SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Wunderkind Raising $100m+ at $1b+ Valuation As They Eye IPO Market in 2023
23 Nov 2021
Chapter 1: What significant revenue milestone did Wunderkind achieve?
February last year, you guys broke 100 million bucks in annual revenue. If you're growing 50% year over year still, that's a massive base. I mean, that would put you over 150 million bucks now in revenue. Is that right? Annualized?
You can infer math so far, but we're definitely... I don't want to infer.
So you just said you were going to grow 50% year over year on a big base and you publicized the base a year ago. So I don't want to infer here.
Yeah. So you're in the ballpark.
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Chapter 2: How is Wunderkind planning to grow its revenue in the coming year?
Hey, folks. My guest today is Ryan Urban. He's the co-founder and he's the CEO and founder of WonderKind. He's had an obsession with undeniable performance. And under Ryan's leadership, the company has been named one of the best places to work by both Cranes New York and is ranked the number one fastest growing software company by the Inc. 500. Ryan, you ready to take us to the top? Let's go.
Let's go, Nathan. What's up?
All right. So previously BounceX and now WonderKind, next-gen performance marketing. Tell me a little bit. I see the new hairdo. Do you still have black toenails or no?
Chapter 3: What does the guest mean by 'up-branding'?
Oh, I've, I've, uh, we've got everything. So, uh, now we've got, uh, now we've got a little Batman file. We've got a little Viking stuff going on. We've got a little Spider-Man too. I love it. You got to go fresh.
So this means, this means you're not going on IPO roadshow anytime in the next three months, right?
You know what the world's come a long way. So I actually was on a, uh, We did do a kind of a pre-IPO, like a crossover fund process. And I really wanted to kind of introduce what Wunderkin does to a lot of the public company investors. Because at some point, it could be next year, it could be early 2023, whenever we feel it's appropriate.
Yeah, we're probably going to be a public company at some point and something we're
we're looking forward to uh but yeah like you know what like you can have your you can have your nails painted and do that and you're not judged anymore and it's awesome it's a great conversation i uh i kept the sides uh i didn't have designs in the sides but this is halloween so now now we've kind of uh completed that process and now it's time to have a little fun there too so but everyone's uh pretty open it's the world's way more inclusive than it was three years ago
Folks, you heard it here first.
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Chapter 4: How does Wunderkind differentiate its marketing strategies?
You can have your black toenails and your IPO too. I love it. Wait, so what was the name of the thing that you said you did where you sort of just put feelers out there, let people know who you were? It's called a what? It's not a...
No, it's like we went through, I know it's a strategic finance process. So some companies need a fundraise to like companies that lose a lot of money. For us, it's like we're doing great. We're probably by the time it's there, maybe even a thousand people will probably be 800 people soon. This has been a great year for us, our best year ever.
And I'm like, I'm calling from the... I'm dialing in from the World Trade Center right now. I love these views. Look at this. Yeah, this is... We're on the 75th floor right now. I'm in a Blue Rose room.
Chapter 5: What types of clients does Wunderkind serve?
You can check it out.
And you negotiated a killer deal on this office space, I believe, right?
We did. Well, it's... When we came here, we were planning this out about four years ago. We've been here about three years now. And this is the most beautiful space, I think, in the world. And they really wanted an anchor technology tenant that's on the way up. And we came in, the whole building really came alive. So, yeah. this is like, like people are, we're, we're coming in.
There's, there's really good energy. So it's, uh, it's awesome. And maybe we'll talk about how, how we're kind of leading, leading way at some of the flexible and office stuff after, but yeah, the things are going great.
I'd love to chat more about that in a second.
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Chapter 6: How does Wunderkind's advertising infrastructure work?
Yeah. So when you say fastest growing ever, I mean, what, how would you guys grow out revenue over the past 12 months?
No, um, I it's, it's, it's, I'd say it's, I'll take a step back. Last year was just our best year in delivering and putting the value of product service. So the revenue growth comes like when you want to grow revenue wise, that comes after your product service got really good. And for us, we sell revenue. So a lot of software companies sell like time savings and efficiency.
Our software delivers revenue by improving experience. And we improved our regular offering so much. So our identity versus technology, like we got that really up to a different level. We recognize nearly 50% of people. It's awesome. We delivered an enterprise text platform last year and that boom, we're a sound user full series. We can increase the business by 20%.
Chapter 7: What are the revenue streams for Wunderkind?
And that's like a real number. It's like within a year, like we can increase almost any business within 20%. So it's a pretty cool. And generally we're doing, or if someone has like a course, we were in six months, we're averaging a 10% increase and we do that by scaling their personalization. So then here, yeah, then you get some big growth world. Yeah.
I think like revenue wise, we'll probably, and we're, we have big scale. So we don't like publicize our exact numbers. I know you, you, you, you do some inferring, but yeah, it's gonna be about a 50% revenue growth, a 50% growth year for us. And that's a, that's on a big base and that's without like, without deploying like a ton of strategic financing.
So we're not the company that's raising $200 million rounds and like hiring a million, like 300, 400 salespeople and playing stuff. We're earning it. We're almost all like, now it's like a half of our customers come by word of mouth for enterprise software company. That's very rare.
Chapter 8: What are Wunderkind's future funding plans and valuation expectations?
It's almost half of one that can people work here come also by referrals. So our clients are referring us and our Wunderkinds, our employees, our Wunderkinds referring other people here. So that's like, those are the important numbers. We like, so we're, we're at the 44 club. We're like, we'll go get the 50, 50 club.
And eventually like, it's just all of our clients will be referred by the clients and, and all of our, all of our Wunderkinds will be referred by the Wunderkinds. So it's a, it's really nice. And honestly, like we, our product and service and our leadership team and our rev is we can be a public company right now. It's like, I want to get a feel like to be a public company.
You, we, of course you want predictability and revenue, but I want predictability on shipping value on operating velocity. So and we have good operating velocity, but I want the innovation velocity. I want predictability innovation velocity. And for me, I want to be shipping like three to five percent in revenue a quarter. And we're getting close to that. So it's a.
It's like we, we're now we have offices in New York, Indianapolis. I have a hundred people, 110 people in Indianapolis now. And it's awesome. It's like having some geographic diversity. It's not only get like different kinds of people. It's like, it's, it's really nice. You get access to different talent and people have a great office. People come to the company and know what success is.
Like it's just good energy. It's, it's good, good blood. And London's really building out. I'm opening office in London. I'm expanding Austin now. I'm opening up in Paris and Paris early next year. I'm going to Ukraine in a few weeks. And we have some people there. We're going to do some nice there. Probably Quebec City, probably Miami.
We were just on the phone with the mayor of Miami a couple weeks ago. So there's a new mayor in New York now. And like, we really want to really recruit a lot of technology comes to New York. And we want to be the ambassador of that. It's like, hey, come to New York. It's exciting. It's a cool place. So it's just an energizing time. This is year nine for us.
We've known each other for five or six years. You knew me when we were doing like 20 million revenue.
So it's... I remember those days. You hosted a great poker event a couple of years ago, which I met a lot of cool people at. That was a ton of fun. And you guys are growing. I mean, I know you don't like to talk about numbers, but you did put out publicly on February 26th last year saying the company broke 100 million bucks in annual revenue. And that's when you rebranded to Wonderkind.
So if you did...
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