You're listening to Cubicle to CEO episode 261. when is the right time to exit your business? For Suneera Madhani, it was after taking her Fintech startup stacks from idea to unicorn, a moniker coined for the rare privately held company that reaches a billion dollar valuation after selling to private equity and finding a new CEO to lead the company's next stage of growth. Suneera knew she wanted to return back to the building phase of business. Taking everything she knew about building a billion dollar company, sanira set out to do it again, this time with worth AI, a company creating the first ever credit score for businesses.
In today's case study on lessons from building a billion dollar brand. Sanira shares the wisdom she took from her exit that she's applying to this new venture, so you can borrow her hard earned lessons in hindsight as well.
Welcome to Cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host. Ellen Yin. Every Monday, go behind the business in a case study style interview with a leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, we have sunir Madani here with us. And if you've been in the entrepreneurial world for the last few years, you've seen her face everywhere as she's built a billion dollar brand and is about to do it again. So Suneera, we're so excited to have you here today.
Ellen, I'm so excited to be here. I feel like we've been trying to make this podcast happen for so long, and I'm so pumped, because I love the format of your show, and so I'm excited to share all the things about building a billion dollar business.
So let's start with your first billion dollar baby. And it's funny to even say that, because it's so rare to even be able to have one unicorn. You know, a unicorn being a company that reaches $1 billion in valuation or more. And that was stacks, right? That was your first business that that reached that valuation and you sold it. And so I kind of want to get into the details of that, as well as how you're utilizing what you learned from building that first billion dollar brand into your new venture at worth.
But before we do that, of course, our listeners have to know what your cubicle to CEO story is, did you ever work at a cubicle desk? And if so, what was that catalyst that led you into entrepreneurship?
Oh, my God, I love that so much to share, and I'm so excited to dive in. But yes, of course, I worked, you know, I've worked in many cubicles, and so my professional career, I'm so grateful for. I really do believe that having a professional career and background really allowed me to see opportunity and to solve problems in my industry. And so I graduated with a degree in finance from the University of Florida. Also, I did a double major in in marketing as well. And so post my college education, I went off to go find a proper like corporate path, and I ended up working in top like fortune 50 and in various different corporations, which led me to my path of working for a payments company.
So that's honestly how I got the idea of my first fin tax, tax payments. It was because I was an employee, because I was in my cubicle, because I was paying attention to customers, saw where the industry was headed, and I knew that there had to be a better way. I could not find the support to go solve it within my company. And so that's really how the first business was born.
And so I if you're listening and you're in a cubicle somewhere, or you're working your nine to five, it's honestly it's the best experience as well. So don't think of it as wasted experience. Everything that I learned in my corporate path has led me to be an incredible CEO as well. And so I'm so grateful for my corporate background, and I do find that, I find that many entrepreneurs who have come from organizations, you're able to build better organizations, because you've actually experienced, not only you know, you've experienced working, you know, for an organization firsthand. I've gone through all the different kinds of bosses as well, the greatest bosses who I'm still in touch with, and some of the worst as well, who told me that, you know, I'm a little girl that will never make it as well.
And so lots of great stories in my past corporate life, but I wouldn't trade any of it. Keep learning is like, is what I will say to you, and then you will find that time where it is time to go, take that risk. And so that was my first path on building my first business, and I knew it was time to go, take the take the leap, because I saw that the credit card processing industry was booming and that it was going to be different, and technology hadn't caught up to, you know, where I saw the vision, and I took that, you know, an idea, a simple idea, we launched the first subscription based credit card processing system, which doesn't, it seems like, it's like, of course, that's around forever.
It hasn't, and you would be game changer, and I went back to my old bosses, who pretty much laughed me out of the room. And, you know, I was very young and wasn't experienced enough. And, you know, why would I be taken seriously, you know, with this idea that I had, but that was my moment. That was my aha moment when I flew back home from my corporate office and sat down to dinner, you know, with my family. And my family was like, Well, why don't you just go start this business? Like, why are you trying to, like, if your company doesn't believe in it, you believe in it, go do it.
And that was the first time anybody had ever asked, like, said, you know, like, why not me? It was like, the I never had thought about having that as entrepreneurship as a career. I grew up, you know, in an immigrant family background, so entrepreneurship was a necessity. It wasn't anything sexy. I was the first person in my family to graduate college, which meant that I was supposed to have a corporate career path and all the things, but that's what eventually led me to start my first business, and it took a decade of building a decade, so 10 years, we just celebrated, 10 years as a company for stocks and so much evolution along the way, but ended up building a billion dollar business, you know, reached record heights and revenue and all the things, and ended up exiting and selling the business and and here I am starting again.
So I know there's lots of questions in between, but the corporate path supported me there.
I love that perspective, by the way, and I agree. I think every experience you have it's stat, it's a stack, right? People sometimes think of changing career paths as starting over. I really don't see it that way. I think it's just adding to whatever steps you've already built up. And I love that. You really emphasize that for our listeners, when you started stacks, did you start it with the intention of building it to sell, or was that just a natural path that, you know, became apparent as you were building it?
