From CRO to CEO: Nick Turner on scaling Dreamdata and building trustworthy AI

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1:34Welcome back to the SaaS Revolution Show. I am your host, Alex Sumia, CEO, founder of SaaSDock, also general partner at BackFuture Ventures. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Nick Turner, who is the CEO at Dream Data, joining me all the way from New Jersey. How are you doing, Nick? Good. Thanks, Alex. Good to have you on the podcast, Nick. So recently, so actually, you know, the dates that you announced the Series B for Dream Data was actually the same dates as SaaS.Europe. A coincidence, I'm sure. many fundraising announcements around around that time but i'm sure yours was a coincidence but uh congrats on that i think a sizable you know series b 55 million um tell us a little bit about um maybe that journey from a to b you know how long that take what were the kind of the milestones had they had they shifted in this i guess kind of ai era that we're in and the metrics that vcs are are looking for for you know growth within companies yeah yeah no thank you very much you know i think we were very fortunate uh we had a very good run from series a to series b i think the series a was um i joined after it was maybe late 22 is when we did it um and so i think that was a you know roughly like i think 10 million funding round and so um uh yeah i would say that not a lot of our metrics have changed.

3:08I think obviously there's a lot of parts to how you pitch. And I will say this was my first time leading a funding round. I participated as basically a supporting staff, you know, to someone doing a funding round. This was my first time. And I think, you know, so I didn't really know what was right or wrong to do. I was fortunate to have a lot of good guidance from board members and from our CFO, Peter. He and I had a very long summer. and spoke to a lot of different investors. And that was just such a great money experience. But, you know, I think the same things are true, but there's a lot more around everybody wants to know, what are you doing with AI?

3:51And I would say especially, you know, you dealt with the narrative of people saying, hey, are you AI native? And are you, you know, are you what they call like legacy SaaS? and I think a lot of interesting conversations around that, especially for us, we were founded in 2018. And so inherently, you can't say that you're an AI native company. And I should also say, when people say AI, they really think generative AI, LLMs, and what do you do in AI? AI as a whole isn't around for a very long time, and we've been using it in our platform for a long time as well. So that was a huge kind of topic of conversations every time is just like you mentioned, you know, what are you doing in the AI space and how are you adapting to the new environment?

4:35So, so that, that came up quite a bit, but the metrics, I mean, look, you know, depending on the type of, uh, investor you're looking at, you've got your kind of pure VC, you got your, your growth equity, you have even like private equity and, and things like that. And I think every one of them has different like things that they want to see. Um, and so So in a pure VC world, they want to know, well, how are you going to grow up 4X next year? Things like that. And they might care less about retention. In a growth equity world, growth rates are maybe a little bit lower. They're less concerned about that.

5:14They really want to know how are your retention rates. That was a key discussion. And not that pure VCs don't care about that. But I think that it comes up more often as you move on the scale of pure VC going up to like private equity. The other thing I'll say that maybe I did, maybe it was wrong. Again, like I said earlier, I don't know. But, you know, my I have a very strong belief around what you focus on when it comes to retention in the early stages of company. Everyone talks about net revenue retention. And I actually would prefer to focus on something called gross dollar, which doesn't take into account upsell.

5:54And the reason for that is that, you know, net revenue is what you would just call a composite metric. It's made of two things. And when you're looking at a metric that's made of two things, it's very easy to hide. You know, it's very easy to hide a problem. And often if you're not focusing on gross dollar, the problem that you're hiding is that you're not focusing on your ICP. So that means that you can kind of sign any deal that you want just in the name of growth, right? And if you do that, then you end up with a certain problem down the road. So that was one of the things I did when I joined the business.

6:25I immediately kind of refocused this on a gross dollar retention metric because I wanted us to hone in on an ICP and then make sure that we could improve that gross dollar retention. I'll stop for a second because I might be getting too into the weeds. Into the weeds is good. Do you think that focus was something that you brought from, I guess, the CRO position into the CEO and that sort of mindset? I think so. And just to be clear, I took the CEO C six months ago. So when I joined the business, it was CRO. And that's kind of when I made that change. But I still believe in that change. And I think once you get to a certain point, it's different for every company.

