BlogVault Inc Revenue (2024)

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Akshat Choudhary. He's the Founder and CEO of BlogVault, MalCare, and WP Remote. These services allow over 20,000 customers to build and manage high performance websites with ease. Akshat, you ready to take us to the top? [00:13] >> Yes, absolutely. Thank you for having me. [00:15] You bet. So 20,000 users, that's a ton of customers. Are you playing like in the WordPress extension ecosystem or some marketplace? [00:24] >> Yes, we do. We are a part of the WordPress ecosystem. So we are a software as a service and not a plug in per se. [00:33] I see. I see. So which of these tools is the biggest? BlogVault, MalCare, and WP Remote? Which one has the most users? [00:39] >> I think MalCare today is our biggest biggest product. [00:43] And it has the most revenue as well? [00:47] >> It's, I think, fairly well balanced, though I would still say MalCare [00:52] >> is the leader. Though all three products are, you know, it's a suite. They all go hand in hand. [00:59] Okay. So explain how they work together. What's a customer pay you for? What do they get? [01:03] >> So they can buy individual products also, but they can buy the whole suite. And WP Remote. So you can buy BlogVault individually for $90 a year. You can buy MalCare individually for $100 a year for a single site. Or you can buy them together at 149. There's another plan at $299 for a single site. And then if you have more sites, then it goes all the way up to [01:29] Akshat, sorry, my audience doesn't know what these tools do. So if people buy the tools, tell us what the tools do. [01:34] >> All right, yeah. So if you're running a website, a WordPress website, you want to protect it because, especially if you're running a business critical website, if anything happens to it, lose, you lose customers, you lose SEO ranking, you will lose, [01:51] >> yeah, it's a big loss to your business, so you can't afford to have it go down. What we do is we protect your business, your business website. And BlogVault lets you back up the website, MalCare lets you secure the website. [02:02] Interesting. And [02:04] >> WP Remote is our agency offering, where if you're running an agency and you have hundreds of websites and you use WP Remote to manage your entire a large number of websites, and that includes backup security and more. [02:18] I see. Okay. So it's all about website security. How many websites have installed one of these three tools? [02:24] >> Hundreds of thousands. [02:26] Your website says 400,000. Is that accurate? [02:30] >> Yes. More is it it would be even higher than that. I think that number has to be updated. [02:35] Have you passed them half a 500, a thousand? [02:38] >> We we don't actually actively track it. It's Okay. Yeah. There's a lot of funny numbers there also. There are paying customers. There are free customers. [02:49] Well, of the of the of the 400,000 installs or 400,000 installs, how many are actually paying for one of the three tools? [02:57] >> Again, actually, don't track it in that manner. What we do track is we have more than 20,000 paying customers. Okay. So 20,000 paying customers. Which have more than one or more websites on our platform. [03:09] I see. Okay. That makes sense. And there's over 400,000 websites on the platform? [03:13] >> Yes. [03:14] I see. Okay. Give me more of the backstory here. When did you launch the company? What year? [03:18] >> So 2010. It's we go back a long way. And it was launched as a side project. Wow. I've been doing it full time for ten years now. [03:26] Are you the sole founder? [03:28] >> Yes. [03:29] So you still own a 100% equity today? [03:32] >> Yes. [03:33] Oh, that's amazing. How many folks are full time on the team now? [03:37] >> We are 35, 36 now. [03:40] Wow. Okay. Tell me about the team. How many are engineers? [03:44] >> Over half the team is engineers. [03:46] And where are they based? [03:47] >> So we are all almost all of us are based in Bangalore. [03:51] Amazing. I hear the talent over there is just incredible. Is that true? [03:55] >> Yes. It is. It a Silicon Valley Of India talent. You get the best engineers in India here, but it's also highly competitive. [04:05] 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 [04:29] your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what 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 gonna [04:53] 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 is [05:15] 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 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 [05:40] 