Yeah, no, I didn't. I didn't know I could go build a million dollar business, let alone a billion dollar business. So I think all great businesses that end up succeeding, there's a little bit of that organic part of it that grows. And I really do believe that you have to really just stay heads down and execute, right? So I always say there's no such thing as a billion dollar idea, only a billion dollar execution.
But once we started executing, we started seeing what our customers were saying, Our business was growing, our team was growing. I wasn't looking up. I wasn't distracted, and I knew that there was, you know, more to to grow. There's more market share to have, there more customers to have. And so we got really focused on executing and building in that, in that way, which then led to big milestones for the company.
And you know, once you do take on investors, and once you do take on strategic capital for growth, you know you have to return that capital. And so that was really when we had to make a decision, to say, are we going to be a lifestyle company forever and just grow this business, or are we going to take venture capital scale it so we can reach more people, so that our technology can be in the hands of more customers?
And that was a path that we chose, which meant that we we would have to exit, which we have to deliver a value to shareholders. And Exit can look like so many different things, which I know you're excited to talk about, but I didn't know what that path of exit was going to be. I thought I was going to take the company public. That ended up selling the company to private equity, which turned out super fantastic as well, but a different path, and the company is still around, like the company is still growing.
And it's amazing, because companies can live on without you. We can have like, nine different case studies here, but after exit, it was like, what's next? And so we're back at it again and building another company, which I think we're gonna, you know, do it in record time, because this time I get to do it with experience. So I don't think it's gonna take 10 years. You know, 10 years isn't actually that long to go build $100 million revenue based company, but I do believe that the path will be faster, because this time I come from I didn't go to CEO school. So the first time around, I didn't go to CEO school, this time around, I have more experience, so lots of lessons.
That makes complete sense what you're saying, and I have a few actually rapid fire questions, just to set a little bit more context for our listeners. One, you mentioned that you sold stacks to private equity. I'd love for you to just high level, maybe debrief why you chose that path over going public. Two, you mentioned that, because you sold to private equity, are you in any way, shape or form, still involved in stacks payments?
Do you have any ownership or shares in it, or are you completely, you know, removed and separated from from that business? And three, you also mentioned that you use an infusion of strategic capital. To help you grow stacks to that valuation. What was the total that you raised for the company over your lifetime as a CEO at that business?
Yeah, lots of very deep questions. I'm gonna do my best to try to answer as transparently as I can to your listeners as I think it's important. But you know, when it's time for exit. Exit means so many different things. It didn't necessarily mean an exit where I was leaving the company. It was style of infusion of capital for the business. And so private equity is a different style of investment into the business. Going public is also you have public shareholders. So there's private exits and there's public exits, right?
So that's the difference between a public offering, which is an IPO, or a private offering which could be through private equity. So that's just the that's just the difference between the two and a company can go down different paths for it. And so we were open to the different paths. We just really loved the partners on the other side. And so we really liked the partners that we were choosing, and were excited about the growth that they would bring to the table. We they had a niche in our space. They had a great strategy for M and A, and so that was one of the reasons why we chose that path, and it was a really successful decision when we did that first exit.
So we capitalized the business in 2020, 20 post covid, which was absolutely nuts to have such growth, even through covid. But it was, it was for the reasons that we were excited about this partner and what they were strategically bringing to the table. And so that was one of the reasons. And then your second question is, what happens post exit? Am I still involved? So yes, I was super involved. I was still the CEO for two plus years thereafter, setting that vision, you know, getting things like in the, you know, in my vision as well, still with their vision alongside. So when you do take infusions of capital in the business, you as, you know, as a CEO, or less and less, or as a founder, you're diluted along the way.
So I think we watch Shark Tank and other things, but we don't get the full idea of what venture capital. So you raise capital, but you're also diluting your equity percentage of ownership. So yes, I'm still a shareholder of stocks. I'm its biggest cheerleader, and I want to be a shareholder of stocks, because I believe in the success beyond me as a company, but I'm not active in a role anymore. So in 2020 god, there's like, I feel like all the 2020s right? 2022 so 2022 I decided that it was, it was time for us to not be part of the day to day execution of the business. And honestly, it's because, you know, there I'm a builder, right?
And so CEOs are visionaries, and I got to build a company from an idea to, you know, record heights. And so at our recapitalization in 2021 so 2020 we brought on the private equity, and then 18 months later, we did another infusion of capital to scale the business, and also our revenue was were growing. So it's not like we're just getting these fictitious valuations. You know, when I exited the business, we're doing north of 100 million in revenue, and so our company was valued north of a billion, and it was the right, you know, timing of the market, and also the right partners at the table.
And we decided to do another infusion of capital into the business to grow the business. And so post after that, I, you know, I'll share something personal with you guys here. So you know what happens when you decide to go, like, land on the moon, but you actually land, right? It's like, okay, yes, I'm gonna go, you know, every year the bar kept getting higher and higher. I want, you know, some of these, some of these things you just like, as a founder, you like, just pull from the air, like, I want 100 million in value. I want a 200 million, or I want to get to 10 million in revenue, or I want to get to 1 million in revenue, or 100,000 in revenue, whatever the goal is. When you achieve it, then you set the next or when you're close to achieving it, you almost like the bar gets higher, and then you're getting close and the bar gets higher. You're always moving the goal post, yeah, always moving it.
