Dreampitch '17 | Salesforce

Layla Seka hosts startup pitches at Dreamforce 2017 with judges Guy Oseary, Chris Sacca, Shahrazad Rafati, and Will.i.am. Three companies pitch: Retrolux, Loop & Tie, and Metasas. Loop & Tie wins $250,000. Salesforce projects it will impact 3.3 million jobs and $859 billion in GDP by 2022.
Questions this video answers
$250,000
3.3 million jobs impacted and $859 billion in GDP
75 paying customers and about 1,200 projects
7 suppliers representing over 150 brands
Team of six; raised $750,000 (three quarters of a million) and round partially open
Chapters
All right, well, the moment we've all been waiting for, Dream Pitch. And so let me turn it over to Layla Seka, Executive vice president of AppExchange.
Layla.
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Dream Pitch. My walk on music is Star wars because I am totally in love with them. How are you doing? Are you having fun at Dreamforce? Give me some. Yeah, right. We are very happy to have you here for the second Android Annual Dream Pitch. It's going to be very fun. Now, I have the fun activity of telling you some of the information about Dream Pitch, namely, we might make some forward looking statements during this process and none of you should make any investment decision based on anything we say right now. And because this is a contest, we have more legal disclaimers. In so much as this is for entertainment, we are supposed to have fun. Don't put your 401k on anything you hear here today. Okay? Just having a good time. But in all seriousness, please don't make any investment decisions. We're a publicly traded company. This is a contest. More information on our website. So I want to talk to you guys a little bit about the Salesforce economy and what really brought us to Dream Pitch. And that is the amazing ecosystem of partners and developers and people that have taken our technology and really extended it out. And when we look at what we've built with those folks, we think about it as the Salesforce economy. Actually, an analyst deemed this for us. And there are a lot of impressive numbers on this slide. The most impressive too, in my opinion, are by 2022, our economy, the Salesforce economy, will have impacted 3.3 million jobs. We will have created them, and we will have impacted $859 billion in GDP.
Boom.
That is a big, big amount of impact for a software company to have. I am very proud of that. We are all very proud of that. And Dream Pitch is a great visualization of that ecosystem and that economy coming to life by showing some great entrepreneurs that have built some amazing stuff and having a talk about what they've done. And so in order to really talk about how we do this at Salesforce and how we built this economy, there's sort of three main tenants that we use to do this. The first one is Trailhead. If you don't know what that is, wow. You should take a look around because that's our online learning platform to help people learn how to code with us, learn how to build with us. I run the App Exchange. I'm very proud of that. That's our online marketplace. The Salesforce store. That's where you launch your activity, your launch your solutions, and launch your products. And then, of course, we have Salesforce Ventures. We've put over $250 million into funds this year to empower and ignite our ecosystem through the Ventures team. So we're really proud of these three ways that we help businesses grow with Salesforce. And so it wouldn't be a Salesforce presentation if we didn't thank everyone for that. We are deeply, deeply honored and grateful for the community that surrounds our company. We know that's the thing that makes it so special. So thank you. Now, let's dream pitch. Yeah. All right. Now, one of the best, best, best parts of Dreamforce are these amazing judges who join us and give us their insights and their great knowledge about these great companies and make this a fun activity for us. Now, these people are way too accomplished for me to remember everything they've done. So I have a sleeve of paper, so I'm going to read it. All right, you ready? Here we go. Our first judge began his career in his teams at what was to become Maverick Records and quickly rose through the ranks to become chairman and partner. He guided the label to sales of over 100 million units globally, including 33 million copies of Alanis Morissette's debut album. Since 2004, Gaio Siri has been the principal at top entertainment management company Untitled Entertainment, whose clients include Emma Watson, Penelope Cruz, Lucy Liu and many others. In 2014, he led a partnership that created the largest music management company in the world. That's Maverick. Ocary he guy personally manages Madonna and you too. Ever heard of them? Right? So that's sort of cool. And that company also. Their clients include Britney Spears, Paul McCartney, Lil Wayne, Shania Twain, and that's just a few of them, right? In 2011, together with with Ashton Kushner and Ron Burke, he co founded VC firm A grade Investments. And they made investments in Airbnb, Spotify, Uber and SoundCloud. In 2015, he and Kushner reformed under the investment vehicle Sound Ventures and have invested in Zenefits, Handy, Robinhood, and Neighborly. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Guy Oceris.
I like that song.
Your parents are sort of proud of you guys just a little bit, right? Woo hoo. That's the list. All right, up next, our second judge, someone I truly love. Ladies and gentlemen, our next judge is the founder and chairman of Lowercase Capital, reported to be one of the most successful venture funds in history. He's a formal Google executive and is best known for Being among the earliest and largest investors in companies such as. Hold on now. Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, Docker, Stripe, Kickstarter. Nice job, dude. He's also done two seasons as a shark on Shark Tank and he has a myriad of accomplishments on many, many lists. But one of the reasons I like him so much, nothing brings him more pride than being than when GQ named him to its worst dressed list for his cowboy shirt obsession. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris second. Good songs too. Everyone picks their walk up music. I always like that fact. Just a little side note for folks to know. All right, next up, talk about a powerhouse. Our next judge is the founder and CEO of Broadband tv, a digital entertainment company which exists to empower creators and inspire audiences. BBTV now achieves more than 30 billion monthly video views and is the third largest video property in the world, following only Google and, sorry about that, Google and Facebook. She's won numerous awards for her contribution to both digital media industry at large and the entrepreneurship. Recently, she was named one of the Hollywood Reporter's most powerful women in global television for the second year running. She was also included in Canada's Top 40 under 40 and Fast Company named her one of the most creative people in business. She has investments in a broad portfolio of businesses and also rolled out equal pay for equal work at broadband tv. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Shahrazad Rafati.
Fair amount of base going.
All right, all right, all right, all right. I mean, as if this isn't impressive enough, we have a little bit more to tell you all. So our final judge, someone who is a very good friend of Salesforce and who we love dearly, has achieved success in multiple sectors. First is a global music artist, and now as a tech entrepreneur and investor. As a future thinker, his creativity and innovation skills have been tapped by companies including 3D Systems, Atom Bank, Beats Electronics, Coca Cola, intel, and Pepsi. Here we go. Now watch out. This is when you're gonna feel bad about yourself. He is a recipient of seven Grammy awards, an Emmy, a Clio, and the World Economic Forum Crystal award recipient. In the world of philanthropy, he's an advocate for equal access to quality education and focuses on STEM skills. His I am angel foundation funds academic programs and robotic clubs for underserved students in Los Angeles and Ferguson, Missouri.
Whoo.
Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Will. I am. Why not, dude? Make it fun, right? All right, all right, all right. So clearly we have a panel of experts not only in multiple fields, but certainly in technology. And we're going to have a little fun so let me tell you a little bit about how this works. Dream pitch grudging criteria is on three main facets the team. Can this team execute the vision? They're putting forth the technology. Have they innovated? Have they used technology in a way that we have not seen before? And that is awesome. And are they ready to run this business? You four know what that looks like, so you four are going to be the ones to make that judging. So let's talk a bit about how dream pitch works. Five minute pitch. There's a loud buzzer. Beware, because it's going to go off and people are coming off the stage. Jen. The judges will have a 5 minute Q&A period, and they will score $250,000 to the company that wins the dream pitch this year. So this is a big, big deal. All right, you ready?
That bear looks pretty sick.
Or a genie. The best. Cody. That's our boy. We love him. He codes. Maybe you'll invest in him, Chris. Anywho, we diverge. Here we go. On, on, on. All right, you guys ready?
Yes.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome pitch number one, Leif from retrolux.
All right, we're really excited to be here at Dreamforce sharing the retrolux story with all you trailblazers. To start, though, I got a really important question for our panel. How many celebrity judges does it take to change that light bulb in the Moscone Center? Will? Can't be more than four, I would say.
Is it a smart one or is it like a traditional?
We're going to get into that. It gets a little more complicated with smart ones. Anyways, I'm going to tell you about a typical retrolex customer that is going to help frame this. Right now, an electrician comes into a building just like the Moscone Center. He takes his pencil and paper and he takes a bunch of notes on what kind of lights are here, where they're at, how many there are, and a bunch of other things. He then gets into his truck, drives back to his office, where he gets on a phone and he calls his brick and mortar distributor, who then calls a lighting rep, who then calls a manufacturer. At the end of the day, they may need to talk to their utility about energy efficiency improvements. They may need to talk to a financing company about financing this project before he even puts a proposal together of what he wants to sell to the Moscone Center. He's probably going to have five different companies and over 10 people involved in that process. And that's before he orders a single product, he sells anything and installs and then commissions. If it's smart building technology. The good news is retrolux is here to really transform the lighting industry. And what we've done is we've built a smart sales platform specifically for the lighting industry and smart building industry that gives him the tools he needs to be more effective in his job. We then connect them to the product suppliers, we connect them to the building owner so that it's a simplified process. Finally, we use a proven process that I developed while I was selling LED lighting technology before the cool kids were doing it to make him even more effective. And the results of our early customers have been pretty profound. They're selling projects 20% cheaper than they used to, 20% faster, and they have 30% more revenue coming out of this. We're really excited because this market is a pretty lucrative market. There's over $600 billion worth of dumb lighting that needs to be replaced with LEDs in non residential buildings today. Our early target market is existing commercial buildings, which is a $20 billion opportunity just for dumb lighting. Adding in smart lighting is an additional $20 billion with a 25% annual growth rate. Add on top of that, smart building technology and the Internet of things, which lighting is uniquely positioned to provide because it's everywhere in our buildings. And and you have a $30 billion market today, growing 25% annually for the next 10 years. Our customers are voting with their wallets. We have three primary ways we make money. The first is through user licenses. We charge the electricians to use our software. Then we work with the property managers to really evaluate their portfolios to find out the best place to install smart technologies. And we charge them as well. Finally, we have a marketplace with our supplier partners. And we earn a royalty on everything that sells through the marketplace. We've had some great traction to date. We launched our paid product in August and we have 75 paying customers already. They've created over 1200 projects to date. Also, we have seven suppliers now that are manufacturers and distributors on our platform, representing over 150 brands. It's a huge testament to the team we've assembled to accomplish this. It all starts with me. I'm Leif Elgathon. I'm the CEO and founder. This is my fifth startup. I've had a failure, but I have two successful operating companies in the lighting industry today. I've also had an exit in the solar development industry. My CTO in the audience here, Brett Adler, has over 20 years of software development experience. Ranging from Fortune 100 companies all the way down to a Y Combinator company. We've built an awesome board of advisors to surround the leadership team to make sure we succeed, including tech luminaires from Silicon Valley, Joe and John, and lighting industry experts Brian, David and David to help us build this product out. And so today, we're confident that Retrilux is uniquely positioned to deploy Salesforce's cloud of clouds in a vertical that's very ripe for disruption. We want to integrate with Salesforce service cloud to make it even easier for these contractors to deploy this technology. We want to integrate with Salesforce IoT to make it even easier to design and deploy IoT and smart buildings. We want to use Salesforce commerce cloud to scale our marketplace and get rid of the inefficiencies in the sales channel. Today, most importantly, we want to integrate with Salesforce Einstein AI to build intelligence all the way across our platform. We're built on Heroku today, and we're really looking forward to the opportunity to have you join us on our journey as we make selling smart buildings easier than selling a light bulb. Thank you. Right on.
