Plausible IO adds $23k in MRR in 12 Months - Full Interview Transcript ⭐️ GGLOT Transcription

0:00
Nathan Latka
Hello everyone. My guest today is Marco Saric. She is the co founder of plausible analytics. A simple open source, lightweight and privacy friendly alternative to google analytics. It’s trusted by over 3000 subscribers to deliver their website and business insights. Marco, you’re ready to take it to the top. I am all right. When did you launch this thing? What you’re
0:17
Marco Saric
About two years ago, 2.5 years ago.
0:20
Nathan Latka
Okay so about 2019 timeframe, something like
0:23
Marco Saric
That I think is actually 2018 december. That’s what like development started in about summer 2019 was the first kind of launch of the product
0:33
Nathan Latka
And and get us into your personal situation for a second. Were you working a full time gig and this is a side project or you quit the gig? Where were you in life?
0:41
Marco Saric
Yes. So basically possible started as a project of my co founder, he’s a developer. He started developing it to spend about a year developing everything, getting it on like ready to go And then he he got me involved because I’m the marketer. So I came from the marketing side, I I took this as a, as a as a full time kind of uh, I’ll join them as a co founder pretty much then about a year in or so.
1:03
Nathan Latka
Okay, now it’s the equity conversations always tough with this sort of setup. You guys just supported 5050 or do you have less than him?
1:10
Marco Saric
Uh, 51, 15? Uh, for him, I think there was some legal reason there was somebody needed to have a tiny tiny majority. But yeah, that’s uh, it felt kind of like a fair thing. I came in from the I can’t help them develop it as in from the marketing side of things and kind of kind of push it that way. And he does the development side of the product and design and all that. So I think it’s kind of these two things coexist and balance each other out. So I think it’s it’s quite fair
1:37
Nathan Latka
I want to dive into the product here in a second. But first tell us on average what our customers paying for this per month.
1:44
Marco Saric
We have a whole range depends. So basically be charged by pay too. So you know if you have a small website with 1000 you know patriots per month you will pay some like $5 per month but you might have 150 million you know and then you you’re paying 200 per month. So it’s a huge range starting from you know $5. It can be up to hundreds
2:03
Nathan Latka
What’s your what’s your don’t name the customer obviously but your largest customer were they paying? You know
2:09
Marco Saric
Actually that’s 150 million won. But what are the painter month? I think it’s somewhere around 600 per month. Something like that. But don’t the could be something similar. They’re not sure.
2:23
Nathan Latka
Fair enough. 5-600 per month. Do you know what a sweet spot is like is 100 bucks per month? Like a good sweet spot. Somewhere in there.
2:30
Marco Saric
It really depends. I mean, I think in general debonair lyrics are a bit more affordable than say, product analytics. So even then people come from something like a mixed panel and things like that, they’re, they’re kind of like, they feel feel comfortable in this kind of price range because product analytics for the same page view, number of pages you’ll be paying very more.
2:49
Nathan Latka
Okay. Yeah. I want, I want to focus my questions around a persona. So I understand you have a massive range but
2:54
Marco Saric
Like, like
2:55
Nathan Latka
If you really just take all your customers and divided into whatever your revenue is, what what would be the average customer being paid be paying from us about?
3:03
Marco Saric
Uh huh. Let’s say maybe $50
3:09
Nathan Latka
50 Okay.
3:10
Marco Saric
Okay. Yeah, I I have not done this kind of population.
3:14
Nathan Latka
Alright. No problem. So you come into the market, er you get 49% of the business. How do you sign up the 1st 100 customers
3:23
Marco Saric
Basically? Uh they’re bootstrapped self funded. So you know, as are out of the kind of the question, what we did. I mean, what what I am experiencing and what I felt was the good solution for previously first open source product is to go content marketing site. So I started creating content I think in in on the third week or so. When I joined, I published my first blog post after doing some kind of more marketing site on the positioning on the website and so on. But I published my first blog post in april last year About why should remove Google extreme website like under 10, 10 different reasons. All there a couple of 1000 words published it event on top of the hacker news, got, you know, 20 30,000 visitors on the first day or two. Uh got out in the summer about 60 70 by now. But basically content is how we got our first and still still are getting our, you know, trials to this
4:14
Nathan Latka
Day talks with the hacker news for a second. So when you did that, you got how many unique website hits that day.
4:21
Marco Saric
I think it’s actually a bit funny because we are all open. So you can actually go to plausible that I, oh, and you can like hit our website and there’s like a button that says live demo and that’s where you can see our own stats. But I think it must must have been about It must have been about you know 20,000 that day.
4:41
Nathan Latka
Okay and how many new trial sign ups do you remember?
4:44
Marco Saric
I will have to go backwards. But I think let’s say you know blogging is it’s not like you get you know, you know 10% of this too, it’s not like an ad, you know, so it’s a it’s a bit more indirect process. So let’s say we got 50 to 100 out of that. But what it does for us is kind of builds the brand, the brand awareness and kind of the kind of us getting us into this this field and people then you know, few weeks down the line. I I may need a new analytics platform. Oh, I remember those guys that talked about how you should not use google analytics and and and that’s how it goes relates. It’s not as direct as something like that. So it’s, you know, 20,000 does not really mean you will get a huge spike in sign ups on that day. But few weeks down the line, it was joe,
5:27
Nathan Latka
Very cool. So this is how you get your first sort of spike of customers. How many customers are you serving today?
5:33
Marco Saric
About 3300 subscribers,
5:37
Nathan Latka
Paying customers,
5:38
Marco Saric
Exactly. And you get About, I mean, yesterday got some like 50 trials. We get about 1000 of your trials per month. And uh yeah, about one third of those converts. So it’s going quite well. Last year in March, when I joined, they were about, I don’t know, like less than 100 now we’re at 3300. Um And is going quite well. I think they were mrr was about 400 or something that I joined. So april last year about 401 $100.4
6:10
Nathan Latka
$100 per month.
6:11
Marco Saric
Mrr. Yes Total 400 and I think it was 405 saying in start of April last year and now we are at 23,000 something. 23,300 I think something along those lines.
6:26
Nathan Latka
They love that. Okay so if we take 23,300 divided by the 3300 paying subscribers. They’re paying on average about $7 a month, something like that. Which would be I’m using your pricing your pricing slider on your site. So that price point would be. What about 10-K. Unique website news. I think I
6:45
Marco Saric
Think something like last time I checked about 80% of customers are on the lower two tiers. So up 200,000 pages. Which which kind of makes sense? I mean it’s not easy to get a website with more than 100,000 pages. So about 80% of customers are there in those first two tiers and then you know, you know the 150 million theories like the only one. Uh
7:04
Nathan Latka
Yeah, this is such a cool story. Why did you guys decide to build, you know, a lot of people? Should I build an open public? Should I not building public? You’re leaning all in your building in public. Why’d you guys decide to do that
7:14
Marco Saric
Fully open sores? I think open source and previously first they kind of go together hand in hand. I think if you want to be able to be transparent and trustworthy, you gotta, you gotta show what you’re doing and kind of, you cannot be a like google are our biggest competitor to google analytics is it’s like a black box. You know, you have no idea what they’re doing while they’re complete opposite. You can actually go to get help. You can, you know, view our code, you can contribute to it, you can even download it and run it yourself on your own server. You don’t even need to pay anything to us. I think that transparency was really important to kind of showcase this privacy first and kind of, we have nothing to hide kind of thing.
7:50
Nathan Latka
Yeah, I agree with that. Now talk to me about how you are managing cash flow. So you’re, you’re bootstrapped how many people on
7:56
Marco Saric
The team today to just two of us.
7:59
Nathan Latka
This is great. I love so revenue per employee is about 11, 12 grand per month. I always I always like looking at that metric. So you guys are doing this both full time now. Mhm
8:07
Marco Saric
Well, both, both full time. I mean the first few months or so we didn’t get paid then for a few months. We kind of got a little bit of a salary. But I think since since january february this year, we’re kind of getting to to reach in the salary levels we got used to, you know, you know, in the, in the real world, kind of
8:23
Nathan Latka
So he’s writing on the code, you’re doing other marketing and the two of you have done this together. Here’s, here’s my big question. I’m a big fan of you don’t you shouldn’t hire people to hire people to brag about how big your team sizes on podcasts, It’s way more impressive to have a small team doing a lot right, doing a lot of revenue, a lot of customers. How big can you guys get with only two people know more
8:42
Marco Saric
Hires. You know, if you ask me this last year, I will have sent no chance 3000 customers. We can be our 22 of us. So right now I don’t want to predict it, but I think it’s, it’s comfortable because we’ve optimized so many things and you know, I was thinking it would go crazy with customer support at 3000 customers. But uh, you know, we have like very, very, you know, simple and evidence and documentation and everything is out there and, and I think we’re kind of rolling and it’s, it’s going well and I don’t think there’s a, there’s a need short term, at least to hire anyone. It might even slow us down. You know, obviously training and so on.
