How Klipfolio CEO Allan Wille grew Klipfolio to $14M revenue and 8.5K customers in 2024.

there on its hair well over 8,500 paying customers did about between 500 maybe close to 570 but less than 600 grand in monthly recurring revenue last month that would have been april of 2017 they raised almost 20 million dollars total the last run was for 12 million at about a 7 to 8 X multiple again on the sharp guy clip folios the company again their team growing rapidly up there and Ottawa Canada to help you build smarter better and higher utility dashboard this is episode 710 coming up tomorrow morning we interview Danielle Vaghela who talks about how we bootstrapped his way into Silicon Valley but first year stays episode this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs to our number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue for customer base you learn how much revenue they're making what's the marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have I'm now at $40,000 per top five experience he has happened on global domination we just bloke hundred thousand units goal mark and I'm your host Nathan Laska hello everybody my guest today is Alan Villa he's the co-founder and CEO of a company called clip folio assassin software the service dashboard company with over 8,500 paying customers including jets calm Zendesk Aviva and IKEA he previously co-founded a company called SPL an internet device software firm that is now publicly traded on the TSX he lives in Ottawa with his wife and two daughters Alan are you ready to take it to the top yeah for sure net and always we were joking here and those of you listening on audio can see us on YouTube I was joking before I said Alan this wallpaper behind you it looks like you're in a bathroom stall in your fancy office chair but this is wallpaper huh it's just wallpaper and all of our all of our meeting rooms got it from wallpaper so I guess which one you're in but I mean this is kind of cool but I hope it doesn't look like I'm in some bathroom stall but you know maybe that's the startup life right maybe listen I would run with it I'd say it's a great storyline right I love it I love it so okay tell us what cliff folio does quickly and then I will jump into some of the numbers sure sounds good so we're a online doc where a cop ate that pork vendor we've got a portion of working with lots and lots of small because businesses thousands of them 8500 of them around the world really used to folder to monitor all the things that matter inside of their business so their sales metrics their marketing metrics their support metrics inventory you name it we can pull it in and then display it on a on a dashboard so so I just you guys understand I use clip folio pretty aggressively I have a little monitor actually you can see it behind me here I turn it off when I when I'm doing the shows because it throws off glares but I always have a right at I'm actually up here it's called they have a dashboard cause of facebooking Facebook engagement dashboard and right now I'm doing tons of live streaming stuff on Facebook and I use that clip folio dashboard to basically check out all that data really real-time but Allen I'll have to confess to you though mine can you guess the number one place I am when I'm looking at a clip folio dashboard Oh on your mobile Roley no but can you guess the location like we're actually on your office on the toilet when it happens oh come on you want so much free time you have so much free time and there's nothing better than popping up your phone instead of getting a little facebook on your toilet you open up your portfolio dashboard so Nathan you know that our user experience team I mean they're responsible for all the user stories and all the users write writing so I probably walk out there right after this call a person and you consider this story because this is important right so listen you know I don't want to admit it but there's a lot of mobile consumption that especially business and something that happens on the toilet it's the first thing you do when you get up in the morning when you want to take a break at lunch you got to use the restroom and people I mean I love looking at my dashboard metrics I'm in the bathroom it's quiet it's a great focus the truth heard here first on the table there's enough vodka there for all out there you go now Allen we had you back on we had you on about four or five months ago in on January 22nd you had told me at that point you passed about 7,000 customers you're now just four months later you set up above 8500 yeah that's right that's right and from a funding perspective I assume you probably even raise more capital you have about 20 million raise total yeah that's right so in January we announced a 12 million dollar raise - yeah and inside round from our existing investors so we were totally thrilled about that I mean it really signals a lot of confidence in what we're doing on the market opportunity so yeah that was the last round I was a serious B round and that came together really really nicely and was there any I mean was there any moment Allen as you went through that process where you said you know what maybe I take this valuation and go create some competition with my inside investors and go see if Salesforce will make an offer to match the valuation I mean we do you evaluate those that's thought well the initial plan so in the fall when we started our Auto Show the initial plan would to go out and bring it an external round and we actually had some amazing discussions with some top-tier investors in Boston in the valley like widest year in Canada as well and at the end of the day we got a call I think this was sort of mid-november from our existing investors who said listen we want to do a preemptive preemptive round you know we're really bullish on this and we want to we want to continue taking this forward so we did use market to validate and we had you know actually a number of interested parties that got pretty far with us even as the insiders we're putting a putting a charge sheet in place so we did feel like we had a really good sense of what was fair what the valuation was we were getting really know that no outside suitor came close to offering to buy the company for anywhere near the valuation that inside investors gave you is that what you're saying yes and no we actually got we actually got some verbal pointers that actually actually the thing those are actually verbal offers but he has to be diplomatic to be saying pointers but verbal offers sure you know then that were actually far more lucrative but there was some math and some obligations that came along with it but at the end of the day it just didn't make sense like what were we oh I think I think the valuation multiples some of the some of the terms that were considering we're just we're just far too rich and what that means is that for your next offer and the one after that you will set yourself up for an impossible and impossible mission oh so these were acquisition offers these were investors giving you term sheets really rich valuations yeah yeah that's right that's right I mean we've had we've had we had some semantic position discussions well but you know nothing has really gone far enough I mean Nathan we're having so much fun that you know we're not looking to be acquired right now so yeah we'll entertain those conversations but I think we really want to we want to really continue building this up and really building value into the company Alan what gives you the ability though to to resist that or and let me describe this urge in a second right so I think last time we came on you said he had raised 12 million and it was something you were Buer Bagwell you said something around a forty five million dollar pre-money valuation correct right Yeah right so so you felt what he just told me is you had offers of VCS that were giving even richer valuation so maybe the terms were a 2x2 quotation preference instead of a 1x liquidation preference or there were some backfill terms you didn't like either they offer higher valuations is that right yeah that's correct exactly exactly my follow-up question to that is you mentioned you have had some actual acquisition offers not not offers to invest at a higher valuation but acquisition offers by bigger companies is that true yeah I wouldn't I was actually call them offers yes I mean you probably know as well as I do it if it dance and what always happens first is you get you get a call from usually somebody in product so product management reaches out and you know they say something like hey we're interested in learning more about your attack and you know potentially we're interested in a partnership so you have a couple of discussions right and it sort of feels like it's an acquisition site to talk but it's with the PMT right and then maybe it gets a little bit deeper and maybe they bring in some business app or some web dev folks and as soon as they do that you know it's going down one top right and they're there being it you know interested in what the business is all about in the opportunity for an acquisition so it doesn't always but you know we've had those kind of conversations and I think in in every one of those conversations you want to layer how much information you present to the to the other company so with every conversation you have to be a little guarded right but you present a little bit more in Goodspeed but we've never we've never gotten to any sort of any sort of formal discussion where there's actually an offer on the table we've had a lot of you know the phone has been ringing but we really have moved it for just because we're not rather in a position where we're interested in selling and what are the so you mentioned you're at 70 or sorry eighty-five hundred paying customers are they still your last time you said your ARPU was about 100 bucks a month is that the same yeah that's right so customers come in at roughly $70 that's kind of their first the first bundle that they buy on average and then over a course of about 12 months they move up to about $150 so you're doing about 850 grand in monthly recurring revenue right now no I wouldn't say quite that much but but somewhere in that neighborhood for sure let's put a bottom on it more than 700 grand our monthly basis yeah no no my metal will tell me where my math is wrong so I'm taking 8,500 customers times 100 is your ARPU actually lower than that yeah so there are a couple of those customers of course clients of partners right so bison partners can either be paying us directly or they're paying via the partner and the part L don't get that the part channel does get a discount right so 35% of our revenue comes through the partner channel which is a really awesome it healthy so 8500 paying customers yes but it's not all exactly the same I see that makes sense so what was revenue last month we're doing about in between five and six okay probably close for six right now got it they're not good and then so here's my next question for you you raise it a forty five million dollar pre-money valuation you raise twelve so what is that fifty-seven post or something like that or 55 post at doing six hundred grand a month you're