Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer 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.
This Week's interview is a story about a marketing guy who was working at a tech company.
He was frustrated about how hard it was to understand the impact that marketing was having on revenue.
He started creating his own solution by gathering data from different sources and putting it all into an Excel spreadsheet.
And he thought to himself, someone should really find a good solution for this.
Eventually he realized that he was the one who needed to solve the problem.
The problem was that he wasn't a developer, so he needed to find the right technical co founder.
He was also a first time founder and was trying to build this business while he and his wife were expecting a baby.
So there was a lot of pressure on him and a huge sense of urgency.
Fast forward to today.
He's grown his startup into a company that's generating several million dollars in revenue.
He' just raised under $9 million in funding to date and his company now employs 35 people and that number is likely to double in the next year.
He shares some great insights both from the early days of turning his idea into a business and we also explore lessons he's learned as his role as CEO continues to grow.
Today's guest is the co founder and CEO of Bright Funnel, a SaaS product that generates pred predictive and actionable insights for B2B marketers and shows them what impact marketing is having on revenue.
Founded in 2012, Bright Funnel has raised just under $9 million in funding to date and its customers include companies such as Verizon and Cloudera.
My Guest has over 17 years of experience in building marketing and selling cloud applications.
Prior to founding Bright Funnel, he was VP of Marketing and Sales at Power Review, which had a $170 million exit.
And he was also a product marketing exec@salesforce.com during their hyper growth years.
So today I'd like to welcome Nadeem Hussain.
Nadeem, welcome to the show.
Nadim Hossain (02:48.180)
Thank you for having me.
Great to be here.
Omer (02:50.180)
Now I always like to start by asking my guests what gets them out of bed.
We like to get inside your head and sort of figure out what's driving and motivating you every day.
So is there a quote that that kind of sums that up for you?
Or if not, just tell us in your own words what, what drives you every day?
Nadim Hossain (03:05.210)
It's a Great question.
So I'll give you two answers.
What gets me out of bed every day is to see the impact we have on our customers, to see that we're really part of someone's daily work life and as a result of their life in general.
So having that impact is what really motivates me.
And as far as the quote, it's actually a quote by one of my team members, my head of product.
His quote was, look, let's just get 1% better every day.
And that really resonates with me in terms of what we do as startup entrepreneurs.
And how to motivate yourself on a daily basis is just about getting 1% better.
Omer (03:43.690)
So I gave the audience a little bit of an overview of Bright Funnel.
But can you tell us in your own words, what is the product and what exactly is the problem that you're trying to solve for marketers?
Nadim Hossain (03:55.450)
Absolutely.
So at Bright Funnel, what we really believe is that the key to understanding and accelerating your revenue as a B2B company is how you orchestrate the right marketing or sales touch at the right point in the buyer journey, in the customer journey.
So to do that, we've pioneered a new category we call revenue intelligence.
So that helps make those complex decisions easy.
And the way we do that is we give marketers and sales development teams insight into how every touch point influences a closed customer, influences revenue and pipeline.
So that helps them do three things, show the impact they're having.
Number one, align your marketing and sales efforts and then optimize those efforts.
And that's used by B2B companies of all sizes.
So like a few that you mentioned, but Cloudera, mobileiron, Nimble Storage, optimizely, Concur.
So a variety of size companies and also a variety of industries.
Omer (05:01.250)
Okay, and how did you come up with the idea for this business?
Nadim Hossain (05:07.490)
So it was really born out of my own experience as a VP of marketing and sales development.
So before starting Bright Funnel, I was at a 100 person company that eventually got acquired like you mentioned, but before we were acquired it was far from certain that we would be successful.
And I remember being a first time VP of marketing and thinking, what are all the things I've got to figure out?
What are all the questions I have to answer?
I was a relatively early customer of Marketo, so in the first hundreds of customers and I was a Salesforce customer and of course a former employee of Salesforce.
And I had this realization that, you know, wait a second, I can't answer the biggest questions I have with either of these Platforms.
I can't figure out what is the customer journey, you know, how to set my campaigns to interact with that journey.
I can't figure out my revenue impact across that journey and I don't know where to put my next dollar.
So that was the, really the first aha moment for me that there was, there was something there.
It was really an emotional level reaction that I'm an analytical person, I'm data driven and I've got a product background, but I still couldn't, couldn't really answer these questions.
I wasn't the proverbial qualitative marketer, which of course these days is more rare.
But this is five, six years ago.
And that was that realization that someone's got to go figure this out.
It wasn't until later that I figured out that I should figure this out.
But initially I thought, oh, oh shit, this is a problem.
Why isn't someone solving this?
Omer (06:41.000)
Yeah.
Before we get into talking about sort of the early days, it was interesting to know that you were kind of with salesforce.com in sort of the earlier, earlier days.
And I recently finished reading Marc Benioff's book Behind the Cloud.
I assume you're familiar with the book.
Nadim Hossain (07:01.800)
Yep, absolutely.
