How Evvnt CEO Richard Green grew to $4M revenue and 3K customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is richard greene he's the founder and ceo of a company called event a platform looking to change an industry through creating an affordable service where only where one simply did not exist before he loves challenging the norm and trying to change the world one event at a time richard are you ready to take us to the top yeah all right this is a tough space like you know events come and go sometimes they don't stay churn is always an issue tell us what your company does and kind of how you're adding value to the space so an event submission you're right it expires you have a very short amount of time to make that event successful our proposition really is around making sure the event hits the most amount of consumers in that short amount of time so if you look at austin where you're based uh we're live on austin 360. we're working the product from being a submit wants to the local newspaper online to being also distributed to a syndicated network of event listing sites so you're on every listing site where there's consumers that gets you by default exceptional placement in google so you get search we're also moving content to the newspaper so if you buy online you appear in print and lastly with some of the newspapers we're working with have relationships with a company called spoken layer and we can also get those events into voice so if you're in austin you submit an event to the paper yesterday no one's going to see it but if you submit it today through our relationships with newspapers you're on the website you're featured you're distributed you're in print and you're on voice so if you're asking siri or alexa where to go tonight that information's around you we think that's a good product and what's your model is it a sas company we're a sas based platform yes okay sorry i was gonna say yeah so what's the average customer pay you per month for this well we have a we have we've tried to get into a pure play subscription model but a lot of people want to just submit an event so our model is that we allow people to submit an event a bundle of events and also they can get onto subscription plans a single event's a festival they don't want a monthly deal uh if you're running training courses you want a bundle you don't want to be on a monthly or a single so we also have subscription the subscription deal is obviously better price you get about a 50 discount on the subscription average price of an event anywhere from 25 to to promote an event up to a thousand depending on the category location so people on your subscription plans on average what are they paying per month uh 50 to 60 bucks okay and what are they getting for that uh they can submit up to four events uh per month okay so this to me is like any company that is doing four events per month typically it's gonna be of i i guess a very large company right that's a lot of events it's a lot of overhead it's a lot of planning but your price doesn't reflect that because it's 50 bucks it's like smb pricing almost right so like how do you don't you tap out eventually i mean there aren't that many companies that do four events every month is there it's the local market so when you look at the market at large 98 of the markets local yes you're thinking britney spears and live nation and you're thinking these big festival companies that's actually qualifies for two percent of the market in terms of the events that are actually happening if you think about austin there's 5 000 events roughly that we think go on every month those come running those events are venues so you think about the the comedy the live music the nightlife that's really where we're focusing our attention we're not trying to help the big guys the big guys have got big budgets and they're already using lots of different tools and they've got big brand names what i'm trying to assist with is the local event okay and if you're a local comedy club you're probably running two to three events a week so you probably need a package that's somewhere between you know 12 and 16 events a month so it has to be affordable otherwise we're just producing sas software for a niche market so how many how many customers are you working with today on just the sas product uh we have around 39 000 customers worldwide that use events platform in terms of onto on on the sas solution itself around 3 000. okay 3 000 got it and when you say the 39 000 number is that in the past 12 months someone has paid you at least a dollar to run at least one event uh well our our total customer base is over the last six years so uh we're targeting the u.s market obviously it's a big market to attack our product today has been sold predominantly in over 139 countries so it's something that's been organically available and we have customers all over the world however we are now targeting local newspapers uh and we're directing our affordable marketing offering into the local markets through companies like gate house as i mentioned uh previous call so richard just to be clear today you have 3 000 customers that are paying on your subscription your monthly plan that's correct okay so multiply by 50 that's about 150 grand per month in revenue right now on that plan is that right that's correct okay and what what percent of your total revenue comes from the sas offering uh our sas business today is about 50 uh the other 50 comes from people that you have to remember people don't just sign up i think to our to services today they come in on a freemium model uh we grow that model lastly where you get your forty thousand uh we we move them through into a page sometimes singles and bundles and then once they're comfortable with the brand and the service they then move on to more affordable monthly plans that's how i feel a good approach to bringing customers on yeah no i think that makes good sense talk to me about growth so where were you you know if you're doing 150 grand per month today on the sas platform where were you a year ago uh we were down about uh 40 to 50 000 i think one of the challenges with any company is how to to acquire customers most businesses out there if you look at ubers and any of the mobile apps they're spending 12 to 15 bucks acquiring customers you need a big war chest to go and attack that market to attack your market if you are spending that much money any technology company on the market today is challenged by customer acquisition one of the luxuries we have is that there's 65 million events being submitted onto the web every year and what we're trying to do is get into the workflow of those event submissions so by working with newspapers providing them event calendars and allowing local audiences to submit locally and access our products really has a zero cost of acquisition and that's really where we're focusing over the next 12 to 24 months strategically so it has zero direct cost of acquisition but if you do fully weighted and you account for your team's time and the phone calls and the travel and things that it does have a cat i mean so what would you say your fully weighted cac is to get a new 50 a month account uh well we put that in about 60 right now you know net margins are sitting at to two uh but we think it drops it down to sixty city to think about the cost of the build however that build in terms of our strategy to come to the us market with