Founder Interview
How Folderly Reached 100 Customers and $1,500 ARPU in Under Nine Months, Bootstrapped (Interview with CEO Vladislav Podolyako)
- Interview Date
- July 14, 2021
- Interviewee
- Vladislav PodolyakoCEO
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Customers (2021)
100
Average MRR per Customer (2021)
$1,500
EBITDA Margin (2021)
20%
Team Size (Folderly) (2021)
20
Gross Churn Rate (2021)
10%
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Vladislav Podolyako during the interview recorded in July 2021 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Folderly’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Folderly launched in November 2020 and reached 100 customers in under nine months
- 02Average monthly charge per customer is $1,500, with a minimum subscription of $200 per month
- 03The business has been profitable from day one, with a 20% EBITDA margin
- 04Folderly is fully bootstrapped, with under $10,000 spent before the first customer
- 05Team of 20 full time on Folderly, including 7 engineers, 2 sales reps, and 3 customer success staff
- 06Organic SEO and cold outreach are the two primary growth channels, generating up to 300 meetings per month
- 07Average sales conversion rate is around 10%, down from 25% when the founder led sales personally
- 08Gross monthly churn averages 10%, spiking to 25% in summer months due to budget cuts
- 09Vladislav owns 60% of Folderly; his agency partner Michael holds a minority stake
- 10Folderly was built as a separate company from Belkins, the agency where the email deliverability problem was first discovered
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Customers (2021) | 100 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Minimum Monthly Subscription (2021) | $200 per seat | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Average MRR per Customer (2021) | $1,500 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| EBITDA Margin (2021) | 20% | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Gross Monthly Churn Rate (2021) | 10% | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Team Size (Folderly) (2021) | 20 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Engineers (2021) | 7 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Sales Reps (2021) | 2 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Customer Success Headcount (2021) | 3 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Pre-Launch Spend (before first customer) | Under $10,000 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Founder Equity in Folderly (2021) | 60% | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Monthly Inbound Leads (organic) (2021) | 100+ | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Monthly Outbound Meetings (2021) | 150 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Total Monthly Meetings (2021) | 300 | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
| Sales Conversion Rate (2021) | 10% | Founder interview, Jul 2021 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Folderly charges a minimum of $200 per month per seat, with customers scaling up as they see results. The average monthly charge per customer reached $1,500, and the business reached this level in under nine months from launch in November 2020.
Customers
Folderly serves 100 customers as of the interview. The company generates up to 300 meetings per month through a combination of outbound cold outreach and organic inbound, converting at roughly 10% on average.
Team
Folderly operates with 20 full time employees, including 7 engineers, 2 sales reps, and 3 customer success staff. The team was built independently from the Belkins agency, with its own cap table and resources.
Profitability and Funding
Folderly has been profitable from day one and remains fully bootstrapped. The business runs at a 20% EBITDA margin, and profits are reinvested into growth including additional hires and new acquisition channels such as PPC.
Growth Strategy
Cold Outbound Outreach
Folderly invested heavily in outbound from the start, running appointment setting through SDRs and generating around 150 outbound meetings per month. This channel draws directly on the team's expertise from running Belkins, an outbound sales agency.
Organic SEO and Content Marketing
The team built out a content marketing and SEO program that generates over 100 inbound leads per month. Vladislav described this as a major second source of pipeline alongside outbound.
Founder-Led Sales to Establish Playbook
Vladislav personally led early sales, achieving a 25% conversion rate. He used that experience to build a repeatable sales process before handing it off to the team, which now converts at around 10%.
Bootstrapped Reinvestment Model
Rather than raising external capital, Folderly reinvests its 20% monthly profit margin into hiring and new channels. This keeps the company lean and avoids dilution while funding continued growth.
Separation from Agency to Prove Standalone Viability
Folderly was deliberately kept separate from Belkins, including not cross-selling to Belkins clients. This forced the team to grow the product on its own merits and build a scalable acquisition engine from scratch.
