How Bullhorn Reached $200M ARR and 10,000 Customers After 20 Years in Business (Interview with CEO Art Papas)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:01Hello, everyone. My guest today is Art Papas. He's the founder and CEO of Bullhorn, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry. He was the original architect of Bullhorn's flagship customer relationship management system, which now is more than 10,000 companies around the world run their business. Art, you ready to take us to the top?

Founding Story and Original Marketplace Idea

Art Papas

00:17Yeah, let's do it.

Nathan Latka

00:17All right. So are early on to the game. So tell us first off when you launched this company, what year, and what are you working on today?

Art Papas

00:26Yeah, so we started Bullhorn in 1999, and we were originally... We were a online service kind of like... If you've ever used or seen Upwork or Fiverr, we were we were an online marketplace, marketplace, and and specifically, specifically, we we were were focused on creative talent. And it and it was really too early for that business model. So it wasn't too early to get people to come online and build profiles and and upload examples of their

01:01work, but it was really hard to get companies to hire those people over the Internet to do freelance work, which now that seems like really common. And I think it was just... We would go to sit with companies, and they'd either, a, say, we don't have Internet connection in the office, which in '99 was, like, shocking.

Nathan Latka

01:01Yeah.

Art Papas

01:01But...

Nathan Latka

01:01Okay.

Art Papas

01:01Two,

01:25or they would say, I just don't trust the Internet. And... Which is ironic because what we pivoted to become was a... One of the early SaaS platforms, and I convinced people to put their business data on the Internet, which arguably should have been harder. But I guess in the the sort of year or so subsequent to us pivoting away from the market marketplace and and becoming a staffing software provider, you know, that the the views the

01:58views change, or I just get better at convincing people to trust the Internet.

Current ARR and Growth Ahead of Forecast

Nathan Latka

02:02So with that, I wanna I wanna fit now. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get where you're at today, and then the rest of the show, we're gonna fill in the whole story in between. Okay. Sound good? So today, first off, you guys on track to do the 175 that you predicted?

Art Papas

02:16We beat that.

Nathan Latka

02:17Yeah. Okay. Good. So what do you think? I know you're trying to get, I think you said two twenty by 2022 or something like that. What's the goal to end this year at?

Art Papas

02:25Yeah. We're way ahead of even that already.

Nathan Latka

02:28Okay. Good. What's driven... What... So so just to be clear, you're north of $200,000,000 in terms of ARR run rate today?

Art Papas

02:34Correct.

Nathan Latka

02:34What drove the accelerated growth? You were making predictions as recently as a year and a half ago that it, you know, would take you till 2022 to hit that number.

Art Papas

02:42Well, we we continue to grow really, really quickly, and I am conservative. And so I tell somebody to do something, I like to do it. And so I wanna make it I wanna make it such that I I don't have an interview, and somebody says, oh, did you do what you said you're gonna do? And I I say, well, not quite. Let me explain why.

Customer Count and ACV

Nathan Latka

03:03Yeah. No. You... It's there's probably something to that. Now this company has gone through many deals. We'll talk about how your conservative approach has given you leverage in those deals, your historical deals to date. But first off, one other data point from today, how many customers are you now serving?

Art Papas

03:1710,000.

Nathan Latka

03:1810. Okay. Well, and that's not like a fluffy, duffy number. That's 10,000 paying customers.

Art Papas

03:22That 10,000 paying customers. Majority are in The United States and and EMEA, and then we also have... I'd say Asia's emerging for us. So that's still sort of a growth area for us.

Nathan Latka

03:38So 10 k customers into 200,000,000 in ARR, fair to say average ACV is about that $20,000 mark?

Art Papas

03:44Yeah, that's right.

Nathan Latka

03:45Okay.

Art Papas

03:45That's

03:46exactly what it is.

Nathan Latka

03:47Let's fill in the backstory now. So 1999, you remember the first... Was the first line of code written in '99?

Art Papas

03:54Yeah, I wrote the first line of code in '99 in my apartment in Cambridge.

