SalesScreen’s Explosive Rise to $8MN ARR: Unveiling their Secrets of Sustainable Growth!

Upendra Varma: 00:00:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast. I'm your host Upendra Verma and today we have Sindre Halaan here with us. Sindre here is the CEO and co founder of a company called Salescreen. Hey Sindre, welcome to the show.

Sindre Haaland: 00:00:10

Hey, nice to be here.

Upendra Varma: 00:00:12

All right, so let's just try to understand what Salescreen does, right? And why customers are willing to pay you money.

Sindre Haaland: 00:00:17

Sure. Um, so high level sales screen is the sales gamification platform. So we're, uh, basically put, uh, made to motivate salespeople, reach their goal and really do that repetitive, sometimes boring, um, job that they have to do every day. That is so important to get the goal, but to do it with a smile.

Upendra Varma: 00:00:41

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And just give us a sense about your customers, right? So who are you primarily serving to? So what's your typical customer look like?

Sindre Haaland: 00:00:49

Typical customer has a large sales team. Uh, they do primarily work transactional, meaning that it could be like phone sales or real estate brokers, or, you know, someone's selling insurance, something that isn't too complex. Uh, and they have a very tight and well established sales process. Uh, meaning that. For instance, um, they could, uh, be very basic. They have requirements that they should hit like a hundred dials per day. And that should give this many conversations, this many offers sent and this many, you know, deals won. Uh, and at that point in time, you will, uh, really start to feel, uh, some big pains. Uh, number one, like from a middle management point of view, you know, Really making them, uh, get that activity in every day consistently is tough. Number two, it's like, it's gonna wear people out. You know, you've got a constant stream of rejections. It's not always that fun. So, um, you will have high turnover and that costs money to recruit new people and get them around. So those are some of the big pain points, but also over time, you will see that there's a big chunk of people, um, in the middle of the tree, or like, you know, in some. Bottom performers that's, you know, they're, they're making the effort and they're doing okay, but, uh, not really, uh, fulfilling their potential. Uh, and that's also a very big pain point that we're helping solve is to get the most out of the middle and bottom performers of a sales team by making their sales work more fun and exciting.

Upendra Varma: 00:02:26

That makes a lot of sense, right? So just give us a sense of, you know, how many customers using your platform today, right? So just want to get a sense of that, right? So how many active paying customers you've got today?

Sindre Haaland: 00:02:36

Roughly 300, uh, different logos, uh, using the platform today. Um, and that

Upendra Varma: 00:02:42

can I ask like how, how big of a,

Sindre Haaland: 00:02:45

000.

Upendra Varma: 00:02:46

okay. So is that 20, 000 is your typical ACV? Is that what you're saying?

Sindre Haaland: 00:02:49

Ironically, China a bit higher, but I was about to say, uh, but over 20, 000 active, uh, monthly sales reps in the platform. Um, so, uh, there's, uh, quite a lot of people enjoying sales screen today. Um, we're roughly 8, 000, 000 dollars in annual recurring revenue. So, um.

Upendra Varma: 00:03:09

Yeah, I think that sort of helps, right? So just, uh, and just sort of give us a sense of your growth trajectory today, right? So where were you, let's say, 12 months before today, right? So approximately,

Sindre Haaland: 00:03:22

Yeah, uh, we've last year was a special year, um, for context, you know, the last year was 2023. That was a tough year for the software industry in general. Uh, and we had a lot of BDR teams and, uh, software sales teams on our platform that, uh, contracted or, or. Outright churned because they lost their funding, um, or did major restructure. So we only grew about 15 percent last year. Um, but it was, um, a year of big transformation for us as well, because we also achieve profitability. So we're 1 of those types of companies. Right now that, um, uh, keep on being profitable while growing at a healthy rate. So say, you know, 20, 20 or so, a bit more than that percentage, uh, is probably the goal for us, uh, or is the goal for us this year. So,

Upendra Varma: 00:04:15

that makes a lot of sense, right? So just want to get a sense of, you know, How your sales motion typically looks like, right? So these are like mid market enterprising deeds, right? So, so what happens, right? So how do you close a deal and just help us understand the whole funnel, right? So how do you discover the customer and how do you end up closing them? Just give us a sense of how that's working for you today.