Omer (07:03.320)
Is that kind of an accurate portrayal of what your experience was like at the company back then?
Nadim Hossain (07:09.840)
I would say yes and no.
So it's a great book and it is definitely one of my favorites and I would, in fact, I want to reread it.
I've read it, I think once and all of that is accurate, but it is partial.
So it is the movie version of salesforce.com so instead of Benioff, it casts Brad Pitt.
If you think of it that way, the reality that there's a layer below that that's just hard to capture in a book in terms of, you know, what was the.
Some of the trade offs or subtleties.
So I think the book is amazing and I've certainly taken, took it as a reminder for a lot of the things that worked well and try to do some of the same things here.
But at the same time, you know, keep in mind that there's always, there's always a layer of, you know, subtlety that you can't put in a book or you can't put in the movie version, if you will.
Omer (07:59.910)
Yeah, I kind of went through that and was like, it's definitely an interesting story and there are some, some great lessons in there.
But I couldn't help kind of feeling it would be great to, to have a book just maybe focused on like the first three years to start with and go a little deeper and, and maybe kind of explore some of the kind of the issues you're talking about.
But anyway, that was, I was just curious about that.
Okay, so you, you've kind of got this idea and then you, you kind of initially sort of thinking, well somebody should go and solve this problem and then at what point did it become, did it sort of shift to I need to be the guy who needs to solve that?
And then, and how did you go about sort of getting started?
Nadim Hossain (08:45.840)
So in my case, the light bulb went off, the initial light bulb when I was an executive at a high growth startup.
So I didn't have a lot of time to dwell on who should go build the product.
I first had to solve it for myself and it was using Excel and realizing that I could only solve it partially.
So, so for me I had to stay focused on my day job.
My team and our team was very successful obviously.
So it wasn't until we were acquired and I had this three month period where we were acquired and I was helping with the transition, but I had some freedom to figure out what was next.
The executive team was not going to be carried forward with the acquisition.
And that's when I started speaking with, I was starting to take what I call a victory lap, which was when you get acquired and you're an executive, everyone sort of gives you credit for it and they want to give you pitch you new jobs.
And the victory lap was speaking with four CMO roles at bigger companies.
So companies that were maybe a few hundred employees that were poised to be, you know, IPOs in a year or two or three.
And what I realized, I realized two things.
One is that I actually didn't want that job.
That I really enjoyed the earlier stage and that was an interesting learning for myself that I enjoyed wanting to be at an early stage startup.
The second learning was these board members, these CEOs and VCs that were reaching out to me.
They all were looking for the same thing.
They wanted a VP of marketing who had their handle on, who could answer all the questions that I couldn't answer.
And I realized that they were running a fool's errand.
That VP of marketing wasn't going to solve that problem by themselves because they didn't have a platform to solve it with.
So that was when I really realized that, okay, I should just go, I should go do this.
And there was another three months.
So you mentioned we were founded in 2012.
That's kind of a gray area.
People ask me when, when you were started.
October 24, 2012 is when I committed to exploring the idea.
And my wife's like, you know what?
Yeah, that's nice, honey, you know, just go for it.
You know, that's nice sort of thing.
It wasn't a real thing.
It was, it was sort of, it was the holidays.
We'd just been acquired and I was looking for a job and it wasn't really.
So we incorporated January 2013.
Really, it wasn't until March or April of 2013 when it was, I had to burn the ships when we were actually expecting a child in August.
And at this point my wife said, look, this is nice, but as long as you're earning a living by the time Stella, our daughter, arrives, we're all good.
And so I had to raise money by the time you had a window of time to raise money before she showed up.
So that was really the go time.
So the early 2013 is really when I, the switch fully went from, okay, this is an idea that someone should solve, I should solve it.
And then, no, really, I'm doing this.
I'm not getting a job, I'm not going to make a living any other way.
So that in my case it took a, it took a couple of months.
And I think that's, you know, if you, if you listen to VCs or you know, on a lot of podcasts or blogs, there's a lot of bravado.
Every founder is different.
You know, I was a first time founder, but I was an experienced startup executive and I was a domain expert.
Took me a while to figure out that I was a domain expert and that was really, once you figure out that you're the guy to do this, that no one else is more of a domain expert than you are, that's when you go do it right.
For me, that was a switch, but I'm analytical and it's an analytics business and that's one of my traits.
And it's not that I'm sort of weighing.
It was an emotional decision, but the analytical part of it was really thinking about can I really build a big business at this stage it was either go be CMO of a significant sized company or start a company and with a family.
So my trade offs were very different than a 21 year old.
And so I started this company to build a big company, to build a company that's, you know, that can be a salesforce, that can be a marketo type company.
Omer (12:48.930)
So I was just thinking like, it's, it's stressful enough for most people having, having a child, but you decided to, to become a first time founder at the same time.
Right.
So it sounds like it must have been.
Did you.
Was it kind of a even more stressful period or are you kind of not the kind of guy who gets too fazed by those kinds of situations?
