How Subskryb CEO Giovanni Smith grew Subskryb to $35.1K revenue and 20 customers in 2023.

hey folks my guest today is giovanni smith he was born and grew up in jamaica studied architecture then moved to canada in 2008. he started off as an estimator in construction in 2010 and became a leader in 2013 where he oversaw multi-million dollar projects and led a team of 50 persons outside the office during his career he always tried different ventures to learn and grow today he's building subscribe that's skryb.com on the end uh to help folks understand uh subscription vehicles as a service in that space giolani are you ready to the top yes sir all right so first off subscription vehicle as a service what does that mean well what we've done is create a service that you know forget about long-term commitments you know forget about a rental you know for a day or two you can jump into a car for a week on a weekly model or a monthly model therefore having access to a variety of vehicles and not having that long-term commitment but still having access to proper nice cars i guess so so how would you compare this to like toro or somebody's car rental marketplace we can get it for a week yeah so toro we've been on tour we've we've lived the tour of life we've experienced the tour life and that's why we created subscribe um my co-founder and i we've we've been top hosts on toro for a number of years here in toronto and the difference is that toro has like a marketplace where people can control the prices and the customer experience is not uh not the best right so and when there's an issue a problem on on the platform for toro you know you're you're really left on your own to really figure it out so subscribe what we've done is we tried we've created a system an ecosystem that will connect all the partners and players in one space subscriber monitor and manage the asset and manage the customer experience itself therefore you know you have the best in class service best in class vehicle but maintain cars and there's no if but maybe in terms of who's has a problem if you're responsible for that problem but subscribers really on the main um control over the experience got it and so you're a marketplace then no no not a marketplace and the way how we see our marketplace is literally i'm from jamaica when you walk into a market people like i can sell it for five dollars no let me sell it for four dollars now let me sit for three dollars right what we try to do is is really get um existing assets like if you have a car in your in your driveway we regulate the prices we regulate the experiences through our hubs and how we distribute the cars and also we manage and maintain a price the prices and right giovanni sorry just i don't mean to kill y'all but just to be clear you have car owners you need that as their asset they supply one side of your marketplace you then need car renters on the other side of your marketplace and you need them to transact and that's how you make money is that accurate exactly exactly okay so and just to be clear you don't buy your own cars so you don't own inventory no we don't you don't no and so last month how many car owners have their car listed on the platform so right now right we have because we just switched over to this model and we have roughly say over 10 different owners right now we do own some of the assets but through our different companies what we used to um have on toro so we now we flip that over into the subscribe brand right how many individual cars are on the platform listed on the platform so right now we have over 30 cars right now and they're growing so right now we just based in toronto right now so 30 cars across 10 owners only available right now in toronto yeah okay okay this is great and last month so in april how many car renters rented at least one car in the month oh um we have i would say easily renters we have maybe around 15 20 give or take oh what's going on there youtube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with sas founders but 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youtube video here in a second but if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash evaluations or if you go to founderprep.com and hover over products click on get your valuation here and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl again all that valuation data live right inside the platform i hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview okay so 20 a rented last month and and now that we know both sides of the marketplace help us understand how you make money yeah so we made money by taking a piece of the pie right and we we offer the coverage in terms of insurance and we take a piece of the transaction and that's how we actually take make money what's the revenue breakdown between insurance and your take rate is it 50 50 no no so insurance differs right depends on on the the the person who's renting a car so therefore if you have a certain age age bracket experience then it depends on the premium will go up accordingly or it goes down right so but that that would determine exactly how we take them out and i understand that but if you look at your total revenue that you actually generated in april and just look at what was insurance versus take rates what was the revenue split i would say more maybe 25 percent or so insurance insurance takes stays level 25 or so and do you like let's fast forward 10 years let's say this company works out perfectly do you see more of your revenue coming from insurance or your take rate oh both uh it's it's it's funny what's your focus going to be it 10 years from now where are you going to make more money not on insurance not insurance there's so many other avenues with our business that will make money from it's not going to be insurance that's if you're focusing on insurance all focus now is not on insurance all right our focus is on the assets itself and how the users use the assets and what upgrades they want to the asset so a subscriber is way more than just the insurance and of the 20 car renters that rented at least one car last month what's the average ticket value is it 100 bucks a thousand bucks five thousand bucks well um with our model right it's it gives depends on the car i'll give you your average rate just think about a per per day can goes between 120 to 150 a day right how many days are people usually renting for minimum three to four days right now and we're trying to push them to the weekly model whereas therefore they can get a break on the price so that's that's so that's how we can engage it right now okay so three days at you know 150 per day is almost 500 so let's say that the average renter is paying you 500 bucks to get a car through your platform what percent or how much of the 500 will you take yeah we take roughly between 20 to 30 percent give or take depends on the situation and it depends on what you negotiate with the car owner exactly it depends on