SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
How MozartData Hit $2m ARR By Moving Upstream AND Opening Top of Funnel
09 Mar 2023
Chapter 1: What is SaaS Open and why is it significant?
Guys, SaaS Open is our next big event in New York City. March 16th and 17th, we'll have 1,000 SaaS leaders all sharing how they built their companies. Our keynotes are Henry Shuck, Marie Martins from Tally.sao, Serby from Symbol, Christopher of DocHub, who had a big exit. Again, hundreds of speakers, 1,000 plus attendees.
And we've got folks bringing their entire executive teams because we have stages for founders, founders,
heads of product head of finance mbd cmos and cro's and then people in hr stage it's gonna be special prices are increasing every week so you don't want to wait go to sasopen.com right now to see what the ticket price is and lock in your spot today again that's sasopen.com march 16th and 17th in new york city tickets are almost sold out
You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka, where I sit down and interview the top SaaS founders, like Eric Wan from Zoom. If you'd like to subscribe, go to getlatka.com.
We've published thousands of these interviews, and if you want to sort through them quickly by revenue or churn, CAC, valuation, or other metrics, the easiest way to do that is to go to getlatka.com and use our filtering tool. It's like a big Excel sheet for all of these podcast interviews. Check it out right now at getlatka.com. Guys, Pete Fishman, mozarddata.com.
They've got big customers like Modern Treasury. Call it almost 100 customers paying on average $1,800 a month. They're pushing a $2 million run rate today in a really good position. They closed a $15 million Series A last year at pushing call at somewhere around $100 million valuation. And they're being pretty scrappy about it. They didn't go hire 100 people.
There are 25 folks full-time today taking a disciplined approach to growth. We'll see what happens next. Hey folks, my guest today is Pete Fishman. He's a CEO and co-founder of Mozart Data. He's over a decade of running data and data adjacent teams at startups in a variety of industries, including gaming, social, HR and benefits, real estate, and many others.
When he realized he was building the same thing at every company, he said, man, I got to build a modern data stack that anybody can use. And that's why he launched MozartData.com. Pete, you ready to take us to the top? Ready to do it. All right. Who's using you these days? Is there any customer you can talk about in a use case? Sure.
I would say that, obviously, we love highlighting our big customers. So we've got a few unicorns that are using us. I love, obviously, giving shout outs to a company like Modern Treasury, who's been one of our longest supporters. How do they use you? Everybody knows Modern Treasury. That's a good example. A company like Modern Treasury uses us as their core data infrastructure.
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Chapter 2: Who is Pete Fishman and what is Mozart Data?
Yes. Talk to me about that. Was that before, was the market already crashing at that point? Or did you get that in right before things started going a little haywire? I like to think of it as like Indiana Jones where like it just sneaks in as like the door is like sort of, uh, coming down. You know, I don't, I don't, I don't think we, you know, we, we raised, uh, at the start of, uh, 2022.
So not the world's best time, but, but in hindsight, basically, yes, the world's effectively best time. Um, so, um, you know, I would say, I would say that, um,
Chapter 3: How is Mozart Data achieving a $2 million ARR?
Obviously, we raised a great round at a great time, which means that we have a long runway. So we are trying to still have a pretty forward-looking perspective. Obviously, not that we see an end to our runway, but I think we also do want to be responsible. This is not my first rodeo, and I've seen companies that have used their runway poorly.
So we want to be pretty intentional about what we're trying to do. And was that series a pretty standard? Most folks are signed, caught 10, 15% of the company in their series A's back then. Were you sort of in that same range? Yeah, exactly. So, um, so you're pushing that a hundred, you're pushing that a six figure value, sorry, a seven, sorry, a nine figure valuation and over a hundred million.
Um, that would be obviously if it were 15%, 15 million on 15% would be, uh, would be a hundred million. So, yeah, I think, uh, you know, obviously, uh, you know, valuations and fundraising and quantity of capital available, um, were, uh, you know, we're obviously very different, uh, in 2021.
But the, I guess I not to put you on this, but the reason I asked that question is there's a lot of folks that did great rounds last year at really high multiples. I forget if I think you were at like two or 3 million and run rate when you did that, which was like a 40 or 50 X multiple, uh, right. Right. Something like that. No, we were at, we were actually, uh, actually just south of a million.
So actually it was like, you know, if you, if you take, if you take that, if you take that number, it ends up being obviously a, you know, a bigger multiple. Yeah, that's interesting.
So I guess the reason I bring that up is obviously every startup, you also sold 7% to YC back in the day for 150k, you're part of that program, you've got to manage, obviously, the storyline, you tell your team on their option value.
