How BRITech Global CEO Yuryi Ferber grew to $12.6M revenue and 350 customers in 2024.

thanks thanks for having me my name is Yuri Ferber I am CEO and founder of britek britek is a SAS for investment management um so over the next 20 minutes I'm gonna show you how and why you should expand your a product from a single to multi-product so I'm gonna talk about value chain adjacency how to do it if you can build the product you can buy it or you can partner now and buy later and the importance of segmentation in customer support and customer success as well so this is our this is my company Revenue growth over the last five years and this is happening only because we also have multiple products by the end I'm gonna show the impact in the revenue growth of having multiple products uh of course so um very important when you expand your product roadmap to build your next products of course you start with one product when you go to the next product very important if you stay in the same ideal customer profile because it's it will be easier to to sell to the same client than to acquire new client it's always this so staying in the same customer ideal customer profile it will allow you to upsell to that customer and also will be cheaper and you are going to have more retention why why you have more retention because when you have multiple products same client using your multiple products you start locking up your clients so usually one product consumes data from another product and this creates a lockup and it's great for mitigate your churn and there are some effects of course that I'm gonna talk uh later um in our case we start backing eight years ago backing with one product for One customer profile uh and nowadays we have like seven products for seven different profiles and serving like thoroughly different use cases for this for this customer base so this is very interesting because it creates a lot of opportunities to monetize your product portfolio uh let's jump into section two um there are many ways to build to expand your product portfolio of course you can use the traditional way of building you as you as you probably did in the first product you you have your CTO you have your team of software engineers and you just build a new product of course you have to uh pay attention to to things like um product Market fit uh as my my friend earlier in this uh session just to show you so product Market fit is one uh thing that you must worry when you create a new product you can have a product Market product but probably you you don't uh it's not a uh uh you have to when you create a new product you have to be worried if you if you if you reach that the product Market fit for that new product a second way to to expand your product portfolio is to buy you can buy a another company or you can buy the intellectual property or you can the third option you can partner now and buy later or maybe by later so what I mean by that I mean that if you finding another company that has a another product similar not similar but adjacent to your product and you and something that you can sell to your customer base maybe you can partner with that company bring that product to your product so make it embedded in your product like like a white label and after some time you can maybe um buy these guys okay so the advantage of the of doing this way is that you don't need money to acquire these guys uh as when you when you buy the company you have to of course use money but if you partner now and buy later you can experiment if that product really has a market fit with your current product portfolio and and in the in the in the another important thing is the culture so you are bringing new people to your company is there a uh are you sharing the same values uh the product is really selling to your customer base so after some time 6 12 or maybe 18 months you can't start to realize if it's working or not and when you when you when you do a a stuff like that partner now and buy later of course you have to take care of a lot of different things first you have to have it on paper so and start with start with a partner contract and stuff like Revenue sharing how much are you going to share with the partner uh what are what are you going to do are you going to support the partner product you're so your support team here is going to support your partner product ideally yes but sometimes it's not so easy to do that so as more as you do using your partner product as more you can retain from the from from the revenue so you can maybe share 50 or less percent as more as you um you do for the with that product after some time as I as I said before if you 6 12 or 18 months or 24 months it depends there's no magic number after you find out that product from your partner is working you're really selling it to your customer base maybe you start to think about how to acquire these guys so the the the acquisition uh uh you should have an uh since day one uh uh a formula to to price that cost of acquisition so you can buy these guys or even if you can um Equity swap so rather than buying them or buy the IP dip or buy the IP and the team you can uh maybe bring these guys to your company and give your company's equity in exchange of their product that's uh that third option this is by the way the the the the the way I like more okay uh again um talking about yeah so build is the first way buy is the second way in my opinion the best way is partner now and maybe by later if it's working uh let's jump to section three so we are talking now about uh segmentation uh segmentation is very important because you know you can have a great product but if you don't serve your customer base well you're going to have churn even having a great product so in my opinion