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This podcast will help you grow your B2B company quarter after quarter—with confidence, clarity, and data-backed decisions.
In each episode, you’ll learn proven strategies, practical frameworks, and first-hand insights from GTM leaders, RevOps pros, and seasoned B2B executives. They’ll walk you through how they use data to set smart targets, forecast accurately, overcome growth plateaus, and build high-performing sales and marketing engines.
You’ll hear stories of real challenges, real results, and the data-driven moves that made all the difference.
The best B2B companies don’t just look at metrics—they use them to take action. Move The Needle will help you do the same.
Ali, Databox (00:01.243)
Welcome to Move the Needle. Today we are joined by Adam Robinson, founder and CEO at Retention.com and our B2B, Solutions for Website Visitor Identification. Adam specializes in high growth, highly profitable bootstrap SaaS businesses, talks a lot about this on LinkedIn, has built Retention.com from zero to 22 million ARR in just four years with zero funding. Before that, he scaled and sold an email marketing company up to 20 million.
Adam, you're an exec who consistently builds in public. I have learned a lot from you. I know your other followers do as well. And that's where I have seen a lot of your really interesting stories and insights. And I've learned a lot and very excited to have you here. Welcome to the show.
Adam Robinson (00:43.554)
Thanks for having me, Ali. I'm happy to be here.
Ali, Databox (00:46.419)
Awesome. We'll see if you still feel that way after I ask you all my hard questions. So it was actually hard for me to pinpoint a single topic because you cover a lot of different topics. have a lot of really interesting lessons, founder led growth, cold outreach strategies, bootstrapping, product market fit, and of course, know, AI, everyone's talking about AI. So one of your posts that I focused in on was your 2026 predictions and
Adam Robinson (00:50.508)
Let's do it, I'm ready.
Ali, Databox (01:16.551)
Prediction number six was you said we will see the first 100 million ARR 10 person startup. And that one stood out to me for a couple of reasons. I think one, it hits on your really deep expertise around scaling businesses with really lean teams and funding. But also it hits on the emerging AI trend and you're already blending that into how you're growing our B2B with you've shared a very small team and AI.
So I thought this could be a fun thought experiment. We'll see if this works. So I was thinking, let's pretend you go back to the beginning days of a startup. It could be retention.com, your email marketing startup, could be an imaginary company you haven't started yet. And you're committed again to bootstrapping, scaling with a lean team. Maybe you will be the first 10 person startup to achieve a hundred million ARR. But this time,
AI already exists right out the gate. Everything that exists now for AI existed then. What would you do differently?
Adam Robinson (02:22.318)
So I think like, you know, I had, I do this weekly show called Unfuck My Startup. It's every Tuesday. My guest this week was the CEO of G2, Goddard. Everybody knows G2. It's a SaaS, if you're watching this podcast, you know what that is. One of the things that he said, which is like so on topic for this, is he's like, you my audience is all, you know, it's 80 % people at like one million ARR, right? So he's like,
The advantage that you guys have that I do not have is that you can actually build an AI native app. He's like, I am forced because we have over a hundred million in revenue to glue AI on top of our app, which like is also something that I mentioned in that post. So, and he's like, there's no way around it. You can't just like turn off G2 and like start over from zero. But if I did, I wouldn't have done it the same way. Like you just don't. So.
Ali, Databox (02:59.42)
Hmm.
Ali, Databox (03:09.107)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (03:22.734)
I think to answer that question, would like to provide some detail on what I think are the necessary ingredients for a hundred million ARR 10 person startup. Because unfortunately, one of the key ingredients, don't just show up and you're like, So ingredient number one is you have to have an insane product market fit, which is the result of a long time of tinkering.
Ali, Databox (03:34.899)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (03:46.365)
No.
Adam Robinson (03:52.062)
That's just the reality of product market fit. But with an AI native app that is the product.
