How Niche CEO Luke Skurman grew to $110.2M revenue and 400 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is gehome de cougas he's the ceo of scoop dot it or scoop it a sas platform that helps marketers publish content using data science he's been an entrepreneur since 2000 first with museo wave which was the first mobile music platform acquired by microsoft then good jet which is pre-iphone mobile widget platform then he's been a startup and advisor along with an investor in tetamus which is email retargeting it was acquired by cruteo the refiners impact which was cross-border accelerators in san francisco all right get home are you ready to take us to the top yeah all right you've done a bunch real quick just because you you have some exposure to music and first mobile platform back back in muse wave time uh iheart media why is it going under um not sure [Laughter] yeah you haven't followed it closely enough huh no all right yeah you know i left music uh where was that seven years ago uh i'm still involved you know i have a i have a band with fellow entrepreneurs here nsf we have a rock band so i'm still a musician but i left the music industry seven years ago and i didn't look back too much what do you play or are you this are you lead singer i'm a little singer oh very good i love this we have we have have cool the cool factor of the show went up today all right tell us about scoop it what are you doing how do you make money so scuba dive you know helps marketers you know figure out what content to publish uh we started as a curation platform we're realizing that a lot of um you know for a lot of people creating content was really hard and curating content was an easier way to um to get content published so we helped you know filter the web for relevant stories and more recently we launched a a new version of our platform which is called hawkeye which helps you derive some trends understand you know get some insights on what content is out there to kind of guide your content strategy help you understand what topics to engage and publish content on uh what your competitors are doing what influencers are doing so we we monitor the web for you so that you are better at uh content marketing this sounds like something maybe similar to a buzzsumo kind of concept yeah so you know buzzsumo uh you know they've done a great platform uh they've done great stuff uh what we added is uh we we've done some natural language processing so yeah you know not getting technical but that's artificial intelligence that can tell you you know this is what the stories are really about uh and we've added some measurements so we we derived a few more insights uh to look at your competitors to look at influencers to to measure things that are meaningful for your content strategy okay and what's the revenue model is it a pure place ass model it's pureblade says um you know we've been talking with the idea of adding some professional services we're you know at the point where you know it could make sense but it's pure place has for now okay great and hey uh real quick just move the mic so it's not rubbing against your clothes just because we're getting a bunch of friction i wanted to make this look that's perfect um okay good so it's pure play sass and then give us more of the history here so when did you launch the company so we launched uh ann of 2011 um and the background was really around you know realizing that we were going to be in a content first world where online visibility was going to be determined by you know the content you were going to be publishing and we felt that it was going to be a big transition for a lot of companies out there you know it was about becoming uh you know a media outlet a media brand and we felt a lot of marketers are not trained to do this it's a it's a new paradigm it's a new environment and so we wanted to see whether technology could help and we realized that you know looking at what's been published out there building a technology that can do that for you was going to be the natural first step um and so that's when we started so we launched end of 2011 um you know first as a as a free tool that anybody could use we have uh now more than four million users of that free version uh we launched the b2b version three years ago in 2015. um yeah so that's kind of the story behind the company and do you the folks that want people are listening around they saying yes i need this i want to use it i mean what are customers paying you on average would you say per month are we talking small 10 a month or 10 000 a month so we have actually uh we have both we started with a freemium model uh that you know is more like for solo entrepreneurs or very small companies and then you know we realized that we needed a b2b version uh an enterprise version uh that would be more scalable that would have you know more features and we have you know clients like uh ibm microsoft so you know very large companies our sweet spot tend to be mid-market companies um you know in that in that range but we've been covering uh the whole range just because we started with a free product then did freemium and then the b2b sas version okay so if we just focus on b2b sas and i pin you down and say give me an average what would you i mean would you say an average is a grand a month 10 grand a month but more than that uh or you know our average is about 10k a year okay so in that in that range but we have you know uh we try to scale with uh larger companies to much higher numbers and what are the uh when you look at your pricing plans and what your sales people are pitching what are the kind of value drivers that drive expansion revenues a number of seats number of pieces of content what is it so for us it's been um you know three things uh the value metrics or number of seats a number of topics you want to cover which is probably going to be one of yours very small company but could be hundreds uh if you're a large uh fortune 500 company and then we have a number of features which are also helping tier the products and and separate them out got it and tell me more about that team how many sales folks are on and what's the total size of your team today so we're still pretty lean we have you know pretty much relied on the the free version to bring us leads so our team is about 20 people um the um you know sales marketing team uh that's about uh seven people um and so you know we're still having a pretty lean model we've been trying to leverage the fact that with the free version we get a lot of inbound interest that's helped develop our brand but also brings a lot of people who sign up for the free version for themselves and then realize they could use this for their company uh and we use a lot of content to help them realize that there are there is more that could do with the platform uh with our more advanced uh versions yep and and ignore i mean by the way it's tough to ignore four million folks but ignoring your free version and just focus on your b2b sas i mean how many customers have you scaled you on that thing since you launched it it's about 250 okay 250 uh b2b clients that's i mean that's healthy if you've got 250 folks paying you know on average 10 grand per year what's at 800 ish per month you're doing north of what 200 grand just on that line of business right that's healthy and then you're you're just to be clear though your freemium users i imagine they're they don't all stay free you have a smaller price 10 a month plan or something for them yeah we have a we have a actually a 12 uh plan and a 79 plan uh for the guys who are more advanced like more consultants and so on and that's a part of the revenue as well but to be fair and that's been kind of the learning we we realized that uh you know i think if you really want to go after a freemium model and i think you know there's the dropbox ipo there's been a lot of numbers coming out of this you really have to have very strong numbers and four million is good but um you know to have a very healthy freemium model with it probably would need to be 40. um and so we started with freemium we we like the revenue we get from premium there's a lot of very happy customers on that plan but we will realize that for us the ufc was born on the b2b uh part with larger companies so would you ever consider selling off the individual part of your business or no um no but for a different reason um the the technology we have um that helps monitor the web that helps with natural language processing uh that uses a lot of the the data points we get uh from the those four million of users they help us think of it as they help us crowdsource what we call the relevant web so the digital web any website that publishes meaningful content beats you know blog or podcasts or videos we wouldn't be able to do that just on our own just crawling the web on our own google can do that um but you know we we have 40 million sources of content that we crawl on a daily basis and the way we re you know we crowdsource some of the the way we source some of those uh most interesting more niche and longer tail uh sources are thanks to our users so that's a various yeah they're helping an aspect of our mind helping you make your machine more effective yeah so you know ai is just um the fuel for ai is data so the more data you have the better your ai is going to be and for us uh that's been a critical part of our model over the past 12 months what portion of your revenue was made up just from your b2b model is that like signific 80 is your b2b model and 20 of your freemium or or your individual that's about yeah that's about 70 b2b okay got it 70 bb so i mean look if you're doing 200 grand a month on your b2b model that's 70 i mean it's it's not insignificant the money you're doing on the on the smb stuff but the key value you're getting there you're saying is not the revenue it's really the data yeah okay take us through um acquisition on these 250 b2b customers i mean how are they finding you how are you closing them so you know most of our and it's kind of particular because you know we've been relying on our free version to get a lot of inbound so we do really you know one thing from a marketing standpoint is we do content marketing and that sounds a bit like you know we drink our own kool-aid and because we're a counter marketing software company and we do kind of marketing but that's been really efficient for us so our whole model is to get people you know to discover us either through our free version and then we qualify them with content so for instance if you sign up for our free version you're going to receive our newsletter which is going to be marketing stuff if we see you you're not into this we're you're not opening it you're not clicking on it we're gonna leave you alone and we're not gonna you know send you that newsletter anymore so we give you a test of it but if you're a marketer you're gonna find some cool interesting uh content so you're gonna start engaging with that newsletter with that content and we're gonna qualify you as a marketer and you know we're going to try to nurture you all to the point where you're going to say hey maybe i should check out the enterprise version of scoopit um and you have people who kind of go directly you know we do the traditional content marketing inbound playbook where we do content that drives seo that drives qualified leads that we convert and then we nurture through uh marketing automation but it's mostly an inbound model leveraging the fact we have a free version that can bring a lot of leads so gihen fully weighted kak you'd say is about what um it's about 7 8k just your beat on your b2b side got it so you're then if they're paying you on average 10 grand per year you keep your payback well under 12 months right yeah that's about it i would say you know that it's a bad yeah one year payback yeah something like that yep and and bootstrapped have you raised capital we've raised capital uh okay how much have you raised we raised uh 13 million yeah man those lit that one ex liquidation preference man how do you how are you grown to that evaluation yeah i know the story uh and the story that the company is actually a bit more complex could that because that cap table is something we inherited from uh a totally different project uh which was um the company mentioned in the intro the widget platform uh so you know part of money were raised on that company and then you know restarted everything uh when we when we folded the uh the widget business uh then took some additional funding uh following that uh restart uh but inherited the capital from uh from back then wait a complicated story did you launch scoop from scratch or did you raise additional capital and you bought scoop from somebody else no we launched it from scratch but was the team that had worked on good yet oh i see which was the previous company so uh we had some cash left from what we had raised for good yet and when we started scoop it we we said okay we can use that gas to create that product so we did a lot of that with our investors back then yeah and raised some additional funding once the uh the restart was uh you know proved to be successful so we haven't consumed the whole 13 million on on scoop it part of that was on on good yet i see um and so yeah well we were um you know we got to go to a point where you know it makes sense so we're still you know very ambitious and want to grow a lot more than what we've done so far what are you growing at today year over year just the b2b side of your business um so you know on the b2b side we've been growing you know um about 50 a year okay got it so you're doing about 130 grand on that side of the business 12 months ago yeah but something around there yeah um okay and tell me about churn so cheering has been um you know uh one of the one of the reasons we've been moving up marquette is we've seen that uh you know with smbs it's actually very hard uh to get the the churn rate where we wanted