SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
They want to rent out your luxurious car using software, hit first $24k in ARR
26 Jun 2022
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
And 20 renters last month, that would mean you did about $2,000 in revenue last month. Is that 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.
Chapter 2: What is subscription vehicle as a service?
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 Giovanni Smith.
He was born and grew up in Jamaica, studied architecture, then moved to Canada in 2008. He started off as an estimator in construction in 2010 and became a leader in 2013, where he oversaw multimillion-dollar projects and led a team of 50 persons outside the office. During his career, he always tried different ventures to learn and grow. Today, he's building Subscribe.
That's S-K-R-Y-B.com on the end to help folks understand subscription vehicles as a service in that space. Giovanni, you ready to take us to the top? Yes, sir. All right. So first off, subscription vehicle as a service, what does that mean?
Well, what we've done is create a service that, you know, forget about long-term commitments, you know, forget about your rental, you know, for a day or two. You can jump into a car for a week on a weekly model or a monthly model. Therefore, we're having access to variety vehicles and not having that long-term commitment, but still having access to proper nice cars.
Mm-hmm.
So how would you compare this to Toro or somebody's car rental marketplace where you can get it for a week?
Yeah. So Toro, we've been on Toro. We've lived the Toro life. We've experienced the Toro life, and that's why we created Subscribe. My co-founder and I, we've been top hosts on Toro for a number of years here in Toronto. And the difference is that Toro has a marketplace where people can control the prices and the customer experience is not the best, right?
And when there's an issue or a problem on the platform for Toro, you're really left on your own to really figure it out. So Subscribe, what we've done is we've created a system, an ecosystem that will connect all the partners and players in one space. Subscribe will monitor and manage the asset and manage the customer experience itself.
Therefore, you have the best in class service, best in class vehicle, but maintain cars. And there's no if, but, or maybe in terms of who has a problem, if you're responsible for that problem, but subscribers really are the main control over the experience.
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Chapter 3: How does Subscribe differ from traditional car rental services?
Oh, both. It's both. It's money. What's your focus going to be? 10 years from now, where are you going to make more money?
Not on insurance, not on insurance. There's so many other avenues with our business that we'll make money from. It's not going to be insurance. That's if you're focusing on insurance. Our focus is not on insurance, right? Our focus is on the assets itself and how they use the assets and what upgrades they want to the asset. So subscribers way more than just the insurance.
And of the 20 car renters that rented at least one car last month, what's the average ticket value? Is it a hundred bucks, a thousand bucks, 5,000 bucks?
Well, with our model, it depends on the car. I'll give you the average rate. Just think about per day can go between $120 to $150 a day.
And how many days are people usually renting for?
Minimum three to four days right now. We're trying to push them to the weekly model. Therefore, they can get a break on the price. So that's how we can engage it right now.
Okay. So three days at, you know, 150 per day is almost $500. So let's say that the average renter is paying you 500 bucks to get a car through your platform. What percent or how much of the 500 will you take?
Yeah, we take roughly between 20 to 30%, give or take depends on the situation.
And it depends on what you've negotiated with the car owner.
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Chapter 4: What is the current status of car owners and assets on Subscribe?
That's a very good question, Nathan. And the way how we could do that is utilize that card for other purposes. Events, get them out to market it differently. So therefore, we don't have only one sense of income revenue for that vehicle. And that vehicle is a car that can be in movie shoots, can be in weddings, that kind of stuff. I see. We can supplement that car to get other revenue.
Really smart. That's how we could try and get that.
When did you launch the business? What year?
2020, November 2020, COVID, you know, my partner and I, we registered the business then and became subscribed. And, you know, we just took it from there, just running with it, man.
And did you guys decide to raise capital or bootstrap?
We're strictly bootstrapping right now. Everything's bootstrapped, right?
And how many folks are full-time on the team?
So right now we have over full-time, I would say, two or three persons. And then we have a team of, uh, our own 12 persons that give her a time, like, you know, to help develop certain things, tech, marketing, all that stuff. Right. So a few hours a week, you know, they're, they're really helping the, the, the vision here in terms of us growing.
Well, marketplaces are tough Giovanni. We're rooting for you though. In the meantime here, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite book.
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Chapter 5: How many renters used Subscribe last month?
Three children. Young.
Busy guy. How old are you?
38, man.
38. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.
Oh, man. Whoa. Maybe traveled earlier. Maybe got married earlier to get the kids out of the way, that kind of stuff.
But yeah. Robert Leonardus Guys, Subscribe is a marketplace where you can list your expensive car and then have renters go book it. It's a marketplace. Last month, they had 20 renters book a car for an average of $150 per day for three days. Again, on average, that's a $500 sort of transaction of which Subscribe makes money by keeping 20% of that.
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Chapter 6: How does Subscribe generate revenue?
It's about $100. Robert Leonardus They're doing about $2,000 a month right now in revenue, trying to get more cars signed up on the platform to meet the consumer demand that they're having. Giovanni, we're rooting for you, man. Thanks for taking us to the top.
Thanks, Nathan. Thanks a lot.