Insight
Entrepreneurship and new small businesses explode during economic downturns
“Small, there are more small businesses that come in the market when the economy gets tight. Entrepreneurship explodes and our TAM is huge.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Targeting micro-SMBs built a moat against larger software providers
“We figured if we could build a tool that was beloved by them, it was a great value prop. You know, we kind of have a bit of a moat around ourselves and wouldn't get a lot of pressure from above from the bigger software providers. And that's proven to be true.”
Opinion
A vertical-agnostic strategy drove Ripl's small business SaaS growth
“Being a much more broad based and kind of agnostic as to which small business vertical we serve, it's really driven the growth.”
Insight
Lean balance sheets enforce discipline during CAC and LTV fluctuations
“We've wanted to keep the discipline around financial management in place, and I think that's served us well because there have been periods where we've had dips, either CAC went up or LTV came down and we needed to be able to manage through that and having, yo…”
Insight
Creating three pieces of content is Ripl's paid conversion tipping point
“At least
Three pieces of content created and posted.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ripl converts approximately 50% of its seven-day free trial users
“We convert about half.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Over half of Ripl's paying customer base exceeds one year
“More than half of our paying customer base we've had for longer than a year.”
Opinion
Scaling micro-SMBs graduate from Ripl to Adobe Creative Cloud
“Well, I mean, I tend to think they graduate to the Adobe Creative Cloud for digital content and video creation, and then to kind of the larger email platform tools.”
Disclosure
Ripl has raised just under $7 million to date
“Just shy of seven.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ripl has 70,000 paying subscribers and over 1.3 million MAUs
“So we've got about 70,000 paying any given month, you know, quarter 1,300,000 plus in MAUs.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ripl generates slightly over $10 million in annual recurring revenue
“We're a little north of ten million ARR and looking to kind of put the foot down and grow faster this year ahead.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ripl's growth slowed to 3-4% after a 200% year-over-year surge
“We've only been up by about three, four percent year over year from 18. 17 to 18, we had huge growth, more than 200%, and so part of that was intentional.”
Disclosure
Ripl relies on direct-response marketing and has no sales team
“We're entirely a direct response marketing driven customer acquisition model. So no sales team at all.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ripl's CAC has been $35 to $45 for over a year
“We've been running somewhere between 35 and 45 dollars for more than a year now.
Nathan Latka: Okay.
Clay McDaniel: and that's CAC against you know, first billing event, right?
Clay McDaniel: Customers that are actually converting, not to trialers, but folk…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ripl retains paying subscribers for an average of just over a year
“Like, you know, on average, we only keep our customers across the whole base a little more than a year.”
Disclosure
Ripl spends at least $200,000 monthly on direct ad spend
“It varies cause we bring it up and down based on CAC efficiency, but never goes below about 200,000.”
Disclosure
Ripl scales ad spend to $500,000+ when churn metrics improve
“When we see LTV real playing, really pulling through, which means our trial churn is looking good. Our month one churn is looking good. We'll go up to 400,000 and a half million or more.”
Disclosure
Ripl operates at break-even and intends to remain profitable while scaling
“Yeah. We're on the right side of that right now, and you know, as we hire a few more folks who might Step down to burning again. But the intent here is to run this thing and break even or better and to continue to scale it, but at a faster rate this year.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Up to 80% of Ripl's customers are on a monthly subscription
“75%, eight percent of our customer base is on a monthly skew.”
Disclosure
Ripl targets businesses under 10 employees and solo entrepreneurs
“We focus on businesses that have 10 or fewer employees and a meaningful part of our customer base is actually just single entrepreneurs solo.”
Assertion Supported
Ripl acquired its brand and IP from a folded company
“We actually bought the rights and the brand from a previous company that had folded early in the 2010. And maybe a little bit of some legacy data, but we've only done three rounds. We had a convertible round early on that converted into equity, but .”
