Founder Interview
How Naehas Reached $40M ARR at 25% Growth Serving Top Financial Institutions (Interview with CEO Rab Govil)
- Interview Date
- November 6, 2023
- Interviewee
- Rab GovilCEO and Chairman
Company Metrics at Interview Time
ARR (2023)
$40M
Revenue Growth (YoY) (2023)
25%
EBITDA Margin (2023)
20%
Team Size (2023)
210
Avg Contract Value (2023)
$1M
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Rab Govil during his interview with Nathan Latka in November 2023 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Naehas’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Naehas reached $40M ARR in 2023, up from $35M in 2022, a 25% year-over-year growth rate.
- 02The company has maintained a 20% EBITDA margin for a long period of time, as stated by Rab Govil.
- 03Naehas was founded in 2011 and broke $1M in revenue in 2013, its second year of operation.
- 04Naehas raised only $300K in its seed round and approximately $2M to $3M in total early funding, remaining largely bootstrapped.
- 05The company has 210 full-time employees as of November 2023.
- 06Investors own approximately 17% of the company and the ESOP pool is 14%.
- 07Until 2022, Naehas had no dedicated sales force and grew entirely through word of mouth.
- 08Rab Govil owns the majority of the company and is the primary investor in the business.
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| ARR (2023) | $40M | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| Revenue (2022) | $35M | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| Revenue (2013) | $1M | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| Revenue Growth (YoY) (2023) | 25% | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| EBITDA Margin (2023) | 20% | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| Team Size (2023) | 210 | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| Avg Contract Value (range low) (2023) | $1M | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| Seed Round Raised | $300K | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| Total Early Funding Raised | $2M to $3M | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| Investor Ownership (2023) | 17% | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| ESOP Pool (2023) | 14% | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| Year Founded | 2011 | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
| Historical Revenue Growth Rate (2013 to 2022) | 30% | Founder interview, Nov 2023 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Naehas reported $40M ARR in 2023, up from $35M in 2022, representing 25% year-over-year growth. The company broke $1M in revenue in 2013 and reached $10M around 2019, growing at roughly 30% per year for much of its history.
Customers
Naehas serves customers in the tens, not the hundreds, targeting the top 200 to 250 financial institutions worldwide. Customers pay between $1M and $10M per year in ARR, and almost all paying customers exceed $1M annually.
Team
The company employs approximately 210 full-time people as of November 2023. Naehas did not build a dedicated sales force until 2022, relying entirely on word of mouth and relationship-driven growth before that.
Profitability and Funding
Naehas has been EBITDA positive at a 20% margin for a long period of time. The company raised only $300K in its seed round and approximately $2M to $3M in total early funding, with Rab Govil serving as the primary investor in the business.
Growth Strategy
Deep Vertical Focus on Financial Services
Naehas built its entire platform around the needs of financial institutions, positioning itself as the system of record for products, offers, compliance, and disclosures. This vertical depth allowed customers to expand their use of the platform across multiple use cases, driving contract values from $1M up to $10M per year.
Word-of-Mouth and Relationship-Driven Sales
Until 2022, Naehas had no dedicated sales force and grew entirely through word of mouth and existing relationships. Rab Govil's prior relationships with large financial institutions from his earlier career helped land the first major customers.
Land and Expand Within Enterprise Accounts
Naehas focused on solving one problem deeply for a large institution, then expanding as the customer brought new problems to the team. Govil described this as building the level of trust where clients come to you to solve more and more of their problems.
Vertical SaaS Multi-Product Strategy
Rather than taking one product to many markets, Naehas invested in multiple use cases and products across the full customer experience stack within financial services. This allowed the company to grow revenue per customer significantly over time.
Targeting Institutions with Scale
Naehas focuses on the top 200 to 250 financial institutions globally, including those with $10B or more in assets. This high-ARPU, low-volume go-to-market motion keeps the customer count in the tens while driving tens of millions in ARR.
Best Quotes
“Our revenue is close to $40,000,000 in ARR.”
“We are growing about 25% year over year.”
“We've been cash flow positive, EBITDA positive in the 20% range for a very long period of time.”
“We are. I'm the main investor in the business. In terms of doing this, we have not gotten any outside. We have any any outside institutional investment. We have some angel investment, but it's a very small amount. I think we'd only raise about 2 to $3,000,000.”
