CV Partner: From Developer to $5M+ ARR Saas CEO – with Erling Linde [417]

This is a machine-generated transcript.

[00:00:00] Omer: Erling, welcome to the show.

[00:00:01] Erling: Thank you so much. Omer. A pleasure, pleasure to be here.

[00:00:04] Omer: Do you have a favorite quote, something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?

[00:00:09] Erling: Yeah. So one thing that's definitely been helpful for me is is a quote from a, a book called Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.

[00:00:15] So it's about working on your circle of influence, meaning work on the things you can change today, and then gradually your circle of influence will expand and you can you solve the bigger problems. And, and for me, that's been super helpful instead of. Being frustrated or spending time on, you know, fighting these like bigger systems or things, you can't do anything about them.

[00:00:36] You know, focus on what you can do. Something about like building my business and then eventually as it expands, you get perhaps the opportunity to influence a bit more.

[00:00:45] Omer: I, I need a constant reminder of that as well. I, like, I tell people, other people, look, can you, do you have any kind of control over this?

[00:00:52] And they go, no. It's like, well, why are you worrying about it going. You know, tackle something that you can control. And then I find myself doing the same thing, like, it's like, anyway. So tell us about CV Partner. What does the product do? Who's it for and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?

[00:01:08] Erling: Yes, so CV Partner is for professional service firms. So it consultancies, management consultancies, engineering firms, and we help them. Manage their resumes, s and past projects in particular for when they need to tailor them and showcase their people in the best possible way to win bids, tenders and proposals.

[00:01:31] Omer: Okay, great. Yeah, I, I, I want to dig into that a little bit later because when you said that in terms of like managing. cvs that's open to so much misinterpretation. And I think you suffered some of that, right? In terms of the type of people at some point you were attracting with, with the product. So I think it's, it's gonna be interesting conversation to just dig into a bit more.

[00:01:57] Give us a sense of the size of the business where you, in terms of revenue, customers size of team.

[00:02:01] Erling: So we're about $5.5 million in ARR at the moment. We have offices in five countries. 42 employees grew 47% in 2023 and currently expanding into to to North America.

[00:02:15] Omer: And the business was founded. 2011, 2012, and you bootstrapped for the first 10 years. You got to what, like 4 million in ARR before you, you raised some VC funding.

[00:02:29] Erling: Yes. So we we went on a, a long bootstrapping journey and initially the plan was to, to do that forever. But at some point we realized we could potentially go a bit faster with with some external capital.

[00:02:43] So, so that's been a big change for us, but also great opportunity to learn and, and do more.

[00:02:49] Omer: Great. So let's go back to, I guess, 2011. Where did the idea for CV Partner come from, and what were you doing at the time?

[00:03:00] Erling: Yeah, so I, my background is a software developer, IT consultant, so I, I, I did work in IT consultancies.

[00:03:07] But I also spent a few years in in London, in the uk. And I worked in, I guess this was at a time when, you know, Lean Startup, the, the book called Just Come Out. It was like all the hype, everyone was doing testing, ideas, validating, iterating. So at some point I decided to, I wanted to, to start my own, business. I had lots of terrible ideas, but one of them was trying to help. At the time it started as a more a B2C. So I wanted to help people apply for jobs or, or in particular like making this like resume generator. That was not a very successful business, but I had dinner with some friends who had started a consultancy and they reminded me that in order to win public bids, they have to.

[00:03:51] Put together a team of consultants, they have to go through each resume, highlight the projects, rewrite the summary, kind of really tailor it so that they, they look the best possible for the people evaluating the bid. And on top of that, they also have to format it. So they might have their, you know, resume template with their company logo and they.

[00:04:11] Have a way they want it to look like, but actually the government, even in, like in the US or in the eu, they all have, like, they say, you have to deliver it on this format, and they keep changing those formats. So they spent evenings and nights copy pasting, formatting, word documents, just to submit these tenders.

[00:04:27] So, so that was the pain we then set up to solve.

[00:04:30] Omer: That wasn't specific just to No. Right, because you, you were, you were, you say you were working in London at the time as well, because I, I just assumed consulting firms just sent a proposal, right? You didn't, I didn't, had no idea that all of this was going on behind the scenes.

[00:04:42] Erling: Well, they are scored on they, they get these, you know, they need to be in this frame agreements, for example, and they, they then have to prove that they have the capacity to deliver people on these projects for the next five years. So they might have to showcase like a hundred consultants and prove that they have, you know, 10 people with 10 years experience in this role.

[00:05:02] They work with this technology, they worked with this. They have these certifications. So it's like a lot of things to prove and all of that is documented in the in the CVS or resumes. So and it va it varies from country to country, but it's it's the, the gist is the same.

[00:05:16] Omer: Got it. Okay. So you were into the Lean Startup.

[00:05:20] At that time, so you've got this idea and then you did all the Lean Startup stuff perfectly next, right?

