TimeBolt Revenue (2024)

[00:00] Timebolt.io. They're adding 10 new customers per day doing 12,500 per month just in recurring revenue. They've also sold almost $300,000 total sales and lifetime sales since they launched in 2019. They help all those YouTube creators, businesses on TikTok, etcetera, quickly edit videos. They save a lot of time, a lot of money. That's why people are willing to pay them $17 per month. Over a thousand monthly paying customers profitable today. Team of two, and they then lean [00:23] on five other contractors. Bootstrapped, which we love. Hey, folks. My guest today is Doug Wulff. He is building timebolt, the world's fastest video timeline editor. Delete dead air and speed up silence instantly and rapidly cut through boring footage. Is it timebolt.io? Doug, you ready to take us to the top? [00:43] >> Yes. [00:44] Alright. Fill in more of your history there because timebolt's not your first gig. How many years have you been in startups? [00:46] >> For about fifteen years. I've been making videos since 2001. So it's been quite some time that I was learning how to leverage video to to sell product and sell software. This my first gig was, selling squirrel guards that go on substation power lines that go invented. [01:02] Oh, wow. Is this your first SaaS company? [01:05] >> No. Yes. This is my first this is my first SaaS startup. We've I've raised capital for more capital intensive businesses that I founded. We're a little too early in 2014, 2015 with a live EDM TV network using robotic camera systems that didn't require a manned operator. So we had some of the smartest guys on the planet, you know, making robotic cameras move like humans and capturing content without actually being there from an iPad 1,800 miles away. [01:36] You were early. [01:38] >> We're a little early, but what was nice with timebolt was certainly getting into enterprise video and how that's been exploding since, you know, 2017. And I think just like with anyone, I was just looking for ways to stand out and be heard more effectively. And I saw this effect on LinkedIn and I I may have been in video, some level of video for fifteen years, but it wasn't until I saw the jump cut [02:02] >> being used on a video on LinkedIn. I was like, wow, this guy never stops to breathe. It's like he doesn't have time to think. And it's just like thought after thought after thought. And that's exactly the way my brain wants it on LinkedIn. And so I got to looking at it and doing the same effect. And I was like, there is no way YouTubers that are doing this effect are doing this by hand because it would [02:24] >> take takes five minutes for every one minute video. [02:27] So, Doug, they're using a lot of your or technology like yours to do these videos. Are you now sell are you b to b or b to c? Are you selling to YouTube creators? [02:35] >> YouTube creators, business to business creators. We've got gaming content creators at 35% of our [02:44] So what's the what's the average customer pay you then per month? [02:47] >> So we have we sell a monthly annual lifetime subscription. The monthly is $17 a month. The annual is $97 a month, and the lifetime is a $250. I just like that. [03:02] How many okay. Give us a timeline here. When did you launch the business? [03:05] >> December 2019, we launched the business. I'm a co founder. I have a technical co founder. I'm in charge of the marketing distribution. My partner, Quinston Pimenta, the brains behind the, you know, technology handles all the product development. [03:19] Who owns who owns more equity? [03:21] >> We're it's it's a it's a fair split. It's a fair split between us both. [03:25] Has that backfired or have you it's worked so far? [03:28] >> It's it's it's worked so far. We're entirely bootstrapped. Right? So we didn't have to bring in an outside investor in order to get the business up and running like I'd done and had my soul sucked out of my life, you know, for for years. When you also [03:43] See my language, baby. [03:44] >> Know, you're one to follow. [03:45] My language. [03:46] >> Yeah. I mean, like, years, but you're, you know, you're at the bottom of the ocean and you're only one there and, you know, it gets more considerably more expensive to fail each time, you know, you you get older. [03:57] Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 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 Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect [04:20] your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna [04:44] get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, private equity firm is different. If you're gonna 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 [05:06] 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 traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired, the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're [05:32] going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at, and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right, we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but [05:54] if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into [06:20] the interview. Twenty nineteen December, you get going. You sell this $250 lifetime plan. How many lifetime plans have you sold to date? [06:27] >> Over 1,300. And [06:30] Wow. That's a ton. So 1,300 times two fifty that's $325,000 of sales from a lifetime plan. [06:35] >> Yes. And we're around that. We're we're around that total [06:40] How do