Latest / 1 to 100 / E23: How Iris Grew From $500 a Month to $3,000,000 ARR with Drew Fallon

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E23: How Iris Grew From $500 a Month to $3,000,000 ARR with Drew Fallon · 1 to 100

0:00
Dude, what's it been like moving from the ECOM side to the SAS
0:02
side? Are you an enemy?
0:04
Are you, are you? Have you just become like, you
0:07
know, you know that scene in Star Wars?
0:11
Dude, yeah, literally like you. You either like, yeah, you
0:14
literally live long enough to see yourself become a freaking
0:17
SAS vendor. I like, I like it way more, man.
0:21
It is. It is.
0:24
I'll use the word easier just from the standpoint of like when
0:29
things go wrong in e-commerce, it's like totally outside your
0:32
control. You know, like if like a truck
0:35
flips over with all of your SPF on its way from Florida to
0:38
California and like you Amazon takes you down pretty.
0:42
It's like there's no, there's so many things in like ecom or like
0:45
in the brand side that like you just can't control.
0:47
And it's like just getting punched in the mouth over and
0:49
over and over again. And I feel like with software,
0:52
it's a little, it's a little different because a lot more is
0:56
like within your control. And so I, I like it way more
0:59
over here. It's way more of a, of a people
1:01
business too in software like, and, and when I was a mad
1:05
Rabbit, the CFOCOO, like I was pretty much like a guy in a
1:08
computer. And now like we, you know, we
1:10
have more. Well, that's not true.
1:12
We, we have almost as many people as mad rabbit did when I
1:14
laughed at Iris already just because there's more people.
1:17
So I, I like it a lot more. It's extremely different though,
1:19
honestly, in a lot of ways. Yeah, don't.
1:22
You I made the same transition. Oh yeah, that's right, Jack.
1:26
You did I, I don't know why I always forget that you had your
1:30
own brand before you moved to the SAS side.
1:32
Yeah, I went from brand to agency to SAS.
1:37
You don't like? Yeah, I think that I liked
1:40
agency because I got to speak to so many founders that were, you
1:44
know, sometimes really passionate about what they were
1:46
doing. That was awesome.
1:48
But definitely it's it's just so much easier in SAS.
1:51
I mean, it's built into the model right Subscription,
1:53
whereas some businesses are just not built to handle the carpals,
1:59
the ad accounts getting taken down, the tariffs, what happens
2:01
to be? That's what I'm saying.
2:03
Like, can I ask you like every every time?
2:06
OK, can I ask an AD question? Is it?
2:08
Is it easier or is it simpler like?
2:11
That's the reason was the wrong word.
2:12
More straightforward is what is what I should have said.
2:15
Like it's like it's, it's easier to understand what you need to
2:18
do and like how to do it. I think it's hard to execute.
2:21
Obviously software is very, very difficult, but I just like that
2:26
we knock on wood Iris so far has been like, I would say like a
2:29
pretty smooth ride to date. So you know shit will hit the
2:33
fan of course, at some point and maybe my answer to this question
2:36
will be a little bit different when that when that day comes,
2:39
but so far so good on our side. Honestly, I.
2:41
Think this would be an interesting question for Zach
2:42
because he was brand side before as well.
2:44
He had his his own art brand and then moved into SAS.
2:49
But for me on the gross side of foreplay, so much easier.
2:53
I mean, like guys, a significant fun pastime in my day is just
2:57
refreshing Stripe and I don't know what I'm going to see,
3:01
right. So I I don't know.
3:03
Yeah, it's, it's one business, right, Sample size 1.
3:06
So who knows? Yeah, I just, I, I worry though
3:10
that like the idea that it is simple.
3:14
So let me, I I'll share just my, I've never done brand, so I have
3:17
no idea how difficult it is, but my opinion is software is
3:22
extremely simple and extremely difficult.
3:25
So like, like you know exactly what you need to do and to do it
3:29
is ridiculously hard and, and it's like a ton of brain trauma
3:36
and and especially because as you get bigger, the laws of
3:40
physics and software is that you have to add people.
3:43
Like that's where all of your cost is, is people.
3:46
And like at some point, Drew, I'm curious like are you
3:49
basically HR at your company yet or are you not yet basically
3:53
like you're you're still actually doing things?
3:57
Like do I have an HR person? No.
4:00
Are you just like spending all day dealing with HR issues?
4:04
My Co founder does a lot of that.
4:05
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't do that.
4:08
This is, yeah, I see this. This is the.
4:10
This is the thing that I think like is underappreciated about
4:14
like the the business of software is because it's all
4:18
human capital. Humans are complicated in their
4:22
own way. Yeah, I think that's, that's a
4:25
good point. I was thinking a little bit
4:26
about that because like we're hiring up right now.
4:28
I think we have like 12 or something.
4:31
And I was like, literally like my job is becoming just like how
4:34
to interact with like these people because there's so many
4:36
of them. Like when we were in Sonoma,
4:38
there was 12 people and I was like, you know, my, I don't even
4:42
do anything really besides just like, you know, answer their
4:44
questions and like give them resources and like help them get
4:46
along and like all that stuff, you know.
4:48
So I, I how many, how many are you guys up to per job?
4:51
75. Yeah, that's I like, that's
4:54
crazy. I like can't even.
4:56
Imagine, Jack, you didn't know that.
4:58
No, I had no idea. Dude, Jeremiah and I talked
5:01
about that a while ago. Remember, he has 75 people
5:03
reporting to him too, across the three businesses.
