41 min
088 – Pipe Drive: Started with a simple idea with zero customers – now over 60,000 customers, $30m invested and 300 employees (w Timo Rein) The Business Generals Podcast | Helping You Maximize Your Entrepreneurial Dreams - Every Single Week
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- Business
Timo Rein is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pipe Drive which is a simplified sales management tool that is helping over 60,000 sales teams around the world to get more organised, more focused and helping them sell more. You have probably already heard about Pipe Drive because they have done an amazing job marketing their service, this is a great episode with Timo, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I know we will receive great feedback on this one!
Timo is based in Estonia with his wife and kids, born in the Soviet Union, studied psychology in university, he lived in the US for four years and is now back home living and running his business from north eastern Europe in the wonderful Estonia.
He co-founded Pipe Drive 7 years ago with 4 other founders, prior to that was a partner is a sales training business for 10 years, so Timo is a seasoned entrepreneur with 17 years in the game of running his own business.
Show notes and links at: https://www.businessgenerals.co/timor (https://www.businessgenerals.co/timor)
Revenue streams
Pipe Drive is a SaaS (software as a service) business, that generates a monthly and annual subscription from customers who are from all corners of the world. They have doubles their revenue each year for the last 5-6 years, so Timo describes as a high growth yet high investment SaaS business. They have invested about $30m into the business which includes successful strong capital raisings.
Dilution of your ownership v Investors
In Timo’s mind their business is run by a team of professionals right across their leadership and executive level, including the investors who he feels are well invested to give the founders every necessary introduction and connection in the market place as well challenge the leadership and ask more of them so as to get the best that the company can deliver.
The big idea and the story of how pipe drive started
* The big idea with Timo’s first co-founder, who also had a sales background like Timo
* Coming up with the specification document of the product
* Looking for developers who would build the code
* Meeting up with 3 other start up founders who had coding back ground
The tipping point for Timo
* He was running his sales business and going well
* An old friend quizzed Timo about his consultancy role at the time and in Timo’s mind this made his wake up to his dream of being a doer, a builder and this sent him back to his drawing board so he went back to looking at building a business.
Building Pipe Drive
With the new 3 co-founders the idea was ready to be dusted off and given another chance.
* Timo and his first co-founder described the whole software idea again to the new team.
* A brand new specification document was created and it was much better than their original spec, as it was much more visual with screen shots and clear work flows.
* The original founders had the idea, they knew how to market and scale a business while the 3 new founders brought in the engineering experience and proven experience in coding a product that can be scaled, so together they created a strong foundation on which to build the business from.
* For a period of 3 months the team would get together on weekend retreats at a local farm house, from Friday nights and code through out the weekend and would only head back to their homes on Sundays. Three of the co-founders had day jobs during the week so this project was only worked on during the weekends at this time. The other two founders plus one other engineer (who would later become a founding employee) worked full time on the project during this 3 month period.
* Although away from family, this helped the team focus well on the project and also helped them build a strong team dynamic and start to understand each other better.
Timo Rein is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pipe Drive which is a simplified sales management tool that is helping over 60,000 sales teams around the world to get more organised, more focused and helping them sell more. You have probably already heard about Pipe Drive because they have done an amazing job marketing their service, this is a great episode with Timo, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I know we will receive great feedback on this one!
Timo is based in Estonia with his wife and kids, born in the Soviet Union, studied psychology in university, he lived in the US for four years and is now back home living and running his business from north eastern Europe in the wonderful Estonia.
He co-founded Pipe Drive 7 years ago with 4 other founders, prior to that was a partner is a sales training business for 10 years, so Timo is a seasoned entrepreneur with 17 years in the game of running his own business.
Show notes and links at: https://www.businessgenerals.co/timor (https://www.businessgenerals.co/timor)
Revenue streams
Pipe Drive is a SaaS (software as a service) business, that generates a monthly and annual subscription from customers who are from all corners of the world. They have doubles their revenue each year for the last 5-6 years, so Timo describes as a high growth yet high investment SaaS business. They have invested about $30m into the business which includes successful strong capital raisings.
Dilution of your ownership v Investors
In Timo’s mind their business is run by a team of professionals right across their leadership and executive level, including the investors who he feels are well invested to give the founders every necessary introduction and connection in the market place as well challenge the leadership and ask more of them so as to get the best that the company can deliver.
The big idea and the story of how pipe drive started
* The big idea with Timo’s first co-founder, who also had a sales background like Timo
* Coming up with the specification document of the product
* Looking for developers who would build the code
* Meeting up with 3 other start up founders who had coding back ground
The tipping point for Timo
* He was running his sales business and going well
* An old friend quizzed Timo about his consultancy role at the time and in Timo’s mind this made his wake up to his dream of being a doer, a builder and this sent him back to his drawing board so he went back to looking at building a business.
Building Pipe Drive
With the new 3 co-founders the idea was ready to be dusted off and given another chance.
* Timo and his first co-founder described the whole software idea again to the new team.
* A brand new specification document was created and it was much better than their original spec, as it was much more visual with screen shots and clear work flows.
* The original founders had the idea, they knew how to market and scale a business while the 3 new founders brought in the engineering experience and proven experience in coding a product that can be scaled, so together they created a strong foundation on which to build the business from.
* For a period of 3 months the team would get together on weekend retreats at a local farm house, from Friday nights and code through out the weekend and would only head back to their homes on Sundays. Three of the co-founders had day jobs during the week so this project was only worked on during the weekends at this time. The other two founders plus one other engineer (who would later become a founding employee) worked full time on the project during this 3 month period.
* Although away from family, this helped the team focus well on the project and also helped them build a strong team dynamic and start to understand each other better.
41 min