SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Resume Building Tool Hit $10m in Revenue, 100% YoY Growth after Acquired
07 Mar 2021
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I would say we've still been growing at over three digits. Got it. So over 100% year-over-year growth since the sale in 2019. Yeah. You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka. Now, if you're hearing this, it means you're not currently on our subscriber feed.
Chapter 2: What was the growth trajectory of Zety after its acquisition?
To subscribe, go to getlatka.com. When you subscribe, you won't hear ads like this one. You'll get the full interviews. Right now, you're only hearing partial interviews. And you'll get interviews three weeks earlier from founders, thinkers, and people I find interesting. Like Eric Wan, 18 months before he took Zoom public. We got to grow faster. Minimum is 100% over the past several years.
Or bootstrap founders like Vivek of QuestionPro. When I started the company, it was not cool to raise. Or Looker CEO Frank Behan before Google acquired his company for $2.6 billion. We want to see a real pervasive data culture, and then the rest flows behind that. If you'd like to subscribe, go to getlatka.com.
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He is building a company called Zeti, which he sold to Bold in 2019. Prior to that, he was co-founder and ex-CEO of InterviewMe.pl and also Resume Lab. Kuba, you ready to get started? Sure. Excited to be here and thanks for having me, Nathan. You bet. So just to be clear, what is the current project you're working on right now? Is it Zeti inside of Bold?
Uh, yeah, like, uh, bold is pretty much, uh, it's pretty much our mother company. Uh, so we, uh, we basically, uh, we basically have a portfolio of website and a portfolio of products for, uh, for, uh, for job seekers. So, uh, back in the day we started inter interview me and Zeddy. And, uh, what year was that? When did you launch Zeddy? So, uh, so Zeddy was launched in 2016.
And, uh, we focused heavily, uh, we pretty much like use the experiences or experience that we had building interviewing PL strictly a Polish brand, a Polish brand. Uh, and we focused, uh, uh, we focused on, uh, on SEO and we went from zero to almost 4 million. Users monthly. Uh, I mean, I mean actually, uh, visitors. So Zeddy went through this stage of... In what period of time?
Zero to four million users? How many years after launch? Within two years. Got it. So in 2018, you had four million users visiting the site monthly. Exactly. That's great. And how are you monetizing these users? We basically offer a resume builder as a service. And was it a pure play SaaS model or a one-time fee?
So back in the day, we started as a one-time thing, but then we moved to purely a recurring model. When was that? What year was SaaS launched? So we started, like I said, like we started as the interview me back in 2015 and pollen is not really used. I mean, now the situation has sort of like changed, but five years ago, like no one was using subscription model.
So this is why we started as one time in the one time fee model. But when we started Zedding, which was a global website, we basically operated in a pure SaaS model. So the SaaS model launched in 2016? Exactly. I see. On the interview, we introduced it in 2019. Okay. So was it 2016 or 2019 that you launched a recurring model?
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Chapter 3: What is the current project that the guest is working on?
So it's not like four business units and there's different co-founders on interview me and there's different co-founders on Zeddy and different people on bold. It's all one business, just different brands. Yeah. Like, so sorry, sorry, sorry for making, for making it confusing. I mean, I think it actually stems from our business models.
So like we, we, we mostly use a search traffic, uh, which we, which we monetize. So in our case, it makes a lot of sense to occupy a lot of real estate in Google. be it organic traffic or be it paid traffic. So we basically have a lot of different websites for career seekers, but at the end of the day, they use mostly one product. Great. Let's go back to the early days because this is impressive.
You go from zero to 4 million views, right? So take me back to those early days. Do you remember in the first year that you were in business, how much revenue you did back in 2016? Yeah, but back in 2016, at the time, when we got the investment, it was around $15,000 a month. Okay, hold on. You told me you got the investment in 2019, I thought. No, it was 2016.
Okay, so you were doing $15,000 a month by the end of 2016. That's also the year that you raised the $200,000 of capital. Yeah, exactly. And, uh, and importantly, that wasn't, uh, uh, there wasn't recurring revenue. So it was, uh, so we pretty much, I had to make this money each and every month. Otherwise we wouldn't be breaking even.
And then take me into 2017, one year later, how much revenue did you do in 2017? Um, I can't give you like the exact number, but, uh, it was, uh, at that time, like we were growing at around like 300% a year for the next, uh, for the next three years. So 2017, I would say it was around like 50, $60,000. Still, still, uh, one time stuff. Yeah. Okay.
And that was 50,000 or 60,000 for the whole year, or that's what you were doing per month. Okay, I see. Got it. And then eventually you switched all this one-time stuff over to SaaS and that happened in 2019, correct? Yeah, like I did make it confusing. So like, sorry, Zeti used recurring subscriptions pretty much like right from the beginning. So it started being very profitable.
But then we launched subscriptions on the interview me PL, which was the Polish site. Okay. I don't think that answers my question. When you're doing 15,000 in year one of one-time revenue, you then grow 300%. You're doing 50 or 60,000 per month in 2017. Regardless of Zeti, interview me.com. When did that one-time revenue start switching over to SaaS?
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Chapter 4: When was Zety launched and what was its initial focus?
On interview me. It doesn't matter who has all your revenue. This is all your revenue. So if we talk about every brand, it's going to get very confusing. I'm just trying to understand when you and your team looked at the revenue and said, you know what? There's an opportunity to launch a recurring plan here. We're doing $50,000 a month in one-time sales.
We're sick of selling new stuff every single month. Let's get some recurring predictable revenue. When was that? Yeah, I did get the question. But the thing is, if we have the same product on two different sites, we use a different business model. So on zeddy.com, it was recurring revenue right from the beginning, 2017. On Interview Me PL, which was a Polish site, we switched to recurring.
