How CrawlQ CEO Harish Kumar grew to $1.1M revenue and 350 customers in 2021.

hey folks my guest today is harish kumar he's a product design engineer who's passionate to fix poorly defined target audience profiles notoriously conversion rates in a high cost of conversions for sas founders and marketers he's now building crawl cue crawl queue all right you ready take us to the top yes yes nathan that's great to meet you and i'm really excited to be part of this podcast it's great with you too so if people want to follow along what's the url they can go to to view the company uh just crawl queue dot ai https crawl queue dot ai okay and who are who are you selling to we are selling to b2b uh companies especially the sales founders who are in the tech space and of course the agencies that are willing to migrate to sas uh so agencies who are already in the traditional space and they wanted to move to sas and we are typically dedicated to helping sas founders sas agencies and the the main goal or main usp of the product is as you said in many times i have listened to your interviews first build audience build distribution network and then build your product and this is exactly the problem we are solving uh with chromecu and my my fellow founders who are busy with building outstanding product i really wanted to help them i really wanted to help the agencies who are willing to help uh so harish just to be clear just to be clear so crawq is helping anyone create content automatically correct uh one step before that is to identify your niche audience and that's the usp of the goal queue and once you have identified your niche audience using uh ai insights and using ai then we put our machine into to create content so the content is content is later part but first part is to really identify a perfect buyer personal perfect ideal customer understood and you guys are built on top of uh are you guys built on top of gpt3 uh we use multiple platform we have our own proprietary uh ai layer what's called athena athena is a smart ai assistant which communicate between user and all kind of uh models like gpd3 or ai21 you name it we have created a layer which got it agnostic to the to the models understood and so what are customers paying on average per month to use this technology uh on average our customers pays 250 dollars per month and of course for agency packages it starts around thousand dollars per month when did you launch the business what year it was launched in 2019 uh and the whole uh 2000 half part of the 19 and 20 was pivoting and experimenting you know working together with beta customers but this year of course in march uh we launched uh in a big way from uh appsumo to different many platforms so it was how many customers are using the platform today who are monthly recurring so not appsumo customers uh apart from the uh the monthly uh sort of customers that are on our platform is around uh 350 customers 300 350 that are paying per month and they're paying on average 250 per month right yes yes but before that we also have absolute customers just so just just to finish that thought out so you're doing about 88 000 a month in revenue right now yes okay very cool nice growth congratulations thank you thank you and if you're doing that today where were you exactly a year ago do you remember well that was really difficult to tell when or year ago almost we started from zero nothing three when you launched in 20 you said you launched in 2019. so what were we doing in november of 2020 i was working with five beta customers into entire year uh pivoting with them and i did not uh scale myself to more customers because i got perfectly five different clients uh or semi or miss size client and i was fully dedicated to them rewarding optimizing so you had five in december of last year so one year ago you had five total customers at 250 a month right okay so you went from 1 250 a month in mrr to 88 000 a month over the past 12 months yes what drove most that growth uh that comes from the traction that we built around the unique usp of the product and also our launches on the different places of course appsumo was the biggest growth channel but after that how many how many did you sign up you know uh we uh sold total revenue of 650k on absolute gross rep and how much and how much of that did you get to keep uh what do you mean takes a cut how much of the 650 000 do you make do you get to keep as a company ah yes right of course you know it's the most so uh 110k uh is a net net that came to us after uh all the commissions from epsom automobiles yes you basically made 100 grand they made like 500 000 off of you i mean does that how do you feel about that well very it's not really a good feeling about it but the amount of traction that we got the amount of uh like visibility we got of course it was not possible sitting is inside the room and not opening our software hi so you sold 650 000 worth in dollars but how many people purchased the appsumo deal uh right now i have 3500 um customers who purchase appsumo daily okay got it and how many of them have you been able to convert to a paid monthly plan uh that percent is quite low at this moment it's not more than three or four percent to be very honest with you yeah well the reason i'm asking is it's rare very rarely can you convert someone that is a discount shopper on appsumo into someone willing to pay 200 bucks a month for your plan so it can be a distraction sometimes uh to launch an absolute because you have all these people you have to support how do you manage that uh it's a difficult part uh today only i put in group communication that i missed uh my eight-year-old old boys teacher reminder three times uh on a