Scaling Without VC: The Journey of eWebinar with Melissa Kwan

Melissa Kwan: 00:00:00

Well, we just crossed a million ARR, um, which I feel like it's a big milestone. So thank you. So this is the biggest, like now officially the biggest company I've ever built

Upendra Varma: 00:00:08

Hello everyone. Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast. I'm your host Upendra Verma and today we have Melissa Kwan with us. Melissa is the co founder and CEO of a company called E Webinar. Hey Melissa, welcome to the show.

Melissa Kwan: 00:00:19

Thanks for having me.

Upendra Varma: 00:00:20

All right, Melissa, let's try to understand, right. What E Webinar does and why customers are willing to pay your money.

Melissa Kwan: 00:00:27

Okay. Uh, eWebinar, um, is a webinar automation solution. So we turn any video into an interactive webinar that you can set on a recurring schedule. So you can do hundreds of them every single month without needing to be in front of a camera to do it live. So we scale, um, you know, live webinars, things like live demos, training, onboarding. Um, we automate that for you. So you never have to do them yourself.

Upendra Varma: 00:00:51

Good. And what use case are you specifically trying to focus on? Right? I mean, I could see a lot of use cases here, right? So I'm, I'm assuming you must have, you know, you know, zeroed down on a couple of them, right? So what use case are you trying to solve here?

Melissa Kwan: 00:01:03

Yeah. Um, I mean, there's two primary one is of course, like sales and marketing, like Legion, people using this for like sales pitches, demos, thought leadership. And then the second is customer success, which is like post sale. So it could be like training content, onboarding. As you can imagine, if you have a tech company, a SAS company, um, you know, you've got like lots of onboarding and training to, you know, deliver to your customers, but we also actually serve a lot of non tech companies as well. Like insurance companies. You know, real estate companies that are constantly training their agents on like new regulations, new products.

Upendra Varma: 00:01:37

So if I joined one of your webinars, right? Does it look like a real webinar? Do I know I'm on an automated setup or like, how does it even feel?

Melissa Kwan: 00:01:45

Yeah, I think we've done a good job into making it look and feel more like an interactive TV. There's a two way participation where there's what we call a lot of interactions that come up. So like, Polls questions, uh, you know, contact form sales notifications, you know, things that pop up. So there's like things you can, I guess, play with for the lack of better term as you're watching the experience. So it's less like a zoom or you're in it and like someone's talking at you. And then there's a chat system where you can like ask the host questions. They can respond in real time or respond later through email. So it's kind of like a support chat. Um, I mean, it looks and feels Not so much like, like it's live, right? Like we encourage our customers to never lie to their customers and say it's live when it's not. But it, it's almost like the Netflix of webinars, right? Like whether you're watching friends. At 7 p. m. on a Thursday when it's live on network or watching it on Netflix, it's the same show. So I would say, like, people know that it's not 100 percent live because they're getting it immediately and when you click on the registration page, there's like 10 time slots you can choose. Um, but, you know, it's more of a hybrid because there is a chat that you can respond in real time if you want to.

Upendra Varma: 00:03:00

Yeah, my question here is like, I mean, does it work, right? So, I mean, if I'm watching a webinar, maybe I'm attending to hear to somebody, right? So, but if it's something that's recorded already, and if you already let me know, like, I'm just trying to understand like what, what's that, you know, drop off rate between a live webinar or something like this, because this is like wonderfully scalable. That's very obvious. If I'm a, if there's somebody sitting in a sales team, I would definitely want this, but yeah, does it work as good or even better than what I have right now?

Melissa Kwan: 00:03:25

I mean, you're asking the founder of a company, is it better than what you have right now? So I'm going to have to say yes.

