2024 Revenue
$27M(Est.)
Customers
80K
Funding
$0
Avg ACV
$338
Team
50
Founded
2019
Flodesk Revenue (2024)
Flodesk is a bootstrapped email marketing and e-commerce platform built for small business owners, solopreneurs, photographers, coaches, and creative service providers. Founded in 2019 by Rebecca Shostak, Martha Bitar, and Trong Dong, the company offers a flat-rate subscription model with unlimited subscribers and unlimited sends, positioning itself as the design-forward, price-stable alternative to legacy email platforms that charge more as lists grow.
The company reached approximately $27 million in annual recurring revenue as of May 2024, up from $20 million a year prior and $10 million in 2021, a figure it hit roughly 18 to 19 months after launch on $90,000 of founder bootstrap capital and zero outside funding. With 80,000 paying customers, 50 full-time employees, and a gross monthly churn rate of approximately 2 percent, Flodesk generates roughly $540,000 of revenue per employee and is profitable.
Growth has been driven primarily by a structured affiliate program that accounts for more than 30 percent of inbound traffic, a viral email footer loop, influencer co-marketing at launch, and organic search. The company launched a second product, Checkout, approximately 18 months before the May 2024 interview, adding a sales-funnel capability that serves as an upsell to the core email product. Flodesk spends approximately $700,000 per quarter on paid advertising and targets a nine-month CAC payback period.
Last updated
Flodesk Revenue
Flodesk reported approximately $27 million in annual recurring revenue as of May 2024, up from roughly $20 million a year earlier, representing year-over-year growth of approximately 35 percent. The company crossed $10 million in ARR in 2021, roughly 18 to 19 months after its planned August 2019 launch. It crossed $1 million in ARR in 2020, approximately six months after launch. The revenue trajectory from $1 million to $10 million over the first 18 months was achieved with no outside capital.
Shostak told Latka in May 2024: "We are hovering right around 27,000,000 ARR," and confirmed the prior-year figure: "I believe we were hovering around 20."
Applying the trailing 35 percent growth rate as a ceiling and a deceleration-adjusted rate of approximately 20 percent as a floor, GetLatka estimates Flodesk's 2025 ARR in a range of roughly $32 million to $36 million. This is a GetLatka estimate based on the stated 2023-to-2024 growth rate; actual results may differ and the company has not confirmed any forward guidance.
Flodesk Valuation, Funding Rounds
Flodesk is a bootstrapped Other Design Software startup. Founded in 2019, Flodesk has grown to $27M in revenue without raising any venture capital or outside funding.
As a self-funded Other Design Software SaaS company, Flodesk has built its business with no outside investment.
| Year | Round | Amount | Valuation | % Sold | Source |
|---|
Founders
Martha Bitar
Chief Executive Officer
Flodesk was co-founded by Rebecca Shostak (Chief Brand Officer), Martha Bitar (Chief Executive Officer), and Trong Dong (Chief Technology Officer). The guest interviewed in this episode is Rebecca Shostak. She is not the CEO; Martha Bitar holds that title per the confirmed roster.
Shostak's background is in graphic and brand design. After college she worked as a merchandise designer for major music brands including Lincoln Park, Rihanna, and Sheryl Crow. She subsequently launched an online template shop selling Photoshop templates to professional photographers and wedding photographers, which she operated from approximately 2011 to 2014. In its best year, the template shop generated between $400 and $500 in annual revenue, which Shostak described as a lifestyle business. Demand declined with the rise of Canva and other SaaS design tools.
Shostak met Martha Bitar in 2017. Bitar was working in business development at HoneyBook, a CRM for small businesses, where she observed the same gap in email design quality that Shostak had identified through her template customers. Trong Dong, the technical co-founder based in Vietnam, had another company running at the time of Flodesk's founding and went full time on Flodesk approximately a year and a half after launch, by which point the platform had reached several thousand paying subscribers. Shostak was 38 years old at the time of the interview, turning 39 the following week. Net worth was not discussed in the interview.
Q&A
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What's your age? | 41 |
| Favorite online tool? | - |
| Favorite book? | - |
| Favorite CEO? | - |
| Advice for 20 year old self | - |
Customers
Flodesk had more than 80,000 paying customers as of May 2024. The company's standard monthly price is $38 per month, with a 50 percent discount offered for the first year, bringing the introductory rate to $19 per month. The flat-rate model includes unlimited subscribers and unlimited email sends regardless of list size, a deliberate departure from the usage-based pricing of larger competitors.
