Dave Lee
Founder & CEO, PlusThis. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveauthorLinkedIn ↗plusthis.com ↗
Dave Lee is the founder and CEO of PlusThis and co-founder of Sixth Division. Previously, he was employee #8 at Infusionsoft, where he helped scale recurring revenue from $600k to over $17 million.
1shows
2appearances
26statements
0resolved
0supported
0contradicted
Everything Dave Lee said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Dave Lee says SMB buyers anchor add-on prices to base software costs
“They look at, hey, I'm paying 70 bucks for this platform. I should only have to pay 19 or 29 for a series of add-ons, regardless of how valuable they might be.”
Dave Lee Uses PlusThis Profits for Personal Investments and Software Incubation
“Yeah, I look at it as an asset that needs to be diversified, and it goes across a number of different things. Personal investments, real estate the market, EFTs I do a lot of charity stuff, so I give away a significant chunk of it. We do fund things for the em…”
Dave Lee says SaaS add-on tools inherit their host platform churn rates
“When it comes down to it, although we have a lot of tools that could be full standalone tools we are really reliant on the platforms. So if Entreport, for example, has a huge turnover and those customers are using plus this as well. That is built in turnover f…”
Dave Lee says platform customers using add-ons are three times more valuable
“They learn quickly that customers, their customers that have an add-on like ours are three times more valuable as a customer.”
Dave Lee says VCs ignore 40% profit margins to focus on growth
“I do stay in touch with PE firms and VCs and investment bankers And they, you know, they could care less if we're 40% profitable. They really only care about the growth rate right now.”
Dave Lee notes downward pricing pressure among marketing automation platforms
“At the same time, there's been a downward pressure on, on pricing. These marketing automation platforms are going after a smaller and smaller customer”
PlusThis Generated $2.1M in 2019 Revenue With Almost 50% Profit Margin
“2019 was a stellar year for us. We broke two million in revenue. So we did 2.1 in revenue. Almost half of which was profit”
PlusThis Serves Nearly 3,000 Paying Customers With Over 60 Marketing Tools
“We've got almost 3000 paying customers, and we've got over 60 tools in the toolkit.”
Switching to Usage-Based Pricing in 2019 Accelerated PlusThis MRR Growth
“However, during 2019, we did change our model a little bit. Where it is a blend between I guess you could call them levels, but also usage. We went to a more heavily usage-based model, and that has really helped drive MRR as well.”
PlusThis Processes About 50 Million Campaign Transactions Monthly For Its Customers
“So we do on average, we do about fifty million campaign transactions a month for our clients, for our customers.”
At Least 20% of PlusThis Monthly MRR Growth Comes From Expansion Revenue
“Of the monthly MRR growth, I would say 20% of it is at least 20% is expansion revenue.”
PlusThis Reduced Monthly Customer Churn From 9.8% to 4.5% Over Years
“When we started the company churn used to be monthly churn used to be about 9.8%. And we worked for years to get that down and we got it down to about four and a half percent monthly churn.”
PlusThis Achieved an All-Time Low Monthly Churn Rate of 2.9%
“Our churn now is down to 2.9%, which is, we've never seen it that low.”
Dave Lee Plans to Keep PlusThis Bootstrapped Despite Exploring Other Ventures
“There are other ventures that, that we're doing and in the process of launching that, that could be a capital raise scenario, but plus this is not that.”
Plus This serves 2,500 customers and processes 25 million monthly transactions
“We've got over 2500 customers, and we process over twenty five million transactions a month.”
Plus This acquires customers by providing free software to marketing consultants
“There are thousands of consultants out there and we give them a free version of our software so that they can play with it and then refer it to their to their clients. So we use them as a channel.”
Dave Lee: Plus This is 100% bootstrapped with no debt or outside capital
“Bootstrapped, a hundred percent. No debt, no financing.”
Plus This reduced monthly revenue churn from 9% to under 5%
“When we started out, we were like at eight, nine percent and then spent a couple of years really driving hard. And it's bottomed out pretty well, right around 4.5 to 4.9%.”
Plus This maintains a fully weighted CAC of about $170
“No, fully weighted CAC is about a 170 bucks.”
Plus This is exploring a structured equity partnership to accelerate growth
“We're actually exploring something right now that would get cash in, we'd give up some equity, but think of it as a structured partnership that would then lead us to faster growth and then a larger exit for us.”
PlusThis Acquires Customers Through Marketing Consultants and Platform Marketplaces
“One is working from, with consultants, marketing automation consultants out there that are working with their clients and they become resellers either on a wholesale model or just a referral, like affiliate referral model. We also try to work directly with the…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Dave's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Founder & CEO, PlusThis | 2 | 26 | — | full record on Top Founders → |