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Brandon Bruce

Co-founder & CEO, Uncat · 4 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestor@Brandon_Bruce ↗LinkedIn ↗brandonbruce.com ↗

Brandon Bruce is the co-founder and former COO of Cirrus Insight, a sales productivity plugin integrating Salesforce with Gmail and Outlook. He currently serves as co-founder and CEO of Uncat and is a General Partner at Market Square Ventures.

50statements → 22claims → 4claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 3.78/5average certainty → 1.32/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 19said about them ↓

2 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 18 not checkable as stated how the 22 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 21 assertions · 2 opinions · 6 insights · 20 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 22 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 18 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Brandon argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Bruce: Outlook represents 75% of the market with customers 4-5x larger than Google
“We're really ramping into this outlook market, which, you know, by most estimates is about 75% of the market and those customers are four or five times larger.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 16:02 Cirrus Insight Is Doing $640k in MRR (Dec 2015) With Much Bigger Plans EP 226

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Bruce: Cirrus Insight targets finishing 2016 at a $15M to $20M run rate
“We've set our sights on doing, you know, about sixteen million in bookings or so. So oftentimes we'll, we'll, we'll look at top line bookings for the sales team. So trying to get those deals in the door, some of them may be multi-year but we love those all the…”
Brandon Bruce Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 15:17 Cirrus Insight Is Doing $640k in MRR (Dec 2015) With Much Bigger Plans EP 226

