SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1616 Why Navy Vet Joined 7 Year Old SaaS Company With No Revenue
27 Dec 2019
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of Analytics Intelligence?
joined analytics intelligence about six to 12 months ago, now focused on scaling, currently doing about 10 grand per month in revenue. The company's bootstrapped really on the back of a developer who really built this for himself. Haas sees the opportunity to commercialize this. That's what his plan is to do over the near future.
Then hopefully go out and raise 1.5 million bucks on a $5.5 million pre-money valuation. Again, really an AI platform to unify all data analytics, data assistant and chat botting for the enterprise in one spot. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Haj Munz. He's building a company called Analytics Intelligence, which is AI digital marketing and analytics assistance.
His background, he was a Royal Naval officer for 10 years, mission critical leadership in submarine service and the Gulf War. Haj, are you ready to take us to the top? Hi, Nathan. How are you? Good to talk to you.
Chapter 2: How did the company transition from bootstrapped to seeking investment?
You bet. I'm very well, thank you. All right. So tell us about the company. What's the company do and what's the revenue model? How do you make money?
So the revenue model is simple SaaS model. What do we do? We provide digital assistance. So there's a whole world of providing chatbots to help people improve their consumer service. What we do is turn that inwards to the company. So people are looking at the ability to improve their customer service through chatbots. We're saying actually improve your employees' effectiveness.
So take analytics intelligence and allow your staff to focus on the 20% of their job that makes them creative and effective and remove the mundane, remove the time they spend searching for information and data. So an example might be your digital analytics,
You might be using analysts to provide information to your marketing team, give them the ability to go straight to data themselves and ask information from the system in a natural language process through a chatbot.
And so, Haj, what do people pay on average per year or per month to get access to this tech you've built? Say that again, sorry? What do people pay on average to get access to this tech that you've built?
So it's about £1,000 per user per year. And then the fundamental model is you get two backends included with that. That's Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or Telium. If you want to have additional backend systems, finance systems, ERP systems, then you pay a connector fee, which is about £5,000 per year.
Okay. If we just, if we look at the company level, kind of the logo you're signing up instead of kind of the seat level, I mean, I'm trying to understand, are you, are we talking like enterprise million dollar deals or $10 a year deals or a hundred thousand dollar ACV deals? Generally speaking, what size are you at? We're talking between 10,000 and 80,000 a year. Super helpful. Okay.
So you're talking four or five, six team members, that kind of thing.
Yeah, so it can vary. So the moment we're doing this model whereby you take your first year is 50,000 unlimited users and then true up at the end of the first year. Because people, when they're taking on a new service, they want to have to take that risk of sudden escalation in cost.
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Chapter 3: What is the revenue model for the SaaS product?
Okay, so why would people pay less? Why would they pay 10%?
Because we're doing a launch campaign at the moment. We're about to launch our company. It's been in stealth mode developing product. So we've got a launch coming up in early February and we're building out a customer base of launch partners for that. Okay. So are you pre-revenue to date? Not pre-revenue, but early stage revenue. Okay.
So our customer at the moment, it's beyond beta, but it's not... You know, it's not in the tens of millions.
Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. By the way, I would say tens of millions is way, way, way, way after startup, grow, whatever. Yeah, post-revenue. Put this on a time. When did you launch? What year? Say again? When did you launch?
So the product was first started development in 2011. I didn't join the company that I joined six months ago. So the founder was David Adoja.
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Chapter 4: How does the AI platform enhance employee effectiveness?
He was an analyst and got fed up with being asked the same questions by business users over and over again. So I wanted to create self-service for them and it grew from there.
Interesting. Okay. So, I mean, that's seven years, though. So, I mean, what was going on? First off, did he raise capital or is it bootstrapped? Bootstrapped.
100% bootstrapped. Okay. He wrote the first platform himself, realized that didn't do what he needed it to do. The second platform was built with... him and other development partners. And we're just reaching the third generation platform now, which is all about giving you that artificial intelligence, that conversational piece.
So it's not just doing a Google search on your internal information, it's continuing that conversation. So the same as a new colleague joins, you don't learn a new language. If you talk to someone in the canteen at lunch, and then you see them at their desk later, you remember that previous conversation. So that ability to have a conversation with the system.
And what's the team size today? How many people full time? Eight? Eight, yeah. All in London?
All around the UK. So we're a virtual team, but they're not all in London. Absolutely not.
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Chapter 5: What are the pricing strategies for the services offered?
Okay. One of the biggest challenges for me was the submarine. Everyone that worked for me was in 30 feet of me and barely see the people that I work with. We have conference calls frequently. We talk via Skype, but rarely are we in the same place.
So you're about to do like a new launch, but I want to first understand like baseline where you're already at today. So how many customers have you scaled to today before you go do this new thing? Okay. Seven. Got it. And I mean, so are they all, all seven of those are paying that $50,000 price you said?
No, absolutely not.
Okay. Yeah, I know. That's what I was just saying. I'm like, he has some revenue. It sounds like here. I mean, so can you share, I mean, before you move on to this new launch, I mean, what are you at today in terms of revenue? I mean, 10, 20, 30 grand a month, something like that. $200,000 a year. Okay, $200,000. Okay, that's helpful to understand.
And where were you a year ago so we can understand growth? A year ago, we were at about $40,000. $40,000 a year. Okay, good. That's really helpful to understand. So $40,000, obviously, per year comes out to, I think, was that $3,000 a month? And now you're up to about $16,000, $17,000 a month. Is that all SaaS revenue? About 60% SaaS, the rest is consulting. 60% SaaS? Yeah. Okay, that's great.
So are you going... 60% SaaS. Hush, say that one more time. You keep cutting out.
60% SaaS. The rest is consulting. The consulting is not strategic. It's building the business model so we can remain bootstrapped and build out a viable business model. But at the same time, we recognize that we're at a point where we're going to go and get further funding. So we're just about to start a funding round now. The objective for that is to complete that in May.
And that will allow us to accelerate our growth very rapidly.
So just to be clear, 200,000 bucks today in terms of ARR run rate, but only about 120 of that is pure SaaS. The other 80 is consulting. Exactly. Okay. And same with about a year ago?
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Chapter 6: What challenges did the founder face during development?
Haj, what was he building for seven years?
So he was, do you know what? I would say he was building it for himself for seven years.
He was building it for himself?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. At the end of the day, what turns one person on isn't what turns another person on. I love building out something commercial. He loved building the product in itself. I think if he hadn't met me, he'd have been happy to carry on doing this himself.
Yep, yep. Very good. All right, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
My favorite business book would be The CEO Next Door.
Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? Yeah, Keith Todd, KRM 22. Number three, what billing tool do you guys use? Say again? What billing tool do you use? We're still billing that out.
Okay, you don't use a tool like Stripe? Not at the moment. It's something we're evaluating because at the moment our customer numbers are small enough that it can be manual, but it's something we're evaluating for our launch.
Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Six. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? Engaged. Getting married next month. Oh, congrats. No kiddos? Four. Oh, four kids. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And how old are you? How old am I? Yep. I am 49. 49. Last question.
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Chapter 7: How does the team structure support remote work?
What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?
Just go for it. The only way you're going to get no for an answer is if you don't ask.
Guys, go for it. He joined analytics intelligence about six to 12 months ago, now focused on scaling, currently doing about 10 grand per month in revenue. The company's bootstrapped really on the back of a developer who really built this for himself. Haas, she's the opportunity to commercialize this. That's what his plan is to do over the near future.
Then hopefully go out and raise 1.5 million bucks on a $5.5 million pre-money valuation. Again, really an AI platform to unify all data analytics, data assistant and chat botting for the enterprise in one spot. Haj, thanks for taking us to the top.
Thanks for your time. Good to talk to you, Nathan.
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