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Founder Interview

How Dux-Soup Reached 15,000 Paid Customers and an 80% Profit Margin on a Bootstrapped Budget (Interview with Will van der Sanden)

Interview Date
June 10, 2021
Interviewee
Will van der SandenFounder
Watch
Watch the full interview

Company Metrics at Interview Time

Paid Customers (2021)

15,000

Profit Margin (2021)

80%

Average ARPU (2021)

$25 per month

Team Size (2021)

20 people

Engineers (Full-Time) (2021)

1

Historical Snapshot

These numbers were reported by Will van der Sanden during the interview recorded in June 2021 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Dux Soup’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways

  • 01Dux-Soup was founded in 2016 and generated approximately $1,500 in its first full calendar year of revenue.
  • 02By mid-2021 the company had about 70,000 users including free ones, of whom about 15,000 were paying customers.
  • 03Average ARPU across the customer base is about $25 per month, and the Turbo edition is the fastest-growing plan.
  • 04Gross churn runs at approximately 10% per month across all users, with Turbo edition churn below 5% per month.
  • 05Dux-Soup adds approximately 4,000 new users per month, with roughly one fifth converting to paid.
  • 06The company is fully bootstrapped with no outside capital raised; the founder owns 100% of the business.
  • 07The team of 20 includes only one full-time engineer, the founder himself, with freelancers hired via Upwork for additional development.
  • 08Early growth came from pricing below tools that were expensive and not very functional, and from influencers asked to try and review the product, the biggest being John Nemo, who was paid nothing.
  • 09The business is highly profitable, with an 80% profit margin, and the founder invests surplus cash in the stock market.
  • 10The founder built the product for self-service adoption so users could get value without sales or onboarding support.

Company Metrics at Time of Interview

MetricValueSource
Year Founded2016Founder interview, June 2021
First-Year Revenue (2016)$1,500Founder interview, June 2021
Paid Customers (2021)15,000Founder interview, June 2021
Total Users, Free and Paid (2021)70,000Founder interview, June 2021
Average ARPU (2021)$25 per monthFounder interview, June 2021
New Users per Month (2021)4,000Founder interview, June 2021
Paid Conversion Rate (of new users) (2021)approximately 1 in 5Founder interview, June 2021
Gross Churn (all users) (2021)10% per monthFounder interview, June 2021
Gross Churn (Turbo edition) (2021)below 5% per monthFounder interview, June 2021
Profit Margin (2021)80%Founder interview, June 2021
Team Size (2021)20 peopleFounder interview, June 2021
Full-Time Engineers (2021)1Founder interview, June 2021
Outside Capital Raised$0Founder interview, June 2021

Growth Breakdown

Revenue

Dux-Soup launched in 2016 with approximately $1,500 in first-year revenue. The founder paid the bills by working as a contract developer, building Dux-Soup in the evenings and at weekends, and after about a year and a half to two years revenue had grown enough for him to stop contracting and focus on it full time. The business is fully bootstrapped with no outside capital.

Customers

By mid-2021 the company had 70,000 total users including 15,000 paying customers. Approximately 4,000 new users join each month, with roughly one in five converting to a paid plan. Gross churn runs at about 10% per month across all users, though the higher-tier Turbo edition sees churn below 5% per month.

Team

The team stands at 20 people covering customer support, testing, marketing, and administration. The founder is the sole full-time engineer, supplemented by freelance developers hired through Upwork for specific feature work.

Profitability

Dux-Soup operates at an 80% profit margin and has been profitable without any external funding. The founder owns 100% of the business and invests surplus cash in the stock market.

Growth Strategy

Influencer Marketing

To get people to the website, Dux-Soup talked to influencers and asked them to try and review the product. The biggest early one was John Nemo, and he was paid nothing for it. The founder said no single influencer drove the growth, though: social selling and growth hacking were the trend, and companies that consult or train businesses in social selling picked up Dux-Soup and promoted it to their own customers, which he called a big part of what grew it.

Competitive Pricing as a Market Entry Wedge

When Dux-Soup started, the founder said, a lot of the tools on the market were really expensive and not very functional, so the company used pricing as its way to win a share of the market.

Product-Led Growth and Self-Service Design

The founder built Dux-Soup so that users could download, run, and extract value from it without any sales or onboarding involvement. This self-service design allowed the product to scale its reach without heavy advertising spend.

Freelance Engineering via Upwork

Rather than hiring a full engineering team, the founder uses Upwork to bring in freelance developers for specific feature builds. He interviews developers directly, leveraging his own technical background to assess quality and avoid the delays that come from intermediaries translating requirements.

