Transcription
And a million ARR seems so far away. It's just like, how am I going to get there, right? And here I am. AI companies today are hitting a million ARR faster than ever. But here's the thing: not all revenues are created equal. Just as fast as we're seeing AI companies hit a million ARR, just as quickly, we're hearing that revenue wasn't really durable. It didn't actually recur, and they weren't able to scale to that next stage of growth.
Meet Franz Huang. He's the CEO of Boodle Box, and he's inside of my Go to Market program. And in record time, he was able to go from zero to a million ARR within 12 months of joining the program. But here's the thing: Franz is an experienced entrepreneur, and in the past, he's taken companies to a million ARR, but it stalled out after that. He knew that this time around, as he grew out his million ARR, he needed to build out a proper flywheel of growth. So when he hit his million, when he implemented everything inside of the Go To Market program, I just had to get on an interview with him to talk through everything that he's learned as he went through this journey this time around.
So in this episode, I go ahead and interview Franz, and we walk through all the key principles that he's learned in taking his company from zero to a million ARR in record time. But he did it in a way so he can actually accelerate to 3 million ARR from here on forward. So when you watch this episode, you will learn the key principles that we teach inside of the Go To Market program to build these kinds of flywheels of growth. And it's my true intention that you watch this episode and you get inspired and you hear from a founder that literally just pulled off exactly what you're driving towards, and you are able to actually accelerate your path to the next stage of growth.
Intro: What's everybody? Welcome to Unstoppable. I'm TK, and on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you grow your SaaS businesses faster with an unstoppable strategy. Now, if you're new to this channel, welcome. I drop an episode every single Sunday with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches on how to grow your SaaS business faster. So if you're new, be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon. That way, you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode with the TK energy. Now, if you're already part of this community, welcome back. It's really awesome to see you over here.
So when I took my own company, ToutApp, from zero to a million ARR, we were a six-person team. We were cash flow break-even. We raised just a little bit of money. And honestly, at that time, I didn't even know how special that was. The stats are this: only 4% of founders ever get to a million in ARR. So every single time a founder that I work with gets to a million ARR, or 3 million ARR, or 10 million ARR, I ship them out a trophy. Here's a picture of a trophy and some of the folks that have already received them.
So when Franz talked about hitting a million ARR within 12 months of hitting the market, I had to get on a call. I had to walk through everything that he's learned in his journey because it's one thing for me to share the principles that I know works. It's completely another thing when a founder that just literally just did it is able to share it from the trenches. So in this episode, we're gonna walk you through the exact principles that Franz implemented and exactly why it was so important to him that he didn't just get to a million ARR, but he built out a scalable go-to-market machine, a proper flywheel of growth, so that he was set up for success in getting from a million to 3 million ARR, which is the next stage that he's digging into. So if you're excited to dig in, go and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm, and let's dig right into it.
On today's episode, I have Franz Huang from Boodlebox. Welcome to the show.
Thanks, TK. Great to be here. Great to see you again.
We're literally here in this space for one of our immersives. Not too long ago.
Yeah. I have sipped scotch behind you.
Yes. You had this incredible post about how you guys hit a million ARR in record time. And I was like, I got to get Franz on the show because I know you have so many learnings. You're an experienced entrepreneur, so why don't we take it right from the top on what does Boodlebox do? And why do you guys exist in the market? Tell us all about it.
Yeah, no, first off, TK, it's so great to be here. I remember standing in that amazing house you have with that amazing view, with that amazing group of people you assembled, and a million ARR seemed so far away. It just like, how am I gonna get there, right? And here I am, and it's great to be able to talk to you about it.
And we were doing the math too, which probably was even scarier to do the math on how to get to a million ARR.
Yeah, yeah. But you know, to your credit, you break it down. Here's, you do, here's the steps, here's the process. We'll talk about that. But I'll just start off by saying you were right. Right? Like the process, the iterativeness, you know, having a plan but not being what it's planned. You were right.
So Boodlebox. Boodlebox is a platform. We build AI infrastructure for lifelong learning and work with AI. We are used by 32,000 users across over a thousand colleges, universities, and businesses and other organizations. We are solving the problem of how to learn about AI and learn with AI at the same time. And that, of course, encompasses a lot of micro problems, right? But if you think about it, we are in an age of change, right? And one of the things that we all have to do now is figure out how to be enabled in this AI world. 60 million knowledge workers, 18 million students, two and a half million staff and faculty. That's the audience that we're serving and helping to get ready for this AI world.
You know, it's so interesting. When LLMs came out and when ChatGPT came out, we knew it was a platform shift, and there was a little bit like, what do we do with this? How do we build incredible companies? And there are certain categories that have started to emerge. One is clearly developer tools, lots of LLM usage use cases there, incredible companies. There's a whole bunch around sales and marketing, which I think is questionable. It's still early, but education has come up quite a bit, like using LLMs to facilitate, to encourage learning. And Unstoppable is a learning education coaching company for SaaS founders. So I've been really digging into it. It's an incredible use case. So how do you guys look at that? Because you weren't always just about the education piece. I think you zoomed and pivoted into that.
We zoomed in. When I was in your living room, we were much broader. We built initially the platform on this idea of collaborative AI. We felt there was too much AI and AI. How do, how can humans and AI collaborate? But that's a solution, that's not a problem, right? And one of the things you challenged us is like, what's your ICP? What is their pain point, right? Who, these words like burned in my brain, right? Who has an urgent problem that you solve that they're willing to pay for, right? And so we just gave it a lot of thought, and we had, you know, we had the problem that a lot of founders have, which is my head was on a swivel. I could work with accounting firms, I could work with non-profits, I could work with colleges. I had interest from the military. And so we did something that you recommended, right? We just started posting. Here's what you can use Boodlebox for. And the reason we went into higher education was because of a Broadway show. I went to West Point, I met with a bunch of, I'm a visiting lecturer there. I went to West Point and I posted about AI and education. And it got the most response of any post I ever did. It went viral. People reaching out and how do I use this? How is this? Like, wait a second here, there might be something here.
That's crazy. I didn't know about this part. That's awesome.
Yeah. So that's how literally it was a LinkedIn post that caused us to zoom in. Now, not just that one post, then of course, I had to do the hard work, right? Then I assembled, I started talking to folks one-on-one. I did more posts, I started asking questions, we created an advisory panel. But and it turned out, and sometimes this happens too, right? Sometimes your solution does push the problem you want to solve. In the sense of, what we also realized was, as you mentioned, there's a lot of EdTech AI tools, but many of them are what I would call point solutions. They're looking at the existing workflow and saying, oh, here's a problem I can solve, make quizzes, or here's a problem I can, tutoring. What we realized was because we were originally a workforce platform and we can be used for anything, what could actually be used for in education is preparing students for the workforce. And so that actually leveraged our initial build, right? But in a very specific way for a very specific ICP. And that unlocked everything.
That's incredible. You guys figured out the ICP, which is kind of like step number one on any sort of go-to-market strategy work that we do. And then you started working on the messaging. Like, walk us through what happened next. What happened with the market? What did you learn? Where did you hit in revenues? What happened after that?
Yeah, so it's so interesting. What's that joke, right? I know half my marketing works, I just don't know what half. David Ogilvy. I love that one. So we tried all kinds of messaging. Even if you know what problem you're trying to solve, like, AI and education. Well, if you really dig into it, and that's one of the values of having an ICP and really dig into it, like, you start pulling the string, and it just starts unraveling. All of a sudden, it's like, oh, wait a second. When you say AI in education, are you talking to the students? Are you talking to faculty? Are you talking to the institution? Who's the buyer within that? And so how do you get your messaging? Because the messaging has to be driven by who you're talking to, right? And I think we did what you're supposed to do in the sense of we came up with ideas and then went through the source. Right. What do you think about this? How would you talk about this? And I remember I would spend, I would slave over this, what I thought was beautiful language, TK, and then my customers wouldn't use it. They use their own language. And you told us this, which is when customers start using their own language to describe your product, steal it, borrow it. That's the language you need to be using.
Yeah. And so our, most of our, in fact, probably all of our copy and language around how we talk about is actually from our customer slips.
Yeah. It's funny how that goes. Like, you can create that perfectly crafted value prop or that manifesto, and then you get some customers, you get, like, the early adopters, but then they start describing it. We call this the "Heyman version." It's like, "Hey, man, you know, you need to use Boodlebox for this." And then you're like, if you can just capture that, steal that, put it on your homepage, everything starts cranking after that. What was that version for you guys? Like, what ended up being, like, the "Heyman version" for what you guys do?
Yeah. So it was this language around, "We are a platform for lifelong learning and work with AI." That's awesome. That turned out to be what rolled off people's lips. And then we, through our Broadway shows and posting, we identified other influencers in the AI education space and started engaging with them. And they got excited about what we were doing, and from their language, right? We then started talking about things like "process matters more than product," "equitable access." And it's amazing when you use the right verbiage with the customer, like, there's all, you can see it. There's this moment like, "Oh, you get me." "You understand?" Like, right now, one of the things we talked about a lot is "productive struggle." If you use that word with educators, they're like, "Okay, you must know something," because that's like a key terminology that's important to us, right?
I feel like "productive struggle" would be very true for founders and entrepreneurs also. Like, that's literally our days.
Yes. Yeah, there's a lot of struggle. I hope it's all productive.
TK. Yeah, I was looking at a couple of our threads from before you had emailed me about, hey, like, we're getting the leads, but they're not fit leads, and the referrals aren't quite kicking in, which told me you were, you had really internalized. You know, there's ICP, there's Manifesto, there's Broadway show, which you clearly internalized, but you also really internalized the flywheel and the metrics. And you're like, looking at it and you're like, all right, we got to change some things here. The highlight reel is super fun and easy, which is, oh, we did this much. And this month in many months. But in the day-to-day, there's lots of twists and turns that come with that. So maybe tell us a little bit about that. Like, how are you looking at the metrics? How are you making shifts? How are you thinking about the flywheel, which I think you had told me you really resonated with.
Yeah. So this is not our first product in this company. Yep. We had a completely different product, AI. So this is a pivot for us. And we got to a million in ARR with that previous product too. Yeah. But it was painful. And I'm now looking back, back on it. There was no flywheel. Like, we were just manually cranking the gears around. And we were proud, we got to a million, but that thing wasn't moving by itself at all. And so I was really, really sensitive to that fact, right? And that's why I was like, is this real revenue? Is this a flywheel? Are we just forcing this? Are we cutting deals and twisting arms and calling buddies and doing one-off deals, and there's no word of mouth? And so this time around, I was like, look, we want to build something that's scalable and sustainable and where there's organic growth. And then to do that, we've got to measure, right? And so we were much more data-driven this time. But we are also, so that's the quantitative side. We're also very qualitatively driven. Like, we talk to people, right? When people said no, when people didn't respond to emails, we would like chase them down and be like, what? What's going on? What? You know what? You know what? Don't you like, help us understand here. And now, the flywheel's going. I have more inbound than my team can basically action. Yeah. We have, most of our inbound is from word of mouth. Now it's from customer referrals. We have influencers who write about us. We have two YouTube channels created about us. We have two newsletters where people talk about the product. That feels just different and good, right? Than previously.
Yeah, I think people don't talk about this enough. Whenever you hear about a founder hitting a million ARR, you hit a million ARR. Not all ARR is the same. So you have one scenario that I see all the time where they begged, borrowed, and stole from their existing network to push to a million ARR. It's 80 different ICPs, 80 different use cases, and they're like, we don't even know how to get the next 3 million or 2 million. And then, you know, what you're describing is like, no, we wanted a machine. We wanted to predictably grow to that. And we now know how to get to 3. Talk a little bit around that because it sounds like you've lived through both.
Yeah. So it's a lot of choosing not to do things, TK. That's what I, that's what I think that's the hard part as a founder, right? You know, I've worked in the White House. You know a little bit about my background. I've worked in the White House. I've been in a war zone. I've worked in a white-collar law firm. This is the hardest thing I've ever done. And I'm like all entrepreneurs. I'm all in. The danger of being all in is then you want to do all things, right? You want to try everything, but you got to quickly to figure out what's not working. And so, you know, when I met with you, we were trying a lot of different things. We were running digital ads, I was doing founder thought leadership, we were going to conferences, we were paying for referral partners. And we quickly realized that not all those efforts were providing the same ROI. And so we quickly had to exercise the discipline. Discipline of, we're not doing this anymore, right? And there's always that moment like, oh, my goodness, then I'm giving up revenue. Like, you're literally cutting off some revenue and some channels, but that's the kind of discipline you need to do. And then the other thing that I think was critical was not just being the only person on the team that believed that. And so one of the things I did, you know, you provide such great materials to, I shared it with the entire team.
That's awesome. And so I wanted everybody to think as a marketer. I wanted everyone to understand the word flywheel, right? I wanted everyone to understand what a manifesto was, and everyone to be thinking about go-to-market. And it's great. It's actually part of our company DNA now.
Now, hang on. I just had to interject here at this very moment of the interview. This is what I was telling you about in the beginning of the episode. It's one thing to get a million dollars, it's another thing to get durable million dollars in annual recurring revenue that you actually know you're going to be able to retain and recur and grow from. And the key to this is one of the things I teach inside of my Go to Market program, which is to think about a flywheel of growth. To think about not just acquiring the revenue, but keeping it and growing it and driving referrals with a similar stage ICP. The more consistent you are with your ICP and your customer base, the more consistent you'll be in the message. The more, the more consistent you will be in the marketing motions, the more consistent you'll be with the revenues. This is super important, and this is why one of the big things that I work with founders on is their ideal customer profile, their manifesto, and their Broadway show. So if you're starting to see the power of how important it is to have a proper, scalable go-to-market strategy, can I just get a "yes" in the comments below and also smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm? It just loves it when you do that, and it just shows us that you're getting value from this content. Also, if you're in the stage where you're looking to build out your go-to-market strategy and you want the step-by-step instructions to follow and you want the coaching that helps you execute on it effectively, just like Franz did, be sure to check out my SaaS Go to Market coaching program. You don't have to go anywhere right now. I'll link to it below. Let's go back to the interview.
I'm sure there are a lot of things that you stopped doing that was scary, but there were probably things that you did and you're like, that was just dumb. Like, we should not have done that. Were there things now that you look back, like if you could go back to Frank France like 18 months ago? You know, I always talk about baby TK. It's like, if you could go back to baby Franz, like, well, what's, like, the one thing you would tell the founder, tell you from 18 months ago as you were embarking on the journey, or 12 months ago even?
Yeah. So we didn't. We didn't focus on higher education as our partner of choice, right? Our ICP, till about 12 months ago. Yeah. And then it cranked. And then it cranked. If I had done that 18 months ago, 24 months ago, oh, my goodness. There was so much wasted development, TK. Now, not wasted in the sense of, like, there's a lot there that we end up leveraging. There was a lot there that we learned from, but I could have been just so much more focused, right? Like, once you focus on ICP, then all your energy, your go-to-market energy, you develop your product, like you said, right? It's about two things, right? It's about shipping code and closing deals. And so, you know, the sooner you focus on that ICP, the more efficient you can be.
Yeah. We wasted time in inefficiency. Was it scary? Because the thing about ICP, I find, is everyone kind of knows what an ICP is. But then, you know, we put you through a process, and it's almost uncomfortable for most founders because you're, like, really having to choose. Like, was that scary for you? Like, clearly you delayed a little bit, but for you, double down? Like, what was that like for you?
Yeah, there was. There was definitely some discussions on the team, right? There were people like, look, if we're wrong about this, like, we get one shot, right? And so, yes, it's scary. Though, at that point, we had done, you know, we had come up with a manifesto. We had done some Broadway shows. We had gotten some feedback. You, you know, I think one of the things that, one of the mistakes we did earlier was we were actually too fast to decide on things as well, right? Like, you see one proof point, you're like, that's it. That's my ICP. I found it. Right. Nirvana. No, it needs to be more than that. So we, yes, it was scary, but we actually were slower in deciding this. We did delay because we wanted more proof points.
Yeah. Let's talk about a little bit around the program and coaching. You're an experienced founder, and I know you came in, you were referred by Doug as an experienced founder. You know, there's a natural thing of, like, I don't know, do I need coaching? Do I need to join a program? And I think you had mentioned, like, you know, I don't know, like, do I need it or do I not? Like, what got you to join the program and how do you think about it now that you're on the other side of it?
Yeah. So, you know, TK, I mentioned this to you. You know, we, I, you know, I had a pretty previous, two previous companies. One's still going concern. The other one had a very successful nine-figure exit. One of the things I realized in that previous wonderful journey all the way to exit, the professionals I worked with, particularly our investor and the professionals, they brought in the value experience. I would ask a question, they're like, "Oh, yeah, we did 10 deals like that. We have six portfolio companies did that." Or "I've seen this." And I was like, "Wow, no matter how smart and good I am, even if I had a successful exit, that's just one turn at the wheel." Yeah. I'm talking to somebody that's had like five or six. And so when I saw you, TK, I was like, "Well, look, right? Like, like this is what TK Does, right? And, you know, no matter how smart I am, just by sheer experience, TK is going to have more perspective and insight." And so I really value coaching from folks that are more experienced, right? And not to say we, I always agree with the coaching. I think you and I actually disagreed on some things, and I was like, "Okay, you know," but you're also like, "Look, you got to make this your own, right? I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you the tools, and you decide what works or doesn't work for you." And I think good coaches do that as well. So I think no matter how good of a founder you are, there's always more to learn. And you should, you should pick out those people that can teach you.
My private equity investor had this great saying, "B people hire B minus people. A people hire A plus people." Yeah. It's very true. One of the elements that I try to bring is we're all trying to figure this out. Let's just get as much data in front of us, as many patterns and principles in front of us. Let's make it known. That's why I also like getting people into a room together, like our immersives. It's like, "Hey, guys, this is like what we've seen. Pattern recognition. Use it in the way that it applies to you." That way you can get the pattern recognition, and then you can move faster and avoid the common pitfalls. But there's, you know, I think we all agree there's no, like, one way. Every company finds their own way, but they're applying the principles, the core principles in slightly different ways to get there.
You're at a million. How do you think about getting to three? Like, what do you do differently? What do you do the same? How are you thinking about that, this next stage of the journey?
