SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
How he bootstrapped to $45k MRR in under 6 months for Employee Engagement SaaS
02 Oct 2022
Chapter 1: How did Digno achieve $45k MRR in under 6 months?
If I multiply those, it would mean you're doing about $45,000 a month today in revenue. Is that accurate? It's accurate, yes.
We're aiming approximately $82,000 by the end of the year.
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.
Chapter 2: What unique approach does Digno take towards employee performance?
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 Mahir Iskender.
He's the CEO and founder of Digno, an advanced platform built to completely disrupt the tired and inefficient employee evaluation process that we've come to know. Driven by passion for human behavioral psychology, Mahir developed Digno with the future of work in mind, supporting and celebrating every member of your organization. All right, Mahir, you ready to take us to the top? Let's do it.
Okay, so it sounds like Digno turns employee performance data into a measurable score. What does that mean?
So we have been studying the behavioral psychology of employees for a couple of years. And what we realized that is there's the five factors that affect the employee performance and company performance altogether. And those are the productivity, goal management, engagement, tenure at the company and consistency. So what we do, we take the data from any inputs.
It can be from your ERP system or from any applications that you use. And we analyze it within our system based on those five factors. And we produce one score, making management, employee management simple.
Okay. And what are customers, companies on average paying you per month to use this technology?
It's $59 for base subscription, but then there's a $7 to $9 per employee fee.
Okay. So what does that mean? The average company is what buying, either paying you a grand a month, two grand a month, Approximately, the average is about $3,000 to $5,000. Okay. And what does that mean? Per month, right? Yes. And what does that mean? That's a team size of what? 100, 200, 300?
Yes. Approximately, we're talking about 300 to 500 people.
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Chapter 3: What factors influence employee performance according to Digno?
I mean, this is the first time actually I'm telling this to the public. So I told them that we have a dashboard where we measure all your calls, all your tasks completed, all the communication you make with your colleagues, and we generate one score. And if your scores go down, forget about the salary increase or rewards that we had in the system. If its score goes up, you'll be rewarded.
And I put a reward to a one-week vacation to Istanbul. So I said, if you reach the 800 score, this is what your reward. And magic happened. Within six months, 30% increase in sales, 40% increase in productivity. I had different age, range age of employees starting using all Asana, the Klaviyo, all the Shopify, all the applications we had. They had better clarity.
Here, just to, sorry, just to jump where it is a short show. So I want to get like quick answers from you if possible. So got it. You eat your own dog food. This is a, you use it on your own employees. First, you write the first line of code in 2020. You get your first, do you get your first customer in 2020 or is that 2021?
No, we launched it actually 2021 July. That's when we wrote the first code, right? So we worked on it until March.
Hold on. Sorry. I thought you just said it was COVID when COVID started in 2020 is when you write the first line of code.
That's when we started the planning. I got the team together. Got it. Yes, the whole planning.
Okay, so first line of code 2021. And when was the first customer?
First customer we got in June 2022.
Okay, so just a couple months ago.
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Chapter 4: How does Digno determine pricing for its services?
We have approximately 15 paying customers.
Okay. And walk me through that conversion cycle. How do you get someone that's trialing to convert to paid?
So initially when we started, obviously we launched it, we sent it to all our friends, partners, everyone that we know, right? We want to make sure that we get some people on board and they try it, they test it, they tell us, give us feedback. So that took us from March to approximately to June.
We had already approximately like 20 users already in the system, but obviously as a new launch, I gave them for trial, like for that long, because all I wanted them to give me just feedback so I can make it better. And then once we launched in July, in June 2022, we got them converted into paying customer, right? And then in addition, in the last- Well, yeah, but how?
But how? Did you email all 45 and say, we're shutting this off unless you start paying? Or how did you get 15 to start paying?
So I had a deal with them. I said that I'm going to give it to you approximately from March to... We had a plan to launch it initially in May. So I told them by the end of the May, you like it, you stay with me, you don't like it, thank you so much. But then I extended it another month, obviously. So they already knew I was expecting them to convert.
And out of 20, we had approximately 18... Not 18, like 17 convert. The rest didn't want to continue. So we had to... you know, just let them go.
But there's no free plan right now. If people aren't paying, there's no way to use the tool.
Oh, we have five user free plan. So I made it, you know, that's my kind of fulfillment, you know, and giving understood. Yeah. So we have five users, up to five users. It's for free of charge forever.
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Chapter 5: What is the backstory behind the founding of Digno?
Visit collide.com forward slash top to find out how. Now, if you follow that link, guys, they'll hook you up with a goodie bag just for activating a free trial. It's a bag that I love. That link again is K-O-L-I-D-E dot com slash top collide.com forward slash top. Okay, got it.
So you don't have to pay the $6 base fee and you don't have to pay $7 to $9 per user per seat if you only have five people on your team. It's free forever.
It's free forever. Yes.
How many people do you have on the free plan?
So we have about 10 people right now.
Why aren't there more? I mean, it feels like if you're launching at Collision and you've been doing this now for two years of planning, there should be more than 10 people on the free plan.
It's because of my perfectionism, honestly. I've been trying to make it better and better every month, every day. And I delayed the marketing launch, let's put it that way, very long. So until I was very comfortable and I said, I told my team, we're going, we're going and let's do it.
that but i'm here today 15 customers paying the arpu you just told me right three thousand dollars per month if i multiply those it would mean you're doing about 45 000 a month today in revenue is that accurate it's accurate yes we're we're aiming approximately 80 82 000 by the by the end of the year and where exactly one year ago you had nothing right you were pre-revenue Yes. Yeah. Very cool.
This is great growth. Now, have you bootstrapped the company or raised capital? Bootstrapped. Bootstrapped. I love that. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you.
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Chapter 6: When did Digno officially launch and secure its first customers?
With us.
Very cool. This is a great story. Okay. So hoping to continue to grow. You've bootstrapped to date, growing nicely. How are you going to meet your next 20 customers?
It's all me. I'm the salesperson, founder of sales.
Yeah, but how? What do you do? Do you go on LinkedIn and search for something specific?
How do you find customers? I use multiple tools. We use seamless AI. You all heard of it. I use SalesFlow. And actually, I just signed up Expandio. I want them to hear because I signed up through the Austin, Texas founder conference.
Nice. You found them down here and you signed up. We love that. Did you have fun at the conference?
Yes.
Yes, yes. I participated in the conference. I listened to all the, you know, the CEOs. And I, you know, this conference actually made me super happy because I confirmed once more time that, you know, the companies needed the Apple Watch. And I created, you know.
Yeah, we're trying to obviously the conference was all about, as you saw, getting a bunch of bootstrappers together, just like you. So I'm glad you enjoyed yourself and that you found the Xpandi team there.
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