9:18
Nathan Latka
So you are profitable today.
9:21
Marco Saric
Yes. Yeah. If you were bootstrap we don’t do any marketing budget has been zero U. S. Dollars since day one. We have not spent event $1 on advertising
9:30
Nathan Latka
Where all these 1000 trials per month coming from them. All content, marketing,
9:34
Marco Saric
Content, marketing, social media, The word of mouth, obviously it’s, it’s, I think one of the things about being open source is this community you can build. So if you go to argue tub, they have something like 7, 8000 likes, you know those stars and get a job and lots of developers know about us, lots of people in this kind of field know about us and and if you go to twitter and search for us, you can see daily people are recommending us and people are saying, oh I have not moved my clients or I have not moved with my own website from Googling supplies with is something that happens daily. It’s easy to see on twitter. So yeah, yeah, you’ve
10:06
Nathan Latka
Got a great and got a great following there. I mean you got 18,000 followers, uh, you know, you guys do something really well, but I think a lot of farmers are scared to do, which is you’ve got a, you’ve clearly defined the enemy, right, google analytics, right. A lot of founders, they are building something because they are against something else. But they want their nervous to talk about the thing they’re against, which is way more powerful to build a community with that enemy publicly out there.
10:30
Marco Saric
100%. So when I joined, first thing I did was positioning over the homepage because before my co founder did not really consider Google is that much? There was a mention of googling, but it was not that clear. And I was like, we got to make this clear. So in one second, you understand it? Because I feel that that’s one of the biggest mistakes startups do because they kind of tried to hide the fact that this big company exists. You know, well, all of their potential customers know that there is a this company that exists. So why not help your potential customers? And just straight up tell him, what’s the difference? What do you stand for? What are you, what are you kind of completely against what they’re doing and tell it like it is. It’s it’s like, you know, information for your customers. You’re helping them out.
11:12
Nathan Latka
No, I totally agree with that. Now, let me ask you a question. You guys obviously growing quickly, will you stay bootstrapped via plans to raise?
11:19
Marco Saric
We were saying no, pretty much daily to all the species and and there’s no, there’s no current plan to raise any. There’s no need either. I mean, yeah, we would not even if you had the funding, we will not go and hire somebody new right now because we plan to take it a bit slower. So no plans.
11:36
Nathan Latka
What would you value the business today?
11:39
Marco Saric
I have no idea. No, I think there was somebody somebody said that we could raise. What was it he said between seven and 15 million and without kind of any, without kind of like no strings attached kind of he mentioned a few months ago when we, because we tweet, we share the public, you know, the camera and so on. So every time I share this, there’s like, you know, several emails from the BC is kind of like you want to take funding And one of them was a bit more concrete. So I mentioned, I think he mentioned something about 7 to 15 million and like it was like we will just give you the money you do what you want. But uh, yeah, so nothing better that I know better calculation other than that fact
12:14
Nathan Latka
Your annual run, right? If you’re doing 23 grand a month right now in revenues, what to about $270,000 per year. I mean, let me, let me ask you a question right? If somebody that also like I could see like a flip folio or grow dot com be very interested in sort of what you’re building. If one of them approached you and offered you guys, you know, $4 million, all cash upfront to cell division. You take it?
12:36
Marco Saric
Probably not.
12:38
Nathan Latka
Are given spouse. Are you in a relationship?
12:40
Marco Saric
Yeah. Yeah. I’m in a rush,
12:43
Nathan Latka
Would they, if you came home tonight to dinner and told them that you were going to get 49, you turned down 49% of a $4 million dollar catch up offer. Would they leave you immediately or would they be supportive?
