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Founder Interview

How Planleave Launched at $1.99 Per Employee Per Month With 3 Early Customers (Interview with CEO Andrew Geisel)

Interview Date
October 26, 2022
Interviewee
Andrew GeiselCo-Founder and CEO
Watch
Watch the full interview

Company Metrics at Interview Time

Pricing (2022)

$1.99 per employee per month

Customers (2022)

3

Team Size (2022)

2

Ownership Stake (2022)

80%

Historical Snapshot

These numbers were reported by Andrew Geisel during his interview with Nathan Latka in October 2022 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Planleave’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways

  • 01Planleave charges $1.99 per employee per month with a minimum of 30 employees
  • 02Andrew Geisel acquired 80% of Planleave for under 6 figures via MicroAcquire
  • 03The company launched publicly three weeks before this interview with a press release
  • 04Planleave had 3 customers at the time of the interview, including one in Spain and one in Ohio
  • 05The team consists of 2 people: Andrew Geisel (CEO) and Jose Manuel (CTO)
  • 06Growth tactics at launch included cold outreach to personal network, Capterra paid placement, and organic SEO
  • 07The CTO Jose Manuel retained 20% of the company after the acquisition
  • 08Andrew Geisel bootstrapped the acquisition and planned to continue bootstrapping
  • 09Andrew left his full-time role at DailyPay only after securing the Planleave deal
  • 10SEO was the primary planned growth channel, with an SEO agency engaged at launch

Company Metrics at Time of Interview

MetricValueSource
Pricing per Employee (2022)$1.99 per employee per monthFounder interview, Oct 2022
Customers (2022)3Founder interview, Oct 2022
Team Size (2022)2Founder interview, Oct 2022
Ownership Stake (Andrew Geisel) (2022)80%Founder interview, Oct 2022
Acquisition PriceUnder 6 figuresFounder interview, Oct 2022
CTO Equity Retained20%Founder interview, Oct 2022
Minimum Employee Count (pricing floor) (2022)30 employeesFounder interview, Oct 2022

Growth Breakdown

Revenue

Planleave launched publicly three weeks before this interview at $1.99 per employee per month, with a minimum of 30 employees per account. With 3 early customers, the company was in its earliest revenue stage at the time of recording.

Customers

The 3 customers at interview time included accounts in Spain brought in by CTO Jose Manuel before the acquisition, and one customer in Ohio sourced through Andrew Geisel's personal network. Customer acquisition was driven entirely by direct outreach to existing contacts at this stage.

Team

The company operated with a 2-person team: Andrew Geisel as CEO handling sales, marketing, and strategy, and Jose Manuel as CTO responsible for product and engineering. Andrew owns 80% and Jose retains 20% following the acquisition.

Funding and Bootstrapping

Andrew Geisel self-funded the acquisition of Planleave for under 6 figures and planned to continue bootstrapping the business. No outside capital had been raised at the time of the interview.

Growth Strategy

Cold Outreach to Personal Network

At launch, Andrew's primary source of customers was direct outreach to his personal and professional network built over 20 years in HR technology. He acknowledged this was a bridge strategy until other channels gained traction.

Organic SEO

Andrew engaged an SEO agency to target keywords such as leave management, vacation tracker, and time off tracker. He viewed standalone leave management as less competitive than broader HRMS terms and expected results to take at least three months.

Review Site Paid Placement

Andrew paid for a top-five placement on Capterra to generate inbound leads. This channel had just launched the week before the interview and was still being evaluated for conversion performance.

Slack and Email Integrations as a Product Differentiator

Planleave's integrations with Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook were positioned as key selling points to reduce friction for end users and admins, supporting word-of-mouth and ease of adoption.

Partner and Self-Service Portal Opportunities

Andrew identified potential longer-term growth through HR technology partner channels and self-service portals, leveraging his existing relationships in the HR tech ecosystem built over two decades.

