Reliability over technology, processes that stop scaling, and the discipline of reaching cash-flow break-even
Colin Nederkoorn · Customer.io
Published September 6, 2024Explore the lesson. Sign in to access the slide download.
Colin Nederkoorn reflects on Customer.io’s mistakes while growing from $1M to $10M ARR. The session explores early infrastructure choices, scaling processes, reliability, and the discipline of reaching cash-flow break-even.
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“application um and the technically hard part is to make sure you're confident enough in what people didn't do um because if you look at analytics products especially in this era 2012 when we started like a lot of them are doing sampling and you can't sample in order to send an email message that's like perfectly targeted and so when we started we our our goal was to get five companies paying us 10 bucks a month and so we”
“while we had a bunch of other issues at the data center which I won't cover today but um we ended up moving to to Google Cloud eventually and um realized that you our customers don't care where we host they care that it's super reliable and the servers stay up and running and the next um the next thing we did that didn't make the beer taste better uh was picking this amazing”
“it out um or you're trying to get a new high your first like hiring process figured out that that person's great for that and when it's time to scale up and that Scrappy process starts breaking they won't be able to tell you that they're going to continue doing it that way and continue approaching the work that way but the way you figure out that you're not doing it right anymore is you talk to people who are um whose businesses are a little bit”
“impossible to get anything done uh then I didn't I didn't realize this and that experience of like this the business being being so new and almost dying made me not want to rely on investor money in order to stay alive and so it was really important to me to be to get to cash flow break even as as soon as possible I think the the mistake that we made here is we had a really complex product that”
“Over the next 20 minutes I’m going to show you mistakes we made growing from $1m - $10m and how to avoid them $0 - 1m Our foundingstory What we gotright $1 - 10m $10m+ Doing things that don’t make the beer taste better Right person, wrong stage Build support around you Why are you here? Culture Fixing things that break”
“9 Mistakes from $1m - $10m I’m going to talk about BEER Bare metal bargain basement Magical unicorn database Fancy JS framework PEOPLE GOING ALONE Scrappy doers to systems builders Just call it sales Customer Relationships Not capitalizing properly No board No peers”
“Fancy Javascript Framework Technology that doesn’t make the beer taste better”
“Capitalizingthe Business Properly toScale Try to do it alone”
Video
9 Mistakes We Made from $1M-$10M in ARR & How We Hit $70M Today - Slide Deck
Founder & CEO of Customer.io, a platform that helps businesses automate personalized emails and messaging to their customers.
Mark Abbott · Ninety.io
Alex Quilici · YouMail
Kyle Racki · Proposify
Savneet Singh · PAR Technology Corp.
Nicolas Vandenberghe · Chili Piper
Jay Ackerman · Reveleer
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22 passages
SaaSOpen, September 2024 9 mistakeswe made from $1M-$10M in ARRand how we hit $70M today Colin Nederkoorn Founder & CEO, Customer.io
We Just Crossed $70M ARR this Year
Retention Metrics
We just crossed $70M ARR this year $1M ARR $10M ARR
Over the next 20 minutes I’m going to show you mistakes we made growing from $1m - $10m and how to avoid them $0 - 1m Our foundingstory What we gotright $1 - 10m $10m+ Doing things that don’t make the beer taste better Right person, wrong stage Build support around you Why are you here? Culture Fixing things that break
Our Initial $1M in ARR $70M ARR
Growing from $1M to $10M $70M ARR
9 Mistakes from $1m - $10m I’m going to talk about BEER Bare metal bargain basement Magical unicorn database Fancy JS framework PEOPLE GOING ALONE Scrappy doers to systems builders Just call it sales Customer Relationships Not capitalizing properly No board No peers
9 Mistakes from $1m - $10m I’m going to talk about BEER Bare metal bargain basement Magical unicorn database Fancy JS framework PEOPLE GOING ALONE Scrappy doers to systems builders Just call it sales Customer Relationships Not capitalizing properly No board No peers
9 Mistakes from $1m - $10m I’m going to talk about BEER Bare metal bargain basement Magical unicorn database Fancy JS framework PEOPLE GOING ALONE Scrappy doers to systems builders Just call it sales Customer Relationships Not capitalizing properly No board No peers
Bare metal bargain basement Technology that doesn’t make the beer taste better
Magical Unicorn Database Technology that doesn’t make the beer taste better
Fancy Javascript Framework Technology that doesn’t make the beer taste better
Scrappy Doers vs Systems Builders The people you need around the business
Just Callit Sales The people you need around the business
Customer Relationships The people you need around the business
Capitalizingthe Business Properly toScale Try to do it alone
Didn't Formalize a Board Until 2017 2012 2024 No board meetings,2 board members Quarterly board meetings and monthly check-ins Quarterly board meetings 2017 Try to do it alone
Not Buildingand Meeting witha Network of Peer CEOs Try to do it alone
What About this Part?
Over the last 20 minutes I showed you: 0 - $1m Our foundingstory What we gotright $1 - 10m SECTION 3 Doing things that don’t make the beer taste better Right person, wrong stage Build support around you Why are you here? Culture Fixing things that break
SaaSOpen, September 2024 Thank you! Colin Nederkoorn Founder & CEO, [redacted email]