Batch provides a high return on investments for all consumer brands which have adopted the platform. Through data lead generation tools, push notifications and quicker decision making, Batch can explode your sales.
Nathan latka sat down with Ivo Draginov, co-founder of Batch, to get the inside scoop about this SaaS-related innovative company. Key metrics include:
- 18,000 customers
- 50 engineers
- Developing multiple revenue verticals, evaluated at $90MM+
Nathan Latka (00:00):
Hello everyone. My guest today is Ivo Draginov. He is co-founder of BatchProducts, five SaaS platforms that provide data and lead generation tools for users in various industries. Ivo, you ready to take us to the top?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (00:11):
Sure.
Nathan Latka (00:11):
All right, very good. Is this one company or it’s five SaaS companies?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (00:15):
It’s actually four consumer facing companies and front end facing companies, and we have one backend company that just provides API services to various industries and–
Nathan Latka (00:26):
What do you mean four consumer facing companies?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (00:29):
It’s basically four separate completely standalone platforms.
Nathan Latka (00:33):
But you’re not selling to consumers. This is a B2B play.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (00:36):
It’s a B2B and a B2C. Yeah, it’s business to business mostly. It’s a lot of it caters to smaller businesses.
Nathan Latka (00:43):
Can you share the URLs of some of the B2B brands? BatchLeads, is that the main one?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (00:51):
Batchleads.io, BatchSkipTracing.com, BatchDriven.com, and then BatchDialer.com.
Nathan Latka (00:55):
Why so many? Why so many? Why not put them all under one?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (00:58):
They just cater to different use cases for the other businesses. We have consumers that utilize multiple of the products, but again, those are some consumers and it just depends on what marketing needs they need.
Nathan Latka (01:15):
Got it. You’re catering, I believe, directly to real estate professionals across all these outlets, is that right?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (01:21):
Yeah, it’s real estate professionals. That’s our original niche. It’s real estate, real estate investors, wholesalers, realtors, and then the other product and the company that I mentioned is mostly just the backend API platform caters to a lot of other companies like CRMs. We provide basically property data, phone number data, and some geocoding services to bigger companies as well.
Nathan Latka (01:50):
What do paying customers pay you on average a month to use this technology?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (01:57):
Again, it depends on which company, but just kind of generalize it. It’s a typical paying customer is about $300 to $350 a month.
Nathan Latka (02:10):
$350 a month?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (02:11):
Correct.
Nathan Latka (02:11):
Got it. How were you getting these customers? Take me back to when you launched, what year did you launch and how’d you get your first ten customers?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (02:19):
We launched in 2018 in August, and a lot of our customers are coming through inbound marketing and then a lot of affiliate sales.
Nathan Latka (02:30):
Well, but be specific. Your first 10 customers, literally, where did they come from?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (02:35):
Facebook. Literally just out outreach on Facebook, just identifying people that needed some of those services and just literally just communicating with them man-to-
Nathan Latka (02:42):
How did you find them? Did you go into a Facebook group or… Tell me about that.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (02:45):
Yeah, there’s a lot of Facebook groups, that’s how we got started.
Nathan Latka (02:52):
Did you build the groups from scratch or were you going into other people’s groups?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (02:55):
They were just public groups for…
Nathan Latka (02:57):
Can you name a couple?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (02:59):
Sure. There’s Wholesaling Houses Full Time is one of the bigger groups, probably about 120,000 people.
Nathan Latka (03:06):
Wholesale or houses?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (03:07):
It’s Wholesaling Houses Full Time.
Nathan Latka (03:11):
Got it. Did the group owners get mad at you when you just go in and start promoting your product?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (03:17):
No, not at all. No, I reached out to people asking for questions and I just provided some solutions. No, there were absolutely wasn’t any issues with any kind of promotions.
Nathan Latka (03:30):
Do you pay the group owner an affiliate fee?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (03:33):
He currently now has an affiliate link, correct.
