Blue Stream Analytics revenue, CEO Maureen McGarry, team size, customer count, churn, and more in 2023.

she's a top broker in Minnesota already her secret power is this offer she built for herself blue stream analytics generated over 4 million bucks in Deal value for her in 2022 of which she keeps three percent of so called 150 000 bucks there of Revenue now she has been frustrated investing over 100 000 bucks of her own money in the engineering on our third iteration but you know what now it's working it's paying for itself and the only question is who should she start selling this to she wants to sell it to other folks other brokerages but also doesn't want to lose the advantage it brings her we'll see what she does next hey folks my guest today is Maureen McGary she is the she's a realtor and broker since 1995 passionate about working with investors and developed blue stream analytics or software company it's proprietary software that pinpoints Investments and delivers analytics quickly as a market leader in residential investing she's eager to help investors succeed in reaching their goals marine radio tickets to the top sure absolutely so so how do you decide to go from you know making six percent commissions to you going you know what I want I want software margins instead let me build software that's a good question um it was pure frustration um you know trying to find investment property for my clients and sitting there with spreadsheets punching in numbers uh you know after a few hours of that you start pulling your hair out and when you have clients sitting there with hundreds of thousands of dollars saying find me something and you can't get through the properties fast enough I literally just one day so there has to be a a faster way to do this and that's where the idea was born um so I never intended to be a a software developer but that's that's what happened now is blue stream does it have customers or are you the only customer use it to support your customers right so I developed it to support my customers but then the work got out and so now we're we're working to uh spread it around to other parts of the country and get it out there to other Realtors and eventually other investors um so that they can use it too but right now just you just us yes okay all right help me understand a little bit about sort of when you made a decision to start writing the code so you you got into the sort of this space in 1995 when did you write the first line of code for blue stream so um we started the the initial code probably um let's see I have to think like prior to covet uh 2020. um no it was probably 2017 2017 2017. yes and what did you do did you code it yourself you learned how to code or you're hired no no I I learned the hard way how to get your ideas out of your head to a developer you know I had to go through that whole process of learning how to explain to a developer exactly what I wanted to do um and so we had a software that was working for us but it didn't really have a user interface um and so then I learned what a user interface was [Music] um yeah so that's so that's where we started and um who'd you hire I mean how did you find a person engineer well we we interviewed a lot of Engineers and um you know security was a big thing for us because um as it turned out obviously we couldn't find anybody else that was doing this so we wanted to make sure we had somebody we could trust and that was not as easy as we thought um so we ended up hiring somebody that was related to me and that was great because I I 100 trusted him and we worked with him for a couple years until um he had some health issues and then we um went with another recommendation that we had um that we're working with now you Source these folks directly yourself you went on LinkedIn Etc right right yeah okay yeah and what did you learn the software world so he helped and he he kind of guided me too your husband is from the software world and sort of helped you find the first Engineers yeah kind of kind of kind of what to look for what questions to ask that shinsan what um you know what I needed to to be aware of yeah that helped a lot I mean the thing with a lot of folks make mistakes here because it says you're speaking a different language so you end up spending a bunch of money on a spec that isn't what you need then you have to fire that person and the next person needs to start from scratch because they have you know they want to build on python instead of SQL or whatever right it's a whole different set I mean how did you go through these iterations and I mean I don't want to ask this question I hope it's no dollars but how much money do you feel like you wasted sort of before you figured it out we're on uh the third uh revolution of this software I I would say we probably have a hundred thousand into it that was a waste oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for evaluation this year now the secret valuation is there's many different ways to value a SAS business so the reason you're going to see three or four different evaluations inside of your founder path dashboard this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SAS company you're going to get a different valuation a VC is going to pay a different valuation private Equity Firm is different if you're going to 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 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 built off random data again you guys hear these interviews on YouTube all these datas are built from real-time valuation data points Founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raise they sold 22 percent of their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to 