How JoyQR CEO Dante Colombatti grew JoyQR to $2.1K revenue and 25 customers in 2024.

he runs marketing at 106 year old wine brand and said you know what we've got to have a better version of QR codes to track attribution he launched Joy QR on the side spend 113 000 bucks building the MVP now over the last 30 days or over the last quarter 16 589 scans across 58 QR codes distributed across TV Billboards Transit print media and packaging it's helping them grow the brand he's opened it up to everyone else to purchase now that can pay five bucks a month to get access they're doing 140 bucks a month right now in Revenue but again uh side project eating his own dog food we'll see what happens next hey folks my guest today is Dante colombati he's a techie digital marketing Pioneer and marketing design director at rubioli Family wines of San Antonio Winery as the fourth generation of 160 year old San Antonio Winery LA's largest Among Us producing Winery he not only understands the importance of tradition but has carried on the family Legacy to help catapult the economic iconic Winery to the National stage and on the side he's building a QR code and bio link Builder that's a shocker there right called joyqr.com we're going to dive into both of them today Dante you ready to take us to the top let's do it Nathan the Sass legend himself let's take it to the dog what's the connective tissue between the winery and the QR business oh my gosh so funny story I run all the marketing for one of our brands that my family owns is called Stella Rosa wines and we do ton of Idaho media traditional all types holistically a 360 approach and I was trying to find a QR code that I can customize that could also be directed to a custom link and bio page and that was where it all kind of started I got aggravated by talking I assumed this was four layers Stella Rosa labels no not just labels yes on the back of labels but uh also traditional Idaho media like Billboards tv ads and I was kind of frustrated how I just didn't want a black box that didn't fit you know look at we got style you and I got style it's all about branding and marketing and advertising you want to be you want to have opportunity to kind of have a say in that style I think of that of that of that whole ad campaign and so having a black box there sometimes isn't isn't the prettiest thing I want to get people in your head though for a bit I mean 106 year old Winery with Stella Rosa which everybody knows I mean if you guys don't know it just read your what you look in your wine thing now you probably have Stella Rosa I mean I imagine that that is not a small business so you this must have been like a massive pain point for you to carve out time go find engineers and actually build joyqr.com yeah no it was uh it was it was a struggle uh again I was just getting frustrated because you know my team was actually kind of laughing they're like QR codes like that's never gonna work you know and I was like look I guarantee you and this is early pandemic I said look we put a QR code on our on our on our out of home or on our tv ads let's just kind of use that as another leverage to understand if if our consumers are sticky enough and are willing to scan and what do we have to lose and lo and behold we were probably the first one of the first Brands to actually use QR codes during early pandemic and it believe it or not people scan and uh the more I got into it the more I realized like it was driving me crazy not to be able to customize a QR code and direct it to a place other than a single link URL how many QR code scans did Stella Rosa process last month last 30 days uh let me look uh we did 60 58. okay so and we just 58 scans or 58 QR codes no no no no no no we did 58 QR codes and we're at uh we're at uh in the last we're at uh 16 589 in the last 30 days you lost 30 days and those 58 QR codes are across your Billboards TV commercials where else yeah TV commercials we have uh out of home media so uh Transit uh TV uh print media Billboards and uh I think I'm forgetting something but uh and regular print it could be flyers or whatnot and also packaging so we do a lot of interesting packaging for different uh different stellarosa I'm just using stellarosa as the example here uh different packaging right so seasonal packaging at Costco or whatnot and we can actually uh engage our audience then drive them to contest or whatnot um buy QR to a bio link page oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for evaluation this year now the secret valuation is there's many different 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back into the interview of the 16 589 scans can you track how many of them led to a sale you know what we use a third party for that so uh we we do use a third party for that but it is you know QR codes have been around forever right and it's it's nothing like it's nothing crazy shockingly uh uh sophisticated really about them until you know obviously in the last few years you know IOS and Android decided to make it more uh the QR code scanner be accessible on your phone onto your camera right and back in the day you're like downloading all these apps to try to figure out okay what app is going to work with what QR code without what QR company but but yeah no now uh the trackability it's it's pretty you know you get your your how many scans where they come from the city the state uh you can get pretty you get pretty like uh granule on where they're coming from uh time breaks type of uh type of system breakdowns uh you know the the typical stuff you've got a lot lot of creatives I mean you know it's Stella time Billboards uh in Colorado a taste magic Billboards celebrate your party during elections you know it's celebration with beautiful women you've got them all right we're gonna we're gonna have at the next SAS conference we're we're promoting it we just give out the new Brandy with the artist Brandy we're gonna I got the I gotta uh I gotta hook you up I would love and I love that man as long as you have a QR code in your back in the back of the stage okay done that's done this is interesting so just to be clear is the QR code joy QR are you the only customer or have you opened up for other people to pay for it yeah so I have so our first like technically our first line of code was in uh in May of uh of 2021 and then we created this kind of beta MVP thing uh in April of 22. and I had been using it with with uh during that time for Our Brands and then I opened it up and put some silly financial model behind it uh like totally underpriced the thing and how much what were you charging like 1.99 a month and 3.99 a month for the pro version so there's a freemium it's a freemium version then there's the uh the Plus for 199 and then there was the pro for 3.99 I mean you might as well just be free right I I you know at that time MVP buddy just trying to get it out there see what happens man so uh but yeah we had a few a few people like uh just randomly be able to find it through probably my Brands and um and and signed up and uh now as of August um which about five months or so ago we've actually uh put out new features and now it's officially launched uh five months ago and you've got five bucks a month now 13 bucks a month is that the most expensive plan 13 a month yeah that's the mode we do have a between us we have an Enterprise version for hopefully agencies in the future which uh we don't really have a financial it's more kind of broken down depending on what they're kind of looking for uh but we hope to get to that that point because I think this is a really great tool because of the analytics and and how you can organize and manage your campaigns most importantly like as you know Stellaris has we have 20 campaigns just for that one brand and be able to organize your QR codes organize your bio Pages cross-reference um which a b which which advertisement worked right which one worked the most was sticky enough and you can you can compare that through our dashboard um so it's super easy to do that makes tons of sense how much money did you spend building it yeah um I spent two day I spent about uh hundred and thirteen thousand dollars and what's that broken down as where to go I went all into uh uh pretty much the beginning uh went through like a couple ux designers one uh that did it this didn't work out just kind of trial and error and then kind of finally found the right crew the right team and uh it went into uh ux UI and into development yep how did you find the development firm that you used uh so a funny story for my personal Brands I used a company called uh called top child to just do our our company's websites and from there I met kind of built a bond and a friendship after these projects were done kept in contact with our developer uh Daniel and uh he lives in Slovakia and uh we kind of kept this relationship going I was in the shower one day after getting mad about this company uh not being able to do this this creative QR connected with a bio page which you think this company the leader in this space would be able would have this thing uh and they gave me a little attitude taking a shower listening to your podcast said what would Nathan do he would just say go get go create the stamp staffs you did not you did not you you thought what would Nathan do I kid you not I have okay this is I've been look buddy I've been listening since 2015. and I don't know I'm not I'm an OG I'm not a tech guy right I'm like hey I'm like a cpg beverage advertising marketing guy and so I was like man this is really neat one day I'd love to try this out and I'm hearing all these awesome entrepreneurs you have on your on your show and I was like what can I do on that and after getting this these email chains from this one large company about how like oh no it's not gonna happen we're not like thank you and just keep checking in like I'm gonna refresh every day this company's page to see if they have this feature I said you know what in my shower I was like let's just do this call Daniel and Slovakia said hey man crazy idea let's go for it uh wait wait put the baby put the baby in the in the deep end of the water and just wait for it and I mean what I what I find myself wanting like when I look at your website so what I love about your story is you built a tool for yourself like that is obviously like the most successful Founders this is always how it starts the flip side to this is the largest QR code companies in the world their number one mode is SEO like they free QR code Builder like they just freaking dominate it's gonna be very hard for you to displace them but where you can win but see you don't have this on your website where you could win is say streamline your digital marketing with joy QR specifically for wine Brands you know and then feature your face and Stella