Cognism Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

please help me welcome to the stage James it's away from cognizant my name is James Isley I'm the CEO and founder of a company called cognizim cognizant is a B2B sales intelligence provider we help companies find their next best customer and first I'd really like to fight Frank um Nathan um for inviting me to speak I met Nathan at a SAS stock in 2019 and we were part of a group a a event called SAS society and Nathan um hosted the uh the table and he gave me one of the things that I um things that Nathan gave me at that talk was a piece of advice about managing my board and he he urged me to like use my board and to actually drive value from my board before that my board had really been um just an access a reporting exercise a place where I reported my figures and after that advice I really made my board um helped to help really plug the gaps that we had in terms of expertise and one of those people was Phil garlic who's head of corporate development as Zoom info and um Phil garlic really helps us to do the transactions and to do the Acquisitions particularly Casper that's saved me at least a million dollars in fees from Bankers so and that should help pay for like his magazine for uh for a for a while so thank you Nathan for that advice it's small bits of advice that can really help accelerate your growth um and and so that's why these events are so key uh so this is the story of the revenue growth from cognizant um so as you can see we've had very um consistent Revenue growth right now actually we're all end of August we're at 37 million AER uh our Revenue growth has really been a mix of probably about 50 uh from marketing and 50 from our outbound sales team and I'll talk more about that um as we as we go through the talk so the next 20 minutes I'm gonna I'm gonna cover a lot of topics uh I'm gonna just cover really key points and and I think some of the key lessons from cognizant's growth Journey um first of all we're going to talk about the growth from zero to 30 million um the three kind of I think strengths of cognizant one is our hiring of international developers another one is our growth um how we kind of split marketing between capture demand strategies and creating demand strategies then I'm going to look at the m a wide umna I love doing m a um I personally yeah I don't use any Bankers we have the expertise on the board from Phil garlic who used to be a head of corporate development Zoom info and I personally Drive the transactions and I really enjoy that and then there's a there's a we've provided an asset which is our lesser of intent for Casper the template for that uh which which is on the one of the Assets in on the uh the the drive uh and then we just talk about why we did the m a in terms of how it improves our um go to market motion and also about the challenges of driving the m a transaction in terms of uh getting to the valuation and structuring the deal so first of all International developers so my I found my CTO on using upwork um so I'm actually a software developer well that's my background but I would say I was a pretty terrible coder and so I knew that the first Gap that I needed to plug was actually a good uh good head of development I I found my so my ctOS from Croatia uh we we hired most of our developers who are actually based in Croatia in Macedonia we've actually got the average cost of Engineers down to 32k and after the Casper acquisition what we found is that most of their developers were hired in Morocco and Tunisia now we're actually building a new office in um Tunisia where the actual average cost of the engineers is around 16k so one of the key things that I would you know ask people to look at is looking at International talent and hiring uh globally and for us that's that's really been um one of the the big advantages we've had one of the other key lessons is really to actually build offices in those locations so actually we have a office in Croatia in in zadar and we have an office in um Scopia in Macedonia and we're now building a new office in sfax in Tunisia um what that really helps to do is really build culture um and and really helps you to retain that Talent what we've found is that when we've actually had developers that have just work from home that they're not they're far less sticky so that's one of my key lessons and one of the I think the strengths of cognizance growth the next kind of one of the key things that I think we've done really right is around capture demand so so we have a fantastic marketing team Aleister corsi is our CMO I'd really urge you to follow her on LinkedIn that she provides some fantastic content and guidance um you know this is the the way that you know I suppose the world should be seen is that um the model that we have in our head is that about three percent of uh anybody in the market is really looking for Solutions at any one point of time and 97 are actually um not not buyers but need to be warmed up so the typical capture demand strategy is really you know SEO Google ads LinkedIn you're bidding on the keywords that that our users are looking for so for us it's B2B data and also bidding on uh competitive keywords our key lesson here was we tried to Outsource this I you know initially tried to Outsource today um before building a team and really didn't get much success you know using agencies and recently again we tried to Outsource this to try and get cost efficiencies and found that really that was a disaster and so really our key lesson here is really to build an in-house team and to really keep the talent and train the talent internally and to really pair that Talent with great mentors um from from companies that are scaling above you and that's really you know been The Key to Our Success here this is our organic traffic and this is really driven from our create demand strategies so uh currently we're about 260 K of value um of of um from our organic traffic that's about twice the value you know using you know tools like hrefs there's about twice the value of our nearest competitor and really hear what we've done um to really drive that and something we did differently this year is we hired a subject matter expert so Ryan uh Risa who who does this cold calling um we actually used him to build a community this this year and that's really works well for us and created like a really good set of differentiated content so again and one of the other things that we've done here is hire uh like content creator like content creators in in low-cost countries have a lot of marketing staff in South Africa which has been a great location for for hiring in terms of marketing um content and this has really helped us to create differentiated content and to to again like have double the traffic than our competitors uh our nearest competitor that's that's a little bit above above us in size um jumping into section two I'm just going to go through the the I'm gonna really dive into the acquisition uh why you know cognizant's uh growth and story and then caspers so Casper was a company that we acquired in France it was more people uh it was more going after um I would say like that individual user that's buying uh data on a credit card uh so also just look at that kind of whole you know why plg and and then um you know how that helps us expand our Market so again this is just cognizant's Revenue again cognizant is really more about a direct we have a direct sales team um so so we we really have um High sales touch points um we our average ACV is is you know from 15K and above um and you know we we we don't have a really any sort of a freemium version It's how we built the company you know we we we were VC funded and uh and and so you know that gave us the resources to kind of really at a very early stage build that sales team um Casper was actually a bootstrap company it's really plg driven so so you know they have a freemium version their average ACV starts at really 500 and goes up to two thousand dollars so it's a really a very different uh model to Cognizant this is the combined revenue um really the the the vision that I had when going after inquiring uh Casper was to kind of fix an issue that cognizant where when we were actually acquiring those kind of micro and SMB businesses at 15K packages we really had very poor retention of them and what we saw when we looked into Casper was for that same type of audience they had on annual contracts they had about 110 plus net retention whereas you know we were around about the 60 level so so really what it we showed was that that pricing and how they developed their products we hadn't really created the the best customer experience of the best customer Journey but by combining the two companies together we could create this this perfect customer experience where we could take customers that that um starting on a far smaller package that could self-serve and didn't need all the cell support and then move them along to the higher ACP ACV packages as um as as they grew so that was really the vision and what we wanted to build coming together and that should create like the perfect like highest most accelerated uh customer Journey um so this is what Alan to Allen's was the founder of Casper um and this was what he said about it Casper is a very good plg data provider but what we're lacking commercial power to address larger deals cognizant has one of the strongest sales forces in our industry and the combination of two will allow us to achieve great things with cognizant knowledge because cognizance knowledge and resources Casper can become one of the most powerful plg data providers in Europe and smash the competition I mean at the heart of any m a transaction or acquisition is really that narrative that story that you're trying to bind everybody together with and this was the narrative that that I built and I I took and talked to Alan about in the team which really was the common Vision that then helped the transaction go ahead and which was the The Vision that was shared with the board I think it's super important that right at the beginning of the transaction if you're leading that m a transaction that you have a narrative that you have a really well defined narrative about when these two organizations come together how are you then going to be a superpower uh so so this these are the the different skills that come together Casper was really a plg motion um they had created a far more simple product that was really aimed at those individuals that are putting and buying purchasing on a credit card cognizant is really an organization that um is telling people who are buying at the org level and so they have all level authority to buy and we're really having more features to actually sell at the to help benefit those org level buyers and because you've got far more sale touch points to be able to sell that org level solution you have to speak to more buyers of course the ACV has to be higher together we can create that kind of like perfected Journey where individuals can come in and initially start on their credit card and as they grow and expand then we can sell them the benefits of moving to an org level solution when they're ready for that that we're ready for that change this is how the transaction took place um and the kind of order and and why so back in September 2021 I was approached by one of my sales people that we had started to see Casper in our deals now I hadn't heard of Casper before and they just added a UK sales rep and so they started to appear in ideals um so I reached out on to um LinkedIn um it was basic as that and and managed to get hold of the CTO and then the CTO put me in touch with the CEO we had a quick Zoom call and then what I immediately did was fly over to Paris um with that Vision that I uh talked about um because at that time we really felt that we were missing that plg element we had tried to build it internally but but that hadn't worked out so so I really felt at that point we really needed to acquire that plg expertise and really have a part of our organization that was really good at plg and where we could concentrate that skill so I engaged