Founder Interview
How Collibra Reached Close to 200 Customers and $75M Raised with 120% Net Revenue Retention (Interview with Felix Van de Maele)
- Interview Date
- March 3, 2017
- Interviewee
- Felix Van de MaeleCo-Founder and CEO
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Total Funding Raised
$75M
Customers (2017)
Close to 200
ARPU (2017)
$200K per year
Net Revenue Retention (2017)
120%
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Felix Van de Maele during the interview recorded in March 2017 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Collibra’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Collibra was founded in 2008 out of a university research lab in Brussels by four co-founders who split equity 25% each
- 02The company raised a seed round of approximately 800,000 euros, then bootstrapped to profitability before raising a Series B of about 20 million in 2014
- 03In December 2016, Collibra closed a $50M Series C round, bringing total funding to $75M
- 04Close to 200 enterprise customers paid an average of $200K to $250K a year on annual plans with cash upfront, though some were still on the perpetual license model Collibra started with
- 05Annual gross customer churn was just 3% to 4%, and net revenue retention was 120% to 125%
- 06The team had grown to 210 people across New York, Brussels, London, and Poland
- 07Sales and marketing efficiency ratio was approximately 0.8 to 0.9, meaning roughly $1 in sales and marketing spend to generate $1 in ARR
- 08Felix was 32 years old at the time of the interview and had been building Collibra for nearly a decade
- 09Collibra started in financial services serving regulatory compliance needs and had expanded across multiple industries
- 10The company separated shareholder decisions from management decisions as it scaled beyond the founding team
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Year Founded | 2008 | Interview, March 2017 |
| Seed Round (2008) | €800K | Interview, March 2017 |
| Series B (2014) | About 20M | Interview, March 2017 |
| Series C (2016) | $50M | Interview, March 2017 |
| Total Funding Raised | $75M | Interview, March 2017 |
| Customers (2017) | Close to 200 | Interview, March 2017 |
| ARPU (2017) | $200K to $250K per year | Interview, March 2017 |
| Annual Customer Churn (2017) | 3% to 4% | Interview, March 2017 |
| Net Revenue Retention (2017) | 120% to 125% | Interview, March 2017 |
| Team Size (2017) | 210 | Interview, March 2017 |
| Sales and Marketing Efficiency Ratio (2017) | 0.8 to 0.9 | Interview, March 2017 |
| Annual Maintenance Fee (Perpetual Model) (2017) | 20% of initial license fee | Interview, March 2017 |
Growth Breakdown
Customers and ARPU
Collibra had close to 200 enterprise customers as of early 2017, each paying an average of $200K to $250K annually. Subscriptions were sold as annual plans with cash collected upfront, with no monthly billing, while some customers remained on the perpetual licensing model Collibra started with, paying a yearly maintenance fee of typically 20% of the initial license fee.
Retention and Expansion
Annual gross customer churn was just 3% to 4%, and net revenue retention ran at 120% to 125%, reflecting consistent seat expansion within existing accounts. Felix noted that some customers had been with Collibra for eight years and continued to upsell.
Team and Locations
The team reached 210 people by early 2017, with the largest group in New York, engineering in Brussels and Poland, and European sales and marketing based in London. The Poland office was opened specifically to address a shortage of engineering talent in Brussels.
Funding
Collibra raised a seed round of approximately 800,000 euros in 2008, bootstrapped to profitability, then raised a Series B of about 20 million in 2014 and a $50M Series C in December 2016, bringing total capital raised to $75M. When choosing investors, Collibra went with Matthew at ICONIQ Capital.
Growth Strategy
Land and Expand in Enterprise Accounts
Collibra focused on landing large enterprise deals and then expanding seat counts within those accounts over time. With annual churn of about 3% to 4% and net revenue retention of 120% to 125%, the model generated compounding revenue growth from the existing customer base.
Following Customers to New Markets
The company started in financial services addressing regulatory compliance needs, then expanded across industries as demand for data governance grew with big data, IoT, and AI. The founding team relocated from Brussels to New York to be closer to their predominantly US customer base.
