SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1569 Why 1000+ Boarddecks Get Manged Using This $7m ARR Tool
10 Nov 2019
Chapter 1: What is the background and purpose of the collaboration software discussed?
launched in 2014 basically a board management product hyper secure share the board decks mobile tablet makes it easy typically people that are paying for the cfos the cro's the ceos on these companies that are preparing the deck they've got over a thousand enterprise customers paying on average acv i've called it seven thousand bucks so about seven million bucks right now in arr growing 60 to 70 percent year over year they've raised five million dollars to date three percent revenue churn per year that's gross they add back 12 percent in expansion so 109 percent
net revenue retention annually, spending a dollar to get a new dollar in CAC. So healthy payback period there of 12. Team of 100 people based in Indiana as they look to continue to scale. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Parun Chadha. He's passionate about building collaboration software that inspires and enables teams.
They're building the best board meeting experience through their onboard product and the most versatile employee collaboration experience through their employee portal solution called Onsemble. Their teams are uniquely focused towards customer success and meaningful innovation. They're based out of Lafayette, Indianapolis, London, Toronto, and he lives in Chicago.
Prune, are you ready to take us to the top? Absolutely. Hi, guys. So the company is called Passageways, and it sounds like you have two separate products. They're both SaaS companies, I assume? They're both SaaS products. Onboard is for board collaboration and Ensemble is for employee collaboration. And which one came first? Ensemble came first.
We've always played in the enterprise collaboration sandbox. And we went from employee collaboration to could we actually keep going? And the next adjacency was management meetings and then board meetings. Interesting. So do this, let me ask you, do most companies start with your ensemble product and then you upsell the onboard product afterwards? Or these are really two separate customer bases?
They are actually co-mingled. We have a lot of overlap, but there are several, most customers have one product. Interesting. Okay. But we see more and more overlap. Okay, so just because this is such a short interview, I want to dive deep into one of them. Which one would you say you spend more time on or which one does more revenue? What's more exciting?
I think the board product is a great product to really talk about because most of the audience is going to be CEOs running companies talking about raising money and, you know, in board meetings. Okay, let's do that. So onboard. So this particular product, what year did you launch it in? We launched it about four and a half years ago. Okay, so I'll call it what, 2013, 2014? Yep. Okay.
And help us understand who you're catering to. So I assume, are the board members, the investors paying for this or the company pays typically? Typically, it's the company that pays. The product itself is to remove the communication friction between information that the management team pulls together for often monthly board meetings. Sometimes it's not monthly.
You also have quarterly and all other variations available. Typically, the software is used by people who pull together the board information, general counsel, CFO, CEO, all those folks. And then this information is made available securely through an online portal that's also available through every mobile app, mobile platform like tablets and iPhones and such. And that's where board members,
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Chapter 2: How did the company transition from employee collaboration to board collaboration?
So when I graduated from Purdue in 2003, I started the ensemble product line with the team that we put together in Lafayette, Indiana. And we got really good at secure collaboration and communication in the enterprise space. Right around when the iPads came out, which is April 2013, we saw that the boardroom access to information suddenly became very attractive on an iPad.
And everybody was trying to think about what's the best way to dish out this information. That's when we started the journey towards the boardrooms. I started this company in the Purdue dorm room, and it was good to see us actually really get into the boardrooms eventually. Now we have some of the largest customers in the world using our product, including some very amazing nonprofits.
Supreme Court in a country is using our product. some of the Fortune 500 companies, some of the biggest banks and hospitals using our product. So it's been actually really a gradual journey where we first learned enterprise communication and collaboration, and then we nailed the use case.
And at this point, I believe from everything that I see, we are the most tech-forward boardroom solution in the market. Okay, and try and quantify this for me. So this is four years in. How many customers have you been able to scale to today? Uh, we are talking about more than a thousand customers at this point. Okay. Okay. I mean, yeah, so obviously fairly aggressive. That's a lot.
Um, and what's the, what's the process look like? I mean, how are you landing these customers? Do you employ kind of an inside sales team strategy or outbound or what? It's a combination. So most of it is, you know, uh, about two thirds of it is inbound and one third is outbound. Outbound does have an SDR, uh, you know, effort that we put together.
