Itai Lahan, CEO @ Cloudinary Cloudinary is not your typical Silicon Valley success story. The company remains bootstrapped and has not taken outside VC investment. Yet in less than ten years, the company cemented its unicorn status by surpassing $100M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and receiving a $2B valuation from Blackstone Growth as part of its February 2022 secondary round. Only a handful of other SaaS companies have ever achieved this level of growth without VC funds; among them Atlassian and MailChimp. So what’s behind Cloudinary’s success? Itai Lahan maintains the company’s secret sauce is its continued commitment to its founding value to put people first. Right from the start, Cloudinary has put its customers first, while simultaneously cultivating a passionate, employee-centric culture: hiring the right people, prioritizing work-life balance, and sharing in the rewards. In this session, Itai Lahan will outline why prioritizing people can contribute to a business's success, and give advice for how to do it effectively. He will talk about: How to maintain your company’s values as you scale - Cloudinary grew from 200-450 employees in less than three years and despite this growth, everyone still has a voice, no matter their title. For Cloudinary, this means continuing to invest in an annual week-long planning summit called the Gathering. This year, pandemic permitting, all employees will come together in Greece and every employee will be involved in planning the company’s focus and future. How to invest in people beyond the obvious - Cloudinary offers the world-class benefits every job applicant looks for, but also offers some that differentiate from other startups. For example, the company just completed its 4th secondary round, which allowed employees to financially benefit from their vested equity. These benefits contributed to the company’s high retention rate

1. Bootstrapping a Unicorn is
Impossible:
This is how we did it
1
Itai Lahan
Co-Founder and CEO
Cloudinary
@Itail

2. Bootstrapping usually means
No VC said “yes” Scarred from past
experiences
2

3. Bootstrapping is Impossible
3

4. VC$$$$
The recipe for bootstrapping success
Revenue > Expenses
Day 1

5. Early days: get to market fast and efficiently
Cost efficient initial product
Highly efficient GTM model
Product market fit at day 1
Fast ROI from day 1

6. Late stage: efficient growth
Salaries < ½ Revenue

7. Late stage: efficient growth
Avg Salary = $150k

8. Late stage: efficient growth
Bottom line to succeed
$300k ARR/Employee
Avg ARR/Emp=$75k-$100k

9. Late stage: efficient growth
-75%

10. Bootstrapping is
Impossible

11. How We Bootstrapped
to $2B

12. Bootstrapping and dev consultancies
Know the market
Have initial paying customers
Be used to being
profitable by design
Have the know-how
to bring to market
It’s all about your customers
Have a day job

13. The Cloudinary approach at < $10M ARR:
Started as a dev consultancy
Catered for developers
13

14. The Cloudinary approach at > $10M ARR:
Small Team > Large Team
80/20
Automation > Processes
Core Values (miraculously) Aligned

15. My personal tips
It’s costly
Hire a CFO early
Careful of the short-term view
Secondaries
Strong board of advisors
Talk to VCs
Get paid in advance

16. The benefits of being
bootstrapped
Health Choice
+

17. Summary and key takeaways

18. Summary and key takeaways
Bootstrapping
– is practically –
Impossible
Health
+
Choice
Revenue
>
Expenses
$300k ARR / Employee

19. THANK YOU
itai.lahan@cloudinary.com
www.cloudinary.com