How He Built The Largest Rev Ops Community In The World (and $500k of revenue!)

RevGenius is the world’s largest and fast-growing community of revenue operations (RevOps) professionals. A RevOps professional integrates sales-funnel efforts with marketing campaigns and the services offered involving all of the organization’s processes, platforms, and talented people.

• 17,000 community members in the 18 months since its inception in June 2020.
• Free for members to use – makes money from paid sponsorships of RevCon events and other company activities.
• $500k in estimated revenues for 2021. Revenues are up from about $80k to $100k in the startup period of the partial year of 2020, beginning in June.

One LinkedIn Post Led to Over 15k Community Members in a Slack Group

RevGenius CEO and co-founder Jared Robin is a sales veteran with 15 years of experience. When the pandemic hit in 2020, he was not employed. As an entrepreneur, he decided the best thing to do would be to start a new company despite the pandemic. A LinkedIn post asking him to help form a community for RevOps professionals was the impetus for beginning the RevGenius community group.

The LinkedIn system crashed when there were over 1,000 users in a RevGenius group chat. This problem caused RevGenius to move to Slack. The Slack group rapidly grew to have over 15,000 members in the first year.

Examples of community members include:

• Thought Leader Dale Zwizinski, Senior V.P. of Sales @SMARTACTION
• Marcus Chan, CEO/founder @VENLI CONSULTING GROUP
• Akarsh Kannan, Business Development Executive @FRESHWORKS
• Julie Pine Parker, a seasoned sales professional, used the community contacts to find a senior position.
• Paige McMahon, a recent college graduate who s seeking her first job in RevOps.

10 Competitors of RevGenius

There are other RevOps communities; however, none have the membership numbers of RevGenius. Most have less than a thousand members. Some are paid services and restrict membership to invitation-only methods, which severely reduces the number of users.

Here are a few examples of RevGenius’ competition from other RevOps communities:

1. Wizards of Ops
2. PreSales Collective
3. RevOps Co-op
4. MasterOps
5. The Growth Ops Community (Formerly MOCCA)
6. Sales Hacker
7. Modern Sales Pro
8. Bravado
9. Pavilion (formerly Revenue Collective): Private, invitation-only
10. Systematic Community: Private, invitation-only

11 Fundamental Tools Used to Build the RevGenius Community

1. LinkedIn: RevGenius started with a LinkedIn post. It soon became apparent to RevGenius CEO and co-founder Jared Robin that there was an unmet need to create a better community space for RevOps professionals.
2. Slack: Slack was the choice for the community forum because of its features, ease of use, and popularity.
3. Flow: Flow is a project management software tool used to organize tasks, timelines, and archive conversations of the project team members.
4. Airtable: Airtable is a platform used to build collaborative software applications.
5. Luma: Luma is used to manage events.
6. Livestorm: A sponsor/presenter uses Livestorm to give a presentation followed by a Q&A. This software is appreciated when compared to Zoom for its clean user interface.
7. Zoom: Zoom is for virtual roundtable discussions with many speakers.
8. Job Board Fire: Job Board Fire is the software used for the community job board.
9. Pallet.xyz: Pallet provides hiring tools used by communities.
10. Printful: RevGenius uses Printful to make its swag items, sold through the company’s website shop.
11. Members and Policies: The community is passionate about sales and marketing. Members are kind and generous to each other. They must follow a specific code of professional conduct with zero tolerance for abuse, harassment, and disrespect.

RevGenius Sponsorships Garnered $500k for 2021

The Sponsorship program design is to be stable and continuous. The sponsorship contract lasts for at least one quarter. The sponsor customers of RevCon events and RevGenius activities pay from $9k per quarter to $100k per year.

Email invitations sent to the community list of over 17K members usually generate 150 to 200 signups for a RevGenius presentation or event. New events are on offer daily.

Examples of live events are:

• RevGenius New Member Onboarding
• RevWomen Roundtable
• RevGenius EMEA Weekly Roundtable
• RevGenius Learning Series
• RevCon virtual conference series

Examples of on-demand events are:

• Go From Novice to Superstar Salesperson
• Six Ways to Ace a Sales Call
• Seven Laws of Highly-Effective Emails to Generate Sales
• Building Human Connections Remotely
• Celebrating Saleswomen

RevGenius Has More Than 20 Sponsors in 2021

Sponsors are carefully selected. RevCon events and other live events have careful schedules to avoid competitive pressures. SaaS companies that market services to RevOps professionals find direct access to a highly qualified target market is an exceptional opportunity to engage them.

This table shows the analysis of the sponsorship revenues based on 20 sponsors.

The list of current sponsors includes:

• AirDeck
• Alyce
• a virtual toast
• Bee
• Breadcrumbs
• Canva
• CaptivateIQ
• Captivate Talent
• Chili Piper
• ConnectAndSell
• Demostack
• Dooly
• EqualTo
• Kennected
• Lane Four
• Livestorm
• Outplay
• Polytomic
• RevOps
• Sendoso
• SV Academy
• Syncari
• Vidyard
• Workato

$100 Job Listings

Job listings on RevGenius cost $100 per month to place the job opening. RevGenius collected about $10,000 in 2021 for these job listing services. More importantly, the jobs listed on RevGenius are specific RevOps positions that may not be posted elsewhere.

RevGenius members get an inside track to network with other members to learn about a potential job opening before any public announcement.

Current Estimated $10 Million Valuation

The RevGenius company achieved considerable traction and proven popularity. The community created with a small staff of four people, including the two founders, is exceptional. The company is now raising money for its expansion plans. RevGenius has the goal to double the number of community members in the next year of 2022.

AngelList investors include:

• Hustle Fund $100k
• Makerpad $100k
• Stage 2 will probably invest $100k

The current valuation of RevGenius as a private company was the idea of the company’s CEO, Jared Robin. The valuation considers sponsorship revenues, revenue growth factors, profitability targets, the value of the existing community members combined with the potential membership expansion, plus a “little speculation.”

RevGenius 2.0

The near-term goals are to release the beta version of RevGenius 2.0, scale the sponsorship revenues as the community membership numbers increase, and offer a paid premium level of the membership services.

Exit Strategy Within Two Years

Ultimately, the exit strategy for RevGenius angel investors and its founders is to cash out with an IPO.

RevGenius CEO and co-founder Jared Robin says, “I am a founder. An IPO is the goal.” Nathan Latka says, “Mark my words, RevGenius will sell for a very large amount within the next two years. Jared Robin has his eye on the prize, and he is building a great community.”