[SaaS Series] Bootstrapping SaaS Success: The ClicData Journey With Telmo Silva

Telmo Silva is the Founder and CEO of ClicData, a cloud-based SaaS business intelligence platform that helps companies connect, visualize, and share their data. Bringing over 25 years of technology and business process improvement experience, he has held leadership roles such as General Manager and Executive VP at Skura Europe, as well as CRM Architect at Boehringer Ingelheim. Under his ownership, ClicData has expanded to serve users across 40 countries, managing thousands of daily dashboards and datasets. Telmo holds a bachelor’s degree in applied science in engineering from the University of Toronto.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [3:39] Telmo Silva discusses the problem ClicData set out to solve in 2008
• [5:43] How inbound marketing and a freemium model brought ClicData’s first customers
• [7:57] Early focus on the pharmaceutical niche and rebranding from ClicPharma to ClicData
• [10:24] Examples of how hospitals use ClicData to reduce costs and optimize resources
• [14:32] Benefits of starting in a niche market and expanding gradually
• [15:44] Telmo shares pricing strategies based on data volume and connector types
• [21:10] Evolution of ClicData’s features from dashboards to automation and data streaming
• [25:48] How agencies white-label ClicData to deliver branded client dashboards
• [29:27] Why ClicData transitioned away from a freemium model
• [41:29] How the acquisition by TeamSystem came about and its strategic benefits

In this episode…

Many businesses struggle to unify scattered data from multiple sources into a single, reliable system for analysis. Traditional business intelligence tools are often expensive, complex, and slow to deliver meaningful results, leaving small and medium-sized companies, in particular, at a disadvantage. How can organizations of all sizes access the same level of powerful, actionable insights that larger enterprises enjoy without breaking the bank?

Telmo Silva, a technology and business intelligence expert, shares how he approached this challenge by creating an easy-to-use, scalable platform designed to democratize data access. He discusses starting with a niche market, leveraging a freemium model to attract early users, and then evolving features based on customer needs. Telmo emphasizes strategies such as prioritizing simple, effective dashboards, tailoring pricing to customer data usage, and encouraging creative applications across industries to maximize value while controlling costs.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Telmo Silva, CEO of ClicData, about building an accessible and versatile business intelligence platform. Telmo discusses scaling from a niche focus to a global user base, creative and unexpected use cases for the technology, and lessons learned from transitioning away from freemium. He also delves into inbound growth strategies, pricing models, and navigating a successful acquisition.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Telmo Silva on LinkedIn
• ClicData
• Jotform

Related episode(s):

• “[SaaS Series] Revolutionizing Online Forms and Productivity With Aytekin Tank of Jotform” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series & Israel Business Series] The SaaS Growth Playbook With David Bitton of DoorLoop” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde [Inspiration]” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “I wanted to make business intelligence accessible so every company could have a complete solution.”
• “The first two years that we launched, we had a freemium model, which basically grew to 35,000 accounts.”
• “Some of our biggest surprises came when large companies with every BI tool still weren’t satisfied and came to us.”
• “We started with this tagline, which is Dashboards Made Easy.”
• “The cost was getting a little bit prohibitive, especially when you start reaching 40, 45,000 accounts.”

Action Steps:

1. Start with a niche market: Focusing on a specific industry allows you to tailor your solution and quickly gain traction.
2. Offer a low-barrier entry point: Using a freemium or trial model helps attract early adopters while providing valuable feedback to refine features.
3. Prioritize ease of use: Creating intuitive dashboards and simple workflows ensures adoption by all users and reduces training time.
4. Adapt pricing to customer usage: Matching pricing to factors like data volume or connector complexity ensures fairness and aligns with delivered value.
5. Explore customer-driven innovations: Observing creative and unexpected use cases can inspire new features and keep your product competitive.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:15 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, doctor Jeremy Wise.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22 

Doctor Jeremy Weiss here Founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Telmo Silva ClicData. You can check them out at clicdata.com and tell them before I formally introduce you. I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out, since this is part of the top SaaS series.

Some interesting ones where I had the founder of Jotform and very interesting grew to tens of millions of users, and he just shared his journey of. It was interesting. We talked about pricing and some of the freemium models with it, and that was an interesting conversation. Another one was the founder of DoorLoop. They grew really quickly.

 They actually raised, I think it was I don’t don’t quote me on this. I think it was they grew to over 200 people and raised millions of dollars very early on. And that was an interesting conversation as well. And Pipedrive was another one. I at the time they had around 10,000 customers.

 Now they think they have over 100,000 customers and really talked about growing that company. So check out more on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. Rise25. We help businesses give to and connect to your dream relationships and partnerships.

