Founder Interview
How Abstrakt Went From $5,500 to $170K in Monthly Revenue in Five Months (Interview with Founder Greg Reffner)
- Interview Date
- March 24, 2022
- Interviewee
- Greg ReffnerFounder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Monthly Recurring Revenue (March 2022)
$170,000
Customers (Logos) (March 2022)
113
Avg Contract Value (2022)
$1,500 per month
Year Founded
2020
ARR at End of 2021
$60,000
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Greg Reffner during his interview with Nathan Latka recorded in March 2022 and represent a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Abstrakt’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways
- 01Abstrakt had 113 paying customer logos as of March 2022
- 02Monthly recurring revenue reached approximately $170,000 in March 2022, up from $5,500 at end of 2021
- 03Pricing is $100 per user per month with an average of about 15 to 16 seats per customer
- 04The company launched its production-ready product on April 1, 2021 and closed its first paying customer three weeks later
- 05Abstrakt raised a $130,000 pre-seed round in 2020 at a $4,000,000 valuation cap
- 06The full team consists of 2 US employees, 2 SEO contractors in India, and a 9-person offshore development team in Indonesia
- 07Abstrakt ranked above Gong for the keyword conversational intelligence software through organic SEO and blog content
- 08The company built close to 60 blog posts and recorded 40-plus podcasts to drive inbound traffic
- 09Greg Reffner invested $60,000 of personal savings to fund the initial proof of concept
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly Recurring Revenue (March 2022) | $170,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Customers (Logos) (March 2022) | 113 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Pricing per Seat (2022) | $100 per user per month | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Average Seats per Customer (2022) | 15 to 16 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Average Contract Value (2022) | $1,500 per month | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| ARR (2021) | $60,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Monthly Recurring Revenue (December 2021) | $5,500 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Pre-Seed Raise (2020) | $130,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Pre-Seed Valuation Cap (2020) | $4,000,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Seed Raise (2021-2022, incl. Startup Showdown prize) | $620,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Founder Personal Investment (2020) | $60,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| US Full-Time Employees (2022) | 2 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Offshore Dev Team (Indonesia) (2022) | 9 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| SEO Contractors (India) (2022) | 2 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Combined Pay for India SEO Team (2022) | $1,000 per month | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Offshore Dev Team Monthly Cost (2022) | $12,000 to $25,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Blog Posts Published (2022) | 60 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Podcasts Recorded (2022) | 40+ | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Sales Cycle (2022) | 7 days | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Year Founded | 2020 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Abstrakt finished 2021 with $60,000 in ARR, equating to roughly $5,500 in monthly recurring revenue in December 2021. By March 2022, monthly recurring revenue had grown to approximately $170,000, representing nearly all of the company's revenue being added in just four to five months.
Customers
The company launched its production-ready product on April 1, 2021, closed its first paying customer three weeks later, and grew to 113 customer logos by March 2022. Greg credited a seven-day average sales cycle, driven by strong inbound demand from organic SEO, as the key engine behind this rapid customer acquisition.
Team
Abstrakt operated with just 2 full-time US employees at the time of the interview, supplemented by 2 SEO contractors in India paid a combined $1,000 per month and a 9-person offshore development team in Indonesia through Beeso Studio costing between $12,000 and $25,000 per month. This lean structure allowed the company to preserve equity and maintain capital efficiency.
Funding
Greg invested $60,000 of personal savings to fund the initial proof of concept, then raised a $130,000 pre-seed round in 2020 at a $4,000,000 valuation cap. A seed round followed that Greg put at $620,000 in total, most of it closed in December 2021 and the balance won at the Startup Showdown competition hosted by Panoramic Ventures, which took a small equity stake he declined to size.
Growth Strategy
Organic SEO and Inbound Content Machine
Greg and his team spent roughly a year and a half building content to rank organically for high-intent keywords such as real time call coaching software, call coaching software, and conversational intelligence software. By March 2022, Abstrakt had surpassed Gong in search rankings for conversational intelligence software, driving a steady stream of inbound leads without paid acquisition.
Blog Content and Podcast Production
The team published close to 60 blog posts and recorded more than 40 podcasts to build topical authority and support SEO rankings. Greg described this as building the optics of looking bigger than you actually are, a playbook he observed at a previous employer called Allbound.
Hiring SEO Specialists Who Track Google Algorithm Changes
Greg recruited two contractors in India specifically because they tracked every major Google algorithm change, of which there are roughly 13 significant ones per year. He found them through LinkedIn by asking his network who lived and breathed Google search algorithm changes, then hired them on a contracting basis and got out of their way.
Short Sales Cycle Enabled by Product Differentiation
Abstrakt maintained a seven-day average sales cycle because most prospects had never seen real-time call coaching before and immediately understood the value. Greg noted that no one else was solving the problem in real time, which reduced friction and accelerated deal velocity.
Capital-Efficient Offshore Development
Rather than hiring a technical co-founder in the US, Greg partnered with Beeso Studio, a startup studio based in Omaha with a development team in Indonesia, to build the product at a fraction of the cost. This approach preserved equity and allowed the company to reach a production-ready product within about a year of starting.
Best Quotes
“As one of my first customers described it, Gong is like finding the black box after the plane's already gone down. Tells you what went wrong, tells you what happened, but it does nothing to actually kind of stop losing the opportunity.”
“We started almost two years ago to the week. So early March of twenty twenty.”
“So ultimately, myself, my founding team, our background is in sales and marketing, so we did what we knew how to do. We generated an inbound marketing machine. We spent a year and a half building content so we could rank organically when people are searching for competition.”
“I can't take any credit for it, Nathan. I found people that are better than me and got out of their way. And I think if I could give anybody starting a company a piece of advice, it would be, as a founder, you've got to put your ego aside, and you have to understand where your gaps are.”
“I mean, we've written, I think, close to 60 blog posts. We have 40 plus podcasts built or recorded. So we are generating a significant amount of content, Nathan, to help kind of bolster all of that.”
“I was fortunate, Nathan, where I saw I was part of Acton Software, then went to a company called Allbound. And I saw what Allbound did, where they invested in inbound content and creating the optics of looking bigger than you actually are.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured Abstrakt at an early and fast-moving moment in March 2022, when the company had just 113 customers and was generating approximately $170,000 in monthly recurring revenue after only a few months of meaningful growth. The figures here reflect what Greg Reffner reported on that recording date and are a historical snapshot. Visit the Abstrakt company profile on GetLatka for current metrics and any updates since this interview.
View Abstrakt’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Greg's Background
- 1:06How Gong Inspired Abstrakt's Real-Time Approach
- 2:45How Abstrakt Uses Google's NLP in Real Time
- 6:36Founding Timeline and Personal Investment
- 8:16Pre-Seed Raise and MVP Launch
- 9:33Seed Round and Startup Showdown Competition
- 12:00Current Customers and Monthly Revenue
- 13:14Inbound SEO Strategy and Content Machine
- 14:21Building the SEO Team and Hiring Philosophy
- 17:43Offshore Development Team and Beeso Studio
- 19:42Playbook from Allbound and Content Volume
- 21:26Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Sleep
- 23:13Outro and Key Takeaways
Introduction and Greg's Background
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Greg Reffner. He's one of the very first power users of conversional intelligence as an account executive. He fell in love with how technology enabled his success. As Abstrakt leader, his vision and why is to help every sales rep and leader avoid the pain of missing their number. You can follow along at his website. It's Abstrakt, spelled abstrakt,.ai. Greg, you ready to take us to the top?
Greg Reffner
00:22>> Yes, sir. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Nathan.
Nathan Latka
00:24Alright. Who who were you working for? Were you were you were selling these you know, using these conversational intelligence tools?
Greg Reffner
00:29>> Yeah. So I was working for a company called Acton Software back when marketing automation first kinda took off, back when HubSpot was becoming that thing. And Acton was a very a company that was known for being early adopter of technology. And so we we started using Gong actually back when they had, like, a football player on their website, on their homepage. I think we were one of the first handful users of Gong, like, seven years ago.
Nathan Latka
00:56Wow. Yeah. No. No. Act On well. It makes tons of sense there. So you were using Gong. So, I guess, help me understand now what you're building today as it relates to what you learned from using Gong at Act On.
How Gong Inspired Abstrakt's Real-Time Approach
Greg Reffner
01:06>> Yeah. So with Gong, it's an amazing tool. They've obviously done very well for themselves. As one of my first customers described it, Gong is like finding the black box after the plane's already gone down. Tells you what went wrong, tells you what happened, but it does nothing to actually kind of stop losing the opportunity. And I wanted to do something about that. And so with Abstrakt, we're a real time conversational intelligence software where based upon what
01:33>> you're telling me, Nathan, as my customer or prospect, Abstrakt is in real time telling me what I should be saying, what questions I should be asking, how to handle those objections so that I don't lose the opportunity. And we do all that through natural language processing, a little bit of machine learning, and some some fancy algorithms.
Nathan Latka
01:53Anytime someone comes on and mentions machine learning algorithms, my follow-up question is always the same. Both of those tools are useless unless you spend a lot of time training them and you have a very large dataset to feed into them, which usually requires someone to do a lot of freaking work. Have you figured out a way to have someone be able to get value from this and avoid having to do all that upfront work? If so,
02:11what is it?
Greg Reffner
02:12>> Yeah. So no secret. We just found a creative way to tap into Google's library and data already. And so typically, the way most companies tap into Google's library and natural language processing capabilities results in the capabilities not being able to be used in real time. And so we, as one of my engineers would say, stumbled into a creative way to tap into that and access that data in real time.
How Abstrakt Uses Google's NLP in Real Time
Nathan Latka
02:45Yeah. You're talking about, like, the natural language AI from from Google. Right?
Greg Reffner
02:48>> Yep. Correct.
Nathan Latka
02:49But but the question still is the same. Right? For every company let me just be very specific for a second. If you're trying to sell mode.com, which competes with Looker, maybe Mode knows that because they're selling to developers, don't say the word pricing until at least minute twenty five. But if you're selling to a CMO, maybe you're a company like HubSpot selling to someone, you need to say pricing in the first three minutes. Who's training the
03:13system to know twenty five minutes versus three minutes?
Greg Reffner
03:16>> Got it. Great. Okay. Thank you for clarifying, Nathan. So candidly, we're too early in our dataset to have that information. We suspect in about two years, we'll be able to start making those recommendations to our customers based upon the data that we have. But right now, the system is configurable per customer. So if you're a Looker, you're configuring the system to say what you want a rep to say when it hears x y z objection or
03:43>> question.
Nathan Latka
03:44I see.
Greg Reffner
03:44>> And so as our customers are configuring the system, it's helping us build that dataset to then be able to, here in the future, kinda start to make those recommendations.
Nathan Latka
03:54Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders. But imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually, saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you connect
04:17your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna
04:42get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here, right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity And red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is
05:03not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're
05:29going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right, we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but
05:51if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into
06:17the interview. Okay. That makes complete sense to me. So what are companies paying you on average per month to use your technology?
Greg Reffner
06:23>> $100 per user per month, and our average customer has about fifteen, sixteen number 16 seats in the in the product.
Nathan Latka
06:30Okay. Got it. So that's about $1,500 a month on average.
Greg Reffner
06:33>> Yes, sir.
Nathan Latka
06:33Interesting. When did you start building this? What year?
Founding Timeline and Personal Investment
Greg Reffner
06:36>> So we started almost two years ago to the week. So early March of twenty twenty.
Nathan Latka
06:44Okay. 2020. Got it. And how did you fund the MVP?
Greg Reffner
06:50>> Great question. So convinced my wife to let me take a decent chunk of our savings account out and kind of get a proof of concept built. And with that proof of concept, I went and raised a small kind of friends and family angel round from local investors here in Arizona. And that got me to my MVP that we launched on 04/01/2021.
Nathan Latka
07:15Okay. Get real with me here because everyone goes through this. Right? It's the conversation with the spouse going, baby, how much are we gonna put into this startup? And and they're going, honey, I'm working a full time gig to support this crazy idea you're working on. Like, if it doesn't work, I'm gonna be pissed. How what how much was it? Are we talking, like, 10 k or, like, 1,000?
Greg Reffner
07:32>> $60,000.
Nathan Latka
07:3360. Okay. Interesting. Yeah.
Greg Reffner
07:34>> And was that
Nathan Latka
07:35meaningful for you guys? Like, was it gonna be stressful if you lost $60,000, or is that like play money for you?
Greg Reffner
07:41>> So we so what's funny is at the time, my wife was pregnant with our first son,
07:48>> we knew we wanted to have a second child, and so she's now pregnant with our second child.
Nathan Latka
07:54Congratulations.
Greg Reffner
07:55>> Thank you. And so she's a full time mom. And so, yeah, it wasn't insignificant for us to make that investment because if I lost it, that lost our cushion, that lost that risk potentially having my wife go back to work and not be able to take care of our children. So it's super stressful. I mean, it's but the
Pre-Seed Raise and MVP Launch
Greg Reffner
08:16>> way I kind of explained it to her, was like, hey, you spent $60,000 on your college education that you don't use anymore, so I get to use $60,000 for Abstrakt.
Nathan Latka
08:23That's so funny. Okay. And how many how many weeks or months did it take you to get the MVP to a point where you could sell it?
Greg Reffner
08:30>> So what's crazy is we got v one of our product out on April 1, and we weren't expecting revenue until, like, October, November 2021.
Nathan Latka
08:40Clear.
Greg Reffner
08:41>> That's, like, five weeks from start from first line of code to launch.
08:44>> No. So we spent about a year. So March 2020 next April. To to next April 2021. So it took us about a year to get the product to the place where we were like, let's go get give it to customers. And on April 1, we got, you know, production ready product, and our plan was to go out and just give it to, like, beta users. Like, give it to people. Hey. Go use this. See what you
09:07>> think about it. We weren't expecting revenue for at least a handful of months. Ended up closing our first customer and getting our first dollar of revenue three weeks after launching the product. And it was kinda crazy when we weren't expecting it, and we actually kinda grew it at a nice organic pace that allowed us to bring our customers last year while still hardening the product, developing our roadmap before we went out and closed our real seed
09:29>> round of funding last year and then one startup showdown a couple weeks ago.
Seed Round and Startup Showdown Competition
Nathan Latka
09:33Interesting. Okay. So hold on. 60 k personal money, you raised a pre seed in 2020. How much was the pre for?
Greg Reffner
09:40>> A $130,000.
Nathan Latka
09:42Okay. And was that sort of typical 3 or $4,000,000 cap?
Greg Reffner
09:46>> So we had a 4,000,000 value cap on that from defensive value round. Yep.
Nathan Latka
09:50Yeah. That makes tons of sense. And then you did the seed round in 2021. How much did you raise there?
Greg Reffner
09:55>> So we raised with the winnings that we just won three weeks ago in Atlanta. So we raised $620,000 total.
Nathan Latka
10:04Okay. When before the prize money, when was the other money closed?
Greg Reffner
10:08>> December of last year.
Nathan Latka
10:10Okay. Okay. Got it. And and the if the prize money was $120,000, that means you raised about 500 k. Now was that at, like, the higher was that, what, $67,000,000 valuation? Or
Greg Reffner
10:19>> So we actually did a little bit less. I wanted we were still kinda risky in my mind, and I felt like it wasn't really fair to go out and try to raise that valuation on the value cap. So we did a we kept it at $4,000,000. I essentially just decreased the interest rate a little bit and kept the value cap the same.
Nathan Latka
10:37That makes a lot of sense. Okay. Then you just won this competition, which is great. You give up no equity, I assume. Right?
Greg Reffner
10:43>> So they take a small percentage of equity.
Nathan Latka
10:45Just how much?
Greg Reffner
10:47>> So I can't discuss the the details of it with you, Nathan.
Nathan Latka
10:51What's the name what was the name of the competition?
Greg Reffner
10:54>> Startup Showdown hosted by Panoramic Ventures.
Nathan Latka
10:57Oh, interesting. So there's base, like, if you do they only take equity if you win, or even if you enter and don't win, they still take equity? Just if you win. Okay. Panoramic Ventures. Okay. Interesting. And why did you decide to enter and spend your time on that? Obviously, time is very valuable as a startup founder.
Greg Reffner
11:15>> Honestly, I I entered that competition in May of last year. I got told that two things. One, they didn't think we could actually build a stable product that people would buy. And two, they didn't think we could go out and get customers. And so I had this kind of, I guess, chip on my shoulder, and so I was like, you know what? I saw a LinkedIn thing post about it. Was like, I'm gonna go apply to
11:38>> this. Let's see if I can kinda prove these guys wrong. And so the only reason I entered it was honestly to, I guess, prove them wrong.
Nathan Latka
11:47So what so what sport did you play in college?
Greg Reffner
11:50>> So soccer, baseball, and snowboarding.
Nathan Latka
11:52There you go. This guy's competitive as hell, and that explains that dynamic.
Greg Reffner
11:57>> Yes. Don't don't tell me I can't do something.
