ScholarshipOwl Revenue (2024)

[00:00] Scholarship Owl is helping large brands like Samsung connect with college students or around the college student age. He also helps 20,000 college students generate and get access to over $1,000,000 of scholarship revenue. That's what they paid out last year alone, processing over a 150,000 sign ups per month right now. They got a robust engine. We're thrilled, obviously, that he used Founder Path for some nondilutive capital as he's grown totally bootstrapped to over $6,000,000 of revenue up [00:24] from 3,000,000 back in 2020. Hey, folks. If we haven't met yet, my name is Nathan Latka. I launched and sold my first software company back in 2015 and went on to write a book about it, which you guys made a Wall Street Journal bestseller purchasing over 30,000 copies. Thank you so much for that. After the book, I launched this show and one went on to create founderpath.com. I raised a large fund to do non dilutive deals [00:51] with b to b software founders. So far, we've invested in over 400 software founders totaling a $150,000,000. Here in 2024, we're doing three to four new deals per week. So if you're looking for capital and don't wanna give up equity, go sign up at founderpath.com for free to get your offer. Alright. Let's jump into the interview. Hey, folks. My guest today is David Abachnikov. He is building scholarship owl.com, which helps connect consumer brands to Gen Z. [01:19] He's got over two decades in tech, including roles as r and d manager in engineering at Google and Waze, and he specializes in bootstrapping companies and excels as a remote team expert. He travels a lot. He's got a passion for data matching algorithms and AI development long before it was mainstream, which complements his keen interest in Gen Z and content creation. David, you ready to take us to the top? [01:41] >> Yeah. Nice. Alright. [01:43] You gotta you have to back that statement up. So you say you were in AI long before it was mainstream. Were you doing any sort of AI stuff at Google or Waze back in the day? [01:51] >> So we did a bit at Google and Waze. We did it quite a bit in Scholarship Hall as well for a few years now. I mean, we leverage a lot of AI to to do efficient matching and kind of, like, extract intent from kind of our audiences in the most efficient way. Mhmm. So we've been doing quite crazy AI algorithms in Scholarship Owl as well. [02:14] Mhmm. Now if you guys have listened to my last interview with David, which is all the way back in 2021, you will know that Scholarship Owl is helping folks. So, you know, kids that are maybe juniors, seniors in high school looking to go into college, it helps you quickly apply for different scholarships. But he's built a massive engine where there's tens of thousands of students doing this. And then and then, obviously, brands on the other side, [02:36] I e, schools and institutions trying to meet those consumers. But because, David, of the updated bio you gave in this in this podcast interview, I'm gonna guess maybe you're not only working with schools anymore. Is that accurate? [02:47] >> So, actually, the majority of our customers are not schools at all. So I'm gonna I'm gonna collect you on a few things. So it's like we're talking about at this point, the scholarship power has over a 150,000 students, [03:02] >> college bound Gen Zs, basically, every month. [03:06] They they sign up every month? [03:09] >> Yes. Wow. So it's not only, like, high school students. Actually, a lot of people who are already in college are looking for ways to, you know, pay for the next year or even things that are outside of tuition itself, things like how do you buy, you know, guest money to get to campus or, like, buying a laptop that you need for school and all those things that are kind of school adjacent. Let's call it that way. [03:34] >> And today, the majority of of our customers on our b to b side like, we we launched Scholarship Haul for Business about a year and a half ago, which is basically a platform that helps businesses, like, private consumer companies. [03:49] Name one or two. [03:51] >> So some Samsung is a customer of ours. We work with BetterHelp. We work with quite a few big companies. We work with [03:59] Samsung and BetterHelp? [04:00] >> Yeah. McGill Hill is a customer of ours. [04:04] What does Samsung want from you? What are they willing to pay for? [04:07] >> So some Samsung are looking for ambassadors. So they're kind of recruiting brand ambassadors to promote their cell phones on campus or, like, among Gen Zs in general. Mhmm. So many companies are using kind of our platform, like, the product we call scholarship campaigns, which is kind of like the best of a scholarship and an ad campaign in one to do some of them, you do it for lead generation. Some of them do it as market research. [04:37] >> They generate UGC with it. Like, we have identified kind of four different main business objectives that