and then basically every wine brand uses you but see you might not want that because then they compete with you so it's like this weird The Balancing Act you know I just took some notes so keep talking but I um honestly I think that's a great idea yeah SEO and sem these guys are I mean one of the bigger competitors out there I mean he's like ex-ceo of AOL right I mean the amount of money that they got you know looking at sem rush and not that it's completely correct um but they are they are spending you know hundreds of thousands of dollars a month there's all these are QR code generator my QR code I mean you've heard of all these books but like they're not as beautiful as yours they're nothing like that they just get the job done and they rank really high on SEO because they've been around forever I mean by the way my recommendation was not like that wasn't a that's I wouldn't do that if I mean my question to you is you don't necessarily want other wine Brands using this if you think it's a massive Advantage for Stella no you know what uh on the contrary man I think this is a tool that I think every Winery Brewery brand if you're an influencer um I think should should utilize a tool like this and I think it's you know it's it's important I think I'm not selfish I think this is a tool that anyone can use and it's kind of cool if other whiners use it um and I wouldn't I wouldn't be I wouldn't be uh upset about that actually how many paying customers today so we had a whopping 20 uh 25 members and on the paid and we have 6 700 on the free wow and that's pretty to what 25 times 60 was that 1500 bucks a month in Revenue that's nice uh actually no it's so it's 20 so 25 users that uh we've had that are paying that actually were part of both the MBP so there's a couple straddlers in there that hits the 199 399 you know a month so you know what's mrr today 500 bucks uh it's a 140. 145 I love this this is ground floor baby I love it 140 bucks brother but uh two bucks of Stella wine bottles it's it's two bottles maybe not even I think it's actually uh less than two models that's awesome okay so so so but you're building it you're using yourself you're eating your own dog food it's building the value of Stella it's also now its own side project which is great how many folks are full-time on it right now or is it none just just you and your engineers on top towel yeah I know so there's no top tell engineer anymore that Daniel is just a buddy of mine that we kept after that contract and so he's kind of my my right hand CTO uh but we only do this on the side so I only do this on weekends and he puts in a couple hours a week uh we have one uh full-time engineer uh but also from Slovakia and he is our boy and he just rocks this thing out full time and I think you know I got the SAS bug so you know this Project's kind of uh kind of almost out of completion I think we will add a new feature for animated QRS which I'm pretty excited about I think will be one of the first to do like an animated QR that actually um you could still scan and it has animation to it on uh you can on a digital TV or whatnot um so we have that feature and then we'll probably move into another fun project and SAS and keep the team rolling so very cool man I love this all right let's wrap up here with the famous five number one favorite book uh it would be zero to one uh Blake Madison and uh Peter Thiel number two is our CEO you're following our studying uh uh yeah gosh everyone's a CEO now um I I no not really I think just number three from everybody before but besides Joy what's your favorite online tool for building a brand kind of sounds funny but Skype figma number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night I get six to seven that's good in situation married single kids ah man I'm single man I heard from your last podcast I need to get some cheese platters and go on upstairs and Gathering some I'm awesome it doesn't feel terrible honestly all right and how old are you Dante we're doing okay I'm 37. 37 last question something you wishing you when you were 20. 20. I would say just you know go with your gut I think a lot of people overthink things with their mind and over emotional eyes with their heart sometimes you gotta have that little pit in your stomach and then just go all the way and don't stop guys he runs marketing at 100 he runs marketing at 106 year old wine brand and said you know what we've got to have a better version of QR codes to track attribution he launched Joy QR on the side spent 113 000 bucks building the MVP now over the last 30 days or over the last quarter 16 589 scans across 58 QR codes distributed across TV Billboards Transit print media and packaging it's helping him grow the brand he's open it up to everyone else to purchase now they can pay five bucks a month to get access they're doing 140 bucks a month right now in Revenue but again uh side project eating his own dog food we'll see what happens next Dante thanks for taking us to the top thanks man have a good one one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm 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 our poo 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 2PM 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 nathanlacka.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 and 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 all right I'll be in the comments see ya