doing about six million kind of run rate you know so what's that like almost 10x right your your multiple do you ever get nervous about growing into that valuation right the risk is you end up for whatever is in going flat and you can never sell for anything where you as a common shareholder actually make money or any of your employees in the equity pack should make money because investors get their money back first yeah so our valuation bubble wasn't quite there was closer to in between uh seven eight which i think is well which i think is about right and this is so if we were to back up some of the other VCS that were chatting with in this process they they were putting terms in place that had significantly higher valuation multiples and now the the logic will say well we'll go for it right because you're you're seeing less dilation you're getting a bigger bigger check but you're right you have to sort of be able to sustain and grow into that in the next round so a bigger valuation multiple is not always what you want I'm always I'm always a big big fan of it's got to be fair for both parties and that includes the terms as well as well as evaluation will pull you know what you have to be able to grow into that and you know the next round after that so I think you really want to want to choose something that you feel confident bullish about optimistic about but it's not too too much of a stretch do you have Clips set up in a clip folio dashboard with all of your valuation offers kind of tracking the investors over time you know what I should didn't I just used a Google spreadsheet so you know that's totally fine but everything else anything else is the folio is basically being tracked you know on the dock works and you're right I mean we've got these big boards throughout the office as well for sales and marketing and supporting Devin and all the rest but no attraction crashing the VCS and the offers of the discussions I did that inside of a Google sheet that's funny I know a lot of people you Rand Fishkin uses you I I'm come across ran because portfolio or penguin actors Noah's portfolio Random House actually just bought my book deal and they are also obviously working with him and then I came across the Rand Fishkin dashboard so there's a lot I mean you have a lot of people using these dashboards whether it's for Google Analytics or paid Facebook ads or paid Google Ads or engagement or onboarding tactics or things like that what's the weirdest use case you have all the weirdest use case you know that's a really interesting question we reduced cases but we do have a lot of NGOs or non-governmental organizations who are using it you know to push some of their metrics evidence so the the International Red Cross for example used it for all the flooding they used it for the Zika virus they used it for you know the baby the stuff that's happening in Africa right so there's a lot of information that they're sharing as well using portfolio you know that is really business information but it's really important for that information to get out and get out in real time so I don't know what the weird is what is but I mean with so many dashboards I'm sure there's all sorts of odd stuff that people are using that if you have any jumped up right talk to me real quick about Shirin last three weeks book it's three percent monthly it's still the same where he got better no it's actually it's actually gone up a little bit and I'll tell you why the four percent no not no not quite enough right there but it has gone up slightly and I'll tell you why and and so everything is in context right so we started advertising quite a bit in on Facebook a lot on AdWords so we upped our budget quite a bit like aunt Helen give us context I mean are we talking hundreds of thousands or ten thousand or what yeah so we've upped it to about 120 thousand per month that's right and there's actually an awesome article on our website that talks about the lessons learned in a Facebook advertise great guys will link to that pressure in the show notes at Nathan maka comm ford slash the top seven ten yeah there's a lot of those are really good crunchier learning in there of course what it does is you know it's increasing our growth rate which is good but the other thing that it does is it brings in more people that are higher up in the fall and you know i think you'll always find out any kind of organic or direct traffic is usually there's lots of intent and people are ready and as soon as you start pushing on the gas and you start advertising you get a slightly different mix now it's still important and it's important from a growth point of view but you have to acknowledge that one of the outcomes one of the negative side effect is going to be that your conversion rate will probably drop and your turn probably go up a bit yeah normal that's totally okay so I think just understanding what happens when you sort of you know switch some of these dials and gauges is important and whether you put your CAC right now the CAC is the catch is still totally healthy so I mean we're still looking at you know sub or higher than I think 25 grams at $2,500 you know so really I mean for your lifetime value is 2500 yeah sorry that's right so CAC is still around $700 $700 I'm still running very very efficiently so LWT character is still relatively healthy although that come down a little bit as well as we spend more on our cutter and our cat payback period as well as is still sub 12 which is awesome so you know I think you need to look at all of those things in in concert and try to figure out you know what's happening and why is