Please help me welcome to the stage Alina's co-founder…
“please help me welcome to the stage Alina's co-founder at sherle Piper Nicholas Nicholas I'm call Nicholas with the give it up for Nicholas with the”
Founder conversationMaster $20m+
Interview with Chili Piper Co-CEO, Nicolas Vandenberghe
From a $25/month round-robin tool to a multi-product platform: a $33M Series B and ACV up from $6k to $10.5k
Nicolas Vandenberghe · Chili Piper
Published September 6, 2024About this resource
- Format
- SaaSOpen 2024 NYC
- Length
- 20 min video
- Inside
- 9 key moments
Explore the lesson. Sign in to access the slide download.
What you’ll learn
Topics covered: Please help me welcome to the stage Alina's co-founder…; Your pipeline inbound pipeline double so say you do…; Series B let's jump into the story that they….
Read the source passagesKey moments
Find the ideas you need and go straight to the source.
Your pipeline inbound pipeline double so say you do…
“your pipeline inbound pipeline double so say you do uh $2 million in a month in Pipeline and now it's 4 million so we could have priced way high and what we thought was that uh candidly there was um canly in the space even though they didn't do what we did we thought they could come in and they have a very efficient business model so that's why we priced at that level we thought we don't want to go too high um and have the risk that they would just cut us up you know it's a very interesting ques”
Series B let's jump into the story that they…
“series B let's jump into the story that they were telling the market at the time you know a lot of Founders interview them and they say oh no we always knew it was going to be this it was per so let's let's see what deck actually looked like this is how you described yourself right this is how you described yourself this is how you saw your competitors at the time any any were you right or wrong looking back uh right okay this is how you saw Revenue I love seeing this because this is a screensho”
Ads events ads influencers influencers PID okay and then…
“ads events ads influencers influencers PID okay and then we have an outbound team uh and is team still and so what would you credit that now are you are you just spending less or are you getting more from the spend which is why CAC is decreased yeah so the first like everybody we decide to do a more efficient so we we stop hiring and Rec kep growing our revenues and so you you need to find more automation alen has a a weekly meeting with a whole”
Calendar round robin
“ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth Where it began: Calendar Round Robin …. Demo motion 2016”
Initial pricing
“ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth Pricing: $25/mo Free to try for 14 days, no CC required 2016”
Meeting Automation category
“ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth “Meeting Automation” Category Experimenting with category definitions, and segmentation “Rev Teams” 2020”
Series B financing
“… including Secondary at $625m valuation (34x multiple on ~$18m ARR) Series B Deck That Raised $33m”
ARR per FTE improvement
“ARR per FTE has increased from low of $70k to $200k Today”
Preview slides
Open slide preview in Google SlidesResource files
- Watch video
Video
Interview with Chili Piper Co-CEO, Nicolas Vandenberghe - Slide Deck
Nicolas started selling newspapers in the streets of Paris in high school, studied Maths at Ecole Polytechnique then Business at Stanford GSB, started and sold 3 tech companies with up to 65 employees and $11M in revenues, ran Sales for a $2Bn telecom company negotiating billion dollar deals with companies like Google, and is now a co-founder of Chili Piper - leader in Meeting Lifecycle Automation - and of KosmoTime - the Calendar app to keep you on Task.
- Company revenue
- $30M
- Team size
- 145
More founder interviews
- How Chili Piper Grew From $16M to $30M ARR With Multiple Product Lines
Nicolas Vandenberghe · Chili Piper
- How to Turn a $2m Niche Solution Into a $500m+ Brand New Category
Nicolas Vandenberghe · Chili Piper
- Crazy years: from $60M in secondaries
Nicolas Vandenberghe · Chili Piper
- Company of the Future? Pivots On Our Way to $50M ARR
Alina Vandenberghe · Chili Piper
- How Ninety Reached $30M ARR By Empowering Teams Through Adversity
Mark Abbott · Ninety.io
- Service vs. Solution: How YouMail Broke $10M ARR Stopping Bots
Alex Quilici · YouMail
Slide by slide
Each slide with a short explanation of what it shows. Open the slide text for its exact wording.
