Hiplead Revenue & Valuation (2020)

just got done editing this interview you guys are gonna love it before i do that though i want you to know that i'm going to be in the comments for the next 30 minutes or so answering your questions if there's additional questions you want me to ask the ceo next time i interview them leave them below or if you're just loving the data points i get ceos to share click the thumbs up button below that's your way of telling me you're loving this stuff and i'll get you more of it additionally again i'll be in the comments answering any questions you have all right for 30 minutes enjoy the interview hello everyone my guest today is connor lee he is building a company called gopersonas.com formerly named hiplead helping sales and marketing teams scale the top of their funnel connor you're ready to take us to the top ready to take us to the top all right so talk to me first about what the company does and then why the name change from hip bleed to personas yeah absolutely so um so at percentage we basically help companies scale their sales so we provide them a platform a software tool for them to use to run uh outbound sales and build basically custom growth engines for their companies and um and we do that um you know primarily through our own application on a self-serve basis and we actually will go in with larger businesses enterprise companies and help them to build out um using custom versions of our software package their own custom growth models and about i'd say about six months ago we we we started to move over to a new name personas from hip lead and the reason why we changed names is basically because um our application um one isn't just focused on on on data on lead data um it's focused on automation automating you know the b2b sales and marketing processes um and i and personas is really our focus so we believe that you know people are most uh when you're running a sales marketing process what you want to do is you want to start by by focusing on your audience first who you're actually talking to and that's and that's the kind of the center of everything if you're going to make um you know with b2b especially if you're going to make uh sales marketing work it's going to be focused on your audience what they care about their pain points um and slicing and dicing it and making the most of it now you got this going back in in 2012 and when it came on the show back in i think it was july of 2018 you'd share that you'd scale at that point about 50 customers on the hip lead product where are you at today how many folks are using the product um where we have let me see we have about uh on the hip lead well on the persona sexual tool we have roughly 100 110 okay and what is the breakdown between like if you look at total revenue last year are you doing any i mean consulting here makes complete sense to me on top of a sas product do you have i mean are you doing both or is it all strictly sas no consulting so we've kind of mod we do do a little bit of consulting but what we've done is we kind of have two distinct products now we have our enterprise plan um and and rather than doing consulting uh in the past we actually build tools that that our clients use um so we'll help them to build out that tool so so it's it's less about us you know writing content running campaigns more about taking the software that we have and building custom versions of it um kind of like a lego block how do you manage all that though i mean then you're dealing with a bunch of different code and you have to deal with bug tracking on seven different you know code bases doesn't that drive your dev team crazy well we actually we so you know we started out you know being a consultancy we we we basically built um a back-end that that can support a lot of this different functionality um so one of the things that that we're that we're that we've been successful we've done is we've kind of turned a lot of our infrastructure into an api so um we can take parts so what the core is is an api and we can build little modules kind of like building blocks on top of that and pull them in and pull them out so kind of like like a set of lego blocks or like an erector set right you've got one piece that grabs data from say their their crm our clients sales force and then it filters it and then it's then it has logic that then would go and say okay well based on what's in here um what's the business logic and they would pass it into another system all those are these individual parts um so yeah it's more like plug and play not full customization yeah exactly i see i see okay all right so 110 customers and are you still kind of in that sweet spot of you know three four thousand bucks a month on average or have you moved up or downstream um so if we've moved downstream in in our services or we're closer to around sorry in our in percentage product um we're closer to an average of a thousand okay um um and uh but our enterprise um business is is is a little bit different we have um so we're doing roughly 130k in the app uh on mrr and about 180k in our enterprise um what's the difference uh the enterprise is so the persona's app is basically um it's it's you know what you get you log in so it's it's like a regular standard sas application you log in you use it the enterprise is basically we've taken um elements of our consulting business and then built the custom code for our big clients we have we have about six um pretty large sas clients um that that are that are paying us 180 k a month in total so so what like if someone asked you what is your total monthly recurring would you take the 130 a month plus the 180 a month yeah okay got it so yeah 310 310 yeah yeah okay that's interesting so so and that's by the way nice growth again last time it came on was about 18 months ago you're at about 150 000 a month did you