How Plutio Reached 600 Customers and $6K Monthly Recurring Revenue as a Bootstrapped Two-Person Team (Interview with Founder and CEO Leo Bassam)

Introduction and Business Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Leo Bassam. He is the founder and CEO of a company called plutio.com. Leo, are you ready to take us to the top?

Leo Bassam

00:09I am.

Nathan Latka

00:10Alright. What's the company doing? And what's the revenue model? How do you guys make money?

Revenue Model and Pricing Plans

Leo Bassam

00:14So Plutio is an all in one business management and productivity platform designed for freelancers and small teams. We make money by selling it as subscription.

Nathan Latka

00:23Okay. And what do people pay on average, kinda per month for this?

Leo Bassam

00:28We have three plans. Starts at 15, ends at 30 with add ons for white label and other things. And currently we're at £44,000 in recurring revenue, which is roughly $6,000 a month.

Customer Count and Monthly Revenue

Nathan Latka

00:41That's great. So I wanna talk about kinda how you got to the point where you then released the product to market, got your first customers. But right now they're paying about $30 a month. And how many customers do you have?

Leo Bassam

00:50Paying customers? 600.

Nathan Latka

00:51Okay. About 600 paying customers. And you said they pay how much per month?

Leo Bassam

00:56It varies. So from 15 to 30 and plus add ons.

Nathan Latka

00:59Okay. So if I take $15 times 300, that's, you said that you're doing right now about $6,000 per month?

Leo Bassam

01:06Around that much.

Early Customer Acquisition via BetaList and AppSumo

Nathan Latka

01:07Yes. Okay. Got it. 6,000. And and how did... So how did you get... I mean, first off, let's put us on a timeline. When did you launch the company? What year?

Leo Bassam

01:14So I started working on it three years ago during college and officially launched November last year.

Nathan Latka

01:20Okay, great. How did, I mean, how'd you get the first time customers?

Leo Bassam

01:23So we did get them through websites like BetaList and directories like that. Sorry.

Nathan Latka

01:30What what list?

Leo Bassam

01:31BetaList.com. BetaList. Yes. Yep. But we actually did our soft launch with AppSumo, which helped us get quite a lot of beta testers outside.

Nathan Latka

01:42Yep. Walk me through how BetaList works.

Leo Bassam

01:45So we basically submitted a website there. We paid for it. So it goes there quicker than basically in a few days, times a week or two. And we got a lot of interest. And so we signed them up for the Plutio account and asked them for feedback and some of them just stayed with us ever since.

Nathan Latka

02:04Okay. Were they signing up for actual paid plans or are these free plans?

Leo Bassam

02:09Well, it was free plan at the time. We we didn't start charging until, last end of last year.

Converting AppSumo Users to Paid Add-Ons

Nathan Latka

02:15Yeah. Because so obviously AppSumo deals, you know, they're tricky because they basically just give you a bunch of discount bargain hunters that want lifetime plans. So how did you how did you convert people from that promotion to actual monthly paying customers?

Leo Bassam

02:30Add ons.

Nathan Latka

02:32Oh, yeah. So give us so give us more detail there. Right? So how many how many how many people do you sign up via that promotion? How much money do make from that? And then how did you convert to monthly?

Leo Bassam

02:40So we've got about 7,000 users out of the AppSumo launch back in last year. And we just started signing them up for the white label, which we launched a couple of months ago. So they would have to pay about $9 to sign up for the white label.

Nathan Latka

02:56Okay. And how many of the 7,000 signed up?

Leo Bassam

03:00I don't have that number on hand, sorry.

Nathan Latka

03:03Okay.

03:05Give me a range is fine.

Leo Bassam

03:08I would say 400 or so.

Nathan Latka

03:10Okay. About 400 went from basically one time lifetime value to a white label $9 a month plan.

Leo Bassam

03:17Correct.

Churn Rate and Onboarding Challenges

Nathan Latka

03:18Okay. And how do I mean, what do they look like in terms of churn?

Leo Bassam

03:24Our churn is quite low at the moment. It's at 5% or so.

Nathan Latka

03:295%? Yeah. That's 5% logo churn per month?

Leo Bassam

03:34Yes.

Nathan Latka

03:34Okay. So, I mean, yeah, that's low, but it's still actually fairly high to build a real SaaS company. I mean, churn through about 60% of your user base in a year. How do you get that churn lower?

Leo Bassam

03:46Well, of our customers churn because of the onboarding. So we don't have any onboarding materials at the moment. And that's because Plutio is a very, it was at a stage where it's always evolving. And so we just reached, it just reached a maturity level. And we just started working on onboarding, which helps basically increase our retention and reduce our churn.

