How Visme CEO Payman Taei grew to $15M revenue and 7.5K customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is paymon thai he's an avid technologist loves new trends and tries to stay updated his background is in biology and has led to him to truly believe in the art of evolution everything changes with time you either follow or create new trends or you'll be left behind he founded a company called hindsight which is an interactive at a digital agency in 2001 and out of that in 2014 he incubated his current company this made one of the leading presentation infographic tools online empowering over a million businesses nonprofits and individuals from over 90 countries including nasa ibm and sony to help improve the way ideas are visualized into engaging presentations infographics and other forms of visual content payment are you ready to take us to the top i'm good nicely said my man all right so give me the name correctly pronounced uh visme visme that's a do you ever have issues with that like when your sales reps are on the phone and they're like yeah go to visme.com and they're like how do you spell that uh no sales reps but um it's more of people reading you know about it uh content marketing and so on and depends you know in europe they tend to say this may and then uh in the u.s they tend to get it right they just say it is me it's interesting yeah as long as they find us on the web that you know that's okay they can call it what they want yep so presentations infographics how do you make money is it a peer play sas model yeah we are a sas model everybody starts free so they can play around with it and uh there's certain you know features and templates and assets and additional functionalities that are unlocked in the premium plans okay and i mean give me a sense are you working smb in market or enterprise what's the average you know plan per month well it's so we have a couple plans and we have an enterprise um and uh basically there's a free version and there's the standard model which starts off at uh you know i'm gonna tell you the monthly price because of course in yearly you get discounts uh so that's uh 19 bucks a month okay then we have the complete plan which is a higher plan and that's 30 bucks a month but people go you know annual they get a good 30 or so percent discount off of each of those enterprises a little bit more expensive um and we also have team plans which basically is the complete plan just number of times the number of users that purchase it yep so it's like 19 bucks a seat basically yeah uh you know 19 starting and then uh there's 30. so we have you know both sides a lot of people start standard and they go upgrade so what would you say the average is just to avoid going down every customer cohort yeah it's um it's right in between so if i was to pretty much uh give you a quick estimate it would be take the take the average so it's it's in the low 20s actually a lot of people go annual so they get a nice discount and that's what actually brings the uh per user cost down a little bit but at the same time they stick with us for a while yep all right give me the back story when did you launch it all right so we um are still in beta if you notice on the website we're pretty much might be the sas with the longest beta period ever which will very very soon uh going to be changing um but uh we started developing this thing back in 2012 or so as just a side project at hindsight hindsight just a digital agency used to do a lot of flash work i did a lot of award-winning flash design work and so on and so of course well you know iphone came out and that knocked things down it really really shook things up and that's where in my bio you hear about me talking about evolution and so on that really you know showed me how it works in in business so very quickly uh visually was just an inte a little internal project to be for animations for non-designers for actually for designers initially almost like a flash replacement long story short by the time we launched a little focus group uh we realized that people really don't care about that most of the audience are non-designers and they're just trying to create slideshows and so on so real quickly like well went off and my mission started on wanting to make vizmy the one tool that you use to create all types of visual content so i don't care if you want to create a presentation or a visual report or a social graphic or an infographic which is becoming more popular there should really be one user interface one tool that gives you great things from start to end so that's how it all and why are you still i mean 2012 was six years ago why are you still in beta this is a marketing thing um well and not necessarily i'm kind of a perfectionist i really want the tool to be where i'm comfortable with saying it is you know ready for prime time i mean the reality is that um partially marketing i could have taken this off two years ago you know this could have been off two years ago now when i said 2012 we didn't really actually even present it to people with a very very small group of people back in 2013 and we didn't even launch a premium plan until it was in sometime in 2014. so just to be clear when was your first dollar of revenue what year uh it was i'm actually going by member here i believe it was uh in mid 2014 when we just actually turned it on so everybody was using it free for a period of time very very slow we didn't really do much marketing or promotion uh just let people come in and get feedback and use it and we very very slowly started off as a premium model um and it wasn't really until just a couple years ago that we got more serious with things and now we're going full basis and what have you scaled to now in terms of total customers um because so uh you know of course yeah you know uh there's free users and then there's uh paid just not for users yeah just customers so customers um so there's two things that i don't really disclose openly but i'll give you ranges uh it is the um actual the total number of customers that we have paying and it is also the exact revenue that we're doing but i'd be happy to talk about other things however with that said um you know it's over a million registered users and out of that um it's really what's around where's 250-300 users that we even rolled out the uh the pay plan um so it's really in the range of uh approaching about ten thousand ten thousand paying exactly okay got it well and and walk me through you before i even like pushed you really hard prefaced it by saying like you don't like sharing this kind of stuff i mean what people will hear that go wait is he like why is he saying that is he hiding something why do you do that absolutely nothing to hide it's just more um you know some i feel like we're a private company so there's certain information i'm very transparent and open about and there's a couple of things uh seeing the stresses exact revenue numbers and a number of users strategically where does it hurt you though so some people would argue hey let's publish monthly income reports it's a great piece of content they'll get us new customers others will say that's so stupid i don't want my customers to see all my are my competitors to see on my desk that's not it's not necessary i think it's more of uh you know just more of a personal uh preference at this time and at some point i'm sure we're gonna be opening it up later on uh you know that's uh it's just really more of a um decision at this time that we have but i don't think it's going to destroy us or anything i think we're happy with where we're going where you know growth rates are great uh what's a great growth rate what do you mean by that so we are um the growth rates we're happy with we're pretty much doubling um every year um user base and also revenue um has been uh pretty much close to 900 90 to 100 uh rate last couple of years yeah i mean you by the way payment i mean you've given me enough information to back into a minimum i mean you know that right yeah absolutely yes i mean i can take 10 000 customers times a 23 price point and say you're doing north of 230 grand a year right i mean a month right now that's accurate correct i mean but you could look at the you know i'm giving you around ten thousand so it could be a little bit higher than that lower than that so yeah yeah which other numbers yeah yeah but but i mean just to be clear you could also i mean you're not you're not saying it's like one to ten thousand when you say ten thousand that's you know plus or minus a thousand in that range right it's not one thousand yeah yeah yeah yeah it's not it's not eighteen thousand so why are you i mean so let's say you're doing about 200 grand per month right now and everyone i mean why are i don't understand why you'd call yourself still in beta i mean you're generating revenue yeah i mean we are we are profitable and uh we're happy with uh it's about the product the product itself um and this is going to happen literally over the next month when we will be releasing out of beta we're pretty much going to be removing the beta out of all around the products i just feel that there's a lot of products out there and they come out of beta way too early and you know in a way i mean look it's hurt us because companies come look at us and they see the beta and they abandon because they're like you guys are not ready yet because what's your turn rate right now uh the churn rate is uh in the so it's around seven to seven and a half percent and but there is one thing though about it and that in our type of business we have two types of users about 25 30 of our users are in the education market oh gosh run like hell horrible market so they come in and they use it and they get a semester we have a nice education discount and we have you know classroom discounts and so on um and so they get it and they really need it for a semester they need for a month or two and the but the beauty of it is that they tend to come back some months later so you know we in our when i say that rate um i look at the trend as far as in the last 60 to 90 days did they come back or not and renew but some of these people actually go back comes next semester that might be five months or eight months later so you know we don't really count that into our you know customer base uh in essence as far as uh you know paying customers when they drop off if they don't renew within 60 90 days they pretty much are a churn for us but uh realistically though they do a lot of them do tend to come back um but the turnout is actually lower when it comes to companies they get team plans and some that go on enterprise or they're just you know one individual within an established business and so on they really don't earn they they stay for a while um so that if i was to just base it on that one um it's gonna be lower but if i look at the total average then certainly it is in that uh seven seven and a half percent yeah and is that just because that's low gross logo