Alessio Alionco. He’s the founder and CEO of Pipefy, which is part of 500 Startups. He’s a passionate product manager.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin Favorite online tool? — Yesware and Salesforce Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Alessio would tell himself to be aggressive with his goals
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:56 – Nathan introduces Alessio to the show 02:12 – Pipefy is a workflow cooperation software 02:21 – Alessio got Pipefy’s idea from his previous company 02:36 – Alessio uses a CRM to manage Pipefy 02:45 – Pipefy has a dozen of processes 03:12 – “We coordinate people’s work” 03:36 – Pipefy provides guidelines for a smooth, business process 03:48 – Pipefy is more of a people coordination solution and Zapier is similar to IFTTT 04:00 – Pipefy charges per user, per month 04:10 – Average customer fee is $200/month 04:20 – Pipefy started at the end of 2014 04:26 – Pipefy had its beta 04:36 – Pipefy released pre-signups in April 2015 04:51 – Pipefy became one of the most voted products of the day 05:23 – There was no revenue in 2015 05:32 – Pipefy started charging in August 2016 05:47 – Pipefy now has more than 400 paying customers 06:00 – Average MRR 06:54 – Pipefy offered a special price for customers who renew their subscriptions 07:00 – Pipefy has more than 60K customers who use them for free 07:24 – Only a small portion of the customers converted 07:40 – SMBs don’t have business processes in place and aren’t willing to pay for one 08:06 – Pipefy wants to focus on companies that are close to being considered enterprise companies 08:42 – Pipefy has raised a seed round of $2.2M 08:50 – Some of the investors are Zendesk’s founders, Valour Capital, Redpoint Ventures, FundersClub and AngelList 09:06 – Pipefy has raised a total of $2.6M 09:13 – Team size is 33 09:32 – 27 are in Brazil and 6 are in San Francisco 09:55 – Pipefy is still hiring more people 10:00 – CAC 10:30 – Overall CAC is around $900 per company 10:50 – LTV is still hard to predict 11:34 – Pipefy’s per seat pricing 12:10 – Pipefy negotiates deals with companies with over 10K employees 12:33 – 2017 revenue goal 12:50 – “It’s really a huge funnel to raise the seed round” 13:00 – The series A dynamic is completely different 13:26 – 2016 total revenue 14:00 – Pipefy is aiming for a $200K MRR which is 10x the growth 16:05 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
The best time to switch to a paid version of your product requires careful consideration to ensure the conversion takes place. Some SMBs rely on free business software and services for their processes—therefore, you may need to adjust your target audience. Be aggressive with your goals and just go for it.
Resources Mentioned:
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives