How iVvy Reached 25,000 Customers and $10M to $20M in Annual Revenue with 100% to 150% Year-on-Year Growth (Interview with CEO Lauren Hall)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Hello, everybody. My guest today is Lauren Hall. She's the founder of iVvy, a multi award winning technology company providing enterprise software to the events industry. Since its 2009 launch, she's overseen iVvy's continued growth and global expansion to APAC, Europe, and North America, offering the world's first real time marketplace with live availability for function space and suppliers. Lauren, are you ready to take us to the top?

Lauren Hall

00:21I am indeed.

Business Model and SaaS Structure

Nathan Latka

00:22Alright. Tell us about the company. What do you do and and what's your business model? Are you a pure play SaaS company?

Lauren Hall

00:27We are, but we're actually a little bit different in the fact that even though we have a fully SaaS model because we have three enterprise applications, which is providing solutions to meeting planners, to venues, which manage their functions based group accommodation, It's their full sales and catering system as well as inventory and time based management systems for suppliers. We're actually in the industry of travel and the events industry, there's only a big major player like Sabre.

00:54So what Sabre does for travel, they digitize the online experience for booking, for accommodation, flights and car hire. We're doing that for meetings and events. So basically we are a global distribution platform known as a GDS, but in order to achieve a GDS, which is the entire price software connection and distribution engine in one, you have to build the technology at the source of the supply chain. So we built operating systems to be able to manage

01:19their live availability rates and inventory of the supply chain. We then connected them into our marketplace, which then enables all of that supply chain to then have consumers and event organizers book in real time. And that was really a huge problem. It was something that I experienced many times over having teams organizing events, which was really truly a way to be able to solve a global problem.

Revenue Streams and Enterprise Customers

Nathan Latka

01:41So you make money every time someone uses your platform to book an event venue. I'm assuming you're taking a referral cut or something like that.

Lauren Hall

01:47Yeah. So what we do is we've got an enterprise SaaS license fee. We've got a transaction fee. We've got usage fees. We've got multiple revenue streams that come across our platform. So we're not just SaaS. So we're obviously transactional model as well.

Nathan Latka

01:59Yeah. If you look at your last twelve months in terms of total revenue, what percent of it was just pure software, not usage, not anything else, just pure soft SaaS?

Lauren Hall

02:08Probably 85% is pure SaaS at the moment because we're only just, yeah, yeah. SaaS is predominantly now because we're only now moving into our distribution model. So what we do is we power the platforms for like American Express, Flight Centre globally. We're building out the distribution B2B platform play. So our goal is to be able to bring those who already own that customer base, which is enormous markets. As an example, the top five travel management companies

02:34of the world control over $100,000,000,000 worth of meetings and events spend because they already service the travel market for those big, corporate customers. But there is an enormous opportunity that sits anything between zero to 200 pax for events, which they don't touch. And that needed to be a self serve solution. So we built that platform

Nathan Latka

02:34So learning Lauren, all to be live clear, and who is paying you the SaaS fee?

Who Pays the SaaS Fee

Nathan Latka

02:58The event space?

Lauren Hall

03:01All the suppliers pay us their SaaS because we are their everyday operating systems.

Nathan Latka

03:01Wait, so just

03:06to be clear again, we don't know who the suppliers are. We don't know your business. So you're talking about the meeting space itself.

Lauren Hall

03:11Yeah. So like we provide our systems to big hotel chain groups. We are the central reservation systems where they're everyday operating day to day solution as well as their booking engine that sits on the front of their websites. So we actually connect all the pieces of underutilized assets that have never been online before. So as an example, you ultimately at the moment can book accommodation for travel, but you could never book accommodation for groups, which could

03:36be 50 to 100 pax when you're organizing an event. So let's go

Nathan Latka

03:36When you

Lauren Hall

03:40back

Nathan Latka

03:40say pax to Lauren, you mean people?