event calendars to access events organizers who want to promote events that technology build is now over the hump uh we released with gate house two weeks ago we went live with 472 calendars including the statesman in austin uh austin 360. we went live from zero to calendars within an hour so the technology is starting to scale based upon that initial investment okay but richard sorry i don't understand my question was to get a new 50 a month account what are you paying to acquire that customer fully weighted your answer was 92 net margin and 60 gross i don't understand how that answers the cap question oh i see in terms of cost per acquisition yeah right cost per acquisition in the business today is probably about 20 percent it's not it's not high 80 percent of what of of the of the of the price that they're coming up so at 50 pounds you're looking at about 15 15 dollars to it to acquire a customer got it so you're getting paid back in the first month i'm sorry i'm just i look at everything as a percentage of the revenue coming in but yeah it's about 15 dollars based on a on a fifty dollar uh transaction got it um you know i mean that that i mean that's extremely fast payback period though one month is i mean most sas companies they're looking at six twelve month payback period so they would spend five hundred bucks to get a new 550 a month customer yeah as i say you know there's two options you either spend if i was if i was trying to acquire customers through paid advertising on google or facebook i'm sure my cost of acquisition will be no it's not just that i'm talking fully weighted which also means your team members that are flying around to austin to close these deals we do everything we have people operate from houston but we don't fly them around we do everything over zoom we speak to clients directly over the internet we have a very lean operation how many people on the team uh we have in london we have seven and we have two here in the us at the moment okay london and the us so yeah you just have what nine people total then that's correct and are you the sole founder or you have a founding team uh no cell phone oh that's great when did you launch company what year uh april 1st 2012 2012 very good and have you been able to stay disciplined and bootstrap this or did you raise capital uh we've we're always raising small amounts of capital we're currently in an investment rate right now with some newspapers already invested well we've got a three million dollar raise currently occurring uh investments today it's been about 800 000 it's just small amounts to move the business when it was needed to be moved but i i classed that as bootstrap still it was still quite small i don't i would say 800 000 i would say like no i wouldn't class without as bootstrapped 800 grand in the company it's not bootstrap now is that mostly equity or or did you do convertible debt there as well it's just equity okay it's pure equity got it and have you looked at venture debt at all or no i have i just don't like it what do you like about it uh just it just feels high risk even higher risk than giving up a big jump in your company for three million bucks uh yeah i think but the way we've raised money is we've brought people in that want to invest in the business and support the business and drive the business uh venture debt i just i think it just feels a little bit more uncomfortable i prefer i prefer to to know where i stand in terms of ownership and investment in if the company's successful we all win if the company's not successful we all fail there's a nice for me that feels feels good venture debt i just feel like you put puts me in my my personal family at liability so why does it put your personal family liability venture debt does not require personal guarantees the ones that i've looked at have i was i was talking to a company via silicon valley bank in new york a few months ago venture debt seemed to be something that was either difficult to acquire or required guarantees oh that's really interesting um you i'm who i'm curious you were talking to i've never met any venture debt firm that requires especially one that was recommended by svb that requires a personal guarantee maybe sometimes they ask for warrants and covenants but yeah i totally understand your point i would never want to touch venture debt if i had to personally guarantee it um interesting okay good uh what about some other economics here so so churn just on your sas product what's your churn annually uh well we quote 86 retention so you're looking about 14 14 revenue turn per year yeah okay that's not horrible i mean how do you feel about that i don't like it uh predominantly we fight pretty hard fundamentally the main reason for churn is that the business stops running events exactly we do get people that have budget issues i think one of the challenges is there's always new shiny things on the market that attract uh spend i think facebook amazingly is attracting a lot of spend uh whenever we dig into the accountability we don't see the accountability but the transparency of the marketing is you know it captures people's imagination so churn is predominantly about events ending or budgets you know people not having the money and those two those are hard to fight when you when you get on a call totally totally understand very good all right let's wrap up here richard with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book um i've got lots i've got lots i've got lots um the last one you read uh i got given one recently i forget the name of it i don't know i forget the name of it number two is there a ceo you're following or studying right now uh i mainly follow ceos at a uh startup level i don't follow the big guys it's sometimes too difficult to understand yeah so name one at a small startup that you follow uh elliott perry at flex out of he's on a startup on a tech startup out of texas austin oh good number three what's your favorite online tool for building your business uh number one is zendesk i'm amazed how good it is how affordable it is at the moment number four how many hours i sleep to get every night uh i push for eight i sleep in the morning i go to bed late sleeping sleeping in the morning all right and what's your situation married single kiddos married with two children oh wow you're busy how old are you uh i'm 45. 45. last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew what i wish what sorry what do you wish your 20 year old self knew uh what i know now name something specifically in terms of so i don't understand the question sorry it's something you you've you've been alive for 45 years you have 25 years of experience after the age of 20. what is something you learn in those 25 years you wish you knew when you were 20. i just focus on staying happy don't don't focus on making money focus on uh enjoying what you do guys focus on staying happy launched event back in 2012 today working with 3 000 customers paying 50 bucks a month so 150 grand per month just on their sas product that makes up 50 of their total revenue uh that's up from 50 grand per month about a year ago so 3x year over year growth that's healthy 800 000 bucks raised to build this thing they'll spend 15 bucks fully weighted to get a new five zero fifty dollar a month uh customer 14 revenue churn per year team of nine folks based between london and the us richard thanks for taking us to the top amazing thank you