Best Quotes

“The average is about $25 a month per per user. Yeah. Yeah.”
“First year revenue, that must have been about $1,500, I think.”
“Today, what we got if you include the the free ones, 70 thousands. But if you if you're looking at paid customers, we got about 15,000 customers.”
“I also failed one product just before this. So I spent a lot of time really thinking on, well, to make sure that this was very much a self-service product so that the end user could just download it, run it and use it and actually get value without anyone having to teach them or getting involved in this process. And that really helped scale the reach really of the products without requiring heavy advertising.”
“This is all self funded. ... It's basically, as I said, I was contracting and just to pay the bills and doing this on the side. And at some point, I managed to flip the switch and make it a full time thing.”
“just just having a a good idea is not is not enough. Actually, delivering on ideas is a lot of work and is a lot more work than you might think than coming up with that idea.”

What Happened Next

This interview captures Dux-Soup at a specific moment in June 2021, when the company had 15,000 paid customers, a team of 20, and an 80% profit margin on a fully bootstrapped model. The figures here reflect what Will van der Sanden reported at that time and should be read as a historical snapshot. For current revenue, customer counts, and other live metrics, visit the Dux-Soup company profile on GetLatka.

View Dux Soup’s current profile and metrics

Full Transcript

Introduction and Product Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Will van der Sanden. He's building a company called Dux-Soup. That's dux-soup.com. It's software for online lead generation. Will, you ready to take us to the top?

Will van der Sanden

00:12>> Absolutely.

LinkedIn Focus and Platform Strategy

Nathan Latka

00:13Okay. So first off, it looks like you're playing pretty exclusively on LinkedIn. Is that correct?

Will van der Sanden

00:18>> Yeah. We we just started LinkedIn. We we started out with a whole range of platforms that we supported, but we really found that, yeah, LinkedIn was the most in demand and also the most differentiating for our company.

Launch Year

Nathan Latka

00:35When did you launch the business?

Will van der Sanden

00:37>> That was in

00:40>> 2016.

Product Packages: Pro and Turbo Editions

Nathan Latka

00:442016. Okay. Great. And tell us more today. What are customers paying you for? What's your most popular package?

Will van der Sanden

00:51>> The most popular thing or the fastest growing one is absolutely the turbo turbo edition. Turbo edition basically is the update that we did about two years ago.

01:04>> Apart from the initial package, which is the pro edition, which provides you with basic automation capabilities and exporting, export and importing. It also adds the automation, also the integration capabilities. And most recently, we also added drip campaigns, which are really popular feature with Audience.

Average ARPU Across Customer Base

Nathan Latka

01:25And when you look across your entire customer base, what's the average customer paying you per month? The Turbo plan is $41 a month, but what's the average?

Will van der Sanden

01:33>> The average is about $25 a month per per user. Yeah. Yeah.

First-Year Revenue and Early Days

Nathan Latka

01:3825. Okay. So launched in 2016. Do you remember what you guys did in first year revenue?

Will van der Sanden

01:44>> First year revenue, that must have been about $1,500, I think.

Nathan Latka

01:49Okay. That's not hey. It's better than zero. Right?

Will van der Sanden

01:54>> Alright. Absolutely. And it was a whole calendar year. So excuse me. There was a we actually started out in January and yeah. And so that's a whole full calendar year and It's it's amazing.

Nathan Latka

02:08So how did you that first year, you only did $1,600 in revenue. A lot of entrepreneurs listening right now that wanna launch a side gig or a full time company, they don't know how to cover their first year expenses that they're growing their SaaS company. How did you cover your expenses that first year?

Will van der Sanden

02:20>> Yeah. The first year, I was basically contracted as a developer

02:27>> because of all, I'm a software developer. I wrote most of the software of the code for Dux-Soup. So yeah, I just was doing this in the first in the evenings really, that's in the weekends.

02:43>> And yeah, after about a year and a half or two years, we saw revenue going up to the level that really the standard or the normal contracting could stop and I could focus full time on Dux-Soup.

Current Customer Count: Free and Paid

Nathan Latka

02:58And fast forward out today, how many customers are you serving?

Will van der Sanden

03:02>> Today, what we got if you include the the free ones, 70 thousands. But if you if you're looking at paid customers, we got about 15,000 customers.

Nathan Latka

03:11One five?

Will van der Sanden

03:12>> One five. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

03:13Okay. So 70,000 free, you converted 15,000 to paid. Right?

Will van der Sanden

03:18>> Absolutely. Yeah.

Growth Tactics and Influencer Marketing

Nathan Latka

03:19How did you get 70,000 free users? What what growth tactics have you used over the past four years?