Nathan Latka

04:00Yeah. Okay. Apartment in Cambridge. And do you remember how much total kind of... However you quantify it, how much you put into building the MVP before your first dollar of revenue?

Art Papas

04:10Yeah. So I... We spent about a year and a half, and I probably coded every day for, like, at least sixty hours a day for six days a week. Sometimes I would take sometimes I would take Sundays off, I think, but, like, yeah, it was pretty intense for a long time. And a lot of that was just wasted work trying to come up with products that people didn't wanna use. What's interesting is once... So one of

04:37our investors introduced me to our first customer, and

Early Funding Rounds and Dilution

Art Papas

04:41he said

Nathan Latka

04:41Oh, you had investors on day one?

Art Papas

04:43We did.

Nathan Latka

04:44Oh, wow. How much did you raise on day one?

Art Papas

04:47Our initial angel round was 1,400,000.

Nathan Latka

04:52Okay. So you were just like a smart guy that could really tell a story, and that's what allowed you to get that money early?

Art Papas

04:57I really couldn't tell a story. My cofounder could. He was amazing. His network was amazing, and he was an incredible salesperson. And he... Very smart guy. And he and I went to pitch investors, and these were people who were his boarding school friends. One was a hedge fund manager, and they had

05:22a

Nathan Latka

05:22So you're talking about Barry or Roger. Which one was there at the beginning?

Art Papas

05:25Barry.

Nathan Latka

05:25Okay.

Art Papas

05:26Barry Hinkley. And Roger came along later because we realized with 1,400,000, we needed somebody to help, like, actually figure out, like, how are we gonna, like, spend this money, and how are we gonna manage it, and we should probably get incorporated and all that. So it was... Yeah. So it was a good trio. Like, Barry was really... Roger was like a COO slash CFO. Barry was like super salesperson, and and then I was really the the

05:56product lead and really did most of the coding up until up until we had revenue.

Nathan Latka

06:03Yep. So what year was first dollar of revenue?

Art Papas

06:062000.

Nathan Latka

06:07Okay. So you spent about twelve months kind of coding, learning. Did you guys spend any of that angel money on on MVP as well? Do... Like, can you quantify how much you spent on MVP?

Art Papas

06:16We blew all the angel money, like, blew all the angel money on the first marketplace idea.

Nathan Latka

06:23Okay. So 1,500,000 on MVP?

Art Papas

06:27Yeah. Worse. Then we we raised, like, nine nine months in, we raised $4,000,000 series a, which was promptly blown on the original marketplace idea.

Nathan Latka

06:41Alright. This must have been, like, extremely dilutive.

Art Papas

06:45Oh, it sucked.

Nathan Latka

06:46Mean, bad was it? You're selling like 30% of the company between those two rounds back then?

06:53Because you're pre-revenue.

Art Papas

06:54Yeah,

06:55it was like 30% of the company. Yeah. However, that, it ended up being like 60 because we had to do a down round. So we pivoted with about a million dollars left in the bank and dramatically cut our expenses, and then we got our first dollar revenue. And we went to our investors, and we're like, we actually have revenue. And they were like, how big can software to the staffing industry be? That business sucks. We are

07:24not investors. And not only that, if you raise money, we have an anti dilution clause and a full ratchet. And so we did we did a down round.

Nathan Latka

07:24Just to be

07:34clear, this was with the pension General Electric pension fund for $628,000.

Art Papas

07:40You said it.

Nathan Latka

07:40This is back in the day. This is 2002.

Art Papas

07:432002. Yeah. And we did a very small, like 700 k round at a 50% haircut to the prior round.

Nathan Latka

07:52Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Now, wait, did the prior folks ratchet up? Did they go ahead and buy their pro rata?

Art Papas

07:59They did.

Nathan Latka

08:00Okay. So then that was extra dilution.

Art Papas

08:02So we got obliterated. Yeah. So if fun exercises, go plug that scenario into, like, a full waterfall for a... You know, with a full ratchet. It's just... It was just horrible. I was... I couldn't under... It took me, like, a week to get my head around, like, technically what was happening in the cap table. But once I did, I was like, well, look. I actually really believe in this company's gonna be a big company. And we

08:28had... I had our first customer saying, this is amazing. You should sell this to every staffing firm in the world. We all have the same challenges. We all need an Internet based system. And so we didn't we didn't... The dilution hurt, but it didn't... Ultimately, we weren't really doing it for the money.