Yeah. So I was very fortunate. One of the, you know, we just closed the seed round and generally you close, it's founder-led sales. It's a lot of duct tape and shoestrings up to this point. You raise some money and then you kind of professionalize, right? Maybe you bring in a, a sales team and you think about scale. I was very fortunate I was able to do that. Before I brought in the seed-stage funding, we brought on a very experienced salesperson, deep industry experience. And so my task now is to clone myself, right? And improve upon that, make the template even better. And so we figured out what works now, how do we do that at scale and, and then how do you support the growth, right? And so now, now when we think about the flywheel, the other problem I had in the previous project is we would close sales and then we had a lot of churn. Yeah. Well, there's no point of pouring a bunch of water at the top if it's all leaking out the bottom. And so, you know, one of the things I love about your flywheel model is you got to think about it holistically, right? Every piece has got to work. And so how do you bring in those qualified leads? Right. How do you qualify them? How do you engage them and get them nurtured and down to a close? And then how do you make the onboarding good such that they have good adoption? And then how do you expand on that and then how do you get referrals? And that entire flywheel. So we've really, it's about, we track the whole thing. I actually use that graphic when I talk to my board now and I actually have little arrows that go to each point and we use bullet points.
That's awesome. I love it. And, and I identify, you know, you know, where the weak points are and we zero in on it, right? Like, here's, look, we have a little bit too high of churn here. Oh, we don't have enough qualified leads here. And so, so from a structure perspective, it's about looking at the flywheel and figuring out where the weak points are and making it go for faster, right? In terms of specifically for Boodlebox, you know, we're in this kind of interesting place with AI and I think other people have this problem too. You know, AI is a relatively new phenomenon, right? Two, three years old. Well, if you're selling to enterprises, they do budgeting at that kind of clip. So no one was budgeting for AI three years ago when they needed to. So we've also been very, a lot of learning around how do we price this, how do we adopt this, how do we work with the institutions so they can afford this point. And so we have a very much a land and expand strategy. We have built-in expansion in our contracts. Frankly, that could help get that get us a good way at 3 million if we just execute.
Yeah, there's that flywheel again. One of the patterns that I see for founders that are at a million. This doesn't apply to founders that are at a million without a machine. Like, you're a founder at a million with a machine. Like, you have thought about the flywheel, you've thought about ICP, Manifesto, Broadway show, the metrics. One of the patterns that I see is it's less about "What do I need to do?" and it's more about "Who do I need?" And this is not your first rodeo, so you probably will recognize that really fast. What are the "who's" you're thinking about as you think about this next stage of growth?
Yeah. So you're going to, you got, you have to have a map it to your flywheel. And obviously this is going to be different for every company, right? But you know, you know, you've got to cover down on all those sections, you know, creating those leads, qualifying, you know, nurturing, closing the deal, onboarding, implementation, adoption, and then expansion and so. And referral. And referral. Yeah. Finally. So we've got, you know, I've got a customer success team, I've got a marketing team, and I've got a sales team. And some of those folks are homegrown, and some of them are folks that we brought in who have deep industry experience.
What I think is absolutely fascinating about, TK, is the changing nature of work, right? And of organizations and the ability for one person enabled by AI to do the work that used to take three or four people. So this is actually a question I'd love your thoughts on, which is how does a go-to-market machine look differently today than it did two or three years ago? In an age of AI. I mean, there was a time where a founder at my stage would be like, "Okay, this is what we use stage money. We're gonna hire 10 SDRs, three account executives, and just crank away." I don't think that's the answer anymore.
It is most certainly not the answer. I'm gonna give a slightly contrarian view on this. I don't think it was ever the answer to hire that many people. I think we did it because everyone else was doing it. And I think everyone else was doing it because money was so cheap. And I think in today's environment, if money was super cheap, then we would still do it. I think the reality is we focused more on sales instead of marketing. And I think what's really happening is we're actually turning back to more marketing instead of sales. We were like, "Let's hire 10 AEs and pair them with 5 SDRs, and let's have the SDRs do outbound DMs, cold call, and pipe it into the AEs 1 to 2 ratio, and let's keep hiring more AEs and more SDRs to scale it out." Then the payback period was, you know, years. The CAC kept going up because not only did you hire the SDR and the AE, you also spent like upwards of $1,200 on tech for each of them. And I'm not knocking it. I benefited from this with the sales engagement category, but I think it's kind of swinging back to marketing. I think what modern go-to-market teams look like is, let's have a really strong marketing team. Let's create really personalized messaging for our key segments. Let's deploy that through key channels, really target them, and let's run that at scale, and let's create pipelines that a very small number of AEs are just handling. I think that's what the modern go-to-market team is looking like. And I think it's more marketing-led versus sales-led, which means there's more scale. And now I think marketing is getting a renaissance because with AI, you can run more campaigns, more personalization, more at scale, and optimize the numbers. You have this, like, super smart thing on the team that can help help you optimize these things and personalize these things. You can do the work of 100 SDRs. I think that's what's happening. Time will tell, but that's my bet on it.
Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that, TK. I don't think. I mean, look, there's the same. Quantity is a quality all into itself, right? But it's also a trap. Yep. You don't have to be good, right? Because it just gets lost in the noise. And so we're also very focused on capital efficiency, on CAC, LTV to CAC, and all these metrics about like, is it a flywheel? Is it not just a flywheel, but is it an efficient flywheel? Yeah.
And yeah, I have a lot of discussions with my sales team. The other thing I would say on the marketing point is, well, I'll say this about AI and then I'm going to translate it to marketing. So one of the points I make about AI is that in, in an era of AI where you can outsource so much AI, the things that make us uniquely human that you can't outsource are actually more, not less, valuable. Yeah. And I think that actually that exact same sentence applies to marketing now. Like, yes, you can do marketing so easily. I mean, inundated with LinkedIn messages, I can tell are created by bots. I have these incredibly personalized outreach emails from folks now that they have dumped a whole bunch of context about me and generated this beautiful messaging, right? But we get a lot of kudos at Boodle because we view higher education not as our market, but as our partners. I personally spend a lot of time talking and developing relationships. We approach it as from a set of values and principles. And it's interesting how much of the outreach we get includes some kind of component of, "We like you all," or "We've heard good things about you as people," or "We think you're trying to do the right thing." And that's important to us in this era of AI.
Yeah. To cite those personalized emails that you're getting, you can tell, you know, you look at it, you're like, "I see what you, that's good. Like, I see what, what you tapped. Like, that's good." But then because you know, you know that the cost of creating that email is lower, and because you know the cost is lower, you're less likely to engage with it. Whereas if someone really found out some crazy stuff and really personalized it and really, you're like, "Oh my God, this person really did the work. I'm going to take the call." And I think that's what you're describing, where you're doing some things that are unscalable, building real relationships, real partners on top of the messaging that's out there and the brand that's out there. And people are valuing that because they're like, "It's harder now to really do the right thing and really build, treat us as partners and really work with us." So we value that. People tend to value things that inherently are costly, and that's how you can stand out. So you're right, it is interesting. It's almost elevating the few people, few humans that can do it really well.
Yeah. But I would say, you know, what's interesting about the scalability? Now, obviously, I can't do develop a personal relationship with every single prospect, but if you do it, they talk to their friends, they talk to their colleagues, and that word of mouth, right? Is this sort of scalable part of it, right? Because your reputation is scalable, your, your brand identity is scalable. Yep. That has been, I think, a critical piece of our go-to-market engine is our reputation in our industry.
How do you think about that? So for you guys, clearly you've done a lot of demand generation, and you know, that's one of the things we teach. Like, that's super important because leads are more important than likes. But now because of your very specific ICP, because of the momentum, you're starting to get like a mini brand. As you look at a million or 3 million and then towards 10, you know, and maybe 3 is within the flywheel, within the expansion, and then you're like, really? Like, how do we get to 10? And if 3 is within expansion, then maybe six or 10 is. We really crank it. Brand becomes super interesting. So how do you think about investing in brand versus demand in this age of AI, in what you're doing next?
Yeah, I think brand has to come from a place of sincerity, right? Brand has to come from a place of, as has been said so often, right, falling in love with your customers' problems, not your solutions. I think it helps you if you're personally passionate about it, right? I am personally passionate about getting the relationship between people and AI, right? I have a background in education. So when I get on a call and it's like, "Look, I've been a trustee of a university, I've been in a classroom." Like, immediately the walls come down, right? And I talk about that, right? And, and so, you know, that brand identity, I think for, you've talked about this, right? Initially, the founder is the brand. Yep. In many cases, right? And so not every founder has to be their brand, but I think it's helpful. I think it's helpful. It's a cheat code. Like, it gives you an unfair advantage.
For sure. Yeah. And particularly if those things are true, if you're personally passionate about the problem, if you're rooted in it in some way, and then what starts happening, I think the next step, when you hire people, right, you create, create a culture. And culture isn't created after you hire, it's created by who you hire, right? And then if you inculcate them with your passion and your beliefs, and then they reflect that when they talk to customers and when they do marketing, when they go out. I think the strongest brands grow organically from the founder who has inculcated a culture that represents their vision and values. Like, brand doesn't get created. Brand is basically what you do every day. That's one of the things I believe. It's basically just amplifying what you just do every day. And it seems like for you, you come from this world, you really believe in this, you really care about this ICP as partners. So you've instilled a set of values, and you're saying, let's just make sure the rest of the team does that, and then that amplifies, and actually, that gets your flywheel to move even faster.
Yeah. And then I think there's also this moment of, like, there's the things you say, and then there's the things you do.
TK. Yeah. It's what you do every day. Forget what you're saying.
