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Founder Interview

How Prism.fm Reached $3M ARR and 300 Customers After Surviving COVID (Interview with CEO Matt Ford)

Interview Date
July 27, 2023
Interviewee
Matt FordCEO
Watch
Watch the full interview on YouTube

Company Metrics at Interview Time

Customers (2023)

300

Avg Contract Value (2023)

$11,000 per year

Net Dollar Retention (2023)

110%

Team Size (2023)

27

Engineers (2023)

17

Historical Snapshot

These numbers were reported by Matt Ford during his interview with Nathan Latka recorded in July 2023 and represent a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Prism.fm’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways

  • 01Prism.fm had approximately 300 customers as of mid-2023, up from around 120 at the start of COVID
  • 02New customers are paying an average ACV of above $11,000 per year
  • 03Net dollar retention across the full customer base is 110%
  • 04One customer segment alone shows net retention of 127%
  • 05The company 5x its revenue from the COVID trough to mid-2023
  • 06Team grew from 4 engineers during COVID to 17 engineers out of a 27-person team
  • 07Prism raised a $5M Series A in 2021 and was working toward a small bridge round in 2023
  • 08The company was not yet profitable in mid-2023 but described itself as coasting toward profitability
  • 09Prism serves both event venues and talent agencies, creating a network-effect flywheel
  • 10The company is evaluating adding payments to the platform, with over $800M in projected GMV flowing through the network in 2023

Company Metrics at Time of Interview

MetricValueSource
Customers (2023)300Founder interview, July 2023
Avg Contract Value (2023)$11,000 per yearFounder interview, July 2023
Net Dollar Retention (full base) (2023)110%Founder interview, July 2023
Net Dollar Retention (top segment) (2023)127%Founder interview, July 2023
Team Size (2023)27Founder interview, July 2023
Engineers (2023)17Founder interview, July 2023
Engineers (COVID period) (2020)4Founder interview, July 2023
Revenue (2018)$180,000Founder interview, July 2023
Revenue (2020)$672,000Founder interview, July 2023
Revenue (2022)$1,900,000Founder interview, July 2023
Series A Raised (2021)$5,000,000Founder interview, July 2023
Seed Raised (2019)$2,900,000Founder interview, July 2023

Growth Breakdown

Revenue

Prism.fm 5x its revenue from the COVID trough. The company reported $180K in 2018, $672K in 2020, and $1.9M in 2022. Matt Ford declined to state the exact current monthly figure but confirmed strong ACV growth and a customer count above 300.

Customers

The company entered COVID with roughly 120 customers and retained approximately 100 of them through the pandemic. By mid-2023 it had grown to nearly 300 customers, adding both event venues and talent agencies to its network.

Team

During COVID, Prism kept a lean team of 4 engineers and a small part-time customer success and sales group. By mid-2023 the team had grown to 27 full-time employees, including 17 engineers, with staff based primarily in Austin and Detroit plus some international hires.

Profitability and Funding

Prism raised a $5M Series A in 2021 and was working toward a small bridge round in mid-2023, described by Ford as bridging to profitability rather than a large growth raise. The company was not yet profitable as of July 2023 but Ford said profitability was close and that cuts could achieve it quickly if needed.

Growth Strategy

Network Effect Across the Live Music Ecosystem

Prism serves both venues and talent agencies, so when multiple parties in a single show all use the platform, data transfer becomes seamless and efficiency gains compound. Ford described this as a gravity effect: working with three Prism users makes the benefit tangible, and working with a non-user makes the friction obvious.

Retaining Customers Through COVID

By keeping product development active and going into the crisis alongside customers, Prism retained roughly 100 of its 120 pre-COVID customers. Ford credited this retention as a major testament to the technology and said it accelerated the company's impact on the industry.

Pricing Increases Over Time

Early customers paid as little as $100 per month, but new customers as of mid-2023 are paying an ACV above $11,000 per year. Ford attributed the pricing power to demonstrated product-market fit and strong net dollar retention.

