SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Flooring engineers builds tool for himself, breaks $11k MRR as 1 person team
02 Sep 2022
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Well, so what are you at right now? 60, 11K in MRR? Is that total today? Yeah, that's right. And nothing a year ago, right? That's right. Yeah. Okay. You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka, where I sit down and interview the top SaaS founders, like Eric Wan from Zoom. If you'd like to subscribe, go to getlatka.com.
We've published thousands of these interviews, and if you want to sort through them quickly by revenue or churn, CAC, valuation, or other metrics, the easiest way to do that is to go to getlatka.com and use our filtering tool. It's like a big Excel sheet for all of these podcast interviews. Check it out right now at getlatka.com. Hey folks, my guest today is Joe Long.
He's a serial entrepreneur, CFO, CEO for various companies. His secret sauce is fixing and adjusting SMBs for operational efficiency and building perpetual motion teams. He's had four years in the Air Force, 30 years in and around Silicon Valley, and now is focused on certain industries like manufacturing, IT, staffing companies with installers who are actually in the field.
He does this via Adasoft.net, his ERP software for flooring companies. Joe, you ready to take us to the top? I am. All right. Did I get that right? Adasoft is your software company?
That's right. Yep. Adasoft is a software I started building three years ago, actually.
That's amazing. Okay. So where'd you get the idea from?
So 2009, I worked for a flooring company and I started in IT early on, but the flooring company had some really antiquated software, 40 years old, started in the 80s. And I thought, wow, we can do better than this. So we built some tools with Excel, built some tools with Access. And then I left the company, so I kind of let it go.
Fast forward to 2018, 2019, I found myself back with that same group, different flooring company, still using the same software. So I went out, looked at all the software.
Which is what? What were they using?
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Chapter 2: How did Joe Long transition from a flooring company to building Adasoft?
I'm not a coder by any stretch. I learned COBOL, FORTRAN, and BASIC way back when. So I didn't keep up with time.
So Joe, how do you get the MVP built? You start coding as three years ago. How do you get the MVP up?
Right. So what I am good at is building a database. So I built a SQL database. designed it, built the flows around it, and then I outsourced everything. So I think I mentioned when I emailed you that I'm a one-man show in terms of that. Everything else is contracted. Everything else is outsourced. And I think I'm going to keep it that way for a while.
I love that. So how many people last month did you pay at least a dollar to do some kind of task for you and Adasoft? Six. Six. Okay. Give us a little bit of flavor of what they do.
Right. So it's a team out of India. It's a company called Flexin and CEO Logistics.
Flexin what?
I've got some Flexin, F-L-E-X-S-I-N, and CEO Logistics. So they've done a great job for me. I just contacted and looked up the reviews way back when, and they started working with me over time within the budget that I had.
Which was what? What was the budget?
Well, it was about $10,000 a month to begin with, and then it floated up to about $20,000, $25,000 a month. And now we're just kind of putting icing on the cake and we're down to around $10,000 a month.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Joe face while developing his ERP software?
Okay. You already signed him up. He will be. That's awesome. What would you get him to switch off of?
Well, they're on CompuFloor and then they augment it with an access database. So they've done a lot of work around there. And really, this is the story with every CompuFloor shop, right? There's going to be a CompuFloor shop probably in every major market. I know of about 10 customers right now that I'll be talking with or putting in the pipeline. Two of them are there.
I'm already in conversation.
What's CompuFloor's revenue, you think?
You know, I've tried to find that out. I've heard... two numbers. So I talked to one of their project managers when he left and he didn't want to give up a lot of information. He was just gone two months, but I got the idea that they had 250 to 350 customers. The problem that they did, they didn't take a SaaS model. They were all on-prem way back when.
So they've taken the on-prem and they're trying to make a SaaS model. And instead of reinventing the whole thing, they just slapped a front end on
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Chapter 4: How does Joe manage a one-person team for his software business?
top of their database and it doesn't work well.
Interesting. But so what do you think their revenue is like 10 million a year?
If that, yeah. I mean, you know, they have a layered approach. So this company pays approximately what they pay for ASOFT, right? They're running the same thing, $10,000 a month or so. But CompuFloor charges them $800 just to create a license, just to create a license. And, you know, Just selling points like that are a slam dunk. Why would you pay $800 to create a user?
Yeah. So why not?
Chapter 5: What strategies does Joe use to outsource tasks effectively?
Yeah, I'd say they're in the neighborhood of four or five million, I guess.
You know, I'm thinking a lot about how I want to spend the rest of my life. And what I'm realizing is I've seen enough sales SaaS tools and marketing SaaS tools selling to other SaaS companies. I love these sort of niche tools that are doing $5 to $10 million a month, especially on-prem trying to move to SaaS. You and I should just team up and go buy this thing.
Oh, you know what? I floated that idea to them. They ignored me. So it's run by a 70-odd-year-old guy who's a bit of a kingpin. That's why the employees cite that they leave. It's because he's too dictatorial. He won't shake it loose. He's got a son who's been trying to drag it into the future, as I understand it. I've talked to him a couple of times. But yeah, by the user base, right?
That's what Rollmaster is. Worldmaster got bought by Broadloom, and they're not really changing it. They're talking about rolling out an ERP system in a year or two, but they've just taken the same on-prem Windows-based software that looks like it's from the 1990s, and they've packaged it with a couple of other things. Same with RFMS. RFMS just bought by 2020 something group.
So you don't think this guy will sell? You don't think he's willing to sell?
No.
you'll be pretty motivated as soon as the dominoes start.
Yeah.
I think. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I thought about going to role master and RFMS and telling them the same thing. It's like, look guys, give me your customer base. I'll, you know, whatever your profit is, I'm sure I can match that.
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Chapter 6: What features does Adasoft offer to its users?
I like Tim Cook on the big stage, but Arvind Sharma, the CEO of IT Conversions, he's a great mentor.
Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Adisoft?
Ooh, that's a good one. SQL Database is what I started it with.
Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Six to eight. Okay. And situation, married, single kids?
I've got three grown kids and a nice girlfriend.
Three grown kids. Okay. And how old are you? 53. 53. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.
Don't get married, start a business.
Guys, there you have it. Don't get married. Start up as adisoft.net. He launched it to scratch his own itch. He's working at a flooring company that had a terrible ERP. He said, I'm going to build it myself. He then signed him up as his first customer on his new software platform. Now doing 10 grand a month in revenue, hoping to double that, triple that over the next six to 12 months.
What I love about this is a one guy shop. He's got six contractors that he's in a great job managing. High, high revenue per employee. Joe, thank you for taking us to the top.
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