My Startup's Midyear Financial Update - Building a Billion $ Company - Episode 5

My startup, Stan, just had its biggest quarter ever, so I decided to dive in and show you exactly how much money we made, exactly how we did it, and exactly how we plan on continuing this growth.
I also give some key advice on our process for problem solving, so make sure to watch to the end!
Specifically, I talk about:
- Our Q2 Financials
- Our Biggest Wins of the Quarter
- Our Biggest Risk to the Company
- How We Plan to Beat That Risk
- Our Strategy for Q3
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See our job openings here!!!⬇️⬇️⬇️
stanforcreators.notion.site/S...
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Connect with me on LinkedIn: / johnghu
DM me on Instagram: / jayhoovy
I'm Funniest on TikTok: / jayhoovy
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Want to start monetizing your content? Check out my company, Stan:
stan.store/
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[@saadpasta3086]

this guy is taking #buildinpublic to next level

[@jayhoovy]

Appreciate you Saad! Hoping to share with you all my lessons learned so your journey is easier

[@moose1158]

I cant wait to brag to my friends about being an og supporter of stan

[@jayhoovy]

Appreciate you for being so early on the journey with me Moose! Truly couldn’t do it without everyone’s support

[@oni5909]

frfr

[@ege8240]

this is actually the gen z explanation of the entire investing concept, love it

[@gyuioppoiuyg]

Congrats on 4 million ARR, what a milestone. As always absolutely golden content. Love the way you break down problems logically then try to come up with a solution to tackle each issue. You guys got this, hopefully we can see Stan grow more and more!

[@solomonkushner3012]

Great channel. Love the content and the personality and simplicity you bring to the complex startup world. Also noticed it is your channels anniversary! Congrats🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@CryptowSky]

Love the transparency 👏🏽 good insights

[@kshitijpatil9015]

Great video @jayhoovy , really happy seeing the numbers, keep it up..........!

[@stanleylo4]

The Goat! Congrats on this milestone and your openness and honesty with your company! You have all the skills to grow your company to crazy heights and I know you will put in a crazy amount of work to do so! Proud to be a fan of such a pivotal company so early! Also, Thanks for naming your company after me! It's an honor! 🤣

[@TheBoysies]

I absolutely love your channel, this is my favourite content on youtube at the moment. So inspiring to see you and the team grow. Keep it up

[@jayhoovy]

Really appreciate it Boysies! Truly flattered to somehow be making boring financials more entertaining to you than MrBeast giving out millions hahaha! But seriously - really grateful for the kind support and being here for the journey. Cheers man!

[@AfzalHussein]

Love this. Congrats J!

[@stevenphung]

Love how open you are with the numbers and challenges ya'll are facing. Super insightful content. Keep it up!

[@jayhoovy]

Appreciate it a ton Steven! Excited for what’s to come and your support along the way!

[@bizzille5989]

Keep killing it Jay! All the way from Nigeria! Love the content!

[@MikeLocke]

Love your videos! great energy and business info!

[@henrytang2453]

This is so cool to see man, hope to continue and watch you become an industry leader real time

[@Reggaeshark.]

Hey man watching and following since Why I Quit, wish you continued success and growth! I’m building out a business to disrupt the agriculture sphere with the aim to help the entire Caribbean and this is inspiring

[@238BibleStudies]

Ahh... Liking the Flywheel approach! You guys rock! - A breath of fresh air...

[@BM-un4os]

Awesome video! I'm in a similar situation! The key is to keep new customers signing up more than old customer leaving.The CSM wheel philosophy, seamless Engineering/Integrations, Value prop w/ email marketing are all major wins! Customers referrals is the the gift that keeps on giving. Not sure what the next big step/win is, but remember the pareto principle and the 80/20 rule! Run 5 buckets really well, but one will pay the most dividends! Regardless, keeping great relationships with everyone will only always help in the longrun. The AI could be huge too!

[@LearningwithJS-ei3ci]

User research 📈to inform the direction of the product is key for retaining users, such a great vibe there ! 👏❤️

[@justkayy]

You're a legend for taking us on your journey like this, thank you!

[@jayhoovy]

Only the beginning Kay! Very grateful that you're supporting along the journey this early!

