How Lightster Hit $84K in Revenue with 12 Paying Customers and 6,000 Community Users (Interview with CEO Sal Avelar)

Introduction and What Lightster Does

Nathan Latka

00:00It helps companies do research with their community based their community based user approach. They pay the users a dollar a minute. He keeps the other dollar a minute. They're doing $14,000 a month in volume today. He keeps again $7,000 a month on that. Hoping to grow to about a 150,000 by the end of the year today. Bootstrapped so far with a team of four. Hey, folks. My guest today is Sal Avelar. He leads lightster, which helpcom

00:23which helps companies connect with qualified users for input and reward users for sharing their opinions. Companies can create unlimited communities of qualified users and users who participate get rewarded with cash and perks. That is what co creation is all about. That's what lightster is all about. Sal, are you ready to take us to the top?

Sal Avelar

00:39>> There you go.

Nathan Latka

00:40So when I read your bio, I like, user testing comes to mind. Right? You help me find people to test my product. Is that a is that an accurate comparison?

Co-Creation Model Explained

Sal Avelar

00:49>> Yeah. Kind of. Like, our proposition is slightly different. We try to to implement that idea of, like, a co creation, like an ongoing process, like, you basically be the communities, and you keep in touch with users to a point that you become customers and then friends and advocates and so on, and you keep owning that community to really co create your product in an ongoing basis.

Nathan Latka

01:15So tell me a story about a customer is paying you right now and what they're paying you for specifically.

Revenue Model and Pricing

Sal Avelar

01:20>> Yeah. So we do have different methods of of revenue. Basically, the basic one, which is the pay per use kind of method. So everyone is welcome. They can jump in for free. And really, when they need to create a session with users, then they pay $2 per minute. So usually sessions are about like thirty minutes. And then we do have a couple of premium plans, paid plans. They include a couple of different features like unlimited chat,

01:50>> session recording, create your own community, pick your rewards and so on.

Nathan Latka

01:55So I I wanna actually don't lose people. If they go to your website, what they'll see is a a website sorry, an application that says, Lightster connects customer obsessed companies with a thousand plus communities for discovery and feedback. And then you have a 100 or so companies listed along with a bunch of partners like 500 startups and tech stars. So Yeah. Are you in charge of building the communities on your app as well? And if so,

02:18that's I mean, that's a massive marketplace issue. How do you get those people to sign up for communities on your app?

Sal Avelar

02:22>> Yeah. So right now, we are the ones building the communities, and we do recruit users. We do invite people to join the the app and and we place them into the the communities as they fit.

Building Communities on the Platform

Nathan Latka

02:38Some of the communities, guys, just so you know, are called, like, Toronto Tech or things like that. Sal, what are some other names of communities?

Sal Avelar

02:45>> Yeah. We have, like, a web three developers. Just the other day, we created one for parents with children 18, and all sorts of different communities. We are actually progressively building communities pretty much every day as our customers are requesting new types of users, new different kind of a custom requirements and so on.

Nathan Latka

03:06Why? How do you incentivize a how do you how do you incentivize a busy web three developer to everything and install your community application when when I mean, what's in it for them?

Sal Avelar

03:14>> Yeah. Right now, there are a couple of ways they're rewarded. The basic one is cash. Right? So users get paid, like, $1 per minute.

Nathan Latka

03:22And if Per minute of what? I don't understand.

Sal Avelar

03:25>> Per minute of of session. So if they are having a video session with someone providing their feedback, they are paid $1 per minute. And and then the companies pay us, we get a cut, and then the users get their payment. And then they do have all the forms of free reward, like, can provide them premium access to to the applications or they get paid in gift cards or any other type of free reward that our customers

03:50>> can

Nathan Latka

03:51Sal, do you only build a community if you already have a company that you know is willing to pay for a session? For example, who's the company behind the Toronto Tech community you've built?

Sal Avelar

03:59>> No. Not really. No. Like, we keep building communities as new users are coming in, and then we we basically select custom requirements to keep building the communities. Of course, when someone has a custom request, then we build those communities for them.

Nathan Latka

04:15This is also my question though is with the Toronto tech. Yeah. If someone joins that and you don't know who's gonna pay for the session minutes, how do you tell the new community members we'll pay you a dollar per session when you know there's no company lined up ready to pay that money?

Sal Avelar

04:28>> Oh, so they are auto qualified to the session. So as the companies are creating the sessions, we pick the ones who are a good fit for, for the projects based on what the companies are looking for, and then they basically auto qualify based on on the hour.

Nathan Latka

04:44Oh, 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

Incentivizing Users to Join Communities

Nathan Latka

05:07your 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

05:32get 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

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Total Communities and Users on Platform

Nathan Latka

07:07interview. So how many total unique communities do you have on the platform today?

Sal Avelar

07:12>> We have more than, I think, right now

07:18>> well, every day we create news, but new communities. But I think now we have more than a thousand communities.

Nathan Latka

07:23And how many individual unique users across those communities?

Sal Avelar

07:26>> Yeah. We have about 6,000 users now. Users can qualify for multiple communities as as they go fit.

Nathan Latka

07:34Okay.

07:35Understood. And then how many companies in the last thirty days have paid for at least one session?

Paying Customers and Project Sizes

Sal Avelar

07:41>> Yeah. We got about 12 companies enrolling now in new new projects like Noble here from Toronto,

07:51>> a couple of other companies from The US, and some companies that are part of the the per the perk programs we have with the the incubators.

Nathan Latka

08:00Mhmm. And so when when one of these 12 companies pays, a a budget to get user feedback through your community, what's the average budget? What's the average project size usually?

Sal Avelar

08:10>> Yeah. It's about from 600 to $1,200 per Okay. Per project.

