How Hi Platform CEO Vinícius Fagundes grew to $22.8M revenue with a 179 person team in 2024.

guys highplatform.com was launched in 2017 the four co-founders owned 20 together and other investors from an earlier acquisite you know merger deal on the other eighty percent today the company is doing 13 million bucks in ARR up from 11 million about 11.5 million about a year ago they raised a seven million dollar round of funding their first outside funding last year at a 40 million evaluation which was about a 3X valuation multiple and the co-founders have gotten smart they bought back a bunch of equity over the years they now own 40 together which is great as Marcelo and team focus on growing High platform.com hey folks my guest today is Marcelo puglisi he's been an entrepreneur since the early 2000s and participated in the launch of eight different startups since 2017 he's been the CEO of high platform the largest customer experience SAS platform in Brazil he participated in fundraising operations M A and mentoring processes uh processes is a fan of conscious capitalism behavioral economics and corporate culture and he's a married father one kid named Benjamin uh graduated in MBA with specializations in management and sales Innovation Marcelo you ready to take us to the top all right so just to be clear put us on a timeline for us what year did High platform launch and when did you join as CEO uh We've launched uh January 2017 and me and three other co-founders and since day one I was the CEO of the company okay and why do I have your start date as 2000 oh I started other businesses uh in 2000 uh with other guys so my journey started as an entrepreneur started here in Brazil and in mid uh June 2000 uh with a company called direct talk and we've stayed uh for a while in the market and actually High platform direct talk originated High platform uh we got some of them so it's the same it's the same cap table then right it's a different cap table uh but with also when did when did you cut that then when did direct platform stop in high start uh January 2017. okay we got it yeah but with if with a different cap table and uh a different different some different products uh but me as as one of the founders how did you do that right so there's a lot of folks listening right now that might have raised a 200 300 500 000 seat round two three years ago and they're going man I love my investors I want to make them whole but this business is not working I want to shut it down and launch their own version of high platform how do you shut down that thing without pissing off the old investors at DirecTV uh we actually didn't shut down uh we merged with another startup it was a a Brazilian startup for uh uh social media Customer Care customer care care and I we started speaking talking with their investors and they are they were very into uh they wanted to invest in in some chatbot products here in Brazil and direct talk used to have this product and and these guys they they just asked me uh could you speak with the the other Founders and and see if you can work together uh can you can you imagine an angle where you put all these products together and the conversations went went pretty well uh the products were very uh complementary so okay so understood you you sold you merged that business then you're done and you move into high platform 2017. now you with your three other co-founders did you guys play nice on day one did you just split Equity evenly or was it sort of lopsided oh we actually we were we had a very little uh of of the shares so we got together the four of us with very close participations uh but we've worked the past three years uh to have more shares and to uh even balanced more our our positions oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside 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random data again you guys hear these interviews on YouTube all these datas are built from real-time valuation data points Founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raise they sold 22 percent of their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to see companies that have sold the whole business well here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round well go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down what they raised what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold there's never been a larger data set of SAS valuation than what you can get now inside of founder path and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second but if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash valuations or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products click on get your valuation here and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl again all that valuation data live right inside the platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview so when you started Martell like if somebody owned more why did you guys read it whoever that was was going to earn like or have more at the beginning uh yeah but that that was not that much different uh the difference was not the Gap was not that large uh and uh we we've uh we actually did get along pretty well and it was easy to choose our uh roles as Executives uh despite of the the shares we used to have okay so you need to own about 25 then at the start somewhere right around there no actually we we had uh way little than that because the investors are from both companies that merged they came together so we have a very uh how can I say that in English but uh we have a very fast of fragmented fragmented cap table uh so how much how much let me just ask it this way how how much of the company did you guys as the four Founders not own oh we actually had uh 20 of the company okay so other people investors from the merge company they own the other 80 and you guys split the 20 four ways five percent