The Ledger
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Britton: SaaS companies selling to other SaaS are a house of cards
“I think a big house of cards in SaaS right now is SaaS companies who have a customer base that is other SaaS companies.”
Cutting R&D preserves software revenue growth better than cutting marketing
“So when the lever you can pull is R and D expense, right. And you feel like you're just going to, the pace of innovation will just slow down a little bit. Then you can actually keep your revenue growth, but then drop your OPEX growth, right? The second that yo…”
Britton: SurveyMonkey failed in enterprise by not prioritizing customer service
“Survey Monkey is really focused on a small business, and to some extent, middle market. They were really never able to correct the enterprise because they didn't really prioritize servicing, which is a kind of a necessary evil, if you will, of going to market …”
Britton: Suzy maintains a 75% blended gross margin despite including services
“Our gross margins are 75%. Blend it, including the services which really shows you that we really are running a SaaS business and not a tech-enabled service business, which traditionally runs in the mid to low sixties.”
Britton: Programmatic audience providers frequently deliver survey responses from bots
“When people try to buy an audience to respond to a survey from a programmatic audience provider, what they often find is it's a lot of bots that are answering the questions.”
Britton: SurveyMonkey faces headwinds moving upmarket into enterprise
“They've had a lot of you know, struggles and headwinds just based upon their capital structure and really based upon what seems to be struggles they've had with getting into the enterprise and moving up market.”
Britton: Suzy expects to reach cash-flow positivity by Q4 2023
“And in that regard, we expect to be cashflow positive fourth quarter
Next year.”
Britton: Suzy will reach high $80M to low $90M ARR by late 2023
“We'll, we'll be in the high eighties to low nineties a year from now.”
Britton: Suzy will likely IPO in two to three years at around $200M ARR
“So who knows what, when we'd be able to IPO, I would say likely in the next two to three years, but probably closer than we're at two hundred million ARR versus a hundred.”
Britton: 99% of corporate decisions are made without data
“99% of decisions that are made at companies are not made with any data. They're guesses. They're hunches. They're based upon my epic thinking.”
Britton: All market research competitors must buy users from programmatic platforms
“We own the app. We own the brand. We own the users. Every other company actually has to buy users from a programmatic audience platform. If they want to provide an audience, we were almost, we have a vertical model.”
Matt Britton: Influencer marketing will never become fully programmatic software
“Influencer marketing, in my opinion, is never going to become a fully programmatic software solution.”
Britton: The agency model is political, not a meritocracy
“The agency model is not a meritocracy. It's not the best work wins. It's really the people who can play the best politics wins where I think a software business, your product could really stand apart.”
Britton: TV and digital convergence will return power to ad agencies
“When TV and digital come full circle, it's going to go right back into the hands of the agencies and it's already starting to go in that direction as everything kind of starts to shake out in that space.”
Britton: Qualtrics holds less than 2% of the $80B research market
“Qualtrics is a 1.2 billion dollar revenue company in an eighty billion dollar market. So you're looking at less than two percent market share for the leading digital player in the research space.”
Britton: SaaS startups must productize services to protect their gross margins
“What's important though, is that you have to productize your service offering. So it's scalable. You can't be an agency. And the real litmus test is your gross margins.”
Britton: Suzy achieved nearly 130% net revenue retention in its enterprise segment
“We ended this year close to a 130% net revenue retention within the enterprise and enterprise defined by that two billion plus number, or I think it's one and a half. I can't remember the last definition we had. It's about 80% of our business. So we have that …”
Britton: Suzy maintains 96% enterprise logo retention and low-80s GRR
“If you're looking at gross revenue retention in the pure sense we're probably in the low eighties and definitely higher within the enterprise. However, our logo retention with the enterprise is 96%.”
Britton: Overspending on R&D is safer than overspending on sales
“If you have a high burn because you're overspending on R&D, you can easily turn that dial down and maybe you have slightly less product innovation, but it's not going to impact revenue. A lot of companies have high burn because they have bad unit economics whe…”
Britton: Suzy will burn under $10M in 2024, achieving cashflow positivity
“We ended at a run rate closer to burning a million a month. And we're going to be sub ten million burn in 20, 24, and then cashflow positive in 20, 25.”
Suzy spends 10-15% on panel rewards with 70% gross margins
“It's exactly 10 to 15%. However, we're able to really maintain the overall gross margin profile in the mid to low seventies.”
Britton: Qualtrics sets the gold standard for online market research
“Qualtrics has really set the gold standard for online market research.”
