Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
Today's interview is with Rick Perrot.
Rick is the co founder and CEO of Unbounce, a software platform that enables marketers to create, publish and test landing pages.
The company was founded in 2009 and is based in Vancouver, Canada.
Now, Rick is a first time entrepreneur who took a pain that he was having as a marketer with landing pages and decided to go solve that problem for himself.
We talk about how Rick did customer development to validate his business idea well before most people even knew what customer development was.
And we also talk about how being non technical actually turned out to be an asset for Rick and how it helped him to be more successful in building the business.
Unbounce has gone from zero revenue to over $7.2 million this year.
And we talk how he and his co founders took that journey and why charging more for their product was one of the smartest decisions they ever made.
With that, let's bring on Rick.
Rick, welcome to the show.
Rick Perreault (01:29.160)
Thank you, Omer.
Thanks for having me.
Omer (01:31.320)
Now, before we talk about Unbounce, tell me a little bit more about you personally.
Who is Rick when he's not working?
Rick Perreault (01:39.400)
Who is Rick when he's not working?
I think I'm still an entrepreneur though.
I spend my time in a garden trying to grow the perfect tomato.
So when I'm.
And it also allows me to actually still think about Unbounce but just getting my hands dirty.
So it's something my wife and I like to do.
Omer (01:58.890)
Have you found that perfect tomato yet?
Rick Perreault (02:01.130)
Nah, still working on that.
Growing tomato is actually quite hard.
Omer (02:06.490)
I have no idea.
Okay, now before we dive into more details, we like to kick things off with a success quote to better understand what drives and motivates our guests.
What is one of your favorite quotes I have?
Rick Perreault (02:22.790)
You know, I worked for a gentleman, that his office was pretty spartan and he had on his whiteboard for years of three or four years that I worked for him.
He had the words unrelenting, raise your focus.
And that was a reminder to him every day to just, you know, stay focused on what was really important.
And that was actually the only thing I ever saw on his whiteboard.
And that was something that stood stuck with me as we, as I moved on in my career afterwards is, you know, to really kind of stay really focused on what was really important.
And I think that's into some degree, has really been helpful during my journey at Unbounce.
Omer (03:00.690)
So let's start by giving our listeners a better understanding of Unbounce.
Who are your target customers and what are the pain points that you're trying to solve?
Rick Perreault (03:15.020)
I'm the target customer.
In fact, that's how we got to where we are today back in.
You know, I had the privilege early on in my career working with some really smart marketers who realized or who knew that if we would send targeted traffic to a landing page, a dedicated landing page, as opposed to just some generic web page generally your homepage, your conversion rates would be much higher.
Unfortunately, those were back in the days and to some degree that's still the case today, where the website was not the domain of marketing.
It was controlled by the IT web developers.
And so as a marketer, we would have to go outside our department to get landing pages made for campaigns and go work with our IT department.
So I'm sure you can appreciate how challenging that would be because it works much, much differently than marketing.
And so that was actually something I saw time and time again everywhere I went.
And at one point I realized I just need this tool that does drag and drop, Add an image, add some text, add my call to action and boom, publish it live.
Don't have to talk to anybody.
Something as easy to use as Mailchimp or WordPress.
Yeah, it needed to be simple.
That was really the pain I had and went out to solve.
When I went out to solve it, I thought there must have been a solution out there.
So I reached out to my marketing peers that I had worked with at some point or I knew and they all said the same story.
It's like, nah, it's this big pain point and we haven't found anything.
We've got to work with developers or we hire an agency and it's really expensive.
So I just got the same story over and over and over.
And when I looked out at the marketplace, the only thing that there were pieces in the enterprise market of enterprise CMSs that solved a little bit of what I was trying to achieve.
But you know, any company that doesn't have a their price page on their website is probably well out of range of what we were looking for.
And hence that's really where the idea for Unbounce came about.
Omer (05:27.050)
You know, I'm so tired of people asking me what landing page software they should use.
Tell me why people should pick unbalance over the other options that are out there.
Rick Perreault (05:40.490)
I Think flexibility.
You know, certainly when we went out to build Unbounce, one of the things that pains we had, or I had early on was actually I really wanted something.
I'm actually designer by trade.
So it was really important to me that I had the flexibility to build something really beautiful, create something right from scratch if need be.
Not working with a rigid template system, but something like a blank canvas, and then create something that really matched the brand, you know, our brand.
And that was, that was actually, you know, something that was, you know, we started with that premise and that's actually something that's, I think separated us to some degree from a lot of companies that we've seen that are out there today.
But I think more importantly, I think something that we've done really well is actually focusing on building a kind of this really good holistic experience.
So not just with the software, but with our support and our educational material.
Every touch point with Unbounce, you know, we really strive to make that a really delightful experience.
And we've invested a lot in our, you know, our customer success team that, you know, anybody who's listening that is an Unbounce customer who've ever had to get support can testify that our team is definitely very fast turnaround for support and very helpful.
So that's the complete package, I think is something we've invested in and I think that definitely sets us apart from a lot of solutions that are out there.
Omer (07:30.900)
So what were you doing when you came up with this idea or had this need for this software?
Rick Perreault (07:40.280)
Working in a marketing department.
Needing landing pages?
Yeah, working on.
I spent.
Prior to Unbounce, I worked in house mostly for other marketing teams, generally more on the creative, the web aspect, the creative side.
So responsible for the design and the performance of landing pages, websites and generally the overall creative direction of a campaign.
I worked my way up through the kind of design field into a creative director position.
And that's what I had done for a long time.
And that's where I had the need and kind of worked with people who were actually really, really smart and realized that landing pages just work really well.
So that's really how I came through here.
I've never been an entrepreneur before.
This is actually I had a need, went out to solve it and that's really how I got to where we are today.
Omer (08:45.070)
So what happened?
Were you.
You've got this idea.
Did you then say, okay, I'm going to go and quit my job?
Rick Perreault (08:53.710)
Sure.
Let me tell you a little bit about the story then.
So actually it was Almost exactly that.
Like I said, I went out looking for a solution.
I was doing consulting work for a company at the time.
So it was, I was fortunate at that moment in time, I wasn't positioned in this kind of.
I wasn't getting part of payroll as part of a company employed.
I was actually working for myself as a consultant on this particular project.
And that was in early, that would have been all late 2008.
And then by early 2009, it was at the point where I had realized that I talked to another dozen marketers that I knew and it was like, okay, I'm onto something here.
They have this pain, they can't solve it.
And then I went out to do, I guess what we call today customer development.
But before I went out and I was kind of, I had this hunch that I was onto something.
But I really want to go out and kind of really prove it to myself before I, you know, quit everything I was doing, making money to actually try to get this thing built.
So I spent in early 2009 just doing, I used, I remember using Facebook ads, targeting marketing.
In Facebook, the advertising platform, you could actually target ads for people whose specific job titles.
So I came up with a survey and I, you know, the ad said, you know, do you have trouble making landing pages?
Click here and learn.
You know, and I had a survey and I asked, you know, I posted, I did the advertising, built a survey and survey gizmo.
And I remember I had, I had 42 responses with people who actually gave me an email address or a phone number to write them or call them to discuss the pain they were having.
So I reached out, you know, I wanted to talk to people that weren't my network.
You know, like your friends and your family will all, you know, will always say, oh yeah, good idea, go do it.
But complete strangers.
And that to me that was some really good validation that this pain was quite universal.
And armed with that, I started doing some research, realizing there wasn't much out there in the market, in kind of an SMB market.
I looked at my strengths and I looked at the products that I did like.
And one of the things they had in common was the self service model.
I really liked that as opposed to building something, then hire a big sales team trying to sell it.
I had no experience there so we could capitalize on my design background and to focus on something that could be self serve and in the SMB market.
So it all kind of started to make sense and really started to pull it together.
And on June 22nd of 2009.
And after realizing, I remember my apartment was just full of sticky notes on every wall.
Everything from, you know, what the product must look like, what it needs to achieve, who we might bring in as early founders.
And I realized this was going to be a pretty big project.
On June 22, I had invited what would become the future founding team to lunch.
And they were all guys I had worked with at some point or another in my career, all had a wide variety of skill sets, and I pitched them the idea.
And by on August 14th.
