How Optimove CEO Pini Yakuel grew Optimove to $94.5M revenue and 77 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is penny Yakub L he's the founder and CEO of optimum provider of the science first relationship marketing hub his extensive experience in analytics driven customer marketing business consulting in sales along with his innovative approach to entrepreneurship business building and marketing have earned him recognition as a thought leader penny are you ready to take us to the top I am alright tell us about opted to move what does it do and how do you make money so we make money by selling a SAS software essentially we work with companies they pay us a monthly fee is how we make money and we what we do we set a relationship marketing hub this means that we help brands to thoughtfully communicate with their customers at scale by leveraging by leveraging machine learning and data science so in every every time they talk to a customer we are one of the channels well it's whether it's email Facebook Google retargeting call center or whatever the one-to-one channel is that convulse station that they struggle the customer is that much more meaningful and engaging because it's based on the day today it's based on the wisdom of the machines learn to understand really what drives customers to detect patterns things like that and what is the average customer pay you per month would you say hmm so I would say that like our price point is around 30 ke okay and that's pretty that's pretty representative of what people would pay on average as well then that is the average okay so that's what is that that's about ten point eight grand per month something like that exactly do you make do you make them sell or pay annual upfront or can they pay monthly so usually our default contract starts with the quality in advance that's how we start we're not the type of a company a lot of companies though you know we're strapped for cash so they want to so usually they want to get the money up front for a year and then the next year is this notion of renewal what do you want to get again a big check for the next year if typically we build a business as a book with the trap or capture positive what we've always been profitable so for us we're not that you know strict on that so we can so typically we do quality in advance we can do monthly in advance if they insist okay so your cash flow positive bootstrapped and when did you launch the company what year so the company was launched in 2009 as essentially in a way a consulting gig around mission planning and data science to Salem automation but everything we do today we did manually with people and presentations and Excel files throughout the years for the first three years we have accumulated money through this agency business and in 2012 we actually launched the brand optimal the software product optic move and we I think a year more into the future so 2013 we probably completed a pivot to fully become a SAS business and all the saw another service business okay and over the last 12 months what percentage of your revenue was SAS versus agency model oh no so ever since that time 2013 we killed agency business so today 20% of our business comes from services 100 sorry say that again you cut out 12 today 12% of our business comes from services and 88 comes from from SAS licensing okay and what have you scaled to in terms of total customers so we we walk today we're are 300 brands I know that one customer can have more than one brand right especially when you sign with a company that owns multiple plans or multiple entities so it's 300 brands it sits on our site and we're hundred fifty people in the company okay a hundred fifty people 300 brands is that generally one to one ratio though in terms of company to brands like do you have about 300 companies or no no that's what I know so let's say I forget the exact number but essentially it's a sometimes a company could have more than one brand yeah I think the average probably 1.4 so that I would okay so you've got you've got somewhere than around like 120 companies 300 brands something like that not exactly but let me give something for myself yeah fair enough yeah because you know what I'm doing here I might do the math the hunter if you do have around 120 right time is the ACV you gave me earlier maybe are you guys doing about north of a million bucks a month right now so you can add we we do you can think it 150 come on 50 people company and it is but it is profitable so you do the math and you can get pretty close you know math would give me if I want to be exact 1.6 million in monthly recurring revenue is that about what you're doing today it's a no but let me keep something for myself well which just tell me which of those numbers are wrong because they're just multiplying 150 times your ACV you gave me no so the ACB is right because they give it to you and well there's your hawk got it okay so I'm obviously too high on customers I won't push harder there other than I mean can you give me a general sense of size are you you know less than 10 million or more than 10 million in ARR no a lot more okay but south of 100 million that's a big that's a big enough range right right would be nice to get yes is that belly and usually you can have 150 people they have around 500 and north stand it again in two thousand usually companies that do hundred million they have a lot more than I'm worth to people not always I've interviewed a few that have around 150 200 yeah you right no I at least in the enterprise software space right of course if you you can be like a money printing machine that can have a heck into a ton of money with 50 people right but in the on top in the enterprise software space it's usually it is like a metric that says okay so how much you're making per employee it is like SAS revenue per employee and typically that number you know goes between hundred fifty thousand to two hundred twenty something like that so and of course companies are raised money and pre-hire they tilt the odds so if you talk to a company that raised a lot of money and they pre hired this will not indicate on the revenue we are we are we've always been kind of like that making more than the number of employees in other words the average you know the average SAS company 150 grand and ARR per employee what you're saying is because your bootstrapped you're doing actually well north of that you're better than average I don't know I know the average is I'm not sure I know it ranges from 150 to 220 something we checked it like a while back does this all these reports you know that you can get but I'm just saying that sometimes companies when they raise a lot of money think we hire for example they can have like young employees but actually make you know four million in revenue and they are so yeah this would be very nice little you're here about your bootstraps so you're not let's not talk about that because that's that's not your model what what I'm curious is are you saying are you saying you're beating that 150 to 220 range or you're in that range your average your with everybody else we are in a good place in the range and another thing I want to mention because you talked about the bootstrapping we so we feel bootstrapping all the way to like year and a half ago in which we took our first line of growth funding of 20 million okay come on you can't lead me on like that penny that's not bootstraps that means you've raised capital after eight years yeah but okay I'll give you credit for that but now you're on the dark side I liked you way more a minute ago you know that right [Applause] I'm for mr. society that idolizes fundraising so I'm not sure that's you I the arch burns that are most impressive to me are the ones that bootstrap their way and they make themselves very wealthy totally bootstrap but I get what you're saying and you hustled for eight years you said you just raised twenty million now is that that's all you raise is twenty million total right okay got it so so 20 million you bootstrapped and I mean look I can put a better minimum on this right so if you say you have a hundred fifty employees and you're in a healthy set quote a healthy area in the range between 150 grand a year in revenue to 220 per employee I mean at a minimum your guys are I mean you're north of 20 to 5 dude you're obsessed with a number let's get it on with the interview I'm absolutely obsessed with it but if because you're giving me data points that makes it easy I'm just multiplying your team size by the minimum of the range 150 K okay you can you know you can guess to make whatever you want well I'm not guessing no painting I'm just using your numbers all right you want me to you only do what to confirm a number - no no no I just I just want it now I'm understanding because you just revealed that you've actually raised and now I'm thinking about - what you said which is sometimes people higher up front and there's a lag time for growth which yeah but that's not the case with us that is not the case okay even after we raise money essentially the company's still profitable even after raising money and we took the you know we took the the round for various reasons but if I would you know boil it up it's mainly - essentially I thought it was the right time to kind of like to gear up and acquire ammunition and I felt that why did you feel that because we're not...