How Leal Reached $15M Revenue with 700 Customers and 120% Net Revenue Retention (Interview with Co-Founder Camilo Martinez)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

0:01Hey folks, my guest today is Camilo Martinez. He's the Colombian co-founder of Leal with a Kellogg MBA and a background in Ben Colombia investment banking. He earlier founded Impulse Travel, a pioneering sustainable tourism e-commerce in Colombia. Again, now focused on building an a much more competitive sort of CRM space. Camilo, are you ready to take us to the top?

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

0:20Yeah. Thank you for having me, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

0:21All right. Take you bet. Take us into the to Liao. So I'm gonna go to go to the website while you explain what is it that you're selling?

What Leal Sells: Customer Marketing Platform for Retailers

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

0:30We have a customer marketing platform for retailers, so we help retailers get the best out of their first party data. ⁓ just help them Making a unique 360 view of their customer on all of their ⁓ sales channels. We're more working mostly with offline retailers and we help them ⁓ monetize this data by predicting revenue of each customer. So we're all about customer lifecycle marketing and we're all about personalization at scale.

700 Customers Across 13 Countries

Nathan Latka

1:04Really interesting. And is this up to date? You're serving seven hundred paying customers?

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

1:08Yes, we're right now in thirteen different countries, mostly Latin America, all the way from ⁓ Mexico to Chile.

Nathan Latka

1:19Okay, but is is seven are you north of seven hundred customers today or it's still seven hundred customers?

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

1:23We're about ⁓ seven hundred, yeah.

Nathan Latka

1:26Okay, 700 customers. Interesting. So when someone signs up for you and starts paying you, what's you do a lot of things. What's the product or the dashboard they use the most?

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

1:35So the first thing that we do is that we integrate with the point of sale system of the retailers and we're able to identify consumers mostly through loyalty programs. ⁓ this way we also build a dashboard where we provide the whole customer database, all of the analytics, so you have all the demographics, psychographics, all the transactional ⁓ buy and behavior of each con ⁓ consumer. And from there you can also orchestrate one-on-one campaigns. One of the things that we've ⁓ built is AI decisioning engine where we are able to do A-B testing to the power of N. And we test different channels, different messages, different offers, different days of the week, times of the day. to see how we can ⁓ earn c consumer attention ⁓ and how can we just bring customer back on the on this retailer's doors. ⁓ and this way we're able to increase the average revenue per customer.

2:44So you're in seven retailers, you plug into their POS systems, but y you don't sell the hardware yourself directly, right? You just play nice with everyone else's hardware.

2:51We're we've been integrated to about three hundred and fifty different systems, so all everything related to e commerce's, ⁓ point of sale systems, this payment terminals, WhatsApp sales channels, ⁓ every piece of software and hardware where there's an interaction with a c ⁓ with a customer.

Pricing Structure: Licensing, User-Based Fees, and Credits

Nathan Latka

3:16And walk me through how you decided to charge for this platform. What's the average customer pay per month? And then walk us through your pricing options here.

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

3:23So we started charging a fee per location. We're now we changed now our pricing and we have three different ⁓ verticals on how we monetize. So the first one it's a licensing fee. ⁓ so we have three different plans, a basic, a professional, and an enterprise plan. ⁓ it starts from thirty dollars and enterprise plan goes starting at two thousand dollars per month. Then we have a user-based fee. So depending on the size of the customer base of the retailer, we have different buckets. And then we have credits that could be used for AI tokens or for channels or for communication. So think of SMS, push notification, WhatsApp. And this credits are globally so They can just decide on which country they're gonna be sending communications to their customers.

Nathan Latka

4:28So make all that simple for my audience they can follow along. If you look at your average customer tear, are they paying a grand a month, ten grand a month? What would you say the average is when you sum all that up that you just described?

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

4:38⁓ we're at about two thousand dollars a month per merchant.

4:44Interesting. And is that when you 'cause there's a big debate right now going on with these AI tools, right? Do you pay, do you do you charge and upsell credits? Do you charge base fees? Do you charge per seat? Do you charge per location? You're sort of doing all of it.

4:57So our main source of revenue it's gonna be on on on user base. ⁓ so we don't have a per seat ⁓ pricing and we've also been ⁓ experimenting other sorts of pricing that is outcome based. So ⁓ we are able to prove an ROI for each retailer that's working with us, we're able to prove an uplift, and we are ⁓ experimenting to having a take rate on this uplift.

5:24Interesting, interesting. Okay, tell me more about your background and the history. When did you guys write the first line of code for the software? What year?

5:31It was two thousand sixteen.

5:33And are you an engineer by trade or no?

