How Qobra Reached €7-8M ARR and 250+ Customers (Interview with CEO Antoine Fort)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

0:00Hey folks, my guest today is Antoine Fort. He's the co-founder and CEO of Qobra, an AI first sales compensation platform. He graduated from college and then co-founded the business in 2020 with his CTO and CPO. That's Axel and Tongue. Did I get that right?

Antoine Fort

0:14Yes.

Nathan Latka

0:16All right. To fix one of B2B SaaS' most broken workflows commissions. All right, Antoine, are you ready to take us to the top?

Antoine Fort

0:22Yes, I am. Thanks very much, Nathan, for hosting me on this episode.

Antoine's Background and Why He Founded Qobra

Nathan Latka

0:27I appreciate you joining. Do you have a horror story? Were you a former account executive that you know, wasn't paid your quota on time or something?

Antoine Fort

0:35Actually not. Actually I didn't really have a proper job before launching Qobra. So I started a company almost right after school. I'm lucky enough to meet amazing people during my scholarship, including VP of Sales from Business Objects, later acquired by SAP, who I spent lots of time with and who helped me to understand what's going on in sales organization. I did not live the horror of commissions myself, but I could see it very clearly, so that's why I wanted to solve this.

Nathan Latka

1:05So here you go, these are the products you're selling today. Which of these products did you launch with and what year did you launch?

Antoine Fort

1:09So these are all like the same referring to the same product. It's more like different value proposition inside of it. Kind of a breakdown of what we do. So we launched as a sales compensation software, so automating end-to-end commissions from integrations to generating statements. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

1:30and what year did you launch the business?

Antoine Fort

1:31Why

Nathan Latka

1:33What year?

Antoine Fort

1:35yeah, twenty-twenty.

Nathan Latka

1:362020. Okay, so you launched the business in 2020 and walk us through your first paying customer. How did you get those first couple customers?

First Customers and the Pre-Seed Round

Antoine Fort

1:44So actually, there's like two first ⁓ customers. One of them, ⁓ so I was just with the idea of launching Qobra, but Qobra was not live. We didn't have the name yet. It was called Sales Crew. And actually the legal name of the company is still Sales Crew. And I saw like the co-founder and CEO of Partu, French company, who wrote an article on sales compensation. So I reached out to him on LinkedIn. And actually what happened, it was a Friday and what happened is like during the full weekend, so it was the lockdown ⁓ with the COVID and during the full weekend, he and his CFO worked on building kind of a sales compensation app, wire framing. And so on Monday, he sent me an email saying, we need to talk. So we have this meeting on Monday and he's saying, okay, I like the idea. So you can see what we did. So if you want, we could be your first investors and your first customers. So I said, yeah, let's go. And we raised a very tiny pre-seed round at that time and Part 2 became our first customer. And then the other one, ⁓ it was almost at the same time, we just launched publicly on LinkedIn. And someone reached out to me saying, hey, it's interesting what you do. ⁓ Can I get a demo? So there was almost nothing to demo at that time, just a promise. But in the end, we landed this customer very quickly.

Nathan Latka

3:15couple of questions there, the pre seed round that you did with part of B, I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. How big was that round or how small was that round?

Antoine Fort

3:22It was 100k, very small round with 7 business angels. That really helped a lot then.

Nathan Latka

3:29Interesting. Okay. And then the second, the first real customer, was LinkedIn part of your strategy to get your first hundred customers. That was a big influence.

Cold Outbound as the First Growth Channel

Antoine Fort

3:38was mostly doing outbound calls. So it was just me on my phone and then a little bit of network as well.

Nathan Latka

3:46How did you find the right phone numbers to call?

Antoine Fort

3:47At that time I was using a company that shut down since then. It was called Cold CRM. And actually it got shut down because it was not respecting GDPR. ⁓ But they were good, like they had crazy amount of numbers.

Nathan Latka

4:03and it worked for you. You got your first, what, 10, 20 customers from cold outbound calls.

Antoine Fort

4:08Yeah, it was a mix of, you know, cold outbound and referrals.

Nathan Latka

4:12And what was the price point back then? How much were you charging?

