How Personyze CEO Yaki Shabat grew Personyze to $4M revenue and 500 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is yaki Shabbat is an Israeli entrepreneur with a specialty in data science after building several ecommerce sites and recognized he recognized the tremendous need for personalization and the opportunity to fill a niche in the market so eventually arrived at a venture that serves one of these passions utilizing AI and digital automation to create an internet that is more personal and efficient since 2008 he's been working on it personalized and has been honing and perfecting the tools we used to accomplish that goal today he's happy to say they've created one the most versatile and powerful personalization solutions on the market yaki are you ready to take it to the top yes all right what is personalized and how do you make money well tanzanite is a complete solution ami-chan personalization and marketing automation we empower marketer to provide a completely personalized and relevant experience with the visitor journey and the business model is a SAS model so our client want to sign up they can easily start personalize the visitor experience on the site email turning up and payment model is a monthly based based on the site volume you see the site of volume the website volume but yeah based on the site traffic volume and Yaqui what do people on I don't go around every customer story what's an average trust or a pay per month would you say oh it's well it's two eyes again it's based on the site topic but it's Todd someone from $250 and can go up to $15,000 okay really high volume traffic okay would you say a fare average though is closer to 200 300 bucks a month something like that farm under 500 okay fair enough and then you found this in 2008 was that right yes into a commercial phase I want 2011 took us some time to develop a solution and it's now how do you pay yourself for this three years while you're building I have some other ventures other businesses and the companies are funded privately okay the initial investment was a 1/2 million dollar and through the years now the company is profitable so basically the ongoing investment that we do in research and development is coming from the company ongoing revenue so you're profitable and cashflow positive yeah and how much capital have you raised two day total just the two million it's a little bit it's more like three million dollar yeah okay and how how many customers are on the platform now today well we have more than 500 customer okay and where have you gone most those customers have you signed them up it's about it so the first few years we were relying mostly on marketing agencies so we provided more as a white level or an option to upload the personalization platform so we got a lot of customers and basically not our direct customer but the world working with them with a digital marketing agency who use personalize to improve the site experience in the last two or three years we started directly to reach out to their end customer it's you own the relationship now you've skilled a 500 of them if I take 500 times that average price point of 500 bucks per month that puts you somewhere around 250 thousand dollars per month in revenue is that accurate yeah and what is growth is how the only customer will pay unless then no it's understood of all those who works for an agency I will you know cause maintenance of those clients are very low so the price has to reflect that so an agency usually you know buy a license sure it went directly you know a good number of customer but yeah I understand that but but today just came for me being about 250 grand a month in revenue yeah and then take me back a year in August 2017 what were you doing then so we get growth rate which you come again about a year ago how much were you doing well I was hired out in the last year we have achieved more than at 20% these are not revenue twenty percent yeah twenty percent and it's what more important for us as a company that we now start seeing more about revenue coming from direct client director that we we are facilitating for many channels and not necessarily through the marketing agency because this is something major that we have done in the past two years as I mentioned is to move and so directly to the customer and not relying any more on marketing agencies and what's it costing you when you go direct to customer what's it's costing you to acquire one of these customers so then pays you 500 bucks per month or I will say 1 mm $2,500 okay so it's commonly our cost of acquisition it's again it's revised as you know and nowadays it's become much more harder to gain attraction of marketers and also the cost of audit has been it's much more higher than just a few years ago so we try now to to have the right mix by also going out to different marketplaces such a we just have we just have like we just want our Shopify app for example so this time those channels help us to you know to reduce the cost of acquisition and so current is these are the numbers but hopefully we will we will be able in there in the near future when we go into much more into more marketplaces to to reduce substantially the cost of acquisition and yeah this year you pay that carry today is what sorry your payback period today is what about five months six months yeah yeah it's yeah yeah this is no I was saying average churn is also critical in this business what's your turn today oh it's also depends on the type of customer this is how we divide it so if you're talking about marketing agencies so basically there is no chocolate as far as we're concerned because the license is the same so the model is a client because this client is continuing to water yeah tell me about the train that you manage that you that you may measure so we do have some where I will say between 10 to 20 percent but a long time is also our fault well from the beginning because we were not the right much sorry just to be clear 10 to 20 percent logo churn per year yeah charlie yeah but is that logo churn and as annual or monthly know what we're talking about okay and again just because it's logos not revenue yeah okay got it and how do you drive that churn rate down well first we try to make sure that when we sign up a customer we sign that we sign up the right customer and if we talk about our solution so what we need to make sure that this client has some traffic on his site because part of our part of the personalization process we're using a lot of hard wisdom so we need some traffic on the side so we're gonna have some data so which so what we do now is also so it's from the beginning where we actually you know sign in the kind so making sure that the client is the right fit for us another thing that we do and it's just to simplify the onboarding process so what we did in the last year we started with you know truly wildlife service but basically it's become like a switch on button for client to sign up as well as because this was something that was a major a lot of time especially in be an enterprise client went on to sign up it goes from too many people so many people as many Department and we need to after all to have all the data both and it's take time yeah so yeah I'm fine now yeah we're sorry I didn't mean to cut you off but I want to actually get a bunch in here up how big is it team Jin where you guys based so we how big is the team today and where are you based or 15 people one five and five zero one five or five zero one five and where you based Israel so the company is based in Israel but the marketing operation now is in USA from D'Alessio Israel and and here in US and you spend much time in Israel or here in the US I'm called more fingers yeah we just very good any any plans to raise capital here in the near future no we basically planning to invest more into our marketing and this is again as I said the company is already profitable so basically I've been you crying is this more money into the company into the company into the marketing any are you an acquisition talks right now with anyone we had in the past currently we don't have anything very good and you said funding wise I wanna make sure I got this right you said 30 million right 3-0 no no three million dollars up to three million okay so I thought I want to make sure I got that right three million very good alright let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what is your favorite business book well I should have put on an event but I will say the last book that I read is a long lost and I really loved number two is there is there a CEO you're following or studying right now [Music] again I will save a mask but also most of the tech tired like Jack was us and Mexicans like all of them oh sorry inspiration for me number three what's your favorite online tool for building your business Oh Edward yeah number four how many hours of sleep to get every night I want qualified okay four to five yeah um service I got just asleep holy mackerel a bunch of situation married single kids bingo sing okay no kids yet alright and how are ya 36 last question what he was your 20 year old self new sorry what he was your 20 year old self new I'm not sure that's a good question when you were 20 what is something you wish you knew well to be more humble I would say guys there you have a be more humble again coming...