Ali, Databox (03:53.544)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (04:04.334)
is doing these generative things that are just so emotionally moving to observe. If it is novel, the product market fit can be totally insane. We're seeing it. You know what I mean? But insane product market fit was a thing before AI apps. It's just right now.
Ali, Databox (04:18.225)
Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Robinson (04:28.876)
the next thing you need makes it much more, it makes the contingent much greater. like another aspect, reason, so like another reason these companies can get so big so fast is because of, know, everybody knows Clay in our world. It's like this Clay UGC loop, right? They have lead gen agencies who get their customers by posting on LinkedIn and the best content they can create on LinkedIn is content about Clay.
Ali, Databox (04:41.543)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (04:59.66)
which is this viral loop, right? And it's amazing content. It's like LinkedIn porn. It's amazing content because you're watching this. Clay is one of the perfect tools for the LLM, right? Like what would be better than taking a list of emails, enriching it with 50 different fields that you had to have individual data subscription for before, and then using ChatGBT to look at all of that enrichment and write a personalized message. That's like the perfect use of the LLM.
Ali, Databox (05:27.869)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (05:29.398)
So, so like having this loop where creators can brag about their intelligence in a way that financially benefits them.
replaces an arm, it replaces a marketing team. I don't know how you measure the effectiveness of like Bruno, their first marketing hire, that's all he was doing. He was just like maintaining and commenting on posts with this creator ecosystem, So like number one is like you need insane product market fit. That does not happen quickly. You're lucky if it's like, well, there was zero revenue for like seven years, right? And then it was.
Ali, Databox (06:11.965)
Never.
Adam Robinson (06:13.186)
very slow for like 18 months with revenue and then it just, it's like they had enough of the world of lead, of B2B data and at the same time they kind of cracked this like lead gen creator situation and then it literally just went straight up. So, so I think you need those two things and same product market fit and then you need this thing where some group of people.
Ali, Databox (06:29.907)
Hmm.
Adam Robinson (06:38.904)
can brag to the world about their genius in a way that financially benefits them. That's like number two. And number three, I think you need an engineer who, so like these 10 people are going to be incredibly senior people. You know what I mean? It's not like, hire a kid out of, unless they're a true savant, right? Like, because what AI, what Claude Cote does for my team,
Ali, Databox (06:44.007)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (06:56.603)
Okay, yep.
Ali, Databox (07:01.907)
He
Adam Robinson (07:07.542)
is like, know, I work with Tate, he's my CTO, he was a Stanford All-American swimmer and comp sci engineer, he's just the fastest individual contributor anyone's ever seen.
AI is great for everybody else. It is inconceivable what it's doing for Tate. You know what I mean? So like, you need a tech person who is like that. Like, AI truly gives the best people in the world a superpower and an amplification in a way that's much greater than if you are not the best person in the world. And it like goes down and down and down. And that's across every discipline.
Ali, Databox (07:23.912)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (07:43.505)
Right. Yeah, that's, love that.
Adam Robinson (07:48.556)
Right? So, and then I think it is helpful to...
Adam Robinson (08:03.064)
It's probably something that is like not in enterprise sale. know, it's like a simple enough PLG led product that you can like manage it with chat bots that are AI. So, and I think the requirement for managing the support with chat bots is the workflow of using a product is simple enough to where you can have almost every single thing written in a document, right?
Ali, Databox (08:30.119)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (08:30.398)
And then that training, that is training data for your chat bot, support bot. And yeah. So, and then I think it helps to have a founder story, but like the UGC component is like so much more powerful than just like one founder posting because it grows also, you know, and founder's voice is just like the founder's voice.
Ali, Databox (08:52.423)
Hmm?
Adam Robinson (08:57.759)
And yeah, I I just think that those are the key ingredients to making that.
Ali, Databox (09:03.929)
Awesome. So some of those definitely are things that existed before AI like product market fit, but look different now. And then some of them are pretty unique to AI. I haven't heard.
Adam Robinson (09:15.244)
Yeah, whole building, building something generative that is by itself kind of amazing to look at for anyone, but also makes me look smart and makes me money is like, think the unique thing with YELLOW.
Ali, Databox (09:28.177)
Yeah, that's pretty awesome. What are, you get to talk to a lot of really cool companies on your podcast, which I am a fan of. what are some other, I like that you made the point of basically like AI in the hands of a junior person who doesn't know what they're doing is a lot less powerful than AI in the hands of someone who's already really smart and fast and competent. I feel like enough people aren't talking about that. What are some of the other really awesome
AI use cases that you've seen or heard that you think others might be messing out on.
Adam Robinson (10:03.458)
So.
I mean, I think everybody should be pushing themselves to build AI native versions of any of the incumbent software products now. what do I mean by that? Hold on, I gotta let my dog in. Is this getting edited?
Ali, Databox (10:22.717)
Mm-hmm. You're good. Yeah, it is.
Adam Robinson (10:29.538)
So.
So if I think of like software before AI versus software after AI, and some of the tools that we use that are like post AI and what were pre AI. like retention.com sells to Shopify stores. Klaviyo is like a great example of like a pre AI app. You like make decision trees to send people down who abandon their carts. Right?
Ali, Databox (10:53.618)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (11:02.099)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (11:05.598)
know, Hayreach is an example in the go-to-market space of the clavio for LinkedIn outreach. You're making a decision tree and you're sending everyone down that decision tree, right? So if I contrast that to the way that I use Intercom's Fin, which by the way is an example of someone who just threw out the baby with the bathwater completely and like built a fucking AI native app at hundreds of millions of revenue. I mean, I think they,
Ali, Databox (11:13.757)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (11:29.522)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (11:35.022)
their sort of cap structure made it to where they had incentive to do that, which I think is hard for like GoDobbers not really in the same place with G2. But if I think about how you use Fin, which is Intercom's app, or Delphi, which is an AI native chatbot that we use outside of our app, what I'm doing is,
Ali, Databox (11:40.433)
Mm.
Adam Robinson (12:01.002)
I'm like giving it training documentation. With Delphi I'm defining the persona and like the goals of it. And then I'm watching it work and I'm correcting it after the fact with either better training documentation or like individually correcting like how it's responding to things. That's like a totally different way of using software than the way that you use Klaviyo and Hayreach.
Ali, Databox (12:04.039)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (12:20.381)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (12:28.332)
The way that you use Klaviyon Hay is you set up a decision tree. If you really want to go the extra mile, you A-B test some of the branches. But like everybody's getting the same canned message, right? Which like...
Ali, Databox (12:35.26)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (12:42.67)
You shouldn't be doing that now. You know what I mean? So, that's like...
Ali, Databox (12:44.723)
There's a better way now. Yeah.
Adam Robinson (12:54.744)
That's the, it's like all applications will be, you know, within reason, right? Anything that is like communication for sales and marketing that is like canned messaging now. Like in five years, it's gonna look totally different, right? It's like you are an abandoned cart agent. Your goal is to increase conversion, you know, across this, you know, anyone who abandons their cart.
Ali, Databox (13:22.803)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (13:23.554)
Here are offers that you can use. Here is data about them. Figure it out.
Ali, Databox (13:29.203)
Yeah, personalized and learning on the fly.
Adam Robinson (13:31.842)
Yeah, figure it out, do it. The Clavio way of doing things is so, I mean, they have hundreds of thousands of shopify stores that are successful doing email marketing that way. like, it's really hard to change that. It's gonna be a while, but like, that's like the clearest illustration, in my opinion, of like the pre and post. And I think,
Ali, Databox (13:50.515)
Right.
Adam Robinson (14:01.772)
I think it hit customer support first because that's like the lowest stakes. It's the lowest stakes, but it's definitely not like it's the, it's the lowest stakes, but like the LLM can do the other shit better too. You know I mean? So, so it's, it's going to get there. It's just like, you couldn't get people to change stuff they're making.
