SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1119 "Channel partners gave us 200,000 customers, $40m ARR"
17 Aug 2018
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
He says he would have focused on one thing. Launched his company back in 2005 and has resisted the urge to raise or sell with his partner Aaron and their third partner coming out of EIG after he sold Bluehost to them. The company is now serving over 200,000 customers. They've amassed that amount of customers, mainly relying on channel partnerships with hosting companies.
Each of those customers pay on average $20 per month at a minimum, so about $4 million per month there in revenue or about $50 million annually. Obviously, a big cost is the cut. back to the channel partners, but still healthy. 30% logo churn annually, maybe up to 40%, depending on the cohort. Healthy LTV at about $480. Super, super high revenue per employee, which I love.
They've done all this very efficiently with a team of 12, totally bootstrapped up there in Seattle.
Chapter 2: How did SoloSEO achieve 200,000 customers?
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.
Chapter 3: What role do channel partnerships play in SoloSEO's growth?
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.
Chapter 4: How does SoloSEO generate revenue from its 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. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Michael Jensen. He's an entrepreneur and co-founder of Solo SEO, the leading provider of DIY website marketing and SEO tools.
He lives in Washington State and enjoys racing and being adventurous with his kids. In fact, he just came in. Michael, you told me from sledding. Are you ready to take us to the top?
Chapter 5: What challenges does SoloSEO face regarding customer churn?
Yes, for sure. All right. So what'd you guys get a big snowstorm yesterday?
Well, big is relative, but here in Washington, we get any snow, we try to make the most of it. So we actually went to try to find a sled Hill and there wasn't none, there wasn't much left. So we just threw snowballs. It was fun. That's cool.
All right.
Chapter 6: How has SoloSEO managed to keep a lean operation?
Tell us about solo SEO. What's it doing? How do you make money?
So solo SEO is a set of do it yourself SEO tools. And, uh, We work directly with customers and we also partner with hosting companies. And so hosting companies will resell our tools as part of the packages that they sell with their hosting. And then we work with customers directly too, anyone with a website basically, that wants to rank higher in the search engines.
So we provide a bunch of tools that help them to do that.
And what are people paying you on average per month, would you say?
Um, so the plans start from anywhere from, uh, $19 a month to up to $99 a month for our pro package. So what do you think a fair average is at 20, 30 bucks? Yeah.
Yeah. About then somewhere in there. Okay. And give me the backstory. When did you launch the company?
So this goes back to really 2005. My business partner, Aaron Stewart, and I, we had tried out a few different online companies and done a few things together just seeing what would work. And we had a real problem getting a lot of traffic as anyone. Yeah. And so we started looking into SEO.
And as we dug deeper into that, we kind of saw this space where more small entrepreneurial business owners kind of like us couldn't afford the big guys to pay SEO $5,000 a month and up. And so we kind of saw this hole there. And so what we decided to do then was make a business of that and create these do-it-yourself SEO tools because there were free tools all over the place.
And so we decided to put it all in one system and to make it a tool set with a bunch of reports and things that would let just the average website owner be able to do something themselves.
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