Earlier this year, a Boston-based $12-million annual recurring revenue (ARR) business chose Stax Bill as its vendor for subscription billing and management. The business was billing over 800 customers a month using a combination of Excel, Netsuite, and human effort as its billing and payments solution.
Within 45 days of coming on board with us, the business was up and running with all its billing on the Stax Bill platform. And today, that business is pumping out over $20 million worth of invoices within our platform.
Among other Stax Bill customer success stories, this one has really stuck with me throughout the year. Just two months after signing on with us, the CFO of that business reached out to me directly. He said implementing Stax Bill was the best decision he has made in his 26-year career.
Not only did it feel great to hear Stax Bill is igniting growth within that business, but also it struck me as a story that exemplifies everything we are working towards and succeeding at within this company and the subscription billing market.
Big growth despite big competition
As a first time CEO who is now over eight years into the job, I am constantly challenged with growing a forward-thinking software company. While 2019 proved to be no different, we set ourselves some very aggressive targets for the year and remained focused on ensuring each of our team members was aligned with, and moving toward, our vision.
I am very proud to say in 2019 we have grown our annual recurring revenue (ARR) 110% year-over-year and our customer count by more than 155%. As a result of our continued growth and success, we have welcomed an increase in our employee count of over 40%.
Our team is also turning up its focus on our ideal customer—an objective we have been working toward over the past couple of years. Since June 2017, that cohort of customers in our ideal customer profile has been growing 20% month-over-month from a monthly recurring revenue (MRR) perspective—this is unicorn status within the SaaS world.
I am extremely pleased with what we have been able to accomplish in 2019 from a team and revenue growth perspective. We continue to win while sharpening the predictability in our revenue and customer success programs.
Our biggest challenge as a business has always been trying to compete with our larger, more heavily funded competitors. But we believe—and our continued success seems to corroborate—that the market we are serving is large enough to create multiple large companies.
Regardless, we remain laser focused on our own key objectives for the year ahead, and I am excited about our future growth initiatives and the team we continue to build.
Bringing our key initiatives into 2020
Throughout the year, we have spent a lot of time listening to what our customers, our prospects, and our market have to say regarding the Stax Bill platform and how we can continue making it better.
Our strategy has always included a careful mix of three key pillars, which we will continue into the new year.
1. Market leadership
We will persist in exploring where we need to take our product to ensure we continue leading our market and gaining visibility as a company.
2. Customer success
We will be working closely with our existing client base to ensure we are providing the best value possible to propel their continued growth and success.
3. Scale and infrastructure
We continue to put plans in place to advance our internal operations to scale up as we grow.
We believe each of these pillars plays an important role in the evolution and future direction of our product. By investing in our platform and customer experience while further strengthening our revenue engines and ensuring we remain firmly focused on provided value to our existing and future customers, we are positioning Stax Bill for accelerated growth in 2020.
As we continue our rapid growth trajectory from 2019 and we meet or beat our targets for 2020, we expect to bring in a significant round of financing over the next 12 months. This financing will take Stax Bill to its next level of growth and scale.
We also expect to grow our headcount by another 50%+ throughout the coming year.
Finishing up our planning for 2020, I am most excited about our future growth initiatives and the team we continue to build. These key initiatives include product, revenue, and team—the essence of any successful SaaS company.
Growing with our values
In 2017 we developed our mission statement: “To empower businesses worldwide with a flexible subscription commerce engine to ignite their growth.”
This year, we built on this pledge to include several core values that serve as guiding principles with respect to how we behave and what we stand for as a team and as a company. These include: simplify, respect, drive, transparency, and above all, family first.
For that $20 million Boston-based ARR business, and the many other growing companies within the Stax Bill family, we are working continually to create simple solutions to complex problems. We are passionate about helping our clients drive growth and about coming up with effective solutions when they come to us with concerns. We are also committed to fostering an open discussion regarding all the ways we can help our clients succeed and how we can improve Stax Bill as their long-term partner. We are not afraid to see our own faults and turn them into opportunities for our clients and our company.
Our family-first mentality encompasses not only the members of our Stax Bill team and their loved ones, but also our clients and the relationships and accomplishments we are building together.
We want nothing more than to see the members of our family reach their full potential in 2020 and beyond.
Happy Holidays, and best wishes in the coming year,
Tyler Eyamie
CEO, Stax Bill