100%. Yeah. So some people think, well, I need to say the right things, right? So we just did a post. We, we have a, there's a, an early, there's a very influential kind of AI thought leader. He's someone who's on one of our advisory councils, and he was writing about the products he was using, and he found great value in the classroom, and he rarely does this. And he listed them, and we were on that list, but so were some, I guess you could call them competitors. Well, we wanted to amplify his message, so we reposted the whole thing and said, "Look, check this out." And he sent us a note that says, "Wow, I'm really, thank you. But second, I'm really surprised you were advertising your competitors as well in that message." And our view was, "Look, we want to support you. And we think one of the things we talk about is agency. One of the problems we're solving for is the ability for students and faculty to have choice. They should have choice, right? And so if these tools work better, that's great. We happen to think ours work better for a wide variety of use cases." Not at all. And so I think just little things like that, choices you make, that's how you build a brand.
Yeah. I want to go full circle on this as we start to bring this together. You started with, you know, AI teams. Yep. Your ICP, as soon as you double down on the ICP, higher education cranked. Revenue cranked. As you look at the future of Boodlebox, like 10 million, 20 million, 50 million, 100 million ARR. Do you think about that original broader vision? Do you think that this is purely a higher education company? And how do you think about the struggle between that?
Yeah, love that question, by the way. It's funny. So I raised the seed round, a very painful process. I talked to 140 venture capital firms, not reached out to. I talked to 140 venture capital funds to get three term sheets. And like every other founder who raised phrases, you get all kinds of interesting comments and stories along the way. And I still remember one of the funds turned me down to like, "Look, we love you, Franz. We love the concept, we love the idea, we think this has legs, but we think this is only a unicorn and not a potential unicorn and not a potential decacorn. And we're looking, we're looking for potential decacorns." So I just thought it was just such a funny piece of feedback, right? Like, "I think you can only build a company that's going to be worth a billion dollars and that's not good enough." Yeah, like, "I hope I disappoint you." Right? Like, "I'm okay with that." Yeah. So who is this? Sorry. Okay, go on, go on to your question.
I do have bigger aspirations. I do think that this is a broadly usable workforce tool, and we have some proof points around that. Frankly, 40% of my revenue is not higher education. It's individual users, it's workforce teams. I have 110% net revenue retention around workforce teams. So this does have broader applications, but as you pointed out, can't boil the ocean. You got to be focused. Even if we wanted to serve that bigger workforce audience, we have to go to where tomorrow's workers are today. And that's higher education.
Yeah, yeah. And so this, this is our beachhead for that bigger audience. Frankly, if, if I conquer higher education, that's still a billion-dollar company by itself.
That, that was gonna be my thing. It's like, hang on, if every single higher ed student, and you can slice higher ed in different ways. Yeah. If every single higher ed student uses this platform, like, forget the fact that at least half of them will use it in their first job and their internship and it'll go viral from there. Just put that aside for a second. But even if it's just every higher ed student does it, every year there's a new class of freshmen. You have a multi-billion dollar business still, like, just with that ICP.
Correct. Yeah. I think the tough thing with this is there's ICP and there's TAM. And sometimes it's easy to confuse just how big an ICP can be. But also sometimes it's like, hey, don't confuse ICP for 10. Like, how do you get to 10 million? What does that look like? Like, it's, it's like a zooming exercise, which is interesting.
Yeah. And even higher education, right? So 4,000 undergraduate schools, 2,000 trade schools, 18 million students, 2 million staff and faculty. Like, I literally know every single one of my potential buyers. Like, they're listed, right? They're public, all their contact information. Even in that, there are sub-ICPs, community colleges and business schools, independent colleges versus Ivy League schools. And so one of the things, I think when you force yourself to have the discipline of really focusing your ICP, you're going to discover a lot of things about ICP. And then your manifesto, you may have, I don't know, I don't know if you call it sub-manifestos, TK. But I actually talk to, to a community college different than I talk to an Ivy League school. Right. And so what's funny is I've had, I've had investors tell me, "Education is such a small market. I don't know if it's worth our time." Like, it's, "What are you talking about? It's huge, right?" Yeah. Now, I'll give you, it's a difficult market in the sense of, right, there's bureaucracies and there's budgets, but it's also a wonderful market because, you know, they're incredible partners. And there's, in the work we do, I feel, is very meaningful.
You grew a million ARR in 12 months. Now you're looking at 3 and then 10. That's fast. But none of this is easy. So this is hard. This is hard work. The reason I do these, the reason I run my channel, the reason I do the program, and you've been to my immersives, is like, it's a lot of like, "Listen, guys, this is really hard. Like, this is hard work. You as a founder, like, you as a CEO, this is hard work. Mentally grueling ups and downs." What's the pro tip you have for everyone listening on managing this stage of the journey? What's a pro tip that you've learned along the way that's helped you just operate at this level?
