How Scoop.it Grew to 250 B2B Clients at About $10K Per Year with 4 Million Free Users (Interview with CEO Guillaume Decugis)

Introduction and Guillaume's Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Guillaume Decugis. He's the CEO of scoop.it or Scoop. A SaaS platform that helps marketers publish content using data science. He's been an entrepreneur since 2000, first with MusiWave, which was the first mobile music platform acquired by Microsoft, Then Goojet, which is pre iPhone mobile widget platform. Then he's been a startup and adviser along with an investor in Tedemis, which is email retargeting. It was acquired by Criteo. The Refiners impact, which

00:26was cross border accelerators in San Francisco. Alright. Guillaume, are you ready to take us to the top?

Guillaume Decugis

00:32Yeah.

Nathan Latka

00:32Alright. You've done a bunch Hi, Nathan. Real quick, just because you you have some exposure to music and first mobile platform back in back in MusiWave time. iHeartMedia, why is it going under?

Guillaume Decugis

00:43Not sure.

Nathan Latka

00:46Yeah. You haven't followed it closely enough.

Guillaume Decugis

00:48No. Alright. Yeah. You know, I left music, where was that, seven years ago? I'm still involved. I mean, I have a I have a band with fellow entrepreneurs here in SF. We have a rock band. So I'm still a musician, but I left the music industry seven years ago, and I didn't look back too much.

Nathan Latka

01:05What do you play? Are you the... Or are you a lead singer?

Guillaume Decugis

01:07I'm a lead singer.

What Scoop.it Does and How It Makes Money

Nathan Latka

01:08Really? Oh, very good. I love this. We have we have cool we have cool... The cool factor of the show went up today. Alright. Tell us about Scoop.it. What do you do and how do you make money?

Guillaume Decugis

01:17So Scoop.it is, you know, helps marketers, you know, figure out what content to publish. We started as a curation platform. We're realizing that a lot of, you know, for a lot of people, creating content was really hard, and curating content was an easier way to to get content published. So we helped, you know, filter the web for relevant stories. And more recently, we launched a a new version of our platform, which is called Hawkeye, which

01:42helps you derive some trends, understand... You know, get some insights on what content is out there to kind of guide your content strategy, help you understand what topics to engage and publish content on, what your competitors are doing, what influencers are doing. So we we monitor the web for you so that you are better at content marketing.

Nathan Latka

02:02This sounds like something maybe similar to a BuzzSumo kind of concept.

Guillaume Decugis

02:06Yeah. So, you know, BuzzSumo, you know, they've they've done a great platform. They've done great stuff. What we added is we... We've done some natural language processing. So that... You know, not getting technical, but that's artificial intelligence that can tell you, you know, this is what the the stories are really about. And we've added some measurements. So we we derive a a few more insights to look at your competitors, to look at influencers, to to measure

02:31things that are meaningful for your content strategy.

Nathan Latka

02:34Okay. And what's the revenue model? Is it a pure play SaaS model?

Guillaume Decugis

02:38It's pure play SaaS. You know, we've been toying with the idea of adding some professional services. We're, you know, at the point where, you know, it could make sense, but it's pure SaaS for now.

Nathan Latka

02:47Okay. Great. And, hey, real quick, Guillaume, just move the mic so it's not rubbing against your clothes. Just because we're getting a bunch of friction, I wanted to make this cookie up. That's Okay. Good. So it's pure play SaaS. And then give us more of the history here. So when did you launch the company?

Company History and Launch in 2011

Guillaume Decugis

03:00So we launched end of twenty eleven, and the background was really around, you know, realizing that we were gonna be in a content first world where online visibility was gonna be determined by, you know, the content you were gonna be publishing. And we felt that it was gonna be a a big transition for a lot of companies out there. You know? It was about becoming, you know, a media outlet, a media brand, and we felt a

03:25lot of marketers are not trained to do this. It's a it's a new paradigm. It's a new environment, and so we wanted to see whether technology could help. And we realized that, you know, looking at what's been published out there, building a technology that can do that for you was gonna be the natural first step. And so that's when we started. So we launched end of twenty eleven, you know, first as a as a free tool

03:47that anybody could use. We have now more than 4,000,000 users of that free version. We launched a B2B version three years ago in 2015. Yeah. So that's kind of the story behind the company.

