SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1633 Why He's Going $100k+ ACV From Day 1 in Recruiting Diversity Space
13 Jan 2020
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of TalVista in the recruiting diversity space?
founded Tal Vista, really helping to drive more diversity in folks' hiring processes, working very much in the enterprise space. Call it five to 10 customers right now, just flirting with a million bucks in ARR. Just launched it a couple of months ago, totally bootstrapped, which is obviously exciting. Operating at break even, team of 10 people, all remote, based all over the place.
Too early to talk about economics, but again, excited in 2019 to focus on growth. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Scott Sessions. He's the co-founder and CEO at Tal Vista. He brings more than 25 years of business management and leadership experience from fast-paced startup companies.
Previously, Scott ran his own consultancy focused on marketing strategy, serving fast-paced startups in the HCM space. Before that, he was a senior director at HireVue. Scott's a serial entrepreneur, having started several businesses over his career. He's most passionate about helping people and seeing them succeed and realizing even more than they thought possible.
Scott, are you ready to take us to the top?
Hey, great to be here, Nathan. Thanks for having me.
You bet. All right. Talk to us about Talvista. What does the company do and what's your revenue model? Are you a pure play SaaS company?
We are a pure play SaaS company. We are focused strictly on diversity inclusion as a recruiting platform for talent acquisition professionals. We are an effective platform for helping companies bring in more diverse candidates to ultimately hire for better diversity.
Interesting. Okay. And so how do you charge? Is it like per number of hires per year or what?
Yeah. So unlike some others, we are not a per seat or per user basis. We are focused on number of hires, estimated number of hires, and then we have an unlimited model. So we have a price bucket band that says you're in this band. Now you have unlimited access. And we work at a business case to get to that price band. But once you're there, you have unlimited access to the full platform.
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Chapter 2: How does TalVista's revenue model work?
That's interesting. I want to talk more about pricing here, but first put all this on a timeline for me. What year did you launch the company in?
So we launched earlier this year, my partner and I. April timeframe was our launch point. Since then, we've signed two major clients, one of which is a global RPO, Cielo Talent, formerly pinstripe. Uh, and that's one I can talk about cause they went out public with that.
Others, uh, the other didn't, doesn't want to talk about it yet, but they are a fortune 100 company and utilizing our platform within integration to their ATS.
Okay. So two customers caught 50, 60 grand a year. You guys are doing what? 10, 20 grand a month right now, something like that.
Uh, actually those are our higher end customers. So we're already Close to a million in annualized revenue. OK, do you only have two customers? So, no, we've got a handful of others. OK, so that is that average down. But those two that I really want to talk about are our higher customers.
I see. I see. OK, but you have you're basically already flirting with the million dollar ARR mark. We are. So walk me through like your history.
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Chapter 3: What is the pricing structure for TalVista's services?
You said you've done a lot of other businesses. I mean, what have you learned about the, you know, you can either go high touch, high price point or kind of low touch, low price point, you know, onboarding. You're clearly going, you know, high touch, high ACV. Why?
Well, because that's where retention comes in. when customers know that they can rely on a partner to come in and take good care of them, they're going to renew. So our retention will increase and continue to grow in the 80s and 90s percentage points versus
low touch and having that churn churn burns a lot of calories and frankly i want to focus on those who really want to utilize the tool and improve their diversity efforts yep and so it's it's a little early because there's not a lot of cohort or sample size here yet but i mean do you have any insight into what churn might be and what expansion might be year over year You know, you're right.
It's early. You could compare it to other subscription SaaS businesses that are focused in the talent space. However, with D&I, because it is early and the results may vary from company to company, we're waiting to see what that churn is going to be.
Yeah. Talk to me about, well, first off, so how many customers do you have today? You have two plus some. How many total?
So it's a handful.
Talking like 10?
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay.
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Chapter 4: How does TalVista ensure customer retention and success?
Sorry.
Favorite online tool for building your company?
So... Salesforce has been fantastic to use in tracking from a CRM and a sales point tracking and throughput. So that's been a great tool.
Number four, how many hours of sleep are you getting every night?
I usually do five to six, which my wife, it drives her crazy. How can I survive on such little sleep? There are times when I'm at three to four at max and we'll go on stints of that. But my norm is five to six.
And it sounds like you're married. Any kiddos?
We have three children. We just married off our first daughter two weeks ago. We have one still at home and one who's in college lives out of the house.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does TalVista face in the diversity recruitment market?
Oh, amazing. Great. And how old are you? Sorry? How old are you, Tal? How old am I? Yep. I'm 52. All right, Scott. Good stuff. And last question. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew?
Oh, my gosh. Ask more questions.
Guys, ask more questions. Coming from Scott, founded Tal Vista, really helping to drive more diversity in folks hiring processes, working very much in the enterprise space. Call it five to 10 customers right now, just flirting with a million bucks in ARR. Just launched it a couple of months ago, totally bootstrapped, which is obviously exciting.
Operating at break even, team of 10 people, all remote, based all over the place. Too early to talk about economics, but again, excited in 2019 to focus on growth. Scott, thanks for taking us to the top.
Thanks, Nathan.
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