Founder Interview
How Alphadoc Raised $250K at a $2M Valuation With 10 Beta Customers (Interview with Co-founder Daan Stolk)
- Interview Date
- May 25, 2022
- Interviewee
- Daan StolkCo-founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Seed Raise (2022)
$250,000
Pre-Money Valuation (2022)
$2,000,000
Active Beta Customers (2022)
10
Angel Investors (2022)
15
Team Size (2022)
2
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Daan Stolk during his interview recorded in May 2022 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Alphadoc’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Alphadoc raised $250,000 in a seed round closed in February 2022 from 15 angel investors
- 02Pre-money valuation was $2,000,000, with founders selling approximately 11% equity
- 0310 companies were actively in the private beta at interview time
- 04An additional 40 companies expressed interest but needed more features before switching
- 05Daan conducted interviews with over 80 to 90 companies to validate the product direction
- 06The company was founded in December 2020 and pivoted away from an API demo platform concept
- 07Daan generated $30,000 in consulting revenue over three months to fund personal runway before focusing full time on Alphadoc
- 08The team consisted of two co-founders plus part-time freelancers including a designer and a software architect
- 09No monthly burn had started yet at interview time, with the first developer hire imminent
- 10Cold outreach on LinkedIn and Twitter, tailored to each founder, was the primary customer acquisition tactic
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Seed Funding Raised (2022) | $250,000 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Pre-Money Valuation (2022) | $2,000,000 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Equity Sold (2022) | 11% | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Angel Investors (2022) | 15 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Active Beta Customers (2022) | 10 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Long-Term Pipeline Beta Signups (2022) | 40 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Companies Interviewed for Validation (2022) | 80 to 90 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Team Size (Co-founders) (2022) | 2 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Year Founded | 2020 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
| Consulting Revenue (Personal, 3 months) (2021) | $30,000 | Founder interview, May 2022 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Alphadoc had no product revenue at interview time, operating as a private beta with no paying customers. Daan personally generated $30,000 in documentation consulting work over three months to fund his own runway while building the platform.
Customers
The platform had 10 active beta customers at interview time, with an additional 40 companies in a longer-term pipeline who expressed intent to switch once the product added more features. Customer discovery involved interviews with over 80 to 90 companies.
Team
The company was run by two co-founders with no salaries, supplemented by part-time freelancers including a designer and a software architect who joined two to three weeks before the interview. The first full-time developer hire was imminent.
Funding
Alphadoc closed a $250,000 seed round in February 2022 at a $2,000,000 pre-money valuation, bringing in 15 angel investors and selling approximately 11% of the company. No monthly burn had begun at interview time.
Growth Strategy
Tailored Cold Outreach on LinkedIn and Twitter
Daan reached out directly to founders on LinkedIn and Twitter with personalized messages referencing mutual connections or shared context. He found that founders responded positively to honest, specific outreach asking for ten to fifteen minutes of their time.
Trojan Horse Consulting Model
Daan positioned himself as a documentation consultant to gain access to potential customers, then disclosed he was also building Alphadoc. This approach kept him close to market needs and frequently converted consulting engagements into product interest.
Extensive Customer Discovery
Before building the current product, the team conducted interviews with over 80 to 90 companies to validate the direction. This research led them to pivot away from an API demo platform toward a full developer experience platform.
Lean Operations to Extend Runway
By keeping founders on zero salary and relying on freelancers for one-off work, Alphadoc avoided monthly burn entirely through the beta phase. This allowed the $250,000 raise to stretch further toward hiring and product development.
Template and Framework Approach to Documentation
Rather than giving customers full flexibility, Alphadoc provides opinionated templates and frameworks that plug into existing open API specs. This reduces the effort required from developer teams and lowers the barrier to building a polished documentation portal.