Virality Within the Industry

Prism's growth tactic is virality: as more venues and agencies adopt the platform, the network becomes more valuable and new users are pulled in organically by their counterparts already on the system.

Payments as a Future Growth Layer

Ford is evaluating adding embedded payments to facilitate venue-to-artist settlements, a flow he estimates at over $800M in projected GMV for 2023. He sees Prism's existing role in contracting, scheduling, and tracking payments as giving it a natural right to facilitate the actual transaction.

Best Quotes

We had virtually, let's call it, fourteen months in the market before the pandemic hit.
We only had like four people at the time, four engineers working on the product. And I had, I think, maybe, you know, three kind of customer success and salespeople that we kept part time to go into the trenches with our customers.
On the other side of the pandemic, we've 5x our revenue since the bottom of the trough. We also didn't churn a lot during the pandemic, which I think was a major testament to the technology.
Positive net retention. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. With one of our customer segments, it's it's segments. It's it's net retention of a 127%, and across our whole customer base, it's 110%.
If a promoter and a venue is both using prism, there's a really enhanced efficient show that gets planned. But if they're not using prism, then they have to do an amazing amount of data entry. So we've created this network effect kind of gravity in using the system where you if you work with three people who are using prism, it's this enhanced benefit.
We're we're looking to raise, like, a little bit of money, basically. Like, back to the whole profitability conversation, we're we're in a place where we don't have to I'm I'm I'm not selling a big chunk of the company. We're, like, kinda bridging our way to profitability, though.
If we're doing that from a place where the core business is profitable, then we're not having to, like, fundraise to, you know, to avoid a layoff at the same time that we're evaluating these new options.

What Happened Next

This interview captured Prism.fm in July 2023, when the company had approximately 300 customers, an ACV above $11,000, and 110% net dollar retention while working toward profitability. Matt Ford was evaluating a small bridge round and exploring payments as a new revenue layer. Visit the Prism.fm company profile on GetLatka for current metrics and any subsequent funding or growth updates.

View Prism.fm’s current profile and metrics

Full Transcript

Introduction and COVID Survival Story

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, prism.fm helps event venues organize with artists and collab on all kinds of show types. Obviously, took a hit during COVID. I thought Matt was gonna totally die, and he just had unbelievable willpower here, got through it, went to a low of, call it, $50.60 grand a month, has now scaled much larger than that, call it over a 150, $200 a month in revenue. 300 customers today, new customers paying on average $11,000 per year for the

00:24platform as he looks to scale, close to 5,000,000 series a in 2021, potentially looking at now as well. We'll see what happens. But he says he's very close to profitability, team of 27 looking to build more payments potential payments products for the same industry. Hey, folks. My guest today is Matt Ford. He's the CEO of prism.fm. He's a spiritual seeker living the good life in Austin, Texas. When he's not running prism or play he's playing music,

00:48hand hanging with his kids, or enjoying nature, prism helps unfuck the live events industry, which we love. Matt, you ready to take us to the top?

Matt Ford

00:57>> Yes. Yes. I didn't write that, did I, about unfucking the live music industry?

Nathan Latka

01:00Write that. I that is verbatim. Don't try and put that on me. But it was it's it's been great following your story because you first came on in 2018 when you had just broke 15,000 a month in revenue, and I'm going, oh my god. My guy, Matt, he's gonna have a hard time during COVID. There's no live events going on, but you made it through COVID with a ton of momentum. I guess, why don't you touch

01:20on that real quick before we get an update?

Matt Ford

01:23>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're saying touch on COVID?

Nathan Latka

01:27Yeah. Well, just touch on, yeah, how you made the company sustainable through COVID when revenues, I mean, flatlined or shrunk.

How Prism Navigated the Pandemic

Matt Ford

01:33>> Yeah. I mean, we had you know, twenty twenty eighteen, 2019 was us getting off the ground, and then we had so we had virtually, let's call it, fourteen months in the market before the pandemic hit. And I know this is a little against your you know, what you typically, you know, look to see an entrepreneur, which is the whole bootstrap methodology, but I had raised money at the end of twenty nineteen.

