SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1632 How He Got 1000 Customers from 42,000 Free Users, $150k in MRR
12 Jan 2020
Chapter 1: What led Lionel Roux to create Wimi?
Launched Wimmy Teamwork back in 2010. Now about 1,000 customers paying 150 bucks a month. So 150 grand a month in revenue. Up 50% year over year. So about 100 grand per month just a year ago. They've got about 5% in free cash. So going to the bottom line, that's an EBITDA margin, which is obviously a great place to be team of 25 in Paris and remote locations, 3.3 million bucks raised.
Again, about 20% revenue churn per year, but also 20% expansion. So 100% net revenue retention on the cohort.
Chapter 2: How has Wimi grown to 1000 customers?
And again, looking to scale fast as really one of the only French solutions focused on kind of project management for specific industries like architects. Hello, everybody. My guest today is Lionel Roux. He's an engineer plus MBA graduate. Started his career in Japan working for Total Oil. Then he created another company in racing fuels in Southern California that he sold three years later.
After graduation, he worked as a strategy consultant. And in 2011, he created WIMI, which makes teamwork fun and efficient. It's what we're going to talk about today. Lionel, are you ready to take us to the top?
All right. Yeah, I think you summarized my background quite accurately.
All right. So tell us about the company. What's the company do and what's the revenue model? How do you make money?
It's a subscription model. It's a SaaS solution. It's growing really fast. Actually, we serve many different companies operating in Europe. any kind of industries. It goes from, you know, very large publicly traded companies to very small businesses. We serve teams that want to be more productive and want to... who wants to... realize, execute projects in a more smooth and easy way.
And so Lionel, what do people pay on average per month to get access to this technology you've built?
It ranges from $9 to $18 a month, according to the spectrum of features you need.
I assume that's per seat though, right? I'm talking about when a new company signs up, typically, what do they pay right off the bat or on average?
it's so it's based on a number of active users it's actually internal user because our all our plans include an unlimited number of guests which are um you know people uh operating from outside the company that can be customers suppliers and this kind of stuff yeah but it can be as low as nine euro and nine dollars a month for one seat.
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Chapter 3: What is the revenue model for Wimi's services?
The product was not mature. Actually, the product itself is quite ambitious because the initial vision was to build a platform that includes all the most essential teamwork services. That includes instant communication, document sharing with a drive that works just like Dropbox. plus task management, plus calendaring, plus video conferencing and screen sharing.
So that's quite a product, honestly. And I entered this business without much IT experience, but with a lot of ambition and drive. And it took us a while to build the platform.
And so Lionel, what have you been able to scale to today in terms of total teams on the platform?
Um, we have about 42,000, uh, companies using our product.
Okay. I assume that's free and paid. How many are paid? Um, that's about 5%.
Okay.
Got it. 42. And walk me through how you get that. I mean, a lot of people try a freemium model, but they can only get 1% or so to convert. Why, how do you get 5%?
Um, it's because we're targeting, we are trying to target the most, um, the, the people that we have the most chance to convert. Um, We we also target some, you know, we we target specific decision makers. So we're trying to take care of who we target. That's how we just try and break that down.
So forty two thousand companies sign up. You'll look at things like what's their team size and then you'll decide to reach out to them because you know that you can charge them more versus someone who's signing up with just one team member. Right. Okay. Got it. So 5% to 42,000 is about 2,100 customers today. Right. Okay. What were you going to say? You also target what?
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Chapter 4: How does Wimi achieve customer retention and expansion?
Very good. Okay, good. Well, walk me through kind of how you actually go back to the team question. So how many total on the team?
Um, it's about 50. Okay. Five zero. Do you mean, do you mean, uh, internally for, for your team, my team? Yeah. Yeah. My team, uh, we are 25 people right now.
Okay.
About half of the, um, half of the company is, uh, has a technical background that includes the developers, the system administrator and this kind of stuff. Uh, the other half is, um, you know, marketing sales. Um, and, um, administration, this kind of stuff.
And have you, and where's everybody based?
Uh, mostly in Paris. Uh, actually we have two office. We have three offices. One in, um, the main one is in Paris. Another one is in Sofia, Antipolis, which is in the Southeast of France. And the third one where I try to go every other month is in San Francisco.
uh, where we don't have a permanent staff, but we have people that can, um, you know, um, perform some, uh, do you have a U S subsidiary set up? No, we just have, um, you know, uh, you know, desk that, um, you know, I can, I can, I can sit on.
So Paris and remote and have you bootstrapped the company or raised capital?
Well, it's kind of in between. Well, hold on.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Wimi face with churn rates?
Tell me more about some of the other economics critical to any kind of SaaS company, especially in the project management space, churn. How do you measure churn and where are you at today?
The churn, well, in the project management, you have a natural churn, which is due to the duration of a project, for example. People take a subscription, the product ends and they drop it and they might take another subscription later on. The churn is about 20% right now.
20% revenue churn per year? Right. And do you have expansion revenue that makes up for that loss or no?
Yes, yes, we're growing at a rate of about 50% a year.
But if you just got the cohort, so that cohort that signed up a year ago, you'll lose 20%. Will that same cohort upgrade by more than 20%?
Yes, yes, yes, of course.
By how much do they expand by?
Well, we have two types of expansion, new accounts and also, you know, current accounts are getting bigger.
Yeah, so ignore new customer ads, just expansion on the cohort, the old accounts.
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Chapter 6: How does Wimi target specific decision-makers for customer acquisition?
Let's see. The thing, what I'm confused is because we sometimes, you know, people pay annually.
Yes, you divide it by 12.
So, um, so let's see, we have seven on average, 17 users, uh, on a paying counts. So that would be, uh, times, let's say 15, um, times. Yeah.
So it's two 55 a month times 12 is about three grand for a year.
Right.
Yeah. I mean, I can do the math, right? If you have 2,100 customers and you're currently doing 150 grand a month, each one pays about $71 per month.
Actually, we have less than 2,100. I think we're more at half of that.
Oh, okay. So less, so about 2.5% of the 42,000. Right. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. So if we have a thousand customers, it's more like they each pay 150 bucks a month, something like that. Right. Got it. And where are you in terms of growth rate? So a year ago today, where were you?
We were 50% lower.
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