REVIEWS.io Hit 8,000 Customers and 170% Growth Bootstrapped, at 57% to the Bottom Line (Interview with COO Tom Goodwin)

Introduction and Overview of REVIEWS.io

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Tom Goodwin. He joined reviews.io as COO with the sole purpose of growing the business globally. The firm is a digital feedback solution that enables online business to build brand trust and is internationally renowned for its innovation. Tom, you ready to take us to the top?

Tom Goodwin

00:17>> Yeah, yeah, thanks Nathan. Thanks for the time today. Yeah, so reviews.io, we're a feedback solution based with offices in The US, Australia, UK, and Australia.

Nathan Latka

00:29And when people hear like world renowned innovation and they hear review site, usually those two things don't go together. So what kinds of innovation are we talking about here?

Product Innovation and Social Proof Features

Tom Goodwin

00:37>> Yeah, well, think some of the innovation elements that we've sort of really been proud of and what we've pushed is really the pushing around social proof and the whole sort of online reputation. So we've got incredible integrations with Instagram which enables customers to sort of identify users, tag reviews into shuffle Instagram galleries to use that to push social proof through Instagram stories and then also identify the influencers as well as then through our online reputation tool,

01:13>> as well as just not being able to collect verified reviews. Our tool enables you to connect to all of those sort of third party review platforms out there. So you can really consolidate and manage all your reviews and feedback in one location. And I think it's being a sort of an agnostic solution. We're not just sort of bound to one platform like Shopify, like some of our competitors, but it also enables Tom,

Nathan Latka

01:37who are some of those competitors? Are you talking like TrustRadius or who are the competitors?

Competitive Landscape

Tom Goodwin

01:41>> I think the main competitors with is you've got Yotpo, Trustpilot, Okendo, stamped.io, those types of competitors, different spaces. You know, we're very much a non contracted rolling thirty day subscription where some of our competitors are very fixed contract, you know, sort of three, five years lock in, very hard to get out of.

Nathan Latka

02:04What are businesses paying you per month on average? I imagine it's a lower ARPU, but higher volume.

Pricing and ARPU

Tom Goodwin

02:10>> Yeah, so our average deal value is around sort of a $100 mark.

Nathan Latka

02:15Yep. Super affordable.

Tom Goodwin

02:17>> We've plans starting right, yeah, we've got plans starting from $45 for those startup businesses, right at sort of our enterprise plans.

Nathan Latka

02:23Yep, and then so what sorts of things are they paying for? Is it literally the ability to go collect these reviews and embed them on their sites for social proof, things like that?

Tom Goodwin

02:32>> Yeah, so the main things they're paying for is to enable them to integrate their platform with our solution to collect feedback during the buying journey. So, you know, so at the point of when an order, depending on what triggers we've got, we've got a great new feature called Flow which allows you to really build out that feedback journey within the solution. So yeah, it enables you to connect and then also then fully manage using social proof

02:56>> tools, put widgets on-site. So, you know, we're also Google accelerating so we can push stars through into the Google AdWords, which can reduce your cost per click and, you know, in Google Shopping as well, really making sure that that you're, you know, you're taking up as much of Google's real estate as possible with verified feedback.

Founding Story and Tom's Background

Nathan Latka

03:15And now when did you launch the business? So when did they launch the business? And you joined in 2018, but when was the business launched?

Tom Goodwin

03:22>> So the business was launched just over ten years ago in The UK, it's reviews.co.uk by Callan McEafe, who's the founder.

Nathan Latka

03:28Is he still there?

Team Growth from 10 to 60 Staff

Tom Goodwin

03:29>> Yeah, he is very much so. Drives very much drive for the product innovation and drive that side of the business. You know, my side, I really look after the operations. So I joined just over three years ago. We were 10 staff and just over 60 now with four offices globally. And I'm based in Sydney.

Nathan Latka

03:47Break down the 60 person team today. How many engineers?

Tom Goodwin

03:51>> Of the team over 50% are engineers. You know, we're very much of a feature technology based business. We've got an incredible head office in The UK in Leicester where our engineers are based. We then have success support and business development teams in each of our regions. We

Sales Team Structure and Quotas

Nathan Latka

04:08Any would build sales reps or is the ARPU too low to have inside sales?

Tom Goodwin

04:12>> Yeah, we do have sales reps. We have a couple in each region, but we always start with support and success first just because we've already, when we go into a region, we've already got customers in those regions. So our key thing is supporting those customers within that time zone and providing that twenty-four hour support globally now we've got seven days a week.

Nathan Latka

04:31How many salespeople if you've got 30 engineers?

Tom Goodwin

04:34>> We've got total salespeople, we've got 10 salespeople across the inside sales across.

Nathan Latka

04:39Do any carry quota or no?

Tom Goodwin

04:43>> No, we've in terms a way that we drive our sales through sort of our sort of automations and things like that. But yeah, in terms of, we've got quarterly targets that the teams are very much driving towards.

Nathan Latka

04:58Yep, and so you come in in 2018, obviously you're gonna, you you did that because you're gonna reinvigorate the business, drive some extra growth. How many customers are you guys now serving today?

