How Incast Reached $400K Take-Rate Revenue and 110 Brand Clients in 2022 (Interview with CEO Vera Kopp)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, incast.me has done something special marketplace model. They connect brands like PepsiCo to micro influencers all around the world, including dogs, pets, people. You name it. They connect it. They did over $2,000,000 of sort of ad volume last year, of which their take rate is anywhere between 10-25%. Their take rate revenue is about $400,000 last year. They have a team of 35 building or sorry, 32 building the company. They served over the past twelve months over

00:23a 110 brands like PepsiCo who put at least a dollar of ad revenue sort of through them looking to scale moving forward with a new platform called Rainmaker. Hey, folks. My guest today is Vera Kopp. She's a female founder and senior entrepreneur of influencer marketing businesses. She graduated with from business management in California AMPM at Stanford at an incast.me and funcast.me along with Rainmaker is what she's focused on today. She's got global clients including TikTok, Shopee,

00:49Amazon, Visa, Ubisoft, and many more. And if she looks familiar, that's because she was on the show back in 2018 when she had just passed 20 customers and $30,000 of MRR at the time. We're excited to have her back on. Vera, are you ready to take us to the top?

Vera Kopp

01:04>> Incredible. I'm ready. And then you're bringing the numbers from back in 2018. It's just so great to see how much we accomplished. I was

Nathan Latka

01:12gonna say, I can't wait to get caught up here. So for folks that missed that episode, you know, what is that? Four years ago at this point, who is incast selling to? What are the customers paying you for?

What Incast Sells and Who Its Clients Are

Vera Kopp

01:21>> They're selling they're buying strategic planning. We set the entire strategy within incast. Majority of our clients are from China, US, Europe. So Shopee, Amazon, TikTok. We create a business plan for them. How to work with creators? We identify the best creators for that particular brand, but identifying not only the creators, which is most important is the audience. Right? Who are the creators that have the best audience that will communicate and have this strategy? And a lot

01:57>> of times, come up with, you know, different KPIs. So we have to be in tune with the KPIs for the brands, its performance, brand awareness, conversion, clicks, daily active users. We are on tune into innovating a way of working with creators as well.

Revenue Model and Take Rate

Nathan Latka

02:17And so, Vera, PepsiCo comes to you and says, Vera, we wanna launch a campaign before the Super Bowl targeting males in America between 20 and 30 years old. Go find me the top TikTok influencers. And you say, well, how much do you wanna spend on this? And they say, you know, $500,000. What's your model? Are you taking a percent of the money they spend through you, or is it a flat one time fee?

Vera Kopp

02:41>> We take a percentage of the budget depending on the campaign. If we have more talent managers, it varies from 10 to 25%. We have the ability to negotiate with creators. We work frequently with a pool of creators that are part of our network community. So it's more it's cheaper for the brand to work within cast and trying to figure it out on their own. And if we get $500,000 for Pepsi, we'll definitely look for a good

03:13>> way to attain a cost per CPM base rate, talking to this male audience and driving traffic to where we need to drive. It's for a specific campaign or, you know, taking people to the stores to buy the product. That is

Nathan Latka

03:31How many brands are you working with? Like PepsiCo's, how many brands have you processed at least a dollar of volume for over the past thirty days?

Active and Historical Client Count

Vera Kopp

03:40>> Over the past thirty days, we have 12 clients in house k. Right now. But overall, historically, we have a 160 clients we consistently plan and and and execute.

Nathan Latka

03:54Okay. So, like, 12, like, that are running campaigns, like, right now, but over the past twelve months, that number is closer to a 130?

Vera Kopp

04:02>> A 110 Okay. For the past twelve months.

Nathan Latka

04:06Yes. And if you add up all of the dollars they spent through your platform, those a 110 customers, about how much money would that be?

Vera Kopp

04:14>> About 1,400,000. So we we we took our company, right, February '18 from $30,000 in revenue to 1.4 in 2000 and 2022.

Nathan Latka

04:30Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you connect

04:53your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

05:17get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here, right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity And red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is

05:39not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're

Total Ad Volume and Take-Rate Revenue

Nathan Latka

06:05going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right, we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but

06:27if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into

06:53the interview. And your take rate you said is 10 to 25%. Assuming your highest take rate of 25% on the 1,400,000, that would be about $350,000 in, quote, take rate revenue for incast. Is that your only revenue stream, or how else are you making money?

Funcast Experiential Activations

Vera Kopp

07:10>> We do have also Funcast, which is five digital experience. We went to five different malls. Stores are having a very challenging period right now to drive traffic right to the stores and to the malls. So we help to engage the the the audience to take them into the mall. Instagram about experiences, we did that for PepsiCo with a chocolate powder called Toji, and also with Heineken, a a drinking soda. We had spaces packed with products, so

07:47>> people were interacting with the product. They were taking photos and posting. And that drove traffic to the malls over 65% over, you know, the thirty or sixty days that we stay with our installations into the mall. So we take creators, we do strategic planning, and also have the the photos, the images going out on Instagram like explosion.

Nathan Latka

08:13That's awesome. Now you launched in 2017. How many folks are full time at the company today?

Team Size and Rainmaker Launch

Vera Kopp

08:18>> We have 32 people in our team from marketing, sales, operations, strategic planning, and now we're launching a new product, which is a self-service community for creators called Rainmaker. And with that, we're offering a solution to small businesses to be able to buy a campaign for $599 a month and get a 100,000, a 100,000 views. So for $599 a month, they're able to get a 100,000 views with up to two creators, either on TikTok or Instagram.

Nathan Latka

08:56How do you convince a creator I mean, you only have $6 to incentivize the creator to drive a 100,000 views. That's a lot. How do you get creators to say yes when you have an inventory request?

Vera Kopp

09:06>> We do have a lot of micro influencers that wants to grow and wants to partner with brands. So a lot of the creators, most of the times, they're not interested only on the money side, but on the growth onto a brand that makes sense to them. As the matchmaking algo that we developed with Rainmaker that allows us to put, like, brands into the neighborhood creator, right, local people, local language. And with that, we also have higher

Creator Payout Economics

Vera Kopp

09:41>> conversions for traffic and for purchases and services.

Nathan Latka

09:45So to sum all this up, if we look at total revenue in 2022 for the company, where were you guys at? It sounds like maybe 500,000, 1,000,000, something like that.

Vera Kopp

09:54>> 2022, we did 1.4 with incast. Funcast was another 500,000 with the model.

Nathan Latka

10:01But that's the top line. Right? That's the top line GMV. I'm talking about, like, your your take rate.

Confirming $400K Take-Rate Revenue

Vera Kopp

10:07>> Take rate's four hundred?

Nathan Latka

10:10Four hundred. Okay. So you did about 2,000,000 of volume across all your products, and you kept about 400 k take rate for yourself?

Vera Kopp

10:16>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

10:17And how this is a cool story here. How much did you pay out to creators?

Vera Kopp

10:22>> We usually pay out to creators 65, 75% of the budget.

Nathan Latka

10:30Okay. Got it. So if you're processing one, you know, $2,000,000 a year, we could assume that about one one point three, 1.4 of that is getting paid out to creators.

Vera Kopp

10:40>> Exactly.

Nathan Latka

10:42Interesting. So if the creators get 60% and you're getting 10 to 20%, who gets the other 10 to 20% that's left?

Vera Kopp

10:48>> It's strategic planning and add ons that we put it into the creative side.

Nathan Latka

10:54So you guys keep that or the creators keep that?

Vera Kopp

10:57>> We keep that. We invest in the strategic planning and operations. So not all the clients will get the strategic planning and the creative. A lot of times, they come with the the creative briefing already ready, and that's when we operate with 10 or 20% cuts depending if it's micro influencer or top creator. The higher the budget, the less of our our fee because it's it's, you know, it's hard to close a deal. For example, Tony Hawk.

