Dan Martell - January 16, 2020


Attracting Investors with Tim @ SaaSOptics.com - Escape Velocity Show #19


Episode Stats


Length

26 minutes

Words per minute

171.95906

Word count

4,603

Sentence count

343

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Hate speech

1

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

SAS Optics is a B2B SaaSaaS company building a service that automates the order-to-cash process for small B2 B saaS businesses. In this episode, we talk to CEO Tim McElroy about how the company got to where it is today and why it's so unique.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.080 if you're selling your software product over the web with a shopping cart yeah we're not for you
00:00:05.680 that's an e-commerce solution you're taking credit cards and you're turning the crank that's not our
00:00:10.480 business although we integrate with the stripes of the world and we're curlies of the world
00:00:15.200 it's really not our our primary business but if you negotiate a different agreement with customer
00:00:20.960 a then b then c and they're all over the map we love that complexity and the variety
00:00:30.000 Boom, we're here with Tim.
00:00:41.360 How's it going, Tim?
00:00:41.980 I'm doing great.
00:00:42.840 Thanks for having me.
00:00:43.760 I appreciate you being on the show.
00:00:45.200 SAS Optics, you've been doing it now for three and a half years?
00:00:48.480 I joined the company in 2016, and I joined the founders that bootstrapped the company for the first six years,
00:00:55.260 and I joined to start raising capital and growing the company faster.
00:00:59.640 Cool.
00:01:00.000 So I was employee eight, and we're pushing 80 today.
00:01:03.620 Holy moly.
00:01:04.300 So really great growth.
00:01:05.360 How much capital did you bring on?
00:01:07.740 So in the first year in 2016, we raised a seed round,
00:01:11.740 a small seed round of $1.4 million.
00:01:14.040 And then the beginning of 2018, we closed our Series A, $5 million.
00:01:19.540 And then we're about to announce, not ready to announce today,
00:01:24.000 but we've closed on our Series B that we'll be announcing here in the fall.
00:01:29.320 How exciting is that?
00:01:30.500 So we're excited to get behind us, yeah.
00:01:32.620 In Atlanta.
00:01:33.640 In Atlanta, absolutely.
00:01:35.140 So we're going to set the record straight.
00:01:36.200 There is SAS in Atlanta.
00:01:37.560 People think.
00:01:37.960 There is a lot of SAS in that.
00:01:39.760 Yeah.
00:01:40.420 I was always wearing people like, what are you talking about?
00:01:42.640 We were just talking off show that we're
00:01:45.320 going to be doing my next event there, which I'm excited about.
00:01:47.920 Weather's better than.
00:01:48.980 Yeah.
00:01:50.480 We were in Boston last year in January.
00:01:52.080 It definitely was a little chilly.
00:01:55.480 And in regards to what SaaS Optics does for those that don't know, how do you explain it?
00:02:01.240 Sure.
00:02:01.560 So we have what we call a subscription management platform.
00:02:04.320 And what we do is three things.
00:02:06.540 We do billing and payments for your customers.
00:02:09.700 We do revenue recognition.
00:02:11.300 And we do SaaS metrics and analytics.
00:02:13.780 So essentially, we automate the order-to-cash process for small B2B SaaS businesses.
00:02:21.120 We focus exclusively on the emerging and growth side.
00:02:24.000 So we're not way up market, you know, talking with the unicorns in the market.
00:02:29.440 We're focused on the zero to $100 million market.
00:02:32.920 Okay.
00:02:33.340 So we have 600 customers to date, and they range from zero in revenue to $350 million in revenue.
00:02:41.060 Wow.
00:02:42.100 What was the second thing you said?
00:02:46.460 Cash consolidation?
00:02:48.800 No, order to cash process.
00:02:50.800 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:02:51.540 Yeah, what's the order to cash process?
00:02:53.420 So really it's about automating the process of, again, we focus on B2B.
00:02:59.560 So really our area of expertise is anything that any processes that's sales driven.
00:03:06.300 So you have salespeople that negotiate agreements.
00:03:09.340 All agreements are typically different when you have salespeople negotiating them.
00:03:13.560 So the term, the subscription term is different.
00:03:16.620 It runs from monthly, annual to multi-year to different payment methods, annual.
00:03:23.420 monthly. And when you have that variety, you have a revenue recognition problem. Per GAAP guidelines,
