How Consumer Fusion CEO Brynn Gibbs grew to $10.1M revenue and 3K customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is bryn gibbs she's the founder and chief executive officer of consumer fusion founded in 2013 after she began helping close family friends with fake negative review removal for their businesses brent you ready to take us to the top sure thanks for having me today very frustrating it's like that person that just hates you so they're gonna get back to you by posting like this fake bad online review you help them get rid of that huh exactly so consumer fusion specialty niche in the reputation management space is identifying and helping remove inappropriate illegitimate negative reviews and photos across different directory review sites and social media platforms i love this okay so who is paying your is it companies paying you or is it individuals paying you good question so um our clientele is made up of smbs and also we're heavy in the franchising space so brands will hire us to represent their whole system as a whole i see what are people paying on average to use as tech you know it depends because people have different review volume you have some businesses who get 20 reviews a year and then you have some who get 20 a day so it depends on the review volume but on average i would say our price point is like 299 a month per location for smbs and then brands of course the pricing is different because it's representing a whole brand what's the largest customer pay you per year don't name them obviously but the biggest contract um about 120 000 a year wow okay and so how many reviews and locations are you managing there you know they actually do not have a high volume of reviews but for their industry a negative review is so impactful that they they have stats on how much money a negative review costs their um system overall and the lifespan of one negative review can impact their franchise location up to 300 000 so they they definitely pay top dollar but it is worth every penny for them and put this on a timeline for me when did you launch the business 2013. okay and how did you get those first you know 10 20 customers so i kind of fell into this on accident i was helping a close family friend who's now a retired dentist this was when yelp and google reviews kind of just became popular and he was attacked online by um a vindictive x employee so his new patient drop-off numbers were down for several months and someone finally brought this to his attention and i offered to help him clean it up and that turned into introductions to people in his local rotary group it was a plastic surgeon and attorney and who were dealing with similar situations but with like a competitor so from there it just was kind of personal referrals recommendations and it was a month-to-month continuing service so it just kind of snowballed and grew from there how much revenue sucks consulting revenue did you do in 2013 do you remember oh gosh i mean it was pretty small but i want to say maybe around like it was under 100 000 but was the tipping i was also doing it myself too yeah when did you realize oh my gosh instead of doing this as a service i should hire a developer and start building technology here well so for us mrr is everything and i was just seeing the long-term picture and realizing okay if i want to continue growing the way that we are i need to have a platform a for my back end but also for my customers to use and i always had the vision of enterprise level so like how brands can manage multiple locations at once so it was pretty quick at the starting point where i knew i needed software and i haven't had any outside investments so we're bootstrapped and it's definitely been i've needed to be patient because it's evolved over time and the software has continued to improve year after year but i would say within the first year and a half i knew that i needed to make moves quickly and how many customers today so because we are enfranchising and like one brand could have hundreds of locations i can't give you like an exact amount but we have several thousand users on the platform between smb and franchising how many i guess the right question like let's just be specific like how many unique brands are using a platform ignore a number of locations or stores but how many brands so i would say there's about 40 brands and then the rest are um smbs i see it i i see um i guess give me can you name one of the brands the name of the smb so we understand the difference yeah so college hunks hauling junk is one of our um brands in the franchising space and then an smb is anything from a local attorney dentist plastic surgeon auto repair we're in all verticals okay so how many smbs you know homes hauling junk is in your 40 brands how many smbs use it um about 3 000. oh wow okay guys so you've got like 3040 but paying customers effectively yeah can i take that three thousand number times that 300 a month price point to back into your mrr which would be like a million a month so no it because they're not all at that pricing okay so that's not an average yeah well but if that's an average that would be average across what if it's not an average across of 3 000. well so that would be average for the smbs but not necessarily in the franchising space okay uh but you just mentioned those 3 000 smbs that are paying right yes so can i take that 3 000 smbs times the 299 a month price point is that is that the right average for those smbs you know what no it's not if i'm being honest it's not what would you so so what is mri today we can go backwards from there um i i prefer not to get into those specifics if that's okay but we're profitable and bootstrapped okay uh can you give me a range if you're not comfortable sharing a specific like under a million revenue more than a million revenue it's under a million in revenue yes okay got it uh why is there such a big so so i guess are those three thousand you're quoting are those are those free users like that's a big gap between like three thousand paying 300 bucks a month versus well a lot of it is um just sometimes they don't need our services to a certain extent and their price points can change and we'll do what we can to retain the client on a monthly basis um so it's just more so like say they're part of a spam attack and we have to put a lot of effort into the account at one point but then things kind of like tame down a little bit it's just we see a lot of movement that way so but are all 3 000 like paying per month right now or some of them are not paying but they're still using your free tools um so some of them are we'll like to get our foot in the door we'll do free pilots to help earn their future business some people do temporarily go on hold i don't know the exact number right now for how many are not paying but the majority are paying okay got it so if we take three thousand like paying right and you're under a million revenue let's just assume you're a million and run rate that'd be three thousand by eighty thousand dollars a month they're paying on average something closer like 25 bucks a month that in the franchising space that is the um the right number per month per location 300 a