Top 100 bootstrapped startups

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Techceler...
Technology & Engineering
SaaS and Business Software
180
http://www.techcelerate.ventures
Letter from
the Chairman
In a world where founders crave the vanity techcrunch headline announcing 
their next funding round, we tend to lose sight of the remarkable founders 
doing more with less.
This issue features founders who have created companies with no outside 
funding. iCIMS Colin Day leads the rankings with over $200M in ARR. You'll 
also enjoy stories from founders who bootstrapped to $100k, $1M, $10M+ in 
ARR.
Each founder leveraged different tactics at each ARR level however the theme 
is simple: Creativity. 
Funded companies lose their creative muscle and answer every issue with, 
"Throw money at it!". 
Bootstrapped founders ask the reverse, "How do we grow 50%+ yoy without 
spending any money?". 
Investors reading this will think, "Bootstrapped CEO's grow way too slow to be 
interesting". I'd argue the opposite. 
Ringlead took 2 years to hit $6M in ARR. Clickfunnels took 3 years to hit $70M 
in ARR. Sharpspring took 4 years to hit $14M in ARR. 
These CEO's constantly ask themselves: "How can we pull cash forward?". 
They do the obvious - selling annual contracts. They push further though. In 
the pages ahead, you'll see non-common ways these CEO's have creatively 
pulled cash forward to continue fueling growth without raising.
Have you considered upselling a $397 user conference ticket after a new 
Nathan Latka, Chairman - GetLatka.com
For the love of data,
Nathan Latka
Nathan@nathanlatka.com
October 2018
customer picks which monthly 
plan to pay you for? Have you 
thought about upselling a $997 
course that teaches how power 
users of your software are growing 
their business?
The bootstrapped founders that 
make up our inaugural "LATKA 
Bootstrapped 100" have built a 
cumulative empire of $862M in 
ARR, and created jobs for 4962 
people. 
 and the founders are making 
themselves rich off cash flow 
instead of selling equity. Not a bad 
deal.
CONTENT
OCTOBER 2018 ISSUE
04  The Latka 
100 Bootstrapped 
List
How these founders 
bootstrapped their 
companies to millions in ARR
19  The Most 
Anti-VC CEO 
We've Spoken to 
All Year!
Jane.app at $4.7M in ARR 
With $0 Raised
20  Super 
Successful CEO's 
Share How They 
Reduced Churn
Leaders from nine 
companies, across various 
price points, dive into how 
they solved their churn 
issues once and for all
27  The Right 
Way to Think 
About Driving 
Expansion 
Revenue
Why CloudCheckr's unique 
model has driven 145% net 
revenue retention
28  Why 
Monitoring Social 
Media Got Crisp 
Thinking to North 
of $10M in ARR
How their software uses AI 
to protect large enterprises 
from marketing risks
29  What 
to Do When a 
Management 
Shakeup Is 
Inevitable?
Sococo now growing 
revenue 66% YoY after 
bringing in new CEO
30  How to Hit 
$1.4M in MRR 
with Less than 1% 
Churn
Why ForceManager's focus 
on creating a sticky product 
has paid off
31  How to Price 
Your SaaS Product
Why this one simple shift 
can help you 8x your price 
without dropping conversion 
rates
37  How Any.do 
Has Driven 150% 
Growth in the Last 
6 Months
Why they are owning the 
task management space
38  The Key 
to Gracefully 
Organizing a 
Management 
Buyout
How Rant & Rave CEO 
orchestrated VC buyout and 
scaled to north of $28M in 
ARR
29
27
20
39  Is Latin 
America the Next 
Big Market for 
SaaS?
Rock Content CEO, north of 
$12M in ARR, sees significant 
promise in emerging LATAM 
market
40  Can't Find 
a Technical Co-
Founder? No 
Worries!
How Talkpush, now north of 
$100k in MRR, landed their 
first customers on a product 
built entirely by freelancers
41  7 Growth 
Channels That Will 
Take Your Business 
to the Next Level 
Fast
How these CEO's got used 
innovative methods and 
channels to drive growth
47  Why This 
Hubspot Executive 
Left and Never 
Looked Back
Peter Caputa now running 
$91k in MRR Databox
48  Sick of the 
Tediousness of 
Content Editing? 
They've Got You 
Covered!
How Filestage scaled to 
$40k in MRR with content 
collaboration tool
49  Onboarding 
SaaS Tool 
with 6-Month 
Runway . . . Will 
AcademyOcean 
Make It?
Why this Ukrainian startup 
refuses to give up
50  Should you 
be rethinking how 
much you pay your 
accountant?
How Botkeeper uses AI to 
streamline bookkeeping and 
hit $140k in MRR
52  Why 500k 
Paid Users Are 
Turning to GitLab 
for DevOps Support
How this code management 
software has crossed $2.5M 
in MRR with a $19 ARPU
54  Do Browser 
Notifications Work? 
iZooto's $98k in 
MRR Says So!
Why this startup has been 
winning early on
40
48
52
4     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
GETLATKA.COM - THOUSANDS OF DATA POINTS ON PRIVATE SAAS COMPANIES
Latka 100 Bootstrapped List: 
How these founders 
bootstrapped their companies 
to millions in ARR
If you know anything about Nathan Latka, you know he loves 
nothing more than a company who has grown to scale without 
exchanging equity for capital. Nothing brings a bigger smile to his 
face.
This month, we decided to rank our top 100 bootstrapped B2B 
SaaS companies and dig into how some of these incredibly lean 
companies achieved such monumental success without the help 
of outside investors.
Let's get started...
How iCIMS Scaled to 
North of $105M in ARR 
with Just One Small Loan
Recruiting will forever be a struggle for companies of all sizes. 
Finding the right talent, at the right price can catapult you into 
success and set you up for long-term growth. 
Yet, with more and more ERPs coming with an out-of-the-box HR 
software included, companies seem to be placing less importance 
on optimizing their talent acquisition. iCIMS, the largest stand-
alone provider base of talent acquisition software in the industry, 
has the ideal solution for businesses looking to take a contrarian 
approach and double down on hiring the world's best people.
iCIMS currently offers the best of breed talent acquisition suite to 
help businesses with recruiting operations. Their products allow 
companies to track applicants throughout the hiring process, 
automate marketing efforts to create passive talent pools, and on-
board new hires efficient.
Colin Day, Founder of iCIMS
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     5
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The company is built on a pure-play SaaS model and dates back to 
its founding in 1999. CEO Colin Day, a young professional working 
in recruiting at the time, was an early believer in HR software upon 
experimenting with his employer's proprietary tracking product.
After a conversation with the company's CEO, Day bought out 
the rights to the proprietary software and spun it out into what is 
now iCIMS. Day funded the buyout using a loan from the parent 
company and a negotiated a portion of equity. 
Today, the company serves more than 3,500 total customers, with 
an average first-year ACV of $30k. 
iCIMS is north of 
$105M in ARR right 
now and has reached 
this monumental 
scale solely by 
bootstrapping.
Aside from the small original loan  which was paid back in full 
with interest and estimated at approximately $2.5M over two 
years  iCIMS has grown with no outside operational capital. The 
company has brought in Susquehanna Growth Equity as a partner 
for multiple investments however, this capital came in the form of a 
liquidity event and no cash was used as operating capital.
Against all odds, iCIMS survived the dot-com bubble and is 
still thriving, even as more and more companies are turning to 
ERPs to meet their HR needs. Their team has scaled to 650 full-
time employees with a large majority sitting in their New Jersey 
headquarters.
How Rant & Rave 
Orchestrated a VC Buyout 
and Never Looked Back
Surveys are one of the oldest tools companies have used to collect 
information on their customers. But, as the world has evolved, their 
utility has continually decreased over time: things have changed 
and customers are providing less and less useful information at a 
rapidly declining rate.
This thesis is exactly what Rant & Rave was born to address. 
Their customer engagement platform helps brands proactively 
communicate with and gather fast feedback from their customers. 
Their real-time feedback uses sentiment analysis to monitor 
customer emotion and drive retention.
Rant & Rave is built on a pure-play SaaS model and currently 
charges their customers $100k annually. They are focused solely 
on serving enterprise customers and have landed large players 
such as Barclays, Manchester United, DPD, and more.
According to CEO Nigel Shanahan, the company has grown 
revenue 35% year over year and are up from $1.7M in MRR 12 
months ago.
iCIMS
CEO/FOUNDER
Colin Day
ARPU
$2.5K
MRR
$8.8M+
ARR
$105M+
INDUSTRY
Software
2016 REVENUE
$70M
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
3.5K+
6     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
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ARR
COMPANY
COMPANY AGE
REV / EMPLOYEE
FOUNDED
TEAM
RANK
0208predictiveindex.com
rantandrave.com
THE PREDICTIVE INDEX
RANTANDRAVE
$73.2M
$28.5M
63
12
$915K
$271K
1955
2006
80
105
0410getresponse.com
https://pixelandtonic.com/
GETRESPONSE
PIXELANDTONIC
$60M
$18.72M
20
8
$200K
$1.87M
1998
2010
300
10
061214maropost.com
calltrackingmetrics.com
http://winmo.com/
MAROPOST
CALLTRACKINGMETRICS
WINMO
$36.48M
$14.4M
$14M
7
6
23
$231K
$626K
$165K
2011
2012
1995
158
23
85
0107icims.com
http://salecycle.com/
ICIMS
SALECYCLE
$160M
$30M
19
8
$213K
$167K
1999
2010
750
180
0309Clickfunnels
https://kentico.com/
CLICKFUNNELS
KENTICO
$70M
$20M
3
14
$538K
$80K
2015
2004
130
250
051113jotform.com
teamwork.com
sharpspring.com
JOTFORM
TEAMWORK
SHARPSPRING
$54M
$18M
$14M
12
11
4
$720K
$132K
$97K
2006
2007
2014
75
136
145
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ARR
COMPANY
COMPANY AGE
REV / EMPLOYEE
FOUNDED
TEAM
RANK
1622assembla.com
webinarninja.com
ASSEMBLA
WEBINARNINJA
$10.8M
$7.7M
13
5
$240K
$257K
2005
2013
45
30
1824processmaker.com
Globalvision
PROCESSMAKER
GLOBALVISION
$10.5M
$7M
10
28
$75K
$117K
2008
1990
140
60
202628vutu.re
brandverity.com
fotoware.com
VUTU.RE
BRANDVERITY
FOTOWARE
$10M
$6M
$6M
11
10
21
$143K
$171K
$214K
2007
2008
1997
70
35
28
1521convertkit.com
priceintelligently.com
CONVERTKIT
PRICEINTELLIGENTLY
$12M
$8M
5
6
$324K
$211K
2013
2012
37
38
1723quantumworkplace.com
https://neoncrm.com/
QUANTUMWORKPLACE
NEONCRM
$10.8M
$7.2M
16
13
$204K
$72K
2002
2005
53
100
192527addaptive.com
Salesfuel
shopperapproved.com
ADDAPTIVE
SALESFUEL
SHOPPERAPPROVED
$10M
$7M
$6M
8
29
8
$286K
$200K
$200K
2010
1989
2010
35
35
30
8     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
GETLATKA.COM - THOUSANDS OF DATA POINTS ON PRIVATE SAAS COMPANIES
The company has scaled to 285 
total customers today and is 
currently north of $2.3M in MRR.
On both a logo and revenue basis, Rant & Rave is currently retaining 
95% of its customers annually. While they haven't reached net 
negative revenue churn yet, Shanahan is confident they will in the 
near future. 
Their team has grown to 105 full-time employees today, with 18 
allocated towards sales and marketing. The company is landing 
4-5 new customers per month with an approximate CAC of $18k 
and a payback period of under 3 months.
Rant & Rave was originally founded in 2000 and raised $2M at 
that time. However, Shanahan architected a management buyout 
in 2006 and has bootstrapped ever since. 
Clearly, the gamble to take the company over and pivot has paid off 
for Rant & Rave. Their team of 105 is headquartered in Coventry, 
UK.
Bootstrapping in India? 
Wingify North of $1.5M in 
MRR with Zero Funding
Web optimization and analytics are a necessity in today's 
marketplace. Understanding where your customers drop off and 
why they do so is a critical component to long-term scalability.
Wingify, a holding company for a host of web optimization products, 
has pioneered a website analytics solution for businesses of all 
sizes.
Visual Website Optimizer (VWO), Wingify's flagship SaaS product, 
helps midsize eCommerce stores and enterprises increase 
conversion rates by making A/B testing easy.  Their tool can be 
used across various stages of conversion funnels to give valuable 
insights into customer behavior.
Launched in 2010, VWO now serves approximately 5k paying 
customers. Their solution helps companies analyze user behavior, 
create hypotheses around optimization, and plan and prioritize 
critical tests for their websites. 
Today, customers pay them anywhere from $300 to $500 per 
month for a subscription to VWO. Between VWO and Wingify's 
other products, 
the company is 
currently north of 
$1.5M in MRR overall 
and exhibiting revenue 
growth between 20-
40% YoY.
The website optimization industry, while growing, is extremely 
competitive. Wingify's CEO, Paras Chopra, was not shy to admit 
this and noted churn as a significant area of improvement for 
his company. Chopra notes that, because optimization is still 
an emerging field, companies typically don't have the proper 
resources in place to focus the ample attention required to get 
optimal benefit.
Wingify currently spends around $720 to acquire a new customer 
with an average payback period of less than 3 months. They 
assume a customer lifetime of around 12 months, on average.
According to Chopra, 
Wingify is a completely 
bootstrapped company 
with their team of 200 
full-time employees base 
entirely in Delhi, India.
Going forward, the company has its sights set on building out 
additional complimentary products to VWO and has already grown 
a tangential offering, PushCrew, to 1,000 users. Expect continued 
success from this impressively lean organization.
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     9
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Could Shopper 
Approved's Reinvestment 
Strategy Pay Off Big?
Scott Brandley is a life-long entrepreneur and has been building 
software for over 20 years. Of the 30+ software companies he has 
started to date, Shopper Approved has been his most successful 
venture to date and earned spots on the INC 500 list two years 
running.
Shopper Approved, launched in 2010, helps businesses display 
product, merchant, and local reviews everywhere their customers 
are looking. Their Shopper syndication network gives their 
customers reviews maximum visibility and ensure they show up 
in all the right places.
Shopper Approved has scaled to 7,000 customers in eight years 
and currently charges an average fee of $100-150 per month. 