Nathan Latka

08:15Yeah. So let's just make the math easy. Let's say a company says, Sal, I wanna spend a thousand dollars getting user feedback. Can you help me find the right community members? You're then paying up the community members a dollar per minute. Where do you make money?

Sal Avelar

08:27>> Yeah. We so we get our cuts. So for the standard plan, we're talking about $2 per minute. The users got a buck, and then we get the the rest of it.

Nathan Latka

08:36Okay. So if someone's gonna pay you a thousand dollars, right, divided by $2, that's five hundred sort of minutes of of time.

Sal Avelar

08:43>> Yep.

Nathan Latka

08:44Right? And you're keeping $500 of a thousand?

Sal Avelar

08:47>> We get 500. Yeah. Exactly.

Nathan Latka

08:48I see. So what volume and projects did you do over the past thirty days, dollar wise?

Monthly Volume and Revenue

Sal Avelar

08:54>> We've lately, I think we had about $7,000 over the last thirty days. Yeah. $7,000.

Nathan Latka

09:01Well, okay. And and help me understand growth. How much did you do exactly one year ago in March?

Growth Since Launch

Sal Avelar

09:08>> Oh my god. Growth was yeah. It was fast paced. So we launched the app back in September last year. And then after that, it was just like try to picking up the pace. We were generating, I think, $900 per month till this point now, about $7,000.

Nathan Latka

09:25Yeah. And and just to be clear, the $7,000 is your cut or you get to keep half of that?

Sal Avelar

09:29>> No. It's our cut.

Nathan Latka

09:30So you're actually doing 14,000 in volume. You're keeping 7,000?

Sal Avelar

09:35>> Yeah. About.

Nathan Latka

09:36I see. Interesting.

Sal Avelar

09:37>> It fluctuates a little bit, but Like

Nathan Latka

09:39Sure. Sure. Yeah. I guess tell me more of the backstory here. So you get this going in 2022. How many folks are full time on the team today?

Sal Avelar

09:46>> We are about four.

Nathan Latka

09:48Four of you. And what are the roles?

Sal Avelar

09:51>> So I am in charge of marketing growth. My cofounder is in charge of product dev and overall kind of operations, and we have two other folks involved in the dev, product development, and so on.

Team Structure and Roles

Nathan Latka

10:06But you and your buddy are the cofounders?

Sal Avelar

10:11>> Yep.

10:12>> Tech experts.

Nathan Latka

10:14Yep. That makes sense.

Sal Avelar

10:15>> Three. Yep.

Nathan Latka

10:16How do you so so what let's say that you have 6,000 users signed up today, and then a month from now, a new company signs up who you know user a is a fit for, but that user hasn't engaged in, like, two months. Are you sending that user a a cold email, a text message? How do you make them aware that a company is willing to pay them a dollar a minute?

Re-Engaging Inactive Users

Sal Avelar

10:35>> Yeah. So we keep actually sending pretty much every week a a whole new set of questions so they can qualify for new communities. That's the way we create incentives of, you know, be qualified, be automatically qualified. You need to actually submit to any new project. You are automatically in the community. Once they can they are in the community and they can receive invitations from our customers to participate in sessions.

Nathan Latka

11:02I see. And have you bootstrapped the company or have you raised capital?

Bootstrapped and Subscription Plans

Sal Avelar

11:05>> Just bootstrapping completely now.

Nathan Latka

11:08I love that. That's great. Okay. And so you have 12 customers right now this month that are paying for sessions?

Sal Avelar

11:15>> We do have a bit more, but the ones that are still initiating sessions, they are not not fully paying yet.

Nathan Latka

11:22Do you get do you try and get companies to, like, commit to, like, a year long contract, or how do you structure the contracts?

Sal Avelar

11:27>> Yeah. So as as I was mentioning, like, just about a month two months ago, we launched the subscription plans. So there's one one plan that allows them to create different perks and and unlimited private communities and so on. That's a $50 per month plan, and there's another one that includes a hundred and fifty minutes, which is about $200 per man per per month.

Nathan Latka

11:53That makes a lot of sense. Well, listen, it sounds like what you're building is a a fund here. You're scaling nicely. You're bootstrapped, which is great. What do you think you can grow revenue to by December of this year?

Growth Projections for End of Year

Sal Avelar

12:02>> Yeah. So we're predicting about 30% growth month over month at this point.

Nathan Latka

12:07What does that mean in terms of revenue you'll do in December this year?

Sal Avelar

12:10>> Well well, I didn't question numbers yet, but I think we are gonna hit about a $120,000, hopefully, by by the end of the year. We don't know yet, but that's that's what we can do.

Famous Five and Wrap-Up

Nathan Latka

12:29That's great. Well, Sal, on that note, let's wrap up with a famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?

Sal Avelar

12:34>> I've been very hooked up with the Ray Dalio one Principles. Principles.

Nathan Latka

12:41Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

12:48Sal, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Sal Avelar

12:58>> Currently oops.

Nathan Latka

13:00Go ahead, Sal.

13:02CEO you're following.

Sal Avelar

13:04>> Yeah. Shane from Air. Like, I've been hooked up with him.

Nathan Latka

13:07Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building lightster?

Sal Avelar

13:12>> Right now,

13:15>> a bit of everything, but we've been relying a lot on Canva, lightster sorry, ClickUp.

Nathan Latka

13:22Sal, you're cutting in and out. So I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap the interview up here guys. Lightster.co Oh, you do. It helps companies do research with their community based their community based user approach. They pay the users a dollar a minute. He keeps the other dollar a minute. They're doing $14,000 a month in volume today. He keeps again $7,000 a month on that. Hoping to grow to about a 150,000 by the end of the year today.

13:43Bootstrapped so far with a team of four. Sal, thanks for taking us to the top. One 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

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