EP 389: ConceptDrop Raises $1.1M, Helps You Get Creative Work Done Quick with Phil Alexander EP389

0.031 - 24.053 Nathan Latka

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.

24.073 - 50.879 Nathan Latka

And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner is Charlie Daggs, okay? He was a middle manager at a manufacturing company. He wants to break free and he won the $100 I give out every Monday. For your chance to win, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes right now and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it. This is episode 389.

51.281 - 58.675 Nathan Latka

Coming up tomorrow morning, you'll hear from Steve Chow. He might be the most successful info product marketer ever.

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top it's drive good morning to all of you our guest this morning is phil alexander he is currently the ceo and founder of concept drop of 500 startups b7 teen grouping but before that he was a member of 1871 in the greater chicago area he was the co-founder of quick to launch llc and before that he did some time at zodius capital before jumping in to his own businesses phil are you ready to take us to the top

88.439 - 94.286 Nathan Latka

I am. All right. Very cool. So first things first, why don't you tell us what concept drop is and how you guys generate revenue?

95.667 - 117.872 Phil Alexander

So concept drop is a marketing platform that allows businesses to have presentations and marketing material designed while they sleep. So no more design contests or wasting hours combing through a ton of applications on freelancer sites for a short project. Instead, what we do is we match everyday marketing projects like presentations and one pagers to top flight designers and

118.223 - 142.86 Phil Alexander

through a series of advanced algorithms and integrations to everyday software, like PowerPoint, for instance. So we are a Chicago-based company. We're actually servicing over 300 leading brands And we're set up as a marketplace. So we're making money from essentially taking a cut of every single project and then paying out the rest to different independent contractors.

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So who is the, in this case, who is the seller? Are there freelancers?

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Do you sign up the sellers?

149.982 - 162.28 Phil Alexander

Yeah. So the suppliers are kind of a global network of elite creative professionals. So we actually vet them and we have a small group of freelancers that are working on projects actually based on fit.

162.36 - 176.04 Phil Alexander

So for instance, if it's like 11 at night and you say, I need a one pager by tomorrow, we can give you someone who might be in London, giving them a headstart on tomorrow's design, but they also have been vetted to have industry experience in your area of business. And obviously it's

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But they're not competing with other suppliers to win that project. We're actually making them the offer, providing the details, and then they can take a look and see if it fits with their project.

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with their pricing and with their skill set and obviously availability is a big piece of it as well my point is so it's let's say it's a hundred dollar project you're taking 35 out of that is the is the freelancer who's accepting that job seeing 70 or sorry the net opportunity which would be 65 or are they seeing 100 bucks and then you take out 35 bucks they see the net we want to show them exactly what they're going to get paid yep awesome great so you're basically upselling that to the the buyers really covering that correct okay cool so and who is the average buyer would you say

252.92 - 267.425 Phil Alexander

The average buyer, we actually work mostly with middle market and larger enterprises. They typically come from marketing teams. Usually we sell into director level and higher on those marketing teams. So a lot of directors and marketing, sometimes CMOs.

275.482 - 287.142 Phil Alexander

at the end of 2012. So we started as just an overnight design service for PowerPoint, and we really kind of broadened our scope and our offering over the last couple of years, launching our marketplace in 2015.

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And so I always like asking this question, back in 2012, Phil, do you remember what that first year revenue was?

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I mean, it was basically nothing.

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Well, you've built something special 2012 to today, July 2016. How many total buyers have purchased something through concept drop?

321.517 - 336.221 Phil Alexander

Well, I can tell you that we worked with over 300 companies and in one calendar year, we 8X'd our monthly revenue. We went from two employees to eight full-time employees. And in the process, we recently closed out a $1.1 million venture round as well.

336.482 - 340.268 Nathan Latka

Okay. And so if it was venture, you were selling equity, that wasn't a note?