Latka logo

Founder Interview

How Aydi Reached a $10M Valuation with 10 Commercial Farm Customers and 5,000 Seasonal Workers Placed (Interview with CEO Hassan Fayed)

Interview Date
November 2, 2022
Interviewee
Hassan FayedCo-Founder and CEO
Watch
Watch the full interview

Company Metrics at Interview Time

Post-Money Valuation (2022)

$10M

Total Funding Raised (2022)

$2M

Customers (2022)

10 commercial farms

Seasonal Workers Placed (2022)

5,000

Active Acres Engaged (2022)

1,200

Historical Snapshot

These numbers were reported by Hassan Fayed during his interview with Nathan Latka in November 2022 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Aydi’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways

  • 01Aydi raised close to $2M via convertible note in February and March 2022 at a $10M post-money valuation
  • 02The company was working with 10 of the largest commercial farms in Egypt as of November 2022
  • 031,200 acres were actively engaged on a daily basis through the platform
  • 045,000 seasonal workers were engaged on a daily basis via the app
  • 05The team totaled 27 people, including 11 engineers and 9 people in product
  • 06Aydi spent approximately $250,000 to build four distinct software products
  • 07Monthly burn rate was approximately $40,000 with no revenue yet at time of interview
  • 08Pricing was planned to launch in December 2022 at $1 per active acre per month plus a 5% service charge on worker order value
  • 09The company was founded in November 2021 and had been operating for exactly one year at time of interview
  • 10Each of the 10 current farms represented only 5 to 10 percent of their total acreage, leaving significant room to scale

Company Metrics at Time of Interview

MetricValueSource
Post-Money Valuation (2022)$10MFounder interview, Nov 2022
Total Funding Raised (2022)$2MFounder interview, Nov 2022
Funding Instrument (2022)Convertible NoteFounder interview, Nov 2022
Customers (2022)10 commercial farmsFounder interview, Nov 2022
Active Acres Engaged (2022)1,200Founder interview, Nov 2022
Seasonal Workers Placed (2022)5,000Founder interview, Nov 2022
Team Size (2022)27Founder interview, Nov 2022
Engineers (2022)11Founder interview, Nov 2022
Product Team (2022)9Founder interview, Nov 2022
Monthly Burn (2022)$40,000Founder interview, Nov 2022
Software Development Spend (2022)$250,000Founder interview, Nov 2022
Products Built (2022)4Founder interview, Nov 2022
Year Founded2021Founder interview, Nov 2022
Average Seasonal Worker Daily Wage (2022)$15 per dayFounder interview, Nov 2022
Free Trial Length Offered to Customers (2022)60 to 90 daysFounder interview, Nov 2022

Growth Breakdown

Revenue

At the time of the interview Aydi had not yet begun charging customers. Pricing was planned to launch in December 2022, with the first paying customers expected to come online in January 2023. The planned model combined a $1 per active acre per month fee with a 5% service charge on the total value of seasonal worker orders placed through the platform.

Customers

Aydi was working with 10 of the largest commercial farms in Egypt during its beta pilot phase. These farms collectively contributed 1,200 active acres and 5,000 seasonal workers engaged daily, representing only 5 to 10 percent of each farm's total acreage, leaving substantial room to grow within the existing customer base alone.

Team

The team stood at 27 full-time people, including 11 engineers and 9 people across product, design, quality assurance, and product management. The company was burning approximately $40,000 per month to support this headcount.

Funding

Aydi raised close to $2M via a convertible note in February and March 2022, implying a post-money valuation of approximately $10M. Hassan Fayed noted that investors were drawn by validation from leading industry players and his prior track record building companies in the UAE and Dubai.

Growth Strategy

Proving Value Before Charging

Rather than charging from day one, Aydi offered farms a 60 to 90 day free trial to demonstrate the software's value in an industry where pen and paper still dominated. Hassan described this as a necessary prerequisite to gaining trust in a market where the pitch was not software versus software, but software versus no software at all.

Digitizing Farm Infrastructure with QR Codes

Aydi created digital identities for every plot on a farm using QR codes, enabling field supervisors to log worker tasks in real time via a mobile app. This infrastructure layer gave management remote visibility into field operations and formed the foundation for the platform's billing model tied to active acres.

