How Green Apple Pay CEO Christopher Tufford grew to $990K revenue with a 9 person team in 2025.

hey folks my guest today is muhammad yunus he's the founder and ceo of v fares the leading virtual events hybrid platform in the world he led the growth of the company from two people back in 2016 to 250 plus today in 2021 he's gonna share revenue here in a second muhammad you ready to take it to the top absolutely all right what's revenue today uh so right now we are at a point where we should be hitting close to 40 million dollars in 2021. that's incredible now where were you exactly a year ago where did you finish 2020 uh it was around 30 million how are you how are you doing this when you have competitors like hop in and visible raising gobs of capital you're bootstrapped i believe uh yeah absolutely uh so i think i see in our case uh uh you know as you know with all respect to in and visible within our customer base we we don't hear much about them again we finally deal with the enterprise customers who really care about uh the visual look and feel of how their event should look like they want their events to be memorable so we are a lot more in that uh 3d highly visually appealing version and platform whereas many others are 2d enhanced networking tools and and you know we don't compete with those guys much within the enterprise sector i remember in march when we came on last year i was shocked by your your average acv which backs up the story you just told what is your average acv today is it still like the 14 to 30 000 range uh yeah actually uh i think as of now our average customer is paying us thirty three thousand dollars um so that's what they're paying us now um you know for the past five months and and what so why are they paying so much more you mentioned visual customization are there other things you're sort of upselling against that no one else is doing or they're doing a poor job at sure no i think for us the the the following is the key right so first for our platform looks uh visually appealing is one of the most beautiful platform out there that's one the second thing is our platform is also something that is end-to-end integrated so again when we work with these enterprise customers they care about integrations with their crm providers like salesforce hubspot uh they care about integration with the likes of marketing um you know if it's uh you know if it's a an ats company whether it's you know a couple of others so it's a it's a fully end-to-end integrated system and third and last thing is that see we have been in the market for almost more than five years so we have far more depth in terms of future set versus anyone else when a customer is coming to us uh you know they get uh far more depth in terms of features if they're doing a trade show they will have the ability to showcase their products sell their products if they're doing a job fair they can pull up their jobs rss feed they can you know have candidates apply for jobs and so forth so uh when it comes to their depth of future set we also have that versus a lot of other players out there and how many customers today uh roughly close to uh 1250 plus active paying customers at this point 1 250. that's true well that's up significantly so so you've gone on the show twice back in 2018 you had broken about a 2 million do you remember this back in 2018 2018 you were flirting with like a 1.7 million dollar run rate and then pre-covered so this was uh i guess very early last year i think this is right right you were at about just a three million dollar run rate you almost 10x yeah i remember telling you that number and i was like no i gosh i wish like i really hit that number but yeah i was hoping to hit 3 million then we hit 30 million so that's what happened yeah so so where were you in early 2020 run rate wise do you remember uh it was close to 2.4 to 2.8 million dollars yeah wow so so okay so essentially what happened was you went from 2.5 million in run rate to 22 million and or 20 million in terms of run rate in december of like this past december so almost 10x growth during covid yeah well and so what drove that i mean there's hard covet is obviously important but there's also a lot of hard work there absolutely there are two things right first of all uh i think prior to covert you have to be a very forward-looking organization to try out virtual events so you have to be one of those fortune 500 fortune 2000 companies in order to do something unique now with kobet what has happened is that everyone is you know forced to learn about virtual events to do virtual events and when they went out there trying to look for a platform we were one of the most trusted platform out there so if you go on g2 you know again with all respect to all the other people who have raised tons of money you will see us as number one when it comes to the highest rated platform so no one no one and i say that with a lot of confidence no one can beat us on customer support uh so as much as a software play uh one thing where we just um you know we are better than anyone else out there is you know how how great our customer support is versus anyone else out there that's one then again you know when they were researching uh who's the most uh you know trusted player most you know the player with uh a lot of um great reviews and then again you know player with with a bit of a you know who can help you run event that is highly memorable we came out there at the top right so we were the one who got a lot of that influx of new business we in fact had to turn uh away tons of business you know this this 30 million could have easily been 60 million have i've been not caring about customer support in many cases we let the customers uh just you know we have to apologize to them that you know the kind of support that we aim to provide unfortunately we feel that we may not be the right vendor exactly that week when we got tons of customers here you have 562 reviews on g2 which means you probably get a lot of organic traffic from there maybe some paid as well but the playbook you run to make sure when you impress a customer they actually take the time to go leave a review is an important playbook what does that sound like yeah i know i think see within the events industry