Mostly metrics revenue, CEO CJ Gustafson, team size, customer count, churn, and more in 2023.

as he cut his teeth in an operating uh company as a in the private Equity Firm also at PWC before that now runs on newsletter focused on CFOs of which he gets a 46 open rate which is about 16 000 opens and a five to seven percent click through rate which is 800 clicks per post called mostlymetrics.com hosted on sub stack 7 000 of those readers are actual CFOs in fact it's so valuable you've got companies like brex willing to pay him one two three four K sort of per post uh from a sponsor perspective he's looking to scale that Now launch to podcast as well with turpentine still while cutting his teeth as an operator as a true CFO at a company called Parts Tech with Giza which he's working on hey folks my guest today is CJ Gustafson he's a startup CFO who sat on both sides of the table the one who's doing the funding and the one who's receiving the funding he's a fan of business breaking of breaking down how businesses make money and writes about his learnings twice a week in his newsletter mostly metrics.com all right CJ radio takes to the top let's blast off buddy all right so my audience really respects obviously folks that cut their teeth in the operating world so what company were you sort of operating in learning that side of the equation yeah man so I've been an operator for about 10 years now I was originally on the you know private equity and management consulting side where I learned a lot about business models but I felt like a total Financial tourist I didn't really have skin in the game and then when I moved over to get you know my quote real world MBA I was at a backup and recovery software vendor and I was leading uh you know sales Ops and FP a and that's kind of where I learned how to make the trains run on time yep so you have a very interesting background so it's a big four PWC then Providence Equity partners for a year and a half Providence equities usually majority buyout it is yeah and technology and media space yeah so did they buy a chunk of veeam and that's why you jumped into veeam no I I had it's funny the connections you make when you're younger end up playing out uh to help you in your career so I had interned and I was completely useless by the way I basically got coffees and sandwiches for people at a company that was bought by VMware and uh this the CEO uh ended up going over to this company and and I called him one day for advice and I was like hey I don't know if I should go get another degree here and he said well why don't you just come work for me and since I went over and started to hang out with sales people and learn about how you both sell and build a product I've never left the operating side got it so theme software through 2019 then a group called snake I think is how you say that through 2012. so snake kind of cyber security on that pre-ipo path and I I followed the same management team there and I helped build out the first FPA group and then we went through the whole craziness of covid and fundraising and hyperscale then you leave that in September 2022 and jump into sort of this this media Empire You're Building why did you make that decision and what is the media Empire who are you focused on audience wise yeah of course so I stumbled upon this so I have a newsletter it's mostly metrics mostlymetrics.com and then I have a podcast it's called run the numbers it's produced by the turpentine Network and do they pay you for this on or do you pay them to be part of the network uh they paying me so we have advertisers so there are a couple different monetization streams I can break down for each but basically what I discovered was there wasn't an operator voice creating content out there specifically for you know the people who are in the trenches uh in kind of the office of the CFO and for a while I was trying to just document what I was learning and Nathan that's because people in the startup world will pay you for the Playbook that you have you've taken a company from X to Y to Z how do you do that now for my company too and I was kind of scared shitless that I don't know if I can swear on this I was scared if I I was scared that I was gonna forget what I was learning so I started to document it and eventually I found what I call audience Market fit it was a bunch of people who were like me interested in the same stuff and it it took on a life of its own it went from you know my mother and my dog and and my wife reading it to 35 000 people in about a year and a half so first year and a half I wrote nobody listened to me when did you launch it when do you start writing I launched it in covid in I think December of 2020. okay just and how did you get your first thousand subscribers oh man that was a grind I was a nut so I would write stuff and then I would find five key words within it so maybe I wrote about top metrics for vertical software and I would go on Twitter and I would maniacally just keep searching for like vertical software and then I would write something insightful and then link back to my article you'd write something insightful in a response to tweets that were already posted and linked back yeah that's exactly what I would do and then I got kicked out of just about every Reddit group trying to post stuff uh like like many content creators do and then honestly what helped was building inroads with B2B companies who were looking to promote their software in some way but wanted a real person to speak to The Narrative of using something so like there are a lot of fpna tools out there they all have content arms or like there are a lot of payment companies like a brex or a ramp and they all you know have content arms but they want to partner with people who are actually practitioners in the trenches and you know I was I was at first willing to you know do it for free for them and