Best Quotes

We charge by employee $1.99 basically. Per month. We start at 30 employees.
Three weeks ago.
We're super new. Yeah. And we just had a press release today announcing the launch. So we just got started.
SEO, to be very candid. That's where most of the money is focused right now, and that's where most of the attention's focused. It's so people can find us, which you know what a SEO is, but that's the biggest thing.
I'm not a technical person, so I originally kinda was doing this in the background for a while looking at HR technology. That's kinda my comfort zone. So that's just sweet. This was the first thing that I found that made a lot of sense and came together, and that's how it happened.
Honestly, I mean, SEO takes three months. We just started it three weeks ago, so I'm not expecting any results from that. Capterra just started last week, to be honest. So I I think it's foolish for me to be thinking too much about that right now. Everything I've been doing has been just my direct working with friends.
I'm sorry. The ones in Spain, Jose, that was pre me, and then the one in Ohio is a friend of myself.
I do have a plan. It's been a while since I looked at it, but essentially what I want to accomplish ideally is once we get the machine going is get it to, at a minimum, 14 clients per week, fifteen, thirty, 45, 60, what, fifty, fifty six clients per month and so on.
I'm gonna bootstrap it for now.
He wasn't selling it. Jose is a technical guy. I'm not a technical guy, so he really wasn't selling it or marketing it. He put it out there, and I think he tried a few things. He tried some SEO, and it just never really took off.

What Happened Next

This interview captured Planleave just three weeks after its public launch in October 2022, when the company had 3 customers, a 2-person team, and was in the earliest stage of building its go-to-market motion. The numbers and strategy described here reflect that specific moment in time and should not be taken as current figures. Visit the Planleave company profile on GetLatka for the most up-to-date metrics and growth data.

View Planleave’s current profile and metrics

Full Transcript

Introduction and Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Andrew Geisel. He's the current CEO and co founder of planleave. His background includes leadership positions at PeopleSoft, Accenture, and other technology companies. Through six years at PeopleSoft, he drove strategic new market initiatives, and again, eventually now leading him to understand the importance of leave management for a good culture. That's what he's building at planleave. Andrew, you ready to take us to the top?

Andrew Geisel

00:20>> I'm ready.

What Is Leave Management

Nathan Latka

00:21All right. So what does that mean, leave management for positive cultures?

Andrew Geisel

00:25>> Yeah. So leave well, two different things. Leave management itself has been around for a while. It's essentially excuse me. I have this thing popped up here. It's essentially the ability to track your employees' time off. So

00:39>> why we say for positive cultures is you kind of started off with saying I worked for a lot of big companies and with that comes working with a lot of different technology and so forth, and I spent twenty years in HR technology itself, and one thing that can be frustrating is cumbersome technology, and so my attraction to planleave, it's so simple, there's no learning involved. I'm not trying to sound like a sales pitch, just being candid.

01:00>> It's just, there really isn't. You can integrate easily, it's basically cut and paste technology.

Nathan Latka

01:07>> It's very

01:07Andrew, can you make this real for us? Can use a real example so customer x uses you to do y?

Andrew Geisel

01:14>> When they're on the platform?

Nathan Latka

01:16Yeah. Tell me a story about how a customer uses you.

Andrew Geisel

01:19>> Yeah. So they they basically, they log in.

Nathan Latka

01:21And you're a real customer. Like, if you can share one, is there a logo on your website you can say this customer uses to do x?

Andrew Geisel

01:28>> Yeah. So Cameo over in Spain uses the application, and they basically have 40 employees. So they set up all their employees. We have a mass invite link to send out to all your employees. They log into the system. They have their own scaled down dashboard specific to their kind of needs, so we don't over complicate it for them. That's different than the admin dashboard. But basically, they can submit an employment request. They can look at their

How a Customer Uses Planleave

Andrew Geisel

01:53>> teams to make sure there's not conflicts, and they can route that to their manager. They can do that through Slack. They can do that through email. It'll go through email regardless, but they can do it through Slack as well. And then it'll automatically, once it goes through the approval process, it'll auto update the Google or Outlook calendar. So really, from a user standpoint, that's it. The admin itself has a much kind of bigger view of it.

