How Systeme.io Reached $414K Monthly Revenue and 8,000 Customers While Staying Bootstrapped (Interview with Founder Aurelien Amacker)

Introduction and What Systeme.io Does

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey folks, my guest today is Aurelien Amacker. He's building a tool called systeme.io. It's a ClickFunnels alternative. Aurelien, you ready to take us to the top?

Aurelien Amacker

00:08>> Sure, let's go.

Nathan Latka

00:09All right. Well, I'm glad you're on. I'm looking forward to this. ClickFunnels is obviously in a very hot space, so help me understand what you're doing. How are you different?

Aurelien Amacker

00:17>> We are an all in one marketing platform for entrepreneurs, creators. 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 own business and today we do over $400,000 in revenue per month.

Launch History and Early Revenue

Nathan Latka

00:39That's incredible. When did you launch the business?

Aurelien Amacker

00:43>> I've been selling online courses about web marketing in the French market since 2010, but we launched the software systeme.io in early twenty eighteen, so it's been a little bit over three years.

Nathan Latka

00:55Okay, so 2018 was launched. If you're doing $400,000 today in revenue, what were you doing exactly a year ago?

2019 to 2020 Revenue Growth and COVID Impact

Aurelien Amacker

01:02>> So it was, I'd say about half of that, like with because of COVID, we got a huge growth in 2020. It was very impressive, know. I mean we were doing fine before but it was definitely a very good year for us. We grew 100%, so we grew from €1,500,000 in revenue to €3,000,000 in revenue.

Nathan Latka

01:24You were at €1,500,000 at the end of twenty twenty and now you're at 3,000,000

Aurelien Amacker

01:28>> No, no, no. We were at €1,500,000 at the end of twenty nineteen and we did €3,000,000 in revenue in 2020. And this year, I think that we're going to do, I hope close to 5,000,000. I'm talking euros, right? Yes. So that would be close to $6,000,000 in revenue this year 2021.

Nathan Latka

01:47Yep, that's great. And you did $400,000 last month?

June 2021 Monthly Revenue Confirmed

Aurelien Amacker

01:52>> Yeah, a little bit over that, like $414k in June 2021. Yeah.

How the First 400 Customers Were Acquired

Nathan Latka

01:57That's great. So so give me the backstory here. Mean, how did you get your first 100 customers back in 2014?

Aurelien Amacker

02:03>> You mean 2018?

Nathan Latka

02:05Sorry, 2018.

Aurelien Amacker

02:06>> Yep. Yeah, no worries. No. So I I've been selling online courses since 02/2010, 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 send a lot of emails.

Nathan Latka

02:21Me too. We're the same there.

Aurelien Amacker

02:24>> Awesome. After the launch, had our first, I think it was four hundred first customers, it was close to €10,000 per month in revenue which was great. I wasn't covering the cost, but you know what, it was nice. And we kept growing since then. It's basically

Nathan Latka

02:41Where did you get that list? That initial list you sent a mail merge email to, where'd you get it?

Aurelien Amacker

02:46>> Oh, because I've been selling online courses since 2010. So you know, was, so I had a blog, I had YouTube videos, so I'm not very 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 why. I mean I was about to do between 20,000 to €30,000 per month so I was making nice income, but I wasn't the best

03:11>> 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.

Nathan Latka

03:24And how big was your email list right when you launched?

Aurelien Amacker

03:28>> So it was about 25,000 people.

Nathan Latka

03:30Okay. Got it. And again, those all came from your courses, your consulting, all that?

Aurelien Amacker

03:35>> Yeah.

Building the MVP Without Being a Developer

Nathan Latka

03:36Really smart. Okay. So you get going now. How did you get the initial MVP built? Are you a developer?

Aurelien Amacker

03:41>> No. No. I'm not a developer. So I really struggled. Like, In 2016 I lost a year and about €30,000. I contracted a company in Morocco owned by a French guy, a customer of my courses and he was like, oh we can get this thing built, it's going to cost you $7k. I was like $7, just take it you know. But I mean it was a mess, they had no idea, it was horrible so I fired them

04:08>> after quite a while actually. We even flew to Morocco with my wife to meet them in person and they were like, yeah, don't worry, it's going be fine. They were so good at telling me it was going to be fine but so bad at delivering. And 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 this guy.

