How Markerly CEO Justin Kline grew Markerly to $3.8M revenue and 30 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is Justin inclined he is the co-founder and CEO of Marc early an influencer marketing company focused on influencer identification and tracking for some of the world's largest and most rapidly growing consumer brands Justin are you ready to take us to the top I'm ready all right good so tell us about mark Rowley how are you approaching influencer marketing what's your business model how do you make money yeah so I mean if you think about it as far as you know what influencer marketing is it's you know you're basically finding popular people on social media I mean technically influencing can happen anywhere but we focus on social and we are both you know kind of an agency and technology company so we run campaigns on a full-service levels you need everything done soup-to-nuts you know from strategy identification outreach pretty much everything that involves an influencer campaign all the way to you know creating content and reporting and then basically on the other side of the business we have a technology platform that we license out to brands and agencies to streamline all those processes we basically are used using the same technology internally we're running campaigns for our clients so just I mean are you SAS platformers that pay-as-you-go it's you know it is a SAS model the platform is and then on the agency side those are a little bit more bespoke we're putting together very customized programs which one makes it more of your revenue I would say I would say it's probably 60/40 more on the campaign side okay and is that the high touch kind of more professional services or is that SAS okay got it so 40 percent SAS 60% more agency model custom stuff yep okay and on the SAS platform where people want to get started to kind of use you what would you say kind of the average customers paying you per month so we can get a sense of you know your perfect fit yeah I mean as far as the SAS model goes I mean it can it's the minimum is a thousand dollars a month these are annual contracts goes up from there okay that's the minimum what's the average paying is it a grand per month on average you know it's I would say on average maybe a couple couple thousand dollars okay and give me kind of give us more the backstory here when you launched the company back in 2012 actually and where were we at I mean why get into influencer marketing of all things so the funny thing is that it wasn't originally influencer marketing that we were it you know it was back in 2012 we were in Washington DC and it started out as a highlighter for the web it's completely different concept know what the hell does that mean so it was basically a tool to help you collect quotes on the internet interesting kind of like a Pinterest for quotes on it and that got us into 500 startups which is a startup incubator in in California and from there we we pivoted the business into influencer marketing we had our technology already embedded on a lot of blogger sites so felt like a natural transition to move into a a way to monetize what we've already built and what do you act today in terms of kind of total customers using you you know I would say honestly I don't know off the top of my head it's I would say yeah I don't know I'll have to come back to it Justin how do you not as a CEO of a company how do you not know how many customers you have my audience is gonna they're gonna go what the hell is this guy Justin doing alright fine I just closed that what's a range I mean are we talking like one customer ten a thousand ten thousand it's under a hundred over thirty ok got it so between 30 and 100 that's helpful to understand and are do you require anyone that works with you on an on the kind of agency side of the business also pays for the SAS model or do you not require that can you repeat that yeah so the 30 customers that you have if they work with you on the agency model a high-touch custom campaign kind of stuff do you require that they pay the 2 or $3,000 a month software fee as well or no no we don't ok there so the reason brands like to use our software is because it's a it's basically a why labeled version of what we use to manage our network it was really designed so you can build out your own influence or network so brands that already have communities you know it some some will come to us and they'll say hey we've been managing over 50,000 influencers with like MailChimp and Google Spreadsheets and it's getting kind of hairy and we need a better way and that's really where our platform shines okay now if you bootstrap this or raise capital we raised a small amount of capital several years ago and kind of been bootstrapping from there okay this was like what the five hundred round of Sept 150 issue it was yeah it was under a million dollars okay well I mean what was raised I'm I'm sure I can look this up on CrunchBase but would you raise to so that's a little over 700 ok 700 and that was all kind of an price or a convertible note or did you do any price to equity round it was both basically it started out as convertible notes and then when we got our lead investor it it basically became equity yep I did convert good and then where you had today in terms of team size so we're about about 12 people okay now based we're in Austin Texas oh good every I'm in Austin - that's great third in Brazos yeah all of you guys are down here we should have just gotten together like in person JIT that's okay but you guys are all based in Austin yeah okay and what do you guys I mean look this is one thing I always ask about when there's kind of a dual business model going on is how you manage your time right there are people that are attacking the same space purely on the agency high-touch model and they're people attacking this purely on a no-touch SAS model you're trying to do both are you gonna try and go one way or you want to keep kind of play in the middle there well you know it's we don't view it as kind of playing both the technology we're basically already utilizing internally to run these campaigns so we're kind of eating our own dog food and we're constantly making that platform better and better and better yeah but just let me say this let me say this differently if you have one engineer that's focused on doing something custom for a high-paying agency client that's one less engineer you can have making the SAS platform better there are companies that direct all their resources to SAS and all their resources to agencies so how do you resist not get beat by each of those companies on each side of your model well so we're not really allocating we're not building custom technology on the agency side right so engineering is always completely focused on the platform okay well same question same question for you I mean anyone not just an engineer anybody at your company a salesperson a marketing person a design person anybody yeah well if you think about it it's really just about solving customers problems and you know a customer a lot of people they don't know whether they need SAS or a full service the industry is still very much in its infancy so to really just focus and put all your eggs in one basket and assume that every customer is going to fit that model it's to solve customers problems if they need help with management we're here for them if they then decide they want to internalize their influencer marketing efforts we're still their partner and we can move with them to that new model and help them insource influencer marketing now more about relationships yeah and