The Science of Success Podcast

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(B) Zero to $25mm of Revenue in 18 Months with Oliver Schmalholz

Lace Gilger
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In this episode, we get a behind the scenes peek at what it truly takes to rapidly scale a massive company - learning the inside lessons that enabled our guest to build his telecom startup from zero to twenty-five million dollars in recurring revenue in 18 months, with our guest Oliver Schmalholz.

Oliver Schmalholz is the co-founder and CEO of News Quantified. News Quantified provides powerful analytics to generate insights from market-moving news, earnings, and other corporate events. For the past 15 years, Oliver successfully built four start-up companies, raised over $50m in venture capital, AND grew a US equities trading firm to over $1b trading volume in three years. When the European Telecom market de-regulated, he signed the first interconnection agreement in Austria leading to an acquisition by a Fortune Global 100 company.

  • Lessons from scaling multiple startups (some good, some not so good!)

  • Choosing the market to focus on when opportunity strikes

  • How to use comparative analysis to find really powerful market opportunities that others might miss

  • How to scale a company from $0 to $25mm in ARR in 18 months

  • Key lessons of rapidly scaling any companies revenue

    • Recurring revenue businesses are essential

    • Manage and keep your churn rate low

    • Leverage a sales and marketing strategy focused on having low fixed expenses. 

    • No advertising expense, having a “no-cap” commission plan, leveraging variably compensated 

    • Leverage third party distribution deals. 

  • “SDR” - Sales Development Reps - being fed prequalified leads and set up appointments. 

  • Have a performance-based, uncapped sales team that works the leads generated by the SDRs. 

  • Leveraged a “partner” strategy to partner with big telephone producers and gain access to their customer base, in exchange for giving them an ongoing residual. 

  • The pitch to big providers was "You make one intro to our sales team and you get an ongoing commission going forward."

  • The importance of having a fearless approach to sales and business development. 

  • How to generate huge value from your sales team using these strategies. 

  • Pay your salespeople a higher upfront commission, front-load it, and also offer them endless, uncapped residuals on the back end, with a right to buy them out at the end of the contract with 12-24 months worth of commissions. 

  • Lead generator / SDR Role"

    • Basic quota: 3-4 meetings/day (part of your fixed comp) ($2500-$3000/month)… you can double it with great performance. 

    • Any production beyond that, you get $10-$50 per appointment set. 

    • Make sure appointment sticks, a canceled appointment gets pulled back out of their bonus.

  • The 3 keys to rapidly scaling a business:

    • Recurring Revenue

    • Efficient Distribution (leveraging variable compensation & performance-based metrics)

    • Operational Excellence

  • How do you think about positioning yourself into the industries that have the biggest potential for substantial growth and scale?

  • Pay attention to platforms and multi-sided marketplaces. 

  • Homework: Pay attention to recurring revenue opportunities and see if you can turn your opportunity into one that has recurring revenue?

  • Homework: Call up 100 potential customers and pick their brains before getting into their space. Be fearless with your business development approach. 

Thank you so much for listening!

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