Due to grandfathered rates, they operate with an ARPU of $70 for 
around $500k in MRR. 
Shopper Approved 
made the INC 500 list of 
fastest growing private 
companies in 2016 with 
$3.7M in annual revenue 
and again in 2017 with 
annual revenues of $4.7M. 
Today, Brandley estimates they are on track to top $6M in 
revenue in 2018.
Brandley is a firm believer in using call centers to acquire customers 
and Shopper Approved currently operates with a CAC of $400, 
solely from cost center spend. Due to low monthly revenue 
churn of 0.8%, they are able to invest heavily in CAC and still feel 
confident that they will be paid back in a healthy time frame. 
In 2014, Shopper Approved's healthy economics drew acquisition 
interests from others in the ratings and reviews industry. With an 
ARR of around $2.5M, they received a valuation of $12M from 
Goldman Sachs, a 5x multiple. Hindsight is always 20/20, but 
Brandley is extremely thankful the deal fell through at the eleventh 
hour. "Right afterwards we took off and it's been a lot of fun," 
Brandley explained.
Shopper Approved 
has bootstrapped the 
entire way since 2010.
Today, they are neck-in-neck with large, venture backed 
competitors with a team size of less than 30 and no capital raised.
Shopper Approved is very profitable at this point, with net profits 
north of 20%. Brandley's strategy revolves around investing 
this profit into his many other companies. He feels confident in 
his process to validate and build out ideas from his plethora of 
experience in the software world and is currently investing in 5 
separate companies. 
Shopper Approved
CEO/FOUNDER
Scott Brandley
ARPU
$100-$150
MRR
$500K
ARR
$6M
INDUSTRY
Software
2016 REVENUE
$3.7M
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
7K
10     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
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ARR
COMPANY
COMPANY AGE
REV / EMPLOYEE
FOUNDED
TEAM
RANK
3036memsource.com
janeapp.com
MEMSOURCE
JANEAPP
$5.28M
$4.7M
8
7
$66K
$131K
2010
2011
80
36
3238agorapulse.com
relahq.com
AGORAPULSE
RELAHQ
$5M
$4M
18
2
$125K
$800K
2000
2016
40
5
344042https://targetrecruit.net/
VenturePact
linktrust.com
TARGETRECRUIT
VENTUREPACT
LINKTRUST
$4.8M
$3.6M
$3.5M
10
6
16
$96K
$116K
$250K
2008
2012
2002
50
31
14
2935ringlead.com
Vainu
RINGLEAD
VAINU
$6M
$4.8M
2
4
$150K
$60K
2016
2014
40
80
3137Corporate360
brightlocal.com
CORPORATE360
BRIGHTLOCAL
$5.1M
$4.2M
5
9
$73K
$35K
2013
2009
70
120
333941Delivra.com
hubstaff.com
http://vtiger.com/
DELIVRA
HUBSTAFF
VTIGER
$5M
$3.8M
$3.6M
19
5
14
$104K
$95K
$35K
1999
2013
2004
48
40
102
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ARR
COMPANY
COMPANY AGE
REV / EMPLOYEE
FOUNDED
TEAM
RANK
4450msights.com
http://getsigneasy.com/
MSIGHTS
GETSIGNEASY
$3.17M
$2.4M
15
8
$91K
$96K
2003
2010
35
25
4652https://tradablebits.com/
hiremojo.com
TRADABLEBITS
HIREMOJO
$3M
$2.16M
7
3
$176K
$216K
2011
2015
17
10
485456luckyorange.com
lbaware.com
https://moosend.com/
LUCKYORANGE
LBAWARE
MOOSEND
$2.4M
$2M
$1.68M
4
10
5
$267K
$80K
$67K
2014
2008
2013
9
25
25
4349https://prezly.com/
coredna.com
PREZLY
COREDNA
$3.24M
$2.4M
4
2
$216K
$60K
2014
2016
15
40
4551http://webhose.io/
rankwatch.com
WEBHOSE
RANKWATCH
$3.12M
$2.25M
3
5
$156K
$75K
2015
2013
20
30
475355WebinarNinja
visme.co
sendlane.com
WEBINARNINJA
VISME
SENDLANE
$2.62M
$2.07M
$1.79M
4
6
5
$187K
$138K
$100K
2014
2012
2013
14
15
18
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From the Winter Olympics 
to $3M in ARR: The Tradable 
Bits Success Story
In today's world, experiences are more valuable than ever. Whether 
it's travel, sporting events, concerts, or some other fun past-time, 
consumers are constantly opening their wallets for experiences. 
Tradable Bits, a Vancouver based startup, has created a platform 
to help the promoters behind theses experiences take their 
businesses to the next level.
Tradable Bits' main purpose is to better understand why fans 
attend specific events and use that information to deliver the 
optimal fan experience. They strive to connect social media 
profiles to behaviors in order to collect, analyze and activate their 
fan data at scale. Their platform addresses the industries' biggest 
pain points and increases ROI with automated personalization.
Today, Tradable Bits has scaled to 20M engaged audiences 
annually across 250 customers. 
Tradable Bits also manages audience targeting for some of their 
customers, taking a percentage of total spend each month.
Since the company's inception in 2011, they have consistently 
grown revenues 50% YoY. Currently, Tradable Bits has focused 
in on concerts and sporting events within North America, but 
is considering expansion into South America and Europe going 
forward.
CEO and Founder Darshan Kaler has grown Tradable Bits to over 
$3M in ARR by entirely bootstrapping. 
A former business operations team member for the Olympics, 
Kaler came up with the idea for Tradable Bits during the 2010 
On average, each customer pays 
them $15k per year ($300k in MRR) 
for access to their SaaS platform. 
winter Olympics in Vancouver. 
Today, their growing team of 17 all resides in Vancouver and are 
focused on expanding revenue within their current customer base 
while weighing expansion into other geographical areas. 
While most of their customers are acquired through word of 
mouth, Tradable Bits focuses a majority of their marketing efforts 
on strategic events. They currently spend between $3k and $5k in 
CAC, with a payback period of around 6 months. Current models 
show an LTV of $50-60k over a 3-4 year time period. 
Overall, churn is very low for Tradable Bits. Kaler estimates annual 
revenue churn to be around 5%, with that figure squeezing down 
to around 1% within the sports and music verticals. With solid 
expansion revenue figures to existing customers, Tradable Bits 
exhibits positive net revenue retention each month.
Going forward, Kaler and the entire Tradable Bits team faces a 
pivotal decision: expand internationally or double-down on the 
North American market. Only time will tell, but expect interesting 
things from this bootstrapped success story.
Go From Working in 
Funded Startups to 
Bootstrapping Your Own
In the world of marketing automation, there is a wide of information 
being left uncollected and acted upon when an autoresponder is 
received. Out-of-office responses, change in positions and titles, 
as well as updated email address notifications contain valuable 
data companies can use to bolster their marketing and sales 
efforts.
LeadGnome was developed to solve this problem for email 
marketers and sales teams alike. Their software provides 
actionable intelligence for these teams based solely on information 
gathered from autoresponders.
The company was launched by CEO Matt Benati in 2014 and 
rolled out their first product in 2015. LeadGnome was built as a 
pure-play SaaS company that prices on a per seat basis, with the 
average customer paying them $10 per month today. 
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     13
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LeadGnome is 
currently north of 
$200k in annual 
revenue and is on track 
to pass $750k in ARR 
by the end of 2018
according to Benati. With annual revenue churn south 5% today 
and 2.5x YoY revenue growth, the company seems poised to 
meet this ambitious goal. 
Perhaps the most interesting piece of LeadGnome's early success 
is their ability to grow as an incredibly lean organization. Aside from 
Benati and his co-founder, the company has no other full-time 
employees and leans on a team of ten part-time virtual contractors 
to get projects completed.
While Benati was a member of three startups prior to founding 
LeadGnome, this is his first venture as a founder, as well as the 
first entirely bootstrapped company he's worked for. 
"I recommend to people that they go build an MVP first," Benati 
explained on episode 1072 of The Top Entrepreneurs Podcast. 
"Then, if you want to accelerate, there a lot of options. In fact, you 
have more options at that point than if you went directly to VC."
Bootstrapping is never easy. But, if you learn anything from these 
founder's stories, know it is possible. And today, with more free 
and affordable tools than ever before, it's becoming more and 
more feasible to grow a viable business without raising additional 
capital.
If you were starting over today what would you do? Raise or 
bootstrap?
Matt Benati, CEO of LeadGnome
14     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
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ARR
COMPANY
COMPANY AGE
REV / EMPLOYEE
FOUNDED
TEAM
RANK
5864ethn.io
konnectinsights.com
ETHN
KONNECTINSIGHTS
$1.5M
$1.2M
4
5
$250K
$46K
2014
2013
6
26
6066qebot.com
http://buzzbuilderpro.com/
QEBOT
BUZZBUILDERPRO
$1.49M
$1.2M
3
5
$165K
$120K
2015
2013
9
10
626870Simplero
DocHub.com
Support Ninja
SIMPLERO
DOCHUB
SUPPORT NINJA
$1.26M
$1.14M
$1.06M
9
4
3
$210K
$228K
$10K
2009
2014
2015
6
5
105
5763postalytics.com
lumen5.com
POSTALYTICS
LUMEN5
$1.62M
$1.2M
0
1
$405K
$109K
2018
2017
4
11
5965blueriver.com
Shufflrr.com
BLUERIVER
SHUFFLRR
$1.5M
$1.2M
17
5
$75K
$100K
2001
2013
20
12
616769http://swooptalent.com/
paymoapp.com
realcontentnetwork.com
SWOOPTALENT
PAYMOAPP
REALCONTENTNETWORK
$1.34M
$1.2M
$1.08M
6
10
3
$67K
$92K
$180K
2012
2008
2015
20
13
6
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ARR
COMPANY
COMPANY AGE
REV / EMPLOYEE
FOUNDED
TEAM
RANK
7278https://siftrock.com/
https://gopbn.com/
SIFTROCK
GOPBN
$1.05M
$840K
4
1
$175K
$34K
2014
2017
6
25
7480http://socialrep.com/
https://paykickstart.com/
SOCIALREP
PAYKICKSTART
$1M
$600K
10
1
$83K
$40K
2008
2017
12
15
768284contify.com
brax.io
Appointlet
CONTIFY
BRAX
APPOINTLET
$900K
$480K
$444K
9
3
4
$9K
$160K
$148K
2009
2015
2014
95
3
3
7177leaddyno.com
conveyour.com
LEADDYNO
CONVEYOUR
$1.06M
$840K
6
2
$106K
$168K
2012
2016
10
5
7379genoo.com
datability.co
GENOO
DATABILITY
$1.02M
$648K
10
2
$146K
$20K
2008
2016
7
32
758183pulseinsights.com
tryinteract.com
bant.io
PULSEINSIGHTS
TRYINTERACT
BANT
$1M
$576K
$446K
5
5
3
$83K
$96K
$37K
2013
2013
2015
12
6
12
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ARR
COMPANY
COMPANY AGE
REV / EMPLOYEE
FOUNDED
TEAM
RANK
8692https://weblium.com/
elafris.com
WEBLIUM
ELAFRIS
$390K
$240K
1
2
$8K
$17K
2017
2016
51
14
8894https://aeroleads.com
Toofr
AEROLEADS
TOOFR
$360K
$216K
3
8
$36K
$216K
2015
2010
10
1
909698leadgnome.com
standuply.com
rewango.com
LEADGNOME
STANDUPLY
REWANGO
$250K
$180K
$180K
4
2
4
$125K
$26K
$26K
2014
2016
2014
2
7
7
8591kvsocial.com
hellotars.com
KVSOCIAL
HELLOTARS
$420K
$240K
5
2
$20K
$60K
2013
2016
21
4
8793https://theseventhsense.com/
https://foxy.io
THESEVENTHSENSE
FOXY
$367K
$240K
3
12
$122K
$24K
2015
2006
3
10
899597getcredo.com
funnelenvy.com
easyredir.com
GETCREDO
FUNNELENVY
EASYREDIR
$276K
$210K
$180K
5
5
3
$69K
$14K
$60K
2013
2013
2015
4
15
3
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ARR
COMPANY
COMPANY AGE
REV / EMPLOYEE
FOUNDED
TEAM
RANK
100106https://notablist.com/index.html
upcontent.com
NOTABLIST
UPCONTENT
$150K
$108K
4
1
$50K
$54K
2014
2017
$3.00 
2
102108Mailinator
missinglettr.com
MAILINATOR
MISSINGLETTR
$126K
$96K
15
1
$42K
$16K
2003
2017
3
6
104110112vidalytics.com
clappia.com
propeller CRM
VIDALYTICS
CLAPPIA
PROPELLER CRM
$120K
$84K
$30K
1
1
2
$24K
$17K
$6K
2017
2017
2016
5
5
5
99105https://chatmatic.com/
linkody.com
CHATMATIC
LINKODY
$175K
$115K
2
6
$22K
$115K
2016
2012
8
1
101107http://tribeboost.com/
https://around.io/
TRIBEBOOST
AROUND
$144K
$101K
6
4
$36K
$17K
2012
2014
4
6
103109111adjusti.co
sitecake.com
netzei.com
ADJUSTI
SITECAKE
NETZEI
$120K
$96K
$60K
0
5
1
$60K
$16K
$12K
2018
2013
2017
2
6
5
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ARR
COMPANY
COMPANY AGE
REV / EMPLOYEE
FOUNDED
TEAM
RANK
114poptin.com
POPTIN
$27K
1
$13K
2017
2
116outseta.com
OUTSETA
$6K
2
$1K
2016
4
113PRE.DO
PRE.DO
$27K
1
$13K
2017
2
115itsease.com
EASE
$8K
2
$2K
2016
5
117https://cloudkpi.com/
CLOUDKPI
$3K
0
$1K
2018
3
Jane.app application
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     19
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Many great businesses originated as a solution to a founder's 
problem. Companies like AirBnB, Basecamp, and Buffer were all 
created in order to "scratch their own itch" and address a pain 
point specific to them.
Add Jane.app to that list. This Canadian company was founded 
in 2011 when co-founder Alison Taylor convinced her marketing 
manager to develop an in-house application to track online 
booking and charting in her occupational therapy clinic. His 
custom solution was a resounding success.
Soon, other clinics and Applied Health practices in the area got 
word and agreed to sign on as their initial customers. Today, the 
company is thriving by addressing a market often overlooked by 
software companies and delivering them am unrivaled product.
