How Jamespot CEO Alain Garnier grew Jamespot to $5.2M revenue and 250 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is a familiar face allen garnet he is the founder and ceo and serial entrepreneur focused on digital b2b sas products he's president of nonpro the nonprofits e f e l which is software in europe and the hashtag play digital movement he's also a music electro producer and practitioner now building a sas collaborative platform called james spot.com helen you ready to taste the top yeah ready nathan happy to talk with you again me too i feel like the last time you came on my gosh it must have been over two years ago how's the company doing today two years ago our company has changed a lot because we have a lot of growth new customers a lot of change you know in the landscape and you know in the landscape of the collaborative tools that change too yep so in in 2018 when we spoke you were doing about 2.4 million dollars in terms of annual run rate where are you at today so now in turnover we are about four million dollars turnover okay so what does so what does that mean that's mean that we have been 25 percent of growth this year okay about so you're doing about 330 000 a month in revenue yeah it's uh the uh mrr you say revenue monthly revenue recurring yeah it's 330 000. yep okay so that puts you at about a four million dollar run rate and yeah about 25 30 year-over-year growth where did you get the goat from you're in a very competitive space how are you finding customers well you know we are about uh four uh hundred thousand cash users now and this year uh was a special europe because you know of the the crisis of kaved of course and then uh we have huge growth of people wanting to work remotely and then we have for instance a french health agency with 80 000 people getting into genspot so you see it's a huge move we have also bnp banking uh bpi banking so new customers that then we are not used to to to use our software because now they have to because of the crisis and the need to stay home working so how many customers logos are on your platform today uh we've got 250 250 and how many paid seats uh we've got four uh uh for four hundred thousand uh c seats so for four hundred 000 paid seats across 250 businesses you've got some you you have to uh we've got about uh some external that are low price you know because you have the full seat and when you buy a gemspot you have a package of free external people of your company that you can use and then after a number you will pay for the external so the user i say it's the old user we have in all countries and tell us what folks are paying you for well the pain we uh we try to uh [Music] what we do for for organization is uh to help them to have their own remote work like you do in your home as you see i see you in the back and you choose to put photo in your in your in and you choose to to change the way you work where you where you live we do the same for our customers because with genspot they're going to plug a lot of apps so they can work like they are you know we are we have we have this uh modularization of how you work that's what we are very different of other solutions and who would you compare yourself to who are you closest to well in in europe we are close to uh the part of microsoft or 365 you know because in this you find all the things to work with documents communication and chatting and doing you know social network inside uh all those elements that's what we are the close uh uh and workspace of facebook too so we have major big competitors yeah and now eleanor are you still are you still bootstrapped and profitable i love that more than ever and because of of the growth uh we we have the ability of of going faster for instance we open spain this year we've got you know uh uh spain uh it's a new market for us so we are going to to go into europe and that's the the way we develop ourselves yeah we do bootstrapping and so when you how much revenue uh sorry how much profit are you doing per month now oh um i'd say for um paramounts about 40 uh 40 50 dollars i would say 50 000 uh no 40 to 50 40 to 50. sorry no no how much profit are you doing so you're doing 300 330 000 in revenue your amounts it's about this because when i i mean 40 dollars yes 40 000 okay yeah i was asking 40 000 yeah sorry i'm sorry yeah sure 40 would be very short you know too high yeah yeah okay got it and and talk to me about what you've done with the team over the past couple years how many people on the team today so we are 35 people now in the in the team and a lot of engineers of course but not also marketing sales people a lot of csm you know to do a relationship with customers because it needs you know uh it's a change in the market because the more we goes the more we see customers expect that for the price they pay they have people that help them to on board on the on the product easily and make the project fast so we have uh teams to do this uh completely uh inside jansport how many engineers uh how many engineers 15 15. okay any quarter carrying sales reps uh sales reps without a 80 sales reps eight and alan do you do you give them a quota yeah we do what's their what's their quota if i joined your team today what quota would you give me so dakota and you see it is uh lower than in us you will see uh is uh when you it depends of the seniority of the sales uh you start with you know i would say 300 000 years and it goes up and it double when you have four years of experience yeah okay so someone that's just starting you expect them to close 300 thousand dollars a new annual recurring revenue in their first 12 months yep i see interesting and and obviously your space churn is really critical what's your turn your revenue turn over the past 12 months in the past 12 months it