Jessica Lee. Nathan met Jessica a few months ago and Jessica toured Nathan in 500 Startups’ office in San Francisco. She’s the founder of Bitesize. She helps companies drive revenue with text message conversations.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – #GIRLBOSS
What CEO do you follow? – Sophia Amoruso
Favorite online tool? — Trello
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Everybody has the same kind of challenges and overcoming them is the REAL WORK

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:37 – HandStack and Bitesize are the same company
01:49 – Bitesize helps brands drive revenue through interactive text messaging
02:00 – A new movie studio has a new movie and wants to reach a million movie goers
- 02:10 – Bitesize will reach people by text message
- 02:20 – The messages will be from a movie character and the approach is interactive
- 02:42 – Bitesize will drive the person to a download link at the end of the conversation
03:01 – Building a list for text is the challenge for Bitesize
03:25 – Bitesize uses manual texting tool
- 03:40 – There’s a law that’s protecting consumers where you can’t randomly message people with algorithms or without human intervention
- 03:56 – Bitesize helps client send text with manual human intervention
04:27 – Jessica shares how an actual message happens
- 04:30 – The company will create a group chat, add people, and click send manually
- 04:39 – People’s reply will go to your app and you can continue to interact with them
05:08 – The difference with the usual group text and from Bitesize is, you don’t get to see other people’s messages
05:34 – Bitesize charges per text and data
- 05:42 – Per text charge is .25₵
06:11 – Most of Bitesize’s costs is from data
- 06:16 – Twilio is at .02₵
- 06:45 – Data charges can go up to .16₵
06:58 – BiteSize’s clients pay them for their marketing skills too
07:15 – For a thousand new messages, an average of 6% will reply which a lot higher than social media ads
07:45 – A lot of Bitesize’s customers will send millions of texts
08:13 – Revenue is measured by campaigns: 140 for the last 6 months
08:41 – Bitesize has raised $125K from 500 Startups
08:56 – Team size is 6
- 09:03 – 3 in the bay area and 3 elsewhere
09:26 – Average MRR
09:58 – 50% of the campaigns are paying quarterly and some campaigns are daily
- 10:20 – Each campaign pays an average of $10K to $100K for the .25₵ per text messages
10:43 – 10% of Bitesize’s customers are from referrals
- 10:50 – Initially, Bitesize was focused on outbound sales
- 11:08 – “Because our product was so unique, people like to know what it is”
11:38 – Bitesize originally started with political campaigns
- 11:49 – Because of Jessica’s background, most campaigns are for the democrats
12:29 – Jessica believes that Bitesize is a tool that is meant to connect people in a more meaningful way than ads
13:05 – 2013 revenue is around $250
13:17 – 2016 revenue is $300K for 6 months
- 13:30 – They pivoted to a more commercial use case in the final 6 months
13:40 – 2017 target
13:59 – “My hope is to grow organically”
16:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Texts can be very spammy but if done right, the return is better than with online ads.
Messages should connect people in a more meaningful way.
Growing organically is cheaper, and it creates more resonance, but it’s harder to do.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

744: Companies Pay Her $10-100k to Text Customers Funny Messages

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders