How Jumio CEO Jennifer Harris grew to $42.4M revenue and 30K customers in 2021.

from Steven St again joined jumio as part of a venture round in 2015 the company was founded in two years prior in 201 13 the company has since raised $60 million helping Drive identity verifications across the sharing economy with the biggest public customer he can articulate being Airbnb they're serving between 350 and 400 paying customers across 40 different countries their team of 1500 is split between San Francisco and India they're growing 46% year over-year currently last year in 2016 they did 26 million identity verifications in a good year in 2017 Steven says he expects that might pass 30 million Steven this is episode 732 coming up tomorrow morning we talk with Z this company has raised 5050 million and he's leading the Caro cargo container software space But first here's today's episode this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of Revenue or customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what their marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have I'm now at $20,000 per to 5 and six million he isent on global domination we just broke our 100,000 unit soul Mark and I'm your host Nathan lka hello everybody my guest today is Stephen St he is the the founder of a company called jio.com now he brings more than 25 years of experience fueling corporate growth in leading technology businesses before jumio he served as a CEO of a company called true position a leader in location based Services technology prior to that he was president and CEO of broadband Innovations delivering Digital interactivity Services to cable TV providers during his tenure he raised over $30 million in equity from Venture Capital firms and strategic investors and ultimately sold the company to Motorola in December of 200 and five Stephen are you ready to take us to the top I am ready to go very good so tell us what jumio does and what's the business model how do you make money all right we're a software as a service uh particularly we do trusted identity as a service so we do two we three things in that ID verification identity verification and document verification it boils down to with an ID verification you take an image of your ID passport driver's license use your laptop use your phone upload it we don't care we will then validate that it is not fraudulent and then if you do identity verification we do a biometric facial comparison of your selfie with your device and the image of your face on the ID to say that oh you have a perfectly valid ID are you the same human or did you steal it yep and then finally we do a document verification which for a lot of know your customer regulations is things like a utility bill or a bank statement do you have something that proves you live there interesting so are who's your customer is it the government that where people are sending their IDs to to validate something or or is the consumer we are our customers are Merchants who do that need to figure out who you are whether for their own business model like Airbnb is a big customer okay they don't have to do it but they do actually need to have a trusted environment of landlords and tenants um and then we also have Airlines we have online gaming companies Bitcoin companies Rick and mortar Banks a lot of them have a no your customer requirement and anti-money laundering requirement that they must fulfill which we do for them are a lot of these companies you're seeing spring up right now where they're scaling internationally with a lot of independent contractors I'm thinking Uber Lyft on demand food delivery programs things like that uh a lot of the friction with these companies moving into new locations is exactly this is the driver actually safe is are they who they say they are do you have a lot of those kinds of customers or no we have a lot of customers of that nature I won't say whether those are specifically customer of ours yeah but I would the way I describe it is the world is moving to the internet online Commerce and the idea that you have to walk into some building and flash your ID is a little inconvenient especially very inconvenient well it's inconvenient and some places don't even have them right they don't have it online I mean a brick and Mor existance so we fit them beautifully I have to tell you too I won't show it on screen here for security reasons but if you look at my driver's ID whenever I'm trying to go into like a place that cards people and I show it to them they look at me twice because it's like cracked halfway and it's old and worn and my reason is simple I don't want to go back to the DMV it's too it's it's it's a it's such a bad experience I would rather just put up with a cracked almost unusable license you know there's a lot of people like that or you know someone changes their hair like in my case you don't have enough left and you know let's face it the ID on your driver's license is a crappy tiny picture yep are you the same human and we use the technology and humans and we figure it out so what is the average again I'm sure you have tons of different cohorts of customers large and small but what's the average customer paying you and is it per month is it a SAS business it is a SAS business typically people pay one year's worth of transactions in advance okay and then they just burn off their inventory and then if they uh need to buy more we do another agreement or we have different mechanisms so it is pay as you go but you pay in advance in a sense and are most I mean can you give me an average are most of these you know $100,000 contracts or 10,000 contracts or million-- dollar annual contracts what's an average you know they range wildly there's a minimum that we won't bother with because to be honest you're not worth the customer support effort which is what but we had it's really not worth our time um and then we have many mullion dollar you cut out there could you repeat that so what was the minimum that you won't really mess with and then go forward up from there you froze up again are connections hear me yeah Stephen kill go ahead and kill the video we'll edit this out but kill your video so the connection stronger entirely Stephen kill your video so our connection stronger okay okay good so we'll edit this part out let me ask that question again uh so Stephen yeah can you give me like an average contract size or is there a minimum you won't touch and if so what is that I'd say the minimum is probably on the order of $30,000 um that would just be a let's get you started kind of purchase but we have many multi-million doll customers and a whole range in between we have and anywhere from 350 to 400 customers right now okay and they're in 40 countries for Zer so we're quite Global yep and what is the so so now that we understand more of the economics and what the company does take us back to the beginning of this thing when did you launch it all right so I should qualify one thing I am not the founder I am the professional CEO who came in later