each yeah yeah I see and Marcelo why do that you're like a talented executive you're well known in Brazil why get involved with something where you only own five percent why not go start your own thing and own 100 uh my wife asked me that uh I'm not your wife but I still think that question yeah that's a very good one uh uh Nathan to be really honest I was so much into the business I was so excited about uh uh Division and the goal and and of course the challenge uh that really I I wasn't to me and I I've chosen the the the path uh the difficult one because uh with we've doubled our participation in the last two years so we've uh we bought shares from other uh yeah that's it that's it but I it was I it was a tough a a tough uh challenge where did you get the money to buy out earlier investors bonuses but where did you get the money from was it profits yeah bonuses from the company so you you have earned bonuses from the company since 2017 and you used your personal money to buy out earlier investors based off your bonuses yeah that's it I see if you're earning all those bonuses though how do you convince the early investors to sell at a price that you can actually purchase shares using your bonus dollars uh we had some we had some guys on the cap table that uh were on the on the company for a while uh they were tired uh they had a minority position so they didn't vote and they didn't participate on the company so they were not happy with this uh position and to then uh the even even though we bought a little a more cheap uh they had they had a good return so it was a good deal to to everyone yeah now guys I'm asking all these questions because High has significant revenues you know Marcel when we last spoke back in June I think it was of 2018 or 2019 you said something like you had 1100 customers paying on average a thousand dollars USD a month so you guys are doing 700 800 000 a month in Revenue back then right uh yes yes we we are doing uh what we are doing uh right now we had uh 1.7 000 uh different customers and we do have 1.1 million dollars in in mrr yeah yeah so 1 700 customers you're doing 1.1 million in mrr which is equivalent to about 13 million dollars of ARR right uh yes that's it correct and so why um I mean look that's good growth but it's not fast growth right if you went from 9 million in 2018 to 13 million today you're only adding about a million net new ARR per year why haven't you grown faster uh another good question for Nathan uh we we've chosen a past a path to the company uh to have um different products we didn't focus in one product so we've built a a whole platform that can help companies selling and help companies doing customer care so there are 10 different kind of features and we did some uh we did we had the merger but we did some m a uh uh during this this uh path during this uh the past three years so we had to put this out together as one product and [Music] try to find the right uh uh sweet spot and the right Market fee to to all these features so and and we've raised money very late uh we actually raised money last tag last August uh we raised uh uh uh seven million dollars uh uh that was our our first round uh so we had very little money we came all the out all the way with so you were Marshall just to be clear between 2017 when you launched and the 7 million round you guys were bootstraps yeah that's it okay and what did you the seven million around I mean most people are raising you know they're selling 15 of the company did you sell around 15 percent a little bit more okay got it so we're talking like a like a 35 million dollar evaluations 40 million valuations something like that yeah foreign looking back does that feel fair was that the right move uh uh I think it was a good move uh uh we we brought some uh a good a good company a good investor so he's very much into the Brazilian Tech Market uh very much into SAS uh it's an it's a new uh fund uh with actually the second company or the first company but now they have uh three or four uh so it was I think it was a good move it was a very good move and help me understand growth so if you're at 1.1 million today in Revenue where were you exactly one year ago uh we actually grew 28 the last year uh and we are probably uh 2020 to uh sorry 20 yeah 22. we are we are growing 20 22 so uh we are not growing really fast but we are we keep we are keep keeping some base uh but probably 20 uh to 2024 uh we will have some very uh strong growth around March what do you guys think you will hit this year in Revenue uh 15 um 50 million dollars how do you so you raised you're at 13 million run right last year when you raised the 7 million seed right most VCS when you raise that money they're going to want you growing 50 60 100 a year over year the projection you just gave me is like 15 one five year of your growth how did you get your board comfortable your VCS was such a slow growth rate uh because they we are looking for a five-year plan so our first our first year that's going to be 2023 it's good it's not going to be that fast but we will unlock uh our growth a path and and revenue streams uh throughout the year so probably the years to come will be really faster okay that makes sense what about team today how many folks are full time oh 100 full time we have uh to uh 200 and 150 people uh how many of those 250 are engineers 65 65. okay and how many sales reps are carry a quota how many sales reps carry their quota uh uh 90 no no how many like what's the number how many how many would you have 20 25 20. and that's pretty good night nine zero percent of them hit their quota each quarter huh yeah yeah what's the quota a million a year in ARR what's the quota uh each of them has a three thousand dollars per month uh uh as the initial quarter and the senior ones they have uh uh six thousand dollars uh per month I see so if those senior people do add