Interview
How Repsly Hit $4M ARR with 1,000 Customers Selling a Mobile CRM for CPG Field Teams (Interview with VP of Marketing Allen Bonde)
- Interview Date
- March 8, 2018
- Interviewee
- Allen BondeVP of Marketing
Company Metrics at Interview Time
ARR (2018)
$4M
Customers (2018)
1,000
Year-over-Year Growth (2018)
About 100%
Team Size (2018)
40
Total Funding Raised
Just short of $4M
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Allen Bonde during the interview recorded in March 2018 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Repsly’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Repsly hit $4M ARR and signed its 1,000th customer (Vita Coco) at the time of the interview
- 02The business had roughly doubled year over year for about five years running
- 03Average customer pays about $350 per month on a per-rep-per-month pricing model
- 04Pricing tiers start at about $30 per rep per month and go up to about $60
- 05Gross logo churn target is about 1.5% per month
- 06Net revenue churn is negative, meaning expansion revenue outpaces losses
- 07CAC payback period is less than twelve months
- 08The company has raised just short of $4M in total, all through seed rounds with no Series A
- 09A team of about 40 is split between Zagreb, Croatia (the tech team, some of the founders and a couple of marketers) and about 20 people in Downtown Boston
- 10Allen traced the business back to 2008 in Croatia, when it was more of a consultancy than a software company; the pivotal moment came in 2014, when the product was commercialized, headquarters moved to Boston and initial money was raised
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| ARR (2018) | $4M | Interview, March 2018 |
| Customers (2018) | 1,000 | Interview, March 2018 |
| Year-over-Year Growth (2018) | About 100% | Interview, March 2018 |
| Average Revenue Per Customer (2018) | About $350 per month | Interview, March 2018 |
| Pricing (entry tier) (2018) | About $30 per rep per month | Interview, March 2018 |
| CAC Payback Period (2018) | Less than 12 months | Interview, March 2018 |
| LTV to CAC Ratio (2018) | Approaching 3x | Interview, March 2018 |
| Team Size (2018) | 40 | Interview, March 2018 |
| Last Funding Round (2017) | $1.6M Seed | Interview, March 2018 |
| Total Funding Raised | Just short of $4M | Interview, March 2018 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Repsly reached $4M ARR at the time of the interview, having roughly doubled year over year for approximately five years. The milestone was marked by signing the 1,000th customer, Vita Coco, with each customer paying an average of about $350 per month.
Customers
The company crossed 1,000 customers at the time of recording. Notable brands in the portfolio include Nike Golf, Health-Ade Kombucha, and Vita Coco. Repsly was sharpening its focus on fast-moving CPG categories including food and beverage, alcoholic beverages, and sporting goods.
Team
Repsly had about 40 people at the time of the interview, split between Zagreb, Croatia, home to the tech team, some of the founders and a couple of marketers, and about 20 people in Downtown Boston.
Funding
The company had raised just short of $4M in total through seed rounds only, with no Series A completed. The most recent round was a $1.6M seed closed in July 2017. Allen noted the company was in the process of raising again at the time of the interview.
Growth Strategy
Narrowing to CPG
When Allen joined, Repsly served a wide range of field-team verticals including dog walkers, pool cleaners, and solar installers. The team made a deliberate decision to focus on fast-moving CPG brands in food and beverage, alcoholic beverages, and sporting goods, where brand loyalty and field merchandising have the highest impact.
Per-Rep-Per-Month Pricing for Easy Adoption
Repsly prices per rep per month, on three tiers starting at about $30. Allen said selling on a monthly plan "lowers the apparent risk" ("hey, can try it out for a few months"), though it also makes it "relatively easy to get into the product and out of it" for seasonal customers.
Positioning as Instagram, Not Salesforce
Rather than competing with enterprise CRM platforms, Repsly positioned its mobile app as easy and visual, more like Instagram than Salesforce. This approach targeted younger field reps who would not adopt complex systems, driving actual usage and data capture.
Expansion Revenue from Growth Brands
Repsly tends to sell to growth brands that, in Allen's example, have 10 reps, then 20, then 30, generating natural seat expansion. This upsell dynamic contributes to net negative revenue churn, offsetting losses from smaller or seasonal accounts.
Moving Upmarket for Stability
Allen said the challenge as Repsly goes upmarket is that "it's less of a growth story, it's more of a full featured story." The earlier, smaller deals "tend to come and go much faster than we would want at scale," and he expected larger accounts to be more stable. He named a bigger challenge too: Repsly does not want to compete with "the Salesforces of the world" but needs to integrate with some of those systems of record.
