Building a Unicorn: JC Glancy on the Zenbusiness Journey

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (00:00.157) But it's

JC Glancy (00:01.612) I got it off Amazon. You can make it say anything, but I just put my name, Yeah.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (00:08.977) That's pretty spectacular. You just did it for yourself? Even better. Everyone's always giving like coffee mugs, gifts and stuff like that. It's like, nah, you don't wait for that.

JC Glancy (00:17.656) No, I just need to work so much sometimes I forget my own name. just a nice reminder of who I am. That's right. That's right.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (00:22.333) as you're juicing yourself with the caffeine that you need.

well, so Jay Z I'm super excited to have you on the show.

unicorn founder, you know, no, no easy feat.

And I would love for you to kind of kick this off by just telling me when you knew you made it within business and what that.

JC Glancy (00:45.408) that's a great start and slash curve ball. So, there's many reasons why I started in business, the main one was, maybe not the main one, but one of the big ones was I started a bunch of small businesses in my early 20s where I tried a lot, failed a lot, learned a lot. And the thing that I learned that I hated the absolute most was paperwork. No one's ever disagreed with me on this.

In any meeting I've ever had, no one's just be like, what are you talking about? love paperwork.

and so after that happened, I kind of set out to find a better way.

And so I was, in America, broke college kid. I found legal zoom existed.

So I went to legal zoom, tried them out and, and you know, because I was a broke college kid, I missed a payment.

And so they sent me a letter in the mail threatening to sue me if I didn't pay my bill.

come to find out later on, that's like a marketing tactic they have for like retention and, know, turn things like that.

And so, you know, fast forward, you know, Zen business, we're just getting started and, you know, getting customers in. And one day one of our customers sent us a letter in the mail saying how we changed their lives and they never could have, you know, started their business without us.

And, you know, they were putting food on the table for their kids now.

So that was like a kind of a full circle moment for me.

And that's kind of when that more than anything else, that's when I knew I was like, okay, that's we're doing, we're doing something important here.

Oh God. This is probably around like we did a, it was called a seed preferred to before the series A. I think it was like right after that before the series A.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (02:18.113) much more positive.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (02:24.76) What scale were you at when you got that letter?

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (02:42.204) All right.

So this, this is fun to talk about. Um, you just mentioned like C preferred to like complicated kind of bridge around maybe, uh, yeah.

Uh, but I'd curious, like as far as your trajectory, it's in business, like unicorn, everyone thinks everything's perfect.

And it's like, Oh, wow. You're so lucky you built the unit.

It's like, I don't know how much luck, you know, played factor maybe it did, but curious to kind of hear like your fundraising.

JC Glancy (02:50.158) Let's make it up. Just make it up. It's fine.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (03:08.316) you know, story, especially when you kind of mentioned there's maybe a little bit of a bridge there because a lot of founders go through that where maybe you didn't hit the series A metrics after your seed right off the get-go. Kind of what was that like for you?

JC Glancy (03:16.067) Mmm.

JC Glancy (03:19.778) Yeah, it wasn't like considered a bridge and speaking of easy, 10 years to an overnight success, right? No one sees the work in my case, I worked in like a old bathroom, kind of bathroom slash closet for a while.

And we have pictures of that somewhere.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (03:39.887) You I need, please send those to, so we can add these into the B roll of the video.

Cause I want to see the founding office of bathroom closet for a billion.

JC Glancy (03:48.261) Okay.

Yeah, yeah, I will for sure. Um, so basically I was 27 at the time when I started Zen business, you know, founded in, you know, 2015 originally.

Um, and then, you know, I, I didn't know what I was doing.

And so I kind of raised, raised the initial like friends, family angel round of like a couple hundred grand.

I think it was maybe three, 400. Um, and then You know, kind of blew through all that.

It was like 50 grand in debt on my credit cards and things weren't things were not going well.

That's an understatement that I freeze, I think maybe. And so, you know, met Ross Ross is our current co-founder and current CEO.

Ross was the founding CTO of HomeAway. You know, they were like the roll up that acquired 26 vacation rental websites worldwide.

And then went public and then went, sold to Expedia for $3. 9 billion.

and so, I grew, somehow I recruited him to come in the CEO and, you know, him and I were great, great teams still are.

And, so when he came in, you know, basically he just came off this huge success.

then basically we just were able to like raise money really easily.

And so then did this kind of seed preferred to, which I guess is probably in some ways a bridge, but, really it helped us like propel the business because we just needed to like raise a you know raise a little bit of a round to like get things going and um and it's funny because you know the there's so many different names for all these things at the time and uh still are so

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (05:29.444) So this is very interesting path that you have here. So you, kind of glazed over the struggle, maybe the bathroom office situation, and you somehow recruited this rock star that just came off a massive transaction. How, how did you convince us? How, how'd you meet him? How'd you get access to him? And then how did you, what, did you use as leverage to get him to the table?

JC Glancy (05:42.851) Mm-hmm.

JC Glancy (05:52.77) Yeah, great question. I leverage. I don't think I had any of that. yeah. so, yeah.

Well, actually it was, it was his bathroom. Well, no, we worked in his garage at also too, at some point, which we actually, I do have like the Austin, Texas started, you know, started a company in a garage store, which is cool.

so I, we got accepted into the capital capital factory accelerator program, which is like, you know, biggest accelerator.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (05:58.898) That's what I'm curious about. How'd get this guy? Come check out my bathroom.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (06:11.376) Gotcha, okay.

JC Glancy (06:25.55) most well known in probably Austin, Texas, which I'm a mentor in LP now.

And basically at the time they had this matching program.

So you get accepted into the accelerator and two of the partners of the accelerator both gave you like $25,000 a piece.

