Crescendo's fundraising journey, including securing funding from top-tier investors like General Catalyst and strategic acquisitions to accelerate growth.
Crescendo's fundraising journey, including securing funding from top-tier investors like General Catalyst and strategic acquisitions to accelerate growth. It highlights how the company used milestone-based funding to focus on execution and challenges industry norms with its pricing model.
I saw my first computer in a department store way back and was intrigued by it. I had to wait till Christmas for the computer and I didn't want to do that. So, I'd just go into the store and then talk myself to code. They thought I was a sales guy. That's cuz I ended up selling more computers than anybody else in the store for. So, they let me stay there. [Music] All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the deal maker show. So today we have with us joining a fantastic founder you know a founder that basically you know like he went through the ranks you know on on on corporate and with other exciting hyperrowth companies and then decided to uh get going as an entrepreneur. And today we're going to be talking about the founding story of the business which is quite unique as well as the way that they think about growth by acquisition and then also raising money and and how to how to build
the incredible teams. No. So very inspiring conversation. Brace yourself for what we have ahead of us. And without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Matt Price. Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you Alejandro. It's a real pleasure to be here. So, originally born and raised in the UK. Give us a memory, a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you? You know, I grew up in a small town in England. Um, and I mean, big memory for me that's relevant here is, you know, that I saw my first computer in a department store uh way back and was intrigued by it. Um, at that point, I wasn't I had to wait till Christmas for the computer and I didn't want to do that. So I'd just go into the store and then taught myself to code there. They thought I was a sales guy and uh and because I ended up selling more computers than anybody else in the store for them. So they let me stay there.
That's amazing. So then so then for you, you know, like what what happened, you know, how did you get into the whole I mean sounds like problem solving is within you, huh? Yeah, you know, maybe. Yeah, it sounds like that, you know, I wasn't a great academic student and I wasn't a book guy. Um so uh I managed to get through you know college uh just on just on my uh computing skills and then my life just opened up when I uh able was able to land a a job at was Ballland at that time which is one of the fastest growing PC company software tools and you know that was like my hands-on MBA an amazing experience the people I worked with there uh were amazing you know people like Mark Randolph who was running direct marketing and went on to found Netflix um in just a an amazing caliber of people and such serendipity to fall into that environment. I mean it sounds like you were doing the you know
the whole tech thing uh in the UK all the way until Senesk. Sends was what ended up bringing you to the US but I guess talk to us about like what was that journey um like and what were some of the biggest lessons before Senesk crossed paths with you? Yeah, I it was interesting working within operators actually bec you know and an operating role and companies and I think the biggest lesson or the thing I'm most grateful I did was I joined companies that were growing and I I didn't care about the role you know I felt like if I could get into a growth company and I think this was mostly driven by my interest in technology so I I loved a good piece of technology in a business idea and so ended up in in very innovative businesses and um was able then as they grew quickly just to have many different roles within that environment was you know which which was a great foundation um you know had
the opportunity to work many different roles many different projects so really I guess I was a founder and an innovator within a corporate environment for a long time but just hadn't really found the idea or the business you know the business uh idea that attracted me to go it alone until Crescendo. Well, I'm sure that and we'll talk about Crescendo in just a bit. Um, but Sendes was pivotal for you. You know, pivotal because you came to the US, pivotal because you were able to really experience hyperrowth. How did the, you know, Send come across your radar? You know, a lot of this is just all network. Um, I was based in the UK. Um, a previous colleague of mine had just joined Zenesk and they were looking to expand and so I got a call to say, "Hey, do you want to join this company?" Um, I think it was about 50 people at the time, you know, less than less than, you know, a few million ARR.
Um, and I wasn't sure about it, you know, I looked at it and said, you know, this is pretty is pretty interesting, but I don't really know who this company is. And so I started to follow them on Twitter and I started to listen to what people were talking about, you know, and this was the advent of SAS and and it really got my curiosity going. It was like selling on premise software and we're sorting for a while. The opportunity it opened up to actually understand how your customers were really using the technology was mindblowing. And so that combination was just say yeah this was a it became a no-brainer. And looking back it was a no-brainer. And it was uh it was a great decision at the time to do it. I mean quite the uh quite the right because we sent this you were for over 12 years there now. One thing that really hits me is after you've been you know working at tech companies and and
for other folks all of a sudden you know you decide 18 months ago to um put an end to that and and take ownership of your own destiny your own future and build your own thing and enter the venture world. I mean that's a that's quite a quite unbelievable you know what how how did that happen for you because I mean that's quite the shift in your career. Yeah it's um and it wasn't necessarily planned. I uh I'd always uh I mean I've been through many shifts in technology shifts right from uh just basic PC to client server to web internet to SAS. So I knew when LLMs came out this was going to reinvent the whole stack and it was going to reinvent the whole domain that I was there. So I already had a view was you know I wanted to be part of this next wave as well. Based on my background I thought m that would probably be in a growth rate role getting in on a series B or some something like that
and helping that company scale. Um but I was approached by uh couple of co-founders and andy and you know and saying hey we've got this idea and it was such a good idea and it was so well backed and so well thought through that the um it was it was a no-brainer to to actually join the opportunity you know and and just from the also from you know assessing the opportunity versus risk balance was something I hadn't seen before and So that and that was the opportunity and how did the you know general catalyst was also in the picture you know and they they were also helpful during this initial phase. So how how did you know the relationship with general catalyst they come about here? Yeah, you know, so general catalyst have this um uh have a fund creation fund which is um where they put money behind uh business ideas that uh that they don't necessarily see companies existing for at that
particular time. So the one of the philosophies around the organization was the uh notion of AI disrupting traditional industries and and and and really having companies within them. So the idea for Crescendo is that the BO industry is a massive market half a trillion dollars half a trillion dollars ripe ripe for disruption. But the current approaches to actually disrupting customer service were very siloed and still are. So it here's a bot or here's here's something else. So actually taking a step back and looking at what's it really take to transform that industry and can we assemble a group of founders with a solution that's going to really really disrupt that and you know customer experience or customer service is an industry where the there have been a lot of unfulfilled promises over time and you know could we be the company that really delivers on you know on the value in the AI
era and that's how we were created. So I guess for the people that are listening to get it, what ended up being the business model of Cresendo? How do you guys make money? Yeah, we um basically we provide customer service uh services to to companies both a but the full service AI and human technology and to humans the um by doing this and our unique approach to doing this we um we found incredible results. So we're able to deploy very advanced solutions uh with technology on people within weeks. As a result um customer care quality goes significantly up and but the cost to deliver it goes down as well. Um and you know we've like I said we've been going just over a year. We have doz dozens of customers live and um all seeing very significant results. Um the uh and this is really just a way of stepping back and re thinking about reinventing as to how you h how do we approach this? How do
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