Bynder Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2023)

hello everyone my guest today is chris hall he's the ceo of binder and has grown the company to over 350 employees with seven international offices in just four years all right chris are you ready to take us to the top yeah go for it all right tell us about the company what do you guys do and are you a pure play sas model or not yeah we're a pure play born in the cloud solution uh and it's basically the core of the application is the dam the digital asset management which is basically a repository for all your digital content and so you know as you're working with customers here give us kind of a quick glimpse into what they're paying on average per month for this um well we have two sets of customers we have our sort of smb enterprise sap enterprise um and that's around close to 30k us dollars a year and then there's the the larger customers that that are upwards from 100 up to uh we're getting close to the million mark yeah would you is it fair to say though you probably have power laws in your customer base and the average is probably closer to 30 or 35 000 bucks a year yeah that's right yeah okay okay and put this on a timeline for us when did you launch the company uh so we started end of 2013 or we were incorporated there was a spin-off uh of label a development agency i started in 2008. um and it really started as a sort of a side project that we started uh using ourselves to get digital assets from one place to the other and that's where we learned how this is kind of useful and it happened to be called a dap we didn't even know that when we started it and how'd the spinout work is the agency on the cap table of binder and did you have to put up any capital to do the spin out uh no this was um uh basically it was a spin out from label a which i also owned so in uh august 2016 we we closed the series a with insight venture partners um and that's been the first sort of cash in there okay so how much capital have you raised to date uh the 20 million euros that we raised in august two years now so what is that it's like 21 million usd something like that 2023. oh 23. okay got it um are you now are you bait where are you based where's home for you uh right now i'm in amsterdam okay so is the team split between the u.s and europe yeah so we have um due to the acquisition of web dam uh a shutterstock company that was a carve out from them uh they're based in uh san mateo on the west coast uh and you know with this acquisition beginning this year you know that was a big team over there so we grew quite significantly in head count uh but we already had an office in in boston um london spain barcelona um rotterdam and dubai so this was just a a very big extra office uh to uh to add so there's uh there's quite a big workforce in uh in the us saying you're at about 350 folks yeah that's right that's that's great and so give me a sense of what you've scaled to i mean you launched this thing back in 2013 as a spin-out from the agency you're not active day-to-day in the agency anymore correct no okay so purely kind of on the sas product so what have you scaled to over the past four or five years in terms of total customers on the platform um i think we're at around what is it let me think this is combined 1600 1600 yeah something about that and when you say combined you're doing the math you're taking your enterprise plus your smb yeah exactly yeah okay now and now i mean is the is this fair math can i take the the one you know the 1600 there times the you know thirty thousand dollar acb that put you i think like what four million a month or something like that in terms of run rate um yeah that adds up pretty quick uh yeah in that range yeah and with that in mind what does growth look like so if you're doing four million a month today where were you a year ago um so it's it's more about especially at this stage it's more about uh growth combined with um the the capital efficiency so you know they're also looking at ebitda more you bring that into consideration um and we're trending healthily above the rule of 40 which is basically the the growth percentage plus your ebitda yep yes so so can you peel back that onion for me is growth like lower or higher and then obviously you make up the rest to get to 40 or 50 with the cash flow um so in previous years it's been it's been negative obviously the the cash flow um but now we're trending uh towards significant cash flow and and that's just making the the rule of 40 also growing sort of what i'm trying to understand is what you're growing revenues at year over year i understand you're past e40 because you've gotten healthier from a castro perspective but a year ago today i mean have you doubled ar over the past 12 months yeah uh so we were at think 16 um at the beginning of this year yeah that's euros so call it 18 so we went from we more than the doubled okay so at the beginning of this year you're doing 18 million bucks in arr is that accurate um the beginning of of uh yeah i'd call it a little a little bit higher than that it's 19 and then then came the acquisition um uh with with web down okay yeah what i was what i was trying to understand that 19 figure you just gave me that was in gen that was your run rate in january of 2018. uh yeah which was like 10 10 11 months ago got it okay and now obviously you've scaled uh you continue continued to grow um what drove the desire to to drive additional cash flow versus you know continuing to reinvest cash and operating at breakeven um i think it was it was it wasn't really a goal on itself uh it's it's you want to grow as fast as you can as efficiently as you can [Music] and so it wasn't sort of as much a deliberate choice of uh saying listen we'll we'll burn a little extra or to grow faster we were growing at sort of an efficient uh efficient rate the more you start burning it's really difficult to add a couple more percent uh so it starts costing more so it was more um uh based on on on just at least having that as a longer term target to be cash flow positive i think that's a healthy healthy way to go and go forward in your budget but is this because i mean look a lot of times when companies start hitting the 60 70 80 million dollar run rate phrase it sounds like you're probably maybe closer to 40 or 50 right now but once you start hitting that phase it comes more difficult to spend money to get customers because you you're starting to tap out all the potential pools right i mean and so you see probability you see profitability grow because of that because you're saving more money so i mean is that what's happening uh so yeah that's that's partly due to this maturing processes and economies of skill as well so you know despite uh doing a pretty difficult uh acquisition we still maintain or maintain to increase that efficiency and accelerate growth um despite or you know whilst you're also getting some synergy effects from that acquisition mm-hmm what you said difficult what made the acquisition difficult well nine-hour was time difference for starters and it's it was uh you know there were 80 or 90 people uh there that you know that's not something you just absorbed easily that's a big that's that you know that's a big project to sort