How Omnystudio CEO Sharon Taylor grew Omnystudio to $4.1M revenue and 750 customers in 2018.

hello everyone my guest today is Sharron Taylor she's the CEO of omnis to do an advanced audio on-demand platform though for enterprise audio publishers with over a decade of leadership experience in the technology industry at omni studio she drives awareness of podcasting around the globe working with radio networks and podcasters to navigate an excel in this space Sharon are you ready to take it to the top I am graphical very good okay tell us about the company so what do you guys do and how do you make money so today we are in its simplest terms and audio hosts for podcasters or broadcasters that want to move in the on-demand space so I always use that line from Zoolander where he jokes about Hansel being so hot right now like podcasting right it's so hot right now and everyone kind of wants to move into it and so we help broadcasters news publishers kind of any players in edges and industries get into on demand or Gary that's great and what's the revenue model so is it a pure place to ask company or what yeah a few places so all platform and usage costs platform and usage costs okay and and walk through like the average customer what are they paying per month that's a very interesting question is it like any podcast company out there we've got still a long tail of podcasters that of you know paying the simple hey it's 20 or 50 bucks a month and they get a quantity of bandwidth and they kind of go from there and then we go all the way that are there into town where we do like your intercoms and your salem radios and obviously they pay a per program show and that's in the you know up to the tens of thousands a month so it's quite a wide split that we've got okay would you say though like 20 bucks or 30 bucks a month is a fair average now I think at the moment an average will probably be around 400 500 bucks alone okay guys so you are kind of more in the mid market enterprise space yes ya know can people think of this like a Lipson well you could in that anyone could be a podcast host we kind of try more for their enterprise end of town so a toolset once you've aged in more with your podcast or more with your audio that's when you'd start looking at your omni studios but yeah but for simplest terms you'd go lives in probably more like are 19 or megaphone to be honest yep all great companies voice is obviously a very hot space that's always excited to talk to you tell me what about when you launched the company what year so there were three guys that launched it 2011 they started with text-to-speech and they realized very early on in the piece that text-to-speech back in 2011 probably not the best quality of automation of it and then yet the journey has been through voice since then so there was a product called Omni radio which was personalized radio for listeners and then Omni studio the platform was three and a half years ago now mm-hmm now you're you're talking about this as if you just joined recently and you weren't with them at the beginning were you a co-founder you came in later no I was late I'd say yes I've been there about two and a half years now okay so you joined him call it 2016 was that with a round of funding have you guys raised uh we have paused on funding I am a unique startup person that doesn't like the earn and burn mentality and so we moved pretty quickly to being just a kind of profitable self-sustaining company so we came in I came in just after the bridge funding and we might do another raise this year if I can be convinced by the board but how much tolls in the company today about 2.3 okay so you know not a crazy amount but definitely you know raised yeah yes okay very good and so 2011 was start date you joined in two years ago 2016 and what have you scaled to now in terms of total customers we all bring around the 750 to 800 customers at the moment okay I mean look that's pretty healthy now can I take 750 times the 450 you mentioned earlier the average price to assume you're doing call it 300 350 a month oh yeah that's pretty good that's good close that's yeah okay good and and where's growth that so a year ago today what were you doing per month way way way so we've grown about 300% in sales from last year this year oh my gosh so you were doing like 80 or 90 grand a month a year ago yep what's driven was that growth I think partly interesting the space partly a change in business model and adding in kind of new revenue streams so helping people monetize is probably the biggest thing now for us okay that's great and when you talk about monetization does that allow you to drive expansion revenue or you just upsell that as a kind of product feature good both mostly expecting revenue okay so you're I'm sorry what I meant by that is are you actually taking a cut of what you help them monetize in most instances yes yeah we are a bit of a unique player in the industry in that we get weird about touching people's advertising revenue like there's a lot of podcast hosts out there that do like a free platform whether they take a web share whereas we all kind of believe that if you're working hard to make money on your shows you should keep as much of it if not all of it as possible so that's a mindset that we're slowly changing as we realize that the revenue on the table is important but for the most part some enterprise customers that are monetizing can get away on I'm going to do without paying us anything for it yep nope that makes sense you're talking about churn it screwed up on a company like this what's your turn today we're negative so we have two buckets of customers both broadcast and then we count them in the podcast space and I think at the moment broadcasters are like negative one point something percent and podcast is a negative seven point something percent we're bringing on more than we're losing and then obviously we're upselling to the customers like while they're on the platform which is helpful for toon and Sharon just to be clear so you're at net negative churn annually that's obviously sorry I assume that's annually not monthly correct correct yes I got it so net negative revenue churn annually that's great that means expansion is outpacing and each earned revenue when you are signing up new customers where are you getting them from at the moment about 60% of our new business comes from the US and Canada it's just the biggest market and so it's kind of where everyone goes our biggest growth at the moment is coming from the UK and the EU so it seems like you know your France Germany Netherlands etc they've got kind of a new mentality in terms of podcasting a lot of the broadcaster's that we work with over there always used to build their own tech and now I think the mentality is shifting to hey we could just outsource this to a team that lives and breathes it every day yes that's kind of our most exciting industry but US and Canada is the biggest what channel are you using to reach though the US podcasters they're specific website or conference or whether is assuming channels you're using so we have a reseller in the United States which has been really really useful for us and they have Hold'em a lot of high value relationships and kind of independent publishers and then otherwise you'll just see me in the States five or six times a year just conferencing making connections and hustling ya know that makes a lot of sense what are you spending on tactic why are these guys so we've you've caught me at the worst possible time to ask this question I've literally just really literally just gone let's just throw a ton of cash at this and see kind of what sticks online what's the time how much so we're probably looking more around the three to four hundred per customer and that's more than we've ever spent at the moment yeah I just told you that head of my board meeting this month that's funny gonna be published yeah I know you'll be good but if you're paying 300 bucks even right and they're paying you 40 bucks a month on average your payback period still less than a month yes right yes we're very lucky yeah it's hot partly because of how hot the industry is right now and then just partly I think it's taken us what two years to get a solid name over there in the states and it's like a snowball in momentum right like once you get it it kind of just keeps going on its own volition yep tell me more about the team what's the team size today so we're five including me okay great that's a mate so your revenue per employees through the roof I love that yes it's crazy yeah yeah I lost my stock so we got a high up you're gonna hire yes are you all based are you all based over there and uh sorry I think you said you were where'd you say you were in Melbourne yeah Melbourne Australia yeah based in Melbourne that's great and hiring whatever we're gonna scale so we'll do engineering like we're looking for engineers at the moment and then we're more than likely the tying of the idea of having like a single employee in satellite offices in the US or the UK and depending on what day the week you catch me on the I think it's the best idea or the worst idea in the world and so we'll go engineering first because we that's where we're kind of lagging and the guys were amazing but there's only so many hours in the day right so yeah you seem like a very smart lady you've had a lot of success they must have had to...