[@drgLACity]

Congratulations!!!

[@SuperKillaki]

Another great video. Not sure if this is as applicable here but another lens is to consider not the just the reasons why a user churned after the fact - because people often post rationalise their actions. Instead, if you have the analytics look at the events of all churned users D-7,3,1 before they churned. Often users give “one last shot” before they leave. Those last shots unravel their true intention, which may add color to the reasons they give in a survey. If there’s no data then likely the user wasn’t activated in which case there’s an activation problem. On a slight tangent, one of the most powerful and often counterintuitive ways to combat churn is to consider how to turn the experience from a single to multiplayer game. There is no better retention mechanic than a strong network effect. Would be interesting to brainstorm some wildcard ideas. Also, would be cool to know some comparative churn benchmarks to get a sense of how big the problem is. Sorry got carried away with a brain dump while stuck on a train. Keep up the good work!

[@TheBoysies]

Just want to give respect to how awesome this answer is. It sounds like you know a thing or two about this!! Love it!

[@jayy3c]

Bro keep up what u doing. This is gold content

[@isaiahv5794]

currently building the framework for my own startup right now, can't wait to watch your journey and maybe even work with you one day👍

[@jordanaguirre5813]

I would have been of the opinion that if growth is exceeding churn then things were good, but I like this perspective that any churn is bad. Then to break it down on smaller parts you can then send a team to work on as their sole focus is pretty cool. btw the intern segment is gold! Especially the box. My personal question to Henry as someone who also would love to be in the creative space (Juggling) is how we would go about marketing the seemingly irrelevant skillset into a positive, which the resume showcase definitely helped answer that a bit.

[@philodev874]

Love this series! Please keep going with this :))

[@DaveNash]

amazing vids man!!! excited for future updates

[@jayhoovy]

Thank you Dave! Appreciate all the support! Cheers

[@shadowcowmooo7415]

GOod job Jay hoovy big steppa!

[@alinatoichubaeva8877]

Great Video!

[@Admani]

Great video dude! Love the transparency and the look behind the scenes

[@jayhoovy]

Thanks so much for the kind words Zaid! Hope you and the fam are doing well!

[@jakeejacobson]

appreciate these videos my dude! and congrats on the milestone! working on a startup myself (going through pre/seed now) and want to make content like this for it!

[@jayhoovy]

excited to see it Jake! thanks for the kind words!

[@sidm3859]

congrats bro. this is sick

[@GrahamBillington]

So stoked to see your success man, keep going

[@jayhoovy]

Thanks Graham! You’ve been here since the beginning! Appreciate your support a ton

[@shivzz.s]

Love to see the growth John! Have you tried partnering with a large creator? Might make the wheel spin faster!!! Keep up the good work, the vids are on point, can't wait to see where you'll be in the coming years!

[@JeanPolanco-yw5vz]

Jay is the goat !

[@xhantimda860]

Really amazing video Jay 🤩. Congrats to the team for launching email marketing 🎉. Welcome to the team Henry 🤝 I’d really love to join Stan as a Fullstack Engineer but unfortunately I’m not based in either LA or Toronto 😢

[@Bunny-mx1fm]

Please never stop building in public it’s awesome

[@Cygx]

12% churn rate, that's AWESOME!

[@Palmtreeshinobi]

Congrats! Would be interesting in the future to see a breakdown of the “L” side of your p&l too. How do you think about burn? Investing for growth? Etc

[@cilinix4548]

Love you and what you do man! I have a youtube channel too (not this one) and thinking about signing up! (Partially because I think you have an amazing personality)

[@TheSalaho1]

Hi Jay, we want to see the tough parts of your week!

[@laurinbook92]

Exciting to see you grow so quickly! I feel like I've just seen the video where you've surpassed 2m ARR and now you're already at 4m! 👏 It's interesting to hear you talk about your organic word-of-mouth flywheel. I'm just in the process of implementing a dual funnel for our b2c and b2b products and organic referrals are already happening well for successful b2b customers. I'm curious, what specific actions do you take to promote organic referrals for your customers? Are you fully relying on achieving great customer success or are you also actively asking for referrals from customers through specific campaigns etc? Would love to hear your thoughts! Ps: Your videos are always a highlight at the end of the week! 😄

[@DJ0305]

Looking forward to seeing you become the next Ben Francis!!