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 a second. But [06:02] 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. All right, let's jump back [06:28] into the interview. So what do you pay a senior engineer at your company? [06:33] >> We don't disclose it, but yeah, it's we pay we are one of the top players. So the best engineers in our company would get as much as they would get in most some of the most Yeah. [06:43] I don't know what that is, though. How how much is it? [06:44] >> It can it can go up to a $100,000 a year. [06:48] Okay. So a good senior engineer would be doing really well if they're making a $100,000 in Bengaluru? [06:54] >> Yes. [06:55] Okay. Amazing. And then, so 16 engineers, 36 full time. Now are you bootstrapped or have you raised capital? [07:04] >> We're fully bootstrapped. [07:06] I love this. So how do you incentivize your employees? Like, do you give them options or not? How do you incentivize them that way? [07:11] >> That's a good question. So we we have a very generous profit sharing program where we do it based on the number of years you have spent at BlogVault and seniority. So a combination of that and so as you spend more number of years, it almost acts as options. [07:30] >> But yeah, we've tried to keep it as fair as possible. [07:33] But actually everyone wants to know how to do this. Everyone is trying to do their own version of this, but no one ever talks about it. And my audience is mainly Bootstrap Founder. So let's role play for a second. Let's say I was an engineer that joined your company five years ago. So I've been with you for five years. What other inputs would you use to calculate my profit share this year? [07:52] >> So five years would be the seniority that you have. That would be number one. So we grade the people at the company based on various factors, but the impact essentially the seniority that you have and then the number of years you have spent at BlogVault. So for example, if you are a very senior person, but you have only spent a year in BlogVault, then [08:16] >> the profit share would be lower than a person who might be junior than you, but has spent five years at BlogVault. [08:23] Yeah. So so actually, let's use a real example, right? So I joined as a let's say I joined as a senior engineer five years ago. So I'm a senior my management level is a senior, and I've been there for five years. What would the math be so that I could back into what my profit sharing might be for last year? [08:39] >> So it would be tens of thousands of dollars would be would be [08:44] Well, no. But I'm trying to get the math equation so that other founders listening can set up their own profit sharing plans. [08:49] >> So it depends on many factors, frankly. Like, we we take out we we we give up almost 30% of our profit to to as part of the profit share. [08:59] Mhmm. [09:00] >> But it again depends on how how how you want to structure it. [09:04] So there's 30 all all 36 employees participate? [09:07] >> Yes. Everyone participates. You have to do a finish a year to participate. [09:12] I see. So you have to be with you for at least a year. So there's 20% of total company profits available for profit sharing across [09:19] >> It's 30 higher than that. Yeah, it's higher than that. Yeah, but it is. [09:23] So what I'm still trying to back into is let's say someone listening right now saying, okay, wanna copy action. I do 20% of my profits for profit sharing. My team is also about 30 people. How would they decide? What's the math equation to multiply that 20% by so that senior engineer has been there for five years could calculate how much they'd make? [09:41] >> Honestly, I don't have the numbers or the formula in front of me, but what we have done is we have assigned a grade and we convert. So the way we do it is, suppose you have, let's for simplicity say, suppose you have been here for five years with us, okay? For five years, suppose the multiplier we add is five, though I don't know the exact multiplier, have the exact multiplier in front of me, and your grade [10:06] >> is five, and your grade is 10. So I would do 10 into five, fifty. And there's a second person who is at four years and grade 10. So that's four into ten forty. What we will do is we'll add up all 30 people's score and then divide the overall pool by this score, by this total accumulative sum. [10:28] Yep. [10:28] >> And then multiply each person's factor to get the actual number. [10:36] So the two examples you just gave was a grade of 50 plus a grade of 40. So grade of 90 together. Let's say your profits last year were, I'm making this up a $100,000. You would take