 We do this in two ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability, and the full execution and production behind the scenes. Number two, we’re an easy button for a company’s gifting, so we make gifting and staying top of mind. It could be for clients, partners, prospects, staff.

 You give us a list of addresses and we do everything else. And we we set up a campaign. So it’s not like one gift. It’s usually, you know, a gift every 3 to 4 months for four years. Right.

 So I love doing it. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. And I always look at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I admire and send them sweet treats in the mail so you can check it out at rise25.com or [email protected]. You can email us there.

 And by the way, today’s episode is part of the sponsored series brought to you by ClicData. I’m excited to introduce Telmo Silva, CEO and Founder of ClicData. And ClicData is a modern data platform made for data people. And what you can do with it is you can connect data from everywhere. They have over 500 plus intelligent database storage and API connectors, and you’re able to connect to anything.

 And he brings 25 plus years of experience in technology and business. He was former VP of services and global IT manager at a top ten pharmaceutical company. And he saw how complex business intelligence tools were, and they often failed to deliver the long term value. And this sparked the creation, the idea behind ClicData. So Telmo, thanks for joining me.

Telmo Silva: 03:27 

Thank you for having me. This is great. Thank you.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:30 

I’m going to share my screen. So if you’re listening the audio there is a video portion. But just tell us about ClicData and what you do.

Telmo Silva: 03:39 

So I’m the CEO and Founder of of ClicData. We created ClicData about 2008 to exactly solve that problem. You know, my experience was that, you know, we would spend a lot of time implementing million dollar systems with consulting companies and kind of implementing data warehouses, data lakes, etc. just to arrive at the boardroom or at the meeting and everybody pulls out their excel. And I thought, there’s something here and that’s not clicking right and and reporting.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:08 

What were you trying to do With the connecting the data at the time for the pharmaceutical?

Telmo Silva: 04:12

At the time, we were not actually doing any, any specific work. We were working on very specific projects with customers. Mainly, we’re working with pharmaceutical companies trying to sift through all their data and trying to make sense of it. So I was working more on the analytics side, but that work kind of led me to think, well, you know, these guys can do it because they have a lot of resources to both human and financial to put in place these these incredible systems and these data warehouses and all these equipment. But what happens to the medium small sized business? 

Is that how they’re going to run their businesses with Excel or some other? Mother kind of low level analytical tool. And that’s kind of what sparked really. That’s that’s kind of thing. How can I democratize this and say everybody could have, you know, an end to end business intelligence solution?

 And that was the beginning of it. It evolved into much more than just business intelligence. We then start seeing all the use cases that people start doing with data. And that kind of motivated us to even push it further and add more features and so forth. Today it is it is quite different than the initial vision of just being a cloud based BI platform.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:30 

Talk about and you don’t have to name names, but that initial, you know, you have to get initial traction in the market. You have to get a first, second, third customer. How did you get your first few customers.

Telmo Silva: 05:43 

Interesting enough, like 99 at the time, 100% of our business was inbound. It’s funny that you talk about Jotform and Pipedrive as well. Both great platforms which we connect to as well. But I kind of took the model from them. I don’t know if they came before or after me, but around that time, Dropbox was one model that I kind of followed very closely.

And I love the freemium model. That was something that for me was was very interesting because it allowed me to get exposure and also at the same time test the scalability and the capacity of our systems with a lot of free users. And while at the same time not having that guilt of saying, oh, I’m taking money from these guys and, you know, the system is broken or something like that. So the first two years that we launched, we had a freemium model, which basically grew to 35,000 accounts in about 18 months. And that was able to give us the experience on how to deal with so many accounts across the world, because data sovereignty and all these other complexities that go along with it, and the scalability of the everything from the dashboards to the capacity to connect to all these different systems, that allowed us to really put it through the test.

 So that freemium model really helped our inbound. And every single account we got for the first five years was 100% inbound. In fact, today we still don’t have any outbound Bdrs or any any sales outbound sales model per se. We do reach out to everybody that starts a trial with us today, and the freemium model is long gone, unfortunately.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:27 

Because, I mean, it costs real dollars to do that. And that’s what I talk to. You know, the founder of Jotform about is like, you have real costs, right? And behind it. And they grew like, I think over 25 million users.

But we talked early on. How do you transition those free people to pay paid. But I mean, even getting 35,000 early on is a lot. How did you get that inbound? Like, what were you doing?

Telmo Silva: 07:57 

We’re absolutely. The website went early on. In fact, at the beginning we were called ClicPharma because we were doing data just for pharmaceutical. And we we changed the name in 2010.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:07 

So you had like a small niche. I mean, it’s not small, but it is a small world in the niche. And so they spread it around.

