How we Bootstrapped our Vertical SaaS to $2.5MN ARR with Zero Funding

Hello everyone.

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Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast.

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I'm your host Upendra Varma.

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Today we have Amar Ghosh with us.

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Amar here is the CEO of

a company called ZenMaid.

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Hey Amar, welcome to the show.

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Amar Ghose: Hey, thanks for having me.

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Excited to be here.

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Upendra: All right, Amar.

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So let's try to understand, right?

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What ZenMaid does, right?

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And why customers are

willing to pay your money.

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Amar Ghose: Uh, yeah.

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So, uh, essentially everyone I watching

this, I assume is going to be familiar

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with a maid service or a cleaning company.

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Um, those companies have like across

the world have one thing in common.

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They have to know where

they have to be and when.

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Um, who's going to go there and what

are the details like of the appointment?

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Um, that's even more important than

being good at cleaning, because if you

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don't show up where you're expected

to be, then, uh, you know, nothing

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actually happens in the business.

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So ZenMaid is essentially a better

alternative to what previously was

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a whiteboard or Google calendar,

or just a pen and paper diary, but

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it's We essentially take all of

that basic information and put it

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on steroids for cleaning companies

around the world to, uh, to use.

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So all automations around the schedule

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Upendra: Talk a bit about these

cleaning companies, right?

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So how do they look like?

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So like, what does a

cleaning company look like?

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So how many, like, just give us a sense

of your, you know, customer, right?

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Before we get

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Amar Ghose: is, it tends to be much, much

smaller than we work with residential

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cleaning companies specifically,

like very specifically, we don't work

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with, um, with commercial cleaners,

post construction, you know, window

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washers, none of, none of that stuff,

just like in your house, like cleaners.

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So it tends to be almost like mom and pop.

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Type businesses where, um, I

think our average customer has,

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I believe five cleaners, maybe

a little, a little bit more.

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I think six cleaners is now the,

um, the average in ZenMaid and

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it, it ranges up to like maybe 40.

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I think one customer has like, has like

80, but it's a, it's a pretty small, like

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it's a very, very like SMB, um, that,

yeah, the average customer is paying us

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just under a hundred dollars a month,

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Upendra: okay.

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And, and how many paying customers

are we talking about today that

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you're serving on your platform?

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Amar Ghose: a couple of

thousand low, low thousands

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Upendra: It's around

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Amar Ghose: around there.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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Upendra: All right.

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Uh, that makes a lot of sense.

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So like, what's the total revenue

you're doing as a company today?

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And approximate approximate

numbers totally work.

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Amar Ghose: we're at approximately 2.

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5 million, uh, per, um, or 2, 2.

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5 million annually right now.

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Yeah.

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Upendra: All right.

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Uh, and also want to get a sense

of how you're growing, right?

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So over the past 12 months, right?

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So where were you in terms of revenue

approximately 12 months before today?

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Amar Ghose: Um, I think

we were, I, I don't know.

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That's kind of a, that's

kind of a tough one.

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I, I mean, I think right now,

like we're, we're at like, like

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just under 200,000 in annual or

in, in monthly recurring revenue.

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And we were at about 150,000 in,

in monthly recurring revenue.

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So yeah, about like 25 to 30%

growth over the past 12 months.

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Upendra: All right.

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So, so, and when did you

start the company as such?

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So when was that first customer

that was, that paid you?

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Amar Ghose: Uh, we started 11 years ago.

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Upendra: Okay.

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Uh, so, and that's, that's,

uh, that's a long time, right?

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So there's, there's a lot of

things that, that must have

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happened in the background, right?

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So I want to capture this, you know,

in a step by step fashion, right?

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First, I want to understand what's

happening over the past 12 months, right?

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So this 20 to 30 percent growth

that you're getting, right?

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So where are your customers primarily

discovering you in terms of, you know,

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top of an early generation perspective?

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Yeah.

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Amar Ghose: Uh, they, we, we have like

a big community on, um, on Facebook.

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We have a lot of organic and like SEO

traffic that is, um, that's coming to us.

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Uh, we've run some paid ads, although

those have mainly been shut off in the

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past year, but we're about to kind of like

bring those, um, bring those like back.