7:08you can't say, hey, when you hit one and a half million AR, you should do X. You can't say that. But you need to have a feel for when do I really need to weed out the companies that just aren't right for us? And I felt at the time was kind of right when I joined the company, I said, let's make this change now. So we know that we're focusing on good customers and we're going to pick up our retention rate. Maybe for the next question, you can just share a little bit for the audience about what Dream Data is and does, and then answer the question to maybe what the VCs asked you in that funding round as to what are you doing around AI?

7:47Because as you said, started in 2018, so we call you maybe native B2B software, native B2B SaaS, and whilst you've got AI within the platform, I'm sure over the last couple of years, there has been some, you know, internal movement within the company and the product to become more like AI first, not necessarily AI native. Yeah. So look, we're a B2B, and I should say B2B2B. We tell customers, if you don't have a CRM, we're probably not a good fit for you. And so we do attribution and activation, and that's effectively like marketing measurement, and then having the ability to say, okay, I've measured this and I know that this channel or this campaign or this ad is working very well.

8:33This one is working very poorly. I can reallocate my budget to the one that's working well. And so our goal is to help marketers kind of orchestrate their entire, all of their marketing budget in one place. So often I've been in MarTech for 20 years. I've run marketing teams, though I grew up in sales. and I think the you know the core thing that you see in MarTech there are 18 ,000 this is this guy Scott Bringer who writes about this he's done the MarTech map for years and there's 18 ,000 different apps marketing is a very busy space and what people typically have is you'll have an SEO person has their own platform paid search has their own platform social media organic social media events you know like deal marketing all that and they all live in silos And so on average, our customers are connecting 12 different systems to us to figure out what's the actual ROI on each and trying to connect it to actual revenue.

9:31And that can also be the holy bear for marketing, trying to make sure, hey, what I'm doing in brand is working, what I'm doing in demand is working, and it's helping support revenue for the company. So that's effectively what we do. To do that well is difficult. So, you know, I think we tell customers, look, the only thing worse than no attribution is bad attribution. And, you know, because you're going to make very bad mistakes and people's jobs on the line for that stuff. And so we spent a ton of time on building a very effective data model. And that's not just around data collection, that's tracking.

10:10And that's also how you build the model and access the data to make sure that you're telling an accurate story to your team. So half of our product team are data scientists. And we always, like, Mikkel, he's the lead to data science team. He's got a PhD in physics, smartest guy in Copenhagen, I think, if not broader. But he is, look, we deliver facts to our customers. And that's very important for marketers that you're delivering facts because you want to make sure you tell your CEO, your CRO, or your board, hey, these are the numbers that we delivered. And here's how I can prove out what that is.

10:44And so if you then like fast forward to your second part of the question in terms of, well, what did you tell DCs about AI? And I will say that generative AI, like a non-deterministic system, layering that over a complex data model is very dangerous. um ai is you know believes that is incredibly smart you know and and a lot a lot of times it is uh but sometimes it's not and sometimes it's confidently wrong and if you're you're not focusing on how that the general ai let's just call it like an ai agent can access that data you get real problems and so over the summer salesforce published a study around their agents and I was quite surprised that they did this.

11:27They did it in conjunction with a kind of a third-party researcher. They said that their agents were failing 40 % to 70 % of the time. Now, look, that is not software. That is a roulette table. And that is not something that you want to put in the hands of someone that's trying to produce accurate numbers. And so very often, Gen.AI and numbers are very difficult to mix together. They're getting better. And so there's a lot of work that you have to do to make sure that how agents are working with data is effective and it's not going to cost you your job. And so there's this idea, I'll go back to Scott, around a system of context.

12:02And what's happening is developing a system of context that allows agents to effectively utilize the data within your go-to-market. And that's part of what we're doing. We're, of course, working on, we have an agent now, we're working on several other agents. but but i think the um you know the the core thing when i went to market uh i always tell this i don't know if it's funny but but i think like you know i'm not i don't know how to speak french i might never actually because i used to work for a french company and they um as soon as i joined the company our ceo adrian said okay we're all now speaking english because we have our first american on board and uh there went all the work i did on um on learning french but But so I'll never be a native French speaker, but I can learn how to speak French.