Best Quotes
“So the business is pretty consistently, and again, starting from a pretty small base, but we've pretty much doubled year over year over the past, say about five years. It's on a pretty nice trajectory and it's relatively lean.”
“We just hit a milestone of $4,000,000 ARR, so that's where we are.”
“We just signed our one thousandth customer, which was another pretty big brand in Vita Coco in the beverage space.”
“Churn is pretty good. Compared to other SaaS businesses I've been in, our target is to be at about 1.5% gross, and we've got pretty nice upsell.”
“There's a lot of upside in accounts. If you look at sort of the total net churn, we do well because we tend to sell to growth brands and maybe they have 10 reps and then they have 20 and then they have 30. So we tend to grow with companies.”
“We have about 40 people total and we're split still between Croatia. So Zagreb has our tech team, some of the founders. I have a couple marketers in Zagreb, and the balance of the team, about 20 people here in Downtown Boston.”
“Repsly is a mobile CRM specifically for field teams and for consumer companies that sell through retail. And it was started in Croatia of all places.”
“It's more like Instagram than Salesforce. When I position the company, I've done stuff with CRM for years, back to doing work for an initial Siebel integrator, if your audience remembers Siebel.”
“When I arrived on the scene, it was relatively horizontal. We had dog walkers and pool cleaners and solar installers and big brands and small brands and consumer goods, and we had a lot of different things for a lot of different people. And for a relatively small business, we had to get more focused.”
What Happened Next
At the time of this interview in March 2018, Repsly had just crossed $4M ARR and 1,000 customers, and Allen Bonde indicated the company was actively raising its next round. The figures on this page reflect what was reported during that conversation and are a point-in-time snapshot. Visit the Repsly company profile for current metrics and any developments since this recording.
View Repsly’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction: Allen Bonde and His Background
- 0:24Past Ventures: Offerpop and Consulting Exits
- 2:57What Repsly Does: Mobile CRM for CPG Field Teams
- 4:59Pricing Model and Average Customer Value
- 5:211,000 Customers and $4M ARR Milestone
- 5:45Year-over-Year Growth and Funding History
- 6:53Strategic Focus: Narrowing Down to CPG
- 7:47Churn, Upsell, and Net Revenue Retention
- 9:37CAC, Payback Period, and LTV to CAC Ratio
- 10:52Team Size and Split Between Croatia and Boston
- 11:13Company History: Consulting Roots, the 2014 Move to Boston, and How Allen Joined
- 11:54Famous Five: Books, CEOs, Tools, and Life Advice
Introduction: Allen Bonde and His Background
Nathan Latka
00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Allen Bonde. He's VP of marketing at Repsly and an adviser to several startups. He's also held executive roles at Placester, OpenText, and KANA, and was co founder of Offerpop, which obviously was acquired. He's He's been a consultant at McKinsey and Yankee Group and started his career as a data scientist. He's an avid speaker and writer, and he blogs at Small Data Group. Allen, are you ready to take us to the
00:22top?
Allen Bonde
00:22I am ready.
00:23Hey, Nathan.
Past Ventures: Offerpop and Consulting Exits
Nathan Latka
00:24All right, so tell us first, you're VP of Marketing today. Were you a founder of any companies in the past that you exited, or kind of what got you into the role of VP of Marketing?
Allen Bonde
00:34Yeah, sure. So I've had a couple of my own consultancies which I've sold, and I was also a co founder of a company originally called Offerpop, now called Wyng, which was one of the really early social media marketing companies kind of ahead of its time, for good and bad.
Nathan Latka
00:49And what happened with Offerpop?
Allen Bonde
00:51Offerpop's still going. Yeah. We... We've... I'm now an advisor. I think we've done a C round at this point, so still chugging along, doing about $15,000,000 in revenue, so nice little business, but not exactly the big eggs that I was hoping for.
Nathan Latka
01:06Yeah, mean, look, I was very familiar with the space because my company, Heyo, was a much smaller player in the space, so it was fun in 2012 for me to watch the wildfire. But well, Buddy Media really started it, then Wildfire, then Involver, then Vitrue. You guys did not exit, and there was another company. I can't remember, there was basically two companies really in the space, I would say, that decided not to exit. You were one
01:26of them. Why didn't you sell in 2012?
Allen Bonde
01:28You know, I think we had a nice little business going and working with a couple other co founders who had some pretty nice exits in the past, I think they had a number in mind and sometimes that's a... It's tough, right? You have a view of what you're worth and it just didn't seem like the right time. Like a lot of things, timing is everything, isn't it?
