SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 606: Hornet Raises $8M to Become Gay Content Hub, 17M Users, 3M MAU with CEO Christof Wittig
22 Mar 2017
Chapter 1: What inspired Christof Wittig to start Hornet?
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.
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Chapter 2: How does Hornet's revenue model work?
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Chapter 3: What are the key metrics for Hornet's user engagement?
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Nathan Latke here. This is episode 606.
Chapter 4: How much capital did Hornet raise and why?
And coming up tomorrow morning, you will hear from 30-year-old founder Peter Schlecht of the SaaS company, which has passed $90,000 in monthly recurring revenue, helping 20 companies get leads and qualified meetings. Good morning, everybody. Nathan Latka here. Our guest this morning is Christoph Wittig. He's a serial software entrepreneur and investor.
Currently, he's the founder and CEO at Hornet Networks, the world's second largest gay social network. And he's a managing partner at Strive Capital based in San Francisco. He's an investor and or board member in various companies, including Inish, Mitigo, Keep Safe, Vertal Health, Black Medicine, Movie Pilot, Boxfish, and App.com. Annie.
He's been active in the U.S., Germany, and throughout Asia.
Chapter 5: What features set Hornet apart from other gay apps?
Christoph, are you ready to take us to the top?
Absolutely. Buckle up.
Good. We're going to have some fun. I'm a big fan of App Annie, by the way. They're on a tear over there, aren't they?
They are absolutely on a tear, and we love Bertrand, the leadership over there, and it's a very joyful investment we're having.
Good. What came first for you, Strive Capital or Hornet?
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Chapter 6: How does Hornet plan to use the $8 million funding?
It came actually at the same time. Strive Capital initiated as key capital after I sold my second company, Servo Software. I started a fund that was focused on mobile apps. And while doing investments as an entrepreneur, I always felt like, you know, like a music critique. I wanted to do something and build something. This is really in my bones all my life.
And so I started Hornet on the side because I was very disappointed in the user experience of the existing gay apps. And Hornet was really a side project while I was starting my investment career. And today it's my career.
And what did you, sorry, the company right before Hornet, what was it that you exited?
Chapter 7: What challenges does the gay community face that Hornet addresses?
Servo Software. That has been a mobile middleware company focusing on the Android platforms or something very technical and B2B. And in fact, Hornet has been my first started consumer business apart from the investment side.
And that first company, when did you launch it? That was kind of middleware.
That was in 2004. It started off as an embedded Java framework and it pivoted when Android came about, which was basically the leading implementation of embedded Java to become a middleware platform for mobile operators and handset manufacturers. And that gave me a good insight into the on-deck and underneath the hood part of the mobile stack, but also the understanding of
what it meant to go into the app store and over the top, and how disruptive mobile would be to every industry as a channel and as a platform to connect people. And since I'm a gay man, I also, of course, thought about how this platform can help strengthen the gay community and create a better user experience than what had been out there at the time.
Chapter 8: What advice does Christof have for aspiring entrepreneurs?
And what year did you sell that company in? What year did you sell that first company in?
In 2010, I merged server software with a Japanese company to form what's now called Key Corporation. It's around, it's thriving, and it's big in the IoT space.
Were you able to withdraw capital out of there? I mean, is that where your initial capital for Striven Hornet came from?
Yes, so the capital was originally provided from that company. That was the fund for Strive Capital. It was initially from Key and also sold my own shareholdings in that company later in the secondary. So those were additional funds on top of the first exit I had back in Germany in 2002.
And how old are you now, Christoph?
Wow, that's a question.
Come on, you can crunch it a little bit if you want. I'm 48. Okay, good. We'll say plus or minus 48 years, right?
Say plus or minus. 29 and some letters, A, B, C, D, I have lost count.
All right. And then loop Sean into the story. So we had Sean back on on episode 440 at NathanLacka.com forward slash the top 440. Was he a co-founder or how did you guys get connected?
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