SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
HelloBox Hits 1500 Customers, $15k/mo Just 12 Months
04 Jul 2020
Chapter 1: What is the revenue and customer count of HelloBox?
We have already some revenues. At the moment, we're at 15,000 MRR, and that's kind of roaring, especially in the real estate industry. How many customers? At the moment, they are 1,500. You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka. Now, if you're hearing this, it means you're not currently on our subscriber feed. To subscribe, go to getlatka.com.
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He is in the messaging management for more lead space, building a company called gethellobox.com. All right, Paul, you ready to take us to the top? Thanks a lot for inviting me to the show. I'm looking forward to. Good. So tell us what the company does. And are you guys a pure play SaaS model?
Yeah, like we created HelloBox a year ago because we've seen that a lot of website owners, especially ones from the real estate industry or also personal brands are. lacking results from their websites. They were like trying to convert people to buy programs or doing other sort of stuff.
But what we found out is that the easiest way to get in touch with them are their existing social media channels. So like Facebook Messenger in Europe, WhatsApp is like a big deal, or also in Mexico. And we thought like, why not offering website visitors the channels they are already using and love to use.
So we kind of build a small widget for website owners where the visitors can get in touch with them via social media channels. Okay, interesting. Now, are you servicing mainly SMBs? What's the average customer paying per month? Or are you pre-revenue? Yeah, we have already some revenues. At the moment, we're at 15,000 MRR And that's kind of roaring, especially in like the real estate industry.
How many customers? At the moment, they are like 1,500. Okay. So 1,500. So they each pay about $10 per month. Right. Yeah. Some are on free tier. Some are paying a bit more. We are trying because pricing, I guess your audience are kind of like tech startups, tech enthusiasts. That's right. Yep. So what I really would like to share is also our main point is at the moment the pricing.
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Chapter 2: How did HelloBox start and what problem does it solve?
We didn't do anything. We are only paying for a few AdWords campaigns. How much a month are you spending on AdWords? That's maybe $500 US dollars. Oh, okay. Okay, that's good. So when you say you're profitable, you're talking like $1,000 a month profit or $5,000 a month or... Depends always what you what you see. We don't like cash out any revenue or like give us any salary at the moment.
We would try to build put everything back into the product at the moment. So how are you paying? I mean, how are you eating tonight? How are we eating? We're doing like a lot of consulting still. Okay. So over the past 12 months, how much consulting revenue have you guys done together?
together like I can say it individually for myself the last 12 months yeah I did maybe let's say 100k okay that's good so 100k on consulting but in the background you're saying I'm only doing the consulting to reinvest in the software because I love the software more and you want to keep scaling the software that's correct that's a smart way to do it all right how many folks on the team today
At the moment, they're like three plus one freelancers who are especially building out integrations with new or with other software platforms. So how many engineers? Two. Two, okay. Any quota-carrying sales reps or no sales reps at this price point? Most of the things we're doing on ourselves, like no specific, no special sales rep at the moment.
And Paul, if you figure out a way to manage churn, you know, at this price point, these guys go out of business all the time. What's churn been last month? It was definitely like under 20%. Annually or monthly? Monthly. Oh, so that's really high. 20% monthly churn is really high. Yeah, yeah. That's at the moment what we're struggling with.
Because the market for especially website chat widgets or messaging widgets is super competitive. But if you're churning 20% a month, you're basically churning through your entire customer base twice every year. So you must be adding a ton of customers every month to be scaling. Yeah.
Yeah, and that's a really big thing for us, where we're trying to get in touch with those who canceled and to understand why they are canceling. So, yeah, at the moment, that's the only way we try to figure out why they are choosing another product. And that's also why I'm a bit concerned about raising prices. Yep. Well, I guess, is it a JavaScript embed? What's the onboarding look like?
The onboarding is just like, you can set it up on the website. Like the editor is straight on the homepage. And after you register for a free trial, you get like five email sequences where we teach them small hints and give them just like some lessons to educate them on the product.
And as soon as we have the phone number, I try to personally get in touch with them, get very personal, and try to also see what we can do for them. Okay, so just to be clear, Intercom and Drift, these are JavaScript embeds. You don't require a JavaScript embed? We do. Yes, we do. Oh, you do. Okay. How many times has it been embedded?
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Chapter 3: What is the pricing model for HelloBox services?
Per month? We check that, especially on AdWords. It's a much higher conversion rate. We get maybe 10 to 20 new customers per month. Okay, so 20 paid customers from $500 of spend. Yes. I mean, what is that? So 500 divided by 20, what's that? $25 per customer sign up? That's pretty good CAC. Say that again, sorry. Paul, it sounds like you're spending $25 to get a new $15 a month customer.
That's pretty good CAC. Yes, yeah. So why not spend more? Why not spend more? Um, yeah, like at the moment, the only thing where we really get recurring new customers are what's like, especially all for WhatsApp campaigns. And we try to increase the, um, the span, the marketing span, but we didn't see any really increasing number of, um, uh, new customers coming in. Yeah. Yeah.
So what we're thinking of is maybe doing more display advertisement, doing like more wellness campaigns. Um, but search campaigns are like really limited at the moment. Yeah. Would you sell the company for a hundred thousand dollars all cash up front? Not at this stage. No. Interesting. All right. On that note, Paul, let's wrap up with the famous five.
Number one, what's your favorite business book? Um, thank you. Economy. Uh, number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now? CEO or follow? Um, Of course, like, oh no, like, do you know Section 4 or L2? Sure, what's the CEO's name? Ah, Jesus, the professor. Oh yeah, Scott Galloway. Yes, yes, that's one, like, really, really. Good.
Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your company? Google Tech Manager. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Between six and eight. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? Married and two kids. Great. And how old are you? I'm 31. 31. Last question. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew? Just relax. Just... Relax more.
Guys, there you have it. HelloBox, messaging management for helping companies get more leads. Currently about 1,500 customers paying $13, $14 a month, doing $15,000 a month in revenue. Just launched about 12 months ago. Totally bootstrapped, so nice growth.
They are cash flow positive as they manage, again, their expenses, doing some consulting work on the side as they look to scale and still retain 100% control of their company. Four folks on the team, two engineers. Churn's a problem right now, 20%. churn each month. They're working on figuring out ways to drive that down. Paul, thanks for taking us to the top. Awesome. Thank you too, Nathan.
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