Ichart Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2021)

hello everybody my guest today is Seymour dunker he's the co-founder and CEO of a company called HRT's the leader in cloud business intelligence and analytics and a seasoned entrepreneur who's been both a consumer and developer of visual analytics before founding eye charts Seymour assisted sa Pease senior management and driving the company's product strategy and was an early team member at to enterprise software startups before that Seymour are you ready to take us to the top absolutely we were just great meeting you we were just joking about you're in Mountain View and I was making fun of how much rent you pay compared to what I get right absolutely it's it's something but it's great to be here so did you tell us real quick what does AI charts do and what's the business model is it's a soar pay-as-you-go how do you make money yeah so you already pointed out it's great you're basically a cloud based business intelligence analytics solution then you can embed into other SAS platforms and as such we are you know basically SAS model and we power analytics inside of any SAS platform and so give me an example of how our customers using you tell me a real story yeah exactly so for example we partner with NetSuite NetSuite is a cloud-based ERP solution of the largest actually and they basically use us as an native embedded bi engine that basically powers us for all of their customers so all of their customers their customers are anything from you know manufacturing software manufacturing companies software companies retail companies and they basically use us like an app instead of NetSuite to get all of their insights you know real-time dashboards interactive charts right natively inside of their solution they don't have to log out log into a separate system they are all inside of it see guys just to knock out some of these acronyms in case you're tuning in and you're kind of new to business so when you use the word bi that's business intelligence and then obviously mentioned that suite you guys obviously know that so seem or should we think of eye charts kind of like you know what like it like a gross komm what Rob's doing or like clip folio and what Alan's building I mean is it is it a visual representation of data or is there is there something else behind it so basically it is we you know it's it's a it's more horizontal than that so we basically can take any kind of data and aggregate that data in real time and then visually represent it so that people can interact it slice and dice the data but also now need visually so pivot tables continue to be everybody loves pivot tables so yeah we do people's as well you know in a more broad really a broad way to explain to us as an analogy is think of us as like in every car you have a navigation system right and rather than the car manufacturing building those navigation systems themselves we supply the equivalent of an author of a navigation system tool to everybody who basically is a car manufacturer in our case it is SAS platforms it makes good sense and who are you selling to the net Suites or the companies that are using NetSuite slike you meant you have on your site I think candy and a few other few other companies it depends on kind of which ecosystem we work with so we consider the SAS platforms ecosystems and NetSuite is a massive ecosystem I think they have they serve round about 40,000 corporate entities so in that case we have a mixed business model either you know you know we have a direct sales team we are working very closely with NetSuite Hall bringing us into you know business so very mixed but as we branch out over NetSuite we are surveying you know we will go into exclusive relationships with these small you know with SAS platforms and let them distribute us so it depends basically by ecosystem and how we are you know initiate the conversation with each and I want to kind of dive in and get a sense of where you were psychologically when you decide to launch the company right you had some successes before this before we do that though help us understand the average Kuster main are we talking $100 per month like annual plans or or 20,000 what's the average customer paying you per year per month oh it can range from anything I would say starting run about you know $15,000 per annum - you know much larger than that and that or that obviously you know bungles the number of users so we basically you know give you if you use NetSuite we basically right-size ourselves with how large units with instances right so depending of how many uses you have on that particular platform will basically give you an unlimited version for that amount of users and that varies yes I'm seeing on your pricing page you have the three plans professional business elite professionals 830 per month businesses 1250 it looks like 1250 if I annualized that it comes out about 15 grand so that's your most popular plan the 50 you didn't one yeah yep very good okay let's dive in more kind of the emotional side of the story so what year did you launch the company in so I arrived in the u.s. in 2010 so I had incorporated the company before that but effectively restarted the company when I had landed sure in the u.s. in some time in early 2010 and where where'd you come from so I originated from back in Germany I'm half Indian half German and yeah so I was I was spending most of my time back in Germany there's a healthy ecosystem over there I spoken at dld in Munich and I was shocked not just there are so many people as so many companies why'd you move from Germany to your very expensive rent in Palo Alto oh yeah they see I was being way too this little in the back in Germany so what was your rent what was your rent in Germany like a fraction of what I'm playing today so I would say a quarter so you know I've kind of it's really funny an interesting story so I mean the short version of it is when I had you know I had the idea for a cloud-based you know Business