AirSlate Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2026)

Company ID

4157

Website

airslate.com

Transcript ID

3643 Nathan Latka (00:00) Hey folks, my guest today is Vadim. And at his request, I'm not gonna try and pronounce his last name, but he started his first company in 1982. And after several startups co-founded PDF Filler, which grew into Air Slate. He's a longtime software industry veteran and returned to the Air Slate CEO role in July of twenty twenty five, now leading the company's next generation of AI products. Vadim, you ready to take us the top? Vadim (00:24) Yeah, well, you know, next generation is actually a very good beginning because while we're trying to adapt to AI with the existing products, those products are commodity and our philosophy is hey, they're gonna have a run rate. We're gonna have a really nice life with those products, but sooner or later we're gonna have to step into AI times. And my approach always been By the way, I've been doing on and off AI for like forty years. I'm not exactly a new guy around the block. So ⁓ our approach is AI best when it's invisible. AI best when it's actually produces real value. ⁓ so we're not putting labels here and there saying AI this and AI that. We're just trying to do best job for our customers using AI. Nathan Latka (01:12) Yeah. Well, tell us more. I'm I'm sharing your I'm sharing your website right now. I mean, your story's interesting. I don't want to talk about your history because there's so much to talk about on a go forward basis, but like you've acquired many of my my friends' companies, right? Chris at Doc Hub, you guys did that deal. Obviously, you were the first, I think, anchor, but you've let all the brands that you acquired still keep their original sort of name and structure. How does that impact your AI strategy going forward? Vadim (01:37) Well, ⁓ it's actually really interesting because the products are the different stage of their development and their product life. So Doc Hub is almost a new kit on the block. Very specific to Google ⁓ universe. PDF Filler has been there forever. you know, I started about eighteen years ago. And Cyan now is like middle of the road. So it's really interesting because PDF Filler is primarily prosumer and we're getting a lot of traffic and the conversion is very good. Doccup really needs some work in marketing. And Cyan Now is a brand sort of recognition game. The interesting part is that while they're different, we're using same technology for the customer acquisition. Something we call marketing engine. I'm sure you know Bordeaux talked to you about the stuff at length. But fundamentally the idea was that we have small amount of common services. That includes marketing, you know, things like DevOps, payments and things like that. But the rest of them are siloed, they have their own GMs, they all have their own development team, they have their own roadmaps, and they sort of go in their independent way. And so far, so good. I don't think AI will actually change anything in that sense. We do have something called AI Labs, which develops common AI solutions which we shift into the products, but there's no mandate to adapt to any technology developed in house. total freedom. And ⁓ the key is having the right leadership. So I hope we have the right leadership. We'll we'll we'll we'll see. Does that answer your question? I don't know. Yeah. Nathan Latka (03:17) So just to be so just to be yeah, so just to be clear, sign now PDFR and Doc Hub. Yes, on the top of funnel, their skins are different, but the underlying tech you've unified and there's a there's a GM on that tech. Is that right? Vadim (03:30) No, no, no, no, no. Sorry, maybe we have misspoken. Cyan, PDFL, and Doc Hub are three entirely different products. Different tech. There are some common components which they share, but very few. we sort of made it intentional because we honestly believed, especially in our days, tech is not the mover. It's the brand, it's the you know, it's the top of the funnel. That's that's the things which differentiate. Nathan Latka (03:32) Okay. Okay. Mm-hmm. Vadim (03:56) In reality, we're not going to even try to adapt it to the same tech because economy of scale doesn't work anymore with AI. Does that make sense? Nathan Latka (04:04) Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. So I mean, break this down for me a little bit. I mean, I know Chris, he came and keynoted. I think he told me he had bootstrapped to like six million of revenue with one or two million of profits before he sold to you guys. he told me I don't have permission to share that number, so I won't share that number. But that happened. And then, you know, you d you've all bought bought all these companies. How many people are full time today across the whole company? And what's the split between each of these products? Vadim (04:17) That's right. There's about yeah. There's about six hundred and fifty people on the company right now. So products have about one hundred and twenty per each. The rest of it is GNA, marketing and common services. Chris sold us a company which was six, I believe, six million dollars in revenue. By the way, big disclaimer, I'm really dyslexic, my numbers can vary. but outside of that, Docap now is doing twenty, twenty two million, something like that. Nathan Latka (04:50) Ha ha ha Vadim (04:56) PDF filler was doing about 106, and Cyan now is around thirty-five. Cyan now we bought. Nathan Latka (05:03) When you sold PDF to the business, what was the revenue? Do you remember? Vadim (05:07) No, no, no. But I never sold the PDF filler to the business. It was the business it was the product which started the business. Nathan Latka (05:13) okay. That was the hub and all these other things are spokes you added on. Vadim (05:16) Doc ⁓ Yes, that's right. PDF filler, the original version of PDF of filler was written with you know with those ten fingers. ⁓ whatever, eighteen years ago. So and ⁓ ever since obviously the original quote, face god has gone. So ⁓ yeah no, it was a found a foundation. Nathan Latka (05:25) Mm-hmm. Vadim, I I Vadim, I think people would be shocked if they landed on this page and they knew that this page right here does a hundred and six million dollars of revenue. Vadim (05:42) Hey, you know, we have ⁓ close to eight hundred and sixty thousand paying customers. ⁓ it turns out to be, you know, when when I build the original thing, actually there's a great story behind it. I have a great friend whose name is Semyon Dukic. And at one point I was about to retire, and Semyon, who is now running, I don't know if you know, one way ventures, sort of he was the guy, I mean, if you ever watch movie twenty-one, that was a movie about him. You know, the card county whole nine yards. He's one of my worldest friends. And he saw me. I was at the time like fifty. I was about to retire. And he knows I would never retire. So he basically walked in and said, You have to build this thing because I need it. And next thing we know, people love the product. And we were like charging like 30 bucks a year or something. And I mean it's a really long story. One day I will write the memoirs, but let me just end it that so yes, right now it's one hundred million dollar product. And we're hoping that it will grow to maybe two hundred million within about two to three years. ⁓ I think we have every reason to believe that, so we'll see. But doing well, thank you. Nathan Latka (06:52) What's the what's the rest of the breakdown? So Doc Hub is twenty two million, PDF filler is one six, sign now is thirty five million. What about the other three? Vadim (07:01) So Alta Flow is sort of a very sort of it's offshoot for us. We've been at that