Sindre Haaland: 00:04:32

sure. Um, so historically we've been a sales led growth company. Uh, which means that, uh, you have people working outbound, uh, very structured where they target our, uh, ideal customer profile, uh, and then, um, build sequences and, and reach out. Um, we have, uh, over the past couple of years. The scene, a shift over to inbound. Uh, so I would say from having a 50, 50 split, uh, between outbound and inbound, it's been more like 90, 10 in favor of inbound. Uh, and that's not gradually shifting back again towards more of that 50, 50 split that we're used to. So clearly there are things happening on a macro scale here. That's a bit out of our control, but, um, that's been the main source of, um, like focused on, on the go to market side, but we have built up in parallel. Well, uh, a product led growth motion. So, uh, we are transitioning over to a product led sales motion where the smaller teams, uh, for, you know, good brand exposure and also, uh, to get a more cost effective solution, uh, may self, uh, on board and try it out and get value from, uh, from sales screen. Uh, while, uh, you know, our sales team can, uh, uh, focus more of their time and effort on the enterprise segment, which, uh, makes for a more, let's say, cost optimized, uh, go to market motion for the business in general. So we're excited to see that we've, um, gotten our first customer, uh, on this route and, uh, we're looking forward to do general availability, hopefully sometimes in a Q2, uh, of 2024, uh, so that everyone can, uh, sign up for themselves without talking to us.

Upendra Varma: 00:06:17

Yeah. And then just, just thinking here, right? So does a platform like sales gamification makes sense for somebody who's just, you know, who's an SMB, right? Does it even make sense for them, right? Because we're looking at. Gamification, it's like, you've got to have a whole bunch of sales tips out there. I don't get that. It might start making sense. Right. So how are you looking at that with this whole new product, you know, growth approach that you're looking at.

Sindre Haaland: 00:06:38

It would be surprised how many people are, uh, struggling, uh, even at, uh, lower head counts, uh, with getting the team amped up and motivated. So, uh, we, we do have a steady stream of, uh, demand, uh, which we regard as, uh, too small because, uh, obviously the, the value. You have the sales gamification platform increases with the team size. Um, so the more people you have, the harder it is to really recognize the individual and motivate them on individual matter and really get the most out of, uh, the whole spectrum of your team. So I would say, um, the way that we see it is that we're spending probably too much time on SMBs, uh, that we should, uh, they, they should be able to, to get going much easier, swifter, and. On their own, uh, and also at the same time, the enterprise companies, um, don't necessarily buy, uh, uh, straight off the bat anymore. They want to try it out. Themselves. It's like just part of the more modern buying journey. So being able to be, uh, let's say a frontline manager without a lot of budget in an enterprise and actually get go in for free and then for a small amount, uh, keep at it until there's so many people using it in the enterprise that it makes sense to kind of like look at single sign on an enterprise, great features, and like the full depth of the platform. I think that really makes sense. So I believe this is just like a refinement or next evolution of the go to market model in SaaS.

Upendra Varma: 00:08:11

Is it similar? Like, can you just get a sense of like your typical ACV? Like, and like, what's the biggest deal you've closed so far? Right. So just want to get a sense of that split here again, right.

Sindre Haaland: 00:08:20

So I would say an average, uh, it's, uh, uh, just above 25 K typically. Um, and

Upendra Varma: 00:08:27

are these customers,

Sindre Haaland: 00:08:29

uh,

Upendra Varma: 00:08:30

it is go ahead.

Sindre Haaland: 00:08:32

yeah, it's over a million. So,

Upendra Varma: 00:08:33

Okay. So just one, I'm specifically asking you this question, right? Because I was just browsing through your website. Are you like, you know, when you have to close these deals, right? You, you have to make your product, you know, enterprise compliant. Right. So in terms of security and all of it, right. So, uh, are you soft to compliant? I do, do you do all of that? Or like, where is your primary customer base that you're trying to serve today?

