How AODocs Reached $30M ARR with 130 Employees While Staying Bootstrapped and Profitable (Interview with Founder and CEO Stéphane Donzé)

Nathan Latka

00:00My team told me that you have bootstrapped the company to over $55,000,000 of revenue. Is that accurate?

Stéphane Donzé

00:05>> Yes. Both companies, Talarian and aodocs, are on the front seat of the AI waves. Aodocs makes AI possible on critical documents because we have the right platform, the right foundation on which you can put AI agents on reliable information. Aodocs is about 30,000,000 today.

Nathan Latka

00:24What's the largest customer pay you per year for aodocs?

Stéphane Donzé

00:27>> The top three are all above 2,000,000 per year.

Nathan Latka

00:31Wow. So you have multiple million dollar per year customers.

Stéphane Donzé

00:33>> Yep.

Guest Introduction: Stéphane Donzé and AODocs

Nathan Latka

00:34Hey, folks. My guest today is Stéphane Donzé. He's the Founder and CEO of aodocs, a French engineer with a master's from a great university. He previously served as VP of Engineering at Exalead, which was acquired by another company in 2010. He's got twenty five plus years of experience in enterprise software and NLP. Stéphane, you ready to take us to the top?

Stéphane Donzé

00:54>> Yes. Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me today.

Nathan Latka

00:57It's good having you and I don't want to bury the lead here. My team told me that you have bootstrapped the company to over 55,000,000 of revenue. Is that accurate?

Stéphane Donzé

01:06>> Yes. We actually group together product IDs like aodocs and a service company. Our parent company named Revevol was one of the first cloud integrators in Europe, and we used this service side of the business to fund the the beginning of aodocs until aodocs itself became profitable about four years ago.

Nathan Latka

01:32Wild. Are you comfortable sharing what just just aodocs by itself does today in revenue, and then we'll go get the launch story and the product story?

AODocs Standalone Revenue: $30M

Stéphane Donzé

01:39>> Yep. Aodocs is about 30,000,000 today.

Nathan Latka

01:41Okay. So when did you launch this comp the service company? What year?

Founding Story: Revevol, Google Partnership, and AODocs Origins

Stéphane Donzé

01:44>> This this was founded in 2007. It was the the very first partner of Google in Europe when Google launched their enterprise B2B edition. And then, aodocs was created in 2012, first under Revevol, and now we kind of flipped it around because the aodocs became much bigger than, than Revevol.

Nathan Latka

02:08Interesting. So before aodocs was launched, was the maximum, like, the the biggest revenue year you did at the services company, and what kinds of services were you doing? Give me an example.

Profitability Journey: From -$500K to Profitable in 2022

Stéphane Donzé

02:18>> We were doing cloud migration, so the companies wanted to move their email files and calendar to the cloud. So it started very small. In in 2010, it was doing a couple million dollars of revenue, and the two companies grew together. So the miracle of our model is that the services activity grew fast enough to sustain the software development activity.

Nathan Latka

02:45And then you became aodocs became independently profitable in 2022. Correct?

Stéphane Donzé

02:50>> Yes. Correct. And in twin 2020, 2021, we were, like, 500,000 in the in the negative, so we were almost profitable, but we became really profitable, really positive in 2022.

Nathan Latka

03:01You were burning at aodocs $500,000 per month. That keep you up at night? Did it make you nervous?

Stéphane Donzé

03:06>> The most we did actually was 200,000 a month. It was tight, then we had to become efficient in R and D, in marketing, in all aspects. We never went into a spending frenzy like you can do when you have a big fundraising. The downside of it, of course, is that in terms of communication opportunities, we never got to make a lot of PR around the big fundraising. Obviously, we were a bit low key.

Team Size and Multicultural Engineering Culture

Nathan Latka

03:37How many folks are full time Stéphane at the company today?

Stéphane Donzé

03:40>> Today, for aodocs, it's about 130, and the whole group, counting, Talarian and the other companies, were two fifty. We are a multicultural company. We have French and Italians and Hungarians and Americans and all kinds of things. I think it's really good to have those different points of view. Engineers are in Europe, and the majority of the market and the customers are in The US, and then, of course, software, you can export it everywhere. We have more

04:10>> stability and more, frankly, a better technical level with European engineers than what we could find in The US for the same budget.