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 out right now and you're raising your seed round well 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 data set of SAS valuation than what you can get now inside of founder path 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 if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash 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 into the interview yeah yeah but I mean look it's a waste but also you sort of needed to do that to learn right right yeah it's it was a process that because of what we're doing and how we're doing it um it was tricky to put it together too so what percent of your time last year was spent on the traditional brokerage business versus trying to build the software company I would say um probably a third of my time was just on software and a lot of that was just making contacts finding data because expanding it nationwide means finding the right data to do that and that took a while um and then I also but I also used what does that mean you're identifying sources for the engineer to build into the tool yes yes okay um one of the one of the pieces that I use here in Minnesota which is where I am and by the way today is a snow day so I'm working from home because we got this much snow um the um we have a direct feed of the MLS coming into our system so if you've ever worked with the MLS which I don't know that you have um there's I think 500 or 600 mls's in the country and you can't just go in and sign up for that and get that data feed you have to be licensed in that area you have to jump through all kinds of Hoops it's not easy to do so um tracking that Source down and figuring out how to expand to multiple markets is not easy see yeah so that that that was spent a lot of time on what pieces do I need to put all this together so that when we roll it out into other markets we're ready to go well so how do you do that I mean don't you you either have to sort of figure a way to scrape it or have a local contact in every area who's got all the certifications to get you direct access and in that case why do they need blue stream why don't they just use the the the MLS well the the first bedrooms how many bathrooms blah blah blah do I want what our software is doing is what an investor wants they want to know what their cap rate they want a specific cap rate out of a property they want a property that's going to be a good rental they want to know what the rental rate's going to be they want to know what their net income is going to be after they pay their expenses you know they want a vacancy rate built in that's what our software does so it's it's it's a much more advanced than anything you're going to get out of any Yamaha house how would you compare yourself to some of these tools that are using uh Airbnb and VRBO data as our data source to get to cap rate around trade back and see rate you know tools like air DNA for example well air DNA is is is a really cool tool if you want to do short-term rental um you know because it's because you can go in and you can look around kind of like Zillow what's going on but what ours does is it says okay here's all the properties that are for sale in a market and let's say you want to buy a rental and this is your ma this is your budget this is how much you're putting down this is your interest rate this is the kind of return you want this is these are your goals as an investor that's what I'm putting into the to it it's going out it's looking at 10 000 properties and it's saying here are the best eight properties for you these are the ones that will produce the best return based on what you want these will meet your criteria so it's not it's not you're not going in and sorting through hundreds of properties it's doing all that for you in a matter of seconds so um for an investor to be so for a realtor for instance to be able to go into a market and find a property find properties like that for investors there's nothing like that out there yeah so so when do you think that you will be able to release this to the market and start signing up paid paid paid customers I'm hoping by this summer yeah and I guess why have you you know learning when to sort of quit is also just as valuable as learning when not to quit right so like how much time and budget have you given yourself before you say you know what I'm going to go back to making whatever you make at The Brokerage and just focus on that where am I going to quit I'm I don't know I might right now I think I'm at the age where um I just want to see if I can do it and I like it you like it everybody everybody that I show it to um I have I have a coach that I'm working with who's who's great his name's Carl Gould and Carl um you know he said all right go out and and show it to you know do tent sales calls do 10 Zoom calls whatever and I did like I don't know 10 15 20 of them every single person was like how do I sign up and I finally called mine I'm like I can't get him to sign up do you send them out but I'm not in their market yet you know so yeah but I mean look your friends are all going to say yes I mean these were people in other words my point is why not like lock them in right if they're saying yes on a zoom call why not fall with an invoice and say here pre-commit to paying right right right right we can do that we can do that but my point is everybody that sees it I have yes I have a list of people that want it absolutely my point is though is like when we do these user research calls people will say yes to your face on Zoom when you file with an invoice and ask them to sign committing to 200 bucks a month for 12 months