How Didomi Grew Consent Management to $40M-$60M ARR Through PE and M&A

We're basically a b to b software company and specialized in consent management. So what we do is that we help enterprise and middle market companies to comply with privacy laws to raise the series b €34,000,000 or $40,000,000. And then we got Marlin as a majority stakeholder back in April 2025. And, yes, they paid quite a strong multiple, above tenets, I can say.

Do you have any million dollar per year customers yet or are still fighting for that contract? I have some. You do? Congratulations. That's a surprise. I I wouldn't have expected that. Congratulations.

Hey, folks. My guest today is Raf Boukris. He's the co founder and chief revenue officer of Didomi. Responsible for scaling revenue across The US, Europe, and Latin America. He's also an angel investor in over 30 startups and is based in France. Raf, you ready to take us to the top?

Hi, Nathan. Thanks for having me.

Okay. Tell us what the company does and what you're selling.

We're basically a B2B software company and specialized in consent management. So what we do is that we help enterprise and middle market companies to comply with privacy laws like GDPR in Europe or CCPA in in The US and lots of other laws everywhere in the world.

This is like when I visit a website and I'm in Europe and it says accept all cookies or opt into consent. You're powering a lot of that.

100%. We are one of the largest providers, helping the largest publishers in the world, including Gutenberg, Sky, Lezeco, AdeVinta, big marketplaces. I would say that basically where them sleep properly, avoiding fines and making sure that they can monetize also their data in the legal way.

When you say you're the largest, what does that mean? Are you processing the most consents per day?

So we are not the largest, but I would say one of the largest. We got an SDK that we display on the different websites, on our customers' websites. And just to give you one number, more or less 2% of the global web traffic is going through our SDK. 2%, which is a very large number.

How many consents are you approving on a daily or weekly or monthly basis right now? Are we talking tens of millions or billions?

Billions.

With a b.

With a b. With a large b. Why? Because our customers are mostly publishers, immersions, very large traffic websites. If you're just an SMB with Google Analytics and a 100 of visitors, you don't go to Didomi. You're gonna choose something that is, I would say, lighter when you don't need to customize a lot.

So just to be clear, you're processing billions of consents per month across your customer base.

Correct.

You know, everyone in the age of AI is trying to figure out how do you price per seat usage based something else. How are you pricing?

That's a great question, Nathan. Just before this interview, I was in a two hours workshop because we are revamping all the pricing. We basically price on the monthly unique visitors. Okay. So the more traffic you get on the different devices, the more you're going to be charged. And we are thinking of new ways, you write with agents, AI, bots on websites. There are lots of different challenges and we always want to bring more value to our

customers through maturity models, through different platforms that we acquire. So very large topic, but long story short so far, the more visitors you get, the more you're gonna pay.

Is most of your selling happening by automatic no touch upselling or do you have sales reps calling into your accounts with a quota target to drive upsell and NDR?

At the end the day, need to go to sales. Okay. We have almost no reseller. So you go on our website, you ask for a demo, you're gonna get a sales. I try to get the sales cycle shorter because I think that buyers don't want to be sold too much through first meeting, second meeting, third meeting. But anyway, if you're an enterprise with 20 stakeholders, you're gonna go through this process. We are covering different segments of

customers and Didomi is super focused on enterprise and mid market, and I don't really believe that you can, you know, pay hundreds of thousands of euros ARR without talking to a sales. Not yet, or we haven't succeeded to do that so far.

AddingWell was PLG. You acquired them in April 2025. What was their average revenue per customer when you acquired them? Are we talking like $10 a user or like a thousand a user?

No. More than more than that. So I would say a few thousand euros ARR because it was a mix, you know, between PLG that was very efficient. When I opened the data room, I say, wow, that's a fantastic model. And the sales that because they also get some mid markets and enterprise.

Okay. And what was that company doing total in ARR before you acquired them?

A few millions in ARR. That's something that we can see.

Why acquire them? Were you acquiring the sales motion? Was it a product? Were you acquiring the team? What was the number one reason?

We raised this all series B back in 2021. You know, that was a very intense year in terms of fundraising. There was lots of money. And then we had two great years, 2023, 2024, but we were almost focused on one consent management platform product. So as a CRO, I needed to get some cross sell and as it takes more time, you know, to develop new lines of products, we're really looking to

do some M and A and look for cross sell products. So what you should do as a founder is you just need to ask your customers and your partners, what are the best tools that you are using or that can make sense to complement our offer? And we bumped into adding well, and we say, oh, you get a great business, more or less the same ICP, more martech than privacy tech, but that can be a very

good vendor and we can do a lots of cross sell. So then, yeah, we we we we designed it to to to make an offer and then to to look for the money.

