Insight
Hood: VC inflows force SaaS startups to prioritize fundraising over customers
“But I think the problem when money pours into markets like that is you get actually companies concentrated more on how can they raise money and how can they drive sales and less concentrated on how can they actually deliver value to their customers.”
Opinion
Hood: Most founders tend to exaggerate their reported revenue figures
“I'm not sure that the revenue figures are exact. I think everyone tends to exaggerate their revenue figures.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hood: VanillaSoft has surpassed $10 million in ARR
“We're actually north of a ten million AR at this point.”
Disclosure
Hood: VanillaSoft has raised just $500k total since 2005
“We've probably raised about half a million dollars since the start of the company in 2005.”
Opinion
Hood: MQLs dumped into traditional CRMs die without sales follow-up
“People are dumping them into CRMs, and quite honestly, they're dying there, and this has been seen over and over again.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
VanillaSoft has up to 700 customer organizations and 6,000 paid seats
“So we have about 657 hundred organizations running five, 6000 seats with us right now.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hood: VanillaSoft grew ARR by roughly 30% year-over-year
“So a year ago, we'd have been about 30% below that. So we're on a good revenue growth.”
Disclosure
Hood: VanillaSoft is cash-flow positive and accumulating bank cash
“Well, we have been reinvesting, but not enough that it stops some cash from piling up in the banks.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
VanillaSoft sees 1.0% to 1.2% monthly revenue churn on monthly contracts
“We're churning at about one, 1.2%, so we're actually I I'd hate to say we're happy with it. I think no one's happy with any churn, but it's actually pretty good for the industry.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hood: VanillaSoft LTV is $30k-$40k on just $1k-$1.5k CAC
“Given that the lifetime value of our customers are generally somewhere around 30 to 40,000, given the size of our customers, I mean we're quite happy you know, spending that thousand 12, 1500 dollars to drive them in.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hood: VanillaSoft's customer acquisition payback period is under two months
“Yeah, our, generally our payback is within two months or so.
Absolutely.”
Insight
Hood: For founders, the pain of failure outweighs the joy of success
“I feel that for a lot of entrepreneurs, the pain when things are going poorly way outweighs your ability to enjoy the times when it's going well.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hood: VanillaSoft has run on pure recurring revenue since 2005
“So we've been in this since 2005 before it was really well known. And we're completely reoccurring revenue model.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hood: VanillaSoft averages $150 cost per lead across all channels
“Well, to give you a bit of an idea, in terms of average cost per lead and what we drive through, it's around a 150 dollars a lead.
That's across all channels.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hood: VanillaSoft converts around 8% of leads to paying customers
“Yeah, we tend to convert actually right around that, around eight percent.”