Shostak explained the pricing philosophy: "We wanna make the price so unbeatable and so enticing and have the most accessible possible model ever that people can't say no to Flodesk."
The affiliate program extends the introductory offer to referred customers: affiliates distribute a coupon code giving new subscribers 50 percent off, while the affiliate receives a one-time $19 payment per conversion. Shostak described the mechanic as: "Give 19. Get 19." The company conducted 100 to 200 customer interviews before writing a line of code, and closed approximately 50 paying customers before a fully self-serve website existed. Before the technical co-founder went full time, the platform had reached several thousand paying subscribers.
Flodesk serves 80K customers.
Flodesk Business Model
Flodesk operates a self-serve, flat-rate monthly subscription model with no sales team and no usage-based pricing tiers. Revenue per employee was approximately $540,000 as of May 2024, calculated on a base of 50 full-time employees and roughly $27 million in ARR. The company is profitable, though Shostak declined to specify a margin: "I'm not exactly sure, but we are very profitable."
The company targets a nine-month CAC payback period on paid customer acquisition. Monthly gross logo churn is approximately 2 percent. Paid advertising spend runs approximately $700,000 per quarter, managed in part through an external agency. Affiliate program costs were estimated by Shostak to be in the millions of dollars annually for 2023, paid as one-time $19 flat fees per new subscriber referred. Affiliate program inbound traffic accounts for more than 30 percent of total inbound. The company also employs 5 to 10 contractors per month on a variable basis.
Flodesk uses Recurly as its subscription billing and analytics platform. The Checkout product, launched approximately 18 months before the May 2024 interview (approximately late 2022), serves as an upsell to the core email subscription and adds a sales-funnel and digital-product-selling layer. Profitability details beyond the confirmation that the company is profitable were not disclosed. Burn rate and runway figures were not discussed, though Shostak noted the company maintains a deliberate cash cushion given its bootstrapped status.
Point-in-time figures shared on the GetLatka podcast, each linked to the exact moment it was said on camera.
Customers (2024)
80000
“Nathan Latka: $27,000,000 of ARR today. How many paying customers does that make? Rebecca Shostak: We have over 80,000.”
WatchFlodesk Employees & Team Size
Flodesk employed approximately 50 full-time staff as of May 2024, with an additional 5 to 10 contractors paid at least something in a given month. Of the 50 full-time employees, approximately 20 are engineers. Shostak confirmed: "Right around 50" full time, and "right around 20 engineers, give or take."
The team is distributed, with engineering talent concentrated in Vietnam. The $540,000 revenue-per-employee figure is derived from the $27 million ARR base divided by 50 full-time employees. The company has no quota-carrying sales representatives; all customer acquisition is self-serve.
Flodesk employs approximately 50 people as of 2026, up from 14 in 2021. It serves 80K customers that rely on its solutions.
| Year | Milestone | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Reached 50 employees (May 2024) | Estimated |
| 2021 | Reached 14 employees (June 2021) | |
| 2020 | Reached 14 employees (December 2020) | |
| 2020 | Reached 12 employees (June 2020) | |
| 2020 | Reached 5 employees (January 2020) | |
| 2019 | Reached 12 employees (December 2019) |
Frequently Asked Questions about Flodesk
What is Flodesk's revenue?
Flodesk generates an estimated $27M in annual revenue.
Who is the CEO of Flodesk?
The CEO of Flodesk is Martha Bitar.
How much funding does Flodesk have?
Flodesk is bootstrapped and has not raised outside funding.
How many employees does Flodesk have?
Flodesk has 50 employees.
Where is Flodesk headquarters?
Flodesk is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States.
Compare Flodesk to the industry
Flodesk operates across multiple industries. Browse revenue, funding, and growth data for Flodesk in each sector below.