Nathan Latka

01:55I don't mind raising. I just don't want I want the founders to get rich when they do it, you But, yeah, you'd raised a million seed in 2017 and a 2,900,000 extension in 2019. Right?

Matt Ford

02:06>> Yeah. And I and I know you're not, like, totally against raising money, but, like, the timing of it was ridiculously good. I mean, at the end of twenty nineteen, we had couple million dollars in the bank, and I I scaled down to a bootstrap team at that moment. You know, actually, funny enough, I'm I'm full steam ahead profitability these days. So I'm I've I've come around to really

Nathan Latka

02:25When are you pro were you profitable in June of this year last month?

Matt Ford

02:29>> We're we're we're working towards that. We're not we're not quite there yet, but we're we're using our runway to get to there. And and it's I could we're in a in a healthy place right now. I'm just being completely honest with you. Like, we're, you know, we're like, I could make some cuts tomorrow to be profitable, but we're in a healthy place right now and have some money in the bank. We're just kind of coasting to

02:50>> profitability at this point now. It's really right around the corner and it feels good. But, you know, we weren't in 2019, so some funding helped us get through that. And it it really allowed us it allowed me to keep a team of engineers that were working on the product and and we had a Which were how many?

Nathan Latka

03:06How many engineers at the time?

Keeping Engineers and Customers Through COVID

Matt Ford

03:07>> We only had like four people at the time, four engineers working on the product. And I had, I think, maybe, you know, three kind of customer success and salespeople that we kept part time to go into the trenches with our customers. So keeping product development strong during that time and going into the crisis with our customers, it allowed us to- I mean, it really accelerated our impact on the industry. And then on the other side of

5x Revenue Recovery and Churn During Pandemic

Matt Ford

03:32>> the pandemic, we've 5x our revenue since the bottom of the trough. We also didn't churn a lot during the pandemic, which I think was a major testament to the technology. Like, we went in with, let's call it, 120 customers. We came out with, of those a 120, we we came out with, you know, a solid a 100 of them. Like, we didn't we didn't see much churn.

Nathan Latka

03:54Where are you today? Just total customer count.

Series A Raise and Dilution Philosophy

Matt Ford

03:56>> We're coming up on 300.

Nathan Latka

03:58Yeah. That's great. So it's 60 more than when we did an interview exactly one year ago, which is nice. We'll touch on that here a bit more. But, keep the story going because didn't didn't you also raise did you raise a series a in about in 2021, July?

Matt Ford

04:09>> Yeah. Yeah. We we raised a series a in 2021, $5,000,000, and, you know, grew grew the business quite a bit. And You

Nathan Latka

04:19sold think you told me you sold about 10% of the company in that round. Right? Like, a 50,000,000 valuation, something like that?

Matt Ford

04:26>> I can't exactly remember what I what I what I what I told you, but we there was, you know, there was some decent dilution in that round of funding.

04:37>> Shoot. I'm sorry. What were you asking me?

Nathan Latka

04:39Well, no. I mean, touch on that. Right? I mean, let's say you diluted more than 10% in the series a. The seed round, you diluted there, you know, maybe fifteen, twenty percent. I mean, how do you think about just founder dilutioning and managing your position in the company?

Net Dollar Retention and Product-Market Fit

Matt Ford

04:49>> Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I'm like I was saying, now, you know, let's call it three year if you take away the pandemic, we've been three years in the market. We have really solid product market fit. We have negative net retention. It and and we have a better understanding

05:03>> of what negative churn.

Nathan Latka

05:05Right? Negative churn.

Matt Ford

05:07>> Negative churn. Yeah. Positive net retention. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. With one of our customer segments, it's it's segments. It's it's net retention of a 127%, and across our whole customer base, it's 110%. For me

Nathan Latka

05:20That's impressive.

