Insight
Guseinov: Equity dilution costs far more than debt for growing companies
“Because I value the equity far more than I value the debts. Very simple. Like, why would you do that if you think your business is growing and your equity is growing, arguably your amount of equity you're going to be giving up is, is far, is worth far more tha…”
Opinion
Guseinov: Just-in-time marketing outperforms traditional monetization that annoys users
“It's just in time marketing and it performs really well. It's far more efficient than adding advertising or other forms of monetization that It pisses people off at the end of the day.”
Insight
Guseinov: Founders needing liquidity must not relinquish company control
“If you don't control the company, then you don't control the faith of your compensation. Just very simple. And so it, if you are okay with that, then you're okay with that. If you're not okay with it, meaning you need more liquidity, don't give up control or d…”
Insight
Guseinov: Stock-collateralized loans let founders access liquidity tax-free
“There's lots of ways to structure these loans, and that the money you receive from these loans is not income. It's debt. So you're not paying taxes on it. So it's, you know, eventually going to pay taxes on it when the stock is sold, but you are in a relativel…”
Insight
Guseinov: Commercial loans typically range from 2x to 4x EBITDA
“The most basic fundamental concept in lending is the turns of EBITDA to total debt value that you can borrow. So for instance, if a company is doing four million dollars with EBITDA, you can probably get loan between two times to four times of the total EBITDA…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Guseinov: RealDefense Had Over $10M EBITDA in 2022
“I think at that time, our EBITDA was up more than 10. And so we would net, we didn't. Nathan Latka: Well, that was out more than ten million. Gary Guseinov: Was more than ten million.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Guseinov: RealDefense will reach $60M to $70M revenue in 2025
“Ah, between 60 and 70.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Guseinov: RealDefense will generate $20M to $25M in EBITDA in 2025
“No, it's between 20 and 25.”
Insight
Guseinov: Operating roll-up acquisitions as standalone entities is inefficient
“Building businesses that are standalone entities and growing them individually is not an efficient use of your time and your resources, because they benefit from each other more than they benefit just from your technology that you bring it to the table.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gary Guseinov scaled AnchorFree revenue to $20 million in 18 months
“I helped them go from three hundred million users to four hundred million users. Grew revenues from zero to twenty million a year in about 18 months.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Preparing for an IPO costs $500,000 to $1 million in upfront fees
“You've spent probably close to half a million to a million dollars just getting the company ready to go public.”
Insight
Separating webinar and conferencing tiers frustrates customers despite boosting ARPU
“Our competitors separate products such as web webinars and web conferencing are usually two different subscriptions. And there's also a lot of limitation. There's a lot of limitation on participants, limitation on presenters, and so they bifurcate the, you kno…”
Disclosure
Gary Guseinov acquired Business Hangouts for less than $1 million
“No, it's, it was less than a million dollars.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fully weighted customer acquisition cost for Business Hangouts is under $40
“It's minimal. It's an, you know, less than, it's a less than 30 to 40 dollars.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Guseinov: RealDefense was bought back for under $10M
“Yeah, so it is, ah, a relatively small amount, less than ten million dollars.”
Assertion Supported
Guseinov: RealDefense has completed six acquisitions since 2017
“We've done six acquisitions since 2017.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Guseinov: RealDefense generated roughly $7M ARR at 2017 buyback
“Oh, we were doing less than ten million. They were doing like seven million a year.”
Assertion Supported
Guseinov: CyberDefender went public via self-registration without an underwriter
“It was gone through what's called a self-listing. It's a little different now. There's a different, different regulations around that today. It's a little easier to actually do a public today, but back then it was a self-registration. So it's as if I go public…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Guseinov: Stock-backed loans carry interest rates of 10% to 15%+
“I'll be between 10 and 15%. It could be even higher, depending on, well, again, how risky it is.”
Disclosure
Guseinov: RealDefense targets $100M-plus acquisitions from multibillion pipeline
“I have a multi-billion dollar pipeline. So we're looking for bigger deals now. So before we were doing deals under a hundred million, under fifty million. Now we're more interested in deals that are a hundred million plus.”
Disclosure
Guseinov: Founder retains less than 20% equity in RealDefense
“Less than 20, and the reason is, is because when we started the business, we started with multiple partners. It's not a dilutive effect that took place.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
RealDefense operates with roughly 300 personnel, including 200 outsourced
“We're at about 300 or so people. About 200 of them are outsourced organization, mostly in support and infrastructure, and then a hundred is marketing and R&D, a dev.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Business Hangouts had 1.7 million users when Gary Guseinov acquired it
“It had over 1.7 million enterprise users, so these are people who, who've downloaded the application, installed it in their Google account. And it had, has over 700,000 registered users and has 70,000 enterprise users.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Business Hangouts maintains an annual customer churn rate under 10 percent
“Our churn is less than 10%.”
