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Founder Interview

How Jamespot Reached $4M Revenue and 250 Customers While Staying Bootstrapped and Profitable (Interview with CEO Alain Garnier)

Interview Date
December 1, 2020
Interviewee
Alain GarnierCo-Founder and CEO
Watch
Watch the full interview

Company Metrics at Interview Time

Annual Revenue (2020)

$4M

Customers (2020)

250

Year-over-Year Growth (2020)

25%

Monthly Profit (2020)

$40,000

Team Size (2020)

35

Historical Snapshot

These numbers were reported by Alain Garnier during the interview recorded in December 2020 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Jamespot’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways

  • 01Jamespot reached $4M in annual revenue in 2020, up 25% year over year
  • 02The company serves 250 customer logos with 400,000 total users across the platform
  • 03Jamespot is fully bootstrapped and generating $40,000 in profit per month
  • 04The team is 35 people, including 15 engineers and 8 quota-carrying sales reps
  • 05New sales reps start with a $300,000 annual new ARR quota, doubling with four years of experience
  • 06Customer acquisition cost is EUR 8,000 (about $10,000)
  • 07Annual gross churn runs between 8% and 10%
  • 08Jamespot expanded into Spain in 2020 and is targeting broader European growth
  • 09Content marketing including ebooks and white papers is the primary customer acquisition channel
  • 10The company spent EUR 30,000 on a French business TV channel (BFM) campaign in 2020 to build brand awareness

Company Metrics at Time of Interview

MetricValueSource
Annual Revenue (2020)$4MFounder interview, Dec 2020
Year-over-Year Growth (2020)25%Founder interview, Dec 2020
Customers (2020)250Founder interview, Dec 2020
Total Users (all tiers) (2020)400,000Founder interview, Dec 2020
Monthly Profit (2020)$40,000Founder interview, Dec 2020
Team Size (2020)35Founder interview, Dec 2020
Engineers (2020)15Founder interview, Dec 2020
Sales Reps (2020)8Founder interview, Dec 2020
New Rep Annual Quota (2020)$300,000Founder interview, Dec 2020
Annual Gross Churn (2020)Between 8% and 10%Founder interview, Dec 2020
Customer Acquisition Cost (2020)EUR 8,000 (about $10,000)Founder interview, Dec 2020
TV Advertising Spend (BFM) (2020)EUR 30,000Founder interview, Dec 2020

Growth Breakdown

Revenue

Jamespot reported $4M in annual revenue in 2020, representing 25% year-over-year growth. The company is fully bootstrapped, and asked about plans to raise capital, Alain Garnier said: "Not yet."

Customers and Users

The platform serves 250 paying customer logos. Total users across all tiers, including the free external users that come in each customer's package and the lower-priced external users added beyond it, reached 400,000. Notable customers include BNP and BPI banking.

Team

The team is 35 people, with 15 engineers and 8 quota-carrying sales reps. It also has a lot of customer success managers, because customers increasingly expect, for the price they pay, people who help them onboard onto the product easily and get their project moving fast.

Profitability

Jamespot generates approximately $40,000 in profit per month while remaining fully bootstrapped. The company has no plans to raise external capital and is using profits to fund expansion into Spain and broader European markets.

Growth Strategy

Content Marketing

Jamespot's primary acquisition channel is content production, including ebooks, white papers, and guides that explain how to launch a project, its difficulties and its steps. According to Alain Garnier, this content-first approach is the company's main acquisition expense.

Paid Search and Digital Acquisition

The company runs Google Ads and other digital acquisition campaigns, none of them aimed at the US. Jamespot stopped spending on US-targeted ads entirely ("We don't sell to US people") and sells in Europe and in markets such as Canada, Indonesia and Brazil.

TV Advertising for Brand Awareness

In 2020 Jamespot spent EUR 30,000 on advertising on BFM, a French business television channel, to build brand recognition against large competitors like Microsoft and Slack. Alain reported the campaign improved Jamespot's trademark awareness meaningfully.

COVID-Driven Expansion Upsells

The COVID-19 crisis drove existing customers to adopt more of the platform, including purchasing additional apps from Jamespot's in-product app store such as video conferencing tools. This increased upsell revenue from the existing customer base.

Geographic Expansion

Jamespot opened Spain as a new market in 2020 and is pursuing broader European expansion as its primary growth vector, leveraging its bootstrapped profitability to self-fund entry into new markets.