Early Pricing Strategy and Per-Seat Model

Antoine Fort

4:14So at that time, you know, our customers, like I think our first 10 customers, they probably like have a like 50 % discount to compare to what we reprice now. So we just looked at what was the price on the market for similar solutions, especially US ones. And we said, okay, for our first 10 customers, let's just split that in two. Let's do half the price so that we can lend these first 10 customers quickly and then we can go up. So that's how we did it.

Nathan Latka

4:44What was that price point? 10,000 a year, 1,000 a year.

Antoine Fort

4:47Yeah, was yeah, 10,000 a year.

Nathan Latka

4:49Okay, so your first price point was about $10,000 per year on average. Okay, and what were you packaging for that? Were you pricing per seat, per feature upgrades, a usage metric?

Antoine Fort

4:58Per seat.

Nathan Latka

5:00Interesting. Okay. And why was that the right metric? Why not number of reps managed commission, you know, reps managed on your platform or some other usage metric.

Antoine Fort

5:09Oh yeah, so actually that's exactly what we do. said person because it's, you know, for a number of sales rep seats, you know, admin licenses are free. So if you have 100 reps for which you're paying commissions, that's going to be 100 licenses, no matter how much, you know, finance and revouse people you have on top of it.

Nathan Latka

5:29I see. I see. Okay. And then you mentioned that those early customers paying 10,000 per year on average were 50 % of your pricing today. So is it fair to say customers today are, you know, averaging more like 20 grand per year?

Current ACV and Pricing Evolution

Antoine Fort

5:40actually it's now again like 30 30 grand per year 30 yeah

Nathan Latka

5:43It's what? 30, okay. Interesting. And how are you, so let's just take a step back now that we understand sort of the pricing and how you got your first customers. I'm on your LinkedIn and I see it looks like you guys are spending a lot ⁓ of investment on sort of in-person events. Is this accurate?

Live Events and Trade Show Strategy

Antoine Fort

6:00Yeah, actually this year we decided to put some gas ⁓ on this type of events. So we did not do as much last year, but yeah, we're more and more, you know, doing face-to-face meetings, dinners, trade shows. I think that helps creating meaningful connections.

Nathan Latka

6:15Well, it's 10. So you guys are telling me about this. What are we looking at here? Walk me through this strategy here. Like what, what did it cost you all in? Did you see a good ROI? Should other people be thinking about events, booth sponsorships?

Antoine Fort

6:27Yes, so we took this booth at SaaStr. It was like the silver package. So it was the lowest one actually. I think I'm not allowed to say the price though, but it's, you know, I think people can...

Nathan Latka

6:42I think he publishes most of it. like 10 or 20 grand or something, right?

Antoine Fort

6:46It's more than this. ⁓ then the plan here is just to get as much people as possible who are walking past our booth talk to us. So you see two things here. The first one is a toilet paper. So it's a toilet paper with the Microsoft Excel logo on it. it says ⁓ Excel is for wiping your butt. ⁓ Qobra is...

Nathan Latka

6:48Okay.

Antoine Fort

7:14to handle sales commissions. Why? Because we replace Excel most of the time. So people stopped by and took lots of pictures and it's very easy ice-breaker, so you can speak to people. And what you see at the back on the TV is we did ⁓ multiple advertising. We like to do type of B2C marketing, but applied to B2B. So it's ⁓ one minute videos of myself or other people from the company, but in... crazy universe. So there's a medieval, there's Stone Age, lots of it. And we advertise that then on LinkedIn ads, YouTube ads, and so on. But we also thought that for the trade show, was good to just have it displayed on the screen so people, again, they're intrigued and they just come and talk.

Nathan Latka

8:03What let's okay, so that's trade show stuff. You mentioned paid ads as well Are you comfortable sharing how much all in you're paying per month on just direct paid advertising?

Antoine Fort

8:10So per year it's between 200 and 300k.

Nathan Latka

8:14And how do you know if it's working or not? Maybe talk about the LinkedIn ads.

