Opinion
Organ: Venture-backed software jobs are more important than serving food
“You know, the restaurant business is not actually one that is sustainable. That doesn't sustainably create lots of, you know, lots of, you know, high tech Innovative jobs. Whereas I think what I'm doing does. So I know that might sound selfish, but I don't thi…”
Insight
Organ: Fire or reallocate engineers lacking a six-month payback during crises
“If the engineers aren't working on stuff that is going to generate a payback within six months, then they need to be reallocated or they're gone. So that's what it's all about. It's all about how do I get payback within six months, and I want to get at least a…”
Insight
Raising quotas to offset salary inflation drives out top sales reps
“There's inflation, there's salary inflation in the market companies are responding by increasing quotas and it's just not possible. It's not possible for sales reps to hit their, hit those numbers, and I think that sets up I think that sets up, you know some, …”
Insight
Organ: Founders should take available government stimulus cash
“I would say that as a founder, if you have an opportunity to get cash from the government at this point, like I try to do it. And you're certainly going to pay enough in taxes over your lifetime. So if this is your one opportunity to get a little bit, then sur…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Organ: Junior Eloqua employees made $10M+ when Eloqua went public
“And so we gave a lot of stock, and as a result, there's, you know, a number of you know, there are some pretty junior folks at Eloqua that are, you know, made ten million dollars plus when Eloqua went public.”
Insight
Organ: SaaS companies can charge $10,000 for upfront needs analysis proposals
“If you're the expert, you can actually charge someone 10,000 dollars to understand their needs in great detail and give them a proposal that they can then use to, they can hire you and your software, or they can go to your competitor. But most likely they're g…”
Insight
Organ: Founders should cut ramping sales reps first during a crisis
“In a time of crisis, your cost of capital is enormous, which means that you need to get payback very quickly with a high level of certainty. So a new sales rep is going to be a very uncertain investment. It's going to take too long. So if you've got four reps …”
Insight
CMOs buy 12 SaaS tools expecting to cut half within a year
“There are a lot of CMOs out there that'll just, you know, they have an experimental budget and they're going to buy like 12 SaaS things. And then they're, they know they're going to cut at least 50% of them after a year. So you've got to make sure that you are…”
Insight
Organ: Founders planning layoffs should build headcount up from employee one
“What I encouraged was to start from literally employee one. So I'm employee one, the CEO. I'm the first employee. Who else do I absolutely need? Okay. I need someone in finance. Okay. I need one person in marketing, whatever. So build up from the bottom instea…”
Insight
Organ: Employee equity swaps are one of the best crisis moves
“And actually, I think that's one of the best things that you could do at this time. Again, you strengthen the company, you raise more cash. The employees are super motivated. So it's a good move.”
Insight
Organ: Nine months is the minimum runway required to reach profitability
“So I think in nine months most good founders, founders and CEOs can figure out how to get their company a profit. And so nine months to me is the absolute minimum of time that you need.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Organ: SaaS customer churn will rise by 10 percentage points during downturn
“So typically what I'd say is that churn is going to go up by 10 points. So if you're used to, 20% churn. I might go up to 30% churn. And your new sales growth is going to be, you know, pretty, pretty anemic in terms of ARR.”
Insight
Organ: Engineering investments normally require a 20x return within two years
“Normally in engineering, you want to get a 20 times return on investment within two years.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Organ predicts Influitive will reach $100 million ARR within five years
“I think it would be four to five years.”
Insight
Organ: Revenue growth gets noticeably harder north of $10M ARR
“North of ten million, the growth has definitely gotten harder.”
Assertion Partly supported
Average sales quota attainment plummeted from 75% to 52% by 2017
“The average quota attainment rate from his and Jim, Jim I have to try to remember the name of his group there, but he basically, Jim, Jim studies sales forces and their effectiveness. And it's about 52% in 2017. So versus, you know, being 75% a decade ago.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Organ: Post-9/11 equity swap extended Eloqua's runway from 4 to 9 months
“That extended our life from, we had four months of cash remaining, and it went extended from four months to nine months.”
Assertion Partly supported
Organ left Eloqua at $20M in sales and under 65 employees
“No, I left earlier so I got the company to around twenty million sales, under 65 people, and you know, and then another CEO actually took over for me, and it was the person who took it public, so you know, it's, which is interesting.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Organ: Influitive ARR is north of $10 million
“We don't disclose revenue, but it's north of ten million.”
Disclosure
Organ: Influitive raised about $50 million
“There's, I raised about fifty million dollars.”
Disclosure
Organ: Influitive averaged over 50% YoY revenue growth
“We've been averaging more than 50%.”
Disclosure
Influitive has 125 employees but only eight are sales closers
“So we have a 125 people and we have eight that are in sales. So it's pretty small, eight that are closers. Then we have a bunch of SDRs, BDRs, open deals, but eight closers.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Organ: Influitive's CAC is about $40,000
“Our CAC is about 40,000 bucks.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
The marketing software landscape exploded from 20 companies to roughly 5,000
“When I was running Eloqua, there was probably like maybe 20 marketing software companies in the entire world at that point, like that were at all sort of relevant compared to us. And we've gone from 20 to, like, 5000.”
