How Aspireship Grew Revenue From $120K to $700K in 2021 and Reached 70 Hiring Employers (Interview with Founder Corey Kossack)

Introduction and Overview of Aspireship

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Corey Kossack. He's inspired to make a greater difference and help overlooked candidates get into software sales. To do that, he launched aspireship, a free online training and job placement platform. He and his team have helped thousands of workers from all backgrounds and experience levels land high paying jobs in SaaS sales. Corey, you ready to take us to the top?

Corey Kossack

00:18>> Yeah. Let's do it. Alright.

Nathan Latka

00:19So first question, how many engineers are on your team?

Corey Kossack

00:22>> We just hired another, so now we're up to four.

Nathan Latka

00:27Okay. So when you guys hear free online training in the bio, don't tune out going, oh, it's a consulting guy. It sounds like there's real software here. Right? So Corey, what is the software component?

Software Platform and LMS Explained

Corey Kossack

00:36>> Yeah. For sure. So it's super interesting. Basically, we built a homegrown kind of LMS for the education side of the business. So it's free top of funnel instant access for candidates. And within there, there's things like built in role plays for audio and video role plays, for testing people for sales acumen and stuff like that. So we built that whole framework to basically take this big top of funnel and whittle it down to a top 10%

01:05>> candidate pool. And then on the back end, what's really cool and I think longer term stuff is matching for companies. So we operate mostly like a talent marketplace where once we've identified the talent, we're then matching them to companies who want to hire them and figuring out who's right for what roles.

Employer Customers: 70 Companies Served

Nathan Latka

01:23Mhmm. Yeah. So you're putting people on jobs with like Mindbody, obviously, well known SaaS company, folks like that. How many employers have you put at least one candidate, like, they've hired?

Corey Kossack

01:32>> Yeah. I think we're up to about 70 now.

Nathan Latka

01:3570. Interesting. Okay. So and and is that the right question? Right? Is that what you measure? Is it how many employers you put one candidate with and then how many candidates you place altogether?

Corey Kossack

01:43>> So I I think it depends how you're looking at it. I think the normal investor B2B SaaS more way to look at it is, okay, what's an average customer? How many do they hire? How long do they stay? I'm actually more interested in the candidate side because it's a network driven business. So as more candidates come in, they attract more candidates and then attract more companies. And so I actually look at it more as a, what

02:11>> does it cost us to get that candidate pool going and accelerating, and then how likely is it that we're gonna monetize it, and what do those economics look like? So that that's more the way I look at it, but you could look at it either way.

Candidate Acquisition Cost and Unit Economics

Nathan Latka

02:23Well, let's start with how you look at it. That's a much better way to look at it.

Corey Kossack

02:26>> What does it

Nathan Latka

02:26cost to get a new candidate on the platform?

Corey Kossack

02:28>> Gotcha. So I look at active users, which basically means someone who not only signs up, but they do something, like they watch a first class or something like that. So it currently costs us about $20 to get an active user. And within 120 days, at least over the last twelve months, we've averaged $275 per active user. So super fast return. It's actually an 80% gross margin business, always shocks everybody. Basically, yeah, that's how we do it,

03:04>> but it used to be $100 to $150 per active user when we were pumping marketing dollars. But once we sort of cross the chasm, you know, we get this group of people in and it just goes like this. Mhmm. So so that's the way the business works.

Nathan Latka

03:19So so $20 to get the the candidate not oh, sorry. The yeah. The candidate signed up and active. They watch at least one video. And then that you make off that candidate over the first three months about $275. So obviously, very quick CAC payback period. How are you making $275 per candidate in the first hundred and twenty days?

Corey Kossack

03:36>> Yeah. So it comes from employers. So employers, it operates like a talent marketplace. Think of Upwork or something like that. Essentially, we're replacing a third party recruiter or any of that sort of stuff where companies are paying $9,000 per hire to hire out of our kind of handpicked talent pool that we match with them.

