How Habu Reached Just Under 50 Customers With $300K Average Contract Value in Data Clean Room SaaS (Interview with CEO Matthew Kilmartin)

Introduction and What Habu Does

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Matthew Kilmartin. He's the CEO and co founder of Habu, the global innovator in data clean room software. He's passionate about entrepreneurship and developing technology to help brands and their digital transformation. He's got twenty years of experience in his career working for innovative software and data companies such as Salesforce, Krux, and Akamai. Matt, you ready to take us to the top?

Matthew Kilmartin

00:19>> Let's do it.

Nathan Latka

00:19Alright. So what does clean room software?

Matthew Kilmartin

00:24>> Yeah. So what it basically means is two companies that have data,

00:31>> who have a common business interest to collaborate around each other's data, but they don't necessarily wanna give each other their data. Right? So meaning it it clean room software is neutral infrastructure where two parties can effectively do analytics across distributed datasets.

Nathan Latka

00:51This is cross beam space?

Matthew Kilmartin

00:55>> Not really, I would say.

Nathan Latka

00:57Because that's the closest like, I try and I try and pattern that.

Matthew Kilmartin

01:00>> What's what's interesting is is a lot of the cloud data warehouses do this are are are doing this now. So Yeah. AWS, GCP, Microsoft are trying to do this, and and that's where data sharing now happens at the cloud data layer. And then Snowflake and Databricks have capabilities around this as well. And so

Nathan Latka

01:19Maybe for my audience, give some use case. So the use case I have is is you potentially are gonna partner with a company. You wanna share email lists. Crossbeam is like sort of how you do this anonymously without giving up data. What's a use case people use you for?

Disney and L'Oreal Use Case Explained

Matthew Kilmartin

01:30>> So use case for us is we work with a lot of so I know Crossbeam because we use it. And a a use case for us is Disney. Disney's a client. Disney owns Hulu, ESPN, and they have all the two TV viewership data, basically. L'Oreal is who is a big advertiser, and they wanna know what are the all the Disney and Hulu, what do you know about my customers, basically? Right? So Disney doesn't wanna give all

01:55>> of their data to L'Oreal. L'Oreal doesn't wanna give all their data to Disney. They use our software to do data collaboration. So I see. Big media companies like Roku, Disney are examples of clients. And then also another big one is with retailers and manufacturers. So like grocers and people in CPG companies. Interesting.

Nathan Latka

02:15Are those your two big use cases, Disney and Hulu and grocers and CPG?

Matthew Kilmartin

02:18>> Those are yeah. And and we have other verticals as well that we're successful in, but those are media entertainment, retail, CPG, advertising, those are a lot of the use cases at which people are using our software for today.

Nathan Latka

02:29And are Disney and Hulu both paying you or is it one side of the marketplace?

Matthew Kilmartin

02:33>> Today, it's one side of the marketplace.

Nathan Latka

02:34Disney or Hulu?

Matthew Kilmartin

02:36>> Well, Disney Hulu's part of Disney, actually.

Nathan Latka

02:38I go with the comparison here. Grocery store or CPG chain?

Matthew Kilmartin

02:42>> It can it can be either, actually. It depends who the actual licensee is. Right? So it could be the grocer. If they're the ones saying, hey, we're standing up an environment for all of our CPGs to collaborate with, it can be the the the grocer. But also it could be like L'Oreal is a client, and L'Oreal is basically saying, hey, I wanna go work with all the beauties. I wanna work with the beauty people. I wanna

03:05>> work with my sponsorship people. And they can basically influence it as well. But our our our our we wanna make it friction free for data collaboration, so we are not charging both sides.

Pricing Model and Average Contract Value

Nathan Latka

03:15I see. I see. Okay. So you're charging one side, and what is one side paying your current customers? One side paying on average per month to use the tech?

Matthew Kilmartin

03:22>> Yeah. Well, per month, we look at it sort of at a annualized basis. The average ACV is in the

03:30>> by mid 300 k range.

Nathan Latka

03:32And how do you get someone paying 600 k? How do you upsell?

Consumption-Based Upsell and Slot Model

Matthew Kilmartin

03:35>> Consumption. So when someone buys our software, they get a certain number of data clean rooms or slots for collaboration. And as they use them and as they use more, they grow and there's an upsell opportunity.