Best Quotes
“If you look at the market, APIs are everywhere and there's a lot of companies that are struggling with marketing their APIs. So existing doc platforms, they focus on providing a really nice documentation environment. But getting customers into your API requires more than just great documentation. It requires the whole experience. And it requires that experience to actually convert people into users. And building a platform that actually focuses on this is the gap that we're trying to fill”
“We have 10 that we're actively working with, and we have about 40 beta customers for what we're calling long term opportunities. They're saying, hey, I want to make the switch, but I don't want to. I need a bit more features than what you're offering in your MVP.”
“I think the idea started in December 2020. And it actually started out as a completely different idea. For the past, I think up until January 2022, we were validating and doing research. So I think we spoke with over did interviews with over 60 companies. And by now it's probably closer to 80 or 90 companies to validate what we're looking for.”
“We started with just our own network and the ball got rolling really quickly. So we learned that on LinkedIn and on Twitter. If you send the right message to other founders indicating, hey, I'm working on this business idea, you're in the right space, we'd love to get even ten or fifteen minutes of your time.”
“It's $30 k. That's what I made in those three months. I actually stopped doing it for this long because it's just too much work. It's just way too much effort. So I'm only doing small projects now and it works because what happens is I come in, first thing I say is, hey, I want be super transparent. I want to be as unbiased as possible, but I can't because I'm also building my own docs platform. And then people are immediately interested in what I'm building.”
“We've raised capital. So we've done around with 15 sorry about my camera here. We've done a round with around 15 angel investors.”
“2,000,000. 2,000,000 valuation. Pre money.”
“We haven't started burn yet. we're just about to yeah, we're about to hire our first dev. And we've been working with some freelancers, but those were one off payments. So that actually keeps us really lean.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured Alphadoc at an early stage in May 2022, just weeks after closing a $250,000 seed round with 10 active beta customers and no paying revenue yet. The team was preparing to hire their first developer and move toward a paid product launch. The numbers here are a point-in-time snapshot from that conversation and will not reflect where the company stands today. Visit the Alphadoc company profile for current metrics.
View Alphadoc’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and What Alphadoc Does
- 0:26The Developer Experience Gap in API Documentation
- 1:42How the Platform Works
- 2:25Beta Customers and Pricing
- 2:51Founding Story and Customer Discovery
- 3:56Finding Beta Customers Through Cold Outreach
- 7:42Reading a Real LinkedIn Outreach Message
- 8:29The Trojan Horse Consulting Strategy
- 9:34Consulting Revenue and Market Insight
- 9:40Seed Round and Angel Investors
- 10:17Valuation Negotiation and Equity Sold
- 11:40Burn Rate and Freelancer Team
- 12:28Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
Introduction and What Alphadoc Does
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Daan Stolk. He joined tech as an intern in the payments industry and then developed an excellent instinct for learning what is required for development processes. He also learned what caused friction for developers and companies maintaining their documentation. So today, he launched alphadoc.io, a developer experience platform to boost sales. Alright, Daan, you ready to take us to the top?
Daan Stolk
00:20>> Yes, let's go.
Nathan Latka
00:21Alright. So what does that mean, a developer experience to boost sales?
The Developer Experience Gap in API Documentation
Daan Stolk
00:26>> If you look at the market, APIs are everywhere and there's a lot of companies that are struggling with marketing their APIs. So existing doc platforms, they focus on providing a really nice documentation environment. But getting customers into your API requires more than just great documentation. It requires the whole experience. And it requires that experience to actually convert people into users. And building a platform that actually focuses on this is the gap that we're trying to fill
01:01>> in the market.
Nathan Latka
01:02And you sort of let people build these API, almost glossaries, general blocks, diagrams, API calls, response and redirects all in one shot, right?
Daan Stolk
01:11>> Yeah, yeah. So what we're doing is we're plugging into your source code, into your open API spec and based on that, you actually get the tools to quickly scale up your documentation. So you're actually giving up all your flexibility, which you're accustomed to with traditional doc platforms and we're giving you templates and frameworks and you can work with those. So it gives you the benefit of not having to think about exactly how the doc portal should
01:37>> be structured. We've we've figured that out for you. All you have to do is fill in the blanks.
