SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1634 Why This Founder Knows He Has To be 100% Owner (And Thats Not a Bad Thing)
14 Jan 2020
Chapter 1: What is Competitors.app and how does it help businesses?
competitors.app helps you manage and understand where all your competitors are getting traffic right now they've got about 20 customers paying 40 bucks a month so 800 bucks a month in revenue getting his first few customers using facebook groups and just pure hustle combination of duck soup plus text expander on linkedin as well currently burning cash he's trying to you know get profitable and call it a year but no rush bootstrap today team of three in remote locations uh spread out all around the world sold his last company for a million bucks and that's where he's using and getting his investment funds from
Hello, everybody. My guest today is Razvan Gurmacha. He is the CEO of a company called Competitors.app, which allows you to monitor competitors' marketing channels. He built two profitable startups and sold both of them, one e-commerce national and one international.
The last startup, he got VC investment without meeting the investors, incorporated in Ireland without ever going to Ireland, and ran a team of eight people all remote because it became profitable and sold it in 2017. All right, he's been in two accelerators and currently accelerators, including one right now. Razvan, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yeah, sure.
All right. So what is competitors.app? That's the URL. What's the company doing? How do you make money?
Well, it's a software as a service, of course.
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Chapter 2: How did the guest bootstrap his startup without external funding?
It monitors competitors, all the marketing channels for $10 per competitor per month.
Okay. And so what is kind of the average customer pay you per month, would you say, total?
On average, we have four competitors per client.
Okay, so they each pay on average about $40 a month?
Yeah.
Interesting. And who are the kinds of people paying? Are these like heads of marketing at companies or what?
Yeah, we have now two markets. We have big agencies where they can add like even 100 domains. And they will add like three, let's say four competitors for each. But we also have small businesses where either the CEO or the marketing guy will just read the reports. And when did you launch the company?
What year?
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Chapter 3: What strategies did the guest use to acquire his first customers?
This year. Okay, good. So launched here in 2018. And how many customers have you scaled to today? Now we have 20 paying customers. 20 paying customers. So walk me through how you got your first customer. What channel did you use?
So the shortest version is getting from Facebook groups and LinkedIn outreach. But the long-term strategy is with search engine optimization. So I'm focusing a lot on search engine optimization, but that takes a lot of time. So currently I'm doing LinkedIn outreach and Facebook. Tell me what you do specifically in Facebook groups. I just comment, talk to people, add them.
And when I see an opportunity, if it's something of interest to them, I just connect with them and ask them if they want to try for free for like one month, three months.
Chapter 4: Who are the typical customers of Competitors.app?
We have to be specific here. So like, how do you find a Facebook group? What do you search in Facebook? I'll close the video because I am getting poor connection. Razvan, leave the video on as best you can. My question was, what do you search on Facebook? What kinds of groups do you look for?
Marketing groups.
So what would you search? Name a group that you're in. SaaS marketing. Okay, SaaS marketing group.
And even lifetime deal groups are pretty good. I got the users from there. Even if they search for lifetime deals, I told them that I do not agree and I will never sell lifetime deals.
Chapter 5: Why does the guest believe in maintaining 100% ownership of his company?
This is like an AppSumo model. Yeah, exactly. And there are a lot of groups now on Facebook like this. But when they hear I will not have lifetime deals, they are willing to try it and some are buying. Why do you think lifetime deals are bad? It's bad for a business. If I think long term, if you get an investor or you sell the product online,
Not everyone will agree to take on board people that will not pay anymore. So that can be an issue. And also, when you're at the beginning, for sure you have bugs. You know you have a lot of stuff to solve. So you will do a lot of customer support. And if you think of how many hours you spend with everyone that gives you feedback or suggestions or complaints, I think it's not worth it.
Especially if you have the money.
Chapter 6: What challenges did the guest face with co-founders in previous projects?
Yeah. So 40 bucks a month is the average a customer pays you. You have 20 customers. So you're doing about 800 bucks a month right now? Yeah. And zero a year ago because you just launched? Yeah. Have you bootstrapped your company or raised?
Yeah, bootstrapped because I have money from my other exit.
That's great. So how much of your own money have you put into this so far? About 50,000 euros. Okay. And where are you spending it? What's your team look like today?
Chapter 7: How does the guest plan to scale and acquire more customers?
Just you? No, me and someone in marketing and one developer. Okay. So three people. So do you own 100% of the company since you're really just paying them with cash? Yes. Why is that important to you? You answer that very quick.
I tried last year a new project with two co-founders. And when we launched the product, I said, I won't pay anymore. We have to make it work. And they said, you know, we'll go get a job. But they remain with the shares in the company. So I had to cancel the project, spend six months trying to recover all the shares, negotiating, and it killed the project. I said, I will not do it again.
Are you too stubborn? Are you hard to work with?
I don't know, probably. I never worked with the team.
So maybe that's- By the way, there's nothing wrong with that, by the way.
There's a lot of value to just, you know, a lot of things, you know, actually the analogy I use when you look at like politics, the countries that like change the most or you could say get the most done or something are actually ones run by dictators because there's one person in charge and they can quickly move versus like nothing gets done in a committee, right?
So there's something to be said for just having full control and driving your vision.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Walk me through, so bootstrapped, three people. Is everyone remote?
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Chapter 8: What insights does the guest share about the importance of focus in business?
I mean, when do you get to break even or is that something you're focused on?
My goal is to break even in one year. Okay, break even. I have time. I have the money to survive until then, so it's fine.
It's a very small cohort, but do you know anything yet about churn? Yes, of course. Not do you know what it is, but your economics.
No one canceled yet. It's too early. From all the paying customers, they are happy. I think it's a long term. Even at start, I wanted all the plans to be yearly. Because you have to monitor the competitors and wait for them to do something important. This may not happen in the first week or first month. Something really, really important that can change your business.
So it's something long term and people understand that it's okay. Why is this so cheap? I wanted to make an affordable solution for small and medium businesses. That was my entry. There are complex solutions already out there that sell only to enterprise. I've even met the CEOs of some enterprise solutions that monitor all marketing channels.
So I'm trying to do this cheap acquisition channel of users with SEO because I have experience in 2005. And I brought traffic on my last startup of $50,000 worth of value every month. So if I'm doing this again, it's a very good viable business and I can sell it $10 per competitor per month.
What'd you sell your last company for? $1 million. And was it a SaaS company or e-commerce? uh, repeat the question. Was it a SAS company or e-commerce? SAS company, an SEO tool, monitor backings. It was called. Oh, I see. Okay. And did all that money go to you or Jeff? You have to split it. Uh, 10% to the investor. Okay. And then, okay. But the rest to you, you don't have other co-founders.
Yeah, exactly.
Why'd you sell it? Why not just keep building that one?
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