How Time Control CEO Chris Vandersluis grew Time Control to $8.6M revenue and 280 customers in 2024.

Introduction hey folks my guest today is chris vander slewis he's the founder president ceo of hms software founded five years before i was born 1984. he's a pro he's a prolific spokesperson on enterprise timesheet and project management systems and his writing has appeared in a number of publications including fortune the ma's handbook and microsoft tech net chris you're ready to take us to the top absolutely all right i aged the company a little bit there but tell us what hms is selling today what are people paying you for yeah so our fundamental product is called time control it's an enterprise timesheet system uh and it's a little different than some of the timesheet systems on the market we made a multi-purpose timesheet system which can be used not just for time and attendance but also for project oriented time for r d tax credits so an auditable timesheet system that can be used for billing for uh attendance and for tracking people's time we've also added to that now because we're so strong working on historical time we've added to that the uh the ability to look forward and do project scheduling and project uh planning uh in something we call time control projects so that's a premium version of our online system very interesting now what are what are folks paying on average per month or per year for this uh yeah so the uh the average per user um is somewhere in the 50 to 60 dollar range um and uh and we charge it annually so um so it can come down to as little as uh you know three four five dollars a month per user uh depending on what people are uh what number of people are uh are subscribing for and what are the team sizes usually signing up are we talking 10 people or 10 000 people 10 well yeah 10 000 would be at our higher range we have a couple of ten thousand plus uh clients uh but the probably the average is in the 300 to 600 range okay so 300 folks at 50 bucks a year that's an acv average of like what 15 grand is a sweet spot for you yeah yeah it was amazing okay so you get going back you said in 1984 right indeed yes back in the day i was younger than nathan i was like you're right yeah yeah that's that's incredible um what what were you back then i assume you've pivoted a couple times yeah we've pivoted it's a very good question we've pivoted several times we started off as a couple of guys doing custom programming uh we were in the project management space by luck of the draw i guess because we started we started working for companies that needed project management software then we became a distributor for a project management product in canada and in 1994 i pivoted again i bought my partner out of the business pivoted into being a publisher and time control was the result and i'll be honest time control was uh the result because it was for me low hanging fruit at the time we had written several time sheets i knew what that was about i was sure i could sell it and um and we did as an on-prem solution in 94. that's incredible um and so do you want 100 of the business today Bootstrapped yes wow okay so you bought back your co-founders there's no outside investors back the co-founder way back in uh way back in 94 um you know a deal we were both happy with um and then we had some investors in 99 bought them out in 2006 um and so now you're just stuck with me that's amazing okay and what's a team size today how many folks full time uh yeah we're just under 25. um so it's a you know so it's a very tight team uh mostly located in uh canada uh but now you know with things being remote people are a little further afield depending a little bit on how you count the size we're talking about staff size so yeah between 20 and 25 if we're talking about uh people who may be doing consulting or implementations or other things uh they may be almost anywhere in the world and the numbers probably double that interesting um so 25 people how many are engineers uh yeah uh third eight eight okay varian interesting okay eight eight or nine okay got it and how many customers do Currently serving 280 customers you have today yeah we have um we have just uh under 300 so about 280 uh at last count so that's up a little bit from the last time we talked in terms of customer numbers is uh slower right we're growing organically by design and by intent and um and we're selling an enterprise system um and so so we don't really expect it's not like we expect to have hundreds of new clients every month oh what's going on there youtube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with sas founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews i've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built it into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out i'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for valuation this year now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a sas business so the reason you're going to see three or four different valuations inside of your frowner path dashboard this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your sas company you're going to get a different valuation a vc is going to pay a different valuation private equity firm is different if you're going to do a minority sale that's different and if you sell the whole business that's a different valuation you can see all those when i hover over here right so the teal is what a vc would pay yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright now what's cool about this is this is not built off random data again you guys hear these interviews on youtube all these datas are built from real-time valuation data points founders share with us on the show so attraction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raised they sold 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valuation data live right inside the platform i hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview Monthly recurring revenue yeah i mean 280 customers paying 15 000 a year on average would mean your mrr today is what about 300 350 000 uh yeah just under that actually about 280. 280. okay that's this is a great business at 280 obviously times 12 puts you at a run rate of about what is that 3.3 million right yeah yeah this is great now what how do you grow bigger are you going to keep expanding seats in the 280 or you think you add a bunch more customers well we're going to add a bunch more customers but by a bunch some people would think it's kind of at a slow number i mean some of those clients are smaller some of them are larger um it's been an interesting change over the last uh three years of course because of the pandemic and the shutdown we have found ourselves spending a lot of time converting our old on-prem clients to online clients um and so that's been good for us and i guess good for the clients um but for us you know it's better for support better for cash flow better for total revs so and what does that growth look like if you're doing 280 000 a month today what were you doing a year ago uh yeah about 240 240. interesting now imagine folks have approached you to try and buy the business many times what's the largest acquisition all of your friends keep calling me nathan i know you're coming on the show this doesn't help you're going to get a bunch more calls but uh but uh what's the largest acquisition offer you've turned down i haven't i've refused to hear acquisition office offers i do talk to people on a regular basis um i mean we're currently not for sale i'm not shopping for money and i'm not shopping for an exit so it's not that