How Metrilo CEO Murry Ivanoff grew Metrilo to $5M revenue and 450 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is murray ivanov he is the founder of a company called metrela which he founded in 2014 to help e-commerce store owners grow their businesses besides spending lots of time with his customers and his team he loves to trail running in the beautiful mountains where he's based all right maria are you ready to take us to the top hey man what's up what's up so first off where are you guys based uh in sofia which is in bulgaria very good and tell us about the company what's matrillo do and how do you make money uh you know we're basically are you like yet another uh e-commerce market marketing platform in the market right uh the way we obviously make money is by selling our product to people who actually make money out of our product you know you don't sound very excited when you say you're just another one of the guys yeah it's 11 p.m here man it was a horrible day you know so excitement is a tough one at that point why was it a horrible day uh because you had to wake up early it's personal stuff you know whatever uh but yeah it's just a horrible day so yeah but overall you're like no we're more than excited because like on a daily basis we work with amazing folks around the world basically like almost half of our customer base is us but then the rest is spread is spread all across the world so we've seen it all more or less like we're seeing how different businesses are being born in different regions and what things are working in certain regions are not working in other regions so it's actually pretty exciting how many customers uh we have at this point we have 450 450 yeah uh and the most exciting one was probably um it was in november where one of my most favorite customers ever um with with native actually got acquired by tng for 100 meals and the funny thing is that we've been with this guy since day zero basically i seen the day he actually found he managed to go from there is zero revenue up to 100 million dollar acquisition in two and a half years which was pretty amazing you know and it's really exciting to see the whole flow actually go through you know like the product that you've actually built you know like you see the guy doing all the route steps and all the right stuff that he needs to grow the business and he managed to nail it and number eight tell everyone my audience doesn't know what you do tell me tactically what you do maybe for that company that just sold for 100 million absolutely all right so our product is basically um crm and analytics and email automation for online stores right we work with a few platforms being magento in shopify you know commerce you basically hook your store we sing the historical data we put all the right tracking in the right place and we just you know like help you you like get your business to the next level using your accurate data actually okay and what do people pay you on average per month uh it's around 150. uh uh 150 bucks yeah okay and what are they getting for that what what things do you price based off uh it's you know like the thing with analysts and all the data software is that they're usually either based on data points or contacts uh the way we actually decided to make it simple for our customers is actually you know uh based on uh monthly unique users that actually visit their website right yep that makes good sense now with 450 customers paying 150 bucks a month you guys are doing about 67 000 bucks a month right now in revenue uh yeah a little bit more than that video in that area okay and give me more of the growth story when did you launch the company uh it was 2014 like in uh in april you know uh just me and my co-founder basically started then like you guys split equity 50 50 uh more or less murray that's that's a lazy way to do it that's the right way to do it though it's more or less it's like it's almost equal yeah who else is on the cap table today uh so at this point it's me my co-founder and a few other investors okay how much have you uh up raised this point i actually raised a little bit less than a million euro okay and is that a convertible note or is it all that quick it's still acquitted so on your cap table yeah yeah uh interesting and why did you decide to raise capital um you know because uh we needed the end of the day you know like uh we decided to go with the lower price point at the beginning and it's one of those markets where you need to invest that shitload of money to acquire customers basically you know so you need money up front right and give me a sense of growth obviously you raise capital you're at 67 grand today in revenue where were you 12 months ago uh 12 months ago we were at 120 customers so that makes uh 3.2 x got it so so so just to be clear i could take 120 customers times 150 you were doing about 18 grand a month 13 months ago 12 months ago yeah interesting okay so i mean that's healthy growth how are you acquiring customers uh a shitload of channels actually uh we'd mostly depend on you know like we have this classic like multiple attribution model where we invest a lot of money in pc uh lately facebook has been actually you know like one of the main driving engines like how much per month are you spending there uh it depends anywhere from 20 to 40 45 sometimes 45 grand yeah wow i mean that's a lot i mean that's you know 80 of your total revenue yeah yeah yeah but okay so is most of that kind of coming from your investor dollars you guys are operating cash flow negative at this point because you have so much marketing spend uh no we're actually close to you know like being fine like it's like the area where we're basically yeah you like our costs are actually way lower so what's your team not that far away from uh we're 15. okay but with 15 people if you're doing 67 grand a month in revenue and 45 grand of that is marketing spend that leaves 20 grand for all your other costs plus 15 salaries yeah basically no people are only losing tomorrow we're not like that you are losing money you are losing money we still are yeah yeah but if you turned off some of the variable marketing you could get to closer to break even fairly quick interesting what are you spending