How Qualifio CEO Olivier Simonis grew to $7.5M revenue and 300 customers in 2021.

hey folks my guest today is olivia simonis he is the creator of qualifio and a few other companies including 87 seconds europe's leading video content agency which he sold in 2018 to date awards he'll step down as qualified as ceo in july and stay as chairman he's based in belgium and started his professional career at pwc in dc another the father of two sons the company cliffo is playing in the engagement and data capture sas platform space olivia are you ready to take to the top oh that was fast all right well hey this will be fun so first things first why are you stepping down to ceo uh well i've been doing i've been a ceo of coalition for 10 years i've been a co-founder and ceo for 10 years in the company there are really talented people that i think can do the job at the moment uh better than than what i can so i'm 50 now and i think i have yeah also other projects that i want to pursue and let these talented guys run the company on a daily basis so you launched it 10 years ago 2010 2011. what does the company do well the company is a as you said it's a sas platform a b2b says platform for interactive marketing for engagement of communities and data capture so uh it's used by by media or by large fmcg companies when they want to engage with the audience and what they do they want they want to know the audience better by capturing pii intent data hobbies etc about their communities and and what are these companies paying you on average to use this technology well the average revenue uh per user for us per client is about 25 000 per year so it's really the enterprise segment uh and they pay us a yearly license for uh unlimited use of the tool got it what sort of upsell metrics allow you to drive expansion revenue is it product upselling seat up selling utility-based upselling uh it's a bit of both so um we very often we start with like one brand uh in one country you would start for example with with a laze in belgium uh because that's where we're based in and then then you would uh upsell to doritos and quaker and then after belgium you would have sell to france and spain if we talk about pepsico for example which is one of our clients plus the number of users as well plus some premium features that we are also putting on the market so that different dimension for us to be able to upsell and how many of these customers are you now working with today uh we are working with about 300 of these customers so a bit less than 300 customers um across europe so 99 of our clients are uh in continental europe yup now can i take that acv you just gave me times the customer count you're doing about six hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue yeah we are we are uh slowly but surely reaching seven million uh us dollar in arr so indeed well congratulations now where were you a year ago well um it's a good question we were basically 25 percent 25 percent lower in air because yeah the coveted crisis did have an impact on our activities we were we used to be growing around 50 a year uh last year was was rather positive but we we we slowed down the growth a little bit because we we were impacted by uh sectors like travel and sports and entertainment which is which is quite an important sector for us uh and yeah most of these companies they stopped investing in new martech tools and and slowed down on their investments so there was a bit of a slowdown of the growth for us but it it yeah allowed us to focus on capital efficiency and also yeah the fact of launching new models and so we're ready to go again uh at the base where we're going in the past olivia how do you manage capital efficiency uh well i think i think you have to be uh super super close conscious it's interesting to to look at the history of quality we used to be bootstrapped for uh about uh six years on our existence and then we raised the series a into those at the end of 2017. rather small it's only three million euro with pension investors um then we had more money on a bank account of course and we kind of lost a bit of this capital efficiency or this cost efficiency of cost obsession uh cause consciousness that that we had um and yeah i think we with the crisis we went back to basics that is to say look at every euro that is going out of a bank account and be super cautious and and and try to think about what this euro is going to bring and yeah basically uh that brought the ebitda back to back to back to positive for us and when you raised it 3.6 million in 2017 what was revenue then uh it was around uh 1.5 uh what a million euros about about 2 million us dollars and can i ask what evaluation you raised 3.6 at well it was a very standard uh times times five uh valuation i mean we we are we we kind of follow the uh just we were valued at the standard uh sas valuation liquids that would be about 10 million free money and 30 million in this in this area yes yeah interestingly what would you how do you think about the companies about you today oh sorry to get that how do you think about the company's value today well to be honest yeah i suppose it's uh it's it's it's following the same path huh i think uh we we are valued around um the same the same duplicator i think the multiplicators have really gone up uh in that space um we we have not been growing as fast as i said as fast as in the past but uh yeah we are we are quite sound we have a great team we have really like marquee customers um we are not really obsessed by an exit nor by a series b at the moment so to be honest we don't care too much about uh how much is the company valued we try to focus on on what we do and growing the business and keeping the customer satisfied with the team satisfied because i mean it's quite a challenge these days to to keep uh the team satisfied you have all these people that are super bored of staying at home um and and yeah we we used to be a company that was very