Nathan Latka

03:57Sorry. What was that price?

Employer Pricing: Per-Hire and Subscription Models

Corey Kossack

03:58>> It's $9,000 per hire fixed. You could think of it as roughly 15% of salary depending on the role. In many cases, it's gonna be less than that. And then we have an alternate model for people who wanna lean into it where they can pay 6 k a year in a subscription and then pay 6 k per hire instead of 9 k.

Nathan Latka

04:21Oh, 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

04:44your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what 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 gonna get

05:09a 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 is not

05:31built 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, 3.7 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 multiple. Maybe you're going

05:57out 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. Alright. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but if you

06:18wanna 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 jump back into the interview.

06:466 k per month or per year? Sorry.

Corey Kossack

06:48>> Per year. Yeah. So it's just like I think of it like Amazon priming it. Right? So Yeah. $500 a month, and then your cost per placement goes down by a third.

Nathan Latka

06:58Okay. So reversing doing the math there. Right? So $275 per active user is what you said you generate, and it sounds like you generate a sale. It's a $9,000 sale placement. So can we take 9,000 divided by $275? It means you need about 32 active users to place one new successful candidate in one hundred twenty days?

Corey Kossack

07:17>> Yeah. So think of it as 3%. So from the top of active users, like 3%, at least at the current state of the marketplace is about what it looks like. 3% get hired? Yeah, through our network where we actually monetize. There are significantly more that get hired outside the network. We don't restrict it, but that's sort of like our distribution. As people come through, even if they go out of network, it then spreads into those companies,

07:46>> it spreads into other people, candidates, and we have this really cool viral loop going on.

Nathan Latka

07:52So what's the bottleneck? Your CAC payback's really quick. Three out of a 100 activators get hired. You make $9,000 on the most, $6,000 on the low side per hired candidate, three candidates at $6,000, and probably it's $18,000 for a 100 new user sign ups. What's the bottleneck here?

Corey Kossack

08:06>> Yeah. There's no bottleneck. So really,

08:10>> it's taken a couple of years to get to this point, so we're about two years old. The last, I would say, three to four months is like the inflection point for us.

Nathan Latka

08:19Sorry, just to be clear, you launched in late twenty nineteen?

Revenue History: 2020 and 2021

Corey Kossack

08:22>> Yes. Right before COVID. Okay. So then we had 2020 COVID, nobody's hiring, almost no revenue, all that stuff. And then, you know, came out, you know, guns blazing since then. But What was 2020 revenue total? Like, $120,000?

Nathan Latka

08:40Yeah. That's awesome.

Corey Kossack

08:42>> Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And almost all of that was in q four. Yeah. So, yeah, so so bottleneck was candidate supply, but now that we've sort of cracked the code on this organic viral growth, the candidate pool, the number of candidates signing up per month has quadrupled in the last six months. So we're on the way now.

Nathan Latka

09:05How many candidates signed up in the last month?

Corey Kossack

09:07>> 1,800. 1,800.

Nathan Latka

09:08And if you quadrupled over the past four months, so what you're doing 400, 500 sign ups a month back in was late last year.

Corey Kossack

09:16>> It was less than that. It was like three in the threes up until like maybe September.

Nathan Latka

09:22Interesting. And where are you you said you spend $20 to get those 1,800 new candidate sign ups every month. Where are you spending that money?

Partner Co-Marketing and Organic Growth

Corey Kossack

09:28>> Yeah. So that's blended. So we do some AdWords, you know, some display ads, you know, things like that. We also sponsor organizations, but the bulk of what happens and the reason the CAC is so low now is that we attract people through, like, we'll partner with organizations that help out a specific niche. For example, we have a partner called the Teacher Career Coach. It's just an individual. She has an online course for transitioning teachers who want

09:57>> to get out into something else. And she's like, Hey, if you're looking to get into the tech industry and specifically sales, you got to check out aspireship. And so they'll send a group of people in, and then once those people in, it spreads within the teachers. So just a bunch of stuff like that that that leads to, to the growth.