then pedal goes to the metal they tell you the real truth have you gotten people to sign invoices I haven't got them to sign invoices no no but I have a list of people that want it when they when we're in their market right how did you decide who to get on the phone call to sort of show it to um different connections I I had different realtors that I knew and then they referred me to other people I reached out to different markets I asked different people I know in different parts I know a lot of entrepreneurs so I would ask different entrepreneurs in different markets I have clients in different states so and and what's your burn I just want to understand how much like how much pain you're feeling here bro until you get it released to the market right I mean what are you spending per month right now on engineering costs to keep building this thing um well right now we're not spending much until we get ready to to expand it to the different markets I think um to keep it going in our Market it's not it's not much it's maybe a thousand a month um but we use it within our brokerage um once we get it out to the other markets then it will depend on which markets we're in and what data we're pulling and that type of thing yeah we need houses led to increase Revenue at The Brokerage like oh absolutely how much sale can you quantify how much sales last year came from the software the software identified I had um yeah I had uh so just working part-time on sales I had almost four million from the software and closed deals yes of which you would make what three percent of or six percent of um well I I figure three percent on those yeah okay got it got it so you could say the software generated 120 000 bucks of revenue for you last year three percent of four million right right okay so maybe it's Pro maybe you've actually already recouped everything you've spent on this on the software oh absolutely I have yes yes yeah if you think about your eat your own dog food we love that I didn't think of it that way but yeah that's true well I mean that's the best way to build a software product right I mean if it's working for you then the question becomes well wait do you even want other people to have this or do you want to use it just as your secret tool to build your brokerage to be the biggest you know yeah it works it works great I mean it um you know if you get on a zoom call with a with an investor uh you know I had one that had to quickly within 30 days by a one and a half million dollars for 1031 exchange and single family homes no-brainer 10 minutes later we're signing a contract how do you decide though I mean it sounds like this is a powerful tool that's an unfair Advantage for you to build the largest Brokerage in Minnesota if that was the case you wouldn't want to sell this to anybody there's not a lot of Realtors who do investment uh honestly there's a lot of Education that needs to happen in the real estate world for this to be a great tool so there's only certain realtors that are going to invest in the time and the energy to to learn how to do this but my point is if you sell this to a bunch of people in Minnesota do you lose its Advantage do you lose the advantage um I think there's I think there's plenty of um I you know I think we would limit it to different markets you know different zip codes and areas yeah I mean we're not going to sell it to you know everybody that wants it but um but Minnesota doesn't have as much rental as a lot of other markets we don't have as many mls's here Florida they have like 15 or 20 mls's so it's a much bigger much bigger Market down there well Maureen we're roon for you we're out of time though for today let's wrap up here with the famous five number one favorite Business book um um I'm reading um profit before people right now I like that number two is there a CEO you're following or studying um no but I have a lot of friends that are CEOs other entrepreneurs so I rely on that group a lot number three what's your favorite online tool for building blue stream Analytics no I'm kind of a numbers geek I would say Excel yeah number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night it ranges from two to eight yeah okay fair enough and what's your situation married single kids 26 years married wow many kids wow that's amazing one almost 18. that's exciting and do you mind me asking how old you are I am over 50. over 50 I don't know 50 she's 50 years Young Folks Maureen last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20. um study business and software guys uh she's a top broker in Minnesota already her secret power is this offer she built for herself blue stream analytics generated over 4 million bucks in Deal value for her in 2022 of which she keeps three percent of so call it 150 000 bucks there of Revenue now she has been frustrated investing over 100 000 bucks of her own money in the engineering on our third iteration but you know what now it's working it's paying for itself and the only question is who should she start selling this to she wants to sell it to other folks other brokerages but also doesn't want to lose the advantage it brings her we'll see what she does next Maureen thanks for taking us to the top thank you one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm Central it's called Shark Tank for SAS 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 our poo CAC LTV you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every Thursday 1 p.m 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 SAS World whether it's an acquisition a big fundraise a 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 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