02:17>> They have the full organization view. They can check for conflicts. They can do compliance. They can set up leave type designations if there's leave types that do not fit within our standard leave types. A good example of that would be FMLA, which is a federal kind of requirement that an employee has to take a certain amount of time off for family reasons, unpaid time off, and then there's different state laws that vary and so forth as

02:40>> well, So

Pricing Model Explained

Nathan Latka

02:41That's helpful. So help me understand. I mean, sounds like you've given an example of 40 employee team, which I would maybe put like big SMB to maybe small mid market. But generally speaking, what's the average customer paying you per month or per year to use plan planleave?

Andrew Geisel

02:55>> Yeah, so we charge by employee $1.99 basically. Start at Per

Nathan Latka

03:00month or year?

Andrew Geisel

03:02>> Per month, sorry. Yeah. We start at 30 employees. To be very candid, we kind of fit two niches. We fit very well with companies that want to move all spreadsheets, and we have pretty solid ROIs built in, which I could walk you through if you wanted to, but basically a company with 30 employees would get like a 5x return on investment, a company with 50 employees would probably get like a 7x return on investment.

Nathan Latka

03:24Just to understand cost of 30 employees at $2 per employee per month, the average customer is paying you at $67.07 bucks a 20 a year, yeah, 60. $720 a year, okay, interesting. Okay. And then, I guess, put this all on a big on a big timeline for us. When did the company launch? What year?

Company Launch Timeline

Andrew Geisel

03:38>> Three weeks ago.

Nathan Latka

03:40Three what?

Andrew Geisel

03:41>> Three weeks ago.

Nathan Latka

03:43Oh, three weeks ago. Oh, super new.

Andrew Geisel

03:46>> We're super new. Yeah. And we just had a press release today announcing the launch. So we just got started.

Nathan Latka

03:51Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you connect

04:14your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna get

04:39a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation. Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna 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. 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

05:01built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction, 1,200,000 seed round, 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna 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

05:27out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll 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 dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. Alright. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but if you

05:49wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation 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. Alright. Let's jump back into the interview.

Acquisition Story and MicroAcquire Deal

Nathan Latka

06:16Okay. When was the first line of code written?

Andrew Geisel

06:19>> My well, so my partner is still with the company, so that's kind of a backdrop story. I I I left my company. I decided I wanted to buy something else. Well, actually, I I put all that in motion before I left my company, but I bought in the planleave.

06:31>> I

06:32>> retained who's now my CTO, Jose Manuel, and he wrote it about over a year and a half ago, and he just never really had the time to do the marketing or anything else like that, that's how we came together.

Nathan Latka

06:44Okay. Got it. So did was it Bootstrap before you came in?

Andrew Geisel

06:47>> Very much so. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

06:49Okay. How did you find the deal?

Andrew Geisel

06:51>> Found it, through which site is MicroAcquire, I believe.

Nathan Latka

06:56Okay. And what did you what did you pay or whatever you're comfortable sharing there? Help us understand how come be sort of in you are.

Andrew Geisel

07:02>> Yeah. I don't really wanna share the the exact amount of what I paid for the company or anything like that, but it was it was a it was a decent amount to to invest in, and we were putting a lot into the company right now.

Nathan Latka

07:12Can you share a range? Was it more than 6 figures?

Andrew Geisel

07:15>> No. It wasn't more than 6 figures.

Nathan Latka

07:17Okay. So you got it for under 6 figures. Did you buy a 100% or just a a portion of it to get control?

Andrew Geisel

07:22>> Ended up being 80%.

Nathan Latka

07:23Okay. And then you left the 20% with this the engine sounds like head engineer or lead engineer?

Andrew Geisel

07:27>> That's correct.

Nathan Latka

07:28Okay. And why was it faster for you to do this versus to build something new from scratch?