churn per month um it is the gross yes that is correct um and we look at it's logo not revenue right that is correct okay got it i imagine your revenue turns probably lower than that because you churn cheap customers um yes but then also the renewal rate remember that some of them go and come back and renew later and in fact some of the ones that drop off on a monthly they didn't come back and just renew for a year yeah that's really tough by the way i've talked to a lot of people that listen to the show and many of them have the same problem it's like a semi-seasonal business and they don't like counting them as churn because they've seen user stories where they come they cancel for six months and they come back and they just don't know how to report that they don't know how to talk about it i mean how do you measure that um we are honestly we're not really measuring right now other than we do see that there's trends on it and so we're working on uh working that into maybe a secondary churn number but we say you know our true churn radium versus the one that industry-wise you know as a sas model people look at and again remember that a lot of times you know there's b we're kind of b to b and then we have a b to c side of us and the b to c side of us the turn red is certainly higher right yeah and when i say b2c that could be the education every individual just needs to create one presentation and they're done for the next six months a year um and so that that certainly does affect that um in that matter i think we're gonna have to almost again maybe there's better metrics maybe you know uh there's suggestions from others out there but so far the way i look at it is that we might have to look at two ways uh the average industry churn and then the actual one that you look at in two different ways have you bootstrapped the company are raised uh no we have not raised this has been fully bootstrapped um and so not a penny that's good that's good stuff i like hearing that and what's a team size today uh we are right now at uh you know taking our ad a couple people we just came on board we're like at 15 right now okay so yeah we're growing very it's been you know this disney isn't like one of those stories um and i'll share that with you where there has been this exponential growth it's just been steady it's kind of like a line if i take our you know the chart from our user base to our customers everything else it's just a steady increase and um you know sure i'd be happy with more of an exponential raise but um at the same time though we're to a point where we know that we've got traction we have great feedback from users um and we just see kind of a long roadmap that will continue uh on i don't see a drop off rate i see an increase and potentially i think over the next year or two there could be more you shrug you kind of hunt your shoulder a little bit while you're telling me it's like it's a bad thing oh i don't think it's a bad thing but you know it's a great question you know when you i think it's a damn good thing by the way that's how you get filthy rich you build a company that you own all of you drive revenues and you start paying yourself more and more every month in dividends and reinvest in the company or elsewhere well absolutely i i agree with that i mean i'll tell i'll give you one example so this one we can you know i'll be more open and it gives you so you're gonna tell me your salary right yeah i'm gonna get my salaries pretty low man um so you know in in in my in honorable opinion though um remember that i run a web agency and i still do and actually it's kind of uh you know very very small and steady just about five six people on that one and um you know and i have to look at i mean not everybody has that advantage right so when i first started it um you know it wasn't a multi-million dollar operation as far as my other agency goes at all but it's just been you know i started in 2001 and little by little um you know it generate income i paid my bills and so when i started it i just kind of um incubated this me out of that you know one developer and me and just working on it and little by little um you know worked it into um intubisme and in fact uh the revenue um when we started the uh the visme product uh here's the thing i actually started this tool called um it was an html editor okay so back in like 2006 2007 when wordpress wasn't that popular everybody's site was html based so at my web agency they would come and say hey uh we need i need to edit my website and the cms system is too expensive so i just created this very simple tool that people just connect with their ftp connect to their site just edit the content that's it wasn't a site builder and that actually grew to about a you know eight to ten k uh a month uh business and i just took all that revenue and just you know put it back into business what did you do with that company you sell it no no it's still around in fact visme is like the name of the brand and easy web content uh is basically the formal company you know the brand so that product is actually just self running i mean it has like what you're doing now in terms of monthly revenue um it's it it drops off more and more each month but it's down to like literally three to four k why don't you find someone real quick some some hustler college student with some parents money to buy it like why don't you sell it to somebody i'll tell you why because you know if i was to sell it it's a reduce in revenue business right so