Upendra Varma: 00:03:31

And I'm assuming you'll back it up with some, some data or something. So that's,

Melissa Kwan: 00:03:35

Yeah. And so, um, yeah, I, I mean, let's put the whole drop off thing, like drop off rate thing to the side for a second. Like I think the attendance rate to live events, because it only happens one time is, is known to be low. Right. I would say like 20 percent or lower because people sign up and they want the replay. Cause like 11, your time is 11 PM my time. So I sign up to get the replay, but maybe I never watch it. Right. We all have replays we don't watch. Um, and that's accepted as the norm, but just because that's a norm, I don't think that has to be a reality. I think the nature of having something be accessible anytime you want and for the quality to be even better than live, because The content's tighter, the video quality is better, there's no housekeeping and questions and interruptions. Our, uh, our average attendance rate across all of our customers is 65 percent on average. My demo, like, you know, because people are really by nature of coming to my site, watching my demo, so they're most likely going to come in, but the attendance rate of my demo is 90%. Anyone that's run a webinar before knows that that's impossible. These are impossible rates, but it's because we're making it available at your schedule. I'm not forcing you to fit my schedule. So I think that's piece one. Um, the question that you ask is like, what's drop off rate? Like, well, I can't speak for everybody because drop off rate is fully dependent on. The person delivering the content, the industry, and is the video quality good? Is the sound quality good? But I want to say that because it's pre recorded, the quality, the scripting, the video quality, like can be much better and much tighter. And we give you the option within the software to allow people to watch in like playback speed, right? So to watch in like 1. 5. I cannot sit through something That is like a, you know, normal speed. Every podcast, every video, I watch at 1. 75. All of them. So, I'm gonna drop off if I watch a live webinar or live event because I'm bored. But if I'm going to something automated and I think there are other people like me, I can choose to watch it faster if I want to, right? So I think that's kind of the main difference, but I think drop off rate is fully dependent on like, Are you delivering value?

Upendra Varma: 00:06:02

yeah. And that's a great pitch Melissa. I think I got a sense of what you're trying to say here, but let's move on to your customer base here. Right. So as of today, right, how many paying customers do you have on your platform approximately?

Melissa Kwan: 00:06:12

Yeah. So I think we have like, I think just under 800 companies now.

Upendra Varma: 00:06:17

And then like, what sort of, what sort of deal sizes are we talking about here? Right. So like how big of bigger deals, I know there's going to be a spectrum here. Right. But like typically what. For your ideal customer, right? How much would they typically pay you? Is it a 10, 000 deal? Is it a 100, 000 deal? Is it a 1, 000 deal?

Melissa Kwan: 00:06:33

So we're, uh, we're a self serve platform. So we're, we're a product led growth SaaS. So it's a, it's a low investment product. So we start at a hundred bucks us. And then, so it goes from like a hundred, 200, 300, and then. It kind of goes up from there. But our average is, I think a hundred and I wa I wanna say like it's $150 a, a team. Um, is the average

Upendra Varma: 00:06:58

That's per month, right? That's per

Melissa Kwan: 00:07:00

per month? Yeah.

Upendra Varma: 00:07:00

right? It's around 2, 000, something like that. Your ACV, something like that. Got it, right? So yeah, and just let's move on, right? So where are people discovering you, right? So where are you getting all of this growth from, right? So what growth channels have been working for you so far?

Melissa Kwan: 00:07:16

Yeah. So my, actually, my post today on LinkedIn is about all the $0 marketing strategies that, that we, that we deployed in, in, um, the past three years. But I wanna say ss e o and content, which we. Um, like the strategy we own is the most successful, um, marketing strategy that we have over 50 percent of our demos actually come from there. Um, I share, you know, two to six times every single week on LinkedIn, just not related to company content, but like my experience bootstrapping three companies. So 20 percent of our demos come from there. Um, and then there's a lot of other stuff, right? Like. Not just SEO optimized content. We create a lot of co marketing content, like guest posts, templates, trainings for, you know, things that our customers and prospects find valuable. And we put that content out there. Um, and then there's also like, you know, getting into app stores, right, doing integrations. Once you do an integration, maybe they'll do like a, an announcement. So. There's all this kind of stuff that kind of has like compound interest over time, but I want to say like social media and like SEO optimized content are the two major traffic

Upendra Varma: 00:08:23

And I want to deep dive a bit into this, right? So, and in terms of content, right? So what sort of content are we talking about? Is it just, you know, SEO optimized blog posts, which are long form? Is that it? Or do you have any specific strategy that's going on?

Melissa Kwan: 00:08:35

Yeah. I mean, I think content is broad, right? The idea of content is broad. So, um, of course, like SEO key, like heavily keyword research, like, um, content is like long form content is like I would call SEO optimized so that those are like 50 percent of our traffic comes from organic search. Pieces of content or like, of course, social media posts, templates within our, um, you know, within our products, customer case studies. Getting people to write reviews on like G2, Capterra, all those things. Creating resources that I share with other founders that are completely unrelated. So like, a good example is a financial projections Excel document that you can copy and paste. Um, I have, you know, I actively get on other people's podcasts. So like, You know, the podcast that we're, we're on now, right? It's, it's a marketing strategy of mine as well. I've had a podcast in the past with 15 episodes. All of it is evergreen content. Every single one of those has a page on my site. So these are just like some, some of the more obvious things. Um, and then, you know, the less obvious things I would say, like getting HubSpot, you know, Marketo, Salesforce, and then having people discover us through there as well.