Best Quotes
“On we're starting to bill our clients $200 per month as the minimum subscription. On average, we charge our clients or whatever check, it's around $1,500 per month. So they scaled up in the system when they see the results.”
“So first of all, since email marketing, our bread and butter, we heavily invested into the outbound marketing. So we have, like, SDR who handle the appointment setting, the guy who handles calls with me, and we, like, this is the first source. So open marketing and other source, we heavily starting to spend to content marketing, SEO, and organically, we're getting around so not converted, around 100 leads per month plus outbound leads.”
“Our average conversion rate around 10 plus. So at the beginning when I like, mostly involved in sales, it was, like, 25 because, like, founders can easily sell until you know what to say. And our average conversion around 10%.”
“It's it's, like, funny small sum. So it's around, like, under the $10,000.”
“So our churn, it was 10, but July and August it went up to 25 because of the summer and like cutting costs of the budgets until the September and other business months. But our average churn rate is 10, maximum 15.”
“A year ago so we actually started in November in November last year.”
What Happened Next
This interview captures Folderly at an early stage in July 2021, roughly nine months after its November 2020 launch, when it had 100 customers and was growing rapidly on a bootstrapped model. The figures here reflect what Vladislav Podolyako reported at that point in time and should not be taken as current. Visit the Folderly company profile on GetLatka for the latest available data on revenue, customers, and team size.
View Folderly’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Problem Discovery
- 0:21Origin Story: Belkins Agency and Email Deliverability Crisis
- 2:36Belkins Agency Size and Relationship to Folderly
- 3:53Folderly Team Structure and Headcount
- 4:18Equity Split and Cap Table
- 5:36Customer Count and Pricing
- 6:35Customer Acquisition: Outbound and SEO
- 7:33Sales Conversion Rates
- 8:24Bootstrapped from Under $10,000
- 9:50Profitability and Margins
- 10:30Churn Rate and Retention
- 12:39Growth Timeline: Zero to 100 Customers in Nine Months
- 13:58Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Habits
- 14:58Closing Reflections and Wrap-Up
Introduction and Problem Discovery
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Vladislav Podolyako. He's building a tool called folderly.com, an email, a platform that helps you understand your email deliverability problems and how to solve them. Vladislav, are you ready to take us to the top?
Vladislav Podolyako
00:14>> Absolutely.
Nathan Latka
00:15Okay. First off, how did you discover this problem? Were you a marketer that had email deliverability problems?
Origin Story: Belkins Agency and Email Deliverability Crisis
Vladislav Podolyako
00:21>> Yeah. So I had, like, backstory about that. We have our our sales agency called Belkins. We serve for our clients as an email marketing provider. We help them with b to b appointment setting. And, like, back, like, two years ago, we had an issue when, like, you can imagine we had we had that back there, like, 200 clients. It's around, like, 500 up to 1,000 mailboxes under our manage. We usually have our successful email campaigns where
00:53>> where we are getting around, like, huge open rate, like, percent plus, and great reply rate, like, 20 to 25% plus, and great appointment rate. And someday, it, like, went up to 5% open rate, low replay or replay rate, and no one like answer you at all, and there is no meetings. And our clients expected to to get those meetings. And it was so frustrating, so I need to to spend so I needed to spend some time to like
01:22>> solve this problem. And I'd like start to dive deep to this durability topic and find out that there is a lot of stuff we forgot to take care of. And for me starting from the that time email marketing start to be like technical marketing because you need to take care of different things like DNS settings, like set up in the right way your domain, mailboxes, tools. You need to have like keep an eye on your content
01:50>> that you need to like do not use links or spam words and you need to take care of your lead as well. So you need to like have hand tailored leads and show like top notch quality and collecting all those case studies makes me like make me the thought that we can pivot to the product because a lot of marketers on the market and salespeople like SDR SDRs head of sales etcetera, They're struggling with email deliverability
02:18>> because no one on the market shows you how to fix any spam problems. It appeared on your mailboxes. Basically yeah.
