SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
x0pa Breaks $3m Revenue, Grows 6x selling B2B Hiring tool
17 Jan 2021
Chapter 1: What revenue target did x0pa set for this year?
Our target was 3 million. We finished at 3 million and we were super excited. We are gunning for 9 million this year.
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Chapter 2: How did x0pa achieve a $3 million revenue milestone?
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. 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 Nina Suri.
She's the founder and CEO of Zopa. This is her third venture. She's been an entrepreneur since 1997, started her first company with an investment of $1,000 to make it a multi-million dollar company across five continents. She pivoted to the digital platform in 2017 and is the recipient of over 23 awards, including Female Business Personality of the Year Entrepreneur in Asia.
Nina, you ready to take us to the top? absolutely nathan excited to get to get started you bet so you came on about a year ago zopa.com if you guys want to follow along it's an ai sass hiring platform nina walk us through what you guys are doing
So we work with government, we work with enterprise, and we work with academia to help promote objective hiring using AI and ML. So making it objective, making it unbiased, and taking it to scale. So those are the main key features.
And what are customers paying you for this product today?
So it's a SaaS platform. It's a subscription. Typically, the subscription can be anywhere from one year to five years, depending on the clients.
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Chapter 3: What role does AI play in x0pa's hiring platform?
That's correct. And what is the customer that's paying you the most? How much did they pay you in 2020?
So we have a client which has the highest that we've got is half a million per client. So yeah.
That's great. And how many resumes did they process last year?
It wasn't just related to the resumes, it was also about the workflow. It was a completely 100 percent automated workflow right from acquiring the application, taking them through automated testing, taking them through automated hybrid assessment, And bringing it to the point where the recruiters can then engage with the candidate. It was a logistics firm.
So it wasn't just to do with the resumes. It was also to do with the automation and the workflow.
Now, when you came on back about a year and a half ago, actually, this was 2019, you had about 32 customers. How many customers today?
Yes. So we've got more than 300 customers now. Yes. And we had a great year. Yes. I love it.
So sorry, read me some of those numbers on that sheet.
Sure, sure. So we've got three products. So one is the AI recruiter, which goes end-to-end hiring. We also have an assessment platform called Room. Room is a hybrid assessment, which does video interviewing, as well as multiple choice questions, essay type questions, and so on. again, very, very AI-enabled to do cognitive analysis, transcriptions, and so on.
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Chapter 4: What pricing model does x0pa use for its SaaS product?
trying to raise the capital. So we just decided to do a quick one on convertible notes. It's a kiss note. And we are now raising our series A. So hopefully the convertible note will be converted into shares as well.
Oh, great. Now, how much are you targeting to raise right now?
Between $3 to $5 million. Okay.
And what valuation are you targeting?
We're targeting $30 million.
Three, zero or one, three, three, zero targeting. And what are early conversations sound like? Do you think you'll be able to get essentially a 10 X multiple on your 3 million run rate valuation wise?
Yes. I mean, look, I mean, the thing is that the numbers are very, very promising. We have a very solid pipeline. We are on track to do 9 million this year. So from that point of view, if the investors are smart, they're going to get the best return for their money. So we are already sitting on 1.2 million ARR for next year, 2021. What does that mean you're sitting on it?
It means it's all the spillover, right, from the previous year. So the annual recurring revenue for 2021. So those are already in the bag. So you already got that happening. And 2022, we are already on a million ARR.
Is that because you're signing multi-year contracts?
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Chapter 5: How many customers does x0pa have now compared to a year ago?
Oh, I'm 53.
Okay, last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?
What was my wish at 20?
Something you wish you knew when you were 20.
Gosh, oh. I can't think of anything, Nathan. You caught me there. But no, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and my wish came true. And I'm so glad I did what I did.
Guys, there you have it. Zopa.com growing exponentially. It just passed a $3 million run rate up from just $500,000 run rate about a year and a half ago. They've done it all just pretty capital and resourceful. $2.5 million raised. So they do more revenue than the total amount they've raised. We love that trend. end. They went from 32 customers to 300.
They're now raising a $3 to $5 million round on a $30 million valuation. That's a 10x revenue multiple, but they have plenty of runway in the bank. Good through June. We'll see what happens across their three product lines as they scale their sales team. Anita, thank you for taking us to the top.
Thank you, Nathan. Always a pleasure to talk to you.
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