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
50% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Brandon Bruce on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Brandon Bruce said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Brandon Bruce argues Salesforce is not a CRM or sales tool
“I think our key kind of learning over the last few years is Salesforce is not a sales tool. Salesforce is not actually a CRM. It's kind of a misnomer. It's called the customer relationship management platform, but you know, as well as anybody, no customer rela…”
Brandon Bruce Sep 12, 2017 ▶ 4:08 780: SaaS: How Did He 2x ARR In Last 12 Months from $6m to $12m?
Insight
Rushing deals increases customer churn due to a lack of commitment
“If I rush you into a sale and you agree, the chance of you turning is going to be that much higher because you really haven't made that full psychological commitment yet.”
Brandon Bruce Sep 12, 2017 ▶ 16:17 780: SaaS: How Did He 2x ARR In Last 12 Months from $6m to $12m?
Opinion
Attendance and ROI at major sales conferences are reaching saturation
“We've done historically a lot of sponsorships at conferences. We found and at least toward the end of last year, that attendance was starting to drop at some of the conferences, so we think that might be a trend. We're not sure yet. And we know there's plenty …”
Brandon Bruce Sep 12, 2017 ▶ 16:43 780: SaaS: How Did He 2x ARR In Last 12 Months from $6m to $12m?
Insight
Bruce: VC or PE backing inflates acquisition legal fees and payout hurdles
“If the venture capital or PE is involved, then they're going to want to protect their interests and get paid. And there's almost always going to be a pretty big lawyer and CP, CPA bill attached to it.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 8:59 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bruce: Salesforce tightened AppExchange lead generation for ecosystem partners
“I will say though, that we, and I think it's fair to say some of the others in our common market have certainly seen some pressure from Salesforce. So I think, you know, they've tightened up their marketplace, the Salesforce app exchange, which had been in the…”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 11:57 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Insight
Bruce: Salesforce AppExchange favors high-level biz dev over organic rankings
“When you look at the folks that are participating in the exchange, they tend to be much larger companies that are doing more high level biz dev type partnerships and less so of the organic rankings driven.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 12:23 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Insight
Bruce: Low end of Salesforce integration market is commoditized
“Now the bottom of the market, I think it's fair to say has become relatively commoditized.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 13:15 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Insight
Many teams overpay for marketing automation just to send newsletters
“And what we came to find out is there's a lot of teams really overpaying and under utilizing marketing automation. So they're paying the big ticket price for a big platform, but they're using it like a monthly newsletter system.”
Brandon Bruce Sep 12, 2017 ▶ 8:58 780: SaaS: How Did He 2x ARR In Last 12 Months from $6m to $12m?
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cirrus Insight finished 2015 with approximately $640,000 in MRR
“So the, so MRR, we finished 2015 at around six 40 K.”
Brandon Bruce Sep 5, 2016 ▶ 6:31 Cirrius Insights $640K MRR 100,000 Customers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cirrus Insight maintains a $750-$800 LTV against an $85 CAC
“So our LTV right now is between 758 hundred dollars. You know, cost of customer acquisition is about 85 bucks. So, you know, we're able to recover our CIC pretty fast.”
Brandon Bruce Sep 5, 2016 ▶ 9:58 Cirrius Insights $640K MRR 100,000 Customers
Disclosure
Cirrus Insight operates at break-even to reinvest in growth
“Yeah, we basically try to keep it at break even. That's essentially our goal. So we reinvest everything in growth of the company.”
Brandon Bruce Sep 5, 2016 ▶ 13:13 Cirrius Insights $640K MRR 100,000 Customers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Outlook represents 75% of the market with 4-5x larger customers
“And then we're really ramping into this outlook market, which, you know, by most estimates is about 75% of the market and those customers are four or five times larger.”
Brandon Bruce Sep 5, 2016 ▶ 15:05 Cirrius Insights $640K MRR 100,000 Customers
Insight
Bruce: Seat-level reviews help end-user SaaS apps rank higher on AppExchange
“One of the things that helps us the most is that we are an end user based application. So you don't install Serious Insight just once for your org. Instead, if you've got a thousand salespeople, they will all use Serious Insight. And we benefit from that becau…”
Brandon Bruce Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 3:58 Cirrus Insight Is Doing $640k in MRR (Dec 2015) With Much Bigger Plans EP 226
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cirrus Insight exited 2015 at roughly $640k in MRR
“So the, so MRR, we finished 2015 at around six 40 K.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 7:31 Cirrus Insight Is Doing $640k in MRR (Dec 2015) With Much Bigger Plans EP 226
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cirrus Insight reports LTV of $750-$800 and CAC of $85
“So our LTV right now is between 758 hundred dollars. You know, cost of customer acquisitions about 85 bucks.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 10:58 Cirrus Insight Is Doing $640k in MRR (Dec 2015) With Much Bigger Plans EP 226
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Bruce: Cirrus Insight targets finishing 2016 at a $15M to $20M run rate
“We've set our sights on doing, you know, about sixteen million in bookings or so. So oftentimes we'll, we'll, we'll look at top line bookings for the sales team. So trying to get those deals in the door, some of them may be multi-year but we love those all the…”
Brandon Bruce Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 15:17 Cirrus Insight Is Doing $640k in MRR (Dec 2015) With Much Bigger Plans EP 226
Assertion Supported
Bruce: Outlook represents 75% of the market with customers 4-5x larger than Google
“We're really ramping into this outlook market, which, you know, by most estimates is about 75% of the market and those customers are four or five times larger.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 4, 2016 ▶ 16:02 Cirrus Insight Is Doing $640k in MRR (Dec 2015) With Much Bigger Plans EP 226
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bruce: Cirrus Insight surpasses $1M in monthly recurring revenue
“Yeah, so we're up over a million now, which is a great milestone for the company, and got to be on the ink list last year.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 1:33 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Disclosure
Bruce: Cirrus Insight acquires document tracking startup Attach
“So during Dreamforce, Salesforce's big conference this year we acquired a small company in Sweden called Attach that we're really excited about because we had started using it internally and really liked it.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 1:52 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bruce: Cirrus Insight ARPU has grown above $8 per month
“Yeah, it's got, it's up a bit from there should be a higher above eight now as we introduce more plans, more bundles.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 2:50 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bruce: Cirrus Insight has 150,000 paid users across 5,000 companies
“So about 5000 companies with about 150,000 total users under those companies.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 4:25 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Disclosure
Bruce: Cirrus Insight raised just over $1M total, none in 3 years
“So our total raise all in has been a little over a million since the time we started six years ago, but we haven't taken on any additional capital, I'd say, in the last three years.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 5:02 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Disclosure
Bruce: Cirrus Insight acquired Attach with cash rather than debt or PE
“We're not applying private equity to a deal. We didn't go out and source a venture debt to do it. We just did it because it looked like a very complimentary technology with a great team behind it that we wanted to also join with us.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 9:25 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bruce: Cirrus Insight annual revenue churn is 15% to 20%
“The annual churn on our side is going to be around, let's say it's about 15 to 20%.”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 14:21 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!

Show 24statements(26 left)

The other half of the tape: Brandon Bruce's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 19 times in 17 episodes on Top Founders. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 19

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
008815152016201720182019episodesmentions
08152016201720182019episodes it came up in
000.87.51.5152016201720182019episodesmentions per episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2016 14 mentions in 13 episodes 1 per episode

Appearances (4)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You! Apr 2, 2018 14m
780: SaaS: How Did He 2x ARR In Last 12 Months from $6m to $12m? Sep 12, 2017 12m
Cirrius Insights $640K MRR 100,000 Customers Sep 5, 2016 13m
Cirrus Insight Is Doing $640k in MRR (Dec 2015) With Much Bigger Plans EP 226 Apr 4, 2016 13m
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