767: With $10M Raised Will They Be Sytem of Record for Your COO?
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Nick Candito. He is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the company called Progressly, championing the company\\u2019s mission towards becoming the new standard for how teams find and execute business processes. He previously served as Relate IQ\\u2019s head of user success and business operations which was acquired by Salesforce, the first automatic and intelligent CRM solution. Nick founded Progressly to address how large industries operate, innovate and share around core business processes.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? \\u2013 Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
What CEO do you follow? \\u2013 Jeff Weiner, Satya Nadella, Dick Costolo, Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? \\u2014 Hubspot tools for email, Pocket
How many hours of sleep do you get?\\u2014 less than 8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \\u2013 be patient, ask more questions and optimize by being around the best people
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:07 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Nick to the show
01:49 \\u2013 Nick thinks Salesforce will win the CRM space, as well as Microsoft and LinkedIn
02:25 \\u2013 Nick is impressed by Base CRM and Social Capital
02:57 \\u2013 Nick stumbled into tech as he was originally a finance major
03:15 \\u2013 He started by joining a small software team building technology for the pharmaceutical industry and learned about the manual system of the tech industry
04:04 \\u2013 Nick then joined Crimson Hexagon and he learned how to take a company to the next level using tools like Salesforce
04:38 \\u2013 With RelateIQ, Nick learned how to create a sales system of engagement
05:18 \\u2013 Nick thinks the best founding duo he has ever encountered is Adam Evans and Steve Loughlin
06:29 \\u2013 Progressly is the operational system of records with a focus on the Fortune 1000 CROs or contract research organizations
07:24 \\u2013 The company has a mobile first strategy (people who are working outside of office)
08:01 \\u2013 Progressly works with a variety of companies; big companies that include Shell Oil and those in the mid-market segment
08:25 \\u2013 The highest price is $49 per user, with the IT Group of Chevron they have 60,000 employees within the company
09:31 \\u2013 The company was founded in 2014 and started to fundraise aggressively in 2015; they were able to raise $10 million in the seed, series A and after
10:22 \\u2013 They had a very specific profile for their seed round and focused on a large institutional investor, a micro VC, and some high value angels\\u2014it played out the way they planned
11:17 \\u2013 They are looking at getting a positive net churn and at how they can accelerate the growth of their accounts; for example, from site-wide deployment to regional deployment to enterprise deployment
13:28 \\u2013 They are now in the hundreds in terms of customers; the energy and utilities sector has a high network effect
14:05 \\u2013 Nathan just interviewed Geoff Moore who said the more specific or weirder the sector, the better
15:24 \\u2013 The utility metric depends on what the user is running on operationally
16:03 \\u2013 The active number of seats are in the thousands
16:46 \\u2013 The first year revenue was pretty low because they did a paid pilot offering
17:10 \\u2013 They were looking into the pilot to use case expansion
17:55 \\u2013 They want to have a 100% growth, year over year
18:10 \\u2013 It is easier to drive a high growth rate rather than have customers who can refer you to others
19:41 \\u2013 Nick will celebrate when he gets to $5 million in ARR or accounting rate of return
20:40 \\u2013 Currently, they are doing less than 300 grand per month
21:16 \\u2013 Having an enterprise cycle in your business is slower upfront, but has the ability to experience significant growth in the long run
21:31 \\u2013 They have 30 employees with some in product design and engineering
22:31 \\u2013 The payback period is significantly lower than 12 months
24:38 \\u2013 The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Target a specific group for your customer base to increase the chances of referrals.
An enterprise account may prove to be slow at first, but it will pay off in the long run.
Ask your customers to promote your business to other people.
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
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
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\\xa0\\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible\\xa0\\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