So I played that game for 10 years. 10 years I played that game where the goalpost just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And because we're great at executing, because we were great at scale, because I had a vision, and I was gonna go do it, and I was gonna will my way there. We did it, but when I achieved, like, the biggest of them all right? Like, as a tech company, what's bigger than that, right? Like, it's literally called unicorn, for a reason. It's unattainable. It's 0.00006% of company. It's not even, it doesn't even round to a single decimal. Incredible. And so you achieve it.
And honestly, after the party, after the media, after all of the things were over. Over, I honestly, Ellen felt the loneliest I'd ever felt. I felt the most emptiest, because it's like, oh, I achieved it. I did the thing, and then I get a new plan that's like, oh, here go from, you know, one to two-
Right.
Like, that's not, it's not exciting, right? So you lose, you lose that. Like, you have to kind of check your ego a bit too, to say, like, am I do I really want to do this? Or am I doing it for like this? You know, just the the high of achieving these goals. And so I went on this, like, really big journey of really searching for I spent a decade of my life, my entire 20s, right, between the age of 25 to 35 which is like, pretty much my adult life, right? In this business, it's all I ever did. And I had two kids along the way, two little girls along the way, my family. That's, you know, it was really hard for me to ever ask myself what was important to me.
So I had investors and shareholders and my customers and my team and everybody else the community telling me how I should run my business right, and how, what, what success looks like. And then all I had was like my family and how I wanted to be successful here, and what, how I wanted to be successful as a mother and a wife. But I never got a chance to really ask myself, like, what do I want? What does this actually look like for me?
And so post March of 2021, after the billion in value, and all of the things, I really went out on a journey to really ask myself, okay, how long do I want to continue to, you know, be CEO here. Do I have other ideas? Do I have other interests that I want to go pursue, and I'm a builder, and that's kind of where, fundamentally, and I think this is where serial entrepreneurship, I get it. Now I didn't get it then I was like, my whole life is going to be this company, like there's nothing else I can do.
And you learn that it doesn't have to be and that you can find purpose and passion. And that's I went on a journey to go figure that out and made an amazing transition, right? So we had time to, you know, to set the business up for success. We've got a really great CEO in place, and she's so fantastic, and I'm so excited about the business. I'm still gonna cheer on the business like I'm still part of its journey in so many ways.
But me, personally, on a day to day that needed to change. And so that's been the evolution, and it's been quite the journey. I almost call this, like this whole journey over this last so now it's been 18 months, almost two years, since I've been out of the role, and I'm really excited to tell you that I I'm like, learning who senera is again and the things that I love and spending time for myself and like asking myself questions. And as I'm building again this time around, I get to learn from not just the business success, but so many things that I would do over in a heartbeat, and then, of course, so many things that I'm like, Okay, this time around. So it's been really fun to do it again.
I really appreciate your vulnerability there. I feel like you're not alone in that experience of feeling at your personal lowest when you reach your career highest. I think that actually is a very common experience among not just women, but especially, I think women, and it's not talked about enough, so I really appreciate you actually saying that publicly. I in looking at, you, know, your experience of building this, this billion dollar brand, I think the the question that kind of strikes me most, and granted, this is a podcast interview, and it would be impossible to fully dissect this, I think, in in our time together today.
But what do you think is the single most important distinction between businesses that are capped at their ability to, let's say, essentially, grow beyond themselves, like there's lots of successful entrepreneurs, especially in the online space right, that maybe scale their businesses to 1 million, 5 million, million, 10 million, maybe even 25 million or so, but very, very few, like you said, ever get to that enterprise level type company where you're at? You know, 100 million, 200 million, etc, in annual revenue. What do you think is the quality, or are the qualities that make a company qualified, I guess, to solve an enterprise problem. What does that look like?
Well, I think the first part of your question was like, what gets in the way? Yeah, right, for scale. And I'm going to be honest, it's you, right? It's you. So I think, I think we think that businesses, like not all businesses, are scalable. No businesses are scalable. It's how we scale them, how we choose to scale them. And I think that when we start our businesses, you know, we have to get really clear very fast. So I'm not, you know, like as my business was getting started, it was very clear that we had a big market fit.
But even if I was a service based there's so many service based companies that are scalable, that reach large enterprise. It doesn't have to be enterprise or not. I think it's about scale or not. So whether you're in the online space, whether you are small business, if you're a retail shop, an online store, right? All of these businesses and these business models are scalable, whether you choose to be scalable or not, or if you choose to have a lifestyle business, and even if it's a lifestyle business, lifestyle businesses can be scalable too. What I find most often is that we're in the way as entrepreneurs, because we can't let go.
So in order to scale, we've got to build we've got to build teams, we've got to scale people. I have a three part scale system that I'm happy to share. Yeah, it's people, process and profits. Those are the three areas of the business that we've got to take a look at to say, is that scalable and it has to live on without you, right? That's the definition. The difference is, is it reliant upon you, right? And so that is what is very the unique trait about scalable businesses is you're removing yourself out of the equation.