Paid Advertising Spend and Retargeting

Antoine Fort

8:18So basically you can then track ⁓ traffic on your website coming from different sources, including LinkedIn. You can also see with LinkedIn the engagement with the posts. ⁓ all this, it's very hard indeed to link revenue to a marketing source, especially LinkedIn since it's top of funnel. So people might just come back on the website afterwards. But you can have very high level ⁓ signals. where you can say, okay, I drove more traffic to the website because of these ads. So we do it. Plus it also generate intents, you people that interact with our ads, they get specifically targeted by, you know, retargeted by some content or directly by sales rep when we believe that the lead is, you know, very worth the call.

Nathan Latka

9:10Okay, so you're spending $10,000 to $20,000 per month on ads across LinkedIn and YouTube mainly.

Antoine Fort

9:17and Google.

Nathan Latka

9:19And Google. Okay. Tell us about the ad strategy. you managing all these creatives here on LinkedIn one by one or using a platform to generate these like your buddy Romain at Arc? I'm sure you know, Romain at Arc ads, right? But how are you generating these?

Antoine Fort

9:31We've got an amazing person in the company, Dylan, who's handling all of this directly. We also have, I must admit, an agency, someone in freelance working, I can't remember how many days per month it is, but it's just a few days. And lately we closed, not with the SpongeBob meme, but with another meme, we just closed the deal. It clicked, it took a demo, then there was the opportunity, we closed it. 80k per year, crazy.

Nathan Latka

10:04your SpongeBob ad.

Antoine Fort

10:05It was not the SpongeBob app, it was like one with the red areas on the head where the problem goes from smallest to biggest and the biggest was sales commission.

Customer Count and ARR Today

Nathan Latka

10:07Ha ha ha! It's what? Okay, with all these growth strategies, how many customers are you now serving today?

Antoine Fort

10:20We serve more than 250 customers now.

Nathan Latka

10:24Wow. Okay. And can I take Antoine, can I take 250 customers times that 30,000 ACV to sort of back into your ARR that puts you at like 7 million of ARR.

Antoine Fort

10:32Yes, let's give both that.

Nathan Latka

10:33Congrats, man. That's exciting.

Antoine Fort

10:35Yeah, it's cool. You know, as a founder, you always want more. reaching 7, 8 is really cool.

Nathan Latka

10:40Yeah What's your goal for the end of 2026? Can you break 10 million of AR this year?

Antoine Fort

10:49Yeah, yeah. That's plan.

Nathan Latka

10:52Come on, you gotta be more American. Like hell yeah, we're gonna crush 10 million of ARR. I love that. Maybe it's 20, there you go. Okay, and walk me through how you funded this. I know you have raised some capital. Obviously every founder wants to manage growth with also dilution. So you told us about your 100K angel round. What happened in between there? Anything else raised?

Antoine Fort

10:54That's the plan! We're gonna cross them in a bit. Maybe 20. So yes, after that we raised a seed round and a series A round. So the seed round was 5 million, it was January 2022, and then we raised our series A 10 million like two years later.

Funding History: Seed, Series A, and Venture Debt

Nathan Latka

11:29Okay, so series A in 2024.

Antoine Fort

11:31Yeah, end of 2020, actually end of 2023.

Nathan Latka

11:35Okay, what was I mean the valuations were so funky back then I mean people were getting crazy 40 50 X multiples on their ARR Did you sort of play that valuation game back then or no?

Antoine Fort

11:47No, we didn't want to play that valuation game because it was quite obvious that this could turn into a trap a few years down the road. we decided not to raise it to high valuation. And I think that the markets collapsed not too long after. So I think it was a good decision.

Nathan Latka

12:13And in terms of, yeah, and it's always good. It keeps all of your employees options above water, right? They can see an exciting path in the future. This is a good thing. If we go back though and go past your first 10 customers, you cold calling and doing outbound, do remember the year you broke your first million of revenue?

Crossing the First Million ARR in 2022

Antoine Fort

12:29⁓ So that was 2022.

Nathan Latka

12:35Okay, how did that feel?

