How Easywebinar CEO Gagan Murghai grew to $3.8M revenue and 3K customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is casey zeeman he's the founder of easy webinar he's consulted such companies as harper collins estee lauder and dell on video webinar strategies and has helped build uh multi-million dollar software businesses his mission is to help a million experts spread their message sell their program and leverage their time through automation and engagement using his tools casey are you ready to take us to the top yes sir i am all right webinars are a tricky business from a technology side of things related to video and all that jazz why get into this space and and give us a quick overview on what the company does sure well we've been in the space for for a little bit um you know at first we started off as uh what's known as an automated webinar platform where we were just a sort of a webinar marketing tool that would stream video in real time with the experience of webinars but then we knew we wanted to grow into something more so we added the ability to do live streaming zoom quality style live stream video um it is a difficult space in the sense that you know there's a lot of webinar platforms out there uh what we're trying to do right now is just carve our sort of uh you know sort of draw our line in the sand carve what we are and get real clear on that because we are um a webinar marketing tool we do live we do automated but i think there is you know we're hitting we're hitting some uh friction because there's so many platforms out there that we're doing some really cool stuff coming in the new year um as we uh as we grow into a kind of a different beast if you will you know than just a webinar platform and walk me through the way you make money is it a pure sas company it's a it's pure sas company we do have we have coaching as well um as and then we do service but most of it is it's it's basically all sas okay and so what is i don't go on every kind of pricing plan or cohort but what's the average customer pay you per month average customer per month is we get the middle package we're at about a hundred bucks a month okay so pretty good and and give me the back story here you said you've been in this space a while when did you launch what year oh well okay i mean it it's a it's a it's a nasty you know like story but like uh not nasty but it's like 2000 i think 2013 we built out a webinar plug-in that was for wordpress and it was only automated webinar so that's basically how we started off we started off selling it as a one-off product not sas based at that time and uh and that's how it lived probably for the first two years two two and a half years until we we always had the knowledge we wanted to get into the sas uh you know sas element of it we wanted to uh just evolve the product so it went from being a plugin in wordpress being going into becoming completely hosted uh live stream platform all the pages all the emails everything is within our system now so um so that was it but we had to kind of move through that model um and uh and and get to that point but it was you know so we we had a we after when we were just a plug-in we we would have a launch model that's how we did it launch model almost like two launches a year and that's how we were doing it and we did great but we knew we wanted to get into sas so we actually i made the decision to stop going for affiliate support i don't know that was the goal is like you know i just want to see what we can do to build this up on our own pull back on the affiliate support so after two years and you know having seven figure years we pulled it down turned it sass to be able to reshift and then so we had a dip but then we rose beyond what we were doing you know when we had first started out so um it was it was interesting growth and so casey real quick tell us close that story out with how many customers you're at today so we're we're we're pushing almost uh 3 000 customers now okay um and you know we're we're looking to do more obviously we we have customers that have had lifetime access so we've had you know i mean well hold on hold on hold on hold on in the sas world when someone tells me lifetime those two things don't go together because it's all about working yeah yeah i mean i'm talking about yeah yeah back in the day give me the sass number though so it's not 3 000. no no that's what i'm telling you 9 000 is probably like the the number of of customers oh yeah 3 000 is the pure sound just yeah yeah yourself was what we had to come through the platform i see i see i see okay so so i mean i can take 3 000 times that average price when you give me i mean that would put you at about 300 grand per month right now in revenue is that generally accurate that's mostly accurate yeah okay and walk me through growth so a year ago what were you doing per month ah a year ago um a year ago we were uh we were a yearly based platform so only doing uh yearly we were probably at at 1500 customers last year um but the uh the customer base was basically paying a yearly of like 497 or or 577 a year so it yeah we we adjusted that um in january basically so so just because like like 1500 customers paying 550 for the year you can still obviously get to a actually deferred basis monthly right so that would put you at deferred base about 60 grand per month a year ago yeah yeah yeah i mean it was yeah we but then we also did launches uh at the end of the previous year where it was lifetime stuff i know you don't want to talk about that but yeah that was so we were we're earning more but sas was at that point we made the real strong decision to switch it over to uh monthly at the beginning of uh this last year and the 2018 yeah so that we've had so the growth we've just been trying to keep up that growth to keep up that growth yeah um but just being here so today you have about 300 000 bucks and that's true monthly recurring revenue folks paying you on monthly basis on average 100 bucks a month yeah i mean that is is including uh the people that are at the yearly from you know the previous years right so the five five hundred dollars and 577 right so that's including that revenue as well yeah 500 divided by 12 right that whatever that number is that's included in the 300 grand not the not the full 500 bucks in the 300 grand the the 300 grand is including um yeah because well so our our price point at that time if you looked at the monthly on that that would that was at you know what 40 50 yeah 40 50 bucks a month right so so yeah so it's so basically you're we've we're adding in that additional revenue it's yeah i'd say it's about you know i said roughly right so it's like we're at 3 000 customers