How I bootstrapped video management SaaS to over $10m ARR

put your hands together as we welcome Chad up to the stage Chad hey great to meet you guys I thought I was on at four o'clock so I'm really glad I randomly walked in here so thank you Nathan you guys having fun so far you guys you guys kind of ready to go home though no let's go great awesome that means you're gonna be engaged okay so I work for a company called shoots to anyone ever heard of us Nathan has one person yeah thank you guy that's because we met yesterday but I appreciate that man

so we're an Aussie based company and and today I'm going to talk to you guys just about how we bootstrapped to 10 million in ARR in our first five years now to be honest I'm not a Founder I'm good friends with the founders two guys they've been best mates since high school I'm like the third guy they bring in so they start a company and go this is super lonely we should bring someone else in to help us so I could have all the fun with another responsibility anyone like that no I'm the only one here okay that's cool so in the next 20 minutes what

we're going to cover is our journey to that 10 million uh ARR how we bootstrap that really dive into some of our business model how that works um you know we're kind of a service and SAS sort of business so our journey from going from really Pure service to more of that technology space I think Erica talked about uh was it SAS plus which is cool I like to call it sassy service it's a little cheeky but um just kind of where we've gone on that journey and what we've learned along the way and

then how we grew from Sydney into five markets in three years who's looking to grow internationally right now yeah it's super fun super fun okay so shoot stuff for the one person that has heard about us a little bit of background we're a video technology company we help some of the world's biggest brands create video content at scale through our suite of apps and Professional Services what does that actually mean so we started live 2015 July 2015 born out of

a high-end video production company Mike the founder in the middle there and uh really he had an interesting challenge you know he's working with these large brands in Australia doing these TV commercials they said Mike I love what you do I don't want to pay you more money and I want to do a video for my CEO every single week but I can't afford to give you five grand to send your production crew out and do that so what do we do he sit down like I mentioned with his best mate Tim he's got a cloud architecture background and said there's a problem here there's a need in the

market we got two options they pulled up business plans for both one was here's the spreadsheet if we go down SAS we build Tech we spend six months trying to do a big raise we give up a lot of our equity and maybe it works maybe what we build is what the market wants or I get a backpack I throw some camera gear in there and we start tomorrow and see if this works with some of our clients so obviously they went with option one and he was able to really test the model out and go you know are people going to pay for this do they

want to do subscription-based video production it actually worked and that's why we're here today and over the years we've built more and more technology to help our clients create and tell more stories so with our model it was very people heavy you know you can see these camera kits down the bottom there we would actually teach our clients to shoot video content we'd have these camera kits with teleprompters and dslrs in it we'd go on site and we would teach them how to shoot all these people had never touched the camera before they upload the footage to our platform and

our team of In-House editors and creatives would turn around their video content in 24 hours so it was super cool super fun really cool to be involved in a creative medium by the way where you can just go face to face with a client and help unlock these storytellers Within These large organizations [Music] Nathan requires that we put numbers in our slide so here is our AR over the past few years so as you can see launching in July of 2015 that ramp up in the first five years there and then covet hit which was super fun

with our model again very on-site we've got camera kits all that sort of fun stuff well all of our camera kits got locked up in people's offices and they didn't know where they were so we had to Pivot really quickly and figure out how can we help these companies create content so we created services around podcasts long-form webinars animated explainer videos which was awesome then we started developing more of that SAS product we understood that we've got to make this transition we've got to create more technology that can

scale beyond what our humans can handle so ever since we started the business we would make videos for every single Prospect we're sitting there cold calling doing all the stuff that you know hearing you guys share about today and going man what's our like unique thing that we can do we can make really cool videos for a guy or for Steve or for John so let's do it so we set up our camera kits and have our teleprompter and make a video but it had all these graphics and animations and I'd say their name and I said hey thanks so much for spending time on the phone with me let me tell you about shootsta and the

next day this Prospect would get a video who's used video in their sales process cool awesome right so you get the power of that well these looked hot they're awesome right so with great feedback well it worked for us we figured it would work for others so a couple years ago we started building some AI technology that would do all that post-production in about three minutes so we launched that to market last year so you can see our transition into more of that SAS play a little bit different part of the market and also screen capture application as well so

you can see for us coming out of coven now we're rebuilding our Revenue so let's talk about the the model that we went with how many of you guys have subscription-based Services here or businesses yep yeah okay so we know it's uh it's the magic sauce right for us we really had to see no one had paid for subscription-based video production up in that point there were no other models there were other companies like us around the world so we had to see would people actually pay for it first now we have the benefit of having these clients from Mike's production company sitting there you know so he could go to

them and say hey um would you pay us like a thousand bucks a month if we did one video for you each month and they said yes he said okay we've got a business here and that's how we were able to get started now obviously with that recurring Revenue stream it just Stacks up over time so we were able to take that money you know no funding whatsoever and really just start to invest it back into our business the other challenging thing is when you start something like this who's going to be your customer like what actually makes sense now

