How QCC (Quickly Check Companies) CEO Zong Peng grew to $62.4M revenue and 1M customers in 2024.

qcc.com think of it like the Zoom info of China launched in 2014 Zhong was part of the four-person founding team he joined in 2016 when the company is doing three million bucks a year in Revenue the company at 60 million in 2020 80 million 2021 100 million in 2022 Zhong said I want to grow this thing fast the other Founder's like man we really like our 20 million dollars of profits last year there's a bit of a difference he left he's now deciding when his next move is going to be we will see what he does hey folks my guest today is zong Pang after 14 years in the U.S he moved to China in 2017. he's early he's an early investor and former CEO of qcc.com the leading director user B2B data intelligence tool in China with 100 million plus registered users and 80 million AR in 2021 he loves SAS artificial intelligence machine learning and data-driven businesses he's not he's also solo motorbiked across Vietnam in 28 days in a Columbia alums Andre he takes to the top thank you very much for the introduction let's begin you bet so just to be clear were you also are you the founder of qcc I know you it sounds like you left last year but were you the founder um well I joined the pre-a yeah and I was an early investor I know the founder very well and um strictly not a Founder but very very early stage so what year did you join the company and what year was the company launched uh complementary was in 2014 and I joined in 2016. okay 2014 got it and and walk me through that relationship so you were an angel investor in 2014 or 2015 and then the founder brought you in as CEO well I was in the US back then and then uh we found this company and um [Music] what could happen and early investor but we got in the on the pre-a-ron okay got it so you you came in before the series a round as an investor yes so I what what was the round size in 2014 or 2015 that the founder raised uh uh five million dollars and you are part of the five million yes okay so how does somebody go from part of a pre-series a series a round of five million you know an investor to becoming the CEO what happened there I I was uh when I was uh at SMP Capital IQ and uh I had always been a very few student of the market of um the data company right and I had a lot of friends in the in in China that um back when I was in Colombia and the story when some days a person called me hey would you like would you like to be the CEO of this company would like to look at this company and and qcc was one it was a company that that came onto our screen and um I look at it it's and the business model is very much similar like cap IQ or Zoom info or so where you at where are you at cap IQ oh is that a comeback kid uh were you a founder or leadership team or what was your role there no I was not a founder of leadership team I enjoyed very much very much later yep yep okay so you're on the leadership team at cap IQ you were also an early investor at qcc you joined qcc full time in 2016. now how much revenue was the company doing when you joined do you remember three million dollars it was a baby it was very or very much of a baby okay so three million in 2016 and just we skipped over sort of the product you've mentioned zoom in vocab by Cuba tell us real quick what are customers paying you for today is it still sort of data intelligence very much data intelligence okay so we can think of it like the Zoom info of Asia is that fair it is fair but zooming for you know it they they do Enterprise sales they have have a lot of a lot of Enterprise sales teams that push the product but our product is pushed to customers directly via app stores and um be a lot direct channels okay so your Bottoms Up you're saying your Bottoms Up individual employees are paying for you versus top down you're not selling to the cro hn we're an iPhone to see our own well we we at the beginning we were selling to the cro and the cios um but that was not sustainable because in China um if you do a top-down approach the sell cycle is very very long yeah it takes months and luckily in in the U.S it takes a lot it takes months or half a year to get the sale done yep our plan I was pushed to through the app stores fof Store Android App Store directly to the consumers they all they have to pay is 260 RMB not dollars you could divide that that's very very cheap um what is that I need to do the conversion real quick hold on 52. 52 a year 52 yeah oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for evaluation this 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platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview and so if if you're a consumer in China and you open up the Apple App Store or the Android App Store and you find qcc what's the headline right what does it say what's going to make me want to download it uh checkup companies look up you know your bosses or I see check out your employers um that's the the cash yep so if you if you haven't got hired you want to go look for a self-lead you're good you want um that's the kind of catch yeah so how many downloads do all the apps have today combined across Apple Android and other app stores um the last time I checked is three billion three billion with a B yes billion or million you have three billion app downloads across all the app stores uh well there's duplicated right but overall there's millions of there's a lot of repetitive