5:36No, I've always been on the business side. I I did investment banking. I I I worked on the retail space, on the advisory role. ⁓ I noticed how much money retailers spend on marketing and how little data they had on the return of this dollar spend. So that's where I decided to build a tech company that would be making this spend crystal clear.

5:59Okay, so do you have co how many co founders?

6:02I have one co founder. She is Florence Bretch, she's from El Salvador, and we met at Calog while studying our MBA.

6:10And what you do is just play nice and say, Well split equity fifty fifty at the start?

6:14We did, we did. against all of the advice that our teachers gave us, but it it worked and we've had we've been ten years together and it's been ⁓ working perfectly.

6:30What was the first moment in that first year where you realized, ⁓ we might be on to something?

6:35Well, ⁓ we we did validation of a hundred and twenty merchants before launching and ⁓ a hundred and twenty said like hey we would definitely sign up once you launch. But once we had the platform ready, it took us almost a year to to have it up and running. we of those one hundred and twenty, we're only able to sign ten, but this ten They gave us one location in just one s ⁓ part of the city in Bogota, that's where we launched. And in a matter of a month, they told us like we want to go nationwide with your platform. So that's where we said, okay, we're really helping them. We are able to prove ⁓ an ROI and their customers are loving it because we launched as a loyalty solution. Now we've expanded to to be a whole ⁓ customer lifecycle life cycle marketing platform.

Nathan Latka

7:35Mm-hmm. So twenty sixteen first line of code, twenty seventeen first paying customer.

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

7:40It was at the end of twenty sixteen, yeah.

7:43Okay. And do you remember what year you broke your first million dollars of ARR?

7:48That was two thousand eighteen.

7:53twenty eighteen. What was your top growth channel? You know, getting that first million.

7:58It was ⁓ outbound of just ⁓ strong sales team, ⁓ one-on-one, and mostly offline. So this was just before the pandemic where people would not take a meeting online, they would just wanna meet face to face. ⁓ but the good thing is that we had an unbelievable ⁓ s low customer acquisition value compared to the ⁓ lifetime value that we had. ⁓ Very low turn rates, so it was a successful go to market strategy.

8:33What were those numbers can you share when you say super low CAC, really long LTV, r low churn?

8:39So we we had about $250 customer acquisition costs ⁓ per merchant location. And ⁓ those at the time, those merchants were paying us on average $100 a month. And they were staying with us for about 54 months. So just do the math.

9:01Yeah. Hundred per month per location. Yeah, yeah, interesting. D have you been able to hold those unit economics through today as you've scaled, or have they gotten slightly worse just because of law large numbers?

9:12Well, we changed the dynamics of our business tremendously during the pandemic. We we we were very strong in the long tail and then we moved up market, so we're now serving way bigger clients, so way bigger tickets. And also as we go bigger, ⁓ the churn rates are are are are lower. So we we have something like zero point three percent monthly churn rate, it maybe even less. and we have a very positive net revenue retention over a hundred and twenty percent. So that that that that's been ⁓ pushing a lot of our growth. Just things like growth.

9:44Wow. Yeah, that hundred and twenty percent net revenue retention. It's hard to not grow when you have revenue retention that high.

9:55It is, it's well we're in the loyalty space, so something that we've been making sure is that we make our clients ⁓ enamored with what we do and just try to bring the trying to be their most profitable marketing channel.

10:15So Camilo, with this pivot to enterprise in ⁓ during the COVID period, how did that impact revenue growth? Do you remember when you broke maybe five million of ARR?

10:23We hit that two years ago. ⁓ our our business was destroyed during the pandemic. We lost almost ninety percent of our revenue, so we had to rebuild everything from scratch. the the pandemic for the retail in Latin America was brutal. actually here in Colombia, for example, we had almost a year of lockdowns and we were very focused on brick and mortar. So that's where we We had to rethink our business. We we had to forego a lot of our invoices just to make sure that coming out of the pandemic we would still have clients.

11:04How low did your your bank balance get during that time?

11:07We were one month away from running out of cash.

11:16Wow, what did you do?

11:18Well, we went to our investors. We we were a bootstrap business. We raised our first institutional round in two thousand eighteen. ⁓ and then in twenty nineteen ⁓ we raised another round. Twenty twenty we were about to close a huge, huge, huge round. And actually we were like with the investors in our office before airports were getting ⁓ closed. So With this new investors, obviously the conversation was in hold and we went to our legacy investors said, like, hey, we have a good business, the business is about to die unless that we get some cash ⁓ in the bank. So we were the first ⁓ entrepreneurs from like all of their portfolio that were asking for money, so we're ⁓ lucky enough to to to get ⁓ support from ⁓ our investors and they said like we're not gonna let a good business die because of something that's so external and that's where we ⁓ that's how we were able to survive during those two nasty years.