Nathan Latka
01:47I have a few friends that I've worked with just through M and A stuff where they'll say, Nathan, we turned down the $930,000,000 offer because we want a billion. And you know what? You look then forward five years, and they're selling the thing in a flash sale for $10,000,000. And it was all because they wanted the B behind the number, and they missed out.
Allen Bonde
02:06I also am a big believer in cycles in business, so I'm hoping that there's another cycle when social marketing gets frothy again. And and you're right. The companies you mentioned, most of them had exits, people like Adobe and Microsoft and others. And I'm hoping that that comes back around. So it's not like we missed the boat. There's gonna be another boat.
Nathan Latka
02:24Yep, good. And just real quick to round out the story on Offerpop, how much total have you guys raised?
Allen Bonde
02:29Offerpop, I wanna say has raised about 25,000,000 so far, if my numbers are right.
Nathan Latka
02:33And why the name why?
02:35Why the name change? I think it's... I liked Offerpop way better than Wyng, which is like hard to talk about and hard to spell.
Allen Bonde
02:41So it's interesting because that was sort of past my time as marketer, but I think Wyng signaled
02:46this
Nathan Latka
02:46If is you were gone when the name change happened, I'm not gonna hit you hard. You get a free pass.
Allen Bonde
02:51Okay. I'll use my lifeblood on that one.
Nathan Latka
02:54All right. Tell me about, tell me about what you're currently working on.
What Repsly Does: Mobile CRM for CPG Field Teams
Allen Bonde
02:57So I've been working with some guys and it's, it's an interesting story. Repsly is a mobile CRM specifically for field teams and for consumer companies that sell through retail. And it was started in Croatia of all places. So it's it's it's not your typical... Or maybe it's your typical Croatia to Boston startup story where, started by some guys. First client was L'Oreal in in Europe. So really nice initial client. They were doing consulting for L'Oreal, creating
03:26a tool so that their sales reps, their merchandisers could just be better organized when they went out into stores.
Nathan Latka
03:32Yeah. Allen, just to be clear, they're selling a L'Oreal shampoo. They're canvassing some geographical area. The rep for L'Oreal, they're trying to convince Kmart, Walmart, these places to carry the shampoo. And this tool, this mobile CRM helps them stay organized.
Allen Bonde
03:45It helps them stay organized. And and so this was L'Oreal in Europe initially. So the business started in Europe. It started focused on Central Europe. But you're right, think about the reps. What are they doing every minute of their day? They're going and visiting accounts, checking on stock, looking at competitors, trying to figure out how the product is doing in retail. And the old way of doing that, they'd have a notebook. Maybe they'd put stuff in
04:07a Google Doc. Maybe they would be filling out a whole bunch of paperwork when they finish their visit. What Repsly does, it enables them to take pictures, fill out forms. It's more like Instagram than Salesforce. When I position the company, I've done stuff with CRM for years, back to doing work for an initial Siebel integrator, if your audience remembers Siebel.
Nathan Latka
04:27Don't age yourself, Allen.
Allen Bonde
04:28Sorry, I'm aging myself. So CRM is great when people use it, it's awful when people don't use it. And so Repsly addressed the challenge of how do you get reps, many of whom were kind of younger, they're in the business because they like dealing with people, they like being out and about, they're not going to use SAP or Siebel or something like that. So how do you make an app that's more like Instagram than Salesforce that
04:50helps them gather data, organize their day, feed all that back to their territory manager or the brand managers so that they can really see what's happening in the field and sell more stuff.
Pricing Model and Average Customer Value
Nathan Latka
04:59And are you selling just on a per seat model? And if so, what's the average seat?
Allen Bonde
05:02Yeah. So this is a kind of classic SaaS model. It's per rep per month.
Nathan Latka
05:07Okay, and how much
05:08is
Allen Bonde
05:08There's that on three different tiers starting at about $30 up to about $60 per month. And our average customer is paying us probably around $350 per month.
Nathan Latka
05:20Okay.
1,000 Customers and $4M ARR Milestone
Allen Bonde
05:21And just crossed a bit of a milestone where we just signed our one thousandth customer, which was another pretty big brand in Vita Coco in the beverage space.
Nathan Latka
05:29That's great, so can I multiply 1,000 times three fifty and assuming that you're doing about $350,000 a month today?
Allen Bonde
05:34That is correct. We just hit a milestone of $4,000,000 ARR, so that's where we are.
Nathan Latka
05:40What is that up from in terms of taking it back twelve months ago? What were you doing, $300 then, $2.50?
