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Completely bootstrapped, Bombora grew to $30M annual revenue since 2014, 14% YoY growth since 2018
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Company expects to get $1-$3 million from Payroll Protection Program
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The CEO says B2B buyers are showing healthier purchase intent after Covid-19 dip
Bombora is a rare case of bootstrapping to a significant scale. Eric Matlick, Bombora’s founder and CEO, has self-funded the venture to 130 employees and $30 million in annual recurring revenue. Our host Nathan Latka had the chance to pick his brains on how Matlick got to this point without funding, and how he plans to handle the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bombora’s core product, Surge Analytics, tracks what companies are doing heavy business research on. Surge tracks consumption patterns of millions of companies worldwide to identify sudden spikes—surges—in research activity on topics that are likely to become trends.
“If you’re a marketer,” Matlick says, “You look at the data and it would identify the universe of companies that you care about, which ones are most likely to be your next prospects.”
Sales teams, for example, often have accounts assigned to them. Via Surge Analytics, sales representatives can identify which companies would be most responsive to their offerings. Marketing teams can use Surge to better understand their target market for their display advertising.
To make the software more user friendly, Matlick has rolled out a SalesForce integration. “The way it would work is you’re about to start your day as a sales professional, you log in and it shows you your accounts: what are they interested in, which ones are likely to engage you because they’re surging on products or services that you sell,” the CEO explains.
Companies share their data voluntarily, Matlick says. It took 5 years for Bombora to build the exclusive “data cooperative” of thousands of B2B publishers—from Forbes and Bloomberg to niche resources. “We cover essentially anywhere where a business professional will do research,” the CEO adds.
Bombora’s natural language processing engine then tries to assign each published piece to its internal taxonomy of product categories and topics. At the same time, Surge tracks users’ IP addresses and cross-reference it with who owns the IP—that’s how they figure out which companies are interested in said products or topics.
Bombora’s 2,000 Customers Pay $15,000 a Year, $30+ Million Revenue
Today, “close to 2,000 customers” pay Bombora some $15,000 a year, with average customer value being around $30,000. In 2018, the company generated $26 million in revenue. Matlick says they were planning on 35% growth this year, but the Covid-19 pandemic got in the way.
As a CEO of a bootstrapped company, Matlick doesn’t have to report to VC’s or coordinate his coronavirus plans with them. Up until this point—April 2020—however, he didn’t have to, because “business is as usual” for Bombora.
“We actually had a very strong Q1,” Matlick says. “In fact, in the last two weeks of March we closed more new customers than we’ve really ever closed before.”
Companies have to tighten their belts during crises, and the cost of failed initiatives and negative ROI campaigns is that much higher. This circumstance, the CEO thinks, means they need sales intelligence “more than ever.”
Bombora is big on events, and most of those got cancelled due to social restrictions. That money, Matlick says, got redeployed to “other lead-generating tactics.”
As an under-500-employee company, Bombora has also applied to the Payroll Protection Program. They’re expecting to get a $2-$3 million check from the government to support payroll and rent. Out of Bombora’s current 130 employees, 65 of those are in the R&D department (data scientists, engineers, product developers). Bombora has “just under 20” quota-carrying sales representatives.
Bombora CEO: Coronavirus Made Companies Less Likely to Buy, but Purchase Intent is Rising Again
From their internal data, Matlick reports that business professionals started consuming significantly more content after restrictions got announced, with particularly large surges by Healthcare and Finance professionals.
Normally, Matlick says, companies usually do a lot of research in December and January, while purchase-intent content consumption shoots up in February and March. This dynamic wasn’t different until the second week of February, after which the CEO saw a massive decline in the company propensity to purchase. In other words, companies are much less interested in buying products or services nowadays.
The good news, Matlick says, is that this dip in propensity to purchase is coming to an end: during the first week of April, companies started showing stronger purchase intent.
See Bombora’s full report here:
https://bombora.com/covid-19-b2b-intent-data/
Nathan Latka’s 5 Questions with Bombora Founder and CEO Erik Matlick
- Favorite business book? “Zucked by Roger McNamee.”
- Is there a CEO Erik is following or studying? “Too many.”
- Favorite tool to grow Bombora? “Zoom.”
- How many hours of sleep do you get? Married? Single? Kids? Age? “7-8 hours of sleep. Married with 4 kids. I’m 49 still.”
- What does Erik wish his 20 year old self knew? “That I don’t know as much as I thought I knew.”
Funding
2014:
2015:
2016:
2017:
2018:
2019:
2020: 0 (bootstrapped, interview)
Revenue:
2014:
2015: $5.65M (2)
2016: $8M (3)
2017:
2018: $26M (interview)
2019: $30M (interview)
2020: $36M (prediction)
Customers:
2014:
2015: 1,000 (4)
2016:
2017: 1,800 (1)
2018:
2019: 2,000
2020:
Sources:
- https://bombora.com/blog/bombora-propels-b2b-marketers-posts-record-growth/
- https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.bombora_inc.0925e249fe0585895661cf6946538552.html
- https://thefly.com/landingPageNews.php?id=2231402&headline=NSR-NeuStar-acquires-Bombora-for-M-sees-M-contribution-to–revenue
- https://bombora.com/blog/madison-logic-data-and-moat-partner-to-combine-attention-and-intent-data/