Full Interview Transcripts
Genius Affiliate Strategy Helps Bootstrapper Hit $27,000,000 RevenueMay 24, 2024
[00:00] Flodesk makes email marketing easy as pie. From 2011 to 2014, she was selling Mailchimp templates doing $405,100,000 dollars per year. Ultimately, Canva and other tools came in, and so templates stopped selling as well. But she still had a great built in base that said, hey, we'd love to build, you know, this inside of Mailchimp and make the flows easier. That prompted her to start going and interviewing folks from her audience, pairing up with a team at [00:23] HoneyBook and eventually launching the three cofounders put in $90,000 total back on launch date before they launched their first paid plan at $19 per month. They eventually got going, and today, over 30% of their inbound is powered by affiliate marketing and word-of-mouth marketing. They have over 80,000 paying customers. Revenue run rate today is about 27,000,000, up from 20,000,000 just a year ago, and their $10,000,000 a year was back in 2021, which they hit just it's crazy. [00:50] Eighteen, nineteen months after launch. All here's a cherry on top with no outside funding and just 50 full time employees for $540,000 of revenue per employee. Hey, folks. If we haven't met yet, my name is Nathan Latkov. I launched and sold my first software company back in 2015 and went on to write a book about it, which you guys made a Wall Street Journal bestseller purchasing over 30,000 copies. Thank you so much for that. After the [01:16] book, I launched this show and one went on to create founderpath.com. I raised a large fund to do non dilutive deals with b to b software founders. So far, we've invested in over 400 software founders totaling a $150,000,000. Here in 2024, we're doing three to four new deals per week. So if you're looking for capital and don't wanna give up equity, go sign up at founderpath.com for free to get your offer. Alright. Let's jump into the [01:44] interview. Hey, folks. My guest today is Rebecca Shostak. She is the chief brand officer and founder at Flodesk, launched the company over six years ago after being very active in sort of the graphic design template space from 2011 to 2018. We're gonna learn her full story today. Rebecca, are you ready to take us to the top? [02:00] >> I'm so ready. Let's do it. [02:02] I am stoked you're here. I met you via Greg Head at SaaS Doc a week ago, and, you know, I rarely get surprised, but he goes, you've gotta meet the Rebecca. I'm like, well, why do have to meet her? And he goes, well, she's bootstrapped, and she's doing a crap ton of revenue. So I don't wanna bury the lead. What are you at today in terms of revenue? [02:18] >> We are hovering right around 27,000,000 ARR. [02:22] This is incredible. Okay. And and just so people get a growth rate, before we dive into your product, your background, design, templates, etcetera, where were you exactly one year ago? [02:32] >> I oh my goodness. I feel like I'm being put on the spot. I believe we were at around we're hovering around 20. [02:41] Okay. So sort of 20 now up to about 26, 27. Yes. That's great growth. Okay. Guys, keep listening. We'll hear how she drove that growth growth without raising VC even while her competitors raise a bunch of VC. But Rebecca first, how did you get into the space six and a half years ago? [02:56] >> Oh my goodness. Well, I mean, we can go way back. So I think my first job out of college, actually, it goes back to that. I was hired at this company to be the designer for the merchandise for a lot of top brands. So I was designing for Lincoln Park and Rihanna and Sheryl Crow. And this was my first job out of college. So that was pretty cool. And I I would I was living in LA [03:17] >> and I would go to Hot Topic and I would see my designs all over the t shirts behind the clerks. I'd be like, oh, I I wanna buy a few of those. And they're like, well, why do you wanna buy those? Like, those are a lot really different bands. And was like, oh, I designed them. And they were like, we don't believe you. Like, not really. [03:32] I did. [03:33] >> And from from there, I I had fell in love with being able to design for a lot of different brands and especially marketing design and brand design and doing, like, a lot of different styles that would excite different people in different verticals. And from there, I sort of I fell in love with this idea of creating for lots of different brands. And I started another company that was a recurring revenue company, but it was just it [03:58] >> was just a little shop that I had online where I was selling templates for professional photographers. And I would get all the [04:06] Photoshop templates. [04:07] >> Photos Photoshop templates. That's right. Yeah. And I would create a lot of different types of templates, pricing and branding for these professional wedding photographers, especially. And then I started getting a lot of requests for Mailchimp templates, but I wasn't able to actually make a Mailchimp template. That wasn't really a thing. It was either, like, you had HTML and then you had to package it with images from Photoshop that you had to export, and then you had [04:30] >> the copy, like, the the the written pieces of it, and you would have to paste these emails together into Mailchimp. And I sold that as a package. But every time I sold a Mailchimp template, the next