You're allowing people to scale. You're allowing processes to scale, which includes tools and technologies, and you're allowing your profits to scale. Profits to scale means, how am I actually scaling to if I had 1000 customers today, 10,000 customers today? So those conversations are really important to have about your business, but we have to be the one willing to let go as CEO, and most often, or, you know, we're not willing to, we say that we are. We say we want the, you know, I support, like, I'm, you know, very involved in so many women's businesses. I do a lot of work, you know, as a mentor through my community CEO school, I have a, you know, a really amazing group called The Millionaire founders club.
These are all seven and eight figure CEOs. Are all looking to scale. And even the ones that come before, I find so often, she is in the way, and she's like, yes, I want this next thing, but then she's not willing to let go and to hire strategically. So it is, that's what I would say, is the trait. It's scalable systems, but you have to remove yourself, although you're going to be the visionary, although you're going to be driving I was super involved until the very last day, right? And now my DNA is permeated in that organization. It's going to scale beyond me, but it's knowing that every business it is, most businesses, it is scalable. I can now with technology and tools and everything it is scalable.
What's not scalable is a very specific lifestyle brand that is very much attached to your name, your person, your everything. That's not going to be scalable. But when you remove yourself, right? And we see so many people who have built these great brands tied to their names, then later on, say, oh my god, it's so attached to me. I'm at the top of my career, but it's not scaling without me. So therefore we're going to rebrand. We're going to go in this direction, and then they do. Direction, and then they do optimize for scale. So I do believe that every business is scalable. You just have to get out of the way.
I love that. I want to kind of turn the lens to you and and how this applied in your own journey, both at stacks and then moving forward into worth so let's, let's kind of revisit, first the piece of removing yourself. So the seven to eight when you made that transition from, let's say, seven figures annually to eight figures annually in revenue at stacks, and then again, from eight figures to nine figures.
What was the key thing you had to remove yourself from? Or what was the key person, product or process that had to change at each of those inflection points to make it possible to leap to that next level of scale. Let's start there, and then I have a question about how that applies to what you're building at worth today.
Yeah, my answer is super simple, and you're gonna hate it or you're gonna love it like there's no other way everything has is going to break, and everything has to change at every different level. What got you from zero to six figures is not what's going to get you from six to seven period.
Can you give someone got examples of?
Yeah, seven to the eight so? And then again, it goes back to the things, like your team, right? So it might be the same team, but it looks different at the seven figure marks. It looks way different at the eight figure mark, and it looks way different at the nine figure mark, right? And so you have to grow your team accordingly, not to what you have today, but where your business is going. So that's an area that you've got to develop talent. You've got to also be able to attract talent that's going to be able to help fill those shoes for what this next level is.
Because at every given point, whether six to seven, seven to eight, eight to nine, it's supposed to break. I don't know why we think like we're like, oh my god, it's breaking. Well, that's a good thing. That means you're breaking it. That means there's, there's wear and tear on it. That means you're. Doing something if it's not breaking and it's crickets, that's a problem. And so learn to embrace that is part of the entrepreneurial journey. It's a shit ton of chaos all the time, like that's what it is. Your job as CEO is to put out fires, right?
And so that's one thing is to make sure that one at every given stage, I'm still leading as the visionary. I'm seeing the things before they happen or as they're happening. I'm thinking ahead. So first step, I'm always thinking three years out to before where I'm at today. So super important to know where the puck is going. You have to be the one to see that. And then the next part of it, when you're asking, what's actually breaking, your systems are breaking. That's always I see.
So systems are breaking, whether that's onboarding for your customers, whether that's your sales process, maybe there's like it does across every business. We can probably identify the different systems that could be breaking. You've got to go focus on process and scaling through process of what this next stage looks like. Then when you go get there and you're getting comfortable, then some other stuff is going to break, and then you've got to know that. You got to go fix that. That's just part of that journey.
But you have to think about it always as like the three year ahead. So I still it's people process and profit. Your profit also has to scale differently. And so what I mean by that is, you know how you're scaling in the beginning, margins look different on products as you're scaling. Most businesses are scaling through multiple lines of revenue when you're at a certain point, right? And so you have to also adapt to the industry. You're probably gonna have competitors if you're doing a great job. That means you're gonna get more competitors. That's exciting, right?
So you've got to learn to embrace that. This is like all the stuff that's thrown at you, and it does it feels like this, like juggle, master of thing, but you've got to be the master. You've got to keep it in the air, but it's okay if it breaks. You've just got, you got to get back up and keep putting on the show. You can't all break all at once, right? And so you've got to pick the right things that you want to optimize and fix, and that's how we're going to be able to do it.
And it's honestly, like, the last piece of it, it's execution. It's it's not going to happen. You have to execute every day. I am so over everyone sharing, like, oh, you can have this. Like, really sick. There's all this freedom that I am definitely all I talk about is freedom in my life as a CEO. Freedom comes in different ways, but I show up and I execute on my business every day that it looks different for me, and I've got teams in place, and freedom looks different, but hard work's there.