00:03:30.360 you need to make sure that your books are GAAP compliant. And then you have the non-GAAP
00:03:36.540 reporting of SaaS metrics and analytics that all of the investors and management team want.
00:03:41.820 Exactly. And we have all of that completely out of the box. We integrate it with your current
00:03:47.520 infrastructure whether it be salesforce or hubspot on the crm yeah quickbooks zero intact net suite
00:03:54.640 on the gl side and we manage that's really cool and that's what makes you guys kind of different
00:03:59.680 from other subscription platforms yeah that and the fact that we we actually are very innovative
00:04:06.880 in our um pricing model so you don't have to be you know always innovative on the technology side
00:04:12.000 We actually innovated quite nicely on the pricing model.
00:04:15.380 How does that look?
00:04:16.560 We tie our license fees to our customers' revenue size.
00:04:21.700 So if you're a $2 million company, you can license the platform for as low as $4,000 or $5,000 a year.
00:04:27.840 If you're a $10 million company, it might cost you $13,000, $14,000 a year.
00:04:32.740 So as our customers grow, we grow along with the customers.
00:04:36.560 So they're not having to take a big bite.
00:04:38.720 And then the other side of the equation is how quickly our customers can benefit from the application.
00:04:45.120 We typically can implement our customers in less than 30 days.
00:04:49.700 Some we've done over the weekend to get our customers live and completely integrated, and they're off to the races.
00:04:56.820 A lot of the competitors on the higher end take four, six, 12 months to implement.
00:05:03.520 And, you know, $50,000 to $100,000.
00:05:05.000 And this is like the Zoras and like the big. 1.00
00:05:06.400 That would be the XORs, the Intax, the NetSuite,
00:05:08.740 kind of the ERP-type solutions on the one side.
00:05:12.380 And then on our side, we are really, really nimble,
00:05:16.940 very lightweight application that we can get implemented
00:05:21.980 in a matter of weeks.
00:05:22.360 Did you say 80 employees?
00:05:23.560 How many?
00:05:23.900 80.
00:05:24.520 How do you grow?
00:05:25.440 What did you do to pull that off?
00:05:28.220 It's hard.
00:05:29.680 You know, the labor market, as you know, is tight and tighter.
00:05:33.440 engineering talent is hard to find we've we've we've definitely accelerated that in in the last
00:05:41.600 year but mainly we've been focused on the go-to-market side with sales people marketing
00:05:46.720 people a business development group so really just this this half of the year have focused on
00:05:55.480 increasing our sales capacity by about 150 percent so we went from four sales reps to now 12 sales
00:06:02.300 reps.
00:06:02.920 OK, so in the previous years, most of those people
00:06:04.860 are on the engineering side of customer success.
00:06:06.900 Yeah, engineering customer success.
00:06:08.640 We probably had three to five salespeople.
00:06:11.040 Is it mostly referral, organic, inbound?
00:06:13.240 So about 40% of our revenue today
00:06:16.220 is made up of coming from inbound leads.
00:06:18.740 So we've traditionally done a really good job
00:06:21.300 with kind of getting inbound requests.
00:06:23.840 But as you grow the sales team that much,
00:06:27.320 there's a lot more mouths to feed.
00:06:28.800 So we're doubling down on the marketing side.
00:06:32.260 But we rely more and more on our account executives
00:06:35.860 sourcing their own business and closing the business
00:06:38.920 as much as we are trying to crank up the marketing lead
00:06:42.220 machine, as well as our business development reps that
00:06:45.400 kind of do outbound.
00:06:46.760 Yeah.
00:06:47.980 I mean, people, I've talked about this
00:06:50.140 with a few other founders in the SaaS space.
00:06:52.140 How big is the, how many SaaS companies
00:06:55.380 you feel there are in the world?
00:06:56.980 So we've done quite a bit of research,
00:06:58.500 as you might imagine, and investors
00:07:01.240 might ask that question quite a lot.
00:07:03.220 But we've done research, and we're pretty adamant
00:07:07.660 that the B2B SaaS market is about 30,000 businesses globally.
00:07:13.240 That's the number I had, about 25,000.
00:07:15.080 About 15,000 in North America and 15,000 rest of the world.
00:07:20.520 You only have about 55 SaaS businesses that are public.
00:07:25.180 You have another 150 to 200 that are-
00:07:27.100 Did you say 55?
00:07:28.120 There's only 55 that are public.
00:07:29.740 Wow.
