Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Interview with Ryan Westwood, Simplus
Salt Lake City-based Simplus (www.simplus.com), a provider of implementation services and technology for the Salesforce "quote-to-cash" software, has been on a massive growth tear in recent months, having just completed its fifth acquisition of another company since Q4 of 2016. We caught up with CEO Ryan Westwood, to understand why the company--backed by EPIC Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and Cross Creek Advisors--has been growing so fast.
What do you do?
Ryan Westwood: We are the leaders in quote-to-cash implementation in Salesforce.
What does that mean?
Ryan Westwood: What that means, is we have a niche within the Salesforce ecosystem, called quote-to-cash. If you purchase Salesforce's quote-to-cash software, we help you best to implement it. Quote-to-cash is the heart of a business, and how you build customers and how you quote customers, confirm the price, and bill the customer.
How did you get into this?
Ryan Westwood: We were entrepreneurs running a business prior to this. We had a company where we needed CPQ software, configuration, price, and quoting software. There was no one to help us implement it. So, we hired a couple of technicians, put our name on DICE, and found that there were many big companies needing help. We figured out it was an under-served market. We partnered with Salesforce CPQ, quote-to-cash, which used to be SteelBrick in the early days. It really was our own pain point, which we took to heart in the business, so we went in and starting doing this.
How are you funded, and what's the status of the company now?
Ryan Westwood: We have scaled to 260 employees, four years in. We now have 9 offices across the country, we have done a seed round, and an A and B round. We've grown by a M&A strategy, which has basically been arbitrage. In our industry, you get a certain multiple of revenue if you're under $10M. That dramatically increases when you are between $10M and $20M, and goes up again when you're over $20M. So, we buy companies that are under $10M, or between $10M and $20M at lower multiples, because they become more valuable to our investors when they become part of Simplus. We've made five acquisition in thirteen months. Our latest was based in Silicon Valley, called CirrusOne. CirrusOne was a wild week. We closed on a Friday, and then announced to all the employees that they had tickets to fly to Salt lake City. We flew 44 people to Salt Lake. We actually just posted a video welcoming them to Salt Lake. We had these thundersticks as they came in at 8am, and created a huge line, and cheered them, as if they were coming onto a football field. Then we took them all to The Killers concert, and basically had a welcome with all of the employees in Salt Lake.
A lot of companies find it a challenge to make acquisitions work. What's your strategy on how to do them right?
Ryan Westwood: When you look at the five acquisitions we've made in the last 13 months, we've been growing at a fast pace. However, I've been very deliberate and focused on our culture. I believe, as CEO, my job is to focus on culture. I obsess over it. It costs a lot of money to fly 44 people into Salt Lake, take them to a concert, and have a week of training and support. We could have just as easily launched through a video conference room at an office in San Francisco. But, instead, we invested in this, because we believe in our employees in a big way, and in our culture. You have to be thoughtful and spend some money on this, because there's nothing like the feeling that a company cares about. It's a big difference when a CEO looks you in the face after an acquisition. I think that's a big difference between the majority of times an acquisition is handled, and how we handle it. We call it our welcome week, and we think it makes a big difference. I think the biggest piece is the culture piece. We've had 100 percent retention to the people we extended offers to in our last three acquisitions.
What's your strategy on future acquisitions?
Ryan Westwood: We'll continue our M&A strategy. We're not doing another acquisition until our Series C in Q4, and we'll raise another round then continue to expand our operations. We're looking to go international towards the end of next year, or the beginning of the next year.
What's the biggest lesson you've learned so far?
Ryan Westwood: One of the big ones, is that ideas win, not titles. I have a meeting every month, called our Change Champions meeting. It includes change and culture champions from our company, who are employees that others look up to, not necessarily the leaders in the organization. We get some of the best learning from them, constantly stressing that internally, there's a lot of smart, brilliant people, and it's not just people at the top. I think that message is really important. Many, not just some, but many of the great ideas we have implemented from our growth have come from this group. It's the mentality that everybody's thoughts matter.
Thanks!