806: SaaS: Recruiting Tool w/ $60m Raised, 2000 Customers, Unleashes CRM

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

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

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2017

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Daniel Chait. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Greenhouse, which designs tools that help create and navigate a new world of work. Daniel has been a technology entrepreneur in New York for nearly 20 years. Before Greenhouse, he co-founded Lab49, a global firm providing technology consulting solutions for the world’s leading investment banks. He’s a proud graduate of the computer engineering program at the University of Michigan.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Nudge
What CEO do you follow? – Kim Scott
Favorite online tool? — Trello
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7.5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The dotcom crash”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:35 – Nathan introduces Daniel to the show
02:10 – Greenhouse sells recruiting software that corporations use to design and execute their hiring process
02:40 – Greenhouse is a SaaS company
02:50 – Average customer pay per year varies
- 03:05 – The pricing model depends on the size of the company
03:40 – Greenhouse tends to price higher than their competitors’ because they offer a premium software solution
04:05 – Greenhouse is in the recruiting software space which is currently crowded
- 04:15 – Daniel shares some of their competitors depending on the categories
- 05:10 – The competition is extremely fragmented
- 05:33 – Greenhouse falls into all the categories, from the smaller ones to enterprise
06:05 – Greenhouse offers three tiers
06:24 – Greenhouse was launched in 2012
06:32 – First year revenue was around $50
07:33 – Post product revenue is around $1M
08:25 – Greenhouse currently has 2000 customers
09:03 – Team size is 195, based in San Francisco and New York
09:30 – Greenhouse has raised $16M from their series C round
09:53 – Daniel enjoyed doing their fund raising and he believes in their investors
- 10:13 – Every round is different
- 10:40 – This was the first time that Daniel raised outside the investment
11:19 – Greenhouse has a world-class retention rate
- 11:36 – 97% of their customers have renewed
11:55 – Most of the team is in inside sales
12:36 – Daniel shares where their expansion comes from
13:11 – Greenhouse’s newest product is Greenhouse CRM which is still in beta
14:10 – The inside sales team job is heat mapping the products used by a customer
- 14:41 – The expansion is through additional growth
15:15 – LTV-CAC ratio
- 15:48 – “We have a healthy ratio”
16:04 – Payback period
17:00 – The weirdest thing Daniel did to acquire new customers
- 17:43 – They went from market research to marketing
17:57 – ARR
- 18:07 – Daniel on hitting the $50M ARR mark by end of 2017
19:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Create something that will make you stand out in a competitive and crowded market.
Focus on how you can increase your customer retention rate—perhaps it’s by adding new products that will better serve them.
Raising a capital round can help you gain new customers.

Resources Mentioned:

Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	founder of greenhouse. He's been doing this for over 20 years. Did the whole bootstrap,
0:03.7	bootstrap, bootstrap thing. And now, you know, it's like he's addicted to raising capital.
0:06.9	Why? Because it gets him new customers, number one. Number two, he's done it and raised about
0:10.9	60 million bucks. He's got a team of 200 people helping it, helping you hire people more efficiently.
0:16.4	Faster greenhouse is their product. They're going to be coming out with the greenhouse Sierra I'm here shortly. This is the top where I interview entrepreneurs who are
0:24.2	number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll
0:30.1	learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how
0:34.1	many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell
0:40.2	bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000 unit sole mark. And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.
0:47.7	Many of you listening right now don't have time to listen to every B2B SaaS CEO that I've interviewed.
0:52.5	If you want to get access to the database I've
0:54.6	created with year-year growth rates, customer accounts, margins, and many, many other data metrics
0:59.6	and data points, you can go to g-et-l-a-com. Here's the thing, though, this database, I keep it to
1:06.8	myself. It's so freaking valuable. And to preserve the quality of the data and make sure that
1:11.9	the people that have access to it have a true advantage, I'm only letting 10 companies on each
1:16.3	month. So we're full this month, but you can go to gitlatka.com to get on the waiting list
1:20.2	for next month. And look, there's big people on the waiting list. I mean, the biggest vCs
1:24.1	you've ever heard of. You've probably heard of them. They're big, private equity, billions and billions under management. So it's an impressive waiting list. Go get on now at
1:31.2	gitlatka.com. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Daniel Chait. He's the CEO and co-founder
1:36.8	of Greenhouse, which designs tools that help create and navigate the new world of work.
1:42.1	Daniel's been a technology entrepreneur in New York for nearly 20 years.
1:45.5	Now, before Greenhouse, he co-founded Lab 49, a global firm providing technology consulting
	...

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