downloads but overall there's more than 300 million people who have downloaded the app Not Duplicate 300 million unique downloads of the application and then how do you measure how many of those 300 million are active in the last 30 days well um we mattered the UN Mau right yep uh anybody who has opened up the app in the past week or the past months that's Mau but data user that's very standard metrics yep so what is your what is your Mau past 30 days affected me six zero million 50 million oh five zero five zero five zero million okay that's I mean what is that that's uh that's almost 20 it's almost 20 right 20 20 of your total download they're active every month that's pretty good how do you drive that kind of activation rate oh they actually rate the vision right it's uh that has to go back to the history if you know if you know zoom zoom in for Capital IQ or other B2B companies like the one that you founded right it's very much B2B you had to drive um through sales channels to um basically sell people but with China is very different because on back in 2016 um when our accounting was founded um Apple was the only Channel where you could Market it but in 26 17 and 2018 [Music] um Android uh fluctuated because a lot of mobile phone makers start using using Android systems that's when they established the Android app stores that's when we we had the opportunity originally it was just at the the Apple App Store but after that Android fluctuated that's when we actually really drove adoption read through through different channels that makes a lot of sense okay now you told me in the bio uh Revenue but I don't want to bury a leader I'll let you share with the audience so what did you guys finish with in 2022 in terms of ARR Ive 100 minutes okay okay and in the bio you said 80 million so did it increase that was 2021 oh okay got it so you added 20 million of new AR over the past 12 months that's right what drove most of that growth organic channels paid where'd you get it organic wow okay and then take us back one more year what was AR in 2020 . 6-0 and a six zero no six zero 60 million okay and then I guess this begs the question you said in your bio that you left it sounds like this thing is a rocket ship why'd you leave that's a long story probably didn't we couldn't talk finishing 15 minutes okay were you did you bootstrap the company or did you guys raise a bunch of capital uh we didn't read the bunker Capital we only raised uh probably a couple million dollars and we'll strapped it for a very very long time and then what um well then they just uh skyrocketed well my audience gonna be going okay but then why did he leave so did other investors come in did a private Equity Firm take it over what would happen oh that's another conversation um well with with China you have to understand this is uh well should I begin uh the U.S I I think a lot of Founders who would um you know and uh tree Capital very kindly or want to bring it to the IPO Market but in China you have to understand if you understand the the regime that card is going off I'm saying something that's probably going to get censored which is okay that's okay everyone in the US will hear it so go ahead that's okay um a lot of Founders in China grew up being under uh the very different regime um their mentality is that let me grow it and let me take control of it the investors are just foreign money their their debt they're not equity so um it's it it's fine to hit that it's fine to take from control over the company so the government effectively took over control of the company it's not that the government but if you are founder if you have a very profitable company what would you do uh keep all the money but you can't keep the money if you leave the company but and you left the company well it's just a lot philosophical challenge did you give up all your did someone force you to give up all your equity no so you still own who's running the company today uh a lot of founders okay how many Founders were there oh three there's three okay we're four funding team and and I was one of them and an early investor and just because of disagreement with uh how we would run the company and and that that's why I left what you wanted to pull profits out and they wanted to keep profits in uh that's not exactly right I I would like to see the com because we have a lot of competition [Music] um when Zoom info was founded it's probably back in 20s 2007 right uh you you know the founder well I don't know the zoom info founder I know Henry shuck who is the founder of discoverorg which acquired some info that's right that's right that's right um we had a lot of competition and that's a question you ask the founder when you are faced with very intense competition do you raise money and compete or you know that you're very profitable and do you keep the money that's a very very realistic question oh I see so do you believe qcc is about to announce a major fundraise because they're going to want to go spend money and compete versus you want to just sort of stay under the radar and be profitable and never you didn't that's not accurate you didn't want that well I want uh I wanted the company at least to raise another round of money to compete effectively and it was profitable and I made the um we launched a very very profitable advertising campaign uh across social media and um other media channels that that actually brought a lot of money in and but who