How SalesScreen Reached $8M Revenue with 350 Customers by Doubling ARPU (Interview with CEO Sindre Haaland)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Salesscreen.com launched back in 2011. They hit $2,000,000 in revenue in 2017, raised some early secondary, some early primary, used a credit line just as a backup. Today, they're doing about $8,000,000 in terms of run rate, serving 350 customers. They're moving upstream. ARPU has doubled the past twelve months. Each customer is paying on average $2,500 per month as as they look to continue to scale, really selling into big real estate companies and insurance companies, helping incentivize and

00:25gamify their sales reps to hit certain pipeline targets. Hey, folks. My guest today is Sindre Haaland. He founded SalesScreen in 2011 when he was 22 years old in Norway. He has a master of science degree in industrial economy and technology with a specialization in computer science from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. In 2019, he moved to New York City, and today, he travels back and forth between The US and Europe as he builds his

00:48sales gamification SaaS called salesscreen.com. Sindre, you ready to take us to the top? Absolutely. Alright. Is this like, get your get your sales reps to play a game so they actually use the software and keep their pipeline updated?

How Sales Gamification Works

Sindre Haaland

01:03>> Yeah. You could say that in a way in a way, but more so I would say you kind of have a business outcome you wanna reach. Let's say build pipeline as an example, you break it into actions that individuals themselves can influence, and you apply game like elements on those to kind of get them more excited, engaged, do more of those activities. And obviously, mathematically, it's going to lead to more pipeline. So

Nathan Latka

01:27That's great. So give us an example of a customer paying you today. What are they paying you for exactly?

Sindre Haaland

01:32>> So it's usually that use case if it's in in the soft space or in the software, but we're the biggest in like insurance, in real estate and more transactional B2C types of environments. So it's to motivate their sales team to go, that's our mantra. So they're paying us per seat for SDRs or sales teams. And it could be clients like, you know, SAP or Seismic or IAD or yeah. A lot of different types of customers all

02:03>> over the globe.

Nathan Latka

02:04Mhmm. And are they still paying about $29 per user per month?

Pricing Packages and Per-Seat Model

Sindre Haaland

02:09>> No, not really. I guess we have a couple of packages, so you could get it even cheaper, which is the recognition package where you get more of the visualization score. And if you want the full gamification, it's typically around $500 per user per year.

Nathan Latka

02:24I see. Okay.

Sindre Haaland

02:25>> Well, more so what are discount or, you know, lower entry prices.

Nathan Latka

02:29I guess just to avoid talking about every single potential use case and price point, what's the average customer pay you per month, would you say?

Current ARPU at $2,500 Per Month

Sindre Haaland

02:37>> Per month, average. Right now, it's $2,500, around there.

Nathan Latka

02:42Okay. That's great. So you've increased that almost two x, actually, exactly two x since the last time we spoke back in late twenty twenty one. You also mentioned in late twenty twenty one that you're in the middle of doing a capital raise. Obviously, now it's very hard to raise capital. But what happened to that capital raise in 2021? Did it close? Did you stop it? What happened?

2021 Capital Raise and Bridge Round

Sindre Haaland

03:00>> We did a small bridge, and that is luckily for us sufficient to keep going. So we're profitable within the next twelve months. But the major capital raise that we were looking for also had some secondary some that fell short when the market crashed. We didn't feel hot on raising in a market like that. So we pulled the plug on that.

Nathan Latka

03:24You did you did though, I think you did this very smartly. Your first ever external capital, I think was in 2017 for and you it was 4,000,000. 2,000,000 was secondary, I think. Right?

Early Funding History and Secondary Sale

Sindre Haaland

03:34>> It was in 2018. So we had a 2,000,000 primary 500 k in secondary. And then we did a top off in 2020 when COVID came on similar amount. So yeah.

Nathan Latka

03:47Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this, you love watching these interviews with SaaS founders. But imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect

04:10your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

04:34get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation. Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity And red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is

04:56not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're

05:22going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at, and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second. But

05:44if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link, this link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into

06:10the interview. There's a lot of founders at your stage that they go, Nathan, like, don't wanna raise VC and ride that boat. I always tell them you gotta get secondary even on your first round. And so many of them founders struggle. They don't know how to ask with confidence for that secondary. How did you do it? How did you structure it? How'd you get it done? I think we were

Sindre Haaland

06:29>> one of the fortunate ones that got approached by quite a lot of VCs since we didn't raise anything prior to that date. And for them to kind of like sweeten the deal, they suggested that themselves. So it was more question of how much do we we need or want, and we didn't wanna sell everything. So, you know, it became a smaller seed round or call it whatever you want.