was not so much because less than than before because i i think that people need our solutions it's about uh eight or ten percent euro okay and how much expansion revenue do you have uh what is expensive revenue all your upsells so ignore new customer editions but what you upsell old customers exact price for this sorry okay okay that's okay that's okay you told me last time you had five percent churn and 15 expansion for 110 net revenue retention sound like you're still about the same spot yeah because it's it's quickly the same we have uh downsized the churn and the explanation was or more because we have a lot of companies that use the gensport just for communication and because of cavite crisis they use it for home working so it's much more using they have to pay more for apps because you know we have an inside app store in gymspot you buy for perhaps to to make up sell into the so they buy some new apps uh for instance uh visio conferencing or you know meetings and stuff like this that they didn't use before so yeah we have a better upselling this year and and how are you getting customers today what's your cac well cac is about uh uh in i know it in euro i would say in euro so it's about ten uh ten thousand uh bucks okay okay about eight eight uh eight thousand uh euros and where are you spending that money for my price i know we are in euros i have to converse everything for you thank you we appreciate my everyone listening here and i really appreciate that so thank you um where are you spending that money well we spend more money in acquisition digital acquisition so ads google ads of course we buy some paid written because we do a lot of you know production of content ebooks uh what we call you know uh nice figure uh uh uh white papers we do a lot of content work very hard on this to to try to give value to people you know to explain how to launch a project what are the difficulty what are the steps so we we give a lot of contents that's our main expenses and a little this year we buy some tv show in france how much have you spent on tv uh how many money you want yeah money it was not so much it was uh uh in uh ago indoors it was a 30 30 uh thousand birds 30 000 euros yeah it was you know uh in uh in a dedicated tv for business people you know in in france did it work it's called bfm did it work yeah because it make a lot of awareness you know uh that jansport become you know uh a a a trademark that was better known than before so we are going to to do it because uh you know that we have uh to to face to a big giant like microsoft slack and so on so we have to to uh to to get uh our trademark known by people so yeah we need to to do heads yeah now that makes a lot of sense very interesting now when i look at ahrefs um you were spending back in may of 2016 on paid ads across 230 keywords today you're almost running no paid ads um and your inbound organic keywords your traffic is about only fifteen hundred dollars uh sorry fifteen hundred unique clicks sort of per month well i was gonna say i'm curious so this might just be because it's only in a certain region so are you running most your ads targeting only europe yeah we do okay we stop we stop to to uh to to focus uh us because it's it's it's useless we don't sell to u.s people we sell to europe people we sell to uh north people to african canada indonesia brazil but not us because u.s is also you know a competitive market and so yeah we do we don't spend any any ads into us for sure yeah okay that makes sense very good well this is great i'm glad to see that you're growing any plans to raise capital not yet all right we're still going you know like this and because uh for for life for next year i i hope i'm going to to be more than 5 million turnover for for next year all right so yeah if you know if we work hard and even with the crisis yeah and because of the team and because it's not only me it's all the team behind me at the gym spot you know it's a it's a great team i i like to work with my colleagues so it's a it's a for me you know it's my third company it's more human story that is so wonderful in this market and and to change the way the people work that's a great you know story for us because we see companies changing the way they work so it's uh it's quite amazing and very exciting for us yeah well we're rooting for you we're out of time so quick answers here on the famous five allen number one what's your favorite business book oh my it's uh always and always from good to great number two is there a ceo you're following or studying i i i i said the ceo of slack is pretty impressive number three seven billion dollars yeah so much that'll be that'll be that'll be you soon you one day number three what's your favorite online tool for building jamespot my online tool yep no i would say it's uh it's by drive you know it's the the crm we use by bribe very good number four how many hours of sleep do you eat every night sorry how many how many hours of sleep do you get every night oh seven and what's your situation married single kids i was diverse i am i have a good new life and you know what a new child that is three years old so i've got big child that are you know adults how many kids three now three wow and how old are you oh yes i'm 50. oh i would have guessed i was going to guess 43. all right 50. i win seven years it's okay all right last question alan what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 well i wish you know uh peace and and uh uh or and for all the world and all crises of coffee will be you know fade away guys there you have it james spot competing in the team management space internal hr tool sort of space right for helping teams stay on the same track with each other participating mainly competing in europe they just broke a four million