Like I've never coasted. I've never coasted now I'm gonna have i vacation, I take time off, I do all the things, but I work really hard, and I've worked really hard and smart, not just work hard. That's part of the journey, too. And so I do think that you've got to be willing to roll up your sleeves, but I have fun doing it. Like it's fun solving problems, right? That's why we're entrepreneurs. So let's go so and then we get to have fun too. Like, who gets to do this job where you get to change your hat every day? I think that's exciting. And so embracing that part of it is, I just freaking love it, and so, like, that's why I'm back building again, which is absolutely nuts, and how I'm applying it. I think that was your second question.
Well, before we get to that piece, actually, I wanted to circle back to because I know for our listeners, they really love to hear, like, tangible examples of how that looked like in your own business. And I think it kind of helps people better perceive how they might extrapolate that into into their business.
So for example, you mentioned like scaling profits, right? And the different things that might happen at different revenue milestones or at different scaling points. And you said one of those things was your lines of revenue might increase. So could you go a little bit more granular there and kind of give an example of like, what was like the line of revenue that you started with, and then what additional lines of revenue. Did you add as you were in the scaling process, and how you made those decisions?
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Yeah, I think something tangible I do want to share is execution is focused too. So as your business scales, there are times to then add in. You're like, Hey, here's partnerships that might look different. Here's, you know, we were a small business company, so we supported small businesses. Our enterprise product came in, you know, 2017 it came, you know, years later from our first product, the Enterprise product allowed for a ton of skill, because we would sign a partner and be one to many.
And that was a new line of revenue for us, but that was an important line for growth. Although we had so much mass and volume, one at a time through our small business customers, we had 40,000 small business customers, but signing seven partnerships that could scale allowed us a similar type of growth a lot faster.
So that's what I mean when I say the different lines of revenue, but I want to make sure it is important for you to not I see this all the time, so I want to be careful about it, because when you're in your earlier stages, you've got to have your hero got to have your hero product, you got to have your hero solution. You've got to go get product market fit. You can't be everything to everyone.
And so it is important for you to stay focused and go execute that. Once you execute that, and that's hitting that ceiling, right, then you're like, Okay, what do I have to add or do, to break to get to this next level? And how this applies here for me today is as I'm building worth we're building the business credit score. I'm super excited to launch the business credit score, and I'm sure we're going to get into it, because I'd love to share why I'm building this, but I onboarded, you know, 40,000 customers, which meant there was 500,000 business applications that was done pretty manually with human we call them underwriters, that would look at every individual business and then determine that business is credit worth.
So that's how we did it, because there's no standardization of, you know, credit in the B to B space, right? As a consumer, we've got our personal credit score, but in the business world, we don't actually have a business credit score. We don't everything's still tied to our personal name. So there was a lot of friction in that process, and that, to me, this is a problem that we're going to go solve, because I believe that if I was a small business owner, if I knew how to increase my credit worth, I would have done that as a woman, as a woman of color, I couldn't get any lending line of credit.
All my business solutions, they were still tied to my personal name. My business wasn't mature enough, and there was a human on the other side deciding my name, Suni ramadani. It doesn't sound like John Stevenson, who might get the application right. And so there's a lot of stuff that I got to learn as a financial institution, but also as a small business owner. But where I'm going with that in this launch of worth is I want every business to have the worth score. I want everyone to know their business credit worth. We've partnered with Equifax and the greatest of companies, and we can talk about what scale looks like at the second time around, but how this applies is, guess what? I'm not going to market to small business first as much as I want to. I want to. So bad, so, so, so bad.
But I learned the first time around, and I already know how to build an enterprise solution. So we built out the enterprise solution for all of the banks, all of the financial service, all of the fintechs, like the stacks of the world. So we built out an enterprise solution first with the word score as a component. Next year, I'm going to go launch four small businesses, which I want to invite all of you to be part of my beta for the word score. But I have to wait. I have to go launch enterprise first get that foundationally off the ground, because when I go land, the top banks which were in conversation were literally four of those top 10 banks that you can name, and we're, you know, at their door, piloting with them right now.
Once I have those customers, they already have hundreds of 1000s of small businesses at the works. Is going to get deployed, right? But I still have to focus on my hero product first, in order for the small business solution to be out. Although my heart's there, that's the whole why behind it. But those are the lessons in learning of what's going to bring you the biggest bang for your time, for your bucks, like, what's going to have the highest amount of impact with the lowest amount of effort, lowest amount of friction, what's going to get the highest impact? That's how I think about your revenue scale, your product scale.
Because we're a finite we'll as organizations and as humans, we only have a finite number of resources, dollars in time. So I've got to drive my team towards getting the maximum results out of those dollars in time. And so that's how I apply when those revenue streams come but I want everyone to get really focused on your hero, because that's going to define your place in the market. That's really important.
I agree. 100% is so much easier to put all your resources behind gaining momentum in one area and then using the increased resources to be able to build out other, other lines of revenue. Like you said, I find it really interesting what you're saying here. Though about how the first time around, you went for small business first, then shifted to enterprise, or added enterprise, and then this time you're doing the opposite way around.
Do you feel looking back, that the reason that you went for small business the first time around is because it was maybe easier to get those yeses from direct small business relationships, just like under your belt.