it's not gonna sell for a lot um it's not going to sell from multiple times to that but when i look at it in the last three four years even you take it hey three years ago was doing five six k and then before that you add all that up and it's uh and without any support pretty much it's just generating that revenue every single month and you know eventually i think you could generate why do you hold on hold on sorry why do you look at past earnings to predict future potential cash flow when it's declining it is no so i'm not looking as far as uh it's going to remain at 3k it's going to go down oh okay okay so yeah yeah yeah absolutely so what i'm looking at is that um i still feel that um it is going to generate some revenue as it goes down to zero over a period of time got it got it requires very little um what do you think it'll make you in the next in the next six months um that tool yeah um i i don't think more than i'm just gonna take out i don't think more than 15 to 20k yeah so what if i wrote you a check what if i wrote your check right now for 15 grand you get the money now you reinvest it i get the company well because after that six months i think would generate another 10 or 12k you know and maybe maybe or or just goes down to you know blah blah blah keeps going in all seriousness let me know if you get interested in selling it i'd write you i'd the only reason you'd do it is if you wanted the cash now versus waiting the slow painful cash flow death no i think uh i mean we're okay on misny the you know the cash that we're generating and so on we're profitable so really honestly that the 15 20k wouldn't do much doesn't it doesn't it kind of hurt you a little bit to see one of your babies are slowly dying you're not giving it the love to grow it because you have visme um and no because i i really my passion is is towards visiting you know this tool was something that yeah i i think it was actually one of the best investments i ever made because i built it literally with like 10 or 12k of development costs you know and it's generated i think over the last eight 19 years almost a million dollars yeah but i'm saying like why don't you let someone with some passion come in and get it going again turn things around i don't think the html editor you know thanks for wordpress and all the other cms's i i j it's just you think it's dead i i think it's yeah all right okay last few economics questions here before we wrap up with the famous five so 15 folks um obviously your bootstrap so you're running it profitably correct absolutely okay cac what are you spending acquire customers um so pretty much majority of our all users they just come through our content we have a really good blog through organic and so on so when we actually spend money which is very little on a ad space and it's pretty much mostly on adwords and so on it's just a few areas that we want to tap into and the infographics and so on um that we don't feel that we get the proper positioning yet we're moving up and in those areas when i look at it the the um is under seventy five dollars now what about what about fully weighted though i mean what do you take i mean include your writers your blog people anyone creating content and like divide the number of new customers per month into their salaries um i don't have the number in front of me that's okay it's uh it certainly is it is it generates i mean it definitely is in a positive area but uh i don't have that exact number got it so 75 dollar cat got a 20 rp i mean what it takes you three four months to get your money back is that about right pretty much i mean yeah unless they on a month-to-month basis someone yeah i'm just going early and paid if you want to something dollars for a complete plan and and that will not well and then what do you assume these these customers are worth to you over their lifetime the ltv um currently we're measuring at around in the 200 area so around 210 is the last estimate that i did um but again it really it's the education and the one-time user that really you know brings that down um it's significantly higher when we talk about like a team plan you know we have uh company that's got 25 users or 10 users and so on they stay with us for years they've been with us for three four years since the beginning almost um those certainly are very valuable and your whole your whole team based up there and in montgomery county or no um so we have a couple individuals outside we have some you know individual in japan a few people in the um in terms of from the support bases uh you know and some data entry and someone in the philippines but yeah the rest is all here right here and where are you um i am right here in the maryland area so dc literally 15 20 minutes north of it yep good stuff all right last question here on growth and then we'll wrap up so just again you said you're going about 100 year-over-year call it 200-ish today if you go back 13 months i mean it's you're doing about 100 grand then is that accurate um no i think it's a little off but your your calculations i know that you're running them yeah they're not they're not exact so your numbers are um in somewhat of a range that i would give um but we were doing uh less than that actually okay so that means your growth rate is essentially a little bit higher yeah it has last year was yeah yeah yeah okay so so can we just put we'll put a minimum so less than 100 grand but more than 50 grand is that fair um i would put it somewhere in between that right okay