Then capital factory would match with 50 grand. And I think back in the day, if capital factory matched with the 50 grand, then floodgate would match with like another 100, 200 grand.

And I, and I, and at this time, when I was going through all this struggle of like, we're trying to figure things out and we're, essentially as close to bootstrapping as possible and just, you know, eating ramen.

it actually was a Soylent back in the day, but, yeah.

So got $25,000 from one of the partners and I was like, just doing everything I possibly could to like meet as many of the other partners as at a capital factory as I could.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (07:08.124) Yeah, I did swing in too.

JC Glancy (07:22.2) try and get $25,000 out of any of them because I was 50 grand in debt and I wrote my credit cards and the math was like, okay, if I get $25,000, I get another $50,000, I can pay my credit cards off, I have another $25,000.

I think the floodgate thing had kind of ended at that time.

so, know, life is funny because timing is everything. And so we actually tried to get a meeting with Ross like two or three times and he was like, in his like honeymoon phase after, you know, taken off from home away.

And so he was traveling and, know, you know, doing a bunch of stuff.

And so he canceled on us a bunch of times and like all credit goes to Roth, my co-founder here.

cause he kept following up. And so we finally met him and like, we kind of hit it off immediately because obviously we're trying to make it easier for people to start businesses and like forming entities and doing compliance and registered agent and all like the gross boring stuff that nobody wants to do.

And he had like, seven entities at the time. He didn't know like where anything was going in, coming out, like completely, you know, completely understood the pain that we were trying to solve.

And so, you he got interested and then we kept meeting with him and meeting with him.

think we met him, you know, five or six times over the course of like several weeks and he kept digging in and learning more and getting more and more interested.

And, and then we kept getting, you know, building more and more rapport and, know, getting to know each other better.

And so we were sitting at Austin Java one day and this is like, you know, close to like the event horizon of like when my credit cards are about to start getting, you know, shut off.

And, and so of course I'm like super desperate, but it's hard to, I was having to play like, I'm not, but like I was terrified.

I wasn't sleeping. And we were sitting there and he,

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (08:58.108) you

JC Glancy (09:13.038) I was like, hey, Ross, would love to have you in as an investor and advisor.

And he's got great Nebraska accent. And he looks at me, he's like, shit, man.

He's like, yeah, I'll give you 25 grand, but I want to be CEO. And I was like, yes, absolutely.

I didn't even think about it. didn't need to have like, oh, let me think about it.

I was like, yes, you got it. You're CEO. And the rest is kind of history.

A lot of people have told me since that was like, you know, one of probably the greatest moves ever made.

Cause a lot of founders wouldn't make that move, you know, but it's like the old adage, like you can either be rich or King.

And I was like, I want to, you I want to be rich.

And I really believed in what we were doing and also 28 years old, 27, whatever it was at the time.

And I had this amazing opportunity to essentially get like a free MBA that I also got paid for.

And I was like, this is a no brainer. I'm going to learn a ton.

You know, we'll see we'll see where this project goes and then it ultimately ended up becoming, know, huge huge massive success So that's kind of it.

So there was no leverage. It's just like he he understood the problem He was really interested in trying to solve it.

He liked us and like thought we could do it together.

And so You know most Most folks I feel like I keep freezing. Are you seeing this or no?

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (10:29.596) Don't worry about it. It just goes and comes. It doesn't actually impact the recording at all. So we'll just cut.

JC Glancy (10:33.174) Okay. Okay, cool. Great.

And so, you know, a lot of like a lot of people in his position, you know, could like manipulate us have a lot of they have hit all the leverage over us in the world.

Right. And, you know, all credit goes to him because like he never once ever like abused that or like did anything subversive or nefarious.

Like it was all support, all mentorship, all just like bringing us in. Don't get me wrong, like there was, wasn't a gift.

Like you didn't give us a gift. Like we worked our asses off every day, all day. It's in business.

Like we showed up to work. but you know, that could have gone a completely different way and, forever grateful that it went the way it did.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (11:16.492) This is such a fascinating story because this is not a common story that you hear in terms of like unicorn, forgo your forgo your CEO title at the earliest stages when all your credit cards are about to burn out.

And the pressure's on, but as far as hindsight, great move and a bold move to recognize that opportunity and to not hesitate.

But also kudos to you for building that relationship and trust over an extended period of time.

JC Glancy (11:34.445) Right.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (11:45.072) So at that point, now you have this, this heavy hitter as CEO. Now, was it you guys all doing the fundraise together and subsequent to rounds or was he leading the charge or you leading the charge? How did you guys kind of, you know, bring that to, cause usually pre, know, pre series a new CEO, non-founder raising money. It's kind of like a unusual story, but to that caliber of a person, maybe it wasn't an issue.

JC Glancy (11:49.186) Yep.

JC Glancy (12:08.332) Yeah, I mean, it really, I mean, it really changed the dynamic a lot. like, you know, like all of us, you know, me, Ross Ross, we all like, we're part of all the fundraisers kind of all the way through to the, the series C I wasn't so much in, the up to the B I was pretty heavily involved in. and, what was it going to say?

yeah. And so basically like, you know, yeah, that's what I was saying.

So like, you know, I used to go into angels and VCs and say, Hey, you know, we're going to take down LegalZoom, right?

Because I'm still mad about the letter. mean, Pettiness wins championships as far as I'm concerned.

And so I would go in and they would be like, okay, they would laugh and be like, yeah, LegalZoom spends $70 million a year in marketing.

Like, how are you going to beat them? I said, well, their product sucks.

I feel like they don't treat their customers right. And I think we can really like...

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (12:41.188) Yeah, good mission.

JC Glancy (13:05.858) hit their soft underbelly and they're high price. Like the price is crazy.

And so I think there's a potential for disruption here. And they would like laugh me out of the room.

Ha ha ha. Good luck. And then we're crew Ross walks in the same room, same people, same story.

And they're all like, that's a great idea. We're going to give you money.

And then kind of then, you know, and then in the subsequent rounds, like, so that went really quick because, know, Ross just had to make some phone calls, right?

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (13:25.921) Ha ha!

JC Glancy (13:35.48) people that he knew.

And I'm not saying it was easy by any stretch of the imagination, but after Ross came in and we got everything kind of shored up and then we had some breathing room to actually go and execute and test and build products.

Which also, that was another huge struggle for about a year, year and a half.

And then once we kind of got things going and like... really had started having some good data around, you know, customer and ICP.

so like, basically where I landed at Zen Business is like, I became the voice of the customer inside the company that ultimately transitioned into me leading all of product marketing.

So I was in charge of all of our quantitative qualitative research to validate, triangulate our hypotheses across like product price promotion, LTV retention term, like all of those things.

And so like, I was essentially the subject matter expert that would come in during the fundraisers and I would just walk them through all the data.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (14:35.622) Very interesting. It's great to hear that kind of founder journey.

Like you still built companies, your idea, you had the vision, and then you realized that bringing in the best talent was how you created the most value and going out and creating that talent.

What are some of your insights for founders listening today in terms of attracting great talent?

JC Glancy (14:58.882) Yeah, I mean, think you have to be a magnet for resource gathering.

so like, you know, and I didn't see this, I didn't really know this kind of like day one, of course.

And then I saw Ross come in and all of a sudden he's just on calls. He's talking to everybody.

He's bringing everyone in. We're getting like moonlighters and like advisors.

And then all of a sudden we just had this like magnetic orbit of like just talent around us.

And of course, Ross just came off this huge win and had a big network.

But the thing is, you can still do that on a smaller scale just by being curious, open-minded, wanting to learn, not having an ego, and just really being open to accepting feedback.

And of course, that comes from like... you know, angels and VCs a lot of times.

I mean, if you're trying to like pull talent into your orbit, like there's ways that you can go out and, know, as far as I'm concerned, you can, you can get access to anyone in the world if you really want to, you know, and there should be no barrier to that.

Some people are like, I can't ever talk to this person because they're like three orders of magnitude away.

I bet you can. You just have to be, you know, persistent enough to just like try and find those people and just ask one or two really good questions.

And then that brings them in and you start to build rapport.

And next thing you know, they're like actually really wanting to help you out.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (16:22.32) And I'm also curious, like, you know, as much as that leads to the right person coming in, but how many shots, you know, you or other founders have to take on goal to get even an opportunity to get that person on the door.

Like, imagine it's not just one email, you know, one cold email gets a job done in most cases.

JC Glancy (16:38.414) Yeah, mean, think that I have, mean, I think one of the things that I, obviously I'm not good at a lot of things.

I think one of the things I was blessed with is like. I really love talking to people.

so I mean, but also like, mean, you know, I, I don't really like the hustle porn thing, but like, I was out there, like going to every event I could talking to everyone, like just asking for advice and like, Hey, this is one thing about doing what, what do you think?

drove, I drove for Uber and Lyft during this time.

And I literally, every single person that got in the car for me is a potential customer because I think everyone wants us to, everyone in their soul wants to start a business because there's a human nature wanting for freedom, which I think running your own business represents.

And so everyone that got in the car, I'm like, hey, I'm thinking about starting this business.

We're going to automate the process for them in LLCs and corporations and all this stuff. What do you think?

And I just had, got like 250 reps in or whatever, however many rides I did over that six months or whatever it was.

And then I was getting like in interest to people that from Uber rides, That's just like one example.

And then you're going out and you're going to networking events.

And I think you just really have to, you have to create momentum.

And the only way you can do that is through action.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (18:00.988) You know, they're like force it and will it into existence.

Can't just sit there and wait. And I do love the Uber store.

I've actually know a couple of founders that have a very similar journey where they drove over to not only cover rent, but also to get the reps in, in terms of just pitching strangers.

Cause that's a great way to get, you know, challenge your resolve against the amount of rejection you might have in pitching someone cold.

JC Glancy (18:25.656) Totally. also, mean, another thing I did is, so this guy, Evan, I think it's Evan Kastner.

There's like, two Evans in Austin that are awesome founders.

And one or both of them wrote a book together and it's called, it's so good.

There's like venture deals as like, you know, for Brad Feld is like kind of the Bible.

And then, then there's, I think it's like,

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (18:45.5) You

JC Glancy (18:52.834) It's, they wrote a book and it's around how you like basically like craft the deck, craft the story, craft the narrative and actually take the money in a very like streamlined process way.

yeah, you're looking it up. yeah, it's, it's great. And then anyways, so I went to, he was giving like a talk at South by about the book and I went to it and, He said that one of the biggest, the best things that he ever did early on in his career was he did improv.

And so I was like, oh, that's interesting. And so I went, took an improv, I took improv classes and I did some standup comedy and like, man, I mean, you want to talk about like rejection from a VC, like go, go get on stage and tell some bad jokes.

Like, you know, I, I, I just would just bomb like all the time.

And I, I, I give, I mean, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that built my like, you know, scar tissue more than anything.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (20:01.82) That was impressive. All these different little tactics that kind of help train your brain and prepare you for what inevitably becomes a massive outcome.

I started this interview about kind of when you knew you struck it, like you were onto something and you're picking up the momentum.

But when you think about the scale that you guys reached, how were you scaling? What were the channels that were working for you? Obviously you had to create the momentum at the early days, but...