Targeting the Largest Commercial Farms First

By focusing on 10 of the largest commercial farms in Egypt, Aydi secured high-volume pilots with significant acreage and worker counts. Hassan noted that some of these farms have 50,000 to 60,000 acres, meaning the company could scale its engaged acreage by 10 times or more without adding a single new customer.

Dual Revenue Model Tied to Core Farm Operations

The planned pricing combined a recurring per-acre fee with a transaction-based service charge on worker wages, aligning Aydi's revenue directly with the two core activities farms care about: managing land and hiring labor. This structure was designed to grow automatically as farms expanded their use of the platform.

Founder's Prior Network and Track Record

Hassan's history of building companies in the UAE and Dubai that grew into healthy standalone businesses helped Aydi raise $2M at an early stage before generating any revenue. His board roles at Tradeling and Scalidy also provided access to regional networks relevant to the agri-tech and startup ecosystem.

Best Quotes

So we we offer our software that helps them put out kind of like requests for workers to come in and and and and work on the farm when they need them to come in. And then our software, essentially, what it does is it digitizes the farms by creating digital identities for each and every plot that they have with QR codes.
So we've spent about $250,000 so far to build the software, and it includes four different products basically that one is for the worker, one is for the supervisor, one is for the management itself, and one is for our internal tools and and and management.
So the main thing is number of acres engaged and the numbers of workers that we that we onboard as well. So currently in the pilot, we have over 1,200 acres that are engaged on a daily basis. And we have close to 5,000 workers that are also engaged on a daily basis.
So the main thing is really to make sure that our software and our products are able to deliver the right kind of value to these farms. And it's something that we're planning on doing. I mean, the first customers that are gonna start paying is next month in December. And we charge them we charge them on a per acre basis.
So we're starting off with a dollar an acre a month with the with these customers. Plus, we charge we're gonna charge a service charge for the workers that we that we bring in basically, because we do the vetting and the onboarding on the training. We charge a service a service charge. So, basically, it's a 5% on the overall order value that that they place.
It's extremely challenging to bring technology. I mean, for the field supervisors, for example, it's the first time they ever use an app for work. And it's an extremely challenging environment where you don't have internet connectivity in most places. So the technical challenge that we have to go through is quite large.
So today, these are 10 farms. 10. This represents around anywhere between five to 10% of their penetration of their total acreage. Yeah. So a lot of these farms, we're working with them in kind of like just a few plots where we're testing out the product.
So we have 11 engineers. We have nine people in product. So between design and and quality and product managers and so on and so forth.
I would say three, four months ago, I was a bit nervous. Currently, now that we're seeing the the the the feedback that we're getting from the customers and we're seeing the utility, I mean, we're we're creating the first of many things.

What Happened Next

This interview captured Aydi at a pivotal pre-revenue moment in November 2022, just weeks before the company planned to launch paid pricing with its first 10 commercial farm customers in Egypt. The figures above, including the $10M valuation, $2M raised, 1,200 active acres, and 5,000 workers placed, reflect what Hassan Fayed reported at that point in time and are not current. Visit the Aydi company profile on GetLatka for the latest available data.

View Aydi’s current profile and metrics

Full Transcript

Intro and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Aydi.com is helping big farms in The UAE hire seasonal workforces quickly and manage their Egypt. Sorry. In Egypt, manage their workers and acreage. They're working with 10 big farms right now, 1,200 active acres engaged, 5,000 seasonal workers placed already. He's hoping to be able to charge a dollar per acre per month, active acre per month, and also about, call it, 75¢ per day per hired employee, which should be about $3,700 per day. But launching pricing next

00:28month, nothing yet. Burning $40,000 a month with a team of, call it, 27 people, 11 engineers as he looks to continue to scale and turn on that paywall. Hey, folks. My guest today is Hassan Fayed. He's the co founder and CEO of aydi, a b two b SaaS company that helps commercial farm source, manage, pay their seasonal workforce. He's also a board member at tradeling.com, a leading UAE based b two b e commerce platform, and Scalidy,

00:51a Dubai based startup landing and acceleration platform. Hassan, ready to take us to the top?

What Farms Use Aydi and Why

Hassan Fayed

00:57>> Let's do it.