Nadim Hossain (13:20.370)
I think having now we have two children, I think being a parent and having children, I think you can't underestimate how much work and stress that is.
I just think no one's got it figured out.
Right.
There's no magic there.
So there's no question that adds a level of urgency and just, you know, extra work, for lack of a better word.
So I didn't know what I didn't know about being a father, let's just put it that way.
But as far as the startup, you know, it gave me a sense of urgency.
Right.
I had a deadline.
In hindsight I realized that, you know, we registered the domain or this is before my co founders came on board, didn't come on board till the summer.
So I registered the domain, I committed to the idea and I started starting to raise money and it was really from February, March till May.
So that was the time period I raised money and it happened pretty quickly.
In hindsight, at the time it felt like it was forever.
In hindsight, I realized it was amazingly fast to raise that initial angel round and sort of I had to will it into existence.
But at the time it felt like it was a long time.
And so I don't know what the lesson is there, but having having a deadline and expecting a child certainly made me more motivated and made me, I think, out there to execute in a way that maybe, maybe someone else might not be someone in a, in a, you know, you know, more earlier in their, in their, in their lives.
Omer (14:53.600)
Yeah, totally.
So you didn't have the co founders on board by then?
Did you have a product or some kind of mvp or were you just kind of going around pitching the idea and trying to raise some money that way?
Nadim Hossain (15:08.330)
So actually I want to add something to the last question.
So you asked about sort of the how did I feel comfortable having a child and sort of starting a company?
The other thing I want to add is I remember in 2013 I spoke with another founder, John Miller, the co founder of Marketo.
And the reason I met with him was just to validate the idea, say, hey, what do you think about this?
And he told me in 2013, he told me two things.
He said, look, I was in the exact same boat.
My wife was expecting a child.
And he said, don't worry about it is kind of what I would summarize the conversation.
When you're early on, it's actually not a bad time to be, to be a dad because, you know, you have a bit more flexibility.
You're two guys in a coffee shop.
You know, you can, you can be flexible your time, which is true.
So I took that advice.
The second part of his advice I didn't take, which was, and it was a softer advice, but it was.
By the way, this is, this totally makes sense.
Someone should do this.
You know, Marketo wants to do this and they're actually trying.
They've tried in the past.
So just FYI, there is a chance that Marketo or Salesforce will try this.
Those two things I took one advice, the other I sort of ignored.
But that was one other thing that let me be confident in going after this.
Omer (16:29.500)
Oh, so you mean you ignored it in the sense that you could have listened to that and said, okay, I'm not going to go and pursue this because Marketo and Salesforce are already going to do something.
Nadim Hossain (16:41.100)
And I took the advice in the sense that, you know, the co founder of Marketo is someone else who had a child.
So I was like, great, that gives me confidence.
The other part I ignored in the sense that.
And again, he wasn't telling me not to do it, he was just saying, FYI, that you should think about this.
I ignored in the sense that it gave me more confidence because I knew that it wasn't the problem, that this is not the domain that Marketo solves based their, their marketing automation platform, an email platform for a marketing operations manager, for demand gen manager.
They're not an analytical platform.
They're not the platform that ties together the entire customer journey and neither is Salesforce.
Although now they're, they're, it's funny, they're, they're talking with some of that same language and it's just not the thing that Marketo does.
If you think of a two by two of operational and strategic.
So strategic might be something a CMO uses directly.
Operational and sort of workflow application.
And the other axis is sales and marketing.
Marketo is squarely in the operational and marketing bucket and they want to do more and more of that.
And same with Eloquest, same with Adobe and all these platforms.
Salesforce squarely in the sales bucket and again the majority of their market cap and they actually do have more of a play in being strategic.
So they have a Better chance of being that strategic platform.
And therefore they're doing things like wave analytics.
They're doing obviously the whole customer journey now that, that language.
But when it comes to revenue intelligence, that is a very, very hard problem.
Right?
It's not just having the data, not just collecting the dots, but then connecting the dots and being prescriptive about it.
That is, that is a 10 billion dollar company that needs to be built just on that, in my opinion.
So that's what gave me the confidence, is that the problem is a very hard one.
This is not an easy problem to go after.
Omer (18:32.260)
Can you kind of give me an example?
You talked earlier about talking to some of the companies about a CMO role there and some of the questions that they were expecting you to be able to answer.
What, what are some of those questions that companies or CMOs are looking to get to the bottom of, which is very difficult to do without using a product like Bright Funnel.
Nadim Hossain (19:02.500)
So.
So it's all about revenue attribution, right?
So people want to understand, to have the intelligence on.
A very basic version of the problem is Marketo tells me I have this many MQLs.
So I've gone from inquiries or conversions to MQL is great.
So I've got that.
And now I want to know, are they generating revenue for which segment at what velocity?
So the kind of the next level of questions, that's still a very basic question.
You're still relying on sourcing leads kind of mentality, sourcing quality leads.
So that's sort of one version of the question that was maybe the case in 2014 or 15 when we first started.