5:06
That's incredible. Do you guys have, are you, are
5:08
you in person? Yeah, we're in person here, New
5:12
York and Bangalore. OK, how many people are in your
5:16
office? Roughly 20 in each office.
5:22
Yeah, that's that's a whole different scale, honestly.
5:25
What was the hardest like increment in terms of like head
5:29
count for you? We went from 30 to 70 extremely
5:35
fast. So like our sort of 0 to 1 was
5:39
like roughly 8 to 9 months and then our like 1 to like zone of
5:45
10 was in the next 15 months. And the, the thing that happens
5:53
when you grow that fast is you just add people really fast and
5:57
like all of it. I mean, like, no matter how hard
5:59
you try, you're going to get so much wrong.
6:04
And that's why I was asking like that.
6:07
That. So it was like, we were like in
6:10
the 20s, call it. And then we like, jumped from 20
6:13
to 70 in the course of 12 months, dude.
6:16
Painful. Yeah.
6:20
What what was the order of of that like staffing model like
6:23
was it like engineers and then marketing and then OPS or like
6:27
how did you think about like building the org over time?
6:31
Most, most of it was go to market hiring.
6:33
Yeah, most of it was go to market hiring.
6:36
And then engineering was actually slower and engineering
6:39
was mostly in network. So the engineering side has
6:43
actually been the least painful to scale because it's it's so
6:46
much in network hiring. But the go to market side is
6:51
both at like more out of network and had to scale faster.
6:58
And so it's been really hard. Yeah.
7:00
And and I mean, this is the nicest way to like my go to
7:04
market team. But go to market people are just
7:07
more dramatic than engineers, you know what I mean?
7:10
What do you mean? Say more.
7:12
Every every, every, every, everything about it like they,
7:15
they just. Spicy.
7:19
Every, every, everything, everything is more dramatic.
7:21
Everything is more dramatic. Like the, the, the, the views
7:25
they hold tend to be more extreme in in either direction.
7:29
They tend to articulate what their views are more often than
7:33
like the average engineer. They tend to like talk to each
7:36
other more often. They tend to be at happy hours
7:37
more often. And so just like there's just
7:40
more drama on the go to market side than on the engineering
7:43
side. Yeah.
7:44
I posted our, our first go to our first like go to market role
7:48
the other day. So I'll start to experience that
7:52
a little bit. I, I, I want like a growth
7:54
marketer. Like I was talking with Nate
7:56
from Numeral and that guy's a beast.
7:58
I want one of those guys like somebody who like I really
8:01
understands like growth marketing.
8:04
I think, I think almost exclusively every hire I've made
8:07
has been on go to market, apart from the things that just need
8:11
to get done. And it's exciting, right.
8:14
Obviously I, I imagine this challenge is building up to a 75
8:17
person team, but each one of those individuals has so much
8:22
potential to do something incredible that you just didn't
8:25
see right. As long as you're not, you know,
8:27
putting them, you know, in, in agency.
8:29
It's common to make go to market hires that are fresh graduates,
8:33
you know, affordable talent. You're actually looking for a
8:36
killer. You might get someone who does
8:38
something very impressive. Dude, totally.
8:42
By the way, there's someone I can't.
8:43
I'm not, I'm definitely not going to say who it is, but
8:45
there's someone who we've hired who is absolutely insane.
8:50
Yeah. This person is like totally
8:52
transforming the like a component of our of our go to
8:56
market right now. And yeah, but Drew, I think by
9:00
the way, I think the numeral thing first of all, Sam is a
9:04
growth marketer like like the the total, the total amount of
9:08
like unfair advantage that that team has is on the growth
9:13
marketing side is unbelievable. Sam is an incredible growth
9:17
marketer, Nate is an ex founder who like happened to have a
9:21
failed YC startup. But like, it's just that, like
9:25
those were the perfect cards to be dealt, basically.
9:29
Yeah. And I am not like I'm like a
9:31
marketer per SE. I am like very much like a
9:34
finance guy. And so I don't even know if I'm
9:38
the right person to like hire somebody.
9:40
Honestly, I might have to like, like call someone and be like,
9:44
do you think this guy's the right fit or something?
9:45
Because I don't like, we have, we've never spent a dollar on
9:47
marketing. Like we don't have any like AP,
9:49
like we don't do like PR Like I, I like, don't know how to like
9:52
spend money honestly very well on marketing.
9:55
I'm hoping that we'll figure it out.
9:57
And if we do, I think, you know, the incrementality of it all
10:00
would be, would be pretty profound.
10:02
But I do think there is like, obviously like a, a testing
10:04
phase, an experimenting phase. Like what, what did you guys
10:07
like start with I guess when you were kind of like beginning to
10:09
deploy go to market dollars? Hiring Raba.
10:15
Yeah. Because I'm like you.
10:17
I don't know. I don't.
10:18
I don't know anything about marketing.
10:20
Dude, I'm not going. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
10:21
By the way, you should you should ring him.
10:23
This is like a side, but you should ping him.
10:26
Yeah. I did.
10:27
I did. I had him.
10:28
I haven't talked to him yet, but OK.
10:31
Yeah, I need a guy like that, you know, I'm going to.
10:33
I need Raba and Nate from you guys.
10:40
That's so interesting. There's a black box for you
10:42
though. True, because you're so close to
10:44
it, right? Yeah, I mean, it's like, I mean
10:47
look like I know how like Facebook ads work, like I ran
10:52
like Matt Rabbit like, you know, I was very much involved in the
10:55
marketing side of that business. But like from AB to B
10:58
perspective, I don't, I don't know what I don't even know kind
11:02
of a thing. And like, you know, we're sort
11:06
of like we're hoping to end the year kind of like the 3 million
11:09
of ARR range. And if you want to continue to
11:11
like scale like a venture backed company, you know, you can't
11:14
just scale with like tweet, like tweets and, and LinkedIn posts.