How much is Jane.app 
doing in ARR?
Jane.app is a pure-play SaaS business with customers 
paying them, on average, $95 per month. Their plans begin at 
approximately $70/month and scale up based on usage.
Today, the company serves more than 18k total customers and is 
at $4.7M in ARR, according to Taylor. Jane.app has been able to 
double revenue year over year in consecutive years, most recently 
growing at 105% YoY. Going forward, Taylor is confident that the 
team will continue this trend is aiming to double revenues yet 
again in 2018.
VC? Who Needs 'Em? Jane.app 
at $4.7M in ARR With $0 Raised
What is Jane.app's churn?
Despite being in the SMB space, Jane.app has exhibited 
impressive customer retention thus far. At present, they have 
less than 5% gross revenue churn annually. Taylor attributes 
their superb product and impeccable product-market fit for their 
stickiness.
Trade shows are the main channel of customer acquisition for 
Jane.app right now and the company pays about $40 to land a 
new customer. 
With an ARPU of $22, 
they are receiving 
payback within 2 
months. 
How much has Jane.app 
raised?
Jane.app is proudly bootstrapped today. The company was 
founded in Canada and is currently on pace to grow their total 
addressable market by ramping up expansion into the U.S.
Their team has scaled to 36 full-time employees and will grow to 
50 employees by the end of 2018. 
$ $4.7M in ARR
20     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
GETLATKA.COM - THOUSANDS OF DATA POINTS ON PRIVATE SAAS COMPANIES
Super  
Successful 
CEO's  
Share How 
They Reduced 
Churn
How to Turn a SaaS 
Company Around in 90 
Days
A shift from an acquisition-first mindset to a retention-first mindset 
can have rippling effects on the growth of your SaaS business.
There are only 3 ways to grow a business
Most businesses could be growing faster if they were focusing 
on the right things. You want to make sure you're pouring your 
company's time, money, and energy into efforts that are going to 
have tangible results to show CEOs, VPs, and investors.
What resonates at Teamwork.com is marketer Jay Abraham's idea 
that there are three ways to tangibly grow a business, which all in 
some form require a focus on customer retention:
1. Reducing customer churn
2. Increasing Average Revenue Per User
3. Increasing the total number of customers
These three growth levers are powerful because the results multiply. 
For instance, Drew found at Teamwork.com that decreasing churn 
by 30%, increasing ARPU by 30%, and increasing the total number 
of customers by 30% increases customer LTV by over 100%.
Patrick Campbell, ProfitWell
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     21
GETLATKA.COM - THOUSANDS OF DATA POINTS ON PRIVATE SAAS COMPANIES
At Teamwork.com, a 30% increase in customer lifetime (churn 
reduction), total number of customers, and ARPU resulted in an 
aggregate increase of LTV from just below $30 million to $65 
million.
Reducing customer churn
Reducing churn should be at the forefront of your growth strategy. 
If you can't hold on to a solid customer base, you can forget about 
rapid growthyou'll never even reach stability.
Replacing customers who churn is expensive and unsustainable. 
To nip that problem in the bud, work on reducing your user churn 
by:
Identifying the red flags 
before churn
Increase your customer's time with your company by pinpointing 
when a customer is going to leave and then preventing the churn. 
SaaS companies should look for patterns in behavior before 
customers churn, and then monitor current customers for these 
"red flag" metrics. This could mean recency of last sign-in, 
frequency of usage, and length of onboarding timethey'll be 
different for every company and every product.
For instance, the team at Groove found that the length of the first 
session with their app and the frequency of logins were red flag 
metrics for churn.
Cohort 1, which consisted of customers that were retained 
after 30 days, had on average longer first sessions and a higher 
frequency of logins than Cohort 2, which consisted of customers 
that churned before 30 days. By targeting customers who weren't 
spending a long time in their first session or logging in frequently, 
Groove was able to reduce churn from 4.5% to 1.6%.
Drew found in his experiences at other companies that identifying 
red flags and making efforts to re-engage customers can prevent 
churn and have around 500% ROI.
Improving your product
A product that solves customers' problems well is going to be 
absolutely necessary to them. These are customers that will not 
churn. Teamwork.com uses feedback surveys to reach out to 
churned customers to find out what they are dissatisfied with. 
Companies like Qualaroo provide templates for surveys and 
aggregate responses so you can turn the feedback into action to 
better meet customers' needs.
Once you get feedback and make changes, be sure to communicate 
them with your current customers, your former customers, and the 
untapped market.
Running a reactivation 
campaign
Reach out to your customers that have already churned and try to 
win them back. Restate your value proposition, explain your new 
features, or offer them a call with a customer service team member 
to alleviate any of their frustrations. 
You can use behavioral email marketing to do this by setting up a 
reactivation email campaign triggered by recency of last visit. For 
example, at Teamwork.com, Drew runs email campaigns to reach 
out to customers that have not signed in after x number of days.
Small improvements in each of these areas will stack and amount 
to large improvements in churn reduction. Churn reductions from 
red flagging and reengagement tactics, product improvements, 
and reactivation campaigns by just 10% each will amount to a 30% 
reduction in churn.
With these three strategies in mind, we analyzed 
eight companies across varying price points to 
understand how they applied these concepts 
and others to significant solve their churn 
problem:
How Agorapulse Reduced 
Net Monthly Revenue 
Churn from 12% to Under 
4% in 3 Years
Agorapulse, a social media management software, struggled early 
on with retention. Back in 2015, they were exhibiting an abismal 
12% net monthly revenue churn and showed no signs slowing 
down.
Yet, according to CEO Emeric Ernoult, the company made 
progress each year. 
22     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
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Agorapulse was able 
to decrease churn 
from 12% to 8% in 
year one, then 6% 
the following year. 
Today, the Hootsuite 
competitor has gotten 
net MRR churn down to 
under 4% and is aiming 
to land below 2% by 
the end of 2018.
Their secret to this insane improvement? Pivoting, moving 
upmarket, and improving their product.
Agorapulse originally featured a $29 per month plan, in addition 
to their premium, more expensive options. By completing shutting 
down this product and focusing solely on their $99 to $199 
monthly offering, the company has slowly been able to reduce 
churn.
While they still carry some legacy clients at this smaller price point, 
they've been able to significantly improve their product and client 
acquisition by moving upmarket, all while minimizing churn over 
time.
Two Tips EmbedSocial 
Implemented to Reduce 
Churn by 36%
EmbedSocial, a social media embedding tool starting at $29 
per month, knew the value of retention. Seeing the ROI of even 
marginal decreases in churn, the company decided to dive deep 
into how they could address this constant struggle during a guest 
post on GetLatka.com. 
Instead of getting caught in the infinite, fruitless process of 
reengineering their customer cancellation flows, EmbedSocial 
took a different approach: understand why customers didn't hook 
and why they ultimately canceled. 
By analyzing customer behavior, the team was able to understand 
the core moment  when customers implemented EmbedSocial 
code on their websites and saw it in action  where customers 
became sticky and design their onboarding flow to make it easy 
possible for them to get there fast. Additionally, EmbedSocial 
used personalized drip campaigns to help nudge new users in this 
direction. 
Agorapulse Team
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     23
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Through this process, the company was better able to comprehend 
the barriers new customers faced towards getting to this sticking 
point and improve their UX even more. 
EmbedSocial implemented another simple, subtle shift that 
helped gather significantly more data around why customers were 
churning. Instead of sending a personalized email after someone 
churned, the company embedded a pop-up window that collected 
feedback and their reason for leaving. 
As a result of adding this pop-up, responses from churned 
customers increased 71% and their win back rate went up 3X as 
they became able to follow-up with the customers based on their 
reason for canceling. 
Overall, by implementing both of these strategies and collecting 
more useful data from their customers, 
EmbedSocial was able 
to reduce their churn by 
36% over ten months.
"Never assume what 
your customers 
want, can or need to 
do. Talking with the 
customers is the most 
important activity!"
Jane Uzunovskii, EmbedSocial's head of growth and customer 
success. 
24     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
GETLATKA.COM - THOUSANDS OF DATA POINTS ON PRIVATE SAAS COMPANIES
Want to Master SMB Retention? Try These 
Two Tactics WebinarNinja CEO Used. 
WebinarNinja, a leading webinar service with $7.7M in revenue 
as of February 2018, plays in a competitive space. Churning 
customers in the SMB self-service space is a not a matter of if, but 
when and CEO Omar Zenhom found the company falling victim 
early on at his $50/mo pricepoint. 
With monthly logo churn around 7% in 2016, Zenhom knew finding 
a solution to retention was the key to taking the business to the 
next level. 
Today, after much 
experimentation, 
WebinarNinja has 
reduced monthly logo 
churn to just 4.1% due 
in large part to two 
factors: live webinars 
and solid onboarding 
campaigns.
Zenhom hosts free weekly webinars for both paying and free users 
while also cranking out another Q&A style webinar exclusively 
for paid users every two weeks. These webinars dive deep into 
features and best practices for users and helps them better extract 
value out of the product while saving time.
Also, upon registration, new customers are delivered a tactical 
onboarding email drip sequence complete with their best content 
on quick tips, features, and where to start. These guides help them 
hit the ground running and quickly launch their first successful 
webinar.
These two steps have helped WebinarNinja educate their 
customers in a convenient manner and achieve monumental 
reduction in churn.
Getting Very Specific With 
Your Target Customer
LiquidPlanner, a predictive project management technology with a 
$10k ACV (annual contract value), prides itself on finding valuable 
customer insights from data. By analyzing usage behavior among 
their hundreds of customers, the company was able to see similar 
patterns among different customer types and better predict 
conversion, retention, and expansion rates. 
Interestingly enough, they used this data to find their highest 
leverage customer segment and double down.
WebinarNinja
CEO/FOUNDER
Omar Zenhom
ARPU
$115
MRR
$218.5K
ARR
$2.6M
INDUSTRY
Advertising, Marketing, Sales
2016 REVENUE
$2.6M
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
1.9K
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     25
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Consequently, the company has invested significantly in customer 
success in this target market in order to address their specific 
pain points around complexity, regulation, and innovation. In fact, 
LiquidPlanner has employees specifically staffed to ensure these 
companies hit their first sticking point and drive retention.
By allowing their customers at their lower price points to churn, 
they've been able to allocate more resources to the customers 
they ultimately can provide the most value to and expansion in 
the enterprise cohort. While logo churn has certainly spiked in 
the short term, LiquidPlanner CEO Todd Humphrey is banking 
on increased retention among construction firms that they've 
doubled down on. 
How Hubspot Used 
a Custom Metric to 
Keep 33% of Unhappy 
Customers
Churn is never black and white. When a customer ultimately 
chooses to leave your product behind, any number of reasons 
could have driven the decision.
As ConversionXL details in their SaaS Churn article, HubSpot was 
well aware of this. In an attempt to better holistically understand 
customer success over the entire lifecycle, their team created a 
brand new metric: the Customer Happiness Index (CHI).
CHI is takes into account numerous factors ranging from frequency 
of activity to specific feature utilization to engagement levels on 
social media, among others. By weighting these factors based on 
years of data from thousands of users, 
HubSpot was able to objectively quantify their customer's 
happiness.
Using CHI, in conjunction with churn, HubSpot was better able to 
capture the reasons customers churned and helped them become 
more proactive towards preventing it going forward. These new 
insights allowed them to assign Inbound Marketing Consultants 
to help customers through implementation early on, offer targeted 
educational resources, and provide personalized monthly account 
reviews.
By tracking CHI and implementing these strategies, 
HubSpot was able to retain approximately 33% of their 
previously unhappy customers, 
as well as improve customer success among their already 
successful clients. This metric not only provided granular insights 
and tactics, but also helped shape their broader company-wide 
changes that have had lasting impact on retention.
Should You Purposely 
Stall Your Growth to 
Improve Retention? 
It's Working for 
StructuredWeb!
StructuredWeb, 
the market 
leader 
in channel marketing 
automation software with an ARPU (average revenue per user per 
month) of $20k, is obsessed with customer success.
"We are dramatically, fanatically focused on customer success," 
exclaimed CEO Daniel Nissan on an interview with Nathan Latka 
on the Top Entrepreneurs podcast. "We spend lots of attention and 
time on it." 
Instead of creating a solution 
for companies of all sizes, 
LiquidPlanner has focused 
their go-to-market strategy on 
highly complex engineering and 
manufacturing firms.
Brian Halligan, CEO Hubspot
26     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
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This probably comes as no surprise, especially from a company 
playing in the enterprise space. What does come as a surprise 
however, is their unique growth strategy. 
StructuredWeb, a nearly 20-year-old company, has intentionally 
grown slower some years in order to focus on retention. When they 
see churn creeping up, their leadership team purposely reallocates 
resources from "get new customers" towards ensuring customer 
adoption, happiness, retention, and expansion.
"Retention is the holy grail of any SaaS business," explained 
Nissan. 
Their strategy is clearly working: 
the company only lost one customer in all 
of 2017 and exhibited less than 5% gross 
revenue churn annually. 
Most Investors Hate "Low 
Margin" Professional 
Services.BloomReach is 
Using Service to Crush 
Churn and you Should 
Too!
BloomReach, a platform built to power digital experiences with a 
$250k ACV (annual contract value), has raised $100M and has 
grown to north of $50M in ARR (annual recurring revenue) today 
with 40-50% YoY growth. Clearly, they are doing something right.
But what's their secret? Perhaps the answer lies in their ability to 
pair their software with professional services. 
Each time a new customer joins BloomReach, they charge an 
additional fee to implement their platform and on-boarding the 
new customers. Additionally, the company offers consulting and 
analytical services, coupled with premium support services, to 
help their clients get the most possible value out of their software.
By setting their customers up for success and requiring them 
to invest more capital, BloomReach has been able to use these 
services as retention and expansion tool. 
Today, the company has hit roughly 10% annual gross 
revenue churn with 100%+ net revenue retention due to 
these healthy upsells. 
There's no limit to the impacts churn reduction can have on a 
business. How different would your board meetings be if you could 
retain even 1-2% more of your customers each month? Think of 
all of the areas you could redirect these resources to grow your 
business even faster.
The possibilities are endless. 
