Sramana Mitra: It’s interesting. Now, where to from here? You said that 2023 was great. You’ve been doubling every year. It’s almost venture scale growth without raising huge amounts of money, which is all fabulous. What are you trying to accomplish and how do you want to play this?

John Wallace: Next, it must be, first and foremost, more of the same. We don’t have to let go of the horse that got us here.

We’re quite thankful to be able to have a direct sales force, talk directly to brands, establish the value, and have them be our primary buyer. We now have all the scale and proof points to have very informed dialogues with potential channel partners.

So, we’re in a position now to look for multipliers on top of what we already have.

Sramana Mitra: How many customers do you have total right now?

John Wallace: Several dozen, I’d say.

Sramana Mitra: A dozen. Is it all US customers then?

John Wallace: No, we broke the golden rule of early-stage startups. A couple of our early customers were international. That forced us to do multicurrency type of design right out of the gate. They’ve proven to be very thoughtful and loyal customers.

After three years of working together, I ended up flying to Denmark and meeting these people for the first time. We have growth happening internationally as well. It’ll be a milestone for us when we put our first salespeople in another country, but right now we manage it from the US.

Sramana Mitra: And what is the ideal channel partner for selling this?

John Wallace: We interact with the brands and their agencies, and quite often the agencies can recognize the sophistication of what we built and see a need for other clients. That’s the kind of potential area for us, whether it’s something informal like a referral agreement or whether it’s something more formal. Sometimes, the ad platforms themselves are in need to explain to their customers their performance as measured by a third party.

So, that’s kind of an established market. It’s a little bit trickier because we want to look for arrangements where that’s more of a referral and it’s the advertiser that’s paying for the measurement.

We think that makes more sense than an ad platform paying to get itself measured. That’s not quite as clean.

Sramana Mitra: Okay. Well, let’s finish with whatever metrics you feel comfortable sharing. How many people? You already said you have dozens of customers, so whatever range you want to provide. I know our range for bringing people in, you’ve already qualified, which is $5 million plus in annual revenue, but whatever else, whatever other guidance you want to provide is fine.

John Wallace: Yes, we’re 60 people. People ask us, are you profitable? And I kind of snicker. I’m like, there’s no day where we can’t be profitable unless I want to write checks into the company. So we are profitable. And it’s even more than that.

What you learn when you’re bootstrapping is, we’re running it intentionally close to break even. So, every time we sell a new customer, we’re going to make a new hire. It’s not exactly one for one, but it’s close.

But what you learn is that you must grow your cash balance to support and operate. You need a balance sheet to operate the new expenses, right? So, if you double your revenue and double some of your expenses, you better double your cash balance, or you’re not going to be able to pay the bills.

That’s something that people who haven’t bootstrapped don’t recognize.

On your question on headcount, we’re 60 people probably. Our hiring is not slowing, but it’s changing shape. As the product gets more and more mature, we don’t hire as much in the direction of customer success.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, of course. Especially if you are able to get these referrals from the ad agencies and stuff like that, that sales model becomes more inbound. That also releases some of the pressure on headcount to sell. So, 10 million plus in revenue, is that where you are?

John Wallace: I’m not going to say, but we’re above your threshold.

Sramana Mitra: Okay. All right. Well, congratulations. Pleasure talking to you. And it looks like you’ve done a great job with this company. We look forward to doing the story.

John Wallace: We still have plenty of runway to mess it up, but so far we’re having a really good time with it.

Sramana Mitra: Okay. Well, very nice to see you again, John.

John Wallace: Alright, thanks Sramana. Bye.