Revenue Unicorn Club: BILL.com

Research & Frameworks
Revenue Unicorn Playbook

BILL Joins Revenue Unicorn Club

Congratulations to BILL as it crosses $1 Billion in annual revenue and joins the software Revenue Unicorns!

Let's see what we can learn from BILL's journey...

Revenue Growth

BILL’s revenue accelerated ahead of the median Revenue Unicorn after $250 Million in revenue. The acceleration began during the COVID pandemic, and the strong revenue growth was maintained in subsequent periods.

Gross Margin

BILL has a robust gross margin profile, exceeding the Revenue Unicorn median across each revenue range and rising to a gross margin in the high 80s at scale. Atlassian displayed similar gross margin strength on their path to $1 Billion in revenue.

Sales & Marketing

Unlike the median Revenue Unicorn, BILL increased sales and marketing investment as they scaled. ZoomInfo exhibited a similar sales and marketing trend with revenue growth.

Research & Development

BILL invested heavily in research and development early in the Company’s lifecycle and later exhibited leverage with its research and development spend. Crowdstrike trended in a similar fashion to BILL on its path to $1 Billion in annual revenue.

General & Administrative

BILL’s general and administrative expenses converged with, yet remained above, the median Revenue Unicorn as it approached $1 Billion in annual revenue.

Stock Based Compensation

BILL had a higher SBC expense as a percentage of revenue compared to the Revenue Unicorn median throughout the journey to $1 Billion in annual revenue. After $250 Million in revenue, BILL’s SBC expense grew and then stabilized in the low 30s as a percentage of revenue. When viewing SBC expense as a percentage of enterprise value, BILL is at 2.8%, which is double the Revenue Unicorn median of 1.4% in the $1 Billion+ revenue range.

Free Cash Flow

BILL’s free cash flow margin improved with scale, revealing its operating leverage. Dropbox, Okta, and Workday delivered a similar trend of improving free cash flow margin with business growth.

Time to Reach $1 Billion in Revenue

BILL reached $1 Billion in revenue after 16.50 years. This is longer than the median time of 11.25 years it took other Revenue Unicorns to reach the $1 Billion mark. Other Revenue Unicorns that took a similar amount of time to achieve the $1 Billion revenue threshold include Atlassian (16.00 years), Palantir (17.00 years), and Unity (16.75 years).

Other Revenue Unicorns founded around the same time as BILL (2006 founding) include HubSpot (2005), Wix (2006), and Veeva (2007). This set of companies took a median of 14.25 years to achieve $1 Billion in revenue (HubSpot at 15.50 years, Wix at 14.25 years, and Veeva at 11.75 years).

The Journey to $1 Billion in Revenue

For those of you that love data as much as we do, below is the full data set used for this analysis.

Again, congratulations to the BILL team! Stay tuned for the next Revenue Unicorn update.

Note: The complete list of Revenue Unicorns used in the comparison can be found in the presentation here.

About BILL

As per the Company’s materials, BILL is a leading provider of cloud-based software that simplifies, digitizes, and automates financial operations for SMBs. The Company was founded in 2006 by René Lacerte. BILL's purpose-built, artificial-intelligence (AI)-enabled financial software platform creates seamless connections between customers, suppliers, and clients. Customers use the platform to generate and process invoices, streamline approvals, make and receive payments, manage employee expenses, sync with their accounting systems, and manage their cash. BILL has built sophisticated integrations with popular accounting software solutions, banks, card issuers and payment processors, enabling their customers to access these mission-critical services quickly and easily. Divvy, a BILL company, provides products for businesses to build budgets, manage payments, and eliminate the need for expense reports. The BILL platform automates the SMB back office and enables customers to pay their suppliers and collect payments from their clients, in effect acting as a system of control for their accounts payable, accounts receivable and spend and expense management activities.

The Company reported $296 Million in fourth-quarter revenue for the period ended June 30, 2023. Combined with results from the preceding quarters, this recent performance boosts BILL across the $1 Billion in annual revenue threshold as measured on a last twelve-month basis to become the latest software Revenue Unicorn.

About The Revenue Unicorn Playbook

The Revenue Unicorn Playbook is an analytical guide that explores the growth of public software companies from $100 Million to $1 Billion in revenue. The goal of the Playbook is to offer founders and company leaders a framework to examine their growth and investments as they scale.

You can find the original Revenue Unicorn article here and presentation here.