How Hireology CEO Adam Robinson grew Hireology to $21M revenue and 4K customers in 2024.

hello everybody my guest today is Adam Robinson he's the co-founder and CEO of hire ology a venture-backed hiring and talent management platform named a top 50 best force workplace by Inc a top company culture by entrepreneur and number 94 in 2016 and number three 32 and 27 on the Inc 500 list of America's fastest growing private companies Adam are you ready to take us to the top let's do it all right very good so up to this real quick cuz I know when you obviously apply for Inc you have to report things like revenue figure where were you in 2016 and 2017 we were just a shade under seventeen million of gap revenue and in seventeen and just under nine and 2016 that's great okay so now tell us what the platform that's a big ol hook right there so now tell us what the platform does for people that aren't familiar yeah we're everything that an owner operated business needs to be good at the people side of their business so we focus our talent technology platform on branded business networks like dealer networks and franchise systems so over the last four years you know we've grown in specialty markets like automotive retail you know one in nine new car dealerships in the United States run higher ology to build and keep their teams we're in over a hundred and thirty franchise brands and five thousand owned and operated locations individually that are part of some branded network and that nuance really matters in our value proposition yeah so 130 we can think of 140 almost like logos and that's across 5,000 locations of those logos is that accurate that's correct okay and how do you price do you price based off logo or poor location we price per location per month based on employee count at that location interesting and what is that's obviously you know knowing how to price and what to tie your to your utility value to is a tricky thing to figure out sometimes how did you come to that kind of being your equation yeah that's the question you know we started our business in 2010 and we were a job slotting model so you could buy a one job opening subscription to higher ology and it'd be the platform for what you need on demand so we were selling to the market we had access to which is small businesses that didn't have a lot of resources or any on selling to them right and so we've grown from there now what we find is as we've expanded the platform in the breath our value prop is really based on servicing the number of employees that you have so if you're trying to maintain headcount of 50 employees that means you're running a certain size career site you're running a certain number of job ads and marketing spend you're running a certain number of interviews test assessments drug on background screens and we price based on your revenue or sorry your employee footprint and that drives our revenue and pricing interesting so if we look at it on the 5,000 number the location number not the logo number on average with the location paying you per month would you say really really depends on on the industry blended you're looking at about 250 to 300 dollars a month okay so that's so that's a tricky price well maybe not but a lot of people that are in that like 102 to $300 ARPU range it's tricky because it's usually not enough to put touch on the sale right but it's also not cheap enough where the sales will be no touch on the website right you have to put something on it how do you manage that balance well what what you would find digging in is that you know the average owner in some of our largest markets owned four to six locations so that that location ARPU 300 bucks really is more like 1,500 to 2,000 dollars I see yeah so you're still you're essentially you're still selling bulk deals right but per location that's the 300 in what's different in our markets in the region why it's you know tough tough to get into this space is because those four locations are typically operators for independent LLC's with four different ownership structures Wow may be owned by a common holding company but the ownership structure is different so if you're a traditional HR tech companies selling to a centralized HR team at corporate that doesn't exist in our customer base they're decentralized networks different ownership structures and requires a completely different text act to pull it off that's interesting it seems like obviously you're pulling it off 5,000 locations three hundred bucks a location puts you at about 1.5 million a month today is that generally accurate we're actually a little bit north are there good so we're you know we run running close to 170 that's great when do you think you'll pass to third quarter Oh great that's great and now would then put you out what is that a 20 million run right come on under this year something like that uh 20 now 27 at the end oh good that's good girl how do you how do you kind of forecast what growth targets you want to hit like how do you know that you want to go for 27 after doing a 17 year oh we look at our addressable market and you know we really we look at what's possible and then we look at what's the what's our maximum efficiency to get at our maximum growth rate so we don't want to blow it out have our acquisition cost go off the charts have our LTV to CAC ratio crater it's just it's just not worth it so we're trying to build the best business we could build which is the right amount of hyper growth right there is there's a point of you know beyond which it's just not worth getting that incremental customer because you have to pay too much it's just inefficient so you know I think you know we're proud of our capital efficiency and the way we approach this it tell me more about that and maybe let's approach it from a payback period number how quickly you like to get paid back on your CAC generally we loved 10 to 11 month paybacks you know and if you're if we're fully loading in customer success and support sometimes we do it sometimes we don't depend on the analysis we're running you know that'll stretch it a little longer and on course sales cost you know we're inside of 11 months that's good so kind of backing the math out of that you're spending somewhere between 3 and 5 grand to get a new location that's correct yeah that makes a lot of sense where where is the spend most effective for you to the extent you can share when we can get in front of prospects that's most effective so we're you know we do a lot of old-school it is thought leadership publishing I've published a book we crank the club it's called the best team wins build your business through predictive hiring which has really had a huge impact on our business and yeah I mean it you know we're showing up instead of being you know paying to speak we're being paid to speak it really makes a difference we're seen as a thought leader in our markets we really get to know our industries and our verticals and so it's really it's it's made a difference so when we can show up and there's 400 people in a room that could all buy from us you know we move out with 40 or 50 customers that's a good use of time it's a great use of time me through funding right so I don't think your boots dropped how much have you raised and why'd you make the decision to raise at all yeah we've raised it somewhere in the neighborhood of about 31 million dollars today that's come in three different rounds a B and C most recently at the beginning of this year and we did it because I you know we saw a market opportunity and there's a window on that market opportunity that closes and and we frankly thought we could we could execute this strategy when these markets and return capital to shareholders in a way that you know make a pretty happy and so we saw the opening and went for it yeah it's fascinating to me I'm Adam how many sound companies there are in this exact space like we had we had the I sim spoke you know Colin was on recently you know he's cranking you know well North a hundred million obviously bootstrap just killing it moved into a new office you got gusto you got zenefits was just on how is there so much space for all of you well a problem by the way coming in I Sims is just a world-class organization and Colin it's killing it I mean it's just you know you know you're gonna look aspire to be as well run a hundred million dollar businesses that one but the it's a universal problem and it's a persistent problem companies are really bad at the people side of their business and as the economy expand expands the workforce expands the problem expands the number of companies created will always have this this this issue big companies have this problem small companies have this problem problems never going away and so it's all businesses with employees have this issue that's a big market I mean it is it is a in tens of billions of dollars of opportunity just in the United States yep are you playing I I think I don't know who is jr. Colin J ed zenefits or calling it I Sims that said that they were just now expanding product line into the kind of job recruiting ad spend market which I guess people spend 15 billion on recruitment related ads annually do you have any products to hit that that space or no yeah she's so interesting I mean some of you know that would out go ahead consider the thought leaders in this space all are coming to market at the same time realizing the same thing they our company is not only bad at hiring about it advertising their opportunities images light the world on fire with with their money and we we have a...