Valuation
$2M
2024 Revenue
$1.6M(Est.)
Customers
2K
Funding
$300K
Avg ACV
$794
Team
15
Founded
2019
Revastaff Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)
Revastaff is a real estate visual services company founded in 2018 by OJ Lopez, who serves as CEO. The company provides photo editing, video editing, floor plans, 3D rendering, and CGI work for real estate agents and photographers, operating as a hybrid marketplace and early-stage SaaS platform headquartered with operations tied to a remote network of artists.
Lopez told interviewer Nathan Latka in October 2022 that Revastaff would generate approximately $300,000 in revenue for the year, up from roughly $200,000 the prior year, with about 2,000 customers having paid something through the platform over the course of 2022. The company runs a pay-as-you-go model and is in the process of converting users to a $20-per-month subscription tier.
Revastaff closed a $300,000 pre-seed convertible note in 2022 at a $2 million valuation cap. At the time of the interview, the full $300,000 remained in the bank. The company operates with five full-time employees, two of whom are engineers, and a network of approximately 30 freelance artists. Lopez described the business as breakeven, neither burning cash nor profitable, with gross monthly expenses of approximately $20,000.
Last updated
Revastaff Revenue
Revastaff was on track to generate $300,000 in revenue in 2022, up from approximately $200,000 in 2021, representing roughly 50 percent year-over-year growth. Lopez confirmed both figures directly to Latka during the October 2022 interview.
The 2022 revenue came from approximately 2,000 customers who had each paid at least something through the platform over the course of the year, operating under a pay-as-you-go model. Lopez noted that individual customer spending varied widely, with some paying $100 per month and others as little as $10, making a reliable average difficult to state. The company was also beginning to build a $20-per-month subscription tier to create more predictable recurring revenue.
Using the trailing growth rate of approximately 50 percent as a ceiling and assuming deceleration given the early-stage pivot to SaaS, a GetLatka estimate for 2023 revenue would fall in a range of roughly $350,000 to $450,000. This is a modeled estimate based on the stated 2021-to-2022 growth rate and is not a figure Lopez provided.
Revastaff Valuation, Funding Rounds
Revastaff reached a $2M valuation in 2022, set during its Pre-Seed round.
Revastaff has raised $300K in total funding across 1 round, most recently a $300K Pre-Seed round in 2022.
| Year | Round | Amount | Valuation | % Sold | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Pre-Seed | $300K | $2M | 15% |
Founder / CEO
OJ Lopez
CEO
OJ Lopez is the CEO and founder of Revastaff. He was 36 years old at the time of the October 2022 interview. Lopez is Filipino by birth, trained as an architect, and described by the host as a public speaker and humanitarian. He founded Revastaff in 2018.
Lopez had appeared on the show approximately a year and a half before the October 2022 interview, at which point Revastaff had about 20 customers paying an average of $75 per month. Net worth was not discussed in the interview and no estimate can be responsibly derived from the available data.
Q&A
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What's your age? | 38 |
| Favorite online tool? | - |
| Favorite book? | - |
| Favorite CEO? | - |
| Advice for 20 year old self | - |
Customers
Revastaff had approximately 2,000 customers pay through its platform over the course of 2022, each having paid at least a nominal amount. The company operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, with individual monthly spend ranging from roughly $10 to $100 depending on the volume of work ordered.
Approximately 1.5 years before the October 2022 interview, the company had about 20 customers paying an average of $75 per month under an earlier service model focused on real estate photographers rather than agents directly. The company was in the process of introducing a $20-per-month subscription tier at the time of the interview, though Lopez described the number of subscribers on that plan as very few at that point.
Lopez noted that real estate seasonality affects ordering patterns, with winter months typically seeing reduced activity. Only 30 percent of realtors use professional photographers, while 70 percent shoot their own photos, a dynamic that informed the company's pivot toward serving agents directly with editing and workflow tools.
Revastaff serves 2K customers.
