SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
LivingSecurity SaaS Breaks $3m ARR, 150% Retention, New Unify Product To Create More Insights for Security Leaders
01 Jun 2021
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Last year, we about tripled our revenue. And so we're looking for a very kind of similar growth path this year.
Okay, interesting. So I mean, do you think I mean, is it insights you think we can get above a million bucks a month in revenue in the next 12 months, you think?
In the next 12 months? Yeah.
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We got to grow faster. Minimum is 100% over the past several years.
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We want to see a real pervasive data culture, and then the rest flows behind that.
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Chapter 2: How did Living Security achieve rapid growth since its founding?
So we closed our $14 million Series B in March of this year.
March of this year. Okay, great. So total capital raise today is what, about $20, $21 million?
Yes.
Interesting. You are on the path. You are not bootstrapped Ashley Rose anymore. You are like, got to be growth year over year, raise it at an up round and go IPO one day.
Yeah, absolutely. We're really excited. And that's the journey we're on.
Okay, very cool. So 130 customers. And then if someone's listening right now, you know, maybe they were just or they're scared of being the next headline about a phishing scam or something or their credit card or their customer data leaking, and they want to pay you to like help train their team. What are folks going to pay on average per month to use the tech?
So it really ranges just depending on the size of the company, but we're really competitive when it comes to other security awareness solutions today with our existing platform.
Once we move and we actually launch Unify, we're creating an entirely really new category, and there's not an existing product or platform out there in market today that's doing what we're doing from a behavioral integration and human risk metric measurement standpoint.
And this will then be kind of a different pricing model than what we have in market in comparison to other security awareness providers.
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Chapter 3: What strategies does Living Security use to retain customers?
I mean, you're now planning sort of how do we make sure we can invest in the new unified product, drive growth and then prepare ourselves for around maybe late next year? What do you think you have to get to in order to see that happen?
Yeah, so we, last year, we about tripled our revenue. And so we're looking for a very kind of similar growth path this year.
Okay, interesting. So, I mean, do you think, I mean, is it insights you think we can get above a million bucks a month in revenue in the next 12 months, you think?
In the next 12 months, yes.
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Chapter 4: How has the COVID-19 pandemic influenced Living Security's training methods?
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So right now, the way that most companies are managing their human risk program, it's typically been driven on what we call activity metrics.
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Chapter 5: What products does Living Security currently offer to its customers?
So how many people are engaged with the program? Are they completing training? We're trying to check that box for compliance. And so what Living Security has done is really transitioning the way that we think about success for our program as being outcome driven. And the outcome that we're trying to drive is behavior change.
And so in order to do that, we built Unify, which is actually integrating into the existing security technology stack to bring in end user kind of behavioral data and to generate insights for our security leaders. So they can say, you know, who is the most at risk and what are they doing? What are these behaviors that are really causing risk for the company? What are some of the behaviors?
What's that?
What are some like tease me a little bit? What are some of those be like, Hey, that employee, Nathan Black, he's always clicking those random emails from external emails coming in and with an IP address and like, I don't know, some weird off, you know, location, he's at a high risk for a phishing attack.
Yeah. So, I mean, that's a really good example. And right now, the data that most companies use are phishing simulation metrics. So they'll send out those phishing emails to their employee base to figure out who's going to click, right, who's going to report. And then that's the data that they're presenting. But there's a lot of other behaviors that we need to watch out for.
and that could present risk for the organization. So what's your password hygiene like, right? Are you reusing the same passwords across websites? Are you using a password manager? Are you connecting and accessing sensitive information, sensitive applications, leveraging your virtual private network? Are you browsing malicious websites? Right.
So there's all of these different types of behaviors that we really need to be capturing and measuring and that we want to fight against as an organization. And ultimately, you want to create a positive security culture around people making good risk based decisions about how they're behaving online.
And talk to me about pricing. You mentioned new pricing model.
Yeah, so with the new model, again, this is not something that is currently existing today. So we're helping companies. First of all, we're educating why this is so important. A lot of organizations, almost all security leaders can tell you, when it comes to data and measurement to their CEO, to their board, they're really still left with a lot of unanswered questions. What does risk look like?
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of the new product Unify for Living Security?
So we are actually really big around like two main goals for our CSMs, one being empowerment and one being growth. And so what we kind of drive home is from a partnership perspective, you know, if we're giving them the tools that they need to be successful and we have like the best solution on the industry, like why wouldn't they wanna do more with us? And so we go in first as a trusted partner
And then we set expectations around how do we want to grow and mature your program. And then they are partnering with us to help grow our business so we can continue to innovate and provide more solutions. So today it's been working really well. And I think it's leading with empathy and value and then being able to drive growth on the back end.
Last couple of questions here, Ashley. Dollar retention, obviously a big metric. You got a new product to upsell. You hope people fall in love with it. What are you guys at right now in terms of net dollar retention?
So last year's numbers were about 150% net revenue retention.
That's incredible. And is that, I mean, can you peel that onion a bit? Gross churn versus expansion?
Yeah. So from a software perspective, we lost one customer on our software last year. So our churn was extremely low. And then we did a really great job last year growing our install base with our CSM. So majority of it was expansion driven.
Yeah. So less than 5% annual revenue churn, more than 50% expansion gets you to 150% net dollar retention. Right. Very cool. I love this. Okay. So Unify is coming up. You just got some fresh capital in the door. Where are you spending most of this capital? Is it really scaling that team in Ukraine or is it anywhere else?
Yeah. So it's really split between three major initiatives. So obviously with Unify, we're hiring kinds of developers and tech talent. So a lot of R&D and then sales and marketing, you know, with the creation of the new category, you know, working with Forrester and Gartner and trying to get a lot of education out there.
We're spending a lot in marketing this year and then growing our sales team, which is both inclusive of our direct sales team, as well as bringing in channel this year.
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