“We raised very little in our seed round. It was, like, $300,000 or something of that sort.”
“Until last year, we didn't even have a Salesforce. It was all word-of-mouth. Last year was the first year we actually added a Salesforce.”
“You know, it's never as good as it seems and it's never as bad as it seems. Like my favorite saying to people is that reality will assert itself to acknowledge it early, but most cases of building any company is learning to auto manage your emotions.”
“We are focused on the top 200 to two fifty institutions around the world.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured Naehas at a November 2023 snapshot, when the company was reporting $40M ARR and 25% year-over-year growth. At that point Rab Govil had just added a dedicated sales force for the first time and was considering expanding to hundreds of financial institutions with $10B or more in assets. The figures here reflect what was reported during the recording and may not represent the company's current state. Visit the Naehas company profile on getLatka for the most recent available data.
View Naehas’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Company Overview
- 1:08What Naehas Does: Customer Story
- 3:53How Financial Institutions Use the Platform
- 6:05Pricing and Contract Values
- 7:54Revenue, Growth Rate, and EBITDA
- 8:33Funding History and Bootstrap Story
- 10:23Early Revenue Milestones
- 11:01How Naehas Won Its First Customers
- 20:20Go-to-Market Strategy and Vertical SaaS Model
- 23:14Team Size, ESOP, and Ownership Structure
- 23:36Famous Five: Books, CEOs, and Tools
- 24:57Personal Background and Closing Advice
Introduction and Company Overview
Nathan Latka
00:00As Rob launched his first company, raised $15,000,000 of equity and sold it to RR Donnelly, then went into about, call it, 2012 time frame launched Nehaas, which is serving financial institutions, helping them to launch customized offers to consumers faster in a more automated way. They broke a million dollars of revenue in 2013, 10,000,000 in 2019, last year did 35, and today at a run rate of about $40,000,000. He's done this basically bootstrapped, caught 2 to 3,000,000
00:24raised early on. Investors today on 17%, ESOP pool of 14%. He owns the rest and he's really serving 20 specific financial customers. Several of them pay more than $10,000,000 per year. So really deep, not wide. He has said though moving forward, he'd maybe look at the other hundreds of financial institutions with 10,000,000,000 or more in AUM. We'll see what he does next. Hey, folks. My guest today is Rab Goebel. He's the founder of multiple enterprise software
00:48companies including Xenarate and Nehaas, which serves some of the biggest brands in financial services. He's got a MS from Rochester Institute of Technology and Computational Imaging where he was the president's scholar. He's also served on the board as a board member at AL for All. Rab, you're ready to take us to the top sorry. AI for All. Rab, you're to take us to the top?
Rab Govil
01:06>> Of course. Of course.
What Naehas Does: Customer Story
Nathan Latka
01:08Very cool. So what is Nehaas? Give me a customer story. How's the customer use you?
Rab Govil
01:13>> So the best story we can use it is you pick any of the top 10 banks in the country. When they want to send a new product, create a new product, or send a new offer to you, we are the we are the platform they use to create the new product or or pricing or a specific offer for a consumer. It is approved in our platform. The content for that offer is created in our platform. It's
01:47>> delivered into the channel using our platform. And then when a customer actually takes advantage of this product or offer, we are the platform that manages whether they should get the credit once they've achieved their goals. So a good example would be an in financial services, an offer might be, hey. I'm gonna give you $500
02:14>> if you open the Right.
Nathan Latka
02:15Instead a conceptual example, I mean, is there a case study you've publicly published so we can actually talk about a real example to help people understand what you do?
Rab Govil
02:23>> Yeah. Of course. So let's use Bank of America as an example.
Nathan Latka
02:28Okay.
Rab Govil
02:30>> Right? So when you're talking about Bank of America as example, they says, I wanna create a new product or a new offer. Right? And an offer would be they would go to the market saying is, hey. If you open up a new checking account or you open up a new credit card account, I'm going to give you
02:53>> $500. As long as you open the checking account, you move $10,000 into the checking account, and you connect it to your direct deposit, as an example. So somehow they have some place they have to create the offer. They have to create the content associated with the offer. They make sure that the offer meets all the compliance requirements. Right? Then they have to deliver this product or offer into the marketplace. And once somebody takes advantage of this
03:24>> offer, then they have to make sure that you meet all those requirements before they give you the $500.
Nathan Latka
03:30Understood. You have
Rab Govil
03:31>> the analytics engine in the back, which actually takes all the transactional data that's coming in, evaluates it, and then tells you.
Nathan Latka
03:39That makes a lot of sense. Okay, that's a great case study. So you're focused on financial firms, banks, you know, especially some of the top 10 banks in the world. Help me understand what these banks pay on average or any customer pays on average per month or per year to use your technology.
How Financial Institutions Use the Platform
Rab Govil
03:53>> It is literally, I mean, we are the infrastructure behind the customer experience. So we have customers who pay us anything from a million dollars to 10,000,000 in ARR.
Nathan Latka
04:05Okay. So you have a couple customers paying you more than $10,000,000 per year?
Rab Govil
04:09>> Yes.
Nathan Latka
04:10Okay. So so like two or three pay more than 10,000,000 per year? Or is it just like one one one use case?
Rab Govil
04:15>> No. This is if they're if they're using a variety of use cases on our platform. Right? So our platform focused on financial services. We have a variety of use cases on a platform. So if a customer using a lot of varieties of use cases, it can be $10,000,000 a week.
Nathan Latka
04:30Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this, you love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of founder path. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you
04:53connect your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founder Path dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company,
05:18you're gonna get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation. Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here, Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is
05:39this is not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founders share with us on the show. So traction, 1,200,000 seed round, 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired, the valuation and the multiple.
Pricing and Contract Values
Nathan Latka
06:05Maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founder Path. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All We're right, gonna go back to the YouTube video here in
06:27a second, but if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's
06:53jump back into the interview. I mean, look, it's it's always impressive when a founder understands how to drive multiple accounts paying more than a million dollars of AOR. When we had Henry Schuck on, he talked about the ZoomInfo IPO. He specifically talked about his $100,000 accounts and his million dollar accounts. So if you look at if you look at Nehaas today and you look at how many customers are paying you, not could pay you, but are
07:12paying you a million dollars per year, is that above 10?
Rab Govil
07:15>> Yes. It's all it's almost all our customers pay us million dollars a year.
Nathan Latka
07:19Okay. So you you are a low volume, high high high ARPU go to market motion?
Rab Govil
07:24>> Yes. Yes. We we we are focused on the top 200 to two fifty institutions around the world.
Nathan Latka
07:33Yep. Yep. Okay. Got it. So how many, I guess, many how many paying customers you're working on today? We're talking about a handful, ten, twenty?
Rab Govil
07:40>> We don't disclose the number of paying customers at this time, right, to be able to do that because we are doing this. But but you can assume, right, based on our revenue that it's a it it it's right now, it's in the tens, not the hundreds.
Revenue, Growth Rate, and EBITDA
Nathan Latka
07:54Got it. And what's your revenue today?
Rab Govil
07:57>> Our revenue is close to $40,000,000 in ARR.
Nathan Latka
07:59And where were you exactly one year ago, so we can get a growth rate?
Rab Govil
08:03>> We are growing about 25% year over year.
Nathan Latka
08:07So you were doing about 35,000,000 annualized in October last year.
Rab Govil
08:11>> Yeah. And we've been cash flow positive, EBITDA positive in the 20% range for a very long period of time.
Nathan Latka
08:22Oh, that's a congratulations. That's huge. Nice work.
Rab Govil
08:25>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
08:26So so clear, that means you did about $6,000,000 of profits last year. Bottom line is okay. Wonderful. Are you bootstrapped as well?
Funding History and Bootstrap Story
Rab Govil
08:33>> We are. I'm the main investor in the business. In terms of doing this, we have not gotten any outside. We have any any outside institutional investment. We have some angel investment, but it's a very small amount. I think we'd only raise about 2 to $3,000,000.
Nathan Latka
08:47And what year was that?
Rab Govil
08:49>> It was almost ten years ago.
Nathan Latka
08:52When did you launch the business? What year?
Rab Govil
08:54>> The business was launched about twelve years ago.
Nathan Latka
08:57Okay. So '20 what is that? 2010, 2011?
Rab Govil
09:00>> Yes. Somewhere in that range. I don't even remember specifically the date.
Nathan Latka
09:04Okay. Got it. And then you raised 2 to 3,000,000 in a in a seed round back then. Most folks, you know, are selling, you know, call it 25% in their seed round. Is that what you did back then?
Rab Govil
09:13>> No. We raised we raised very little in our seed round. It was, like, $300,000 or something of that sort.