to be and we've discussed a lot of companies who've been in that space where you know technology itself is you know needs to be packaged with some uh skills and expertise which you know in the marketing uh uh space is often the case um so that's why we've been moving up market we have more stable clients uh we have you know better um longer term uh contracts longer term opportunities um so that's been our strategy to um to to uh address charm um [Music] we've been also working a lot on the product uh and you know seeing what we could do in this uh but i think you know getting you know above 75 retention yearly on smb is um is really hard some companies manage us to do this uh and have a very healthy model but if you want to do you know negative churn and upsells and so on it's probably more with you know larger companies suki home just to be clear what are you at today in terms of churn on your b2b side um well that's not something we disclose uh okay but i think you know it's it's a hybrid of you know a number which uh to be honest i'm not really proud of which is more what we get on the smb and some you know negative churn numbers that we're getting on the on the enterprise version of on the larger segment of our client base so i'm trying to think a number you wouldn't be proud of it see is it fair to say on your enterprise side your churn currently is north of five percent monthly and you're working on bringing that down on the uh yeah so on the smb part where north of that yeah on the smb part okay but just to be clear you're not really focused on the smb stuff right you're really focused on the b2b stuff yeah so the way we and that's kind of uh depends on how you you differentiate your segment is but when we look at our b2b version we have you know companies anywhere from 10 to you know 200 employees that's what we call smbs the enterprise uh you know is like companies of a thousand employees or more those are where you know we're we're getting very optimistic on you know getting um that's where we can get some upsells negative churn rates and so on yeah companies you know with 200 200 employees or less this is still you know where we're getting um you know um a churn that's you know we're not really proud of and where you know if you look at what companies like like hubspot have been uh if their stores their numbers um they started also with a lot of churn and they've been investing massively to to to be able to to retain customers on that uh on that segment yeah what uh last question here before we wrap up with the famous five on your enterprise side what do you assume a minimum lifetime value is today um for us you know we're shooting to get 50k um minimum yep uh it's about five years worth of value well enterprise we sell you know if you're going to be a larger company you're going to be uh higher than that so but but yeah we we try to be at uh at that range yeah okay very good let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book so i'm not really strung into a business book there's a blog that i love which is uh thompson good's uh blog i'm much more into reading his blog than reading any business book to be honest number two is there a ceo you're following or studying right now um so again i don't have like a mentor or somebody i'm studying uh i do a lot of mentoring myself and i love to learn from you know young entrepreneurs i think i learn a lot more from you know having interactive conversations then trying to read the the fifth bio on steve jobs yeah name one name one of these underground ceos it's a young young person that you follow um so you know it's more like the people i mentor through the accelerators have been involved in um so you know the uh the tethermist was was one of the the company that i've been involved at the board uh is one of the companies i've been involved the one you mentioned that we was acquired by critio um the two guys who've been um running this company have been really impressive um there are two french guy um uh antoine de vose uh and alexander chavaniac and they've been you know starting this from scratch bootstrapping it ending up being the first acquisition of crutio and they've been in doing a fantastic work so they're they're starting a new company now and i'm following that up very closely number three what's your favorite online tool for building a business um so recently i've discovered something called full story i don't know if you're familiar with them yep i am good good company yeah if you're building a product it's it's really uh it's really great i think you know i wished i had that for a long time and it's really giving you so for those of you who are not familiar with it it's helping you understand what your users are doing with your product so you can it's almost like you they were in the same room as you were and you could see where they click what they're doing uh what they don't get what they really what they're able to do so it's really an amazing tool number four how many hours of sleep to eat every night uh about seven okay that's good and what's your situation married single you have kiddos i'm married so i have a wife uh who's displaying i was very disciplined with my uh with my sleep and so she uh if i were on my own i'd probably be at five or six uh but she uh she gets me to do seven every night so yeah and any kiddos or no three three oh wow okay and how old are you home they're um no you how old are you oh i'm 47. 40 sounds let's say you're not 17. all right 47. and take me back it's your 20 year old self what do you wish he knew so i think the number one thing i would say is um you know the ability to get out of your comfort zone is you know where i learned the most so you know if i had to go back in time and it was not about it wouldn't be about hey you should know this it would be you know go out go out of your comfort zone explore take some risks um i i did that to some extent but um you know i i think you know you cannot uh take too many risks when uh when you're 25 so there you guys have it it's impossible to take too many risks when you're young so take them all take them all gi home says he founded scoop it back in 2011 they pivoted around and some different ideas raised 13 million bucks to build this it's really content and content at scale they'll help you surface what's working they use their free user base about four million folks to help train their machine which fuels their b2b enterprise business where they've signed up about oh what do we say about 250 customers paying on average 10 grand per year so about 200 220 grand ish per month just in that revenue stream makes about 70 of their total revenue churn right now he's not proud of they're working on getting that lower the economics are looking good in their enterprise cohort spending about seven grand on cac for a payback period of under 12 uh months again lifetime buying these guys around 50 grand gi home thank you so much for taking us to the top well thank you and great summary