say Hey you know I'm trying to get my my name out there I enjoy writing and I have experience to speak about stuff that'll resonate with people it's not like you just hired somebody on upwork to write it for you and it doesn't really make sense so partnering with business has helped a lot 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 ways to value a SAS business so the reason you're going to see three or four different evaluations inside of your founder path dashboard this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SAS company you're going to get a different valuation a VC is going to pay a different valuation private Equity Firm is different if you're going to 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 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 not built off random data again you guys hear these interviews on YouTube all these datas are built from real-time valuation data points Founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raise they sold 22 percent of their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to see companies that have sold the whole business well here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round well go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down what they raised what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold there's never been a larger data set of SAS valuation than what you can get now inside of founder path and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second but if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash evaluations or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products click on get your evaluation here and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl again all that valuation data live right inside the platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview who was your first business partner my first business partner was actually it was ramp which was a really good one to have and then I did data rails on the fpna side and then the first uh paid one that I worked with was brex and since then it's been kind of Off to the Races what year did Rex pay you they were in 2022 and before that like I I actually never even thought about advertising or sponsored content I was totally of the subscription mindset and that's because I came from B2B software companies where I just knew how powerful subscription was and I eventually actually came to the conclusion like hell why don't I have all the monetization methods and I think that's what a lot of creators struggle with is picking their spots of where to make money off stuff and sometimes they pigeonhole themselves into just one thing I mean like you can make a lot of money if you do webinars uh to help you know a software company land deals with a highly targeted audience there are a lot of different Avenues you can take and kind of blending those together will kind of uh end up in a larger pie over time how did you structure that original brex sponsorship contract and what was the total value of the contract they had reached out to me and they said hey uh how about we just pay you a lump sum for six posts and so I don't think I can give the exact amount on it but that was kind of eye-opening to me like oh somebody wants to pay me for my writing now it's not just a way to use companies as a partner I mean are we talking give us a range limit are we talking like 1K per post or like 10K per post or less or something it was it was uh in the middle of those two numbers you just gave so but it's per post so if it's 2K per post for six posts they pay you something like I'm making this up 12 you know uh 12K something like that yeah yeah something in that ballpark so it wasn't like I was retiring off it but it was if you've ever made a dollar online for the first time it's a real holy moment like I feel I feel kind of seen and validated here and that was more important to me than the money it was like a company that I thought highly of was willing to pay me and they were taking a bet on me and and since then I've been able to drastically I'd say increase the contract values of those who want to advertise because of the audience so what do you charge now to get a mention in a post um minimally minimally probably like five to ten thousand depending on how much I have to say about it okay um but yeah that's kind of the do you sell any other inventory besides a backlink and your mostly metrics article so I think about myself kind of as a SKU and I think content creators have to do that like you know it's not just about writing something in a backlink and charging for it it's my voice is different than other people and I think the finance game and I will also show up and talk to your customers if you want just from my experiences so like you could structure something where hey and I'm just gonna make it up uh you know a hundred thousand dollars over three months you could do uh one podcast readout every week um in my own tone that should resonate with Finance people plus a newsletter post plus like a webinar show up to your event and um it it becomes more of a relationship I think when you do it that way to say listen I'm here to make you succeed in any way I can in any content form that you can and by bundling those together it's more of like a holistic value prop not just you know a transactional thing where you sign up and maybe they pay you with a credit card for one post and then you never hear about them again it's hey how can we grow together and actually integrate it into a marketing plan I mean how do you make it sticky you published a post on July 25th 2023 titled what got you here isn't getting you there it featured Rex Chief strategy officer but the sponsor inventory at the top is blank it says mostly metrics plus your logo here if the original contract with brex Works they'd want to be buying up all of your ad space so how