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Brandon Bruce argues Salesforce is not a CRM or sales tool
“I think our key kind of learning over the last few years is Salesforce is not a sales tool. Salesforce is not actually a CRM. It's kind of a misnomer. It's called the customer relationship management platform, but you know, as well as anybody, no customer rela…”
Attendance and ROI at major sales conferences are reaching saturation
“We've done historically a lot of sponsorships at conferences. We found and at least toward the end of last year, that attendance was starting to drop at some of the conferences, so we think that might be a trend. We're not sure yet. And we know there's plenty …”
Rushing deals increases customer churn due to a lack of commitment
“If I rush you into a sale and you agree, the chance of you turning is going to be that much higher because you really haven't made that full psychological commitment yet.”
Bruce: Salesforce tightened AppExchange lead generation for ecosystem partners
“I will say though, that we, and I think it's fair to say some of the others in our common market have certainly seen some pressure from Salesforce. So I think, you know, they've tightened up their marketplace, the Salesforce app exchange, which had been in the…”
Bruce: Low end of Salesforce integration market is commoditized
“Now the bottom of the market, I think it's fair to say has become relatively commoditized.”
Outlook represents 75% of the market with 4-5x larger customers
“And then we're really ramping into this outlook market, which, you know, by most estimates is about 75% of the market and those customers are four or five times larger.”
Cirrus Insight maintains a $750-$800 LTV against an $85 CAC
“So our LTV right now is between 758 hundred dollars. You know, cost of customer acquisition is about 85 bucks. So, you know, we're able to recover our CIC pretty fast.”
Cirrus Insight operates at break-even to reinvest in growth
“Yeah, we basically try to keep it at break even. That's essentially our goal. So we reinvest everything in growth of the company.”
Cirrus Insight finished 2015 with approximately $640,000 in MRR
“So the, so MRR, we finished 2015 at around six 40 K.”
Bruce: Seat-level reviews help end-user SaaS apps rank higher on AppExchange
“One of the things that helps us the most is that we are an end user based application. So you don't install Serious Insight just once for your org. Instead, if you've got a thousand salespeople, they will all use Serious Insight. And we benefit from that becau…”
Cirrus Insight exited 2015 at roughly $640k in MRR
“So the, so MRR, we finished 2015 at around six 40 K.”
Bruce: Outlook represents 75% of the market with customers 4-5x larger than Google
“We're really ramping into this outlook market, which, you know, by most estimates is about 75% of the market and those customers are four or five times larger.”
Cirrus Insight reports LTV of $750-$800 and CAC of $85
“So our LTV right now is between 758 hundred dollars. You know, cost of customer acquisitions about 85 bucks.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight targets finishing 2016 at a $15M to $20M run rate
“We've set our sights on doing, you know, about sixteen million in bookings or so. So oftentimes we'll, we'll, we'll look at top line bookings for the sales team. So trying to get those deals in the door, some of them may be multi-year but we love those all the…”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight ARPU has grown above $8 per month
“Yeah, it's got, it's up a bit from there should be a higher above eight now as we introduce more plans, more bundles.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight acquires document tracking startup Attach
“So during Dreamforce, Salesforce's big conference this year we acquired a small company in Sweden called Attach that we're really excited about because we had started using it internally and really liked it.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight targets $100 to $150 CAC per user
“What we try to do is get it in a range about a hundred, a 150 bucks a user on the acquisition side.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight has 150,000 paid users across 5,000 companies
“So about 5000 companies with about 150,000 total users under those companies.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight surpasses $1M in monthly recurring revenue
“Yeah, so we're up over a million now, which is a great milestone for the company, and got to be on the ink list last year.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight annual revenue churn is 15% to 20%
“The annual churn on our side is going to be around, let's say it's about 15 to 20%.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight acquired Attach with cash rather than debt or PE
“We're not applying private equity to a deal. We didn't go out and source a venture debt to do it. We just did it because it looked like a very complimentary technology with a great team behind it that we wanted to also join with us.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight raised just over $1M total, none in 3 years
“So our total raise all in has been a little over a million since the time we started six years ago, but we haven't taken on any additional capital, I'd say, in the last three years.”