11:18
I mean that that that stuff works really well and it'll
11:21
continue to work, I think. But like to get to 75 people, I
11:25
think you have to get a little bit better at a couple other
11:28
motions probably. Who's the person at the org for
11:32
your ICP who says we need Iris? I'm booking a call.
11:37
Usually whoever is like the most senior finance leader.
11:40
So it's actually not super often to be ACFO, more like AVP or
11:44
like head of kind of a thing and a lot of a lot of founders too.
11:49
So usually the brands that we're working with are like on average
11:53
they're like 30 or 40 million. So they're not quite like CFO
11:55
type companies, but they would they would have like some sort
12:00
of like head of probably. Right.
12:02
How much? Are they paying you?
12:04
What's your ACV? We've really jacked up prices
12:10
lately. Like these days we're more in
12:13
like the two to four KA month range.
12:15
When we launched it, about $500 a month.
12:17
I mean, the software was such a piece of crap when it was 500
12:20
bucks a month. But like now, like if somebody
12:23
wants to like go below 2 grand a month, I'm probably not going to
12:27
do it unless it was like a super stick brand they wanted to do
12:31
like a case study or something. The the next question I had was,
12:36
are you guys strictly CPG? Because I remember going to your
12:38
website and going, I'm pretty sure this would work for brands
12:42
that aren't CPG, but the CPG are across the website quite a lot.
12:47
So the, the, the whole, the whole like purpose of IRIS
12:50
honestly is like to solve like the working capital problem.
12:54
So that's like that's anybody that holds inventory is kind of
12:57
like our broader sort of Tam if you will, because like like for
13:01
example, if you're selling lotion direct to consumer on
13:04
madrabbit.com, like you have to buy that, you have to hold that
13:07
and then you have to send it to somebody.
13:09
And we have like a company that does industrial stovetop
13:12
distribution that's on Iris because they buy the stovetop,
13:15
they put it in their warehouse and then they ship it to the
13:16
restaurant or whatever. So it's the same kind of problem
13:19
where it's like forecasting is very important because if you
13:21
over forecast or under forecast, it's going to triple down in
13:23
your balance sheet and then you end up, you know, overstocked or
13:26
understocked. And so like that's my, that's my
13:30
like broader way of saying it. But like more practically today,
13:34
like, yeah, we pretty much only work with, with CPG brands.
13:37
We probably like 3 or 4 that are like sort of not like the brands
13:40
that you think of. Like we had a manufacturing
13:43
company too that was using US for mostly like cash flow
13:47
modelling. I would like to extend beyond
13:50
brands like desperately, honestly.
13:52
Can I give you a very controversial suggestion I love?
13:56
Controversy. OK.
14:00
I think you should try to just let whatever B to C business
14:04
come in and let them do it on their own and just put like a
14:08
Stripe link at 1500 bucks a month.
14:11
So that way your turn reduces to.
14:14
So like your turn probability switches at the 2K mark for the
14:18
segment of customers that you are addressing like this
14:23
basically across a bunch of different types of software,
14:25
across a bunch of different companies.
14:27
I have learned that basically somehow 2 KA month is a number
14:31
after which a $30 million brand, the probability of churn changes
14:36
very dramatically because of the way they do the financial
14:39
reviews. I I bet you, if you think back
14:42
to when you were at Mad Rabbit and you were like looking at
14:44
software vendors and asking questions about which ones to
14:46
keep and which ones to not keep. There are numbers that you
14:49
ignore and then there are numbers that you don't, right.
14:51
Yeah. And so like let them just buy it
14:55
on their own and B to B commerce is roughly 3 times bigger than B
15:02
to C and find all of the places where B to B is like what you
15:08
were talking about this like industrial stove top and things
15:10
like that. Find all the places where that's
15:13
happening and focus your marketing there, which is a
15:18
totally different type of marketing than the types that
15:21
Nate and Raba and all these people do.
15:24
Yeah. Right.
15:25
Because the tab is everyone who's playing around in dorky
15:29
spreadsheets, right? And there are so many businesses
15:32
that I don't know are wholesaling into Walmart or
15:35
selling on Amazon or selling on Shopify that you know are just.
15:39
Lost our only issue though. Our only issue with that is like
15:42
the implementation phase is like is not self-service like we it
15:47
takes like two or three weeks realistically to like get up and
15:50
running on Iris. And it take, it can take
15:53
depending on the size of the brand, it can take a week to
15:55
sync the data because you know, like we're syncing like down to
15:58
the order level for like the old time, like the whole history of
16:00
the brands it's storing it. We do all of our own ELT and it
16:06
for like a big Amazon brand where like Amazon like rate
16:08
limits you pretty hard. That can literally take like
16:11
multiple weeks. So for shop, I agree and I think
16:16
that's a good idea. I think we have a little bit of
16:17
work to do on like the onboarding side before that's
16:19
like a super practical approach. And then if my and then if if
16:25
you go the B to B route, the way to do it is all partner
16:28
marketing versus direct marketing.
16:32
So as it would be all partner marketing versus direct
16:35
marketing. So then you would like go to big
16:37
commerce, you would go to fair, you would go to these types of
16:39
companies and ask them, hey, the people who you are surveying,
16:45
they are having this inventory problem today.
16:48
Fare is financially incentivized because they underwrite the risk
16:52
on the on the retailer side. Like that's their model.
