Founder Interview
How Practice Ignition Reached a $24M Revenue Run Rate and 5,000 Customers While Processing $1B+ in Client Payments (Interview with CEO Guy Pearson)
- Interview Date
- November 19, 2021
- Interviewee
- Guy PearsonCEO and Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Annualized Revenue Run Rate (Nov 2021)
$24M
Customers (2021)
5,000
Revenue Growth (2021)
70%+
Client Payments Processed Annually (2021)
$1B+
Team Size (2021)
150+
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Guy Pearson during his interview with Nathan Latka in November 2021 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Ignition’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways
- 01Practice Ignition was running at about $2M a month in November 2021, a $24M annualized run rate
- 02The company served 5,000 accounting and bookkeeping firms around the world at interview time
- 03Revenue grew 70% or more for two consecutive years through 2021
- 04The platform processed over $1 billion in payments annually across five countries
- 05Average revenue per customer was $400 per month, blending $150 software and $250 payments
- 06The blended take rate on payment volume was approximately 50 basis points
- 07Practice Ignition raised a Series B led by Tiger Global in 2019 at just over $50M pre-money valuation
- 08JMI Equity led the most recent Series C round, closed shortly before the interview
- 09The company had over 150 full-time employees and was targeting 170 by year end 2021
- 1095% of the customer base were CPAs and bookkeepers
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Annualized Revenue Run Rate (Nov 2021) | $24M | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Customers (2021) | 5,000 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Revenue Growth (2-year run) (2021) | 70%+ | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| ARPU (2021) | $400 per month | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Software ARPU (2021) | $150 per month | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Payments ARPU (2021) | $250 per month | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Client Payments Processed Annually (2021) | $1B+ | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Blended Take Rate (2021) | 0.50% | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Payments Net Dollar Retention (2021) | 130% | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Team Size (2021) | 150+ | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Open Positions (2021) | 20 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Marketing Team Size (2021) | 20 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Series B Pre-Money Valuation (2019) | $50M+ | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Series B Round Size (2019) | $15M | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Secondary in Series B (2019) | $2M | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Secondary in Series C (2021) | $10M | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Secondary to Team (Series C) (2021) | $4M | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Secondary to Exiting Investor (Series C) (2021) | $6M | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Year Founded | 2013 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Year Reached $1M Revenue | 2017 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Total Raised Through 2017 (founder estimate) | $2M | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Series A Dilution | 30% | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Series C Dilution (approx) (2021) | 15% | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Countries with Payment Processing (2021) | 5 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Practice Ignition was doing roughly $2M a month by November 2021, about a $24M annualized run rate, up from $1M in annual revenue in 2017. The company grew 70% or more for two consecutive years, driven by a blended model combining SaaS subscription fees and a percentage of payment volume processed through the platform.
Customers
The platform served 5,000 accounting and bookkeeping firms globally at interview time. Roughly 95% of the customer base were CPAs and bookkeepers, with notable customers including Baker Tilly in the US and Zen Accounting in Canada.
Team
Headcount had grown to over 150 full-time employees by November 2021, with Guy Pearson expecting to finish the year at approximately 170. The marketing team alone grew from 4 to 20 people in the four months prior to the interview.
Funding
Practice Ignition raised a Series B led by Tiger Global in 2019 at just over $50M pre-money valuation, with $2M of that round taken as secondary. JMI Equity led the most recent Series C, which closed shortly before the interview, with $10M of that round structured as secondary to benefit early employees and exiting investors.
Growth Strategy
Content Marketing and Inbound
Guy Pearson credited content marketing and inbound as the primary early growth engine, driving prospects into a self-serve sign-up flow for the base plan. The marketing team scaled rapidly to support this channel.
Partner Co-Marketing
Practice Ignition built partnerships with Gusto, Thomson Reuters and Intuit's PCG Group to accelerate growth in the US market. These partnerships were described as a key lever for conquering the US.
Product-Led Growth Transition
The company shifted from a high-touch, manual post-sale model toward product-led growth, using the platform itself to guide customers through onboarding and expansion. The shift let the company keep the team it had built while the product carried more of the onboarding, with quota-carrying reps concentrating on the two larger plans.
Payments Expansion Within Existing Accounts
Payments revenue expanded at approximately 130% net dollar retention year over year as customers built trust in the platform and rolled out payment collection across their full client base. This utility-based expansion drove revenue growth without requiring new customer acquisition.
Vertical Focus on Accounting and Bookkeeping
By concentrating almost entirely on CPAs and bookkeepers, Practice Ignition built deep product-market fit in a segment where every professional services business has a CPA or bookkeeper, creating a natural referral and expansion path.
Best Quotes
“They start there. They build up trust in the platform as we start to manage the revenue, then they turn payments on.”
“95% of our customer base are CPAs and bookkeepers around the world.”
“Payment is about US$400 a month for a mix of software and payments. So it's sort of a blended pace. The average software clip is about US$150 and the payment is about US$250”
“We process both ACH and credit card in about five countries around the world: US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand. And we've got a couple of billion dollars of revenue under management, and we process north of a billion annually at the moment.”
“COVID has been an accelerator and a headwind for us because you've got accountants looking after their clients, doing forecasts and all these things they never would have done probably for years. And then you've got the wanting to get paid and having moved online. So we've grown about 70 plus percent last two years running, which is not terrible.”
“It's changing a lot every week. We're north of a 150. I think we'll finish the year at 170. Give you an idea of sort of the rate we're hiring at the moment.”
“I might be a smart individual on certain days, but realistically, I can't run or do the jobs that other 150 people do. So I think particularly with what is it, the great resignation or whatnot coming up, make sure you take care of your folks. They believe in the journey and they think you're looking after and they'll stay and they'll back you up.”
“I got married the day after the round closed. So how's that for time?”
What Happened Next
This interview captured Practice Ignition in November 2021, shortly after it closed a Series C led by JMI Equity, running at about $2M a month (a $24M annualized run rate) with 5,000 firms on the platform. The company has since rebranded to Ignition (ignitionapp.com). The figures here are what Guy Pearson gave at that point in time and are not current; see the Ignition company profile on GetLatka for the latest available revenue, customer and funding data.
View Ignition’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Company Overview
- 0:38What Practice Ignition Does
- 1:25Customer Base and Sector Focus
- 2:07Pricing Model and ARPU
- 2:23Payment Processing Volume and Take Rate
- 4:52Founding Story and Early Fundraising
- 8:57Customer Count and Revenue Run Rate
- 9:40Growth Rate and COVID Impact
- 10:31Team Size and Hiring Pace
- 12:28Freemium Experiment and Lessons Learned
- 12:48Net Dollar Retention and Business Model
- 13:23Holding Retention at Scale
- 14:05Why the Series C Included Secondary
- 16:56Secondary Sales and Taking Care of the Team
- 18:19Advice on Secondary and the Great Resignation
- 18:52Series B Valuation and Raising from Australia
- 20:46Famous Five Rapid Fire
Introduction and Company Overview
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey folks, my guest today is Guy Pearson. He's got more than a decade of experience in professional services. He's a chartered accountant, chairman of Interactive Accounting, a progressive accounting firm he founded in 2009, and an angel investor in multiple portfolio companies. Today, he's the CEO and founder of Practice Ignition, the world's first client engagement and commerce platform for professional services businesses. Guy, you ready to take us to the top?
Guy Pearson
00:19>> Hey, Let's go.
Nathan Latka
00:21Thanks for staying up late. I think you're based down there in Sydney. Right?
Guy Pearson
00:23>> I'm up early. It's 7AM here. Oh my god. So we can put the coffee in. You've got your coffee in. I'm at the other end, mate.
Nathan Latka
00:29Yeah. Okay. Fair. Well, okay. So practiceignition.com is a site. Now just to be clear, you are not a consulting company. You build software for consulting companies. Correct. I see.
