How Rosterfy CEO Shannan Gove grew Rosterfy to $10M revenue and 130 customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is shannon gove he is the co-founder of roster phi they exist to connect communities to events and causes they're passionate about solving complex contingent workforce management problems for the largest organizations in the world from the super bowl to the city of london to the british heart foundation and many more shannon you ready to take us to the top let's do it all right last week was august last year i think you shared you were going to do about 2.1 million bucks an ar i imagine covert impacted you somehow what happened yeah good uh good question so yeah we ended up around the two two one you were right um we probably closer to one ish arr and so we ended up for this year for 2021 we'll probably end up around the three two with two mil arr so we've managed to weather the storm as best we can and and grow quite significantly so um it has been a challenge but we've managed to get through well you're a sas plus model 2 million of your 3.2 this year will be sas what's the other 1.2 yeah we work on some uh significant enterprise contracts that require a lot of support from our team and also some technical support as well so dedicated project leads on projects like the commonwealth games or some work with fifa and uefa as well yeah so to describe for people missed our first episode together describe to people like what you do sure large organizations require that require mass workforce management they have come from spreadsheets or outdated systems our platform provides the end-to-end solution from recruitment screening engaging rewarding scheduling time and attendance award rate so we provide that end-to-end journey in one central system where previously they might have had four or five systems so that's what our platform does and given the significance of some of these programs like the fifa world cup or the commonwealth games or the city of london volunteer program a lot of these programs may require one or even two full-time staff supporting them to to execute that journey launched in 2015 i think you told me last year you passed a hundred customers how many today uh probably closer to 130 or so and i'd suggest that's because of covert because we've probably just gone to the larger end of town compared to gaining mass smaller customers and what so mri just on the sas side today is something like 150 000 something like that ish yeah yeah roughly is churn high no chen's really good um we we have uh on average at the moment because we're doing this we're raising investment at the moment that this as of next week we're starting um and so we'll be at about 97 percent um retention uh month on month got it so three percent churn per month or 36 per year do you have expansion revenue that makes up that hole uh yeah roughly yes okay all right sorry what's your net revenue retention um i don't know the number off the top of my head then for that for that question yep ask me about the race is you're a bootstrap today right well we raised two mil end of 2019 aussie and uh we had been bootstrapped until that point in time what is that in us dollars two million rt one six ish interesting and what evaluation did you raise that at uh seven and a half it six call it six was that the right valuation you think for them uh who knows um i think we probably had a large portion of our revenue being uh as a fair split between sas revenue and once off revenue so probably at that time potentially but we've certainly increased our recurring revenue now so um i think we'll be in a better place for this race how much are you looking to raise now we're looking to raise five mil aussie um potentially by the end of this year but we'll see how we go and why five million uh i guess we can talk about it but we're we've come from the volunteer mass workforce space and we're really finding an opportunity for us in the in the larger contingent workforce space so um probably a higher level of workforce um into an organization effectively anyone that's not full-time in an organization so because of that it's a much larger market size we'll be moving into so we want to increase our sales and mark marketing capacity and probably just general resource around the team to support that and what valuation do you think you'll raise uh it's it's a million question but um we're seeing some pretty crazy valuations at the moment um we'll really let the market decide that anything off a 10 to 15 times multiple for recurring revenue would be a good mark and then we we do have around a million of of of support sort of um non-recurring typically but whether you want to classify support for these contracts is recurring um we'll find out so 10 to 15 times sas recurring would be about evaluation so you think you'll see it'll be above a 30 million evaluation yeah i think that's the number that a few people have mentioned to us but um we'll go through the journey and find out talk to you about the art i mean this is game theory how do you get soft conversations so give me your term shooter shut up it's a great question and we learned a lot through our last investment race um where we had a lot of fantastic conversations people really loved the concept and and for us what like what we are passionate about is connecting communities all around the world we've got a great story to tell and so people are really attracted to that story and then the contracts come out and they display a different thing of the conversation so it's um we we learned a lot through that process and and i think for us it's just about cutting to the chase and and importantly just we want to work with the right people that will support us and help us grow we're not naive to think we know it all so it's not just money we're chasing here i think we can we'll get that money from somewhere we just want to make sure it's from the right people and shannon what's the cap table look like today how much equity you used to own uh yeah so what did we um give up last time i think it was 22 percent correct correct so that that's still what we have there um and so three co-founders of majority shareholders of business um and i'm one of those and then we have the investors in that small pool scott so you plus the other two co-founders on 78 and investors on 22 yeah now and we have an esop pool for our staff so that is 10 but that just hasn't all been utilized yet in this small portion people struggle with when to set that up right when you start incentivizing employees with that and ease up well when did did you set that up by your pre-seed round 1.6 million yeah we did um around then and a touch after but um yeah it's an interesting uh thing to have it's our staff are so important to us and and we want them to be as part of the journey as what we are um and so it's we decided to set it up then and i guess the advice or the thought was it's probably easier to do it then um compared to later down the line where people may have to sell shares to to create it um and it just might get a little messy and i think future investors want to see that to be able to bring good people in so you're just prepping yourself for the future we we weren't in this for two years we're in this for the long run so um we thought we may as well set it up early yeah and what's the team task today how many people uh we're around 23 now so we've significantly bolstered our team in the last six to six to nine months um certainly probably not what we were expecting at the start of this year with covert and and how it's lingered on in particular this year and especially where we are in asia pacific um but uh yeah 20 23 now oh very cool and how many engineers uh we have six slash seven engineers in our team interesting so where are the other like you know 15 are they sales reps or what yeah we have uh six in the sales team at the moment and then like i mentioned on those significant projects we have um dedicated project staff so that's probably around four and then we have a global account management team as well that supports clients through zendesk that might be another for and then finance and leadership interesting and how are you landing more customers like where are you spending money today on cap yeah um i think our summer in this investment round is we've got to where we are today from hustle and grind of and good relationships and networks um so we really have in the last six months bolstered our marketing efforts um to increase our visibility out there but um i guess for our larger clients it's often a direct sales lead and an effort into that and building relationships but then for the mid market opportunities it's through marketing so we'll probably spend a top line quarter of a million in marketing this year but that could be a lot more um to increase visibility uh coming into next year so we're doing the groundwork is what i'd say this year but we're gonna grow off that next year sorry mate say that again where's the quarter million going this year where are you spending it yeah uh into a lot into we've got an seo agency and so we're just finding the right avenues there a lot into linkedin google um and then advertising sponsorship of some campaigns um and then some other resources in the marketing team as well so some content writers this sort of direct marketing um that's what we're putting it into what's up shannon let's wrap up here with the famous five number one favorite book um...