Bonnie Crater. She’s the CEO of Full Circle Insights. She’s a 5-time VP of marketing and executive at many software companies in Silicon Valley. She’s been named one of the 100 Most Influential Women by the Silicon Valley Business Journal and one of the Top 20 Women to Watch by Sales Lead Management Association.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – N/A
What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff
Favorite online tool? — Docusign
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7.5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “My path has been just fine”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:53 – Nathan introduces Bonnie to the show
02:24 – Full Circle Insights helps marketing people accurately measure and track the impact of their marketing campaigns on pipeline and revenue
02:50 – Full Circle Insights has an annual contract and usual contract which pays $30K a year
03:00 – Full Circle Insights launched their product in 2012, but it was started in 2010
03:10 – “Never start a company on December 31st”
- 03:18 – The IRS would want a tax return for 1 day of business
03:51 – Bonnie quit her VP of marketing job prior to Full Circle Insights
03:58 – Bonnie was invited by her friends to start Full Circle Insights and there are 4 founders
04:20 – Two of the founders were from Salesforce, including Bonnie
04:49 – Full Circle Insights is built on Salesforce
05:01 – Full Circle Insights was on Salesforce’s AppExchange
05:54 – Bonnie was a CEO in 2001, but it was a failure and she had to hire and fire a hundreds of people
07:35 – Bonnie was a VP of marketing a couple of times with different companies after the failure
08:04 – Full Circle Insights was initially bootstrapped, they raised $11M
- 08:14 – They raised money because they were going broke
- 08:21 – They were paying themselves
08:50 – First capital was raised in 2012
09:12 – Her first product was built from the money the founders had put in
09:32 – Dan, the CTO, is the developer
09:53 – Full Circle Insights has around 150 customers
10:12 – Team size is 35
- 10:38 – 8 in engineering and product, 12 in sales, 4-5 in marketing, 7-8 in customer success and some in accounting
11:17 – Full Circle Insights have broken around $4M in ARR
11:33 – Full Circle Insights’ model is to double, then triple
12:33 – Full Circle Insights has 90% renewal rate
12:40 – Churn is usually from acquisition and CMO changes
13:26 – Bonnie was hoping to have a 100% renewal rate in the coming years
14:37 – Full Circle Insights has a sales rep who has a puppy that he brought to the tradeshow
- 14:53 – The puppy became a booth magnet and they were able to acquire new customers
15:25 – Fully weighted CAC is $18-20K
15:30 – Payback period is less than 6 months
16:30 – Lowest marketing expenses is digital marketing and the biggest is from tradeshows and events
17:31 – LTV
18:30 – Full Circle Insights’ new VP of sales
19:01 – ARR target is $7M
20:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Never start your business on the last day of the year.
We all make mistakes and we just have to learn from it—just don’t make the same mistake twice.
Be creative and do what you need to do to draw new customers in.

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

825: SaaS: 4 Founders, 150 Customers Paying $30k for Pipeline and Revenue Management

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders