Revolution Design Revenue (2024)

[00:00] Revolution dot design is trying to help you get design done faster and more affordably in a more reliable way. They've got four customers, say, paying $5 a month launch just eight months ago, already doing 20,000 a month in revenue. Again, this is sort of that blend between a design agency plus recurring SaaS fee, hoping to keep these customers sticky. We usually see a lot of churn. They haven't lost any customers so far. Only four. They haven't [00:20] lost any of them, which is good. We'll see what happens next. Hey, folks. My guest today is Kerim Al-Lami. He helps tech startups avoid complicated in house hiring, overpriced design agencies, and unreliable freelancers with his company. It's called revolution design. They can hire top 1% senior design talent in one day for $49.90 per month. That's almost 5,000 a month. And pause or cancel at any time. Kerim, are you ready to take us to the top? Yes. [00:46] Let's go. Alright. This is cool. So so I've interviewed a bunch of folks that do this sort of thing, and the issue is always churn. It's keeping someone paying $5 a month for more than a couple months. How do you address this? [00:57] >> Yeah. Basically, I think the main thing to address here is to hire the best designers, really, like, you know, prove your point. Because when the client is happy with you and all of the designs, they get them quickly, they are happy with them, I think they will stay. You know, we've been in the business for quite a not very long time. We've been in the business for eight months. And, you know, some of our clients are [01:22] >> still with us after eight months. So, yeah, I think that's like the main point to address always. [01:27] That's great. Okay. So you launched eight months. So you launched basically January 2020 this year? [01:33] >> Yep. Yes. Yes. Yes. [01:34] Very cool. Okay. And can you give me an example of a customer paying you today? [01:39] >> Yes. So usually there are tech startups who just raised a series A or seat or anything like that, and they are looking for designers. Usually, the founder is quite technical or like the marketing person is quite, you know, marketing and they are not skilled in looking for designers, looking at portfolios and stuff like that. And, you know, they have like three options, you know, hire agency, full time, or freelancer. And, you know, they are all, like, [02:11] >> kind of fundamentally flawed in our view. [02:13] So how many designers have have I mean, do you hire them full time or do you is it a marketplace? You just sit in between? [02:20] >> Yeah. Basically, we sit in between and we are like the creative directors. I have also a co founder. We've been freelancing and helping tech startups for almost combined period of fifteen years. So we know like we know how it goes, especially in this industry. And we kind of seen in between as creative directors and, you know, direct the the designers and communicate with clients and stuff like that. [02:43] And So how many how many paying customers then do you have today? [02:47] >> Yeah. Right now we have four. [02:49] Okay. Yeah. One And how many freelance designers do you need to support those four paying customers? [02:55] >> So actually, one designer can take up to three clients. And, you know, like the main thing why we kind of founded revolution design is because here in Czech Republic and Slovakia where we are from, you know, we have like a really great design talent for really affordable prices. And, you know, that's the reason why one of the biggest agency design agency is called STRV, is basically located in Prague because, you know, you have a really great [03:22] >> talent here that, you know, can take €23,000 a month and they are, you know, happy as, you know, I don't know what. And, you know, for 2 to $3,000, I mean, a month, can sell them to, you know, three clients. [03:39] Okay. So you have three or four designers you're working with consistently right now? Yes. Okay. Interesting. Got it. And so, I guess, walk me through I mean, are you guys profitable today? Can you does the business model work? Is it sustainable? [03:53] >> Yeah. It's it's totally profitable, actually. So yeah. [03:57] How how much profits in June this year? [04:00] >> Yeah. We've done about counting, like, €15,000. [04:06] Yeah. Okay. And that's pretty good. I mean, look, I'm doing [04:08] >> the math. [04:09] Four customers, $5 a month. You're doing 20,000 a month top line. After you pay designers, you pay your salaries, you pay your software expenses, you're profiting $1,015,000 a month. [04:19] >> Yes. Yes. Like, we don't really pay ourselves salaries, you know, and stuff like that, but, you know, that's [04:24] So you guys split the profits of 15 k between the both of you? [04:28] >> Yeah. Like, we reinvest them to the company and, you know, hiring and stuff like that. So yeah. [04:33] That's awesome. Are you guys thinking about launching your own internal software product? [04:38] >> Yeah. We were really thinking about it, but I think and I believe that our clients really value the simplicity because right now we work on Trello. But, you know, in the future, it's I don't think it's quite sustainable with twenty, thirty, you know, 40 clients. So this is something that we are really kind of like thinking about and even, planning. So yeah. [05:01] 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 [05:24] 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 [05:48] 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 [06:10] 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 [06:36] 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 [06:58] 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 [07:24] the interview. That makes sense. How did you get the first four customers? Talk me about the sales process. [07:30] >> Yeah. Absolutely. Basically, they were all inbound clients or leads as we didn't do any called outreach or anything like that. They usually are our past clients we have worked with before or know new clients that, you know, just saw what we are doing. And we haven't, like, really, you know, doing any any marketing, sales, outreach, or anything like that so far since we are in such early stage. But, yeah, [08:00] >> that all of them are inbound [08:02] and Mhmm. Yeah. Well, I mean, how people say all of them are inbound, but inbound doesn't just happen. Right? If you launch a site in the middle of a forest and make no noise, no one's gonna find it. So you must have done something to get people to find you. [08:15] >> Oh, no. Absolutely. Yeah. We just, you know, put out one LinkedIn post that, you know, we are launching this new business. [08:23] >> Me and my co founder have worked with hundreds of clients before. You