Ahead Intranet Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Pascal Grossniklaus. Over the past twenty years, he's learned hundreds of digital transformation projects that culture is the number one success factor of change. With their SaaS intranet application called ahead, they're looking hard to help organizations adopt a growth mindset that fosters employee engagement, innovation, and customer satisfaction. Pascal, you ready to take us to the top? [00:21] >> Yes. [00:22] Alright. Absolutely. So if people wanna follow along, they can go to aheadintranet.com. Who's buying the tool? Who are you building us for? [00:30] >> Well, these are mainly larger companies with more than 500 employees with a lot of, let's say, deskless workers. And because at the moment they have quite a problem to to reach these people. So world when we look at the global workforce, 80% of the workforce are not working on a computer on a day to day basis. But everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. So we have the year 2022, and still the most companies communicate to [01:04] >> these people with a blackboard or by their direct report or just by [01:13] >> yeah. You know? Yeah. By the direct report. Let's say like that. [01:17] So it it give me an example of a of a team, if you can name a customer, name them. But what is a deskless worker? Who's an example customer? [01:25] >> An example customer for it is a manufacturing company. It's a big one with 8,000 employees. They produce aluminum wheels, and they have factories all over the world, like Mexico, US, China, Eastern Europe. And yet, they the whole day, these workers standing on a machine. And [01:46] >> during corona, the all the desk workers, the administration people, the salespeople, they worked from home. So they they didn't were able to communicate to these people what is going on, what their strategy is, what's the measurements are. So it was quite difficult for these companies. [02:06] I see. And so these companies, when you look at all your customers today, on average, what are these companies paying you per month to use your tool? [02:14] >> Yes. Exactly. Per month per user. What's the average though? In average, it's around it depends on the size of the customer. So the average customer size is about 1,200 Swiss francs a month. [02:33] Swiss francs. Okay. Hold on. How do we convert that to USD? [02:37] >> Yeah. It's around it's would say, $1,300. [02:41] Yeah. Per month? [02:43] >> Per month. Yeah. [02:44] Okay. And if someone's paying you $1,300 per month, how many seats is that for, probably? [02:51] >> This is around 500 seats. [02:54] I see. Okay. Very cool. Let's get the backstory here. When did you launch the company? What year? [03:00] >> In the year 2020, March 2020. [03:03] Okay. So fairly now. [03:04] >> Before the pandemic started in Switzerland. [03:07] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So launch in 2020. When did you get your first dollar of revenue? Do you remember? [03:12] >> Yeah. It was it it was already before. So maybe a little bit of background story. We founded the company as a professional service company where we build hundreds of intranets for companies. But more and more, I was unsatisfied with the outcome of these intranets. So we started kind of a side project with a couple of friends, and we already marketed before we had an actual company. So we already did, like, MVP and sold it to potential [03:48] >> customers. [03:49] 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 [04:13] 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 [04:37] 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 [04:59] 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 [05:25] 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. Alright. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but if [05:47] 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 the [06:13] interview. When did you build what year did you build manually your first intranet for your first customer? [06:19] >> Well, this was around 2006, 2007. It was for a large, large telecommunication company, and they had the idea to replace their printed employee magazine with a digital platform. [06:35] So, Pascal, is it fair to say you effectively were running an agency from 2006 to 2020 manually building intranets? [06:43] >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. [06:45] How how big did you grow that? What was the the your highest revenue year? How much did you do? [06:49] >> Well, this thing this company still exists because we didn't just do intranets. We were a professional service provider for IT projects. We did software programming. This company still exists, and we are around 200 employees with a revenue of more than 30,000,000. [07:07] A $30,000,000? [07:09] >> Yes. [07:10] What did it— $30,000,000? Yeah. $30,000,000. 30,000,000. Yeah. Yep. So so so that that's what you did last year in revenue. In 2021, it did 30,000,000 in revenue? [07:21] >> Yeah. With the old company. Yes. [07:23] Okay. And so what do you mean when you say old company? Do you own equity in the agency still? [07:28] >> Yeah. I'm still the vice president of this company, but I'm not actually working at this company on a operating level. [07:37] Do you have equity at the agency? Is it your is it your agency? [07:40] >> Yes. One third is mine. [07:42] Oh, very cool. Okay. So when you how did you have the conversation with your partners who own 60% of the agency and say, hey, wanna spin this software out? How did you guys spin it out? [07:52] >> Well, they honestly, they helped to invest in the new product. So the new spin off, the aheadintranet, they also have a stake in there financially, but they are not working on it. [08:05] They still [08:06] >> run the old company, my two friends, and I'm fully responsible for ahead. [08:12] So for the spin out, a couple questions there. How much money did the agency invest in a new software company? [08:20] >> Well, this was around 700 k. [08:24] Okay. 700,000. And how much equity does the agency own in the SaaS company? [08:30] >> Nothing. [08:32] Okay. How much do your two friends own of the SaaS company? [08:37] >> One third as well. [08:39] They each own one third or they own 60%? Each [08:43] >> owns one third of it. Yes. [08:45] Oh, okay. Got it. So you own 30%. They each own 30% for 95%, whatever. [08:51] >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. [08:52] I see. I see. Okay. Very interesting. Okay. So 700,000 invested from the agency. So is it fair to say you guys are bootstrapped? Otherwise, you haven't raised any traditional capital? [09:04] >> When we founded the company in 2020, for the go to market, we raised some money from family, friends, and fools. [09:16] How much? [09:16] >> About 500,000, 500,000. Yeah. [09:20] Would you have $5,000,000 cap or something? [09:24] >> Yes. Exactly. [09:25] Yep. And and is that all you've raised today? [09:28] >> That's all we raised today. Yes. [09:30] Love that. Okay. So you get your you have a built in customer base from all these folks that