The Exchanges

Q Do you have, I mean, so you've done this bootstrapped when you say like organic growth, you know, when I hear organic growth, sometimes I go, oh, well, they're just not sure how they're growing, which is maybe a bad thing. Cause then you don't know how to do more of it. Right. So what is, I think you probably actually know how you're growing. How are you actually growing?

A Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you stay there. So during, COVID, we, we thought let's, let's invest in our brand. So previously what we've done, it's a little bit different is that we're a hundred percent white label platform. So we found channel partners and the channel partners essentially, they, they grew our business. So we went on a complete white label. So we, our brand, WildJar was completely out of it. Um, and then as things happen, you know, we picked our first enterprise, like proper enterprise client around that 15 month. Um, and then brand starts to become a little bit important and sort of during COVID, we just thought, look, we need to start marketing ourselves a little bit. Um, and sort of from July till now, uh, we've done some ad spend. We've done some video testimonials, video case studies, building a little bit, and we would have brought on out of that one to two. I said, we brought on about 30 new logos in that time period.

AI assessment note: “we found channel partners and the channel partners essentially, they, they grew our business.”

Q Let me ask you guys as co-founders, you still have another 200,000 dollars of profit you're making every month. How do you decide how to allocate that capital? Do you pay it out to yourselves as dividends? Do you keep it in the business? Do you go buy other smaller companies? What do you do with it?

A Um, so, I mean, we have been looking to acquire, um, that's definitely been on the roadmap, and, um, we, we've, we've identified a few businesses, um, and the, I mean, debt's pretty easy at the moment too, so we're looking at possibly doing a bit of a debt raise there to do it, but at the same time, it's, um, we We, we have shared profit as well. Um, so we've taken it in different times, um, to help each other out. And, um, yeah, so we've done that too. So it's, it's, it's only been sort of been more recently that we've decided to do that. Um, because there's no point just keeping it in the business. We, we invested in another startup. So we did, we did help fund that. Um, there's another sort of charity business that we've put money into.

AI assessment note: “we have been looking to acquire... We, we have shared profit as well.”

Q Is it like sales ops of the world or?

A Um, more so like, um, like if you look at the US, like invoker and dialogue tech, they've done that. There's in, in the UK, there's, uh, infinity and response tap have combined, and they're not really combining to say remove. It's just more just to bring, um, revenue together. And so there's a few others who are trying to do it. Um, but it's interesting you said sort of sales, like, because, um, None of those businesses do what we do, and we, we do everything before the call actually comes into the business. That's where our IP sits, and that's what we're really good at. All those other businesses, it's around, like, what we're doing now is having the conversation and bringing analytics in the conversation, which is really, really important, but In a, in a buying cycle through a website, people have been searching for three months or a month, and then as soon as they call, it goes into the contact center and they have that information, but they don't know what the journey has been like before. So we're, we're now integrating into like a dial pad and the talk desks and those cloud-based contact centers to enrich their data so that when we send it to their agent, we say this customer has come through a, you know, Google paid ad Um, they started their journey X months ago. Um, you know, they've called three times. So then when I have a conversation, it's more meaningful as well.

AI assessment note: “None of those businesses do what we do, and we, we do everything before the call”

Q Really interesting. Okay, and in the backstory, you launched this in 2016, how'd you guys fund the MVP?

A Uh, so, bootstrapped it, so, um, Myself and a founder, we were at another business, and we actually had this model within, it was a traditional telco, and we wanted to take it to the business, and it didn't work out. I was head of product strategy. Um, my founder was head of technology. Uh, so I left, uh, went back to agency world. My family has an agency, and I was working in that, and really wanted to obviously focus on, on the core side, as much as we were good at. Um, so plugged it in there, did a bit of an MVP, We reached out to my co-founder and said, look, I think we need to, you know, spin off a new business. He's from Italy. He flew back to Italy and had three months at his family, and then we just sort of went from there.

AI assessment note: “Uh, so, bootstrapped it, so, um, Myself and a founder”

Q And give me a sense of, you know, how you fit in a space. Oh, it's a very crowded space. There's a lot of VC backed companies spending way too much money in this space. What niche have you carved out for yourself?

A Yeah, definitely. I mean, so we, um, myself and the co-founder, so we came from a similar space and Um, I'm from an agency background as well, and we really looked at the market and in terms of what we needed to do, and, and we saw that, you know, a lot of them were doing the self, low cost, high volume, and then there was sort of the enterprise model as well. Um, so where we fit is sort of right in the middle of it all, where our model is more From an onboarding perspective, it's, it is a full self-serve, but we, we work with them in the first three months to get to move to a point where they can self-serve and move forward, but we found it just fits really nicely in terms of our models, so.

AI assessment note: “where we fit is sort of right in the middle of it all”

Q Wow, ok, so 172 customers, and you've done all this bootstrapped, right?

A Um, for us, it was all organic, and, um, you know, we were in a space where, you know, we knew the industry as well, so we knew a lot of agencies. I've got a lot of agency contacts. Um, the, where we started, the Australian market, it was, there was a few sort of legacy, um, platforms that had been there for a while, and they weren't scaling very well. So we wanted to build a platform that would scale, um, scale quickly. Um, and so that's what we did. It was all organic, all word of mouth, and I guess Uh, but one, a lot of agency people moving around as well. So, you know, they'll take the platform and turn us on there.

AI assessment note: “for us, it was all organic, and, um, you know, we were in a space”

Q plan plus one additional month free. They'll also give you all your money back within 30 days if you're not happy. Check out the deal at NordVPN.com forward slash my last name, Latka. That's N-O-R-D-V-P-N dot com forward slash L-A-T-K-A. What about the flip side of this? If someone came to you guys and offered you guys forty million all cash up front to sell the business, do you sell?

A Um, I mean, when, when we built the business, we, we didn't, we, we kind of thought five years because that's, I mean, you say five years, but we were genuinely like, you know, five years. We're not salespeople. And I think that's what we realized, um, trying to hire salespeople. We're, we're, we're very much product and very passionate about what we do, but we're not very good at training salespeople. So if somebody did come to us, it would have to be a good fit where, um, You know, they can implement a sales strategy, put us into those sort of tools, then we'll do that. Um, to give you an idea that in market right now, there are competitors, you know, US ones to look at winding up a few platforms like us to do something similar.

AI assessment note: “if somebody did come to us, it would have to be a good fit”

Q What does your gross revenue turn look like annually?

A Um, I, I don't really know, but in terms of the logo, I, all we've worked out is on the 172 we have now clients, um, we had a total of 208 with us. So we've lost, um, I mean, it's around like 36 odd clients total. Um, so over four and a half years, we're looking at three and a half percent. Um, we haven't looked at revenue, but what's interesting from those ones that, um, come off is that when we went through this period of, um, Like, it was just myself and a co-founder, we were doing 70,000, and we were sitting there going, do we, do we just keep doing what we're doing now, or do we sort of go, go and grow a little bit more? Um, and I went to an agency who was, it was another one who I knew really well, and they said, look, we would love to work with you, but you're only two people, so we don't really want to, you know, it's a bit of a risk for us. So we hired somebody, he came in, um, but attracted the wrong, um, End client for us. So a lot of those logos that we've lost are actually through the acquisition of, you know, this really small self-serve self on board. And what we've found is we, we don't work well in that space. I mean, we can, they can come on and work with us, but where we work well as, as a, like an expert or trusted advisor to the agency partners. So, um, but we definitely need to do better in terms of working out that the revenue term, but I mean, everything…

AI assessment note: “I don't really know, but in terms of the logo... We haven't looked at revenue”