raise a bunch of extra capital to drive that growth are we able to do all that with no extra yeah all that without actually we yeah we've been around for a while so we've got a lot of software we've got a lot of process a lot of people um yeah and so all that's been our growth has been really driven by um by just kind of listening to our kind of going after these bigger clients that that um you know bigger companies have complex organizational needs and they're willing to pay money a lot of money to solve these complex organizational needs that you can't just um that they can't you know throw their own developers at or can't um you know can't throw you know sales operations or marketing options okay so still just about 200 000 in equity raised yeah yeah we have we've raised zero now you uh i'm going off i'm trying to remember email threads did you decide to use debt or not uh a while back yes so we use lighter capital okay um yeah we even our loan was uh 150k in actual loan and we had a 50 interest paid over over three years so we paid 225 uh okay 75 000 you know in in in fees and and whatnot uh so it was uh it was but it was a good experience we enjoyed it and um and uh and in general i we haven't done it yet but there's where um there's a lot of people um i'm not sure when this is going to air but there's um a lot of resources around covid small business association resources that um that a lot of companies you know are a good way to to get really cheap damage yeah so we're going to put this out fairly soon so let's talk about that tomorrow april 3rd is when the the actual the federal government has said okay you can now apply now there's some caveats here especially where in san francisco a lot of my audience is vc backed one of the issues is it's called the affiliate clause essentially in the contract would basically potentially makes it impossible for vc-backed companies to apply for this now would this apply to you do you consider yourself a ec back because you raised 200 000 no it was it was debt is fully paid off um oh that 200 grand was an equity yeah there's no equity at all so we have some friends and family that that have done safe notes but not not not a not a significant amount so there's no actual like you know true equity on um on our books oh i see i see okay so yeah then you're basically bootstrapped so you're good to go but like some things that people should know about rake related to this is you know essentially you take your total payroll expenses excluding contractors so don't include 1099s you can include pay to founders and owners defined as more than 20 you know more than 20 of the company and you do that between essentially the prior 12 months to applying for the loan tomorrow so call it february 2019 through call it february 2020. um and you cap these the tricky part about this is it's only up to the first hundred thousand dollars in salaries per employee so you might do you have people you pay more 100 grand anybody uh yeah yeah we do okay so like how walk me through the application process how are you applying for this uh so well we are we we haven't fully decided to apply yet but um we've actually built a resource site cova.gopersinus.com and uh and what it is is um it's a bunch of discounts that are available to uh to sas companies and to startups that are that are under 500 employees and then we're going to build we're building a page on there about um the uh the care act loans and the related payroll oh this is great you've essentially went out or just scanned the internet basically hey hey box is giving a discount at lastians giving a discount dial pad is like here's a big list of all these exactly and then we're gonna add other tabs underneath there that show people um you know a lot of companies have have laid off a lot of their employees and um you know what not so everybody's looking ways to save money and to tighten up so we pulled a bunch of resources together and one of the ones we're working on is another tab that's going to be about how to apply um and and how to do that um yeah yeah yeah this is great i mean look for those of you maybe we release this one tomorrow i'll move this episode up since it's going to be relevant anyone listening to this right now it's it's april 3rd friday you know morning basically the federal government has said okay banks who are fdi insured and they're going to put out a more comprehensive list they haven't yet which is crazy it's 24 hours away but basically they're saying funds can start you know the applications can start being processed by banks tomorrow and what that means is if you had a million dollars in salary right payroll uh over the past 12 months capped at 100 grand per employee not including contractors you then take that number divided by 12 so about 83 000 per month and multiply by 2.5x multiplier right so you're looking at about 200 000 is what your loan would be eligible for from the federal gov backed by the federal government from your bank if your bank is fdic insured yeah right so the trick with this that you know the connor that i'm trying to share with people is i think the money will run out right if you take 350 billion right at a max of 10 million per company that's only 34 000 companies right even even if you only do 100 thousand per company that's 3.5 million companies jobless games last week or a loan or last month 6. you know 6 million right so yeah it's going to run out so you should apply quickly yeah yeah absolutely um yeah and there's a lot of companies that are that are that are struggling to make payroll and this is a really great thing to help them yeah last thing on the subject just to get all the information out there people are saying well nathan do you have to pay the loans back so like let's say conor had a million of payroll expense he goes and gets a loan for 200 000 he's like well wait do i pay this back the terms on the loan are it cannot be higher than point five percent interest rate set by the federal government and the term can't be more than two years that's also a federally set guideline as of like 5 40 a.m this morning it could change right so banks will do these loans but here's the cool thing if connor gets that check for 200 000 from his bank they will put in his bank account if he spends that money on payroll utilities mortgage or any interest payments on mortgage or rent it's deductible it's forgiven so in the eight weeks after conor gets the loan starting you know let's say gets it tomorrow or early next week in the next eight weeks if he spends 200 grand on any of those items including payroll he doesn't have to pay back any of the loan it's essentially free money so that's why this is so important for founders to take advantage of especially if you've really been hit hard by the virus that's all the info i spew it out you're an expert on it yeah well i i've studied i mean i just i've studied the heck out of it because so many people were asking me questions but yeah that's that's the approach to take there and make connor i'll pay you after this episode and figure out how to get you this information for your site too but yeah guys also check out the link is uh covid.go personas.com uh we'll put it up on the blog as well so you guys can check that out um connor talk about your customers are you seeing a churn spike because of this um yeah i mean so customers that are so you know we work with a lot of different companies almost all of our customers are sas businesses um and they're they they span the gamut from recruiting to companies that are doing photography um to doing you know pure pure place sas um you know remote worker um you know sort of software and obviously the ones that are that are the tightest are ones that are doing things related to offices and um things related to um to physical events so some of our customers that are that are kind of the tightest what we've been doing for our existing customers we've been offering them free resources on our own services during this time and massive discounts um just just to you know make sure that they they you know can get can get through this um and uh you know and so we're we're we're trying to to keep everyone from churning by by doing whatever we can um on a case-by-case basis so if the customers you know really you know need resources and we can tell and we talk to them then we'll we'll roll out some extensions and resources for them okay all right but in general yeah we are seeing we are seeing a lot of uh a pain in the marketplace um you know um companies that are doing recruiting are are hurting especially ones that are um you know doing um recruiting for you know non-technical kind of roles um sales and and support and all that and then companies that are doing uh event related things or office related things are all feeling a bit of pain so taking a step back you had shared last time your gross revenue churn annually was about 12 still around there have you gotten better uh yeah we're still in that range on our on our uh on our product we haven't had any churn on our enterprise uh whatsoever so zero percent there but on our yeah we're at 12 15 percent churn on on the uh the self-serve go percentage and are you seeing meaningful expansion revenue especially from that self-serve at maybe a grand a month up to your enterprise level at five six seven eight grand a month well yeah we have um we have and i don't have all the numbers in front of me but but the 15 percent includes some expansion chern but we treat the two and we treat the enterprise and and and the app is almost two separate businesses um so we haven't easily tracked them in between but um but yeah there is a good amount of of um of because what we do is we have a monthly plan um and and uh starting off at right now it's 2 50 and and during covet we give it for free for three months for companies that need it um and then we what we'll do is we'll upsell people on to a one-year plan with a with a discount um and so and so if you factor those two things in it it does uh it does have probably 10 or more um kind of uh you know negative negative churn or upsell so when you look so when you look then at the past 12 months if you have 12 revenue churn and about 10 to 15 expansion you're flirting with about 100 net revenue retention um no the 15 the 12 15 kind of churn um includes some of that um so i think we're probably around 20 churn overall and and then if you add in the revenue it brings it down and then there's probably another five percent that that um expansion that we're not counting because it's going to the enterprise business because we haven't like done all the math but um yeah so it's um that's kind of the range but conor if you generally just look at the customers you had paying you exactly one year ago and then you look at the amount of downgraded revenue plus add back the amount of expansion revenue is that cohort about flat so 100 percent net revenue retention it's about five percent uh churn overall okay got it so ninety so ninety five percent net i see it exactly that's helpful okay cool um where is growth coming from um so gross coming from um we're let's see um well it was coming from events uh that'll be changed for a while yeah yeah we're we we uh we partnered with the growth marketing conference and and uh and and do a lot of stuff with them those guys are great um uh we are kind of shifting over to doing a lot more webinars ourselves um and then a lot of it kind of comes from our own we use our own tools to to run our own outbound campaigns um and uh and and what not so we uh we basically have so our tool um does email so you can use it to run outbound email campaigns and you can also use it to run ad campaigns uh look-alike