How the Platform Works
Nathan Latka
01:42That makes a ton of sense. Okay, when did you or I guess before we get into the history here, what are folks paying for this on average per month?
Daan Stolk
01:50>> It's not something that people are paying for yet We're Okay.
Nathan Latka
01:54So all free?
Daan Stolk
01:55>> Yeah. It's well, it's actually it's a private beta. So,
02:00>> customers in the beta, they're not paying today. They will in the future, but there's
Nathan Latka
02:05How many are in beta?
Daan Stolk
02:07>> We have 10 that we're actively working with, and we have about 40 beta customers for what we're calling long term opportunities. They're saying, hey, I want to make the switch, but I don't want to. I need a bit more features than what you're offering in your MVP.
Beta Customers and Pricing
Nathan Latka
02:25What are they switching from?
Daan Stolk
02:27>> They're switching from platforms like Readme, GitBook, their own open source tooling as well.
Nathan Latka
02:36You said README or README?
Daan Stolk
02:39>> Sorry, readme.io. Yeah. It's a docs platform.
Nathan Latka
02:45I see. Interesting. Okay. So you've got 10 on the beta list now. When did you start building this platform? What year?
Founding Story and Customer Discovery
Daan Stolk
02:51>> I think the idea started in December 2020. And it actually started out as a completely different idea. For the past, I think up until January 2022, we were validating and doing research. So I think we spoke with over did interviews with over 60 companies. And by now it's probably closer to 80 or 90 companies to validate what we're looking for. So we started out with something completely different with an API demo platform, but we quickly learned
03:25>> that that's not what people are looking for. At least not the people that we were talking with. They're looking for a way that actually makes easier to build a developer experience and not just add more complexity. We're trying to solve this problem where people are having issues with finding the right employees, talented employees to help build out this developer experience. There's just Yeah.
Nathan Latka
03:46Because it's it's boring. It's people would call it boring work.
Daan Stolk
03:50>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
03:51Is. So how did you
03:52so how did you find these 10 folks that are in the beta today? Where did you find them?
Finding Beta Customers Through Cold Outreach
Daan Stolk
03:56>> We started with just our own network and the ball got rolling really quickly. So we learned that on LinkedIn and on Twitter. If you send the right message to other founders indicating, hey, I'm working on this business idea, you're in the right space, we'd love to get even ten or fifteen minutes of your time.
04:22>> People respond to it quite positively because people are always
Nathan Latka
04:25Is asking that the exact text that you use when you LinkedIn message another founder?
Daan Stolk
04:28>> No. It's specific to the founder. So it's tailored to what is the founder.
Nathan Latka
04:35Oh, 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
04:58your 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
05:22get 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
05:44not 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
06:10going 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
06:32if 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
06:58the interview. Can you read me one? Can you open your LinkedIn and read me one of the ones you did?
Daan Stolk
07:04>> Oh, putting me on the spot here.
Nathan Latka
07:07Well, because copy is really important with this. People get LinkedIn messages all the day. So when people say that we built this off cold messaging on LinkedIn, people are going, well, wait, I never respond to LinkedIn messages. What is what is Daan doing differently that I need to learn from? You know?
Daan Stolk
07:20>> Yeah. Yeah. So let me see.
Nathan Latka
07:25Oh, I gotta scroll and search a little bit. Right?
Daan Stolk
07:28>> Yeah.
07:33>> Okay, so here's one where I actually used a mutual connection. I said,
Reading a Real LinkedIn Outreach Message
Daan Stolk
07:42>> Hey, Founder. Obviously used their name. I think we know each other through mutual connection. We both used to work at company XYZ. I just started as a documentation consultant to pay the bills while I'm building my own sales enabling docs platform. Probably interesting to do a call.
Nathan Latka
08:03Interesting.
Daan Stolk
08:04>> I just realized actually that that's I completely forgot about it. But
08:10>> when I started out, I started out as a doc sales consultant.
