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

Upendra: 00:00:00

Hello everyone. Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast. I'm your host Upendra Varma. Today we have Amar Ghosh with us. Amar here is the CEO of a company called ZenMaid. Hey Amar, welcome to the show.

Amar Ghose: 00:00:10

Hey, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Upendra: 00:00:13

All right, Amar. So let's try to understand, right? What ZenMaid does, right? And why customers are willing to pay your money.

Amar Ghose: 00:00:19

Uh, yeah. So, uh, essentially everyone I watching this, I assume is going to be familiar with a maid service or a cleaning company. Um, those companies have like across the world have one thing in common. They have to know where they have to be and when. Um, who's going to go there and what are the details like of the appointment? Um, that's even more important than being good at cleaning, because if you don't show up where you're expected to be, then, uh, you know, nothing actually happens in the business. So ZenMaid is essentially a better alternative to what previously was a whiteboard or Google calendar, or just a pen and paper diary, but it's We essentially take all of that basic information and put it on steroids for cleaning companies around the world to, uh, to use. So all automations around the schedule

Upendra: 00:01:08

Talk a bit about these cleaning companies, right? So how do they look like? So like, what does a cleaning company look like? So how many, like, just give us a sense of your, you know, customer, right? Before we get

Amar Ghose: 00:01:17

is, it tends to be much, much smaller than we work with residential cleaning companies specifically, like very specifically, we don't work with, um, with commercial cleaners, post construction, you know, window washers, none of, none of that stuff, just like in your house, like cleaners. So it tends to be almost like mom and pop. Type businesses where, um, I think our average customer has, I believe five cleaners, maybe a little, a little bit more. I think six cleaners is now the, um, the average in ZenMaid and it, it ranges up to like maybe 40. I think one customer has like, has like 80, but it's a, it's a pretty small, like it's a very, very like SMB, um, that, yeah, the average customer is paying us just under a hundred dollars a month,

Upendra: 00:02:01

okay. And, and how many paying customers are we talking about today that you're serving on your platform?

Amar Ghose: 00:02:08

a couple of thousand low, low thousands

Upendra: 00:02:10

It's around 2000, something like that.

Amar Ghose: 00:02:13

around there. Yeah. Okay.

Upendra: 00:02:14

All right. Uh, that makes a lot of sense. So like, what's the total revenue you're doing as a company today? And approximate approximate numbers totally work.

Amar Ghose: 00:02:22

we're at approximately 2. 5 million, uh, per, um, or 2, 2. 5 million annually right now. Yeah.

Upendra: 00:02:31

All right. Uh, and also want to get a sense of how you're growing, right? So over the past 12 months, right? So where were you in terms of revenue approximately 12 months before today?

Amar Ghose: 00:02:40

Um, I think we were, I, I don't know. That's kind of a, that's kind of a tough one. I, I mean, I think right now, like we're, we're at like, like just under 200,000 in annual or in, in monthly recurring revenue. And we were at about 150,000 in, in monthly recurring revenue. So yeah, about like 25 to 30% growth over the past 12 months.

Upendra: 00:03:02

All right. So, so, and when did you start the company as such? So when was that first customer that was, that paid you?

Amar Ghose: 00:03:07

Uh, we started 11 years ago.

Upendra: 00:03:10

Okay. Uh, so, and that's, that's, uh, that's a long time, right? So there's, there's a lot of things that, that must have happened in the background, right? So I want to capture this, you know, in a step by step fashion, right? First, I want to understand what's happening over the past 12 months, right? So this 20 to 30 percent growth that you're getting, right? So where are your customers primarily discovering you in terms of, you know, top of an early generation perspective? Yeah.

Amar Ghose: 00:03:29

Uh, they, we, we have like a big community on, um, on Facebook. We have a lot of organic and like SEO traffic that is, um, that's coming to us. Uh, we've run some paid ads, although those have mainly been shut off in the past year, but we're about to kind of like bring those, um, bring those like back. A lot of like industry partnerships and stuff. I mean, we've just, we've been doing all of this for, for a long time. So, um, you know, over the years we've built up a lot of marketing assets and quite a few, uh, quite a few distribution channels.

Upendra: 00:04:04

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Right. And I still want to get a sense of, you know, your engine today, right. I understand you've got a lot of channels, right. And obviously you need to have those at this stage of your company. Right. So, but which of them do you believe it? At this point of time, right? It's sort of contributing a lot. So can you just put a number, can you just help us understand, you know, give some ratio of what's working, how, and all of those things across these channels, or is it very hard to answer?

Amar Ghose: 00:04:27

Honestly, not really because marketing attribution and tracking is just total crap. It's a, it's a problem that no one has been able to properly like solve. And I, I also don't believe that there's any one channel that actually does that. I very much believe in the whole, uh, Um, that, that someone has to see your brand seven times before they like actually sign up. So, I mean, I would say that our Facebook group helps a lot with a lot of people signing up, but very, very few people come to the Facebook group, discover us, and then sign up directly like through that. So I think it's all like inter, interrelated. I mean, If I had to pick one, it would probably be SEO and organic. Um, but, uh, beyond, beyond that, I, yeah, I, I don't, I don't really, um, really have a good answer there.

Upendra: 00:05:17

So, so, so we'll, we'll, we'll talk about these two, these two things. So talk about this Facebook group that you're talking about, right? So what's your strategy there, right? So do you use it primarily as a lead nurturing channel? Like what's, what's, what happens in that community?

Amar Ghose: 00:05:30

So we have two Facebook groups. One is for all of our users and that's for them to, you know, to, to chat. Um, actually not too much about the software. Where we tend to not let them ask questions about the software in there, uh, because, you know, they, they should be going to like to support for that, but it gives them a bit of a smaller, tighter knit community to, um, to get to know people and all of that. And then our bigger Facebook group is for all, uh, maid service owners and, um, and, um. You're just like anywhere, right? It doesn't matter what software they use, if their customers like, et cetera. And so with that, I mean, we started that group, I think eight years ago at this point, so it really just kind of runs on its own at this point. Like we probably aren't using it anywhere near as much as we potentially like, as we potentially could. Um, it's just a great place for like our. Ideal audience and our potential users to hang out online to ask questions. So we do get like content ideas from there And we'll occasionally post about you know product updates and stuff like that. But again, it's not it's it's not hugely. Um Intentional at the moment. It was back in the day back in the day It's like I was personally on there every single day answering as many questions as I could Going live on facebook for like multiple hours a day was like a very like gary v style Um approach but now it kind of runs a bit more like on its own with like with minimal So it introduces people to our brand and, um, you know, helps out with, with a couple of a couple of other things. And then the user group is great for like for feedback on the product and stuff like that.

Upendra: 00:07:09

And, and how big of, how big of a group are we talking about here? How many members in that community?

Amar Ghose: 00:07:14

Uh, the bigger community has, I believe 8, 000, um, 8, 000 like made service owners.

Upendra: 00:07:20

And then just talk about your SEO strategy today. Right? So what, what are you doing? Right? So is it landing pages? Is it logs or is it everything? Right. So, so do you have any strategy going on here, especially in your particular niche?

Amar Ghose: 00:07:31

It's mainly it's mainly blogs. Uh, so so we have is every year we do the maid summit, which is a virtual summit for maid services, uh, like around the world. And that gets a couple thousand like online attendees, um, every single year. And we bring on Anywhere between like 40 and maybe as high as 60 folks to speak, uh, some of those are our customers. Others of them are coaches or consultants or agency owners. Uh, but the one thing they all have in common is they all work. Specifically with made services, right? We don't take random accountants. That's like, I work with small businesses. That's not good enough. They have to be ultra specialized to working with made services. And so what we do with that is that gives us 40 to 60, um, pieces of video content that are then published to our YouTube channel. And over the years, we've had, um, we've had like a very talented writer on our team who Who has gone through and has turned each of those videos into standalone, um, standalone articles. Sometimes it's the entire talk. Sometimes it's like one section of the talk that makes a really good 800 or 1200 word article or whatever. And so over the years, I think the last time I checked, we had. I don't know, 800 pages or something like that on our, on our blog. Um, and then other than that, it's really just publishing consistently being in business for, for, you know, 11 years now, and just, I think being recognized by Google as just like. A quality source of information that like, you know, we've never played any games like done any, you know, like black hat stuff or any, um, you know, questionable backlinking or anything along those lines. So every time there's a Google update, it always seems to help us. Like, I can't remember the last time there was a Google update that actually negatively impacted

Upendra: 00:09:24

And then how much of, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. How much of a monthly traffic are we talking about in terms of, you know, overall inbound,

Amar Ghose: 00:09:31

I honestly, I, I don't, I don't know, um, like low, low five figures a month. I think, I think maybe three to 4, 000 like a week on the blog, but honestly, I don't know.

Upendra: 00:09:41

got it. Yeah. And let, let's move on to your industry partnerships, right? I mean, like, so how have you built or, you know, developed these relationships over years to just talk about. What happened over the time, right? And what sort of partnerships are we talking about, right? And you know, what's, what's, what's happening around this.

Amar Ghose: 00:09:55

Yeah. So with, with that, I think that that was definitely playing to my personal strengths when we were getting the, um, the business like off the ground that I went to a lot of live events and met people in person. And really just offered to kind of to, to be helpful. Uh, I think that if you're a SAS founder and you are good with just like web development, even like WordPress and stuff like that, I essentially, you know, let multiple consultants in the industry know once I've sort of gotten in contact. That I would let them know, like, Hey, you know, um, technology is our thing. Like, it's not like, it's not your thing. So if you're having any challenges that you need, website edits that you need, like these sorts of things, you always have a direct line to me. You're thinking about building your own app. You can drop me a line and I'll spend an hour talking to you about the challenges you might go through and just sort of like offering up time like that. Uh, I remember that for one of the consultants, she messaged me with some problem that I looked at and I was like, I have no idea how to solve this. I ended up going on Upwork and paying 200 to someone to come in and to solve her problem. She might find out about this if she ever watches this interview, but like, she never knew that we actually went through and like, and, and did that. Um, and then also we've always taken the, uh, you know, a rising tide raises all ships kind of approach. So the maid summit, for example, it's like every consultant in the industry wants to be on like good terms with Zenmaid because if they're not, they're not going to get invited to this thing. And that's something that, you know, We've seen people that have literally launched entirely new businesses off of talks from like, from that summit. So there's a variety of ways, you know, we try to feature them in other content, doing Facebook lives and stuff like that.

Upendra: 00:11:43

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And talk about your bottom of the funnel, right? So once somebody discovers your product, what happens, right? How do you convert that, you know, that'll lead to a paying customer, right? Is it completely hands off? Like what's happening today? Or

Amar Ghose: 00:11:54

So it's a lot, it's a lot of, uh, of retargeting of like Facebook, uh, Facebook retargeting and, uh, and then using email marketing. Once we've added them to the, uh, to the email list to kind of nurture them. Um, It's self service in terms of getting them, uh, getting them to a trial. Once they get on the trial, then we have like kind of a sales team. It's not like a strict like sales team, the way that it is like with other companies, like they don't make commission. It's more of like a customer success team that does a bit more of the onboarding and the handholding. Like we offer unlimited calls to help people get started, but you know, most people don't take advantage of that. If they do, they're not usually a great fit. Um, so yeah, that, that, that's generally like how, how it goes. But then also the, the Facebook group is really massive for that, right? That the Facebook group doesn't probably get us that much new traffic, but anyone that joins our email list and then jumps into our Facebook group, it might take two years for them to look at our software, but they're never going to forget our brand name. And that that's kind of the point.

Upendra: 00:12:57

so do you get on any sales calls as such? Do you have any touch points where your sales person goes and talks to these customers, does that happen ever?

Amar Ghose: 00:13:05

All right. Well, dude, that's like the customer success. So, so that that's after that's after they've signed up for the trial. Not before. Um, we only make exceptions if it's like a franchise or somebody that's like really big, but if someone has like three cleaners and they're like, we need to talk to you before we sign up for a trial, the answer's no.

Upendra: 00:13:22

So, but that's still not your customer, right? Somebody signing up for trial is still your potential lead, right? That you'll still have to

Amar Ghose: 00:13:27

Yeah. Yeah, definitely

Upendra: 00:13:29

My question is like, can you afford to have a sales team at this price point? There's a 2, 000 deal, right?

Amar Ghose: 00:13:34

not a, not a real sales team, not a real sales team. If I had to pay people commissions, we, we would not be able to make the unit economics, um, work. And I, I did sales in like in a previous previous life. So like, I'm, um, I'm quite, quite familiar with that, that, yeah, we, we don't,

Upendra: 00:13:50

it's more like enabling ER, you know, customers to move from that trial to pay journey, right? Somehow in some automations or whatever you can do.

Amar Ghose: 00:13:57

Yeah, much more handholding and like on board. And like I said, it's, it's more customer success than it is sales.

Upendra: 00:14:02

So how does it show and look like today? Right? Because I mean, at this price point, you typically expect a lot of shown, right? So what, what's, how does that number look like?

Amar Ghose: 00:14:10

Um, I think like a customer churn is somewhere like just under 5 percent a month. And then revenue churn is closer to like 2 percent a month. So it's, you know, I wish it was, I wish it was better. I hear about, you know, bigger softwares that have just insane, like churn numbers and everything. And, you know, you, you have to take like the good with the bad, right. A lot of those companies, you have a nine month sales cycle, right. It's, you know, we sign people up a lot without even talking to them. So, um, you know, yeah, I don't really compare myself to other, um, other companies too much or other industries too much, just because it's, it's so, it's so specific and like, it just, it doesn't matter, right. It doesn't change.

Upendra: 00:14:49

what's that primary reason, right? For these turned out customers, is it because they are, they themselves are shutting down their business or what's happening in this case, right? I mean, I'm understanding almost 60 percent of your customers sort of, you know, go away in a year or so. Right. So what's happening to these customers typically from your own analysis?