JC Glancy (20:26.712) Right.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (20:29.105) you know, Uber driving, know, driving Uber can only get you so far.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (20:29.105) you know, Uber driving, know, driving Uber can only get you so far.

like, when did you actually get the breakout velocity and what was the secret sauce there?

JC Glancy (20:36.522) Yeah, well, so I think there's a kind of a good story before that about like the, you know, doing whatever it takes kind of thing.

So we set a goal, basically prior to like us deciding to compete head to head against LegalZoom, we built a lot of other products that nobody wanted.

We built like, a site called an app called Zen filing, which essentially was an app where any existing business owner, the 26 million existing business owners in America to go download the app, put the name of their business in and then check the compliance of their business.

That did not work at all. Cause no, was terrible.

but we thought it was a good idea at the time.

I also had a white label, a white labeled, like formation workflow for law firms, right?

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (21:14.97) It doesn't sound that great.

JC Glancy (21:27.288) Formation is a loss leader for law firms to get startups.

And so they'll do it for free. then they kind of delay the fees until the next round or whatever.

And so I was like, hey, we'll just sell you this software. We'll white label it to you.

And it makes you look cool because you have some tech to go out to these founders.

Turns out selling to law firms is terrible. Maybe the worst sale of all time because everyone has to be unanimous, I think, across the partners.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (21:50.15) No,

JC Glancy (21:56.876) And so then we're like, okay, well, like none of this is working.

Let's just compete head to head against legal zoom. And so in an afternoon in a garage in Austin, Texas, I built a landing page with a, a, a, a software called lending that I got from sumo.

had like a $49. Yeah. It's like $49 for landing for like lifetime access. And I was like, great.

Bought it. I, yeah, I built, I built a landing page and then I built a,

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (22:14.758) Yeah.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (22:20.092) So I'm gonna get all those.

JC Glancy (22:25.39) ad campaign in Google and literally the landing page had like phone number, like name, email address, what type of company do want to form?

And then I had three radio buttons for like these other products we were thinking about.

One was called worry-free guarantee, which, and then I just sent it live and then all of sudden just worked, right?

And I was like, oh, we're getting calls. And then basically we decided, hey, we're going to set a goal to grow 10 % week over week.

for, or it was 20%. I think it was 20 % week over week for 16 weeks, right?

So that's 16 weeks of my life. I literally did not do anything about this.

had, like, I had like, like, I had the call at night in bed, we get a call and I'd answer it on my Apple watch, like Dick Tracy.

It was great. And so hit that goal. The last day, like the last day of that 16 weeks, you know, I had like,

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (23:12.764) and

JC Glancy (23:23.822) two more customers to get.

And I was just doing all this manually by hand.

Every time someone would come in and give us their email address, would email them personally, hop on the phone with them, talk them through everything, and then just take the credit card over the phone and put it in Stripe manually.

And so this is a crazy story. I want to answer your question, but I want to give perspective of how we got there.

I think it's important. The last day of the 16 weeks.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (23:45.638) Yeah.

JC Glancy (23:52.482) My dad was having heart surgery, not like a major heart surgery, he had like a valve replaced, but I was in the hospital in like the waiting room, the surgery, like the OR waiting room or whatever.

And I literally like closed like the last deal or converted the last customer.

And like, I was just like, you know, was like this monumental moment in my life.

And I was like, man, we just like, we just hit that damn goal. And so.

From there, that was kind of what allowed us to go and raise more money.

then we actually started building product around and automating and having workflows and things like that. So we got lucky.

And this was a moment in time where basically, LegalZoom just owned the Google landscape.

No one could compete against LegalZoom. And so we're just like, OK.

zero dollars, like in the ad, was like, I noticed, like I looked at all legalism's ad, none of them had any, none of them had pricing at all, right?

Cause it's such a brand. was like, okay, we'll just put like zero dollars, start for free, form an LLC.

Like those just worked immediately. And it was just like, okay, upside surprise.

And so, you know, from a channel perspective, like Google just worked out of the gate.

was like, you know, the most, most predictable. you know, most reliable and what that did really was it got us enough traffic to then optimize the funnel, right?

Cause we had so much traffic coming in that we could then optimize the funnel over times, like page by page, just improve, improve, improve.

So then when we can get our conversion rate up to a point where we could then go to like affiliates and say, Hey, we want to like, we want to partner with you.

Here's our conversion rate. Here's how much we're gonna pay you on a cost per acquisition basis.

And then that was obviously lower than our CAC in Google. And then that blended it down.

And then we kind of went paid affiliate for a while.

And then our affiliate partners ended up being like 50 % of our traffic at one point.

And so we got very reliant on them. And then we had to scramble to be like, we need to do SEO.

JC Glancy (26:15.726) as fast as we can because we need to like mitigate the risk of if that partner were to like potentially pull out for whatever reason, because then we would have just lost 50 % of our growth overnight, you know?

So.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (26:25.145) Mm-hmm.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (26:29.948) So, and so you mentioned Google, you mentioned affiliates. Did you also, were you doing Facebook ads at the time too or?

JC Glancy (26:39.15) we were, they mean, they never really worked that great.

You know, I think, I think in today's world, like social and video is like way more important, but kind of in 2017, 2018, it was like, not as, important as it is today from like a brand awareness perspective and like, you know, top of the funnel perspective.

so yeah, we, we had that, like, you know, it would drive some conversions, but like nowhere near as meaningful as like paid and affiliate.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (27:09.658) No, it's genius. It sounds like you found the channel, you doubled down on it, and basically came down to a killer offer.

An offer that sounded so much better than Nickel Zone, which is...

JC Glancy (27:16.226) Yeah.

Well, yeah, because it was a killer offer because, and then where we really got the big unlock, where we got the big unlock, was the way we started was it was, you know, $0 to start, just pay the state fees.