the founder had the classic experience that we've all had I believe he was on a beach in France and arguing with a credit Cardy company as to whether or not he was who he is and he thought there's got to be a better way than the annoying questions that we all know it's called knowledge-based authentication what's the size of your mortgage what's the last transaction you did what's your dog's name all that stuff which by the way is very easy to actually break into somebody's identity just by Googling and looking at their Facebook page and answer some of those questions so he said there's got to be a better way and he came up with this which was a real great way to do it which is make it so dead easy pull out your phone and take a picture so what year was that uh that that product this company was founded with some other products but that was about four years ago okay so let's call it 20 call it 13 now when did you come in I came in two years ago okay so about two years after it launched that is correct and what did that look like I mean from an operational perspective did did they raise capital and you came in like through the C round or how' that work um I came in I was brought in by the investors um at that point which are andreon Horowitz uh City Ventures and Eduardo saburn the co-founder of Facebook yep and and what was the how much total have you guys raised you know the company had raised to that date probably about 60 million okay so quite a quite a significant sum of money and we are doing actually very well we're probably growing I think last quarter was a 47% Revenue increase over the same quarter the previous year okay growing very quickly I think yesterday we broke through a 150,000 identity verifications at a single day oh wow that's that's amazing it's this is a very successful thing and it's a we're just beginning there's a lot of comp competition but there's a lot of business out there if you think how many different ways and times you have to pull out your ID you know hotel room rental car you know online gaming whatever you might need to do there's a lot of transactions out there yeah now just so I understand the funding question real quick so 60 million has been raised in total and you came in with the last tranch effectively the the history is more complicated than that but that would be good enough but if I'm using my research team did some research here but like in August 2016 it sounds like Millennium uh technology value Partners LED that round of financing were you an entrepreneur residents at Millennium and that's how you met the company or did you meet the founder some other way no I was hired by effectively Andre and Horwitz if you're familiar with them they have actually a recruiting firm internal which is a very helpful thing to those of us in their portfolio the actual largest investor this point is Santana growth Partners who are a private Equity Firm based in New York and Meno Park and then Millennium came in after that okay I understand now good okay so so a lot of success here 60 million rais founded in 2013 you came in in 201 uh5 you're see about 40 40 6% year-over-year growth and you just said you recently passed 150,000 identity verifications in one day that's correct that's amazing and what do you Pro like in give give me a bigger number in 2016 how many verifications did you process 26 million wow that's in and what will you do in 2017 um my guess is closer to 30 I I haven't got a forward forecast but things are exploding uh one of the things that's been happening recently is uh the Bitcoin Market is going crazy and we are quite um deeply in mesed in their need to do know your customer AML requirements yep that makes a lot of sense and then tell me more kind of about team here so you came in again in 2015 what was the team size then and what is it now uh the team size was probably around 90 95 in the west M and is now about 110 115 in the west and about 500 in India now a, in India so so total called about, 1500 correct yeah and what is the going into kind of user acquisition right so I'm curious the the the India team is this kind of a software product that is then verified by a human that you pay very little in India to kind of make sure it all checks out like why is that what's that big team in India doing well interestingly um what this is is this is a hybrid blend of computer vision facial recognition and Industry experts in a single integrated system this is not a did the automatic thing not figure it out throw it to the humans It's actually an integrated process so a lot of the automation may be to assist an expert interestingly which you didn't go over my background I start off my life which is incidental to why I was hired I'm an optical engineer by training designed laser weapons i l about Optics and a computer vision system can do a lot but it really has a lot of trouble if the image isn't perfect and let's face it if I said you can take a picture wherever people take crappy pictures at Starbucks and bad lighting with a laptop that has a fixed focus camera a computer vision cannot figure that out someday maybe yeah so we we do both we just make sure we get it right yep I think that's probably that's and that's the best answer right that's the best kind of solution um okay good and then talk to me about growth how are you driving growth like how are you finding new customers what are you paying to get them you know we're in spite of the fact that most of listeners won't have known about this company we're quite well known in the uh fintech space and related like the shared economy space so that we get a lot of inbound uh leads we do have a substantial Salesforce direct and we do have Partners how many people are on your Salesforce my guess is there's probably 20 25 all in your San Fran office no also in London oh in London okay got it so 25 kind of inside Salesforce and are you doing anything like like you know last month how much did you spend on paid media are you using any of the funded uh any of the raised Capital to to do that uh we we do uh different things at trade shows I I don't know what the numbers are off hand uh but we we are at all the kind of trade shows you want to be at we do various things in the marketplace um I you know I'd love to have you give you a better answer but I don't have those numbers that's okay I mean it sounds like you're running an organization that's fairly large you you have other people like your CMO that probably know those exact numbers but you know off top of your head a key acquisition channel for you guys is going to these kind of shared economy trade shows yeah I mean those interestingly those are probably the least relevant it's happens to be that we are known for instance in Silicon Valley if you are we have three or four of the top unicorns or customers of ours which I I can name Airbnb because everybody knows about that one yeah but we're very involved with a lot of those kinds of businesses and people talk to each other and say how do you solve this requirement of knowing