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...