SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
$100k Spent on MVP to Decentralize AI, 5 POC's, $500k Seed Raised
26 Dec 2021
Chapter 1: What is the current revenue status of Edge Neural.ai?
Currently, we have pre-revenue. We would expect to go some revenue this year, again, just with the beta customers and not with just the referential customers, I would say. But in two to three years down the line, I would see a revenue of around $5 million.
You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka, where I sit down and interview the top SaaS founders, like Eric Wan from Zoom. If you'd like to subscribe, go to getlatka.com.
We've published thousands of these interviews, and if you want to sort through them quickly by revenue or churn, CAC, valuation, or other metrics, the easiest way to do that is to go to getlatka.com and use our filtering tool. It's like a big Excel sheet for all of these podcast interviews. Check it out right now at getlatka.com. Hey folks, my guest today is Sarvesh Devi.
He's the co-founder and CTO of Edge Neural.ai, a software engineer, designer, and architect. He obtained a master's degree in computer engineering from Syracuse University in New York.
He has experience spanning over 12 years in designing complex products and developed more than 100 Edge AI models in technological areas like driverless cars, robots, and filed six plus patents in the field of autonomous vehicles. Sarvesh, are you ready to take us to the top?
Sure. Yeah, I'm all for it.
All right. So the URL of the website, if you want to follow along, is edgeneural.ai. What are you building and who's buying it? Who are you selling to?
We are building a platform, software-defined platform, which basically works for facilitating development on AI models on edge. And our customers are more or less developers and enterprise customers or users who are going to use this platform to build AI models for edge devices.
Can you give us an example? Can you name any of your maybe enterprise customers who are paying you today?
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Chapter 2: Who are the target customers for Edge Neural.ai's platform?
Um, I mean, we would want to, uh, I mean, we have specifically, uh, made it undisclosed. Uh, we would want, I mean, we have, uh, I mean, to be very honest, we, there is a small round, uh, just to launch a product, but now like under, like under a million service.
Yes. I see. Okay. So it was like an angel friends and family around a couple hundred thousand.
Yeah. Correct. So, and then, uh, we are soon going to launch our next round, uh, within next four to six months.
Um, and how much do you plan to raise there?
We plan to raise between 5 to 10 million dollars.
And why is that the right amount? What will 5 to 10 million help you do?
Basically, we would want to, what we are trying to build is a niche problem and complex AI problem. So we would want to have our product mature. We are not just building a product, but we are also partnering with various companies. So we would want to have our sales team grow. Uh, we are also trying to switch our India office, uh, to us.
So, uh, that is where we, that's, that's the step that we are taking in. So that is where I would want to raise our next round, uh, like a big amount, uh, than, than what we had previously.
And how much revenue do you think you have to do to be able to go raise five to 10 million bucks?
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Chapter 3: What pricing model does Edge Neural.ai use for its services?
Some of them are partially paid POCs.
I see. How did you structure? I mean, obviously, every founder starts with POCs. How did you structure the contract value on those POCs?
Based upon how much time we are going to spend on that. That's the only value that we added. Earlier, the POCs were free. I mean, we wanted to prove the value of platform and that's where we kind of made the POC, understood the timelines that we would spend to make this POC happen. And after that, once that is done, we would basically use that time and to charge our next customers for POC.
Are any of the paid POCs paying you more than $10,000 to prove out the concept?
No.
Okay. Interesting. So you said earlier that you're going to charge $600 per seat and then $10 per device. How do you know that pricing is going to work if no one's paying it yet?
So we are currently in talks with a few of the customers. They are not paying customers, but they are soon going to be converted to paid customers. And that is a plan that we have kind of put in front of them. And that is how we are evolving in terms of our business plan and what price structure is good to number at.
So you showed this to them and they said, yes, I'm willing to pay. You just haven't captured their credit card yet and actually moved them to paid. I see. Okay. What's the team like today? How many people?
So we are a nine-member team and split between technology and business team.
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Chapter 4: When was Edge Neural.ai officially launched?
38. Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?
I would have started a startup when I was 20.
Guys, he's all in. Wrote the first line of code in 2019 for Edge Neural. Got going in 2020 with a bunch of paid POCs. No paid customers yet, but they are on their way there. They're going to charge $600 per seat and then $10 per installed device. They've raised a couple hundred thousand dollars in a pre-seed round. He's put in 30 grand of his own money, so he's all in.
Team of nine hoping to go raise a seed round of $5 to $10 million here in the next couple months. We'll see what happens. They're a first paid customer. should be onboarded here in the next 35 days as well. Sarvesh, we're rooting for you. Thanks for taking us to the top.
Thank you. Thank you, Nathan.
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