Adadot Revenue & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Alex. She's the founder of adadot.com. It's the world's first fitness tracker for work for developers. She leverages data hidden in productivity and collaboration software to help developers improve how they work and feel. Rooted in science, integrates with GitLab, GitHub, and Slack. Alex, you ready to take us to the top? [00:17] >> Yeah. All good. [00:18] Alright. So is this a is this a physical thing people are installing or no? It's digital? [00:22] >> No. We call it the fitness tracker, but really it's just it's just software, basically. It functions like a fitness tracker, but not not a physical thing. [00:32] Interesting. Okay. So explain to me, I guess, are are teams paying for this for all of their engineers to use to become more productive and happy or engineers paying for this themselves directly? [00:42] >> Actually, little bit of both. So, pricing works in the same ways that Notion does. You have a personal pro and then you have two licenses as well. So, it can happen both ways. [00:51] Okay. And so, I guess, how how many are some of the individual license usually costs? [00:57] >> It's just a small one. It's about $10 per user per month. [01:01] 10 per user per month. And I guess help me explain maybe explain the story of how an engineer has used you and how they changed their habits or behaviors because of what they learned from Adadot, the app. [01:11] >> Yeah. So, we have some real life examples. So, for example, an engineer that was working front end, he was very scatty with his approach in his calendar, wasn't actually accounting for a lot of focus time during their day. So, essentially a lot of meetings cramping in their time. And once they've noticed that, this basically stopped kind of arranging meetings in the middle of the day, which basically left them three or four focus hours a day, which [01:36] >> increased productivity by 50% month on month. [01:39] Very interesting. And are you Is your main go to market today? Like, you start off selling direct to enterprise, selling massive team plans or did it start bottoms up individual engineers? [01:49] >> Yes. So, we're kind of like using a hybrid approach at the moment. So, sometimes you speak to team. [01:53] How'd start? How'd you start though? [01:55] >> Yeah. So we essentially start usually at the individual level and then basically sell upwards. [02:01] So when did you sell your first individual? Do you remember the year? [02:04] >> Yeah. No. It was like a few months ago. It's a very recent product. Yeah. [02:09] When did you launch? Like, when did you when did you launch the business? [02:11] >> So the business started back in 2019. We actually pivoted a couple of times before we arrived in our current destination. The current product launched on Product Hunt in January, January 28. [02:23] And how did the Product Hunt launch do? [02:25] >> Number one Product Hunt kind of item of the day. [02:29] That's amazing. Okay. And did you can quantify, like, how many website hits or sign ups did you get from Product Hunt? [02:36] >> So it's a very good question because we had the free tier of FullStory as a tracking kind of tool, and actually, we surpassed it. So we got notification from FullStory going, we you can't track anymore. So it's definitely above a thousand sessions, and that's how we know. But that was that was the limit that we had. So definitely above a thousand is Interesting. [02:58] So that launch was 01/28/2022. You got about 400 upvotes. Right? [03:02] >> Yep. [03:03] Okay. And over a thousand sign ups. Now, how many of those sign ups converted to paid? Do you know? [03:08] >> Yeah. So, to be honest with you, not all of them, obviously. So, we had about kind of like 50 sign ups out of that that were kind of fully integrated and kind of proceeded to to go into, like, the more premium tier. So, the individual licenses right now are mostly kind of on the freemium side. [03:25] Well, 50 converting to paid out of a thousand is a 5% conversion rate. That's pretty good. Those all all those 50 started paying $10 a month? [03:32] >> Yep. [03:33] That's awesome. Well, congrats. You don't seem very excited. [03:36] >> No. It is very exciting. Sorry. Just I'm always thinking about the next stage and, you know, growth and getting like bigger and better. So I'm always I'm always focused on the next thing. [03:44] So those were 50 from Product Hunt. How many total users do you have today? Customers, paying customers? [03:49] >> Yeah. So if we look at essentially both kind of corporate customers and individuals, so it's about 200. [03:57] Oh, 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 [04:20] your 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 [04:44] get 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 [05:06] not 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 [05:32] going 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 [05:54] if 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 [06:20] the interview. Can we take 200 times 10 to get your MRR? [06:24] >> Yeah. Well, actually, no. Because the corporate ones are charged at double the price. So, essentially, you have to basically take that into consideration. So, I would say they're half and half right now. [06:34] So, you're doing about $3,000 a month right now on revenue, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. And where were you exactly a year ago? Do you remember? [06:41] >> Oh, goodness. It was a completely different product. We were doing a very, very different thing. So, we were trying to solve the problem of again, it's a work related problem, but it was about kind of time analytics and how people are utilizing their time from a kind of broader perspective, just