day, I'd get an all caps, super angry, you need to give me a refund email from the customer saying, like, I could not implement these designs in Mailchimp. And this this happened from about 2010 to 2014. And I was like, [04:54] >> wow. That is a big gap in the market of people needing really beautiful email marketing that represents their branding, and it's not being served by the legacy players. But I was like, that's someone else's problem. Surely, there's going to be a Squarespace of emails. [05:07] So was twenty ten to 20 you said twenty ten to 2017? [05:11] >> '14. [05:12] '14. '14. When was what was your best year revenue wise selling those templates? Are we talking, like, $50 a year or, like, $500 a year or more maybe? [05:20] >> It was was between 4 to $500 a year. [05:23] Okay. So this wasn't like a small business. I mean, this was plenty for you to live on, have a great life. [05:28] >> Yeah. I mean, it was. It was it was really nifty. I would say though that with the onset of Canva and a lot of SaaS players coming into the space, the demand for these one off Photoshop templates had decreased. So it wasn't super sustainable, but it was something that that created a really nice little lifestyle business. [05:45] Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. So what happened in 2014? Canva's coming in, your templates are selling less, you've identified this key need, you haven't built a product for it yet. What happened in 2015? [05:55] >> So between about so we the the idea of Flodesk, I would say, was conceived in 2017. So I had this template shop, and then I also started to pitch template shops to other influencers. So I was just just making a lot of creative output and templates for a lot of different brands in different spaces and to different audiences. But in 2017, that's when I met my co founder Martha. And we got together and she was working [06:22] >> in a company, a CRM called HoneyBook, which is CRM for small businesses. So she had a lot of overlap with her, with her market, seeing the photographers who a lot of them use HoneyBook. And she was seeing the exact same problem where we would see these huge influencers that were making millions of dollars a year and had the most beautiful Instagram feeds, the most gorgeous websites, and their emails were freaking ugly, like, to be completely honest. [06:48] >> And so she saw it from her side and she saw that the these amazing influencers were so savvy with every part of their business email and they were struggling. I saw it from my side and we were like, somebody's gotta do something about this. [07:01] So What what was her role at HoneyBook? [07:05] >> I believe she was working in business development. [07:08] Okay. Yeah. Because, I mean, that was I'm just going back in our we can do this live when we have 3,300 episodes. We had Oz Alon on 05/04/2021 on the show, one of the HoneyBook founders. And the [07:17] >> the data Oh, yeah. [07:18] Yeah. The data he shared, I mean, they were this wasn't just a small company. I mean, they broke seven they broke $10,000,000 of revenue in 2021, now over $30,000,000 of revenue. But it sounds like she was onto something even back then because in 2017 when you met, they'd already I mean, they'd raised a bunch of money. So she certainly understood what it was like to for a VC backed company. How did that influence how you guys [07:37] split equity on day one as cofounders and how you thought about funding your first million of revenue? [07:42] >> Yeah. Well, we actually have a third cofounder too, Trong, who is in Vietnam, and he's our technical cofounder. And so, we we split up the the equity between the three of us going forward, and then we also put aside an employee pool. So from the beginning, it was just the three of us, and then, we also had some set aside for employees, but we we always knew that we wanted to remain undiluted and keep as much [08:11] >> of our shares as possible and also make sure that anybody that we brought on offered equity to would feel like really bought into the company. And so that was a big part of not taking on VC. [08:22] Now, Rebecca, did you guys have the tough conversations early on about are we all equal? Are we not? Do we just do 30% each then have a 9% ESOP pool? I mean, how did you you know, you probably can't share specific percentages, but generally speaking, is everyone equal, or was it clear someone was putting in cash and so they got more equity or something like that? [08:41] >> I can't share specifics, but I think there were a lot of interesting conversations around the topic. And we decided to split things up based on, how much money each founder was putting in at the time because we fully bootstrapped and it was out of our pockets. And then about, like, at the the amount of effort that each was putting in at what stage. [09:02] Yep. Was everyone convinced and ready to be full time on day one or did some people keep a side gig for a little bit until Flodesk hit some traction? [09:10] >> So Martha and I were completely full in, at the beginning and obviously, she was working full time at HoneyBook and we were very diligent about making sure that, that there was no overlap in that time there. So that she was basically moonlighting at the desk and pulling it eight hour day in the evenings, after work. So she and I were definitely, like, full time a 100% from