Insight
Dunn: Website personalization cannot succeed without customer segmentation
“The big turn issue for us was we were selling personalization software. People bought into it, but you can't personalize without segmentation. So a lot of these companies came on board and they realized they didn't have the data that they needed to accurately …”
Opinion
Dunn: RightMessage has not yet hit true product-market fit
“I wouldn't say that we've hit product market fit in the sense that we have a really good way, a compelling way, Of showing somebody why they should switch from, say, Sumo or OptiMonster or whoever to us.”
Disclosure
Dunn: RightMessage will not raise capital or scale headcount yet
“We wouldn't raise money at this point or scale the team at this point because I think we're so right now we're so individually working together with our current customer base base and subscriber base to figure out Positioning wise, are we in the right place or…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dunn: RightMessage churn is driven by customer education, not disbelief
“We know why we're churning. It's an education problem. We've asked people, we've talked to people, and what we're being told again and again is we completely, 100% believe in The outcome that you're promising us, but we need help on the strategic side.”
Assertion Supported
Dunn: ConvertKit only worked out once Nathan Barry went all in
“I mean, he was at the same point with ConvertKit where he was splitting his time. And when he went all in on ConvertKit, that's when everything started to work out.”
Disclosure
RightMessage plans to stay profitable and avoid a Series A round
“Profitable out of the gate. So we're not looking to jump from the different to series A or anything like that.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dunn: RightMessage ARPU is about $100 per month
“Well, our ARPU is about a hundred bucks a month, but plans start at 30, and we have people paying in a few hundreds a month.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dunn: RightMessage reached ~$8k MRR one week after launch
“And then we did a big launch kind of info product style when we went live sold annual plans that got us, I think to about eight K MR or thereabouts pretty much a week into it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dunn: RightMessage launch sales came 100% from email list
“No affiliates. Yeah. It was a hundred percent in the list.”
Disclosure
RightMessage raised $500k from Nathan Barry, Ankur Nagpal, and Paul Singh
“We raised about a half a million from people like Nathan Berry of ConvertKit anchor of Teachable Paul Sing and others just friends of mine, frankly, who wanted to fund us.”
Disclosure
RightMessage reaches $30k MRR and generates $10k monthly profit
“Our total MRR at the moment is 30 K a month. Our, I mean, we're basically, our expenses are probably 20 K. So yeah, we're bringing about a 10 K a month profit.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Dunn: RightMessage recorded 16% revenue churn over past year
“I mean, bare metrics is saying over the last year, revenue turned 16%.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dunn: RightMessage has roughly $50k remaining of $500k raised
“We've burned through a good about, we have about 50 left.”
Disclosure
Dunn: RightMessage would probably turn down a $700k cash buyout
“Probably not, to be honest.”
What-if
Dunn regrets dropping out of school to start a business
“Honestly, I dropped out of school to start a business. I kind of wish I would have stayed in just cause I'm not going to get that time again.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
RightMessage reached $20k MRR three and a half months after launch
“Yeah, we launched in January. We're at, we're just about 20,000 MRR. So in about Three and a half months.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
RightMessage's revenue is growing 30% to 40% month-over-month
“We're growing 30, 40% a month now and happy with it.”
Disclosure
RightMessage raised $500k from integration partners including ConvertKit and Leadpages
“No, we raised half a million. So we raised from early customers along with, Some of the companies we integrate with, like ConvertKit, Leadpages, Drip, and so on.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
RightMessage raised its early round in one week without a pitch deck
“It was back in October and it only took, it took about a week. No pitch checker. They were all friends of mine, so I just really emailed them and did it that way.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Teachable founder Ankur Nagpal convinced RightMessage to raise venture capital
“We were going to bootstrap, but our first customer was Teachable, and Anker reached out saying, I want the product faster. Can you raise some money and build a team on it?”
What-if
Dunn: Wishes he had stayed in college instead of dropping out
“Probably would have stayed in college. I dropped out, ah, kind of wish I would have probably stuck with it a few more years, but yeah.”
Disclosure
RightMessage has just under 300 customers
“Just shy of 300.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
RightMessage has zero direct customer acquisition spend
“We haven't spent a dime on any hard costs like acquisition costs.”
Disclosure
RightMessage operates with no salespeople across a three-person team
“I mean, we don't, so we aren't in terms of sales, we don't have any sales people. It's just myself, co-founder, and we have a part-time designer.”