six grand every month for 12 months that means they add 72 000 of mrr which is equivalent of about 850 000 of ARR so your top reps that's what they do yes okay very interesting well this is a heck of a story we didn't I want to wrap up talking about the product right I mean where do you see the customer success service space going over the next three four five years uh very good question I I actually uh think that every company and I think a high platform as well has to do first of all Basics uh to guarantee that our customers are using uh the products in the proper way and also being a hub of information and data uh benchmarking of using the products and and getting results of the product so I think this is uh step one for for customer success uh but what I do see different uh in the coming years is that Technologies make making things uh very different in the way that we can deliver uh content we you can deliver we can have education products you know programs in order to use our products and as well as the way uh WhatsApp messenger Facebook Messenger uh and and this kind of apps they are changing the way we relate to each other uh as a B2B uh software business uh so I think we have a a a very different same same purpose uh with the basics concept with the basic concept but delivering it in a different way well Martella we're certainly rooting for you we're out of time though now let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite book uh onwards uh hard truths number two is there a CEO you're following or studying oh so many so many I I actually really like how it shoots uh uh and so on I'll put something yeah number three what's your favorite online tool for building High platform besides your own or goggle uh GoGo oh Google Google yeah Google Chat number number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night six okay and um what's your situation married single kids married with kids um one kiddo that's great and how old are you um 46. last question something you wish you knew when you were 20 years old most of most of the things I know today wow oh so stay to stay calm uh uh in in in difficult times guys highplatform.com was launched in 2017 the four co-founders owned 20 together and other investors from an earlier acquisite you know merger deal on the other 80 today the company is doing uh 13 million bucks in ARR up from 11 million about 11.5 million about a year ago they raised a seven million dollar round of funding their first outside funding last year at a 40 million evaluation which was about a 3X valuation multiple and the co-founders have gotten smart they bought back a bunch of equity over the years they now own 40 together which is great as Marcelo and team focus on growing High platform.com customer success and software tool Marcelo thanks for taking us to the top thank you Nathan good to see you bye one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm 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 our poo 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 p.m Central 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 SAS World whether it's an acquisition a big fundraise a big sale a big profitability statement or something else I don't want you to miss it additionally if you want to take this conversation deeper and further we have by far the largest private slack Community for B2B SAS 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 for that at nathanlacka.com forward slash slack in the meantime I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube I'll be in the comments for the next 30 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 got to push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys's support alright I'll be in 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hello everybody my guest today is marcelo puliasi he is the ceo and founder of a company called hip platform more importantly though he's an entrepreneur sas enthusiast behavioral economics fan and has strong has a strong sales background leading one of the largest sas largest sales software service companies in brazil and fosters the local startup and tech ecosystem since the early 2000s he has a ba degree and specializes in sales and marketing marcelo are you ready to take us to the top oh yes i am very good all right so the company that you're currently working on is called hip platform tell us about the company and and how you make money well high platform is a customer care uh platform uh we are very focused and in media and enterprise businesses here in brazil and we are trying really hard to help companies to uh relate in a better way with their consumers so we we we deliver software as chat bots chats email management uh social media customer care among among others uh to help companies uh to to give up to improve their service their customer care service and to relate each other relate better with their consumers and give me a general sense of what folks are paying for these features what are people your customers paying on average per month uh they're they're looking uh first of all uh to to to to save money you know to to make their up their customer care operations more product uh with more productivity uh and and save money so in the last two years we are we are the number one chat bot here in brazil we have over uh 150 uh clients and those are those are paying customers oh yeah okay oh yeah yeah they are looking they are looking to improve their their services throughout uh artificial intelligence and to give to give a better uh to better service to their consumers and as well as save save money and put money in other uh other things inside their companies where they can improve their products and services so marcelo my question though is on average what are these customers paying per month for your platform oh oh they're paying um sorry i thought you you asked