SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 349: He's Really Smart So Why'd He Quit for Startup?
08 Jul 2016
Chapter 1: What is Fuel Panda and how does it work?
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Chapter 2: How did Pavan Boob come up with the idea for Fuel Panda?
Again, text the word Nathan to 33444. Top job. This is episode 349. Right now, tomorrow morning, you're going to hear from Amanda Parker, a Toronto-based SaaS business doing 25K in MR with just 10 clients. How would she do it? Top Shrive. Good morning. Our guest today is Pavan Bhuban.
He's worked at Amazon, Salesforce, and recently at a big data startup called Identify, which was acquired by Workday. He's a computer science graduate, holds a master's of engineering degree from Cornell, and is a graduate of Ignite program by Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Chapter 3: What challenges does Fuel Panda face with gas theft?
He's the founder of Fuel Panda, which is a weekly subscription service that refuels your car at your work or home when it is parked. Pavan, are you ready to take us to the top?
I'm ready, man. All right, let's do this.
Good, good, good. Okay, so tell me first, what does Fuel Panda do and how do you make money?
Okay, so Fuel Panda is a weekly gas refueling service. So we show up to your house or your office, wherever your car is parked, every week and refuel gas in your car so that you're not stepping into the gas station again. And we're making money by charging a subscription fee or a service fee as well as some margin on the gas.
Okay, so this is a SaaS business then, basically?
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Chapter 4: How is Fuel Panda preparing for the future of autonomous vehicles?
Yes, it's a SaaS business.
Is there a lot of software involved or it's just it's a monthly recurring product?
It's a monthly recurring product for the user, but there's a lot of software on the logistics side.
Okay, so it is a true SaaS business. Yes. So walk us through some of the metrics. How many current customers are you working with as of March 2016?
Yeah, so we just started in January, and we're part of the current 500 Startups batch. So in the last few months, we are working with more than 100 customers, and we're doing around 70 to 80 refuels every week. And then so far, we've done – so we're just getting ready for fundraising as part of the 500 –
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Chapter 5: What are the financial metrics of Fuel Panda so far?
demo day. So I'll give you some high level metrics. You know, we've done more than 20 to 21,000 gallons of fuel. We're getting close to 1000 refueled so far in last few months. Yeah.
And how much money have you made?
We made more than $10,000. We made close to $15,000.
Okay, so this is kind of very early in terms of scaling. Are you self-funded up to this point?
Chapter 6: What is Fuel Panda's customer acquisition strategy?
Yes, it was a completely self-funded bootstrap startup. And as I said, we recently got selected for the 500 startups batch 17. So that was our first investment.
So they invested, I guess, the $150,000 or whatever their terms are for 7% of the business? Yeah.
Are those accurate terms? No, it's 125K for 5% of the business.
Okay, for 5%. And are you the sole founder or do you have other founders? I have a co-founder.
Chapter 7: What lessons does Pavan Boob share from his entrepreneurial journey?
Okay, you have a co-founder. And is that the extent of the team size right now? It's two people?
Yes, it's two people. We have some drivers on contract, but the full-time team is two people.
Okay, so I have to ask you a question. Looking at your background, I mean, you are super, super educated, very, very smart guy. Why go after refueling as the big business to jump into?
So it started from a personal pain actually. We were working from garage after Identified was acquired by Workday.
Chapter 8: How can listeners connect with Pavan and learn more about Fuel Panda?
We stayed there for a year and decided to start our own company.
Did you make any money in that acquisition? Were you early enough to have equity?
Uh, not as much, but we made good money. Like when we left, we still had left a bunch of money on the table because, uh, you know, you have, uh, bonuses for two years and we left after a year. Got it. Okay. Yeah. So, um, yeah, so I had a commute that was 40 miles one way. So close to 80 miles round trip. And every, you know, a few days I would run out of gas, uh,
And like most people, you remember to fill up gas only when you see your dashboard light. So, and then the worst part is if you're commuting, then most of the time you're in the car when you're commuting. So you're in rush hours, you see the dashboard light and you know, you're not spending like 20, 25 minutes going to the gas station.
Now you're like stuck in traffic, trying to get out, get back in, you know, all those extra hoops. And that kind of stuff kept on happening over and over again. And it was like really frustrating for me. And most of the times, like, you know, being the kind of person I am, I would not really like fill up right when I see the dashboard right.
So I would see, oh, there's still like 30, 40, 50 miles on the remaining, right? So you end up in a situation where you're getting late to a meeting or want to get somewhere fast, and then you have to go fill up.
so that's how it started and then the initial idea was that we would just you know go to people's houses uh say sunday night uh top up their car you know drive their car to the nearby gas station top it up and bring it back and we thought like the first i uh the first reaction in my mind was well no one's going to give handover a stranger their key to their cars right so we were like okay this is not going to work until i see until i saw a
five gallon gas can at Home Depot, right? And then we started going to our friends, relatives, like, okay, we're going to fill up your car every week.
Yeah, but like, this is a key thing here. I mean, step two on your website under how it works, it says leave the lid open. So people actually have to leave their gas tank kind of lid open when they leave their vehicle and park it.
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