[@Diablotux]

Wow, just subscribed. Thanks for this level of transparency it helps fellow entrepreneurs a lot :) Out of curiosity: how much did you invest in the retreat? I am always puzzled to make up the right budget it would be interesting how you decided to allocate that budget (I am super scared of allocating too high, or making the retreat too "boring" on a cheap budget)

[@kukasmog]

56% trial conversion is really good, nice job

[@chrishorton7218]

Learning a ton, thanks bro

[@jayhoovy]

Glad to hear Chris! My goal is to basically make my Stanford biz school education free for everyone

[@joshgreenfield3026]

good video, got me to click. Think next video can be about your employees who they are and how YOU, the ceo of a startup, chose those specific people. I don't see a lot of CEOs of startup specifically talking about who they need, how many people they need etc. Also what you deploy capital for? What's the VC money going towards? That would get me to click on a video. Just some thoughts...great job with this one!

[@aviiontech9098]

Henry seems so happy to be there

[@startupjobstoronto8802]

Great video. Could you share a template of your financials spreadsheet and formulas for other startups to use?

[@srisaisushangumadavalli4049]

banger vid again brother

[@jayhoovy]

Appreciate it brother!! See you in the next video :)

[@AfzalHussein]

Jay, if you're not already, you should consider turning these vids into tweet threads (I guess X-threads now lol). You'll easily grow your twitter following. There's a massive #buildinpublic community there.

[@danielrudiger4435]

😁The question that just popped into my mind: Are you doing this as prep for your quarterly review, sort of something to review yourself and then have an even better presentation after. Or are you holding your quarterly report again but for us? Anyhow, much love, your content is awesome, this channel should be way bigger 😅 I love your outlook on things, like that optimistic skepticism 👍

[@jayhoovy]

again but for you guys haha! just trying to teach everything I'm learning so your journey can be a bit easier

[@1-person-startup]

hi jay; would you be interested to make a video in how you raised pre-seed / seed round money for stan?

[@Diablotux]

Without revealing the actual figure what would be the compensation package for the intern? (a range would do just not to disclose his salary directly :))

[@oni5909]

do you have the video of how to create a startup?

[@pietrocavallo1369]

How did you learn to code without a computer science/ IT degree and background?are there any resources you’d suggest?

[@TochStyle]

Interesting

[@Onnickjessayan]

Henry is the best hahaha

[@Kayakamuy]

Wohoooo

[@oni5909]

hey i’m actually from the bay if that could still work to try and apply?

[@jancetindag]

easy money

[@Nearoe]

What do you use for analytics? mix panel?

[@jayhoovy]

I am lucky enough to work with an incredible data scientist - but we track and display everything Streamlit!

[@Nearoe]

ok thank you!@@jayhoovy

[@moritz-]

what about referrals?

[@ashish99311]

what's your AWS bill?

[@frankyohance4625]

Ben Simmons caught a nasty stray as an ineffective problem solver. 😂

[@jayhoovy]

Hahahahah he had to be the collateral 🏀 shoulda worked on his 3 more

[@fayazmaihandost]

I have great product idea can you help?

[@samomokan]

This felt like the best business school lecture ever. Whilst I watching this I was thinking damn people probably paying £100k to not get taught this well 😂 Thank you for the content bro!! ❤

[@jayhoovy]

haha thank you so much! my goal with my content is actually just to make my Stanford Biz School education completely free to the entire world - I hate how gatekept so much of this information is

[@samomokan]

And this is why you are going to continuing succeeding@@jayhoovy

[@taavdontsa7833]

have tou tried A.I.?

[@TomWang]

Hey Jayhoovy - why did you start this channel and showing everything publicly? Being a CEO is already hard, now you are adding a second job as a content creator. Just curious!

[@cilinix4548]

It can also be seen as an extension of the business, how is now able to put himself into the place of the customer AND attracts more potential customsrs

[@ozelot92k]

What is stan about?

[@jimmywilliams5820]

@jayhoovy I liked and subscribed to support only so you can eventually pay Henry to get out of that box #paythatmanhismoney