T.LY Revenue (2023)

[00:00] Hey folks, my guest today is Tim Leland. He's the creator of T. LY, URL shortener and link management tool. His goal is simple, make creating short links a one click process. This led him to create the URL browser extension that makes it easy to create, share, and track these URLs. Currently, the company has over 10,000,000 short URLs created and tracked, sorry, and over a 100,000,000 clicks across those links. The link shortener extension has over 400,000 active [00:23] users. It's an affordable URL shortener that allows users to brand, track, and share their short URLs. Tim, you ready to take us to the top? [00:31] >> Sure. [00:32] Alright. Everyone thought Bitly won this space. What mousetrap did you build that that made you steal market share here? [00:38] >> Yeah. That's a great question. [00:42] >> Know, Bitly has been around for a long time and definitely still probably the most popular that you see. But what I've been able to do is build the URL shorter extension that has gained a lot of popularity. And then on top of that, I built [00:58] >> a shorter URL shortener using the domain t.ly and have seen lot of growth over the past year or so. [01:08] Mhmm. So so I think the product this is a rare case where we don't spend much time on the product. It's exactly what it sounds like, a URL shortener. Right? So what are people paying for this? How do you make money? [01:19] >> Yeah. So, I mean, it's you can use it for free. Go create, you know, short URLs. But when it comes to some additional features, so some additional analytics, the ability to use the API, custom domains, be able to change the ending of the short URL and some other features that you only get for paying. So smart URL. So if you want one URL that will redirect based on a user's country, browser and different things like that, [01:51] >> You know, if if they're on a phone, you wanna take them to the App Store. They're on, you know, desktop, you want may wanna take them to your desktop app. So that type of thing. [02:02] Mhmm. Very cool. And so when people do this, if you look at only your paid user base on average, what's the customer paying per month? [02:09] >> Yeah. So I when I started this and I think their prices have changed, but Bitly to be able to have a custom domain, you know, it was it was very pricey. So I went with the approach of, you know, a more affordable option. So I started off at $5 a month and that's where I'm at right now. So, you know, pretty much anybody can get in there at their own domain and start sharing the term as [02:36] >> branded links so they can use their own domain and create as many short URLs, you know, depending on what plan they're on. [02:47] This is great. I love this story. Okay. So a URL extension, browser extension allows you to grow a big user base product led growth. You put up a $5 a month paywall. Now people are paying today. How many folks are now paying? [02:58] >> Yeah. I actually looked at that just now. I have over 600 paying customers. So obviously, there's churn in there and but once somebody gets using it and they're happy with it, they usually stick around for a while. [03:11] That's awesome. Okay. So $3,000 a month in revenue about. Right? [03:15] >> Well, the plans go up and down. So I'm actually over the 4,000. So depending on what plan they select. So there's, you know, the plans are really the difference are if you want teams and if you want additional short URLs per month. So that's how it kinda scales. Some some people sending out a lot of short links want to be able to, you know, generate more per month. [03:38] Understood. And what year did you launch the business? [03:43] >> 2020. [03:44] 2020. Okay. So fairly new. I mean, are you or is this a sole founder scenario up to four k a month? [03:50] >> Yep. Yep. It's just me, you know, kinda doing it almost as a side project on top of full time job. So this just, you know, nights and weekends type of thing for me. [04:02] 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 [04:25] 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 [04:50] 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 [05:11] not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder 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 [05:37] 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 [05:59] 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 [06:25] the interview. That's on your I see dad posters behind you. You're a busy guy. [06:30] >> Yes. Yes. [06:31] Alright. So did how many kids do you have? [06:34] >> Three boys. [06:35] Whoo. Okay. Three boys, a startup, and a full time gig. Yep. [06:39] >> Yep. [06:40] Alright. Busy guy. So okay. I guess walk me through why $5, and when did you officially launch that that paywall? What months? [06:49] >> Oh, I'd have to look back at that. [06:52] Was it I mean, was it this year or last year? [06:55] >> It was last year. [06:57] Okay. So second year in business. And why $5? Or you just sort of make it up and see what happens? [07:03] >> Yeah. I think I kind of went the route of what a lot of people starting out, they don't charge enough. But but I was trying to, you know, give an affordable option to people who just want, you know, a certain number of links per month. So that's Mhmm. That's kinda where I came with the price. You know, I did some calculations on, you know, how much storage and scaling. That's where the cost comes in for me [07:26] >> is server cost and scaling this. [07:29] What do you think all in costs are per month? [07:33] >> Per user? [07:34] No. No. For you. For you to