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A lot of like industry

partnerships and stuff.

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I mean, we've just, we've been doing

all of this for, for a long time.

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So, um, you know, over the years

we've built up a lot of marketing

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assets and quite a few, uh, quite

a few distribution channels.

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Upendra: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

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Right.

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And I still want to get a sense of,

you know, your engine today, right.

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I understand you've got

a lot of channels, right.

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And obviously you need to have

those at this stage of your company.

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Right.

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So, but which of them do you believe it?

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At this point of time, right?

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It's sort of contributing a lot.

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So can you just put a number, can you

just help us understand, you know,

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give some ratio of what's working, how,

and all of those things across these

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channels, or is it very hard to answer?

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Amar Ghose: Honestly, not really

because marketing attribution

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and tracking is just total crap.

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It's a, it's a problem that no one

has been able to properly like solve.

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And I, I also don't believe that there's

any one channel that actually does that.

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I very much believe in the whole,

uh, Um, that, that someone has

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to see your brand seven times

before they like actually sign up.

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So, I mean, I would say that our Facebook

group helps a lot with a lot of people

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signing up, but very, very few people come

to the Facebook group, discover us, and

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then sign up directly like through that.

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So I think it's all like

inter, interrelated.

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I mean, If I had to pick one, it

would probably be SEO and organic.

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Um, but, uh, beyond, beyond that,

I, yeah, I, I don't, I don't really,

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um, really have a good answer there.

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Upendra: So, so, so we'll, we'll, we'll

talk about these two, these two things.

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So talk about this Facebook group

that you're talking about, right?

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So what's your strategy there, right?

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So do you use it primarily

as a lead nurturing channel?

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Like what's, what's, what

happens in that community?

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Amar Ghose: So we have

two Facebook groups.

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One is for all of our users and that's

for them to, you know, to, to chat.

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Um, actually not too

much about the software.

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Where we tend to not let them ask

questions about the software in there,

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uh, because, you know, they, they should

be going to like to support for that,

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but it gives them a bit of a smaller,

tighter knit community to, um, to

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get to know people and all of that.

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And then our bigger Facebook

group is for all, uh, maid

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service owners and, um, and, um.

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You're just like anywhere, right?

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It doesn't matter what software they

use, if their customers like, et cetera.

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And so with that, I mean, we started

that group, I think eight years ago

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at this point, so it really just kind

of runs on its own at this point.

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Like we probably aren't using it

anywhere near as much as we potentially

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like, as we potentially could.

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Um, it's just a great place for like our.

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Ideal audience and our potential users

to hang out online to ask questions.

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So we do get like content ideas from there

And we'll occasionally post about you

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know product updates and stuff like that.

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But again, it's not it's it's not hugely.

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Um Intentional at the moment.

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It was back in the day back in the day

It's like I was personally on there every

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single day answering as many questions

as I could Going live on facebook for

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like multiple hours a day was like a

very like gary v style Um approach but

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now it kind of runs a bit more like

on its own with like with minimal So

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it introduces people to our brand and,

um, you know, helps out with, with a

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couple of a couple of other things.

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And then the user group is great

for like for feedback on the

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product and stuff like that.

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Upendra: And, and how big of, how big

of a group are we talking about here?

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How many members in that community?

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Amar Ghose: Uh, the bigger community

has, I believe 8, 000, um, 8,

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000 like made service owners.

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Upendra: And then just talk

about your SEO strategy today.

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Right?

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So what, what are you doing?

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Right?

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So is it landing pages?

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Is it logs or is it everything?

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Right.

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So, so do you have any strategy going on

here, especially in your particular niche?

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Amar Ghose: It's mainly it's mainly blogs.

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Uh, so so we have is every year we do the

maid summit, which is a virtual summit for

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maid services, uh, like around the world.

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And that gets a couple thousand like

online attendees, um, every single year.

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And we bring on Anywhere between like 40

and maybe as high as 60 folks to speak,

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uh, some of those are our customers.

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Others of them are coaches or

consultants or agency owners.

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Uh, but the one thing they all

have in common is they all work.

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Specifically with made services, right?

