Building a Fat SaaS Venture: Rob Hull, Founder and President of Adaptive Insights (Part 7)

Sramana: Who led your latest round of funding? That is a substantial amount of money to bring onboard.

Rob Hull: We had participation from Norwest Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, as well as participation from others such as Salesforce.com and even ex-CFOs who found this to be a compelling platform like Jeff Epstein who used to be the CFO at Oracle.

Sramana: What has Adaptive Insights achieved to date?

Rob Hull: We have 2,000 customers and we have built a very strong partner network. We have gone to market through direct and indirect channels. We have our own sales team and we have also partnered with over 200 partners around the world. That has helped us to grow not only in the US but internationally as well.

We have customers on the ground in 80 different countries around the world. Much of that has been with the assistance of local partners who have provided sales support and local language interaction with the customer.

Sramana: What do your deal sizes look like?

Rob Hull: It can be anything from mid-five figures up into the six figure range. It depends on the size of the company as well as where we start and how that grows over time. We have a land and expand story. We get into an organization and grow over time. We will expand into new functions and we see account growth both functionally as well as with different products.

Often, we find ourselves entering a company through one operating unit. That unit will typically have a good deal of success and they will bring us into the other operating units. We have had a number of successes like that with folks like Coca Cola.

Sramana: Are you able to close deals on the phone?

Rob Hull: Absolutely. For the first several years of our companies’ life, if we were in close proximity to a customer, then the chance is pretty high that we closed the deal over the phone. We likely implemented our services remotely as well.

Sramana: That is a comprehensive view of what I wanted to cover here. This is a great story. There are some unique situations where fat startups make a lot of sense. Thanks for taking the time to share your story.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Building a Fat SaaS Venture: Rob Hull, Founder and President of Adaptive Insights
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