SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
How he used community to raise $1m for his Backend as a Service SaaS
11 Jun 2022
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Right now, they are paying nothing because we are still in public data. Okay, so pre-revenue today. 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 Amit Chakmak.
Chapter 2: What is a Backend as a Service platform?
He is the founder and CEO of Altagic. He's an ex-management consultant for McKinsey & Company, and he also worked at Chicago and in the Istanbul and Chicago offices. Today, he's building Altagic, which is a backend as a service platform. Amit, you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, take us to the top. All right. So what does that mean, backend as a service platform?
Backend as a service platform is meaning, I mean, if you think about the modern applications, web applications or the mobile applications, basically they've got two components. The first one is the front end, where the end users see and interact with. And there's the invisible part, which is the backend.
Backend is basically where all the business logic resides, where you store your data, where you manage your files, et cetera. So all the business logic, all the functionality usually resides in the backend side. It's a big space. I mean, are you doing this for a specific industry or just anybody? No, just for anybody. There's no industry focus right now we have.
It's applicable across all different industries. Okay. So, I mean, can we, just for the sake of creating some focus here, which customer is your most popular? What's your most popular use case? Our key target or segment who will be using this platform is basically the people that are developing applications. Those can be categorized into two main categories.
One of them is the classical developers, people that are writing codes. And the second category is the makers or the creators because Autogic is a no-code platform. So you don't need the code in order to develop backend applications in Autogic with simple drag and drop operations. You can model your data, you can define your services and endpoint and so on. Makes a lot of sense. Okay.
And what are folks paying on average per month to use your technology? Right now, they are being nothing because we are still in public beta. Okay, so pre-revenue today. Yeah, exactly. So we are in public beta right now. But in a couple of months' time, we will launch the plans. We are still working on the plans.
But I can tell you that our pricing model will be based on the execution environments because… As a backend, as a service platform, we will be providing environments to run your applications. So per environment, per different, let's say, tiers, you will get different, let's say, capacity. And based on that one, the pricing will be applied. Amit, how many folks are using it today?
How many are in the beta? Right now, we're about close to 1,000. How did you sign them up? It's basically friends and family. Initially, during the private beta period, it was mostly friends and family and close people. But after the public beta, we started to build a community around developers.
So we started to put a lot of resources and emphasis on that, particularly after the investment we get, actually. We started to build this community, developer community, currently in our local country, but we will be going global soon. What's the URL to the community? How can we look at that? Sorry? What's the URL so we can look at the community? No, we've got the Discord channel, Altogic.
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Chapter 3: Who are the target users of Altagic's platform?
When did you write the first line of code for the business? When we signed up for this business, I started working on this one in June 2020, and it took about 14 months to launch to public beta. So it was August 2021. We started with the public beta. Still, the platform is in public beta. I understand. How have you funded it? Funding is basically from two venture capital firms.
Our lead investor is Scalix and in participation from 500 Istanbul. So those are our key venture capital investors. So how much did you, break down the rounds for me. What was the last round of funding you raised? What year and how much? We only had one round, this is the seed round, which is $1 million. And they are basically, majority of them is from Scalix.
What year was that, this year or last year? This year. Do you guys care about valuation right now, specifically your valuation? 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. 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. So you've only raised a million seed. So again, you started working on this in 2020.
So before you raised this seed round, how did you pay people? How did you survive? Did you have savings? Are you a rich guy? How did you survive? Well, it was my personal, let's say, budget or personal spending. After the seed funding, we started hiring people. So after two months, I mean, two months ago, we started hiring these developer managers and the dev advocates and so on.
Before that one, it was just me and my co-founders. So we were together working on this thing. Did you guys split 50-50? Well, majority of them is coming from me. Okay. Why is that? Because you put in more money or something or what?
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Chapter 4: How is Altagic structured in terms of pricing?
Yeah, exactly. My share is much higher and so on. So depending on how much money effort you put in and how much time you spend on that one, that was my agreement with my co-founder. So the share that I have on the company is much higher than him. And how many employees today are working at the company full-time? Right now, eight people full-time. Okay. How many engineers?
All of them almost, except one people, all of them are engineers. Sorry, two people, except two people, all of them are engineers. Our developer advocates are also engineers because we are targeting the developer segment and we are developing lots of example applications and so on. So our developer advocates are engineering backgrounds, computer science, computer engineering backgrounds.