Upendra Varma: 00:09:52

So, so Melissa, you talked about your LinkedIn strategy as such, right? Where you typically go out and share your own bootstrap journey, your story, right? That people connect with and maybe they come to you, right? So my question is like, does the customer base you're trying to target overlaps with that, right? So do you have a good overlap there? Because if there's No overlap. It might not make a lot of sense. Right. And, and I asked this question, everybody, because I mean, everybody says like, okay, just go ahead. Be honest, share your journey. But I mean, if that doesn't match, right. So it's not going to make any sense. Right. So in your case, what's, how does that look like? Does it match?

Melissa Kwan: 00:10:24

Yeah. So, um, and that's a great, that's a great question because, so I took a course on like how LinkedIn works from Justin Walsh. Uh, I don't know if you know him as a creator, but his whole like method is write about something within your expertise that attracts the audience you care about,

Upendra Varma: 00:10:43

Yeah.

Melissa Kwan: 00:10:44

otherwise it's useless. So the best customers for eWebinar are resource strapped companies, right? Right. Because we are almost like an extra person. That are doing these webinars for you and resource trap companies are bootstrap companies. Like they are my number one target customer or like small medium companies, right? Which consider themselves kind of boots bootstrappy. So, um, it just, it just was just such a natural fit that I would only write about. Like stories from my bootstrapping journey to attract other bootstrappers and then they come to my profile and the main link that I have is, is ewebinar. com. So for me, it definitely matched, but you're right. Like, if you're, if the content you're putting out there is not attracting potential customers. They were, they're never going to come to your site, but I think there's a reason why 20 percent of our demos actually come from LinkedIn is because there is, there is an alignment there.

Upendra Varma: 00:11:38

Got it. And let's move towards the bottom of your funnel. Right. Is it completely self serve? Right. Or do you have any, you know, touch motion

Melissa Kwan: 00:11:44

self serve

Upendra Varma: 00:11:45

Okay.

Melissa Kwan: 00:11:46

zero. I refuse to, I refuse to talk to anybody regardless of how big their company is. It's about training your customer. Like I know I hate calls and I didn't start a product to be product led. So that I can talk to people. I did that in the beginning, right? For the first year, because like every company starts off sales led, I had to sell probably our first a hundred deals, but that gets tiring pretty quickly because you're not getting the return, right? Sales cycle is long and it's like a hundred bucks to start. So when somebody comes into the funnel and they're like, Oh, I would like to talk to a person before I sign up. The answer is no, I will not talk to them because if I talk to them once. They'll know that after they sign up, they can get me again and again and again. And so it's part of me, like training my customers to know that we're always there on support, on text, on email. And they can get us at any time of the day. They just can't get me on the phone.

Upendra Varma: 00:12:41

That makes a lot of sense. So, so what happens in your funnel, right? Is it like, okay, somebody discovers you if they start a trial and then they essentially after, you know, whatever that time period is, they just have to subscribe to a paid plan. Is that it?

Melissa Kwan: 00:12:52

Yeah, that's really it. Right. You know, they join a demo, um, after they join a demo, they get entered into like a

Upendra Varma: 00:12:58

But that's an automated demo, right? So there's nobody sitting out there. Yeah. Using your own

Melissa Kwan: 00:13:02

That, we use our product to deliver our demos. So like, I think last year over 3000 people watched a demo. I didn't do a single one live, but there's a kind of a 10 day, very quick follow up like every second day. And then they get it put into like a six week kind of follow up and then they get it put into a sequence of getting one mail per month about like, you know, how customers are using us and things like that as kind of a nurture campaign if they do not sign up and don't convert. If they sign up, but don't convert, then they get put into kind of a different, a different track of 12 emails over the next year. Uh, but really just to remind them that, uh, we're here. But everything is like self serve and super simple.

