How Metadata CEO Gil Allouche grew Metadata to $15M revenue and 240 customers in 2024.

quick context this was recorded March 28th and 29th so a couple weeks ago at my live event SAS open.com we had a thousand software CEOs there if you missed it we hope to see at the next one September 5th and 6th in New York City SAS open.com but for now let's jump into the recording the bank account went down and down and down how do you compete with a giant that has like 400 million if I'm not mistaken in funding how do you compete with someone like that now how did we make it and that's the majority of this presentation hey folks if we haven't met yet my name is Nathan ladka I launched and sold my first software company back in 2015 and went on to write a book about it which you guys made a Wall Street Journal bestseller purchasing over 30,000 copies thank you so much for that after the book I launched this show and went went on to create founder path.com I raised a large fund to do non-dilutive deals with B2B software Founders so Far We've invested in over 400 software Founders totaling $150 million here in 2024 we're doing three to four New Deals per week so if you're looking for Capital and don't want to give up Equity go sign up at founder path.com for free to get your offer all right let's jump into the interview from 2 million to 12 million in ARR and what particular playbooks we use to get there some of them are not very sexy but they've been tried over and over and over and are guaranteed to produce pipeline so focus on that a little bit about myself I'm a software engineer a robotic software engineer in my background I turned into a marketer at some point did a good job because I have a technical background and today B2B marketing is a very technical job so I've done well as a VP of marketing and at some point I saw the gap between what is available to a vpf marketing in terms of data and technology and what is possible in terms of data technology for a BB marketer and I made a choice to take the leap and start a company that if you're our customer you essentially don't have you don't have to hope for pipeline you don't have to you know be a rocket scientist to generate pipeline because you use experimentation and data as a means to an end to guarantee that you have predictable Pipeline with economies of scale a little bit about our Revenue because that's that's the proof that you should listen we had a very interesting path where it took us years to find product Market fit for years we built this piece of software and did a lot of customer development and in 2020 we found what we thought was product Market fit I was so happy after years finally a meaningful re Revenue number a meaningful ARR but unfortunately this also happened at the same time have you ever been in a situation as a Founder where you're worried about your Runway I couldn't sleep during that time we had less and less money in the bank and although we had product Market fit you know we had a repeatable sales cycle the same kind of customer the same kind of pitch roughly the same amount of Revenue but the bank account went down and down and down and investors wouldn't take my money not the good investors I had a bunch of sharks who thought it were bleeding and would give us terrible term sheets but no good investors want to put their investment on the table and so in one day I've decided that try instead of trying the same thing trying to raise money with the same story that I have product Market fit Etc I have to take ownership on on the future of the company and so we decided to cut enough of the spending and I'll show you exactly what tactics we did what we took such aggressive measures to make sure that next time we go fundraising we don't need a fund raise and when you don't need the money when you go to an investor and you tell them this is happening anyway you are invited to join us for this journey the conversation is very very different you talk to different people much Kinder people and you get term sheets that you're proud of not something that you're ashamed to go to your board with so what did we do first things first the decision that many people don't like to do cut expenses we I went through every line item in QuickBooks every line item in my American Express credit card and whatever was not necessary to keep the lights on I didn't pay just like that my credit score went down to about 300 at some point with American Express they didn't like that and they would call me every day pay your bill I like I'm not paying anything out of the bill until I have money then I'm paying all of it and you know that happened eventually but I didn't like the the the path in between I have some derogatory marks uh and I'm proud of it because it saved the company I also went to my sales team who were doing great and told them look I can't really pay you but you're doing a good job can I convert some of your commissions into stocks and surpris inly more than 50% said yes the best sales people in fact said yes and now they are they majority stakeholders in the company a bunch of other hacks we did we launched I talked to all of the customers I I decided that moment that I'm going to meet every customer that I have you know we only had like what 50 or 40 but I met all of them and learned that for some of them that were about to churn a piece of the product was still relevant to them so we launched a mini version of the product and we're able to to maintain some of the some of the grr some of the retention we did a bunch of other measures for for example every campaign that I had every marketing campaign that I had had the all the way to revenue uh Roi return on investment I made sure that every campaign that we have generates Revenue not just pipeline not just leads but actually goes all the way to revenue and so we were able to focus and then quadruple down on what was working and so that was that was kind of the mecs we took from here I can tell you we got into Break Even it you don't see it here that was the previous present a but I got we got all the way to I think 25 Grand in the bank it's like not a lot of money in the bank almost going under and then slowly going up from that moment I was able to get 200k in account receivable debt from that I was able to get 300K in convertible note and then $2 million uh raise and then a 4 and a half million right after that so being sustainable company chills out investor they're like all right there's one less risk I know you're not going to run out of money I know this is happening anyway looks like you have product Market fit now I'm going to give you a shot and that year was a special year because after we raise that money suddenly the survival was like we didn't have to survive we didn't wake up every morning okay how am I making it one more day and from that mindset when you not have when I still get cash updates by the way twice a week so I still have a little bit of PTSD but I don't wake up every morning thinking I'm running out of cash and that gives you a little bit of okay now let's think about the vision what do I want and when things started working out the product Market fit was really there and so once we started investing in sales in marketing we're a little bit more more spendable than before we started focusing on what is what is repeatable that can take us to the next level and we actually negotiated if if the year before I negotiated with the board to cut the growth by half because I didn't have the money to support that growth this year we're like hey how much more can we grow this may not last forever which it didn't right the economy tanked so like how do we take advantage of a market that is growing and so we we renegotiated with my leadership team three times and we almost made it to the third goal so instead of gr to five instead of going to 7 and a half which was the new goal we decided 12 and a half is the third goal and we almost made it now how did we make it and that's the majority of this presentation there are four four cool playbooks some of them came from us metadata and some of them came from our customers because we run demand generation for B2B companies B2B SAS companies mid markets then we have a lot of proof a lot of quantitative proof on what works when I say works again I don't talk about vany metrics I don't care about leads don't care about Impressions click through rates all of those cool you know kpis that that you know growth uh hackers talk about I really don't understand much about I dive all the way into board level kpis Revenue cak pipeline comparison guides so we were poor still even with an a round we were competing with giants that were creating categor is spending lots of money on SEO and sem you know owning all the display inventory so how do you compete with a giant that has like 400 million if I'm not mistaken in funding how do you compete with someone like that one hack is called comparison guides we were able to parachute into deals in the last minute and steal it away How does it go so most companies invest advertising and marketing money in the entire funnel everything from what is this category about what problem are we solving who's the best vendor what are the...