Lauren Hall

03:42People, yeah, pax. As people. So as an example, let's go back all the way to the beginning. The biggest problem with organizing an event that it can take up to six weeks to be able to source and access and get people to respond to an inquiry. Okay, you go backwards and forwards negotiating between a venue and a supplier and potentially the corporate that you are either organizing it for or on behalf of. Now, reason for that

04:06exists is because there's been no systems that sit at the supply chain. So there's been no ability for these sales and catering systems that sit at venues or inventory management systems that sit in suppliers that actually connect online that make available the inventory time available and rates to those

Nathan Latka

04:06Totally.

Founding Story and Timeline

Nathan Latka

04:26Yeah, Lauren, sorry, don't mean to cut you off, but we are short on time. I totally get the product. It makes perfect sense to me. I totally understand why you're doing it. It's a huge problem. I get it. So I want to dive more into, I want to capture more of your story here. So, so walk me through kind of a timeline. When did you launch the company? What year?

Lauren Hall

04:44I launched iVvy in 2009. I started building the first platform for meeting and event organizers, much like what you see Cvent in The States. We built that Cvent platform here in Australia. My journey started back in South Africa when I built the first platform to solve that corporate meeting spend problem to be able to provide availability rates and inventory online. When I originally built the platform, I had massive demand. It outstripped the capability of how it'd

05:14been built and engineered. I had to re engineer that platform to start again because it had been built in ASP Classic, not in a PHP or a dot net. And I obviously have bootstrapped that company for a couple of million.

Nathan Latka

05:28And have you bootstrapped this current company?

Lauren Hall

05:30Oh, no, now we've got capital. We've got significant capital. So we've raised quite a lot.

Nathan Latka

05:34How much have you raised to date?

Lauren Hall

05:36Well, we're now close to nearly 26,000,000.

Nathan Latka

05:38Okay. And it was at all equity or any that convertible debt or convertible notes?

Lauren Hall

05:41We did some convertible notes. We've done some in terms of majority equity. But yeah, we're in a massive growth path at the moment. So we basically... So going back on and looking at your timing. So I built the first platform in South Africa from a timeline. I had funded that for about 3,000,000 of my own cash. And ran out of funds. That was in 2008.

06:07Like 2006, it took me two years to build that. Take it to market, commercialize it. I then ran out of funds. I then was awarded. I went to the South African government. I was awarded 10,000,000 from the government because of the national benefits we're bringing

Nathan Latka

06:07Is

06:21that included in the 20?

Lauren Hall

06:23No, no, this is excluding. Because within two days of me being awarded those funds, I was then given access to Australia. I left South Africa because I witnessed the brutal murder of my father and I chose to leave the country. So I took my two young kids and started again. So I entered Australia with no money, no job, no network. I started again. I recapitalized the company. I started out, brought in a good co founder. We

06:50built up our first phase. We built and commercialized that now. We're now currently in 13 countries with offices

Customer Count and Customer Types

Lauren Hall

06:56and

Nathan Latka

06:56How many some customers are you serving?

Lauren Hall

06:59Oh, we've got about 25,000 now.

Nathan Latka

06:59Okay. These are like, again,

07:02hotel chains, event locations.

Lauren Hall

07:02Hotels,

07:05restaurants, meeting planners, corporates, not for profits because we've got multiple customers across the globe. I mean, work with it. People can get onto our platform in many different ways. You know, they can either sign up and be part of the marketplace, which is their online RFP tool. They can be part of the SaaS system, which is their full operating systems. They They can use our meetings tech to take all the registrations and payments and processing for

07:27their events. You know, there's multiple layers within iVvy in terms of where people can actually utilize our team.

Pricing by Customer Segment

Nathan Latka

07:32So Lauren on just the SaaS aspect, what are these And I know you have many different cohorts, but best you can, on average, what are these companies paying per year or per month for the SaaS component of your tech?

Lauren Hall

07:43Look at ranges like, you know, from a small restaurant, it can take anything from 50 to $100 a month on And the then for large hotel chains, it's, you know, can be anything from $250 to $500 a month. It depends on the size because we, you know, as a hotel chain, we also provide all the central reservation systems. Integrated into their property management systems.