2026 Revenue Outlook and Group Structure

Nathan Latka

04:17That update you gave on 55,000,000 was middle of last year. I imagine you have an update today. What do you think you'll do combined revenue in 2026?

Stéphane Donzé

04:25>> Hopefully, 15 plus percent growth. So we'll we'll see. It's the way we have a few big years that should land at the end of the year. So it's it's hard to to say and to tell at plus or minus 5,000,000.

Nathan Latka

04:39So maybe break 60,000,000 of revenue this year or something like that?

Stéphane Donzé

04:42>> Yeah. I I think so. We have reselling activity that that is going down. So in the whole numbers, it might not not move, a lot, but in terms of generated margin, it's it's, we expect a big a big increase.

Nathan Latka

04:56The breakdown and let's say you do 60,000,000 this year. You're is it fifty fifty between aodocs and a services company or no?

Stéphane Donzé

05:02>> Aodocs is a bit more than than half. Then we have another software company called Talarian, which is the maker of GPT for Sheet. It's an add on in Excel to bring AI in Excel and Google Sheet. And then we have the service activity. So the other half is partly Talarian, the other software company, and partly the services activity. Both companies have similar origins. So just like when aodocs started because there was no document management solution available in

05:32>> cloud, Talarian started because there was no there was a need for several functions, sending emails from a spreadsheet, merging documents, creating documents from a spreadsheet, and then later integrating spreadsheets with AI correctly. So we heard those needs from our customers, and we built those apps. The services company not only gave us funding for the software, but it gave us a good point of observation to be on the ground, connected to the business users and seeing live

06:02>> what were the frustrations, what were were there, the needs that were not adequately covered by the market.

06:07>> I have a confession.

Nathan Latka

06:08Are you ready for something?

Stéphane Donzé

06:10>> Yep.

Nathan Latka

06:11I had no I had no idea you were behind yet another mail merge. I love this tool so much.

06:16Look at

06:17this email from twin I sent you this email in twenty sixteen, ten years ago. Look at this email.

Stéphane Donzé

06:21>> Oh, and, yeah, do you have Roman, Gerard, and Rupe?

Nathan Latka

06:24Yep.

06:25I wanted to buy you so bad. It was so simple and so powerful.

Stéphane Donzé

06:27>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

06:28And when I couldn't get an answer, I'm like, they must just be printing money. They don't need an acquisition. And sure enough, you are probably printing money.

Stéphane Donzé

06:36>> We are printing even more money. In 2016, it was probably in around a million dollars revenue. Now we are, like, six times that.

Nathan Latka

06:44Yeah. I have to be I mean, you are very, very good at at at at distribution because these apps I remember back in the day, YAMM had, like, millions of usage or downloads or

Stéphane Donzé

06:54>> It's still in top top three, I think, of the the marketplace for Google Sheet.

Talarian and YAMM: The Other Software Company

Nathan Latka

06:5918,209 review. Yeah. This is it. 18,000 17,000,000 downloads. How did how are you driving growth and distribution? I mean, don't wanna ask the question about this one because it's old. How are you driving distribution for this agent?

Stéphane Donzé

07:10>> Same same strategy. We were first We were first in bringing AI in Excel and Sheet way before Copilot, way before Gemini and Sheet, and word-of-mouth, some YouTube marketing, some a lot of LinkedIn, but frankly a lot of word-of-mouth. And it's funny because the two companies have vastly different go to market. On aodocs we have relatively small numbers of very big clients: the Airbus, the Air Liquide, the Veolias and the like, while Talarian, they have tens of

07:42>> thousands of of tiny clients.

Nathan Latka

07:44And do you have a motion that connects them all? Do you pick off enterprise, you know, employees paying $5 a month here and try to upsell them to a 100 k plans on aodocs?

Stéphane Donzé

07:52>> We have a few, joint customers, but usually it's different population. The people using Yam, for example, have are not are working in in marketing departments while aodocs, we we target engineering, we target IT, we target HR.

Nathan Latka

08:09There's a couple things I'm wondering. First off, you must have incredible focus and discipline because I'm sure you're getting hounded by private equity firms to buy the company and you've resisted for ten plus years.

