Tom Gibby is the Co-Founder and CMO of The Bot Platform – a no-code enterprise software solution that allows businesses to create better employee experiences on internal communication platforms, including but not limited to ones like Microsoft Teams, Workplace From Facebook, and more.
Since the company’s founding in 2016, they’ve been able to achieve a tremendous amount of success:
- AAR: $1.2 million.
- MRR: $110,000.
- ARPU: $1,400.
The Bot Platform’s customers include some of the largest organizations in the world. Booking.com, Facebook, Weight Watchers, and Globe Telecom are among them. Their success story is certainly impressive and is more than worth exploring.
The Power of a 12-Month License Fee
The Bot Platform allows customers to not only build their own bots, but create automated workflows and more. This can all then be connected to the internal communication channels that employees are already familiar with and using.
In addition to examples like Microsoft Teams and Workplace From Facebook, users can employ any web-based API that they want using the existing Bot Company interface. It’s a service aimed at Human Resources departments, communications teams, and more.
The Bot Platform Currently Has 35 Customers
While all customers of The Bot Company pay a 12-month license fee, the total amount of money they will pay depends on the size of the company itself.
Of the 35 customers that the organization currently has, the monthly income ranges from those accounts that pay $1,400 per month all the way up to $15,000 or $20,000 per month.
The Bot Company’s largest customer currently spends approximately $240,000 per year thanks to this pricing structure for the service.
A Pivot From 2016
When The Bot Company originally launched in 2016, they were primarily focused on chatbots. Thanks to their position as an original Facebook Messenger bot launch partner, they attracted the attention of a wide range of clients – including one of the biggest music DJs in the world.
At the same time, the founders were beginning to develop concerns about how flooded the market was becoming. They realized that the benefits of automation would be far better used internally rather than externally, which is where their attention had been to that point.
Roughly a year after launch, they pivoted in a decidedly new direction. Because they were already a Facebook Messenger partner, they accomplished this without having to rebuild too much of their existing platform.
The Bot Platform’s Annual Revenue of Just Under $2 Million
Even though some customers only pay as little as $1,400 per month to use The Bot Platform, their annual revenue has already hit the point where it is just under $2 million.
The organization’s annual gross churn is just 36% – impressive for a service that is still this young, relatively speaking. Expansion revenue on an annual basis comes in at 54%. Net revenue retention is an equally impressive 118% – pointing to a service that continues to resonate with its target audience.
$800,000 in Service Revenue On Top of It All
The Bot Company is also notable for charging for service revenue on top of its pre-existing business model.
There are some interested prospects who simply don’t have time to build their own custom solutions themselves. Others have an urgent use case where they need a bot sooner rather than later. In either situation, they can pay to have The Bot Company’s in-house team build a platform for them.
Many customers get very good success stories incredibly quickly. They don’t have to worry about the learning curve of working with a new platform. The Bot Company builds them a custom solution while they’re training their own internal teams. This allows the customer to transition in the most efficient way possible.
The Bot Platform Experimented with the Idea of Raising Capital 2.5 Years Ago
Up to this point, The Bot Company has been bootstrapped, raising little outside capital. They did have a small “friends and family” funding a few years ago, amounting to ~4 million pounds.
They experimented with the idea of raising capital roughly 2 1/2 years ago, but decided against it. Company leadership thought that it would be better to invest in growing the business and generating sales, rather than courting investors.
Clearly, the results have paid off for them in more ways than one. The Bot Platform has a CAR that is up 81%, year-over-year.
A 75% Ownership Stake
Tom Gibby and his other three co-founders maintain a 75% ownership stake in The Bot Company – something that they have no plans of giving up anytime soon. Employees have also been given equity in the company, coming in at around 10%. There is also approximately 15% unassigned capital that is planned to be used for strategic purposes at a later date.
Gibby Wouldn’t Sell The Bot Platform for $6 Million, All Cash Up-Front
In the end, Tom Gibby still sees an incredible amount of potential in what The Bot Company can accomplish in the future – to the point where if someone offered him and his co-founders $6 million, all cash up-front, he emphatically insists that he wouldn’t even consider selling.
Interestingly, a large part of this has to do with the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Gibby indicated that the area of the employee experience has always been booming, but the pandemic has underlined where the future of work is going and how important it is to make sure that employees have the right tech-based tools to be at their most productive.
Obviously, this is a trend that shows absolutely no signs of slowing down anytime soon – which is why Gibby and his three other co-founders are in it for the long haul.
