Founder Interview
How ScreenMeet Reached 50 Customers with Negative Churn (Interview with Ben Lilienthal)
- Interviewee
- Ben LilienthalCo-Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Customers (at interview)
50
Total Raised
$5M
Team Size (at interview)
15
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Ben Lilienthal during the interview at the time of recording and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See ScreenMeet’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01ScreenMeet had 50 customers at the time of the interview, landed over about four years
- 02Pricing ran from $20 to $60 per user per month at the time of the interview
- 03Ben said deals under $25,000 were "kind of not that interesting at this stage of the company," though ScreenMeet would not walk away from them
- 04ScreenMeet raised approximately $5M from angels and family, with no institutional venture capital
- 05The team was about 15 people, with no SDRs, AEs or customer success reps beyond one technical account manager
- 06Ben put gross churn at "probably single digits"
- 07Ben said ScreenMeet had negative churn, with expansion of about 10% per account from year one to year two
- 08Most growth came through CRM platform providers such as Salesforce, which "takes a piece of every deal that they refer"; Ben put the average AppExchange commission at about 20%
- 09OpenTable was an early notable customer, representing a couple hundred seats
- 10The company was approaching cash flow breakeven at the time of the interview
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Customers (at interview) | 50 | Founder interview |
| Total Raised | $5M | Founder interview |
| Year Founded | 2014 | Founder interview |
| Team Size (at interview) | 15 | Founder interview |
| Technical Account Managers (at interview) | 1 | Founder interview |
| Pricing Per User (at interview) | $20 to $60 per user per month | Founder interview |
| Annual Expansion per Account (Year 1 to Year 2) (at interview) | About 10% | Founder interview |
| Support Agents Using ScreenMeet (at interview) | Tens of thousands | Founder interview |
| New Customers Per Year (average over four years) | About 10 | Founder interview |
Growth Breakdown
Customers
ScreenMeet had landed 50 customers at the time of the interview, over about four years. Notable logos included OpenTable, which represented a couple hundred seats, and the company had recently deployed the largest technical services organisation on the planet, which has over 10,000 support agents around the globe.
Team
The company operated with approximately 15 people at the time of the interview. Ben and his COO handled sales directly, and the only dedicated customer-facing hire was one technical account manager.
Profitability and Funding
ScreenMeet raised close to $5M from angels and family and had taken no institutional money; Ben said venture investors had told him "we'll give you money privately, but don't take money from our funds." At the time of the interview the company was not yet profitable: "We're getting to breakeven."
Retention
Ben said ScreenMeet had negative churn, which he put down to "just outstanding customer satisfaction." He put expansion at "10 ish percent" per account from year one to year two, higher when customers onboard additional teams, and gross churn at "probably single digits." He said ScreenMeet generally did not lose customers, and that the ones it did lose were replaced by more seats.
Growth Strategy
CRM Platform Marketplaces as the Primary Channel
ScreenMeet went to market through large CRM platform providers such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Microsoft Dynamics, positioning itself as the cloud-native remote support application within those ecosystems. Ben called it "a sort of channel distribution model" in which Salesforce "takes a piece of every deal that they refer"; he put the average AppExchange commission at about 20%, and said channel details were "kind of stuff we don't really disclose."
Executive-Level Platform Sales Motion
Ben and his COO did the selling themselves. They went in with platform companies such as Salesforce, ServiceNow and Microsoft Dynamics and sat with the executives: once the customer had made "the platform decision," ScreenMeet was the cloud application for the remote support use case. Apart from one technical account manager, ScreenMeet had no SDRs, AEs or customer success staff, and Ben was "not entirely convinced" it needed a big sales overhead even to scale.
Rip-and-Replace of Legacy Desktop Incumbents
ScreenMeet targeted companies running fifteen-year-old desktop-to-desktop remote support tools such as LogMeIn, Bomgar, and GoToAssist, positioning its cloud-native architecture as a faster and cheaper replacement. The pitch centred on day-one savings of millions of dollars for large enterprises.
