SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1603 How She Used a Tracking Watch To Get Her First 1000 Customers, $20k MRR
14 Dec 2019
Chapter 1: What innovative product did Karen Cantwell launch in 2014?
She launched I Stay Safe Corp, which basically helps you keep your family members safe. Now over a thousand members paying to keep their members safe. 20 bucks a month on average and about 20 grand per month today. That's up from 11 grand a month just about a year ago. So healthy growth burning about 10 grand per month, but they've raised about 1.6 million bucks from a nice angel down in Florida.
brisbane and australia four people full-time again all down there in brisbane about 85 logo churn per year that's why they're adding new products to basically tie up and expand more of the product cycle spending call between two and four bucks to acquire one of these new customers so quick payback period
hello everybody my guest today is karen cantwell she was a born innovator in 2014 she launched tick launched tiktok track the first gps smartwatch globally for children followed up with a bespoke software monitoring platform that platform now hosts multiple gps devices providing one platform for the safety of everybody in your family she holds an mba from qut karen are you ready to take us to the top
Yeah, for sure.
Chapter 2: How did I Stay Safe Corp grow to over 1000 customers?
Lovely to be talking to you.
Okay, so tell us about I Stay Safe. What's the company do specifically? And are you a hardware company or a pure play SaaS company?
So we're pretty much a little bit of both. When we first started in 2012 with TikTok Track, it was primarily to have a hardware solution for children to keep them safe via the watch.
Chapter 3: What pricing model does I Stay Safe Corp use for its services?
But then we realized that we could help so many more people through a software solution that integrated other GPS devices to keep people safe. So then we kind of over the last two or three years have sort of pivoted into more of a software slash hardware company and we operate via a SaaS business model.
Okay. And what is the company? TikToktrack.com.au or kind of the istaysafecorp.com.au?
So iStaySafeCorp.com.au is iStaySafe is the company and iStaySafe really focuses on the software as a service solution. TikTok Track was our primary product that we actually launched to market in 2014, which was a child safety watch.
Which one is pure SaaS in the first one?
The first one.
OK, so let's focus on that for the rest of the interview, just for the sake of clarity, even though understanding your first success came in the form of this TikTok track concept.
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Chapter 4: How did Karen support herself in the early days of her business?
So for for I stay safe, you know, help me understand when people pay for the service, what are they getting and and and what do they pay on average per month?
So basically, I Stay Safe is a software platform now that integrates multiple tracking devices. So when someone pays a service fee, they're adding a device or a hardware piece to keep someone in the family safe.
So if they're adding a mobile phone to track their adult child or their loved one, then they're looking at sort of around $3.50 a month for the service to add it to our platform and receive all the features. If they're adding a TikTok track watch for one of the younger children, then the service starts at around $12 a month because there's a SIM card in the watch that we provide as well.
So it ranges from about $12 up including the SIM.
So, I mean, just because I don't want to go down every product skew and every customer cohort, on average when someone signs up with you, are they paying $12?
Around $6 a month.
Six-ish. Okay. So maybe it's like, you know, two of the things or one TikTok and then one $3 thing. Yeah. Okay.
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Chapter 5: What strategies has Karen implemented to acquire customers?
Depending on who you want to keep safe in the family is what sort of device you add to track via our software platform.
Yep. Yep. And when did you launch the company? What year?
So we started the company in 2012, launched our first solution in 2014.
That's great. Now, the early days are obviously really tricky. How did you support yourself those first two years?
Um, so I had a, um, an advertising agency that I, um, they owned. So that was my first business. So I basically ran that, um, to provide an income while I was getting, um, I stay safe up off the ground and just work from home.
That's great. Now over the, you know, obviously you going through all the trenches, making it happen now, four years later, what have you scaled to in terms of, sorry, I guess it's, yeah, it's four years. How many customers have you scaled to?
So we've mainly focused on Australia to sort of get it right here before we go globally. So we've got over a thousand subscribers on our database at the moment. And they're in every state and territory across Australia.
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Chapter 6: What challenges has Karen faced with customer churn?
And we're now just starting to look at the global market.
That's great. I mean, that's wonderful, Karen. Congratulations. I want to talk more about how you got those customers first and why just Australia first. I think there's probably some lessons there. Can I take that thousand times that $6 price point? You're doing about six grand a month right now.
Yeah, so with the majority of our customers, we're probably selling the TikTok track watch too. So at the moment, our average recurring revenue is around 20 grand a month.
Oh, wonderful. Okay, great.
When we scale, it will be on average around $6 a month. But at the moment, we're doing around 20 a month.
You're saying, so moving forward, the average you think is going to settle out more towards six, but currently it's 12-ish.
Yeah, but at the moment, our primary product is the watch, which is the higher price point per month.
That's great. Okay, good. So about 20 grand a month today and taking back a year. So in December of 2017, how much were you doing a month?
Probably around 11.
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Chapter 7: How much funding has I Stay Safe Corp raised and from whom?
Okay, good. So you've about doubled year over year. How are you getting all these customers? That's impressive. A thousand.
So I think mainly a lot of it's been word of mouth. We have a... disabilities and autism community, where that's been really strong support for us in helping kids in that area. We've done a lot of publicity, a lot of PR, and we've done a little bit of TV advertising as well to really grow our brand nationally.
So when you look at all these kind of paid efforts, in order to get a new kind of $12 or $20 a month customer, what do you pay typically to get that customer?
Yeah, it's probably around $3 or $4 per customer.
Okay. And most of that's TV ads?
That would be our biggest expense, but the majority of our advertising is online, social, through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
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Chapter 8: What are Karen's future plans for scaling the business?
We do a lot of Facebook advertising. We do probably maybe one to two TV campaigns a year.
Okay.
But we don't do that on a regular basis. It's too expensive.
Yeah, yeah. What does that mean? What does a TV campaign cost?
Well, in Australia, we probably spend between $100,000 and $150,000 for each campaign.
And what is that, like a 30-second spot?
So that'll be a combination of 15 to 30 second spots, probably over about a six week period. There might be one or two weeks there where we're not on television, but just over a six week flighted period, it's probably, yeah, about 100 to 150.
And have you bootstrapped the company or raised?
We've raised. So I started off purely just myself. Um, began with just investments, um, from friends and family to small investments to actually get the product to market and the solution to market in 2014. And then, um, took on an angel investor, um, in November, 2015.
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