How Canadian SaaS Boss Insights Is on Track to 3X Revenue in 2021

Speaker 1:

Hello everyone. My guest today is Keren Moynihan. She is the former banker and second-time founder and currently the CEO and co-founder of Boss Insights. The company offers business data as a service. Their single API enables easy access to hundreds of sources like QuickBooks, Salesforce, Stripe, bridging data gaps between banks and business customers. And under one minute. Keren, you’re ready to take us to the top?

Keren Moynihan:

Let’s do it.

Speaker 1:

All right. So I mean, walk us through the first. Is this sort of a pay-as-you-go number of API requests per month sort of deal? Or is it more pure-play SaaS?

Keren Moynihan:

It’s pure SaaS and we’re actually not charging by data because then we’re a cost center we’re actually charging when we make the lenders win. So we charge per borrower, they make money, we make money.

Speaker 1:

Tell me more about that. Are you working exclusive with banks and lenders and connecting the two or what’s it look like?

Keren Moynihan:

Well, there’s the tech side of Boss Insights and then there’s the market play. And the lending group is the first, it’s the beachhead customer, such a huge need, $5 trillion. And that was pre-COVID for business lending. That, that’s where we dipped our toe in the market. And we work with banks, credit unions, and private lenders, but that’s not all we do.

Speaker 1:

Banks, credit unions and private lenders. Okay. So can you maybe… Just because this is a little bit in the weeds, you come from banking, so this is your world, but dumb it down for me, right. Can you give me an example of someone who uses you?

Keren Moynihan:

Yeah, absolutely. OKR financial just today released a statement saying that they’re working with Boss Insights because they want to be customer first. And their customer is the small and medium business or the startup company. They want to give people alternatives to equity. So they’re already active and sponsoring in the ecosystem and they wanted a way to be tech first, so that’s why we’re working.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. Is this like sort of a Kabbage sort of platform?

Keren Moynihan:

Yeah. Yeah, it would be. Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. Okay. So my audience definitely knows sort of Kabbage model, OKR financial. So if OKR financial is trying to do and provide sort of credit scoring algorithms to verify, SMBs, historical cohort data, and then give them a loan against that, where does your API come into play?

Keren Moynihan:

There’s hundreds of sources of information on business customers.So let’s just keep it super simple. There are two main categories that lenders want right now they’re either traditional lenders and what they want is accounting information. Because the second business says, “I want money.” They say, “Give me two years of financials.” Or they’re an alternative lender. And then what they want is commerce and cashflow information. And what they’re doing is some rendition of, I want a couple of months or 12 months of the revenues you’re bringing in the door and I’m going to give you one month. Or let’s say, if you’re above the crowd, I can’t think of a company who might be doing this. They might give you three months. Who does that? Do you know anybody?

Speaker 1:

No. So, Founderpath. I mean, our thing, I mean, we could be a customer of this.

Keren Moynihan:

Oh, well then how metta let’s do it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, no. I’m asking you because, I’m learning about Boss Insights, but it sounds like we could be a customer of you.

Keren Moynihan:

Yeah. In preparation for this chat, I looked at your website. I have to say your messaging is spot on. And absolutely we could be working together. What we’d be giving you is a realtime view on the business. And then you can either lend to them yourself, or you can match them with some of the other lenders that you’re working with, that’s the idea. That you’re getting away from the manual data connections and the manual collection of information, which can only be summarized as somebody telling someone else to go clean their room. I cannot tell you how often we were trained at RBC, “This is an opportunity for discussion.” No, it’s not. Let’s get away from it and let’s actually have some fun when you know what’s going on with the business realtime, you can do some crazy things, like give them an answer realtime.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Really compelling. And so someone like me or OKR financial, or your average customer, what are they paying you per month to use this technology you’ve built?

Keren Moynihan:

It really depends. We have economies of scale pricing. We have ways for people to test this out, if they have one to 10 borrowers, let’s say, but the sweet spot really happens when you get to a couple 100. And then it is under $20. We have pricing that goes down to even a dollar per borrower. So really this is change on the table. It’s pennies on the dollar to what lenders are making.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). If you look at those sort of your total revenue divided by your total amount of customers, what’s the average customer currently paying you per month, would you say?

