The Ledger
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Top startup performers grow internally from modest salaries, not expensive hires
“I've never experienced the idea that by going out and paying, you know, a huge salary, I'm gonna get a 10 X person to come in. All my 10 X, if you like, people who work for me now, who are on good salaries, they all started joining the company at fairly modest…”
Harris: Hire at moderate base pay and reward high performance with raises
“Reward performance with high wages, i.e. Hire somebody on a moderate, conservative salary rate. If they do really well for you, by all means double their salary if you want to. Don't do it the other way around. A six figure salary does not necessarily bring in…”
Karandish: Capacity has acquired YouCanBookMe
“I am really excited to announce that Capacity has acquired You Can Book Me.”
Harris: YouCanBookMe was profitable at $5M ARR before acquisition
“We've got You Can Book Me running at a really nice five million dollars a year profitable”
Harris: Capacity acquired YouCanBookMe in a 50/50 cash and equity split
“So it was fifty-fifty, 50 cash, 50 equity.”
Harris: Bootstrapped founders can accept hybrid M&A deals much more easily
“So for me and Keith as founders, we could take a hybrid offer much more easily than so many people who, as David says, Take on far too much complicated cap table nonsense at the very beginning. And I highly recommend it because as founders, as bootstrap founde…”
Harris: YouCanBookMe maintains a 4.3x pay ratio vs 201x public US average
“Some incredible ratios coming out of public, publicly listed companies in America, but 201 times Is, is, is essentially the average. You can book me as 4.3”
Harris: Bootstrapped SaaS companies should target 25% to 30% net profit
“If you're a SaaS bootstrapped team a company around our sort of size, you should be expecting to make 25, 30% profit, which sounds like a lot, but as I said, nobody's giving this money to you, so you need to make it yourself.”
Harris: Stock options are efficient domestically but impractical for multinational teams
“And actually, I mean, share options are quite good and tax efficient for people in one country, but for us, we had to look at a scheme that was going to apply in multiple countries.”
Harris initially rejected Capacity's acquisition outreach
“The first time they contacted me, I said no.”
Karandish: YouCanBookMe processes one million bookings per month
“One of the biggest use cases we've had for Capacity is when folks want to automate their booking process, and now we're able to do that on the tune of a million bookings a month.”
Harris: YouCanBookMe received multiple acquisition offers prior to Capacity deal
“We got offers. In fact, we got offers over the last couple of years. We've had quite a few offers, but I never wanted to do it because I didn't want that feeling.”
YouCanBookMe employs 22 full-time staff and 35 total workers
“We're about 22 people full-time. And we have, we actually have an overall head count of around 35 people, if you include all of our contractors and things.”
Harris: YouCanBookMe was not for sale when Capacity approached
“We didn't go through a process. We weren't for sale. We didn't put up some big estate sign, you know, up in our lot capacity approached us.”
YouCanBook.me reached $5 million ARR with over 20,000 customers
“Now for context, to get that five million, we have over 20,000 customers.”
Harris: YouCanBook.me has never missed payroll in 12 years
“I've never ever not made payroll for the 12 years we've been running the company, and there's only one way to do that, which is financial literacy.”
Harris: YouCanBookMe average employee tenure is 3.3 years after doubling headcount
“You can book me 3.3 years. And it's only 3.3 because we've just doubled the size of the company. Recently, normally it was about four years, four and a half years.”
Harris: YouCanBookMe Paid $75k in First Profit Share Payout
“And in a year later, As we had always promised our team, we paid out 75,000 dollars, it was about 50,000 pounds, to the five eligible team members who'd been working with us for all that period of time.”
Harris: YouCanBookMe redistributes 10% of quarterly profit to tenured staff
“Basically our logic is, you've got to be employed, you can't be on a disciplinary, and you have to have worked for us for at least a year and a half. We then look at our net profit, excluding any you know, out of sort of extraordinary costs, like foreign excha…”
Harris: YouCanBookMe Has Over 1M Accounts and 22,000 Customers
“We've got over just a million accounts. Where, where am I looking here? There we go, million accounts. We've got about 22,000 customers, and to date, over the last 10 years, We've got eighty-two million bookings. We do around a million and a half bookings a mo…”
Harris: YouCanBookMe runs at a 95% gross profit margin
“In the UK, we are only required to report on direct costs like AWS and stuff. So for us, we run a sort of a 95% gross profit margin.”
Harris: YouCanBookMe is doubling headcount funded by monthly revenue
“Recently, we've just decided to double size of the company, so we're, but we're, what we're doing is we're investing we're eating into our profit margin. We're not trying to spend money that we didn't have. So we make it out of our monthly ARR, if you like.”
Harris: YouCanBookMe trailing 12-month voluntary employee turnover is 3.6%
“Turnover. This is the voluntary last 12 months of turnover at 9.2%. How many people are just deciding to resign and move on instead of, you know, other negative, more negative things? And you can put me at 3.6%.”