you've got and you've got 30 of them you mentioned I mean can I take the 30 customer number times the average monthly payment you said earlier of around two-ish k and assume you guys are doing what north of 60 grand a month right now you can assume that I'm not really at liberty to to disclose those numbers right now Justin just to be clear I'm using I'm just multiplying your numbers I'm just I mean I'm not making anything up I'm just multiplying your numbers please you know speculate all you want Justin just to be clear I'm not speculating you told me 30 customers and you said an average was in the thousands per month I'm just multiplying your numbers so are your numbers are they different let's move on to the next question well no because I want to understand this otherwise people are gonna going or they're gonna say great ok perfect good because sometimes people will say well wait a second actually no we're doing 6 million a month that we're not doing we're pre-revenue I want to make sure I've generally got the right space yeah no those obviously when we're running campaigns right the budgets are very different they're very custom our minimum campaign size is $25,000 yeah it's also chunky revenue so it's hard to plan around versus a CEO is very predictable it is so it's it's a combination and yeah like you like if you back into it you know the way that you did you would you come up with here's that be the right way to think about it could it wait that's fine how do you manage things like churner attention you're over here I mean do customers use you once then leave or can you pretty predictably count on that you know them to come back you know it's it's very unpredictable because influencer marketing is going to work for some and it's not going to work for others and I think that you know while we are always you know working with our clients to make sure that you know it's that there is successful as they can possibly be they're just some industries where it's more conducive like I think CPG brands is the real sweet spot like it it is an amazing way to generate conversation you can send out product via you know the you know mail service to a bunch of different influencers and it's a great way to get campaigns up really fast and it's just a category that we've seen a lot of success on all right Justin makes good sense now what do you want to do with the company I mean usually when people raise a clock starts and you've either got to be essentially raising once a year until you're you know scaling big you know right before you actually we have the CEO of we pay on right they group sold for 400 million recently to chase you haven't raised in a while so people could look at that and go uh they're probably kind of flat or it's may be a lifestyle business I mean what do you want to do with the business so you know I think that there are a few business models that we are starting to experiment with outside of what we're already doing because I see the industry you know getting there are a few different directions that it can get right like I think that Instagram or Facebook could potentially start offering influential marketing so our goal is to become friends with them and to work with them and kind of almost become a partner to to Facebook be able to provide this as a preferred vendor that one direction I like the creative aspect the agency side of things and partnering more with specific influencers and developing talent that's another direction that we're also exploring so there's a few different avenues we're seeing solid growth here you know with what we're currently doing but I definitely am starting to look at other avenues for growth yeah I mean just saying if I'm just gonna call a spade a spade when you have investors right you don't have like you can't just decide one month to be really casual positive a you take a bunch of money personally to pay to yourself which if you didn't have any capital raised you could easily do and it's a great kind of lifestyle cash flow business you reinvest in real estate other stuff you can't do that because you raise from five hundred you have other investors on your cap table I mean why not if you love the creative side why not just shut this thing down relaunch is an agency that you're in full control of and when you're going out selling hustling closing deals you can make yourself very very wealthy just taking off cash flow yeah you know I think that we are very committed to to this model and you know obviously you just don't want about your investors down you feel stuck no no I wouldn't say that I don't believe you know I I think that there's a lot of room for growth in this industry and you know we say that with a straight face you're half smiling as you say that it's a tough sell look it's a tough space I mean I I'm asking this because we've had other folks in the influencer marketing space that are pure sets that are just I mean they're huge they're killing it they're doing a great job or I get the other on which is a wealthy individual who's built an agency and made him or herself very rich doing these custom campaigns and you just feel stuck in the middle and I see entrepreneurs all the time that I raised capital five six years ago I feel stuck and that's the worst thing is have a smart person stuck in a shitty idea yeah I wouldn't say that honestly I think that it's it can be an amazing driver for brands we've seen amazing success from zero revenue to millions all off of influence or marketing so it is a very powerful channel and we just want to build it the right way yep all right Justin let's wrap up here with the famous five quick answers number one what was the last book you read the last book I read I would say it is how to live by Sarah Blake well number two is their CEO you're following or studying right now you know I've always been amazed by a couple people I mean I think Elon Musk obviously everyone loves him you know very inspirational I'd say Musk number two is there a a favorite online tool you have favorite online tool that I have there are so many pick one I like Evernote okay number four how many hours of sleep to get every night two days ago about two hours last night about 8:00 okay so so we'll call it somewhere in the middle around 6:00 or something all right and what's the situation Justin I saw you had a wedding ring on married you have any kids I have two kids I have a wife who was previously our CEO and yeah and I've been in Austin for a couple years and how old are you I am 31 they're ready one last question take us back 11 years what he was your 20 year old self now what do I wish my 20 year old self knew or 21 year old self knew just to relax like you don't need to hurry you know like enjoy your time in you know I was very focused on making the most out of time and I was very much a stickler always had to be productive constantly and I feel like learning to work smart and you know it really enjoying yourself while you're alive will cause you to be even more productive there you guys have it from Justin don't sweat the small stuff enjoy your life don't rush so fast lunched Marc early back in 2012 was the CEO now is the CEO they've got a team of 12 down here in Austin helping with influencer marketing working with 30 customers right now the revenue comes from two sources about 60% agency side 40% SAS side doing somewhere around 60 grand per month in revenue healthy growth rate they raise seven hundred grand many many years ago looking to play harder in the space maybe a Facebook preferred partner or another out Justin thank you so much for taking us to the top thanks Nathan