04:30>> I was like, do you know someone like you? And he was like, yeah, 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 list, sending the emails, then all the payment pages, all the pages, and then finally the courses.

Team Size and Engineering Headcount

Nathan Latka

04:53How many engineers are full time today?

Aurelien Amacker

04:56>> So actually we've just hired our sixth engineers, so you know it's not a lot. We've been going with only three developers for a while, but last year we felt that it was time to add more people to the team, so we doubled the team in a year.

Nathan Latka

05:12And how many total are on the team now today?

Aurelien Amacker

05:15>> So we have 60 people. Six zero? Yes, six zero. And you're going tell me, it's too much. You're not making enough revenue, right?

Nathan Latka

05:24Not necessarily, but what do they do? How many salespeople?

Aurelien Amacker

05:28>> So salespeople actually we don't have many because we're selling to individuals so it's a very low touch business. We do actually we do have two salespeople, but selling our coaching programs in the French market.

Nathan Latka

05:43I see. How many so you said low ARPU, what do customers pay per month on average?

Aurelien Amacker

05:47>> So in the French market it's €32 and in the 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 per month. I was like, wow. This is this is crazy.

Nathan Latka

06:02And how many customers today?

Aurelien Amacker

06:03>> So we have 8,000 a little bit over 8,000 paying customers.

Nathan Latka

06:08You know your numbers. You must you must listen to the show.

Aurelien Amacker

06:12>> I've been listening to the show for a while, since 2015, so I'm glad to be

06:17>> on the show, you know.

Nathan Latka

06:18You're Wow, you're an OG. You haven't listened to every episode. That's like thousands of episodes.

Aurelien Amacker

06:23>> 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 Themes, they do like WordPress plugins. So I met 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, like SaaS founders, do you know any? And I thought for a while, was like, no, actually I

06:45>> don't know any. It's only because I've been listening to podcasts for years, so yours Mixergy. I know you've been twice on Mixergy and I listened to the two interviews so you know I know my stuff.

Nathan Latka

06:56How did I do? How would you rate my performance on Mixergy?

Aurelien Amacker

07:00>> No, you do great. The first time I felt that Andrew, which is a great guy by the way, so nice, I felt that he was like a bit aggressive with you because maybe there was like some kind of competition, but then in the second interview that was for your book, it was like oh, a lot more friendlier, I felt.

Nathan Latka

07:18Nobody believed that first interview, nobody believed that we had 10,000,000 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 gonna share my screen and show the downloads. And he was shocked when I showed him. And then then it all was good.

Aurelien Amacker

07:33>> No, I believe you because the show was great. I really enjoyed it. I thought that he was like more greeting you about the numbers, the real numbers of your first business that you sold. I was like, hey yo, right? Or yay yo.

Nathan Latka

07:46Hey yo, h e y o.

Aurelien Amacker

07:47>> You see, know my stuff.

Nathan Latka

07:48You do know your stuff. And it's funny because, you know, we did a book with Random House and on page six, and that was after the interview with Mixergy, said, 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 SaaS company And in the it's the most highlighted, it's the most highlighted page in

08:08Kindle for the book. So there you go.

Aurelien Amacker

08:09>> Kindle. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:10Cool. Alright. So you're killing it. 8,000 customers. Are you profitable?

Profitability and Financial Goals

Aurelien Amacker

08:15>> Yeah. Actually, yeah. We are like very profitable. I mean, my

08:22>> financial goal is to make a €100,000 per month and I'm getting close to that so yeah, I'm very happy.

Nathan Latka

08:32So of $400,000 a month in revenue, how much do you take to the bottom line as profit?

Aurelien Amacker

08:37>> Yeah, so today it's about it's between 80 and 100.

Dream Home Purchase and Capital Allocation

Nathan Latka

08:42What do you do with that money? Do you just let it sit in a bank account or how do you invest it?

Aurelien Amacker

08:46>> Yeah, it's a good question. So actually we bought our dream house six months ago with my wife, so it was 1,500,000, I mean 1.4 and we had a down payment, but we still had close to 1,000,000, so because I think that there is so much cash in the world, you know, like everything is overpriced, you look at you know the stock market and everything, so I just I would prefer like pay up the house in two

09:13>> or three years and invest a little bit between stock market and I don't know.