Nathan Latka

06:51Sindre is the pretty girl walking down the street that everyone is chasing, saying, please take my secondary. Please, please, please. A good position to be in.

Sindre Haaland

06:58>> Actually helps.

Nathan Latka

06:59It does help. It does help. Now, last time we spoke, you were working with 400 customers. How many are you at today? And what drove that growth?

Customer Count Down to 350, Moving Upmarket

Sindre Haaland

07:06>> Yeah, I guess it's a bit of the go to market strategy. At that point, we wanted to take in any type of customer. So we went fairly broadly, and we didn't have like a dialed in ICP. So it was a lot of SMEs as well. So reality is that we were probably not, I think we're even fewer customers than that today, like around three fifty, but much larger, as we also talked about with average contract value.

07:32>> So I think we've done a major shift in going upmarket, and that's been quite successful.

Nathan Latka

07:38It sounds like you've still driven obviously revenue growth despite the smaller number of just customers without looking at ARPU, right? So if you have three fifty customers at $2,500 a month, I mean, you guys are right, right around $8.50, $8,900 a month in revenue, right?

$8M Revenue and Currency Headwinds

Sindre Haaland

07:51>> Yeah, we're a little bit well, around $8,000,000. We've had a bit of unfortunate luck with the US dollar lately, since we have quite a lot of customers invoiced in in Great British pound and Norwegian kroner and such. So yeah, that's taken a bit of a hit the last twelve months, but still pretty good.

Nathan Latka

08:11Well, that can come back. Who knows? We'll see what happens. But Exactly. You you still drove a nice growth here from about a 6,000,000 run rate at those currency values in 2021 to $8,000,000 today. You've also, I think, mentioned you you did leverage, I think, a $4,000,000 loan in 2020 to preserve equity. Is that right?

Credit Line as Capital Buffer

Sindre Haaland

08:28>> It was kinda like more of a credit line, so we haven't really drawn a lot on that. So we still have that as buffer.

Nathan Latka

08:34Interesting. How do you how do you think about that in terms of getting access to capital during a recession?

Sindre Haaland

08:41>> Well, I think it's a brilliant way to get access to capital during a recession. So if you have recurring revenue, and it's fairly predictable, you can leverage, you know, even your setup or vessel to get to either a credit line or some loan upfront, so you can continue to invest or have a better runway to your next fundraising. So I advise people to look into that if if they haven't done so already.

Nathan Latka

09:08If you did pull money off that $4,000,000 line, what interest rate would you pay?

Sindre Haaland

09:13>> Around 7%.

Nathan Latka

09:147%. Interesting. And is that fixed? Like, obviously, 2020, so far, didn't increase 4%. Has that has that facility, whoever is behind that facility, increased that rate on you over time or no? It's fixed at seven?

Sindre Haaland

09:25>> It has gone up a couple of times. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

09:27Interesting. So in order to lock in the interest rate, you've got to pull the money and then but then you have to pay the interest rate even if it's sitting in your bank.

Sindre Haaland

09:34>> Yeah, exactly. So in this case, you can actually pay it back as soon as you have the money, which is great, you know, when you have fluctuations in seasonality and stuff like that.

Plans to Raise and Valuation Multiples

Nathan Latka

09:43So that's that's great. Okay. Any plans to raise capital right now or you're you're sitting tight?

Sindre Haaland

09:49>> I mean, in this market, if the price is right, we'll do it. I think that we would benefit greatly from it. But it's not an active push on our side right now with a bank or anything like that to raise. I think maybe after summer, it's going to be brighter times, and we'll see what happens.

Nathan Latka

10:07What would be the right price today?

Sindre Haaland

10:10>> That's hard to say, you know. You know the multiples and how far down they've gone. So it's not like we expect double digit multiples at this stage. But, you know, yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:24So you'd consider something that you'd consider like an 8x, 9x if someone approached you with that, you'd Absolutely. Look at

Sindre Haaland

10:30>> In this market, you would be insane not to honestly. I do think we're gonna bounce back to that level. Hopefully not in a too far distant future.

Nathan Latka

10:39How do you manage that? Because like an 8x multiple on 8,000,000 revenue today would be a 64,000,000 valuation. But I seem to remember you telling me last time we chatted that you had a 120,000,000 rep val valuation on your last priced round, which means you have to have a weird conversation with employees that have option grants because they could effectively be underwater. How do you have that conversation?

