EP #257 - Roy Raanani: Settling In Switzerland And Building A Business

About Roy Raanani:

Roy Raanani is the co-founder, former CEO and current president of Chorus.ai, a B2B SaaS platform that helps sales teams improve the quality of their conversations and sales processes by analyzing how top performers engage with customers in calls and video meetings. He holds a BA in Engineering Science from UoT and an MBA from Stanford, and previously worked for companies like Bain & Company and Innovation Endeavors.

After quitting his consultancy job and spending a sabbatical in Rheinfeld thinking about business ideas, Roy developed an interest in undervalued data sets in business, specifically conversations – he wanted to use machine learning to discover what makes a conversation end badly and what makes it end well. He founded Chorus.ai in 2015 and has since grown it to millions in revenue and over 100 employees, and raised over $65M in capital from Emergence Capital, Redpoint and Georgian Partners.

But the sailing wasn’t always this smooth. Thinking back to when they were first building the product, Roy recounts an interesting cycle he observed:

1. When you’re building a product, the feedback you get from your first customers will be mostly negative, which decreases both your motivation and your customer’s excitement level about the product. However, simultaneously to this, your product’s quality level is slowly going up.
2. At some point these first customers might lose their patience and stop using your product. But then you acquire new customers whose excitement level is just as high as your first customers’ once was, and this time your product is starting off from a slightly better position.
 
3. Rinse and repeat.
 
4. Finally you reach a point when your new customer doesn’t have a bad experience! And the only thing that kept you going through this entire process was the fact that, flaws and all, people were still using your product, so you must be answering a real need.

In conclusion, so long as you don’t run out of hope or cash, perseverance will get you to product-market fit.

In Chorus.ai’s case, it also got them to a tradesale. They were acquired by Zoom Info in 2021 for $575M and have since seen their yearly growth rate double from 100% to 200%.

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Memorable Quotes:

"A lot of investors are too comfortable giving entrepreneurs advice having never been in their shoes."

"We’re always focused on older, experienced people, but I think it’s just as important to get to know the amazing people that are maybe a couple years behind you."

If you would like to listen to more conversations with expats living in Switzerland, check out our episode with Ross Mason.

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