The team's based out of Lafayette, Indiana, and we also have sales offices in other areas, including the names that you mentioned, Canada and UK being the main ones. Most of our SDRs are actually based out of Lafayette, Indiana. Okay, and what's the team size today? We are right around 100 people at this point, and about 15 SDRs. Sorry, you cut out their 15 SDRs? Yeah, that's right.
And how many account executives does each SDR support? So we have almost a one-to-one ratio on the SDR to AEs. And how do you structure kind of their incentive plans? Is it around number of demos per month, number of calls per month? What is it? Yeah, so the SDRs have to generate an X number. It's between 10 to 20 sales qualified leads.
and they get qualified when the account execs actually accept that opportunity. Interesting. And that's monthly? That's monthly. So on a monthly basis, if you can generate about 20 sales accepted leads, you know, you're doing pretty good. We win about, you know, 25, 30% of our opportunities it really gets into definition of how you define what's a win is.
For us, if it stays in the pipeline for more than four months, we kick it back. That's great. That's interesting. Okay, great. So 100 people, 15 SDRs, they've got to get caught, 20 sales accepted leads, that gets accepted by the AE. Then I assume that moves to a demo and then obviously they're closing. Actually, there's often a trial and then closing. But sometimes...
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Chapter 3: What are the pricing models for the board management software?
We had two thirds of the product of the revenue at this point is, you know, is, you know, projected to be board product by the end of the year. Okay. And one third is going to be an employee collaboration product. Okay, got it. So I mean, if board today is doing seven, and that's two thirds, if we add another third, so that puts you at what 10 or 11 million total ARR by both products.
Is that accurate? That's the projection. That's what we're shooting for. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, I mean, you got it. You must have a good idea. You got about 30 days left. I have a pretty good idea. But you know, what is interesting is most of my customer base is financial. And the seasonality is off the charts.
believe it or not between now and the end of the year, I'm going to do 40% of the year's business. Yep. That makes sense. 40, 40% of the year's business, because there's a lot of budget flush that happens at the end of the year. These guys are planners, uh, you know, and about 50% of my business is coming from the financial services industry. Yeah.
The other, other verticals like healthcare, uh, you know, are similarly seasonal, uh, But there are some businesses which are not seasonal. For example, nonprofits and higher ed, they tend to be not seasonal. Higher ed is seasonal, but they're centered around the academic year rather than the financial year. Yep. All right, Parun, let's wrap up here with the famous five.
Number one, what's your favorite business book? Right now, I'm really digging Principles by Ray Dalio. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now? I love Elon Musk, but really as far as studying, I really love Ratan Tata. Which company? It's Tata's in India. What's the, spell the company? T-A-T-A, Tata. Oh, T-A is the company, okay. Yeah. Very good.
And then number three, what billing tool do you use for your company? We're still using QuickBooks. Oh, QuickBooks, wow, okay. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? I've been trying to get close to six. Recently, I've been short on sleep. I have an 18-month-old at home. Oh, wow. How many kids? Just one? Just one. And married? And married, yeah. You, not the kid. All right.
And Prune, how old are you? 43. 43. Last question. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew? I wish I knew the value of having a really well-vetted and close-knit leadership team. Guys, there you have it. Makes all the difference. It does. Have a close-knit leadership team. Again, you guys heard it here. Launched in 2014. Basically, a board management product. Hyper-secure.
Share their board decks. Mobile. Tablet. Makes it easy. Typically, people that are paying for it are the CFOs, the CROs, the CEOs on these companies that are preparing the deck. They've got over 1,000 enterprise customers paying on average. ACV have called it $7,000. So, about $7 million right now in ARR. Growing 60% to 70%.
Year over year, they've raised $5 million to date, 3% revenue churn per year. That's gross. They add back 12% in expansion. So 109% net revenue retention annually, spending a dollar to get a new dollar in CAC. So healthy payback period there of 12. Team of 100 people based in Indiana as they look to continue to scale. Perun, thanks for taking us to the top. Absolutely. Thank you, Nathan.
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