Reducing churn is an art, not a science. If these stories are any 
indication, there is not a single magic pill for improving retention, 
but many. 
by Patrick Campbell, PriceIntelligently.com
StructuredWeb
CEO/FOUNDER
Daniel Nissan
ARPU
$20K
MRR
$720K
ARR
$8.6M
INDUSTRY
Content Marketing
2016 REVENUE
$7.2M
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
36
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     27
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Why CloudCheckr's Unique 
Pricing Model Has Driven 145% 
Net Revenue Retention
Moving to the cloud is no longer just 
a trendy phrase companies throw 
around in strategy sessions: it's a 
reality for most businesses. In Right 
Scale's survey of nearly 1,000 IT 
professionals, 96% of respondents 
are currently using some form of 
cloud in their business today.
Aaron Newman, CEO of CloudCheckr, 
was an early believer in this platform-
as-a-service trend and founded the 
company in 2011 after a successful 
exit at a social media company he 
led. Today, CloudCheckr is built as a management platform for 
companies transitioning to and currently operating on the cloud. 
Their tools provide insights into inventory management, cost 
optimization, and overall security for their customer's cloud fleet.
How much is CloudCheckr 
doing in MRR?
CloudCheckr structures their pricing to match cloud offerings 
and is designed to scale along side their customers. They use 
their cost optimization tool to determine their customer's monthly 
cloud spend and then charge based on a certain percentage of 
total managed spend. Their average customer pays them around 
$2-3k per month today.
Right now, CloudCheckr is serving 600 total customers and 
grew revenue 85% year over year from 2016 to 2017 after 
tripling revenue from 2015 to 2016.
They are well north of $1.2M in MRR currently and are aiming to 
break $40M in ARR by early 2020, according to Newman. 
What is CloudCheckr's 
churn?
CloudCheckr sits at 96% gross annual revenue retention right 
now. With a scalable pricing model, expansion revenue comes 
naturally as their customers grow their allocation. They have 145% 
net annual revenue retention today.
CloudCheckr bootstrapped initially, before raising $50M from 
Level Equity last year. Consequently, the company has become 
more aggressive with their customer acquisition efforts 
and are now spending around $18k in CAC with an 8 to 9 
month payback period.
CloudCheckr's team of 150 is headquartered in Rochester, New 
York with their overall team distributed across 4 continents. This 
fast-growing SaaS company certainly has a bright future as they 
look to cross $40M in ARR and eventually go public in the next 
few years.
CloudCheckr Demonstration at SUMMIT
28     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
GETLATKA.COM - THOUSANDS OF DATA POINTS ON PRIVATE SAAS COMPANIES
Why Monitoring Social Media  
Got Crisp Thinking to North of 
$10M in ARR
Social media is a blessing for companies looking to customize their 
marketing efforts and interact more directly with their customers. 
Yet, with communication channels wide open, how do you manage 
the inherent risks of user generated content?
Crisp Thinking has been on top of this problem for over a decade. 
Their software uses artificial intelligence to monitor offensive 
content posted on company's social media pages, mitigate social 
media PR crises, and keep tabs on threats to staff members.
Over the years Crisp Thinking has provided marketing risk 
protection for large enterprises such as Coca-Cola and Disney, 
filtering all of their user generated content through their platform. 
Their automated software, combined with human touch, removes 
inappropriate content and alerts marketing teams.
How much is Crisp 
Thinking doing in ARR?
Crisp Thinking's customer base is composed entirely of large, 
global enterprises that pay them thousands for dollars per month. 
According to CEO Adam Hildreth, the vast majority of their first-
year ACVs are north of six-figures.
The company serves approximately 100 customers and tens of 
thousands of brands today. 
They have crossed 
$10M in ARR this year 
and are growing at a 
rate of 70% YoY.
Hildreth noted that the company will cross $17M in ARR by the end 
of 2018.
What is Crisp Thinking's 
churn?
According to Hildreth, churn is "tiny" for Crisp Thinking. While 
gross revenue and logo churn was not specified, he did mention 
that net revenue retention was currently at 110% annually. In terms 
of customer acquisition, the company aims for payback within 12 
months and is hitting that mark right now.
Crisp Thinking has raised 7M to date from angel investors and 
has grown their team to 80 full-time employees. Their team is 
distributed throughout the U.S. and U.K. with their headquarters 
based in Leeds.
%Net Revenue Reten-
tion at 110% annually
Developers at Crisp Thinking using the latest technologies
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     29
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Sococo Growing 66% YoY 
After Hiring New CEO
Maintaining team cohesion and bonding while being a distributed 
team is inherently difficult. Even with tools like Slack helping to 
make communication as efficient as possible, a gap still remains in 
creating an open, collaborating culture within remote companies. 
Sococo, the online workplace where distributed teams come to 
work, has the core product to solve this issue once and for all. Their 
virtual office has finally created a solution that helps company 
foster unity and positive culture across multiple time zones, 
remotely. 
How much is Sococo 
doing in MRR?
Sococo is built on a pure-play SaaS model and charges companies 
on a per seat basis. Companies currently pay them $15 per user 
monthly with that figure being discounted based on volume and 
annual plans.
Companies typically run a short pilot with Sococo and bring 50-
100 seats initially. Over time, these accounts have grown well 
into the hundreds and even thousands of users and have driven 
significant expansion revenue for Sococo.
Sococo has scaled to more than 10k total users across several 
hundred companies today. According to their CEO, Marc 
Kirshbaum, the company is north of $200k in MRR today and 
growing 66% YoY. 
What is Sococo's churn 
today?
Customer retention and product stickiness has been a strong point 
for Sococo thus far. Last year, they exhibited 92% annual customer 
retention on both a logo and revenue basis.
The company has yet to invest in paid marketing channels thus far 
due to strong inbound leads from organic channels. 
They're currently spending less than $10k in fully-weighted CAC, 
with a payback period of approximately 10 months.
How much has Sococo 
raised to date?
Across various rounds, Sococo has raised between $10-15M 
of venture capital. According to Kirshbaum, the company feels 
confident about their current sales engine and is looking to raise 
an additional $7M this year to further build out their sales and 
marketing team.
Sococo's team of 30 full-time employees is distributed throughout 
the world, with headquarters in Utah. Keep an eye on this fast-
growing SaaS company as they look to raise soon and cross $1M 
in MRR by the end of 2019.
Across various rounds, Sococo 
has raised between $10-15M of 
venture capital.
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How to Hit $1.4M in MRR 
with Less than 1% Churn: 
ForceManager
In business, you live and die by your sales team. And, in B2B sales, 
no team is more valuable than your boots on the ground, field sales 
teams. 
ForceManager, a Spanish SaaS startup, has broken onto the scene 
to build a different CRM: one focused on leveraging contextual 
information and artificial intelligence to help field representatives 
optimize daily activities. They use locational and other existing 
data to help these salespeople become more proactive and close 
more deals.
How much is 
ForceManager doing in 
MRR?
ForceManager charges their clients on a per seat basis either 
annually or monthly. Their average customer pays them around 
$2k per month for 20-30 seats. 
The company has 
scaled to 700 paying 
customers right now 
and are well north of 
$1.4M in MRR. 
ForceManager more than doubled revenue YoY in 2017 and are 
looking to cross a run rate of $20M in ARR in the near future. 
What is ForceManager's 
churn?
ForceManager spent a large portion of their initial days focused on 
building a sticky and functional product. 
This has clearly paid off as the company now has gross MRR churn 
of 0.8% with net negative revenue churn of 0.5% monthly. 
The company currently pays $3k to acquire a mid-market 
customer and spends $8-10k on landing enterprises. According 
to ForceManager CEO Oscar Macia, the company shoots for an 
80% margin over the lifetime of their customers and optimizes for 
an 8-12 month payback period.
How much has 
ForceManager raised to 
date?
Overall, ForceManager has raised $16M thus far across three 
rounds. Initial capital was allocated towards developing their core 
product while recent rounds have been invested in building out 
their sales and marketing team. 
ForceManager has grown to 95 total employees today with a 
presence in Barcelona, London, Mexico, and Colombia. 
ForceManager Conference
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     31
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How Repositioning Your SaaS 
Product Allows You To  
8x Your Price
Pricing is often more about positioning and perceived value than it 
is about cost-analysis and unconvincing ROI calculators.
As a result, repositioning can allow you to charge many times more 
than you think. Here's how.
You've created a marketing tool called DoubleDown that doubles 
the cost-efficiency of AdWords campaigns. You heard that right 
folks  as a marketer, you can generate the same impact, the 
same number of conversions, the same quality of sales leads, but 
with half your current ad-spend. Wonderful! Who doesn't want 
higher ROI.
What can you charge for this tool? Clearly you can't charge as 
much as the money the customer is saving on AdWords, otherwise 
the net result is no savings at all. Let's say you can charge 25% of 
the savings and still find many willing customers.
Here's what your sales pitch looks like to a specific customer who 
spends $40,000 per month on AdWords:
Great deal! The VP of Demand Gen will be able to boast to the CMO 
that she saved the company $15,000/mo even after paying for 
DoubleDown, and you're raking in a cool $5,000/mo. Everyone's 
happy!
Now let's see why you can actually charge eight times as much 
money for the same product.
Marketers have a single paramount goal: Growth. Even indirect 
marketing like brand, events, and PR have the long-term goal of 
supporting growth. In the case of DoubleDown's customers it's 
direct: Growth through lead-generation through AdWords.
Growth is much more valuable than cost. To see why, consider the 
following two scenarios:
1. CMO reports to the CEO: I was able to reduce costs 20% this 
year.  The CEO is happy. The CEO's follow-up question is: 
How will we use those savings to grow faster?
2. CMO reports to the CEO: I was able to increase growth by 
20% this year, but it also cost us 20% more to achieve.  The 
CEO pumps her fists amongst peels of joyous laughter. The 
value of the company increases non-linearly. The additional 
revenue growth more than pays for the additional marketing 
cost that generated it. The CEO's follow-up question is: How 
can we ensure this happens again next year?
It's always 10x more valuable for a business to grow faster than it is 
for the business to save money.
This insight points us to an alternate pitch for DoubleDown. It's 
not about spending less for the same amount of growth, it's about 
spending more to create more growth.
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In particular, using our example of the customer who currently 
spends $40,000/mo, suppose that customer is generating 200 
quality sales leads per month from that spend. The sales pitch 
changes as follows:
You're paying $200/lead right now, yielding 200 leads per month. 
Using DoubleDown, you can double the number of leads you're 
generating, still at a cost of $200/lead:
The key is this: The customer is willing to spend $40,000 to 
generate 200 leads, and therefore is happy to spend $80,000 to 
generate 400 leads. It doesn't matter how much of that $80,000 
is going to AdWords versus going to DoubleDown. The key is not 
to "save money on AdWords," but rather to "generate more growth 
at a similar unit cost."
In the "saves money" pitch, the value was $20,000, and the 
customer needed to keep 75% of that value-creation. Whereas 
in the "generate growth" pitch, the value is $40,000, and the 
customer is happy to pay 100% of that value-creation to a vendor. 
Both the amount of value created, and the percentage of value 
the customer is willing to pay, is a multiple higher for the "growth" 
pitch versus the "save money" pitch.
So the next time you want to formulate your product as a way to 
"save time" or "save money" or "be more efficient" . DON'T!
Instead, figure out how your product creates value in the way your 
customer already measures value, and position your product as a 
way to accomplish that.
Jason Cohen, CEO Smartbear
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Figuring this balance out can be tricky. 
Let's take a look at how a few SaaS 
company CEO's and CMO's have figured 
this out:
Value-Based 
Pricing in 
Action: 
Percolata
Percolata, the "Moneyball for physical retailers", is a scheduling 
tool that uses in-store insights to build dream sales teams within 
retail locations. The company is growing fast and on pace to break 
$10M in revenue by the end of 2018...but economics weren't 
always so favorable for this Silicon Valley based startup. 
Prior to their current product offering, Percolata struggled for years 
to sell retailers access to sensor data:
"We found that 
retailers were already 
drowning in data, they 
didn't know what to 
do with all of it. The 
real challenge isn't 
collecting this data, 
it's finding out how to 
use it and get utility 
out of it."
Greg Tanaka, CEO of Percolata
Tanaka and his team used this and other insight for retailers to shift 
their value proposition and build an application layer that analyzed 
and packaged this data in a way their customers could get 
significant, measurable value from. Thus, Percolata in its current 
form was born. 
Today, their product is set to schedule over 18 million hours for 
more than 40 retail chains. The best part? The sell has never been 
easier. 
"Before, when we were selling sensor data, it was like pulling 
teeth," Tanaka lamented. "Now, it's the exact opposite. We're not 
even trying and getting tons of referrals and inbound leads."
With a value proposition that retailers can't ignore  for every dollar 
customers spend with Percolata, they get $20 to $40 back in 
increased sales  and a repositioned product, Percolata has never 
looked back.
How to Ditch Half Your 
Customers and 10x Your 
Deal Size
Hiring is difficult. It always has been and probably always will be. 
Especially in today's market where top talent has more optionality 
than ever before, it has never been harder to lock down and retain 
your industry's rockstars.
Enter SwoopTalent. This Oakland-based company connects talent 
data silos inside large enterprises. Typical companies have around 
7 different systems that contain talent data. SwoopTalent connects 
this internal data with publicly available data, giving them a single 
source of talent data and making it easier to consume.
The company's first iteration was founded in 2012 with a sole 
focus on the external component of talent data, but quickly found 
the space becoming commoditized. In 2016, their founders were 
faced with a difficult decision: turn the lights off entirely or find a 
creative way to reposition.
In a brazen move, SwoopTalent pivoted entirely, shifting their 
focus from providing external talent data to an internal focus for 
enterprises. By changing their story and tripling their price point, 
they've cut their customers in half, reduced support cost, and 
increased stickiness, all while increasing their average deal size by 
a factor of ten!
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According to Stacy Chapman, CEO of SwoopTalent, the company 
more than doubled revenue in 2017 and is on track to do the same 
in 2018. The company is approaching $2M in ARR today and 
showing now signs of slowing down anytime soon. 
While the move upmarket at the eleventh hour was certainly a bold 
move, Chapman insists that more businesses should consider a 
similar strategy:
"A lot companies don't get it," Chapman said. "The sales cycle for 
a $10k per year contract and a $85k annual contract are exactly 
the same."
I'm Moving Upmarket...
How Long Should I Give 
My Existing Customers to 
Switch?
Understanding and engaging your audience is of utmost 
importance when attempting to increase conversion efficiency. 
Loyaltics, a mobile engagement platform, is designed to help 
businesses optimize in this arena and allows them to gain valuable 
insights and use them to target their mobile users.
