417: CV Partner: From Developer to $5.5M ARR Saas CEO - with Erling Linde

Summary

The SaaS Podcast - Episode 417: CV Partner: From Developer to $5.5M ARR SaaS CEO with Erling Lin

Host: Omer Khan
Guest: Erling Lin, Founder and CEO of CV Partner
Release Date: October 24, 2024

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1. Introduction

In Episode 417 of The SaaS Podcast, host Omer Khan interviews Erling Lin, the founder and CEO of CV Partner. CV Partner is a SaaS product designed to help professional services firms manage and showcase their team's resumes and project experiences to secure more bids and proposals. The conversation delves into Erling’s journey from a developer to a CEO, the challenges faced during bootstrapping, the significance of user experience, growth strategies, and the pivotal decision to raise venture capital after a decade of self-funding.

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2. Erling's Inspirational Quote

[04:00]
Erling Lin:
"Working on your circle of influence—focusing on what you can change today—has been super helpful. Instead of being frustrated by bigger systems, I concentrate on building my business, and gradually, my influence expands."

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3. Founding of CV Partner

3.1 Identifying the Problem

[05:03]
Erling Lin:
"CV Partner is for professional service firms—IT consultancies, management consultancies, engineering firms. We help them manage resumes, CVs, and past projects to tailor and showcase their team effectively for bids and proposals."

Erling founded CV Partner in 2011 after recognizing the significant time and effort consulting firms invested in formatting and customizing multiple consultants' resumes for large project bids. Initial attempts included a B2C resume generator, which failed to gain traction, leading him to pivot towards solving the specific pain points of professional services firms.

3.2 Early Development and UX Overhaul

[10:55]
Erling Lin:
"We hired Nicolai, a UX expert, who completely revamped our product's design and usability. This major design shift became a key differentiator for CV Partner."

Despite building an early version of CV Partner, Erling realized that a developer-centric interface wasn't appealing to customers. Feedback from prospects indicated poor design, prompting the addition of a UX expert as a co-founder. This collaboration led to a more user-friendly and visually appealing product, enhancing customer acquisition.

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4. Overcoming Initial Challenges in Sales

4.1 Lengthy and Ineffective Demos

[17:55]
Erling Lin:
"Early sales demos often dragged on for hours, overwhelming prospects. Over time, I learned to streamline pitches, focusing on what customers truly cared about, reducing meetings from two hours to sometimes just ten minutes."

As a developer without sales experience, Erling’s initial demos were exhaustive, often extending beyond customer interest. Through experience and possibly insights from sales literature, he developed the ability to recognize when to conclude a demo, making the process more efficient and less taxing for both parties.

4.2 Building Customer Relationships

[16:20]
Erling Lin:
"We approached the local market, engaging with smaller consultancies open to Lean Startup and Agile methodologies. By continuously refining our pitch based on customer feedback, we maintained open doors for ongoing dialogues and eventual sales."

Persistent engagement with prospects, even after initial feedback, allowed CV Partner to refine its product and sales approach. Erling emphasized the importance of not fearing rejection and recognizing that opportunities for follow-up often arise later.

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5. Growth Strategies and Channels

5.1 Conferences as a Growth Channel

[26:24]
Erling Lin:
"Attending and speaking at conferences was pivotal. We connected with similar companies and potential customers by engaging with them during breaks and leveraging our conference presentations to build credibility."

Conferences provided a platform for CV Partner to showcase its product, network with potential customers, and establish authority in the industry. Submitting talks enabled Erling to gain stage presence without incurring high costs, effectively using events to drive growth.

5.2 Inbound Marketing: SEO and Google Ads

[33:55]
Erling Lin:
"Inbound leads from SEO and Google Ads were consistently successful. We focused on optimizing for relevant keywords and creating targeted content, although it required ongoing tweaking to avoid attracting irrelevant traffic."

By investing in SEO and targeted advertising, CV Partner attracted leads organically. This approach complemented conference-based networking and word-of-mouth referrals, creating a diversified growth funnel.

5.3 Word of Mouth

[33:25]
Erling Lin:
"Satisfied employees often carried CV Partner to new organizations when they changed jobs, enhancing our word-of-mouth growth. A great user experience and onboarding process made the system easy to adopt and recommend."

The quality of CV Partner’s user experience fostered organic referrals, leveraging the professional networks of existing customers to expand the user base without substantial additional marketing expenditure.

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6. Transition from Bootstrapping to Venture Capital

6.1 Decision to Raise Funds

[06:35]
Erling Lin:
"After ten years of bootstrapping and reaching $4 million ARR, we realized that external capital could accelerate our growth. This transition allowed us to expand faster than relying solely on revenue."

Bootstrapping provided financial discipline and organic growth but eventually limited the company's ability to scale rapidly. Recognizing the opportunity to expedite expansion, Erling opted to raise venture capital.

6.2 Impact of Raising VC Funding

[45:31]
Erling Lin:
"Raising VC funding aligned our ambitions with investor expectations. The support from our Norwegian VC has been invaluable, providing professional board meetings and strategic insights that have propelled our growth."

Securing VC funding introduced new dynamics, including increased expectations for growth and scalability. However, the support and expertise from investors facilitated more structured and accelerated expansion efforts.

6.3 Adapting Team and Operations

[44:30]
Erling Lin:
"Transitioning from a bootstrapped team to a larger organization required hiring customer success personnel in new geographies to ensure effective onboarding and localized support."

Expansion into new markets necessitated strategic hiring to manage regional operations, maintain customer satisfaction, and support the growing global customer base.

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7. Lessons Learned and Best Practices

7.1 Sales Efficiency

[24:17]
Erling Lin:
"Focus on the main workflow and value of the tool during demos. Avoid overcomplicating the presentation with unnecessary features. Understand the client's needs and tailor the demo accordingly."

Erling emphasizes the importance of delivering concise, value-driven demos that address the specific pain points of prospects, avoiding the temptation to showcase every feature indiscriminately.

7.2 Importance of Delegation

[50:36]
Erling Lin:
"Delegation is crucial. As soon as you figure out how to do something, delegate it. It might take longer initially, but over time, it becomes efficient and frees up your capacity to tackle bigger challenges."

Delegating tasks effectively allows leaders to focus on strategic initiatives, fostering scalability and operational efficiency within the organization.

7.3 Maintaining a Growth Mindset

[50:06]
Erling Lin:
"Successful founders need to reinvent themselves regularly. Roles evolve from coding to sales to strategic leadership, requiring adaptability and continuous personal development."

Adaptability and the willingness to evolve are essential traits for founders navigating the multifaceted challenges of growing a SaaS business.

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8. Lightning Round Highlights

8.1 Best Business Advice Received

[48:43]
Erling Lin:
"Take control of the pipeline. Shift from being reactive to proactively pursuing opportunities, enabling more consistent and manageable growth."

8.2 Recommended Book

[49:21]
Erling Lin:
"The Revenue Architecture by Jacko Founder Coy. It contextualizes SaaS models and provides a framework to assess and implement growth strategies effectively."

8.3 Attribute of a Successful Founder

[50:06]
Erling Lin:
"The ability to reinvent yourself regularly, adapting to evolving roles and challenges within a growth company."

8.4 Personal Productivity Habit

[50:36]
Erling Lin:
"Delegation. Freeing up personal time by entrusting tasks to others enhances overall productivity and operational efficiency."

8.5 Fun Business Idea

[51:14]
Erling Lin:
"Integrating tech and AI into the food and wine industry. While not lucrative, it's a passion project close to my heart."

8.6 Fun Fact

[51:34]
Erling Lin:
"I own a 250-year-old farm in Norway—it's my digital detox, allowing me to reconnect with nature and unwind from the digital world."

8.7 Passion Outside Work

[52:15]
Erling Lin:
"Food and wine. I'm passionate about exploring wine regions, grape varieties, and integrating technology into this domain someday."

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9. Conclusion

Erling Lin’s journey with CV Partner underscores the importance of identifying a genuine market pain point, prioritizing user experience, iterating based on customer feedback, and strategically leveraging growth channels. His transition from a bootstrapped developer to a VC-backed CEO highlights the balance between organic growth and accelerated expansion facilitated by external funding. The insights shared offer valuable lessons for SaaS entrepreneurs aiming to build, launch, and grow their businesses effectively.

For more information about CV Partner, visit cvpartner.com. To connect with Erling Lin, find him on LinkedIn or at erlingvpartner.com.

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This summary captures the essence of Episode 417, omitting advertisements and non-content sections to provide a coherent overview for those who haven't listened to the episode.

Transcript

[Omar Khan]

Welcome to another episode of the SaaS podcast. I'm your host Omar Khan, and this is a show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business. In this episode, I took to Erling Lin, the founder and CEO of CV Partner, a product that helps professional services firms manage and showcase their team's resumes and project experience to win more bids and proposals. In 2011, Erling was working as a developer and decided to start his own business. After several ideas that didn't take off, he discovered a significant pain point in consulting firms the enormous amount of time and effort spent formatting and tailoring dozens, sometimes even hundreds of consultants resumes for large project bids. He built an early version of cvpartner to address this issue, but soon realized his developer design interface wasn't enough to win over customers. After blunt feedback from a prospect about the poor design, he brought on a UX expert as a co founder to overhaul the product's design and usability. This major design shift became a key differentiator for CV Partner. The early days were difficult. Erling had no sales experience and his initial demos often dragged on for hours, overwhelming prospects. Over time, he learned how to streamline his pitch and focus on what customers really cared about, and growth was also slow but steady. Erling bootstrapped the business for 10 years, relying on conferences, SEO and word of mouth to acquire customers. Today, CV Partner generates over five and a half million dollars in ARR, employs 42 people across five countries, and is currently expanding into North America. In this episode, you'll learn how Erling went from a developer to a salesperson to a CEO, learning new skills as the company grew why having a great user experience was key to getting customers to recommend them how the team balanced getting customers through inbound marketing with building a more active sales team. We talk about why Erling decided to get VC money after 10 years of bootstrapping and how it's changed the business and how CV Partner is navigating the challenges of expanding into North America and what they're learning as they grow. So I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by attio, the Next Generation of CRM. Now imagine a world where your CRM is powerful, easily configured, and deeply intuitive. Well, ATIO makes that a reality. You can set it up in less than a minute, and in seconds of syncing your email and calendar, you'll see all your relationships in one place, all enriched with valuable data. You can also build Zapier style automations. Get powerful reports and seamlessly handle any go to market motion. From PLG to sales led. Atio is designed for the next era of companies like yours. So it's time to say goodbye to inflexible one size fits all CRMs and join industry leaders like elevenlabs, replicate modal and more to scale your startup to the next level. You can try Atio for [e-mail] that's attio.com Are you building a software product? Then you probably know how challenging it is to find competent engineers. You don't have to micromanage. And then you have all those worries. Will this app work correctly? Can it handle millions of users without crashing? Can I trust these developers when I don't know what they're doing? That's where Axle Hub comes in. With 10 years of software experience, they do things differently. You'll work directly with Phil, their CEO and technical leader. No middlemen, no managing multiple developers. Phil guides the entire process and personally oversees your product. Think of him as your technical co founder minus the equity stake. He brings his expert team to build your app right from day one. Ready to make quality software without the headaches, visit axlehub.com that's a x e l h u b com Erling, welcome to the show.

