How Summaraize Reached $2,000/mo in Revenue with 70 Customers in 2023 (Interview with CEO Jay Desai)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, Jay is a non engineer who's launched a SaaS tool called summaraize.com, helping podcasts and YouTube hosts cut up their content, summarize it, and then market it back out on platforms. First non line of code written in January this year. Got going, brought on a cofounder. Four months later, they split equity 40 50%, 50%. Monthly recurring revenue today is, call it, $2,000, of which 30 customers paying $30 a month is the recurring fee. They do another

00:23pay as you go model that makes another one k on top of that. They've already grown this month in July 2023. They've already collected 3,400,000 of revenue. His goal is to hit 20,000 a month by the end of the year. We will see what happens. Hey, folks. My guest today is Jay Desai. He's a three times first marketing hire, previously helped to start up grow from six clients to 400 in under a year, that's now exited,

00:44currently cofounder of summaraize. He's built the MVP in one week through no code and a $100, and now is head of marketing at captivate talent building captivate talent building out inbound from zero. Jay, you ready to take us to the top?

Safety Net: Running a Startup While Employed

Jay Desai

00:56>> Yeah. Let's do it.

Nathan Latka

00:57Alright. So just to be clear, you're doing your own startup at summaraize, but you have a safety net. You have a backup plan, head of marketing at Captivate Talent. Yeah.

Jay Desai

01:06>> That's correct. Makes it a little bit easier. I've done the Founder role before without that safety net, and it's not as fun.

Nathan Latka

01:15Don't you have to cut the safety net though so that you have no choice but to exceed at the start succeed at the startup?

Jay Desai

01:21>> Definitely. But, you know, I have a lot of, like, personal, like, I guess, risk factors as well. So, you know, I just got a house with my fiance, you know, we have a car, we've got other things to take care of, bills and all of those things. So it makes it a little bit easier where it feels like instead of coming from a place of like, I need to start making revenue, like, as fast as possible

01:42>> because I need to recoup my investment, which is essentially draining from my personal bank account to, hey, like, we can actually make smart decisions, think a little bit more long term versus, like, I need to collect as much cash as possible to to have that safety net. Mhmm.

How Summaraize Works: Product Walkthrough

Nathan Latka

01:56Tell us about the product, specifically a customer that's using you today and how they use you.

Jay Desai

02:01>> Yeah. So we're used by a lot of podcast hosts, content creators, content marketing teams. Essentially, they'll do is they'll drop in either their podcast file or video content, including like webinars, customer interviews, and we use AI to basically summarize that. So we split it out, we give you the timestamps, quotes from each section, overall summary, title suggestions, we turn it into LinkedIn posts, Twitter threads, blog posts, just basically a bunch of stuff. And all you do

02:31>> is, like, upload a file, fill out a couple of items on a form, and then we just deliver the content back to you in about five to ten minutes.

Pricing and Average Order Value

Nathan Latka

02:38And what's the average customer pay you per month to use the tech?

Jay Desai

02:42>> So our average customer pays us close to $30 a month. I think our the last time I checked our average order value is about $28.

Nathan Latka

02:51That's great. And put this on a timeline for me. When did you launch the business?

Launch Timeline and MVP Build

Jay Desai

02:55>> So I originally launched it back at the beginning of January. It took me about a week to build out the MVP. We get a break actually at Captivate Talent between Christmas and New Year. So I spent that week building out a first version of the product, Launched at January 1, and the first version was built on no code. I brought in a co founder about four months in, and we've been working on it ever since together.

Co-Founder Equity Split Decision

Nathan Latka

03:20What what equity premium do you get over your other co founder? Because you took the risk four months earlier?

Jay Desai

03:25>> We actually decided to split it down the middle. And the reason for that is because a few other competitors started popping up as well around the same time. And I don't have a technical background and these other competitors also had like two or three co founders. So for me, I kinda had to make a decision, like, do I wanna get a 100% of a grape or 25% of a watermelon? And I decided splitting it down the

03:48>> middle kind of aligned incentives, and I think that made the most sense for us.

Nathan Latka

03:51Mhmm. Mhmm. Well, the big question is, can the grape turn into a watermelon? Because if you know what can't, then you'd rather own a 100% of the grape. Right? So let's dive into that a bit more growth. Right? So you got your first customer earlier this year, got your MVP Live. How many customers are using the platform today?

Customer Count: Subscription vs Pay-As-You-Go

Jay Desai

04:07>> So we have about 30 customers on the actual subscription, but we also have a pay as you go model, and we've required more customers through there. So we have, like, the total of 70 customers, around 70 customers that are basically have paid for the product at some point or another.

Nathan Latka

04:24Oh, 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

04:47your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what 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 get

05:11a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is not

05:33built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction, 1,200,000 seed round, 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're going

05:59out right now and you're raising your seed round. Well, go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at, and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. Alright. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but if you

06:21wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into the interview.

Monthly Revenue and July Growth

Nathan Latka

06:48So on the recurring side, 30 customers paying on average 30 per month would put you about a thousand bucks a month in recurring revenue. How much do you make on top of that for the pay as you go stuff in June last year last month?

Jay Desai

06:58>> So last month, we did about $2,000 in net volume. So that's after taking out all of our Stripe fees. And obviously, we have some other costs over there as well. And then this month, actually, month to date, we've already done about $3,400.

Nathan Latka

07:13Mhmm. And what's your success rate in terms of converting one off pay as you go projects into monthly recurring predictable fees?

Jay Desai

07:20>> Yeah. So it kinda depends. Honestly, the pay as you go users end up sticking on closer to the pay as you go plan because their content needs are usually changing. Like, we just had a customer actually today that just did another pay as you go. So I wouldn't say, like, it's a fair even, like, conversion. It's more of, hey. Do I have, like, consistent content needs that I need to do repurposing, Or is my podcast video

07:44>> content going to fluctuate month to month? And so that's kinda where a user would make a decision whether to go for subscription or pay as you go.

Nathan Latka

07:51Interesting. And have you bootstrapped this so far today, or have you raised capital?

Bootstrapped: $100 Personal Investment

Jay Desai

07:55>> Completely bootstrapped. My investment personally was about a $100, which we've way more than over, like, got back at this point. So this point, I kinda consider it as I'm playing with house money essentially. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

08:09So what what would it take for you to quit the full time gig and go all in here? Because you have competitors, to your point, working and trying to kill you that are all in.

Path to Going Full-Time: $20K MRR Goal

Jay Desai

08:17>> Yeah. So for me, I think our goal for the end of the year is to reach about 20 in MRR. That's our big goal. I think we're making a lot of progress over there and that can be it doesn't necessarily have to be a hundred percent twenty k MRR. It could be 20 k in net volume sales. Like I said, we're already done month to date, 3,400 this month. So that would get me to move in

08:38>> full time. Although we are trying to be a little bit smarter about how we allocate our capital and I'm really big on capital allocation, capital efficiency. So we are actually working with a lot of creators as well to promote the product and create some of that growth as well to basically subsidize the fact that we are not able to put in full time work yet into it.

Nathan Latka

08:59What's the moat? Mean, 20,000 a month divided by $30 a month means you need to sign up over 600 customers, up from 30 today. That's a lot of growth. I mean, how do you go why why is the customer gonna pick you over all the other products that do this sort of, hey, podcast, YouTube repurposing stuff?

Jay Desai

09:14>> Yeah. So we really focus in on the quality of the content. So I've been a podcast host myself, actually. I grew a podcast from zero to about 100 k plus in downloads, and then I've since left being that host position. That's where they've been acquired by the HubSpot, like, podcast network as well. So I've done that before. I've worked for post production before, and I kinda know what quality is kind of needed as well to not

Competitive Moat and Content Quality

Jay Desai

09:36>> just kinda check the box off of doing the work, but also kinda generate results as well and grow your audience and actually build something effective with your content. So that's really what the moat is that we're going on is that we feel that we can solve the problem better than anyone else can. A lot of these other competitors are kinda just checking the box on content repurposing, but that doesn't mean you're gonna get extra results and

09:58>> actually drive revenue or customers at the end of the day, and that's what we're really focused on.