Nathan Latka

00:58Alright. So give me an example of a commercial farm that might use you. Are these, you know, walnut farmers, pineapple? What kind of farms?

Hassan Fayed

01:05>> Yeah. So the main crops that are grown by commercial farms here in Egypt are citrus, grapes, strawberries, potatoes, and so on and so forth. So quite similar to what you would typically find in states like Florida or California in The US. Mhmm.

How Seasonal Agriculture Hiring Works

Nathan Latka

01:26Okay. So a potato farmer, walk me through there. Why does a potato farmer have to hire a seasonal workforce at all?

Hassan Fayed

01:32>> So the way that agriculture works is you have spikes and seasonality in terms of when they need workers to come into the field to either prune trees, harvest the crop, do field maintenance and so on and so forth. So the nature of that market is you cannot hire people full time. You need to bring them in on a seasonal basis. And there's 1,000,000,000 people globally that work as seasonal agriculture workers. So that's one out of every

02:05>> seven or eight people in the world that do this kind of work.

How Aydi Makes Money from Farms

Nathan Latka

02:09And so walk me through how that potato farmer how you make money from them by helping them hire these seasonal workers.

Hassan Fayed

02:16>> Sure. So we we offer our software that helps them put out kind of like requests for workers to come in and and and and work on the farm when they need them to come in. And then our software, essentially, what it does is it digitizes the farms by creating digital identities for each and every plot that they have with QR codes. And we have a supervisor app that allows the field supervisor to track and register every

02:51>> task that a worker does on the field and report that back to the management that are typically sitting in an office somewhere not too far so that they can have real time visibility on everything that's happening in the field and how the workers are performing and be able to reward and retain their top performers as well.

Nathan Latka

03:11And Hassan, what does the average farmer pay you per month to use your technology?

Why Aydi Has Not Charged Customers Yet

Hassan Fayed

03:16>> So we're actually still in the beta pilot phase. So we haven't started charging our customers. We're working with 10 of the largest commercial farms right now to perfect our product before we we launch it

Nathan Latka

03:31to a design why not charge them like a design fee? I mean, a co a co build fee or something.

Hassan Fayed

03:39>> So the the the challenge here is that we're really introducing software probably for the first time in this sector. A lot of these firms still use pen and paper to manage most of what they do. And so really demonstrating the value is a crucial prerequisite to us gaining their trust and and being able to charge them once they've seen the value. So a lot of the conversations that we have are not us trying to pitch our

04:09>> solution versus other existing solutions in the market. It's really us selling the idea of bringing software into the farm.

Nathan Latka

04:18So, Hassan, how much have you spent so far to build the software?

Software Development Spend and Four Products Built

Hassan Fayed

04:22>> So we've spent about $250,000 so far to build the software, and it includes four different products basically that one is for the worker, one is for the supervisor, one is for the management itself, and one is for our internal tools and and and management.

Nathan Latka

04:45Oh, 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

05:08your 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

05:33get 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

05:55not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founders 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

06:20going 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

06:42you 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

07:09interview. Are you rich? How did you get 250 k?

Hassan Fayed

07:13>> No. I'm not rich. We raised from investors, essentially.

Nathan Latka

07:17When was that?

How Aydi Raised $2M Pre-Revenue

Hassan Fayed

07:20>> That was in February and March of this year.

Nathan Latka

07:24Okay. And how much did you raise?

Hassan Fayed

07:26>> We raised close to $2,000,000.

Nathan Latka

07:29K. And and how did you I mean, do you have a history of building and sort of selling a company? I mean, how did you raise $2,000,000 pre any pre pre pre product?

Hassan Fayed

07:39>> Yeah. We've we've already so previously, I had built a few companies in The UAE and Dubai, and we've scaled these to quite healthy to become quite healthy businesses that are standing on on their own two feet. I think that what we what enabled us to raise this amount at an early stage is a, the the validation for the value that this product can bring from the from leading industry players in the market.

Nathan Latka

08:13Measured by what? Number of scans, number of workers hired? What's the utility metric you're you're measuring there? The activation metric.