companies and brands are using scholarship campaigns to achieve. [04:49] Mhmm. [04:51] And so how do you charge don't tell me what Samsung specific pricing is, but what do you charge brands like Samsung to access your your student base? [04:58] >> So the charge is basically cost per application. So it's a result based cost depending on how precise it is, how targeted it is, and, you know, like, what are the actions that the consumers need to do in order to to apply. So it kind of ranges roughly between, like, dollar 20 to $30 per application, depends on on those metrics and so on. And part of that of that budget goes towards promoting the campaign itself, and part [05:33] >> of it goes toward a scholarship that goes to the students. So kind of that that is split. And we take care of, like, the whole process of earning the scholarship. Like, we have our own kind of five one c fee entity that helps make it tax deductible. I mean, when was the last time you heard of a marketing campaign that actually gives you tax benefits? Right? [05:54] Yeah. Sign me up. I'm ready to go. This is incredible. So how many brands like Samsung or Better Health now pay you on a monthly basis to get at least one application? [06:03] >> So on a monthly basis, we're talking about 50 blends. But on a yearly basis, it goes, to 400 because, like, some of them are seasonal, some of them are throughout the whole year. Depends on the on the goals that the brand is trying to achieve. [06:19] Mhmm. How do you manage I mean, that's a big flux. So how do as you're building a company and a remote team, and I'd love to hear how many full time employees you have today, I mean, how do you manage sort of hiring, scaling up or down based off cash inflows from brands that are very seasonal? [06:34] >> Well, we don't like, it doesn't change that much. Right? I mean, at the end of the day, we still have a pretty stable ARR, and we have two revenue sources. Right? We have the premium tools for the students, like a subscription business on one side. And the other side, we have the b to b side, which generates revenue from the brands and the companies. [06:55] And what's the split? Is it fifty fifty revenue split? [07:00] >> It's today, more more of it comes from the consumers, but it's quickly catching up, like evening And [07:10] what do students pay to use your subscription tools? [07:14] >> So on the on the consumer side, on the student side, we basically offer many tools that help them kind of highlight where their highest chance of winning a scholarship is, like optimizing the application process, adding a bunch of transparency into that. They pay $15 a month for the usage of the of our premium features. Mhmm. So, like, things like they know like, an applicant count. Right? They know exactly how many other people apply to a specific [07:44] >> scholarship, so they know to invest their time where they have the highest chance of winning. We give them a lot more kind of tracking over the application process itself so they know that the brand on the other side actually viewed the application and actually, you know, accepted it or who who is the winner. We make sure they know that there is a winner. Right? Like, in the scholarship space, there's quite a bit of, like, scams and [08:09] >> lack of transparency and all of that. So we kind of our premium product takes away all of that. You know exactly what happens. What are your chances? You're yeah. Predictable. Like, we make the whole process predictable, transparent. [08:21] Yeah. Nate Nathan, you applied for the Samsung scholarship. There are 983 other applicants. The winner is gonna be announced on March 25, and I get an email March 25 that says congratulations or uncongratulations. You didn't win, but here's the link to Sammy's LinkedIn profile. Sammy won from Samsung. Boom. Go Exactly. Click here to apply to other scholarships. [08:39] >> Exactly. But more than that, we actually optimize the application process itself. So one of our features on the consumer side, we call it kind of like the Netflix of scholarships. Right? When you apply to a specific scholarship, some scholarships require quite a lot of different, like, application process, maybe an essay, maybe, like, a social media post, maybe, like, a video submission. So we analyze all of that, and we find other scholarships that, you know, you can [09:04] >> apply very quickly and easily too as well. And then we can batch them together and apply you to many different scholarships at the same time. [09:12] Sounds smart. And kind of you know, we basically [09:16] >> we triple kind of the time that it takes you to apply. We kind of [09:23] >> bump the efficiency, like, to three times more. Right? Like, the same you invest the same time to not only we kind of find all the scholarship that you you can apply to that are perfectly matched to you, and that's where AI comes in. Right? We use a lot of matching, a lot of algorithms to extract a lot of this data on [09:39] So when you say there's a 100 when you say there's a 150,000 applicant or or consumers signing up each month, could one person count multiple times if they're applying to multiple scholarships, or is that unique? 