audiences um in very easily and then also do mailing as well so we use all those tools together to kind of um you know to reach people whatever medium they they prefer and kind of all the mediums in general and that that generates a lot of our the vast majority of our revenue and are you operating right at breakeven or are you profitable uh we're profitable oh great okay very good uh what's team size today how many folks uh so we have eight employees in sf and we have uh 12 other remote employees um kind of all over the world um our development is based in south america primarily we have we have two folks in sf and but the rest of the engineers are in are in south america in peru um and then we have operations folks kind of all over the world um folks in canada parts of the us uh asia africa eastern europe you name it very very remote yeah exactly all right wait so how many engineers total 20 on the team how many total engineers uh we have five engineers in total okay and any quota carrying sales reps uh yeah yeah we have we have uh we have one quote occurring sales rep currently um and then we have we have some we have another contractor we work with that's um that does also carry quota but isn't isn't a full-time employee good stuff man all right so last question on the covet stuff so it sounds like you're still researching the the payment protection uh plan that they've put out i mean is there any reason you wouldn't apply for that have you done any research there no there isn't a reason i probably probably should um if anything because we're working on content to uh to help people do it yeah so just kind of learn the process ourselves um so there's there's no real reason to apply i mean as you said it's yeah it's capped at five percent so point five percent yeah yeah um it's essentially it really is the closest thing you're ever going to see to free capital uh from from what everything i can tell i mean i you look at it and go it's too good to be true but from everything i can tell that's it that's the number um the reason i'm asking the reason i've said it so much is you know part of what i've done over the past two years i don't obviously talk about this a ton publicly but i've invested a lot of money via debt into sas companies and so one of the things that i'm considering doing and if you end up doing this email me or tweet me is i am matching whatever you get from covid so if you like applied and got a 200 000 check from the cobot funds i will would give you another two hundred thousand dollars and now it's not gonna be as cheap as point five percent but i'll match funds essentially oh interesting that's really cool yeah so we'll see how it works out yeah well um you sent hey if you want to if you if um i'd be happy to put that on our site too um if it's if it's useful we're cuz we're gonna create another tab and so if there's anything that you want to share publicly um of matching or whatever else yeah yeah happy to we'll definitely talk because on my blog right now at the top pinned i've got a massive like information sheet for sas companies but i don't have what you have which are deals that sas companies are giving to people impacted by covet and the two together make a lot of sense so we'll follow up on that awesome all right connor let's wrap up with the famous five number one favorite business book uh man i think uh i just it's but at this these days it's crossing the chasm okay very good uh no you've graduated from a hard thing about hard things huh yeah number two is there a ceo you're following or studying um you know i'm um you know i like manny medina is a is a guy i know pretty well and a buddy and and i like what he's doing at uh over outreach yep just put up a great linkedin post here i should check it out he had to make a tough decision laying off a large portion of the team but i think didn't in a way that is just probably the most graceful way you could ever do that so good lessons there number three what's your favorite online tool for building your company besides your own um you know we've we've been liking hubspot a lot numbers and also outreach you know as well number four how many hours of sleep you get every night these days i've actually been getting uh a healthy eight hours of sleep every night that's one common theme amid the virus everyone's getting more sleep and uh uh married single kids uh married no kids okay okay but that must have been recent i was gonna say that was recent right yeah yeah all right congratulations and how old are you uh i am 38 38 very good last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew 20 year old self um i think i i wish my training itself would have known that um you know that basically uh think about this yeah it's a big one party party less uh work less enjoy life a little bit more there you go party and work less guys there you have it uh from connor lee used to be hiply now called go personas because they're doing much more than just leads uh they grew from 1.8 million in terms of run rate called a year and a half ago to over 3.6 today serving two separate cohorts self-serving enterprise together again 310 000 a month in recurring revenue he's done this in san francisco and bootstrapped which i love to use some debt to get going but basically bootstrap no equity rates 20 folks on the team all remote five engineers one sales person 95 net revenue retention as he looks to scale check out covid.gopersonas.com for deals uh during the virus that sas companies are doing in terms of discounts uh connor thanks for taking us to the top thanks nathan it's been a pleasure as always these ceos rarely give these kinds of interviews i hit them hard i get the data and i want to do it more so if you want to get more of this stuff make sure you subscribe up here and then additionally go check out one of my other ceo interviews right now