1210 How this Niche CRM player passed $7m in ARR after CEO Stroke
SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Nathan Latka
4.6 • 683 Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
CEO and Co-Owner of Z2 Systems, Inc. After making a few mistakes growing up and turning my life around, I decided to focus my life on helping nonprofits. I consider myself one of the luckiest people in the world to own and run a software company that helps nonprofits work towards achieving their missions. We started the company with just two people and some friends and family money, and are now surpassing the largest competitors in the industry.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | nonprofit for CRMs, building up, again, building up neon CRM.com. |
| 0:05.0 | Launched in 2005, totally bootstrap, now serving through over 3,000 nonprofits, paying on |
| 0:10.2 | average $200 a month, so doing north of $7 million in ARR today. |
| 0:14.1 | They've got 1% net revenue churn annually. |
| 0:17.1 | Gross is about 6%. |
| 0:18.4 | So healthy economics there. |
| 0:19.8 | CAC is $1,100, mainly through Gartner as a channel, which is interesting. Payback period there, |
| 0:24.8 | obviously, under six months as their team of 100 people based between Chicago and China |
| 0:29.2 | work to give more power back to these nonprofits via the CRM product. |
| 0:33.9 | This is the top entrepreneurs podcast where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn. |
| 0:45.3 | Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million. |
| 0:58.0 | I had no money when I started the company. |
| 1:00.0 | It was $160 million, which is the size of any IPOs. |
| 1:03.0 | We're a bit strapped. |
| 1:04.0 | We have like 22,000 customers. |
| 1:07.0 | With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes. |
| 1:17.2 | I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. |
| 1:21.6 | Hello, everyone. |
| 1:22.0 | My guest today is Jeff Gordy. |
| 1:24.0 | He's the CEO and co-founder of Z2 Systems, otherwise known as Neon CRM. He's got a background |
| 1:28.6 | in sales, marketing, customer service, and management. He's a UIC graduate with a BS in business |
| 1:34.7 | management. And after making a few mistakes growing up and turning his life around, decide to focus |
... |
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