How Frrole CEO Amarpreet Kalkat grew Frrole to $492K revenue and 18 customers in 2017.

this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs to our number one our number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what the marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have I'm now its twenty thousand dollars per tough I haven't explained he has happened on global domination we just pull over a hundred thousand units for Mark and I'm your host Nathan lack any of you guys met in person has seen my unbelievable dashboards that I built you know I'm an mo analytics like crazy person I love the data and I'm up resenting the data in beautiful dashboard design team can use on their mobile devices their phones and tvs throughout the office now the way I do this without having to hire a big development team is that Nathan lock accomplished analytics if using a company called Eclipse folio and i'll tell you more later on the show how i use them nemikham forward plush analytics in this episode 6 36 coming up tomorrow morning we hear from clayton max the CTO of infusion soft i get into the weeds with clade he gives us the reason Infusionsoft did not IPO how they passed 100 million dollars in annual crowing revenue with 125 million dollars raised helping 45,000 SMB with marketing sales automation i also asked you to go public good morning everybody makin left to hear our guest this morning is operate in calcutta is the CEO and co-founder of fro land a I that's artificial intelligence start up as redefining consumer intelligence he loves building things Viet product revenue streams teams or organizations I'm afraid are you ready to take us to the top let's go right ahead room in yeah very good all right tell us what fraud does what's the business do and how do you generate revenue so full provides consumer intelligence we largely look at public social later I use that to build you know these insights knowledge about people about brands businesses markets and you know the customer side we work a lot with marketing departments research inside streams and we also now recent instead of working with product owners you know products that need to be consumer aware so plugging in consumer awareness and as you know as a service essentially in based on what we know about the people so what is ok so I'd understand you what it does so so give me an example of a customer paying you and tell me exactly how they use you so take a little for example you know ebay flip kart except to our customers so we work with a muffin or muffing analytics research team and they for them understanding the consumer is the holy grail right for marketing guy thoroughly because I make the ama p with ebay so ebay is using you and and yeah and tell me exactly how they're doing it yes they we will for example the shipping p merry way the shipping insights team works with us now they want to understand hospital experience that consumers have with ebay shipping they want to understand how they compare to their competitors they want to see how their programs you notes as well are doing they want to understand if people care more about faster delivery or cheaper delivery so they're lot of questionable the consumer that you can get unfit from social data so we help them get those answers your striping kind of OpenSocial API is like Facebook Twitter to kind of do this problem they're not exactly we we have data about no ships with both Twitter and Facebook so so we have access to you know official access to these api so it's a no screaming Parker at all but yeah we get the data or algorithms you know try to understand that you know make deductions and that's what our customers make use of so if a Twitter mentions on you know and Twitter something like just got my stuffed animal from ebay i love how fast it shipped you wouldn't be able to get that data and send it to your ebay shipping team to say hey people love fast shipping will get that absolutely so we'll get that goes into our system you know we're probably looking at a few where she builds you know r annotations as I guys would say you know we're trying to annotate every conversation every person in in dozens or thousands and tens of ways so yeah so based on that I get my answers for the questions that I'm looking for and how do you you so what did he may pay you I mean how do you make money just a subscription business you know this must pay us for the insights so typically they would say hey I'm interested in insights about me and you know X number of competitors for example so we say okay I'm based on that this is why ups on a monthly basis and that's the business okay so it's a subscription take subscription sack it's a monthly subscriptions and / yes the data data says absolutely and what just what is talked about in averages for now but with the average customer paying you per month well how does the medium the better number you know we have a couple of older customers who don't pay as much we start around two and a half three years ago we have a couple of new customers I think the average just for fast you know comes to around thirty two thousand dollars for you okay 30 gram per year yeah but the median number will probably be higher I don't have the exact number but should be around 48 50 K so and gave ami cel annual contracts no not really um so personally I don't believe in locking customers in you know unless there's a reason you know they if customers good value they should use us if they don't get value then why should they so normally we have a 30-day workout clothes you know if you're