Why Buy Pre-Revenue

Andrew Geisel

07:32>> I'm not a technical person, so I originally kinda was doing this in the background for a while looking at HR technology. That's kinda my comfort zone. So that's just sweet. This was the first thing that I found that made a lot of sense and came together, and that's how it happened.

Nathan Latka

07:46What made sense? I mean, they pre revenue when you purchased it?

Andrew Geisel

07:49>> Pre revenue, except for the company in Spain, so very little revenue to be very candid.

07:55>> Yeah. It made sense. It wasn't really the money. It made more sense. Honestly, it was the user experience. Again, I'm kind of being redundant. I'm not trying to sell me. I'm very honest. It's just so simple and easy. That was my first attraction. Then when I jumped into the business model

Nathan Latka

08:06so simple and easy, why didn't it have more revenue?

Andrew Geisel

08:09>> He wasn't selling it. Jose is a technical guy. I'm not a technical guy, so he really wasn't selling it or marketing it. He put it out there, and I think he tried a few things. He tried some SEO, and it just never really took off. And, you know, I can't speak for him. He's not here right now, but I can't speak to the whole backstory, but he just didn't have Well, it's your money.

Nathan Latka

08:27It's not his money that bought the company. Right? It's your money.

Andrew Geisel

08:29>> It's my money that bought the company. Correct.

Nathan Latka

08:31Well, yeah. That's what I'm asking. Right? So I mean, how did if he's not having any sales, like, how did he know what to build if he's the tech guy? I mean, you make it sound like he's sort a tech guy who didn't talk to any customers because there were none. He just sort of sat in a hole and built the thing. How did he know what to build?

Andrew Geisel

08:44>> That's good. He really didn't have an HR background, so I can't speak to that part alone, but and I never really asked him that question. But he did do a fantastic job. That's all I can tell you. I mean, I tested it out myself for a couple months before, you know, we were talking through it. Mhmm. Solid. Everything was in place. All the integrations worked just fine.

09:03>> So that's just the backstory. And then like I like I where I was going on the business side as well, I focus on another vendor specifically. And when I jumped into the model, the revenue per employee is fantastic, and that was attractive as well.

Nathan Latka

09:17The revenue per employee at planleave?

Andrew Geisel

09:20>> No. At another company, I kinda compared it to. When I was kinda focused on the due diligence on the business side, I was focused on another vendor. And when I jumped into the business model, that was an attractive piece as well.

Nathan Latka

09:32Sorry. I'm not following you there. You you wanted to buy something in this space, and you were curious if generally the space had high revenue per employee. So you looked at one other vendor and it had a high revenue per employee.

Andrew Geisel

09:41>> Sorry. Now there is two pieces. So the first piece was the user experience. That's what I fell in love with first. I'm just like, this is so simple and easy, and I understand that. Second part was when I started focusing on the business end of things, there was another vendor that I kind of focused on. There's a few vendors in this space, but there's one specifically that they've done a pretty good job, and when I focus

10:00>> on the business model and the revenue per employee and kind of perform the calculations, that part was attractive. So at a high level, I mean, that's kind of why.

Nathan Latka

10:07What would you consider a good revenue per employee in your space?

Andrew Geisel

10:10>> It's pretty significant. It's over 800,000 at least.

Nathan Latka

10:18Significant is relative. What do you mean by that? What are you comparing it against?

Andrew Geisel

10:22>> I think 800,000 per employee is a pretty nice return. I'm comparing against this kind of common sense based on the investment. Our expenses are not that I don't wanna kinda give away everything if someone's gonna be listening to this.

Nathan Latka

10:33But Andrew, no offense, but there's not ton of giveaway to how many revenue. You bought on MicroAcquire where it's public anyway. People can see the whole listing if they wanted to looking at the archives, so you're not giving away anything. I'm trying to learn. Right? So when you say 800,000 in revenue per employee, I'm just trying to understand how that drove you to buy a pre revenue company where there is no revenue per employee.