Nathan Latka

03:51Okay, so let me try and give an example. Let's say HEB, the grocer is paying for your software, They have x number of slots. A slot might be filled by Procter and Gamble because they sell Dove shampoo and Dial. Okay. That's how it all works.

Matthew Kilmartin

04:06>> Yes. Yep. You got it. You're quick study.

Nathan Latka

04:08Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you

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06:34Let's jump back into the interview. Okay. So your upsell, that's a powerful upsell is number of slots. Are there any other very powerful upsells here, number of seats or no?

Matthew Kilmartin

06:43>> We don't have a seat model right now, it's more based on as people are consuming more slots in collaboration. Okay, interesting. Then also,

06:56>> we're starting to look at some different modules as well. Sort of version one of the software was around, let's just stick with the L'Oreal example. L'Oreal has their beauty customers, right? That's a dataset. And then there's a dataset with HEB or whoever else. We're starting to do now things more around machine learning where they might have machine learning models built around skin types or propensity to buy other products. And how do you now start to do

07:24>> machine learning and other datasets? So that would be a more advanced module, but out of the gate, it was sort of more data to data, and now it's more advanced modules around ML and more model to data.

Nathan Latka

07:35And when was out of the gate? When did you launch?

Company Launch and COVID-Era POCs

Matthew Kilmartin

07:38>> We've been building it. We've been out of for three years, built technology for a year, launched commercially two weeks before the shutdown. So March 2020 is when we launched commercially.

Nathan Latka

07:48Mhmm. And what was that like? How'd you get your first customer?

Matthew Kilmartin

07:53>> Beg, borrow, steal.

07:56>> Yeah, listen, it was a weird time, right? Because as you can see by our price points, it's kind of an enterprise sale and we're selling to big brands. There wasn't a lot of appetite for companies to enterprise buying at a time during COVID in the beginning. And so we had to get super flexible. And so we actually did some shorter term deals, we call them first value deals where instead of letting someone sign up for a

08:17>> year, we'd have more flexible terms and start using our software. We probably did Well, actually, interestingly enough of all those deals we did sort of six month deals with to do sort of POCs or first value engagements, every single one of them has continued on as a customer.

How Many POC Bets and Conversion Rate

Nathan Latka

08:34How many? How many POCs have you done to date?

Matthew Kilmartin

08:37>> Well, now we're done with the POCs. That was like two years ago. Okay. That was two years ago when we first launched, now we're doing proper.

Nathan Latka

08:44Take me back because there's so many of my listeners that are in that state, right? They're launching POCs to get going. How many do you have to launch and how many converted to paid and what did you learn?

Matthew Kilmartin

08:52>> Oh, yeah, great question.

08:56>> So for us, because enterprise, it was less around

09:03>> volume and quantity and more around quality. Right? Yep. Like one of my good buddies is the founding revenue leader at HubSpot, and obviously their model is very different. Right? And

09:16>> so, yeah, so for us, was all around quality of fit and then also really handshaking with those customers around mutual success plans. So that would be my advice is like, you don't know your ICP, you're trying to figure it out, place a few bets, place a few different types of experiments, identify what your learnings would wanna be. Obviously you want sort of the money, but really the money is like a short term thing, but it's good

09:40>> to get money because you want thirty days of skin.

Nathan Latka

09:42Matt, how many of those bets did you place though?

Matthew Kilmartin

09:43>> We talking like five Disney's or five grocery chains or 10

09:46>> or We placed probably eight to 10 bets.

Nathan Latka

09:52Okay, eight to 10. And then what does that sound like back then? Was it like, listen, here's what we're gonna try and deliver over the next month or year or fifteen, thirty, fifty days, and at the end, it's going to cost you this if you're happy. What was the timeline and what was the cost if they were happy?

Matthew Kilmartin

10:06>> It was probably more of a

10:11>> ninety to one hundred and twenty day window of make happy value realization. And then we didn't break our pick honestly, if it's gonna cost this. We were really just focused on delivering great product, delivering value. And we said if we do that, it's gonna work itself out and we'll have a proper business conversation.

Nathan Latka

10:26Oh, so you didn't try and set an anchor at the beginning of POC to say, if we work hard to make you happy, it will be $30 a month?