Customer Count and CSM Coverage

Tom Goodwin

05:07>> We've got just over 8,000 customers globally.

Nathan Latka

05:10Wow, okay, got it. And how do you sign, like make sure that all of them stay active and aggressive? Do you sign like a CSM to every 2,000 customers or something?

Tom Goodwin

05:20>> No, so basically we've got, we've used some great tools. We've got some great automations, but yeah, in terms of with our great business and enterprise plans, we're all assigned to CSM and

05:32>> then really our essential and small business, it's all about interacting with the platform. So if we see people struggling to go through the platform, then one of our CSMs will reach out to them. So we're very hands on with our customers. We're very strategic with our customers to make sure they get real value out of the solution.

Nathan Latka

05:48And Tom, how much has revenue grown percentage wise since you joined in 2018? Do know?

Revenue Growth Since 2018 and COVID Impact

Tom Goodwin

05:53>> Yeah, I mean, revenue's growing like over 300%. Mean, obviously it's not just down to me, it's obviously down to the whole team and the way the products develop. I mean, if you look at our product innovation, particularly in the last twelve months, the amount of features that rolled out and improved, we launched a new dashboard only last month, very much sort of taking on sort of a lot more user friendly dashboard. And again, with our new

06:19>> flow features and all our new integrations, I mean, that's driving a huge amount of our growth.

Nathan Latka

06:24And if you grow on like three, I was say, you've grown 300% since 2018, if you just look at the past twelve months, you know, coming out of COVID, how much have you grown over the last twelve months would you say?

Tom Goodwin

06:33>> Oh, we've grown at about 170%. So yeah, huge amount.

Nathan Latka

06:37Did COVID hurt you guys? I mean, imagine a lot of small business went out of business. Did you lose and have churn because of that?

Tom Goodwin

06:43>> Yeah, but we were really supportive for our customers. So our customers, the industries that were affected by COVID, we provided them support, we provided payment policies during the COVID period to allow them to still use our solution, but not have to pay for it. Those verticals travel, all of those things that were heavily affected by COVID. But yeah, we obviously then have the growth sectors, the new essentials, health, creativity, all of those things that boomed during

07:11>> COVID. We certainly saw huge growth in those areas.

Nathan Latka

07:16And Tom, did you guys bootstrapped this or you guys raised capital?

Bootstrapped and Profitable

Tom Goodwin

07:19>> No, we're still bootstrapped and very much proud of it. So we're bootstrapped from day one and I love that. We're very much a profitable business driving fantastic expansion. Our plans for this year, just in terms of what we're doing with the business and the way that we're growing our teams, not just across engineering and products, but across marketing and also, you know, building out teams, particularly US is going really strong for it.

Nathan Latka

07:43Tom, can I ask how profitable you are, like 10% to the bottom line or more?

Tom Goodwin

07:48>> More. More, that's We're like More, 57%.

Nathan Latka

07:53So what do you do? Like, again, I don't know what the revenues are, but what do you do with all the extra cash in year? Do you pay it out as dividends or do you just let it sit in the bank or what?

Tom Goodwin

08:01>> No, no, we're very much preparing ourselves for this next stage. We've done some incredible developments in the last six months and really that sort of war chest that we're building is really getting us ready to sort of really push out the new features and growth that we're gonna be pushing or pushing now. Since the new dashboard went live last month, growth is really just driving and with the integration features that we're adding certainly over the next

08:28>> quarter, that's really there ready for us to really continue to be bootstrapped and continue to drive the business and build out those teams.

Nathan Latka

08:35And if these customers adopt these new product lines, hopefully you start to see your net dollar retention being well above 100%. How do think about churn today?

Churn and Net Dollar Retention

Tom Goodwin

08:43>> Churn, for us churn, you know, we're, churn is pretty good to be honest. We're sort of around 1.7% churn. You know, it's pretty Yeah.

08:55>> Yeah, Yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:56Now do you, so that's like 20% per year. Do you expand those historical accounts by more than 20% to make up the gap?

Tom Goodwin

09:03>> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So our net revenue retention is something we really pushed through expansion, particularly with expansion and reactivation. We're being a business that's sort of ten years old. If you look back at some of our original customers that we're gaining a lot of reactivation back into the business because they've Yeah, gone

09:21>> they've canceled, they've gone to one of our competitors with them, the distance of them ground we've covered with our features in the last twelve months. You know, we've then won them back because obviously you may have left because of certain features. We now have those features. So yeah, our reactivation is incredibly high at the moment.

Nathan Latka

09:36So what is net dollar retention? How far above a 100?

Tom Goodwin

09:40>> At the moment, when I looked at the figures probably last week, we're about 103, I think.

Nathan Latka

09:45Okay. Got it. So that's like 23% expansion. That's pretty good. Now, when you upsell stuff, what are you upselling against? Like if a brand is using you, do they upsell because they have new shops they're opening or new locations or new product upsells? How do you upsell?