[00:05:29] Erling: Not so sure about that, but what I tried to do at least was to focus on the customer and I tried to get customers from day one. So I called everyone I knew and didn't know in consulting industry at the time.

[00:05:40] And I said, is this a pain for you? And if I solve it, will you pay for it? So they all said yes in the beginning of course if I solve it. But then I started building it, started to show it to them. And then I obviously kept asking, you know, will you pay for it? And as it became better and better, I would say one day one of them said to me like Ling, this is.

[00:06:00] Really good functionality, but it looks completely so that, so that, that's when I, you know, took a step back and decided to hire my co-founder Nicolai, who is a user experience expert. And, and, yeah, it's it's, it's, it is one because now the user experience is one of our, you know, main selling points and why people load the tool.

[00:06:24] Omer: So it was a developer designed product at first. Yes. Only, only developers know what that really means. Exactly. So why, why was the, why was the, the design or the UX. An issue if, if it's really like a tool that they're using on the backend, or was this because this was the same tool that they were gonna put in front of clients to present this information, right, or, or was it just because it was difficult to use?

[00:06:56] Like why, why, why, why did they care about it? If it's solved the problem?

[00:06:59] Erling: So, so I, I, I, I guess some of it might have been, you know, personal preference and all that, but I think, I think we also have at least two type of users that I simplified. So you have the people that work putting the bids together, so that, and that a bid team, or it could be a sales person, could be the marketing department and they, they can learn to.

[00:07:18] To use perhaps a lowkey tool, but then you also need to get the data and, and that actually means that each consultant in the company, and it can be thousands of them or or engineers, they need to access the user interface and they actually need to update their resume or, or, or CV. And for that to be successful, it has to be super simple and really nice to you son.

[00:07:40] They, they won't go in and update their resume every day. They might do it once a month for once every two months. And then the user experience has to be like super nice each time so that the data, the quality of the data that goes in is good as well.

[00:07:54] Omer: Right. Okay. So. You, you, you've kind of identified this issue in terms of, you know, the product design could be better, but how did you, did you already know Nicolai?

[00:08:07] Erling: Yes. We had actually met like a year before on an event called a startup weekend where you're go, you have 48 hours to try to an idea and, and, and see if it can, can become a business. So, we did try out an idea. It did not become a business, but we definitely learned to, to know each other and I knew he had that sort of compliment, complimentary skillset that I so desperately needed, so.

[00:08:32] Omer: Got it. Okay. And what was your pitch to him and, and how, how easy or hard was it for him to. You know, say yes and, and, and join because I, you know, it's, it's hard enough to find, you know, we all know it's hard enough to find a co-founder who, who, who fits, but then actually persuading them to say yes.

[00:08:53] That's, that's just as hard. Right. So what was that your experience like for you?

[00:08:57] Erling: Yes. Yeah. So the, the thing is, I think he was just finishing his master's degree at the time. So I did call him and say like, what's your plans for the fall? And he said like, I, I'll come and work with you. So I said yes. So actually that wasn't too hard, but..

[00:09:13] Omer: Okay, great.

[00:09:14] So he comes on board. And you, you like, number one priority at that time is like, okay, we've gotta fix this UI. How long did that take?

[00:09:22] Erling: So I, I was an iterative process, but but I, I think we got quite far in like a few months time. Probably six months time. It was, you know, completely redone. And I, I think in the beginning he thought that he could just sit in design stuff and then I would implement the design, but he, at some point he said to me, I'll, I'll, I'll have to learn CSS and take this job from you, because otherwise it will never be good enough. So he, he, he learned that, and, and then he started polishing and fine tuning and everything happened.

[00:09:52] Omer: What, what, what was the rest of the tech stack, the, the product that you built first?

[00:09:56] Erling: Oh, at the mo at that point in time, it was Ruby on Rails, MongoDB, and, backbone JS, I think all running on Amazon Web services. Yeah.

[00:10:05] Omer: Okay, cool. So you, you guys spend a few months improve the design, the look and feel of the product. Did you have any paying customers at that point? I.

[00:10:17] Erling: We got one around that time.

[00:10:19] Yes, yes. But we, it did take a while and but we kept going out to the customers, showing them the improvements of the product, asking 'em, are you willing to pay now? And they, you know, after adjusting the u ui, they, you know, we got closer and closer. They maybe said, okay, but what about this thing? And then we went back and fixed it.

[00:10:38] Omer: So, so that's a really interesting point that you just made. When I talk to a lot of founders who are at this stage, they, they often feel like, okay, I've gotten an opportunity to talk to a customer and this is my one shot, and if I don't nail this they will never be a customer and I will have blown it and the world will end and all of that stuff.

[00:11:02] And you did something pretty smart, which was you said you, you kept on going back to them. Right? So for someone who's in that situation now, like. Just, just kind of explain like what, what you know, is it about you? Just lucky. And these people are like, Hey Erling, we, we, you know, we got all the time in the world.