Matthew Kilmartin

10:33>> No. It was COVID. It was in the beginning of it. Right? You just

Nathan Latka

10:36negotiated at the end.

Matthew Kilmartin

10:37>> Yeah. So today, maybe we would be a little bit different, but yeah, it was a different time.

Nathan Latka

10:44Interesting.

Matthew Kilmartin

10:44>> This is an in person sale, it's an enterprise sale, and so all of sudden we're trying to do it over Zoom screens. So we were flexible early on and it served us well. Yep.

Customer Count and Network Effect

Nathan Latka

10:53How many today? How many customers?

Matthew Kilmartin

10:55>> Oh boy,

10:58>> we are south of 50 still.

Nathan Latka

11:00Okay, 50. When do you think you'll break 50?

Matthew Kilmartin

11:04>> End of this month.

Nathan Latka

11:05Oh, you're close.

Matthew Kilmartin

11:06>> Yeah, we're close. We're growing a lot. Because you think about it is, okay, so let's just stick with your HEB and Procter and Gamble.

Nathan Latka

11:15Procter and Gamble, yeah.

Matthew Kilmartin

11:16>> Yeah, Procter and Gamble, they might not be paying us, but all of a sudden they're collaborating with HEB, so they're getting exposure to our software. So all of a sudden we have a nice network effect where you could potentially go and have a conversation with Procter and Gamble. So it's still an enterprise selling motion. We're working hard to identify some more product led growth, and that's an area for us that we're focused on right now. But

11:40>> we're definitely in the top It's a hot category, would say. There's RFPs out there right now. A lot of people are thinking about it.

Nathan Latka

11:49Yeah, it's not just By the way, that's not just a nice tactic of mean, is a golden staple of the fast growing SaaS companies, right? You look at bill.com. I learned about bill.com because someone told me that they only were gonna pay me if I signed up for bill.com because they were already using bill.com. It's the same sort of thing for you. Know, dial Procter and Gamble uses it via HEB, then Procter and Gamble goes, wait.

12:08We work with hundreds of retail partners. We should buy our own licensed copy of this to to use it.

Matthew Kilmartin

12:13>> Yep. You're exactly right.

Nathan Latka

12:14You're exactly Yeah. That's a great that's a great trade to be able to have, which is nice. Now did you intentionally plan that going in, or was that like a nice accident?

Matthew Kilmartin

12:22>> I wouldn't like to say the word accident, but no, we didn't. I mean,

Nathan Latka

12:25listen, I

Matthew Kilmartin

12:29>> was at Salesforce. So this is my second startup, right? My

Nathan Latka

12:32last You were at Salesforce in 2018 before '20 when you launched in 2019?

Matthew Kilmartin

12:36>> I yeah. I I resigned from Salesforce three days to the day after they acquired my last company. So I was at a company called Krux, which Salesforce acquired. I was the CRO at Krux,

Nathan Latka

12:46so I was Did you make a lot of money in that acquisition or no?

Matthew Kilmartin

12:49>> Did I personally or did the company?

Nathan Latka

12:50Yeah. You as CRO. I mean, you maybe you had one or 2% equity or or not. I don't know.

Matthew Kilmartin

12:56>> It was a good outcome.

Nathan Latka

12:58K. Yeah. I mean Not not f u not f u money, but, like, you know, it's comfortable money.

Matthew Kilmartin

13:02>> Yeah. Listen, I'm still working.

Nathan Latka

13:05You're doing what you love though. Come on. Mean, this was not small deal. This was not a small deal though. I mean, was, I think, what, a $700,000,000 deal if my memory is right? Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Kilmartin

13:14>> Yes. Yeah. And but listen, Salesforce is awesome. I learned a ton there, but what I also learned was when there's rapid change and there's chaos in a market, you need innovation. And sometimes it's easier to innovate when you're really sort of small company starting with a with a clean slate.

Nathan Latka

13:29How long were you at Krux?

Matthew Kilmartin

13:32>> Almost five years.

Nathan Latka

13:34Oh, come on. You're totally he's on guys, he's underselling himself. You had some equity there. That was a very good exit for you. Did you plow any of that money back into Habu or no? Could say bootstrap at the beginning or no?

Matthew Kilmartin

13:43>> So Habu was actually launched inside of a venture studio. So the founders of Krux started a venture studio. It's a fund called Superset. It's a $65,000,000 fund and they start startups. They're not VCs. They actually started 10 companies in the last three years.

Nathan Latka

14:01So how did you get involved?

Matthew Kilmartin

14:03>> Well, I was thinking about starting my own thing, but I'm not an engineer. And so I needed a technical co founder and to go hook And these guys are my old bosses, right? From the last company. And so to go work with them, I basically had instant access to world class engineering talent and plenty of capital to get going. And so we raised series A right as I came in, We actually just closed our series b.

14:27>> Snowflake invested in us actually as well.

Nathan Latka

14:29Oh, nice.

Matthew Kilmartin

14:29>> We're we're

14:30>> off and rolling now.

Nathan Latka

14:31Quantify those for me. What was the series b? How much?

Matthew Kilmartin

14:34>> 25,000,000.

Nathan Latka

14:35And blah blah blah blah blah.

Matthew Kilmartin

14:36>> And that was a series b.

Nathan Latka

14:37When was the series a?

Matthew Kilmartin

14:39>> Series a was November well, we not February 2020 is when we announced it.

Nathan Latka

14:46February 2020. Okay. And how much was that for?

Matthew Kilmartin

14:49>> End of end of twenty nineteen is when we really closed it.

Nathan Latka

14:52Okay, okay, okay. And how much was that for?

Matthew Kilmartin

14:54>> 13.

Nathan Latka

14:5513, and that's when you came in?

Matthew Kilmartin

14:57>> Yes, right then, right when we closed that.

Nathan Latka

15:00Did the series A investors, was that a contingency, they had to bring you in as CEO?

Matthew Kilmartin

15:07>> Superset actually leads the rounds as well. And so it's, I mean, it's people I've worked with forever, right? So it's not, I mean, yes, we sort of mutually agree, but it was not necessarily contingent. Like they had been incubating and building some tech as well, trying to think about ways to solve this problem.

Nathan Latka

15:24Interesting. Okay. Got it. So you go into this. So help me understand if someone else is listening right now going, I am just like Matt, I need to go find a venture studio where I can be the CEO of one of their companies and spin it out. How does that cap table shake out? Do you look at super set like a fiftyfifty co founder effectively? Are you way under 50% equity in the business? Thirty, fifty?

Matthew Kilmartin

15:43>> I'd rather not get into the specifics of the

15:47>> cap table for Habu. There are other venture studio models out there. I think Superset's a little bit different than Y Combinator and some of the other folks like that because

16:02>> they play sort of very operational roles. So the CTO who actually was the CTO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the CTO of my last company, he was the CTO of Habu for two years. The other superstar partner is actually chairman of our board. So they're pretty active roles now that we've sort of raised our series B and we're a bigger company. They've sort of taken a back seat, but yeah, mean, listen, the cap table sort of appropriately

16:24>> represents the different inputs of where people are adding value.

Nathan Latka

16:27Fair, fair. Yeah, thanks for that context. And then look, most people, series B, you're selling 10 to 15% of the business. Were you guys sort of in that same range?

Matthew Kilmartin

16:36>> Sorry, say that question one more time.

Nathan Latka

16:37Most series Bs today, SaaS, B2B SaaS, you're selling 10 to 15% of the business. Were you guys sort of in that standard range?

Matthew Kilmartin

16:45>> Yes, we're in that range.

Nathan Latka

16:46Yeah. Okay, fair.

Matthew Kilmartin

16:47>> Then taking the

16:48>> I tell you though, Nathan, I should probably do a better job paying attention to all these details. I'm more focused on trying to grow the company rather than staring at the cap table every day.

Nathan Latka

16:58Well, let's talk more about that. So 50 customers today at a $25,000 ARPU. I mean, that puts you at about 1.2 in monthly revenue today, correct?

Matthew Kilmartin

17:07>> Ish, yes.

Nathan Latka

17:08How do you

17:09go from 50 to a 100? Let's talk about growth.

Team Composition and Sales Motion

Matthew Kilmartin

17:13>> Yeah, so we, for a long time, and for people listening out there, I'd be happy to Feel free to ping me on LinkedIn or share war stories. We stayed a little too lean too long on the sales and marketing function, I would say. We had ton of engineering, product engineering,

17:31>> I felt like we probably could have invested earlier in sales and marketing. And

17:39>> there's other people in our category who are a lot bigger, we're an early stage company, and they're doing a lot of marketing about the category. So a rising tide lifts all boats, so we're benefiting from the category expansion, we need to do a better, and we have a better product, but we need to do a better job sort of increasing awareness around what we do.

Nathan Latka

17:54Matt, who are those? Name one or two in your space that are sort of educating the market.

Matthew Kilmartin

18:00>> There's a public company, they're also a partner and a great partner as well, but there's a public company called LiveRamp who has a competitive product. So to anyways, but listen, great company. We actually use some of their identity products as well, classic competition. But what was the question you just asked me? Oh, how do we grow? Yeah, listen, we're adding salespeople and we've got a, I think at this point, and you've probably heard this talking to

18:27>> a lot of different other founders, it's about defining your selling motion. How do you try to repeat it? Like we're going through all of that stuff right now and really how do we try to codify it even more.

Nathan Latka

18:38Yep. And accelerate. What is your team today? How many people full time?

Matthew Kilmartin

18:43>> We are just under 50.

Nathan Latka

18:47Just under. Okay. Got it. And and how many of those are engineers?

Matthew Kilmartin

18:51>> Oh, boy.

18:56>> Half.

Nathan Latka

18:57Oh, wow. Okay. And how many are sales reps with a quota?

Matthew Kilmartin

19:04>> Six maybe.

Nathan Latka

19:06Got it. And did you hire your first quota carrying rep, like, pretty recently? This is a pretty new motion for you?

Matthew Kilmartin

19:11>> No, no, no. Okay. We had one early on salesperson and she's

19:19>> she's a rockstar. Me and the executive team was all involved in a lot of these sales and we had a lot of contacts, right? Just from our last project as well, last company. But we had an awesome sales executive who's been with us sort of since the beginning, since day one, And then sort of middle ish of last year, we've been adding. Now we have a chief revenue officer as well who's got a lot of domain

19:39>> expertise. She's awesome. So the one fact which is rare in sales companies, Salesforce is about 75% women, which you can often see. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

19:48Very cool. That's great. We love hearing that. And it sounds like, I mean, from a growth perspective, if you're doing one, one point two a month today, where were you exactly a year ago?

Growth Rate and Triple-Triple-Double Mantra

Matthew Kilmartin

19:59>> Oh boy. I should have invited my COO and CFO to answer all these questions.

Nathan Latka

20:04Oh, on, don't act naive. You told me before you listened to the show, you knew all these questions were coming.

20:11Or just give me a growth rate. You guys are growing a high-

Matthew Kilmartin

20:12>> Listen,

20:14>> like, you know, like we sort of have a mantra of triple, triple, double double, right? In terms of growth expectations. And so we're on track for that.

Nathan Latka

20:25So, well, it depends on when you start triple, triple, double. So did you double last year or did you triple over the past twelve months?

Matthew Kilmartin

20:31>> Our fiscal year actually just ended January 31. And so we're still finalizing things with our board meeting next week. I'd rather not-

Nathan Latka

20:41Such a political answer.

Matthew Kilmartin

20:42>> Okay. At least Matt, you at least doubled.

20:45>> Your listeners aren't gonna learn anything from me telling you these numbers. It's more about Of

Series B Raise and Snowflake Partnership

Nathan Latka

20:50course they are because it's all it's much better than you saying like fluffy Duffy, we had a big failure and duh duh duh duh duh duh duh. So just to hear, mean, somewhere between doubling and tripling last twelve months, is that a fair statement? Okay. Got it. It. And okay, cool. So series B, why raise 25,000,000? That's a lot of dilution. Where are you spending the money?

Matthew Kilmartin

21:09>> Could have actually raised more.

21:13>> It's actually not yeah. Listen.

Nathan Latka

21:16I mean, by the way, if you're doing a million bucks a month right now in revenue, right, which by the way is pretty high, $240,000 in revenue per employee with 50 people. So I'm assuming you're actually a little less than probably a million right now per month, but let's say you're around that.

Matthew Kilmartin

21:27>> Yeah. Because, like, I I sort of quoted the average price of some of our our deals more recently. There's still some of those early on deals, which were a lot more lot smaller. Right? So the Fair. The numbers don't all tick and tie as as well

Nathan Latka

21:38as But you're flirting with 1,000,000 a month in revenue.

