SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1739 Construction SaaS VIRUS Plan: $84k MRR, $300k Cash, -$25k Monthly Burn
28 Apr 2020
Chapter 1: What updates are shared at the beginning of the episode?
Hey guys, I'm recording this here on April 5th. It's Sunday. Everyone's trying to survive the crisis. Quick note to you guys, we are moving, you know, we used to delay these episodes by, you know, four to eight months after we recorded them in terms of releasing them on the podcast. We've changed that.
A lot of these interviews you're gonna hear over the next many months are gonna be ones we recorded only
days prior we think that's a smarter way to run the show i've made the change so expect more urgent information coming out secondly i am getting destroyed on itunes reviews by these people that say nathan's rude he's hard-hitting blah blah blah which by the way i am it's part of my style it's what works the problem is people that love that style never take the time to go leave a five-star review
So I only get one or five star reviews on iTunes. And right now there's a streak of one star reviews that is driving me crazy. It would mean the world to me, guys. If you're loving the show, you love how direct I am. You like the style. If you go leave a review on iTunes now, if you do that and tweet it to me, text it to me, email it to me, whatever you want.
I'm going to reply with a very special surprise. I think a lot of you guys will really like it is heavy, heavy data oriented. All right. So I appreciate that. Thanks, guys. Enjoy the show. Checked it selling to construction teams. They've got 300 cash in the bank. Their net burn is $25,000 per month. So they've got some runway to get through this crisis.
The question is, will they start getting mass cancellations from construction companies of which 150 pay them right now about 550 bucks per month. They have 82,000 or about $84,000 a month right now in revenue. They're pivoting their product. to try and work in a virtual scenario as well to continue adding value to their customers.
As a backup, the Norwegian government obviously has a $10 billion bailout plan. He could tap if he needs it. But Tom Erick, I think you're going to get through this just fine. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Tom Erick von Krog-Martensen. He is building a tool called Checkedit, which helps simplify communication in construction projects. All right, Tom Erick, you ready to take us to the top?
I am. Go ahead. So Unique Space, you're selling directly to who at the construction company?
We're going to the main constructors and subcontractors and also a lot of the property builders themselves.
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Chapter 2: How is Checkedit addressing challenges in the construction industry?
Are you right? Or are you profitable?
No, we are burning. So yeah, we are still burning.
About how much are you burning per month?
So that's about 200,000 Norwegian kroners. So you can divide that by eight. So yeah, so approximately 20,000 K is... About 25,000 US dollars per month. Yeah, that's great.
Yeah, that's good. Now, everyone right now is looking at their burn because of the crisis going on with the virus, right? So how much cash do you have in the bank right now?
Uh, so we have a cash reserve, uh, with, uh, with the bank. So, uh, we have, uh, quite a few months, uh, left, uh, to live and we have, uh, a bridge fan, uh, financial round, uh, going on with the investors that we have on board. But the big problem is if the clients that we have on subscription stop paying because they don't have money.
So that is where the uncertainty is, but otherwise we are financed until we are going break even. But the crisis right now, of course, can be changing thing.
So what does that mean, though, in terms of cash in the bank? You have like two, three, four hundred thousand cash in the bank, something like that.
Yeah, we have about three hundred. We have about three hundred K. So three hundred thousand dollars as a cash reserve in the bank. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What is the current revenue and customer count for Checkedit?
Even yesterday, a new client signed up. So we actually have a tool that can help them in the crisis because they're not allowed to meet in big rooms. They're not allowed to do construction meetings. They're not allowed to do group inspections on site together.
So what we allow them to do is actually use our tool to do the inspections and then delegate the tasks and follow up without actually meeting face to face. So you can You can actually run and control your project without being face-to-face.
Interesting. Very interesting. And how many people are on the team today? We are 11. 11 people now. That's great. How many engineers?
So there are four developers and two on customer success who are also doing... development when it comes to onboarding tools and automating the processes within the system. So it's for developers and to customer success developers.
How many quota carrying reps, if any?
Say again?
How many sales reps do you have with quota?
We have two sales reps and one marketing person. So the marketing person has also been doing 50% sales, but now he's 100% marketing. So it's two sales and one marketing.
And you told me last time that you had about 36% annual revenue churn. Is that accurate on a gross basis?
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Chapter 4: How has Checkedit's funding strategy evolved over time?
Yeah, that's good. That's a good program. All right, let's wrap up here with your famous five. Number one, favorite business book.
Yeah, it's... It's measure what matters. It used to be scaling lean, but now we are working with OKRs. So I really see that measure what matters is a great book.
Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Yeah, I really love what Elon Musk is doing. He's quite eccentric, but still, if you want to solve huge problems, you need to be bold and nobody's more bold than that guy.
Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your company?
Yeah, we're still using HubSpot a lot, so that's good. But I also see that Google Hangouts has been great for us now in these quarantine times because doing web meetings really solves a lot for us now.
Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
I still get about seven hours of sleep, maybe even eight sometimes.
And 47, 48, how old are you?
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