Cirrus Insight surpasses $1 million in monthly recurring revenue
“So we're just hitting and starting to pass a million MRR now.”
Cirrus Insight prices its Starter tier at $19 and Closer at $29
“Now our two plans starter and closer are 19 and 29 respectively. And our flight plans seats are selling for substantially more.”
Cirrus Insight reaches approximately 125,000 active seats
“So it's up about a 100,000 now. It's probably about a hundred and a quarter.”
Cirrus Insight maintains negative net revenue churn in its enterprise cohort
“As far as net revenue turn, it'd be negative. As far as net C turn, it would definitely be under that. 10%, probably under five percent for those large companies”
Cirrus Insight scales to 70 employees on initial $550K seed funding
“So now we're up to about 70. We haven't raised any additional funding. We haven't sought to, so we're still powering away with the good old-fashioned customer-funded organic growth.”
Cirrus Insight sees 15% to 20% annual gross customer churn
“Gross customer churn is going to be in the 15 to 20% range right now.”
Cirrus Insight spends $25K to $50K monthly on paid marketing
“Our budget for paid marketing last month was probably somewhere between 25, 50,000 dollars.”
Cirrus Insight serves 100,000 end users across 3,500 organizations
“Yeah, we serve about a 100,000 end users and those are spread across over 3500 organizations.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight maintains net negative churn
“So net negative turn. So we always add more seats then we lose”
Cirrus Insight has over 350 consulting partners and resellers
“So we have a network of over 350 consulting partners as well as some resellers.”
Cirrus Insight targets a $50K monthly quota per account executive
“On the quota side, we're aiming on average. So it varies based on tier, but on average about 50 K a month. Per, per, per account executive.”
Cirrus Insight launched the first Salesforce-Gmail integration in 2011
“In 2011, launched the first integration of Salesforce, which is the famous customer relationship management platform in the cloud, and Gmail.”
Cirrus Insight acquired scheduling tool Assistant.to
“We've acquired them already about nine months ago. We added the functionality in the Sears Insight. It's one of our most popular features.”
Latka: Cirrus Insight hit $640k monthly MRR with just 1% churn
“Cirrus Insights, which they're now doing they just crossed 640 grand per month in MRR, but their monthly churn rate is actually, it's actually one percent.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight acquired Assistant.to about nine months ago
“We acquired them already about nine months ago. We added the functionality into Sears Insight. It's one of our most popular features.”
Cirrus Insight serves 100k end users across 3,500+ organizations
“Yeah, we serve about a 100,000 end users and those are spread across over 3500 organizations.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight raised $1.15M via convertible notes without institutional VCs
“We've benefited from the, you know, early support of friends and family. And then a few early customers and angels came in to provide some early capital, but otherwise, you know, we consider ourselves bootstrapping institutional backing. Yeah, we just did conv…”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight AEs target $50K monthly bookings quota
“Well, it'd be 50 K in, in booking. So spread, if we were translated into MRR, it'd be a little over four K.”
Cirrus Insight maintains a partner network of over 350 consultants
“So we have a network of over 350 consulting partners as well as some resellers.”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight Maintains Net Negative Churn
“So net negative churn. So we always add more seats then we lose, you know, the primary reasons.”
Cirrus Insight finds events and partner marketing outperform ads
“No, we do very little in the way of ads. We do find retargeting to be valuable for us. We certainly tried a lot of different types of advertising, but our most our best spend has been on events and as well as partner marketing.”
Cirrus Insight cuts back conference marketing to focus on paid spend and SEO
“Historically, we've done a ton of conferences, so lots of traveling, lots of pressing the flesh, meeting folks on the conference floor, which has been great. I think toward the end of last year, we started to do less of that. There seemed to be diminishing ret…”
Bruce: Cirrus Insight has 58 employees across Knoxville and Irvine
“Total team size today is 58. Merrily split between Knoxville, Tennessee, where I am and Irvine, California, where Ryan is.”
Cirrus Insight charges $19 per user monthly, billed annually
“So today it's 19 dollars a user a month paid annually. And then we just introduced a new plan, a closer plan about six weeks ago that includes some additional functionality, like the ability to mass email out to customers and some higher end calendar integrati…”