SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1523 Will This Pre-Revenue New Workspace Prioritization Tool Take Off?
25 Sep 2019
Chapter 1: What is Veeamly and how does it streamline workflows?
founded Veeamly here just this year. They have a bunch of free users using the platform, helping to make and streamline all of your workflows into one place. You can be more efficient, get more done, and generally be happier every day. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Emna Gariani. She is the CEO and co-founder of Veeamly.
Before the company, Emna helped launching several companies as a global director of the Founder Institute and built several products as part of her previous company. She has a dream to change the way people communicate and kill the world of assumptions. Emna, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yes, absolutely, Nathan.
All right. What does Vimli do and how do you make money?
So Vimli is a priority workspace across collaboration tools. That means it's a desktop app where we bring all of the collaboration tools like Jira, Slack, Intercom, Zendesk, you name it. And on top of that, we give the user a prioritized feed of all the conversations across their tools. So, um, yeah, and we are a SaaS platform and right now, uh, we are still free.
So we're going to start charging, uh, in 2019.
Okay. So you're pre-revenue right now.
Yes. Pre-revenue.
Okay. How many free users?
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Chapter 2: How is Veeamly currently generating user interest?
When did you launch the company or the idea?
So we, we started this last year, um, and mid 2017, and we went to market like, uh, fall 2017 with a couple of customers. testing it out. And then we kind of close it out, went into a lot of product development. And now, again, back into soft launch with few companies. So and are they possible limitation? Yes.
How are you supporting? So have you raised capital? I mean, how are you supporting yourself in these early stages?
We were mostly bootstrapped and with a few angels and also we were part of a seed accelerator, the refiners.
Okay, so how much total capital into the company?
Uh, about 200 K 200.
Okay. So you're using that money to kind of, you know, pay your necessary bills and do all that stuff while you focus on growing.
Well, actually, so just to be clear, 200 K with like not full capital N, but like with everything, like it's actually more than that, that we pay the bill is like we put our own money in. That's the point. So I'm not counting that.
Yeah. Yeah. Got it. You have 200 from outside investors and then some more from you and who else?
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Chapter 3: What is the timeline for Veeamly's product launch and development?
Yeah. We're fundraising.
Okay.
So you're going to have capital coming in. Yes.
Got it. So, so how much, how, how much are you looking to raise right now?
Right now we're raising about 500K.
Okay. And walk me through like what that sales pitch sounds like for other people that are also pre-revenue looking to raise capital. This will be valuable.
Yes, absolutely. So to the investors you mean, right?
Yeah. Like what does it sound like? So I might, for example, if I'm going to be skeptic right now, Emna, you already took in 200 grand. You're still pre-revenue. Like why am I going to give you another 500K now?
Because so right now what we spend time on is redeveloping the core technology and the product. And right now we developed a very big pipeline of large companies, but also smaller companies with organic growth.
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Chapter 4: How is Veeamly funded during its pre-revenue stage?
So, so the 500,000 you're raising, um, if you spend that all, I mean, will you be post revenue or we have to raise again before you start driving real, real revenue?
No, we will be post revenue.
Okay. When, when do you think you'll be post revenue this year or next year?
Yes. Uh, early Q2.
And how are you, how are, you know, big question early entrepreneurs have to figure out is pricing. So how are you going to, how are you planning to price this thing?
So we tested a little bit, right? In the beginning, we were targeting just managers. So it was a little bit on the high end where we're charging $200 per user per month. But right now we're going to have more of a freemium model where we're going to have people use a part of it for free.
And then I got charged for premium features like similarity, where we pull similar conversations from your different tools to the current conversation you're looking at.
Okay. So what do you think the updated pricing might look like?
As the end look like on the upper end as a $200, the top premium part per user and at the lower end as $20 per user.
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Chapter 5: What are Veeamly's strategies for converting free users to paid customers?
Yeah, no, I understand. And after they connect all their feeds, are you doing things from like a machine learning perspective where you'll say, respond to this first, respond to this second, that kind of stuff?
Yes. So for us right now, we developed an engine that using NLP and deep learning that helps detect what are the top priorities for that user. In the beginning, the prioritization is done based on the text. So like SaaS, tech, all of that, you know, if the system is down or bug or somebody is sick.
But then as they start using it, we have the system learns from them based on their behavior, like who they interact with the most. Like if Nathan, for example, you're my best friend or the person I talk to the most, you definitely can show up on top before somebody else.
Yeah, that's interesting. Good. So when are you actually putting up the hard pricing wall? When should you start seeing revenue coming in, you think?
Can you repeat, please? Sure, yeah, yeah.
When do you decide? How do you decide? This is a decision every first-time founder has to make. When do you actually put up a pricing wall and force people to pay if they want to use this thing?
So in the beginning when we tested, we went directly into premiums. There was just a free trial period, and then they would pay for it after 30 days. After testing that, we realized that actually it's better to let them use the tool for free a little bit. So like even the prioritization is better and everything to their needs.
And then really use customer success pretty much to push them to upgrade for the premium feature and show them what they can get more out of that.
Okay. So again, when do you think, what month do you think you're going to put up that actual? April. Q2.
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Chapter 6: How does Veeamly plan to set its pricing structure?
Emna, thanks so much for taking us to the top.
Thank you.