Upendra Varma: 00:13:46

And then just, can you just quantify how this funnel looks like, right? So what sort of a conversion rate are we talking about for somebody who signs up to somebody who becomes a paid customer of yours? Approximately. So,

Melissa Kwan: 00:13:56

Yeah. So about, um, 20 percent of people that join our demo will sign up on, um, on a, on a trial, but of course not everybody has to watch a demo before they sign up on a trial. Like some people sign up without, without that. Um, and then depending on the month, I guess our conversion rate from trial to paid is anywhere between 35 to 40%. Before we doubled our prices. So our prices when we started used to be 50 and now it's a hundred before it, when it was 50 conversion rate was about 60%, but we had a lot more churn and we had a lot more people that weren't very tech savvy and needed more support after we raise our price. Um, you know, we had less trials. You know, a lower conversion, but it's a net positive because we are charging double. But the major positive is we're getting more serious people signing up, not just people signing up because we're cheap and they need a bunch of handholding and then don't convert.

Upendra Varma: 00:14:53

so what's really been working for you, right? I mean, I'm assuming they're like bunch of, you know, competitors out there, right? So, so how do you establish that credibility during those, you know, 14, 20 days when they're using your product for trial, right? So how do you manage to convince them? And if you're not getting into a call, right, so how are you establishing that credibility? Why, why, why do they have to pick you? Right? So what's, what's happening there? Like, what's the secret sauce? For

Melissa Kwan: 00:15:14

two things. Um, one is we have the most incredible product by far. I want the customer to be in deep research because if I was the first person you come to, you have nothing to compare to. If the first car that I saw was a Ferrari. I'd be like, well, what else is out there? Maybe, maybe there's something better. Maybe the seat's too low. Like, I'm not sure, right? But anyone who is deep in research and has seen like two or three other products or maybe five or six, they'll come to us and be like, this is the best. So that's number one is like, you have to have

Upendra Varma: 00:15:50

And what do you mean by the best? Is it like, what's, what's that feature? Like, is it in terms of feature set? Are you talking about usability or performance of what's okay.

Melissa Kwan: 00:16:02

And I, I don't say that lightly, right? We have the most features. We have the only chat system that lets people hop in real time or respond later through email. It's not a fake email box that looks like chat. It's real. We have 20 different interactions. It looks and feels like the Apple of webinars. And this is words, you know, from our customers. Number two is. For better or for worse, we are always available, right? We have a small team, everybody's on support seven days a week. If someone's awake, they're responding. And this is part of trust, right? Like, of course that's not sustainable over time as we get bigger, but people feel close to us. They feel like we're human. You're not getting put in a queue of tickets and someone responds to you in five days. And we listen to your feedback and we actually implement it if it makes sense. So our

Upendra Varma: 00:16:53

that even if I'm just starting a trial and I'm not your paid customer, would you reply to me immediately? Okay. So that's my next question, right? So like, like I'm assuming now that your customer support is not automated, right? You've got people, you know, just, okay. And what's the

Melissa Kwan: 00:17:07

we have a very, we have a very big, no, but we have a very big. Like help center. So it's automated in that sense. Like any, any question they have, maybe we have an article like we don't help them. We don't get on a call. We only help them through text and email. Um, like we, we just use HubSpot for, for ticketing. Um, but we have a very. quick response time and a very huge library of help articles that they can actually go through. Um, but I think the most important thing is we make them feel present and we make ourselves trustworthy and we make our customers feel like they're part of the process so they can impact the roadmap. So they make a difference in our product. So I've heard that like time and time again, it's why people pick us is because our support is really good.

Upendra Varma: 00:17:55

And Melissa, what about churn here, right? So I'm assuming you're spending a lot of time in ensuring that your customers are successful, right? So what sort of churn rates are we seeing? I mean, obviously after increased prices, right? So now that you've got a bit less churn.

Melissa Kwan: 00:18:06

Yeah, I mean, I think churn is normal, especially for SMB. Um, I think our churn is anywhere from like eight to 10 percent revenue wise a month. It's higher than I want it to be, but it's also because we've never worked on that part of our business. We've always been like chasing something else, but actually as we speak, this quarter is the first quarter where we're looking at how to better activation and churn and onboarding by, you know, More better in app messaging, better emails. We just installed user pilot. We don't even measure anything. We have no stats on our customers. We've just been like. Chasing features, chasing revenue, but now we're in a place where we can like breathe a little bit. Um, but yeah, like churn is, is higher than I want it to be, but there, you can't, you can't save all churn. Right. If that makes sense. Like some people are just not ready. Some, and maybe like, maybe some people sign up and it's more, it's too expensive for them. Maybe they're not even ready in their business. Um, I I've heard this really great thing before where it's like when, when customers or when companies obsess about churn, it's almost like leaving a party. Where people are having a great time to chase after people who left because they're not having a great time, right? It's, you should, you should find more people who want to come to the party. And that's what we've been doing. And that's why customer case studies and reviews is such a big part of our marketing is we want people, we want to find more people like them and not focus too much time on like, Oh, why did you leave? And when did you leave? And let's measure why you left. Like that, that is actually less important to me.