16:57
And so the fact that you're making the merchant more
17:00
financially literate is actually directly impacting the
17:04
monetization for fare. And so like that's the type of
17:07
thing that I would be thinking about.
17:09
Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah.
17:11
It's that's like the other thing, unlike the sort of go to
17:14
market side for us, like it's all inbound business.
17:17
Like we've never done like a good partnership like this is
17:20
like, you know, spending money or not, you know, like we don't
17:23
really have like a partnership network.
17:24
We don't really have like an outbound motion.
17:28
So we'll that's a lie. We just started doing some
17:30
outbound like a week or two ago. So we'll see how that how that
17:34
works out. But yeah, there's, there's like
17:36
a lot that there's a lot of work that we got to do.
17:41
I'm so bullish on Iris. I remember back when I was at
17:44
one of the Triple Well events, I was talking to AJ about it and I
17:46
was saying, man, you guys, we need some sort of equivalent of
17:51
Iris in Triple Well because brand owners in SMB, you know,
17:54
one to 10 mil, that's their only question is like, are we
17:58
profitable? Are we profitable this week?
17:59
Are we profitable this month? They want that answer and
18:01
they're using tools like Triple Well to get some, you know, idea
18:05
of it. They're using these abstracts.
18:06
Well, do you remember? They did, I think they call it
18:09
like fin hub or something. And I was like, I was a triple
18:12
well customer mad rabbit. And they had like this fin hub
18:14
idea. And I don't know if I ever like
18:16
reached out to them, but I was like, this is so sick.
18:18
They should totally run with this.
18:19
And I think they just like stopped pursuing it kind of a
18:22
thing. But yeah, that I mean, that's,
18:26
that's basically it's it's like it's like triple well for
18:28
finance. That's a good, that's a good
18:29
person. Yeah, yeah.
18:32
Somebody. What are the things engage with?
18:34
Go ahead. Oh, I was just going to ask
18:36
like, what are the, what are the motions, Drew that you think you
18:39
you do want to run? So like the whole business is
18:45
inbound right now, you know, we have somewhere like over 100
18:49
customers, which is just from my tweets and, and LinkedIn posts.
18:54
I think like I can continue to do that and like it generates
18:57
like good business. I could probably scale it.
18:59
Like, for example, like I'm going to, I'm going to do a
19:01
podcast and I'll do more video content and clips and LinkedIn
19:03
and all, and all that stuff. So I think like you can probably
19:07
like in, in the case of this business Iris, you can probably
19:10
double the sort of net new business from like organic stuff
19:15
pretty easily. And then I want to do like some
19:18
I want, I want to get outbound going like Wayflyer.
19:20
Like Wayflyer, they scaled all the way like almost exclusively
19:23
on outbound. And so we started just doing
19:26
that a little bit. I think partnerships would be
19:28
great. And then we also and I don't
19:32
know if you guys have any experience with this, but like
19:34
getting into like a big like consulting firm, like we're
19:39
working with this one company that has like 300 clients and
19:42
we're doing like a pilot with them.
19:44
And like hopefully we get like into one and then they roll us
19:46
out to the only all three hundred kind of a thing.
19:48
So some more of those like channel type partnerships, I
19:51
think would be, would be really effective for us because there's
19:54
like the whole, the whole ecosystem of like, you know,
19:56
Oracle and a plan, you know, like they really have like
19:59
economies of like consultants and stuff, which is, which is
20:03
like something that could be pretty cool for us.
20:06
And then like I'm going to hire like an enterprise type
20:08
salesperson that's going to, you know, kind of run like the six
20:10
or nine month, you know, 12 month kind of enterprise motion.
20:17
So yeah, that's that's kind of how we're thinking about it.
20:20
And and in the enter like what's the product offering in the
20:23
enterprise? The primary value prop for like
20:28
a really big organization is essentially just like applying
20:31
AI to your actual like S and OP process, like your financial but
20:34
like your budgeting process essentially.
20:36
So like Anaplan, for example, it takes nine months to to
20:40
integrate Anaplan and then you know, you have essentially a
20:44
just a clunky old, you know, not AI native system.
20:47
And so all these, all these companies obviously are
20:50
extremely interested in in integrating AI into as much of
20:52
their business as they can. And I don't, I don't know that
20:55
you really need somebody like me or maybe like somebody like a
20:59
little bit of a lower level, like a financial analyst who
21:03
would be like running those models in in like an Anaplan
21:06
instance. You can just like talk to it and
21:08
have it like build you a scenario, you know, like, hey,
21:10
Amazon just took us down, you know, for a month.
21:13
Like how does that affect, you know, our 2025 goals?
21:16
Like how close, how, how much are we off budget?
21:18
Like those are really, really basic questions that you don't
21:21
need to pay a kid $140,000 a year to answer, you know?
21:26
I gotcha. I gotcha.
21:27
I gotcha. Yeah.
21:28
And then our like our like lower market, our like lower market
21:31
offering is like more of like the what Jack was saying, which
21:34
is like how much money did I make yesterday and like how much
21:37
money am I going to make today? So like as you get bigger and
21:40
bigger for Iris, like the, the finance departments get more and
21:43
more sophisticated and there's also like a whole like BI
21:46
element to the platform. So, you know, we, we sometimes
21:51
are working with like data teams and that's like actually
21:54
enterprise, you know, like there's no like $20 million
21:56
company with the data team. So there's, I mean, yeah,
22:00
there's a lot of, there's like a lot of features like it's Iris
22:03
has become a pretty beefy platform, which is part of the
22:06
problem with like, which have your earlier suggestion around
22:09
kind of like letting it RIP. It's hard to learn.
