SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
640: ProntoSign Passes 300 Enterprise Customers with $50-$500k ACV To Help Manage Secure Signatures at Scale with CEO Bill Brice
25 Apr 2017
Chapter 1: Who is Bill Brice and what is his background?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.
I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Many of you who I've met in person have seen my unbelievable dashboards that I built. You know, I'm an analytics-like crazy person. I love the data, and I love presenting the data in beautiful dashboards that my team can use on their mobile devices, their phones, and TVs throughout the office.
Chapter 2: How did Bill Brice transition from yogurt to electronic signatures?
Now, the way I do this without having to hire a big development team is at nathanlacka.com forward slash analytics. It's using a company called Clipfolio, and I'll tell you more later on in the show how I use them. It's nathanlacka.com forward slash analytics. This is episode 640, and coming up tomorrow morning, you'll learn from James Sweeney.
He has $25 billion, that's with a B, in medical technology exits. Guys, he may be the best in the world in the med tech space. He himself has raised over $2 billion across those companies, and he's now sitting on a new phototherapy billion-dollar bet. You'll want to hear what it is. Tune in tomorrow. Good morning, everybody.
Chapter 3: What unique challenges did Bill face in the frozen yogurt business?
Nathan Latke here. My guest this morning is Bill Bryce. He's currently the chief executive officer of Alpha Trust Corporation, which he launched in 1998 to capitalize on the sustained long-term shift from paper-based document businesses to fully electronic document processes.
A noted entrepreneur, Bill is considered one of the industry pioneers and is a leading authority on electronic signatures, especially around generating real economic impact and brand enhancement. He served as Chairman of the Board for the Electronic Signature and Records Association and is currently a member of the Board of Directors. Now, Bill's not a one-hit wonder.
Before this company and electronic signatures, he started his entrepreneurial career when in college by co-founding Bryce Foods. As Chairman and CEO, he grew the company into a global enterprise best known for its chain of, I can't believe it's yogurt, frozen yogurt stores. The company grew to 1,500 franchise locations in 43 countries with manufacturing operations on four different continents.
For his work, he was awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the International Franchise Association, which is the world's oldest and largest organization representing franchises worldwide.
Chapter 4: What is AlphaTrust and how does it operate in the e-signature market?
Bill Bryce, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yes, Nathan, let's go.
Who, when they graduate college, is thinking about yogurt?
Well, let me tell you, actually, we're based in Dallas, so that's where I started that company as well. And this was back in 1977, 78. And, you know... I guarantee you there were no Texans interested in frozen yogurt. Now, it's a product that actually started out in California back around that time, and we were the first company to bring it to Texas, and we started the franchise here.
It started out as a bunch of company stores around Texas, and we built it up and learned what we were doing, and after about five years, we turned it into a franchise and went from there.
Now, Bill, what do you mean by that?
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Chapter 5: What types of clients does AlphaTrust serve and what is their average contract value?
You said it was started in California, and you brought it as a franchise to Dallas. Were you the actual owner of the concept, or did you just buy access to the franchise?
No, the product frozen yogurt was kind of first invented and popularized in California in the mid to late 70s. But we found it out there. And in terms of the product, people were selling it at mom and pop stores and things like that. We thought it would be a good market here. So we were kind of pioneers in the market here in Texas. So we just operated our own chain, which we created.
We owned it. And then we turned it into a franchise and began to franchise it.
Chapter 6: How does AlphaTrust differentiate itself from competitors like DocuSign?
And you did that very successfully. 1,500 franchises across 43 countries. If I wanted to come in and franchise one of these concepts, what would I pay you both upfront and on an ongoing basis?
Well, again, back then, so we're talking about, you know, in late 80s, early 90s kind of dollars. But back then, probably to build one of those stores would have been about $150,000, of which there would be a $20,000 franchise fee paid, you know, that the company would receive. And the company also collected about 5%, 6% royalties. Some of its use for advertising.
Yep, and that's on top line, right? That's gross, not net. Yeah, exactly.
Chapter 7: What is the business model of AlphaTrust and how is revenue generated?
Yep. So what, uh, I want to, uh, I want to, cause we wouldn't do this in the intro. I want to get to kind of how you wrap that company up and then got into electronic signatures at its peak, uh, the yogurt company, what was it doing in terms of annual revenue? And then how did you exit that business?
Uh, that company, uh, the system wide revenue, that company probably got up to about 150, $60 million. Um, but we, uh, uh, Back in the early to mid, we sold the company in 1996. And it was sold because someone was coming along and buying up and consolidating frozen dessert franchise operations. And they said they made us a good offer and we sold it and went on down the road.
Bill, what is it, you don't have to say the specific offer, but how is a franchise operation like yours, how is it valued?
Chapter 8: What are Bill Brice's future plans for AlphaTrust?
It's actually sold pretty much like most businesses, at least back in the day. You know, it used to be companies were sold based upon, you know, multiples of earnings or cash flow. It's a little different for, you know, getting used to these days when companies are sold on multiple of sales.
Yeah, interesting. I know, isn't that crazy? So yours was cash flow, a cash flow multiple.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Okay, got it. And what was considered a good multiple back in those days? You know, I don't know. I was born in 89, so you've got to educate me here.
Sure. Well, probably in – Things are sold on multiples of EBITDA typically. And so, you know, probably somewhere between six to 10 times was depending on their growth rates and things like that would be kind of where you would see on a multiple of EBITDA.
Interesting. Okay. So you go, okay, I'm done with this being valued bottom line. I'm now going to go into electronic signatures where I get top line value based only on growth and I can still lose a lot of money every month, but be a billion dollar company, right? Well, some people can. Tell us about AlphaTrust. Why'd you launch it?
Well, I mean, frankly, we did a lot of software back in the yogurt business because we were doing manufacturing and managing a lot of inventory and a lot of stuff. And so we did a lot of fun stuff around just-in-time inventory and real-time processing of manufacturing operations. It's all kind of boring stuff, but it was kind of fun to optimize it and make it sing.
So we got out of that business and began to look around. That was, of course, we're talking now 1997, 1998. .com stuff is bubbling, internet's bubbling. People are all looking around, how are they gonna make a bunch of money? But I was always kind of annoyed by the tremendous amount of pain that paperwork was in a business operation.
So we had bar-flung operations and people are still sending stuff. I mean, I'd get email. So people were sending stuff around, and internet office envelopes, and everyone had to sign off manually on paper, and it just seemed like it was a real pain. So it seemed like a pretty good idea to maybe tackle, could we automate that?
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