with the cat with um Casper sold them that Vision then in November we um created the letter of intent so Phil garlic um who has that expertise so again we didn't need to use a bank which is great and I'd really um urge that um if you're doing M A it's like you can do this yourself you don't need a banker and you can save millions of dollars in fees um like it isn't that complicated to do that and I really feel that it's super important for you as a Founder to drive the transaction because it will help the success in terms of the relationships you build for the for the Post merger um the the for the Post merger um success for that to be successful and so um we did the letter of intent the letter of intent which again I've providing the resources is a really important step I mean that that that's really you negotiate that that's where you build you ground expectations uh and so it's a really key step to get that right and to get all the expectations set correctly between the company acquiring your own board and your own staff at the same time we did uh due diligence in uh technical Financial due diligence in January 2022 and kicked off the legal process and then the transaction completed in March 2022. so it was it was fairly quick I mean Casper is actually a fairly small organization it was 14 people again I threw a lot of personal time into it to make sure that it happened quickly um and also did lots of trips to Paris which was no bad thing and to make sure that that um that I built the relationships with the Casper team uh in terms of yeah so so the next section I'm just going to um have a quick look at the LOI um the the structure of the deal and and what we learned so in terms of the letter of intent um you can you know have a look at that that in on the desk and if you've got any questions like please connect to me afterwards and I'm happy to explain anything or go into anything in more depth um I mean one of the big lessons going through another m a transaction at the moment is at this stage is really to understand is the founder ready to sell like this is where you can really drag out a lot of the issues and and um really find out like who at the uh where the other company of the doubts and and then you've got as the drive of the transaction it's my job to to to kind of challenge those doubts and Tackle them in the letter of intent to get everybody comfortable with the transaction so um again this part of the process is really about building relationships and closing off doubts um and um another big another big area here is jurisdiction issues so Casper was a French company um there's a lot of uh negative noise about France as a country to do business in well so far we're having a very good experience um here we did have one problem around tax on the on Equity so so it was actually more um tax efficient to do a pure cash transaction and so that's ultimately how we structured the deal uh so the deal structure here so so of course the big debating point is valuation and we've just gone through a period in time where valuations have been Sky High and when actually we started this transaction you know there were deals being done in the VC community in our space where multiples were like like 40 times Revenue um so of course that wasn't going to fly with our board and so you know one of the um things that I really had to do was really um find that common ground on valuation between the founders and my board which is you know we're we're VC funded so I've got a lot of VCS to kind of debate valuation with that um one of the like methods and tactics that there that are used in terms of negotiation is really you know talk about valuation multiples um that are higher on the the current uh AR and then with the board talk about the multiple um at the close of the transaction so you can talk about a low multiple so so that was just one tactic so that I could actually um like meet everybody's expectation um it's just really about talking about the same thing at different periods of time um that would again help to find agreement um in terms of the way that we structured it um because we didn't do Equity um we we actually built an out structure so um so those are the cash payments at different milestones and that's worked really well as well um in terms of incentivizing just in the same way as Equity we did our the first time we actually did an acquisition we did an acquisition in 2020 with a company called meltastic that was most like majority Equity uh and and I haven't really seen any difference between doing it with Equity or doing it on this own out structure um and actually from from our perspective because we did this cash and not Equity it's really cheaper if you think about it from from our perspective as a fast Growth Company uh and actually the the the other party preferred cash um I think everybody always prefers cash um generally um so um and yeah and this the the overall that um structuring the deal with this um and communicating on the on the um the multiple in in different ways to the to the acquiring company into our board really helped to get everybody on board for the transaction um so so I guess to summarize and I've gone pretty quickly through that um the the what I've covered over there is really you know the keys to our growth is really for cognizant has really been um us um being International like hiring International developers like for us to grow faster in the future like I'm gonna find new locations again right now we're looking at North Africa because it's really untapped and there's great talent there um you know we've we've had a great we created an amazing um uh way of capturing of growing with this capture demand and creating demand strategies and splitting those out and really putting resources in both I mean that in terms of create demand really that's like a year uh payoff but again as you see now like we have double the number amount of organic traffic than our nearest competitor so again it's really paid off and the Investments really paid off um in terms of why do m a uh or inorganic growth is is um really beneficial it's really beneficial to plug the gaps that you might have in your own skills in your own team uh it really does also help to stop competition um and and um you know that that that's been a key for I think that's um Casper would have been a big problem overall if they've grown in the US market is independent um and of course adding product capabilities and in terms of the m a uh a book um hopefully you can all dive into that real uh letter of intent and that'll give you a great template um to to think about deals um if you have any questions on that please you know happy to answer them um you know it's it again we've now got this new go to market motion which which is fantastic right now we're using Casper to enter new markets so we're about to kick off Spain um so the aim is that for us going forward is that we'll go into new markets with a plg motion once we get a certain amount of traction then we'll set up the direct sales teams to sell deals at a higher ACV when we've got once we're in key accounts uh that you know that for me is extremely exciting and and it means we can grow at a faster Pace uh and in terms of valuation um again in terms of negotiating um yeah that's that's um you know the key there is really to um be able to like look at the expected to discuss the expectations of the company you're going to acquire and look at the expectations of the uh of your board and then find ways to discuss the evaluation in different ways to make everybody happy which is easy to do if you just use time as one it was one of those methods to um to to to set people's expectation in the right place so that's um Sophie thank you again for letting me present Nathan um and yeah um and if you have any questions please contact me connect to me on LinkedIn I'm happy to answer any anything in more depth [Applause] [Music]

Introduction hello everyone my guest today is james isilla he's the ceo and founder of cognizam a b2b sas company which was recently voted one of the top 25 startups in the uk by linkedin before founding cognizam james was employed as an algorithmic trader james has a a masters of engineering and information systems engineering from imperial college of london james ready to take a stop yes for sure thank you thanks for watching this show you bet algorithmic trading so did you get like super rich you know carving milliseconds off of trades b by installing hardware close to the stock exchange not quite i was a i was a swiss utility when i was doing the algorithmic trading um so so i was doing kind of a bit more slower stuff um but but it was it was good fun it was i finished i thought it was my dream career but um but then i realized that it wasn't you know it was sitting behind a desk all day long which i'm a bit more of a social person so it wasn't for me really so what is cognism so cognizant we help businesses find and engage new business in the in the b2b space so we're providing global contact data so mobiles direct dials b2b emails and and then the tools to engage that data to create new business so and we've also just recently acquired a business in germany called mailtastic which is a email signature marketing platform and that really ties back to getting those prospects engaged and to help increase uh conversions um when i hear about an acquisition like that and the space you're in what i really hear is the data play it allows you to make sure you have enriched in you know enriched contact data etc exactly yeah so so that's part of it you know part of when when when we're looking at acquisitions what we're also looking for are tools that help us to inform our data asset and to improve our data quality and that acquisition was done back i believe on may 11 of this year so fairly recently um how did you meet the founders tell me how the acquisition went down yeah but pretty much everything was done because it was covered and then we had all the country lockdowns as well so it was a really interesting time to uh to do a an acquisition we met them just before uh the country lockdowns had happened so we were able to travel and meet them once but then everything was done over zoom and so we did all of all of it over zoom and you know it's funny because in germany you know you have to actually go to the notary and actually have the whole contract spoken out even uh you meant to actually have a representative to sit there and listen to the entire contract spoken out but they made an exception because of covert and so we're able to do everything remotely that's incredible okay so that closed earlier this year um and give me a general sense how would you guys pay for mailtastic um in total uh you know i believe like in total it was around about uh four million i think it was about four million and how do you structure that i mean you you obviously have some scale but you're not like you don't have hundreds of millions to throw around was it an all stock deal all cash was there earned out how do you it was it was a mix of a mix of stock and a mix of cash okay got it and how do you as a startup founder sell the mailtastic founders on taking your stock instead of more cash you have to have to sell a vision to them get them to believe in your vision and we've had an incredibly fast growth rate so you know we we grew in in 2019 from like two to seven million um so you know we've got an amazing revenue engine i mean that that's the heart of our company really is is um you know an incredible inside sales engine and and great great uh marketing engine as well and and so we we could sell them the the fact that they would grow faster with us i think in europe in particular there's a lot of great product companies that have um you know don't have the capital to grow and have um but you know like generally weak um you know don't don't have the investment in the sales team um and also in their in their home markets it's usually a little bit tougher than say in the uk or us markets both both of which we have access to so just to be Monthly recurring revenue clear you finished 2019 with the run rate of 2 million and you've