And are you comfortable sharing the multiple range you paid for adding well?

I cannot, but I can say it was... We we we paid kind of a premium. When we approached them, they had less than three years and the growth was just insane and the EBITDA was so positive that they can pay, you know, some dividends. So there is a big trade off between selling and keeping the company and milking the company. So we paid a good price. That's also the reason why we did a roadshow and handed

raising money from a PE firm. We did double track between VC and PE and PE was much more adapted for the next phase of Didomi doing more and more M and A consolidation.

My research team only told me that in 2021, raised a 40,000,000 series B. Did you raise money prior to that?

We raised three rounds. One very small round that you cannot find in the press that's with business injured, but I would say that's two hun... Less than €300,000. Okay? So very small dilution. Then we raised 5,000,000 in end of twenty nineteen with a French DC that is called Drega, that is still there, long term partner. And then we raised the Series B €34,000,000 or

$40,000,000 back in summer twenty twenty one. And then we got Marlin as a majority stakeholder back in April 2025.

Going back to the 2021, I mean, so many companies were trading for insane valuations back then. You three being smart founders said, hey. We should take advantage of this. If you were a good negotiator, maybe you traded at 15, 20, 30 x forward looking ARR. Is that true?

We traded at a strong multiple. That's what I can say. More than what is trading now. We knew for sure that that was kind of a bet. So we had different offers. And also for the story, we raised with elephants and approached us before Series B. They were kind of aggressive. They do outbounds and they say, okay, we did big research on your company. This is why you're exceptional. This is why

we want to invest. And then we say, okay, you get one offer, but you need to do a roadshow. You need to challenge to see what's your value on the market. And then at the end we say, hey guys, you're interested. We got different offers from tier AVC. Are you still interested? And they say yes. And yes, they they paid quite a strong multiple.

Did you trade for larger than a 20 x multiple?

Cannot answer this question, but Can give

me a wide range? I'm trying to get a sense if it was like five x or 50 x. Can you just give me a really broad

range of, like It's not a five or seven x. So it's more than this.

Above that?

Above 10 x, I can say.

Okay. Above 10x. Fair enough. Okay. So now the question to you is, you know, you're one of the founders. Obviously, team's excited in 2021 about their equity. Right? There's new investors coming in. Now, you know, everyone, not just you, everyone's trading at lower multiples. How do you manage the psychology of your team and their options potentially being underwater?

That's a good question. So I think we get long term employees, okay, that got, stocks at a very, very low strike price. Okay. So I would say that we get early employees that were very, very happy and we get employees that joined in 2021 that made less money.

You're ten years into this since the launch in 2017. You know, really good founders will try and find a way to create liquidity, a little liquidity, both for themselves and early employees. Was any part of that $440,000,000 series b a secondary?

There was secondaries, not as much as when the b came in. But, yeah, there was liquidity and especially for the business angels.

I want to understand how the company is growing as you're thinking about these funding runs. What year did you pass a million of ARR? Do you remember?

I think it was more or less when we raised the 5,000,000 with Brigham. Company was launched in 2017. We started to sell early twenty eighteen. Man, I think that in less than two years we did the first million of AR.

And when did you break 10,000,000? Maybe 2020... Maybe end of twenty twenty three, something like that. And now that you've got private equity on, are they demanding at board meetings? Raf, you've gotta be growing 200% year over year, or what's what's the goal for 2026 in terms of growth rate?

I think that they also, I wouldn't say patient, but we made two acquisitions in a row, which is a lot. So I think that the first priority is to make these two acquisitions quite successful because they injected money also for these acquisitions. Okay. So that was the first step. Second step, they also want to make sure that you get the right people in your C suits to succeed in the five coming years. At the end, they

just want you to be efficient, so rule of 40. If you grew by 40%, you can be break even. If you grew by 20%, and now you know with AI, because you mentioned in Nathan, more and more, you get the rule of 60, which is challenging. But if you want to be a tier one company in 2026, you need to reach it. But we are not there.

Are you profitable today?

I think this question is quite complex because as we acquire, we acquired one profitable and one non profitable company and did me was more breakeven. So no, I would say we, we more or less, I would say more or less. Depends the way you you compute it, but the group is more or less fluctuating and depends on the investments. But...

I'm trying to get a sense if you're a gambler or not, what your risk tolerance is. Was there any point of time before you raised from Marlin in April 2025 where you burned through the full 40,000,000 series b and your bank got so low you considered shutting the company down?

No. Absolutely not. We we had lots of cash. And no, we are not gamblers. Even if I'm... I've been a poker player for twenty years, but we are not gamblers with the company, with people's lives. So we didn't want to be in a situation when we had to raise. So for instance, just after series B, when we saw the collapse in the stock market in March 2022, we said, okay. The plan, that's a series b plan.

