SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1022 How This Barcelona Sales Tool Grew 2x YoY, Raised $16m, Charging $200/Seat
12 May 2018
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn. Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million. I had no money when I started the company.
It was $160 million, which is the size of many IPOs. We're a bit strapped. We have like 22,000 customers. With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc. are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes. I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Oscar Masia.
He's an experienced sales-oriented manager and entrepreneur. He's the co-founder and CEO of Force Manager, which has transformed from a small startup to a leading competitor in sales management in a very short amount of time.
The rapid growth has been Force Manager's impact spread globally to over 35 countries with offices already in Spain, London, and Latin America, counting with a wide portfolio of clients, including several large multinationals. Oscar, are you ready to take us to the top? Hi, how are we doing? I'm doing good. Okay, so tell us about Force Manager. You know, the sales space is a tough space.
What do you guys do and how do you make money? Well, basically, it's a tough space, but it's a huge space. There is huge opportunities and there are a lot of niches where you can get value from. For instance, in our case, we have specialized ourselves in field sales. Field sales is a very important part of the sales landscape.
And there are a lot of field sales reps out there that need a different solution than the conventional CRMs. In our case, we use and we leverage CRMs. contextual information, AI and everything to provide a solution for field sales reps that it's more a sales assistant that's basically helping them on their daily activities.
So this is basically our approach and well, it's been quite successful and we are growing so much in the last years and I think it's a very good solution for these guys. Well, basically, we are doubling our staff and our business every year. So for this market, I think it's a great number, of course. And so these are teams that utilize field sales.
It's a mobile app that, you know, the sales rep in the morning pulls it up on their phone. They see where they need to go today and they maybe recommend where they should drive and who they should close? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it's very important for a mobile application to understand the context of the user every time.
Because as long as mobile users, they just look into their phones, they're a very short window of time. We need to provide them always information that is interesting for them at that time and it's actionable. For instance, we use geolocation to provide information on their surroundings. For instance, if he has to go to the next visit, we take into account the traffic conditions.
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Chapter 2: How did ForceManager achieve rapid growth in sales management?
I thought Hertz was a stationary rent-a-car place. Yeah, that's it because they have a business unit that they sell their services to companies. So they have to visit companies in house to offer their services. And this is where, where our product really makes a difference because they need to be, they need to be proactive and go there to find their potential customers. I see.
What's your business model, how to make money? Well, we are another software as a service company.
and yes and well basically we we charge our customers a monthly our yearly and basically per seat and what do people pay on average would you say per month well it depends on the number of seats but we can say that the the basic the basic yeah what's your average though like across your entire customer base would you say Yeah, I would say it's around 20, 30 sales reps.
That's probably around $2,000 per month. Okay, so it's about $100 a seat. Yeah, more or less. Okay, got it. Okay, now tell me more about the backstory here. When did you launch the company, Oskar? Well, we started back on 2011. So it's been such a long time since we started First Manager. And well, it's been a very long story.
So a lot of things that happened at the beginning were me and my co-founder, basically two guys sitting together in front of each other. And then we had to hire a lot of people. We needed to build the technical stuff at the beginning. Are you technical or business? Sales, marketing. Excuse me? Were you technical or business? Like, how did you guys meet in the beginning?
Well, my co-founder is a tech guy. I'm the business guy. But the cool thing here is that I understand perfectly his needs because I have a technical background as well. And he has a business background as well. So I think we are very complementary, but we understand each other. What's our role in the company?
And did you guys just in the beginning just say, OK, we're just going to split equity 50-50? Or how did you have that tough equity conversation? Well, I think it's very important to be very straightforward and put this over the table as soon as possible.
And in our case, as long as we were providing the same amount of value to the project and we were 100% committed, 50%, 50% I think at that time was the obvious outcome. So this is basically what we did. And you said at this time, so you're inferring something has changed. What has changed?
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Chapter 3: What unique solutions does ForceManager offer for field sales?
Well, from that point, I've seen a lot of things. Now we are scaling our company. We are going to new markets. So now the company is absolutely different from what the company was at the time. So a lot of things have changed. Well, how does that all impact the cap table, though? That's what I'm interested in. I mean, is he still with the company? Oh, sorry. Yeah, absolutely.
