How Pulseinsights CEO Jeremy Bieger grew Pulseinsights to $2.6M revenue and 10 customers in 2024.

hello everybody my guest today is Jeremy badger he's the CEO he was actually he's a serial entrepreneur with a calling to build enterprise marketing software today he's the co-founder and CEO of pulse insights which uses innovative technology to help enterprises understand customer needs and to efficiently collect user information to deliver richly personalized experiences before this he founded uber tag which was a tag management system and analytics tags on websites he sold that company in 2013 and then stayed on the lead client management and product management teams before that he was managing digital experiences at American Express Jeremy are you ready to take us to the top yeah sure all right man so let's jump in here at pulse insights what's it doing what's your business model how do you make money all right sure so we're subscription software for enterprises we work with large enterprise marketers like Sony Johnson Johnson Visa Comcast Verizon etc got it and go ahead no I was gonna say so B you're talking like enterprise tells me how these guys can you give us kind of an average range contract wise you're talking like a hundred grand a or a million a year ten million a year there abouts Run 100 came here I would say that was a big range so you had to be one of those okay so better yeah about a hundred grand a year and what do you do for them all right so we help them understand what their customers really want and need in a way that is extremely actionable they can get massive amounts of customer feedback on any question on their mind and within a couple of days or weeks to get thousands of responses and so they could test anything from pricing of a new product or getting feedback on a product roadmap or helping this solve user experience issues and and how are you doing that what audience are you putting their thing in front of to get the feedback that's great great question so we use owned channels for the most part like app web site including mobile site and email and what we've built is unique way to ask questions of users without interrupting what they are originally there to do so often our technology allows you to us to insert one or two questions inside of another experience and word it in such a way that users feel like they're giving feedback that will be used because it will so give me an example I'm in my inbox right now American Express wants to ask me a question their use you what will I see in my inbox so you might see if you just cancel the product sometime in the last year you might see a question that says hey we we noticed you canceled so-and-so product in the last year could you tell us why and there might be three or four options and with one click as a secondary message Amex we get thousands of responses knowing why people have canceled certain product and this is an email though that American Express is sending yeah it could be an email as a secondary message or it could be when somebody logs into their site or it could be and when somebody uses the app okay Jeremy everyone listen where I was thinking I never actually do those things right so do you just send out so much volume that you send out ten million of course a thousand are gonna do it no so that's so this is this is the key difference I'm skeptical by the way convinced me here yeah okay so um approximately about half a percent is the industry average of those type of survey responses minuscule sometimes even lower than that some people will fudge the denominator because it's even worse than that we will often see results that are ten percent plus or higher why and the reason why it's the intersection of three things one is the way that we ask by the way we put one question in the experience that where you don't have to go somewhere else you don't have to answer it later you don't have to be worried that you'll be taking a long survey it's just one or two questions right in the you know in the experience the second thing is about targeting we we have really advanced targeting so that we're only asking the right people on the right pages in the right moment and the third thing is asking in a way that people want to answer people that people our belief is that people want to share but it's just that been so onerous in the past to actually collect that data and it's not asked in a way that people actually want to answer or believe there's a payoff if they do answer and when all those three things allowed do you incentivize them no so will it be hey off the payoff is that the company will use that that information to create better decisions for people like the person that answered but what's the payoff for the person that answered though they already cancelled you're saying they're gonna give them like some discounted deal to reactivate or something well in that example maybe there would be a coupon or something that later the company uses but it there's never a direct incentive that is just tell us what's on your mind so that we can be a better company for you okay all right interesting I kind of believe you so we'll keep moving forward when did you guys when did you launch the company all right so we built the product in 2013 and we've been launching it as a with been in market since 2014 okay and have you bootstrap this thing erased 100% bootstraps I love things we're very proud of I love that when did you start where is the team based and how big is