dollar run rate up from 3.2 million a year ago 25 year-over-year growth bootstrapped profiting 40 dollars per month in revenue 250 customers 35 on the team 15 engineers they've got eight sales reps that start off at a 300 000 per year quota 110 net revenue retention and an 11 000 cac for under 12 month payback period as ellen continues to scale alan thanks for checking us the top thank you from paris and see 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 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 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hello everyone my guest today is alex he is a multi-entrepreneur in software and co-founder of ra sam which he sold the sales and ceo of jamespot collaboration platform today which plays again in the collaboration platform space are you ready to take it to the top yeah ready okay very good tell us what jamespot does and how you guys make money what's the revenue model well you know we are a french european company software and we are all in one collaboration solution so we changed the way the organization worked together you know in this digital age okay and what does that mean i mean are you how do you bill are you sas platform yeah we are fully sas platform 100 cloud-based and we deliver 18 applications for organizations to work together better you know that make everyday project collaboration innovation faster and easier for our collaborators okay so just are you like in that marketplace or do people buy pay one time and get access to seven different tools no yeah we we have a uh it's more like you know an intranet or enterprise social network all in one base all in what collaboration software okay so what do people pay on average per month for this well uh we had more than 200 customers now because you know we work with bluetooth and so on and the average price you know for a user you asked for me yeah now for a brand for a brand oh for brand it depends how many users you have inside well what is the average number of users oh it's about uh 500 to 1 000. that's and what are they pay per user they pay produce about seven euros okay so we'll call it we'll call it eight us dollars so 500 i wanted to make the translation in dollars for you and for all the world because we have different prices uh whenever sometimes it's uh it's quite the same we have a quite discount for dollars people so just be clear 500 seats it sounds like you said with an average of eight bucks a seat that's essentially a brand paying you on average four grand a month something like that yeah exactly okay and can i multiply times 200 brands you're doing about 800 000 per month right now yeah because you know uh we have some uh customers are smaller than these that's why i asked for an average so what's the average customer pay per month [Music] uh it will be 1 000 okay so you're doing more like 200 000 per month right now exactly how today our annual record in revenue is about two million dollars okay great that's wonderful and where were you exactly if you're doing call it 200 grand today a month what were you doing exactly a year ago we are i didn't understand the question you say where we are the last year one year ago so january of 2018 how much were you doing per month yeah yeah 1.5 million euros so we have done a 40 percent growth last year yeah so you're about 125 000 us dollars a year ago now you're about 200 thousand dollars per month and we are going to 3 million euros so that's mean 3.3 uh million dollars by the end of this year yeah with 50 uh persons of of growth this year because it's a huge market today okay so what's the team size today how many people we are 12 20 people okay and everyone's based in france yeah they are all based you know some in europe but maybe in france and we start we work with broad people so uh because we have to make sales and customers success management locally based for people that are not in the same you know time as we are yep and have you bootstrapped this company or raised capital no it's fully bootstrapped but the first company i've based horizon to call from a cell to tallest was with vc and but jamesport is a 100 bootstrap company we and it's a different very interesting model that you know from vcs and so are you uh burning capital today or you're casual positive oh oh excuse me bless you thank you uh no we are we are positive today uh with um very good uh a big day about how much like 10 20 more than this for this year oh that's great so let me ask you as an entrepreneur when you have free cash flow each year what do you do with it you let it sit in the bank or you pay out a dividend or what no what we do we make we reinvest our 80 persons and adding 20 for you know the the bfa you know the money you need to to when you are in uh you know full growth so you need you know have money because you have to pay before hiring people for instance sales people uh or marketing actions so um but mainly we reinvest all and do to make this growth happen yeah and when did you launch the company what year the company uh was lunch is 2005 but the product was lunch is 209 so it's a ten years product that's a bootstrap time for for european we are we are sometimes slower that you are in us yeah no i i think there's nothing wrong with slow bootstrapped growth um tell me how you got your first 10 customers the first 10 customers were coming because we uh we were dealing with you know very people that was looking for something very new because at this time you know social platform were not uh very very uh you know no um and so it was by network first uh people you know people trust you people know tell me specifically though because everyone can say that specifically who was the first person you sold to and how did you know them so the first i sell was a guy that i knew