a 100,000 divided by 90? [10:49] >> So you take 20% of that, so you take $20,000. [10:53] Oh, okay. [10:54] >> And and then divide it by 90, and then each person, the two people will get five is to four ratio, essentially. [11:01] Oh, I see. So 20,000 divided by 90 is 222 per person. Then [11:07] >> they Into would 50. [11:10] Sorry? [11:11] >> Into into 50. The first person will get into fifty and second person will get into 40. [11:15] Yeah. So again, I'm calculating the unit. Right? So one unit of grade is worth $222 and then one would get 50 times 222 and the other would get 40 times 222. [11:27] >> That's correct. [11:28] At a high level, that's how you do it. [11:29] >> That's roughly the math, the exact numbers I don't have in front of me, but that's roughly the math we have. [11:36] That makes a ton of sense. Okay. I love that. Very cool. Thanks for sharing. [11:40] >> And the one factor since you speaking so much, we really so the score is if the more time you spend with us, the higher the ratio. So you would see like a 50 a person would make us significantly more money than a 40 or 30 a person. So it's almost like stock options also. So the value increases because we know that as in SaaS, the business, the more time it's a time plays such an important role [12:06] >> in creating value. [12:08] Yep. Yep. In 2021, how much total did you pay out to employees as part of this plan? [12:12] >> We are not disclosing this. This is the number, but it's it's hundreds of thousands of dollars is what we we gave to. [12:19] You think that'll break a million this year? [12:22] >> We would love to do it. I I'm not sure we'll be able to do that. It's not we're we're not that profitable. [12:28] Okay. Okay. Interesting. Well, you're profitable and you're bootstrapped, we love. [12:33] >> Yeah. So so Yeah. But we'd love to do it, that 20%, 25% is not set in stone. It's we see how so the actual other factor, and which is why it's slightly more complicated, is in SaaS we also, what we know is that the faster we grow, the more profits we are willing to give up, in the sense shared with everyone. [12:57] >> Because so that incentivizes us to grow faster and faster. So what might be 20% at certain growth level, it might even go up to 60% at another growth level. [13:08] I see. Very interesting. Now you mentioned ahead of the call that you can't share exact revenue, but you could share a range. What revenue range are you in today? [13:15] >> It's a few million dollars. It's less than 10, but a few million dollars. [13:18] Okay. Do you think you can break 10,000,000 this year? [13:21] >> Very difficult. [13:23] Okay. Difficult. [13:23] >> Yeah. It's very difficult, but within a couple of years, definitely. [13:27] So let's just say the number is 4,000,000 divided by 20,000 customers because you're mainly selling one time annual plans, right? [13:34] >> No. So we sell recurring [13:39] >> plans, which are monthly annual. So this is an interesting part about our business. We have customers who pay us a $100 a year, and we have customers who pay us 6 figures per year. [13:49] What's the what's the big don't name the customer, obviously, but what's the largest customer pay you per year? [13:54] >> 6 figures per year. It's a good sum. [13:59] Okay. So the largest customer is like a 100,000 a year, something like that? [14:03] >> Yeah. It's a big sum of money. Yeah. But because of the nature of the business there, we are multi feature and then the number of units, number of sites plays an important role. [14:15] Yeah. I imagine the the biggest reason someone's gonna pay you a 100,000 versus just a 100 a year is number of sites. Right? That's what they upsell against? [14:23] >> Yes. Number of sites plus some of the features. [14:27] Yeah. Interesting. What feature is the number one reason people upgrade? [14:32] >> I think people spend as they get used to the platform, they they want more security. Then we have some add ons available, like we have real time backups for WooCommerce store, for ecommerce store. So we have these add ons which really add up to significant sums of money for people to upgrade. So we basically the business that we are in, you know, we keep, as we add features, try and do [15:02] >> it in such a manner that we can get more and more we create more and more incentive for customers to upgrade. [15:09] Mhmm. Mhmm. No. That makes a lot of sense. Now, if we wanna calculate growth rate, what did you what would you grow revenue out over the past twelve months? [15:18] >> I can't share that. Because the Yeah. Like I mentioned, right? There are certain factors which we cannot share, but we have been growing healthily at least 30% a year. [15:28] Okay. Got it. So you grew at least 30% over the past twelve months. [15:32] >> Yeah. [15:32] Okay. Very cool. I mean, so so if you keep growing at 30% per year, mean, feels like maybe not this year, but maybe next year you could potentially break 10,000,000, right? Or maybe the year after that, 2024, 2025? [15:43] >> Hopefully. Yeah. So we are being aggressive Today today, I think we are better placed than we have ever been to grow faster than we have ever been. So [15:51] What do you remember the year you passed a million in revenue? Was it like 2013, 2014? [15:56] >> It was, I think, 2016 or 2017. 