Nathan Latka (03:37):
How many affiliates do you have that have driven at least one sale?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (03:40):
We have about, I would say, close to probably 500 men now.
Nathan Latka (03:46):
Wow. Okay. That’s impressive. How have you recruited so many affiliates? Where do you find them?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (03:52):
Basically, our niche is very kind of close knit to where people are basically selling coaching platforms and it’s a lot of going to events, communicating with people that are coaches and influencers, and then showing them what our service is and how our service is better than the other services out there.
Nathan Latka (04:15):
With the affiliates, plus the Facebook group, you saw all this growth. How many customers are you serving now today?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (04:21):
We have a total of about 18,000 customers.
Nathan Latka (04:25):
They’re all paying monthly fees?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (04:28):
Correct. Yeah, three of the companies that we have are on a subscription basis. The other ones, the fourth company that’s consumer facing is a pay-as-you-go model.
Nathan Latka (04:39):
Okay, got it. If I took 18,000 customers times 350 bucks a month on average, that’s 6.3 million a month.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (04:44):
Yeah, we do close to that. Yeah, and then it’s not-
Nathan Latka (04:50):
Ivo, you’re surprising me here, which I love. You’re doing 6.3 million a month in revenue.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (04:54):
We’re not doing exactly 6.3, but it’s for sure seven figures. A lot of the customers that are on the pay-as-you-go basis don’t order every single month. Come orders may vary from anywhere literally from $20 a month all the way up to $10,000 a month.
Nathan Latka (05:12):
I see. Okay. What are you doing right now? Last month, how much did you do?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (05:15):
Last month we did little over two and a half million.
Nathan Latka (05:19):
Wow. This is impressive. What does growth look like? Exactly a year ago, how much were we doing in that month?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (05:26):
2020, we grew about 140% …
Nathan Latka (05:30):
Wow.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (05:31):
… from 2019.
Nathan Latka (05:33):
How did you do that? I mean, considering COVID.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (05:36):
Well, I think COVID’s like a blessing in disguise, to be honest. A lot of people basically switched to utilizing our data and our services and their phone numbers that we provide, even from their computers at home. It just turned into a lot of people actually being more aggressive in trying to find deals and leads, which ended up benefiting us. Again, we’re focused on providing a super quality product.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (06:10):
The initial months of COVID back in March, April and May, we took a really a step back and try to figure out how do we optimize everything that we have. Everything from team structures and being able to exponentially grow the team size. All of those things really helped us the months following that with being able to scale and grow. We added about a 100 employees in about a six month timeframe. That really just …
Nathan Latka (06:42):
How many total employees today?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (06:43):
About 140. I think a little bit more.
Nathan Latka (06:46):
Got it. What was total 2020 revenue?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (06:50):
We had about 16.9, I believe.
Nathan Latka (06:56):
Million.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (06:57):
Yep.
Nathan Latka (06:58):
That’s up 140% since 2019, so you were doing about six million in 2019, something like that.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (07:03):
Actually a little bit less than that, yeah.
Nathan Latka (07:05):
Wow, Less revenue, so about five million?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (07:08):
Less revenue, right, about five.
Nathan Latka (07:10):
What do you think you closed this year at?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (07:13):
We’re projected to do over 30.
Nathan Latka (07:15):
That’s amazing. Now, have you done all this bootstrapped?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (07:18):
A lot of it has been. There’s been a lot of pieces in the employees, and we’re in the process of hiring some key C-Suite positions, president of operations, VP of sales, full-time recruiter. All of those are positions that are really going to just …
Nathan Latka (07:35):
Yeah. Have you raised from capital or you’re bootstrapped?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (07:39):
No, we haven’t. We’re completely bootstrapped.
Nathan Latka (07:42):
Who is we? How many co-founders?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (07:46):
It’s three co-founders.
Nathan Latka (07:48):
Did you guys all just split it evenly 30-30-30 or no?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (07:52):
Yep.
Nathan Latka (07:53):
You did, really?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (07:54):
Yeah.
Nathan Latka (07:54):
You guys are best friends?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (07:56):
Pretty much, yeah. I see him –
Nathan Latka (08:01):
Do you ever regret that decision? Do you ever feel like, “You know what, I’m doing more, I should have 40%?”
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (08:04):
No, not at all. No, it’s teamwork. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them and vice-versa.
Nathan Latka (08:10):
Okay. You each own 33% of the business, you’ve bootstrapped, you think you’ll do about 30 million in revenue this year. What would you value the company at today?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (08:18):
That’s a good question. Honestly, I don’t have a clear answer to that. If I had to guess, obviously I’ve thought about it. If I had to guess, I’d probably say about 60 to 90. But again, that’s a wild guess, and I really don’t know.
Nathan Latka (08:32):
Why 60?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (08:34):
Based on growth projections and some things that I’ve read based on what companies are selling for based on revenue earnings. Again, I’m not probably the most educated person to give an exact number on that, but that would probably in the ballpark.
Nathan Latka (08:55):
We’ve got a lot of very rich people listening to the show, looking for companies to go acquire, so I’m going to ask this question for them. Do you think if someone came and offered you 60 million all cash front, would you be able to convince the other two co-founders to take the deal, or would it have to be higher?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (09:07):
No, it would have to be higher. We’re-
Nathan Latka (09:11):
See, now he changes, no he changes his tune and says, “Oh, it has to be high.”
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (09:17):
Correct. Well, no, I think probably what the company’s value today is not going to be what it’s going to be value in the year. We’re growing a billion dollar company brand in the next five years, so that’s kind of our potential exit strategy, if you want to say.
Nathan Latka (09:30):
Are you making money? Were you profitable last year?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (09:33):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Nathan Latka (09:34):
How much? You did 17 million top line, how much to the bottom?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (09:39):
We’re about 57% profit, so like nine point something.
Nathan Latka (09:43):
What do you do with all that money? Do you pay those dividends or what?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (09:46):
No, I mean, we always get paid and we reinvest a lot heavily into other products. We know we started with one product in 2018. We added two products last year, which they’re in the early stages, one of them just crossed 100,000 MRR, just launched in December.
Nathan Latka (10:06):
What’s the URL of that one?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (10:08):
BatchDialer. That one just crossed 100,000 month and it’s growing pretty rapidly. We had some little setbacks with launching and development stuff, but that’s behind us.
Nathan Latka (10:22):
That’s great. Would you ever set up profit sharing with employees since you have 50% of revenue going to the bottom line?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (10:31):
That’s a good question. We are in the process of giving some small percentages of ownership in case of sales to certain key people, but we’re keep keeping that to a very minimum at the moment.
Nathan Latka (10:45):
How many engineers are on the team of 140?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (10:49):
Software engineers or …
Nathan Latka (10:50):
Software.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (10:51):
Are you including the quality assurance engineers and that all development –
Nathan Latka (10:54):
Sure. All.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (10:55):
A total of about 50.
Nathan Latka (10:58):
5-0. Do you have any quota carrying sales reps?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (11:01):
Say that again?
Nathan Latka (11:01):
Do you have any sales reps that carry quota?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (11:04):
Oh yeah. Yeah, we have sales reps.
Nathan Latka (11:07):
How many?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (11:08):
Seven-ish.
Nathan Latka (11:10):
What quota do they have?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (11:12):
I want to say it varies on all the products. All the products are a little bit different. Even the price points are different. One of them, for instance, has to do 100,000 a month in revenue on let’s say the skip tracing side. On the Dialer side, honestly I don’t have the number in front of me.
Nathan Latka (11:32):
Yeah, no, that’s fine. Talk to me about getting new customers. Do you think your channel to grow is going to be affiliates or is it going to be something else?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (11:39):
Affiliates has been the big portion of our growth. We’re missing a lot of key things at the moment with any like outbound sales, which we’re currently not doing at all. That’s why we’re trying to hire some of these key positions with president of operations too sometimes so we have the capacity to start putting a strategy behind outbound sales and being more proactive as far as generating leads. We generate a lot of leads, a lot of inbound and affiliates. Again, there’s a lot of missing potential profits in not doing outbounds.
