Content building tool Genial.ly has about 7 million users working in education, media, and technology. About 60,000 are paying customers, which adds up to an MRR of $300,000 and about a $3.6 million annual run rate.
The company is known as a Canva competitor, but co-founder and CBDO Alberto López says Genial.ly is more versatile and focuses on online content.
“You can create infographics, presentations, video presentations, gamification experiences, and everything that you can imagine,” said López in an interview with Latka in September 2020. “We save money and time [for] people because you have just to learn one tool.”
Although López and his three co-founders launched the company in 2015, they didn’t monetize until 2017. Now customers can use either the paid or free version. Plans start as low as $15 annually for students, or users can pay $90 per year for a pro version.
About 80% of Genial.ly’s paying customers enroll in the teacher plan with an annual cost of about $60.
Even though many students use Genial.ly, the company’s churn remains relatively low at about 24% annually. But the company also has 20% expansion from upselling, which results in 96% net revenue retention overall.
Source: GetLatka
López and his three co-founders own approximately 20% of Genial.ly through a parent company Ecoavantis, and venture capital investors own some equity, as well.
Genial.ly raised about $5 million from these investors, and they planned to raise $10 million in Q4 of 2020 as they continued to scale. “We want to raise money again, just to be in the market for a possible exit in the future,” López explains.
The company has a team of about 70, including 15 engineers and five quota-carrying employees on a sales team. Genial.ly also runs an ambassador program of 150 people who promote the company by making informational webinars and using the product on social media. The company does not pay these ambassadors, but instead pays for some perks like travel.
In addition to setting their sights on the U.S., Genial.ly aims to expand in other markets. “We have seen how Genial.ly is growing in other markets, for example, in Brazil, in India, and in Asia in general,” López says. “So we want to make the most use of that opportunity for us to grow faster.”
What is Genial.ly’s annual revenue?
In 2020, Genial.ly generated $3.6 million in ARR.
What is Genial.ly’s monthly revenue?
In 2020, Genial.ly generated $300,000 in MRR.
Who is the CEO of Genial.ly?
Juan Rubio López is the CEO of Genial.ly.
Transcript Excerpts
Recognizing business opportunities by filling your customers’ needs
“Genial.ly comes from another company called Ecoavantis. In that company, we were a communications agency. Our clients … [were] big corporates and also education corporates. They wanted to edit the creations we developed for them, but since they didn’t have a knowledge or background in design or computing, they couldn’t. So, we suddenly thought that it was a good opportunity for us to create something that [meant] people without knowledge or background in design could create these things.”
How brand ambassadors can foster community on social networks
“We built a community of ambassadors …The community is in social networks, in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, TikTok … The ambassador program [is] focused on education. This usually consists of people who are in love with the tool. We give them our free master plan, which is our most advanced plan, and they help us by making webinars, by cross-selling from cross-marketing, and to spread the word within their networks.”
A product that automatically generates hundreds of daily leads
“We have a sales team. And actually, we don’t like to call them reps because we don’t … do lead generation. We receive every day more than 300 leads, because we have thousands and thousands of people go to our website and start creating.”
Full Transcript Nathan Latka: Hello, everyone. My guest today is Alberto López. He launched Genial.ly to provide a tool to create interactive communication experiences and more engaging content for more than two million of his current users worldwide. He participates in tasks such as the business development strategy, funding process, and public relationships. Alberto, are you ready to take us to the top? Alberto López: Yes. Hello. Thank you. Nathan Latka: Thanks for coming on. And just to be clear, are you one of the co-founders? Alberto López: Yes, I’m one of the co-founders. Just, I want to make sure that the audience know that now we have more than seven million users. Nathan Latka: So, what does that mean? What’s the company doing? What are they using? Alberto López: Well, we provide a tool to make all kind of interactive content so that you are able to learn once, one tool, and you can create almost everything. You can create infographics, presentations, video presentations, gamification experiences, and everything that you can imagine. We save money and time to people because you have just to learn one only tool. Nathan Latka: And when you say seven million users, are those free and paid signups? Alberto López: Yeah, free and paid. Our conversion rate is around… It’s a little bit lower than 1%. So, yes. More or less [crosstalk 00:00:01:11]- Nathan Latka: So, you have about 60,000 customers? Alberto López: Yes, exactly. Nathan Latka: Okay, got it. So, 60,000 customers, and about how much do you charge per month on average? Alberto López: Oh, it depends. We have different plans. We have monthly plans and yearly plans. Our most expensive plan is $250 a year, and by which you can create, you can use everything. And our most affordable plan is the student one, which is €15 a year, but you will find some challenges for you, for the use. Nathan Latka: Just because you have free, pro, master, and team, you have a bunch of different plans and you have professional and education. So, there’s a lot of things going on here. Can you just give me an average? What’s the average customer pay per month, would you say? Alberto López: The average, we could say around 60. €60. Nathan Latka: Six-zero? Alberto López: €60 a year. Nathan Latka: Six-zero a year? Alberto López: €60 a year. Yes. Nathan Latka: Okay. I’m trying to hear if you’re saying one-six or six-zero. Six-zero? Alberto López: Six-zero. Six-zero a year is for… That’s for teachers. Teachers are around 80% of our clients. Nathan Latka: Now, can I take 60,000 customers times $5 a month, you’re doing about $300,000 per month in revenue? Alberto López: Yes. Our MRR in this moment is around 300K MRR. Nathan Latka: 300,000. That’s that’s great. I mean, congratulations. Let’s dive into this backstory and how you built this. What year did you launch? Alberto López: Well, we launched it in 2015, but we didn’t start to monetize till 2017. We started very slowly, but now we are growing really, really fast. We are growing at a rate of 15% monthly at average. So, yes. Our marketing approach, actually, is, it’s relative. We grow and grow because word of mouth, because… We have a logo in the creations. We have around 17 million creations all around the world. So, more and more- Nathan Latka: On what basis? 17 million things created daily, weekly, monthly? Alberto López: In total. Nathan Latka: Total. How many per month? Alberto López: Per month? I don’t have this data. Nathan Latka: Okay. Got it. So, you launched in 2015. You started monetizing in 2017. How did you fund the company for the first two years if you had no revenue coming in? Alberto López: Well, actually, we based our first year from other company. We were actually… Genial.ly comes from another company called Ecoavantis. In that company, we were a communications agency. Our clients… That was big corporates and also education corporates. They wanted to edit the creation we developed for them, but since they didn’t have a knowledge or background in design or computing, they couldn’t. So, we suddenly thought that it was a good opportunity for us to create something that by which people without knowledge or background in design could create these things. So, for the first year, we were working at the same time in that agency and also in Genial.ly. So, also, another two co-founders came, so they invested their own time. And also we have- Nathan Latka: Yeah. So, you have three founders? You plus two others? Alberto López: No, me and Juan Rubio, which is the CEO, Chema Roldán is the CTO, and Luis García, who is the [crosstalk 00:04:54]. Nathan Latka: So, four co-founders. Alberto López: Four co-founders. Yeah. You could say that, but- Nathan Latka: Did you guys… I mean, that’s a tough conversation to have. You’re spinning a company out of an agency. There’s four co-founders. Do you guys just split equity 25, 25, 25, 25, or no? Alberto López: No, no, no. It’s much more complicated. Our cap table is difficult because in the other company, in Ecoavantis, we were four co-founders. So, we own 15%, 25% of that company. So, the cap table is a bit complicated. In this moment, because we have raised around $5 million in this moment, [inaudible 00:05:35] different VCs came, so the cap table is not like that at this moment. Nathan Latka: Well, so, does the agency own any portion of Genial.ly? Alberto López: Yes. Nathan Latka: How much does the agency get to keep? Alberto López: In this moment? Nathan Latka: Yes. Alberto López: Well, I think that data, I can not share with you. I’m sorry. Nathan Latka: A range is fine. Alberto López: Around, you could say, 20%. Nathan Latka: Okay. Got it. And so you gave it to the agency because you basically built this in the agency and then spun it out. You four co-founders, then, each own some amount of equity, and an investors who put in $5 million own some equity as well. Alberto López: Exactly. Nathan Latka: I see. Okay. How did you get your first thousand customers? Do you remember? Alberto López: Well, yes. My colleagues, they did very well because they built a community around the product itself. I remember myself launching this typical text to my colleagues, to my family. “Please register here because this is very interesting. It’s a very interesting tool for you. You can create your presentations for your sales team. You can create your CV and you can create many things.” And also, we built a community of… how you call it… ambassadors. Nathan Latka: Where can I view the community? Alberto López: Well, the community is in social networks, in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. TikTok. We are also in TikTok. Nathan Latka: How many ambassadors do you have? Alberto López: 150 [crosstalk 00:07:14]. Nathan Latka: Okay. So, you have 150 ambassadors. There’s currently 87 people following your guys’s LinkedIn page. So, not all the ambassadors follow you on LinkedIn. I mean, help me understand exactly how the ambassador program works. Alberto López: Well, the ambassador programs, it consist mainly… It is more focused on education. This, usually, consist of people who are in love with the tool. We give them our free master plan, which is our most advanced plan, and they help us by making webinars, by cross-selling from cross-marketing, and to spread the