People were asking, tell me if these MQLs are generating revenue and sort of drill down one level deeper.
Now where the market is, is they're saying, you know, since 2014 the market's exploded.
There's all this marketing and sales tech.
You know, tell me what's working and what's not.
That is the, the CEO CMO board level pain point.
Where should we put our money?
You know, should we be doing trade shows?
Should we be doing ppc?
You know, is it all about content marketing?
Tell me that this stuff is working, show me the impact and then tell me what we should be doing next.
Does that make sense?
Omer (20:15.240)
Yeah, yeah, totally.
So I think I read somewhere that one of the goals of Bright Funnel was to sort of shift marketing as being seen as a cost center into sort of more of a revenue driver.
And I think that maybe is like the one sort of high level question that many sort of c Level, kind of board level type, you know, company leaders may have, which is we're spending, I don't know, we're spending $100 million on our marketing.
What are we getting for that?
And is it just something that is nice to do or is it actually helping, you know, move the bottom line and then the next level of detail?
I think what you're saying is yeah, it's great in terms of how we're spending this money, but we have a budget and where do we allocate those funds to get the best returns?
And it's, it's very clear cut when you're doing something as focused as say Google AdWords because you, you know exactly what you're spending and you know how many clicks you're getting and so on.
But when you start to look at marketing and especially in bigger organizations where a lot of these things are happening, as you mentioned, like trade shows or you know, content marketing or whatever, whatever those other things are, it becomes much harder to figure out which one of those things are actually helping drive revenue and what are the things that you should keep doing, what are the things you should stop doing, where you should you invest more money and so on.
Right.
So I think that's the gist of certainly from what I'm understanding.
Nadim Hossain (21:53.760)
Yeah, absolutely.
And the type of customers that we work with are they're all B2B companies.
And in B2B you can have varying sales cycles, but typically it's sort of in the weeks to months.
Right.
It's not one day, it's not E commerce.
In E commerce there's the ability to be more precise in terms of your funnels are shorter and therefore you're just trying to figure out exactly what that funnel was, what ad they saw.
It's much more about ad tech.
In the B2B world there is a buying committee.
Whether you call it that or not, there are multiple people in the account that are making the decision.
So we've been account based.
Marketing is a hot topic now.
But from 2013 onwards we've built the product to be account based.
So we're looking at that whole account understanding who are the people on the account.
So in there there's leads in your Salesforce system, there's contacts that are attached to the account level and then there's contacts that are attached to the opportunity.
So there's three kinds of structured objects that have to be reported on which Salesforce itself doesn't do, which is just not their core architecture.
So, so there's a data problem to be solved there and see getting a full view on who are all the people interacting with your company and they're interacting with you through your sales development reps reaching out, they're interacting with you through marketing campaigns being responded to, they're interacting with you through ads being, you know, clicked, etc.
So.
So those are all the kinds of things that have to be figured out in a B2B environment.
So which is to say that the problem in B2B is a much, much more complex problem, in my opinion, than in B2C.
And therefore the.
The solutions have to be more probabilistic.
They're not absolute or deterministic.
We're not trying to give you 100% confidence interval on what's going on.
It's more about, you're flying blind today.
That's how I felt.
And that's how a lot of our prospects and customers feel before they use Red Funnel is they don't have any insight.
And we're giving them much, much better visibility and better results than they were getting flying blind, not surprisingly.
But the goal isn't to have 100% confidence.
The goal is to make much better, faster decisions with, you know, you're playing more of a Moneyball for marketing as opposed to, you know, flying a rocket ship to Mars.
Right.
That's sort of a very precise problem.
You know, we're not doing the SpaceX type of math and problem solving.
It's more figuring out what is the best bang for the buck.
Omer (24:30.620)
Yeah, got it.
Okay, so let's go back to kind of going out and raising money.
So did you.
Did you sort of have some sort of product at that point, or what were you sort of pitching?
Nadim Hossain (24:44.110)
So the good question.
So caveat is, this is, you know, mid-2013.
So this is a little bit.
The market conditions always change.
I'll tell you what we did.
It's not advice by any means for anyone else.
So we didn't have a product.
We were.
I had.
So my goal was to hire one of the two best engineers I knew.
Both of them were similar sort of tenure and seniority as me.
In fact, they're both more senior in experience.
One was a guy, Ranjan, that I was at the time working with, or I just stopped working with at Power Reviews.
And he went on to Bazaar Voice, which is the company that acquired us.
And the other was Nasheed, who was.
Who was Cornell.
He wasn't a classmate, he was one.
One class above me.
But we knew each other from Cornell.
And I figured, okay, I'm going to, and it requires a sales job.
Right.
Because these are two very skilled engineers.
There's a million problems they could work on.
They haven't felt the pain of marketing attribution and of the things that we solve.
So it was partially a leap of faith in me, but also showing that look, these are customers that have the problem.
So really I spent from October, November all the way till, till March, April convincing them to come on board.
And also they both had reasons that they couldn't move right away.
It turned out they both said yes.