Right. And we created this kind of choose your own adventure funnel. It was great.

so it was just like one product. was like one page, one product, one pro one page, one product, like kind of all the way through.

And it was just literally binary. Yes. No. Right.

And so they're like, do you want to form an LLC or corp LLC?

Right. Do you, do you, do you want expedited filing? Yes or no. Do you want EIN? Yes or no.

And then what we would do is we would just drop new pages in for things that we didn't build just to test, to see if people would buy them.

Cause they thought they were buying them. Right.

And then we would say, oops, my bad. Like that's actually not ready yet. We're not charging you for it or whatever. which is great.

And then over time.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (28:06.705) Yeah.

JC Glancy (28:13.26) Right.

We started, we started to add so many things to the funnel, right.

That we were learning a lot about what people wanted, but like the people were getting funnel fatigue because the funnel was too long.

And so then we're like, okay, how do we solve this?

Well, you know, I was like quickly realized, well, we built enough products now based on like everything we've learned from the funnel.

Like, let's just like put those in the packages, which is so obvious. Right.

But like, you know, at the time, like this, The offering was so good, right? Zero dollars to start.

then, you people would pick up a lot of things along the way.

you know, only like, I think like 27 % of people would actually make it through and just, just form a company and only pay the state fees.

Right. But we still got them as a customer before we can like cross-sell and upsell them later.

and, and then from there, you know, this was like October, it was October 5th, 2018 that week we like launched packages, right?

so we had like starter pro premium and like they just included like different things, whatever.

And then, you know, we don't, everyone knows how packages work. have to explain that.

but like you never really get like, you know, and a new product launch, I think is always like pretty difficult and mostly just like hand to hand combat.

but this just worked. mean, our LTV overnight went up 212%.

It was like the, it was the biggest, like it was the, it was the biggest, LTV shift in like company history.

Cause everything after that was just marginal improvement forever. But it's like overnight we went from like, making, I don't know, 50 bucks a customer to like whatever, 250 or something, whatever it was.

And that was the moment that it was like, okay, now it's like, we got some real opportunity to put fuel in the fire here.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (30:00.093) And this is a competitive market.

There are countless solutions and all different, you know, whether it's a full package solution, like a legal zoom or other competitors, there was a lot of me too, that came out after you guys came out.

What is it like kind of competing in that red ocean and being able to stay on top of that?

JC Glancy (30:10.734) Bye bye.

JC Glancy (30:19.694) Yeah, I mean, it's a never ending fist fight and just total battle.

So what's it like? Obviously it's super difficult. And then all of a sudden, next thing you know, the cacks are increasing, right?

Because everyone's bidding on the same keywords. And then downstream of that, so then the LTV has to increase and there's pressure on both all the time.

And then you also have to contend with the payback period.

And the good news here is we had such a better offer than anyone else, especially when people are doing comparison shopping.

We're just the shining star. And then they're doing comparison shopping and we're also the number one rated on all these affiliate sites and they're seeing that.

And so we had a lot of social proof there.

I think where we really just absolutely dominated was We just built like an absolute like a marketing machine, like go to market machine with like going back to talent, right?

None of the other companies in the space at the time were venture backed, AKA they're not giving people shares, AKA they're not getting the best talent because the best talent in the tech world like wants, you know, salary and equity.

And so we were able to recruit the best people and like that was a huge, I mean, that was a huge advantage for us.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (31:47.002) And so at this point, really competing on a superior marketing machine with a killer offer.

And that's kind of how you stood out and with the growth in

JC Glancy (31:47.362) Thank

JC Glancy (31:56.75) All right.

And so I don't want to discredit customer success. we absolutely were so obsessed with customer success.

I mean, if you look at our reviews on Trustpad, think we like a 4. 8 or 4. 9 and like 22,000 reviews right now.

And so, I mean, we're talking like we were doing everything possible to give customers the best experience.

like, you know, Like at the beginning, it was like a little bit of me.

Like I was, I was on chat and intercom. Like I did kind of everything, of course, at all stages.

but like we were bending over backwards to do anything we could to make people happy and like surprise and delight them.

And we still do that to this day. And so like our chief, our chief customer officer, Mitch still to this day, if we get like a bad review, he's calling the person personally and he's like taking care of the problem for him.

And so like, you know, if you compare. You know, and I'm glad, I'm so glad we did that because it it forced acts as a force function for all of our competitors to also give better service.

Cause like, you know, prior to us, you know, legal zooms wasn't great. Like, let's be honest, right?

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (33:23.996) I can say as a former customer of LegalZoom many years ago, my first business back in like 2008, 2009, to then using you guys for my real estate business for creating a couple LLCs, can say it's like, yeah, it was like a night and day difference across the board.

And it's awesome to have you on the show having been a customer of your product for several years now.

JC Glancy (33:29.762) Right.

JC Glancy (33:46.478) Totally. Thank you.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (33:49.649) There's all, like in most startups and be curious to hear how yours went.

Like you had these really tough points in the early days and then you start picking up, you know, picking up velocity, improving product, you know, figuring out the sales channel.

there any other like breaking points, whether are you running out of money, got to raise another round, or did you have money being thrown at you?

Like what were some other kind of like at the later stage, call it post series A, post series B that were like, you know, near death experiences or complex situations that you guys had to, deal with.

JC Glancy (34:19.33) Yeah, I mean, I'm so bad at like remembering like timing and dates of when things happened.

because like all I cared about was like the conversion rate on the website, like LTV and like, you know, retention, AKA, customer success.

So I was just so focused on that. I really didn't care about anything else.

but I mean, I'm pretty sure that we closed our series a like right at the end of 2019. And so we know we're all going here, COVID.