Revastaff Business Model
Revastaff earns revenue by charging real estate agents and photographers for post-production services including photo editing, video editing, floor plans, 3D rendering, and CGI work. The current model is pay-as-you-go, with customers ordering services as needed through the platform. The company is building toward a $20-per-month SaaS subscription that would give realtors access to the workflow management platform, media storage, and on-demand access to the artist network as an add-on.
Lopez described the business as breakeven in October 2022, stating it was neither burning cash nor profitable on a net basis. Gross monthly expenses were approximately $20,000. With $300,000 in pre-seed capital sitting in the bank and the business at breakeven on operations, the company had not yet begun investing the raised capital into platform development at the time of the interview.
The platform connects U.S.-based real estate professionals with a remote network of approximately 30 freelance artists and editors. Gross margin, churn, LTV, CAC, and net revenue retention were not discussed in the interview.
Revastaff Employees & Team Size
Revastaff had five full-time employees as of October 2022. Two of those employees are engineers, and two are account managers handling sales. Lopez also works with a network of approximately 30 freelance artists and editors who carry out the post-production work for clients.
Revastaff employs approximately 15 people as of 2026, up from 14 in 2023. It serves 2K customers that rely on its solutions.
| Year | Milestone | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Reached 15 employees (March 2024) | |
| 2023 | Reached 14 employees (November 2023) | |
| 2022 | Reached 5 employees (October 2022) | Estimated |
| 2021 | Reached 4 employees (November 2021) | |
| 2021 | Reached 4 employees (May 2021) | |
| 2020 | Reached 3 employees (November 2020) |
Frequently Asked Questions about Revastaff
What is Revastaff's revenue?
Revastaff generates an estimated $1.6M in annual revenue.
Who founded Revastaff?
Revastaff was founded by OJ Lopez.
Who is the CEO of Revastaff?
The CEO of Revastaff is OJ Lopez.
How much funding does Revastaff have?
Revastaff raised $300K across 1 round.
How many employees does Revastaff have?
Revastaff has 15 employees.
Where is Revastaff headquarters?
Revastaff is headquartered in Haltom City, Texas, United States.
Compare Revastaff to the industry
Revastaff operates across multiple industries. Browse revenue, funding, and growth data for Revastaff in each sector below.
Full Interview Transcripts
They Doubled Revenue This Year to $300,000 Helping Real Estate Agents Edit PhotosOct 26, 2022
[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest my next speaker is Filipino by birth, an architect by training, a gamer by heart, and a family man by commitment, does a lot of public speaking and also humanitarian by choice. Studied architecture and is now building revastaff.com, real estate visuals that sell. OJ, you ready to take us to the top? [00:17] >> Yes, sir. Let's do it. [00:19] Alright. [00:20] >> Thank you for having me, Nathan. [00:21] You are welcome. [00:22] >> Yes. [00:23] So I had you on about a year and a half ago. You had about 20 customers doing is charging $75 per month on average. And talk to me a little bit about the the product back then. I don't know if it's the same as it was today, but tell me what you're working on now today. What's the product look like? [00:36] >> Well, the the the core product is still the same. We were still very much into real estate, but before we were we're servicing a lot of of of real estate photographers. But we pivoted and and went and go after the real estate agents themselves. So because we we were we we were made aware that only 30% of real estate agents actually use photographers. And you know, 70% of that actually just shoot their own photos and and [01:07] >> for for your audience to know we are actually doing post production work for a lot of these real estate visuals from your photo editing, video editing, floor plans, you know, 3D, CGI, things of that nature. And [01:21] So, OJ, are you a marketplace today than are you a SaaS company? [01:25] >> Well, well, a little bit of both. We were still we were still serving photographers, but it's kind of pivoted up to to going after real SaaS use case for for these realtors, going after the realtors to to spend [01:45] >> in our platform rather than going through a photographer and and and take shots of the properties and things like that. [01:51] So, OJ, just to be clear, you you real real estate folks, realtors can pay Revastaff to do all of the photo editing and everything for their new unit themselves. You used to, though, connect them to photographer and then relied on them to manage the photographer. Now you just do all the work internally yourself. Is that right? [02:13] >> Yeah. That's right. We we still do the real estate photographers as I've mentioned earlier. Only about 30% of of realtors actually use professional photographers. So those there's a big chunk of realtors that doesn't use real professional real estate photographers. So they take others, their their visuals, their phone photos, and things like that. And then and and so right now, they would be able just to upload that directly to our platform. And we're building a SaaS model [02:43] >> with that starting with with $20 a month and using our platform [02:48] How many realtors are