"Software Management Is A Challenge For Every Company Of Every Size," David Campbell, Tropic CEO

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

After failing as a novelist (more than once), I got into software sales. I was one of first 20 employees at a martech startup call BounceX (now Wunderkind) and grew into VP. I met my co-founder Justin (VP of Ops), so the two of us learned how to scale a company from 20 people to 350 people and ~$80M in revenue.

After that I was a Global Business Manager at Microsoft with a huge territory selling into 200K-person banks. At the end of my tenure there, I realized that I’d sold to companies of every size and stage and EVERYONE hated buying and managing software at EVERY LEVEL - too confusing, too opaque, salespeople suck, etc.

Seemed like a natural opportunity fix a problem, since literally everyone was mad about it.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

We’re called Tropic; we make companies fall in love with procurement. On our purchasing platform CFOs can approve, manage, renew and all of their SaaS tools in one place. They can also activate Assisted Purchasing, where Tropic resources renegotiate contracts for clients to reduce SaaS expenses, all without a single call or email to a vendor.

What is the origin story?

After I left BounceX for Microsoft, I saw a client lay off 2,000 people because they couldn’t afford to pay their SaaS vendors. I quit that day, recognizing that software management is a challenge for every company of every size.

I sort of felt like I’d been one of the “bad guys” all along without realizing it and resolved to focus my career on solving problems for the buyer.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

I’ve seen every type of software sale at every level in the market. My co-founder Justin ran RFPs while he was consulting at Bain and built our procurement process from scratch at BounceX. Together, we’ve looked at this problem from every angle on both sides.

We’ve also somehow managed to hire some of the most brilliant people in the industry to solve this problem, including sourcing people from Twitter, Tesla, Carta, Boeing, and Oracle, and they all bring a unique and brilliant perspective to the business.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

Building a different startup :)

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

Well, as a recovering sales rep, revenue is still #1. We also look at total spend managed for clients ($200M+), total vendors in our database (1,200+), churn (only one logo so far…), average savings per customer (23%)

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

We got to $2.6M in our first 12 months in the market, and $1.1M of that was just last quarter.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

Most excited: CRISPR because… no genetic diseases ever again?

Most worried: AI - while real AI doesn’t exist yet, credible researchers predict a singularity in our lifetimes. Skynet, anyone?

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

We love HackerNoon’s no-nonsense approach and engaged audience of people just like us.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Never expect failure, but ALWAYS embrace it. Failure is on your critical path. You need it. No one got anywhere by taking the safe option anyway.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

The book “The Exorcist” is actually better than the movie (which I also loved) and is totally worth reading.