How GetEmails CEO Adam Robinson grew GetEmails to $7M revenue and 750 customers in 2021.

hey folks my guest today is adam robinson he's building a very cool tool called get emails and he started this after spending 10 years on wall street trading credit default swaps at lehman brothers and started his first startup called robbily email marketing the company was bootstrapped ranked number one in customer satisfaction in 2017 the company distributed mid seven figures and was sold for eight figures his current venture get emails helps e-commerce and publishing customers identify their anonymous web traffic and retarget them over email he launched company in november 2019 and just crossed i'm gonna let him tell the revenue number adam grady at the top yeah sure ready to take us to the top how are you doing okay what's the revenue number what's up uh four million ar that's great okay 66 full-time employees bootstrapped 50 total margin that's incredible 18 months old well 18 okay got it so talk me through the first that's the starter story how did you get your first hundred customers so i had as you as you read in the bio i had an email marketing company that i started called robly email marketing uh that's a very difficult space incredibly challenging but we had a really nice lifestyle business and then attempting to niche i discovered this identity resolution space which is like basically identifying anonymous web traffic and then without the person actually filling out a form we'll pass you a plain text email address add it to your list so you can market to them and whereas you would get like three to five percent of people to fill out a form will get you 40 of your traffic so just an unbelievable email list growth tool it was a feature in robly everybody loved the feature nobody was actually switching to the platform so so we thought hey if they're if they're like downloading these files and uploading them in their email marketing app and they're enduring that horrible experience and like give us a 10 out of 10 on the mps report we need to spin this out connect it to everything and launch the product on its own so ask me a plain text email so i've used tools like it is magic let me just ask the question because i thought my audience will ask the same exact thing which is there's tons of tools like this out there the issue i always have is you get a massive list of company names based on ip addresses it'll say you know someone from sendgrid was on your site for 20 minutes but i don't know what the hell to do with that you're saying we'll give you the person you'll give me the email of the person who was on the site yeah so we connect an anonymous we connect anonymous digital identifiers that are used in the advertising network to rich customer profiles um and yeah like lead forensics for instance does what you're doing what you're talking about but we go a step further it's primarily a b2c tool because all the all the emails are like gmail hotmail um yahoo and stuff like that but we actually give you the person and it's worth 3d uh it can we have some b2b customers but like we're having so much success in the bbc world we're just not focused on it you know what i mean all right so launching 28 uh wait late 2018 it sounds like 2019 2019 okay um scaled nicely so so first one our customers came from your last company which is great how many customers are you adding per month these days so it's kind of like a tale of two businesses there was what we did to get it off the ground and there's what we did what we're doing now so the first i would characterize the first year as uh the facebook year my wife and i did these like outrageous and funny facebook selfie videos then they were like the ads were paying back in a day um they were giving us unbelievable reach it was working incredibly well but nine months in we're like this is the wrong type of customer churns through the roof um even though the ads even those quick payback and allowed us to grow really quickly we noticed that our top ten customers had huge revenue expansion they were paying us between five and thirty thousand dollars a month we need to focus everything on them so end of the year last year uh beginning of this year we did a pivot stopped running ads um it's entirely an outbound sales model and we're bringing on people between like you know two and ten thousand dollars a month now that is just a totally different like the number of customers that we're adding is much lower but like we added 50k mrr in the last 30 days you know what i mean and across how many customers uh i would say probably you know uh 25 to 50. whereas if you if you if you did 50k a year ago it would have been like 500 or something like that you know what i mean a new mrr mrr r got it okay it's a good growth so just to be clear absolutely no dollars on ads right now zero dollars on ads what does the sales team look like if you're doing outbound is there a sales person or what there is one sales person and one person assisting that sales person she's doing it entirely entirely cold email the quote is kind of like bring as much as you can but it's one sales person who brought in 50k mrr last month so she's doing pretty well i mean the reason i'm asking here is because this is like like a pivotal moment for a lot of test companies is the comp that you put on your first sales rep say that again sorry this is a pivotal moment in many sas companies when to bring on your first outside sales higher and what quota how to incentivize them so yeah she's she's she's been there since she's been there since day one and she has a a sort of co-founder incentive structure she's got like shadow equity that her equity percentage grows with our ar so like she just got her equity doubled when we crossed 4 million ar you know that would never yeah that would never