Britton: Suzy's average customer pays $150,000 per year
“So a 150,000 a year. So I guess it's about 12,013 thousand a month.”
Britton: Most market research tools cannot re-engage respondents without owned panels
“Most online market research tools do not have their own audience. So they can't keep going back to the same person. If they're buying a third party audience, they'll answer a question. They'll never see that person again.”
Britton: Net-new software sales and account expansion require distinct skill sets
“If you're a net new seller, you really just have to understand our product, right? But if you're expanding, you actually have to understand the company. And especially if you're already working with them, there's an expectation that you know the company. So th…”
Britton: Suzy at $100M ARR Will Have $250k–$400k ACV
“And I see our company at a hundred million ARR having a 250,002 400,000 ACV and, you know, maybe even having less customers”
Britton: Suzy's Large Customers Have 145% NRR vs 58% for Small Ones
“The big company, big spend companies do about a 145% net revenue retention, while the small company, small spend companies do about 58% net revenue retention.”
Britton: SaaS generates value far faster than agency models
“It just goes to show you how much better of a model SAS is than an agency model, because that took me 12 years to get that exit. And, you know, we're probably 10 times as valuable or Close. Right. After only being in business for three and a half years”
Matt Britton: No influencer marketing startup has sold for $50M
“There hasn't been one influencer marketing company that sold for fifty million dollars”
Britton: In Hindsight CrowdTap Probably Should Have Sold in 2012
“In hindsight, we probably should have, I think that, you know, when you have VC investors, they swing for home runs. They're not about singles or doubles.”
Britton: CrowdTap Revenue Growth Tailed Off as Market Caught Up
“The growth of the company definitely tailed off because the market caught up with crowd tap and the influencer space.”
Britton: Eight-Figure Revenue Businesses Should Use Debt Over Mispriced Equity
“Sometimes you raise debt financing versus equity financing, not so much because you can't raise equity financing, but because you can't have the right valuation. And you, and with a business that has, you know, eight figure meaningful revenue, you're, you have…”
Britton: Agencies reliant on charismatic leaders face serious scalability limits
“I think it's a danger of an agency when you have a charismatic leaders, you can only be in so many places at once.”
Britton: Influencer Marketing Is Enduring but Functions as an Agency Model
“Cause I don't think the influencer marketing space is going away anytime soon. But I do think it's much more of an agency model.”
Britton: Brands Flee to Proven Influencers as Networks Cut Creator Rosters
“And I think that with brands is a flight to safety towards the more tried and true influencers. And you're seeing that with platforms like maker studios that are drastically decreasing the amount of people that are in their network.”
Britton: Suzy's services team generates approximately 16% of total revenue
“Our Center of Excellence team, which is about 16% of our revenue, is an important component of kind of guiding our clients down that digital transformation journey within research”
Britton: Suzy raised a $10M internal cushion round in late 2022
“We did a tiny internal round at the end of 20, 22. We went out to market. We were just needing an extra ten million dollars almost for cushion because the market was so uncertain. At that point, still kind of is. So we want to pat our balance sheet a little bi…”
Britton: Suzy's 2021 Series D valued the company at 10x ARR
“It was closer to about three hundred million of post money. We had a 10 X valuation. We had a 10 X valuation, which is a healthy multiple because we didn't get above our skis. A lot of, we had term sheets with higher multiples. I'm happy that we took The 10 X …”
Britton: Suzy will reach profitability and $100M ARR without raising again
“We have enough capital to get us through to profitability. And because of that, we don't have to raise anymore. We can get past a hundred million mark based on a hundred million we've raised.”
Britton: Suzy generated mid-$60M in revenue during 2023
“A little lower than that, in the mid sixties.”
Britton: Suzy expects to grow revenue by 30% to 32% in 2024
“We're going to grow about 30% this year. Maybe 32%.”
Britton: Suzy Targets Super Enterprises Making Over $5B in Revenue
“Our ideal customer profile is what we call super enterprises, a company that do over five billion a year in revenue. We primarily focus on technology food and beverage, packaged goods, financial services companies in, in those in that overall revenue tier.”
Britton: Suzy's CrowdTap has 1M registered users and 50k-100k MAUs
“You're talking about our CrowdTap consumer panel which we have a million registered users on, and on a monthly basis, you are correct, it's anywhere between 50 and a 100,000.”
Britton: Suzy serves 400 large enterprise customers
“We have 400 large enterprises that are working with us today.”