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We don't take random accountants.

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That's like, I work with small businesses.

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That's not good enough.

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They have to be ultra specialized

to working with made services.

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And so what we do with that is

that gives us 40 to 60, um, pieces

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of video content that are then

published to our YouTube channel.

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And over the years, we've had, um,

we've had like a very talented writer

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on our team who Who has gone through

and has turned each of those videos into

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standalone, um, standalone articles.

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Sometimes it's the entire talk.

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Sometimes it's like one section of

the talk that makes a really good

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And so over the years, I think

the last time I checked, we had.

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I don't know, 800 pages or something

like that on our, on our blog.

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Um, and then other than that, it's

really just publishing consistently

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being in business for, for, you know,

11 years now, and just, I think being

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recognized by Google as just like.

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A quality source of information that like,

you know, we've never played any games

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like done any, you know, like black hat

stuff or any, um, you know, questionable

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backlinking or anything along those lines.

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So every time there's a Google

update, it always seems to help us.

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Like, I can't remember the last

time there was a Google update

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that actually negatively impacted

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Upendra: And then how much of,

yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

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How much of a monthly traffic

are we talking about in terms

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of, you know, overall inbound,

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Amar Ghose: I honestly, I, I

don't, I don't know, um, like

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low, low five figures a month.

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I think, I think maybe three to

4, 000 like a week on the blog,

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but honestly, I don't know.

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Upendra: got it.

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Yeah.

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And let, let's move on to your

industry partnerships, right?

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I mean, like, so how have you built or,

you know, developed these relationships

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over years to just talk about.

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What happened over the time, right?

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And what sort of partnerships

are we talking about, right?

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And you know, what's, what's,

what's happening around this.

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Amar Ghose: Yeah.

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So with, with that, I think that

that was definitely playing to my

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personal strengths when we were getting

the, um, the business like off the

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ground that I went to a lot of live

events and met people in person.

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And really just offered to

kind of to, to be helpful.

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Uh, I think that if you're a SAS founder

and you are good with just like web

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development, even like WordPress and

stuff like that, I essentially, you know,

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let multiple consultants in the industry

know once I've sort of gotten in contact.

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That I would let them know, like, Hey,

you know, um, technology is our thing.

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Like, it's not like, it's not your thing.

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So if you're having any challenges

that you need, website edits that

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you need, like these sorts of things,

you always have a direct line to me.

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You're thinking about

building your own app.

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You can drop me a line and I'll spend an

hour talking to you about the challenges

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you might go through and just sort

of like offering up time like that.

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Uh, I remember that for one of the

consultants, she messaged me with some

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problem that I looked at and I was

like, I have no idea how to solve this.

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I ended up going on Upwork and

paying 200 to someone to come

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in and to solve her problem.

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She might find out about this if she

ever watches this interview, but like,

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she never knew that we actually went

through and like, and, and did that.

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Um, and then also we've always taken

the, uh, you know, a rising tide

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raises all ships kind of approach.

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So the maid summit, for example, it's

like every consultant in the industry

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wants to be on like good terms with

Zenmaid because if they're not, they're

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not going to get invited to this thing.

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And that's something that, you know,

We've seen people that have literally

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launched entirely new businesses off

of talks from like, from that summit.

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So there's a variety of ways, you know,

we try to feature them in other content,

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doing Facebook lives and stuff like that.

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Upendra: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

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And talk about your bottom

of the funnel, right?

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So once somebody discovers your

product, what happens, right?

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How do you convert that, you know,

that'll lead to a paying customer, right?

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Is it completely hands off?

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Like what's happening today?

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Or

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Amar Ghose: So it's a lot, it's a

lot of, uh, of retargeting of like

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Facebook, uh, Facebook retargeting and,

uh, and then using email marketing.

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Once we've added them to the, uh, to

the email list to kind of nurture them.

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Um, It's self service in terms of getting

them, uh, getting them to a trial.

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Once they get on the trial, then

we have like kind of a sales team.

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It's not like a strict like

sales team, the way that it is

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like with other companies, like

they don't make commission.

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It's more of like a customer success

team that does a bit more of the

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onboarding and the handholding.