Well, every time we go for a funding round, the table changes because we have new investors that are coming on board. And we've been through a seed capital round, Series A, Series A+, and now Series B. How much total have you raised? We've raised so far, I think it's about 15, probably around $16 million. One six, right? One six, right. Okay, $16 million.
And why did you decide to raise the capital versus continuing to bootstrap? Like, where is it going? Is the tech really hard? That's where you need the capital? Or is it user acquisition that you need the money for? Where'd you use the money? Well, it's a pretty good question because basically when you're at the position, it's the first thing that you have to do yourself.
It's a good idea to raise money because when you have investors on board, basically you have another responsibility and other people to be accountable to. So, of course, in our case, as long as we are in the tech business, we know that the best... A barrier to enter to our competitors is growth. So we need to grow very, very fast. And the only way to grow very, very fast is having capital.
Yeah, Oscar, to be clear, though, my question is, where strategically do you spend the money to drive the growth? Is it on an engineering team because the tech is really hard? Is it on acquisition because those leads are expensive? Where is it? Well, it depends on the moment of the company. At the beginning was everything about product, product and product.
But as long as the company has a stable product and it's a good market fit, everything is about sales and marketing. So right now I would say that 80% of our expenditure every month, it's going to marketing and sales and other related activities to marketing and sales. But in the beginning, everything is about product. What's your team size today? Uh, we are about to get to 100.
I think we are 95 probably. Okay. So basically this is where, where we are. And where are you guys all based? And we are based in Barcelona. Uh, then we have a team in, in, in
in Madrid another team in in the UK in London another team in in Mexico in in another one in Colombia sorry very good okay so we are we are spread abroad yes yeah spread out okay good and then you mentioned you're spending you know 80% of your spend is on sales and marketing activities ignore sales reps and any human expenses what do you spend each month just on paid acquisition
Well, right now we don't have a very active paid acquisition strategy because we switched from inbound to outbound. We are investing heavily on outbound campaigns. What I mean with outbound is basically that we have SDRs. We have the typical predictable revenue team. SDRs, phone calling, then inside sales that are basically getting to lead and running demos and then closing the deals.
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Chapter 4: How does ForceManager's business model work?
I think it's called Who. It's a very, very interesting book to read to any founder or anyone related on human resources. And it's a really good one because having the world-class guys on board, it's paramount for building a business. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now?
Well, the one that is cooler for me and I love his style is the one that is running SpaceX and Tesla. So this guy is... Elon is. It's amazing. Elon Musk. Number three, besides your own, what's your favorite online tool? The online tool? Well, one of the tools that we use all the time and we are very, very happy using it is HubSpot, for instance, for our marketing campaigns.
So it's a very, very built-up tool and we love it so much. That's interesting because they're all about inbound and you're shifting to more outbound strategy, but they're still helpful, huh? Yeah, it's very helpful, yes, because we are doing not much strategy, but we have a lot to do, so we need to manage it. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Around six hours.
Okay, that's good. And what's your situation, Oscar? Married, single, do you have kids? I have three kids. Holy mackerel. I'm married. Married with three kids, and how old are you? I'm 40. 40. Okay, last question. Take us back 20 years. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew? Whew. Probably how to hire people better. This is something very, very important.
And a lot of things related to business. Basically how to manage people and align them to basically what you want to do. This is probably the most complicated part of managing a company. There you guys have it from Oscar with Force Manager. He wishes he would have learned how to hire better and faster and quicker and more efficiently.
He launched the company back in 2011, has since raised about 16 million bucks, 700 customers he's currently helping. They're growing 2X year over year. So again, about...
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Chapter 5: What challenges did ForceManager face during its early days?
in 2016, doing about 700 grand in revenue. Now today, in December 2017, doing 1.4 million bucks a month. Super healthy unit economics, retaining loads of their customers. Super healthy payback period of eight to 10 months with this team of 100 folks between Barcelona, Madrid, UK, and Mexico. Oscar, thank you so much for taking us to the top. Okay, thank you so much.