Matt Ford

05:21>> Yeah. For me, it's like I was grateful to Raiz when it was kind of this pie in the sky like, hey, fuck it. We think there's a big market out there. Let's go and find some investors that believe in that as well, the sky's the limit. But over time, I think we've become more and more rational about how big of a market is. I'm going use some made up numbers here. But in the start, let's say,

05:41>> Hey, we believe the TAM is 500,000,000. So it's like, All right, sure, go and raise however much we want. But over time, I think it's really important for an entrepreneur to get more realistic about what the SAM is versus the TAM and what the true TAM is. And now that we've had three years in the market, it's just quite obvious that this business should be sustainable and profitable as a default. And there's always more things we

Path to Profitability and Future Fundraising

Matt Ford

06:02>> wanna do with innovating. We're considering adding payments onto the platform. We're considering what other customers we can expand into. But if we're if we're doing that from a place where the core business is profitable, then we're not having to, like, fundraise to, you know, to avoid a layoff at the same time that we're evaluating these new options. Like, we know the default is, hey. We got a good group of people that love what we're doing. Got

06:26>> a customer base that's hooked on our product innovation. That's the default. Great. So now we can use that foundation and look to more and more ways that we can innovate. And for me, I'm like, if a fundraising opportunity emerges not out of need, kinda what you were saying, like, you're just for the founders getting rid of it. Like, we're finally in a place where we can like we're coming up on fundraising for opportunity versus for need,

06:51>> and I think that's, you know, extremely exciting.

Nathan Latka

06:54Oh, 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 Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect

07:17your 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 Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

07:41get 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 this is

08:03not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder 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. Maybe you're

08:29going 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 Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right, we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but

08:51if 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 hoveroverproducts, 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 jump back into the interview.

09:18You've managed dilution to the extent where you still own a nice chunk of business. I call it 30 to 50%. Right? Something like that?

Matt Ford

09:25>> Yeah. I own a nice chunk. And you're back to your question, like, how do I think about it? Like, it would be great to own a greater percentage of prism, but this is I'm this is the furthest I've taken a company. I I I own an asset that grows directly with how much I succeed. I'm in complete control of my most valuable asset. It's more than

Nathan Latka

09:43And no co founders.

Matt Ford

09:44>> What's that?

Nathan Latka

09:46No co founders.

Matt Ford

09:48>> I had co founders along the way that we've parted ways with and, you know, mostly all in good good good grace. You have to spend money. You have to

09:56>> spend money to part ways?

Nathan Latka

09:57You have to buy them out? Or how'd that work?

Matt Ford

09:59>> A little bit of it it depends on the story. A couple we spent money on. Yeah. I get a couple of it was more, cordial, and we and they and they bought their equity. So yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:09Okay. Okay. Cool. Alright. Very cool. Talk to me about how you've grown. You've gone from 240 these are event venues buying your technology. Correct? Not the artists?

Matt Ford

10:18>> Well, we have the we now have event venues in the artist businesses as well using prism.

Nathan Latka

10:23Tell me about that.

Expanding to Talent Agencies and Network Effects

Matt Ford

10:25>> Yeah. So it like, the overall pitch of prism is, you know, the the live music industry is this, like, connected ecosystem of of people that are doing business to make concerts happen. You have the venues and the promoters who are putting on the events, and then you have talent agencies who represent the artists, and they're and they're booking these and they're they're essentially, like, selling the bands to these venues and promoters. So we work with both

10:51>> sides of the ecosystem and that mostly helps with data transfer, long story short. If a promoter and a venue is both using prism, there's a really enhanced efficient show that gets planned. But if they're not using prism, then they have to do an amazing amount of data entry. So we've created this network effect kind of gravity in using the system where you if you work with three people who are using prism, it's this enhanced benefit. And

11:19>> then you go and work with someone who's not using prism. It's not that you don't want to do business with them, but it's like you tangibly notice like, Hey, I'm just more efficient as a business when I work with someone that's using the same network as me. So that's a big part of our strategy.

Pricing Increases and Current ACV

Nathan Latka

11:31Have you increased pricing or is each customer still paying about $600 a month?