Land with Large Logos and Expand
The company started by selling small seat counts and then landed anchor customers such as OpenTable and a global technical services organisation with over 10,000 agents. With the technical services deployment live, Ben said the team was "kind of going back through the large enterprise customer list very diligently."
Channel Partners Instead of a Big Sales Team
By relying on channel partners rather than building a large internal sales team, ScreenMeet kept overhead low. Ben noted that paying the channel and paying your own sales team tend to cost roughly the same, but the channel carries less hiring and ramp risk.
Best Quotes
“ScreenMeet is enterprise remote support in the cloud. So if you think of existing remote support applications, which is basically when the IT help desk or the call center comes in to take over your computer, they're all desktop to desktop based. ScreenMeet is the first enterprise SaaS solution to be developed cloud native, which means it's faster, cheaper, better than things like LogMeIn, Bomgar, GoToAssist, Webex, Skype, Zoom for the remote support use case.”
“we started by selling a couple seats here and a couple seats there, and then we landed a big customer in OpenTable, which was a couple 100 seats. So we felt like we were pretty cool, and then we recently deployed the largest technical services organisation on the planet that has over 10,000 support agents around the globe.”
“we have an online no touch offering at screenmeet.com, but it's much more interesting to go into the large enterprises and rip and replace fifteen year old software with ScreenMeet because one, it really drives compelling value, millions of dollars of savings on day one”
“we've raised capital, but we haven't taken any institutional money.”
“you sort of know the venture community and basically to a person they've said, we'll give you money privately, but don't take money from our funds because we're just gonna distort what you're doing.”
“50 companies over four years, so that's 10 customers a year, right? Will it be 25 to 50 customers over the next twelve months? Probably.”
“The average AppExchange commission rate is about 20%.”
“I mean, have negative churn and we do it through just outstanding customer satisfaction.”
“We're getting to breakeven.”
“what I've learned doing this is you've got these windows to gain market share, and if you can raise money while there's still money to be had, you might as well go and gain market share because then you can manage the cash flow just off revenue, right?”
What Happened Next
At the time of this interview, ScreenMeet had 50 customers, about 15 people and close to $5M raised from angels and family, and Ben said the company was "getting to breakeven." He expected customer wins to pick up from about 10 a year: "Will it be 25 to 50 customers over the next twelve months? Probably." That was his forecast at the time, not a result. This page reflects the company as it stood during the recording. Visit the ScreenMeet company profile for current figures.
View ScreenMeet’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:01Introduction and Guest Background
- 0:20What ScreenMeet Does and How It Makes Money
- 1:03Sales Motion and Target Customer Profile
- 2:34Key Customers Including OpenTable and Largest Deployment
- 5:49Company Founding Story and Prior Background
- 7:40Team Size and Internal Structure
- 9:53Funding Approach and Decision to Avoid Institutional Capital
- 10:53Customer Count and Growth Rate
- 14:47Channel Strategy and AppExchange Distribution
- 16:48Churn, Expansion Revenue and Net Retention
- 18:14Cash Flow and Path to Breakeven
- 18:50Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions
Introduction and Guest Background
Nathan Latka
00:01Hello, everyone. My guest today is Ben Lilienthal. He's a serial entrepreneur in the collaboration space. He started four companies, sold two to public companies, and ScreenMeet, his current company, is number four. He's a proven leader and innovator, Amherst College BA and Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Alright, Ben, you ready to take us to the top?
Ben Lilienthal
00:18Sure. Fire away, Nathan.
What ScreenMeet Does and How It Makes Money
Nathan Latka
00:20Alright, what is ScreenMeet and how do guys make money?
Ben Lilienthal
00:23Sure. ScreenMeet is enterprise remote support in the cloud. So if you think of existing remote support applications, which is basically when the IT help desk or the call center comes in to take over your computer, they're all desktop to desktop based. ScreenMeet is the first enterprise SaaS solution to be developed cloud native, which means it's faster, cheaper, better than things like LogMeIn, Bomgar, GoToAssist, Webex, Skype, Zoom for the remote support use case.