12:47Right. And that's how I think about AI as well. Like, you know, we're never going to be able to say, hey, we were a native AI company because we were founded in 2025. That's something that you can't say truthfully to anybody. But you can certainly learn how to use AI in your organization. That's kind of the message that I would send to other SaaS founders is that you've really got to think about it that way. Don't spend time thinking about, man, I'm not AI native. I'm going to fail. Like, that's just not accurate. You can learn how to use AI both in your product and maybe also more importantly, across your organization.

13:18Yeah, no, 100%. I mean, I'm seeing this with actually a well-known SaaS company that I spoke to this week that their product effectively enables you to build AI agents visually. and what I learned from the person that I spoke to is actually their role was about making the company AI first internally and all the transformations of using AI internally so yes as a B2B software company to your point look at the roadmap if it's there now or you know should be thinking about how do we become let's say AI first from one perspective from a product for our customers to use it, but internally as well. I think there seems to be obviously this requirement that operationally companies need to be looking at how they can transform by using AI.

14:14And I don't know if we're behind the curve personally, but we're starting to use certain tools in AI SDR, for instance, not yet seeing the results, shall we say, but I think there's a lot of work that you've got to put into it and train it and the jury is still out. And just kind of looking at other elements sort of beyond that. But I feel like there's a lot of more work to do to kind of transform SaaS stock, certainly internally, to become AI first as such, whilst we're not offering AI products to the customer. But I guess kind of like internally within Dream Data, how is the AI transformation?

15:02What perhaps has been implemented that you're seeing that's working? I guess there'll be different tools and different things within different departments, but what are you seeing that's working and producing results for the company? Yeah, I think it depends on the department for sure. We just went through our budget process with our board and approvals and everything. And one of the interesting, more interesting conversations was headcount on the engineering team. How many more do we need versus how much should we actually just stock up on like AI tools there? Less of a conversation in terms of headcount on like go to market and inherently only I think on the sales, especially on like a sales team and the customer success team.

15:48I think everyone's using it. You know, we work closely with Gemini, actually. And so our company both uses that as our core LLM and our product also uses that as our core LLM. And I shouldn't say core. I said it is the one that we use, just to be clear, if anybody's listening. But I think that on the sales side, I think you could see the typical use cases. First off, in our tech stack, like utilizing Gong, that is probably one of the more common uses in terms of getting understanding of calls. It's how I review calls. I look at their AI summaries. I see a lot of people using it for kind of email writing.

16:32That I'm hesitant to do. I think for me personally, maybe I'm showing my age. You know, there's a book, a very old book, called How to Win Friends and Influence People. Maybe you're familiar with it, Dale Carnegie. In that book, he talks about a letter that he received, and on the bottom right-hand corner, is this little note. It says, dictated, not read. And what that means is that somebody feels very important because they were able to dictate to someone else what they wanted to say to you, and they didn't even bother to read it. Right. And so part of me feels like using AI in that respect, if you're trying to build a relationship with someone, and they can tell that you used AI, it's like the new dictated, but not read.

17:15And I'm cautious around that. You know, I think I like to build strong relationships with people. And so I tend to use it sparingly if I'm looking at myself personally for writing, I like to write those things myself. But I know the sales team is using it for figuring out how to answer objections, things like that. We use a bot for questions on the product. Our system inherently has a ton of different features. And so we use that to answer questions quickly from both an internal support point of view, as well as reutilizing it for external support. If we go back to when you mentioned that you've been in the CEO role for six months, why did you want to take the job, leave CRO, go to CEO?

18:06Obviously, I imagine it's a great opportunity and challenge. What have you learned over the last six months in the role is it as expected? I've learned a lot. I've learned that there's a lot more to learn, I think. You know, that's probably what I would say. As expected, that's a... I'm not sure if I had expectations. I think that's what I would say. First off, I took the role because it was an amazing opportunity. Dream Data has built something very special from an internal culture point of view, from a product point of view, from how we help our customers. I joined because I tried to build something like Dream Data at two separate companies, and I failed.

