SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Testbox Lets You Try Software Without Sales Calls, Landed 1st Customer, $2.7m Raised at $12m Post Money Cap
10 Nov 2021
Chapter 1: What is TestBox and how does it change software buying?
head at the moment but if we take the next like three to four years basically to be able to say look if you're trying to buy enterprise software the first place you go to is testbox.com you say i'm looking for these three or four vendors let me get my hands on and it shouldn't just be in customer support but basically all of the sales ops tools all the marketing tools or whatever basically come to testbox and then you can um make the best decision in a few weeks rather than many months
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. Hey folks, my guest today is Sam Senior.
He's the co-founder and CEO of TestBox. Originally from regional Australia, he studied software engineering at Economics University where he met his co-founder, Peter. He left Bain after six years as a senior manager in San Francisco to build the future of software buying.
Chapter 2: How does TestBox allow users to test software without sales calls?
He now lives in Boulder, Colorado. Sam, you ready to take us to the top? Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Nathan. You bet, man. So what does this mean, the future of software buying? Well, I think previously everyone has talked about having an enterprise sales letter process. and selling software. I think the future is actually customer-led.
So meeting the customer and how they want to buy software, the process they want to take, and giving them a true hands-on experience.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of customer-led software purchasing?
And so we've basically built an app that allows people to test and compare enterprise software before they buy without needing to talk to a salesperson, with a hands-on experience, with real data in there, and all the use case configured so they can do a side-by-side comparison within minutes instead of doing a month-long sales process. Sam, how does that work? It sounds too good to be true.
Someone listening right now that wants to try Salesforce. Salesforce is not going to let you try it unless you get on a sales call and all this stuff. Have you pirated their software or something and give everyone access? How do you do this? So we've been very intentional in starting with just one software category to prove our value. So we started with customers.
more in discussion, but we've got more than 50% of the market share of the top platforms already partnered and integrated with us.
Chapter 4: Why did TestBox focus on customer support software first?
And how do you define market share? So otherwise you wouldn't know how, if you have- In terms of revenue or users, really either is fine. I think if you take revenue, for example, like Zendesk and Helpdesk Space has 20 plus percent of the market share. They're actually one of our partners that's integrated into TestBox. Okay. And what about like Freshworks? Yep. Integrated. Okay.
And HubSpot Service Hub and a few others as well.
Chapter 5: What strategies is TestBox using for market growth?
So what do you give Zendesk and Freshworks to let them do this? They want people going through their funnel, obviously. So yes and no. I think they understand that people don't always want to go direct and go through an AEVDR process. Instead, they want to go self-serve and hands-on.
We're basically taking that self-serve approach and supercharging it in a way that no one else has been able to do by getting it more real life, like it's already been implemented for that end user. So we're actually a new lead generation source for them. Mm-hmm. Interesting. Yeah.
Chapter 6: How does TestBox generate revenue through partnerships?
Well, it's actually funny. Dixia's interview is next week. Kirish came on before their IPO with Freshdesk and Brian Alligan came on pre-IPO from HubSpot. So you also have HelpScout, Trengo, and that crew as well. So this is cool. I love how you're going to sort of focus on a niche here and dominate the niche. Why customer support software though? Why start there?
So my co-founder and I actually about 10 or 11 years ago worked as IT help desk agents. So we just...
Chapter 7: What challenges does TestBox face in its early stages?
use cases that really matter but it all got kind of coalesced around this experience actually where someone close to me who previously bought help their software and i watched how painful that experience was and i basically interviewed her the entire time to understand what the major pain points were and how we could make it better so those two experiences together said let's start there plus it's a hugely growing market that's like 10 and a half billion today growing at 10 plus percent and it's getting more and more important so it's also a good niche for that reason
Tell me more about growth. So you got going, you just raised some capital. We'll come back to that in a second, but you're onboarding. This is a three-step process. First is introduce yourself. What are people mainly picking in the industry dropdown? Are you seeing concentration around B2C tech or B2B technology or something? Yeah.
So that's primarily where we focus is B2B tech and then e-commerce, then fintech.
Chapter 8: What are Sam's future plans for TestBox and its product development?
But what do you do for signups? Signups. What market are they in? Those three? Yes. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Cool. And then... So I'm going through it now. I love asking these questions. So you're basically saying, what products do you want to test? I'm going to click HubSpot and Zendesk looking for another solution. So you're basically doing user-generated content here.
People start typing in something and it's like a new customer support tool that's taking off. You should be aware of it because people will start typing it, right? Exactly right. And so we're basically trying to collate all that information so that we can say, great, We've had this many more people asking for this platform. Let me go build that partnership and get them integrated. All right.
Talk money to me. When you give HubSpot a new customer, it's probably the hottest thing they can possibly get. You must have some economic upside here. Yeah, exactly. So with HubSpot, it's 20% of total contract value. So not just first year, but actually the entire contract value that we get paid. What if you help the customer sign up on HubSpot for $100 a month?
HubSpot, the customer success managers work with them for 12 months and expand them to $1,000 a month. Do you get the expansion revenue too? 20% on that? Okay. So you have to trust on HubSpot and then that's going to Freshworks reporting back to you accurate expansion revenue on accounts that you help them land. Yeah, exactly.
But that's part of the partnership terms in terms of terms and conditions, legal, that sort of goodness. Super interesting. Okay. So you're effectively a sales rep for them, but running a different motion. But yes, but it's fully productized. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So when did you guys launch the business? When did you write the first line of code?
The first line of code was written just over a year ago, but we launched in sort of a public beta in middle of June. So only a few months ago now. And what numbers do you care about right now? Like waitlist size? Tell me what you care about. I think there's two major things for us. Because we're essentially building a marketplace, we need to be building
continue to build partnerships really matters. So I'm trying to pick up a new partnership every month at the moment. So we have that supply side of the market. And then on demand side, it really is just like, how many signups can we be generating on a weekly, monthly basis? And then once they're in, how quickly can we get them to a decision? Is it going to take three months like it does today?
Or is it going to be like a recent converted customer where it took them two weeks? And that's a significantly better process than they go through at the moment. So we're not done with October yet. So I can't ask you for October numbers, but in September, how many total new signups? So it's less than 10. I think we're at like sort of eight, that sort of number.
So it's still small, but it's continuing to grow every single month. Got it. And how many customers have you actually, there are now paying on one of your six or nine partners? Yep. So we've closed, we've unclosed one deal so far, but that's- How does that feel? That must've been amazing. How'd that feel? Yeah, it felt pretty incredible. There was a lot of jumping up and down.
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