$100 million plan for building a unicorn in 24 months — Shane Hegde // Air

Shane Hegde, CEO of Air, discusses how marketing strategies can affect your company's valuation. As your company grows, it’s inevitable that your metrics will start to change. And, as companies look to scale their marketing activities, they’re going to have to make the shift towards organic marketing channels to ensure that spending remains minimal while growth occurs. Today, Shane talks about his 100 million dollar plan for building a unicorn in 24 months.
About the speaker

Shane Hegde

Air

 - Air

Shane is the CEO of Air

Show Notes

  • 03:08
    Building a unicorn with 100 million dollars in 24 months
    Going from a hundred million to a billion dollar company in 24 months comes with a lot of complications. But, it really boils down to finding a good product market fit and a good product channel fit.
  • 06:05
    Fortifying your customer base
    Youre looking at opportunities for retention, engagement, and expansion within your existing customer base. This could involve external marketing, but also community building and referral programs to drive new net.
  • 09:21
    The importance of documentation in scaling
    Efficiency starts with documentation and being willing to revise that documentation as processes change. Essentially, youre trying to figure out how you can do the same thing for the same price while doubling or tripling the outcome.
  • 11:48
    Scaling your marketing activities
    Theres always a struggle between investing in net new channels while doubling down on the most efficient channels. Ultimately, it boils down to spending the time to figure out what works in terms of new channels.
  • 14:33
    Indicators of when to scale a business
    Most people are making the transition to growing efficiently versus spending more to grow. As a result, this is changing the timing of focusing on growth and the strategies being employed to achieve that growth.
  • 20:11
    Marketing activities to unlock a companys scale
    Identify the type of revenue that is needed, how to keep growing, and what channels will unlock that growth. So, youre thinking about how leads will be coming through organic growth marketing activities and relying less on paid channels.

Quotes

  • "We started Air about four and a half years ago. Over the course of the last four and a half years, we built a business that today is valued at 110 million." -Shane Hegde, CEO, Air

  • "Businesses in the growth stage trade at anywhere from 20 to 60 times revenue. If you're growing at 150%, you might trade at 20 times, if you're growing at 250%, you might grow at 40 times." -Shane Hegde, CEO, Air

  • "If our plan is to compound revenue at the pace that we've been currently compounding at, the valuation of the business should meet that curve at a normalized revenue multiple." -Shane Hegde, CEO, Air

  • "If you look at our 2021 growth, 45% of our growth came from expansion. These are existing customers who were just spending more." -Shane Hegde, CEO, Air

  • "If youre trying to scale, you need to find a way to accomplish how you can do the same thing for the same amount of money and get twice or three times as much output." -Shane Hegde, CEO, Air

  • "From our perspective, efficiency starts in documentation and in process. At Air we're process people. We sell and build a product that's process-oriented for marketers." -Shane Hegde, CEO, Air

  • "One question that every marketer should be asking themselves is if I had unlimited CAC, would my unit economics hold?" -Shane Hegde, CEO, Air

  • "The beauty of having a dynamic go-to-market motion is that you can support a variance of leads." -Shane Hegde, CEO, Air

  • "At successful enterprise software companies, your net revenue retention and net dollar retention is over 130%." -Shane Hegde, CEO, Air

About the speaker

Shane Hegde

Air

 - Air

Shane is the CEO of Air

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