SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1360 How He's Shifting Doodle Meeting Tool 200m MAU's to SaaS
15 Apr 2019
Chapter 1: What inspired Gabriele to join Doodle in 2016?
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Don't take yourself too seriously. Doodle was founded in 2007. A company called Tamedia bought 49% of it in 2011. And then in 2014, they bought the entire company. Gabriel, who joined us today, was a part of Tamedia. And in 2016, when they were not happy with the growth of Doodle, they said, we need an executive to jump in and run this thing. Gabriel said... I'll do it. Looks exciting.
They now have over 200 million users, again, helping you more easily construct and get your friends or colleagues together to have meetings. They've got twenty five thousand paying customers on their SAS product, which makes about 15 percent of the revenue today. That's one five percent. The other eighty five percent is advertising based revenue. But again, they want to flip that percentage.
They've got those twenty five thousand customers paying about three bucks a month. So somewhere between 60 and 100 grand per month in revenue. Hoping to drive up to about $1.5 million in ARR run rate by the end of this year, December 2018. Willing to pay $8 to $10 for a free trial with our team of 60 people based between Zurich, Berlin, and Tel Aviv.
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. 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 Gabriel Otino.
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Chapter 2: How has Doodle evolved since its founding in 2007?
So I get that. But I want to understand. So did they pursue you in 2016? Or did you pursue them? And what revenue were they before turning to SaaS? Yeah. So what we've been doing is that Tamedia, the mother company of Doodle, has owned Doodle now for four years. So in 2014, Tamedia took 100% stake of this. And it, you know, grew steadily, especially on the revenue side.
It grew nicely on the user side, but on the revenue side, it grew steadily. And so the feeling of the media, you know, of the corporate was there is so much more potential in this. Let's come. Let's do and change something. And. At that point in time, when I came in, we really were tasked to say, look, what is going to be your growth strategy?
And so we looked at what we had been doing for all of the years before, which is advertising business. And we just saw that the growth trajectory there wouldn't be as interesting. And also that, you know, given that this is a productivity tool, you really want to align, you know, your incentives with the incentive of your users and customers.
And so, you know, they come to you and pay for what they get. And so we're now really turning this into a subscription business where we're about enabling great meetings. So really, going into the scheduling full on with, uh, with a suite of, uh, of other tools as well.
Not only the group scheduling, you, you know, um, but also, you know, one-on-one scheduling integrations into your, uh, calendar, um, smart scheduling as we do with, um, our bots that, um, we bought. So we bought a two years ago and is really startup, uh, that does, um, that does a smart scheduling bot in Slack called Mekon.
And so all of these pieces together, we're really now putting together to a, you know, all encompassing scheduling tool that you can use today. So did Tamedia pursue you in 2016 or you pursued them? I was in Tamedia and they asked me to do this job. Oh, I see. You were at the parent company and you said, oh, I want to go jump into that thing. It looks fun. Yeah. I see. Exactly.
And I've been doing this now for two years and we've changed quite a lot. So we've grown from, you know, being 20 people to being about 60 people now. Where's everybody based? Um, we're based about half is based in Zurich, about a quarter in Berlin, a little bit less than a quarter in Tel Aviv. And, uh, we have some people, um, helping out from, uh, from an outsourcer in Belgrade.
So we are spread across four offices in, in Europe and Israel. Um, yeah. And just to be clear today, now Pureplay SaaS company, or do you still have a legacy trailing kind of revenue? We have, we have still, we have still a large part of our, for, uh, of our revenue still advertising. Um,
So, um, so we've, we've spent the last year or so really to, uh, to, to get our technical house in order and, and to really focus on, on the premium product. And now we're starting to monetize it. So we're starting to be more aggressively monetizing the premium, the premium business. I want to focus the rest of the show on the SaaS side of business.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Gabriele face in transforming Doodle into a SaaS business?
Okay. And why not just stick all annual? What did you see in your data that said, hey, we need a monthly option? So it's just to see another conversion point. So to have a lower barrier of entry. And obviously, as most SaaS companies do that, the monthly price will be higher if you multiply it up by 12 than the annual price.
So, uh, so we want to see how that, how that works out and if we can get some more revenue growth out of having a monthly plan. And I'm curious how it's, you know, how the experiment has gone so far. So 2016, you join, you think about pricing, you start transitioning to SAS and that makes up 15% of your revenue.
Walk me through how many customers do you now have just on the SAS project, ignore your advertising side. Yeah. So, um, so, uh, so we are, we have about, um, Between 25 and 30,000 customers. And do you feel like that's a good conversion rate from your 200 million free users or a bad conversion rate? I mean, how does that set you? That's really low.
That's why we have a huge potential in front of us. And that's where really we are all totally convinced that we can flip this over to a 90 to 10 business where 90% is subscription and actually keep the advertising growing. So, um, so if you, uh, so, so, so we really believe there's a huge potential in the, in the South side of this business. Yep.
And again, just only Gabriel speaking to the SAS side, if I take that, those 25,000 customers times that caught $3 a month ish price point, right? I mean, that puts you right now, this revenue stream for you guys is about 62, 64 grand per month, something like that. Is that accurate? Yeah. Yeah, it's actually a bit more. Okay. Have you broken 100 yet or no? 100 grand a month? Not yet. Okay, cool.
So as you kind of balance these two very different revenue streams and you're setting goals with your team, what is the goal by the end of the year in terms of what ARR run rate you want to hit on the SaaS side of the business? So we want to get to about 1.5 million ARR by the end of the year. Got it. So call it like 120 grand a month, something like that. You're at 62 now.
So doubling between now and the end of the year. Yeah. As he looks to the sky and goes, I hope we can do that, right? Yeah, no, it's like looking to the sky and saying, yeah, it's a stretch, but it's a good stretch. If you're between 64 and 100 grand today per month in revenue, give me a sense of growth. Where were you a year ago? So a year ago, we were... Wow, good question. I'd have to check.
I know, though, that we're getting much, much better month over month. So our cash collection this month compared to last month has gone up more than 20%. We are on a roll right now. It's going really well. We are on a roll to be up about 40% in cash collection compared to last month. That's where I say we have a huge potential because historically Doodle hasn't
really talked a lot or communicated a lot with their users and customers to really bring them to a conversion. Because it's very Swiss, it's very privacy, and we don't want to bother our users too much.
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Chapter 4: What revenue model does Doodle currently use and how is it changing?
Good question. Uh, next question. No, no, seriously though. I mean, you seem like a talented guy. Why agree to do this with no equity? Um, that's, uh, yeah, that's good. That's it's, it's really interesting. I love this product. I really love this product. I love, um, the, the vision we have for this and, um, and, um, it's, um, it's, it's a good, it's a good gig really.
Um, I'm, I'm allowed to, to grow a company. I'm allowed to really. you know, make, make it big in this thing. And, um, and so, yeah, um, that's, uh, do you have at least, I mean, have you negotiated some kind of performance where like, if you guys hit this much revenue, then you're awarded this much. I obviously have a bonus, uh, part of this and so on and so forth.
Uh, so there's, it's not like I'm, I'm, I'm totally, yeah, I was gonna say, there's gotta be some way you have some upside if you work really hard to grow this thing. Absolutely. Very good. Gabriel, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? Yeah, I love the Creativity Engine by Ed Catmull. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Yeah, I've met recently the CEO and co-founder of Monday.com. I'm really impressed by what they're doing in their business. And yeah, there's a lot to learn from him. And guys, we had Gil and those guys on. They're also a great sponsor of the show because we use them. You can check them out at monday.com forward slash the top. Great 10% off just for the top listeners.
Gabriel, it's nice how that works, isn't it? We didn't even plan that. All right. Number three, what is your favorite online tool for growing your business? Um... It's basically, it's been slack at the moment. It's really just for the communication of it. Growing the business, you mean by, you know, leads, growth and so on.
Intercom, we're using Intercom right now for all of our user communication. Great. Yeah. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Eight. That's good. And what's your situation? I see a ring on, so you're married. How many kids? Yeah, married and two girls. Two kids. All right. And how old are you? I'm 41. 41. All right, Gabriel, take us home here. Last question.
What do you wish your 20 year old self knew? Oh, wow. Um, good question. Um, I don't know. Never asked myself this question. Um, what do you tell your little girls? What, what they should know? Yeah. Yeah. What do you tell them? Like when you're, when you talk to them about business or just, you know, doing what they love and life, I mean, what do you tell them? What's advice you give them?
Yeah, I think, I think, I really tried to give them the advice that, um, or one of, one of the things I really believe in is that, that, um, you, you shouldn't use, you shouldn't take yourself and all of the people around too seriously. You should always be able to laugh about, um, yourself. And, um, even when it's, when it, when the going goes, uh, tough.
So I think, uh, that really helps me to, um, Yeah, to be kind of healthy. Good. Guys, don't take yourself too seriously. Doodle was founded in 2007. A company called Tamedia bought 49% of it in 2011. And then in 2014, they bought the entire company. Gabriel, who joined us today, was a part of Tamedia.
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