Nathan Latka
02:27So this law launched out of Belkins, your agency, where you discovered the problem. Now how big is Belkins? How much revenue did Belkins do in 2020?
Belkins Agency Size and Relationship to Folderly
Vladislav Podolyako
02:36>> So in 2020, Belkins did almost 6 mil in ARR, so in their annual revenue. We have, like, 150 people on the on the board of Belkins. There's a lot of sales marketing people, also we started there to collect the our development team which is now product team for the Folderly. And to give you an idea how those companies are related to each other, so we split it up all those those two companies, and each of our
03:05>> product we build here, split it up to a different company with different team with own resources. Because if you're bootstrapping, need to take care of all those stuff. And since we're like like to bootstrap and we hate to earn investments because we can do it by ourselves, like, lessly do more work, etcetera. So we want to split up everything and keep clean as possible and even we do not do not outreach the clients of Belkins with
03:34>> the Folderly stuff yet and we try to do it by our by our own. Because we're like starting from scratch just what's the difference? We have our expertise and maybe resources at the beginning like hiring or some sales and marketing efforts, but Just we
Folderly Team Structure and Headcount
Nathan Latka
03:53to jump in real quick, how many people are full time only on Folderly?
Vladislav Podolyako
03:58>> 20. So in total, we have 180 people. Engineers, seven.
Nathan Latka
04:04And how many are sales and marketing?
Vladislav Podolyako
04:07>> Two.
Nathan Latka
04:08How many any quota carrying reps on Folderly or no?
Vladislav Podolyako
04:13>> We have customer success team, and it's now, like, three people.
Equity Split and Cap Table
Nathan Latka
04:18Three people. Okay. So got it. There's 20 people on the Folderly specifically, 180 over at the agency. There are two separate cap tables. So how is the equity of Folderly split up? Do you own the majority?
Vladislav Podolyako
04:31>> Yeah. So I have a partner, Michael, as my partner in Belkins. So we like equal partners, but in Belkins. And what we do to in order to creating our product. So we split it up on the each and every product we will build and the person who like involved most have a majority and the other person who like just helping with advisers or some other staff have less.
Nathan Latka
04:59Folderly?
Vladislav Podolyako
05:00>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
05:01So you have the how much equity do own in Folderly?
Vladislav Podolyako
05:05>> So we did, like, 60 on 30.
Nathan Latka
05:08You own 60% of the agency?
Vladislav Podolyako
05:09>> Yep. Yep.
Nathan Latka
05:10Got it. So the agency will basically sit on the cap tables of these products that you guys spin out, and then you or Michael or whoever the leader is of the product will own 60% of the business.
Vladislav Podolyako
05:23>> Yep.
Nathan Latka
05:24I see. Interest do you like that model? Is it working?
Vladislav Podolyako
05:28>> So far. You know that a company is, like, worth nothing because no one ask you for the price.
Customer Count and Pricing
Nathan Latka
05:36Yep. How many customers are you are you serving today on Folderly?
Vladislav Podolyako
05:41>> Around 100.
Nathan Latka
05:43Okay. And what do they pay per month on average?
Vladislav Podolyako
05:47>> On we're starting to bill our clients $200 per month as the minimum subscription. On average, we charge our clients or whatever check, it's around $1,500 per month. So they scaled up in the system when they see the results.
Nathan Latka
06:05So does that mean your monthly recurring revenue on Folderly is about a $150,000?
Vladislav Podolyako
06:13>> Almost. So it'd be less. I can say that's that's, like, it'd be less. Okay?
Nathan Latka
06:22Like, 130,000?
Vladislav Podolyako
06:25>> Yeah. Somewhere.
Nathan Latka
06:28How customers? Are you just selling to agency customers from Belkins, or where are you getting new customers somewhere else?
