How Sumall CEO Dane Atkinson grew Sumall to $13.4M revenue and 350K customers in 2023.

hello everybody my guest this morning is Dane Atkinson he's a serial entrepreneur with a focus on technology data and small business he's been CEO of a dozen companies like samal and Squarespace mentors are far too many others and had the pleasure of building the careers of thousands will creating while creating billions in equity value and sometimes losing millions Dane are you ready to take it to the top yeah actually I am alright what felt better making billions or losing millions actually there it's pretty interesting it's the middle that's most boring when you're not really cooking or another certainly the making is better than losing all right let's start off with I think the name probably people are more familiar with Squarespace what did you do at Squarespace and then complete the story how'd that turns us into some all so I joined Squarespace it was basically just Anthony who's the current CEO I joined up as a CEO I guess now almost 10 years ago and spent five years building the company up to its first chapters we raised a whole hunk of money and that made a pretty interesting product that has still sort of the market leader for the design side of websites today and what years were that but some brackets on that for us as 2007 to 11 now did he bring you in at the beginning there are you guys were cofounders together and you were CEO nope he was he started off at the University of Maryland it was working out of a dorm room literally and I got a small office I tried to find a way to buy him but he's way too smart tell us more of that story so what did that sound like and how did you find him why'd you want to buy them mutual friend of ours identified him at the time I'd known carpets of other people who are looking at publishing about publishing was interesting space and I think of our bright yeah who were in in the same kind of industry I don't a company called for your imagination which was a video podcasting company and we're gonna come to ability which is a competitive YouTube the time so a big belief in this idea of content creation and I got introduced to him and thought his product even back then was just light years ahead as an engineer and a founder he was exceptional his exception is a sense of design and technology that's really rare and what he was really young and I've been through this so many times is like oh well this would be really easy so we sort of danced around for a while eventually we had lunch with his dad which final ask for proving that showing up and we quickly grew from there so I think you know the months after I joined we built the tech team we had a Palmer to support and started a Dean when was the kicking moment when did you realize okay there's no way this guy's gonna sell to me so I should join him if I can't buy them I'm pretty early on like he had developed enough a revenue stream and he was enjoying a lifestyle what size I was a back then can you can you share that we're pretty quite about the figures but it was it was definitely more than one person that way got it okay when it's actually a one-person company that's what I was gonna ask it was basically him you know what can we say north of 500 grand I mean he was making plenty cash flow eyes oh yeah in the course of the years yeah interesting it's very very impressive at early age to accomplish did you get an actual offer on the table did you ever say okay here's my you know final thing and no I just tried and realize that it was a fruitless ground and thought that um it would be better just to pair up you know I saw in him something that was interesting he had you know a lot of the same ambitions and oil that I had made when I lost by my runs or made runs the very early part of my career so I figured I could help guide it around some the pitfalls which worked out I think the rate is so 2007 to then what was the final year 2011 they got gorilla and so tell me about that what would happen there why'd you why'd you leave well we've sort of conquered the market so we've raised 40 million bucks we persisted the fair share of acquisition offers and we had a large obviously large team I think that we'd identified ourselves as sort of category winner even then for the design side of things you know I'm addicted to his idea of creating companies done as my my I would say way too many times so I felt at that time that it was probably the right thing for him to sort of blossom out as he'd learned all of us like it's truly pass on me take another swing in it so then back to the start what was I mean but there had to have been some more leverage besides you kind of just being in that mindset I mean was there a round that was happening and that the lead on that round wanted to put in a CEO or you just felt like you couldn't out any more value no neither actually I think that uh you know we've been between rounds a couple always profitable it's a very strong business model I think that we just felt that we sort of found our DNA and mean Anthony felt that it was kind of the time for him to do it without mhm Daniel the quick question on profitability how can you be profitable when you raised 40 million bucks unless that 40 million just sits in the banking don't spend it high you can actually be proper you raise that kind of money and there are some case stories as is Squarespace where you build a proper booths all the way through obviously we raise that kind of money we would spend it aggressively but the return was really quick so John I see your income for sure as you started put that money to work in marketing but Squarespace has always been a machine it's just generated ahead of itself so the money velocity was really tight you'd get payback periods under six months and then reinvest and keep churning yeah actually it's got harder at being a SAS - but I'm certainly back then we would be able to churn money three months from pepper dicing that's a strong pot that's great okay tell us about some all what does it do and what's the model is its ass so it's freemium actually it's almost entirely free I'm a purposeful standpoint so we've done this enough that we felt we could give back yes at me yes music places but way too much of my career so it's an analytics platform that lets small businesses kind of compete against the giants they put their data into our environment it does things for them automatically and gets them a sense of what's actually happening we were about the same size from a customer footprint as a square space but obviously we don't have the kind of income but we definitely shift people's lives which is very doing well so when you say when you see said you had free users and then you said cut yeah they're same size customizes Squarespace so is it is it is it all free right now and you're still just growing the base or you okay so then you say customers what do you mean by that so we defined a customer or someone who's actively using the platform but he just being know okay go what come on Dane my audience is gonna listen and go wait what do you mean that you can't call a non-paying use our customer it's true as fare well how are you supporting this if it's all free is it yours using I mean how do you decide when Dec turn on an income or do you just not want to do that you're just a good person and philanthropic and a bit of both right so we we've been lucky enough to build enough companies that B C's give us my to burn the furnace so we've got a you know a roaring or furnace at the corner of our operations I think I don't be raised we raised about 25 million bucks and our belief is that if we were able to consolidate this category and as we are so we're a half million business on the platform I will be able to do things that are really meaningful for the community and also generate a lot of capital for us it doesn't really work in the small scale so we don't want to preclude people from getting the advantage other data and we don't want to slow down the platform growth at this stage I think down the road we'll be in a very good position to collectively defend and offer things to our customers so our hope is that next couple years we'll start to add that value that will turn a few of those knobs so tell us more about I mean because this podcast obviously has an opportunity to drive a lot of people to the website but I want them to really understand what it does can you tell us a story of how a business is using a unit or have that on the website is your personal data scientist but what does it actually do yeah so I think that the sad part about the way this was changing as small businesses are to have a PhD in analytics and marketing and all these other things which they simply don't write so for us the advantages if you're a small business you connection your data you put in your social services you put in your Shopify account your Etsy account or your PayPal you put in your ads accounts and you see everything in one place we'll give you a sort of a rundown each day of what's happening so for best practices you can sort of see yourself evolve and understand what the market looks around you and then we sort of automate a waste of the basic stress so we...