The Ledger
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Pokros: Recruiting scorecards are stupid and merely reinforce preexisting choices
“We firmly Believe that scorecards are stupid. I think that scorecards make you feel like the choice that you made makes you feel better about the choice you made. It only reifies your existing values and your existing choices.”
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: Recruitment should be run by the CEO, not HR
“We don't think it should be run by people ops and HR. We think it should be run by the CEO of the company.”
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.”
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…”
Pacross: AI video should prioritize cutting costs over perfecting quality
“The twist that we put on it is I think that the main goal of those of that video technology should be to dramatically reduce the cost of creating the video as opposed to fine tuning the quality.”
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: Early-Stage Hires Must Be Explorers Defining Their Own Roles
“Every person that you're buying, that you're bringing on board is an explorer. They're creating their own job rec. So you created a job rec that you thought was going to fit them, but they'd never created that job. And so you should think about the people you'…”
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.”
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.”
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 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.”
Pacross: First round of PPP funding will quickly run out
“There's not going to be enough in there for the first round. They're either going to have to reduce the amount or find some other way to funnel through or offer a heck of a lot more.”
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.”
Marketplace solutions exit at 2x to 5x revenue, not 10x
“Marketplace solutions are really a combination of the two. So you might be looking at an exit that's more like, Two to three times two to three times revenue or three to five times versus the 10 X that most VCs are looking for.”
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 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 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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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 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.”
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 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 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 has been entirely bootstrapped since inception
“This is all bootstrapped from the very from the very beginning.”
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 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 currently relies on zero paid marketing
“So we're actually doing no paid marketing right now.”
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.”
Pokros: Verblio serves over 1,000 active customers monthly
“We have where we serve over a thousand active customers every month.”