Keren Moynihan:

Some of it’s a little proprietary, so I can’t exactly get into it because we are servicing some of the largest lenders. So for example, CIVC was just on a panel with us our top five Canadian bank. And then we’re serving some billion-dollar bank. So the community banks, the one who are rolling up their sleeves and out there. So it really is a little bit proprietary. But the idea is if you’re thinking about their loan book, what happens when they’re using Boss Insights… A recent quote we got from CC bank for example, is that in 30 to 60 days, they got access to two to three years worth of leads. They decreased the amount of time they were spending by 80%. So that’s what we showcase in market.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Talking more about the history here. When did you launch the platform?

Keren Moynihan:

2017.

Speaker 1:

Okay. 2017. And how did you fund the growth? Did you sort of raise immediately or what?

Keren Moynihan:

Not exactly. This is a tech fin company. What I mean by that is I the former banker and not the first person here, it’s actually someone who scaled Amazon. And in 2013 he saw that you need insights in order to win the market. And sure enough, Amazon is in lending. He started mining Bitcoin. The first money in Boss Insights was mined in a basement. And still yet we haven’t diluted. We’ve essentially raised a seed round, almost a million dollars, but we haven’t diluted [at 00:05:50] all.

Speaker 1:

So just to be clear, you guys did a litecoin token offering back in 2013 to fund the business?

Keren Moynihan:

No, we mined our own coin money. We basically just mined the money. And so it was just free money. Honestly, to be fair-

Speaker 1:

Cash rates, energy resources.

Keren Moynihan:

Yep, yeah. And so we had that… We’re Canadian companies selling into the U.S. market. So Canadian economy has a lot of funds available for startups. So if you’re a compelling story and what that means is if you’re promising to hire more people into your company and you continue to grow, they will give you grants to help you get there. That’s part of how we’ve grown our company, but we also have some debt financing secured as well.

Speaker 1:

I see. I see. Okay. So I’m sure you probably talk about [inaudible 00:06:35] and things like this. How how many grants or funds related to grants where you’re not having to sell equity have you raised from the Canadian government?

Keren Moynihan:

It’s quite substantial. It’s a healthy seed round.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So, I mean, I would put healthy seeds somewhere between two and 6 million bucks. Is that a fair range?

Keren Moynihan:

No, it’s less than that.

Speaker 1:

Less than that.

Keren Moynihan:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Okay. Got it. So you’ve funded the growth to date with less than $2 million in grants or non-dilutive capital, does that include the debt you raised probably from CIVC or [crosstalk 00:07:06]?

Keren Moynihan:

From BDC and yes it does. And then also just the sales are actually helping to let us grow.

Speaker 1:

That’s the best fundraising, right. Is customers paying you up front, which is great. Okay. So just to be clear, the partner that you started working with, who is ex-Amazon, you guys founded the company together, you have equity in the business and 2017, you launched?

Keren Moynihan:

Yes. So he started in 2017. I joined at the beginning of 2018 and we are that… The cap table is really healthy. There’s no investors on it. So if any investors wanted to come in, it’s a very easy thing to get onto. We’ve grown since then and we actually just hired our first non-founder sales person. We now [crosstalk 00:07:46]. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that’s great. So just to be clear, the cap table really is you plus your co-founder.

Keren Moynihan:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

That’s great. Did you guys split it 50/50 or do you just say, listen, “I’m the boss, 60%.”

Keren Moynihan:

51/49.

Speaker 1:

But you get 51?

Keren Moynihan:

I got 51.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that’s great.

Keren Moynihan:

Oh gosh.

Speaker 1:

I love that. He’s going to listen to this and go, “Oh, why did I… That 1% difference.” Okay. So I love that you mentioned, you just hired your first non-sales rep. So how many people are on the team today?

Keren Moynihan:

So we’re eight people at the moment we’re actually hiring. So we’re looking for BDRs, we’re looking for front-end software developers. So if anyone’s out there, please reach out. But we’re really excited about our VP of sales, his name’s Jordan Cohen. The person who founded the company, it was Luke Moynihan. He scaled three tech companies and he started coding at 14. He really is one of those savants in his own field. And so he’s the one who’s responsible for all this. Jordy Cohen. Yeah. He’s really incredible. I’d love to tell you his latest analogy about what’s going to happen in lending, but-

Speaker 1:

Let’s leave that as the open loop, give us that before we end. So eight people on the team, how many engineers?

Keren Moynihan:

It’s half and half, half marketing, half engineers.

Speaker 1:

Okay. And no quota carrying sales reps now, but you have one joining imminently.

Keren Moynihan:

We have one now that just joined and that’s Jordan Cohen, was running VP partnerships at OnDeck and now he’s working at Boss Insights. So if I come from banking, he comes from alternative lending. It was the perfect match.