that do business for us in the previous life and so he jump in in the company and say he need this to to better deal with his salespeople and so that's why it was the first customer and the second one uh was you know a huge company uh which one total you know total tltal yeah it's one of the five major accounts in the world and uh they need some collaborative tools to make their uh what we call a survey and uh in internal uh how did you know this who'd you get in touch with there this was a previous customer in my previous company okay of pre oh god of the previous company and you knew what was the title of the person you sold to there um at this time it was more people into innovation process but and the second time it was more uh deal with people of communication internal communication hr head of hr not really hr more communication and organization inside people who think about the way people work together interesting okay very good and then what's churn look like today what is sorry churn so our churn is about uh five persons per year only okay five yeah a very few uh uh churn because we do a lot of you know uh intensive work to to uh to understand why people are going to collaborate on jansport is that revenue churn or logo churn uh this is a revenue term okay so five percent revenue return and then do you have expansion on the on the same cohort or no yeah we have expansion into uh the other ones of course and it's about uh uh 10 or 15 percent here okay so your net revenue retention is what about 110 yeah yeah because we when you add this and you uh subtract the other one that's why we are inflating uh and it's a very uh it's one of the reason of our growth where is the 15 expansion coming from what are you upselling to old customers two things the first thing is that we have a customers that have more user because we are dealing with growing companies so they put more employee that's the first things the second one is that we have an upselling model with applications because into gemspot you can add new application you are going to buy and so then you have more use of the of the system with new usage your new way of using the solution very good how aggressive are you being to get a new customer that pays you a grand a month will you spend the first year acv to get the customer yeah so the first year uh it's about eight thousand uh dollars so we are we are profitable about you know uh nine nine months in nine months you you have what we call a cost acquisition cost yeah it's about nine and then that eight thousand is fully weighted are you including salespeople salaries and productions fully weighted with sales machines uh people of uh marketings including ever you know uh general gna that i put inside you know i put a a part of all you know the the expense we have into this so it's not you know it's a really a full costed customer acquisition cost very good all right let's wrap up here on with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book so um i i would tell you we have uh uh it's a it's into the the news today we have renault nissan you know this uh those are cara uh yes yeah nissan but it's uh it's also renault that's more famous in europe because nissan is in u.s but uh renault is in europe we have l'oreal you know we've all you know the cosmetic stuffs uh l'oreal pascagoula phobia uh yeah it's uh it's uh so what's your question is what's your favorite business book what does mean the february's book sorry your favorite business uh a book you read you open a book and you read it what's your favorite business book oh sorry i didn't understand at all no problem it's i would say i was looking back to see if i can show you it's the sales acceleration formula the cell's acceleration formula that's a good one number two from the up spot and the second one is this one yeah it's by near all that's a good one sorry i didn't understand at all it was booking you know booking with no problem number number two is there a ceo you're following or studying oh true so many ones i would say the ceos i'm following is uh if we said the big ones uh for me uh i say peter thiel is very interesting uh one uh number three what's your favorite online tool for building the company favorite tool yep i would say or build up a company very tall it's good from performance to excellence from good to great you know what is your favorite online tool for building like your company oh online tool i would say today it's pi drive it's like number four how many hours of sleep to get every night oh uh seven and what's your situation married single kids i am uh diverse and i have a new kids of two years you know with my new uh wife okay so one one kid oh i have i have two big kids you know that my daughter has 23 years so three kids total three kids what are you i am 49 49 and last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew what is your what's something you wish you knew when you were 20. ah i don't know where what i knew was then 20. i was doing programming that was i was a geek when i was young what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 ah wishing you [Music] two you know to to to make a big concert of music because i'm a musician too i don't know if this is to answer the question but uh very good guys there you have it again from alan is building james spot a collaboration tool 200 customers right now using it paying a grand per month so 200 grand a month right now in sales up from 125 grand a month just a year ago they've got about 20 ebitda so healthy cash flow margin bootstrap team of 20 in france 5 revenue churn 15 expansion for net revenue retention of 110 he's paying eight grand to get a new customer worth 12 000 a year so a nine month payback period as he looks to scale uh thank you for taking us to the top thank you tom