Regroup revenue, CEO Joe DiPasquale, team size, customer count, churn, and more in 2023.

has been said I am an entrepreneur who's both taken VC and bootstrapped I've started a few things so I'm just here to talk about that a bit um just want to get a sense of anyone who's maybe either uh let's see are you Founders in the room everyone is a Founder let's say okay uh has anyone raised a BC before uh in the room okay great and people then mostly bootstrapping at the moment okay and maybe looking into VC okay great that's wonderful so um before I go to my you know kind of summary slide that they ask I just want to tell you a bit about what I've started uh so far um kind of in chronological order the first fewer late 2000s the last thing is 2017. my first business uh was a business called College wikis uh started it in 2006 was um out in Silicon Valley was in business school at Stanford did you know kind of Wikipedia like sites for colleges this is the time of I don't know Wikipedia being big Facebook being big that sort of thing still is but it was the moment for it it was a moment for like an advertising driven play and we raised series a for that business and then kind of the world imploded so we'll talk about that with very a lot of parallels to 2023 obviously 2006 I raised series a in 2008 for that business and then 2009 happened um start out's a non-profit so all of these are actually funded in different ways College wikis Series a start out as a non-profit for LGBT entrepreneurs so it's raises money from like Hoffman Foundation that sort of thing uh regroup is what I spend most of my time on now I'll tell you a bit about it it's Mass notifications and emergency messaging cell is like an annual SAS license to Enterprises any company or hospital system or city or school who needs any sort of like text messaging Blaster and way to internally communicate with their constituents of any type bitville capital is a fintech and crypto fund that I started in 2017 so that's actually just based on Revenue essentially um so so let's talk a bit I guess why don't I now do kind of what I'm going to cover but I'm very open to questions we can either take a question or two after or if you have them please please just ask um so uh I think we all know that you know VC is you know once you've found product Market fit you can call it VC you could call it kind of even Angel a precursor VC but it's you know when you found product Locker fit it's a way to really accelerate your growth there's been a lot of talking on the the main stage today if you guys have seen those as well about kind of not essentially like hiring sales people before you have something to sell uh same thing with VC right um but we'll talk about the pluses and the minuses bootstrapping you know um uh you know it's I think as Ben said it's what what Nathan talks a lot about uh but um I will tell you that with regroup it's all I also started in the late 2000s so it's been you know over 15 years as well so there's that plus and minus right you keep a lot of equity but it's also probably going to be a slower growth rate and the risk is all on your shoulders they always say diversification is the first rule investing if your bootstrapping you're not really diversifying and no one else's skin is in the game uh really so no one has to help you it's a at any you know or has that level of uh of involvement um and then I'll talk a bit about uh this presentation about like different gray areas of both funding uh and different ways to kind of I don't know ease things for yourself so how to evaluate yourself in your business and timing timing is I think um under discussed I guess uh just to you know I think it's it's very relevant like that it's 2023 right now and we'll see where the market goes but um even in SAS multiples uh were you know Maybe 2x on a revenue basis what they are today so I've seen multiples up to like 16 time sales on average from some studies another about like six times sales for example so uh everything's timing based uh so we've covered this but I will tell you a bit about regroup so um it's Mass notification meaning text messaging voice messaging I don't know anyway a large company would want to get to their uh their employees or their constituents put them into different groups that's why we're regrouped especially after emergencies but of course uh these days especially with work from home and covid people use it for any reason to get out to their employees we do desktop messaging app based messaging that sort of thing um so uh this has also covered a couple times today but you know we all know that one percent of companies are VC funded I can tell you for college wikis though uh we're here in New York at the time I was living in the Bay Area and I uh for the college Wiki's uh process of getting to series a uh we also raised Angels so we went out to basically every Angel group we went to New York angels we went to I don't even know if these places still exist Boston Harbor Angels ecoast Angels that's just I wasn't even living in this area I was living in the Bay Area so we went to Sand Hill angels we went to everywhere so that's the Venture Capital process I remember Foundation capital I had 11 meetings with them uh and then they told me no we wished from a place called high bar Partners at the end of the day um for college wikis so you should just be aware that it's a long process it's its own process it is a distraction um and but uh it can be worth it in that case you know you you again diversify risk and think college Ricky's did not succeed so that was a good idea in that case the retroactively hindsight being 20 20. um but uh VC I think uh if you let's talk about you know maybe how to know if you're going to be able to take VC um I think since we're at a SAS conference I'm going to assume that most people in the room are running SAS businesses if you're running us as a business maybe let me know is everyone here kind of SAS Tech okay great so we all know that you know getting investment you know what they show on like say Shark Tank where pretty much everyone is selling them a commercial product or service is quite unrealistic very few Venture capitalists actually invest in that and so I don't know you know it's could have made for TV so it sounds like everyone here has a prerequisite of uh having a software product or a SAS product uh and then also of course a prerequisite would be the team having a technical co-founder uh having some traction and that sort of thing so even by the time of going to Angel groups and again I've done the whole Angel circuit um you know they there's high expectations even for I remember talking to David Rose of New York Angels they have you know it's not a one percent rate but it's something like five percent or so of companies that apply to them get get get Angel um I will tell you that my experience with angels that it's much easier to go to individual Angels uh than to uh than to a group I would say um so uh so um let's talk about like VC and this for me also covers the angel market and whether it's an option for you we've talked a bit about you know everyone here is kind of in Tech that helps software helps of course you know that investors want us they do software because they want um you know low cost of goods sold right scalable all of that not telling you anything you don't know um but um in terms of the stage and team uh often uh they will want to see some skin in the game from yourself often you'll see Founders who have you know friends and family invest or repeat entrepreneurs so um I think that's that's you know one thing that you you see is how invested are you as a founder and your traction but for venture capital I think most of the bootstrapped in terms of like where is your business depends on how big your Market is if you're going for a very specific niche market that's when you can own the whole thing bootstrap it get to 10 million ARR sell it for 100 million AR and that's the same exit as building a unicorn uh you know where you're revealing it to Let's whatever that is but the more AR you need to have a good exit the harder your life is essentially so it's uh uh that's just a plus and minus so if you're doing something that's Niche uh you may want to consider bootstrapping if you're doing a huge play where because where you're competing against uh large companies then you're going to want to raise money and go fast um so yeah uh so let's see um so a lot of people I think have this preference for bootstrapping if they can and I think uh I've talked to some Founders here today who have bootstrapped and it's really about a few things but you know either creatively financing uh obviously we're we're here at a at a conference that's sponsored by a company that does you know Revenue based factoring so there are creative ways to do that financing that of course requires Revenue uh but even you know there's early stages of friends and family where you can raise it as convertible debt that's gone out of favor a bit these days since y commentator came out with its uh updated contractors many many years ago that actually kind of already pieces out the company even at the early stages of friends and family but there are ways...