paying $20 a month? [02:52] >> Our right right now, very few because we we still are doing [02:57] Like like how few? Under under 10? Under five? [03:00] >> No. We we we have about 2,000 realtors that are paying us. It's not that consistent. Hence, we want them to subscribe to because right now, it's it's a pay per service. So, they are in a pay pay as you go model but we have 2,000 of them doing pay as you go. Some of them spend $100, some of them spend $10. Right? So in hands [03:22] thousand of them though paid you last month, at least a dollar? [03:26] >> Last year. Last year. For for for one year, from 20 this year, there's about 2,000 of them who have gone through the platform and paid us something. [03:37] Oh, 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 [04:01] your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what it 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 [04:25] get a 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 [04:47] not built 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 [05:13] going out 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. All right, we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but [05:34] if you wanna 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 [06:01] the interview. And and how much do they pay you on average? [06:05] >> On average, they they pay [06:10] >> unrepurring because we have we have realtors that pay us, like, a $100 a month. [06:16] OJ, But we have to simplify this or we're gonna lose the audience. I'm just I'm just trying to get a sense of how many customers are gonna pay you something this year, and what's your gonna be your total revenue this year? [06:28] >> Alright. So for this year, we're gonna hit about 300 k of revenue. Again, I can't I can't I can't average out because it fluctuates. Right? [06:37] That's fine. [06:38] So 300 just stick with 300,000 in revenue from how many customers? 2,000? [06:43] >> Yeah. Around 2,000 customers. [06:45] Okay. And and and how many have already paid you to date? How many of the 2,000? What percent? [06:50] >> Everybody. You have paid at least, you know, at least $5. [06:55] Okay. Well, then So I just so just OJ, just to repeat this back to you. I said, how much are gonna do this year? And you said 300,000 in revenue from 2,000 customers. My then natural question was, well, there's still two months left in the year. So how many more customers are gonna pay over the next two months? And you just said none. They've all already paid you. [07:12] >> Right. Right. Right. So we have about about 2,000 customers that's already paying through the platform. Or ordered through the platform rather. [07:20] How many are going to order over the next two months? [07:24] >> It's it's really hard to say because it's gonna be winter. Right? So so a lot of them probably won't order in the next two months because it's gonna be wintertime. Yeah. [07:35] Got it. Alright. I won't push that further. So $300,000 this year, and that's up from how much last year? [07:43] >> We we we did almost 200 last year. [07:45] Okay. So 180,000 last year, 300,000 this year. It's there's there's what I'm hearing you in your voice and sort of your body language is, there's not a lot of predictability around this because they take photos one month and they don't take any the next month. Right? So that makes it really hard for you to hire and build a business because there's no predictability or consistency. Right? So how many full time employees do you have today? [08:07] >> Full time, we have about, five employees full time, and, the freelancers that work for us would would would be about 30 freelancers. [08:17] Okay. And and you mentioned did I think last time we spoke, you said you were raising a pre seed round, but you hadn't closed it. Did you end up closing that last year? [08:26] >> Yeah. We actually just raised this year, and and we we raised our our pre seed this year. [08:35] How much did you raise? [08:37] >> 300. [08:39] Okay. So 300,000 pre seed. And was that on a note? [08:43] >> Yes. That's right. It's it's a convertible note. [08:47] Got it. So most pre seed notes these days have a cap of, like, you know, 2 or 3,000,000 today. Is that what your cap was? [08:53] >> That's right. Yeah. Around that. [08:54] Okay. [08:55] Okay. So 2,000,000 cap. And why do you need the money? Why is this an expensive business to build? [09:01] >> Yeah. Basically, we will be building towards the SaaS model. And, well, we have actually investors that are very interested in us helping to build a Web3 model, which is we have the capability with our 3D artist to do like metaverse stuff. Right? So so the environments and things like that. So they're looking into that as well. And and there's a lot of a lot of side projects going on and not just in real estate [09:30] >> and they're looking into other verticals as well. As long as it's about visualization, photos, videos, 3D, CGI that our artist, here in the other side of the world can do. That's something that we are actually looking forward to to doing. [09:44] But there how many of the five employees are engineers? [09:50] >> Just two. Just two engineers and then two account managers handling sales and things like that. [09:58] And how many freelancers have, like, photograph editors have you used over the past year to to do all the work of editing? [10:08] OJ? [10:11] >> Hello, though. [10:12] Yep. OJ, we can hear you fine. [10:21] OJ there? [10:27] Guys, as