So COVID happens. We had this amazing office, 30 people, around 30 people in Austin, Texas. It's a historical building. It's in a rock quarry. have this amazing beautiful birds and trees outside.

And it was the best time of my life. The entire thing was like.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (34:51.728) Good timing.

JC Glancy (35:14.318) graffiti from our designers. Like that was like the startup vibe that like everyone wanted, right?

It was the best and I miss it. And so, know, Mark's, so what was cool is our, one of our, think, Graycroft, like our, who led the series A when like the COVID thing started becoming a thing.

They got like the, one of the people from like the CDC on the phone with all the portfolio companies, which is like, that was a cool value add.

Yeah. And then, and then the person was like, yeah, two weeks to stop the spread.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (35:16.272) but all those bases here.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (35:39.12) That's a value add, yep.

JC Glancy (35:44.066) That's bullshit. Like this is going to be a long time.

And they like called it and they're like, you need to like, you need to take proactive measures like immediately.

And so I think the entire world shut down like around the 13th or 14th of March.

And we, we, we went, we went fully remote March 6th, never went back to the office. Right.

And so as soon as all that happened, like everything died, like all of our traffic.

all of our conversions, no one's forming businesses. And it was the worst.

we were like, we were basically like, okay, we're going to have to shut the business down.

We were in a very contractionary period at that point in time where like none of us knew what the hell was going to happen.

And, and so we were just struggling. Like no one, know, no one knew what to do.

We couldn't increase conversions. Like it's just not, you know, If people aren't forming businesses out of like, you know, fear and uncertainty, then like we have no control of that.

and then, and then, people are sitting at home, and all of a sudden they start getting these things called stimulus checks.

then, basically for the next 16 weeks straight, had like the most insanely explosive growth you could ever imagine every day.

Like literally every day was more conversions than the day before.

And every day was the most conversions we ever had.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (36:50.864) Yeah.

JC Glancy (37:10.062) Every week was better than the last and it was just in explosion, explosive. so cool. That's awesome.

But now we're having to like blitz scale to like take, uh, and every now all of a sudden everyone's like at home working remote.

We're having to figure out how to work remote as a team that used to work in person at the same time that we're having to blitz scale.

And so we went from like 30 people like March 6th of 2020 to like 300 in like eight months or something.

Like we like, yeah, we like had to 10 X our team because of the growth was so crazy.

I remember Chris, our like head of IT. I mean, I don't, I feel so bad for the guy.

don't think he slept for that whole time. We would have like, you know, he would be in calls with us for whatever reason.

And behind him would be, I'm not even joking you, just a wall of Macbooks.

And he's like, I, he's like, and all he was doing just shipping Macbooks. Like,

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (37:44.604) What?

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (37:55.868) .

JC Glancy (38:09.196) That was like, he was like, open the box, provision the MacBook, put it back in the box, ship it.

And he just did that all day, every day. so, obviously this is an amazing thing happening on one side and a crazy, terrible thing happening on the other.

And so the bipolarity of that having to contend with that was like, I mean, it was really exciting on one hand, but it was crazy on the other because when that happened.

I didn't leave my house or do anything but work for four months straight.

And then I just totally burned myself out. I remember one day, was Friday afternoon, I think I just went immediately, my desk was next to the couch, because I had a small one bedroom in Austin at the time.

And I just crashed on the couch. And I don't think I got off the couch until Sunday afternoon, Monday morning.

So that was rough. for sure.

then kind of, you know, good news is it's like, because that happened, you know, we basically were able to capture a lot of the market share and then keep it.

And so in addition, it's like, now we're able to recruit, going back to the talent piece, now we're able to recruit like the best talent from everywhere in the country because we only had people in Austin, Texas.

And so then I was like, wow, this is like, hey, this is like, there's a lot of negatives to the work from home thing, but like, this is a good positive.

It was cause like, best talent comes from anywhere in my opinion.

And so now we're getting like amazing people from like East and West coast, like, you know, from state to state.

then.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (39:45.946) Yeah, how much harder would it have been to recruit 300 people in eight months if you weren't remote?

You know, and just the real estate logistics of getting space.

You know, the fact that you went remote was a blessing.

JC Glancy (39:50.741) I don't know how we would have done it. Yeah, exactly.

It, yeah, I mean, you know, in retrospect, I mean, almost as like if COVID didn't happen, we would have been on this like probably like slow, like slow growth trajectory.

Like I think everything would have turned out the same ultimately, but you know, obviously there's a lot of like, a lot of, I mean, a lot of bad things happened during COVID and a lot of like companies got really, really hurt during COVID and some, but some like got lucky and we were just one of the ones that got really lucky.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (40:27.004) Well, in all fairness, you were prepared to be lucky.

You you made that investment into SEO. Like that was probably massive for you guys.

And you had the, you had the marketing engines already dialed in. You had all that hard work.

So when the volume came, you were there and you were the leader. Um, so not luck.

It was, you know, I know it's always weird saying COVID was lucky.

JC Glancy (40:27.627) Yeah.

JC Glancy (40:38.208) Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mm-hmm. That's exactly it. I No, no, I'm not saying that. I'm just, yeah, definitely not saying that.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (40:52.88) So you have this massive explosive growth.

go from like basically maxing out your credit cards to, now this massive trajectory of growth, over several years.

And, but you're no longer at Zen Business. So, you know, walk us through kind of the, journey of you making the decision to, step down from your role, at Zen Business and kind of what, what led you to do that.

JC Glancy (41:06.189) Right.

JC Glancy (41:16.46) Yeah, yeah, mean, I I'm nothing but the best things about my time it's in business and like just forever grateful for my time there and the people that I met and the. lives we got to touch. know, because like ultimately, we ended up having, you know, six co founders.