Efficient Sales and Marketing Spend
Felix tracked sales and marketing efficiency as a ratio of spend to ARR generated, which he put at approximately 0.8 to 0.9, meaning roughly $1 spent to generate $1 in new ARR. With very low churn, the payback period was close to twelve months and the lifetime value of each customer was very high.
Annual Upfront Contracts
Collibra sold its subscriptions as annual plans with the cash paid upfront, with no monthly billing. It had started out on a perpetual model, and some customers were still on it: they paid one big license fee upfront and then a yearly maintenance fee of typically 20% of that fee, the same amount every year, so the recurring part of that revenue was smaller.
Investor Selection Based on Trust and Fit
Felix prioritized investors who understood the business and had relevant experience over those offering the highest valuation alone. Collibra went with Matthew at ICONIQ Capital: Felix said they had built a relationship from the beginning, that Matthew came with great references, and that he was very founder friendly but also a long-term investor.
Best Quotes
“So basically, we're a software company, SaaS company, and we help typically larger organizations to better find, understand, and control their data.”
“We raised a seed round of about €800,000 which at the time was a pretty big deal, especially in Belgium, which didn't really venture capital as we know it here in The US. But then we started to bootstrap it until profitability, and we were profitable tripling every year and that's when we raised our first big rounds, our Series B rounds of about 20,000,000, and then we were in kind of full growth mode.”
“In December, just last December, we did a $50,000,000 round, Series C round. All in we did about 75,000,000.”
“What we want to get to is that we call it the Amazonification of data, where ultimately users just shop for data like they are on Amazon, they put it in their data basket, so to speak, and then it goes to approval workflows to actually get access to it and so they can run the analytics.”
“Yearly customer churn is really low, it's about 3% to 4%. ... That's really, really low. I mean, it's basically land and expand model, even with these kind of big land deals, but they're the biggest companies in the world. So that's really, really important for us to keep that trend low and then expand over time in those accounts where we sell more seats.”
“It basically means that it's close to one. So it means that it costs us $1 in sales and marketing expense to generate $1 in ARR.”
“I was thinking a long time, okay, do I want to do next? I basically had four options in my mind: I could continue to do a PhD, I could go into banking, I could go into consulting, or I could actually start my own thing. And the last thing was the only thing that really sounded exciting to me.”
“I think I was good. It's sometimes it's good to not know too much. Otherwise, you don't take any risk. So I wouldn't change much.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured Collibra in early 2017, shortly after closing its $50M Series C round with close to 200 enterprise customers and a team of 210 people. The figures Felix shared reflect the company at that specific moment in time and should not be read as current. Visit the Collibra company profile on GetLatka for the latest reported numbers and funding history.
View Collibra’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 1:31What Collibra Does and Its Business Model
- 2:30Funding History: Seed, Series B, and Series C
- 3:53The Library Analogy: Explaining Data Governance
- 5:12Customer Count and ARPU
- 7:00The Founding Story and Decision to Start a Company
- 7:56Four Founders and the Equity Split
- 8:48Separating Shareholders from Management
- 10:11Series C Negotiation and Investor Selection
- 11:58Churn, Net Revenue Retention, and Land and Expand
- 12:52CAC, LTV, and Sales Efficiency
- 14:53Team Size and Office Locations
- 16:22Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
Nathan Latka
00:00This 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.
Felix Van de Maele
00:18>> 5 and 6,000,000. He's head bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000 unit sole market.
Nathan Latka
00:24And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. This is episode six eighty three. Coming up tomorrow morning, talk to Niko who breaks down how to raise your first round of funding with his health care API and Redox founder. Again, his name is Niko. Good morning, everybody. My guest this morning is Felix Van de Maele. He is the CEO and one of the founders of a company called Collibra, which he took from idea to founding to more than eight
00:47years 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 Collibra, Felix served as a researcher at the semantics technology and applications research laboratory 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 master's in computer science and software engineering from that university and a master in general management from
01:14the Vlerick Business School. Felix, are you ready to take us to the top?
Felix Van de Maele
01:18>> Yes, I am. Did
Nathan Latka
01:19I get all those words correct?
Felix Van de Maele
01:22>> You got them right.
Nathan Latka
01:23I did my best. Did my best.
Felix Van de Maele
01:24>> Sounds complex.