Ali, Databox (14:04.2)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (14:19.333)
Right. Just, yeah.
Adam Robinson (14:29.292)
when presented the option of changing something they're not making money on. In most cases, I would say. Like normal support tickets are not like viewed as like revenue generation for most people.
Ali, Databox (14:32.615)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (14:38.395)
Right. Well, and what you're describing requires also a shift in the buyer's behavior, not just the vendor's behavior, right? Like they need to expect a different experience in the product and a different way of solving the problem they've been solving before.
Adam Robinson (14:48.108)
Yeah.
Adam Robinson (14:56.78)
Yep, true, which will come, which will come. It's probably better for both sides, right?
Ali, Databox (14:58.299)
Yeah, interesting. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah. How AI presents an opportunity. It's not just doing the same thing faster. It's like a completely different way of solving important problems.
Adam Robinson (15:16.142)
that, yeah, that's just my observation from this experience. It hit me, it's like, oh, these are AI native apps. That makes sense. You're training in AI, you're giving it a persona and goals, and you're setting it loose. Whereas old software is just totally different.
Ali, Databox (15:19.121)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (15:34.501)
Yeah. So how, how does all of that, we'll just call it AI, all of the, that falls into the bucket we just talked about, how does that impact product market fit? Because you brought that up as probably the most important thing for companies to get right when they're trying to grow.
Adam Robinson (15:52.366)
I think that the, the, fundamentals of product market fit are not really impacted by like what you were trying to do. Like, I still think you need to like, literally speak to as many customers as you can on your journey, even though like the hammer you're giving them to like hit a nail with is AI rather than not AI. Like it's still like, what did this do wrong?
Ali, Databox (16:19.123)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (16:22.306)
You know, or you set up things in the app to like, you know, sort of monitor their satisfaction. So like, I would argue that it has not.
Other than like, cloud code speeding up how fast you can add things that will make them happy, AI does not shorten the path to figuring out what is something new and great for this group of people. It still requires the same like horrible slog as like, as it always has, in my opinion. I mean.
Ali, Databox (16:53.416)
Hmm.
Ali, Databox (16:58.483)
Yeah.
Adam Robinson (17:02.56)
as someone who's here trying to do it, right? It's really helpful. I think it's really helpful if you can build a tool for yourself because the feedback loop is so much faster, you know? And then go after people like you. That's hard because in most cases, B2B founders are gonna sell to B2B and that's like, or if you're doing that as me, then you're in the most competitive market ever for software because everyone knows how to build stuff.
Ali, Databox (17:04.423)
Mm-hmm. What about from the market?
Ali, Databox (17:13.309)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (17:32.558)
Again, it's a way to do it.
Ali, Databox (17:36.081)
Mm-hmm.
What about market research and trying to identify those opportunities? AI can play a part there, but would you argue it's not a replacement for talking to real humans?
Adam Robinson (17:51.978)
I think that AI in that way is full of shit, personally. I just like don't. I watch somebody in this like WhatsApp group that I'm in, that Peter May also be in, like Alina from Chili Piper put it together, it's just like a bunch of sass CEOs. Somebody dropped this hilarious Insta meme of like.
It was these two people with like, it was a husband and a wife with like really thick Indian accents. Me like, yeah, chat GPT, like, you know, how do I get rich with no work? You know, like give me the ideas that I spend no time in. Like I get very rich and like, you know, all of the ideas I'll be on shark tank, you know, ideas for getting rich with absolutely no work. Right. So, so like.
Ali, Databox (18:27.261)
More.
Ali, Databox (18:38.609)
I see that, yeah.
Adam Robinson (18:46.978)
There's always been startup ideas, websites. There's always been startup ideas, content.