word within their networks. Nathan Latka: Got it. And this is obviously a super-smart plan. If they help you get sales, do you give them a commission, or no? Alberto López: Well, sometimes we pay them by, for example, when people could travel around the world, we could pay the travel for them, but we usually don’t pay in cash. Nathan Latka: Okay. How many people are on the team full-time today, ignoring the ambassadors? Alberto López: 70. Nathan Latka: Seven-zero? Alberto López: Seven-zero. Nathan Latka: How many of them are engineers? Alberto López: Around 15 [crosstalk 00:08:33]- Nathan Latka: One-five. Okay. And do you have any full-time quota-carrying sales reps, or no? Alberto López: Oh, yes, we have. We have a sales team. And actually, we don’t like to call them reps because we don’t… For example, we don’t do leads generation because we receive every day more than 300 leads because we have thousands and thousands of people go to our website and start creating, and we have several [crosstalk 00:09:11]- Nathan Latka: Alberto, that’s fine. That’s great you have so much inbound. All I’m asking is, how many people are full-time on your team that have a quota? Alberto López: In sales team? Five. Nathan Latka: Five. Okay. Got it. And again, they’re handling all those inbound leads that you get every day. Alberto López: Yes. Nathan Latka: Yep. Yep. Fascinating. So, talk to me a little bit more about the product. I mean, should people think about this like a Canva? Alberto López: Yeah. It’s similar to Canva, but I would say that Genial.ly is more… It’s more interactive because Canva is more focused on designers. Canva is thought for to create online and to download your creation, like for a communication piece to be downloaded and to be printed, but Genial.ly is more focused to be consumed, for the content to be consumed online. We are more interactive in this sense, and we are also more versatile, because with Canva, you can create presentations and dossiers, for example, but with Genial.ly, you can create a very wide range of pieces of communication, different business communication. Nathan Latka: I see. And when you sell to students, churn is obviously going to be an issue, right? So, what is your guys’s gross churn per month, currently? Alberto López: 2%, in this moment, on [crosstalk 00:10:36]- Nathan Latka: Okay. That’s actually not… So, 24% annually. That’s actually not that bad. Alberto López: No, it’s not that bad. Of course we have to [inaudible 00:10:44] a way to improve, but it’s not that bad. The students, actually, are not our focus in this moment. We want to have a plan for them because we have millions, literally, but they usually don’t churn too much. Actually, they pay €15 and most of them, they renew, but we know, we are aware, that most of them are going to be free product, and we are happy with that. Nathan Latka: Yeah. So, 24% churn. Do you have expansion revenue? Do you have ways to upsell customers or no? Alberto López: Yes. [inaudible 00:11:16]. Nathan Latka: How much expansion do you see, annually? Alberto López: Annually? I don’t have the data. Nathan Latka: Or monthly is fine. Alberto López: Wait a second. For example, this month, September… Well, 5,000 expansion. €5,000 expansion. Nathan Latka: Okay. Got it. Into a base that is essentially 300,000. So, about 1.8%. Alberto López: It is MRR. Nathan Latka: Yeah. So, you saw 5,000 in new MRR into a base that’s 300,000 MRR. So, about 1.7% expansion monthly. Alberto López: Yeah. Yeah. Approximately. Yes. Nathan Latka: Yeah. That’s great. And what are you upselling, typically? Is it number of seats or feature-based upsells, or what? Alberto López: Yes. Mainly it’s seats because… Well, you can go to upgrade your plan. If you’re a student, you can upgrade to our [inaudible 00:12:10] plan. If you’re [inaudible 00:12:12], if you are a teacher, you can upgrade to a master plan. But most of the upsells are for seats. Nathan Latka: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That makes a lot of sense. Any big product updates coming up that we should know about? Alberto López: Of course. We want to implement the seats, the automatic seats, because, now this is a nightmare. If you want to buy more seats, you have to contact our service team, which is quite crazy, and we are working on implementing the automatic seats system and the seats administrator. Nathan Latka: Alberto, are you guys still… You did this last raise of… I think it was four and a half million euros, or something like that, back in February of 2020. So, fairly recently. Are you now burning capital today on a monthly basis, reinvesting to drive growth? Alberto López: Yes. We are going to raise 10 million in around two months. And if you ask me why, I don’t know why, because we actually have most of the money in the bank. We don’t need the money, but- Nathan Latka: Just to be clear, you still have $4 million in the bank. Alberto López: Around 2 million. Nathan Latka: Okay. Got it. Alberto López: Because half of it… You have mentioned four and a half million, but half of it was secondary money. So, there was for people who sold [inaudible 00:13:30] originally. So, we want to create a round. 