SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
He Quit His Fulltime Gig for $5k/mo Side Project, What He's Doing Now
28 Mar 2021
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
And the story is really just the traction that we have with our enterprise deals and what's going to be coming in the pipeline in the next month or two. There's some pretty exciting brand names and some big opportunities. So I think that the investors are going to be pretty excited about that.
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My guest today is John Stern. He's always been fascinated with technology and interpersonal communications and has been in a multi-time early stage sales leader and recently co-founded Ringpin with his good friend and business partner, Brian Levine, to help companies reach customers in more meaningful ways for more places. He's living in sunny San Diego with his wife and two young kids.
John, you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, this is awesome. Thanks for having me, Nathan. You bet. Hey, so tell us a little bit quickly, what space is Ringpin playing in and is it a pure play SaaS business?
Yeah, it is a SaaS business. And we actually cross into a lot of different industries because we help anyone that has any physical products or location run digital campaigns or provide digital experiences from those physical places. So it works a lot in retail. e-commerce, shipping, packaging, so many different real estate. So we cross over into a lot of different industries.
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Chapter 2: How did John Stern transition from a side project to a full-time business?
And because we do those integrations, we can become available to all of their customers right out of the gate instead of us going to try and find all the customers.
That's fascinating strategy. Can you tell me about the first API integration or partnership you guys launched?
Yeah, Postal.io was one of the first ones that we did. We worked really well with them because they do a lot of B2B account-based marketing. So we were able to, they sent wooden boxes of cookies from Nam's Bake Shop and they wood burned QR codes on the lids of those cookie boxes with a personal video from their customer to the end user. And it just got such a great reaction.
They wanted to start putting QR codes on every package that they sent out.
So would Postal.io then buy a bulk license plan from you guys and white-label your QR code product, or they'd sell your thing directly to their end customers?
Great question. And we're still working out. Postal is one of our best partners and we just love working with them. So we're figuring out the best ways to work together. But ideally what's going to happen is that people are going to be embedding our software into their platforms. So then it's just an extra thing that they can sell to their customers and then we'll share the revenue on that.
Do you have brand equity though? In other words, will end customers know about you or will you really just keep your brand equity to ring pins and then they will mask your service as their own in a white label fashion to their end users?
Great question. And I think both options will be happening. We do have customers that we work with directly to build up that brand equity. And it also gives us the virality piece that we can have, you know, powered by Ringpin on every page that someone could click on if they thought it was a cool experience to build their own QR code and landing page.
But we will have some other customers that want to white label it and present it as their own software.
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Chapter 3: How does Ringpin's technology benefit businesses?
Okay, so they're both paying about two. I guess I'm a little bit confused on if a direct brand is going to pay you to use you and they're not white labeling anything. You said they can get started at two grand a month. I imagine if Postal is working with you, it's a very different sort of model. There's sort of a deeper relationship there, right?
Yeah, I mean, with Postal, just to be totally transparent, we just started to prove the concept and we wanted to see how it was going to play out before figuring out the financial pieces behind it. But most likely then, because we like them so much, we will give them the software and then just share the revenue from customers that they sell it to.
I see. I see. But were they, I was asking about your first, like your first hundred folks in using the platform in 2016. Postal was your first one launched back then? Oh, no, no, no.
Postal has been since, sorry, since the pivot where we added the QR codes and everything towards the end of last year.
I see. I see. Well, take me back to the start date. What was your initial thesis? Who were your first hundred customers?
Oh, got you. Okay. So way back in the day, we were building an omni-channel contact center for this insurance agency here in San Diego. They kept buying other insurance agencies that wanted to be able to use all forms of communication, voice, video, text, and live chat from any device in any location.
So we started building it for them and they ended up getting acquired by a private equity company before we finished the platform. So then we were sitting with this omni-channel contact center, kind of similar to like a talk desk or a dial pad or something like that, which to be totally frank, didn't excite Brian and I that much. building a kind of phone communication system.
What we really wanted to do is just give people the ability to connect from anywhere that they are and do anything they want from anywhere. The phone piece wasn't that exciting and we were a little bit more excited about video, but really being able to take it from physical to digital
Kind of brought it all together with the Omnichannel Contact Center and the actions and experiences that you can deliver through these codes. So most of our customers in the beginning were all just phone and texting customers. And they were a much different kind of level of customer than we're looking at right now. Now we're going after enterprise instead of small business and mid-market.
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Chapter 4: What is the revenue model for Ringpin's services?
Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building a business? Roam Research. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Four. Four. Okay. And what's your situation? Married, single kiddos?
Married with two young kids. Two kids. Okay. How old are you? I'm 43. Turn 44 next week.
Oh, exciting. Happy early birthday. Thank you. All right. Take us back to your 20 year old self. What's something you wish you knew back then?
Wow. Um, 20 year old self. I was just moving to San Diego and getting started out here. Probably, you know, to to ask for help a little bit. It took me almost 20 years to do that for the first time. And I've had a huge advancement since I've allowed myself to do that. I was always someone like kind of like a high achiever and didn't ask for help for anyone.
And asking for help has opened up a ton of doors for me.
Guys, ringpin.com, founded back in 2016 by John, now doing about under $5,000 a month in revenue across 45 customers. But looking to scale, he finally ripped the bandit off and went full-time last year, helping SMBs like restaurants and actually many other brands understand how to use QR code technology.
The go-to-market really right now is through API partners like Postal, which they're really excited about. We'll see what happens. John, thanks for taking us to the top.
Thanks a lot for having me. This was awesome.
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