How did HG Data get their first customers?

HG Data got their first customers through Direct enterprise sales to large companies such as HPE and IBM, with pilots that expanded into annual subscriptions.. Their most effective growth channel became Enterprise direct sales, with OEM partners that embed the data set in their own products as a second major revenue source..

What tech stack does HG Data use?

HG Data is built with Chrome extension.

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HG Data

by Craig HarrisLaunched 2012via Nathan Latka Podcast

SaaS enterprise-direct-sales subscriptionagency-to-product

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Growthenterprise direct sales

Pricingsubscription

HG Data, founded in 2012 by Craig Harris, builds competitive intelligence data sets that sales and marketing teams use for precision B2B targeting. The company started with large enterprise clients, reported roughly $6 million in 2015 revenue, and expected to pass $10 million in 2016, which it described as doubling each of the last four years. It also has about 50 OEM partners and roughly 200 direct customers, with a team of 80 based in Santa Barbara.

Why They Built It

Craig Harris sold his prior philanthropic-space company's brand and customer base to Blackboard, kept the underlying IP, and applied the same methodologies to the B2B market, since for-profit companies had far more money. The product is a competitive intelligence data set that lets sales and marketing teams do precision targeting at scale.

Why It Worked

•Starting with enterprise clients paying mid-six figures let the company build revenue on large, sticky accounts rather than on early-stage startups with thin budgets.
•Pilots that expand into multi-region subscriptions show that proven data value compounds, which the company describes as negative churn.
•Selling data to OEM partners who embed it as an ingredient, rather than exposing it to end clients, gave the company a second revenue channel that reached buyers it could not sell to directly.
•Moving downmarket with lower-priced UI-based subscriptions widened the customer base, but the company's risk management around partner conflict shows that expansion must be sequenced carefully.

How to Replicate

1.Land enterprise customers with a small paid pilot in one business unit, then expand to an annual contract once the data proves its ROI.
2.Sell the underlying data to other software vendors as an ingredient in their products so you reach their customers without competing with them directly.
3.Before launching a lower-priced product tier, map which existing partners or enterprise clients it could cannibalize and design the product to sit alongside them.
4.Track renewals and expansion revenue closely, since the source credits enterprise accounts growing from $250,000 to over $1 million as the main driver of growth.

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