Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Florida: SproutLoud CEO Jared Shusterman (Part 6)

Jared Shusterman: Quite frankly, a lot of these guys don’t trust the bigger brands that they sell. The number one game changer here in helping these guys was to be cooperative and, in effect, reap the benefits of that cooperation. It then came down to funding. We put a stake in the ground even in our industry around making sure that we are, by far, the best in helping manage and spend the funding that’s coming from the brand down to the local partner.

It has allowed us to position ourselves particularly for the client profile that I described. I described three things. They sell to an independent sales channel. Two is, they have a comprehensive set of marketing tactics that the channel partner uses. The third is funding. Some of these brands or local channel partners relationships may not have a lot of funding. They just need more sales enablement.

There are a lot of tools out there that are great for that. We wanted to be the best at taking the marketing budgets, which oftentimes are overlooked. These co-opt budgets are, in some cases, seen as a necessary cost of doing business because the brand down the street offers the same thing to a channel partner. We think there’s a better way to be spending this money to ensure that benefits are reaped by both parties versus just this necessary spend where the channel partner may run wild and, oftentimes, creates conflict.

The way the money is disbursed today is through reimbursement. Much like how you go to a doctor’s office and the insurance isn’t co-paid at that point in time. You send the bill to your insurance provider and they give you back the money they were supposed to pay. There’s some fraud involved. Sometimes it’s a source of conflict in what’s supposed to be a sprit of cooperation when the co-opt or brand guidelines are not followed.

When the channel partner sends in, “I’ve got a $5,000 bill.” Then the auditor says, “Sorry, you didn’t follow the guidelines.” It creates an issue. There’s really a lack of visibility in how the spend is driving in customers. A lot of it is anecdotal. People do it the same way. They don’t really know how that one is impacting the business. We’ve tried to flip the paradigm here where you can get both parties on a shared platform with very strong visibility into how the marketing is performing. There’s a ton of benefits.

Sramana Mitra: Makes it a lot more manageable. The workflow that you’re automating and streamlining is extremely valuable. No funding right?

Jared Shusterman: Yes, correct. We’ve reached over $30 million in sales as of 2016. We’ve got about 180 employees and all of that was based on a small initial personal money.

Sramana Mitra: Very good. It’s a great story. I love the business as well as the way you have built it.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Bootstrapping to $30 Million from Florida: SproutLoud CEO Jared Shusterman
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