SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1171 New Founder Talks First 30 Days, $160k in Revenue, Next Steps
08 Oct 2018
Chapter 1: What led to the launch of Lemlist and its initial success?
Launched Lemlist, got co-founders there at his office location there, which is, I believe, I think he said it's called Station F in France. Met his co-founders, three of them. Wrote the first line of code several months ago. Now that they've launched, they did a big successful launch on AppSumo, did about 130 grand in revenue there, one-time revenue.
He's now transitioning and going and saying, how can we get real monthly recurring revenue or start stacking a stream of revenue? 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.
Chapter 2: How did the AppSumo launch impact Lemlist's revenue?
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.
Chapter 3: What strategies is Lemlist considering for monthly recurring revenue?
Hello, everyone. My guest today is Guillaume Mouvesh. He's the CEO and co-founder of a company called Lemlist. He's a SaaS lover with a passion for growth hacking. Since starting the company, he's traveled the world for a year using social networks to stay at locals and local spots for free. He has two master's degree in chemical engineering and marketing and is now all in on the company.
Guillaume, are you ready to take us to the top? Yes. All right. What does Lemlist do and how do you make money? So Lemlist is a software as a service. So it's the first email automation platform that can generate personalized images directly into cold emails. Okay, so personal images into cold emails. Tell me what that means. Is this like merge tags for images?
Yes, so you can insert merge tags within images or dynamic images such as logos, people faces, or whatever you want actually. As long as you have an URL or something you can upload, you can insert and create personalized images. Got it. So like if there's a meme of Beyonce that I want to send out to everyone, I can say, you know, hey, you know, bracket, bracket, first name, bracket, bracket.
This is you last Sunday night or something like that. Absolutely. That's something you could do. That's your Beyonce every night, right? Yeah. All right. Tell me more about the company. So you said it's a SaaS play. What do people pay you on average per month? Uh, it's around like, uh, $40. Okay. 40 bucks per user. And then give me more of the story here. So you traveled the world.
I mean, when did you start the company officially? Uh, we started like the first line of codes mid November in 2017, launched in beta beginning of January this year and, uh, officially launched on AppSumo like a few weeks ago. Okay. And what are you at today in terms of total paying customers? So we had more than 3,000 customers paying on AppSumo, and we have a total of 4,000 users today.
So I know AppSumo, it's a one-time-for-life. Tell me about just your monthly recurring. How many just monthly recurring? Uh, we're just starting right now. So less than 10. Yeah, exactly. Okay, good. So how do you start? I mean, AppSumo can be really valuable, uh, or it can be really bad because you basically have to support these people for life.
So like, how did you strategically think about doing it and how do you move all these customers and eyeballs? AppSumo has driven you. How do you change these people over to a monthly plan so you can get more value? Okay, so there is actually there is a few type of people in AppSumo. You have a great part that is buying stuff because of fear of missing out.
So those people actually buy coupons, maybe log in once and would never use actually the product. Then you have all the person that are giving really great feedback. And this is the one we actually like are talking to. So companies, for example, who have VC funding or this kind of things. And then, you know, like it's all about the active users.
At the moment, we don't really have like a really high server load. So for example, our server's load is still the same. So we still get like really high margin, you know, since it's software. And that's pretty much what we're at right now. And tell me about the team. What's the team size? Uh, we're just like three people. So two co-founders, uh, three co-founders, sorry.
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Chapter 4: What unique features does Lemlist offer for email automation?
We all have different and complementary skills. So we think like all skills are equal. We need you. You know, we need the tech part. We need the commercial and like business part. So it's pretty much. Yeah. Makes sense. Now, how are you supporting yourself right now? Obviously, it's not really making that much money today. How are you paying yourselves? We're not.
So that's why we actually have to start growing the MRR. So we have a little bit of savings. And, you know, like our goal is to get like salary just to to live. And as of maybe like October 2018. Yeah. What are your current because you're based in are you based in France? We're based in Paris. So we are. Yeah. I'm envious. It's beautiful there. So you're based in Paris.
What have you been able to minimize your living expenses to per month? I live at my girlfriend's house, so I'm not paying rent, which is great. And I don't know, around like 500 euros. I eat a lot of pastas. I was going to say, so good. You figured out a way to hack rent, you know, get a girlfriend. You figured out a way to keep your food really low. What, no other expenses?
You walk to work, no cars, gas, nothing like that? No. And we also have like French is it's a wonderful country because we have some subvention from states. So I actually spend maybe like 500 euros per month and the states is giving me like 450. So it's.
yeah you what do you what do you mean the the the country gives you the country gives money you know for entrepreneurs that are launching businesses and uh yeah yeah so so how do you go from successful app sumo launch you get a chunk of cash you have all these users you guys are probably all in the support emails all day long for the past couple weeks how do you now shift focus to like getting your first 100 monthly paying customers where are they going to come from
Okay, so like the acquisition channel are obviously called emailing, because we use our own platform is very cheap, you know, like, scrapping emails nowadays is like super easy. And sending emails to people is kind of our specialty. So we have actually like really high reply rate whenever we start launching campaigns. And also definitely use referral and affiliate programs.
So use our customer base to bring users and give them some revenue shares based on the users they bring us. And how do you convince them to market your tool versus all the other tools out there that do this kind of thing? It's actually really interesting because basically like our differentiation with the images is actually like super powerful.
