The SaaS CFO
Kristen Beck, CEO and co-founder of Elly, shares her career path from being Trello’s first revenue hire through leadership roles at Atlassian, Shogun, and Typeform, and explains why she returned to startups to build an AI-native recruiting platform. Elly focuses on capturing and learning from unstructured conversational data across hiring—from kickoff through interviews and debriefs—to help teams make better decisions, reduce time spent, and reveal patterns in successful hires. Beck outlines Elly’s two main customer segments: high-volume employers (including manufacturing and home healthcare) and fast-growing startups, and describes how AI enables insights beyond basic efficiency gains. She discusses Elly’s founding timeline, seed fundraising to $8M (Atomic incubation and Sorenson-led round), PLG-led growth via word of mouth, a free ATS with paid AI features using subscription-plus-usage pricing, and key metrics like K-factor and module adoption, with Elly headquartered in New York and a 10-person team. Show Notes: 00:00 Welcome and Intro 00:08 Kristen Beck Career Path 02:07 What Ellie Does 03:01 Why Build Ellie 04:44 Ideal Customer Profiles 06:08 How AI Changes Recruiting 08:57 Founding Story and MVP 09:41 Seed Round and Investors 10:35 Why Raise vs Bootstrap 11:49 Fundraising Lessons in Crowded Markets 14:20 Go To Market and PLG 18:42 Pricing and Usage Model 20:39 Key Metrics and Virality 22:19 Team and 2026 Priorities 23:56 AI Makes Distribution Matter 25:31 Where to Learn More Links: SaaS Fundraising Stories: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/elly-raises-8-million-in-funding [https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/elly-raises-8-million-in-funding] Kristen Habacht’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-habacht-80288780/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-habacht-80288780/] Elly’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ellyai/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/ellyai/] Elly’s Website: https://www.elly.ai/ [https://www.elly.ai/] To learn more about Ben check out the links below: Subscribe to Ben’s daily metrics newsletter: https://saasmetricsschool.beehiiv.com/subscribe [https://saasmetricsschool.beehiiv.com/subscribe] Subscribe to Ben’s SaaS newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/df1db6bf8bca/the-saas-cfo-sign-up-landing-page [https://mailchi.mp/df1db6bf8bca/the-saas-cfo-sign-up-landing-page] SaaS Metrics courses here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ [https://www.thesaasacademy.com/] Join Ben’s SaaS community here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/offers/ivNjwYDx/checkout [https://www.thesaasacademy.com/offers/ivNjwYDx/checkout] Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrmurray [https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrmurray]
247 episodios
Comentarios
0Sé la primera persona en comentar
¡Regístrate ahora y forma parte de la comunidad de The SaaS CFO!