Nathan Latka

10:16Interesting. Okay. So you did $120,000 in 2020. What did you do last year in 2021? 700,000. Wow. Okay. I mean, that's great. Scale with how many people on your team full time?

Team Size and 2022 Revenue Outlook

Corey Kossack

10:25>> So at the time, we did I think we were about 10 last year, and now we're 16.

Nathan Latka

10:32So we've Yeah. We've added a

Corey Kossack

10:34>> bunch in the last few months.

Nathan Latka

10:36And what do you think you'll do this year in total revenue?

Corey Kossack

10:38>> I it'll be in the twos. So two to three, you know, three would be three would be upside.

Nathan Latka

10:45Yeah. Now what's the breakdown of that? So so how many I guess the right question is how many employers are are on the $6,000 per year subscription fee right now?

Corey Kossack

10:54>> Yeah, so it's maybe like 15% of the base. So the majority, even ones that do repeat hiring, they just like a la carte. They like to pay when they hire, low commitment. It's also the easiest. You can sort of look at us like a PLG or usage based pricing type model where just low friction to get in even on the employer side. And then once they're in, I mean, it's been kind of amazing. You would think

11:21>> that more would just automatically upgrade to the subscription, but I think some of the dynamics of how they get budget approved and stuff like that, they're like, well, look, I already have approval. Let's just keep going.

Nathan Latka

11:32Yeah. So how many candidates did you successfully get a job last year?

Corey Kossack

11:36>> I think probably about a 100.

Nathan Latka

11:38Okay. About a 100.

Corey Kossack

11:39>> Directly through the network. So figure that there's two to three x that amount outside the network that are landing jobs in tech. So they're all success stories, but not monetizing.

Nathan Latka

11:50Yeah, if you did $700,000 in total revenue and everyone was paying a la carte $9,000 per hire, that'd be about 78 hires, I believe, last year. Some are not a la carte, though, so it's a little higher, something about 100 total hires direct.

Pricing Evolution and Employer Pushback

Corey Kossack

12:01>> Not to mention that we've changed pricing at least three times in the last twelve months. We used to charge 5 ks per hire.

Nathan Latka

12:08Interesting. Okay. Tell me about that. Was there pushback when you increased prices? A lot of people listening right now going, I really want to increase price, but I'm scared it's gonna piss people off.

Corey Kossack

12:15>> No. I mean, basically, just the demand has been so strong. And every time we even even when we got to 9,000, most people are like, oh, that's below market for recruiting. It's like, well, we're not recruiting. We're a marketplace. It's different. But that's there it's basically, I think most SaaS companies and people that look at this, they're either willing to pay something or they're willing to pay nothing. Less about, oh, that's too expensive. That's too pricey.

12:43>> And especially because we have ways for them to lean into, you know, higher volume stuff that cost less, we don't get hardly any pushback on pricing.

Monthly Run Rate and First $100K Month

Nathan Latka

12:53And in terms of, like, sort of run rate, when you add up all your revenue, last month you did something, what, like, like a 120, $130,000 in revenue?

Corey Kossack

13:00>> Yeah. So you can you can say we're, you know, 1.5 run rate. It's super interesting, though, because it can change real quick.

Nathan Latka

13:08I was gonna say, yeah, because you're effectively SaaS plus, SaaS being SaaS plus sort of transactional based upsell based off a success, you know, a successful placement, that thing can go up obviously really quick if usage goes.

Corey Kossack

13:20>> It also was the first it was the first month that we ever cracked a 100 k. Congrats. Yeah. Thanks.

Roles Placed and SDR Compensation

Nathan Latka

13:27That's exciting. And so so I guess for people listening right now, maybe that are not founders, are thinking about joining a founding team, right, as a sales rep, who who are you are these SDRs you're placing? AEs, CSMs, BDRs? What's the core role, your focus?

