SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Checkli Launches Enterprise Plan To Get Past $5k in MRR
24 Sep 2020
Chapter 1: What is Checkly and its current business model?
Just in the last two months, we've signed up 36 brand new business customers who are paying for the processes. We haven't marketed it. We haven't done anything. And it's growing like crazy.
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My guest today is Marvin Russell. He's a two-time founder with two successful exits. Now as head of growth at SureSwift Capital and moonlighting as the CEO of Checkly at night. Marvin, you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. All right.
So I want to dive into this decision you made to sort of split your time because back in November of 2018, it sounds like you were sitting on a growing, interesting company at Checkly. You had passed, I think, 200 customers paying on average $6 a month, $1,200 in MRR, and you were really just getting sort of the momentum going.
Yeah, it's funny. I found a lot of frustration. And I think you said it best when I was on your show, people want to relive that. You told me it's going to be really hard to grow a checklist app. And you were right. I found a lot of challenges. There's a ton of free checklist apps. And I thought, you know, we had really cool features that set us apart.
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Chapter 2: How did Marvin Russell pivot Checkly's focus?
Is that right?
We're at, we're, we're growing up into two months ago. We were at like 2000. Now we're closing in on 4,000 and we're growing. So we're pretty excited.
Why invest so much time building these products when you know darn well someone at Google spends a day and essentially launches it natively inside of Gmail and then boom, people don't need it anymore, right? I mean, I used to have a plugin that did sort of the same thing inside of Google and I just shut it down. It was doing a hundred grand in ARR.
Just shut it down because I'm like, I can't keep up with Google and they're going to release this for free anyway soon. It's pointless.
Yeah, you're right. I've thought about that. And here's what I came up with. Because back when I was running my site auditor, the last that's been acquired, I had the same concerns. I'm like, companies like Moz and SEM Rush are just going to knock us off one day. And I was wrong. And here's why I was wrong. And the same thing goes for Google or other companies.
The trick that I think of one of the biggest pieces to successful SaaS entrepreneurs is focus. Google has a million things going on. They're trying to perfect a million businesses, a million apps, a million pieces of software. We have one thing. Our blinders are on. We're now all in on process. That's all we're thinking about. That's all we're doing.
And I think that that's our competitive advantage.
Interesting. All right, well, we will see what happens now. Did you bootstrap Checkly or did you raise?
We bootstrapped at first, but then SureSwift gave us a little tiny... uh, funding amount just to pay for our developer, which we were grateful for, but we already blew past that. So, so now how much, how much did you raise?
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Marvin face while growing Checkly?
Checkly doesn't require full-time work, but I just love the balance that they give me.
A lot of you guys will ping me out of the blue asking for help selling your software companies, but I'm not a broker and I'm really focused on founder path right now, not helping folks sell their company. So I'm always looking for great tools to recommend for you guys to quickly figure out what you could potentially sell your company for and how much cash you could get.
That's where Flippa comes in. Now, here's my thing about brokerages, especially for selling your company. You guys should not have to pay a 10% brokerage fee when you put your blood, sweat, and tears into building your company for years and have a sale. All smart founders know, though, that the best way to maximize price is to have multiple options.
So how do you get multiple options, multiple bids on your company without paying a broker 10% or more? Well, I recommend Flippa because they have the largest list of buyers for these sorts of digital assets, which almost always guarantees a bidding war. I tell my founder friends all the time to try Flippa's valuation calculator to see what their company is worth.
And I encourage you guys to do it today. Go to NathanLacke.com forward slash Flippa right now to test out the valuation calculator for free. That's NathanLacke.com forward slash F-L-I-P-P-A. What's the Checkly team look like? Is it just you? It is me and one developer, one software developer, Simon. Okay, got it. So got it. And then talk to me about churn. You have 400, 500 customers.
What's your churn on Checkly look like?
Right now it's at 3.4% and it's dropped a little bit. So it's not bad. Obviously, I want to improve that, but it's not too bad.
That's monthly?
Yeah.
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Chapter 4: How many customers are currently using Checkly?
Do you think that we're in a position to sell our data?
I have no idea because I don't know what the data is that you're sitting on.
Well, it's just like, you know, people make checklists, they list off you know, what hotels are going to stay out, what things they're going to buy, what things they're going to do. So somehow there's got to be data in understanding, you know, user, you know, buying behavior and all that stuff. Anyway, I'd let that, I need to consult somebody.
If anybody's listening to this, reach out to me, you know, if you're a data scientist, because I'd love to learn more about how we can monetize our data.
So no exit on the horizon because you still need to build that data play. And your first exit was for somewhere between a hundred grand and a million, but it was sub seven figures. No.
My first exit was my agency. I built a small agency, and that was a $300,000 exit. My company was north of seven figures. I won't give the exact number, but it was over a million dollars.
And that was the site auditor? My site auditor, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what does growth look like at SureSwift? Who are you looking for? What are you trying to pull in?
So growth for me, so there's a team of acquisition people that we're looking to acquire, you know, SaaS, bootstrap SaaS companies, people with zero investors, right? So bootstrap SaaS companies. And we're looking for, you know, companies that are in the one to five million space, right? So we're looking for anything along those lines. And which, you know, is great.
But my role is more growing the portfolio. So we believe at SureSwift that like, all software tastes like chicken. So if I'm looking at a portfolio of 36 companies, right?
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Chapter 5: What is the pricing strategy for Checkly's new business plan?
Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Between six and eight.
Okay. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
I am married. We are trying to have kids. And for those who are struggling too, we've been through several rounds of IVF. It hasn't worked for us yet, but For anybody who hears that, you're not alone. I'm struggling to do it.
There you go. All right. Last question. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew?
I have a whole list of things that I wish my 20-year-old self knew. I would probably say invest in index funds. Put money there.
Guys, there you have it. Checkly launched a couple years ago, passed $1,000 a month in revenue back in 2018. Now today with a new product line for recurring events, it's over $3,800, $3,900 a month in revenue. Marvin is working aggressively on that while also joining up with Kevin and SureSwift Capital part-time to help them drive growth across their portfolio companies.
All right, Marvin, thanks for taking us to the top. You are very welcome. Thanks, Nathan.
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