Yes. My first 100 customers, I literally would drive my car. So I had a Volkswagen Beetle. Oh my gosh. I used to have one too. Of course we have, I feel like we have so much in common. So drive my bug, and I had terminals in the trunk of my car. And I would show up to small businesses, and I'm like, Here, try my solution, try our solution. And I would like pretend to be the rep of this, like, company, and like, amazing, put my product into their hands. And I needed my first yeses.
And so I think we're naturally going to go, what is like the least path of resistance, where, for me, at that time, was small business. Right now, because of now being able have built the experience, have built the companies, have the contacts, have I could pick up the phone and call the president of Equifax, right? And it's really exciting, and they're excited about it. And so it's easier to form partnerships, and it's easier to form those relationships. So I'm like, let's leverage enterprise first. But I would not have been able to do that if I started worth today as I did in 2013 it would not be the same case.
And so that's why I believe the second time around, like the momentum is there, is is there. It's faster because you're you're more experienced, and your network is there. That's why your network, and we talk about this all the time, your network's so important. And not just your network within your your customers, your product set, but even with entrepreneurs around you and other industries and other things. Because as you're building and solving for challenges, like we don't have to do it alone.
Like, there is a way to solve for it. And if you have a great network that you can rely on, and I didn't have that the first time around building I curated the network way, like, too late when I'm, like, having to solve all these problems on my own, and that's what I really just I'm so passionate about building the network is such a boys club in the FinTech space, such a boys club. And I'm proud to say we've broken that mold.
It takes companies like with CEOs that look like me to say, hey, there's other ways to do it, and your network is really important. So that's another tip I want to give. Doesn't matter at what stage, keep building the network. Collect great relationships.
What would you say was one of the most impactful relationships that you made early on in building that still actually coming to fruition, even now as you're building worth?
Oh, my God, so many. I'm such a loyalist. I have, like the same people in my life forever for everything all the time. So I would say my mentors. So it doesn't, it didn't start off as like, formal mentorship, but you know, definitely I've got two key mentors in my life that have been with me from the very early stages, and there's they're both still with me as mentors, as investors. My chairman, Asif Ramji. I met him at a conference. He was in payments, he was just a few years ahead, and we connected.
And we connected very quickly over, you know, you know, something in common, and he was excited about what I was building, but I was able to, you know, get his phone number and get his email and then connect on, you know, he probably thought that, you know, he was like, Oh, great. Like you said, you're gonna go build this cool. And then I actually did new thing, and I did it, and then I emailed him, and I'm like, Hey, I did the thing that we talked about what's next. And so I was always seeking advice and guidance from people who were just a few steps ahead of me, right?
And so that was so instrumental. Asif is actually chairman of worth now as well. So he's like, it's come back full circle. People, but relationships are so important. And the way that you know, I know the next question is like, Well, how do you build those relationships? Like, how did you find your mentor, get in the room? That's how I did it. I showed up to a conference that I didn't want to go to, that I had to drive to Tampa for on a day that I was way too busy to do it right, and showed up anyway and sat in the front row and waited to meet this person that I wanted to meet, right?
And I did that so many different places, and it always pan out that way, but I always say yes to things, and I say yes, and it's not going to be perfect, and it's going to be hard, and it's it's not easy, but that's how it happens. It happens organically. It happens by being in the room. It's so, so important.
Yes, and I feel like there is something to be said when you know you look at people that seem outwardly lucky, and to me, I don't think it's really that they're naturally lucky. It's just that they put themselves in positions where opportunities are more likely to show up. They do it so frequently that it's like the chances in their favor, right? Because, just by pure, what is it? Pure statistic. yes.
Yeah, it is so important. I do believe, like, I'm such a big fan of being a super attractor. Gabrielle Bernstein, I believe, is her book, super attractor, many, many, many years ago. But I really do believe it like, I you have to have great energy. You've got to have you gotta have passion for what you're doing and building like, I've been doing this for so long, but my energy like, it's like, it's the end of the day, it's actually end of Monday.
Mondays are big days, and I know this is gonna air on, like, another another time, but this is my energy all the time. When I talk about my business like, I just am so happy and so excited. And it doesn't mean that every day is great. Business is hard. It's the hardest thing that I do. It's the toughest job. You're not appreciated for it. The chances of it winning are so difficult. But if you can find the joy and like, but I'm building for a reason like I'm here to do, and that was my my mission around stocks was so it was beyond. I wanted to see it at the table. I wanted to change the way business the debt was done. It was different. I like, had something to prove. This time around. I don't have anything to prove.
But My why is so i i saw it firsthand as a woman of color as a financial institution on both sides, I'm the best person to solve this problem. I'm going to eliminate all decision making biasness from these financial institutions, because I'm going to give them a system that can give them what the financial institutions need, which is data right? Which is, in essence, we're a data company, but when I give it to them in the way that we're doing it, it'll eliminate the bias consciousness of all the underwriters are viewing applications just like mine.
