How ApuTime Reached $600K Revenue and 300 Customers with an Autonomous ERP (Interview with CEO Martin Lonsky)

Intro and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Aputime.com. They help field teams that have a lot of field and human operations, optimize their time and their planning. Launched in 2016, he was building the MVP for six years before launching, but he's grown now from 10,000 a month in revenue to 50,000 a month in revenue in the last two months, really rapid growth. They've raised about 1,700,000 total today. Their last round was $800,000 seed round last year at about a 4,500,000 valuation. He sold 15%

00:23of the company. Team at ten today as they look to continue to scale. Hey folks, my guest today is Martin Lonsky. He's building a very cool tool called aputime, which is a it's the first autonomous ERP. It's a putime.com. Martin, you ready to take us

00:38to the top?

Martin Lonsky

00:39>> Hello guys.

What Is an Autonomous ERP

Nathan Latka

00:40All right. What's an autonomous ERP? Give me an example of a customer that's using you.

Martin Lonsky

00:45>> Yeah. Basically, let's imagine you are sitting in your car and you turn on your navigation.

00:54>> Basically your navigation will calculate the optimal route into the destination and it will tell you when you arrive into destination. And let's imagine you can do the same in company processes and the whole execution management inside the processes and hundreds of projects. We can tell every employee what is the best thing to do right now and we can recalculate it in real time. So when anything is changed inside the company, we can recalculate everything what is

01:25>> going on in in the company.

Nathan Latka

01:27Martin, can you give me a specific example of the company that pays you today?

Target Customers and Use Cases

Martin Lonsky

01:32>> Well, we are SaaS, so software as a service. So we are very similar to SAP in the process management platform, but we make it autonomously. The most of our customers are from manufacturing or light manufacturing where a lot of projects are running and they are very complex in the processes. So we can handle the whole scheduling for the human resources. So basically we optimize work time schedule in real time. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

02:06And is this specifically for folks that are driving, like, on roads and maps and you're saying there's a mountain there, it's too expensive or that's too costly here?

Martin Lonsky

02:15>> Yeah. Basically basically, there was there was just similar to to the navigation, but we we don't care about about the roads and and so on. We calculate the the tasks. So, basically, we are like Asana, but with with autonomous scheduling system. So we can optimize the work time schedule inside the company. We can tell tell people what is the best task for this this time.

Pricing and Contract Structure

Nathan Latka

02:44Understood. And what's the average customer or company pay you per month to use the technology?

Martin Lonsky

02:50>> Yeah. Basically, for around

02:55>> 1,500 per per per month.

Nathan Latka

03:031,500 per month?

Martin Lonsky

03:05>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Most of our customers are pay paying annually, so we are talking about about 10 k.

Nathan Latka

03:1210 k per year. And what obviously, don't name the customer, but what does your largest customer pay?

Martin Lonsky

03:18>> I believe that it is Siemens or or we have we have customer which is a public television in here in Czech Republic. We are based in Czech Republic in the middle of the Europe. So maybe maybe the public television it's comparable, but it is absolutely different segment.

Nathan Latka

03:38But are you talking $100,000 a year contracts or a million dollar a year contracts?

Martin Lonsky

03:44>> No. We are still thinking about about 20 k.

Nathan Latka

03:49Okay. So you're still trying to figure out how to get your first customer to 20 k a year?

Martin Lonsky

03:53>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Basically, are focused on on on the small and medium sized companies because there is a very huge gap between between only simple task management tools and solution like SAP.

Nathan Latka

04:08So Yep. And just to be clear, you launched in 2016, I believe. Right?

Martin Lonsky

04:13>> Yeah. Yes. And have you

Nathan Latka

04:14bootstrapped or raised capital today?

Martin Lonsky

04:18>> Currently, are bootstrapping, but we are running the fundraising roadshow.

04:23>> But we don't need to close it as as soon as possible.

Nathan Latka

04:28How much are you looking to raise right now?

Martin Lonsky

04:32>> $1,722,000.

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

Fundraising Roadshow and Market Conditions

Nathan Latka

04:59your 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

05:23get 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

05:45not 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

06:59the interview. And, Martin, what are you learning in the market? A lot of people are saying it's very tough to raise equity right now.

Martin Lonsky

07:06>> I'm pretty pretty clear with that because we absolutely know that we have we have a disruption technology. We are we are reinventing the whole area of of managing processes because No.

Nathan Latka

07:18But you're avoiding my question, though. The question is not about you. It's about the market. Do you have someone that's already given you a term sheet? Or what is the market telling you? Do you have any equity investors ready to pony up?

Martin Lonsky

07:28>> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We we are cool with that because we we've grown from from $10.10 k MRR to $2.50 in just in just two months. So we have very quick traction.

Nathan Latka

07:45Say that again. You're at 250,000 a month in revenue?

Martin Lonsky

07:48>> From from 10 k to $2.50.

