SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
SaaS Startup Raises at $3m Valuation Helping Precious Metal Dealers Verify Buyers and Sellers
11 Mar 2022
Chapter 1: What is the SaaS startup's unique value proposition?
So Giancarlo, first customer less than 45 days ago. You got five today at $200 a month, about $1,000 a month in revenue today. Is that accurate? That's right. 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. Hey folks, my guest today is Giancarlo Di Leo.
He's an entrepreneur and seasoned technology entrepreneur, I should say, and investor who's been successful in building companies and products across many different industries.
With over 20 years of experience in building, he has held C-suite level roles, acted as an advisor and an investor, and his highlights include co-founding Vital Hub and CareKit Health, and now Trust Chain Global, the first end-to-end transaction platform for commodities. Giancarlo, are you ready to take us to the top?
Yes, definitely.
All right. So just to be clear, is the Web3 technology on blockchain or is it a SaaS play?
It started off as a SaaS play and we're moving into the Web3 technology play as well.
Okay. And when did you get going? What year was the first line of code written?
So we started in September of 2021.
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Chapter 2: How is the transition from SaaS to Web3 technology being managed?
Do they have any fraud or cases around them? What's their ranking out there in the world? Like, are they a legitimate business owner or operator out there? And then they go through our process of actually doing the deal, like, you know, signing. We have e-signing built in.
So signing your NDAs, signing proper documents, uploading your bank statements, which and things like that, that we can verify all of that kind of stuff. So they go through that entire process and our monthly fee allows them to manage the deal and do due diligence and do all of those.
Understood. And so what are they paying on average to use that all the things you just described?
So right now that's $199 a month that they use to do that. And then our second revenue model is on our escrow and paymaster services.
But current customers today on average are paying 200 bucks a month to use the technology.
That's right.
Yes. Okay. Got it. Got it. And so what month did you sign up your first customer? Was that just in February? That was just in February. Yeah. Okay. Got it. And so how many customers now today? A couple, four or five? We have five customers in total right now. Five. Okay. And so how have you found them, right? The precious metal example, where did you find that customer?
Well, so a few of us that have joined the company, like myself, I've been doing the commodities trading.
Wait, are you a founder?
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Chapter 3: What challenges does the startup face in the commodities market?
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 Giancarlo, first customer less than 45 days ago, you got five today at 200 bucks a month, about $1,000 a month in revenue today. Is that accurate? That's right. And talk to me more about the team. You mentioned your co-founders, just you two right now?
Right now, we're the two co-founders, but we have our core development team that we have, which is three people. And we have our small BD team who are about four people, a part of the BD team as well.
Okay. So nine people total full-time? That's right. And how are you paying for those folks? Obviously, there's not enough revenue to do that. So who's covering the bill?
So it's a combination of some of them are equity-based. We did do a small raise with N49P in Toronto, one of the investment groups.
When was that?
That was January that we announced it.
And how much did you raise there?
Right there, we raised $350,000 US.
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Chapter 4: How does the platform ensure buyer and seller verification?
Okay. Very good. On that note here, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book.
Oh, it was a business book. Oh, I was going by Lord of the Flies is my favorite book. I didn't realize it was Lord of the Flies.
Lord of the Flies works. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
One of my favorite CEOs has always been Steve Jobs.
Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building trust chain?
One of the tools we're using right now, Growth Genius.
Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? Six. And Giancarlo, what's your situation? Married, single kids?
Uh, married, uh, two kids, two kiddos.
Okay. And how old are you?
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