29 passages
Chili Piper interview context
Slide text
SaaSOpen, September 2024 Interview with Chili Piper Co-CEO, Nicolas Vandenberghe Nicolas Vandenberghe Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Chili Piper
Chili Piper ARR growth from 2017 to 2024
Chili Piper's ARR grew every year and accelerated sharply, ending 2024 above the $40,000,000 line. The bars start near zero in 2017, pass the $10,000,000 line in 2021, and keep rising through 2022 and 2023.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth
Early demo motion and pricing
2016 start: Calendar Round Robin for sales teams
Chili Piper began in 2016 as a narrow tool for sales teams, Calendar Round Robin, sold through a demo motion. The early site pitched smart apps for sales leaders, with a team performance dashboard shown below the headline. The chart behind it marks where 2016 sits on the ARR timeline.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth Where it began: Calendar Round Robin …. Demo motion 2016
2016 pricing started at $25 a month
The first public price was $25 per month for Calendar Round Robin, with a 14-day free trial and no credit card. A second product, Team Goals, was listed as call us and still in private beta. Low price plus a free trial was the early entry point.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth Pricing: $25/mo Free to try for 14 days, no CC required 2016
2018 pivot to instant booking for inbound leads
By 2018 the pitch moved to speed: do not make high-value leads wait, let them book instantly. The page shows a form submission qualified with Salesforce data, routed by territory, opportunity matching, and round robin, then offered live meeting times to the prospect.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth Don’t Make VIP Leads Wait ….book instantly 2018
2018 added a $200 plan beside $25 licenses
Chili Piper kept the $25 per-user license and added a $200 per-month plan for an Intelligent Form Booker that schedules meetings from web forms. The higher tier bundled form scheduling, lead routing, disqualification, API access, and advanced reporting. The slide asks what drove this decision.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth $200/mo Plan Added What drove this? 2018
Category definition and financing
2020 tested a Meeting Automation category
In 2020 the homepage claimed a category, complete meeting automation for revenue teams, and named a Rev Teams segment. The slide frames this as an experiment with category definitions and segmentation. The page offers both a free sign-up and a demo.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth “Meeting Automation” Category Experimenting with category definitions, and segmentation “Rev Teams” 2020
ARR chart returns after the category experiment
The same ARR bar chart returns after the category experiment. The 2021 to 2023 bars climb well past the earlier years, and 2024 ends above the $40,000,000 line.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth
Series B deck that raised $33m
This opens a walk through the Series B deck that raised $33m. The round included a secondary at a $625m valuation, which the slide describes as a 34x multiple on about $18m ARR. The slides that follow are pages from that deck.
Slide text
… including Secondary at $625m valuation (34x multiple on ~$18m ARR) Series B Deck That Raised $33m
Series B deck opens with customer proof
The deck leads with its positioning, the #1 inbound conversion solution for high-growth companies, and backs it with two customer quotes. A growth lead at Apollo cites a lift in meetings booked, and a VP of Growth at ChowNow cites higher conversion on booked leads. Below is a wall of recognizable software company logos.
Differentiation against scheduling and chat tools
The deck sorts competitors into scheduling tools and chat tools, then argues for three advantages. They are integration with every web form, stronger native CRM connections built around Salesforce, and more sophisticated real-time routing using CRM data. The claim is that no other vendor can qualify, route, and schedule straight from a web form.
Traction: ARR doubling year over year
The company bootstrapped until a seed round in January 2019, and growth continued despite COVID-19. The chart marks ARR of $2.0M, $3.0M, $7.0M and $10.0M, with year-over-year growth labels of 50%, 133% and 43%. The steepest climb comes after 2020.
Solution: make speed to lead instant
The product is an inbound conversion platform that qualifies, routes, schedules, and hands off leads in one flow. Concierge covers qualify, route, and schedule from web forms, in-app, and email automation. Instant Booker covers handoff, letting SDRs book meetings quickly. Both integrate with email, calendar, CRM, and sales engagement tools.
Instant Booker makes handoff scheduling one click
Instant Booker removes errors from handing a lead from one rep to another. A browser extension adds booking inside the CRM, so reps schedule handoff meetings from anywhere and embed suggested times in emails. The slide's stated outcome is to book more meetings, faster.
Executive team and company size at Series B
The deck presents a five-person leadership team, including the CTO, a co-founder and CPO, the CEO, a VP of Customer Success, and a VP of Sales EMEA, as ready to scale to IPO. The broader team is shown as 134 employees across 22 cities and 84 countries.
141% net revenue retention driven by large teams
Large teams with 10 or more seats are 88% of revenue and drive the retention: net dollar retention of +159%, annual logo churn of -13%, CLV of $130K, and CLV/CAC of 9.7. Teams under 10 seats are 12% of revenue, with +76% retention, -57% logo churn, $4K CLV, and 0.3 CLV/CAC. The low end is to be addressed next.