work for a sales team but you know my attitude is keep this thing as small as possible i actually want to like sell it to your private equity or something that will actually scale the team like at the end of the day how much equity do you currently still own the business uh we have the same cap structure as the last company because it was a spin out of the last company if that makes sense and the last company i had two co-founders um i own 42 percent of the last company and i on 42 of this one got it and did your wife you said does your wife own any here too my wife does not own any equity she was just a significant contributor to the ad campaign oh got it not a co-founder okay cool yeah not a co-founder i mean i i started the first company like five years before i met her got it got it okay and what's the so so the other two co-founders on the other sort of 60-ish percent or exactly bootstrap no investors okay interest but i'm asking there was no investors at the old company either no no investors why didn't you just why did you buy them out i mean why take them into the new business man that's too long of a story for this podcast but um it was just you know one of them's my brother one of them is my best friend uh there were several ways to handle this and i just thought just rewinding a little bit um i sort of experimented with growth tactics for like three years with the other company's money as it was doing fine you know great lifestyle business something finally works right if i'm the investor in the old company i say you just spent my money for three years trying to to figure this out so you know it's my asset yeah that's kind of the conclusion i came to um and it's really hard to buy somebody out when you're like so excited about the future prospects of this thing like what what would you sell so yeah we we did like 50k mrr in like the first six weeks what would you have sold that equity for well just you know going back to the co story adam i mean they're all are they working currently as hard as you are in the company uh one of them is one of them is not it's like the one that's not like that's the argument of why you would reshuffle the captive thing right i i hear you uh there was one other sort of tricky moment in like 2015 or 16 and i think maybe if that tricky moment hadn't happened i would have been more assertive about it but uh you know but with this one my plan the entire time was to sort of grow it really fast and exit fairly quickly so that also is just you know if i was in this for like 10 years i 100 would push for that um how many customers today uh 750 paying customers 750. okay cool and then um talk to me about churn so churn is a really hard thing to talk about because i explained that facebook ad strategy and like the people were bringing on last year probably had an average of 10 000 unique monthly visitors whereas everybody would bring on now has 300 to 500 000 totally different customer profile i told you better top 10 in turn so looking at it by segments um our top 25 has been around for 75 percent's been around for over a year all the top 10 is huge expansion revenue but like the the bottom churn the the top line churn number just like doesn't even mean anything because it's the whole bible listen we just the whole magazine issue last month was focused on logo churn doesn't mean anything but it doesn't mean anything for the exact reason you just articulated and that's why we use revenue churn which accounts for large contracts that are super sticky and expanding so what does your revenue term look like over the past 12 months uh it looks great i mean i'm not going to give an exact number but it's single digits okay single digits monthly or annually monthly okay got it so under under 10 revenue term per month now does the expansion revenue driving the same cohorts make up for the churn is your net revenue retention of 100 uh yes okay got it how far above 100 you can even drive that with your big expansion accounts i mean we just kind of started a few months ago really focusing on these guys so it's all these questions are are super hard when you're really early in the company you know what i mean because you're doing it you're not that's not no i don't like i'm not gonna buy that because you're trying to grow an exit to private equity firm they're gonna be way tougher than i am on all these questions so i just don't buy i don't i don't buy that at all what what's happening is you're growing so fast it's not worth your time to focus on it right now you just started working you you just gave me my answer to those guys yeah but by the way like you're gonna have to polish all this up right if you end up running your process but really what's up i mean there's people listening right now that are gonna go yeah i'm like adam i we're growing so fast i'm not losing money we're profitable i know it's working even if it turns high i know it's working so i'm going to keep going right i mean yeah that all makes good sense that makes good sense talk to me about so grow grow fast and exit i mean what would you buy the company at today i mean i i don't know what's a what's a 4 million ar company growing at 15 a month the 50 total margin and six full-time employees worth well that's that's that's the science but a sale is never about science it's always an art uh it comes down to when you go home at night and you have to tell your wife you turn down an excise offer how big does it have to be before she says i can't believe you did that i'm leaving i mean you're asking my opinion of what i'd sell for now i'm asking how you personally would value the business i think that this thing uh would make sense to certain buyers you know i think 25 on the low side um i think a good price for it's probably 50. if i get if i double revenues before the end of the