Matthew Kilmartin

21:40>> I mean, you you you're got you around there.

21:42>> We're that we're on that track.

Nathan Latka

21:43Yes. Yeah, my point is you traded at somewhere around evaluation multiple of like 20X. I mean, I know others in your space, not your space directly, but with their same metrics that they're trading at like 30X, 40X, right? So like, I'm just trying to get a sense of how you guys thought about dilution.

Why Take Strategic Capital from Snowflake

Matthew Kilmartin

21:58>> Yeah. Listen, I think we had a unique opportunity with our partnership with Snowflake. And we partnered with Snowflake and Snowflake Ventures invested in us. Wow. And think Snowflake's a great product and we built a bunch of our technology on it and it made sense to listen, I saw the power of distribution at a company like Salesforce. And if you can do a partnership with Snowflake to help people drive more compute with Snowflake, we can get the potential

22:26>> benefit and partner with them from a distribution perspective. So that's why it made sense. Was one of the reasons. And also the market's hot.

Sales Rep Quotas and Vertical Segmentation

Nathan Latka

22:34Yeah, no, I agree. That's a great answer. Last question, are you flying traditional model with your six quota carrying reps? Or you have them aiming at 5X their OTE in terms of quota?

22:46A $100,000,000 quota target. If they hit quota, they make something like, you know, $250.

Matthew Kilmartin

22:52>> It's funny, I actually missed that meeting this morning where we actually go through those specifics, yeah, probably a little bit higher than that. And I'm actually a fan of six month quotas at this stage of a company still a little bit, because I feel like we're still trying to figure it out. And listen, love salespeople

23:16>> who make 300% of quota, blah, blah. But it's like, yeah, well, guess what? Your CFO is going change the goals next year, right?

Nathan Latka

23:21So

Matthew Kilmartin

23:22>> we want to make sure that we're appropriately compensating people, but we're also not setting the bar sort of too low. Everyone's a shareholder.

Nathan Latka

23:32All 50 people own equity. Options pack comes with every offer. Yes. Oh, that's great. That's nice. So you do six month quota. What, $600,000 is the target for six months in terms of quota, 1.2 million for the year, something like that?

Matthew Kilmartin

23:44>> Something like that. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

23:45Interesting. Very cool. And how do you split it up amongst the reps? Is it geography based or some other way?

Matthew Kilmartin

23:51>> It's funny. It's a hot topic right now internally

23:56>> because I think we're actually, I think we're literally making these decisions today. I think we're probably going to move to some sort of a blend where it's actually more vertical, which I think at our stage is not that normal, but I think given the nature of what we do, that vertical expertise is really useful, right? If someone can talk that HEB game and go talk it everywhere else, that's a good thing. So that's how I'm thinking

24:22>> about it now.

Net Dollar Retention and CAC

Nathan Latka

24:23Especially because it sounds like you have a very clearly defined three or four key areas that makes complete sense to me. Super interesting. And then talk to me about, you mentioned how you're able to drive expansion based off number of slots and also module upsells. Was your net dollar retention over the past twelve months greater than a 100%?

Matthew Kilmartin

24:43>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

24:44How far? A 120?

Matthew Kilmartin

24:45>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

24:45Not sure. That's a yes on 120.

Matthew Kilmartin

24:49>> It's a podcast, people can't see my face.

Nathan Latka

24:51All right, fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, but we already understand how you're driving and that's obviously healthy metrics. Are you doing a bunch of stuff in terms of paid marketing? Like, do you have a real CAC here?

Matthew Kilmartin

24:59>> No. Not yet, actually. In fact, we we just we have a just hired some the a CMO who's coming on board. So yeah.

Acquisition Speculation and Investor Advice

Nathan Latka

25:06Snowflake offers $500,000,000 to buy the company tomorrow. Do you have to sell?

Matthew Kilmartin

25:12>> I don't wanna answer that question. I I mean, I just

Nathan Latka

25:14Are you in acquisition talks right now with with Snowflake?

Matthew Kilmartin

25:18>> No.

Nathan Latka

25:19Do they have a right of first refusal because they led your series B?

Matthew Kilmartin

25:23>> Let's not get into the specifics on that.