And every time someone use Lemlist, they realize that they increase their reply rates. We have like companies such as Freshdesk. Yep. like who have been, uh, they have been like AB testing, like, uh, images versus no images. And they realized that they got like higher reply rates whenever they were using like personalized images.
So, you know, like, uh, with all these type of reviews, like right now we have around like, uh, I don't know, 120 reviews on cap Terra and lots of people are actually, you know, like, uh, how did you get all those reviews on cap Terra? Well, actually, they got in touch with us and they say, hey, guys, do you have users that would like to give a review?
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Chapter 5: How does Lemlist plan to convert AppSumo users to monthly subscribers?
And there are like, uh, lots of programs such as like Facebook, Microsoft and so on. Got it. Okay. So, so besides affiliates, what other ideas, I mean, what other things are you guys pursuing to drive your first paying monthly customers? So affiliates, cold email, and AdWords. We're going to try to steal some competitors. Who do you see yourself competing with?
So I think Mailshake is a decent competitor. There is also companies such as Reply, Reply.io. Or, I don't know, like Prospect HQ or Outreach, for example. Yeah. A well-known one. So what do you guys want to do with the company, right? I mean, how old are you? I'm 26.
Chapter 6: What challenges does Lemlist face in customer acquisition?
Okay, 26. We're actually about the same age. So what do you guys want to do with the company? I mean, is this to create a quick win, make some money, and then go for the billion-dollar home run? Or you think this can be a really big billion-dollar business? It's very difficult. Like we're very early. Like I would say we want to grow the company as big as possible.
We're not really looking for fundings because that's not really our vision. And we like the way bootstrapping company works because I believe we really focus on users. Then, you know, we find like really market fit and a channel of acquisition that works and that is cheap. And then like we can grow steady. But, you know, like...
really and with no kind of VC pressure and all and so on and yeah basically like The goal is really to be different from what every other cold email is doing. People were saying for a long time, don't send images in your cold email. That's not good. That's not professional. It's not true. We've experienced it. It's working.
As long as you be different and you get the attention of your user, you get more replies. That's a fact. And everyone who's using it loves it. So it's... It speaks by itself, basically. And tell me more about how long this took you to code. So you said you wrote the first line of code, I believe you said November of 2017, right? So it took two, three months to code? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So the entry barrier in terms of like, I mean, my co-founders are really good. Like they're a bit older. They're both like around like 40 years old. And maybe they started coding when they were five. How did you convince them to join you? Whose idea was it? Who was convincing who?
I actually met them in Station F. Initially, whenever they saw my determination, I think I convinced them because I started working on another project with Russian freelancers. I had to leave to Russia and spend like three weeks in the middle of nowhere in Russia. And then to show how motivated I was to launch a proper SaaS business.
And then in the end, they got convinced and they say, okay, let's do this. So yeah, that's pretty much how it is. Have they had an exit? Did they all quit corporate jobs or something to do this? No, they have actually, they also have another project called Talkus. Talkus is basically like a chat integrated in Slack. So people can get in touch with you directly.
That's what we're using on our website. So it's a live chat that is integrated in Slack.
great interesting well listen i i love this story uh you're obviously really early and people always go nathan like have some people that earlier on your show don't don't wait till they're like you know 100 million in arr and they're about to go public so it's fun to kind of get in your head and and understand kind of where you're at how you're thinking about growth channels um and kind of how you found your co-founders i think it's a great story so any any other like today after you hang up with me what's the first thing you're gonna go do
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Chapter 7: How does the team structure and equity distribution work at Lemlist?
So that's a great thing here. I can interview a lot of people just like make them on them list, try to see how they react, you know, to our onboarding changing stuff. And, uh, yeah, pretty much what I do. I love it. All right. Let's wrap up here. Guillaume with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? Favorite business book would be Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
I love to understand how people think and behave regarding like pricing and so on. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? I like Harry V. I know it's baby basic, but I really like him. You know, it's just do it. I like this mentality in my sets. Number two, what's your favorite online tool for building the business?
Um, I really like station, you know, it's, uh, it helps me save like a lot of time. What is it? Station.com or what? Uh, I don't know. I can find the link for you. I think it's a station.co or something. It was like a most aborted product of the year on product. Okay. Got it. They're also French, French connection. Okay, good. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Ah, between six and eight. That's pretty good. And what's your situation? Married, single, you have kiddos? Girlfriend. Girlfriend, no kids. None that you know of, right? Yeah, exactly. All right. Last question. Take us back six years. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew? I would say invest all my money in Bitcoin, as many people here know. All right, guys.
There you have it from Guillaume. Again, launched Lemless. Got co-founders there at his office location there, which is, I believe, I think he said it's called Station F in France. Met his co-founders, three of them. Wrote the first line of code several months ago. Now that they've launched, they did a big successful launch on AppSumo. Did about $130,000 in revenue there, one-time revenue.
He's now transitioning and going and saying, how can we get... full real monthly recurring revenue or start stacking a stream of revenue. I'm going to look at affiliate deals, going to look at cold traffic, cold emailing, going to look at AdWords as well. Guillaume, we're wishing you the best and thanks for taking us to the top. Thanks a lot, Nathan.
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