Nathan Latka

04:08And walk me through what or how you're editing the onboarding. What do you know you have to get a new user to do to make them sticky?

Leo Bassam

04:15So I created, as I started building Plutio, I created a community, which now has about 3,000 active members. And we always ask questions. We listen to them. We see what they want versus where they're struggling. And I always take notes of all these things and obviously plan accordingly. So with them, so I shared the onboarding sequence or materials with the community.

Nathan Latka

04:36What does that mean though? You're sharing Google Docs with them? I mean, what does that mean?

Leo Bassam

04:40It can be threads on like on Facebook pages, it can be a thread, it can be a form, a survey, things like that.

Nathan Latka

04:49But you can't afford to do this with every customer. They're only paying $9 a month. Eventually that doesn't work. So how do you do this at scale?

Leo Bassam

04:57What do you mean by every customer? We don't actually do it. We don't sort of go through them one by one. We just go through the majority of them.

Nathan Latka

05:06Yeah. So I guess my point is 5% of them are churning per month. And you're saying the reason that's happening is 5% of them are not getting onboarded properly. And you're saying the way you tackle onboarding is you post, I guess, a message in a Facebook thread where a lot of your users hang out. And I see Intercom on your homepage or a messaging app. It looks like your face is there managing it. So I mean,

05:25if people are always messaging you asking like how to get onboarded, you can't handle that at such a cheap price point.

Leo Bassam

05:32Well, that may be something I need to look into.

Nathan Latka

05:34Well, but I don't want you to just take what I'm saying as fact. You might learn something. I mean, you might know something that I don't, right? So like, I mean, does it scale? Can you build the onboarding actually into the tool instead of having to rely on support and forums?

Leo Bassam

05:46Yeah. So that is something we are working on in the next couple of months.

Nathan Latka

05:50Okay.

Leo Bassam

05:50We see new needs for it and we're sort of working on it right now.

Team Size and Location

Nathan Latka

05:53And what's the team look like today when you say we?

Leo Bassam

05:56It's only me and the developer.

Nathan Latka

05:58Okay. So two of you guys. And where are you based?

Leo Bassam

06:01London and he's in Lithuania. We're quite still nomad at the moment. So we based in London, he's in Lithuania, we travel all the time.

Nathan Latka

06:08That's great. Are you bootstrapping the company or have you raised?

Leo Bassam

06:11Completely fully bootstrapped.

Nathan Latka

06:13That's great. And why, so you launched it back in 2017 out of school. I mean, did you leave corporate of job or you started this right out of school or where was your head at when you launched it?

Founding Story and Motivation

Leo Bassam

06:23So it started out of frustration from running my first business, which I started when I was 15. That's about ten years ago with Dubai International Airport as my first paying client. So as I tried to grow that business during the last period of my college, I struggled because the majority of tools were designed for teams and team collaboration, things like that. So I decided to build Plutio designed for freelancers and small businesses, and it seems to

06:48have kicked out.

Nathan Latka

06:49And what's the number one thing that you know, again, new user has to do to get sticky? Well, the one action they have to take.

Leo Bassam

06:57The numb... The number one action that my users have to take to to stick?

Nathan Latka

07:00Yeah. They they sign up. What do you know you have to get them to do very quickly so that they see the value so they stick?

Leo Bassam

07:06Sign up proposal, get a proposal sign or an invoice paid or basically a project set up, a project flow set up quickly.

Nathan Latka

07:12Okay. So right now the average user when they sign up, how long does it take them to get their first invoice signed or paid?

Leo Bassam

07:18So that is information I don't yet have access to which which basically made setting onboarding quite difficult for us. So we don't have to access this information just yet.

Nathan Latka

07:27Okay. But is that kind of what you're building your onboarding around? They click sign in with Google. Then the first thing is upload the document you want signed and then send it to the person you needed to sign. I mean, is that kind of what you're building around?

Leo Bassam

07:37That's what we're trying to do. Yeah. We're trying to show them flow. So the majority of them... The majority of feedback I'm getting is that there is no templates or inspiration of how to get started. And so that's what we're trying to do now to show them how it can be used, show them how others are using it and give them templates so they can quickly set up the flow.

Nathan Latka

07:54Now that BetaList is done and AppSumo is done, how are you driving additional customer growth?

Affiliate Program and Growth Strategy

Leo Bassam

08:00It's mainly word-of-mouth right now. So it's affiliate program. People just talking about it. That's mainly it.