do you create sustainability here so that one that that's a great example of a partnership I did not charge them for that because I Met Art and I said this is an incredibly brilliant person and I want to have him tell his story and share something with my audience so I actually went and said hey do you want to just do this you know person to person and I can interview you on this so I don't like I actually don't try to monetize 100 of everything because I think people appreciate when you just want to talk to smart people and and put them you know on display for the audience so that one by the way I don't think these are we're in the same space so like I I don't want to give you that as an out I don't think what you just said those don't have to be mutually exclusive if you do a really great piece of content somebody is going to be willing to get their name in that piece of content it's not like you're selling out every time you sell a sponsorship Link in a post so like my question is a lot of companies like this newsletter sponsors Etc the difficult thing they have is they will get a 6 12 10 15K contract one time from a brex but then if they don't get the click-throughs I Rex expected right or they don't get like brex can't justify the cost internally over time it becomes a one-time thing that's very hard to build a sustainable business around so so have you unlocked anything in terms of creating sustainable response relationships that consistently yield you you know four or five six grand per month yeah so it's a great question and I think the key is both sides realizing that this is for my audience CFOs aren't going to just buy something because you did one Banner ad in one post you have to be willing to buy like at least a month or like six posts or you know uh for the podcast we do three month sponsorships because it's best for both of us you need to hear it multiple times I remember there was a study that you need to hear about a brand seven times before you actually consider making a purchase so I'm very upfront with people who want to sponsor it and I'll say listen I can do a one-time post for you but I really don't think it's going to be the best results because you have to also build a relationship with the audience and they have to hear from you multiple times um from from multiple angles so I I try to caution people away from paying for one thing and saying listen I'll even like you know maybe do one post for free just to show you the clicks or something like that I don't usually do that but I want to build a long-term relationship where we expose you over time multiple times to to an audience but I mean how do you do that even when you look at your most popular posts on your website I lost 209 000 of my own money trying to start a business um like I don't see anything in here like brex supports you know everyone trying to start a company even if you lose 200 Grand like me click here to try brex right I mean your most popular post should definitely be full you know if you have a sponsor inventory full like that should be effectively filled so I guess yeah I think that's the second one down I think the second one down most popular third one down is on vertical software that one was sponsored by abacom a company that I really believe in within the FP and a space and what's cool about that is they continue to get clicks now because most of my content is Evergreen like I'm not gonna like if you think about different levels of content you have like um you have Evergreen stuff which I write which is always helpful like people are always going to want to know more about metrics so they can make more money over time and be better at their jobs and then you have news stuff which maybe a flash in the pan and you get big views one day but people won't visit it so um some of my early posts I didn't uh advertise at all because I was just trying to get audience capture and to be honest like it's kind of one of those things where you're learning on the fly every day and trying to see which model is best and um there there are a lot of uh creators that you know I look up to in this space and they actually give away a lot of their content for free so somebody once said to me CJ you want to give away so much value that you almost feel sick not charging for it and that's when the real money will come yeah it's also a great way for people that can't make money to use as an excuse of why they haven't made any money I mean ultimately you want great content creators to make a lot of money so they can reinvest I mean look at look at Mr Beast and how much he spends on new videos the videos get better because he makes so much money so I want to see you get really rich because you're gonna invest it back in what you love me too um so I guess my next question for you is why give up a percent of your podcast Revenue to a network when you already own relationships via mostly metrics with sponsors like applicom that you can sell directly yeah I mean I'm still a full-time CFO at this point too and I do nights and weekends and hustle really hard on writing and the podcast but what turpentine gives me is more Distribution on top of what I already have professionally produced podcasts and access to people that I may not be able to tap into so um like they help me Source a lot of the podcast guests they help me advertise and find partners and they have a sales arm which is helpful and so it allows somebody who's professional like me to show up and just be responsible so like Jim Cook jumping on your show you know the co-founder of Netflix you're saying turpentine's worth it because they would get a guess like that on my show you wouldn't want to get that guess by yourself 100 and I think over time I'll be able to get a lot of these guests by myself so far it's probably been 50 50 coming from my network 50 50 coming from theirs but what is also uh potentially you know not seen in what we've talked about before is they have other business podcast cast and the best way to grow a podcast is through other podcasts so Eric uh tornberg and Amelia you know the co-founders of turpentine what they've done an excellent job of doing is making other niches that are somewhat can generally related who can cross promote each other the newsletter that I have is an excellent source of distribution but it's not the end-all be-all so I want to grow from different angles and you know by supporting other podcasters on the network you end up finding this pool of like-minded people who will cross-pollinate between them yep yep very cool so when do you when you quit your full-time job and go on on media that that's the that's the million multi-million dollar question here and I think it's more so when I finally get an idea to to to fulfill what I call uh content to Commerce um and what my end goal with this is to build a business behind it all so a lot of companies what they do is they'll make a startup and then they'll try to find distributions so they'll start with the product and then try to find the people my thing is to find the people have fun creating the content and then figure out what product they want and then build that for them so like a lot of content creators use their content to invest in other companies that's cool and stuff but I want to build a company behind it and so you know I'm happy in the spot that I'm in now learning as a CFO and it gives me a ton of credibility I think there's a flywheel there where I can crystallize what I'm learning and I can also be seen as a subject matter expert because I'm doing it day to day but eventually uh I'd love to to make this full-time probably within within the next three years here when you send out an email to your 35 000 subscribers how many open typically and how many clicks usually yeah my my uh my open rate right now yesterday was 46 so far um and then my click-through rate on any is between three and seven percent depending on the post itself but uh usually it's probably in the four and a half to five range okay I guess so 46 of 35 000 what is that like 16 000 opened and then you're saying seven percent of this or five to seven percent of The Sixteen thousand would click yeah something like that and then the website itself so just to be clear sorry that would be like six seven or 800 clicks per post yeah yeah that that sounds about right and yesterday for example we got 26 000 first day views because a lot of them are through email but a lot of them are also just Word of Mouth it was kind of cool somebody emailed me today I made the tldr tech uh newsletter for the first time today which was like a cool milestone for me just because I've read it for so long but I've been getting picked up by different distribution networks and kind of this whole internet flywheel this it makes it easy how many how many people weigh via subsex to analyze your audience how many of them are true CFOs operating at a SAS company right now friend actually built me a tool and it's coming to Market um next month and it's called Mega hit and basically I upload my subscriber list and then it uses Apollo IO and Chachi BT and a couple other tools and Linkedin to figure out what percentage of people are of what title and what industry they work in so the last time I checked I think I had about 7 000 actual CFOs and then I have other people within it who are you know maybe a couple years behind and aspiring to be CFOs right maybe they're the head of fpna are those CFOs at SAS companies do you have any way to know that yeah it Blends them by uh it's pretty neat it'll show me what industry they're in and then it'll show me how many people work at that company too so how many of the 7 000 CFOs on your list are SAS CFOs would you say uh about 60 okay wow some pretty significant uh there okay very cool all right CJ on that note let's wrap up here with the famous five number one your favorite book my favorite book uh Catch 22 by Joseph Feller number two is their CEO you're following or studying yeah uh Mark kastowsky of minoan Brands minoan experience number three what's your favorite online tool for building mostly metrics my favorite online tool is just a a blank sub stack page baby from the Dome uh number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night oh man I got a one and a half year old and then I got another one on the way so not as much as I'd like probably seven okay and the situation sounds like someone's not married with one kid another one on the way yes sir all right and how old are you TJ I'm 32 going on 33. nice last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. everything's gonna be okay I actually have it written on a Post-It note up here because nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems and I think I some moments in life in in business in particular you think it's the end of the world or the best thing ever but you gotta wake up tomorrow and do it again guys he cut his teeth at an operating uh company as a in the private Equity Firm also at PWC before that now runs on newsletter focused on CFOs of what she gets a 46 open rate which is about 16 000 opens and a five to seven percent click through rate which is 800 clicks per post called mostlymetrics.com hosted on sub stack 7 000 of those readers are actual CFOs in fact it's so valuable we've got companies like brex willing to pay him one two three four K sort of per post uh from a sponsor perspective he's looking to scale that Now launch to podcast as well with turpentine still while cutting his teeth as an operator as a true CFO at a company called Parts Tech with Giza which he's working on uh CJ thanks for taking us to the top thank you sir it's been a blast 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 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