So instead of one technical co founder, I got two great technical co founders.
They didn't know each other so there was, there was some risk there that they have to get along, which, which they did.
But that was, that was the thing I had to do to kind of get a company instead of an idea to make it a company.
One of them actually did help on weekends build very basic prototypes which I was able to demo a really, really basic prototype of, of what we're doing.
So we had a prototype, we didn't have a product.
The, I think the prototype only proved that I could get a world class engineer to spend their weekends to work with me.
That was probably what investors saw in that prototype, which is a very, very, very important skill set.
Right?
I mean, yeah, I cringe when I see jokes about, you know, the prototypical business founder looking for a tech foundry.
Now I've got a great idea, just an Engineer that generally 99% of the time that person doesn't succeed.
That was me.
But I did succeed.
And it's true, like if you're, if you're not technical at all, you're not going to succeed most of the time.
Now what I did do is I was very deep in the domain.
I had the problem myself.
I have a passion for the problem.
I wire framed the problem, you know, using, you know, Balsamiq, I drew up what the product would look like.
So I applied my product management skill sets.
I did 100 customer interviews by the time, you know, we raised money.
So those are the things I did.
I had a lot of credibility, I had a lot of passion.
I was able to recruit two world class engineers who said they would join us by a certain time frame.
And those were the strengths that we had.
And I was very experienced in being a SaaS executive with some success under my belt.
Those were our strengths.
Omer (27:57.340)
So you did a hundred interviews before you raised money or kind of during
Nadim Hossain (28:03.820)
the process, more or less before.
So really in that Q4 of 2012, when I was no Longer drawing a paycheck from the acquisition.
Say November, December, really over the holidays I started.
And it was actually around the time we were.
We were also going on our honeymoon.
So I was, I was reaching out to everyone I knew saying, look, I have this big set of problems I want to solve.
And initially it was two sets of problems.
It was, I think the web stack is broken.
And because of the measurability.
So my original idea actually was not quite the.
The idea we ended up working on in 2013.
I was thinking, is there something around the web stack but around making it more measurable?
And the feedback I got from everyone is, yeah, web stacks a mess.
But I think it's.
We.
It's a mess, but we're using Drupal or this or that.
Whatever, we're making it work.
And then I started looking into what's out there.
There's some other interesting companies like Squarespace and Weebly and whatnot that were already up and running.
But where people had a lot of energy for me was around the measurability.
And I realized that was the thing that was more the specific idea, narrowing down the idea.
And so when I, by the time I registered the domain and the company in January 2013, by that point, Bright Funnel was.
Was what it is today.
That was always.
That was the founding vision from.
From that early 2013.
Omer (29:39.960)
Okay, great.
So let's talk about kind of getting the product out there and getting your first, let's say going from zero to your first 10 customers.
What were some of the things that were most effective in helping you acquire those early customers?
Nadim Hossain (30:03.710)
So my, my biggest takeaway from the very, the first 10 customers.
And this is for an enterprise product that costs tens of thousands back then.
Now it's up, you know, hundreds of thousands.
But for an enterprise type of product where you just can't put it out there and, and get freemium or users that needs to be sold your early.
So, so there's conflicting advice you get from blogs and VCs and they say, oh, you really want to have hands off customers that, you know, prove that there's a market demand.
That's total BS in the early days, no one rational should be using your software.
Like in our case, you give us.
Our customers are giving us all their salesforce data, all their marketing automation data.
That's an irrational act of love on their part.
Right?
So what you need in the early days are believers, right?
You need.
So instead of, you know, you don't want customers in your.
That who are your friends and Professional acquaintances and that have a conflict of interest.
I say in the early days, no conflict, no interest.
Like they have to be doing it for you.
You the person.
So now that said, we had it.
We did have a mix of customers in the early days.
But my point is that a couple of them.
So one of our very first customers, one of our first three customers was Exact Target.
Now a couple of months later, they got acquired by Salesforce and that caused.
A year later, it caused us to turn that customer.
They actually never really went live.
But.
So Tim Kopp was.
Was the CMO at Exact Target.
I think he found me through Angellist, somehow heard about the company.
You know, we got to know each other.
He's like, you know what?
I believe in this.
This has to happen.
I want to buy the product, I want to invest in the company.
So it all happened at once.
So he had a conflict in a way.
He became an investor.
Another customer was Dave Holley.
Then he was at Social Course.
Now he's at Dynamic Signal.
He used to work for me.
He was my director of product marketing at Power Reviews.
And of course he had a director Demand Gen, who ended up being the one who was really the customer, the first user.
But he sort of had a conflict.
He knew me.
And so that's an example of, you know, those were both sort of.
They weren't arm's length.
We had other customers like ServiceMax, who's now part of GE, still a customer, and who.
Or who came through the website, heard about us through a blog post.
And the buyer there, this woman, Janelle, you know, she's the classic early adopter.
Just, just believe in the vision and had the problem, wanted to solve it.
Another one, Nimble Storage, still a customer to this day.