[00:11:23] Keep coming back. It's all good. Was it about you trying to frame the meetings in a certain way? You know, what allowed you to keep that door open with them and for them to keep saying yes to, you know, making time to, to, to see what you were doing.

[00:11:39] Erling: I, I think it's a combination of things. So we, we did approach the local market so we could walk to their offices, basically.

[00:11:47] So the, like, the consultancies that would be around us they would also be like on the smaller size. So we kind of go off market, more enterprise later. But they were a smaller size and, and I guess not all of them, but many of them were like also bit excited about either Lean Startup or Agile.

[00:12:04] There was some, some way, some way sort of forward leaning. But yeah, I think we also did frame it like that. You know, we have, look, we call them, is this a problem and we have a solution, are we willing to look at it? We we're not sure, like completely done yet, but we would love to to show it to you. But we also kept asking just straight up, like, okay, will you buy it?

[00:12:24] And then that's when you get proof, right? So you can actually get the real feedback and go back and and fix it. So, so no, I, I don't think that was so I do. I, I, I guess my take is that there is, it's, it's, you can always go back later, so maybe not the exact same person, but organizations, they, you know, people change roles and jobs and new people come in and new initiatives.

[00:12:49] So it's like, you know, the timing window where it's a good time to pitch your product, that, that might vary, but I, I don't think you should be too afraid to. To, to kind of, yeah. You fail at the first time. It's, it, there will be opportunities later, most times.

[00:13:06] Omer: And how long did it take for you to go from that first customer to the first 10?

[00:13:10] Erling: So that might have been a year or so, I would say, yeah. It probably was. I, I I remember obviously I was an engineer. I now had someone helping me. The ui ux, but telling was still a mystery to me. So I, I was, you know, I was technically confident. But the, when you sit down. With a potential customer and you talk and you leave the meeting I had, I had no feeling or no clue if that was a good meeting or a bad meeting.

[00:13:40] And I, I remembered like the early days we were doing, we were doing demos and we were demo everything, every single functionality in the tool, every button. And we would always, always get into trouble because there was some quirk, some something that. Didn't work, I guess the customer wanted it to do. And you started like explaining and you're kind of trying to hot fix it because you could program sometimes and it just like, you know, I think the initial meetings lasted two hours, so I, I guess some people signed up in the, and just out of exhaustion.

[00:14:16] I, yeah. But but but that was, yeah, that was I guess something that I have since developed and improved on. So I, I, I think, I'm not sure how exactly it started, but, but I must have read the book or it was some, something must have clicked because at some point I started kind of, okay.

[00:14:36] When they gave me that sort of signal or cue, that means they are hooked and they're kind of happy and actually I should just leave now. I should not keep going for another 90 minutes. So, so I started doing this, like whenever I felt that sort of, okay. They bought it now, or they bought into it. I should, I should now leave or stop doing the demo.

[00:14:57] That those meetings went from two hours to, you know, sometimes 10 minutes.

[00:15:02] Omer: Wow. And, and, and was it, was there a particular book or, or a couple of books that, that, that, that helped you figure that out? Or was, was this just kind of doing this over and over again and saying.

[00:15:17] Erling: Yeah, I, I, I tried to remember, 'cause it's like 10 years ago, I can't remember a specific book, but I do remember like How to Sell.

[00:15:24] B2B software, like Googling that and buying some books from Amazon and, and, and there might have been some takeaways from there. But I think also it's like the, the sort of pattern recognition you get after a while by doing it again and again and again. And then as an engineer, like, you know, initially, you know, this is like people that's, they're not machines.

[00:15:43] How does this work? But then eventually actually you start seeing patterns and you can start reasoning about it and, and you get sort of more, more, yeah, it starts becoming more of a thing. And, and you can, you can start improving groups.

[00:15:56] Omer: Give gimme one example of like a signal that you saw in a meeting that said to you shut up. Don't keep, don't keep talking.

[00:16:04] Erling: I, I, well I think these days, when, when, when when I do like this presentation, it's like obviously folk, you try to understand the client a bit where they are and, and, and, and if this, I. Problem is relevant to them at, at all. But then once you kind of maybe start showing the tool, and if you, you see that, if they say that, oh, this is amazing, this could help me solve so much, and you kind of show them like the high level.

[00:16:26] When it works, there is no reason to kind of, you know, jump in just to show them like the user administration or the compliance settings like you, you, you got them, you maybe you should set up another meeting to follow up, or like, depending on the size of the customer, it might be, you know, still 20 more minutes, the meetings before you end up with a deal.

[00:16:46] But at least this meeting you've done, you kind of, this was the purpose, to get them hooked and, and willing to. To go to the next stage.

[00:16:55] Omer: And, and you said that, you know that that was often the signal for you to say, I need to, I need to leave now. But was this, you know, what did you do to. To, to try and close the sale or to at least get to the next step.

[00:17:09] Like you weren't just like, okay, great, I'm just walking out now. Right? You were trying to, yeah.

