#409 - How Renaud Charvet chose ownership over speed - and made Ringover impossible to copy

Ton Dobbe: You're a SaaS founder. You've built something solid, but growth still feels harder than it should. Most SaaS companies don't fail because of bad tech. They fail because they've never become a must have to the right customer. This podcast is here to change that. I'm, um, Tondoben, and this is the remarkable SaaS podcast. Every week I talk to founders in the trenches, facing friction, making bold moves, and building companies that last. We dig into real choices around focus positioning, customer pool, team alignment. The things that separate forgettable software from the ones that people can't live without. No hype, no hacks, just honest conversations to help you build something that people would miss if it was gone. If your SaaS should be indispensable but isn't yet, this is your podcast. Let's get into it. The guest on m the podcast this week is Renaud Chavet, co founder and US CEO of Ringover Focus.

Renaud Charvet: It might feel slower in the short term, but it compounds much faster in the, uh, long term.

Ton Dobbe: This is Renaud. He started back in 2005 selling cheap international calls. Then Skype, Viber, and WhatsApp wiped out his whole business. So we built something new, and that became Ringover. And here's the part that inspired me. They kept what's hardest to build all in house, while everyone else stitched their product together, uh, from other companies parts and their infrastructure. Yes, it was slower and it cost more, and for years it looked like the wrong call, but it became their moat that underpins their success today. Then he moved his whole family to the US to crack the hardest market there is. Ringover had to face some very big rivals with very deep pockets, and obviously nobody had heard of them. So instead of chasing the whole market, he picked one industry and ignored the rest. Well, hi, Renaud. Thank, uh, you for making the time available today and being the guest on the podcast.

Renaud Charvet: Sure. Very happy to be there today. And thanks for hosting me.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, that's a pleasure. Um, more of all because of the. Yeah, when I saw the, uh, when I got introduced to your company, Ringover, uh, I was impressed, first of all by the journey that you've been through of over 20 years. And I think there's a lot of things to learn there that, uh, we can zoom into, uh, before we start talking about the company and, uh, the journey that you've been through and actually what it does, what energizes you and what drives you as an entrepreneur.

Renaud Charvet: Yeah, sure. M. You know, as an entrepreneur, you want to build like, um, a successful Business. But success is not one defining moment. It's more like thousands of mode improvements that compound, uh, over time. And so what gives me energy, uh, in the morning is like, yeah, waking up that, uh, today I can solve like a real problem, remove a blocker for the team and move the company forward. So it's more like a lot of small things rather than one big thing.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, you're completely right. It's never, ah, one thing that, uh, does the whole thing. It's a thousand things that actually stack up. And it's more the direction that you have to feel and explore. Exactly. Yeah. So just for my own reading and research on the company, you founded a company back in France in 2020, uh, to 2005.

Renaud Charvet: Exactly.

Ton Dobbe: Now it's 20 years down the road. Company was bootstrapped until 2020. Then there's some, some rounds of funding coming in. And, uh, recently you, uh, you actually moved to the U.S. which is from 2022, uh, to start the, to expand actually into a completely different territory. Um, first of all, for the, for the people that are listening to this, what is Ringover? What is the problem that you're solving?

Renaud Charvet: Yeah. So today, I mean, and it was also the case before, like business conversations, uh, they are one of the most valuable sources of information, uh, in a company. Uh, yet most organizations, they don't capture, uh, structure or leverage, uh, this information effectively. And, uh, why? Because for years the phone system, you know, it was kind of like a standalone infrastructure. Um, everything, uh, all the calls that you made, they were at best recorded, uh, and saved on the, on this, uh, pbx, on this, um, on this phone system. And so what we do, uh, today is like, we transform these business communications, um, into a, uh, strategic data layer that will connect directly to your, uh, business tools, like a CRM, like an ATS for recruiters, or LDESK for support. And uh, our mission today is really to help companies, uh, to have better conversations, to capture the intelligence inside these conversations and ultimately make better decisions.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, uh, that's a broad one in itself, but I mean, I get your point. Um, it's a very important one, the capturing of data. I mean, you never really thought about it in the last five years or so. It really became apparent when, with the, with the move of AI, I mean, I started capturing and transcribing, for example, the podcast already early on with, uh, tools like Otter. And since there's been so many different tools around that particular thing. But suddenly.

