SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Would You Kill $700k Business To launch This SaaS for Architects?
09 Jan 2022
Chapter 1: What revenue does NJ Media generate monthly?
We are currently doing around 60 to 80,000 euros a month. And we saw many of our customers struggling to convert leads. So we made a small CRM, which kind of helps them to manage them, talk with them, communicate them, activity planning, deal planning, so they can close more deals.
Chapter 2: What challenges do customers face in converting leads?
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 Nick Janssen.
He's building two tools, NJ Media, which helps architects to attract more clients to digital media, and also Sharpify, a simple and powerful CRM tool for SMBs. He's 27 years old, started in 2019, now doing and on track to do about $700,000 here in 2021. Nick, you ready to take us to the top? Yes, Nathan. All right. So NJ, it's not, is it njmedia.com?
People are going to think it's a media business, but do you have SaaS referring revenues here? No, no. That's primarily an agency. Another business we have, that's kind of the SaaS tool. Okay. And so what's that tool? That tool is called SharpFind. Why we're doing that? Because NJ Media is a lead generation agency that we are currently doing around 60 to 80,000 euros a month.
And we saw many of our customers struggling to convert leads. So we made a small CRM, which kind of helps them to manage them, talk with them, communicate them, activity planning, deal planning, so they can close more deals. So let's focus on the agency here for a second. What year did you launch that? We started 2019 in the beginning of that. So the first year was 109.
Second year was around 360. And this year it's going to be close to 700, 750, something like that. I love it. You hold up the magazine real quick. You showed me before the call. So you just give me the data because you know what I'm going to ask. You got the magazine. That's great. So this year you think you'll do 700K.
Now, are these folks sticky or do they pay you for like a month and then leave usually? What we did, so one of our mentors teached me to sell upfront a lot of expensive package, which is around 3,000, 4,000. And then we are selling them a continuity that seems very cheaply, but still we have problem with churn.
So our stickiness on average is like three months, which we are trying to fix because NJ Media, when we started, we were doing basically every type of service business. And now we're specifically working with architects and interior design companies outside of Latvia. So I'm from Latvia, a small market locally. So we wanted to grow to like, we wanted to do 2 million this year.
We didn't do that, but we want to grow outside. So that's why we niched down a little bit. Yes, you still doubled year over year. And I can tell from your background, you know what you're doing when it comes to interior design. Very clean, very nice aesthetic. Are you an architect? That's my wife.
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Chapter 3: How did Nick Janssen start his businesses?
Oh, your wife. I'm not an architect. That's my wife. That's my wife. Design, that's my wife. So why choose, why niche in architecture? It's like I was doing initially SaaS business and I looked at the market and I was like, damn, this is so red. Like many people doing that, many people, competition big.
And then the second niche, which I was about was digital agencies, like helping them to grow because many agencies struggle to get to 50 a month. So maybe that one. And also it's a red ocean. And then I saw, hey, we have good clients in Africa.
damn there's like nobody doing this stuff and the dudes who are doing that it's super old school guys and that's why we chose this niche and uh first month we launched it it was uh middle of october uh november we spend on ads 5.5 000 we got cash collected 6 000 and revenue was 19 000 and this month probably going to triple that number for those for architects
This is inside of NJ Media or on Sharpify? That's only NJ Media. Okay. Interesting. So tell me about Sharpify. When did it launch? We are still building it. We have the website ready. Everything is ready. We're still building that. We like let it to have people in the middle of this year. So some users do it and we have it like a free plan. So many, many people not to just use the free plan.
We have like 50, 60 people using the free plan and we have one customer actually who's actually paying. We're not kind of pushing it because we're still in development. I want to like, I have one coder. So only
guy who's quoting me the soft and i'm paying him a salary and how much i just want to make uh it's 3 000 euros in a month yeah yeah yeah uh interesting and um is he in or she in europe uh yeah he's like a friend of mine he comes to our office we have like a cool office for like like really cool office does but you own 100 you own 100 equity and sharpify both yeah both yeah Okay.
And both NJ Media and Sharpify, you 100%? Yeah. Those are two separate entities, but yeah, we want to mix them together. Yep.
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Chapter 4: What is Sharpify and how does it support NJ Media?