Nathan Latka

08:03Would you say Lauren that you lean towards the higher end of that? So maybe 150 or $200 a month on average or no, you're really long tail SMB?

Lauren Hall

08:11No, no. I think we lean to the higher end definitely because we work in non global groups and typically because there's a lot more complexity. If you're looking at the restaurant areas, which is very simple stuff, okay. There may be a lots of smaller players, but definitely I think we sit in the enterprise space, particularly across the market.

Revenue, Growth Rate and Team Size

Nathan Latka

08:30So Lauren, can I take the $100 kind of per month average times the 25,000 customer number you just gave me? I mean, that obviously would put you at about $2,500,000 a month on the software end. Is that accurate?

Lauren Hall

08:42No, that's probably not. I mean, we're sitting probably closer between the 10 to 20,000,000 in revenue a year.

Nathan Latka

08:42And you

08:49said about 60% of that is, or sorry, 80% of that is SaaS?

Lauren Hall

08:52Yes, majority SaaS. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:54Yeah, that's great. I want to understand more of how you've signed. This is incredible. I've signed up so many locations. What's your growth? I mean, what's the number one growth channel look like?

Lauren Hall

09:03Look right now, I mean, majority of our time over the last nine years has actually been spent in the Asia Pac region. We've obviously recently launched into The US which we've got enormous pipeline because we're working with global groups. We also launched into The UK. We have global teams out of South Africa, but we found that definitely because of the large volume of major groups, which are brands like in The States as well as in Europe,

09:28the volume of properties that we're getting on board are in the hundreds. We don't just get on one property, get on large groups.

Nathan Latka

09:28Okay.

Lauren Hall

09:28And then we roll those out across the markets. I think there's still a lot of learnings to be honest, Nathan, about our growth strategy. It's not like a simple tool where people just sign up and we have outbound sales teams. Have on the ground high level executives that

09:49are in

Nathan Latka

09:49What's the the team size today, Lauren?

Lauren Hall

09:52We're now about 65, okay? We probably will be before the end of our financial year, we'll be closer to 100.

Nathan Latka

09:59And when's your end of your financial year?

Lauren Hall

09:59June.

Nathan Latka

09:59Okay. And where's everyone based? Are they remote or all in Australia?

Lauren Hall

10:05No, no, no. They're all over the world. We've got offices in America, okay, which is California. We're now opening Dallas. And we're opening Canada in January. We've got offices in The UK, South Africa, India. Yeah, we've got offices in all the regions.

10:21Predominantly it has been Australia for quite some time. And for the last nine years. But now we will be opening offices every three months around the world.

Nathan Latka

10:31That's great.

10:31And in terms

10:31of growth, I mean, said between ten and twenty kind of today, let's assume kind of lower. So if you're at 10,000,000 ARR today, where were you about a year ago?

Lauren Hall

10:42I suppose some of that I don't actually want to share too much in terms of all the numbers, Nathan, because I think as you know, my chase now is a 100,000,000 in revenue in the next four years.

Nathan Latka

10:42Okay.

Lauren Hall

10:42So rather working forward versus backwards, you know, part of our growth, you know, we've been growing anything between, know, a 100 to 150% year on year.

Nathan Latka

10:42Okay. A 100%

11:02year over year growth. I mean, 100% year over year growth would mean, you mean you could call it maybe a $400,000 to $420,000 a month about a year ago, you're at $800,000 or $900,000 a month now. Yeah. By the way, the reason I asked those numbers is because my listeners want to be like you, right? Potentially if they're smaller, and you can learn a lot from history. So I love the ambition. I love... When do you think

11:19you'll hit a 100,000,000 by?

Lauren Hall

11:21The goal is four years.

Acquisition Interest and Unicorn Ambition

Nathan Latka

11:22Okay. Are you right now in aggressive. Are you in talks right now with Vista Equity or Cvent to acquire you?

