The Ledger
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Lemlist hired early videographers and delayed hiring salespeople until $1M ARR
“We had a team of up to 10 people in the video team out of a hundred, out of 80 to a hundred people and that was a significant investment compared to most of the SaaS companies that you see. Even at the beginning of the company, I think it was the second or the…”
Moubeche: Tying bonuses to lead volume harms overall lead quality
“Because I know a lot of people, you know, they're trying to put bonuses on number of qualified leads, marketing qualified leads, sales qualified I think it's too complicated, and I think people tend to always optimize things based on, so for example, if I tell…”
Lemlist turned down $20M and $30M investment offers to remain fully bootstrapped
“And then all of that, of course, attracted a lot of investors' attention, where we had a twenty million dollar investment proposal that we turned down before turning down a thirty million dollar investment, simply because we don't need the funds.”
Latka: Mailshake does not have as strong a community as Lemlist
“He does not have as strong a community as Lemlist.”
Moubeche: Lemlist sees -5% to -6% net MRR churn on 5-to-50 rep teams
“Sales team that are with more than sales people, more than five sales people, so from five to, let's say, 30 or 50, that's kind of our sweet spot, and those people are not churning. Like, we have negative net MR churn, so something around, like, minus five Min…”
Moubeche: Aligning teams on quarterly MRR beats lead-based bonuses
“I know a lot of people, you know, they're trying to put bonuses on number of qualified leads, marketing qualified leads, sales qualified leads. I think it's too complicated, and I think people tend to always optimize things based on, so for example, if I tell …”
Lemlist rejects VC funding to bootstrap and focus entirely on users
“We're not really looking for fundings, because that's not really our vision, and we like the way bootstrapping company works, because I believe we really focus on users, then, you know, we find, like, really market fit, and a channel of acquisition that works,…”
Contrary to conventional wisdom, adding images to cold emails increases replies
“Like, people were saying for a long time, like, don't say images in your cold email, that's not good, that's not professional, that's not, it's not true, you know. Like, we've experienced it, it's working. As long as you be different, and you get the attention…”
Charles Tenot says Claap's product equates to a $20M ARR company
“It's a product that is much better than the two million AR product. It's a, it's certainly at the level of a twenty million AR product.”
Claap reached $2M ARR at 10% monthly growth and cash breakeven
“They pivoted to Conversation Intelligence a year and a half ago. And they grew this product to two million AR and kind of very fast growing, like recently about 10% month over month. And so they had raised the seed, but now they were like almost breakeven. The…”
Lemlist funded Claap acquisition via convertible bonds without setting a valuation
“We don't set a valuation. We don't need to set a valuation. We don't know, to be honest. Like, you don't need to set a valuation because you convert the bond at the time that there is an operation, you know, the two million worths with a discount. It's 20%.”
Lemlist acquired Claap for $15M upfront, scaling to $25M with earn-outs
“It's so the price is between 30, 15 and twenty-five million but there are some components that are like earn-out part, so it depends on future growth but basically we paid around fifteen million right now, and with add-on price if they reach a revenue target.”
Lemlist ARR reaches $36M, pushing Lempire portfolio to $40M total ARR
“When I joined, Lemnist was at fifteen million precisely, and now Lemnist is at 36, and the other Lempire products are at four, so almost five, so we are around 40. Yeah, so, yeah, now we are exactly that's accurate, we are at forty million a bit more now.”
Lemlist generates approximately $10M in annual profit
“Beside this we're profit making at Lemnis. We do around ten million Profit every year.”
Lemlist reaches $23M ARR and day-one profitability with zero outside funding
“So we're currently at twenty three million dollars in annual recurring revenue with approximately 10,000 free trials per month, a bit over that, with zero dollars in funding, profitable since day one, with five SaaS products and about 80 employees.”
Lemlist has operated with 35% to 45% EBITDA margins since day one
“We're profitable since day one. We have between 35 and 45% of EBITDA margins, and we don't need A board or investors to force us into a specific direction.”
Lemlist found Product Hunt launches are becoming less effective for software distribution
“But as we do more Product Hunt launches, the impact, unfortunately, is going down, and it's not as effective as it was before.”
Lemlist serves 50,000 customers and refuses to move upmarket to enterprise
“All of this with 50,000 customers worldwide, focusing on SMBs. We're not going up markets, and we're focusing on bringing as much value as possible as small businesses.”
Lemlist sold Lempod at $600K ARR before LinkedIn banned engagement pods
“We sold that business when it was doing 600 K in annual recurring revenue, and it was right before LinkedIn completely went against the pods and were very aggressive against them, so I don't recommend using pods anymore, even if Lempod is still active from the…”
Latka: Chili Piper Sold $7M Secondary at a $625M Valuation
“We're seeing, you know, Chili Piper just sold seven million secondary at a six hundred twenty five million valuation with fifteen million in revenue, but that's very different than what Lemless just did, which was sell thirty million for 20% of business at one…”
Moubeche: Lemlist generates over $100K in monthly net profit
“Right now we're making, you know, like each month we're making a bit more than a 100,000 dollar profits.”