Telmo Silva: 08:15 

Absolutely. Well, I do think I do think people are still looking and continue to search for that capability of of running their business and looking at their KPIs in a better way. Right. And I don’t think the larger platforms, whether it’s, you know, Power BI and other things, I’ve solved it. It’s still too complex for those companies to do it.

And that’s why I think we’re getting these organic inbound is because people are still searching for that perfect solution and they’re hitting us. Now, we don’t have the marketing dollars that other companies do, but through the freemium and through the just organic, we’re getting enough inbound to that. At the beginning, I was actually quite surprised how many companies started reaching us organically. But more surprising to me was the fact that some of these companies were well known, large corporate, or at least affiliates or departments of large corporate companies that I thought, okay, I am sure they have every single BI platform in the in, in the market out there, and yet they’re still not satisfied. Or at least a group of people are not satisfied.

 So what is it about it? So that allowed us to explore. So we took different customers, some people from legal, a lot of medical offices which have like already a staff of five, six people to manage. They have 2 or 3 systems to connect data to us. Maybe we are hitting a few marketing agencies, very niche ones that are, you know, have 2 or 3 clients that need to to support with with data and that grew ultimately into larger and larger. And as we got to be well known, you know, larger companies came to start looking at what we do.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:09 

I know that you help various industries, like you mentioned, hospitals, education, retail. Do you just talk a little bit to give people an idea? How are people using you? Maybe I don’t know if you want to take which example, either a hospital education or retail and and what they’re doing.

Telmo Silva: 10:24 

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, on on the health front, it’s always about on the hospital side, it’s also about attracting costs, you know, reducing costs, trying to optimize basically all their resources, whether, you know, it’s it’s operating rooms or whether it’s just maintenance staff or whether it’s supplies, etc. So there’s a lot of logistics around that and a lot of a lot of procurement and so forth. So a lot of our dashboards are being used to track financial metrics and quantities and time spent in that area for our marketing customers.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:02 

Let me let me ask a quick question on that. So like an example for that would be okay. A hospital maybe has, I don’t know, 200 suppliers of equipment and other things. And they basically you they connect whatever the ordering is for each of those things into a centralized dashboard. So they can kind of see everything in one place and go, okay, here’s our because they may have even more than one supplier.

I mean, they probably have people that do the linens and uniforms and everything, and it pipes in and, you know, okay, we can see our cost and they can kind of segment based on what the item is, etc. is that.

Telmo Silva: 11:41 

Absolutely.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:42 

Accurate.

Telmo Silva: 11:43 

In one use case of it? Another one, another use case could be simply, you know, the occupancy of certain wings of the hospital in terms of rooms, etc.. And the other one could be the use of an MRI machine, you know, percentage utilization. So a lot of these different topics that and and there are some similarities across. And this is really why we moved from pharma to industry agnostic is when we start with pharma.

It was very specific about pharma products. Who do you sell to what doctors etc. whether it’s marketing, sales or or even medical information, right? That they were tracking a lot of different things. But when we start nailing it down, we start we went to hospitality and they were thinking about, okay, room occupancy, you know, again, vendors managing vendor costs, etc.. Right.

 So you start seeing these patterns across. And this is what’s kind of really interesting for us, because I don’t think a lot of other companies have that capability today. We have these kind of global view of how all these metrics are being used in terms of the metadata, not the data itself. Obviously, we don’t look at the data that’s everybody’s customers is secured. But we do look at the metadata because we the system needs to know how to handle that metadata.

 And we start looking at and identifying patterns, which is very interesting for us to see that there are commonalities between all these industries. And and ultimately, you know, it all ends up being a bar chart or a pie chart or something like that. Right? So it’s that flow to us that is very interesting and how we can help the customers get to that faster.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:22 

Yeah. Tom, I do want to talk about kind of the evolution of the of the product because interesting. You know, obviously it’s from the first couple customers. It’s different now. I’m curious what people, you know Love as far as like, okay, there’s like now they have a nice dashboard and everything like that.

Yeah. Before we get to that, I just want to point something out that’s interesting. Is niche right? And it’s it could be lost going on the website now because it’s years later that you’ve been running this. But what I have I had the founder of RXBAR on the podcast.

 And what was interesting is like every now people know what RXBAR. And but in the beginning it was literally they were niched and had CrossFit people and then it expanded from there. And I feel like it’s the same with you. You didn’t, like, try and solve everyone’s problem. You were like, okay, we’re pharmaceutical and I can see how, okay, adjacent to that, the pharmacy school is working with these healthcare hospitals, whatever, and adjacent to that.

 And then it so I just want to that’s my observation there where it was like, it sounds like a critical piece of growth is like you did niche early on.

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