ConvertKit

“I tend to focus on the monthly numbers, but it's going to be, you know, three and a half, four million.”

“So we're at about 48 dollars in average revenue per user. So about 65% of our customers are on that 29 dollar a month plan.”

“We have 1.2 million in the bank right now.”

“45,000. It tends to find it to hang out about 10% of our revenue.”

“So I actually launched it back in 2013. And it was kind of a side project and effort there. And it kind of floundered around for about, you know, a 1002 thousand dollars a month for almost two years.”

“So if you can only bring 25 people to a webinar we'll still happily do it, because we have it down to a great system, and we see it as we get to do a live demo to 25 people.”

“The annual push has a big impact on churn. And especially when you're going after kind of a prosumer audience, you know, the lower end of the spectrum at that thousand subscribers or less, they might be trying out blogging. They might not be super well establi…”

“In the craziness of growth, I haven't nailed it down because we've spent so little on on paid acquisition. It just hasn't been a big channel for us so far that I haven't dialed in those numbers.”

“We do about 10 to 20 or more webinars a month.”

“So we've probably added 25,000 subscribers to our list this year, just purely through joint venture webinars.”

“We're about halfway there right now of expansion revenue canceling out churn.”

“We're trying to keep the pricing really simple and have it only be on how many subscribers you have, because that, you know, the more successful you are, the more I want to get paid and so I like that really simple pricing. So we're not going to add in, like, …”

“We have about 10,000 bloggers as customers.”

“So all around, we're at 24 full-time people now.”

“So we, about a quarter of our webinar, a quarter of our revenue comes through the affiliate program and then we pay out a 30% commission.”

“We try to keep the profit around 25,000 or sorry, not 25,025 percent per month.”

“We see that it's at 7.6% of user churn. And revenue churn was sitting, you know, 6.8 or so. But actually, you know, if you switch to an annual plans, you're losing revenue. And so that counts towards revenue churn. So it just spiked in the last couple days fro…”

“Totally self-funded.”

“We did that first month free promo for our email list and we got a thousand new customers on that.”

“We did almost 300,000 in annual plan revenue in two days, just from that.”

“So there are two people that have, or we have two advisors who have shares in the company. So in all across the board, we don't do equity except in these two cases.”

“And so we went from having 30,000 in the bank running at like three percent profit margins in February to by July first, we had half a million in the bank and we're operating at a 50% profit margin.”

“I think my equity was supposed to vest and that director position was supposed to vest the next month, like two weeks after that. So it was a very strategic move on his part.”

“I was Nathan's first hire at ConvertKit. I was his first full-time hire and he brought me on to do marketing and this new emerging thing, which was needed called customer success.”

“We were running about a 52 to 55% trial of paid conversion rate with credit card up front.”

“If in signup, they said they have 2000 subscribers. Now we know that our single goal is to get them to import those subscribers. And so it can totally change the activation metrics based on who they are.”

“I think the month of June, we're at 5200 trials. So that's substantial way better. I think our best month ever before that was in the 3000 range.”

“We've been targeting a three to five month payback period.”

“Asking the questions will not decrease the number of people that make it from you know, account signup page to create an account.”

“It's been live for about a month and a half and we've had our worst month of growth ever in June.”

“Expansion revenue definitely helps, but it hasn't been enough to get us to, you know, net negative churn, which is the ultimate goal. So it cuts our churn rate in half. But you know, we still have to drive a lot of new revenue.”

“I want to be running SEVA for the next 1015 years.”

“I'm not considering raising capital.”

“We do some, I think our paid ad ads budgets is about 20 to 25,000 a month.”

“Yeah, we tend to average 15 a month, and those range from really big ones with someone like Pat Flynn that will drive, you know, 500 trials or something like that, which is pretty substantial or we'll do smaller ones that will drive 30, 40 trials and that's st…”

“So we changed the name from ConvertKit to Seva and Seva is a Sanskrit word and it means selfless service. And basically we're trying to build a much bigger brand and we didn't want to be, I guess, pigeonholed into a really techie sounding name.”