Renaud Charvet: Yeah, no, actually everything started from the transcriptions, you know, when we Started to have some very good uh transcription and at uh, a reasonable cost because you know like transcription has been there over the years but it was very expensive. You know it started with voicemail transcription so it was short conversation. So you could, you, you were able to pick a few cents per minute but when you have to transcribe like 45 minutes longer uh meeting or. Yeah, you, you need a, you need to find something with a uh very, very good cursor.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It reminded me of the first year of the podcast. I think the first year I actually outsource this. So someone else, an agency was doing the transcript for me very much, possibly assisted with technology but most of it also with by hand because I needed it for the podcast. But uh, things have changed quite dramatically since. One thing you said is today, this is what you do today. The company was founded on a completely different principle and the first 10 years it was a completely different business. Right?

Renaud Charvet: Yeah, exactly. Actually we started as like a uh, classical telecom operator and we focused on providing cheap international uh calls to anyone that had like an in line. The idea it was kind of like a two step dialing. You are calling like an 08 uh premium numbers uh in France and once you reach this number you were asked to enter your um, correspondent number overseas and you were dialing it and then you were um, getting in touch with him and you were paying like a lower price as if you were calling directly uh with your online uh operator. Uh, it went very well until like you know all the, because of the, the rise of the um, uh 3G, uh let people at like Viber, Skype, uh and then WhatsApp then. Yeah, I mean you could call for free. So it comes completed this uh, uh destroyed our business. Um and we also work on, on providing some services for businesses like audio conferencing, uh fax to email and uh, the virtual phone system. Um, we only started to work on ringover starting uh 2013 actually. It was kind of um, an opportunity because there was some new technologies appearing like WebRTC, you know where you could make video calls, uh within your browser. You don't, you didn't have to install like uh a standalone software. And also the Opus codec, uh, uh, it's kind of like a deal breaker uh in the telecom industry because this codec uh allows you to adapt the um, the quality, uh, I mean the level of bandwidth uh that you use to send the voice over the Internet, uh depending on how good your Internet connection was. And uh, so that was very, very Good. And this is where we started working on Ringover. And we did like four years of R and D before being able to sell it here.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, I mean it intrigues me at the end because how many companies have actually gone through a phase whereby their complete business was destroyed by something else and you have to then start over. I mean, what has been the hardest part there to uh, first of all to, to, to take a clean sheet of paper and to start thinking, okay, now we have to. When we've got a blank sheet, we can do it again. What are we going to build bet this uh, this company on? Can you, can you walk me through that?

Renaud Charvet: Yeah. I mean I think our fair advantage was like, you know, we, we didn't have only one uh, service. Even if like the, the overseas coding system was the largest one. We had like the, the fax to mail, the audio conferencing. We had like uh, other services. You know, like uh, one was like you could uh, drop a voicemail directly on the, yeah, on the, on the voicemail box of your correspondent, even if the phone was on. You know, I mean we have like maybe 10 different services that were kind of like fueling the, the company and um. And you uh, know like we were like bootstrap for 20 years actually. Our customers were our first investors. And because of this, you know, when service was going down, uh, we had the finances to uh, have the time to like develop a new product. And um, I knew we were always have been like a product company. So uh, I mean there was our co founders, Ludo and John Seymour. They are um, always looking for new technologies and new opportunities to make some new services. So I think, yeah, having this mix of revenue and product driven company and uh, we were able to build Ringover and at the time to build it uh, uh, the way we wanted.

Ton Dobbe: Well, yeah, I got a question on that. So what was a fundamental decision that you took back then that's paying dividend right now that is actually sort of fueling the success that you have today?

