Core

Santi Biblioni and his co-founders felt the problem firsthand. They had previously exited a company five years earlier and understood that professional service firms—agencies, consulting firms, law firms, accounting practices—didn't actually have a project management problem. The real issue was project profitability. These companies sell hours and need to understand their margins in real time to negotiate better fees, hire more people, and increase salaries. Yet no existing tool solved this because "no one wants to log hours... everyone hates it." The trio, all Argentinian and in their early 30s with a decade of working relationships, decided to build the solution they needed.

With just $10,000 of their own capital, Santi and co-founder Jose built a minimum viable product. It was "awful," but it worked. They launched with a handful of customers—three to four in the first round—which was enough to get into the prestigious 500 Startups program in San Francisco. The initial MVP proved the concept: companies would switch from horizontal tools like Asana, Monday, Trello, and Jira to a vertical solution built specifically for their use case.

Core's early growth came through the 500 Startups network and organic inbound channels. SMBs discovered the product through organic search, content marketing, and SEO efforts driven by the CEO's writing. Meanwhile, enterprise customers typically came through outbound prospecting. By the time of this interview, the company had grown to approximately 115 customers with an average contract value (ACV) of $19,000, though the range was wide: some SMBs paid $5,000 annually while enterprise customers exceeded $100,000 per year. The company charged $30 per user per month.

The product-market fit metrics were exceptional. Net revenue retention hit 114%—meaning the existing customer base grew by 14% year-over-year from expansion revenue. Churn was a healthy 4%. Most expansion came from customers adding more seats to their teams. On the growth side, the company initially relied on outbound sales but invested more aggressively in inbound channels early in the year. Email nurturing on an expanded database proved effective for enterprise customers, while organic SEO and blog content drove SMB acquisition. The vertical positioning worked: 80% of current customers had switched from generic project management tools once they matured and needed profitability insights.

Core just closed a $6 million Series A at a $40 million valuation—a 25-26X revenue multiple. The capital came from top-tier investors including Kevin O'Connor (founder of DoubleClick, acquired by Google) through his SCOP Venture Capital fund, alongside other strategic individuals including founders from Plan, Aquafold, and Crackle (acquired by Salesforce), plus the Global CEO of Walmart. The company was doing roughly $150,000 in monthly recurring revenue at the time of the interview, up from approximately $400-500k ARR one year prior. The team, now 66 people (30 engineers, 12 in sales), planned to allocate 70% of the new funding to growth (marketing, pre-sales, sales, post-sales) and 30% to product. Their goal: break $2 million ARR by December, continuing their 9-10% month-over-month growth trajectory.