150 unique [09:49] >> 150 [09:50] unique sign ups? [09:51] >> 150 students, not 150 applications. [09:53] I see. So how many applications are you processing in in a given month now? [09:58] >> So I think it's about [10:02] >> I don't have the exact number, but it's in the millions. [10:06] Well, it's also seasonal. Right? Maybe we should ask for total 2023 stats. How many total applicants like, applications through all 2023? [10:13] >> So it is seasonal. Like, q one is the highest, q four is the lowest. And I I can tell you that students in general won over a million dollars in scholarships last year. [10:25] Wow. Okay. Over so you paid out through Scholarship offer over a million dollars of scholarships through your programs. We [10:31] >> paid, you know, like the bands that are publishing scholarships paid to us a million dollars. Yeah. [10:38] And then then you pick winners of students and wire that out to students? [10:42] >> Yes. [10:43] I see. Okay. Do you keep a cut of that? [10:45] >> Or Student or the or to the college depends on the kind of specific scholarship and so on. But, generally, yeah, we we wire it out out to the to the recipient, whatever is the the student directly or the college depends on the specific Yeah. College. [11:01] And and how many students today are paying for your premium tools, like applicant tracking, things like that? [11:06] >> So we have over like, we have around 20,000 students now on the premium. [11:11] Okay. [11:14] >> And those are the ones that are paying on the premium side. [11:17] That's great. So when you say ARR is pretty stable, are you comfortable sharing what ARR is today all in? [11:23] >> So I can say the total revenue of last year was 6,000,000 in total. Great. That's great. [11:31] What's your goal for this year? What are you trying to grow to? [11:34] >> So we're aiming for 10,000,000 this year. [11:37] It's a And how are gonna get there? Charge brands more or sign up more more consumers? [11:42] >> No. The the focus is more to work with more and more companies and scale that side of the business. [11:47] Mhmm. This is great. Can we talk a little bit more about how you capitalize the business and maybe touch on Founder Path briefly? [11:54] >> Sure. [11:55] Okay. So are you bootstrapped or have you raised traditional equity? [11:58] >> No. We're we're 100% bootstrapped. Yes. I see your smile. [12:03] I love it. I love it. So you own a 100% along with your team? [12:06] >> So me me and my partners own a 100% of the business, and Founder Path actually helped us a lot. Like, what I'll walk you a bit to kind of the the life cycle. Right? Every student that comes to the platform, they get, like, a seven day free trial of the premium features. Right? So we get our consumer audience from many different channels. It used to be quite a bit from Google, but with all the changes that [12:34] >> happen with ad networks, we scale Google down, and we make most of our traffic from from affiliate networks, from all kind of promotions, from different from running scholarship campaigns ourselves and so on. But there's a pretty big gap between kind of our cost of acquisition or the point of acquisition and when we [12:57] >> bring you know, when that revenue comes back to us, essentially. Right? And and because we're trying to scale very quickly and the business is very seasonal and it's subscription business, a large part of it, that means that we need to pay for the traffic today that we will return part of it in a week to two weeks and another part in four months. [13:21] Mhmm. [13:22] >> So how do you sponsor that or how do you pay that when you're BoostUp company? Well, that's exactly where the founder path comes in. Right? We basically take the money today of what we would make on that student within the next year and buy the traffic now and, you know, make that money throughout the next year. [13:41] Mhmm. Are you comfortable sharing how much you took from Founder Path? [13:50] >> We took from Founder Path I'm comfortable showing the kind of the last chunk, and we're gonna take another one this year. [14:00] >> So last time, we took 300,000, and we plan to take another 100 to 150,000, actually, in the next few weeks. [14:09] Are you are you comfortable talking about the deal we did together back in 2021, or you don't wanna go back that far? [14:14] >> No. The company has changed a lot since then. I I'd rather not talk about what was done because it was a very different kind of profile. [14:23] Do you remember the use of capital? I understand that business has changed, but do you remember or are you comfortable sharing sort of the use of capital back in 2021 and how that helped you change or pivot the