SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 503: $125k for 5%, How To Grow Into $2m+ Valuation with InDemand CEO Alex Saidani
09 Dec 2016
Chapter 1: Who is Alex Saidani and what is InDemand?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the $100 is Rich Jones. Okay, Rich Jones, he is stuck in corporate. He wants to break free.
Chapter 2: What revenue model does InDemand use for local retailers?
He's binging on the show. For your chance to win 100 bucks every Monday morning, simply subscribe to the podcast right now on iTunes and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it. Folks, many of you reach out to me and you say, Nathan, so many guests on your show talk about the importance of batching. But whenever I try and batch, you tell me this.
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Chapter 3: How did InDemand's pricing strategy change over time?
Nathan Latke here. This is episode 503. Coming up tomorrow morning, we talk with Mailplane app CEO Lars Steiger. They have over 10,000 customers with the goal of helping you use Gmail better. Top five. Good morning. Nathan Latke here. My guest today is Alex Seydani, and I have no idea who the hell this guy is, but I will tell you, we found each other. People said you should have him on the show.
His company is called InDemand.com at TryInDemand.com.
Chapter 4: What challenges did InDemand face with inactive customers?
Alex, are you ready to take us to the top?
Of course. Of course. Great to be part of it.
Thanks. So fill in some of the gaps there. I'm being a little facetious, but are you part of our 500? Is that how we met?
Yeah, so I went through the 500 Startups program back in January with InDemand. I guess I've been an entrepreneur since the age of 13, self-taught developer, been doing companies pretty much all my life.
Chapter 5: How does InDemand generate revenue and what are its key metrics?
That's great. Okay, so tell us what InDemand is and how you generate revenue.
Yeah, so we're actually just in the midst of a pivot. So right now, we sell software for grocery stores and other local retailers. be able to sell to their customers online and actually deliver to them within the hour. We kind of say it as a white label Instacart. We actually charge grocery stores directly. So we'll charge them set up fee, monthly subscription and a per order commission. Yeah.
So is it like a SaaS business or more of a marketplace?
Chapter 6: What strategies is InDemand using to attract new customers?
It's definitely a SaaS business. So it's sort of white label software, you know,
Okay. Okay. So SaaS, fair enough. So walk me through, first off, let's kind of get a benchmark here. When did you start? What year did you launch the business in?
Yeah. So, well, we technically started last year based on some consultancy work I've been doing.
Chapter 7: What is the significance of the $125k investment for InDemand?
But in reality, the product we have now actually launched in April, started building at the end of January. April 2016?
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Great. And then I always like asking this, usually there's more history, but that's okay. What was your, what will your first year revenue be? Do you think?
First year revenue?
Chapter 8: What advice does Alex have for young entrepreneurs?
I guess, I mean, in the past 18 months, we've made around 325K. Top line or gross? Gross.
Okay. Gross. Great. 325 gross. Okay, great. That makes sense. So let's, let's then back into some of your customers, right? So tell us a customer story. What's like your ideal customer?
So, yeah, for example, I guess right now it would be sort of a local grocery store. So we're talking with a grocery store in San Francisco called Real Foods Company. They've got two locations. They don't really have an online presence. You know, they're not really selling through Instacart.
And we kind of go in and we'll give them the software to actually be able to sell to the customers online and actually gain customers. I guess the new customers who have sort of got this modern approach, you know, they're looking to actually order on the go. They're not necessarily willing to go into the store and they're happy to pay a little bit extra just to get it delivered to them.
And how many current customers are you working with?
We're working with, we've got about 150 companies using the software. About 25 of them are active.
Okay, define active.
So they're processing orders on a sort of day-to-day basis.
Okay, got it. What about the other ones? Are they still paying you something or what?
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