some of those people pay the 500 uh so i mean we're at about 1500 customers this year at the new monthly price point and then of a hundred yeah yeah and then the previous is still at about 500 to 57. so so that's where the numbers which was about which was about half the price half the price if you were to take the monthly yeah if you were to take it divided by 12. yeah so you're doing more like 225 per month on a fully diluted basis yeah but then we also have we do service and stuff like that too yeah i'm just i'm just talking just sass yeah yeah sure sure yeah okay great that's that's really helpful so 220 that was difficult to get to okay 225 per month that's okay uh and grow from a growth rate perspective it sounds like you about doubled year over year it's a combination of pricing changes and a change in your revenue model yeah so i mean the revenue model was a much needed thing uh to do so yeah that was and the price change as well absolutely got it and we are still bringing in like the good news is like people are are happy to pay the new pricing like it's it was something we should have done years ago but we didn't still bootstrap today yeah still bootstrap that's great so bootstrapped and how many folks total on the team uh we have about uh we are probably 12 12 people um like remote yeah everybody's remote um most of it i'd say we have about nine full time and then probably you know like three that are you know more of like freelancers who are doing some marketing stuff or content marketing and things like that for us churn is obviously critical in a sas business and i've interviewed a lot of webinar players and churn is always an issue because it's very seasonal someone has one webinar then they cancel what is your churn today and how are you trying to drive that down so let's see i think our our churn uh last time i looked at our numbers which i haven't looked at our numbers in a while but some of the things we're doing to counter balance the the churn rate uh well give me a range first of what it would what do you think it is sure um actually i probably could pull up my numbers to say you're pulling something up i'm curious what do you use for all these numbers do you have a tool you use um well we we actually are probably going to roll in uh recurly but no right now we have like stuff in like a google doc at the moment got it right so what's your google doc safe return let me see here hold on yeah take your time i'm swigging protein shake while you look that up guys that's the trick by the way at a good podcast you've got to do protein shakes get your protein shake between every episode yeah yeah yeah yeah uh let's see here my drive i can share with you guys listening other other webinar platforms are interviewed i mean you're typically seeing monthly logo churn in the like seven eight nine ten percent range which obviously is too high to get the valuations that most sas companies get you gotta get below kind of two three percent to be a like super super healthy sas company yeah i think that um well before we were actually doing our we were measuring our term by year and so that's fine there's nothing wrong with that and i think if i recall we are looking at a 30 percent churn yeah over that's logo turner revenue churn that that is uh that's revenue churn okay um [Music] and uh and so i guess if you you you just take that and you multiply that or divide that by 12 that will kind of give you the the monthly churn rate um some of the things that we incorporated to clean up that churn um was we added a 30-day onboarding sequence every new customer gets an on-boarding call as well um and and we've had we added office hours um basically where they can come into the facebook group so some of those things some of with with some of those additional uh elements we've seen an improvement upon churn um and of course you know now that we're now that we we are moving into the the monthly we're we're seeing uh that sort of change i don't have full numbers but we are using for recovery of like let's say credit cards we're using a platform called gravy um to help us with our recovery of like failed credit cards and things like that and that's uh we're at early stages with that but it's looking like that's actually going to be doing a lot of improvement upon like just getting people with their credit cards back up and running that's good and then the last question on economics to acquire new customers what are you paying to acquire new customers on average would you say uh i'd say for acquisition of a new customer um we're probably talking about like like 50 to 75 uh for a new customer acquisition and then you know uh so we're just barely under the mark of what the monthly would be but then you know we're assuming that they're going to stick around um you know for hopefully obviously more than three to four months but you know if we're if we're looking at that the the sort of you know the average um the average is about three and a half months is what we were uh calculating when we were doing it um on the yearly even though it was difficult to kind of mention do that on the yearly then we started implementing casey hold on sorry sorry sorry all these these things are contradicting each other how so how can you have a three and a half month ltv on a year-long contract paid up front are the people asking for refunds well no i mean you can't have a refund after 30 days so uh okay so how is there a three and a half month lifetime value on a year contract right no we started doing the we we started looking at sorry we started looking at the the the monthly um and we i think what we were doing is is i'm trying to remember how we were doing it but i think we're i think basically we're looking at the monthly at the beginning of the first half of this year and looking at what the lifetime value of the customer was and so based on that we calculated about three and a half months was basically where that window was was coming into into play based off based off data this year which are only monthly plans right but there was something we were doing for last year um that that we were sort of assessing assessing this i'm not sure how we were doing it but well it's very it's very critical i mean so the number you just told me of 30 revenue churn per year that would average lifetime value in terms of months at 36 months you churn your whole user base in about three years what you just told me is very different which is they're only lasting three to four months not 36 months that's a very different lifetime value uh yeah okay so that's right that's right that's right so the yearly was that the the yearly was calculated at three years right um that's that's