How Shufflrr CEO James Ontra grew Shufflrr to $6M revenue and 100 customers in 2024.

hello everybody my guest today is James entrees the co-founder and CEO of shuffler the leading presentation management sass platform that transforms presentations from one in dun decks to enterprise assets from creation to distribution to presentation and sharing to reporting and then updating shuffler streamlines the presentation process so clients get a higher ROI on their investment in content better control their message and overall increased productivity James are you ready to take us to the top yeah I'm very happy - that was a mouthful I would say you know my Google Drive foot files and folders and Dropbox folders are just like the deadzone of just presentations from 10 years ago that I should have reused that I never could find cuz I didn't tag them right and it just didn't work so you're solving that problem in many ways yes and taking it much further than that in in many ways there's a legacy of hundreds and thousands if not millions of presentation files in corporate America and institutions around the world that like you said no one knows where the slide is I can't find it and shuffler helps dig dig that out and bring those slides up to the top and your pure place Alice model right yes okay so walk walk me through like what's the average we won't go down every cohort well what's the average customer pay you per month would you say about $1,000 okay good okay you're very much in the enterprise space then yes very much this is enterprise communications this is about treating presentations as a communications category no longer a presentations thought of as one and done next Thursday I'm doing a presentation and I've got 30 minutes and here's my 21 slides and we're going from A to B to C to D and if you ask a question about F you gotta wait in the new world of presentations it isn't about that 1:1 meeting you're gonna pitch for it's about your enterprise having 250 or 300 slides about your company of who you are what you do everything that's done and everyone within your institution can go to this SAS drive and drag and drop and hit save and have a compliant up-to-date pre-configured presentation and spend less time and spend more time out in front of the clients now do you call a presentation management it takes a special kind of guy to get excited about presentations walking through your head where your head was when you launched the company and what year was that chef was officially launched in 2013 and we got our first client in 2014 okay I have spent 20 years in doing high-end presentations doing cd-rom presentations in the 90s James you're aging yourself that's okay I don't mind but you know presentations we've done exhibits in Epcot Center we supported the Olympics selling or advertising Warner Brothers mercedes-benz exhibits around the country and there were all high-end consulting type of situations as technology changed and features became available we recognized the continual questions being asked we did so good on this how can the rest of the people in our company use these same slides that they just paid us six figures for for the CEO shuffler is that means to take that one big investment in your presentation and allow everyone to prove that as good as CEO did with all the supportive you know everything CEO has well okay and so walking through we are today so you launched 2013 first paying customer in 2014 where you had today how many customers we have about a hundred customers at a hundred grand and recurring monthly revenue it's a twenty five seventy five game where 75% of them are low clients looking to come on and grow up where 25% of them is the majority of it yep this is about controlling the message on the enterprise and our bigger clients than ones that are more advanced are recognizing that having a broken communication cycle between marketing and sales specifically on presentations is a big waste of time you know you've probably made presentations you go copy and paste you hunt you open this one you close that you open a third you say I'll start with that go back to the first at a page move it and by the time 90 minutes go by you're at your starting point yeah yeah James I'm sold on the product it makes complete sense I get it I did you know I think I think there's a big space for this give me a sense of growth rate though today so you today you're at a hundred grand a month where were you out a year ago in June of 2017 27 probably about 50 grand or so he's pretty much doubled annually we've picked up specifically because of client recognition of it by by identifying the category presentation management using the verbage about selling versus telling updating slides managing your presentation work slow many companies are having this problem and they're actually coming to us because we've written about it there's you know years of blogs about presentation mishaps and that's where our main clients are coming in now companies are asking you know what's our strategy for presentations mm-hmm well the categories being designed by shuffler right now and you know in the internet space if you help identify the problem and solve it at the same time you become recognized as oh that's like shuffler and that becomes a bigger momentum in launching an internet you know a SAS type company and eventually owning the category in the categories presentation management yep James are you bootstrap dovey raise capital I am bootstrap but I am I have I have an investor right now who's already we're well on our way you're crazy unless you're currently considering a raise we're more than halfway down the road and it's why well down the run why why you have to raise capital why not say bootstrapped because it's an enterprise sale I would like to but there's when you get into big banks and you move from like I have two big banks at clients that have moved from a hundred clients to fifteen hundred users within like 12 and 15 months the demands of what they want for the next step where they say well we can have nine thousand users if you deliver a B and C exceed some of my current cash you know needs a net that just proves so I can right now say these two clients are gonna go from you know five grand a month to twenty five grand a month if I have an extra 250 or 300 grand investment over the next four is that how much you're wanting to raise about 300 grand no I'm we're we're on our way to raise two million dollars in more than one of us one millions in the bank at this point how did you decide on the two million number mostly through my understanding of running the business and running my own business and what needs are and bootstrapping quite frankly there's nothing more learned than being forced to bootstrap and deliver services and products for clients that you know we're going to be more valuable to 10 or 20 other clients so you have to make the extra investment even though they're paying just enough to get by by doing that along the way gives you a good barometer of what you need going forward and James are these the the money you're raising are you doing it as convertible a convertible note or is it true a straight-up investment to equities shredded investment so how are you know simple how are you so it sounds like you when you when you do an equity round you know you say we're raising two million and you don't close or collect any of the money until you have the two million it sounds like you've already closed a million and now you're letting it roll to maybe two million is that what you did what you allowed yourself to do in tranches well well we we said our goal was two million when we reached 750 we will access be allowed to access the money ice and start working towards it so as we cross that level which gave a level of commitment from you know people who put up the money we're comfortable moving forward and hitting certain goals without you know going under there's nothing how much how long is that two million option exists like if you two months from now got you know filled out the chimin dollar on could you still take the money or is there a deadline on that we've been well we put the end of the year but um you know obviously it's between you and your investors and what's right for the company and where you're going and what the growth rate is and and where you are yeah I know it's interesting though because you know for a guy like me that invests or other VCS listening right now when they hear something like that what they thought they hear is oh I can wait and see how he uses the initial tranche of capital see if he drives growth and then give them money at the end of the year and getting at the same deal terms of every one that took the risk earlier on in the year how do you manage that um that could be the case I think it closes out very quickly and I'm I'm not overwhelmed or I'm more concerned about making sales at a million dollars I can run this business and never need more money what's the team size today there's about 12 people who make full-time living on it we see your profit or cashflow positive today then we've as a bootstrapped company we've paid our bills from the very beginning every one of our clients have paid for the features that are in shuffler you you haven't had it you haven't had to like like put in more of your own capital to keep the thing going right you're you're profitable all just counsel from the business not only that I've paid my own rent I live in Manhattan and have kids in school how many kids I have two kids okay you know we've we bootstrapped started it we started it quite frankly with clients you know even though there's development ahead of time we knew people wanted it and had clients because we were...