SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
BossInsights 2x YoY to 5 Customers Helping Lenders Capture Data
26 Dec 2020
Chapter 1: What is Boss Insights and how does it function?
This is a tech fin company. What I mean by that is I, the former banker, am not the first person here. It's actually someone who scaled Amazon. And in 2013, he saw that you need insights in order to win the market. He started mining Litecoin. The first money in Boss Insights was mined in a basement.
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Now look, I never want money to be the reason you can't listen to episodes. On the checkout page, you'll see an option to request free access. I grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Karen Moynihan. She is a former banker and second-time founder and currently a CEO and co-founder of Boss Insights. The company offers business data as a service.
Their single API enables easy access to hundreds of sources like QuickBooks, Salesforce, Stripe, bridging data gaps between banks and business customers in under one minute. Karen, you ready to take us to the top? Let's do it. All right. So I mean, walk us through this first. Is this sort of a pay-as-you-go number of API requests per month sort of deal? Or is it more pure play SaaS?
It's pure SaaS. And we're actually not charging by data because then we're a cost center. We're actually charging when we make the lenders win. So we charge per borrower. They make money, we make money.
So tell me more about that. Are you working exclusively with banks and lenders and connecting the two? Or what's it look like?
Well, there's the tech side of Boss Insights, and then there's the marketplace. And the lending group is the first. It's the beachhead customer. Such a huge need, $5 trillion, and that was pre-COVID for business lending, that that's where we dipped our toe in the market. And we work with banks, credit unions, and private lenders. But that's not all we do.
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Chapter 2: How does Boss Insights charge its clients?
It's actually someone who scaled Amazon. And in 2013, he saw that you need insights in order to win the market. And sure enough, Amazon is in lending. He started mining Litecoin. The first money in Boss Insights was mined in a basement. And still yet, we haven't diluted. We've essentially raised a seed round, almost a million dollars, but we haven't diluted at all.
So just to be clear, you guys did a Litecoin token offering back in 2013 to fund the business?
No, we mined our own Litecoin money. We basically just mined the money. And so it was just free money, honestly, to be fair.
Chapter 3: Who are the primary users of Boss Insights' services?
Cash rates, energy resources.
Yep. Yeah. And so we had that. we're, we're Canadian companies selling into the U S market. So Canadian economy has a lot of funds available for startups. So if you're a compelling story and what that means is if you're promising to hire more people into your company and you continue to grow, they will give you grants to help you get there.
That's part of how we've grown our company, but we also have some debt financing secured as well.
I see. I see. Okay. So how I'm talking, I'm sure you're probably talking about like shred and things like this. How many grants or funds related to grants where you're not having to sell equity? Have you raised from the Canadian government?
It's it's quite substantial. It's, it's, it's a healthy seed round. Okay.
So, I mean, I would put healthy seeds somewhere between like two and 6 million bucks. Is that a fair range?
No, it's less than that. Less than that.
Okay. Okay. Got it. So less than two, you've funded the growth to date with less than $2 million in grants or non-dilutive capital. Does that include the debt you raised probably from CIBC or something similar?
From BDC. And yes, it does. And then also just the sales are actually helping to let us grow.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of data in lending according to Boss Insights?
Yes. So he started in 2017. I joined at the beginning of 2018. And the cap table is really healthy. There's no investors on it. So if any investors wanted to come in, it's a very easy thing to get onto. We've grown since then. And we actually just hired our first non-founder salesperson. Oh, great.
Yeah. That's great. So just to be clear, the cap table really is you plus your co-founder?
Yep.
That's great. Did you guys split it 50-50? Or did you say, listen, I'm the boss, 60%?
51, 49. Oh, but you get 51. I got 51.
Oh, congratulations. That's great.
Oh gosh.
He's going to listen to this and go, Oh my, why did I, that 1% difference. Okay. So I love that. You mentioned you just hired your first non-sales rep. So how many people are on the team today?
So we're eight people at the moment. We're actually hiring. So we're looking for BDRs and we're looking for front-end software developers. So if anyone's out there, please reach out. But we're really excited about our VP of sales. His name's Jordan Cohen. The person who founded the company was Luke Moynihan. He scaled three tech companies and he started coding at 14.
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