it happening in and do I need to adjust and what's your team size last time I spoke it was 75 we're probably about it's hard to tell these days we just had three three new people start this morning so I think we're a finger about 90 yeah we're actually new it really his name still or no of course is a big smile of course we're actually we're actually moving into an awesome new space in November it's an old movie theater it leveled the floor but it just is gorgeous space downtown Ottawa so we're working with Java Tech's right now and I should be able to hold up to about 130 hundred forty people so you know it can't come too soon I'll have to come visit Ottawa and check it out that sounds very cool it's going to be a super secret spot for sure one of the themes guys I have on the show is to have very successful people at selling information on people like Amy Porterfield people that have online membership courses and many of you will direct message me and email me and some of the insects means that Nathan how do we do all this how do we do the email marketing for of course how do we handle the payment how do we put the membership login on our website you know how do we get the course information organized quickly and easily well the tool that people are using and a lot of people are using this you can see you at Mathematica comm forward slash course that's Nathan Tucker come forward slash course the trial is nice and free which I love if you're like me I just want to log in and go around to figure it out myself and then decide if I want to use it or not so snake-like accom forward slash course this is the most straightforward way i've been-- to launch your course so you don't have to go buy ten different pieces of software like email marketing plus payment plus a bunch of other stuff it's all in one the trial is totally free Nathan Lanka comm forward slash course so there now I'll be there alright now unless wraps up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book you know what I just read one that is absolutely amazing the author is David Lattin and the book is called lead by greatness number two highly recommended leads by greatness number two is their CEO you're following or studying no I mean I read a ton of stuff right and I'm always sort of learning about you different things I would say the one that I'm John with maybe most is right here in town I just had lunch with Toby licked it from top of I you know so Toby is a huge asset that we have here in town so you know definitely definitely fall and jam and see what it's doing number three is their favorite online tool you have like acuity scheduling you know the one that I love is [Music] there this little chrome plug-in that allows me to check out SEO stats of different websites I know what it's called SEO plus or something like that so I mean I check that one out all the time I go to websites or even if I'm search setting Eric if your company's legit I want to know what their traffic patterns like are they actually getting folks in right is there is your buzz the other one that will have to sort of tip my hat to is our I'm just totally amazed at their growth story and how how well their user experiences such as a very very cool sort of competitive analysis platform yeah guys and our story's a fascinating one you can go to Jim I had him on my show competitive intelligence I had him back about a year ago they've raised 19 million dollars they went from 0 to 1 million active users very very quickly he also sold his first company jigsaw to Salesforce for about 160 million bucks we talked about in the episode that in the episode at Nathan Locker calm /the top before three three more guys over there Allen how old are you 43 and how many hours of sleep are you getting every night on average you know I'm getting enough I'm a huge I'm a huge believer that you've got you've got a health hack your way through being an entrepreneur right you've got to find time to sort of like I cycle to work every day you know so that's my way of sort of done so many hours that would you say on average asleep yeah oh I'm getting like maybe tsukanai off seven hours a night that's good okay and what's your situation married single be up kids married I've got two daughters two daughters if it marry right all right take us home and take it back twenty three years what do you wish your 20 year old self knew 20 my 20 year old twice so I would have I would have not so in my first company we raised like 50 billion and that was probably when we were about 20 22 something like that I think I think I probably would have said listen build something of value and then see if you can raise money and really back then and I mean the whole world was doing it you know everybody's raising money and then we tried to figure out how to make it work yeah there you guys have it build value first and then figure out how you want to make money from again Alan with clip folio there on its hair well over 8,500 paying customers did about between 500 maybe close to 570 but less than 600 grand in monthly recurring revenue last month that would have been april of 2017 they raised almost 20 million dollars total their last run was for 12 million at about a 7 to 8 X multiple again on the sharp guy could folios the company again their team growing rapidly up there and Ottawa Canada to help you build smarter better and higher utility dashboards Alan thank you for taking us to the top the website if you enjoyed Alan today go back and listen to Blake yesterday who break down how he's gotten 17,000 people to use his mobile app to manage their wardrobe more efficiently