How Typeform Grew to 125,000 Customers and Built Its One Funnel Strategy (CEO Joaquim Lecha at SaaS Open 2024)

Intro and efficient growth question

Nathan Latka

00:00quick context this was recorded March 28th and 29th so a couple weeks ago at my live event SAS open.com

00:07we had a thousand software CEOs there if you missed it we hope to see at the next one September

00:125th and 6th in New York City SAS open.com but for now let's jump into the recording that we accelerated

00:19growth on that first brick we added another almost 60 million can we aspire to have paybacks within the year

00:286 8 12 months hey folks if we haven't met yet my name is Nathan ladka I launched and sold

00:38my first software company back in 2015 and went on to write a book about it which you guys made

00:43a Wall Street Journal bestseller purchasing over 30,000 copies thank you so much for that after the book I launched

00:50this show and went went on to create founder path.com I raised a large fund to do non-dilutive deals with

00:58B2B software founders so far we've invested in over 400 software Founders totaling $150 million here in 2024 we're doing

01:07three to four New Deals per week so if you're looking for Capital and don't want to give up Equity

01:12go sign up at founder path.com for free to get your offer all right let's jump into the interview hello

Joaquim Lecha

01:18everyone uh good afternoon and thank you for being here I'm fortunate in my position I have the opportunity to

01:28talk to uh many um other cosos other Founders other departmental leaders and the question that is in everybody's Minds

01:37nowadays especially nowadays is how can I help my company grow more efficiently so in the next 20 minutes I

01:47wanted to share with you our uh past how we got to where we are um to um let's say

01:56there's two chapters to this up to 125 ,000 customers globally and more importantly I also want to talk to

02:04you about how we are focusing and and thinking about um growth and efficient growth in this third chapter of

02:11the company that started in 2023 and in that sense that is through what we call one funnel I would

02:20like to also explain you the five specific steps that we've been taking since 2023 to implement that one funnel

02:29hope hopefully with the idea that um after this you will have you will take away some new insights and

02:38especially some actionable steps that um might help you also um grow your companies more efficiently in 2024 and Beyond

What Typeform does

Joaquim Lecha

02:50who knows type form okay that's good that's good thank you thank you for being users and customers of type

02:59form for those who do not know type form um the company was founded in 2012 with the objective of

03:08helping companies ask important questions to their most valued audiences so think of a marketer that wants to know the

03:16name the surname the email the contact details of somebody think of the product uh manager that wants to ask

03:24important questions about the new feature or the new product that is available but needs to improve these things are

03:32done through mainly surveys and quizzes and um um forms uh via text via video via voice that people inet

03:43in their web pages in their emails and all of that was there but the thing that set type form

03:51apart was excellent responding experience we realized that if the respondent was having a new Fresh and great experience responding

04:05those questions our customer would benefit from more information better information higher completion rates and so on it's also a

04:16Moment of Truth where that company and each of those respondents get in touch sometimes for the first time so

04:23it's a moment where that company can stand out right and can feel different can start connecting via brand Etc

04:32the other pillar is our focus on making sure that we give our customer superpowers specifically the first two of

04:42these were the engineering and the designer superpower so without any coding or without any design knowledge everybody can easily

04:54create amazing online interactions so that's type form and one of the key takeaways here in our growth story is

05:03how the product was different was better and the product itself helped grow a lot David our cofounder shared with

Chapter one: product-led growth

Joaquim Lecha

05:17Nathan Thea podcast some Revenue metrics here are for context but what I want to to talk about is these

05:26first two chapters that then will lead into the third chapter the first two chapters is chapter one from inception

05:34in 2012 to 2018 in this chapter the company achieved let's say the first level the first step the first

05:44brick which is more or less around this 20 million it took 6 years and you can see that at

05:51the beginning the slope of the curve is flatter because it is never easy to start a company and to

05:58be successful so kudos to all of you who are in these stages at some point because the product was

06:06so good and purely because of the product the growth started accelerating right and you can see that in 200

06:14um 16 17 but eventually in 2018 the growth has slowed down to that 31% so that was the first

06:24moment in our time when we thought okay what got us here will not take us there we have to

Chapter two: go-to-market acceleration

Joaquim Lecha

06:31rethink this and that's what we did right so enter chapter 2 because chapter one had been purely product Le

06:40growth we thought what are we going to add in this chapter two and what we thought was we have

06:48to accelerate with goto market and in the next four years so 2019 to 2022 you can see that we

06:58accelerated growth and on that first brick first 20 million we added another three bricks or almost 60 million so

07:07let's talk about that a little bit more in detail okay we need to accelerate growth we need a second