Andrew Geisel

10:53>> Because I I with twenty years of my experience, I mean, I I I felt that I definitely there's another backstory to this too, but with twenty years experience, I know HR technology, feel pretty well working for big companies and startups, so I felt comfortable with technology itself. I feel comfortable with my network and kind of where we're progressing in that area. Beyond kind of the direct customers, I think there's potential partner opportunities and self-service portals, to

11:17>> be honest, within the HR tech space. And

11:23>> I guess at a high level, those were some of the some of the areas that kind of stuck. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:27Well, that's helpful. Look. And look. Had Colin Day on many times. Right? But before and I saw you know I know

11:31you did time and I for Colin at one point.

11:33Yeah. Yeah. So we had him on many times. Right? And this was even pre you guys when before you guys broke a $100,000,000 in revenue, I think now you guys that company is up to $303,130 in ARR. Okay. And Colin's now not there. I think it's Steve Lucas is is running the show. But, anyways, point being is, you know what you're doing. You've been in the space. So so what's your playbook? Right? How do you take

11:52this thing that has a great user flow within a great space? You got it for maybe a steal for under a $100,000. What do you do? What are the first moves?

Go-to-Market Strategy and SEO Plans

Andrew Geisel

11:58>> SEO, to be very candid. That's where most of the money is focused right now, and that's where most of the attention's focused. It's so people can find us, which you know what a SEO is, but that's the biggest thing. And then the second thing is I think we have all the basic functionality in place. There's a few more things I'd like to do, but they're not major. It's really prioritizing and picking countries, markets to go to.

Nathan Latka

12:19So let's fast forward. Let's say you come back on the show in twelve months and you say, Nathan, the keyword that we worked really hard to rank for that has driven us the most traffic is x. What is that keyword?

Andrew Geisel

12:31>> Leave management in The US, but it varies on different countries in different countries. So something

Nathan Latka

12:36But will you not compete in The US on purpose because it's too competitive? You'll do it specifically in Colombia or somewhere else.

Andrew Geisel

12:42>> Starting in The US, actually from an SEO standpoint, it's the highest place, so we're definitely gonna do that first.

Nathan Latka

12:49What do mean highest? What do you mean the highest place?

Andrew Geisel

12:52>> If you go through, like, the SEO data and you find out who's doing the most searches, most of it's here in The US.

Nathan Latka

13:00Well, but that also it's also the most competitive. Right? Everyone else can see that and bright ranks for that term. So how do you as a two person startup break through the noise and rank number one for that term with a low backlink profile?

Andrew Geisel

13:10>> You know, I mean, the first part is, yes, I agree it's competitive because the HRMSes. I don't think it's as competitive for a standalone leave management company, if that's the direction somebody wants to go, and if you start going below leave management, going to vacation trackers, time off trackers, it's not that competitive at all, to be very candid. So that part's pretty open for us, but the HRMS is our biggest competition because they're coming lower

13:31>> and lower into the space. There's, like, I don't know, 40 or so SMB vendors that are pretty competitive.

Nathan Latka

13:35You think that you think

13:37the long tail keywords like vacation tracking is where you can excel?

Andrew Geisel

13:43>> Those are areas that we are focused on. Yes. That's from from the SEO I'm working with company. That's the data we're finding that are the areas to kinda focus on.

Nathan Latka

13:51But, Andrew, I mean, when I type vacation tracking into search, you know, the number one way to tell somebody's competitive is is there an ad running against it? And then it's really competitive if there's multiple ads. BambooHR, Paycor, HelloTilt, vacationtracker.io are all running paid ads against the term vacation tracking. How do you and then there's a bunch of very highly ranked places here. So when you say SEO is gonna be your go to market, how are

14:14you gonna outrank softwareadvice.com, vacationtracker.io, and some of these other paid placements?

Andrew Geisel

14:20>> Well, I don't first of all, have my personal opinion about the paid ads, but Bamboo, I don't view as a direct competitor. We're standalone. So if you're looking for an HRMS, we're not your bet, and we're gonna be much more economical.