month per location no no you said 25 per location correct so in the franchising space though you mentioned that you so you use two words you use the word brands like hong song there was 40 of those and you used the word smb like dentists and you said there are 3 000 like dentists like smbs what i'm doing is just you said you're under a million revenue i'm just taking three thousand customers divided by a million dollar rate on average twenty five dollars per month would that be about accurate i would have to look into that further for you i i don't have those numbers how many do you know how many just like paying customers you have i mean i assume that's when you track pretty darn close yeah no absolutely um it's just when you look at it from a brand level and an smb it's different [Music] okay but there's only 40 brands and there's 3 000 smbs right so the majority of revenue is coming from those 3 000 s b's if all of those absolutely got it okay cool let's get let's get more sort of the back story here so you've managed to boot drop this which is incredible tell me more about the team that you've built how many folks full time so 22 team members okay 22 and how many engineers six and so we outsource that our development team is over in belarus and they have been with us since day one they're fantastic wow how did you find them are you using a firm like cody toss to find them are you just they're individual people you found so uh the company is called oxygel uh we were connected through um a colleague several years ago and they have just continued to grow with us interesting so there's like a dev shop yeah and are you paying certainly you know most dev shops like sim form coding costs like 35 bucks an hour for development talent is that sort of what you're paying it's a little bit higher than that um lately there is just heavy need for developers so we have seen the rates increase but um it is cheaper for us to have them overseas than domestic and and you are all these 22 folks full-time you know because what i'm trying to back into are any of them working for free because if you're under a million revenue paying 22 full-time salaries would be a lot um so a lot of it is entry-level positions um but everyone here is full-time yes i see got it so 20-time full-time plus another six year outsourced engineers but they're on your full time um the engineers not are all not necessarily full-time that's just depending on the workload and the projects that we're rolling out actually got it so tell me more about like growth i mean signing up three thousand dentists is not easy how did you sign all these folks up well what's that yeah well they're not all dentists we're in all you know verticals so signing up three dozen hasn't been hard how do you do that so we will we used to attend a lot of conventions like veterinary shows plastic surgeon shows dental shows um but the biggest way the last few years has been through partnerships so our service is complementary to digital marketing agencies social media agencies and so we will work with them um and partner and represent either the brand or just um kind of like an affiliate agreement with them and that's been the quickest way for us to see this growth is through partnership got it so if there's a brand in los angeles who works with dentists as a marketing agency you'll sell to the marketing agency and the agency will sell directly through the dentists i see so these 3000 smbs you quoted you might not own the direct relationship to them you might own the relationships directly to the marketing agency that touches a hundred smvs exactly so sometimes we have the direct relationship others um we go through our partner it one just depends numbers earlier when i was asking you is a little harder to talk about it's because there's different kinds of relationships exactly sorry i should have been more clear about that up front because otherwise people are listening going this bryn doesn't know our numbers this makes total sense now it's some of them are direct relationships and a lot of times you're going through marketing agencies so help me interest that's an impressive model how do you incentivize marketing agency to sell your product do you give them kickback so it depends and it is all case by case but a lot a lot of it is they see value in our service so when we are cleaning up businesses online reputation when we're improving their star rating helping them generate more reviews they rank higher in google so they see the value there for their client so sometimes they cover our expense um on behalf of their clients other times they do mark it up it's case by case with each one but we kind of customize our approach with all of our different partners it just kind of depends on their wants and needs but are you are you like are you paying like if they sign up customers either their customers or them themselves are paying you sign on a month like some amount of revenue every month right to get those seats unlocked are they paying you or like are you paying them a kickback of like 30 like per contract like per month forever or is it something different so it depends some is like a straight percentage based off of the dollar amount some are we just give them our tiered pricing and then they mark it up accordingly um our biggest partner pretty much just doubles what our cost is awesome so but again it does differ that makes perfect sense interesting okay cool that's a great way to bootstrap a business because all those like these would be like sales reps you'd usually have to hire and put on your like profit loss full time now so it's a marketing relationship and affiliates not just that too but the account management side too because we are not necessarily having to communicate directly to the client as well yeah interesting okay so like i want you to grow fast i want to see you guys kill it like when can you break a million dollar run rate do you think that'd be 80 000 a month in revenue um i mean i think that next year is going to be very big for consumer fusion we have some recent partnerships that um were in like the final stages of rolling out so i think by like mid next year and next year interesting and and what has your growth rate been over the past 12 months so kova did hit us pretty hard um but we had 200 growth last three years okay like each year or over this oh no like that combined got it like 20 grand a month up to like a 40 grand a month over the three years yeah something like that okay interesting and what would you have to go over the next 12 months to break a million dollar run rate by the middle of next year um can you say that again sorry yeah so if you look at your revenue today how much would you have to grow that to break a million dollar like to break 80 grand a month within a year so we already do the 80 grand a month i thought you were asking a million a month well no 80 grand a month would be a million dollar run rate 80 grand times 12. so you already do more than 80 000 a month in revenue yes oh great okay well so you already passed a million dollar run right then what's your next big revenue goal well i mean like in the next three years i'd like to do 10 10 mil a year