Nathan Latka

09:18That's smart and do you own a 100% of the business?

Aurelien Amacker

09:21>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

09:22So no investors, no stock option pool for employees, you're a 100 owner?

Aurelien Amacker

09:26>> Yeah, absolutely.

Nathan Latka

09:27I love that. Now would you sell the business today if someone offered you 20,000,000 all cash upfront today, do you sell?

No Exit Plan and Ownership Structure

Aurelien Amacker

09:34>> No, no way. I mean, it's crazy. People ask me all the time like, hey, what's your exit plan? I'm like, I don't have any exit plan. I love what I do. I want to take this business to, I don't know, $20, $30, $40, $50 millions in revenue. Know?

Nathan Latka

09:49Look, I love the ambition. Think that's great. So just to be clear, I imagine that you have VCs reaching out, what's the highest valuation you've turned down?

Aurelien Amacker

09:57>> No, so actually, like I avoid posting on Indie Hacker because I know the next week I'm going to get two or three emails, Hey Aurelien, you know, I'm a big fan of yours, I've been following you and stuff. So at the beginning I was, of course I'm flattered, you know, it's great, but I tell them right from the beginning, guys, I'm not looking to raise any money because I know that if we start talking then you

10:17>> know, I mean there is no point, so I just turn them down. That's it.

Nathan Latka

10:22Okay, fair enough. Good stuff. All right, talk to me about churn. Is the product sticky?

Churn Rate and Freemium Plan Impact

Aurelien Amacker

10:27>> So we have a high churn. It was like nine to 10%. Now we've got lower. It's getting closer to 8% because we launched a freemium plan that was three months ago. So with freemium because people have more time to actually experience the product, the churn goes down. But I think it's totally normal. Like I heard Noah Kagan saying, oh, if your churn is too high, fix your product. I'm like, no, that's our market. We're selling to

10:55>> Bob and John and Is that

Nathan Latka

10:578% churn monthly or annually?

Aurelien Amacker

10:59>> It is, it is. And it's high, but I think that

Nathan Latka

11:01Is it monthly or annual?

Aurelien Amacker

11:03>> It's monthly.

Nathan Latka

11:04Oh wow, okay got it. So you're churning almost 100% of your base almost every year.

Aurelien Amacker

11:09>> Yeah, so actually you say this all the time and actually it's not how it works because so churn is high, but I mean churn, if it really happens, we're not going to lose eight times 12% of the people in a year. We're not going to be left because it's going be like first month eight percent and second month like seven percent and third month like 6%. So the churn is not and it's the churn across our

11:33>> entire customer base, but churn is a lot higher with new customers. But we have people who have been with us for a year or two and these guys are not churning out.

Nathan Latka

11:42Yeah, it's a really good point. You have a wide top of funnel, you get a lot of trials. So of course, lot of trials are gonna churn in the first month or two, but once they stick past four or five months, the churn should drop. So when you start looking at customers that have been with you for more than six months, what's churn monthly then?

Aurelien Amacker

11:57>> No, I don't have this kind of data, I just know it because I see our customers, you know, they've been with us for a while and I know our customers because I've been sending online courses to these guys for ten years, know, and like they want to start online business, tomorrow they're gonna try to invest in real estate, know, or learn the guitar, know, and maybe they'll come back later, you know, that's that's fine.

Nathan Latka

12:16What are you paying to get new customers?

Affiliate Program as Primary Growth Driver

Aurelien Amacker

12:19>> Oh, so we so 70% of our sales come from our affiliate program. We pay our affiliates over $100,000 per month, so we pay 40% lifetime commissions to our affiliates.

Nathan Latka

12:33How many affiliates made at least $10 last month?

Aurelien Amacker

12:37>> Oh, that's a good question actually. It must be about, I'd say 600.

Nathan Latka

12:44How did you recruit 600 affiliates? Is it just because you pay out so much?

Aurelien Amacker

12:48>> No, it's over time. Like you know, it's word-of-mouth. Obviously the customers that I guess some of them you know refer around them to earn some affiliate commissions, so it's really over time. So in the French market we have a lot of affiliates promoting us and in the English market, now we're trying to build this up and we have some affiliates who have made so far like $3,000 $5,000 so it's

Nathan Latka

13:13Got it.

