Challenge: Grokability's founder, Alison Gianotto, needed a quick way to evaluate how her business was doing. She was so swamped with other tasks, she didn't have time to dig for answers. These days, time isn't as much of an issue, but recovering payments is.
Solution: Baremetrics was there for Alison in the beginning, helping her visualize company data quickly so that she could make decisions with confidence. And it's there for her today, continuing to help Grokability recover thousands of dollars in lost revenue every month.
Result: Because of Baremetrics, Alison had the time and information she needed to grow her business back in 2016. Now, Baremetrics is integrated into everything Grokability does, giving Alison and her team accurate data and helping them recover $150k in failed payments.
Like many great businesses, Grokability was started out of necessity.
In 2013, Grokability's founder, Alison Gianotto, held the CTO position at an ad agency in New York City. The agency was moving to a new office and Alison was asked to inventory all company assets to make sure they remained accounted for throughout the process.
Unfortunately, the asset management tools available to her at the time were subpar. So Alison did what every great entrepreneur has done before her: she built her own solution.
In 2015, Grokability became an official business. It had one product, Snipe-IT, the asset management tool Alison had created a couple of years before. Since then, the Grokability team has created a second product, GoodForms, an ethical email verification service.
But it wasn't all rainbows and sunshine along the way…
In her own words, Alison felt completely "overwhelmed" when running her business. It's not surprising—she was managing the help desk, working on installations, and writing software code all by herself. Suffice to say, Alison was strapped for time.
Luckily, Alison discovered Baremetrics in 2016, which allowed her to easily visualize company metrics and glean company insights, without having to build her own tool from scratch. This enabled Alison to focus on other aspects of her business and grow Grokability.
6+ years later, Alison and the Grokability team still use Baremetrics on a daily basis. She says, "I've used other apps. But I like the Baremetrics interface, the pricing structure, and the insights the tool gives me. It helps guide us in the direction we need to go."
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In our interview with Alison, we talked about four specific Baremetrics features that Grokability loves, as well as the "Open Startups" initiative, which Baremetrics founded in 2015.
Like every other successful SaaS business, Grokability regularly monitors customer churn.
In fact, Alison hosts a company-wide meeting every week to discuss who recently signed up for Grokability's service, who recently canceled, and potential reasons for new churn.
"Yes, this is my company," Alison says. "But I don't have all of the answers. Engaging the whole team in churn discussions helps us brainstorm new solutions. It also gives my employees a voice, which makes them feel more invested in Grokability's success."
With Recover, Grokability recovered over $8K in failed charges in December 2021.
Recover, a dunning solution, is one of Baremetrics' add-on features.
With it, users are able to recover a significant portion of lost revenue via customizable email campaigns, in-app reminders, and paywalls that help fight against things like expired credit card numbers, insufficient funds, and other typical banking issues.
In-app reminders alert customers to update their payment information.
Customized emails get sent automatically, putting time-consuming follow-up campaigns on autopilot.
Collect payment information through a Baremetrics-hosted form or your own.
According to Alison, Grokability didn't always use Baremetrics to recover failed payments. But because the team was happy with Baremetrics' analytics suite, they decided to add Recover to their subscription. That way both analytics and dunning processes could be handled "under one roof."
This turned out to be a great decision!
Alison and her team use Recover with a Baremetrics hosted URL, to collect updated payment information from customers as efficiently as possible. The result? Grokability has recovered more than $150k in lost revenue in the last 3 years!
On average, Recover pays for itself 38x over.
"One of the things I really appreciate about Baremetrics is that you can mark a point in time."
Businesses change every day. Some of these changes are for the better, but others… Not so much. It's important to know how your business is changing and why. That way you can properly assess company metrics and manage operations with confidence.
Baremetrics helps Grokability evaluate company changes via the annotations feature.
Was that last email blast successful? Have our customer support KPIs gone up since we made our last hire. How has the pandemic impacted our sales and retention metrics?
To answer these questions, Alison simply has to access the Grokability dashboard in Baremetrics and mark a point in time. She can then assess company metrics from the specific moment she marks to determine the root cause of company changes—good or bad.
Annotations mark significant events and help users visualize how they impact business growth.
More importantly, Alison can evaluate whether each change translates to positive, sustainable results. If they do, she knows she can double down on current tactics. If not, she knows that she needs to alter her strategy.
Either way, Baremetrics helps Grokability identify spikes in important metrics like MRR and churn rate, which they use to understand historical seasonality and predict future trends.
Benchmarks, a popular feature inside Baremetrics, enables users to easily compare their company to other SaaS businesses. This allows them to accurately gauge performance.
Cohorts are grouped by Average Revenue Per User, essentially the average amount you bill a given customer. The data below shows how you compare with other companies who bill similar amounts.
As Alison says, "When you're a small business, you don't know if you're 'doing it right.' Being able to see where you're doing great and where you could improve—across multiple industries within the same cohort and price range, no less—is super important."
You can see the rest of Grokability’s Benchmarks including LTV, churn, and more here.
Benchmarks help companies pinpoint where they’re succeeding, and where they can improve. They can then experiment to try and increase MRR, reduce customer churn, and otherwise grow their company.
At Baremetrics, we started the "Open Startups" initiative to bring transparency and openness to the world of business. This is something that resonated with Alison and the Grokability team.
"Technology, as an industry, is full of posturing. Real honesty, both to your customers and to your employees, and having open conversations in terms of business finances, is important."
This level of transparency has really helped Grokability when it comes to hiring. Top talent appreciates the open way that Grokability operates. As a result, the company is regularly approached by people looking for work. This makes the recruitment process much easier.
As Alison says, "When you have a culture of transparency, people want to work with you."
If you'd like to join the "Open Startups" initiative, you can do so here.
At the very least, consider visiting the page and joining thousands of other people who have subscribed to our email list and now receive free lessons on how to grow their startups!
To learn more about Grokability, visit their website and read their blog, where Alison and her team share product updates, business-building tips, and more. If you're into software development, we suggest checking out Grokability's GitHub profile as well.
Grokability is one of 800+ subscription-based companies using Baremetrics to understand key metrics and accelerate growth. To see how Baremetrics can make a difference for your business, start a free trial today.