How Shorthand CEO Ricky Robinson grew Shorthand to $9M revenue and 431 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is Ricky Robinson he's the CEO at shorthand maker of the visual storytelling platform trusted by the BBC Business Insider refinery29 Honda UK saved the children and hundreds of other publishers brands nonprofits and universities they make it simple for storytelling teams to create memorable stories that audiences want to share Ricky are you ready to take us to the top absolutely all right this is a you know scaling content creation is very difficult especially when you start adding video elements and it's not just you know blog post anymore these days I'm eager and excited to talk to you because I think it's a problem so many people have so tell us what's shorthand does and how you make money what's your revenue model yeah so these days we we do annual subscriptions it's just annual subscriptions we don't do month lease and we sort of sit in that space where you know prior to shorthand coming along news news organizations and big brands would have an internal development team to create these sorts of stories on a custom basis so case by case I'm so expensive very long time frames publishing and short hand kind of just comes and makes makes that a lot easier so you know we reduce time and cost by you know more than 10x in a lot of cases and how does it walk me through all this work so like the made up to look beautiful sent out to die campaign by the BBC right so this as I scroll through it I mean it's a blog it's essentially a full screen full bleed blog post or other interactive kind of elements built into it walk me through the back end how did you make this magic happen yeah so I mean all the magic is really I guess two parts so the editor the editor is really magical to use a lot of our customers say you know it's the best part of their day are using shorthand to create stories so we put a lot of effort to that and then the rest of the magic is all in the browser on the front end and I think one thing that we do that you know a lot of a lot of other platforms don't and I guess why why the likes of BBC and Business Insider are using shorthand is because we kind of make sure that all these interactions work across every device every platform so we do put a lot of ethic to that so give me an example give me an example of business insider so like what suppose they used you on yeah so business insider I'm they use it for commercial content so they do sponsored content for you know likes at Volvo Cartier those sort of brands and that that's a that's a fairly big use case so news publishers wanting to offer their brand for customers something special and a cut above what they've been offered previously but also something that they can do on a repeatable basis right yeah so again in the past they've done these stories but it's taken a lot of effort and now they can kind of create a lot of these stories in a very quick time frame you know make sense walk me through what the average price when is per year I went up wiggling on every customer chord I'm sure you have many but on average yeah absolutely so it's six thousand u.s. got at six thousand per year and and what what generally people get for that is that like one piece of content per month or how do you how do you define that no so we'll talk about that in a minute but I think one of the lessons we learned was was not to offer it on a per piece-- basis and we'll talk about why in a minute but essentially it's it's based on features but the big differentiator between you know whether you're what you're paying in the tens of thousands for shorthand or or less than that is whether you're exporting the story on to your own infrastructure there's a big difference between customers who want and need that ability and customers who are happy to have this store is hosted on shorthands infrastructure and so there's a there's a big difference in value there walk me through how you're tackling something like a load speed right so I've tested a bunch of these sites before I did in the load speed was really really bad because it's such interactive content right some of these things I imagine the BBC you're not actually hosting them so how do you handle things like load speed yeah so I mean load speed is an interesting one I think you'll find that for the kinds of stories that these are short hands short hand stories do load fast and one of the things that if they're hosted on you and not exported yet well it depends like a lot of our customers do do a good job of putting that on you know this infrastructure CD and in front all of that kind of stuff one thing that shorthand is it's different to some other platforms is that it's it's static files right there are their flat files so you are loading the the the HTML the assets CSS all off just a normal web server right and it's not being dynamically served out of a database I'm so that's one thing that that is quite different to other solutions and it's it's a big trend on the web at the moment is the some static static files right so when did you launch the company what year um so we got started we incorporated in 2013 but there was no product until 2014 ok and so how did you support yourself over that time to do is raise capital yeah we did so we have investor well-known guy in Australia called Graham wood so he's he's Baptist he's the only backer at the moment how much how much they own the beginning to give you yeah so three million Australian ok and and a total raise total raised to date is how much that's it yeah oh just sorry we sorry we we did we raised another five hundred basically to open up a shop in New York okay so if you raised three million five hundred Australian dollars which is equivalent about two point today which is equivalent out 2.5 million u.s. dollars yeah okay great and just from one investor that must be nice yeah I mean Graham's really supportive he's always been very interested in independent journalism good journalism he he funds The Guardian in Australia so The Guardian newspaper and he's had a bunch of other projects in his space before and over the past couple of years what have you been able to scale to in terms of total customers using you guys yeah so we're just shy of 250 customers at the moment that's great now if I take that 250 times now you said the that's 6,000 obviously was annually but I put it about a 1.5 million dollar run rate is that about accurate that's about accurate yes that's great that's very good and talk to me about the talking about growth so if you're at about 1.4 today where were you about a year ago yeah about a year ago we were doing where are we we're doing about 60 60 mr are you table on say yeah over this year I think the last Australian financial year which kind of ends in June it's been a little bit slower than the previous year and I think the reason for that was these story limited plans that we offered right so we we offered these plans for three thousand dollars and then three three and a half thousand dollars which gave you like a couple of stories and that was great for growth like they sold by the bucketload the problem is that a lot of those customers once they created those stories and exported them that was it that we're done gone and so turnover this last this last six months or so has not been great has been terrible I capture news like to two percent I take two percent logo turn per month yeah no that's revenue check two percent of revenue turn per month that's net or gross revenue turn that is that is gross okay so you're not adding back and expand the upsells no no no okay great and it's ready why do you say that's horrible that's actually I mean that's not horrendous it's for us it is because we know where we were at before where were you sure was was awesome so less than half of that okay so which sorry what changed so these story limit story limited plans right so offering these things where they create two stories and that's all they need then they move on so I think our problem that was in plan design and I think we we we've sorted that problem out now like we obviously don't offer those plans and insurance hire you well sure and churn is high at the moment cuz we've got annual plans right so we sold a plan a year ago one of these $3,000 plans they're turning now oh god they're not gonna new and at the new price yeah I see what you're saying so so that's been our issue but if you remove all of those story limited plans our curve looks a lot a lot nicer I would argue I would argue that 2 percent revenue churn per month on a gross basis Jenner by the fact that you're asking people to essentially who we're paying three garner now pays six grand for the same thing that's actually not bad at all walk me through new customers you're onboarding what's your CAC yes so our cat I'm so it costs us fifty cents on new ar-ar-ar dollar yes you spend really cents for that new for that new dollar they are yeah I guess three you know it's three thousand dollars to bring on a new customer yeah three K CAC and so then you're getting paid back what in about six months yeah roughly that yeah but it's all about paid up front so Kona cash basis in salutely yeah yeah interesting yes so how cash I mean you know the last Australian financial year we we had a cashflow positive year so it was yeah...