12:54
Marco Saric
I think it will be supportive. But that’s definitely when you ask it like that, it’s a bit more to think about for sure because on my own I’ll be like, we were really not not want to sell and it really has to be a right situation, right buyer for everyone, for us, for the customers. But when you ask you like that, I’m like more like maybe I should think about it twice, but no plans. No plans for investors or sales. That’s great.
13:16
Nathan Latka
Let’s touch on turn real quick. What’s your term rate today
13:20
Marco Saric
Things about 2%.
13:21
Nathan Latka
Okay. 2% per month.
13:23
Marco Saric
Is that good?
13:24
Nathan Latka
It doesn’t really matter what if it’s good or bad. The question is, do the economics work and you guys are profitable and you’re growing
13:29
Marco Saric
Nicely. Like one thing that I look at our expansion M. R. I always wanted that to be bigger than churn and that’s that’s covered quite quite well every month. What is your
13:38
Nathan Latka
Expansion? If you look at the customers from one year ago, how much are they expanded on average?
13:42
Marco Saric
So let me just quickly. Uh I don’t I don’t spend much time on this in
13:47
Nathan Latka
Your dashboard.
13:49
Marco Saric
Yes, I I’ve been using paddle and I’m in the dashboard and I can see last month they got expansion of um Expansion of our of 400 and turned 400. So that was very even this month expansion a matter of 300 and turn of 100. So it’s like and then the previous languages March, expansion 800 and turned 300. So like that’s one that I care about. I mean um are are obviously covers obviously both, but I’m curious that the churn gets covered by expansion to kind of even it off. And
14:19
Nathan Latka
I would personally just this is anecdotal based on the interviews that I’ve done in the database that I run. You rarely see companies at this stage in this taxonomy, this category have expansion, everything like you guys do. I would credit it because it’s so crystal clear that people are paying you a price point tied to the number of unique website visits. So you have a natural automatic Upsell built in and that’s actually healthy
14:42
Marco Saric
Thing and we don’t actually even enforce it so strong, they send an email a couple months in and we kindly ask you to upgrade and if it were expelled and people respect that then people upgrade and yeah like you say it’s natural thing you want to build your website to to grow more and then you end up having more visitors which means you end up having to pay more for your analytics. It kind of makes sense because also our costs are are larger with storage and all that stuff.
15:05
Nathan Latka
Very good. Alright Marco. Let’s wrap up with the famous five No 1. What’s your favorite book
15:10
Marco Saric
Rework? I would say base camp
15:12
Nathan Latka
No two. Is there a founder you’re following or studying right now?
15:16
Marco Saric
That’s right now. But I followed the rand Fishkin for years now. I love his thinking
15:21
Nathan Latka
And he’s got a great book lost and founder highly recommended.
15:24
Marco Saric
I’m as a great one. Yes.
15:25
Nathan Latka
Number three What’s your favorite online tool for building plausible?
15:32
Marco Saric
Yeah. Three through I guess twitter. I don’t really have a favorite one. Number
15:38
Nathan Latka
Four. How many hours of sleep every night?
15:40
Marco Saric
How much what sleep? Okay. 7, 7 hours approximate.
15:45
Nathan Latka
And what’s good? What’s the situation? Married, single kids?
15:48
Marco Saric
Um No kids, girlfriend lived together. Not married, not married yet.
15:54
Nathan Latka
No kids. And how old are you marco?
15:56
Marco Saric
I’m 38 I
15:57
Nathan Latka
Think. he says. And with with a question mark on the end. Last question, what’s something you wish you knew when you were 20?
16:05
Marco Saric
I wish I, I started to start up faster as in corn or owners found that I was until last year I was basically, I’m more like an employee
16:15
Nathan Latka
Plausible dot io there an alternative, all analytics that does not crap all over your privacy. They’re growing very quick. $400 a month in revenue. A year ago. Now, over $23,000 per month. Over 3300 customers marco about 49% of businesses. Technical co founder took 51%. They’re off to the races. Boots dropped in, building in public. Marco. Thanks for taking us to the top.
16:34
Marco Saric
Thanks Nathan.

Plausible IO adds $23k in MRR in 12 Months - Full Interview Transcript ⭐️ GGLOT Transcription

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