08:17>> So my co founder always says I'm the Trojan horse. So I reach out to companies or people come to me and say, Hey, I need some help. I need consultancy work on my docs platform. So I come in and I say, first of what
The Trojan Horse Consulting Strategy
Nathan Latka
08:29did you make last year just on the consulting side of stuff?
Daan Stolk
08:32>> I only ended up doing it for like for three days a week. I only did that for three months. And I think that gave me enough runway to pay the bills for four or five more months.
Nathan Latka
08:50So what is that, like $20 you make or $10, $20 grand, something like that?
Daan Stolk
08:54>> Yeah. Yeah. It's $30 k. That's what I made in those three months. I actually stopped doing it for this long because it's just too much work. It's just way too much effort. So I'm only doing small projects now and it works because what happens is I come in, first thing I say is, hey, I want be super transparent. I want to be as unbiased as possible, but I can't because I'm also building my own docs platform. And
09:19>> then people are immediately interested in what I'm building. And sometimes it turns into something interesting and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I just act as a consultant. That actually helps because it keeps me completely in sync with what's happening in the marketplace.
Consulting Revenue and Market Insight
Nathan Latka
09:34Now, it's a great way to keep your ear to the ground. Now, have you funded the business yourself or have you guys raised capital?
Seed Round and Angel Investors
Daan Stolk
09:40>> We've raised capital. So we've done around with 15 sorry about my camera here. We've done a round with around 15 angel investors.
Nathan Latka
09:52And when when did you close that round?
Daan Stolk
09:56>> February.
Nathan Latka
09:56And Okay.
09:57How much did you end up raising?
Daan Stolk
10:00>> 250,000.
Nathan Latka
10:01Okay. Got it. By the way, whatever's happening on your thing, your video looks fine to me. So I wouldn't worry about it.
Daan Stolk
10:05>> Oh, okay.
Nathan Latka
10:06Okay. Yeah. So so 250,000 raised in a in a seed, sort of a seed round. Obviously, valuation and dilution management is important. Most people are selling like 20 in their seed. Were you sort of in that same range?
Valuation Negotiation and Equity Sold
Daan Stolk
10:17>> Yeah, 15%.
Nathan Latka
10:19Okay. So you were like, what is that? A $850,000 valuation, something like that?
Daan Stolk
10:25>> 15%. So it's
Nathan Latka
10:27Oh, 1.5%.
Daan Stolk
10:29>> No. Sorry. Oh, 15. One five percent.
Nathan Latka
10:32Yeah. So that would be that would be about a oh, oh, oh, got it. Got it. Got it. So you you were like a 1,400,000, 1,200,000 valuation, something like that. Pre money.
Daan Stolk
10:41>> 2,000,000. 2,000,000 valuation. Pre money.
Nathan Latka
10:442 okay. So 2,000,000 pre, you raised $250 k, you said?
Daan Stolk
10:48>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
10:49Got it. So so $250 k divided by yeah. Okay. Got it. So $250 k divided by 2,200,000 would be 11% that you sold, not 15%.
Daan Stolk
10:59>> Yeah. Sorry. You're right. It's 11%.
Nathan Latka
11:03Okay. Got it. Well, that's even better.
Daan Stolk
11:04>> It's Yeah.
Nathan Latka
11:05Yeah. Yeah. That's even better. How did you guys get I mean, walk us through that negotiation a little bit. How did you get to that valuation pre revenue?
Daan Stolk
11:13>> It was easy. We realized that a lot of the ideas in the space, they're not really based on tangible data, right? You can say, oh, I have a lot of better customers that are prepared to pay x, y, z. But if you don't have product yet, it's still not really based on anything. So what did we do? We said, how much runway do we need? How much percent of the business are we willing to
Nathan Latka
11:37What was the answer to that? How much runway did you want?
