SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
842: SaaS: Ukraine SEO Tool 3x MRR yoy from $20k July 2016 to $70k July 2017
13 Nov 2017
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
In 2015, he spun Serpstat out of his very successful agency, NetPeak, which does between $10 and $15 million in annual revenue. Serpstat is now a SaaS tool, 52 employees working on it.
Chapter 2: What inspired the creation of Serpstat from Netpeak?
They've passed 1,000 customers, raised $250,000 for 15% of the company back in 2016.
again today they've just passed 70 grand in monthly recurring revenue which is tripled from the same period last time three percent gross logo churn each month 20 cac on a 70 monthly arpu so payback periods very quick 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 talk.
Chapter 3: How did Serpstat evolve into an independent company?
Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination.
Chapter 4: What funding did Serpstat receive and how did it impact growth?
We just broke our 100,000 unit sold mark. And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Many of you listening right now don't have time to listen to every B2B SaaS CEO that I've interviewed. If you want to get access to the database I've created, with year-over-year growth rates, customer accounts, margins, and many, many other data metrics and data points, you can go to getlatka.com.
Here's the thing, though. This database, I keep it to myself. It's so freaking valuable. And to preserve the quality of the data and make sure that the people that have access to it have a true advantage, I'm only letting 10 companies on each month. So we're full this month, but you can go to getlatka.com to get on the waiting list for next month. And look, there's big people on the waiting list.
I mean, the biggest VCs you've ever heard of. You've probably heard of them. They're big, private equity, billions and billions under management. So it's an impressive waiting list. Go get on now at getlatka.com. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Artem Bor. He's the founder of NetPeak Group and co-founder of SeedFund Wannabiz. He's focused on the development of B2B SaaS product companies.
His first such SaaS company is an all-in-one SEO platform for professionals called SERPstat.com with 2,000 customers and 100,000 users. Artem, are you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so give us a specific example. What does SERPstat do and how do you make money? And those of you listening, just to make it clear, it's S-E-R-P as in Paul, S-T-A-T.com.
Yeah, sure. I will tell you shortly about a small story of this company. SERPstat was born as a keyword research tool in NetBeak agencies that they funded when I was 20 years old. And NetBeak agency now is the largest SEO agency in Eastern Europe with more than 400 employees. And
Well, hold on, Artem, real quick. When you say it's the largest SEO firm in Europe, but then you use 400 employees as a metric, employees just mean you have a lot of cash burned, right?
So is revenue also reflective of... When you try to compare SEO agency, you have to know some metrics that will be public for every agency. So in Eastern Europe, I mentioned Eastern Europe, not full Europe, We can be comparable only with this metric because no rating exists with cash.
So how many, at Netpeak, how many customers are you working with?
We work right now with two projects. This is more than 300 projects.
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Chapter 5: What marketing strategies are driving customer acquisition for Serpstat?
And what year did you say you launched Netpeak in?
When I was 20 years old, 10 years ago, I founded NetBeak. It was a bootstrapped company.
So that was in 2007, bootstrapped. And you still bootstrapped that or have you raised capital for it?
For agency no, because agency business and working with the top projects in Epic we faced with a problem There was no competitive analysis and keyword research tool with Ukrainian database with data for Ukrainian market and for instance I can get information in five seconds that domain name natanlatka.com has at least 1,400 keywords in top 100 of Google common US or for example Your site is that good by the way?
Not bad, but not the best result.
I like you, Artom. You give it to me like it is. Last question on the agency before we start talking about Serpstat. So in 2016, just the agency, what was total revenue?
I cannot show this information, but it's more than $10 million.
But less than 15 million? So between 10 and 15 million?
We're between 10 and 15 million, yeah.
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Chapter 6: How does Serpstat manage customer churn and retention?
So we had to create Serpstat for our own purposes. Serpstat at that time had no dedicated team at all when we started. It was in the beginning of 2013. But two years later, in April 2015, in-house product become an independent company. From this moment, Serpstat started its growth.
Sorry, what year was that where Serpstat became independent?
In April 2015.
Okay, so that's kind of like founding year, right? Yeah. Okay.
So it was independent company, independent office, team, etc.
And so just to be clear, what year did you actually start building it inside the agency, your first line of code?
Inside the agency, we started building it in 2013.
Okay, 2013. So two years after you started coding it in the agency, you spun it out as its own product. And so again, tell us, give me a specific example. Well, you did, I think, with NathanMalka.com. So tell me more about the history here. So have you bootstrapped it or have you raised capital?
We had money in NetBeak for Serpstat growth at the beginning, but we had no dedicated team. So it was $5,000 burn rate for this company. It's very easy. Per month? I mean, yeah, per month.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of Serpstat's revenue growth from 2016 to 2017?
Hey, Art, I'm sorry. Let me go back to that question. I think I misstated it. So when you raise the $250,000 for 15% of your company, that was in 2016, you said? Okay, and then you just told me that your ARR, your annual crying run rate, has passed $1 million. So that means last month you did about $88,000?
Chapter 8: How does the pricing model of Serpstat compare to competitors?
Almost, almost passed. We are near this. This is right now in this month.
So what did you do last month in total revenue, just on SERP stat?
We was $70,000 KMR last month.
Got it. So you think this month you'll break $88,000? Yes. Got it. So what's driving, I mean, tell me like, how are you acquiring customers for the company?
To be honest, the main, our main, our method to use content marketing, we have a pretty strong blog and we have some famous guy, Igor Go, Igor Go is our evangelist that make a lot of videos, webinars, et cetera. Do you pay him? Sure, of course. It's our employee in our office. Got it.
And how many employees are you at today?
We have 52 employees in Serpstat and almost 20 employees in our marketing department.
So just to be clear, you have five, two total employees, so 52 in Serpstat. And of those 52, 20 are in your marketing department? Yeah. Got it. Got it. Okay, very cool. And, and still only really, just to be clear, the total money you have in the company is that 250 grand from 2016, right? The rest is bootstrapped?
We, yes, it was bootstrapped.
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