SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 629: Mexico's Gaszen Raises $700k, Uses Roof Meter to Tell Mexican Households When Gas Is Almost Empty with CEO Jennifer Reyna
14 Apr 2017
Chapter 1: What is the main focus of Gaszen and its innovative gas management solution?
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. I just finished traveling Southeast Asia for 41 days, and I usually always get sick when I travel, and quite frankly, eating is difficult for me. It's hard to find a restaurant, and I'm spoiled in Austin with my personal chef. Well, I took these little packets with me this time, 30 of them, in my carry-on suitcase.
They kept me totally healthy with 11 different secret ingredients. You can see them at nathanlaca.com forward slash juice. I'll tell you more later on in the show. That's nathanlaca.com forward slash juice. Top Tribe, you know I don't have a lot of time to waste.
Chapter 2: How does Gaszen monetize its services for consumers and gas suppliers?
That's why I use FreshBooks to send out invoices and make sure I'm collecting my money. To get your free month, go to nathanlatka.com forward slash FreshBooks and enter the top in the How Did You Hear About Us section. This is episode 629. You're in for a treat today. And coming up tomorrow morning, you'll learn from Matthew, who he mentioned is helping.
His company mentioned is helping 4,000 customers with Google Alerts. It's basically Google Alerts on steroids. They're all paying a minimum of $60 a month, and he's doing $240,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Good morning, everybody. Nathan Latka here, and my guest this morning is Jennifer Arena.
She's got a lot of energy, and most importantly, she's studied business creation and development in Mexico. She's created three startups so far, Agridelico, which is a social company, Brain Fusion, which is embedded in Southwest development, and Gazen, gas management. They've raised over $650,000 United States dollars in Mexico and have developed their own
working product she's a mother lover sister and daughter that enjoys life and lives with zero regrets she says after all there's only one life and she's in the constant pursuit of the best version of herself jenny are you ready to take us to the top yes yes yes here i am great thanks for joining me today so you've had a lot of success talk talk me through your current and your latest and greatest which is pronounced i believe gas zen gas management what do you do and how do you make money
Okay, so basically what we did is that we realized that people have a lot of complaints about their gas and that they're not getting what they're expecting out of it.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Gaszen face before launching its product?
So we built a gas management platform that basically we created a device that goes into the stationary tanks. Here in Mexico, our stationary tanks are on the rooftop, so it's really dangerous to go and check your gas.
so we give them an application and they can see all their consumption all their statistics and they can grade which is the best gas supplier and see which is the best option and we monetize through the service we sell to the gas supplier all the information and at the same time if the end user wants to have automated services then we also monetize from it
Got it. So this isn't for cars. This is for actually houses. And in Mexico, the way gas works, it's really dangerous to check it yourself. So that's why that that's why this is such a great product.
Exactly. It's for all propane gas users, domestic and industrials.
Got it. Very good. So walk me through again from a money perspective. I imagine you're making money actually selling the physical meter, correct?
Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What partnerships has Gaszen established with gas suppliers and real estate firms?
Remember one thing, we hadn't been into the market yet. We are finishing our development and we're going to be selling on April. What we do have right now is we went already to gas suppliers and they have bought our product with real estate and with ferreteras that are hardware stores.
Okay. So how many gas suppliers have paid you already? How many do you have relationships with?
Uh, two of them.
Okay. Two gas suppliers. And, and you said you have real estate as well.
Yes. Real estate is really important because they want to give a really good service or a better service to the end users and, you know, some hook for them to buy their houses. So telling them that they won't ever have to go to the rooftops and that the gas is going to be all the time, anytime, it's a big win for the end user.
So how many real estate agents have you partnered with?
We have partnered with three already and we are in discussions with more than 15 all over Mexico.
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Chapter 5: How did Gaszen successfully raise funds through Kickstarter?
So we are working really hard on getting the product there.
And what are those three partner real estate partnerships? What do they pay you?
Okay. So they buy the device and what they do is 77 US dollars.
Okay.
And we, that device, what we do is we go directly to the buyer of the house and we, by our application, they can also update their service and then they can do the automated monetizing model.
Okay, now with the two gas suppliers, are they paying 77 bucks per device, per person, like per house they supply or how do they pay you?
Yeah, they get a better price because they buy a lot of devices. And with that price, what we do is that for the first six months, we are getting all these statistics that we need in order to get the best deal. Either they pay per consumption, per order, or they pay per liter. So that's basically it. what we actually talked from the beginning with them. Because here in Mexico, we have a problem.
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Chapter 6: What are the revenue streams for Gaszen after selling its devices?
The gas suppliers, they don't really get already like the technology side. So we had to educate them and we had to, you know, like, here is the value of doing it. And this is what it's going to give you.
So Jennifer, how did those two gas suppliers, how many units do they buy from you when they sign the partnership?
Okay. These ones are for 5,000 units each. Yeah.
Okay. So 10,000 total. And what do you, what do you charge them per piece when they, when they buy in that kind of volume?
$50 per piece. Okay.
So you've made money through selling 10,000 at 50 bucks a pop. So that's 500,000 in sales just to the gas suppliers, just on the device. And then you've had three real estate partners, which each buy the device, you know, for $77 USD.
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Chapter 7: How does Gaszen ensure its manufacturing remains in Mexico?
And it looks like you also have done a Kickstarter. How did that do?
It was really good. For us, it was a big jump of faith because we didn't know how actually we're going to make it happen since it was with Pondeadora in Mexico. And it was the first month that they made a fusion with Pondeadora and Kickstarter. So it was really good. We were successful.
How much did you raise?
We raised 80,000 pesos, which are like, yeah, 80,000 pesos.
Yep, and how many backers?
We got 111 packers. Some of them, they just donated money. Some of them actually bought the devices.
Got it. So 80,000 Mexican pesos is about 4,000 United States dollars, right?
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Chapter 8: What advice does the CEO give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
Yeah.
Yeah. Good. So the Kickstarter worked well, but it looks like your number one revenue channel right now is selling in volume to the gas suppliers. Is that right?
Yeah, we're going totally B2B.
Yep. That's great. And what about funding? Have you guys raised capital?
Yes, actually, we just raised our seed round. We raised 350,000 US dollars. Here in Mexico, that's huge. It was really hard work and we were totally happy and excited of closing it.
And was that a convertible note or was it a priced equity round?
It was equity round.
Okay. And what about, you know, you raised obviously just now a Q1 2017, but when did you launch the company?
We started two years ago, actually. It's been a long road.
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