Omer (00:11.440)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Obra Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talked to Jason Vanderboom, the founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign, an email marketing, marketing automation and sales CRM platform.
Jason was doing consulting work as a developer.
He decided to move to Chicago and study fine arts at college.
So he started looking for a way to do less consulting work, so so he had more time for college.
At the time, he'd been building email marketing solutions for a number of clients.
So he decided to package up that work as an email marketing product that he could sell.
This was an on premise product, not SaaS, so clients had to install this software on their own computers.
He continued with the on premise software model for 10 years.
Growth was slow.
By the end of the 10 years, he had a team of eight people and was generating a couple of million dollars in revenue and was profitable.
And then he decided to bite the bullet and switch to a SaaS model.
He was potentially risking all the revenue he was currently generating, but looking back, he wishes he'd done it sooner and didn't overthink things so much.
And the real growth for ActiveCampaign has happened in the last two years.
Thirteen years after building the product and company, ActiveCampaign now has over 60,000 customers and generates over $50 million a year in revenue and it employs over 300 people.
Jason raised $20 million in 2016, but bootstrapped and self funded the business for the first 13 years.
And so far he hasn't used any of the money he raised.
And he's a single founder who's built this business slowly.
You've probably heard things like, you can't succeed unless you find a co founder or unless you jump into working on your business full time from day one.
Well, in this episode we dispel those myths and show you how a single founder who started his business part time still went on to build a SaaS business that generates over $4 million in monthly recurring reven revenue.
It's a great interview and an inspiring story and I hope you enjoy it.
Jason, welcome to the show.
Jason VandeBoom (02:54.370)
Thanks for having me.
Omer (02:56.530)
So what gets you out of bed every day?
You know, I always like to find out, like what drives and motivates my guests.
You know, do you have a favorite quote or, you know, just tell us in your own words.
Jason VandeBoom (03:05.490)
Yeah, so not really Necessarily a quote that would probably wrap it all up, but it's, it's all about just kind of impact creating things and impact.
In the past, I was sometimes actually building the product and whatnot.
But I find that from team, customer base, market in general, that just signed, I've always put that over any financials.
Omer (03:26.650)
Now, for people who aren't familiar with ActiveCampaign, can you just kind of give us an overview of what the product does, who's it for, what problem you trying to solve?
Jason VandeBoom (03:35.930)
So the easiest way to sum it up is we help growing businesses connect with their customers.
So we have elements of marketing automation, you know, doing some messaging, but more importantly, probably kind of finding that balance between automated messaging and human touch.
So we really feel that you shouldn't over automate a customer experience.
And that's what we're just trying to solve for.
Omer (03:58.070)
Let's kind of lay the groundwork and just give some context so people understand like where the business is today.
You have over 60,000 customers, revenue wise, what are you doing right now north of 50 million.
$50 million a year and you have a team of over 300 people.
Jason VandeBoom (04:22.710)
Yep, about 330 right now, I believe.
Omer (04:25.670)
Okay.
And so the business was started back in 2002, I believe.
Right.
Jason VandeBoom (04:34.150)
Really close.
2003, right at the start of the year.
Omer (04:36.550)
Yeah, I should have written that down.
So.
So the business has been running for about 15 years and so there's a lot to cover here.
And you know, I always like to at least spend some time talking to my guests about how they started the business and how they came up with the idea.
And you know, it's not.
I know, I appreciate that.
It's not always that easy to do when you started a business 15, 16 years ago.
Yeah, but let's kind of go there.
Where did the idea for ActiveCampaign come from?
Jason VandeBoom (05:11.140)
Yeah, so it actually comes from quite a bit before that even, because I was doing consulting work, different projects for clients I would find online for probably six years prior or so at least.
And I found I kept doing the same things over and over.
So part of it was I just wanted to save some of my own time and package up some of the things I was working on.
One of the things that I was really helping a lot of businesses with was kind of building out, like how do they just communicate with their customers like a basic email, sending it out to their customer base.
At the time, the market didn't have a ton of options.
So I was building these one off solutions while at the Same time, right as I was starting the company, I actually moved to Chicago and despite having this kind of engineering and consulting background, was going to fine arts school.
So I had to figure out a way to pay for that as well with less time to do consulting at the moment.
So I just sort of packaged it up and put it online.
So it wasn't this great.
Like I'm going to take on a market, I'm going to, I'm going to build this business that's going to be growing and taking off like you know, a rocket ship or anything like that.
It was more, I just saw an opportunity to save myself some time, opportunity to show some value to true small businesses.
Omer (06:29.080)
So that's really interesting that the whole business was started by you trying to find a way to fund yourself so you could study fine arts.
Yeah.
Yes.