too if you are a vertical B2B you you must have segmentation in your customer support and your customer success teams this is going to so your both things will will need to have domain expertise on what you do so if they talk the same language of of your client it's going to create a really a value and it's going to create a bond and the churn will be dramatically reduced so segmentation is very important and customer success by the way customer success for me is they are the the the guys that upsell so again going back to that example you have a product you partner with another company to add their product to your offer offering um who does that in my opinion the customer success is the is the one that upsell because why is that because for me a customer success is like a CRM 2.0 now so these are the custom relationship managers very close to the clients uh they but but they need to understand the the client's business and so they are they're talking to the client on a frequent basis so they they will know the best time to upsell or to sell a new product to that same client and the sales teams they are worried about bringing new clients so you segment you you leave the sales team acquiring new clients and you have this customer success team of course making sure everything is working and upselling new products to your client base we believe it this is a page from our website we believe it so much that you can see in our product page this is our products in our product page we highlight the our customer success team and our customer support team so again you can have a great product but you need to have customer success and customer support very serving your clients very well and keeping our churn very low um so so I show you these three most important things I think is important to take care when you are expanding your product portfolio from single to multiple products but let me show you the impact when you have a multiple portfolio in your company what happens to your growth again if you keep your your churn low and what is low usually one digit so less than nine percent per year is a is a a good metric for a low churn so okay so you if you have a churn a low churn and if you have multiple products you can have a net dollar retention higher than 100 percent in our case we are working in a range between 110 to 120 percent and what what is the impact of the of having a high net dollar retention the growth coming from the customer base is huge if you take a look at for example 2019 27 percent of the of the growth came from the customer base if you take a look at 2020 30 came from the customer base and if you take a look at 2021 two-thirds of the growth came from the customer base only one one-third came from new clients so this is only possible if you have multiple products and you are constantly frequently um upselling to your customer base um yeah that's it I'm open to questions peace you mentioned that you should Target the same ICP for us our ICP our businesses because we are p2b SAS yeah thank you uh yeah our icpr other b2bs um what are your thoughts of targeting the same company but different department within those companies right because right now we serve let's say the operation department but maybe we can come up with a product that served their sales department so even though it is the same ICP the same company another department but another department what are your thoughts about that or should we like stay within the same department and not go across Department yeah when I when I when I say ICP it can be a different Persona inside the same the same company but not the same user so in your case uh it we have the same situation in our company first again if you if the the if one Department that that is your client is saying good things about you your company this is going to help a lot because the first thing is when the new department will buy a product from you is ask the other department so again customer support customer success key in this uh in this uh in this in this moment so it's not a problem it's considered the same ICP another department so very important if you have big corporations and you have products to sell for the entire company this will work and I don't know how how young is your company or but uh if you have multiple products you are going to to to to experiment net dollar retentions uh in in high levels thank you very much guys [Applause] foreign

hey folks my guest today is yuri ferber he's a successful entrepreneur with a 20-year track record was previously ceo and founder of ymf a leading financial software company with 300 employees that was later sold to tot vs he's well respected authority in the brazilian technology sector and is often called upon to advise firms and individuals on i.t best practices and solutions before founding ymf yuri spent eight years in investment bank guarantee as a trade and trader and portfolio manager now building b2b brighttech.global platform for investment managers yuri are you ready to take to the top yes let's do it all right so what kind of investment managers are paying you so um so we are a provider a software provider for the investment management players right we are not a investment manager as ourselves but we provide technology for almost all the the chains of the investment management ecosystem that makes sense and give me a sense of what these investment managers are paying you each month to use your software um our acv is let me give you in dollars it's uh currently is like um 20 28 000 a year okay and how many customers are you working with over 350 350 customers okay now i can and can i take three 350 times 28 000 you're doing about 9.8 million in arr that's it and where were you about a year ago just so we can calculate growth seventy percent seventy percent so you're doing about seven million in arr where did most the growth come from how are you getting customers yes we have like on average 20 um upsells in the base and the rest comes from your clients okay got it and what are you upselling is it number of seats a feature set a utility-based upsell what is it uh we so in our platform sas platform we have over 30 uh features or 30 use case so what we do is constantly sell new use cases we are not driven by number of users or sets we are drive it by number of use cases and number of portfolios investment portfolios our uh clients uh control with our um technology and that okay that makes sense now do you ever consider since you are so close to their aum or their sort of assets under management would you ever take a percent of the aum or no we we do we we we do um we do it but only for new entrants uh just to make easier for them to uh use us so it's like a five beeps and and because they are new entrants the aom is not big uh so it allows allow them to to start using our technology and of course after time we grow organically with them so yuri you'll let new invest managers avoid paying you a 30 000 a year fee and instead pay 0.5 percent of their 0.05 percent of their aum yeah that's five b so 0.05 off per year of their aom yep and how much aum are these do these new entrants have on your platform right now it's like it's like a 10 20 million um so in dollars it's like a two three five million dollars in game when the new entrance only got it of course so i told you we have like 28 000 as our acv on average but but of course we have guys stop paying is like uh um like what i have the numbers in brazilian race so um like uh 5 000 per year up to up to what let me let me see um like to 300 000 per year so your highest acv account is 300 000 a year yeah yeah yeah okay got it and the growth has been great you're at about a 10 million run rate today up from 7 million about a year ago and i believe you told me last time in 2018 you finished without about a 5.5 million run rate correct yeah correct and when what just so people have context when did you launch we started the business in 2014 and the next year we we so we started the business with a our first acquisition and the second acquisition came one year later so the the company was uh bootstrapped uh with the two acquisitions at that time and and on top of those acquisitions we grew the company so far it's like a 20-fold uh revenue growth in in six years how big was the initial acquisition how much do you have to pay for it very small like um in dollars it was like um uh six hundred thousand dollars both okay where did you get the six hundred thousand dollars in 2014 to do that acquisition the first uh the first acquisition my money the second it was a uh a venture capital fund that invested in us back in early 2015. and how what was the size of that round do you remember three million three million reacts three million dollars three million dollars what valuation did you negotiate it's like a six times uh err which was what back then uh do you know i don't know these numbers on my mind so you may you can make the calculations but it was like uh you you so just to make make easier they got like a 34 of our equity with them yeah so you raise at a six million pre-money and nine million posts something like that yeah okay and have you raised any capital since then or no no no organic growth since then six years but the news is that we are raising a second capitalization round right now how much are you looking to raise 50 million dollars five zero million yeah what valuation are you targeting we are targeting eight big eight times eight eight times ar um so 80 million pre-money or post uh eight eight times so it's like 80 8 million free money 80 million pre-money which would be 130 posts yeah so you'd be selling again about a little more than 30 of the business yeah okay how do you think about dilution is any of that going to be secondary no no secondary so it's just uh it's it's just for for for acquisition so again we we started the company with two acquisitions six years running organically and now we restarted the acquisition uh plan so we are running by by the way we are running our third acquisition at this moment we expect to have the closing early october and we have over we have like a three or four more to be done with that money and tell me about the team today how many people on the team before the the the third acquisition we talked about 120 people how many engineers like um literally 35 engineers are they all down there near your brazil office or are they outsourced brazil i see uh and any sales reps that carry a quota yeah so the biggest part of our investment is in in growth so we have like a 40 of the revenues being invested in growth how many sales reps do you have on the team that carry a quota it's like around 30 35 sales guys salesforce including inbound.bound marketing every everyone how many total sorry 35 35 okay but how of that sales team how many actually carry a quota that they have to hit 280 guys 20. okay what is their quota a lot of people struggle with launching their their sales plans like this how do you structure it so we they have a uh uh they have a combination of um of a fixed salary plus a very uh very aggressive uh sales commission uh so uh that's how we are growing like 70 percent here with that aggressive commission sales commission what's aggressive it's like uh day 10 it's it can be like a three times their uh their fixed fixed salary which is why it's which is like um two thousand dollars a month so you pay them twenty four thousand dollars per year fixed and then they have to go sell about sixty seventy two thousand dollars a new arr per year to hit quota that's it so payback is less than eight months if they hit their quota do you pay them more what's the commission uh it's just a little bit more uh it's like a 20 um more it's a it's a it's a premium 20 premium over the sales commission got it so so if they hit their target quota of 72 000 of new er in a year in addition to their 24 000 base you'll pay them an additional 20 percent or approximately 4 000 so they're full on target earnings is about thirty thousand dollars that's it okay is that model working can you hire another twenty sales reps on that same quote and keep growing oh it's working it's working yeah uh by the way i we we have uh sales guys everywhere not only in brazil okay oh where are they based everywhere we have sales guys in brazil we have in the rest of platinum we have in the us and we have in other countries in europe how did you convince a u.s salesperson to work on just a twenty four thousand dollar fixed annual average it's different in the u.s it's different i see i see okay that makes sense um this is ford this is like the latem cost of sales guys yep with your nine million dollars right now in terms of ar almost 10 million are you profitable yes yes we are profitable since 2018. how profitable like um 15 percent ebitda uh 15 percent ebitda so you'll take 1.5 million to the bottom line this year something like that this year we are going to have like a um yeah that's it's in dollars that's it that's it and and so yuri why why go sell 30 of your business to raise 50 million bucks if you're profitable do you just really want to go do some acquisitions yes acquisitions uh acquisition is part of our growth strategy from now on so what is the strategy keep keep growing organically 70 per year and add like 30 35 or inorganic growth so the idea is to double the business every year from now on and what kinds of companies would you go buy would these be like consultants that work with investment firms no we are buying product companies in the same space we are working but they they complement our product portfolio we we don't want to buy more of the same we we are adding other companies that that complement and and create synergies between the the customer bases for sale you know product work for sale that that that's our investment acquisition strategy okay and um when you look at your net dollar retention annually what is that at now it's like 128 percent okay 128 and how much of that is churn that you have to make up yeah it's it's it's uh it's um the journey is already the that number you know break it down though for me what is gross churn actually like uh rose throwing is like 44 per year but we mentioned we retain 128 so it's like 132 minus 4 take us to 128. yep that makes a lot of sense is there room to drive your net dollar retention higher than 128 or do you think you're capped out our our goal for for this metric is uh to sustain in one to under one turn we didn't reach 130 yet but we believe maybe by the end of the year we can reach one uh uh 130. yep i got it and before we wrap up here talking about your current cap table how much equity do you still own i own like uh 66 66 and then your seed investors from 2015 they own what 30 percent 34. okay so it's just you two on the cap table yeah i i 34 is our holding company i i have the majority stake of the holding company and i have other six or seven executives that run the business with me they have a minority uh equity uh at the holding code so so it's like 80 of the 66 is mine the rest is distributed in the in the executives with with the executives got it so about 12 of bree tech global is your executives uh then about 54 is you and then 34 is your seed yeah i see okay um and is everybody on board with taking dilution with this new 50 million dollar raise and if so how did you convince that those that executive team to take that delusion um because they they understand the the plan they understand the the that it makes a lot of sense for us to be diluted so and again part of the money is debt not equity so the dilution is is lower than the the how much how much debt will be of the 50 million it's like um 20 debt 80 percent equity got it so you're gonna have to you're gonna have 10 10 million be debt that 40 million will be equity yeah do you have a debt partner lined up already or no you're still looking no oh oh yes you already have a a inviting offer to a term with a local uh that that venture debt uh provider here in brazil are there warrants included no uh what's the interest rate oh you are curious it's like uh it's a it's a good business you're going to find out it's like um it's like uh 18 percent here holy cow why don't you why don't you go try to find cheaper capital i think you can definitely find cheaper than 18 percent not in brazil okay we're gonna fall i'll flop with you after this we'll we'll chat have you already signed that term sheet is it binding i'm about to sign it okay wait we'll chat right when i finish recording yuri on that note let's wrap up with a famous five number one what's your favorite business book um i have a lot of favorite but the last book i i read and i love it is the the founders mentality number two is there a ceo you're following or studying not nowadays number three what's your favorite online tool for building the business um nowadays i love because it i don't have in us a secretary or assistant so i love the calendly calendly number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night um seven eight hours per night and what's your situation married single kids married three kids not not they are not kids anymore but married three kids and yuri how old are you i'm 57 57 last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. the same question you asked me