Passage Ways

Perun Shada graduated from Purdue in 2003 and founded the ensemble product line (now called OnSemple) with a team based in Lafayette, Indiana, focusing on secure collaboration and communication in the enterprise space. The real spark came in April 2013 when the iPad launched. Perun saw an immediate opportunity: board members and executives suddenly wanted secure access to board information on tablets and mobile devices. The idea was simple but powerful—create a secure online portal where companies could share board decks with CFOs, CEOs, general counsel, and board members, removing communication friction around monthly (or quarterly) board meetings.

Onboard launched around 2014, about four and a half years before this interview (placing it in late 2018). The product was designed to be hypersecure, allowing companies to share board information securely through an online portal accessible on any device—tablets, iPhones, desktops. The software would be used by people pulling together board information (CFOs, CEOs, general counsel) and made available to board members, auditors, outside counsel, and others depending on their permissions. The founding insight that "a portal is a portal" helped Perun realize that the enterprise collaboration infrastructure he'd built for OnSemple could power the board collaboration use case too.

Perun and his team adopted a hybrid sales strategy—about two-thirds inbound and one-third outbound. The outbound effort relied on an SDR team based in Lafayette, Indiana, with 15 SDRs each tasked with generating 10-20 sales qualified leads per month. As the company proved product-market fit, they expanded into Canada and the UK, though they noted that US unit economics remained superior. They had no geographic offices initially, but as global ambitions grew, the cost of establishing payroll, legal infrastructure, and marketing channels in new countries increased their CAC significantly.

By the time of this interview, Passage Ways had grown to over 1,000 enterprise customers, with some of the largest companies in the world using the product—Fortune 500 companies, major banks, hospitals, nonprofits, and even the Supreme Court. The average contract value (ACV) landed at $7,000-$8,000, with some customers paying as little as $5,000/year and larger ones paying $50,000-$60,000/year. Pricing was per-user based on three tiers: Essential, Professional, and Enterprise. The unit economics were aggressive—they were spending about $1 in customer acquisition cost (CAC) to land a $7,000 ACV deal. Expansion revenue drove incredible expansion velocity: 3% annual revenue churn combined with 12% expansion revenue growth resulted in 109% net revenue retention. Expansion came from three sources: new board members being added, new committees launching (e.g., audit committees), and customers upgrading to higher pricing tiers. The company was geographically concentrated—about 50% of revenue came from financial services, which meant extreme seasonality. Between November and year-end, Perun projected doing 40% of the year's business due to budget flushing and planning cycles.

By late 2018, Passage Ways had grown to a $7 million ARR run rate on the Onboard product alone, with 65-70% year-over-year growth (from ~$4.5 million ARR the prior year). The full company—including the legacy OnSemple product—was projected to hit ~$10-11 million ARR by year-end, with the board product representing two-thirds of revenue and employee collaboration one-third. The team had grown to 100 people across Indiana, Canada, and the UK. Just four months before this interview, Perun closed the company's first fundraise ever: $5 million in equity capital. For a bootstrapped company that had maintained healthy unit economics and was already doing $7 million ARR on one product line, this capital was meant to fuel global expansion and push for 100% growth in the board business in the coming year.