business? [14:35] >> So we went to a pretty major restructuring back then, but I don't wanna go into the the details of that too much. [14:44] Okay. Great. So fast forward to today, you're using capital to invest in obviously paid ad spend. You've grown the business. So you're at 6,000,000 today. Do you remember what revenue was back in 2020, 2021 when you first started at Founder Path? [14:58] >> Yeah. It was was less than 3,000,000, I think, on that number. [15:03] Mhmm. Okay. So you've grown the business from three to six without having to give up equity. What is that like, how do you think about a lot of David, lot of founders, like, don't think about what their equity is worth. I mean, how do you think about the sort of equity you've been able to save by using venture debt? [15:17] >> So I want to add that it's like, the goat from three to six, I mean, while it's quite impressive in an in an all of itself, What for me personally is even more impressive is that we could without taking external, like, you know, like, equity funding, we were able to launch a completely new product, build new development teams, build a sales team without any, you know, without giving out any equity for funding. And that's a huge [15:51] >> win. Right? Even if we decide eventually to maybe go, you know, and bring in VC funding, our value now is so much higher. And I in a negotiation point, if we decide to go to the the VC route at some point, we're not coming from a point of weakness when we say, well, if we don't raise now, we will die. We'll not die at all. We come from a point of strength when we say, well, this [16:16] >> is what we did with no VC funding. We know we can scale it a lot more. Now are you as an investor gonna bring us value as a strategic investor or, like, to your connections or your knowledge and so on? Because if it's just capital, we don't need you. That negotiation is so much more powerful. Right? Especially con like, if you look at the last three years, like, I know a lot of entrepreneurs entrepreneurs who lost [16:42] >> their companies or, like, who failed or, you know, or had to do a down round because they didn't hit their projections or whatever. We never worried about any of this. This is, like, such an amazing place to be. [16:55] I can feel it in your energy. You're not, you know, you're not stressed. You're building a sustainable company. We obviously love that. I also know, David, you you I mean, you did your research. You know about the different venture debt options. Not asking you to obviously throw anybody else under the bus or even name them. But when you looked at all the options, why did you decide to go with Founder Path, and what did you like [17:11] or dislike about the process? [17:14] >> Well, yeah. So I did a lot of research. I looked at, I think, at all the competitors. And I am comfortable showing that initially we went with the Capchase before Founder Path existed, I think, or when it was just about starting. And I think the like, working with Founder Path and, I mean, with you and your team was [17:39] >> it's it's so much more comfortable, and it's kind of such a much more open communication. And on top of that, Found. Path gives a lot of additional value, like SaaS Open, like all the things around. Like, it doesn't feel like working with a banker. Right? Because it's not. [17:56] So I shouldn't start wearing a suit. [18:01] >> I mean, you have the proper fintech suit. Right? So that's [18:06] That's awesome. Well, no. Listen. We're we're enjoying, obviously, supporting your growth and love how you're sort of pivoting and growing the business. What do you most before we wrap up with the famous five here, how do you plan to continue to use sort of AI to help more students earn more sponsor revenue and more brands connect with the right applicants? [18:26] >> Alright. So we're already very good when we need, you know, to do very wide campaigns, when, like, anybody can apply and and that's it. [18:35] >> The thing is that on those campaigns, when you have, like, 50,000 applicants to to a specific scholarship campaign, like, the chance of this like, the student of winning that is, like, one out of 50,000. Right? It's chances are very small. On the other hand, our engine today is able to kind of target a student down to, like, a specific zip code. Right? So anybody can run a a campaign on our platform like the you know, we [18:59] >> have local dentist offices. We have, like, a law office in Texas running a campaign to, you know, bring in students, like, adding a scholarship. Because, essentially, [19:11] >> Gen Z is kind of the level that is the point where the first decisions are being made. So somebody who chose the loyal vendor, like, in in the first year of college, they're gonna stay with them for thirty years. I mean, the value is crazy. And what we're working constantly, like, constant chase is to improve our algorithms and matching to be as precise as possible. I'd