1Mby1M Deal Radar 2021: Fullcast, Seattle, WA

Despite the explosion of sales tech, attainment numbers for sales teams are at an abysmal 52%. This means organizations are making up for lack of planning alignment by hiring double the sales resources they need. To address this problem, Fullcast was founded in 2017 by Dharmesh Singh and Bala Balabaskaran as a platform for growing companies to streamline go-to-market planning and link the plan to execution-driven changes on the field.

Prior to starting Fullcast, Dharmesh and Bala had worked at Microsoft and Salesforce where they had first-hand experience of the challenges in planning. Most of the planning tools in the market were highly inefficient. Even after buying the planning solution from Anaplan, they would still have to use a consulting team from Deloitte to build the model. Since it was not connected to the CRM, they’d have to spend time getting the data into the CRM. So, they built a custom solution at Salesforce to help with its internal process called Go For Growth (G4G). This led to the idea of building a platform that would allow other companies to do the same.

Fast growing companies cannot afford large planning cycles and inefficiencies. The key strategic job of the leadership is to allocate resources most effectively to deal with the changing market landscape and their own internal talent pool. Fullcast enables companies to streamline go-to-market planning and keep the plan “alive” by integrating it with the execution in the field. It helps teams

• Stay on top of the allocation and performance of territory, teams, and product lines with respect to the plan

• Adjust the plan and course correct in real time

• Automate manual work to be done on CRM

• Reduce dependency on internal IT teams

Initially, Fullcast tested its value proposition across both SMB and the Mid- Market tech companies. Its USP was, “For less than the cost of an FTE, Fullcast can offer you sales ops as a service.” Companies from conferences like SaaStr bet on them and they gained traction through references and repeat business. Today, it has 16 customers, of which seven have had multiple renewals. Customers include MongoDB, Udemy, and Automation Anywhere. Its ARR is over $1M and is breaking even on its monthly expenses. It has a very lean team and its burn is about $80K-$85k per month.

The company targets high growth companies, mostly mid-market tech enabled companies with 80-100 sales reps and growing their headcount at over 25% y-o-y. It uses Webinars, email, and LinkedIn outreach to acquire its customers. It focuses on a set of about 300 accounts that is nurtured through content with the goal of converting 10% of them to paying customers within a year.

The pricing is based on use cases and number of reps. Its ACV is about $75K. Initial all-inclusive deals were priced at about $80K. It is experimenting with pricing and module packaging. It has proven land and expand on use cases, so it’s now looking at dollar-driven upsells.

Using a bottom-up approach, Fullcast expects its TAM to be $9 billion. It targets the RevOps function and its ideal customer would have at least a team of 4-5 people supporting this function in addition to people budget for tools and consulting. The Fullcast platform delivers functionality that generally takes at least 2-3 FTE in companies having 100 -1000 sales reps. The salary for a top Analyst or Sales Strategy or Ops Head is about $120 K/year. There are about 60,000 companies worldwide that would fit that bill. Assuming $150K per customer in return for saving these companies from investing in the additional head or consultant, the TAM would be $9B.

Fullcast initially bootstrapped and then raised money. It first raised $800K on a convertible note offering to some small institutional investors and friends and family. In June 2018, it raised $2.75M in a round led by Cowboy Ventures with participation from Harrison Metal and Fika. It also opened a debt line of credit as it continued to focus on revenue while building the platform. Customers have been its primary drivers of funding. It has had some near-death moments but has persisted with a self-driven, resilient, and customer-obsessed team. It has a small team of 10 FTE and contractors spread across the Bay Area, India, and Seattle. When COVID hit and it had to optimize its expenses, each team member voluntarily accepted a salary cut.

The company plans to hire for leadership roles in Sales and Marketing and local engineering talent to move faster and scale. It also plans to invest in a product support team to support the growing customer base. It intends to take market share from point solutions even as it taps into the net new market for Rev Ops Platform. It plans to achieve over $3M in ARR within twelve months of funding.

Fullcast is looking to raise a Series A for about $6M. The ideal investor is someone who understands the value of the long game and someone who understands B2B sales. They need to have a conviction on the future of the intelligent enterprise and believe that digital transformation is the only way to drive the agility quotient in thriving companies. It also needs help in building out the rest of the team and scaling its own GTM function.

Dharmesh expects to see Fullcast as a standalone public company in 7-10 years. 

This segment is a part in the series : 1Mby1M Deal Radar 2021