SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1662 How He Turns Your team Into Referral Machine with $65k in MRR
11 Feb 2020
Chapter 1: What is Boone and how does it help teams?
Launched his company back a couple of years ago. We'll call it 2014. Again, helping really teams turn their teams into their most powerful agents for recruiting, right? Recruiting new talent. 26 customers today paying about 30,000 bucks on average in terms of ACVs. They're up to about 65 grand per month right now and revenue up from $16,000 per month just about a year ago.
Burning about 35 grand per month, but that's okay. They raised about 1.3 million bucks to drive growth. Team of three based mainly in LA. Too early to talk about kind of other economics, but scaling nicely, looking at raising some additional capital here.
the near future hello everybody my guest today is david sorry dakota younger he's the ceo of a company called boone he's ambitious and tenacious likes working connecting people and enjoys the fact that simple interactions have with one another that we have with one another can have a big impact he tries to keep that in mind as he goes through his day let's talk boone dakota are you ready to take us to the top yeah all right what's the company doing how do you make money
So essentially what Boone does is helps people be able to make money by sending referrals. So we sync up with an employee or a user's social networks and their address book on their phone.
Chapter 2: How much revenue is Boone generating and what is their growth strategy?
And we can proactively give them recommendations when someone they know is a good fit for a job opportunity on Boone with one of our companies. So it's like a little recruiter in your pocket that makes it really easy for anyone to be able to send referrals.
And how do you make money? Who are you charging?
We charge the company. So they pay a flat subscription SAS fee based on the size of the company.
And what would you say an average is? What's the average company pay per month?
About per month, we break it into just an annual upfront contract. So it's about 30K, 32K.
And what does that get them? Like how many referrals?
They have unlimited amount of referrals. I'm in an unlimited job post. That's like the average size there. You're looking at a company that's going to be over 5,000 employees.
Okay. And when did you launch the company? What year?
Uh, 2000 officially we did, uh, 2014, but that was when it was just coming out of beta. Uh, so we've been around, I'd say like fully operational about a year.
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Chapter 3: How does Boone's referral system work for employees?
So the sales cycle there is really short. We also have another really slick tool where we automatically scrape new jobs that are posted and can create profiles for them, those companies automatically and reach out to key members of staff
um that helps to really target uh select you know companies based on how we want to qualify those leads that's been really scalable so 26 of these folks you've closed at a thirty thousand dollar kind of ac that's twenty five hundred bucks per month i mean i can multiply that right you're shooting about 60 65 grand a month right now and what's that up from about a year ago uh so a year ago we were looking at a low 200k about 195k in terms of ar but
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So 195 grand about it by 12. That's about 16 grand a month now up to 65 grand a month. That's obviously healthy growth. What's the team look like today?
Yeah, it's still a pretty lean team. So we have three full time members. We have an external dev team. So that's how we were able to keep it really lean. I mean, there's not a lot of sleep going on right now, but part of, we just, we're about to wrap up our raise right now. And so part of that's going into bringing on some additional sales and marketing individuals and customer success people.
That's great. And now have you, so three people today, have you raised any capital today or are you bootstrapped?
No, we raised capital. We raised, I think, by now, actually last week, we just closed another 200K. So we're at around 130, I mean, 1,300,000 for the entire life of the company.
Was any of this kind of on a priced round or it's all kind of venture debt or convertible debt?
Convertible debt.
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Chapter 4: What pricing model does Boone use for companies?
There was one, the first, I think our families and friends round was priced, but that was it. Everything past that was convertible debt.
All right, so three folks and where's everyone based? Everyone in LA?
Yep. Well, our biz dev comes in on a monthly basis. He's not always here. He's actually based up in Canada. But since it's a SaaS company, he doesn't necessarily need to be there. He's got a pretty strong network. But myself, my ops manager, the CFO, we're all on site.
And I assume since you're raising capital, you're still burning capital to drive growth?
Yeah. I mean, right now it's especially, uh, given the market, I mean, the unemployment has been, I mean, it hasn't been this low ever. Like the, the, the demand for talent is at an all time high. Uh, so we're trying to capitalize on that market and grow as rapidly as we can.
So how much are you burning per month right now? Like 10, 20 grand or what?
No, we're looking at around 35 right now.
That's not, that's not horrible. And it's most of that head count or what?
Yeah, development and headcount.
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Chapter 5: How has Boone scaled its customer base?
So instead of continuing to take like dilutive convertible notes and things like that, have you looked at venture debt at all?
I know that's where we're going to be headed for the roundup. This is the last convertible debt round we'll be doing. You mean convertible note? Yeah, convertible note. From what we're looking at, the metrics that we're going to be able to put up, I think that'll be something we're going to be looking at for sure.
What do you like about venture debt?
Well, I mean, you get a lot of the strategic benefit there.
Well, you can get a lot of the strategic benefit there, both from introductions and opportunities with partners or potential customers, but also some of the experience there that they're going to be able to bring to the table, both from the business end and how to run a company, how to scale a company, but also things to benchmarks to be looking for if you're going to be planning to raise in the future.
Uh, and so I think that that's important as well. And then potentially even helping to accelerate, um, you know, that, or help manage that, that future, any future raises that you're going to be doing.
So you would be looking for venture debt to help you manage the growth of the business and help with venture capital rounds in the future.
Um, I think, no, I'm saying like working with, uh, the venture companies, I mean, they're going to be able to help potentially open up doors with potential customers. bridging their network. Right. I mean, even when we went with, we got with 500 startups, that was one of the benefits we got out of them. Right.
That's an accelerator though, with hundreds of companies inside or, you know, maybe thousands of companies at this point.
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