So you clearly had different plans on what you were going to do.
Jason VandeBoom (06:42.360)
Oh, kind of.
So I've always had this like technical, but I've always really loved fine arts and design in general.
And when I, you know, over time it's like that's the perfect combination for like a product first type of company or leadership.
So it sort of all kind of worked together.
Omer (07:00.610)
And so you, you sort of built this product and so what it sounds like you kind of already built it for customers multiple times in, in different shapes or forms.
And then you're like, okay, let me package this up, put it out there and hopefully I can get some customers and, and generate some revenue.
Jason VandeBoom (07:20.100)
Yep.
Omer (07:21.380)
Now at that time it wasn't a SaaS product, right?
Jason VandeBoom (07:25.860)
Yeah.
So it was true on premise.
So someone would have to buy it, download it, figure out how to install it on their own server.
And keep in mind I'm targeting like true SMBs as well.
So people that don't have a dedicated IT department or even person nor a network administrator or anything.
So the level of friction there was pretty hard.
And I was trying to take on on premise software and the true SMB market at the same time, which is quite frankly probably the two hardest things to probably do.
But from that like I really learned a lot about a ton of different small businesses and like what mattered to them, where they saw value, where, where they saw sort of like pain or opportunities within their company.
So despite it being like a, a rather tricky thing to take on, the education from that alone was just something I would never give up.
Omer (08:19.610)
So the challenges of building and selling on prem software is, I think is most people understand that, which is why, you know, SaaS software has become so popular.
But you mentioned also, you know, dealing with SMBs and small medium businesses is being a big challenge.
And why for people who are not kind of familiar with that or people who are thinking about serving SMBs, what's, what's difficult about that?
Jason VandeBoom (08:46.810)
There's a, there's a lot of different things.
The, the advantages you have a big market you can make a real impact on like true businesses and that impacts their families and things like that to a, to a degree that you just don't get in the enterprise.
But unlike a mid market or enterprise company, they just don't have internal resources or internal know how necessarily for all of the different pieces and quite frankly the ones that do probably shouldn't be spending the time trying to figure all of that out necessarily unless it's core to their business.
So our challenge was how do we do on prem for SMB?
How do we make that as seamless as possible and support them as much as possible so that we stay out of their way so that the product delivers on the value that they're trying to seek and trying to get but they're not having to consume a bunch of their time.
Because I've found like, especially with a small business, a lot of people don't value their own time as much as they should.
So that was a key part of our messaging as well of just trying to like the product by design is trying to help them get more time.
So if you have to install it and whatnot, that has to be pretty seamless.
Omer (09:54.170)
And how did you start getting customers?
Like you sort of, you said I kind of made this available.
But yeah.
So were you marketing or what were you doing?
Jason VandeBoom (10:03.060)
Yeah, so I, I've early on like we never had any great like marketing hack or anything like that or anything really.
It was back in the day of almost like directories and whatnot.
So we just put it on some things like that and then like one person bought it and then, then like all of a sudden like you know, give them a lot of attention all of a sudden like a second or a third and instead of taking this approach of like, you know, try some, some growth hack that'll you know, get widespread like awareness.
Early on it was just double down on anyone that was taking the chance of even talking to us.
What can we do to learn from that and to help them see value faster.
So it was very hands on with all of the, all of the customers and today we still try to take that approach.
Obviously we have to scale it out a little bit but like how can you stay so close to your user and so close to that level of detail.
In terms of like, where are the points of frustration, where are the points of value?
Omer (11:06.020)
Do you remember how much you were charging for the product?
Jason VandeBoom (11:08.420)
Yeah, I think it started at about $35, a one time fee and then it went to like 85 or something.
But it had the classical problem of on prem perpetual software.
Right.
So we would have a good month, sell, sell a number of licenses and then all of a sudden like a holiday would hit or something like that.
And I could never enjoy that time because your revenue is all over the place.
And the added benefit of, you know, switching over to a recurring revenue model, not only do you get rid of that friction of installing, but that revenue base should be, should be quite predictable and sustainable.
Which, which is nice.
Omer (11:48.750)
Okay, but you didn't see that at the time.
You went on for what, 10 years?
Jason VandeBoom (11:54.270)
I didn't see that for a long time.
Yeah.
Omer (11:56.750)
So how big did the business grow in the time that you kind of continue with this on prem kind of model?
Jason VandeBoom (12:03.230)
It was, I think at the end of it we were eight people and eight products.
So the other thing we did, which is something nobody should do, but I would still never take back because it was a great experience.
As we built out the company, as people bought more of that initial product, we needed help desk.
We needed different things to manage the customer experience.
Normally you'd go out, you'd get a help desk product, you'd go get a live chat, a survey product.
