SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Employee time tracking app hits $180,000, founder owns 100%
27 May 2022
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Okay. And can we do 50 times 300? You're doing about $15,000 per month in revenue? Yeah. You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka, where I sit down and interview the top SaaS founders, like Eric Wan from Zoom. If you'd like to subscribe, go to getlatka.com.
We've published thousands of these interviews, and if you want to sort through them quickly by revenue or churn, CAC, valuation, or other metrics, the easiest way to do that is to go to getlatka.com and use our filtering tool. It's like a big Excel sheet for all of these podcast interviews. Check it out right now at getlatka.com. Hey folks, my guest today is Gaurav Seth.
He is building a work-from-home platform to reduce OPEX and enhance productivity called WorkforceNext.i. And he's an entrepreneur and people manager working in this area for the past 16 years, trying to solve the problems at their root. All right, Gaurav, you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, hi. It's good to have you here.
So tell me, give me an example of a customer that's paying for WorkforceNext. So basically India is the country of where most of the people offering the services in order to run any business or in order to make things done. So there are a lot of problems in this sector and there are a lot of hurdles to manage things online or using telephone.
So what we do, we made a WFM platform to managing those business and specifically for the managing the labor or the workforce they are having. So they can manage all the workforce using a single platform. And name is Workforce Next. And what are they paying you on average per month to use the technology? So... That's it. Sorry about that. What's a range, right?
So what are customers paying you per month to use the tool? Okay. So that's quite nominal charges on the SaaS platform. And we charge only for $3 to $4 per user per month in order to use that platform. And so when a company signs up, how many seats are they paying for usually? So there are a number of companies and large enterprises using this platform. I can have some names into that, like
LG is using our platform and there are some production houses. My question is, when a company signs up, what are they paying total per month to use the tool? So I understand it's per user per seat, but I don't know how many users they sign up. So that's a number of users. It depends on the number of users they are having. So how many users do they usually sign up with?
So our target customers are specifically from 30 users. They are having 30 workforce in their team to 500 workforce in their team. Okay. So it's fair to say 30 people at $3 each is about $90 per month. Yeah.
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Chapter 2: How does WorkforceNext help reduce operational expenses?
Okay. And is that what most of your customers pay today on average, $90 per month? Yeah. The average size of company we are handling is people are having 90 to 100 employees in their organization. Okay. So 100 employees at $3 per user per month, right, is something. It's $300 per month. $300 per month. I see. Okay. When did you launch the company? What year?
We started the product development in December 2019 and started selling in June 2020 and incorporated the company as a private limited entity in December 2020. Okay. And have you bootstrapped the business or did you decide to raise capital? Yeah, that's a Buddhist business. I love that. Congratulations. So that's quite sustainable and we are running that into the lean mode.
So now we are trying to scale that up. And how many customers do you have today? Right now we have approximately 50 companies. Five zero? Yeah, five zero customers. Okay. And can we do 50 times 300? You're doing about $15,000 per month in revenue? Yeah. That's great. And where were you exactly a year ago if you're doing 15 per month now?
So in this financial year, we are expecting to double it down. So approximately we will have 100 customers in this financial year. So Gaurav, this month you're doing $15,000 a month in revenue. How much revenue did you do last year in May? Uh, last year that was, uh, uh, we, we, we are, uh, uh, scaling that up. I mean, we are having, uh, the customer on the twice date of every year.
I mean, uh, for example, if we have, I think this is getting too complex. I'm just asking you, what was your revenue in one month? May of last year. So. One year ago. Yeah. The half of that, you can say approximately 20 to 25 USD. 2,500? Yeah, 2,500. So you grew from 2,500 a month in revenue to $15,000 a month today. Yeah. That's great. Congratulations on the growth. Yeah, thanks.
And so how are you getting, you have 50 customers, how are you getting these customers? So most of the customers are coming either from advertisement or we are some of the larger enterprises. We are outreaching them. How much do you spend on ads each month? I didn't have an exact figure right now. So sorry. It's a range. Yeah. Approximate, if I can tell you in Indian rupees, will that work?
Sure. Okay. So approximate, we are spending approximate 1 to 2 lakh rupees per month on reaching those people. 2 million rupees per month? No, not 2 million rupees. That's 2 lakh is sort of 0.2 million rupees. 0.2 million. 0.2 million rupees. I got it. So 200,000 rupees, you're spending like 2000 or 3000 United States dollars per month on ads. Yeah. Yeah. And where are you spending that money?
LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, somewhere else. Most, most of the time the money is spending on either on Google or LinkedIn and some, some time on the outreaching them. So we, we, we have the team of people who outreach the enterprise and, uh, uh, chase them over the call, over the email marketing, so on that thing. And Gaurav, how many folks are on your team today?
Right now, we have four people in our team for the sales only. How many total on the team? Total number of people we have right now, 10 to 11 people. Okay. How many engineers? There are four engineers. Four. And are you the only co-founder? Yeah, I have a co-founder that's the CTO of our company. I mean, the main technical guy. So he takes care of everything.
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Chapter 3: What pricing model does WorkforceNext use for its customers?
You want them to feel this magic as fast as possible. Now, we've tried to solve this at FounderPath by creating downloadable CSV templates and building our own in-house importers and then copying and pasting a long help article to users via email. It just is not fun work. Nobody gets it. Nobody wants to do that work. This is where Flatfile comes in.
Flatfile is the data onboarding platform built to take the acute pain out of importing customer data into your product. The nice thing is enterprises love this because Flatfile is SOC 2 Type 1 and 2 certified, GDR compliant. Super easy to use. So no more emailing files back and forth like CSVs. No more copying and pasting help articles that no one reads.
Just clean data quickly so you can grow your SaaS company. In fact, ClickUp, BambooHR, and HubSpot all use Flatfile. It's one reason they're growing so quickly. Check out Flatfile today at NathanLacke.com forward slash Flatfile. That's NathanLacke.com forward slash Flatfile. So did you guys just split equity 50-50 at the start?
uh yeah sort of but but till that as we didn't raise any kind of funding so we didn't split the uh equity as of now but as soon we will raise some fund or we will try to raise some funds then we will decide that how many equity he will have and how many equity i will have my question my question is when you started how did you split the equity As soon as we start raising the fund.
Right now, Gaurav, if you sold the company, what percent of the money do you get? If I sold the company... How much equity do you currently own in the business? Right now, I have 100% of equity. Okay, so that's my question. How did you motivate a technical co-founder to join you, a startup, very risky, and get no equity? Yeah.
So my thing is that we didn't split the equity as the company didn't have any worth initially, right? So yeah, but we have the equal salary model. So whatever we are earning, we are splitting that in equal amount. So you own 100% equity, but you're splitting profits 50-50. Yeah. I see. Does your co-founder make any fixed salary or no? He's just doing profit sharing with you.
He's having fixed salary as well. Okay, I see. Got it. So he didn't take any equity because you gave him a fixed salary and then he also gets 50% of profits. But we have planned. I mean, I have a particular plan that as soon as we start raising the fund, I will offer him some equity as well. I see. That makes sense. Okay, tell me more about the product. What are you building next?
Where do you see sort of workforce management going? So, the thing is the field employees, to manage the field employee and forecasting them and how many people we have to put in. So, these kind of problems every day any specific industry are facing in India specifically. So, they are quite hard to manage these things or they are not even digitalized these processes as of now.
So we are trying to digitalize those things. And are you profitable today? Yeah. How much? So in terms of profit, our profit is Well, yeah, this is you're the interviewer. No, who else is profit? No, no, no. I thought you were asking for if they are having some profit or if that tool is giving some profit to them as well. I mean, I thought you were asking for ROI.
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Chapter 4: When was WorkforceNext launched and how has it evolved?
In the meantime, though, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book? I didn't read much of books, so I cannot. We'll skip it. Number two, is there a founder you're following or studying? The founder, I follow mainly Vijay Shekhar Sharma from Paytm. Paytm CEO? Yes. Yeah, the Paytm CEO, Vijay Sekhar Sharma.
Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building workforce? My favorite online tool. I generally, most of the time, I use Adobe XD to create some graphics or some more. What is it again? Sorry? What's the tool? Tool is Adobe XD. Adobe XD? Yeah, Adobe XD. All right. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Sorry, I didn't get the question. How much sleep? Hours?
Yeah, sleep hours. I generally take six hours of sleep. And what's your situation? Married? Single? Kids? Yeah, I'm married. I'm married. Any kids? Yeah, I have two kids. And luckily, when I started the company, I got a kid at the time. All right. Two kids and a startup. And how old are you? I'm 40. 40. Last question, Gaurav. What is something you wish you knew when you were 20 years old?
When I was 20, right? Yes.
Chapter 5: How many customers does WorkforceNext currently serve?
Something you wish you knew. Yeah, so maybe the business psychology or the people management things I know at that time. I wish I know at that time so maybe I could do a lot of difference. Guys, employee time tracking tool and workforce management tool, workforce.next just broke $15,000 a month in revenue up from 2,500 just a year ago. Team of 10, Grov launched it back in 2019.
Totally bootstrapped today. Four engineers, four sales reps as they look to scale. They've only lost two customers. Currently serving 50 customers that pay on average 300 bucks per month. That's $3 per user per month or per seat. All right, Grov, thanks for taking us to the top. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Nathan. Thanks for the time.