strong on on yeah atmosphere and and events of your feelings and and of course all these activities have been completely stopped so it's kind of challenging to keep people uh the same level of motivation and so yeah focus is really there at the moment rather than than looking at the uh series b or a potential exit i mean that might of course come later on but we are really not proactively looking for that and are you profitable today yes we break even yes profitable i wouldn't say but we are we are break even so it means we have no pressure uh to to yeah to raise money or to find a financial solution you talk about team and culture how many folks on your team today uh today's a bit less than 80 people in the company spread across four offices so our main offices is in brussels in belgium and then we have uh sales and marketing offices in madrid in paris and in amsterdam how many engineers of a 78 ah it's about half half of work are working on on the product if i if you take the product and fnd team uh including the devops uh it's about it's about half of the company the rest being being sales marketing and gna how many of the sales folks actually carry a quota uh well it's it's a actually more most of them um except we have two sdrs uh which are a bit of a different uh approach but all the rest they carry quotas yes so how many carry a quota about 15 30 uh at the moment the sales team is about uh eight people eight people okay yeah one of the big one of the big things is scaling assessment scaling your your sales team right so how do you think about hiring new sales reps ramping them up what quarter do you give them in the first year um yeah that's that's a good question no no because we we we are as i mentioned uh pretty strong in continuing continental europe or the questions that we are now asking ourselves is what about uk i mean the biggest digital marketing market in europe um and and for this now we are awaiting the options of hiring people in the uk working with partners uh locally and to answer your questions uh when we we we have quota based sales guys the average uh monthly m that we asked them to to to bring in uh is around three thousand us dollars uh of of new of new uh uh of course with the wrapper period in the first 12 months if they had three grand each month for 12 months that's 36 000 new mrr or about half a million of ar in the first year yeah except except that uh of course there is a ramper period so we don't accept except anything from them the first six months uh and then we expect half of the target the six months that are following uh yeah we really expect your fully ranked folks though are adding about half a million an ar that's their target quota yeah yeah that's what they should they should be doing uh and and olivia if they hit quota what's their full on target earnings is about 100 grand 150 grand well don't forget we are in europe so it's not uh the market is a bit different uh so it really depends i mean we have we have senior forks so we have more we have more junior forks um yeah the the on target earnings uh is is more or less i mean if i take a big approximation around 50 50 and that would be like 50k uh fixed and 50k uh on target earnings yep that would be an average that makes a lot of sense so so take me back to again personally you have some ideas you've written down you want to go build them you're going to step on the ceo are you the sole owner of qualification besides the investors no we are actually two co-founders um and yeah a bit typical we were both in our 40s we were both uh yeah reaching 40s when we decided to to step out of our employee job to start the the entrepreneurial adventure a bit on the late at the late i mean you're still alright and yeah my co-founder said she used to be the cto and i mean he knows he has no has stepped down as cto and we have a great cto replaced him about a year and a half ago uh so he's still working in the company but as a chief innovation officer um so we both founders we still own the majority of the shares and now the of course the uh the investors that have joined us uh three years ago they on the rest and also the team uh owns warren so we decided uh two years ago that that we wanted to have an employee stock option plan not limited to a few key people but open to the whole company so we have uh know about 90 people of the employees of the company that owned warrants of the company and they can they will be able to exercise these warrants to uh to have shares on a fully exercised and fully diluted basis how large is the employee option pool uh we we made it uh at ten percent of uh the cap table um yeah then it was right it was a bit diluted no i think in total it's so it's around seven point five uh percent um and then investors own something between caught 10 and 20 and then you and your family yeah we we have one kind of friend and family first our business angel uh and then the the the investor of journalists for the series uh a they earned around around 30 percent of the company so it's a rather simple simple captive but attorney yeah so so you and your co-founder still own what about like 55 percent of your degree you're good at maths and well that's good i'm curious so so how do you how do you go about finding a ceo to replace yourself here well i know that's that's a very good question and for me that's a great story because uh the the ceo who is gonna yeah be the full ceo from next month uh has actually joined the company seven years ago so um he joined the company first as a as a sales guy uh in belgium and then he became kind of the country manager a sales country manager in belgium then he became the the head of sale then he becomes he became the ceo and and since uh january we are both co-ceo so it's really someone that that knows the product knows the company is fully aligned with the values leave the values i mean uh and and i think it's a great uh key to yeah with your succeed with your values there's