Renaud Charvet: Um, so I think especially you know, when we started like uh, the first version of Ringover, actually at the beginning, uh, it was only like um, a phone system on the cloud, you know, um, it was not connected to any business tools. So um, you know, like people were seeing it as a commodity. Uh, when you are talking to, to prospects, it was only about price. And the first big difference, uh, I think that we made is when we started connected Ringover to the business tools like CRM, uh, you know, Salesforce, HubSpot, and Help Desk like Zendesk or even like a recruiting software and ats. Um, when we started doing this, uh, we were able to synchronize the contacts between our tooling over and the business tool so the customers were starting to know who was calling before answering. And then we were able to log uh, the calls, sms, the voicemail recordings, everything in the business tool. So we were able to give our customer some metrics so they could measure and coach their team's performance. And then we started to talk about ri, not about cost and productivity. Um, and so instead of talking to the CFO and discussing about price, then we were talking productivity with head of sales, head of support or uh, head of revenue for instance. So that was really the big change and that was really when rigor was starting to boom.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, that's a fundamental one I hear so many software companies that are providing a tool whereby they say you save hours, you become more efficient, uh, and it's always about lowering the cost part whereby too many have an opportunity to do something on the upside and actually uh, do something that actually helps companies become better, companies become more competitive and so on. Which is from a value perspective a completely different thing. I actually made a note as this market has of course always been extremely competitive. Um, so yeah, that question that then comes up is how do you, how do you differentiate in a market like that? But I think you just answered that or was there more to it?

Renaud Charvet: M. Yeah, yeah, I mean how do you differentiate? I think it's like um, of course innovation, you know, like uh, especially with um, uh with AI now we, I mean we're moving enough to like this communication platform to the next step will be an agent platform, you know, like uh, we tending to have uh, uh, some voice agents. When you call the ivr, they can pre filter the call route to the right uh, uh, correspondent, uh, book meetings. So being on top of innovation, uh, for this is key. But also I think talking to customers, I think that's one of something I would recommend, um, as a funder, especially when the company is growing, uh, you know, so you are, you have some um, some sea levels that are like in charge of talking, you know, to your prospects to your customers and then you get their feedback like through a proxy kind of. So I think you know, even, even if it's not your full job and you have another mission, you know, taking the time to go on the trade show for instance, uh, or talk to you know, some unhappy customers, you know, that contact you on LinkedIn or directly by email. I mean, I always take the time to do it because you get so much insight. You know, like you got information sometimes that your uh, your team members don't want to share with you because, you know, they don't want to hurt you. For instance, or when you go to a trade show, you go, you can get some insights on the, on the industry. I, um, mean, yeah, I think this is how you don't uh, lose your momentum and make sure like the, you will please your, your customers. You know, of course, you know, you might not get like the, the next big idea talking to your customers, but you know, we're talking of like having all these multiple small steps of improvements in your, in your product. I mean, I think this is a great way to get the information from them.

Ton Dobbe: Do you see that back in, for example, churn numbers? I mean, is the product a sticky product that people want to stay to or actually is it also a market whereby if they, if they find a cheaper alternative tells which um, actually it

Renaud Charvet: really depends on, on which customer segment you're talking to. Uh, it's true that we have um, noticed, you know, like, especially like the, for the smaller companies, uh, you know, like their needs of like coaching, uh, you know, like uh, analytics, reportings on the team performance, you know, is less uh, advanced than a larger company and they come to ringover most for like, you know, the calling, the connection with the CRM because it's always useful, you know, even if you have like, uh, a few employees. But the stickiness is much greater, uh, uh, when we move to the IRT of the, of our customer base.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. The problem is bigger and as a consequence they appreciate uh, what you've built in a much better way.

Renaud Charvet: Yeah. Also, you know that the, the resources to invest in the product because for instance, you know, when we have empower, like our solution of uh, uh, conversation analysis, uh, actually, you know, you need to, to get the best of it, you need to be able, uh, to prompt you and you need to know in advance what's the outcome you want from this tool, you know, and, and sometimes, yeah, you need to have the um, assistance of a consultant or just you know, to spend the time on it. And if you are like your full day on, on the operations and you don't, you can't take this time to hold up a little bit and think about the strategy and what you want to do with the product, then yeah, you, you don't have the same results as someone who.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly. Exactly. When I was doing my research, what I also saw is that you've always been quite deliberate about what. Yeah, what part of the products that you own and what part. Probably not. And I'm particularly talking here about the, for example, the owned infrastructure and um, the European data sovereignty, the data centers where you host and these type of things. How important was that in the past and how important is that today?