Matt Ford

11:36>> We we have increased pricing quite a bit. I mean, our our, like, month our current month ACV is obviously quite different than if you look at all of our 300 customers because we have a lot of people that were paying a $100 in the early days. But to date to date, we're getting an ACV, like, above 11,000.

Nathan Latka

11:54Okay. Okay. Very cool. And just to to round out revenue growth, so one year ago when you came on the show, you were doing about 155,000 a month in revenue across 240 customers. Where are you today?

Revenue Growth Discussion

Matt Ford

12:04>> Well, I can't disclose exactly what our revenue amount is at, but we're, you know, growing ACV strong, and we're above 300 customers now. So

Nathan Latka

12:12Okay. Why can't you've always shared when you come on in the past. You said that you were up six x since the recession. You when you came on during the recession or the COVID, you said you're doing about 56,000 across a 120 customers. So can we assume you're 6 x $50 a month?

Matt Ford

12:26>> Yeah. You could assume that.

Nathan Latka

12:29Sorry. Those are numbers you gave me. I don't wanna make a false assumption. Are the numbers you gave me accurate?

Matt Ford

12:34>> Yeah. There's just some strategic things happening right now that I can't, like, publicly be super clear about the numbers, but, you know, growth is heading in the right direction.

Nathan Latka

12:42Are you selling the company?

Matt Ford

12:44>> No. Not yet.

Nathan Latka

12:45How much are you targeting in the fundraise?

Bridge Round and Fundraising Strategy

Matt Ford

12:52>> We're we're looking to raise you're so funny. We're looking to raise, like, a little bit of money, basically. Like, back to the whole profitability conversation, we're we're in a place where we don't have to I'm I'm I'm not selling a big chunk of the company. We're, like, kinda bridging our way to profitability, though.

Nathan Latka

13:08Well, listen. If I read in the news that prism does a $30,000,000 series b, in my head, I just want you to know I'm gonna hope that on the backside, you reserve 80% of that as secondary for yourself. Let's just put it that way.

Matt Ford

13:20>> No. I appreciate it. I this is not what this next round is about. Like, during We- We had- You're gonna like this. We had opportunities to raise a larger round of funding and we intentionally were like, Hey, let's dilute less right now. We don't actually need it. And there's a question about, oh, could we turn that to secondary? Like, frankly, like, I don't feel like I'm quite at the place where I'm I'm doing that.

Nathan Latka

13:44So, you know, I'm I'm really because you're choosing to I mean, have you asked for it and folks said no, and you you just feel like you don't have the leverage to get it right now?

Matt Ford

13:52>> No. Right now, I'm more focused on growing the business. Yeah. Like, I think like, for me, there's a clear like, I'm I'm conserving the equity that I have and, you know, saving it for the future. And, you know, there's a clear like, I see a clear runway right now to get the company, you know, to $1,520,000,000 in recurring revenue, and it's just my own kinda calculations and willingness to hold on

Payments Opportunity and GMV Analysis

Matt Ford

14:17>> to that.

Nathan Latka

14:18Long will it take you to get to 15 run rate, you think? The the and be end of this year, or was it take end of next year?

Matt Ford

14:24>> End of next year.

Nathan Latka

14:25Yeah. Yeah. That's aggressive. That's like goal. Can you do that with your

Matt Ford

14:29>> current that's curious is if we can if we can break into the payment space. That's that's, like, the new you know? Yeah.

Nathan Latka

14:35Yeah. Well, what's the analysis? Mean, we have a lot of listeners that have SaaS that are thinking about, like, should I add embedded finance? So, like, when you're thinking about should we invest in developers to add a fintech product? And if so, what percent of the GMV can we take? Like, how are you modeling that? How are you thinking about it?

Matt Ford

14:47>> Well, I think every opportunity is different, but, you know, for us, there's a question of like, prism prism is I think we've kind of, like, earned the right to be involved in the payment because our customers yeah. The the payment that would be we would be getting in front of is the the payment of the venue to the band. And prism of that do

Nathan Latka

15:07you already sit on? Do you know how much of that you've processed the past year?

