SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
742: This Founder Crowns Real Estate Agents "Mayors", Grows From $700k to $6.4M in Under 12 Months
05 Aug 2017
Chapter 1: How did Amanda Newman start her journey in real estate?
park bench she came on about a year ago they've since like quadrupled right going from uh going from 70 grand in mr to almost 628 000 in monthly recurring revenue churns come down as well to 2.75 per month they did 1.9 million last year 6.3 ideally this year a thousand real estate customers who they are crowning the digital mayors of their city with their lead generation tool 90 gross margin paying about 676 bucks to acquire a customer that's worth 13 grand to them with their team of 30 up in toronto amanda
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. This is episode 742. Coming up tomorrow morning, Bo, the founder of Privacy.com, joins us.
Chapter 2: What innovative solution did Park Bench provide for real estate agents?
And the question is, will this 28-year-old founder replace credit cards? Tune in to find out. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Amanda Newman. When she was 26, she became a realtor planning to specialize in Liberty Village, Toronto. She created a local website for the neighborhood she lived in for really to get a one-stop shop for local deals, events, and news.
Quickly, other realtors wanted what she had, and she realized that the technology she created could easily be duplicated all across North America. Park Bench, the name of the company, is has grown from a single marketing idea into a multimillion dollar company with 27 employees and is growing at a rapid pace. Amanda, are you ready to take us to the top?
Chapter 3: How has Park Bench scaled its customer base rapidly?
Yes, I am.
Very cool. Hello. Thanks for joining. So last time I had you on, it was January, February, March, April. It was May of 2016. At that time, you had about $500,000 raised. You had 10 customers that were paying on average $2,500 per month. So you were doing about $25,000.
No, that's not us.
Chapter 4: What are the financial metrics behind Park Bench's growth?
I know this is what you told me. This is right out of your interview. You were doing about 25 grand in MRR. Is that not right?
No, back then we were doing about 80 and we sell upfront on average for about $4,500.
Okay. Well, did you have multiple components of the business? Like this might've been just your SaaS component. What were you selling upfront?
So we build neighborhood focused websites for real estate agents and we sell the entire package upfront for around on average $4,500 for the whole year.
Chapter 5: What challenges does Amanda face with customer acquisition?
OK, I will go back and listen to what you said. Most of this data is actually taken directly from your voice. So maybe there was something special there. But this is I'm just giving historical context. We can update all this in a second. Right. So about 10 customers, 500000 bucks raised.
We've never raised money.
You did not raise money.
no we might have to wait hold on hold on hold on oh i know what i did here i know what i did here you are right next to amanda parker and you are exactly right amanda newman that was my yes that's why i got confused you're totally right amanda newman so you guys were at 215 customers right your 2015 revenue was about 880 grand you had raised 125 000 bucks you had about each customer was paying about 350 bucks a month you're doing about 70 grand in monthly recurring revenue
Chapter 6: How does Amanda define personal wealth creation?
5% churn, $400 CAC based up there in Toronto, LTV of 20 months, $7,000 LTV in terms of dollars, eight people on your team. Is that all right? That's all correct. Boom, baby. Founded in 2014. So update us, where is the business today? And why don't you start by telling everyone who's new what your company does?
Okay, so we build neighborhood websites and we have a technology that aggregates the local content. So the events, the deals, the news, and we sell the exclusive rights to those neighborhood sites to one real estate agent per neighborhood.
Then we teach them how to use that neighborhood website in order to go out into the community, interview local businesses, teachers, professionals, and feature their articles on that neighborhood site.
Chapter 7: What is Amanda's perspective on investment strategies for growth?
So they're adding a ton of value to the community and they're also building lots of relationships as they go. So they can become a connector in the community. They'll know the plumber, they'll know the roofer, they can connect everyone with their clients.
Which is the key, right, for deal flow. Yeah. So tell us, where are you at today in terms of total customers?
Today we have about over 1,000.
That's amazing. So you have four acts. You were at 215, I think, last time we spoke.
Chapter 8: What are the final thoughts and advice shared by Amanda?
Yeah. So when we got back from 500 startups, so last time we spoke, I was actually in Silicon Valley. And we got back from there. They pushed us to take their money. So we took their $125,000 and they made us go and invest in growth. Because I remember last time we spoke, when we invest money, we make it back very quickly, almost instantly. So we took that money.
We invested a ton on Facebook advertising, taught myself how to do a lot of digital marketing. And we use one of the companies that was on here as well at Espresso. So we did a lot of digital marketing to acquire leads. So realtors, we now we get about 60 to 100 realtors a day contacting us wanting to be the digital mayor of their neighborhood. Yeah.
And to give you an update, we got a 3,000 square foot office. There's now 30 employees. Last month was May. We did $628,000 in revenue.
Okay, very congratulations. It's exciting.
Thank you. Yeah, we just celebrated this morning. That was our biggest month by far.
Well, yeah, because that just, I guess today's June 1st. So yeah, that just wrapped up. So $628,000. Now, is that all monthly or occurring or is there professional services mixed into that?
So that's just our entire revenue. So last month we sold about 150 realtors. They paid us upfront for that. And then now they have a 12 month term.
What are they paying upfront on average?
About $4,500 to $5,000.
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