18:51And I saw that they had built it, met the founders, and it was kind of, you know, the story was, we'd love you to come on as CRO, and if things go well, we would make that move. So I have an amazing relationship with Lars and Seth and the team overall. It's just been fantastic. So that's kind of, you know, why I was excited to join. and I've always worked with marketers. So I was also very passionate about that. I felt like they weren't getting what they deserve, both in the system they needed. You know, sales as a CRM, what does marketing have? But the promise of the CDP never really came through.

19:29So I was really passionate. I am really passionate about what we do and I'm passionate about our customers. That's, I guess you say, dream data. Now this switch from CRO to CEO might be more interesting. I think that I didn't really know what to expect, to be honest. We did kind of go immediately into a discussion around fundraising. And so that became a big focus. And that was, to me, is just one aspect of the job, a very important one. I mean, there's a guy, Sam Vicko, so maybe you know him. He runs Pavilion. He says, you know, one job is to not run out of cash. And like, yeah, that's really true.

20:07And so if you're early stages of startup and you want to scale, like, you know, funding allows you to do that. So that was important to accomplish. And again, very, very lucky to have gone through that, gone great partners in Beach Band. um i i would say the thing that i've had to the to get used to the most is the um i would say ambiguity of relationships at this level of a company um i come from both a military family my father was in the army i had cousins that were marines uh and and and another uncle so but a bunch of like military background which means that i'm hardwired for hierarchy um you know and um relationships are a bit more ambiguous at this level, both in your relationship with the board, your relationship as being a kind of higher CEO relationship with, with founders, you know, Lars.

21:05And again, I don't, I never, we work together as colleagues. I don't think, you know, I don't see him necessarily as like someone that, that, but we're, we're close. He technically is on my team. He is a founder. So I have deference to him. I really think of this, look, this is their company and I'm just trying to steward it to success for them and for the customers. So he's the founder, he's on my team, he's on the board, which means that I report to him as well. And so it's kind of a unique situation. That's something that I have to get used to personally. And other people might be very used to that type of a situation, but I wasn't and I'm still making sure I navigate it effectively and do a good job on that front.

21:46So that's one thing that stands out to me in terms of getting used to the job and the differences. I would say the pressures, you know, CRO is generally can be a high pressure job. You know, you've got a target on your back every quarter. It's similar as CEO. And I guess also I'm still, I'm technically CRO CEO. We're looking for a new hire right now for that position. But I think the pressure might be a little bit higher, but I feel similar to running that role. But of course, I'm biased. Are you changing your routine to look after yourself anymore now that you're a CEO? Like, are you going to bed earlier, getting up earlier, more gym sessions or whatever?

22:35Has anything changed from that perspective or is it still the same personal kind of like maintenance? I think it's the same. Maybe I should say a little bit less. Honestly, I need to get back in the gym. So I need to do more work on that. I guess it was a long summer of fundraising. But look, my life and I know some people may disagree with this, but there are four things in my life. it's leanne it's conlin jack obviously my my my wife and and two two boys and dream data and i'm totally comfortable with that you know i i i'm working in a place that that kind of was my my dream this is a dream job for me as lame as that may sound you know i i was 14 thinking about how can i because i i'm 45 so when i was 14 1994 and and that is uh when the internet i see lots of else to the internet with AI.

23:27We can maybe talk about that, but, but, um, it was such an exciting time for me. And I was like, man, I would love to just start and run a, a, a software company. Um, and so I'm, I'm kind of living my dream and, uh, it's a passion for me. And, and you, uh, with that journey from, uh, the CRO role to now CEO, so you've been part of the scaling journey, which is still continuing for, for dream data. Uh, I, I guess, uh, so far from the journey that you've been part of. Maybe what have been some of the non-obvious challenges for scaling that DreamDates was experienced and any decisions from that period that you would redo today?