i have the same answer i would love to learn more about sas 20 years ago guys there you have it bree tech dot global they sell sas to investment managers they have just almost 5 billion in aum just on early and new funds they have a lot more than that on their other funds they work with 350 fund managers right now they just they're about to break 10 million dollars in terms of ar run rate up from 7 million just a year going up from 5.5 million back in 2018 they are profitable they've managed to drive 10 million ar raising just 3 million on a 6 million pre back in 2015 now looking at raising 40 million in equity and 10 million in debt at around an 80 million dollar pre-money evaluation we'll see what happens yuri thanks for taking us to the top thank you very much thank you nathan one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas 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 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m central to 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 sas world whether it's an acquisition 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 sas 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 at nathan lacka dot com forward slash slack in the meantime i'm hanging out with you here on youtube i'll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode 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 to push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that i appreciate your guys's support all right i'll be in the comments see ya

you're gonna love this interview just got done editing it i'm glad i got it live for you i'll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes hanging out answering any questions you have in fact leave a comment below about data points or what you think is going to happen to the company and i will respond to every comment additionally if you're just loving the content click the thumbs up and i will go and check out your profile as well and give your videos some love as well in the meantime enjoy the interview hello everyone my guest today is yuri ferber he is a successful entrepreneur with a 20 plus year track record uh he previously was ceo and founder of ymf a leading financial software company with 300 employees that was later sold to tot vs now building a company called bree tech url bretek dot global making uh digital simpler for folks yuri are you ready to take to the top let's go nathan and good to talk with you again yeah i'm glad you're able to make time to jump back on for those that missed the first episode tell us quick what does the company do we are in the investment management space so we we we are a sas company we serve the investment management uh ecosystem and they serve the the investors so give me you i mean tell me the story of how a customer that's paying you right now how are they paying you and how do they use you yes our acv is still the the basically the same we are talking about three thousand dollars a month um so our acv is uh very stable and how many customers are you serving now we are we have like 250 customers that's up from 150 uh which is great from about what that would have been almost a year and a half ago so nice growth where is that most that growth come from where are you finding customers oh we have some news from that time at that time we were having customers in brazil mexico and chile now we have customers in eight countries uh last year we started our expansion to to the uh to europe and the u.s markets now when you came on back in 2018 you said that in q1 of 2019 you were going to close up i think you told me a six million dollar raise at a 6x pre-money valuation did that deal happen no because we we uh stopped at that uh that raising process what happened is that we changed our expansion model we created a uh what we we call a distribution franchise model so basically we now have like five franchisees around the world and they are uh allowing us to expand globally without a lot of money from our side so at that time we were raising money to to grow the sales and marketing team and now uh that uh growth is coming from the channels from the franchisees uh that we are uh uh attracting uh around the world and yuri with this model which is new since the last time we spoke what have you been able to grow revenue to today so our revenue like is like nine million dollars if if we keep the same uh currency exchange rate that we use at that time because i don't know if you are following a brazilian exchange rate uh from that time it's like uh almost a 50 percent uh devaluation uh you know in the currency yeah so 250 customers paying three thousand dollars uh an on average per month usd puts you at about 750 000 a month in revenue again usd or about a 9 million dollar run rate uh not thinking about currency exchange issues which for you is a real thing i mean that is a real deal you have to worry about yeah yeah yeah it's it's good and but but again because we are uh uh now we have customers in three different uh currencies we have customers in brazilian realize of course most part of them are out of the 250 2 and 20 are in brazil for the most part still in buzz in brazil yet in brazil but but we have customers in europe and the u.s so we have uh like 90 percent of our clients paying re-eyes and 10 paying euros or dollars us dollars i see and what is so so when you last came on you said you raised about four million dollars total have you raised any additional capital no okay are you raising right now no okay and what's what you look like today how many people we still have the the 20 people uh so basically the interesting this uh channel uh model that we created is that uh it's a win-win partnership and uh the the the channels they are making money and uh we are