SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1068 SiteCake: We Rely on Whitelabel Partners With Unique Kickback Structure
27 Jun 2018
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn. Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million. I had no money when I started the company.
It was $160 million, which is the size of many IPOs.
We're a bit strapped. We have like 22,000 customers. With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc. are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes. I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Good morning, everybody. My guest this morning is Nikola Mirchik. He's the CEO of a company called SiteCake.
It's a simple CMS for static websites. He's an entrepreneur coming from the design and advertising background. And with this company, it's obviously a WordPress for static websites. He's also a blockchain enthusiast. Nikola, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Nathan. That's the representation. Thank you for calling me.
Of course. Blockchain enthusiasts, the thing's going up and down and all over the place right now. Are you buying all the way down to zero? Why are you an enthusiast?
Well, I'm an enthusiast because, not only because of the price changes and trading opportunities, but because that's the new economy, you know. I see blockchain as a new economy where all networks become marketplaces. So, I believe that it will be much more efficient and faster economy than the one that we have today.
Is Sidekick built with any kind of blockchain technology or no? No, no, no.
Sidekick is the regular CMS, but we have plans to transfer it and use the possibilities of blockchain.
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Chapter 2: How did SiteCake evolve from a web design agency?
And so are you, I want to understand more kind of economically how this works. So are you in full control of the company to date or have you raised capital?
No, no. So, so far, you know, we, we are bootstrapped.
Okay. Bootstrapped.
Yes, yes.
And who's, and who's we? Do you have a co-founder?
Yes. Nikola Ivancic, he's co-founder, CTO. and uh and president like he's also you know so we are like the core three of us there are two developers and what's the total team size look like uh total team size small as six people six people okay oh where are you guys all based we're in serbia all everybody okay so why um
know obviously there's a lot of hype around blockchain right now but how do you guys have a rational conversation about is an ico the proper way to raise capital and the proper way to build a company in the space well that's something that's changing from month to month you know because this this space is so new you know and people are learning you know mistakes of of other uh startups that are doing infrastructure you know is uh is uh building and uh
uh you know now even these days your exchanges are offering capital for icos so so you know you don't know if who is who is the best partner at this time maybe it's a vc maybe it's exchange because they will you know push you uh immediately uh on a on a well-established exchange so we'll be able to sell more tokens you know yep so so these these things are really really uh changing quickly
Also, you know, there are drawbacks like banks are not, if you want to go with a bank like, for example, Silicon Valley Bank, you know, you need to go through six months of compliance in order to do an ICO. So, you know, there are still, it's very hard to do this.
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Chapter 3: What revenue models does SiteCake utilize?
But I learned so much about where the users are scrolling and clicking on my site using that tool. It helps me increase conversion rates, make more money and grow those businesses faster. And we'll have to see what happens with those businesses, but I'm buying them. I'm buying them very quick and I'm using NathanLaka.com forward slash hot jar for all of my website analytics. You can, too.
I work with them. It's totally free. You can go to Nathan Latka dot com forward slash hot jar. No credit card required. Again, use it as much as you want. Nathan Latka dot com forward slash hot jar. I'll see you there. How do you price an ICO? How do you how will you price an ICO? How do you I mean, how do you actually logistically do it?
But usually the ICOs are done on Ethereum blockchain, so that's the, let's say, safest route because it's made for easy creation. Ethereum blockchain is made for easy creation of new tokens, you know, and so you announce the ICO, create Ethereum tokens, then sell those tokens or just percentage of the token, let's say 50%, you know.
And, uh, you, uh, in that way you acquire capital to build the product, you know?
So how much, but like, what do you, I mean, how much do you, would you like to raise if you do ICO?
Uh, you know, for, for what we have in mind, you know, uh, a couple of million will be enough. Yep. And you know, these days. We actually don't want to raise too much money because that's a problem, you know, in the start. So we want to go, you know, organically.
And generally speaking today, kind of pre-ICO and you're four years in, how many customers have you scaled to?
We have like 8,000 customers.
Okay. And are those white label partners or those are individual paying customers?
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Chapter 4: What challenges does SiteCake face with its business model?
And we will provide a service to these local guys. Got it. And then we'll provide the technical capabilities, CMS and templates, and they'll do the selling and support. In this way, you know, this is a B2B2C model. And then, you know, they can, for the customers, they can do support in their own language, you know, okay, everybody knows English. And also set their own pricing.
Because, you know, the $14 per website is maybe okay for US, but not for Brazil, not for Serbia.
You set a minimum, though, that your white label partners have to charge, right? So they don't undercut your own pricing?
Yeah.
for this version, which is Sidekick Cloud, you know, we will charge only annual revenue for them. So it's up to them how good they are in selling, you know, what they need.
Yeah, Nicola, my point is though, you also sell direct to consumers. How do you prevent your white label partners from offering it at a price that's cheaper than what you offer it directly?
Yeah, I understand. So we are basically not selling, you know, at this moment, the Sidekick is just engine of the car. So end users cannot use it, you know, so it's only for designers, web agencies. Only white label.
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
My favorite business book is right now is a spider and a star. And maybe, you know, well, that's the one.
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