I guess my question is, what really makes your product and service unique? Right. What is your competitive advantage?
Yeah, so our competitive advantages fall into a couple of broad buckets. The first one is we're first to market. Combining productivity tools like Salesforce has been known for with a marketplace that allows people to easily access the products that they want to sell into buildings. The second thing that's really unique about what we're doing is combining or connecting the different players in the industry. So you've got product suppliers, contractors, and then building owners. And we bring them all into one experience, so they're not trading paper back and forth to each other. So those are two of our primary competitive advantages.
Just speak to me a little bit more about the competitive landscape. Who are the other players that are out there?
Yeah, so we break our competitors into two primary categories. You got productivity softwares like Salesforce, but really built for lighting companies. And then you have companies that are on what I call online purchasing or E commerce. And so on the productivity side, we've got companies that are, like I said, focused really small on lighting, and then ones that are focused on mechanical, electrical, plumbing. And then Salesforce, which is really broad on the productivity or on the sales side, you've got companies that are focused on lighting, companies that are focused on MEP as well. And then companies like Amazon that are trying to do everything. They only focus on commodities, though. They don't focus on complex sales transactions, which is the industry we're in. That's what makes us really unique. And why you need the productivity software for the marketplace to work.
So sorry, just, I'm going to just. With respect to that question, you had a slide that spoke about the size of the market opportunity. So how much of that is addressable to you? Because it's very obviously a niche offering for the lighting marketplace. Right?
Yeah. So the industry or the numbers we use were the big numbers. That includes the cost of the product, the cost of installation, tax, profit, everything. About 50 to 60% of every single project is the cost of the product. And so that's really our target addressable market.
Thanks.
And how big is your team?
Our team right now is six people. We have six engineers focusing primarily on development and sales.
And how much money have you raised so far today?
We've raised three quarters of a million dollars. We do have a round open today. We're about halfway through it.
When you say you've done 1500 projects.
Since you've started 1200.
1200 projects, what's the average size of each one of those projects?
$40,000. We expect that number to go up to about $50,000.
So just one piece of feedback first. Actually, first, right off the bat, I love seeing the Heroku logo. That was one of my first investments ever. And so cheers takes me back. You know, it's very tempting to have a three way marketplace where you're getting paid all the way across. Like that should be one of the strongest slides in your presentation. But in my experience, I actually think trying to get paid by everybody around the table can actually inhibit growth. It's best when you figure out who depends upon it most and hit them up and let everybody else come and use it for free. And so I encourage you to kind of have that discussion with the team and figure out where you might be able to just give it away and get paid by one person around the table. So in this landscape, it seems like you're obviously displacing somebody. So I'd love to just understand who loves you and who hates you.
Yeah, so the people that love us are the people we call project implementers. They're the ones that build the projects and sell them to the Moscone Center. Upstream of them there are distribution companies, brick and mortar, and there's lighting reps before you get to the people that make the product. Both of those entities are really nervous right now because of Amazon and they're looking for ways to differentiate ourselves. We Think those two need to combine into one or potentially be eliminated. So they're the ones that are by far the most nervous about what we're doing and what the larger trends are in the industry.
You've done a pretty good job of telling this story, and I, and I can see through the story. It seems like it'll be something that one successful customer of yours will be able to easily tell another successful customer of yours. I'm curious, is that something you learned from your failed startup or what other lessons did you take away from failure? I mean, this is one of the only industries where you can wear that, you know, where you can wear Wiping out as a, as a badge of courage and honor. But what'd you take from that experience?
You know, the things that we learned. I learned from other startups was how important team is. And so for this startup, we assembled the right team and got the right people around us to make sure we didn't make mistakes. And so I always recommend people get the right team. Think about the skill sets you need, and then surround yourself with advisors. They really help you see around corners and don't step into things you shouldn't step into. By far the biggest thing that I learned in my previous startups.
My question is kind of a compliment to what guy asked, which is you said you have 150 brands and seven suppliers. How long did it take you to actually onboard those seven suppliers and tell us a little more about the cost of customer acquisition overall?
Great.
We got 15 seconds left, so I'll do my best. Onboarding these companies is actually very difficult. Most of them are using Excel spreadsheets and PDFs for their product list. They're not even on Amazon. So we have to take their Excel spreadsheets that they have all these products in and transform them into something that actually works. Our customer acquisition, Leif.
Great job. Sorry, someone gotta keep time. Good job. Great job. Bravo. That's very hard to do. Congratulations. Congratulations, Leif. Thank you all. Beautiful job. Next up, we have Sarah from Loop and Tie. Come on up, Sarah.
Hello, I'm Sarah. I'm the CEO of Loop and Tie and we've designed a gift choice platform that allows companies to treat their customers to choices of unique gifts all sourced for makers around the U.S. over 600 businesses have treated 56,000 clients and employees to their choice of gifts through our platform representing 2 million in sales. We started Lupin Tie because corporate gifting is dated. It's stuck in the land of branded coffee mugs and gift baskets. And a one size fits all approach. 84% of all US businesses are running at least one gifting program, and they're spending $90 billion a year on these programs. So we see two massive problems. The first is that the product that's being given is uninspiring and wasteful, and nothing is one size fits all anymore. Winning companies know that they need to tailor their customer outreach in some way to the audience, yet gifting doesn't reflect that. And second, elements that we know are integral for successful businesses are not present from a data and tracking and just sort of know your customer standpoint. So loop and tie fixes both of those problems. We make it really easy for companies to create a tailored customer experience. And with loop and tie, gifting is no longer a black hole. It's a source of new data on customer preferences, and it's also a new customer communication channel. So we'll walk through our platform in action. The San Francisco 49ers are one of our customers, and their sales team uses us to send gifts to prospects. They do that because 82% of all gift recipients will write a custom thank you note back to their sender. So when you're in sales, using loop in time means you're going to hear back. So here is an email that they sent me after our meeting, and I get to click in to choose a gift that I like. So I scroll through my gift options and I never see price. The whole process is like taking me shopping, and I choose the item that stands out to me. I enter my shipping address, and at the end I can enter that thank you note. Sending a gift is just as easy. We curate gifts into collections. So a company chooses a collection which is organized by price, and they can also make a selection of a custom collection. So the 49ers customer service team does this, where they've built a collection of fan experiences and merchandise that they can sell as service incidents arise. And in order to send the gift, all they do is upload a list of email addresses and that's it. All of the gift data gets centralized into an engagement dashboard. And so you can see when people open their email what their choices are as well as their thank you notes. And the main point of this dashboard is that we give our companies all the data they need to assess the impact and efficacy of their programs. So choice worked for two of our customers that we'll run through here. The Dallas Stars used us as an incentive to get people to pay faster for their season ticket holder or for their season ticket contracts. And so we were able to double their week one payment rates. And we were also able to drive a survey response where 76% of fans said they're going to renew faster next year. Because of our incentive. And with us, gifting is no longer a sunk cost. One of our customers, Brassfield and Gorey, was able to reuse unused gift credits from one year to the next and save 30%. So we make money on every gift that's sent through our platform. If you send one of our curated collections, we earn 30%. And if you send a custom collection, we charge a transaction fee. So Loop and tie is differentiated by our focus on process. Most other gifting concepts are focused on a product catalog, but any gift supplier can list their products in our marketplace. And we can also integrate with third party customer relationship and customer service tools. So by becoming the way that companies make and manage their gift purchases, we tie into that $90 billion budget in a very sticky way. The concept for Loop and Tie came from a personal gifting problem that I experienced while working at a large investment bank. And I became fascinated with this idea of creating a customer experience that was both scalable and personalized. And I teamed up with our cto, Dimitri, who was the perfect person to help me build and scale this concept. He's built and scaled applications at Info Group, McKins, Microsoft, and Pivotal. By now, I hope it's clear that this is not just about the gift. It's what the gift can do for a smart business. With the funding and support of Salesforce Ventures, we'll invest in product integrations with particular focus in the Salesforce ecosystem, making it even easier to use the gift as a way to understand and communicate with your clients. So that's all. And I'm happy to answer any questions.
You want to go ahead.
I think it goes without saying Amazon is the dominant player in the space. You look at February, 43% of US online sales were done through Amazon. So why would someone go through Loop and Tie instead of going to Amazon? And how are you planning on competing with Amazon?