the beginning. And then our technical co founder, had his [09:37] >> other company going at the same time and went full time, within a about a year and a half of the company launching. [09:44] Okay. That's great. I know you can't give individual numbers, but can you share what you guys all in together put into the company to fund it to get it going? Was it know, we're talking like 50 k or, like, 500 k or millions. Can you share that? [09:56] >> $90,000. [09:57] Oh, great. Okay. So you guys put in $90. And then what? Tell me how you get the MVP launched and when you close your first customer. [10:04] >> Oh my goodness. So, I love telling this story because I think a lot of people are almost confused about how we had product market fit even from day one. But the truth is that we actually had a viable product before we touched a line of code. And I know that sounds nuts, but when we were first starting, Martha and I had crazy amounts of customer interviews. Like, we probably spoke to a 100 to 200 people from [10:29] >> our target audience because it was just the water we were swimming in. Right? It was the people that we were already hanging out with, and they were my customers and people that she had relationships with through HoneyBook. So she and I were [10:40] But what are what are those people? People you sold Mailchimp templates to two years prior? What were those people? What were their job titles? [10:46] >> Yeah. So it's almost like the new creative economy. Right? So a lot they call them solopreneurs, but a lot of them are photographers, service providers, coaches, educators, people at salons, spa services, masseuses, creative services, graphic design services. So it's like this sort of whole economy that was overlooked by traditional Silicon Valley of people who have small businesses. And I think it's not super attractive to a lot of SaaS companies because they wanna go after the big [11:16] >> whales of of getting these, large enterprise customers. [11:19] Churn too much. I don't wanna sell something to them. They're not gonna keep it. [11:22] >> Yeah. Exactly. And Martha and I were like, no. Like, this is almost a secret. This is a secret superpower that it's an underserved part of the economy, and it's a huge growing sector of the economy, the small business segment. And if we can nail it, then we will then we'll really been onto something. So we immersed ourselves in this customer segment. And I just remember it was pre Figma, so I had my Envision mock ups. And [11:47] >> I would go in and be tweaking it, and we would be go walking them through flows and having them go through sort of like a fake builder experience. And at the end asking, would you be willing to pay for this? And they were whipping out their credit cards saying, when can I buy this? So we had a really clear idea of our vision and what this Wait. [12:07] Did you close it? Did you if if if okay. Let's say I was one of those [12:10] >> We actually did. We [12:12] We did. What landing page let's say let's you say give me the Envision board. It feels almost real because it's an Envision. It feels like a real flow. And at the end, you say, okay, Nathan, mister hair salon guy, are you willing to pay $30 a month or whatever to pay? And I say, yes. Do you do you to make sure they're not bullshitting you and tell you what you wanna hear, do you say, okay. Here's [12:28] the link. Go swipe your card now, or what did you do? [12:32] >> Oh, well, so basically, we had one on one interviews. So either in person or on Zoom or I guess Google Meets at that point. And we would walk them through the flow. And then at the end, Martha would ask them the question, how much would you pay for this? And we would put a few numbers of pricing in front of them because we were also trying to test out pricing positioning. And at that point, they said [12:54] >> $19 a month. That was what we landed on. I think we were anchoring on something around there, like, $38 a month, because that's actually our full price cost, but we offer 50% off your first year. And our special beta deal that, has long since passed was you could get 50% off for life if you sign up for our beta. And it that just it worked so well. And so we we offered the 50% off deal, and [13:20] >> people were loving the $19 a month price point. It was kind of unheard of to have unlimited subscribers and unlimited emails, especially at that low price. And compared to, like, the major players or the larger players, like, they they charge you so much when your list gets big. So, yeah, we we had people signing up. And the service that we offered because we didn't have a software was me just designing their emails in Photoshop and then [13:46] >> plugging it into something that could be sent. So it was almost like a design service. And then the the platform development and the self serve onboarding experience came downstream from that. [13:58] Okay. So how many $19 per month plans did you sell before you said, Tron, hurry up. We gotta launch a freaking website that actually works. [14:06] >> Well, we he was he was there helping us and me also managing the engineers to help us build it. But we I think by the time Trong went completely full time, we were in the several thousand range of subscribers of of paying members. [14:22] Wow. Okay. Okay. Got it. So, I mean, a thousand paying $19, and you're making $20 a month before you have a working website. That was all from Vision flows, basically. And you're doing custom work on the backside? [14:34] >> Yes. Yes. That's right. [14:36] Incredible. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So when did you when did you email all the list and say, okay. It's live. Go to flowdesk.com, log in, and create your first thing. We've pre uploaded the designs we already did for you. So you see them in your dashboard. Click the thing, start sending. Like, when was that moment? [14:52] >> Wait. I'm so sorry. I just realized. So we didn't have the paying we didn't have that many paying customers without a website and a platform. So we had maybe fifty fifty people who had signed up with their card before we built, like, the entire self-service flow. But we I think the reason why it's a little bit hard to pinpoint exactly when that moment was is because we had a lot of in between where we had a [15:15] >> website up and people were signing up, but the software had a lot of, like, high touch interaction from Martha and me to actually give people any kind of viable experience. [15:25] Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. No. That makes a ton of sense. And that would when so when did you say that would have been? Was that in 2018, 2019 when the website was fully fully working? [15:35] >> Yeah. I would say it was so we we had our planned launch in 08/12/2019. And then a month before that, we had our explosives, sort of prelaunch launch, which I can get into in a second because I think that's the most fun part of the story. But I would say starting in early twenty nineteen, we actually had a website. [15:56] Yes. So I have it pulled up. 08/16/2018. It says, Flodesk. It's not fancy. It's just black in the upper left with a period. There's some weird sort of oval shapes background. It says beta access coming soon. And it says [16:07] >> Oh, man. [16:08] It says design beautiful campaigns made with love for small business owners, and there's no login. It just says enter your email for early access. Okay. Tell us about your prelaunch launch. [16:18] >> Oh my goodness. So, yeah, I thank you for speaking me back on the trip to memory Lane. There's been so many iterations of the website. I completely forgot about that, but I love it. And we did have people coming through that that form at that point. [16:32] >> So we were planning a big launch for August 12. Then we had planned, a co marketing campaign with a community called Rising Tide Society, which, was actually owned by HoneyBook, but it was a community that served the small business world and a lot of our target market were part of the Rising Tide Society, about 80,000 people. So that was sort of our big marketing campaign. But leading up to that, a month before, a good friend of [16:58] >> ours who was an influencer was beta testing the software, and she was like, you guys, this is absolutely incredible. I just love Flodesk. And she asked if she could send out a newsletter using Flodesk and move over from ConvertKit. So we were like, yeah. We don't know exactly what's gonna happen, and, hopefully, you know, the software will work and everything will [17:17] Who was it? Was it, like, Marie Forleo or Amy Porterfield or one of these types? [17:21] >> One of those types. So it's actually Natalie Frank who's Yeah. Who's now our head of marketing. But, she's also a very good friend of Martha and me, and she had an incredible personal brand with a lot of followers. So she had 15,000 people on her mailing list at that point. And she shot that email out, and she plugged Flodesk at the bottom with more than just our little viral footer that says made with love in Flodesk. [17:44] >> She actually put, a footer at the bottom that said, if you're loving the design of this email, check out this new service by my friend's Flodesk. And during that time, we had that website up and we were getting maybe two to three people trickling in a day just who heard about us organically or through the grapevine. We we went through Y Combinator startup school and, like, the word was just starting to get out a tiny bit [18:08] >> about us in our very close friend circles. But when she started, when she so it was about two to three a day in our Slack channel. We had a channel that was telling us how many trials are coming through. As soon as she sends the email, within thirty minutes, we're getting 50 trials or more an hour. Within twenty four hours, we were tutorials were popping up all over YouTube. Within forty eight hours, it was all over [18:29] >> Instagram and social media. And it just completely exploded. It, like, self launched. And since we have a viral loop in the footers of our emails and on our forms, I mean, a very high touch point with, with the with a lot of the emails that are going out. Like, it it was sort of like a perpetual motion machine that just kept going and going, and it exploded. So by the time we had the large marketing campaign [18:54] >> plan, a lot of people were already using us. It was it was just one of the most incredible moments of my life. [18:59] That's Natalie's background, going off our LinkedIn cofounder Rising Tide Society in June 2015, then recruited in October to HoneyBook as head of community. Right? Because she has such a great community. Right? And then she effectively used that Rising Tide Society, then