Intelligence Platform and the question really is where do you where you where do you build that right and when I started originally I was based in Germany I had hired some you know brought in early some developers from India now my entire development team is here in Mountain View but you know that's that's how I started and I was wondering where to start and I know from my past trying as a German company to sell to the US market it makes much more sense to be here in the US market and trying to you know fighting did not invent its wheel here yeah but also I talked to early customers in Germany and who asked me who I asked you know would you be interested in buying from you know I charts Heidelberg GmbH or from an eye chart Silicon Valley Inc and they very clearly said it's definitely interested from buying where the innovation is so it was kind of like you know clear to me like the u.s. guys buy like to buy from American companies Germans like to buy from Silicon Valley so why not you know why not move there so why not why not just do what a lot of media companies do which is buy a postal box in New York City or buy a postal box in Silicon Valley ya know plus there's the personal dimension like who would not want to be the first would not want to live in in in the sunny California yeah so I must have totally fit into into my my personal and my wife's like you know perspective is coming out here and you know building a company from him and fast forward so you launched it in 2010 fast forward to today how many folks are on your team we have a team of 60 people ok and yeah we have 60 people all around view well so we have two locations we have Mountain View locations and then we are out in Sacramento my sales team sales operations is out in Sacramento and how many folks at the 60 are sales we are a 20 men team in the sales and supporting functions so yeah okay and then if we go back I want to dig more into kind of the sales role here we talk to a lot of SAS companies that have gotten really really good at figuring out how to drive net revenue expansion from their current customer base year-over-year and a lot of that levers usually the strongest lever there's number of but sometimes there are other levers that inside sales team can pull what levers are those I'm assuming those 20 are probably some inside salespeople what levers are they pulling to drive expansion or revenue for your product so so basically our right now the majority about what a market is centered around you know going and finding NetSuite customers and so the love is very simple like if you are using NetSuite we pretty much you know know your pain points very well which is you are struggling with you know getting reports and insights and we fix that problem and saw the size of how much you need really depends on how big your next video instance is and how it the value of our system grows the more user you use it right so so we have a discussion with you is how you know what's the value of having consistent insights and KPIs measured across the organization and how do you make that you know transparent and visible to everybody and our method automatically drives our conversation in terms of right sizing how much of I trust you need see more that was really viable to understand that what I was referencing though is when someone is already your customer right in year one they've paid you the contract what are you doing over the next part of their lifetime to increase the value you're giving them and also at the same time increase the price point the number for this would be write net revenue expansion right okay got it so so look as these get started we develop a really you know a good sense of what their needs are and for example number of our customers need like they start with one data source but now they basically are trying to get insights from multiple data sources so how can I have integrated an integrated view that's a that's a fantastic way of expanding so for example one of our customers basically has production level data right so they have you know in one system they have ERP data their financials and other system they have in a production level data you know see those that that data combined that drives expansion for us God it makes sense broader use basically and you're now call it seven years into the company how many customers are you serving or range so quickly accelerating so wrong about 200 customers and you know we are adding I think 2030 customers a month right now so and with our upcoming channel agreements that's gonna be accelerating info so just to be you know on the on the we really started it'll be been focusing on various markets our you know focus on ecosystems started really three years ago so that was like we started in the next video some three years ago so that that's how it really real see more have you bootstrap this company of you raise capital if so how much so we raised capital all the time so we've raised twenty three million dollars today and initially we bootstrapped the companies with the help of number of angel investors that basically helped me to come here to the US and then built the company has begun but institutional investments we you know started taking roughly three years ago so the bulk of their funding came as we you know growing into our current business model and I and I assume Canaries in this capital you're getting better senses of kind of how cohorts are performing whether you're onboarding them from the NetSuite kind of channel or other channels you're growing obviously a key thing in any SAS businesses churn what's your what's your annual churn look like and why do people leave if they do choose to leave so our journey is round about I would say five to seven percent and the majority we have kind of like dependent on the underlying right so since we're inside of the NetSuite baked into the Nets we get the leave NetSuite they leave us right so so that's how it where we are connected to also a big function what we found is