Yeah. Let me answer in two.
ways. First, I think part of it is work you do even before you start to journey in the sense of. People often ask me, like, hey, should I start a business? Should I be an entrepreneur? And my test question, TK is do you love something enough to fail at it? Right. Because that's the most likely result of you starting a business. And you're going to. And you're going to feel most of the time that you're failing. So you better love it enough to fail at it. And that's how you know you're passionate about something. To be an entrepreneur or be a founder. That's before now, if you're in it. I mean, you talk about this TK Right? Self care and all these things. Like, I can't crank away for 100 hours a week can be effective. Right. I. You know, it's. It's important to work out and eat right and get, you know, have good sleep, hygiene, and nurture my relationship with friends and family. And far from being a distraction, those things actually make me a better founder now. Not to say there aren't times when I crank right. I go into founder mode. Yeah. And I have done that. But in the long term, right. It is a marathon with sprints inside of it. Yep.
That's so true. I think that's exactly right. Like, you do. It is a marathon, but then you have surges. And I also do this sometimes. I'll do these 45 day beast modes where I'm like, you know what? Nothing else matters except for solving the crap out of this. And then there are other times where I need to be more balanced and in the over art. Like, you're built for the marathon, but you can also sprint when necessary. And I think that's what's necessary to be successful as a founder today. When it's easier than ever to get into entrepreneurship, but it's harder than ever to win. Yeah.
I think the other thing is a leader. You're setting an example for your team. Right. So when you take a break, you're giving. You're giving permission for your team to take a break, which is important because you don't want them burning out either. There's this. What is this thing? 770, you heard the this, right? You work seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Seven days a week with no brave. Like, that's just, like, that's not sustainable. Right. There's a time and place for everything in the journey. And maybe, you know, when you're going from zero to one, it's like nothing else matters. Crank. It's cool. But I will say like, and maybe you'll agree with me on this. You're A fit guy. Like I think making time for mental health, pausing and reflecting, celebrating the wins, working out. Those things actually help you perform better than what's in the field. Yeah. You don't want to get to a place where you're making bad decisions or you're doing work that has to be undone. Right. And your team can tell too. Like you know. Yeah. Oh, what's that? You know one, one of your jobs, right, is to keep your team motivated. And they could tell, they can tell if you're run down. They could tell if you're like dragging ass. Right. Yeah. So you've gotta, you gotta beat your best to inspire the best from your team. Yeah.
Now you know how France built out his scalable go to market machine to get to a million ARR in record time. But not just get there. Build out a flywheel of growth, build out that scalable foundation so now he can look towards scaling the 3 million ARR and beyond in a hyper competitive space like AI and education. Now here's the thing. What you may not know is, well, how do I implement all of these principles? How do I build out my go to market strategy? Well, if you're in that stage where you're building out your go to market strategy to accelerate growth, this is why I created my SaaS Go to Market coaching program. Inside of this program I give you the step by step instructions on how to build out your go to market machine and I also give you my coaching so that you're able to execute on it effectively. So to join the program, just go to tkkader.com gtm tkkader.com gtm Due to the overwhelming demand due in terms of this program, we've streamlined the application process. The better the fit, the better the results. So all we ask is on that page you fill out a little application form, you answer a few questions, I will review it personally and if it's a fit, we'll get you onboarded right away and we'll get to work to building out your scalable go to market machine so that you can accelerate your path to the next stage of growth.
Inside of this program we do three key things. One, we build out your ideal customer profile. Now everyone thinks they have an ideal customer profile until they work with me. That's why it's so effective. That's why we've helped create so many companies that have gotten a product market fit and scalable revenues. A well done ICP exercise. We do 29 different points to really flesh out what your ICP should be once you have your ICP, the second piece is to build out your manifesto. And your manifesto is your messaging, it's your positioning, it's your strategic narrative. This is how you tell the story of exactly what you do, why you do it, and how you actually attract your ICP to you and your company. Once you have these two pieces, then comes the third pillar. The third pillar is the Broadway show. The Broadway show is a consistent set of sales and marketing activities that you can scale over time to get to that next stage of growth. It's what helps you bring your manifesto to your ICP on a consistent basis to build pipeline and convert to revenue. It's an incredible program. We keep celebrating more and more fabric founders that have gone through this program. So if you'd like to work together, just go to tkkader.com GTM also, if you got value from this video, please smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm. It just loves it when you do that. I also drop an episode every single Sunday with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches on how to grow your SaaS business faster. So be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon. That way you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode. If you have a co founder, if you have a team member, if you are part of a Slack or WhatsApp group of other founders that are building software companies, whether it's AI or SaaS that would get value from this video, that would get inspired by this video. That's why we do these. That's why we share our stories so we can inspire you to actually build your software companies and build incredible software companies. Please share this video with them. It would just mean the world to us. Lastly, remember everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business. When you are with us, yours is going to be unstoppable. I'm TK and I'll see you in the next episode or inside the same SaaS go to market program. Take care everybody. And lastly, if you have a actually not lastly.