SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Modigie Gets You Accurate Prospect Cell Numbers, Hits $300k ARR, 29 Customers
24 Jan 2021
Chapter 1: What inspired Ken Hoppe to create Modigie?
And so we first wrote our line of code in late 2019. So really, I look at 2020 as our first really billable year. And we came in just a hair under 300,000.
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My guest's name is Ken Hopp. He's the founder and CEO of Modigi. Prior to this company, he spent 20 years in various tech leadership roles with two exits and most recently at Google, experiencing firsthand the widespread shift to mobile for business communications.
They built real-time mobile phone verification and enrichment platform on Google Cloud Platform to scale and recently integrated with Salesforce so B2B sales and marketing can connect with more of their prospects. Ken, you ready to take us to the top? You bet. All right. So give us a load on here. This sounds like an enterprise related tool for mobile. What am I missing?
No, it's certainly it's certainly we are typical clients are B2B that have a lot of front end call center reps called BDRs or business development reps that do business to business outreach with net new prospects. And so what we saw back in my time at Google is that there was a continual decline of the ability to engage with people that we don't have relationships with.
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Chapter 2: How does Modigie enhance B2B sales productivity?
And just to be clear, you had no revenue in 2019, right? We did not. So zero to $300,000 run rate in 12 months. And what do you think you can do at the end of this year? What do you think you can grow to?
Well, the difference will be... I wish I had a crystal ball. I mean, I know the following. I know the following. When you automate a process, everything goes smoother.
So the Salesforce managed package through automation is going to dramatically improve both the ability for our clients to consume Modigi and at the same time for us to have a higher consumption, which will mean, as I described to you, a higher fulfill rate. Yep. So, I mean, I'm modeling it for over a million. So it'd be a, you know, a 3x growth.
But it's all about the Salesforce managed package and the market for Salesforce. So the clients that we're servicing are... Ken, how did you get those first 20 clients?
Walk me through that process.
Yeah, old school. It's brute force. So a couple of things. Again, when I was at Google, I ran a team of hunters. And so what I recognized back then, I applied today. So we use, we absolutely incorporate mobile into our omni-channel outreach. And we basically, our business target, our marketing operations, sales, sales operations, chief revenue officers, VPs of sales.
And so it's just primarily we started in Silicon Valley. And the beauty is our first wave of customers were our own doing and then word of mouth spread. So we have some luxury of having reference customers.
So this first 2029, it was really cold outbound, basically. Get the cell phone numbers of the CRO, call them and close them.
100%. Interesting. And some of the network, Nathan. But no one was gifting, you know, no one was giving me a freebie.
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Chapter 3: What is the business model of Modigie and how are clients charged?
You know, my Fitbit says about seven.
Seven. I skipped three. What's your favorite online tool for building a business?
So anything collaboration. I'm going to narrow it down. So the Google G Suite of tools has been phenomenal.
Yeah. Number one, what's your situation? Married, single kids? Married with two daughters. Two kids. Okay. And how old are you?
52. I'm an old guy.
That's prime, prime time, baby. Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?
Oh, it's just solving a, you know, finding a business problem and just, just taking action sooner on an obvious business problem.
Yep. Makes sense, guys. Modigi helping, especially teams doing outbound, make sure they've got accurate mobile information on their prospects. He did this because he learned it. He was doing himself inside of Google. Ken Hobbs going from nothing to $300,000 in ARR in a little under 12 months. 29 customers right now as they look to scale. Bootstrapped, which we love, and profitable.
10 on the team, four full-time, six are sort of part-time engineers as they look to scale. Ken, thanks for taking us to the top.
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