school last eight month and uh he was stressed out last night he was saying i'm daddy i'm really stressed out you have to really talk to teacher so it was very difficult and uh now i talked to you to my uh little boy who was eight year old and he was really stressed out because i missed his teacher school three times so it was very very very very difficult time last eight months supporting all these uh customers so from today i said no i'm going to uh put uh 269 per call that you are going to book with me yeah so this is something i had to take this step but it was difficult to support all the absolute questions that's good yeah good nice nice move i mean you now have 350 that are paying norap sumo uh you know 88 grand a month you're north of a million dollar run right now today have you done all this bootstrap or did you raise capital it's completely bootstrapped from my own uh on funding 350 kr i have already put from last two years i have sold my house two times uh i moved to a lower smaller house so i'm fully invested i have thick skin in this game and it's really really excitement of building something but also fully invested myself you are 100 percent on do you own 100 harish yes i own 100 of the company i love that nice work you take all the risk you get all the reward right i hope yes yes that's that's that's not the basic idea but i had this dream of helping and bridging this gap between sales marketing and product development because i have lived with this frustration for last 20 years product marketing and sales working how do you manage churn uh currently of course you can see that 3500 lifetime deal they are not going to churn right but the customers who are coming and joining free trial of course i need to provide them a lot of value and the the churn numbers are getting now visible not in that in a significant way but uh i so far as i have reached the way the way to measure turn is take ignore free trials ignore appsumo last month in october take your total paid customers how many of them stopped paying or downgraded this month to november no it's not a single customer okay we're five days in but you get my point so you have yeah what was your churn from september to october in terms of revenue uh as i said uh those who joined me paid hardly up to two or three customers dropped okay so maybe a thousand dollars of churn each each month got it but how much how much new revenue do you add last month uh the last month on the recurring revenue it was uh i have to keep all these numbers on my head but uh it was almost around uh 2500 was the revenue that we ate very cool so you add you add 2500 you turn a thousand so net you grew 1500 a new mrr last month yes very cool nice work where do you plan to get new customers moving forward what's the growth plan there are three growth tiers one is uh working with affiliate uh second one is uh also launching on the different channels for example we are going big way on the product hunt uh that we wanted to get more visibility and traction from there and the third one is we launched our own uh inbound and outbound marketing program we are using our own tool to create very very niche specific content dedicated to sas founders agencies and uh the one i talked about the growth consultant so their people business consultant basically your growth consultant so they are these are my three primary target audience and harish how many people are on the team today uh we are 10 people on the team 10 people how many engineers uh i have eight developers and eight developers uh one of course delegated product design for product owner also do the agile scrum and manage my backlog uh myself i am also the cto and main person behind it uh but how much do you pay when you add up all the salaries except your own how much do you pay for head count right now each month uh head count uh currently is uh larger so it still am and end up like a run rate of uh 7 500 so all in your monthly expenses for head counter seven seven thousand five everything everything including my aws or other type of infrastructure cost uh gpt counting together 7500 is the total run rate and i i'm all right that doesn't make any sense sorry what do you mean total run rate uh like uh the total amount uh cost of goods sold plus what i pay to the the developer you're spending your own expenses each month right now or 7 hundred bucks correct yeah so okay it's currently it's not break even you can see it right already well you're i mean if you're doing 88 000 a month in revenue and you're spending 7500 you're making 80 000 a month in profit right now uh yeah yeah yes correct the breaking one is not in terms of the so you you can see it's uh five hundred is total uh the expense like the every month the run rate right uh and the numbers uh that you just mentioned is also uh sort of not stable because of the last a few uh these numbers that you're getting from maximum so they both may if you add together sorry sorry no no i don't understand i don't understand you said you have 350 customers who are not from appsumo that are paying 250 per month is that correct yes if i take 250 a month times 350 customers that means you're doing 88 000 a month in revenue ignoring appsumo exactly yes yes yes okay and you're telling me that you're all in expenses every month your head count your payroll your aws is 7 500 per month yes 7 500 per month so why can't i take your revenue of 88 000 per month subtract your expenses of 7 500 per month to get your profit of something around 80 000 per month oh yes yes that's that will be the true number what i i was saying whatever i have invested i was also trying to take away from the profit and get the break even so what my definition of break even will be at a point where what i have invested so far and what i have earned together should make a net profit right so that was my calculation so i understand your calculation now [Music] how are you paying 10 people and only having to spend 7 500 per month to do that what do you mean by that if your all in expenses are 7 500 per month including paying 10 full-time salaries that means each person is making on average under a thousand dollars per month uh so some of them are really i work with interns or uh junior people uh my uh autocad people my six people from india so their salaries are of course uh lower so i managed a completely remote team i don't have anyone working inside this room it's all remote team and i always get people who are interested to learn nlp and all those things so i have really optimized this uh headcount expenses i have not good expensive marketer or anyone who is uh asking me 2 500 per month i get everyone which is under 600 per month which who are working with me and this has to that's how i survived otherwise it's not difficult that makes sense what are you doing with all the profits your bank account is going up by 80 000 per month every month what are you doing with all that profit well i i have to still recover a lot of uh debt or the the house i have sold and i have my own money so i have to take back some of money uh put back my savings because i have invested my life savings on it the last two years and that's what i'm doing i'm trying to get get it back where i have taken out i have taken all my investments policies uh youth call me and then every investment that i have made uh at completely zero without this so i'm taking out and making sure that i break even at some point of time where my own investment uh is taken out from this system it should be pretty quick though if you're making 80 000 per month in profit and you've put in 350 grand of your own money you should get all your money back out in the next four or five months correct yes that's my target so the march uh should uh all my investment should be out and that that's where i'm looking for an external funding or preparing my company for an external funding how much do you want to raise uh at this stage we want to raise around uh one and a half million to two million that's what our currently uh our current calculations are and if i write you a two million dollar check today how much equity would you give me that would be a very difficult question to answer around look i'm looking around the 25 to 30 percent uh dilution of the capital mm-hmm so you would sell someone you checked today you would sell 30 for 2 million which would effectively be a 2 4 6 six million dollar valuation [Music] um yeah something like that yes that feels cheap to me if you've gone from nothing to eighty eight thousand dollars a month in revenue right now or zero to a million dollar run rate very fast you should be valued at a minimum 10 million dollars that's uh this close the valuation i have in mind around the 10 million that's my valuation and the numbers of course uh is difficult to arrive at this stage but 10 million and above the valuation at this stage got it very cool let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite book uh my number one favorite book is jim edwards and he's my famous copywriter and copywriting secrets is the one that uh i recommend everyone i have implemented everything what he has said if you're looking for the book i have it here and i have it i have it as well and then these are also very good books for yeah i have implemented both jim edwards and also what you showed the words that sell everything and crawl queue with uh also have you heard about using schwartz is also one of my favorite book using course breakthrough advertising that's like the og uh let's move forward here number two is there a ceo you're following or studying uh ceo i'm following and studying well this is a difficult one um i'm following steve uh from uh uh from apple who the uh the apple ceo oh steve jobs or tim well he's dead you're talking about tim yes i i follow him from his last speeches and those got it got it number three motivation number three what's your favorite online tool for building the business my online tool for building the business is uh the the you mean the marketing tool or any kind of tool uh just a tool that you like a lot uh active campaign is one of the tool that i really like most number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night um it's difficult five hours of sleep i'm getting every night okay and what's your situation married single kids i have two kids and married married yes and how old are you harish i'm 41 41 last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 if i was in my 20 something you wish you knew when you were 20. how uh if i when i was in 20 if i could that time i wish that i i should have left my nine five job uh i would have been billionaire by this time now guys who would have left this job faster crawl q crawlqueue.ai they help you target the right audience and then write great content automatically for that audience they were doing a thousand dollars a month in revenue a year ago now doing 88 000 per month 350 customers paying 250 bucks per month on average he's done all this bootstrap he's put in 350 grand of his own money sold his house twice but now he's profiting almost 80 000 per month to get all that debt back and he owns 100 we love this story he is all in harish thanks for taking us to the top thank you thank you nathan 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 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 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