like to pinpoint the the, specifically, the audience that you are [19:39] >> looking at, knowing when the person is about to go to the you know, to think of a lawyer and having them apply to a scholarship at that point. So [19:52] >> the it sounds simple, but it actually pinpointing that and and kind of detecting intent on that level is extremely complicated. Mhmm. And that's our constant chase, kind of constant improvement on that. Yep. We have quite a few kind of, you know, AI systems in place if if the brand wants to earn a scholarship with an essay, which we don't recommend ever. Don't earn essays because nobody likes to review them and nobody likes to write them. Actually, [20:19] >> we we have a saying inside that the only like, brands hate reviewing essays almost as much as students like, like, writing them, like, being writing them. But the point is that we're trying to kind of make that process as easy for the brands to kind of review and and award the funds and all of that and as easy for the student to apply as possible. So Yep. For the majority [20:44] We'll follow we'll follow along closely. You gotta come back on in a year and give us an update, but we're out of time today. Let's wrap up here with a famous five. Number one, your favorite book. [20:52] >> My favorite book. I listened to read the the greatest the greatest CEO within, and I absolutely loved it. [21:00] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [21:05] >> Can I say the big guys? Like, I'm a big fan of what Satya Nadella has been doing lately. [21:10] Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Scholarship Owl? [21:15] >> My favorite online tool for building Scholarship Owl? [21:19] >> That might be a a bit you know what? I'm go I'm gonna go with the simple [21:25] >> I'm a huge fan of Mixed Panel. [21:28] >> Yep. [21:29] Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night? [21:31] >> How many hours of sleep? I get five to six. [21:34] Okay. And situation, married, single, kids? [21:37] >> Engaged. [21:38] Oh, congratulations. That's very exciting. [21:41] >> Thank you. [21:42] Alright. And I think you had a birthday. Right? You're 37, 38 now? [21:47] >> I have a birthday on the April 29, so next month, and I'm gonna be 40. [21:52] Okay. Well, man, engaged, 40, you're breaking 6,000,000 of revenue, bootstrapped. You're living the life, man. Last thing, something you wish you knew when you were 20. [22:02] >> Something I knew well, I wish I knew founder Peff when I was 20. [22:07] Guys, there you have it. Scholarship Owl is helping large brands like Samsung connect with college students or around the college student age. He also helps 20,000 college students generate and get access to over a million dollars of scholarship revenue. That's what they paid out last year alone, processing over a 150,000 sign ups per month right now. They got a robust engine. We're thrilled, obviously, that he used Founder Path for some nondilutive capital as he's grown totally [22:30] bootstrapped to over $6,000,000 of revenue up from 3,000,000 back in 2020. David, thank you for taking us to the top. [22:37] >> Thank you so much.

Introduction hello everyone my guest today is david debachnikov he is building a great company that changes the way americans pay for college by leveraging data to make scholarships more accessible and transparent he's doing this at scholarshipowl.com david you're ready to take to the top yeah so scholarship is leveraging technology to increase the chances of earning private and excellent scholarships for american students and who's paying for this the students or somebody else to use the premium features of the platform the students are paying a subscription fee which is uh 15 a month um and for that basically we save a huge amount of time for them preventing them from applying to scams or finding the scholarship that match them the best way possible and how Currently serving 15000 customers many customers do you have today we have today uh 15 000 paying customers and about 1.5 million users in general so can we take Monthly recurring revenue 15 times 15 000 you're doing about 220 000 a month in revenue so with some partnerships and other things um you know with some b2b partnerships as well we do a bit more than that okay got it and let me ask you why do students keep paying you after you help them get the scholarship dollars once you have a massive term problem so uh the thing is that um a common misconception the students need scholarships only when they're just applied to college but the reality is that students actually need scholarships more in the first year of college in the second year than in high school because many of the financial aid that they get is only for the first year and they can use private scholarships to pay for board for books and other things they need in college as well and there's no limit to how many scholarships you can earn throughout your whole education so