Speaker 1:

That’s great. And so over the past three years, how many total customers have you guys scaled to using the platform?

Keren Moynihan:

So we’re somewhere in the 1000s of borrowers on the platform at the moment and we’re just growing. I mean, we’re-

Speaker 1:

How many lenders?

Keren Moynihan:

Well, we’re hoping now to onboard somewhere between four and seven before the end of this calendar year.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So still right now, less than two or three?

Keren Moynihan:

No, no, we have more than that, but we’re hoping to cross the threshold of 10 customers by the end of this year.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I see. I see. Got it. So you have four or five now you want to get four or five more before the end of the year.

Keren Moynihan:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

When I asked how many customers you use the word borrowers, but the borrowers don’t really pay you, right. The lenders are and alternative financers are the ones paying you, right?

Keren Moynihan:

That’s true. I guess I’ve been engineered to answer the question from an investor point of view.

Speaker 1:

That perspective. Yeah. No, but that’s fine. That’s fine. I just want to make sure I understand clearly. So yeah. So you’ve got four or five lenders or alternative financers using you today who touch and use your API to enrich thousands of borrower accounts.

Keren Moynihan:

Yes. And some of them, they let us use their name. So for example, we can now say that we’re proudly working with CIVC. We’re working with The Bridge with OKR, CC bank. There’s a few others we can’t actually say. So then when we’re asked the numbers, we don’t really divulge them.

Speaker 1:

Yep.

Keren Moynihan:

But we’re onboarding at the moment three more. So it’s just an ongoing… Data is the hot topic this year.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. So when you [inaudible 00:10:43] something [inaudible 00:10:43] early on, you’re hustling, you have some early traction, really incredible team, it sounds like. When do you guys break like a million or $2 million run rate? I mean, do you think you can hit that next year?

Keren Moynihan:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Got it. We love that. I mean, once you have a little revenue scale, you can start to [inaudible 00:10:57] evaluations touring and go raise equity to fuel growth more. I mean, do you think you’ll be raising in Q1, Q2 next year?

Keren Moynihan:

Look, I don’t know how to answer this other than to just answer it. There are people who have raised that don’t even have any product or deliverables in market. And we already have that we’re proven and we’re trusted. We have case studies released. We’ve doubled our revenue. So we’re open. We always say we would raise a million and a half. We already have the product built. But what we’re looking for is not just capital, we want strategic. We want to work with lenders who really see that the market is changing and you need to be ahead of the game to delight your customers.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). No, I love that. So 2017 was your first year in business. Did you have any real revenue in 2017? Do you remember first year revenue?

Keren Moynihan:

No. And we started at the end of 2017, so we just crossed the three-year mark. We really went into market in 2019. So all the sales I’m talking about happened in 2019, and then we doubled it in 2020. And we’re looking to triple that in the next few months.

Speaker 1:

That’s great. So what 2019, you finished a hundred grand, 200 grand in revenue. Something like that?

Keren Moynihan:

You’re like a surgeon with this precision.

Speaker 1:

You have to ask. I mean, I’m just backing, right? If you’re not at a million dollar run rate yet, and you doubled from 2019 to 2020, you could have been doing 200 grand in 2019. You doubled-

Keren Moynihan:

You’re not far off, yeah. The numbers are pretty close.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Yeah. Obviously you can’t divulge what big customers like CIVC are paying you, but we can sort of do back [inaudible 00:12:18] napkin math here. And congratulations. I mean right. Scaling that without having to have any equity dilution is a really important thing a lot of people haven’t done that yet. So give us the prediction. What’s your partner thinks going to happen to fin tech in the next year?

Keren Moynihan:

Here’s the thing, what we need to do as an industry is collaborate. We keep thinking of this as a competitive game and yes, it’s a competitive game, but if we don’t collaborate, we’re all going fail. The analogy that we’re giving, we have banks here and we have fin techs holding onto their products like this because they think that they have to have the best product. What actually has to happen is a little bit more of what Amazon did. One time they were selling books and now if you look at what they’re earning profits from, it is not their own product. It’s by creating an infrastructure that invites everybody to use it.

Keren Moynihan:

And that’s what we need to do as an ecosystem. We need to have the banks, who are lifting up the regulatory burden that none of us really want to lift up, have this infrastructure that gets the latest in fin Tech. That’s our prediction for what needs to happen in the future. And we’re already seeing that the most innovative of banks are looking for best in class. So Boss Insights separates ourselves from all the competitors, by being the easiest to adopt, you don’t have to code anything at all. If you don’t want to, it is like signing up to LinkedIn. And also it is the most flexible to use. So it doesn’t matter what lending model you want to operate on, we have the data.