Current Customers and Monthly Revenue
Nathan Latka
12:00Yeah. That's exactly right. Okay. Interesting. Alright. Now you you got your first customers then. How many customers are you serving now today?
Greg Reffner
12:07>> A 113.
Nathan Latka
12:08That's a 113 seats or logos?
Greg Reffner
12:10>> 113 logos.
Nathan Latka
12:12Wow. Okay. I mean, so then I mean, can I take a 113 times $1,500 a month? You're doing a $170,000 a month in revenue?
Greg Reffner
12:19>> Simple math. Well done, Nathan.
Nathan Latka
12:22I mean, that that's pretty incredible growth.
Greg Reffner
12:24>> Yeah. I mean, it's been fun. Right? Like, it's what's crazy is most people don't know this technology exists. And so when they see it, there it's we have seven day sales cycle. So it's generally like, okay. Let's let's get started because they no one else is solving this problem.
Nathan Latka
12:43Mhmm. But just to be clear, mean, that's really rapid growth. Right? What did you do what was your run rate in like like, what did you finish 2021 with?
Greg Reffner
12:50>> 60,000 in ARR.
Nathan Latka
12:52Yeah. So, like, your monthly recurring revenue in December. So this would have been four or five months ago is what?
Greg Reffner
12:57>> $5,500, $5,000.
Nathan Latka
13:01Four months ago. So you've basically added all your revenue in the past four or five months?
Greg Reffner
13:05>> Yes, sir.
Nathan Latka
13:06Well, okay. This is crazy. So how did you I guess, how did you land those first 113 customers? At at a pretty high price point, I would say, for a start up.
Inbound SEO Strategy and Content Machine
Greg Reffner
13:14>> Yeah. So ultimately, myself, my founding team, our background is in sales and marketing, so we did what we knew how to do. We generated an inbound marketing machine. We spent a year and a half building content so we could rank organically when people are searching for competition. Name name
Nathan Latka
13:33name two or three of those. What are the search terms in Google?
Greg Reffner
13:37>> So real time call coaching software, call coaching software, conversational intelligence software, sales coaching software. I think we just got to page one on that. I think, yeah, conversational intelligence software, we just passed Gong in our rankings for that keyword. And so it was just building out kind of a steady generate an inbound marketing machine, and we knew I knew two years ago that I needed to start that process then in order to have it impact us
14:07>> today.
Nathan Latka
14:08Yeah, Greg. Sorry. You have some sort of genius here that I have to dig to find out because you're above HubSpot, Gong, and a lot of people for conversational intelligence software. So how are you so good at SEO? What what's the secret sauce here?
Building the SEO Team and Hiring Philosophy
Greg Reffner
14:21>> I can't take any credit for it, Nathan. I found people that are better than me and got out of their way. And I think if I could give anybody starting a company a piece of advice, it would be, as a founder, you've got to put your ego aside, and you have to understand where your gaps are. And I couldn't tell you the secret sauce in terms of how we got there. I was just told, hey. Go
14:43>> write the content. We'll tweak it. We'll edit it. We'll put in the meta tags. We'll do the keyword saturation. And I was like, cool. So I built a team that knew what they were doing, I got out of their way.
Nathan Latka
14:54Where did you find those people? And was it one person or how many or an agency or what?
Greg Reffner
14:58>> Yeah, so there's a couple different people.
15:02>> Kind of a mix between knowing people. So Claire Dobson, our director of marketing, she worked at an agency. She's the wife of one of my best friends, and so I just kind of spent time talking with her about what she knew and what she had done, and when she explained what she was capable of, brought her on board. And then I met a couple people actually through some connections out in India that kind of self proclaimed
15:26>> nerds and geeks around Google and SEO and brought them on board on a contracting basis. And like I said,
Nathan Latka
15:32got out of the India up did you find them on Upwork or Fiverr or what?
Greg Reffner
15:36>> Through LinkedIn, just kind of reaching out to people and was like, hey. Do you know anybody that does this, this, and this?
Nathan Latka
15:42What were those? What were the this is?
Greg Reffner
15:44>> Who's who who do you know that lives and breathes paying attention to Google search algorithm changes? Google makes hundreds of those changes a year, about 13 major changes a year. Who do you know that could tell you tell me every single time Google makes an impactful change to their algorithm? I wanna talk to that person, and I wanna bring them on board, and I wanna hire them.