00:07:30.740 pure SaaS businesses.
00:07:31.580 Wisconsin Contact, do you know this?
00:07:32.860 Were they the first ones?
00:07:33.860 Yeah, absolutely.
00:07:34.680 Gail.
00:07:35.100 I worked with her way, way back in the day at D&B Software.
00:07:38.940 A lot of us owe Gail.
00:07:40.220 She's a pioneer.
00:07:41.180 She was.
00:07:42.240 She was a pioneer.
00:07:43.280 55, only 55 public.
00:07:45.020 Only 55.
00:07:45.620 And then there was probably another 150 or 200
00:07:47.840 that have reached unicorn status, about $100 million
00:07:51.900 in revenue.
00:07:53.180 But that leaves everybody else is trying to get from $1 million
00:07:57.080 to $100 million.
00:07:58.580 And that's where they all live.
00:08:00.720 Yeah.
00:08:01.220 So I go to these conferences.
00:08:02.740 And how much is it growing per year?
00:08:05.360 Oh, I think it's still 20% to 30% depending upon who you ask.
00:08:09.140 Just like software eating the world.
00:08:11.120 But I look at it a little bit different than the Forrester's
00:08:15.500 and the Gartner's of the world.
00:08:17.840 You've got to look at the supply chain.
00:08:20.300 And there's been an explosion of these incubators
00:08:23.060 and accelerator programs in every city.
00:08:25.360 I mean, we have five, six, 10 of them in Atlanta alone
00:08:28.540 That really has fueled the landscape in Atlanta.
00:08:32.940 And it's happening all over the world.
00:08:35.480 And they're all subscription.
00:08:36.640 There is no other model.
00:08:37.720 Yeah, it's 80%, 85% subscription.
00:08:40.120 I mean, most of them.
00:08:41.320 And so I think the wins that are back from a business model standpoint, and not all of those will make it.
00:08:48.800 But it's certainly, there's a lot of venture capital on the sidelines funding it.
00:08:54.760 And I just think the future looks really bright.
00:08:57.420 It's, I mean, obviously, Tim, it's a pretty competitive space, you know, SaaS, selling to
00:09:03.360 SaaS, right?
00:09:04.560 Martech probably has it the worst, but how do you guys differentiate?
00:09:08.720 What is your thought, like, the go-to-market?
00:09:10.640 How do you win the business?
00:09:12.740 Yeah, no, that's a great question.
00:09:13.960 So we're exclusively direct.
00:09:16.180 If you think about it, we're an extremely capital-efficient business.
00:09:19.540 Every motion in our company, from the business development and marketing side, through sales,
00:09:25.040 through implementation is all done using video conference exclusively.
00:09:29.680 We're not flying around the country, you know,
00:09:32.800 paying sales reps enormous amounts to have meetings, you know, locally.
00:09:38.120 We do everything, you know, virtually over the web, which is really great.
00:09:42.700 Our sales cycles are average about 35 days.
00:09:46.680 So it's a very high velocity business.
00:09:49.400 Yeah. So we really, really differentiate by having our sales reps very, very well-trained and very well-versed in the product so they can go deep because they're selling to CEO founders and they're selling to CFOs. And you have a young 27, 30-year-old guy that's going toe-to-toe with how to calculate CLV, for example.
00:10:11.580 Yeah. So they have to be really well trained. And we've done a very good job at that. And, you know, we don't even have like traditionally have systems engineers that help the salespeople, you know, go deep on functionality. We don't we don't have to leave it with the accounting. So, yeah, it's a very, very quick sales cycle. And, you know, you show the product and it resonates and goes. So but our focus is on that the side of B2B that sales negotiated agreements. If you're selling your software product.
00:10:41.340 It's a unique hook.
00:10:42.380 If you're selling your software product over the web with a shopping cart, we're not for you.
00:10:48.080 That's an e-commerce solution.
00:10:49.540 You're taking credit cards and you're turning the crank.
00:10:52.160 That's not our business.
00:10:53.240 Although we integrate with the stripes of the world and we're Curlies of the world, it's really not our primary business.
00:10:59.720 But if you negotiate a different agreement with customer A, then B, then C, and they're all over the map, we love that complexity and the variety.
00:11:08.800 because we're very, very agile and easy to use.
00:11:11.800 Do you allow the customers?
00:11:13.540 Is the legal part in your platform?
00:11:15.700 It is not.
00:11:16.720 We can store all the agreements with all the customer
00:11:19.660 records, but we're not.
