How T.LY Reached $48K Revenue and 600 Paying Customers as a One-Person URL Shortener (Interview with Founder Tim Leland)

Introduction and product overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey 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

00:23users. 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?

Tim Leland

00:31>> Sure.

Competing with Bitly and building the Chrome extension

Nathan Latka

00:32Alright. Everyone thought Bitly won this space. What mousetrap did you build that that made you steal market share here?

Tim Leland

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.

Monetization model and paid features

Nathan Latka

01:08Mhmm. 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?

Tim Leland

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.

Pricing strategy and the $5 per month plan

Nathan Latka

02:02Mhmm. 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?

Tim Leland

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.

600 paying customers and churn

Nathan Latka

02:47This 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?

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

03:11That's awesome. Okay. So $3,000 a month in revenue about. Right?

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

03:38Understood. And what year did you launch the business?

Tim Leland

03:43>> 2020.

Solo founder running a side project

Nathan Latka

03:442020. Okay. So fairly new. I mean, are you or is this a sole founder scenario up to four k a month?

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

04:02Oh, 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

04:25your 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

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06:25the interview. That's on your I see dad posters behind you. You're a busy guy.

Tim Leland

06:30>> Yes. Yes.

Nathan Latka

06:31Alright. So did how many kids do you have?

Tim Leland

06:34>> Three boys.

Nathan Latka

06:35Whoo. Okay. Three boys, a startup, and a full time gig. Yep.

Tim Leland

06:39>> Yep.

Why $5 a month and what it costs to run

Nathan Latka

06:40Alright. Busy guy. So okay. I guess walk me through why $5, and when did you officially launch that that paywall? What months?

Tim Leland

06:49>> Oh, I'd have to look back at that.

Nathan Latka

06:52Was it I mean, was it this year or last year?

Tim Leland

06:55>> It was last year.

Nathan Latka

06:57Okay. So second year in business. And why $5? Or you just sort of make it up and see what happens?

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

07:29What do you think all in costs are per month?

Tim Leland

07:33>> Per user?

Nathan Latka

07:34No. No. For you. For you to run the business. So

Tim Leland

07:38>> hosting wise, I'm over $300 a month.

Nathan Latka

07:40So that's That's your biggest cost?

Tim Leland

07:43>> Biggest yep. And I've started experimenting with some advertising. So seeing how that goes to, you know, paid advertising.

Nathan Latka

07:53So Mhmm.

Acquisition interest and long-term vision

Nathan Latka

07:54And 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?

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

08:18What was the largest offer you got? I know it wasn't binding, but just that you were talking about.

Tim Leland

08:22>> It was a few months ago. So, you know, it was more in the 200,000 user range.

Nathan Latka

08:30$200,000?

Tim Leland

08:32>> Yes. Two two hundred thousand users.

Nathan Latka

08:34Okay.

Tim Leland

08:35>> I'd I'd have to look it up. I don't remember.

Nathan Latka

08:37But Oh, come on, Tim. You don't forget those things. What was the offer? What was the range?

Tim Leland

08:42>> Like, in the $60,000.

Nathan Latka

08:46And 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?

Tim Leland

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.

Pricing tiers and plan structure

Nathan Latka

09:04That'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?

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

09:34Is anyone on that one?

Tim Leland

09:37>> I don't think anybody's on that one, but I have some on the the $100 a month plans.

Nathan Latka

09:42So just to be clear, if you have a 100,000 short links per month, it's $400 a month?

Tim Leland

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

Nathan Latka

09:57mean, 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?

Tim Leland

10:11>> Yeah. That's yeah. That's it could be it could come back and bite me.

Nathan Latka

10:15How 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?

Tim Leland

10:25>> I don't have those numbers. I'd have to take a look.

Nathan Latka

10:28But Do you know do you have some sense of how active your biggest users are? How many links they create per month?

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

10:56So So how many redirects do you allow to be tracked per month at $400 a month?

Tim Leland

11:02>> So it's unlimited. And Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:07But 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?

Tim Leland

11:14>> Yeah. I think that's kind of, you know, the problem that a lot of people have, you know, starting out.

Nathan Latka

11:22Tim, 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?

Tim Leland

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

Building Chrome extensions since 2015 and growth story

Nathan Latka

11:48Interesting. 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

12:08did you grow that Chrome extension to 400,000 users?

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

12:53Which is what year?

Tim Leland

12:56>> That might have been 2019.

SEO and Chrome marketplace ranking tactics

Nathan Latka

12:58Okay. 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.

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

13:45Mhmm. 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.

Tim Leland

14:07>> Yeah. So you have tiny URL, Bitly, and Rebrandly are kind of the top that I'm familiar with.

Nathan Latka

14:13What about, like, what about, like, Tim Leland, the URL shortener, these kinds of things?

Tim Leland

14:20>> Not sure which

14:21>> It's interesting. Which one is that?

Nathan Latka

14:23Well, 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.

Tim Leland

14:31>> Oh, that's that's mine.

Nathan Latka

14:32Tim Leland. Okay. I was wondering.

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

14:42>> Yeah.

14:42Yeah. 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?

Tim Leland

15:03>> As far as being on the top searcher?

Nathan Latka

15:05Yeah. 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?

Tim Leland

15:14>> I think that's a lot of it, but I yeah. I'm not a 100% sure there. But

Nathan Latka

15:20It 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?

Tim Leland

15:34>> Yeah. It's it's a good idea.

Cross-promoting extensions

Nathan Latka

15:36Interesting. Okay. Any other tricks we should know about sort of Chrome extensions?

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

15:58Mhmm.

Tim Leland

15:58>> Cool.

Nathan Latka

16:02>> Yeah.

16:02Alright. And just to clear, you're the only one on the team, is right in your bootstrapped. Right?

Tim Leland

16:06>> Yep.

Famous Five: books, mentors, and habits

Nathan Latka

16:07I 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.

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

16:30Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Tim Leland

16:37>> So it it are you familiar with Taylor Otwell?

Nathan Latka

16:41Nope. What company is he with?

Tim Leland

16:43>> He's the founder of Laravel open source development framework, and he's built several companies around stuff.

Nathan Latka

16:51Number three, favorite online tool for building URL shortener.

Tim Leland

16:55>> So the the framework that I use is Laravel. So that's Laravel. Yep. The framework. Yep.

Nathan Latka

17:00Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Tim Leland

17:04>> I try to get at least eight.

Nathan Latka

17:05So married and with three kids. Right?

Tim Leland

17:08>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

17:08And how old are you, Tim?

Tim Leland

17:10>> 34.

Advice to younger self and closing

Nathan Latka

17:11Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Tim Leland

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.

Nathan Latka

17:27Guys, 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

17:48revenue. 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.

Tim Leland

18:02>> Thanks. This is great.

Nathan Latka

18:05One 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

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