thing for quite a while now. It's not a big product, it's about five million revenue, something like that. Has a very small team. It's outside of our DNA, fundamentally, in a sense that you know everything is prosumer for us. But Alta Flow is a corporate product and we're trying different strategies. At this point We believe we finally found the right way to go. My hope is going to double every year, but we'll see. You know, my this this is this is a six year journey. Could have been much more successful. Hey, you win some, you lose some. ⁓ US legal is about I think six million, something like that. It contributes a lot of traffic and a lot of value to PDF filler. And it's actually there's like about eighty five thousand forms. Nathan Latka (07:37) Okay. Mm-hmm. Vadim (07:58) which are hand built by lawyers and it's a humongous asset because it allows us to ⁓ use this data to build new products. This is sort of a unique proposition. We actually have one more product which you do not have on the list because we haven't really publicly announced it. The URL is bizdraft.com, B I Z draft dot com. ⁓ and it's our first AI product. We build it specifically for our users. It creates ⁓ agreements, legal agreements. ⁓ the the interface is unique because we actually combine editing and AI and we've seen some really interesting stuff about detraction so far. I'm very pleased. This was produced literally by three people in about forty five days. And so far we're getting a great feedback. So we'll see what's going to happen in the future. No revenue. Nathan Latka (08:54) Revenue still? Vadim (08:55) No revenue. Nathan Latka (08:55) Yep. Vadim (08:56) And w it's not gonna most likely we're not going to actually monetize that. It's much easier for us to use this as a traffic generation engine versus, you know, trying to get money out of the poor people who who who need agreement every once in a while. And the focus is small business, yes. Nathan Latka (09:12) So, Fadim, I I want to ask you like a deeper question here, right? So let's just look at US legal for a second. A lot of people will look at this site and they would say, Well, and actually it looks much better now. But when I look at when I looked at this like six years ago, as we could we have a long relationship together, it didn't even look this good. But when I was reverse engineering your guys' your funnel and I put US legal back like air slate gets like no traffic, right? And I'm like, how do they have over a hundred million of revenue? Well, then I went and I looked at the form site and I said, Vadim (09:20) Yeah. Yeah. Nathan Latka (09:40) Like this site structure is actually very d interesting because they have these thousands of templated forms which pull in a lot of traffic. And I'm not even sure that ⁓ refs is capturing it all, but I'm leading to a question. And my question is this Harvey and all these legal AI tools, they have to have a large training set to sort of win. You guys should have won that space because you had a very large training set. Why weren't you guys Harvey? Vadim (10:04) well, I mean, you have to remember our customer, and there are thirty one million of them in the US, ISMBs. It's the guy who, you know, who fixes your plumbing, who bakes your bread, who sells you books in a small bookstore. Harvey is way out there. This is like a legal game. ⁓ they go from different from different point of view altogether. We try to serve our customers. We're very focused on that group. And these guys don't need this monstrosity and huge building sets. We have enough information to build a solution which is I wouldn't say good enough. I I would say great enough for them. Okay? They don't need complicated agreements which are gonna withstand scrutiny of multiple courts and multiple states and multiple regulations. They need something they need to understand. The number one request for this draft, we want to understand the agreement we're about to sign. What are my liabilities? What are my obligations? Make it square. Leave me alone. I want to answer 10 questions and get the shit done. Okay, and this focus on the customer is extremely important. ⁓ there's a bit of a difference between the company you saw, you know, whatever, six years ago. It's really been six years. ⁓ my god, we're getting old fast. Nathan Latka (11:07) Yeah. Yeah. Well, we I was up there in Boston with your team. We had a really good brainstorm. That was more recently, but man, you and I, I mean, you know what's wild? I'll show you this. PDF filler. I don't know if remember this. ⁓ this was the this is wild. Look at this screen share here. This is I I I actually underestimate it. Videem, this was 10 years ago when Boria came on the show, your co founder. This was when you broke 10 million of revenue. Vadim (11:45) my god. ⁓ God, God. That was that was a wonderful time. You know, we function outside of VC world. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have a lot of friends who are VCs, but as a species, it's a different breed altogether, right? I mean, so we were so what happened was for the first seven years I was running a company, I was a CEO, he was a president. And at one point Boya comes in and says, I really want to grow this thing. I really want to grow this thing. And I said, you know what? If you wanna grow and you wanna take money, then you become a CEO because I'm not dealing with VCs. And that's what so happened. ⁓ yes, but we got we got bootstrapped to about I think eighteen million. A lot of hard work. No, one a one eight. One eight. One eight, one eight. And then we got the first Nathan Latka (12:31) Eight zero. One eight. What's the remind me, how much capital total have you guys raised today? Vadim (12:41) I think about one hundred and fifty if you count, you know, all the loans and stuff like that. But I mean we got money from G C Capital, ⁓ Morgan Stanley, G Square and some minor minor minor yeah. Yeah, UI Path Ventures, yeah, but it was a minor investment. Not that big of a deal. Nathan Latka (12:55) UI UI path ventures. That that last price round though was June twenty twenty two, fifty one, fifty two million raised at a one point two million, one point two five billion valuation, right? Yeah. Yeah. I have good memory. But how do you ⁓ are you I mean, what are you seeing in the market today? Do you think if someone offered you I mean, are you in the money today? You think you're valued north of one point three billion today? Vadim (13:08) ⁓ w that's right. That's right. Your numbers are better than mine. No, I don't think so. I mean, let's be honest, market really went down. ⁓ you know, I I would place a value of the company right now. I mean, optimistically, maybe eight hundred. And you have to understand it was one hundred million dollar revenue when we got the last evaluation. Now it's two hundred million revenue. So in reality it's a very substantial. I think ⁓ is panicking. I think my VC friends really don't understand what's going to happen. I think I have a very clear vision of where we're going and how it's gonna play out. I do not believe for a second that my customers are going to build their own software. That's absolute baloney. ⁓ and only people who never build products can actually think that that's what's going to happen. Yeah, there's a build versus buy on much more developed markets on the corporate side, but we are not gonna get affected. So we're just going to get the value up. Yes. Nathan Latka (14:13) Can you can you can you real quick? Sorry, can you fill in those gaps really quick? So the min metrics I have from direct interviews with you and Borea was twenty sixteen, ten million of ARR, twenty twenty two a hundred million, and twenty twenty six two hundred