Founder Interview
How Remindax Reached 1,500 Customers with Organic SEO and 20% EBITDA Margins (Interview with Sadaqat Ghafoor)
- Interviewee
- Sadaqat GhafoorFounder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Customers (as of the interview)
1,500
EBITDA Margin (as of the interview)
Around 20%
Team Size (as of the interview)
4
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Sadaqat Ghafoor during the interview at the time of recording and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Remindax’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Remindax had 1,500 paying customers at the time of the interview
- 02Average customer paid $40 to $50 per month
- 03Customer acquisition cost ranged from $15 to $40 per new customer
- 04About 90% of customers came through Google search, and "expiration date reminder" was the main search term bringing in traffic
- 05Conversion rate from free trial to paid was approximately 10 to 15%
- 06The company was bootstrapped and profitable, with around 20% EBITDA margins
- 07Team of four people, mostly based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
- 08Churn was about 5 to 8%
- 09Remindax launched as a free service in 2014 and moved to a paid model in 2017
- 10The founder left profits in the company rather than taking dividends, relying on other income streams
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Year Founded | 2014 | Founder interview |
| Paid Model Launch | 2017 | Founder interview |
| Customers (as of the interview) | 1,500 | Founder interview |
| ARPU (as of the interview) | $40 to $50 per month | Founder interview |
| CAC (as of the interview) | $15 to $40 per customer | Founder interview |
| Gross Churn (as of the interview) | 5% to 8% | Founder interview |
| EBITDA Margin (as of the interview) | Around 20% | Founder interview |
| Team Size (as of the interview) | 4 | Founder interview |
| Free-to-Paid Conversion Rate (as of the interview) | 10% to 15% | Founder interview |
| New Sign-ups (as of the interview) | 15 to 20 users per day | Founder interview |
| Share of Customers From Google Search (as of the interview) | About 90% | Founder interview |
| Bootstrapped | Yes | Founder interview |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Remindax moved from a free service to a paid model in 2017. At the time of the interview the average customer paid $40 to $50 per month across 1,500 customers, with EBITDA margins of around 20%. Asked what Remindax was making a month exactly a year earlier, he said it had been half the level at the time of the interview: "It was half of this."
Customers
The company had 1,500 paying customers, acquiring new users at a rate of 15 to 20 sign-ups per day. About 10 to 15% of free sign-ups converted to paid.
Team
Remindax operated with a lean team of four people, mostly based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where it ran all of its operations. The founder noted plans to hire more talent as the company expanded.
Profitability and Funding
The company was fully bootstrapped and had covered its own expenses for the past year, with the founder no longer putting any of his own money into it. Profits were retained in the business rather than distributed as dividends.
Growth Strategy
Organic SEO
He said virtually all of Remindax's customers and traffic came through search engines, with "expiration date reminder" the main search term bringing in traffic. The founder said approximately 90% of customers came through Google search.
Google AdWords
The company experimented with paid social media including Facebook but found more success with Google pay-per-click advertising. He said AdWords was doing well for Remindax, and he put the fully weighted customer acquisition cost at somewhere between $15 and $40.
Customer Service as Retention
The founder credited fast, responsive customer support as a key differentiator, noting that customers were moving from competitor products to Remindax specifically because of service quality.
Free Sign-ups and Conversion
The free service was the top of the funnel: about 10 to 15% of sign-ups converted to paid, and the founder said more sign-ups meant more conversions. The most-used feature was scheduling email alerts for expiring documents.
Best Quotes
“Basically, Remindax is an expiration date reminder service, so it helps users and companies to track all types of dates, expiration dates, due dates, event dates, and they are notified by email and SMS alerts before any event or the date is about to occur.”
“Average customer is paying about 40 to $50 per month. And we have about... At the moment, we have about 1,500 customers.”
“It's totally basically all our customers, all the traffic is coming through search, search engines.”
“We are focusing on mostly on SEO for Google and the main source of customers are through search only.”
“For past one year we have stopped putting any money into it and it's just doing good to handle its own expenses.”
“Churn is about, you can say five to 8%”
“I leave it in the company. Basically, as I told you, I have multiple streams of income. So I'm not dependent mostly on this business.”
“I wish I would have known how to run a company with multiple people because that time I started a number of companies, but it wasn't very helpful and I failed many times. And this is the biggest thing I should have known that time.”
