How Ringpin CEO Jon Stern grew to $629.3K revenue and 45 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is john stern he's always been fascinated with technology and interpersonal communications and has been a multi-time early stage sales leader and recently co-founded ringpin with his good friend and business partner brian levine to help companies reach customers in more meaningful ways for more places he's living in sunny san diego with his wife and two young kids john you're ready to take us to the top yeah it's awesome thanks for having me nathan you bet hey so tell us a little bit quickly um what space is ring pin playing in and is it a pure play sas business yeah it is a sas business and um we actually cross into a lot of different industries because we help anyone that has any physical products or location run um you know digital campaigns or provide digital experiences from those physical places so it works a lot in retail e-commerce shipping packaging um so many different uh real estate so we cross over into a lot of different industries can you just try and make that real for for the crew listening and say can you mean can you tell a customer story on how they're using you yeah sure um like we support 40 pizza shops in toronto and they use us on their mailers on their boxes in order to get customers to reengage leave reviews buy more pizzas all that type of stuff we can also work with payment processors so people can take their bills scan a qr code and it can skip all the friction and they can one click pay from there so we make it really easy to drive digital actions from physical products and places did you grow up in a family that maybe had a small business or a pizza shop location or something like what got your brain so interwoven into this this cohort this sector it's funny that you asked that actually my father has been a professor for 49 years but he also had an i.t consulting company on the side and i grew up working for him very young and started my own i.t consulting company right out of college so both brian and i have been helping people solve problems using technology for over 20 years oh wow okay so so there was an agency model here and through the agency you learned a little bit more about the sas you wanted to build yeah it's just um you know working with so many different customers over the years we were able to identify some problems and always interested in remote work and remote communications and then really the pandemic accelerated a lot of the things that were already in place but a lot of the physical places were left behind so we saw a big need in the market to bring all these greatest advancements you know from the digital world to the physical world because you know digital one and uh physical needs to take advantage of all those advancements and what are these customers paying ringpin on average to use this technology suite you've built yeah typically we have a minimum of like 2 000 a month but it really depends because there's so many different um ways that you can use our software um you know you can set it up for communications you can set it up to generate user content um you can set it up to just redirect to another website so it really depends what program our customers um want to use it for and we are usually able to find something that works for everybody and would you say that sort of 2000 a month or 24 000 per year is sort of the sweet spot average or that really a starting point and you have serious you know expansion revenue opportunities yeah um we have expansion revenue opportunities so that's just to get started and then we're hoping to work with um you know some pretty big brands that that's just a drop in the bucket for yeah let's capture more of the back story here so you just touched on it briefly with your dad being a professor your agency business as well when did you officially launch ring pin what year yeah way back in 2016 the very end of it and it looked very different then and um you know it was a side project for brian and i for many years and then last year you know when we saw the pandemic coming we really kind of pivoted hard into this physical the digital transformation um and uh we've been sending qr codes back and forth to each other for years and years and and i told them americans are too stubborn we're never gonna a qr code business it was basically like a dirty word for a long time but um i was in brazil in the end of 2019 and and i was able to order an ice cream cone through a qr code and i sent him a text i was like hey this is pretty cool now you can do something fun with qr and we saw you know the videos and and stories coming from china seeing how people were using qr codes to get access to different areas because of kovid so we knew that the adoption was going to be forced here in the us and we saw it first at you know restaurants for menus and now just uh you know the use has exploded uh even though qr codes have been around for 25 years they're finally just you know picking up in the united states and like a third wave of qr code usage was that your first use case like how did you get first hundred customers was it restaurants and menus we actually kind of have um stayed out of the restaurant um area a little bit just because there's so many people competing for that right now brian and i both have a background in e-commerce and retail so we we started with a few of those but mostly we're going after api partnerships so other platforms that we can integrate with and because we do those integrations we can become available to all of their customers right out of the gate instead of us going to try and find all the customers that's fascinating strategy can you tell me about the first api integration or partnership you guys launched yeah um postal i o is one of the first ones that we did we work really well with them because they do a lot of b2b account based marketing so we were able to um they sent wooden boxes of cookies from noms bake shop and they wood burned qr codes on the lids of those cookie boxes with a personal video from their customer to uh you know the end user and it just got such a great reaction they wanted to start putting qr codes on every package that they sent out so would postal i o then buy a bulk license plan from you guys and white label your qr code product or they'd sell your thing directly to their end customers great question and uh we're still working out postal's one of our best partners and uh you know we just love working with them so we're figuring out the best ways to work together but ideally what's going to happen is that um people are going to be embedding our software into their platforms so then it's just an extra thing that they can sell to their customers and then we'll share the revenue on that do you have brand equity though in other words will end customers know about you or will you really just keep your brand equity to ring pins and then they will mask your service as their own in a white label fashion to their end users great question and i both come but i think both options will be happening we do have customers that we work with directly to build up that brand equity and it also gives us the virality piece that we can have you know powered by ring pin on every page that someone could click on if they thought it was a cool experience to build their own qr code and landing page but we will have some other customers that want to white label it and present it as their own software so when you send me earlier that the starting point is somewhere around 2k per month is that for a partner like postal or an end customer like a postal customer with the qr code on the boxes yeah it would be for either okay so they're they're both paying about two i guess i guess i'm a little bit confused one is if the direct brand is going to pay you to use you and they're not white labeling anything you know you say they can get started two grand a month imagine if postal's working with you it's a very different sort of model there's sort of a deeper relationship there right yeah i mean with postal just to be totally transparent we just started you know to do to prove the concept and we wanted to see how it was going to play out before figuring out