Venasolutions Revenue & Funding (2024)

hello everyone my guest today is sean caddo he oversees the execution of venna venna's global growth strategy managing customer relationships and leads the company's executive leadership team before taking on the ceo role he was then as chief operating officer responsible for the company's sales marketing services and customer success teams they are playing in the enterprise budgeting planning and revenue forecasting space shawn are you ready to take us to the top okay uh hi nathan it's nice to meet you so you have two things working for you toronto's hot and so is billing related software and fintech so you're best of both worlds right yeah definitely uh we love being headquartered here in toronto canada uh also our space is a pretty exciting one uh right now it's uh you know we're really seeing a lot of new opportunities in the marketplace so tell us more about the company what do you guys do and how do you price is it pure place ass yeah we're we're a cloud provider we sell on an annual subscription basis and we provide budgeting planning and forecasting software uh for our for companies uh anywhere from uh 20 million in revenue up to uh we have a number of customers that are in the fortune 500 as well oh that's great and just give me a general sense i'm sure you have a lot of different cohorts but generally speaking what's the average customer pay you per month or per year yeah um our customer annual recurring revenue is between 50 and 100 000 uh per year and then we also have professional services that handles uh some of the more complex uh implementations uh and process automation work if you look at a cash basis over the past 12 months what percentage of the cash you collected was professional service versus true occurring oh we're um you know the majority of our uh revenue that's coming in is software uh cloud-based subscription revenue uh and uh early on or in the first couple of years the company had more of an even split it was actually a little more weighted on the professional services side uh but we've made that uh transition right after the first couple of years and uh we're definitely a cloud of sas and when was that year one sean when did you launch yeah ben has been around for uh seven years so um we uh we're the youngest provider of uh software in our space but we are the fastest growing uh company uh with our uh annual recurring revenue doubling uh year over year that's great and give me a sense of what you've scaled to in terms of total customers using you yeah we're approaching uh 500 customers uh now which we're pretty excited about and focusing on customer success and customer satisfaction is the key enabler that's helping us uh you know bring new customers on board you know we see getting customers live being really successful uh with the product and then you know the the financial world cfos directors of fp a uh you know they they're they do connect and they do talk and uh and that kind of word of mouth is really uh helping drive uh new sales for us in addition to our marketing and sales efforts and sean 500 customers at that minimum acv have called 50 grand right puts you at about 25 million bucks a year or about 2 million a month on the low side you said you go up to 100 grand too is that accurate you're above 25 million are at this point yeah that's uh that's correct as a private company we don't get into the actual details of exactly what our annual recurring revenue is or our total revenue um but uh it's definitely north of what you're uh you know what you said there that's great so look a lot of companies i have on the you know they're in the 80 to 90 range and i always like to ask the question it's a big metric uh what year do you think you passed a hundred million an arr ah it's a great uh great question um you know we're we're on the trajectory right now we're sticking to our strategy and our game plan and we do we do expect uh you know sometime in the future something like uh like an ipo could definitely be in the cards uh for bennett and that kind of revenue range on the annual recurring side is definitely the ballpark for that so you know we're uh we're looking uh to do something potentially in the you know the the three to four uh four year range got it good good so we'll call it 28 kind of 21 22 ish something like that oh no absolutely much more uh absolutely higher than that but uh i don't want to like i said no no no no no no sorry sorry 20 21 2022. oh absolutely in terms of the timing of the years yeah sorry for the confusion there yeah abs absolutely that you know we want to just continue to execute our strategy and focus on uh world-class customer experience for our customers and continuing to enhance and develop our product you know we think we have a great product today but we're really excited about where we're taking it in the future that's great and and i want to get more into kind of how you're driving this growth in terms of land and expand but i want to make sure everyone has a clear understanding of what the product does first so can you tell us specifically how someone inside of one of these organizations is using you yeah absolutely so um as i mentioned before it's cloud-based software it's a centralized database um that exists in amazon web services environment we're able to connect to their sources source systems like their netsuite or their oracle or their sap maybe their sales force or their marketing automation system we bring in the data in real time into our centralized database and from there we have a workflow engine we can add all the process and the rules and the reporting to automate a process like your annual budgeting and planning uh as well as uh your your reporting because once you've locked down a budget and you've got all the the routing the rules and the reporting you want to then report your actuals versus your budget and so that that becomes an automated process so finance is no longer pulling data and trying to create these reports on a weekly or monthly basis all of that reporting's automated and they can spend time analyzing the data and getting key insights into their business what's your source of truth though there sean so if you're pulling from like networking these things a lot of these things might be dependent on sales people updating a closed deal and that's potentially if you're pulling that data how you see you know revenue coming in but what's the source what's the again the key source of data on the actual revenue collected what are you plugging into yeah so we'd be plugging into in that case the erp is usually the final source of truth inside an organization and we're using that data as the as the primary source so that's one of the the benefits of vena is instead of having spreadsheets floating around your organization where everybody's got different information i may have one version of a spreadsheet somebody else may have another we're dealing with a centralized database and a whole template based system so everyone is actually looking at the same data and they're just we're just controlling access and permissions to that information but it essentially provides a single source of the truth tying back to your core system in uh in real time david at expense pi has built very something special in this space but it's been bottoms up the kind of verbage you're using with me and the sick kind of the positioning sounds to me like you're much more top-down you know sell directly to the cfo and then go down is that accurate yeah our our primary target is uh usually the directors of fp a um and then of course what is that what's fpa um financial planning and analysis um and so that's the person who leads kind of the budgeting and planning cycle inside an organization and they're involved in it they