And so I know that there's a greater mission here, of standardizing the credit score. Also, I love doing stuff no one's done before. Like, I don't know what it is, but I just love something that's like, so crazy, so big, and you're like, This is so simple. Why isn't there a business credit score? Like, literally, it's the one. Literally, it's the most right? Like, and when we talk about it, people are like, Oh, my God, you're right. This is going to be crazy successful because it's like, it doesn't exist, but it's also it's going to be really hard, right, doing something that no one's done.
Why haven't they done it? It's because somebody's tried and failed, right? And so, but I like taking it on, because I have this naivete in a really I'm like, this crazy optimist. I'm like, if somebody can do it, we can do it. And I do believe that, because I think we think differently, and I think as women, we think differently, and that's why we can solve the world's problems differently, because the world has been just made by men.
All products, services, everything has been done through the patriarchy, so it is time for us to disrupt the way stuff is done. And so whoever is listening, I know there's like full audiences, and I'm not trying to take away from our awesome male entrepreneurs, but it is important that we have diversity in how we're solving problems. And it's exciting to solve it's exciting to solve something different.
So I'm gonna leave that with all the entrepreneurs in the room, and I think that's what makes companies successful. What is that unique thing that you bring to the table? If it's the same as everybody else's, nobody wants that and there is something so special about your business. Highlight that focus on what makes you unique in the space. That's all you need. Focus on that and like, go deliver that to your customer. Watch that grow. That's what you need to focus on.
I love the passion in your voice. I'm so impressed by your Energizer Bunny, contagious, contagious energy. I'm like, sunira, give me some of that, because it is not the end of day Monday for me. And I'm like, I needed an injection of sunir energy in my veins, because you're bringing the fire.
By the way, I'm gonna do a quick plug. It's called Big Business energy. So I send a newsletter out every Wednesday. I'm sure Ellen, you'll link everything to the show notes every Monday. I've got a podcast called CEO school, so you'll get this energy from me. Also, there's, like, vulnerable energy too. So it's not it depends on, like, when I'm recording, but I love to share all the things. And so you can get this energy on Mondays and on Wednesdays. And so I'll link the stuff, and I will give you the energy.
And then everyone here is going to get their worth score and tell me what they want to add. Be part of helping me build and change the ecosystem for credit worth and for your business worth. It's so important for you to know, and I have I know how to share it with you. So I'm so excited to give every business a business valuation where their finances are like what needs to be different. So I'm really excited about it. But big business energy every Wednesday in your inbox. That's the energy.
I love it. I actually just saw a sweatshirt on Etsy the other day that said, big business energy, and I thought of you. I was like, oh, I should get this. It's such a great such a great name. And yes, the big business energy newsletter, opt in. And of course, CEO schools links will be below if you want to check it out.
To wrap up our time together, sunira, I really loved that example you gave of the different approach that you're taking this time with how you're starting enterprise versus small business. What's another lesson from selling your first business that made it desirable, actually to someone to acquire in the first place that you are bringing to building worth that our listeners could also think through about how to make their business and their assets more desirable to an outside investor.
Great question. Such a great question. I believe that every business is also exitable. So if you build a scalable business, which is what we talked about in the earlier part of the case study portion right scaling your business through the right channels, removing yourself out of it builds for a scalable business.
Which, if you build a scalable business, and your business has enterprise value, make sure you're focused on that enterprise value and how you can grow that enterprise value, and in order for it to be desirable to an acquirer, or to, you know, to get investment, or to have an exit of whatever kind of strategic merger, whatever it may be, to be acquired by a different brand, or to have an outright, full sale of the business, your business needs to have scalability, because somebody else is going to come take over and say, Can I actually grow it further?
And so you want to be able to demonstrate the value of the business and the scalability of the business, which in essence, is done through your financials and your performance indicators, your KPIs, your financial plan. And I don't want to scare non my non finance girlies or men out here. We love our data here. Bring it. Bring it. It is so important for you to know your numbers like it is so important and for your business to be on track for that.
So when we set our plan, like every year I set our annual operating plan, we're 98% to the T, if not always 100% or over. I've never missed a plan. We're going to deliver upon that plan. And we're adjusting the forecast. We're adjusting the plan so you don't want to be shooting from the hip of like, if every month your business looks like this, up and down. And for those that can't see me right now, I'm like, literally just waving my finger up and down right. If it's if it's doing that, that's not scalable.
You want to show it doesn't have to be hockey stick for it to get acquired. We don't like that either, right? You want it to be slow and steady. You want it to be steady growth. And you want to show that you can repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat. So although it, you know it seems boring, but in finances like that's how you build a business. It's every month your your sales should be increasing. Your customers should be increasing. Your optimization of your other metrics, like your attrition should be decreasing. Like, how are you optimizing your business? That is your job as CEO is to optimize the business.
So when somebody comes in, they're like, hey, it doesn't have to be perfect, because no one's gonna buy a per they're not buying they're not looking for a perfect business. They're looking to take their skill sets and say, Oh, we can add this to the mix. We see a distribution channel here. We love this about that. We see all of this space with our partnerships.
So you want to leave room for to get them excited. So it doesn't have to be perfect, but you have to show the scale you have and that you can do. It has to be done through your like your KPIs and through your finances. And I'm a huge believer in having a CEO scorecard. Having a CEO dashboard doesn't matter the size of your business. Everything that I'm sharing here, I don't want you to dismiss me because I built a billion dollar business. I'm also back at worth right now, at the end of the year, we're going to be a, you know, a couple million dollar in ARR, right? So we're back at zero.
