SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
How this Reporting Tool Bootstrapped to $4.2m ARR, 2600 Customers
23 Sep 2022
Chapter 1: How did Dash This achieve $4.2 million ARR?
So 2,600 customers, $135 a month means you're doing about $351,000 a month right now on revenue, correct?
Yeah, US, yeah.
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 Antoine Paré.
He's been building and helping businesses grow online for over a decade with digital marketing. Today, he's the CEO and partner at Dash This, a software helping thousands of digital marketers every day.
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Chapter 2: Who are the primary customers of Dash This?
He's also a family man who's happiest hiking and skiing with his two kids or traveling with them around the world. Antoine, you ready to take us to the top? Absolutely. All right. Tell us about Dash This. Who's paying for this right now?
Mainly marketing agencies or any marketers that need to have good-looking reports each month. And we help them to automate their marketing reporting. So yeah, we're here to help them going faster in a simple manner with their reporting.
And what are they paying per month on average to use that kind of technology?
Chapter 3: What pricing strategies have been tested by Dash This?
$135 for existing clients.
And it's always been that way? Or have you kind of edited and tested pricing over time?
We did around, I'd say like five to six different pricing over time. Like we've been here for 10 years, but the clients have really changed over time. Like at the beginning, 10 years ago, it was really big agencies with data scientists. And now it's every day, it's everyone who has a business or has to do marketing online. So, and it's kind of a different crowd that we had 10 years ago.
Interesting. And so you launched in 2011. You've scaled. Marketing agencies are using you. How many pay you today to use the tech?
How many clients do we have?
How many clients?
Yeah. 2,600 clients. Yeah.
2,600. Okay.
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Chapter 4: How does Dash This drive customer growth?
That's great. And how many did you have about a year ago? Do you remember?
I think we got like 500 to 600 clients last year. Tell me about that. How are you driving growth? SEO mainly, like SEO and PPC. It's really all inbound marketing.
Okay, break these down for me. A lot of people, they want to do SEO, they want to do PPC, they don't know how to do it. Let's talk about SEO first. What's your strategy?
And like 10 years ago, Stefan, my, my, my, my, the founder of dash this, that was the only owner, like really tried to do this, to do this by his own. Like he created content, like lots of content. It was really helpful. It drives the business. Like, uh, uh, with more revenues.
And when he hired me as a consultant, I was specialized in SEO and I kind of helped him to develop more content and to be more specific in keywords and to be more of a sniper, I'd say. And then we hired people who were only doing this.
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Chapter 5: What is the customer acquisition cost for Dash This?
And we did a lot of blog posts, but it wasn't all working. So we kind of figured out that there were specific keywords we were good at and we like did what like everyone is doing. Like we, we, we got some tools, uh, we, we chose some keywords and we fight hard for them. And, and, but a smaller, a really small portion of our, of our SEO, uh, brings a lot of the, of our, of our incomes. Yeah.
And it, can we get a clue from that from your footer? So the keywords you really focus on are SEO reporting, social media monitoring, Facebook reporting, things like that.
Yeah, of course, of course. And, and, Now, today, we're working on more about the awareness and for KPI keywords or things that are not necessarily at the bottom of the funnel, but more at the top of the funnel. Because we have a lot of content for the lower portion of the funnel, like people that are highly converting. So we have to be working more on the top.
And what about PPC? So how much do you pay to get a new $135 a month customer?
I'd say 600 in PPC, but overall, I'd say $450 for the both portion.
I don't understand.
I mean, for all our clients, the cash, the customer acquisition cost for all of our clients is about $450. I see.
Got it.
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Chapter 6: How does Dash This manage churn and retention?
So $450, they pay $135, you get paid back in three to four months.
Yeah, mainly, yeah.
I see. Where are you spending that money? Facebook, Google, somewhere else?
Mainly Google.
Interesting.
We did a lot of Facebook earlier, like retargeting and stuff like that, but it didn't work out as much as Google did.
And do you have to constantly change the copy or can you stick with the same copy on Google when it's worked for a long period of time?
Um, yeah, recently we worked hard on that. So, and it helped the results are better, but I don't think we are working on that every weeks or every month. Like it's kind of like sprints. We'd get like a, for a, for a few months ago, we worked on that and then we worked like last year, but it's not a constant work for us.
Yeah. Facebook marketing report, Google search. It's you guys and then Overflow and then Hootsuite and then the arena in terms of all the ad placements. So it makes sense. You're sort of going after these keywords. How much do you spend in the past 30 days on paid ads total?
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Chapter 7: What unique features does Dash This offer compared to competitors?
Okay. Got it. That's not a ton. So it's working. I mean, can you double that and double your customer base or no?
We've been increasing our budget lately. So yeah, we're trying it.
Yeah. Interesting. Okay. And then talk to me about equity. You mentioned you weren't a founder, but you were hired. Do you own equity?
Yeah. 30%.
Okay. Got it. So tell me how you worked out that deal. There's a bunch of people listening right now that maybe want to join a SaaS company. They want to negotiate for 30% like you did.
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Chapter 8: What are the future plans for Dash This in terms of growth?
How'd you do it?
I'd say that Stefan really, really, really believed in my capacity to grow the business. So he gave me a good deal, I'd say.
So he owns the other 70%? Got it. And you guys are bootstrapped? Absolutely. I love this. That's great. Totally bootstrapped. Any plans to raise? You want to stay bootstrapped?
Bootstrapped.
I love that. Why is it so important to you guys? Did you guys get burned in the past by some VCs or what?
No, I don't know why. It's kind of the, it's in our DNA. Like we want to do stuff we believe in and we want to be like independent. I love it that way for now.
So 2,600 customers, $135 a month means you're doing about $351,000 a month right now on revenue, correct?
Yeah, US, yeah.
And what were you doing? Go ahead.
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