SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1283 $100m Exit Was $45m Cash Upfront, Using To Launch New $10/mo Website Builder with 3250 Customers
28 Jan 2019
Chapter 1: What is the guest's background and journey to success?
He was a refugee. He's been through a war. He went through the whole thing with Ukraine, co-founded Temple Monster, grew it to $25 million in revenue in 2013, sold it for $100 million to a private equity firm. $45 million of that was cash up front. The rest he's working right now through an earn out.
While he's doing that, though, he launched another company called Webleum, which is essentially subsidizing the creation of websites for folks and then upselling a $10 per month charge in terms of a SaaS model. So they've now got about 3,250 people paying $10 a month for their service. Super healthy lifetime values right now with their team. This is the top entrepreneurs podcast.
where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn.
Chapter 2: How did the guest grow TemplateMonster.com and what was its revenue at sale?
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.
Hello, everyone.
Chapter 3: What is Weblium and how does it differ from other website builders?
My guest today is David Braun. He was born in the USSR, got a war, was in a war there, was a refugee, moved to Ukraine and then co-founded TemplateMonster.com. He then grew that to $100 million company and sold it out to a private equity firm. Since then, he started a company called Weblium to build a McDonald's in the web design industry.
He's married with four kids, two wives, three dogs, five homes, 10,700 phone book contacts, 100 conferences a year, military business, and having a lot of fun. When the war started in Ukraine, he founded the largest crowdfunding platform, peoplesproject.com, to help wounded soldiers become an advisor to the Ministry of Defense and a civil activist. David, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yeah, sure. All right.
So how do you manage two wives in Ukraine, four kids and all this other stuff you're doing?
Chapter 4: How does the guest acquire customers for Weblium?
That's a good question. Well, basically, you know, like when you get a divorce, most of the people, they get mad at each of, you know, each of them. And then the kids usually suffer. And then when I start, I'm a sales guy, you know, like I'm selling lots of great stuff, you know, like, so I know like what the mindset is. So I went to my wife. So they said there is a grace period.
It's like when she's like really mad at you because you kind of, you know, like disappointed her. So wait until the grace period ends. Usually it's about six months. Then go and talk about the future.
Chapter 5: What are the financial metrics and growth rate of Weblium?
You mean after you were divorced?
Yeah. After the divorce, you like expiration periods, you know, like it is about six months. And then when you go and say like, what would be the future? And then usually you're talking about the guarantees. So what I did, I did a structure, um, uh, 18 years plan. So I put the money in the bank.
So like, she was super sure that, you know, like I would not leave her without, you know, like without the, uh, financial support and so on and the kids.
But you already had, right. You already divorced.
Chapter 6: What is the guest's strategy for managing cash flow and expenses?
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, like, so now she's a good friend of my existing wife. They go to vacation together, you know, like, so it's perfectly sorted out. My friends, they have a joke, say, when you get, when you retire, you're going to work in United Nations as a peacemaker.
So you literally pay your ex-wife for 18 years, some amount of money every year to keep her happy, basically?
Yeah. And it's like, it's a mix with not to her. It goes to her and, uh, and my son, you know, like together. So like they live together, they have real estate.
Chapter 7: How does the guest handle competition in the website building industry?
So once the financial question sorted out, so emotions are, you know, like became better. Yeah.
Now is she remarried?
Yeah. She's, she's already. And you know, like I know the guy, like he's good guy. So now it's everything is, so I'm happy now.
Okay. That's good. All right.
Chapter 8: What advice does the guest have for aspiring entrepreneurs?
Take me back to your first, it sounds like your first big win template monster.com. So, so it sounds like you were a refuge. I mean, how soon did you launch that company after you are a refugee and moved to Ukraine?
Yeah, it was 16 years ago. Like I was a first degree student in the university. I met a guy from New York and we kind of like got together well. And he offered me to launch the digital agency, like web design agency. And so I was like an outsourcing division, you know, like because labor costs in Ukraine were much lower, you know, like than in the US.
And then, you know, like when we started web design, we kind of didn't like it a lot of back and forth communications and lots of, you know, corrections and revisions. And then, you know, like I found my most productive designer. He was really fast. He was using some sort of elements, you know, like to complete the websites. And I asked him, like, what are you doing? What do you use it?
He's like, this is my template. And I tried to Google, not Google, Google was non-existing back then, you know, like it was Yahoo. So I searched for it and I found that there were no templates for web designers. So like we asked him to create 30 first templates. We published online and within first couple of months we took, we got like $70,000 in sales.
And after two years, we got like $1 million in sales. Then I created the affiliate program. We got like $10 million in sales. Like it was growing and booming. We basically created web templates industry.
So, and what year was this?
It was 2002. Okay.
So, and when did you sell it? What year?
Uh, 2013. Cause like we got the revolution in Ukraine. It was uncertainty, you know, like I, and my, my senior partner, he became, he got a cancer. So I had to be with him in Israel and in us. So I decided to sell the company.
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