Corey Kossack

13:41>> Yeah. So right now it's SDR or BDR and AE. So we do both. You can think of the candidate pool split in two. There's one who are transitioning professionals from all walks of life that have never held a sales job. Those are your likely SDRs, BDRs, and then there's salespeople, that have actual experience closing, but they've never done SaaS before. And so they could be in insurance sales or mortgages or advertising or whatever, and we'll help

14:11>> them transition in directly and sort of skip the SDR path in most most cases and go straight to an AE role.

Nathan Latka

14:17Interesting. Okay. So if someone is joining let's not use Mindbody because they're an actual customer, but, like, let's say someone's joining Gong today. What should an SDR be expected to see in their offer letter in terms of comp?

Corey Kossack

14:29>> Sure. So it's changed a ton in the last six to nine months, I would say, with the constraints in the market. But I generally say, you know, 50 to 65 k on a base and 10 to 20 k in a variable. So you're looking at 60 to 80 is all in is typically what you're gonna see. We do see stuff outside of that as well. We've had certain more strategic type SDR roles where your OT might

15:00>> be 100 ks, so kind of crazy. And these are all primarily remote roles. So we're not talking about like, you have to be in the Bay Area or New York and and that sort of thing.

Nathan Latka

15:11Interesting. And and have you self funded the business or did you decide to raise?

Corey Kossack

15:15>> We did raise. So I I had a a company before actually exited to Mindbody. So that's the connection there. Which company was that? It's called Frederick. It's a SaaS marketing platform for SMBs. So, anyway, so straight after leaving, I raised a 1.4 pre seed when I had nothing, like, no team, no product, just like, hey. I can do this. This is the big

Nathan Latka

15:42five five cap or something?

Corey Kossack

15:44>> Yeah. That was, like, that was in in 2019. Yeah. That was that was the five cap. I had a bunch of people I worked with and I'm like, Hey, I'm gonna make these terms awesome, obviously you can make a ton of money,

Funding History and Total Raised

Corey Kossack

15:58>> that stuff. So I did that and then I've basically taken inside money since then. We've raised a total of 4,000,000 to date, and now sort of looking at, okay, is a series A in our near future, we're not far from being profitable, so lots of different options.

Nathan Latka

16:18So 4,000,000 minus 1.4, right, is 2.6. When did you raise the 2.6 seed round effectively from insiders?

Corey Kossack

16:26>> Yeah. So we didn't do it at once. When COVID hit, we were like, oh, shit. Who knows what's going to happen here? And so we took, I don't know, another 800 something, then, and then, we just had little chunks come in another 600 at a different point. We did a million something last fall. So just all, all small.

Nathan Latka

16:48Did you keep increasing the valuation as well?

Corey Kossack

16:50>> Yeah. So cap kept coming up.

Nathan Latka

16:52Yep. Yeah. So the last million you took in, I guess, last year, what valuation did you raise that at?

Valuation Caps and Insider Rounds

Corey Kossack

16:57>> Yeah. So I had I had about a million that was at a 15 cap, and then we had a top off at a 20,000,000 cap.

Nathan Latka

17:06Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So you still own what? 60% of the 65% of the business? Something like that?

Corey Kossack

17:12>> Something like that.

Nathan Latka

17:13Interesting. Less than that.

Corey Kossack

17:14>> Little less than that.

Nathan Latka

17:16Okay. Cool. And and co any co founders or just you?

Corey Kossack

17:19>> Yeah. So I recruited a co founder named Jason Ridell. We met through our kids'preschool, and he's a, like, seasoned tech guy from PayPal. Mhmm. And so he's our our CTO. And then, I have some really early people like Christine Rogers, who I brought in as President and COO. She was the head of sales at the last company, and we worked closely together, And so I almost think of her like pseudo co founder, but not technically

17:51>> a co founder.

Prior Company: Frederick, Booker and Mindbody

Nathan Latka

17:52And your first company founded in 2014, Frederick, did you raise capital there? And if so, how much?