22:11
It's a, it's a complicated thing, which is we're working on
22:15
working on getting it to be easier.
22:17
But until AI actually just like does all the work for you and
22:21
you don't really have to worry about anything, I think, you
22:23
know, there's going to be some learning curves for this kind of
22:25
stuff. Do you guys run into that?
22:26
Like, do you see people like trying to use it sometimes and
22:29
like, it takes them like a little bit to kind of learn?
22:31
All the, I mean, first of all, yeah, that's, that's true for
22:35
all tools. Yeah.
22:38
I, I, I think like, actually the hardest thing, and this is like
22:43
where you're like product packaging will start to matter a
22:46
lot. Is like, what is the thing that
22:49
this person is signing up to do? And then how do I just like only
22:54
talk to them about that thing and tell them to ignore the
22:57
other buttons basically? Yeah, that's a really good, like
23:00
that's like another thing that we do that we don't do like I
23:03
could, you could sell like we sell irises like basically one
23:06
platform and then like the financial modeling is like an
23:08
upsell and an inventory planning will be like another upsell.
23:12
But, but we don't like to your point, like we don't package it,
23:14
we don't message it. Like we don't have like
23:16
different like you just get the whole thing.
23:18
Like whether or not you're paying for the financial model
23:20
part of it, you'll get it. You'll never know how to use it
23:23
without like us helping you like integrate it and configure it
23:26
and everything. So we don't really worry about
23:27
it. But there's no like, paywall,
23:28
like, oh, like you have to, you know, pay more for that.
23:30
I don't think you need to worry about paywalling actually.
23:35
And I, I agree with you that paywalling doesn't actually
23:37
matter. Like, I think that the part of
23:40
it that matters is like, what is the journey that you're putting
23:43
the person on? So in the sales process, in the
23:45
product on boarding things like, can you like configure those
23:48
parts of it such that like you just say like, Hey, don't worry
23:51
about these other buttons basically.
23:53
So that way they are actually successful in using the
23:55
platform. I mean, we, dude, we have this
23:57
problem in incredible ways. Like it's, it's, it's like, it's
24:04
like very, very bad. And so it's like an area that I
24:09
am spending way more time worrying about.
24:12
And actually this is like relevant in the SAS world
24:15
especially. But Doug Leone at Sequoia, the
24:19
number one thing he talks about when he's talking about product
24:22
market fit and like how to go up into enterprises, he'll, he'll,
24:24
he won't talk about marketing, he'll talk about product
24:27
marketing. So talk about sales, product
24:30
marketing and product. And there is an insight there,
24:34
which is like the rest of the marketing can flow out of
24:37
product marketing, but being crisp about your product
24:40
marketing really matters precisely for this reason.
24:43
Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's so much
24:49
to it. I can't agree more.
24:52
I mean, it's interesting with your product, Rashad, because
24:54
there's sort of 1000 different directions that your user can go
24:57
in at any time. But yeah, I couldn't agree more.
25:01
I think that the word for me is excitement.
25:04
How do you maintain excitement to solve the problem that they
25:08
got your tool to solve when they're actually using the
25:11
product, right? The same way that they had the
25:12
excitement that brought them to actually adopt your tool in the
25:15
1st place when they're actually in there.
25:18
How do you keep that feeling of I'm about to solve it or I am
25:21
solving it through the experience of the product?
25:25
That's I think that's a good call, Jack, But in in like
25:27
there's, there's there's like kind of cheap ways to do that.
25:30
Like there's a lot of like apps that like when you go in and
25:33
it's like confetti plus ten row ads, you know, it's and it's
25:36
like, OK, like I I've seen I've seen some, you know, ads really,
25:41
really do that. And you know, I would never do
25:42
that. But I think you have to do it in
25:45
like a very like deep seated, like like truthful way where
25:48
it's like you do actually like if you want to get integrated
25:50
into like the workflows, like you're actually making in your
25:52
shops case, like actually making people money.
25:56
That's when like the stickiness probably like will never, will
25:59
never go away. Yeah, I and for us with the like
26:04
what you were talking about, which is like the attach issues.
26:06
So it's like I give you the platform, then I attach
26:10
forecasting and things like that.
26:14
The what, what you wanted to follow a logical sequence as
26:18
opposed to just like, hey, they just start doing everything.
26:21
Because the, the problem with like starting to do everything
26:24
is like actually nobody's doing anything or like nobody knows
26:27
what is like the milestone that they should accomplish.
26:29
And so they don't feel the progress.
26:34
Yeah, Anyway, I, we, yeah, there's, there's like a whole
26:37
like we're, we're on this journey right now, especially
26:40
with our enterprise customers, because the, the sets of
26:43
offerings is, is sufficiently wide where you need to actually
26:48
have like an account plan. And you need to say like you
26:53
start in paid media, then you go to paid search, then you go to
26:55
SEOAEO, then you go to a data product, then you go.
26:58
And so like, you have to carry them through a journey and you
27:02
need to realize where they're starting and then paint a
27:04
journey for them. And then your, your product and
27:08
your support or success, whatever you want to describe
27:12
has to like draw that journey for them.
27:15
And so anyway, my only suggestion when you hire this
27:18
enterprise AE is like, just have some point of view on what
27:22
journey you want to put people on.
27:23
So that way that person knows where to like start them
27:26
basically. Yeah.
27:27
It's, it's, it's a good point. And in our case, it's not, it's
27:30
kind of it's, it's come about like fairly naturally.
27:35
Like we start in like sort of like analytics.
27:37
And then, you know, once you have enough analytics, some
27:40
people start to wonder, oh, like, I wonder how this could
27:42
help me look forward instead of just backwards.
