The Ledger
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Nicolas Vandenberghe: Nations should only exist for soccer tournaments and global taxes
“So my view is that at some stage we should have global taxes you know, we should have no, we should have nation for soccer tournament, that's cool, but not for anything else, not for fight and all that.”
Vandenberg: Chili Piper Will Hit $1B Valuation at $20M ARR
“I would say that if we meet our plan by the end of the year, getting the twenty million, we'd be there.”
Vandenberg: Drift Refuses Small Customers to Mask Churn Problems
“I see the drift is doing that because they've had the churn problem. So then they're trying to make their numbers look better. So they even refuse to take companies.”
Vandenberg: Chili Piper Will Hit $100 Per Share, Making Employees Millionaires
“We have a 150 pipers. We promised them all that we're going to get our share price to a hundred dollars a piece so that they're all millionaires every single one of them.”
HubSpot steals Salesforce market share by starting downmarket
“I'm observing our HubSpot is taking market share away from Salesforce, and they take them from the bottom, and then from Marketo and from the other, they take them from the bottom, because when you start with a product that can serve the bottom efficiently, an…”
Chili Piper cuts headcount by one-third, from 250 to 170
“So we cut a third of the company. So we went from two 50 to one 70”
Chili Piper achieved cash flow positivity to avoid a down round
“We didn't want to go at a lower valuation, so we said we cut costs, we go cash positive. That's what we do. So that's what we've done.”
Late-stage investors cannot block sales below Chili Piper's $625M valuation
“They don't have the rights. Those who came into the very high valuation do not have the rights to block.”
Chili Piper raised $33M and sold $33M in secondary to Tiger Global
“We did a secondary with Tiger Global. We sold thirty-three million. So we raised thirty-three million, and we also sold thirty-three million.”
Chili Piper closed a $27M secondary share sale at a $625M valuation
“Yeah, so we did six 25, which was the highest of the market. We, that was in the end, well, at five hundred million with ten million worth of sale, at six 25 with twenty-seven million, so twenty-seven million secondary, and that's what happened.”
Tiger Global Offered Chili Piper a $33M Series B on First Call
“So unsolicited in March, we got an interest from Tiger Global. I got on a call with John Curtis and literally he made the offer on the fly. The later the evening with a term sheet two weeks later with the money for a thirty three million be around.”
Chili Piper's Tiger Round Split $33M Primary and $33M Secondary
“The thirty-three million went into the company. The same amount went into the secondary.”
Vandenberg: Chili Piper sees CAC payback in about one month
“Yeah, that's right. We're getting paid back in about a month, yeah. About a month.”
Vandenberg: Fast-growing SaaS companies raise at 20x run rate
“I see that fast growing SaaS companies Raise at 20 times the current run rate.”
Chili Piper plans Q1 AI scheduler as 'ChatGPT for Calendly'
“We have something coming in the first quarter that we think is the chat GPT of Calendly, you know, but we'll see.”
Chili Piper repriced employee stock options after new 409A valuation
“Yeah, so we repriced the options, so we I went to the board, I said, look I believe the whole idea of stock options is to be motivated which that, so we had another four, nine, eight, it's called to tell us the current correct price, and we repriced all our op…”
Vandenberghe: Chili Piper growth is driven by virality over SEO
“So it's more the viral aspect than the SEO that's working for us. SEO, to be a candidate, I think we can do better, and we get back to it next year.”
Chili Piper ties account manager bonuses entirely to cross-selling over NDR
“So we switch our AM bonus entirely on cross-selling. They're no longer compensated on NDR. They're only compensated on cross-selling.”
Chili Piper burned $2M per month before enacting layoffs
“We were burning, it went to two million a month.”
Vandenberghe says 42 VCs reached out to lead Chili Piper's Series C
“I had 42, that's the number, VCs who had reached out to me to say, we want to do your C-Round, we want to do your C-Round”
Chili Piper faced revenue contraction and a 50% drop in new logos
“Instead of organic expansion, we had contraction. Instead of new logos, we had half of new logos.”