Sure. So first someone chooses Loop and Tie versus Amazon or any other product supplier because of that process piece that I touched on where sending choice is a really big deal because you drive engagement when someone's an active participant and picking out what they want. And that's why we get that really high response rate. And you're also able to understand what their preferences are. So there's a really great customer example that I love with a commercial real estate firm that used us and the guy saw that his client picked out a yoga mat he would have never known this guy did yoga. And now they go to yoga together. And it's this beautiful relationship building story. And you don't get that when you go to someone like Amazon or another provider and you pick out a specific product. In terms of competing with Amazon, of course nobody wants to go head to head with Amazon, but their kind of main focus being on selling product allows for them to be more of a partner than a competitor because we are selling our platform and this notion that other third party gift suppliers can list with us comes into play.
Thanks.
Cool.
Go ahead.
Will, what happens if someone like Amazon or Amazon makes it a feature? How do you protect yourself then?
Well, you know, we've done a really good job of looking at this whole concept holistically. So we look at, you know, it could be a feature, but maybe, you know, they're not actively selling that into enterprises and installing it in their CRM. That's kind of another standard deviation away. And there's, you know, a whole enterprise sale that happens with what we do that I feel like makes it kind of not, not as obvious of a, of a choice for them. And I forgot you asked a second, second piece of your question and I. No, that was it. Okay, all right. Did I answer it appropriately?
Well, Ashton, my partner and I, we've actually researched this idea. We thought we see a hole as well, but we were always focused on the marketing, the curation. What makes it unique is what you're hearing here is Amazon is clearly hard to compete with. Why can you compete with them because of your curation, that you've got something unique no one else has. Or so and so's gifting. Will's ideas for a music gift or a fashion gift. And you go, oh, well, you can only get that here. You've been around. Now start in 2016. Right.
2015.
2015, yep. So your growth over those years, 15, 16, where do you see yourself from last year to this year? What's the rate of growth?
Sure. So this year we've sold 50% more gifts year to date than we sold last year. 2015 was really us just getting off the ground. So 2016 over 2015 was about 75% growth.
And what's, how do you break out of the 2 million mark into the tens of millions?
So it's really looking at the power of platforms. And so one of the reasons that we're so excited about Salesforce is that the gift should be a part of every prospecting, customer service interaction and Curation is absolutely. One of the pieces of our platform that I think is so fantastic is the ability to allow customers to create their own collections. And I think that's something that could really apply within the music industry. The Colts are another client of ours and they have a ton of excess merch that is just sitting in a warehouse. And they shipped it to us, actually, and we're storing it on their behalf. We made it giftable for them. It's a collection now. And I think that there's a lot of value that. That's just sort of sitting on the sidelines like that.
Right on.
So, first of all, I'm not worried about Amazon because I have made the mistake before of. Well, I. You know, the Dropbox guys pitched to me a long time ago and I was like, well, I worked at Google and we had a product that did exactly this and I passed. And that probably cost me like a billion dollars. So what?
Whoops.
Don't miss out again.
So I will never, ever make the mistake of underestimating a driven founder and startup in the face of a large looming competitor like that that doesn't have your focus and your zeal and your competitive advantages in this case. So I have two main questions. One is how can you leverage the Salesforce platform to actually put even more data behind the value of these gifts?
So.
So traditionally, gifts are thought of on the cost line that, hey, I gotta spend this money to keep my clients happy. But you started showing a little bit of data there about how these things could actually. I'm gonna keep talking, by the way, buzzers be damned. So how can you actually put a little meat behind showing what the value is? And the second question. Cause the buzzer's about to go off. Just give me a second. I need this question. You just showed one of the most diverse team slides I've ever seen for a startup at this scale. Is that a competitive advantage for you?
Do I have time to answer?
Answer them both.
Answer them both it is.
And if you don't invest in us, it'll be the same feeling as if you didn't invest in Dropbox.
Okay.
Awesome. Woo. Good job, Sarah. Good job. Good job.
Not bad. Strong.
That was strong.
Bravo. That was awesome. Nicely done. All right. God love you, Chris.
Saga.
Up next, ladies and gentlemen, Arlo Gilbert Metasas.