Renaud Charvet: So, I mean, from day one, you know, it was already, I think it was kind of one of the core values of the, of the company. Um, you know, is the idea, like, um, if you want to have this competitive edge, you need to uh, own your, your technology and also your infrastructure. So for instance, you know, I mean, from day one we had like, um, a server hosted in like a data center. And of course it's not our data center, but we were renting some, uh, a cabinet in the data center to put our equipment. Uh, and even on the software, you know, like, uh, we could have gone much faster, like losing Twilio or another provider. Um, but we build it internally so we can have access, you know, to the lower tier of the technology and really like, do what we want with a product, not depend on someone else roadmap. Um, and this is key for us and also especially in Europe, you know, like, it's true that data sovereignty is key. So, you know, we all want, um, uh, data is m posted like, um, in France or in Europe, I mean, for the European customers, uh, on our own servers, you know, we're not using like AWS or Google Cloud, for instance. I mean, some customers want to use it and we have integration with it. So every time there's a conversation, we can store the recordings in the AWS environment, but by default everything is hosted on our own equipment, uh, in our infrastructures.

Ton Dobbe: Let me make a small interruption here. Renault just said something that a lot of his competitors wouldn't. While everyone else built on the same rented parts, he decided to build his own so he would never look like all the others. Because when you look like all the others, you compete on price, and that's a fight that nobody wins. And owning the foundation gave him something the renters couldn't. For some buyers, knowing exactly where their data lives is the whole reason they choose him. And this is what remarkable software companies do. They aim to be different, not just better. They offer something valuable and desirable, and they acknowledge they cannot please everyone. Want to master these traits as well? Simply read my book. I've made the electronic version available for free. Just visit theremarkableeffect.com to grab your copy and inspiration will spark within 10 minutes. Back to the interview. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes these things are, ah, people glance over them and say uh, we don't have the infrastructure choose the one. We choose the cheapest one or the, whatever the version is. But they do matter, ah, especially when it comes to communications.

Renaud Charvet: I mean, you know, regarding the um, sales pitch, I mean it's one of the key differentiator. And also regarding cost, you know, like uh, I um, mean when you scale and you have your own equipment, I mean you get better production cost than the competition that using someone else, you know, come to do this.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly, exactly. Um, let me see. So 2020, well 2013, you said you started to build a product, then it took a couple of years to get the product there to start selling it. Uh, so the company gets, starts to build success with the product and then you decide after 15 years of being bootstrapped, let's do a round of funding. What drove that decision?

Renaud Charvet: Um, well, yeah, you know, for all these years our customers were our first investors. So, so that was very useful. But you know, technology is um, is moving very fast. Competition too, especially in, in our space. And we were able to start, you know like um, to go overseas in Spain, in the UK with our own fundings. But we always had in mind, you know, the, the idea to go on the U.S. market because you know it's like 50% of the, the global market share. And for this, I mean we had to be like uh, realistic. I mean if, if we would have gone there on our own, uh, then it would have been at the expense maybe on the product development and we couldn't have gone as fast as we wanted. So that's what this is when we uh, we decided to, to raise and have this fund first, uh, funding with Expedition Capital.

Ton Dobbe: Okay. So it was for expanding. Now I've been in this uh, space also quite a bit of time. And for example, if I go back to the time when I was at Unit four, we also wanted to expand international because we were in the Netherlands. We wanted to go to France for example, we wanted to go to Germany. Um, so there's multiple options for that. You can partner, you can um, do a greenfield, do it yourself, you can acquire, um, all of them have their pros and the consultation. And what made you decide to do, uh, to go by yourself to the US to do a greenfield there and not for example acquire a company and then build from a standard base?

Renaud Charvet: No, that's um, that's a good point. Um, I think we want it to be to to go there directly, at least at the beginning. You know, like, I mean, that could be an option to scale, you know, acquiring a company. That's not something we are refusing, but, um, you know, to better understand the markets, to get, like, direct feedbacks from customers as well and not go through a proxy. M. Yeah, that's, um. That's why we wanted to go like, like direct. So. No, it's not. I. I know some companies do differently, but. Yeah, it wasn't our choice.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, it's actually, It's. It's always a choice. Um, so then in 2020, you. You did the funding, and in 2022, you actually move yourself to Atlanta.