We built them all, which like I said, not the thing to do, but it really helped us understand each individual little piece of the customer experience, how it all related and what mattered.
Because we only had so much time, so we had to really focus on the key value areas for developing.
So that kind of gave us this whole idea of the entire customer experience and also led us to the idea of there's something much larger here.
Because as we have these distinct products, we understood, we quickly saw kind of the challenges that a lot of businesses even have today, where there's no one thing kind of just orchestrating the entire customer experience.
And that's what led us into kind of the updated direction of the company, if you will.
Omer (13:21.670)
So do you, do you remember how much revenue you were doing by the end of those 10 years?
Jason VandeBoom (13:27.350)
Not exactly.
I'd say yeah, couple one or two.
Couple million, something like that.
Omer (13:34.000)
One, one assumed.
Jason VandeBoom (13:35.360)
But the thing I would say also with that growing.
Right.
Profitable.
I think all too often people really put an emphasis on like Businesses that are adding like, you know, 10 people every single week and growing at, you know, certain digits.
There's nothing wrong with a business that's growing at a slower rate, but that's actually truly sustainable and providing value.
And there's so many of those.
But they just don't get the credit or the support that they probably should.
I'm a huge believer in that.
Like sustainability and building true value.
Omer (14:13.530)
Yeah, no, I agree and I think in many ways it's just because it's not, you know, it doesn't sound like a sexy story or a headline.
Jason VandeBoom (14:20.250)
That's exactly why.
Omer (14:21.170)
Yeah, but in many ways I think, you know, it's these kinds of stories that resonate more certainly with, you know, most of the people I talk to who listen to this show, they're much more interested in stories like this.
Jason VandeBoom (14:35.160)
So.
Omer (14:35.880)
Because the reason I'm asking this is because, okay, so it's been a long journey, 10 years or so, you're generating a couple of million dollars, but you're continuing to grow, you're profitable, you've hired people, it's not huge.
You know, you have eight people and then you decide, okay, now we're going to move to a SaaS business model and potentially we're going to jeopardize all the revenue that we're making right now.
Jason VandeBoom (15:06.610)
And not only that, we're going from eight products to one.
So we're having to, you know, sunset or sell off the products we're not choosing to continue with.
So there's a lot of risk there.
The, the opportunity was large.
It's just there, there was no certainty behind it.
Right.
Like it was completely different business model in terms of deployment.
There is no deployment.
And, and we're used to a customer base that likes paying a one time fee and then we're going to go and say pay us every month.
So it's a ton of risk.
Um, now we did manage to do that transition, remaining profitable, continuing to grow the entire time.
Um, but those, it took us like a, a year or two to sort of flip the business in terms of what, what's paying the bills completely.
Um, and the other thing is I was really, I really didn't want to abandon any of our early customers at all.
Meaning like even up until like a year or so ago, like we had people on support contracts still that we're still helping with on prem software from back in the day.
Like that doesn't make any sense on paper.
Like if you asked any, and you know, like most any investor or something, they would think you're.
They're not very intelligent.
But.
But for me, it's, it's, you know, just doing the right thing longer term and obviously like doing this for 15, like, I'm, I'm all about the law.
I don't know anything else.
It just, it's just meaningful.
So our brand, we didn't have to change that.
We were able to help a lot of our customers kind of move to the different model and whatnot.
But, you know, not abandoning.
And the same thing can be said now where I'm just so passionate about the SMB space.
A lot of businesses kind of position where we are today would start moving up market.
Right.
It makes it a little easier on the unit economics for like sales and marketing and paid, paid acquisition and everything.
But I just see such a giant opportunity in the SMB space.
But more importantly, it's like the impact you can have there.
And if you can do that efficiently, if you can actually retain your revenue and whatnot, and it can be done because we're doing it that scale, that's such an opportunity to be had.
So just like we didn't want to kind of just quick turn it off from one model to the other.
There's absolutely no plans to move up market.
Omer (17:39.680)
So it's something you said earlier about if you asked an investor, they'd think you were crazy for continuing to support those people.
Jason VandeBoom (17:47.200)
Some investors, yeah, some investors, yeah.
Omer (17:49.920)
And that kind of leads to.
The other thing that I wanted to talk about was that you raised $20 million, 2016, a couple of years ago, but for the first time, 13 years of this business, you didn't raise any money, right?
Jason VandeBoom (18:08.630)
Nothing.
Yeah.
Omer (18:10.790)
And so, like, how did you.
How much did you have to spend to kind of get the business started?
Jason VandeBoom (18:15.670)
So when I started the business, I think I probably.
I sold my car at the time because I moved to Chicago, so I didn't need one.
So I had a couple thousand from that.
And I spent most of my money on a new computer, which is the logical thing to do.
Right.
And then I just, I just.
That was it.
I mean, I didn't take a lot of capital.
Like, the nice thing is it doesn't take a ton of capital to start a business.
Even back then.
And now as well now the, the problem I think a lot of people run into is they want to make this big splash.
They want to like, you know, go from like zero to like 5,000%, like overnight.
Right.
I just didn't think about it that way.
I thought about it as this More like, you know, I was happy to even have one business choose to spend like 30 some dollars.
Right.
And then I just focused and I didn't care about the price point in terms of how much I cared about proving that value out that compounds over time.
Obviously it's a longer approach.
It wouldn't work in all markets like if it's a total land grab or something like that, but when it can, that allows you to self fund.
And I think the important thing there is like if I were to have taking capital earlier, that would have changed everything, right?
Like that transition from on Prem to SaaS may or may not have happened because it was, there was some risk there or if it did happen, it would have probably been like as fast of a cutover as possible because we would just take the loss from, from that for a while and just hope that the future is better.
I think it would also just change the dynamics of the company, what we cared about to a degree and also, and mostly most of that is because potentially I would have lost more control with earlier funding.
So if it's at all possible, and it's not always possible, if it's all possible to prove it out further, you're just so much more in control of your destiny and making sure that your company is actually staying true to what you believe in.
Omer (20:12.140)
So kind of talking about being in control of your destiny.
The other thing is that, you know, we often hear that you can't build a successful business alone, that you have to find a co founder.
But you didn't do that.
Jason VandeBoom (20:29.510)
No.
So yeah, and initially it was just myself for, for a couple years at least.
And, and today still it's just, you know, I've never had a co founder.
I've obviously had some like wonderful people to work with, which helps.
But you know, there's probably some, some decent value in having a co founder in terms of just like that loneliness that could potentially occur with certain decisions or like, you know, being able to put your guard down with someone in terms of like if you're truly like, you know, like worried about a situation or something like that, it's probably not fair to put that on anyone other than someone like a co founder.
But I, you know, there's so many people like that are passionate about all sorts of different businesses, starting businesses and whatnot.
I didn't really find it that hard to find people to talk to.
I even like back in the day I even like used more traditional sources like going to the SBA and talking to people there and whatnot.
Because that was before there was even like a huge, like SaaS population or a group of founders I could even go to.
And it's still a great organization.
But there's so much more now today that I don't feel like you're totally by yourself.
Right.
And the benefit of that is that, you know, I've never really had, you know, founder disputes or something like that.
And if I want to do something and I truly believe in it and whatnot, I can just sort of drive that change pretty quickly.
Omer (22:02.730)
Yeah, no, I think that's a really, really good point.
You know, I think there's clearly a lot of benefits to having a co founder, whether it's that kind of person that you can bounce ideas with and kind of, you know, just de stress with or whether it's somebody who complements your skills and kind of, you know, fills in the gaps.
But, you know, if you were, if you were the guy building the product and you were the guy kind of obsessively thinking about product design and just how to build a great product and experience for customers, like who was doing the marketing in those early days, so
Jason VandeBoom (22:48.120)
myself as well, and then as we hired some people, I have the added benefit though that we were building a product and a platform that was focused on marketing.
Right.
Focused on the customer experience over time.
So I think that's potentially a little easier because we're always thinking about how do you kind of build your funnel, how do you convert more from a product standpoint?
And we could just apply all of that to our business.
So a lot of what we've done product wise is almost of selfish need internally.
Right.
Because as we've been growing, we've been running into these challenges and we've just been thinking about, you know, looking at the market, looking to see how the market solves for it, but then not doing that, coming up with our own sort of take on it.
And then so it both works for us and then we can enable other SMBs to sort of take that same technology and run with it.
Omer (23:42.379)
The other question I had about the early days was you didn't kind of fully jump in with both feet and make this a full time thing right away.
Right.
This was, was this kind of a part time thing for a while.
Jason VandeBoom (23:53.400)
Well, technically kind of a part time thing I'd say I'd probably like.
From our standpoint, I'm just really was really passionate about it, so I enjoyed it.
So I just spent a lot of my free time doing it.
But I was, you know, I was Starting art school at the same time.
So that was full time.
I was able to get out of a bunch of classes in terms of credits, things like that, which got me a little bit ahead.
But then it quickly started, you know, you, you can only do so much in a day.
Right.
So, so I moved over to part time, then online part time and then just sort of phased that out over time as the business started having more and more demands and needs, we were
Omer (24:30.230)
kind of talking about the transition from on prem to SaaS.
And eventually you guys made that transition.
Instead of selling it off for a one off fee, you were now charging like I think you started with like nine bucks a month, right?
