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James Isilay

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
171 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

Well, I think my investors are kind of like targeted to 300 million AR for us to go to IPO.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

So the question is, how much do we do that organic?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

How much do we do that inorganic?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

I think we've got a lot of optionality there in terms of different paths to go down.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

But right now, we're focused on organics for the next couple of years, get the company profitable.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

And then once we're profitable, then look at our options to speed up the IPO.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

Right now it's hiring.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

We've got execs to fill in.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

So I'm looking for a new CFO.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

And then I've got another exec.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

So it's upgrading the exec where those execs are kind of not scaled.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

And then I think overall it's the economy, of course, right?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

So I'm sure everybody's seeing win rates kind of drop and deals getting harder to close.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

So for me, it's really upgrading the sales team so they get more multi-threaded and we can start to get more of those enterprise deals.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

Because I think that that is where we need...

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

The issue right now in win rates, particularly enterprise, is that there's more decision makers needed to close deals.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

So you need to get more multi-threaded and you need to teach your teams how to do that.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

And that is a skill set that is not in many books you can just pick up and lay out.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

No, it was my sales team.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Fireside Chat with James Isilay of Cognism: Fundraising during the current economic climate

Just to repeat the question, how did you find the acquisition offer?