just recently passed a 7 million dollar run rate just we've just yeah that was at the end of 2019 we were 7 million and now we've just gone over um 10 million that's great okay so i got i got my math wrong then you finished 2018 with 2 million 2019 with 7 million and now you're about you're passing 10 million 830 grand a month yeah yeah yeah yeah so this month we did about um 750k of net new business so so we're kind of getting back yeah so we're getting back to kind of just pretty where we were pre-covered and we had a little bit of a hit um you know with the we're wearing that happened with um covered for one month but we've consistently grown and consistently hit our targets every month walk me through what happened in covet again 2018 you're 2 million 2019 you get 7 million run rate december that's you know call it eight nine ten months ago kova didn't sort of hit you've only added about two million over the past ten months what impact did covet have on that growth um so well i suppose yeah we were kind of three million right i guess the um what really happened a churn i guess like customers that we had that um were in the recruitment and the event space in particular got really heavily hurt um i think you know in particular in the uk now you know those types of you know we've had like a complete lock down um and then we've gone back just recently in the last couple of weeks into lockdown um so so you know those businesses are heavily here um so we i it's like when we had started in uh 2017 well you know we had a like a focus on s b businesses so of course s b businesses have been particularly we've been moving up um consistently you know away from the the smaller companies up um to you know larger employee companies but you know that was part of like a large part of our custom base and that part that custom bases being hit particularly hard as well um and a lot of that um it's kind of like a portion of that is coming back but you know the you know that that was the main hit and then it was also just the disruption of going from in office to work from home um and so we've made that transition now of actually being able to effectively manage a remote sales team but initially you know that was a bit of a shock to our system um of actually you know because we had a like a great office culture and you know great great team in office yep no it's tough thing to balance obviously the nice thing is you're still getting growth and yeah to your point caught two and a half three million a new ar over the past call it 10 or so months um you've raised capital obviously along the way tell us about Raised that so yeah we've raised in total about 23 million and from a mix of european and u.s investors um so we've still got a very healthy cash balance from that um but yeah um you know it initially we um had uh investors from mainland europe um from from um switzerland and from um actually from the balkans um like a fund from um uh that um like the balkan fund and then we got funded by uh uk investors angel investors and then uh more recently from a big uh us vc called peak span and and then from axa investment partners which are also european based so break that down for me you did 10 million with peak span in july of 2019 is that right yeah yeah and then 12 million from axa just just in march this year yeah and that was a mix of like primary and secondaries yeah tell me some folks don't understand what secondary means how's that work um so basically it's employee existing employees or existing investors selling their shares um you know for us a small discount to um to to an investor so the it's a great way to get liquidity and it's becoming a bit more common so if you want liquidity an earlier stage you know that's that's actually becoming an option now where was it you know from my understanding it wasn't much of an option even just a few years ago but now it's it's you know funds are getting more um used to offering it and and why why would folks on your team do that if they know your financial since you're growing so fast especially considering the tax consequences of cashing out a portion of their shares yeah i mean speaking to some of my angel investors the angel investors especially from the uk um a lot of their angel investments have just died and so actually getting any sort of money out investment is great you know um so they're very static just to actually see any sort of return from us from a seed stage investment um i i think you know just generally you know all everybody in the team is is pretty much a first time in startups like none of us are experienced um entrepreneurs um and so just getting some liquidity to to get a lifestyle balance um you know was was it was a great opportunity to you know um i was like get cash it kind of get a bit of a cash and uh and buy some of the things that you wanted in life right yeah about what portion of the 12 might end up going to secondary uh totally it was about five million oh okay okay it's not not was that 30 40 40 something like that yeah yeah yeah okay not bad and the rest of that obviously just sort of infusing the company you mentioned healthy cash balance today buy yourself some runway during covert obviously is probably a main priority help us understand what team looks like today how many folks uh in total we're 179 people so it's a very large number but we have a lot of people in the balkans um so you know we have like a large data research team in macedonia and all our engineers are in croatia um in a place called zidar and summer and zagreb and then our sales and marketing team are in the uk and then we've got a small office in new york and one person in vancouver what does that what's the total monthly expense for just the team in macedonia just being an idea um oh uh in terms of expense i mean i would say it's not i mean typically um like we're paying about um you know 500 euros per person there into like on an average for you know so that's kind of the average price i'd have to exactly yeah per month yeah it's very i mean when we when i looked at it it was cheaper than