Pricing and Customer Segments

Nathan Latka

04:00And do you... The folks that want... If people are listening around, they're saying, yes. I need this. I wanna use it. I mean, what are customers paying you on average, would you say, per month? Are we talking small 10 bot dollar a month or 10,000 a month?

Guillaume Decugis

04:11So we have actually... We have both. We we started with a premium model that's, you know, is more like for solo entrepreneurs or very small companies. And then, you know, we realized that we needed a B2B version, an enterprise version that would be more scalable, that would had, you know, more features. And we have, you know, clients like IBM, Microsoft, so, you know, very large companies. Our sweet spot tend to be mid market companies,

04:36you know, in that in that range. But we've been covering the whole range just because we started with a free product, then did freemium, and then the B2B SaaS version.

Nathan Latka

04:44Okay. So if we just focus on B2B SaaS and I pin you down and say, give me an average, what would you... I mean, would you say average is a grand a month, $10,000 a month, more than that?

Guillaume Decugis

04:53Our, you know, our average is about 10 k a year.

Nathan Latka

04:55Okay.

Guillaume Decugis

04:56So in that in that range, but we have, you know, we try to scale with larger companies with much higher numbers.

Nathan Latka

05:02And what are the... When you look at your pricing plans and what your salespeople are pitching, what are the kind of value drivers that drive expansion revenues? A number of seats, number of pieces of content, what is it?

Guillaume Decugis

05:14So for us, it's been, you know, three things. The value metrics or number of seats, number of topics you wanna cover, which is probably gonna be one if you're a very small company, but could be hundreds, if you're a large, Fortune 500 company. And then we have a number of features which are also helping tier the products and and separate them out.

Team Size and Sales Model

Nathan Latka

05:34Got it. And tell me more about that team. How many sales folks are on it, and what's the total size of your team to date?

Guillaume Decugis

05:39So we're still pretty lean. We we have, you know, pretty much relied on the, the free version to bring us leads. So our team is about 20 people. The, you know, sales and marketing team, that's about seven people.

05:54And so, you know, we're we're still having a pretty lean model. We've been trying to leverage the fact that with the free version, we get a lot of inbound interests that's helped develop our brand, but also brings a lot of people who sign up for the free version for themselves and then realize they could use this for their company. And we use a lot of content to help them realize that there are... There is more they

06:13could do with the platform with our more advanced versions.

B2B Customer Count and Freemium Revenue

Nathan Latka

06:17Yep. And and ignore... I mean, by the way, it's tough to ignore 4,000,000 folks, but ignoring your free version and just focus on your B2B SaaS. I mean, how many customers have you scaled to on that thing since you launched it?

Guillaume Decugis

06:27It's about two fifty.

Nathan Latka

06:29Okay.

Guillaume Decugis

06:29About two fifty B2B clients.

Nathan Latka

06:31That's, I mean, that's healthy. If you've got two fifty folks paying, you know, on average $10,000 per year, what's that 800 ish per month, you're doing north of what, $200,000 just on that line of business. Right? Mhmm. That's healthy. And then you're you're... Just to be clear, though, your freemium users, I imagine they're... They don't all stay free. You have a smaller price, $10 a month plan or something for them?

Guillaume Decugis

06:49Yeah. We have a we have a, actually, a a a $12 plan and a $79 plan for the the guys who are more advanced, like more consultants and so on. Mhmm. And that's a part of the revenue as well. But to be fair, and that's been kind of the learning, we we we realized that... You know, I think if you really wanna go after a freemium model... And I think, you know, there's the Dropbox IPO, which

07:12has been a lot of numbers coming out of this, you really have to have very strong numbers. And 4,000,000 is good, but, you know, to have a very healthy freemium model would... It probably would need to be 40. And so we started with freemium. We we we like the revenue we get from freemium. There's a lot of very happy customers on that plan, but we realized that for us, the opportunity was more on the on the

07:35B2B part with larger companies.

Nathan Latka

07:38So would you ever consider selling off the individual part of your business or no?