“If you put in, you have over 5000 subscribers, then that alerts our demo team and it tries to get you to schedule a demo.”

“I bought it about two and a half months ago. And Yeah, we paid 310,000 dollars for it.”

“No, we raised half a million. So we raised from early customers along with, Some of the companies we integrate with, like ConvertKit, Leadpages, Drip, and so on.”

“I mean, he was at the same point with ConvertKit where he was splitting his time. And when he went all in on ConvertKit, that's when everything started to work out.”

“I don't know if anyone really has a moat. What's interesting is their pitch is you can come and you can leave anytime you want, which works really well for people like me that join. Cause there's no reason not to try it, but then the downside of people can lea…”

“So January, 2016, the previous 12 months, we'd grown from 2000 in MRR to a 100,000 in MRR.”

“Yeah, so it drives about 40% of all of our new accounts. [2106] Nathan Latka: Wow. [2107] Nathan Berry: Is from search.”

“So it's basically external discovery first, and then later do the internal once the platform is bigger.”

“And at one point affiliates we're driving a little over 30% of all of our revenue. That's probably dropped into the 20, 20% range”

“We haven't had like a crisp, you know, like here's the offer on the table, but like the private equity people show up nonstop, you know? And I just always like saying no thanks before it gets to”

“And so next year, we'll return to the 20% mark.”

“Now, powered by traffic converts a lot lower than other traffic. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but if a visitor to conversion, visitor to free account conversion rate is seven or eight percent, like in other channels, Powered by traffic might …”

“We used to have something in there where we had another score for individual performance. And we took that out and we basically decided we're going to set a high bar for performance, just like to work at this company default and everyone wins and loses togethe…”

“We've been spending a little more aggressively this year. So we're doing about five percent profit. And then but at the beginning of the year, we're closer to 20, 23%.”

“Then you're looking at what it takes to add an additional million dollars in Value in the enterprise value for ConvertKit versus what it takes to go make a million dollars somewhere else. And it's just an order of magnitude more effort to do it in real estate …”

“Yeah, so we divided that out, we're at about 830,000 in monthly like top line revenue driven by affiliates.”

“When I look at the curve that I'm on with ConvertKit, and if, and the curve that MailChimp did, if we were to overlay those two, ConvertKit is far ahead. Like if we put the start date of the two of them, ConvertKit is far ahead on that curve than MailChimp was…”

“But like, now for ConvertKit, it's like, oh, we have 250,000 users, and so let's just tell them to use this new thing.”

“Yeah, it'd be at least 3000.”

“January of this year, we passed a billion dollars earned by creators on ConvertKit or, Through, like, other platforms.”

“Yeah, so I own 90%, and the team pool is 10%, of which seven percent is currently allocated.”

“Prior to this year so last year, maybe we were driving two to 3000 visitors a week through powered by links.”

“So in that pool it is. 75% based on you're just a team member and everybody participates equally. And then 25% is based on time with the company.”

“I think about 400,000.”

“It's probably a couple of years off.”

“And we grew our way from like barely break even to five months later, we had 60%, sorry, 50% profit margins. Three months of expenses in the bank.”

“Yeah, so we're at twenty five million ARR right now.”

“So we're paying out About 250, we can figure this out, about 250,000 a month to affiliates.”

“We, in our models, we expected a three percent free to paid conversion rate. We came in at a five percent rate and we're like, that's fantastic.”

“So I think of compensation in two different ways that kind of makes a quadrant. So I think of short-term versus long-term compensation, and I think of guaranteed versus performance-based. So short-term guaranteed is salary. Long-term guaranteed is like for one…”

“The way he's like driving a lot of growth right now is he's doing these mini competitions.”