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Like we offer unlimited calls to help

people get started, but you know, most

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people don't take advantage of that.

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If they do, they're not

usually a great fit.

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Um, so yeah, that, that, that's

generally like how, how it goes.

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But then also the, the Facebook group

is really massive for that, right?

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That the Facebook group doesn't probably

get us that much new traffic, but

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anyone that joins our email list and

then jumps into our Facebook group,

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it might take two years for them to

look at our software, but they're

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never going to forget our brand name.

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And that that's kind of the point.

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Upendra: so do you get on

any sales calls as such?

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Do you have any touch points where

your sales person goes and talks to

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these customers, does that happen ever?

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Amar Ghose: All right.

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Well, dude, that's like

the customer success.

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So, so that that's after that's after

they've signed up for the trial.

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Not before.

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Um, we only make exceptions if it's

like a franchise or somebody that's

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like really big, but if someone has

like three cleaners and they're like,

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we need to talk to you before we

sign up for a trial, the answer's no.

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Upendra: So, but that's still

not your customer, right?

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Somebody signing up for trial is

still your potential lead, right?

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That you'll still have to

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Amar Ghose: Yeah.

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Yeah, definitely

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Upendra: My question is like,

can you afford to have a sales

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team at this price point?

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There's a 2, 000 deal, right?

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Amar Ghose: not a, not a real

sales team, not a real sales team.

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If I had to pay people commissions,

we, we would not be able to make

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the unit economics, um, work.

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And I, I did sales in like

in a previous previous life.

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So like, I'm, um, I'm quite,

quite familiar with that,

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that, yeah, we, we don't,

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Upendra: it's more like enabling

ER, you know, customers to move from

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that trial to pay journey, right?

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Somehow in some automations

or whatever you can do.

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Amar Ghose: Yeah, much more

handholding and like on board.

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And like I said, it's, it's more

customer success than it is sales.

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Upendra: So how does it

show and look like today?

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Right?

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Because I mean, at this price point, you

typically expect a lot of shown, right?

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So what, what's, how does

that number look like?

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Amar Ghose: Um, I think like a

customer churn is somewhere like

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just under 5 percent a month.

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And then revenue churn is closer

to like 2 percent a month.

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So it's, you know, I wish it

was, I wish it was better.

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I hear about, you know, bigger

softwares that have just insane,

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like churn numbers and everything.

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And, you know, you, you have to take

like the good with the bad, right.

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A lot of those companies, you have

a nine month sales cycle, right.

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It's, you know, we sign people up

a lot without even talking to them.

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So, um, you know, yeah, I don't

really compare myself to other, um,

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other companies too much or other

industries too much, just because it's,

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it's so, it's so specific and like,

it just, it doesn't matter, right.

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It doesn't change.

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Upendra: what's that

primary reason, right?

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For these turned out customers, is

it because they are, they themselves

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are shutting down their business or

what's happening in this case, right?

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I mean, I'm understanding almost 60

percent of your customers sort of,

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you know, go away in a year or so.

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Right.

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So what's happening to these customers

typically from your own analysis?

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Amar Ghose: It's a

variety of like of things.

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I mean, uh, yeah, I don't know.

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Some, some go out of business.

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Um, you know, I mean, I think, I think

what one thing is like when you look at

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that 5 percent number, if you were to

remove customers that have been with us

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for longer than 90 days, So that have

made like their third payment to us.

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Then that churn number

drops massively, right?

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Like you'd like, you know, probably

in like the 3 percent or like 2

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percent like range, like range there.

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So like the other thing is that a

lot of churn are people that were

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never truly using the software.

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They were evaluating it and 14

days wasn't enough for, for them.

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Right.

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So, um, yeah, it's, it's a

variety of things, but yeah.

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Upendra: So I'm going to talk about

that zero to one journey, right?

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So how did it all start?

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Right.

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So where did you, like, how did you

decide, okay, I'm going to build a

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service for me cleaning industry, right?

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How did it all start and how

did you get that first customer?

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Amar Ghose: To just keep it,

keep it brief, uh, I ran a maid

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service previously, and then a

friend of mine, because I'm, I'm

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the non technical like founder.

