How Tapclicks CEO Alexandra (Sasha) Solovyeva grew Tapclicks to $20M revenue and 5K customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is he is the ceo silicon valley veteran of technology and marketing solutions he's an angel investor entrepreneur and fortune 500 executive and is now building his company called tap clicks he's got a bse from the sjsu and is an alumni of harvard business school babak are you ready to take us to the top i sure am all right tap clicks last time you were on was about oh february 2018 you said you had about 3 000 customers 100 employees uh where are you guys at today how you doing things are looking really good so we're now at about 5 000 agencies and media companies using our platform to service millions of smbs and national advertisers and we're approximately 250 people 250 people and those are those are 5000 those are actual paying customers not like you know free or okay and you said 250 team yes all still san jose no we're all over the world now so our main areas are san jose uh boston montreal nashville and then we got teams now in india as well as latin america very good and for people that missed our first interview together help them understand what the company does well really at the core of the business we help large and medium-sized agencies and media companies manage all their marketing data and operations with a platform that offers io workflow analytics and reporting that's really what we do as a product line these companies get incredible efficiencies through using us they can service their customers really really well by offering basically storyboarding how their campaigns are doing for them managing all that big data unifying it visualizing it and reporting it so that anytime anywhere somebody wants to see that data at their level they can see it through our reporting solutions or analytics dashboards and arpu's still around 300 bucks a customer per month well you know as you know we have different types of customers and on average on the middle to high end we're looking at 2 000 a month and then it goes all the way down to hundreds of hundred hundreds of dollars per month yeah i mean what do you think of fair averages across the entire base three four hundred no it's probably higher it's more like uh 900 to a thousand bucks okay okay so fair i mean that that's triple what it was you know two years ago so you've driven some expansion revenue it sounds like new product lines yes we're we're really excited about our new product lines that you know what we call the marketing operations platform is taken off very nicely both in the large customer base and media medium-sized agencies we're seeing growth in the number of agencies and it's all of it is getting traction we've introduced new products in in the area of marketing as well such as seo serve site auditing etc so it's it's really becoming a full platform right now now when i take 900 bucks a month times those 5 000 customers i mean that puts you at like 4.5 million a month right now in revenue is it accurate uh no it's lower than that so i i think i i made a the numbers too high then on the average side so okay so so how many but it is 5 000 customers yes okay and so and our poo would be closer i mean if you're doing 400 bucks a month on average that would put you i mean what is that 400 times five thousand two million bucks a month yeah you're closer yeah okay got i mean have you got have you guys broken two million a month at this point no no no do you think it'll happen in the next month or two we're expecting to do 20 million arr uh in in q2 we expect to hit that in this quarter so it's a little lower actually okay so just to be clear 20 million in terms of runaway would be 1.6 million a month you're hoping to break that kind of this quarter so what are you at today one and a half one and a half okay so that would be yeah that would be a 300 rpoo 300 bucks times 5 000 customers puts you about 1.5 today yeah and that is that is from a growth rate perspective uh you know you were doing about 1.1 in mr last time you were on so so does that sound about right to you uh yeah i think when we talked last time it was about 1.1 yeah it was so again that was around december of 2017 as when that would have been um so what is i mean what has growth been year over year would you say my view on the growth on the um on the revenue side i feel like we were doing when we talked about 10 million in revenue and we we closed the year at 15. uh in terms of in terms of cash collected or run rate cash collector okay and so december 2018 which would have been four or five months ago you were doing what about 1.2 1.3 a month that's right okay got it that means you only would have added like 200 000 in new bookings in terms of mrr uh last i mean all last year is that right no no no i don't think so so i think we added um we've added about the number 1.1 was really from feb i believe and i i'm not as quick as you're doing that math but i would say i want to say that we've gone from a million to million and a half okay okay got it for over uh that would have been uh over what period of time about 12 to 13 months got it and you're at 1.5 today hoping to break 1.6 here in the next uh two or three months yes that's good um let's get off the numbers here for a second let's talk strategy so so growing the company right what has been your kind of growth channel to go from you know again you have 3000 customers 18 months ago now you're at 5 000 where have you gotten them it's a combination of uh just organic growth and i think we discussed we had some acquisitions along the way that has really helped our growth as well okay tell me about one of those did you do an acquisition last year we did yes come on back don't let me pull out of you what was the company why'd you do it it hasn't been announced so i can't announce it right now but we do do an acquisition recently we did do one that's in the area of uh mobile uh reporting as well as collaboration tools i'm really excited i want to share that with you but i can't okay how much how much have you raised today we have done 10 million of venture debt last year about a year ago and uh we had some seed funding as well from some angel investors yeah you told me last time we had five million raised in equities so you have 15 million raised total when you add the equity plus venture debt throughout the history of the company that's correct yeah why do i mean how are we able to lock down 10 million of venture debt i mean that's that is a little i mean that is way more than what most people will do the usually it's a per it's like you know anywhere between four and maybe three and six x of your mrr 10 million and you're doing 1.3 i mean that's almost like call it 10x your mrr uh it's yes probably somewhere around there i would say that in general the our partner really believes in our vision and our strategy and what's going on with the company wait why the hell does that matter venture debt doesn't care what your vision or strategy is there's no equity upside for them they just care a little bit these guys are a little bit different they're they're like a hybrid model of venture debt and equity so i i wouldn't put him into that who who is it who is it boathouse capital okay so do they take warrants and covenants and things that's right oh okay so yes they do yes they do that's right got it got it got it now that was on that was on the back i think obviously uh with sas capital as well right yeah so we we already took care of that one so sas capital is no longer our partner i do want to say they're a great company to work with okay so that was the 3 million you took back in april of 2017. you're saying you already paid that all back off that's right i see okay and they did not okay and the 10 million was just from boathouse that's correct have you seen i mean you're you're rare in that you have chosen to hold on to equity and go this kind of venture debt route which by the way i don't think it's a good or bad thing i actually like it i like that you're holding on more of the company um any downside you've seen by doing that anybody any been any temptation to just say screw it let's just go raise equity not anything like that i'm saying i think the the package that they offer from a hybrid model is very very attractive to a company like ours it does really reduce dilution and i think i view it as lower cost equity really the way it's structured uh i do believe that as the company is growing and we have very high hopes now we're at 5 000 we got the right amount of people to have that momentum so we're going to continue our growth and i think we're going to be looking at about 7 000 agencies and media companies by the end of the year and much much higher growth rates so when you look at that then you start thinking about okay the next round is going to be large and it's going to be equity yeah are you burning capital today in terms of profitability are you at break even just a little bit like a little bit as like 100 grand or like a 5 million no no it's like 100 100...