attracting more channels uh over the years so like i told you we have five channels at this moment brazil rest of latin america us and europe and we expect to by the end of this year we expect to have like two or three more channels so we are expecting to to grow uh three more countries per year in the years to come how many engineers are on the team uh most part of the the the company the 20 uh people are engineers so basically uh 15 16 17 like uh 15 okay and how many quota carrying sales reps uh so again the the sales reps they are in the franchisees okay so you have no quota carrying sales reps on your team we have people that manages the channel so we have someone that do the onboarding process when a new on a new channel comes in we have another guy that looks uh uh it's our we call him our global growth officer and he manages the channels and we have uh staff uh helping these guys to to manage the channels so i would say like 15 guys uh as software engineers and five guys to manage the channels okay so so talk to me about one of these channels can you name one of them that's doing well for you yes so the brazilian uh was a turn into a channel so we have a distribution channel in brazil we have another distribution channel uh taking care of the rest of latin america these guys are based in peru and they are managing clients in mexico chile peru and colombia we have another channel can you keep sorry can you name can you name like what's that website what's that company name uh they use our our our our brand that's the interesting that's why we call a franchisee so they they they sell they implement and they support the clients in their geography in their geography and they use our brand to to uh uh in the front uh to so the other quotations to the clients or the proposals they are all uh protect proposals of course the contract the contract with with the clients it's always a brit tech in brazil and the client wherever the client is but these guys they are uh you know supporting our growth and our uh and our customer success as well when you last came on you said gross revenue churn was about one percent what's it at today today is like five percent per year okay and what's expansion revenue especially like our net retention rate is like 125. okay so you have 30 expansion five percent churn for a total of 125 net revenue retention yes that's pretty good now are you still spending about twenty one thousand dollars to get a new three thousand dollar a month customer yeah of course that cost is in the channel but the channel is keeps uh the the payback for the channel is still uh like six to seven months uh payback so what what is that economic model with the value-added resellers you give them 30 40 50 of the sale on perpetuity or what uh uh like uh 24 percent okay and so if a channel signs up a new 3 000 a month customer uh and that customer pays that for 10 years do you pay 24 every single month to the reseller yeah exactly okay uh if that 3 000 a month customer that the va that the valued reseller signs up pays for the full 36 000 yearly contract up front do you pay them 24 of that immediately we don't like uh pro payments so we really try to make uh monthly payments okay well and why is that most people like upfront payments because it pulls cash forward because we already profitable so we don't need the upfront payments uh and that's it how how how profitable are you like uh 20 ebitda margin okay got it so on 750 000 per month your ticket talking about 15 000 a month oh sorry hundred fifty thousand dollars a month added to your bank account every month yeah what do you do with that money did you just let it sit there and pile up or what so we are using that money to to to expand to attract more channels so of course this this uh this is a a cost for us to to to expand but after we uh find a new uh channel in a specific area uh uh we have the cost to to find these guys we have the cost to train then we have the cost to uh to onboard these guys so uh we are using part of the the the the cash generation to expand in more channels very good all right yuri let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book i i like to nowadays i i have another famous business book which is the book from simon sinek which is the infinite game number two is there a ceo you're following or studying i really think that uh the the ceo from microsoft this guy is really doing a great job number three how many uh sorry what's your favorite online tool for building your company we use a a a group of of of of technology and so we use hubspot we use a zendesk we also are using nowadays churn zero for customer success management and microsoft planner microsoft things this is most uh most important tools we are using uh in a day day to day number uh four how many hours of sleep are you getting every night uh six seven hours per night and what's your situation married single kids married three kids wow how are you 56 56 uh and last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew again i would love to know more about sas 20 years ago guys there you have it uh protect global again making investment and wealth management decisions easier they're now doing about nine million dollars a year in terms of run rate they have five percent net revenue or sorry gross revenue churn annually with 25 sorry uh 125 net revenue retention about a seven month payback period but unique model here no quota carrying reps on their team mostly engineers 15 16 engineers they leverage a value-added reseller model where they incentivize resellers under their brand to sell their product uh and then they uh pay a kickback of about 24 to that value out added reseller as they look to scale they're profitable take in about twenty percent deeper to margins to the bottom line every single month in terms of cash flow four million dollars raised yuri thank you for taking us to the top thank you nathan good to see you again you guys know i fight like heck to get these data points for you from these ceos that rarely do these kinds of shows if you want more shows like this make sure you subscribe right now we're trying to get 10 000 youtube subscribers by the end of september here 2019 and it would mean the world to me if you clicked now to subscribe additionally i've got two more great interviews for you if you want more data points from the world's leading sas ceos click and watch one of them right now

