Published: July 4, 2017, 9 a.m.
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Allan Willie. He\\u2019s the co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio, a software-as-a-service dashboard company with over 8500 paying customers including Jet.com, Zendesk, Aviva and Ikea. He previously co-founded a company called Espial, an internet device software firm that is now publicly traded on TSX. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and 2 daughters.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? \\u2013 Lead by Greatness
- What CEO do you follow? \\u2013 Tobias L\\xfctke
- Favorite online tool? \\u2014 SEO Plus Chrome plug in and Owler
- How many hours of sleep do you get?\\u2014 6.5-7.5
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \\u2013 \\u201cListen, build something of value and then see if you could raise money\\u201d
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Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:07 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Allan to the show
- 01:50 \\u2013 All of the meeting rooms in Klipfolio\\u2019s office have different wallpaper
- 02:12 \\u2013 Klipfolio is an online, cloud-based, dashboard vendor
- 02:18 \\u2013 Klipfolio works with mid-sized businesses who use them for everything
- 02:40 \\u2013 Nathan uses Klipfolio quite aggressively, especially for his Facebook live streams
- 04:17 \\u2013 When Allan was last on The Top, he was passing 7K customers\\u2014now he has 8500 customers
- 04:36 \\u2013 In January, Klipfolio announced a $12M raise which was an insight round from existing investors
- 05:14 \\u2013 The initial round was to raise an external round
- 05:43 \\u2013 \\u201cWe did use market to validate\\u201d
- 06:12 \\u2013 Klipfolio had verbal offers that were lucrative
- 06:40 \\u2013 The valuation were multiples for some of the terms
- 07:00 \\u2013 Klipfolio also had some acquisition discussions
- 08:08 \\u2013 Allan won\\u2019t call the acquisition discussions offers, because it would still have to go through a lot
- 08:59 \\u2013 In every acquisition discussion, you want to layer how much information to present to another company
- 09:35- Customers usually get the $70 plan for the first month, then move up to $150 in a year
- 10:10 \\u2013 Some of the customers are partners who can pay directly or pay as a partner
- 10:24 \\u2013 30% of Klipfolio\\u2019s income come from their partner channels
- 10:35 \\u2013 Last month revenue was $500-600K
- 11:16 \\u2013 Klipfolio\\u2019s valuation was between $700-800K
- 11:25 \\u2013 Some of the VCs that Allan has talked to are putting terms in place with a higher valuation
- 11:47 \\u2013 You have to sustain your valuation to get into the next round
- 12:34 \\u2013 Anything on Klipfolio is being tracked
- 13:15 \\u2013 The weirdest use case
- 13:25 \\u2013 There are NGOs who use Klipfolio to push some of their metrics out
- 13:34 \\u2013 Red Cross uses Klipfolio for flooding, zika virus and other stuff that is happening in Africa
- 14:11 \\u2013 Churn has gone up slightly
- 14:35 \\u2013 Klipfolio started paid ads for $120K a month
- 14:41 \\u2013 Klipfolio has a blog about the lessons they\\u2019ve learned from Facebook Ads
- 15:24 \\u2013 One of the cons of ads is that the conversion rate drops and churn goes up\\u2014which is normal
- 15:40 \\u2013 CAC
- 15:54 \\u2013 LTV
- 16:05 \\u2013 LTV to CAC is still relatively healthy
- 16:26 \\u2013 Team size is around 90
- 16:47 \\u2013 The team is moving to a new space in November
- 18:20 \\u2013 The Famous Five
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3 Key Points:
- Maintain your valuation in order to get into the next round.
- Not all acquisition talks are considered offers.
- A company of great value has a better chance of raising money and getting acquired down the road.
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Resources Mentioned:
- The Top Inbox \\u2013 The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- Klipfolio \\u2013 Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar \\u2013 Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you\\u2019re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- Acuity Scheduling \\u2013 Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator\\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible\\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\\u2019s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
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