Customer Acquisition: Outbound and SEO
Vladislav Podolyako
06:35>> So first of all, since email marketing, our bread and butter, we heavily invested into the outbound marketing. So we have, like, SDR who handle the appointment setting, the guy who handles calls with me, and we, like, this is the first source. So open marketing and other source, we heavily starting to spend to content marketing, SEO, and organically, we're getting around so not converted, around 100 leads per month plus outbound leads. So we're getting, like,
07:09>> one
07:12>> hundred one hundred fifty around that in the terms of outbound meetings. So in total, we're having per month up to 300 meetings, which is converting to our call to, like, for the client.
Nathan Latka
07:27So 300 meetings, a 150 convert into what?
Sales Conversion Rates
Vladislav Podolyako
07:33>> No. I mean, that 100 to 50 comes from the outbound marketing. So the other 100 coming from the organically from the other sources, like company marketing and yeah.
Nathan Latka
07:45From those 300 meetings, how many convert them to paid customers last month?
Vladislav Podolyako
07:51>> Our average conversion rate around 10 plus. So at the beginning when I like, mostly involved in sales, it was, like, 25 because, like, founders can easily sell until you know what to say. And our average conversion around 10%.
Nathan Latka
08:11Okay. Got it. That makes sense. Now have you bootstrapped Folderly, or did you guys raise external capital?
Vladislav Podolyako
08:17>> Yeah. Bootstrapped.
Nathan Latka
08:19How much of your agency money have you invested into Folderly?
Bootstrapped from Under $10,000
Vladislav Podolyako
08:24>> I can say that nothing because if we will come to resources. So we hire the folks in the Folderly for the development team. We started to, like, raise the ideas that we need to build the product. So we have an idea that we solve for our clients in Belkins and we need to build the product. So we started to hire people under the Belkins and we started to build the product. And, you know, we've strapped for
08:52>> the beginning and we do not like add some money on top because we started to sell the product to clients even though we probably have like that MVP version. So we started to figure those problems by our hands for some clients that they that they appeared that they have those delivery problems, and they agreed to us to do this. And we, like, we invest those money to the growth of the Folderly.
Nathan Latka
09:18But, Vladislav, before you had your first customer, you were paying engineers to build the platform. How much total did you spend before your first customer?
Vladislav Podolyako
09:29>> It's it's, like, funny small sum. So it's around, like, under the $10,000.
Nathan Latka
09:37Under 10,000. Okay. That's great. And you said there's 20 full time on that team today. Do you plan to stay bootstrapped, or are you gonna gonna go out and raise capital?
Vladislav Podolyako
09:46>> Planning to stay bootstrapped, so we'll see.
Profitability and Margins
Nathan Latka
09:50Is the business profitable today?
Vladislav Podolyako
09:53>> From day one.
Nathan Latka
09:55How much profit last month?
Vladislav Podolyako
10:02>> Around 20%.
Nathan Latka
10:04Okay. So call it $30,000 to the bottom line. What do you do with that money? Do you pay it out as dividends or do you live it
Vladislav Podolyako
10:10>> We're investing. No. No. We were investing to the growth. So we I've started to heavily, like, hire more more people to, like, handle handle the stuff or or, like, adding more position sources like PPC and others. So reinvesting and planning to, like, getting more and more ARR.
Churn Rate and Retention
Nathan Latka
10:30Is it sticky or are people churning?
Vladislav Podolyako
10:33>> You mean, like, people the employee turnover or something? Churn. So our churn, it was 10, but July and August it went up to 25 because of the summer and like cutting costs of the budgets until the September and other business months. But our average churn rate is 10, maximum 15.
Nathan Latka
11:01Okay. Got it. And that's that's monthly churn?
Vladislav Podolyako
11:04>> Yep.
Nathan Latka
11:05So that's really, really high. How why are people turning so much?
