SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1312 How Consent.io Got Its First $15k in MRR
26 Feb 2019
Chapter 1: What led Rado Rakoff to start Consent.io?
He's gone through two kind of failed startups where he learned. Now he's building Consent.io, launched in 2017 with his team of 10 people based in Amsterdam and Bulgaria and other locations in the UK. Currently serving 10 customers, doing about $15,000 a month in revenue. They've only lost one customer since they've turned on revenue about six to 10%.
12 months ago, spending about 1500 bucks to acquire the customer, mainly through their business development person. It's too early for other economics, but again, growing, hopefully going to grow to about 50 grand per month in revenue in the next nine to 12 months. We can go out and raise 1 million on a $5 million valuation.
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 of hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million.
Chapter 2: How did Consent.io achieve its first $15,000 in monthly recurring revenue?
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. My guest today is Rado Rakoff.
Chapter 3: What customer acquisition strategies has Consent.io implemented?
He studied marketing and mass communications in the U.S., then transferred to international business overseas. He started in business development on market intelligence products, then transitioned into management consulting. Later, and for the longest, he spent... most of his time in political consulting.
His interest of social processes and information dissemination led to Consent.io as his first startup. After two failed starts, bad timing and not the right team, he's now going at it for the third time. Lucky and going strong for two years so far. We'll dive into the story today. Rado, are you ready to take us to the top? Thank you, Nathan. Sure. Your cat wants to join the interview.
She or he is on the counter behind you. I love this. What's their name? This is Ludo means crazy. It's nine o'clock in the evening. I love it. All right. Tell us about the company. What do you guys do and how do you make money? Sure. What we do in the shortest way possible is we're building the universal platform for communication between individuals and organizations.
Some call it feedback, some call it customer satisfaction measurement. The key to it is we believe that the world and consumers and businesses are ready for a fresh approach to market research. One that is much more transparent, open, democratized. Even we make money by charging a flat monthly fee to our customers who are the business side and, uh, to our individuals who provide the value of, uh,
ease of use, picking into how people feel about any topic, and last but not least, of course, empowering their voice so they're actually heard in the boardrooms. And walk me through kind of what your average customer pays per month for this. Sure. Most of our customers pay in the range of
starting from $300, let's say, dollars or euro up to $3,000, depending on the scope of the topics that they want to have real-time analytics and sentiment analysis on. So would you say $300 or $400 is a fair average, or is it closer to $3,000? $300 is the lower level, and $3,000 is the higher. Yeah, what would you say the average is about? On average, it's about $1,500. Okay. Okay, very good.
So good. You're kind of mid-market, pushing enterprise space with these price points. When did you launch the company? What year? We launched the company a year and a half ago, and we incorporated in Amsterdam towards the end of last summer. Okay, so 2017-ish. And what have you scaled to today in terms of total customers?
We're approaching about 10 total customers from different segments and industries, also different geographical markets with some in retail banking services, media. And 10 at kind of 1500 per month puts you at about 15,000 per month in revenue. Is that accurate? More or less. So yes. And where have you got these customers? Are they friends of yours from past businesses? Where'd you find them?
Right. Uh, it's a mix. Um, A lot of the initial customers came from our direct sales efforts. Then our investors helped a lot with opening some doors for us. We attended some conferences, startup matchmaking sessions, etc. And now we're transitioning into structuring resale partnerships with classic market research agencies and the like. How much have you raised to date?
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Chapter 4: What is the pricing model for Consent.io's services?
I believe Elon Musk is a hero for us all, isn't it? Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your business? Honestly, Hacker News. I just get a lot of inspiration and insights from there. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? That is a very tough question. Let's say between five and seven. Okay, so call it six on average. And what's your situation?
Married, single, you have kids? Uh, not married, but not single and long term relationship committed. Not married and any kiddos? No, not just two cats. Two cats. All right. Ludo and another one. And how old are you? I didn't catch that last one. How old are you? Oh, I'm turning 36 this August. 36. Okay, last question. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew?
Oh, a bit more on how much I didn't know. There you guys have it. He wishes he knew how much he didn't know back in the day. He's gone through two kind of failed startups where he learned. Now he's building Consent.io launched in 2017 with his team of 10 people. based in Amsterdam and Bulgaria and other locations in the UK, currently serving 10 customers, doing about $15,000 a month in revenue.
They've only lost one customer since they've turned on revenue about six to 12 months ago, spending about $1,500 to acquire the customer, mainly through their business development person. It's too early for other economics, but again, hopefully going to grow to about $50,000 per month in revenue in the next nine to 12 months so we can go out and raise revenue.
$1 million on a $5 million valuation. Let's see what happens. Rado, thank you for taking us to the top. Thank you, Nathan.
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