Renaud Charvet: Yeah, to.

Ton Dobbe: To become the. The person that is actually going to grow the U.S. uh, there's now a new group CEO, which was your CTO. So it actually says something about the investment and the commitment that you have to, um, to. To give, to be. To become successful in a new market. Uh, if you look at it in hindsight, did that decision to actually go to yourself pay off?

Renaud Charvet: Yeah, yeah. And I think it was really like, um, something necessary to do, especially at the beginning. Um, you enter the US Market, you're no one, especially as a French, uh, company. Um, so you need to, uh, build your team. You need to get your first customers. And having like the. Yeah, the CEO, like, you know, in the US it sends, uh. Because, you know, like, uh, I'm married with kids, so I moved my family over there. So it kind of sends a senior, like, okay. They're not just there to try for like, six months and see if it's going well or not. Like, the guy moves there with his family. He's really, like, committed into this project. And so it helps, like, to gain trust with your first employees and first customers.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. Ah, it gives such a signal. I know, uh, another entrepreneur that actually was founded in the Netherlands, and, uh, she and her marketing manager actually moved to Minneapolis, uh, to do exactly the same thing. And it really paid off. But of course, when you do that, you also leave sort of the rest of the company behind. And therefore, you have to trust that, uh, things will continue to go as well as they went. Um, with you not being there. How did you organize that?

Renaud Charvet: But, you know, that's the advantage of not being like a solopreneur. Actually on, you know, Ringover, there's like, two other, um, co founders and, uh, the president, John Samuel, uh, stays in Paris, as well as the CTP that move to the. As a CEO, uh, a few years later.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's important to uh, to keep everything. I mean, because the expansion is good and uh, of course it can, it can couple for a while. But uh, it shouldn't be that the US becomes the drain of the real. Of the big company of the. Of the. Of headquarters, which I've seen a lot by the way, you know, that uh, the expansion actually starts to, to get the whole company into danger now. Um, let me see, 2022, you moved 2026 today. Actually there's um. In that same period there's this other. Yeah. Transition coming. So the first time you got uh, your. Your whole business model got wiped out by companies like Skype and like Viber. Then you start building a product indeed in the communications area era. But then AI, The AI wave comes and it totally starts to transform what could be. Um, so I think what I see right now is that the company has sort of made another pivot, uh, and it's different company from what it was five years ago. Is that correct?

Renaud Charvet: No, no, exactly. I mean that's kind of like a shift because you know, like AI is changing like um, the way businesses interact with uh, customers or prospects or candidates for recruiters. Um, actually you know, there's more and more conversations from different channels and um, historically, you know, like all these companies like that visibility into the emails through CRM records, but not into like the thousands of conversations that um, are happening uh, every day. And uh, um, since you know those conversations, um, they contains like enormous amount of um, of knowledge. And so what we do now is more like, uh, based on the transcription we were talking about. You know, everything like lays on the, on the transcription. We uh, use AI note, you know, to summarize scores, identify next steps, uh, update automatically the CRM records, call the teams and extract all this inside but at scale. So this is like the big difference, uh, uh, with before. And uh, what's important to say is like, you know, like what we do, you know, it's not like really replacing humans. It's more like helping them to spend less time on the administrative work, uh, more time, you know, like uh, and spend more time when they bring value. You know, like building relationships, closing deals, uh, supporting their customers and uh, also like uh, coaching their teams.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. The thing that intrigues me, um, and maybe that is in combination with the M move to the US Is at the end, if you see the technology shifts changing so fast and the expectations are changing every month, customers expect. We're loving it, uh, let's say uh, a year ago and now it's saying, yeah, but everybody's doing it right now, so the bar is increasing. So you find your sweet spot in terms of where the value of the company, uh, is coming out at its biggest. Um, we talked about a little bit about it before we started the call about the traits in my book, the Remarkable Effect. And one of the traits that you chose was the first one that remarkable, uh, software company cannot acknowledges that they cannot please everyone. Um, how is it playing out for the group and maybe more in context to the US how did that play a role in actually becoming successful in the U.S.