Nathan Latka

08:07What's the affiliate program? What do you pay in terms of kickback?

Leo Bassam

08:1015%.

Nathan Latka

08:12For life?

Leo Bassam

08:13Yeah. Recurring.

Nathan Latka

08:14Okay. Okay. And and how are you signing up affiliates? Where are you finding them?

Leo Bassam

08:20From our current customers.

Nathan Latka

08:22Okay. So what they'll be like brand ambassadors, I mean, a picture, one freelancer. Do they, how do they, do they have big lists of other freelancers or how do they market it?

Leo Bassam

08:30We are, we're touch. We're trying to actually get in touch with some influencers to start doing that in a scale. But right now it's just a couple of customers, for example, who have clients who might use it or other friends or things like that. People like that.

Nathan Latka

08:46Yeah. Are you looking at raising capital anytime soon or no?

Leo Bassam

08:52Not... No.

Nathan Latka

08:53Probably like a nomad life. Yeah. That's good. Where are you traveling to next?

Leo Bassam

08:58We're going back to Austin celebrate with AppSumo and then to Australia to host the very, very first Plutio summit.

Nathan Latka

09:06When are you back in Austin?

Leo Bassam

09:08In about January.

Nathan Latka

09:10Got it. And when you when you say celebrate, what do mean? They invite all the people that have run a campaign and you guys party?

AppSumo Black Friday Deal and Lifetime Plans

Leo Bassam

09:15Well, Just Plutio has basically been one of the tools that... One of the apps that they always sort of shown a lot of... I don't know how to explain it, but it was... It did really well and it was one of the top apps. And so there's a really good connection between me and them. And when we sold out our Black Friday deal, which was last Friday, we made $20,000 in twenty four hours. And so it's

09:39like, it was a big achievement. We weren't celebrating all that together.

Nathan Latka

09:42That was the cut that you got paid?

Leo Bassam

09:44No. That was the total amount we we made.

Nathan Latka

09:46Okay. That was the total amount. They keep, I think, what, 30 or 60%? Yeah. 60% or 30?

Leo Bassam

09:5360.

Nathan Latka

09:53They keep 60 of that. Right? So you're getting what? Like, 7 or $8 or or less?

Leo Bassam

09:5360. 60,000.

Nathan Latka

09:53Sorry. 60,000 what?

Leo Bassam

10:03Dollars. Sorry. Pounds.

Nathan Latka

10:06I'm confused. The total deal did how much?

Leo Bassam

10:10$200,000.

Nathan Latka

10:11Okay. I thought you just said 20,000.

Leo Bassam

10:14No, 200,000. Sorry.

Nathan Latka

10:15Got it. I misheard you. Okay, 200,000. And then you're saying you keep 30% of that, which is about 60. They keep the other.

Leo Bassam

10:23Yes.

Nathan Latka

10:23Got it. So, so, and what was the price point on the life on the on the plan?

Leo Bassam

10:28$49 per foot

Nathan Latka

10:3049 for the whole year or for me for the for life? So how do you like what I always struggle this is when someone sells something for life, you're essentially giving your word to someone who's making a buying decision that hey, you pay now we're going be around forever. That's like a really hard promise to make.

Leo Bassam

10:48Well, it's not necessarily saying that we're gonna be here forever. It just that, know, here's our vision, here's what we're building, here's what we've done so far, and here's what we're aiming to do. If you believe in that, then we appreciate your investment at this stage. So it's basically just

Nathan Latka

11:04Yeah, they're not, just be clear, they're not investing. They don't have equity in the company.

Leo Bassam

11:07In a sense, well not investing in a company, they're investing in their business because buying into Plutio right now the value it will give you later on for that amount you're paying right now will be higher.

Nathan Latka

11:17Well, but just be clear, they're not an investor in your company. They're not, they don't have equity, don't have shares. I mean, they're a customer. You're choosing the word, use the word investor, which I understand. But I mean, they're a customer.

Leo Bassam

11:26Yeah. But but Nathan, when you buy into, let's say you invest into buying printers for your business to have what? Like printers or computers or whatever tools for your business to start a business, then you're investing into these tools to help the business grow. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:42No, totally. I am. I mean, I pay for a lot of software, but it's all monthly. I'm not paying anything for life because I have no idea what that CEO is gonna go do. I mean, you tomorrow could decide you wanna keep traveling and stop developing the company and the company shuts down, but you still have basically it. I mean, by the way, I've heard this happen many times with AppSumo, is why I'm bringing it up.