Nathan Latka
01:26Tell us what we wanna dig more into your story, but tell us what Collibra does and what's the business model? How does it make money?
What Collibra Does and Its Business Model
Felix Van de Maele
01:31>> Sure. Sure. So basically, we're a software company, SaaS company, and we help typically larger organizations to better find, understand, and control their data.
Nathan Latka
01:43Tell us a story about one of the customers that use you so we get a real example. Sure.
Felix Van de Maele
01:46>> So we really got started in financial services. So every bank today needs data governance, which is what we do, how it's called, which basically the reason that they need that is for regulatory compliance. Every bank needs to be able to show to the regulators that they understand what data they have, how it flows through the organization. So ultimately, if they report to the regulators, they have full confidence that the numbers are correct. That's really where we
02:13>> started. But right now, it's really across lots of different industries driven by big data analytics, IoT, AI and so forth.
Nathan Latka
02:22And what year did you launch the company in?
Felix Van de Maele
02:25>> We launched it in 2008.
Nathan Latka
02:26In 2008 and bootstrapped or have you raised capital?
Funding History: Seed, Series B, and Series C
Felix Van de Maele
02:30>> We raised capital, so we actually started out of school, my first company, the first thing I ever did. And we raised a seed round of about €800,000 which at the time was a pretty big deal, especially in Belgium, which didn't really venture capital as we know it here in The US. But then we started to bootstrap it until profitability, and we were profitable tripling every year and that's when we raised our first big rounds, our Series
02:58>> B rounds of about 20,000,000, and then we were in kind of full growth mode.
Nathan Latka
03:03What year was the Series B?
Felix Van de Maele
03:04>> Series B was 2014.
Nathan Latka
03:08Okay, so all in you've raised about 20,400,000, something like that?
Felix Van de Maele
03:13>> In December, just last December, we did a $50,000,000 round, Series C round. All in we did about 75,000,000.
Nathan Latka
03:21Got it. So 75,000,000 in total. And you said this is your first company out of college. How old are you today?
Felix Van de Maele
03:26>> I am 32.
Nathan Latka
03:2732. Awesome. This is so you've been focused on this for about a decade. Right?
Felix Van de Maele
03:31>> Yes. Thanks a lot. So it does.
Nathan Latka
03:33Hey, the focus is an important thing. So there. So the risk in this chat we have is that I lose the audience because they don't understand kind of the data side of what I described, because you're 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 I'm not calling my audience dumb, but even for me, right? Can you dumb
03:52this down for me?
The Library Analogy: Explaining Data Governance
Felix Van de Maele
03:53>> Absolutely. And I love to use a bit of an oldie analogy. Let's say you have a library, in library you have books, and you have these index cards, and these index cards tell you where to find a book, who the author is, who has last rented it. It's very similar to organizations with data, right? So you have lots of databases that store the data, these are the books of a library. What we do, we are the
04:15>> index cards. We help people, users find where the data is, what it means, how they can use it, what the quality is, these types of things. And ultimately, what we want to get to is that we call it the Amazonification of data, where ultimately users just shop for data like they are on Amazon, they put it in their data basket, so to speak, and then it goes to approval workflows to actually get access to it and
04:41>> so they can run the analytics.
Nathan Latka
04:42Interesting. So it's, I mean, is this almost like a search engine for datasets?
Felix Van de Maele
04:47>> It's in a way, yes, it helps them find the data. So that's in a way the search engine parts. But then you need to understand that there's quality, 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. We help companies control it more so people can actually find it and get value out of it.
Nathan Latka
05:08And where are you today in terms of customers? How many customers you have paying you?
Customer Count and ARPU
Felix Van de Maele
05:12>> Right, so we have close to 200 customers.
Nathan Latka
05:16I imagine if you raise $75,000,000 and you have 200 customers, this is very much an enterprise play with really high kind of ARPUs. What's your ARPU add on average?
Felix Van de Maele
05:24>> Yes, it varies, but right now it's about $200k to $250k.
Nathan Latka
05:29Annually or monthly?
Felix Van de Maele
05:30>> Annually. Annually.
Nathan Latka
05:31Got it. Yeah. Monthly would be a would be a nice business.
