How Metadata Hit $15M ARR Using 4 Growth Playbooks (Interview with CEO Gil Allouche)

Introduction and Event Context

Nathan Latka

00:00Quick context. This was recorded March twenty eighth and twenty ninth. So a couple weeks ago at my live event, saasopen.com. We had a thousand software CEOs there. If you missed it, we hope to see at the next one, September fifth and sixth in New York City, sasopen.com. But for now, let's jump into the recording.

Gil Allouche

00:18>> The bank account went down and down and down. How do you compete with a giant that has like 400,000,000, if I'm not mistaken, in funding? How do you compete with someone like that? Now how did we make it? And that's the majority of this presentation.

Nathan Latka

00:33Hey folks, if we haven't met yet, my name is Nathan Latka. 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 one went on to create founderpath.com. I raised a large fund to do non dilutive deals with b to b software founders.

00:59So far, we've invested in over 400 software founders totaling a $150,000,000. Here in 2024, we're doing three to four new deals per week. So if you're looking for capital and don't wanna give up equity, go sign up at founderpath.com for free to get your offer. Alright. Let's jump into the interview.

Gil Allouche Introduction: Journey from Early ARR to Growth

Gil Allouche

01:18>> From 2,000,000 to 12,000,000 in ARR and what particular playbooks we use to get there. Some of them are not very sexy, but they've been tried over and over and over and are guaranteed to produce pipeline. So focus on that. A little bit about myself, I'm a software engineer, a robotics software engineer in my background. I turned into a marketer at some point, did a good job because because I have a technical background and today b to

01:41>> b marketing is a very technical job. So I've done well as a VP of marketing and at some point I saw the gap between what is available to a VP of marketing in terms of data and technology and what is possible in terms of data technology for a b to b marketer. And I made a choice to take the leap and start a company that if you're our customer you essentially don't have you don't have to

02:03>> hope for pipeline. You don't have to you know be a rocket scientist to generate pipeline because you use experimentation and data as a means to an end to guarantee that you have predictable pipeline with economies of scale.

Metadata Business Model and Predictable Pipeline

Gil Allouche

02:18>> A little bit about our revenue because that's that's the proof that you should listen. We had a very interesting path where it took us years to find product market fit. For years we built this piece of software and did a lot of customer development. And in 2020 we found what we thought was product market fit. I was so happy after years finally a meaningful revenue number, meaningful ARR, but unfortunately this also happened at the same time.

Finding Product-Market Fit and the Cash Crisis

Gil Allouche

02:50>> Have you ever been in a situation as a founder where you're worried about your runway? I couldn't sleep during that time we had less and less money in the bank and although we had product market fit you know we had a repeatable sales cycle the same kind of customer the same kind of pitch roughly the same amount of revenue but the bank account went down and down and down and investors wouldn't take my money not a

03:17>> good investor I had a bunch of sharks who saw that were bleeding and would give us terrible term sheets, but no good investors want to put their investment on the table. And so in one day I've decided that instead of trying the same thing and trying to raise money with the same story that I have for that market fit, etcetera, I have to take ownership on the future of the company. And so we decided to cut

03:41>> enough of the spending and I'll show you exactly what tactics we did. What we took such aggressive measures to make sure that next time we go fundraising we don't need the fundraise. And when you don't need the money, when you go to an investor and you tell them this is happening anyway, you are invited to join us for this journey. The conversation is very, different. You talk to different people, much kinder people, and you get term

Cost-Cutting Measures and Survival Tactics

Gil Allouche

04:07>> sheets that you're proud of, not something that you're ashamed to go to your board with. So what did we do? First things first, the decision that many people don't like to do, cut expenses. We, I went through every line item in QuickBooks, every line item in my American Express credit card, and whatever was not necessary to keep the lights on, I didn't pay. Just like that. My credit score went down to about 300 at some point

04:33>> with American Express. They didn't like that. And they would call me every day, pay your bill. I was like, I'm not paying anything out of the bill until I have money, I'm paying all of it. And you know that happened eventually, but they didn't like the the the path in between. I have some derogatory remarks and I'm proud of it because it saved the company. I also went to my sales team who were doing great and

