subscription Startups

Conga is a SaaS company specializing in data management, document generation, and contract management for Salesforce users. Founded in 2006 and joined by CEO Matt Schiltze in 2015, the company has grown to serve over 9,000 paying customers across 140+ countries with hundreds of thousands of seats, achieving 200% bookings growth in the prior year and 100% expected growth in the current year, with industry-leading negative churn and gross margins of 85-87%.

Q is a SaaS platform launched in 2015 that provides hand-curated content suggestions for social media users and helps content creators promote their work through Qpromote. The company grew to 5,000 paying customers largely through an AppSumo lifetime deal that generated $30,000-$40,000 upfront, though only about 300 customers were later converted to recurring monthly plans. Currently operating at ~$25,000 MRR with 8% monthly churn, they're scaling through influencer partnerships and just beginning paid acquisition.

Geniebelts is a Copenhagen-based SaaS platform built by six co-founders from diverse backgrounds to solve communication and collaboration challenges in the construction industry. Starting with a free platform that attracted 10,000 users in 2014, the company now serves nearly 200 paying customers across 40+ countries, growing from €10,000 MRR in December 2016 to €100,000+ MRR by late 2017 with a 149% negative churn rate. The company raised €4 million in external funding a year prior to this interview and achieved a 7-8 month payback period with €4,500 customer acquisition cost.

Vuture is a marketing automation platform purpose-built for enterprise professional service firms (law firms, accounting firms). Founded by Robin Stevens in 2007 and still bootstrapped after 10 years, the company has grown to $10M ARR with 300 enterprise customers through high-touch, low-volume direct sales. The company ranked #16 on the SaaS 1000 list for staff growth, maintains exceptionally low churn (~0.3% monthly), and achieves 85%+ gross margins.

Popton is a lead capture platform for creating customized pop-ups and overlays, built by co-founders Gal and Tomer (both 28) who met in high school. Launched officially two months prior to this interview in early 2017, they bootstrapped the product using revenue from their profitable digital agency ECPM ($30k/month). They grew to 72 paying customers with $2,300 MRR by leveraging their agency network and content marketing community.

Badis Kalfalahi launched LeadGuru.io in September 2016 as a side hustle while attending Achèse Paris business school, building a service that outsources cold-email campaigns for B2B companies. The company reached $19,000 MRR with 24 customers paying an average of $800/month through a subscription model, generating approximately $45,000 in revenue over eight months. After his CTO departed, Badis pivoted to partnering with Reply.io instead of building proprietary tech, focusing on the service and sales aspects of the business.

Coupa is a B2B SaaS platform that helps enterprises optimize their spending through procurement, invoice processing, expense management, and supplier management. Founded in 2009 and taken public in October 2016, the company has grown to serve over 530 customers including major enterprises like Airbus, Rolls Royce, Nike, Uber, and Lyft, generating approximately $140 million in annual recurring revenue with 40%+ year-over-year growth and exceptional retention metrics.

Xsella is a cloud-based SaaS platform launched in 2011 that helps service businesses (architects, accountants, designers, consultants, agencies) manage operations through automation and integration with existing tools. With $11M in total funding, 60 employees across Sydney and San Francisco, and over 1,000 customers, Xsella has achieved strong unit economics with ~$480k-$4.8M monthly revenue, 80% daily active user engagement, and 20-30% year-one expansion revenue with negative 10% net revenue churn.

Instapage is a SaaS landing page optimization platform founded by Tyson Quick in 2012 to solve the problem of wasted ad spend. Starting with $600k seed funding and pivoting with only $75k remaining, the company bootstrapped to over 16,000 customers and $10M+ ARR by 2017 through aggressive paid acquisition, achieving 350% CAC ROI with a $1,200 average customer lifetime value.

Haste is a network optimization platform founded by Adam Toll and an engineer co-founder to reduce lag and improve stability for real-time applications, starting with competitive gaming. The company gained 350,000 signups primarily through influencer partnerships and grassroots community engagement, converting between 1,000-10,000 to paid subscribers at $6.99/month after launching their paywall in 2017. With $6M+ raised and a 15-person team based in Atlanta, they're scaling infrastructure support beyond their initial two game titles while maintaining a sustainable 4-5% monthly churn rate.