Matt Ford

15:11>> Well okay. So the keyword is process. If we were if we had the full network utilizing payments, it's over $800,000,000 flowing

Nathan Latka

15:18through twelve months?

Matt Ford

15:20>> Yes. Yes. That's the projection for this twelve months for 2023.

Nathan Latka

15:24But what was last? Like, if you look at historically million. Okay. Yeah. So what your your analysis is, man, if we actually facilitated the payment with investing engineering to do the payment rails and stuff, and you guys kept 2% to 500,000,000, that number gets big pretty quick.

Matt Ford

15:35>> Yeah. Like, the the the long of what I was trying to say is, like, do we have the, you know, the right to be the one that, you know, that that does facilitate that payment? And I think what we've done on the SaaS front has given us

15:46>> a right the right?

Nathan Latka

15:47I don't know what you

Matt Ford

15:48>> mean by that. Like, what like, can can someone just come in tomorrow and say, hey. We wanna invent a technology for like, a payment solution for the industry. And what I'm saying is we have a more of a right to do that than someone who comes in tomorrow because we're already helping these people organize their payments and doing a payment ledger and doing the contracting around the payments. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

16:08Well, how are they doing

16:10the payments right now? Like, do they put it through bill.com or something? Who are you competing with?

Matt Ford

16:13>> They they contract it in prism. They schedule it in prism. They track it in prism, but then they go into their bank account and actually facilitate it.

Nathan Latka

16:22It feels like a very natural thing for you to do. Right? I

Matt Ford

16:25>> mean That's what I'm saying. That's what I mean by have we earned the right. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

16:27Yeah. So what what take rate do you think if you process 800,000,000 in next twelve months, do you think you can take a 2%, a 5%, a 20% cut?

Matt Ford

16:36>> Absolutely not on the 20%. I mean, so this is this is this is what we've learned is you have to ask yourself what what propensity the market has? Like, what are they used to? So for prism, like, are we offering? Like, In exchange for efficiency and better organization,

16:55>> okay, but what are they doing instead? Right now they're sending ACH and wires, and that's anywhere from free or $20 a month to $20 a payment. So we wouldn't have the immediate opportunity to take like 5% of a payment to an artist. Like, people would be like, alright, no, I'm just gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna save a little of efficiency and

Nathan Latka

17:15go into my bank.

Matt Ford

17:16>> It's not worth $5,000

17:17>> a month.

Nathan Latka

17:18What about 22% of 500,000,000 is $10,000,000 in revenue for you.

Matt Ford

17:21>> This is this is what I'm getting at. So for us, it's like there the question is is, like, how you know, there's a direct revenue stream even if it's not 10% or 5%. And the strategic moat of being the payment facilitator and getting people, in love with that solution of not having to work with their bank account every single time and having to be more organized and streamlined, that's what's exciting. But yeah. But there is a

17:44>> transactional opportunity as well. The other question is, how much is that 800,000,000, you know, chopped up? If you think of a POS system at a bar, that's like a bunch of $5 to $10 payments. So for them to take 5%, it's like, whatever, let's call it a 0.25 to a dollar. So that's- It's really easy for payments companies to take a bigger cut of a smaller transaction than a smaller cut of a bigger transaction, depending on

18:12>> the market. So that's something that we're working through right now. But still, there's there's there's enough payments for it to be a very exciting opportunity for us.

Nathan Latka

18:20Yep. And what's the team size today? How many full time?

Team Size and Engineering Headcount

Matt Ford

18:22>> We are at 20 sorry. I'm, like, I'm trying to think. 27. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

18:2927. And and are you still using sort of an outsourced engineering team, is that all in house at this point?

Matt Ford

18:34>> No. We've never had outsourced engineering. We've always been in house.

Nathan Latka

18:37Oh, okay. How many engineers?

Matt Ford

18:40>> We have of that 27, I believe, 17.

