Mozart Data Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Guys, Fishman, mozartdata.com. They've got big customers like Modern Treasury, call it almost a 100 customers paying on average $1,800 a month. They're pushing a $2,000,000 run rate today in a really good position. They closed a $15,000,000 series A last year at pushing costs somewhere around a $100,000,000 valuation, and they're being pretty scrappy about it. They didn't go hire a 100 people. There are 25 folks full time today taking a disciplined approach to growth. We'll see what [00:22] happens next. Hey, folks. My guest today is Peter Fishman. He's a CEO and co founder of mozartdata. He's over a decade of running data and data adjacent teams at startups in a variety of industries, including gaming, social, HR and benefits, real estate, and many others. When he realized he was building the same thing at every company, he said, man, I gotta build a modern data stack that anybody can use. And that's why he launched mozartdata.com. Pete, [00:45] you ready to take us to the top? [00:47] >> Ready to do it. [00:48] Alright. Who's using you these days? Is there any customer you can talk about in a use case? [00:52] >> You know, sure. I would say that, obviously, we we we love highlighting our, you know, our big customers. So, you know, we've we've got, you know, a few unicorns that are using us. I love, you know, obviously, giving shout outs to a company like Modern Modern Treasury who's been one of our, like, longest supporters. [01:10] How do they use you? Everybody knows Modern Treasury. That's a good example. [01:13] >> Yeah. You know, a company like Modern Treasury uses us as as their core data infrastructure. So they have an incredible data science team, data analysts, even folks that sort of work as data engineers. But they sort of focus on organizing, structuring their data so they could, you know, build insights and reports and sort of monitor those for the company rather than sort of spend most of their time, you know, doing the data sort of plumbing and [01:41] >> data infra work that's really become rote and and and commonplace for many of these companies. [01:47] And when we spoke back in December 2021, you told me your pricing model was based off compute and number of rows. Is that still the case today? Have you changed your pricing model? [01:56] >> We have not changed our pricing model. We are still planning on not reinventing the wheel on that front. There's many, many, many great data companies out there, and we want to copy essentially the the norms that they put into the industry. So we wanna price in a very standard and transparent way. But one big difference that that those companies don't do versus us is that we bundle those things. So many of those companies charge on compute, [02:22] >> which or charge on rows. We charge on effectively the bundle of compute and rows. [02:26] They get you on both. It's a pain in the butt because you'll need a bunch bunch of one and not a lot of the other, but you gotta pay for both sort of thing. Right? [02:32] >> That's right. So we have a singular currency, you can be sort of fungible between those two. Right? So some companies, they have just giant often, like, are b to c companies that are tracking many, many things, have, you know, a bunch of rows, but maybe they're not doing as heavy or complex joints on top of them. Or sometimes you have b to b companies that have very valuable rows. So each row represents a lot of money [02:54] >> or potential revenue. But then maybe they're so they're bringing in very few to their warehouse, but maybe they're doing a lot of analysis of each and every customer. [03:03] Very cool. And talk to me about growth and usage. You said customers on average are paying about $1,800 a month two years ago. Where are you at today? [03:12] >> Actually, that number is pretty flat for for two reasons. One, our largest customers have expanded. So, you know, we've actually set new records last month and the previous month where, you know, our our sort of biggest usage based customers that are paying us north of 6 figures. But we've also brought on board a lot of more early stage companies, and we introduced new pricing that is much more early stage friendly. So the the net of those [03:39] >> two sort of balance out on our ACV. [03:42] Fair. Fair. Do you have your first million dollar account yet? [03:45] >> We don't have a 7 figure account, but but we are yeah. But I will you'll be one of the first to know when that happens. And but, you know, there are a lot of companies that do spend a lot of in on on data infrastructure, obviously. Yeah. Many companies that spend 7 figures. We obviously target the SMBs, and you would be surprised at how quickly, you know, consumption goes up once they start seeing value in data. [04:07] Oh, 100 a 100%. Okay. So about flat there. You launched this in 2020. You told me when you came on, I think it was last year that I think this is right. You guys did a 15,000,000 series a, right, last year? [04:17] >> That's correct. [04:18] Yes. Talk to me about that. Was that was the market already crashing at that point, or did you get that in right before things started going a little haywire? [04:24] >> I I like to think of it as like Indiana Jones where, like, it just sneaks in as, like, the door is, like, sort of coming down. You know, I don't I don't I don't think we, you know, we we raised at the start of 2022, so not the world's best time, but but in hindsight, basically, yes, the world's effectively best time. Yeah. So, you know, I would say I would say that, obviously, we raised a a [04:50] >> great round at a great time, which means that we have a long runway. So we are trying to still have a pretty forward looking perspective. You know, obviously, not that we see, you know, an end to our runway, but I think we also do wanna responsible. You know, this is not my first rodeo, and I and I've seen companies that have, you know, kinda used their runway poorly. So we wanna be pretty intentional about what we're [05:13] >> trying to do. [05:14] Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect [05:37] your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna [06:02] get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation. Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here, Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is [06:23] not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founders share with us on the show. So traction, 1,200,000 seed round, 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired, the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're [06:49] going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right, We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but [07:11] if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into [07:37] the interview. And was that series a pretty standard? Most folks are selling, call it, 15% of the company in their series a's back then. Were you sort of in that same range? [07:46] >> Yeah. Exactly. So Okay. [07:48] So you're pushing in a you're pushing in a 6 figure sorry. A seven sorry. A 9 figure valuation in over a 100,000,000? [07:55] >> That would be obviously, if it were 15%, 15,000,000 on 15% would be would be a 100,000,000. So, yeah, I think, you know, obviously, you know, valuations and fundraising and and quantity of capital available were, you know, were obviously very different in 2021. [08:17] But the I guess I not to put you on this, but the reason I asked that question is there's a lot of folks that did great rounds last year at really high multiples. I forget if I think you're at, like, 2 or 3,000,000 in in run rate when you did that, which is like a 40 or 50 x multiple. Mhmm. Right? Right? Something like that? [08:31] >> No. We were at we were actually actually just south of a million. So actually, it was like Oh. You know, if you if you take if you take that if you take that number, it ends up being obviously, you know, a bigger multiple. [08:42] Yeah. That's interesting. So I guess the reason I bring that up is obviously every startup you also sold 7% to YC back in the day for a 150 k. You're you're part of that program. You've gotta manage, obviously, the storyline you tell your team on their option value. And so if they see the market going crazy, but you were bragging a year ago about the how you got a really great valuation, minimize dilution, how do you [09:01] now reverse that narrative and tell the updated storyline, which is, guys, your options are still above water. Don't worry. [09:07] >> Well, I mean, no. We don't think of basically the private valuations or the sort of current state of the market as the the key indicator for kinda the success of the company at the end of the day. This company will be you know, especially for the employees, the the common holders, which include me, like, there's very few outcomes where the company ends up being worth exactly the amount that we raised. The company the modal outcome of [09:35] >> the company, the the the mean and the median is that is that ultimately it goes to zero, but but there are many outcomes where the company is wildly successful. So, you know, we don't really we don't really harp on the likely outcome for many companies in the seed and series a stage. We we think about kind of what the opportunity is, and we race pretty hard to that. And, you know, in terms of options being underwater, [10:00] >> you know, obviously, I've worked at at many companies. Some yeah. [10:03] You know the drill. That's why I asked. [10:05] >> Yeah. Some of the options were successful and and and some they weren't. A couple of things we did do. So we did do a reset four zero nine a. So it is the case that firms that are doing four zero nine a valuations have been very different about those valuations the back half of twenty twenty two than they were in 2021. [10:25] So we're still having about 30% discounts to the to the last round, or are you seeing something different? [10:30] >> In terms of the four zero nine a's? [10:31] Yeah. The four zero [10:33] nine a's all last year were coming in 30%, about 30% of what we were seeing the valuations at. [10:38] >> I mean, to be to be total to be totally honest, I I damn. Now I'm doing the math in my head. It was it was steeper than that. So it was almost a 50% discount. So Okay. So, [10:51] >> you know, I would say that [10:52] Well, no. Not steeper. Sorry. What I was saying is what I was seeing was 70% discounts, where the valuation was 30%. [10:58] >> Okay. So that was not what I was seeing in in our 04/2009 a, but but resetting that for employees was actually important. So it gives them greater confidence that greater confidence that they are gonna be above water and that there's a lot of value in essentially holding their their common shares and their their belief that, you know, our company can get to a really great place with our runway. [11:21] Pete, what's the team size today? How many folks? [11:24] >> We are 25 folks. [11:26] So Oh, that's great. So you've grown without adding a lot of because I think last we spoke, you were at 20 or 21 people. So you haven't gone on some crazy hiring spree. [11:33] >> Sorry. We're we're about five people bigger than