Intercom raises a Series B round of $23M
insideintercom.io
insideintercom.io
Their blogging has been interesting since before Intercom was even incorporated (at their consultancy company, Contrast's[1], blog).
They're also a bunch of smart, down to earth people.
Exceptional folks. Congratulations.
I didn't had a chance to use their products, but hearing the opinions about it - and knowing their attitude - I'd vote with my both hands if having the opportunity to do so.
Great job, Guys!
I'm glad they touched on this. I've heard from several sources that many VCs don't care about engagement at all, as long as growth is massive - which seems crazy to me.
For my own SaaS, I'm focusing entirely on engagement and getting the service right before scaling up. I'm constantly talking to early users, gathering feedback and iterating. It's a slow and painful process, but it's reassuring that Intercom also did this.
A great company needs both growth and engagement.
If I read between the lines correctly:
Intercom the CRM focused on medium to small web apps as we know it will be gone soon. Intercom the Big Serious Business CRM but with a friendly interface is the new direction.
Congratulations to the team — Salesforce is definitely needing better competition. Congratulations to whatever is second-place to the current iteration of Intercom.
You don't get to a billion dollars without snubbing the initial customers.
I've had the pleasure of meeting a few of them and what can I say, they're extremely passionate about what they do!
Congratulations.
It doesn't make sense to invest in anyone who might just grow to a 50 million dollar company? I think VCs must be missing out on a lot of opportunities.
I think the parlance for tripled-our-money is "base hit." You don't play baseball to hit base hits. (Well, unless you're the Oakland As -- and talk to Dave McClure et al if you want to hear this metaphor in a lot more detail.)
There exist angels and other seed-stage investors who would not be unhappy with a $50 million exit, to put it mildly. (To say nothing of the founders and the employees.)
This year the Oakland A's were 3rd in the MLB in home runs (out of 30 teams), last year they were 7th. In the famous moneyball season (2002) they were 4th. They very much build their teams around hitting home runs, just like most VCs :)
I realize you are mentioning the analogy second hand, but I just want to make sure people don't get confused about the A's! There certainly are some smallball [1] teams in the MLB, but the Oakland A's are not one of them.
All these numbers are bullshit when starting out, anyway.
There exist angels and other seed-stage investors who would not be unhappy with a $50 million exit, to put it mildly. (To say nothing of the founders and the employees.)
Actually, $50m exits under current conditions are horrible for employees, just because employee equity is so low. After preferences, it ends up being equivalent to the kind of bonus bankers get when the firm's trying to get rid of them.
Aside from just regular greed, I think one of the reasons VCs push for pathetic option pools is to create a company where a $100 million exit will piss off almost every single employee, which means that even if the founders would prefer it, there are plenty of key players who'll only do their best in a quest for a $10B+ result.
The fact that many of us believe that any given "billion dollar" prospect is counterfeit is neither here nor there. Sure, most VCs also fail with the "bet on billion dollar companies" strategy. Most VCs fail. But that doesn't mean that they should select instead a strategy that appears to be mathematically predetermined to fail.
There are too many hidden variables and no one knows what they are doing. I don't.
For more detail on this, talk to people.
With 2000 customers, what might be their annual revenue (they say in the millions)? $2-4 million?
Their evaluation must be a huge multiple of revenue. I therefore imagine their belief is they have conversion down so now it is time to buy marketshare?
And then go ahead and hiring executives and managers who're not outsiders. Sorta like what Marissa did with that French dude.
1. Have a large enough vision and market 2. Maintain high quality of user engagement 3. Hire a talent team 4. Found the right investors
These are pretty much what every successful startup company needs. But I'm curious about
1. How did they obtain a user base (especially enterprise level accounts in the US) and keep them from the competitors, especially when they didn't have any marketing hiring yet?
2. How are they able to attract the talented team members even they were small? The same for investors.
Looks like they have extremely good luck.
Can you refer some of them which may cover the above questions?