How Collibra CEO Felix Maele grew to $210M revenue and 1K customers in 2025.

this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of Revenue or customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what their marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have I'm now at $20,000 per talk 5 and6 million he help on global domination we just broke our 100,000 unit sold Mark and I'm your host Nathan Latka this is episode 683 coming up tomorrow morning I talked to Nico who breaks down how to raise your first round of funding with his Healthcare API and Redux founder again his name is Nico good morning everybody my guest this morning is Felix vanal he is the CEO and one of the founders of a company called CRA which he took from idea to founding to more than eight years of record growth and Industry leadership we'll talk about it he's responsible for the company's Global business strategy now prior to co-founding khra Felix served as a researcher at the semantics technology and applications research laboratory uh at a university over in Brussels where he focused on on ontology focused Crawlers for the semantic web and semantic data integration he holds a masters in computer science and software engineering from that University and a master in general management from the vurk business school Felix are you ready to take us to the top yes I am thanks for did I did I get all those words correct you got them right I did my best I did my best sounds complex good so tell us what we want to dig more into your story but tell us what kber does and what's the business model how does it make money sure sure so basically we're a software company SAS company and we help typically larger organizations to better find understand and control their data ultimately um yeah and tell tell us a story about one of the customers that use you so we get a real example yeah sure so we really got started in financial services so every bank today needs data governance which is what we do what how how it's called Uh which basically uh the reason that they need that is for Regulatory Compliance so every Bank needs to be able to show to The Regulators that they understand uh what data they have how it flows through the organization so ultimately if they report to Regulators they have full confidence uh that the numbers are correct uh that's really where we started but right now it's it's really across lots of different Industries um driven by big data analytics iot uh Ai and so forth and what year you launch the company in we launched it in 2008 okay 2008 and bootstrapped or have you raised capital uh we raised Capital um so we actually started out of school my first company the first thing I ever did um and we raised a seed round of about 800,000 Euros which at the time was a pretty big deal especially in Belgium which didn't really know doesn't really know Venture Capital as we as we know here in the US um but then we started to bootstrap it until profitability uh and we were profitable tripling every year and that's uh when we we raise our first bigger round our series B round of about 20 million uh and then we were in kind of full growth mode what year was the series B series B was 2040 okay so all in you've raised about 20, 400,000 something like that uh in December just last December we did a $50 million rounds series rounds all we did about seven seven um 75 million got it so 75 million in total and you said this is your first company out of college how old are you today I am 32 32 awesome this is so you've been focused on this for about a decade right yes it takes a while sometimes it does hey the focus is an important thing so so the risk in this chat we have is that I lose the audience because they don't understand uh kind of the data side of what I describe because you you are very I mean you're an engineer right so semantic web things like this people may not understand is there a way you can dumb this down so that and I'm not calling my audience dumb but even for me right can you dumb this down for me absolutely and I I I love to use a bit of an Al the analogy let's say you have a library and Library you have book books and you have these index cards and these index cards tell you where to find the book who the author is who's last rented it uh it's very similar to organizations with data right so have you have lots of databases that store the data these are the books of a library what we do we are the index cards we help uh people users find um where the data is uh what it means how they can use it uh what the quality is these these types of things and and ultimately what we want to get is to get to is that we call it the Amazon ification of data where ultimately users just shop for data like they are on Amazon they they they put it in their data basket so to speak and then they goes to approval work workflows to actually get access to it and so they can run the analytics interesting so it's I mean is this almost like a search engine for data sets it's it's in a way yes it helps them find the data so that's in a way the search engine part y uh but then you need to understand it there's quality there there's really the governance because now it's chaos everybody wants to do data and everybody does data and it's a lot of chaos and we help um companies control it more so people can actually find it and get value out of it and where are you today in terms of customers how many customers you have paying you right so we have uh close to 200 customers and I imagine if you raise 75 million bucks and you have 200 customers this is very much an Enterprise play with really high kind of arpus what's your arpo at on average yes it varies but right now it's about 200 to 250k annually or monthly Ann annually got it yeah monthly would be a would be a nice business huh that would be nice got it so if I if I divide that out by 12 you have the average customer paying you somewhere around 20 grand uh per month now are these contracts do you pull them all forward are they all annual plans where the cash is up front uh annual plans with cash front yes okay so no MTI no monthly yeah never got it so I'm Felix I just want to get a broad sense of Revenue if I take 200 customers times the number you just gave me that puts you at somewhere around 4.1 million bucks in Mr or somewhere around call it 10 million in ARR is that about right or sorry sorry not 10 not 10 sorry 50 50 million in ARR um a bit less we started actually with a Perpetual model so some of these customers are