that it all matters how we're on board the customers so you know early on we were still in a learning experience learning curve if you don't on board the customers in the right way spend enough time with them let go too early that's where they you know we just notice I did but you know we we have got them baby we need to get them to so doing an excellent job on onboarding the customers making sure that all of the needs are taken care of and then obviously there's certain dependencies we cannot you know for the influence and quickly let's touch on CAC and LTV before we wrap up because we're running out of time I'm sure you're doing all kinds of tests related to acquisition what is it cost you an average to acquire a new customer so as compared to you know we compare that to our first year contract so we're roughly at fifteen fifty percent of our first year contract come on seventy five hundred bucks yeah so we are we are highly profitable basically from the initial time we close it close a deal which is great because that means we can you know reinvest into a building great service for our customers so it's it's pretty more or they are they you said your average contract value annually about fifteen grand are those typically paid all upfront yes you have no cash gap issues if it cost you seven five hundred bucks to acquire a new one yeah got it what is what is what's stopping you from growing faster because the metrics look like they make a lot of sense you know there's there's an advantage of growing fast and there's an advantage of burning yourself as you grow too fast because you know as you kind of grow into the next two levels you want to make sure you have the right set of quality in place both across your team's like you know how do you sell how do you serve your customers how do you build your product so that's so we've got critical mass at this point so we got ready to take off the brakes and accelerate our business but what I perhaps that's part of my background coming from there I come from time so so yeah exactly at that point right now so but until now it was all about focus on having a highly you know well-functioning team that produces quality and gives our customers what we to give them and see more I can I'm gonna do backwards math or back in the napkin math here for a second you mentioned you had about 200 ish customers and your average contract value is about 15 grand so it's safe to assume you guys are doing somewhere in terms of ARR around 3 million ish well as I said we are not in a position to mention our revenue numbers being private companies but where would that equation that I just did go wrong because you told me both of those numbers why would that multiplication not be accurate so we also do some professional services for our bigger customers so we are we are you know the specifically the larger ones you know want us to do extra work in terms of integrating additional data sources so there's additional stuff we do that so I'm judging based off this this this small smile on your face when I said that you're doing more than 3 million when you add on professional services and everything else as I said you guys have to watch the video and decide for yourself what they're doing based off the Seymours reaction see more let's wrap up here with the famous five number one with your favorite business book my favorite business book is given Kelly it's called it's slipping right now in my mind it's the incredible I think it's called incredible numbers basically but yeah it's tough the about the future twins number two is their CEO you're following or studying right now I would say one of my favorite ones just because he's a wife count is Elon Musk number three are you a wild cat deep down you're gonna sell this company and then go you know try and take over Mars well I'm not sure about selling at this point but you know it's fun building a high-growth company and having a great team on board so and you know going to Mars I don't know that's pretty cool yeah so see more if NetSuite came to you and they're trying to add to their top line and said hey we're gonna write you a check for ninety million dollars yes or no do you sell nice way he said that with a straight face I was pretty good alright number so what is your what is your favorite tool number three what's your tool my favorite tool absolutely I charge because besides your own beside your own I'm not able to what is my favorite tool when you use a lot for your business for you actually NetSuite so we use NetSuite it's a great fantastic tool we also use Salesforce for basically running our internal distant good not you know what you would expect but yeah so those are you fantastical annoying systems we number for how many hours of sleep to get every night more you know like more lately which is great so I try to sleep 7 hours 6 hours 7 hours great and what's your current situation married single you have kids I've got a great wife and three fantastic kids oh wow ok and Howard are you I am 45 45 ok last question take us back 25 years Seymour what do you wish your 20 year old self knew what I wish my 20 knots a good question is well so I would pretty much do him a lot of the stuff that I'm done perhaps been a little bit more time outdoor there you guys have it from Seymour founder of HRT's he would have spent more time outdoors he felt at his company in 2010 after coming over from Germany on the back of a small angel round they've now raised over twenty three million dollars serving 200 customers again making it easy for them to visualize data especially NetSuite data they're a CV or their average contract value is some around 15 grand they also make money from professional services and some other things their annual attorneys between five and seven percent so super healthy their payback period is around six months or about 50% of their first year value of that 15 grand again 60 folks based out there in Mountain View and San Francisco Seymour thanks for taking us to the top