Burn Rate and Freelancer Team
Daan Stolk
11:40>> Yeah, so we said, let's get enough money to build an MVP with a small team of four or five people. Founders aren't getting a salary. We're bootstrapping ourselves. The whole point of the consultancy was that we don't take money out of the company. And it also keeps us super eager. We're, you know, we're fighting every day to build a company because
Nathan Latka
12:04So what is what is burn? What is burn today then? How much are you burning per month?
Daan Stolk
12:08>> We haven't started burn yet.
Nathan Latka
12:10So That's
Daan Stolk
12:11>> we're just about to yeah, we're about to hire our first dev. And we've been working with some freelancers, but those were one off payments. So that actually keeps us really lean.
Nathan Latka
12:24Where did you find these freelancers and what did you have them do?
Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
Daan Stolk
12:28>> Personal network. We work with an amazing designer and we have a freelancer that's working as a software architect. So really helping us lay the groundwork. But this guy has a ton of experience.
Nathan Latka
12:43Does the designer look Is the designer looking for more clients? Can you share his name?
Daan Stolk
12:49>> Yeah, he's on our website. Stefan Yee. Yee is his last name, Y E. And he's on our website on Alphadoc. If you go to the team page, you can see his name.
Nathan Latka
13:00So people could listen if they like your design and want to hire him part time. Could, right? Or is he full time with you?
Daan Stolk
13:06>> No, no. He's part time with us.
Nathan Latka
13:08I see. I see. Well, he did a great job. The website looks fantastic.
Daan Stolk
13:12>> Cool. And then sorry.
Nathan Latka
13:13And then who what was the other one? You said a software architect?
Daan Stolk
13:17>> Yeah. Yeah. He's he's helping us out from architect point of view, and we just recently started working with him just two two or three weeks ago.
Nathan Latka
13:28Yeah. He's not on the website yet, right?
Daan Stolk
13:30>> No. He's not on the website yet.
Nathan Latka
13:32Very cool. Listen. Yeah. Go ahead.
Daan Stolk
13:37>> No. No. Sorry.
Nathan Latka
13:40Awesome. Well, look, what I was gonna say is no, we're rooting for you. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?
Daan Stolk
13:49>> Secrets of Sand Hill Road.
Nathan Latka
13:51Number two, is there a founder you're following or studying?
Daan Stolk
13:55>> No. But sometimes I feel like I'm married to my co founder.
Nathan Latka
13:59So I
Daan Stolk
14:00>> think I'm following him.
Nathan Latka
14:01And number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Alphadoc?
Daan Stolk
14:05>> Motion, an automated task and calendar scheduler.
Nathan Latka
14:09Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Daan Stolk
14:13>> Seven to eight.
Nathan Latka
14:14Okay. And what's your situation, Daan? Married, single, kids?
Daan Stolk
14:17>> One baby on the way.
Nathan Latka
14:20Cool. Married and a kid. That's very exciting. How old are you?
Daan Stolk
14:26>> 29.
14:27>> 29.
Nathan Latka
14:28Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.
Daan Stolk
14:37>> Go for equity at your first startup.
Nathan Latka
14:41Did you get screwed at your first startup?
Daan Stolk
14:44>> No. I did. I don't feel like I got screwed, but I should have definitely made a case for equity.
Nathan Latka
14:52Guys, there you have it. Alphadoc.io just raised $250,000 in their seed round at a $2,200,000 valuation. Currently, just two co founders relying on freelancers to get the MVP up. They help you build out your API documentation easier so that the developers are more likely to actually use your API. Again, not a sexy space, but definitely popular, definitely needs work. Daan is making this easy. He supported himself last year doing $30,000 in consulting projects before saying, okay,
15:16I can now focus on the SaaS because he had enough personal runway. Again, now scaling, hopefully hiring three to four people this year to break out of beta and launch their first paid customer accounts. We'll see what happens. Daan, thanks for taking us to the top.
Daan Stolk
15:28>> Thanks a lot.
Nathan Latka
15:30One 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
15:55p. M. Central. Additionally, remember these recorded Founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at two p. M. Central. 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
16:17acquisition, 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
16:38are 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
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