okay got it so that would be getting up to like 800 a month in revenue and can you do that with your current product line are you developing new products so yes we can um we just rolled out a new ai tool that's going to help us be more efficient in identifying the types of content that can quickly be removed so it absolutely is doable and if you're out like nor you know 80 grand a month or north of that today in revenue where were you exactly a year ago in the middle of cova do you remember we had like 25 of our accounts go on hold so covid was definitely it impacted us but we were able to retain all of our employees and we actually started working for um the 25 of our accounts who needed to go on hold for free just because we wanted to help support them through those challenging times and be sure that they knew we were there for them during those hard times to where when they were able to operate again they would quickly pick back up with us very well when you've done that you've earned their trust hopefully for a long time that'll drive up your ltv which will be great how do you think about about the business today would you raise capital or are you process of raising capital or you're staying bootstrapped i'm going to stay bootstrapped yeah that's great now if someone came to and offered you three million bucks all cash up front to sell a business today do you exit no well you said that quit what's the number it would it would have to be a lot more than that i put a lot of sweat and tears into this business but yeah i mean we'll i think we're gonna hit just under 4 million and so when you're so shy you say these numbers but i'm like trying to you want you should be so proud of these things you should i know i did that i don't like to boast i don't know i also don't like people knowing all of our business you're not bragging you're not bragging i'm pulling it out of you so so you think you'll break for you i mean you will break four million bucks in revenue this year we'll be right under that we're projecting that i mean brian that's incredible so so like during cobit like last year i guess it was a tough time but you were like under 3 million that year i guess yeah 2.9 yeah but but you retained everybody which is incredible so this is incredible your bootstrap business doing formula year in a very competitive review space like round of applause this is great thanks thank you so cool okay um what's the next product you guys are working on so it's the ai tool that i mentioned so we have years worth of data so every time we would work on disputing and getting a negative review removed we logged the directory it was from the reason why it was successfully removed and after eight years we finally had enough data compiled to where we could develop an ai tool and did heavy like machine learning so we can plug in the content of a review through our back end like when we pull in um our clients new reviews it'll automatically go through there and it will put out a rating of the percentage of the review likelihood that it's um able to get removed anything above 50 has a good chance at being removed so now this will quickly identify which reviews our team needs to target versus ones that would be more of a waste of time interesting i think it makes everything more efficient now are you operating right now at breakeven or is the company like super profitable not super profitable but we are profitable okay we have put a lot into our dev you're reinvesting a ton yeah and i think that's the reason for our long-term success is back when we were very very profitable i wasn't out spending a lot of money i was pushing it into the software development brand do you still own 100 of the business so i gave my executive team some equity just because i when we were first starting i couldn't give them the higher salaries that they deserved and i think it was a smart play because they are so vested that we're like a work family we are all so tight we've worked together for years but they have you know pride of ownership and they want consumer fusion to grow you know as much as possible and together we are just super strong so i'm very happy that they you know have the ownership of consumer fusion as well other founders in your shoes how much do you recommend they give to their executive team are they saved for their executive team so i think it depends on you know each individual person and their role and what they can contribute but i um let's see i gave up 23 percent those four players that's great and you then kept i guess what 77 something like that that's are you the sole founder yes wow this is such a rare story you never hear about soul founders bootstrap this is great congratulations and i was a female under 30. i i feel like there are not there's not much female representation in this industry so anything i can do to help that i'm all for that you on you know so funny not to get like too political like when i have females on the show like i never have females on because they're female i have them on because they're great sass founders but what's it and then they happen to also be female but it's so funny because when i get like someone like you on it's like i have to pull so hard to get you to like brag about your story with the metrics just like we just went through when the guys come on and they're like telling me numbers that are like exaggerated and way above what they should be and i gotta bring them back down to earth you're like the opposite why is that um i'm not really sure i just i'm a private person in general um and i i just don't want it to come across as being bragocious i don't know no i don't think you're at any risk of that i really enjoyed this let's wrap up here with the famous five brand number one favorite book um confidence creator number two is there a ceo you're following or studying there's not but i'm gonna put that on my to-do list no no that's okay number three what's your favorite online tool for building the business oh gosh um i'm not sure number four how many hours of sleep to eat every night five five okay and what's your situation married single kiddos married three kids oh my gosh you are busy can i ask you how old you are 35 35 last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 um that i would have a successful sas business when i was 20 i had no idea what i wanted to do with my life guys there you have it heck of a story here helping mitigate all negative online reviews consumerfusion.com they've grown nicely 2.9 million bucks last year they'll finish this year you know well about 4 million bucks she's growing and doing this all bootstrap their team of 22. she's really got everyone working the same drum troll executive team with some equity sure so they can all grow together as they continue to serve their over 3 000 smbs and brands they work with brand thank you so much for taking us to the top thank you appreciate your time one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm 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 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 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m central to 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