Chili Piper employee satisfaction dropped from 92% to 75% following layoffs
“We were at 92% before Morocco. We redid it in January, we were at 75%.”
Chili Piper transitioned to cash flow positive in just four months
“Yeah, so so November, December, January, February.”
Alina Vandenberghe developed the first iPad app demoed by Steve Jobs
“She did the first iPad app that Steve Jobs demoed when he launched the iPad.”
Structure customer-funded software dev as prepayments to retain intellectual property
“You can't do a service. The fee has to be a prepayment against software because otherwise they own the IP, right? If you do a service business, you do develop for them and they own the IP. So the, it's very important if you ever do something like that, where y…”
Tiger Global pushed Chili Piper to adopt Oyster for global contractor compliance
“But then when we did our B run the attorney for Tiger Global said that doesn't look very safe, like from a liability standpoint, right? And so we said, okay, we'll move to Oyster.”
Two Ukrainian engineers made $1.6M each for one month of work
“We gave them shares. A 100,000 shares each. And as I said, the secondary is 16 dollars a share. So each of them, that pair for the months was 1.6 million each.”
Chili Piper enforces a strict no-discount policy across enterprise sales
“By the way, we have a no discount policy. So I do about five rounds of negotiation with, not negotiation with the procurement Facebook.”
Vandenberghe: Base10 offered Chili Piper $15M on $55M pre at 12x ARR
“So that deal was June 20, 20. It was based then. And they offered 15 on 55 pre.
28 years.
So we're doing around four plus million.
So it's, it was
around 12 X. There was a number, 12 X run rate.”
Vandenberg: All Chili Piper Customers Double Inbound Conversion Rates
“And what happened is that all our customers double the inbound conversion rate. So they go from 40 to 80% or from 20, some went from 23% to 75%, right?”
Vandenberg: Hardest Part of Inbound Is Real-Time Qualification and Routing
“But the hard part is not to show a calendar. The hard part is to do the real-time qualification and routing.”
Vandenberg: Early Chili Piper investors saw 50x to 100x secondary returns
“Some of them You know, came in very early and they did a 50 or a hundred X. Yeah.”
Vandenberg: Event Badge Scanning Fails to Build Pipeline Compared to Meetings
“So scan badges is nice but that doesn't get you pipeline. Yeah. Then you have to follow up for email them, go through the same thing. So all of them realize that what matters is try to get meetings ahead of time and meetings on the floor instead of go straight…”
Vandenberg: Chili Piper Will Not Sell to ZoomInfo or Gong
“That is not in our future. No, Alina
and I have built this company. We having a blast.”
Vandenberg: Chili Piper enforces a strict no-discount pricing policy
“One thing remarkable about TV Piper is that we have a no discount policy. So nobody, we just don't know discounts. And even these companies that I mentioned, there are very large companies with procurement department bigger than our company pay the same price.”
Vandenberg: $40M pre-money valuation is fair for Chili Piper
“Yeah, I think that's fair for us now. The market will tell me.”
Chili Piper achieves positive cash flow without raising new capital
“No, we switched to being cash positive.”
Chili Piper launched and quickly pulled 'Inbox' email client in 2020
“So little known is the fact that in 2020 we launched a product called inbox. Because we thought, okay, we need to help people engage with their buyer, and there is a lot of things happening in the inbox, so let's do an inbox, an email inbox, which came out lik…”
Tiger Global offered $33M at an 'absurd valuation,' says Vandenberghe
“We bootstrapped for four years, then we raised fifteen million in twenty-twenty, just after COVID, and then Tiger Global came in and say, we want to give you thirty-three million at an absurd valuation.”
Nicolas Vandenberghe's first startup reached $11M revenue and received a $50M offer
“And we did six millions our first year, eleven million a second year. And then we got an offer for fifty million and John Scully.”
Nicolas Vandenberghe lost a $42M payday when a $60M acquisition collapsed
“Six zero, and I have 72% of the company So I'm about to clear forty-two million, and, ah, and the deal collapsed, and the dot bomb happened, and I had to shut down the company. Actually, I did a deal with Microsoft, but I laid off 65 people, ah, and.”