Sales Motion and Target Customer Profile
Nathan Latka
01:03Are you selling directly to the operator of the call center or the companies that put their calls through the call center?
Ben Lilienthal
01:09We sell to the companies that hire the outsourced service provider call centers. The verticals that we sell into are mainly subsets of high-tech, so hardware like PC and phone manufacturers, software like other SaaS companies, and then finally, you know, sort of random sort of verticals within education, manufacturing, and obviously the IT help desk goes across lots and lots and lots of traditional industries.
Nathan Latka
01:46And help us understand briefly kind of how you price. So the average customer pays you about what per month to access the technology?
Ben Lilienthal
01:54You know, anywhere from 20 to $60 per user per month.
Nathan Latka
02:04And how many... What's at a logo instead of a seat base at a logo basis? Are these... Are you typically serving small teams of five people or enterprise teams of 500?
Ben Lilienthal
02:13Well you know the beauty of SaaS and the beauty of startups is you build the software and to sell one license is as much work as selling 10,000 licenses.
Nathan Latka
02:28Not always. With the sales motion it can be very different. One's a no touch and free Yes, another has a whole
Key Customers Including OpenTable and Largest Deployment
Ben Lilienthal
02:34but from the back end perspective of course. So what we did is we started by selling a couple seats here and a couple seats there, and then we landed a big customer in OpenTable, which was a couple 100 seats. So we felt like we were pretty cool, and then we recently deployed the largest technical services organisation on the planet that has over 10,000 support agents around the globe. And so the interesting thing is our software and
03:06our infrastructure didn't really have to change, we just had to turn on more instances in our, you know, dozen AWS Azure data centers around the world. And now that we've sort of gone live with the largest technical services organisation on the planet, we're kind of going back through the large enterprise customer list very diligently.
Nathan Latka
03:30So I mean, you'll have people obviously on both sides of this equation, but you know, typically most people will double down on either enterprise or low... You know, no touch kind of freemium based SMB side. It sounds like you are really trying to do more of the enterprise size... The bigger team sizes.
Ben Lilienthal
03:47Yeah. I mean, we we have an online no touch offering at screenmeet.com, but it's much more interesting to go into the large enterprises and rip and replace fifteen year old software with ScreenMeet because one, it really drives compelling value, millions of dollars of savings on day one, and two, we go in with some of the largest CRM platform providers in the world as part of a full suite solution.
Nathan Latka
04:23By the way, I totally get the product. You don't have to convince me on that. It makes perfect sense. I just want to understand the kind of economics and how you've gotten the customers you've gotten. So because we can't talk about every cohort, mean is it fair to say maybe the average team signing up with you guys is is what a 100 people or something like that?
Ben Lilienthal
04:38From a support agent perspective? Yeah. 100, you know, 50 seats and up.
Nathan Latka
04:41Okay. 50. Okay. Fair enough. So so then can I take the 50 times 20, the average the average folks are signing up 50 seats at $20 a seat?
Ben Lilienthal
04:52A little higher than that.
Nathan Latka
04:56Higher seat or higher or higher...
Ben Lilienthal
04:58Figure the average deal size. Figure average deal, you know, like under $25,000 is kind of not that interesting at this stage of the company. We're not gonna walk away from it. I mean, if that's where you're going.
Nathan Latka
05:11Yeah. No, what I'm trying to do is basically get out of talking about per seat and talk more about what kinds of companies you're targeting, which would basically manifest itself in ACVs or number of seats per company. What you're saying is we want to have companies that are signing up at least 100 seats at $20 a month, which puts you north of a $25,000 ACV.
Ben Lilienthal
05:29Yeah, that's right. And so you sort of build the hiring plan and the revenue and the financial model and you know, of the go to market marketing stuff around those metrics versus let's sign up 10,000 customers.
