David Barrett. He started programming at the early age of 6 and has been aspiring to become an expense report magnate ever since. He attended the University of Michigan where he worked in a virtual reality lab before moving to Texas to render 3D graphics engines for the video game industry. Next, he moved to California to join Travis of Uber in building a peer-to-peer file transfer technology called Red Swoosh, which was acquired by Akamai in 2007. In 2008, David left that company to start Expensify and has since been relieving the world’s frustration one expense report at a time.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Good to Great
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? — Google Docs
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self know one thing, what would it be? – “It is possible for everyone else around you to be wrong and for you to be right”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:46 – Nathan introduces David to the show
02:38 – Expense reports have been overlooked
02:56 – David took the opportunity that will take care of expense reports
03:18 – Expense report is synonymous with any business
03:52 – David shares how his eagerness to help the homeless led him to create an expense report reimbursement app
05:09 – David was in Episode 655 of The Top
05:16 – Expensify isn’t looking to raise another round at the moment as they just raised $25M
05:23 – Expensify is currently profitable and not burning capital
05:27 – Team size is 120
05:33 – Expensify was founded in 2008
06:04 – Expensify currently has 42K customers
06:21 – Expensify also has millions of free users
06:49 – Pricing has a free account which offers 10 receipts a month and a paid account starts at $9 per active user
- 07:15 – Enterprise plans also start at $9
08:21 – ARR is still under $100M
09:44 – The expansion is the bulk of Expensify’s revenue growth
10:40 – Expensify has a $5 plan for a group
11:10 – Revenue retention is over 100% annually
- 11:24 – Every 3 years, a customer pays 500% more
12:55 – The most effective strategy to acquire customers is to hand their product to the individual employees and promote it within their own companies
- 14:14 – David shares how the payment shifts from the employee's personal card to the company’s expenses
- 16:16 – The target is to share to at least one other person
16:35 – Expensify doesn’t have any paid channels
- 16:40 – They do lots of conferences which is more for establishing brand leadership
- 17:25 – They spend a single digit million, annually, for their conference
- 17:32 – Their conference is ExpensiCon
- 18:00 – Only 100 selected people can join
19:35 – David believes that the cost of sales doesn’t equate to the cost of customer acquisition
- 21:38 – The most important decisions are not quantifiable
22:40 – David won’t sell Expensify for $300M
16:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Getting your own clients to refer you is the best way to grow your customer base.
The most important decisions for your company are sometimes not quantifiable.
Focus on the best possible brand or product you can offer.

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

844: SaaS: How Ignoring CAC Works for ~$100m ARR Expensify

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders