How Sellsy CEO Victor Douek grew Sellsy to $46.3M revenue and 3.2K customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is alana melvacky in 2004 after 10 years working in advertising he launched a dating site with his c a co-founder who is now the ceo at his current company celsie the site quickly became a leader in its market and the medic group bought it in 2007 as a design specialist he's responsible for ergonomics of salesy and customer relationships he also manages the partnership program he also supervises both the development and the marketing strategies the company scales ellen are you ready to take us to the top yeah all right so what is what does sellzee do and how do you guys make money what's the revenue model uh we are typical sas company um and we edit uh a substitute for small businesses so we basically do crm invoicing and help desk uh in the same package so this is basically uh classic sas uh recurring subscriptions revenues model uh and we have some site businesses you know like services uh but mostly it's uh subscriptions and on average what do people pay per month for this it really depends on the the size of the company because we have a different uh plans but as of today our rpu is around uh uh 101 300 uh euros a year which is something like 1 200 dollars i think yes about a hundred dollars a month yeah very much in the smb space yeah exactly okay very good and when'd you launch the company what year uh we launched in 2010 2010 very good and how many customers are you working with now today uh today we have three uh thousand title rent companies uh three thousand nine hundred companies as of this month uh working with us representing uh around 20k users that's great so so can i take 3 900 times 100 a month you guys are doing about 390 000 a month in revenue yeah and where were you where were you a year ago uh a year ago i think uh we were around uh 200 uh to um 250 000 uh kmr and so where's i mean this is incredible you've signed up almost 4 000 customers what has been your go to market strategy how did you get your first 100 customers um you know we came from dating yeah so uh we used a lot of uh common strategies like you know uh ppc mostly uh it's already at the very beginning but uh we also launched very early on um uh partner um affiliates program for our customers uh so on average 40 percent of our new customers come through our existing customers and we incentives them by cutting them a check uh when they bring someone what's the kickback thirty percent uh twenty percent okay so it's a twenty percent is it per month for life or just for the first year first year okay commission on first year now that works it's 40 okay we have a promotion oh very good so 20 affiliate commission um on year one revenues now when you were just launching and you didn't have any customers obviously you couldn't you couldn't do that so how did you get your first 100 customers uh uh mostly through ppc uh and on google uh i would say uh email sending this kind of stuff you know uh at the very beginning uh alan what are you starting on ppc you mean through google uh yes for google uh also through facebook and linkedin uh every ppc we can get uh and what were you paying what were you paying on those channels to get one new paying customer uh i would say because it's because it costs just around 100 uh euros okay a new customer and it still does okay so you get paid if it costs you 100 bucks to get a customer and they pay 100 bucks a month you get paid back in a month that's nice yeah but yes but it's uh yes but uh as of today we also have to pay sales people so it's not yeah yeah that's just your that's your director that's your direct yeah not your fully weighted cac that's your direct cac now fully weighted it's not that we are uh as of today we have a payback of uh just under one year okay so about about call it 10 11 months which means you'll spend you know a thousand or about 1200 bucks to get a new customer yeah okay and very good and then um and so breakdown you laughed you said you do ppc and then you laughed and you said other email stuff what do you mean i assume this is like a cold email strategy what was your early email strategy yeah exactly i don't know you asked me at the beginning so at the beginning we used a lot of stuff called email um what the cold email say uh it would say uh uh it would look like you know uh a really cold email sent by a six people uh what was the subject line yeah you know it's not like a marketing in a email with big images this kind of thing you think it would be just more uh you know um i'm working with this new crm company uh and i'd like to uh showcase it to you this kind of thing very quick quick messages uh and it worked very good are you are you bootstrapped today or have you raised capital no we raised uh we raised two two rounds uh a first round in 2011 of uh 1.5 million euros and uh in last january we launched we raised seven million euros okay so eight and a half million euros raised which i believe that is what about eight million dollars yeah exactly yep yes and are you burning capital today or are you break even um we were broke even until uh the end of 17 but after we raised uh we stopped being uh break even but it is as a strategy because we hired like 30 people this year how many people are you today total uh those are we are 17. 70. where is everyone based we are mostly based in la rochelle which is a coastal city in french which is a headquarters of the company uh but we also have a an office in paris with 10 people that's great uh and we are planning to open an office in the uk uh next year that's great so france and remote locations now you said you're burning capital how aggressive are you being when you say burning you mean like 100 grand a month or a million a month no no we burn uh when you mean burn you mean above what we uh no we burn like almost ah at most 100k a month yeah yeah not not not i'm asking not your total expenses but your total yeah just to be clear like big revenues you know uh basically today the company cost uh something like uh uh 500 case a month you're doing 400k in revenue like 400k yeah so you're burning your bank is going down by a hundred grand per month yeah exactly what's churn uh our churn uh average uh on 2018 was 145 on what is that sorry what does that mean 145 a month 1.5 per month yeah and we are targeting one person in 2009 and that's logo turner revenue churn that's more like uh 2.5 so is that logo churn or revenue churn no it's a gross customer chain okay based off logos or revenue logos uh logos logos okay got it logos very good and then um talk to me a little bit about about the kind of funding moving forward so are you raising additional capital right now uh no we are still in uh in processing mode uh i think we will go back to raising capital by the end of of this new year of 2019. yeah very good all right now global starting in june to raise by the end of the year yeah let's let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book uh i would say uh the jason linkin book uh i'd have the title in mind i think predictable revenue yeah exactly yeah with by by aaron ross [Music] yeah and jason lincoln yeah to read happiness number two is there a ceo you're following or studying um quite uh quite a few but i i like butterfield it's like number three is there a favorite online tool you have for building the business uh yeah track mogul good number four number four how many hours of sleep to get every night a month hours of hours of sleep uh normal uh six or seven okay and what's your situation married single kids i'm married with four kids wow okay and how old are you how old are you uh i'm 48 48. last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew excuse me what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 um i'm probably doing what i do because i created my creative my first company was i went when i was first uh 23 and i don't get uh annoyed and i like what i do so i i keep on going that like this guys he would have done the same thing lunch sells you back in 2010 a marketing suite for smbs 3 900 paying customers 100 bucks a month 390 grand a month in revenue up from 250 grand a month just a year ago they've driven most of their growth based off an affiliate program that pays out 20 commission on year one revenue their first 100 customers got through ppc on google facebook and linkedin at a hundred dollar cac so quick payback period there their fully weighted cac today is about a thousand bucks so a 10 month payback period economics in terms of churn 1.5 percent monthly logo churn team um 70 in france and remote locations raised about 8 million bucks burning 100k per month right now as they look to scale ellen thanks for taking us to the top yes no problem have a nice day