Jun 8, 2020 · 18m · top-founders
Rosterfy Hits $1.2m Revenues Helping Superbowl Staff Volunteers
Shannon Gove · 9m spoken Nathan Latka · 5m spoken Frank Bien · 4s spoken Eric Yuan · 4s spoken Vivek Bhaskaran · 2s spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Rosterfy co-founder Shannon Gove speaks with Nathan Latka about transitioning an event staffing agency into a global workforce management SaaS platform generating $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue across marquee events and non-profit clients.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 37.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 4.2 Guest teaching 1.2 Guest disagreement 1.3 Nathan pushing back 3.3
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 13:40 Shannon defends customized workforce deployment models
Shannon resists Nathan's standardized SaaS comparison by emphasizing that large-scale events require unique workforce management architectures that cannot fit into standard box pricing.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 13:20 Latka rejects the premise that enterprise deals lack scalabilityNathan bluntly refuses Shannon's claim that mega-event support does not scale, citing how high-touch SaaS giants like Salesforce handle enterprise contracts.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 12:45 Shannon breaks down multi-year mega event pricing complexityShannon educates Nathan on the practical operational differences between servicing a localized charity versus a multi-year deployment like the Dubai World Expo.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 16:08 Latka calculates monthly cash burn from fundraise and runwayNathan cuts through Shannon's deflection about projected runway to reverse-engineer his real monthly burn rate of $100k directly on air.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latka Subscriber Feed Promotion and Founder Archive Preview | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | This segment consists of a promotional sponsor message, subscriber pitch with archival clips, and the initial pleasantries of the interview. | |
| Volunteer Management Workflow and Client Contract Tiers | 5 | 2 | 1 | 4 | Nathan drills into the customer profile, contract values, and immediately questions how Rosterfy manages churn risk when client needs are tied to one-off events. | |
| Bootstrapping with Event Workforce, Seed Funding, and Team Distribution | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | Nathan breaks down the timeline from MVP to funding, doing real-time headcount math across engineering, quota-carrying sales reps, and operations. | |
| HostGator Mid-Roll Sponsorship Announcement | 7 | 3 | 4 | 7 | Following an ad read, Nathan aggressively challenges Shannon's assertion that large enterprise deals cannot scale on standard SaaS pricing, countering with the Salesforce enterprise model. | |
| Customer Acquisition Economics, Marketing Strategy, and Runway | 6 | 1 | 2 | 6 | Nathan presses Shannon on CAC payback and refuses a vague runway answer, forcing Shannon to confirm actual monthly cash burn numbers. | |
| Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions with Shannon Gove | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Standard Famous Five rapid-fire questions covering favorite books, sleep habits, and CEO reflections. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Gove: Rosterfy Serves One-Off Major Events Alongside Recurring SaaS Clients
“Really we have two different types of clients. One is mega and major events around the world which I guess you would classify as once off revenue. And then we have our SaaS recurring types of clients, which is charities, not-for-profits, cities, universities, …”
Gove: Rosterfy Generated ~40% SaaS Revenue Last Year, Targeting ~60%
“I'd probably say this year coming we'll be pushing towards 60% of SaaS, and last year maybe 40%.”
Rosterfy Event Contracts Range From $50K to $500K AUD Annually
“Mega and major events really can range anywhere from 50,000 Aussie to half a million dollars a year.”
Rosterfy Powers Workforce Management for Super Bowl and World Expo
“We work with the Super Bowl in the US, but we also work with the Dubai World Expo, which is one of the largest events in the world, spanning across six months that we've been working with for already a year and a half now.”
Gove: Rosterfy standard SaaS contracts average $10,000 to $15,000 annually
“Then the SaaS recurring Would be really a range from 10 K to 30 K, but I guess for your averages, the per year. Yeah. For your averages, perhaps take it around the 10 to 15 K.”
Gove: Event Workforce deploys ~300 staff daily at the Australian Open
“The Australian Open's on right now. We've got 300 odd staff a day down there”
Gove: Rosterfy was started in 2015 as internal scheduling software
“Started Rostify was in 2015. We decided we needed a better way to schedule our workforce and communicate to them, and so we built our own platform”
Gove: Rosterfy raised 2 million AUD at the end of 2019
“We raised two million Aussie at the end of last year.”
Gove: Rosterfy has around 20 employees across global offices
“We have around 20 of us around the world. We have offices, the head offices in Melbourne, Australia, and then San Francisco, Colorado, New York. So our team are pretty spread out in the US. We have a team in Manchester in London. And then Dubai is where our we…”
Gove: Rosterfy projects SaaS revenue to double year over year
“And that's certainly the projection for the next few years as well.”
Gove Explains Rosterfy's Core Three-Pillar SaaS Pricing Model
“One is the amount of administrators, so seats. Second is the amount of workforce in the database, and thirdly is the amount of events and shifts that they have throughout the year. So how much are they using the system? That's how we'd be basing off the SaaS-b…”
Gove: Multi-Year Mega-Events Cannot Use Standardized SaaS Pricing
“Because a world expo goes for probably three years by the time we'll finish working with them. So you can't just have a SAS based pricing for an enterprise style deal like that.”
Gove: Rosterfy maintains at least 12 months of runway
“At least 12 months probably pushing out from there because we really are backing ourselves to say that we don't need to just blow it all instantly in order to do so because we've got so many great clients that are paying us license fees and that's how we've be…”