[Erling Lin]

Thank you so much. Omer. A pleasure. Pleasure to be here.

[Omar Khan]

Do you have a favorite quote? Something that inspires or motivates you that you can share with us?

[Erling Lin]

Yeah. So one thing that's definitely been helpful for me is a quote from a book called Seven Habits. So highly successful people. So it's about working on your circle of influence, meaning work on the things you can change today and then gradually your circle of influence will expand and you can solve the bigger problems. And for me, that's been super helpful. Instead of being frustrated or spending time on fighting these bigger systems or things you can't do anything about, focus on what you can do something about, like building my business. And then eventually, as it expands, you get perhaps the opportunity to influence a bit more.

[Omar Khan]

I need a constant reminder of that as well. I tell people, other people, look, do you have any kind of control over this? And they go, no. It's like, well, why are you worrying about it? Go and tackle something that you can control. And then I find myself doing the same thing. It's like, anyway, so tell us about CV Partner. What does the product do? Who's it for? And what's the main problem you're helping to solve?

[Erling Lin]

Yes. So CV Partner is for Professional service firms. So IT consultancies, management consultancies, engineering firms, and we help them manage their resumes, CVs and past projects in particular for when they need to tailor them and showcase their people in the best possible way to win bids, tenders and proposals.

[Omar Khan]

Okay, great. Yeah, I want to dig into that a little bit later because when you said that in terms of like managing cvs, that's open to so much misinterpretation and I think you suffered some of that. Right. In terms of the type of people at some point you were attracting with the product. So I think it's going to be interesting conversation to just dig into a bit more, give us a sense of the size of the business where you. In terms of revenue, customers, size of team.

[Erling Lin]

Yeah, so we're about five and a half million US dollars in ARR at the moment. We have offices in five countries, 42 employees, grew 47% in 2023 and currently expanding into North America.

[Omar Khan]

And the business was founded 2011, 2012. And you bootstrapped for the first 10 years. You got to what, like 4 million in ARR before you raised some VC funding?

[Erling Lin]

Yes. So we went on a long bootstrapping journey and initially the plan was to do that forever, but at some point we realized we could potentially go a bit faster with some external capital. So that's been big change for us, but also a great opportunity to learn and do more.

[Omar Khan]

Great. So let's go back to, I guess 2011. Where did the idea for CV Partner come from and what were you doing at the time?

[Erling Lin]

Yes, so I. My background as a software developer, IT consultant. So I did work in IT consultancies, but I also spent a few years in London in the UK and I worked in. I guess this was at a time when, you know, Lean Startup. The book had just come out. It was like all the hype everyone was doing, testing ideas, validating, iterating. So at some point I decided to. I wanted to start my own business. I had lots of terrible ideas, but one of them was trying to help at the time it started as a more a B2C. So I wanted to help people apply for jobs or in particular like making this like resume generator. That was not a very successful business. But I had dinner with some friends who had started their consultancy and they reminded me that in order to win public bids, they have to put together a team of consultants. They have to go through each resume, highlight the projects, rewrite the summary, kind of really tailor it so that they look the best possible for the people evaluating the bid. And on top of that they also have to format it. So they might have their resume template with their company logo and they have a way they want it to look like. But actually the government, even in, like in the US or in the eu, they all have like, they say you have to deliver it on this format and they keep changing those formats. So they spend evenings and nights copy, pasting, formatting Word documents just to submit these tenders. So that was the pain we then set out to solve.

[Omar Khan]

That wasn't specific just to Norway. Right. Because you say you were working in London at the time as well. Because I just assumed consulting firms just sent a proposal. Right. I had no idea that all of this was going on behind the scenes.

[Erling Lin]

Now they are scored on, they get these, they need to win these frame agreements, for example, and they then have to prove that they have the capacity to deliver people on these projects for the next five years. So they might have to showcase like 100 consultants and prove that they have 10 people, people with 10 years experience in this role. They work with this technology, they worked with this, they have these certifications. So it's like a lot of things to prove. And all of that is documented in the CVs or resumes and it varies from country to country, but the gist is the same.

[Omar Khan]

Got it. Okay. So you were into the lean startup at that time, so you've got this idea and then you did all the lean startup stuff perfectly next. Right?

[Erling Lin]

Not so sure about that. But what I tried to do at least was to focus on the customer and I tried to get customers from day one. So I called everyone I knew and didn't know in the consulting industry at the time and I said, is this a pain for you? And if I solve it, will you pay for it? So they all said yes, in the beginning, of course, if I solve it. But then I started building it, started to show it to them and then I obviously kept asking, you know, will you pay for it? And as it became better and better, I would say one day one of them said to me, like Erling, this is really good functionality, but it looks completely. So that. That's when I, you know, took a step back and decided to hire my co founder, Nicolai, who is a user experience expert. And yeah, it's, it's, it's one. Because now the user experience is one of our main selling points on why people love the tool.

[Omar Khan]

So it was a developer designed product at first, yes. Only developers know what that really means.

[Erling Lin]

Exactly.

[Omar Khan]

So why Was the design or the UX an issue if it's really like a tool that they're using on the back end? Or was this because this was the same tool that they were going to put in front of clients to present this information? Right. Or was it just because it was difficult to use? Like, why did they care about it if it solved the problem?

[Erling Lin]

So I guess some of it might have been, you know, personal preference and all that, but I think we also have at least two type of users, if I simplify it. So you have the people at work putting the bids together. So a bid team or their salesperson could be the marketing department and they. They can learn to. To use perhaps a clunky tool. But then you also need to get the data. And that actually means that each consultant in the company, and it can be thousands of them or engineers, they need to access the user interface and they actually need to update their resume or cv. And for that to be successful, it has to be super simple and really nice to use. And they. They won't go in and update their resume every day. They might do it once a month or once every two months. And then the user experience has to be like, super nice each time so that the data, the quality of the data that goes in is good as well.

[Omar Khan]

Right. Okay, so you've kind of identified this issue in terms of the product design could be better. But how did you. Did you already know Nikolay?

[Erling Lin]

Yes. We had actually met like a year before on an event called a startup weekend, where you have 48 hours to try an idea and see if it can become a business. So we did try out an idea. It did not become a business, but we definitely learned to know each other. And I knew he had that sort of complement, complementary skill sets that I so desperately needed, so.

[Omar Khan]

Got it. Okay. And what was your pitch to him and how. How easy or hard was it for him to, you know, say yes and join? Because, you know, it's hard enough to find. You know, we all know it's hard enough to find a co founder who fits, but then actually persuading them to say yes, that's. That's just as hard. Right. So what was that experience like for you?

[Erling Lin]

Yeah, so the thing is, I think he was just finishing his master's degree at the time, so I did call him and say, like, what's your plans for the fall? And he said, like, I'll come and work with you.

[Omar Khan]

So I said yes.

[Erling Lin]

So actually that wasn't too hard, but okay, great.

[Omar Khan]

So he comes on Board and you, like, number one priority at that time is like, okay, we got to fix this ui. How long did that take?

[Erling Lin]

I was an iterative process, but I think we got quite far in like a few months time, probably six months time. It was completely redone. I think in the beginning he thought that he could just sit and design stuff and then I would implement the design. But at some point he said to me, I'll have to learn CSS and take this job from you, because otherwise it will never be good enough. So he. He learned that, and then he started polishing and fine tuning, and everything happened.

[Omar Khan]

What was the rest of the tech stack, the product that you built first?

[Erling Lin]

Oh, at that point of time, it was Ruby on Rails, MongoDB, and Backbone JS, I think, all running on Amazon Web Services.

[Omar Khan]

Okay, cool. So you guys spend a few months, improve the design, the look and feel of the product. Did you have any paying customers at that point?

[Erling Lin]

We got one around that time, yes. Yes. But we. It did take a while and. But we kept going out to the customer, showing them the improvements of the product, asking them, are you willing to pay now? And they, you know, after adjusting the ui, they, you know, if we got closer and closer, they maybe said, okay, but what about this thing? And then we went back and fixed it.

[Omar Khan]

So that's a really interesting point that you just made. When I talk to a lot of founders who are at this stage, they often feel like, okay, I've got an opportunity to talk to a customer and this is my one shot, and if I don't nail this, they will never be a customer and I will have blown it and the world will end and all of that stuff, and you did something pretty smart, which was you said you kept on going back to them. Right. So for someone who's in that situation now, like, just kind of explain, like, what, you know, is it about you just lucky. And these people are like, hey, Erlene, you know, we got all the time in the world. Keep coming back. It's all good. Was it about you trying to frame the meetings in a certain way? You know, what allowed you to keep that door open with them and for them to keep saying yes to making time to see what you were doing?

[Erling Lin]

I think it's a combination of things. So we did approach the local market so we can walk to their offices. Basically, something like the consultancies that would be around us, they would also be on the smaller size, so we kind of go off market, more enterprise later. But they were a smaller size, and I Guess not all of them, but many of them were also bit excited about either Lean Startup or Agile. There was some way sort of forward leaning. But yeah, I think we also did frame it like that. We have look, we call them is this a problem? And we have a solution that we're willing to look at it. We're not sure completely done yet, but we would love to, to show it to you. But we also kept asking just straight up like okay, will you buy it? And then that's when you get the proof right so you can actually get the real feedback and go back and fix it. So no, I don't think that was so I do, I guess my take is that there is you can always go back later. So maybe not the exact same person, but organizations, people change roles and jobs and new people come in and new initiatives. So it's like you know the timing window where it's a good time to pitch your product. That, that might vary but I don't think you should be too afraid to kind of you fail at the first time. There will be opportunities later most times.

[Omar Khan]

And how long did it take for you to go from that first customer to the first 10?

[Erling Lin]

So that might have been a year or so. I would say yeah, it probably was. I remember obviously I was an engineer. I now had someone helping me with the UI ux but telling was still a mystery to me. So I was, you know, I was technically confident. But the. When you sit down with a potential customer and you talk and you leave the meeting, I had, I had no feeling or no clue if that was a good meeting or a bad meeting. And I remember like the early days we were doing, we were doing demos and we demo everything, every single functionality in the tool, every button and we would always, always get into trouble because there was some quirk, some bug, something that didn't work as the customer wanted it to do. And you started like explaining and you kind of tried to hot fix it because you could program sometimes and it just like, you know, I think the initial meetings lasted two hours. So I guess some people signed up in the end just out of exhaustion. But that was I guess something that I have since developed and improved on. So I think, not sure how exactly it started, but I must have read a book or something must have clicked because at some point I started kind of okay when they give me that sort of signal or cue that means they are hooked and they're kind of happy. And actually I should just leave now. I should not keep going for another 90 minutes. So I started doing this whenever I felt that sort of, okay, they bought it now or they bought into it, I should, I should now leave or stop doing the demo. That those meetings went from two hours to, you know, sometimes 10 minutes.

[Omar Khan]

Wow. And was it, was there a particular book or a couple of books that helped you figure that out or was, was this just kind of doing this over and over again and saying, yeah.