What Practice Ignition Does
Guy Pearson
00:38>> 100% right. I it's one on like Shopify for services. Right? So you think about it like that, where the engineer used to run the revenue on payments and connect through the third party workflows so they can have their tasks, billing, and collections all tied together to a digital handshake. That's And kind of what we
Nathan Latka
00:53so to help me understand, can you name a customer that's paying you and what they pay you for specifically?
Guy Pearson
00:58>> Baker Tilly in The US would be one of the larger ones. Let me think about what else.
Nathan Latka
01:04Said Baker Tilly? Sorry, Baker Tilly?
Guy Pearson
01:06>> Baker Tilly. So they're a large CPA firm in The US and Canada. And they pay us for software to help run their contracts. And accountants usually reengage or reissue contracts every year. So it's a sort of a firm plan if we can dumb it down to that.
Nathan Latka
01:23Are you selling mainly to accounting firms?
Customer Base and Sector Focus
Guy Pearson
01:25>> 101% at the moment. 95% of our customer base are CPAs and bookkeepers around the world.
Nathan Latka
01:31Interesting. Okay, so there is a sector focus here. It's not just any consulting firm in the world.
Guy Pearson
01:36>> No, that's true. We do have some weird and wonderful customers in many different industries, like small ISPs, education providers, lawyers, digital agencies, marketers, etcetera. But the large primary bulk of our focus has been on bookkeeping and accounting as every professional services business has a CPA or has a bookkeeper. So it's very much sort of let's solve their problem and then they can recommend it to their clients in the long run.
Nathan Latka
01:59I see. Okay, that makes tons of sense. So what is the average Baker Tilly, not actually Baker Tilly, but what's the average customer paying you per month or per year to use the technology?
Pricing Model and ARPU
Guy Pearson
02:07>> Payment is about US$400 a month for a mix of software and payments. So it's sort of a blended pace. The average software clip is about US$150 and the payment is about US$250
Nathan Latka
02:18Interesting. So what is the two fifty dollars Is that a percentage of the volume they process through your platform?
Payment Processing Volume and Take Rate
Guy Pearson
02:23>> Correct. So we process both ACH and credit card in about five countries around the world: US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand. And we've got a couple of billion dollars of revenue under management, and we process north of a billion annually at the moment, but obviously, that rate's sort of pouring up.
Nathan Latka
02:41Got it. So so you process over 1,000,000,000 per year, and these are individual accounting firms like Baker Tilly sending invoices or quotes to their customers. When you add all those up, it's over 1,000,000,000. You take a small cut of that.
Guy Pearson
02:52>> Correct. That's exactly how it works.
Nathan Latka
02:54Come on, Guy. What's the cut? What's the smallest?
Guy Pearson
02:59>> The smallest? We take about well, mean, it's on the website, so it's very easy to see, but the blended take rate for ourselves is about 50 bps at the moment. We're looking to push that up through getting the volume up there and negotiating on our cost side, but also just thinking about how we charge smartly for people. So people are feeling like they're paying the right amount for the right service. Ultimately, what we're trying to do
03:20>> is make sure there's no administration, make sure they don't have to use another system, make sure the clients can see their payments and understand where they're coming from and that everyone's kind of happy on the two sided agreement.
Nathan Latka
03:30Yeah. Mean, but Guy, I mean, look, just quickly, mean, billion bucks in GMV at a 5% take rate is your lowest. That means that a minimum
Guy Pearson
03:37>> Oh, fifty fifty bits point five.
Nathan Latka
03:39Right. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Point 5% take rate. I mean, your your your minimum revenue there is $5,000,000 there, right? If that's your lowest take rate, probably higher.
Guy Pearson
03:46>> Yep.
Nathan Latka
03:47Yeah. That's great. Okay.
Guy Pearson
03:49>> Yeah. Thankfully. Thankfully.
Nathan Latka
03:51That's good. What is the how do people get down to 50 bps? Like, do they what do most people start at? Is it like 250 bps, 2.5%?
Guy Pearson
04:00>> No. Yes. So the gross rate before we have to pay any of our providers is sort of two seventy bps in The US on credit card. And this is a headline rate. But we have a flat fee charge for ACH presently. And so if you're processing B2B payments, similar to say like a bill.com, but you're running it through us between the two parties, they're paying a fixed fee of maximum $1 And so obviously you get a
04:24>> blended rate, that take rate comes right down.
04:28>> And so it's a fairly nice mix. We're just interested in bringing in the flow of commerce between two B2B parties and getting rid of checks. That's kind of our main secret sauce. And it's a great platform for removing that admin layer so everyone gets stuck in and has a good experience.
Nathan Latka
04:44Yep. Now I wanna get to the round of just doing JMI Equity recently, like literally a couple of days ago. But let's go back to like day one for a second. When did you guys launch? What year?
Founding Story and Early Fundraising
Guy Pearson
04:52>> 2013. We had an MVP out in 2012. But, yeah, about eight years ago.
Nathan Latka
04:58Okay. Wow. About eight years ago. And do you remember the year you broke a million in revenue?
Guy Pearson
05:03>> Yeah. That was 2017.
Nathan Latka
05:052017. Okay. So 0 to million, five five years. That's the struggle was real back then,
Guy Pearson
05:10>> Oh, man, this is the devil. Trying to sell to account as a bookkeeper, they're lovely people, but also trying to have the right level of product in terms of not too structured and flexible and trying to find that balance is a real pain point. It's a slog. I think we'd only raised about $2,000,000 in that whole five year journey. So we had a very lean maintain trying to figure out how to make things work and scale
05:35>> it up. And from then on, it's sort of more expansion capital and where we went.
Nathan Latka
05:39Do you remember? Yeah. You did I think you did like three seed rounds, a million in 2015 and one point five ish in two tranches in 2014 and then 110 angel round, I think, before that. Right? Something like that?
Guy Pearson
05:51>> Yeah. So we had like family friends and fools. So my brother, my best mate, and one of my old business partners in my old CPA firm. Then we had a bunch of angels, which was anchored by a guy called Craig Winkler, who's effectively like our Intuit founder, but just in Australia. And on the back of that, we then raised from Real Ventures, which is up in Canada. I'm based in Sydney, Australia to sort of put how
06:15>> far we had to go. And so John Stokes up there, I read our first seed check and kind of split the round into and we had enterprise
06:23>> software listed company founder here, lead the second part of the seed round a year later. So sort of split. And then it was on to Series A with Australian funding, particularly now it's great and it keeps getting better. But we had four VC funds and two billionaires write us a 5,000,000 Australian dollar check, to give you an idea. So it's 3.5 US. So at that point we were like, you know what, maybe this rising thing isn't
06:46>> for us. We actually got through the break even in 2019 and sat down with friends and advisors and whatnot and was sort of like, well, where to from here? We had this much of the share of the market. We had product market fit. And we ended up going to look for the biggest and the baddest and had Tiger Global come along to lead our Series B in 2019, which is phenomenal. And yeah, like you said, JMI
07:09>> recently. So if you look at the crunch base for us, it's like little bits of capital and kind of like big chunk and then bigger chunk.
Nathan Latka
07:16Next and next, it'll be $5,000,000,000 valuation. You guys
Guy Pearson
07:20>> are going to be long term. Oh, mate. My my mother would be so proud. But look, I would say that you know, take me back.
Nathan Latka
07:28I mean, managing dilution is obviously critical. You want to build a big business and also try and preserve as much ownership for you and your co founders and your brother, your best mate as you can over time, right? So when you guys went on to that 3.6 US USD around back in the series A back in 2017, do you remember what valuation you raised that at?
Guy Pearson
07:44>> I do.
Nathan Latka
07:45Was it was it was it very dilutive?
Guy Pearson
07:48>> It was. It was really so Australians, how would you put this? They like to see efficiency in capital deployment as a mindset we're used to profitable companies. And so when you've something that's not profitable but growing quickly, people sort of struggle. We really needed the capital. We found great partners once the price was on the low end, but we also were sick of raising. So this is going to be our last round that obviously played into
08:15>> the price as well. But we brought on some great partners. So those people who joined us actually helped us get to the B round and onwards. So there's a mix of what if. You know, would have loved to on, Jayco.
