How Kwanzoo CEO Mani Iyer grew Kwanzoo to $5.5M revenue and 50 customers in 2024.

hello everybody my guest today is Manny I air he is the CEO of a company called kwang-soo a leading provider of account based advertising and retargeting solutions for mid to large b2b enterprises he previously founded a software business that was acquired by Oracle and PeopleSoft he's a serial entrepreneur industry speaker on account based marketing demand generation b2b marketing and advertising and a start-up advisor Manny are you ready to take us to the top absolutely okay what was your previous company you sold the PeopleSoft er Oracle yes so it was you know in the corporate elearning area so we kind of helped companies yet plant like that child Schwab Juniper Networks aspect communication of several others tech companies you know some government organizations you know primarily with employee training customer training partner training so I was more selling into the HR and training departments at those types of organisms what was the name of the company company was called team scape so we could all their days of Netscape its you remember say yeah we were one of the other escapes that so far and what was the acquisition price would you sell out for we got a decent exit I would say it's look I mean I'm based in Silicon Valley but and also you know in Austin Texas so you know both locations of work out of both the business was pretty much self-funded bootstrap we got a few million in revenues so we got a decent revenue multiple this was back in the you know early early part of the decade okay you can say it was kind of maybe below between 10 and 50 million is that fair yeah I would say a little bit in the lower end of the range okay good so maybe between 10 and 30 million yeah look I don't want to pin the exact trigger and we as I said that the we had a few private investors this was early in his decade I miss was like 10 20 years ago yeah it was about 10 15 years ago yeah listen if any of them come back at you you just send them my way I'll take care of him that was like forever ago all right all right so you got a successful exam to your belt it wasn't kind of fu money but it was enough to kind of you do whatever you want to do the rest of your life kind of money why decide to get into kwang-soo and what does Kwanzaa do yeah so again as you said I did finish that a company go off and you know helped us some younger company startups with a customer development business development that kind of thing but then I found that there was an interesting opportunity for us to go build a business again and this one really for us you know it took us I would say a couple of years to figure our product market fit but then we've seen a pretty nice ramp since 2015 with Kwan zoo we focus on as you said we call it account based advertising the whole category within B to be called account based marketing really came together and started taking off in 2015 and so B being focused in that category in an area more around integrating connecting advertising technologies into marketing technologies right and now do you is it a transaction based approach you take a percentage of money through your platform or is it SAS based it is it is actually SAS based off but again we also get a piece of the action in terms of scale or use of usage right so it actually has a bit of both you know as a SAS component in that we do get platform fees license fees for the use of the platform by all of our customers typical 12-month contracts if you will we see what specific alone those I mean we talk in 10 grand or a million bucks no it's not a myth it's not a million bucks look a way to frame us in the market today at least the way we look at it in the mid to large enterprises you know we are the strongest alternative to a if you're familiar with a company called demand based yeah and be in a piece of the business they have around advertising so as you know demand base where does more so they're going broad in that ABM category we think of what Vito is we're going deep right you can you know we didn't want to be like a mile you know I think it was a mile wide and inch deep you want to go really deep and so if we're going deep into the hole ABM dismay advertising the Italian Daria then you answer your question the platform fee for us range anywhere from a thirty thousand dollar entry price point twenty five a month thirty thousand scales all the way to eighty two hundred thousand yes sir you said that's thirty thousand a month or a year a year yes I got 200k annualized platform contracts and then on top of that you know we also you know make some additional dollars on on services and there's some media and data and so on that we end up managing for what when if you look at your revenue pie what percentage it is SAS versus a you know percentage cut look I think we if I look at all the dollars flowing in we make about sixty point sixty to sixty five percent sixty five percent of the dollars coming in flowing to us the other thirty five percent goes into what's called media and data be clear so sixty five percent of your revenue is SAS 65% is SAS and there are some services in there so okay like professional like one time professional services stuff yeah there's some one time there's some yeah we package it as part of running these programs in campaigns so we the situation is a lot of this VC pretends we can go to agencies in the coming years in just the state of the market the market is still early not enough customers or the agencies have the expertise to run these a VM add programs in-house so we end up taking that on taking that piece of the business too now when did you launch the company one year 24 2015 okay so when IBM thing took off I would say you know we have been added a couple years earlier to again and what different iteration we were doing more for retargeting business in b2b but honestly you know we were we didn't have I don't think that I can of differentiation of product etc the real traction revenue growth for us has been since 2015 and we've seen at this point it's been pretty healthy 300 300 plus person we brought over the last two years what about just the last year this past year again has been decent again it's been a big transition either for us no we're talking like 50% or 100% I'm sorry are we talking like 50% or 100% year-over-year growth so they got it got it so about 50% year-over-year growth ashore closer to that at least and then what do you now today in terms of team size again you know we're you know we're not getting into specifics on revenue and team numbers but again the Manning why would what what is why is I always wonder when people hit me back on this question why would you not share your team size why is that strategically important look you know to be honest that you know we are up against like you know say say a major competitor I just feel like you know we don't have to necessarily get into it yeah I can I can go I mean I can go on to LinkedIn right and and look at what it tells me in terms of people right so it says 10 people right so but I'm so curious if I mean if you only have one employee but you're ever-new per employee is killing all your competitors that's a great business right why would you hold that I'm just always curious why people hold that back so you're at about 10 employees right now well more than that I mean they also have some outsource teams and so forth it be used so yeah look we're certainly you know south south of 50 definitely well north of 10 okay you're kind of rocking in your chairs you say that are you embarrassed by having such a small team you feel like it makes you weaker for some reason no no not at all I mean we have the strongest technology in this category you know we have some great data but why hesitate on show you team size I think it's about trying to get you I'm sorry but then why hesitate about sharing the team size that's what I'm trying to understand look I think private companies can decide what they want to share what they don't want to share no I know that but I want to get in your brain and learn from you I'm trying to understand if you feel a small team strategically saying that is disadvantageous or advantageous to you and why or why not well I mean you're right about that when look we sell a fairly complex piece of software and there are certain customers out there who do look at some of these metrics and parameters some do some don't and so I think private company sometimes don't want to necessarily you know get into a detail on that kind of topic if customers really care about though they'll ask you that before you sell to them right won't they yeah they do they do so you gotta tell the number anyway sure yeah okay interesting all right let's move on so so that's awful understand 2015 you launch the company now the bootstrap Derby raised mostly boots fat a lot of my capital riding on the business yeah okay any outside capital besides your own though no no I mean we have one angel investments put a small amount of money but the rest of the capital is mine okay so it's fair to say like less than five hundred grand in the company right from other people yes okay good okay sometimes people say oh you were basically boots dropped and I go well how much is that...