15 So, our VCs, our current partners, have advised that to create this round. Nathan Latka: How much are you burning per month right now, in terms of cash? Alberto López: I don’t have the data, Nathan. I have to let you know later. I don’t know the data. Nathan Latka: A range is fine. I mean, are you basically breakeven? Are you burning, like, 100 grand a month? Alberto López: Yeah. We are now, since COVID-19, we went through the breakeven. Now we are profitable. Nathan Latka: Oh. Got it. Got it. So, you look to raise later this year… So, let’s say you go do raise $10 million. What would you spend that money on? Alberto López: We want to grow more in the States. Our CEO moved there one year ago, but we have to grow our team there. We need to build our network there, and also we have more projects, more technical project, apart from the seats. We want to create this… Are you familiar with Scrum? Nathan Latka: Am I telling you, am I familiar with Scrum? Alberto López: Yes. Nathan Latka: Yep. Agile development. Scrum. Yeah. Alberto López: Yeah. I’m sorry. Scrum and LT. LT is a technology by which you can monitor who is doing any part, any click or any [crosstalk 00:15:13]. So, technology like that. So, we have implemented this technology, and yes, we want to grow the team in the States and actually in other markets, because since the COVID-19, we have seen how Genial.ly is growing in other markets, for example, in Brazil, in India, and in Asia in general. So, we want to make the most of use of that opportunity for us to grow faster. Nathan Latka: Yep. Very good. Well, look. Hey, we’re out of time, Alberto. It’s clearly a fascinating story here. Let’s wrap up quickly with the famous five. Number one. What’s your favorite business book? Alberto López: Well, are you familiar with… What’s the name? Don’t remember the name. The guy who created Salesforce. Nathan Latka: Marc Benioff. Alberto López: Yes. Nathan Latka: Behind the Cloud. Alberto López: Yeah. Nathan Latka: Very good. Number two. Is there a CEO you’re following or studying? Alberto López: A what? Nathan Latka: Is there a CEO you’re following or studying? Alberto López: Well, the guy from Tesla. I love him. Nathan Latka: Elon Musk? Alberto López: Elon Musk. Nathan Latka: Number three. What’s your favorite online tool for building Genial.ly? Alberto López: Online tool. Nathan Latka: Your favorite online tool. Alberto López: What does that mean? I’m sorry. Nathan Latka: A tool that you use online. An online tool. Slack, [crosstalk 00:16:34]. Alberto López: Oh. An online tool. Okay. I’m sorry. Nathan Latka: Yeah. No. You’re fine. Alberto López: We use a lot ChartMogul. Nathan Latka: Okay. Good, good, good, good company. Alberto López: And also Slack, of course. Nathan Latka: Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night, Alberto? Alberto López: How many what? Sorry. Nathan Latka: Sleep. Alberto López: Oh. A day. Nathan Latka: Hours of sleep. Alberto López: Well, now, since I have been… I have recently be a father. I sleep too few hours. Let’s say, now, five hours. Nathan Latka: Five hours. And just one new kid? I know the kid… Just being a father. Only one, or you have more? Alberto López: I have more. I have two daughters. I want another one. Nathan Latka: Married with two kids. Alberto López: Yes. Nathan Latka: And how old are you? Alberto López: 38. Nathan Latka: Alberto López: Very good question. When I was 20. Wow. Maybe I would like to know more about the big crisis of the… How you call it, the crisis, is in English. The dot-com. The dot-com crisis. Are you familiar with that? Nathan Latka: The dot-com crash. Alberto López: The dot-com crash. Yeah. Nathan Latka: Very good, guys. Alberto from Genial.ly. They’re so-called a Canva competitor, but built more exclusively for online, more interactive content, about 60,000 customers paying on average five bucks per month, doing 3.6 million in terms of annual run rate. Right now they’ve raised $5 million to do that. Most recently, 4 million, 4.5 million, in February of 2020, but 50% of that was secondary. They’ll do another $10 million round here in Q4 of 2020. So, watch out for that. 70 people, seven-zero, on the team right now. 15 engineers, five quota-carrying reps. They turn 24% of their customers call it annually, but have about 20% expansion. So, net revenue retention, about 96% as they look to continue to scale. Nathan Latka: Alberto, thanks for taking us to the top. Alberto López: Thank you, Nathan. Thank you so much. Nathan Latka: One more thing before where you go. We have a brand-new show every Thursday at 1:00 PM Central. It’s called SharkTank for SaaS. We call it Deal or Bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live, and the founder shares backend dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU, CAC, LTV. You name it, they share it, and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch. Every Thursday, 1:00 PM Central. Nathan Latka: Additionally, remember, these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2:00 PM Central. To make sure you don’t miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button, and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn’t want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it’s an acquisition, a big fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement, or something else. I don’t want you to miss it. Nathan Latka: Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We’ve probably talked about your tool, if you’re running a company, or your firm, if you’re investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. Nathan Latka: In the meantime, I’m hanging out with you here on YouTube. I’ll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. If you enjoyed it, click the thumbs-up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We got to push them away. Click the thumbs-up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys’s support. All right, I’ll be in the comments. See ya.
