SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
How he got his first $130/mo paying customer and $1m raised
01 Feb 2023
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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That way you can go filter the data, find companies that are your same size, what they sold or raised for or at, and then use those as comparables in your decks to argue and debate and get. a higher valuation and less dilution, which is the name of the game, less dilution. Check it out today at founderpath.com forward slash products. That's plural forward slash valuations.
Again, both plural founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash valuations. 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.
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. Guys, Fincom.co, they launched their MVP back in June.
They raised a million dollar pre-seed round, including 250K of non-dilutive capital from the French government at a call to 2% cost to capital. They've used that to be scrappy. They've now got 23, sorry, they've got under 100 paying customers, but more than one paying customer. These customers paying on average call it 130 to 150 per month. A couple thousand bucks in monthly recurring revenues.
They look to keep scaling and extending their runway. Hey folks, my guest today is Martin Kuro. He's the former private equity investor turned SaaS entrepreneur. He's an HEC Paris graduate and started at Goldman Sachs in London and Morgan Stanley in London before moving to PE after a student in strategy consulting. Today, he's the co-founder of Fincom.
That's with an E on the end, Fincom.co, which is a real-time financial data platform for SaaS. Martin, you ready to take us to the top? Absolutely. Let's go. All right. What kind of real-time data?
Well, so right now we update it every day, but we're moving to closer to real time with updates coming in around every 20 minutes, that's three times an hour. And depending on the system, we're pushing that limit because we want our clients to have the freshest data possible.
Okay, but it's mainly the SaaS companies, but is it data that the CFO uses, data that the tech people use? I assume it's finance, Fincom, right?
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Chapter 2: How did the guest secure their first paying customer?
No, we're not using them because we've kind of outgrown their purpose. It's a French-based agency called Blue Square. We really recommend these guys. They're great. They're trying to launch an MVP in France. They're very agile. They know the ropes. They'll provide you with a ton of useful inputs. They certainly saved us a lot of time and helped us avoid a lot of mistakes.
So you paid them under 50K to help you get the MVP live in addition with your third, you know, your CTO who did the backend work. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Very cool. Now, how did you guys, I mean, it sounds like you raised, but how'd you pay your bills all last year when you were pre-revenue?
Our own assets, basically.
Okay. So you just saved up some money before you quit and said, okay, I'll live off savings for a year.
Well, private equity, you know, it's a great career. You know, it was tough choosing to leave it. But, you know, the draw of entrepreneurship was just too strong. But it's a very well-paid career. So, yeah, we did have some money saved. And we've been living on that ever since. And, well, that changed, obviously, after we raised.
Now, when did you raise?
What year? We closed in July of 2022. Okay. And how much did you raise so far? Where is the million total for our first round?
Okay. And as I said, it'd be like your pre-seed round. And then look, most people are selling like 15 to 20% in their pre-seed round. Were you serving that same range?
No, lower than that.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did the guest face before launching their MVP?
Oh, that varies greatly. Sleep is massively important to my well-being, so I try to hit a seven hours minimum. And I do build my entire day around my sleep cycle.
That's good. And what's your situation?
Married, single, kids? I'm not married, but with a long-term partner, which I'm hoping to marry one day. She says yes.
Very cool. Okay, no kids. And how old are you? 33. 33. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.
Grow your network. Get out there. Speak to as many people as you can. You'll always learn something.
Guys, Fincom.co, they launched their MVP back in June. They raised a million dollar pre-seed round, including 250K of non-dilutive capital from the French government at a call to 2% cost to capital. They've used that to be scrappy. They've now got 23, sorry, they've got under 100 paying customers, but more than one paying customer.
These customers paying on average call it 130 to 150 per month, a couple thousand bucks in monthly recurring revenues. They look to keep scaling and extending their runway. We're certainly rooting for them. We'll see what happens next. Martin, thanks for taking us to the top.
Thank you for having me.
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