[00:17:13] Erling: Yes. No, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that I have to go, but then I said, okay I will, you know, if this sounds good. You know what, what? These days anyways, like, you know what, what do you actually need to. To, for me to be able to make like a more formal decision.

[00:17:28] Is it like, you know, do you have to talk to more stakeholders? Are there more people we should convince? Should I just send you a quote? Do we have to go through some procurements and security? I mean, eventually you become, you become more proactive, right? Because in the beginning, I think what happened is that they, they said like, okay well, I guess this is story from when we went from ver like smaller clients where, you know, maybe there was like one meeting with a stakeholder and then one meeting with a CEO and then.

[00:17:54] It's all done, right? But then as you start getting bigger clients, they, you convince someone and they, and you say, okay, will you buy it? And they're like, yes, but you need to show it to these people. And then, okay, yes, but actually can you send some security documentation? And then, yes, but actually can you have a data price agreement?

[00:18:10] And then, yes, but actually you need to talk to procurement, which will que squeeze you on price. And then you know, yes, but you also need to talk to it. So now having, like in the beginning you just had to do that and it took forever and it felt like. Completely powerless over that. But these days you can obviously be proactive and you can basically ask them like, who, who checks the contracts?

[00:18:30] Do we have to talk to procurement? Who's your it, you know, CTO ort o it that we need to talk to? And you can try to, to streamline that a bit more and do more of this in parallel. So, so I think it's yeah, in the beginning you have to kind of figure out that path, but as you soon you start to see patterns, you can be more efficient.

[00:18:49] Omer: What? What did you do for the demo? To get it down to like. A lot shorter than two hours. So clearly you weren't like demoing everything like, you know, here's our privacy page and all of this stuff, right? But how did you figure out these are the things that I need to show this particular person who's in front of me right now?

[00:19:09] Erling: I think I focused on Dr. Main workflow and the main value of the tool. Look, this is like you can search and find people. You can tailor and you can export. And that's like, you don't have to make it more complicated than that. And then if they start, you know, asking about what can I search for this? And can I filter, can I re like, can I do, then you can show that.

[00:19:30] But like, you just need to get them to understand the basics and buy into that. I think that's and the, I guess what would give them the most value in there, but I think just, you know, put yourselves. There are seats, like when you get the demo for a tool, like, I'm not able to focus for even 30 minutes, not, you know, not close to 45 or 60 minutes.

[00:19:56] It's like someone just have to explain it to me in a simple terms first.

[00:20:00] Omer: Yeah. It, it sounds like the, what you, what you started doing was like telling them. Sort of what were the key things that the product did, and then answer some of the questions about the how in terms of, you know, like, can you filter on search results and stuff like that.

[00:20:19] But once you've built the product and you're really proud of. Hey, this search thing can do X, Y, Z. Right? It's, it's like you kind of assume everybody else is gonna be excited about that, right? So you're like, oh yeah, we, and, and, and they're not right. They don't care. So, okay, great. So, so now we've got a product that is, has a better ui, better design.

[00:20:42] You are, you've done enough of these two hour sales calls to know what not to do, and you're getting better at, better at doing that. So presumably you're starting to close more of these, these, these deals. Now, how are you like getting, finding customers? So obviously, you know, you had the local, you know, consulting firms that you could go to.

[00:21:06] You're, you're getting to the point now where it's like you need a bigger pool of, of leads, and so how, how did you find more people?

[00:21:13] Erling: Yes. So I think the first sort of channel that we used, which was beyond our kind of immediate network and, and reach was to, to, we started to go to these conferences. So there's a couple of conferences and we started noticing that, you know, similar companies to do.

[00:21:30] Clients we already have, were going to the same con conferences. And they they would typically have kind of booths on the, on on, on the conferences. And they were actually there to sell as well. But I noticed that during the talks they were quite bored, so that's when you could approach them. So I just like, you know, Hey, how's it going in the breaks?

[00:21:47] And I just went from one to another and typically we would have a customer there, so I could just point like they are customers and they are now also customers. Maybe you should. So that was like a, a way to do it. I think in the beginning we couldn't even afford the tickets for these conferences, so I had to submit the talk to have a presentation and then get in the door.

[00:22:05] But that, that was that was yeah, that was a quite successful channel for us in the beginning.

[00:22:11] Omer: Okay. So. What were you, so, so the talks was like, you didn't wanna necessarily do the talk, but it was like it was a way of not paying for a ticket. Exactly. I,

[00:22:21] Erling: I can't remember if it was any good or not.

[00:22:23] It's probably like mediocre.

[00:22:26] Omer: Did the talk help? Like, I, I would've thought getting some stage time or in front of attendees to talk about whatever might be a good thing.

[00:22:33] Erling: Yes to some extent it helped because you have more credibility and you have a cooler badge and Yes, absolutely. So, yeah.

[00:22:41] Omer: Right. So when you, when you're wandering around the kind of, you know, the event and going booth to booth.