So about two months later, we were in my apartment incorporating the company and writing our first lines of code, and we put up our blog.
That day they had all pretty much dropped everything they were doing and we went on this journey.
That's where it all began.
Omer (12:38.510)
How did you figure out using Facebook ads to.
To basically do these sort of customer development interviews.
This was before the whole kind of lean startup movement.
So how did you figure this stuff out?
Rick Perreault (12:59.130)
I don't know.
I might have said to somebody, I need to reach other marketers.
And somebody might have pointed to me, hey, Facebook allows you to run advertising where you can target people by job title.
And I was like, exactly what I need.
Thank you.
And I think I just.
That's how I probably learned about it.
Omer (13:18.860)
How much did it cost you to run those ads?
Rick Perreault (13:21.740)
You know, I don't think it was very much.
I get asked that question.
I've been asked that question before.
But.
And I want to say was I might have spent a couple of hundred dollars.
It really wasn't a lot of money to validate, you know, to get this.
And I think I.
That plus the survey.
In fact, I think even the Survey Gizmo or SurveyMonkey, I used to.
It was one or the other.
I think I was able to use that for free, you know, and I want to say I definitely spent less than $200.
Omer (13:51.020)
And then.
So once you had these email addresses, how did you.
What did you ask these people?
Rick Perreault (14:00.140)
Well, how do they go about getting landing pages made?
Is landing pages important to them?
So actually this.
The survey would have had this information.
So I was pre qualifying.
If people didn't think, marketers didn't think landing pages were important, they didn't use them.
I think I asked them why, but I was really interested in the ones that said, we know they're important, but they're really expensive or time consuming to get done and our IT department is uncooperative and just who are.
So then I'd reach and I wanted to Just see what they were looking for.
And I hear the story.
I'd get on the phone or I'd get an email and they'd all say, all I need, all we need is this little tool we could use.
Yeah, so that was, you know, so I was looking for people who actually really understood that they were leaving money on the table by not using landing pages and, you know, and felt that pain.
So I really wanted to understand, you know, what a solution looked like for them.
And actually I want to validate whether the pain was real.
There's no point of going out and quitting your job and going down this path of building something if the pain isn't really universal.
So that was confirmed.
The pain was real for everyone who kind of everyone like me, marketers who are doing online advertising, definitely there was a real measurable amount of pain.
Omer (15:31.150)
You see, most people, or I'd say most geeks would have probably gone out and spent six to 12 months building something and then gone out and maybe talked to somebody.
Right.
Or maybe put up a landing page,
Rick Perreault (15:45.230)
you know, and I get asked that too.
And I, and I, and I think the reason I'm not a developer, so in order for me to go, I actually had to go out and I had to find a way to validate this without.
Well, I couldn't prototype it and I couldn't get, you know, I'm not going to get, you know, some really smart people to spend some time on this if there's no validation whatsoever.
So I really needed to go out and find a way to validate this without building something because I'm, I'm not a developer.
So that was my approach was to get feedback from other marketers who were in eventually our target market.
Omer (16:23.370)
And yeah, okay, so you got together with these co founders, the guys who became your co founders and pitched this idea to them.
Did you have a clear idea of what that product should look like?
Or were you still at the stage of there's an opportunity here.
People are telling me they need something.
Rick Perreault (16:54.890)
I had a fuzzy idea, you know, even, yeah, I kind of had an idea.
Like I said, I started this saying I needed something that was self service that it would be easy to use for someone like me, so it couldn't require any coding or it really needed to be as easy to use as PowerPoint.
And that's what we kind of, that was the, kind of the mandate.
And then we knew how to build a landing page.
We knew what most landing pages look like and what are the elements.
So it needed to have, you know, the ability to put some imagery.
It needed, had the ability to have some big headlines and needed the buttons and clicks.
It needed forms though the very first version of Unbounce didn't even have forms.
The one we first version we went to market with.
But you know, we knew that these things would be required and so there was.
Yeah, we kind of had an idea but we.
That was about as far as it went.
One of the things I will say early on was can you imagine Unbounce today without a B testing?
I mean, but early on, the first version, that wasn't the pain.