Renaud Charvet: exactly? Um, you know, when we m. When we moved to the US we wanted like to address the market kind of like the way we did in uh, Europe, you know, selling to like support and sales teams. But quickly, you know, like we were to face the, the ugly truth. Kind of like, you know, when you arrive, no one knows you on the, on the market, and you're facing some huge players, uh, who are like, better. Better financed and uh, have been there for years on the market. And uh, you know, people are like, oh, who's ringover? What should I, you know, work with you? Like, what kind of customers do you have? So you know, we ah, we took some time and they said, okay, like, ah, it won't work like this. So let's find you know, like a very specific industry where we bring like the, the most value and let's, let's be like laser focused on it. You know, let's not like spreading around. And um, and actually so we're starting with um, with staffing. Um, and so what, what we did with this specific industry. Um, you know, we started like, uh, having relationship with like the, the key players from this industry, like the ats, which is like the, the software of the, of the recruiter. So we partners with them. You know, we, we attended like industry, uh, events, uh, of staffing like SIA or some very specific, uh, you know, like Burn Engage, for instance, and target only the um, recruiters and staffing agencies as a prospect. And this way, you know, after a few months we're starting to be like, kind of like legit, you know. Oh yeah, ring over. You know, I've talked about it and you. And um, you can leverage referrals as well. So it was kind of a quick way to get uh, a minimum amount of customers in the US So yeah, what I would say is like, you know, focus. It might feel slower in the short term, but it compounds, you know, much faster in the uh, long term. So that would be My advice, I

Ton Dobbe: mean obviously I'm nodding here, you can't see that on audio, but it's, it's true. Um, because it's also what I see all the time at the end. Has this, the knowledge that you gained with the focus, is it also kind of trans. Related to, to the European market right now whereby maybe also get a little bit more focused?

Renaud Charvet: No, exactly. Actually you know like um, I mean staffing was not uh, kind of a key priority in, in Europe. It was mostly like sales and support. But uh, you know like we leverage the networks and partnerships we had in the US with like this uh, um. This staffing partners and um, now we're working with them on the European market and it's actually a good sour at the moment and of business.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah. So you see that like the, the learning and the experiences you get from uh, from going in a more difficult situation are actually um. Yeah. Paying off now. Um, but I also saw recently in 2025 you, you did a first acquisition. Why an acquisition after 20 years and not earlier?

Renaud Charvet: Um, I mean it was kind of um, an opportunity actually because you know we didn't have like this experience of uh, acquiring some um, businesses and like you said like it can be like a real strategy for going overseas. And so uh, we were like oh maybe let's start with like um, acquiring like a first company in France, you know, not too, not too large. Um and this way we can be like um. We can have this first experience of like uh. Because when you make an acquisition it's not only like uh, a product or some revenue, it's also like a team, you know. So how do you integrate the team to our company or to share like the, the values and also how do you get like the product to merge with the core product of uh, offering over. So yeah, it was not a large team in the end it was like uh, three or four people. But um. No, we learned a lot about it and uh, I mean it's still in progress that you don't do it uh, overnight actually.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly. Yeah. I mean there's of course different strategies when it comes to acquisition. So this was from what I hear from it, it was purely a technology buy that would kind of complement the ring over products in order to get to a speed and maybe time to market in a particular area.

Renaud Charvet: Exactly. Instead of building again um, this technology because the companies are very strong on giving some um, self recommendation with a chat on the website. And that's not something uh, we had in our product portfolio and there were some More requests from customers as well. So yeah, this is what we went on it and um, ah, it's also a good opportunity to do some cross sells. Like there are some customers that could be interesting.

Ton Dobbe: It's the cross and upsell opportunity. What was most interesting about it by the way.

Renaud Charvet: Um, I think um, maybe the integration can be longer than um, than expected. Uh, especially because you know the team, I mean our headquarters in Paris and the, the team was more on the, on the west of France, uh actually so even if we have some people remote, you know, they were not like uh, I mean we couldn't move like the whole team in the headquarters. Uh, so it can be like um, an additional challenge and uh, also you know like migrating technologies together like um, are not as well. Yeah, as fast as uh, you think. I mean two products but not like built the same way. So it takes some time to uh, get them to stock together kind of.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly. What would you do differently with the next acquisition?