I don't know of anyone who has started a successful startup who mind their ideas that way. It's great content because one ofpreneurs
Ali, Databox (19:02.129)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (19:06.439)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (19:07.918)
That is where you are at that point in your life. You're like, okay, Greg Eisenberg is gonna tell me how to go to Reddit and scrape it with ChatGPT and in five minutes use clog code to make $10,000 a month. That's great YouTube content for a 20 year old who doesn't know how the world works, right? That content is what the LLM is trained on. So when you ask the LLM to do market research for you, it's gonna be this hollow crap.
Ali, Databox (19:31.175)
Hmm.
Adam Robinson (19:37.422)
I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying some type of personal experience in connection to a market and ability to identify a real hole that you are either directly or indirectly experiencing through people that you do business with or you know in your personal life.
In my opinion, it's a much better place to start than like these Indian guys. Show me how to like, these fake Indian people. Yeah, it is so funny. It is just like, the script is unbelievable because it's just true. It's like the next manifestation of this get rich quick scheme has been going on since the beginning of time, right? So yeah, that is why I don't think doing market research with Chachit Ptyu is great. It's just.
Ali, Databox (20:04.241)
Yeah. I've seen the video you're talking about.
That's my man.
Ali, Databox (20:17.917)
Yeah.
Adam Robinson (20:26.796)
I think it can be good for some things, you know, help me like, like I was trying to like see if.
a tech partner of ours would be interested in acquiring part of our business. And it was like really good at giving me different ideas for that. But like,
Adam Robinson (20:51.426)
Man, startups are hard. It's just so much, you know what mean? It's like, yeah. And the idea is such a small part of it anyway. It's just the idea that you have when you start. It's almost never what it is five years after that. It's just the rabbit hole you go down in the journey.
Ali, Databox (20:57.681)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (21:06.877)
Mm. Right.
Ali, Databox (21:11.623)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (21:15.587)
Interesting. That's a lot to think about. What I committed to myself that I wasn't going to only ask you about AI today, because there's some saturation around that. So what else? You talk to a lot of scaling businesses on your podcast that get stuck on their road to 10 million ARR. What are some of the common challenges, biggest pitfalls that you hear over and over?
Adam Robinson (21:47.534)
Well, I think that like the problem most people think that they have is that their outreach isn't working.
and they just need more customers. And like, we see that from our show attendants. Whenever we have, like, I have the Clay agency that like is talking about how to do this, you know, nine channel, omnichannel outreach when you sleep, you know, as you sleep and like, whatever, I book 38 demos off this. Like 600 people show up for that. I have this unicorn CEO of this amazing company that everyone knows about and 64 people come, right? Like, so.
Ali, Databox (22:00.35)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (22:27.886)
I think that a big misconception is that like if I were just doing the cold email like that Adam's doing through with the agency that's doing it for him then I would be getting customers like Adam right
Ali, Databox (22:46.963)
As a marketing leader, this is very validating. Yes, keep going.
Adam Robinson (22:52.272)
No, it's like a very common misperception, right? But like...
The reason you're getting stuck is because you don't have product market fit. You know, it's like, you might not even have message market fit, right? Like, so there's a huge cart before the horse, but by the way, it's like desperation, you know? It's like, and you're like, have the same, and so in the other part, that's like really worth mentioning is like,
Ali, Databox (23:08.179)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (23:18.589)
Yeah.
Adam Robinson (23:27.086)
And I remember this, like I had a company that was stuck at 3MillionAR for, I don't know, three and a half years. That company was stuck because it did not have product market fit. It was an email newsletter app, there was MailChimp, it was free, they had more features. And it's very hard from an ego perspective to admit to yourself as the founder and like product leader of a company that the product sucks.
And when it doesn't have product market fit, that is what a product sucking, it's like, it can help people put contacts in and send emails and cannot be good enough to spread via word of mouth. Those two things are like, and it's really hard as a founder to accept the fact that if it's not spreading by word of mouth, it is not good enough, because then you're like, well, I'm not good enough. And that might be partially true. But you will be.
Ali, Databox (24:06.707)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (24:19.282)
Mm.
