Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Savage: Targeting one-month payback forces 10x to 20x marketing returns

Chris Savage · 848: SaaS: Wistia Video King? $10m+ ARR, 10k+ Customers on Just $1m Raised! · Nov 19, 2017 · at 13:50

Chris Savage, CEO of Wistia, discusses SaaS customer acquisition payback periods with Nathan Latka.

0:00 / 0:34exact quote · 34.5s
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“What I've noticed is actually that people get obsessed with this, like year payback thing, because everyone says if you're not doing the year payback, then you're not investing enough in growth, but the problem is, like, it's so easy to do dumb stuff or things that look like they're working that aren't actually, and it's so, you know, you get on that, that, that rat race of trying to continue to fund that, when we've found that sometimes just thinking the other direction of, like, all right, we want a month payback how do you have to just almost like open your brain to the things that are the 10 X to the 20 X returns when you start doing that.”

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Disclosure
Savage: Wistia only raised two angel rounds totaling $1.4 million
“We only ever raised two angel rounds. So for a total of 1.4 million, we raised 650,000 in 2008. And another about 800,000, a little less than that in 2010.”
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Assertion Not checkable as stated
Savage: Early angel investors held preferred shares with veto power over sales
“Their shares also were preferred shares. And so it meant that they had rights to a board seat. They could block a sale.”
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Assertion Supported
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