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Um, and so a friend of mine approached

me and essentially was like, Hey,

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I see that you guys have built out

like, you know, Your own little

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scheduling, just using the website.

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I think that we can turn that into a

SAS and offer it to other maid services.

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And so that's how we actually

started the company back in the day.

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And then we got our first customers

with just cold email and cold calling.

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Um, our first, first hundred customers

came from cold email and cold calling.

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And at some point along the way there,

we got lucky with a partnership that

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helped us to go from like there to maybe.

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Maybe 150 or something and then

sometime between 100 and 150 clients

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was when our, um, our inbound

began to, uh, began to build up.

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That's when, you know, we were getting

to see a couple more folks finding us

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like on, on Google and we'd written a

couple of articles and all that stuff.

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So that's how we started.

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Upendra: And then what have you raised

in external funding so far to build

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your company over the past 10 years?

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So, so is it completely bootstrap and you

co founders own the complete business?

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Is that how it is today?

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So,

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Amar Ghose: four, four owners now

that were that one of my, my, my,

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So our current CTO has got a

significant chunk of the business.

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And then one of the guys who was

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to like, to build up the company.

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Um, like it used to just be me,

him and the initial co founder.

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He's got a, he's got a small

amount of equity as well.

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Upendra: so what's the

long term vision here?

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Am I right?

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So what are you doing?

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What are you planning

to do with this company?

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Are you going to sort of sell it

off to somebody or what's, what's

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the vision here now that you have

complete control over the company?

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Amar Ghose: Um, I'm planning on

like, I don't, I don't think that

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I'm likely to sell, to sell the

business, but we'll have to see.

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It's like a, you never say never kind

of thing that it's just, it's one of

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the industries that's like the least

disruptible in like, in, in the world.

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It's just, you know, people are

always going to pay other people

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to like, to clean their homes.

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Um, so I don't think there's, there's

that much like risk in terms of, in

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terms of that, um, Uh, I think that the

best companies are always built to sell.

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So like the idea is that I'm, I'm building

it, uh, so, so that like, it's possible to

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sell it, but the way that I see it is that

if I move on from Zen made, I'm likely

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going to focus on, um, on like another SAS

product and potentially in the future have

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like a portfolio of like SAS companies.

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And so to me, it's like,

why, why sell the first one?

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If that's the one that's like,

that's working, you know, it's.

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Fits off like a nice, nice,

nice bit of like, of, of cash.

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We've done all of like the hard work,

like hard work now, so, um, yeah.

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We'll, we'll see.

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I think it, it is more likely

that I'm gonna hire someone to

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replace me as CEO at some point.

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Upendra: And you don't plan on to raise

some sort of external VC funding and,

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you know, you know, pump up the growth

by doing all of that things, right?

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You

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Amar Ghose: Oh, no reason.

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Upendra: And why, and why not?

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Why are you such, why do you

have such a strong opinion?

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Amar Ghose: because people that

have investors generally essentially

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have bosses and have people

that they're working for, right?

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Like, it's 1.

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30 in the afternoon right now and, you

know, I'm just back from an appointment.

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I went to the gym like this morning

and like, I'm essentially responsible

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for getting the results, but how I

spend my time is nobody's business

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but my own, and I'm not going to

put that at, at, at risk, right?

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Like, yeah, so, so that, that, that's

essentially it, like, yeah, we, we've

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had a couple of offers from people

that are like, oh, like, you know.

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You know, if you take this money, you

could just go hang out at the beach.

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And I'm just like, I'm

already at the beach.

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I don't, I don't need to, to sell, to

sell the business or to grow the business.

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Um, like I'm growing it more now as

like almost like a personal challenge.

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And because I do want

to make a bigger impact.

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For us to affect more made services.

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I'd like to bring on better people

onto the team and pay my current team,

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like more than they're currently paid.

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And like, and all of like all of that

stuff, but there is zero chance that

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I will, that I will take investment

for this, for, for this company.

418

Um, you, you can, you can

mark my words on that one.

419

Upendra: Thanks so much.

420

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

421

Hope your skills send me to

much, much greater heights.

422

Amar Ghose: thanks for having