Nathan Latka
09:18Ah, okay.
Rab Govil
09:20>> So so I think and then we raised a little bit along the way as we did this. So so, obviously, the investors own a very small portion of the business.
Nathan Latka
09:29I mean, what? Like, 20%, though. Right?
Rab Govil
09:31>> I think they own like, I think less than around 15 or seven around 17%.
Nathan Latka
09:37Okay. Got it. And and I guess, were you already independently wealthy before this? Did you have an exit or something?
Rab Govil
09:43>> I've I've had I've I've done reasonably well. Yes. I've done reasonably well.
Nathan Latka
09:47Well, what's your story though? Mean, did you have were you a really highly paid consultant or did you have another software company you sold or how did you build your wealth?
Rab Govil
09:53>> I I've had software companies I've sold. I did some investments that kind of worked out reasonably well. Right? So so over the years, I've done well. So that has allowed me to now invest in a few ideas that I find super, super interesting. Yep. Right?
Nathan Latka
10:10Okay. That makes a lot of sense. I wanna talk more about where you see this space going, specific specifically for the financial institutions that you're working with. I imagine you have a thesis on that. Before we do that, though, let's just spell out a little bit more of the backstory. How many years did it take you to break a million dollars of revenue?
Early Revenue Milestones
Rab Govil
10:23>> I think we were in million dollars of revenue in year two.
Nathan Latka
10:26Okay. So 2013, you did a million of revenue.
Rab Govil
10:29>> Oh, yeah.
Nathan Latka
10:30Okay. Do you remember when you broke 10,000,000?
Rab Govil
10:33>> I think we grew initially it was an interesting cash flow business. Right? So we kinda grew, like, we kinda grew about, like, 30% year over year for a long period of time. Right? And the company just kinda ended up growing. In fact, the interesting story about this company is that until last year, we didn't even have a Salesforce. It was all word-of-mouth. Last year was the first year we actually added a Salesforce. Mhmm. Mhmm.
How Naehas Won Its First Customers
Nathan Latka
11:01That's great. And how did you so teach us then. How did you get your first couple of customers? How did you hit your first million of revenue?
Rab Govil
11:06>> I think we had we had one of our kind of the top four banks kinda came to us. Right? We were we were working on some very interesting software related to landing page optimization. And one of the larger institutions came to us, and they thought that the software could be used to really cut kinda manage personalization at scale. And we worked with this institution to actually build out our first
11:33>> the first piece of functionality that they were able to deploy at scale, and that allowed them to go from something like 800 offers to basically, like, 10,000 offers in the marketplace.
Nathan Latka
11:46Mhmm.
Rab Govil
11:47>> Right? So the so the so the real story behind this company is is generally financial institutions are very behind from a personalization and customer experience perspective.
Nathan Latka
12:01Perhaps, sorry, just a moment though, a big bank doesn't just come to a startup and say we wanna use you. Okay? So you're you're making this you're I wanna make sure you're not putting a gold ban on this and making it sound way easier than it was. You had sold a company previously to R. O. Donnelly back in 2010, and it looked like you were already in this space a little bit. Did you already know this
12:18bank from NimbleFish?
Rab Govil
12:20>> Yes. Yes. I I I I have had relationships with these financial some of these financial institutions for a little while. Yes. Yes.
Nathan Latka
12:27So were they a were they a paying customer at NimbleFish?
Rab Govil
12:31>> They were not a paying customer, but they've heard about me at that time. Heard about us, me at that time. So they were looking for a solution and and they were very interested in the technology I was developing.
Nathan Latka
12:40So when I read the, my research team read the explanation of what NimbleFish does, it's very similar to what you're doing now, which is you're exclusively focused on financial, you know, the financial sector. So if you were gonna go right back into the space, why sell NimbleFish in the first place at all? Why not just keep building it?
Rab Govil
12:55>> Great question. So NimbleFish was very focused on the production piece. So this company is not like NimbleFish at all. Right? They were not
Nathan Latka
13:02mean production piece?
Rab Govil
13:03>> Like actually doing the content production of getting a direct mail piece out or an email out. Right? Like what Salesforce or something goes for. Right? There's a huge amount of process ahead of the production piece, which is like, we are the system of record for products. Right? We are the system of record and these institutions for offers. We are the system of record for their compliance, for their disclosures.
