The Ledger
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Chellappa: Big tech hires showed no performance difference compared to startup hires
“I've hired people from Salesforce, Zendesk, I've hired people from big brand companies, and I've seen no difference in performance from somebody who might have just worked for a smaller startup or run their own mom and pop business in the past.”
Chellappa: Founders should lead sales and close the first 10 accounts
“I'm a firm believer that this, that the founder should be doing sales, and doing some other marketing for the first two years. They should be the one closing the first 10 accounts. If you're not doing the, I closed the first 40 accounts, because we were bootst…”
Chellappa: 90% of Employee Failures Stem from Attitude, Not Skill Gaps
“90% of the time, if they lose their job, whether they lose it voluntarily, or you let them go, is because of some attitude related issue. Either personality, or because they have an attitude issue, or they can't work within the team, or there's a culture fit i…”
Chellappa: High-attribute candidates eventually outperform experienced, low-attribute hires
“When they're coming in, the performance is going to lag. But over time, their performance is going to exceed the other individuals.”
Chellappa: You know within six to eight weeks if a hire will work out
“In six to eight weeks, you know the person's gonna work out on that. Every single time. Every single time I've had to let a person go, even a year later, I knew within six to eight weeks if that person wasn't going to work.”
Chellappa: Scaling Past $5M ARR Requires Hiring Experienced Executives
“The hardest, I think this is the hardest place to hire, because you really need somebody who's done this before. You don't need a newbie. You don't need somebody who's been an AE who wants to be a VP of sales. So you don't, or you don't need a, you know, someb…”
Chellappa: Startups should always choose being understaffed over overstaffed
“Understaffed is better than overstaffed all the time. You know, I absolutely believe it. And I really think that's the way especially startups should be functioning.”
Chellappa: Hiring a Good VP of Sales and Marketing Takes 80 to 90 Days
“Finding a good VP of sales and marketing Are really the hard ones, which can take anywhere from 80 to 90 days, sometimes even longer.”
Chellappa: 46% of New Hires Fail Within 18 Months
“46% of the time, People fail in 18 months. Any hire you do.”
Chellappa: A wrong early hire sets a startup back a full year
“A wrong hire will set you back a year. So if you hire the wrong person, you'll end up doing their job, and then you'll have to get back here, and then you'll have to find the next person, and then you'll be gun-shy about hiring the next person. That person's q…”
Chellappa: Critical startup hires should be rejected unless they are a 'hell yeah'
“What I really realized is if your answer is not a hell yeah when you hire somebody, when you're looking at somebody, especially for a critical role, then it's a no.”
Chellappa: Questioning an employee's fit three times means they are wrong fit
“If you repeatedly asking the question, if the person is in the right role, then the person is not in the right role. If you're going to ask that question more than three times, and you keep a counter, and if you had three different times the same question on t…”
Engagedly operates on a 2.5:1 sales quota-to-OTE ratio
“No, we are a lot lower than that. So we don't do a five, five to one. We do more, more like two and a half, three to one.”
Chellappa: Engagedly will achieve EBITDA profitability in Q3 or Q4
“You know, we are not a bit that positive yet, but we will be in the Q three, Q four timeframe.”
Chellappa estimates Engagedly's valuation between $30M and $50M
“I mean, I would suspect today it's probably in the 30, 50 range, depending on who's buying it.”
Chellappa ran sales, marketing, and implementation up to $1.5M ARR
“I was doing all the sales. I was doing marketing. I was doing implementation of the product. I was doing a lot of those things until we got to about one and a half million or thereabout in revenue. That's when we hired our first CSM. To help implement so that …”
Chellappa: Company is currently generating roughly $7.6M in ARR
“So we are here right now, roughly, 7.6000000 ARR.”
Chellappa: Shut down international operations after failing to understand local HR culture
“All of those, we shut down the international operations because we could not figure out how to support them. The sales team did not fully understand how to sell the product in those countries because we didn't understand the HR culture in those countries.”
Engagedly CAC payback period is typically six to nine months
“Our payback period is typically within six to nine months to get a new customer.”
Engagedly averages two-year contracts with a one-year minimum
“So our contracts are typically two to three year contracts. We don't do a month to one contracts at all. One year, minimum one year, our average contract size is two years.”
Engagedly incremental ACV reaches $11,000 to $12,000 per client
“And right now our ACV on an incremental basis or a critical basis is roughly around, you know, 11, 12,000 per client.”
Engagedly founders self-funded the business with $3 million
“We put in, between me and my partners, we put in to date about three million.”
Chellappa: Engagedly charges $5 to $7 per seat monthly
“Well, it's per seat basis, right? So every employee is a seat essentially. So it's usually anywhere from You know, five dollars a seat to seven dollars a seat per month. Subscriptions are typically annual.”
Chellappa: Engagedly client size ranges from 80 to 20,000 seats
“We have clients that are 20,000 seats, you know, and we have clients that are 80. So the average is probably somewhere around four or 500 employee organizations roughly.”
Chellappa: Engagedly charges up to $5,000 for implementation as a loss leader
“It can go anywhere from 203 hundred dollars to 5000 dollars. But it's usually like a loss leader. We don't really make a lot of money in it, you know.”