Deal Abstract
https://www.seedinvest.com/contiq/seed
A team of Indian bros from old school, 500 lb gorilla tech companies (VMWare, Microsoft, Intel, and EMC) are banding together to build an integrated SaaS tool for custom, trackable, sales websites. Combining Google Analytics, Blanket, some portions of Canva and Visible together into one smooth, streamlined tool. Backed by broke angel granddaddy Jason Calacanis. Tl;dr a no brainer in my book.
In addition, happy fourth of July weekend, everyone!
Decision
Yah bros—take my money.
Why Investing/Passing
- Self denigrating humor aside, this startup/product space is basically the dream. Total SaaS B2B play. I love this type of company and should clarify my thesis statement to include this type of product.
- Passed every single one of Calacanis of characteristics not to mention having Calacanis as an investor.
- I essentially made a decision before making it to the Thiel characteristics, will be curious to write notes as I continue. [Update: Yup, intuition did not change as I went through Thiel characteristics. Could be bias, or could be confirmation that fundamentals of business are strong.]
The 6 Calacanis Characteristics (91 161 18)
| Check | Pass/Fail |
| 1. A startup that is based in SV | Pass. Source. |
| 2. Has at least 2 founders | Pass (2) |
| 3. Has product in the market | Pass |
| 4. 6 months of continuous user growth or 6 months of revenue. | Pass: 2019 was $325k and 2018 was $36k. |
| 5. Notable investors? | Pass: Author of Angel and these characteristics, JCal Jason Calacanis himself. Also, VMWare and Deloitte as customers. |
| 6. Post-funding, will have 18 months of runway | Pass: Raised $253k, burning $187k annually or $16k monthly, at best will have 65 months of runway at present spend. |
The 7 Thiel Questions (ETMPDDS)
- The Engineering question:
- Yes: Combining Blanket, Google Analytics, Google Slides, etc. all into one trackable deployable specific sales site. So straightforward yet so clearly better than cobbling those tools together.
- The Timing question:
- Yes: I’ve been on the buying side of a B2B high touch sales protocol multiple times, and was impressed by the explosion of B2B sales efficiency tools such as Calendly, Lever + automatic scheduling, CRM sales tools that track to email, etc. This is a very good time to be building sales automation and personalization tools.
- The monopoly question:
- Yes: The beauty of this tool is that the concept is not hard, it’s just doing a great job at combining disparate tools into a single UI/UX that is good.
- The people question:
- Good: A bunch of Indian tech bro’s from VMWare, Microsoft, Intel, and EMC.
- The distribution question:
- Good: Have worked on the enterprise software side and so probably have the clout to have convos with big, hesitant B2B clients.
- The durability question:
- Very: one could easily see if this product is successful, it would have huge position to enter into adjacent market e.g. email marketing, CRM, etc. Not that it wants to, but getting the spout of customer and sales acquisition data is very powerful.
- *What is the hopeful secret?:
- Making highly personalized, highly tracked sales pitch websites is a scalable enterprise that allows for large margins on enterprise SaaS costs.
What has to go right for the startup to return money on investment:
- Be cautious but aggressive during COVID: this company launched in January 2020, making it look like one of the new companies started in the COVID-conomy. As long as they can keep selling to enterprise during this period of uncertainty, they are going to be very well positioned as other players die.
- Build a great defensible product: this company already has a solid business model, so now the goal is retention and good operations. Creating a delightful and end-to-end user experience a la Canva will be key to making sure their product is sticky and ARR keeps growing.
- Look for smart opportunities to eat other companies lunches: this company isn’t trying to be Mailchimp or Salesforce. But if the conversion for B2B sales is there, there isn’t a reason why this company can eat (or at least nibble) at the lunches of these specialized providers. Another business comparable would be Lever.
What the Risks Are
- Disruption From Peers: what’s to stop a HubSpot/Blanket/Salesforce from funding a team to build out a clone once the product is good? This isn’t a high concern, but the exact same beauty of its simplicity in concept is what makes its barrier to entry for other well capitalized peers lower. (That said, especially for HubSpot and the like, the move is probably buy over build.)
- Scalability of the Content, UI/UX: How much of the content is really “AI powered”? If the automatic suggestions at the beginning are trash, then that means it’s still a manual endeavor and adoption will be slower.
- Clear value proposition for customers: attribution is the El Dorado of sales and marketing. Ultimately you get one conversion and the person who made the sale has to use their own judgment to figure out what tools helped and what didn’t. Related to UI/UX, not only does the person using Contiq’s software have to find value, but ideally that sales rep’s competition also has to be envious of Contiq and lobby their firm to buy licenses.
Muhan’s Bonus Notes
- I absolutely detest buzzwords such as “AI powered,” but this company turned it around for me with the non-buzzy, straightforward product.
- Loved seeing that annual burn go from $667k (2018) to $187k (2019.)
- Amused that “intangible assets” value went from $500k in 2018 to 1.94 million in 2019.
Financials (References)
- Total Amount Raised: US $1.044 million
- Total Round Size: US $2 million
- Raise Description: Seed
- Minimum Investment: US $200 per investor
- Security Type: Crowd Note
- Valuation Cap: US $9,000,000
- Offering Type: Side by Side Offering
Updates
This is where I’ll post updates about the company. This way all my notes from offering to post-offering updates will be on one page.