And so, you know, Ross was running, Ross was running a CEO, Shinaz is, know, they're a COO, they've been working together for like 25 years, and like, have ultimate trust with each other.

And so basically, you know, as we were recruiting, like, you know, I was doing I was just one man, like, you know, kind of one man show head of product marketing this entire time.

And then we really were like we need to dial this up.

So then we went and we went and recruited like amazing like senior level talent, right?

This is like, you know, this is like we need that we were at a new stage, right?

We needed someone to like, you know, go from kind of like we went from like the zero to one and the one to 10, but we needed like the 10 to 100 person, right?

And like, I'm not I'm not I'm not that person, right?

I'm not that person is like a non CEO, like as a CEO, I'm pretty sure I can do that.

But if I'm having to execute an entire team and do the cross-functional building of support and stuff, I just don't have the patience for that.

I'm sorry. And so we just went and recruited the best people.

And then I was able to give away my day-to-day duty.

Ralph was able to give away his day-to-day duty, had a product.

And so we went and raised the $200 million Series C at end of 2021 from Oak and Softbank and others.

And with that money, a big portion of it was carved out for global acquisition.

so, Raph and I jumped at the chance. mean, Ross and Shinaz are running the day-to-day of Zen.

you can have Raph and I, who are also founders, the original founders.

JC Glancy (43:14.734) go and like meet with all these other founders of similar companies to try and like, you know, buy these businesses, right?

And so basically we isolated a target list around 30s and business clones around the world, every continent except for Antarctica.

And then Raph and I flew around the world, met with all of them. We got 200 LOI to acquire.

And as we're going through the process of, you know, buying these businesses and these aren't small businesses, right?

As we're in the process to buy these businesses, 2022, Fed raises interest rates, bottom falls out of the market.

Everyone pulls back to conserve cash and the macro had changed.

And so we made the decision, like all of us, like, hey, let's kill the global acquisition strategy.

No longer a strategic priority for the business. We don't want to divert X amount of dollars, all the resources, attention, priorities of the business trying to enter these new markets when we just need to focus on our home market and we never need to raise cash again.

We made the tough decision to kill the global acquisition strategy.

Bad news is, I wasn't going to get to do it at Zen, but I was already fully vested, did some secondary.

And so was in a good place. The company was in good place, still growing.

so decided, hey, I've been there, what, seven, eight years, and ready to take some time off.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (44:31.772) So how does that feel?

JC Glancy (44:31.982) It didn't last long, I get bored pretty easily.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (44:35.388) As most of us founders do. You take a break and you're like, what? You start twitching and gotta do something again.

JC Glancy (44:37.708) Yeah, I know. mean, I, know, I, try, I tried it.

plan to take a year off, you know, wanting to get caught up on all my doctors and dentist appointments I missed over the last, you know, years.

And, after about three weeks, I was bored as hell, you know, sitting on the sidelines.

but I mean, I still kind of forced myself to take some more time off.

made it six months until I couldn't take it anymore.

And I just felt like, I just, you know, total, total loser again and, decided to start looking for new opportunities.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (45:12.176) Kind of brings you to London? You're out here with me here in London.

That's how we got connected.

JC Glancy (45:16.364) Yeah. I love London by the way.

If anyone watching hasn't been here, highly recommend it. Come see me and Jason. We'll take you out. Yeah.

So, you know, obviously, you know, going, harkening back to the kind of the story of the global acquisition, right?

And so like we were looking at, you know, companies all over the world and, you know, think there's a huge opportunity, you know, with respect to, you know, Europe to figure out a new way to help small business owners, you know, working on something.

and really excited about what's ahead. And so, yeah, but then of course, that kind of brought me to Europe and I wanted a different life experience and nice cultural experience.

I love history and so it's been great living here and I think there's a big opportunity.

JC Glancy (46:07.64) hey, Jason, you got muted. can't I can't hear you. It's all good. Thanks.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (46:12.956) Now I'm excited to have you here in London and excited for you to share a little teaser into what you're up to.

Yeah, but before we wrap, as a unicorn founder, sharing a message with other founders out there, what do you think it takes or what would be your advice to founders that aspire to be on the unicorn path?

JC Glancy (46:19.042) Coming soon.

JC Glancy (46:26.519) Yeah.

JC Glancy (46:38.074) a few things, just show up. Just show up.

Like the hardest, the hardest thing to do is just show up to work every day. just show up.

Like that's one. and then one story I always tell is like kind of the, guess I was going to, you know, tattoo.

was going to get this as a tattoo, you know, growing up, I went to, you know, like Catholic elementary school and went through first through eighth grade, from time it was like six to 14, and there was a sign in the hallway.

And I walked past it every day for eight years, just burned into my brain.

And I'd look at it and I would just read it.

And my last day of eighth grade, before I graduated, I went and I ripped the sign off the wall and I stole it.

And I put it in my bedroom. I wish I still had it.

And what it said was, persistence prevails when all else fails.

And then so that's my advice

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (47:46.045) That would be a general theme I picked up on this podcast with you is persistence.

Jason Denross and various other partners and the maniacal focus on LTV and CAC. That's what it takes.

JC Glancy (47:46.445) I'm

JC Glancy (48:01.314) Yeah, I mean, have to be, I I don't know if I'm like, I ruminate a lot.

like, just like, when I just, I'm really good at only thinking about one thing and like just obsessing over it.

And I don't know that's a good thing or a bad thing, but like, I just get obsessed.

So yeah, takes, it kind of takes that level of obsession, I would say.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (48:20.156) It's a binary thing. you put it into the right, if you're obsessed with the right thing, it's very powerful.

Other things get maybe left behind in life for a while, but that's how true massive value creation can be created is when someone has that level of relentless commitment to something.

JC Glancy (48:27.266) Yeah. Right.