Tech Capital is a UK-based intellectual property investment company that acquires and commercializes university discoveries through a global network of 4,500 research universities. The company generated £3.8 million in revenue in the first half of 2017 by providing three core services: invention discovery, invention evaluation, and executive placement in technology transfer, while also building a portfolio of seven maturing companies. Founded in 2014 with £9 million in capital raised through a listing on the London stock exchange's AIM junior market, Tech Capital exemplifies the partnership-driven approach to scaling university IP commercialization.

Red Seal is a cybersecurity SaaS platform providing network modeling and risk scoring for enterprise networks and government agencies. Founded in 2004 and re-launched under CEO Ray Rothrock in 2015, the company grew from $17-18M ARR to $40M ARR by focusing on cash flow profitability and gross margin expansion (77% to 86%) while maintaining 90% revenue retention. The company serves approximately 240 global 2000 and federal customers with average first-year ACVs around $200K, expanding to multi-million dollar deals through customer expansion.

Jitterbit is an enterprise integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) founded in 2005 by the Sasan brothers. George Gallego joined as CEO in 2011 when the company had 50 customers and ~5 employees, scaling it to over 1,000 paying customers with $40-50M ARR by 2017, growing 70-80% year-over-year. The company acquired customers primarily through trade shows, webinars, and inbound marketing, maintaining a healthy 10% annual churn rate with 105% net retention.

Qualtrics is an experience management SaaS platform founded in 2002 by Ryan Smith and his family. Starting with academic customers, the company grew to ~$50M revenue by 2012 while remaining highly profitable, then pivoted to aggressive growth mode, scaling to 9,000+ customers and $250M+ ARR by 2017. The company turned down a $500M acquisition offer and is preparing for a public offering.

Automattic was founded by Matt Mullenweg in 2005 to build services around WordPress, the open-source blogging platform he created in 2003. The company operates primarily as a subscription business with three main products: WordPress.com hosting, Jetpack services, and WooCommerce e-commerce platform. Automattic has grown to over 100 million ARR, operates fully remotely across 62 countries with 650 employees, and has strategically remained private to maintain long-term strategic flexibility.

RingLead is a cloud-based SaaS data management platform built by Chris (formerly SVP at CA Technologies) and Russ (founder of Computer Associates). They acquired the struggling company in November 2016 and transformed it from losing money to over $550k MRR in roughly one year by consolidating operations to Long Island, building a performance-based culture with employee equity, and launching a new unified product portfolio (DMS) in April 2017. They grew from ~160k to 550-600k MRR with 700+ customers and plan to hit $2.6M MRR by 2019.

Insight Squared is a sales analytics and business intelligence SaaS platform launched in 2011 by Fred Shohmer and two co-founders. The company raised $1M initially and $27M total in venture capital, growing to 750+ customers (primarily mid-market and enterprise) with a team of 135 in Boston. They focus exclusively on sales operations and analytics, positioning themselves uniquely in the intersection of business intelligence and sales enablement.

Malwarebytes is a cybersecurity SaaS company founded by Marsen Klazinski in 2008 that provides malware remediation and protection software for consumers and businesses. Starting with a free remediation tool and $40 annual subscription model, the company bootstrapped to $25 million in ARR before raising $80 million and achieving over $130 million ARR by 2017. The company has grown to 650+ employees with 3+ million consumer subscribers and 50,000+ business customers through word-of-mouth reputation and community-driven acquisition, maintaining profitability throughout its growth.

Centrify, founded by Tom Camp in 2004, is an enterprise identity and access management SaaS platform that helps organizations manage passwords, multi-factor authentication, and privileged access control. The company bootstrapped for 4-6 months before raising capital across five rounds totaling $90M from investors including Excel, Mayfield, Samsung, and others. With over 5,000 customers (including two-thirds of Fortune 50), Centrify passed $100M ARR in early 2017 and achieved cash flow positivity, demonstrating strong SaaS metrics with 95% net dollar retention.

Nathan Latka runs a daily podcast interviewing SaaS founders about their metrics and growth tactics, having produced nearly 1,000 episodes. Facing frequent legal threats from boards demanding episode removal due to transparency concerns, he shut down the show but then pivoted to a Patreon-based monetization model. In a test of customer commitment, he raised $527 from 9 patrons willing to pay for exclusive content, validating audience demand and launching a tiered subscription offering exclusive episodes, metrics calls, and monthly data exports at $5-$500/month.