Nathan Latka (12:19):
What’s the funnel right now across all products? How many new leads per month?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (12:24):
Just out there, across all products? I have to honestly don’t think… Let’s say on our BatchLeads side, actually I know that. For BatchLeads, it’s 4,300 leads we had from March 1st through up until now.
Nathan Latka (12:42):
How many convert to a trial or paid?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (12:45):
About 10% of them convert, 10-20%, 10 to 15% convert to a trial. Then about 35% of those convert to an actual paying customer.
Nathan Latka (13:00):
Got it. That’s what about 180 new customers per month on 4,300 new leads?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (13:05):
No, that doesn’t actually sound right. No, the leads, I think it’s what do we classify as an actual lead. I think that’s one of the missing pieces potentially. We have about, so on the BatchLeads that we have about 1,000 customers a month times… I’d have to actually look at our marketing.
Nathan Latka (13:31):
That’s okay. You added about 1,000 new customers though, just last month on BatchLeads?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (13:33):
Yeah.
Nathan Latka (13:35):
Yeah on 4,300 top of funnel leads.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (13:38):
Correct, and I’m just trying to think if those are actual trials or they were actually the leads. I think you may have those numbers.
Nathan Latka (13:44):
Yeah, yeah, that’s okay. But no, generally speaking of 4,000 inbound leads, 1,000 new converting to pay, that’s 25% conversion rate. I mean, that’s pretty impressive.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (13:51):
Yeah, it’s about, and again, it varies on the products, but I know one of BatchLeads is about a 32% conversion rate.
Nathan Latka (13:57):
Would you ever consider raising outside capital?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (14:00):
I don’t see the reason for it, to be honest.
Nathan Latka (14:02):
Yep, yep. Very cool, man. Let’s wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what’s your favorite business book?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (14:11):
Measure What Matters.
Nathan Latka (14:12):
Number two, is there a CEO you’re following or studying?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (14:17):
Yeah, Dan Martell.
Nathan Latka (14:21):
Love that guy. Number three, what’s your favorite online tool for building your business?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (14:26):
ProfitMall
Nathan Latka (14:26):
Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (14:30):
Five and a half to six.
Nathan Latka (14:31):
Okay, and what’s your situation, married, single, kids?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (14:33):
Married with two kids.
Nathan Latka (14:35):
Okay. Do you listen to the show? You know all these answers so fast.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (14:40):
No, I actually don’t listen to the show I did. I had no idea what questions you’re going to ask me.
Nathan Latka (14:42):
I love it. This is great. Okay, and how old are you?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (14:44):
I am 33.
Nathan Latka (14:46):
Take me back to when you were 20. What’s something you wish you knew?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (14:49):
I wish I knew?
Nathan Latka (14:50):
Yep.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (14:57):
I would’ve gotten to SaaS quicker than I did.
Nathan Latka (15:00):
How did you find Dan Martell, out of curiosity?
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (15:05):
I think YouTube.
Nathan Latka (15:06):
YouTube. That guy, he’s so good on YouTube.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (15:08):
Yeah.
Nathan Latka (15:08):
Guys, there we have it. BatchLeads launched in 2018, past 5 million in sales in 2019, 17 million in sales in 2020, 30 million in sales on track to do this year. They did 2.5 million in revenue just last month across 18,000 customers. They’re selling and catering to the real estate space, anything related to call dialing, lead generation, you name it, they’re on it. Called evaluation somewhere between 60-90 million bucks, but they own 100% of the business outright across three co-founders, 30-30-30% each. 140 people on the team, 50 engineers, looking to continue to scale with new product lines. Ivo, thanks for taking us to the top.
Batchleads CEO Ivo Draginov (15:39):
Thank you.