Nathan Latka

07:51Wow. 10 You were doing 10,000 in MRR a year ago?

Martin Lonsky

07:55>> Yeah. We are at 50, 50 k MRR at this time.

Nathan Latka

08:01Sorry. Are you doing 250,000 a a month right now or 58,000 a month?

Martin Lonsky

08:05>> We've we've grown from from 10 k MRR to 50.

Nathan Latka

08:11Five zero. Five zero. And that growth happened over the past twelve months?

Martin Lonsky

08:17>> No. That growth faster in the last two months. That is very, very, very quick.

Nathan Latka

08:24So if you're doing 50,000 a month today in revenue, what were you doing exactly one year ago?

Martin Lonsky

08:30>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

08:32>> Two two months ago, we we No. Martin were on 10 k.

Nathan Latka

08:36A year ago, how much revenue were you doing monthly?

Martin Lonsky

08:39>> Okay. Around one or two. We've entered the market one year ago, so there is a huge research behind the aputime. So six years we were doing the research. I'm a past academic academic researcher. So there is a huge huge research behind the aputime and we've entered the market last year. So everything's

Nathan Latka

09:04not pay your Martin, how did that six years of building an MVP? You launched in 2016. You go to market last year. How did you pay your bills for six years?

Martin Lonsky

09:12>> Easily with the angel investor behind.

Nathan Latka

09:15I thought you said you bootstrapped the company?

Martin Lonsky

09:18>> Yeah. At this time, we are we are bootstrapping. Our angel investor doesn't need to invest anymore. We are bootstrapping, but but we need to to Martin,

Nathan Latka

09:28how much capital have you raised total to date?

Martin Lonsky

09:31>> 1.7.

Nathan Latka

09:32Okay. So you're not bootstrapped. You have raised capital. When you raised the 1,700,000, what year was that?

Martin Lonsky

09:37>> Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. I was thinking that you you are you are asking for a bootstrapping right now, but we are not bootstrapped in the past year.

Nathan Latka

09:47So when did you raise the 1,700,000?

Martin Lonsky

09:50>> During the seven last years. It was in in a lot of tranches.

Nathan Latka

09:56Oh, I see. Was it a convertible note, was any of the were any of them priced equity round?

Valuation and Funding History

Martin Lonsky

10:00>> Yeah. A private equity round.

Nathan Latka

10:02So you do is they someone did put a valuation on the business? Yep. Okay. So when was the last tranche of money raised? Was that this year or last year?

Martin Lonsky

10:12>> It was last year.

Nathan Latka

10:13And how much was that tranche? Just that one?

Martin Lonsky

10:16>> Just the just this one tranche. Let me calculate it. It it was in in Czech crowns. Okay.

10:28>> Almost 800 k.

Nathan Latka

10:31Okay. So a lot of it. And most folks in their pre seed round are selling between 1520% of the company. Were you in that same range?

Martin Lonsky

10:39>> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We are we are talking about 15%.

Nathan Latka

10:43Okay. Yeah. So 15% if you sold 15% for 800 k, that puts your valuation at somewhere between sort of 4 and $5,000,000. Is that right?

Martin Lonsky

10:54>> Yeah. Yeah. After after the after the market fall fall down, we have we have a valuation from from the global company, Grant Thornton, made for 15, almost 15,000,000, but it was last year. So maybe it's a lot of different this year.

Nathan Latka

11:16Understood. How did you go from $2,000 or $10,000 a month a month ago to $50,000 a month today? What did you do over the past thirty days?

Martin Lonsky

11:25>> Yeah.

AppSumo Campaign and Affiliate Growth

Martin Lonsky

11:27>> This is a crazy roadshow because we were selected into AppSumo Select and we've got a lot of ambassadors who who wants to to cooperate with aputime. So they very quickly started to with the affiliate, and that's it. So so we we we were selected to cooperate with you with the optimal. So we've launched the campaign.

Nathan Latka

11:52Martin, how many paying customers do you have today?

Paying Customer Count and ARPU Correction

Martin Lonsky

11:57>> Around 300 to 300 companies. And then, of course, a lot of AppSumo lifetime deals, but we don't count that because it is only marketing and spreading our our our idea abroad.

Nathan Latka

12:12Okay. If I take 300 customers paying on average $1,500 per month Yep. That would put you at $450,000 a month in revenue. You're one tenth that size. So where's my math wrong?

Martin Lonsky

12:27>> Not every customer is is so big. So some customers are very, very tiny, about 10 or two to 50 users, and some customers are around one hundred and fifty fifty employees. So

Nathan Latka

12:43So the average customer today taking your monthly recurring revenue of 50,000 divided by 300 customers, the average customer today pays something like a $150 a month, not 1,500 per month. Is that right?