OJ is reconnecting here, again, this is one of those models not a lot of predictability, but has 2,000 customers that have paid at least a dollar this year, potentially built an opportunity here to build a SaaS company, but he's gotta get more engineering resources. Two engineers is not enough to build an MVP here. So so let's see if we can ask him more questions about that if he reconnects. OJ, you there? [10:50] Alright. OJ, you good? [10:53] >> Yep. Yep. Did I lose you there? [10:55] So my question is my question was I mean, obviously, you're trying to pivot more into a SaaS model, but it's hard to do that with two engineers, and it's really hard to build software that can edit photos. Right? What's the I don't understand what the software opportunity is here. [11:09] >> Yeah. So so so so basically, it's it's still very outsourcing related. So, you know, people that has jobs there in The US, they would usually outsource to us. Hence, the the platform is a very basic ordering platform. Right? [11:24] Oh, got it. So it's not software to edit photos. It's software to manage contractors. [11:27] To get those 2,000 realtor. [11:33] >> Exactly. Yes. That's right. [11:35] That makes a lot of sense. Okay. And I cut you off. What were you saying? [11:39] >> Yeah. So so the the the model right now is to convert the users that we have to use the platform as their their centralized workflow management tool. That means that they would you know pay us $20 a month just for the privilege to use the software whether to hire editors, or even use the, the, the software as a, a media storage. So instead of, of, of, paying, you know, all these, storage, they would just be able [12:11] >> to store all their media files in our platform, and then as an add on, they could actually outsource that to the network of artists that we have. So that's gonna be the play moving forward. Hence, it would be more predictable and and that's our our pitch to our investors. That's that's what what we're gonna be working on in in building that model. [12:31] Understood. How much capital are you burning per month right now? [12:36] >> Not so much. Not so much. Probably about 20 k a month. [12:39] Okay. Does that make you nervous? You've only raised a 100 k, which means you have, you know, ten months of runway, eleven months of runway. [12:45] >> Yeah. Well well, we we are actually also revenue generating. So the the 20 k burn is actually just building up that platform and and [12:53] Sorry. When I say burn, I mean, net burn, not not all your expenses. What what what how much is your bank going down every month? [13:04] >> Well, it's not really going down because we're actually generating revenue. [13:09] Okay. There's plenty of companies that generate revenue but are not profitable, so their bank goes down. Right? So what do you mean you're what do you mean I'm asking you, are you profitable or not? Not if you're generating revenue. [13:19] >> No. No. No. No. We're we're we're at zero. We're at zero. So every month, we're not burning, and, we're not profitable. [13:25] Okay. Got it. So do your pre seed investors that just give you 300 k say, OJ, spend faster. We just gave you this money. You're not investing it. [13:32] >> That's right. So so they they're actually investing, so that we would be able to build that platform, that that SaaS model. [13:39] OJ, you just said you're breakeven, which means the 300 k you just got on the pre seed round is now sitting in your bank doing nothing. How are you not getting pressure from those investors saying, OJ, burn money. Invest the 300 k we just gave you. [13:50] >> Yeah. That's right. That's right. That's why we were we're actually we just recently raised. That's why we haven't burned anything yet. [13:57] So the 300 k is still in the bank? [13:59] >> That's right. That's right. [14:00] Alright. Well, we're rooting for you. We hope you use it to grow. In the meantime, now let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? [14:08] >> Still E-Myth. [14:10] >> Alright. [14:11] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [14:14] >> Michael Saylor right now. [14:16] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Revastaff? [14:22] >> Recently, HubSpot has been very helpful. [14:24] Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night? [14:27] >> Eight hours. [14:28] Alright. And situation, married, single, kids? [14:32] >> Married, two kids. [14:33] And 36 today? [14:35] >> Yes. That's right. [14:36] Alright. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [14:41] >> Just I wish I would have quit school sooner. [14:46] Guys, Revastaff was launched in 2018. They're helping real estate agents get their photos edited faster, quicker, and more efficiently. Over 2,000 agents have paid them at least a dollar over the past year. They'll do 300,000 in revenue this year, up from 200,000 last year. Just closed a 300,000 seed round at a 2,000,000 cap. All the money is still in the bank as OJ decides where to reinvest it. Team of five today, gonna double down on software [15:05] moving forward. OJ, thanks for taking us to the top. [15:08] >> Thanks, Nathan. Appreciate it. [15:11] One 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 [15:36] Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big [15:58] fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign [16:20] up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. [16:39] We got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.