what happened is that anytime a customer is coming to any vendor including us i think they they they know that they're going to work for uh weeks if not months for that one day that one day that one day for virtual event has to go just perfectly well and would always go ahead and do their research so they will they want that social proof so they will see g2 they will ask us can you give us social proofs they will ask us for references and then you know once once they are done doing a virtual event with v fairs they know how much how much those reviews have helped them so again just by default they go out there and and post some of those reviews of course we encourage them you know as well that you know if you feel that you whatever you know whether it's good or bad service we would love you to kind of go ahead and share that internally as well externally with the world talk to me about team today how many folks full time uh 250 people and how many are in support uh so in support we would have roughly around 120 plus people wow okay how did you scale that so almost half your team is in support are they all based in the states or how did you scale that team uh so uh so they're based all over the world so you know from us to canada to australia singapore etc but bulk of our support is based out of either pakistan or out of some of the other asian countries again they work uh u.s time zone they work uk european time zones so we we kind of assign them based on where our customer base is this is also just an insane amount of this must take a lot of your time you had 45 people on about on the team about 16 months ago you've hired over 200 people i mean how do you hire 200 people in 18 months you know i think we we have uh we have that brand recognition in most of these countries so again when we were hiring uh we went to this uh you know online university drive we went to the best universities out there in the world and we literally heard any any good candidate that was available at that time what'd you do you reached out to like the deans of the schools and said send them our way or what was the playbook there the the we reach out to the career services team uh so again you know in some of these universities we're already well known some of them are our customers to begin with uh so again they would say that by the way we use v first platform they're hiring go ahead you know and they will recommend sometimes hand-picked candidates and will give it to us smart how many engineers on the team uh roughly around 50 15 5-0 okay and last time we spoke you were just scaling up your your sales team you had two quota carrying reps right before covet hit and you had them on an annual quota of 500 000. what does that look like today uh so we have roughly around 27 of them right now okay so that's also scaled have you increased quota target or is it still about half a million uh no each one of them have roughly around anywhere from one million to two million depending on the stack size how do they respond when you said hey guys when i increase quota from half a million to a million each one of them have hit at least uh three million or above last year so again in most cases this is almost uh there's no one who have not hit a target in most cases they affected their targets within a quarter or two quarters that's what happened so if i was one of those sales rep that joined you during cobit and i hit my quota like what are you probably paying me base and what are you paying me in comp a commission yeah it's roughly a hundred and hundred so you will get uh around yeah 200 plus yep yeah that's that's right in line with what we see 200 000 and then above a million dollar quota five to one ratio your sales people are profit centers right yeah exactly that's for any challenges i mean it sounds like it's all working any challenges scaling that sales team this is a the challenge i think at that time was really we we strive in being extremely transparent and when there's a lot of money coming to you you want to be make sure that you know as much as you want to win the customer you also sometimes wanna just be careful of what you're signing up with right because the way we have been able to scale is that we have been absolutely clear what our platform does how we can support you how we can help you right uh during the covert times a lot of customers would just want to sign up with you without even telling what they're looking for you know and again we were very careful of again not having sales people who are just out of the out there for money we care about just again we don't we don't want to get a customer for first year we want to get a customer for the next three to five years and we just want to make sure that we are signing up with the right customer so just having that transparency having that like extreme honesty within within sales people that's what we typically look for when you're trying to hire someone if you sign up no new customers over the past 12 months which we know won't happen but let's just assume it for a second how much will you grow revenue just because of the power of your expansion team yeah so uh historically speaking it has been close to 140 percent so our network innovation historically was 140 percent we have to see because in 2020 of course we got a lot of these customers who were trying to do a physical one now they did a virtual one as of now we are seeing that uh we will have at least a close like anywhere from 70 to 80 uh customer retention and hopefully 100 plus revenue retention so we'll see what will happen this year uh but uh historian's beginning has been anywhere from 140 to 150 revenue just to be clear 80 retention would be 20 churn and then 60 expansion for 140 net is that right that's historical numbers we'll see what will happen in 2021 but that's exactly what happened let's talk let's talk money you have you must be turning down vc emails every single day what's the highest offer you've gotten uh so uh yep i think we all have seen uh valuations for for visible etc but uh you know again we we have seen anywhere from 10 times or 20 times revenue so minimum 10 times all the way up to 20 times so far revenue is what we have seen so far so you've seen basically sort of soft offers above 600 million offer offers you know let us write a check and brad that valuation yeah roughly around 500 plus yeah yeah interesting um you've obviously chosen not to take into those offers correct as of no yeah what would change your mind yeah i think for us it says about the money it's really about finding the right partner uh you know we are here for the long term so we are not a company who is just an afterthought of covet we feel that uh we always knew that you know there would come a time that similar to any company they have uh microsoft teams they have some et cetera there would come a time where every company will need a virtual event license so we're here for the long term i think at this point uh there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of money being spent for this industry and i think there are a lot of people who are looking for that short-term gain short-term confirmation none of us knows what will happen over the next 12 to 14 months 12 to 24 months given people are going back to normal so again just anyone who is there for a bit long term you know five to seven years is what you're looking for primarily rather than someone who's just there for the short term and current captive i mean are you sole founder of co-founders uh so yeah i'm the founder of the company and then of course this company is uh there's a there's a parent company who own v fares uh then that's pay.com but yeah do you own the majority of the equity though or does the parent company own the majority parent company owns the majority okay so i didn't know this so this is makes it more difficult probably for you to move uh you know raise capital exit etc i imagine who is that parent company it's bathe.com bayt.com um and again they act as just we see so as such as such yep i think they are they're pretty awesome in a way that you know pretty much all the decisions are done and taken by me so i think on that front you know we have completely yeah that's nice so how much equity do you own today uh yeah i'm just unfortunately not allowed to disclose that whenever i've told you okay that's okay all right so got it that makes sense um i guess a couple other questions here right uh you know johnny has to figure out a way to validate his validation uh his valuation at hop and he does things like buy stream yard which is 30 million in revenue for 250. are you right now in acquisition talks with anybody uh we are in discussion uh with uh yeah within within within a sector where you know again we are moving towards hybrid so anyone who has been doing physical events before like physical element mobile apps we are in discussion with a couple of people do you think you would exit before december or no uh no got it so it'd be a longer term play there yeah would you look it for a full exit or would you have them like write a small equity check and businesses stay close and scale that way yeah i i i would love to i think we feel that we we have the team and we have that vision to kind of run this company for the long term so we're not trying to really uh you know just kind of fix it at this point and are you more interested in those kinds of partners that are direct competitors hop in visibo et cetera or adjacent categories it's more adjacent categories so we're looking for people you know who have done physical events before and as you know physical events are moving towards hybrid we're also moving towards hybrid just trying to find the right partner you know who you know together we can work with them to build a stronger company very good muhammad on that note let's wrap up with the famous five number one favorite business book uh the favorite business book have been uh yeah just zero to one like that uh is always our favorite one yeah well you've you've certainly done that uh number two is there a c a ceo you're following or studying i have always appreciated uh steve jobs but uh nowadays it's uh you know satya from microsoft yep yeah is microsoft one of the folks you would potentially exit to uh they have never reached out to us so yeah i have no idea number three what's your favorite online tool for building b fares uh i'm a big fan of pop spot so again you know uh with with this influx of uh new leads hubspot have helped us a lot so you know pretty kind of them yeah are using any sort of these new tools you know remote.com pilot any of these uh we are primarily again yeah i think just sticking with hubspot with uh slack you know those regular channels no no none of the other fancy ones as of now number three how many hours of sleep are number four how many hours of sleep every night yeah i think hardly for four to five hours max at this point what a thought muhammad that's how do you survive on four to five hours yeah i think with uh yeah i think when you keep on hitting those great numbers you know you know you have this at least rush you hardly get to sleep even in those four to five hours you have you know again a deal or something in your mind yeah how old are you i'm 37 30. okay you got plenty energy then and what's your situation married single kids married with two kids two kids okay last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20. yeah i think uh yeah uh again the earlier you start your business early you get into things that you're passionate about the better it is you know i think you know the longer you delay you're just missing out on tons of those great energy years that you have are you the largest player in this virtual event space that is still bootstrapped uh i yeah i would i would like to believe that yeah i think i don't think so you know when i look at others like introduce sex connects hop in i think you know each one of them is no longer bootstrapped so i would like to believe that yeah all right that's the headline biggest bootstrap company virtual event space grew 10x over the past 12 months flirting with 30 million bucks in terms of run rate today hoping to break 40 million by the end of the year over 1 250 customers up from 170 just about a year and a half ago we've hired 200 people over the past 18 months now 250 full-time on the team they've turned down valuations in the 500 million dollar range they want to find a long-term partner in acquisition talks now but might not pull the trigger we will see what happens muhammad thanks for taking us to the top thanks nathan 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 p.m 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 alright i'll be in the comments see ya