Positioning and product expansion
2022 homepage leads with results, not a category
By 2022 the homepage headline is result driven, double your inbound conversion rates, and promises more meetings booked and more pipeline created. The sub-heads speak to the buyer persona and drop the Meeting Automation category language. A row of well-known customer logos sits below.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth Website Headline is “Result Driven” Sub heads talks about persona, no “category definition” of Meeting Automation 2022
2022 product line expands beyond one tool
In 2022 the navigation lists several products, Form Concierge, Distro, Handoff, Instant Booker, and Integrations, alongside use cases for demand generation, sales, revenue operations, and customer success. The slide poses the question of how to decide what to launch next.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth Product Expansion Continues How to figure out what to launch next…. 2022
2024 positioning as a multi-product platform
Today the site presents a clear multi-product approach, an all-in-one conversion platform. The menu lists ChiliCal, Chat, Form Concierge, Distro, and Handoff, each with a one-line job, plus integrations. Compared with 2022, the products are grouped under a single platform name.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth Today Clear multi-product approach 2024
Acquiring customers more efficiently
Customer acquisition cost fell through 2024
CAC rose from $8.2K in January 2024 to a peak of $12.5K in April, then fell most of the way after that. It reached $6.2K in August, ticked up to $7.9K in September, and ended at $4.7K in December. That is a drop of more than half from the peak.
Slide text
2024 We Figured Out how To Get Customers Cheaper
SEO as an acquisition channel: backlinks and traffic
Chili Piper's organic search presence has grown to a Domain Rating of 77, with 13.4K ranking keywords. The chart tracks referring domains and organic traffic since 2015, with organic traffic rising sharply at the end. A September 2024 tooltip shows 2,659 referring domains and 21,650 organic traffic.
Slide text
SEO? PLG?
Top keywords are brand terms plus a few topics
The top organic keywords include branded searches for the company name and login, alongside non-brand topics such as persuasive techniques, marketing automation, speed to lead, and lead distribution. The list compares September 2024 with July 2021.
Slide text
SEO? PLG?
Free entry tier plus per-product paid plans
The pricing page starts with ChiliCal, a free scheduling-links product, and a $15 per user per month Teams plan. The Demand Conversion Platform products are Concierge, Chat, Distro, and Handoff, each at $30 per user per month plus a platform fee. Every paid product includes ChiliCal Teams.
Bundling products lowers the per-product price
Buying more products lowers the price of each one. The full Demand Conversion Platform is $72 per user per month plus a $1,000 per month platform fee. Custom bundles cost $25 per product for 2 products, $20 for 3, and $18 for 4 or more, with one platform fee. ChiliCal Teams is included with any purchase.
ACV and ARR-per-FTE improvements
ACV rose from $6k to $10.5k
Average contract value climbed from $6k to $10.5k over the last six months. The chart of average ARR by close month dips in April 2024, then rises steadily through July.
Slide text
ACV Has Increased from $6k to $10.5k Last 6 Months
ARR per employee rose from $70k to $200k
ARR per full-time employee fell to a low of about $70k in early 2022, then rose to $200k today. The monthly chart runs from January 2020 to August 2024, dipping from late 2020 into 2022, jumping in late 2022, and climbing steadily afterward.
Slide text
ARR per FTE has increased from low of $70k to $200k Today
Closing view of ARR growth since 2017
The talk returns to the ARR chart as its summary. Revenue grew from near zero in 2017 to above the $40,000,000 line in 2024, with growth accelerating after 2020.
Slide text
ChiliPiper.com Revenue Growth
Thank you from Chili Piper's co-CEO
Nicolas Vandenberghe closes the SaaSOpen September 2024 session with a thank-you and invites the audience to reach him by email. The slide repeats his name and his role as co-founder and co-CEO of Chili Piper.
Slide text
SaaSOpen, September 2024 Thank you! [redacted email] Nicolas Vandenberghe Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Chili Piper
Latka podcast: 3,050 SaaS founders interviewed
The session ends with a pitch for the SaaS founder interview podcast. The slide cites 3,050 SaaS founders interviewed and 500+ five-star reviews, and tells listeners to search Latka on iTunes. Two sample reviews praise the interviewer's stats-driven style.
Slide text
3,050 SaaS Founders Interviewed Search “Latka” on iTunes. 500+ Five star reviews.