What Happened Next
At the time of this interview, Remindax was a bootstrapped, profitable SaaS business with about 1,500 customers and a team of four, mostly based in Dubai. The founder said that as the company expanded he planned to hire more talent, because it needed more customer support. This page reflects the company as it stood during the recording and is a historical snapshot. Visit the Remindax company profile for current figures.
View Remindax’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Company Overview
- 0:23What Remindax Does and How It Makes Money
- 1:06Pricing and Customer Count
- 1:31Launch History and Free-to-Paid Transition
- 1:47How the Founder Supported Himself Pre-Revenue
- 2:46Customer Acquisition and SEO Strategy
- 6:51Paid Advertising and Customer Acquisition Cost
- 7:44Team Size and Location
- 8:01Bootstrapped and Path to Profitability
- 8:21EBITDA Margins and Capital Allocation
- 9:47Churn and Customer Retention
- 10:27Famous Five: Favorite Book, CEO and Billing Tool
- 11:41Advice to Younger Self
Introduction and Company Overview
Nathan Latka
00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Sadaqat Ghafoor. He is the... An entrepreneur by nature who loves to explore new possibilities by solving everyday problems. This approach has helped him create new businesses. He loves traveling to new countries and places, but in the meantime, is building his company, remindax.com. Sadaqat, are you ready to take us to the top?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
00:17I'm ready.
Nathan Latka
00:18Alright. So tell us about the company. What's the company doing? How do you make money?
What Remindax Does and How It Makes Money
Sadaqat Ghafoor
00:23Basically, Remindax is an expiration date reminder service, so it helps users and companies to track all types of dates, expiration dates, due dates, event dates, and they are notified by email and SMS alerts before any event or the date is about to occur.
Nathan Latka
00:46Okay, and is it a SaaS platform?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
00:48It's a SaaS platform, it's cloud based and it is basically
00:55for the people. Basically it helps to the...
Nathan Latka
01:02So what are people paying on average per month for this?
Pricing and Customer Count
Sadaqat Ghafoor
01:06Average customer is paying about 40 to $50 per month. And we have about... At at the moment, we have about 1,500 customers.
Nathan Latka
01:16Okay. So you're doing about $60,000 a month?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
01:19Yeah. Approximately.
Nathan Latka
01:20And what were you doing exactly a year ago? How much per month?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
01:24It was half of this.
Nathan Latka
01:26Okay, so about 30,000.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
01:28Yeah.
Nathan Latka
01:28That's great. When did you launch? When was year one?
Launch History and Free-to-Paid Transition
Sadaqat Ghafoor
01:31The service was launched in 2014 initially.
Nathan Latka
01:31That's great.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
01:31And it was a free service back then, and it was in 2017 we started the paid model.
Nathan Latka
01:41How did you support Sadaqat? How did you support yourself between 2014 and 2017 with no revenue?
How the Founder Supported Himself Pre-Revenue
Sadaqat Ghafoor
01:47Actually I have multiple streams of income. I have multiple businesses. This is one of them. So it was launched as a free service as I mentioned earlier. So I was not dependent on this business basically. So I was supporting myself for my other streams of income.
Nathan Latka
02:05Now is this your biggest revenue stream today?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
02:09Can say it's about 30% of total of what we are making today.
Nathan Latka
02:14I see. Very good. Okay. So all your businesses together are making about $180,000 a month.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
02:18Yes. You can say that.
Nathan Latka
02:20That's great. Okay. And how many ideas are you working on right now besides this one?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
02:24At the moment it is one, but we have, I have one another, it's in the pipeline, but I'm managing my time to work on that as well. But I hope it will take some time to execute.
Nathan Latka
02:38Okay. So on this company, Remindax, how are you getting new customers? Like how'd get your first 100 customers?
Customer Acquisition and SEO Strategy
Sadaqat Ghafoor
02:46It's totally basically all our customers, all the traffic is coming through search, search engines.
Nathan Latka
02:52What's the number one search term people use to find you?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
02:56It's like expiration date, expiration date reminder. This is the main the search term which we are getting more traffic.
Nathan Latka
03:03Expiration date reminder.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
03:05Yeah. So we are focusing on mostly on SEO for Google and the main source of customers are through search only.
Nathan Latka
03:17Okay. And so expiration date reminder, I see you ranked number one and then Slack is below you along with a couple others. How many new sign ups do you get per month from this search term?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
03:30Approximately 90% of our customers are coming through Google search.
