Appbroda Revenue (2024)

[00:00] Guys launched in 2021. Today, he helps over 320 individual developers monetize their 1,400 games. He helped them process 20 to $30,000,000 of ad revenue over the past twelve months, of which he keeps he keeps eight to 12%. So call it a $2,000,000 run rate for the business. That's up over a 100% year over year since last year. And they're bootstrapped, which we love. He's targeting a million bucks in revenue per employee, which we certainly hope he [00:23] hits. The company is called appbroda.com. Hey, folks. My guest today is Ashish Aggarwal. He's worked ten years in digital with five years at Google across Play and AdMob and then fell in love with the app gaming publishing world. He had no clue that it's a $20,000,000,000 industry with 2,000,000 folks creating amazing games and apps. Since then, he's launched appbroda.com, which helps you become your ad ops or is your ad ops expert. Ashish, you ready to take [00:47] us to top? [00:50] >> Yeah. Absolutely, Nathan. Very excited. Big fan of what you do, both at the podcast and, of course, your company. So really excited to kick this off. [00:58] Well, so you know all the questions. Right? So so what what are you guys at right now in terms of revenue? Let's just start with the big one. [01:04] >> We can't disclose exact figures, but it's we're just about twenty months old, and we are between the 0 and $5,000,000 revenue range already. [01:13] Okay. Great. [01:13] >> We're we're bootstrapped. We we haven't placed any round of funding. [01:18] And when did when did you guys launch? What year? [01:21] >> We launched in 2021, right in the middle of the pandemic. June 2021 is when we got started. [01:26] It's a hell of a time to it's a hell of a time to launch. [01:29] >> Yeah. Hell of a time to launch, but honestly, like, unfortunately, it worked in our favor because all of our customers were based in in Europe and, you know, USA and different parts of the world. And reaching them was was easier because of everything was digital. Right? Although you earlier you had to take a flight from we're based in Dubai and India. You know, you would have to take a flight to meet your customers, but that's not [01:53] >> the case anymore. So kinda working our favor there. [01:56] Now before we talk about your product, you mentioned in your bio that your goal is to hit 1,000,000 revenue per employee by 2026. That's how I know you listen to the show because that's one of my favorite metrics. What's your revenue what's your revenue per employee today? [02:08] >> Yeah. I think that'll be a bit of a giveaway, but I think we we're about, you know, anywhere between 20 to 50 x away from that. [02:16] Okay. And how [02:17] do you plan for that? Right? How do you get your team focused on that number? It's not a traditional business metric. They might go, Ashish, why are we optimizing for revenue per employee? [02:25] >> Right. Yeah. No. I think that's a great question. I think we've built in our DNA the sense of a big revenue goal, but also being profitable from day one. Right? Being bootstrapped, not looking for VC funding at the time when everyone was getting VC funding very easily in countries like Southeast Asia and India, we want, we've built it profitably. So I think from day one, whoever's joined us, you know, it's a natural question when you join [02:50] >> a startup, are you guys raising funding? Have you raised funding? Do you plan to raise funding? And the answer is no. We think that, you know, as a SaaS company, we can be profitable. We've done the math. We've, you know, we're in an industry which is really large, $20,000,000,000 as you said at the top. And we think that because we've been profitable, and we've still been more service than product till now, we think that we're gonna [03:12] >> get better at profitability. Right? So that's kind [03:14] the last twelve months, what was the revenue split between service and SaaS, like percentage wise? [03:20] >> Yeah. I think the last twelve months, it's due towards service. But in the last six months, it's 80% product and 20% service. [03:28] Okay. Got it. Last six months, 80% product. Okay. And and then, I guess, talk to me a little bit more about what the product does. Right? What are customers paying you for today? Yeah. [03:37] >> So I think just a little background, right, so for everyone, it's it's a very large industry, but it's it's sort of niche in terms of knowledge. Ad networks have been around for a while. These ad networks, like four or five of them, like Google, Meta, Iron Source, AppLovin, etcetera, they fuel the entire content and gaming industry to a large extent, more than people realize, right, the ads you see on your phone. Now, these tools enable the [04:03] >> content creation. There are about 2,000,000 developers globally that actually participate in this industry by create creating content. And the way they make money, the way they can fuel it back into creating more content is through ads. Now, the top four guys in this industry, the ones I mentioned, they only have sales or service teams that cater to the top two or 3% of developers. Right? And this is not an eighty twenty industry. What I mean by [04:31] >> that, it's not that 80% of the revenue is controlled by 20% of the developers. It's more of fortyfortytwenty. 