27:44
And then that's how you get into the forecasting thing.
27:47
And then like once you're in the forecast thing, and this is
27:49
like, we haven't launched this like inventory plan thing yet.
27:53
But like once you're in like the financial modeling, then like
27:56
those guys work so closely with like the OPS teams that like
27:59
they're like they're like, OK, like we could use this for like
28:02
inventory planning. So like we have this like it's
28:04
working really, really well right now.
28:06
Most of our growth is actually coming from existing customers
28:08
right now. Not even, not even net new
28:10
customers because I don't know how you guys think about
28:12
seasonality, but like summer's like pretty slow for us in terms
28:16
of like net new customers. And so like we basically have
28:19
like, and we, we again, we don't package it or market it in like
28:22
a great way, but there's like an analytics product essentially
28:25
and there's like a forecasting product and there's like an
28:27
inventory product. And our, our best customers use
28:30
all of them. And that's when they're real,
28:32
they're actually getting like the full sort of like circular,
28:35
you know, benefit of a virus like integrating with the
28:37
accounting team, with the, with the inventory team, etcetera.
28:41
So yeah, I, I, I totally agree with that.
28:43
What's the thing that like you think?
28:46
What do you think is like the biggest bottleneck to go from
28:50
like 3 to 10? This is such a VC question.
28:53
I can't believe I'm doing this. You, you, you, you, you, you
28:58
build AVC backed SAS company for long enough and you become AVC.
29:03
It's like, so it's like actually one of it's like one of the
29:07
worst things about being AVC backed company is you at some
29:10
point you keep getting asked these questions.
29:12
It's like those are the questions you ask anyway you.
29:15
Start as a brand owner and and you move into a SAS, then you
29:18
ultimately become AVC. That's like the ultimate
29:20
degradation of math. There's only one thing in common
29:26
between all of these people. They all have podcasts.
29:28
Yeah. Yeah, our, our bottleneck is on
29:33
the go to market side. It's not we don't have like a
29:35
product scaling issue. It's like, that is the, I mean,
29:38
the goal is to get towards 10 is like what I would say, and I can
29:43
do it. I think about it in thirst, like
29:46
if we get to get to like in the 3:00-ish, you know, neighborhood
29:49
this year, I can double us next year just doing what I'm doing.
29:53
That's, that's not, that's not an issue.
29:54
But I need that, that extra 3 million.
29:56
And that's where we're trying to hire up a sales team to get to
30:01
because our sales cycles are probably like 2 months, you
30:03
know, on average. I mean, they're getting longer
30:05
as our prices go up. But we got to, it's hard to find
30:09
sales people. We, we've, we've tried, we've
30:10
tried, we've tried a few times, like like contract work with,
30:15
you know, a couple folks. Like a year ago we were, we were
30:17
kind of doing it and it's, it's just a, it's a complicated
30:21
product. So we've sort of landed on this
30:23
idea like we need somebody who has sold planning software
30:26
before, like somebody out of like an Oracle or out of banana
30:28
plant or a planful or whatever. Because there's so much tribal
30:32
knowledge in this stuff. I don't know if you guys see
30:34
that issue as well. Like, do you feel like you could
30:36
hire up like a salesperson from some other domain or do you
30:39
think you need somebody who has experience in like your kind of
30:42
category? Rashad's probably going to have
30:45
a better answer than me on this one, but my experience with
30:47
sales reps is they're they always have their Jedi mind
30:50
tricks and they ask too many questions that sometimes maybe
30:54
it helps the sale. I don't know.
30:55
I'm not sales trained. But yeah, I find it hard to
30:58
understand. Some sales reps I'll ask me a
31:00
question ago or the last the the person they're selling to a
31:03
question. And I think what even is the
31:06
answer to that question, right? There's a lot of tricks of the
31:08
trade I don't fully understand. Yeah, I God, I say, dude, I get
31:17
into trouble so much because of this podcast.
31:20
OK, I but I'll but, but you know what?
31:24
Thank goodness I don't care. The the I'll just tell you what
31:29
I like, what my experience has been.
31:31
I think like you should not hire from from the ECOM SAS world.
31:35
I think that that's actually and, and actually the reason
31:39
goes back to something you said at the beginning around your
31:41
Acvs and your Acvs going up. The problem with the basically
31:46
all of ECOM SAS is that most like 99.99% of ECOM SAS is low
31:52
price or it's entirely usage based.
31:56
And So what that the, the problem is that none of these
31:58
people actually know how to, not none of these people.
32:02
It's very hard to get people who have been trained in that way to
32:06
understand how to sell SAS that is of high value and therefore
32:11
of high cost. Yeah, true.
32:13
And so my number one suggestion for you is do not make the
32:17
mistake of looking for sales people from the ECOM world.
32:21
Look for SAS sellers who know how to do SAS sales, who know
32:25
how to do great discovery, who can actually attach value to the
32:29
thing that you are selling, especially because you're sales
32:31
people. Their job is to go upmarket.
32:34
It's not for the inbound of the mid market of I'll describe as
32:39
the mid market of ecom that actually you want to go towards
32:43
automation anyway. And, and so like, yeah, and, and
32:48
I, and I think like that, that's, that's one component of
32:51
it. And then the other component of
32:52
it is you, you'd need to sell to the right type of like willing
32:57
buyer basically. And like I, I, I love the D2 CE
33:02
com community. I'm like an active participant
33:04
in it. I don't think like a SAS sales
33:07
motion is appropriate for that community.
33:09
I actually think like swipe your card and buy is appropriate.
33:14
Yeah, Yeah. I mean it's, I think like I want
33:18
to grow out of it more than than than we are sort of.
33:21
As I said, I do think it's a good place to start a product
33:25
because these people pay no money.
33:28
They hate you by default and they will churn the second that
33:31
you, like, don't like provide them value.
33:34
So it's kind of like, it's kind of like you're like you're
33:36
building like a diamond by pressure almost a thing.
33:40
And like, yeah, I mean, I love the community too, obviously,
33:43
but like, it's a brutal place to like, build a software product.
33:47
That's a good segue into when are you guys going to have a
33:49
Shopify app? Iris, Yeah, Iris is a Shopify.
33:58
I, I don't know, I think they like rejected us.
34:01
I think we would, but man, it's it's not something that you
34:08
could just download an app and then start to use.
34:10
That's for sure. Probably like not anytime soon.
34:15
I guess it's the answer. Our shop fire integration is
34:17
literally like you have to check like the 40 boxes.
34:21
So like the like read boxes to like integrate shop fire divers.
34:24
Jack, pitch me on why someone should build a shop fire.
34:28
I like. I'm so curious to know why you
34:30
think someone should build a shop a fire.
34:32
To to for all the opposite reasons for why sales should
34:37
sell upmarket, because you get penetration and you get
34:40
distribution. That's literally it for the for
34:43
the lowest customer who could ascend.
34:47
Do you run like like ads on like Shopify App Store or something?
34:52
Like how do you get to see it? I can't imagine that's not.
34:54
That's a great question. I actually have no idea.
34:56
I've never. There's no distribution to be
34:58
had on the Shopify App Store. That used to be the case, but
35:01
there's not. There's nobody's going to the
35:03
Shopify App Store and typing financial planning into the App
35:07
Store search bar. Yeah, but there's, you know,
35:09
there's a lot of there's a lot of apps that are like that you
35:13
can use in place of of what Iris does that that would probably be
35:17
easier and cheaper to set up. Not certainly not, you know, all
35:21
the stuff that we do, but we're not a point solution.
35:24
Like we're we're very much a platform.
35:26
And so like if you like, there's like, you know, there's like
35:28
those like, like the profit was like an app that like kind of
35:31
told you directionally kind of maybe how much money you made
35:34
yesterday. There's a lot of issues with it
35:37
from like for example, like because they don't they don't
35:39
have as a robust technical approach.
35:41
They're not standardizing time zones, right or doing gap
35:46
revenue. There's there's like issues with
35:47
it, but directionally there's there's like, you know, there's
35:50
like stuff out there that people could use and they probably do I
35:54
think be profit got acquire. That's a good topic.
35:57
We should talk about M&A in this space.
36:00
I don't know if you guys have any insights or thoughts.
36:02
That's like one thing that I need to be better about.
36:03
I obviously know all about the M&A in like the consumer world,
36:06
but I don't know much about what's going on kind of in in
36:08
this category. I guess Clavio bought that
36:10
Gatsby company. I don't even know what that is.
36:14
Yeah. I don't, I, I, I actually don't
36:16
know what that is either, but I, I think it's a pretty small
36:20
company. Yeah.
36:21
So yeah. And that's like Shopify keeps
36:24
buying like small companies too, like they keep buying like
36:27
little studios or apps. It's kind of an interesting
36:29
trend after they after they blew it out on deliver and then
36:31
fumbled. It's kind of like, I wonder if
36:34
they'll look if they'll ever get back to that.
36:35
I like that you brought that up though, Drew.
36:38
I like that you brought M&A up though, because if you could, if
36:42
B profit was distressed and you could get them for a very good
36:46
price, would that be a consideration?
36:53
No, our our technical infrastructure is, is is far too
36:56
complicated to integrate something like that into it.
36:59
Right, Yeah. Will you do M&A, Will you buy
37:02
small companies? Like how do you think about
37:06
enterprise value build over time?
37:10
I would, I would, yeah. I actually, I talked to, I
37:13
talked to one company about it and because just mostly just
37:15
because they had a bunch of integrations that we, that we
37:17
wanted. But again, because our, our
37:22
database is so granular, like we literally call every data point
37:26
essentially of like unprocessed data.
37:28
So like even like, even like a company who has like a bunch of
37:30
integrations that we, we might want to like Aqua hire
37:32
essentially, you know, if, if they haven't built the
37:34
integrations in a way that's like perfectly compatible with
37:36
our, with our sort of infrastructure, it's it just
37:39
becomes like you're better off just starting from scratch kind
37:42
of thing. So I would, I wouldn't the odds
37:45
that we would ever buy a company for their existing
37:48
infrastructure is, is pretty low.
37:51
But of course, you know, if there's a good team and and you
37:53
know, we felt like we could do a deal with somebody that we could
37:55
equi hire or they had like a good a good brand or they had a
38:00
head start on something that we wanted to get into.
38:05
Yeah. I mean, it's certainly not like
38:06
on the road map for us. That's, you know, we're we're
38:08
still really early stage too. Have you guys considered it at
38:11
all? Have you done it?
38:12
Yeah, we have like a small Aqua hire, but dude, you want to know
38:16
what's even crazier than that? There's a lot of, and, and the
38:19
reason I'm asking just to like put on your radar, there is a
38:24
bunch of companies that got started in like the 20/21/2020
38:30
era when it was like super easy to raise money and have
38:33
essentially no revenue or are shrinking now.
38:37
And they all of them want to sell.
