How Weblium CEO Victoria Koko grew Weblium to $7M revenue and 3.3K customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is david braun he was born in the USSR got a war was in a war there was a refugee moved to Ukraine and then co-founded template monster.com he even grew that 200 million it come by a hundred million a company and sold it out to a private equity firm since then he started a company called Webley him to build a McDonald's in the web design industry he's married with four kids two wives three dogs five homes ten thousand seven hundred phone book contacts a hundred conferences a year military business and doing and having a lot of fun when the war started you crane he founded the largest crowdfunding platform people's project calm to help wounded soldiers become became an advisor to the Ministry of Defense and a civil activist David are you ready to take us to the top yeah sure okay so how do you manage two wives in Ukraine four kids and all this other stuff you're doing that's a good question well basically you know like when you get a divorce most of the people they get mad at each of you know each of them and then they the kids usually suffer and then when they started I'm a sales guy you know like I'm selling lots of great stuff you know like so I know like what's the mindset is so I went to my wife so they said there is a grace periods like when she's like really mad at you because you kind of you know like disappointed her so wait until the grace period ends it usually it's about six months then go and talk about the future if you were divorced yeah worse you like exploration periods you know like it is about six months and then when you go and say like what would be the future and then usually you're talking about the guarantees so what I did I did a structure 18 years plan so I put the money in the bank so like she was super sure that you know like I would not leave her without you know like without the financial support and so on and the kids already divorced yeah exactly and then you know like so now she's a good friend of my existing wives they go to vacation together you know like so it's perfectly sorted out my friends do you have a joke say when you get ready to retire you're gonna work in the United Nations as a peacemaker so you literally pay your ex-wife eighteen years some amount of money every year to keep her happy basically yeah it's like it's a mix with not to her it goes to her and in my son you know I see yeah they're so like they live together they have real estate so once the financial question sorted out so emotions are you know like became better better yeah now is she remarried yeah she's she's already and you know like I know the guy like his good guy so now it's everything is so I'm happy now okay that's good take me back to your first it sounds like your first big win template monster.com so so it sounds like you were a refuge I mean how soon did you launch that company after you are a refugee and moved to Ukraine yeah it was 16 years ago like I was first degree student in the university I met a guy from New York and we we kind of like got together well and he offered me to launch the digital agency like web design agency and so we I was like an outsourcing division you know like cuz labor cost in Ukraine are were much lower you know like then in the US and then you know like we when we started web design we kind of didn't like it because like there was a lot of back-and-forth communications and lots of you know Corrections and revisions and then you know like I found my most productive designer he was really fast he was using some sort of elements you know like to complete the websites and I asked him like what are you doing what what do you use it see like it is my template and I tried to google it not Google Google was not existing back then you know like it was Yahoo so I searched for it and I I found that there were no templates for web designers so like we asked him to create thirty first templates we polished online and within first couple of months we took we got like $70,000 in sales and after two years we got like 1 million dollars in sales then I created affiliate program we got like 10 billion dollars in sales like it was growing and booming we basically created web templates industry no and what year is this it was 2002 ok so and and when did you sell it what year 2013 because we got there evolution in Ukraine it was uncertainty you know like I and my senior partner he became he got a cancer so I had to be with him with Israel and in u.s. so I decided to sell the company okay and in 2013 how much revenue did the company do I was twenty five mil a year okay and where your margins crap because you were paying affiliates a huge chunk or no no no we was like super profitable with 70% margin to the bottom line our gross yes yeah bottom line net okay interesting so what'd you sell it for higher meal okay so you saw 400 million so 20 bucks so basically Forex top-line revenue but it sounds like to us cash flow to work with as well okay and were you the sole founder Jeff co-founders there you had a I know he had one do you have any others no I I had another one he's like so like there was like a private deal like a private equity like a family a family office they want it just cash so our the condition was as long as we continue delivering the forecasts in sales we could do whatever we want we just so they do not interrupt into operation so I have a contract until 2021 and then you know like the contract expires I stay in the work and I go you're still working full time than in this in the business right kind of of course I have operational directory so I usually like supervising I see I see okay and what component one hundred million was cash upfront cash upfront was about 45 okay so the rest is kind of your X Gina sales plans and some general structure exactly okay got it so I mean if you have three co-founders there's 45 million cash upfront is fair to say you know you're taking on 10 to 20 million air you're using that to reinvest something like that exactly so that's why I started Webley you bozo you know like I had a non-compete agreement so like I talked to the buyer because like slightly compared he competes with template monster but you know like I know we've got a strategic agreement that we would use actually template monster is a lead generation channel and we do like revenue share with with with private equity so what is web Veeam is it a SAS company as an agency yeah it's actually a SAS company but it works as an agency like you know like the problem with during tablet monster times we created over 1.5 million websites for customers as an agency basically and the biggest problem is you know like we use so many platforms like WordPress Joomla Magento you name it and the problem was once you create the website and you you you sell it to the customer after one or two years in a new version of WordPress comes in you have to patch it you have to update and do a lot of stuff and people at the end of the day like after three years you visit the web perfect website that you deliver three years ago nowadays it looks abandoned yeah we know like it's at homeless so I started to think about maybe we create a website builder but you know like wigs Squarespace we believe every one is on the scene right now if the clients people do not want to do it in do-it-yourself mode because the websites at the end are crap you know when you take a look and you see that you know like those websites are crappy really unless you are what David sorry I don't mean Cleophus so tell me our people what are people paying you per month on average would you say they actually pay me subscription $10 a month okay they paid it for a year so it was $120 a year and why would they keep paying you after you they get the website launched you saw we have a all inclusive platform it's good it's hosted with Google Cloud it has SSL Certificates we give you access to to the editor where you can update and manage your content so basically you don't work it and if you don't if you are too lazy most of our clients are lazy you can buy webmaster hours just inside the control panel so people usually buy 10 hours it's enough for a year $100 we charge you and you get 10 hours you we have a slogan cold there is a guy for that so you need to prayer to put a press release on the website you send him an email and there is a guy for that so he publishes the press release for you mm-hmm okay are you I mean it sounds like this is almost like human powered software though most pure-play software companies well there's no human kind of touch involve or haven't they have like 86 percent gross margins do you have margins that higher or no there lower you know like it depends on the volume currently it's we still subsidize the business but from what I see right now we get a small studio with six people creates already 400 websites a month okay so my so my goal is to have a lot of French high studios all over the world we power everyone under the same platform so for the customer it looks like digital agency so because they love this way but on the back end it works...