Our DevRel manager, he's not from the engineering background, but he's more like the community building aspect. And we've got another marketing specialist guy who doesn't have an engineering background, but he's got a management background. But we will be hiring soon, like four or five people, additional people joining us within the next couple of months.
So I think by July time, we will be around like 12, 13 people, full-time people working on this. Did you use any freelancers to build a product to where it is today to save money? No, not for the platform. For building the product, we didn't use freelancers.
But right now, we are using freelancers because there are a couple of components, a couple of parts that needs to be coded, that needs to be developed. And we are using actually three freelancers right now. From which site? How did you find them? It's again... Our network, our friends network, we have got access to some of the top developers in different companies in our local country.
So we reach out to them and we- Where are you based? I'm based in Istanbul, Turkey. Okay. So you didn't use like a marketplace to find these engineers in Istanbul. You used your friends. I use my friends, but of course, for some freelancers, for graphic designs or for creation of videos and so on, I also use some marketplaces. There are some local marketplaces that I also hired some people.
Can you name one or two of those marketplaces? Beonlook.com, B-I-O-N-L-U-K.com. Beyondlook.com. Okay. And did you hire, I mean, your website is beautifully designed.
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Chapter 5: How many users are currently in the beta phase?
Did you hire your graphic designer from Beyondlook? I did it myself. Ah, wow. So multi-talented. You code, you develop, you sell, you do everything, huh? Yeah. That's amazing. So what did you use Beyondlook for? What roles did you hire for there? For the freelancers, you mean? Yes, what do they do at BeyondLook? Yeah, a couple of things.
Two of them are right now working on developing the front end of some of the key applications. We will be launching one application soon, within a couple of weeks' time. They are working on the front end of it using different technologies. One of the guys is more technical. He's helping us automating some of the backend processes.
Chapter 6: What strategies did Altagic use to build its initial community?
Because Altogic is running on Kubernetes, Docker containers, etc. So we will be automating process for setting up new environments. So he's helping us on automating that process. And besides that one, we will be also soon working with some UI UX designers. It will be contractors. We will be working with them. We are in the selection phase right now.
We didn't select yet, but we are waiting demos from that. But we will be working with some couple of UI UX designers. Very cool. Running short on time here, but obviously managing your dilution is critical. Most people, when they raise their seat, are selling about 20% of the business. Were you sort of in that same range? At the same range, yeah. Similar to that. Okay.
So 5 million valuation, something like that? Something like that. Exactly. Okay. That's great. Well, eager to see what you build with these next four hires and as you keep scaling and as you open up your beta to make it public. In the meantime, let's wrap up with The Famous Five. What's the last book that you read? The last book I read, it was related to the power of the introverts.
I'm an introvert guy. I don't know if you know the Meyer Briggs types. I'm ISTJ. And I read a book related to the power of introverts. How introverts can be Because typically, if you have more extrovert people, more social going people, you get your energy by hanging out with other people and interacting with other people.
But in terms of introvert guys, we usually get our energy by thinking ourselves and spending, let's say, more private time for ourselves. So I was reading a book related to that. whether that team more advantages for me to become introvert or extrovert? Should I try to be more socialized? And so it was quite interesting for me.
There were some quite different insights and it reflected a lot on me. Power of introverts. Very good. And then rapid fire here for these last four. Quick answers if you can. Number two, is there a founder you're following or studying? Right now, no. Okay. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building a project?
Online tool for building Altlogic, using an online tool for building Altlogic. I think one of the key tools that we are using in terms of not exactly building, but communicating Slack, we are using extensively for communication and so on, and also the GitHub. Slack and GitHub. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
I think depends, but on average, I think five, four, five hours. And what's your situation? You mean married, single kids? Married with kids. How many kids? One. Ah, okay. And how old are you? He is four and a half. No, you, you. How old are you? Me, I'm 45. 45. Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20? I wish I had started optologic much earlier.
So I wish I had taken this journey much earlier. Okay. Guys, there you have it. Altogic got going in 2020. They are now in beta 1,000 users. He hustled with his co-founder to build it up toward his today. Raised a million dollars, seeded a 5 million valuation recently to move out of beta into public launch.
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