SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
$1m in Revenue and $15m Valuation, What GDPR Compliance Tool FixNix Is Building
30 Apr 2021
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Do you think you'll break, hopefully you'll break a million dollar run rate this year?
Yes, we are seeing a huge traction post COVID-19. Why is that? Because I think everybody have moved remote.
Chapter 2: What traction is FixNix seeing post-COVID-19?
Previously, everybody, when you go ask them, try cybersecurity, they used to say that they don't need it actually at that point of time. But now everybody working from remote, everybody is able to realize the importance of cybersecurity, data loss prevention, etc.
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We got to grow faster. Minimum is 100% over the past several years.
Or bootstrap founders like Vivek of QuestionPro. When I started the company, it was not cool to raise. Or Looker CEO Frank Behan before Google acquired his company for $2.6 billion.
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My guest today is Sean Sankaran. He is building a tool called FixNix.co. He's the entrepreneur who sold his house. He's bootstrapped the company for eight years and has been mentioned by Gartner, got awarded as a top reg tech and GRC company by Medici and 30 other international entities.
He pivoted to cybersecurity officer platform during COVID to offer people plus businesses plus leadership in cybersecurity rather than a process system. Sean, you ready to take us to the top?
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Chapter 3: How did FixNix pivot during the pandemic?
Actually, interestingly, I sold my house, became the entrepreneur who sold his house to Woodstrap.
How much did you sell your house for and what year?
About $200,000 and I used close to $250,000 in the company throughout this eight years.
What year was that? So it was 2012?
2016. Actually, we did a kind of a rise, semi-rise from our friends, family and extended industry members from Silicon Valley and the US. So we raised close to some $100,000 from the industry and maybe a couple of $100,000 from family. We raised almost less than a million dollars. It was not a real crowdfunding per se, but it was a kind of extended one.
Based off our research, it looks like you raised about $150,000 in 2014, $500,000 in 2016, another $500,000 in 2018, and then another $250,000 last year in 2020. Are those right? Ah, yes. Okay, so you raised about exactly sort of a million dollars, but no traditional VCs, more like angels. That's right. I see. And why did you choose to go that path?
Because I think we started the business out of India. The engineering was always out of India. And in India, the venture capital's appetite to understand this kind of enterprise proposition, your new SaaS enterprise proposition for a new industry.
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Chapter 4: What services do customers pay for at FixNix?
I think was very less. I think people didn't get enterprise at all in the Indian venture capital community. So particularly at least for a new blue ocean. So I think that may be the reason I thought, okay, let's bootstrap. In fact, I raised a debt from government of India, which is a very unusual source. I raised $150,000 debt. I mortgaged my house to get it.
And it was a very interesting journey. That was the seed for the company, actually.
Interesting. Do you have any debt on the books today or have you paid it all back?
No, we paid back.
Would you look at using debt again to keep growing?
Yeah, I think now there are a lot of interesting opportunities coming in the U.S. markets. A lot of people are keen to provide based on our traction, so we may be open to it. Maybe I think I'm considering maybe even a crowdfunding through Republic like platform Snathan now.
So more than going to venture capital, we are looking at putting a rise together, hopefully in another quarter of this quarter.
How much capital would you look to raise?
Now we are looking at 5 to 10 million, maybe 5 through account funding, 5 maybe through other partners who may be interested in the space.
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Chapter 5: How did the guest acquire their first customers?
Well, look, I mean, what you're selling is difficult. I mean, I mentioned the sales cycle is a little bit long, right? Because basically governments will say that you have to have PCI DSS or GDPR or, you know, PADSS. And you're basically saying, hey, companies will help you comply with all these government regulations in a quick, easy way using our SaaS tools.
So your best friend is the government's imposing new restrictions so that more people have to buy your software to keep up, correct?
There was a lot of learning working with government. In fact, we tried partnering with the regulator of India, the Reserve Bank of India. We tried doing a public-private partnership. We tried them in their own cloud to focus on some markets like credit union, community banks. But it was a big dud. I think focusing on Indian markets alone was a big dud.
So I think we kind of did that for initial 24 years, focusing on emerging markets like India a lot. I think that was a big learning curve.
Yep, that makes sense. Well, again, now you're in emerging markets, you have partners in emerging markets. We'll see what happens next. But in the meantime, let's wrap up here with the famous five.
Number one. I have a small observation. Actually, there's this privacy regulations like GDPR, California Privacy Act, which is kind of impacting the whole industry. It's not just one company, right? Not large corporates alone need to subscribe to these regulations. So that is helping. So we kind of help automate the privacy regulations to not cybersecurity alone.
So that is helping us get a lot of foothold now.
Great. Let's wrap up here, Sean, with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
Kind of the monk who sold his Ferrari.
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