40% of the revenue is controlled by the top, but the remaining 60% is split between small and medium sized developers. Right? And there's a there's a very large knowledge gap on how best to utilize the tools in this in this industry to maximize your revenue from your app. So what we want to do as appbroda is we want [04:57] >> to become a platform where you just self serve, you come, you log in, you you have an app, you have a game, whatever you have, and you understand how best to use these products to reach from, like, a noob, like, a person who doesn't know how to monetize his app or game to an absolute expert. Right? Like like, the best in class [05:15] Ashish, sorry. I don't mean I don't mean to cut you off, but I wanna get make this more succinct. App developers are using you to get more customers? [05:23] >> App developers are using us to monetize better using ads. [05:27] Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you connect [05:50] your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what it it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're [06:14] gonna get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here, right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity And red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this [06:36] is not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round three point seven raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the [07:01] multiple. Maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in [07:24] a second, but if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's [07:50] jump back into the interview. Okay. So you're a marketplace. You've gotta get content creators like app developers and then Procter and Gamble that wants to sell their toothpaste. [07:59] >> So what we're doing actually, Nathan, is add networks at the marketplace, like you said. So, like, an AdMob, for example, is a market [08:06] Of course. That connects Procter [08:08] >> and Gamble to app developer, like, let's say, Candy Crush, for example. [08:11] Yep. [08:12] >> We are building on top of the marketplaces. We are not disrupting the marketplace itself. We seeing the marketplaces aren't able to fulfill the knowledge gap between the 2,000,000 developers that use the marketplace and how they use the marketplace. Right? So there there's some So who's paying you? [08:27] The developer in the marketplace or the marketplace themselves? [08:30] >> The developer pays us. The marketplaces always have an interest in what we're doing. So we have a partnership with Google. We're trying to build one with Iron Source and AppLovin. They're very interested because the more we help their end customer optimize, they make more money. Right? [08:44] So you're helping new game developer x create more ad inventory, get a higher CPC, get a higher click through rate on the marketplace? [08:53] >> Absolutely. Bang on. There are four or five key metrics. We help them achieve those better. [08:58] And name the five. Just list them real quick, the five metrics. [09:01] >> Okay. So straight off, you start with the number of ad requests. That's totally dependent on on your traffic. [09:07] Yep. What's the second? [09:08] >> The second is your match rate. How many requests you send, but how much did you get filled in your inventory? How much [09:15] The match rate. Filled. [09:17] >> The match rate. The next is your show rate. How many ads did you actually show? Most people don't realize there's a big drop, like 40% between ads you show and ads you fill. Right? And then is your CPC. How much is the advertiser actually paying you for a click on the ad? Right? And how many And clicks are you [09:33] on average, what are what are developers paying you to use your technology? [09:38] >> So we work on an entirely revenue share based model. Anywhere between eight to 12% is what we charge of the entire ad revenue that the developer makes. Right? I see. [09:49] Yeah. Okay. So it's it's got it. So it's a ad rev mod. It's a it's a per it's a transaction based model. You're taking a take rate of eight to 12%. What is the Yeah. What what what is the when it how many developers right now have made at least a dollar through your platform? [10:05] >> So currently, we've had 1,400 apps and games make money more money than they were before through our platform. But that's split across about 320 unique developers. Right? Because one developer makes multiple games and multiple apps. [10:17] Yep. Yep. That makes tons of sense. Okay. And what's the right question? I just I'm not quite sure the right question to ask you, but how do we measure if they've putting they're putting a large volume through you or not? Is is it just GMV? [10:30] >> Yeah. I think GMV is one way to look at it. That's probably the best way to look at it. Right? In the ad world, it's called ad impressions. So the number of ad impressions that flow through your platform, you know, we have a self serve dashboard. So for example, last year, 2022, January, December, we touched about 10,000,000,000 ad impressions, which is a very large number, but, you know, like, it's it's not that large in the ad [10:54] >> world. Right? So we wanna definitely grow, like, 50 x on that. [10:58] Well, of the 10,000,000,000 ad impressions that you help these 1,400 apps optimize across these 320 unique developers, what does that mean in terms of dollars? Right? You know, an ad impression is one thing, but is it is that a $100,000, a a billion of dollars going through your platform? [11:14] >> Yeah. It's it's a it's a mix because CPCs determine, you know, the the cost of an impression or the value of an impression. [11:22] Of course. [11:23] >> And CPCs vary from US to India. So India will be on the lower end and US will be high. Blended, maybe you can look at, like, maybe 3 to $4 is what that means. Right? So if you're doing, like, about 10,000,000,000, you might be making a GMV of 20 to $30,000,000. Ballpark. Just ballpark. [11:39] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And sorry. The math you're doing there is you're taking 10,000,000,000 ad impressions, and you're assuming a click through rate, and then you're assuming a $3 cost per click. [11:50] >> It works a bit different in the ad world. So it's calculated using a metric called CPM. CPM is simply 10,000,000,000 divided by thousand into $3. [11:58] So yeah. So you're using you're using it to a $20 c or what is the CPM you're using? [12:03] >> 3 to $4. So 10,000,000,000 divided by a thousand into three to four. [12:07] I see. I see. I see. Yeah. Three so it's not it's not $3 CPC. It's $3 CPM. [12:12] >> Oh, yeah. It's CPM. The CPC will be, like, much lower. Maybe $1.15 to $1.16 for that. [12:17] I see. Okay. So just to make this all very clear and concise, you've got 1,400 apps that have used you across 320 unique developers over the past twelve months. Basically, last year, you tested 10,000,000,000 ad impressions generating somewhere around $20,000,000 of GMV for these 320 unique developers of which you keep eight to 10% of that 20,000,000. [12:36] >> Bang on. [12:37] Yeah. Ah, very cool. That's awesome. Very cool. Tell me more about your team. How many folks are full time? [12:42] >> So we have about 52 full time folks. About 20% of our team is tech, about three to four folks in product, and the rest are just in in BD. BD is about another 15% of our team. And the rest is spread across finance, HR support, you know, things like that. [13:01] Yep. And how do you you know when a new developer signs up for your platform, talking about getting them activated, right? What do you know they have to do in the first seven days? Otherwise, they're gonna churn, you're gonna lose them. [13:13] >> Yeah, it's a great question. So our customer is a very impatient customer. You need to increase their revenue in the first fourteen days. If you don't do it, the customer is gone. He or she is gone with someone else. Or they disregarded your platform. So we've got to do two things really well. We've got to make the integration less than thirty minutes to our platform. Right? Currently, it's five minutes. So we we kind of, you know, [13:36] >> got there. The second thing is we've got to make sure that the the developer sees at least 10% revenue increment in the first ten days of doing work with us. Otherwise, we're out of the business. We have no chance to say. [13:49] Interesting. That makes a lot of sense. Now talk to me a bit about growth. Right? If you're taking eight to 10% to 20 million GMV today, which is about a 2,000,000 run rate, where are you exactly one year ago? Do you remember? [13:59] >> I think one year ago, we were at half of this. [14:03] Oh, wow. [14:03] >> But with a smaller team. And we've invested in the team, especially in tech. Last six months has gone into investing in tech. We've got a solid product road map, so I think there was a lot of focus on business. We were more service oriented, like I said. The last six months, we've also done really good work on GTM and going international. One of the challenges being an Indian sort of company is [14:24] Are you based in India right now? Chennai, Bangalore? [14:27] >> I'm based in India in in Delhi. Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of India, but I'm I'm in Delhi. Delhi is not far behind. And, you know, the company's headquartered in Dubai. We're completely remote. But, you know, there's always a challenge in for SaaS companies in India to capture US and Europe and, you know, China and Japan. These are the big markets, the big revenue value markets for us. Right? I think we've done well in [14:49] >> the last six months in capturing especially Europe and penetrating, like, parts of East Asia, which are more value. Mhmm. [14:56] And take me back to that first year. Do you remember what total revenue was in 2021? [15:03] >> Whirlwind, I think it was, like, less than 500,000. [15:07] And that was mostly services. Right? [15:09] >> It was very volatile. Right? It was very volatile. And, you know, this year is gonna be bad for ad spends in general, macroeconomic factors. But we're particularly excited about this year because publishers or app developers will struggle with making more revenue, which is why companies like ours come in and kind of say, okay, even if we can help you make 10% more, we're extremely valuable in recessionary climate. Right? So I think this year is gonna be [15:32] >> a very, very pivotal year for us for two reasons. One, the product, and second, just going international. [15:37] Yep. Yep. Very interesting. Last question here. How are you signing up customers? What's the growth strategy? [15:42] >> We're being very hacky. We've used a lot of email marketing. We've used a lot of LinkedIn. We've used a lot of tools for free on the net. Like I said, [15:52] every What's your favorite free tool to use? [15:55] >> Chrome extension that lets you find people's LinkedIn email ID. [16:00] What's it cost? [16:01] >> There are several, so I don't wanna name one. But, like, we use SignalHire. We use LGM. We use a bunch of these. And they just let you find the right POC, the right decision maker for us. And, you know, we can just pitch him or her through an email straight away. [16:16] Very cool. Alright, Ashish. On that note, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite book? [16:22] >> Favorite book, Harry Potter. [16:24] How you work? [16:27] >> 90% strategy, 10% execution. [16:30] No. No. No. What was the name of the book? [16:33] >> Oh, Harry Potter. Harry Potter, like Harry Potter, like the [16:38] Oh, Harry, like Harry Potter. Sorry. Favorite business book. [16:42] >> Oh, favorite business book. Okay. The one from Naval Ravikant. I forget the name of the book. [16:48] Yep. That's a good one. His his almanac. Okay. Number two, is there a CEO you are following or studying? [16:56] >> I follow you quite a bit, to be honest. I am not just [16:59] saying Oh, that god. Am so sorry. So sorry for that. [17:01] >> No. No. Because, look, I think two things. Right? SaaS is is hot in India, and also because I think what you guys are doing in terms of funding SaaS is really interesting. So I've I've been following you on LinkedIn quite a bit and your podcast as well. So I would say right now, top of mind you. Yep. But if I pick one person who I followed, it was, the Google India CEO from 2014 to 2020, which [17:23] >> was Rajan. [17:24] >> Yep. [17:25] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building appbroda? [17:31] >> Interesting. I think LinkedIn for sure. [17:34] Number number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night? [17:38] >> Nine. [17:39] Okay. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? [17:42] >> Married. Recently married. [17:44] Any kids? [17:46] >> No kids yet. Not yet. Don't mind about any of that. [17:49] And how old are you? [17:51] >> I'm 34. [17:52] >> 34. Last question. [17:53] Ashish, something you wish you knew when you were 20. [17:59] >> Fall forward. Great quote from Denzel Washington. Right? I think persistence is is important. Fall fall falling forward is is kind of embodies that in a good in an articulate manner. [18:10] Guys launched in 2021. Today, he helps over 320 individual developers monetize their 1,400 games. He helped them process 20 to $30,000,000 of ad revenue over the past twelve months of which he keeps he keeps eight to 12%. So call it a $2,000,000 run rate for the business. That's up over a 100% year over year since last year. And they're bootstrapped, which we love. He's targeting a million bucks in revenue per employee, which we certainly hope he [18:33] hits. The company is called appbroda.com. Ashish, thanks for taking us to the top. [18:38] >> Thanks so much, Nathan. Thanks for this opportunity. [18:41] One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers. They try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it. And the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM [19:07] Central. Additionally, remember these recorded Founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button, and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big [19:29] fundraise, big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up [19:51] for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. And if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We [20:10] got to push them away. 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