Their product provides two key services: analytics that help 
mobile app owners collect data and gain insights on their users 
and functionality that uses this data to create personalized and 
targeted messaging across a variety of mobile channels.
The company originally launched as a solution for customers of 
all sizes with a freemium model and paid plans beginning as low 
as $99 per month. Over time though, leadership began to realize 
that their strategy was attacking the market from too wide of a lens 
and, upon investigating, Localytics realized 40% of their support 
volume was coming from customers that drove just 10% of their 
revenue. It was time for a change. 
The company began executing a plan to disband their lower tiered 
customers, giving them up to 12 months to make the decision to 
transfer to their new enterprise plan. While Localytics ultimately 
lost approximately 75% of their lower tier customers during the 
transition, they were able to retain the remaining 25% at triple their 
original price point.
Today, Localytics' annual plans start at $10k and the company is 
serving 600 customers with an ACV between $50-100k. Their bet 
to move upmarket appears to be paying off and the company is on 
track to break $50M in ARR by the end of 2018.
Follow HubSpot When 
Determining Your Value 
Metrics
When it comes to uber-successful SaaS companies, HubSpot 
deserves to be held in serious consideration. With more than 
$375M in 2017 revenue at nearly a 40% YoY growth rate, few 
companies are dominating the game like HubSpot. 
So, what is this juggernaut's secret? Obviously, a stellar set of 
features and great product-market fit are in play, but perhaps the 
real secret lies in their obsessive focus on pricing. 
According to CEO Brian Halligan on episode 962 of The Top 
Entrepreneurs Podcast, the importance of pricing was made very 
clear after the company received its first round of funding from 
Sequoia in 2011. To date, HubSpot has spent thousands of hours 
discussing their pricing model and Halligan still thinks they have 
room to optimize.
At the core of HubSpot's pricing strategy is the idea of maximizing 
the supply and demand curve. Halligan postulates that most 
entrepreneurs and companies leave a significant amount on the 
table by going upmarket without exploring the lower end of the 
demand curve. 
This concept is what drove HubSpot to address the SMB market 
and create products they could cross-sell. And, while they 
had difficulties convincing investors of the validity of moving 
downstream, their move has proven to be profitable with lots of 
room remaining to grow. 
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So, what pricing model did thousands of hours of discussion yield? 
The answer: one that is more complex than Halligan would prefer, 
but one that is successful nonetheless. 
For their flagship products, pricing is based on two markedly 
different value metrics. For their Marketing Hub offering, they 
directly link pricing to number of contacts, increasing in price 
as their customers increase their performance. Their Sales Hub 
software, on the other hand, is based on a per seat basis. 
While these varying models have created some confusion, there is 
no denying its efficacy. Since investing more time and resources in 
pricing optimization, HubSpot has improved logo retention by 14% 
and increased net revenue retention by more than 30%.
How Frequently Should I Be 
Testing Pricing Changes?
Some companies change pricing every day. Others, hesitate to 
adjust annually and can spend years with stagnant prices. 
I think we all can agree that the optimal frequency lies somewhere 
in the middle, but what is the most efficient interval to test pricing 
changes? 
The short answer is that every company is different and so is their 
customer bases' volatility to pricing changes. The long answer 
was explored by FrontApp, a workspace collaboration software, in 
their How we de-risked our SaaS pricing strategy blog post.
In this post, the company dives into the plethora of experiments 
they underwent in order to gather data on answering this difficult 
question. With each iteration, they put hypotheses to the test and 
gain insight around how their customers valued their product.
The ultimate conclusion? You should probably be testing price 
changes more often. Despite the additional time and resources it 
takes your development team to design efficient testing methods, 
FrontApp suggest most companies are leaving non trivial amounts 
of cash on the table by not exploring different prices. 
As detailed in the post, FrontApp went from iterating prices once 
per year to once every three weeks. They were able to design 
systems that allowed them to easily compare old cohorts to new 
cohorts and de-risked the entire process by testing only on small 
sample sizes. 
"People fear changing 
pricing too often 
because they think it 
will scare away their 
customers. And for 
somethat might 
be true. But *never 
*experimenting with 
your pricing means you 
may never learn the 
value of your product 
and its potential for 
growth."
 Mathilde Collin, CEO & Co-Founder at FrontApp
Using Data and Tests to 
Optimize Your Pricing 
Page
Most SaaS startups live and die by their pricing pages. Finding the 
right positioning, design, and copy that increases conversions can 
be the difference between 6-figures in ARR and millions. 
RJMetrics, a business intelligence platform for ecommerce, 
understood the leverage of their pricing page and sought out 
a way to take it to the next level. In their blog post on Crazy Egg, 
they disclosed their process for using data and well-designed 
experiments to impressively increase conversions.
From the get-go, they could tell customers weren't scrolling down 
far enough to engage with their important elements. RJMetrics 
quickly adjusted their page to include their most important 
elements above the fold and increased conversions. 
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The article, in its entirety, discusses their iteration process from 
beginning to end. Their core takeaway: get good at making (and 
testing) hypotheses. The only way to improve is to test.
Investing in tools like Hot Jar, Crazy Egg, Split, and Convert are 
a necessity when optimizing these landing pages. By building 
them into your workflow, you can create simple tests that yield 
substantial results. Take it from RJMetrics, a few small tests 
and design changes yielded a jaw-dropping 310% increase in 
conversions.
Pricing will always be a work in progress. If brilliant companies 
like HubSpot are spending countless hours attempting to master 
their own models and still see room for improvement, perhaps you 
should take a closer look at your current offering as well. 
Remember the saying "Its easier to upsell current customers than 
it is to get brand new ones". Imagine what would happen if you 
repositioned to sell your current customers a plan that is 8x larger. 
That's big growth without $1 of acquisition costs. How much could 
you be missing out on?
Based off Jason Cohen Essay, ASmartBear.com
Bob Moore, Co-founder of RJMetrics
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How Any.do Has Driven 150% 
Growth in the Last 6 Months
Task management is a hot space. As more and more people look 
to improve their personal productivity, they are turning to various 
applications to help them get the most output they possibly can 
on a daily and weekly basis.
Any.do set out to help individuals get the most out of their work 
day back in 2011 and created an elegantly designed platform to 
do just that. Today, the company has evolved into the world's most 
popular task management app, boasting 20M users globally.
How much is Any.do doing in ARR?
Any.do charges users on an annual basis, with the average 
plan costing $35 per month. By marketing their software as an 
investment into their customers' future productivity, they are able 
to get full payment up front.
The company is north 
of $3.5M in ARR today 
and has grown revenue 
150% in the last sixth 
months alone.
 Their customer base is currently north of 100k paying users.
What is Any.do's churn?
Churn in the B2C space is traditionally a difficult metric to optimize. 
Any.do has experienced similar woes in this department and is at 
40% gross logo churn annually. Despite this volatility, CEO Omer 
Perchik notes that the company has 6-7x better 
user retention after 30 days than their 
competitors.
Any.do only recently began experimenting with paid acquisition 
and has had success early on. Due to their annual billing upfront, 
the company is receiving full payback immediately, on a cash basis 
and within 12 months on a recognized revenue basis.
How much has Any.do raised thus far?
Any.do has raised more than $6.5M to date across multiple rounds. 
While Perchik would not disclose specific numbers around total 
funding, he did note that the company is profitable today.
Their team of 20 full-time employees is based in both Tel Aviv and 
San Francisco right now. Going forward, Any.do is focused solely 
on finding product-market fit for their new personal assistant 
feature and are currently in A/B alpha tests with 1k U.S. users.
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How Rant & Rave Orchestrated 
VC Buyout and Scaled to North 
of $28M in ARR
Surveys are one of the oldest tools companies have used to collect 
information on their customers. But, as the world has evolved, their 
utility has continually decreased over time: things have changed 
and customers are providing less and less useful information at a 
rapidly declining rate.
This thesis is exactly what Rant & Rave was born to address. 
Their customer engagement platform helps brands proactively 
communicate with and gather fast feedback from their customers. 
Their real-time feedback uses sentiment analysis to monitor 
customer emotion and drive retention.
How much is Rant & Rave 
doing in MRR?
Rant & Rave is built on a pure-play SaaS model and currently 
charges their customers $100k annually. They are focused solely 
on serving enterprise customers and have landed large players 
such as Barclays, Manchester United, DPD, and more.
The company has scaled to 285 total customers today and 
is currently north of $2.3M in MRR. According to CEO Nigel 
Shanahan, the company has grown revenue 35% year over year 
and are up from $1.7M in MRR 12 months ago.
What is Rant & Rave's 
churn?
On both a logo and revenue basis, Rant & Rave is currently 
retaining 95% of its customers annually. While they haven't 
reached net negative revenue churn yet, Shanahan is confident 
they will in the near future. Their team has grown to 105 full-time 
employees today, with 18 allocated towards sales and marketing. 
The company is landing 4-5 new customers per month with 
an approximate CAC of $18k and a payback period of under 3 
months.
How much has Rant & 
Rave raised?
Rant & Rave was originally founded in 2000 and raised $2M at 
that time. However, Shanahan architected a management buyout 
in 2006 and has bootstrapped ever since. Clearly, the gamble to 
take the company over and pivot has paid off for Rant & Rave. 
Their team of 105 is headquartered in Coventry, UK.
Rand & Rave
CEO/FOUNDER
Nigel Shanahan
ARPU
$8.3K
MRR
$2.3M+
ARR
$28M+
INDUSTRY
Customer Engagement
2016 REVENUE
$20M
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
285
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How Rock Content Broke $12M 
in ARR in Latin America 
When it comes to Latin America, SaaS companies are probably not 
the first thing that come to mind. Slowly but surely that sentiment 
is changing however, with more and more software companies 
being founded each day in emerging markets across LATAM. And, 
thanks to influencers such as Diego Gomes, founder and CEO of 
Rock Content, it's only a matter of time before that perspective is 
forever changed. 
Gomes founded Rock Content in 2013 as a content marketing 
platform with tools and services on top. Companies scan their 
marketplace and pool of 10,000+ freelancers to hire talent to write 
articles, produce videos, design graphics, and more.
How much is Rock 
Content doing in ARR?
Rock Content currently is broken down into three revenue streams: 
their SaaS offering, marketplace fees, and professional services. 
Today, their SaaS subscriptions make up 30% of their revenues, 
marketplace fees contribute to 50% of revenue, and professional 
services compose the remaining 20%. 
According to Gomes, they closed 2017 with $10M in revenue and 
are currently at $12M in ARR. 
What is Rock Content's 
churn today?
Rock Content breaks up their customers into four segments: small, 
mid-market, enterprise, and resellers. As expected, their smaller 
segments have been exhibiting the most churn, while their larger 
clients have held steady. Overall, Rock Content is at 72% revenue 
retention annually. 
Remarkably, the company has been able to grow to scale without 
significant funding. To date, Rock Content has only raised $2M 
from outside investors.
How much is Rock 
Content paying to acquire 
a customer?
Organic traffic has driven a significant amount of leads for this 
Latin American company, thus driving down CAC. Of their team of 
300 full-time employees, 20 are solely dedicated to marketing and 
content generation. Today, they pay approximately $2k to acquire 
a new customer and optimize for a payback period of about 6 to 
8 months.
While the team is not actively looking for investment at present, 
Gomes noted they are always "dating investors." With a new 
product launch on the horizon, additional funding may be on the 
horizon for this wildly successful platform.
The company has grown to just 
north of 1,500 customers right 
now, with each paying an average 
of $7k annually.
Rock Content Offices
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From MVP Built by Freelancers 
to $100k in MRR: Talkpush
Finding and hiring the right candidates is a challenge as old as 
time. Companies have consistently struggled to find and retain the 
best talent across every industry. With recruitment software that 
uses messaging and chatbots to talk with candidates, Talkpush is 
helping to ease the load of overburdened recruiting teams across 
the world.
Talkpush is built on messenger APIs like Facebook and WhatsApp 
and injects messaging between candidates and employers. They 
have the capability to collect audio, video, and text from candidates, 
making a standard resume a thing of the past. Their core solution 
is currently helping recruiters increase their individual output by a 
factor of five or more, in most cases.
How much is Talkpush 
doing in MRR?
Talkpush is a pure-play SaaS product and charges their 
customers based on volume. They target enterprise customers 
with plans ranging from $1k to $6k per month. 
The average customer 
pays Talkpush 
approximately $3,300 
each month. 
The company has scaled to north of 30 customers and just 
crossed $100k in MRR in April. The company is growing quickly 
and processed more than 1M interviews last year alone and have 
scaled from just $40k in MRR 12 months ago. 
What does Talkpush pay 
in CAC?
Today, Talkpush has yet to experiment with paid marketing. CEO 
Max Armbruster noted the company first built out their customer 
success team and is now honed in on developing their sales team; 
marketing is next on the list of priorities.
Nonetheless, Talkpush is currently paying $11k in CAC with an LTV 
of $62k. They have also achieved net negative revenue churn of 
5-10% annually.
How much capital has 
Talkpush raised?
Talkpush has raised $1.5M in capital to date. According to 
Armbruster, this cash was spent on technical resources and 
building out an engineering team. Despite being a recruiting 
company themselves, Armbruster lamented about the three year 
journey Talkpush embarked on to find the right head of engineering.
Talkpush is a team of 35 full-time employees spread throughout 
the world. Their largest offices are based in the Philippines and 
Latin America. 
Talkpush team
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7 Growth Channels That Will Take 
Your Business to the Next Level 
Fast
If you're a mature business, you're probably all too familiar with the 
law of large numbers. According to Investopedia:
In business, the law of large numbers relates to growth rates, 
stated as a percentage. The law of large numbers indicates 
that, as a business expands, the percentage rate of growth 
becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
This makes intuitive sense. It's easy to grow 300% from year one 
to year two when your company only generated $10k in revenue 
early on. But when you hit $10M in ARR and you can no longer hit 
triple digit growth rates with ease, where does expansion come 
from?
Many businesses turn to the "land and expand" model to drive 
additional revenue. Upselling new products to your existing 
customers or encouraging them to buy more seats are proven 
methods to increase your average revenue per user and drive 
growth.
An alternative approach is to land more net new customers. Yet, in 
a chaotic marketplace, where does one even begin?
We looked at the various growth channels and marketing 
techniques companies are using to acquire new customers today. 
From global expansion to creatively hacking content marketing to 
incentivizing product demos with gift cards, these seven CEO's 
shared their secrets for efficiently landing new customers.
