The sales demo is one of the most critical parts of the sales cycle for B2B SaaS products. It’s central to the process because it allows the prospect to see how they would use the product and how it would solve his/her business need. However, getting to a meeting is a tricky part for sellers in a sea of solutions vying for attention out there and with limited bandwidth on the part of the buyer. LeadrPro is a software marketplace for B2B software that directly incentivizes the buyer with cash to participate in sales demos. Not only is the buyer able to discover relevant solutions through the marketplace but they are able to be compensated for their attention. Sellers get access to qualified prospects which they approve before the demo as well as get valuable feedback, invaluable for emerging companies as they flush out their offering. Sellers are charged between $150-$250 per qualified demo depending on the plan that meets their needs. With LeadrPro, companies can think about replacing their manual and expensive SDR efforts.
LA TechWatch caught up with LeadrPro Founder and CEO Chris Sheng to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised a $1.1M seed round from Okapi (lead investor), Mucker Capital (pro-rata), Gaingels, Plug and Play, and Matt Mickiewicz (founder of 99 designs, hired.com, flippa)
Tell us about your product or service.
We’re the first software marketplace directly connecting sellers with buyers of software. It’s like a dating app for B2B sales, but we actually schedule the date/meeting once there is a match, and we provide feedback afterwards to both sides!
What inspired the start of LeadrPro?
I’ve been a growth marketer for almost 10 years now, ran a growth marketing agency for the past 7, and I’ve been with Mucker Capital as a resident growth advisor for the past 4 years. I’ve worked with 200+ venture-backed B2B SaaS companies on go-to-market and growth. My deliverables have always been binary – generate more sales-qualified leads, which in the B2B world is defined as a completed product demonstration.
About 1.5-2 years ago I had hit an inflection point: 1) try to scale my agency from $2M in annual revenue to $4M (which scaling any service-based business is extremely difficult) or 2) build out an automated solution that would have no cap on scalability.
That said, I had two ideas that I was circling that I presented to Will and Erik (partners at Mucker Capital) in Oct of 2021 – a sales enablement tool / CRM (ie. Apollo, Outreach, reply.io) or a lead gen tool that would ultimately become LeadrPro. Will and Erik both suggested the ladder. So that’s the path I went down.
They invested the initial $400K pre-seed I needed to build out an MVP, and then we launched our beta 6 months later during mid-April of this year.
How is it different?
If you’ve ever been involved in B2B sales, you know getting to a meeting is the hardest part of the sales process. You have lead databases (Zoominfo, Clearbit, Seamless, 6sense) that can give you contact data (access to your target audience) – but none of them guarantee you meetings. A phone or video call is typically the strongest selling point for any sales team but getting to a booked and completed phone or video call is very challenging.
Nowadays, you could be selling the cure for cancer – but if your only channels are email and LinkedIn DMs – you’re still climbing an uphill battle. We’ve all been on the receiving end of those outreaches – these are very noisy channels where it becomes extremely difficult to navigate what is relevant and what isn’t.
Now imagine a world where B2B “marketing” is democratized.
The lean startup has a chance to compete with the 800-pound gorilla for the same accounts (forcing all to focus on innovation and serving their customers)
Exorbitant marketing budgets become a thing of the past ($455 billion was spent on paid advertising by SaaS companies in 2021 alone, that’s more than the GDP of Ukraine)
The sole focus of B2B marketing is to generate value-driven, actionable content for its audience
Our communication channels (email, social media, phones) are free from solicitors
Every piece of content we interact with (thru these channels) has purpose, meaning, and value
This is the world we are committed to building at LeadrPro.
What market are you targeting and how big is it?
We’re looking to displace the SDR role which is fundamentally broken, similar to service jobs within hospitality, as it’s got the highest attrition rate of any corporate job at ~30%.
That’s an $11B a year market.
What’s your business model?
We have a 50-70% take rate for every meeting we broker on our platform. A seller pays us for a meeting, we pay part of that fee to the buyer, and we keep the rest.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
We are 50% cheaper than the human alternative (an SDR) while generating equal if not more output. So, we are primed to grow in an economic downturn.
Companies need to reduce spend, but still have aggressive sales quotas to hit. That’s where we become extremely valuable to companies. Plus, we offer a pay-per-performance model which is very appealing and 100% risk-free. No training, onboarding time. We deliver results in less than 24 hours.
What was the funding process like?
It was stressful in the sense that fundraising is a big distraction. It takes a lot of time away from other key areas of your business like product and growth. That said, I was very fortunate to already have a strong relationship with Mucker. I also got an intro to John Waller (who is now on our board) at Okapi via a Founder meet Funder event, and he ended up leading our round (finding a lead to set the terms is the hardest part of fundraising). Gaingels came in via a Mucker intro. Then Plug and Play and Matt Mickiewicz both surprisingly reached out to me via LinkedIn. The timing just happened to be serendipitous that I already had a lead and was looking for follow-on investments.
Matt was perhaps the most interesting story. I got a message from him on LinkedIn on a Thursday a week prior to our close date (which I have hundreds of unread LinkedIn messages, so for me to be online when he messaged me and for me to have read it, feels like kismet). Matt’s a guru when it comes to marketplaces. So, when I saw his LinkedIn profile, I got excited. We ended up talking the next day (on Friday), and then he committed by Sunday. I don’t know if that’s a typical situation, but I thought it was pretty cool. And already he’s lent so much value.
All in all, the actual fundraising process itself felt very organic. If someone didn’t commit, I didn’t chase. I asked for binary answers, I set deadlines. I was confident in our traction and our team, so much so that if the round fell apart for whatever reason, I knew we’d still be ok. So I think that BDE gave us leverage and helped to move things along.
Also having a good legal team was very helpful. Legalese is not my strongest suit, and to have a team that was patient with me in explaining everything along the way, made things a lot easier and at the same time allowed me to make good decisions.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Whether or not we wanted to raise capital. Lol. I don’t think enough founders consider this point. My goal was to always get to profitability as quickly as possible. So, when we did get there without any additional capital (outside of our pre-seed), it became a matter of dilution and how far could we get on our own. Ultimately, I recognized that additional capital would help us get to where we needed faster. And considering we’re in a first-to-market situation, raising a round was critical for us to get network effects ASAP.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
You’d probably have to ask them, but I’d say first to market, my domain expertise, and our traction.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’re 1000% focused on being super focused on over delivering to our current and future customers on our core deliverables. There is a lot of room for us to ultimately go up or downstream as it relates to product and/or revenue – but I just want us to be the best at what we do. What that looks like is:
We want to be the fastest and most cost-effective way for SaaS companies (our customers) to fill their sales pipeline
For our users (the buyer), we want to be the best platform to discover and evaluate new software
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Focus on getting to profitability. Launch with an MVP of an MVP, get customers, ask questions, listen, iterate product, get more customers. Rinse and repeat.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
My goal is to get to $1M in MRR by the end of 2023. Simple as that.
What is your favorite restaurant in LA?
I’m vegan. So, hands down it’s Crossroads.