Best Quotes

“So now in turnover, we are about $4,000,000 turnover.”
“That's mean that we have been at 25% of growth this year.”
“So we are 35 people now in the team.”
“CAC is about, I know it's in Euro, I would say Euro, so it's about $10,000 ... It's about 8,000 Euro.”
“Well, we spend more money in acquisition, digital acquisition. ... we do a lot of production of content, ebooks, ... white papers. We do a lot of content work very hard on this 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 give a lot of contents. That's our main expenses. And a little this year we buy some TV show in France.”
“It was not so much. It was August, it was 30,000 euros.”
“In the past twelve months, it was not so much because less than before because I think that people needs our solutions. It's about eight or 10% year.”
“For next year, I hope I'm going to be more than 5 millions turnover for next year.”

What Happened Next

At the time of this December 2020 interview, Jamespot was a bootstrapped, profitable French collaborative SaaS platform with $4M in annual revenue and 250 customers. Alain Garnier stated the company had no plans to raise outside capital and was focused on European expansion. Visit the Jamespot company profile on GetLatka for current metrics and updated figures.

View Jamespot’s current profile and metrics

Full Transcript

Chapters

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is a familiar face, Alain Garnier. He is the founder and CEO and serial entrepreneur focused on digital b two b SaaS products. He's president of non... The nonprofits EFEL, which is software in Europe and hashtag play digital movement. He's also a music electro producer and practitioner now building a SaaS collaborative platform called jamespot.com. Alain, you ready to take us to top?

Alain Garnier

00:24Yeah. Nathan. Happy to talk with you again.

Nathan Latka

00:27Me 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?

Alain Garnier

00:33Two years ago. Our company has changed a lot because we have a lot of growth, new customers, lot of change in the landscape and in the landscape of the collaborative tools that changed too.

Annual Revenue and Growth Rate

Nathan Latka

00:46Yep. So in 2018, when we spoke, were doing about $2,400,000 in terms of annual run rate. Where are you at today?

Alain Garnier

00:53So now in turnover, we are about $4,000,000 turnover.

Nathan Latka

00:59What does that mean?

Alain Garnier

01:02That's mean that we have been at 25% of growth this year.

Nathan Latka

01:06Okay. So you're doing about $330,000 a month in revenue?

Alain Garnier

01:11Yeah. It's MRR you say revenue, monthly revenue recurring.

Nathan Latka

01:17Yeah. It's 330,000?

Alain Garnier

01:20Yeah.

Nathan Latka

01:20Okay. So that puts you at about a $4,000,000 run rate and yeah, about 25, 30% year over year growth. Where do you get the growth from? You're in a very competitive space. How are you finding customers?

Alain Garnier

01:30Well, you know, we are about 400,000 users now, and this year was a special year because of the crisis of COVID, of course. Then we have huge growth of people wanting to work remotely, and then we have, for instance, French Health Agency with 80,000 people getting into Jamespot. So you see it's a huge move. We have also BNP banking, BPI banking. So new customers that then we are not used to use our software because now they

02:10have to because of the crisis and the need to stay home working.

Customer Base and User Count

Nathan Latka

02:14So how many customers logos are on your platform today?

Alain Garnier

02:18We've got two fifty.

Nathan Latka

02:21250. How many paid seats?

Alain Garnier

02:25We've got 400,000

02:33seats.

Nathan Latka

02:34So 400,000 paid seats across two fifty businesses?

Alain Garnier

02:38We've got

02:40some external that are low price because you have the full seat and when you buy a Jamespot, you have a package of free external people of your company that you can use. Then after a number, you will pay for lower external. So the user I say it's the old user we have in all, all, completely all.

Product Positioning and Competitors

Nathan Latka

03:01And tell us what folks are paying you for.

Alain Garnier

03:05The pain we try to, what we do for organization is 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 and you choose to change the way you work, where you live. We do the same for our customers because with Jamespot, they're going to plug a lot of apps so they can work like they are. We have

03:39this modularization of how you work. That's what we are very different of other solutions.

Nathan Latka

03:46Who would you compare yourself to? Who are you closest to?

Alain Garnier

03:50Well, in Europe, we are close to the part of Microsoft or three sixty five, Because in this, you find all the things to work with documents, communication, and chatting, and doing social network inside, all those elements. That's what we are the close

04:16and Workplace from Facebook too. So we have major big competitors.

Bootstrapped and Profitable

Nathan Latka

04:22And now, Alain, are you still bootstrapped and profitable?

Alain Garnier

04:26Yeah.