year like maybe a little bit a little bit above that then i think that i will interesting what's your opinion i mean you're the person who talks to a hundred people a day about this stuff um the most valuable thing i've heard from you so far is what the top 20 percent of accounts look like and what the expansion pattern looks like um you're gonna get it because that's all we're doing now you know yeah yeah i mean again i don't know what the breakdown is right but what i can tell you is the companies right now that are getting the highest valuations they they all have net dollar retention above 150 percent right so like that's one like that plus just overall growth rate are really the key drivers i'm seeing today of sas valuations you know the closest comp that i put you guys to would probably be lemlist and guillaume very similar space you know what's the name list yeah i mean he just you know they're three co-founders they're very pro how much are you profiting on the four million fifty percent total margin so last month you did about how much top line uh like three hundred grand dropped 150 at the bottom of the bank what do you do with that currently do you pay it out as dividends yeah interesting and and can you explain to me how like your is it just the founders or do the six employees get to take part a little participation there uh you know as i explained uh our our employees have a little shadow equity sort of portion of it does that relate to dividend checks every month or no yeah yeah they get dividend checks how does that work founders asking all the time that our bootstrap how do we get our employees incentivized without giving up a big chunk of equity and they do dividend well i love this shadow equity um you know at the end of every month if you have one percent shadow equity i just write them a check for one percent it comes out of the next month's expenses if that makes sense one percent of what though of the whatever whatever the total distribution was going to be okay and is the total distribution so if you did 300 grand last month and 150 goes to the bottom line we distribute 100 percent of the 150 yeah okay so so yeah like i i have like you know a target bank account amount that i like running for the size company where i would say it's 250 grand right so like we built up to that point and then now it's a one-to-one with the cash flow we generate why is that i mean because why is your bank christian number 250 how'd you come up with that i don't i have no idea honestly yes you do it's emotional yeah i i just didn't you know that seemed like a number that like no matter what we wanted to do it was going to be enough to to guess it if we wanted to i was never going to get in trouble you know it's you would prob is that like does that seem high to you for like a tiny company like this i know what are total your total monthly expense 150 grand yeah think about about all right so you have i mean yeah it's like six weeks of expense i mean but it's a sass business so it's not going to go away i don't know it's it's you could probably run it with a lot less you might run away your role is just take your fixed expenses multiply times six months i don't know what your fixed expenses are yeah not a lot yeah i mean the employees already are in there and these are good fixed right hosting so etc yes it's probably it's probably right around there yeah interesting um no i mean i look i think you know i think you know company and exactly one year ago what was revenue uh we've grown 250 since a year ago so it's probably like 50 grand 75 grand i don't know yeah you're like one a 1.5 million run rate about a year ago yeah exactly yeah um no i mean look i think this is great growth congratulations i mean this is also a space where you know i mean again there's a ton of churns so the fact you've sort of figured out how to how to get that above 100 net net dollar wise it's pretty impressive um cool okay got it uh six people on the team total one sales person how many engineers one engineer one engineer how do you build this whole thing with one engineer did you use an outsourced dev shop or something no he's a total savant actually we have two engineers we have one guy who builds integrations full-time but doesn't touch the code uh and and the cto is my co-founder and he's just like a super genius where did you find a person just as integrations time um through my other company we hired somebody um i actually built a development team in argentina for the for my first startup when i wanted to pull everybody off to work on this one and the guy we hired down there to manage them knew this this other guy did you use a firm to spin up a team in argentina or did you just know someone on the ground that was incredibly difficult um you know i went to i lived down there for a year and then it still didn't work until i figured i had to like hire people to manage hire someone to manage the entire team it was it was just oh if anybody wants to email me adam get emails.com i'm happy to jump on a call about this it is it is a bear all right uh last thing before we wrap up what's your fully weighted attack including salesperson commission to get a new call at 500 a month customer i mean that's so we added 50k mrr last month and we have two sales people so what commission you pay um well i don't pay them commission i pay them based off mrr they're sort of you know what i mean like she's a basically co-founder sort of level employee and her commission grows as revenue grows and she's like the sole driver of growth right now because she's the only one adding it does that make sense structure exactly yeah yeah so you don't you don't really have a good idea of what pac is no i haven't even we haven't even thought about it you've made it purely variable yeah and that would have to change if i