million. But fill in the gap between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty two. Like when did you break fifty million? Vadim (14:22) Right. Right. We broke fifty million. ⁓ God. I mean you're really challenging myself. I mean me right now with my dynamic ability. So twenty ten, maybe twenty fifteen, I would say we got the money from GCE. That was the first investment of capital. We bought Cyan Now, we rebuilt Cyan Now, and we we got to about fifty million. Something like that. Nathan Latka (14:56) Okay, so s so twenty sixteen was fifty million. Vadim (15:00) I believe so, yes. But then again, just count my yeah. Nathan Latka (15:01) Okay, okay. When did you break when was did you break ten million before the money from G C in twenty fifteen? Vadim (15:07) yes, absolutely. We raised money when we were close to eighteen and a half million. That's that's that's the that's the point. We got all the way up to eighteen million ⁓ on total bootstrap before raising money. Nathan Latka (15:20) So what so so you hit eighteen million of revenue in what, twenty fourteen? Vadim (15:26) Yes, something like that. Maybe twenty thirteen. Twenty thirteen, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah. The heavy lifting was done without any investment. Yes. Nathan Latka (15:28) Okay. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. So how much yeah. Mm-hmm. Sorry to keep cutting you off. I'm just so curious. So twenty thirteen was eighteen million bootstrapped. And when you bought sign now, that basically doubled the business? Were they doing about the same revenue as you? Vadim (15:39) That's all right, that's fine. Yeah. No, it didn't double the business. Far from it. We bought it, it was doing about three million dollars a year. ⁓ now it's about thirty five. So it didn't really I mean we had to rebuild the entire product and we had to, you know, weaponize the marketing stuff. So it took a while. No, PDF filler continued to doing great and that's where we got most of the money. I mean, the way company was built, PDF Filler was a cash machine and we just take the cash and invested in other product. ongoing so and still continues today by the way. So that part didn't change. Nathan Latka (16:17) Yeah, yeah. Do you so looking back now, like Bor I was gonna ask you, it's a cash cow, why raise money at all? But it's because Borio wanted to really grow or he pushed you on to grow faster. Vadim (16:24) Boy wanted to have a multi billion dollar company. ⁓ and hey listen, you know, I've been doing this thing for a very long time and I think he deserves his chance. So I just let him pretty much run the show and I step aside. You know, there's only one captain on the ship, and there's only one direction you can take, and focus is important. So that was his focus. He wants real scale. Hey, you know, the th we are in a good place today thanks to this thinking, so no complaints. Nathan Latka (16:39) Yeah. You shared with me that he he drove your your daughter to school yesterday morning, so you're still close. When you guys sit down and have a coffee and look back at the golden years, printing money, no board, no VCs, do you ever go like what would you Vadim (17:03) God, please you make me feel so nostalgic. Nathan Latka (17:09) Would you change anything though? I mean, teach the founders listening right now. Would you change anything? Vadim (17:14) Try to get money. As late as you possibly can. Cash is the king. Make money. Don't pay yourself a lot of money. Don't spend money. I mean, ⁓ and ⁓ from day one, think about exit. ⁓ that that is something which I learned. I don't like to exit, to be honest. It's like a baby, right? I mean, you've raised this thing, you want to become a real company, you want to build real value, you want to build cool products, but you have to think about exit all the time. And Guys, if you can avoid it, don't raise money. I know that it's sort of a you know a very modern tendency. Let's just because we need to scale. It's it's funny. I was teaching this seminar on software 101, how to build software company, and I asked one question to the audience. I said, What is the essential part of having a company? And you know, people say great business plan, funding, great talent. They're going on and on and on and on. This little girl in the front row, who must have been 16, said, customer, said finally, somebody figure it out. You know, that's what it's all about. It's about customer. And this is actually a really important advice, I think. Choose your customer very carefully. Because if you make a wrong choice, you're going to be on the wrong journey to the wrong destination, and you'll never make it. So that's that's my wisdom. Nathan Latka (18:42) You are one of the leading Yeah, you are one of the leading examples, I would say, still operating today that is private, so not public. That is high volume, low ARPU. You know, I think you said eight hundred thousand paying customers today. Vadim (18:58) no actually altogether we have about million mil one point one million, but PDF Filler has eight eight hundred and sixty sixty thousand paid customers. Nathan Latka (19:06) So 1.1 million paying customers into $200 million AR. Yep. Into a $200 in into a $200 million ARR base means each customer is paying you on average $180 per year. I mean, that is the definition of SMB. Yeah. So if someone else is running that same playbook, you know, and we dig in, I mean, this is where all your this is where all your top of funnel is coming from. What did you guys do at PDF filler to build such a massive organic content machine? Vadim (19:09) All together, all the products. Yeah. Your math is this. Right, exactly. All right. So ⁓ we have under management, as far as I remember, 4.8 billion keywords. And ⁓ we had thirty-five million pages. This stuff has changed significantly, so it worked really well for us for quite a while. ⁓ but what's happening right now is very different. AI is getting smarter, search engines are getting smarter. our ability to create perception is getting is is weakening, let's put it this way. AI ⁓ requires a very well structured information. We throw a lot of stuff out there and it's not exactly clean. It's pretty messy. So now we're going into a process of reducing what we had before and making it more productive. But the numbers are staggering. You're right. I mean that's yes. Nathan Latka (20:27) Yeah. One of They're huge. I mean, when we when I came up there to Boston and you, me and Borea, some other folks you guys got together, we had a brainstorm. I mean, I'm at I I remember one of the topics of conversation was how to think about contextual relevance. So instead of programmatic SEO like this kind of keyword here, it was how to build contextual relevance around keyword clusters. Is that still your thinking today? And and how are you testing this? Vadim (20:49) Right. Absolutely, yes. Yes. you know, we're talking about clusterization, we're talking about semantic core, we're talking about discovering new keywords and so on so forth. Now you do have to understand that f you take this huge you know, four point eight billion, very few of them are actually productive. So figuring out which clusters are more productive and trying to cover as much as we possibly can. That's definitely part of the journey. But I gotta tell you, Nathan, this stuff is about to change. And it's gonna change not overnight, but it's gonna change pretty drastically. our ability to influence and bring people over is going to be probably significantly diminished. If before I would call it 80%, now it's gonna be 30%. And it doesn't matter how many landing pages we have, it's the quality versus quantity now. That's the name of the game. it's real