The Ledger
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Rubin: Debt is always cheaper than equity for successful startups
“That's always cheaper than equity. If you think you're going to be successful, that is always cheaper.”
ShipHero generates approximately $5M in annual recurring revenue
“We don't disclose exactly, but in like the five million ARR bull book.”
ShipHero reached $5M ARR with no marketing team or SDRs
“We hired a first salesperson in September. So whatever that was like eight months ago. And but it's not, we have no SDRs. And we didn't, we don't actually have a marketing team.”
ShipHero refuses VC until they prove a reliable customer acquisition formula
“Cause I don't have a formula for growth where X dollars equals Y customers. I need to figure that out before I take any more serious money.”
ShipHero averages $1,500 monthly per customer, with 3PLs paying up to $10K
“Average customer pays us. About 1500 a month. But our three PLs generally are paying us between five and 10,000 a month because they have a lot of More shipments, they're shipping for a lot of merchants versus if someone was shipping on their own in their own …”
Rubin: ShipHero has around 300 direct-paying customers
“People that pay us directly, so not counting the merchants on the three PL around 300.”
Rubin: Most ShipHero growth comes from existing customers
“Most of ours growth is from existing customers.”
Aaron Rubin self-funded ShipHero with $1.2M from a previous exit
“So I put in the first cash from my previous company once we hit, which was a 1.2 million that I put in my own money.”
Rubin: ShipHero raised $435K on SAFE notes at $100K MRR
“Once we hit around a hundred KMRR, I got some friends and family on safe notes for like 435,000 from them.”
Rubin: ShipHero secured a term loan from Lighter Capital instead of revenue-based financing
“So they say they do revenue based financing and I had spoken to them and I said, I don't want to do revenue based financing. I want a term loan. And then they gave me a term loan.”
ShipHero pays 10% to 20% interest on its Lighter Capital term loan
“It was I'll say between 10 and 20%.”
Lighter Capital's loan required no warrants, only key-person life insurance
“It's three year term. So it's like fantastic. I'm like anything else where you kind of stuck with them because you got warrants or you got a board seat, no board seat, no warrants. Only weird bit was I had to get life insurance for myself,”
ShipHero Gross Churn Is Under 1% Monthly for Live Customers
“Once we get customers to go live, it's less than one percent a month that churn out.”
Rubin: ShipHero Was Profitable for the Entire Previous Year
“Well, we, so now that we took the money from lighter we'll dip into the negative this month, but for the entire last year, we were profitable.”
Rubin: ShipHero Maximum Monthly Burn Will Peak Around $90K to $100K
“Beginning like our first, our max burn will probably be around 90 or a hundred K as we kind of mapped out what we've been spending on one.”
ShipHero generates almost all revenue from SaaS
“Our revenue is almost all from SAS. We do drive some revenue to our three PLs and we got a little money off it, but it's not significant compared to the SAS revenue.”