are our Founders didn't want to didn't want to do any of these oh so you wanted to be aggressive and grow faster and the other Founders were like don't spend so much money we like our profits I see now it all makes sense okay how much how much revenue how much profits did the company have last year on 100 million of Revenue uh 20 20 that margin I mean that's pretty darn good yeah that's pretty good okay and and how many paying customers is the company have today more than a million more than a million okay so of the 50 million Maus um only to about two percent of them actually pay is that right it's very much like gaming companies now if you play any games that's the the subscriber ratio that that you get yeah I mean I mean look when you look at other B2B SAS company I mean you aren't B2B though you're sort of like B to C but you're going Bottoms Up um you know I mean do you see a path to be up to a five percent conversion rate from free to pay that would be sort of world class for this sort of you know comparable business model very much so if you do a lot of uh uh Improvement on your product uh getting into a fiber five percent conversion rate is fair or suitable it's got it in fact when you have so many users right yep yep yeah you've got so you've got you've got a million customers paying about 10 bucks a year which is 100 million dollars a year in Revenue right that's different than the 52 a year you told me earlier well our subscription rate is 600 and uh 360 RMB if you divide it by that by seven that's fifty dollars a year correct yeah fifty dollars per year but you just said you had a million paying customers right yes got it so so there's 50 you multiply that by six or seven that's 100 million they are right yeah I see I see what you're saying but what I'm saying is do you do you have do you have a million customers paying 50 bucks a year or you could have two million customers paying 50 bucks a year that's what will get you to 100 million dollar run right do you have only one price point which is 50 per year or do you have other more expensive price points uh there are other tier pricing it's very much a a um freemium model right I see the reason why we have two percent conversion rate is mostly the the app is free uh we do have one year subscription two-year subscription and three year subscription and all that it's it's just tier pricing yeah yeah understand 360 RMB per year and two-year subscribe uh two years subscriber rate it hasn't been stopped yeah yeah very interesting did Henry shuck ever try and buy the company I never got a call from him all right attack I did talk to to to well never intended to sell because it's a very unique company yeah no I agree it sounds like it's on a very unique what do you guys think you'll finish with I know you're not involved anymore but what do you think 2023 what do you finish with in terms of ARR well that depends on whether the economy opens up or not yeah yeah that's fair what are you gonna do next well um that's a very interesting question um keep on doing um things in Ai and machine learning and data company space and and keep on looking at other interesting uh SAS and data companies you know the companies we've been looking at were including snowflake Zoom info um cross strike a lot of very interesting SAS companies that in in the US I I found it just that very different from the from China yeah no I agree and how many before before we wrap up here Zhong how many folks are full time at qcc today 200 people 200. wow that's that's really good Revenue per employee as well very much so yeah wow okay let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite book favorite book [Music] or the last one you read well I had to I have to say three body problems three body problem you probably have read it by yourself it's a side habit I'll read it though that's great number two is there a CEO you're following or studying recently Elon Musk I know it's a cliche number three what's your favorite online tool your business online tool business online too what do you mean uh like like slack Trello figma well the reason we I the the one that I used the most is uh wind how do you spell it w-i-n-d when it's Bloomberg of China ah very cool okay number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night six hours and what's your situations on married single kids single okay not married no kids and how old are you below 40. below four below that's interesting most people say uh older than x you say below 40. all right last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. not be so kind um don't be so kind that's another different uh the conversation I love that guys qcc.com think of it like the Zoom info of China launched in 2014 zong was part of the four-person founding team he joined in 2016 when the company is doing three million bucks a year in Revenue the company hits 60 million in 2020 80 million 2021 100 million 2022 zong said I want to grow this thing fast the other Founder's like man we really like our 20 million dollars of profits last year there's a bit of a difference he left he's now deciding what his next move is going to be we will see what he does zong thank you for taking us to the top thank you bye-bye one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm 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 our poo CAC LTV you name it they share it and the buyers try and 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