Speaker 1:

And last question, why does someone use Boss Insights instead of just doing what we did at FounderHub, which is just build an API connection with Stripe, QuickBooks, Zero, all these plat , all these sort of data sources.

Keren Moynihan:

Well, it’s the number one question we’re getting this year. Why buy you and not build you? And the answer is, if you want one to three integrations, go build. And some of them are quite easy like QuickBooks, but if you want to normalize data within a category, so if you want any more than three in accounting, you need to have an API shop to normalize the information. If you want to go outside of accounting, into commerce, Stripe, Square, Whatnot, Chargebee. Then you’re really getting into the nitty-gritty. And that’s when you need to have somebody dedicated on the data side. We have 100s of different sources, and you’re going to see very quickly that we’re going to move outside of accounting to commerce, compare it with banking and then move over to sales.

Speaker 1:

You have on your website, 800 applications, you support are all those actually already built, or if people hit and say they want a MailChimp integration on your website, you then quickly build it because it was inbound driven by CIVC.

Keren Moynihan:

No, all those were actually built. What we’re adding now is collaboration of our own. If a bank doesn’t have a plat integration or a Yodlee integration and that’s what they wanted, there are some of those that we’ve already built in place. They don’t become a dev shop deciding on, should I have an API to this accounting provider and this payroll provider and this banking transaction provider. We want to be able to give them one place to go to, and it gives them access to lower level pricing. So that’s how we approached it.

Speaker 1:

Very cool. Keren, let’s wrap up here with the famous five. Number one favorite business book.

Keren Moynihan:

Okay. I’m just going to answer favorite book, favorite business book. Okay. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning because that is what we need above all else.

Speaker 1:

Number two, is there a CEO you’re following or studying?

Keren Moynihan:

Elon Musk.

Speaker 1:

Number three. What’s your favorite online tool for building bots?

Keren Moynihan:

Ooh, God. There’s so many. We’re using 20. I’m not kidding around Slack is very helpful. I have to say, LinkedIn is the best. I am so sorry HubSpot, we just switched from you to Salesforce because we needed a lead gen tool. And then there’s a bunch of other ones we use Confluence, Atlassian is an incredible company.

Speaker 1:

Number four. How many hours of sleep you get every night?

Keren Moynihan:

Four.

Speaker 1:

Four, that’s not healthy.

Keren Moynihan:

Three kids. One startup.

Speaker 1:

Fair. Fair enough. Okay. Are you married?

Keren Moynihan:

Yes. Okay. Married three kids. Can I ask how old you are?

Speaker 1:

No, that’s just rude. I’m 20. I just have a lot of years experience of being 20. Oh, the reason I ask that question is because I will want to ask the question now, now take us back to your 20-year old self. So take us back to zero years. What do you wish your 20-year old self knew?

Keren Moynihan:

Oh, wait, the fun parts coming.

Speaker 1:

What does that mean?

Keren Moynihan:

It means that when you’re enthusiastic about what you’re doing, when you’re doing something that’s meaningful, if it’s… You know the seat at the table that’s always ignored in our industry is the customers. And that’s what keeps me going. That there’s going to be a point in time where we can measure business owners on their merit, not their collateral. We keep saying your business, and this is how I value you. But no one’s valued on their collateral. It’s what you bring to the table. So that’s the best part. That’s a sweet spot for me, because I know we’re so close as an industry.

Speaker 1:

As Boss Insights, realtime financial data for lenders, they have four or five customers now hoping to add four or five new ones in the next one to two months. Ideally double revenue, break a million dollar run rate next year. They’ve done all this incredibly capital efficiently, they’ve leveraged grants and basically non-dilutive capital from the Canadian government to drive growth so far, as they look to really play a major role in the future of fin tech. Keren, thank you for taking us to the top.

Keren Moynihan:

Thank you.

Speaker 3:

One more thing before you go, we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1:00 PM Central it’s called shark tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on three hungry buyers. They try and do a deal live and the founder shares backend dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU, CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it. And the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday, 1:00 PM Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2:00 PM central, to make sure you don’t miss any of that. Make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube. The big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn’t want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it’s an acquisition, a big fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else.

Speaker 3:

I don’t want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders, you want to get in there. We’ve probably talked about your tool, if you’re running a company or your firm, if you’re investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I’m hanging out with you here on YouTube. I’ll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. And if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn, we have to counter those people. We got to push them away, click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I-