StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

May 1, 2018 · 21m · top-founders

1011 How He Drove $1.4m in ChatBot PreSales

Travis Stevenson · 13m spoken Nathan Latka · 6m spoken
0:00 / 0:00

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 podcast, host Nathan Latka interviews Chatmatic founder Travis Stevenson, who explains how he generated $1.4 million in alpha pre-sales to bootstrap a Facebook Messenger automation software platform without outside venture capital.

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 31.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →

Nathan as informed peer 6.0 Guest teaching 2.3 Guest disagreement 1.7 Nathan pushing back 4.7
05100:0010:0020:000:49–6:26 · Nathan as informed peer 6/10 Introducing Travis Stevenson and Chatmatic's Messenger Automation Nathan drills into the business model, pressing Travis to clarify whether the $1.4M alpha presales represent recurring annual software subscriptions or one-time lifetime fees.6:26–14:44 · Nathan as informed peer 7/10 Analyzing Unit Economics, Churn, and User Activation Nathan applies SaaS benchmarks to calculate MRR and questions activation metrics, catching Travis in an apparent contradiction between 60% user activity and 80% subscriber attainment.14:46–19:19 · Nathan as informed peer 5/10 Sponsor Spotlight: Acuity Scheduling Following an Acuity ad read, the exchange is collaborative as Nathan and Travis discuss acquisition channels, blub-funded team size, and CAC limits.0:49–6:26 · Guest teaching 2/10 Introducing Travis Stevenson and Chatmatic's Messenger Automation Nathan drills into the business model, pressing Travis to clarify whether the $1.4M alpha presales represent recurring annual software subscriptions or one-time lifetime fees.6:26–14:44 · Guest teaching 4/10 Analyzing Unit Economics, Churn, and User Activation Nathan applies SaaS benchmarks to calculate MRR and questions activation metrics, catching Travis in an apparent contradiction between 60% user activity and 80% subscriber attainment.14:46–19:19 · Guest teaching 1/10 Sponsor Spotlight: Acuity Scheduling Following an Acuity ad read, the exchange is collaborative as Nathan and Travis discuss acquisition channels, blub-funded team size, and CAC limits.0:49–6:26 · Guest disagreement 2/10 Introducing Travis Stevenson and Chatmatic's Messenger Automation Nathan drills into the business model, pressing Travis to clarify whether the $1.4M alpha presales represent recurring annual software subscriptions or one-time lifetime fees.6:26–14:44 · Guest disagreement 2/10 Analyzing Unit Economics, Churn, and User Activation Nathan applies SaaS benchmarks to calculate MRR and questions activation metrics, catching Travis in an apparent contradiction between 60% user activity and 80% subscriber attainment.14:46–19:19 · Guest disagreement 1/10 Sponsor Spotlight: Acuity Scheduling Following an Acuity ad read, the exchange is collaborative as Nathan and Travis discuss acquisition channels, blub-funded team size, and CAC limits.0:49–6:26 · Nathan pushing back 5/10 Introducing Travis Stevenson and Chatmatic's Messenger Automation Nathan drills into the business model, pressing Travis to clarify whether the $1.4M alpha presales represent recurring annual software subscriptions or one-time lifetime fees.6:26–14:44 · Nathan pushing back 6/10 Analyzing Unit Economics, Churn, and User Activation Nathan applies SaaS benchmarks to calculate MRR and questions activation metrics, catching Travis in an apparent contradiction between 60% user activity and 80% subscriber attainment.14:46–19:19 · Nathan pushing back 3/10 Sponsor Spotlight: Acuity Scheduling Following an Acuity ad read, the exchange is collaborative as Nathan and Travis discuss acquisition channels, blub-funded team size, and CAC limits.

speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

0:00 · Nathan 45% · guest 55%0:00 · Nathan 45% · guest 55%3:00 · Nathan 18.7% · guest 81.3%3:00 · Nathan 18.7% · guest 81.3%6:00 · Nathan 28.6% · guest 71.4%6:00 · Nathan 28.6% · guest 71.4%9:00 · Nathan 24.7% · guest 75.3%9:00 · Nathan 24.7% · guest 75.3%12:00 · Nathan 20.2% · guest 79.8%12:00 · Nathan 20.2% · guest 79.8%15:00 · Nathan 48.4% · guest 51.6%15:00 · Nathan 48.4% · guest 51.6%18:00 · Nathan 37.7% · guest 62.3%18:00 · Nathan 37.7% · guest 62.3%21:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 0%21:00 · Nathan 0% · guest 0%
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 13:32 Defending active user definitions

Travis firmly pushes back on Nathan's confusion, delineating between regular active logins tracked on Intercom versus accounts that generated at least one subscriber.

 Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 13:22 Calling out contradictory user metrics

Nathan interrupts to challenge Travis directly, asking how only 60% of users can be active if 80% have captured subscribers.

 Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:30 Explaining Facebook Messenger lock-in

Travis educates Nathan on why Messenger bot platforms are stickier than email marketing tools, explaining that subscriber lists cannot be exported across platforms due to Facebook authorization rules.

 Nathan holds their own ▶ 6:26 Deconstructing presales into baseline MRR

Nathan demonstrates financial modeling expertise by converting Travis's raw $1.4M presales figures into a normalized $100k monthly recurring revenue equivalent.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
ChapterTopicNathan as informed peerGuest teachingGuest disagreementNathan pushing backWhy
Introducing Travis Stevenson and Chatmatic's Messenger Automation 6225 Nathan drills into the business model, pressing Travis to clarify whether the $1.4M alpha presales represent recurring annual software subscriptions or one-time lifetime fees.
Analyzing Unit Economics, Churn, and User Activation 7426 Nathan applies SaaS benchmarks to calculate MRR and questions activation metrics, catching Travis in an apparent contradiction between 60% user activity and 80% subscriber attainment.
Sponsor Spotlight: Acuity Scheduling 5113 Following an Acuity ad read, the exchange is collaborative as Nathan and Travis discuss acquisition channels, blub-funded team size, and CAC limits.

Statements from this episode (8)

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chatmatic generated $1.5 million in pre-launch alpha sales
“We've actually already done right now, we've done about 1.5 million in, in sales in our alpha stage and so.”
Travis Stevenson May 1, 2018 ▶ 2:46
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chatmatic acquired 1,800 to 2,000 alpha pre-launch customers
“We're ranging right around 1800 to 2000 ish customers.”
Travis Stevenson May 1, 2018 ▶ 2:58
Insight
Stevenson seeded tracking pixels with JV partner traffic to build lookalikes
“What I did was I used those joint venture partners to build up an audience, basically to feed my pixel for Facebook, feed my pixel for YouTube. And then you take that audience, you create lookalikes, and now you have amazing startup audiences for Facebook ads,…”
Travis Stevenson May 1, 2018 ▶ 4:36
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chatmatic: 45% to 50% of pre-sale revenue is recurring
“45 to 50% of our revenue is recurring either yearly or monthly. The rest of it's gonna be a flat fee for a set amount of features that they got at that time.”
Travis Stevenson May 1, 2018 ▶ 5:20
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Stevenson: Chatmatic will generate $25k to $45k monthly from renewals
“I would say that in, in any sort of projection that we've run, I'm probably more along the lines of a 25 to 45,000 a month when it comes to them, for them to actually recur, like, for them to actually continue on and to upgrade, because a lot of people I mean,…”
Travis Stevenson May 1, 2018 ▶ 7:09
Assertion Contradicted
Stevenson: Facebook Messenger subscriber lists cannot be migrated between platforms
“The problem with messenger is it's based on where you get the authorization. So you can't move a messenger list from one place to the next.”
Travis Stevenson May 1, 2018 ▶ 9:43
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Stevenson: Chatmatic has connected bots to about 44,000 fan pages
“The good news is, you know, we're right now with 2000 ish customers, somewhere around that that, not that line. We've had bots connected to, I believe right now about 44,000 fan pages.”
Travis Stevenson May 1, 2018 ▶ 14:03
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Stevenson: Chatmatic acquisition costs cap at 50% of sales
“I mean, 50% cost is about what we would typically run at most, whether it's a JV affiliate relationship or if it's ads.”
Travis Stevenson May 1, 2018 ▶ 16:24
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 2,600 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more