Sindre Haaland: 00:08:55

yeah, I mean, we, we started early on. Uh, so we are even ISO 27, so one certified, um, And then obviously that's an investment takes some time, but you got to have these types of capabilities on on the single sign on side on on the security, privacy, compliancy side to be able to cater to the biggest enterprises. And, um, you know, you mentioned to me prior to, we started here that you're based out of India. Uh, Our latest customer that came on board was Adobe, uh, with more than, I think, 500 people out of India. Um, and clearly those types of companies wouldn't, um, just pick any vendor, uh, because they have quite strict, uh, guidelines on who they can partner with. So. That's

Upendra Varma: 00:09:43

that, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So just help us understand the backstory here, right? So when did you start the company and you know, how many people you've got today on your team

Sindre Haaland: 00:09:51

Sure. Um, so sales screen is, uh, the product that, uh, came up, that came on market first of March, 2014. Um, I started the company back in 2011 at the time, uh, I was just, uh, you know, a computer science major student, uh, surrounded by smart people. And we started a company doing consultancy work while trying to explore and iterate over different solutions that could lead to our first sauce. Um, and it was one of those products that we created. Corporate messaging application that one of our clients used to send messages internally, every time someone calls the deal to kind of create excitement and awareness and like that bus, uh, both in the call center, but also in the field. And that use case, uh, grew into a sales screen, which was one of the first sales gamification platforms on the market. And that was launched in 2014. So from that point and onwards, we've just been able to grow organically and we, I haven't really spent a lot of money to grow. It's been very cost efficient from the get go. Uh, so it wasn't until 2018. We raised our 1st round of money from outside investors up until that point. We were 100 percent

Upendra Varma: 00:11:04

and where were you, where were you as in terms of revenue in 2018 when you raised that first round

Sindre Haaland: 00:11:09

I think we're on 2 or 3 million dollar, uh, at that mark.

Upendra Varma: 00:11:14

and where did you invest all of that external funding into? Was it on, you know, ramping up your sales team and what was that?

Sindre Haaland: 00:11:20

going international. So this company is founded and started back in Norway in Europe, which is a tiny, tiny country, like we have 5 million people. Uh, it's not a good place to, to grow big software as a service companies that is seat based, uh, licensing model. You kind of like need to get into bigger markets. And, uh, uh, us was, uh, barely, uh, one of those markets that we. We dreamt about that, uh, would be a good fit for our product. Uh, so we, uh, raised money from a strategic investor who had, uh, relationships and experience with the U S market. It could help us, uh, uh, bridge the gap culturally, but also financially to, to take this to the U S and, uh, we did that and, uh, really leaned into the U S market in 2019. And it's now our fastest growing market, uh, globally. So it's a good decision.

Upendra Varma: 00:12:14

And, and like, how much did you raise in 2018?

Sindre Haaland: 00:12:16

We didn't need a lot of money. Uh, bear in mind that we. We didn't have any money prepared to that around, so we just took in a couple of 1M dollars. Um, and then we've done done that a couple more times. So I think maybe in total, we've raised roughly 7M dollars. Um. Uh, over the lifetime of this company,

Upendra Varma: 00:12:36

And let's talk about the whole retention here, right? I'm assuming you must have pretty good retention rates given the ticket sizes, but just talk about how that works and your typical expansion as well.

Sindre Haaland: 00:12:45

our retention numbers are, uh, similar to, uh, most, uh, enterprise softwares in that segment, we have roughly 110 to 120 percent NRR and historically, uh, Perhaps even been better, um, I would say across our customer base, because we do also have, uh, quite a bit smaller clients. Uh, it's slower. So it's still above 100 percent NRR, but on a gross revenue retention side, uh, we retain roughly 80, 85%, uh, per year. So we still need to. You know, sell, uh, in order to, to grow. Uh, but it's, uh, um, it's an, uh, it's a, it's a decent, uh, business and one that, uh, we believe, um, it's going to grow like the space that we're in. Um, there's so many talks about AI and machine learning and people replacing SDRs and salespeople all over, but like ultimately humans are going to be involved and go to market. And if you have you was involved, they will need to do boring, repetitive tasks. And that, uh, that would greatly benefit from some, some fun gamification elements. Like, yeah, I think I haven't really specified it. Maybe it's almost like a given now. Like when I started the company, nobody heard about gamification. Now I feel like everyone knows it, but in principle, you just take game, like elements and apply it to something that has nothing to do with games, like leaderboards. competition, rewards, badges, achievements, trophies, these kind of things to kind of like spice up something that has nothing to do the game with games really make

Upendra Varma: 00:14:25

So I can understand it back in 2014. I think you must have been like the one of the first ones to this, you know, category. Right. So like, was, was there any conscious decision that you made to just, you know, not raise excessive amount of money and, you know, just, you know, grow crazily, like, you know, like how a typical category creator might do, right. For example, now outreach, Salesforce, they had to do all of that, even gong, all of it. So, because the moment they realized that they've got a new category, there is tons of money. And then, you know, they just, you know, I know basically try to expand, right? So what was there any conscious decision that you made, you know, back then to just, you know, grow, keep on growing sustainably, you know, without, you know, raising excessive amounts of money.