Nathan Latka
03:36It's From this basically keyword?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
03:37Yeah. From this keyword.
Nathan Latka
03:39Okay. So 90% of new... And how many new users are you signing up per month?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
03:44Per month, can say about 15 to 20 users per day and you can say it is about
03:55per month.
Nathan Latka
03:56400 to 600?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
03:58Yeah.
Nathan Latka
03:58Yeah. And how many of those will convert to paid?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
04:02Can say about 10%, 10 to 15%.
Nathan Latka
04:05Okay. That's good. So you're, so you're kind of converting anywhere between getting 40 to 60 new customers per month?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
04:10Yes.
Nathan Latka
04:10What do you know you have to get a new sign up to do in the first kind of session to increase the likelihood that they convert?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
04:18Basically, it depends upon the traffic. I believe if we have more traffic, if we have more traffic, we'll convert more customers.
Nathan Latka
04:27Wait, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. Why is the amount of traffic you get going to be the driver behind how many of your trialers convert to paid? Isn't it shouldn't be a usage metric? Like if they do X, Y and Z in your tool, they're more likely to pay?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
04:45Basically the figures we have seen over the time is whoever signs up for our free service, they end up paying, become a paying user within a month. So, but we believe that the more you
Nathan Latka
05:00Well, 10% of them do.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
05:03Yeah, the more sign ups we have, so the more conversions we have. That's what we do.
Nathan Latka
05:07Okay. So but but but what if you instead of saying, how do you add to the top of the funnel? What if you said, how do I increase my conversion rate from 10% to 20%? So So what if you have the same traffic, but you want to double your revenue? What I'm saying is what usage metrics do you know you have to get a new trial or to use to increase the likelihood that they convert?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
05:26I think we have some new feature suggestions by our customers that if we have these kinds of features, if we have this kind of flexibility, then I hope we can increase our conversion rate by adding new features.
Nathan Latka
05:41What is currently the most used feature?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
05:46Currently most used feature is scheduling of
05:52any expiration date for the documents, which is expiring soon. So it generates the email alerts. This feature is mostly used. Plus we have recently added the storage, which we can upload scanned documents and attach it with any expirations.
Nathan Latka
06:10So this is this is like the same way people used to put fridge in like the the company refrigerator with an expiration date on it. Can essentially say hey sign this document in next seven days otherwise it expires and we lose the deal.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
06:25Yeah, it works sometimes, somehow like that. And not only this expiration reminder to a single person, we can create a contact list. You can add multiple people in that loop so they all will be notified of those upcoming expirations.
Nathan Latka
06:41Interesting. Very interesting. Okay. So that keyword is driving a lot of traffic. Now, you doing any paid experiments, Facebook ads, Google ads, etcetera?
Paid Advertising and Customer Acquisition Cost
Sadaqat Ghafoor
06:51Yeah, we have tried social media, we tried Facebook, but we have more success on pay per click through Google.
Nathan Latka
07:00Okay.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
07:00And AdWords is doing good for us.
Nathan Latka
07:03So what is your fully weighted customer acquisition cost right now?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
07:08At the moment, we have somewhere between $15 to $40.
Nathan Latka
07:12Okay.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
07:12That is a product for customer acquisition cost.
Nathan Latka
07:14And they're paying $40 a month, so you're getting paid back in less than a month?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
07:20Yes.
Nathan Latka
07:21So why not put a million dollars into that channel?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
07:25Actually, it's a small company right now. We have very limited resources. So as we expand, we are planning to hire more talent because we are looking to expand further and we need more customer support.
Nathan Latka
07:42How many people today?
Team Size and Location
Sadaqat Ghafoor
07:44As of today, we have a team of four.
Nathan Latka
07:46Okay. And where is everyone based?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
07:49Sorry?
Nathan Latka
07:49Where's everyone based?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
07:51It's mostly based in Dubai.
Nathan Latka
07:53Okay.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
07:53In United Arab Emirates, and we are handling all the operations from here.
Nathan Latka
07:57And are you bootstrapped or have you raised capital?
Bootstrapped and Path to Profitability
Sadaqat Ghafoor
08:01Currently we are just bootstrapped.
Nathan Latka
08:03That's great. Now are you putting more of your own money in every month to keep it afloat or are you operating a breakeven?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
08:09For past one year we have stopped putting any money into it and it's just doing good to handle its own expenses.