what uh that's what my ceo sent over and then right now we've been looking at the monthly the monthly churn is about three and a half months right yeah they're staying for about four months so churn is about 15 or 20 percent per month right right right which is really like way way too high how do you get that lower well that's where we instilled we put into effect in fact the um recall the 30-day cycle and uh and based on that you know in the we're we're going to re-look at our numbers for obviously the second half of the year but um with those added elements uh we've already started seeing like just a more a a more like people are sticking around their their um you know they're they're we we see a little more loyalty uh in in them sticking around i don't know whether to believe i'm trying to decide if i believe what you're saying or if you're just like you know what nathan i'm in i'm in freaking la i don't care about numbers like this i'm just going with the flow we're making money and i don't really actually know my numbers but i'm scared to tell you that i don't know them well i do i do know our numbers it's just i haven't looked at our numbers like in the probably the last probably the last 30 days yeah i'm just saying because like a four percent left in value you might as well not be a sas business so when you say that you're running all these tests on onboarding like you should know that like if you add on a call which is human touch which is costly that that cohort of customers on average stays double that eight months which means it's worth putting a call on it you know you like you wouldn't know which things are driving longer ltv if it was something you're really focused on driving uh up or turned down in the inverse well i mean we knew that we just wanted to give everybody a much better experience coming in we wanted to lessen the friction of them coming into a webinar platform and not knowing necessarily what they're going to be doing or how they're going to be doing it so that's why we decided we were going to give everybody an on-boarding call so that they felt a little more connectivity with us do you know though for someone that took that call how long they stay on average i bet it hopefully it's better more than four months yeah again i have not i don't know the data on that right yeah that's fine that's fine okay good any plans to raise capital um you know we've we've talked about it uh we've talked about it but it's not something that we sorry um it's not something we've put into effect i mean we've we we're open to it um we've talked to people that we're interested in acquiring um and so you know yeah i mean if there's we have we have a a pretty interesting roadmap for 2019 that we're excited about that i think is is going to kind of differentiate us uh you know from the existing webinar space we're looking at doing becoming a little more social we have another social platform that we're gonna combine into this so that we are more of a social video live video platform you know where we really focus on analytics really focus um on uh kind of distribution of the content as well as webinars and what do you think here in 2018 when we finish off the year what do you think you'll do in total revenue this year um let's see i would say hold on one second he's whipping out his phone calculator we're doing a launch in december so the goal i thought you said you were getting away from launches yeah i know but we have a lot of well i haven't we haven't done a launch in like two years so i'm doing a launch because we have a lot of amazing people yeah yeah hold on let's talk about that a second what do you think you'll do in 2018 yeah so if we that's what i'm saying if we roll in this launch my goal is that we can uh that we can pull in um the four million in this year if we can really rock out this launch well uh and leverage some of our players that are doing really well like amy porterfield i thought you said you were moving away from the affiliate model though i know which we have for a long time but i have been thinking about you know just doing a big surge of people a big surge of customer growth and i i think the affiliate model was was working when we did it but the problem was we didn't do we were we are a one-time platform we didn't have a monetary element yeah yeah got it we're gonna we're gonna do it as we're gonna do uh a yearly option uh with bonuses and just kind of just drum up even more business is the idea very good casey let's wrap up here quickly with the famous five because we're out of time number one what's your favorite business book uh my favorite business book is um god let's see man oh man i would say um well i think i may have one behind me here it's okay if you don't have one that's fine but russell uh uh russell brunson's expert secrets is a really fabulous book i mean it kind of helped with a lot of like just really determining what the uh you know expert space it helped us to find our avatar as well so number two is their ceo you're following or studying right now uh i follow the ceo with zoom yep eric eric won yeah number three what's your favorite online tool for building your business besides your own um that's a good question uh i'd say facebook ads but that's not really an online tool if you use it if you use it as a tool all right how many hours you sleep to get every night eight and what's your situation married single kiddos i'm married with three kids wow and how old are you i'm 44. 44. last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew that's a good question um that there are no boundaries um [Music] and that you can make your own way without feeling like you're in a structure in a in a sort of box i was an actor at 20 so it's like you know even actors were put in this box of what you have to be um so guys there you have it there are no boundaries don't get stuck in a box go do what you want to do launch easy webinar in 2013. now 12 people building up the platform doing about 200 grand a month in revenue that's about double from last year serving about 3 000 paying customers paying again between 50 and 100 bucks per month bootstrapped which is great 30 revenue churn per year on their annual plans churn is much much higher than their monthly plans he's trying to figure out how to bring that down um working on that this year looking for a launch later this year hoping to clear the year with about 3 million bucks in revenue maybe 4 million bucks in revenue spending up to 75 100 bucks to acquire a new customer which that obviously pays back in the first month if they're paying 50 to 100 bucks per month for the platform all right casey very good thanks for taking us to the top thanks nathan