How Cognism CEO James Isilay grew Cognism to $83M revenue and 6.4K customers in 2024.

quick context this was recorded March 28th and 29th so a couple weeks ago at my live event SAS open.com we had a thousand software CEOs there if you missed it we hope to see at the next one September 5th and 6th in New York City SAS open.com but for now let's jump into the recording the first two hires I ever made were terrible like 72% of Founders report that the ENT bills Journey affected their mental health yeah we've gone from um you zero and now we're at 71 million a hey folks if we haven't met yet my name is Nathan ladka I launched and sold my first software company back in 2015 and went on to write a book about it which you guys made a Wall Street Journal bestseller purchasing over 30,000 copies thank you so much for that after the book I launched this show and went went on to create founder path.com I raised a large fund to do non-dilutive deals with B2B software Founders so far Far We've invested in over 400 software Founders totaling $150 million here in 2024 we're doing three to four New Deals per week so if you're looking for Capital and don't want to give up Equity go sign up at founder path.com for free to get your offer all right let's jump into the interview hibody um yes I'm James isay founder and CEO of cognism um so this talk is about like how cognism avoided scaling crisis from going Z to 70 million a um when I was thinking about like how to tax tackle that topic the the there's many stages of the journey from0 to 70 million and the one theme that came back to me again and again was about mentorship and my Support Network and and then I and it really reflected on how did that support network grow from when from when you know we were Zer AR to 70 million AR and I think like that's the biggest difference and that's the biggest thing that's made um our journey smooth and so that was what I was going to focus on how many people here have a mentor could you just put your hand up if you have like a mentor oh wow not that many how many people have a mentor of a company that's that's several stages ahead of them okay so like just SW okay so this is a really important talk um so this is this is our AR um and as you can see it's been it's been fairly it's been a fairly smooth Journey um so so yeah we've gone from um you zero and now we're at 71 million a and and there um just so you know like cognism we're in the B2B sales intelligence um so we help um companies with contact data filling the sales pipeline enriching um opportunities to help um increase win rate um so we're really helping to build um and and help execute on Pipeline um the the the the one of the great things about me going into this industry is I knew nothing about this industry before cognism I was a Trader so I traded oil German power and carbon I was in the finance industry I started cognism to build a fintech and then we pivoted into sales intelligence and so one of the great things about this journey is I really didn't know anything about sales intelligence so corny quote from socet trees true knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing and I really knew nothing about this industry and that was very beneficial for the for the journey and because I approached it from the perspective that I knew nothing and I needed to keep finding mentors to help me to uh build my knowledge in the industry and know and know what to do in terms of building a company so so I really like went out and seek knowledge and I really went out and tried to like find the mentors um to help me get to the next stage um this is really important these are some really key stats um 72% of Founders report that the ent's journey affected their mental health 37 report suffering from anxiety and 36% from burnout the average level of loneliness among CEO Founders is reported to be 7.6 out of 10 the the entrepreneurial journey is really really hard you um like I've seen Founders burn out I've seen um people go through crisis having a mentor and having a really good support network is really key for those moments to get through to the other side and for for me it's been really key to help with the continuous scaling yeah so the and again like just to go back to these four pillars that you need to think about for yourselves when you're um on this entrepreneurial Journey you know family health career wealth that you know that they're all pillars of that you need in terms of your support network and I'll show where my support Network's at right now and you know if you don't have one of these pillars in the right place then what I've seen time and again with with other Founders is it just the chair breaks and it falls down because one of the legs falls down so it's really important that you build a support network around all of these areas this was my support network in 2016 um so two two types of investors I had the conservative investor Dean Farley both of these the these these two were friends at the time Dean was like the conservative investor that would call me WhatsApp me every single day chasing me about every single penny that was spent um like he was it was a bit miserable but like again he he kept me on my game and and Usman was the optimistic investor who said he'd always be there for me provided the first check in um and then I never heard from him ever again um so combined they were the perfect investor but that was like my support network in 2016 when I started on this journey it gave me the confidence to move forward and it gave me the confidence to get going um this is my support network now it's actually bigger than this um and and and there's many legs to it it's missing my fitness coach which I've just added um but like Harold debant is my wellness coach he makes sure that I'm in my a good happy place in my mind uh Dario arnard is my uh wealth advisor I got secondaries uh to stop me going crazy spending tons of money and creating loads of stress from that um KT trust is my um CEO coach so she helped build our company values she helps me whenever there's a crisis in my management team she she's the best adviser on how to resolve that crisis in terms of personal relationships between seite Executives she helps us with okrs and Peter Dean is my CEO mentor and he's he's been at net Suite when you know taking it to billions in Revenue Crystal decisions um in terms of like taking that to a formidable expert he's been there many times before and he's been on the journey many times before any crisis I've ever seen he's seen it before and uh you know I've a he has the solution on how to resolve it or he knows how not to resolve it um and then I have these um investors Peak span Balton they have like dozens of experts in residents dozens of operating Partners like Balden for instance has David kog really famous CMO um David vman the the um CPO of um bookings.com and they they're really th those those networks really help me in terms of in particular who to hire which are the seite people that I need to hire next to keep the the scaling Journey going um this was a really good um guide that I found um from I had to shout out to Santiago morale which really I think really gives a good guide on on the stages that you hit and and the what you need to develop in terms of your own um understanding and knowledge as a CEO I I I I didn't know I hadn't touched any of these topics when I started my company and now that this is these are the kind of it was a really good guide of what I've educated myself on as I've gone through my journey so like the final stage digital value infrastructure applications team product management Work Management operations team of teams coordination and process Investments and projects organization and culture that one's been super key for our scaling and then Enterprise governance risk security compliance information man management and architecture that's what I'm really like building knowledge around right now and where I'm really seeking out mentors to kind of like help me with the scaling there this was another guy great guide and I felt that like we had a talk early this morning morning about like hitting these scaling crises um and the this this really resonated to me and and I think it like uh resonated from talks I had this morning um so these These are kind of the typical like Revenue points you get where you hit those scaling crisis and there where you really need to make sure that you've got the mentors that are at the next stage and some mentors for instance when when Peter Dean became my mentor originally I probably I I knew I knew I know now that I really took him to an earlier stage because the advice that he gave me wasn't really resonating and didn't really have impact cuz I take him a bit early but right now he's the perfect mentor and and whenever a crisis comes up because he's he's really been he's really played at this stage like the 50 million a plus um his his advice has been invaluable um so um yes um oh we lost some pictures there um but so I wanted to go down to like a particular stage and then just talk through these different stages and what mentors I had there and where they helped us um so if we go back to like the sub 1 million when we just started I had three key mentors one was Tom James um and he was an angel investor who' had an exit the...