We went out actually first version, when I did the customer development, it was in my eye, in my head, it was, well, what we'll do is we'll build this builder and then we'll integrate with Google Website Optimizer, which is free and marketers can use that.
So the idea of actually building a B testing into Unbounce didn't actually come about until we, I think we actually might have already started building it when I started getting feedback from marketers saying actually Visual Website Optimizer is really, really hard to use and we need to go our developers to use it, so therefore defeats the whole purpose.
So we, yeah, so you know, it definitely evolved a bit but you know, we understood we needed to solve this pain.
We needed to do in a way that would be self service.
It had to have some certain key elements to it.
But what, you know, you know, I didn't have the whole product sketched out in wireframes, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Omer (19:02.580)
How did you go about building the first version of the product?
Did you, did you bring on people who could do that kind of work or did you have to hire developers?
Rick Perreault (19:14.680)
Yeah, the founding team, there were six of us in total, three engineers and one of the other partners looked after the kind of the operations of the business.
One looked after and then Ollie who looked after.
I said the day we found the company, we put up our blog and I can talk a little bit about that and why we did.
Yes, we had three engineers focused on three different areas of the product.
One, who's our CTO today, looked after the platform that this would all sit on.
One of the engineers focused on the application environment and one focused on which included the AB testing engine and one focused on the WYSIWYG drag and drop editor.
Yeah, the three of them worked on this.
We went from, we went from I guess founding the company in August of 2009 to early 2010.
We had a really rough beta that people could actually go in, add an image, edit some text and put a button.
Omer (20:23.150)
Were you guys all working on the business full time during that period?
Rick Perreault (20:27.550)
Yes.
Omer (20:29.550)
So how were you funding the business?
Rick Perreault (20:33.730)
Credit cards, bank accounts?
Yeah, we bootstrapped it until early 2010.
We raised some.
Once we actually had a. I think we were in beta or we were, we were either in beta or just about to launch and we raised kind of like some friends and family, former colleagues, we all pulled some capital together and that got us from I guess launch to some sort of profitable self sustaining.
And then soon after we raised a small venture round with a syndicate of investors.
Omer (21:22.100)
So it's, you know, Eric Ries could do a case study on you guys.
Right?
Just in terms of sort of like a textbook case study on, on how to go and do customer development, customer validation.
Rick Perreault (21:40.170)
We certainly.
Yeah, I mean we did.
It's funny when I read the reading the Lean Startup and actually I've had the opportunity to meet Eric and talk a bit and so much about that book reading it goes, hey, that's what we, we did that we didn't really know what we were doing.
We just, you know, the thing was, it's like again, I think it goes back to the fact that I wasn't a developer and I needed a way to validate these ideas and the pain without actually building something.
And then when it came to building something, we knew we had to get something to market really quick because we didn't have a lot of capital, we didn't have a lot of Runway.
There's only, you know, line of credits only go so far.
And we really needed to get something out to market and really start generating revenue really quick.
And none of us were ex Google.
It's not like we weren't, you know, this was all the first time we've done this, so we didn't have any, we didn't even know what a VC was.
Seriously.
I mean the whole idea of raising venture capital, I mean especially here in Vancouver, it's not like we've grown up in this environment where, oh, you come up with this great idea and you go talk to this firm or that firm or if you're lucky enough to have a huge success previously, it's a lot easier.
None of us came from that.
So we just knew we couldn't risk or afford building anything that wouldn't be valuable.
We worked with our customers actually really early on in the beta and it was clunky and there was no way that in a lot of ways not usable.
But then over a few weeks, then customers say, hey, I'm going to run a campaign.
Or is that okay?
And then, yeah, yeah, actually they weren't even customers yet because they weren't paying.
And yeah, I think it was at some point in early summer of 2010, one of our users said, you know what?
I'd pay for this at this point.
And it was like, boom.
Pricing page went up curly, and away we went.
And I think in our first month, we had four paying customers.
Omer (23:55.420)
This was back in when, 2010.
Rick Perreault (23:57.580)
That was in 2010.
Omer (23:59.260)
Okay, so looking back at those early days, what do you think was one of the biggest mistakes that you made?
Rick Perreault (24:08.390)
Trying to do too much for trying to be a bit of everything to everybody.
Let me elaborate a bit.
And this goes back to unrelenting razor focus.
In the early days, actually, when I originally envisioned Unbounce, I always said, you know, unbounce, it'll be $100 a month.
Marketers have no, you know, they'll put a credit card down, pay for it.
But when we actually came out with the product, when we were coming live, it was like the pricing at the last minute, it's like, no, no, no, we need cheaper pricing.
And, you know, and then we had a $10 plan, a $25 plan, you know, all that.
So we were.
And then marketing and, hey, you just need, if you just need to get a webpage up, you can use Unbounce and cost you 10 bucks a month.
So there was a bit of that definitely on that end.
But equally as important, we, you know, we stopped a lot of cycles to take on, you know, Corel phones us up or a bigger brand, hey, we like what you're doing, but if we had this, this and this, or if you can build some landing pages for us, we'll pay you and that, you know, from these bigger companies.
And so all this stuff is attractive early on, but it really is just a, I like to say, an attractive distraction from what you're really trying to do.
And we fumbled about, for about a year, you know, taking calls from big companies and realizing at some point, so, yeah, taking calls before from big companies and, you know, having meetings.
Well, if we only built this feature, we could get this company and maybe we could just hire a salesperson who's going to go out and, you know, just waste of time.
And then the same on the low end, you know, we'd get people who'd phone us up and, you know, phone us up six times because they don't know they don't know how to use their computer, but they know they need a webpage and we finally get them there and then it's like, well, they need help with marketing and then they churn.
Two months later when we at some point stopped taking calls from enterprise companies or, you know, having that knee jerk reaction there and say, no, you can be on board the same way as everybody else.
And when we dumped our 10 and $25 plans and really stayed focused on the marketer, the business just started to improve, revenue took off.
We, you know, the problem actually.
And then from a functionality point of view, you know, a lot of the people who wanted, you know, were paying us $10 a month.
They wanted us to integrate with Facebook while customers who were paying us 100 wanted us to integrate with AdWords.
Well, so just, you get a lot of, you really got to focus on, you know, you pick your, pick your Persona or you know, your profile of your ideal customer and go after them and don't get distracted by the bottom of the market or the top of the market or someplace that.
Because you can't do everything.
And we still can't do, we still can't do everything.
If the needs of an enterprise, somebody who's calling you up and want some of your attention, their needs are going to be probably a lot different than somebody who just needs one webpage and is willing to pay $10 a month and they're going to have different needs and you can't satisfy both.
So you really got to pick your.
Omer (27:23.890)
So give me one example of a particular situation where you guys kind of maybe pursued an opportunity and then in hindsight look back and said, wow, that was a waste of time.
Rick Perreault (27:36.450)
A $25 price plan, we had, we had it for years.
Well, we had it probably for the first time, I guess, 2010, 2011, early 2012.
We actually got cohort analysis.
Here was another thing.
And then someone realized on average our $25 price plans churn after four months.
So they pay us about $100 on average.
It costs us $150 to acquire a customer.
And it's like the light bulb went off and it was just like, take that pricing off right now.
And we did.
And we just, the metrics and then, you know, we just, it like the mass starts to work out after a while.
So definitely not measuring and holding to a belief that because you would see lots of volume on the $25 plans, you know, we'd get dozens of trial starts every day.
And some of, you know, many of those would turn into customers.
So we just saw all this volume but we actually didn't do the analysis of, you know, who's actually sticking with us.
So today it's like we're really kind of focused that the professional marketer, they're paying us between 100 and $200 a month, they have low churn rate, stay with us for a long time.
And the questions, when they do call us, they're actually really, you know, they're really challenging us to kind of really push the limits of the product.
And yeah, so we really stayed.
That was definitely one area that was a mistake.
And likewise on the other side, we spent some time with, you know, we used to spend time with big, you know, big brands that call and say, listen, we want to speak with your CEO, you know, the CEO and the CTO and you know, you'd have three calls with them.
They'd want to do NDAs and I just.
But then they'd never adopt.
And today what we found, looking back on all that, that was a waste of time.
But today we treat everyone the same.
So if, you know, big enterprise Fortune 500 company calls us up, we tell them this and we know we don't sign NDAs, you can't talk to the CEO because that just doesn't, it's not going to work.