[Erling Lin]

I tried to remember because it's like 10 years ago, I can't remember a specific book. But I do remember, like how to sell B2B software, like Googling that and buying some books from Amazon. And there might have been some takeaways from there. But I think also it's like the sort of pattern recognition you get after a while by doing it again and again and again. And then as an engineer, like, you know, initially, you know, this is like people that they're not machines. How does this work? But then eventually actually you start seeing patterns and you can start reasoning about it and you get sort of more. Yeah, it starts becoming more of a thing and you can start improving.

[Omar Khan]

Give me one example of like a signal that you saw in a meeting that said to you, shut up, don't keep talking.

[Erling Lin]

I think these days when I do this presentation is like, obviously you try to understand the client a bit where they are and if this problem is relevant to them at all. But then once you kind of maybe start showing the tool and if you, you see that, if they say that, oh, this is amazing, this could help me solve so much and you kind of show them like the high level way it works, there is no reason to kind of, you know, jump in just to show them like the user administration or the compliance settings like you got them, you maybe you should set up another meeting to follow up. Or like, depending on the size of the customer, it might be, you know, still 20 more minutes meetings before you end up with a deal. But at least this meeting you've done, you kind of, this was the purpose to get them hooked and willing to go to the next stage.

[Omar Khan]

And you said that, you know, that was often the signal for you to say, I need to leave now. But was this, you know, what did you do to try and close a sale or to at least get to the next step? Like, you weren't just like, okay, great, I'm just walking out now, right? You were trying to. Yeah.

[Erling Lin]

Yes. No, I wouldn't say that. I have to go. But then I said, okay, I will, you know, if this sounds good. You know what? Well, these days Anyways, like, you know what. What do you actually need to. For me to be able to make like a more formal decision? Isn't it like, you know, do you have to talk to more stakeholders? Are there more people we should convince? Should I just send you a quote? Do we have to go through some procurements and security? I mean, eventually you become more proactive, right? Because in the beginning, I think what happened is that they said like, okay, well, I guess this is story from when we went from like smaller clients where, you know, maybe there was like one meeting with a stakeholder and then one meeting with a CEO, and then it's all done, right? But then as you start getting bigger clients, they. You convince someone and you say, okay, will you buy it? And they're like, yes, but you need to show it to these people. And then, okay, yes, but actually, can you send some security documentation? And then, yes, but actually, can we have a data privacy agreement? And then, yes, but actually you need to talk to procurement, which will squeeze you on price. And then, yes, but you also need to talk to it. So now having, like, in the beginning, you just had to do that and it took forever and it felt like completely powerless over that. But these days you can obviously be proactive and you can basically ask them, like, who checks the contract? Do we have to talk to procurement? Who's your it, you know, CTO or VPO IT that we need to talk to? And you can try to streamline that a bit more and do more of this in parallel. So I think it's. Yeah, in the beginning you have to kind of figure out that path. But as you soon you start to see patterns, you can be more efficient.

[Omar Khan]

What did you do for the demo to get it down to, like, a lot shorter than two hours. So clearly you weren't like, demoing everything. Like, you know, here's our privacy page and all of this stuff. Right. But how did you figure out these are the things that I need to show this particular person who's in front of me right now?

[Erling Lin]

I think I focus on, like, the main workflow and the main value of the tool. Like, this is like, you can search and find people, you can tailor and you can export. And that's like, you don't have to make it more complicated than that. And then if they start, you know, asking, but what can I search for this and can I filter? Can I reorder? Like, can I do? Then you can show that, but, like, you just need to get them to understand the basics and buy into that. I Think that's and I guess what would give them the most value in there. But I think just, you know, put yourselves in their seats. Like when you get a demo for a tool, like I'm not able to focus for even 30 minutes, not, you know, not close to 45 or 60 minutes. It's like someone just have to explain it to me in the simple terms first.

[Omar Khan]

Yeah, it sounds like what you started doing was like telling them sort of what were the key things that the product did and then answer some of the questions about the how in terms of, you know, like can you filter on search results and stuff like that. But once you've built the product and you're really proud of hey, this search thing can do xyz, right. It's like you kind of assume everybody else is going to be excited about that, right? So you're like, oh yeah. And they're not right? They don't care. So okay, great. So now we've got a product that has a better ui, better design. You've done enough of these two hour sales calls to know what not to do and you're getting better, better at doing that. So presumably you're starting to close more of these deals now. How are you finding customers? So obviously you had the local, you know, consulting firms that you could go to, but you're getting to the point now where it's like you need a bigger pool of leads. And so how did you find more people?

[Erling Lin]

Yes, so I think the first sort of channel that we used which was beyond our kind of immediate network and reach was to started to go to these conferences. So there's a couple of conferences and we started noticing that, you know, similar companies to the clients we already have were going to the same conferences and they, they would typically have kind of booths on the, on, on, on the conferences and they were actually there to sell as well. But I noticed that during the talks they were quite bored. So that's when you could approach them. So I just like, you know, hey, how's it going in the breaks? And I just went from one to another and typically we would have a customer there so I could just point like they are customers and they are now also customers. Maybe you should. So that was like a way to do it. I think in the beginning we couldn't even afford the tickets for these conferences. So I had to submit the talk to have a presentation and then get in the door. But that was a quite successful channel for us in the beginning.

[Omar Khan]

Okay, so what we said the talks was like, you didn't want to necessarily do the talk, but it was like it was a way of not paying for a ticket.

[Erling Lin]

Exactly. I can't remember if it was any good or not. It's probably a slack, mediocre.

[Omar Khan]

Did the talk help? Like I would have thought getting some stage time or in front of attendees to talk about whatever might be a good thing?

[Erling Lin]

Yes, to some extent it helped. Because you had more credibility and you had a cooler badge. Yes, absolutely.

