SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
AI Tool Profited $70k Last Month on $195k of Revenue. Plans to hit $3m ARR By December then Raise $5m.
10 Oct 2023
Chapter 1: How did WordLift achieve $195k in revenue last month?
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They do that same thing across other brands using their knowledge graph, enabling you to build a real AI strategy and increase human productivity, launching all these descriptions within your own company's voice based on the data you feed or Lyft.io. He's got 800 paying customers. He profited $70,000 last month, so really healthy profit margins.
Last raise was $800,000 at 5.5 post and will be looking to do his next round in Q4 this year, Q1 next year, targeting four to five million. It's somewhere around a 20 million valuation, again, scaling nicely with a team of 27 engineers, five on the sales side. Hey, folks, my guest today is Andrea Volpini.
He's a serial entrepreneur and an expert in the semantic web technologies and artificial intelligence space. He's the co-founder and CEO of WordLift, a company that specializes in AI-driven SEO solutions. His experience and focus is on leveraging artificial intelligence to improve web content and enhance SEO and user experience. Andrea, are you ready to take us to the top? Totally. All right.
Well, I'm thrilled to have you back on. You know, we had you on about a year ago. For those that have not heard of WordLift before, maybe describe how a customer is using you today and then we'll jump into more of the story.
Right. So we build knowledge graphs and these knowledge graphs are designed to optimize content so that search engine can understand what this content is about, get more users. And then we're starting to use this knowledge graph to use generative AI alongside with it. And that's the exciting part.
And so what does that mean? Can you maybe actually share a customer name that's using you and tell us how they're using this specifically? Sure.
Right. I mean, let's take Ray-Ban. Okay. They have product description and they've been using for over a year now WearLift to build a knowledge graph and then fine tune a model that can create a product description for every single variant, not just the main model, but every single variant with the exact tone of voice that Ray-Ban has.
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Chapter 2: What role does AI play in WordLift's SEO strategy?
And, you know, just to give you a few numbers, last year, 2022, we closed at 1.2 million euro, you know, the final number. And in June this year, we've done 1.352. So we went beyond 100% growth in the first semesters. And now, you know, the numbers is kind of slightly going down, but we're targeting 2.3, 2.5 million euro by the end of the year.
Okay, so $1.4 million run rate is about $120,000 per month divided by 800 paying customers would mean each one's paying on average about $140 per month.
Yeah, but I mean, there is a slight difference between the enterprise patch and everyone else. And we have onboarded clients of the size of Coca-Cola, for example. And so we are working on multiple markets, multiple languages. And so the way in which we're selling the subscription to the enterprise is that we sell by website, per market, per language.
And so at the end of the day, you buy Wellift on a URL basis. And, you know, starting point can be something like two euro per URL per year. Okay, got it. So you sell per URL per language per year. And then we add on top smart content services like the content generation, like the module for generating Q&A.
So we are effectively becoming a generative AI platform focusing on enterprises doing SEO, starting from the creation of a knowledge graph.
So 1.35 million run rate today up from, you told me a year ago, again, you're about 1.2 million. So a little bit of growth. Now that'd be okay if you'd bootstrap the company because when you bootstrap, you can grow on your own terms. But you've raised a pre-seed round in 2022. I think you raised 800K at 5.5 million post money.
How are those investors responding to what I would say is maybe slower growth relative to what their expectations were when they invested?
I mean, you called 100% growth a slow growth?
Sorry. You told me that a year ago. I mean, you came on in 2021 as well. And you told me you had 705 paying customers at 123 a month, which would be 1.1 million run rate. You told me then you grew that to a year ago to 1.2 million run rate. And you then said this year you're at 1.3 million dollar run rate.
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Chapter 3: How does WordLift help companies like Ray-Ban with their product descriptions?
And so with that headcount expense, obviously, you know, you pay that out of your monthly recurring revenue. Is the company profitable today? Are you burning that money?
No, we are profitable. We have a good profit. Um, we have around, uh, I mean, if I look at August, I think we are around 38 profit margin. 38% or 38,000? 38%.
Okay, so 38% on 200K of MRR would mean you profited something like $70,000 in August.
Yeah, it's true that, of course, I'm keeping my salary low, the other management team. I mean, we're still kind of in a bootstrap mode. I mean, I want to keep the company profitable so that I don't have to deal with issues with investors. I mean, I want to keep things as healthy as possible. And I want a company that is profitable.
We've always been profitable since after the first year and a half, and I want to keep it that way.
So does that mean you still have the full $800,000 pre-seed from last year in your bank?
Pretty much. We have at the moment, I think, 780. I mean, it's fluctuating. We're investing on it. On Monday, we have a new general manager starting up. I mean, so we're investing on technology and team as we should, but we're not overspending. We're not like crazy with the money that we got.
And you mentioned your own salary. A lot of founders are not quite sure what to pay themselves. So when you say you pay yourself, quote, a low salary, can I ask what that is and how did you come up with the number? No, you're going to ask.
No, but I mean, let's say that if I would go and work on a corporate, I would possibly earn double of what I'm making.
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Chapter 4: What changes has WordLift made to target enterprise clients?
I follow several CEO. Um, yeah, of course I have to follow people like, uh, like mask because I use X, uh, or X Twitter. Uh, but, um, I have a good relationship with, uh, with the founder of Yost that we're going to meet next week. And, uh, and, and we have a, you know, I think a great relationship. I can learn a lot from him because he sold the company already.
Um, number three, what's your favorite online tool for building word lift?
Um, personally, I like a lot, uh, the work that, uh, we do with Zapier. I think, uh, you know, kind of connecting dots and automating marketing. It's, it's good, but, uh, yeah.
Number three, what's your, uh, sorry, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
I mean, I should do better. I mean, I think we are, you know, six, six and a half, seven. I mean, depending on the period of time now, it's very low. And what's your situation? Married, single kids?
I married two kids. Very happy. And I think you had a birthday, right? You're 46 now? Yeah. In March. In March. Very good. The last question, something you wish you knew when you were 20.
um oh boy uh when i was 20 that uh that i could uh already focus on uh kind of my dream idea rather than you know kind of learning from from from the bottom up you know i could i could focus in the beginning on things that i loved yes i mean not that i didn't not that i did things that i didn't love but i could be more crazy even more crazy than i was already
Guys, wordlift.io today does $195,000 a month in revenue, up from $103,000 a month just a year ago. They help large brands like Ray-Ban quickly use AI to write meta descriptions for all their thousands of SKUs on all their sunglasses. They do that same thing across other brands using their knowledge graph, enabling you to build a real AI strategy and increase human productivity launching.
all these descriptions within your own company's voice based on the data you feed wordlift.io. He's got 800 paying customers. He profited $70,000 last month. So really healthy profit margins. Last raise was $800,000 at 5.5 post. And we'll be looking to do his next round in Q4 this year, Q1 next year, targeting four to 5 million. It's somewhere around a
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Chapter 5: What is WordLift's current customer count and average revenue per user?
20 million valuation. Again, scaling nicely with a team of 20, seven engineers, five on the sales side. Andrea, thanks for taking us to the top.