Tweet Binder Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Javier Abrego. He's building a cool tool called tweetbinder.com, helps you analyze your Twitter information. Javier, are you ready to take us to the top? [00:09] >> Yes. [00:10] Alright. So you came on this must have been a while ago, I forget, it was a while ago. Give us an update. Where's the company today in terms of product? What are guys helping customers do? [00:20] >> Yeah, well, I was at your show, Deal or Bust, about one year ago. Yeah, it was great, Nathan. It was great. But right now, tweetbinder is actually a little bit better than just before. What we do basically is to analyze information on on Twitter. We are a six people company, three engineers. 2020 was a very good year for us in terms of of revenue. And this year, we our hope is to get the same amount of of [00:54] >> revenue than last year. [00:56] What did you get due in 2020 revenue wise? [00:59] >> Okay, here, the Latka numbers, I have them ready here. [01:03] He has them. [01:05] >> Okay, in US dollars last year was 440,000 US dollars, and this year, we are hitting 300,000. [01:15] Right now. [01:15] >> So, yeah, we hope to get there to get there at the same the same time last year. [01:22] Got it. So does that mean you're doing, if you're at 300,000 now divided by, you know, nine months, you're doing about 35,000 a month? [01:31] >> Yeah, more or less. [01:32] Something like that? Interesting. And Javier, so it sounds like you're flat year over year. Why is it flat? You know, Twitter's growing fast. Why aren't you guys growing? [01:41] >> Yeah, good question. In the first years, we have two lines of business, what we call the SaaS, you know, you get your report into tweetbinder.com and the services side. And we have like, let's say 60% of our revenue in the services part of the company, we have to kill that. So we have been growing the, let's call it the analytics part, the SaaS part of the business quite okay. And last year, we are better than last [02:12] >> year in terms of, let's say the SaaS business, but last year we had a lot of requests for custom jobs on like related to COVID because a lot of people wanted to know what happened around COVID in Twitter last year. So it was a horrible year for everyone, but in terms of Twitter analytics, it was a good year. [02:36] Interesting. Okay. So so that makes sense then. So today, how many customers are paying you per month? [02:42] >> Per month, our subscription clients, are 120 at this moment and we that's the MRR side of the business. What we have very strong as well is the one off reports, You know, sometimes you don't need a subscription, you guys want to see how your event went on Twitter, so you just buy one report. That part of the business, we are setting about 200 reports, a little bit more per month and it's getting us around, let me [03:14] >> see, around 13,000 US dollars and our MRR subscription, just subscription is about 19,300, sorry, 19,300. [03:26] Got it. So when you add them, that's how you get $30,000 to $35,000 a month in revenue? [03:31] >> Yeah. And there's a third one because we're still doing like these custom reports we have like for universities for example, they want to do something that requires a little bit from our side, you know, like I want to, for example, we have one example, we had one client that wanted to get a list of all the doctors, medical, medical doctors of France that are on Twitter, so we can do that, know, so but we have to [04:00] >> do it ourselves, so that's that's the rest of the revenue comes from that type of services and it's like, I don't know, 15 clients per month. [04:13] Got it. So I could, and you charge, you know, between 50 and $200 for these one off reports depending on how much history you're pulling for somebody, but Javier, if I wanted to ask to pay you and I said, Javier, I really want just a list of everyone on Twitter who has the words angel investor in their bio, you could go pull that list for me. Yeah. Interesting. Would I get their email as well? No. So [04:39] what what dataset would I get from you in that report? [04:42] >> The well, you are going to get the number of followers, the number of following, the the location, where they're If I mean, the number of tweets, the number of likes they are getting, the number of retweets they are getting, and then on top of that, that's the public metrics of Twitter, we can give you like other metrics, grossing those metrics on engagement rates, like those kind of things. But the email is the email is private part [05:09] >> of I see. On your Jira account. [05:11] And so so you launched this business in what year? [05:14] >> 2013. [05:16] 2013. And are you do you own 100%? 90%? 89%? [05:20] >> 89. [05:21] Who owns the rest? [05:23] >> A small fund here in in Spain that we closed a deal, a funding round in two thousand seventeen, one hundred k. They got around 9% of the company and the rest of the company is from one client and one worker here in Dubai. [05:43] Got it. So you give your client a little bit of equity? [05:46] >> Actually, it's funny story in less than a minute. This fund wanted to interview our clients to see if it was worth to invest in tweetbinder and when this this client knew that tweetbinder was seeking for funds, they wanted to invest in tweetbinder, so it was very good for us. [06:04] That's very cool. So you own 89%, investors own 9% and then a customer plus an employee own the other, call it 2%. [06:12] >> Yep. [06:13] That's great. So what's the plan with the business? I know you came on Deal or Bust a year and a half ago. We had buyers lined up. There was a nice little back and forth. Did you get I forget. Did you get any offers? [06:24] >> Not that day. [06:25] Not that day. Have you had people try and buy the company? [06:28] >> Yeah. [06:29] What are people trying to buy it for? [06:32] >> Less than 1,000,000 US dollars, so it's not worth it for me. Two offers and less than 1,000,000, 2.5 and we said no. But one of the things, answering your questions, one of the things that I don't like about tweetbinder is that people only use us when they need us. So our churn is very high. This is not a product that you use on daily basis because you analyze hashtags or you analyze keywords when you need to. [07:03] >> So sometimes it's not