Guillaume Decugis

07:43No. But for a different reason. The the technology we have that helps monitor the web, that helps with natural language processing, that uses a lot of the the data points we get from the... Those 4,000,000 of users. They help us... Think of it as they help us crowdsource what we call the relevant web. So the digital web, any website that publishes meaningful content, be it, you know, blog or podcast or videos, we wouldn't be able to

08:10do that just on our own, just crawling the web on our own. Google can do that, but, you know, we we have 40,000,000 sources of content that we crawl on a daily basis. And the way we we, you know, we crowdsource some of the... The the way we source some of those most interesting, more niche and longer tail sources are thanks to our users. So that's a very Yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:32They're they're helping

Guillaume Decugis

08:33an aspect of our model.

Nathan Latka

08:33Helping you make your machine more effective.

Guillaume Decugis

08:39Yeah. So, you know, AI is just... The fuel for AI is is data. So the more data you have, the better your AI is going to be. And for us, that's been a critical part of our model.

B2B Revenue Mix and Customer Acquisition

Nathan Latka

08:49Over the past twelve months, what portion of your revenue was made up just from your B2B model? Is that, like, significant... 80% is your B2B model and 20% is your freemium or or your individual?

Guillaume Decugis

09:01About, yeah, that's about 70% B2B.

Nathan Latka

09:03Okay. Got it. 70% B2B. So, I mean, look, if you're doing $200,000 a month on your B2B model and that 70%, I mean, it's it's not insignificant, money you're doing on the on the SMB stuff, but the key value you're getting there, you're saying, is not the revenue. It's really the the data.

Guillaume Decugis

09:16Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

09:17Yep. Okay. Take us through acquisition on these 250 B2B customers. I mean, how are they finding you? How are you closing them?

Guillaume Decugis

09:24So, you know, most of our... And and it... It's kind of particular because, you know, we've been relying on our free version to get a lot of inbound. So we do really... You know, one thing from a marketing standpoint is we do content marketing. And that sounds a bit like, you know, we drink our own Kool Aid and... Because we're a content marketing software company, and we do content marketing, But that's been really efficient for us.

09:46So our our whole model is to get people, you know, to discover us either through our free version, and then we qualify them with content. So for instance, if you sign up for our free version, you're gonna receive our newsletter, which is gonna be marketing stuff. If we see you're not into this, where you're not opening it, you're not clicking on it, we're gonna leave you alone, and we're not gonna, you know, send you that newsletter

10:07anymore. So we give you a test of it. But if you're a marketer, you're gonna find some cool, interesting content. So you're gonna start engaging with that newsletter, with that content. And we're gonna qualify you as a marketer, and, you know, we're gonna try to nurture you all to the point where you're gonna say, hey. Maybe I should check out the enterprise version of Scoop.it. And you have people who kind of go directly. You know,

10:29we do the traditional content marketing inbound playbook where we do content that drives SEO, that drives qualified leads, that we convert, and then we nurture through marketing automation. But it's mostly an inbound model leveraging the fact we have a free version that can bring a lot of leads.

CAC, Payback Period and Funding

Nathan Latka

10:47So, Guillaume, fully weighted CAC, you'd say, is about what?

Guillaume Decugis

10:51It's about seven, eight k.

Nathan Latka

10:53Just your beat... On your B2B side. Mhmm. Got it. So you're then... If they're paying you on average $10,000 per year, you keep your payback well under twelve months. Right?

Guillaume Decugis

11:02Yeah. That's about it. I would say, you know, that it's about, yeah, one year payback. Yeah. Something like that.

Nathan Latka

11:07Yep. And and bootstrapped, or have you raised capital?

Guillaume Decugis

11:11We've raised capital.

Nathan Latka

11:12Ah, okay. How much have you raised?

Guillaume Decugis

11:14We raised, 13,000,000.

Nathan Latka

11:16Guillaume, man, those... That one x liquidation preference, man. How do how are you gonna grow into that valuation?

Guillaume Decugis

11:22Yeah. I know the story, and the story of the company is actually a bit more complex because that... Because that capital is something we inherited from a totally different project, which was the company you mentioned in the intro, the widget platform, Goojet. So, you know, part of the money we raised on that company and then, you know, restarted everything when we when we folded the the widget business, then took some additional funding following that restart, but

11:49inherited the capital from from back then.