Adam Robinson (24:24.556)
You know, over time, if you just like the rest of us who have been successful, just come in every day and think about nothing else for like a decade. That's usually what it takes to be successful in this world, in my observation. In anything, for that matter. So, yeah.
Ali, Databox (24:33.489)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ali, Databox (24:39.431)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (24:46.791)
What are the, what are the?
Adam Robinson (24:47.47)
How do you fix that? That's what everybody wants to know.
Ali, Databox (24:50.737)
Yeah.
Adam Robinson (24:56.586)
The sad answer is you probably somehow end up doing something that is quite different than what you're doing, but somewhat tangential. But that causes this problem of like, holy, it's just choice paralysis. Like, what is it? But like people who have been stuck and break out of it, it's usually that. And then a way less common...
Ali, Databox (25:04.7)
Hmm.
Ali, Databox (25:15.421)
Hmm.
Adam Robinson (25:22.058)
solution is like you actually add to the feature set that is not really growing on its own to the point where there is some product market fit there. And I think like particularly dangerous now because it's so easy to build features that your app ends up being like vomit. It's like, what is all this crap? Cause you're just like adding anything that anyone says. think there's this
You know, super simple apps with like a really defined ICP will be novel, in my opinion. In a world where everyone can build everything. Like an app that does three things like incredibly well will be just like a beautiful experience, you know. In my opinion, that's like over the next few years, you'll see some of these things take off and people will be like, why is that taking off? I could build that in one minute.
Ali, Databox (25:55.827)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (25:59.316)
Hmm.
Ali, Databox (26:06.396)
Yeah.
Interesting. Yeah.
Adam Robinson (26:19.074)
That's fucking stupid. And it's like, okay, well, the thing that you have has 9,000 things that you built in one minute and no one wants it. So, so yeah.
Ali, Databox (26:24.945)
Yeah. Hmm.
Ali, Databox (26:32.175)
Interesting. What are some of the signs that the product market fit is off and how would you make the case that that is the root issue versus what you've said people often default to that it's like a reach or awareness problem.
Adam Robinson (26:50.732)
Okay, so if you have not, if you have not ever felt like things are just like easy in the winds at your back, you don't even know what I'm talking about when I say product market fit. And it's very weird.
but if your startup is hard. So like, until you get, Warren Buffett has this great, quote, like, about, it's not about product market fit, but to me I relate it to that. It's like, uh.
You
Knowing what it's like to run a business is like, for someone who hasn't actually run that business, it's like trying to explain to a fish what it's like to walk on land. Like, one day of walking on land is like better than like, so product market fit is kind of like the same deal. It's like, until you experience this like radical pulling of product out of you.
Ali, Databox (27:37.884)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (27:53.267)
Mm.
Adam Robinson (27:55.608)
things very much feel like there's wind at your back. That's a big one. Producting pulled out of you, money's just piling up in your bank account. Everyone is clamoring all over themselves to come work for you. Investors are trying to bang down the door to invest in you. It's basically like on every metric, there's wind at your back. And...
For almost, I mean, for people in my audience at least, they're just not there yet. I spent many years, my businesses are so, and it's a dynamic thing too, it comes and goes. Both of my businesses are kind of in a five out of 10 right now, I would say. And we are definitely not growing as fast as I would like us to be. And we're building new stuff to try to like.
Ali, Databox (28:24.989)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm.
Adam Robinson (28:51.832)
crack new product market fits.
Ali, Databox (28:54.299)
Yeah, that's what I was actually, though it's gonna be my next question is, sounds like for yourself and other companies you talk to, you have experience that high, the wind is at your back, it's a great product market fit, and then it stalls. Like what are some of the reasons why that might be happening?
Adam Robinson (29:10.284)
Yeah, I mean, so like product market fit is a combination of like the, the uniqueness and the value that your product provides. And when, when it happens, we live in America, like you're going to have a hundred people copy you. So like once you get, and, then what makes like, you can't really copy clay. So, you know I mean? Like what they're, they will have product market there for a very long time. You can do that. It's just incredibly difficult. It would take a long time. And like their brand is so strong.