who these people are whether by regulator or by my own business model last few questions here before we wrap up with the famous 5 so you mentioned you mentioned a large range in your annual contract values you know between you said 30,000 on the low end up to way over 1 million on the high end is that accurate correct and you said that variation is based mainly off they're prepaying for a number of kind of identity verifications and then as they use that inventory over the year they pay that down is that right basically yes okay so how do you I mean do you do you do the same pricing per identity verification across all your customers or does it differ from 5 cents on one to 10 cents on another or something like that well I very specifically won't talk about price that is a competitive information that I don't want to disclose sure and I also won't disclose whether the prices vary having said that different markets have different value that they see from this kind of activity and we're into the uh grabbing of market share as we should y it's a new space and we're in the front so we're going to grab as much as we can and I as far as I can tell we're probably anywhere from four to 10 times the size of the next biggest guy growing faster than them yeah Stephen just to be clear I mean one of the reasons I asked that question is is for that exact reason right to grab market share sometimes it makes sense to vary pricing because you're delivering different amounts of value people customers are willing to pay more or less depending on their their cohort right or their stage in life um so I mean it sounds like again you're just based off the growth numbers you just articulate you're using that very effectively okay listen space geographies Also vary you know what do you do when you sell to somebody in Vietnam versus selling to somebody in uh London very different uh economic situations yeah but it is helpful to understand though what what what one thing that I think a lot of Entre R preneurs struggle with is finding that one key usage metric that you know provides ultimate value that you can tie pricing to it sounds like you are crystal clear on that you know your number that you're you're optimizing for is a number of identity verifications and you know that as that number increases it has a direct correlation to your Revenue increasing absolutely this is a this is very much a grab the market share and its transactions y's a service okay top tribe I have to tell you many people go Nathan and you came out of nowhere your website's growing so fast how' you do it the answer is simple so I use host skater I don't know if you guys know that but I use host skater and the reason I do they have like about 4500 free templates I can use cuz I don't code they've got a great 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based off the wrong assumptions correct interesting is there a book you can name that people can access publicly you know there I there is one that I got off of the iTunes uh website but it's called McKenzie of the you some sort of you just type in McKenzie you'll find a book and it'll it'll describe this in there I've got the internal information it was just very valuable right so they can search m they can just search Mackenzie book yeah okay number two is there a CEO you're following or studying currently well interestingly the last company I managed is a portfolio company of Liberty Media and that is uh John Malone's company uh run now by Greg maay and one thing I liked about the way they go about things they take a calculated risk and they go straight down the middle of the Fairway in terms of we're going to go by in this case what they did recently is by Formula 1 they're not like hiding in the bushes or anything and they go straight forward say this is how we're going to make it worth something more than what we paid so I like that kind of approach having said that you know you've got the Steve Jobs which is let's create a market dislocation and do it very covertly until no one can respond very quickly because we got there first y so I like both approaches to be honest number three is there a favorite online tool you have like a QD scheduling well I you know I'm sorry I'm an old school guy I'm using outlook on a Mac stepen come on I know I know I would go into the detail of what I use it's very good but you know uh you get used to your tool and I got an invested amount of information in it yep what I do use as a tool which is something I thought I would is I spent time researching my competitors particularly the executives and what they say and do in the marketplace that's been recorded like this conversation you and I are having yep now do you have a tool that helps you quickly find that information or that's just a practice you like to do that's a practice it's called Google yeah I will I will tell you I don't know if this is going to be live yet but I am actively building a tool which scrapes all of the audio data from these podcast interviews I do and makes it in a readable almost like pitchbook form for people like you to go analyze that's interesting well that will be helpful to me it's the Insight of those two examples of CEOs right or they're going to State what they're doing but they also might make some hint to the other things that they're thinking of no makes when when you're in a new space there's not a lot of Secrets right every plunging forward number four Stephen how many hours of sleep do you get every night uh eight how's that sound it's pretty good and what's your situation married single you have kiddos married four kids wow okay and how old are you I am 61 61 years young Stephen that explains the Outlook thing take us take us home here take us back 41 years what do you wish your 20-year-old self knew um travel just a little bit less when the kids are young but travel less when the kids are young travel less than I did okay when the kids were young I did a lot of travel I do a lot of travel that's kind of why I'm good at this but uh I wouldn't change a lot when I was 20 yep I would do the same things over again there you guys have it from Steven St again joined jumio as part of a venture round in 2015 the company was founded in two years prior in 2013 the company has since raised $60 million helping Drive identity verifications across the sharing economy with the biggest public customer he can articulate being Airbnb they're serving between 350 and 400 paying customers across 40 different countries their team of 1500 is split between San Francisco and India they're growing 46% year over-year currently last year in 2016 they did 26 million identity verifications in a good year in 2017 Steven says he expects that might pass 30 million Steven thank you for taking us to the top thank you very much if you enjoyed Steven today go back and listen to Paul yesterday where him and I debate ferociously should you call people customers if they aren't paying you I feel like it's a lie but you give me your opinion go tune in and tell me what you think