Cutting the team in one round
“we do it. It's done. We don't go into other layers. Those who stay are in for good, and and they're not they're not going to worry.”
Founder conversationMaster $20m+
How Chili Piper Grew From $16M to $30M ARR With Multiple Product Lines
Nicolas Vandenberghe explains how Chili Piper cut its team from 225 to 150, became cash positive and nearly doubled ARR with a multi-product approach.
Nicolas Vandenberghe · Chili Piper
Published January 16, 2024About this resource
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What you’ll learn
Nicolas Vandenberghe, co-founder and CEO of Chili Piper, explains how the company went from about $16M ARR in 2021 to $30M without raising new capital, after cutting the team from 225 to 150 in November 2022 and becoming cash positive. He also covers how Chili Piper sequences its products, why it is launching self-serve for smaller customers, and how integrations and partnerships bring in new business.
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Why the Inbox product was pulled
“Even though I love the product, we pulled it out because, you know, one thing is to have a good product, another one is to be able to bring it to market.”
The contrarian case for SMB first
“The better way to go at market is go to down market first.”
Repricing options after the down market
“So we repriced. We repriced the options.”
Partnerships as a growth channel
“We call it Chili Piper Everywhere. So we've done more partnership, ecosystem partnerships.”
Resource files
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Video
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
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