How Storybook App CEO Francisco Cornejo grew to $2M revenue and 10K customers in 2024.

hey folks my guess it is francisco cornejo he's the he's a husband and father of two boys his family's his greatest treasure and his greatest project he's building now a company called storybook hyphen app.com to help parents make their kids fall asleep francisco are you ready to take us to the top let's do it okay so what's the model here are you selling directly to moms and dads or is there a b2b play yeah storybook is a b2c a consumer a subscription based app it's free to download seven days trial and then you have a subscription to have all the content of the app okay interesting and when did you guys get when did you launch sort of the first line of code for the application [Music] so the the mbp we released it in may 2018 2018. but the fast growth we saw it since january um 2020 january and here's one of the main uses little ones i love that and so how much do parents pay on average per month to use it we have yearly plans so the yearly plan the yearly price in the us is 89.99 okay so 90 bucks and when did you get your first customer what year uh well the day we launched uh we started with a paper download a business model back then probably the wrong decision but was great to test our hypothesis there are people willing to pay for this even without looking at the app and the reviews were great on day one we sold 300 apps that was really exciting and told us we are on the right track and so how much did revenue do that first year the first year we did around 98k the second year we did around a 100k wasn't much difference the next year we did a 400k so oh wow there's there's when we started to grow really fast and so that would have been 2020 right yep so in 2020 you did 400k how much will you do this year the plan is to get there with 700k and what you're not pushing to grow we're right now are really really busy working on the product so we're looking in the long term of the how much total though this year have you already done uh we already passed 500 close to 600 000 okay so you need about 120 000 of sales in the next 60 days to break your goal yeah we'll get there that's awesome okay and how are you finding these customers what's your growth strategy so we've been relying on paid acquisition since we started facebook and instagram mostly and now we are seeing a big potential in partnerships and of course organic which takes a long time to build now we are seeing the benefits of it francisco how much did you spend on facebook and instagram ads last month um last month wasn't the typical month but we are spending around uh 40k 50k per month and so how much do you know you can like what does it cost you to get a new 90 download depending the country um so um right now for example the price in in brazil we are testing monthly plans which is something we have nowhere in the world in latin america the price is 50 in the uk the price is 50 pounds in the us it's 89 so the average um a cost per acquired subscriber is around 40 to 60 depending on the country okay so 50 bucks like in the u.s uh you might spend 50 bucks to get a 90 download so you're profitable you know well you're profitable instantly because they pay it all up front right yeah well we aim to to do that we aim to to have a um higher a air pool than a cat than or so the renewals come as an addition but it's all annual so even if your average revenue per second per month is i mean you're getting it all right back immediately now have you have you raised capital here are you bootstrapped yeah um we raise our precedent round last year we're lucky enough to cross roads with jason calacanis um amaze amazing angel investor probably one of the top five in the us not the top three at least and he also was a an early investor in town.com and um he fell in love with the business model because he know he knows about the subscription apps and how massive they can grow but he also understood the the need of helping parents to get their kids to sleep because of a personal experience so it was a great thing and how much did your brother first around last year so it was around a million a million okay got it and what what sort of cap or evaluation do you raise that at um we raise that eight million okay did that feel fair to you like looking back is that was that the right call yeah yeah i think the potential was there a the numbers are show that the the investors are happy and we're looking to raise more so um yeah i think it was only raised a million today then yep okay that's great how much are you looking to raise now um where still undecided on the on the figure yeah what do you think it'll be do you have a range um we're aiming to to get to our series a next year so we should be looking at uh it could be anything from five to seven million and if you raise five million what do you think you'd spend that money on is it mostly cac um well it's gonna be growth massive growth right now we have been really focused on the product so if you compare story from what it was a year ago and what it is now we tripled or a metrics in retention in monthly active users in we increase content by a lot so we look at this or mu the only thing that we care is people who are actually completing the stories not looking at the app not starting a story the ones who are completing stories and it's around 30k uh 30 000 monthly active users today yep and what was it a year ago a year ago was um in december last year was around 8 000. around 