no better price to expect he's highly respected by the rest of the team and honestly for me that that yeah that makes me quite proud to to be able to build a company that actually can live uh without the two founders and it can really continue so the founders and and will not be impacted negatively on the contrary i think yeah i think that's great before we wrap up here uh with the famous five talk to me about churn what's your what's your gross revenue during the last 12 months well it's uh it's it's quite stable to be honest um it's we we have a churn about 10 a year which is rather standard for for this kind of sas product um it has gone up a little bit uh at the beginning of the covet crisis because of a churn linked to to travel sector and cinema companies and and yeah um attraction parks etc uh but most of it was was basically were contracted to get to freeze because because people were not just at the office to operate the platform um so so it went up at that time by 50 um and now we are really back to the the average uh churn rate that we used to have around around 10 yearly so and how much expansion revenue do you have on the same cohort uh yeah that's a good uh that's a good question um it's yeah in terms of new newbies when when i say we are growing the business uh it's it's about two-thirds is coming from newbies and one-third is coming from from expansion uh of existing contracts so um yeah that's upsells that are that are linked to new countries or new brands or uh new users that are that are joining the platform yep you've added about a million an ar over the past eight to twelve months you're saying about one third of that new million in ars about 350 grand came from expansion of historical customers exactly that makes a lot of sense so is net dollar retention above 100 would you say yeah it's around that yes yeah very good all right um and what are you spending to get one of these new customers in terms of cap sorry in terms of uh yeah we we we are spending around around 15k um so we we can say that or after after the first year the the the new customer are completely um yeah profitable yep that makes good sense olivier let's wrap up here with the famous five number one favorite business book no i didn't i didn't know i'm sorry i didn't prefer that at the door right okay i just didn't know top of your head favorite business book it has to be a business well i i would say predictable revenue because i saw that's such an easy answer but uh that's one we have been using a lot to structure our sales team number two is there a ceo you're following or studying um [Music] there's studio i'm following uh i think i think that's to be honest i i don't have kind of a guru mentor but uh we we have put together a ceo uh as a ceo of of sas compassio club of sas companies uh here in the french speaking area of belgium and to be honest i'm very inspired on a daily basis by my faults that are doing the same job that i am so the name of that group oh it's just it doesn't have a name it's just the ceo sas club around here but i think that's uh that's for me great inspiration uh more than famous uh series to be honest number three what's your favorite online tool for building a business what what's your favorite online tool i didn't get that your favorite online tool for building oh okay well uh to be honest i think i think slack really changed your lives uh at qualifier and especially when when you're a ceo and you want to be involved in everything happening in the company uh without too much effort i think yeah for me slack slack really changed the way i worked number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night uh seven more or less and what's your situation married single kiddos uh merits two kids 14 14 and 13. take us last question what's something wishing you when you were 20 something i wished when i was 20. something you were here new um yeah this is a hard question when you have not prepared it uh i want them off the top of your head not scripted probably probably that uh that i would get so much uh pleasure and satisfaction by creating my own company so i would probably have done it earlier had i known uh how much uh i would love it guys quillfio founded back in 2010 they've scaled from 5.4 million bucks in terms of run rate last year to 6.6 today healthy growth rate they've done been done it pretty capital efficient uh 3.6 million raised and that's it in 2017. 78 folks on the team say 38 engineer 8 sales reps again helping you understand uh and collect data across all of your different digital channels due to the interactive content they help you set up we'll see what happens next olivia thanks for taking us to the top thank you so much nathan one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm 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 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 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the subscribe button below here on youtube the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live i wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the sas world whether it's an acquisition a big fundraise a big sale a big profitability statement or something else i don't want you to miss it additionally if you want to take this conversation deeper and further we have by far the largest private slack community for b2b sas founders you want to get in there we've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing you can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying sign up for that at nathan laca.com forward slash slack in the meantime i'm hanging out with you here on youtube i'll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode 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 but i do it so that we can all learn we have to counter those people we got to push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that i appreciate your guys's support all right i'll be in the comments see ya