Getspokal revenue, CEO Chris Mack, team size, customer count, churn, and more in 2022.

who have one my guest today is Chris Mack he's a former consultant to Microsoft GE GM American Express and many others now he's the founder of spoke which will jump into today Chris are you ready to take us to the top yeah all right what is spoken and how do you guys make money vocal is a content marketing automation platform which sounds like a lot of buzz words basically it's been designed to help ok very good n is a pure place ask company yeah between 50 and 200 bucks a month ok fair enough so very much in kind of the SMB space then alright and put this on a timeline for me when you launch the company what year we started in 2012 and what was the context did you just leave all your consulting gigs and want to strike out on your own or what was the deal yeah actually for me I had left my consulting gigs a couple years previously I think that I'd reached my limits of where I wanted to go in the corporate space and so I actually just kind of quit everything and traveled for a couple years oh wow where'd you travel all over Asia South America Europe yeah pretty much like Australia pretty much everywhere except for Africa and yeah and then I came back to Vancouver that was in 2012 men fast forward to today how many customers have you scaled to well so we scaled up kind of been on this interesting journey started with the plan of becoming like a startup and we joined like a little you know maybe took up quite a bit but we reached a point where basically the like onboarding and getting new customers who is kind of hitting equilibrium with the number of people that we're leaving as well as somebody is kind of a tough space people yep home start a new platform and you know try to hang it for three months or six months or a year and then and then leave so we were seeing a lot of churn and how high we thought we're saying like 10 percent monthly churn 20 percent won't mean this is allow backs like I'm not sure I could even give you the exact numbers anymore but what we were seeing is like we're working harder and harder and not really seen the kind of growth that we were used to seeing and so we kinda were faced with a choice and it was either you know we revamp our entire kind of process and revamp our entire the way we were approaching everything or except that it reason who will scale that's a start-up and it would be a really it was a nice business and accepted it as that so that's basically where we've gotten to is that we stopped growing probably a few years back and we went fully remote and now we manage everything remotely and manage the existing hell are we talking two percent a month three percent you know what I don't even check anymore but I would say it's less than that it's probably sitting good okay so sorry less than two or three percent per month logo churn easy yeah and how many customers you have today hold on what do you mean you don't talk about customer doesn't make any sense we don't talk about how many customers we have because that doesn't really help our customers um there's like that was part of the startup game as part of that part of the thing that we realized moving into this is that like there's two ways to approach a new business and one is to try to play the startup game and what do you mean sorry what I don't understand what I mean played a startup game play the startup game so when you enter when we entered we started building this company there was a lot of Drive and a lot of people pushing you know to take investment dollars for example or to you know really focus on all the metrics that you've been talking about sharing mmm are like there's really important baseline things but they're they're really important if you've got a certain goal in mind Chris just to be clear there are the most successful bootstrapped companies know these numbers inside and out this has nothing to do with raising capital what I'm hearing you say is you made a strategic life choice it's a flat and and it makes you self-conscious to share the numbers because they're flat I would encourage you to go all-in on this story cuz I think it's valuable so how many customers are yet today but I still not releasing those numbers well why why why would you not um I guess it was just a decision that we made a while back because we who's on the team honestly said the main reason is is personal psychology I guess around it so if you're focusing on those numbers if those are the numbers that those are the numbers that you're gonna drive towards right like you said there was a you know I made a lifestyle change like decision to not focus on those so that I could focus on other things that I can seek you more important so if I focus on the number of customers that we have then that's going to be the metric that I use moving forward and the metric that I consider to be most important if I on the other hand work on making sure that our customers are happy and that the platform is working for them and that's what I'm gonna be focusing on yeah Chris just sorry my audience gonna listen to this and they're gonna they're gonna sense they're good they're gonna sense something's going on because there are plenty people not focused on growing customers that are focused on retention which is what you just said they still know how many customers they have so all I'm asking for is a general sense I mean are we talking like ten customers a thousand customers a million customers generally where are you yeah we're between ten and a thousand ok fair enough good so less than a thousand customers so you're focused on retention you've driven churned down and you're still be your bootstrap correct absolutely yeah that's okay so that's great and and talking about the team today so are you the sole founder or their co-founders I don't know there was two of us who founded it so my former kilometers left probably about Oh probably but four years ago when we decide to make the switch you know would you buy our outer as you take equity with her okay and and how many people on the team and all your remote places across the world [Music] four people very good and then walk me through with us more people do so obviously there's you what does everyone else do well we have a software dev a customer support person and basically like the software dev slash server admin okay and so what do they the software developer I mean walk me through like product strategy where are you trying to take the company maintaining effectively so the issue with this kind of space is a change is so fast that it's difficult to try to like you can't just build a product and leave it running because all the other load need agree with probably about twenty different systems which is kind of where a lot of the value out comes from like in Spokeo so just maintaining a lot of the systems when for example you know Facebook's updates their API or Twitter updates their API or or any of our partners do requires quite a lot of work so we've slowed down on new feature development and really kind of focused on maintaining current api's and also in one develop or do that though I mean HootSuite these are companies that plug into all the different social api's they have dozens of developers specifically just to keep these things updated you have one how can you keep up but you know you could but see you know you could hire more if you want to stay bootstrapped and only grow based off your revenue you could hire more developers to meet this vision if you focused on growing revenue understand so why are you not doing that we did try that was our initial vision you