We're just not equipped for that.
And nine times out of ten they sign up anyway and use the product just like everybody else.
And that's what we've learned.
Omer (29:53.690)
So that's interesting.
So you had a lower price point plan because you thought that that word attract more customers.
And when you took that away and charged more for the product, you had people actually sticking around for longer.
Rick Perreault (30:12.680)
The revenue went up, the revenue went
Omer (30:14.960)
up and, and presumably that was because the price point was doing a better job at targeting the people that you really wanted to attract towards this product.
Rick Perreault (30:26.840)
That is correct.
So even though the volume of accounts went down a little, the value per customer went up.
So I'm going to say probably around the time when we made the switch and dumped the sub $50 plans and even today we kind of really focus that $50 a month plan towards kind of startups or early stage companies.
But when we dropped all those plans, I think our average revenue per customer per month was sitting at around $30.
Today it's around 80.
Wow.
So the value of the customer has increased significantly.
And what's important though, it allowed us from a support our success team, we realized we're going to have a hard time scaling this team because it costs so much to give this support to these lower plans.
And we want to give a great experience.
We're trying to build a great brand, and you can't do that by not providing great support.
So by eliminating those plans, thus eliminating a big portion of our support burden, our team was now able to go from moving from being reactive to actually being proactive.
And now, actually, the team is now divided into four key areas, and educating and onboarding and technical support.
And they do a much better job today than they would have ever had been able to.
We're able to afford to offer some really great support today because we just don't have the support burden that we had when we had those lower plans.
Omer (32:10.330)
Yeah, so you had this idea, you turned that eventually into a product and then launched it as a, as a paid product, and you had your four paying customers in the first month.
Rick Perreault (32:25.340)
What.
Omer (32:26.060)
Let's talk a little bit about what you did to acquire more customers.
I'm interested in talking about maybe one marketing strategy that you used which turned out to be pretty successful.
And let's talk about one which maybe, you know, you looked, in hindsight was.
Was a waste of time or, or maybe just was.
Was just too expensive for you to acquire customers that way.
Rick Perreault (32:55.330)
Well, I'll start with that.
Sales.
A sales team.
So early on, we, you know, we've, we, you know, we'd always be an approach.
Hey, you know, hire me and I can sell this to bigger clients.
And, and again, it was a, that was a distraction, but it also didn't work because what the bigger clients always wanted was actually the sale.
We actually hired.
We did it twice where we hired somebody, brought somebody in on a trial to do sales, and they said, I'm going to open my Rolodex.
They came back and said, well, actually, I can't sell this until you have this, this, this, this, and this.
And in each scenario, every client was almost different.
So for us, that was definitely not a channel.
What we did do very well, though.
One of the things we recognized early on is that we weren't entering a market.
There was no landing page platform market that we were just coming into with a better or faster or different product.
So we had to.
How are customers going to find it?
It's not like they're searching on Google for landing page platform because they didn't exist.
So what we did, day one is our blog.
And we figured the only way we're going to get really some good traction is we got to get in a.
We got to make it easy for customers or people who have this pain or are interested in a B testing and landing pages and conversion rate optimization, we got to make it easy for them to find us.
And two, we need to get people who are in the space, the thought leaders in the space talking about the US we need to get them on board.
We need to build allies.
So we focused on the blog.
In fact, one of the first, one of the co founders wasn't an engineer, was actually a marketer who wrote and by the time, you know, in the first, even before we had unbounce the product came out, we probably had a hundred blog posts and they were really focused on quality and so that people were actually reading this stuff and saying this is actually really good and sharing it and then so today that's actually still a high quality really, you know, just really good content is something we focused on.
So we've evolved.
So the blog is where it started, but then it was the ebooks.
And you know, we don't forget most, you know, most people still aren't on Twitter, they use email.
And that's something we learned that asking somebody for an email address to download an ebook on the ultimate guide to whatever.
And it works.
And if they're interested in the subject matter, you can send them a trial to come and take a look at your product and there's a good chance they'll be interested.
So for us it was always been around content.
We've not had success around sales, we've not had success with performance.
So any kind of paid advertising, we've not been successful there though yet just as we speak, we're actually trying it.