promote Flodesk, which is where what really sort of made you guys take off. And then now, obviously, she's full time, but this really goes to the power of building a a a community. I mean, it's [19:19] such a moat. You can play queen maker is what we'll call it. You can play queen maker any software you want. Right? [19:25] >> I think so. And I I think that's, like, a big secret to it as well. I think we had founder market fit, which is something that not a lot of people talk about. But we had product market fit before we touched line of code, we had founder market fit, like, literally from day one since we we signed the the incorporation papers. It was like we we not only understood our audience, but we actually were one of [19:48] >> them. Like, I I I felt the pain as a small business owner with my template shop of not having an amazing design forward, super user friendly email tool to promote, my template offering. So I think understanding not just understanding, but beating one of our customers was a huge advantage. [20:06] And were you always email, or did you have a bit of a type form potentially play early on? You weren't sure if you were gonna be a survey tool or an email tool. Was it always gonna be email? [20:14] >> It was always email. Just completely clear, beautiful, simple email marketing. It's been our thing since day one. [20:21] So by August 2020, the headline says email marketing, easy as pie. And now it says put your email in and actually try it. Not sign up for beta, actually try it. So people would get in and start going. I wanna touch on a couple of things here. The first is a lot of people have problems trying to engineer what is called the viral coefficient. Right? You explained it already. It's the powered by sort of thing. Right? [20:42] This is very powerful. Now some people say we can't do this because we don't have a software tool that is like one to many. Right? They don't have a Natalie, right, where it's one to many. What would your advice be to them, and can you quantify the impact of your powered by? How many new trials do you get today from click throughs on your freemium powered by product? [21:01] >> Well, that one, we get over 30% of our total inbound traffic from the viral loop and from word-of-mouth referrals, which are sort of interlinked because our we have a really strong affiliate program, and Martha made sure that we launched with that, which is we can touch on that in a second because that's a big recommendation of mine. But, we had, a give 50% off to your audience. So the coupon code would be distributed through the people [21:27] >> that used in Love Float as through our affiliates, and you would also get $19 a month. So you basically give $19 a month to your audience because the full price is 38 and get $19. So it's a super simple messaging. Give 19. Get 19. And then, the viral footer isn't just taking people to sign up for Flodesk. It's taking people to sign up for Flodesk for the affiliate page of the person who sent the email. So [21:53] >> that it provides a strong incentive for people to keep that footer turned on, and also an incentive to keep sharing about Flota. So I would say for people who don't have a huge one to many audience, I think partnerships and affiliate programs can be huge because even if you yourself haven't built a large audience, you wanna tap into and leverage people that do. And you can do that by offering them a lot of incentives. And I [22:17] >> mean, everybody wants to make money. Right? Like, I think that's that's the case. And so by offering really strong affiliate incentives, you can tap into other people's audiences as long as they love your product. I think the first thing, though, is making sure you build something that people are even excited to talk about. [22:32] Yeah. Look. This is interesting because I just interviewed the CEO of SEMrush, Eugene, and he said one the big mistakes they made early on is SEMrush's early affiliate program was 40% in perpetuity on monthly receivables. Right? So or sorry. Monthly contracts. And that that killed their margin by nature. They could only have 60% margin because 40% was going to the affiliate. You've you've structured this very nicely where it's still a great winner for everybody, but it [22:53] doesn't impact your margins. Right? Give your audience 50% off Flodesk. Right? And then and then the affiliate is paid $19 just every time someone signs up from their recommendation, just one time $19? [23:06] >> Correct. Correct. [23:07] That's awesome. So so how much do you know this off your head? How much how much do you pay how much did you pay out to affiliates in 2023 last year? [23:15] >> Oh my goodness. I don't have that off the top of my head, but I am pretty sure it's in the millions because, so so much of our traffic comes in through word-of-mouth. [23:26] Yeah. [23:27] >> That's It's a really, really major channel for us, and it's something that we're really doubling down on and investing in because it's like, if you search for Flodesk even on Google, you'll see all of these blog posts and YouTube videos evangelizing us. And I like, we're we're really, like, blown away by the amount of love and investment we've gotten back from our community and us. And so we wanna reinvest in them as well. And I think [23:50] >> it's really important to to do that. Like, it's like our one of our biggest