8. okay yeah so this is great growth um how many customers are have will download the app this year or how many i guess are on the monthly work are the annual recurring plans now today um so right now we have um ten thousand paying subscribers active paying subscribers 10 000 paid so when you say active paying subscribers does active mean they're part of that mau number yep so i guess if you have 10 000 customers how can you have 30 000 monthly active users like triple the amount of your paid customers are there a bunch of free users in there yep oh i see got it it's a premium model so you can use the app for free and but if you want to to get access to all the content you need to pay for a subscription i see so 10 000 paid on the annual plans how many total downloads does the app have all time all time uh we are a little past 1.5 million okay 1.5 million so you've converted 10 000 of those into paid yeah well remember that the business model changed but yeah ultimately that's that's what it is yep yep interesting any other product lines i mean can you sell anything else these ten thousand customers increase arpu yeah of course many things uh but um the focus right now is to make a story with the best product it can be so we can launch for a more aggressive growth and instead of focusing to get more money out of this ten thousand we want to get to a million subscribers uh two million subscribers and and along the way we will be launching additional things um premium content uh physical products um we have a few things down the line but i don't want to spoil the surprises that's fair and who is we who's how many people on the team today we are 20 20 people and are you the sole founder no uh actually my co-founder she's the brains and her and soul of the product she's the one who came up with the idea and who writes the stories and it creates a content for storybook is she your wife yep [Laughter] all right so you guys are co-founders you own you split it 50 50 at the start yep very cool you didn't give her a little more let her have 51 you take 49. she deserves that she deserves everything absolutely that's amazing okay so you guys split 50 50 you sold 10 to angel investors so it's like sort of like like 40 40 10 or 45 45 10 something like that right now yeah well yes they were safe so not equity as as of now yeah yeah but but when they convert it'll be somewhere around there yeah i assume you're planning to raise it higher than the cap on the note 8 million of course yeah yeah very cool all right um so 20 folks on the team today how many are engineers or engineering team is five people five people okay and what do the rest do so the grow team and the product team take our our bulk we are 16 people full time and for four people um a half time in scattered across the world we have people in spain in colombia and argentina in ecuador and one person in australia but the rest of the team is the the product team and the growth team do you have the seven hundred thousand dollars in revenue you'll do this year do you have to give 30 of that back to apple no um there's a couple of things we also sell directly to our website and but most interesting is interestingly uh both apple and google now have a 15 commission if you are selling less than a million a year so they don't they take fifty percent fee so we're making the most of that next year we won't be able to do that so can you just launch a version two that starts from zero and just keep that under a million e i guess i'm guessing you can but you will be losing on all the rankings and all the history of the app yeah very interesting okay got it so that makes a lot of sense to me um you mentioned partnerships name a partner that you'd love to part that you think could drive you a lot of customers i don't want to jinx it but we have been working with really interesting companies in latin america and we're talking with a company in the us and we're about to close a deal with a consumer a very big player in the baby product space um that we aim it's gonna give us at least a million uh new downloads in the first 30 days very cool so yeah i don't want to do it we're rooting for you let's wrap up though uh now with the famous five francisco number one favorite book wow um that's a hard one um i don't know the most recent i read was working backwards number two is there a ceo you're following or studying um not really number three what's your favorite online tool for building storybook as of lately uh i'm a big fan of notion i don't know if i can replace that number four how many hours of sleep do you eat every night between four and five and what's your situation well we actually we know you're married how many kids two two kiddos and how old are you i'm 34. 34. last question francisco what's something you wish you knew when you were 20. uh the tech startup world [Music] all right guys there you have it storybook app launched in 2018 they did a call at 90 000 bucks in revenue in 2020 they broke 400 000 in revenue this year break 700 000 in revenue 1.5 million total downloads of which 10 000 have converted to a paid plan it's parents who want to help their kids go to sleep faster that quality time right as they're falling asleep they raised 1 million bucks at an 8 million cap looking to raise maybe a 5 to 10 million series a here soon we'll see what happens francisco thanks for taking us to the top nathan a pleasure thanks so much one more thing before you 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