[Omar Khan]

So, yeah, right. So when you're, when you're wandering around the kind of, you know, the event and going booth to booth, what. Tell me what like a typical conversation.

[Erling Lin]

Would look like at those conferences. It was like you could. For me, then I could start asking them like, you know, do you actually do spend time on formatting resumes or cvs? And because of the people that were there, the odds that they would say yes to that question is quite high. So if they said yes, then you, obviously, you had a conversation going and you could, that you could start talking a bit more about how you solve that problem. And then, you know, sometimes that was the right person to talk to. And that led to maybe a meeting after the conference as well. And that was kind of the start.

[Omar Khan]

I mean, it's so, it's so obvious, yet so many people fail to do it, which is just asking people if they have this problem that you're solving. Right. Because if they say, no, I don't have that problem. Right. You don't, you don't have to waste any more time with them. Right. Or you can try to figure out what other problems they do have. But this, this mistake that so many kind of early stage founders make, which is just assuming that the person has the problem and just getting into the pitch of how we, we solve this stuff. And it's, it's a lot more effective and I think it's a lot easier as well when you're just asking them questions. Do you have this problem? Okay, how are you trying to solve it? Or are you trying to solve it? And do you have to deal with this? Or when you have a bid, do you have to go through xyz? Right. Because that's super helpful both in terms of understanding your customers or your potential customers. But then it makes the sales process a lot easier as well. It makes the demos a lot easier and all that stuff because you know their situation better. Right. So ask more questions. So great. So you went through that process, you figured out, you know, you had these conversations with them on their breaks. What was the next step like how did you try to walk away and sort of turn it into, you know, an opportunity time?

[Erling Lin]

I guess we obviously tried to capture their contact details and then tried to set up a meeting, a follow up, which, you know, hopefully they would still be interested and in the mode of maybe potentially solving that problem. Right. But I think we also learned lessons lately from events that, you know, you might have a really good connection at an event and then you come back and if you email them a week later, you know, there's all kinds of excuses for not talking to you. So I think probably actually April Dunford told me this, but I think she said that like the half life of lead from an event is like, you know, it's 24 hours. You have to, you know, you have to try to, you know, the best thing is to book the meeting there and then bring up your calendar and get them to commit.

[Omar Khan]

Yeah, it's kind of mind blowing, what a difference that can make. Because when someone is kind of so excited, you assume they're going to be excited when you call them a couple of days later. And as I think most people have found, you might get those excuses, they might just ghost you. And it's like you can't even get another opportunity to talk to them. And in many ways just kind of, I guess, forcing it right there. And then it's like, okay, great, here's my calendar, when are you available? That kind of thing. At the very least you're going to figure out you're either going to get a commitment and a date schedule to go and talk to them again or you're going to realize they were just trying to be nice to you and they didn't really care. And that's, that's good as well. Right. So you know, it's just like, I think it's sometimes we're just afraid to get rejected. Right. So it's like it's easier just to say, oh, give me, you know, let me have your email and we'll do this later. Okay, great. So lots of useful lessons there in terms of the events. Was that the main growth channel that you use to get to like the first million in ARR?

[Erling Lin]

I would say there's like two other growth channels that's also been kind of consistently successful for us. And one is like just inbound leads from SEO, Google Ads, things like that, that would be a bit more from, you know, a global stage. So it's like you wouldn't really know where that next lead might come from. Whenever someone like Google CV Management system Or something like that. But and then, and then as we started getting like a critical mass of customers, what we started noticing as well is that the employees in these consultancies, they change jobs sometimes, right. They jump to the competitor or they move to a just sort of type of consultancy and maybe a slightly different industry. And they would, if because of the user experience and the onboarding experience, I guess we being very helpful, then they would take the system with them. So word of mouth and inbound has been like really two really good dandy growth channels for us. It's not necessarily so. The word of mouth is a function in a way, or the number of customers or users we have. So over time, you get more and more as you grow, I would say. And then the inbound has been super useful, but also something which, depending on the space you are in, you may or may not be able to scale indefinitely. So now we're also looking into other channels.

[Omar Khan]

Okay, so let's unpack the inbound. So I think this was mostly SEO and some Google Ads, right?

[Erling Lin]

Yes.

[Omar Khan]

Was this just about like optimizing your site and some pages for keywords, or were you regularly creating new content and publishing articles? Like, what were you doing to build up this traffic?

[Erling Lin]

In the beginning, I would say it was about tweaking. Yes, we built some content, some blog posts with certain keywords. Kept doing that for SEO purposes. But it also took us a while to kind of have the marketing function that we needed that would constantly produce high quality content. I think in the beginning it was more about getting the keywords out there.

[Omar Khan]

Okay. So I guess what I'm trying to figure out is like how much work you had to do to and how long it took for you to start to see some of these inbound leads coming in. And again, I think for, I mean, obviously we've got to kind of put this into context. This was like 10 years ago. And what you could do with SEO 10 years ago versus today is dramatically different. But I think I'm just curious, like, you know, like how you went about kind of building this inbound engine.

[Erling Lin]

Oh, it was, I guess one thing that springs to mind is obviously one thing is bidding for these keywords, but a lot for us, it was also figuring out which keywords we shouldn't bid for because we got a lot of kind of traffic that we didn't want. People that was looking for a resume tool like the one I built initially for applying for a job or confusing it with a recruiting system or something like that. So the CV or resume Word is difficult to optimize for. So you get this tiny long tail of words which may or may not have the volume you need in order to optimize for it. So it was also a lot about tweaking that. My colleague Andreas spent quite a lot of time on that in the beginning.