Introduction hello everyone my guest today is chris tufford he's the founder and ceo of green apple pay he left college after two years to start his first business and has successfully and and has had success in a variety of unrelated markets from telecom to igaming including the largest amateur poker league in canada the world poker tour amateur poker league chris you're ready to take us to the top sure all right you're under the gun you're under the gun you've got ace king off suit the guy to your right or gow to your right is a pretty aggressive player you're putting them on pocket queens they've just shoved all in pre-flopped you call it ace king unsuited under the gun well that's a bit of a situational call isn't it it's uh are you on the bubble for the money because if you're on the bubble for the money you might actually fold that hand yeah yeah there are there are certain times when you will fold aces yep so it's actually situational but normally normally you're calling i love that all right green apple pay what are you working on so green apple pay is a digital fundraising platform for organizations like uh charities and non-profits and other community organizations schools churches other things like that to help them generate steady recurring revenue by making it seamless for their stakeholders to give back through their normal everyday spending sort of like a cash back reward program for organization and how do you what's the revenue model for you pure software players a percent of gmv as well yeah i know so we're we're primarily actually just doing a rev share so there's there's no upfront cost there's no setup no monthly or annual fees we just we just do a rev share with the organizations i see i see Currently serving 0 customers okay so so what does the average organization do through you in a year in terms of volume well we're just launching we're literally just going to be launching a pilot uh next week or the week after with another organizations to do a bit of a closed beta for a couple of months and then uh more of an opa beta to get us through sort of probably end of september and then more of a commercial launch in october well you're in a heck of a moment then i mean this is the launch time for you so you know fill in some of the backstory here what got you into this in the first place well a lot of it sort of stemmed from the fact that watching um my son does high level sport karate um and so his his uh his team fund raised through a lot of old school stuff right that a lot of the parents are organizing they were doing use electronics and use clothing drives and fundraising barbecues and raffle ticket sales and t-shirts sales all the old school stuff right that people do and between that and the fundraising stuff that is happens at a school you realize that there's there was a better way if we could create a digital platform to help these organizations i know these types of platforms exist for the individual um you know there's there's spare change roundups by companies that help you invest in your retirement like acorns and milo and there's companies that help you do earn cashback rewards from your spending like drop and amply and pay me but nobody's doing this kind of stuff with the organizational level where you know a whole group of dozens or hundreds or thousands of people can pool their spare change in cash back rewards and send it to an organization and i mean it sounds like you're having a lot of fun playing poker you've been involved with a lot of other things why dedicate your time to this like what are you doing now to pay the bills um well my wife's got a good job at a hospital so that helps because i'm actually going uh i'm working putting my time in for free right now to make sure other members of the team can get paid Raised did you raise did you put it on your own capital to get this going we're we have we've raised some uh we did a family of um friends and family how much we've raised a total of about half a million but wow the majority of that actually came from a number of different government programs i've made sure not to leave any free money on the table so i think like a good like a good poker like a good poker player that's right how much of the 500k was grant money that you don't have to worry about a return on uh about half of it almost okay interesting so you raise about 250k from friends and family on like a safe or something the rest is grand money yeah well some of it's death oh and debt okay well how did you raise debt there's nothing there's no there's nothing to put hold debt against it's a new company well one of the one of the first institutions that put some money in was called verge capital and they put money into uh organizations that have a social purpose so because of the fact that we're helping organizations with fundraising there's a real social focus there to what we're doing and so they put the money in as debt so i see and is it just it's just a term loan over what period of time yeah oh five years five years interesting and what are they doing do they give you like rock bottom rates five six percent or yeah prime plus two oh that's not bad at all yeah that's really good as a matter of fact we're talking to them about their they're looking to re-up and put some more money yeah interesting why do they want to put more money in you don't have any attraction yet well because they can see where we're heading i mean we didn't even have a product when they put the first money in so now that we're about to launch a pilot with a product they can see where we're headed they believe in what we're doing one of the other things that's interesting about that is the interconnected with them is is a connection with a their parent organization which is pillar non-profit in ontario in southwestern ontario which is sort of an umbrella group that um is a group that represents other charities and nonprofits and and so we're sort of using them as a great way to provide some uh warm introductions um into those that