Sindre Haaland

10:56>> I'm not sure where you got that number from actually. We were never valued at that level. Or actually, we were, but we didn't accept that offer. So I guess technically you're Ah,

Nathan Latka

11:06that's where I got it from them.

Sindre Haaland

11:08>> So We've never taken a round at that level. Let's say like that. We've had term sheets, but that's a different thing.

Nathan Latka

11:14I see. So would you say it's a good thing you didn't take raise that money at the higher valuation because then all the options would be underwater?

Sindre Haaland

11:20>> I think many people struggle with that right now. Was it smart to not raise it? I don't know. I wouldn't say that either. So

Product Roadmap and PLG Motion

Nathan Latka

11:28Yeah. Alright. Let's with our last couple minutes together here, let's talk more about product, which is what I love, right? What's what's on the product roadmap for SalesScreen?

Sindre Haaland

11:38>> For this year, it's actually simplifying it a bit, and making it just easier to maintain and use for our clients and make sure that they get value and they see the value directly inside the tool. We're going to work a bit more on the front end. So new competitions, new competition layouts. That's always fun and exciting. And we're also actually building a new PLG motion. So that's taken quite a bit of resources, but I think we

12:06>> we have to. And I think it's a really brilliant way to get your customer acquisition cost down. So we're exploring that now, and hopefully, we'll have something live in a couple of months.

Nathan Latka

12:16There you go. And how many folks are full time on the team today?

Team Size and Headcount Reduction

Sindre Haaland

12:20>> On the product team?

Nathan Latka

12:21Just at the whole team?

Sindre Haaland

12:22>> Everybody.

Nathan Latka

12:23Whole team.

Sindre Haaland

12:23>> Yeah.

12:24>> We're just north of 40 people, around there.

Nathan Latka

12:27Okay. 40. 40. Okay, I think last time you told me 50. So you did have to let some people go try and get

Sindre Haaland

12:31>> Yep. Your I think that, again, the world has changed. So we as as many others had to look at, you know, efficiency. And then now we're at, yeah, well, 175 to 200k per person, and that's much better.

Nathan Latka

12:48Yep, revenue per employee. How'd you do it? Was it a group meeting in person? Was it an email to the team early in the morning? And then you come off from Slack? Like how I mean, this is a hard thing, right? But how do

Sindre Haaland

12:58>> Yeah. It is. It is. Now, in our case, we did one on ones with everyone that was affected, and we did it back back to back in one day.

Nathan Latka

13:08Oh, wow. That was a draining day.

Sindre Haaland

13:10>> Oh, yeah, it wasn't fun. Yeah. I don't want to do that too often. But yeah, I mean, that's that's life. That's business, unfortunately. And it really is a terrible feeling as a CEO and a founder specifically, to let people that you love go. But at the same time, you have to think about the ones that are left and securing your livelihood. So that's what you have to do as a leader.

Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

13:38Well said, Sindre. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your the last book that you read?

Sindre Haaland

13:45>> Actually, I I don't even remember. It's been too long.

Nathan Latka

13:48Okay. We'll say none.

Sindre Haaland

13:48>> It's only podcast these days.

Nathan Latka

13:50Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a CEO or founder that you're following or studying?

Sindre Haaland

13:56>> No. Not really.

Nathan Latka

13:58Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building SalesScreen?

Sindre Haaland

14:03>> For building SalesScreen? Visual Studio.

Nathan Latka

14:07Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Sindre Haaland

14:11>> Oh, I have two small kids. So six, maybe.

Nathan Latka

14:14Okay. That's still pretty good with two kids.

Sindre Haaland

14:16>> So two so two two kids and I so so are you married?

14:19>> Yeah. I'm married.

Nathan Latka

14:20Okay. Married with two kids. And how old are you?

Sindre Haaland

14:23>> 33 years old.

14:25>> 33 years old.

Nathan Latka

14:26Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Closing Thoughts on ICP

Sindre Haaland

14:32>> I guess the value of a tight ICP.

Nathan Latka

14:37Guys, there you have it. Salesscreen.com launched back in 2011. They hit $2,000,000 in revenue in 2017, raised some early secondary, some early primary, used a credit line just as a backup. Today, they're doing about $8,000,000 in terms of run rate, serving 350 customers. They're moving upstream. ARPU has doubled the past twelve months. Each customer is paying on average $2,500 per month as as they look to continue to scale, really selling into big real estate companies and

15:02insurance companies, helping incentivize and gamify their sales reps to hit certain pipeline targets. Sindre, thanks for taking us to the top.

Sindre Haaland

15:09>> Thank you.

Nathan Latka

15:10One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. 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 1PM

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