used your agency. So I'm assuming you were able to turn revenue on the SaaS company pretty quick. How many customers do you have today on the SaaS business? [09:42] >> Well, that's a difficult story because, you know, the agency is still doing intranets. They're still building intranets. So that's one of the reasons why we took ahead out of it, because there's we started the competition and we said, okay, that's not healthy for both of us. So we almost have no customers from the agency because these are is another type of customers. [10:09] Okay. So how many customers does the SaaS business have today? [10:13] >> 60. [10:14] Six zero? [10:15] >> Yes. Six zero. [10:16] And and can I take, Pascal, that 60 customers times $1,300 a month average? You're doing about $78,000 per month right now on revenue? [10:26] >> Exactly. [10:27] Wow. Okay. That's still that's impressive. Where were you exactly one year ago? Do you remember? [10:33] >> Yeah. We we were around 21 k. [10:38] 21,000 a month a year ago. So over three x year over year growth. If you're not growing by selling to your old agency customers, where are you finding new customers? [10:49] >> That's the most difficult part. So so we start we learned a lot in this process, and we started to focus really on on industries like manufacturing, retail, wholesales. And we started to build a community with our customers. We call it the ahead x community, because we learned that these internal comm responsible people in larger companies, they they love to have an exchange. How do you communicate internally about strategy, about culture, about values inside a company? So [11:27] >> they are very keen to have this exchange. So we we start to build this com this this aheadex community where they get so [11:36] Where where can I find the community on your website? Do you link to it anywhere? [11:40] >> No. It's not linked yet. It's it's quite closed. You'll find some webinars that we recorded out of this I see. Out of this events. Yeah. [11:49] Yeah. I see that. That makes a lot I mean, community is a very real asset. It's a it's a it's a distribution channel that you own as a SaaS company, and I see sixty four minutes, sixty two minutes, fifty eight minutes, these webinars you've recorded with folks in that community, it sounds like. [12:04] >> Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And this is is really very valuable because when they recommend us to potential customers, that's the we have the shortest deal cycles, I would say. Mhmm. Those we have we we earned the trust already through the community. [12:21] Yeah. This makes a lot of sense. Okay. So the community is up and going. You're grabbing a lot of growth there today. You've raised only 500,000 from outside investors plus 700,000 from the agency. You're you're about to break a million dollar run rate. Congratulations, by the way. That's exciting. [12:38] >> What's the goal for 2022? [12:39] How much do you hope to grow? [12:41] >> Yeah. We wanna again double our our revenue. And, yeah, we would hope to go close 1 to 2,000,000 by end of twenty twenty two. [12:53] Any plans to raise this year or you wanna stay bootstrapped? [12:57] >> No. At the moment, we would like to stay bootstrapped. [13:02] >> But at the moment, we are currently active in the region of Switzerland, Germany and Austria. But we plan to do a go to market in other countries. Spain is a hot candidate at the moment. And if we do that, we think about raising money. [13:21] Yep. Yep. Tell me about your team today. How many are full time just at the SaaS business? [13:26] >> We are eight people full time just for the SaaS business. [13:30] And how many are engineers? [13:32] >> Four of them. [13:34] Okay. How many sales reps with a quota? [13:38] >> It's The quota is like 150%. So it's me, half, and then one full time. [13:46] Okay. So two people carrying a quota. You Alright. And Very cool. You're too early probably to chat about, I mean, churn. Do you know what your churn is? Do you have do you what your net dollar retention is? [13:58] >> So we have no churn at the moment. So this can be good and bad. This means that we are not too progressive in sales and not too forcey. But on the other side, it's also a bit in the business. Because when you imagine a company with more than thousand employees, when they introduce something like an internal com platform, this is an internal project for them that takes some effort, so they are not going to switch so [14:29] >> fast. So there are studies that normally these platforms, when they are established, they last for at least four years. So at the moment, it's quite early to say how the churn will be. We're gonna see it in one or two years. [14:42] Regardless if it's a heck of a story, I love that you learn about your customers through the agency before getting into the SaaS business. Let's wrap up here with the famous five, Pascal. Number one, favorite business book? [14:54] >> Eric Reece, The Lean Startup. [14:57] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [15:00] >> Satya Nadella. [15:02] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building ahead? [15:08] >> HubSpot. [15:10] Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? [15:14] >> Seven. [15:15] Okay. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? [15:18] >> Married, three kids. [15:20] Oh, wow. How old are you how old are you? [15:23] >> Oh, 42. [15:25] >> 42. [15:26] Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [15:30] >> Something I wish I would knew when I was 20. [15:33] Yep. [15:35] >> Or that failing fast is a good thing. [15:39] Guys, there you have it. From 2006 to 2020, and it include goes on today. They built an agency manually building intranets for B2B brands. They do $30,000,000 in revenue annually with over 200 employees. He said, You know what? We should spend out a SaaS from this agency. So he said, You know what? His two buddies who are co founders in the agency stuck with the agency. He spun out the SaaS. His buddies own 60% of the [16:01] SaaS. He owns 30%. They're scaling. They raised $500,000 in a pre seed round in 2019 to get it going, and then the agency put in $700,000 to keep it scaling. The company just broke a million dollar run rate up from $21,000 a month just a year ago with a team of eight. Love stories like this. I predict big things for these guys. Pascal, thanks for taking us to the top. [16:20] >> Thank you very much, Nathan. [16:23] One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at one p. M. 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 [16:47] Thursday 1PM Central. Additionally, remember these recorded Founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM 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 an acquisition, [17:10] a big fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something 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 are [17:31] 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, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter [17:51] 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.