$20k Upwork Side Gig to $200k ARR SaaS Project Editing Real Estate PhotosMay 25, 2021
Introduction hello everyone my guest today is oj lopez he's a filipino by birth architect by training salesman by vocation catholic by faith and family man by commitment humanitarian by choice after three heartbreaking business failures in his 20s in the construction construction and outsourcing industry he founded revastaff.com in 2018 and now things are growing nicely oj you ready to take us to the top yeah sure well thank you so much for for inviting me on your show nate has been serving so what is what is revastafin and how are you guys making money yeah so rambostop is a two-sided marketplace we have photographers in the platform and we supply them with the post-production staff like editors and floor plan artists and cgi artists and things of that and mostly these are people from the philippines vietnam and india and most of these real estate photographers are in the us so we have about about 20 photographers in the platform and about 30-ish editor staff on the editor side and the drafter side things like that so one side of the marketplace are the photographers and editors who is on the other side of the marketplace who's hiring them the the other side of the market is the the u.s uh side real estate photographers on the other side of the market is the editors from the philippines vietnam in india and then we just match uh the requirement of these editors whether it's going to be photo editing in photoshop or drafting floor plans uh and at the end the end user is actually the real estate agent who would market all these properties so we're kind of in enabling uh the the photographers to streamline their process to outsource their post-production work so that they would be able to shoot more houses during the day and and we take care of all the back-end stuff for them and yeah and we we charge them for per photo per floor plan per render uh and then it's just half and half for for the the guys on on the back end so we take a commission out of that let's use a specific example a us photographer who who's photographer taking pictures of real estate here in the us takes a picture they want that one picture edited by one of your editors in the philippines what did you charge them for that one picture to edit it's a dollar retail so now if you're a new customer we we charge you one dollar per photo and each house is usually like 30 to 40 photos each house so it's it's about 30 to 40 bucks for the photos and then if they would want to add floor plans with that it's ten dollars per floor plan usually three three floors per house or three plus so the average would be around 50 bucks okay and last month how many photos were processed through your system uh last month about 5 000 photos oh wow okay and how many floor plans well so so that's uh that's about five divided by Currently serving 20 customers uh i don't have the number on top of my head but it's usually about 400 houses 400 to 500 houses each month so 400 to 500 floor plans yeah that's about right or times two of that so it seems average about two fourths two floors per house one thousand floor plans Monthly recurring revenue got it a thousand a thousand floor plans at ten bucks a pop is ten grand a month in revenue plus 5 000 photos at a dollar each that's another five grand so you're doing about fifteen thousand dollars a month in revenue yeah and then plus the va side of things because uh we do have supply them with virtual assistant uh and then the 3d renders and things like that and 3d virtual tours vr tours that we do also the editing so it would round about 20 22. and and this is impressive i mean you know getting both sides of the marketplace is really difficult how did you sign up 20 photographers in the u.s well it just started with one and i was just the one making the floor plan for that guy and that guy uh started to hire uh photographers under him and ask who is that guy how did you know him uh it's the upwork so we started like a freelance gig uh just me i have an architectural background so i just do the floor plans for for for that photographer and then we offer it and then when when we have like enough team photographers i mean enough team of editors now a few photographers turned and now i wanted to uh to to give more jobs to those editors so i just started marketing by myself called calling no photographers in the u.s and and uh don't call emailing them doing you know facebook groups uh marketing things like that and then that's where we got a few accounts in new york few accounts in in north carolina and now we have a new client actually very exciting stuff uh just last week we just landed the client in california that would like triple our number overnight but they have about 44 photographers in in their in their system we're serving like four cities but that's pretty brand new so just keep it back to make sure i understand you were freelancing on upwork saying marketing your skills to edit floor plans one person found you and then before you know it he's referring a bunch of other people and you take it off and you start building this marketplace yes for sure yeah that's what happened very recently we we started our own platform i just got a cto