How Becoming #1 on G2 
Crowd Helped Catapult 
Gong.io
Sales professionals are always looking for a competitive edge 
and, thanks to Gong.io, they may have the answer to they've been 
searching for. 
Gong listens in on sales calls and helps organizations understand 
what's going on during the conversation. They help individuals 
optimize pitches by understanding where they can improve, 
providing managers with insights around who needs coaching and 
their corresponding blind spots.
Launched in late 2016, this conversation intelligence platform 
for sales has scaled incredibly fast. They've grown from 12 beta 
customers to 200 paying an average of $800 to $1,000 per seat 
annually...all in year one.
What's their key to success? According to CEO Amit Bendov, their 
secret has been getting "lots of inbound".
While the company uses lists, cold outreach, and conferences to 
generate sales, 20-30% of their business is coming from organic 
sources. And, with stellar rankings on sites like G2 Crowd, this 
should come as no surprise.
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Gong.io is currently 
ranked as the 
#1 conversation 
intelligence platform 
for sales and #1 for 
all sales tools on G2 
Crowd. 
Additionally, the company is the #3 rated B2B tech company in all 
of Silicon Valley, ahead of Google and other giants. 
These rankings are backed up by logo churn close to 0% and 
annual net revenue retention north of 150%. Clearly this $2M in 
ARR company is doing something right and word is getting out.
PDFFiller's Case for 
Building Internal Growth 
Tools
PDFFiller is a document management platform that enables end-
to-end document generation for businesses of all sizes. Operating 
on a pure-play SaaS model, the company has grown to 200k 
customers, each paying up to $15 per month.
A business doesn't scale to such impressive size without solid 
tactics...so what drives PDFFiller's marketing machine? The 
answer: a homebrew, sophisticated digital marketing platform.
Instead of leaning on outside software and tools, this bootstrapped 
behemoth made the decision to keep everything in-house and 
develop their own internal platform. Covering both organic and 
paid channels, this custom solution is the backbone for all of 
PDFFiller's marketing efforts. 
Today, the company uses this tool to run 60M keywords on top of 
SEO, SEM, and other paid digital marketing platforms.  
Additionally, the PDFFiller team created an internal CRM complete 
with an A/B testing system that optimizes their site's layout based 
on the visitor's profile and acquisition channel. Each user is given a 
unique, custom experience depending on who they are and where 
they came from.
For their content marketing needs, the company also developed a 
tool to help streamline collaboration. 
"We have a marketing technology that allows us to find sites that 
would be interested in collaborating with us and we have that as a 
partnership program," explained Boris Shakhnovich, president of 
PDF Filler on episode 494 of The Top Entrepreneurs.
PDFFiller
CEO/FOUNDER
Borya Shakhnovich
ARPU
$10
MRR
$2M
ARR
$24M
INDUSTRY
Customer Engagement
2016 REVENUE
$24M
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
200K
This platform also generates tens 
of millions of landing pages that 
ultimately drive 4M people to their 
site monthly...all automatically.
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This process is driven primarily by automation, but also includes 
human touch. Their technology automatically finds sites that 
would be a good fit for collaboration, allowing their team members 
to target vetted candidates and optimize close rates for guest 
posts and backlinks.
PDFFiller's dedication has clearly paid off. The company is north 
of $10M in ARR today, ranks for 2.7M organic keywords, and is 
featured on 5,800 referring domains.
How Landing Their First 
Channel Partner Took 
SoloSEO to New Heights
The story of SoloSEO begins way back in 2005. CEO Michael 
Jensen, along with business partner Aaron Stewart, founded the 
company as a means to "scratch their own itch": as two emerging 
internet entrepreneurs, they had difficulty driving traffic to their 
own websites.
SoloSEO was born to solve this problem. They offer a set of do-it-
yourself SEO tools for individuals and SMBs, working directly with 
customers and numerous strategic web hosting partners. They 
strive to help anyone with a website that wants to rank higher by 
providing a plethora of tools to reach their SEO goals. 
Today, the company has scaled to 200k paid customers, with the 
average generating between $20 and $30 in monthly recurring 
revenue. SoloSEO is doing $4M in MRR right now and their channel 
partnerships are a large driver for this scale.
SoloSEO is currently featured in a number of hosting companies 
registration flows and operates on a revenue share model when 
they are sold. Typically operating on a 50/50 or 60/40 split, the 
company has developed a fruitful, lasting relationships with these 
hosts.
But in a crowded space of SEO tools, how did SoloSEO stand out 
and win these partnerships?
Prior to joining the team, SoloSEO co-founder Danny Ashworth 
wrapped up a successful exit of his first company, BlueHost. After 
selling BlueHost to Endurance International Group (EIG), Ashworth 
joined the SoloSEO team full-time and immediately got to work.
Ashworth's existing relationship to EIG helped SoloSEO close a 
partnership deal early on, helping them grow faster. 
The team then 
leveraged their deal 
with EIG to land more 
hosting partnerships 
and help them 
ultimately reach the 
$48M in ARR mark 
they are at today.
Why Databox is Hacking 
Guest Posts Better than 
Anyone Else
Creating high quality content is no easy task: it can eat up 
significant resources that many early-stage companies just don't 
have. And, without the proper distribution channels, there's no way 
to ensure that traffic is driven to the article you've slaved over for 
weeks.
What if there was an easier way to create more content, with less 
effort AND have a small army sharing on your behalf? Databox, 
a business intelligence platform doing $91k in monthly recurring 
revenue, may have the answer.
The company, led by former Hubspot growth hacker Peter Caputa, 
loves to take a collaborative approach when creating new content. 
In order to kick off a new article, their team brainstorms a list of 
topics and sends out a quick survey to their internal lists and any 
potential collaborators they would like to include.
While contributors get tons of inbound questions all of the time 
for potential guest posts, Databox aims to make the process as 
painless as possible using their surveys and short requirements. 
The team then uses these responses to crowdsource a large 
amount of their popular posts such as 35 HubSpot Integrations 
Top Users Swear By and 18 Tips for Increasing Your Sales Team's 
Activity.
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By using just a paragraph or two from 
multiple contributors, Databox can crank 
out high quality content in just a few hours. 
These posts also bring the company two additional benefits 
in addition to driving organic traffic. By including a plethora 
of contributors, these articles typically perform well on social 
channels as they are frequently shared out by those who helped. 
The content has also proven to create a community around itself 
that more and more people want to be a part of and learn from.
Databox even takes this one step further by using these articles 
as a means to target potential prospects. Instead of reaching 
out cold to leads, Databox will diligently research the company's 
blogging history and find ways to include their expertise in future 
collaborative posts.
In exchange for a few sentences on the proposed topic, Databox 
includes a mention to the company and appropriate linkbacks to 
their website. 
According to Caputa, 
this strategy has 
netted them 50% 
response rates on 
targeted agencies, 
Hubspot partners, and 
more.
By providing value and exposure from the beginning, Databox has 
been able to use this methodology to add more warm prospects 
into the top of their funnel at an impressive rate.
How Enplug Efficiently 
Expanded Geographically 
Some conferences can be a draining, ineffective use of your time. 
Some conferences can change your business forever. Nanxi Liu, 
CEO of Enplug, makes a compelling case for the latter narrative.
After speaking at the YPO conference a few years ago, Liu was 
approached by another executive looking to transition from the 
logistics industry to the technology space; he wanted to take her 
company global. 
Databox
CEO/FOUNDER
Peter Caputa
ARPU
$140
MRR
$91K
ARR
$1.1M
INDUSTRY
Customer Engagement
2016 REVENUE
$276K
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
650
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Within months, Enplug struck a deal and opened their first office 
in Europe. By creating a partner program that allowed other teams 
to license their brand and technology and sell it foreign countries, 
they were able to more than double their footprint. 
Today, Enplug's core 
business serves about 
1,000 customers in the 
U.S. Their franchising 
program features ten 
partners in Brazil, 
Australia, Japan, and 
the U.K., with each 
serving approximately 
150 companies on 
average. 
Partner cuts vary based on the market and associate pricing, but 
Enplug charges a fixed fee per license that scales down as volume 
increases. And, with all sales salaries and expenses sitting on their 
partner's P&L, they are insulated from a great portion of the risk 
involved. 
With a unique approach to white labeling, Enplug has been able to 
add additional revenue to their $400k in MRR core business. 
The Gift Card Trick: 
Incentivizing Product 
Demos
JazzHR, an applicant tracking and recruiting software, has an 
unconventional way of getting prospective customers. As a way to 
sweeten their cold outreach efforts, the company gladly forks over 
Amazon gift cards to any potential leads that sign up and attend a 
full product demo with their sales team.
JazzHR CEO Pete Lamson admitted the absurdity of the idea from 
inception, but was cautiously optimistic as they experimented over 
the course of a few months. After seeing little to no improvement in 
close rate as result of the gift cards, the company ultimately shut 
down the program. 
But then something interesting happened.
Over time, JazzHR began seeing these initial demos turning into 
substantial deals. While the gift cards didn't result in immediate 
JazzHR
CEO/FOUNDER
Pete Lamson
ARPU
$200
MRR
$600K-$750K
ARR
$7.2M-$9M
INDUSTRY
Customer Engagement
2016 REVENUE
$7.2M
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
3K
Enplug Team
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conversions, they did help their sales team get off on the right foot 
with new leads.
This information shifted their thinking and firmly placed their 
gift card recipients warmly at the top of their funnel. And, after 
analyzing the customer acquisition cost data, the experiment 
proved successful.
Today, the program has been reinstated and remains financially 
successful. After testing various values, JazzHR now offers $25 
Amazon gift cards to all companies that complete a product demo.
The Right Way to White 
Label and Insulate 
Yourself from SMB Churn
Churn in the SMB space is a constant struggle for SaaS companies. 
With a lower price point, putting the necessary touch to ensure 
customer success is not economically viable. What if there was a 
way to shield your business from this volatility?
Vendasta was well aware of this problem when they launched 
back in 2008. The company has changed the game for SMB by 
providing a complete, white label tech stack that helps these 
businesses solve their marketing, sales, fulfillment, and delivery 
problems.
Vendasta generates revenue in two distinct ways. First, they 
charge value-added resellers a monthly subscription fee for 
access to their sales and marketing platform, as well as their 
marketplace. Second, they generate recurring revenue based on 
the sale of their white labeled software products to SMB, with their 
resellers typically marking up the product 5x.
Resellers, on average, pay Vendasta $1k per month for access to 
their software and marketplace. According to CEO Brendan King, 
the company has 1,200 resellers using their product to sell to 
100,000 small businesses monthly. 
King noted that Vendasta hit $2.3M in MRR last month, with 
approximately one third of revenue coming from subscription 
revenue and the remaining two thirds being attributed to product 
sales. The company grew 45% year over year in 2017 and is aiming 
to cross 50% growth in 2018.
With their unique SaaS business model, Vendasta has been able to 
achieve net negative revenue churn. While the company 
exhibits 15% gross annual revenue churn, 
they have 117% net revenue retention yearly.
By white labeling their products and charging a monthly 
subscription to their value added resellers, the company has 
found an incredible growth channel that also insulates them from 
rampant SMB churn.
Vendasta CEO, Brendan King
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Why He Left Hubspot to Run 
$91k in MRR Databox
With so many sources of truth across your business, how can you 
possibly make intelligent, data-driven decisions without spending 
all day logging into twenty different platforms? This problem is 
exactly what Databox has set out to address.
Databox pulls all your data into one place, so you can track 
performance and discover insights in real-time. Their platform 
features out-of-box integrations with 60+ different tools and helps 
businesses easily visualize their data through a drag and drop 
interface while allowing them to set goals and create scorecards 
across any device.
How much is Databox 
doing in MRR?
Databox is pure-play SaaS company that charges their customers 
on a monthly basis, scaling up with usage. Their average customer 
pays them $140 per month today and the company is adding 80-
100 new customers each month.
With 650 paying customers, Databox is currently north of $91k 
in MRR. They have exhibited impressive year over year growth, 
scaling from just $23k in MRR 12 month ago. 
How much is Databox's 
CAC?
According to CEO Peter Caputa, Databox has acquired most of 
their customers through organic content marketing. They estimate 
CAC at $315 right now and receive payback in under 3 months. 
While the company originated as an enterprise solution, they 
recently pivoted to specifically serve the SMB sector. Consequently, 
churn has been a huge area of improvement, according to Caputa. 
Databox is currently at between 4-5% monthly logo churn and 
2-3% net revenue churn per month.
How much has Databox 
raised?
Upon joining the company after exiting Hubspot, Caputa raised 
$1.1M on a convertible note, bringing Databox to $4.8M total 
raised. Caputa is focused on reducing churn and keeping CAC low 
before raising an additional round. 
Databox's team of 20 full-time employees is headquartered in 
Boston and is shooting for cash flow break-even in Q3 of this year. 
Databox Team
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How Filestage Scaled to $40k  
in MRR With Content 
Collaboration Tool
As content creators, collaboration is key. Making sure 
valuable ideas are properly discussed and incorporated 
into the final cut of an article, video, image, or audio file is 
crucial to bringing the best final product to your audience 
possible.
Yet, tracking changes, edits, and suggestions via email is 
clunky and outdated. Teams often get frustrated by the 
lack of organization and overall inefficiency. 
Filestage was created to solve this issue and helps 
companies make content editing efficient across their creative 
teams. Their web application allows users to upload files, host 
discussions and feedback, and approve and accept final edits, 
streamlining the entire process. 
How much is Filestage 
doing in MRR?
Filestage is a pure-play SaaS company. Their average customer 
pays them $100 per month and range from small agencies and 
freelancers to large enterprises.
They've scaled to 
400 customers today 
and at approximately 
$400k in MRR
according to CEO Niklas Dorn. The company has exhibited 
impressive growth over the last 12 months and is up from $5k in 
MRR one year ago.
What is Filestage's rate of 
churn?
In their smaller cohorts, churn has been a difficult problem to solve. 
Filestage is currently at roughly 6% monthly revenue churn in this 
segment, mostly due to freelancers and small agencies no longer 
requiring their product for additional projects.
In their enterprise and mid-market segments however, churn 
is more stable. Filestage is 2-3% monthly revenue churn in this 
cohort.
How much is Filestage 
spending to acquire a 
customer?
According to Dorn, the company doesn't spend any cash on 
paid acquisition channels. Today, they focus mainly on content 
marketing, cold outreach, and referrals. Filestage is at a fully-
weighted CAC of around $400 with a 4 month payback period.