Nathan Latka
05:45That's right. What's the backstory here when did you launch the company, what year?
Company Founding Story and Prior Background
Ben Lilienthal
05:49Yeah, sure, the company got started in 2014, we incorporated in 2015. I had previously sold a company into GoToMeeting, which most people you know, it's pretty logical, there was a product called GoToMyPC, and another product called GoToAssist. And so I mean, it was literally you know, I was the entrepreneur they brought in, I was a GM, ran a division, 100 people, $25,000,000 P&L. I sort of looked around said, know, yeah, this is SaaS,
06:19but it's not really SaaS, it's not really cloud native, and in the fifteen years since you started this company, this thing called the cloud has sort of grown up, and so we need to re platform all this stuff as cloud native, and I went to my boss who was the GM of the $500,000,000 division and he said, Yeah, you go do that, I don't have $5,000,000 in three years to do a science project. So that was
06:49the backstory. It's sort of the incremental innovation of replatforming a billion dollar a year business in the cloud, the cloud version is gonna win.
Nathan Latka
07:00Yeah, totally. By the way, Eric did this, mean he did this basically on the same story and the guys didn't wanna let him build it internally so he said fine, I'm gonna leave and launch Zoom and basically now Zoom is cannibalizing his other product he sold into that company previously.
Ben Lilienthal
07:13Yeah, and I know Eric. I mean Eric and I, because I was the audio layer for GoToMeeting, that was the company that they bought. And so we talked, I said go for it man, know, like having spent ten years getting punched in the face by ten millisecond packet drops, I don't wanna do audio or video anymore.
Nathan Latka
07:33Yeah.
Ben Lilienthal
07:34So I'm gonna do the screen sharing part.
Nathan Latka
07:35Yeah, okay talk to me about what you've scaled to today in terms of team size, how many folks?
Team Size and Internal Structure
Ben Lilienthal
07:40Yeah, no, so the other thing that's very interesting if you're going after large enterprise deals, and you're a SaaS company, you almost have perfect economics. So we're you know, we're under 20 people.
Nathan Latka
07:57Why do you say that like it's a negative? I have nothing wrong with
Ben Lilienthal
08:00No, small no. My point is it's a positive.
Nathan Latka
08:03Yeah, I have nothing wrong with that. Wait, so less than... You're talking about like 10, 11, how many people actually?
Ben Lilienthal
08:0815 ish.
Nathan Latka
08:09That's great. What's the sales motion look like on those? Do you have any like SDRs, AEs, CS folks yet No. Or
Ben Lilienthal
08:15No. And I mean, have one technical account manager.
Nathan Latka
08:18Okay.
Ben Lilienthal
08:18But it's me and my COO between the two of us, you know, we have fifty years of running enterprise software companies.
Nathan Latka
08:26Who's doing sales? Are you both doing sales?
Ben Lilienthal
08:28Yeah, we're both doing sales, and what we do is we go in with the large platform companies, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft Dynamics, and sit there with the executives and say, this is an executive level, this is a platform decision. Now that you've made the platform decision, what's the application to solve this use case? It's not buying a box and putting it in your data center. Know, that's what one vendor will do. It's not buying desktop software, it's
08:59buying the cloud version of the tool.
Nathan Latka
09:01Yeah. No, again, I get the... Ben, totally get the product, I'm sold on it. After you
Ben Lilienthal
09:05No, no, my point motion is also not sort of a quick and dirty... You're you're still sort of selling at the conceptual level. You know, you're not quite selling the swipe your credit card and you're done kind of at those intervals.
Nathan Latka
09:21Oh god. You you you... Anything above $5,000 a year, you're not having a no touch swipe your credit card on a website deal. But all those companies typically have still sales motions built out around SDRs per AE and then customer success reps per AE to support onboarding. I'm just wondering if you have that system built out yet.