Resisting Private Equity and Staying Independent

Stéphane Donzé

08:18>> Four times a week, yeah. We worked hard to build a profitable company. And now we're at the point where the profit, the EBIT of the company can be allocated in investment, hiring more, growing and so on, a little bit in

08:37>> returning to shareholders, a little bit of internal things where we do like a yearly company seminar in Italy. So, I mean, it's fun to be growing a profitable company. And the point is the private equity playbook, which is gonna be to do cost cutting, to maximize the profit or to it's something we can apply ourselves. I mean, would I sell a company to someone who can do and then read the benefits of our own work? If

09:09>> someone comes in with a platform that can distribute the product and accelerate our growth, sure, why not? That's a different story. But we love our company, we love our independence, we have a great market positioning. Both companies, Talarian and Aodocs, are on the front seat of the AI waves. Aodocs makes AI possible on critical documents because we have the right platform, the right foundation on which you can put AI agents on reliable information. TALARIAN is bringing

09:39>> AI in productivity tools to help companies accelerate, so in both cases, we benefit from the AI wave, and we want to take it. We don't want to sell the company. Now that that we have, you know, a fantastic tailwind.

Nathan Latka

09:55Can I ask you what was profit margin last year?

Stéphane Donzé

09:58>> Profit margin on aodocs is

Nathan Latka

10:01The whole thing. Whole company.

Stéphane Donzé

10:04>> On the whole thing,

10:07>> 10 ish percent.

Nathan Latka

10:09And before we move away from the private equity thing, let me just play devil's advocate for a second. Right? You're doing 50, 60,000,000 of revenue. You're very profitable. AirSlate is really interesting. Right? They grew by building a lot of sort of small tools that went viral, and now they're buying buying other tools. If someone like this came in and offered you, you know, 15 x all cash, your current revenues, so something between 500,000,000 and 700,000,000 to sell

10:30the whole thing out, right, you you wouldn't take that deal.

Stéphane Donzé

10:32>> I don't know. We need we need to talk. Right? But we're not looking to sell our our there's no exit strategy. Our our goal is to grow the company. That's why I was saying to me, I like I my company. I don't want to see it acquire to to wither and and and die, and there are so many acquisitions that that fail that I don't wanna see that. But if you have a platform that helps me

10:55>> grow, yeah, we can talk.

Nathan Latka

10:56Okay. Let's go on AI. Everyone's building products in the age of AI. They're wondering when Claude releases the next extension, is it gonna kill us? So my blunt question to you, with all due respect, why would people use GPT for Work when I can just put Claude in Excel?

Stéphane Donzé

11:08>> Well, it's it's different use cases. GPT for Work is extremely good at

11:16>> bulk application. If you have, if you try Cloud and Gemini and the likes on more than 100 lines, it's gonna slow down and fail and so on. What we're doing here in terms of plumbing, in terms of data management, is hard. Understanding the full spreadsheet and running for a long time is a tough problem. If you look on YouTube, there's lots of comparison videos. We measure the difference, and there's stark difference.

Nathan Latka

11:41What's the largest customer pay you per year for aodocs?

Stéphane Donzé

11:44>> The top three are all above 2,000,000 per year.

Nathan Latka

11:48Wow. So you have multiple million dollar per year customers.

Stéphane Donzé

11:50>> Yep.

Nathan Latka

11:51This is shocking to me. So I'm looking at the website. You have customers paying you 2,000,000 per year. No. Individual customers for this. What are you upselling against? Is it number of seats, number of like, are you upselling?

Stéphane Donzé

12:01>> So the the base, if you scroll down, would you see some of the logos we can we can display? Google and Veolia are both in the very large category. Veolia, they are building water treatment plants. You know the desalination plants that are in The Middle East? We've recently migrated most of their North American division from SharePoint to to aodocs, ensuring that Veolia distributes the right technical documentation to actual contractors building the water treatment plants, and ensuring

Why Google Pays AODocs for Document Management

Stéphane Donzé

12:30>> that those projects are delivered on time and budget with the right profitability. So essentially, at aodocs, ensure that companies use the right version of the documents, use the right authoritative information when they do their projects or they do their processes, so that we reduce human errors and we accelerate the business process. We do the same with Google. We help them build data centers. We are working with Airbus as well on the airplane certifications. And to your

12:59>> question, what's the metric for the pricing? Usually, the number of users or the number of employees plays a role in pricing, but it's not necessarily the only metric. Sometimes we price based on the processes themselves, how many documents you have to validate or to ingest or to process every year.