07:15engine that first plane was a small plane with one engine the product right now this plane becomes bigger it

07:23already has 45,000 customers but it needs another engine go to market is the engine what we do is we

07:33go and take a look at our customer base we realize one thing every customer creates forms these forms are

07:43shared there's 370 submissions on average per month right so 370 people per month per customer are exposed to the

07:54product right also customers are happy because the product is a good product product they talk about the product so

One North Star: total customers

Joaquim Lecha

08:01there's a viral growth there's an organic growth and their realization is customers bring customers so as a company we

08:10need one goal right one Northstar total number of customers so that's the one goal that we set ourselves for

08:20to let's say starting in 2019 now the goal needs a strategy how are we going to achieve that goal

08:28we I said already go to market but what kind of options are there for us so in terms of

08:34our strategy there are four different criterias that we used to assess those options the first one if if it

08:42can be something simple better than complex back in the day a lot of people talked about growth Loops right

08:51so you had to invest in many different areas and one thing one flywheel would Mo move a flywheel it

08:58was too complex for me the second thing is it has to be scalable I mean we already have 45,000

09:05customers we should have we should aspire to something that will bring tens of thousands not hundreds or thousands the

09:14third thing for me was we haven't done a lot of goto Market in any sizable way so we have

09:21to learn so there needs to be quick feedback loops right so we have to know as soon as possible

09:28whether something is working or it's not working and the fourth um criteria there hopefully it's not only positive Roi

09:41but it's fast Roi so can we aspire to have paybacks within the year 68 or maybe 12 months so

09:51that's those were the decisions one goal number of customers strategy with clear criterias and then then we found out

Google search ads tactic

Joaquim Lecha

10:01one tactic the one tactic was paid marketing Google search hats this is mostly what we did and because we

10:11focused we became very very good so our teams could learn very fast how to do that how to improve

10:18it how to optimize it over time how to do automatic beaing how to and we also because we were

10:25focused on that we also created very good Partnerships very good relationships with the partners that helped us achieve those

10:33results so in these four years we added these three additional bricks we added 880,000 plus customers and we added

2022 slowdown and segments

Joaquim Lecha

10:41more than 300 submissions 300 million submissions but you might have uh recalled previous slide when the last year 22

10:52we only grew 22% and that was below our average so second moment of recognition what got us here will

11:02not take us there again we went back to our customers and this is um early 2023 and we say

11:12okay we don't have 45,000 now we have 125,000 and taking a look at them we saw that they were

11:20very very different right so in company size where they are from how they use the product what for how

11:27many how much value they derive from this the average of submissions per customer per month decreased to around 330

11:37but we could see that that average that applies to all customers there were some customers that got 125 or

11:44less per month and then within um those all customers we had a Target group that got almost a thousand

11:53something in the north of 900 and within that Target group there's other subs segments specifically Meat Market companies that

12:03are actually using us for big at a bigger scale they were buying the Enterprise skus and they were getting

12:1015 to 22,000 submissions per month so not all customers are the same some get more value from using type

Shift to a submissions North Star

Joaquim Lecha

12:22form and we should focus on these customers again we needed to shift from one go all being total number

12:30of customers to something else that would support a much more successful strategy what we did was to shift to

12:37total number of submissions so now we want to increase and we want to reach 1 billion 2 billion 3

12:44billion submissions as fast and as soon as possible and that allows us to think about those customers that derive

12:51the most value in the end the submission is a proxy for Value right because when you ask questions the

12:58value is from the answers so the more answers from more people the more value you get another thing that

Fragmentation and the one funnel

Joaquim Lecha

13:06happened is that we were decreasing our growth rate we were focused on Google search ads so what we did

13:14was the natural thing let's do more things right so let's add more channels and sources let's kick off a

13:24um initially small sales team let's do actions after support right let's start maybe conversations with potential resellers and Tech

13:35Partners all of those were different thems with different budgets with different customer interactions different data and different processes right

13:47and different tools so there was a huge amount of fragmentation that we understood was inefficient for instance if a

13:59lead is discarded by the AE or the SDR because it's no longer qualified that lead might be lost that

14:07lead might not go to the marketing team because these are two different teams right second they are looking at

14:14their job obviously they want to optimize for their maximum and that's a local maximum that's not the type form

14:22or the customer maximum so this is when we thought okay instead of having so many different themes and processes

14:32and in the end customer funnels why don't we think about one funnel it's one company it's one goal it's

14:41one funnel so one funnel the five steps to this it's taken quite some time I mean in the end

Step one: one team, one budget

Joaquim Lecha

14:52when I look back it's most of last year right the first step it's a simple step some of these