Ben Lilienthal
09:37Well, don't and we're not entirely convinced that we need like even to scale, like we can probably get there without invest, like, in a big overhead sales kind of expense.
Funding Approach and Decision to Avoid Institutional Capital
Nathan Latka
09:53Yeah. Are you bootstrapped today
09:54or have you decided
Ben Lilienthal
09:54We've
Nathan Latka
09:54to raise
Ben Lilienthal
09:57raised capital, but we haven't taken any institutional money.
Nathan Latka
10:01Okay.
Ben Lilienthal
10:01So we've... I mean, kind of done the like after twenty five years, know, you sort of know the venture community and basically to a person they've said, we'll give you money privately, but don't take money from our funds because we're just gonna distort what you're doing.
Nathan Latka
10:20Totally. So how much into the company today? You're talking like 200, $300?
Ben Lilienthal
10:24No, like closer to $5,000,000.
Nathan Latka
10:26Oh, okay, but all from kind of more like angels versus traditional?
Ben Lilienthal
10:31And family, know, because like, look, I don't know how fast this market's going to move and I don't wanna have to bet my sweat equity that's gonna happen sooner, but it's gonna happen and we're the number one, we are the disruptor in the market. So it's all like we'll get a look at every deal.
Customer Count and Growth Rate
Nathan Latka
10:53So you've been at this since 2014, over the past five years what have you scaled to in terms of just total customers you're now serving?
Ben Lilienthal
11:00Well, mean I think the more interesting question is how many support agents use ScreenMeet today?
Nathan Latka
11:07No, actually specifically don't want to know that answer because that is a per seat thing. I'm trying to actually understand how many companies have adopted you just at a company
Ben Lilienthal
11:07Under 100.
Nathan Latka
11:16Okay, under a 100.
11:17Okay, and now feel free to share the number you like, which are number of those agents that have adopted you.
Ben Lilienthal
11:23Oh, I mean tens of thousands.
Nathan Latka
11:25Okay, got it. So tens of thousands across a 100 companies, I mean you're looking at team size that on average north of a thousand.
Ben Lilienthal
11:31Well, are a couple pretty big ones there, but the interesting thing is you look at how many Salesforce Service Cloud seats are out there, how many ServiceNow CSM or ITSM seats have been deployed, and you sort of do the attach rate. It should be one for one or, you know, two, right? So the addressable market for us is millions of seats deployed, and we're still in the tens of thousands.
Nathan Latka
11:56Yeah, but across right now less than a 100 customers.
Ben Lilienthal
12:00That's right.
Nathan Latka
12:01Okay, fair enough. And then you said earlier kind of average ACVs were call it 24 ish range, that would put your MRR right now at somewhere around $200,000 a month, is that generally accurate?
Ben Lilienthal
12:09We don't disclose that, but you know, in the ball.
Nathan Latka
12:14Yeah. Yeah. By the way, don't wanna disclose things you don't feel comfortable disclosing, but I'm just taking two numbers and multiplying, which was your average ACV times your customer account.
Ben Lilienthal
12:20Yeah. Yeah. No. Get it.
Nathan Latka
12:21Yeah. Yeah. Cool. What about growth? So if you're at around that area today, where were you about a year ago?
Ben Lilienthal
12:28Much significantly lower.
Nathan Latka
12:30Like tripling year over year, doubling year over year?
Ben Lilienthal
12:33Yeah. At least.
Nathan Latka
12:35At least doubling or at least tripling or at least quadrupling?
Ben Lilienthal
12:38I I mean, look. We sort of crossed the chasm over the last twelve months.
Nathan Latka
12:43Yeah. Ben, these are all very generic terms. People define chasm their own way. Jeffrey Moore defines it one way for different companies.
Ben Lilienthal
12:49Well, again, we don't disclose that stuff. So...
Nathan Latka
12:51Okay. That... That's fine. Again, just to be clear, I'm taking numbers you've already given me. Right? So so if if any of those numbers you wanna change or update, definitely do that so that they're accurate.