Nathan Latka

11:50Wait. So Complicated story.

11:52Did you launch Scoop from scratch, or did you raise additional capital and you bought Scoop from somebody else?

Guillaume Decugis

11:57No. We launched it from scratch, but with the team that had worked on Goojet Oh, I see. Which was the previous company. So we had some cash left from what we had raised for Goojet. And when we started Scoop.it, we we said, okay. We can use that cash to create that product. So we we did a lot of that with our investors back then Yep. And raised some additional funding once the the restart was, you

12:18know, proved to be successful. So we haven't consumed the whole 13,000,000 on on Scoop.it part of that was on on Goojet.

Nathan Latka

12:25I see.

Guillaume Decugis

12:26And so, yeah, we're we're... You know, we gotta go to a point where, you know, it makes sense. So we're we're still, you know, very ambitious and wanna grow a lot more than what we've done so far.

B2B Growth Rate

Nathan Latka

12:37What are you growing at today year over year? Just the B2B side of your business.

Guillaume Decugis

12:42So, you know, on the B2B side, we've been growing, you know, about 50% a year.

Nathan Latka

12:46Okay. Got it. So you're doing about $130,000 on that side of the business twelve months ago?

Guillaume Decugis

12:52Yeah. About that.

Churn and Moving Upmarket

Nathan Latka

12:53Something around there. Yeah. Okay. And tell me about churn.

Guillaume Decugis

12:58So churn has been

13:02one of the reasons we've been moving upmarket, is we've seen that with SMBs, it's actually very hard to get the the the churn rate where we wanted to be. And we've discussed with a lot of companies who've been in that space where, you know, technology itself is... You know, it needs to be packaged with some skills and expertise, which, you know, in the the marketing space is often the case. So that's why we've been moving upmarket.

13:28We have more stable clients. We have, you know, better longer term contracts, longer term opportunities. So that's been our strategy to

13:40address churn.

13:43We've been also working lot on the products and seeing what we could do in this. But I think getting, you know, above 75% retention yearly on SMB is, is really hard. Yep. Some companies manages to do this, and have a very healthy model. But if you wanna do, you know, negative churn and upsells and so on, it's probably more with, you know, larger companies.

Nathan Latka

14:06So, Guillaume, just to be clear, what are you at today in terms of churn on your on your B2B side?

Guillaume Decugis

14:11Well, it's not something we disclose. Okay. But I think, you know, it's a it's a hybrid of, you know, a number at which, to be honest, I'm not really proud of, which is more of what we get on the SMB, and some, you know, negative churn numbers that we're getting on the on the enterprise version of... On the on the larger segment of our client base.

Nathan Latka

14:29So so I'm trying to think a number you wouldn't be of. See, is it fair to say on your enterprise side, your churn currently is north of 5% monthly, and you're working on bringing that down?

Guillaume Decugis

14:39On the... Yeah. So on the SMB part, we're north of that. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

14:42On the SMB part. Okay. But just to be clear, you're you're not really focused on the SMB stuff. Right? You're you're really focused on the B2B stuff?

Guillaume Decugis

14:49Yeah. So the way we... And that's kind of depends on how you you you differentiate... You segment those. But when we look at our B2B version, we have, you know, companies anywhere from 10 to, you know, 200 employees. That's what we call SMBs. The enterprise, you know, is like companies of a thousand employees or more. Those are where, you know, we're we're getting very optimistic on, you know, getting... That's where we can get some

15:11upsells, negative churn rates, and so on. Yep. Companies, you know, with two two hundred employees or less, this is still, you know, where we're getting, you know, a churn that's... You know, we're not really proud of. Yep. And where... You know, if you look at what companies like like HubSpot have been, if there are stories, there are numbers, they started also with a lot of churn, and they've been investing massively to to to be able to

15:36to retain customers on that on that segment.

Enterprise Lifetime Value Target

Nathan Latka

15:39Yep. What... Last question here before we wrap up with the famous five. On your enterprise side, what do you assume a minimum lifetime value is today?

Guillaume Decugis

15:47For us, you know, we're we're shooting to get 50 k minimum.

Nathan Latka

15:52Yep. It's about five years worth of value.