sources like Wikipedia, Reddit, things like that which will make a huge difference. I'm not telling you anything you don't know already. I'm just saying that this massive push towards enormous amount of keywords I think has come to the end or will come to the end within the next, I don't know, nine months to twelve months. This stuff is happening. Google is getting a lot smarter. Nathan Latka (22:06) Hmm. So let me let me make this really real for a second. Let's use a real example. Okay. Let's say I am a ⁓ pool contractor in Austin, Texas, and I need, you know, I and I and I pay PDF filler because I found a long time ago some template doc about how to get a proposal out quickly to a pool owner in Austin, Texas. Moving forward now, if I'm that same a new contractor, pool contractor in Austin, Texas, and I go to Chat GPT and I say free two page template for me to get my first. Vadim (22:13) Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Nathan Latka (22:36) you know, proposal out in Austin, Texas. Can you actively influence? Have you found a way to actively influence the results ChatGPT is showing? There's always all these gurus right now saying they figured it out, but I don't know that it's actually figure out a bowl. Vadim (22:48) No, no, no, no, no, it's bullshit. I'm sorry, I've tried this stuff. ⁓ again, think about it. Chat GPT today has a Q of about one hundred and ten. Once it has IQ of four hundred, whether you and I have eighty or one forty, it doesn't make any difference. It's getting much smarter. And it's very unpredictable. So the answer is adaptability. You know, there's no way we're not going to have the same wonderful schema of SEO experts telling you what to do. Forget it. It's not gonna work. We have to play fair now. It's it's sort of a you know I know we don't like to play fair, we wanna use the advantage, but in reality, ⁓ we'll yeah, I mean, you know, if you if you play chess and you start playing with computer, very soon you just like throw your hands in the air and say, I can't win and you come back to humans. I mean, one of the reasons why we were so successful, you know Nathan Latka (23:30) We like silver bullets. Vadim (23:44) I'd be honest, our competition was not sophisticated. Boria was ⁓ a bioinformatics professor. He knew the stuff inside out. So we use high level math. Our bidding on PPC was superior. Now everybody has a clause. We are on an equal basis, so you have to be I think it's gonna be a lot more about the product and about reputation ⁓ in the future. And I f and if you start thinking about, hey, you know, today for me, my agent makes most of the buying decisions. Seriously. Actually it's worse than that. My president names is Claude. You'll need to unlock your iPhone first. that's my iPhone talking. Nathan Latka (24:16) Yeah. That's your agent jumping in. Vadim (24:35) But I mean like I can tell you a really funny story. So I was talking to my CFO Richard at nine o'clock at night and we were going about how we need to hire a president. And you know, at nine o'clock I said, you know what, that's okay. Let me go play with Claude. Let's see what I can come up with. Like three o'clock in the morning, I'm like, I'm done. This thing is pretty good. It can actually run a company. Not the entire thing, but some s significant parts. So I'm saying to Claude, Hey, will you be my president? And the Claude responds, hey, you know, you actually need somebody alive because people are not willing to listen to AI. Great, I'm going to bed. I get up next morning after three hours of sleep. I go to my schedule and there's an interview for the president position. And the name of the person is Claude. And I flipped out because I thought that my Claude made an interview. But it turns out I wasn't so lucky. I was actually interviewing somebody whose name was Claude Alexander. who joined us as a president literally two weeks ago. So now everybody has a cloud, but I have two. And this is the guy who spent most of his career at Adobe ⁓ building Adobe Acrobat, the creative cloud and signature solution. And I think he's gonna get us to the next level. Nathan Latka (25:37) That's so funny. I love that. It's actually I'm just seeing this right now. Actually, this is pretty funny. You you actually just announced this six days ago. ⁓ his name his name really his name his name really is Claude. and this is what you said about him and this is him. Vadim (25:59) That's right, that's right, that's right. That's right. That's right. That's the guy, yes. Very likable guy. Nathan Latka (26:09) So what's the growth what is the growth plan moving forward? How do you go from two hundred million to four hundred million of revenue? Vadim (26:15) ⁓ we're gonna double double ⁓ double back on our existing products. We believe there's you know twenty to thirty percent growth in there. ⁓ but majority of the plan is probably gonna go to new A products. And by the way, the example you brought up is really interesting, the guy at the pool. ⁓ think about this guy not worrying about how to find the document, what to stay with compliance, you know, how to make sure that the pool is gonna be clean to the point of the inspection. permits and things like that. That's a huge area where these poor people spend six to eight hours a week. Instead of getting a couple of slices of pizza and a nice cold beer and watching a football, they're sitting there with their fingers on a keyboard trying to figure out how to fill up the damn document and there's a bureaucrat somewhere who needs to approve it. So this is we believe it's a humongous market. ⁓ and we think that If not today's AI, tomorrow's AI, and that's a iri really sort of important point. You're not building for what's available today, you're building what's gonna be available three to six months from now. We'll be able to tackle those problems and we'll be able to provide enough of a value to a lot of people and ⁓ remain horizontal while verticalizing the product for a lot of vertical sort of sub markets and stuff. That's the Nathan Latka (27:37) Well, that's what I'm gonna push you on. I I'm seeing a lot of horizontal players just getting crushed. I mean, you really I my argument is you really have to go vertical to keep your net dollar retention high, but you wanna stay horizontal. Vadim (27:48) Now you're talking, so how the hell do you do that? And the answer is your product has to morph itself. It has to speak the language of your customer. So if it's a small medical office, you know, it needs to understand this stuff. If it's ⁓ I don't know, pool guy, it's a different language. It makes all the difference in the world. And I think that AI actually allows you to morph your software to address a particular user segment. And the great thing is that we don't have to rush. We can wait for the feedback loop to kick in. We are not a startup in that sense. All the startups are gonna be starved to death before they actually get the real feedback. We can take our time, so still going very fast. absolutely, yes. We have a pretty good Ibata, we're doing well. Nathan Latka (28:31) Are you guys profitable today? More than twenty percent. Vadim (28:38) I'm comf ⁓ close. Can I just say close enough? ⁓ let me put it this way. Again, grey beard, I know that cash is decaying. There's uncertainty in these times. It's coming big time. Guys preserve cash. Do yourself a favor. There's nothing else like that in the world. So you know, you should have a reasonably good round rate. Nathan Latka (28:43) Ha ha ha. AOO AO Doc CEO Stephane Dons came on my show, a French gentleman. He reminded me of your space a ton. ⁓ but he, you know, he's doing very similar stuff to you. But his A C V they're targeting enterprise and it's