still on Perpetual model what what is what's that model look like for for people listening right now that might be starting they might want to use that model yeah so it's it's a license fee basically the customer pays you one big license fee up front and then they own a software and then they pay uh maintenance fee yearly which is typically 20% of the initial fee I see and the difference between the typical SAS m is that they pay the same amount every year I see so the recurring part is is less than if we if we throw up a range then could we say somewhere between 30 and 50 million bucks in ARR yeah that covers it yeah yeah yeah got it okay good let's go back into the story so so you graduate from school you you you were an engineer right you got your engineering degree yes correct how did you get this idea um it's uh I was doing research on semantic technology at the time and I was doing another master in software engineering uh and I was in Argentina studying and I was thinking a long time okay what do I want to do next I basically had four option in my mind I could continue do a PhD I could go into banking could go into Consulting um or I could actually start my own thing and the last thing was the only thing that really uh sounded exciting to me and I finally I started reading these books in Silicon Valley I think in from Silicon Valley did these biographies like yeah I think they had a great book at the time it's called Founders at work um it's fantastic book it's a bit old now but it talks about the founders of Twitter and so and so on before that existed and in all my I think naivity I thought well when they can do it I can at least try right why why shouldn't I and kind of that's how we got started and you were at this point what 22 23 yeah 22 years old 23 and you said we tell me about the founding team so we started uh four Founders oh wow yeah four Founders uh the three others were doing uh their PHD at the lab and then while we got started I did like mini a mini MBA the the general management during that time we kind of wrote the first business plan and then as I graduated we raised 800,000 Euros uh seeed round and started the company that's a lot of Founders to start the company with how do you have the tough conversation around Equity or did you just split it 25 each we just split it 25 each no that's a lazy way to do it you just you said boom I don't want to debate about this let's just be fair we're all going to do the exact same amount of work everyone gets 25% yes okay so let me ask you this because this this happens and no one ever talks about it let's say there's four of you guys there's a major company decision and you're split down the middle two of you want to do one thing two you want or do the other how do you break the split yeah so I think it's it's um so I'm CEO and and I think what we've tried to from from the beginning and it's not always easy of course is to split uh shareholders from management and of course in the beginning like your shareholders are your management and is the whole company but as you grow that changes over time and so we try to separate the two as much as possible so any kind of shareholder related just shareholders which now includes venture capitalist and so forth anything that's company decision management related is just management and this as a shareholder as a Founder I don't have any additional rights as a manager I only have more obligations if you will because I'm a Founder that's a great way to put it I think and give us a sense you said you you just did your series B see series C so what I assume the foref founders still have most of it you probably have a very small Equity pool and what investors own 25 30% something like that yeah that's not really public but it's it's in a typical range got it what when people are doing a series C I'm I'm interested in this data because you just did it don't say your specific situation but on average what percentage of of com of your company are you giving up when you're doing a series C I think that's that's so hard to say it depends uh where you are in your trajectory how much you need it how raising uh I wouldn't know I mean Market averages honestly what was most important for you when you were negotiating this this last round um I think actually the series B was a big round for us because we were profitable at the time didn't have to do anything and and so for us that we were really at a Crossroads where with the founders and kind shareholders decision okay what do we want to do um and we really believe that we can build a category defining company we were the first in our Market it's a huge opportunity it doesn't really you don't have that that chance that often and so that's when we said let's go for it and so the series B I think that was kind of a big decision for us and now we've been on the trajectory to get to 100 million in recuring Revenue as quickly as possible and kind of the serc lies in that path how did you decide I imagine you had interest from multiple parties how did you decide kind of which investors to pick was it just strictly who gave you the best valuation or was there strategic approach how' you think about it uh it's a combination obviously evu matters uh but it's it's more than that what I really want those people that understand their business and have done it before um and obviously it's it's a very it's a big relationship you you need to build uh so you need to trust each other and so how much do you trust the people you bring on board is a is a critical I think is is ultimately the most important and you ultimately went I believe based on my research with with with Matthew right at iconic yes correct so why did you like him like how' he win Ian we build a relationship from the beginning um um he had great references um that's how we got introduced and um very founder friendly but also um long-term investor um and so it just clicked really well shifting back to the business for a second at aro's this high right with 200 customers I imagine you have a lot of kind of inbound sales because you can afford it because the contract value is so high and account managers and things how are you managing turn what's gross customer turn per month yeah so yearly customer turn is really low it's about 3 to 4% that's that's amazing that's really really low uh so I mean big uh it's a basically land and expand model even with these kind of big land deals uh but they're they're the biggest companies in the world um so that's really really important for us to keep that TR low and then expand over time in in those accounts where we sell more seats basically that's the that's the business model so gross gross retention call it 97% annually when you talk about net uh uh uh Vue net net net revenue expansion I mean you're looking at 110% year over your growth 120% yeah 120 125 got it so you're expanding these accounts and growing them 20 to 30% every year corre amazing what are you so you've raised a lot of capital I imagine these pitch decks you're having to kind of show how you can spend the money to get more customers so you probably have a good idea on CAC what are you spending to acquire these customers it's in um I mean it's an enterpr Enterprise sales place so um like like you said field account reps that are pretty expensive you need a big kind of support team with pre-sales and account manager and so forth also long s Cycles so that's why you really got to invest up front to get to to close these deals um and that's really where the where the most of the money H gets in but um with the very low turn I mean the the the the GAC LTV ratio is really really high what what is really high it's like it's almost indefinite that it's hard to calculate right now because we almost have no turn and there's no limit we we've had customers whove been with us for eight years years continue to upsell so it's it's um this is one of those really Felix interesting areas in the SAS world because you'll have a lot of overoptimistic brand new Founders who will go in an Excel sheet and say we have 1% churn they'll extrapolate that out and say the customer is going to stay with us for a 100 months or something crazy and unrealistic they multiply times their arpo and they get a totally unrealistic lifetime value number then they spend the CAC based off the LTV and they go bankrupt a guy like you you're in the opposite position right you've already kind of proven it out you you lifetime value could be millions of you have no idea so how do you decide how to set the threshold on what you'll spend to acquire a customer yeah I think what what we really look at is um is sales efficiency sales and marketing efficiency so how much sales and marketing dollars are we spending to generate $1 of AR what is that number um it's around Benchmark um Benchmark data around 0.8 0.9 and okay teach us that I haven't had anyone bring that up before and I've had many Founders that have raised sign you know amount amounts like what you've raised how's that work so 8% what's that ratio so it basically means that it's close to one so it means that it cost us $1 in sales on marketing expense to generate $1 in ar oh I see so it's basically I think a 12 month like payback payback which is super healthy and then these customers are sending with you for multiple years so it's all upside after that yes got it makes a lot of sense team size where you guys at about uh 210 right now 210 people wow amazing and where are you guys based uh so uh biggest team is in New York uh then we have Engineering in Brussels and Poland okay and um sales and marketing for Europe as out of London and what is the uh you mentioned you've got folks in Brussels and Engineering was that intentional do you have cost savings there on salaries uh that's where we started so legally it's still a Belgian Belgian company that's where we got started but then most of our customers actually were in the US so that's why we mve to the US the founding team to New York okay follow their customers so that's why we kind of built out the HQ in in New York um then engineering HQ is and BR got started and in Poland is really because we couldn't find enough engineering Talent quickly enough uh while we open a second engineering office in okay top tribe I have to tell you many people go Nathan you came out of nowhere your website's 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favorite online tool you have like a qy scheduling uh I still use everod a lot okay that's a good one number four how many hours of sleep to you get every night um uh between six and eight try to get as much as possible not bad and you're 32 what's your situation married single recently married and my first child on the way oh very exciting so so one kiddo on the way uh 32 you're married last question Felix take us back 12 years what do you wish your 20-year-old self knew I think I was good it's it's sometimes it's good to not know too much otherwise you don't take any risk so I wouldn't change much there you guys have it it's good to not know so much sometimes because then you won't take as much risk from Felix who risked it all he graduates he gets up with three of his PhD buddies launches calra they've now crossed uh they've raised about again 75 million bucks have 200 customers uh you know paying somewhere around 16 Grand per month they're only doing annual or multiannual uh or multi-year uh deals pulling the cou forward again bridge that cash Gap again they're really as he described it the index cards in books kind of in this bookstore to help you not only find data you need but then run analytics on it and get value from it their team is 210 folks uh based in many locations Brussels and New York City being two of the major ones founded in 2008 Felix maybe you're iping in the next 2 3 years right thanks so much for taking us to the top thanks for having me if you enjoyed Felix today go back and listen to VOD yesterday who breaks down why tech companies are opening Salt Lake City offices his company just did it called Cloud Cherry it would mean the world to me if you guys got any value from this episode if you would go leave a review on iTunes right now and then subscribe you know I hustle like hectic get these episodes out every freaking day for you guys and trust me I love it I would do it with no listeners but boy oh boy it makes my day and it makes my teens day when we see great reviews and get your feedback so thanks so much okay top drive I love giving away free money I feel like o we're giving away cards and I have something special for you today how many of you have heard our super sharp guests talk about success they've had with Facebook and Google ads well all of you listening right now yes if you're listening you get $100 and free AdWords here's how you get it okay again thanks for listening get the free $100 from Google right when you sign up with my website post provider HostGator go sign up now to get your free money hostgator.com Nathan again that's hostgator.com Nathan