How Core-Apps grew Core-Apps to $6.8M revenue and 1.5K customers in 2019.

hello everybody my guest today is jato Kashi's a technology entrepreneur he likes to transform ideas into working business models with multiple revenue streams today he's the CEO of core apps a technology software provider for the event industry the Krebs brand is well recognized as an innovator of software technology for the events space Jay you're ready to take it to the top yeah let's let's do it all right so first of all you guys a pure place ass company or know you're like per event based pricing we're prevent pricing it's a way that we do it yeah because each event is a little different so that kind of made sense to go that way yeah we've had a bunch of people wanting the event industry all the way up like Reggie from see event came on to the social table see you who you probably know cuz they're in your area and it's like not quite SAS because it's like one conference in July then cancel till next July and then come back to July after well it's not only that you get the situation where some are big trade shows and others are just educational conferences and don't need all the bells and whistles that the big trade shows do yeah okay so help us understand what you do that's different than other event kind of management software yeah so what we do is is we take and we control the mobile app space from that standpoint so having all of the information that would normally find in a product guy but then also interactive maps that will route you around the trade show floor we have it set up so that we can handle very complex data that you might get into for medical events with posters and abstracts and multiple presenters and and all that good stuff and then on the event management side what we do differently there is so when you go to a trade show someone has to manage the booth sales for that someone has to manage that floor space and control all of that and that's what our software does there interesting okay and then the average event pays you how much so you'd be used at the event oh it just depends I mean we could be anywhere from a couple of thousand dollars up to say you know fifty thousand dollars it just depends on all the functionality and features that they need and what's the reason so Jay just cuz we don't have time to get on every cohort would you say like the sweet spot is probably in the in in that 10 to $15,000 range okay and for 10,000 bucks what am I probably getting at that event you're getting a you're getting a mobile app that will have a interactive trade show floor that will route you around and to have pretty much most of the bells and whistles that you need the event organiser pays for this and you give it for free to consumers that are attending the trade shows so they can navigate easier that's exactly right yeah that's the model and setting up the data and giving it back to the event organizer yep exactly all the analytics exactly then there's also some sponsorship opportunities inside of there where we both make money and and things of that nature 10 when did you launch the company what year 2009 so we're going on our 10th year anniversary here in Monde grass that's great now happy bootstrap Jer did you decide to raise capital bootstrapped it this is the core EPS was my six company and I've been you know familiar with starting and getting things going and then selling them off and normally I do that in about a 5 to 7 year range but we we love this industry so much that we've kept it on and stuck it around it's great so over the past 12 months how many events did you work with Oh last year well we have a little over 800 clients and we did probably in the neighborhood of a little over 1500 mobile apps ok 1500 mobile apps that's great now I mean can I take 1500 times that price point just gave me right average of call it 10,000 but you can't so so you know from the mobile app standpoint let me give you the range so we have one that's like 30 to 50 you know three thousand two hundred fifty that's more for a smaller event that's very education focused no exhibitors just straight sessions and speakers all the way up to fifteen thousand dollars that could be your you know big-time trade show having you know something like a show case of products and not ads so what did you what do you mean again we you have a ton of different cohorts here I can't go down every one of them so last year 1500 events how much money did you make from those events last year we did like seven mill okay that's pretty good so your average really is I mean looks I'm actually gonna figure that out real quick right so 1500 events yes you you dude about 4500 ish per event that puts you at 7 million bucks do you have any major costs on that or no no the good news is is that while we're not really SAS software we are using a template so it is the same software that we're using across the board for all of them it's just how we tweak it to make it work you know what things we turn on and what things we turn off yep if you compare the you know 2017 a mental events to the 2018 events how many of them churned meaning they'd used in 2017 but not 2018 well the good news is is that we have a really high retention rate so we're about 95 percent retention rate that's pretty good on a local basis a revenue basis that's one it's on a revenue basis as well as the other because it kind of corresponds with each other but yeah we don't lose a lot of clients we have a good customer retention rate and that's because of the people who work for us really know the industry well and work well with the industry people yeah so I mean you I mean look you do have a SAS business it's just not you can't measure it monthly you have to measure on an annual basis you do you do and and and we do have a SAS business in that it is the same software that's being used over and over again it's just not always used the same way every single time like a typical SAS right and so before 28 I wanna get growth right here so 2807 what you'd hear before we're at we had double-digit growth we were at about 5.4 okay that's great okay so 5.4 up to seven that's again nice growth and again I love that you're doing this bootstrap so um where are you getting this growth from how are you signing up new customers you know we we we took we went back in 2017 towards the end of 2017 and 2018 and we went back into our customer base and you know with a very definitive narrow look at our customers and said there's a lot that they're not using that we provide and we need to make sure that they understand all of the offerings that we had so we really had a big growth spurt within our own customer base we had our normal growth that we get with signing up new customers but honestly in 2018 that growth spurt really stay within our customer base mm-hmm now that makes good sense now when you go in I mean your first five customers tell us the story of how you hustled and scratched your claws and landed those guys oh my god that this is a good story so in 2009 I had this idea of doing a mobile app I we were actually at CES and we were trying to find CES as a massive show consumer electronic show massive show and we were trying to find some particular exhibitors and I was with one of my business partners at the time we weren't business partners at that time but we were there we couldn't find him and I said you know if there was a mobile app and I had my Apple 3G with me and I said if there was a mobile app that could locate this these people that would be fantastic and through the rest of that time and we designed up what it would look like and decide to move forward with III I funded the company we got it going we brought in one of our other who became one of our other business partners into this to develop it he had done mobile apps before and we got that started the first customer I signed and I thought CES was our big was the big show that was out in it it still is a very very big show but there's one that happens every three years that's a little bit larger and just a little bit bigger called connect spoke on AG with the association of equipment manufacturers and I met the woman at a trade show and she loved what we were doing and she said I'm gonna give you guys a shot let's do it and I was doing it with smoke and mirrors baby I mean we were doing screenshots on a big display and showing it and talking about where it was gonna go what it was gonna do and she loved it and she said yep we're gonna have you do the smaller show which by the way happens to be still be very large in the industry it's still in the top one many people how many's oh that show had 60,000 attendees okay so what was and what did she pay you to do that first one that first one I think we charged her in total $15,000 for the two shows we were so happy to get the business and what timeline did you give yourself from selling the vision which didn't exist but ealier sang the idea to test it and she says okay I'm in then you're like oh have to build this thing how much time did you have to actually get it damn built so we sold it in the April...