That's crazy. So we still have tons of money in the bank. We need to be capital efficient.

Were you growing like a 100% year over year in twenty three, twenty four, twenty five or more or less?

Less. Less because more or less. That's just twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, we were targeting an efficient growth. Okay? So Mhmm. I would give you the range 20 to 50% why not burning all, not burning a lot.

If you negotiate with Marlin in 2025, there's a lot of my listeners wondering what do growth equity firms pay? What multiples are they paying today? Are you comfortable sharing what multiple you negotiated with Marlin and why they were the right partner?

I cannot. I cannot mention the multiple, of course. But I would say this is a great multiple. And, you know, with P, what is great is that to get a buyer that is paying a fair price and is very different from the stock options, the liquid preferences. So that's what we like, you know, and we didn't try to over negotiate valuation because as founder, you roll out tons of... You you do a big rollover, okay, of your equity. So...

And you were, I mean, you traded above 10 x in '21. It's fair to say 2025, you were you were maybe, you know, above two x, but below 10 x, right? Something in that wide range?

I can say this range. Two to 10 is the...

Yeah. That's a big range.

Two two is really low and 10 is quite high for PE, so that's a big deal.

And you were and you were saying that time period, you're growing 20 to 40% year over year. So on a 10,000,000 base in '23, were doing something like 15 to 18,000,000 of revenue in 2025, something like that?

Not too far.

As you think about moving into sort of 2026, you've obviously done some massive acquisitions. A lot of the press was reporting, I mean, that SourcePoint acquisition, I mean, you weren't materially bigger than them. Right? Would you agree that that was sort of a a combination of equals in terms of revenue sizes?

We're bigger than them in terms of ARR. Okay. Yeah.

But they'd raised $48,000,000. Right?

They raised tons of money and they launched earlier than us. Maybe that was the the the the trap. But what was great is the quality of their customers. So the ICV was much higher than Didomi. The number How of big multiple because we get lots of mean market at Didomi. So the quality of their customer portfolio and also the geos, you know, a company that has lots of enterprise customers in The US and in UK is

worth more than in all the geos. So, that was the perfect acquisition for Didomi and now we are very happy. It's hard to know the story looking forward, but looking backward, we are more than happy.

How many customers are you serving today now?

At the group level, 3.5 k customers.

That's amazing. Okay. And are... I mean, do you have any million dollar per year customers yet or are still fighting for that contract? I have some. You do? Congratulations. That's a surprise. I I wouldn't have expected that. Congratulations.

I can imagine the name, but we get one multimillion dollar customer.

Tell me more about your team size today. How many full time?

We are a bit less than 200 full time employees.

How many are engineers versus like sales team?

Revenue team is half of the company and Okay. Direct plus engineers plus support team is the 40 to 50%.

Let's wrap up with AI. Where are you taking your product? Your customers are listening to this interview. What do you want them to know about your product roadmap?

AI, we have more and more. It's in the plan, but that's not in industry compliance where you are gonna rush to put some agents because compliance is quite complex and you want to... You cannot take too much risk, you know. It's not like in the voice industry or retail or other industry, but yes, it's coming. I would say that for the Didomi Group, we have massively invested internally in our operations. So far, not so lot of AI that is in the product suite.

Okay. Makes sense. And are you comfortable sharing just overall combined company revenue range today?

In dollars, 40 to $60,000,000 a year.

Go go back ten years to when you launched this thing, Raf. Did you ever imagine you'd be, you know, running and serving 3,500 customers with forty to fifty, you know, 40 to 60,000,000 of ARR?

No. To be honest, we have always been very ambitious, but it has been a step by step game. And, no, that's fantastic. And I think that every phase has been crazy. And that's also why I like to angel invest. I like to share all the learnings, the different phases. I love that.

And what's your situation today? Like how old are you today? You know, married, single, what is it, what's your life look like?

I'm 35. I'm father of three young kids, nine, seven and two. I live in Southern France now. I quit Paris last summer for Nice, Cote D'Azur French Riviera. What can I share? Also actively investing in more than 35 companies. Also love to do sports, boxing, and and I play poker, if you want to know everything about me.

But we're hosting a Founder Poker Night in Paris. Get a sense you're probably pretty good, so maybe maybe I don't want you at the table. You'll take all my money.

That's always what people are telling me. I want to invite you. I want to be purchased and not invite you.

Guys, didomi.io launched in 2017 by three cofounders with this team of a 190 people, 80 on the revenue side and 80 on research, product engineering, product managers, etcetera, doing between 40 and 60,000,000 of ARR today. Rob, thank you for taking us to the top.

Thank you, Nathan.