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SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

How he Negotiated $9m valuation with $1m ARR sales attribution SaaS tool

03 Aug 2022

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 4.405 Nathan Latka

And so, I mean, can we take 500 customers at 200 bucks a month? You guys are doing about a hundred grand a month in revenue.

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4.686 - 9.822 Vlad Jelptenko

Well, that's where averages. So yeah, we're doing currently a 75 K per month.

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11.894 - 24.331 Nathan Latka

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.

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24.811 - 47.363 Nathan Latka

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 Vlad Jelptenko.

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47.383 - 65.519 Nathan Latka

He's the founder and CEO of redbrickredtrack.io. He combines his passion for digital marketing and creating things since 2000. And now as a founder, he's always looking for to learn from people who are ahead of him on both path and fundraise, but also likes to have a nice life besides startups. Vlad, you ready to take us to the top? Yep. We'll try to.

66.08 - 70.368 Nathan Latka

Just to be clear, so is RedTrack bootstrapped today or are you raised? No, we're raised.

70.389 - 71.871 Vlad Jelptenko

And we're raised two times already.

72.112 - 77.963 Nathan Latka

Yep. Okay. All right. Well, don't tell us how much. We'll chat about that a little bit. But first tell us, what is the company? What are people paying you for?

78.567 - 98.62 Vlad Jelptenko

People pay us to get comfortable daytime when they do digital marketing. Basically, they see everything in their campaigns in green and they know things are going good. If something goes bad, we have automation that can stop the campaigns, let them know, and they will look and address the issues. Why are they paying us money?

Chapter 2: What is RedTrack and how does it help digital marketers?

239.696 - 242.879 Nathan Latka

I see. Okay. And now how many customers are you working with today total?

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242.899 - 243.66 Vlad Jelptenko

500.

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244.721 - 250.628 Nathan Latka

Okay. 500 customers. And so, I mean, can we take 500 customers at 200 bucks a month? You guys are doing about a hundred grand a month in revenue.

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252.262 - 258.709 Vlad Jelptenko

Well, that's where averages. So yeah, we're doing currently 75K per month.

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260.652 - 262.374 Nathan Latka

You're very close to the million dollar run rate.

262.594 - 279.433 Vlad Jelptenko

Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, I'll be honest, if not, the war in Ukraine would be there. Last three months were a bit rough for us. A lot of customers we had from Europe, actually from Europe, they were on a bit of, not decline, but let's say steady growth.

279.413 - 287.923 Vlad Jelptenko

So we were growing a couple of last month, just one or two percent per month, which stopped us short of reaching one million Aurora, which was my goal for June.

289.144 - 291.047 Nathan Latka

I didn't know that. So you're currently based in Ukraine.

291.627 - 297.935 Vlad Jelptenko

No, we have part of the team in Ukraine, part of the team in Lithuania, part of the team now across Georgia and Tokyo.

Chapter 3: How has RedTrack's pricing changed over the years?

492.773 - 512.462 Nathan Latka

Do you think you might raise soon or sell a portion of the company? There is no other tool on the internet that you can use to get a better and higher valuation than FounderPath's new valuation tool. We have over 253 deals that went down over the past 30 days, all the revenue numbers, all the valuations, and the multiplier.

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512.502 - 533.41 Nathan Latka

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.

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533.55 - 542.72 Nathan Latka

Again, both plural founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash valuations. What's a smaller city in Brazil that's better to hire from?

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542.74 - 545.503 Vlad Jelptenko

I don't know what the smallest one.

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546.184 - 548.026 Nathan Latka

Well, where did you hire your people? What city?

548.566 - 560.529 Vlad Jelptenko

We hire from Vinos. From the north of Brazil. We have three cities. And actually, I don't know not a single name of the city. That's a shame. I just know that our team is in the north.

561.11 - 561.43 Nathan Latka

The north.

561.45 - 568.282 Vlad Jelptenko

We have live calls, but I heard the names of the cities several times, but they never stuck in my memory.

569.003 - 587.773 Nathan Latka

And the compensation you can pay the folks in north of Brazil is about half what you'd pay a developer if you hired them in Rio. Yep. Wow. Interesting. Very cool. And so you mentioned back in, I believe in 2020, you raised a $530,000 seed round. Is that correct? Yep. Exactly. And have you raised since then or no?

Chapter 4: What factors contributed to RedTrack's customer growth?

820.543 - 822.828 Nathan Latka

Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

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824.511 - 845.944 Vlad Jelptenko

Um, I used to study a couple of them. Now I'm more, or I can't tell them still, I'm just learning from many people in the niche. So when I have a problem or a question, I reach out to the VCs or to the community we have. I ask that question and I get advice whom to talk to who would give me the best solution.

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845.924 - 872.501 Vlad Jelptenko

So that's why I say the advice that sticks most in my memory would be my talk with Compatero CEO six months ago when he helped me reshape our approach to pricing by just looking at our numbers and saying to me one phrase, that your customer pricing is not a journey from low to high. Your customer should be in buckets. And then it was like, wow, you're so right.

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872.561 - 875.044 Vlad Jelptenko

And we shaped our pricing completely.

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875.064 - 882.893 Nathan Latka

Guys, there you have it. Pricing should not be a journey. It should be buckets. That's a good takeaway there, Vlad. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building RedTrack?

886.156 - 892.644 Vlad Jelptenko

My favorite online tool would be actually Google Drive because I have the docs, slides, everything.

893.184 - 894.786 Nathan Latka

Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

896.989 - 897.97 Vlad Jelptenko

From six to seven.

898.253 - 900.436 Nathan Latka

Okay. And what's your situation? Married, single kids?

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