Nathan Latka
13:27Mhmm.
Rab Govil
13:28>> So we manage now their whole end to end process. Mhmm. Mhmm. Right? So it's a very different model. Right? Think about think about us being the ERP type of software for the customer experience.
Nathan Latka
13:40Yep. Yep.
Rab Govil
13:42>> Right? Other otherwise, these financial institutions would not pay the money they pay us just for the production piece.
Nathan Latka
13:51Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. That makes sense. Now you found when did you found NimbleFish? What year?
Rab Govil
13:57>> I don't even remember. I think that was somewhere in the early two thousands.
Nathan Latka
14:03Right? I have I have 2004, but you're you should know better than me.
Rab Govil
14:08>> You know, I'm horrible at dates, right? As an entrepreneur, they seem to just blend together, right? I get excited about the businesses and I don't even remember these dates. In fact, one of my businesses just got like some secondary liquidity, ZenRate, we did some secondary liquidity and I've already forgotten. I should have remembered when I have these big payouts, but don't seem to remember those exact dates.
Nathan Latka
14:36How big was the payout?
Rab Govil
14:38>> The payouts have been in tens of millions of dollars, right?
Nathan Latka
14:42And why was the right time, why was now the right time to do a secondary at Xenarate?
Rab Govil
14:48>> We wanted to get, like the company's been kind of growing a 100% year over year. It was important to kind of get the right
15:03>> set of talent around the table that can help scale it to the next level. I think the best way I explain this is my skill set is kind of the 0 to 10,000,000, Right? I'm really good at the 0 to 10,000,000 range. And then I think the the people with better expertise that are kind of in the 10 to $100,000,000 range. So so for me, sometime it's good to kind of bring investors along that can help
15:34>> you kinda scale to the next level.
Nathan Latka
15:37And and to generate, are you referring to the round that was done back in June.
Rab Govil
15:40>> Right? The secondary then?
Nathan Latka
15:41Yes. You said that secondary there was tens of millions?
Rab Govil
15:44>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
15:45I I guess what's not being reported? Because the seed round there is being reported as a 15,000,000 round by Volition Capital. So how was their tens of millions of secondary if the total round was 15,000,000?
Rab Govil
15:54>> That's the only thing we publicly have disclosed.
Nathan Latka
15:57Okay. So Volition put more money on top of that that maybe wasn't published that it was secondary for early investors and employees?
Rab Govil
16:04>> Yeah. I think I as as I said, right, that that was the one we publicly disclosed.
Nathan Latka
16:09Okay. Got it. And what is your I understand you're an investor there or I mean, how do you work with the founding team over there? I think Brian Brian's leading that company. Right?
Rab Govil
16:18>> Yeah. So I'm I'm, at this time, the executive director. So I'm very much involved, and I kinda help kinda drive the product strategy there.
Nathan Latka
16:27Mhmm. I'm just trying to reverse engineer the math of how you as an executive director, as a non founding member would have enough equity to be able to take advantage of a secondary to the tune of generating tens of millions
Rab Govil
16:36>> Because I was yeah. I I was I was the major investor until at that time. Right? I was the majority shareholder.
Nathan Latka
16:43Okay. Oh, so you own more you own more than 50% of the company?
Rab Govil
16:47>> I I I still own more than 50% of the company.
Nathan Latka
16:50Oh, got it. So you you Brian wasn't really a hired gun then for you?
Rab Govil
16:54>> He was he was he came in, and and I cannot and he was one of the cofounders, and he had a portion of the company, but most of the majority of the company was to loan
17:02>> by me.
Nathan Latka
17:03How did you convince him to join you? I mean, if I'm Brian, I'm going, I'm gonna go do my own thing. I don't want Rab to own, you know, 90% and I only own 10.
Rab Govil
17:10>> Because I have all the infrastructure in place to kind of build the product and and the infrastructure, and he could come in and just be the CEO to drive drive the business.
Nathan Latka
17:24Uh-huh. Uh-huh. He he was also COO at Neha's for a bit. So was this a Neha's spin out to some degree?
Rab Govil
17:31>> He he helped Nehos initially to kinda get do some work, and then he wanted to kinda go focus on my structure allows me to actually go out and allow me to go out and build new businesses as part of my overall structure. So he ended up kind of wanting to be the co founder and CEO of ZenRite.