Ali, Databox (29:22.245)
Yep.
Ali, Databox (29:37.523)
Mm.
Adam Robinson (29:39.362)
that people are just like, why am gonna buy this imitation thing? With my stuff, it's a lot easier to just like come into the market and say, I do exactly what they do for half the price. RBDB, it's kind of a little bit harder because it's low price, like retention.com like that. So I think the competitive dynamic changing is like, and in some spaces like the Aurum Nooks, this like dialer space, like,
Ali, Databox (29:50.483)
Hmm.
Adam Robinson (30:09.642)
Oram was out there, Nooks was a customer, Nooks copied their product, raised $70 million and just like went and undercut people. That's really annoying. But like it totally, like Oram was like a rocket ship to 25 million ARR and then they stalled out. like Nooks was out there, you know, stealing all their customers basically.
Ali, Databox (30:16.168)
Mm.
happens here.
Ali, Databox (30:31.155)
Yeah.
Adam Robinson (30:32.622)
So yeah, think the biggest, if you really had it, it's just like you didn't have a moat, so it was easy for competitors to sort of reverse engineer what you were doing. And just like maybe they were selling your customer something else and now they're selling them this too and it just sort of changes everything.
Ali, Databox (30:41.757)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (30:52.315)
And then do you shift on more feature development to build a bigger mode or do you shift on brand to build the preference or.
Adam Robinson (30:57.966)
So, so like, now we're, now we're getting into the territory of like, I don't, every business situation is so different and like, so good social media content is just definitive, but like the reality of the world is that, you know, it just, every situ, like data box situation is so different than mine. Like almost nothing strategic that we would do.
Ali, Databox (31:07.123)
Yeah.
Ali, Databox (31:18.438)
Yeah.
Ali, Databox (31:22.759)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (31:27.662)
would be that optimally would be the same, right? So I think the only thing that you can do is try to make your customers as happy as possible. If you're totally stalled out, probably in a new and different way, you know, and just keep beating your head against the wall until it clicks, you know? And it's like an S curve.
Ali, Databox (31:30.129)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ali, Databox (31:41.383)
No.
Ali, Databox (31:45.041)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (31:55.237)
Yeah, that's good advice.
Adam Robinson (31:57.292)
It's like the S-curve illustration's perfect. It's like flat, flat, flat, boom. More success than you ever thought, faster than ever, then that pans out. And if you're not working on your next S-curve as the last one's happening, then you're gonna stall out. It's just the reality of the game.
Ali, Databox (32:14.673)
Yeah. I appreciate the nuance around it. right. There's a lot of LinkedIn is the ultimate black and white do this and you'll see what the algorithm rewards. Yep. Absolutely.
Adam Robinson (32:22.318)
Yeah, you should do this. I mean, again, it's like, it's the best social content. Yeah. And I think the best position on social media content is like, does that mean you should not read my stuff? No, but I try not to like tell people what to do. try to share experience. And I think that, you know, especially in other states, startups, like you want a prescription, but what you should draw, not only from social media content, but anyone ahead of you who you think has answers for you and they don't.
Ali, Databox (32:34.897)
Okay.
Ali, Databox (32:44.051)
Hmm.
Adam Robinson (32:52.686)
You should draw inspiration from their experience, but it is not a prescription, right? So yeah.
Ali, Databox (32:54.963)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
I like that. And customer happiness as a North Star. That makes sense. All right. One more set of questions. BI and analytics company here. So I got to some questions around data. What, in your experience, have been the most important metrics for midsize SaaS companies, companies that are trying to skill to skill in the range you talk to?
Adam Robinson (33:05.902)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (33:26.929)
one of the most important metrics. And are they the ones that they are often tracking, or are they tracking the wrong metrics?