Renaud Charvet: I think, uh, no, for the next acquisition we'll still go for like um, not too big acquisition because still on the uh, learning phase. Um, but uh, no, I think, yeah, uh, having this focus on integrating the team in the company, uh, you know, it's kind of like the same challenge. And when you have a branch in the US or west or in Spain for instance or uk, they don't always feel like the same as the team in HQ because you know they're far ah, people don't see them as much. So yeah, I think this is kind of like a similar challenge like how to make them really feel ring over after a few months and look like a different entity.

Ton Dobbe: You bring two cultures together like you say, even, even though it's a small company and these companies always been there to make their own decisions and uh, suddenly they're part of a larger family. Um, it's impressive how you've been able to grow the company over uh, 20 years across the 50 million ARR mark, uh, so clearly scaled beyond a number of those milestones that other companies don't even reach. What has been, if you look back in the hindsight of the 20 years, what has been the thing that has been something you live by when it comes to scaling a company. What needs to be true?

Renaud Charvet: I mean, what kind of context are you referring to?

Ton Dobbe: The thing that you always pay attention to where it comes to, okay, we're, we're growing, but I mean are we growing in the right way? Is that maybe profitability is it.

Renaud Charvet: No, it's true. Like especially you know, after like, you know, at the post Covid era, people were mostly looking at the top line, you know, like, oh, we need growth, we need growth. Um, but you know, like, once you have your customers, it's also very important not to lose them because, you know, the cost of acquisition is um, bigger and it's just a waste. You know, like if you had a customer and losing customer is always like a big pain for us. So no, like uh, a big focus on churn, like uh, I mean, how to improve like the customer adoption of the product, how to be sure that they will get the value from the, from the product that they expect, you know, that you can match the promises to the uh, customer's uh, experience. Um, so yeah, that's one of our hot topic at the moment. Uh, you know, like I said, like the product adoption is great on the higher tier from the customers, but on the lower tier, like we still have to, to work to lower the charm. And yeah, it's um, one of the major focus at the moment in the company.

Ton Dobbe: Interesting that you say that because going back to the trade, number one, you know, a remarkable software company acknowledges that you cannot please everyone. Isn't that also a sign then if, if you're successful at a certain size or a certain type of context where the product is, is being used and in other areas it's less successful and you get more chance to just say, hey, we're not for you. Um, isn't that something that comes up or is being debated? I know how hard it is, by the way.

Renaud Charvet: Yeah, no, no, no, no, that's true actually. I mean, you know, our focus regarding acquisition is on the higher tier, but because, you know, the product especially like the, the voice part we budget, like, because we come from this B2C world, you know, like we, we made this product very easy to uh, to use. Easy to, to. So we have like this incoming influx, you know, of like customer, like smaller customers. And um, so yeah, we try to please them in a certain way and lower the churn. But it's true that the more and more the product will evolve, the less it will fit the smaller, uh, customers. So even if we try to have like a, you know, like a lighter offer for ingovern, this is what we have with uh, Token quicktalk. Um, yeah, we um, for the moment, yeah, the, the churn on these two products is not as good as we. As we wish them.

Ton Dobbe: We have to work on it and there might be a reason for it at the end. Um, but it's always something that Is it's hard to do because there's a certain revenue stream connected to it and saying no to it at the end to cut it off, it's like, okay, how are we going to make up for that? But sometimes, and that's what I see in reality of course, that then that focus actually helps you get you um, beyond that wave in numbers that you cannot even predict for. There's maybe something to think about. Um, almost. Last question. Out of all the 20 years of entrepreneurship because I saw actually that you started ring over coming out of school. You were in it first. An intern. Ah. In a number of financial service companies and then started Ringover. But what is a lesson that you took in the early days that you still. Yeah. Sort of live vividly today?

Renaud Charvet: I mean maybe that's the one we talked earlier. Like, you know, like don't stay too far away from your customer. I think that's the biggest three especially you know, when you have a huge goal. I mean we have some ambition. So the focus could be like, okay, we need to scale this company as fast as uh, possible. But doing this, I mean don't forget, you know, uh, who are uh, actually your first investors. You know, like your, your customers. So m. I think it's really important for like a co. Founder or CEO to uh. Yeah. To not be completely disconnected from the, from the customer base and even some prospects.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. I think you also mentioned the high. The. The real thing because a lot of companies say yes, we are customer focused and everybody. Well in sales we are talking to customers. In customer support, we're talking to customers. But you specifically say the founder, the CEO. I mean as a uh, as the leadership of the company to continuously have those conversations.