run the business. So [07:38] >> hosting wise, I'm over $300 a month. [07:40] So that's That's your biggest cost? [07:43] >> Biggest yep. And I've started experimenting with some advertising. So seeing how that goes to, you know, paid advertising. [07:53] So Mhmm. [07:54] And and so what do you wanna do with the business long term? I mean, if someone came to you today, I mean, you have a very large Chrome extension, 400,000 users. If someone offered you, you know, a $100,000 all cash upfront today, do you sell? [08:06] >> That's a good question. I've I've actually not official had official offers, but I've had people interested. And and for now, I'm kinda holding on to it to see how far I can take it. [08:18] What was the largest offer you got? I know it wasn't binding, but just that you were talking about. [08:22] >> It was a few months ago. So, you know, it was more in the 200,000 user range. [08:30] $200,000? [08:32] >> Yes. Two two hundred thousand users. [08:34] Okay. [08:35] >> I'd I'd have to look it up. I don't remember. [08:37] But Oh, come on, Tim. You don't forget those things. What was the offer? What was the range? [08:42] >> Like, in the $60,000. [08:46] And and did you did so, I mean, did it at least warrant the conversation with your spouse at the dinner table, or were you, like, immediately, like, no? [08:53] >> I was kinda thinking that's that would be, you know, a a pretty good deal, but no. I I wanna keep growing in. We both decided, you know, keep working at it. [09:04] That's awesome. I love that. Alright. So that makes a lot of sense. Again, let me go back to my first question. So where's the product going? Right? So so do you offer $100 a month plans? Do you build what can you build on top of this, you think? [09:17] >> Yeah. So the plans scale up depending on how many short links you want per month and also team members. So I have the largest plan I have right now is a 100,000 short links per month, and that's at $400 a month. [09:34] Is anyone on that one? [09:37] >> I don't think anybody's on that one, but I have some on the the $100 a month plans. [09:42] So just to be clear, if you have a 100,000 short links per month, it's $400 a month? [09:47] >> Yes. Creating so you can create, you know, the 100,000 each month. So it kinda scales where you can do that many per month. I [09:57] mean, I don't know if you guys listening or having the same thought I am, but holy shit, Tim. You give away a lot for a very little amount of money. I mean, I've I've seen things where it's like, if you go up to five links, it's $300 a month. And you're like, 100,000 links a month for $400 a month. Why not? [10:11] >> Yeah. That's yeah. That's it could be it could come back and bite me. [10:15] How many here's a way to reverse engineer that. How many users do you have that have more than that created more than a 100 links last month? Do you know? [10:25] >> I don't have those numbers. I'd have to take a look. [10:28] But Do you know do you have some sense of how active your biggest users are? How many links they create per month? [10:35] >> Yeah. So the biggest thing is not necessarily the links, but more so the tracking of the redirects. So that's where a lot of companies limit the number of redirects tracked per month. And that's where, you know, if somebody creates one link and it has, you know, millions of redirects and they're having to track stats on that, that's where it really starts to add up. [10:56] So So how many redirects do you allow to be tracked per month at $400 a month? [11:02] >> So it's unlimited. And Yeah. [11:07] But come on, man. So wait. Why have you been so why are you giving so much away for free? Does it make you does it make you nervous to ask for money? [11:14] >> Yeah. I think that's kind of, you know, the problem that a lot of people have, you know, starting out. [11:22] Tim, why not just rip it off? Why not just throw up a plan for $5 a month and just test it for a month and see what happens? [11:30] >> Yeah. That's a good idea. You know, you look at, like, a tiny URL who's been around for twenty years and they, you know, are doing been giving it away for free. So now they do some other things through advertising and they actually recently introduced paid plans. But [11:48] Interesting. Well, I I it's it's interesting what you've built. You know, a lot of people would kill for the kind of product led growth sort of acorn, you know, you know, foundation that you've built, which is compelling. And I also love I talk about this all the time. Actually, it was a chapter in my book about using Chrome extensions as your initial community and your initial go to market. So have you learned anything? I mean, how [12:08] did you grow that Chrome extension to 400,000 users? [12:11] >> Yeah. That's a really good question. So I started building extensions back in 2015 and I actually built a weather extension that grew to 200,000 users and [12:24] >> it's still pretty popular. It's weatherextension.com if you're interested. But so I use the extensions I've built to help promote my other extensions and this has been in that space for a while. And so the URL shortener extension, the idea came from when Google was shutting down theirs. I built the extension to use multiple services. And that's when whenever that their shut down, that's when I saw a huge jump in numbers. [12:53] Which is what year? [12:56] >> That might have been 2019. [12:58] Okay. Interesting. But now did you do things though to, like, encourage people to leave you a review on the Google Marketplace so you rank higher? Or do you optimize your headline