SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Appify Recruits Powerhouse CEO, Hits 45 Customers for No Code App Building Platform
28 Oct 2020
Chapter 1: What led to the recent funding round for Appify?
We raised our series A and then we just did an extension on the round this summer. So we ended up with eight before and then we added 3.45 this summer, partly because we started to see this kind of opportunity present itself where we needed to put more sales reps. We needed the quota capacity to actually have the conversations and to push the pipeline forward.
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We got to grow faster. Minimum is 100% over the past several years.
Or bootstrap founders like Vivek of QuestionPro. When I started the company, it was not cool to raise. Or Looker CEO Frank Behan before Google acquired his company for $2.6 billion.
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My guest today is Jen Grant. She has a passion for building companies from the ground up and taking multiple companies to a billion-dollar valuation. Plus, she's been involved with companies such as Google and Box. She led the Google Apps, EDU, Gmail, and Book Search marketing teams, and she received Google's most prestigious award for her marketing leadership.
Jen, you ready to take us to the top?
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Chapter 2: How does Appify simplify app building for businesses?
Are you opting for sort of the four or five X multiple there?
Yeah. So what, what we're really looking for right now is, and again, we're at that early stage. We don't know all of the numbers we were looking for that repeatable motion. So like, is this what an inside sales reps will continue to do every month? So we don't quite know, but what we want to optimize for is how do we make them neutral so that we can say, okay, now we're at the neutral point.
Now we can start adjusting and saying, okay, let's raise the quota. Let's figure out what are the other sort of levers we need to pull in order to make each of our sales reps more than just neutral to the business.
How many quota carrying folks on the team today?
So we have four right now, plus the leader. So we have three inside sales reps. Plus we just hired what we're calling a strategic account executive because our land and expand model really does require you know, we're landing very small.
So, okay, we need someone who's kind of a little bit more of a heavy hitter to get in there and make the relationships and that longer term upsell of some of these bigger customers we have.
So guys, up until April of this year, I used to pay a full-time designer $3,000 per month to handle things like blog images, podcast logos, slide decks, and things of that nature. And then a guy named Russ Perry came on the show. You guys might remember it. His company is called Design Pickle.
And it shocked me when he told me he's basically bootstrapped to 18 million in revenue, serving 3,000 customers. What it is is they set up a Slack channel for you full of designers. You post design projects and boom, you get results. They do designs for you. In fact, it is also way cheaper than having someone full-time. I now happily pay for the past three months for Design Pickle.
I pay $1,000 per month. And they're so quick turning all my keynotes around, blog posts, featured images, logos, you name it, they do it very quickly. So I said, Russ, we've got to give a deal to my audience. What can you do? And he said, well, Nathan, we saw so many downloads from the show. We'll give your folks 50% off for a limited time. That's $200 in savings.
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Chapter 3: When did Jen Grant join Appify and what was her previous role?
So how are they? 45 people on the team. You must have raised a bunch of money.
We did. We raised our Series A and then we just did an extension on the round this summer. So we ended up with eight before and then we added 3.45 this summer. Partly because we started to see this kind of opportunity present itself where we needed to put more sales reps.
We needed the quota capacity to actually have the conversations and to push the pipeline forward to see, you know, what are those moments where we can get that repeatable motion and get that data really working for us. So we're still at the figuring out stage for sure.
Do you think you can get up past, call it like a quarter million dollar ARR run rate by December this year, two, three more months?
That's our hope. I mean, when you look at the pipeline, we're in this you know, very typical where that Q4 pipeline is big and we're sort of, you know, looking at it going like, all right, like we have enough people to actually close it all and to continue to bring in the folks there.
And we'll see, I think it'll be an important part of the growth of the company to see what we can do by the end of this year.
Jen, as we wrap up, there's a lot of founders listening right now who are like, you're now CTO that are looking to recruit talent like you. And they never know sort of like what they love you, they find someone like you, they go, well, what should this thing look like?
I mean, obviously, it's a big combination, I imagine of their salary, but there's also real equity upside and incentive, you've already done well, so you don't need to make a How should people think about structuring comp plans if they're bringing in a new CEO like you to lead?
Yeah, I think that's important. So, you know, at this stage, at the post-series A, when you're looking for, you know, typically as a product engineering founder looking for a go-to-market type CEO, which is you know, where I would fit in every time. So the conversation to have is with your board and with your main Series A VC investors. So that was the conversation that Hari had.
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