Search in video hello everyone my guest today is yuri ferber he's a serial entrepreneur with a 20-year track record and was previously ceo and founder of a company called ymf a leading financial software company with 300 employees that was later sold to a big tech company today he's focused on bra tech down there in sao paulo yuri are you ready to take us to the top let's go nathan all right talk to me about britak what do you guys do and how do you make money okay so uh britak is a wealth tech we serve the investment management ecosystem basically we serve asset managers broker-dealers family offices wealth managers and our mission is to make investment management simpler and faster simpler and faster so i mean do we put you in the category of like wealthfront betterment robinhood uh we uh it's more like adapar okay i'm not familiar with adapar um yeah so we are not we are not uh uh we serve the the financial institutions and they serve the customers the the the investors oh i see so you're like b to b and then whoever you support they then are like a robin or a whale front they'll support the consumer exactly i see okay very good and are you a pure play sas company yes we are okay so without going down every kind of customer cohort give me a general sense what's the company paying for your platform per year per month uh it depends on because we have a platform so depending on how much modules and how many portfolios the company the customer has he pays a different amount so it's a pay-per-use uh sas play uh but on average uh they are paying like three thousand uh dollars per month okay that's helpful to understand and put all this on a timeline for me when you launch a company we started the company in 2012 but we went to the market in 2014 so we spent two two years on the first product and was that you using money from your past sale kind of funding the company or how did you initially fund exactly that's it uh raise the money only in 2015. and how much race today uh we raised like um we raised like uh left maybe let me see in dollars uh four million dollars four million and before you raise that money your yi i'm curious how much of your own money did you put in like um yuri you cut out there about how much did you put in one million dollars one minute okay so someone called that a lot someone called that a little but it sounds like you had an exit and you're able to use some of that money to go into this one was it public your first company you sold it how much did you sell for uh we sold it for like um 25 million dollars okay were you the sole founder yes i'm the i was the founder and i and i and we sold it in 2009. oh that's great that's very good um and it was also a financial play yes yes it's a it was different but in the financial market we were serving the custodians at that time oh interesting okay good all right so launch this company again protect in 2012 you build for two years you go to market in 2014 how many customers do you have now today we now have a 150 customers in brazil mexico and chile interesting why those three geographies so specifically in terms of financial market these are the the brazil is the is the bigger the biggest market but mexico and chile they have also good financial market customers for us okay so if i take 150 customers times that 3 000 price point you gave me that would put you guys what about 450 grand a month right now on revenue yeah exactly and what's growth look like where were you at a year ago we are we are basically doubling every year our arr okay that's pretty good so caught 225 000 about a year ago now 450. yuri where's most that growth coming from expansion revenue or new customers uh no basically new customers but we also have upsell because as i said uh we have a modular platform so we are always trying to sell more modules to the to the base yeah but most part of the the growth is coming from new customers yep and when you look at the cohort that signed up a year ago typically how much are you able to expand them in year two like 110 percent 130 percent uh yeah our our our gross dollar churn is very low so like how low less than one percent oh wow yeah wow that's very low and what's your expansion uh so basically uh like a 90 percent plus 10 percent upsell tell me what you mean you retain 90 no we retain 99 yeah but but uh the uh from from the the the expansion ninety percent is is uh for new customers and ten percent from uh from the old customers oh i see so if we ignore new customers for a second if we just do cohort analysis from a year ago you'll lose one percent revenue you'll expand 10 so net revenue retention is 109. yeah that's pretty healthy now do you employ like a sales team to drive expansion revenue what's your team look like today we we have uh uh uh uh uh resellers in brazil in mexico and chile and in brazil which is the the biggest team we have like uh for in terms of hunters and and and inbound marketing we have a site like six guys six people and what's just your total full-time employees how many folks uh like 20 guys okay 20 and are they all remote as well no no basically most