SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Starred Looking to Raise $4m Series A for HR Tech
10 Oct 2020
Chapter 1: What is Stard and what does it do?
So it's around 2 million right now and it's split equally amongst the two. What we did see happen also with COVID-19, that also in the legacy business, because it's less focus, we saw a higher churn and in our focus we're still growing.
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And you'll get interviews three weeks earlier from founders, thinkers, and people I find interesting. Like Eric Wan, 18 months before he took Zoom public.
Chapter 2: How did COVID-19 affect the company's business?
We got to grow faster. Minimum is 100% over the past several years. Or bootstrap founders like Vivek of QuestionPro. When I started the company, it was not cool to raise. Or Looker CEO Frank Bean before Google acquired his company for $2.6 billion.
Chapter 3: What pivot did Stard make two years ago?
We want to see a real pervasive data culture, and then the rest flows behind that.
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Chapter 4: What is the pricing structure for Stard's services?
Now look, I never want money to be the reason you can't listen to episodes. On the checkout page, you'll see an option to request free access. I grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Lars Van Weeren.
Chapter 5: How many customers does Stard currently have?
He comes from an entrepreneur family and had his first car cleaning business at the age of 13. He even studied small business and entrepreneurship. And after working at a startup and Google, he founded his current company, Stard, with two Rs. Two years ago, Stard made a pivot into the people experience, which means measuring feedback from higher candidates to retire employees.
Lars has two other pre-revenue startups called Vesper and June, which we'll dive into. All right, Lars, you ready to take us to the top? Absolutely, let's go. Okay, so it starred your main gig in terms of which one you make the most money from?
Yeah, so maybe the other two are more a joke. Those are my two daughters.
Chapter 6: What are the revenue and profit figures for Stard?
So it's a five-year-old and a two-year-old daughter. So I often refer to them as my pre-revenue.
Oh, that went way over my head. I was just reading your bio. I had no idea. Okay, so you have two kids. Start is your thing.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Chapter 7: What funding has Stard raised so far?
Okay, so walk me through sort of what people pay for when they pay for Start. What are you selling?
Yeah, so it's a typical software as a service. So we pivoted away from client satisfaction, now fully focusing on both candidate experience and employee engagement. And if you look at the candidate experience side, it's more or less 10,000 ACVs, so 10,000 per year. And employee engagement is more like 20,000 per year.
Okay, got it. So last time you came on, this was back in November of 2018, if you remember, you said you had about 250 customers paying about $7,000 per year. Now you're saying minimum is more like $10,000 per year. Is that right? Yeah.
Chapter 8: What are the future plans for Stard's growth and funding?
Okay. And how many customers are you working with today?
Yeah, so we divide our business now in more the legacy business, so the customer satisfaction business, and that's still the majority of our revenue. So that's around 150 clients, and we have around 70, 80 clients in the new focus.
Oh, it's okay. Hold on. So break that down for me. The old focus is what?
Yeah, so that's really customer satisfaction. And I think I made a first-time founder mistake by going too broad. So we tried to fix every problem with feedback out there. But essentially, we tried to be there for everyone. So we were there for no one. And two years ago, we sat down because every day we saw another competitor. And we were a tiny fish. It fished in a big ocean.
And we thought it's better to become like a big fish in a small pond. So we sat down and we decided to fully focus on candidate experience, also because there's little competition. And that's our way in also for the whole people experience. So from hire to retire, the feedback.
Okay, got it. So you've got about 250-ish customers today between both lines of business? Yeah, that's correct. And what does that add up to in terms of total MRR last month?
So it's around 2 million right now. And it's split equally amongst the two. What we did see happen also with COVID-19, that also in the legacy business, because it's less focused, We saw a higher churn, and in our focus, we're still growing.
Got it. So you're doing about $170,000 per month in revenue or a $2 million run rate. Yeah, something like that. So, I mean, how do you think about that, right? Because that means you're about flat since when you last came on almost a year and a half ago, right? But have you bootstrapped or have you raised?
No, so we're now actually making money. So the last time we spoke, we were burning a lot of money. And I think that's also one of the pain points when making a pivot. You really need to fight your way. When you take one step back before you can take two forwards, you need to do it all by yourself. So we're doing it ourselves right now. So while the total revenue is flat in a way,
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