when we last talked. Five or six people bigger than last talk. So, you know, you're talking about 20 or 30%. You know? And and to that end, you know, obviously, that sort of corresponded to a little, you know, honestly, a little shrink in what was our model. So our model was to double our people and, you know, more than triple our revenue, and I think that we've been a [11:55] >> lot, you know, a lot more focused on doing everything efficiently. And we sort of got that that queue really early, I think, before a lot of companies really that became the the thing that everybody started doing. [12:07] Yeah. The the LinkedIn post that went viral? Yeah. Very cool. Talk to me about customers today. So obviously, mentioned you're adding at the top of the funnel, lower ARPU, but you're also expanding with big ones. How many total customers are you serving today? [12:18] >> No. We're below a 100 customers. I was really hoping to to get there for this podcast. And, you know, when you multiply that by our ACV, which I mentioned was between, you know, twenty and and and twenty five k. So we're we're pushing up against hitting, you know, 2,000,000. And, you know, I would say that, you know, our goal is to really expand on the low end. So we still see really great NDR in our cohorts. [12:47] What's good? Like, above one thirty, 140%? [12:50] >> Yeah. So so the answer is yes. So some of our initial cohorts were just ridiculous, so over $2. But but, you know, once we see those companies maturing and starting to really add all of their data sources, we're still seeing, you know, well above, you know, a dollar and a quarter and, you know, into the dollar 50. [13:10] Yeah. So a 125, 150% NDR is what that means. Right? [13:13] >> Yeah. Exactly. [13:14] Yeah. Very, very cool. [13:16] >> Alright. And I just benchmarked it against the dollar. [13:18] No. I think that's great. I I I think it's actually made way easier to talk about it against a dollar. I'm a dollar, not a percent guy. Cool. I I guess any other things you're you're that you think are sort of is is non common advice, but you know is true because you've done this so much, advice you'd give other entrepreneurs? [13:36] >> Well so, I mean, I would separate out a couple of things. So you mentioned, one, just trying to motivate the team with, you know, with with with equity, but being extremely generous given kind of the likelihoods of of potentially being out of the money. So you have this tension of are the teams valuing equity at a time of high inflation and, you know, kind of the world is collapsing, But what you get are the true believers [14:00] >> in your company. So it's a little bit counterintuitive. The ones that are finding kind of that difficult to find motivation in it, you know, probably aren't quite the right fit for your team. So you you know, we offer extremely generous equity packages to, you know, join the company, which is also why we've had maybe a little bit smaller of a growth. Right? So we've been focused on giving out and and as a result, we also had [14:22] >> a larger equity option pool because we did, you know, anticipate maybe a [14:26] What's large? I mean, most standard ones are, like, five to 7% attached to the series a round. Did you do something bigger than that in terms of ESOP? [14:32] >> Yeah. We did do a little bit bigger than that. So and and and and with that, that sort of corresponds to the philosophy, and I think it matches what I think of as your opportunity, which is, you know, now is now is the classic time to join startups. These are when the heroic returns actually happen. We think that we have the runway to make something special happen. So it's kind of getting in at the right time, [14:56] >> I think, gives us, like, really a unique opportunity as opposed to one where where there was so many competitors that were able to sort of join us along the way. So you mentioned that one from the start. The other one that I think is, you know, one that I talk about, we sell to SMBs, and and, typically, like hot SMBs. Right? Like, so companies that are growing, that are getting data, that that are growing with that. [15:18] >> You know, that segment is gonna be a lot more dollar constrained. Right? And so you have this sort of counterbalance that I'm seeing, which is on the one hand, we sell a product that's supposed to substitute out a much, much, much, much, much more expensive product, data engineers. A data engineer might cost a 100 x what mozart costs. On the one hand, we have sort of the tailwind of we're a sort of a cheaper product than [15:42] >> the data engineers. That's an incredible tailwind in this tight, like, tightening of money. On the other hand, you know, the companies that we sell to have had a huge money crunch. Maybe if you raised at the right time, great, but many companies that are sort of really tight on budgets and are, you know, worried about their next fundraise, we find that challenge of selling into that group. Mhmm. Mhmm. [16:02] Interesting. Well, it'll certainly be a very interesting next next twelve months. It sounds like you have plenty of runway to get there, but on that note, Pete, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite book. [16:11] >> Mentioned this the first time, but I'm gonna go back to it. It's it's Moneyball. So Moneyball is the inspiration for finding unique things in data, and I've sort of based a lot of my personal career around it. I I started my career in sports analytics and now have made a career in tech analytics. [16:30] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [16:34] >> Yeah. I I again, I think I'm gonna go with