Margin Differences by Influencer Tier

Vera Kopp

11:27>> Right? He charged a 100, 150,000 for a post. We we we take a cut of 10% because he has a management and he has another agency, so then it doesn't add up to the client so much. But if you go micro influencers, we're working with 50 or 100 micro influencers, we need more people to manage, we increase our margin to 35%.

Nathan Latka

11:51I see. So are you like Patrick Star, Tony Hawk, Jillian Michaels, Foodgod? Like, are you working with their agents at CAA to process this stuff, or are you working directly with them?

Vera Kopp

12:01>> We work with agencies, CAA, UTA, and their managers as well to close the

Nathan Latka

12:06So they're they're taking a cut in between there too then?

Vera Kopp

12:10>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

12:11Yeah. But you would say your strategy really is to put those big names up as posters on your website, but they're not where most of your volume goes. You actually used to focus on the micro influencers if you can.

Working with Agencies and Top Talent

Vera Kopp

12:20>> Correct. And there are a few strategies we did, especially with with TikTok. We work in different verticals. That's where we're able to keep all the channels and all the verticals, especially for clients too. So, you know, talking about pets, we we worked with the top top 100 pets of The US, and there were micro influencers back in the days. Now they grew. But we onboarded them into TikTok when TikTok was what what was TikTok at the

12:51>> time?

12:52Yeah. So

12:52>> it was very interesting to see them now with millions of followers. But at the time, they were just, you know, micro influencers, pets that we were migrating from different social media from Instagram and YouTube and taking them into a new platform. And it's fantastic to see the growth of our clients and also see how much we contributed to their growth. Right?

Nathan Latka

13:14Bringing Vera, when we when we last spoke, you were bootstrapped. Are you still bootstrapped today or did you raise capital?

Bootstrapped Since Founding

Vera Kopp

13:19>> It's still bootstrapped. Yes.

Nathan Latka

13:21Great. We love that. We love that. Very cool. Wait. We're out of time here. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?

Vera Kopp

13:29>> Jesus, How to Make Big Plans.

13:32>> Mhmm.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

13:33Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Vera Kopp

13:36>> Ben from Ben Entertainment, Ricky Ray.

13:41>> Yep.

Nathan Latka

13:42Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building incast?

Vera Kopp

13:47>> Right now, our proprietary Rainmaker.

13:51>> Rainmaker.

Nathan Latka

13:52Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Vera Kopp

13:55>> Six.

Nathan Latka

13:56Okay. That's good. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Vera Kopp

13:59>> God. You have to get to that question.

Nathan Latka

14:02Of course. You know it's coming.

Vera Kopp

14:04>> Separated. Not divorced yet, but getting there.

Nathan Latka

14:07Getting okay. Close. You're almost there. Hang tight. Any kids or no?

Vera Kopp

14:11>> No kids.

Nathan Latka

14:13Okay. And and can I ask how old you are?

Vera Kopp

14:15>> No.

Nathan Latka

14:16Oh, just give me a range. Give me a range.

Vera Kopp

14:19>> A little secret. I am in the four point o era of confidence.

Nathan Latka

14:23That's fair. I will say under way under 40. Alright. Last question, Vera. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Vera Kopp

14:31>> I wish I would have all the knowledge that I have today in my twenties and the confidence too.

Nathan Latka

14:38Guys, incast.me has done something special marketplace model. They connect brands like PepsiCo to micro influencers all around the world, including dogs, pets, people, you name it. They connect it. They did over $2,000,000 of sort of ad volume last year of which their take rate is anywhere between 10-25%. Their take rate revenue is about $400,000 last year. They have a team of 35 building or sorry, 32 building the company. They served over the past twelve months over

15:02a 110 brands like PepsiCo who put at least a dollar of ad revenue sort of through them looking to scale moving forward with a new platform called Rainmaker Vera. Thanks for taking us to the top.

Vera Kopp

15:11>> Thank you so much for having me, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

15:14One 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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