Yet again, it seems to come down to content as something we've done really, really well.
Omer (36:03.240)
So let's talk about the paid advertising because I hear a lot of companies or startups talking about the paid advertising route doesn't really work for us.
And often I think it can be a question of do they really have the expertise to, to be able to effectively run paid advertising campaigns.
Now you're a marketer, right?
So tell me a little bit more about from your perspective, why that hasn't worked for you.
Rick Perreault (36:33.660)
I think for us at least today we haven't found a way to make the cost work.
We're just not.
We just.
And actually, interestingly enough, so we just ran a test campaign.
Oh, what did they tell me?
I think we got one acquisition after spending about $1,600.
Now that's not really good ROI, especially like I say right now it costs us on average about $150 to acquire a customer.
So we're way off here.
We've got somebody working on this stuff and what we did find before that, we're just restarting this again.
We're determined to get in here and try.
But what we did find the last time we did it, and once we eventually found, you know, the right things that were working for us at the time and got our cost of acquisition down, it wasn't actually even attracting a really good customer.
Omer (37:31.400)
Interesting.
Rick Perreault (37:32.520)
Yeah.
So we.
So that, you know, for us.
That's all I can say there.
You know, I don't know why that is.
Whereas I do know other businesses that actually are just killing it with advertising, like paid advertising, and it's one of their largest channels.
In fact, I get entrepreneurs coming to us quite often looking for advice on.
They've grown their business to date on some paid channels and now are looking to some kind of more softer channels like, say, content marketing and are asking for some advice around that.
So I don't know why it's never really worked for us.
I know from a price point of view it's never worked, but I don't know why it's been more expensive, significantly more expensive for us to actually really be competitive on the paid advertising piece.
Omer (38:26.560)
Now, one thing I also wanted to ask you was about starting a business with six co founders.
Now, this is probably a question you've been asked before.
You know, how did you guys make decisions?
Right.
It just seems like too many cooks in the kitchen.
Rick Perreault (38:46.090)
There's definitely some of that.
There was, you know, we all had our.
We've had some moments.
It would have never worked had we never worked together before, I guess I'd say.
I mean, every single one of us were connected some way.
Some of, in fact, most of the team I had known for 10 years or more.
So.
And, you know, we had a lot of, you know, we already had, you know, blowouts and big fights previously, so we were used to that.
So that made things a lot easier, that's for sure.
But it was challenging.
You know, I, you know, I sometimes I like to say the best thing, you know, starting the business, it was the best.
The best thing about Unbounce is it had six co founders.
And the worst thing about Unbounce is
Omer (39:36.300)
it had six co founders.
Rick Perreault (39:38.500)
But I will say there's no doubt in my mind that had we not taken the approach we did in bringing us all together to do this, Unbounce would not be here today.
It was such a big undertaking.
That was.
We just Never had the capital or anything to go just hire a bunch of people at the time.
Yeah, it would have never worked.
So it was definitely a lot of challenges.
It's, you know, think of family life.
It's, you know, brothers and sisters.
It's kind of think of it like that, you know, it's.
But you know, you get through it.
You know, you get through it and you try to do your best to make decisions that are in the best interest of the company or, you know, the six of you, in our case, the six of us, in our case, in the early days, at what point
Omer (40:30.850)
did you take on the CEO role?
Rick Perreault (40:35.770)
I guess day one, it was.
Yeah.
Omer (40:39.210)
Okay, so you guys already created some kind of structure and sort of like a decision making sort of framework as opposed to let's just all sort of jointly make every decision.
Rick Perreault (40:49.210)
Oh, yeah, correct.
I mean, and sometimes that, you know, it's.
Yes, yes.
And we had the structure.
We generally all had our expertise in our area of focus.
But that said, it didn't always, you know, there were contentious issues that would come up where, you know, the six of us would get together and people would want to vote, you know, but we, you know, we all had our, we all have our strengths and weaknesses.
So we, and you know, in the early days that we fumbled around that a little bit, but over time we kind of, we found what we were good at and where, where we actually had some really good, you know, some valuable insights to bring to the table and, and, and other areas where we just learned to be quiet on an issue because.
Yeah, so we just.