“What I look for is the key metric, which is GMV and then the counterbalancing metric. And so in this case, we're looking to drive the most GMB. That's the main thing. Small creators, big creators all contribute to that, but obviously the big creators drive far…”

“Yeah, so we're at twenty five million ARR right now.”

“We launched profit sharing at our very first team retreat... Summer 2016. And we had grown from 100 K to 300 K in monthly revenue. We'd saved up three months of expenses in the bank. We'd gotten to 50% profit margins through like the team being really lean. An…”

“So in that pool it is. 75% based on you're just a team member and everybody participates equally. And then 25% is based on time with the company.”

“So January, 2016, the previous 12 months, we'd grown from 2000 in MRR to a 100,000 in MRR.”

“Search is really like just that anchor that we've, I don't know, gradually invested in over time. And now it pays off in a big way... Yeah, so it drives about 40% of all of our new accounts. Is from search.”

“I think about 400,000.”

“What it takes to add an additional million dollars in Value in the enterprise value for ConvertKit versus what it takes to go make a million dollars somewhere else. And it's just an order of magnitude more effort to do it in real estate investing or something …”

“But like now for ConvertKit, it's like, oh, we have 250,000 users.”

“January of this year, we passed a billion dollars earned by creators on ConvertKit or... Through the aggregation.”

“So we're paying out About 250, we can figure this out, about 250,000 a month to affiliates and paying a 30% commission.”

“For trying to grow a SAS business content, by the way, is a really hard way to grow a business. Like go from zero to one and like basic, like no traction to simple traction. And that's what I was trying to do. But if you don't have the community already, it's …”

“You're definitely going to see it down the road from a marketplace perspective of here are featured products to buy. And, you know, here's the best the best eBooks the best photography resources, you know, all of those sorts of things as we're driving the”

“So it's basically external discovery first, and then later do the internal once the platform is bigger.”

“When I look at the curve that I'm on with ConvertKit, and if, and the curve that MailChimp did, if we were to overlay those two, ConvertKit is far ahead. Like if we put the start date of the two of them, ConvertKit is far ahead on that curve than MailChimp was…”

“We basically locked expenses and then grew our way out of it. And we grew our way from like barely break even to five months later, we had 60%, sorry, 50% profit margins, three months of expenses in the bank.”

“Prior to this year so last year, maybe we were driving two to 3000 visitors a week through powered by links. And then after launching freemium, scaling that up, we're now driving 14, 15,000 visitors a week from powered by links.”

“We used to have something in there where we had another score for individual performance. And we took that out. We basically decided we're going to set a high bar for performance, just like to work at this company and everyone wins and loses together.”

“I'd say 500 to a thousand dollars per shoot somewhere in there, and then maybe one shoot per week.”

“Yeah, so we divided that out. We're at about 830,000 in monthly like top line revenue driven by affiliates.”

“We have this unsplash collection of creator photos. If you'd like, we'll release those. You know, if you sign off on it and you're up for it, we'll release those photos on unsplash as part of our convert kit, you know, creator collection. And that has, like, t…”

“And at one point affiliates we're driving a little over 30% of all of our revenue. That's probably dropped into the 20, 20% range as like the”

“We, in our models, we expected a three percent free to paid conversion rate. We came in at a five percent rate and we're like, that's fantastic.”

“Yeah we've been spending a little more aggressively this year, so we're doing about five percent profit. And then but at the beginning of the year, we're closer to 20, 23%.”

“We're eight years in and like selling and being done now is just way too early. And so it's really like, if I want to build a MailChimp level company or a Stripe level company or something like that, then it's like, great show up for another decade.”

“Yeah, so I own 90% and the team pool is 10%, of which seven percent is currently allocated.”

“It's for larger organizations, for instance, like ASUS, like IBM, Pipedrive, ConvertKit, and all those sorts of like customers that we have, like Tim Hortons. So for, These customers, the churn rate is very minimal. Almost, I cannot say zero percent, but it's …”