Vladislav Podolyako
11:11>> So because we're charging a lot for like average SaaS tool, we're charging $200 per mailbox, and they have other tools that they spend money with like Mailchimp or like Outreach. And other tools, they is like splitting those budget between those tools because those tools must solve those problems and they actually don't. Most of the time they say that this is the high price even though we will solve this problem, or they thought that if we will
11:42>> solve solve this problem for one they never appear again. But the thing is with email deliverability that if you are sending emails you can go to the spam straight away because you are like engaging with the people, people can be in bad mood and they like can you report this spam, etcetera. So the the the first reason would be like summer for us in terms of increasement of the churn rate. The second would be that customer
12:10>> thought that the this problem like one time one time problem that we will solve and nothing happens again and they are like returned back after the six months or even less. I had the case when when Folder our our client churn and the next day he went again to the spam and they they are open rate went like down and he told me that Vlad, can you, like, bring me again and we'll do the stuff over
Growth Timeline: Zero to 100 Customers in Nine Months
Vladislav Podolyako
12:39>> again.
Nathan Latka
12:40And so Vlad, people are coming and going. I understand that. You'll figure out churn over time, but what does growth look like today? If you're doing a $130,000 a month in revenue, where were you exactly a year ago?
Vladislav Podolyako
12:51>> A year ago so we actually started in November in November last year.
Nathan Latka
12:57Okay. So you went from nothing to a $130,000 per month in under, what, twelve months?
Vladislav Podolyako
13:05>> Eight or nine. It's already nine months.
Nathan Latka
13:08Nine months. Okay. Yeah. It's obviously a really high growth rate, so it's fun to see you growing so quickly using your agency model. What does your week look like today? Do you spend any time on the agency, or are you only folder late?
Vladislav Podolyako
13:20>> In some meetings. So some are, like, execution decisions that I need to make. But overall, I'm, like, thought about building more products and creating some sort of growth. So we'll build products under the growth or services and we'll like use our resources that we collect over the years and we will like building those frameworks for like faster building of the products and we will like bootstrap everything because we have an agency on the side. And So
13:52>> building the grow, building Folderly on the side, and, yeah, planning to grow, bootstrapping.
Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Habits
Nathan Latka
13:58Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, your favorite book.
Vladislav Podolyako
14:03>> Actually, it's predictable revenue by Aaron Ross.
Nathan Latka
14:07Number two bible of sales here.
14:10Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Vladislav Podolyako
14:15>> Actually, no one because I have I have, like, the free time for following. I rather sleep.
Nathan Latka
14:21Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your business besides your own agency?
Vladislav Podolyako
14:28>> The good one. So it's Zapier and,
14:34>> like, Confluence and Jira and all those development stuff.
Nathan Latka
14:38Number three or four. How many hours of sleep do eat every night?
Vladislav Podolyako
14:45>> It depends on the day, but it's the lowest, like four up to six.
Nathan Latka
14:52Okay. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
Vladislav Podolyako
14:56>> Married.
Nathan Latka
14:57Any kids?
Vladislav Podolyako
14:57>> No kids.
Closing Reflections and Wrap-Up
Nathan Latka
14:58No kids. Okay. How old are you?
Vladislav Podolyako
15:01>> 25.
Nathan Latka
15:0225. Last question. What's something you wish you knew five years ago when you were 20? I
Vladislav Podolyako
15:09>> wish I knew the
15:15>> the the the experience I collected over the sales and marketing was agency and that why it's so hard to build agency first. So, you know, that if you're building service, it's hard because it's everything around you and the like your partner. Michael and I talked to build Belkins with like $100 and we like came so far with a lot of people. So I think I will tell myself that it's never go it's never was easier just
15:46>> starting to go faster or something like that.
Nathan Latka
15:49Folderly was launched guys in November 2020. They've gone from nothing to a $1,500,000 run rate in nine months. How did they grow so fast? Well, Founders Vlad and Michael had an agency that did $6,000,000 in revenue last year. They built the SaaS tool as a separate company outside the agency and are now scaling very, very quickly. The tool helps you make sure your emails don't end up in spam boxes. It's an email deliverability tool. Vlad, thanks
16:12for taking us to the top.
Vladislav Podolyako
16:14>> Thank you, Nathan.
Nathan Latka
16:17One 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 one
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