SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
How he Doubled ACV to $480k selling niche SaaS to 10 Grocery Stores, now $4.5m in revenue
02 Aug 2022
Chapter 1: What was the revenue growth of Birdsy over the past two years?
Look, considering the space you're in, in that pre-COVID, you were doing about a 3 million run rate. The fact that you sort of grew in your space, added almost $2 million of ARR in the past 24 months is pretty darn impressive.
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Check it out right now at getlatka.com. Hey folks, my guest today is Shekhar Rahman.
Chapter 2: What unique services does Birdsy offer to grocery stores?
He's a CEO and founder of BirdZ, a B2B SaaS company and industry pioneering customer intelligence platform that helps supermarkets deliver a true one-to-one automated marketing and personalization platform at scale using machine learning and other data-driven technologies. Shekhar, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yes, I am, Nathan. Good to be back on.
I know it was 2019 last time you were on.
Chapter 3: How does Birdsy collect customer data for personalized marketing?
So this is great. But just to be clear, for those that are just learning about Birdsy, are you only selling to grocery stores? Currently, yes.
We have been asked by a number of other retailers what platform will work for them. But maybe towards the beginning of next year is when we'll try to transition into maybe C stores.
Chapter 4: What is the average monthly payment for grocery stores using Birdsy?
Okay. So I go into a grocery store. If they're using Birdsy, are they going to get my phone number or email? Or how do they get that? Is that at the checkout when the people go, hey, do you want to give me your email address to get updated offers and stuff?
Chapter 5: How does Birdsy's sales team operate within the grocery sector?
No, typically we work with retailers that already have loyalty programs. So they already have loyalty programs implemented and our platform kind of goes on top of that. So we take first party customer identified data where you put in your loyalty number or your phone number. So we know exactly what you bought in the transaction.
And we use that data to then track customer behavior trends and then figure out what offers to send you.
Chapter 6: What strategies does Birdsy use to expand revenue with existing customers?
I see. Okay. And what might one of those offers sound like? 10% off toothpaste if I come back before Wednesday?
Yeah.
Chapter 7: What factors influence Birdsy's decision to raise capital?
So the unique thing with the Bird's Eye platform is typically the way the promotion industry works is it's CPG driven. So the brands will say, hey, here's what I want to put out coupons on, or here's what I want to get deals on. And then the retailers essentially will try to identify the audience that works best for those offers. What we did is we flipped the equation.
We said, let's start with the shopper.
Chapter 8: What future growth opportunities does Birdsy see in the market?
Let's look at Nathan. Let's look at his purchasing behavior and what will get him back into the store. Forget about what's on sale. Let's see what will get him back in the store. Is it 10% off sushi, 10% off pizza, whatever it is, let's create a promotion tailored around his personal experience and interests, and then figure out how to get that funded down the road.
Very interesting. Okay. So what are grocery stores paying you on average per month to use this platform?
Oh, it depends on the number of campaigns they run, but it can run anywhere from $40,000 to $60,000 a month. Okay. That's what they typically pass.
So all of your customers are paying more than $40,000 a month, some paying much more.
Yeah, I'd say the average is around $40,000.
Average is $40,000. Okay, fair enough. This is very much in an enterprise motion, right? $500,000 ACVs. Do you have a big sales team?
No, not right now. It's just a couple of people because, you know, the industry, while it's big from an addressable perspective in the grocery industry is about $750 billion. But there's only a couple of hundred supermarket chains that are really in our target market. And so they represent about $400 billion in sales in total.
And what we're really going after is 1% of that is our truly addressable market, $4 billion market. So we're going after a $4 billion TAM, which is really where the promotions industry is, right? Where coupons and sale and your weekly ad items, that's about the amount of money that's spent on that part of the business. And that's where we're going after.
So how many folks are on the team today full-time? About 28. And how many of those are sales folks with a quota? Two. Two. Wow. Okay. So how many deals do you expect one sales rep to close in a quarter or a half year?
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