2016, 2017. [16:01] 2017. Okay. Now we can't end this, Achash, without talking about your growth. You've signed up 20,000 customers. That's a ton. How have you signed up so many customers? [16:11] >> So WordPress is a huge ecosystem. The websites, like every business has a website. [16:16] >> Right? And there are millions and millions of websites. So the problem we are solving is essential to every business. [16:23] Well, let's be really specific. Right? You how many signups per month do you get from the WordPress marketplace? [16:31] >> You know, we actually don't get that many sign ups on the WordPress marketplace. We get it mostly through word-of-mouth and organic traffic. [16:39] Got it. Okay. How do people find you organically? So one website has installed you. Do you have, like, a powered by BlogVault button or something? [16:47] >> Organically, plays a role. A lot of articles talk about us because we have been around. So when you have a SaaS product which is ten years in the making, brands get created, micro mini brand gets created. [17:00] What's your top keyword? What keyword drives you the most traffic? [17:03] >> I can't share that. [17:05] I can just look it up. [17:06] >> I can look it up. But we get, like, frankly, a large number of keywords, but the reason we don't share it is you can look it up, but it's a very competitive space. So I don't want to arm my people. [17:20] Yeah, anyone can look it up. Anyone can look it up on SEMrush or Ahrefs. Why don't you just save me the time and name one or two keywords? [17:26] >> So there are so many, like, the the [17:30] Don't give me your best one. Give me, like, your third or fourth best one. [17:34] >> No. I'm just thinking about it. Like, we we we would we would rank for all sorts of stuff, [17:43] >> random stuff like how do you configure a WP config file. So we have a long range of this thing, and you would be surprised by the number of search volume we get because of it. So those are also there are so many factors over there. Which doesn't show up in fact, if you had asked me on day one whether that keyword will rank and give me so much traffic, I would have been like, I'm crazy. We [18:06] >> ended up writing that article or or with being oblivious to the potential. Mhmm. Mhmm. [18:13] Interesting. Okay. That makes a ton of sense. So SEO now who do you have someone in house running your SEO? [18:19] >> Yes. We do. [18:20] I see. How did you find that person for people listening that wanna hire their own SEO in house person? [18:25] >> It was we we we went through the different we posted the jobs in different forums, and we got very lucky. I think this person came through one of the local forums in India. [18:36] What was that forum about? [18:37] >> Job book job forums in India. I believe it was Indeed. The I'm not sure. Like, we posted it in a bunch of places, and we got lucky. Like, finding finding good finding good talent is you have to get lucky. [18:51] Yeah. What's his name or her name? [18:54] >> So it's Bhuish is excellent, but he's no actually, he's he's left BlogVault just this month, just fifteen days ago. So [19:03] So you replace you have to replace him now? [19:05] >> Yeah. We have to replace him now. [19:07] Interesting. Okay. There's a lot of people buying companies in the space. Obviously, Saeed comes to mind. There's a lot of other people. I assume you've gotten M and A offers before, have you? [19:16] >> We've got, but we are not really looking to sell. [19:20] I totally understand that, which is great. I'm curious, though. What's the highest offer you've gotten even though you said no to it? [19:25] >> We haven't we haven't entertained anyone. So we don't while people have sent feelers, we have have been very clear because we are better positioned today. We have a better team. [19:37] Yeah. Actually, I'm not disagreeing with any of that. You're doing the founder you're answering this like a founder, which is fine, which