Woopra

Eli Corey studied computer science at the Lebanese American University and built the first generation of Woopra in 2007. The product was designed to help businesses consolidate customer activity across all channels and build a more data-driven culture inside their organizations. Woopra was sold on a basic SaaS model, with customers subscribing on a month-to-month basis.

The team started building the product in 2007 and launched in early 2008. For a couple of years they ran a premium model without charging anyone at all. By the time they were ready to monetize, the product had about 50,000 active projects on the system, all using it for free. Woopra raised an angel round of a million dollars through an equity round, then reached profitability quickly and has stayed self-funded since.

Around October 2009, Woopra launched its commercial packages. Eli recalls that the team set up a notification system to alert them every time someone upgraded. Early transactions were small, around $15 to $30 a month, but the upgrades came in constantly. Eli said that many users had been waiting for the premium features, and that upgrades arrived every 10 to 15 seconds on launch day. That response validated years of work.

Today Woopra runs two customer tiers. Small business customers pay about $3,000 a year, and enterprise customers pay about $30,000 a year. Woopra has more than 1,000 paying customers, including a number of Fortune 500 companies. Eli said the company spends roughly $1,000 to $2,000 to acquire an enterprise customer, and a sales team handles those deals.

The enterprise edition was the turning point. It was introduced a couple of years before the interview, and by then it generated roughly as much revenue as the small business tier, with the two groups near a 50-50 split. Eli said the company had lost only a single enterprise customer over the past two years. He attributed this to relationship-building and to educating customers on features that competitors don't offer, which makes switching costly.

Small business retention has been harder. Switching tag management and cloud tools is easy, and Woopra cannot afford to staff individual support for small accounts, so churn there has been a real problem. The company has been building an educational program to improve retention, and Eli said it is showing progress but still has a long way to go.

Woopra's revenue grew about 50% per year. Based on the figures discussed, revenue for 2015 was north of $1.5 million, and current MRR is around $300,000. The team has 12 full-time employees in San Francisco, plus part-time and remote contributors. Eli said they plan to focus on identifying a vertical for their marketing and to push growth from 50% toward 100% per year before raising money on better terms.