Jason VandeBoom (24:44.230)
Yep.
Omer (24:44.670)
Yeah.
So it wasn't a huge amount of money.
Um, we kind of talked briefly about this before we started recording.
Was you kind of look back at that time and say, I, I wish we'd done things, things faster.
I wish we hadn't.
I wish I hadn't kind of done so much overthinking and, and kind of waiting and sort of delaying.
Can you kind of share that thought process?
Because a lot of us go through exactly those kinds of issues and it's always good to hear about somebody who, who went through those issues but kind of came out on the other end.
Jason VandeBoom (25:15.260)
Yeah.
Because, you know, I saw that opportunity for quite some time.
I'd say probably, you know, years before we actually started doing anything about it.
In a way we even had a little bit of validation because even when we were on prem, we started experimenting with on prem licenses that were paid by the month.
So I already kind of saw the, like the value out of recurring revenue.
Right.
But, and this isn't unique to the situation even to this day, just focusing so much.
I like to think everything through so much.
I start thinking about the what ifs.
It actually works.
Right.
So I'm pretty confident this would be a success if we did this.
But now I'm in fear that it's going to be a success if we do this in a way because I'm thinking about what do we need then?
Like what, what.
Maybe we shouldn't do this yet because we should plan for X, Y and Z to be ready for when it does take off.
And that has just, you know, that, that has caused delays and, and I, I feel like, you know, we're getting better at that, but not perfect at that still.
But that's what kind of held us back in the past.
And it's just kind of, it's, it's odd saying it out loud in a way because it's just like, yeah, your, your fear is something working out.
But you know, I've talked about it with quite a few people and it's, it's definitely not a unique thing by any means either.
Omer (26:39.910)
So I think fear of success is just as prevalent as fear of failure.
Jason VandeBoom (26:44.870)
Yeah.
Omer (26:45.910)
And the product thing is really interesting because you can kind of have like really extreme examples where somebody is like, you know, not doing something.
Because like, you know, when I was at Microsoft, we were thinking about, okay, you could build a product and you know, how are we going to scale it so, you know, we can have millions of people using it.
And so you got a kind of different kind of scale problem.
But when you're starting out, you don't need to think about that when you've got five users, right?
Jason VandeBoom (27:12.300)
Yeah.
And then like, if you over plan it and you overthink it, you'll actually just design the wrong thing anyway.
So like, not only are you delaying, but you still have to do the same amount of work as it starts to take off, most likely because your users will tell you what is probably needed or they'll expose sort of the pressure on whatever needs to be scaled up.
Omer (27:35.610)
So you said we still sort of do that from time to time now as a company.
I'm curious, is that a result of you as a founder and your sort of natural ways of thinking about things and that kind of becoming part of the company culture?
Jason VandeBoom (27:50.730)
I think it's a combination of a couple things.
One, we want to, we don't like missing on expectations or on customer value.
At the same time, we like delivering like iterations, so we don't like completely miss by designing the wrong thing.
It's a, it's a hard balance to make right.
And then as the customer, as you have more and more customers, there is this feeling of pressure of like, you know, it's, it's more pressure than when you, when you're just starting out on making sure your decisions are likely accurate.
So I think it's a combination of those two things.
I think it's probably a healthy thing for the most part.
It's just something to be aware of and to probably push yourself on a little bit.
Omer (28:38.120)
How much time do you spend thinking about competitors?
Jason VandeBoom (28:42.120)
Not that much, actually.
So understanding the market, where things are going, stuff like that, what people are doing, obviously keeping up with that in near real time.
But it's, I don't really care that much what any specific company is doing, meaning if I thought I was spending a lot of time on that I'm failing in my job, in my opinion, because what we've done historically and when we've seen success, it was when we were taking a problem that we understood, and I don't need a competitor to understand a problem and then finding a way to solve for that, that just makes more logical sense and shows value faster for an SMB.
Now, sometimes competitors are useful to see, like, how does the market traditionally attack this problem?
But I never thought of it as like, they did X, let's do now X, Y and Z and, and sort of going back and forth like that.
And I think that's what allows you to differentiate a little bit as well.
And quite frankly, like a lot of these markets are so large, if you're only obsessing about your customers or your competitors rather, and not about just your customers pain and opportunities that they're highlighting, you could really hurt your growth.
Omer (30:01.730)
Did you have that same mindset, you know, five years ago when.
Jason VandeBoom (30:07.650)
No, that's a good question.
Earlier on, I'd say I was, I was more in that camp of like, oh my goodness, look at, you know, this company.
They just did this or they just raised, you know, however much money.
Fear, you know, but time is just shown.
It just, it's.
It's a waste of time to, to obsess on that.
And you should just like really obsess about the details, the pain, the opportunities that your customers are facing and your prospects that don't turn into customers because that's going to drive your opportunities and allow you to make some guesses on product decisions that others just are not doing yet.
And that's how you could actually be an innovative company instead of just some clone that keeps up but is always number two or three in the market.
Omer (30:56.130)
So one of the things we talked about was sort of the fear of success and how you look back and wish you'd kind of moved faster on some of those decisions.
Is there anything else that you look back at?
Sort of top of mind you just kind of you wish you'd done differently.
Jason VandeBoom (31:12.070)
Yeah.
So I think so.
I was so focused on product.
Right.
And just building on the engineering side, design side.
We didn't even have a sales team up until 2016.
Our marketing was pretty, pretty basic at the grand scheme of things.
So when we started looking at like, okay, what are we going to do in terms of just trying to grow at our marketing?
What are we going to do in terms of growing out a sales team?
The idea of just looking at companies that experience a ton of growth and A ton of success with like strategies and thinking that you could take those strategies and just like, yeah, that's going to work the same way for us.
That is where we missed a couple times, I'd say.
And sometimes it's because you're looking at something that's in a different market or maybe a little bit more upmarket where we're SMB, but also like to actually have the success that strategies people pull from oftentimes they're unique to the time period, the company, the company DNA to a certain extent or the product.
So you have to come up with your own ones.
So that kind of goes back to kind of what I was talking about product and not looking at competitors as well.
But you should try to take in as much as possible in terms of strategies of what others are using, but don't just kind of run with it and think it's going to work.
Content marketing worked really, really well with HubSpot.
Right.
Doesn't mean it won't work for you, but come up with a variation of it to an extent or take a small aspect of content marketing and bring in some other things as well.
And it's something we've seen with some of our customer base as well because we're dealing with so many businesses that are trying to, trying to grow their business so trying to find that uniqueness I think which sounds really simple and basic, but when you see these like strategies that are like seem so simple and successful, you can just kind of narrow your results by just doing kind of what has been done.
Omer (33:17.320)
So like content marketing, was that something that you kind of spent time on and it didn't work as well as you thought?
Jason VandeBoom (33:25.350)
Yeah, and I think we focused earlier on, this is a while ago, but a little bit more on just you know, pushing out content on just all these different topics and whatnot instead of what I think I would have done, you know, looking backwards now, which is easy, but just talked about more about just our experience, what we're seeing with our customer base and building some thought leadership about kind of just like how can you just improve the customer experience and just focusing on that, not focusing on trying to target keywords and stuff like that as much.
And on the sales side that was another one where we went from having no sales team and someone like myself who was never my dream to have a big sales team.
Um, but now, you know, after, after some iterations, after trying, you know, some, some, some models that were definitely a little more mid market enterprise and then figuring out our own sort of what works here for us now?
I'm a huge believer in it because I see the impact and efficiency, but it took us a while to find our own sort of, own sort of path.
Omer (34:36.359)
So I, I think you mentioned earlier that a big part of the growth happened in the last couple of years.
Yeah, but before that, like when you switched from On Prem to SaaS, I guess back in 2013 or so, like how, what were the biggest drivers of growth?
What was getting you moving towards these 60,000 customers?
Jason VandeBoom (35:03.759)
So honestly it was pretty slow.
So like 2012, 2013, we're about eight people.
2016, start the year, we're about 20 some people.
So in that time frame, from a, from a team size standpoint, how many
Omer (35:15.760)
people were you in 2016?
Jason VandeBoom (35:17.400)
About 20 some people.
Omer (35:18.360)
To start the year 20 people two years ago?
Jason VandeBoom (35:21.400)
Yeah, like two and a half, but yeah.
Omer (35:22.840)
Wow.
Jason VandeBoom (35:23.120)
Yeah, we've yeah, grown a bit since then.
But, but that time frame, it was like, like to your point you mentioned earlier, like $9 a month is what we were starting with.
So we're building up an entirely new revenue stream.
Very low sort of cost of entry and that takes a while.
Like you know, you have to get a lot of $9 plans and it would scale up a little bit but.
And it's a struggle.
And during that time we're also winding down, you know, finishing up, winding down some of the on prem revenue.
So like while we were growing, it never felt like we were until we sort of were more completely focused on, on the reoccurring revenue.
But it was, yeah, it was a, it was an interesting, an interesting time because it was just like you have to get that compounding, you know, base of everything.
We also worked a lot with partners and whatnot and that's just a, it's a longer term thing as well.
You know, we were going very, very focused on use partner channels, use organic and those you can't just like turn on.
You can't throw in like you know, a million dollars and get $2 million on, you know, on the other side it has to be authentic.