Nathan Latka

10:03Mhmm. And what are your all in expenses monthly today? Are you guys profitable?

Profitability and Monthly Burn

Jay Desai

10:08>> Yeah. We are profitable. So our monthly our burn essentially per month is about $250. The last time I checked this month, we might be actually closer to about 300 or 325. But, yeah, we are profitable. Everything that's coming in, like Well, that's you not paying

Nathan Latka

10:26yourself and your cofounder. It sounds like not paying him or herself either.

Jay Desai

10:29>> Correct?

10:30>> Yeah. That is correct.

Nathan Latka

10:32So I guess, how did you convince the co whoever your partner is to effectively work for free?

Jay Desai

10:37>> Yeah. So we had actually worked on a project for a little bit a couple years ago. So I worked on another kind of startup that kinda crashed and burned. I got a decent amount of traction, but wasn't monetizing at the beginning, which was the mistake of that. Swipely.

Nathan Latka

10:53Okay.

Jay Desai

10:55>> So I I started that and then I tried to see if he wanted to join on. I found him through Indie Hackers actually. And he was like, this project really isn't for me. Let's try something new from scratch. This was kind of when I at this point, I was was drawing from my personal bank account and then I was kind of put into like a stressful kind of position in terms of not generating enough revenue to

11:18>> support what I needed. And so we worked on a new product together for a little bit, didn't really see much traction and I kind of took a full time job. That's the one that's Captivate right now. And then I reached out to him about four months into launching this new product summaraize. And I said, hey, I have like five customers over here. Here's the MRR value. Here's how much money I've made. And I think this has

11:42>> a lot of legs on it. There's some competitors popping up. Are you interested in getting in this space, like getting involved? And he was like, yeah, let's do it. Like, I believe in the product. I I think we work well together. So that's kind of how we decided to partner up.

Nathan Latka

11:55You price per number of minutes. Why is that?

Jay Desai

11:59>> So the reason that we do that is it's basically based off of our cost. And also, it makes a lot more sense for the end user. If you kind of think about content repurposing and changing things up, it takes way more time to go through an episode that's sixty minutes long than it does for fifteen minutes. So that's one part of it. And then even our costs as well, how our costs come out, our costs are

12:22>> generally fluctuating. Our variable costs are basically fluctuating based on how long content is, and so it makes a lot of sense for us to charge per minute. We actually did it first. So I started per minute, and then now, basically, all the other competitors are are also charging per minute as well.

Nathan Latka

12:40I mean, it's hard for me to follow the whole per minute thing because, like, you don't wanna charge for your time, and it sounds like you're not using software necessarily to generate these videos. There are real humans doing work here. Is that accurate or not?

Jay Desai

12:51>> Yeah. So we're using the software for it, and then we actually charge per hour. So, like, we we have, like, an estimate per minute, but it basically we charge per hour. So you're either getting, two hours per month, three hours per month. And then we have, like, different bulk bulk pricing options, smaller pay as you go options.

Nathan Latka

13:07That's three hours though of end produced videos. So if I get a thirty second video, you know, that counts against the three hour total allocation.

Jay Desai

13:16>> Yeah. So if you submit a thirty second video, we'll take off thirty seconds from your account.

Nathan Latka

13:22Sorry. What I'm asking is, is three hours the time it takes you to do the work, or is that the end number of minutes produced by summaraize? That's

Jay Desai

13:32>> the end number of minutes. So, like, essentially, the way that we're charging so for this podcast episode, if it's fifteen minutes so typically what happens for a user is they'll basically go into their podcast recording software if they're using Zoom or Riverside or something. They'll record an episode. Let's say it's like fifteen to twenty minutes. Maybe their editor trims out some parts of it. Let's say it goes down to like fifteen minutes. They upload a file

13:55>> that's fifteen minutes long. We basically charge them for that fifteen minutes against whatever either

Nathan Latka

14:01Yeah. Or three minutes. End produced. If you use if you you if you watch that fifteen minute summaries dozen, you then create a thirty second promo. They're counted fifteen minutes against the three hour limit, not fifteen seconds, not the end timeline.

