How Zenbusiness CEO Denis Barrier grew Zenbusiness to $150M revenue and 800K customers in 2024.

quick context this was recorded March 28th and 29th so a couple weeks ago at my live event SAS open.com we had a thousand software CEOs there if you missed it we hope to see at the next one September 5th and 6th in New York City SAS open.com but for now let's jump into the recording I lay in bed and pray for customers to come to the website have you more than doubled since 2021 oh my God yes okay great so in 2021 you did 41 million so today he's doing more than 8 [Music] hey folks if we haven't met yet my name is Nathan ladka I launched and sold my first software company back in 2015 and went on to write a book about it which you guys made a Wall Street Journal bestseller purchasing over 30,000 copies thank you so much for that after the book I launched this show and went went on to create founder path.com I raised a large fund to do non-dilutive deals with B2B software founder so far we've invested in over 400 software Founders totaling $150 million here in 2024 we're doing three to four New Deals per week so if you're looking for Capital and don't want to give up Equity go sign up at founder path.com for free to get your offer all right let's jump into the interview Ross you've got such a great story though because obviously you were in the driver's seat at home away but you weren't necessarily the founder front line what was that experience like and specifically what was it like when you signed or they the founders told you we're selling for 3.5 billion to Expedia well first I need to correct you 3.9 billion there we go we like a 400 million 400 million extra we don't want to lose that um well I mean it was it was great I mean we went public we raised all this this money uh and then we went public and then uh we sold to Expedia and still to this day Expedia says you know was our best acquisition and we we let him a great product that's great well we're going to we're going to close the interview with more on the Expedia deal but first we want to learn a ton about Zen business over the next 20 minutes we're going to focus on customers and how Ross thinks about serving the customer not being stuck in a SAS business model which I think you do extremely well we're going to talk about deals that he's been through both you know he bought a bank why did he buy a bank and then we'll also talk about Capital to an extent how he's capitalized the company how he's using it to fuel growth so on that note what does zen business do while people get a shot at your homepage here yeah I mean I think the the fundamental issue for entrepreneurs nowadays and we really really focus on firsttime entrepreneurs it's scary going out there and uh you know doing it on your your own so what we do is we provide everything to launch run and grow a small business we primarily focus on service-based businesses primarily because those are the businesses that get that get created so think of we start with the formation whether it's a es Corp LLC then we go into all the compliance that you have to do then taxes accounting website banking uh marketing just everything a small business needs to uh get up and running all in one place that's why the previous you know we are a platform we've always been a platform we're a SAS platform and um you know everything that the previous speaker was talking about is very very true we surveyed our customers Ross before you talk survey you you did a very smart survey process I want to you have receipts to back this up this is what the website looked like in 2018 I always want to bring right CU you don't want to learn from a Founder doing 100 million of what they're doing now you want to learn what they did to get there so that you can match it to where you are right now so this is what you launch this this is how you described it pay zero to file plus State fees was this like a plg motion or what the fun it look like when you started yeah it very much was a plg motion and I tell everybody I lay in bed and pray for customers to come to the website you know and and they they did yeah I mean we we started out at free uh then we went to paid and now the market is uh you know we've been so successful now the market has went back to zero which is where we've went uh uh and we're happy you launched though a combination and this is what's fascinating these were the six products that Ross launched in 2018 and if you guys look at these only two of those six have a dash month after it right only two of them two of them are fixed fees right so you could say services and then one is plg free how I mean I don't know if you were you thinking sort about all the business models or this is what your customers asked for uh no we were we were initially just trying to disrupt the incumbents and so a free offering is always the best way to do that um and um you know we're back to that right now it's very competitive in the space so your this is news because you moved from 2018 to 2020 this is what your pricing looked like so why did you move from we just saw to this uh because we were leaving a bunch of money on the table how did you know that you just um that's a good question uh because you know the the problem with uh a zero cost off well let me put it this way the market wasn't at a zero cost offering so I mean I think you have to very plugged into the to the market now the market is at a zeroc cost offering and and everybody's there at that time we were leading it and it got us into the market it it got us our rounds of funding it got us our customers and you know early on we were just really trying to get that motion and uh to discover so the long answer is we discovered our customers willing to pay a lot more for uh the formation piece and then the the real uh uh trick here or the real learning and this this is nothing new in hindsight is that customers want a simple solution presented to them they want everything in one place you know we are the system of record for our our customers Ross back that up though cuz this is your current pricing page and it looks like the the opposite of simple yeah well um yeah it is but this is where the market is sorry this is where the this is where the market is now it that that's not really true it is a simple pricing you can either get starter Pro or premium that's it's simple it's right there right that's right it's simple there but you know I'll challenge you with any uh consumer-based uh product this is pretty simple and and again it's not to your previous speaker I just love him maybe he'll come on as a consultant for us expensive SS expensive um is you know we're the platform play we've always been the SAS platform Play We in some sense we've created this complexity at at initially it wasn't complicated now it's complicated because all of the other folks in the space you know they have to check the box so we've got what Zen business does we've got what they well you said you were leaving money on the table in 2020 you move from this pricing to this pricing can I ask have you more than doubled Revenue since 2021 when you made these pricing changes I don't know you know I'm very uh cautious because it's so competitive about what do you think our revenue is well I don't want to guess that but I'm trying to let you get out here with just a percentage have you more than doubled since 2021 oh my God yes okay great so in 2021 you did 41 million so today he's doing more than 8 he tricked me tricked me so today he's doing more than 82 million bucks of Revenue which may be north of that reading body language and these very expensive shoes no comment he can't he can't I had to push him so hard for this we were having a great time you were in your studio I'm like I it took me till a minute 11:47 on the podcast to finally I said I used actually we're going to learn from Andrew here in a second Warner uh he's going to interview the next guest but Andrew one of his tactics if you're launching a podcast and you want to like get data and do it in a polite way is it's called a l basically so I said you can see the text I said Ross I think you're doing out a 40 million run rate today and he jumps in and says we're well you remember he said we're well north of that you cut me off yeah yeah so they're doing well he can't comment too much on that I want to go though into you weren't just sleeping on your bed and praying uh you were testing a lot of grow early on I was cuz we didn't know what we were doing but we figured it out fair enough how did you figure this out all a lot almost the majority of your SEO traffic is coming from the com programmatic SEO the state name plus LLC yeah I'll tell you what this this is a this is really uh DNA for us uh as the founding CTO at homeway homeway was even made it into the Google book as the vertical search for vacation rentals so we were a top 10 rated organic search on the face of the planet there's a lot of homeway folks there's a lot of Legal Zoom folks there's a lot of Expedia folks...