[00:22:49] What, tell me what, like a typical conversation would look like?

[00:22:55] Erling: At those conferences? It was like, you could for, for, for me then I could start asking 'em like, you know, do you actually, do you spend time on formatting resumes or series and. Because of the people that were there, the odds that they would say yes to that question's quite high.

[00:23:11] So if they said yes, then you, obviously you had the conversation going and you could, that you could start talking a bit more about how you solved that problem. And then, you know, sometimes that was the right person to talk to. And that led to maybe a, a, a meeting after the conference as well. And that was kind of the start.

[00:23:28] Omer: I, I mean, it's so. It's so obvious yet so many people fail to do it, which is just asking people if they have. This problem that you're solving, right? Because if they say, no, I don't have that problem. Right? You, you, you don't, you don't have to waste any more time with them. Right? Or, or you can try to figure out what other problems they do have.

[00:23:54] But this, this mistake that so many kind of early stage founders make, which is just assuming that the person has the problem and just getting into the pitch of how we, we solve this stuff and it's. It's a lot more effective and I think it's a lot easier as well when you're just asking them. Questions, do you have this problem?

[00:24:14] Okay, how, how are you, how are you trying to solve it? Or are you trying to solve it? And you know, do you have to deal with this? Or when you have a bid, you know, do you have to go through X, Y, Z? Right? Because that's like super helpful, both in terms of understanding your customers or your, your potential customers.

[00:24:31] But then it makes the sales process a lot easier as well. It makes the demos a lot easier and all that stuff because. You know, their situation better, right? So ask more questions. So, so, great. So you, you went through that process. You, you figured out, you know, you had these conversations with them on their breaks.

[00:24:49] How, what was the next step? Like, how did you try to walk away and, and, and sort of turn it into, you know, a a, an opportunity.

[00:24:56] Erling: Time, I guess we obviously tried to capture their contact details and then tried to set up a meeting, a follow up, which, you know, hopefully they would still be interested and in, in the mode of maybe potentially solving that problem.

[00:25:09] Right. But I think we also learned lessons lately from events that, you know, you, you might have a really good connection at an event and then you come back and if you email them a, a week later, you know, there is all. Kinds of excuses for not talking to you. So, so I think probably, actually April Dunford told me this, but I think she said that like the half life of a lead from a, an event is like, you know, it's 24 hours.

[00:25:36] You have to, you know, you have to try to, you know, the best thing is to book to me, think there and done, bring up your calendar and, and get them to commit.

[00:25:43] Omer: Yeah. It's, it's, it's kind of mind blowing. What a difference that can make because when someone is kinda so excited, you assume they're gonna be excited when you call them a couple of days later.

[00:25:56] And as, as I think most people have found, you might get those excuses, they might just ghost you. And it's like, you know, you can't even get, get, get another opportunity to talk to them. And in many ways just kind of, kind of, I, I guess forcing it right there. And then it's like, okay, great. Here's my calendar.

[00:26:13] When are you available? That kind of thing. At the very least, you're gonna figure out, you, you're either gonna get a commitment and, and a date scheduled to go and talk to them again, or you're gonna realize they were just trying to be nice to you and they didn't really care. And that's, that's good as well.

[00:26:29] Right. So, you know, it's just like, I think sometimes we're just afraid to get rejected, right. So it's like, it's easier just to say, oh, gimme, you know, let me have your email and we'll do this later. Okay, great. So lots of useful lessons there in, in terms of the, the events, was that the, the main growth channel that you used to.

[00:26:53] Get to like the first million in ARR.

[00:26:56] Erling: I would say there's like two older growth channels that's also been kind of consistently successful for us. And, and one is like just inbound leads from, you know, SEO, Google Ads, things like that. That would be a bit more from, you know, a global stage. So it's like you would really know where that next lead might come from whenever someone like Google Theory management system or something like that.

[00:27:22] But, and then, and then as we started getting like a critical mass of customers, what we started noticing as well as that the employees and these consultancy, they change jobs sometimes, right? They jump to the competitor or they. It moves to a adjustment sort of type of consultancy and maybe a slightly different industry.

[00:27:41] And, and they would if, because of the user experience and the onboarding experience, I guess we being very helpful. Then then they would take the system with them. So, so word of mouth and inbound has been like, really two really good. The growth channels for us it's not necessarily so the word of mouth as a function in a way or the.

[00:28:06] Number of customers or users we have. So over time you get more and more as you, as you grow, I would say. And then the inbounds has been super useful, but also something we, which you, depending on the space you are in, you may or may not be able to scale indefinitely. So so now we're also looking into other channels.

[00:28:26] Omer: Okay. So let's unpack the, the inbound. So I think this was mostly, I. SEO and, and some Google ads, right? Yes. Were you was this just about like optimizing your, your, your site and some pages for keywords, or were you regularly creating new content and publishing articles? Like, what were you doing to build up this, this traffic?