Felix Van de Maele
05:34>> That would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. I got it. So if I if I divide that
Nathan Latka
05:37out by 12, you have the average customer paying you somewhere around $20,000 per month. Now are these contracts? Do you pull them all forward? Are they all annual plans or the cash is upfront?
Felix Van de Maele
05:46>> Annual plans with cash upfront? Yes. Okay. So no
Nathan Latka
05:48monthly bill to year. No monthly.
Felix Van de Maele
05:50>> Yeah, never mind.
Nathan Latka
05:52Got it. So, 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 4,100,000 in MRR or somewhere around call it 10,000,000 in ARR. Is that about right? Or sorry, sorry, not 10, not 10. Sorry. 50,000,000 in ARR.
Felix Van de Maele
06:10>> A bit less. We started actually with a perpetual model. And so some of these customers are still on perpetual model.
Nathan Latka
06:16What that model look like? For people listening right now that might be starting, they might want to use that model.
Felix Van de Maele
06:21>> Yeah, so it's license fee. Basically, the customer pays you one big license fee upfront and then they own a software and then they pay a maintenance fee yearly, which is typically 20% of the initial fee.
Nathan Latka
06:33I see.
Felix Van de Maele
06:33>> And the difference between the typical SaaS model is that they pay the same amount every year.
Nathan Latka
06:37I see.
Felix Van de Maele
06:38>> So the recurring part is less
Nathan Latka
06:40if we throw up a range, then could we say somewhere between thirty and fifty million bucks in ARR? Yeah, that covers it. Got it. Okay, good. Let's go back into the story. So you graduate from school, you were an engineer, right? You got your engineering degree?
Felix Van de Maele
06:56>> Yes, correct.
Nathan Latka
06:56How'd you get this idea?
The Founding Story and Decision to Start a Company
Felix Van de Maele
07:00>> I was doing research on semantic technology at the time, and I was doing a lot of master's in software engineering, and I was in Argentina studying. I was thinking a long time, okay, do I want to do next? I basically had four options in my mind: I could continue to do a PhD, I could go into banking, I could go into consulting, or I could actually start my own thing. And the last thing was the only
07:20>> thing that really sounded exciting to me. Finally, I started reading these books in Silicon Valley, and I think from Silicon Valley did these biographies.
Nathan Latka
07:28Like name one or two?
Felix Van de Maele
07:30>> Yeah, I think they had a great book at the time, it's called Founders at Work. It's a fantastic book, it's a bit old now, but it talks about the founders of Twitter and so on before that existed. And in all my naivety, I thought, well, when they can do it, I can at least try, right? Why shouldn't I? And that's how we got started.
Nathan Latka
07:49And you were at this point, what, '22, '23?
Felix Van de Maele
07:52>> Yeah, 22 years old.
Nathan Latka
07:53'23. And you said we, tell me about the founding team.
Four Founders and the Equity Split
Felix Van de Maele
07:56>> So we started four founders. The
08:01>> three others were doing their PhD at the lab. And then while we got started, I did a mini MBA, the General Management. During that time we wrote the first business plan. And then as I graduated, we raised €800,000 seed round and started the company.
Nathan Latka
08:19That's a lot of founders to start the company with. How'd you have the tough conversation around equity or did you just split 25 each?
Felix Van de Maele
08:25>> We just split 25 each.
Nathan Latka
08:27No, that's a lazy way to do it. You just split it. You said boom, I don't want to debate about this. Let's just be fair. We're all gonna do the exact 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. Of you want do one
08:45thing, of want to do the other. How do you break the split?
Separating Shareholders from Management
Felix Van de Maele
08:48>> Yes, I think it's So I'm CEO and I think what we've tried to from the beginning, and it's not always easy of course, is to split shareholders from management. Of course, in the beginning, your shareholders are your management, and is it a 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 is just shareholders, which now includes venture capitalists
09:12>> and so forth. Anything that's company decision management related is just management, and 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.
Nathan Latka
09:23That's a great way to put it, think. And give us a sense. You said you just did your Series B? Series C. Series C. What I assume the forefounders still have most of it. They probably have a very small equity pool and what investors own 25, 30%, something like that?
Felix Van de Maele
09:38>> Yeah, that's not really public, but it's in a typical range.
Nathan Latka
09:42Got it. When people are doing a series C, I'm interested in this data because you just did it. Don't say your specific situation. But on average, what percentage of your company are you giving up when you're doing a series C?
Felix Van de Maele
09:53>> I think that's so hard to say. Depends where you are in a trajectory, how much you need it, how much you're raising. I wouldn't know, I mean, market averages, honestly.
Nathan Latka
10:05What was most important for you when you were negotiating this last round?
Series C Negotiation and Investor Selection
Felix Van de Maele
10:11>> 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 so for us, we were really at a crossroads with the founders and shareholders decision, okay, what do we want to do? And we really believe that we can build a category defining company. We were the first in our market, it's a huge opportunity. You don't have that chance that often. So that's why we
10:33>> said, let's go for it. And so the Series B, I think that was a big decision for us. And now we've been on the trajectory to get to 100,000,000 recurring revenue as quickly as possible and the Series C lies in that path.
Nathan Latka
10:47How 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 is there a strategic approach? How do you think about it?
Felix Van de Maele
10:57>> It's a combination. Obviously, valuation matters, but it's more than that. What I really want is people that understand their business and have done it before. And obviously it's a big relationship you need to build. So you need to trust each other. And so how much do you trust the people you bring on board is a critical, I think is ultimately the most important.
Nathan Latka
11:17And he ultimately went, I believe, based on my research with Matthew, right, at ICONIQ?
Felix Van de Maele
11:21>> Yes, correct.
Nathan Latka
11:22So why did you like him? How did he win?
Felix Van de Maele
11:25>> I mean, we built a relationship from the beginning.
11:30>> He had great references, that's how he got introduced and very founder friendly, but also long term investor. So it just clicked really well.
Nathan Latka
11:42Shifting back to the business for a second, At ARPU is this high, 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 churn? What's gross customer churn per month?
Churn, Net Revenue Retention, and Land and Expand
Felix Van de Maele
11:58>> Yeah, so yearly customer churn is really low, it's about 3% to 4%.
Nathan Latka
12:03That's amazing.
Felix Van de Maele
12:04>> That's really, really low. I mean, it's basically land and expand model, even with these kind of big land deals, but they're the biggest companies in the world. So that's really, really important for us to keep that trend low and then expand over time in those accounts where we sell more seats. Basically, that's the business model.
Nathan Latka
12:23So gross retention, call it 97% annually. When you talk about net revenue, net net net revenue expansion, I mean, are you guys looking at 110% year over year growth 120%?
Felix Van de Maele
12:34>> Yeah, 120, 125.
Nathan Latka
12:36Got it. So you're expanding these accounts and growing them 20 to 30% every year? Correct. 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?
CAC, LTV, and Sales Efficiency
Felix Van de Maele
12:52>> It's an enterprise sales place. So like you said, the field accounts reps that are pretty expensive, you need a big kind of support team with pre sales and account manager and so forth. Also a long sales cycle. So that's why you really got to invest upfront to get to close these deals. And that's really where most of the money gets in. But with the very low churn, I mean, CAC LTV ratio is really, really high.
Nathan Latka
13:19What is really high?
Felix Van de Maele
13:21>> It's almost indefinite. It's hard to calculate right now because we almost have no churn and there's no limits. We've had customers who have been with us for eight years continue to upsell.
Nathan Latka
13:32Is one of those really, Felix, interesting areas in the SaaS world, because you'll have a lot of over optimistic brand new founders who will go on an Excel sheet and say we have 1% churn, they extrapolate that out and say the customer is gonna stay with us for one hundred months or something crazy and unrealistic. They multiply times their ARPU and they get a totally unrealistic lifetime value number, then they spend the CAC based off the
13:52LTV, and they go bankrupt. A guy like you, you're in the opposite position, right? You already kind of proven it out, lifetime value could be millions of dollars, you have no idea. So how do you decide how to set the threshold on what you'll spend to acquire a customer?
Felix Van de Maele
14:05>> Yeah, I think what we really look at is sales efficiency, sales and marketing efficiency. So how much sales and marketing dollars are we spending to generate $1 of ARR?
Nathan Latka
14:15What is that number?
Felix Van de Maele
14:17>> It's around benchmark benchmark data around 0.8, 0.9.