fascinating what they've done. I do you know these guys? Have you diligenced them? Vadim (29:19) I I I've never diligenced them, I know about this guys and this is the space we never want to be. You know, it's just because I hate corporate sales, the sales cycle, the feedback cycle, ⁓ there are a lot of benefits to this space, but it's so slow, it's so incredibly you cannot iterate, you cannot innovate, everything takes forever. I'm sorry, not my game. I mean I've played that one, I just don't like it. Nathan Latka (29:26) Why, why, tell me why. Vadim (29:48) And you have to understand that every company you know like yeah, it's like, you know, I mean I wish them all the luck in the world. I really do. Yeah. yeah, if you and if you think that SMB is an easy customer, think again, they're much tougher than any corporate guy out there because they demand as much as anybody else, but they're not willing to pay the full price. So you do get one hundred and eighty bucks per customer and they want the compliance and they want the intelligence and they want the content. Nathan Latka (29:49) No, I it's fine. It's I get it. I get it. You don't wanna have to talk to anybody. You want all PLG. Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. So Vadim (30:18) All nine yards. So before you go into consumer guys, think twice. But you know, retention is...

00:01:38,200 --> 00:02:21,500 [Speaker 0] Top Tribe, good morning. Nathan Latka here, and our guest today is Boria Shaknovich, and he is the president of pdfFiller. And in addition to being responsible for the daily operations and marketing campaigns, he also participates in setting the mission and vision of the company. Prior to his work at pdfFiller, Boria's earned a PhD in bioinformatics and was subsequently a professor of bioinformatics at Boston University. He later moved to Harvard University to work on systems biology. He now uses his scientific background to develop interdisciplinary approaches to advance pdfFiller's core business. He's responsible for making sure that pdfFiller has a vibrant community of users through business development, demand generation, and customer analytics. Boria, are you ready to take us to the top? 00:02:22,600 --> 00:02:25,600 [Borya Shakhnovich] Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. 00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:29,420 [Speaker 0] Of course. And just to clear things up, you are the CEO and founder of pdfFiller, correct? 00:02:30,440 --> 00:02:35,090 [Speaker 1] Uh, I'm not. I'm the president and, uh, the co-founder. How about that? 00:02:35,090 --> 00:02:38,820 [Speaker 0] What's the, what's the difference? So you had a co-founder, and one was CEO, one was president, basically? 00:02:40,040 --> 00:02:41,600 [Speaker 1] Yes. Absolutely, yes. 00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:45,620 [Speaker 0] Makes perfect sense. Okay. Tell us what the business does and how you generate revenue. 00:02:45,620 --> 00:03:35,760 [Speaker 1] Yeah, absolutely. So, um, pdfFiller is a document management platform. So, uh, we allow people to essentially do end-to-end, uh, document generation. Uh, then, so, like, let's say for example you have, uh, a, you're a small dental office and you need to create a patient intake form. So we allow you to create that online. We allow you to add fillable fields on top of that. We allow you to, uh, you know, put that out on, in the world, and, uh, you know, have your customers or patients come in with a mobile device, fill it out. You get that information inside. So that's one of the use cases. We also, let's say you have a document that you need, um, signed, uh, by one of your, like a contract or something like that, by one of your partners. We allow you to do that as well. 00:03:35,760 --> 00:03:40,240 [Speaker 0] And what, what do you... And talk to me about your pricing model. Is it a SaaS business model? 00:03:40,240 --> 00:03:52,720 [Speaker 1] It's a SaaS business model. We charge per month or for a year up front. Uh, three tiers, professional, uh, personal, and business, uh, with the business being the most expensive at $15 a month. 00:03:52,720 --> 00:03:57,100 [Speaker 0] What is the... And just to kind of get a, make that clear, what does the average customer pay you per month? 00:03:58,660 --> 00:04:01,340 [Speaker 1] Uh, probably $10 a month. 00:04:01,340 --> 00:04:04,560 [Speaker 0] Okay, 10 bucks. Very good. And give us some more background. What year did you found the business in? 00:04:06,420 --> 00:04:07,180 [Speaker 1] Sorry, what was that? 00:04:07,180 --> 00:04:08,820 [Speaker 0] What year did you launch the business in? 00:04:08,820 --> 00:04:42,300 [Speaker 1] Oh. So, uh, the story went like this. In 2008, uh, the founder of the business, Vadim, uh, he started it as a lifestyle business, and then, uh, ran it, uh, until 2011, the end of 2011 by himself and one other person. And then I joined the company at the end of 2011, so five years ago exactly, and, uh, we applied some marketing technology to it, and we built out, um, a better product suite. And now we have, uh, close to 200,000 customers and 150 people working for the company. 00:04:42,300 --> 00:04:47,580 [Speaker 0] Okay, got it. And is that all pdfFiller, or is pdfFiller like a subsidiary of another larger business? 00:04:47,580 --> 00:04:49,130 [Speaker 1] No, it's all pdfFiller. 00:04:49,130 --> 00:04:49,200 [Speaker 0] Okay. 00:04:49,200 --> 00:04:50,620 [Speaker 1] Uh, so yeah. 00:04:50,620 --> 00:04:56,840 [Speaker 0] So can I... Am I doing the math correctly if you have 200,000 paying customers and I multiply that by 10, you're doing about two million bucks in monthly recurring revenue? 00:04:58,280 --> 00:05:00,320 [Speaker 1] [laughs] Uh, that's pretty close. 00:05:00,320 --> 00:05:08,400 [Speaker 0] That's close. Okay, good. And what is the, uh, so, so you joined, you said five years ago, but it was launched, what, in, in, did you say 2009-ish? 00:05:08,400 --> 00:05:09,280 [Speaker 1] 2008, yeah. Mm-hmm. 00:05:09,280 --> 00:05:11,860 [Speaker 0] 2008. Not a good year to launch a business. 00:05:11,860 --> 00:05:13,000 [Speaker 1] No, absolutely not. 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:13,220 [Speaker 0] [laughs] 00:05:13,220 --> 00:05:23,260 [Speaker 1] But, uh, because the product was so needed and so good, uh, it grew organically, uh, even up until 2011, and then we really accelerated it from then on. 00:05:23,260 --> 00:05:31,540 [Speaker 0] That's great. And walk... Do you, do you have numbers? It sounds like you're kinda the business guy. Do you have numbers and do you understand things like, you know, c- uh, gross customer churn per month? And if so, what is it? 00:05:33,420 --> 00:05:42,980 [Speaker 1] Um, yeah. So [laughs] I understand some of that. Um, so we have a pretty low gross customer churn, in the single digits. 00:05:42,980 --> 00:05:50,260 [Speaker 0] Okay. So, so, so, like, so bad SaaS churn would be, like, 9%, good would be 2%. Are you, you know, 2% or not? 00:05:51,764 --> 00:06:01,164 [Speaker 1] Uh, no, we're not. Uh, we're, we're a prosumer business. Uh, so we have a lot of, uh, the business divi- is divided into several as- uh, parts. 00:06:01,164 --> 00:06:01,724 [Speaker 0] Okay. 00:06:01,724 --> 00:06:40,124 [Speaker 1] So we have a lot of people that use it on a transactional basis, and we have a lot of people that essentially build their own business on top of pdfFiller. So for example, we have an API, uh, and integrators use that and ca- you know, in combination with CRM systems or ERP systems that they build out, right? So for customers. So we have, uh, and, and we have businesses that thrive on top of pdfFiller on a day-to-day basis. Like, you know, we work with government institutions, for example. So, um, the transactional part of the business is closer to the 9%. The, uh, the actual, you know, enterprise part of the business is much lower than 2%. 