were the one building out of salesforce under her but my whole plan is to let somebody else do that yeah yeah yeah so i mean do you think you i mean if someone came to this i mean with a lot of buyers that listen to this podcast they come and offer you something around i don't know 15 20 million bucks all catch up front do you sell the business probably not for 15 or 20. um i just think it's grown so fast that that there's somebody out there who likes it for more than that interesting okay very good let's wrap up with the famous five number one favorite business book uh four steps to the epiphany number two is there a ceo you're following or studying i share an office with dave rogen moser from proof and those guys are doing some unbelievable stuff right now oh are you down here in austin yeah oh i mean get a coffee sometime i'm like five minutes from you uh i love that all right uh number are you gonna take over their office or no no i'm just uh you know i'm just hanging out in there every day got it well i know they were trying to sublet a part of it but then they bought yeah that are kind of a headliner then they then they started this thing called jarvis and they're they're yeah converts an ai and they're not looking to do anything anymore they're absolutely crushing it with that he needs to get on here and talk about it because it's phenomenal it's just like the story of that is unreal all right number three what's your favorite online tool for building a business besides your own uh intercom number four how many hours i sleep to eat every night seven ish you know these you listen to the show don't you i do i'm i'm like i'm like a fan girl is it what you expected sort of being on it versus listening uh yes yes i like that i think that's a compliment so that's good right that was exactly exactly what i expected good no and you still feel good about it right i do i'm glad i did it you know especially because i'm very upfront with what i'm trying to do at the end of the year which is this thing so look look a lot of people will say like you realize negotiation books they say you have to be approached and to do i'll tell you what if you put out there that you want to sell and you can create a bidding war that is how you get your rational offers so like i'm all for sort of saying we're accepting term sheets on august 1st you know give us indicative terms to open up data room 1 on august 15th and we're picking a term sheet designed by august 30th let's rock and roll drum it up demand baby if you have any other if you have any other ideas for how i might sort of further drum up demand i would i would like look i'd love to take it to market for you i mean i have plenty of buyers i think could you know i don't know i mean look i have to put some feelers out but i think getting you know sounds like 15 was too low 20 is more interesting but 25 especially on clean terms starts to get really interesting at your current rate obviously be more if you grew yeah i think you're probably in the right zip code and i was you know my whole idea was like get it to the end of the year be doing six and a half or seven because we got a couple other growth things they're going to crush it and then that number is higher you know great what's your situation mary said well we know you're married single kiddos i'm married uh no kiddos working on it okay oh nice exciting how old are you i'm 40 40. last question adam what do you wish you when you were 20. uh skip wall street and learn how to build software dude quit messing around statement there's a lot of very rich people that love wall street now i know but this is uh this is just more satisfying to me to be honest i mean when you think about every right now in sas it's so hot every dollar of mrr you add to your business is effectively worth 60 in equity because you multiply times 12 to annualize it and a minimum 5x multiple it's an atm you put a dollar and you get 60 out it's crazy hey let's do this guys there you have it adam get emails.com did 1.5 million bucks run right last year have grown about four million in terms of run rate now they do 300 ish thousand dollars in top line revenue per month profit 150 grand at the bottom line every month they pay out dividends their team only six people high revenue per employee which we love 750 customers helping you understand those anonymous website visits but not just telling you what company that visit is from but actually giving you an email so you can follow up and take action on it adam thanks for taking us to the top thanks nathan it's fun one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas 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 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the subscribe button below here on youtube the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live i wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the sas world whether it's an acquisition a big fundraise a big sale a big profitability statement or something else i don't want you to miss it additionally if you want to take this conversation deeper and further we have by far the largest private slack community for b2b sas founders you want to get in there we've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing you can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying sign up for that at nathan lacka dot com forward slash slack in the meantime i'm hanging out with you here on youtube i'll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode if you enjoyed it click the thumbs up we get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive i am on these shows but i do it so that we can all learn we have to counter those people we got to push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that i appreciate your guys's support all right i'll be in the comments see ya