Year-over-Year Growth and Funding History
Allen Bonde
05:45So the business is pretty consistently, and again, starting from a pretty small base, but we've pretty much doubled year over year over the past, say about five years. It's on a pretty nice trajectory and it's relatively lean. You know, the business has raised just short of about $4,000,000 but really through seed rounds, there hasn't been a proper A round. So it's been mostly bootstrapped are certain and
Nathan Latka
05:45Has it been
06:07a priced round though or is it all convertible notes?
Allen Bonde
06:09It's, I mean, the last round was in, I wanna say July and that was a $1,600,000 round. So yeah.
Nathan Latka
06:17Priced though, right?
Allen Bonde
06:17Yeah.
Nathan Latka
06:17Okay. That was last July?
Allen Bonde
06:21That was last July.
Nathan Latka
06:22Alright. Was the last
06:23We're coming up on a year. You know what that means. Right?
Allen Bonde
06:26It means we gotta sell more stuff.
Nathan Latka
06:27It it means you're either raising capital or you're selling. Which one is it?
Allen Bonde
06:31So we are raising and and the, I mean, it's a nice little story, right? If you can double the business every year, if you could project forward, we're at four, we wanna do eight. And we think that in the bigger picture of CRM, we've got a really nice niche market here, right? It's not for everybody.
Nathan Latka
06:50I do like how specific it is. It makes it easier to compete.
Strategic Focus: Narrowing Down to CPG
Allen Bonde
06:53And one challenge I'd say in thinking back to some of your other episodes, like what are the challenges of the business? When I arrived on the scene, it was relatively horizontal. We had dog walkers and pool cleaners and solar installers and big brands and small brands and consumer goods, and we had a lot of different things for a lot of different people. And for a relatively small business, we had to get more focused. So this year,
07:16and when I came on board, we're really doubling down on CPG, and specifically what they call fast moving CPG, so food and beverage, alcoholic beverages, sporting goods and apparel, things that people tend to buy pretty often, but where there's a high level of brand loyalty, because really the difference in merchandising in the field, we're not selling to commodity products, we're selling to the L'Oreal's, the Nike Golf's, the Health-Ade Kombucha's.
Nathan Latka
07:43Allen, how sticky is it? What's your churn look like today?
Churn, Upsell, and Net Revenue Retention
Allen Bonde
07:47Churn is pretty good. Compared to other SaaS businesses I've been in, our target is to be at about 1.5% gross, and we've got pretty nice upsell because we tend to sell
Nathan Latka
07:58Hold on a one, that's one and a half gross logo churn per month?
Allen Bonde
08:01Yes.
Nathan Latka
08:02Okay. Say, and revenue churn is about equal?
Allen Bonde
08:04Yeah, about equal.
Nathan Latka
08:05Okay, got it. Okay, that's fairly nice. And then, sorry, you were gonna continue on about expansion.
Allen Bonde
08:10There's a lot of upside in accounts. If you look at sort of the total net churn, we do well because we tend to sell to growth brands and maybe they have 10 reps and then they have 20 and then they have 30. So we tend to grow with companies. The challenges as we go up market is it's less of a growth story, it's more of a full featured story. And I think our biggest challenge also is
08:31we don't wanna compete with the Salesforces of the world, but we need to integrate with some of those systems of record. So we certainly
Nathan Latka
08:37So Allen, quick, sorry. Is net revenue churn negative then?
Allen Bonde
08:41Correct.
Nathan Latka
08:42Okay. How negative?
Allen Bonde
08:44I wanna say, I mean, our target is probably to be around negative 1.5. Yeah. Yeah. So good amount upsell.
Nathan Latka
08:51Yep. And that's annually, Negative 1.5 annually or monthly?
Allen Bonde
09:08Because of the nature of our customers and some are pretty small, it tends to be still kind of waggy, if you will, in But terms of up and I think we do well, especially because we make it easy and it's most right in SaaS. If you have most people on a monthly plan, it's good to sell in that way and it lowers the apparent risk. It's like, hey, can try it out for a few months. The
09:28bad news is obviously we make it relatively easy to get into the product and out of it if people say they're seasonal, they hire a bunch of seasonal workers, And then when out of season, they can shut
CAC, Payback Period, and LTV to CAC Ratio
Allen Bonde
09:37down
Nathan Latka
09:37What's their your CAC right now? What are you paying to acquire these guys?
Allen Bonde
09:44We're at...
09:45Our payback's probably around twelve months, right? So we're looking at LTV to CAC of approaching three, I'd say. So it's not exactly where we want it to be, but I think we're still kind of feeling like an earlier stage company, we're probably paying a little bit more than we wanted to acquire, mainly because we're entering some consumer segments that we haven't really played in before. So we have to spend ahead in terms of getting it to
10:08new markets.