it okay so we are all over the world we have our development team in Tokyo the three co-founders the pulses sites are in New York Boston and Salt Lake City we have clients successful in Canada UK and Greece so we're really we've been a remote team we get together at least once a year as a group but we promote team since day one how many people we're about 12 people 12 people okay so let me ask you I love this so when you when you spend company money to do that one team or treat each here I mean that's got to be a pretty big bill right I mean it's pushing like 10 20 30 grand yeah yeah but it's worth I mean it's worth it right yeah so yeah I mean the cofounders get together at least every six weeks and then the whole whole team you know once a year and yes absolutely worth it yeah there's a little turd there's nothing I mean it we work as well as one could work you know uh remotely and we really do make it work but there's when you're together there's nothing like that no listen I'm a huge fan of this mod honestly I'm trying to figure out myself with these companies that I'm buying because I just hate the idea of checking into an office every morning I mean you can't see this right now but I'm not wearing any pants right I don't want me joking and so okay good so what have you grown customers to how many customers do you work with huh so you know we don't disclose the number of cluster customers okay but I mean are we talking like like hundreds or tens or thousands okay tents so yeah so if you if you do the math on the twelve people and you do math on 100k a year you can sort of get yeah keep mixing educated guesses but why are you guys and your bootstrapped right so so obviously you have to operate cash flow positive unless you're sinking money in yourself so that's the I mean one of my favorite reasons to bootstrap is that you offer your business like a business from day one yeah I'm having been in situations where you wean yourself off the capital so that's a painful process and the truth that matter is that I mean we work in a very happy being a software business and typically billing upfront allows us to get the cash flow and use that cash flow for growth upfront so in that sense we're in a pretty favorable position but we obviously you know growing out of cash flow means you we manage cash very carefully yeah no I mean it makes a lot of sense and look you said you're in the tens I mean you can take a minimum of just say ten right multiply times I guess you said a hundred grand a year that's what is that monthly eighty three hundred bucks so you guys actually you're probably flirting with or you already passed that million dollar AR marks that's a great target to be by yeah tell me more about other economics related to a customer so you have to be really careful about managing your payback period on CAC because you can't have a big gap there otherwise you lose obviously lose money what do you like to keep your payback period out so uh we don't measure we don't have any outbound marketing and so and we have sales that which I didn't mention that we also have a sales signal salesperson in Connecticut and two of the founders do heavy sales and so because we're the founders are effectively fixed costs we don't really look you know evaluate customer acquisition cost because marketing cost is effectively zero and two-thirds of the sales cost is fixed so how do you measure how do you measure things then like what you're willing to spend on acquisition like do you hire by the way I'm talking fully weighted cat so typically you would take all your marketing and sales salaries included in that right but you're saying it's fixed I get it they're co-founders but how do you make a decision when you when you go hire a new customer I mean a new sales rep yeah so we we are we are taken from the days of running divisions in large companies we have taken some of the things that work and some of the things really do work for large companies many things do not but many things do and two of the things that we are religious about is managing our cash flow on a bi-weekly basis and managing to a quarterly in an annual plan and if something is off plan we adjust the plan you know but so that that is basically what tells us what cash we have to invest and when we invest we typically think in terms of product you know the underlying thing that's differentiated that delivers value to clients and then go to market which is things like sales and marketing that help bring that you know sort of deliver it to new clients have you lost any customers that started paying yeah so this is something we're super proud of we have exactly all right so if you're gonna push me there's one client that we've lost come on Jan you know me I'm of course I'm gonna push you but it's almost zero because in this case they spun down the whole marketing okay and they and they hope to spin it back up again at some point so if that actually happens in 2018 we'll be at zero loss customers at this very moment we're at one okay uh you know we'll call less than one percent or less than ten percent logo churn annually and then what about that's ever okay got it so less than five percent then annually right you've been around for two three years four years revenue expansion do you like what are the what are the different pricing kind of axes you use to drive someone to go from $100 or $100,000 contract value near one to you know 150 in your - yeah okay so um we have not been very aggressive at trying to rate to raise prices on existing clients and we don't have very much variability in or in there in our contracts we and we do that because when we selling the other side of the table at large companies it's really hard to budget you have a lot of variability like imagine your site gets a lot of visits one month and all sudden your bill is higher than you did it for that's really tough to budget for and so we've maybe gone to the other extreme where we're basically look this is a fixed cost and we're not gonna talk about pricing until the next contract is up yeah that's pretty smart but you're mostly on annual contracts so you have an opportunity once every 12 months yeah we have yeah once you're a 12 months we can reevaluate I think we haven't we haven't been super aggressive about that because you know in the early days where we're okay leaving some value on the table and just creating value because that value is part of how we grow as well when people start recommending the amazing value they're getting from us and so like is it super important to capture every dollar of revenue or maybe have this perception and halo of being like one of the best investments that companies do I mean what is the growth rate look like right now year over year whereas actually just looking at it because our you know four in December are sort out basically know where we are and we are above a three hundred and thirty percent caker okay and break that down for the AH for folks in the audience that might not understand that it's so basically if you look at multiple years over if you're looking at growth rates over multiple years and taking into account compounding it's over three hundred percent a year and then give give it to us just over the last twelve months in terms of top-line revenue we've doubled in the last twelve months so that's great that's great I mean that's really that's really effective so yes you call it somewhere between kind of forty and sixty ish twelve months ago now somewhere between you know double those numbers so 8120 that's good great growth for bootstrap company good stuff and it yeah basically let me we don't have external capital we obviously can grow faster than that if we did but the trade off just isn't worth it and that's right that makes a lot of sense okay let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book Jeremy I don't read business books I think that I think that uh business is pretty straightforward it's basically delivering value creating a differentiated product that's from a differentiated product you know world view and then executing well listening to customers executing well and not to say that business books would wouldn't expand my perspective but I'm just focused on that number two is their CEO you're following or studying right now I don't study CEOs either I do respect the Elan musk quite a bit I liked the way he he makes a lot of incremental improvements like we do by looking at things creatively and when you do that in aggregate you've got a very different company and so uh despite the fact we're not thinking anywhere nearly as large as him the approach is very similar number three with your favorite online tool there has been no tool that's changed our business more than Google Docs Google sheets and Docs no go ahead no how do you how do you do things like payroll management all that with a remote team oh yeah we have we use many web apps in that case we use QuickBooks okay got it and try and try net but there's in terms of like transforming a business like it's a far worse product if the collaboration wins its makes it such that you're willingly work with a far worse product just because the collaboration number four how many hours of sleep to get every night I strive or aspire for eight but it doesn't usually happen okay you know after you know handful of days of five or six then I'll crash and get get the full amount and I went through situation married single you have kids two kids married exactly and how how are you I'm 42 42 42 in re months good good stuff last question take us back 22 years what he was your 20 year old self new okay so I have the important thing is being really good at what you do and to be really good at what you do you got to like it and so the earlier people find out what really gets them out of bed their own then they could start looking for the intersection of how to actually turn that into a career and I a lot of people that I mentor are really focused on things outside of the thing that gets them out of bed and well in everly ones up happening is they struggle and so it's tough because it's not always in their section of they were an easy intersection but funding what you love and the getting paid well for it but the earlier you focus on that the better there you guys have from Jeremy the earlier you find what you love the more success you'll have he launches come any pulse insights back in 2013 after a lot of experience in corporate it's bootstrapped which I love there are a remote team of twelve people again focused on pulse insights cloud software for really innovative enterprise customers they're working with over ten currently they've grown from around 40 ish grand a month and em are just 12 months ago in December 2016 to double that here in 2017 super healthy economics because they have to manage cash they have no you know they have no ten million dollars sitting around so hyper effective business Jeremy thank you for taking us to the top thank you