SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Team Communication App Breaks $122k/mo, Still Owns 100%
03 Apr 2021
Chapter 1: What inspired Dmytro Okunyev to create Chanty?
You seem shy about that. You should be proud. That's exciting.
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.
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Chapter 2: When did Dmytro first start coding for Chanty?
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.
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.
We want to see a real pervasive data culture, and then the rest flows behind that.
If you'd like to subscribe, go to getlatka.com. There, you'll find a private RSS feed that you can add to your favorite podcast listening tool, along with other subscriber-only content. No questions asked. No questions asked. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Demetrio Okunev. He's the founder and owner of Chanty, a team communication platform.
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. Demetrio, are you ready to take us to the top? Hi, nice to meet you guys. 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. We started this idea a while ago before that, but the first lines of code was done back then.
Yeah. Okay. So you launched in 2017 and how did you get your first, you know, 10, 20 customers?
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Chapter 3: How did Chanty acquire its first customers?
It's per year. Per year. Okay. That's really good for this price point. How have you made this so sticky?
Well, this team chat software, I mean, if they start, then they will use it definitely.
Why don't they leave? Why don't they go use a free version of Zoom or one of these other free tools popping up?
Well, you see, like, some tools are free, but actually for the companies, they're not free. So they also have, like, paid models. Basically, if you are, like, established business or if you are, like, a team, an existing company, more than 10 people, 10, 15 people, then any software will be not free for you. And then we have a really nice combination of software.
So we combine, like, Slack experience of chat. Then we combine project management experience of Kanban boards, like small trailer. And group video calls like Zoom has.
Yep. This makes sense, Dimitro. Can I ask you, when you get a new customer that doesn't come from an affiliate, on average, what are you paying to get that customer? What's your CAC? Yeah.
So one customer acquisition cost at this moment, like a week ago, it was $487.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and the lifetime value is much higher.
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Chapter 4: What is Chanty's current customer base and revenue?
I love that. How old are you? I'm 35. Wow. Okay. This is so cool.
What were your prior businesses? Sorry, one small correction. I own 80% of the company. 20% of the company is a pool of equities for our employees. Sorry for that.
An employee option pool? Yes. Got it. How much of your own personal capital have you invested in the business so far?
How much of my own personal capital? My first investment was half a million. And well, currently it's already almost working. So yeah, I think I will invest more.
So you've put in 500,000 today, but now you're profitable doing 120 grand a month. You don't necessarily need to put in more money unless you want to make some extra hires or something. Yeah. This is a great story. Why don't more founders do this?
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Chapter 5: What features drive free users to convert to paid accounts?
Why? I'm being facetious. Obviously, you can't fund your business this way if you don't have $500,000 of cash sitting around. But you had successful exits prior to this. Were they all in software?
By the way, I didn't have exits. Those companies are still mine.
So they're still there. What are those companies? What are the URLs?
So the main company is Digifico, digifico.com. This is the software development agency. Can you spell it?
D-I-G-I-F-I-C-O dot com. And so it's an agency model, and you use the agency revenue to launch the SaaS company. Exactly. This is actually what I wanted. That's incredible. How much revenue did the agency do last year? I would not disclose it, but it was a pretty big number. More than two million? Yes. Okay. How many people are employed at the agency? 120. And how do you split your time?
You have this fast-growing SaaS company. You have a big agency.
I'm only focusing on Chantian product. Basically, I mean, that company is 10 years old. All processes are established. I don't see any problem there. It's like working business. It's very good. They're doing fantastic stuff there for us and for our respective clients.
So
What would you value Chanty at today if you had to put a valuation on it?
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