it's still the majority of our users today are high school seniors but basically manual users are between the ages of 16 and 26 and when did you launch the company david what year so the company was launched in 2015 and and what did you what did you grow revenue to back in 2015 your first year 2015 it wasn't we didn't have any revenue we had we've been bootstrapped but we were trying to figure out what would be the model um 2016 uh we already scaled around almost 2 million um in revenue and what did you finish 2020 with 20 20 20 we finished with four million four million okay that's great and so what um have you bootstrapped the company today Raised you're still bootstrapped so uh until until now we never took any external funding uh only in generally this year we took revenue based funding in order to accelerate our growth and how much did you raise we took uh we got approved to 1.3 million out of which at this point we took only 300 000. okay and what do you like or dislike about revenue-based financing um i love that it's non-dilutive so basically we don't give out a part of the company in general the thing is that vc based funding comes sometimes with the strategic partners or with uh you know connections that revenue-based funding does not so that's uh that's kind of one downside and um when you take revenue-based uh financing you basically start uh from the beginning to think how you're gonna pay that so basically you're locked into using most of the revenue-based financing in order to generate gold on your existing model instead of kind of experimenting with ballistic models that might um cause faster goats talk to me about how talk to me about how you got your first 1000 customers you have 15 000 today that's a lot of customers how are you getting them um the majority of our customers are online onboarding so ppc affiliate network that we started building with and we scaled quite a bit of content uh marketing so basically we started pushing out a lot of content related to our space but how did you get your first how did you get the first 1 000 customers though so if you're looking for some story of us going to do it we didn't do that right so it's mostly online the standard ways well david i'm looking for your story so when you say standard tell me what you mean did you start with ads on day one uh so we started with a blog related to the the space and started like advertising that blog and it turned into uh where did you advertise the blog um mostly on other like platforms and smaller ones on connections like more like personal connections i don't understand what that means okay so the story is that the con our product didn't start as a sas product it started actually as uh blog and content related to the scholarship space itself so that kind of got a bit of traction and on top of that the product started being built so that's why the story is a little bit confusing in that sense but it's not like we built a sas product and then started like looking for customers for that yeah it's not david it's not confusing this is a great way to build a sas company it just is what it is it started off as content in a blog you built an email list then you launched a paid membership product it sounds like yeah how large did you grow your email list before you launched the sas product uh a few thousand it's not that big okay like under ten thousand [Music] yeah okay and what's the email with size today [Music] sorry six million six million people amazing and and what kinds of things are you doing with that list to drive additional growth um so what i mentioned before that we have additional revenue other than the sus side is different partnerships of other uh other scholarships promoting them to our platform other companies in the educational space like we work with around 40 different partners at the moment and what does the pitch sound like to them can you name a partner and explain to me how you convince them to market your product [Music] there's many different ways it's a bit uh hot on uh pick one yeah it's easy it's easy if you pick a pick a story a real story so um i mean a simple example is uh nielsen for example have um does market research to scholarships uh and we work with them to basically work with the students to um like to reach out to students to um nielsen and why does nielsen help promote your product do you pay them a commission we don't basically live initially revenue share and is that typical revenue share you just split it 50 50. we do it with other other organizations for example uh ones that promote our site like we have the two-sided some companies promote us and some companies we come out as well so nielsen is an example that we promote but fastback for example is somebody who promotes us that they have you know um featured scholarships and things like that that we post our scholarships though let's go to your team how many people on the team today were almost 50 people