How Rankwatch CEO Vaibhav Kakkar grew to $14M revenue and 1.5K customers in 2024.

good morning everybody my guest this morning as web huff cacar he's the cocoa founder of a company called ranked watch with an idea of making internet marketing and intelligent process apart from being helping businesses succeed online and writing about internet marketing he's usually found digging deep into the beautiful world of search engine algorithms will of are you ready to take us to the top absolutely yeah okay so when people hear internet marketing they run the other way they're they're stopping this podcast interview right now why should they keep listening what do you do I makes a software it's you SAS software and I've been into SEO since 2004 and almost you know since the very early days I've built a company sold it and this is my second company right now okay so rank watch is a software platform and give us the lowdown what does it do it helps people do better SEO it gives you a lot of intelligence a lot of data helps you take better decisions on you know certain SEO parameters which you need to know to you know implement better SEO look at your competitors see what they are doing look at your own website track it properly and grow your organic traffic see organic traffic is the best traffic and we help you grow it more and more great and what do you tell me more about kind of how you price what's the average has to pay you per month so our average customer would pay us around 125 isch dollars although you know we do have some enterprise customers who pay us thousands of dollars like our biggest customer would be ten over $10,000 per month but yeah most most of our customers are small medium businesses okay we are a lot of agencies which use us and so how many total customers today do you work with we have over 1500 customers right now okay 1500 any kind of just gave us the ranges of you know some are big some are small some are SMB and it is it fair to say we'll have 1500 times 125 a month you guys are doing what about 180 grand a month hundred eighty seven we are approximately okay and what are you growing at year-over-year go back twelve months how much were you doing then um you agree at almost around thirty five forty percent here on the earth okay so um you didn't like a hundred forty grand a year ago yes and this year we are hopefully going to grow even more like I'm expecting forty five to fifty percent growth this year um maybe even more you know we are talking to a couple of really big agencies if those clients you know come on board it might be even hundred percent and when she wants the company 2013 2013 without where was your brain when you launched it were you just leaving a corporate job where you did you have to make this work what were you thinking when you launched so before that I used to run an agency it was called digital next and you know I started back in 2009 and in 2013 I sold that agency to err listed Swedish company and that's when you know I thought what next and SEO was the only thing so that agency was into services but you know I also deep down into search engine optimization and I really need the pain points so me along with my brother as my co-founder we thought okay now let's let's build some software which is a much better actually better I don't know make you know it takes a lot of effort and investment but it's like involves more using your mind and like you know building solutions yeah to problem who has more equity you or your brother we have we are equal partners equal your your a fair group of guys huh oh you have to be paired alright now what have you guys be trapped the company or have you raise money uh we have dropped the company so we did have money from our last exit which we have invested completely plus right now we are funded through our clients okay so by the way that's the best this is the best investors are your customers how much of your own money have you and your brother put in the company put in almost three hundred thousand dollars of our own money in the car okay and what's the team size today we are over thirty people right now and where's home base we have our base in India and we have some people in the US some couple of people so all the development happens in India support happens in India and we have people selling enterprise deals in the US Australia and UK got it so this u.s. sales team how many people are on that just one pose okay this one person got it now walk me through customer growth I mean getting to 1,500 customers is not easy how are you acquiring these customers um the sales team is mostly for enterprise customers but we focus a lot on the small and medium customers as well which is completely autopilot we do not so customers find us through online mediums maybe Google maybe you know some of our guest blog anything you know like all the marketing which we are doing and this come to our website in the sign up for a free trial so it's a 15 14-day free trial and during the free trial they have a look at our software then you know our customer happiness team gets in touch if required take them through the software or you know they might just sign up by themselves if they are very hands-on with the software or you know if they're a hands-on with technology plus we are also investing and focusing a lot on building the software to the next level like some of our customers have 50,000 plus clients so some of our competitors have 50,000 per strikes a one or two of your competitors SEM rush its revs Moz these are our competitors in the small/medium business category if Mars came to you and offered you a million bucks for the company do you sell nopes what's the price the price right now I don't know see you don't think about these things while you are you know focusing on growth like I get to office by 9:00 a.m. and I work till what maybe seven eight nine and that's that's all I like doing right now I don't know what I'll do if I sell this where did you serve the last company for he was sold over five million pounds okay five million pounds and what did that company view or we were into digital marketing it's still it still exists it's called digital next dot code or QK if you go check it out and you know B we were providing digital marketing services this was an agency yeah it was an agent okay got it all right back back to back to what you're doing today so rank watch so what is churn look like um so John is not very high it's in low single-digit churn but still is our logo churn per month 2 or 3 percent yeah around around that some some months are bad but mostly it stays around that ok why wasn't months bad C um lately you know is you business a lot of small agencies they all a lot of small customers perhaps would just not want to do a lot of SEO sometimes plus there was a point of time when we were you know focusing a lot on more development and you know we stopped perhaps taking good care of the customers of our customers but you know we quickly realize that yes something is not right and then you know we went back to our old ways of like you know making sure everyone is happening so so so what do you assume with with 3% longer term per month or somewhere around there what do you soon lifetime value is on these customers so what we have seen is the higher the bigger customers really staple long like we've had customers who are bears in five digits have and they've stayed for over three four years now it's only the smaller customers who perhaps would leave us because what happens is we really integrate deep