usually lead the opportunity with us uh but the cfo is definitely involved because this is a strategic cloud-based platform that they're adding on top of their erp or their other course systems so it's very important it's a tool that they're going to use on a daily basis and if your year one acv is between 50 and 100 as a ceo kind of leading the organization what are you comfortable spending to acquire these folks uh so we we have a pretty healthy uh you know payback um and a great uh uh ltv to clack uh ratio for us and so you know typically in our business people are looking to get somewhere in that 12 month payback is that where you are on decree and we're yeah we're we're in uh we're in that range uh we're in the 12 to 18 month range that's good so it's fair to assume you're totally willing to spend between 50 you know first year acv on acquisition uh yeah up to up to uh first year um uh annual recurring revenue to acquire a customer and we have a very healthy uh customer retention rate uh where our business we're actually able to grow our business on an annual basis with our existing base and so then we're out on top of that we're adding a lot of new customers and that helps contribute to growing our annual recurring revenue uh a hundred percent yeah uh year over year what is when you look at net revenue expansion right it sounds like you have very healthy expansion revenue more than makes up for any gross kind of lost revenue what is net revenue retention year every year yeah we're our revenue retention is about 104 consecutive grade for the last couple of years congratulations that's not easy to do uh and what's driving most the expansion are they adding seats or adding on additional features what are your inside sales folks using yeah it's a combination of two things they're either adding and expanding a number of business users they're adding because our we have the um a great uh success rate in end user customer deployment this is where a lot of our competitors might fall down and so they're able to get more people in the business involved in using our product um and because of our primary excel based interface and that's comfortable for people and so uh expansion of seats is one and the second area is they're adding additional processes which is another unique differentiator for benna a lot of our competitors provide one point solution and that might be this budgeting and planning solution we definitely do that the majority of our customers use us for that but we also do things like the financial close process and month end close which is something really a controller leads inside of an organization so it's a single product or a single platform to automate all of your financial processes that you need to do on top of your erp and so that will be things like your reporting and analytics your month end close your budgeting and planning and there's a number of other solutions that our platform provides and we have we have templates and process and best practices that comes out of the product uh or out of the box with our product um that enables us to go well beyond just budgeting planning and reporting we're running in a timer so last few economics questions before we close with a famous five what do you assume lifetime value is in months and in in dollar figures oh i you know i off the top of my head i don't know what it is i would guess it's in the uh you know upwards north of 500 uh 500 million well well well north of that you mean 500 thousand sorry 500 thousand dollars i was gonna say i'm in the wrong business i'm getting into financial erp i'm getting into the erp space yeah thank you for the correction yeah right that's okay that's it so 500 grand in what four or five years something like that uh yeah you know with the 50 to 100 that i gave you uh earlier you know say five to ten years uh for a customer lifetime um and you know you do get changes of cfos and things like that that can cause people to leave if they've had familiarity with another product in the past yeah what's team size today uh we're 220 employees um all toronto uh know about uh just under 200 based here in toronto okay where's everybody else uh we have them some in uh throughout the us uh and then we also have an office in the uk as well and then we're going to market internationally uh through some strategic partnerships too great and funding have you i want you to tell me you've bootstrapped this but i'm guessing that's not the case how much have you raised uh well we took uh two years ago uh uh then it took the first round of major institutional investment uh it was 30 million dollars um raised from santana growth uh partners and they uh they're they're a member of our board now and a great partner uh for us and that's all the capital 30 million series a done there was um uh there was some stuff before that i think technically would be a series b okay that was done and there were some smaller based investors uh and angel that occurred in this in the previous years i don't have the exact figure uh but it wasn't uh it wasn't uh a major round like that one that was got it but total end is what like maybe like 31 32 million something like that yeah so i'm i'm going to estimate it in the in the 30 to 40 range yeah yeah yeah very good okay let's wrap up here with the famous five shawn number one what's your favorite business book ah okay well it's an old one uh but i've read it i believe i've read it four times now i keep going back to it and i love it and that's uh crossing the chasm you know what as you were describing that thing is before so as you were described i'm going he i can tell it's going to be a jeffrey moore reference and it's going to be that beautiful orange cover with the beautiful graph it's a good one number two is there a ceo you're following or studying right now um you know the the ceo that i'm following the most right now on uh you know on twitter and paying close attention to is my wife uh she's the uh the ceo of uh of our house and uh you know she's pretty active in uh social media that's great number three what's your favorite online tool for building a business oh for building a business um i thought you might ask me more on the personal side i was going to tell you spotify because i just stopped using that in my down time you're cool your cool factor sean is going through the roof spotify good number two num num i'm joking number four how many hours of sleep to get every night yeah about six maybe a little bit more okay and what's your situation obviously married you have any kiddos yeah um i'm married uh to my wife shannon and we have a nine-year-old daughter avery oh that's great and how old are you how old am i yeah i'm 47. take us home last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew um i think the the biggest thing is to think big um and uh you know being canadian i think sometimes we're a little bit more on the conservative side so thinking a little bigger you know and taking a few more risks uh earlier in life uh you know that's what i tell myself guys there you have it from sean selling into the directors of finance and planning started in 2011 venez solutions now 220 people based between toronto and other remote locations serving over 500 customers at this point many of them in the fortune 500 going over a hundred percent year over year first year acv between 50 and 100 000 bucks doing north of 25 million bucks right now in ar healthy economics 104 net revenue retention annually fifty thousand dollar cacre totally totally willing to spend up uh one year up to first year acv on acquisition again aiming to really get into that space where potentially going public looks interesting in the next three or so years sean thank you so much for taking us to the top and nathan it was great chatting with you