04:52>> told them look I can't really pay you but you're doing a good job. Can I convert some of your commissions into stocks? And surprisingly more than 50% said yes. The best salespeople in fact said yes and now they are majority stakeholders in the company. A bunch of other hacks we did. We launched, I talked to all of the customers. I decided that moment that I'm going to meet every customer that I have. We only had like

05:15>> what 50 or 40, but I met all of them and learned that for some of them that were about to churn a piece of the product was still relevant to them. So we launched a mini version of the product and we're able to maintain some of the of the GRR, some of the retention. We did a bunch of other measures for example, every campaign that I had, every marketing competitor had, had all the way to revenue

05:37>> ROI, return on investment. I made sure that every campaign that we have generates revenue, not just pipeline, not just leads, but actually goes all the way to revenue. And so we were able to focus and then quadruple down on what was working.

05:51>> And so that was kind of the measures we took. From here I can tell you we got into break even if you don't see it here, that was the previous presentation, but I got we got all the way to I think $25 in the bank. It's like not a lot of money in the bank. Almost going under and then slowly going up. From that moment I was able to get 200 ks in accounts receivable debt. From

Converting Sales Commissions to Equity and Customer Retention

Gil Allouche

06:12>> that I was able to get 300 ks in convertible note and then $2,000,000 raise and then a 4,500,000 right after that. So being sustainable company chills out investor. They're like alright there's one less risk. I know you're not gonna run out of money. I know this is happening anyway. Looks like you have product market fit. Now I'm going to give you a shot.

06:35>> And that year was a special year because after we raised that money, suddenly the survival was like we didn't have to survive. We didn't wake up every morning, okay how am I making it one more day? And from that mindset when you're not have, I still get cash updates by the way twice a week. So I still have a little bit of PTSD. But I don't wake up every morning thinking I'm running out of cash. And

06:54>> that gives you a little bit of okay, now let's think about the vision. What do I want? And when things started working out the product market fit was really there. And so once we started investing in sales in marketing, we're a little bit more more spendful than before. We started focusing on what is repeatable that can take us to the next level. And we actually negotiated if the year before I negotiated with the board to cut

07:19>> the growth by half because I didn't have the money to support that growth. This year we're like hey how much more can we grow? This may not last forever, which it didn't right the economy tanked. So how do we take advantage of a market that is growing and so we we renegotiated with my leadership team three times and we almost made it to the third goal. So instead of growing to five, instead instead of going to

Reaching Breakeven and Fundraising Success

Gil Allouche

07:39>> seven and a half which was the new goal, we decided 12 and a half is the third goal and we almost made it. Now how did we make it? And that's the majority of this presentation. There are four cool playbooks. Some of them came from us, metadata and some of them came from our customers. Because we run demand generation for our b to b companies, b to b SaaS companies, mid markets, then we have a lot

Scaling Sales and Marketing After Stability

Gil Allouche

08:01>> of proof, a lot of quantitative proof on what works. When I say works, again I don't talk about vanity metrics. I don't care about leads, don't care about impressions, click through rates, all of those cool KPIs that growth hackers talk about, I really don't understand much about. I dive all the way into board level KPIs, revenue, CAC, pipeline. Comparison guides. So we were poor still even with an A round we're competing with giants that were creating

08:29>> categories, spending lots of money on SEO and SEM, owning all the display inventory. So how do you compete with a giant that has like 400,000,000 if I'm not mistaken in funding? How do you compete with someone like that? One hack is called comparison guides. We were able to parachute into deals in the last minute and steal it away. How does it go? So most companies invest advertising and marketing money in the entire funnel. Everything from what

08:58>> is this category about? What's problem are we solving? Who's the best vendor? What are the features? Why is our pricing the best? Well, this is cool. If you have the money to do it, that's amazing. If you don't we didn't. We said hey we're going to focus on one area only. When they get to the place where they're already qualified they already know they want to purchase something and they're just comparing vendors, comparing features based on

09:19>> the problems that they have. I want them to know about us. In fact when they do the comparison, I want to be the one that gives them the comparison guide. And so what did we do?