on on the Google Marketplace to make sure they rank you in the right category? Like, this kind of stuff. [13:12] >> Yeah. So just from building the other extensions, I've kind of learned a few tricks and obviously just the words you put in there and then reviews are important. But no, I mean, it just it ranked well as far as Google searches. If you search URL shortener, it's actually in the top page, which helps out a lot. But yeah. So, you know, back in 2019, it had 60,000 users. So that's kind of the growth of, you know, [13:43] >> the past three years or so. [13:45] Mhmm. Yeah. It's interesting. When I search URL shortener in the in Google, I get all of these responses. And, yeah, you're you're listed as one of them. I'm trying to find it right here. Featured by Google. So there's a lot oh my gosh. This is competitive. Holy crap. There's a lot of these guys. [14:07] >> Yeah. So you have tiny URL, Bitly, and Rebrandly are kind of the top that I'm familiar with. [14:13] What about, like, what about, like, Tim Leland, the URL shortener, these kinds of things? [14:20] >> Not sure which [14:21] >> It's interesting. Which one is that? [14:23] Well, it's interesting because the reason I landed, it's called it's called it's under extensions URL shortener. It's called Tim Leland, t I m l e l a n d. [14:31] >> Oh, that's that's mine. [14:32] Tim Leland. Okay. I was wondering. [14:34] >> I was gonna say, because in the description, it says the best way to create short links using t dot l y. I'm like, I wonder if this is okay. [14:42] >> Yeah. [14:42] Yeah. So, this is the first result then in Google. Right? So, when when I look at URL shorteners and I go down the page and click on this thing, which is actually a it's actually a Google it's a developer. It's a develop it's a link to Google's thing, chrome.google.com/fortress for your stuff. So that's interesting. Did you intentionally set that up, is that, like, a nice accident? [15:03] >> As far as being on the top searcher? [15:05] Yeah. Like, why is Google why is Google make have yours on number one for that keyword term? Is it just because your your the name of your thing is URL shortener, and that was my search? [15:14] >> I think that's a lot of it, but I yeah. I'm not a 100% sure there. But [15:20] It makes a lot of sense. You know, people go, Nathan, why'd you name your show the top podcast when you launched? And I said, well, look. I just looked up the most searched word for podcast when I launched, and it was what's the top podcast? So I said, hell, I'll name I'll name my show the most searched thing. You know? [15:34] >> Yeah. It's it's a good idea. [15:36] Interesting. Okay. Any other tricks we should know about sort of Chrome extensions? [15:43] >> Yeah. So using your using the extensions to promote each other. So if somebody's already installing one, that's always a good thing. So, you know, when when you install mine, I kinda encourage people to check out some of my other extensions. [15:58] Mhmm. [15:58] >> Cool. [16:02] >> Yeah. [16:02] Alright. And just to clear, you're the only one on the team, is right in your bootstrapped. Right? [16:06] >> Yep. [16:07] I love that. Cool. Well, listen. We're we're excited to see what you do next. In the meantime, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book. [16:17] >> Maybe not as necessarily business book, but I just read Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's, you know, relates to business and building good habits. And so that's that's probably my most recent top choice. [16:30] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [16:37] >> So it it are you familiar with Taylor Otwell? [16:41] Nope. What company is he with? [16:43] >> He's the founder of Laravel open source development framework, and he's built several companies around stuff. [16:51] Number three, favorite online tool for building URL shortener. [16:55] >> So the the framework that I use is Laravel. So that's Laravel. Yep. The framework. Yep. [17:00] Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? [17:04] >> I try to get at least eight. [17:05] So married and with three kids. Right? [17:08] >> Yes. [17:08] And how old are you, Tim? [17:10] >> 34. [17:11] Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [17:16] >> Yeah. [17:18] >> I think when I was 20 in college, I was doing computer science. I wish I had started a business then versus, you know, wasting a lot of my free time. [17:27] Guys, there you have it. Launched in 2020 right around when Google shut down their URL shortener. He launched t.ly, his own spin on the platform. His Chrome extension now has 400,000 downloads, launched Paywall late last year for $5 a month. I think it's underpriced, but he has great revenue. His customers get great value. 600 customers paying $5 a month, about 4 ks or north of $5 a month, over about 4 ks right now in monthly recurring [17:48] revenue. Recently turned down an acquisition offer for $60,000 because he wants to see where he can grow this thing. One man solopreneur cranking it profitable. His biggest cost is $300 for hosting. We'll see what happens next. Tim, thanks for taking us to the top. [18:02] >> Thanks. This is great. [18:05] 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, 1PM [18:30] Central. 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 [18:52] fundraise, 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 [19:14] for that @nathanlatka.comslashslack. 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 got [19:34] to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. All right. I'll be in the comments. See you.