Pilot Metrics: Acres Engaged and Workers Placed

Hassan Fayed

08:19>> So the main thing is number of acres engaged and the numbers of workers that we that we onboard as well. So currently in the pilot, we have over 1,200 acres that are engaged on a daily basis. And we have close to 5,000 workers that are also engaged on a daily basis.

Nathan Latka

08:39What does that mean? 5,000 workers have been hired by one of these farms and are making money via your app?

Hassan Fayed

08:45>> Yeah. Exactly.

Nathan Latka

08:46Wow. That's impressive. Okay.

08:47I mean, so I guess, why do you have to keep waiting to charge? I mean, that sounds very valuable.

08:53Why not start charging now?

Pricing Model: Per Acre and Service Charge

Hassan Fayed

08:55>> So the main thing is really to make sure that our software and our products are able to deliver the right kind of value to these farms. And it's something that we're planning on doing. I mean, the first customers that are gonna start paying is next month in December. And we charge them we charge them on a per acre basis.

Nathan Latka

09:17How much?

Hassan Fayed

09:18>> So we're starting off with a dollar an acre a month with the with these customers. Plus, we charge we're gonna charge a service charge for the workers that we that we bring in basically, because we do the vetting and the onboarding on the training. We charge a service a service charge. So, basically, it's a 5% on the overall order value that that they place.

Nathan Latka

09:45The order value, I mean, we're not talking about objects here. We're order value is really the salary they're paying a seasonal worker.

Hassan Fayed

09:51>> Exactly. Yes.

Nathan Latka

09:52So what does the average of those 5,000 higher, what's the average seasonal worker make?

Hassan Fayed

09:57>> A day? Or

Nathan Latka

09:59Sure. Yeah. A day.

Hassan Fayed

10:01>> So it's around

10:05>> I mean, it's around maybe $15 a day, give or take.

Nathan Latka

10:1015. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So if you're if you're gonna if you're taking 5% of that, then it's sort of 75¢ per worker per day.

Hassan Fayed

10:19>> Something along these lines. Yes.

Nathan Latka

10:20Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean, with 5,000 out there, though, mean, that's $3,750 per day. Right? Yeah. For you. Yeah. It's a lot of money. I mean, if you multiply that times 30 days in a month, I mean, that means that's a $112,000 a month in revenue for you.

Hassan Fayed

10:36>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:37Turn it on, baby.

Hassan Fayed

10:39>> It's coming. I mean, look, it's extremely challenging to bring technology. I mean, for the field supervisors, for example, it's the first time they ever use an app for work. And it's an extremely challenging environment where you don't have internet connectivity in most places. So the technical challenge that we have to go through is quite large. And we're finally at that tipping point where our technology is at a stage where it's reliable enough for these farms to

11:09>> be able to base their op to depend their operations on us. And we needed to get to that milestone before we start telling customers,

11:20>> you can start paying us for the software essentially.

Nathan Latka

11:22Yeah. How many farms, like individual customers, make up your 1,200 acres engaged today?

10 Farms and Expansion Potential

Hassan Fayed

11:29>> So today, these are 10 farms. 10. This represents around anywhere between five to 10% of their penetration of their total acreage. Yeah. So a lot of these farms, we're working with them in kind of like just a few plots where we're testing out the product.

11:47>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

11:48You can scale this 10 times just with the current with the current with the current customers.

11:52Right? You can go up to 12,000 engaged acres.

Hassan Fayed

11:54>> Exactly.

11:55>> Yeah. And even more. Some some of them have fifty, sixty thousand acres and so on. So.

Nathan Latka

12:01Yep. Did you write the first line of code for the platform?

Hassan Fayed

12:05>> So that that final I mean, it it we we've built quite a few platforms that we've that we've kind of, like, discarded over time.

Nathan Latka

12:15Yeah. I wanna know when you started that. The first the first one. How early?

Hassan Fayed

12:18>> So the very first one was in November of last year. So it was exactly a year ago.

Team Size and Monthly Burn

Nathan Latka

12:24Yep. Very cool. Okay. So 10 customers today. You think when you launch do you think they'll all start paying when you launch pricing next month?

Hassan Fayed

12:32>> Most of them. Some are still because we're giving them a sixty day free trial, sixty to ninety day free trial. So depending on the customers, I mean, some should come online in terms of payments by January.

