SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
We Need More Female Founders Like $170k/mo Crystal Huang
20 Dec 2015
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. In yesterday's episode, number 38, you heard from Neil Patel and he walked through how to capture 1,000 emails per day and he gave us a clue about what he's doing next. Okay, Top Tribe, our guest today is Crystal Huang. She is the co-founder and CEO of ProSky.co. And Crystal is near and dear to my heart because she is part of the 500 Strong family.
Those are all the investments that Dave McClure and Paul Singh have made at 500 Startups. So Crystal, I'm excited to talk to you today. Are you ready to take us to the top? Yes, I am. Very ready. Good, good, good. Well, you know, help everybody understand before we dive in. You graduated recently from Birmingham Young University.
You went out in Mountain View and walk us through what ProSky is and what you're focused on selling. Sure. So basically what we are is we're a SaaS company and we actually help other companies find qualified candidates and they actually get to test them through a project setting before they hire them. So kind of think of it like a try it before you buy it kind of idea.
We have many candidates and we populate their system with all these awesome college students who are ready to be recruited. And if they like them, they hire them. As simple as that. That's great. And you said you're a SaaS business. Again, we've got a lot of the top tribe that are building their own businesses. But if you don't remember, guys, what SaaS means, that's software as a service.
That's what SaaS means. So as we use that term, keep that in mind. Now, Crystal, walk us through real quick. A lot of folks might be listening, wondering, I want to be part of the 500 family. I want to be in Mountain View as part of an accelerator. What was it like applying to 500 startups? And was it competitive? And why'd you do it? Yeah, it definitely was.
I mean, I know for our bash, there was a couple thousand people who applied and they probably accepted maybe 25, 26, I'm thinking. So yeah, you can see that. I mean, it's very difficult to be accepted. And we were... To be honest, we weren't even sure if we would be accepted just because we've heard so many stories of people applying multiple times and they didn't even get in.
I think the one thing that 500 is really looking for is traction. So not only come in with a great idea, but actually show that you've actually validated your customers and you can actually make this business work.
And the neat thing about 500 is they have this awesome distribution channel and they can actually teach you and help you to be able to scale your startup really fast once you get into the program. And I would also encourage you guys to, you know, definitely try to reach out to other 500 alumni and find out from their experience and sell them on your business.
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Chapter 2: What is the main focus of ProSky and how does it operate?
So here they come, Crystal. Break down the 171 for us. If a student wants to, like, is the student paying to use prosky.co or is the company's paying? How does it work? Yeah, so like I said, we're a SaaS company, so the companies actually pay us. So imagine if you're a company, you wouldn't have to go to the college to recruit students anymore.
Companies are spending an average of $10,000 per campus. Fair per college. That's a lot of money. They don't have to do that anymore. You know, we actually populate the system for them and they can actually work on a project with the student. And I would say the majority of students are actually already trained on different skill sets.
So they're already getting quality candidates through their system. So I would say three quarter of our revenues are actually coming from companies and about a quarter is actually coming from students. And the reason for that is because we've actually been able to help subsidize a lot of that cost.
So think of more expensive training programs or courses or whatever, all them out there where they're charging anywhere from 10K to 15K for a training program. We've actually subsidized that to $249 per college student per training program.
And a lot of that, we actually have university partnerships where our training programs are either part of the electives or part of a subsidy program that the college offers for their students. So, Crystal, just to break that down, you're doing about $171,000 a month in monthly recurring revenue as of, again, August this year.
Three-fourths of that monthly recurring revenue is coming from companies, and one-fourth of that revenue is coming from students. who are paying $249 per class or per training, like your marketing thing on your website or your B2B sales or your SEO or your web development courses on your website. Is that accurate? That's correct. Okay, great. So walk us through then what companies are paying.
Yeah. Companies pay according to their size and their revenues. So it's anywhere from $500 a month to $5,000 a month. So to give an idea, a startup with maybe 10 employees, they would be closer to $500 range.
And in a mid-sized company who is paying a good couple hundred million dollars in revenue a year, and they may have employee size anywhere from 100 to 800 employees, they would be paying close to around the $5,000 range. Got it. And how many total companies worked with you guys, I guess, just say last month in July?
Yeah, we actually had well over 60 companies, and we're actually going to be growing to 500 paying companies by April of next year. That's great. And what about on the student side? Back in July of 2015, how many students had gone through your program? We, last month was actually a really good month.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Crystal Huang face when applying to 500 Startups?
And Crystal said about 500 students who are paying them, who paid them 250 bucks a month back in July. So Crystal, this is fantastic. I think people are really going to They're going to go to your site. They're going to want to understand the numbers as it relates to your website.
And we'll break down, you know, these numbers and all the digits and the math in your show notes at nathanlatka.com forward slash the top 39. Again, forward slash the top three nines. Okay, Top Tribe, I want to give you more brain juice this month totally free. If you're loving this episode, text the word Nathan, N-A-T-H-A-N, to 33444 for your chance to win a prize on an upcoming show.
The next prize is a pack of 14 business books valued at $250 if you bought them on Amazon, and these books are the ones that Mark Zuckerberg thinks every entrepreneur must read. Crystal, I know you're getting a real cold, but you got to get excited with me because we're about to get into my favorite part of the show. Do you know what's next? Tell me. Come on, Crystal. It's the famous five.
Are you ready? Let's do it. All right. Number one, what is your favorite business book? So it's not really a business book, rather a biography, which would probably help cover one of my favorite CEOs. And it's actually the Walt Disney autobiography right now. Um, it's just fascinating to see what he went through and how much passion he put into building, um, Disney as a brand.
And I mean, it's definitely given me a ton of inspiration to build my own business. You know, that book page 349 blew my socks off when Disney and, but when Walt and Roy, Roy, you know, Walt's older brother, Roy Disney. We're discussing whether or not to do Cinderella and Walt turned, this is from that page and told Roy, Roy, I'm spending a hundred million bucks on Cinderella.
Go figure out how to get it funded. I'm starting to spend the money tomorrow. And it's just crazy. You had like the creative genius in Disney and the mathematical financial wizard in Roy. And it's just, it's no one knows about Roy, but that's what made it work.
Yeah, I mean, it was really the perfect, if you're talking about founder, you know, chemistry or symmetry, you know, that was like the perfect founders team. I totally agree. Okay, we'll link to that in the show notes. Number two, Crystal, which CEO are you following or studying right now? And again, I have to say Walt Disney again. I'm like, seriously, like so engrossed with him right now.
I mean, it's just crazy how he managed to build a company nothing to this amazing empire, you know, internationally. And so I think I've really been studying what he's been doing and, you know, really following him through. Now, Crystal, number three, as you are building your empire, what is your favorite online tool like Evernote? Yeah. Yeah, I'll have to give a shout out to Osana.
They've been amazing. For one, as a CEO, you know, it's not really micromanaging people, but really understanding what's going on in your company and understanding what teams are working on and where they need help in. And Osana kind of gives me that broad view where I can kind of go in into different projects that might
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Chapter 4: What was ProSky's revenue growth before and after joining 500 Startups?
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