How systeme.io CEO Aurelian Amacker grew systeme.io to $20.1M revenue and 8K customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is aurelian omaker he's building a tool called system dot io it's a click funnels alternative aurelion you're ready to take it to the top sure let's go all right well look i'm i'm glad you're on i'm looking forward to this click funnel is obviously in a very hot space so help me understand what you're doing how are you different so we are an all-in-one marketing platform for entrepreneurs creators so we don't have only the sales funnels we have the email marketing tool we have the membership side we have the affiliate program management and actually we use our own tool to power our entire business and uh today we do over 400 000 uh dollars in revenue per month oh that's incredible when did you launch the business so so i've been sending online courses about web marketing in the french market since 2010 but uh we launched the software system natalio in early 2018 so it's been a little bit over three years okay so 2018 was launched if you're doing 400 000 today in revenue what were you doing exactly a year ago so it was i'd say about half of that like with the because of kovid we got a huge growth in 2020 it was very impressive you know i mean we were doing fine before but it was definitely a very good year for us we grew a hundred percent so we we we grew from 1.5 million euros in revenue to 3 million in revenue you were at 1.5 at the end of 2020 and and now you're at three no no we were at 1.5 at the end of 2019 and we we did 3 millions in revenue in 2020 and this year i think that we're going to do i hope close to five million i'm talking euros right yes that would be close to six million dollars in revenue this year 2021. yep that's great and and you're doing you did 400 000 last month uh yeah a little bit over that like 414 in uh june 2021 yeah that's great so so give me the back story here i mean how did you get your first hundred customers back in 2014 uh you mean 2018. all right 2018 yep yeah no there's no so i because i've been selling online courses since 2010 i had a list of i think at the time it was about like 25 000 people on it and i did the launch by email so i'm an email marketing guy right i sent a lot of emails me too we're the same there awesome so after the launch we had our first i think for it was 400 first customers so it was close to 10 000 euros per month in revenue which was great i wasn't covering the cost but you know what it was nice and uh we kept growing since then so uh it's basically where did you get that list that initial list you sent a mail marge email to where'd you get it oh because i've been selling online courses since 2010 so you know i was so i had a blog i had youtube videos so i'm not really good at youtube videos i stopped quite some time ago i wasn't the best at blogging i wasn't even the best at selling online courses and i guess that's that's why i mean i was about to do between 20 to 30 000 euros per month so i was making you know a nice income but i wasn't the best marketer in the french market but i was like oh maybe i should build a software app because i wasn't happy with the existing tools i felt that there was a need for an alternative you know and and how big was your email list before right when you launched so it was about 25 000 people okay god and again those all came from your courses you're consulting all that yeah really smart okay so you get going now how did you get the initial mvp built are you developer no no i'm not a developer so i really struggle like uh in 2016 and 16 i i lost a year and about 30 000 euros um i i i contracted a company in morocco owned by a french guy customer of my courses it was like oh we can get this this thing built you know it's gonna cost you seven grand i was like seven grand just take it you know but um i mean it was a mess like they had no idea it was horrible so i fired them after quite a while actually uh we even flew to morocco with my wife to meet them in person and they were like uh yeah don't worry it's gonna be fine they were so good at telling me it was gonna it was gonna be fine but so bad at delivering and um yeah i fired them then i struggled i tried many different developers and one day i found a guy on upwork and i could see that i could rely on these guys i was like do you know someone like you and he was like i work with this guy he's good as well so we got him on board we got a third one on board and we built the product in 2017 i moved my business over to our own software so first the email is you know sending the emails uh then the the uh all the payment pages all the pages and then finally the the courses so how many engineers are full-time today so to actually we've just hired our six uh engineers so you know it's not a lot we we've been uh going with only three developers for a while but last year we felt that it was time to um you know add more people to the team so we we've doubled the team in a year and how many total are on the team now today so we have 60 people six zero yes six zero and uh you're gonna tell me oh it's too much you're not making enough revenue right not necessarily but what do they do how many sales people so sales people actually we don't have many because we're in uh you know we're selling to individuals so it's a very uh low touch uh business we do actually we do have uh two sales people but selling our coaching programs in the french market i see how many so you said low rpu what are customers pay per month on average so in the french market it's 32 euros and in the in it's it's weird because in the english market i just found out that it was a lot more it was like 50 more like 50 euros per month i was like wow this is this is crazy and how many customers today so we have 8 000 a little bit over 8 000 paying customers you know your numbers you must you must listen to the show i've been listening to the show for a while since 2015 so i'm glad to be on the show you know you're wow you're an og have you haven't listened to every episode that's like thousands of episodes no no i've not listened to every episode but i've listened to a ton of episodes and you know it's funny because i met you know thrive teams they do like wordpress plugins so i met this their ceo hannah she lives in lisbon just like me in portugal and she was like hey i'm trying to connect with like some startup builders likes as founders you know any and i thought for a while i was like no actually i don't know any it's only because i've been listening to podcasts for years so years and mixergy yeah like i know you've been twice a mixer g and i listened to uh the two interviews so you know i i know my stuff how did i do how would you rate my performance on mixer g no you do great the first time i felt that uh andrew which is a great guy by the way so nice i felt that he was like a bit like aggressive with you because maybe there was like some kind of competition but then in the second interview that was uh for for your book uh it was like oh a lot more friendlier i felt nobody nobody believed that first interview nobody believed that we had 10 million podcast downloads in under a year and a half and that's what he was pushing me on and eventually i said you know what i'm just going to share my screen and show the downloads and he was shocked when i showed him and then then it all was good no i believe you because the show is great i really enjoyed it uh i thought that he was like more greeting you about the the numbers the real numbers of your first business that you sold i was like hey you're right oh yeah you heyo h-e-y-o you'll see i know my stuff you do know your stuff and it's funny because you know we did a book with random house and on page six uh and that was after the interview with mixergy i said you know what i'm sick of people asking me questions about numbers i'm just gonna put my tax return in the book and so my tax return is actually on page six for my first sas company in the book and it's the most highlighted uh it's the most highlighted page in kindle for the book so there you go yeah all right so you're killing it 8 000 customers are you profitable yeah actually uh yeah we are like very profitable i mean uh um i'm like my financial goal is to make a hundred thousand you know uh euros per month and um i'm getting close to that so yeah i'm very happy so of 400 000 a month in revenue how much do you take the bottom line is profit yeah so today it's about it's between 80 and 100. and what do you do with that money you just let it sit in a bank account or how do you invest it yeah it's a good question so actually we bought our dream house um six months ago with my wife uh so it was it was 1.5 million i mean 1.4 and uh...