12:23So did the twenty twenty VCs with the big round, do they pull their term sheet?

12:27They pull it out, yeah, and they never came back.

12:29Okay, so what was the first raise amount in twenty eighteen?

12:33⁓ one million.

Nathan Latka

12:35Okay, and then you did another round in twenty nineteen for how much?

12:38three million.

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

12:40Three million. Okay, wow, and then I think you my research team told me you did another deal in twenty twenty four, right?

Nathan Latka

12:45We did. We we raised our series A that it was for almost eleven million.

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

12:51Okay. So can I add those up? Eleven million plus three million plus one million. You've you've ⁓ raised about fifteen million total.

12:57We've raised six more milyen since then.

13:01like a series A extension? Okay, that was last year.

13:02Yeah. That was last year and ⁓ a little chunk came early this year. ⁓ some really cool thing happened also this year. We we reach profitability. yeah, that was something really t ⁓ huge to celebrate. And I think we're not gonna raise any more money. for a soft as a service company, ⁓ what ⁓ the great things are happening right now in AI, I don't see any point of why raising more money would be

Nathan Latka

13:17Ha congrats.

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

13:36Something that we would need.

13:38So you broke five million of revenue ARR in twenty twenty four. Now in twenty twenty-six you're profitable. Can I ask you what your ARR is today?

13:45I I can't disclose that, Nathan, but like we're north of that.

13:49Okay. Can I I mean earlier you told me seven

13:51Something really cool happened was that we were two hundred employees. We're now thirty-five and we're growing ⁓ we are we're starting to to be highly profitable and and yeah, and I think ⁓ we we just started a new era where you can just do way more with less.

14:14Can I take the 700 customers you told me earlier times the average they're paying you of 2,000? I mean, that would put you at 1.4 million a month of revenue.

14:22Well the the good thing about this is that we have merchants that ⁓ we serve throughout all Latin America and their contracts are over a million, so I'm just giving you the average. ⁓ we have ⁓ some sweet deals that have ⁓ really pulled our our our revenue ⁓ up.

14:45Well I mean but those two numbers though, we're not disclosing any new information. You already shared it. Is there any reason I can't multiply those two numbers together to get one point four million of monthly recurring revenue?

14:54Well, those are averages. Yeah.

14:57Yeah, if they're averages I should be able to multiply, right? So are you s I guess just to cut to the chase, are you saying basically you're not at one point four million of MRR yet, but you think you can break that this year?

Nathan Latka

15:05I say I can't disclose, but yeah, yeah y your numbers do add up.

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

15:14Okay. I just don't want my audience to blow you up in the comments. They're gonna say, Camilo, you already gave Nathan seven hundred customers and you said the average customer paid two grand a month, and they're gonna multiply and say, Why can't you just say that the multiplication is one point four million a month? So last chance on this, then we'll move on.

15:29Yeah, we're we're we're we're we're we're we're about that ⁓ revenue level that you're mentioning.

15:36This is exciting. You could celebrate this. What makes you nervous about about shouting it from the rooftops? Just competitive pressure?

15:42Course.

15:43Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Well look, you have all optionality on the table because you're profitable with a smaller team, higher revenue per employee, which may you means you can make long term investments for your customers. Let's talk about that. Where are you taking this product?

15:55Well, we all are about retail, so we're ⁓ just expanding in the regions that we operate. We are ⁓ right now exploring opportunities with some of our brands ⁓ that we're only serving in LATAM, but they want to take us globally, so that's a huge opportunity that we're look really looking into. ⁓ the second thing is that we We're trying to become the marketing hub for this retailer. So we're starting to look into retail media. We're starting to look also into paid media. So just be like ⁓ the the the the just becoming like an autonomous growth center for this retailers. Do you just tell me what are your objectives? I'll let you know where you should be investing your money if it's CRM, if it's loyalty, if it's meta, TikTok, or also how can I monetize your customer base through third parties that would like to pay for ⁓ communications to your customer base, so retail media. So we've we've been building a lot of ⁓ of product just to make the marketing of this retailers as easy as it could get. ⁓ just help them with all the analytics and we all with all the orchestration, ⁓ without much sweat.

17:25This makes a lot of sense. Where what are you mentioned to get your first million of revenue, it was a lot of outbound. You're still growing, you know, from twenty twenty four you've more than doubled your revenue. What are your top growth channels today?

17:36We have a mix of inbound and outbound. We're ⁓ doing a lot of ABM. We've ⁓ also have a strong channel ⁓ that we've been working with ERPs, working with payment processors, and different e commerce players so we can become strong ⁓ enhanc enhancements of their platform and just opening a new growth engine for their clients by taking advantage of the data which this ⁓ clients have been haven't been able to ta to do. ⁓ and while still outbound is strong for us and referrals

18:19So those ERP partnerships that you're mentioning, I imagine you just reach out to a lot of the companies that you've already built integrations with that I'm showing here on my screen right now and you say, Hey, do you want a partnership? I mean, are these typically a financial relationship? You know, if Shopify sends you a customer, you pay them a fee, or is it just more like co marketing together?

18:35we have everything under the sun. We are part of the marketplaces of some of this players. So this players, they they don't they they they they're not actively selling us, but like they're they're just an abilitator. For some others we have some revenue share agreements. ⁓ with some others ⁓ we they're resellers of our platform just directly. So it's it's been a fantastic new world for us. We started exploring this channels ⁓ last year and we've we've been working ⁓ hand in hand with this players and they've been helping us grow.

19:19How you mentioned today that you're doing ABM inbound and outbound. What was the total team size you said you have today?

19:24⁓ we're less than forty, ⁓ thirty eight.

19:28How many of those folks are focused on like sales and marketing, ABM, inbound, outbound, et cetera?

19:33that team has ⁓ eight people.

19:36Can you take me into their day to day? Like what are those SDRs doing? Are they emailing a hundred new people a day? Are they taking thirty demos a week? What does it look like?

19:44So we no longer have human SDRs, we have just a suite of agents that they're they're working on. on orchestrating different communications through LinkedIn, WhatsApp, ⁓ calls and emailing. then we have other sorts of agents that are qualifying ⁓ this demand. At the same time part of our team is just trying to ⁓ create content so we can have stronger positioning on each LLM and lastly ⁓ we are having only two ⁓ AEs that are the ones that are serving those demands.

20:28Interesting. So would it be a fair statement to say, you know, when I take your revenue divided by thirty eight FTEs, your revenue per employee today is like over four hundred K, which is dramatically up from what it was a year or two ago. Is that because you've built this swarm of agents to help you drive revenue?

Nathan Latka

20:45Well, I think the major cuts that we had besides this demand gen team was also on the engineering side. We had almost eighty five engineers at one point. Right now we're a team of about fifteen ⁓ also doing agentic engineering. So those have been cuts that have been company wide and that has been helping us improve the the the amount of revenue permit.

Camilo Martinez, Co-Founder

21:14Camillo, Camillo, you've been very transparent with my audience. You've taught them a bunch of stuff. Before we wrap, is there anything you wanted to talk about that I didn't ask about?

21:21Yeah, I I would say that one of the things that I'm ⁓ fascinating about this AI world is that in April everybody was talking about the SaaS apocalypse and nowadays the market has been getting traction again. And I I I I I got to see that we are like in a great opportunity to take advantage against the incumbents. We are building product faster than ever. We have a price point that incumbents can compete. And at the same time we're in a region where companies they they they don't have many vendors to pick. So Latin America has been a great opportunity for us because we have state of the art technology ⁓ for a price point that global players can compete and we're also being able to integrate a retailer in fifteen days while incumbents are taking almost twelve months. So that's where we are seeing a fantastic opportunity for the years ahead.

22:26How committed are you? If someone comes if HubSpot comes to you and offers you 160 million all cash up front to sell the company, do you take the deal?

22:32man, not today. I I think we're still really small for the dreams that we have.

22:40One hundred and sixty million's a lot of money.

22:43We've had offers in the past, Nathan. I think ⁓ it will come one day but I love what I do and ⁓ I don't see myself just being an exited founder yet.

22:53What's the highest acquisition offer you've turned away?

22:56man, I can't talk about that.

22:59Fair enough. All right, Camille, as we wrap up here, if people want to follow you online, where can they find you?

23:05My LinkedIn it's Camilo Martinez F. same with the the the the rest of the social media. ⁓ my email is ⁓ camilo at leal.co

23:17Guys, there you have it. Liao launches a loyalty program for retailers in Colombia back in 2016, first line of code. 2017, ⁓ customers start scaling. They break a million of revenue in 2018, really scaling outbound with a $250 CAC, $100 per month prolocation price point, and a lifetime value over fifty-four months enabled them to go raise their first million dollars, added three million to that raise in 2019. And moving forward to 2024 is when they broke five million dollars of revenue and closed a series A of eleven million, but that was Not before COVID almost blew them out of the water. They had one month of cash left in the bank. They pivoted to go up market and now they're off to the races. They've more than doubled revenue since 2024. Profitability has increased, revenue per employee has increased, net revenue retention has increased to over 120%, and gross churn monthly is under zero point three percent, with the average customer now paying two K per month. They've scaled over 700 retailers connecting to their POS systems to help them bring back. Those loyal customers more to increase cart values. Camilo, thank you for taking us to the top.

Nathan Latka

24:19Thank you, Nathan.