Nathan Latka

04:27Oh, I love that.

Alain Garnier

04:28More than ever. And because of the growth, we have the ability of going faster. For instance, we opened Spain this year. We've got Spain,

04:40it's a new market for us. So we are going to go into Europe and that's the way we develop ourselves. Here we do bootstrapping.

Monthly Profit

Nathan Latka

04:48And so how much profit are you doing per month now?

Alain Garnier

04:55I say for per month about 40,000 to 50,000 dollars I would say.

Nathan Latka

05:03Dollars 50,000?

Alain Garnier

05:07No, 50, sorry.

Nathan Latka

05:10No. How much profit are you doing? You're doing 330,000 in revenue?

Alain Garnier

05:15Amounts, it's about this because I make

05:1740,000.

Nathan Latka

05:21Okay. Yeah. That's what I was asking, dollars 40,000.

Alain Garnier

05:23Sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. Sure. 40 would be very short, you know, to have bootstrapping.

Team Size, Engineers, and Sales Reps

Nathan Latka

05:30Yeah. Okay. Got it. And and talk to me about what you've done with the team over the past couple of years. How many people are on the team today?

Alain Garnier

05:37So we are 35 people now in the team.

Nathan Latka

05:41Many engineers?

Alain Garnier

05:42A lot of engineers, of course, but not also marketing, sales people, lot of CSM to do a relationship with customers because it's a change in the market because the more we go, the more we see customer expects that for the price they pay, they have people that help them to onboard on the product easily and make the project fast. So we have teams to do this completely inside Jamespot.

Nathan Latka

06:12How many engineers?

Alain Garnier

06:14How many engineers? 15.

Nathan Latka

06:1615. Okay. Any quota carrying sales reps?

Alain Garnier

06:21Sales reps, have eight sales reps.

Nathan Latka

06:24Eight. Alain, do you give them a quota?

Alain Garnier

06:27Yeah, we do.

Nathan Latka

06:29What's their quota? If I joined your team today, what quota would you give me?

Alain Garnier

06:33So the quota and you see it is lower than in US. It

06:40depends of the seniority of the sales. You start with, I would say $300,000 a year and it goes up and it double when you have four years of experience.

Nathan Latka

06:57Someone that's just starting, you expect them to close $300,000 in new annual recurring revenue in their first twelve months?

Churn and Upsell Revenue

Alain Garnier

07:04Yep.

Nathan Latka

07:04I see. Interesting. Obviously your space churn is really critical. What's your churn, your revenue churn over the past twelve months?

Alain Garnier

07:13In the past twelve months, it was not so much because less than before because I think that people needs our solutions. It's about eight or 10% year.

Nathan Latka

07:27Okay. How much expansion revenue do you have?

Alain Garnier

07:31What is expansion revenue?

Nathan Latka

07:33All your upsells. Ignore new customer additions, but what you upsell old customer.

Alain Garnier

07:37Is the exact price for this? Sorry.

Nathan Latka

07:39Okay. That's okay. You told me last time you had 5% churn and 15% expansion for 110% net revenue retention. Sound like you're still about the same spot?

Alain Garnier

07:50Yeah, because it's quickly the same. We have downsized the churn and the expansion was more because we have a lot of companies that use the Jamespot just for communication and because of COVID crisis, they use it for home working. So it's much more using, they have to pay more for apps because we have an inside app store in Jamespot, you buy for apps to make upsell into the, so they buy some new apps, for instance, video

08:23conferencing or meetings and stuff like this that they didn't choose before. So yeah, we have better upselling this year.

Customer Acquisition Cost

Nathan Latka

08:30How are you getting customers today? What's your CAC?

Alain Garnier

08:34CAC is about, I know it's in Euro, I would say Euro, so it's about $10,000 in

Nathan Latka

08:34Okay.

Alain Garnier

08:34It's about 8,000 Euro.

Nathan Latka

08:47Where are you spending that money?

Alain Garnier

08:49Price I know is are in euros. I have to convert everything for you. You.

Nathan Latka

08:55We appreciate. Everyone listening and I really appreciate that. So thank you. Where are you spending that money?

Acquisition Channels and Content Strategy

Alain Garnier

09:03Well, we spend more money in acquisition, digital acquisition.

09:09Ads, Google Ads, of course, we buy some paid return because we do a lot of production of content, ebooks,

09:21what we call nice figure

09:26white papers. We do a lot of content work very hard on this to 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 we give a lot of contents. That's our main expenses. And a little this year we buy some TV show in France.