another cop out, and I mentioned this last time. [16:40] No Stewart Butterfield. [16:42] >> I know. I'm going with Derek Steer. So I'm wearing a [16:45] Oh, there you go. [16:46] >> So, you know, Mode is a company that [16:49] You were an early investor, weren't you, the first investor? [16:51] >> David Sachs and I were the first two investors in Mode, the company. You know, they spun out of Yammer, which was a team that I I ran. And now, ironically, they're a great partner of ours and that it pairs nicely with mozart. But the thing that I respect most is that they have forged a really great path of selling to data analysts, and they think about the analyst so deeply. And then on top of it, they've [17:16] >> started to be able to solve problems that that that you get to as you mature and mature, as you as you move upstream. So we really do wanna follow exactly in their path, and I'm gonna take a cue from, you know, from that whole founding team, but Derek in particular about sort of being a thought leader and that driving kind of that that growth into larger and larger organizations. [17:38] And if you guys wanna learn from Derek, he is one of our keynotes at SaaS Open coming up in fourteen days in New York City, saasopen.com. Come learn. Great story. He's well, I don't know if that's public. I won't we won't chat about that yet. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building the business? [17:54] >> So favorite online tool well, we have to, you know, we have to certainly shout out some of our customers. So, like, I obviously am a big fan of Rippling. So, you know, we I'm not, believe it or not, an HR leader. I did mention you did mention off the top that I work in HR tech, but, you know, having somebody to sort of steal that work from me and making sure that, you know, our employees get [18:16] >> paid is first and foremost right. [18:19] Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? [18:22] >> I'm a light sleeper. I think they call it, like, a dolphin sleeper. So I do about five to six hours a night. And I I am drinking coffee now, but I I also drink coffee maybe two days a week. So I'm pretty I sort of freakishly able to to get by with, like, five or six hours of sleep. [18:39] That's great. I think you've had two birthdays since we last spoke. Are you 43 now? [18:43] >> I am still 42. [18:45] Oh, 42. Okay. [18:46] >> Getting it you know, Dan Dan and I started the company effectively in our forties. So late to the entrepreneur game, though we did start a hot sauce company together ten years prior. But late to the entrepreneur game, but still going strong, still got the energy of a 24 year old even if I'm 42. [19:04] That's great. Been married. Everything. Married? Any kids? [19:07] >> Yo. Getting married. Oh, yeah. You mentioned Yeah. June, having so we'll, yeah, we'll see if I can keep keep my energy through the through the marriage and then what whatever comes next. [19:18] That's awesome. And, Pete, last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [19:23] >> You know, I think the things that I I'm actually going to my I I I actually just signed up to go to my twenty fifth high school reunion. So I was so I was eight 18. And, you know, the things that I that I really wish I knew, you know, and I I think it's you know, I I actually just had this moment of of of thinking about it. You know, I I like to say that [19:44] >> it it kind of all works out. You know, the things that I cared so much about, you know, I remembered caring about, you know, or not I was, like, captain of my, you know, high school math team or whether I, you know, was, you know, achieving some sort of, like, not meaningless accolade, but that kind of has translated into you know, that that desire for that and that push for that was exactly, you know, I think [20:07] >> the things that sort of perpetuated me in in different stages of of professional growth. But it's also I I wish I had cared a little bit less about it, and I often feel silly about mentioning, like, high school accolades for for obvious reasons twenty five years later. So I I would say that it kind of all works out as the thing that I most, you know, wish I knew or or or could wrap my head around. [20:30] Guys, Pete Fishman, mozartdata.com. They've got big customers like Modern Treasury, called almost a 100 customers paying on average $1,800 a month. They're pushing a $2,000,000 run rate today in a really good position. They closed a $15,000,000 series a last year at pushing costs somewhere around a $100,000,000 valuation, and they're being pretty scrappy about it. They didn't go hire a 100 people. There are 25 folks full time today taking a disciplined approach to growth. We'll see what [20:53] happens next. Pete, thanks for taking us to the top. [20:55] >> Thanks, Nathan. [20:57] One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM [21:22] Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. 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Introduction hey folks my guest today there's peter fishman he's has over a decade of experience running data and data adjacent teams and companies like microsoft vmware open door platinum and ease he realized that building the same type of modern data stacks of each company which was obviously painting the butt uh was the opportunity that he's building today mozart data they launched in 2020 it makes it easy for anyone to set up a modern data stack without a data engineer in under an hour that's a big promise peter you ready to take us to the top let's do it what does a modern data stack look like today a lot of folks know the individual piece of a modern data stack but what a modern data stack is is uh it's centralizing your data without sort of requiring a lot of data engineers give it a face though name a couple tools today that people would like stick in a data stack well i would like to think mozart data is the tool that no besides your own come on uh but uh but beyond that uh people know el tools like five train and stitch um people are certainly familiar with data warehouse options uh the the biggest and and baddest being snowflake but also uh google bigquery or or amazon redshift um and then people also think now about transform and they think of it in many different flavors in terms of observability data governance uh a lot of bi tooling a lot of reverse etl so really it's about taking data from the silos in which it gets generated and turning it into something useful at the end which is generally a chart that people will then take action on or sending it back into a system that that people use out in the field and operationalize and peter when folks are signing up for this and paying you what are they i mean give me a service suite so are they paying average per month to use your technology sure so you know our acb is uh around twenty thousand dollars but the median is around a thousand dollars a month um so uh people are you know people are essentially you know from that getting data infrastructure so data infrastructure can be you know 10 years ago would take a number of data engineers and a very big check to one of the big tech companies uh to get started today you know not just with our tool but with many tools um you swipe a credit card and you're off to the races you know for as little as say six dollars yep okay very cool so you guys got going on this in what year uh we're a pandemic company so we started in april of 2020. all right 2020. and have you guys raised Raised or decided to uh bootstrap uh so we did y combinator that summer and then raised the seed around uh after y combinator and what are they doing these days is it 160k for seven percent something like that uh so in our class you got the the rich price of 150k for seven percent and now i believe it's 125k so our our company you know had an implied higher cap but then and then subsequently we raised a variety of money through other safe notes um i think you'd raise four million in a more traditional seat after that is it accurate uh it ended up being actually six um through uh kind of a seat extension and what was non you said non-traditional what was non-traditional about how you did it uh so in in so far as that it was in in steps so typically when you think about like an extension or a bridge you're talking about a company that's on its like sadly like it's last legs and trying to figure out a way to get to that next round and when we did it we did it a little bit opportunistically um just because uh i think the market for for you know data tooling is is certainly the investor market for for data tools is is really hot i'd argue it's very advantageous to always have an open round that means anytime you meet someone you can help you and they say i'd love to put money and you can say yes the docs are ready the things thing that is boom boom sign the docs and you can get them in versus if you're closed you got to spin up a whole new process it's a it's a lot you say wait to our series a right and then you lose them right sure the difference between you know uh raising like uh on on a signature versus you know if you're raising a price round uh you know there's an official close date there's you know lining up uh you know all of the terms and all the like not just the not just of the term sheet but of all of the sort of legalese that goes back and forth about edge cases so you know obviously uh if you're an entrepreneur you get into the business not to argue about sort of the edge cases of what happens when you fail you instead only really want to think about um you know how to make your business better and you know how to get that capital efficiently that's right now most folks in their street around these days are selling between sort of 10 and 20 percent of the business were you guys sort of in that same range yeah i think um i think you you know you you have to sell a meaningful chunk of your company and your efforts over over the coming years uh you know when you're raising and you don't have too much to show for it uh the short version is you can bootstrap a company and that's always impressive um but then you can also take you know the gas fuel and try to try to capitalize on a market opportunity that you see so yeah we were we were selling um what feels like in hindsight a large chunk of our company yeah yeah you're talking like six on like a 35 or 40 pre something like that yeah i think and then you know valuations you know change rapidly at the early stage so a hint of traction is really incredibly valuable so uh it is the case that like um you know i think you can think about pre-product and and the team and raising on your resume and your network and then thinking about having a product and being able to go into a pitch meeting just with a demo as opposed to a deck um in fact we didn't really raise uh we didn't really raise with a with a deck um just because uh you know i think now people really are most interested in seeing what it is yeah exactly 100 yeah so talking about the traction do you remember how you got your first customer tell us that story i mean you always you always remember your first dollar so tell me so mike so first off i'll say that my co-founder and i this is our second time doing a company together so 10 