Nathan Latka
08:29What's the number there? Are we talking like you sold, like, 20% of business or, like, 30 of business? 30. 30. Okay. That's not horrendous. Right? I mean No.
Guy Pearson
08:36>> No. No.
Nathan Latka
08:37You know, it's on the high end. It's terrible.
Guy Pearson
08:40>> I think it's because we we don't ever really got twelve months capital, as you can see from our race history. Right? So it was sort of like the ongoing dilution and the small step ups in between each round up until the b and then the C. So, yeah. Yeah. It was painful at the time.
Customer Count and Revenue Run Rate
Nathan Latka
08:57Yeah. Yeah. Painful, but now worth it. You guys are scaling nicely. How many customers are you working with now today? Like Baker Tilly's?
Guy Pearson
09:03>> 5,000.
Nathan Latka
09:04Oh my gosh. 5,000.
Guy Pearson
09:05>> How old would be on Baker Tilly would be on the high end, and we probably should stop using their name because they're sort of one of the largest in the world.
Nathan Latka
09:10But Okay. I'll stop using them.
Guy Pearson
09:13>> So let's use good good friends of mine. Zen Accounting in Canada would be would be a good example of, like, a great customer that fits right on our ICP. So it's about 5,000 firms around the world that we're working with today.
Nathan Latka
09:23Okay. Okay. And can I sort of get a range here if I take those 5,000 customers times the $400 average ARPU? I mean, that puts you at, like, 2,000,000 a month in revenue. Is that about right?
Guy Pearson
09:33>> Yep. Yeah. Pretty cool.
Nathan Latka
09:35And if that's where you are today, what is growth over the past twelve months?
Growth Rate and COVID Impact
Guy Pearson
09:40>> It's funny. COVID has been an accelerator and a headwind for us because you've got accountants looking after their clients, doing forecasts and all these things they never would have done probably for years. And then you've got the wanting to get paid and having moved online. So we've grown about 70 plus percent last two years running, which is not terrible. But we would have liked to grow more. Hopefully that's what's coming as the campus particularly look forward
10:04>> to getting paid and have taken care of their clients and now needs to take care of their own business. And so what we're seeing is an acceleration. And we've made some really great partnerships recently to help us sort of conquer The US. Gusto, Thomson Reuters, Intuit PCG Group. So we're kind of off off into the races, we're looking forward to, you know, coming coming to bring all the goodness that we've got down here into The US
10:26>> market and and ramp up that market there.
Nathan Latka
10:28Tell me tell me more about the team today. How many folks are full time?
Team Size and Hiring Pace
Guy Pearson
10:31>> 100 and it's changing a lot every week. We're north of a 150. I think we'll finish the year at 170. Give you an idea of sort of the rate we're hiring at the moment. And much does this You're at about 100.
10:45>> That's a good question. About 20. But we've got about 20 positions coming down the pipe in the next couple of days. So we're trying to ratchet it up. We went to market and scaled by making sure we took care of in manual ways. So taking care of the customers on the post sale side and learning what they needed. And then on the inbound side, we just had basically content for marketers driving people in for sales. And
11:10>> then switching that gear into product led growth to take them through the journey and still keep the team that we've built. And then adding on, I think our marketing team has gone from four to 20 people in the last four months.
Nathan Latka
11:21Oh, wow. Okay.
Guy Pearson
11:22>> So ratcheting on.
Nathan Latka
11:23Do you guys employ sort of app on strategy? Do have internal quota carrying sales reps with like million dollar quotas or no?
Guy Pearson
11:29>> We do. And that's probably roughly about right. But the ASP on an average deal is probably $175 And so they have to actually sell quite a lot of software to make that happen. So we'd have those folks and they tend to stick to our two larger plans, which are still quite small. And then the base plan tends to be a straight flow through from marketing into self sign up.
Nathan Latka
11:54What comes first? Accounting firm putting a dollar revenue through you and you making that in the percent of GMV or them buying a software first and then adding on invoicing later?