You know, they were introduced through a prospective investor.
And that customer, it's not scalable.
You can't grow all your customers through, you know, for very long through investor introductions.
And these are investors that aren't actual investors.
In our company, there would be investors, but it's very, very effective in the early days.
So those are the.
I think for an enterprise type of company, you just have to hustle and get whatever introductions you can get, however you can get it.
So foot in the door is really important.
And finding believers is.
Is the thing you're looking for.
That is the most important thing.
Omer (33:20.430)
Yeah, I think that's a really, really important distinction.
And I'm glad you kind of clarified the kind of customers that you're kind of working with.
And this is not a product where you Sort of sign up for a freemium.
You know, you just sort of Google it, come to the site, sign up, and then, you know, get your credit card out and start paying for it.
When you're, when you're talking about this sort of product, it's a, it's a significant investment.
Where.
Well, maybe, maybe for some companies, maybe for others, it's a, it isn't that much, but.
And so especially I think in the early days, I think that this sort of idea of believers is a really important insight.
And all of these people, I assume it wasn't just about the problem and that sort of resonating with them and them feeling like, yeah, I need a solution for this.
It was also about having that face to face kind of interaction with you and sort of getting to know you and your sort of vision which kind of got them on board.
Am I right?
Nadim Hossain (34:30.620)
Absolutely.
The very, the first 10 customers, it's very obviously I sold them myself.
It's not a scalable process.
Omer (34:38.300)
Okay.
And then, so beyond that, we've got the first 10 on board, you're getting some traction.
Let's talk about some of the sort of the growth strategies and tactics that sort of helped you sort of get to the next level.
Nadim Hossain (34:53.740)
Absolutely.
So in that 10 to 100 phase, I think it's a very different, different kind of challenge.
Now this is where obviously you're getting into having employees that are sales and marketing.
Obviously, as a founder, you're always selling, or for a while at this stage, I'm selling less actually.
But in that phase, you're still selling a little bit or you're part of that sales cycle.
And so what we did, and who knows if this was the right thing, but my advice in hindsight would be at the point where you have those 10 customers that they're getting value, I think you should go and hire salespeople.
And for me, it was really hard to think that there's sort of a conventional wisdom that says, go hire two reps. We didn't do that.
We did hire two people.
One was more of a director, one was a junior, a very junior rep, but very, very smart.
And that's the model we took.
And that actually did work for us.
So for me, it was getting a more senior person was actually helpful early on.
Not a VP of sales, but someone who's hands on, can really, you know, is seasoned enough.
And that was appropriate for our category.
Right.
We are, you know, we're, we're giving insights to CMOs, to the whole marketing team, how you spend your Money.
They're, you're trusting us with all this data.
Those are pretty significant sales challenges.
They can be now.
The problem is so acute that we didn't have a problem with that.
No one to this day, it really never comes up that, oh yeah, this is, I don't want to give you my data.
That just doesn't come up.
It's because they see the problem is so strong that they need to get to the other side of that problem.
And I think that's also the other test is if you're, if you're not tackling a big enough problem, people aren't going to agree to, to work with you in the early days if they don't want your crappy product, it may not be the right thing to tackle for you.
Does that answer your question?
Omer (36:55.590)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, so give me, give sort of give the audience a little bit of an idea of the size of Bright Funnel as it is today.
So can you kind of share anything in terms of revenue or sort of size of the company?
Nadim Hossain (37:14.180)
Sure.
I can give you broad strokes.
So we're in the multiple single digit millions of revenue.
You know, we've raised 9 million total.
So we, we have raised a series A and a seed, seed round.
We are about, depending on what day of the week this week you asked me, we're about 35 employees.
I think we're exact, the exact number is probably 33 right now.
We're going to end the year in 60 to 70 employee range.
So that's kind of broad strokes about where we are.
Omer (37:43.950)
Wait, so you're going to go to, you're going to like almost double employees by the end of this year?
Nadim Hossain (37:48.270)
That's right, yeah.
This year we will double employee count.
Yeah.
Omer (37:51.230)
Nice.
So looking back, I mean it sounds like the, you kind of the idea that you had back in 2012 has sort of proved itself.
You've got a lot of customers on board, you're generating revenue.
You manage to persuade these, these sort of high caliber engineers to sort of come on board and sort of join you.
You found those early believers and sort of now the company is growing and getting more traction.
So things look like they're going pretty well.
If you could sort of go back in time to maybe the, the early days, what advice do you wish you could give yourself?
Nadim Hossain (38:42.460)
That's a great question.
So the learning I've had and the advice I would give myself is that this is a hard job.
Right.
It gets the challenges keep evolving every year, maybe even every six months.
And it is, it is absolutely A marathon.
If you're doing a B2B company, there's zero chance of Instagram or, you know, that sort of instant, seemingly instant outcome.
On the flip side with it, with a SaaS company, a B2B company, getting 1% better every day will result in a win.
Like it just will.
Right?
So I think the lesson, the advice would be invest in yourself.