Will van der Sanden

03:24>> In the in the well, we as a tactic, we basically use pricing. At the moment, at the starting of the company, there were a lot of tools out there that were really expensive and not very functional. So we got in there with using pricing as a way of clawing a bit of the markets and we also

Nathan Latka

03:48Yeah but Will nobody knows about your pricing unless you get them to the website. How are you getting how did you get 70,000 people to the website and opting in?

Will van der Sanden

03:56>> Used or used or talked to influencers,

04:00>> basically asking them to to review the product and or to try the product and if they're likely to review it as well.

Nathan Latka

04:06Can you name the influencer that drove you the most new users?

Will van der Sanden

04:10>> The first the biggest one for us was was John Nemo, I would say.

Nathan Latka

04:14Can you spell that John who?

Will van der Sanden

04:16>> John Nemo. It's a yeah. Just John as you would spell John. Nemo, n e m o.

Nathan Latka

04:22L e m o.

Will van der Sanden

04:23>> No. N n for November.

Nathan Latka

04:25Oh, Nemo, n e m o.

Will van der Sanden

04:27>> Yeah. That's it.

Nathan Latka

04:28And what made him like what gave him the ability to drive so much traffic? What platform did he have a big following on?

Will van der Sanden

04:35>> Well, first year we obviously did not get to 70,000. The first year we probably got to about maybe a few, well, a thousand or 2,000. So

04:47>> it's not that we really had a single influencer really driving this forward. What we've seen really is that

04:59>> because the trend at that point was social selling and

05:06>> growth hacking that a lot of businesses were looking for tools to differentiate themselves and they were looking at influencers to see what tools were basically getting on going on the markets. And it was a lot of those companies that consult big companies or they train companies in doing social selling, they were picking up Dux-Soup and really running it and promoting it to their customer base. That is also really a big part of what really grew the

Nathan Latka

05:43Understood. So if you guys if you're listening right now, I wanna copy this strategy. You look at John Nemo on LinkedIn. Okay? He writes for Inc, LinkedIn, Social Media Examiner. He's been on Entrepreneurs on Fire. He wrote a book called LinkedIn Merchants, Content Marketing. All the placements that he writes for enables him to backlink to Will's company. Right? So if you wanna go find your own John Nemo, you can go on LinkedIn, search for writers at

06:04these similar outlets and go try and incentivize them to promote your product. Now Will, that's the big question. How did you incentivize John to promote your product over our competitors?

Will van der Sanden

06:13>> He just liked the way he worked.

Nathan Latka

06:15So you don't pay him anything?

06:17No commission, no anything?

Will van der Sanden

06:18>> Nothing at all, man. No. Zero. He liked the way that the product works. He liked the way that it was priced. And we we also got along at a personal level just yeah. For conversations online and

06:32>> yeah. So it was just a bit of a click and it was Understood.

Nathan Latka

06:36A 15,000 customers, $25 average ARPU, that would put your MRR at about $325,000 or $375,000 per month. Is that right?

Will van der Sanden

06:45>> Yeah. It sounds about right. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

06:46Do you think you can break 400,000 this year?

Will van der Sanden

06:50>> Well, that's definitely the the forecast.

Nathan Latka

06:52Yeah. What have you going at over the past twelve months? If you're at $370,000 a month today in revenue, where were you a year ago?

Will van der Sanden

06:59>> I would say probably like 2.5.

Nathan Latka

07:02Okay. So so $250,000?

Will van der Sanden

07:05>> Yeah. Now

Nathan Latka

07:06have you done all this bootstrap or have you raised capital?

Will van der Sanden

07:10>> No. This is all self funded. So there's no bootstrap, no capital. It's basically, as I said, I was contracting and just to pay the bills and doing this on the side. And at some point, I managed to flip the switch and make it a full time thing.

Nathan Latka

07:29Are you the sole founder?

Will van der Sanden

07:31>> Yeah. Go ahead.

Nathan Latka

07:32So you own a 100% of the business right now?

Will van der Sanden

07:33>> Absolutely.

Nathan Latka

07:34Most most engineers like you when they launch a business like this, they they really struggle with marketing and sales. I mean, how did you overcome that hoop without having to give up 40% to a co founder?

Will van der Sanden

07:43>> Well, I've got a background in working in other product companies and really also working with people in marketing and just generally being involved in also the product positioning. So I spent Well, I also failed one product just before this. So I spent a lot of time really thinking on, well, to make sure that this was very much a self-service product so that the

08:13>> end user could just download it, run it and use it and actually get value without anyone having to teach them or getting involved in this process. And that really helped scale the reach really of the products without requiring

08:30>> heavy advertising.

