How Badger Maps CEO Steven Benson grew Badger Maps to $8M revenue and 4K customers in 2025.

you guys Badger mapping. comom Steve launched it back in 2011 2012 they scaled to over a million of Revenue in 2017 today doing six million of Revenue because over 4,100 companies who have field sales teams they have to drive a route knock on doors Etc use Badger mapping to plan that route for efficiency save on G gas get more done close more sales he's doing this uh again about 8,000 live seats on the platform they're taking in and doing over 500 call 2,000 calls per month they're getting leads from integration Partners like Salesforce and he's done all of this totally bootstrapped which we love hey folks my guest today is Steve Benson he's the founder and CEO of badger Maps the number one app in the app store for outside and field salespeople to upgrade existing crms with mapping routing and scheduling he's also the CEO of badger sales University and hosts the outside sales Talk podcast specifically for outside sales people and is currently president of the S Sales Hall of Fame Steve you ready to take us to the top absolutely I want to know order of operations on these things did you have the software company first and then you launched the university and then you launched the podcast or was it podcast University SAS what was the order of operations it was SAS company then uh then podcast and then University okay so you you H had this SAS company and said you know what I don't have to go raise a bunch of money I need a mo let me go launch Media right to get attention and get leads from was that sort of thinking exactly I mean it's it's one of these classic Micro Niche podcasts the the group of people that we sell to our ideal customer profile as a field salesperson an outside salesperson and the the name of the podcast is outside sales talk so we have experts come on who are expert in experts in sales and teach what their areas of expertise through the lens of um knowing that the listeners are generally field salese and outside salese because that's who uses our product knowing what you know about your show what would you tell SAS Founders who say Nathan how do I get as many downloads as possible on my show I'm looking to launch how would you respond to that well I mean we we can't all be as popular as you for starters so I'm trying to give you the opportunity to talk about the importance of a niche small Market but they're all potential buyers of badger Maps that's exactly what I was going to say we don't we don't have to be um as you don't have to have a huge podcast you you have to have a podcast that is very specifically valuable in some way to a very specific group of people your ideal customer profile and you know some people have larger Tams than others and so it can be more broadly applicable but you know if if 300 people are listening to your podcast but there are 300 people that are your ideal customer profile who could each pay you a 100 Grand a year that's amazing so it it really it's less about you know being the most popular kid on the Block and more about have you created value for the the the same Niche that that you sell your software to yep you get the company going back uh 2012 2013 you break a million a million six in Revenue you've been on the show a couple times in 2017 scaled to 3 million in 2018 you scaled up from there to about four or five million in 2022 where's the company to today and and talk to us a little bit how you capitalized the business um today we're at 6 million in ARR um we've capitalized the business um it's a it's bootstrap you just small a small friends and family ground and about 10 years ago uh other than that it's been bootstrapped we've we've brought in uh money from revenue from selling the product uh early on customer funded Baby Let's Go customer funded and and also well we've used we've used debt over the years um we've used debt from several providers and currently uh as you know we use founder path as our as our debt provider oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 287 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built it into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for valuation this year now the secret valuation is there's many different ways to value a SAS business so the reason you're going to see three or four different valuations inside of your founder paath dashport this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SAS company you're going to get a different valuation a VC is going to pay a different valuation private Equity Firm is different if you're going to do a minority sale that's different and if you sell the whole whole business that's a different valuation you can see all those when I hover over here right so the teal is what a VC would pay yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright now what's cool about this is this is not built off random data again you guys hear these interviews on YouTube all these datas are built from realtime valuation data points Founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raise they sold 22% of their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to see companies that have sold the whole business well here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round well go in here and look at all the recent seed deals that went down what they raised what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold there's never been a larger data set of SAS valuation than what you can get now inside of founder path and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're going to go back to the YouTube video here in a second but if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founder path.com products SLV valuations or if you go to founder path.com and hover over products click on get your valuation here and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl again all that valuation data live right inside the platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview Stephen and I liveed together during covid and we're talking more and more about this idea that there needed to be sort of a revenue based fund that was built by an operator not a private Equity person not a VC like an operator who actually knows what Founders need he was one of the big reasons I actually launched founder path and Steve it's CR see to fast forward to today you know $150 million fund 160 um Founders using it we're having a blast so I app appreciate the extra push on that you are really one of the early Advocates of debt financing why is it so important to you to keep Equity well I mean I I would I guess there's two answers to that one um I I don't think that SAS companies are always a good fit for for venture capital and and I'd say a lot more often than not they're not a good fit for Venture Capital there's so many small problems in the world that uh don't have AR aren't just don't have the explosive growth that you need for to to Really satisfy the Venture model and certainly um certainly I'm in one of those and I think a lot of SAS companies are in in those Venture needs very specific things to to make their their Economics work um so debt really a much better way to go dead in bootstrapping I think for for many many SAS businesses not all obviously there are there are you know SAS businesses that start out they seem small but then they pivot a little bit or something happens they become really big um that there you know they seem Niche but they're actually not there are some that you didn't think would win but then win and they end up a lot bigger there so there there's a lot of different situations you can find yourself in there certainly there's lots of places Venture is appropriate for but there's also lots of places that Venture would say ah you guys are you know you're you're growing a little too slowly or ah the t's a little too small or ah this is this is not that this is not that interesting of a space for us or oh it's too crowded there a lot of reasons right that they could that they could not like something but but they could be a very attractive business with a that that have great economics for for Founders employees um but uh but it's not a good fit I was I was joking I call you a cockroach SAS company right because you have the mo I mean you know obviously everything on Founder paath is confidential so we can't talk about that on the podcast unless you reveal it but what I can say is like we have data that you've shared with us since 2015 and I have I don't I mean I may be seen on a handful I can count on one finger the consistent like clockwork work growth month over month every month for like almost 10 years is just remarkable to me and what's funny is and I think I told you this but you literally...