Overview of Four B2B Growth Playbooks

Gil Allouche

09:31>> First thing is review sites. Just like there is Yelp for consumer, there is G2, there is Trust, URadius and a bunch of other websites to help consumers of SAS determine which vendor they should go with. Right? This exists. We started paying the biggest check I paid was for G2. I pay them for two things. One to have lots of reviews so that our profile looks good. Our customers loved us. I want to make sure it's very

10:00>> public. So we had one of the best g two profiles. If you go there, you're already half in. The second one is how do I know that the deal is being cooked? Right, if my competitor is talking he's not telling me hey I'm talking to this to this prospect you should join in. I need to figure out that the deals are in the making. So I purchased the buyer intent signal. It's a very fancy name to

10:19>> pay for a web log data. G2 would send me their web log data. It's like a bunch of IPs and URLs. And what I did with that is reverse IP so I understand which company it is, which location it is, I know who is my customer so I will go and find the contacts of that customer and I would start bombarding them with emails and ads to tell them hey I think you're in a buying cycle

10:40>> for this particular product. Right? Here's a comparison guide. It's a generic comparison, it's objective comparison guide. And the comparison guide was not created by us, was created by G2. So there is credibility to it. But as the author, as the one who is, sorry as the vendor, I can determine which features I'm sorting the guide by. And I can sort it by the features that I'm best at. For example we're best at ROI, the best vendor

11:06>> in our category. And so I would go and sort the buyer guide based on this feature. And when the customer if they care about ROI or ease of implementation or customer service, boom we come up first. Even if you don't come up first, it's still worthwhile to do it because if you're in the top three or top four, it's very likely that the person is going to give you a shot. They're to give you half an

Playbook 1: Comparison Guides and Buyer Intent Data

Gil Allouche

11:27>> hour on the phone to maybe convince them. Even if they use it as a negotiating tactic, they're going to give you the time of day to at least compare you to someone else. So person guide from review sites, you don't brand it, don't brand it with your logo, make sure the person who is buying understand this is an objective as much as possible objective comparison and you'll get a shot at the table.

11:55>> This is how to do it. It's not very complicated. I do the step by step by the end of this presentation you have my email. I think Nathan will also send you these slides, but this is a very easy to implement within I would say a month you can have this up and running.

12:12>> Second one, Convo ads. Many times CEOs of SaaS companies or VP of marketing for SaaS companies ask me, how can I generate pipeline quickly? I am told that there is no silver bullet. It's wrong. There are some silver bullets out there. You can apply tactics. It's your sum game of time and money and the audience you're going after. Right? Like you have there are some restrictions, but there are particular playbooks that can generate pipeline quickly. I'm

12:38>> not talking about e book leads, webinar attendees. No, I'm talking about people who will hop on a call knowing they're going to be sold to is the person you want to sell to and you have half an hour to try to sell them. I can't guarantee you'll sell them, but you'll have half an hour to try and do it. How do you do it? LinkedIn has this ad type called conversational ad. It's basically a promoted email,

13:00>> right? You get emails all the time on your email, you don't open them, they're in the promotions tab. But on LinkedIn you get emails and if you pay for it as a vendor you can be on top of the list. So you'll be the first person that they see on their email. And it's a chat bot that you can create, it's a workflow that basically ask them and the workflow that we use is either giving a

13:18>> gift card, a donation, or an audit, a marketing audit for your company. So something of value. You get something of value for free, in return you give us your time. Half an hour twenty five minutes for a demo. This tactic we've been using it maybe for four years now. It hasn't been exhausted. All of my customers use it. It hasn't been exhausted. The arbitrage is not there. You can't get it for really cheap anymore because many

Playbook 2: LinkedIn Convo Ads for Demo Generation

Gil Allouche

13:45>> people know about it. But this works and within weeks, within maybe two weeks of executing this campaign you would be able to start seeing a flow of demo request. As simple as that. It's not rocket science, the steps are here. You can determine exactly which buyer, which influencer, which message you want to get them. You pay for the email, you pay for the targeting, you also pay usually for some sort of a value add where it's

14:13>> a gift card or an audit or whatever it is that you want. In return you get a shot in selling to your prospect. And if even if you don't sell at the very least you get objections and you can learn and iterate.