years ago we started a hot sauce company together and i don't remember really just our first sale but i remember our first sale to somebody that didn't have one of our last names yeah yeah that was a really special moment for us um now in the data space you don't really sell to you know i don't sell to my parents um so uh you know our first customers unsurprisingly came from our network it was folks that wanted to not just use you know our product as a modern data stack but actually really have the high touch experience of work who was it though peter can you name them are they are they okay being public yeah yeah i mean we talk about these companies all the time so in at the end of y combinator uh we we made three sales and we left y combinator with three sales so um that was tempo um and and rippling were sort of the the two largest and then gaia gps uh was was another sale so we made three sales during y combinator so one per month so actually not that impressive um but like you can think of it as infinity percent growth uh but yeah those those three like you know we sent out the invoices at the same time so technically i think the first strike payment came from i believe the answer is tempo but i'm but oh now i'm embarrassed i bragged about remembering the first dollar in in reality it's just uh you know an electronic transaction so i didn't actually receive that fistful of cash fair fair fair fare okay fast forward Currently serving 40 customers today how many customers are you working with now yeah we're working with uh a few dozen uh almost 40 customers um and um you know obviously that spans a variety of sizes and stages and and industries we're not specific to b2b or b2c peter 40 customers i thought arpu earlier the media and you caught it up a grand it means you guys doing about 40 Monthly recurring revenue 000 bucks a month right now in revenue uh well i think it would be a little bit more than that right so uh so we are doing a little bit better than that um haven't hit the magical seven figures of arr but come on you've got you've got 10 days left can you break 83 grand a month to give him 10 more days i like to think of it by the way i i take the challenge on very seriously but i like to think of the opportunity as our our you know fiscal year end in january 31st so uh so so give me give me 41 days and we'll see we'll see if we can make it okay cool so you you're maybe you're averaging is not a thousand bucks a month it's maybe more like you know 1500 two grand a month and you're more like 60 or 70 grand you quoted the median so just taking many things in stats uh we're definitely a case where you know you have some companies that are six figure companies um so the average looks a lot higher than the median we really do aim to service the small company that's just trying to get started in their data journey but then we hope to service them as they become unicorns deca coins etc we have a number of companies that have become unicorns uh while they've been mozart customers we like to call that causality in practice uh of course one hundred percent yeah oh that's the only reason they're a unicorn now i'll go with maybe maybe it's like uh maybe yeah and peter help us understand growth rate if you're on 60 70 grand a month today where were you a year ago you remember uh sure you know in general we've been growing 10 month over month which is basically a seven month double time um so you know when when you're nyc hold on peter you've got to make it simple for my house you're doing about 20 grand a month a year ago yeah you know we left yc with only 20k but like yeah so if you kind of think about us as having done uh you know over over you know a number of doubles in the last in the last year you know we had fewer than 200k um at uh you know at the sort of yeah if you double if you double your revenue from your go twice you went from 15k to maybe 30k then 30 doubled up just north of 60 at this point i think that probably is on track that's about right yeah um okay cool tell me more about the team how many folks today we are 22 people wow how many engineers uh we're uh we're basically 12 technicals 12. okay pretty what are the other 10 do um you know we do sales and marketing uh we you know i i think a big part of sas we have a we do have a gta we don't call it sales marketing we call it gtm um so and then on top of it we have a lot of uh customer support so folks that are that are helping teams get up and running one of our business models is is similar i call it like superhuman where we love to give people a push in the back so superhuman in order to use essentially their email interface you know they they make you get on a 15-minute call with them so they can explain a lot of their functionality we like to do the same we think that really the hardest challenge in data is just getting started so having sort of an expert by your side to make that that start happen we think is really valuable to our company so a lot of our motion is not just about like a new arr but actually expansion arr as companies really uh get their their data systems going how many csm reps do you have today uh we have we have zero that have that title but we have um we have three folks that kind of uh have like data analytics experience okay and how many are sale like full-time sales reps today with a quota at the company um so we have a sales team of five they all carry quota uh so we have one ae and one head of sales that that basically are closers interesting okay very cool yeah and then obviously net dollar retention is critical as you scale 150 200 is like would be world class uh the