Martin Lonsky

12:54>> Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

12:55I I see. What's your tactic? You know, I've seen AppSumo work for people and then really hurt other people, and it really can hurt if you don't have a plan to move one time lifetime deals to monthly recurring plans. How are you

13:08doing that?

Martin Lonsky

13:10>> Yeah. Yeah.

AppSumo Lifetime Deals Strategy

Martin Lonsky

13:12>> Currently, we've blocked the the AppSumo customers on our AWS account with which is which is with a 100 k

13:28>> activate program. So we we don't have any cost with with that during this this and and next year.

Nathan Latka

13:36Well, sure you do. It's your it's your time. You have to support all those users that never gonna pay you again potentially.

Martin Lonsky

13:42>> Absolutely. Absolutely. And they are helping us to make this service absolutely amazing. Currently, was talking about that we are mostly for the companies medium sized and yeah around the medium sized company. But we've learned something very important because we've acquired a lot of freelancers and we are missing some few features to be best for the freelancers as well. So maybe we can open this market and we would never know it without AppSumo.

Product Learnings from Lifetime Deal Users

Nathan Latka

14:26Martin, how of the 300 paying customers today per month came from AppSumo?

Martin Lonsky

14:32>> They are paying multiple ways. They

Nathan Latka

14:35are upselling.

Martin Lonsky

14:37>> They we are creating the marketplace. So

Nathan Latka

14:41No. Martin, my my question my question is, of your 300 customers today that are paying you monthly Yeah. How many of them came from AppSumo directly?

Martin Lonsky

14:55>> Ten, fifteen maybe.

Nathan Latka

14:56So why do you credit AppSumo for your growth when they make up less than, I mean, than 6% of your total paying customers?

Martin Lonsky

15:05>> Currently they spread this idea. We have a lot of customers who just signed up because of the campaign and they don't know about the AppSumo. So people just talking about it and use the affiliate, but nobody nobody Got it. Our partners.

Team Size and Engineering Headcount

Nathan Latka

15:25How many how many folks are full time on your team today?

Martin Lonsky

15:29>> 10.

Nathan Latka

15:3010. Okay. Great. And how many engineers?

Martin Lonsky

15:34>> Three.

Nathan Latka

15:35Okay. And last question before we wrap up. ChatGPT, robotic process automation, what's the future of your space? What are you building next?

AI and Budgeting Product Roadmap

Martin Lonsky

15:44>> Okay.

15:58>> When we are when we can optimize the work time schedule, are we are coming with AI insights into aputime because everybody wants to know the the deepest the deepest information about the company people cannot calculate during the life. So this is next. And another thing on our pipeline is budgeting because if we can calculate to the future how the projects are going on, we can calculate the cash flow, how the cash flow will going on in

16:32>> the time. So it will be huge.

Nathan Latka

16:34Great. We're rooting for you. In the meantime, let's wrap up with the famous five one word answers here if you can. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions

Martin Lonsky

16:42>> Business book? Maybe zero to one.

Nathan Latka

16:46Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Martin Lonsky

16:51>> Number two… I love I love leaders is lost. Maybe number number number three is

Nathan Latka

17:05Martin one is fine. The third question is what is your favorite online tool for building aputime?

Martin Lonsky

17:14>> Currently

17:17>> online tool, I love the product lift at this time because Wow. It is very important product lift.

17:26>> It is very important to have a public roadmap because it makes the community and the relationship between users and between between aputime team. So we use product lift to have completely white labeled road road map and wish list and so on. And people are are very active there. We can we can communicate with all our customers and they communicate between each others. So And that works.

Nathan Latka

17:55That works. This is rapid One word answers if you can. Okay? Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Martin Lonsky

18:02>> Maybe five to six.

Nathan Latka

18:03And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Martin Lonsky

18:08>> I'm currently single, but I have two kids with with the same same girlfriends, so we are to get to get married.

Nathan Latka

18:15And how old are how old are you?

Martin Lonsky

18:18>> 33.

Nathan Latka

18:1933. Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20 years old?

Closing and Outro

Martin Lonsky

18:26>> And in in the next twenty twenty years?

Nathan Latka

18:28When you were 20 years old age, what's something you wish you knew?

18:38That so that

Martin Lonsky

18:40>> everything don't need to be done.

18:45>> That's something.

Nathan Latka

18:46There you have it, aputime.com. They help field teams that have a lot of field and human operations, optimize their time and their planning. Launched in 2016, he was building the MVP for six years before launching, but he's grown now from 10,000 a month in revenue to 50,000 a month in revenue in the last two months, really rapid growth. They've raised about 1,700,000 total today. Their last round was $800,000 seed round last year at about a 4,500,000

19:09valuation. He sold 15% of the company. Team at ten today as they look to continue to scale. Martin, thanks for taking us to the top.

Martin Lonsky

19:17>> Thank you very much.

Nathan Latka

19:18One 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 1PM

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20:27for 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 those people. We

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