We started back at zero again. My business for CEO school, I've got multiple businesses, and my, you know, my business at CEO school is a multi seven figure business, but it's on the lower stage of the multi seven figure. But that's, that's my intention, but it's growing steady and slow, and it. There is an acquisition tomorrow, I can always open up my books and show scalability, and I always start that on day one.
And if you don't have that today, that's okay, just what does that look like? And so it is important for you to be able to track and show which I believe that financial health and understanding of that part of the business is really important, and even you don't have to be the expert, so I want you to know, but you have to be smart enough to direct the business, and so don't ignore it. I find so often that we ignore that part of the business until it's too late, or we're always looking at it on an aftermath. Really think about enterprise value of the business. So that's an important shift.
Can you detail for us being back in the beginning stages now, at worth what that projection looks like? So someone might hear, okay, CEO scorecard, CEO dashboard. Maybe they're like, I don't know what that means scenario. I don't know what metrics I'm looking for. Maybe could you just pull out one, like one KPI that you had put in your annual operating plan for 2024 for worth.
Can you tell us what that KPI is and how you chose it? Because I think that's the piece people struggle with, is exactly what you said senior. You said, don't just shoot from the hip. I think a lot of us who don't maybe have a background in this type of strategic planning, it does kind of feel like a shoot from hip, like a wild guess, throw spaghetti at the wall. Hope you reach your target. But for you, could you share one specific KPI and how you arrived at that number?
Yeah, so important for us. So for us, let's use, I think, honestly, the most important thing about any company, revenue solves all problems. I'm gonna go straight to revenue KPI so you can have the world's we have the world's greatest product. For two years, we've been in stealth. We've been building. It's all data scientists and all the things. But if I don't have sales KPIs to actually get our product into the hands of customers, it means nothing, right? No one's gonna ever see the word score or see the platform or use it, or it's not gonna be of use.
So let's go to Sales KPIs. So it's not about revenue as a KPI that I'm like, oh, where's revenue at? Let me go track that right now, you know, at the end of the year, we know we need to be at x number of customers, enterprise customers. So how do I work backwards from that? What I'm looking for is leads, looking for my pipeline, right? And so some KPIs that we're looking at are our MQLs marketing qualified leads that the marketing team is generating through our website or through webinars or through, you know, most of our sales and our leads are coming from conferences that we're attending in person, and so we've got marketing qualified leads, but a huge KPI that I'm looking at. What are the sales qualified leads?
So what happens when it goes from an MQL to an SQL? So that just means opportunity. So the salesperson is really identified. This is a really, let's say Bank of America for an example, right? That is a strong opportunity that the number of SQL is, what is an important indicator for my business. So in order for me to have, let's say 10 enterprise customers, and I'm making this up, by the end of the year, right? I need to have, you know, maybe our sales conversion is 30% let's say so I need to whatever work backwards.
Okay, I have, I gotta have 30 opportunities. In order for me to have 30 opportunities, I have to have 60 sales qualified opportunities, for them to turn into 30 opportunities to then turn into 10 customers. So those are ways to track it. I'm not just waking up to say, Oh, what do we have today? It's like, No, we have to go ensure that we're hitting the metrics of giving the sales team the right marketing qualified leads are on pace for it, so that they can turn it into the right sales qualified leads, they can turn it into the right pipeline and opportunity, which will then turn it into a closed customer.
So those are ways to track your KPIs in order to have scalability. And not just like, oh, we had this article, and now we have, like, all these customers. Like, it's not just shoot from the hip thing. We're being very methodical about scaling.
I love that breakdown, and like you echoed before, what you're sharing here. It's not just applicable to billion dollar businesses. You really are breaking down simple metrics that we've used even to figure out okay for a specific launch, like, how much do we want to make from this launch, and how do we work backwards and reverse engineer those numbers? So I think that's a great reminder.
Thank you for sharing your insight today on what it looks like to build a billion dollar business both once, but also now again, twice, or it will be twice. I have full belief that it will be twice. And so make sure. If you're listening today and you're curious what your business is, credit score is check it out below. The links will be below you can learn more about worth and what sanera is doing. And sanera, is there anything else you want to share with our listeners, or have them go connect with you on a specific platform to say hi.
Yeah, definitely come say hi to me. I'm on all the channels. I love supporting entrepreneurs, and specifically, I think that is what we're trying to build from the board score. We do believe that we need to demystify the finances of the business. We're creating one simple solution so that everything is integrated of your business, health your business, find. In one place that not only do you know your credit worth, you know your business worth, so definitely you know go to wordscore.com I'm sure Ellen is going to share all that below, but just come find me say hi. I'm Suneera Madhani on all platforms. I hang out on Instagram and on LinkedIn. So come shoot me a DM and share this podcast. I'm really excited to connect with more of you offline as well.
Thank you so much Suneera, and thank you all for tuning in. We'll catch you in next week's episode, bye.
Bye Ellen, talk soon.
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