Guillaume Decugis

15:55Well, enterprise, sell... You know, if if you're gonna be a larger company, you... You're gonna be, higher than that. So... But but, yeah, we we try to be at, at that range.

Famous Five: Books, CEOs and Tools

Nathan Latka

16:03Yep. Okay. Very good. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Guillaume Decugis

16:09So I'm not really strong into business book. I... There's a blog that I love, which is, Tom Good's blog. I'm much more into reading his blog than reading any business book, to be honest.

Nathan Latka

16:19Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now?

Guillaume Decugis

16:24So, again, I don't have, like, a mentor or somebody I'm studying. I do a lot of mentoring myself, and I love to learn from, you know, young entrepreneurs. I think I learn a lot more from, you know, having interactive conversations than trying to read the fifth bio on Steve Jobs.

Nathan Latka

16:39Yeah. Name one. Name one of these underground CEOs. It's a young young person that you follow.

Guillaume Decugis

16:45So, you know, it's more like the the people I mentor through the accelerators I've been involved in.

16:51So, you know, the the Tedemis was was was one of the the company that I've been involved at the board. Tedemis is one of the companies I've been involved, the one you mentioned that we... Was acquired by Criteo. The two guys who've been running this company have been really impressive. Our two French guy, Antoine Davos and Alexandre Chavagnac. And they've been, you know, starting this from scratch, bootstrapping it, ending up being the first acquisition of Criteo,

17:19and they've been in... Doing fantastic work. So they're they're starting a new company now, and I'm following that up very closely.

Nathan Latka

17:24Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building a business?

Guillaume Decugis

17:29So recently, I've discovered something called FullStory. I don't know if you're familiar with them.

Nathan Latka

17:33Yep. I am. Good good company.

Guillaume Decugis

17:35Yeah. If you're building a product, it's it's really it's really great. I think, you know, I wished I had that for a long time, and it's really giving you... So for those of you who are not familiar with it, it's helping you understand what your users are doing with your product. So, you can... It's almost like you... They were in the same room as, as you were, and you could see where they click, what they're doing,

17:54what they don't get, what they really... What they are able to do. So it's really an amazing tool.

Personal Life and Advice to Younger Self

Nathan Latka

17:59Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Guillaume Decugis

18:02About seven.

Nathan Latka

18:03Okay. That's good. And what's your situation? Married, single, you have kiddos?

Guillaume Decugis

18:06I'm married. So I have I have a wife who's displaying... Who's very disciplined with my with my sleep. And so she... If I were on my own, I'd probably be at five or six, but she she gets me to do seven every night.

Nathan Latka

18:19So And any kiddos or no?

Guillaume Decugis

18:21Three. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

18:21Three? Oh, wow. Okay. And how old are you, Guillaume?

18:24They're No. You.

Guillaume Decugis

18:25How old are you? Oh, I'm 47.

Nathan Latka

18:2747. I was gonna say you're not 17. Alright. 47. And take me back at your 20 year old self. What do wish you knew?

Guillaume Decugis

18:34So I think the number one thing I would say is, you know, the ability to get out of your comfort zone is, you know, where I learned the most. So, you know, if I had to go back in time and... It was not about... It wouldn't be about, hey. You should notice. It would be, you know, go out go out of your comfort zone, explore, take some risks. I I did that to some extent, but, you

18:56know, I I think, you know, you cannot, take too many risks when, when you're 25. So

Nathan Latka

19:01There you guys have it. It's impossible to take too many risks when you're young. So take them all. Take them all, Guillaume says. He founded Scoop.it back in 2011. They pivoted around at some different ideas, raised $13,000,000 to build this. It's really content and content at scale. They help you surface what's working. They use their free user base of about 4,000,000 folks to help train their machine, which fuels their B2B enterprise business where they've

19:23signed up about, oh, what what do you say? About 250 customers paying on average $10,000 per year. So about two hundred, two hundred and twenty grand ish per month just in that revenue stream makes about 70% of their total revenue. Churn right now, he's not proud of. They're working on getting that lower. The economics are looking good in their enterprise cohort, spending about $7,000 on CAC for payback period of under twelve months. Again, lifetime value on

19:44these guys around $50,000. Guillaume, thank you so much for taking us to the top.

Guillaume Decugis

19:48Well, thank you, and great summary.