Guy, Chris Sharzad. Will all you Dreamforce attendees aloha. My name is Arlo Gilbert. I am the CEO and co founder of Metasas. And I'd like to share a surprising statistic with you that's not it. 31% of SaaS accounts that you have at your companies are completely unused. This creates a tremendous amount of waste. And the way that this waste happens is pretty simple. It's easy to buy SaaS. Employees buy SaaS with their credit cards. They buy it with invoices when managers buy it. And then once they buy it, nobody has any idea who has access to it, how much you're spending on it, or whether the data inside of it is secure. Which means that when it comes time for renewals, you're completely blind. So today I'd like to introduce you to Metasas, one pane of glass for all of your SaaS. Metasas is SaaS. We are a SaaS application in the cloud used through your browser. We bring value to procurement, finance and IT and our primary features that we identify shadow IT. We also identify risk across all of your SaaS platforms and then we identify waste through contract management and spend management tools. We have a very robust product. We have 200 direct integrations into great applications like Salesforce if you plug in your single sign on vendor. We also support an additional 6,000 applications. And when we're scanning for Shadow IT, we have a database of 32,000 vendors that we're scanning against. So when we go into a customer, we do four things. First, we start out with a great big scan of all of the SaaS that they don't know they have. We call that shadow SaaS. That's the stuff that just lurks. And then we go through all of your applications and we identify accounts that you didn't even know had access to all of this SaaS. So there's security. And when it comes time for renewals, you receive proactive notifications with usage data which enable you to right size your contracts at just the right time. So don't take my word for it. Spreadfast is one of our customers. Spreadfast is an Austin based social media management platform. They've grown both organically and through acquisition, which leads to a lot of redundant applications. So when we started with Spreadfast, they had no idea how many applications they had. And by the time we were done, we had discovered more than 148. And this is not unusual, but that's just one example. This massive market is ripe for disruption. SAS this year will be a $46 billion market and $14 billion of that spend is completely wasted. Now if that's not big enough for you, SAS is growing at 18% compounded annually right now. So the reason we decided to start this company is pretty simple. SaaS is one. This year, 50% of all the software that's purchased will be software as a service. The APIs that we need to service our customers are finally available and IT is pulling their hair out with spreadsheets, post it notes and calendar reminders trying to solve this problem, and it's ineffective. They're desperately in need of a complete management solution for their SaaS. So we don't just connect into Salesforce. We actively leverage Lightning, Heroku, and very soon you'll also be able to provision Metasas directly from within the App Exchange. Now, we are a young company, but we're two really great founders. So I've been building companies for 20 years. My first startup I built from my college Dorm room with $10,000 in student loan money. I bootstrapped that company with no investment to a $50 million arrangement. And I had no idea that was even impressive because I was so busy putting one foot in front of the other. My co founder, Scott Hertel, our cto, is a classically trained engineer, manager and architect. He started his career at Accenture and moved his way through Microsoft, Dell, until he got the startup bug and built his own successful healthcare logistics startup. And we're not alone on this journey. We have some great investors whose names you might recognize. Great guys like Mark Cubitt, companies like Barracuda Networks, VCs like Chicago Ventures, and Austin's own center of gravity, the Capital Factory. So, judges, if you select Matasas as the winner for this competition, we're going to use that extra capital to begin going to Channels and hire our first Director of Channel Partnerships, because Channels will be an important part of our growth. So thank you very much.
Well, you certainly showed us right off the bat that sass jokes kill at a conference like this. And you definitely had me right up until you showed Cuban on the slide. I don't know if everyone else had the same reaction I did, but who do you sell this to? Who's the decision maker?
Who buys this?
I mean, it seems like there is the opportunity to capture a lot of spend that's wasted, but who do you ultimately try to get to in the organization and how do you get to them and how do you close them?
So this is a complex challenge we have because it's a new problem. So traditionally what we've been selling to is IT directors, but what we find is that often it's the CFO that's driving the IT team to go solve the problem. And many companies are starting to actually establish cloud management roles and so as those begin to evolve, that will be where we'll target.
First of all, I gotta say I really like the idea and I think this is something that we really need at my company. But so congrats. What I like to better understand is like, when you're looking at like the players out there, you look at Zyla, you look at better cloud. These are players that have been there for a longer period of time and they've raised more money. Tell me a little more about your competitive advantage and maybe your technology. How's it different? How do you differentiate yourself in the market?
Sure.
Well, so one of those companies is a much older company that's pivoted into a kind of tangentially related. And one of them is just a few months older than us. From a competitive standpoint, our big real lead is the fact that we have 200 direct integrations into SaaS vendors. Nobody else has more than nine. And when we go talk to companies, this is usually the reason they decide to pick us.
Thank you.
I think it's pretty badass. You knew the competitive landscape right there. That was, I don't know. That should not go unmentioned.
No, it's actually pretty impressive. I think it's a really good product.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Guys.
Will?
I'm good.
I don't.
Without Salesforce, you know, what is your cost of customer acquisition? You know, you touched on, you know, how many clients you have and you can tell us a little bit. How long does it take you really to onboard? You know, some of these kind of, you know, particularly like, you know, major kind of obviously vendors that you work with.
Yeah. So you mean, you mean onboarding the SaaS vendors?
Yeah, yeah.
So we can build a new integration in six hours. We've built an entire framework. If you think about zapier, it's much like that. We can churn out about 20 new integrations a week. And so we do that in response to customer demand. So what we do for the onboarding is a pretty simple process. We start off by integrating your single sign on vendors and connecting to your financials to scan for shadow SaaS. And then we take a multi phased approach over the next 60 days where we do direct integrations where we can get richer data and provide you with greater insights.
Great, thank you.
Those individual SaaS vendors don't like you very much. And so is there any platform risk you run into as you ping their systems to try and figure out what exposure an enterprise has to them, et cetera? Do you run into an API Risk, do you run into platform risk? I mean, they have every incentive to push you away because you're hitting their top line directly.
So you would think so, but we've even sat down with Salesforce Customer Success Team and they just don't think that way. Really good SaaS companies care a lot about engagement and when their customers have a lot of shelf where that's a problem for them. So what we found is actually that the vast majority of SaaS vendors are quite happy to have us in because not only do we help their customers to raise awareness that perhaps they need more training on the tool because the lack of engagement is not always about the fact that you don't need the product. But in addition to that, we actually expose those SaaS vendors to business units that they wouldn't have otherwise because we provide an employee catalog to every person at the company so that before they buy something, they can quickly go check, do we already have something that does what I need?
