Bootstrapped To $15m ARR In 2.5 Years

GM! It's Tuesday, January 10th - Today, we're covering Disney employees heading back to the office, Rolls-Royce breaking sales records, the DoJ seizing $450m of Robinhood stock, Goldman Sachs cutting 3,200 jobs, the rise of 'robot lawyers', and a deep-dive into a bootstrapped $15m cash cow.

- Callum

HEADLINES

Disney Employees Have To Return To The Office

> Disney CEO Bob Iger tells hybrid workers they must return to the office 4 days a week starting on March 1st, 2023.

> Rolls-Royce hits a 119-year sales record as US demand for its $550,000 cars surges. The carmaker sold over 6,000 vehicles in 2022.

> The Department of Justice has seized $450m worth of Robinhood shares held by FTX executives Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang.

> Huge bonuses of 50 months' of salary given out by shipping giant Evergreen Marine as they breach $20b in revenue in 2022, over 3x their 2020 revenues.

> Goldman Sachs to cut 3,200 jobs after its year-end cost review.

> Bed Bath & Beyond warns of bankruptcy before its Tuesday quarterly earnings call.

> Binance loses $12b in 60 days as the world's largest crypto exchange bleeds assets in the wake of the FTX fallout.

> Congressman-elect George Santos is caught in a scandal as false claims surface.

> Former Mcdonald's CEO agrees to pay $52.7m in SEC settlement for misleading investors about inappropriate workplace relations that led to his firing.

> Apple VR headset expected to ship in fall 2023.

> Vista Equity Partners acquires Duck Creek for $2.6b, as the SaaS company valuation falls from its $7b high in 2021.

TOGETHER WITH CURTIS MOTORCYCLES

Is This The Tesla Of Motorcycles?

At a price of $120k, Curtis Motorcycles is building the Tesla of electronic motorcycles. And they’re getting traction!

The Numbers: They’ve pre-sold $2.7m of motorcycles, giving the company 3+ years of profitable operation, with a list of 1,200 qualified buyers interested in joining them.

This EV motorcycle market is growing rapidly, projected to reach $10b+ by 2027. There’s a lot of interest in the space with major players LiveWire, a Curtis competitor, going public at a valuation of $1.8b.

What Now? This is your chance to invest in Curtis before they become the market leader in EV motorcycles.

YOUR MONEY

The Market Could Fall Another 30%

 📉 Stock Market: Stock valuations are still high, which suggests that the market has yet to bottom and could fall as much as 30%, Bank of America Says.

🏡 Real Estate: Consumers' confidence in housing is on the rise as house prices fall.

  • Fannie Mae showed sentiment improving from November to December as home prices fall and mortgage rates level out.

  • The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage hit a high of 7.37% in October but is now at 6.14%.

FEATURE

Bootstrapped To $15m ARR In 2.5 Years

Adam Robinson has built a money printer. A hypergrowth startup on track to make $50m this year!

In just 2.5 years, the company produced enough profit to distribute $5m to Adam and his co-founders. Adam owns 42% of the business, which means he pocketed a cool $2.1m.

Here's what they do

Retention helps identify anonymous web traffic on e-commerce websites and retarget those visitors over email. Via identity graphs, it can capture the personal emails of ~40% of anonymous website visitors.

What's The Revenue?

  • 2020: $0 ARR

  • 2021: $4,000,000 ARR (with 6 employees 🤯)

  • 2022: $15,000,000 ARR (..still with 6 employees)

  • 2023: $50,000,000 ARR (Goal)

Here's the story

1) In 2012, Adam called it quits after 8 years as a credit trader at some of the largest banks in the world.

2) He founded Robly, a software business that powered email marketing for small businesses. It took off...at first.

2) In 2019, Adam launched a new feature that would let his customers identify anonymous web visitors - he called it 'email retargeting'.

3) In just 6 weeks, they were making $50k/mo. Adam turned this feature into its own company, called GetEmails. He was burned out from his last startup, so he planned to sell it after 18 months.

4) By late 2022, the company hit $15m ARR with a team of 6. He had built a lean and very profitable business - something he could sell. But that all changed after a meeting with his good friend Dave Rogenmoser, CEO at AI company Jarvis.

5) Dave grew his company, Jarvis, to $50m ARR in 12 months, without hiring any new employees. This was crazy because 12 months earlier, they were contemplating shutting it down. Adam learned that Dave was spending $1m+/mo on Sales and marketing to make that $50m ARR. Inspired...Adam decided to level up his game.

6) Adam grew the team from 6 to 25 employees in 14 days. By January 2023, the company is poised to scale quickly. With this new focus, they plan to hit $50m ARR by the end of 2023 and $100m ARR by the end of 2024.

ON TREND

'Robot Lawyer' Offers $1m To Whisper In Your Ear In Court

On Sunday, DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder made a bold proposition to any lawyer slated to argue an upcoming case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Let DoNotPay’s AI lawyer, built on OpenAI’s viral GPT-3 API, argue the case before the court, Browder said, in exchange for $1 million. All the human lawyer would need to do is wear AirPods and repeat to the court what DoNotPay’s robot lawyer argues.

According to Browder, his company’s AI begins by asking the client what the legal problem is, then finds a loophole and turns that loophole into a legal letter, which it can send to the right institution, or upload to a website.

For more, join the conversation here.