[Omar Khan]

And what was the. Were you, have you been mostly sales led? Did you introduce some kind of product component? Like once you got this inbound visitor turning into a lead, were they able to sign up and start using the product or was this just requesting a demo or something like that?

[Erling Lin]

It's always been that sort of. You have typically you would do a demo and I think that also because we started with companies maybe like 40, 50 employees and then we gradually grew into like up to a thousand and now we are in like you know, 10, 20,000 employees size. And I think what. So I went to a workshop with this guy called Jackal who's written this like huge book called the Revenue Architecture. I think he has like for me that explained a few things. It's like if you have very high volume, low price or low ACV transactions, then you can't have a sales team doing a demo for each one of them. That's too expensive. Right. And also the expectation from the customer is to just click and put in the credit card and get started. But I think we moved quite quickly upwards like some like mid size to enterprise segment where they do expect more of a hands on, there is more of a procurement process, there is more compliance to check. So the PLG type of motion made less sense for us. That doesn't mean that every now and then we get like a smaller sign of that. We think okay maybe we should you know, have some self serve version which could make it easier. But it's not the target segments that we're targeting. It probably isn't a perfect match with a PLG motion.

[Omar Khan]

So given where your business is today, what happens if you know somebody with a two person company comes in and requests a demo? Are you still going through that process or are you just like it goes.

[Erling Lin]

Through a very lightweight process on that.

[Omar Khan]

So we talked about SEO, some Google Ads, the conferences and word of mouth as being these, these main growth channels getting you to the first million. You, you continued growing the business up to like 4 million ARR. Before you, you raised, decided to raise funding. Was it again just doubling down on those, those areas, you know, build a great product general, you know, drive more word of mouth, keep going to these events or did you start doing other things as well?

[Erling Lin]

No, I think from 1 million to 4 million. I think we started to grow abroad. So we at the time we had started in Norway and we got our first sort of Swedish customer, our first Danish customer. We grew up into a few other industries so we were kind of expanding geographically and also slightly into adjacent industries to be able to keep going.

[Omar Khan]

And what was the playbook? Just again going to more events, doing more adwords?

[Erling Lin]

Yes, at the time, yes. So I think what we, but what maybe we did, which we've done a few times now, is that as soon as you start getting like a lead from a different country or region and sometimes you have to translate the ui, sometimes you have to find someone local who can onboard them. So we've several times like instead of hiring a salesperson first, we actually hired a customer success person first in a new geography so that we can, we can sort of sell from another country. But they need to be and believe that they will be taken care of and actually successfully onboard for that. Sometimes you need a local person.

[Omar Khan]

So you were a first time founder with CV partner, you were a developer and hadn't done sales so you had to learn how to do that as well. You tried doing the design but then decided that probably wasn't something that you were going to keep doing. What about the hiring? Did you have experience in hiring and building a team before you started this business?

[Erling Lin]

No, absolutely not. So that has been obviously a learning journey. And also I think, yeah, looking back at it, we've been sometimes super lucky with the hires we have made. But for sometimes we have also been a bit naive and I think as you grow with a growth company, even if you're growing 50% year on year, then the requirements and the demand on the business is getting a lot higher, especially on the leadership team every year. So someone you hired last year, which was then step up and absolutely amazing, you might actually need to hire someone even better than them the year after. So it's like that sort of shifting upwards constantly has been definitely a learning point. You just sometimes you may not have seen that kind of excellence before. So you just have to believe that there is someone out there that's even better. And then when you find them it's like, oh, this is amazing. So chasing that sort of top talent, this constant thing that we're doing.

[Omar Khan]

You said sometimes I was naive. Give me an example of what you mean by that.

[Erling Lin]

I would say that as an entrepreneur we love solving problems. Right. We don't see, we love challenges when we don't necessarily See obstacles. Obstacles, like as a. As a complete stop. We see them as something you can work around, or you see potential in opportunities. And sometimes if you. If you apply that to people, you might find that, you know, actually we kind of knew that this wasn't going to work out, but we just really, really hoped it could work out, or we saw that they had some potential, or we thought we saw this. So. So that's like, you have to be tough on the hiring. I think it's a lesson learned.

[Omar Khan]

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's an interesting way to frame it in terms of, like, you know, seeing it as a problem. You see somebody and you like them, you know, on a personal level, they seem to be like a cultural fit. There might be a gap in terms of where you need them to be. And you kind of see it as promise, like, well, we could do XYZ and that would help them to do this. And, you know, sometimes that works out.

[Erling Lin]

But sometimes it does. Crap.

[Omar Khan]

How have things changed? Well, first of all, why did you then decide to raise money? And I wanted to kind of talk about how things have changed with the business since then. So what was the. You know, you're getting along like, you know, you're a 4 million ARR. You're bootstrapped. Do you guys own 100% of the company? Why did you decide you wanted to go and raise money now?

[Erling Lin]

So, I mean, as we talked about, this was obviously a learning journey for me. Like, so, you know, the first year I had to learn or I had to build it and I had to learn to sell. And then I had to learn about compliance, perhaps, and then I had to learn about hiring. I was like, constant sort of development, and it was kind of portioned out during these 10 years. So really fun journey and amazing. But at some point, we started making a little kind of projections because the only way we can hire or expand was to actually get customers. So we had to chase real customers and we had to sign a deal. And then we could go back and we can hire this one person that would help us maybe go to the next stage. And I think that was good. You build a healthy business, you focus on the customers and you get in revenue. And that was super helpful. But at some point we just started seeing that actually we had a bit more cash to spend right now. We could spend one year or two years instead of five years to get to this point. And then it started making sense. But then going from being in bootstrap to where, like, the founders owned the company and Some employees owned the company. It was like to kind of going over to this, like, VC side that, you know, that was a bit of a journey for us. So. But we did it very softly and smoothly and found the most friendly Norwegian vc. And they only took the minority stake, of course. And it was like a nice transition into that for us, but it's also made us a lot more professional. We went from 20 to 40 people in 612 months. It was like suddenly you were in the room and half of the people are completely new. So that was obviously a big, big transition for us.