Nathan Latka

25:25You guys can read a

Matthew Kilmartin

25:27>> space and

Nathan Latka

25:30figure it out for yourself.

Matthew Kilmartin

25:32>> All I'll say is

25:36>> we have great investors and if people want to learn about this type of stuff, talk to your investors. I had great counsel from our chairman of my board and our investors on the best way to get the partnership. Honestly, that's the thing I would actually say. And I would even say this from the Krux days is, there's a lot of capital in the markets today, and I would encourage any entrepreneur to really focus on value added

26:00>> capital. And I'm super fortunate to have that not just from Snowflake, but also from some really awesome investors. And yeah, we probably could have gotten better terms from people and whatnot, but at the end of the day, you want people that are actually going to make you better.

26:16>> I feel super fortunate for the investors that we have, and I think they push us to be better.

Nathan Latka

26:21It's not an easy decision though. Right? The reason I bring this up is deciding to take capital from a much larger player in your place, I. E. Snowflake, is both an advantage because they're more likely to distribute your software. It's also potentially disadvantaged. Is LiveRamp less likely to acquire you because Snowflake is a major investor? Do you limit your options moving forward? So there's a give and take.

Matthew Kilmartin

26:39>> Yeah, I think so. But at the end of the day, Snowflake's not looking to restrict our TAM and we have to be agnostic. Yep.

Closing Questions and Lessons Learned

Nathan Latka

26:47Well, we'll see what happens, Matt. In the meantime though, let's wrap up with some easy, some fluffy questions here for you. Number one, favorite business book.

Matthew Kilmartin

26:55>> Oh boy, most recent business book, let's do that one. I actually just read the CEO of Snowflake's book, Amp It Up, which is actually a pretty good read. I

27:04>> just Amp read It Up.

Nathan Latka

27:05Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying besides Snowflake?

Matthew Kilmartin

27:10>> Yeah, I would say, it's actually the chairman of our board, Tom Chavez. He actually is the CEO of a portfolio company as well. And yeah, he spins a lot of plates and I'm fortunate to have had him for a mentor for a long time.

Nathan Latka

27:24I- What do mean portfolio company? Are you an LP in Superset or something?

Matthew Kilmartin

27:29>> No,

27:31>> Habu was incubated inside of Superset, and so it's part of Superset portfolio.

Nathan Latka

27:36Oh, I see.

Matthew Kilmartin

27:36>> See. And so he's chairman. He's a CEO of another company as well, but he's the CEO I probably pay the most attention to.

Nathan Latka

27:43I see. I see. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Habu?

Matthew Kilmartin

27:50>> Telephone. It's underused today in business.

Nathan Latka

27:53Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Matthew Kilmartin

27:57>> Sleep's important, between seven and eight.

Nathan Latka

28:00Okay, that's good. In situation, married, single, kids?

Matthew Kilmartin

28:04>> Married, four kids.

Nathan Latka

28:05Four, holy crap. How old are you?

Matthew Kilmartin

28:08>> 47.

Nathan Latka

28:08Okay, last question, Matt. What is something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Matthew Kilmartin

28:12>> Say that one more time?

Nathan Latka

28:13Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Matthew Kilmartin

28:16>> It's a marathon, not a sprint, and the importance of managing your own psyche.

Nathan Latka

28:29Guys, there you have it. Matt was at a hot startup, sold to Salesforce for $700,000,000. After he cut his teeth there, he said, you know what? I'm gonna jump out, launch my own thing, but he didn't have any technical skills. So what he did is he partnered up with a venture studio called Superset to spin out this company called habu.com. They're growing nicely. Call it 500% year over year growth or 200% year over year growth doubling

28:49or tripling last twelve months from $500,000 up to about $1,000,000 a month, flirting with it in revenue across 50 enterprise customers. Just closed a series B, $25,000,000 with a critical partner in Snowflake. They sold, caught 10% to 15% of the business. Now looking to scale their sales team. Total team of 50, six quota carrying reps. Really excited about the space. We'll see what happens next. Matt, thanks for taking us to the top.

Matthew Kilmartin

29:09>> Thanks. It was nice meeting you. Appreciate the opportunity.

Nathan Latka

29:13One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. 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 1PM

29:38Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM 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 do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big

30:00fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up

30:22for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We

30:41got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.