Nathan Latka

09:46How much have you spent on TV?

Alain Garnier

09:50How many money you want to pay?

Nathan Latka

09:52Yeah, money.

Alain Garnier

09:52It was not so much. It was August, it was 30,000 euros.

Nathan Latka

09:52€30,000?

Alain Garnier

09:52Yeah, it was, you know, in dedicated

10:08TV for business people, know, in France.

Nathan Latka

10:08Did it work?

Alain Garnier

10:08It's called BFM.

Nathan Latka

10:08Did it work?

Alain Garnier

10:08Yeah, because it make a lot of awareness that Jamespot become a

10:24trademark that was better known than before. So we are going to do it because you know that we have to face to big giant like Microsoft, Slack, and so on. So we have get our trademark known by people. So yeah, we need to do ads. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:44Now that makes a lot of sense. Very interesting. Now when I look at Ahrefs, you were spending back in May 2016 on paid ads across 230 keywords. Today, you're almost running no paid ads, and your inbound organic keywords, your traffic is about only $1,500, sorry, 1,500 unique clicks sort of per month.

Alain Garnier

11:08I'm...

Nathan Latka

11:08I was gonna say I'm curious. So this might just be because it's only in a certain region. So are you running most of your ads targeting only Europe?

Alain Garnier

11:17Yeah, we do.

Nathan Latka

11:17Okay.

Alain Garnier

11:17We stopped we stopped to to to focus US because it's it's it's useless. We don't sell to US people. We sell to Europe people. We sell to North people, to African, Canada, Indonesia, Brazil, but not US. Because US is also, you know, a competitive market. And so yeah, we do, we don't spend any, any ads into US for sure.

Plans to Raise Capital and Revenue Target

Nathan Latka

11:43Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Very good. Well, this is great. I'm glad to see that you're growing. Any plans to raise capital?

Alain Garnier

11:50Not yet. We're All still going, you know, like this and because for next year, I hope I'm going to be more than 5 millions turnover for next year.

Nathan Latka

12:03All right.

Alain Garnier

12:04So if we work hard and even with the crisis and because of the team and because it's not only me, it's all the team behind me at Jamespot. It's a great team. Like to work with my colleagues.

12:19For 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 quite amazing and very exciting for us.

Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

12:39Yeah. Well, we're rooting for you. We're out of time. So quick answers here on the famous five, Alain. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Alain Garnier

12:46Oh, favorite, it's Always and Always From Good to Great.

Nathan Latka

12:51Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Alain Garnier

12:55I I said a CEO of Slack is pretty impressive.

Nathan Latka

12:58Number three... 7 billions dollars.

Alain Garnier

13:01That's so much.

Nathan Latka

13:03That'll be that'll be that'll be you soon. You one day. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Jamespot?

Alain Garnier

13:10My online tool?

Nathan Latka

13:10Yep.

Alain Garnier

13:10No, I would say it's Pipedrive, it's the CRM we use, Pipedrive, very good.

Nathan Latka

13:20Number four, How many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Alain Garnier

13:23Sorry? How many?

Nathan Latka

13:24How many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Alain Garnier

13:27Oh, seven.

Nathan Latka

13:29And what's your situation? Married? Single? Kids?

Alain Garnier

13:32I was divorced. I'm... 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.

Nathan Latka

13:42How many kids?

Alain Garnier

13:42Three now.

Nathan Latka

13:44Three. Wow. And how old are you?

Alain Garnier

13:47Oh, guess. I'm 50.

Nathan Latka

13:49Oh, I would have guessed... I was gonna guess 43. Right.

Alain Garnier

13:52I win seven years. It's okay for my living.

Nathan Latka

13:56All right. Last question, Alain. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Alain Garnier

14:01Well, I wish

Nathan Latka

14:19stay on the same track with each other participating, mainly competing in Europe. They just broke a $4,000,000 run rate up from 3,200,000 a year ago, 25% year over year growth, bootstrapped, profiting $40,000 per month in revenue, two fifty 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 twelve month payback period as Alain continues to scale.

14:45Alain, thanks for taking us to the top.

Alain Garnier

14:46Thank you from Paris and see you.

Nathan Latka

14:51One 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

15:15p. M. Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at two 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 SaaS world, whether it's

15:35an 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 wanna take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You wanna 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

15:57saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty 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

16:16people. We got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys' support. Alright. I'll be in the comments. See you.