SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Gong.io Adds $1.5B To Valuation, 1500 Customers, $45m+ in Revenue for Revenue Intelligence Sales Tool
01 Sep 2020
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
And just looking at the average, Gong is like an entire spectrum of customers. We have like on the lower end, it could be usually the minimum would be like 15K for smaller customers and seven figures on the upper tiers.
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My guest today is Amit Bendop. He's the co-founder and CEO of Gong.io, the number one revenue intelligence platform for sales. He brings more than 20 years of leadership experience. managing product marketing and sales for global corporations. Prior to founding Gong.io, he was the CEO of Sisense and CMO of Panaya. Amit, you ready to take us to the top?
Yeah, let's give it a shot.
So you're very specific there in calling Gong a revenue intelligence platform for sales. Help me understand what that means.
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Chapter 2: What is Gong.io and what makes it a revenue intelligence platform?
But in most accounts, it's very low.
So, Brake, with that sort of understanding, obviously, the growth has also been impressive in terms of just valuation, also customer growth over the past two, three years. Help me understand how your team has changed over that time period. So you told me you had just 52 folks on the team back in early 2018. What are you at today?
uh close to 300 i think 330. it changes by the day so yeah about 330 people um we have been like pretty cash efficient uh largely uh because of the product strength and which drives like strong units economics so we haven't even touched we're still running in a series d money right we we raised the series d we did not start touching um
the Sirius C money we raised in December, and we still have a pretty long way to go with the Sirius B, right? So we've been like pretty efficient in how we got to like a 2.2 valuation, right? Which reflects kind of like the growth that's still ahead of us with like very low gaps. So the team is actually like, I mean, definitely grew substantially compared to,
217 or whatever whenever we spoke back then but uh we've been pretty pretty efficient and never got never had to go crazy i mean just to be clear it sounds like you still have the majority of that 65 million from your last round in the bank plus the extra 200 today so you've got sort of a war chest of somewhere like yeah not the majority the entirety got it so you have like 200 260 million or so in the bank right now you can do whatever you want with it more that's a lot of that's a lot of pianos you can buy
I appreciate that about you.
A lot of tech CEOs, when they get at your stage, they lose their personality. I so appreciate when I see you putting up and being self-deprecating, even though I think you play pretty darn well on your LinkedIn videos. Talk, let's back into here to understand more about sort of ACV growth, right? So as companies do what you've done, you know, grow very fast, you almost always see ACV expansion.
You told me back again in early 2018, the average customer is paying about $30,000 in terms of average ACV. What's an ACV up to today on average?
Uh, well, I didn't tell you that you've come up with a number. It was, I remember that, that interview, but it was, it was, it was less than that right now. It's north of 30. I mean, if you. Yeah. So just looking at the average, the guy is like, uh, entire spectrum of customers where like on the lower end, it could be usually the minimum would be like 15 K uh, for our customers. And.
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Chapter 3: How did Gong.io achieve significant revenue growth during COVID?
Do you think you'd do that this year if you haven't passed it already?
No, no, no. We're not going to get to $100 million a year.
We're not far from that. Okay. Interesting. In terms of strategy to get there, whether it's, again, it sounds like it'll be more than this year, maybe next year, do you think it will more be a function of your upsell and expansion team driving more adoption and then increasing accounts, respectively, or will it be new customer additions completely?
We have both. We always scale. We have two things working. First, very strong new logo acquisition. And second, great expansion within customers. And we always have to calibrate. Sometimes there are a lot of expansions.
Chapter 4: What is the current funding structure and valuation of Gong.io?
So the new team, people don't necessarily need to sell many new logos. So we started breaking the accounts and make sure we pull both levers. But both of them are pretty strong. I mean, I'm kind of sure Google are the zone of our NDR. plus the new logo, that's what drives the strong growth.
Well, I mean, if you look at revenue growth over the past 12 months, what percent of the growth would you say came from expansion versus new ads altogether? Do you know?
I don't even like the top of my hands. Okay. Both are substantial.
Fair enough. What about altogether? Ignore cohorts of where the growth came from, just total revenue growth past 12 months. What was that?
Um,
We have customers, so our history, we started selling in 2016, so we have about three years of history. Those cohorts are around 250 and north percent of what they bought, and most of them are still with us. very, very strong growth over time and retention, lifetime value, all those metrics.
That's one of the things about the valuation that our unit economics are very strong and the product power is driving that.
Are there any really strong unit economics that you guys are very proud of and you worked really hard to hit that I haven't already asked about?
I mean, you name it. So NDRs are, you know, LTV to CAC is like greater than five. I mean, you know, it's a virtual internet with like very little sharing that they have.
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Chapter 5: How does Gong.io acquire its customers and what is their customer base like?
Love that, guys. Amit, there you have it, gong.io. They've been in the news recently, did a $200 million raise at a $2.2 billion valuation. That was from a $750 million valuation just about eight months prior when they did their $65 million raise back in December of 2019. They're serving over 1,500 enterprise customers, over 60,000 sales reps use the platform actively.
Again, a new way to really measure and gain revenue intelligence from your sales functions as it looks to continue. to scale. They won't hit $100 million in run rate this year, but obviously is on their radar as they continue to scale, focused on expansion revenue, where net revenue retention today is over 150%. Amit, thanks for taking us to the top.
Thanks very much, Nathan. My pleasure.