about six seven months ago and built the ninja rava staff that app which now streamlines all the processes before because before we were using third-party software like dropbox for ftp uh google calendar for scheduling so right now it's going to be all in one place streamline all the processes from when the photographer shot the house and then upload that on our platform and then the editors will be able to get that on the other side of stuff and then edit it on photoshop or lightroom and and re-upload that and then uh just one click it will now be sent to the realtor which is the end client and then the end client would now ask uh would now close the job or accept the job from the photographer the photographer photographer yeah i totally understand a product that makes complete sense to me um to understand that the size of the phone you built on upwork can you quantify that in 2020 how much revenue did you personally do the upwork well upwork was just 2018 and then everything was uh 2018. 2018 we did about 20 20 grand in revenue uh but we started mid of 2018 and then 2019 we doubled that uh uh 40 grand and then uh 20 20 uh within about 120k all the upwork no no all uh organic like cold calling cold email facebook groups okay let but i just want to get this story here so you you launched in 2018 on upwork you did 20 grand in sales you then saw an opportunity you moved yourself off of work launched your level staff and you did approximately 40k in 2019 and 120 grand in 2020. that's right i see what do you think you'll do here in 2021 uh we're we we project about 100 250 k but then with the new client coming in as i said we triple our our head count overnight what's that again what's headcount today uh we have about 30 freelancers on our platform how many are full-time employees building row at south every everything is is contractor but about about 20 of them are working full-time but uh they are considered contractor not as full-time employees okay how many of the 20 are engineers uh we have one cto and one guy helping him out so just a couple so okay so what are what are the team people on the team doing if they're not engineering uh they're the ones doing the work photoshop and doing no no won't include the marketplace that'd be like uber calling all their drivers employees which is not the case i'm just curious how many people are on your team building rubber stuff not the editors not the photographers right all right gotcha so so we have one cto and then one guy helping him out like a product project manager kind of thing and then a couple of va's so like four people the four okay got it that's great and have you bootstrapped us or raised Bootstrapped yeah we've been bootstrapping it's very hard to race in the philippines man so i'm being on your show hopefully you will be able to get some american dollars coming over here why why do you want to raise capital well the market is so huge i mean we're just serving about 2 000 realtors and there's about 2 million realtors in the us and we can leverage obviously uh what we have here in the philippines because though our our people are are doing full-time work and they are getting paid american dollars and it's still like below minimum wage u.s but here no it's like tries uh three times the the minimum wage here so it's it's it's uh uplifting their quality of life and we saw this opportunity that we've been able to to you know scale this to many uh too many filipinos vietnamese and in in people from india who can just go to the platform have like a full-time uh career just making photos and editing photos all day long and they will be able to to have no quality of life working from home and things of like that and and during the pandemic obviously we have like people just saying yeah we are life savers no we got uh uh we got laid off from from our you know our companies and then we have we saw this platform and now we were able to take care of our families and things like that so so given that opportunity i i would be good because we're already earning a 200 k uh us and living in the philippines it's like you know we're living like kings right but uh and living by the beach and things like that but seeing this this opportunity that this can really scale uh with uh also working with photographers i don't mean to cut you off but again i want to get a lot in a very short amount of time so so if you did like if you had another fifty thousand dollars today where would you spend it um marketing um what specifically are you talking ads or what yeah yeah ads and sales people so right now it's just me just me like call calling closing deals uh so maybe if i would be able to duplicate myself like three ojs that that would you know uh what would that cost you in the philippines to hire another oj um i would start with probably just a thousand dollars a month for for somebody to to like do all those things that i can do yeah i would look at doing this deal but but let me ask you a question before i do this if someone wrote you a fifty thousand dollar check how much equity would you going to give them um we we did uh ask we basically did a shark tank show here in the philippines and we asked for 100k for 10 percent okay so so value business at a million bucks which seems fair