sources of of traffic. [23:56] Well, and these things are by rosanna.co.uk. The ultimate guide to Flodesk. Meet the email marketing platform I'm obsessed with. And then it's the full link, and then right there, smack dab, and then I'll get 50% off Flodesk. Right? There it is. Boom. Goodness. And yeah. This is great. So how many how big is the program today? How many affiliates did you pay at least a dollar to in the last thirty days? And a range [24:16] >> is fine. I I wish I am. [24:18] >> I have thousands. [24:19] Or is it, like, tens? [24:21] >> It's thousands. [24:22] And do you see power laws? You know, do your top 30 affiliates generate 80% of your affiliate revenue? [24:28] >> Yeah. It looks like a lot of the standard, graphs that you see where it starts out with a few that are at the very top and then goes down. But, we're one one thing that's sort of blowing us away and that is a little bit unusual is that we get a lot more referrals from, like, smaller high like, more frequent, smaller referrals than other companies do. So most companies, they have almost all of the referrals coming [24:55] >> in from a few big players and almost nothing from everyone else. And for us, the distribution has a much longer tail. [25:01] Your long tail is more substantial than the average. Correct. Really interesting. Okay. $27,000,000 of AR today. How many paying customers does that make? [25:11] >> We have over 80,000. [25:13] That's wild. Okay. So 80,000 paying customers. And besides the affiliate traffic and the powered by, what's your second most powerful growth channel? You grew from 20,000,000 last year to 27,000,000 today. [25:27] >> I believe that it is organic search. [25:32] Interesting. What keyword do you know you've just dominated? It drives you a lot of your traffic. [25:38] >> I [25:40] >> I think it's again, it's like a long tail. Like, I think it's a lot of little things. Like, we have we we just have so many affiliates generating content. And I I guess that goes back to the affiliate channel though. And we also have a pretty strong paid arm as well. But I think that I believe that's I'm not sure about the numbers, but it's not generating, anything like our affiliate. [26:04] Yep. Yep. Okay. So 80,000 paying customers at 19, 19 a month is, what is that? Think that's, like, 1,500,000 per month times twelve months is 18,000,000. So you have some people paying more than $19 per month. What what do you upsell? How and how do you upsell? [26:19] >> Yeah. Absolutely. So two ways. So, actually, the $19 a month, it we had a cutoff in 2021 of our out of beta campaign, which was wild, and we had a ton of people coming in there to lock in their lifetime beta. But now what we offer is 50% off for your first year, which is also a very enticing deal. I mean, it's still a super good deal and even so our full price is $38 a month. [26:43] >> So we have a lot of full price customers now. So that, increased our ARPU quite a bit. And then in addition to that, a year and a half ago, we launched a new product called Checkout, which is a super simple way to get, a sales funnel up with, like, a beautiful designs and it is seamlessly integrates with our email product. And so that is an upsell as well. [27:05] You just see, like, these loud men in this space selling. You say, I wanna beat Nathan Barry ConvertKit. And now I see Russell Brunson at ClickFunnels. I'm a take it to him too. Is that what happens here? [27:15] >> With the going against King of our Kit [27:18] or going up against King [27:19] >> of Kit? [27:20] No. I'm I'm I'm only half joking. I mean, what how did you know that this I mean, sequencing with product launches is very important. You start with email. How did you know that the best next thing you should focus on is sales funnels? [27:31] >> Our customers are requesting it. Honestly, like, everything that we build goes back to what people request. And we just released a public road map so people can upvote and downvote, but we've always had a very strong arm around places where people can submit their user requests. We also have a very vocal community on Facebook where we can get real time feedback from our users about the pains that they're experiencing and what they're asking for. So we [27:54] >> never build just for the sake of building or for the sake of making extra money or trying to have an upsell. We build because we are all about obsessing over what our customers want from us and then bringing as much value to them as possible. [28:09] Oh my gosh. Rebecca, your pricing page on this is so funny. It says I'm like, I'm gonna catch her on something. I'm gonna find how she upsells. And it says, stop getting penalized for growing your list. And it has one of those draggers. Those of you listening in your car, it has one of those draggers. Right? Like, how many subscribers do you have? And I'm expecting, like, the Flodesk price to go up as I, like, drag [28:26] the number of subscribers up to a 100,000. The left side says, Flodesk email marketing, $35 a month. The right side said is everybody else. Since I drag the dragger from five k on my list up to a 100,000, everybody else goes up to $700 per month. Rebecca and Flo does stay at $35 per month. This is like this is like goes against all conventional wisdom about driving net dollar retention and all...
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