SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1551 Another CRM Hits 2500 Customers, $180k MRR
23 Oct 2019
Chapter 1: What is the background of the guest and his company?
Youdon'tneedacrm.com launched in 2013, went through a pivot, $600,000 raise, now serving 2,500 customers, paying about 75 bucks per month. So they're doing about 180, 190 grand per month in revenue. That's up from about 100 grand a month just a year ago in November, 2017. They've got 3% revenue churn per month, so about 64%.
Net revenue retention per year because they don't have any expansion revenue yet. Spending up to 500 bucks to get a new $75 a month customer. So payback period is about seven months with a lifetime value of around 2000 bucks. Team of 10 in remote locations all around the world, doubling to 20 over the next 12 months. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Sonny Paris.
He is a French internet pioneer. He's got a PhD in theoretical physics, co-founded Weborama in 1998, survived the internet bubble crash, got listed on the French stock market back in 2006, founded a company called U-Link in 2008, and then pivoted to NoCRM four years ago. Now he's got more than 2,500 customers worldwide using his SaaS software to close more deals.
Sonny, are you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, of course. So I've interviewed thousands of SaaS CEOs, and I think you win for most unique URL. You don't need a CRM.com. All right. So how are you different than a traditional CRM?
Basically, what we say is that CRM are boring and they slow down salespeople. And they slow down salespeople basically because before start to work, a salesperson has to create a company, add a contact. than a deal I need to do. So it's a lot of stuff to do and we are much more faster than that. Okay, but so how? Where are you pulling your data from? Their inbox? Where? There are several points.
The idea is really to focus everything on the lead and the lead contains all the information and it's really quick to create a lead. So you can forward a mail to us, it creates a lead. You can take a picture of a business card with the mobile app, it automatically creates a lead and recognizes everything inside it. You're on LinkedIn, on the page, you click on the button,
It's really, really super easy. And we have also something to manage what we call call prospects. You can import list of call prospects into the software. It's like at that time, like an Excel sheet and you click just on a button after having qualifying the prospect to turn it into a lead. So the idea is really that. You click and you have a lead.
Okay. And walk me through, are we talking enterprise, SMB, mid-market? What's the average customer paying per month for this?
It's clearly SMB. We're focusing on company from, let's say five, our main target would be company from five to 30 salespeople. And the price is starting at around 12 US dollar per user for the starter edition and 19 for the expert edition.
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Chapter 2: How does noCRM differentiate from traditional CRMs?
So we said, OK, let's go. Even if, as you know, the guys from PayPal say competition is for losers. So even if it's a loser's way to compete,
we lose well yeah well i mean no i mean it's just it's difficult space to make money in right hubspot's got their free crm then you have salesforce on the very other extreme it's just difficult uh it sounds like you have some nice traction though you said you've scaled about 2500 paying customers today
Yeah, we have a good traction. We are more than 50% raised year to year. That's great. Yeah, that's really nice.
Just to be clear though, but right now you've got about 2,500 different companies paying you for the software.
Exactly, yeah.
That's great. I mean, so look, 2,500 companies at that price point, you gave me 75 bucks, 80 bucks a month. That means you're doing, call it 180, 200 grand a month right now. Is that about right?
Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Okay, and 50% year-over-year growth would mean you were doing back in November of 2017 about, what, 120 grand a month?
No, a little less than that.
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Chapter 3: What is the average customer profile for noCRM?
That's correct. We have several ways to measure churn. We are quite precise on that. We measure the churn also depending on the duration of the contract. Because the churn of the new coming customers is always higher, much higher than the churn of the longer customers, as well as the churn of the The biggest company is lower than the churn of the smallest company.
Sure, of course. Yeah, and that's to be expected. Talk to me about tools you're using to measure this. So what do you use for your billing platform and your reporting platform?
We use Stripe as a billing platform. And over all that, we have designed our own statistics stuff.
Okay, so you didn't use like ChartMogul or one of these kind of companies?
No, no, no, no, no. The fact is I'm quite comfortable with data because of my scientific background. And WebArmor was a company that was doing ad tech and stuff like that. So I'm quite good in tracking and stuff like that.
But you always build it internally, even at that company? At the company, we built the software.
So it was a software. It was our product.
Oh, that was the product. Yeah, that was the kind of product. Oh, I see. I see. And have you bootstrapped this company to date or have you raised?
We've raised a little bit of money on the Euling Pro, the social network. But when we decide to pivot, we pivot without raising any money. So it's really bootstrapped, in my point of view.
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Chapter 4: When did noCRM launch and what was the initial funding?
And after that, we hope to continue with Russia and to open an office in New York.
Okay, very good. So you're 10 today and over the next 12 months, you plan to double. Exactly. That's great.
And we have people in the US, in Argentina, in London, in Portugal, and in France. So pretty remote. Yeah, exactly.
Chapter 5: Why did the guest pivot to the CRM market?
We are a remote company. We work remotely and we meet each other in Paris sometimes or at some event that we do each year.
And so actually that's interesting, right? So when people aren't all checking into a physical office every morning at 8 or 9 a.m., do you run the company in terms of just here are all the tasks? I don't care when you do them. Just let's make sure we get them done.
No, not exactly. We believe that we're just like in the office. Everybody comes in the morning. We have what we call the three goals a day routine. I ask every people to think before starting to work to what does he want to achieve today? And then he shared that on the social network that we have, the international social network.
And then we use the international social network to share a lot of things. And also we use collaboration video tools like Skype or stuff like that. But we try to build the office around the corporate social network.
Got it. Very good. And then in order to get a $75 a month customer, what do you typically spend on fully-weighted customer acquisition cost?
Basically, we try to spend one-third of the lifetime value of a customer. Sorry, one what? One third. One third of the lifetime value.
What do you assume lifetime value is? Uh, the last time I was around 2000, uh, euros. Okay. So 2000 euros.
I mean, if I divide that by, by three, that means you're spending around five, try to be maybe a little bit lower than that, but let's say not, not more than 500, I would say.
Okay. So 500 euros to acquire a $75 a month customer. So what your payback period is about eight months, nine months. Yeah, exactly. Okay. That's fairly healthy. Um, and where are you spending that money when you do spend it?
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Chapter 6: What are the current metrics for customer growth and churn?
Divorced, two kids, and with a new wife that has also two kids.
Okay, good. So, all women. So, not married, four kids altogether? Yeah, exactly. And how old are you? 47. 47. Last question. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew?
Nothing, because if I knew how hard sometimes it was, maybe I would have done this kind of stuff.
No, give me, give me something. You've learned a bunch of the point here is to give someone else who's 20 a lesson.
Okay. A lesson. Uh, okay. Okay. Give me just one second to find something that is more or less interesting. Uh, yeah. Okay. Uh, don't believe in the existence of Google or Facebook or company like that. They are not existing. So build your company, grow at your own rates and, And don't look at the exception. I know that all the people that raise money only looks at the exceptions.
But you can have a great life, build a great company with a normal life. raising so much money.
Guys, there you have it. Ignore the exceptions. You don't need a CRM.com. Launched in 2013. Went through a pivot. $600,000 raise. Now serving 2,500 customers. Paying about 75 bucks per month. So they're doing about 180, 190 grand per month in revenue. That's up from about 100 grand a month just a year ago in November 2017. They've got 3% revenue churn per month. So about 64%.
net revenue retention per year because they don't have any expansion revenue yet. Spending up to 500 bucks to get a new $75 a month customer. So payback period is about seven months with a lifetime value of around 2000 bucks. Team of 10 in remote locations all around the world, doubling to 20 over the next 12 months. Sonny, thanks for taking us to the top.
What a great synthesis.
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