Sindre Haaland: 00:15:01

we were actually leading up to a bigger growth round and we had several offers on the table that unfortunately are Uh, outside investor didn't, um, think was attractive enough. Uh, so we, we could have quickly have, uh, ended up at the similar journey. Um, but when the market corrected itself, um, we, um, we decided to go back to a bit of our bootstrap roots and think more about profitability and sustainable growth. Uh, but clearly, you know, I, I raised money for a reason. And, um, one of them were, we were actually working with Oracle as a client. And they were expanding. Um, we were expanding with them quite rapidly across all of their hubs, even to, to the APEC region and to the North America region, um, until, you know, Oh, their it team centrally, uh, challenged us saying, you're not really using any Oracle technology and you're offering, and we, we don't have any vendors that doesn't use Oracle technology. So you've got to. You know, transition off of Microsoft Azure and over to Oracle, if you want to keep us as a client and keep on growing. Um, and also we're a bit concerned because you're, you know, you don't seem to have, we have a history of crushing startups because we're so big and we have like tens of thousands of sales reps. So like how much money have you raised? How many people are you? Um, and you know, at the time we were only 25 or so, and we hadn't raised any money. So, uh, we realized that, okay, there is a market opportunity, like enterprises and companies really want this, but also we, we, we need outside funding to gain the muscles, to be able to really deliver this globally and at scale. Um, So we had to do it if we wanted to continue to grow, um, and take that opportunity. Uh, today we're just above 50 employees. So we're still quite cost effective, uh, down maybe from, I think it was 70 at the most, uh, but it's, um, you know, that's the correction that the most of software service companies have gone through. The recent years

Upendra Varma: 00:17:07

yeah, that makes a lot of sense, right? So simply like one last question, right? So what's, what's the vision here, right? Where do you see your company in the next two to three years?

Sindre Haaland: 00:17:13

division for sales screen is really around that male management layer, because I think they're, they're being burnt out and, and drain and just, I don't know, beaten and pulled in every direction these days. Like, uh, uh, there's less of them as well to, because of the focus on cost. And it's really tough to get people ramped up and get them excited to do the hard work that they need to do every day and keep them delivering. Um, at scale. So if we can help and really make their life easier, uh, really make that the day to day work life of sales reps all over globally, fun and exciting generally, like the deaf fun doing it. I think we make a, an impact that is. It's truly remarkable, not many companies that I know is going in that direction is usually about some financial gains. So, for me, that is, uh, rewarding in itself, but, uh, I would say that, uh, we probably, uh, need to partner with someone, uh, else and, uh, really, uh, get. Step on the gas on the AI side to help them on that next level, uh, type of, uh, support, and then I'm talking about the front line managers. So instead of having them coming into our tool and thinking about cool competitions, they could set up and who needs an additional lift. Who should I coach this week? Uh, and have an extra talk with. Like our software should through artificial intelligence surface that to the front line managers and give them concrete, uh, I guess to course correct their performance trajectories and really get to that next level without them having to, to think for themselves really that that would make it, uh, that would be an ideal situation. And that's something that we're working towards releasing this year.

Upendra Varma: 00:19:05

And financially, what's, what's that goal that you're looking at, right? So are you looking to exit in the near term or what's the plan here?

Sindre Haaland: 00:19:11

I mean, that is not a goal in itself. Um, I think that, uh, if there is a new owner that comes in and really believes in what we're doing, I want to step on the gas that would excite a lot of people. And it could happen if that owner has another company that has strong synergies, then, you know, we could merge. Um. Or, you know, we could become a platform that, uh, acquires adjacent, uh, um, software sales tech, uh, but we could also very well just continue as we are, because we keep on growing and there's, um, a lot of signals, at least that we're seeing that the market is, um, Improving and things are accelerating, like what I mentioned earlier with the outbound motion being much more effective again. So I think that, um, we've all been through some hard years and like the, the fruit of, uh, surviving and driving in that, uh, market, uh, is something that we can harvest, uh, over the next couple of years. So, uh, good years ahead.

Upendra Varma: 00:20:16

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Hope to scale, scale screen to much, much greater heights.

Sindre Haaland: 00:20:24

Thank you.