SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1138 Goldman almost sold us for $12m, thankfully it failed
05 Sep 2018
Chapter 1: What is Shopper Approved and how does it work?
He's now going all in in his latest venture called Shopper Approved. It is a ratings system, essentially, that allows people to leave good and bad ratings. They get all of them tied into one. Scaling quickly, almost sold it for $12 million back in 2013. Thankfully, they did not. It fell apart. The company was launched in 2010.
They're now 30 people in Utah, bootstrapped, serving 7,000 customers, paying on average $71 a month, so last month did about $500,000 in revenue, hoping to break $6 million in ARR by the end of this year, only churning about 10% of their revenue annually, which is healthy news. Paying $400 to acquire these customers, getting paid back in the first four months, healthy economics.
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Chapter 2: What were the circumstances around the $12 million sale attempt?
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.
Chapter 3: How has Shopper Approved scaled since its launch?
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. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Scott Brandley. He is the CEO and co-founder of a company called Shopper Approved.
He's a lifelong entrepreneur and has been building software for over 20 years. He co-founded the company in 2010 and in 2016 made the Inc. 500 list. In 2017, they made the list again and were also number seven on the Utah 100 list, all with no outside funding or investors, which I love. Scott, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yes, I am.
Okay.
Chapter 4: What is the customer acquisition cost for Shopper Approved?
So if you did the whole ink thing, your numbers are public. What were you, what, you know, what'd you do in a revenue last year alone, 2016? We did about 4.7 million. I'm sorry. And that was 2016 or 2017? 2017. And what was 2016? 3.7, 3.8. Okay.
And what do you think you'll break this year? We're on track to do over six.
That's pretty good. Okay. So call it, what is that? 50, 40, 50% year over year growth is good. Bootstrap. Tell me about the company. What do you do?
So we've actually been developing software for a long time. We've built over 30 different software products. And Shopper approved is our biggest one. So we're kind of unique in that respect. Who is we though, Scott?
Is this an agency you launched with some buddies or what?
No. So I first started out with my dad. We built some companies called TrustGuard, Rhino Support, FreePrivacyPolicy.com. And then in 2010, I started building Shopper Approved with one of the people that worked for us. His name is Garrett Pearson. And we ended up becoming business partners and we've built other software companies since then.
Oh, interesting.
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Chapter 5: What unique business model does Shopper Approved utilize?
So what do you focus most of your time on now? Doing this consulting work, launching software, or do you focus on Shopper Approved exclusively?
Me personally, I focus mostly on Shopper Approved. And then my other business partners focus on the other companies.
Okay, so tell us more about Shopper Approved. What's it doing and how do you make money?
So Shop Reproved is kind of unique. There's two different types of review companies online, active review companies and passive review companies. Passive are more like when consumers can go leave a review on any company. What we do is active reviews or business driven reviews where the business hires us to collect reviews for them.
And that way we collect reviews from everyone equally, which we feel gives a better score.
Interesting. Okay. And how do you make money?
So we charge the businesses a monthly fee.
Okay. On average, what do they pay per month?
It depends on the size of the business, but I would say between 100 and 150 a month. Okay. 100, 150.
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