The Filestage team has grown to 11 full-time employees, with five 
focused on sales and marketing and the remaining six lasered 
in on product. They've raised just 600k to date and looking to 
continue their lean operation going forward.
Filestage Team
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 Onboarding SaaS Tool   
With 6 Month Runway...Will 
AcademyOcean Make It?
Even if you have the world's best product or software, your 
success hinges on ease of onboarding. If you have the answer to 
everyone's problems, yet no one knows how to use it, what good 
are you really doing?
AcademyOcean is a SaaS product built to help other SaaS 
companies address this massive pain point. Their software helps 
businesses create private courses that help educate customers on 
new features and products. Companies use their tool to increase 
stickiness, generate leads, and build loyalty.
How much is AcademyOcean doing in MRR?
Companies are currently working with AcademyOcean over 
similar competitors like Teachable and Thinkific. Their product's 
core differentiation is around their ability to educate and engage 
customers at all stages of the sales funnel. 
Today, the average customer pays AcademyOcean $200 per 
month. 
The company has 
scaled to 15 total 
paying customers right 
now and is generating 
$3,000 in MRR. 
The company was launched four years ago by Ukrainian 
entrepreneur Vladimir Polo and was born out of another idea 
entirely. While AcademyOcean was originally a different, 
unsuccessful SaaS product, the former company's custom 
onboarding academy generated noteworthy buzz. Polo quickly 
validated this demand and pivoted to what is now known as 
AcademyOcean.
How many customers has AcademyOcean 
churned?
To date, AcademyOcean has churned four customers of a total of 
19 they've served over their lifetime. Polo attributes this churn to 
poor product-market fit and believes the company has solved this 
issue going forward. 
At their current growth rate, AcademyOcean is adding 1 to 2 new 
customers per month and expects that to multiply in the coming 
months. Their team has just recently invested in marketing efforts 
and are focused on content marketing at this point in time.
What is AcademyOcean's runway?
AcademyOcean recently raised $100k in exchange for 10% equity. 
Their team of 6 full-time employees is based in Ukraine and, 
according to Polo, is burning $8k in cash each month. 
Going forward, AcademyOcean has approximately 6 months of 
runway remaining and are confident that their marketing efforts 
will drive the necessary growth to keep the business afloat. Be 
sure to follow Polo and the entire team as they look to change the 
way SaaS companies onboard!
Nathan Latka &  Vladimir Polo
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How Botkeeper Uses AI to 
Streamline Bookkeeping, Hit 
$140k in MRR
Bookkeeping is nuisance for businesses of any size. Whether 
you're a family doctor, car wash, Fortune 100 company, or growing 
SaaS startup, bookkeeping has probably left you at wits end on 
more than one occasion. 
Thankfully, botkeeper has emerged on the scene to provide an all-
in-one solution for those that hate bookkeeping. Their software 
solved the problem of hiring and retaining good accountants and 
mitigates human errors. Botkeeper provides bookkeeping services 
with 24/7 support, unlimited reporting, and smaller headcounts, all 
at 30-50% cheaper than current options.
How much is botkeeper 
doing in MRR?
Botkeeper is a pure-play SaaS product with services baked into 
their monthly subscriptions. Their average customer currently 
pays them $500 per month and plans scale based on quantity of 
transactions. 
Botkeeper
CEO/FOUNDER
Enrico Palmerino
ARPU
$500
MRR
$140K
ARR
$1.7M
INDUSTRY
Accounting, Software
2016 REVENUE
$300K
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
500
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What does botkeeper's 
churn look like?
Botkeeper is churning customers at a rate of 4-6% annually 
and has achieved net negative revenue churn. Today, they have 
between 20% and 34% net negative revenue churn per month. 
While initially bootstrapped by Palmerino, botkeeper has raised 
a total of $4.5M to date. Their team of 50 full-time employees 
is distributed throughout the U.S. Be sure to follow botkeeper as 
they look to continue their impressive growth trajectory in 2018 
and beyond!
They have scaled to over 500 
customers today and are 
close to a $2M run rate, doing 
$140k in MRR last month. 
They have grown from just $35k in MRR 12 months ago and 
are hoping to end 2018 with more than $4M in total revenue, 
according to CEO Enrico Palmerino.
How much is botkeeper 
spending to acquire 
customers?
Today, botkeeper spends between $1k and $2k to acquire a new 
customer at a price point of $500 per month. They are landing 
customers primarily through referrals and organically through their 
website, but they also employ a team of 13 brand ambassadors 
that educate people on their new way of doing bookkeeping.
According to Palmerino, the 
company estimates a minimum 
LTV of $12k over the course of 
four years.
Botkeeper offices
Enrico Palmerino, CEO Botkeeper
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Why 500k Paid 
Users Are  
Turning to 
GitLab for 
DevOps 
Support
DevOps is a difficult function to manage and optimize within most 
companies. Thankfully, GitLab has emerged as a single application 
for the complete DevOps lifecycle. They help companies anywhere 
from project planning and source code management to CI/CD and 
monitoring.
Launched in 2011 by Founder Sid Sijbrandij, GitLab began as a 
simple open source project to assist DevOps teams and evolved 
into a full-fledged company a year later. The team was accepted 
into Y Combinator in 2015 with just 9 employees and has been on 
an incredible growth trajectory ever since.
How much is GitLab doing 
in ARR today?
GitLab has maintained a large focus on their open source version 
of their product and are still committed to growing both their open 
source and proprietary codebases right now. They currently have 
three pricing tiers which range from $4 to $99 per user per month.
The company has grown their customer base to 5k total 
organizations with approximately 500k total paid users. According 
to Sijbrandij, 
GitLab is north of 
$10M in ARR today.
The company has exhibited incredibly growth over its history, 
doubling their incremental ACV each of the last 5 years.
What is GitLab's churn? 
In terms of annual logo churn, GitLab is south of 10% today. 
Additionally, they've been able to achieve net negative revenue 
churn of an astonishing 75% annually. 
With annual contracts, GitLab optimizes for an instant payback 
period on a cash basis with their typical contract lasting 12 months. 
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GitLab
CEO/FOUNDER
Sid Sijbrandij
ARPU
$19
MRR
$2.5M-$3.3M
ARR
$30M-$40M
INDUSTRY
Information Tech, Software
2016 REVENUE
$10.0M
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
5K
How much has GitLab 
raised to date?
According to Sijbrandij, the company has raised approximately 
$40M thus far. Their team of 270 is fully distributed with 150 of 
those members focused on engineering and product efforts. 
The future looks bright for this fast-growing YC alum. It will be 
interesting to see which direction Sijbrandij and the leadership 
team take GitLab going forward as they've recently added 
Automattic's Matt Mullenwig to their board.
Gitlab Team Summit Greece 2017
Gitlab Office
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Do Browser 
Notifications 
Work? iZooto's 
$98k in MRR 
Says So!
Browser notifications are hot in 2018. They can help companies 
increase conversions and stay in touch with their audience, all 
without ever collecting a single email address.
iZooto has been helping online retailers and publishers take 
advantage of this emerging AdTech since March 2016. Their 
classic SaaS platform helps these businesses retarget, engagem, 
retatin, and convert their audiences by taking advantage of 
browser notifications.
How much is iZooto doing 
in MRR?
iZooto is built on both a pure-play SaaS model and a marketplace 
model. The company charges retailers based on number of 
subscribers that have opted in to receive notifications while also 
helping publishers monetize their notification inventory with 
advertisements. 
They've scaled to 400 total customers with the average customer 
paying them between $150 and $200 each month. According to 
CEO Vivek Khandelwal, 
iZooto is currently at 
$98k in MRR with $54k 
of that figure coming 
purely from their SaaS 
product. 
iZooto
CEO/FOUNDER
Vivek Khandelwal
ARPU
$150-$200
MRR
$98K
ARR
$1.2M
INDUSTRY
Information Tech, Software
2016 REVENUE
$192K
TOTAL CUSTOMERS
400
iZooto Team
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The company has grown significantly YoY and was at just $16k in 
MRR 12 months ago.
What is iZooto's churn?
iZooto is at 5% monthly logo churn today, but thanks to their pricing 
model, they are able to consistently drive significant expansion 
revenue.
iZooto acquires customers primarily through inbound via their 
content marketing efforts and referrals. The pay $1,200 in fully-
weighted CAC and optimize for a 9 month payback period.
What LTV does iZooto 
place on their customers?
According to Khandelwal, the company assumes a minimum LTV 
of $3k over 12 to 13 months. Their team has bootstrapped to 32 
full-time employees in India thus far and has no plans to raise 
capital in the near future.
 In terms of net monthly revenue 
churn, the company is at negative 
3% right now.
iZooto Team
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Why Helping Nonprofits  Got 
NeonCRM to North of  
$6M in ARR
Doing what you love, helping others, and producing significant 
value is a recipe for long-term, sustainable success. Luckily for Jeff 
Gordy, CEO of NeonCRM, his SaaS product has been checking all 
of these boxes since 2005.
NeonCRM is an all-in-one CRM software and tool built just for 
nonprofits. Organizations use their product to manage fundraising, 
membership, events, and websites in order to raise more, save 
time, and grow faster.
How much is NeonCRM 
doing in MRR?
Today, thousands of nonprofit organizations are using NeonCRM 
to take their operations to the next level, with the average 
customer paying them $200 per month. Pricing is dependent on 
organization size and required functionality.
NeonCRM serves more 
than 3k total customers 
today and, according to 
Gordy, is north of $6M 
in ARR right now.
 The company has also exhibited healthy year over year growth, 
adding between $1M and $1.5M in ARR over the last 12 months.
What is NeonCRM's 
churn?
Churn is an ever-present concern of SaaS companies, especially in 
the volatile nonprofit sector. NeonCRM however, appears to have 
a recipe for success and has achieved 6% annual gross revenue 
churn with only 1% in net revenue churn. 
Gordy takes pride in their ability to drive expansion revenue 
through both new customer acquisition and increased usage. As 
nonprofits become more successful with their fundraising efforts, 
their number of contacts increases as well, allowing NeonCRM to 
grow alongside their customers.
How much does 
NeonCRM pay to acquire a 
customer?
NeonCRM currently pays $1,100 to acquire a new customer with 
a payback period of approximately 6 months. Their LTV model 
also suggests impressive value for their larger customers with a 
duration of 13 years and a minimum LTV of $30k.
The company has been bootstrapped since its humble beginning 
and has no plans to raise outside capital at present. Their team of 
100 is based entirely in Chicago and China.
NeonCRM Space Theme at NTC Conference in Nola
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Can PRE.DO Break $10k in MRR 
by End of 2018? CEO Thinks So!
Collaboration across teams is always difficult. When you factor 
in scale, different locations, and cultural barriers, it can seem 
impossible. Making sure everyone's voice is heard and the right 
ideas make it to the top is art every business struggles to perfect.
PRE.DO was as a digital innovation tool to help companies 
collaborate and get all employees involved during the idea 
generation process. Their technology helps companies and 
employees capture ideas, weed out duplicates, and prioritize the 
best ones. Their goal is to provide insights during ideation and 
make working together easy.
How much is PRE.DO 
doing in MRR?
Companies are currently paying PRE.DO $449 per month to use 
their software product in addition to a one-time, $5k configuration 
fee.
The Danish company has scaled to five paying customers 
today, including one of Denmark's largest banks, with some trial 
customers in the pipeline. 
They are currently 
north of $2,200 in MRR 
right now and aiming 
to cross the $10k in 
MRR mark by the end 
of 2018.
Has PRE.DO raised capital?
According to Uffe Koch, CEO and Co-Founder of PRE.DO, the 
company has been completely bootstrapped thus far. Thanks to 
their one-time setup fees and the co-founder's successful past 
exits, the company has enough runway for the immediate future.
Their team is based entirely in Denmark and has scaled to five 
interns, in addition to the two co-founders. PRE.DO hasn't invested 
significantly in online marketing efforts to date, but is zeroing in 
on paid advertising for the second half of this year. The company 
acquired its first five customers through their own network and 
other organic channels.
Going forward, Koch thinks there is a bright future for PRE.DO. 
With plenty of avenues for additional revenue streams within 
the context of their current business model, he thinks there is 
tremendous opportunity on the horizon. Only time with tell if this 
bold Danish duo will scale this collaboration tool beyond their goal 
of $10k in MRR by the end of the year. Stay tuned.
Redmark Design Sprint Innovation
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How ProcurementExpress  
is Bringing PO's Into the  
21st Century
In the past, when businesses make purchases, figuring out who 
buys what items has been a hassle. Teams have filled out time 
consuming, out-dated forms and wasted valuable time making 
sure they are complete to the finance team's specifications. 
In 2014, ProcurementExpress emerged on the scene to bring 
purchase order management into the 21st century. Their mobile 
and desktop applications replace archaic order forms and help 
business spend their money easier and more efficiently. 
How much is 
ProcurementExpress 
doing in MRR?
ProcurementExpress is focused on small and mid-market 
businesses with $1M to $50M in annual deal flow. The average 
customer currently pays them north of $200 per month. 
According to CEO James Kennedy, ProcurementExpress has 
nearly doubled revenue over the last 12 months and is on pace to 
double again in 2018.
How much is 
ProcurementExpress 
paying to acquire 
customers?
In terms of fully-weighted CAC, ProcurementExpress aims to 
spend around $800 to land a new customer. In their current model, 
they are able to land a new customer for every 20 demos they 
perform. Word of mouth referrals, PPC advertising, and affiliate 
marketing are their main channels for growth right now.
Going forward, the company is focused on optimizing all stages of 
their funnel, with specific emphasis on the latter parts. According to 
Kennedy, this is the highest leverage point for ProcurementExpress 
in the near term.
What is 
ProcurementExpress' 
churn today?
Over the last four months
ProcurementExpress 
has exhibited 2% gross 
logo churn each month.
 While the company has achieved net negative revenue churn in 
the past, they have not been able to consistently maintain that 
pace thus far. In terms of lifetime value, Kennedy models LTV at 
around $13k over 50 months.
ProcurementExpress' team of 20 full-time employees has raised 
only $300k to date, all from a small friends and family round. Their 
distributed team is based in South Africa, Ireland, and Pakistan.
The company has scaled to 250 
customers today and is doing $65k 
in MRR right now.
Nathan Latka with Procurement CEO James Kennedy
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     59
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Will SecurityScorecard Cross 
$25M in ARR This Year?
