SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
My Favorite Bootstrapped SaaS Founder ($122k MRR)
12 Jul 2021
Chapter 1: What inspired Dmytro Okunyev to create Chanty?
Well, that's exciting, but, you know, the market is really big and we see lots of opportunities. So, yeah, we have ambitious goals, by the way.
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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He's the founder and owner of Chanti, a team communication platform.
Chapter 2: How did Chanty acquire its first customers?
He started twin with the idea of a chat app back in 2017, and then realized that team communication should be made easier, more flexible, and powerful, so that it includes chat, audio, and video. Dmitry, are you ready to take us to the top? Hi, nice to meet you guys. Nice to meet you. Thanks for making time. I appreciate it.
So tell me a little bit, I mean, this is a, you know, team communication is obviously a hot space. When did you write the first line of code for Chanti? I think it was back in 2017 when we started.
We started this idea a while ago before that, but the first lines of code was done back then, yeah.
Chapter 3: What is the current customer count and revenue for Chanty?
Okay, so you launched in 2017 and how did you get your first, you know, 10, 20 customers?
First, 10, 20 customers we got, I think, early 2018. And basically, that were demo customers. We made a lot of marketing, even without product, just our landing page with our email grabber. But we do lots of social media and content marketing, and basically that content marketing gets us leads.
We started from writing articles, like comparison of the existing software back then, and quickly gained some thought leadership reputation in the field.
So yeah, people were eager to try out our software. That's great. Now, do you remember how many customers you signed up in 2018?
Um, I think that year alone, we got somewhere around 200.
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Chapter 4: What features drive free users to convert to paid accounts?
Okay. Like the product was not publicly available.
And how many customers do you have today?
Well, right now we are reached already like 20K. So it's under there.
You have, you have 20,000 paying customers. Paying customers, we have around 1K. Okay. What's the 20,000 number? Is that free users?
Chapter 5: How does Chanty handle customer acquisition costs?
Yeah. The rest are free users. Okay. So what's the number one reason a free user converts to a paid account?
Well, basically, we have natural limitations, just the amount of seats in the team or members in the team. And then, of course, we have a business plan with some nice features which are not available on our free plan. We are really no mad company.
We are having our video calling solution only for our business customers just because we are paying a lot for our servers and maintaining this infrastructure. That's why this is a paid feature.
Yeah, people have to pay you if they want group audio calls, one-to-one video calls, group video calls, screen sharing, dedicated support, these kinds of things.
Chapter 6: What strategies contribute to Chanty's growth and customer retention?
Yeah. And so when the thousand number you just gave me, is that a user, one user or like the number of users using it? Or is that the number of businesses? And they have a lot of users. Businesses and they have lots of, I see. Okay. So, so on average, when a business signs up for you, how many seats are they typically purchasing?
Well, they sign up usually really small. It's just another focus group on the company. There are like three, four or five users.
Chapter 7: How does Dmytro manage his time between Chanty and his agency?
But eventually our average member amount for one team is 47 and a half.
47 and a half team members? Yeah. I don't want to be the one that gets cut in half. Okay. So, I mean, can I then take an average? Can I take 47 team members times three bucks a seat? Does the average paid customer pay you about 140 bucks a month?
So, yeah, if I'm not mistaken, our current minimum paycheck is around $122.
$122.
Chapter 8: What are Dmytro's future plans for Chanty and its valuation?
Okay. And can I multiply those? Can I take 1,000 customers times $122 a month? You're doing about $120,000 a month in revenue? Of course. You seem shy about that. You should be proud. That's exciting.
Yeah.
Well, that's exciting, but the market is really big and we see lots of opportunities.
So yeah, we have ambitious goals, by the way. Well, I like ambition. I mean, talk to me, though, about current growth. If you're doing $122,000 a month today in revenue, what were you doing a year ago? Do you remember?
Yeah. So the last year, we got much less. If I'm not mistaken, we closed the year around $600,000. Okay.
Yeah.
So you were doing like $50,000 a month about a year ago, something like that.
Yeah, and a lot of our users came from the channel sales. So of course, our partners and affiliates, they took part of that.
How many affiliates have you paid at least $1 or $2 in commissions?
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