How WriterAccess CEO Byron White grew WriterAccess to $9.4M revenue and 14K customers in 2020.

hello everyone my guest today is byron white he is the creator of the content creation platform writeraccess.com byron you ready to take us to the top let's do it all right so what is writer access is marketplace play here or sas blue both actually rhetoricist is a marketplace where you can connect with writers content strategists editors translators and people that are performing the type of valuable work that content marketers need these days we charge a sas fee to access our talent pool and our software that makes it all work but essentially exit redirects just makes it easy to find freelancers place orders and manage the workflow now you came on back i believe it was like uh september of 2018 i think um you told me that you launched the company in 2010 at that point you were just passing about i think a thousand customers where are you today how many customers um well that thousand active customer base um probably is uh been expanded to about 7 000 active customers of a year um we also have gone from 100 customers when we first started in 2010 to 40 000 customers more than 40 000 customers that have purchased from us in the history of the company so so so tell me tell me that one more time and what that means is that basically just means a lot of people touch you they churn so you still have seven thousand actively paying today but forty thousand paid you something that's correct in the life of the company 40 000 people have purchased content from us i see i see so take me back to founding year 2010 how much revenue did you do that year you remember about a half a million okay interesting and what did you end up finishing 2019 with um about 8.2 million and i can tell you this because it's public information we made the inc 5000 list five years in a row and that's public congratulations sure i i would grill you anyway and try and get it if you have if you if you hadn't if you hadn't disclosed it so so 8.5 million last year and what do you think you'll finish this year with um north of nine south of ten so we'll show another growth here this year for sure and have you done this all bootstrapped absolutely oh we love that that's impressive so decade in 10 million company all bootstrapped what's the closest you've come to selling equity not close at all um i haven't had interest up to this time uh we've talked with multiple but when you make the 5000 list you get repeated phone calls from private equity venture capital even on the corporate side uh people interested in the business because they see growth right so you they're interested in learning more about the business model so we've talked with dozens and dozens probably hundreds of people over the years and keep our door open for communication but uh for us it's about growing the business and helping our our freelancers uh you know grow their businesses which is really what we're doing we represent thousands of freelancers yeah break down the marketplace for me so so let's just talk about the last 30 days how many businesses like me have paid you something to access your freelancer talent thousands okay can you be more like two three five ten less than ten more than two okay got it and and uh let's just make it easy let's say it was 5 000 right 5 000 businesses like me have paid you to access your freelancer talent how many freelancers have they paid at least a dollar through your platform over the past 30 days probably about the same number i mean when i say they've done business with us they've made a transaction with us so um remember a couple things nathan we we charge a monthly subscription fee you know for the for the service so it's kind of like a platform as a service those fees range from 39 to 59 to 79 depending upon what you want if you just want access to writers and very light software no problem but if you want our full-service solutions designed for example for agencies that are scaling content you might need our white label solution and you might need access to our shutterstock getty image photo library so your content managers can manage content like one content manager can manage content for 50 clients if you're an agency writer access maybe more um so the platform builds in automation it builds in you know building a team up um you know launching articles well in advance of when they're due and working on a month-to-month basis to place orders you know manage the workflow cue up the content push it out directly to wordpress facebook you know wherever it needs to go and using our engines and software to do that so it's like it's like a content marketing workflow software on steroids out of curiosity i think this is going to surprise people maybe maybe it won't be surprising the customer don't name them but the customer that pays you the most monthly what do they pay you monthly um we have some customers that are paying north of a hundred thousand dollars a month you know to have content created at scale um we have customers paying a hundred dollars a month you know including their 39 a month fee right so that's that's interesting because that's kind of our problem right we're servicing 93 different industries more than 90 industries right we are servicing smbs tiny little startups but we're also servicing fortune 500 companies and agencies either micro entrepreneurs or full-blown thousand person agencies that are trying to scale content often for tens of thousands of clients they're looking to everyone's looking to us towards give me a great writer you know make sure they're proficient and skilled and make sure that they can work within the confines of what our orders are the specifications the requirements the rule sets that we can tag on to in order to make sure orders are done the right way uh built-in keyword optimization if you need it you know checking keyword density analysis or particular requirements i need x y and z sourced i need to know your sources i need you to research these five websites you know or every project is different and we're dealing with so many different types of projects that's the other problem right because we're representing writers editors translators content strategists and guess what we just expanded and launched designer access and we now represent designers illustrators animators photographers videographers so it's and they're all working the same platform just with two different brand names which is a whole nother discussion in itself nathan should we change our name or do everyone loves writer access so we're like stuck you know and like uh you know do we just have two two twin sisters writer access and designer access you know i don't know it's our it's our debate of the month within our team baron how many people are on your team 12 how many engineers couple okay four or five less okay um are so that i'm trying to figure out a phrase this question the biggest issue i see with founders that come on who are trying to build marketplaces is like virtual ran into this right they made a move and basically moved all of their freelancer talent from just contractors to full-time employees which jacked up their fixed expenses through the roof but long term can improve their economics i believe you just told me 12 full time on the team you keep all of your 5000 freelancers they are contractors not full-time employees the trick with that is how do you make sure that they will fill the demand that you drive them based off what you're paying them versus them going out getting their own work personally like themselves we encourage our freelancers to get their own work if they need to and or want to we believe in the digital you know the gig economy if you will where many of our freelance service are i'll give you some examples they're completely overqualified to be creating an article on vacuum cleaners okay or cleaning the house but they enjoy it they actually like that work maybe come on i a technical writer you're telling me you can convince them to write an article on vacuum cleaners and love it not only can i convince them they only want to do write writing that is not within their profession because they do that all day every day doing their job that's fair that's the point right so you know i i think um you know we're very happy with with the with the freelance base of writers we have and freelancers we have we think that's the right way to build the business model and it's not because we don't want to pay benefits or medical benefits it's just because most of our our our writers have full-time jobs and have those benefits elsewhere or have purchased their own medical we have some writers that you know they make in excess of 100 000 a year with us and they buy their own medical insurance and we you know help them out if they need help on it from an hr perspective um but you know for the most part um you know we we think that the you know that the freelance economy is is here to stay and people like it and want it and it's a healthy part of of the global infrastructure just like uber's biggest expense is going to be paying drivers i imagine your biggest expense annually is paying out your freelancers right so absolutely if you finish this year let's just make the math easy nine million dollars you said somewhere between 910 let's just say 9 million about how much will you pay out to your freelancers that's also public we pay 70 of every dollar transactional dollar that comes in is paid to our freelancers we don't that is that is actually one of the secrets i think for our success is we have been fully transparent with what our rates are with both freelancers and writers in our clients yeah so it's it's very important i think from our perspective that we be transparent because so frankly a lot of marketplaces gouge a lot more than that yep yep...