Nathan Latka

18:43Are you built are all in in Austin, or are they spread out?

Matt Ford

18:46>> We're a little bit spread out. Our core team is in Austin, and we have a few people in Detroit. And then we have some international engineers that are, like, full time employees. It's not like a dev shop situation.

Nathan Latka

18:58Very cool. Very cool. Well, we're rooting for you, man. Congrats on the growth. Let's wrap up here with the the famous five. Number one, your favorite book.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Matt Ford

19:05>> My favorite book of all time. Let's just go with The Alchemist. That's a good book.

Nathan Latka

19:09Yeah. Your last one was The Da Vinci Bio. I'm sensing a trend here.

Matt Ford

19:13>> Alright. That was really good. You have that.

Nathan Latka

19:15And number two, is there

19:17is there a CEO you're following or studying? Last time you said Grimes, so you gotta pick somebody new.

Matt Ford

19:21>> I said Grimes. I that's probably just the podcast that I listened to. I thought I I I'm super happy for Sam Altman and what OpenAI has cracked open. Like, I think I'm not as like, I'm not going for the roller coaster ride that everyone is with how like, I think there's an amazing amount of noise in the in the signal of what AI is, but OpenAI has clearly, like, done something very important and interesting, and we'll

19:47>> see where it goes in the future. But if if it doesn't go anywhere besides what it's already done, it's extremely impressive.

Nathan Latka

19:52Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building prism?

Matt Ford

19:57>> My favorite online tool

20:03>> lately, I've been doing a lot of marketing myself and using Camtasia, which is like a a way to, like, chop up, like like, live recordings of

20:10>> the app. School, man.

Nathan Latka

20:11Camtasia's old school.

Matt Ford

20:12>> Wow. Okay. Number four.

Nathan Latka

20:13How many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Matt Ford

20:16>> I get I try to get nine.

Nathan Latka

20:20That's good. And still not married, one kid. What? You're 34 now. Is that right?

Matt Ford

20:25>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I'm in a in a relationship, not married yet, but that that could change in the future.

Nathan Latka

20:32Any more kids or still

Matt Ford

20:33>> I don't wanna divulge anything on the podcast that I can't divulge, but there's there's things there's things happening with the company, and there's also things happening with my personal life.

Nathan Latka

20:41That's very exciting. Still one kiddo, or you have more at this point?

Matt Ford

20:46>> Just just one for now. But once again, you know, it's just

20:49>> been miping away. You know, you you don't wanna break baby news on the podcast. That's for sure. We want family first. Family first.

Nathan Latka

20:56Alright. And, Matt, how old how old are you?

Matt Ford

20:58>> 34?

20:59>> Yeah. You had it right. 34.

Nathan Latka

21:01Yep. Alright. Take us home here.

Matt Ford

21:02>> Something wish knew same age.

21:03>> So yeah. Know. It's perfect.

Nathan Latka

21:04Take us home. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Closing Summary

Matt Ford

21:08>> Something I wish you I was 20. I think just the importance of wherewithal and keep and and positive attitude and a willingness to persevere is is like the stimuli like, to maintain a good attitude and you know, through, like, challenging times, like, to, like, work that muscle and to understand it more and more.

Nathan Latka

21:31Guys, prism.fm helps event venues organize with artists and collab on all kinds of show types. Obviously, took a hit during COVID. I thought Matt was gonna totally die, and he just had unbelievable willpower here. Got through it. Went to a low of, call it, $50.60 grand a month. Has now scaled much larger than that. Call it over a 150, $200 a month in revenue. 300 customers today. New customers paying on average $11,000 per year for the

21:55platform as he looks to scale. Closed to 5,000,000 series a in 2021, potentially looking at now as well. We'll see what happens. But he says he's very close to profitability. Team of twenty seven looking to build more payments potential payments products for the same industry. Matt, thanks for taking us to the top.

Matt Ford

22:10>> Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Nathan Latka

22:12One 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

22:38Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button, and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big

23:00fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign

23:22up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people.

23:41We gotta push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.