So what does the $250,000 mean to you guys? I mean, you've got Mr. Fancy Pants from Dallas, potential 2020 presidential candidate. I mean, how does it move the needle for you guys?
And then I think, to add to that, I think, how much more capital do you need to kind of get to break even? And I know it's early to ask that, but Obviously you raised 1.6 million. This is another 250,000. How much more capital do you think you need?
Sure.
So we've raised 2.1 million. And we did that across a variety of angels, institutionals and guys like Mark. And you know, this is an enterprise product. So we've got a long sales cycle. We have a lot of heavy lifting on the development that we have to do. It's going to be several years before we get to true break even. We're following a pretty traditional path of drinking the venture Kool Aid. So, you know, that money for us really is going to help us get that person that we don't have budgeted for channels because we have a very strict budget. We've got sales, marketing, engineering. But channels is something that I'm owning right now, and quite honestly, I don't have the time to do it.
Well.
Great.
Can you actually answer that, like in terms of number of customers? So, you know, kind of, how do you. How do you. If. Do you track that based on. Okay, if we achieve a million customers, then kind of that's when you can get into breaking.
Yeah, if we achieve a million customers, we'll be bigger than Salesforce Woo.
Don't count your chickens yet.
Our product is very expensive.
Don't count your chickens yet. Come up here. Sarah, come up here. Leave. You stay here. Arlo, stay here. You guys are gonna do your judging. Come on up here. You guys are gonna talk to me for a minute. Big round of applause for all of our contestants. Thank you very much. It's really hard to do that. That's really hard to do. Good job. All of you did great. Okay, so let's chat a little bit. So how did that feel? How was that? Was that okay? Was it. Were you scared?
You know, it's a pretty intense experience, I won't lie. But I think you get a moment of clarity when you walk on stage and you see they're real people and they're here to help support what we're trying to do.
Except for Chris. Yeah, you know, he's tough.
You want him to be. So you wanted to ask the hard questions.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. What do you think, Sarah? How is it for you?
So exciting. You know, as an entrepreneur, you guys know, you work so hard to build something and you hope someone cares. And being in a room as big as this and with people as impressive as this, it's pretty exciting to get to talk to them about something that you love.
Yeah, absolutely, Arlo.
I was just glad I didn't trip going up the stairs.
That's what I'm always scared of, too. I'm like. And she face plants on her way up.
But it's. I mean, what an amazing opportunity to share with all these attendees and to see. Exactly. Like you said, these judges are real people and not just people you see on tv.
Right, Totally. What was the thing you were most worried about happening outside of falling down, which I know I have that fear as well.
But I think missing the beginning of my pitch is always the most scary part, because once I get started, it's pretty much clockwork. But you always worry you're going to get this blank moment and stare into the abyss and not be able to recover, Right?
Absolutely. None of you did that. You all were wonderful. You should feel very happy about yourself. What about you guys? Was there something you were, like, nervous about? More nervous than usual?
Yeah.
I mean, for me, it was just about remembering the order of the slides. You pitch a thousand times, but, you know, you can still. You can still.
So what's the next slide? What's the next slide?
Yep.
Absolutely.
What about you, Sarah?
I'm really wordy, and I wanted to make sure my answers weren't too long.
I Thought you were awesome. Not at all. Who. Who asked? Are you guys done judging? So I'm gonna bring you. Oh, Shahrzad's done, too. Who asked the scariest question? Who are you most scared of to get questions from? Come on. Come on, you can answer it. Don't be scared.
I was more scared of Chris, but Sharzad actually had the bullets.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
She's.
She's silent but deadly. She comes in there and she's got all the. What's your. What's your numbers? What's your. Absolutely. Don't mess with her. What about you guys?
Well, I think, you know, Chris was the one that I was the most scared about. Just because you. He's on Shark Tank and you get to watch him beat people up. But Shahrzad did give the hardest question.
Apparently, you're the hardest judge, but maybe.
With a good delivery, right?
Always. Always.
You realize I only beat up the other judges. I'm actually really nice to the entrepreneurs. I know what that journey is like, but, I mean, with no Cuban, no o' Leary here, I'm just in a good mood. I'm happy to spend time with you guys.
How was this experience for you guys? What was it? I mean, we're judging, we're tallying. Let me tell you all what's happening. We're having a little chat while the official tally is going on behind, and I have someone in my ear that's going to tell me about.
I'd like to say, first off, congrats to all of you for making Dream Pitch. It obviously takes a lot of courage to come on this stage and share your vision and story with all of us and this amazing crowd. So congrats. Being an entrepreneur is obviously not easy. It's a lot of hard work and stress before you actually see success. So I want to commend you on what you have achieved so far, and I hope that this session was really helpful in terms of, you know, kind of giving you some insight in this incredible journey. So congrats.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Go ahead. Go ahead, guy.