you tell me how you do that. How do you go how do you go sell to 1,300 people? [06:44] >> Okay. But but where where we also we have 900 we have over a thousand active paying subscribers as well. [06:52] Monthly. [06:54] >> Monthly and annual. Correct. So we're at about, you know, $12,500 recurring revenue and about 20 a month with the actual with the lifetimes. [07:02] So $12,500, 12,500 per month or about a $150,000 per year, not including lifetimes? [07:08] >> Correct. [07:09] And if you're at 12,500 today monthly, again, not including lifetimes, where were you exactly one year ago? Do you remember? [07:15] >> Almost exactly half. We've been growing at about 11% month over month when you take all the months consecutive and and that's about 11% month over month growth. [07:24] That's Great. [07:26] >> That's pro and and and that's net profit, the numbers that we're we're talking about, because what's nice about this model, we decide [07:34] Wait. Wait. I don't understand that. What do you mean that's net profit? How do you pay salaries and marketing? [07:38] >> I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's gross profit. I apologize for that. [07:41] Okay. Okay. [07:42] >> Because we're a downloadable software, it actually sits right there on your computer, so your computer is what's powering all the algorithms, so you know we pay maybe $7 a month to Amazon, you know, a server, just for actually downloading the software, so the expense of running these high these large gigabit files, you know, long video files is negligible. It just doesn't cost us anything additional. [08:07] Okay. And how many folks are full time today? [08:10] >> Two. We just have a team of two, and I we, of course, open that up to contractors, whether that's design contractors, you know, technology creators over the course of time. So we have about four or five of those. [08:24] What kind of contractor did you pay the most money to in November here of twenty twenty two? A designer, a video editor, something else? [08:32] >> Something you won't be able to see until another two weeks. But what's sitting behind all this is a brand new brand story, new homepage. We've [08:43] So designer UI UX person? [08:45] >> Yes. And then the implementation of it on the web, it's all created now. We're just we're filling in a couple pieces. [08:50] Where tell me how you found this contractor that you trusted with the whole website rewrite. [08:56] >> That's that is something I've been able to I've had good luck going out to Fiverr and Upwork and finding decent designers. And it's certainly a level, like, when you start talking about logos and some of the more specific creative graphics or typography, you know, at, like, $45, a $100, hell, you might get something that you really like, you don't, you know, you just kinda come up in your head, hey, I'm willing for this type of asset, [09:20] >> I'd be willing to spend $300 for it, know, go ahead and get on Upwork and ask three or four people to do those things. [09:28] >> But I have a resource, I had a resource that I went and asked and said, hey look, I'm, you know, I don't want amateur hour when it comes to design. What I end up finding out is that you the Founder are the one that's responsible for really coming up with the content, the flow, the ideas behind it. The designer just comes in and adds that depth and professionalism to to that brand message. They're not gonna come [09:53] >> up with some new brand story that's gonna hook and create a category that's not the case. [09:58] So Doug, do you what do you pay for all of your fixed headcount expenses, including contractors monthly right now? [10:04] >> What's in both? I'm not sure. I'm [10:09] You pay yourself? [10:10] >> Yes. Absolutely. [10:11] Okay. That's good. [10:12] >> So my my partner and I basically split we basically split revenue costs, things like that. [10:18] Are you guys profitable today? [10:20] >> Yes. [10:21] Even after paying yourself? [10:24] >> I I have a a positive bank account. I mean, I haven't always had that. [10:28] So Let me well, let's just say this. Let's say you're doing 12,500 per month. You each pay yourself $2,000 a month. So there's 4 k of expenses there, then there's other expenses. That leaves maybe, like, whatever, 2, 3 k hitting the bottom line of like business profit after you pay yourself. Are you guys profitable using that sort of strategy? [10:42] >> Yes. Yes. So we're so we're the investments that we're making, so instead of taking home, you know, 9,000, we each take home $6,000 and pay, you know, the put that other money to work in other ways. [10:56] But How do you think about that? I mean, one of things that I I I try and find with clearly creators early on, you know, indie hacker creators like you is, like, are they good capital allocators? So typically, a lot of these folks, when they're pre 1,000,000 in ARR, like, you'll just pay yourself a big salary, which is great. Nothing against it. Love it. Beautiful lifestyle. We all start like that. The great ones are that builds, you know, [11:15] 5, 10, 15 million a month in rev sorry, a year in revenue. They re they they know where to take those dollars, put them back into the machine, and build the machine. Have you found that flywheel yet? Are you still working on it? [11:27] >> We're still working on it. I I think so much we we're in a really interesting space with video and just using some of the features, for example, we have coming out, check. Okay? There's