Guy Pearson
12:04>> First ones. They buy the software, they'll run through usually like accountants, as you can imagine, have a system currently for billing and collecting payment. And so typically what they do is they send a contract out to one of their teams or their friend who's a client. They start there. They build up trust in the platform as we start to manage the revenue, then they turn payments on. And the faster we build that trust, the faster they
Freemium Experiment and Lessons Learned
Guy Pearson
12:28>> roll it out across the client base. The freemium model is something we tried way back in the day and that did not work. As soon as we turned pricing off and payments, sorry, charging everyone for the software, we had a whole bunch of emails going, oh, great. Now I'll start using it. So big lesson learned back in, like, 2014 or '15. I was just like
Net Dollar Retention and Business Model
Nathan Latka
12:48Yeah. Well, the reason I asked is you're really well put I mean, some of the highest multiples, revenue multiples I'm seeing right now in terms of fundraisers, especially like a 50,000,000 series B, C, whatever, is net dollar retention being through the roof. And anytime you have a combined business model where it's SaaS plus utility based metric, percent of GMV, usually the NDRs are through the roof. I mean, do you guys have pretty high net dollar retention?
Guy Pearson
13:07>> Do. Yeah. We're sort of yeah. I think payments expands at about 130 year over year. And then software is sort of industry standard. Yep.
Nathan Latka
13:17Yep. So like adding it all together with like like a 140, 150% net dollar retention across the base in both product lines?
Holding Retention at Scale
Guy Pearson
13:23>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
13:23Yeah. That's mean, can you hold that at scale, you think? Can you can you keep keep that up to a $100,000,000 in ARR?
Guy Pearson
13:28>> Well, that's definitely the plan. But, you know, there's challenges along the way. Right? We we just I don't know. We've a very loyal customer base that loves us, which is great. But obviously the challenge is on us to keep building great software and help keep that retention level high and sort of bring more incentive for them to expand and bring the rest of the team into the mix as well. So we sort of make sure that
13:48>> it's sticky product.
Nathan Latka
13:49Yep. I mean, it sounds like you had great growth. Obviously, you did the series A, it was a little dilutive. You probably learned from that. You probably never sold 30% of your business again. You waited for it more. And you're both series B and series C waited for something more competitive. But why raise I mean, million is still dilutive. Right? Why raise it?
Why the Series C Included Secondary
Guy Pearson
14:05>> We had one shareholder that that was wrapping up their fund. So we used to part the process to sort of clear them out.
Nathan Latka
14:12Oh, we want secondary?
Guy Pearson
14:14>> Yeah. We had about 10,000,000 secondary Oh, I see. In in the mix.
Nathan Latka
14:18Only rest the investor or did you give early employees the option?
Guy Pearson
14:22>> No. Yeah, we did. So we made early employees, existing team members who've been with us for a while and had options that were vested. They were allowed to cash out some. Myself and my co founder took a few chips off the table.
Nathan Latka
14:34Wait. Hold on. How do you decide that? Like, if you sell a million bucks of your personal shares, it's like a bad signal. But like, then you wanna take enough where they're where you're like financially safe and not to worry about shit. Right? So like, how do you balance that?
Guy Pearson
14:45>> Oh, I mean, I guess I'm a CPA by background. And so having the conversation with folks is like, look, if I don't have to worry about making a mortgage or payment at home and banks hate entrepreneurs, particularly in this country. And so it's like, well, I can grab the house or buy the apartment finally. And then I don't have to worry about that side, Maybe have a small mortgage and I'm focused on the company, but I
15:04>> don't have that sort of pressures of home like I did in the early days where you've got personal credit card debt because you're paying yourself $20 flying around the world, sleeping on couches, trying to figure out how to make ends meet. So the focus is just sort of laser in and most people actually, Jamie, my folks were great about it. Tiger was great about it. People are really supportive. They're like, you've been on a ten year
15:25>> journey. We don't want you to burn out.
Nathan Latka
15:27I'm hearing great things. So I've talked to maybe seven founders that raised significant rounds from Tiger over the past like ninety days, and everything I'm hearing is Tiger has been extremely supportive about allowing big chunks, even 50% of rounds to be secondary. So it's great to hear that from you as well. And they've been great to work with. Now, in terms of valuation, most folks are, you know, Series C, they're selling maybe 10 ish percent of
15:47the business. Were you sort of standard there? Or were you way lower or way higher for some odd reason?