15:00steps are simple that doesn't make them easy but the first step is about going from fragmented teams and budgets

15:09to one team one budget from optimizing those local maximums to optimizing for the global maximum what we did was

15:18hire a revenue leader and we brought in all of the goto Market Revenue related department so now marketing and

15:30sales and channel sales and customer care and customer success and even pricing and packaging are reporting to that one

15:40person and there is a repops function that takes a look holistically at all of these functions and data sets

15:49and Def determines what is best right for the company not for each one of these departments so unifying going

Step two: unified tech stack

Joaquim Lecha

15:59from fragmented to a unified team the Second Step here is about now that you have one team now that

16:07you you can start thinking about what are these data uh or interaction points with my customer what information do

16:17I get where do I get that information and go from fragmented data sets from let's say that reside in

16:25different tools so there's different fragmented tool sets and also fragmented processes to a unified customer-driven Tech stack we as

16:37typ form believe and this is what we promote that every company has to be very close to their customers

16:44or to those valued audiences right you have to talk to them so we always start with this zero party

16:51data we believe that data is very important because it's an opportunity to engage the people it's an opportunity to

16:59ask and get their intention and the information Straight From the Source so that zero party data for us is

17:06very important it it can start in a contact us form it can be because a survey or um let's

17:15say a form um triggered in your web page it can also be because it's something that um opens up

17:22inside the app or inside the software tool that is important but it's not enough your companies have a lot

17:33of other data that you can use data about for instance what ad this person saw what landing page this

17:42person comes from right all of that let's say marketing activity type type of data you also have a lot

17:50of product type of data did the did the person sign up did the person start creating a form for

17:56instance in our case right or all of that data is the first party data the data you collect from

18:02the customer is zero party data this data is the first party data and then you can also buy third

18:07party data who is that person what company does that person work for in what title or in what position

18:14in what capacity right all of that data is contextual so you not only have the responses but you now

18:25know the respondent this is very important because think of about product feedback you might get product feedback but you

18:33might want to understand if that product feedback is provided by somebody who is an expert user in your product

18:40or it's a a basic user a novice user of your product so you have to understand the responses but

18:48also in the context of who responding with all of that now you can personalizing you can start setting every

Step three: unified ICP segments

Joaquim Lecha

19:03individual every different segment in the right path step three is about understanding customer but the customers that we like

19:17so in the past we used to have oh this is not my customer because I'm in sales this is

19:22too small for me oh this is not my customer because I am in marketing and I I don't I

19:29mean I I do selfs serve right so going from those fragmented views of who our customer is to one

19:37type of uh let's say to one unified view of different segments right and the other thing that we learn

19:43is that while you have to start somewhere and generally is by doing an adoc Consulting type of analysis that

19:50says this is your target Persona this is your ICP this is your Persona that thing is a static picture

19:58that cannot remain static right so as you collect information and you bring these fragmented sources into one unified data

20:06set you also go into what is static and a priori to Dynamic ever evolving and based on feedback loops

Step four: journeys and measurement

Joaquim Lecha

20:18what is really working the fourth step is about now you can think of different Journeys for different segments so

20:29for instance one segment is people who are inbound in our contact us form another journey is people that marketing

20:39could try to grab their attention bring them as mqls and then they need a separate type of action in

20:47one case is mostly hand raisers it's inbound in another case we are going outbound with a combination of marketing

20:53and sales right it's very important to prioritize and here again I would go back back to where do you

21:00have the biggest numbers where can you achieve the biggest numbers what is most probable that it's going to have

21:05an impact for you in the shorter term generally contact T shows High intent and that has um let's say

21:13a more probability of success finally measurement right so all of these funnels can have their kpis and you have

21:24to measure what is happening how many people come into contact us how many people are um taking the call

21:32and so on by doing this in a very personalized Way by bringing all this data knowing your customer and

Results and wrap-up

Joaquim Lecha

21:39different customer segments the final step or the final thing that I want to share with you is it seems

21:47to work it took us a year to get here but in the last nine weeks in terms of the

21:55highest valued customers which is the end Enterprise skus we've been seeing record levels of new revenue generated we have

22:05increased a lot the opportunities with the additional targeting we have increased the lead quality because of this enrichment so

22:13wasting a lot less time of your AES and sdrs and we have also personalized those interactions to make sure

22:20that more and more of those people actually respond to the petitions to a meeting with let's say Sur surp

22:28passed in the end Revenue numbers so that was that for me I think I almost made it in 20

22:35minutes it was 21 minutes and I hope it was useful thank you very much