about their pay uh our average uh our acv is about one thousand dollars okay that's per year per month per month per month okay good so so i mean can i take the thousand bucks times 150 and say you guys are doing about 150 000 a month in sales right now uh we are actually doing our mrr is about uh 750 000 okay so where's my math wrong that was really wrong [Music] uh i know i i just said that we have over uh 150 clients in chatbot using our chatbot platform oh i see i see yeah it's one of our it's one of our products sorry so how many how many total customers do you have we have uh over uh uh over 800 yeah yeah because if they're each paying 800 or sorry a thousand bucks a month and you're currently doing 750 000 you have at least 750 customers right yeah that's it that's great and this is uh it's a great story here so take me back to when you launched the company what year was that uh actually i've started in the year 2000 uh we were one of the one of the first startups here in brazil uh we had some seed money from one large bank and some some entrepreneurs here and we've started with our thesis was just about trying to help companies to to sell uh to improve their sales on on their website so it was the very beginning of e-commerce here in brazil and the very beginning of internet as a general thing here and companies were trying to to make money with the internet so we we deployed the web chat in order to try to help them to to improve their sales and to improve their businesses on the internet and what have you raised to date i'm sorry what have you raised to date uh we have raised we haven't raised much we have raised about uh let me see all over the years uh two two million dollars i think so two million issues okay good so fairly healthy considering um considering what your monthly recurring revenue is right it's always nice to see someone that has raised less than the amount of money they're making every year right yes we are actually trying to raise more you know because we are in a very uh hype moment and we are not uh being able to uh don't know how to say that in english but to to uh to attend all the uh every opportunity we have you know so we have more demand that we can handle at this very moment so we are trying to haze more money how much are you wanting to raise oh this time we're trying to to raise um with about five uh five million between five and seven million dollars at this very moment and and can you share i mean what kind of valuation are you hoping to get oh yeah uh we are uh trying to make uh 3.5 times our uh revenue so it's about 75 million dollars sorry 75 million rei's in dollar i think it's 20 million dollars yep so you want to raise between five and seven million us dollars on a 20 million dollar uh pre-money valuation yeah that's right yeah so you'd sell about call it 20 of the company yeah that's right yeah okay very good and what is i mean how's that going what's the funding environment like in brazil uh i think we are at this moment we are in a different in a unusual position because in brazil we have lots of vcs and early stage money and we don't have more funds specific to growth money or to stages that later stages so we are actually talking to some funds in the u.s because we are kind of you know cheap and they have more track record working with companies that are not in the early stages and we are also speaking with uh very few people here in brazil uh that can handle a company with our profile and well actually we we find out found out that in brazil we had to do private equity uh but we are still a small for them you know so when we are in an unusual spot that we are not big and not small anymore you know yeah you're not big enough for private equity but you're too small to do another convertible note right that's it yeah that's right uh talk to me more about growth so today you're doing 750 000 us dollars per month what were you doing a year ago in june of 2017. uh we we improved our sales in 20 20 22 and i think uh we are we'll have the same rate this year between 20 and 25 percent uh of course as an entrepreneur is this space to i see room to to to improve our sales uh but it's not it's not a bad rate you know yeah for a company of our sizes just to confirm then you were doing about six hundred thousand dollars per month a year ago now you're doing 750 that's about a one that's about a 25ish percent growth rate yeah that's right okay interesting yeah i mean so that that is also i think going to be an interesting conversation when you talk to us vcs is at companies your size they like to see much higher growth rates um than that what what's making it most challenging for you to grow uh at this very moment i think i think our challenge is to have money to improve our sales and marketing teams and to also improve our products uh because how can i say that the more you say the more you sell the more you have to the product has to to grow with your with your with your sales bring some scale to our business so [Music] our our user proceeds is based on on sales and marketing number one then product and we are also we're also looking for some inorganic opportunities in brazil so we can we can buy some startups and we can acquire some startups that could help us a lot if you let's say you do get a term sheet for a 3.5 x kind of valuation your 20 million evaluation if somebody at the same time offered you a higher valuation let's say forex let's say they offered you 25 million to buy the whole company would you sell no why not why would you raise an evaluation lower than a similar offer to buy the whole thing i think it's not the right time to sell it i think we still have uh as as i said before a lot of room to grow uh we can grow at higher height rates and i think we do have the money we can do that and have a better valuation like in three or four years where let's say you do get the this five million dollars what is your current cac and and and where is that money being spent uh today our our carcass is is about uh i'm sorry our is about uh 2.5 uh between 1.5 and 2 000 dollars uh our payback is about uh the average payback is about eight months and we put money we are putting money in uh we are doing some events and uh uh inbound uh sales so we are doing google facebook linkedin uh to to bring leads and and events that's our our main uh efforts uh we have two sales teams we have sales teams there that there's uh uh one of them is focused on inbound and the other one is on field sales for larger companies so we do code calls we do like the old school uh what's your total team size march marcel uh today we have uh if we count in inside sales and everybody count everybody knows everybody uh 18 people oh 18 full across the whole organization engineering product sales marketing oh no no just sales no no what's your total team size i mean my total team sorry it's 130 people 130. okay and and walk with this real quick you just said you have an eight month payback period which confused me because you said customers pay a thousand dollars per month and you pay 2 000 to get them which means your payback should be two months why is it eight because we have some setup uh setup costs so our client they pay setup and they pay uh mrr after the setup i see i see okay got it so how does that extend the payback shouldn't if they're paying an upfront setup fee shouldn't that make the payback period faster uh why is that because they're paying you a chunk of cash up front to set everything up you see what i'm saying if if someone's paying you a grand per month and you paid two grand to get them that you get your money back in two months if they're paying an upfront setup fee as well it should be even faster yeah uh i think one information that is important our new clients they they come with a a average a a their acv is lower than 100 1 000 i see so we do a lot of of cross-selling up so i see so they start they start they mainly start with 500 between 400 and 500 dollars so it's an effort of our sales team to improve their their ecv throughout six months and between six and twelve months that makes sense that that that then makes the eight month payback period make more sense uh tell me quickly about churn what's your turn today uh our churn is 2.5 uh percent per month that's logo churn that's uh money that's turning that's mrr turn okay so that's that's dollar churn yeah dollar charge and that's grosser net i'm sorry is that gross or net uh that's snacks it is net so you're adding back all your expansion revenue as well [Music] yeah okay got it that's great that's that's that's that i mean look that's healthy so um just and so just to be clear right if you want that time is 12 months right so you're churning about 25 of your revenue annually yeah that's right okay and that's on a net basis yeah it's on our basis got it cool so so for you to drive the reason i'm pulling that out is for you to then drive a 20 year over your growth rate you've got to add enough new customers to make up for the 25 churn revenue plus an additional 20 so 45 right yeah that's right yeah okay very good and where's the team based are you guys all based in uh in sao paulo no we have we have some people in blooming out that is a city close to florida annopolis is like a one and a half hour from florianopolis so we have inbound sales and and development and dev team in illuminae and but many our people is here in sao paulo very good all right marcelo let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what is your favorite business book wow uh the ones from howard shoots from starbucks yep starbucks book number two is there a ceo you're following or studying right now he's a celia ceo that i'm following right now yep oh i follow so many guys i do i do like a lot brazilian guy called mariano gomez he is a ceo from vtex a global platform a global ecommerce platform i really like him i really appreciate what he does number three is their favorite online tool you have for building your business uh my favorite my favorite one too google online tools are are great i also love slack yeah yeah number four how many hours i sleep to get every night oh well i had a two-month-old baby so i'm sleeping between five and four uh four and five hours okay and you just one kid or more it's my first kid first okay and uh buried single yes i'm married married there in brazil very good and how old are you i'm 41 41. marcel last question here what do you wish your 20 year old self knew oh i'm sorry you didn't i didn't get you that's okay what do you wish your 20 year old self knew uh i'm sorry that's okay when you when you were 20 years old what's something you wish you knew wow everything i know at this very moment i was very naive and an emotional guy and i'm much more stable but one thing that everything passes you know you have ups and downs and everything just goes by i have to stay steady everything passes stay steady he launched hit platform back in 2000 you know so it makes sense right he's been at this for 18 years a lot of patience here but he scaled the business quickly with his team of 130 people in brazil helping folks do customer support much better right much more efficiently they've got 750 customers paying on average a grand per month so 750 000 per month today in sales that's up about 20 year-over-year in june 2017 doing about 600 grand per month in sales they raised two million dollars but currently looking to raise another five to seven million on a 20 million dollar pre-money valuation so looking for about a 3.5 x multiple on arr again based in brazil with a 2 000 cac 8 month payback period 2.5 dollar churn per month that's on a net basis in a hot space marcelo thank you for taking us to the top thank you so much nathan good to see you bye