Team Size and Engineering Setup

Nathan Latka

08:32Yeah. Nice product nice product led growth there. What's your team look like today? How many people?

Will van der Sanden

08:37>> 20 people.

Nathan Latka

08:3820? How many engineers?

Will van der Sanden

08:42>> Well, I would say one.

Nathan Latka

08:45There's only one engineer building the product. Is that you?

Will van der Sanden

08:47>> Yeah. That's me. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:49Have no other engineers on the team?

Will van der Sanden

08:52>> We occasionally or yeah. Occasionally, we basically get freelance engineers to do some additional developments.

Nathan Latka

09:00Where do you hire those freelancers from?

Will van der Sanden

09:02>> Oh, we get them from Upwork.

Nathan Latka

09:04Upwork. Okay. And and what's the trick to using Upwork? A lot of people have tried Upwork for developers and they get a bunch of crap out. They don't get good code.

Will van der Sanden

09:13>> Oh, the the trick is I want to do the interviews with the with the developers. Obviously, being a developer myself, I know what I'm looking for in in in this in this sort of market and yeah, well, I tend to try and avoid going indirectly. It's really important in my view to talk directly to the developers without having someone interpret your requirements to then

09:40>> translate to somebody else to build because it just it takes too long and you end up with

09:47>> long delivery times and expensive feature sets. So yeah, just hire them directly if you're to select them yourself. Obviously You hire them directly for

Nathan Latka

09:59a very short period of time and then you let them go. You're the only full time engineer on the project.

Will van der Sanden

10:04>> Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:05What do the other 19 team members do?

Will van der Sanden

10:07>> We have a few testers. We've got quite a few customer support staff, marketing staff and well, obviously just the admin staff to do the accounts and that sort of thing. Yeah.

Churn Rate and Retention

Nathan Latka

10:23Churn is critical in a business like yours. What was gross revenue churn over the past twelve months?

Will van der Sanden

10:29>> Gross revenue churn? I'm not sure if I know what gross revenue churn is.

Nathan Latka

10:35What what is your churn?

Will van der Sanden

10:37>> Oh, just oh, the the well, the churn, we were at about 10%.

Nathan Latka

10:4310% of your users churn monthly?

Will van der Sanden

10:45>> Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:46Okay. And and are those usually high paying customers or lower paying customers, folks that are on, like, the free trial or something?

Will van der Sanden

10:51>> It tends to be the low ones. The if you look at just the the higher the the turbo edition especially,

10:59>> the churn I've I would say is is probably less than 5%.

Nathan Latka

11:045% monthly. Right?

Will van der Sanden

11:05>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:06That's still fairly high. Right? That means you're churning 60% of your user base every year. How do you get how do you get churn down?

Will van der Sanden

11:13>> We well, we get churn down by growing well, you don't get by growing customers, but there is a natural churn that you get in this market because a lot of people they change jobs, change or they just change companies. So

11:30>> there is a, yeah, just a natural churn that you will never avoid and we we reduce it by making a product that works and delivers to to the people what what they're looking for and that's our strategy.

Nathan Latka

11:44So so the the reason you're seeing 60% of your user base churn currently per year is because they tell you they're switching jobs?

Will van der Sanden

11:51>> Yeah. Yeah. Both jobs or projects. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:54I mean, if someone loves your product and they're in company one and they switch over to company b, don't they then buy the product in company b two so you just turn

Will van der Sanden

12:01>> Yeah. But but we can't link those together. So we we also I mean, we have about 4,000 new users every month. So if you basically just look at those those numbers, it's it's yeah. It's probably quite a lot of recurring or revisiting users, but we don't yeah, we don't have the link to those

Nathan Latka

12:23How many of the 4,000 new users per month convert to paid typically?

Will van der Sanden

12:30>> There would be about, I would say a fifth probably.

Nathan Latka

12:34One fifth? So call it like 800, something like that?

Will van der Sanden

12:38>> Yeah. Interesting.

Plans to Raise Capital or Stay Bootstrapped

Nathan Latka

12:40Any plans to raise capital or you wanna stay bootstrapped?

Will van der Sanden

12:44>> No. We stay we stay the way we are. There's I worked with the investors before. I think it might only be interesting in a in a larger becoming part of a larger a larger organization, which is where where a company will be acquiring Dux-Soup, but there is no and we we have no reason to to get capital in. There's no no benefit to us.

Profitability and Capital Allocation

Nathan Latka

13:07Will, you've built a great life for yourself using the SaaS business model as leverage. Right? I mean, three seventy five top line, 20 full time folks. There are only one engineer. Engineers are usually the most expensive. So I imagine you're highly profitable.