Renaud Charvet: Yeah, no, exactly.

Ton Dobbe: Um, yeah, exactly. Okay, so then last question. Um, for the people that are listening to this, um, other other founders of software companies or people that aspire to. To start a software company, what would we do and what would be a don't that you'd like to share with them? Um, based on what you've learned so far.

Renaud Charvet: M. Um, do or maybe uh. Yeah, maybe regarding the messaging of. You know, for a long time. I think it might be because we are kind of like a product like company. Uh, we were you know, like selling kind of fitters, you know, like uh, oh, you can do this with a product, you can do this. But customers, they don't buy the software, you know, they buy outcomes. So for instance recruiter, they want more placements. You know, sales, they want more revenue support, they want more API Customers. So yeah, it's um. I think, yeah. Something to keep in mind is like yeah, don't, don't just features like understand uh, what you can provide to your customers with this product and make sure they understand the value of this, what they can do.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly.

Renaud Charvet: Yeah.

Ton Dobbe: And a don't.

Renaud Charvet: And the don't. Um, that's also what something um, I like from your uh, 10 point checklist. Like the, you know, don't be, don't be just better like be different. That's uh, I think that's something also on the, more on the self speech, you know, like oh yeah, we better than this competitor because we have this feature extra or, or you can do, I don't know, x percent better or something. I uh, mean you need to keep like an, an identity, uh, share your, your vision and um. Yeah, because if you're, if the customer, the prospect sees you is like oh, just like a competitor but with a slightly better product. They won't do the effort to change actually like um.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly.

Renaud Charvet: You need to sell them like a bigger promise than just like a uh, few extra features.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. Well, it comes back to all the two. The do's and the don'ts are really connected here. And first of all it's about like sell the idea, not the product. And the other one at the end about different and better. People cannot understand and see better, you know, um, but different is something they can feel. And I always say there's so many competitors out there. We don't compete on the features that we have because typically it's 90, 95% equal. Because it's. Yeah. I mean if you're in a particular space, it's stable stakes. You need to have it, otherwise you don't even play. But people can never copy how you build it. The decisions that you made early on to solve a particular problem this way or that way, that is where the context comes in and understanding like what is really going on with your customer and do we have something that is built for this particular context? Yeah, very, very important.

Renaud Charvet: Also you know who you are targeting. Like uh, you can be different because like oh, these competitors sell better. Like I don't know, customer support and, and we are experts for recruiters for instance.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly.

Renaud Charvet: Yeah.

Ton Dobbe: Well thank you very much for sharing. Like yeah. The almost 45 minutes of, of discussion on um, the journey of the company 20 years, uh, in the making and uh, ready for the next 20 years. I would say. Where can people go to find out more about Ringover or to say hi to you?

Renaud Charvet: Oh, I mean, uh, more about Ringover, of course, on our website, ringover.com and regarding, uh, reaching out to me. Yeah, I think LinkedIn is a great, uh, channel. Um, I always reply to my emails. So, yeah, happy to chat with the audience and no, and thanks again for this experience and, uh, always happy to share, um, if I can help, um, entrepreneurs to start or scale, I mean, um, from my experience and mistakes, m always.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly. I feel useful. Yeah, it's hugely valuable, uh, for other people. That's why I'm doing this in the first place. So thanks.

Renaud Charvet: Yeah, thanks a lot. Um, see you soon.

Ton Dobbe: And this wraps up my conversation with Renaud Charvet, co founder and US CEO of Ringover. If you got value from this episode, please share it with other SaaS founders who need to hear this as well. And if you got 10 seconds, a quick rating or review on Apple Podcasts will help more people to find these conversations. Thank you for listening to the remarkable SaaS podcast. If you want more insights like this, subscribe to my daily email Espresso with Ton. It's a two minute shot of clarity for SaaS founders who want to create pull, not push. You can sign up along with getting my book@valueinspiration.com. see you in the next episode.