Antoine Fort

12:36That was awesome. We had an amazing party. And I remember because there was like two big deals closing the day. It was a crazy week because we closed one customer every day of that week, which at that time, you know, did not happen. I mean, ever before that. So it was a crazy week. And on Thursday nights, we have the CFO of this company, Akinio. ⁓ signing a contract that gets us above one million so we took all the champagne from the bar that we were in and you know just had a good night

Nathan Latka

13:14I love that. That's so cool. Okay, so you passed a million in 2022. And do remember like what's growth rate today? You're at around 8 million today. Where were you exactly one year ago?

Antoine Fort

13:23you know between four and five.

Nathan Latka

13:28Okay, so are you happy or not happy with that? How does that growth rate feel in today's market?

Antoine Fort

13:2812 months ago. Yeah, honestly, it's really cool. I'm happy with that. We're working hard to increase that growth rate because there's lots of things that we do well, but there's so many that we can do even better. So this growth rate is exciting. It means that we're doing lots of things right. ⁓ It also leaves room for improvement, you know?

Nathan Latka

14:01Yeah, yeah, of course. No, that makes a ton of sense. Are you getting I mean, my notes say that you raised from singular, the revenue syndicate and Breega. I mean, are they feeling are they putting pressure on you? Hey, get to 200 % year over year get to 300 % year over growth. What are they like as investors?

Antoine Fort

14:17They're really healthy investors. So on the board, we've got Singular and Breega. That's correct. And they are perfectly aware that pushing a company to just burn ⁓ stupidly ⁓ can do more harm than good. So of course, they're putting pressure. They want us to grow faster, even faster. We got a plan that is completely, you validated and that they fully agree on. yeah, that, you know, there are investors that understand what it is to be in the shoes of the founder. They don't only look at the numbers and I'm glad that we have them on board.

Nathan Latka

15:09That makes a lot of sense. then my notes say that you also raised $2 million in debt. Is that accurate? And if so, should other founders be thinking about using debt to avoid dilution?

Antoine Fort

15:18Yes, I think it's really something useful to do, especially on top of fundraising. It's good moments to go and talk to bankers. So let's do it. You just need to be aware that this money needs to be paid back. So a few years later, when you look at what you're paying, make sure to, you know, don't take this money as if it was invested money because it isn't.

Nathan Latka

15:44You did that two million on the back of your series A 10 million round.

Antoine Fort

15:47Yes, correct.

Nathan Latka

15:49I see. Did you do end up working with like SVB or HSBC or who'd you end up? Are you comfortable sharing who you worked with there? Were they a good partner?

Antoine Fort

15:55⁓ As bankers, we've got HSBC on board and two other banks.

Nathan Latka

15:57Yeah. That's great. Okay, let's position, let's go away from the economics. I'm a numbers guy, so I love that. But I wanna talk more about sort of what you do. I just saw this on your LinkedIn. Top sales rep earned 1.5 million in commissions in 2025. Tell me more about this data you're tracking and what on earth was that sales rep selling to make that kind of commission?

Antoine Fort

16:17So I'm not allowed to say what that person was selling because it's data of our customers. But what I can say is it's real data. So the person that earned the most money just in variable compensation across really thousands, it's not thousands, like 10,000s of sales reps earned $1.5 million. And he's very ahead of the second one.

Nathan Latka

16:44Wow, and those.

Antoine Fort

16:46And you know, as you can see, he's earning like 75x what people earn on average in variable compensation.

Nathan Latka

16:56So let me ask you, there's a massive battle going on right now to basically replace the sales rep, right? Replace the commission structured sales rep. People are saying like AI can do it. I had Amanda on from one mind. She's basically convinced firms like HubSpot. confirmed this with me live to pay a hundred to $400,000 per head, per fake AI agent head to put on the website to actually take the zoom call, close meetings. And her argument is, look, this is much cheaper than paying a quota carrying sales rep 300 K. If they hit the 1 million quota target. How would you sort of react to that?

Antoine Fort

17:28So what product was this Mindy selling?

Nathan Latka

17:33this is one it's called one mind.com. The founder is her name is Amanda. The point being though is like, do you believe that AI agents can replace the, replace the quota carrying account executive in 2027?

Antoine Fort

17:44think for very, not simple products, products that have very fast sales cycles, where just one call close, AI will replace sales reps. But as long as there's more complexity, ⁓ I think it's still very far from being capable of doing so.

