SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1741 CodeAcademy for Blockchain Developers Hits $4k MRR
30 Apr 2020
Chapter 1: What updates are shared about the podcast's 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. slowly winding down his full-time job to scale his side project, Zastron, which is essentially helping people learn Ethereum, kind of like how you'd learn how to code with Team Treehouse or Code Academy.
He's, again, doing that for blockchain and decentralized platforms like Ethereum. Currently has 200 students paying 20 bucks a month for the platform, so about $4,000 a month in revenue. Just himself building it based up there in Massachusetts, 10% logo turn per month, bootstrapped, obviously operating at breakeven, hiring contractors to build out the course as Hello, everyone.
My guest today is Mahesh Murthy. He's a software engineer and entrepreneur who's currently down the blockchain rabbit hole. He's worked in various industries such as travel and sports and started his company Zastron last year to teach tech developers blockchain programming through real world projects. Loves his family, food and travel. Mahesh, are you ready to take us to the top? Yeah. All right.
So how's the company work and how does Zastron make money? So we have a couple of different models. One is we have a subscription model. So anyone can come in, subscribe and then work through the courses. All of them are self-guided courses. And what do they pay per month for that on average? $20. Okay. And what's churn like?
I imagine a lot of them only stay for a month or two and then when they're done with the course, they leave. Um, I would say three or four months because, um, I'm still building out the courses, the content. So there's enough to keep them engaged for three or four months. Okay. So that would be what, like, like 10% churn each month, something like that. Yeah. Okay.
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Chapter 2: How did Mahesh Murthy transition to focusing on Zastron?
So it's not really a SAS product. Um, the reason is, um, I introduced the SAS model only three months ago. Um, it was before that it was more, um, just by the course for a lifetime. Okay. So how, how many are on the SAS model today? Like 200? Yeah. Approximately there. Interesting. Why'd you decide to make that pivot?
Well, so some of the customers are a little more price sensitive because my buy the course outright is a little more expensive. So and it's a bigger commitment for some people. And I'm a new brand. I'm still building out my business.
the brand and the people are still not aware of the product so this was a good way to like give them an entry and say um here why don't you try it out look at all the courses it's just 20 bucks a month and then from then on you can uh you can see if you want it you can uh commit to it to a subscription model or switch and buy outrightly so that you get all the updates whatever yeah so this is like code academy or team treehouse but for blockchain
Correct, yeah. Yeah, interesting. Okay, so call it 200 people paying 20 bucks a month. You're doing about four grand a month right now in revenue? Yeah, it goes up and down. On a good month, yes, I do. It also depends on like surprisingly on the crypto market. Why is that surprising? If it gets hot and more people sign up, if it doesn't, they churn. But the thing is, it's developers.
It's not like traders or investors. Oh, come on. But developers give in to speculation all the time. I guarantee you developers were more excited about Bitcoin and blockchain about a year ago than they are right now. They are more excited today. No, no. They were more excited when Bitcoin was 19,000 than they are today. Now, they're not speculators, but they still can't give in.
I mean, they're going to give in to the hype a little bit. they will give into the hype a little bit, but, uh, I did not expect that it was going to like impact that much. I see. I see. Okay. What's your team size today? How many people? Um, I'm one and then I hire contractors for a lot of the other, uh, work anywhere from like video production, uh, video editing and stuff.
And then there's a whole bunch of tasks, which I need to get done. I hire contractors. Have you bootstrapped the company or raised? Uh, so far it's been bootstrapped. That's great. Congratulations.
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Chapter 3: What revenue model does Zastron use for its courses?
Um, where are you spending most of the money? Is it on like the video contractors actually creating the courses? Um, to be honest, the, um, the, did you ask money or time? Where are you spending most of the money? Yeah. The, the revenue. Um, the most of the money is on the infrastructure, like video production and, um, the whole things around it and hosting, um, And a teeny bit on marketing.
Most of the marketing is organic. So I would say most of the expenses are around video production. Yeah. So tell me more about how you got these 200 customers. You say it's organic, but I mean, it doesn't just happen magically. What kind of pieces of content did you create that are attracting all these new students? Yeah. So when I started out, I started blogging on Medium.
Like Ethereum, that's where I started. And I was breaking it down. And people started really liking it. I even published a few course tutorials on Medium. And those are quite popular.
Chapter 4: What challenges does Mahesh face with customer retention?
And half of the traffic comes from my Medium posts. Got it. Okay, very good. So half of the traffic comes from there. How many new students are you signing up per month right now? What's growth look like? I would say 100 or so. And are you doing this full time or is this a side project? Um, I would say mostly full time. I'm like slowly, uh, winding down my, um, other job I was at.
What else were you doing? Was that like a full time thing or what? Yeah, it was, I am was, uh, I'm a CTO at a, uh, a sports startup called next gen golf. We run golf tournaments. Yeah. So you should be building like, you should be building like a blockchain based sports betting program or something like, huh? Like, like, like what is it? Augur? Uh, yeah, I should probably build on top of Augur.
That would be, uh, that'd be nice, but maybe someday. Um, tell me more about, what are your thoughts on block one? Block one. Do you, have you heard of them? No. You haven't heard of block one. They were, it was, they've raised the most in terms of an ICO ever in history. It's like $4 billion. Oh, block one. The, uh, the EOS. Yeah. EOS. Yeah. Okay. Um, To be honest, I'm not a big fan of EOS. Why?
One is, for me, the reason I got into blockchain was the whole decentralized aspect of it. I don't consider EOS to be a fully decentralized platform. There are, what, 32 validators and there's colluding going on. The project seems like it's in a mess. And it doesn't give me... a good vibe about the project. From the technical point of view, that's the biggest reason.
It just feels like a centralized entity, so that doesn't really excite me much. Do you think the $4 billion that they raised will pass through government measures, or do you think they'll end up getting prosecuted via some legal stuff in the U.S. ? Um, they probably will get some scrutiny and someone is going to definitely look at it. And I don't, I don't know.
I don't know that too much, too much of the legal details and what the regulations are going to be, but, uh, they're just not going to like go away without any, um, uh, someone is going to look into that. Yeah. Which block, which blockchain are you most bullish on in terms of how the technology works? Um, Ethereum, because that's where I got started, to be honest.
And I really like the community, like the people working on it. There's still a lot of challenges, but I would say Ethereum is the first one, which I'm very bullish on. Very good. All right, let's wrap up here, Mahesh, with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? Zero to one. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? CEO, Elon Musk.
Number four, what's your favorite online or number three, what's your favorite online tool? Online tool. Let's just say Twitter. I use it in a very different way. Very. Yeah. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Um, six to seven. Okay. And what's your situation? Married single kids. Um, married with one kid, seven month old. Oh, wow. Congratulations. And how, how are you?
I'm 35. 35. Last question. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew? selling. Guys, learn how to sell easier. Coming from Mahesh, he's slowly winding down his full-time job to scale his side project, Zastron, which is essentially helping people learn Ethereum, kind of like how you'd learn how to code with, you know, Team Treehouse or Code Academy.
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