785: He Makes $500k+ From Udemy Helping You Code

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

Ceo, Entrepreneurs, Founders, Software, Business, Entrepreneurship, Saas, Startups

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2017

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Evan Leong. He’s the VP of Product at Devslopes, a learn-to-code platform focused on taking beginners to paid professionals to curated project-based videos. He’s always been involved with startups since 2015, when he took the leap from a corporate job to join the startup world full-time.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Good to Great
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — Trello
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Follow your instincts, follow your gut, and don’t let age stop you from what you want to do

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:05 – Nathan introduces Evan to the show
02:31 – Devslopes is a learn-to-code platform for iOs, MacOS and TvOs
- 02:39 – A version for Windows will be available soon too
02:48 – Devslopes is similar to Treehouse
03:00 – Devslopes has been around for a year and a half
03:10 – Devslopes has just converted to SaaS
- 03:22 – They garnered 130 subscriptions just after the launch
03:33 – Average pay per customer is a little over $20 a month
04:05 – Devslopes was funded through Kickstarter and an investor
- 04:15 – They raised $190K in Kickstarter
04:35 – Devslopes’ CEO is a good salesperson and they had a strong community even before Kickstarter
05:04 – The Kickstarter campaign was blasted around
05:11 – The community size is around 10K
05:22 – Devslopes has raised an additional of $300K from Redfoo of LMFAO
05:42 – Devslopes was launched in March 2016
05:53 – First year revenue was $600K
06:04 – 2017 goal is to reach a million
06:39 – Devslopes has large courses that will take people more time to stick with them
06:48 – Devslopes is pumping out target topics which are 2-3 hour courses
07:13 – Team size is 8
07:48 – The CEO started in e-learning marketplaces
08:05 – By the time Devslopes started, the CEO already had 40K students on Udemy
08:33 – Devslopes gets students from affiliates too
09:12 – Devslopes want to fully dive into the learning experience
- 09:32 – They liked the idea of having everything in one program so they created the SaaS model
10:17 – Devslopes publishes to affiliates the content that the affiliates want to promote
10:26 – Udemy likes to promote 30-60 hour courses
10:43 – Devslopes is also on Skillshare, Learnability and Inkydeals
- 10:58 – 90% of the content goes to Udemy and the rest are spread out to the rest
11:08 – 90% of the revenue is from Udemy, too
11:30 – Devslopes is just starting to use Facebook ads which is their only paid marketing
12:05 – CAC
- 12:11 – Most of what Devslopes gets from Facebook ads is social presence but no paid leads yet
12:44 – The charge of Udemy fluctuates depending on how they promote their content
13:21 – Evan focuses on the product and handles the team
13:37 – Devslopes currently have 5K iOs downloads and a couple of thousand from Mac
15:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

With the advancement in technology, more people are opting to learn from the comfort of their own home.
Target your market so it will be easier for the company to adapt a new business model.
Customers will stick with your product if it is of value to them.

Resources Mentioned:

Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Evan, again, he's leading, really designed the experience at, at really the company leading the way in terms of learning to code, going from nothing to an expert at Devslopes.com.
0:10.4	They do most of their revenue. In fact, 600 grand in 2016 through other platforms like Udeme.
0:15.5	Now they're building their own technology where you can go to their own site and sign up for $20 a month kind of subscription
0:21.4	courses. They have 130 folks signed up for that. They're only a month in, so doing about
0:24.8	$2,600 a month there. Their goal is to do a million dollars this year with, again, their
0:30.3	team of about five or sorry, about eight people. This is the top, where I interview entrepreneurs
0:37.4	who are number one or number two in their
0:39.9	industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making,
0:45.7	what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000
0:51.4	per talk. Five and six million. He is hell bent on global domination. We just broke our $100,000 unit sold mark. And I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell bent on global domination.
0:55.3	We just broke our $100,000 unit sole mark.
0:58.0	And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.
1:01.3	Many of you listening right now don't have time to listen to every B2B SaaS CEO that I've interviewed.
1:06.5	If you want to get access to the database I've created with year-over-year growth rates, customer accounts, margins, and many, many other data metrics and data points, you can go to g-et-l-a-tka.com.
1:17.5	Here's the thing, though, this database, I keep it to myself. It's so freaking valuable.
1:22.7	And to preserve the quality of the data and make sure that the people that have access to it
1:26.6	have a true advantage, I'm only letting 10 companies on each month. So we're full this month, but you can go to
1:32.1	Gitlatka.com to get on the waiting list for next month. And look, there's big people on the waiting
1:36.4	list. I mean, the biggest VCs you've ever heard of, you've probably heard of them. They're big,
1:40.3	private equity, billions and billions under management. So it's an impressive waiting list. Go get on now at Gitlatka.com.
1:46.4	This is episode 785.
1:48.0	Coming up tomorrow morning, Mitchell Reichka joins us.
	...

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