00:11:20.860 OK, you're not doing the redlining and all that stuff.
00:11:23.260 Not somebody else's.
00:11:24.200 No.
00:11:24.500 And then what about deal rooms and things
00:11:26.960 that have to go outside of parameters for what the account
00:11:29.560 execs?
00:11:30.060 Do you guys support that concept?
00:11:31.720 So you mean for fundraising?
00:11:33.120 No, for deals that might go outside the threshold of what
00:11:37.680 they're allowed to negotiate discounts and stuff.
00:11:40.020 Yeah, so we have those guidelines.
00:11:42.780 But there's not anything within the system that's enforcing
00:11:46.740 that now.
00:11:47.100 Yeah, red flagging and saying, OK, we need these decisions.
00:11:49.980 It's just neat because I think that's
00:11:51.600 like for people that might be new to B2B sales.
00:11:54.960 I mean, this is.
00:11:55.980 Sure, well, what that really relates to and affects
00:11:59.040 is the gap revenue recognition rule.
00:12:01.740 So if you're discounting or if you have bundles
00:12:04.960 and you are discounting services and not discounting software
00:12:10.660 with the new GAAP ASC606 guidelines,
00:12:14.620 you're not able to do that.
00:12:15.640 You have to actually restate your revenue on the back end,
00:12:19.540 even though your sales rep.
00:12:20.620 Are we thanking Enron for all this stuff?
00:12:22.360 Well, I'm not sure it's Enron.
00:12:23.860 It's probably some of the big software companies
00:12:26.220 along the way, too.
00:12:26.720 I just finished reading the Enron book,
00:12:28.200 and they were so ridiculously creative.
00:12:29.800 They were cooking the books.
00:12:30.820 Oh, my gosh.
00:12:31.880 Yeah.
00:12:33.280 what they said, their analogy was the accountants would sit there and say, it's kind of like you
00:12:37.040 have a dog, but if it looked like a duck, it could do something. So all we need to do is give the
00:12:41.380 dog some yellow. You know what I mean? Like essentially change the characteristics of the
00:12:45.160 dog. Now we can call it a duck and then it acts different. It's like, wow. And I guess the gap,
00:12:51.680 I mean, it's thousands of paid. I mean, it's huge, right?
00:12:56.500 It's huge. Yeah. And you have to have an interpretation from accountants.
00:13:01.940 Yeah.
00:13:02.440 They're kind of ruling the world.
00:13:04.580 They create the guidelines and then enforce the guidelines.
00:13:07.160 So that's the next business I want to get in.
00:13:09.080 Yeah.
00:13:09.620 Now, was this your background?
00:13:10.860 Is this how you?
00:13:12.060 No, I have a 30-year background in software.
00:13:15.720 And I've been mostly in applications,
00:13:19.180 manufacturing applications, ERP, financial systems,
00:13:23.300 back in the mainframe days.
00:13:25.100 Yeah.
00:13:25.640 How did the founders convince you to come?
00:13:28.000 So David Ryan was one of the key founders.
00:13:30.880 I've known David for 25 years, really good friend of mine, one of the second guy I ever met in
00:13:36.040 Atlanta. So we became really good friends. This is his ninth software company that he started.
00:13:41.520 I was an investor in one of those companies along the way, always knew what each other was up to and
00:13:46.760 never had a chance to work with one another. And then one of my last businesses, we sold to
00:13:51.760 Cisco. And after I spun out of there, he said, come look at SAS Optics and help me with a sales
00:13:58.920 a marketing plan. And after spending a day, I said, why aren't you raising capital and growing
00:14:03.700 this thing faster? He had built the business to about a million in ARR, 166 customers, and he did
00:14:12.880 it with $53,000 worth of investment. So I said, what are you doing? Let's raise some capital and
00:14:20.240 go. So he called me up a week later and said, would you join me and help me do it? And I jumped
00:14:25.680 in with both feet first time. Was it the relationship sign? Because I mean, a lot of
00:14:29.600 founders listening to this love a team. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's a lot of, it's based on
00:14:34.780 trust. You've seen a performance over time. Yeah. But we've never worked together. So that
00:14:39.040 was obviously something new that we needed to work out. But, you know, the trust relationship
00:14:43.260 was there. And so we started working on the business and he's obviously is the founder.
00:14:50.100 He knows everything about the business and can do every function in the business, which is great to
00:14:55.080 have, because as we're scaling, there's things that go off track.
00:14:59.400 And he can go apply his experience in the parts
00:15:05.440 of the business.
00:15:05.940 Special, special projects.
00:15:07.620 Yeah, exactly.
00:15:08.560 Yeah.
00:15:09.060 Because the founder, I mean, it's interesting.
00:15:11.440 So he's still involved in it.
00:15:12.480 Oh, yeah.
00:15:13.200 Yeah, he's very, very involved.
00:15:15.880 Yeah, absolutely.
00:15:16.840 And what are the things that you've seen that, obviously,
00:15:21.940 the product has to product market fit, et cetera, sales.
00:15:24.280 But what are you doing as an organization
00:15:27.640 when you grow so fast?
00:15:29.500 How do you think of leadership at that level?
00:15:31.380 Sure.
00:15:31.840 Well, it's an evolving thing.
00:15:34.040 And don't think about it probably quite as enough
00:15:38.140 as I should, but it's evolved.
00:15:41.420 And it's a little easier when you have 30 people
00:15:44.440 in the company than you do 80.
00:15:46.040 And we've evolved.
00:15:47.740 And we're all 80 in Atlanta?
00:15:49.400 Yeah, and we're actually resisting the urge
00:15:51.880 to do what others have done and have a completely
00:15:54.160 decentralized remote workforce. I'm old school. I can't put my head around it yet. And I think,
00:16:01.920 you know, what we've really considered is we'll do that until we can't hire really good people
00:16:06.320 locally anymore. And we'll start to, you know, expand out in the various different geographies.
00:16:12.480 But right now it's still working great. But, you know, we have a great cadence of internal
00:16:18.240 meetings. All of our different organizations do daily stand-ups. We have a weekly management team
00:16:25.860 meeting. We had a monthly stand-up meeting for the entire company. Like in all hands. All hands. But
00:16:32.620 those started getting kind of repetitive. You're communicating the right rhythm. Sometimes it's
00:16:37.860 like, well, you already told us. Exactly. So that cycle, we're reworking. We went to a monthly
00:16:44.780 newsletter for example and have a quarterly um all hands meeting so we're we're working our way
00:16:50.460 through it to keep it interesting and not mundane and repetitive and no one remembers what the heck
00:16:55.420 he said who uh who taught you your leaderships did you have like somebody so yeah one yeah one
00:17:01.500 of my mentors um was a guy is a guy by the name of tom noonan he's an investor in our company tom
00:17:06.940 was the founder of Internet Security Systems in Atlanta.
00:17:12.400 I joined the company as employee 13
00:17:15.760 and ran global marketing for the company
00:17:17.820 and grew it to about $300 million in revenue.
00:17:21.400 And we sold it to IBM for about $1.9 billion in 2006.
00:17:27.580 So you worked with Tom.
00:17:28.540 You were employee 13?
00:17:29.620 Yes, I was, yeah.
00:17:30.860 And then we did Julex after that
00:17:32.740 and ran that business for about three years
00:17:34.900 and sold it to Cisco.
00:17:35.820 It wasn't quite a billion dollars, but whatever.
00:17:39.460 It was a great ride.
00:17:40.300 And Tom was involved in that company as well?
00:17:41.680 Yeah, he was one of the founders as well.
00:17:44.340 We found two of our security engineers that were in Germany that had a new idea,
00:17:52.160 and they were trying to – it was kind of IoT before IoT was cool.
00:17:56.740 It was an energy management solution that could detect any IP-connected device
00:18:03.480 across the network and be able to understand its utilization
00:18:07.620 and energy consumption, and then we could turn things on and off
00:18:11.620 remotely or put it in a lower power state. And it would have been really
00:18:15.560 great if the United States cared about saving energy,
00:18:19.440 but it was really very popular in Europe,
00:18:22.900 and we were co-selling a lot with Cisco
00:18:27.620 in Europe because the kilowatt hour is 30 to 40 cents.
00:18:31.660 A lot more expensive.
00:18:32.400 So they really used our solution to help sway these big infrastructure deals.
00:18:37.680 And we convinced them over time that they needed to own us.
00:18:41.260 For sure.
00:18:41.800 But what did Tom teach you from a leadership?
00:18:44.960 Like if you said, like, here are the three things I took away from him.
00:18:46.960 It's really the number one thing and the last thing is all about culture.
00:18:52.240 You've got to build a great company culture.
00:18:54.660 You work so many hours that if you don't like the people you work with
