How Leadmonk Reached $3.6K ARR and 50 Customers in 2022 with Zero Marketing Spend (Interview with CEO Naveen S G)

Introduction and Leadmonk Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Naveen s g. He's the cofounder of leadmonk.io, having twenty years of IT industry experience across sales, product development, consulting, and entrepreneurship. Leadmonk is an online appointment scheduling software. Naveen, are ready to take us to the top?

Naveen S G

00:15>> Yeah. Hi.

Nathan Latka

00:16I'm okay. Look. I'm looking forward to this and here's why. A lot of people go, you can't invent another appointment scheduling software. Calendly has already won. How would you respond?

Mobile-First Scheduling and the Case Against Calendly

Naveen S G

00:27>> Okay. As you know that we are all moving towards mobile first business world, and in this world, mobile number is fast becoming the customer identifier. And all the traditional softwares which are there, like Calendly, Acuity Scheduling, they're all built for email address based appointment only. So that's the reason we decided to come up with this. Because as you can see here, not everyone is comfortable using the email address, except millennials and working professionals. Think about people

00:58>> in the informal sectors, retired professionals who are not net savvy. So for them, if you ask them to book appointments only using email address, then it's a friction for them. Okay. And also in first, yeah, for some sectors, email address based appointment is not really not needed, like a real estate agent, insurance agent, doctor's appointment, dental appointment, they don't need See, mobile number is the customer identifier. You can call them, you can message them, you can

01:26>> send the quotation, you can do everything.

Nathan Latka

01:27I mean, When did you launch the company? What year?

Naveen S G

01:31>> Only in the no. This year, January.

Nathan Latka

01:33This year?

Naveen S G

01:33>> So it's been yeah. Eight months.

Nathan Latka

01:36What are you looking on this? How did you decide what your first pricing would be? What are customers paying you per month?

Naveen S G

01:42>> Right now they are paying $6 per month. That's an annual plan. So how we came up with this pricing is we just compared with the benchmark with the other applications that are available. We said like, why don't we introduce an introductory pricing so that people who are not familiar with this mobile number based appointment scheduling, they can explore it and if they like it, they can start using it. So that's the introductory pricing.

From 500 Free Users to 50 Paying Customers

Nathan Latka

02:06And what month did you sign up your first customer?

Naveen S G

02:09>> Last month, because last month only we activated the subscription. In fact, we had not activated. We had a lot of free users. We enabled the subscription and in the very first week itself, were fortunate to get a user, paid user

Nathan Latka

02:24from How many free signups did you have before you launched the paid plan?

Naveen S G

02:30>> We had 500 plus.

Nathan Latka

02:32500. Okay. And how many are now how many are now paying?

Naveen S G

02:36>> Yeah. 10 no. Around 10% of them are paying. Right now,

Nathan Latka

02:40we have got Five zero?

Naveen S G

02:41>> Yeah. Yes.

Nathan Latka

02:42So you went from zero to 50 customers in the past thirty days?

Zero Marketing Spend and 24-Country User Base

Naveen S G

02:47>> Yeah. Yeah. Past forty five days.

02:50>> Yes. And

02:51>> the main point is we have not invested even a dollar in the digital marketing campaign.

Nathan Latka

02:57Well, hold on. Before we go there before we go there, Naveen, so let me so you built a 500 person waitlist. How did you do that?

Naveen S G

03:06>> Okay. How they did is we went ahead and listed our leadmonk in all the listing sites. Name product hunt. Name a bunch of them. Yeah. Leadmonk. In every listing sites we listed.

Nathan Latka

03:16No, no, Navin, name a couple. Product Hunt, where else?

Naveen S G

03:20>> Yeah, Product Hunt and then GetApp, Capterra, all the review sites, like 50 plus review sites are there, like Good Business, SaaS Finder, and Google Workspace. Google Workspace is also Google Workspace Marketplace. Yeah, we get a lot of leads from there. And then there's Microsoft app marketplace, we get a lot of leads from there as well. So in all these marketplace we listed, and that's where from there we Now it's are free. Yeah, yes. And we have

03:48>> users from 24 countries.

Nathan Latka

03:51Oh, 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 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 your

04:15Stripe 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 get

04:39a 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.

04:52Right? So

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Sponsor: Founderpath Valuation Tool

Nathan Latka

06:14Alright. Let's jump back into the interview. Okay. So you list all these marketplaces for free. Is that the only tactic you use to build a waitlist of 500?