having higher say in india and you know they speak they're on the same time zone uh like everybody's fluent in english um so you know it's it's a very cost effective location and part of like our you know like i said one of our first backers was a firm called sc ventures benches self-central ventures um who are um you know from that region and you know part of it is creating jobs in in that region and so it was a really great fit for us to get take funding from them and then also to build a base there so you know like it was a double bonus really and so how many people are now are on the team there uh i believe it's a like in both regions it's about 60. okay about 60. okay great great and now to help me understand this so there's a crunchbase says you guys have raised 50 million that's obviously not accurate or missing something yeah i asked that to be corrected yeah there's like a double count there i think i'm like they've got the series be counted like 20 times um got it because then i was gonna give you i was gonna say you've only built a nine million dollar company and you raised like 60 mil 6x that that's not really capital efficient but you're much more capital efficient than what that shows yeah yeah yeah so i i asked for that to be corrected but it hasn't i'll chase them no worries we got there we got the right story here now that's all that matters so 60 people uh in those locations 179 on the team total and so how many engineers would you consider on the team uh we have like 15 coders and we have 24 with devops which includes qa as well like 24 with devops and qa okay and how many folks on our team carry a quota um uh i would so i would say like carry a quick carrying quota um i would say that's around about um 12 right now and james should i dig deeper here at the top of the show you said one of the things you feel like you're very good at is your is your sort of revenue motion i mean should i dig deeper on how you built the sales team sure yeah so how'd you so how did you build it right so let's just start with like a number and then work backwards right what do you set quota at relative to their full on target earnings base plus commission um so oh so in terms of the the actual quote i mean um right now uh our uh like so in terms of the actual bdms or we i guess you call account executives um they have like a minimum target of around about eight thousand uh dollars of um quota that they're meant to be bringing in per month and so that that's and then in terms of commission we're just about to change our commission model right now it's it's you know i've been told it's very generous um and and we we kind of set targets we you know we've we've been setting targets so that you know generally like almost all of our reps always hit that hit their target so we're quite generous on the targets and we're getting getting a little bit tougher uh now in terms of targets so um yeah but it's around it's 8 000 minimum that they need to hit so like last month how many reps hit hit your quota uh all of them hit quite so okay so you have so that's obviously not good you want something you want to set up sofa yeah so and then you said your commission's generous i mean some usually hear something like 30 percent or something like that what is your commission at right now okay people are not that generous ten percent of monthly or annual uh i've i've monthly yeah got it so if a quote is hitting their 8 000 in new mrr target every month they're basically adding 800 of a month to their to their comp basically 10 percent of 8k uh yeah yeah but the yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah okay got it what we're going to say since they were say something else there no no no yeah okay got it so commission's ten percent how long here's a big question how long do you pay that commission is it every month for 12 months or 24 months or what yeah it's every month for 12 for 12 months okay so if a customer stays longer than 12 months your margin automatically increases because you don't have to pay commission anymore exactly yeah interesting how long are customers staying um i mean uh generally um like yeah in terms of uh the total time that they're staying um i mean yeah um that would be uh i i say like in general it's around about 14 months um i mean but we have customers that are staying a lot longer a lot longer than that uh maybe a better question is like what's your monthly revenue churn um um so our net retention um our net retention is around 85 percent right now and it's moving towards it ninety percent well james that's really poor that's a very poor net retention metric why is that so low um i mean it's i think it's quite typical in our industry i mean because in the in the like for meltastic for instance our net retention ratio is you know um over and 110 percent well that's great yeah um but for the for in prospecting tools you know for like i said in the data business um like a net retention rate of around 85 percent is you know to my understanding from the history of industry quite common and so we have a very fast sales cycle and you know also we have a returning like a lot of those customers will like customers that churn out will come back um so you know they they treat the services almost transactional and so then come they they return so it's it's um you know as far as you know my understanding and knowledge of the industry is quite a common that's like a common kind of um well i mean we just saw zoom info go public right they're obviously much larger more mature etc they've been around for you know much longer and you know they're like 120 in terms of net revenue retention right so you would put them in your space right yeah i would put them in a space i think that that figure really applies to more than enterprise uh clients and if you actually look at their smb net retention or their mid market then then i think it's it's more towards our figure yeah yeah yeah i mean according to the s1 you know they basically brought it broke it down by three cohorts um they also broke it down though by just as a on a revenue basis across the entire business and it came out to call it like 110 120 but look you'll get there i mean that's why you go do an acquisition like mailtastic you'll do more of this and it'll become stickier and stickier over time um how many part of that is we started in that smb space right and and um and then we've moved up towards um you know moving towards enterprise right now so that that's part of the story how many customers are you currently serving Currently serving 1000 customers um in total over a thousand if you include the meltastic clients okay got it so i mean so so what are they paying on average per month then um in total um like our acv right now is about 14 000 uh per year got it got it so that means our poo is calling like you know a thousand eleven hundred range something like that yeah interesting um okay got it and do you think you i mean do you think you'll break a ten million dollar run right by the end of the year you got three more months oh no we're so we've already we've already gone over 10 million so we're over 10 million now and and and we should finish this year at 11.5 and then next year you know i'm i'm certain with the kind of metrics that we've got that we'll get we'll be at 20 at the end of next year interesting um that kind of confidence to me goes oh he he's putting a deck together he's about to go raise more capital well yeah we we i mean we always have like a deck ready um but you know i'm just quite solid on our metrics and then the other thing is that we're aiming to increase our atv you know it was at like 11k now it's at 14k and you know the aim is to get it towards the 28k um and we're releasing like you know uh we you know we know what we need to do in terms of product strategy to get there yeah that makes a lot of sense and um how much are you burning per month right now um actually only right now at the moment it's only about 200k uh per month that we're burning right yeah that's that's net burn yeah that's not that's actually not that that's not that bad so i mean you're that money that you raised i mean you've got you know call it 10 million basically well 5 million of the 12 was secondary so you've got what six or seven still sitting in the bank yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly interesting so and so we're doing um you know i think covered actually helped us get way more efficient so we didn't need an office anymore like um you know it slowed our kind of head count growth um so there was a lot of positive effects i say from from covert and just making us more efficient in terms of how we worked um so and you know we really have an engine now where we can just put more money into head count in terms of sdrs or into marketing and then get more growth and so it's just really a question of like you know how much we want to put the foot down on the pedal at the moment yeah i won't push you harder than this sort of high level question because it's obviously a sense of information but when you did do the 12 million dollar round did you guys break 100 million dollar evaluation or do you think that'll be your next round um oh yeah i think that'll be our next our next round got it so if you hadn't been flirting with it though you guys have been pretty close on the 12 million a fairly close yeah yeah yeah very good all right james let's wrap up here with the famous five number one favorite business book um the hard thing about hard things by ben horowitz number two is there a ceo you're following or studying yeah of course uh henry schuck from um zoom info uh of course um i just i like they have an incredible revenue machine and also just their path to ipo through organic and inorganic growth is uh you know something to be studied it's a heck of a it's a heck of a story in the use of debt when you look at the zoom info acquisition and how they pulled that off it was incredible number three what uh what's your favorite online tool for building your company besides your own i said gong i like gong um i also slack actually gong and slack number uh four how many hours of sleep you get every night about six okay in situation james married single kids uh you're married uh two two girls 13 11 and one boy three years old oh wow and how are you i'm 42 42. take us home last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew oh new um i i would say actually um like doing a startup you know like actually uh taking more risk um away from you know i suppose like when i graduated it was the the path was to go into investment banking which is what i did and then i became a you know developer trader um you know i think if i um would have i would have taken more risk and actually jumped into startup world earlier um because i just love it it's it's like it's just so much fun guys cognizam.com a great prospecting tool they've just passed 10 million in annual recurring revenue will finish this year with 11.5 million with eyes on 21 million in 2021 they're serving over a thousand customers they raised 23 million bucks to do it their last round of 12 million bucks 5 million of that was secondary but the rest basically still being the bit still sitting in the bank because they're just burning call it 200 000 per month right now maybe do another round in 2021 we'll see what happens team of 179 people big data team in macedonia and another team in croatia of developers 24 engineers total 12 quota carrying sales reps about to change the commission structure to get a little more aggressive there eight thousand dollars a new mrr per month is quota for those aes as james continues to scale the company james thanks for taking us to the top thank you one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry buyers they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards their expenses their revenue arpu cac ltv you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every thursday 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the subscribe button below here on youtube the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we 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