SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
852: FinTech: Businesses Process $10b+ In Supplier Payments Through NvoicePay
23 Nov 2017
Chapter 1: What is Invoice Pay and how does it transform supplier payments?
of the early founders one of three of invoice pay back in 2009 their business model is transitioning more towards sas as they make the world of kind of businesses paying their suppliers more efficient they're making the the suppliers be able to update their data more efficient and the businesses be able to again interact with those suppliers more efficiently as well there's definitely a sas model there but right now it's a transaction kind of volume play they are well they thought it was a big deal and they passed a billion in transaction volume they're well over 10 billion now looking to beat out a lot of these banks and break
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Chapter 2: How does Invoice Pay's revenue model work?
Here's the thing though, this database, I keep it to myself. It's so freaking valuable. And to preserve the quality of the data and make sure that the people that have access to it have a true advantage, I'm only letting 10 companies on each month. So we're full this month, but you can go to getlatka.com to get on the waiting list for next month. And look, there's big people on the waiting list.
I mean, the biggest VCs you've ever heard of. You've probably heard of them. They're big, private equity, billions and billions under management. So it's an impressive waiting list. Go get on now at getlatka.com. Good morning, everyone. Hello. My guest today is Carla Freedy, and she's the chief executive officer, co-founder, and member of the board of directors at a company called Invoice Pay.
She has 20 years of experience in management, finance, and marketing roles in both large and early-stage companies.
Chapter 3: What challenges did Invoice Pay face when starting out?
Along with the founding team, Carla has grown Invoice Pay into the leading B2B payment automation software company.
Before this company, she was president and CEO of a privately held company, VP of marketing for GeoTrust, which was acquired by VeriSign in 2006, co-founder of the Ascend Group, a strategy consulting firm servicing technology firms in the Bay Area, and director of marketing at Mentor Graphics early on, along with being a part of the PBAS team at KPMG. Carla, are you ready to take us to the top?
I am.
I'm here, ready to go. That is quite a bio. We're going to learn a lot from you, huh?
Everything you can learn in 15 minutes or less.
Good. Tell us what invoice pay is and what's your revenue model. How do you make money?
So invoice pay is transforming the massive and mostly manual effort that goes into paying suppliers for businesses. So today it's kind of hard to understand because as a consumer, you can pay anybody with your cell phone. But in the business environment, the world is still mostly paper-based. And so enterprises are paying their suppliers by writing a paper check.
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Chapter 4: How has Invoice Pay evolved since its founding in 2009?
So what we're doing is transforming that into a paperless world where suppliers, regardless of where they're located, can securely and electronically get paid, regardless of their size or their technology.
So consumers can think of it as almost like a Venmo or PayPal, but for business-to-business transactions.
Yeah, I think that's a good analogy, and that is we're bringing the simplicity of consumer payments into the business world.
Makes good sense that business world is always behind the consumer markets. You're changing that. What's your model? How do you make money? Is it SaaS-based or transaction-based or what?
So we are both SaaS-based and transaction-based. So we supply software for our customers to use, and we also get paid on a per-transaction basis.
Okay. And if you only had to pick one of these revenue streams to be more meaningful for you, which one is it?
I think in the future, it will be more of the SaaS-based model that will become more meaningful. So as we expand and invest in our platform, the solution grows, and I think that'll be a more meaningful revenue stream in the future.
So right now, what I'm hearing you say is the transactional fees you guys take is more meaningful to your growth than the SaaS platform that you're actively developing.
That's right.
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Chapter 5: What is the current market size for B2B payments?
You've had a lot of success, which means you could really do anything. I'm curious where your head was at when you launched the company. How many years ago was that and why invoice pay?
So we launched InvoicePay back in 2009, and there are three of us that are founders. There's another woman who knows a lot about payments and has been in the payment space for years before InvoicePay. There's myself, and I come from kind of a marketing slash finance background. And then there's just a brilliant guy who's a technology person.
focused guy and the three of us started Invoice Pay in 2009. And I think it's really important, right? When people are founders, it's really important to come together with people that have different skills than them and work together. So I can't imagine starting a company on my own without the skill sets of the founding team in this together.
So way back in 2009, nobody was talking about B2B payments. We started in Portland, Oregon, which does not have a deep or broad technology venture capital funding area. And then we also started by targeting automotive dealerships. So I laugh, we had three strikes against us, right?
Those are three bad things, right?
Right? Recession.
Hell of a year to launch.
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Chapter 6: How does Invoice Pay ensure customer satisfaction?
Nobody's ever made money in an environment that's really hard to raise money. So that made us very capital efficient, really focusing on the customer and what we can do to build our product. I think that helped us as we evolved until this point.
Now, are you bootstrapped today or have you raised capital?
No, we've raised capital today. So those days are long behind us. So the early days of worrying about raising money are long behind us. We now have plenty of people who would love to invest. in invoice pay, right? And our challenge has shifted. Our challenge is now to grow faster than the market, right? And pick up share. So we're in a market that's 36 trillion in payment volume size.
So it's huge. And our challenge is to grow faster than that, right? And get a piece of this market as- Well, how fast is that market?
You give me the concrete number, a snapshot in time, but how fast is it growing?
So the numbers I've seen only show it at 25%, but we're growing double year over year. Got it. Right?
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Chapter 7: What are the future growth strategies for Invoice Pay?
So it's kind of a land grab opportunity is the way I would characterize it.
Yep. Now, my research team tells me you guys have raised about $20-ish million. Is that accurate?
About $25 million. $25.
And the last, I think, was a Series F. You guys are getting pretty deep. Why not do less rounds, more each? Kind of why take the kind of piecemeal approach?
So, you know, I don't, it's a function of raising money during the time. So remember now we were raising money in the middle of a financial crisis and a recession and we're raising money in payments. So in payments, you make money a little bit of a time. So it takes a while to get a payment company up to critical mass.
And in that environment, it's much smarter to raise a little bit of money, show results, hit a milestone and raise more money. And that way, you hang on to a bigger chunk of your company long term. And so we did sort of these bite-sized raises. In other words, raise money, deliver results, drive more customer volume, and raise money.
Is your key, you talk about reaching milestones to get more leverage, to raise an evaluation that's higher so there's less dilution for founders and the employee equity pool, et cetera. Is the key number that you guys have to keep focused on, is it transaction volume through your platform? Is that it?
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Chapter 8: What insights does the guest share about work-life balance?
Yeah, I think it's transaction volume and it's also customers, right? Customer results. And so when you can drive and get to thousands of customers, then everything else kind of goes by the wayside, right? You've proven your product works. There's customers who will buy it across vertical markets. And then the company is really on its way.
It's about then sort of maximizing the opportunity versus getting into the market.
Now, what do you got today in terms of total customers using you guys?
We have about 2,500. It's kind of hard to count a customer because one customer may have 250 locations.
Yes, you have 2,500 customers. This is obviously why probably transaction volume speaks more. Before you raised your first round of capital, what did you and your co-founders feel like you had to hit in terms of total transaction volume through your platform to really go out and raise at terms that you would all accept?
So you know what? We didn't really have this transaction volume number. But I will say when we hit our first billion, we thought, wow, this is great. What year was that? And it's like, wow, that was a long damn time ago. And that number seems so small now. It's just funny. Yeah.
I mean, was that like in 2010, 2011?
Yeah, maybe it was in 2011. I don't know. But we thought, you know, gosh, we hit a billion dollars through our network. People are going to really notice and we're going to be, you know, we will have arrived. But honestly, it's nothing compared to the size of the market, right?
You guys were toasting champagne and nobody else gave a damn, right?
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