AI Agents: Analyst, Architect, and Coach

Nathan Latka

18:06Interesting. Very cool. Okay. Anything that you are building in the AI space that we should talk about in terms of product.

Antoine Fort

18:13Yes. we really believe that, I mean, what we're doing with our product is we're turning a SaaS product, which is basically a product that helps people do their job to an AI product that does the job. And we are building three agents that we're going to be releasing this quarter in June that are called, yeah, that are called ⁓ the analysts, the architects. and the coach. What they all do, and let's take the architect for example, the architect allows you to build and deploy comp plans in minutes instead of weeks. So typical implementation of Qobra or any incentive management tool takes weeks because you need to see the data, then implement the comp plan rules. There's usually ton of plans across the organization and they all have their specificities. All this now is just, this is my plan. Here's my PDF, here's my PowerPoint, whatever, build it and deploy it. So that's the architect and then the analyst ⁓ and coach for like similar use cases of reports building and startup engagements. So this is truly exciting because I really believe that this will allow us to provide so much more value to our customers. and I'm so excited to see them live in a few weeks.

Nathan Latka

19:50When you launch agents that actually do work for your customers, do you think your own agents will cannibalize your current revenue at all?

Antoine Fort

19:57No, what I believe in, I'm a big fan of what Sequoia says about AI and services. They say that for every dollar spent on software, there's $6 spent on services and that AI turns the $6 into software. Currently in the sales compensation space, or space, there's lots of people gravitating around for implementation, for consulting. So we believe in a different world where you don't need all these people to maintain your sales compensation tool and you can do it autonomously. And we believe even further, we believe that the tool will do the work themselves. So I don't think it's going to cannibalize our revenue. On the contrary, I believe that it will increase dramatically our revenue because we'll be able to capture dollars that currently are going into people and consultants. and external firms. So all this will turn to software and we're going to be the software for that.

Nathan Latka

20:56Cool. Well, this is, this is exciting. I can't wait to see when you release those, we're recording this here in May of 2026, just so everyone has contacts. Antoine, as we wrap up, I want to just touch on two other growth channels. think you're crushing, but correct me if I'm wrong. It looks like you're investing pretty aggressively on making sure you get a lot of reviews. mean, a thousand G two reviews is a ton of reviews, but a lot of people say, ⁓ but I have to pay G to like.

Antoine Fort

21:13Yep.

G2 Reviews and GEO Visibility

Nathan Latka

21:1710 grand a month to then be featured and like, maybe the leads are good. They're bad. And then also I want to talk about your SEO strategy, which appears to be sort of taking off. first question is G2 working for you.

Antoine Fort

21:28Yes, yes, and to link it with the SEO, G2 has very strong authority on SEO and GEO. So having lots of reviews and being highly ranked like we are ⁓ is really driving lots of traffic.

Nathan Latka

21:41sales compensation software.

Antoine Fort

21:43No, sadly not, but we're gonna be there.

Nathan Latka

21:48saying, oh, here we go. You're getting up there. Can you when you say drives you a lot of traffic? Can you quantify it? Do you do know how much you get from G two weekly or monthly?

Antoine Fort

21:56It's not necessarily that we get traffic from G2, but let's say that you ask a question to Claude about what is the best sales comp software out there. Claude will rely on multiple data sources and links online that can provide with the answer to that question. And since G2 has very strong authority, then people don't go to G2. but so, you know, it can vary a lot. Hopefully.

Nathan Latka

22:14Mm-hmm. I'm gonna try it while you do it.

Antoine Fort

22:24We can be in there. ⁓ So that drives traffic for us.

Nathan Latka

22:26Yep. Mm-hmm. Okay, so it does it helps you show up in AEO and GEO results, which is good And then are you paying G to anything or you're just using their free tools?

Antoine Fort

22:39So we have the base plan, ⁓ which is I think around like 10k year, just to not have our competitors logo showing up on this page.

Nathan Latka

22:45Okay, great. Yours. Yeah. All right. And what about SEO? It looks like this is like taking off. One of my questions to you is, know, there's, forget, I'm going to screw it up now. Cause I think it's, it, it RepVue? There's another tool that to me, this is like a media business. I'm like, man, Antoine should go buy this media business. It feels like a great play for your software. Are you inactive discussions to buy this business?

