Building a High-Growth Startup From Brazil: Revelo CEO Lachlan de Crespigny (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How much money had you raised in 2019 of October?

Lachlan de Crespigny: We had raised $15 million in 2019.

Sramana Mitra: You had some war chest to be able to figure things out.

Lachlan de Crespigny: We did. It was very lucky timing. It was not an easy fundraise. We were still a Brazilian-focused business at that point. There weren’t many funds that were interested in investing in Brazil in an industry they didn’t know.

Today, our business is much more US-focused. We were lucky with the timing of when we raised. It did make many of our Board Members nervous when coronavirus hit. Apart from anything else, 30% of their investment disappeared on just exchange rate movements.

Sramana Mitra: In the beginning, COVID was a freezing situation. Within a few months, the tech industry recovered and started figuring out how to work remotely. That must have worked in your favor.

Lachlan de Crespigny: It was the best thing that happened to our company. People stopped hiring software developers just from the city they live in and they started looking in timezones. We quickly realized that we were sitting on top of the largest source of software developers in Latin America. All of the United States is now looking for software developers across Latin America.

Within 18 months, the United States grew to become 95% of our business. Growth just exploded. The assets we have went from what was an okay business to an incredibly valuable business.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me about the dynamics of your go-to-market strategy to make this marketplace really scale. To what extent do you have to use a direct sales force to bring in the companies that are recruiting on your platform? You do need to introduce your platform to the recruiters.

Lachlan de Crespigny: A lot of them have never dealt with international companies before. When hiring people that have salaries anywhere from $80,000 through to $300,000 a year, they want to talk to someone to make sure that this is for real. Our go-to-market is similar to a SaaS company. We then have SDRs that qualify the leads that come in. We have account executives that explain the pricing and our business model. Once they decide to use us, it’s the customer success team for when they need help.

Sramana Mitra: What is the relationship size? In one year, how much are you making off of some of these companies? What sized companies are you working with on the corporate side?

Lachlan de Crespigny: Most of the companies are from Series A to Series D.

Sramana Mitra: You’re selling mostly to venture-funded tech companies?

Lachlan de Crespigny: About half are venture-funded tech companies. The other half are mid-market companies. A lot of us forget that a vast majority of the economy is not VC-funded.

Sramana Mitra: That’s part of why I started One Million by One Million. 99% of the startups that go out to raise money get rejected, but there are many great businesses out there that don’t go through the venture route.

Lachlan de Crespigny: There’re a lot of companies like that that use us as well.

Sramana Mitra: How many companies do you have on the hiring side?

Lachlan de Crespigny: Across North and South America, there are 20,000 companies that have used our platform.

Sramana Mitra: Would you say that word-of-mouth is working well in your favor?

Lachlan de Crespigny: Yes. CTOs are our main contact point. It is a very tight-knit community.

Sramana Mitra: How about the candidate pool?

Lachlan de Crespigny: The total candidate pool is over 400,000 developers.

Sramana Mitra: All across Latin America?

Lachlan de Crespigny: Yes. We’re particularly strong in Mexico and Brazil. We’re strong in Argentina and Costa Rica as well.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Building a High-Growth Startup From Brazil: Revelo CEO Lachlan de Crespigny
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