SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Willco Breaks 10k Customers, $1m Revenue, $6m Valuation for End of Life Planning
23 Dec 2020
Chapter 1: How did the pandemic impact Willful's growth?
It just so happened that we were able to say, hey, look, we are actually a pandemic proof business and a business that has actually seen our numbers go up. And so they were able to rally the investors and we closed in the end of May.
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My guest today is Erin Berry. She is an entrepreneur, speaker, startup advisor, and former technology journalist. She's a co-founder and CEO today of a company called Willful, an online estate planning platform. She's appeared in publications, including the New York Times, Forbes, and CNN, and she was named one of marketing magazine's top 30 under 30 marketers.
Erin, you ready to take us to the top? Of course. All right. Estate planning is not like a sexy hot topic. How'd you find yourself in that world?
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Chapter 2: What inspired Erin Berry to start an estate planning company?
Exactly.
Did you do that on it? I'm curious about SPV models. Did you do that on a note, like a safe? Or did you do it priced round?
No, we did it as a price round with a post-money valuation of $6 million. We had done some convertible debt earlier on from mostly Shopify executives. In Toronto, there's a lot of Shopify executives who are angel investors now. So those all converted along with the price round, but it was, yeah, it was priced.
And walk me through that valuation conversation because this isn't obviously a typical SaaS movement, but there's a clear path to launching a recurring product. So how did you justify the valuation with really one-time sales?
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, we always do try to position ourselves more as an e-commerce model versus a traditional SaaS with recurring revenue. And the investors who want SaaS are never going to see the valuation there. But luckily, our investors had been executors themselves. They really understand the space.
And they had also invested in other companies like Mocha, who are more e-commerce based fintechs. So really, I mean, it's always a dance. Nathan, I'm sure everyone tells you this. It's like negotiating anything. They come in low, you go high, you try to justify it. They say, no, that's crazy. And then you meet somewhere in the middle.
So luckily, we found great investors who saw the value in the business and who understand that you're getting into bed for a decade potentially. And so you have to both be happy walking away from the deal.
Talk to me about your guys's content marketing strategy. And if that's your primary user acquisition channel, you rank very high according to Ahrefs for competitive terms like online will even just the word will you guys are in the sixth position for it gets you caught 300 400 clicks per month organically. Is that an intentional strategy?
It is, Nathan. A lot of the things we do are not intentional, but this one is. You know, for us, we always think about the behavior of our users. You really start your search for estate planning and wills by hitting up Google. And so we've long known that PR, content marketing, and methodical SEO is going to be the way that we win.
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Chapter 3: What is Willful's pricing model for estate planning services?
estate administration tools, insurance, things like that, I absolutely think that those one-time transactions could get us up to that run rate or that the commission could be on the B2B side. So for example, launching a version of Willful where a financial advisor could pay a monthly fee to offer it to their clients. And so the recurring actually comes from the B2B side of the business.
Yeah. I mean, the company that comes to mind when I'm interviewing you, because, you know, I do some of these interviews, I've touched a couple in this space, but like trust and will comes to mind. And I'm going a bit off memory here, but I think that they were only doing like 25 grand a month in revenue. So 300,000 bucks a year, but they'd raised like $8 million at a ridiculous valuation.
You're doing, it sounds like more revenue than they're doing, but it's not true SaaS. So you're maybe not getting the premium that they got, but you're maybe making more money.
I don't know. I mean, I think Cody and I are very close. We're partnered with them and we do a lot of work together. And I definitely would not say that we're making more revenue than them. I don't know that for sure. But the market in the U.S. is just so much bigger. Right. So and they've obviously seen a covid bump as well.
I think that we're both trying to achieve the same goal, but it's actually nice that we're both doing it in different ways. So, for example, we have a family plan where you can buy multiple plans. They don't. So it's a way for them to validate that they all have subscription. We don't. So it's a way to kind of validate that. So it's actually nice to your point early in the conversation.
it's not a sexy topic. And so us estate planning CEOs tend to be a pretty tight-knit club and to share learnings. And it's nice to have these peers in other markets who are sharing those learnings.
Yeah. And sorry, I have to add a correction there. That's just their SaaS revenue. Like you, they have a much larger business, which is sort of the one-time sort of sales, but they're trying to build that recurring revenue. That's super interesting. Wait, so is there a path where in four years I'm interviewing you and Cody and you guys are all part of the big same company?
You know what? I always say, if I had a chance to move down to San Diego, which is where they're based, instead of staying here all winter in Toronto and trudging through the snow, absolutely. I mean, obviously, there's a few paths for any company. There's IPO, exit, or staying profitable long-term. And I think we're very much on an exit path.
And when we think about ideal acquirers, we want it to be somewhere where we want to work, right? I'm going to have to spend years of my life at the acquirer. And so, of course, we really admire their culture and their mission.
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