right now to acquire a customer what's your cac uh at this point it's it's around twelve hundred dollars i mean like four yeah like i would say like the average when you divide by all the other channels and all of the other stuff it gets to about 700 okay and if i take okay wait what's the difference between 712 uh so i mean like the ppc ones are at 1200 but if we like how like all the other channels were actually used to the choir vlogs it goes down to 700. oh i see okay so 700 bucks they pay you then 150 bucks per month so your payback is about four or five months that's pretty healthy yeah yep um what about churn uh the net one is at 1.2 um it it was around one for that revenue that's retention that revenue annual retention yeah and the logo one is hold on murray is that is that 1.2 is that annually or monthly it's monthly okay it's a net mrr yeah and the logo one monthly is at four percent four percent churn okay so just to be clear you're growing mrr at about point two percent per month that's your net revenue churn or net revenue expansion yeah got it um what is the what is the well that seems really low actually if i take 0.2 times 12 months what gives us a percentage so it doesn't matter i mean what do you aim to hit year over year in terms of growth rate uh you know we're hoping to keep the same growth rate at the very very least we're trying a lot of other stuff in life we've always been a sales service actually so for this year we actually want to try to build a sales team or less like you like a more healthy sales structure we will go slightly upper market because we've seen you know like a pretty good uh success with slides with slightly bigger pieces this is actually um so you know like basically in order for us to get to the next level we definitely are planning to build a sales team this year so change the game a little bit more or less and obviously when you get a sales team going it's really important to understand lifetime value of customers who understand how to set a quota and incentive structures for sales what do you assume your lifetime value is on these customers like at this point it's around uh 3k uh you're like that's the best jay estimated like we believe um you know like it's basically going to be so like the mat is basically showing that in order to like build a sustainable um you like sales machine we might need to pump up the pricing a little bit you know are you raising capital right now uh we yeah we are planning how much should how much do you want to raise it's going to be around 1.2 million hours 1.21 1.3 but it's going to go and be like in august got it remind me when you raised that last million when was it uh the last round was uh 500 000 euros and that was in uh april 2017. okay and what valuation were you able to get on that uh i can't tell that man sorry was it above or below 10 million uh it was below 10 below okay are you aiming for above 10 million for on this next round or below possibly yeah okay around there i i'm trying to get a sense of what percent of the company you're willing to sell to get the million in so it sounds like maybe somewhere between you know around 10-ish percent yeah we don't know like we're still not sure if we're actually going to raise the rounds it's like once again we're getting actually close to the point where we can be self-sustainable so we're not sure yet why would you why why raise money at all then uh because if we want to like grow even more amazing and like get the game to be a little bit more challenging for us to actually stand out in the market because right now mitchell is basically this underdog in the market you know but if we want to get to the next level and actually get the name out there we'll definitely to invest more so it's this personal battle that i'm having basically do you guys have venture debt in in bulgaria i no idea what the that is that's like interest right so you could raise all right up to 4x your monthly recurring revenue pay it back over three years at a 1.3 or 1.4 x multiple but it allows you to get all the cash up front then investors drive growth uh it's doable more or less yes yeah that's like one of the options we're basically like think about who's doing that in bulgaria or who are you talking to in the venture debt space so we have a shitload of vcs in the area actually like they're usually you know like smaller vcs let's say funds are between 10 to 50 mil funds you know mostly in the seed space so they go to the series a space so uh so right now our investors are launching open 11 which are local fund syrians via and we also have speed invest in vienna very cool all right mario let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book uh holy predictable revenue number two is there a ceo you're following are studying right now right now uh i don't think so like you've mostly been reading about running stuff lately so yeah number three number three is there a ceo or sorry what's your favorite online tool that you use to build a business numbers quite honestly double numbers number four how many hours of sleep to get every night uh average is six hours that's pretty good the course of the week and what's your situation married single you have kids i'm single single no kiddos yeah no kiddos yep no kiddos and how old are you i'm 29 29 last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew holy uh i don't know man uh that life actually is as awesome as it seemed back then there you guys have it from murray life actually is as awesome as it seemed back then launched his company metrillo back a few years ago in 2014 he's now at 15 people full-time helping e-commerce brands do things like crm outreach conversion optimization things like that serving 450 customers who pay 150 bucks a month so about 67 grand a month right now on revenue that's up from 18 grand a month just 12 months ago they raised a million bucks maybe are going to raise again in september here of 2018. four percent monthly churn in terms of logos each month healthy revenue expansion month over month as well cac 700 bucks again 150 bucks a month in payment they're getting their money back in four or five months so healthy economics murray thank you for taking us to the top thank you man have a good one