The $50,000 that you were doing monthly in 2017 that you said is one-time stuff, was that Zeddy or Interview Me? Both. Okay, got it. Got it. So you're giving me numbers that are combined and then trying to split out the business model, which is what's making it confusing. I'm trying to simplify the story here. $50,000 in 2017 across both brands was all one-time stuff, correct? Correct. Yeah.
Like if we want to simplify, let's say it was like 50,000 bucks. Okay. You then transitioned at some point where you were selling more monthly recurring stuff. And it sounds like that was in 2018 and 2019. Exactly. And why did you make the switch from a founder's perspective? Why go from the one-time high volume stuff to the maybe less people paying, but more predictable revenue recurring?
Well, the numbers worked for us. We started running tests on ZE.com and obviously the number of subscriptions went down slightly, but our LTV made up for it massively. So we basically started making like three or four times more money. Yep.
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Chapter 5: How did Zety achieve 4 million users in its early years?
So when you did and looking like that today, for example, the folks that pay you monthly to use these tools that you've built for the market, what are they paying you on average per month? Are we talking like five bucks a month or like 500 bucks a month?
Uh, so, uh, back in the day, like we had, we had three of three plans, five, 10, 15, uh, we consolidate and consolidate them into 20 into one plan, which is like $25 per month. And who are the people you should paying for this? I imagine if I paid you to do one resume and then I get a job, I'm going to stop paying the $25 a month fee.
Uh, one of your most search search terms actually is how to cancel my Zeti subscription. I imagine this is a theme you deal with. Yeah, so here's how it works. So most of the time when we think of creating a resume, we think that we will basically create a resume, send it over to the employer, and bam, all of a sudden we get the job.
Chapter 6: What monetization strategies did Zety implement?
This is not what happens. And most of the time, the average time of looking for a job is anything from two up to five, sometimes six months. So during this period, you should be sending resumes and customizing them for each and every position. So our users basically come back to the platform to make some changes. customize the resume for... Why do they need you once they get a job is my point.
Once they get a job... I don't think they need the resume builder to begin with, but now we started offering a bunch of other retention features. So we're trying to focus on the value that we are providing to the user. Social cards would be one of them. So it's basically an...
internet profile that you can have something like something similar to LinkedIn profile that you may have and it's kind of linked to your resume. So when you send your social card to an employer. You have basic analytics, how many employers are opening your domain. Help me understand scale here.
I imagine most of the audience is saying, I was curious, you went from zero to 4 million users visiting the site in 2018, but how good were you at converting those users, those eyeballs into actual paying customers? Yeah, like I said, I wouldn't be able to give you specific numbers, but at the time when we were acquired, we were on a $10 million run rate. Okay, got it.
So how many paying customers was that back in 2019? Hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. I guess a better question might be, what conversion rate were you trying to optimize for in terms of unique hits, right? Unique users converting into paid? Was it like the 3%, 4%, 5% we typically hear or something higher? No, it was way lower than that. It was around like 1%.
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Chapter 7: When did Zety transition from a one-time fee to a SaaS model?
1%. Interesting. And I guess that model can work for you, right? So a lot of people think they have to get up to 2%, 3%, but you made it work for you. I think our product requires a very specific business model. So in a typical SAS, you get this much higher conversion rate, 3%, 4%, and maybe much higher. In our case, we used organic traffic.
So we built this content machine, and we basically started targeting each and every person Who was at the stage of looking for a job? And we were reaching these people with free content. And that traffic was very cost-efficient for us to build. So even with around 1%, we've been able to... Yeah, we're running out of time here. Last couple of questions before we wrap up with the famous five.
So since you sold in 2019, has growth increased or decreased? What have you grown? Like a percentage is fine, so you don't have to give numbers. Yeah, massively, massively, massively increased. I would say like we've still been growing at over three digits. Got it. So over 100% year-over-year growth since the sale in 2019. Yeah. That's great. All the other brands that we know that we built.
Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And you just sort of said you were at a 10 million run rate in 2019. If you have over 100% of your growth, that means you break 20 million last year. And if all goes well, maybe you can break 40 million this year. You think you can do it?
Uh, I said like around, uh, but, uh, and yeah, and it's, uh, and it's, you're, you're, uh, it's, you're doing the math, the math Nathan, uh, not me, but, uh, yeah. It's you excited to stay with the company. I mean, you're a founder, you're a builder. What has bold done to incentivize you to stick around after the acquisition? So, yeah, it's funny.
It's funny that you're actually asking this question because we're leaving, uh, you know, in about two. Interesting. What's next? Uh, ask me now in about six up to 12 or 12 months for now, like, uh, I need to, uh, I need to take, uh, take a bit of a break to explore my curiosity and, uh, think about it. How many co-founders were, did you guys have at Zeddy before, before you sold? Two.
Just two of you guys. Uh, and you guys just split it 50, 50, and then you had a $200,000 angel investor. No, it was, we started, we started, we started with, with my idea. So I had, you had more, you don't have to say how much more, but you had more. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Good stuff. Let's wrap up here quickly with the famous five. Number one, Cuba favorite business book.
Well, that actually, okay, I can give you the most recent one. Extreme ownership. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? Jeff Bezos and Musk. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building the business? I started as an SEO guy, so that has been Ahrefs. So what's your favorite SEO tool? Number three, how many hours of sleep are you getting every night?
Used to be six. I'm trying to get to eight. And what's your situation? Married, single kids? Single. And how old are you? 35. 35. Kubo, last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20? Travel more and started earlier. Guys, Zeti was founded to help you build your resumes back in 2016.
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