Amar Ghose: 00:15:05

It's a variety of like of things. I mean, uh, yeah, I don't know. Some, some go out of business. Um, you know, I mean, I think, I think what one thing is like when you look at that 5 percent number, if you were to remove customers that have been with us for longer than 90 days, So that have made like their third payment to us. Then that churn number drops massively, right? Like you'd like, you know, probably in like the 3 percent or like 2 percent like range, like range there. So like the other thing is that a lot of churn are people that were never truly using the software. They were evaluating it and 14 days wasn't enough for, for them. Right. So, um, yeah, it's, it's a variety of things, but yeah.

Upendra: 00:15:48

So I'm going to talk about that zero to one journey, right? So how did it all start? Right. So where did you, like, how did you decide, okay, I'm going to build a service for me cleaning industry, right? How did it all start and how did you get that first customer?

Amar Ghose: 00:15:58

To just keep it, keep it brief, uh, I ran a maid service previously, and then a friend of mine, because I'm, I'm the non technical like founder. Um, and so a friend of mine approached me and essentially was like, Hey, I see that you guys have built out like, you know, Your own little scheduling, just using the website. I think that we can turn that into a SAS and offer it to other maid services. And so that's how we actually started the company back in the day. And then we got our first customers with just cold email and cold calling. Um, our first, first hundred customers came from cold email and cold calling. And at some point along the way there, we got lucky with a partnership that helped us to go from like there to maybe. Maybe 150 or something and then sometime between 100 and 150 clients was when our, um, our inbound began to, uh, began to build up. That's when, you know, we were getting to see a couple more folks finding us like on, on Google and we'd written a couple of articles and all that stuff. So that's how we started.

Upendra: 00:16:56

And then what have you raised in external funding so far to build your company over the past 10 years? So, so is it completely bootstrap and you co founders own the complete business? Is that how it is today? So,

Amar Ghose: 00:17:08

four, four owners now that were that one of my, my, my, my initial co founder left in 2017. So our current CTO has got a significant chunk of the business. And then one of the guys who was with me since 2015 and really helped to like, to build up the company. Um, like it used to just be me, him and the initial co founder. He's got a, he's got a small amount of equity as well.

Upendra: 00:17:28

so what's the long term vision here? Am I right? So what are you doing? What are you planning to do with this company? Are you going to sort of sell it off to somebody or what's, what's the vision here now that you have complete control over the company?

Amar Ghose: 00:17:37

Um, I'm planning on like, I don't, I don't think that I'm likely to sell, to sell the business, but we'll have to see. It's like a, you never say never kind of thing that it's just, it's one of the industries that's like the least disruptible in like, in, in the world. It's just, you know, people are always going to pay other people to like, to clean their homes. Um, so I don't think there's, there's that much like risk in terms of, in terms of that, um, Uh, I think that the best companies are always built to sell. So like the idea is that I'm, I'm building it, uh, so, so that like, it's possible to sell it, but the way that I see it is that if I move on from Zen made, I'm likely going to focus on, um, on like another SAS product and potentially in the future have like a portfolio of like SAS companies. And so to me, it's like, why, why sell the first one? If that's the one that's like, that's working, you know, it's. Fits off like a nice, nice, nice bit of like, of, of cash. We've done all of like the hard work, like hard work now, so, um, yeah. We'll, we'll see. I think it, it is more likely that I'm gonna hire someone to replace me as CEO at some point.

Upendra: 00:18:43

And you don't plan on to raise some sort of external VC funding and, you know, you know, pump up the growth by doing all of that things, right? You

Amar Ghose: 00:18:49

Oh, no reason.

Upendra: 00:18:50

And why, and why not? Why are you such, why do you have such a strong opinion?

Amar Ghose: 00:18:55

because people that have investors generally essentially have bosses and have people that they're working for, right? Like, it's 1. 30 in the afternoon right now and, you know, I'm just back from an appointment. I went to the gym like this morning and like, I'm essentially responsible for getting the results, but how I spend my time is nobody's business but my own, and I'm not going to put that at, at, at risk, right? Like, yeah, so, so that, that, that's essentially it, like, yeah, we, we've had a couple of offers from people that are like, oh, like, you know. You know, if you take this money, you could just go hang out at the beach. And I'm just like, I'm already at the beach. I don't, I don't need to, to sell, to sell the business or to grow the business. Um, like I'm growing it more now as like almost like a personal challenge. And because I do want to make a bigger impact. For us to affect more made services. I'd like to bring on better people onto the team and pay my current team, like more than they're currently paid. And like, and all of like all of that stuff, but there is zero chance that I will, that I will take investment for this, for, for this company. Um, you, you can, you can mark my words on that one.

Upendra: 00:19:59

Thanks so much. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Hope your skills send me to much, much greater heights.

Amar Ghose: 00:20:04

thanks for having