[00:28:51] Erling: In the beginning, I would say it was about tweaking. Yes, we built some content, some blog posts with certain keywords, kept doing that for SEO purposes. But it's also took us a while to kind of have the marketing function that we needed that would, you know, constantly produce like high quality con content.

[00:29:11] I think in the beginning it was more about. Getting the keywords out there.

[00:29:15] Omer: Okay, so I guess what I'm trying to figure out is like how much work you had to do. To and, and how long it took for you to start to see some, some of these inbound leads coming in. And again, I think for, I mean obviously we've gotta kind of put this into context.

[00:29:35] This was like 10 years ago, and what you could do with SEO 10 years ago versus today is dramatically different. But I think I'm, I'm just curious, like, you know, like how, how you went about kind of building this inbound engine.

[00:29:50] Erling: It was I, I guess one thing that springs to mind is obviously one thing is, bidding for these keywords, but a lot for us, it was also figuring out which keywords we shouldn't bid for. Because we got a lot of kind of traffic that we didn't want people that was looking for a, a resume tool like the one I built initially for applying for a job or confusing it with a, a recruiting system or something like that.

[00:30:14] So the. The, the CV or resume word is, is difficult to optimize for. So you get this like tiny long tail of words and which may or may not have the volume you need in order to optimize for it. So, so it was also a lot about tweaking that. My colleague Andrea spent quite a lot of time on in the beginning.

[00:30:35] Omer: And what was the. Were you, have you been mostly sales led? Did you introduce some kind of product led component? Like once you got this inbound visitor turning into a lead, were they able to sign up and start using the product or was this just requesting a demo or something like that?

[00:30:58] Erling: They've always been that sort of, you have, you typically, you would do a demo.

[00:31:02] And I think that also because we. Started with companies, maybe like 40, 50 employees. And then we gradually grew into like up to a thousand. And now we are in like, you know, 10, 20,000 employees size. And, and I think what's, so I went to a workshop with this guy called Jackal, is written this like huge book called the Revenue Architecture.

[00:31:27] And I think it has, like, for me that explained a few things is like if you have. Very high volume, low price, or low a CV transactions. Then you can't have a sales team doing a demo for each one of them. That's too expensive. Right. And also the expectation from the customer is to just click and put in the credit card and get started.

[00:31:46] But I think we moved, I. Quite quickly upwards like some, like mid-size to enterprise segment where they do expect more of a hands-on. There is more of a procurement process. There is more compliance to check. So, so, so, so the. The PLG type of motion made less sense for us. That doesn't mean that every now and then we get like a smaller signup that we think, okay, maybe we should, you know, have some self-serve version, which could make it easier, but it's not the target segments that that we're targeting probably isn't a perfect match with a PLG motion.

[00:32:25] Omer: So, so given where your business is today, what happens if you know somebody with a. Two person company you know, comes in and requests a demo. Are you, are you still going through that process and, or, or, or are you just like..

[00:32:37] Erling: We go through a very lightweight part process on that.

[00:32:41] Omer: So we talked about SEO some Google ads, the conferences and word of mouth as being these, these main growth channels, getting you to the first million, you.

[00:32:56] You continued growing the business up to like 4 million ARR before you, you raised, decided to raise funding. Was it again, just doubling down on those, those areas, you know, or we built a great product generally, you know, drive more word of mouth, keep going to these events. Or did you start doing other things as well?

[00:33:19] Erling: I think from 1 million to 4 million, I think we started to grow abroad. So we, at the time we had started in, in Norway and we got our first sort of Swedish customer, our first Danish customer. We. Grew up into a few other industries. So it's, we, we were kind of expanding geographically and, and, and also slightly into adjustment industries to, to be able to to keep going.

[00:33:44] Omer: And what, what was the playbook? Just again, going to more events. Doing more AdWords?

[00:33:50] Erling: Yes. At the time, yes. So I think what we, what maybe we did which we've done a few times now, is that we, as soon as you start getting like a lead from a different. Country or region. And sometimes you have to translate the UI.

[00:34:06] Sometimes you have to find someone local who can onboard them. So we've, we have several times, like, instead of hiring a salesperson first, we actually hired a customer success person first in a new geography so that we can, we can sort of sell from another country, but they need to be and believe that they will be taken care of and actually successfully onboarded.

[00:34:25] And for that, sometimes you need a local person.

[00:34:27] Omer: So you, you are a first time founder. With CV Partner, you were a developer and hadn't done sales, so you had to learn how to do that as well. You tried doing the design, but then decided that probably wasn't something that you weren't gonna keep doing.

[00:34:45] What about the hiring? Did you have experience in hiring and building a team before you started this business?

[00:34:51] Erling: No, absolutely not. So so that has been yeah, obviously a learning journey and, and also. I think, yeah, looking back at it, we've been sometimes, you know, super lucky with the hires we have made but for sometimes we have also been a bit naive, and I think as you grow with a growth company, you just, you know, if you're, even if you're, you know, growing 50% year on year, then the, the requirements and the demand on the business is, is getting, you know, a lot higher, especially like on the leadership team every year.

