SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1259 Brazilian SaaS Raising $5m on $20m Pre, $9m in ARR, 20% yoy Growth
04 Jan 2019
Chapter 1: What is the background of Marcelo Pugliasi and Hip Platform?
He launched Hit Platform back in 2000, you know, so it makes sense, right? He's been at this for 18 years, a lot of patience here, but he scaled the business quickly with his team of 130 people in Brazil, helping folks do customer support much better, right? Much more efficiently. They've got 750 customers paying on average a grand per month. So $750,000 per month today in sales.
That's up about 20% year over year in June, 2017, doing about 600 grand per month in sales. They raised $2 million, but currently looking to raise another 4%. five to 7 million on a $20 million pre-money valuation. So looking for about a 3.5X multiple on ARR. Again, based in Brazil with a $2,000 CAC, eight month payback period, 2.5% dollar churn per month. That's on a net basis in a hot space.
This is the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn.
Chapter 2: How has Hip Platform scaled its business in Brazil?
Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million. I had no money when I started the company. It was $160 million, which is the size of many IPOs. We're a bit strapped. We have like 22,000 customers.
With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc. are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes.
Chapter 3: What is the current revenue and growth rate of Hip Platform?
I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Marcelo Pugliasi. He is the CEO and founder of a company called Hip Platform.
More importantly, though, he's an entrepreneur, SaaS enthusiast, behavioral economics fan, and has a strong sales background, leading one of the largest software as a service companies in Brazil and fosters the local startup and tech ecosystem since the early 2000s.
Chapter 4: How much funding is Hip Platform currently seeking?
He has a BA degree and specializes in sales and marketing. Marcelo, are you ready to take us to the top?
Oh, yes, I am.
Very good. All right, so the company that you're currently working on is called Hip Platform. Tell us about the company and how you make money.
Well, Hip Platform is a customer care platform. We are very focused in media and enterprise businesses here in Brazil, and we are trying really hard to help companies to relate in a better way with their consumers. So we deliver software,
chatbots, chat, email management, social media, customer care, among others, to help companies to improve their service, their customer care service, and to relate better to their consumers.
And give me a general sense of what folks are paying for these features. What are your customers paying on average per month?
They're looking, first of all, to save money, to make their customer care operations more product with more productivity and save money. So in the last two years, we are the number one chatbot here in Brazil. We have over 150 clients.
Those are paying customers?
Oh yeah, they are looking to improve their services throughout artificial intelligence and to give a better service to their consumers and as well as save money and put money in other things inside their companies where they can improve their products and services.
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Chapter 5: What challenges is Hip Platform facing in the funding environment?
So Marcello, my question though is on average, what are these customers paying per month for your platform?
Oh, oh, their pain. I'm sorry. I thought you were asking about their pain. Our average, our ACV is about $1,000. Okay.
That's per year or per month? Per month. Per month. Okay, good. So, so, I mean, can I take the thousand bucks times 150 and say you guys are doing about 150,000 a month in sales right now?
Uh, we are actually doing our MRR is about, uh, $750,000. Okay.
So where's my math wrong? That was really wrong.
Uh, no, I, I just said that we have over 150 clients in chatbot using our chatbot platform.
Oh, I see.
I see. It's one of our, it's one of our products. Sorry.
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Chapter 6: What strategies does Hip Platform use to acquire customers?
So how many, how many total customers do you have?
We have over 800.
Yeah, because if they're each paying 800 or sorry, a thousand bucks a month and you're currently doing 750,000, you have at least 750 customers, right? Yeah, that's it. That's great. And this is a great story here. So take me back to when you launched the company. What year was that?
Actually, I started in the year 2000. We were one of the first startups here in Brazil. We had some seed money from one large bank and some entrepreneurs here. And we've started with our thesis was just about trying to help companies to sell, to improve their sales on their website.
So it was the very beginning of e-commerce here in Brazil and the very beginning of internet as a general thing here. And companies were trying to make money with the internet. So we deployed a web chat. in order to try to help them to improve their sales and to improve their businesses on the internet. What have you raised to date? I'm sorry? What have you raised to date? We haven't raised much.
We have raised about, let me see, all over the years, $2 million, I think so. $2 million-ish.
Okay, good. So fairly healthy considering what your monthly recurring revenue is, right? It's always nice to see someone that has raised less than the amount of money they're making every year, right?
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Chapter 7: What is the current churn rate for Hip Platform?
Yeah, we are actually trying to raise more, you know, because we are in a very hype moment and we are not being able to... I don't know how to say that in English, but to attend every opportunity we have, you know, so we have more demand that we can handle at this very moment. So we are trying to raise more money.
How much are you wanting to raise?
Oh, this time we are trying to raise about five million, between five and seven million dollars at this very moment.
And can you share, I mean, what kind of valuation are you hoping to get?
Oh, yeah. We're trying to make 3.5 times our revenue. So it's about $75 million. Sorry, $75 million. In dollar, I think it's $20 million.
Yep. So you want to raise between $5 and $7 million on a $20 million pre-money valuation.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. So you'd sell about, call it 20% of the company. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
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Chapter 8: What lessons has Marcelo learned throughout his entrepreneurial journey?
Okay. Very good. And what is, I mean, how's that going? What's the funding environment like in Brazil?
I think at this moment we are in an unusual position because in Brazil we have lots of VCs and early stage money and we don't have more funds specific to growth money or to later stages. So we are actually talking to some funds in the US because we are kind of cheap and they have more track record working with companies that are not in the early stages.
and we are also speaking with very few people here in Brazil that can handle a company with our profile. And actually we found out that here in Brazil we had to do private equity, but we are still small for them, you know? So we are in an unusual spot that we are not big and not small anymore, you know?
Yeah, you're not big enough for private equity, but you're too small to do another convertible note, right?
That's it.
Yeah. Uh, talk to me more about growth. So today you're doing 750,000 us dollars per month. What were you doing a year ago in June of 2017?
Uh, we, we, uh, improved our sales in 20%, 20, 22%. And I think, uh, we are, we will have the same rate this year between 20 and 25%. Uh, uh, Of course, as an entrepreneur, I see room to improve our sales, but it's not a bad rate. For a company of our size, it's not a bad rate.
Just to confirm then, you were doing about $600,000 per month a year ago. Now you're doing $750,000. That's about a 25-ish percent growth rate.
Yeah, that's right.
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