Naveen S G

06:22>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

06:22Okay. So you build the waitlist for five and when did you start building the waitlist? What month?

Naveen S G

06:29>> From January itself.

Nathan Latka

06:30Okay. So right at the beginning. January this year. January through sort of July, you're building a waitlist. You launched pricing in early July, now you have Okay. 50 So my next question is you have a 500 people on the waitlist. How did you convert 10 of those into paid customers? What was sort of the paywall that you put up?

Naveen S G

06:48>> So, I mean, they were all using this And like many of those customers did share the requirement as well. And to be honest, from that find, at least we could convert only like, hardly 10 customers, but remain 40 plus customers we've got in the last two months who are the new customers who came on board. See what happens is all these pilot customers, They will have some kind of a preconception like, okay, this platform is that

07:12>> this, okay, this, okay, some features are not there like that. But all the new customers who signed up in the last two months, they were very happy with that because when they signed up, they got most of the features they were expecting.

Nathan Latka

07:22Was there a I mean, did they sign up for

07:24a free trial or did they start paying on day one before they used it?

Naveen S G

07:27>> No. We have fourteen days trial period and we also have freemium model.

Nathan Latka

07:31Do you require a credit card in the free trial? No. Okay. So they went to your pricing page that says $6 per user per month best value. They click on Yes. They click on get started? Yes. And then what you basically say is, okay. And I'm actually doing this now so I can ask you better questions. I sign up for app.leadmonk.io. I I continue with Google, and eventually, I'm gonna basically say I can use it for

07:53free for fourteen days.

Naveen S G

07:55>> Yeah. Free for fourteen days. And if you have a basic scheduling requirement, it is free forever. If you if you have advanced scheduling requirement, then only you have to go for the subscription plan only after fourteen days.

Nathan Latka

08:06I love this though. Because once I sign up, see, a lot of people make the mistake of dropping people directly into UI. You're qualifying me. This page says complete your account setup. What does your day to day role at work looks like? And you have education, leader, freelancer, sales and marketing. Okay. So I'm gonna pick leader plus entrepreneur, and then you say update name and URL. So I'm customizing my booking page now with with with, who

08:27is Nathan still available?

Naveen S G

08:29>> Yeah. Yes. We have reserved it for you.

Nathan Latka

08:32Oh, I'm gonna did you really?

Naveen S G

08:34>> No. I'm

Nathan Latka

08:35just I

08:36almost got really excited. Okay. So now I'm connecting the calendar. Okay. Cool. So finish sign up. Okay. So where do I see okay. So now you drop me the UI and my trial in the upper right says fourteen days left. If I click it, it says I have 10 seats, trials expires in ten days. There's a coupon code for the annual plan. But what if okay. So what do people click here typically when they upgrade?

Naveen S G

08:58>> So when they upgrade, they just have to go and click on the $8 plan.

Nathan Latka

09:02I see for the year

Naveen S G

09:03>> when the yeah, $8 per month. That's in the end of but we also have given a coupon code where user can avail 25% discount on that as well.

Nathan Latka

09:11I see. So no one picks the $10 per month. They all pick the yearly one?

Naveen S G

09:15>> Yeah. All of our paid subscribers have opted for that as well because it's a bargain deal, 6 versus $10

Nathan Latka

09:23What about the text message credits? Do people buy a lot of those?

Naveen S G

09:27>> Yes. Like there is one the very first customer who is in a leading immigration law firm in Los Angeles. They buy, I mean, you know, because all their appointments are mobile number based. Like they book at least 30 appointments per day. And as if it is a mobile number, need SMS number to send the appointment confirmation reminders and all. And they buy they buy at least like $5 worth of SMS every month on and above the

09:53>> subscription plan.

Nathan Latka

09:54So Naveen, how much revenue will you do in August just from the message credits?

Naveen S G

10:00>> Just from the message credits in the August month, like, on the yeah. Yeah. $10. Only $10. We got it. Okay. Because all the other users are from the b two b world. Okay. They're I know they don't need the I know. You're saying they don't need it.

Bootstrapped with $300K in Personal Savings

Nathan Latka

10:15You're doing 50 customers, $6 a month paid annually, but you're doing about $300 per month in MRR.

Naveen S G

10:22>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:23Yes. Interesting. Okay. And you just launched in January. When did you write the first line of code?

Naveen S G

10:28>> January only.

Nathan Latka

10:29Oh, so literally the whole company, all this year?

Naveen S G

10:32>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:33Amazing. And have you bootstrapped or did you raise capital?

Naveen S G

10:35>> No. It's a bootstrapped company. So I have invested around 300 ks from my personal savings.

Nathan Latka

10:42Oh, Navin, that's okay. How did you make, how do you have so much money?

Naveen S G

10:46>> Because I had a services consulting startup earlier, which I ran for seven years where I worked with a lot of overseas customers. And plus, as I mentioned, like I have a twenty years of experience. So a lot of savings are there. So we wanted to, I mean, it's an inspiration from your website. Like we were really wanted to bootstrap this company and we wanted to reach a certain revenue target to, know, because it's kind of an

11:07>> evaluation on our idea and our approach for a good market strategy.

Nathan Latka

11:11I love

11:11that you were inspired by the website to be bootstrapped. But, like, here's the thing. My gosh. Like, just a lot of people, my listeners don't have 300 k to spend. So, like, why did you have to spend so much to get the MVP live? Why couldn't you get something easier to build live earlier?

Building the MVP with Freelancers and Co-Founder

Naveen S G

11:27>> No. I mean, 300 k in the last eight months because to fill and to build a full fledged product and we had couple of freelancers also working for us.

Nathan Latka

11:34How many?

Naveen S G

11:35>> Yeah, like around three freelancers. We were now on different points in time. And plus that also includes, know, some of the subscriptions, AWS GCP subscriptions, and also this website, and also some explainer video on How

Nathan Latka

11:47much should the website cost?

Naveen S G

11:49>> So website is what you know, it's only, $250.

Nathan Latka

11:54Oh, okay. That's not bad. So where most of money go to? The three freelancers, the engineers?

Naveen S G

11:59>> Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:59Why couldn't you code it yourself?

Naveen S G

12:01>> No, we did. We did. Okay. Because we also decided to use the latest technology as well, like Google Flutter and the GCP and all. So initially we didn't have that experience. So that's the reason we onboarded them in the initial only for three, four months, we onboarded them for four months. Now me and my co founder, we are the only two guys who have built all the advancing features. Did he put

Nathan Latka

12:26in 300 as well?

Naveen S G

12:28>> No, no, no. So you only put in 140 then? No. No. We it's a shared amount.

Revenue Goals and Plans to Scale

Naveen S G

12:33>> Like, we both have a work

12:34>> put in, like, 5,300.

Nathan Latka

12:35Yeah. I see.

12:36Yeah. So you own 50% of the business each today?

Naveen S G

12:39>> Yes. Like, 54. So, yeah, 54, 46.

Nathan Latka

12:4354. You have 54? Yeah. Okay. 50 why'd you split it that way?

Naveen S G

12:49>> That's because I started a bit earlier.

Nathan Latka

12:51That makes sense. I think it's a good reason. Yeah. Alright. So now you're scaling, which I love. You've avoided having to do a seed round because you used your own money. That's usually the most dilutive round. You now have some revenue. What do think you get your monthly revenue to by December?

Naveen S G

13:04>> So we wanna grow by at least by 10 10 times in the next six months. So that's why we are going to run marketing campaign from next month onwards, that's like next

Nathan Latka

13:13week Wait, why not more? Growing 10 times is only going from 300 a month to 3,000 a month. Why can't you get up to 10 k per month by the end of the year?

Naveen S G

13:21>> No, because that's requires more money in the digital marketing. So if you already invest a lot of money, so that's why we know we wanted to see when you are a bootstrap How company

Nathan Latka

13:31much of the money do spend on marketing?

Naveen S G

13:34>> No. As of now, zero. We want to spend now.

Nathan Latka

13:38But why? Why would you want to spend money if you don't have to?

Naveen S G

13:42>> No, that's because organic route, we are now we are getting only what 10 to 20 new users every day. But if you have to grow at 10 times, then you need more users, least like, you know, 50 plus users signing up every day. So that's that's the reason, you know, we had to go for the marketing campaign, like content marketing, all the other things, all the other Like, channels we wanna

Nathan Latka

14:05how do you avoid flushing money down the toilet though? Where are you gonna test spending money first and how much?

Naveen S G

14:11>> Yeah. So the one sure shot, which has worked and which is working for us is content marketing. For that, we probably will hire a few content writers. We'll

Long-Tail SEO Content Strategy

Nathan Latka

14:19answer Well, what's working right now? What's the keyword you're ranking for that's getting traffic?

Naveen S G

14:24>> Okay. So the the one is, like,

14:28>> the 14 you know, yeah, email templates to invite to book appointments politely. Some of the long keywords, we are focusing mainly on the long keywords because all the short keywords are taken over by the Calendly, Acuity scheduling, all that. We can't really bid on that. That's why we are focusing on the long keywords, like upon Email hardly booking software.

Nathan Latka

14:47Templates to book appointments politely. Yes. I love this. And you ranked number one. 15 email templates to share your scheduling link politely. Yeah. Yeah.

Naveen S G

14:58>> This is How much

Nathan Latka

14:59how many users have you gotten from this?

Naveen S G

15:02>> That's the one which actually gets us at least ten, fifteen website visitors every day.

Nathan Latka

15:07That's amazing. And how many like signups would you say it's driven you lifetime?

Naveen S G

15:11>> I don't know because we are not put any we are not built in any logic to see how many of them came to the platform.

Nathan Latka

15:19That's okay.

Naveen S G

15:19>> Because the app is different and this one is different. That's one. And another one is like how to update your booking link in your Google business profile. So that is also another blog which gets a lot of lead. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

15:31Yeah. To our website. How did you how did you know, for someone listening right now, they might say, wanna copy Naveen and go find long tail keyword strategies for their own niche. How did you know to write a post on the polite way to share your scheduling link?

Naveen S G

15:46>> It just said right. I didn't know. I mean, to be honest, when I started working on this, wasn't familiar with all this. Yeah. I just started writing. In fact, I wrote several blogs around fourteen, fifteen blogs, and that's the one which started giving us more traffic. I didn't know that I started. I wrote so many blogs in the last eight months.

Nathan Latka

16:07That makes sense, man. That makes sense. Well, you're building something special. I can't wait to watch you grow. Just to be clear, there's two of you right now that are full time. Everyone else is a contractor.

Team Structure: Two Full-Time Co-Founders

Naveen S G

16:16>> Yes. Yeah. No. Right now, only two full time. We don't have any contractors in the last four months. Okay. So we are the only two guys managing everything.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Personal Life

Nathan Latka

16:24Naveen, on that note, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite book.

Naveen S G

16:29>> Favorite?

Nathan Latka

16:29Favorite business book.

Naveen S G

16:32>> No.

16:35>> I don't I don't think so much.

Nathan Latka

16:38We'll say none.

16:38Number two.

Naveen S G

16:39>> See, no. There is one sorry. Sorry. Favorite book is Think Fast, Think Slow.

Nathan Latka

16:43Number two, Thinking Fast and Slow. Yeah. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Naveen S G

16:51>> No. I'm not following anything else.

Nathan Latka

16:53Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building leadmonk?

Naveen S G

16:59>> Favorite online tool is Canva. Canva is one and Wix. Yeah. Canva, Wix and also Freshmarketer. Yeah. Freshdesk. A lot of these tools I use.

Nathan Latka

17:10Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Naveen S G

17:13>> Sorry?

Nathan Latka

17:14How many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Naveen S G

17:16>> Five

17:19>> to six hours.

Nathan Latka

17:20Okay. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Naveen S G

17:23>> Married with kids.

Nathan Latka

17:24How many kids? Two. Two. Alright. And how old are you?

Naveen S G

17:30>> I'm 41.

Nathan Latka

17:3141.

17:32Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Closing Summary and Wrap-Up

Naveen S G

17:36>> Yeah. I mean, yeah, I should have I mean, I should have started this entrepreneurial journey journey at the age of 28 itself.

Nathan Latka

17:43Guys, start sooner. He's building leadmonk.io to go compete with Calendly using long tail keywords as a way to get their traffic up. He has 50 customers today paying $6 a month to $300 in monthly recurring revenue or $3,600 in ARR. They got their first 500 people on the wait list by posting on review sites. Now scaling bootstrapped, he spent $300,000 on the MVP. The question is, can he 10x his revenue over the next six to twelve months?

18:05We will see what happens. Naveen, thanks for taking us to the top. Yeah. Thanks.

18:12One 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 1PM

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19:21for 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 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

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19:47See you.