848: SaaS: Wistia Video King? $10m+ ARR, 10k+ Customers on Just $1m Raised!

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

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

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2017

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Chris Savage. He’s the CEO and cofounder of Wistia, a leading video platform that enables business teams to harness the connective power of video. They help over 400K businesses connect better with their customers using video as the medium.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Masters of Doom
What CEO do you follow? – Ben Chestnut
Favorite online tool? — Quip
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Persistence is the difference between success and failure”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:51 – Nathan introduces Chris to the show
02:17 – Wistia is a SaaS business
02:20 – Wistia is a platform where you can upload your videos and customize them for your site
02:49 – Wistia charges based on the number of videos
02:55 – ACV is $100 a month and it’s 25 cents per video
03:38 – Wistia is already 11 years old
04:09 – Wistia didn’t make money their first year
05:08 – Chris and his cofounder needed at least 15K a month to live
05:55 – Wistia made a mistake when they weren’t charging based on the storage
06:35 – Chris explains their decision to change their pricing
07:04 – Gross margin is in the 70s
07:43 – Total number of customers
08:00 – Wistia still has a free trial for 3 videos
- 08:05 – There are a few hundred thousand free users
09:21 – One the best things Wistia offers is inspirational and useful content for free accounts
10:05 – Wistia gets 15% of direct, attributable conversion from free accounts
10:30 – Wistia has raised two rounds with a total of $1M
11:09 – “We are very focused on long-term”
11:29 – Chris wants Wistia to be less complex for users
12:27 – Customer churn is 1.6% a month
12:47 – On a unit economic basis, Wistia is consistently expanding
13:11 – LTV is approaching $5K
13:20 – CAC
16:00 – Stretch goal in December of 2017
- 16:09 – Wistia is focused on profitability
17:06 – Wistia is doing a more than million dollars a month in revenue
17:22 – Wistia has raised less than what they’re making monthly
18:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Changing the price of your product won’t necessarily equate to profitability—balance is the key.
Converting customers from free to paid takes a lot of testing and patience.
Persistency is the difference between success and failure.

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	founded back almost 11 years ago. Feels like a long time, but not really, right? In 2006 was
0:04.3	launch date. They're now over 100 people up there in Boston, helping you guys, the world,
0:08.3	really entrepreneurs better, you know, frame their video, host their video, present their video
0:14.0	to their online audiences. They have tens of thousands of paying customers, an ARPU average of
0:19.2	about 100 bucks a month doing well more than
0:20.8	a million bucks in monthly recurring revenue. Growth tactic-wise, you know, making limits more
0:25.7	obvious in their free trial is something that's helped them drive growth. Margins lower than
0:30.2	most SaaS companies, but that's because they have hosting expense. They've managed to keep
0:33.3	churn, though, lower than most, especially SMB companies at 1.6% monthly.
0:38.3	This is the top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base.
0:47.7	You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.
0:56.2	I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell bent on global domination. We just broke our $100,000
1:01.1	unit sole mark. And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Many of you listening right now don't have
1:07.1	time to listen to every B2B SaaS CEO that I've interviewed. If you want to get access to the database I've created with year-over-year growth rates,
1:14.3	customer accounts, margins, and many, many other data metrics and data points,
1:18.4	you can go to g-et-l-a-com.
1:21.7	Here's the thing, though, this database, I keep it to myself.
1:25.1	It's so freaking valuable. And to preserve the quality of the data and
1:29.3	make sure that the people that have access to it have a true advantage, I'm only letting 10
1:33.3	companies on each month. So we're full this month, but you can go to getlatka.com to get on the
1:37.6	waiting list for next month. And look, there's big people on the waiting list. I mean, the biggest VCs you've ever heard of. You've probably heard of them. They're big, private equity, billions and billions under management. So it's an
1:47.2	impressive waiting list. Go get on now at Gitlatka.com. Hello, everyone. My guest today is
	...

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