Adam Robinson (33:31.128)
Yeah, I think if you're trying to actually grow revenue a lot, then the combination of low...
a revenue churn or high gross revenue retention in a reasonable TAM is like the combination that gets you there.
Ali, Databox (33:53.683)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (33:56.492)
You know, I got some high-term businesses. I'm kind of doing it in a different way, right? Like for me, I'm trying to run it as capital. I don't, my goal is not to have like a billionaire or our company. I really don't give a shit about that. I, you know what I mean? It's like, I want to continue steadily growing my profitability over years and years and years. I want my employees to feel like they have an abundance of financial, intellectual and interpersonal capital.
Ali, Databox (34:16.179)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (34:26.08)
I want to build good brands that are market leading and that people respect. I love the revenue per headcount metric. I love operating a very high total margin business. again, this is not what most people are focused on in our world. But to me, it's just...
Ali, Databox (34:36.755)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (34:49.011)
Yeah.
Adam Robinson (34:52.246)
It's just who I am, it just makes sense that I should want as much revenue with as few employees as possible, regardless of whether it's software we're making or selling peanuts or whatever else. So yeah, I think.
Ali, Databox (35:11.507)
Yeah. I don't hear many people talking about that one. And I saw that you did the revenue per head count. Can you talk a little bit more about how you arrived on that one as a one to prioritize?
Adam Robinson (35:24.471)
well, I think it was just what I said before, like I think in any business.
Ali, Databox (35:26.791)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (35:30.486)
If you were smart, you would try to make as much money and have as few employees and costs as possible. I mean, particularly employees, because they're complex. Humans are, there's just no question that if you had two instead of 2,000 employees, you would have like a thousand times less people issues. Like that's just a thing. So a business with the same revenue with two employees would be a thousand times better business than the one does 2,000.
Ali, Databox (35:34.674)
Yeah.
Ali, Databox (35:38.781)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (35:52.723)
So, mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (35:59.662)
In my opinion, I would run around that, regardless of the future prospects of it. So yeah, again, this is like, it goes back to the bootstrapper VC debate. To me, the fundamental reason that I'm in business is to maximize the odds of...
Ali, Databox (35:59.753)
Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (36:10.771)
Hmm.
Adam Robinson (36:23.438)
continued profitability growth into the future, whereas like most software is funded by BC, they're not trying to do that. They're trying to maximize the odds of, they're trying to create a scenario in which there could be an epic outcome. Not really trying to maximize anything else. Yeah. I think there's a lot of,
Ali, Databox (36:40.444)
Hmm.
Ali, Databox (36:43.858)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ali, Databox (36:48.307)
Fair enough.
Adam Robinson (36:50.69)
there could be a lot of really beautiful, small software businesses that today don't exist because they were forced down that path. They were forced into something that they never should have been.
So talk about that a lot.
Ali, Databox (37:06.651)
Yeah, yeah, awesome. That was all the questions I had for you, Adam. Was there anything else?
Adam Robinson (37:11.918)
Well, you know, I mean, I'm very impressed that you asked the last one and I finished my answer at 10 45, which was the end of this meeting. How did you even do that? Like you're really good host. Did you have this all timed out? Was there like a script even before we started that I didn't know about? Is this an Adam bot? You're like, give the Adam bot 37 seconds to answer that one.
Ali, Databox (37:17.363)
Look at that, on the dot. Was there anything?
clock in the corner. No, I have the questions but no, not not a script. Nope, nope.
Actually talking.
This is to AI avatars having a conversation. Honestly, these days you almost wouldn't know. They look really good. Yup. Anything I didn't ask, any other quick pieces of advice you want to share?
Adam Robinson (37:43.054)
Mm-hmm.
Adam Robinson (37:51.0)
Hey,
I just think you ought to keep going. No matter what.
Ali, Databox (37:57.203)
That's all we can do. Yep, awesome. Well thank you. That was a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.
Adam Robinson (38:04.856)
Thank you. Great interview.