It has to, you know, it's going to take some time and you have to have some luck along the way as well.
Omer (36:44.370)
So what's what drove the growth in the last two years?
Because about two years ago you raised the $20 million, but you haven't really used that money, right?
Jason VandeBoom (36:55.500)
Yeah, yeah.
So it really started taking off, I'd say in terms of like, you know, we're reaching this point of where it's like starting to compound At a nice number.
We're really trying, really finding our spot within marketing automation, which is key.
Where we thought there was a lot of players down market, a lot of players upmarket, and nobody kind of serving that.
The middle of market automation and not meaning mid market, but like going beyond just basic email marketing and sending emails.
There was nothing really solid at the time for an SMB and within reach.
So that's what, that's what allowed us to kind of like really start to take off as people are adopting that idea.
But yeah, it took a little while, but.
And then 2016, middle of the year, that's when we're raised and we didn't necessarily need the capital.
It was actually for a couple of points.
One of them kind of funny perhaps, but one I thought it was inevitable.
I see this giant opportunity, having some cash, additional cash on the balance sheet helps you sleep a little better, helps you make the better decisions.
I think as well, to an extent, it kind of goes back to that fear of failure, fear of success type of stuff.
But then also I actually like.
And even if there is no true accountability, you know, if it's a super minority deal or something like that, I like some outside pressure.
And this kind of goes back to your point of, you know, having a co founder or not, like having a co founder gives you that perhaps more than what I had available.
And obviously the team, you know, can put pressure on you, things like that, customers can, but having kind of an outside party, that's just pushing you on different things.
That's kind of what I thrive under.
Not a reason to raise capital.
I wouldn't do it for just that.
But that in combination with knowing that, you know, I just saw a giant opportunity ahead.
I thought it was kind of optimal timing to raise as a business because we were really having that growth accelerating so we could really optimize for what we cared about.
Felt like the right time.
Omer (39:12.170)
I kind of want to talk about you as a founder and you know, it's obviously clear you've been building this business for 15 years.
So you definitely sort of didn't start up with this sort of mindset of, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna build this business and I'm gonna exit next year and sell it off or whatever.
You've been kind of thinking about a long term.
You also, you know, there also seems to be this, you still see this huge opportunity out there that where you are, where you've got to right now is, is just part of the journey and there's a lot more that you guys can do and, and sort of grow the business.
And also, you know, I kind of look at you as a founder and, and again, when we were chatting before recording, you were saying, hey, you know, I'm not really one of those guys who's kind of like, you know, particularly outgoing in terms of networking and doing that stuff.
And I just kind of, just tell me a little bit more about that because there are so many people who listen to this show who kind of like that.
You know, they're not the, necessarily the extroverts, they're.
They're people who kind of like you are kind of really focused on wanting to build great products.
But sometimes they kind of look at that and they say, you know, I don't.
Do I have what it takes to, to build a successful business?
Jason VandeBoom (40:33.890)
Yeah.
And I think that's a, that's an all too common thing.
It's that like self doubt of like, are you the right person?
Right.
Or could you even do this?
And what I think really matters the most is like you don't have to be like the most outgoing person going to every networking thing and just talking, talking, talking and, and you know, not having as much time to actually build the value that you know, you could provide with a product.
But what is important is that you really have like a clear, clear vision and, and most importantly, a ton of passion around it.
So like, you don't have to be the most outgoing person, but you need to be able to hire amazing people.
Right?
Like over time if you're, unless you're, you know, looking to keep it just, you know, your, yourself, which is perfectly fine as well, you can make an amazing business.
You need people that are better than you over time and that's possible.
And like as long as, you know, you're, you're clear on vision and you're extremely passionate about it.
Like you're not going to just like give up on kind of what you're, what you're.
What you believe in in terms of opportunity because that passion will sell.
You don't have to be like the clearest communicator to do that.
But you know, it's, and that's kind of what Connect continues to drive me is just like what drives me is impact creating things.
And you know, I really enjoy that from a product standpoint from you know, watching kind of our team grow, working with people that are far better than myself on so many different topics because I know what I don't know.
But then also like I see it as A way to impact like SMBs as a whole to an extent, which is really exciting.
Then also impact the communities that we operate within.
And those give you like some, some things to be truly passionate about that are not just like, yeah, we hit, you know, X in revenue, yay.
Or like, you know, we, our headcount increased this.
Yay.
Those are all like validators of something working as long as it's in a sustainable way.
But if you're not doing it for something bigger than that, you know, maybe it's fine.
It obviously works for quite a few people.
But I just having that longer term passion for it I think would probably be harder.
Omer (42:56.950)
Yeah, I think that's great.
And I think that a lot of people are going to be inspired by listening to your story.