Nathan Latka

08:28Yep.

Art Papas

08:28You know?

Nathan Latka

08:28Well, how old were

08:48you how old were you at this point?

Art Papas

08:49Yeah. I was twenty twenty five.

Nathan Latka

08:52Okay. So you're caught, well, like 42 ish today, 43?

Profitability After 2003 and the 2008 Recapitalization

Art Papas

08:56Yes.

Nathan Latka

08:56Yeah. So... Okay. So let's fast forward to 2008. You take in 26,000,000 from General Catalyst Highland. What was revenue at that point?

Art Papas

09:04We were

09:0713 and a half trailing.

Nathan Latka

09:09Okay.

Art Papas

09:11And so that last little bit we raised. GE came along in 2005, was like, You guys are doing great. You need some more money they gave us. So it was funny. The business they thought was horrible. They were like, Oh, actually, it's really great.

Nathan Latka

09:25Well, yeah, but you had four years there of turnaround, right?

Art Papas

09:27So we raised one and a half then. We didn't spend that, and then we got to 13,000,000, and we were always profitable after 2003.

Nathan Latka

09:36So that $1,500,000, that was not another haircut. That was at a better valuation than the...

Art Papas

09:40It was at an up round. And

09:46then Highland and General Catalyst came along and said, let's recapitalize the business. So so GE was able to get out. And then

Nathan Latka

09:46So

09:55part of that was secondary?

Art Papas

09:57Yeah. A lot of it. Most of it was secondary.

Nathan Latka

09:59Just buying out GE?

Art Papas

10:01GE, and and then there was internet.com portfolio. So we outlasted our investors. They went out of business.

Nathan Latka

10:09That's pretty impressive, by the Did you and and your folks figure out how to get a chunk of the company back, or did these guys come in and still buy, like, 60%?

Art Papas

10:17Guys were really great. They came in, they were like, Look, you're essentially a hired gun CEO with your package. Let's get you real equity in terms of options. And I'm so glad they did that because that had a pretty transformative effect.

Nathan Latka

10:35Oh, huge Art. I mean, I'm doing the math on your full deal history. I'm going, I gotta fix something had to have happened here for him and his folks to stay incentivized because there's no way they would have stuck. So kudos to General Catalyst and Highland Capital Partners. You typically see this. They know damn well if they're coming in and a founder owns less than half the company that they're gonna be diluted to, like, nothing, lose

10:54interest. They said, you know what? Let's create an option pool post round. What? Obviously all the equity will probably vest and they give it to you immediately, did they?

Art Papas

11:02No, no, no, all vested. Yeah. It was tied to a vesting.

Nathan Latka

11:06You share what size that pool was? Obviously, didn't all go to you guys. There's probably some for employees, but you're talking like 20, 30% option pool.

Art Papas

11:12It was a 20% option pool.

Nathan Latka

11:14Okay. Fair enough. So investors at this point were back down at like on a fully diluted basis, something like 40%. There was 20% up in the air that you guys could earn over a couple years.

Art Papas

11:23We're still 60%. We really got hammered.

Vista Equity Acquisition in 2012

Nathan Latka

11:26Oh, okay. Okay, good. Okay. Okay, so fast forward to 2012. Tell us what happened then.

Art Papas

11:31So then Vista Equity comes along and says, I want to buy your business. And I was like, I'd never heard of Vista Equity. I didn't really understand private equity, how it was different from venture. I had heard all sorts of horrible stories about how they just cut costs, and it's all about managing the EBITDA. And then I did some homework, and I found out that that's not really what Vista's all about. And that was a pretty...

11:59You know, like Highland coming in and and sort of, you know, being really pro management and pro the company,

12:10so was Vista. And that had a really positive effect, and they allowed us to replatform our product, which at that point, you know, SaaS 1.0 product had never been redesigned, was still in ColdFusion.

Nathan Latka

12:26What was ARR? What was ARR in 2012?

Art Papas

12:282012 was like 40.

Nathan Latka

12:31'40. Yeah. So I assume that this was call like a 150, 200,000,000 ish kind of deal?

Art Papas

12:39I can't comment exact valuation.

Nathan Latka

12:42Oh, come on dude, this was like a decade ago almost.

Art Papas

12:44Six years ago.

Nathan Latka

12:47You're still under NDAs? Oh, wow, okay.

Art Papas

12:51I can't swear, I'm not sure. But, yeah, I mean, it it's like when the the... It did leak that it was a 9 figure deal. So... Yeah. And it wasn't high 9 figures, obviously.

Nathan Latka

13:03Yeah. I mean, look, we'll we'll move on past this. Is it... Can we just put a cap? Can we say between a $100,000,000 and $500,000,000? Is that a fair range?

Art Papas

13:09Yeah. Perfect.

Nathan Latka

13:10Were the... First off, were you doing... And were you dealing with Robert or Brian? Because Vista was kind of early. Know, now, obviously, everyone knows Vista, but...

Art Papas

13:17Alan Klein was head of the Foundation Fund, and I did have Robert and Brian on my board, and those guys are all three of those guys are... Everybody at Vista I worked with was really great. It was a great experience.

Insight Partners Deal, Acquisitions and Growth Rate

Nathan Latka

13:29Okay. So here's my big question. Here's my here's my next big gap in your story that I was really looking forward to interviewing you about. Vista will not let a cash flow positive portfolio company go, you know, almost regardless of the premium. You know, their issue right now is they have to deploy $14,000,000,000 of capital. And if they find a good company, they're gonna keep it. Why did they let you go to Insight?

Art Papas

13:51Yeah, good question. So we were the last investment to liquidate out of the FoundationOne fund. So FoundationOne was their

14:03first fund that was geared at mid sized growth companies, and all the other investments had been huge home runs. And they were like, look, we can close down the fund. There's a lot of interest in Bullhorn. And once they closed down the fund, the returns on that fund were just unbelievable. It was an unbelievable fund. And so I think there was a sense that if the price was right, and it was a return that looked in

14:34line with the rest of the portfolio, which, you know, they had some deals that were like 10x. And so it was a really, it was a good outcome.

Nathan Latka

14:44Yep. Okay. And what year was that with Insight?

Art Papas

14:47That was just a year, just over a year and a half ago.

Nathan Latka

14:51Okay, so call it twenty seventeen-eighteen.

Art Papas

14:54It was the end of Thanksgiving seventeen.

Nathan Latka

14:57Yep. And right before you did that deal, so while you were under kind of Vista's arm between 2012 and 2017, what did you grow revenues to?

Art Papas

15:06We started revenues at 40. And we ended at 130.

Nathan Latka

15:11Okay, so 2017, your guys can't work on do it 130. And then today, obviously, up over two twenty. What were the first two things that insight helped you do in the company that you would have not learned from anyone else except Insight?

Art Papas

15:23Yeah. So, well, one of the big things that we did when we were closing the deal with Insight was we did a really strategic acquisition. And I think having

15:35a new partner, their appetite to go after something that had a very long range impact to revenue but was strategic, hey, you're gonna get into a whole new product line, and it's gonna take time to make that happen.

Nathan Latka

15:49Are you talking PeopleNet or Connexys?

Art Papas

15:50PeopleNet.

Nathan Latka

15:51PeopleNet, yeah.

Art Papas

15:52At Vista, we did Connexys with Vista, and then PeopleNet was with Insight.

15:57And

15:59so that one was a really transfer. The other thing that Insight did, which I thought was cool, was they came in, they're like, hey, guys. What about AI? And we're like, look. You know, we we really... We have some stuff going on with AI, but we're not investing a ton because we're not venture backed,

16:22we want to generate EBITDA. And Insight was like, Look, you can't be a software company and not be investing in AI. Yeah. And so,

16:30they took sort of the progressive move of saying, like, let's right size that investment so that you're positioned to give your customers the benefit of all the things that you can do with AI. And so so that's been that's been really cool.

Nathan Latka

16:43So fast forward, we're almost back up now to where we're at today, but let's go back one year ago today. So north of $200,000,000 in ARR today. Do remember where you were at a year ago?

Art Papas

16:59Where did we end last year? It's blurry for me because because

17:07because of... We did a lot of acquisitions last year. So

Nathan Latka

17:10Yeah. No. You guys did. I mean, I'm looking at, mean, Talent Rover, Jobscience, and Invenias or something like that. You gotta rebrand that one.

17:19Yeah. But I'm just trying to get a general sense of year over year growth rate. So I mean, obviously doubling at this scale is extremely difficult. You're more probably in the 20 to 30% range.

Art Papas

17:28Yeah, that's exactly where we are.

Nathan Latka

17:30Yeah. Okay. So 20% year over year growth. Now, of the things I like to look at with companies at your scale, know, I've had Region with Cvent. I've had a couple other folks on with 200 to $400 or $500,000,000 ARR. They're all thinking about E40 metrics relative to public SaaS companies, obviously, because most of the addressable market.

Art Papas

17:45Yeah, was going say,

Nathan Latka

17:45so what's your E metric?

17:47Okay, good. So you're E50, which means if you're doing 20% year over

17:51year growth, you've got to be taking 30% EBITDA margins.

Art Papas

17:54Yeah, or 25-25.

Nathan Latka

17:55Or 25-25. Yeah, fair enough. Okay, that's great. So moving forward, right? Help me understand some other things here. So a lot of growth at your scale can come from expansion revenue. Are you driving a meaningful expansion revenue now, and do you see it as a growth channel, or more of your growth is gonna come from new customers?

Art Papas

18:10Yeah. We... You know, it's interesting. Like, we were all new logo sales for the first decade, maybe even fifteen years. And, you know, you get to a point where you realize, like, my customers buy other software products. And so it takes a while for the organization to shift to say, okay. I'm gonna go spend time with my existing customers and try and upsell them. And... But once you do, you discover that there's this whole new gear

18:39for growth. And so that's been... So part of the part of the acquisition strategy is, like, the PeopleNet acquisition gave us two new product lines. The... There were some acquisitions we did a couple years ago that gave us two product lines, and so those are really starting to take off in that customer base now.

Nathan Latka

18:59Okay.

Art Papas

18:59But there's a lot of work you have to do. Like, we had to do a lot of r and d to take a product that was standalone successful with a 100 customers and make it scale to, you know, how's it gonna flow into 10,000 customers and

Nathan Latka

18:59Yep.

Art Papas

18:59You know, how's gonna work?

Gross and Net Revenue Retention

Nathan Latka

19:14So if you peel back this onion for me here for a second, if you look over the past twelve months, just gross, so ignore expansion for a second, gross revenue churn, are we talking like 10 ish percentage or what was that number?

Art Papas

19:26We're in the low 90s gross and around a 100% net.

Nathan Latka

19:33Okay, got it. So just obviously that's not churn, that's retention. So you're retaining about call it 92, 93 ish percent are churning seven or 8% annually. And then you're just said your expansion is also seven or 8% for 100% net.

Art Papas

19:46Yeah, and I would say the expansion number is the one that we think in the next couple of years could go to, we could be at 110, 115.

Expansion Revenue Opportunity

Nathan Latka

19:54Well, was just gonna push you on that in a very polite way. Look, most folks at your scale, you're seeing, and especially at these ACV sizes, you're seeing expansion revenue world class, I'd say, is between 20 and 30% annually, and you're significantly below that. Why haven't you driven more expansion revenue, especially with all your acquisitions?

Art Papas

20:10Yeah, so I mean, my

20:13quick answer to that is, like I said about the R and D, when we first bought our first add on acquisitions, we did not sink the kind of R and D that we needed to into it. And so now what you're seeing is the ramp is high. I mean, that was the upsell factor was probably like three, 4% a couple of years ago. And so now it's starting to ramp.