And so if they see the market going crazy, but you were bragging a year ago about the how you got a really great valuation minimized dilution, how do you now reverse that narrative until the updated storyline, which is guys, your options are still above water, don't worry.
Well, I mean, we don't think of basically the private valuations or the sort of current state of the market as the key indicator for kind of the success of the company. At the end of the day, this company will be, especially for the employees, the common holders, which include me, there's very few outcomes where the company ends up being worth exactly the amount that we raised for it.
The company, the modal outcome of the company, the mean and the median is that ultimately it goes to zero. But there are many outcomes where the company is wildly successful. So, you know, we don't really harp on the likely outcome for many companies in the seed and series A stage. We think about kind of what the opportunity is and we race pretty hard to that.
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Chapter 4: What is the customer base and pricing model for Mozart Data?
These are when the heroic returns actually happen. We think that we have the runway to make something special happen. So it's kind of getting in at the right time, I think gives us like really a unique opportunity as opposed to one where there was so many, competitors that are able to sort of join us along the way. So you mentioned that one from the start.
The other one that I think is, you know, one that I talk about, we sell to SMBs and typically like hot SMBs, right? Like so companies that are growing, that are getting data, that are growing with that. that segment is going to be a lot more dollar constrained.
And so you have this sort of counterbalance that I'm seeing, which is on the one hand, we sell a product that's supposed to substitute out a much, much, much, much, much more expensive product, data engineers. A data engineer might cost 100x what Mozart costs. So on the one hand, we have sort of the tailwind of We're a sort of a cheaper product than the data engineers.
That's an incredible tailwind in this tight, like tightening of money. On the other hand, you know, the companies that we sell to have had a huge money crunch. Maybe if you raised at the right time, great. But many companies that are sort of really tight on budgets and are worried about their next fundraise, we find that challenge of selling into that group. Interesting.
Well, it'll certainly be a very interesting next 12 months. It sounds like you have plenty of runway to get there. But on that note, Pete, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite book. Um, I mentioned this the first time, but I'm going to go back to it. Uh, it's, it's money ball. So money ball is the inspiration for, um, finding, uh, unique things in data.
And, um, I've sort of based a lot of my personal career around it. I started my career in sports analytics and now I've made a career in tech analytics.
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Chapter 5: How does Mozart Data differentiate itself in the data industry?
Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? Um, yeah, I, again, I think, uh, I'm going to go with another cop-out and I mentioned this last time. Um, No Stuart Butterfield. I know I'm going with Derek steer. So I'm wearing a, so, um, you know, mode is a company that, uh, you were an early investor, weren't you?
The first investor, David tax and I were the first two investors in, in mode, the company, um, you know, they spun out of Yammer, which was a team that I, I ran. And now ironically, they're a great partner of ours and that it pairs nicely with Mozart.
But the thing that I respect most is that they have forged a really great path of selling to data analysts and they think about the analyst so deeply. And then on top of it, they've started to be able to solve problems that you get to as you mature and mature, as you move upstream. So we really do want to follow exactly in their path. And I'm going to
take a cue from, uh, you know, from that whole founding team, but Derek in particular about sort of being a thought leader and that driving kind of that, that growth into larger and larger organizations. And if you guys want to learn from Derek, he is one of our keynotes at SAS open coming up in 14 days in New York city, SAS open.com. Come learn. Great story. He's, I don't know if that's public.
I won't, we won't chat about that yet. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building a business? Uh, so favorite online tool. Well, we have to, you know, we have to certainly shout out some of our customers. So like, uh, I obviously have a big fan of, uh, rippling. So, uh, you know, we, I'm not, believe it or not an HR leader.
I did mention, you did mention off the top that I work in HR tech, but, um, you know, having somebody to sort of steal that work, uh, from me and making sure that, you know, our employees get paid is, uh, first and foremost, right. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? I'm a light sleeper. I think they call it like a dolphin sleeper. So I do about five to six hours a night.
And I am drinking coffee now. But I also drink coffee maybe two days a week. So I'm pretty sort of freakishly able to get by with like five or six hours of sleep. That's great. I think you've had two birthdays since we last spoke. Are you 43 now? I am still 42. Oh, 42. Okay. Dan and I started the company effectively in our 40s.
So late to the entrepreneur game, though we did start a hot sauce company together 10 years prior, but late to the entrepreneur game, but still going strong, still got the energy of a 24-year-old even if I'm 42. That's great. And married any kids?
Uh, you know, getting married, uh, in June, in June, um, having, uh, so we'll, you know, we'll see if I can keep, uh, keep my energy through the, through the marriage and then whatever comes next. That's awesome. And Pete, last question, something you wish you knew when you were 20.
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