00:18:58.800 or don't like being there, then what's the point?
00:19:01.300 I mean, it's all about the journey, not the destination.
00:19:04.620 And we just really built a great company that everybody liked each other.
00:19:09.440 I mean, the testament to that is after work, do your employees go out together or do they scramble and they don't want to see each other?
00:19:17.420 That's a good test.
00:19:20.320 And it's happening with our business at SAS Optics,
00:19:23.800 really building a great, tight culture
00:19:26.200 that is founded in some core values
00:19:29.120 that you make sure you keep in front of the employees.
00:19:31.960 Were the core values there deliberately
00:19:34.280 spelt out when you started?
00:19:35.440 Or did you bring that into the SAS Optics?
00:19:37.560 No, we built them as we started hiring people.
00:19:41.440 I was employee 8, so we started thinking about that
00:19:44.680 in really the first year to have some core values.
00:19:49.420 And is this something that you instill?
00:19:53.380 Like you say, hey, these are the values
00:19:54.740 I think we should have?
00:19:55.520 Or how do you come to?
00:19:57.140 So it's in all of our onboarding presentations
00:19:59.420 with our new employees.
00:20:01.020 We have an award we give out every month
00:20:04.400 that kind of embodies those.
00:20:06.220 So an individual.
00:20:06.980 You know, either one or many of those values
00:20:09.640 and try to back that up.
00:20:11.540 And with real clear examples of kind of employee performance.
00:20:15.760 That's cool.
00:20:16.380 But yeah, there's probably so much more to do.
00:20:18.680 But we do what we can.
00:20:20.600 What do you guys do that's a little different or unique from a culture point of view?
00:20:25.620 Do you guys sponsor any committees?
00:20:28.080 Or is there anything you guys do that?
00:20:31.220 Yeah.
00:20:32.380 I guess we have a lot of different fun events that we do as a business.
00:20:37.580 Whether it's we typically try to do something quarterly.
00:20:41.200 Get the company together and go do something fun.
00:20:43.680 Whether it be a picnic or Topgolf or casino night.
00:20:48.220 So this is stuff that doesn't happen when you have a distributed team.
00:20:51.260 Yeah, you can't do that.
00:20:52.960 I mean, you're not going to pop up Skype and Zoom and watch everybody have fun.
00:20:58.640 Yeah, so those are the things that we really work on.
00:21:01.140 And it's really good.
00:21:01.740 And we try to deliberately cross-pollinate the team.
00:21:05.120 So like Trivia Night, we deliberately had teams of engineers and marketing people and salespeople
00:21:11.900 co-mingling that would never really talk to each other.
00:21:15.620 So we try to do it.
00:21:17.820 So it's working so far.
00:21:20.840 How many departments do you have,
00:21:23.800 and what are they called in your organization?
00:21:25.840 Yeah.
00:21:26.600 So we have sales, and we have the business development team,
00:21:29.520 which is part of sales.
00:21:30.580 We have marketing.
00:21:31.860 We have engineering.
00:21:34.140 We have product management.
00:21:36.580 And we have customer implementations.
00:21:39.260 We have data migration services.
00:21:41.340 And then we have our customer support team, technical support
00:21:44.100 team, that takes all the inbound.
00:21:46.340 And where does the support – does that roll up to you or does that roll into implementation?
00:21:51.780 Yeah, so it rolls – so our founder, David, is the COO.
00:21:55.780 So a lot of that back office from product through to support and implementations roll up to David.
00:22:02.620 And I have the marketing and sales side of the organization, yeah.
00:22:06.240 So culture is a big thing that your essentially mentor, Tom, taught you.
00:22:11.200 Anything else?
00:22:11.840 not that i can think of but you know it's really all about watching him execute the cadence and
00:22:19.420 yeah and just the um just the public speaking side of it and being prepared i mean um taught
00:22:25.260 me a lot about you can't just go up and wing it although he was really good at winging it
00:22:29.280 yeah you know is usually very well after a lot of preparation yeah yeah that you didn't see
00:22:33.700 yeah um so but made it look like yeah exactly that's what it takes that's cool and what do
00:22:39.140 you think great SaaS companies, because obviously you
00:22:42.740 have a lot of them as customers, what are they
00:22:45.240 doing right in the market today?
00:22:47.640 And I don't know how much insights
00:22:48.980 you have into their businesses, because you