Antoine Fort

22:56Yep. Yes. So we're not in a discussion to buy this business, but I know Ryan who owns RepVue. He's doing an amazing job with that platform. know that sales jobs like a lot to go and check here, like how is it to work for the companies. And, you know, I think that we provide very complimentary data, especially the, know, the salescom calculator, which you just showed a bit earlier.

Programmatic SEO and Glossary Strategy

Nathan Latka

23:35And these are the ones, this is where you're getting most of your traffic from. you built the glossary SEO playbook, which is smart programmatic SEO. Was that intentional or by accident?

Antoine Fort

23:44Yes, intentional. We have really been working strongly on SEO for the past, maybe like two to three years. So at first, ⁓ you don't see the results so much, but then, you know, when it starts to kick in, it really does. So we're glad we did these investments already.

Nathan Latka

24:03This is. Yep. So guys, here's the glossary concept. This is a really smart go to market motion. The trick is you have to know which, which glossary terms you want to rank for. So Antoine, I imagine that was you sort of contributing what you think is important, but also a little AI enrichment as well.

Antoine Fort

24:19Yeah, and I'm lucky to have very talented people working for Qobra. it was not my idea, but again, someone from the team that I'm really glad he's working for the company.

US Expansion and Acquisition Question

Nathan Latka

24:32Last thing I'll ask about, you know, I'm close obviously with Ben and Greg that who moved for all this different Paris, France, they came and explored Austin state of my house for a couple of weeks, ⁓ about a year to go before they moved to San Francisco full time. You look like you get a lot of your traffic from France. you, are you actively trying to sort of break into the States and you know, get more traffic? I mean, you, if you've monopolized France, it probably for sales commission software already, right?

Antoine Fort

24:52Yeah, so, you know, France is a big market, there's still a big part of the market to capture over there. I don't think we even have one percent of the market, so ⁓ there's still some strong growth opportunities out there. But yes, we're really breaking strong into the US market. I'll be relocating to New York anytime soon. ⁓ Yeah, you know, like these trade shows in San Francisco, we're doing another one in New York, in Boston. You know, we're everywhere because the US market is a priority for us. We already have like a significant part of our revenue coming from the US. So yes, it's intentional and Ben and Greg had some strong success already. So we are replicating.

Nathan Latka

25:18Congrats. That's good. If someone in the States wanted to expand to France and acquire you, would you, if someone offered you a hundred million all cash today, would you take the deal?

Antoine Fort

25:49for 100 million? You asked me to be transparent, so I'll take it.

Nathan Latka

25:51Yes.

Antoine Fort

25:52This was

Nathan Latka

25:52I love that you're so honest. That's amazing. Are you comfortable sharing what your valuation was back in 2023 when you did that round?

Antoine Fort

26:00I know, cannot.

Nathan Latka

26:02Can you share if it was higher or lower than 100 million?

Antoine Fort

26:06It was lower. Otherwise I wouldn't take it.

Nathan Latka

26:08It was lower. Okay. Very cool. Yes. So that's why I asked. Yeah. Very cool. Well, hey, Antoine, this was really helpful. You taught us a ton. If people want to follow your story online, where can they find you?

Antoine Fort

26:17On LinkedIn, Antoine Fort, feel free to hit me up.

Nathan Latka

26:22Guys, sales compensation software, Qobra.co, launched in 2020, small pre-seed. first investor was their first customer. Then by 2021, got the first 10 customers. $10,000 per year ACV did a 5 million seed in 2022 and broke a million of ARR that same year, which is great. In 2023 did a 10 million series a also use some debt, which is great to avoid dilution. And by 2025 broke 5 million of ARR growing call it 80 % to year over year at 8 million around 8 million of ARR today here in May of 2026, looking to scale again, 250 customers scaling the sales compensation software space, launching three agents here shortly to actually do the work for you. Antoine, thanks for taking us to the top.

Antoine Fort

27:03Thank you so much, Nathan. Really appreciate this session with you.