the financial pieces behind it but most likely them because we like them so much we will give them the software and then just share the revenue from customers that they sell it to i see um i see but were they i was asking about your first like folk your first hundred folks in using a platform in 2016. postal was your first one launched back then are you oh no no postal has been since sorry since the pivot where we added the barcodes and everything um towards the end of last year i see we'll take you back to the start date what was your initial thesis who were your first hundred customers oh got you okay so way back in the day um we were building an omni channel contact center for this insurance agency here in san diego they kept buying other insurance agencies that wanted to be able to use all forms of communication voice video text and live chat from any device in any location so we started building it for them and they ended up getting acquired by a private equity company before we finish the platform so then we were sitting with this omni channel contact center kind of similar to like a talk desk or a dial pad or something like that which to be totally frank didn't um excite brian and i that much building you know a kind of phone communication system what we really wanted to do is just give people the ability to connect from anywhere that they are and do anything they want from anywhere um the phone piece wasn't that exciting and we were a little bit more excited about video but really being able to take it from physical to digital um kind of brought it all together with the omni channel contact center and um you know the actions and experiences that you can deliver through these codes so most of our customers in the beginning were all just phone and texting customers um and they were a much different kind of level of customer than we're looking at right now now we're going after enterprise instead of you know small business and bin market so let's fast forward today back from the call center approach then you're doing the postal app integration test today launched after the pivot how many customers are you serving today yeah um if we include the old ones you know we have probably about 45 but on the new stuff we have about seven probably okay got it so and then talking about funding did you bootstrap the company or raise yeah we've bootstrapped no we love that love that okay so bootstrapped 45 customers now can i take 45 times 2 000 a month it puts you like 80 grand a month in revenue something like that no no no not even close those were old customers that were paying much different um you know we're below 5 000 a month in revenue right now yeah but most of the deals that we have in our pipeline are larger than that so as soon as uh you know we get those across the finish line we'll we'll be making moves and who's we what's the team look like um we have brian and i and uh eight advertisers okay got it so you two are the only full-time folks yeah and how do you split roles do you want to be an engineer another sales guy or what's that look like yeah brian handles all the development and architecture and uh together we work on product and then i do the sales and partnerships very cool and what is you i mean it sounds like you've got a piece of technology that touches a lot of businesses that today are raising a billion dollar evaluations you've already touched on dial pad i'm also on your website right now you have a very cool video sort of widget which is basically like a better version of you know drift or intercom right in terms of live communication on the site did you develop that technology as well that's actually our partners go tolstoy they're a new startup um out of israel that we really like but we have um you know we have the live video communications and we're partnering with them for the asynchronous video communications so we're partnering with other technology people that can kind of fill the gaps until we have a bigger team and can build everything you know internally as well yep yep interesting very cool okay so so what's the plan i mean how do you go from 45 customers to you know 400 customers yeah um we love these api partnerships that we're working on um they're giving us access to all of their customer bases so as soon as we get embedded into those platforms that will pick up our customers a lot and we also have a product led approach so we have developers building with our api right now internally in companies and we want them to solve problems internally and then that will you know lead to a sale in those places as well so we think between the partnerships and the developers uh that's how we're going to be you know expanding and john how are you how are you guys paying you know and funding this you've been doing it since 2016 or about 5k a month in revenue that's not enough to pay you and your co-pay and your partner to just cover sort of basic living expenses yeah great question you know frankly it's been it's been a struggle and uh this year incovid you know slowed down our lifestyle a lot so i think a lot of things came together to allow this to happen um you know to be frank we probably are going to do a raise quite soon after we sign a few of these enterprise deals uh so that will alleviate some of the pressure but really it has been a struggle to make it this far um and you know we weren't full time on it up until recently so we did have other incomes until then but uh bootstrapping a business is hard and you and you're never uh certain that you're gonna make it but in the end there's a higher risk and a higher reward when did you rip the bandit off when you go full time um like june of last year june of 2019 2020. well listen this is fun we're rooting for you guys how much do you think you'll try and raise if you do go and do a fundraise um probably three to five million okay and what story will you tell in order to get you know to what valuation you think you'll sell like 10 20 of the business yeah and the story is really just the traction that we have with our enterprise deals and and what's going to be coming in the pipeline in the next month or two uh there's some pretty exciting brand names and some big opportunities uh so i think that the investors are going to be pretty excited about that very good john let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book business book um or book in general i like the godfather by mario puzo i don't think everything needs to be that serious number number two is there a ceo you're following or studying um i really like uh jeff lawson at twilio and uh david cancel at drift number and eric over at postal sorry i don't know that's good eric you gotta get eric in there he's a big big big partner right uh number three what's your favorite online tool for building the business uh rome research number four how many hours i sleep to eat every night four four okay and what's your situation married single kiddos married with two young kids two kids second how old are you i'm 43. next week oh exciting happy early birthday thank you all right take us back to your 20 year old self what's something you wish you knew back then wow um 20 year old south i was just moving to san diego and getting started out here um probably you know to uh to ask for help a little bit um it took me almost 20 years to do that for the first time and i've had uh huge advancements since i've allowed myself to do that i was always someone like kind of like a high achiever and and didn't ask for help for anyone and asking for help has opened up a ton of doors for me guys ringpin.com founded back in 2016 by john now doing about under 5 000 a month in revenue across 45 customers but looking to scale he finally ripped the bandit off and went full time last year helping smbs like restaurants and actually many other brands understand how to use qr code technology to go to market really right now is through api partners like postal which they're really excited about we'll see what happens john thanks for taking us to the top thanks a lot for having me this is awesome 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 2 p.m central to make sure you don't miss any of 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