It's not easy, but, you know, building a business isn't easy no matter how you go about it.
So, you know, we had our own unique set of challenges because it was, you know, six pretty opinionated co founders.
But I'm sure the alternative would have been equally, if not more challenging.
Omer (41:57.160)
Okay, Rick, So we started this conversation by talking about where the idea for Unbounce came from.
And then we've taken this journey together on how you guys turn that idea into a successful product.
Let's talk about the business today.
What sort of revenue are you guys doing?
Rick Perreault (42:15.140)
We're doing about.
Okay, we ended November.
We ended October with about 7,500 customers that generated 620,000 monthly recurring revenue in US dollars.
So that works out to about an average revenue per customer of about $80.
We're growing that rate.
Revenue is growing at about 7, 7, 8%, 7% a month.
6, 7% a month, depending on the quarter we're getting close to the U.S. thanksgiving and holiday season, so things are starting to slow down a bit.
But we'll double this year.
We did better than double last year.
We're, yeah, great margins.
We're profitable.
We're 76 employees today across two offices.
Main office here in Vancouver, where I think there are about 70 of us, 68 of us here.
And then we have a Montreal office where we have half our marketing team.
And so I think there's our east coast success team.
So I think there's eight.
Eight in the Montreal office.
Omer (43:36.310)
What's the one thing in your business that you're most excited about right now?
What does the future of Unbounce look like in the next year or so?
Rick Perreault (43:47.190)
You know, what excites me right now is the culture that we've created.
It was one of the fears that we had and it's one of the, you know, when I talk to other entrepreneurs who have, you know, who are in businesses that are a few heads years ahead of us, and I said, you know, you look back on that growth stage, you know, what advice do you have for me?
And one of the things they almost unanimously said, you know, just be careful of the culture.
Just keep an eye on that.
Be careful how you grow.
Don't just throw bums in seats, go the extra mile to make sure you hire really special people and they'll take care of the business.
They'll all, you know, and I think we've done that really well in this last 18 months of, 18 months ago, I think we were less than 20 employees.
So we've grown really fast and we've had very, very little churn in terms of employees.
And they are actually, they're shaping what Unbounce is going to be 18, 24, three, four years from now.
And I, that's what I actually, I'm super excited about that.
I, I, it's what I love, coming into work and just watching them, you know, watching the team work and grow the business.
Omer (45:05.750)
It's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like you to answer them as quickly as you can.
Are you ready?
Rick Perreault (45:12.790)
Yep.
Omer (45:14.150)
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Rick Perreault (45:21.690)
Treat company money like it's coming out of your own pocket.
So be very.
Be frugal.
Omer (45:28.250)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Rick Perreault (45:34.410)
Well, if you haven't read it, the Lean Startup.
Omer (45:37.450)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Rick Perreault (45:45.860)
Create something that's really important.
To a lot of people.
Hopefully they can make money at it.
Omer (45:51.620)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Rick Perreault (45:58.260)
Sticky notes.
If I can't get my idea down on one sticky, it's too complicated.
So simplify it.
Omer (46:06.500)
I love that one.
If you had to start over tomorrow, how would you go about finding that next business opportunity?
Rick Perreault (46:17.680)
Talk to your target market.
Talk to you, you know, talk to future customers.
Omer (46:22.640)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Rick Perreault (46:29.600)
An interesting or fun fact about me that most people don't know?
Oh, I'm a huge Star Trek fan.
Omer (46:42.970)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
And I think you may have already told me this.
Rick Perreault (46:49.770)
Yeah.
Gardening.
Omer (46:52.490)
Awesome.
All right.
Great answers, Rick.
I want to thank you for joining me today and sharing your experiences and insights.
And thank you for letting us get to know you a little better personally as well.
Now, if folks want to find out more about Unbounce, they can go to unbounce.com that's correct.
If they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Rick Perreault (47:12.580)
You can follow me on Twitter at Rick Perot or you can send me an email Rick at Unbounce.
Happy to chat.
Omer (47:19.700)
Awesome, Rick.
Thanks again and I wish you continued success.
All right.
Rick Perreault (47:23.860)
Thanks, Omer.
Omer (47:24.740)
Cheers.
