GE 295: How Founder Mike Roberts Started With Only $3K But Grew SpyFu To $7M ARR and 11K Customers (podcast)

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• [00:42] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Growth Everywhere Podcast!
• [01:58] Mike founded SpyFu about 12 years ago in Scottsdale, Arizona.
• [02:25] His office is nearby, so he commutes on his electric skateboard.
• [02:55] His favorite metric is earning per employee.
• [03:05] They make over $7 million in revenue annually.
• [03:45] Mike started SpyFu with only $3,000 left in his bank account.
• [04:01] Everything mattered and every mistake was personal, in his experience.
• [04:23] Entrepreneurship is a journey and you’re constantly learning.
• [05:25] SpyFu is $39/month for unlimited use.
• [05:55] It allows you to fully research your competitors.
• [06:39] SpyFu generally has more historical data, whereas SEMRush will give you 18 months of data.
• [07:00] History matters: people make mistakes early on and it’s important to see everything that they have done and if they worked.
• [07:41] With SpyFu, there are no limits, unlike every other one of their competitors.
• [09:00] He doesn’t want to cut his prices, but acknowledges that you can make more money per customer if you have more customers.
• [10:46] SpyFu has around 11,000 paying customers.
• [10:56] A lot of their customers use the free option.
• [12:07] Their launch brought in $20,000 MRR.
• [13:18] Nacho is the “Holy Grail of competitive intelligence”.
• [14:40] The entire internet is built on anonymous user tracking.
• [15:05] So, Mike’s team wondered what would happen if they collected data, but didn’t use that to display ads.
• [15:21] They take all the data and push that into Google Analytics.
• [15:37] Then you can look at that info as if it were your own.
• [15:57] They are not sponsored by Google, but are legitimate.
• [17:12] This sort of data has always existed, but it’s only been accessible to billion dollar companies.
• [17:30] $99 gets you information on 5 websites.
• [19:51] If Mike had gotten capital for SpyFu, they wouldn’t have $7 million in revenue, they would have made $40 million. However, their attention would be diluted and he wouldn’t have been able to launch Nacho.
• [20:20] Raising capital sometimes costs control of the company.
• [21:10] VC money can get in the way when you have a failed entity, but you won’t quit because of pride and debt.
• [22:00] Mike has more failures than he can count and actually has a podcast where he talks about them.
• [22:50] SpyFu has a lot of servers and environments.
• [23:30] He set things up so that certain environments don’t get scanned and indexed by Google.
• [24:15] There was a time that they meant for the site to get indexed, but it accidentally did not.
• [24:38] Robotto is a great resource for monitoring text robots.
• [25:37] Mike has 10 electric skateboards and hover board-type items.
• [26:00] He is looking forward to getting an electric bicycle.
• [27:20] Mike’s favorite tool is VWO, as it has helped him make millions.
• [30:25] Mike originally thought he had to set aside a certain percent of his revenue.
• [30:55] He later realized that there are better ways to do revenue sharing.
• [32:12] One book Mike recommends is How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Resources from the interview:

• SpyFu
• Nacho Analytics
• Mike on Reddit
• Mike on Twitter
• Mike@nachoanalytics.com
• VWO
• Must-read books
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People

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