24:09No, I think AI is the biggest thing right now in navigating that switch. It was hard to say, hey, we're founded in 2018. Here's how we're tackling AI versus everyone looking at AI native. Though I will just say what I've heard a lot of is concern around the durability of revenue from AI native companies. There's a ton of innovation budgets out there. If the innovation budget doesn't become a permanent budget line item, what happens to that revenue? We still know. I probably shouldn't call it specific examples, But there's hub companies that were founded less than a year ago, and they're doing 100, 200 million revenue.

24:55And they've not experienced a real renewal cycle. And so there's a lot to learn once you get to 12 months and you say, hey, are these companies staying for more than a year? And so that needs to play out. Just going back to that kind of the parallel of the Internet era versus AI. This is certainly as big, if not bigger, than the Internet. but there were bumps. You know, I remember going to college thinking, this is going to be huge. And then like at year three of university, oh, everything tanked. You know, the NASDAQ is tanked. And am I going to have a job when I graduate? Of course, things turn around for the better for everybody, I think.

25:35And maybe we're in that, maybe we're yet to hit that phase of this. You know, the promise, there's a huge promise that needs to be met. And, you know, we think we can need it. We think we can help AI meet that through the way that we've thought about giving you know access to to data for ai agents finally nick um thinking about sort of advice to founders and ceos for the the next 12 months as we we enter into 2026 you know what practical advice um you know would you give for founders that are looking to build predictable revenue engines and you know across that period um yeah just kind of curious to uh to hear yeah i mean I think I'm, even though I'm in startups, I'm probably much more conservative in terms of how I think about spending money.

26:27You know, I, even in the era of Zerp, you know, when money was free, I still was hesitant, someone was hesitant to spend a ton of money. Probably because of my experience with what I was saying about the internet era and looking for a job as that was kind of a wishy-washy situation. living through a financial crisis in 2008-2009. So I think that people need to focus on just building a good profitable business as opposed to thinking about how I hit insane growth numbers. It will come back to haunt you if you do that. Do something sustainable. That's how I would think about it. What else? I think what I said before about being SaaS versus AI native, keep that in mind.

27:13And you can successfully navigate that. That's going to be the biggest topic of conversation when you talk to investors or when you're talking to customers even. But ultimately, I do think there's a little bit of a problem right now. And we're guilty. Don't get me wrong. I think everyone's guilty is that you were talking very much about a feature versus the results. And that's like the number one thing that they tell you and go to market is like, stop talking about features. Start talking about how you're going to impact the business. And so if you're going out and saying, we're the AI native accounts payable or accounts receivable or any other, you know, what's the value in that to the customer?

27:52Like, what is it going to mean to the bottom line for your customer? Because there's really only a couple of things you can do, especially in MarTech. You either deliver more leads or you deliver cheaper leads, you know, and you can squibble with the name of we call it a lead. But, you know, those are effectively the two things that you can do. Everything comes back down to that. And so just make sure you're drawing a parallel to what you do to actual ROI. I love CFOs. I've talked to more than I would refer to in my life in the last two years. And what that tells you is that everyone is scrutinizing any spend quite a lot.

28:29And so you'll also need to justify yourself to finance departments. So make sure you're thinking about those hidden stakeholders when you're thinking about how are you going to go to market? What are you going to say to customers? Yeah. Sage advice there. Thank you for sharing both of those bits of advice. 100 % agree. Nick, thank you for joining the SaaS Revolution show. Hopefully, we'll get you back at a SaaS stock before we started recording. I think you shared you've been to SaaS stock in Dublin in 2019. So we're now in Austin. That'll be in April, probably a little bit easier for you to travel to.

29:08but also the Dublin event is still a great show. So hopefully we can make that happen in 2026 and see each other in person. But thanks for being a great guest on the show. Really appreciate it. Nick Turner, CEO of Dream Data. Thanks, Alec. And I guess congrats on 10 years. It's awesome. Keep it going. Thanks, man. Planning another 10. Another 10. Thanks for listening to the SaaS Revolution Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and follow the show. It helps more AI and B2B software founders to discover the podcast and keeps us bringing you the leaders who are shaping the future of the industry.