Corey Kossack

17:57>> So we raised 620,000 in Angel. And then we were first acquired not by Mindbody but by Booker in 2015. It was like eight months after customer number one. We were not looking for a sale, but it was like so strategic and so aligned. So I joined, I joined Booker and and built the business inside of it. And then we exited, you know, jointly to Mindbody.

Nathan Latka

18:22Was that a big cash event for you when you sold to Booker? Or was it more like getting equity in Booker and then the cash event was selling Booker to Mindbody?

Corey Kossack

18:28>> Yeah. It's the latter. Yeah. So I was looking at it as continuation of a startup. And then the big cash event was Mindbody. And then nine months into Mindbody, as I was staying, we were acquired by Vista for 1,900,000,000. So it was it was a crazy little

Nathan Latka

18:45Did you get to dip into that as well, or you had already sold all your stock?

Corey Kossack

18:48>> Mostly sold. Yeah. So not too much. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

18:50Alright. That's what we call,

18:52like, the the triple the quadruple dip with a little bit on the end there on the Vista deal. So what what a good story here. So okay. If you do raise so look it sounds like you're thinking maybe about a series a. If you do raise a series a, how much will you try and target?

Series A Plans

Corey Kossack

19:03>> Yeah. I think 6 to 8,000,000 is what we're what we're looking at, what we're talking to a few people about.

Nathan Latka

19:08Mhmm. And what do you think you can raise valuation wise at? A range, obviously, is fine.

Corey Kossack

19:12>> I'm not sure. I mean, I think I think we'll see. I think there's a difference between what you can do and what you should do or picking the right partner. So I'm not necessarily going to the highest bidder. You know, a lot of, not personal scar tissue as much, but scar tissue through people I know, like choosing the wrong VC. So, I'm definitely prioritizing that over, whatever the number is gonna be.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

19:38Alright, let's wrap up here, Corey, with the famous five. Number one, favorite book?

Corey Kossack

19:42>> Favorite book? I like Founders at Work.

Nathan Latka

19:44Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Corey Kossack

19:47>> I like Andrew Gazdecki, MicroAcquire. I like the fact that he's, like, kinda like a movement. You know, I like that that kind of stuff that founders do.

Nathan Latka

19:56Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building aspireship?

Corey Kossack

20:00>> There's something most people don't know called trevor.io. Incredible analytics back end. There's so much stuff you can do with it. Super lightweight.

Nathan Latka

20:11Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Corey Kossack

20:14>> Five to six.

Nathan Latka

20:15Okay. And what's your situation, Connor?

Corey Kossack

20:16>> Married, single, kids, or Corey?

Nathan Latka

20:18Sorry.

Corey Kossack

20:19>> Married and four kids. Eight, seven, three, and one.

Nathan Latka

20:24Wow. How old are you?

Corey Kossack

20:26>> I'm 38.

20:27>> 38.

Nathan Latka

20:28Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Corey Kossack

20:33>> Something I wish I knew when I was 20, I would say,

20:39>> just keep going.

Nathan Latka

20:41He launched he launched his first company in 2014, raised some angel money, sold to Booker in 2015. Not a huge cash event then, but obviously got a lot of stock in mind or in Booker, which became a nice cash event when Mindbody acquired Booker. Obviously, Mindbody acquired by Vista. Corey took off and started aspireship in 2019, raised a quick 1,400,000 pre seed round on a 5,000,000 cap really to help folks get roles in sales at SaaS

21:04companies coming from other maybe insurance sales roles or other things like that are looking for a career change. They're doing about $2,000,000 in terms of or sorry, 1,500,000 run rate today, $700,000 last year in revenue, 120,000 in 2020 revenue, working with 70 companies, placing over a 100 job candidates last year where he makes anywhere between 6 to $9,000 per successful hire. Corey, thanks for taking us to the top.

Corey Kossack

21:26>> My pleasure. Good to see you.

Nathan Latka

21:30One 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

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