Nathan Latka

12:44Yep. Yep. And how many folks are on your team today full time?

Hassan Fayed

12:49>> So we're currently 27 people.

Nathan Latka

12:5227? Yeah. So what does that mean? What are you what are you burning per month in terms of headcount? Like, 30, 40 grand?

Hassan Fayed

12:59>> Something along these lines. Yes.

Nathan Latka

13:01Does that make you nervous?

Founder Mindset and Excitement About the Mission

Hassan Fayed

13:06>> I would say three, four months ago, I was a bit nervous. Currently, now that we're seeing the the the the feedback that we're getting from the customers and we're seeing the utility, I mean, we're we're creating the first of many things. And and the and and now kind of like the nervousness has faded and a lot of excitement is there. It's the first time farmers get to find work, or I mean workers get to find work

Valuation and Convertible Note Structure

Hassan Fayed

13:37>> opportunities while sitting at home and very easily. It's the first time supervisors are able to log all of their work in a very simple way through their mobile phones. It's the very first time that the management can see what's happening in the field from anywhere. It's the first time that that these acres are digitized and and there's real data on on on on what they're doing. So I would say the nervousness has faded quite a bit

14:09>> and and and there's a lot of excitement now.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Habits

Nathan Latka

14:11Understood. And then, obviously, if this becomes big, you wanna keep as much equity as possible. Most folks are selling about 20% in pre seed rounds these days. Is that about what you sold?

Hassan Fayed

14:19>> Pretty much. Yes.

Nathan Latka

14:21Okay. So that'd be 8,000,000 pre money, 10,000,000 post?

Hassan Fayed

14:25>> Something along these lines. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

14:26Was it priced or you did a note?

Hassan Fayed

14:29>> No. It was a note.

Nathan Latka

14:30Like, with a so a 10,000,000 cap, something like that.

Hassan Fayed

14:32>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

14:33Very cool. Alright. Of the '27, how many full time, how many are engineers?

Hassan Fayed

14:38>> So we have 11 engineers. We have nine people in product. So between design and and quality and product managers and so on and so forth.

Nathan Latka

14:53Well, we're rooting for you, man. We're out of time now now for today. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book?

Hassan Fayed

15:01>> The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

Nathan Latka

15:03Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Hassan Fayed

15:09>> I would say I mean, he's he's he's no longer the CEO as of this year, but Ray Dalio, I'm a big fan of him. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

15:17Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building aydi?

Hassan Fayed

15:21>> ClickUp.

Nathan Latka

15:22Number four, how many hours of sleep to get every night?

Hassan Fayed

15:26>> Four.

Nathan Latka

15:27And four, that's not healthy.

Hassan Fayed

15:30>> Yeah.

15:33>> It comes with a job.

Nathan Latka

15:34Yeah. But you'll you'll you'll die eventually if you only get four hours of sleep every night. Yeah. What's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Hassan Fayed

15:41>> Single.

Nathan Latka

15:42Okay. And how old are you?

Hassan Fayed

15:45>> I'm 28.

Nathan Latka

15:47Okay. Last question.

15:49Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Hassan Fayed

15:54>> Oh, that's a good one.

16:01>> You'll get you you'll get there.

Nathan Latka

16:03Mhmm. Just take it

16:05There you have it. Aydi.com is helping big farms in The UAE hire seasonal workforces quickly and manage Egypt. Sorry. In Egypt, manage their workers and acreage. They're working with 10 big farms right now, 1,200 active acres engaged, 5,000 seasonal workers placed already. He's hoping to be able to charge a dollar per acre per month, active acre per month, and also about, call it, 75¢ per day per hired employee, which should be about $3,700 per day.

16:34But launching pricing next month, nothing yet. Burning $40,000 a month with a team of, call it, 27 people, 11 engineers as he looks to continue to scale and turn on that paywall. Hassan, good luck. Thanks for taking us to the top.

Wrap-Up and Closing Remarks

Hassan Fayed

16:46>> Thank you, Nathan. Appreciate your time.

Nathan Latka

16:49One 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

17:15Central. Additionally, remember these recorded Founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM 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 world, whether it's an acquisition, a big fundraise, a

17:38big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna 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 saying. Sign up for that

17:59at 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 got

18:18to 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.