14:26>> Next one, close loss campaign. This didn't used to be like nicely packaged in a slide like that, but I started using this tactic many years ago. It used to be me and my VP of sales sitting in a bar doing shots, two of our laptops open, and as time goes by we're less worried the typos and the type of emails that we send and how many emails and is it perfect? No. But basically the tactic is

14:49>> you lost many deals sometimes to price, sometimes to a competitor, sometimes due to timing and so you go back to the same company and you go back to the same buyers, two different avenues. Same buyer, different company, things change. Same company, different buyer, different point of view. You go and you use whatever reason you lost that deal, It if was budget, maybe now there is budget. If it was timing, maybe now is the right time. If

15:12>> it was a competitor, maybe that competitor sucks. So you go and you have that message, start that conversation with that person. And the other avenue is we want a huge deal just by going to the same person who liked us, but she couldn't bring us into that company. She later joined ThoughtSpot, big ass logo that we still have and we were able to win that just because we woke up. It's like hey you remember us, you

15:31>> liked us, you work in a new company now. And so this is very simple here where you need to gather the data from your Salesforce. You can add on top of that information from user gems. User gems are very unique data source that tells you which people switched which jobs. Another thing that you can put there is the reason why you lost that deal because that's how you personalize the message. You you the opener for the

15:55>> conversation. That simple tactic always gets you pipeline back, always. This is the email that we send. It's not very sexy, it's long, but you can notice two things or maybe you can or you cannot, I'll tell you. First, this is not HubSpot. This is Apollo. We have HubSpot, but we don't send this email from HubSpot because this is not a marketing email. It's a sales email. Also the email doesn't come from a marketing at metadata or

16:20>> my my AE or my VP of sales. No. This comes from the same ICP. I find the same person that I sell to and I find the same person in my company with equal and I send that email from them because there is much more credibility. There's camaraderie between a marketer and a marketer versus a salesperson and a marketer. Those two things very high very high open rates and reply rates. And you can see below, oh

16:42>> no you cannot see. Now you can see below the bunch of opportunities within less than a week. It's a healthy open rate you know. 30% of the people open the email, Some of them reply a bunch of new opportunities. Some of you don't even see here conversations that happen over text. Oh I saw that email. Yeah I'm ready to hop on another call. Oh it wasn't right before let's hop on a call now. So not very

17:06>> sexy tactic. I do it every quarter guaranteed to wake up some buyers and get you some some deals back on the table. It's very important to add new contacts to the companies that the champion move to another one. So, you add more and more people into that contact so that one of them will give you a shot.

17:32>> Last but not least, B2C social. How many times have you heard the sentence Facebook doesn't work for b to b? They say it all the fucking time. All kinds of sacred cows out there. Go and massacre them because you'll be the one who breaks the status quo. You'll be one of the only marketers out there who goes and bid on people on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Reddit, on TikTok. People are everywhere all the time.

Playbook 3: Close-Lost Campaign to Reactivate Pipeline

Gil Allouche

17:57>> And if you target them, if you like, if you target them properly, meaning if you don't use the channels native targeting, sometimes doesn't make any sense for b2b, right? Facebook doesn't care about b2b. They make 90% of their revenue from political and consumer campaigns. So they don't have any job title or company name on seniority, but we do. We're not the only vendor, but we're one of the layers of targeting for a company like Facebook. If

18:20>> you target exactly the same people using the same email, the same PIIs, now you have a whole new channel. And first of all, it's interesting because you'll be able to distract them. They're so accustomed to the usual content of Facebook, some see a b2b ad for them you're going to get their attention. Two, you're going to be doing crazy arbitrage. In our platform we constantly clone automatically campaigns exactly the way they are. One campaign type to

18:48>> the other because the CAC goes down significantly you're competing against many many less people so it gives you the opportunity to target more people with the same budget so take a look every channel gives you different types of targeting capabilities on Quora on Reddit you can target based on questions on tags. People are asking questions about what problems are you solving? Whatever problems that you're solving put them in a long sentence now you'll start targeting based

19:14>> on that tag. It's very very powerful, but you have to experiment. You have to experiment constantly and see what works for you. Just by trying, just by trying you'll be outside of the 99% of the marketers who only go after LinkedIn and Google and that's it.

19:29>> That's it. I'm one and a half minute before my end. Thank you for your time.