00:06:40,124 --> 00:06:44,184 [Speaker 0] I see. I see. I see. So maybe a weighted average of maybe five-ish percent, something like that. 00:06:45,604 --> 00:06:46,464 [Speaker 1] Exactly, yeah. 00:06:46,464 --> 00:06:55,804 [Speaker 0] Yep, yep. That's great. So, so l- let's get out of the numbers for a second and go back. You said you applied, when you joined you applied, quote, "marketing technology" to the platform. Tell us more about that. 00:06:58,544 --> 00:07:17,764 [Speaker 1] Yeah. So we built out one of the most sophisticated, uh, marketing platforms, digital marketing platforms. I'll give you some numbers. Um, we run 60 million keywords on top of SEO, SEM, uh, and other digital marketing channels with, uh, tens of millions of landing pages. 00:07:17,764 --> 00:07:17,774 [Speaker 0] Uh-huh. 00:07:17,774 --> 00:07:33,644 [Speaker 1] Uh, that brings about four million people to the website on a monthly basis. Uh, we, um, and then all of that is done automatically, essentially, right? So we have automatic keyword generation, automatic bid management. Uh, we have an internal CRM that has an internal 00:07:34,724 --> 00:07:57,024 [Speaker 1] AB testing system that optimizes not only the way that the site looks, but how people actually walk through the sites. So if you actually go to pdfFiller, you're gonna have a unique experience, uh, that depends on who you are, where you come from, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and, um, so we, we built all of that out inside of pdfFiller, and that's what pdfFiller runs on. 00:07:57,024 --> 00:08:14,484 [Speaker 0] According to nathanlatka.com/ahrefs, you guys between September and November went from about 40,000 referring pages to almost doubling that, 90,000. Is that because you launched a bunch of these landing pages kind of in an, an automatic fashion? 00:08:15,944 --> 00:08:16,844 [Speaker 1] Uh, 00:08:18,404 --> 00:08:39,144 [Speaker 1] n- no. Uh, we also have a, uh, marketing technology that allows us to find, uh, sites that would be interested in, uh, collaborating with us, and we actively have that as a program, as a partnership program. And, uh, you know, those are the sites that I refer to pdfFiller in one way or another. 00:08:39,144 --> 00:08:48,004 [Speaker 0] Did you do that though recently? I mean, when I look at this data, something happened between September and November where these things, like your backlinks, like quadrupled. 00:08:48,004 --> 00:08:58,004 [Speaker 1] [clears throat] Um, no, nothing special. It's probably, uh, uh, it's probably just Google catching up with our work that we've been doing over the last year or so. 00:08:58,004 --> 00:09:04,144 [Speaker 0] Okay. And, and, I mean, how are you doing this? I mean, is it all code, or are the, is it part human, part code? 00:09:04,144 --> 00:09:17,524 [Speaker 1] It's part human, part code. So we, we automatically find the sites and then, you know, we curate it, and then, uh, there are humans that actually, you know, get in touch with, uh, the website owners and stuff like that. 00:09:17,524 --> 00:09:19,024 [Speaker 0] That's fascinating. 00:09:19,024 --> 00:09:19,134 [Speaker 1] Yeah. 00:09:19,134 --> 00:09:30,504 [Speaker 0] Yeah, so tell me more about that. Like, do, do, is this, is there, like, a team of five dedicated just calling potential inbound, like, links every day, and then you negotiate to get pdfFiller kind of positioned in those backlinks? 00:09:31,824 --> 00:09:56,844 [Speaker 1] Um, no, not quite, uh, not quite five. Less than that. It's all about finding the right people that are relevant to the websites, and we do that through, uh, semantic search technology. So we find, uh, sites that have very similar interests to ours, and then the conversion rate, uh, backlinks is much higher than, because these people, you know, are in the space and are interested in, uh, pdfFiller's core business. 00:09:56,844 --> 00:10:04,524 [Speaker 0] And what tool are you using? Is it a tool that my audience can use as well to f- like, for their own business to find these kind of, uh, quality potential backlinks? 00:10:05,664 --> 00:10:10,704 [Speaker 1] No. We, we write everything in-house. We're in sort of digital engineering, uh, shop. 00:10:10,704 --> 00:10:31,324 [Speaker 0] Yep. No, it makes good sense. And I can just, again, looking at the nathanlatka.com/ahrefs, I can see, I mean, you've got almost 5,800 referring domains, 2.7 million organic keywords, and you get about a million views per month just from organic traffic, maybe more, maybe less. This, some of this data sometimes is behind or in front of, uh, where you're at. 00:10:31,324 --> 00:10:31,344 [Speaker 1] Mm-hmm. 00:10:31,344 --> 00:10:33,644 [Speaker 0] But, um, is that your key driver? Do you do any paid stuff? 00:10:34,764 --> 00:10:40,304 [Speaker 1] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, like I said, we run, uh, about 60 million keywords on top of AdWords. 00:10:40,304 --> 00:10:42,584 [Speaker 0] Oh. Oh, I didn't hear you say that. I thought you said or- organic. 00:10:43,704 --> 00:10:53,484 [Speaker 1] Uh, no. Well, we do it on SEO and SEM. So, uh, we have one, we have one of the largest, um, SEM, 00:10:54,564 --> 00:11:02,344 [Speaker 1] uh, platforms and accounts, uh, in Google, uh, certainly by the numbers. 00:11:02,344 --> 00:11:02,634 [Speaker 0] Uh-huh. 00:11:02,634 --> 00:11:33,784 [Speaker 1] Uh, and, uh, maybe not by spend, but, uh, certainly in terms of, like, the number of keywords that we run and how we run it. Uh, so we, like, have automatic generation of keywords. We have automatic bid management on top of these AdWords. Uh, we also have automatic creation of ads, and we run that across all of their, uh, digital marketing technologies, right? So, like, on top of, uh, contextual search, GDN, on top of, uh, remarketing, RLSA, and et cetera, all of that stuff. 00:11:33,784 --> 00:11:39,224 [Speaker 0] So with all this data, you're clearly a data-driven company. What are you guys willing to acquire, to pay to acquire a new customer? 00:11:40,544 --> 00:11:46,284 [Speaker 1] Uh, so we make money on, uh, the first payment. Um- 00:11:46,284 --> 00:11:47,444 [Speaker 0] So less than $10? 00:11:49,004 --> 00:11:50,984 [Speaker 1] Yeah, less than $10 a month. Yeah. 00:11:50,984 --> 00:12:09,716 [Speaker 0] Got it. And if I'm- Doing a back of the napkin kind of LTV calculation, if your weighted kind of gross monthly customer churn is 5%, they're staying for an average of 20 months at a, you know, ARPU around 10 bucks. Your lifetime value is about 200 bucks a pop. You're spending less than 10 to acquire it. Uh, Boris, that is math that, that would make any investor's heart sing. 00:12:09,716 --> 00:12:10,376 [Speaker 1] That's right. 00:12:10,376 --> 00:12:11,486 [Speaker 0] [laughs] 160- 00:12:11,486 --> 00:12:13,546 [Speaker 1] You're very good with, you're very good with the numbers, Nathan. 00:12:13,546 --> 00:12:15,216 [Speaker 0] Uh, quick, are you impressed? 00:12:15,216 --> 00:12:16,556 [Speaker 1] I am very impressed, actually, yes. 00:12:16,556 --> 00:12:19,186 [Speaker 0] Good. I want 5% of the business now. No, just kidding. [laughs] 00:12:19,186 --> 00:12:21,136 [Speaker 1] [laughs] 00:12:21,136 --> 00:12:23,776 [Speaker 0] All right. So you have 160 team members. Where are you guys based? 00:12:25,016 --> 00:12:30,356 [Speaker 1] Um, so the team is divided across, uh, Boston. So the s- 00:12:31,496 --> 00:12:40,816 [Speaker 1] the management and leadership is in Boston, and then we have a very large, uh, development, design, and even marketing, uh, office in Kyiv. 00:12:40,816 --> 00:12:42,016 [Speaker 0] Oh, in Ky- in, uh, in France? 00:12:43,246 --> 00:12:43,916 [Speaker 1] In- 00:12:43,916 --> 00:12:45,096 [Speaker 0] What did you say? 00:12:45,096 --> 00:12:45,206 [Speaker 1] In Kyiv. 00:12:45,206 --> 00:12:47,396 [Speaker 0] Oh, Ukraine. Ky- oh, Kyiv. Okay, got it. 00:12:47,396 --> 00:12:47,416 [Speaker 1] Yeah. 00:12:47,416 --> 00:12:50,656 [Speaker 0] Very cool. And, uh, self-funded or have you raised capital? 00:12:51,956 --> 00:12:53,606 [Speaker 1] Self-funded. Completely bootstrapped. 00:12:53,606 --> 00:13:01,356 [Speaker 0] That's, that's amazing. That's really amazing. Um, how many folks do you... How many co-founders are kind of on the cap table? Is it, is it pretty messy or no? 00:13:01,356 --> 00:13:02,496 [Speaker 1] No, it's just the two of us. 00:13:02,496 --> 00:13:06,586 [Speaker 0] Oh, just you two. Okay, great. Um, so he kinda started it, and you kinda joined pretty early on. 00:13:07,736 --> 00:13:08,715 [Speaker 1] Right, exactly, yeah. 00:13:08,716 --> 00:13:09,456 [Speaker 0] Got it. 00:13:09,456 --> 00:13:09,476 [Speaker 1] Mm-hmm. 00:13:09,476 --> 00:13:16,636 [Speaker 0] And then, um, I always like asking this 'cause it's usually embarrassing. What was your first year revenue? So that would've been, I guess, 2008. Do you remember? 00:13:16,636 --> 00:13:16,936 [Speaker 1] Uh, 00:13:18,406 --> 00:13:27,956 [Speaker 1] s- I wasn't there. Uh, so I only joined at the end of 2011, but, you know, the first year revenue, uh, was something like $20,000, something like that. 00:13:27,956 --> 00:13:30,456 [Speaker 0] [laughs] How things change, right? 00:13:30,456 --> 00:13:31,456 [Speaker 1] Yeah, that's right. 00:13:31,456 --> 00:13:31,656 [Speaker 0] Yep. 00:13:31,656 --> 00:13:32,256 [Speaker 1] That's right. 00:13:32,256 --> 00:13:36,636 [Speaker 0] Very good. And what, uh, what did, what were you guys-- what'd you pass in 2015 in terms of total revenue? 00:13:37,976 --> 00:13:41,816 [Speaker 1] Uh, w- in 2015. That was last year? 00:13:41,816 --> 00:13:42,176 [Speaker 0] Yep. 00:13:42,176 --> 00:13:42,536 [Speaker 1] Uh, 00:13:43,656 --> 00:13:46,156 [Speaker 1] it's double-digit millions. 00:13:46,156 --> 00:13:51,296 [Speaker 0] Double-digit millions. Okay, good. So, uh, when you say double digit, you mean above 10? 00:13:51,296 --> 00:13:51,776 [Speaker 1] Mm-hmm. 00:13:51,776 --> 00:14:00,456 [Speaker 0] Yeah. Now, what do you guys wanna do with the business? D- I mean, have you considered raising capital? Do you wanna sell it? Or is it just generating cash flow and making you guys filthy rich, so you don't wanna do anything with it? What do you wanna do? 00:14:00,456 --> 00:14:01,236 [Speaker 1] [laughs] 00:14:02,276 --> 00:14:21,076 [Speaker 1] Um, yeah, no, I mean, we're, we're definitely growing the business. The business is growing very fast. You know, we're very excited about where it's going, and, uh, we're very excited about, you know, moving it forward. Um, you know, we're doing a lot of partnerships. We're, we're, like, working on a very close partnership with Salesforce, for example, right now. 00:14:21,076 --> 00:14:21,555 [Speaker 0] Uh-huh. 00:14:21,556 --> 00:14:44,316 [Speaker 1] Um, and, uh, we're doing partnerships with government institutions, and we do a lot of, like, work for, for the government and taking them paperless and stuff. Um, so we're gonna continue growing that business and moving, uh, you know, into the enterprise space more and more. Uh, we have a lot of people that are coming in to us. Oh, by the way, um, I forgot to mention, we have zero salespeople. Um- 00:14:44,316 --> 00:14:46,085 [Speaker 0] So no touch. You're using SEM- 00:14:46,085 --> 00:14:46,085 [Speaker 1] Oh 00:14:46,085 --> 00:14:49,476 [Speaker 0] ... and kind of SEO and all this stuff that you're doing to get no-touch sales. 00:14:49,476 --> 00:15:38,976 [Speaker 1] Right. Exactly. So, uh, we're gonna be building out that, uh, you know, sales and customer support more and then going and, uh, doing these integrations into larger organizations because the technology is really powerful and, uh, a lot of people are really interested in using it and, uh, sort of it helps the, uh, customers to do end-to-end paperless, you know? You know, essentially, if you PDFfiller, you don't need to do anything, uh, with paper. And, uh, it also digitizes a lot of the data, so the majority of the customers get an ROI within, you know, the first few hours because, you know, the half an hour that's spent on typing in the information from paper into your CRM, all of that stuff is just saved, basically, with PDFfiller. And so your, you know, our customers love us because of that enormous ROI. 00:15:38,976 --> 00:15:50,916 [Speaker 0] Last question before I get into, uh, kind of the wrap-up, w- or wrap-up section here. Do you guys have an appetite for, for acquisitions in this space? It's very fragmented. Would you ever buy up smaller competitors at great prices? 00:15:50,916 --> 00:15:51,836 [Speaker 1] Yeah, absolutely. 00:15:51,836 --> 00:15:52,376 [Speaker 0] Have you done it before? 00:15:53,776 --> 00:15:58,216 [Speaker 1] Uh, we have not done it before, but we're actually in the process of doing that now. 00:15:58,216 --> 00:16:03,056 [Speaker 0] Oh, great. Obviously, it's probably, that's probably confidential, but how, how do you make decisions about which ones to go after or not? 00:16:05,116 --> 00:16:35,396 [Speaker 1] You know, I think that it's companies that are complementary to us. Uh, you know, uh, it's companies where we can add value, so, uh, where they're maybe doing, uh, one part of the business and we can actually transform, uh, by adding the functionality of PDFfiller on top of, like, their business and really accelerate the growth and improve their retention by making the product, you know, more comprehensive. We have one of the more sort of comprehensive solutions in the space. Um- 00:16:35,396 --> 00:16:39,256 [Speaker 0] Would you-- so you wouldn't buy or... buy a direct competitor. You'd only buy someone that's complementary? 00:16:40,516 --> 00:16:47,566 [Speaker 1] We would buy a direct competitor that's, uh, a direct competitor of part of the business, not, not of the whole business necessarily, right? 00:16:47,566 --> 00:16:47,596 [Speaker 0] Okay. 00:16:47,596 --> 00:17:06,606 [Speaker 1] So, like, we have, we have a signature solution, for example. We have a form solution. You know, we have a, you know, we have lots of, like, we have a mail merge solution. So we have lots of these competitors that are in different parts, and they're not growing as fast as we are, uh, but we can add, uh, PDFfiller on top of their functionality. 00:17:06,606 --> 00:17:06,636 [Speaker 0] Yeah. 00:17:06,636 --> 00:17:07,626 [Speaker 1] Or like PDF editing, for example. 00:17:07,626 --> 00:17:09,776 [Speaker 0] Upsell to their customers or things like that. 00:17:09,776 --> 00:17:14,376 [Speaker 1] Exactly. Right. Exactly. Or improve retention by offering, uh, a superior product. 00:17:14,376 --> 00:17:20,516 [Speaker 0] What general-- of the things you just mentioned, what general area is the c- company you're looking at buying now, what, what are they in? Like mail merge or something else? 00:17:22,436 --> 00:17:50,096 [Speaker 1] Yeah. Uh, so all the-- we are looking in all of those places, right? So we're looking in the mail merge sp- space. We're looking in the, you know, the CRM space. We're looking in the signature space. Uh, and there's a lot of companies, like you said, it's a really fragmented space. There are a lot of really, really small companies that are not growing very fast, and, you know, we can accelerate that by adding the marketing engine on top of it as well as, uh, in complementing the product offering. 