SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Launch AR Campaigns Easily, SaaS Hits $25k MRR Under 8 Months
01 Feb 2022
Chapter 1: What is the average price for AR marketing services?
The average price for each user is 180 euros per month. Our MRR today is about 20,000 euros per month.
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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Chapter 2: How is the current monthly recurring revenue structured?
He's the co-founder and CEO of Arial, the Italian startup that offers a SaaS AR marketing platform to customers. He's been helping companies in their digital transformation and innovation activities since 2015. Matteo, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yeah, I'm ready and thanks for this opportunity, Nathan.
You bet. Okay, so how are companies using AR in their marketing?
Yeah, Hariel is a software as a service platform that helps brands and creative agencies to easily launch engaging augmented reality marketing campaigns in a snap without the needs for coding skills or downloading apps. Our focus is AR marketing and
We merge augmented reality with the marketing side with a no-code platform that enables marketers to deliver this type of engaging experiences on the entire customer journey. And the platform is built with
the vision also to enable them to track data in order to understand if this campaign helped them to get a better ROI on, for example, their e-commerce or print media support and on their gamification channel.
Understood. So Pirates of the Caribbean, when they're launching, if they want to create a Snapchat filter with a pirate hat or something, they would use you to create that? Yeah. Very cool. Okay, help me understand what are these brands paying you on average per month to use the technology?
Aureole is built as a freemium software as a service model. It is possible to start with a free plan where you can start to have an initial approach with augmented reality. This type of account is totally for hobby and for personal use. With 29 euros per month, is it possible to start with a commercial plan?
And yeah, with different add-ons that you can buy inside the platform, it is possible to boost your account, for example, with white label, custom branding, or you can connect your custom domain and, for example, unlock advanced reports.
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Chapter 3: What is the role of augmented reality in marketing?
And then at that $150 average price you just told me, that means you guys are doing about $110,000 a month in revenue?
It depends because we have different types of targets on the customer. We have, for example, freelancers and small web agencies that use a very starting plan that comes for $150 per month as average price. But, of course, we have also big customers like enterprises or companies that... have a more powerful plan with Ariel in order to... Yeah, Matteo, I understand that.
That's why I was asking what the average price that was earlier, right? So are you saying that you're doing more than $100,000 a month in revenue or less?
More, more, more.
Oh, you're doing more. Okay, fantastic. So what are you guys at right now? About $150,000, $160,000 a month?
Yeah. Per month, the average is 250.
Oh, I see. Got it. Got it, got it, got it. So if I take 250 bucks a month times 750 customers, that's more like 180,000 bucks a month. That's more accurate. That's incredible. You've gone from nothing. You just launched last year to a pretty healthy monthly recurring revenue, right? Did you have any revenue exactly one year ago?
Yeah, we will close the 2021 with $300,000 of revenue.
Okay, so you finished last year with $300,000 in revenue?
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Chapter 4: How can brands effectively use AR for campaigns?
You can actually see a demo live instantly right now. Check it out. NathanLatka.com forward slash Flatfile. You're doing $25,000 a month today in revenue. What were you doing exactly one year ago?
One year ago, we'll close the 2020.
No, no, Mattia, in December of last year, how much revenue did you do? In December of last year, $5,000. Okay. So you've gone from $5,000 a month to $25,000 a month over the past 12 months. That's great growth. Have you done that all bootstrapped or did you raise capital?
Basically, we are a totally bootstrapped company. We closed the first seed round of $700,000 in November.
Sorry, how much?
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Chapter 5: What pricing models does the AR platform offer?
$700,000? $700,000. $700,000 in November. And that was your pre-seed round? The seed round. Seed round. Okay. And most people are selling somewhere between 10% and 20% of their business in their seed round. Were you guys in that range? Sorry, Nathan. Most people, when you raise equity, I mean, when you raise capital, you're selling equity, right? Most people are selling 10% to 20%.
Yeah, we raised totally via SAFE. So at the moment... Well, there's a cap.
There's a cap usually. Is it a 5 million cap?
We have a floor of 2.5 million floor and 8 million of a cap.
What do you mean 2.5 floor?
Because a safe works as a floor and the cap. The floor is the lower valuation and the cap is the higher valuation. Our higher valuation is $8 million today.
Sorry, I've seen a lot of safes. I very rarely see a minimum. You usually just see a cap and it looks like your cap was $8 million. How does the $2.5 million floor work?
Probably. I don't know if this financial instrument in Italy is different, but you need to specify a range between the comparable items.
Interesting. Maybe someone in the audience knows more about that.
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Chapter 6: How did the startup acquire its first customers?
What's it cost you to get a new $150 a month customer?
The cost of?
The cost to get a new customer.
It's quite different today to measure the customer acquisition cost. I can tell you that at the moment on Google, our cost per lead is about $10 per lead for
Okay, and you need about six leads because you convert 15% to paid. So you spend about $60 to get a new paid account, something like that. Yeah. Interesting. Very cool. Great story here, Mattia. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite book.
Favorite book. Favorite book. I don't know the exact title in English. In Italy, the name of the book is Cashvertising.
Okay. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? A CEO you're studying. Is there a CEO or a founder that you're following?
A CEO, yeah. I love Elon Musk.
Number three, what's your favorite online tool?
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