[Omar Khan]

So for many found, for many Bootstrap founders, raising VC funding is like going to the dark side, right? And probably you had some concerns. You could, you know, rationally you could see the benefits of doing that. It sounds like you had some luck in terms of finding, you know, a great VC that kind of, you know, kind of fitted with what, what, you know, you guys wanted, the way you wanted to run the business. How, how, how have things changed beyond that in terms of, do you feel like there's more pressure on you now about growing faster?

[Erling Lin]

Like, you know, that growth pressure is also coming from, from my ambitions. So, yes, you have some extra pressure, of course. But I think it's more important that when you decide to go down that route that you just align your ambitions with what their expectations are. So the VCs, they want to invest in companies and ideally they want them to multiply a lot. And if you are successful, you obviously might become like the star in the portfolio and they give you lots of support. But if it goes completely bad, maybe they're not so much or you get more heat. But for now, it's been amazing in terms of the support. More professional board meetings than we've ever had. They're helping us a lot in terms of just seeing what they have seen in other companies. And if they see something that we are not doing or something that we could do better or something we're missing, you know, they're pointing that out and that's a great help, I think. So it's. For now, it's still all good, but I think you have to align that this is the journey we want to go on and that has to be aligned with, you know, this typical VC journey. Right. If you, if you start backtracking or look, I want to go back to bootstrapping, then it's like, that's two things.

[Omar Khan]

So given, given what you know now, do you, do you feel like if you could have done it all over again, you Would have raised some VC funding earlier.

[Erling Lin]

Yes, a few years earlier. Not. Not 10 years earlier, I think, like, because we weren't. I weren't. I wasn't ready. We weren't ready as an organization. That would have been too soon for us. If I were to ever, like, start a new company, then you don't know if you would raise money sooner because then you maybe know more. But for us, I think, yeah, maybe a few years earlier, but not 10 years earlier. That's my take on it now.

[Omar Khan]

Okay, great. Let's wrap up and get onto the lightning round. I've got seven quickfire questions for you. Ready? What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received so recently?

[Erling Lin]

It was from the chairman of our board who said, take control of the pipeline. And I can explain what that means, but just going from being very reactive and running in all directions in terms of what's coming in from the intel, just trying to change that so that actually you go after something and you get it. You can do so much more with that. That's the journey we are on that.

[Omar Khan]

Yeah, that one sent that statement, take control of the pipeline. We could probably do a whole episode right, just on expanding on that. But maybe we should one day. What book would you recommend to our audience and why?

[Erling Lin]

So I'll bring up the book I mentioned earlier, the Revenue Architecture by Jacko founder Coy. He just takes so much sort of SaaS, models and theory that's out there and he puts it into context. So that, like we talked about earlier, is like people say you should do plg, but then actually you need to make up your mind if this is right for the context your company is in. And with that context and the framework it provides, it's also a lot easier to kind of take different pieces of advice and see where they fit in and why you should maybe listen to it or maybe why it shouldn't. At times.

[Omar Khan]

I should get him on the show. I think that would be a good conversation to have. What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

[Erling Lin]

But I think at least for a growth company, you do need to reinvent yourself quite often. So, like, you know, every six to 18 months, your role and what you do in the business is going to change. So, you know, we started coding and then I became the salesperson and now like, I'm more the strategic leader. And that requires that ability, I think, to change or reinvent yourself.

[Omar Khan]

What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

[Erling Lin]

I think that's Another takeaway from the 7 Habits of Highly successful people is the delegation. So try not to kind of be the. In the business, try not to. Everything has to go via you. Fine. As soon as you figure out how to do something, see if you can get someone else to do it. Requires investment from you. So like the first time you delegate something, it's going to take longer than if you've done it yourself. But the third time, the fourth time, you just see it happening and it's magic and it's so nice and you free up your time and you can focus on the next challenge.

[Omar Khan]

What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time?

[Erling Lin]

So I guess my, I mean, like coming to that. But my passion is like food and wine and I just like, you know, bringing tech, maybe some AI into that space. That would be really fun. Probably I wouldn't make any money, but it would be closer to my heart. Yes.

[Omar Khan]

Well, what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

[Erling Lin]

So I have a 250 year old farm back in Norway.

[Omar Khan]

A farm?

[Erling Lin]

Yes. It's not like any animals or anything at now, but it is more or less like it was 250 years old. So it's really like going back in time. So, you know, working digitally, being on zoom calls all day and working software. Sometimes it's just really nice to just go out on the countryside and, you know, chop some wood or go back to basics.

[Omar Khan]

Wow, that sounds, actually sounds pretty cool actually.

[Erling Lin]

Yeah, it's kind of a digital detox for me that I do every now and then. Yeah.

[Omar Khan]

And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

[Erling Lin]

So I would say food, wine. Just like all the geekery you can do into these wine regions and grapes and types of. I would love to spend more time on that, but that will be for later.

[Omar Khan]

So, Erling, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure unpacking your story and trying to extract some lessons for our listeners. If people want to check out CV partner, they can go to cvpartner.com and by now they should know it's not for managing their cv. Right. And if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

[Erling Lin]

Yeah, you'll find me on LinkedIn or erlingvpartner.com awesome.

[Omar Khan]

Thanks man. It's been a pleasure. I wish you and the team the best of success.

[Erling Lin]

Thank you so much, Omer. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

[Omar Khan]

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