know, we have all them, all of them in our connections. We emailed some of them. [08:34] >> And, yeah, basically, you know, some of them converted, some of them, you know, are still hesitating and we have calls and stuff like that. But, yeah, I think it's about, you know, proving that that you know what you're doing and having a great portfolio and, you know, doing all that. [08:51] What kinds of work are you are they paying you $5 a month for? Is it mainly sort of website design or what are you paying for? [08:58] >> So basically, pride ourselves on having these full stack designers, which means that it's someone who knows how to do brand, website, and product. So whether you need, you know, like a new brand, a new website, new product, or anything in between, we can, you know, provide that. Right now, the most work we have is for website, web design, and web flow. However, in the past, it was mostly product design, so UI, UX, and stuff like that. [09:29] Interesting. And I love how you structured your pricing page. Take me through that. You have revolution design and you have senior designer, agency, and freelancer. How are [09:36] >> you winning So [09:38] >> basically, are three. I think the core fundamental problem with all all three of them is that, you know, they are paid by the hour. And, you know, like, many people don't realize that, you know, when designers are paid by the hour, they intentionally delay projects. I'm kind of guilty of guilty of that too. Of my friends are as well because, you know, when you are fast, well, basically a tech startup needs someone who can deliver fast, [10:06] >> incredible results, you get paid the least, you know, and when you are slow, you can pay more. So I think that's like the core fundamental problem with all of them. However, like these three solutions, the agency freelancer and the full time designer, they all So for example, hiring a full time designer usually takes up to forty one days and usually costs between 120, $160,000 a year in New York, San Francisco. That's basically where my clients are [10:39] >> from. And you get the benefit of working with them on a day to day basis. They get to know your brand and stuff like that. You know, agency usually costs between 50 to $100,000 a project. And usually that's not very feasible at the start. And, you know, finding a great one is, you know, hard also, but not that not as hard as, you know, hiring or finding a really great freelancer because hiring a great freelancer, which [11:07] >> is like they call the middle between agency and full time designer is like searching for a needle in a haystack because you never know which way we [11:18] found our design agency is we started off on Dribbble and Behance, and we hired for one project. And then we realized the person that we were using is part of an agency. And then before you know it, we grew to the agency program. Are you guys using Dribbble and Behance for your top of funnel? Will you do one off projects on those sites to land a larger customer? [11:36] >> Actually, my cofounder, he has been designing for almost eleven years or ten years, and he had all of his projects from Dribbble. You know? I, you know, never got on Dribbble or Behance or anything like that. [11:49] So have you gotten a customer from Dribbble or no? [11:51] >> No. No. No. Actually So it's [11:52] not working for you? [11:55] >> Actually, yeah. We had one. Actually, it was this, you know, web free web free wallet called Qualaboblet. I'll call it bio I'll call it those labs. They they saw my cofounder's, you know, portfolio. [12:08] Dribble on the hands does work for you for top of one. I'm trying to pull lessons for the audience. If you're trying to [12:12] >> do the [12:12] same thing, get on Dribble on the hands. Second The thing you do on your website is you offer a website audit for $4.95 at your top of funnel, I imagine. It's a, you know, a tripwire product here. How many of these have you done? [12:23] >> Yeah. We've done about, like, two, three of them so far. Yeah. They convert one of them converted, so it was like 33%. But yeah. Not in a scaling are not scaling right now. So yeah. [12:37] Can So what's your goal for the end of the year? How much revenue are you hoping for this year? [12:40] >> Oh, we definitely want to hit the 20 clients, a $100,000 a month. Would be probably in the first [12:47] That's a lot of growth. That's like five x growth from where you're at today. [12:51] >> Yeah. I mean, we are in the not in not at the end of the even, like, the first year. And we haven't even done any outreach and stuff like that. So, yeah, quite exciting. [13:02] Alright. We'll see what happen we'll see what happens, Kerim. In the meantime here, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, your favorite book? [13:08] >> Yeah. That has to be The Great CEO Whipped in by Matt McCurry. [13:12] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [13:15] >> Elon Musk probably. [13:17] Yeah. Number four number three, what's your favorite online tool for building revolution design? [13:24] Figma and Webflow. Yeah. Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night? [13:28] >> Oh, like, six, five. [13:30] And what's your what's your situation? Married, single kid? [13:33] >> Yeah. I have a girlfriend, long term girlfriend. [13:35] Yeah. So no kids? [13:36] >> Yeah. Fortunately. [13:38] And how old are you, Kerim? [13:41] >> I'm 22. [13:42] 22. Last question. [13:43] >> Something you wish you knew two years ago when you were 20. [13:48] >> I mean, you know, be more ambitious probably. Take on more risks, I would say. [13:55] Guys, there you have it. Revolution. Design is trying to help you get design done faster and more affordably in a more reliable way. They've got four customers today paying $5 a month. Launched just eight months ago, already doing 20,000 a month in revenue. Again, this is sort of that blend between a design agency plus recurring SaaS fee, hoping to keep these customers sticky. We usually see a lot of churn. They haven't lost any customers so far. [14:16] Only four. They haven't lost any of them, which is good. We'll see what happens next. Kerim, thanks for taking us to the top. Yeah. Thanks. 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, [14:39] 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 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 [15:02] 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 fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna 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 [15:25] 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 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 [15:45] 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'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.