video production is not is not cheap it's gotten cheaper but back in 2015 it was not cheap and so as tempting it was to go oh man we got all these small businesses in Australia we could help them out they want to make lots of video and every dollar for those businesses counted it was really challenging to actually service them we realized if we actually focus on that mid-market and Enterprise play these clients will be sticky with us they got bigger budgets in Australia they had a huge need because fairly enough these global

companies the content was coming out of America and all these other businesses and all these sort of Regional Offices going we need localized content we don't want American accents I don't know why it's very selfish of them you guys awake you guys all right I'm super sarcastic and it might get a little bit worse I apologize but this really was a true thing okay so they want to localize content so we really have this need we were able to work with some of these amazing companies I remember we were about to pitch for funding we didn't get it but we were in this this uh room with a

bunch of high net worth individuals I kid you this is the great startup stories right we're on with Kiwanis Airlines everyone know Qantas Airlines pretty big so we had pitched in front of them hey we want to help you scale your video content they call us 30 minutes as we're setting up for this presentation that caused hey hey we're in right you're hit okay can we put your logo on our slide deck yeah no problem it's like literally can't make this stuff up so it was amazing to be a part of that you guys know that feeling in the early stage so we realized we've hit a sweet spot with mid Market to Enterprise and

that's really where we played up until today the other thing that really helped us out was I just want to get that headshot done appreciate that man yeah the other thing that helped us out was those agreements paid up front anyone else do that annual agreements up front when they when they're willing to pay it yes yes it's awesome okay now taking that Revenue right gotta be careful here we take some of that deferred revenue put it back into the tech development now you got to keep some of that aside

obviously to service your clients but that was real key for us in the early days to go okay we understand there's a need here with the tech we got to facilitate that with people right now but let's put that money back in and develop along the way and just a fun fact I think when we looked at some of the numbers over the past seven years you know we've probably invested almost 10 million dollars in the technology that we've developed not developers okay so these are all of our editors this is early days of shooting our office in Sydney just to

make a point it was very manual we got creatives there working directly with our clients so let's talk a little bit about that transition from being a service-based business to SAS who actually has Service as part of their model right now yeah do you like it are you trying to get rid of it I loved Erica's you like it I like it too personally but I'm weird like that I'm like I like people and I think it's fun to be a part of their Journey especially when it comes to content creation so don't shy away

from service I've loved the presentations this week where we've really had a great balance of this but the fact is that don't think of service has a dirty word just because it doesn't scale look what I'm I said don't be afraid to start with humans humans are cool I like humans humans are great they can be messy I think last night art table we're sharing stories of messy humans that we've hired and interesting uh Journeys along the way but they can be less expensive than Tech in the early days so you can use some of those Services some of those individuals to

really test the market out and go okay what are our clients wanting to do what's the need out there yes it's manual but we get a sense of really what are they asking for now along the way you're creating almost that blueprint and then you go well how can I leverage technology to create this in a more efficient way and that's been really key for us we've looked at what should we build in the content creation space so test with your service blueprint also don't wait too long I think we did that you know we got really comfortable in

the early days going like the this side of shoots so we call it pro now with our Professional Services and we have creative producers and editors and all that fun stuff animators and we're like this is really this is really good this is really comfortable in that that way but we knew where we wanted to go right where we wanted to go be in an exit be an evaluation all that sort of fun stuff we wanted to grow a really big excellent fun company and you're only going to to get so much with a service based business we know one maybe 2x if we go

down the SAS path we're going five and Beyond and when we looked at this too and even when the boys were kind of looking at that model going which way do we go in the early days recognizing that a lot of Founders can give up too much equity in the beginning because of the need to raise these big amounts in order to invest and build in Tech that may or may not actually be what the market wants so just consider that you know when you're looking at that type of thing and then stay focused on why you started the business what is the end goal I was having lunch with another founder today

not a part of this uh event but Nathan I told them next year he needs to be here but you know I was like what what is your why you know we talk about that but what's the goal what are you trying to do and some of them can be really lofty and important right I'm going to change the way people communicate forever some people can be like I'm gonna exit for 100 million dollars I just want the cash and that's okay too that's everyone's got their goal right so allow that to drive you know the decision-making process for your business and lastly how you're going to compensate your employees

I love um the the keynote we had early on on yesterday we talked about you talked about it what was your name again Bridget I was taking notes I'm going to send it to our founder and so the profit sharing model you know where you can really look at we want to incentivize our staff everyone should have you know skin in the game make sure you're not giving away so much Equity that you don't have enough set aside for an ESOP or some sort of compensation plan I'll be really transparent with you guys like it's been very difficult for us we didn't do that in the early days and

