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Venky Balasubramanian

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
191 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

We have to work with carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, just in the US, where it's like do that into 200 countries.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

And then you're going to have to build that globally, right?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

In terms of like your servers, data centers, pops, all of that.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

And then comes your software.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

So you wouldn't find too many startups coming, fly by, and doing something in an MVP approach.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

It takes a long time.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

Over the last seven years, we've built solid carrier relationships with 100 plus carriers.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

And that's part of the core of the business.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

And also a key reason of why we are able to deliver the quality at scale we do.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

You mean like from an inbound organic model?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

That depends, right?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

Yeah.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

So typically, obviously when we, when we, you know, charge our customers, we have a portion of that revenue going to our carriers because we have to pay them for the actual voice call and SMS.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

But like, I mean, I mean, there are obviously a lot of numbers, but like keeping it simple, high level, typically we are net positive on a customer in six months.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

Like if you look at, I mean, some of our competitors are public.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

So it's not like how you kind of talk about SaaS margins.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

So the margins are lower in our spaces or our space rather.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

But like, I wouldn't say it's significant.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

We still are, you know, close to 60 plus percent margin numbers when you talk about gross margin, but it's not like a SaaS business model.

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations

Yeah, net-net is 60 plus.