a lot of funny jokes and a lot of satire comedy that can be done with something called uncheck, you know, uncheck.com. And so we just now feel within the last, you know, two, three months that we have really tacked on the additional features [11:52] >> to really begin to to work to create our own category and create some category defining video content. That's where stuff that gets shared naturally, that applies to people, you know, that that you don't have to pin put such a specific market in order for it to work, think, is is a holy grail when it comes to content. [12:10] Yep. That makes a ton of sense. Talk to me about growth, though. You never answered how you got a thousand paying customers. [12:16] >> The the first part was was there were blogs and forums all over the Internet that were asking were that were creators. It was just YouTubers suffering in silence in 2019. They were just like, is there anything that cuts dead air? You know, there's just huge forums about these conversations. And I knew [12:33] once Like, name one. Name a big forum you got customers from. [12:36] >> Adobe's. Like, even on Adobe, competitors forums. I mean, the competitors have our name linked out to timebolt like Camtasia, Filmora. Like, Filmora has been a fantastic referral source. [12:51] Do you pay them or they give you free referrals? [12:53] >> No. That's that's all free. So I made sure that I was found by those that were looking for a solution to the problem at least would find a link, which then obviously helped my SEO. I do have a search engine optimization background, just like with other, like any co you know, any founder would have that, you know, I had to bootstrap his own companies and create growth. [13:11] So how many how many organic hits do you get from Google right now per month that are free? [13:16] >> So we're averaging between 150 to 200 unique visits a day. Okay. We are, we've got, we're basically selling five to 10 on the higher side of that 10 new subscribers a day. The churn on the, you know, you get a decent high churn on the monthly subscribers, but what what's funny is you just start canceling them out every time one doesn't, the payment doesn't go through. What we find is there's just payments that are only meant [13:44] >> to go through once. And what's nice is we've got such a, we've got a product that's once they start using it, they don't want to stop. And as soon as that's gone, you know, they're re signing back up. So we're averaging four, recurrence. So we're averaging about, four different recurring business days. [14:01] So on Monday through Friday, you get 200 hits from Google organically. You convert or sorry, 10 of those into a paid customer. So you're adding like something between a hundred and two hundred new customers per month. [14:10] >> And dropping, you like and you lose because what happens is they end up buying, the other do two things. One of the they drop off because of the payment and then come back on and sign on, that's why our average return is four, or they or they just buy a lifetime, right? And so we're trying to reach that point where we get up enough recurring monthly recurring revenue that we could comfortably, you know, we could at [14:33] >> least live on that and then begin to increase the price of our of our lifetime to it. [14:39] Yep. Makes tons of sense, man. This is quite a story you've got. You guys can check it out timebolt.io. Let's wrap up here, Doug, with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book? [14:49] >> Favorite favorite, Snow Leopard. [14:52] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [14:56] >> Scott Belsky. [14:58] Number messy Middle. That's a good one. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building timebolt besides your own? [15:04] >> Thrivecart. [15:06] And number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night? [15:10] >> Seven. [15:11] Okay. Situation, married, single, kids? [15:14] >> Oh, it's a mess. I can't well, I'm a 44 year old dude lives in an apartment. Right? And there's there's a you know, I I I stay here so I can be with my kids and and stay with my kids, but I learned a lot of life lessons. But I am single to put fully into my company. [15:28] Four four kids, you said? [15:30] >> No. No. Well, I have three. One of them is a marine and grown up and [15:34] Oh, wow. Alright. So so not married, three kiddos, and you're you said you're 40? [15:39] >> Yes. 44. [15:40] 44. Okay. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [15:48] >> If you do startups for too long, you are not you are you become unhirable in the marketplace. [15:55] This is very true, guys. Timebolt.io. They're adding 10 new customers per day doing 12,500 per month just in recurring revenue. They've also sold almost $300,000 total sales and lifetime sales since they launched in 2019. They help all those YouTube creators, businesses on TikTok, etcetera, quickly edit videos. They save a lot of time, a lot of money. That's why people are willing to pay them $17 per month. Over a thousand monthly paying customers profitable today. Team of [16:19] two, and they then lean on five other contractors, bootstrapped, which we love. Doug, thanks for taking us to the top. [16:24] >> Thank you very much, Nathan. [16:27] One 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 one [16:52] p. M. Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at two p. M. Central. 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