know and you know we have that discussion all day long as to whether we failed or tried harder or should have tried a bunch of different things but that was our initial vision and we tried that and we reached a certain level of growth now we were doing pretty well but we were also seeing a very high level of churn and and so overall what we were seeing is you know really really working very very hard for at the end of the day well what didn't amount to be a whole lot more than what we have now and now we're things a bit more relaxed and everything's a bit more chilled so it's you know goes back to what you you clearly said you know just a few minutes ago it is a definitely a lifestyle design choice so where did you guys talk to me about where you do where you topped out before just churn was too much and before you made the changes so you top I think you said three or four years ago before you switched and in that month I mean did you break a hundred grand in revenue fifty grand and I mean where were you generally we're doing pretty well yeah I mean again I'm like not sure there's a whole lot of point in discussing exact numbers but you know we're doing yeah high five figures okay high five below hundred yeah okay fair enough so at that point you said by the way this reminds me some of my story my first company hey oh it was a dragon doll for Facebook apps every Tuesday morning we knew that we were gonna have something broken because that night Facebook released that's when they did the release and eventually we topped out about 89 de grand a month in revenue we had raised VC and we eventually decided to know what we can't like our turns too high it's like 7% per month we can't keep up and I intimately sold the business so like I'm trying to push you here to be open about this guy think it's valuable but you're being coy on the numbers I would just I just think you should be open with the numbers because other people should do what you're doing and they don't because they think it's bad because they sense a weakness coming from you when really I think it's a strength I mean people can sense whatever they'd like to I mean it's not gonna change how I decide to communicate about my company right so I mean I understand what you're saying and I don't think it really changes it would because if you oh if you really win if you really doubled down on these questions I'm pushing you hard on it owned it other people would say you know what there's nothing wrong with that I should do it too but because you're like holding stuff back people assume there's something wrong with it I just think it's smart I think it's a smart choice that you made the decision to be totally honest with the members at some point so why not why not so your best month four years ago you're doing called 89 to grand a month whatever now it's down or it's flat call it 30 40 50 some somewhere below that right why not just sell the company and move on go travel more um it's definitely been something that I've been thinking about well you know no one's ever gonna buy the company unless they know the numbers a lot of buyers listen to my podcasts okay yeah look I mean it's I don't know what to tell you it's it's kind of sitting in that space right now where that is one option what would you how would you think about selling it because like the challenging thing is somebody like you you are SAS company and SAS companies sell for you know 6x but but the problem is you're declining there's churn like dadadada I mean you'd be lucky probably get one and a half 2x I think for a company and especially in this but I've seen a lot of companies actually in this space just totally roll up and fold because all the changes and the and the war against bots has really they've caught off a lot of these applications very tough so what do you think you'd sell for on in terms of a revenue multiple you're pushing for four answers to questions that I haven't even really gone that far down you said you've thought about it we've thought about it like thought about it in terms of you know literally just a thought about it but the reality is is it is like a lifestyle choice right I mean the reality is is not a not a whole lot of energy needs to be put into this company at this point you know it takes over really well a lot of our customers have been with us for years at this point the you know my employees I've been with us for years so it's kind of a comfortable it's a nice place to be there's there's no sense of urgency on my side in order to you know to sell it or to to change anything really so but that's because you're comfortable correct you were comfortable making six figures at corporate gigs before for several years before you quit and said I want to do my own thing I mean I'm just I'm just curious does in your life does there ever become a forcing function that says wow I am comfortable if I just if I sold this thing free to my mind I could go travel and be happier or I could launch you know a new idea I have or something like I mean I think what's happening here is it's doing 50 or 60 top-line you're pocketing each month 20 30 grand and you can live comfortably on that you have no reason to do anything which can be very dangerous absolutely agree with that that's not exactly a situation though so I because I'm able to work remotely I do actually travel quite a lot so I'm currently in South America for example and it isn't actually the only company that I work on so it protected that reason you know is comfortable and it is very nice and and I doing what else are you working on okay what else are you working on I've got a cryptocurrency based startup that's kind of still under stuff no other thing that I'm ready and I keep the challenge going so his focus kind of lost for me and but I do appreciate I guess the continuity that it provides and I appreciate that kind of relationship to the build trick so so it's kind of a nice thing which is I guess why there's not a whole lot of urgency to solve it yeah that makes sense I get it all right very good Chris let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book what's last book you read oh it's killing fire number two it is there a CEO you're following or studying right now um I've always admired Elon Musk obviously um there's number three what's your favorite online tool for building a business this is a zero keeping nothing wrong with that number four how many hours of sleep do you get Rene I came for eight I mean six and nine and and what's your situation married single kiddos no single no kids cut out sorry no kids and how old are you I'm gonna forty one forty one last question Chris what do you wish your 20 year old self knew like so many things I think I wish that [Music] yeah the difference between like getting advice from other people and the appropriate place that it belongs in your life a bit more a bit more inner strength and taking advice as advice as opposed to perhaps life guidance guys there you have it manage your advice wisely launch Spokeo back in 2012 playing in a social media space by 2014 they top down the high 5 figures per month in revenue his co-founder left he's now basically said he know what there's gonna be a lifestyle business we're bootstrap it's now flat called you know doing somewhere but you know less than obviously 80 90 grand per month in revenue they've gotten churn in check so less than 3% logo turn per month folks paying on average 50 bucks per month they have between 10 and a thousand customers again bootstrapped as he builds his team traveling the world for people fully remote Chris thank you so much for taking us at the top thank you