Upsell Mechanics and Expansion Revenue

Tom Goodwin

09:58>> So our upsells are based on, so our CSMs identify opportunities through whether they need to grow through the solution while growing through the plan. So if, you know, they start on our essential plan and grow through. We also then have our bolt ons. So we've got like our integrations with Google Local. We've got our integrations with Instagram and that's no other way that they can grow through the solution. And then typically also around some of our

10:24>> other integrations with the likes of like Zendesk, a huge amount of our platform is all inclusive within the plans, particularly integrations, but some of our integrations have got a little bit more complexity to it. And that's why there's a bolt on and then added cost

10:38>> to add that feature into the solution. And we've got a couple of new really exciting features coming out soon as well, one around sort of loyalty, which will again be something that will help us grow that net revenue retention.

Nathan Latka

10:52And Tom, can I take those 8,000 customers times a $100 ARPU and say you're doing about $800,000 per month right now or somewhere around there?

Tom Goodwin

10:59>> Yeah, probably a little bit more than that, yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:01Well, this will be exciting, Vince. I mean, this year is the year you're passing $10,000,000 in ARR. There's gonna be a big celebration, right?

Tom Goodwin

11:07>> Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:08Bootstrapped, know, that's very rare. There's probably a point, there's probably less than, I mean, there's less than a 100 companies, SaaS companies in the world, I would say, that bootstrapped past $10,000,000 in ARR, so should be very proud.

Acquisition Interest and Future Plans

Tom Goodwin

11:20>> Yeah, well, you're the man with the metrics. So yeah, it was good to hear that.

Nathan Latka

11:23Maybe it's more than a 100, but you're certainly up. I mean, it's top 1%

Tom Goodwin

11:26>> Yeah, we're very proud and Callum and his wife Nikki, founded an incredible business and Calum's drive and enthusiasm around the product and his knowledge, it supports and makes my job a lot easier.

Nathan Latka

11:40Yeah, mean, flip side of that is like, there's so much money in the market, it's so frothy. There are probably people that pay just stupid, silly multiples for you guys right now. At what point is it just too hard to resist?

Tom Goodwin

11:53>> I can't say that I don't get contacted on a daily, weekly basis, so does Callum. But I think for us, it's about just finding the right time and the right, and when we get the right metric. I think we've done a huge amount of work around our billing, around our expansion revenue, around our platform, the dashboard and the whole sort of customer journey. I think there definitely will be a point that we, when we wanna be

12:14>> more aggressive in some of the larger markets like The US, I think there will be a point that it'll be great to be part of and to bring in a partner at this point. I think we're still just loving it. We're just loving the being a bootstrapped business. We still loving the growth that we're achieving on a month by month basis and that, and yeah, there will be a point without a doubt, you know, and we're

12:35>> planning that point. We know sort of where it will be. And I think we just wanna make sure that it's right for everyone. It's the right partner. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

12:43So if Yotpo goes out and raises like a $250,000,000 like series F and wants to use all that cash to buy you, do you turn down $250,000,000 cash or what is it?

Tom Goodwin

12:52>> A 20x multiple, 25x multiple? Absolutely.

Nathan Latka

12:55You would turn that down.

Tom Goodwin

12:59>> We're seeing, we've got a path and we're looking forward to continue. I mean, Yotpo's obviously going down that road, they're about to float on the NASDAQ. They have a vision, we have a vision and we're very proud of our vision and very confident that we'll become even more of a challenger in the market.

Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

13:19We love that. Okay, very cool. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Tom Goodwin

13:27>> God, you just caught me then. The Billion Dollar Coach.

13:31>> Billion Dollar Coach, yep.

Nathan Latka

13:33Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Tom Goodwin

13:38>> I would say very much that Afterpay guys have been something and obviously this week with a big, with their big buyout, you know, being based in Australia, Nick and the team there has been, you know, a really inspiration story.

Nathan Latka

13:51Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building reviews?

Tom Goodwin

13:56>> For building reviews.

Nathan Latka

13:57Well, for building your company?

Tom Goodwin

13:59>> Intercom has been something that I've really enjoyed embracing.

Nathan Latka

14:03Number four, how many hours of sleep do you eat every night?

Tom Goodwin

14:07>> Six and a half.

Nathan Latka

14:08Okay. And situation, Tom? Married, single kiddos?

Tom Goodwin

14:11>> Married. No kids?

Nathan Latka

14:12Two. Okay. Two kids. How are you?

Tom Goodwin

14:15>> 10 and 13. I'm 44.

Nathan Latka

14:1744. Last question. What do wish you knew when you were 20?

Tom Goodwin

14:23>> I learned to code.

14:26>> Guys, reviews.myio biggest fallback is the fallback is, yeah, I can't code.

Nathan Latka

14:32Guys, reviews.io found it back in 2011. They did call it $3,000,000 in revenue back then. They now since scaled to about, call it, $10,000,000 in ARR. They've done it all bootstrapped, which we love. They do this with a team of 60 people, 30 engineers, 10 sales reps, zero carry quota, but they do have team goals. Tom came in in 2018 as COO, now leading the company into to really great economics, 103% net dollar retention as they

14:55look to scale and serve over their over 8,000 small business customers. Tom, thanks for taking us to the top.

Tom Goodwin

15:01>> Great. Thanks a lot, Nathan. Appreciate your time.

Nathan Latka

15:05One 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 one

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