it's about 4x revenue uh currently now did you deal there or no no no because they they wanted more and it's not it's not like a start up here so that's why the ecosystem here in the philippines is not mature enough that they would want more equity on their side and uh the deal was kind of like getting us as in-house team of the real estate companies something like that yeah we've already done deals with founders in malaysia and the philippines i believe that if you're building a sas company it doesn't matter if you're in silicon valley or the beach in the philippines a sas company is a sas company um i love what you're building so the way we think about a deal like yours is we take your monthly occurring revenue 15 grand multiply times three so it's about forty five thousand dollars if you go to founderprep.com today and sign up we can essentially get you that in under under a day so so i'd love to look at that we don't take any equity i mean it sounds like the valuation you just asked for you'd be willing to give me five percent of the business for 50 grand i'd give you 50k you'd have to pay it back over a year but i would take no equity wow wow wow yeah definitely we're going to do that deal all right well let's talk we'll talk more about it after the show so so you hire sales people to scale you um how do you sign up more are the editors all fully booked right now do you need to onboard more editors or no yeah well the market is actually just a facebook group a lot of editors out there just looking for jobs so if you have like overflow work i would be spammed by editors just asking for work yeah great so you you really that's how the marketplace is solved you really need to get more photographers in the real estate space using your platform that's right because most most photographers especially the ones that are starting it out they would want to edit their own photos but uh we want to tell them that you know you can actually get more work and just outsource editing so if you they are doing like one or two house a day and they could get like four or five and and you know get rid of all the back-end stuff and have ram staff take care of that for them how many of the 20 photographers put at least one picture or floor plan through you each month like the past six months in other words is it sticky do they keep using you yeah yeah every time the photographer would use us uh they would use us at first they would use us for floor plans because they want to edit their own photos and then they would my question is though is it sticky are they coming back every month and giving you floor plans and new photos yeah for sure for sure so we just started with i said one photographer then five then ten then right now it's about twenty amazing you're building something special man let's let's wrap up here with the famous five number one favorite business book i'll go old school uh e-myth number two is there a ceo you're following or studying uh right now it's going to be elon musk number three what's your favorite online tool for building rubber south uh ravastaff.com besides your own uh dropbox number four how many hours of sleep you get every night ah 17 and what's your situation married single kids uh wife two kids very cool and how old are you i'm 35 35 last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20. i was 20 that everything will be okay guys he started on upwork did 20 000 in revenue in 2018 helping real estate agents edit their floor plans and their pictures he then built his own platform revistapp.com did 120 grand in 2020 on truck to 250k this year in 2021 has about 20 photographers that are spending on average 75 dollars per month on the platform so 15 grand in mrr ask for 100 grand for 10 of the business ultimately turned down we'll see if we get a deal done on founder path oj thanks for taking us to the top thanks ethan appreciate it one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas 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 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2pm central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the subscribe button below here on youtube the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live i wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the sas world whether it's an acquisition a big fundraise a big sale a big profitability statement or something else i don't want you to miss it additionally if you want to take this conversation deeper and further we have by far the largest private slack community for b2b sas founders you want to get in there we've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing you can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying sign up for that at nathan laca.com forward slash slack in the meantime i'm hanging out with you here on youtube i'll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode if you enjoyed it click the thumbs up we get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive i am on these shows but i do it so that we can all learn we have to counter those people we got to push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that i appreciate your guys's support all right i'll be in the comments see ya
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