SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1487 MIT Spinout Passes $120k in MRR Helping With Customer Analytics and Upselling
20 Aug 2019
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
My new book, How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital, is out. You can get it at capitalistbook.com. Here's what Nicholas said on March 6th on Amazon. Incredibly incisive, useful, and sensible. The author is not greedy and is in fact extremely generous and does not hold back on the knowledge he imparts.
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Now, you guys that listen to the podcast know I'm detail-oriented, so that review might not surprise you, but I hope you grab the book. It's now a Wall Street Journal Instant National Bestseller. Grab it at capitalistbook.com. Audible version is available too. They founded Zylotech back as a MIT spin out in 2014, today doing about 125 grand per month in revenue.
That's up, I'll call it, you know, 250% year over year. They've just closed another round of funding. So 6 million bucks funded so far. 15 customers paying on average 100,000 bucks there. and ACV. Contracts expanding typically year over year between 30% and 60%, depending on which cohort or which customer. Again, small base right now.
He's willing to spend about $30,000 to sign a $100,000 customer. So payback period there, I'll call it six, seven months. A team of 35 people based in Boston and other remote locations. 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 Abhi Yadav. He's the CEO at Zylotech, a technology entrepreneur and customer analytics expert.
He's got experience of many stages of the lifecycle, from startups to bootstrap to venture funding, M&A, and all sorts of other experience. As an early customer 360 category pioneer, he's worked with numerous enterprise brands across the retail technology and financial industries over the past decade. He's an engineer who holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.
Abhi, are you ready to take us to the top? Absolutely. Really excited to be here. Thanks for having me. You bet. All right. Zylotech, what's the company do and how do you make money? Yeah, I know. So we're an enterprise software.
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Chapter 2: What is Zylotech and how does it generate revenue?
Yeah, so we are sort of CAC is, you know, and like I said, we've been more surgical in catching customers. So our approach has usually been, you know, focused on kind of thought leadership, demand gen, and that led to like, you know, direct sales and, you know, talking to them, also doing our own curated events to acquire customer referrals is working pretty good with us. Yeah.
So when you add up like all the humans you have dedicated to those initiatives, plus direct paid spend, what's your fully weighted CAC look like? So it's about anywhere from 20 to 30K. It's not less at the same time. Okay, so that would put your payback, what, at about kind of four or five months? Yeah, like six, seven months. Yeah, six, seven. Very good. That's great.
And you just closed this round of funding. I'm curious what the funding environment was like since you just went through it. Did you raise mostly in New England or you go to the Valley or what? Yeah, so our lead is definitely from the New England area, one of the good we see and probably some point in time I'll talk about that. But it's an embargo announcement that's coming in.
So, uh, but we also have, uh, you know, two other, uh, uh, sort of investor, actually three other investor. And one is from New York. One is from Texas and one is from the Valley. Yeah. Pretty good coverage there. All right. I mean, let's, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? Oh, it's a good to great.
Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? I think I like being in the New England area. Very fascinated. Brian Holligan of HubSpot, you know, went to the same school. Also had a lot of stories and connections. Very inspiring. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your business? Sorry, what's your favorite online tool for building the business?
Okay, so it's Google. I'm a complete Google fan of Google Calendar, Google, you know, Wiki to Google Email. We almost play with everything around what Google offers. So absolutely. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? That's a tough one. I could say that on an average, I sleep for six hours throughout the week on an average.
So there's a plus and minus, but that's how I do the mean average. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? Married with two kids. That's great. And how old are you? Oh, seven and almost going to be one. How old are you? Oh, I'm just 14. How old? 40. Oh, 40. Great. Last, last question here. How do you wish your, what do you wish your 20 year old self knew? What, what do I, I'm sorry.
Could you say that one more time? What do you wish your 20 year old self knew? Uh, pretty good sports person, I would say. Um, so I, I think there's a lot of similarity between playing at sport and doing startups. So probably a team play and, you know, uh, doing it that well. More team sports. Yeah. Guys, there you have it from a B founded Zylotech back as an MIT spin out in 2014.
Today doing about 125 grand per month in revenue. That's up, I'll call it, you know, 250% year over year. They've just closed another round of funding. So 6 million bucks funded so far. 15 customers paying on average 100,000 bucks there in ACV. Contracts expanding typically year over year between 30 and 60% depending on which cohort or which customer. Again, small base right now.
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