Jay Desai

14:16>> Yeah. So we're re we're repurposing that whole episode. So we're creating social content across that whole episode. We're creating, like, a blog across that whole episode. So we look at basically all of the audio from that entire episode.

Nathan Latka

14:31Got it. Got it. Okay. And just there's two of you today, or is there more?

Jay Desai

14:34>> Just two of us right now.

Nathan Latka

14:36Two of you guys. Great. And cool. Bootstrap to date. You have a couple $100 of your own money in. You're scaling. You wanna get to 20,000 a month by the end of this end of this year. I guess, give me some secrets here for podcast hosts that are listening in. Right? You work with our friend Alina at Chili Piper. The the folks that are using short form content to promote longer form episodes, what are they doing

14:58the best in terms of actually growing their number of downloads and audience?

Jay Desai

15:02>> So in terms of what they're doing, they're just kind of posting in multiple places. So that's like a big part of it as well. And then also optimizing how you post. So for instance, we we provide keywords as well. So if you use podcast hosting, there's that section when you upload your episode where you can kind of put in your keywords. Having a good title also can make a difference. Having the right description can make a

15:23>> difference. So that's a part of the podcast hosting. Even on the YouTube side, we provide you like a SEO or like a search optimized YouTube optimized description, tags over there, titles as well. And then kind of posting even on social, we have very much invested in having the right structure over there to just perform versus like, big chunk paragraphs or stuff like that. I'm sure you've probably scrolled past a lot of that stuff before. Even on

Pricing Model: Charging Per Hour of Content

Jay Desai

15:48>> the email side, everything is built out to how actual humans read it and how it performs. So it looks like I guess if I had to, like, pull a quote from a customer that, you know, it looks like it's been trained on the the top performing creators across all of these channels, essentially.

Nathan Latka

16:04Jay, on that note, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, your favorite book?

Jay Desai

16:09>> My favorite book is Deep Work.

Nathan Latka

16:11Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Jay Desai

16:15>> I there's a lot that I am following. I think for me being in the AI space, definitely Sam from OpenAI. So that's gotta be the one.

Nathan Latka

16:24Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building summaraize?

Jay Desai

16:28>> My favorite online tool?

16:31>> Probably, actually, I'd say there's a lot. Segment is actually a really good one. We haven't actually implemented it. I've done it on a couple of other products before, but it's like incredible for kind of matching that customer data together.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

16:46Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Jay Desai

16:49>> I get about seven hours of sleep. Sleep is something that's super important to me. I if you see me with four hours of sleep, I do not function very well.

Nathan Latka

16:58Alright. Situation, married, single kids. I think you're married. Right?

Jay Desai

17:01>> I have a fiance, so engaged.

Nathan Latka

17:03Very cool. No kids yet?

Jay Desai

17:05>> No kids.

Nathan Latka

17:06Alright. How old are you, Jay?

Jay Desai

17:08>> I am 28 years old. Gonna be 29 in two months.

Nathan Latka

17:11Awesome. And last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Advice: Just Get Started

Jay Desai

17:15>> Something I wish I knew when I was 20. Honestly, just get started on things. If you have an idea, just get started and figure out the rest. Doesn't have to be perfect. That's something I'm trying to get better and better at each and every day.

Nathan Latka

17:26Guys, Jay is a non engineer who's launched a SaaS tool called summaraize.com, helping podcasts and YouTube hosts cut up their content, summarize it, and then market it back out on platforms. First non line of code written in January this year. He got going, brought on a cofounder. Four months later, they split equity 40 at 5050%. Monthly recurring revenue today is, call it, $2,000, of which 30 customers paying $30 a month is the recurring fee. They do

17:50another pay as you go model that makes up another one k on top of that. They've already grown this month in July 2023. They've already collected 3,400,000 of revenue. His goal is to hit 20,000 a month by the end of the year. We will see what happens. Jay, thanks for taking us to the top.

Jay Desai

18:03>> Thanks so much, Nathan. Thanks for having me.

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 one

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