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Pokros: Choosing executive coaching over sales hires drove Verblio's 700% growth
“So I had a budget where I could choose one sales person or an executive coach to support all my new leaders on my first year. And I chose an executive coach to coach up that team so they could do all of these things. So that's where strategy gets made and some…”
Pokros: Verblio developers are Latin American contractors at 20% to 25% cost
“All of our developers, our individual contractors are out of Latin America that are maybe a quarter, maybe two, 20% of the cost work with our team full time.”
Pokros: Do not hire for experience between $0M and $10M revenue
“The first thing is I don't believe in hiring for experience at a zero to ten million type of range. There are very few positions that require a large amount of been there before done that. Those are the most expensive people. Those are the most the most compet…”
Pokros: Copywriters should write job descriptions instead of HR staff
“Your copywriter should be able to do this within, like, 30 minutes, and you're having your HR people write this.”
Sourcing freelance talent is easier than solving client-side operations
“It's amazingly easy to find a great crowd of workers who want to work freelance from home
Who are extremely qualified. So most of our challenge is focused on the business solution side.”
Pokros: Bootstrapped companies invest two years behind while VC firms invest ahead
“If you're an investor company, you're investing two years in front of where you want to be. And if you're a bootstrapped company, you're investing what you needed to do two years ago now.”
Verblio Maintained 0% Leadership Turnover Over Six Years
“Every member of this leadership team that I've hired over the last six years, we have had zero percent turnover.”
Pokros: Every leader hired at Verblio took a pay cut to join
“Everyone of these leaders who came to our company took a pay cut to come to my company to do this because they want to be there.”
Pokros: Hiring inexperienced talent requires disproportionate investment in support resources
“If you're going to build a strategy about hiring top tech talent, that's flexible and passionate But has never done it before. You need to give them a lot more resources.”
Verblio pays employees $200 to dye their hair company colors
“We offer 200 dollars if you dye your hair one of Verblio's three colors. It has to be over 50%, and I have to approve it.”
Verblio generated $6.1M in 2020 revenue, paying $3M to freelancers
“So we paid about half of what we are. We paid out a flat half. So our company brought in six million or 6.1 million last year. And so three million went to freelancers.”
Pacross: Verblio has no quota-carrying sales reps
“We don't. We only have an inbound sales lead. We just brought on a fractional VP of sales.”
Verblio targets 50% marketplace margin vs. Upwork's 10%
“We're shooting for more of a 50% margin range versus the 10% up work range.”
Verblio requires all freelancers to write on spec to self-match
“All of our writers write on spec. And so basically they match themselves to the client. By doing so, they have every incentive to make sure they match themselves right, or they're wasting their time in their writing for someone else.”
Verblio experiences roughly 10% monthly revenue churn
“So basically our turn is around 10% a month, which is really high logo or revenue. Oh revenue.”
Pokros: Verblio has 8 to 10 people interview every new hire
“So we have an extensive recruiting process where we have Eight to 10 people interview every person that comes on board.”
Pokros: Verblio has maintained 40% to 50% growth on a bootstrap budget
“I took over the company from the founders in 2000 at The end of 2016. So we have been growing at 40 to 50% successfully on a bootstrap budget since then.”
Pokros: Verblio on track for $12M to $14M in revenue
“We're on track for 12 to fourteen million dollars in revenue this year.”
One Verblio client orders 1,200 content pieces per month
“So we have a client doing 1200 unique pieces of content per month on our platform.”
Verblio's average customer spend reached $800 per month
“Our average customer now spends 800 dollars a month.”
A Verblio freelance writer earned $100,000 on the platform in 2020
“We actually had our first writer make a 100,000 dollars last year on the Verblio platform, which I'm incredibly proud of.”
Verblio acquired AI video generation startup Automagical
“So we bought a company called Automagical, which is very similar to sorry. Been out of it for a while. So similar to other players in the market that are trying to take existing content and turn them into videos by using AI.”
Verblio expects to produce 80,000 pieces of content in 2021
“And we're, we've got, I think we're going to create 80,000 pieces of unique content this year with 3000 writers working on our SaaS platform.”
Verblio expects to reach $840k MRR within two months
“We're crossing seven 50 and we should be at eight 38 40 within the next two months.”
Verblio enterprise accounts over $1,000 see 2% monthly churn
“The churn on those accounts that are basically, we consider enterprise a thousand dollars and above churn at two percent per month.”
Pacross: Verblio's paused revenue surged 50% in three weeks
“So our paused revenue went up by 50% in three weeks.”
Pacross: Verblio grew revenue 47% in 2019
“We grew by 50%, 47% last year, with pretty much the same team supporting it and some additional contractors that went on board”
Pacross: Verblio expects roughly $500k from PPP stimulus loan
“I think it should be around a half a million dollars. It could, it depends on how they categorize our freelance writers. If they include those as well then it would be possibly double that, but I expect them not to.”
Verblio opened first credit line to fund an acquisition
“I just took out my first line of credit Couple of weeks ago to acquire our first company.”
Verblio serves roughly 400 agency customers and 400 SMBs
“So we're working with so we're working, we have a hundred customers and about 400 of them are our agencies and 400 of them are SMBs.”
Verblio produces content for 1,500 businesses each month
“And we write for about 1500 different businesses each month.”
Verblio grew 30% year-over-year and 50% over two years
“So we versus a year ago, we're a 30% growth, and we've grown 50% over the last couple years.”
Verblio shifted customer base from 80% SMBs to 60% agencies in 3 years
“So now our so now our customer base is now 60% agencies versus 40% small businesses and, Three years ago, it would have been 80% small businesses.”
Verblio currently relies on zero paid marketing
“So we're actually doing no paid marketing right now.”
Verblio generates 95% of revenue from subscriptions
“So we have a subscription based model. So our subscription is based on services. So all of our revenue came from that services, probably 95 plus percent with maybe five percent from projects.”
Fewer than 5% of applicants pass Verblio's writing test
“We only accept just under five percent of our writers pass our initial writing test”
Verblio has been entirely bootstrapped since inception
“This is all bootstrapped from the very from the very beginning.”
Pokros: Verblio pays out roughly a third of revenue to writers
“And we pay out about a third of that to writers, which is a different marketing model than a lot or different business model than a lot of other players in our space.”
Pokros: Verblio serves over 1,000 active customers monthly
“We have where we serve over a thousand active customers every month.”
Pokros: Verblio CEO personally participates in every new employee onboarding session
“So we now, once you're big enough, so it took us a while to get there, but I'm a part of every onboarding session too. I want to run the part about culture. I want to talk about the culture company history.”
Pokros: Verblio on track to produce over 100,000 content pieces
“We're basically on track for over a 100,000 pieces of unique content created.”
Pacross: Verblio has around 1,000 platform clients
“We do have around a thousand clients on our platform”
Steve Pacross: Verblio creates content through 3,000 US-based writers
“Verblio is a content creation platform. We provide content through our network of 3000 US based writers. And we do that through our SaaS platform that's focused on how to deliver content at scale.”
Pacross: Verblio has 17 to 18 full-time employees and 23 total workers
“So we have 17 or 18 full-time hires right now, and seven, so we're 23 with the additional full-time contractors too.”
Pacross: Verblio is fully bootstrapped with no outside capital
“We are fully bootstrapped. So we have no capital, much less additional capital at our hands.”