Leo Bassam

12:01Yeah, me too. Me too. And I actually received a lot of, basically a lot of people ask that same question when we launched the deal initially, but I just came out doing videos, explain to them what we're doing and it seems to work.

Nathan Latka

12:16Yeah, I mean, the reason I bring it up is because there's a lot of

12:18founders There's

12:21a lot of founders like you that get blinded by initial, Hey, here's a $100,000 or $200,000, right? That an AppSumo can drive you. But it actually really hurts your ability to build a long term sustainable business because you then have to go hunt for more cash flow after you use up that cash. Because very few of those people then convert over to like a monthly paid plan. Now you, it sounds like have converted a couple of

12:40them. You call it 400, $9 a month. So it's like $4,000 a month there, but still, I mean, that's the trick is like, how do you use the initial surge to actually build true recurring revenue so you can build a better and better product over time?

Leo Bassam

12:56So what I'm doing right now from the first deal, I use that money to develop Plutio into a level where I can actually start pushing it and compete with other competitors. And the users who came from the AppSumo deal. So they first give us funding to do that development and reach that maturity level. And two, they give us a lot of reviews, which helps build trust with new customers that we're gonna be reaching very soon. And

13:20it helped build a community which also builds, you know, it shows to new customers that there is something going on with activity. So they helped us in a lot of sort of at a lot of levels, especially at an early stage. So now with this new funding, which we did from the last Black Friday deal, we're going to start using it for scaling Plutio and using all the help we got from the AppSumo initially, which is

13:44reviews, activities on the community and feedback on a very, you know, early stage product, which was buggy at the time.

Nathan Latka

13:52Yeah, I totally understand what you're saying. What I'm saying though is these are essentially like drugs that are like one time hits and that allow you to put off the idea of thinking about building real recurring revenue for a longer period of time, because you can keep going back to this drug. And all I'm asking is like, steps are you trying to take to build your muscle, which is a true, like recurring revenue SaaS muscle versus

14:16going back and hitting this drug once a year over and over?

Path to Profitability and Recurring Revenue Focus

Leo Bassam

14:18This is the last time we're doing it. We're not doing any more lifetime deals or Black Friday lifetime deals.

Nathan Latka

14:25So again, a year from now, let's say you're traveling, bank accounts are low, you want to hire another developer. It's very easy to call up someone and say, hey, let's do another deal. Like it's so tempting and they make it so easy. Noah's very smart because of that. Knows what he's doing. It's a smart model for him, not for you, I would say, but very smart for him.

Leo Bassam

14:41I agree. So we are actually very close to becoming profitable right now. And obviously our complete focus right now is to use that funding to scale to a level that will keep us within a comfortable zone.

Nathan Latka

14:53Yep. And so if you're doing about $6,000 a month, you're saying, you know, what to get to 7 or 8, you'll be able to, you know, be profitable paying you, your developer, any tools you pay for

Leo Bassam

14:53Very

Nathan Latka

14:53things like

Leo Bassam

15:03comfortable. Yes.

Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

15:04Yeah. That's great. Very good. Okay. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Leo Bassam

15:10I have not read any.

Nathan Latka

15:11Okay, that's great. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now?

Leo Bassam

15:16Richard Branson.

Nathan Latka

15:17Number three, what billing tool do you use?

Leo Bassam

15:20Stripe.

Nathan Latka

15:21Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Leo Bassam

15:26Five.

Nathan Latka

15:27Five, okay. Am I in the middle of your sleep schedule right now?

Leo Bassam

15:31Nearly.

Nathan Latka

15:32What time is it?

Leo Bassam

15:3310:00.

Nathan Latka

15:34Okay, number five. Sorry, what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Leo Bassam

15:39Single.

Nathan Latka

15:40Okay. No kids?

Leo Bassam

15:41No kids.

Nathan Latka

15:42And how old are you?

Leo Bassam

15:4325.

Nathan Latka

15:4425. Last question.

15:45What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?

Leo Bassam

15:50To move from Dubai earlier than I did.

Nathan Latka

15:55Move away from Dubai earlier? Guys, there you have it. Move away from Dubai earlier. Coming from Leo now in London launching Plutio, helping freelancers built it to solve his own problem now serving about 600 customers paying $10 a month, so $6,000 a month in revenue. Used BetaList and AppSumo to get his initial funding and kind of dollars coming in the door. Now focusing on making real true recurring SaaS revenue from customers willing to pay every month

16:20to support him as he adds value and works towards moving to breakeven and profitable here shortly. Bootstrap company, two people in London and Lithuania, 5% logo churn per month. Leo, thanks for taking us to the top.

Leo Bassam

16:31Thank you very much.