38:43
And the total number of like quote, UN quote willing buyers
38:47
is basically 0. And so these founders just want
38:50
to be able to say like we got acquired on LinkedIn, like
38:55
literally OK. And so, yeah, I, I'm sure this
39:01
is going to get clipped also, but the, and so there's this
39:05
massive pool of assets and I've been talking about this to a
39:09
bunch of people that are going to go on the market in the next
39:13
like 15 to 18 months because all new capital is going to AI
39:17
companies, like pure like like really AI companies.
39:22
And so given that all new capital is going to these AI
39:24
companies, these guys are going to be stranded.
39:27
They're going to be trying to sell, They're going to be trying
39:28
to like reboot their lives. Dude, there's a play to be had
39:33
here. And you're a finance guy where
39:35
you can just literally financially engineer enterprise
39:38
value extremely fast through acquisition of revenue,
39:44
customers and assets? Like I said, like rolling them
39:48
up. You're saying like.
39:48
AP Yeah, like literally like PE, but PE based on entry price, not
39:54
based on exit price, yeah. That's interesting.
39:58
I wonder, I mean it's, it would be basically be like a cashless
40:03
transaction. 100 percent, 100% of it would be cashless, Yeah.
40:08
Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, I would.
40:10
I would look at that stuff. Yeah, I would.
40:15
I would, I would look at that kind of stuff.
40:16
I mean, we're we're again, we're still pretty small.
40:18
Of course, I don't know when, how big were you guys, when or
40:22
directionally like when did you do?
40:25
First one, yeah or 0. You've done more than one.
40:30
We've, we've only done the one, but yeah, we, we, we looked at
40:33
sorry. So we did the one at 0 revenue.
40:36
And then we or like when we were just starting to make revenue,
40:40
that other company had no revenue also.
40:43
But the number of companies who have tried to sell to us in the
40:45
last six months has been like, very large.
40:48
Really. Yeah.
40:50
Yeah. I've gotten, like, knocked on.
40:52
Like the number of people have knocked on the door trying to
40:54
sell to us has been like, yeah. I mean, I obviously cannot say
40:57
who and what and things like that, but yeah, next year is
41:01
going to be wild, yeah. Interesting.
41:04
Is that like a worthwhile like flow of opportunity for you or
41:10
is it a bunch of junk? Now, OK, there are, I want, I'm
41:17
happy to give away almost all of my secrets.
41:20
But Drew, this you and I should talk about not on a podcast.
41:26
And then let's actually do something because the shape of
41:30
these opportunities is like very interesting and very real.
41:35
And you I, I think you can like literally just produce
41:40
enterprise value out of nothing. Yeah.
41:43
Yeah. Well, that has me less than it
41:46
meant, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
41:48
Interesting. Yeah, just because of the.
41:50
Yeah, just because of like what is happening, Yeah.
41:55
Yeah. I mean, I guess we're like
41:55
coming up on like the sort of like 5 year fund life kind of a
42:00
thing, you know, for all those people that deployed in 21.
42:05
Yeah, it's interesting. The customer's player, I think
42:10
is, is really, I mean, this is a little bit of a zoom out from
42:14
what you were just talking about, but the customers play is
42:17
interesting to me. I think in SAS, a lot of brands
42:20
don't have the customer base because a sales call is
42:23
required, right? Just to understand the product
42:26
and, and, and accessing the customers is, is more about
42:31
being in contact with them, being in front of them than it
42:35
is about persuading, right? A lot of these people would, I
42:41
think a lot of customers would pick up Iris if they just knew
42:45
about it, right? And if they knew what it did.
42:47
But there's a little bit of a cost there, one to finding Iris
42:51
totally organically and then to understanding what Iris is and
42:54
the problems it solves. But after all of that's behind
42:57
you, I think that there's, you know, massive time out there
43:00
that would adopt A product like Iris.
43:04
Yeah, I think it's, you know, we're, we're still working with
43:07
like our early adopters, you know, and like I think my social
43:11
media has gotten like 25,000,000 impressions this year or
43:17
something, which like isn't very funny.
43:20
And because it's hard. I mean, I don't have like a
43:21
huge, I have like 15,000 followers or something.
43:25
So like, if you want to like get like real reach, you know, you
43:29
kind of have to pay to play, which is goes back to our
43:31
earlier conversation about like actually deploying dollars in a
43:33
way that people will actually find you.
43:34
And, and then to Rashad's a really good point about, you
43:37
know, packaging it up and, and having the journey sort of
43:39
thought out like this. These are all things like, I
43:41
mean, like we have 12 people, nine of them are products or
43:45
engineers. Like we have, this is a, this is
43:48
a problem. We don't have business people.
43:50
Like we need that. That's so that's what we're
43:51
hiring out now. We're hiring business people to
43:54
think about all of these issues and as, as we scale, which I
43:58
think we got very, very lucky because a lot of companies in
44:01
our position would not have had the luxury of, of generating
44:05
demand without having to pay for it.
44:08
And but that's, that's only going to get us so far kind of
44:11
thing. So now it's like time for us to
44:12
like build like a real kind of business around this, this
44:14
product that we built. Dude, this is super exciting.
44:19
Yeah, Drew let, I mean, I'll, I'll ping you offline about OK
44:24
about some of these other things that are happening.
44:28
I'd be very curious to get your perspective on unlike what to do
44:32
there. But yeah, dude, this is a big
44:35
success. I do got a drop though.
44:38
Jack, can we do you think we can call it?
44:41
Of course. Yeah, let's wrap it up.
44:45
Thanks for having me guys. Awesome.
44:46
Yeah, good job. This was fun for coming on.
44:49
Yeah, Good time. Thanks so much everyone.
44:50
You guys looking forward to this conversation.
44:52
Thank you, guys. Yeah, bye.