Interview with a founder
CustomerGauge CEO Adam Dorrell
1. How would you describe your company’s offering and customers in one sentence?
Our CustomerGauge software solution helps business-to-business companies improve their customer retention, by bringing multiple streams of feedback and usage data to front-line employees, and showing them where monetary opportunities lie.
2. How did you make your way into the world of SaaS and start your company?
I was always interested in software. In fact I used to make money from writing computer games before I left school. But I took a detour into marketing. It was only after I was made redundant later in life that I felt ready to start again in software. I was attracted to the idea of automating customer feedback, and attaching some retention value to it. I got interested in the Net Promoter Score. By then, (2007) it was possible to create software without having to own a server. So I set up a company, financed it with my credit card, and taught myself PHP and MySQL. We launched our first reporting system, and signed our first paying customer later the same year.
3. CustomerGauge has been recognised as a thought leader in customer retention. How has the journey been so far?
Thanks. I like to write about what we do. At one point I worked for a computer magazine, and I liked the way that people in an industry have a jargon to communicate among themselves that made them feel inclusive. I started a “Net Promoter News” column and peppered it with phrases like “asker” instead of “survey” and described researchers that were negative about Net Promoter as “flat-earthers” or “NPS-denyers". We collected NPS scores, and created benchmarks. That made it clear we knew what we were doing.
Since then my team has conducted original research every year, and published five books on customer retention.
It’s not always easy, but our efforts to educate potential customers eventually pay off. I guess it helped that we are somewhat ahead of the market. Some customers tell us they have followed us for years (before buying!)
4. There’s no easy path to success. What has been your main challenge and greatest achievement?
We have had tough times and good times. I often feel there is a very fine line between success and failure. Not long ago, we had two, nearly three, quarters of sales that were below target, and we lost some large accounts. We had to stop hiring, cut costs and shelve plans. It was incredibly stressful as we got to the end of each month: the survival of your company might be at stake. But I had to stay calm and confident – at least outwardly if not inwardly – to lead everyone through it. I kept saying, “It will all be OK.” I think our greatest achievement was remaining confident and putting the right processes in place. It’s almost as if we survived by sheer willpower. Now we’re on a much better track. We eliminated things that were holding us back and made it easier for customers to buy from us.
5. The SaaS industry is changing so fast. How do you make fast decisions and act on them? How do you build an agile learning organisation that can quickly adapt?
I’ll start with the agile part. We hired a great CTO who brought in an agile philosophy at CustomerGauge. We now do sprints every two weeks, and release code without fail 20 – 30 times a year. Everything is documented. We usually hold an all-hands meeting to explain what was developed, by who, and what it took. Today our development is incremental. It doesn’t revolve around big code releases. It’s more relaxed, but still highly productive. This has impacted the entire management team. When it comes to product marketing materials and sales plans, we’re closely aligned in terms of pace. I’m impatient and always want things done yesterday. Luckily, my team delivers. In our weekly OpCom meeting we review what we did the previous week and what’s next. My team doesn’t always look forward to it, but it’s a CustomerGauge tradition. We know that every Tuesday afternoon we can air any issues and address them openly. This also informs our recruitment: people must be able to work to this rhythm.
6. CustomerGauge operates in Amsterdam and Boston. What were your main learnings in scaling the company to the US market?
We had to make our communication much simpler. The Americans value simplicity and clarity in communication – your idea and concept must be easy to explain. People often say that in the USA you have to dumb down. Actually, I think it’s more a case of being smarter in the way you say things. It’s far harder to achieve brevity in words and images. For example, we sometimes use icons in our software. In Europe people are used to this, but in the US it creates confusion. You can see this difference on the roads. The US yield sign says ‘YIELD’, but in the Netherlands we use a downward pointing triangle.
I’ve always admired American authors. I believe in direct communication. The Twitter culture is a good example. Take President Trump. He dismisses his opponents with two-word insults. It’s not my style, but it works. Repeat it often and it sticks.
For us, the challenge is to spend enough to repeat it often enough. That’s the scale challenge. In the US you have to spend big. It sounds like a cliché, but we’ve found it to be true. That kind of spending is hard for a European startup!
7. You founded CustomerGauge with your wife Camilla. So besides being co-founder and CEO, you’re also a husband and father. How do you achieve a healthy work-life balance?
That’s a tough question. We don’t advertise the fact that we are co-founders, but we also do not hide it. It informs everything we do. We care deeply about our family and this extends to our employees. We’re committed to fairness, diversity and celebrating our differences.
Camilla and I consider ourselves equal at home and at work. In the Netherlands fathers are expected to do their fair share of childcare. From the start I dropped the children at the creche or school and was very much involved in raising them.
In terms of work, Camilla is strong in areas that I’m not as good at. So we complement each other. It's not fair that I get to be named CEO, while she’s COO when she’s often so much better at something than I. However, it’s easier for the outside world if we have one leader, so I have selfishly assumed that role! Joking aside, we still see a lot of sexism in our business. I try to push against that. I have a wife and two daughters. Simply helping women to be more visible is not enough.
Married founders are more common than you might think. Cisco, Medallia, Eventbrite, VMWare, Kaspersky… There’s not a lot of literature on it. It’s a tough founder dynamic, but if you can make it work, there are all kinds of benefits. I’m sure that one day, Camilla and I will help other founders manage it!
8. As a CEO, what do you know now that you wish you had known in the beginning?
Be less optimistic. Growth does not happen as fast as you think and overestimating sales doesn't help!
9. What advice would you give other founders in the B2B SaaS industry?
Hold on to your great idea. Keep the focus tight and hold on to your vision. If you attract a big customer, you’ll be very tempted to compromise, but you need to be selfish. The more features you add, the more you move away from clarity of concept. On the other hand, you must also be ready to pivot when you need to…
Oh man, it's so hard to juggle this – no sane person would choose to be an entrepreneur. But every founder I know in this industry just couldn’t resist!