One thing I just want to cover before we wrap up is the, you know, you started ActiveCampaign with email marketing, you kind of started doing marketing automation and there's sort of a sales CRM component to it.
And now I just noticed, I wasn't even aware of this, that you're now starting to do messaging as well.
Jason VandeBoom (43:26.130)
Yeah.
Omer (43:27.410)
So what's the, what's kind of just
Jason VandeBoom (43:29.810)
what are we up to?
Omer (43:30.610)
Yeah, yeah.
Where are you taking this product in this business?
Jason VandeBoom (43:33.410)
So our real interest and care is, is all about improving the customer experience.
And we think the best way that we could do that is owning essentially the orchestration layer of the entire customer lifecycle, meaning having all the data from when someone's anonymous, when someone starts entering a sales cycle and then post, sell, upsell, whatever it may be, and then orchestrating movements.
So maybe it's messaging, maybe it's movements of data, it's influencing other tool sets along the customer journey.
And so what that, what that allows is.
Yeah, like we do have, you know, we do have a SMB CRM.
But what we want, because our care is more in that orchestration layer above the tools is for our SMB CRM to be interchangeable with say Salesforce.
Because every business should sort of craft their customer experience with the tools that, that fit the need the most.
Right.
And we can't possibly do that if we take a traditional all in one approach.
So by focusing on kind of automation, orchestration, but really making it native feeling for interfacing with all these different tool sets and whatnot, that's kind of where we're focused today.
Omer (44:44.560)
Okay, let's get on to the lightning round.
I'm going to ask seven questions.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
Sure.
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received.
Jason VandeBoom (44:54.940)
I had someone tell me early on to not get ahead of myself and every time I would want to do something, get more office space, anything like that, they'd ask how much pain I'm feeling and if I didn't feel enough pain to not do it.
And that has been actually quite helpful.
Omer (45:12.460)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Jason VandeBoom (45:15.660)
I would suggest no single book.
I'm not a big fan of one suggestion.
More so just intaking as much data as possible.
Meaning like I love to consume like short content, blogs, a couple of the different apps out there that'll give you summaries and then also books.
But like find books that have real stories and I love books that are like more about problems than solutions.
Omer (45:42.260)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Jason VandeBoom (45:46.980)
Obsession of detail and not letting that up.
Meaning like even with the number of customers we have today, I'm looking every day.
I start my day and end my day by looking at cancellation reasons and nps.
Omer (45:58.100)
So NPS for people that don't know is a net promoter school, right?
Jason VandeBoom (46:01.540)
Yeah.
But I want like all customer pain to be how I start my day, how I end my day.
That's the cancellation part and I want a little happiness in my life as well.
So that's where the NPS part comes in, hopefully.
Omer (46:12.500)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Jason VandeBoom (46:16.090)
Yeah, so it's a habit of breaking out.
So I have all these ideas, all these different tasks.
It's no one tool set.
But what I've found works well for me is having a bunch of different sort of to do apps in a way.
So I have a to do app.
I use my email to an extent and then I also use paper and assess these different priorities of to dos.
And it keeps it separated enough like almost in a physical way where it actually works.
Omer (46:42.690)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Jason VandeBoom (46:46.850)
It's a great question.
I just am so obsessed on kind of customer experiences and I have tons of ideas within that realm.
It's just such a wide thing we're trying to take on.
I've been doing it for so long, I may be just stuck in the customer experience world.
Omer (47:03.730)
What's an interesting little fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Jason VandeBoom (47:08.060)
Previously mentioned a little bit earlier, but kind of that, you know, really focusing on engineering early on only almost exclusively.
And then fine arts school, which is just most people find bizarre.
Omer (47:18.860)
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was like, what?
Yeah.
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Jason VandeBoom (47:25.820)
Family and kids.
Like, kids are just such a grounding and they have such unique perspective.
Actually, my, my one son as has an interest in things that are going on.
So we'll talk about things and he'll just give me his own thoughts on all sorts of things.
And it's amazing thoughts coming from a seven year old.
Awesome.
Omer (47:46.530)
Okay, great.
So if people want to find out more about ActiveCampaign, if you haven't checked it out, go to activecampaign.com and if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Jason VandeBoom (47:57.890)
They can reach out to jason@activecampaign.com awesome.
Omer (48:01.950)
Jason, thank you for joining me.
I really enjoyed this conversation and there was a lot of thought to cover in terms of what happened in 15 years and 45 minutes or so.
So I appreciate you kind of taking us through that, sharing your story and just sort of some of the insights and lessons you've learned along the way.
I wish you and the team all the best in the future.
Jason VandeBoom (48:25.070)
Yeah.
Thank you.
Likewise, and appreciate you having me.
Thanks again.