Nathan Latka
14:22And okay, teach us that. Well, I haven't had anyone bring that up before, I've had many founders that have raised, you know, amount amounts like what you've raised. How does that work? So so point 8%, what's that ratio?
Felix Van de Maele
14:31>> So it basically means that it's close to one. So it means that it costs us $1 in sales and marketing expense to generate $1 in ARR.
Nathan Latka
14:40Oh, I see.
Felix Van de Maele
14:41>> So it's basically, I think twelve months like
Nathan Latka
14:43Payback. Payback. It was just super healthy. Then these customers are staying with you for multiple years, so it's all upside after that. Yes. Got it. Makes a lot of sense. Team size, where are you guys at?
Team Size and Office Locations
Felix Van de Maele
14:53>> About two ten right now.
Nathan Latka
14:55Two ten people. Wow, amazing. And where are you guys based?
Felix Van de Maele
15:00>> Biggest team is in New York. Then we have engineering in Brussels and Poland.
Nathan Latka
15:04Okay.
Felix Van de Maele
15:05>> And sales and marketing for Europe is out of London.
Nathan Latka
15:08And what is the you you mentioned you've got folks in Brussels in engineering. Was that intentional? Do you have cost savings there on salaries?
Felix Van de Maele
15:16>> That's where we started. So legally, it's a Belgian Belgian company. That's where we got started. But then most of our customers actually were in The US. So that's where we moved to The US, the founding team to New York. Followed our customers. That's So why we kind of built the HQ in in New York. Then engineering HQ is in Brussels where we got started. And in Poland is really because we couldn't find enough engineering talent quickly
15:37>> enough, why we opened a second engineering office in Poland.
Nathan Latka
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Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
Nathan Latka
16:22Awesome. Well, Felix, this has been amazing. A lot of good insight here. Let's wrap up with the famous five. You ready?
Felix Van de Maele
16:27>> Okay.
Nathan Latka
16:28Alright. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
Felix Van de Maele
16:31>> I think it's an oldie, but Crossing the Chasm is stays good.
16:35>> Geoffrey Moore, it's a good one.
Nathan Latka
16:36Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Felix Van de Maele
16:40>> I really like Into from Zohra.
16:44>> Yep.
Nathan Latka
16:45Number three is their favorite online tool you have like Acuity Scheduling?
Felix Van de Maele
16:50>> I still use Evernote a lot.
16:51>> Okay, that's a good one.
Nathan Latka
16:52Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Felix Van de Maele
16:56>> Between six and eight. Trying to get as much as possible.
Nathan Latka
16:59Not bad. And you're 32. What's your situation? Married, single?
Felix Van de Maele
17:02>> Recently married, and my first child on the way.
Nathan Latka
17:05Oh, very exciting. So so one kiddo on the way, 32. You're married. Last question, Felix. Take us back twelve years. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?
Felix Van de Maele
17:14>> I think I was good. 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.
Nathan Latka
17:21It'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 Collibra. They've now crossed away raised about again $75,000,000 have 200 customers, you know, paying somewhere around $16,000 per month. They're only doing annual or multi annual or multi year deals, pulling the cash forward again, bridge that cash gap again. They're really as he described
17:47it, 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 two ten folks based in many locations, Brussels and New York City being two of the major ones founded in 2008. Felix, maybe you're IPO ing in the next two, three years. Right? Thanks so much for taking us to the top.
Felix Van de Maele
18:06>> Thanks for having me.
Nathan Latka
18:08If you enjoyed Felix today, go back and listen to Vinod yesterday who breaks down why tech companies are opening Salt Lake City offices. His company just did it called Cloud Cherry.
18:19It 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 heck to 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, makes my day and it makes my team's day when we see great reviews and get
18:39your feedback. So thanks so much. Okay, Top Drive. I love giving away free money. I feel like, oh, 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.
Felix Van de Maele
18:57>> If you're listening, you get a $100 in free AdWords. Here's how you get it. K? Again, thanks for listening. Get the free $100 from Google, right, when
Nathan Latka
19:04you sign up with my website host provider, HostGator. Go sign up now to get your free money. Hostgator.com/nathan. Again, that's hostgator.com/nathan.