Grainger: Mavenlink acquires dozens of businesses monthly at near-zero CAC
Ray Grainger · EP 479: $45M Raised, 5000+ Project Management Customers with Mavenlink CEO Ray Grainger · Nov 16, 2016 · at 12:40
Ray Grainger, CEO of Mavenlink, discusses customer acquisition strategies and organic growth channels during an interview with Nathan Latka.
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“We acquire a great number of customers for free. And when I say largely, I mean, these are, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of new businesses every single month at zero acquisition costs for all intents and purposes, other than the cost of producing content.”
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Mavenlink was the #1 Google Apps Marketplace app for four years
“Ended up becoming the number one installed app across every category in the world for four years through the Google Apps Marketplace, which drove tens of thousands of visits to Mavenlink at zero acquisition cost.”
A 12-18 month CAC payback works if customers stay three years
“Manage it by channel and really look at the payback. And if you can get it, you know, As you're scaling your company, we're from 12 to 18 month payback on that acquisition cost. If you keep your customers longer than three years, you're in good shape.”
Grainger funded Mavenlink for three years by selling his Accenture stock
“Just before we started the company, I had sold a lot of my, not a lot, but enough of my Accenture stock. I was a, I had founder's stock at the time. Oh, great. Did well there. And sold some stock that funded our company for three years.”
Mavenlink spent nearly $1M in self-funding before monetizing
“Probably by the time we got to beginning monetizing the business, we'd probably spent nearly a million dollars.”
Mavenlink counts over 1,500 customers on its Premier tier
“We would have well over 1500 businesses or customers that are using our premier offering.”
Mavenlink cohort net dollar retention expands in a 'smile curve'
“If you look at our Net return, net dollar retention over the course of the lifetime of cohorts. It looks more like a smile curve. You can go down and you get some churn, but the people that stay with you grow and grow substantially. And so those cohorts over t…”