Nathan Latka
16:07Yep. So you hired these two folks in India full time?
Greg Reffner
16:11>> Yep. Correct.
Nathan Latka
16:12Oh, wow. How big is the team today?
Greg Reffner
16:14>> So we have just two people here in United States, two people in India, and then I have my offshore, I guess, yeah, offshore development team in in Indonesia is nine people.
Nathan Latka
16:27I love how you're building this. This is so cool. Okay. Tell me about the the offshore dev team. How did you find them?
Greg Reffner
16:34>> So I'm not a technical person, Nathan. I've become a maybe an elementary level technical person over the past two years. But when I started Abstrakt, I was trying to find a technical co founder. And everybody I talked to told me one of two things, like, no, this can't be built. The technology doesn't exist. Or two, I can't build it with the amount of money you want to build it for. And so I went to this website
16:59>> called Co Founder's Lab, where I ended up finding a gentleman by the name of John Bunting out of Omaha, Nebraska, of all places. And he started a startup studio called Beeso Studio. I
Nathan Latka
17:10purchased What was it called?
Greg Reffner
17:12>> Beeso Studio.
Nathan Latka
17:13Okay.
Greg Reffner
17:15>> So started talking with him, and he was like, Screw it. Let's try it. And so kinda pulled together the team.
Nathan Latka
17:24I'm making 50%?
Greg Reffner
17:26>> No. No. Just I mean, single digit equity percentage to come on and build the product.
Nathan Latka
17:32Oh, so he's full time now?
Greg Reffner
17:34>> Yep. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
17:35He's the second one in The US.
Greg Reffner
17:37>> No. So that's Claire. So he's John's kind of moved out of the picture, and now we're just working with the development team in Indonesia.
Offshore Development Team and Beeso Studio
Nathan Latka
17:43But he still but John still has equity?
Greg Reffner
17:46>> He still has his company, Beeso, still has equity for getting us to this point.
Nathan Latka
17:50Oh, so they sort of help with MVP as a startup studio and then help to basically transfer your work onto this firm in Indonesia?
Greg Reffner
17:57>> Correct. Yes, sir.
Nathan Latka
17:58Ah, super smart. I love this part. Okay. And what what's the can we look at the website of the firm in Indonesia?
Greg Reffner
18:05>> So it's called Beeso Studio. So it's
Nathan Latka
18:07called He his people are in Indonesia.
Greg Reffner
18:11>> Yeah. Correct.
Nathan Latka
18:12Oh, I see. So he's okay. Got it. So you're still paying Beeso Studio for work for their talent that they're onboarding or or or not based off needs in Indonesia.
Greg Reffner
18:23>> Correct. Yeah. So ultimately, we're, I guess, contracting them in a little bit of ways. I see. I mean, what I'm able to get out of them for the dollars that I put into it is so much more than if I, you know, went here in The United States or hired just a single technical cofounder here in The United States.
Nathan Latka
18:42Makes a lot of sense. Can I ask what do you pay them per month? Like, a range is fine.
Greg Reffner
18:47>> Anywhere between, like, 12 and $25,000 a month.
Nathan Latka
18:51Yeah. Yeah. But again, cheap because of all the equity preserved if you grow this big. Right? I mean, makes a ton you have to take a risk upfront, but, right, if it works, it works. So this is super cool. And then and then sorry. Real quick on the two SEOs in India. What what's their website, or do they not have a website?
Greg Reffner
19:05>> They they don't have a website. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
19:07Because they're just with you.
Greg Reffner
19:08>> Yeah. And I I mean, I combined pay them a thousand dollars a month.
Nathan Latka
19:12That's crazy. Okay. Interesting.
19:15I'd love to interview one of them if you're open to it to ask them exactly what strings they pulled to help you rank for these things to be I mean, I want I see a headline of small Phoenix startup outranks $10,000,000,000 gong for the word conversational intelligence. And I want the and I want the playbook.
Greg Reffner
19:34>> Yeah. That's amazing. It's been it's been a fun ride. Think ultimately, like,
Playbook from Allbound and Content Volume
Greg Reffner
19:42>> I was fortunate, Nathan, where I saw I was part of Acton Software, then went to a company called Allbound. And I saw what Allbound did, where they invested in inbound content and creating the optics of looking bigger than you actually are.
Nathan Latka
19:58Mhmm.