developers. [06:58] I see. Okay. And talk to me about the founding story here. Are you sole founder or do you have a co founder? [07:03] >> I have a co founder, technical guy, CTO. [07:06] You guys were nice to each other and split it fifty fifty or did you keep more? [07:10] >> I kept more. Yes. Now now we're rejigging a little bit, actually. We're in the process of redistributing a little bit of that. [07:17] And why is that? [07:18] >> Well, because when we started, we're a completely different product. We were doing something different and it made sense to split it that way. Now, because obviously we're way more technical products, there's much bigger contribution on his side. So, actually, it would make sense to have a more equal split. [07:33] Okay. And have you guys self funded or have you raised capital? [07:36] >> We have raised capital now. So, we just closed around a nice chunky pre seed. If you basically put all the money in, including government grants and everything, that's about like a million essentially in dollars. [07:48] Okay. And what most folks are sort of raising pre seeds these days. It's sort of a million on a five cap. Is that sort of what you guys did? [07:55] >> No. No. We have we have a few uncapped notes in that round. [08:00] Oh, good. Okay. So, it's not a priced round. It's an uncapped note. [08:03] >> So, some of it is priced because of UK government rules. Some of it is essentially uncapped. [08:08] Oh, I see. Interesting. Okay. Well, let's let's look at future, right? So, how do you sign up a thousand more customers? What's the go to market? What's the growth strategy? [08:15] >> Yeah. So, as I mentioned, we have a two prong approach. So, we're basically kind of doubling up on kind of like the team aspect and individual aspect. But from a distribution perspective, we're looking at a number of distribution deals right now with some very, very well known, not going to name who, online Who are they? Marketplaces. It's the it's the usual suspects. We, you know, just don't don't want to say [08:35] But these are like the GitHub's of the world? [08:38] >> Some of that, but also like actual like marketplaces that cater to, you know, you know, lifetime deals and stuff like that. So there's, you know, a tiered approach as to how we're gonna get to a thousand customers. [08:49] Well, why would you sell a lifetime deal though? That doesn't enable you to drive recurring revenue and make hiring decisions and invest in future products. [08:56] >> Yeah. So, we have a good reasoning for that and it has to do with some of the features that we are working on, which are a lot of data intensive, essentially, and predictive modeling off the back of it. So, actually for us, it's in our best interest to get as much data, as many users as possible. [09:11] So then why charge at all? Why not erase your pricing altogether? [09:15] >> We do have a freemium. So we do do that. But at the same time, we need to prove the value in the use case. Right? So, you do that in three ways. You do that through proving that you have you know, you're solving a problem that's real and people are willing to pay for it. [09:29] Very cool. Alright. Talk to me about your team today. How many folks? [09:33] >> Seven. [09:34] Seven. Okay. And how many engineers? [09:37] >> Most of them. [09:38] There's literally just two of us. [09:39] >> We're not technical. [09:39] So five. [09:40] Okay. That makes sense for what you're building. Listen, we're rooting for you. This is a heck of a story. Again, guys, check it out. Adadot.com. Alex, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite book. [09:51] >> Oh, god. Favorite book. Venture deals. [09:53] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [09:57] >> It's gonna sound very common. I do like Elon Musk. He's like a huge visionary. So nothing too special there, I guess. Just Elon Musk. [10:05] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building adadot? [10:09] >> Figma. [10:10] Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? [10:14] >> Four. [10:14] And what's your situation? Married? Single? Kids? [10:18] >> Oh, wow. I am I am married. Yeah. Hence, the Harris. Awesome. [10:22] Any kiddos or no? [10:23] >> No. No. [10:24] None. Can I ask how old you are? [10:27] >> Too too old, probably. Too old. About well, 35. [10:31] 30. We'll say 30 years young. Okay. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [10:38] >> Something you're doing. How to how to basically scale to 2,000 customers? I I wish I I mean, knew that way. [10:45] Guys, you have it, adadot.com. They got going with a big product launch. Now have about 200 customers paying, you know, 10 to $20 a month for their tools. Call it $3,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Just closed a million dollar pre seed round, including some grants and other stuff to really double down on growth. Seven on the team today, five engineers. And really the purpose of the tool is to help engineers understand just how to basically [11:07] build a healthier life, healthier workflows, collaborate stronger, get more done quicker, and again, be happy while they do it. So looking to scale at 2,000, 3,000 customers, we're rooting for you, Alex. Thanks for taking us to the top. [11:17] >> Thank you so much. [11:20] One 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 [11:45] p. M. Central. Additionally, remember these recorded Founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at two p. M. Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's [12:07] an acquisition, a big fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people [12:28] 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 counter [12:48] those people. We got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.