SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1729 "Kentucky CEO Doubles ARR and Consulting Helping Banks Find Ways to Support Non-Profit Initiatives "
18 Apr 2020
Chapter 1: What urgent changes are happening in the podcast release schedule?
Hey guys, I'm recording this here on April 5th. It's Sunday. Everyone's trying to survive the crisis. Quick note to you guys, we are moving, you know, we used to delay these episodes by, you know, four to eight months after we recorded them in terms of releasing them on the podcast. We've changed that.
A lot of these interviews you're gonna hear over the next many months are gonna be ones we recorded only
days prior we think that's a smarter way to run the show i've made the change so expect more urgent information coming out secondly i am getting destroyed on itunes reviews by these people that say nathan's rude he's hard-hitting blah blah blah which by the way i am it's part of my style it's what works the problem is people that love that style never take the time to go leave a five-star review
So I only get one or five star reviews on iTunes. And right now there's a streak of one star reviews that is driving me crazy. It would mean the world to me, guys. If you're loving the show, you love how direct I am. You like the style. If you go leave a review on iTunes now, if you do that and tweet it to me, text it to me, email it to me, whatever you want.
I'm going to reply with a very special surprise. I think a lot of you guys will really like it is heavy, heavy data oriented. All right. So I appreciate that. Thanks, guys. Enjoy the show. find CRA. He helps banks connect with nonprofits where they can actually check off the 10% the bank has to spend on qualified nonprofits as defined by the government.
So that's low-income areas, things like that. He helps those banks meet that threshold. He's now serving about 22 banking customers, did $72,000 in recurring revenue last year on top of that $62,000 in consulting. Should be breakeven this year as they scale the team, $900,000 raised and three full-time folks Hello, everyone. My guest today is Ben Lowley.
He's the founder of a company called FindCRA, which makes Community Reinvestment Act compliance easy or CRA compliance easy for banks through powerful data driven software that cuts out countless hours of complicated manual research and delivers actionable insights quickly. He's again, co-founder and CEO and leads overall company vision, product and design as well as business strategy.
Ben, you ready to take us to the top? Yep, let's do it. So banks are going to get pounded tomorrow with everyone applying for this PPP stuff. Are you playing any role in this?
Not on that end of it, but... In other aspects of all this mess, we should be playing a good role. So walk me through that, right?
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Chapter 2: How does findCRA help banks with Community Reinvestment Act compliance?
Okay. How many banks pay you today?
Right now we have 22 active bank clients. We've got 17 in our pipeline. And this is at the institution level. At each institution, there's anywhere from two to 10 users, depending on the size.
Okay. And give me a sense of what you charge banks per month to use you on average.
Okay. So our contracts are annual. And because we really think that... and what we've heard from our clients is that, um, they need, they're, they're going to need the tool over an extended period of time. So like a, a monthly based subscription model wouldn't make sense for them. And it helped. It's, it's more beneficial for our business.
What are the annual contracts look like? Are we talking like 10 grand or a hundred grand or five grand?
Um, I think our highest one is nine. Okay. So, um, our lowest is about 2,500. Okay. We also just launched a new product this year to help banks research their markets. So it's not nonprofit based. It's more getting that census data, the demographic and economic data in their markets to determine what the needs are in a specific community.
Because every community is unique, especially as we're finding out during this really difficult time. And so different communities are going to have different needs. And so this tool, we call it Contexture. One part of CRA is what they call performance context. And that's really, that's the bank going out, doing research to figure out what the needs are in a market.
And so we've developed a product, it's SaaS-based as well, that gives them instant market reports. And that's really driven sales as well. So... Banks can sign up for that anywhere from $2,500 to about $5,000. And we'll sometimes discount the pricing if they bundle it with our nonprofit search product.
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Chapter 3: What role does findCRA play in supporting nonprofits?
Looking at annual run rate for 2019, we were at $72K. Oh, great. That's just SaaS products. We also do consulting as well, kind of more personalized, tailored approach. We'll review their CRA program, review their loan file, and help them find opportunities that they've supported. What was consulting revenue from 2019? It was good. It was 62K. Okay.
This is great. So great little business, right? $72,000 in AR, $62,000 in consulting, and I assume small team. You've kept it pretty tight?
Yeah, yeah. Still pretty small. We have added one to staff. So four people? We have three full-time employees. We have two part-time employees and one contractor that helps us with social media and communications.
Have you raised any additional capital since last time we spoke or still just $900,000?
Still just about $900,000. Yeah, we haven't done any additional raises. Do you regret raising that money? No, no, not at all. It's... it's been crucial to get us to a point where we could hire a full-time salesperson. So she's in an account executive role. She came on last August and we brought on 14 new institutions in the last two quarters. Does she carry quota? Yeah. Oh, great.
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Chapter 4: How does findCRA's solution provide value to banks?
Okay. So she's part of your three full-time.
Yeah. She's part of the three full-time. We're kind of the the, uh, the tripod holding company up, you know, I love that.
So are you, are you still investing that 900 grand or are you guys profitable at this point?
I'm sorry. Uh, you broke up for, I was going to say, are you still burning?
Are you still burning money every month investing at $900,000? Are you guys profitable at this point?
Uh, some months we have in cashflow positive. So, um, yeah, we, we are self-sustaining at this point.
So if you look at 2019 as a whole, you're about break even.
Um, I wouldn't say we were breakeven, but we were close.
You think you will be this year?
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Chapter 5: What does CRA qualified mean for banks and nonprofits?
There's not a lot of money to split up. So how do you like, so when you're the lady you hired to lead this, I mean, do you say, Hey, please only sell $5,000 a year contracts are higher. Otherwise we can't afford to pay you commission.
Uh, no, we've really, um, let her loose to sell as much as she possibly can um we're trying to we're trying to scale this nationally and i mean get as many demos as we can once we get a a demo um with a bank like we're at about a 33 kind of conversion rate so um We want her to be successful. We want her to be part of the kind of foundation of our team as we really look to scale this nationally.
All right, very good, Ben. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book?
Favorite business book? Probably Fooled by Randomness by Nicholas Lebb. That's a good one. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? I always keep my eye on Elon Musk, but I think my favorite CEO of all time is probably Andy Grove.
number three what's your favorite online tool for building your company um probably asana number four how many hours of sleep to get every night uh try to get seven but usually it's more like six um yeah what's your situation married single kiddos engaged oh congratulations no kids no kids no kids yet all right yeah and how old are you I am 36. 36. Last question.
What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew?
I wish that I knew then that it was okay to fail and that You know, I didn't have to have all the answers.
Guys, Ben building fine CRA. He helps banks connect with nonprofits where they can actually check off, you know, the 10 percent the bank has to spend right on qualified nonprofits as defined by the government. Right. So, you know, low income areas, things like that. He helps those banks meet that threshold.
He's now serving about 22 banking customers, did $72,000 in recurring revenue last year on top of that $62,000 in consulting. Should be breakeven this year as they scale the team, $900,000 raised and three full-time folks. Ben, thanks for taking us to the top.
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