SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
How to raise $500,000 with no code, no customers, and not based in the US
16 Nov 2023
Chapter 1: How did Tony Hsu transition from corporate to startup?
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, Dashcom is a low-code tool.
He's got 10 paying customers that pay on average $200 per month. So he's doing 2000 a month in revenue up from nothing a year ago, because he just launched about a year ago. He's got, again, those 10 customers. He raised 500,000 bucks in seed funding at a 2.5-ish million valuation, sold under 20% of the business. His team is four folks today that are full-time, two contractors.
He's taking a risk while his spouse helps manage the family, also working a job as well. We'll see what happens. He jumped out of corporate, a publicly traded company, to go on this journey. And Tony, we're rooting for you, Dashcom.com. Hey, folks, my guest today is Tony Hsu. He's the former CTO of cChannel, which is listed on the TSC.
He's got 20-plus years developing code and now working on a tool called Dashcom.com, a low-code development platform. Tony, you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, thank you. Hi, everyone. My name's Tony. Yeah. Great to have you here, Tony. So give us a quick overview on the platform first. Is it built for any specific niche in terms of no code or is this for anybody?
Yeah, it's mainly designed for developers and product managers to develop internal tools for the company, for the enterprise. Very cool. Now, your website is in Japanese, so are you based in Japan? Sure. Yes, exactly. Amazing. What is the software industry like over there? Are a lot of SaaS founders like you, or are you the first? No, no, no, no, no way that I can be the first.
The SaaS industry is kind of bloomed in the past four to five years. And there are some SaaS unicorns in Japan and some public SaaS companies already reached, we say when we measure in ARR, they can reach $100 million. ARR. Yep. So it's kind of close. Tony, name three. What would you say are the top three software companies in Japan? Okay, so one is Luxury. So another one is called Smart HR.
Another one is called Kintone. Can you spell that one? K-I-N-T-O-N-E. Another one is Smart HR, which is focused on HR area. And another one is Luxury. R-A-K-U-S-E. L-A-K-U-S-L. Very cool. So the software industry is alive and well in Japan. You're building this no-code tool. I guess, help me understand. Low-code. Low-code. Okay, so not no-code.
You have to have some engineering background to use it then, huh? True. Okay. What are engineers paying on average per month to use your platform? Yeah, in Japan, there is a big background or big picture of the industry in Japan is the shortage for software engineer is extremely, extremely paid.
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Chapter 2: What is Dashcom and who is it designed for?
Yeah, right now, our average revenue from a company is around $200. Okay. So the average team size then is what? It's like a 15-person team using you, paying you $200 a month, something like that? Um, some big companies, some big enterprises, they, um, we are still small. We are still trying to find our product market fit.
So we have some, um, early adapters, um, some big companies, they, they are willing to pay a higher price to support their internal deploy, private deploy. So our average value is like, um, $200 per month per client. But for the middle value, it's around $100 to $150. Can I ask you what your largest customer pays you today? Not that it's a customer. Yeah.
Yeah, right now they are paying 100,000 yen, which is around $800 per month. Okay, that's pretty good. So you said 100,000 Japanese yen? Yes. Okay, so at today's conversion rate, that'll be about $665 per month on average. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, this is great. And how many total customers are you working with today?
So far, we started this company last March, and we are in our 19th month at this moment, but we are still trying to find the product and market fit in Japan. Right now, we have more than 10 clients, and we are trying to reach to our first 50 clients. That's great. So 10 customers, paying on average $200 per month means you're doing about $2,000 per month right now in revenue, right? Yes. Yes.
And just so we can measure growth rate, where were you exactly one year ago? Do you remember? Were you zero? Yeah, one year ago it was zero. So what month did you get your first paying customer? First paying customer was the contract that started on this February. We fixed the contract on January, but the payment started from February. That's great.
And everyone wants to know, obviously, how people find their first paying customer. How did you find your first paying customer? Oh, from my friends, from my circles, just referrals. I see. So it was maybe a former boss or former employee or something like that. Exactly. So what do you think your growth channel of the future will be?
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Chapter 3: What challenges does the software industry face in Japan?
How do you go from 10 customers to 100 customers? Well, that is the answer that we are searching for right now. We are doing some experiments. We are trying on different channels, and we are also trying to figure out which one is the best one for us, especially measured on our eyes. What are you testing, Tony? The first one is SEO, just inbound leads.
Another one is we tried some paid sales assistance from outside. But both of that doesn't work well at this moment. But we are trying to continue to do the SEO, and we're trying to find some other companies to help us on the sales side. I see. How many folks are full-time today at the company? Is it just you? No, at this moment, we have four full-time members and two contractors.
Okay, so six total. And are you the sole founder or do you have a co-founder? I'm the sole founder. That's awesome. So you own 100% of the company then, right? We already had funderized our seed, secured our seed around last year. So we have some seed investors. How much did you raise in the seed? In Japan, because it's in Japan, we raised about... uh, half a million USD. Okay.
Uh, half a million. Okay. So half a million USD would be about, what is that? Like 75 million Japanese yen. Yeah, exactly. So 500,000 United States dollars. And most folks in their seed rounds are selling 20% of their company. Were you in that same range? Oh, yeah, exactly. We sold less than 20%, but more than 50%.
Okay, so between 15 and 20, which means that your valuation was somewhere around $2.5 million, right? Yes. How were you able to get that valuation? Are you a second or third time founder? How did you convince investors to bet on you? Because my previous experience was a CTO in a publicly listed company. So I guess that worked a little bit. Yep. Now you're cool, right?
You don't have to wear suits anymore. You can wear a leather jacket and a white shirt. You know, it's a painful journey. Yeah. There's a lot of my listeners, you know, are married. They have a spouse and they're at a safe corporate job and they want to quit to launch their own thing. But the spouse is like, I don't know if I want you to do that. Do you have a spouse?
And what was their feedback on you quitting corporate for a startup? Yeah, I'm married and I have two kids, two young kids. And my wife is very supportive. So she's the golf for me, you know, he's a shelter for me. That's great. So how do you balance that? Does she sort of have a corporate job while you take the risk at a startup? Or how do you balance that?
You mean balance my current situation? Exactly, your current situation, right? So you're taking a big risk. You're managing a family. You have two people. Is she working full-time at a corporate job for consistency's sake, or how are you balancing all that? Oh, yeah, exactly. So she has to work in another company to make some stable income for this family.
So I took the risk, and we are aiming for... a better future. That's great. Okay, so you raised 500,000 bucks. How much revenue do you think you can grow to spending the 500,000 that you raised? Since we raised the money before we started the company. Yeah, before we wrote our first line of the code. So actually, right now, the situation is kind of difficult for us.
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