of combine those companies and to make sure that they're maintaining you know their their own organic growth but moving towards and merging them together as as one company basically with one product and one product roadmap one support that's that's a difficult integration process were the business models at least aligned were they also a sas company yeah they were they were in our space base and they were the number one our number one competitor in the us um so yeah it was comparable products so that helped and that the 19 million in arr that you gave me that was before the acquisition right that was before yeah okay so you buy it now again that's really helped you almost still you know double or more than double over the past 10 11 months um the cash used to do that deal was a lot of i mean was a lot of that the reason you raised the 23 million no that was um that was a year before that as well and um or two years actually one year and a half and that was pure growth money um the um the way we we financed the deal with um with web damn was largely through debt oh i see okay tell there's a lot of people using debt very effectively these days tell us about how you did that what did you work with what hercules or timia or svb um yeah we worked um we worked with svd for a bridge loan um and are now basically refinancing that yeah sorry you're what refinanced refinancing.bridgeloan that's you're doing now yeah yeah oh i see and what you're going to refinance with a new with a new kind of term loan or you're going to go on raise equity no on a new loan but this so this was we did it with the bridge loan because it's just a lot quicker and then you get more time to sort of figure out the the uh the definitive debt situation economically though what would the how would the terms be different between a bridge and a and a true term loan i mean obviously you know both of them are at a fixed interest rate right typically the uh the the bridge loan is supported by the vc as well um so it's basically convertible so you get a year you know extension on on figuring out that loan but if you can't get it you know you you you basically have to converts uh convert equity yeah there's kind of warrants and covenants and things like that yeah yeah interesting okay uh sorry we got in the weeds there let me go back to the customer level for a second i thought it was valuable by the way um in terms of return obviously churn and retention are critical in a sas company uh what's your retention today and how do you figure you know how do you drive that higher so we're at uh 103 104 and net revenue retention uh yeah okay so uh sorry you know gross and that would be about 93 something like that okay so gross 93 networking for retention yeah and so the people so two questions there the the 93 gross revenue retention the seven that churn why do they churn well uh that's something you know that's a really interesting question and it's and it's you know we obviously we track the reasons but we try to predict sort of what customer base are we having uh additional churn and try to figure out why um so that's always sort of top of mind and also looking at the different types of turn there's sort of you know some customers you outgrow or they outgrow you or is it really a product problem are you losing that those customers to to others or did they change ownership or that there's there's a ton of reasons the ones you really want to worry about is obviously are my big you know are my are my the the customers with the the lcv that you want or the optimum lcd versus cac are they happy and are they you know creating more stickiness and expanding rather than part of a cohort that is sort of known for dropping off and it's usually the there's a higher churn rate in smaller accounts i think that's across the board in any kind of sas company that's usually the case um so yeah we try to compare that and and use that for predictability and and when you then look at i'm curious to kind of understand how aggressive you're being going after new customers so so right now when you look at cac on a fully diluted basis so all-in costs are you happy with the month or 24 month payback or six month what do you optimize for uh actually that that's that's an interesting question obviously you know we're trying to trend towards 12 and we're actually under 12 right now but that's that's it that's a really important metric but we also want to look at uh the lifetime lifetime contract value because um you know for your customer acquisition cost are you attracting the right customers that that create that longer lifetime value or are you just looking at the first year of contract so that's sort of a sub optimum to just optimize on year one revenue but i think it's you get better results if you can uh optimize your your marketing campaigns and your sales focus based on on what gets you the the the highest uh lifetime contract value yeah chris any big acquisitions coming up uh we're you know we're always looking at um m a opportunities uh you know we have uh insights that be really squarely behind us and there's so there's a lot of cash in the market there's a ton of opportunity in the market right now because there's just a lot of i think sas companies sort of after 10 20 million um quite often it plateaus a little bit and and because there's there's maybe not that that huge total addressable market so they start sort of slowing down a little bit so those are uh are on our radar um and some other exciting adjacent vendors uh or decent category vendors as well yep very good all right let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book um i'm re-reading uh jason freed's uh getting it real you gotta be real sorry getting real number two is there a ceo you're following or studying right now um [Music] yeah looking at bill gates and just the the the you know the usual suspects i guess number three what's your favorite online tool for building the business um i'd save the uh amplitude number four how many hours of sleep are you getting every night uh ups and downs but right now seven eight okay that's pretty good and what's your situation married single kids married recently any kiddos yep two uh two boys six and nine two boys very good and how are you chris uh i'm 39. all right last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew um i guess uh i i haven't done a lot of things i i regretted it's more i think i'd look back and say more i should have done that sooner so i guess acting sooner rather than later is outweighs making mistakes every now and then guys act sooner rather than later binder rolled out of his agency back in 2013 big m a happened recently they've just you know they did about 19 million bucks in terms of run rate uh and early of 2018 then did the acquisition you know now they're serving 1600 customers 30 000 acv is a healthy average to call it you know 4 million ish right now per month in revenue the economics look good 93 revenue retention annually 140 net revenue retention annually that 93 was obviously gross um you know trending towards a 12 month payback period team of 350 folks between san mateo boston london spain and remote locations as they continue going after the damn space chris thanks for taking us to the top thanks