Upendra Varma: 00:19:42

So Melissa, let's talk about the backstory here. It's have you raised any external funding so far to build your company?

Melissa Kwan: 00:19:47

So we do not have any institutional funding. So no VC, no private equity. We do have like friends and family funding in the beginning to get started. But David and I, David is my CTO co founder. We wrote the first checks. So we invested financially, of course, and our time, um, into the business to, to get it started.

Upendra Varma: 00:20:04

And then like, as a free, are you completely bootstrapped?

Melissa Kwan: 00:20:09

Yeah. I mean, I would consider that bootstraps. Like we don't have zeros funding, but I think having zero funding is, is a misconception of bootstrap companies. Yeah, bootstrap

Upendra Varma: 00:20:17

You've got to start somewhere. Yeah.

Melissa Kwan: 00:20:19

yeah, you don't have VC funding. We have like friends and family.

Upendra Varma: 00:20:22

And then how big is your team today?

Melissa Kwan: 00:20:25

We have all contractors, zero employees. But as for full time contractors, we have eight people. And then we have like some part time on as needed. So as needed is like Designers, contract writers.

Upendra Varma: 00:20:38

who built the entire product? Is it just, you know, you, your CTO working with this

Melissa Kwan: 00:20:42

Yeah, my CTO, yeah, my CTO, we've got a team in Vietnam. We have a team of five developers, developers in Vietnam, and we just recently brought on another senior from Ukraine. Um, but he is like the lead of the products. He still, he still writes code and he manages the development team as well. I wish I can code, but. You know, I can't.

Upendra Varma: 00:21:03

All right. So Melissa, so what's, what's the big vision here? Right. So where do you see your company going in less than next two to three years?

Melissa Kwan: 00:21:10

Well, we just crossed a million ARR, um, which I feel like it's a big milestone. So thank you. So this is the biggest, like now officially the biggest company I've ever built. Um, honestly, my

Upendra Varma: 00:21:21

And you've got absolutely two people on your, you know, what you say, permanent payroll. Is that how we can see it? Right. So because everybody's a contractor.

Melissa Kwan: 00:21:28

um, yeah, I don't pay myself. Um. Yes, I hope to, and, and, you know, in the next few months, um, but you know, they're, they're, even if they're a contractor, I would still consider them on payroll because they're, I'm just paying them differently because they're far away, they're not

Upendra Varma: 00:21:44

And are you profitable today?

Melissa Kwan: 00:21:47

Uh, I think we hit our first profitable quarter last quarter. But I don't pay myself. So this is a big, you know, this is a big detail is if I did pay myself, then I can't, but I did sell a company in 2019. So I'm, I'm, you know, living, living off the proceeds of that, um, which allows me to do what I do. Um, yeah. So I

Upendra Varma: 00:22:08

Going back to the vision of your company in the

Melissa Kwan: 00:22:10

Yeah. The vision of my company, I just number one, I want to pay myself, not a small salary. I want to pay myself a market salary. You know, I've been doing this for 13 years and the only two years I've ever had a real salary was when I sold my previous company to a new company. All of those years when I was working for myself, I was not getting a market salary. So I, I want to pay myself a market salary. I want everyone on my team to get a market salary. And my goal is just to make sure everybody has a good time and live well. And if In the future, we sell this company that would be a bonus, but it's not the thing that I'm going for. The thing I'm going for is freedom and lifestyle and making sure everyone is taken care of and has a good time.

Upendra Varma: 00:22:59

And are you going to raise VC funny and VC money? And are you going to sort of chase that extraordinary growth?

Melissa Kwan: 00:23:04

never. I think I want to chase extraordinary growth without VC money. I think that's key.

Upendra Varma: 00:23:11

Yeah. That's wonderful, Melissa. All right, Melissa, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. It's a wonderful conversation, right? So hope you scale AWA now to much, much greater heights.

Melissa Kwan: 00:23:19

Thanks so much.