Nathan Latka
17:49Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I'm just I'm trying to figure out how someone like him I mean, graduate, you know, he was from Forbes sorry, from Bank of America for many, many years. And I mean, really well, I just I mean, I'm trying to figure out how you convinced him to work for you with such a small equity slug going into it. And your answer is you just had a lot of the stuff already in place. Yes. Yeah, interesting.
18:12Okay, all right. Well, and I guess why was now, I mean, you're already wealthy. So why do a secondary when equity markets are generally compressed? People would say that's pretty bad timing.
Rab Govil
18:22>> Well, I think in terms of doing this, first of all, we got a very good multiple on the business, right?
Nathan Latka
18:30I'm not asking for your data, but what would you consider generally today a
Rab Govil
18:33>> good multiple on a SaaS business, B2B? A good multiple on a SaaS business, b to b, I think, Nathan, it all depends on how how what the growth rate is Mhmm. Mhmm. Type of the business. Right? If if if you're if the business is growing 100% year over year, I think getting multiple in the double digits is not
18:57>> and it it's it's reasonable. It's all dependent on the growth rate.
Nathan Latka
19:00Mhmm. Mhmm.
Rab Govil
19:01>> And how efficient is the growth rate?
19:04>> Yeah. So, I mean, was Xenaray growing more than a 100% year over year? Yep.
Nathan Latka
19:07I see. Okay. Got it.
Rab Govil
19:08>> So, I mean, fair to say something between like a ten and thirty x multiple on that secondary?
Nathan Latka
19:13Yes. I see. Interesting.
Rab Govil
19:14>> Just to be clear, that is completely separate in terms of our product use case than Nehaas. Right?
19:19>> Yes. It is.
Nathan Latka
19:21Yeah. That's a simulation training platform. Do you sell that platform also to financial firms?
Rab Govil
19:26>> We sell it for that goes across in multiple horizontal markets.
Nathan Latka
19:30I see. I see. I see. Okay, so to Neha. So you break a million dollars of revenue back in 2013, is it what your first $10,000,000 year is what twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen?
Rab Govil
19:44>> The first $10,000,000 I think,
19:49>> I'll have to look it up. I'm not specific. As I said, the company kinda ended up growing about 30 to 40 between 20 to 40% year over year depending on what the year was.
Nathan Latka
19:57Yeah. That that will put you at about 10,000,000 run rate in around 2019. I'm not pinning you to that, but it's somewhere around that year. Right?
Rab Govil
20:02>> Yes. Yes, yes.
Nathan Latka
20:03Okay, interesting. And then I guess, how have you
20:08Where How are you growing the business today? I mean, is such an impressive story that you've done this bootstrap. People are gonna wanna learn. I mean, how did you get enterprise clients so quickly? How do you get individual customers paying more than $10,000,000 per year?
Go-to-Market Strategy and Vertical SaaS Model
Rab Govil
20:20>> So I think, so first of all, right? I mean, you want to build such a strong relationship within these enterprises, right, that they come to you with their problems. Right? We didn't get to a $10,000,000 ARR business with one of our clients because we could just do one use case. Right? The trick behind this is if you solve the problem in a way and they feel that you are a true partner of theirs, right, they will
20:56>> come to you with other problems they want to solve for you, right? I mean, IBM at one time kind of created that playbook, right, where
21:10>> what what was the saying, right, before before they lost their way is like, you you you never got fired for buying IBM. Right? So once you build this level of trust within these large enterprises and take care of them, they will come to you to solve more and more of the problems. So then as an entrepreneur, you need to decide, are you going to build a vertical SaaS company? Where you're to invest more in multiple product
21:39>> strategies? Or are you going to go build a horizontal SaaS company when you're taking one product out to multiple folks? Right? If you get your business model right and if you're gonna build a vertical SaaS company, well, then you need to be able to invest in multiple use cases and multiple products that go across the whole
Nathan Latka
22:04Stack. Yep.
Rab Govil
22:05>> Stack. Like, across the whole stack. Right? That's the that's the only way to do that. So so partly, I think it's like you pick the right business model. Once you pick the right business model, then it comes down to is, are you gonna create the right infrastructure in place and stay true to your business model?
Nathan Latka
22:25Right? So you're moving forward is gonna be to go deeper on your current 20 customers versus trying to go get 2,000 new customers.
Rab Govil
22:32>> Well, and get more customers like those. Mhmm.