Like, keep making, get better.
Not just as a company, but in yourself.
Become a better CEO every day and, you know, just realize that, that it's, it's the journey.
Now.
I did, I did figure that out pretty quickly.
The anecdote I share sometimes is when I through, through our sales cycles, I had a chance to meet lots of interesting CEOs and just through the Silicon Valley network.
And so I would ask occasionally, I remember I was talking to the CEO of a company called Dhruva, who had met, I'd known for a while when they were Series A.
And so I asked Jaspreet.
It's like, hey, tell me.
It's sort of like as a shoulder to cry on it.
It was maybe after a sales call saying, hey, by the way, tell me.
Gets easier, right?
You're now at a Series C, you guys, it must be easy for you.
You've got a team, you're global.
And he's like, dude, no, it just gets harder.
Like it just, it does not get easier.
And I sort of filed that away and I asked that same question to a couple of other people and I.
One of them, I remember it was Nick Meta at Gainsight.
So I get the same answer three or four times from somewhat later stage companies.
And another one I do remember was Bob Tinker and MobileIron.
They went public, right.
I'm asking the CEO who took a company from founder to IPO, and we had a great chat and he gave me some great advice and it was no, the job just gets harder.
You got to keep, you know, got to keep building these new skills.
So that's also what makes it really fun to be a CEO and co founder.
That it is the hardest job, you know, that one can imagine in the business world.
But it is, you're learning every day.
So.
So you've got to be someone who really enjoys that learning, who's resilient and, you know, just, you're, you're enjoying that job.
Omer (41:06.300)
Yeah, that's a great insight and great advice for anyone who is maybe earlier stage in the journey or even today still questioning about what they're doing.
Nadim Hossain (41:15.820)
My lesson is it never ends.
Like looking at Marc Benioff from, you know, when I was there we were, it wasn't a small company.
We're already public.
We were 1500 employees.
You know, we were not yet a billion dollars or I think 500 million in revenues.
But, but now even the employees, those 1500 people, I guarantee you no one thought it's going to be, you know, a multi billion dollar, ten billion dollar revenue company.
Maybe even not Mr. Benioff himself.
Right.
I think to me a lot of that just thinking long term while also executing short term, building the culture, you know, being great at two things.
Not just sales and marketing or product and engineering, but both.
Right.
There's really the two things a company does and Salesforce did that.
A lot of the things you read in that book are true.
It just doesn't give you the next level down.
You can't take it literally.
You've got to then figure out how to operate other for yourself.
And to me that's, that's kind of what I took away from Salesforce was why, you know, why not us?
Right.
You're, I think you live in Seattle or if I'm not mistaken.
Omer (42:23.730)
Yeah.
Nadim Hossain (42:24.650)
And I remember, you know, after the, the, after Seattle won the super bowl, that was a quote from the quarterback and I don't know if it was before or after they won actually, but I just love that quote.
Why not us, right?
Just ask yourself why not?
Usually if you have a great answer for that, then don't do it right.
For me, I couldn't, to this day I can't come up with a good answer to that question, why not us in building a great company.
And that's one of the things that motivates me is sure there are other smart people out there, but it should be us building this, the first great, first multi billion dollar company in the general space of marketing.
And we think of it as revenue tech, not just marketing.
And of course it's, of course it's long odds, but that's what one of the things that motivates us.
Omer (43:11.730)
So does that mean you're a Seahawks fan now?
Nadim Hossain (43:14.850)
You know, I, I love, I love American football and I didn't grow up in the U.S. i grew up in seven different countries.
So I didn't know football until I, I after college really.
But I've definitely fallen in love with it.
I think it's just such a strategic sport and I play soccer and I play, I played other sports but, and so I am, I do love, I do like the Seahawks in a lot of ways.
But I think the Only team I identify with is the Stanford college football team because, you know, I went to grad school there and there I just got into.
Got into it then.
And it falls really ever since at the NFL level, I can't have any real loyalties to a team because they're themselves are mercenaries.
Right.
I like players.
That's the way I would put it.
I think if you grow up in the US Obviously, you know, you like the Steelers or Seahawks, but if you're coming into it as an adult, you know, if you give them loyalty, they're not going to give it back to you as a fan, so screw it.
I'd rather follow individual players and who I think is a good coach or a player.
And I do like Pete Carroll.
It's funny being at Stanford.
You know, it was at the time I was a fan of the time of the great rivalry with Harbaugh.
So it's fascinating to see the two of them now go on to greater things as well.
But, yeah, I like the Seahawks.
I'm not sure about Pete Carroll.
Omer (44:31.620)
Yeah, no, I'm a big fan and I grew up in England and so it was kind of.
American football is very alien to me for a long time and a very slow game as well, if you're used to playing soccer.
Right.
So it was kind of an interesting transition to make, but I guess maybe that's a sign that I've become so Americanized that I think it's.
It's not a slow game anymore, but
Nadim Hossain (44:55.640)
gives you more bathroom breaks and TV breaks, right?