five zero and how many engineers well 20 20 engineers and so what are they building what what is the most technical thing about this product i mean first we have two products we so far we've talked only about the student side we also have uh scholarship.app which is the uh crm for brands and organizations to offer scholarships and our product actually is very tech intensive i myself i'm before scholarship power was a senior engineer at google so i come from engineering and the whole process of matching and finding the scholarships and leveraging you know they will leverage also machine learning and ai to find the ones that you have the highest chance of winning uh and there's many different ways to apply to different scholarships to uh you know to leverage all this huge amount of data that we already have in order to um basically instead of the student applying to hundreds of different scholarships we wanted to apply to three scholarships a week but he that he has the highest chance of actually earning got it so 20 engineers in order to do that yeah i need a lot of data and a lot of engineering for us how many sales employees do you have of any we have marketing in sales we don't have any uh we don't do uh enterprise sales or anything like that today so okay so no sales reps how many folks on the marketing team eight people eight yeah eight people okay and does that include like the content writers the people managing the email list these sorts of things email us list yes content writer will work mostly with external content like uh freelancers that we work with for for a long while but social media email content brand awareness and planning um all those kind of like product side of the marketing as well and talk to me about churn i imagine with consumers like this churn can sometimes maybe get high what is your turn annually so our monthly channel at the moment is about 12 percent um so yeah it's pretty high um a large part of that is because our business is extremely seasonal as well um you know like not the students do not have all the time in the year to apply to scholarships and all that and it's based labor intensive work for them even with uh with the tools but we provide them to make it easier so the majority of our challenges and david you mentioned your land you're Customer acquisition cost spending on ppc ads what does it cost you to get a new 15 a month customer um it cost me today um sixty dollars got it so that's what a four or four or five month payback period yeah how do you make that work because your customers are only staying for six or seven months so there's only two or three months of margin there for you to make money they stay seven to eight months in most cases and okay same same question though there's only three or four months there for you to make margin on so we're doing the scale got it is there any i mean are you okay with those margins and you're just going to keep driving new volume the thing is that one of the big mistakes we've done in the history of the company is basically we started scaling before we fully nailed our unit economics and in a way we kind of woke up too late for that and we dedicated 2020 into fixing that and we are now in a much better place than we were two years ago but still not well we want to be and a large part of our roadmap this year is actually dedicated to father fixing it right well david on that note let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book what's my favorite uh business book um [Music] i guess what to launch zero to lunch zero to launch number two is there a ceo you're following or studying um i mean from the big guys let's say somebody shy uh no google uh number three what's your favorite online tool for building a business um let's say mix panel if that's if that could be considered that of course number three how many or four how many hours of sleep to get every night many hours of sleep uh i'd say an average of uh five okay and what's your situation married single kids um living with a girlfriend no kids okay and how old are you [Music] 36 last question david what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 um i wish i knew how to monetize my site projects when i was 20. i was so involved in engineering and i never knew how to sell what i was building guys scholarshipowl.com doing 4 million in revenue this year from 15 000 students paying 15 bucks a month to identify scholarship opportunities at scale this is very much a tech play they've got 20 people on the team of 50. they've done this all bootstrapped which is great uh scaling nicely obviously there's churn here because it's students but they're okay with that because unit economics worked nicely as they looked you to scale using content ppc and their six million person email list david thanks for taking us to the top thank you very much 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 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