[00:35:24] So. Some, someone you hired like last year, which was then step up and absolutely amazing, you might actually need to hire someone even better than that, than the year after. So it's like that sort of shifting upwards constantly has been yeah definitely a learning, a learning point. You, you, you just sometimes you, you might, may not have seal.

[00:35:48] That kind of excellence before. So you just have to believe that there is someone that out there that's even better. And then when you find them, it's like, oh, this is amazing. And yeah. So, so chasing that sort of top talent is, is constant thing that we're doing.

[00:36:02] Omer: You said sometimes, you know, I was naive. Give me an example of what you mean by that.

[00:36:07] Erling: Well, I, I would say I would say that as an entrepreneur, we love solving problems, right? We, we don't see, we love challenges when we don't necessarily see obstacles like as a, as a complete stop. We see them as something you can work around or you see potential in opportunities.

[00:36:27] And sometimes if you. If you apply that to people, you might find that, you know, actually we kind of knew that this wasn't going to work out, that we just. Really, really hope it could work out. We saw that they had some potential or we thought we saw this. So, so that's like, you have to be tough on the hiring.

[00:36:49] I, I, I think it's a lesson learned.

[00:36:51] Omer: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think that's, that's an interesting way to, to, to frame it in terms of like, you know, seeing it as a problem. You see somebody. And you, you like, you like them, you know, on a personal level, they, you, you, you know, they, they, they seem to be like a cultural fit.

[00:37:06] There might be a gap in terms of where you need them to be. And you, you're like, you kind of see it as problems like, well, we could do X, Y, Z and, and that would help them to do this. And, and you know,

[00:37:17] Erling: sometimes that works out, but sometimes it does threat. So, yeah.

[00:37:21] Omer: How, how has, how have things changed? Well, first of all, why did you then decide to raise money?

[00:37:27] And, and I wanted to kinda talk about how, how things have changed with the business since then. So what, what was the, you know, you're, you're getting along like, you know, you're, you're a 4 million ARR, you're bootstrapped, you guys own a hundred percent of the company. Why did you decide you wanted to go and raise money now?

[00:37:43] Erling: So, I mean as we talked about, this was obviously a learning journey for me. Like, so, you know, the first year I had to learn. Or I had to build it and I had to learn to sell and then I had to learn about compliance perhaps, and then I had to learn about hiring. It was like this constant sort of development that it was kind of portioned out during these 10 years.

[00:38:00] So really from Journey and amazing. But at some point we started, you know, making a bit of kind of projections and we, because the only way we could hire or expand was to actually get customers. So we had the chase real customers and we have to sign a deal and then we can go back and we can hire this one person that would help us maybe go to the next stage.

[00:38:21] And, and, and that's that. I think that was good. You build a healthy business, you focus on the customers and you, you get in revenue and, and that was super helpful. But at some point we just, I started seeing that actually we had a bit more cash to spend the right now. We could spend one year or two years instead of five years to get to this point.

[00:38:40] And then we started making sense. But then going from being a bootstrap where like the founders owned the company and some employees that owned the company, it was like to to, to kind of going over to this like VC side that, you know, that, that, that was a bit of a journey for us. Some but we did it very softly and smoothly.

[00:39:00] Found the most friendly Norwegian vc and they've only took the minority stake of course. And it was like a nice transition into that for us. But it's also made us a lot more professional. We went from 20 to 40 people in, you know, 6, 12 months. It was like certainly you were in the room and like half of the people are completely new.

[00:39:21] So, so so that was obviously a big, big transition for us.

[00:39:25] Omer: And so for a, for many found, for many bootstrap founders raising VC funding is like going to the dark side. Right. And, and probably you had some concerns. You could, you, you know, rationally you could see the benefits of doing that, it sounds like.

[00:39:43] You, you, you had some lack in terms of finding you know, a great VC that that kind of, you know, kind of fitted with what, what, you know, you guys wanted the way you wanted to run the business. How, how, how have things changed beyond that in terms of. Do you feel like there's more pressure on you now about growing faster?

[00:40:05] Like, you know.

[00:40:07] Erling: That growth pressure is also coming from, from my ambitions, so, so yes, you have, you have some extra I. Pressure, of course, but, but but it's, I think it's, it's more important that when you decide to go down that route, that you just align your ambitions with what you know, the, their expectations are.

[00:40:29] So the, the VCs they want to invest in companies, and ideally they want them to multiply a lot, right? So, and, and if you, if you are successful you obviously might become like the star in the portfolio and they give you a lots of support. But if it goes completely bad, maybe, maybe, you know, they're not, not so much or you get more heat.