00:17:50,096 --> 00:17:56,236 [Speaker 0] Very cool. Well, Boris, if people wanna follow you as you keep building this company, where's the best place for them to connect with you online? 00:17:57,344 --> 00:17:58,974 [Speaker 1] Um, [laughs] 00:18:00,524 --> 00:18:01,464 [Speaker 1] probably- 00:18:01,464 --> 00:18:02,344 [Speaker 0] The website 00:18:02,344 --> 00:18:03,094 [Speaker 1] ... on LinkedIn. 00:18:03,094 --> 00:18:03,204 [Speaker 0] LinkedIn. 00:18:03,204 --> 00:18:11,664 [Speaker 1] Yeah, on LinkedIn or website or something like that. Yeah. I'm actually unfortunately not on, uh, like Twitter and stuff like that, but although I probably should be. 00:18:12,704 --> 00:19:28,743 [Speaker 0] All right, guys. Earlier I mentioned I used a little unknown tool to do a lot of my email marketing and marketing automation called Drip. Nobody knew about this, nobody, until Clay Collins comes along with his big old, you know, fat checkbook at Leadpages, buys the company, and now, like everybody's using it. Okay? If you're not using it, let me just tell you very quickly why I use it now that the secret's kind of out of the bag. It's very simple. I don't like hiring developers. My favorite feature of Drip is the drag-and-drop interface where I can drag the email sequences together. Like, once someone views this blog post or opens this email, then do this, right? So life cycle marketing like that, folks, is the future. I hit Michael Stelzner so hard on this earlier in the year. You can't blast your lists anymore. You have to have smart marketing automation, and quite frankly, you try Infusionsoft, it's like holding two 100-pound dumbbells in each hand. The reason I love Drip, okay, it's more powerful than Infusionsoft, but it's light as a feather. Totally light. I mean, you can throw it, blow it, lift it. It's so easy. You can sign up for 60 days right now at NathanLatka.com/drip. That's the special link, NathanLatka.com/drip. I don't know why the hell I'm telling you people this. I like to keep tools that I really like to myself because it's a big advantage, but there it is. Go use it right now before I totally change my mind. NathanLatka.com/drip. 00:19:30,144 --> 00:20:10,664 [Speaker 0] Okay, Top Tribe, I have to tell you, many people go, "Nathan, you came out of nowhere. Your website's growing so fast. How'd you do it?" The answer is simple. So I use HostGator. I don't know if you guys know that, but I use HostGator. And the reason I do, they have, like about 4,500 free templates I can use, 'cause I don't code. They've got a great e-commerce plugin, and guys, I bug the heck out of their support. They've got 24/7 support, which I love. So what I've done is I've worked with them. You guys know I make great deals. If you go to HostGator.com/Nathan, you can sign up, get your own domain for 30% off and a 45-day money-back guarantee. Okay, again, I make great deals for you guys. Go to HostGator.com/Nathan to grab that now. 00:20:11,944 --> 00:20:28,444 [Speaker 0] That's okay. Hey, yeah, sounds like it's, whatever you're doing now is working, so I'd keep doing that. But Top Tribe, we'll link to that in the show notes at NathanLatka.com/thetop494. Again, /thetop494. Boris, it's time for the famous five. These are rapid-fire questions with quick one-word answers. You ready? 00:20:28,444 --> 00:20:28,784 [Speaker 1] Sure. 00:20:28,784 --> 00:20:29,824 [Speaker 0] What's your favorite business book? 00:20:31,704 --> 00:20:34,284 [Speaker 1] Uh, uh, Guerrilla Marketing. 00:20:34,284 --> 00:20:37,104 [Speaker 0] Number two, is there a CEO that you're following or studying right now? 00:20:39,084 --> 00:20:44,224 [Speaker 1] Uh, the CEO that I'm following is, um, 00:20:45,364 --> 00:20:49,464 [Speaker 1] oh, what's his name? Uh, the guy who leads Salesforce is just- 00:20:49,464 --> 00:20:50,584 [Speaker 0] Benioff. 00:20:50,584 --> 00:20:51,843 [Speaker 1] Yeah, Benioff. Yeah, exactly. 00:20:51,844 --> 00:20:54,484 [Speaker 0] If he offered you $100 million today for the business, would you sell? 00:20:56,684 --> 00:20:57,664 [Speaker 1] No. 00:20:57,664 --> 00:21:01,024 [Speaker 0] Number three, is there a favorite online tool that you have, like TopTal? 00:21:03,344 --> 00:21:08,033 [Speaker 1] Uh, favorite online tool. Um, what kind of an online tool? 00:21:08,033 --> 00:21:08,064 [Speaker 0] Anything. 00:21:08,064 --> 00:21:08,884 [Speaker 1] I use a lot of online tools. 00:21:08,884 --> 00:21:10,704 [Speaker 0] Whatever you use the most. 00:21:10,704 --> 00:21:12,264 [Speaker 1] Uh, whatever I use the most. 00:21:12,264 --> 00:21:12,884 [Speaker 0] Besides your own. 00:21:12,884 --> 00:21:16,524 [Speaker 1] Google Analytics. Google Analytics is probably the, the one that I use the most. 00:21:16,524 --> 00:21:19,124 [Speaker 0] And number four, yes or no, do you get eight hours of sleep every night? 00:21:20,344 --> 00:21:21,224 [Speaker 1] No. [laughs] 00:21:21,224 --> 00:21:24,064 [Speaker 0] [laughs] And what, what's your situation? Married, single, do you have kids? 00:21:25,304 --> 00:21:30,304 [Speaker 1] Um, I have a, a, yeah, I have a six-month, 16-month-old. 00:21:30,304 --> 00:21:32,403 [Speaker 0] Oh, wow. Okay, so married and one kid. 00:21:32,404 --> 00:21:32,854 [Speaker 1] Mm-hmm. 00:21:32,854 --> 00:21:34,504 [Speaker 0] And what's your... Are, are you... How old are you, Boris? 00:21:35,724 --> 00:21:36,624 [Speaker 1] I'm 38. 00:21:36,624 --> 00:21:40,544 [Speaker 0] Okay, so last question. Take us back 18 years. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew? 00:21:42,444 --> 00:21:42,644 [Speaker 1] Uh, 00:21:43,844 --> 00:21:46,704 [Speaker 1] that doing is more important than knowing. 00:21:46,704 --> 00:22:12,954 [Speaker 0] Oh, wow. Love that. Top Tribe, there you have it. Doing is more important than knowing from Boris, who built, he joined early, early on as a co-founder at PDFfiller. They now are just doing something spectacular, over 200,000 customers, do over 10 million bucks in rev- way over 10 million bucks in revenue in 2015, all bootstrapped, which I love. Average customer's paying 10 bucks per month, doing over or around 2 million bucks in MRR with about 5% weighted gross churn. $10 CAC, $200- 00:22:12,954 --> 00:22:12,964 [Speaker 1] Yeah 00:22:12,964 --> 00:22:19,144 [Speaker 0] ... lifetime value with this team of 160 people between Boston and Kyiv. Boris, thank you for taking us to the top. 00:22:19,144 --> 00:22:20,664 [Speaker 1] Thanks, Nathan. I appreciate it. 00:22:21,964 --> 00:23:10,904 [Speaker 0] If you enjoyed Boris today, go back and listen to Chris Dever yesterday. Chris's company has over 15 million users and 90,000 in monthly recurring revenue with his company DocHub, making document signing easier. Top Tribe, I love giving away free money. I feel like Oprah giving away cars, and I have something special for you today. How many of you have heard our super sharp guests talk about success they've had with Facebook and Google Ads? Well, all of you listening right now, yes, if you're listening, you get $100 in free AdWords. Here's how you get it. Okay, again, thanks for listening. Get the free $100 from Google, right, when you sign up with my website host provider, HostGator. Go sign up now to get your free money. HostGator.com/Nathan. Again, that's HostGator.com/Nathan. 00:23:12,564 --> 00:23:24,504 [Speaker 0] Okay, Top Tribe, I'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning. And don't forget, before you listen to any other episodes, subscribe on iTunes right now for your chance to win 100 bucks every Monday. 00:23:27,484 --> 00:23:33,364 [Speaker 0] [outro music]