Opinion
Buhrdorf: Founders should never hire a lawyer for company formation
“You know, when you do a formation, people come to me and say, hey, should I use a lawyer to do a formation? I say, absolutely not. Not only will they do it wrong because they don't do 1000 of thousands of these like we do, we make damn sure we do it right, hav…”
Insight
Ross Buhrdorf: SMBs prefer major commercial banks over fintechs for primary deposits
“Our customers don't want us to take deposits. They don't, you know, the, we're embedded fintech, so we have You know, a FBO account, or think of it as like a Venmo account. We have a holding account. That's what our customers want. They don't, they want Chase.…”
Insight
Ross Buhrdorf: A free offering is the best way to disrupt incumbents
“We were initially trying to disrupt the incumbents, and so a free offering is always the best way to do that”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
ZenBusiness CEO: 10 of 15 acquisitions targeted organic search rankings
“We've done
15 acquisitions.
10 of those acquisitions were organic search position.”
Insight
Founders and employees should always take secondary liquidity, Buhrdorf argues
“No, man, you should always take money off the table. What are you talking about?”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ross Buhrdorf predicts ZenBusiness will reach profitability by fall 2021
“We will be profitable next fall.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Buhrdorf says ZenBusiness will easily break $30 million ARR next year
“Yeah, that's very easy, easy to hit that number next year.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
ZenBusiness maintains a monthly churn rate of 1.5% or lower
“1.5, and we're below that some months.”
Assertion Supported
Buhrdorf: Zero-cost entity formation is now the industry standard
“Now the market is at a zero cost offering, and everybody's there. At that time, we were leading it, and it got us into the market.”
Disclosure
Buhrdorf: ZenBusiness has more than doubled revenue since 2021
“Oh my god, yes.”
Disclosure
Buhrdorf: ZenBusiness refuses to offer features that do not generate revenue
“We're making money on everything. We, otherwise we don't.”
Assertion Supported
Buhrdorf: Banks pay up to $500 to acquire a single customer
“For a bank, I know right now I can give you, a bank pays because I don't want a bank board. They pay up to 500 bucks for a customer.”
Opinion
Buhrdorf: ZenBusiness is what Shopify is for e-commerce
“I will say that, you know, what I pitched to the VCs, and we still really is a tenant of our business, what Shopify does for e-commerce, Zen Business does for the service sector.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Buhrdorf: ZenBusiness has served 500k customers with 400k+ active
“We've had 500,000 customers, but, you know, around 400,000 plus.”
Insight
Ross Buhrdorf: Customer survey responses diverge from true willingness to pay
“Customers tell you one thing in a survey, but then when they put in their credit card, that's a different, it's a different thing.”
Insight
Ross Buhrdorf: Funded startups should hire professional market research firms for surveys
“And I'd recommend, you know, a company that's got any amount of funding To use professionals, and professionals go out, they get the, they build the surveys and the questionnaires based on what you want to know, based on a lot of the early you know, survey mon…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ross Buhrdorf: ZenBusiness revenue run rate recently passed $42 million
“Oh, hey, man, we're north of that.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Ross Buhrdorf predicts ZenBusiness will triple its revenue in 2022
“We're going to do two, close to three X revenue growth this year.”
Insight
ZenBusiness bypasses fintech KYC friction using upfront business formation data
“Fintech products suffer from acquisition and then conversion, right? So they can acquire the customer, but then they got to go through all of this KYC stuff. With us at Zen Business, we have all that KYC stuff because we do the formation. We do the EIN.”
Assertion Supported
Buhrdorf says small businesses use over 10 unintegrated apps on average
“On average, folks are using 10 plus different vertical applications that aren't integrated to get their businesses run”
Insight
Solopreneurs avoid standard logo churn by starting new gigs after failures
“These people don't churn, logo churn, like other mid-market products, because if the person fails, and we really want to think about this in this fashion, if this person's business fails, they're still a person. They still have a side gig. It's not like they b…”
Disclosure
Buhrdorf prefers users run five companies over pushing high single-business ACV
“I'd rather see our customers paying us a thousand dollars a month and have five different companies. Because that makes more sense than having, you know, a single company until it's, you know, got 10, 12, 20 customers, 20 employees, then they could move into t…”
Disclosure
Ross Buhrdorf: ZenBusiness moved from free to paid and back to zero-dollar pricing
“We started out at free then we went to paid, And now the market is, ah, you know, we've been so successful. Now the market has went back to zero, which is where we've went”
Insight
Buhrdorf: Banking and taxes are small businesses' top post-formation worries
“Banking for us is really about, it's one of the, it's the number one next to taxes is the number one thing that, that Small businesses are worried about, like, oh my god, I just did a formation, you know, what kind of filing do I, you know, what kind of format…”
