Anh Vu, the founder and CEO of Avocode - a tool to connect front-end designers and back-end developers and make fantastic collaboration simple. Anh’s background is in design, but he’s building a SaaS business with negative churn and great profits by being totally on top of his numbers.

Famous 5:

Favorite Business Book? – The Startup Playbook
What CEO do you follow? — Hiten Shah
Favorite online tool? — Chart Mogul

Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? —Measure everything, be really data driven, and focus on retention

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:13 – Nathan’s introduction
01:50 – Avocode makes it easy for front-end designers to share information with back-end developers
02:50 – The designer uploads the design into Avocode, where all the team can access it, leave notes, and make revisions. Then the developer can access all the design assets through Avocode
03:25 – As of May 2016, $50k MRR
03:57 – Launched in February 2015
03:54 – $250k annual revenue in 2015
04:20 – Currently working with the 500 Startups accelerator
04:53 – 2800 customers on one of two plans
06:00 – Average revenue per customer is $27
06:40 – Some users were on boarded in a pre-order process and pay less than average
07:17 – User churn is 7% monthly
07:28 – Net revenue churn is -1%
07:50 – Some users stay and purchase more and more seats - so revenue churn is negative
08:40 – Upselling more seats to your current customer base is a KEY SaaS strategy
09:23 – There are 14 people in An’s team, based in the Czech Republic
09:43 – Monthly expenses are $35k
10:10 – They’re profitable
11:20 – Currently spending nothing on customer acquisition
12:01 – The average business-plan customer stays for 18 months
13:12 – Most of the customer base is startups and enterprise businesses
14:00 – Growing at 15% month over month
14:18 – Planning to start their first capital raise in August 2016
15:20 – Discussing partnerships with companies like Adobe and Sketch
16:07 – Follow Anh on Twitter

18:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Upsell your current customer base
Plan partnerships and exit strategies - early
Measure everything

Resources Mentioned:

Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
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

EP 351: $50K Monthly Revenue, Finally Designers Can Quickly Give File to Developers with Anh Vu of Avocode

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders