SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1631 His Argument For Moving from SaaS to On Prem
11 Jan 2020
Chapter 1: What inspired Zoltan to launch his company?
Launched his company back in 2017, again, trying to help and understand how to manage the velocity and the productivity of developers through his company, Jutential. They have about a couple dozen customers to date. They launched, again, just about a year ago, or call it a year and a half ago.
Now looking at, again, about raising, call it maybe a million bucks, team of three to help fund their growth faster, maybe move into the on-prem space because teams are more comfortable hosting their source code there. In terms of aggressiveness, he's definitely gonna be spending less than 12 months in terms of a payback period as they look to fuel growth. into 2019 and beyond. Hello, everybody.
My guest today is Zoltan Perestaki. He's a startup founder, digital entrepreneur, and product executive hailing from Hungary, where he began his career in marketing and business development, working for major brands like T-Mobile, HBO, and Google, eventually as their country manager.
After having worked four years in beautiful Barcelona, Zoltan now is the co-founder and CEO of Getentula, a software development analytics platform. Zoltan, are you ready to take us to the top? Yes. Okay.
Chapter 2: What is Gitential and how does it function?
So tell us about the company. What's specifically, what's the company do and what's the business model? Are you a pure play SaaS company?
Yeah. Okay. So yeah, as you said, software development analytics, basically we analyze Git repository changes and we created a dashboard where you can better understand as a developer, what, how your contribution changes over time. And if you're managing a bunch of developers, then actually you can get a
better picture of who's doing what, how is the performance changing and what are the opportunities for you to optimize and increase your productivity?
And when you say performance, you literally mean like velocity, like lines of code pushed or frequency of pushes or what?
Yes. So it's obviously lines of code is not a good metric to measure productivity of developers. So we've actually taken it a step further and we're looking at what those lines of codes are actually doing. So we try to take into account the language it's written in and the functions that are included.
So basically you look at what functions are being produced by which developers or which teams and how can you further optimize your output.
I see.
You also asked about our business model. So yeah, right now we're kind of a pure SaaS play. But the more we understand about the market, actually, the more we see that there is a serious need for an on-prem um, version.
So, you know, we're, we're actually moving towards that direction because the more developers you have, usually the less likely you are to be comfortable with, you know, sharing your, your source code and, you know, keeping it in the cloud is, I was surprised actually to learn this, but it's still, it's still not a common practice.
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Chapter 3: How does Zoltan measure developer productivity?
Put it on a timeline for us. When did you launch? What year?
So we launched last year, actually, with our closed beta. And we started to monetize like... beginning of this year, but you know, we were still working on the product and, you know, I, I, I still think that, you know, the way the product looks is, uh, is, uh, is still a very early version. So it's, uh, you know, we have to go through a lot of iterations until we, until we finalize.
Uh, but we're more or less like, I would say about a year old and, um, about really like, you know, six to eight months into, into monetization. And Zoltan, how many, how many teams have you signed up so far? Well, overall, we have through our free tier as well, because we offer a free tier to all public repositories. So we have more than 1,200 registered users.
Out of that, most of it is actually in our free tier currently. Um, I wouldn't really like to say exactly how many customers we have, but, um, you know, it's, it's, it's early stage.
Just give me, don't give me the exact number. Just give me a range. I mean, are we talking like a dozen, a dozen customers so far today or a hundred or.
Yes, it's more, more in the dozens than, than the hundreds. Um, uh, yeah, but as, as I was saying, we, we, we're a small team yet. So we're, we're more, uh, we're three. Okay. And where's everyone based? Um, so I'm based in, in Los, in the Los Angeles area and our development team is actually in, in, uh, my native country, which is Hungary.
So that's why that's where our backend, the development work, uh, is carried out. Understandably, you know, it's, uh, it's, it's from, from the business point of view, um, you know, just to recruit developers, not, not to mention the cost, it's, it's much easier to do that in Eastern Europe.
Yep. So California, Hungary team of three. And have you bootstrapped this today or have you raised?
It's, it's bootstrapped. And, um, well, I have to say we're very close to closing our, our, our pre-seed rounds.
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Chapter 4: Why is Zoltan considering moving to an on-prem solution?
Uh, don't tell me per channel. I'm trying to get a sense of how aggressive you're being. So if someone, you know, what are you willing to spend to get a new $500 a month customer? Um, I mean, this is just like, this is just like a, this has nothing to do with you reveal all your most profitable channels.
It has more to do with you as a CEO, how aggressive do you plan to be and how patient can you be with payback period?
Yeah, I mean, it's like, honestly, the 500 is, you know, we're not planning for the 500 to be there. So if you don't mind, I really don't want to share more on this area.
Sorry, it's not quite making sense to me, though. So I have to clarify this. What do you mean you don't plan on the 500 being there?
So no, I mean, as I was telling you, the bigger the teams, the more we see the need for such a product. And as I was telling you, the on-premise version is something that we need to work on. So when that is in place, actually, we see that revenues are going to be way higher.
Well, yeah, but it doesn't matter if it's a dollar a month or a million a month. The payback period is a ratio of CAC to first year LTV or second year. So like it's a ratio. It doesn't have to be finite numbers. I'm just generally trying to get a sense. Like, are you happy to pay 12 months of lifetime value to acquire a customer, whether it's a dollar a month or a million a month?
Yeah, I mean, it's yeah, it's it. I really cannot give you the exact answer right now. So I'm, I'm, I'm sorry. We might, we might need to edit this, but yeah.
Well, no, we're not, we're not going to edit it, but I don't understand why. I mean, it's because it has nothing to do, there's nothing that you're giving up here strategically.
It's, it's, it's just, it's just because as I was saying, you know, we're, we're not alone on this market and I really don't want to, you know, like give, give out this information to all, to all of our competitors.
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Chapter 5: What is the pricing model for Gitential's services?
Okay.
Do you would you give that advice to other kind of startup founders as well?
I think it really depends on, you know, what what your expected churn rate is. And, you know, at this point, I don't think we we have established enough data points to really see like how much or how long we can actually hold on and hang on to these customers. And, you know, how can we increase? Do you have any churn at all?
Well, obviously we do have churn, especially in the free tier, you know, who sign up and then... No, no, no, ignore free.
I'm only talking paid. Ignore free.
Yeah. Yeah. So so in the in the we also we also had in the in a churn. I mean, it's like, you know, it's you really can't speak about percentages here and monthly and annual because we're so we're so early. But but it but it yeah, I mean, it did happen that, you know, somebody thought that this is going to be what they're looking for. And then it wasn't.
And that's why you're getting a signal that you need to move like on prem.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other thing is actually that, you know, that's why I think that we're constantly working on our metrics as well. So, you know, we haven't really, and I don't think any of the players in this market have like landed the final metrics to measure development velocity or development productivity by. So I think it takes more time to get there.
And I'm not even sure if we're ever going to get there to have like final metrics.
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Chapter 6: What is the ideal team size for Gitential's product?
Following or studying? Um... No, not not. I mean, like, obviously, like one of my heroes is Elon Musk. But I mean, I think that's that's more like, you know, a general than than in my in my space.
Number three, what billing tool are you using? Billing tool. Yep. Billing tool. Like how do you bill your customers? Do you use any tool or app for that?
Uh, no, we're actually, we're, we're, we're, we're bootstrapping this as of now. So we're not, we're not developing things that we don't need. Yeah.
Sorry. I'm not talking about developing your own internal bill. I'm talking like, are you on Stripe or authorized.net? Oh, sorry.
Yeah. So Stripe. Yeah. Stripe. Okay.
Number four.
How many, how many more like a payment tool in my, in my view. So that's why. How would you distinguish between payment?
How would you distinguish between payment and billing? Yeah. Yeah. So Stripe. Yeah. Okay. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
How many hours do I sleep?
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