00:22:50.360 see the financials, but maybe not the activities.
00:22:53.960 What do you think some of these fast-growing companies
00:22:57.360 are doing that are contributing to their growth?
00:23:01.800 Like what's the, is there any strategies or thoughts?
00:23:07.080 I think it really comes down to their market segment and, you know, were they an early mover in that segment or not?
00:23:14.480 I mean, that spells a lot of it.
00:23:16.020 If you're, you know, one of the first there, like, you know, Sales Loft in Atlanta, for example, they certainly have competitors, but they're in a market niche that's just on fire.
00:23:27.400 On fire.
00:23:27.860 And so it's really about capturing that and really being very disciplined on how you operate the company from the meeting cadences through to where you place your investments.
00:23:41.460 It's a balance of all of that.
00:23:44.100 Yeah, but it's interesting you say that because how many email automation tools are there?
00:23:48.900 So it's like if you add another one, that's a pretty competitive space.
00:23:52.400 Oh, definitely.
00:23:52.900 Whereas if you look at like, you know, ABM terminuses in Atlanta, if you can find one of those trends in that, you know, at least that's the beginning of a good decision and then operational excellence.
00:24:04.780 Yeah. And it's also all about it's a lot about fundraising as well.
00:24:08.840 I mean, if you have a very compelling product and you're early enough and you can convince investors quicker than the others and get executing faster, it makes a world of difference.
00:24:22.840 Instead of spending most of your time on fundraising.
00:24:24.300 Exactly, yeah.
00:24:25.520 And we've been really fortunate where our fundraising cycles have been very short.
00:24:30.240 You know, after the seed round, the seed round, I would admit, is longer than we thought.
00:24:34.920 But coming from, you know, bootstrap land to, you know, getting funded the first time takes a little bit of time.
00:24:42.080 But we're over that hump and we've got a great partner in Atlanta, Fulcrum Equity Partners that we really like.
00:24:49.600 That's awesome.
00:24:50.080 Tim, one question I'd love to ask leaders, CEOs, is, you know, looking at your journey, you know, operating companies as an entrepreneur,
00:24:58.700 What have you, who did you need to become to be the CEO of a growing SaaS company at
00:25:06.180 SaaS Optics?
00:25:06.980 Like what were some of the things that weren't obvious, you know, personal side, that kind
00:25:11.940 of thing?
00:25:12.380 Yeah, no, I think it's about discipline and actually knowing what your strengths are and
00:25:18.020 what your weaknesses are and making sure that you fill the weaknesses with the right people.
00:25:23.900 You know, it's not enough to get the right people on the bus.
00:25:27.000 You've got to put them in the right seats and make sure that everybody's executing.
00:25:31.760 So it's a lot of knowing what you're good at and what you like to do and giving up and giving it to the people that are deep with the expertise.
00:25:41.540 How have you gotten that feedback of the strengths versus weaknesses?
00:25:46.060 Because, I mean, sometimes as individuals, we're blind to it.
00:25:49.320 Yeah.
00:25:49.780 Like, do you solicit it or how do you?
00:25:52.520 Sure.
00:25:52.920 I think it's a lot of self-awareness.
00:25:54.960 I mean, you have to have a good dose of that and be self-aware.
00:25:59.620 But, yeah, along the way, whether it be Tom Noonan or Dave Ryan, our founder, just, you know, just be honest and tell it like it is.
00:26:08.720 I mean, we're all here for the same reason to, you know, grow the company and improve.
00:26:14.080 So it is about, you know, continuous improvement and, you know, just check your ego at the door.
00:26:20.000 Yeah.
00:26:20.400 And just go.
00:26:21.860 That's awesome.
00:26:22.760 So, yeah.
00:26:23.320 Tim, I really appreciate you coming on.
00:26:24.520 Yeah, thank you.
00:26:25.120 Where do people find you?
00:26:26.300 Where do they go online?
00:26:27.620 They go to www.sasoptics.com.
00:26:31.260 We're going to link this below.
00:26:32.420 Absolutely.
00:26:32.740 I know you're on LinkedIn.
00:26:33.820 Really appreciate it.
00:26:34.740 I appreciate it.
00:26:35.420 Thanks for having me.
00:26:36.040 Thanks for watching this episode of Escape Velocity.
00:26:39.300 Be sure to like and subscribe and leave a comment with your biggest insight from our conversation.
00:26:44.760 Be sure to check out the next episode.