Jun 27, 2019 · 17m · top-founders
1433 Can You Run 2 $1.5m ARR Companies At Same Time?
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of The Top Entrepreneurs, host Nathan Latka interviews Walls.io founder Michael Kamleitner to analyze the financial metrics of his bootstrapped social aggregation tool and debate the operational challenges of managing two parallel $1.5M ARR software companies.
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 40.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 4.8 Guest teaching 3.0 Guest disagreement 2.2 Nathan pushing back 3.8
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 9:29 Refusal to abandon either business
Michael rejects Nathan's assertion that running two companies is irrational, insisting that as a founder he will not abandon either healthy product.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 12:44 Challenging confidence without CAC dataNathan refuses to let Michael claim paid acquisition is effective until Michael can produce concrete customer acquisition cost figures.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 7:18 Contextualizing event SaaS churnMichael educates Nathan on the cyclical reality of the event software market, where customers churn between annual conferences but reliably return.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 11:51 Venture capital split-attention reality checkNathan demonstrates VC domain expertise by explaining why institutional investors would refuse to fund a founder dividing attention across two independent companies.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Promotion of How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Solo promotional monologue by the host reviewing his book and previewing the upcoming interview. No interactive dialogue takes place. | |
| Introduction of Michael Kamleitner and Agency-to-SaaS Pivot | 5 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Nathan introduces Michael and quickly focuses the discussion on Walls.io. The exchange is collaborative and informational as Michael outlines their pricing tiers and product mechanics. | |
| Scaling Bootstrapped Growth, Team Allocation, and Use Cases | 6 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Nathan calculates monthly recurring revenue on the fly and interrogates high churn rates. Michael explains the structural churn inherent to the seasonal event industry. | |
| Shift Toward Permanent SaaS Deployments and Enterprise Adoption | 7 | 4 | 5 | 8 | Nathan strongly challenges Michael's decision to run two separate companies simultaneously, rejecting Michael's analogy comparing businesses to children. Michael holds firm on his commitment to growing both products. | |
| SWOT.io Enterprise Profile and Acquisition vs. Venture Strategy | 8 | 5 | 4 | 8 | Nathan aggressively presses Michael on marketing economics, demanding to know how Michael can trust paid acquisition without knowing CAC off the top of his head. Michael looks up the data live to show a healthy 100 euro CAC. | |
| Vienna Team Operations and Upcoming SaaStock Dublin Meetup | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | The interview transitions into a lighthearted and friendly Famous Five segment, with both acknowledging upcoming plans to meet at SaaStock in Dublin. |
Statements from this episode (16)
Kamleitner: Walls.io and Swat.io are equal in revenue size
“Well, they're basically equal size, but I would suggest to focus on Wallsio since it's a much more internationally targeted product and basically it's our most exciting baby right now.”
Walls.io charges €200 monthly for Pro and €500 for Premium
“Basically we offer two, two pricing plans. That's a pro plan. That's about 200 euros per, per month, and the premium package is 500 euros per month.”
Kamleitner: Walls.io operates with 10 to 11 dedicated team members
“Our whole company is 22, and we are about split half-half, so that's about 10, 11 people right now, so that's it, yeah.”
Walls.io has roughly 700 to 800 active paying customers
“We are currently at around seven, well, seven or 800 paid walls, as we used to say.”
Walls.io generates roughly €100,000 in monthly recurring revenue
“That's not too, too far off. Yes.”
Kamleitner: Walls.io grew revenue 60% to 70% year-over-year
“Well, year over year, the last year we grew about like 60, 70%.”
Kamleitner: Walls.io growth driven by new US customers
“We started in Austria and the German speaking countries, but during the last one year, we see tremendous growth coming in from the States actually. So, so I would say it's mostly new customers.”
Amazon uses Walls.io internally across its US offices
“One of our latest latest showcase or logo customers is like Amazon US. They are using the product internally in their offices to raise awareness for social media content.”
Kamleitner: Both bootstrapped SaaS products are profitable and growing well
“As long as we are growing and obviously we are profitable as being bootstrapped, there is no other way to that. I don't see any one of those products failing. Failure for me would be like stagnation and no growth at all. But like I said before, we, with both p…”
Kamleitner considers splitting his SaaS products and appointing a co-CEO
“To really do both products or both kids justice there is definitely a way to do that, and that would be like to either split, split up both products from the, from parent company and find a good co-CEO or some other way to split roles”
Swat.io generates approximately $1.5M in annual recurring revenue
“Well, that's about the ballpark.”
Kamleitner says Walls.io and Swat.io are worth over $3M each
“Well, well, I see the value of each product way higher, quite honestly.”
Kamleitner: Walls.io customer acquisition cost is approximately €100
“I had, I have a browser window open. I can now tell you that the CAC is, is around 100 euro. So that's about half our average, average per month.”
Kamleitner: Walls.io is transitioning to permanent usage subscription models
“Like I said, we are moving away from the event business and towards this more permanent usage models where we have a much better CAC to LTV ratio.”
Kamleitner: Software companies cannot rely exclusively on paid ads for sustainable growth
“Paid paid acquisition through adverts also, also at some point hits the ceiling. And we are seeing, like you said, the space is competitive. So, so it will not be it will not work to grow only from cost per click forever.”