not able to get value you can work out got it but if they're paying that the 12 months up front the 32 ish thousand up front many cuz to spit what early you know we will throw in a small discount if they want to pay and really but a lot of fun Christmas pay quarterly or monthly is a little too much of an overhead from invoicing perspective etcetera so quarterly sure she's aware we go got it and then take it back and give us some more the history what you do on to the business end so we go back a little while so we actually started as a hobby to see news discovery product and where this was 2012 2012 yeah so then 2014 be you know we've reverted to a b2b model we said okay we've got this intelligence you know we gotta find a way to monetize so so as you know embrace sort of Bangalore so you know fix was a little bit friendly back in bend over since the valley and yes 2014 we like a b2b product so it's been three years pretty much intact answer here was you know the three year and was three for us and now where you are in terms of team side today so hurting people right now what money 130 is 13 yeah all in San Francisco or bix between san fran and bangalore so actually right now everybody's in bangla and i split my time between San Francisco and Bengaluru i'm here in fact looking for a first san francisco you know based teammate maybe you line them from a listener from from the show what who are you looking for sales product sales absolutely i'm looking for a sales guy yeah all right there you guys have a sales guy sales gal whoever it is I'm a pretty what's your compensation look like is it mostly as a mostly base or commission or what so we actually yeah so base commission bill but idly idly i'm looking for a i would call it almost a goat on real kind of parole you know so so we would wear you open to a significant chunk of equity if that works well you know for the right person so what's the holy mission of chunk like 5 10 15 well five to ten percent is significant in my book okay yeah that's coke on drug level equally that way i would see and have you guys raised capital tonight are you self funded whether it's a small injured around a couple of years two and a half years ago now yes so we'd raised like a 250 k and ya posted we have embraced money yet okay so a total capital that you've raised is about quarter of a million yeah yeah and where you at today in terms of how many customers are our paying you per month so we are a team 17 18 CS 15 to 20 you can bolt bus call it okay and can I just take 18 times kind of a thirty-two thousand dollar annual contractor assuming this I mean pretty healthier you're about 50 grand per month yes a little less than that right now so we're doing it on 40 41 in a model right now yeah that's great yes and take 18 times you know a little bit less than 2,500 bucks per month from each customer that's a healthy little business sorry good yeah where are you where are you and what about churn obviously visited pivoted in 2014 but what's your gross customer turned per month so that's one thing I'm in zuellni the way 15 we actually quite bad on that name of us for 2016 and how do you know you did bad so bad boo is around seeing around would ya all customers out of like three customers I think out of 10 or 11 at that point of time every month and now over all over the year over the year yeah so last year you know out of some 16 our customers we lost two so so there you go i mean in terms of here are likely fifteen percent annual turn yeah but revenue site i mean our net revenue side i think we will we've been fantastic you know with ups etc so the net revenue shown is very healthy projective yeah it definitely is negative yeah so good thing that's always gonna be any of no sales people it's just you so far we've could one sales guy in india right now yeah so we and the sales guy that's it do people want one of our people a century that's great and what's your what are you paying to acquire in your customers what's your CAC on average ok so i haven't really done that yet calculation exactly yeah but because a lot of our you know a silver outbound so switching out you know most of our customers are mid-market to enterprise you're not really SMBs yep so I don't have that number i'm saying you it's okay but but i mean it sound like your biggest cost is the actual salary of the salesperson or are you doing any paid marketing per month little bit a little bit in Libya Libya five hundred thousand dollars a month and yeah that's good it yes a largely sui disclose that are you testing now I have for the 500 grand what are you putting that on I think we've tried a couple of things like we had a new head of muffin come in last year round April and she's been experimenting you know it's very very good obviously you know sem exceso a little bit you know I think we recently experimenting with LinkedIn we run a couple of campaign with social media publications etc so CSO experiments largely you know small experiments there and we have to see what really works which social media publication um which one did we do something with [Music] um okay I was just really nothing about you you had something to say on social media examiner it means maybe with them I it was one of the social media with social media examiner's or something similar and what's the model like you sponsor a conference or you sponsor an email lists and or what I think it was it was maybe an email is sent plus a banner read something like that it was definitely not a constant sponsorship got it Argo is working for you or now I think it looks okay it worked okay I don't think there's anything that's was like really really well yet I mean partially I think it's our learning curve as well definitely it is yep but yeah I think it worked okay so you know what we have a few probably needs coming in a little bit of awareness etc so so that's just waiting right now what are you I mean I imagine I'm just making some assumptions here about salaries in bangalore but i imagine if you're doing 40 grand in revenue per month you guys are cash flow positive right yeah pretty much like gonna break even i would say right no yeah right yeah yeah they just cuz i've just heard you get amazing i mean do you mind me asking on average what are you paying somebody in bangalore is it weigh less than the states are about even know it's definitely less than stitch it's definitely less than state like what if I went to Bangor and hired a developer or junior developer what would i pay see depending upon what kind of a guy like even really good guy or you know okay glee etc I only want the best the best so the best I would cost you ok so it is gosh you're on ok so let's let me take a guy who's probably been doing it for a couple of years ago yeah so couple of years if you take it and should cost you around 20 lakhs plus 20 lakhs plus rupees and that in dollar terms would be like what three thirty thousand dollars or so yeah yeah yeah thirty-five thousand dollars like I said you get to the top of this episode I have amazing data and you guys know from my interview style I'll of data but whatever more than data is making its action via beautiful dashboard that I can view on my phone on my tvs in my living room or even on my laptop I'm traveling and the company that I used to create these dashboards which Boldin data from I lipson back end my google analytics back in Salesforce and other data sources it's called clip folio you can see an example executive dashboard or my social media command center or my web metrics dashboard at Nathan acha kaam board crush analytics that's Nathan Lanka com forward slash analytics and you can try it there for free for three months its portfolio you can try it free for three months everybody else has to pay so you get it free for three months Alan's a good friend he's the CEO of the company he came on the show I said I love your product can I feature it so Nathan like a calm for Josh analytics go check it out now very cool I'm afraid you're building a great business I'm rooting for you let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book I come on this is the easiest question of all now I'm not ye not not very big on business books I mean if anything don't make one up if you didn't read one it's okay yeah so let's I mean I have like right now I'm reading the hard you know the thing about hard things I you know that's what I'm kind of caught on the flight but yeah I mean I wouldn't really say I'm really big on business Bookshare more like inspirational stories I think that's bigger in my book number two is their CEO you're following or studying right now I like a couple of guys p & Wildlife travis kalanick i would say right now I definitely think it's a good wave guide into a lot you know any good up he's wasting right noise is tremendous sorting this one the sky that comes to my mind number three is their favorite online who you have like a cutie scheduling if maybe I think I like a flood number for how many hours sleep to get every night six then what are you what's your situation married single day up kids I'll meridean happy little daughter so do anyone yet you're busy how are you the Vietnam alright last question check it's like 18 years what he was your 20 year old self knew ya better than I just wanted to have fun man I yeah so but when you would tell him focus focus fried ice there you guys have it focus and prioritize more from the founder again of furrow we got our pre with us again they launched back in 2014 oh sorry 2012 pivoted later on in 2014 name now we've got a team of 13 basically almost everybody in bangalore again helping you in helping companies with social intelligence they've got 18 customers a quarter of a million dollars raised doing about forty one thousand dollars per month with with net negative revenue churn I'm afraid thank you for taking us to the top thank you later than was graduated with you if you enjoy them free today go back and listen to meet Shawn boggess tree with rocket reach they just killed their lowest margin products of good lessons there on killing product and they double down on seventy dollar arpu customers their goal it's ten million dollars and 2017 arr it would mean the world to me if you guys got any value from this episode if you would go leave overview on iTunes right now and then subscribe you know I hustle like have to get these episodes on every freaking day for you guys and trust me i love it i would do with no listeners but boy oh boy makes my day and makes my team's day when we see great reviews and get your feedback thanks so much such I've I love giving away free money I feel like oh for getting away cards I have something special for you today how many of you have heard our super sharp gasp talk about success they've had with facebook and google ads well all of you listening right now if you're listening you get a hundred dollars in free AdWords here's how you get it safe again thanks for listening get to three hundred dollars from google right when you sign up with my website first provider hostgator sign up now to get your free money hostgator.com boards flash Nathan again at hostgator.com /a Nathan