Derek O'Carroll

Executive Chairman, Alto Software · 2 appearances on the record.

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executiveinvestorauthor@DerekOCarroll ↗LinkedIn ↗altosoftware.co.uk ↗

Derek O'Carroll is a SaaS executive best known for leading omnichannel retail ERP platform Brightpearl as CEO through its acquisition by Sage. Prior to Brightpearl, he spent over a decade in senior leadership roles at Symantec and co-authored The Omnichannel Survival Guide.

34statements → 25claims → 5claims resolved → 80%fully supported → 3.88/5average certainty → 1.29/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 7said about them ↓

4 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 20 not checkable as stated how the 25 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 22 assertions · 3 insights · 6 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 25 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, and 20 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 Derek 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
Brightpearl has raised $71M all-time, including $39M since 2017
“We've raised 71, I think, in total since the company was started in 20, sorry, 2008. But since my tenure, I essentially relaunched the business in 27. That brings us to thirty-nine million.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 16:00 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY

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 Derek O'Carroll on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Derek O'Carroll said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Low-margin professional services prevent fatal pre-live SaaS churn
“If you don't get professional services right, you see pre-live churn spike, which obviously impacts your universal churn. And then post-live churn, you want to drive down below 10% and get to sort of four percent and be super sticky. And that's why professiona…”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 4:37 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Insight
Hard sales quotas for CS incentivize short-term decisions that harm LTV
“And then they make decisions for the short term and it does not, not good outcome for lifetime value.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 11:54 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Disclosure
Brightpearl's fully loaded cost per AE is approximately $580,000
“When you look at the fully loaded cost of each AE, we're running at about five 80, you know, when you take in count your BDO or your cost of pipeline, and you look at all of the people that you need to feed a new AE, because we run a territory model.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 12:46 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Disclosure
CEO Derek O'Carroll required a down round to reset Brightpearl's valuation
“When I came in the terms of me joining and what we agreed with the board was we would do a down round and we would level set the business based on a true valuation that we thought was more in keeping with the fact that it had high churn and that's not viable.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 4, 2019 ▶ 8:05 1290 How New CEO Rightsized Brightpearl, passed $12m in ARR
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brightpearl deploys in 110 days versus over a year for legacy ERPs
“Customers go live we're clipping along at about a 110 days in the last 12 months, in the last 12 month period, and that's calendar days. So that's from when you sign to when you go live. Which in comparison to the sort of legacy ERP systems like SAP or NetSuit…”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 3:51 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Brightpearl targets $25M ARR by adding $7.2M net ARR in 2021
“We've got twenty five million of R to get to in terms of total R. So I've got to add 7.2 million of net R at the end of the year, by the end of this year, of which 2.2 million will come from expansion.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 9:02 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Disclosure
Brightpearl bases CS commission plans on retention rather than hard quotas
“We have CS reps split into two. We have technical account managers that are all around adoption. And then we have account managers that are all about contract renewal, negotiation, pass value delivered. So they're the two roles. And both of them have a commiss…”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 11:09 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brightpearl's AOV nearly tripled after shifting from per-user to GMV-based pricing
“The monetization strategy was based on, it was a per user based license structure when I joined. And we moved it to a GMV number of orders, whichever is higher, because we obviously do retail and wholesale. And we did that in January, 2017, and we saw our aver…”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 4, 2019 ▶ 10:34 1290 How New CEO Rightsized Brightpearl, passed $12m in ARR
Insight
Targeting one specific competitor sharpens sales teams and drives product differentiation
“And by selecting a target for the team to go after, it really created that sort of sharp end of the stick. Everyone went after that competitor. And then that really also has driven that differentiation and the value selling that I spoke along. So it's importan…”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 4, 2019 ▶ 13:04 1290 How New CEO Rightsized Brightpearl, passed $12m in ARR
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brightpearl's enterprise customer acquisition cost is approximately $27,000
“Whereas the CAC, when I look at the overall, as it pertains to overall customer base yeah, so it's about 27,000 dollars at the moment to acquire a new customer in the enterprise space, so my mistake, yeah.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 4, 2019 ▶ 18:06 1290 How New CEO Rightsized Brightpearl, passed $12m in ARR
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brightpearl reaches $18M ARR with over 850 customers
“We're at eighteen million dollars in our, we're at just over 850 customers, but I'll explain why we've got less customers now.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 2:12 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brightpearl ARR is growing at approximately 40% year-over-year
“And we're clipping along at about 40% our growth per annum.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 2:19 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brightpearl average order value grew 588% to $38,000 per account
“AOV over the four-year period I've been here AOV has gone up 588%, and it's now at 38,000 per year on a per account basis. That's subs only, not implementation.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 3:13 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brightpearl maintains 13% gross churn and 102% net retention
“We're at still 13% churn and DOR is at a 102%.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 5:17 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Failed implementations account for 5% of Brightpearl's 13% gross churn
“When you look at that 13% churn, about four points of that four percent of it, sorry, five percent of that is coming from What we call failed implementation.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 5:32 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brightpearl processed $4.4B in platform GMV in 2020
“In 2019, we processed three billion dollars of orders through the platform. In 2020, that went up to 4.4 billion dollars.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 7:04 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brightpearl quarterly expansion revenue grew 140% quarter-over-quarter
“Expansion in the quarter. So this is this quarter. Is running at a 140%. So that's a good indicator for and that's growth this quarter over last quarter.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 8:46 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Prediction Not checkable as stated
O'Carroll: Brightpearl processing volume growth will normalize to about 40% in 2021
“It grew last year, which is quite exceptional, just over 60%, or sorry, 58%, I think it was. And we expect this year to sort of normalize a little bit down to about 40% growth we expect this year.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 9:57 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Disclosure
Brightpearl AE monthly quota floor is $75K in new ACV
“Average ACV, so annual contract value per month that we expect from each individual head is 75 K minimum. So that's their sort of floor.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 12:31 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Assertion Supported
Brightpearl has raised $71M all-time, including $39M since 2017
“We've raised 71, I think, in total since the company was started in 20, sorry, 2008. But since my tenure, I essentially relaunched the business in 27. That brings us to thirty-nine million.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 16:00 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Assertion Supported
O'Carroll: Brightpearl achieved breakeven and zero cash burn in 2020
“Last year, we reached break even profiles. We weren't burning any cash”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 16:23 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Disclosure
Brightpearl will split its $33M round across working capital, M&A, and reserves
“So of the 33 we raised, we're going to deploy a third of it into working capital improvement into the business. We're going to keep a third of it aside for some acquisitions that we're looking at. And we'll keep a third for a rainy day in the bank”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 16:42 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Disclosure
Brightpearl has a pipeline of 12 breakeven acquisition targets
“So the criteria is pretty simple. So technical only. So companies that have really good product, but not necessarily the cost of anything else. So engineering teams. I'm looking for a breakeven profile. They can't be burning cash. Preferably I'd like pre-confi…”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 17:10 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY
Assertion Supported
Brightpearl raised $33M at $105M pre-money, up from $8M in 2017
“Pre-money, 105. When I joined the company, it was worth eight.”
Derek O'Carroll Feb 25, 2021 ▶ 17:51 Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY

Show 10statements(10 left)

The other half of the tape: Derek O'Carroll's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 1 episode on Top Founders. every mention, with the transcript →

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Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Brightpearl $33m Raised, $105m Valuation, $18m Revenue, Targeting $25m by EOY Feb 25, 2021 13m
1290 How New CEO Rightsized Brightpearl, passed $12m in ARR Feb 4, 2019 13m
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