Joe Rohrlich, CEO, Recurly
Today we're meeting Joe Rohrlich, CEO of Recurly. They are a subscription management platform that helps businesses of all sizes by providing a simple repeat payment program so that companies can increase their user base and maintain their subscribers.
Over to you Joe - my questions are in bold:
Who are you and what's your background?
My journey has been all over go-to-market - from Sales to Marketing to Customer Success. The through-line has always been seeing a problem or opportunity from the customer point-of-view, and really trying to walk a long mile in the customers' shoes. I view my role today and throughout my professional journey as trying to reverse-engineer solutions to those opportunities. Looking backwards, I've been fortunate to learn and lead a pretty broad spectrum of customers - from Entertainment Industry leaders to Global CPG brands to Public Universities. Every successful B2B story starts with a clear vision for increasing customer value, then systematically figuring out how to scale that repeatedly. I've had the privilege of leading such transformations at industry trailblazers like Bazaarvoice, where I helped brands grow their ecommerce presence, and at Top Hat, where I contributed to redefining how software can enhance student engagement.
What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?
As CEO, I get to serve a variety of stakeholders. The starting point is our customers, followed by our team members and our shareholders. I'm responsible for setting the direction for Recurly and ensuring that we are investing to lead our market, breaking into new industries and geographies, and building on our tremendous heritage of leading subscription brands through technology.
I'm looking forward to building on this position of strength, thanks to the strong work of my predecessor and leading us to our next period of growth. Our mission is simple: helping our customers expand their customer bases. In an ever-evolving subscriber landscape, we're proud to empower a diverse range of businesses with our bold vision.
We have a terrific team, dedicated to customers' and partners' businesses, a platform built for scale and a growing market need for our leadership. It's all systems go at the moment, but this fits in with our new mantra - TNT (Today not Tomorrow).
Can you give us an overview of your business?
Recurly is a subscription management platform that helps businesses of all sizes by providing a simple repeat payment program so that companies can increase their user base and maintain their subscribers.
For customers like Paramount+ and Twitch, we help coordinate their subscription process, ensure payments are taken promptly and smoothly, and advise on how strategy can be optimized to help maintain and acquire new subscribers.
Tell us how you are funded?
In 2020 Recurly was acquired by Accel-KKR, the industry-leading growth equity firm, which marked the most recent chapter in our story. From the early seed investment we got back in 2010 we have grown rapidly, now servicing over 2,200 merchants with a subsequent subscriber base of 67M, and processing over $12B in total payment volume annually.
What's the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?
Recurly was founded by Isaac Hall in 2009 in his apartment, when he noticed that recurring billing was a problem that many businesses couldn't quite crack. Within a year, he had brought on Dan Burkhart as CEO and co-founder, raised $1.6M in seed investment, moved to San Francisco to open an office, and hit that all-important 100 customers benchmark.
We know that subscriptions are so much more than a monthly payment, they're a personal investment and an ongoing customer relationship. With a one-off payment, customers don't have that same connection as with a subscription, which means the expected standards of service are higher. This proves a continual challenge for businesses who need to retain their subscribers as subscriber expectations are rapidly evolving.
Who are your target customers? What's your revenue model?
We work with merchants of all shapes and sizes, particularly those who are new to the subscription model. While our traditional customers live within the digital media and entertainment space, we're broadening our horizons recently as we expand into areas like travel and hospitality. Businesses are increasingly recognising the mutual benefit of a subscription for both the merchant and the customer, and we are ready to support those who either don't know where to start or need to get their services off the ground rapidly.
If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?
This is less of a change and more of an opportunity that we and many of our partners see. Merchants deal with a complex ecosystem of FinTech and Payment solutions - our collective opportunity is to bring those solutions into greater harmony through elegant product and commercial integrations - allowing the customer a simpler route to compose holistic solutions.
What FinTech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?
I love the digital wallet solutions that have transformed how I transact everyday. I'm an Apple Pay fan to the core right now - opting to use their wallet and my phone to make pretty much every purchase.
Finally, let's talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?
Alternative payment methods are already a big deal, but we're only scratching the surface of their impact. In 2024, the use of Apple Pay, for example, through our merchants nearly quadrupled from 0.6% to 2.2%, but still sits way behind debit and credit payments (50.8% and 30.9% respectively). The growth is clear, and the reasons behind it are too. APMs are a comfortable option when engaging with a new vendor, and from our own data, we can see that fraud remains relatively low here, accounting for just 1.4% of declines.
Thank you very much Joe!
Read more about Joe Rohrlich on LinkedIn and find out more about Recurly at recurly.com.