1539 How Venga Hit 2000 locations, $3.6m ARR on $2.7m Raised Helping Restaurants, Fitness Centers with Customer Experience

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

Ceo, Entrepreneurs, Founders, Software, Business, Entrepreneurship, Saas, Startups

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2019

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sam Pollaro is the CEO of Venga, a Washington, DC-based technology company that uses big data to help restaurants and fitness companies better understand and engage with their guests. Before co-founding Venga, Sam was the founder of Petals for the People, a business that revolutionized the sale and distribution of fresh cut flowers.

Mr. Pollaro holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Vanga, helping restaurants and fitness studios managed customer experience launched back in 2011.
0:05.6	They now serve 2,000 locations doing about 300 grand per month and revenue.
0:09.2	That's up from about 240 grand per month just a year ago.
0:11.7	Healthy growth, considering they've raised just 2.7 million bucks.
0:14.9	Each location paying called 150 bucks per month.
0:17.2	5% gross annual revenue churn.
0:19.5	7% expansion gives them 102% net revenue retention
0:23.1	annually. Spending called a grand to get a new $150 a month account. So that's about a seven-month
0:29.0	payback period, pretty healthy. Team of 21 people in D.C. and other remote locations.
0:34.5	Hello, everyone. My guest today is Sam Polaro. He's the CEO of a company called Venga, a Washington, D.C. based technology company that uses big data to help restaurants and fitness companies better understand and engage with their guests. Before Vanga, Sam was the founder of Petals of For the People, a business that revolutionized the sale and distribution of fresh cut flour. Sam, are you ready to take us to the top?
0:54.7	Let's do it.
0:55.4	You're a flower guy.
0:56.3	You must be very sweet, huh?
0:59.0	Actually, once you see like the business side of flowers,
1:02.5	it kind of ruins the experience for you.
1:04.4	It's like watching the sausage get made.
1:07.2	Totally understand.
1:08.3	Tell me more about your current company, Venga.
1:10.0	What's the company doing?
1:10.7	How do you make
1:11.0	money? Yeah, sure. So we are a customer relationship management system for businesses. We work right now
1:19.5	in the restaurant and fitness verticals, meaning we help those companies to use their data to better
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nathan Latka, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Nathan Latka and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.