useful to get a monthly subscription. So let's say we close around 30 to 40 new clients in subscriptions every month, but we got around sometimes 30 or even more cancels every month. And we ask our clients, we have a form saying, why do you cancel? And they don't say because the product is bad because they come back, it's because I don't need you guys right now, I will come back next month or [07:36] >> in two months. So answering your question, what we are building right now is another product based on Twitter that requires that you pay every month. For example, look, this is I mean, the people in the podcast are not going to see this, but what I'm holding right here is one analysis of Nathan Latka, your profile. [07:59] How am I doing? [08:01] >> Actually, very good. You know, you grew in the last month 254 followers. Yeah. And actually, you are getting a lot of retweets and likes as well. [08:11] I love that. [08:12] >> What we are doing now with this, Nathan, is like we are going to launch and this is an exclusive for you. We are going to launch launch, sorry, a product that tracks Twitter users and we every hour we are going to update the metrics, following followers, list, retweets, likes, everything, everything. So every hour you're going to get updates in the tweetbinder dashboard. [08:41] So Javier, I think a lot of founders will fall into this trap which is they want to decrease churn, they want to launch new product that feels stickier, but like how do you know that that's what I How do know someone's gonna pay monthly for that? Like, I don't wanna get hourly update. Like, what am I gonna do with that information is the big question I think with any reporting SaaS. [08:57] >> The good thing is you can compare with your competitors. I mean, maybe you are not a good client. I mean, actually, you can have this for free, know, and if you want, you ask Nathan, but let's say you are a beer company, you want to compare your performance on Twitter with other beer companies, so you can group them in this product and you can compare what they are doing. Ask our client, what do you need? What [09:22] >> do need? What can we what can we do to stay with us? And they ask for this. So [09:27] When does this launch Javier? [09:30] >> We launch in two weeks. [09:32] Okay. Well, we're looking for we're recording today on Thursday, September 23, so two weeks from now will be like October 5, sixth time frame, we'll see or October 10, we'll see how that goes. Talk to me a little bit more about what you plan to do over the next twelve to twenty four months. So do do you anticipate staying do you think you'll raise more capital or no? [09:49] >> No. I don't I don't want we don't need it right now. We are profitable. Thank God. [09:53] How much do you guys how much do you make per month? [09:56] >> We have a profit, net profit of 10,000, a little bit less, 8 to 10,000 US dollars, in euro it will be like 6,000, something like that. [10:06] Congratulations, that's great, right? Very few SaaS companies are profitable, so congratulations. [10:11] >> Yeah, it's, we've been profitable for the last two years, one year and a half, let's say, previous years were were very tough for Tweet Binder, Nathan. [10:22] So if somebody's listening right now, we have a lot of buyers and private equity firms that listen to the show and they came to you and offered you, you know, 1,800,000 all cash upfront for the business, would you sell? [10:34] >> Will probably say yes, but what I want, Nathan, is to grow this company and the only way that I know how to grow is by creating products, you know, that's my blessing, my curse at the same time. So what we want to do is not really to sell the company, is to partner with a big company that we can go with and they can buy part of tweetbinder, let's say 40% of the company, so we can [11:03] >> be like [11:05] >> part of that other company, use their resources. That's what we, that my wish that will be, we will that if somebody offers me 1,800,000, I mean, that's great because I own 90% of the company, but you know, I have so much fun during the day, so much fun and [11:24] That's a good thing, otherwise you wouldn't be doing what you're doing. Javier, out of time here, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? [11:31] >> Business book? It's not famous five, it's famous eight or something. It's more than [11:36] Well, yeah, we ask a couple extra questions. You know the you know the drill. [11:39] >> Okay. The hard things about the hard things. [11:41] Okay. And is there a CEO you're following or studying? [11:44] >> Yeah. Andrew Gazdecki from MicroAcquire. [11:48] Number three. How many hours of sleep do you get every night? [11:51] >> Eight. [11:52] And what's your favorite online tool for building the business besides your own? [11:56] >> Yeah. I hate this question because nobody says tweetbinder in your in your podcast, but I will say Slack, of course. [12:02] Slack. Yep. And then what's your situation? Married, single, kiddos? [12:05] >> Married and two kids. [12:06] Two kids. And how old are you? [12:08] >> 42. [12:09] 42. Take us home here, Javier. What do you wish you knew when you were 20? [12:13] >> Well, [12:17] >> I will say like, [12:21] >> to be patient, you know, to be patient mostly. [12:25] Guys, tweetbinder, they got off onto a great start in 2013, they broke $400,000 in revenue last year, now doing $35,000 a month in revenue, profitable, $10,000 a month to the bottom line. They do a lot of revenue via one off reports. They make $13,000 a month doing that. All the other revenue comes from 120 customers that pay for their recurring fee, launching a new SaaS product here in October that will help them drive more SaaS revenue [12:47] and scale. Javier still owns 89% of the business. They sold 9% in a $100,000 pre seed round back in 2017 at a $900,000 valuation as he looks to continue to scale with his team of six. Javier, thanks for taking us to the top. [12:59] >> Thank you, Nathan. [13:02] 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 [13:27] Central. Additionally, remember these recorded Founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. 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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 [14:31] got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.