I was going to say that, you know, in the nine years I've been investing, one of the best investments I've ever made was in Chrisaka. So I think it was like, a billionaire.
You were the one first guys to commit to us. I appreciate that.
We're really lucky. So I was trying to lean in, but he was so quick. He's got that, like, Southern, like that Western sort of boom, boom, boom, boom. So.
One of the things I'm Encouraged by is. You know, back in olden times, like a few years ago, it was really hard for startups to go after such big markets and such big dollars without raising tens of millions of dollars of venture capital and staffing up with a bunch of cities suits and ties. No offense, but what I'm encouraged by is you guys are startups and yet the numbers you're putting up there, you really do have huge addressable markets. And each of you has a very clear value proposition where you can capture in the beginning millions, but up to tens, hundreds of millions of dollars of value back, whether it's capturing back errant spend that shouldn't be out there, that's really draining. Bottom line for otherwise well intentioned enterprises is whether it's not just helping the bottom line of companies, but actually the environment too. And something I think we all need to care about more and more these days, or whether it's actually turning gifts into something that can make you money, rather, you know, make a giver money rather than just cost them money, which it's fun to have selfish interest in being generous all of a sudden. But all three of you, I think have very coherent businesses for which you really effectively told the stories. And that, that leaves me optimistic and happy about the state of what's going on here.
Thank you.
Yeah. Each one of you guys are approaching your businesses, trying to solve a problem. And the reason why I didn't ask you questions is because you guys expressed and articulated the problem that you saw and solved with the companies that you started. So that's the reason why I stood silent. But at the same time, you know, I'm really inspired by you guys as entrepreneurs. I'm an entrepreneur myself. I believe in it so much that I'll shed my own skin to keep it moving forward. And I encourage you guys, regardless if you get the money or not, do not ever, ever give up on a problem you see, and how you're trying to solve that in the form of a company or a service. So thank you guys so much.
Agreed. Agreed. And we have a winner, actually. We're there, amazingly enough. So this is the moment of truth. And I am very, very, very happy to announce all of you did a wonderful job. You all won in my book. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you. But we do have a winner. And the winner is. Ladies and gentlemen, we are very excited to give. I'm pushing the button to give the award to. I'm announcing it. Lupin time. Here you go, kiddo. Congratulation. Everyone loves the Big Jack.
Thank you.
Come on up here. Let's take a picture all together. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for Dream Pitch. We're going to do it again and again. Put your apps in there, get your ideas into us. We are wicked fired up and proud of you. All right, have a great dream. Forrest. We're taking a picture.
You.
Know, Salesforce has changed my life. I wrote a blog post about this a few years ago that I was never expecting to go, I guess, viral, but it did. And the blog post is titled the best thing I built on Salesforce, my career. And it's true.
I was an at home mom.
I thought I was going to be.
The world's best pediatric surgeon.
I went to school for business. I was not in this industry a.
Couple of years ago.
I went to school to be a lawyer.
I was a cosmetologist and a hairdresser. If you would have asked me 15 years ago if I would have a career in technology, I would have told you you were creating.
You know, and it's not easy to put yourself out there. I think about what is it that makes you excited and happy and passionate? What is it that I really love? Why do I like doing this stuff? Maybe your passion is veterans and your passion might be retail or if you're in banking, you can really take what you learn in Salesforce and you can apply it to any industry.
That was an eye opener for me. This is a huge universe. I can actually start to dream about.
What I want to do.
The power of the Salesforce platform allows you to do so many things.
You can do so much with it.
I'm flying with Einstein.
The sky is the limit. The limit is your imagination.
We're going to bring our customer a level of service that is extraordinary.
That's what it's all about.
It's all about the customer.
I can now talk to case study example of the case study example of.
Where with Salesforce we've been able to pull this off.
That's exciting.
That's where it's been life changing. I never thought I had the ability to do that. And I think Salesforce has not only given me technical skills, it's given me confidence in myself to know that I can achieve these things.
Being a trailblazer is coming out first.
And clearing the path for others.
It's being the voice of the customer.
You're giving them something that they're looking for.
You're always making sure that the best technology is at their fingertips.
These tools actually, actually pushed me to figure out what the best is.
Every day.
All of that is not possible without.
An incredible tool like Trailhead.
The best thing about Salesforce and the smartest thing they've ever done is the community.
It is phenomenal.
The Trailhead community just takes you wherever you need to go.
I somehow found the user group and I went in there and I was actually hoping to pay somebody to help me, and all these people helped me for free. I will never, ever forget. Back yelling and I remember that experience, and I try to recreate that for other people.
It's an amazing example of what an ecosystem can really do when it bands together and focuses on how we can all make each other better.
Where you can not only be proud of the work that you're doing, but.
The people you're doing it with.
That's the magic of Salesforce.
It's changed my life.
It really has.
And it's changed my company and the.
Customers that I work with.
When your customers are happy, your company's thriving.
And when your company's thriving, you're truly at your best. You're at the top of your game.
This is what I was meant to.
Do my whole life.
Being your best is not only having a great career, but it's enabling others to have a great career. And I think that makes me my best.
It.