Nathan Latka

14:31No. No, Andrew. I'm just talking about SEO. I'm just I'm I'm asking questions based off your answers. You said that you wanna go to market. Your first move is gonna be SEO, and I'm trying to understand how you plan to attack SEO. How how will you win in a market that's so competitive? You must have some unique mousetrap you're gonna go after. I thought it was a specific keyword, but vacation tracking tracking is very competitive.

Andrew Geisel

14:48>> Those are the keywords we're going with. Those three.

Nathan Latka

14:51Yeah. But so how do you that's what I'm trying to figure out. How do you outrank these? It's how are gonna outrank BambooHR? Has a domain rating of over 80.

Andrew Geisel

14:57>> When I search in The US, honestly, when you get past those paid ads, and normally three of them are HRMSs outside of Vacation Tracker, which is the only one that you mentioned that's not, I see it very easy from a leave management standpoint to be very on top from a standalone leave management company. So, I mean, when I put in my work, that's what I came away with. I'm not doing it right now, but that's what

15:14>> I came away with. I don't think it's that difficult, to be honest.

15:19>> You have to

15:19>> give ads to our message because we're not an HRMS. It's you're gonna be

Nathan Latka

15:23Well, Andrew, it doesn't matter what you I'm I'm little the way you get discovered here is the keyword that a user is searching in Google. So if you use vacation tracking or track or I'm just reading to you what already ranks there. You've gotta outrank that to get that same traffic. It doesn't matter if you are a competitor to BambooHR or not. They're ranking for a keyword you said you wanna target. How do you outrank them?

Andrew Geisel

15:41>> I performed all the same everything you just did right now, did myself. And I saw the same ads too, and I saw the bamboos, I saw everyone else. To be very honest, when I walked away performing the same exercise that you're talking about, I don't see it as that hard to climb over the vendors that I'm worried about, to be honest. I don't really even see them on the first page. I see the HRMSes on

15:59>> the first page.

Nathan Latka

16:01Okay. Understood. But again, if the HRMSes are taking up the first page for that keyword

Andrew Geisel

16:07>> or $7 an hour, so you're gonna have a com or 6 or $7 an employee at least, if not more. So this is much it's a different animal.

Nathan Latka

16:16Okay. Like if we're all competing if we're all competing for the swing set on a playground, right, And there's two three other people on the swings, and you're like, they're not a competitor. That's fine. There's still only four swings. So even if you don't compete with them, they're still on the same swings that you wanna be on. How do you kick them off? That's what I'm asking. It's not do they compete with you or not? Are

16:35they cheaper than you or not? It's they take up real estate that you want. How do you get that real estate?

Andrew Geisel

16:41>> Again, when I performed the exercise, I didn't really see much of an issue getting there outside of the paid ads. I wasn't focused on the paid ads. On the paid ads itself,

Nathan Latka

16:48that's Ignore the paid. Ignore the paid. Skip over the paid. I mean, vacationtracker.io, softwareadvice.com, Clockify, vacation. How do you beat vacation tracker?

Andrew Geisel

16:56>> Clockify is a prime attendance vendor. Vacation tracker is the only one that's a competitor. Software advice is a company that refers people to other software.

Nathan Latka

17:03So Yeah. Absolutely. Totally. It's like g two. They're all built on inbound organic SEO. What I'm trying to understand is, like, what is your so they each maybe have I'm making this up a 100 backlinks to their pages. Unless you have some strategy to write a long form piece of content on planleave with backlinks to it, you're you won't outrank them on page one. That's what I'm trying to understand is how do you plan to actually

17:21tactically do that?

Andrew Geisel

17:27>> Yeah. As far as I mean, you're talking some some language. I don't know, and that's where I'm getting the help from my SEO firm. But, I mean, as far as Oh,

Nathan Latka

17:33you hired an I thought SEO was part of what you're you personally you hired a firm to run this for you. Yeah. Oh, well, now I'm more worried, Andrew.

Andrew Geisel

17:44>> Why why is that?

Nathan Latka

17:46Well, because SEO is not a thing that I mean, it's really hard to just any SEO firm, an agency that wants your money is gonna tell you they can rank number one, and then they're gonna say, I guess what? It's gonna take four years. You know? But look look, I hope it works. I mean, I I hope obviously, I hope it works. I'm rooting for you. But so SEO, are is there are there any other moves

18:04besides SEO you plan to make to grow revenue, get your first customer?

Andrew Geisel

18:07>> I'm doing some of the software channels like Gartner and so forth.

Nathan Latka

18:10Organic or paid?

Andrew Geisel

18:13>> Paid.

Nathan Latka

18:14Okay. Tell me more about that. So what what might you test on Gartner next month in terms of ad spend?

Andrew Geisel

18:18>> It's actually Capterra specific. I paid for top five placement.

Nathan Latka

18:23And and what do you anticipate? Like, do you need to get a 100 clicks from there and convert ten twenty to paid customer? How are you thinking about that?

Capterra and Paid Review Site Channels

Andrew Geisel

18:29>> I don't know if that ratio is accurate or not. I mean, the the one challenge we have with that is leave management's not a very highly sought area. So I don't know. I mean, I'm still kind of in the figuring out phase with that one. But, you know, putting the money up right now, and we'll see what comes from it.

Nathan Latka

18:45Was there when you purchased planleave, was there a wait list that came with it? Is there a group you can try and move to a paid plan or no? Gotta build the wait list?

Andrew Geisel

18:52>> A group we can move to paid plan. I apologize. I'm I I don't understand.

Nathan Latka

18:57Do you have a wait list? Are there any free users that you can market to to try and get them to pay?

Andrew Geisel

19:02>> We have a free trial. Yes. But there was no wait list. I'm sorry. My CTO, Jose, did not do any marketing, didn't do anything with the company at all.

Nathan Latka

19:10Got it. So when do you you're you're pre revenue today, right, or do you have a customer yet after you purchased it?

Andrew Geisel

19:15>> Couple customers. Yes.

Nathan Latka

19:16Oh, you do? You do? Okay. Great. So how did you get those customers? Where'd you get them from?

Andrew Geisel

19:20>> Jose got those in Spain, and we got one just in Ohio recently.

Nathan Latka

19:23No. No. Andrew, like, tactically, did that come from Capterra ad, SEO? They were on the free trial. How'd you find that?

How First Customers Were Acquired

Andrew Geisel

19:29>> Honestly, I mean, SEO takes three months. We just started it three weeks ago, so I'm not expecting any results from that. Capterra just started last week, to be honest. So I I think it's foolish for me to be thinking too much about that right now. Everything I've been doing has been just my direct working with friends.

Nathan Latka

19:44Customers you already have, where'd they come? I'm just asking where they came from. That's all.

Andrew Geisel

19:48>> I'm sorry. The ones in Spain, Jose, that was pre me, and then the one in Ohio is a friend of myself.

Nathan Latka

19:53Okay. Got it. So you're selling into your historic like, sort of your old network of friend that you have?

Andrew Geisel

19:56>> I have to until things take effect. Yes.

Nathan Latka

19:59Okay. Are you all in on this? Are you doing this full time?

Andrew Geisel

20:01>> I am. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

20:03Okay. So how how do you how do you rate yourself? Right? How do you grade yourself? A year from now, how will you know if it's working or not?

Growth Targets and Bootstrapping Plan

Andrew Geisel

20:08>> I do have a plan. It's been a while since I looked at it, but essentially what I want to accomplish ideally is once we get the machine going is get it to, at a minimum, 14 clients per week, fifteen, thirty, 45, 60, what, fifty, fifty six clients per month and so on. And that's where my numbers kinda came from.

Nathan Latka

20:30Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. But you've got three customers today paying, you know, for whatever, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty seats. So it's like with 50, 60 bucks a month. So you're at your first $200 a month in revenue. Right? You gotta start somewhere. Right? Anything can keep growing that. Now do you plan to bootstrap this or raise capital over time?

Future Acquisition Plans

Andrew Geisel

20:46>> I'm gonna bootstrap it for now.

Nathan Latka

20:47Bootstrap it. Very cool. Any other acquisitions you're gonna tuck in under this one, or this will be the only

Andrew Geisel

20:53>> No. If there's any long term plan, I think it it would be again since the attractions to the user experience, I think it would be way down the road to do a time and attendance system very similar and just kind of bolt them together. But it's a little premature to be thinking about that.

Nathan Latka

21:07Mhmm. Interesting. And did you

21:10I'm trying to look at your LinkedIn profile. You've got a bunch of stuff that it still says you're present at today. Right? Are you still DailyPay director of channel sales?

Andrew Geisel

21:18>> No. I left DailyPay.

Nathan Latka

21:20Okay. And then all the other stuff as adviser. Okay. Got it. So but that was the thing you were doing full time before planleave?

Andrew Geisel

21:25>> That's correct.

Nathan Latka

21:27I see. Okay. So did you leave DailyPay and then find planleave, or you waited to leave DailyPay until you found planleave?

Andrew Geisel

21:34>> The latter.

Nathan Latka

21:35Ah, okay. So you found the target first and then quit the full quit the safety net, and now you're all in?

Andrew Geisel

21:40>> Yeah.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

21:41Alright. Well, we're rooting for you, man. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite book.

Andrew Geisel

21:46>> I always like Bret Easton Ellis books. So, god, we're going way back, but I guess it's Less Than Zero.

Nathan Latka

21:53Sorry. So what's the title of the book?

Andrew Geisel

21:55>> Less Than Zero.

Nathan Latka

21:56Less Than Zero.

21:57Okay. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Andrew Geisel

22:02>> Not studying. I don't really think I'm following anyone else. I have a lot of respect for Colin Day, which you mentioned previously.

Nathan Latka

22:07Yep.

22:08Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building planleave?

Andrew Geisel

22:12>> From a business standpoint or or

Nathan Latka

22:14what's Something you use every day, a virtual, you know, to a tool that you use.

Andrew Geisel

22:18>> Gosh. I'm bouncing around so many right now. I'm using a back end kinda campaign manager on LinkedIn and seeing how that's working. But What's it called? Waalaxy.

Nathan Latka

22:28One Lexi?

Andrew Geisel

22:29>> Waalaxy. I think it's W, two a's, laxy.

Nathan Latka

22:33Interesting.

22:34Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Andrew Geisel

22:37>> Varies. Dog woke me up at 4AM last night, so that was probably, like, five hours. But on average, I don't know. Seven or eight.

Nathan Latka

22:45And situation, married, single kids?

Andrew Geisel

22:47>> Single.

Nathan Latka

22:48Any kiddos?

Andrew Geisel

22:49>> Can't afford, no.

22:50>> No kids. It'll afford me.

Nathan Latka

22:51No kids. And how and how old are you?

Andrew Geisel

22:55>> I'm 53.

Nathan Latka

22:5653.

22:57Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Andrew Geisel

22:59>> Boy, there's a ton.

23:06>> I wish I got married back then. It's a lot more complicated right now.

Nathan Latka

23:10Guys, there you have it. Planleave.com. He comes from the HR tech space. He fell in love with this project and engineered a bill and said, you know what? I'm gonna leave my full time gig. I'm buy this thing. He paid under, we'll call it, under 6 figures for it. Let the CTO, Jose, keep 20%. He owns 80%, and now he's using his network, his go how, an and SEO agency to get his first dollars of revenue.

23:28Already about three customers paying, call it, $50 a month. So a $102,100 bucks a month in revenue. Hoping to grow that to 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 k a month in revenue. We'll stay up to date. Planleave.com. Check it out. Andrew, thanks for taking us to the top.

Closing Summary

Andrew Geisel

23:38>> Alright. Thank you very much.

Nathan Latka

23:41One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. 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, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM

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