SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1674 The Weird FB Ad Headline He Uses to Sell his Rental Management Software
23 Feb 2020
Chapter 1: What is Syncbnb and how does it help rental managers?
syncbnb helps you manage your rentals he's currently working with 1200 rentals which each pay about 13 14 15 bucks a month doing 15 grand per month right now in a revenue up from nothing just a year ago you know he had issues doing this with his own company with his own rental unit basically built the tool for himself split at 60 40 with his development co-founder now raised 580 grand his team of nine in greece are building this out burning about 15 grand a month so plenty of runway eight percent logo churn per month as they look to scale no upsells yet spending 60 bucks to get a new customer so about a three month
Payback. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Alexander Karavytis. He is the co-founder and CEO of Sync BNB. Since 1995, he's worked as a web designer, developer, project manager, and team leader, along with a specialist in many other areas, before moving on to C-level positions in large tech companies in Greece.
He recently left a managing partner position in the largest online services group in Greece to start Sync BNB with his co-founder, Petros. They're now playing in the vacation rental channel management space. All right, Alexander, are you ready to take us to the top? Sure am. Let's take this up. All right.
Chapter 2: What challenges did Alexander face before starting Syncbnb?
Tell us about the company. What are you guys doing? And what's your revenue model? How do you make money? So Sync B&B helps vacation rental owners and managers increase their revenue, manage bookings from multiple sources, and avoid double bookings. So it's PurePlace SaaS. We charge $15 per rental per month.
And we offer some other services also, which are, you know, one-off, but that's our main model. And Alexander, so how many rentals are being managed through the platform today? So we currently manage 1,200 rentals that belong to 400 different owners or managers. So that's our user base today. That's great.
Chapter 3: How did Alexander validate the need for his software?
Can I multiply 1,200 times 15? You're doing about 18 grand a month right now. It's a bit less. It's around 15K because there are some bulk discounts involved, but it's around 15. Okay, that's great. And when did you launch the company? What year? We launched in January of this year, 2018. So we are 11 months old. That's okay, good. I mean, so off to a nice quick start.
I want to talk more about kind of how you've driven this growth.
Chapter 4: What is the revenue model for Syncbnb?
I mean, how'd you get your first customer? So the story starts a bit before that, about one year before we launched the product, where I first discovered the pain point. So I was managing my own vacation rental. I was on multiple channels, and I was getting many bookings I couldn't handle.
Whenever I got a booking from one channel, I had to log on to all the others and close the dates so that I wouldn't get a double booking on those dates. So I tried to find the software that would solve this problem for me. And whatever I found, and I tried many, was either too expensive because it was targeted towards the vacation rental managers and management companies that could afford it,
or whatever was affordable was not working very well. So the next thing I did was try to find out if I'm alone, if I'm the only one that has this problem. So what I did was I ran a survey on 1,200 vacation rental owners and managers all over the world. I gathered data. I saw that there were many people, a large percentage of those people had the same problem.
Chapter 5: How much funding has Syncbnb raised so far?
And that's how we decided to start the company. Interesting. And I mean, are you a developer? Did you start developing it yourself? No, I used to write some code back in the day, but it's been many years. So I needed to find a co-founder. And I was very, very lucky to find Petros, who actually came back from the Netherlands, where he was a lead developer for a large online bank.
And, you know, we're discussing the problem and the potential. And at some point he said, fuck it, I'm coming back. Let's do this together. So he came back and we started. You guys split 50-50?
Chapter 6: What is the customer acquisition cost for Syncbnb?
It's 60-40, but we run it like it's 50-50. That's awesome. And what's the rest of the team look like? Just you two right now? No, actually, I know you're going to grill me for this, but we've raised some money. How much? Well, we started with $200,000 last year before we launched the full product.
And we raised another round, another note a few months back for another $380,000 to help us expand and grow faster. So we're nine people right now, and we're all based in our offices in Athens. Okay, so nine people, $580,000 raised, but all debt. Notes? Notes, yeah.
Chapter 7: What unique Facebook ad headline does Syncbnb use?
Notes, okay, so burning capital today? Yeah, our burn rate is, well, our expenses every month are around 30K, so we make about 15, so it's about 15. Yeah, your bank account's going down by 15,000 each month, but you have plenty of runway. At least 10 months, but the concept is to raise again in a few months and grow even faster. Yeah, churn, have you lost any customers? Yeah, we do.
The main reason is that for many of our customers, it's a seasonality thing. So they rent their properties maybe only in summer or maybe only in winter, depending on what type of property it is. We have an 8% monthly churn. It's on a local basis? Yeah, it's both local and revenue. You listen to the show, don't you?
Chapter 8: What future plans does Alexander have for Syncbnb?
I'm a big fan. I was going to say, you know all the things before I ask them. This is great. Why do you listen? Most people say it's too aggressive. Um, I, I don't think if it's a people, uh, you know, concept of wanting to listen into what's going on around the world, uh, maybe it's just curiosity or, uh, maybe it's just fun watching you grilling people, uh, with the speed of your questions.
That's great. Now, I know I didn't know you listen to the show. I do know that you read that you got the magazine. So I'm looking forward to you getting getting that. But OK, good. I'm still waiting for that. It hasn't arrived yet. OK, very good. Yeah, those ship. We send it out to about 10,000 B2B SaaS CEOs. They ship on the 15th of each month.
And because you're in Greece, that'll probably take about 14 days to get to you. So look out for it. It'll be there soon. Okay, sure will. 8% logo churn per month right now. It's seasonal, which is why there's churn. Walk me through, do you have any upsells yet or is it just 15 bucks per rental is all I can pay you? It's still early. So we're focusing on the core product.
We want to do that right. And the plan is to start introducing some added value services maybe later in 2019. Yeah. Do you know what your CAC is? Like what do you have to pay to get a new $15 a month rental? Yeah, sure. It's average about $60 per customer. Okay. So we do some paid campaigns on Google AdWords and Facebook. And what is your most successful Facebook ad?
What's the headline sound like? We're running A-B tests on various different titles and creatives. The one that has been attracting the most clicks has been the one that starts with, are you an Airbnb host? Interesting. It just triggers the imagination of what comes next, so they click it to find out what comes next. That's great. That's really great. Okay, good. 60% CAC, $15 a month.
It's about a four-month payback period. A little bit less last time I calculated it. I think it's around three months or something. Okay, very good. And you mentioned that you want to raise additional capital in the future. I mean, how much are you looking into raising your next round? And what do you want to grow revenue to before you do that? Our aim is to grow to 50K, 5-0.
when we raise our next round. And we hope it will be an equity round and raise maybe 1 to 1.5 million, something like that. Interesting. Very good. And what valuation do you hope to raise at? I mean, do you have an idea? If we get a 10x multiple, I think it's going to be great. Yeah, yeah. Do you think you'll get that? Is there a lot of funding opportunities in Greece?
Actually, it's one of the best times to start a startup in Greece because there's a European program called Equifund. That came out last year and it has put about 300 million euros in eight different funds. So it's a fund of funds. So 300 million has been divided into eight funds that have been investing that money into startups.
And to be frank, the startup community in Greece, it's grown a lot in the last few years, but it's nothing compared to Silicon Valley or other European startup cities. So it's one of the best times to start a business in Greece right now. That's great. All right, Alex, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
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