Building a High Growth SaaS Company from Los Angeles: Nick Hedges, CEO of Velocify (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What triggered the telephony piece? What is the telephony functionality from a use case point of view?

Nick Hedges: It does a large number of things. One of the things is that it allows you to work very efficiently through an optimized list. If you look at what a typical salesperson does in a normal CRM, they go to a lead or an opportunity, read the information, decide whether they’re gong to call it, and then they make the call. After the call finishes, they need to figure out who they’re going to call next.

With our system, we have the prioritised list and you can just move from one lead to the next quickly and efficiently, always knowing that whoever you’re going to be calling next is the opportunity that is the highest priority to call. The other thing that it does is that it solves the number one issue in inbound sales. When you generate leads, whether that comes through your marketing automation system, straight from your website, or from third parties, the number one thing that determines whether you’re going to convert that lead is how quickly you call it. There’s just a very high correlation between the two.

What our telephony system does is, it ensures that that lead is called quickly. It does that through what I call rewardification. Essentially, the person who raises their hand the quickest gets the lead and gets connected to the call. The lead comes in. The phone will ring among four or ten of the sales persons who are eligible for that lead. Whoever picks that up and hits one first will get the lead distributed to them and then an outbound phone call will be made to that lead. It creates a high velocity on calling a lead when it comes into the system.

Sramana Mitra: That’s very interesting. Switching gears a little bit, when you came on board in 2008, the company was $4 million in revenue in funding. What has been the funding history of the company?

Nick Hedges: We’ve been very capital efficient. We took about $5 million in Series A. That was in Q3 of 2007. Then when I became CEO in 2011, I decided to raise a Series B so that we could pursue a more aggressive growth agenda. I raised, in Q2 of 2011, an additional $15 million. We haven’t raised any money since then.

Sramana Mitra: When did you become CEO?

Nick Hedges: I became CEO in April 2011.

Sramana Mitra: What were the circumstances in which your transition happened?

Nick Hedges: I have had progressive promotions. I went from SVP of Business Development to SVP of Sales and Business Development. Then I was asked to run marketing and strategy as well as become the Chief Revenue Officer. After four months as the Chief Revenue Officer, I became President. When I was a CRO, we released the telephony capability that really took off. I lobbied the Board that we should be following a more aggressive growth agenda. That’s the point at which they decided to put me in the President role and I ultimately became CEO.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Building a High Growth SaaS Company from Los Angeles: Nick Hedges, CEO of Velocify
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