As a cyber-security professional in today's world, your job 
has never been more difficult. Between the countless hackers 
attempting to steal your valuable data and the seemingly infinite 
ways to breach your system, protecting yourself is an uphill battle. 
To make matters worse, as more and more companies transition to 
the cloud, the well-being of their confidential information is often 
placed in the hands of their providers. And, until recently, there was 
no source of truth to verify and rate their security.
This all changed in 2014 as SecurityScorecard emerged on the 
scene. Their software allows companies to audit their vendor 
ecosystem with security ratings and continuous risk monitoring. 
The company has become the leader in security ratings and 
is used by hundreds of customers like GE, McDonalds, Pepsi, 
AllState, and others.
How much is 
SecurityScorecard doing 
in ARR?
SecurityScorecard bills on an annual basis with customers paying 
$2k per year to monitor a single vendor. On average, customers 
pay them between $80-100k per year. 
The company has landed 450 total paid customers today and 
has been doubling revenue year over year. 
According to 
SecurityScorecard 
CEO Aleksandr 
Yampolskiy, the 
company is on track to 
break $25M in ARR by 
the end of 2018.
What is 
SecurityScorecard's 
churn?
In terms of gross annual revenue churn, SecurityScorecard 
currently operates at around 10% right now. Thanks to their 
consistent ability to grow within their existing customer base, they 
are exhibiting 15% net negative revenue churn at this point in time.
With annual billing upfront, SecurityScorecard is able to receive 
rapid payback from their customers, on a cash basis. Overall, the 
company anticipates a payback period of under one year, 
spending less than $80k in CAC. 
How much has 
SecurityScorecard 
raised?
Across their Seed through Series C rounds, SecurityScorecard 
has raised a total of $60M to date. According to Yampolskiy, the 
company is "flirting" with a $250M valuation and is not looking to 
raise additional capital in the near future.
Scorecard's Offices
60     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
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From Side Hustle to $50M+  
in ARR: SEMrush
Any business owner will agree: organic traffic is always the best 
traffic. Yet, in today's competitive landscape, creating content 
and webpages that drive this free viewership has never been 
more difficult. Creating high ranking content and measuring its 
performance takes a great deal of effort.
SEMrush is a tool tens of thousands of businesses  ranging from 
small, solo bloggers to massive Fortune 100 enterprises  trust to 
help them manage and measure success across various digital 
marketing platforms. Their all-in-one marketing toolkit helps 
companies improve performance across SEO efforts, paid traffic, 
social media, content marketing, and more, 
How much is SEMrush 
doing in ARR?
SEMrush was originally launched in 2008 as a side hustle between 
its co-founders. However, due to incredible and consistent organic 
growth, the company became their full-time focus in 2012. 
Today, SEMrush customers pay a wide range in price, based on 
usage. Their entry-level product begins at $100 per month and, 
while most of their customers are at a monthly price point less 
than $200, they've landed sizable enterprise deals in the high six-
figure ranges annually.
According to Eugene Levin, Chief Strategy Officer of SEMrush, 
the company has scaled to 2M total users today with 30-50k paid 
customers while adding more than 1k new customers monthly. 
The company is currently at a run rate 
greater than $50M and has exhibited 
revenue growth north of 60% YoY. 
How much does SEMrush 
pay to acquire customers?
When Levin first joined the company two years ago, SEMrush was 
receiving full payback from its customers in around 1 month.
The team initially focused on Google Adwords as a growth 
channel, but has since shifted focus towards content marketing in 
both English and other European languages. 
Logo churn, especially at the lower price points, has been a bit of 
an issue for SEMrush to date. On the other hand, from a revenue 
churn perspective, the company has been able drive healthy 
expansion revenue and has achieved net negative annual revenue 
churn.
How big is the SEMrush 
team?
Today, the SEMrush team has scaled to over 500 employees. The 
company is headquartered in Philadelphia with offices in Europe 
and Russia. 
Despite their impressive market share and growth rates, Levin still 
sees a tremendous opportunity for growth going forward. What's 
next for this marketing tool juggernaut? According to Levin, the 
goal is to cross $80M in ARR by the end of 2018. Only time will tell.
Since joining however, the company 
has raised $40M in outside funding 
and is now optimizing for payback 
within 5 to 6 months.
Nathan Latka with SEMrush CSO Eugene Levin
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     61
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How to Scale from $100k in ARR 
to North of $1M in 18 Months: 
Siftrock
There are countless marketing automation tools out there that 
can help you communicate with your audience, regardless of size. 
But, what if you want to take the conversation to the next level? 
What if you want to increase your reply rate and find better ways to 
engage your list? Siftrock has the answer.
Siftrock is a marketing automation tool that helps businesses 
with large lists manage and mine replies to mass emails in order 
to acquire more information and coordinate proper human touch. 
Whether you receive an out of office, a notice of changed position, 
or an eager response, their product helps companies automate 
and improve their processes after the send. 
How much is Siftrock 
doing in ARR?
Siftrock is a pure-play SaaS product that bills annually. Their 
average customer currently pays $7,500 per year based on usage 
and deployed feature set. 
According to CEO Adam Schoenfeld, the company is 
currently serving 140 customers and just 
crossed $1M in ARR. 
Over the last 18 months, Siftrock has scaled from $100k in ARR to 
their current 7-figure mark.
How much has Siftrock 
raised to date?
In stark contrast to his first company, Simply Measured, which 
raised tens of millions of dollars, Schoenfeld's team is entirely 
bootstrapped. Seeing significant opportunity, the business has 
elected for slower, more intentionally growth at this point in time.
Today, Siftrock is optimizing for a payback period of 10 months. 
They are proudly hitting that mark right now and receiving payback 
within 6 months after spending approximately $3,500 in CAC.
What is Siftrock's churn?
Being a young company, ripe with early adopters, churn is yet to be 
an issue for Siftrock. 
Over the last 18 
months, the company 
has exhibited 99.5% 
gross revenue 
retention with 135% 
net revenue retention, 
overall. 
Siftrock's team of six full-time employees is based entirely in 
Seattle and are focused on driving additional expansion revenue, 
bolstering outbound sales, and innovating their product going 
forward.
Adam Schoenfeld & Chris Hundley, CEO & Co-founder Siftrock
62     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
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Will SMARTASSISTANT's CEO 
Shakeup Pay Off?
Customer experience is critical to long-term success. It drives 
loyalty and, if done right, can even turn your customers into 
advocates for your brand.
SMARTASSISTANT was created to help brands and retailers to 
build intelligent digital sales assistants and provide excellent 
customer service at scale. Their software determines a customer's 
needs and requirements and helps recommend the right products 
to make an informed purchase every time.
Their chatbots ask thoughtful questions and map these needs to 
the right product features, ultimately providing the best options 
for inquiring patrons. Their application helps banks, telecom 
companies, and retailers through customer chatbots, Facebook 
messenger, Amazon Alexa, and more.
How much is 
SMARTASSISTANT doing 
in MRR?
SMARTASSISTANT has built out a product on a freemium basis 
and their core product was built out of an agency founded back 
SMARTASSISTANT Team working
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     63
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in 2006. Just four years ago, their founding team decided to pivot, 
raise $3M from angel investors, and create a SaaS product.
Today, SMARTASSISTANT has scaled to north of 100 total paying 
customers with the average paying between $10k and $100k 
monthly. According to the company's President and CMO, Markus 
Linder, 
SMARTASSISTANT is 
doing between $1M 
and $4M in MRR right 
now and has exhibited 
more than 100% 
revenue growth YoY.
What is 
SMARTASSISTANT's 
churn?
SMARTASSISTANT has been successful in reducing their churn 
thus far and is currently in the single digits in terms of gross annual 
revenue churn. Linder also proudly mentioned that the company 
has achieved net negative revenue churn and is retaining 110% of 
their revenue.
SMARTASSISTANT has been driving this expansion revenue 
through usage as companies add additional brands, domains, and 
supported languages. Their typical customer pays a first year 
ACV between $50k and $100k with the company receiving 
payback within a year.
How much has 
SMARTASSISTANT raised 
total?
SMARTASSISTANT has raised a total of $9M to date from outside 
sources. The company recently hired a new CEO and is expanding 
their offices in Austin and NYC. 
Their team has grown to 100 full-time employees and is focused 
on crossing $50M in ARR within the next few quarters.
SMARTASSISTANT Founder, Markus Linder
64     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
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Why Enterprises Are Paying 
Sorry as a Service to Send Gifts 
for Them
In a digital world, reaching out to your customers in an old school, 
physical manner can easily separate you from the rest of the 
pack. Instead of sending a template email thanking them for their 
service, what if you could send a handwritten card complete with 
freshly baked cookies...all at scale? 
Sorry as a Service has set out to do just that.
Founded in 2015 by three co-founders during a 48 hour hack-a-
thon, Sorry as a Service helps enterprises send personalized gifts 
at the press of a button. Their SaaS product integrates with all 
web-based CRMs and allows companies to send handmade gifts 
to their customers with little to no friction. 
How much is Sorry as a 
Service doing in MRR?
Sorry as a Service currently has two revenue streams: their high-
margin software that integrates with CRMs and their lower margin 
handmade gifts they send on enterprises' behalf. The company 
has scaled to 11 enterprise customers today and currently sends 
out 400+ items daily.
The average customer 
pays Sorry as a 
Service around 
$1,300 monthly, for 
approximately $14.3k 
in MRR today. 
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     65
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The company also makes 5-10% margin on gifts and is close to 
break even with a $20k gross monthly burn rate.
How much has Sorry as a 
Service raised?
Sorry as a Service was founded in late 2015 and joined both 
Startup Wise Guys and Techstars the following year. 
and has been able to run lean with a team of eight members 
based in Estonia. 
Being a young company, CAC has been difficult to estimate thus 
far for Sorry as a Service. The team has one full-time member 
dedicated to enterprise sales and also pays partners 20% of first 
year revenue for referrals. 
How can they scale?
Quantifying their value has admittedly been an issue for Sorry as 
a Service at this point. While no marketing team would deny the 
inherent value in their product, it often labeled a luxury service for 
most companies.
Going forward, Indrek Poldvee, the company's co-founder and 
leader of sales, noted they must improve their messaging in order 
to close more deals. But, with impressive results thus far  some 
companies have seen 2.5x ROI on customer LTV versus traditional 
vouchers and gifts  things look promising for this Eastern 
European startup.
$ The company has 
only raised $250K
Indrek Poldvee, Co-Founder of Sorry as a Service
66     LATKA     OCTOBER 2018
GETLATKA.COM - THOUSANDS OF DATA POINTS ON PRIVATE SAAS COMPANIES
Poor Employee Retention? 
StellarEmploy Can Reduce 
Turnover 30%!
Hiring and retaining great employees is the secret to scaling any 
business in a sustainable manner. Yet, with more options than ever, 
it can seem impossible to find the right talent and ensure they are 
the type of team members you want to keep for the long run.
This problem is especially prevalent in the hourly job market. 
Coffee shops, warehouses, call centers, and other companies that 
pay wages on an hourly basis constantly deal with the burden of 
employee turnover and bringing it their replacements.
What if you could mitigate and reduce this turnover? Luckily for 
these businesses, StellarEmploy was created to attack this pain 
point for companies of all sizes and industries. With a core product 
proven to reduce employee turnover by 30%, they have set out to 
help employers quickly identify and hire the best talent for their 
business.
What is StellarEmploy 
doing in MRR?
StellarEmploy uses an elegant 15-minute questionnaire, alongside 
a ML algorithm calibrated based on their client's drivers of 
success, to determine which applicants will be the best fit going 
forward. They currently bill customers annually, based on the 
number of hires they plan to make over the next year and charge 
approximately $100 per hire.
The company has scaled to three total customers today and has 
proven their efficacy in five different industries, reducing turnover 
by 30% or more in each. 
StellarEmploy is doing 
$5k in MRR today 
and looking to raise 
$1.5M to build out a 
sales team and further 
improve their data 
science efforts.
What is StellarEmploy's 
churn?
StellarEmploy defines churn as any user that executes a pilot 
without converting to a paid plan. Sara Nadel, StellarEmploy's 
CEO, believes the company is still too young to measure churn in 
a meaningful way.
In terms of customer acquisition, the company brings in new 
business primarily through calculated hustle and cold outreach. In 
the future, StellarEmploy is looking to grow their sales team and 
invest in events to drive additional expansion.
Today, StellarEmploy is composed of its three co-founders and 
one full-time employee. They are notorious for using contractors 
and freelancers to fill gaps in the short-term, but are very eager to 
bring on new talent soon. Be sure to follow this exciting early stage 
company as they continue to grow!
OCTOBER 2018     LATKA     67
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How Vendasta Hit Net Negative 
Revenue Churn with SMB
Churn in the SMB space is a constant struggle for SaaS companies. 
With a lower price point, putting the necessary touch to ensure 
customer success is not economically viable. What if there was a 
way to shield your business from this volatility?
Vendasta was well aware of this problem when they launched 
back in 2008. The company has changed the game for SMB by 
providing a complete, white label tech stack that helps these 
businesses solve their marketing, sales, fulfillment, and delivery 
problems.
How much is Vendasta 
doing in MRR?
Vendasta generates revenue in two distinct ways. First, they 
charge value-added resellers a monthly subscription fee for 
access to their sales and marketing platform, as well as their 
marketplace. Second, they generate recurring revenue based on 
the sale of their white labeled software products to SMB, with their 
resellers typically marking up the product 5x.
Resellers, on average, pay Vendasta $1k per month for access to 
their software and marketplace. According to CEO Brendan King, 
the company has 1,200 resellers using their product to sell to 100k 
SMB monthly. 
Kind noted that 
Vendasta hit $2.3M in MRR last month, with approximately 
one third of revenue coming from subscription revenue 
and the remaining two thirds being attributed to product 
sales. 
The company grew 45% year over year in 2017 and is aiming to 
cross 50% growth in 2018.
What is Vendasta's churn?
With their unique SaaS business model, Vendasta has been able to 
achieve net negative revenue churn. While the company exhibits 
15% gross annual revenue churn, they have 117% net revenue 
retention yearly.
Due to the varying sizes of their cohorts, CAC was not disclosed by 
King during his interview. He did however, share that the company 
optimizes for a payback period of 9 months when acquiring a new 
customer. 
How much has Vendasta 
raised?
Vendasta has raised $13M in outside capital to date. The 
company's team of 285 full-time employees is headquartered in 
Canada and focused on hitting 50% YoY growth for the remainder 
of this year.
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