Aurelien Amacker

13:15>> And

Nathan Latka

13:17that's your biggest expense really. I mean, a $100,000 a month is your biggest expense. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Very cool. So affiliates there, you've moved your CAC basically from being, you know, fixed on your balance sheet to basically variable only if affiliate closes a sale for you, which is great. Things are going well. What's next for you? Don't want to sell, you don't want to raise, what's the next product you're going to launch?

Plans to Grow in the English Market

Aurelien Amacker

13:39>> No, grow this thing, you know, like start getting some traction in the English market. Actually, it's happening right now, it's very exciting. We get like, get so many testimonials and people promoting us and noticing, we're doing some outreach. So just keeping this thing, know, and getting to 10 millions in revenue, then 20 millions, 30 millions and hopefully get back on your show, you know.

Nathan Latka

14:01You should start using Founderpath so that I can put other companies that are email marketing or funnel builders or affiliate firms or video hosting in front of you and you can start buying them with your profits and growing faster. How about that?

Aurelien Amacker

14:13>> Could be. I mean, that would be better than, you know, buying some stocks, I guess, right?

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Personal Life

Nathan Latka

14:17There you go. I would love that. Well, Aurelien, this is great. Congrats on your growth. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite book.

Aurelien Amacker

14:24>> So favorite book. The truth is I cannot name it, because I think there is one book that's responsible for our success. I'm going to name the second one after that would be, I mean the great book that I've just read, it's Working Backwards by two senior, former senior executives at Amazon, you know.

14:43>> Was very interesting.

Nathan Latka

14:44Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Aurelien Amacker

14:48>> Yeah, Jeff B, my man. Jeff Bezos.

14:51>> Jeff Bezos.

Nathan Latka

14:52Number three. What's your favorite online tool for building a business besides your own?

Aurelien Amacker

14:56>> Oh, it's out of Slack. I mean, it's amazing. We're entirely remote, so I can go, you know, I can go to the beach, I can go to the gym, whatever, and, you know, faking I'm still working, so it's great.

Nathan Latka

15:06Do you use remote.com to manage your remote employees?

Aurelien Amacker

15:09>> No, I've never heard of it. What's that?

Nathan Latka

15:11How do you manage like payroll in 20 different countries?

Aurelien Amacker

15:14>> So it's a mess. Like my wife handles the payments. They have to send invoices. So we use Time Doctor to track timing, but

15:24>> yeah, it's a lot of work.

Nathan Latka

15:25Aurelien, you definitely should use remote.com. They have a special deal. They want to sponsor the show and I said, give me a great deal for my people. You are one of my people. You've on it for five years. So you guys check it out. If you have a lot of remote employees and you want decrease all the stress associated with paying them, you know, tax burdens, IP issues, that, try out nathanlakka.com/remote. All right, Aurelien, how about

15:45that for organic ad placement? That was pretty smooth, right?

Aurelien Amacker

15:49>> That was perfect. You're a killer.

Nathan Latka

15:51How many hours of sleep do get every night?

Aurelien Amacker

15:54>> Like, eight hours.

Nathan Latka

15:55Eight. Okay.

15:57And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Aurelien Amacker

16:00>> Married, one four year old daughter.

Nathan Latka

16:02Wow. And how old are you?

Aurelien Amacker

16:04>> I'm 41.

16:05>> 41.

Nathan Latka

16:06Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Aurelien Amacker

16:09>> That's I'm not gonna believe it, you know, like buckle up.

Nathan Latka

16:14Guys, there you have it. Get going. Systeme.io, they went from 1,500,000 revenue in 2019 to over 4,800,000 run rate. Today they're doing this all bootstrapped. 8,000 customers are competing with ClickFunnels. Most of the revenue and the growth have come from affiliates. Over 600 affiliates made money last month through the program. They pay out a $100k a month right now to their affiliates. They are profitable. Take about a $100k a month to the bottom line as he

16:36reinvests in buying his dream home. Maybe the stocks one day, but having a lot of success. Aurelien owns a 100%. My man, thanks for taking us to the top.

Aurelien Amacker

16:44>> Thank you very much, Nathan. It was a pleasure.

Nathan Latka

16:48One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM

17:13Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button, and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big

17:35fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up

17:57for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We

18:16got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the

Aurelien Amacker

18:23comments.

18:23>> See you.