only way to get there though is if you set up your pricing tied very closely to you know high value utility metric what is that metric for you [Music] so we didn't want to reinvent the wheel on pricing at the end of the day we charge very similar to many companies in the data space which is based on compute and based on rows uh so this is sort of um the the new language of data tooling and uh you know we didn't invent that wheel so so it is the case that compute is a really good proxy for you know value created so if you're essentially using your data warehouse presumably you're getting some value out of it and that's a that's a pretty common metric that's that's largely how that is how snowflake charges yep just a snowflake obviously a lot of people point them and say you know what they don't even feel like sass it's almost pure utility-based almost like a gas bill and that's why they have ndr that's through the roof uh anyways great story here here let's wrap up with the famous five number one favorite book uh moneyball i'm a data person of course it inspired really my career number two is there a ceo you're following or studying yeah i think um in general i'm always uh you know there are many ceos that i look up to but i love the stuart butterfield example of the pivot into the tool that they were using and the great success that they had after that and i had worked in essentially the enterprise uh space that that was about uh i'd worked at yammer for a number of years number three what's your favorite online tool for building uh mozart uh well my favorite uh tool is we use mozart so besides your own well it's i don't know it's a i don't know if that's a cop-out but i also love uh mode so i i don't wanna say i'm too partial to any bi tool but that was um something that really uh it was mode came out of uh a tool that i had built uh with well they're also derek steer was on the show recently that's also x yammer yammer emer execs were the first uh checks into that business did you write a check it was i was the first jack i don't know i was going to say that to david sacks or if he gave it to me but that's hysterical so you know uh so i will i you know of course i'll you know i have to i say we love all bi tools many of them are downstream partners but i i will say that uh i take a lot of pride in seeing the way that mode has come along as uh really incredibly uh no derek gave you guys a ton of credit i mean he we spent probably three or four minutes when i interviewed him and he was saying how excited he was that his ex yammer or team basically backed him early on he came on the show and talked to us you know they broke 19 million dollar run rate last year just passed a 40 million dollar run rate the growth rate he has is incredible uh and it's an amazing tool i think it's uh it's an amazing way to do ad hoc analysis and real practitioners uh really understand and respect that why didn't you join mode instead of launching mozart uh well so so uh it was a very tough day for me both derek josh and ben the three co-founders walked into my one-on-one with derek and explained that we're not gonna have the one-on-one that they were leaving uh in in a handful of weeks to go start uh mode i said oh man what am i doing uh but i i actually really loved the challenges that i that i had at microsoft at the time and um and and spent my time uh on a number of different uh microsoft products uh got to touch billions of users have that larger company experience your options did pretty well i hear i don't know what you're telling about yeah okay all right mode's your favorite tool okay number four how many hours you sleep to eat every night um i'm a five or six hour person it's not because i'm like grinding the midnight oil as a startup founder but because i've always sort of been able to oddly exist off of five or six hours of sleep and what's your situation married single kids i recently got uh engaged my partner works across the street not in tech but as a news reporter so cool okay so any kids or no uh we have no kids and how old are you peter i am 41 41 last question something you wish you when you were 20. uh well there are many there are many things like i want to kind of like go back and like in like back to the future two style bet on every like subsequent super bowl or winning but you know in general i would say uh you know it's kind of okay the ups and downs of a career so sort of having kind of that perspective on sort of non-linear progress being a reality of of life and careers and you know it's not about sort of getting there kind of first or fastest but sort of enjoying the ride in a cliched way guys there you have it messy data to analysis already very quickly uh they launched call in 2020 they're called mccovet company about 15 000 bucks a month in revenue a year ago now 70 000 a month not reinventing the wheel here they charge on compute and number of rows 40 customers to date about a 6 million dollar seed round caught like a 30 to 40 maybe 50 million evaluation when they did that but team 22 today scaling quick 12 engineers five on the sales team scaling and nicely peter thank you for taking us to the top thanks so much one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry buyers they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards their expenses their revenue arpu cac ltv you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every thursday 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the subscribe button below here on youtube the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do 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