member uh membership organization i see i see how many people sales lead to yeah how many folks do you have on your team right now nine how many engineers two two engineers so what do the other seven do well that's including me and so i mean some of them are part-time like our cto is part-time when i need him and our ceo is part-time when i need him he's darren's been around from the very beginning um and then we've got a product consultant that's helping train up manny who's the product manager and tomorrow is doing the lead dev and cc is doing um the front end development and are you so founded do you have 100 equity i have the vast majority of it darren's that darren's the next largest shareholder and i'm and he's less than 10 percent and he's your seat effectively your cto oh yeah ceo he's got a lot of experience he brought a lot of the team members together for us because he's worked with them in the past at some previous uh um businesses so he sort of brought these guys in so that's how we knew they were good and how do you i mean how do you get your first hundred customers on this thing well it's it's a it's a relatively easy sale you would you you you can understand that if you're a small and mid-sized charity or non-profit right now you've been hurt pretty hard by the pandemic right a lot of these organizations not that different from my son's karate team did a lot of their fundraising through offline in-person events right they ran walk run bike-a-thons and charity golf tournaments and charity auctions and all this type of stuff that they haven't been able to run and do anymore so the idea that we're bringing to them something that's that's fully digital that they can they can sort of pivot to and adopt not only now to help them solve the the ongoing problem they're having with fundraising but then as an augmented new digital revenue stream for the future is pretty compelling and i mean how do you make money on this if a company puts a million dollars through you raises a million through in a year how much will you take that uh we start the rev share at 80 20 um but we give them an opportunity to grow their rev share up to 95 through various different metrics hitting hitting activation targets and time on the platform so that's the cost right you're making the bet that your your software is so valuable that they can raise more money than using other platforms so that if they put a million through you and you take 200 grand or 20 they go it's worth it so i guess that's the question right is who else are you competing with in the space and do they will they take a lower percent yeah well potentially um but what we're helping them do of course is this is going to be found money to them right in a lot of ways um i mean the micro donations from the spare change transaction roundups or you know or practically found money to people because it's just spare change but once we start rolling in the cash back rewards through connecting into um affiliate programs that's literally found money right it's just organizations that'll pay us a commission on track spending by sending people to go shop either online or in their bricks and order um stores or what have you and are you you mentioned you're looking at raising potentially more debt capital are you looking raising any more equity capital currently yeah we're going to open a seed round in march how much do you hope to raise on that and at what valuation a million i think a million at five and give me the sales pitch someone says well how do you get a 5 million evaluation chris you're crazy there's no customers yet yeah well that's that's really sort of there's it's it's more uh it's not really a science is it um valuations on a pre-revenue tech company but um i would say a a five million dollar valuation this probably tends to be a bit on the lower side if you're looking at companies that are raising from vcs well yeah but i mean just because you're trying to raise from vc doesn't mean you magically have a five million dollar company that would be crazy but it is a sales pitch it is a story and it sounds like an interesting story starting with the need you saw with your sons with your son's team yeah so listen we're rooting for you come back on a year give us an update chris in the meantime let's wrap up with the famous five number one favorite business book business book uh the making of a blockbuster by wayne hazenga number two is there a ceo you're following or studying i've read a few books over the last few months about elon musk and jeff basics they were both they were really really good and uh mark benioff [Music] number three what's your favorite online tool for building the business wow um i'm really starting to uh dig into using i haven't i never used a crm before so i i've i'm i'm digging in and building out of the crm streak that connects into our google mail number four how many hours of sleep are you getting every night not enough how many hours do you think well i'm seven maybe 70. and what's your situation married single kids i only have one kid married one son okay how old are you uh 53 53 monday oh congrats happy late birthday take us home here what do you wish you knew when you were 20. what uh i'm sorry what did i what something you wishing you knew when you were 20. oh lord um everything takes longer than you think guys there you have it green apple pay betting that he can help nonprofits raise more capital new found money by rounding up credit crime transactions and things of that nature they raised about 500 000 to date 250 000 of which was basically free money the other was an angel around raising now a million on a 5 million valuation to keep growing the business nine people on the team he's got about 90 equity so i'll call it the ceo has about under 10 percent they're looking to scale and onboard their first customers here quickly revenue model is taking percent of this new found donation money and we'll see if it scales chris thanks for taking us to the top thanks nathan really enjoyed talking to you 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 ltd 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 laca 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 gotta 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