of them of course there's a part uh one guy in mexico another in chile but uh uh most part of the guys are in sao paulo sao paulo very good um and walking and of course from sao paulo we serve the entire country that's pretty good that's a lot i was telling you before the thing there's a lot happening in sao paulo a lot of technology now have you figured out how to handle like boletos and paper payments and things like that uh we are we are trying to to do something like that but for another uh different uh segment not the the the not the brokers and or not the asset managers but for for another kind of uh financial advisor yeah we are still it's still on on a paper plane so so which i'm curious being in brazil what billing system do you use uh basically we send uh like uh we the the guys pay us uh using a transfers wire transfer oh so you don't use you don't use like stripe or any kind of billing system it's just manual invoices yes yes because we talk about 150 customers it's not so much but so we can do it our erp can support and sending voice automatically every month which erp do you use we use a local erp called um called omi omi and it's a good erp for uh sas companies like us uh talk to me about customer acquisition cost yuri what's it paying what are you paying to acquire a new customer fully weighted uh we pay like uh 16 uh uh uh uh like like six times so the payback is uh comes in between six and seven months so you just have to do the math so yeah so seven times three thousand per month you'll spend 21 grand to acquire a customer yeah yeah basically that and where do you spend that is it on your sales team or direct advertising where you spend it uh basically uh a sales team and uh uh like 20 in marketing like google adwords and social networks and linkaging for example and the most of most of the partying in in sales team so so hunters so call it 80 sales team 20 you know direct spend yeah interesting um makes good sense that four million you raised you said was in 2015 um any plans to raise capital right now yes we are planning to to raise capital next year and we expect to raise like six million dollars next year okay raising next week so raising six million caught q1 2019 and what valuation would you love to raise at i i'd like to not mention that number well maybe not maybe don't tell me like what your actual evaluation is but what is evaluation that would make you really happy if you could get it uh the same evaluation that we have uh in the first round so we are talking about uh six times six times er yep six times arr and again if you're doing 450 a month right now that would put you at about a 32 million dollar pre-money valuation that's great so so six into that what that means you're selling what five to ten percent of the company ideally something like that yeah exactly would you ever do venture debt are there venture debt firms in brazil not in brazil it's it's very expensive in brazil do you venture that how like you're talking like 14 15 interest much more than that really it's like it's like a 30 to 25 percent yuri that's so it's impossible that's we're in the wrong business yeah yes i think they are interesting okay good uh that's that's helpful to understand and where will you spend that money uh we are planning to do some acquisitions and uh and the part of the money also to expand our our our sales team because we we we are planning to keep these uh pace of growing for the next three to five years so uh keep the the the the business growing 100 every year we have to expand uh uh our our marketing and sales team yeah so if you i mean you're pretty close to hitting a six million dollar run rate this year then you want to double to 12 and 24 and keep going from there yeah that's it that's very good yuri let's uh let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book um i love i love a lot of business books but i love this uh this book from john d john doerr which is a measure what matters good one number two is there is there under the radar ceo that you're following in sao paulo under the radar no but uh i i i like the the the ceo from netflix uh reid hastings and uh i think he is doing great great job there in netflix number three what is your favorite online tool online tool uh i have some some to grow the business i i i like i love we use a lot of online online tools like hubspot pipe drive zendesk for the customers uh success team so those three they are great uh tools yeah number four how many hours of sleep to get every night um depends on six seven eight hours okay and what's your situation you're married single kids i'm married with uh three kids three kids wow you're a busy guy and how old are you i'm 55. 55. last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew i at that age i would love to know of course it was not a a a business model at that time but i'd love to to do to learn more to do to know more about sas companies synthesize business models yeah learn more about sas earlier there you guys have it from bra tech financial company b2b founded 2012 went to market now doing about 450 grand per month in revenue they've raised four million dollars serving 150 clients in the financial space they then use the bride tech technology to sell through directly to consumers and investors they're going 100 year-over-year so healthy growth rate there again customers paying about three grand per month less than one percent gross revenue churn per year 10 expansion so net expansion there our net revenue retention is about 109 really healthy economics in terms of payback are about seven months so willing to spend 21 grand to acquire a 3 000 a month customer team of 20 people in brazil and other remote locations yuri thank you for taking us to the top thank you nathan