Okay, cool. And then how many at NJ Media doing about $80,000 a month right now in revenue, $700,000 this year? How many customers do you have right now paying you? Sorry, what did you ask? How many customers do you have right now paying you on NJ Media? Like recurring customers, we have like stable recurring customers, like 20, 30, like stable recurring.
Most of them, we get new onboarding for them. Because we have one supplementary product for NJ Media, which is a course for beginners, big beginner entrepreneurs, which we sell around 1,000 to 1,500 euros, depending on if they use the incentive deal we offer them. So in Latvia, we're selling also a course and a service.
And Nix, when you do at NJ Media $60,000 to $80,000 per month in revenue, are you profitable? Yeah. Yeah. Of course. I'm like, I don't, I don't like close to 40%. Yeah. So what do you do with that capital? Because you own a hundred percent. What do you do with it? I just put it back inside of the business. Buying office gear. We have a really cool office. Investing in people, trainings.
Chapter 5: What strategies did NJ Media use to grow its revenue?
I buy courses. This year, I spent 30,000 euros on courses alone. I just put it back. Because one of my other mentors said, you have to put it back on everything you have to make a significant amount, I think. My goal is to have a 100 million euro company. Will it be NJ Media or Sharpify, you think? My idea, Shopify, probably is a shitty idea because it's super red ocean.
So I'm thinking about to pivot the Shopify tool for specifically architects. I think that's my kind of idea, make it more valuable, but I still, the CRM is a bad market to do it, I think. And have you bootstrapped NJ Media to date or have you raised capital? Yeah, of course. Yeah, everything, everything. So you've bootstrapped? Everything, yes. Everything's bootstrapped.
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Again, both plural founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash valuations. Any plans to raise at Shopify?
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Chapter 6: How does NJ Media ensure customer retention?
No, if I'm thinking about the ideas, right? I'm like looking for the ideas. I'm thinking about them. I'm going to plan to do interviews in January for architects. And if I have some idea and I understand, okay, shit, I want to do it fast and I need the money. Now I have contacts.
Actually, I could get money from my friends who have businesses like Colgear for making like millions a month and he could maybe give it to me if I need. So yeah, I don't have it yet planned out, but maybe later. What would make you take capital? I don't know.
If I think I need it, if I have the idea, okay, I have a plan, I see huge demand, and I just don't have the resources to take from my own money to just do it. Maybe I could hire two guys to program. Maybe they could do it. Because my NJ Media is basically a consultancy, which is very... There's huge margins, big margins. So we have room to operate, right? How many are full-time at the agency?
Um, 12, 13 people. And how many of those are engineers? One. So we have like seven. Yeah. Like seven people, me included are like sales guys, like selling things. And so five, six people are working with the client ads. And we have one guy who's coding things and like doing that stuff. Very cool.
Well, if people want to follow along, watch the story, you can go to nj-media.com as Nick jumps into his new SaaS business. We'll see how if he pivots it or stays with it. It's sharpify.io. Nick, in the meantime here, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? I will say it too. One of the recent ones, which I really liked and a shout out to him.
If he sees this video, it's Alex Ramosy, a hundred million offers. Very good book, like really good book. Damn. Like that book. And the second one is 10X Rule by Grant Cardone. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? Uh, the same guy, Alex Ramosy. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your business? Uh, the, I think Zapier and ClickFunnels. I like those two.
Those are the best. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? I know precisely like 6.5. I use Aura. And what's your situation? And we know you're, it sounds like married. So any kids? No, not yet kids. We're married. Married and no kids. And how old are you, Nick? I'm 27, I think. 27. 27 or 28. I was like, thank you. How old am I? That's funny. All right. Take us home here.
Something you wish you knew when you were 20. Damn. I was very bad in... I was smoking, drinking until I was 23. And I thought I wish I knew faster to do something meaningful or something useful. So maybe start a company faster? Yeah, like do something faster. That's the number one thing. My brother is now like 14. He's like having a YouTube channel and making like 100 euros or 200 euros a month.
It's like crazy. I'm like, what the hell? Guys, there you have it. EngineMedia.com. They launched back in 2019, did $109,000 in revenue, doing $700,000 this year, and now niching down serving architects. About 25 customers paying on average $40,000 per year. Profitable, taking $35,000 to the bottom line. Bootstrapped as he looks at launching his own SaaS tool called Sharpify.io.
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