Nathan Latka
08:18So it's profitable today?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
08:20Yeah. It's in profit today.
EBITDA Margins and Capital Allocation
Nathan Latka
08:21As the owner, how do you decide what money you take out of the business each month and what you keep in the business, in the bank account?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
08:30Right now there is only expense we have is to pay to the team, which is our
Nathan Latka
08:37And your PPC stuff and any software you pay for it, any hosting.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
08:42Yeah, of course. There's there's only the we have expenses that we are doing is we have hostings, have third party services which are working with us to run the whole system. We have Amazon AWS and we have a bunch of other services which you are paying for at the moment.
Nathan Latka
09:01So back to my question, how much are you taking to the bottom line every month? Are you talking 10%, 20% EBITDA?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
09:08You can say around 20% we are taking note of.
Nathan Latka
09:11Okay. So 20% on $60,000 top line would be about $12,000 each month you're taking to the bottom line. My question is as the owner, do you just take that out as a dividend or do you leave it in the company? How do you decide how to allocate your capital?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
09:25I leave it I don't I leave it in the company. Basically, as I told you, I have multiple streams of income. So I'm not dependent mostly on this business. So I just wanted to grow as if their own. And that's how it works.
Nathan Latka
09:41That's great. And what is your is your churn is obviously critical. What's your churn today?
Churn and Customer Retention
Sadaqat Ghafoor
09:47Churn is about, you can say five to 8%
Nathan Latka
09:47Okay.
09:51That's 8% logo churn annually?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
09:53Yeah.
Nathan Latka
09:54And okay, I mean, that's not bad at all. Do you have a meaningful expansion revenue or no?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
10:01Right now there is no such big plans for the expansion, but we are focusing right now mostly on the customer service. Many of our customers, they are very satisfied with our service because we have responded very quickly solving their problems, and we have seen many of our customers are moving from our rival companies to our company just because of our customer service.
Famous Five: Favorite Book, CEO and Billing Tool
Nathan Latka
10:27That's great. All right, Sadaqat, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
10:35My favorite business book is,
10:39can't say it's a business book, but it's Power of Habit, which I believe the most.
Nathan Latka
10:43Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
10:47I'm a big fan of Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin Group.
Nathan Latka
10:51Number three, what billing provider or billing tool do you use?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
10:56We will use this... For billing, we use this invoicing software.
Nathan Latka
11:04Called?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
11:06It's called xenyce.com.
Nathan Latka
11:09Accentwise?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
11:12XInvoice.
Nathan Latka
11:14Oh, like EX?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
11:17EXInvoice.
Nathan Latka
11:18Okay. So you don't use like Stripe or Recurly or Chargify?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
11:23Oh, no. We are not using any of those.
Nathan Latka
11:25Okay.
11:26Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
11:30Five to six hours.
Nathan Latka
11:32And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
11:35I am married with two kids.
Nathan Latka
11:37Okay. That's great. How old are you?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
11:39I'm 42 at the moment.
Advice to Younger Self
Nathan Latka
11:41Okay. Sadaqat, and last question here. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
11:48I see myself like I'll be growing how I'm working and my plans for the future. I hope I'll be a better person.
Nathan Latka
11:59But what... No. No. When you were 20, what's something you wish you knew?
Sadaqat Ghafoor
12:04Oh, I
12:07wish I would have known how to run a company with multiple people because that time I started a number of companies, but it wasn't very helpful and I failed many times. And this is the biggest thing I should have known that time.
Nathan Latka
12:24Guys, there you have it. Start a business, build a team faster. Again, launched his company, Remindax, back in 2014. Now 1,500 customers paying $40 a month. So $60,000 a month in revenue, up from $30,000 a month in revenue just about a year ago. They're getting 90% of their new users coming from the keyword expiration date reminder. So an SEO play. They're adding 15 to 20 new users per day or 400 to 600 per month, 10% convert
12:47to paid. And again, they help you put expiration dates on documents, contracts, things like that. They're profitable to the tune of about $12,000 to the bottom line every single month. And he's bootstrapped, I love. Team of four in Dubai, 8% logo churn annually, spending about $40 to get a new customer. So one month payback as he looks to scale. Sadaqat, thank you for taking us to the top.
Sadaqat Ghafoor
13:06Thank you for your time, Nathan.