I think now we look at how our staff react to different changes that we have to make as a company and there's not that motivator where they're like well I got Equity or I've got shares or there's an upside to it and that can be really challenging when you have to make certain strategic decisions okay so for all of you that are considering growing internationally I was the test case right I spent half my life in Australia I'm married to a beautiful Australian my family lives there I actually never thought I was

going to leave I was one of those Americans that left here when I was like 17. when I sit down with Mike and he goes hey man like I want you to come join shootsta there's three of us and I'm like bro I got a kid and I need to feed them so I don't know startup life's for me eventually twisted my arm and I came over but he said would you ever move back to America and I was like no I love America by the way now but at that point I was like I've never wanted to do that but you get so excited about the Prospect and the possibility of what could happen with the company and we're

two years in and we've moved into Singapore which is really easy from Australia right it's like a two-hour difference and we're starting in that eight-pack region and knowing well the the big whale is the us we got it to the U.S so when you make that transition and we were probably a little bit naive we we thought you know what Singapore was easy Let's uh let's do the US and the UK at the same time and Hong Kong why not just be crazy it was super challenging guys basically you get kind of dropped in a country and

go us is the biggest Market you should be fine they should be knocking on your door it doesn't work that way so a couple things I want you guys to think about you know as you're looking at expanding and just some notes from our journey so number one find your generals what I mean by that you've got to have people if you're going to open a new market these people need to carry the heart and purpose of your business trying to hire someone remotely and you're going to like transfer culture to them over a zoom call incredibly incredibly difficult and we were talking about this last night just

about the fact that you almost need to bring that person into your workflow into your environment for a good three to six months to understand how everything works now for us as a service SAS service sassy plus business you know we were replicating a lot of roles internationally because we serviced our clients locally we had in-house production teams in country because they were jumping on video calls with their clients and that was a big part of our model was around the creative collaboration side of things and so we had to kind of figure out

how do we replicate almost like a franchise in each region it can be caustic cost heavy communication can be really challenging so that's why it's really important that you find people that can carry the purpose of the founders and the mission of what you need to be doing that are going to run each of those regions the other thing speaking from you know personal experience don't leave them on an island don't assume that they're okay there go and visit them bring them back to your country you got to keep that cycle going going it can be very isolating if you're

starting something by yourself in a new region and think about your mvt so your minimum viable team is that a real thing because I made up that acronym is it is is okay we're good with it all right we'll keep it we'll add it to the vernacular so what's your minimum team to get started what do you need in order to test the market so is that a sales person in the region is that this sort of chameleon General that can go in and do sales and do customer success and all that fun stuff like Chris was talking about earlier so determine what that is for us

it was me and an editor sitting in a co-working space and then as we brought our clients we could afford to build out the rest of that team also identify what roles can you centralize what's something that you can have at HQ to service your entire country or you know multiple regions in that regard and what really has to be local so things like Finance we found we needed a local Finance person to run payroll but also because each market was so different they needed to have that specific expertise

and recognize the learning curves can be really really steep you don't know what you don't know again I'm speaking from experience you know I was 17 when I left the US I knew nothing about business in America I had the right accent barely but that was about it so when I landed back here it was really about knowing that we can't treat this market like we treat Singapore or London or Hong Kong these markets work totally different you basically were in Uber all day doing face-to-face meetings with your clients I come to the U.S I'm like that's a lot

of plane rides that's not how we're going to sell here and so we had to manage expectations around the growth of the company that we had to learn how to sell differently before it was even cool with covid we were all doing remote selling so I say that because as you're looking at moving into another country know that there's going to be differences there okay give yourself some slack in that and your Revenue projections as well knowing it's going to take maybe a little bit longer to scale up because you need to learn actually in market and know that buyers process and expectations need to be

different your model may look a little different in each region for us here you know when we got here we're now working with the hqs of the companies that we worked with internationally so companies like LinkedIn and Salesforce and other really cool names that I'm going to drop on you like Oracle all these guys right and so the regional teams were like oh man I'm happy to get any sort of video this is great but then we come into the hqs and they're like we have in-house production but they can't keep up with the scale but our expectation around quality is up

here so we had to modify who we hired their skill set the expense around that to meet the expectation of the market so just recognize that you can't just copy and paste every time you need to give yourself some margin for that as well so don't assume that one size fits all okay just a quick recap so we talked about bootstrapping to 10 million again crazy Journey guys you're in the space you get it I wouldn't trade it for anything I feel so blessed that we went

with a subscription-based model because it just changed the game in video production we got copycats throughout the years all that fun stuff but it's been an incredible ride to be able to work with our clients not just with technology and again the stuff that we're building now transitioning into that SAS space is also fun but to be able to be on the ground with our clients helping them create something together and to watch that process go on think about other ways that you can add service into your business or make that transition into SAS as well don't be

afraid to do things manually which we've talked about a lot this week and then think about those markets really take your time go if you're a Founder go spend three months there meet with tons of people and just get information understand their buying process understand their expectation around what you provide as well and be ready to kind of adjust or pivot your model based on the region and that's it from me so thank you so much guys it's been a pleasure getting to know you if you have any more questions feel free to reach out