[00:40:49] But but for now it's been amazing in terms of the support, more professional, board meetings than we've ever had. They're helping us a lot in terms of just, you know, seeing what, what they have seen in other companies and if they see something that we are not doing or something that we could do better or some, something we're missing, you know, they're, they're, they're pointing that out and that that's a, a great help, I think. So, so it's for now it's still, still all audit. And, but I think you have to align that, you know, this is the journey we want to go on and that has to be aligned with I. Know this typical VC journey, right? So if you, if you start backtracking or the guy want to go back to bootstrapping, then it's like, that's too late.

[00:41:33] Omer: So given, given what you know now, do you, do you feel like if you could have done it all over again, you would've raised some VC funding earlier?

[00:41:44] Erling: Yes. A few years earlier not, not 10 years earlier. Earlier. I think like, because we weren't, I, I wasn't ready. We weren't ready as an organization. There was that would've been too soon for us.

[00:41:56] If I were to ever, like, start a new company, then you don't know if you would raise money sooner because then you maybe know more. But for us, I think, yeah, maybe a few years earlier, but not 10 years earlier. That's that's, yeah. I take on it now.

[00:42:12] Omer: Okay, great. Let's let's wrap up and get onto the lightning round.

[00:42:16] I've got seven quick-fire questions for you. Ready? What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received?

[00:42:23] Erling: So recently it was from the chairman of our board just said like, take control of the pipeline and, I can explain what that means, but just going from being very reactive and, you know, running in all directions in terms of what's coming in from the inbound, just trying to change that so that actually you go after something and you get it in, you can do so much more with, with that that's, that's the journey we are on that.

[00:42:47] Omer: Yeah, that, that 1 cent, that statement. Take control of the pipeline. We could probably do a whole episode right. Just on. On, on expanding on that, but maybe we should one day. What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

[00:42:59] Erling: So I'll, I'll bring up the book I mentioned earlier, the Revenue Architecture by, by Jacko founder, coy.

[00:43:05] He just takes so much sort of science models and theory that's out there and he puts it into context. So that, like we talked about earlier, is like people say you should do PLG, but then actually you need to. Make up your mind if this is right for the context your company is in. And with that context and the framework he provides, it's also a lot easier to kind of take different pieces of advice and see where they fit in and why, why you should maybe listen to it or maybe why you shouldn't at type.

[00:43:34] Omer: I should get 'em on the show. I think that would be a, a good conversation to have. What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

[00:43:43] Erling: I think at least for a growth company, you do need to reinvent yourself quite often. So like, you know, every six to 18 months your role and what you do in the business is going to change.

[00:43:56] So, you know, I started coding and then I became the sales person. And now like I'm more the strategic leader. And that's requires that ability, I think to, to change. Or reinvent yourself. Yeah.

[00:44:10] Omer: What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

[00:44:13] Erling: I think that's another takeaway from the Seven Habits, so highly successful people is the delegation.

[00:44:18] So, so try not to kind of be the, in the business, try not to, everything has to go via you find. As soon as you figure out how to do something, see if you can get someone else to do it requires investment from you. So like the first time you delegate something, it's going to take longer than if you've done it yourself, but the, the third time, the fourth time, you just see it happening and it's magic and it's so nice and you free up your time and you can focus on the next challenge.

[00:44:45] Omer: Well, what's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?

[00:44:49] Erling: So I, I guess my, I mean like the, but my passion is like food and wine and I just like, you know. Bringing tech, maybe some AI into that space. That would be really fun. Probably I wouldn't make any money, but it would be closer to my art.

[00:45:06] Yes.

[00:45:07] Omer: Well, what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people dunno?

[00:45:10] Erling: So I have a, a 200 and 50-year-old farm back in Norway.

[00:45:14] Omer: A farm.

[00:45:15] Erling: Yes. It's a, not like a any animals or anything at the, at the, at it, at at now, but it is more or less like it was 250 years old. So it's really like going back in time.

[00:45:26] So, you know, working digitally, being on Zoom calls all day and working software, sometimes it just really nice to just go out on the countryside and, you know, chop some wood or go back to, to basics.

[00:45:39] Omer: Wow. That sounds actually sounds pretty cool actually.

[00:45:42] Erling: Yeah, it's kind of a digital detox for me that I do every now and then.

[00:45:46] Yeah.

[00:45:48] Omer: And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

[00:45:51] Erling: So I would say food, wine, just like all the geek you can do into these like wine regions and grapes and types of it is, you know, I would love to spend more time on that, but that will be, be related, but yeah.

[00:46:04] Omer: So, Erling, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:46:05] It's been a pleasure unpacking your story and, and trying to extract some lessons. For, for our listeners, if people wanna check out CV Partner, they can go to cvpartner.com and by now they should know it's not for managing their CV. Right. And if folks wanna get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

[00:46:23] Erling: Yeah, you know, find me on LinkedIn or erling@cvpartner.com.

[00:46:27] Omer: Awesome. Thanks for being the pleasure. I wish you and the team the best of success.

[00:46:31] Erling: Thank you so much, Omer. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

[00:46:34] Omer: My pleasure. Cheers.