Nathan Latka
22:36Right? But there's only so many Fortune 100 companies, there's a 100 of them.
Rab Govil
22:39>> Well, they are actually, they're actually, you don't have to go out to Fortune 100 companies, right? You're, when you go into a financial services space, right? You can go to companies as low as 10,000,000,000 in assets. So we are not going after thousands of companies, but there are hundreds of those institutions. They're in the hundreds to a thousand institutions on a worldwide basis that
23:01>> are Understood, our that's great.
Nathan Latka
23:02I just realized I'm enjoying this so much we've run out of time. So just some rapid fire quick stuff here. Phil, if you can fill up the rest of the TAP table here. Have you set up an ESOP pool for your employees or no? Yes. 10%?
Team Size, ESOP, and Ownership Structure
Rab Govil
23:14>> We are close to 14%.
Nathan Latka
23:15Oh, that's great, you're generous. 14% there, investor 17% and you own the rest, right?
Rab Govil
23:20>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
23:21Amazing. Okay, and then you already told us about profitability, which is great. How many folks are full time on the team today?
Rab Govil
23:26>> I think we have close to two ten.
Nathan Latka
23:29Wow, okay, Very cool. This is great. Let's wrap up here with the famous five, Rob. Number one, your favorite business book.
Famous Five: Books, CEOs, and Tools
Rab Govil
23:36>> Ah, my favorite business book.
23:42>> I'm trying to think is what was, what would be my favorite business book that I have? Or the one
Nathan Latka
23:47I you're reading
Rab Govil
23:50>> wouldn't call it the one I'm reading right now is my favorite business book. I think my favorite business book has to be
24:00>> the art of hiring. I think I'm trying to figure out who, how to hire well. I don't remember exactly the name of the book, but
Nathan Latka
24:09That's okay.
Rab Govil
24:10>> The Art of Hiring, rapid fire ones.
Nathan Latka
24:12Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Rab Govil
24:16>> CEO I'm following or studying, yes.
24:21>> Peter Glassner at Veeva. Number He's done an amazing job, dollars 4,000,000 in capital and build I mean, what an amazing story he is. So he's probably the CEO I look to from a vertical SaaS perspective.
Nathan Latka
24:36Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Nehaas?
Rab Govil
24:40>> My favorite online tool for building Nehaas is probably Google.
Nathan Latka
24:47Number
Rab Govil
24:48>> I'm not sure if I have a if I have a specific site or anything that I go to.
Nathan Latka
24:52Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Rab Govil
24:55>> Oh, I got I get a good seven to eight hours.
Personal Background and Closing Advice
Nathan Latka
24:57And situation? Married, single, kids.
Rab Govil
25:01>> I am I'm married with a with a daughter who just graduated proud dad graduated from MIT, and she's working for a quant hedge fund in New City.
Nathan Latka
25:11Oh, very cool. Very cool. And how old are you?
Rab Govil
25:14>> I am 56.
Nathan Latka
25:15Grab, take us home. Something you
25:17wish you knew when you were 20 years old.
Rab Govil
25:20>> Something I wish I did when I was 20 years old or new.
Nathan Latka
25:24Something you wish you knew.
Rab Govil
25:28>> You know, it's never as good as it seems and it's never as bad as it seems. Like my favorite saying to people is that reality will assert itself to acknowledge it early, but most cases of building any company is learning to auto manage your emotions. For the world, world doesn't change as much as you think it really changes.
Nathan Latka
25:52Guys, Rob launched his first company, raised $15,000,000 of equity and sold it to RR Donnelly, then went into about caught 2012 time frame launched Nehaas, is serving financial institutions, helping them to launch customized offers to consumers faster in a more automated way. They broke a million dollars of revenue in 2013, 10,000,000 in 2019, last year did 35 and today at a run rate of about $40,000,000. He's done this basically bootstrapped caught 2 to 3,000,000 raised early
26:18on investors today on 17%, ESOP pool of 14%, he owns the rest and he's really serving 20 specific financial customers. Several of them pay more than $10,000,000 per year. So really deep, not wide. He has said though, moving forward, he'd maybe look at the other hundreds of financial institutions with 10,000,000,000 or more in AUM. We'll see what he does next. Rab, thanks for taking us to the top.
Rab Govil
26:38>> Alright. Thanks, Nathan. Talk soon.
Nathan Latka
26:41One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers. They try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM
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