SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1202 He Raised $20m+ in First Company, Now Bootstrapping in B2B Sales Tech Space, $1m in ARR
08 Nov 2018
Chapter 1: What success did Adam achieve with his first company, Simply Measured?
Adam had a lot of success at his first company, Simply Measured, raised a lot of capital, grew it to many, many millions in ARR before he left and then obviously went on to sell. Now he's joined up with a, it sounds like a very talented CTO in 2014. The CTO launched the company Siftrock, again, helping with emails. You get all the replies.
What do you do with the replies when someone says, I'm out of office or I've changed jobs? And how do you update your CRMs and all your data records to make sure it reflects everything you're collecting from those automated replies online? And then most importantly, how do you actually, again, engage with the people that wrote you real replies from those mass emails you sent out? He's solving it.
They're a team of six people based up there in Seattle, totally bootstrapped 140 customers paying on average 600, 700 bucks a month. So doing, uh, they've passed a million bucks in ARR, uh, growing and I have about 10 X over the past 18 months, which is healthy 135% net revenue, uh, retention year over year. Again, healthy growth, siftrock.com.
Chapter 2: How did Adam transition from Simply Measured to Siftrock?
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 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.
Chapter 3: What unique challenges does Siftrock address in email marketing?
I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Adam Schoenfeld. He is the CEO of a company called Siftrock. He joined as ex post facto co-founder in October 2016. He's passionate about all things related to SaaS marketing and sales. Previously, he was a founder and CEO at Simply Measured in the social analytics space.
He's also a BOD member at Visible, leader in the B2B marketing attribution space. Adam, are you ready to take us to the top? Let's do it.
Chapter 4: How has Siftrock achieved significant growth in a short time?
I remember Simply Measured back. That was the heyday for those companies back in 2012 when Wildfire, Vitru, Buddy Media, all those guys sold. Did you sell at the same time?
No, later. I was in the business for a long time, grew it, and then I left the business to come join Siftrock, and then it sold to Sprout Social Post. What's that?
Got it. Size-wise, what did that get up to? You guys were a couple million in AR, right? Can you share or no?
Can't share details of that. It was definitely more than a couple, but I can't share details about that.
Why'd you leave? Why not stay with Sprout Social through like an earn out or something?
So I actually left before the Sprout Social acquisition. And for me, the company had grown. We were over 100 employees. It had some success. I'd learned a ton. And I really love the earlier stages of a business. And I wanted to go do something. I wanted to go bootstrap a business, actually. I wanted to try a different model.
And when I met Chris, who had started Siftrock solo, I was just drawn to him and his energy. And so I just had the opportunity to go do something else that I was really passionate about.
Yeah. Sorry. My numbers were way off too, because I mean, you guys had raised, I mean, there was well, I know one round you did that simply measure was like 20 million. You guys had raised a significant amount of capital, right?
Yeah, we did. Yeah, we went on the VC path and we did put a lot of capital into the company. And as you know, you were in that space at a similar time. And a lot of companies, that space got very crowded very quickly.
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Chapter 5: What business model does Siftrock use to generate revenue?
You need somebody who can functionally compliment you, but also personality and style-wise. And so when I saw him, and we spent a ton of time together dating, and I informally advised him for probably a year before I actually you know, joined the business. But that was just, I just saw that as such an opportunity that, you know, I was willing to make a lot of sacrifice to come on board.
I, like you guys, have never been able to find a project management tool that I love. You know, my blog writers like one thing, my developers like one thing, my designers like a different thing, and it's so difficult to get them all on the same page. So when I had Roy Mann, the CEO of Monday.com on the show, I was pleasantly surprised at what he told me regarding his traction and his growth.
And I said, maybe I should try this thing. So we now use monday.com. I started with the magazine. We've launched the Latka magazine, solely dedicated to SaaS founders. It's the only magazine focused on SaaS. And my content writers and my designers worked beautifully together on that project using monday.com for project management. I then said, well, let me give it a real test.
Let me see if I can use this for sprints and product cycles with my developers using it as well. And so we did that for Git Latka on our last release. It worked like a charm. Never before have I been able to find one tool that my developers, my designers and my writers and myself can use and be happy with.
You know, for me, I do most of my work waiting on the boarding deck about to get on a plane. I have to be able to access this stuff on my mobile device and it works beautifully. We've been using it for several months now. And I said, Roy, I'd love to introduce this to my audience, but you got to give me a great discount. Make me a great offer. He said, Nathan, OK, fine.
If your folks sign up and try it today, we'll give them 10% off all plans. If they use this link, nathanlaca.com forward slash Monday. So you can go there, try it for free. And if you decide to start paying, you'll get 10% off. Again, that's nathanlaca.com forward slash Monday. What's growth look like? You just passed a million in AOR. Where were you 12 months ago?
Oh man, I mean, we're in those ridiculous percentage growth rates, right? But we really think about it in dollar growth. I guess at the end of last quarter, we were growing like 260%, right? I mean, we went, it took us 18 months to go from basically 100K to a million a day or so. So, you know, when I came in, we were about a hundred K of just what he'd cobbled together.
And, you know, we just crossed the million 18 months after I came on.
So to summarize that in 20, he launched in 2014, he grew it to about a hundred grand in ARR in 2016, when you joined, it was about a hundred grand in ARR. You've grown now over the past two years up to, you know, north of a million. So 10 X over two years, pretty healthy growth.
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Chapter 6: Who are Siftrock's target customers and what do they pay?
Yeah. Are you running right now at about breakeven? Yep, right about break-even. Some months a little over, some a little under, so 2017. The nice thing about annual contracts is you can make this work bootstrapped if you can do annual deals.
Adam, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
I've been really into Seth Godin right now, so I'll go with Purple Cow. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying currently? Oh, a lot, a lot. I love doing this. Um, I'll go with a local CEO, um, Sandy Lynn. She's the CEO at skill jar. Um, they just raised a big round and, um, she's super, super sharp. I love talking with her.
So somebody I know personally and have been kind of watching her grow.
Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building a business besides your own?
Um, Oh man, so tough because, um, right now I'm really excited about drift and outreach and they're, you know, they're all in the sales and marketing world where I live. Um, both of those, I, Since we're getting outbound going, Outreach has just done some amazing things to help that, especially in terms of personalized emails. So I really like that tool.
Number four, how many hours of sleep are you getting every night? Oh, I'm pretty steady in the seven ballpark, maybe six and a half. And what's your situation? Married, single, you have kiddos? Married, two young ones, four-year-old and a two-year-old.
Okay, that's incredible. And you said you're 35, right? Yep. And last question here, what do you wish your 20-year-old self knew?
Oh, man, that idiot? I don't know what I'd tell him. Probably just not trust your gut, but listen to your gut, I think. Anytime I've sort of strayed, it's been sort of like not listening to a gut feeling, not asking why, not digging down on that.
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