Guy Pearson
15:52>> We were a little bit higher.
15:54>> Not I'm trying to think not dramatically, I think the dilution was supposed to be 15%.
Nathan Latka
15:5913%?
Guy Pearson
16:00>> Yeah. So like I said, a little little bit higher, not not massively.
Nathan Latka
16:04And I mean, did that mean when you look at your revenue, and then you look at sort of multiple, did that sort of feel fair to you? I guess maybe a better way to ask that, did you did you turn down higher valued term sheets because you like Tiger and the secondary they allowed?
Guy Pearson
16:16>> Well, JMI led this round. We turned down and then we did the Tiger round, we turned down Tiger had the highest. When we did this round, we turned down higher term sheets to work with JMI. They backed Clio, ServiceNow, PointClickCare, so a couple of things.
Nathan Latka
16:32Verticalized Tiger software was your B?
Guy Pearson
16:35>> Yeah. Yeah. JMI let out a c.
Nathan Latka
16:37Oh, the 2019. 10,000,000 of a 20,000,000 was secondary.
Guy Pearson
16:41>> Oh, sorry. I'm I'm back then, it was 2,000,000 of the 15.
Nathan Latka
16:47Oh, So JMI let you take 10 out of the 50, and Tiger let you take two out of the the 16 or 17 USD.
Guy Pearson
16:53>> Yep.
Nathan Latka
16:54Oh, I see. I see.
Secondary Sales and Taking Care of the Team
Guy Pearson
16:56>> So we've done it in both rounds, mostly just easing easing burdens to people, like, you know, buying a house, putting kids through school. We had a whole bunch of angel investors who backed us, like, my best mate, my brother. It's like they're not really in this game. They were there to support me. So letting them sort of de risk a little bit along the way, which is great. Yeah, JMI us JMI let It was about 4,000,000
17:18>> went to the team, 6,000,000 was the buyout Tuesday investor.
Nathan Latka
17:24Any advice you'd give to founders that are going to us right now? Doesn't get talked about a lot, so I appreciate you being transparent. Would you manage the secondary any differently?
Guy Pearson
17:32>> No. I think it's really important. So for us, I think from Australia, having stock options and buying them at more than paper is not really a thing. So I think the biggest education for us, what we were trying to do and wearing my accounting hat was very much let's put a price on these, let's let some of the teams sell some so that they place a value on options. It's sort of been a new journey here
17:52>> in us as to how to think about that as an employee, as a team member. And so we really wanted to make sure that people thought it was valued, but it wasn't just a piece of paper that might be worth something someday. And really, once again, just relinquishing pressure on the home front for the most part. So paying down debts, clearing out formal option holes and then sell altogether if they wanted to, if they weren't at
18:11>> the company anymore and just clearing out bit of the option table. So the advice would be, sure you take care of your people.
Advice on Secondary and the Great Resignation
Guy Pearson
18:19>> I might be a smart individual on certain days, but realistically, I can't run or do the jobs that other 150 people do. So I think particularly with what is it, the great resignation or whatnot coming up, make sure you take care of your folks. They believe in the journey and they think you're looking after and they'll stay and they'll back you up.
Nathan Latka
18:37I can see why you have 150 people following you these days. People obviously love that approach. That's great to hear. Round out the valuation story for me real quick. We've got series A, we've got series C, what did you guys raise the series B at?
Series B Valuation and Raising from Australia
Guy Pearson
18:52>> Raise that 50 just north of US 50.
Nathan Latka
18:56Post money?
Guy Pearson
18:57>> Pre.
Nathan Latka
18:58Pre. Okay, got it. So 50 pre, call like 56 to eight, like 70 post, something like that. Yeah. Okay, very cool. Great story there. Or did you feel like you're at a disadvantage being based in Sydney? Or do you feel like you got a multiple, like same multiple you get if you're based in New York?