good it wasn't as low good all right numbers and your numbers that you're calculating based on right now they're they're not uh very accurate uh they're in a range so um well hold on hold on so you're you're backtracking and whenever when someone backtracks on my show what it tells me is i've painted a picture that makes them look way bigger than what they actually are well you're in a range where i think it needs a buffer of about uh 25 i'll give you that so you can go up higher you can go lower got it so so if i if i take instead of 10 000 customers if i shave off 25 of that and say you only have about 7 500 multiplying times that 23 price point that puts you about 170 grand per month um i i don't care about what you're actually at i care about a minimum that's awesome i i can't i can't disclose that information but i'm just using the numbers you just gave me well you're using estimates that i'm giving you you're taking a number of 10k that i'm giving you and you said i'm 25 to i'm 20 i need 25 rogue room i cut off 25 you say no that's not right um i'm just giving you that there is a range so uh i i can't tell you exactly what down it is and how it is and um you just told me 25 i'm not making that up i'm just using your numbers i did say that i'm giving you ranges so 25 is not a range that's that's an exact percentage you can go to you can go to 10 000 and take it up 25 you can take it down 25 we're somewhere in that range and i can't what range though you haven't given when you say upper down 25 so the minimum would be 7 500 and i'm saying okay i'll give you the minimum times 23 the minimum mrr you're doing is 172. um i i can't disclose the numbers that's uh that's a range i mean that would be the minimum right payment this is what drives me crazy people call on my show and they talk in circles about free users paid users betas not betas that's my average that's not my average and then they like wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle when i try and give them a ton of credit which usually tells me that i painted a picture that made them look way bigger than what they actually are why do you i mean why don't you just own that no i don't think it's it's way bigger i don't think it's way lower so uh you know we'll leave it at uh the estimates you're giving are not unreasonable um we were happy with where we are and as far as the numbers you're providing um you know you could be off by a tiny bit more but it's it's close you're close to where we are and you're not comfortable just sharing a minimum like are you north of 100 grand per month right now oh yeah absolutely okay but you're south of 200. um we are south of that okay perfect that's fair that's a great range that's a real range it's something that's actually measurable and something my audience can attract to and understand all right famous five number one what's your favorite business book uh so i personally read a lot of blogs um and not so much books harp covers but one of my favorite is the book uh hooked so that's a book that i pick up every so often i keep putting down i pick up and that's by er nadal yep so that's a great book number two is there a ceo you're following or studying uh there's a couple so i actually you know um one is uh ben chestnut i heavily look up to him from mailchimp um you know it's amazing what they've done especially of course from a bootstrap aspect um and also hit and shop he's one of my favorites just great content very open about how they build the sas and so on so those are the two that i follow closely number three what's your favorite online tool for building your business uh disney no beside your own no um yeah so uh buzzsumo we use that a lot uh great tool uh so and uh that's that's a tool that we've been on for a couple years number four how many hours of sleep to get every night i tell every night my plan is eight and unfortunately it's five to seven so my son woke me up five in the morning i think it wasn't a five-year-old how many kids do you have total i have one uh 18 months all right and married single i'm married married one kid oh and how old are you um i'm way old man 40 way older all right 41 what do you last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew um yeah so i would say is leave your ego at the door if you're going to start a business company and uh you know and you got to get ready to mop the floors and because you're going to have to get your feet wet there you guys have it from payment you're going to get your feet wet and off the floors leave your ego out the door he made it tough on me i had to beat a little bit but anyways what a story 2012 had an agency built visney as a side project it's since scaled he's going all in on and growing on about 100 year over year north of 7 500 customers doing somewhere between 100 grand and 200 grand per month right now again growing 100 year over year average customer paying about 20 bucks per month churn's a problem he's figuring out how to solve it seven percent gross logo churn per month when he does spend money to acquire customers it's about 75 bucks so he gets paid back in about four months with his team of 15 based in maryland and other remote locations again helping smbs with visual and larger teams with visual content visual presentations and just making things beautiful hey mom thank you for taking us to the top hey nathan great stuff by the way love your blog and uh love your show here and so um i hope everything goes well and needed support from us let me know