Lauren Hall

11:28That came that come. I'm not interested in selling.

Nathan Latka

11:31Why why aren't you interested in selling at all?

Lauren Hall

11:33No. I've got a goal to be the first female unicorn in hospitality to reach a billion dollar market cap, and I potentially wanna list the company.

Nathan Latka

11:42I love that goal. Where would you list it if you did list?

Lauren Hall

11:45Look, I think certainly my head office is probably gonna be land up being in The US. We've got our R and D stuff here in Australia because of the tax benefits we receive. The view is that we will probably grow our US team extensively. We've had a lot of people approach us for acquisition. We know who ultimately would wanna buy us. They're already sitting around the table. But the goal for us is grow out our US

12:07team enormously because it's a $400,000,000,000 market for us. And the reality is as we grow our global footprint is to then look at the pace of our growth. And look, I think many opportunities will come to the table at the same time. But I definitely think we're gonna have a heavy dominance in The US. Europe.

Churn and Retention

Nathan Latka

12:27Churn's critical in a company like this. What's your revenue churningality and how do you make sure to keep that as low as possible?

Lauren Hall

12:33Look, one of the things that I think is really important, I think we've got a 96% retention rate, which is only a 4% churn.

Nathan Latka

12:39That's logo or revenue?

Lauren Hall

12:41That's in... Pardon me?

Nathan Latka

12:43That's logo or revenue?

Lauren Hall

12:45Revenue.

Nathan Latka

12:45Okay. Got it. So 4% revenue churn annually. That's really low.

Lauren Hall

12:48Yeah. Yeah. It's very low. And look, we've been very, one of the biggest things that we really pride ourselves is retaining our customers, you know, and working right really, really heavily on making sure that the customers, because we're such an agile development company. I mean, we release about a thousand releases a year.

Nathan Latka

12:48Okay.

13:06Do you implement CI's integration or no?

13:11Yeah. Do?

Lauren Hall

13:12We do. And we mapped out integrations into Opera, Oracle, CRS, Sabre, point of sale, you know, we are, and we have an enormous roadmap of revenue management integrations. And, you know, we run an agile waterfall approach in terms of our sprints, you know. So we've, you know, we're a very, very fast and agile company.

Profitability and Latest Funding Round

Nathan Latka

13:31Lauren, last question here because we're out of time before we wrap up with the famous five. Are you profitable today or cash flow positive?

Lauren Hall

13:37No, because we are not actually chasing profit, we're chasing growth. And currently we are capitalizing for that growth around the world.

Nathan Latka

13:43The last round you raised, what year was that?

Lauren Hall

13:47Well, I've just completed a round now for 15,000,000.

Nathan Latka

13:47Okay. And That's included in the twenty six. Is...

Lauren Hall

13:47Correct.

Nathan Latka

13:53Yeah. Well, okay. Then... By the way, that makes sense then. You you obviously wanna reinvest that. You shouldn't be cash flow positive right now.

Lauren Hall

13:59No, no, it's not at the same... Now we're in a massive growth trajectory now. As we do that, we will continue to capitalize and grow so that we can reach our goals of $100,000,000 and hopefully a $1,000,000,000 market cap. And we can celebrate a female unicorn in hospitality, which is a very, very hard place to be.

Nathan Latka

14:19I would love that. I think that would be wonderful. And I hope you come back on the show and celebrate in four years and we're toasting virtual champagnes together. All right.

Lauren Hall

14:27I'll be there, Nathan, without a doubt. Thank you for your time.

Famous Five: Books, Tools and Personal Life

Nathan Latka

14:30Yeah. Hey, quick here because it's the format of the show. Really fast, famous five. Number one, favorite business book?

Lauren Hall

14:37Screw It, Just Do It.

Nathan Latka

14:38Screw It, Just Do It, Richard Branson.

14:40Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now?

