The Exchanges

Q So how did you do this? I mean, this is not easy, right? How did you get those first hundred agencies paying you to use the tech, use your technology?

A The first thing I actually did was finding out why people are buying from it. So in the beginning, I ran more than 700 demos in five months with only agencies myself to understand Why are they making a decision to pick Expondi and not one of our competitors to have a better understanding about how we can position Expondi. And I found out that safety is, it's, it's the main topic for everybody. That was one thing. Another underestimated thing in this gray area, and let's call it a special market, is that people want to do business with a reliable partner. And a lot of our other providers, they are hiding themselves for LinkedIn. So actually, you even do not know who's behind that software, and especially if you want to outreach them or contact them or try to ask support, it's very hard. So we decided to not hide ourselves from LinkedIn, but show our faces and our team and create videos and be visible and try to provide high priority support almost 24 seven around the globe with myself and our team, of course. And I think these Two points are the basics which achieve the most success for us in the fastest growth and only picking a niche because the market is so huge. So we decided to only go after LinkedIn agencies because we really understand what were their main challenges.

AI assessment note: “in the beginning, I ran more than 700 demos in five months with only agencies”

Q Okay. So in July of 2019, you launched the beta version and how much do customers, how much do the initial customers pay you to use the software?

A In the beginning, we did not ask any money just to retrieve and get our feedback for us to define which audience is the best fit for us. We start with outreaching local users, which are not that familiar with using any type of LinkedIn automation, but that were all people who are using such kind of an IP tracking software. And we found out in that data that that was not the best audience for us. For the simple reasons that we have to sell LinkedIn first. Second, we have to, uh, uh, sell LinkedIn automation. And third, we have to educate them because they did not know what they have to sell. So it was that time consuming and not scalable. So after, and I think it was September, we decided before we launched it globally, mid November, 2019. To focus on the global market and only on LinkedIn agencies, which had actually the same challenges as I faced when I was an agency owner myself. And one of these challenges was to do safe outreach on LinkedIn, because we all know that we're operating and let's call it kind of in gray area, right?

AI assessment note: “In the beginning, we did not ask any money”

Q Did you write your first line of code for the software then in 2019?

A Uh, no, uh, uh, in between that. So, so, so, so I think it was somewhere around. I jumped actually on LinkedIn to provide a service, uh, uh, in the beginning for myself to, to generate leads on, on the LinkedIn platform by optimizing the profile or target audience and actually outreaching people. In the beginning, I did everything manually with two left hands. I can't code anything myself. And just one simple Excel sheet. After managing five customers accounts, I found out that it was that time consuming that I could, it was not scalable. So I searched on LinkedIn, sorry, on Google, on Google for tools which could help me automate some repeated tasks on LinkedIn. And I found tons of tools, and we all know that there are hundreds of tools which can automate Some repeated tasks on LinkedIn from DuckSoup to LinkedHelpo to MeetLana to Alfred, and especially in that time, mostly of all these tools were Chrome extensions, and some of them were catched by LinkedIn as well. That means that LinkedIn is able to detect such kind of tools, and they will actually flag the accounts who are using it. So it was not that comfortable, especially Because I was managing profiles from C-level decision makers, which did not know that.

AI assessment note: “Uh, no... I can't code anything myself.”

Q new white label partners, obviously, but across 400 customers, it's about a hundred hundred bucks to get a new hundred dollar a month customer. That's obviously a very healthy payback period, so that the math works out nicely there. Um, help me understand how you go from five million today to ten million by the end of the year. Where do you think your growth is going to come from?

A Yeah, our growth will come from managing the company more based on data, right? We see also that we can improve a lot in insurance and then onboarding. So from next month, we will hire an external expert. To focus more on the onboarding and, and for the previous three months, we start tracking why people are canceling and why people can move forward, for example, from the first to the second payment. Um, so I think the quickest wins for ourselves are in that area to close the door in the back a bit more. And if people are satisfied, we see, for example, now that if we can bring people from the first to the second payment, And that's also the user's challenge to make it more clear for them. And if you can bring them results with examples and templates in that time period, they, if you can bring them to the second payment, they will go to the third, fourth, five, sixth.

AI assessment note: “our growth will come from managing the company more based on data”

Q I understand, Stephen. So help us understand sort of growth today. So, so this month, how many new customers will you add?

A I think we have two revenue streams, and one revenue stream is that people can sign up straight from our website, and we have somewhere around 300 signups per week on our website. They are not, they start trialing with the seven days trial, and then we hope to convert as many as we can, and the other revenue stream is that we provide white labels, and they are exclusively for agencies with more than 20 accounts. And we have agencies on board with more than let's five, six, 700 accounts. Um, so on the website, we have, uh, let's say thousand signups a month, new signups. And, uh, all the revenue stream is that we only focus on white labels and larger agencies because they are bringing more, uh, more accounts and they grow with Somewhere around maybe 10, 10 larger agencies per month.

AI assessment note: “thousand signups a month, new signups... maybe 10, 10 larger agencies per month”

Q You bet. Now you rarely see LinkedIn software or marketing software branded as the safest. Usually that's like construction work or, you know, dangerous work. Why do you use the word the safest LinkedIn automation software?

A Yeah, let me tell you the story behind. I am managing multiple SaaS companies in the Netherlands, and one software already for more than five years. It's a very intelligent IP tracking software. It's called Lead Express, similar to software like Lead Forensics, Alba Cross Lead Feeder, where we can identify website visitors. It's actually a nice software to have, but Almost all the users of this kind of a software as they struggle with was the best way to follow up, right? So actually, I received tons of this kind of requestions from people using the software. And what they do is that they try to pick the phone, they go to the reception. Hey, Nathan, it's Stephanie, or can you please forward me to the person who's visited my website, but it's actually a hard one. So, after receiving tons of such kind of questions, I tried to Challenged myself to find a way to do acquisition on a much more modern way, and then we're talking about somewhere around three years ago. I jumped on LinkedIn, and after pivoting a bit on LinkedIn, it became after a lot of spending a lot of time to educate myself as my number one lead channel, so that was actually the starting point of Helping people achieving results on LinkedIn as kind of a LinkedIn agency.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, let me tell you the story behind.”