Moubeche: Lemlist sees seasonal Q3 churn as European customers pause summer subscriptions
“I know Q three is sometimes a bit like less strong cause you have July and August where those are the months where we see like, we sometimes see like small companies especially like cheap French bastard that usually decide to turn and come back in September.”
Moubeche: Lemlist spends zero dollars on paid advertising
“As I said, like, we don't spend anything on ads, so our CAC is more linked to, let's say, like, the time we spent and based on our salary”
Moubeche: Lemlist awards a 25% monthly salary bonus for successful quarters
“Every quarter you can get 25% of your salary, of your monthly salary.”
Moubeche: Converting lifetime deal users into paying subscribers is very tough
“I think it's very tough to convert a lifetime deal user into a paying customer.”
Lemlist spends zero dollars on paid advertising or acquisition channels
“We don't spend any money on paid ads or paid acquisition or anything else.”
Converting lifetime deal SaaS users into recurring paying customers is tough
“Yeah, I think it's very tough to convert a lifetime deal user into a paying customer.”
Lemlist sees seasonal summer churn as small customers pause subscriptions
“Cause I know like Q one is really strong. Q two is also really strong for us. I know Q three is sometimes a bit like less strong cause you have July and August where those are the months where we see like, we sometimes see like small companies especially like …”
Moubeche values Lemlist at $7M to $8M on a 3x-4x multiple
“I think to be honest, like it's basically like, let's say we're at, I mean, we're north of two million ARR, but I think it's like 7,000,007 to eight million. If I have to be very like reasonable, I would say, because it would be like something if you are, if y…”
Lemlist generates more than $100,000 in profit each month
“Right now we're making, you know, like each month we're making a bit more than a 100,000 dollar profits.”
Lemlist co-founders split equity equally across tech and business
“We want, you know, to have equal share, be equally motivated during the, for the entire project. We all have different and complementary skills, so we think, like, all skills are equal. We need, you know, we need the tech part, we need the commercial and, like…”
Claap targets the same 3-to-50-rep sales teams as Lemlist
“Clap is selling to exactly the same people as we target. So sales team from three to 50 reps sometimes a bit more and they have the same kind of ACV. They have the same like champions, which are rev ops, business ops or sales managers.”
Lemlist won the Claap acquisition despite being outbid by larger French rival
“We've been facing like two players, including one leading AI platform in France, like much bigger than us. And ultimately what made the difference, it's not really the price because we beat slightly less. It's a more the fits with the product and the team.”
Lemlist targets 25% to 35% profit margins while investing in growth
“We try to remain around 25 to 35% of profit margin. Just because we always try to invest in, in the team. So we hire more developers, product managers sales to grow the company, but we always try to remain highly profitable. So, or let's say threshold is like,…”
Claap's acquisition earn-out requires reaching up to $10M in ARR
“But yeah, basically just, you reach a milestone of AR, you get some money, and the more, and it can go up to ten million AR.”
Taplio and Tweet Hunter grew from under $1M to $6M post-acquisition
“It's, I think, doing close to six million dollars in revenue. When we acquired it was doing less than a 1,000,000”
Lemlist drives software sign-ups by operating 6 to 10 employee LinkedIn accounts
“So we have today between six and 10 accounts posting on a regular basis on LinkedIn, getting a lot of views, a lot of engagements, which means a lot of sign-ups and a lot of visibility when we have a product update, new resources that we want to showcase to ou…”
Lemlist sold nearly $200K in digital courses over a 10-day period
“We ended up selling close to 200 K worth of courses within 10 days, so it was two launches of five days each.”
Lemlist spin-off product born from a Facebook group discussion generates $2M ARR
“The first one is creating a whole product, generating today two million dollars in annual recurring revenue, just based on a community discussion that we had within our Facebook group, within the community that we built.”
Berman: Lemlist bought Tweet Hunter and Taplio for over $2M plus earnout
“Yeah, it was two point something in all for Tapleo and TweetHunter, and then there was an earn out.”
Moubeche: Lemlist reached $2M ARR with 12 employees
“So we were like 12 people when we reached two million in ARR, and in September, twenty-twenty, we're gonna be 19 people.”
Moubeche: Lemlist netted roughly $150,000 total from AppSumo launches
“Total with AppSumo, essentially, we made, I think 150 K.”
Moubeche: Lemlist has 3% to 4% net MRR churn for sub-10 person startups
“So I would say like startup less than 10 people, et cetera. The churn is around like maybe 10%, but the net MRR churn is basically around like maybe three to four percent”
Moubeche: Lemlist has over 3,000 recurring customers and 10,000 total users
“In recurring, we have, like, more than 3000 companies paying on the monthly basis, and total customer is more than 10,000.”