Will van der Sanden

13:21>> Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

13:22So so how how much would you say you take the bottom line every month?

Will van der Sanden

13:29>> Well, I would say 80%.

Nathan Latka

13:30Okay. So my question to you as a capital allocator, as a founder trying to build wealth, get more freedom, etcetera. When you take 80% of $375,000 monthly revenue to the bottom line every month, I'm sure you don't just let the cash sit in the bank. How do you think about it? What do you do with the cash?

Will van der Sanden

13:45>> Oh, the cash is partly it's it's basically to make sure that the family is is okay. Right? You gotta you gotta take care of the family and

Nathan Latka

13:54Well, yeah. Will, just to be clear, I mean, 80% profit is $300,000 in profits per month. I don't I mean, unless you've got 300 kids, you can't spend $300,000 a month on a family, I don't think.

Will van der Sanden

14:06>> No. No. No. No. It's alright. No. No. No. Well What I'm asking what

Nathan Latka

14:10I'm asking really is how you as a smart guy building a business thinking about capital allocation personally.

Will van der Sanden

14:16>> Oh, it's it's well, it's just invested in different in yeah. In different assets. So

Nathan Latka

14:23So you're buying physical assets, houses, real estate, things like that?

Will van der Sanden

14:27>> Yeah. In in the stock market.

Nathan Latka

14:29What are you a crypto guy?

Will van der Sanden

14:31>> No. Not so much. No.

Nathan Latka

14:33Stock market, traditional equities, and real estate and family.

Will van der Sanden

14:37>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

Acquisition Interest and Exit Thinking

Nathan Latka

14:39Very cool. This is great. Alright. Now last question here. You're at about a $4,500,000 run rate today. If someone came and offered you, you know, a seven or eight x multiple, so call it $30,000,000 all cash up front to sell the business today, would you?

Will van der Sanden

14:53>> I would definitely have to get a good thing. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

14:56And what would be like the deciding factor in the offer? What would you be looking for?

Will van der Sanden

15:03>> Would be well, obviously it would be the way that the buyer mean, cash in hand, that would be very difficult to reject because I've got plenty of other ideas that I want to work on and try out. So there is something that includes basically being able to develop new things or becoming part of a bigger team. In the past, worked with bigger teams with people who are clever and who are striving to both do something to

15:40>> make a change. So yeah, if there was somebody to work with a team like that, that will be that will be great. But yeah. It's all depends on the people really that that you're talking to.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

15:53Will, on that note, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Will van der Sanden

15:58>> I actually don't read any of them.

Nathan Latka

16:00Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Will van der Sanden

16:03>> No.

Nathan Latka

16:04Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Dux-Soup?

Will van der Sanden

16:08>> My favorite what, sorry?

Nathan Latka

16:09Online tool besides your own.

Will van der Sanden

16:13>> For for building the company, you mean?

Nathan Latka

16:15Yes.

Will van der Sanden

16:16>> I would say Bitbucket.

16:19>> Bitbucket.

Nathan Latka

16:20Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Will van der Sanden

16:24>> Oh, eight.

Nathan Latka

16:25Eight. And what's your situation? Married, single kiddos?

Will van der Sanden

16:28>> Married.

Nathan Latka

16:29How many kids?

Will van der Sanden

16:30>> Two. Two.

Nathan Latka

16:31Two kids. Okay. And how old are you?

Will van der Sanden

16:33>> I am 50. I just turned 50 recently.

Nathan Latka

16:36Happy late birthday.

Will van der Sanden

16:38>> Thanks.

Nathan Latka

16:39Alright, Will. Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Will van der Sanden

16:43>> Sorry. That was too fast for me.

Nathan Latka

16:45What's something that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Will van der Sanden

16:49>> Oh, that

16:53>> that yeah. That just just having a a good idea is not is not enough. Actually, delivering on ideas is a lot of work and is a lot more work than you might think than coming up with that idea.

Closing Summary

Nathan Latka

17:07Guys, Dux Soup, the lead management tool founded in 2016, totally bootstrapped, broke $250,000 a month one year ago, now at $375,000 per month. So about a $4,500,000 run rate, 70,000 free users. He's converted 15,000 to paid. Here's the crazy thing. One engineer on the team. Incredible. If you look at revenue per engineer, it's through the roof. I don't think anyone breaks 4,500,000. So, Will, congratulations. Thanks for taking us to the top.

Will van der Sanden

17:29>> Well, thank you for having me.

Nathan Latka

17:32One 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

17:56central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at two 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 SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition,

18:18a big 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 wanna 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

18:39up 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.

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19:04See you.