Ben Lilienthal
13:01Yeah, no, no, you're you're okay. We're good.
Nathan Latka
13:04Okay. What what and I mean, when you raise even if it is from angels at a 5, you know, 5,000,000, you've put yourself on a track basically saying we're not going to be bootstrapped, which means there's generally a kind of a flow you have to go at, which is you know, two or three x the first couple of years, then obviously two or one x even after that is fine. So I mean, this year, what are
13:22you hoping to grow at? Are you targeting like a two x or three x or more?
Ben Lilienthal
13:28I mean,
13:30Again, we don't manage the market. We can't forecast that demand.
Nathan Latka
13:39Well you just said that you're the number one player in the market, so how can you say that but not?
Ben Lilienthal
13:43The We number one... We are the only cloud replacement for the desktop incumbents. So at what rate do people switch off of their long in the tooth renewal solution and move to the cloud platform, I can't forecast.
Nathan Latka
14:05Well you have five years of cohort data, so you should have at least a prediction. That's all I'm asking for is what's your prediction in terms of what that switch rate looks like over the next twelve months?
Ben Lilienthal
14:13It's going to accelerate. Mean, I can tell you that.
Nathan Latka
14:16What has it historically been?
Ben Lilienthal
14:17Very, very incremental, tiny, tiny, I think of it, 50 companies over four years, so that's 10 customers a year, right? Will it be 25 to 50 customers over the next twelve months? Probably.
Nathan Latka
14:31Okay, got it. So 50 customers today that you've landed over the past four years?
Ben Lilienthal
14:36That's right.
Nathan Latka
14:37Okay, got it. Where is most of the growth coming from? So how are people finding That kind of motion of switching you just articulated. Are you guys doing kind of ABM stuff or are they finding you naturally? What's that look like?
Channel Strategy and AppExchange Distribution
Ben Lilienthal
14:47Yeah, no, it's really going in through existing channels
14:54like the CRM platform providers, and being the cloud based replacement for the desktop solution.
Nathan Latka
15:05So
Ben Lilienthal
15:07as they sort of say, okay, now that I have this CRM platform in the cloud, what are the key features that are missing?
Nathan Latka
15:16Are you paying those folks a kickback or is that just organic ranking in like the Salesforce AppExchange for example?
Ben Lilienthal
15:24Know, Salesforce takes a piece of every deal that they refer.
Nathan Latka
15:30Is that your number one referrer?
Ben Lilienthal
15:34No, but also like that's kind of stuff we don't really disclose.
Nathan Latka
15:40Okay, I'm simply asking if you're following a model or reseller model, is that something that you're
Ben Lilienthal
15:44It's a reseller model, it is a sort of channel distribution model.
Nathan Latka
15:51Great, and so let's not talk specifically about any one thing, but generally speaking under that model, you're gonna take a hit to your margin immediately because you gotta pay for that lead from the marketplace.
Ben Lilienthal
16:01You're either gonna pay the channel.
Nathan Latka
16:02Yeah, my question is just simply what is that typically? Are we talking 10%, 40% or something less?
Ben Lilienthal
16:08The average AppExchange commission rate is about 20%.
Nathan Latka
16:11Perfect, super viable, yeah I didn't know that.
Ben Lilienthal
16:13But again just to level up, know you either pay the channel or you pay your own sales team, but it all works out to be about the same. You know, the channel is less risky because you don't have to hire the sales guy, get them up to speed and then see if they perform.
Nathan Latka
16:29But the sales force doesn't close your deal, you still have to put a sale... You just have to put touch on it after they drive you the lead.
Ben Lilienthal
16:35Totally. Totally. And and the AppExchange is not a lead gen place. Don't... I mean, for any SaaS entrepreneur out there, don't think you're gonna put an app in the AppExchange and people are gonna beat down your door. Yeah. You then really have to market around it.
Churn, Expansion Revenue and Net Retention
Nathan Latka
16:48We're running out of time here, but quickly churn is critical in any SaaS company. So how do you look at your churn and how do you make sure you're always driving it to a more healthy place than it is today?
Ben Lilienthal
16:57Yeah. Well, I mean, have negative churn and we do it through just outstanding customer satisfaction.
Nathan Latka
17:03So what does expansion look like typically on a customer that signs up a year ago? You talking like 40%, fixed, 80%, less?
Ben Lilienthal
17:09No, no less, less probably single double digits, 10 ish percent.
Nathan Latka
17:16Okay. Well, that's still... Mean, 10% is still pretty good. And it sounds like that's more than... Go ahead.
Ben Lilienthal
17:21If they onboard additional teams, it then grows higher.
Nathan Latka
17:25Well, you'd include that in whatever the expansion is. That that... That's what expansion revenue is. So you're saying total expansion revenue on account is typically 10% from year one to year two?
Ben Lilienthal
17:33Yeah, I think that's fair.
Nathan Latka
17:34And then over that same period of time, that same cohort, gross churn is about what?
Ben Lilienthal
17:41Gross churn,
17:46I'm just trying to do the math in my head, probably single digits.
Nathan Latka
17:49Yeah, mean less than five Yeah,
Ben Lilienthal
17:52so it's still net positive.
Nathan Latka
17:53Yeah, yeah. And that's less than 5% annually, correct?
Ben Lilienthal
17:55Correct.
Nathan Latka
17:55Yeah, so you're saying net negative revenue churn, which is fine. It's the same as saying net revenue retention of north of 100%, because your 10% expansion more than makes up your 5% churn.
Ben Lilienthal
18:06Yeah, right. I mean, generally don't lose customers, and the ones we do are replaced by more seats at the ones.
Cash Flow and Path to Breakeven
Nathan Latka
18:14You're still investing pretty heavily in growth, I mean you've raised capital, you're cash flow negative at this point, right?
Ben Lilienthal
18:19We're getting to breakeven.
Nathan Latka
18:20Yeah, you think it'll happen this year?
Ben Lilienthal
18:22Yeah.
Nathan Latka
18:23And you'll raise you think when that happens or no?
Ben Lilienthal
18:26Yeah, I mean look, what I've learned doing this is you've got these windows to gain market share, and if you can raise money while there's still money to be had, you might as well go and gain market share because then you can manage the cash flow just off revenue, right? Especially if you're not constantly feeding new sales hires.
Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions
Nathan Latka
18:50Yep. No, makes a lot of sense. Very good. Let's wrap up here Ben with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
Ben Lilienthal
18:56Crossing the Chasm.
Nathan Latka
18:58Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Ben Lilienthal
19:03No.
Nathan Latka
19:04Number three, what is your favorite online tool for building your business besides your own?
Ben Lilienthal
19:09My favorite? Gmail.
Nathan Latka
19:11Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Ben Lilienthal
19:15Six to eight.
Nathan Latka
19:16Okay. And what's your situation? Married, single, kiddos?
Ben Lilienthal
19:20Married and first child due in four weeks.
Nathan Latka
19:23Oh, wow. Very... I'm glad That's we got exciting. The
19:27And how old are you?
Ben Lilienthal
19:2846.
Nathan Latka
19:29Last question. What do wish your 20 year old self knew?
Ben Lilienthal
19:35Trust your intuition more.
Nathan Latka
19:37Guys, trust your intuition more. Coming from ScreenMeet, 50 customers paying north of $25,000 in terms of ACV again, helping people transition to a cloud solution for their remote support teams, especially the ones located in call centers. Right now has about 15 people on the team, 5% gross churn, 10 expansion, 105% net revenue retention. They're still burning a bit, but they have cash flow positive in sight. Hopefully this year, 5,000,000 raised launched in 2014 as they look to
20:04scale. Ben, thank you for taking us to the top.
Ben Lilienthal
20:06Great. Thank you, Nathan. I appreciate it.