Omer (44:58.120)
Yeah.
All right, let's get on to the lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a few questions and just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
You ready?
Nadim Hossain (45:06.440)
Sure thing.
Omer (45:07.640)
What's the best piece of business advice that you've ever received?
Nadim Hossain (45:12.520)
So the best piece of advice would actually be the thing that I touched on earlier, which is, you know, it is.
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
I mean, the day to day feels like a sprint and it has to be.
There's.
There's sprints within that, but it's.
It's going to take time and it's, It's.
It's just you've got to take two steps forward every day, get better and better, and then great things will happen.
Omer (45:36.450)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Nadim Hossain (45:41.490)
So there are actually.
When I saw that, I actually would recommend behind the Cloud.
I think it's a great book.
I think it, you know, Salesforce is still the greatest SaaS company ever built, and you know, if you have no exposure to SaaS, it'll give you sophomore knowledge.
Right.
You'll take it literally.
But it's a great start.
Then you have to then test all those assumptions.
Right?
You've got to ask real people and ask yourself, come up with the answer for yourself.
But I think that's a great book.
I would absolutely recommend in the business context.
Omer (46:16.520)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Nadim Hossain (46:22.360)
Grit, I would say.
Grit and resilience.
I mean they're, they're highly related.
I think that's number one.
Omer (46:27.560)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Nadim Hossain (46:33.000)
I take notes prolifically and you know, I'm a, you know, if I'm on a call, I'm typing as I'm taking it.
And so now as a result, I have notes going back to brainstorming the idea for Bright Funnel.
I have all those notes and I take it in Evernote, which I have a love hate relationship with, but I take notes prolifically and I'll have to tell you, I was a little bit kind of self conscious or maybe even ashamed of that.
Your CEO founder.
Should you really be taking that many notes?
But then I started reading Richard Branson's biography and he talks about how he takes literal notes and he's not a bad, bad role model either.
And for me it's just a way, it's a good way for me to think.
I've taken written notes and typed notes.
The type notes really work well for me and it gives me a lot of, you know, extended memory.
Omer (47:23.290)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Nadim Hossain (47:28.970)
You know, there's an idea that I had in business school which purposely it's non tech idea.
So I think the world needs a P F Chang's for Indian or South Asian food.
And I won't pursue it because restaurants are way harder than technology.
But that's an idea that I would wish someone does.
And I think, I'm sure there's someone working on that right now.
Omer (47:52.610)
Yeah, I thought about that once for maybe like a Chipotle version of that because you kind of go in there and go anyway.
Different conversation.
Nadim Hossain (47:59.450)
That works too.
In the Bay Area we have a great.
I'll give a free pitch to this chain called Casa.
So I think they, they have that they could, I think they can go national and they keep adding locations.
But with restaurants it takes forever, you know, just takes forever.
I think that will happen.
It's a matter of Time.
But it's.
I'm too impatient to run to run a restaurant, nor do I have any skills.
But it did, you know, just to tell a quick side story, at business school we had this, a two week course on any business idea and you spent two weeks focusing on that before classes start.
And I picked this idea because, you know, I knew it was unlikely I'd do it.
I was kind of before tech, before and after business school.
And you know, my takeaway was you had senior restaurant executives giving advice.
Yeah, it's just a hard way to make a living.
But I got a lot of appreciation for people that are successful building, building food.
Food businesses.
Omer (48:51.680)
Okay, well, what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Nadim Hossain (48:57.300)
So I'm a former amateur boxer, picked it up as a teenager and then continued it through my early 20s.
I wasn't, you know, I wasn't champion of any kind, but I really, really enjoyed it and had a few competitive bouts.
Omer (49:12.900)
Nice.
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Nadim Hossain (49:18.980)
It's my kids.
There's really only two things I do.
It's work and family.
There's not time for anything else, you know, obviously, besides a little bit of reading here and there.
Omer (49:28.700)
You know, I get to know so much about my guests by going through these questions.
Sometimes I think I should do this at the beginning of the interview because it kind of, I don't know, you just kind of have a different perspective on somebody once you've kind of explored some of these questions.
Nadim Hossain (49:45.100)
But anyway, yeah, they're great questions.
Omer (49:47.660)
So thank you for making the time.
I really appreciate this.
I enjoyed this chat and learning about Bright Funnel and sort of the journey that you've taken to build this business.
If folks want to find out more about Bright Funnel, they can go to bright funnel.com and I'll include links in there too in the show notes as well.
If folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Nadim Hossain (50:13.570)
Great question.
So there's.
We're actively hiring, so if anyone's looking, you know, is interested in our vision, you can apply for a job through our website.
And if you want to email me directly, you're welcome to.
My email is CEO@brightfunnel.com.
Omer (50:30.810)
sweet.
Nadeem, it's been a pleasure.
I wish you all the best and thanks again for your time.
Nadim Hossain (50:36.570)
Great meeting you.
Thank you.
Take care.
Omer (50:38.170)
Cheers.