Lauren Hall

14:45Actually, Alison, yes. And there is, believe it or not, and now one of the things that probably would have been really good if I actually knew that I was going to be asked that, okay? I probably would have told you. Yeah, Alison Maslin, who's built a 6 multimillion dollar company, she's absolutely fantastic. I'm actually working through

Nathan Latka

15:04What's her last company?

Lauren Hall

15:06Her last company now, okay. Now you're gonna give me... Yeah. You're really getting me on the spot, aren't you?

Nathan Latka

15:12Well, my audience wants to look her up, what would they type into Google?

Lauren Hall

15:15Well, I would go in there. Alison Meslin. She does this LevelUp solutions teaching people in SaaS companies to be able to grow to multimillion dollar companies. And I think she does Scale or Fail is a really, really good book that I've been reading. I would definitely, particularly businesses that are moving from that. You know, now you've built your national platform. Now you need to scale out fast. How are gonna do it? How fast? What are your

15:36growth? She wrote that.

Nathan Latka

15:38She wrote Scale or Fail?

Lauren Hall

15:38Yeah, yeah. And she basically puts together a CEO strategic roadmap, okay, that really, really can help people that are looking to be able to grow their businesses

Nathan Latka

15:38Number

15:47three, what billing tool do you use?

Lauren Hall

15:51Billing, well we've written our own billing systems.

Nathan Latka

15:51Okay.

Lauren Hall

15:51We are payment gateways as well. So we actually are the entire engine of

Nathan Latka

15:51It's custom.

16:00Yeah.

Lauren Hall

16:02We've done custom builds on all of our payment processing. However, we do integrate 25 payment gateways and we utilize different solutions for our customers. Also one of the other ones that we're integrating to is like Stripe as well for the global platform. Braintree, there's a couple of ones around the world.

Nathan Latka

16:18Great. Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Lauren Hall

16:21Probably luckily four.

16:23I've been

Nathan Latka

16:23Four, Lauren, that's not healthy.

Lauren Hall

16:26I know, I'm terrible. I'm a workaholic. And I start early in the mornings and then I finish late like eleven, twelve at night.

Nathan Latka

16:32Mean, wouldn't have guessed. You have like no energy.

Lauren Hall

16:37You wouldn't tell me... Sound like I should be on drugs. No.

Nathan Latka

16:39I'm kidding. Okay. So four four hours. And what's your situation? Married, single, kiddos? It sounds like you have two kids. Right?

Lauren Hall

16:44I am married and with two kids. My son has just finished school and done schoolies week for the last week.

Nathan Latka

16:44Okay.

Lauren Hall

16:44In Australia, typical crazy week of partying. And I've got a son of 13.

Nathan Latka

16:56That's great. Okay. They're two. And then do you mind me asking how old you are?

Lauren Hall

17:00I am 47.

Nathan Latka

17:0147 years young.

17:02Last question. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?

Lauren Hall

17:06You know, think one of the things that for myself is I would actually say celebrate myself for the last thirty years of business because I have given everything all the time in everything I've ever done and I've never given up. And I have to actually pat myself on the back because I have indomitable spirit and fearlessness like no other.

Nathan Latka

17:25Guys celebrate yourself more from Lauren founded this company after fleeing Africa after witnessing her father's brutal murder. This was in 2009, really started over in Australia with sights now on building the first kind of female run unicorn in the hospitality industry. She's well on her way with doing between ten and twenty million bucks right now in ARR scaling a 100 to 150% year over year. Just raised an additional 15,000,000 help fuel that growth, 26,000,000 raised to

17:49date, about 65 people on the team total today. All of them are remote, about 4% revenue churn annually. So economics are holding serving 25,000 event locations, whether it's restaurants, hotels, things of that nature, helping them book their space and doing many, many other things as well. Lauren, thank you for taking us to the top.

Lauren Hall

18:05That was such a good summary. You better share that with me so that I could share that with my team, all right?

Nathan Latka

18:10Sold, we're done. You're on. Thanks, Lauren.

Lauren Hall

18:14Thanks, Nathan.