SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
858 SaaS: College Business Plan Turned $4m Biz, "We Just Raised $6m"
29 Nov 2017
Chapter 1: What inspired Tom Coburn to start Jebit?
A rare case where a business plan competition yielded an actual business that's growing and they're doing well. They've raised capital about $10 million, but more importantly, they are driving revenues. About 50 customers paid, you know, called on average eight-ish grand per month. So doing about 400. grand per month in revenue, trying to get to that 500 mark.
Ideally, by the end of the year, hitting that $10 million annual run rate would be a good stretch goal, a good target for them. They've got a team of about 40 folks up there in Boston, again, focused on helping their clients get hard data points via kind of very branded surveys and content that don't feel like branded surveys or content.
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 sole market.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Many of you listening right now don't have time to listen to every B2B SaaS CEO that I've interviewed. If you want to get access to the database I've created with year-over-year growth rates, customer accounts, margins, and many, many other data metrics and data points, you can go to getlatka.com. 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. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Tom Coburn. He's the co-founder and CEO of a company called Jebit. He left Boston College to pursue the company and is currently on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
He's also the co-founder of Enjoy Life Education, a nonprofit that empowers teens to be the best versions of themselves, and SSC Ventures, which invests in Boston College entrepreneurs. Tom, are you ready to take us to the top?
Absolutely. Let's do it.
All right. So we've got kind of three things mentioned there in the bio. Which one would you say is your main focus?
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Chapter 2: How does Jebit's platform enhance customer data collection?
The weirdest thing we've done. Uh, I think I'll go, I'm going to use my co-founder, but it's, uh, I'll throw him under the bus just cause it's a great story. Uh, so, I mean, when we first left school, I was 20 and he was 19 and, uh, he had a meeting with the CMO that was at a bar and he wasn't sure he'd be able to get in. So he had to go get his fake ID so he could do this meeting.
And he is now the only person I know that got their fake ID for business purposes.
That's hysterical. So he was able to go into the end of closing the deal.
Uh, I don't actually even remember.
That's hysterical.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. That's great. So, and that's back when you guys were 19 and 20, right?
Correct.
Now fast forwarding to today, just give us a touch point here. How old are you now?
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Chapter 3: How does Jebit ensure high engagement rates in surveys?
Nothing crazy. Yeah. Cool. That makes good sense. And then last question here. So it's like, let's fast forward. It's the holiday party up there in Boston for December, 2017. And you guys are toasting because you hit your, your stretch kind of ARR goal. What is your stretch ARR goal for this year?
Uh, trying to get as close to 10 million as possible, but, uh, we've got, we've got a lot of big things that need to come through to get there.
And what, just so we understand how, how big you're kind of forecasting growth in December, 2016, what'd you end up?
Uh, in terms of ARR?
Yeah. Just take December, 2016 revenue, obviously times 12.
we were right around the 2 million mark.
2 million mark, okay. And then you said today you're past 150 grand per month in revenue?
Yeah, we're significantly over that at this point.
Okay, got it. So, okay, got it. Oh, okay, you're significantly above the 150.
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