Greg Reffner
19:59>> And that's a playbook that I wanted to follow where if you look at our company, if you look at our product, you would never know that, like, it's mainly been just a handful of us over the past couple years. And, you know, it's just
Nathan Latka
20:14You're targeted though too. Like, see, if someone was just looking at, like, Alexa rank and unique views per month, you would never come on their radar because you don't rank high. But you rank really high for the keywords that matter. You've picked three or four and you really rank high for those. Because like when I click on the thing that what you rank for conversational intelligence software and go to the page, it's not a long blog
20:31post. It's a it's a landing page with great images, smart h one tags, a video built in the middle, and then some stuff at the bottom. So your team it's not like you're spending hundreds of hours writing blog content. They they just needed to write headlines and little descriptions for the design, and they did all the optimization.
Greg Reffner
20:48>> Correct. I mean, we've written, I think, close to 60 blog posts. We have 40 plus podcasts built or recorded. So we are generating a significant amount of content, Nathan, to help kind of bolster all of that.
Nathan Latka
21:02I I love this story. So you have two there's two full time employees right now effectively?
Greg Reffner
21:07>> Correct.
Nathan Latka
21:08Million dollars in revenue per employee, folks. Love this. Greg, I say one day, I think very soon there's gonna be someone that takes a company public with less than 10 FTE, the SaaS company. You could be one of those. John at SmartSuite is another one I'm watching very closely, but I'd love it for I'd for it to be you.
Greg Reffner
21:22>> That would be that wouldn't be a bad day.
Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Sleep
Nathan Latka
21:26Alright. Cool. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book.
Greg Reffner
21:30>> Favorite oh, Simon Sinek, Start With Why.
Nathan Latka
21:33Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Greg Reffner
21:40>> I I like Steve Jobs. I can't go wrong with Steve Jobs.
Nathan Latka
21:44Nice. Good one. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Abstrakt besides your own?
Greg Reffner
21:50>> For online tool for building Abstrakt? I gotta give I gotta give HubSpot a shout. Free tools. I mean, we've been free CRM, free marketing tools for a while now.
Nathan Latka
22:02Hey. Real quick. If Amit from Gong comes and offers to buy over 25,000,000 all cash up front, do you sell today?
Greg Reffner
22:07>> Oh, yeah.
Nathan Latka
22:09Oh, yeah. Everyone always says, no. I have to talk to the board or no. I have to talk to my wife. You're like, no. If that happens, 10 x multiple. I'm
Greg Reffner
22:18>> I'll take it. I'll I mean, just come bring me on board for three years and let me run the product.
Nathan Latka
22:23I I I it would not shock me, Greg, seriously, because of the quality people we have listening to the show. If you get some inbound from this, we'll see what happens. So here number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Greg Reffner
22:34>> I'm very fortunate to have a wife that takes very good care of me, and so I usually get, like, seven, eight hours of sleep a night.
Nathan Latka
22:40Okay. Yeah. So seven, married, one kid already, and another one, what, due in three months?
Greg Reffner
22:46>> In July. Yeah. So three months ish. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
22:48It weird that I knew that? I just I feel like a July baby.
22:53Alright. Well, the last last how how old are you, Greg?
Greg Reffner
22:56>> I'll be 35 in June.
Nathan Latka
22:58Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.
Greg Reffner
23:03>> I wish I would have known to listen to my dad every time he told me that something would happen or I would feel a certain way, and I fought him every step of the way. I wish I would have known to listen to my dad.
Outro and Key Takeaways
Nathan Latka
23:13Guys, Abstrakt.ai launched in 2020. He was one of the first users of Gong at a company called Acton when he was doing sales. He said, you know what? I need to make this stuff real time. He's done it with a laser focused SEO strategy. They've gone from basically nothing to a $170,000 a month in revenue over the past five months, a $2,000,000 run rate and get this to full time employees. He's very smartly used contractors to
23:33preserve equity and preserve his cash and have a really healthy balance sheet. And also has done this pretty cash effectively. He's only raised about $630,000 to drive 2,000,000 revenue, very healthy capital efficiency. We'll see what happens next. Greg, thanks for taking us to the top.
Greg Reffner
23:47>> Thanks, Nathan. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks for having us.
Nathan Latka
23:51One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU, CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday one
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24:59people are saying. Sign up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. And if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, I do it so that we can all learn. We have to
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