The Ledger
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Boebel: VCs exploit missed quarterly targets to acquire more equity
“If you miss it, you have a bad year, bad couple quarters, it can be pretty damn hard to raise money. And, you know, BCs, they know what they're doing. They'll take advantage of that and buy a little bit more of your company than otherwise they would have.”
Boebel: Startups should plan cash spend to hit zero at profitability
“The idea is like invest it all touch zero in the bank account. The moment you, Hit profitability. You at least design for that, operate towards it.”
Boebel: 'Touch Zero' model aligns running out of cash with reaching profitability
“I always operate to where, you know, every few weeks we're tuning our financial model to try to make sure we touch zero in the bank account, which by that, I mean, we spend every dollar, but the moment we run out of money is the moment we hit profitability.”
Boebel: Bay Area Series A funds force startups onto a venture treadmill
“I went out and talked to a lot of Bay Area investors, you know, at the typical Series A funds, and just found that all of them, for their funds to work, they really want companies that are going to spend more than what you can in the top zero model. You're rea…”
Boebel prioritized PLG experience over enterprise sales for Pingboard's CEO search
“The things that were important to me is someone that really understands product and product led growth. So, you know, we didn't want someone who had a more traditional enterprise sales background turned, turned CEO that would come in and kind of layer on a lot…”
Pingboard operates entirely on self-serve signups without a sales team
“And we don't have a sales team today. It's all product led where customers sign up online”
Boebel: Org chart software is an overlooked need dominated by PowerPoint and Visio
“I think it's an interesting combination of something every company needs, but something that is overlooked, and Really, there's no solid software for it out there. Everybody can still build org charts in PowerPoint and Visio.”
Boebel: Pingboard raised $7.5 million across three separate seed rounds
“We've raised three separate seed rounds that were each two and a half million dollars, which is very different. Seven and a half million total.”
Boebel: Revenue-based financing adds two months to customer payback period
“Most likely the percentage of revenue route, the from what I've seen, you can get better terms that way. And it's actually easier to model and it's easier to plug into the touch zero operating model than I have. Which I already have. And basically the way it w…”
Pingboard founder Bill Boebel steps down as CEO, appoints Laith
“The big news and why Laith is on this call is I've hired Laith as our new CEO. I was founder and CEO and I'm taking a step back now”
Boebel: Pingboard raised $7.5M across three seed rounds, skipping Series A
“We've raised seven and a half million. We did it as three separate seed rounds though. So we've never truly done a series.”
Boebel: Pingboard hit $5M ARR and 40 employees before COVID-19
“We crossed five million in revenue in 20 20, 20, right before COVID hit, and we're at 40 people”
Boebel: Pingboard took 11 months to recruit its replacement CEO
“It took 11 months to find our new CEO. So we hired a recruiter. They really helped us scour our own networks and networks outside of people we already knew. And it took a while. Probably half the time was figuring out the exact profile of what we were looking …”
Boebel: Pingboard shifted to profitability during COVID to avoid raising capital
“We've run the business in a way where with every round of funding, we try to be able to get to profitability and that's what we've done. You know, we never thought we actually would pull the trigger on going profitable, but we did when COVID hit because we had…”
Pingboard generates about 3,500 monthly signups
“We like, for example, with our product today, we generate about 3500 signups per month.”
Webmail.us had 80,000 customers when sold to Rackspace
“We, when we sold that business to Rackspace, we had, like, around 80,000 customers, and I think the average price point there was closer to 20 dollars.”
Pingboard's $150 initial monthly deal sizes expand to $220 over time
“Across the board, it's 220 dollars average customer size, but when a deal first closes, it's about a 150 dollars.”
Boebel: Pingboard churns 1.5% monthly, offset by expansion
“We churn about a percent and a half a month, which isn't too bad because it's actually offset by expansion revenue almost exactly.”
Boebel: Pingboard scales to approximately 1,200 customers
“So earlier this year we crossed a thousand customers. I believe we're around 1200 now.”
Boebel: Pingboard crosses $3 million ARR threshold
“We crossed into two million in January of this year. We're crossing three right now.”
Boebel: Pingboard has around 40 angel investors with prior exit experience
“We have a lot of angels, about 40, but they're all like entrepreneurs, built and sold companies before, have different areas of expertise to tap into.”
Boebel: Pingboard originated as a front-desk visitor directory for Capital Factory
“So we built that initially, actually, out of a need we had at Capital Factory. We needed basically a member directory and something sitting at the front door so that a visitor could, Browse the, or search the directory, and ping the person they were there to s…”