Guy Pearson
19:12>> It's a good question. I think most of my American teammates who've been with us for a while think I'm disadvantaged. I didn't go to Stanford, to be frank. But but
19:23>> no, not so much.
19:27>> I'm sure there's definitely people like you being on the continent. So it'd probably be easier to raise certain rounds or have more investors interested if they feel that they can fly and pay us a visit much easier. But I'm quite happy building an Australian company. I mean, I'm not sure if you've got Canva, Campaign Monitor, Atlassian, Xero's from this end of the world. And all this kind of goes on. We're just trying to throw our hat
19:50>> in the ring and create another great company from this end of the world and bring that culture that allows 150 people to stay with us to the world and do it our way. Not super patriotic in terms of like beating my chest, but would really like to sort of help us. Australia has a history of digging things out of the ground, farming things and building things on top of it. We really like us to sell our
20:12>> smarts. That's the reason to stay down here. Also great R and D incentives. So any developers that want a job coming out.
Nathan Latka
20:20Big is the kickback? Shred in Canada is like a 60% kickback. What's your kickback?
Guy Pearson
20:25>> About the same.
Nathan Latka
20:26Wow. So if you pay a developer, I'm making it up $200,000, you're gonna get $120,000 at the end of that year back from the government.
Guy Pearson
20:34>> Yep.
Nathan Latka
20:34Yeah. Wow. But doesn't that's that's a very
Guy Pearson
20:36>> So, like, I think shredding and our program are very much the same in that it's something on things that you build that are at risk. So not for maintenance and not for DevOps, but for, like, new feature development.
Famous Five Rapid Fire
Nathan Latka
20:46Yep. Very cool. On that note, guys, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one favorite book?
Guy Pearson
20:51>> The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz.
Nathan Latka
20:53Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Guy Pearson
20:58>> I'm sorry, he's the CEO. Des Traynor, Intercom.
21:01>> Yep.
Nathan Latka
21:02Number three, favorite online tool?
Guy Pearson
21:06>> Oh, I don't know. That's a hard one. I would just say, geez, so I I can't imagine my life without it.
Nathan Latka
21:11No. That's a good one. Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night except, you know, days when you're doing the 7AM podcast?
Guy Pearson
21:17>> About six to seven. Alright. I'm I get up super early.
Nathan Latka
21:21And what's your situation? Married? Single? Kids?
Guy Pearson
21:23>> Recently married. Two weeks ago.
Nathan Latka
21:25Oh, wow. That's exciting.
Guy Pearson
21:26>> I got married the day after the round closed. So how's that for time?
Nathan Latka
21:29Holy mackerel. So I assume the honeymoon was nice. A little secondary money to play with. You rock and roll. Right?
Guy Pearson
21:35>> No. Honeymoon's coming up. We we had about two days off, we're going to planning session. So end of December. So I'm not sure if you have any Australian mates out there, but we don't really work between December 15 and January 15. It's kind of like July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and August all tied into one. I enjoy that.
Nathan Latka
21:53Just married, about to do a honeymoon, and no kids or have any kids?
Guy Pearson
21:56>> No kids.
Nathan Latka
21:57No kids. And how old are you, guy?
Guy Pearson
21:59>> 37.
22:00>> 37.
Nathan Latka
22:01Last question, something you wish you knew when you were 20.
Guy Pearson
22:04>> More patience.
Nathan Latka
22:07Guys, he says he needs more patience. I think he has incredible patience. Launched in 2013. They've had patience enough for five years to go up to a million bucks in revenue did four different sort of angel and seed rounds, but now they're scaling nicely. They're serving over 5,000. Think about like accounting practices, helping those firms scale with their consulting, they'd have dual business model SaaS, plus percent of GMV, they're processing billions now over a billion per
22:28year doing about $24,000,000 run rate across all their brands last raise just a couple days ago, million Series C at a $330,000,000 valuation sold about 13% with 10,000,000 taking care of his early team members, early employees. Guy, thanks for taking us to the top.
Guy Pearson
22:42>> Alright. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Nathan Latka
22:45One 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 one
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23:54saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. And if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those
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