how we that particular car and the car owner situation we will it ranges but that's on average okay so if you have a 500 value you take 20 you're making a hundred bucks basically per renter yeah and 20 renters last month that would mean you did about two uh two thousand dollars in revenue last month is that right yeah okay so how do you scale what's harder to scale the renters or the car owners right it's a it's a car so right now what we're doing is getting more we need more supply a hundred percent and um because i know i don't know if you're aware but more oems they're trying to get into the subscription model the uh car dealerships are trying to get into the subscription model and we're trying to leverage that right in terms of getting more more assets on our platform so utilizing those assets that we can get more more uh products on our platform there but how giovanni what's the playbook how do you convince other car owners just put their car on the platform well what we what we do is uh we show them the potential and earnings right that's one way and also we show them in terms of the ease of use of our technology and how they how subscribe will make their lives better in terms of giving us asset we manage the asset sit back and leave it up to us for a period of time for us to manage and market the asset what are the potential profit opportunities for this if you're trying to sell me on listing my car on subscribe yeah so on average i would say you know if uh say your car gets rented out for for the month you would take right um let's say it's a a a nice car you know a hundred thousand dollar car between 60 or 80 80 000 for example let's use that one um we we we see that you could actually get get between two to three thousand dollars give or take for that month for that car right depends on you know the customer the time of year there's so many different factors that will reflect or affect that price for that for the month but let's say i'm listing my car on the platform right obviously and i'm saying hey what does a pro forma look like for a year you're going to say okay well of 365 days we can we think we can rent it this percent right and then of those percent of days you think you can get it rented then it's going to be at this price per day on average right so what's the percent for a year what how many days do you think you could rent a car if the car is on your platform send the person at a time awesome that's that's you quote okay yeah guarantee that yes on a personal time we think we will be able to have the car out printed right you guarantee that yeah be based based on unless we don't have cover if coffee doesn't hit then we can pretty much guarantee that because the space on our experience for the past uh six to seven years you know all cars my question is will you if a founder commits to giving their luxurious car to you for a year will you commit to booking 255 paid days with that car well it's a challenge that's our challenge and that's based on data we'll say yes this is what you expect expectations are i know i don't want to say a hundred percent but no nothing's 100 right so i know you had just a tough question but just based on data it's on the percentage of time i'm just thinking like a whole like a owner of a car right if i'm not gonna just like like i'm either gonna be on your platform or i'm not i'm not gonna like list it one day then take it off the next so if you tell me in a year you can book 255 days at 150 bucks a pop for 40 000 bucks in revenue of what you're gonna keep ten thousand i'm gonna make thirty thousand on a ninety thousand dollar car i'm gonna give you that car for the whole year and not worry about it but if you can't book then i'm not going to list it again on your platform because it's a pain in the butt unless you can commit to like that long-term revenue so how do you deal with that that's a very good question nathan and the way how we could do that is is utilize that car for other purposes you know events get them out to um market it differently so therefore we don't have only one sense of like income revenue for that vehicle and that vehicle is a car that can be in movie shoots can be in weddings that kind of stuff then we can see that we can supplement that car to get other revenue right really smart that's so that's how we could get more um try and get more get that when did you launch the business what year 2020 um november 2020. cover you know we uh my partner and i we we start we registered the business then and became subscribed and you know we just took it from there just running with it man and did you guys decide to raise capital or bootstrap we're strictly bootstrapping right now everything's been strapped right and how many folks are full-time on the team so right now we have um over full-time i would say two or three persons and then we have a team of uh around 12 persons that give our time like you know to help develop certain things tech for marketing all that stuff right so a few hours a week you know they're really helping the the vision here in terms of us growing well marketplaces are tough giovanni we're rooting for you though in the meantime here let's wrap up with the famous five number one favorite book first book i would say um it's the thing the power of thinking big by john maxwell c maxwell number two is there a ceo you're following are studying uh i really i really like um ray dalio i like the way how he his culture how he keeps his culture in his business the open book kind of aspect really cool admiration number three what's your favorite online tool for building subscribe oh we lost your audio yeah platforms can you hear me my favorite online tool yeah yeah i would say definitely linkedin is working well but we're exploring with definitely all the social platforms right now number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night maybe three to four oh my wife is not hearing this maybe three two to four sometimes four hours all right nights six hours yeah married and any kids or no yes i'm married three children young kids busy guy how old are you 38 man 38 last question something you wishing you when you were 20. oh man whoa maybe traveled earlier um maybe got got married earlier get the kids out of the way and all that kind of stuff but yeah guys subscribe as a marketplace where you can re list your expensive car and then have renters go book it it's a marketplace last month they had 20 renters book a car for an average of 150 bucks per day for three days again on average that's a 500 sort of transaction of which subscribe makes money by keeping 20 of that so about 100 bucks they're doing call 2000 bucks a month right now in revenue trying to get more cars signed up on the platform to meet the consumer demand that they're having giovanni we're rooting for you man thanks for taking the top thanks nathan thanks a lot one more thing before 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