into the processes of a company so if a company is if it is a big company and they're really using a software it really it gets very difficult for them to change move to another software so you know that's that's true for any anyone would say all the people who really use our software and pay us a lot they never turn everybody would say that so on average what do you su-mei new customers worth to you what's the lifetime value so um around 18 18 months is right now our LTV for a small customer beta bigger customers have a 27 months okay so when you take the ATO to a smaller one when you take 18 months times your hundred twenty-five dollar ARPU that's about twenty two hundred bucks in total lifetime value that's a no touch sale right oh yes that's no that's okay and then obviously your Enterprise one is growing your revenue much faster because it's bigger deals more sticky yep and become they might give them a demo like one on one for size demo to the 20 to the you know small customer it's required we try and avoid that but if someone asks for it we are more than happy to give them a you know life walkthrough of the software sure and what's your tak I know obviously it's different for enterprise first SMBs but what's on average were you paying to acquire customer um so we are being very less money we see because we are an SEO software we do great SEO so 70 80 % of our customers come through such they search about something in the internet which is related to us by quietly my aunt gave me a terma you rank really well for oh if you search for rank tracking software like there would be at least 10,000 keywords which we rank for yeah my give me like a name one or two the top ones so the terms so if you like one of the good terms is future of SEO if you search on Google we did an infographic we'll be interviewed you know some of the top experts in the industry and be ranked in the top 10 and we see a lot of conversions happen through this page and that's just one example we do well like you know if I start looking at we would have at least a few thousand keywords we rank for okay that means I just search that I don't see your article on the front page but I assume if you do this with ten thousand keywords even you know five ten clicks from each keyword per month adds up future of SEO but but my just I don't care about actually going to deep down into that term my point is your skier you're scaling based off these keyword terms and they're each driving you know a couple hundred clicks per month and that's how you're getting free growth yes pollution eleven I think we just move from page one to page two and that's who an average actually comes into picture the you know our team would have gotten a trigger from rock watch that this keyword health has moved from page one to page two time to put some work on this II would like you know yeah yeah I actually I do see you I see on the second page is the future of SEO what industry experts think rank watch yep interesting so you'll get a notification that you sunk in the rankings and then your team will go back in and re update it to try and go higher that's just one example does a lot but yeah that's one thing so are you not spending any money per month right now on on direct paid stuff OPR how much per month obvious bending around of five to eight thousand dollars on social okay and and then how much you have to pay to get a new customer from Facebook so [Music] not like I'm not very happy be end up paying around eleven hundred dollars to acquire which is quite high energy because means of acquisition are really low like the cost is really low over there but so on your paid channels like Facebook ads did you spend between five and eight grand per month on it cost you 1200 square so you're getting four or five new customers a month from Facebook ads and those customers are paying you 125 bucks a month right no so some of them will be an agent like if it is a big agency client they'll pay us a lot more first but yeah a lot of them wouldn't end up being us one out of five how quickly do you like to get that 1200 hours and cash back what's your payback period I six months ish okay that's what you like to optimize for yeah wait so when will you shut off ads like when it starts getting to like 1500 per new customer - grand per customer like what's your limit so honestly I've not really focused a lot on acquisition right now because our focus has been more on building the software because we're still you know we not a hundred percent compared we are not an adposition to compete with the best players in our market we still are like around six months to nine months away from you know having a couple of features which will make us you know head-on competitors ever well that web you every sale every CEO will say that every CEO will say we're behind we're behind we're just just this feature one more feature and then we'll be equal it's never the case they're always they're always driving new products at the same time as they're driving acquisition and by the way I think you're doing a good job at it I mean you have a hundred 80 grand a month recurring revenue as you're growing yep but again you know like I said I think we should do more and more every month yeah and all right very good well let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's the last business book you read don't you say that again what's the last business book that you read seven Habits of Highly Effective People number two is their CEO your phone are studying right now um my all-time favorite is Steve Jobs but I really you know follow a couple of people named Morgan India so there's this guy who started a Flipkart in India that's like a ten billion dollar valuation company right now so I believe Ansel I follow him very closely now number three is there a favorite online - you have to grow your business um yeah we use a lot of like management tools yeah name one level the scrum software's which we use tulip it's called that's that's my thing it's a lifesaver for us tulip scrum software very good number four how many hours of sleep do you every night it's variable anywhere from by even a half to seven okay good and then what's your situation married single you have kids I'm married no kids no kiddos and how old are you I'm pretty due okay last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew so I say that again if I was 20 years old what do you wish your 20 year old self knew how to really capitalize on the opportunities I have in a bigger better way I think I had a lot of opportunities and I could have perhaps you know capitalized on them better and if if I knew how to scale better so that that's one thing I sometimes do regret there you guys have from web hoop he would have kept eyes on his opportunities faster he built and sold an agency for about 5 million pounds and in 2013 jumped into SEO with rank watch launching it with his brother very fair brother by the way they decided split 50-50 now they've got a team of 30 people based between the india-us with Anne again with a sales person in the US as well but mainly in India growing quickly about 1,500 customers paying 125 bucks a month so about 185 grand right now and monthly recurring revenue that's up from 140 grand just 12 months ago so about 30 ish percent growth year over year in terms of revenue 3% logo churn per month which they're working on keeping low lifetime I have about 18 months and payback period under six months which is obviously very healthy web ooh thank you so much for taking us to the top thanks a lot