Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Was it mostly direct selling through LinkedIn?

Peter Ord: We were 100% outbound all the way to our Series A. Our Series A was raised in October 2020. We sourced three lists that we believe represent ideal customer profiles. The first list was companies that have recently raised. The second was competitors of our current competitors. The third list was people whose job roles have changed in LinkedIn that had implementation manager in their title. Those three lists are our outbound effort. We got all the way to $2 million ARR just by pure outbound approach.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you raise in Series A?

Peter Ord: $10 million. That’s when we started getting serious about inbound. We found Belle. If we had found Belle a lot earlier, we would have been a lot more successful. We didn’t have a true infrastructure. We had a Squarespace website all the way to the start of 2019. We weren’t serious about our website. Our website was designed to pick up a conversation that starts a conversation. It worked for our model.

Sramana Mitra: My take is whatever works is fine. Just figure it out.

Peter Ord: We continue to grow outbound. Today, 60% of our revenues is driven from inbound.

Sramana Mitra: In terms of inbound, what strategies are producing?

Peter Ord: It’s so early in our trajectory. We run LinkedIn and FB campaigns. When we started to do paid search, we started getting people interested in HR software because of onboarding. We were also investing in a professional website that sparks conversation. You really can’t hack the process. It takes a disciplined approach where you’re very consistent to grow that organic traffic.

Another thing that we had going for us is that if we improve the catcher’s mitt, the viral effect of our product would catch. We offer that Amazon tracking experience for B2B. Our customers put our product in front of their customers.

Sramana Mitra: So there are leads that come in through that.

Peter Ord: Exactly. We have about 25% of our revenue come in from that viral effect.

Sramana Mitra: When did you cross the $5 million ARR mark?

Peter Ord: We just did.

Sramana Mitra: Congratulations! $13 million is the full amount of funding?

Peter Ord: We just raised Series B for $25 million. We raised a bridge round right before COVID for an additional $2 million. That was another blessing. It enabled us to keep our minds on the gas pedal. They had wanted to put more money in the seed round. Money clouds judgment at the early stages.

They wanted to put $4 million in. I said that I’ll take another $2 million if we hit a benchmark. We did. We took that seed plus round in February 2020. One of the things we did was I went to our sales team and said that it’s going to be a hard environment to prospect in. Those that continue to prospect will excel.

Sramana Mitra: It actually turned out to be not true. People were very apprehensive and scared. I’ve done story after story of people being able to keep going without much of a problem.

Peter Ord: It’s made our product more relevant. We didn’t know this at that time. I told the sales team that I’ll double their commissions in 2020. It ended up being an accelerator for us. Our differentiator was we enable better engagement with our customer’s customers.

Sramana Mitra: Wonderful story. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Solo Entrepreneur Bootstraps First, Raises Money Later in Utah: GuideCX CEO Peter Ord
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