Nathan Latka

20:37So it's growing.

Art Papas

20:38It absolutely should be like 20, 30%.

Nathan Latka

20:38Yeah, you

20:41guys can get there. I would say that's a massive part of your growth story in the next five years. Mean, that's this money on the table for you guys.

Art Papas

20:48You've been sitting in our management meeting.

CAC Strategy by Segment

Nathan Latka

20:50Yeah, good. That's good. Have little birdies everywhere, you know? Alright. Some other questions here about aggressiveness, CAC. So let's role play here. For a $20,000 ACV account, will you spend the full $20,000 upfront to get them? What do you like to optimize payback period for?

Art Papas

21:02We'll spend about 25... $2,222.05 to 25. Depends on the segment. So bigger customers, more expensive. So you'll spend up to 25, you know, a dollar 50

Nathan Latka

21:02Yep.

Art Papas

21:02To acquire a dollar of recurring revenue. Smaller customers, you'll spend about dollar 10, maybe

Nathan Latka

21:02Okay.

Art Papas

21:02A

Nathan Latka

21:20Love that. And are you generally getting more aggressive there or less aggressive?

Art Papas

21:24In the enterprise, we're getting more aggressive. And in the SMB, it's all about, like, how do you focus on driving the efficiency?

Nathan Latka

21:32Yeah. So I

Art Papas

21:32The right customers. Right? Like, the high churn customers, how do you avoid signing them up and putting a lot of effort and energy into into that?

Nathan Latka

21:40Did you spend much time when you were with Vista? I I don't know if this is before their time, but with, like, Reggie at Cvent or Andre Ping Identity or Bill at Mediaocean, those guys or no?

Art Papas

21:49I I know Reggie and and Andre.

Nathan Latka

21:54Okay.

Art Papas

21:55And I've met Bill, but I don't

Nathan Latka

21:57The only reason I ask the only reason I ask is Andre and and Reggie both when I had them on, I pushed them on this, and they said, yeah. And one of the things they're doing is they're driving, you know, they're driving up even to sometimes $2 for a new dollar of ARR because they're driving competitors out of their distribution channels. And once the competitors leave those channels because they've made it so expensive, they just drop

22:16the CAC back down. Are you doing any of that tactically in any channels?

Art Papas

22:19You can have to do that. Market dynamics might be different in our market.

Nathan Latka

22:19Yep.

Art Papas

22:19I'll tell you, when we add sales and marketing heads, we don't see a dramatic... Like our ramp is pretty quick, and so maybe they're more enterprise focused. And so I think it... And it... And if you have competitors who can really give you a run for your money in the enterprise, like, that's...

Team Size and Sales Productivity

Nathan Latka

22:42Yep. Yep. Okay. Let's... You just mentioned a ramp time. Let's talk about team quick, and then we'll wrap up. Team size today, how many people total?

Art Papas

22:50We're just under a thousand.

Nathan Latka

22:52Okay. And how many are engineers versus quota carrying folks?

Art Papas

22:57Good question. Off the top of my head, I would say there's probably, in the R and D team, about 200, and then sales is about one sixty.

Nathan Latka

23:08And what do you optimize your pro formas, like, per salesperson? You look at salesperson profitability. Right? So compare their on target earnings, right, when they hit quota, their full comp relative to their bookings targets. Is it like generally like a five x multiple you're optimizing for a 10 x or what?

Art Papas

23:21Yeah. So

23:24it's... In the SMB, it's about three to three and a half. And then in the enterprise, it's a full five.

Nathan Latka

23:32That's pretty good. Okay. Good. Good stuff. Anything that I should have asked you about, like metrics you're looking at that I haven't asked about or you're like, you missed this?

Art Papas

23:41Yeah. I mean, the one we look at a lot is CAC to LTV. And so... And especially by segment. So if we're talking about a large customer that that CAC to LTV... And I I I exclude upsells from that. I just look at sort of, like, you know, let's say it cost to acquire the initial customer.

Nathan Latka

24:02You're extrapolating first your ACV.

Art Papas

24:06And also, like, the upsells really blur. Like, okay. You know, you had churn over here, so you'll end up with like an infinite LTV to CAC. And so I like to look at it sort of on a raw basis. And that for us has been a really good metric. Like the SMB, we were good but not great, and it's allowed us to become great, and in the enterprise, we're excellent, amazing.

Nathan Latka

24:33What do you consider excellent?

Art Papas

24:35Well, you get 1% churn, and it costs you $2 and so you keep the customer for like ninety nine years.

Nathan Latka

24:43Excel Excel sheets are not your friend in this case because it gets very unrealistic very quickly.

Art Papas

24:48Yeah. So you could spend $99 acquiring the customer and breakeven.

Nathan Latka

24:52Yeah.

24:54As long as you can manage the cash gap, potentially with private equity backers you can.

Art Papas

24:59Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Debt is great.

IPO, Personal Wealth and Legacy

Nathan Latka

25:01So when when are you gonna IPO?

Art Papas

25:03I don't know. It's not really on my mind because the private markets are so good and

Nathan Latka

25:12Yeah. But how do you personally get rich? I mean, of the things I always like is how founders get personally rich and early employees and all employees. Like, how do they get rich? Like, you give up so much early on. Now, you strike me as guy that likes learning. You're probably learning a ton still, so that's one factor. Right? But like the other is like, how do you make personal wealth from this?

Art Papas

25:28Well, I mean, there's plenty of personal wealth in private equity deals. You can sell a little bit of your stock and reload with options.

Nathan Latka

25:35Did you with the Insight deal? Some of it was secondary?

Art Papas

25:38No. With the Vista deal, did quite a bit and regretted that actually, enormously because you saw what happened to the revenue, right? Had I just held on? When you're...

Nathan Latka

25:54Yeah, you're like 30. You're like 37 at that point, 36.

Art Papas

25:58Yeah, that's right.

26:02So now for me, it's definitely just about having fun and building a great company. I think more about the legacy of

26:12what are the employees gonna say about their experience at Bullhorn.

Nathan Latka

26:12Yep.

Art Papas

26:12I think, you know, of course, people like people on my team are like, yeah, we're gonna get paid. Right?

Nathan Latka

26:23Well, Nar, you're you're a young guy. I mean, you have one or two more hits in you, would say, after this, and they probably be big successes based on all you learn. So we'll see what happens.

Art Papas

26:30I just did... We just did our twentieth... This is actually August is our twentieth anniversary. So I don't know, man. I I may I may not have any hits. I'll just keep doing this.

Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

26:40Well, we'll see what happens. Alright, man. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Art Papas

26:47Winning by Jack Welch.

Nathan Latka

26:48Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Art Papas

26:51I find Benioff intriguing.

Nathan Latka

26:54Yep.

26:55Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building the company?

Art Papas

26:58Online tool for building the company. That's a tough question. I don't know that I use. I must use some online tool. Google Docs? I don't know.

Nathan Latka

27:08Number four, how many hours of sleep you get every night?

Art Papas

27:12I get a solid seven to eight.

Nathan Latka

27:14Okay.

27:15And situation married, single kids?

Art Papas

27:17Married, kids.

Nathan Latka

27:18How many kiddos?

Art Papas

27:19Two kids.

Nathan Latka

27:20Oh,

27:21And how old are you?

Art Papas

27:2243, 40

Nathan Latka

27:22I

27:25got that right on the nose earlier. That's pretty good. Alright, 43. Last question. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?

Art Papas

27:31Oh, how anti dilution worked.

Nathan Latka

27:37Guys, bullhorn.com founded in '99 raised 4,000,000 early on, basically sold 60% of the company before going on, having a lot of success and now over $200,000,000 in ARR, up 30% year over year. Essentially their E40 metric is about E50, 25% EBITDA margin, 25% year over year growth at this scale, obviously pretty impressive. Thousand folks on the team, 7% annual gross revenue churn, 8% expansion as they look to drive more expansion revenue over time with more acquisitions

28:03now that they're part of the Insight family. Art, thank you for taking us to the top.

Art Papas

28:07Alright. Thanks.