Nathan Latka
10:09Let me digest to that real quick, Allen. Said payback period is twelve months. If you have an ARPU of $350 a month, that means you're spending up to one month of first year ACV or about $4,200 to acquire the customer. You Vince, is that right?
Allen Bonde
10:22Let's see in terms of... It's probably... It's lower than that. So so I
Nathan Latka
10:27So less than twelve months payback?
Allen Bonde
10:28Correct.
Nathan Latka
10:29Okay. And then you said your your LTV to CAC ratio is three. So I'm just taking $4,000, which is your CAC times three to get about $12,000 in lifetime value per your thousand logos. Is that about right?
Allen Bonde
10:38That probably sounds about right. Again, in some of our markets and especially the earlier deals that were smaller, I think they tend to come and go much faster than we would want at scale. If we go up market, I think it'll be more stable than that.
Nathan Latka
10:50And what's your team size today?
Team Size and Split Between Croatia and Boston
Allen Bonde
10:52We have about 40 people total and we're split still between Croatia. So Zagreb has our tech team, some of the founders. I have a couple marketers in Zagreb, and the balance of the team, about 20 people here in Downtown Boston.
Nathan Latka
10:52You
11:07guys are digging out from a big snowstorm,
Allen Bonde
11:09Yeah, don't rub it in.
Nathan Latka
11:10Yeah, all right. Croatia and Boston, very good. And what year was the company created?
Company History: Consulting Roots, the 2014 Move to Boston, and How Allen Joined
Allen Bonde
11:13So the business actually goes back to 2008 in Croatia, but the first few years, it was more of a consultancy than a software company. And so the pivotal moment was in 2014, when really the product became more commercialized, the business headquarters moved to Boston and some initial money was raised. So I'd say the modern version of Repsly is about three and a half years old.
Nathan Latka
11:35And how'd they convince you to join? Did you get equity?
Allen Bonde
11:38I did, and also I was brought in through one of the board members, Mike Volpe of HubSpot fame. Oh, yeah. So Mike and I go back. I've done some consulting for HubSpot in the past, and he kinda convinced me to take a look, and then I kinda crashed their search, and the rest is history, I guess.
Famous Five: Books, CEOs, Tools, and Life Advice
Nathan Latka
11:54That's awesome. That's good to hear. All right. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, Allen, what's the last business book that you read?
Allen Bonde
12:00So I don't know if it's my last, but probably my favorite, and the one that I go back and reread is Moneyball, if that counts as a business book.
Nathan Latka
12:07It does. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now? They're in Boston.
Allen Bonde
12:11In Boston, I'll go back to HubSpot. Think Brian Halligan has done a pretty amazing thing. Again, like doing something that Repsly would like to do is carve out sort of a niche within marketing automation CRM, in their case, obviously for SMBs, in our case for people with field teams.
Nathan Latka
12:29Yep, number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your business?
Allen Bonde
12:33Personally, I like WordPress. I've used WordPress forever and when I want to fool myself to think I can code, I mess around and build websites that I don't need WordPress.
Nathan Latka
12:43Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Allen Bonde
12:47Six, but usually four and a half.
Nathan Latka
12:49Four and a half, okay man. And what's your situation, married, single, you have kids?
Allen Bonde
12:53We've got three kids, although two are now out of the house, and one is gonna be going to college, so we will be empty nesters and our plan is to move to the beach.
Nathan Latka
13:01That's great, three kids married, and how old are you?
Allen Bonde
13:04I am 51.
Nathan Latka
13:06All right, Allen, take us home. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?
Allen Bonde
13:11My 20 year old self was studying engineering at the time. If I knew what I know now, I would have traded my grad studies in engineering computer science for an MBA.
Nathan Latka
13:23Really get an MBA instead?
Allen Bonde
13:25I think so.
Nathan Latka
13:25All right guys, there you have it from Allen, working with Repsly founded in 2008 as a consultancy, really got going 13. They're now helping over a thousand customers. These are field reps for CPG brands manage their day to day as they're going in trying to hustle and sell into these retailers. They have each customer paying about $350 a month, so they've passed $350,000 in monthly recurring revenue or that nice 4,000,000 ARR mark. That's up almost a
13:49100% year over year. Their churn is about 1.5, a gross logo churn per month. They have net negative revenue churn per month of 1.5, which is great. CAC to LTV, super healthy payback less than twelve months with their team of 40 between Croatia and Boston. Allen, thank you for taking us to the top.
Allen Bonde
14:05Hey, man. Thanks for having
14:06me.