is we're not for sale. We're better positioned, but that's not my question. My question is just what's the most anyone has even hinted of offering? [19:47] >> No. So if it's the good thing is once you let people know that you're not looking for to sell, then they know. They don't, they know that [19:55] So no one's actually made you an offer? No one said, [19:58] >> I'd Yeah. Like And we have not entertained it at all. So we have shut it out I see. Right off the bat. [20:02] What would you what would you value the business at today? [20:06] >> I don't know. We are very conservative. So maybe maybe say four four to five x revenue is what we would value value. [20:12] So what? Like, $20 or $30,000,000 bucks, something like that? [20:14] >> Some some some small [20:15] I mean, WordPress comes along and offers 30,000,000 all cash up front, don't you have to sell? I mean, it's a perfect partnership. [20:22] >> No. We don't. Like I mentioned, it's money is not affected because [20:27] It has nothing to do with money. WordPress is your perfect partner. If you're trying to help small businesses manage their websites, why wouldn't you sell to someone like WordPress? [20:34] >> Their biggest competitor. So I would be like, I'm here to kick their ass. So [20:40] You wanna beat WordPress even though you play in their ecosystem? [20:43] >> So Automattic is the company, yes. And we would love to yeah. We think we have a better product than them and which is what's exciting about the whole thing. [20:51] Sorry. I thought WordPress owners weren't installing your app on top of the WordPress instance. [20:57] >> So WordPress is an open source software. Right? And the the the there's a company, Automattic, who's [21:06] I know Automattic. We've we've had Matt we've had Matt Mullenweg on the show before. Exactly. [21:09] >> And he's talking. Right. So yeah. Yeah. Right. So Matt Mullenweg Matt Mullenweg's company create [21:17] >> Matt Mullenweg created WordPress WordPress, but Matt Mullenweg's company also plays makes software for WordPress. [21:26] >> Okay? So that like, frankly, the disjointed thing, and there's a bit of confusion there. But what we what we do is we play in the open source. We so our customers use open source version of WordPress. [21:37] Oh, understood. Understood. [21:39] >> And not what Automattic sells. [21:41] Got it. Got it. Well, hey, listen. We're out of time. Last quick questions here. What are you spending to get a new $100 a year customer CAC wise? [21:48] >> So most of it is organic. So it it it's it's a marketing team, content team seller. [21:54] Did you spend anything last month on paid ads? [21:57] >> Last month we have experimented, but we don't it's it's just these are just experiments. [22:02] Okay. Got it. Well, let's wrap here then with the famous five. Number one, what's your last book that you read? [22:07] >> Last book I read would have been it's the book by the money. Let's call it Atomic Habits. [22:17] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [22:20] >> It's been a long time. So Jason Cohen, who founded WP Engine, so I closely follow what he does. [22:28] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building BlogVault? [22:32] >> I think Google Suite is something which we swear by. [22:37] Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? [22:39] >> Eight hours. [22:40] That's good, Akshat. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? [22:45] >> Married with with a daughter. [22:47] Okay. One kiddo. And how old are you? [22:49] >> I'm 39. [22:50] >> 39. [22:51] Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [22:55] >> That I'm extremely fortunate. Mhmm. [22:58] Guys, there you have it. BlogVault launched as a side project back in 2010. They now do millions of revenue, 35 employees, bootstrapped and profitable. They paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars across their profit sharing plan last year. Their employees, again, mainly based in India, 16 in Bengaluru. Akshat now scaling nicely with three key products, all helping folks built on top of WordPress secure their sites, BlogVault, MalCare, WP remote. We'll see what happens next. Akshat, thanks [23:23] for taking us to the top. [23:24] >> Thank you so much for having me again. [23:28] 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 [23:53] 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 [24:16] fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna 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 [24:38] 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 [24:57] got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.