JC Glancy (48:38.926) And you really have to love what you do and be passionate about it.

I mean, some people maybe are good at making money for money's sake.

For me, that's not how, I mean, I'm more of, I wanna have a big impact or I wanna help people and make their lives better.

And so I think you really do have to love what you do and that's what gets you through the hard times.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (49:02.266) Well said. Well, JC, if anyone here wants to connect or reach out, what would be the best way for them to get in contact with you?

JC Glancy (49:09.87) I don't really do social media, so that's tough.

But I mean, I would say like LinkedIn, you know, find me on LinkedIn, just JC Glancy, like you can see right here.

Happy to connect. It's the photo of me. I have a beard and it's pretty, and I'm also don't have hair, so should be pretty easy to find.

And then shoot me a message on LinkedIn, happy to connect and more than happy to spend time with folks who have questions.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (49:37.326) Awesome. JC, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for coming on the show today.

JC Glancy (49:40.472) Thanks Jason, appreciate it.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (49:42.652) All right, we'll leave the recording just in case we say anything after, but yeah, that'd be pretty much the wrap.

That was a fun story. didn't know. We had a lot more to share. It's always great to have these podcasts and get to know people a little bit more in terms of the...

JC Glancy (49:55.288) Totally, yeah.

And I'm so stoked because the chief communications officer from Bumble agreed to come on as an advisor for us.

he's basically going like, yeah, thanks. And he's, I mean, he basically built the Bumble brand, everything that Whitney will have heard ever like said or did, like he crafted that narrative.

And obviously like she's like the face of like women's empowerment, you know, I would say like worldwide. And so.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (50:06.222) Ready Recruiting Talent.

JC Glancy (50:25.07) I'm super excited for that and I can't wait for him to get like more of these stories out of me.

is like kind of almost a therapist, like the way he asks questions.

I just like open up to him and then he's like, yep, got it. This is great.

So I'm excited for that.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (50:39.824) That's gonna be good.

then I know we're meeting, well, I'll have a meeting. I'm gonna try to make the meeting.

I think it's on Tuesday. But yeah, been enjoying having you here in London and getting to know you a little bit more and diving deeper even on this podcast.

I know we didn't talk about Kadosa, but I'm excited for that playbook.

it's very different playbook from what you did before.

JC Glancy (50:46.168) Cool.

JC Glancy (51:03.244) Yeah, yeah, no one really knows about it yet, yeah, because with all the acquisitions, it's gonna be interesting.

It's been fun, though. Things are moving.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (51:08.41) Yeah.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (51:15.536) So, well, I'll get my team, chop this up, put it together, like the parts where it's like you check on my audio, all that kind of stuff gets cut out.

And then we'll have this out. I think you'll probably be out in two or three weeks.

JC Glancy (51:28.248) Cool.

How many folks have listened to this?

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (51:32.636) So YouTube, it's a couple thousand or like low thousands.

then we send it out via email and our newsletter and LinkedIn reaches about each 10,000 to 15,000 people.

So not everyone listens to the long form, but as far as the directions and awareness, those are good.

JC Glancy (51:46.04) Cool.

JC Glancy (51:49.454) wow. Yeah, make some, goddamn.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (52:00.765) You held it in the whole time, well done.

JC Glancy (52:03.328) No, I was holding in. shit. Yeah, I guess I didn't. That's cool.

Well, I guess I wish I would have had more social presence, but Robbie's gonna make me do all that, which is fine.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (52:18.076) It's an important step, I think, especially launching companies these days and having a presence that people can recognize.

Either you go full cryptic and just like, no one knows anything about you and you just do deals, or you go full public and you make yourself at least accessible and validatable.

People come in and do kind of the digital reference check. I definitely chose on the latter.

JC Glancy (52:19.138) Yeah.

JC Glancy (52:39.862) Yeah, I mean, that's the way to go for sure. It's haven't done it yet.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (52:46.756) in the most recent years. Right?

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (52:46.756) Well, hey man, most likely to see you maybe on Tuesday.

JC Glancy (52:51.49) Yeah. Awesome, man.

Have a great weekend and get some sleep. All right. See ya. Bye, Jason.

Jason Kirby @ Thunder.vc (52:54.844) I'll try.

Uh, this is for the Limelight team, just to recap. So a couple of key points that came out of this podcast, want to highlight was what is like maxed out credit card to, you know, $1. 7 billion valuation, um, raising a $200 million series C, um, basically giving up the CEO seat and still being able to raise money and being able to recruit top talent.

Um, what was the other good one? I think like, you know, maxing out credit cards to $1. 7 billion. Yeah. Evaluation, being a market leader. didn't talk about that, but they are the market leader for this service in the U S which is pretty powerful.

and then, his maniacal focus on product and LT, product led growth and product marketing.

but, yeah, that's a kind of key talking points to capture for this one. Obviously chop up the beginning and end and everything like that.

Um, and then one thing I was going to say, and I'll try to make a note in the Slack just in case you don't get this, but having them talking about what we kind of think is the most, uh, the best cliffhanger in this episode.

And then I think we need some kind of like intro video. That's just like more of a kind of like what 20 BC does where it's a little bit of music and like kind of flash this past guest and stuff like that. um, It kind of highlights, you know, a little bit of who we are, like fun reason to mystify, you know, unlocking the stories behind great founders and capital allocators.

So then you line those lines at kind of like a little bit of B roll flashing graphics, you know, for like five seconds and then it cuts it.

So there's like a clear transition because on our last episode, there wasn't a transition there. It was just like, boom.

So it'd be great to kind of have the teaser quick five, 10 second, you know, transition video, highlight video.

intro video and then go into like, hey, JC, tell me about your biggest, whatever the first question I asked.

All right, that's it.