How Amio CEO Honza Donátek grew Amio to $115.8K revenue and 7 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is matosh gucciara he is the co-founder of a company called amio previously at todo he believes that doing things differently is one of the key factors to any success uh any moving anything forward again now working on rich messaging experiences for companies matosh you're ready to take us to the top uh sorry once again i didn't get that the last one i just said are you ready to take us to the top you're ready to rock and roll yeah this is like you know this is like us crazy americans we say these weird phrases like this and you guys are like what the what the hell are these people talking about that's correct i'm from europe um i'm used to british english all right what does omeo do and are you guys pure play sass yeah that's correct like what we basically do is we unify messengers into single api so this is the core of the product but uh we go a little bit beyond because we believe that if you would like to build anything uh and a rich experience on those messengers you need to have several integration to existing softwares and all all that around so yeah but the core of the product is the unified messaging api and what i mean i still have a lot of different pricing plans here on average what do companies pay you per month to use the technology it really depends uh so we try to stick with uh rather like medium and large companies uh so the price really where is based on how many messages they send and how many active users they have but it starts on 500 and it can go to 2 000 euros monthly okay would you say 500 those if or maybe 600 a month is a fair average well the average right now is exactly like uh 550 actually okay 550 euros per month and then people pay more based off how many messages or how many users yeah exactly so the pricing model is uh scalable so we don't want to limit you on how many messages you send but we limit you on how many user interaction you have because if you would like to have a rich experience then you know like you don't exchange only one message when did you write the first line of code for this uh that's a good question well actually i uh sold uh this product to uh the first client uh even without writing a single code but the first line of code was written nearly two and a half years ago by me excellent so 2017 yeah exactly this is where we started and how much total did you spend building the mvp before you had a revenue it sounds like you maybe had revenue immediately well we did so the first part i uh i was able to sell is actually integration to zendesk uh but it was uh for a rather smaller check so it was i remember that correct 25 euros was that something like that okay so you pre you basically told the company hey for 25 euros i will help you do a zenfits integration well actually this come up from uh the first user interview so i came to to it was actually an e-commerce player here in the local market and i was trying to sell them some kind of rich experience on messengers and the first obstacle we saw or i saw was actually that they don't they cannot respond to their users on facebook messenger so we first like solve this issue and then we can move on why did you probably i mean 25 has nothing to to write code and do this integration why did you do 25 dollars uh that's a good question um i was not thinking about like it's a small amount of money uh maybe developers as as far as i'm i was developer and i'm still developer they usually underestimate their price so maybe that was the reason so so that was your first customer call 2017 2018 how many customers are you serving today uh so right now we have uh seven enterprise companies uh with us and uh yeah so seven companies paying about 550 bucks a month you're doing about 3 800 a month in revenue something like that yeah that's correct if you come only mri than this but yeah and do you remember what you're doing exactly a year ago yeah we've been actually trying to go so the thing is like we over pivot not just the product but also the focus on sales so one year ago we've been focusing more on developers because our we thought that if we will attract like developers then they will pull us to companies what was revenue exactly a year ago a year ago it was below 500 actually okay 500 euros caught 500 euros a month now doing three you know almost 4 000 a month obviously growth there small numbers now what does your team size look like today how many folks are on the team uh so this this uh the team size uh has very also a lot uh right now we stabled on four people we are three developers and one uh sales representative how do you pay four people with only four thousand dollars a month in revenue [Music] uh so we actually do a lot of like consulting so whenever we go for let's say a larger client let's say a bank for instance then you need to you know like customize the product a lot so this is how we do it um or how we've been doing that uh but we've been also recently accepted to an acceleration program called startup wiseguys and with the acceleration program uh some kind of investment also came how much so this is what uh so right now they're offering 30 000 euros and is that all the company that you've raised to date or have you raised other capital so this is uh all we have raised uh we are actually uh going to do a sea drown uh probably in the beginning of september uh and how much do you hope to raise in the seed round so that's a little bit different numbers than you were probably used in the us we are going for a smaller check of uh around 300 000 euros okay and what valuation do you hope to raise at uh that's still not settled uh we are right now focusing on growing in sales so this was our goal for for the end of this month what do you hope to raise that valuation-wise yeah yeah so uh something uh between one 1.5 million to three million euros okay interesting good okay so uh four folks on the team thirty thousand race navy the accelerator now it sounds like you're burning capital each month as you drive growth how much are you burning per month like five grand a month two grand a month where are you at we try to keep it really low uh so this is how we survive till now but now it's growing with four people and we we burn around six uh and a half thousand euros okay not not not crazy sounds manageable especially if you just raise thirty thousand it gives you some runway um do you know anything yet about your churn rate has anyone started paying you and stopped yeah that's a good question um so uh actually our sales recycling it's around five months but whenever we get a client they usually stick with us a long time so right now we have a churn of only one customer and the reason was that we twisted the product a little bit so then it was not suitable for them but the good thing for our business whenever they integrate it then uh you know like they're happy with the service we provide and they use it for a longer time that's great now do you know what you pay fully weighted on your customer acquisition cost to get a new 500 a month customer well not really because since the acceleration program we've been doing uh the sales some kind of ad hoc uh so we've been not we haven't measured this uh this stuff uh and we decided not to measure that what commission do you pay your sales person uh the commission i can communicate that because we have only one sales guy and it's uh not uh like public available sure but i mean most sales people it's pretty standard right you're given a commission of 10 20 30 on the 500 a month that they land you can give me a range it's fine sure sure so let's let's call it it's something between 10 and 30 commission uh for a yearly subscription and will you pay them each month on that or you pay the full commission of the year up front oh it really depends uh if he is able to bring the contract like 12 month contract and they will pay upfront this is what we are usually aiming for then he will get the money so if he brings in six thousand five hundred dollars a month or six grand a year and he gets that up front you'll essentially pay him between ten and call it thirty percent of the six grand so between six thousand and eighteen thousand dollars sorry yeah 1800 yeah that's correct okay so i mean by the way like that is your cost all right that is your cac right anywhere between 10 and 30 that's correct but right now we have only two samples so you know like i cannot say like this is oh you have to start somewhere right everyone starts at zero uh sure sure but yeah uh i would to say that right now it's not that important to us so that's why we are not focusing that well it's extremely important if you have a sales person and they're and they're commission driven i mean you have to get that pro forma right if you want to end up scaling your sales and marketing and hiring more sales people you really have to dial in the you know the ramp up time for a sales person the quota targets all that jazz i mean yeah you are right but on the other hand like i still believe like even though we found some kind of product...