somebody couldn't come along and say oh i have a huge box of un uh non-sequential unmarked bills here would you take it there's obviously some offer at which anybody would sell but um at the moment i mean i've got a pretty good deal right we're making good profits i get to take the money home what's good like 10 20 uh yeah over 20 percent it was just uh Profits under 30 last year which is the best every year for profits and i mean we don't take it all um but uh you know we took you know that's by the way chris that's approaching a million that's approaching a million dollars in profits right uh yes it's under actually but yeah it was like under it wasn't 30 it was like between about 20 by the time we paid out dividends and paid out uh bonuses and stuff for the staff you know we ended up with 22 un required monies so wait chris tell me about that i have so many bootstrap founders that say yes and i want to do dividends and bonuses but i don't know how to structure it how do you structure your dividend program well the dividend i mean dividend program is what chris wants so um so the program is how much is left uh at the end of the day uh what do we need to do for uh taking care of the staff and uh and uh staff retention in terms of bonuses things like that um and then uh you know for me the calculation at the end of the at the end of the year is well this is what's left over what should i leave in the company for growth for you know healthy cash flow for working capital and um and let's get the rest out and so uh you know so yeah for me last year it was you know it was a nice amount of money is there a math formula though you follow for your team of 25 that says okay there's there's um you know six hundred thousand dollars of profits you've been here for three years so you're getting one percent you've been here for four years that kind of thing yeah it works i mean i allocate of the profits about 20 for bonuses so um so 20 of the money i mean that's that's not a promise but i mean if we like last year that was about the the number and so the staff shared that based on like you say based on longevity and their role in the company yeah so it sounds like you get about eight hundred thousand of total ebitda right twenty percent of that would be two hundred thousand that you split between the employees six hundred thousand bottom line and you say that's the crisp plan what do i wanna do with this uh basically yeah yeah and so you know about half of it stayed in the company and you know the rest uh you know uh we carefully took care of to make sure both the irs and revenue canada were taken care of and then um yeah and then kind of put it aside so uh are you uh are you married i am i'm married here in tampa florida two uh growing stepsons one in high school one in middle school i've got a um a daughter in canada who's a quite a successful uh influencer um so yeah that's amazing so the real question on your reason is the real question on your sales price is if someone says chris today i want to buy the company for 30 million all cash up front when you tell your spouse tonight the dinner table what's the number where they go chris you said no to that you're that's crazy yeah probably 30 million dollars read the answer so um so somebody went to say you know 10 times rev 15 times rev 12 times rev five times rev no because i can take that out of the company myself right yeah um and then i i mean for me the the life decision would be okay and so now i'll have a big box of money and what um i mean you know i have i've got a great job i really love my work um you know today you're the most stressful part of my day so um you know i better get my numbers together but um but you know i get to i get to take care of companies like interpol and uh general electric and amd i mean these people are doing things um and we get i mean it's not like we're running those companies but we get to be a small part of what they're building that's pretty cool it's very cool that's very cool all right well chris on that note i guess one last question would you ever use profits to go buy another company do a little roll up strategy i get offered every once in a while i was offered actually just this month from somebody who has been in contact with me about you know trying to find me a buyer which i keep telling them thanks i'm not currently looking for a buyer you know i appreciate the company um and i actually did look but it wasn't for us um so would i maybe uh you know it would have to be uh it would have to be a great mix we've seen many examples of people who try to put uh companies together usually because there's something wrong and that's of not great interest to me i mean it would have to be some kind of a strategic fit yeah makes a lot of sense crystal not now let's wrap up here with the famous five no and i should say okay i never i'm never ready so go ahead no you're you're gonna be ready i will say we're very excited you're taking the stage at founder 500 september 1st in austin texas i'm very excited for your keynote i hope you go deeper into what do i want to celebrate which are bootstrap founders they keep 100 control that have dividends they pay their team out you build a great life i can't wait to hear the keynote i've got my flights booked already so i'm ready to go we're excited for that all right famous five number one favorite book uh i'm reading you know i i pulled it out just for you last night uh i'm currently reading uh ai 2041 by kfuli which is 2041 sorry 2041 yeah ah very good okay number two is there a ceo you're following or studying i'm really not i mean i i hear about a lot of people but there's no one in particular that i'm following number three what's your favorite online tool for building time control uh linkedin still is i listened to my podcast from 2018. still linkedin yo so you did your research number four how many hours of sleep to get every night uh yeah five six okay and situate what we already said this married with you said three kids uh yeah one uh one um is mine up in uh canada and uh two stepsons here who keep me plenty busy one just started driving that's a terrifying notion that is terrifying and chris how old are you i am 64. 64 years young last i'm getting older now nathan nah you're young you got plenty of time uh last question something you wish you knew when you were 20 uh something i wish i knew um yeah to be more patient i take the long view coming from a guy that's been building the company for 30 years that's a surprising answer but you have to take the long view i mean if i was just looking at things week by week i mean i don't know it would be a different kind of company but not one that would be you know as exciting to me guys timecontrol.com auditable or audit proof timesheets but didn't start that way back in 1984 got launched pivoted many times bought out his co-founder now he owns 100 of the business they're doing 240 000 a month a year ago now doing 280 000 a month for a 3.3 million dollar run rate last year though they took about 800k to the bottom line and paid out 200k in dividends and rewards out to his team at 25. the rest 600k says you know what it's a great life being a bootstrap founder that's profitable what should i do with the money good problem to have we're rooting for him chris thanks for taking us to the top thanks nathan one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas 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 1 p.m central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m 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 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