Nathan Latka

13:20It's shocking to me that Google pays you, you know, millions per year for a product for which is document management when they have Google Sheets. I mean, they they are I mean, they have a whole product line around this. Why don't they build this internally?

Go-to-Market: Inbound, Trade Shows, and LinkedIn

Stéphane Donzé

13:32>> Google focuses on on collaboration. When you're on Google Drive, you have your documents. I have my documents. We do whatever we want with those documents. The the the value proposition of Google Drive is speed, speed and convenience and ease of use. Bad side, let's say, of of that is is nothing is controlled. You have no guarantee that what you find in my Google Drive is up to date, validated, and truthful. What aodocs does is can we

13:54>> control those documents? We put them in a process, we have traceability, and we are able to tell you this is the authoritative version, this is the version that has to be sent to the contractor, and you can build the data center from it because it's been validated by engineering, by legal, by finance, in this order. And both work together because when you use aodocs and drive together, when you're in collaboration phase, you wanna go fast, but

14:17>> at some point, have the final version. You wanna sell this send this sales proposal to the customer, and you wanna make sure you set the right so you send the right price. So that's where aodocs comes into play, and we have the validation. The two are complementaries, two different side of the same call. But Google, they don't have a tool for document control. It's not their business. It's not their DNA. And and for this, it makes

14:39>> sense to go look on the market for specialists.

Nathan Latka

14:42What's your go to market? How are you getting new customers at aodocs? Is it outbound motion or what?

Stéphane Donzé

14:46>> It's outbound. It's trade shows. It's word-of-mouth. We get a good part of our business inbound. 50 plus percent of the of the sales pipeline comes from contact on the website, or RFPs that we receive because people know we exist and then they want to include us in a in a tender.

Nathan Latka

15:07As you test different live events like this, have you learned anything about construction or the sales stuff you're handing out or what you're putting on the screen to just maximize conversion at events?

Live Event Strategy and Pre-Event LinkedIn Campaigns

Stéphane Donzé

15:16>> I think the one thing that works well at events is to contact the attendees before. So we do a pre campaign on LinkedIn. Hey. We're gonna be there in one month if you want to see us, blah blah blah. We get the list of attendees, and we contact each and every one of them, and then we we explain our value proposition, and we we push to book a meeting on the booth. When we do it right,

15:38>> we can get more traffic because people know we are there, and they have added us on their list of sponsors to visit. When it's available, we also buy speaking slots, so we have sponsored speeches, sponsored presentation, a different

Nathan Latka

15:56What does that cost usually?

Stéphane Donzé

15:57>> Small events can run-in the 10 to 20,000. The events, you can you can pay a 100 or plus thousand dollars for

Nathan Latka

16:06How do know if it's worth it, Stéphane? I mean, it worth spending a $100 for a twenty minute keynote spot?

Stéphane Donzé

16:09>> Our target are IT architects, architects,

AI Wave and AODocs Positioning

Stéphane Donzé

16:14>> IT IT leaders, leaders, and if you go to a conference where those IT architects pay to come, every every person you touch at this conference is potentially a future prospect, Maybe right now, maybe six months, maybe two years later. So a 100 conference for us, a single deal from that conference pays for it.

Nathan Latka

16:36Guys, there you go. Check them out. Aodocs.com if you're looking for IT solution for document management or if you're looking for a job. Right?

Stéphane Donzé

16:43>> Exactly.

Wrap-Up and Where to Follow Stéphane

Nathan Latka

16:45Alright. Stéphane, if people wanna follow you online as we wrap up here, where can they find you?

Stéphane Donzé

16:50>> Mostly on LinkedIn. I'm not a big Twitter guy. So if you want follow me, go on LinkedIn.

Nathan Latka

16:55Guys, what a story. Services company launched in 2007. Now today, '26 2026 will do 60,000,000 of revenue, 50% of which comes from aodocs. Stéphane, thank you for taking us to the top.

Stéphane Donzé

17:05>> Thank you for having me.