How Carbonze Is Structuring 10 Pre-Revenue Pilots to Win Its First Paying Customers (Interview with CEO Gokhan Gureser)

Intro and Founder500 Event Announcement

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey guys, recording this here on what is it? Friday the nineteenth. Maybe you're seeing this on Monday at the latest, but wanna let you know we are almost sold out for Foundercomp sorry, Founder500 in Austin, Texas here in about a week. It's gonna be an amazing event. 500 B2B SaaS founders. I'm looking at the attendee list. There's almost 60 founders with more than $67,000,000 in ARR. It's an incredible group per group. There's over 150 with more

00:27than 1,000,000, more than a million revenue. It's an incredible group. You don't wanna miss it. Grab your hotel, grab your flight, grab a ticket right now. I'll put the link in the bio, in the description here on YouTube. And I think there's only about three tickets left. Okay, about three tickets left. I'd love to see you guys there. Don't be bashful. Grab your ticket now. Hey, folks. My guest today is Gokhan Gureser. He improves processes, continues

Guest Introduction: Gokhan Gureser and Carbonze

Nathan Latka

00:50to improve processes and make them more efficient. He uses Lean Six Sigma digitization business process mapping and robotic process automation. He's doing all this at his company that helps quantify carbon emissions of companies at carbonze.com. Gokhan, take us to the top.

Gokhan Gureser

01:05>> Hello.

Pre-Revenue Status and Pilot Overview

Nathan Latka

01:06I'm glad you're here. Okay. So for carbonze, it sounds like you guys are pre revenue to date. Walk me through what the initial prototype is. What are people paying you or what are you running pilots for?

Gokhan Gureser

01:18>> So we are dedicated climate specialists here and the corporate sustainability outlook is changing and advancing. And currently we quantify carbon emissions of companies and we deliver sustainability, discernment and intelligence to achieve carbon emissions of corporate businesses.

Nathan Latka

01:39Gokhan, how many companies are running pilots with you today?

10 Pilot Customers and How They Test the Platform

Gokhan Gureser

01:43>> Currently, have 10 clients and they are pilot customers pre revenue stage, and they are providing us new requirements and they are testing the product currently.

Nathan Latka

01:56And help me. Can you maybe share the name of one of those clients and explain how they're testing you?

Gokhan Gureser

02:02>> Yeah. One of the client is like, for example, in China, we have

02:11>> a very large consulting company, and they are testing themselves. And after testing, they will roll out for their own customers with

Nathan Latka

02:21the By my my audience my audience doesn't know what carbonze is. So when you say they're testing it, my audience doesn't know what it is. So explain how this large consulting company in China is is testing you.

How Carbonze Converts Activity Data to Carbon Emissions

Gokhan Gureser

02:33>> They are calculating their carbon emissions. They're adding actually into into the platform. They're adding the activity data. Then the carbonze engine calculates the carbon emission and converts the activity data, for example, electricity bill, water bill into carbon emission.

Nathan Latka

02:55Okay. So any clients that use you, they have to give you, like, information like their water bills, electric bill. What other data do they have to give you?

Gokhan Gureser

03:03>> They have to give transportation data such as how many trucks or cars they have and how many transportation they have made via third parties. And also they have to give a waste amount per year.

Nathan Latka

03:20Isn't that a ton of work, Gokhan? I mean, how do you manage? Like if a company has 100 cars and they want you to measure carbon emissions, don't you need a sensor in the cars to manage that? Isn't it it's too it's too hard for a a client to give you that data manually every every day, every month.

Data Requirements: Transportation, Waste, and Bulk Entry

Gokhan Gureser

03:38>> Yes. We have two kinds of data entry, one bulk data entry and the other one is individual data entry. So customers might just enter like how many cars they have and 120 cars, for example, and they can generalize and abstract some data and it's allowed by regulation.

Nathan Latka

03:59I see. I see. Okay. And what are folks hoping like, you obviously outline what has to happen during a pilot in order for a cuss you know, to turn into a paying customer. Right? Do do you do that in your pilot?

Gokhan Gureser

04:14>> Sorry. I didn't catch the question on that.

Nathan Latka

04:16When you sign up a pilot, do you make it clear that if you're able to deliver x, y, and z within y period of time, that that pilot will turn into a paying customer?

Gokhan Gureser

04:31>> Yes. Mostly, actually, most of our clients currently are consulting companies, which are interested in selling our products, reselling our products into their clients, their business B2B clients.

04:44>> So we already have developed the platform and they can enter the data.

04:51>> So they just need to collect the internal data, activity data from different various departments.

Nathan Latka

05:01Oh, 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

05:24your 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

05:49get 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

06:11not 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

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06:59wanna 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 interview.

Pilot-to-Paying Conversion Criteria

Nathan Latka

07:26And so what does a consulting company need to see at the end of the pilot for them to say, yes, I'm happy to pay for this?

Gokhan Gureser

07:35>> Consulting company when they when they report, because at the end, the outcome is carbon emission report, which is regulated by greenhouse gas protocol globally.

Nathan Latka

07:53Have you thought about what you're going to charge for the product when you launch pricing?

Pricing Model: Free for SMEs, Per User for Large Companies

Gokhan Gureser

07:58>> Yes, for SMEs. And also, if you would like to give your existing clients, we will offer the product for the first three years for free, small and medium sized companies. And for large companies, it will be per user, 500 per month.

Nathan Latka

08:23And do you think most of these consulting companies will sign up one user or or more, their whole team?

Gokhan Gureser

08:28>> It depends on the size of the company. Mostly, we expect

08:34>> six users per company.

Nathan Latka

08:37So you're anticipating some of these pilots converting into $3,000 a month accounts?

Gokhan Gureser

08:42>> Yes. Well, yes.

Nathan Latka

08:44Do you think it's gonna happen?

Gokhan Gureser

08:48>> Exactly.

Nathan Latka

08:49Do you think it's gonna happen? How are the pilots going? Do you think they're gonna start paying?

Gokhan Gureser

08:54>> Yes, exactly. I think they will start paying.

Consulting Partner Strategy and Distribution

Gokhan Gureser

09:00>> They will start paying. But the most important thing is they, after they use our own product, they recommend our product to their own clients because they have, for example, 500 customer base, which is more a bit larger opportunity for us. So I'm not really interested if they pay or not. I don't care. But if they want to present us, they want to be consulting partner with carbonze.

Nathan Latka

09:29How are you as a startup founder, you're pre revenue right now. How are you supporting yourself while you're pre revenue, you know, paying for rent, paying for food, that kind of stuff?

How Gokhan Supports Himself While Pre-Revenue

Gokhan Gureser

09:39>> I mean, currently, bootstrapping carbonze and also with our own, me and our co founder, CTO, our own financial sources.

Nathan Latka

09:54So Gokhan, did you save up a bunch of money so that you could have financial resources while your company is pre revenue?

Gokhan Gureser

10:02>> Actually not. This is a large risk for us. And also I'm currently making corporate sustainability consulting as freelance in Germany and in Europe as well, so I can finance myself. If I need money, I have lots of consulting opportunities. Also, I'm founder of scrum6sigma.org, which I give online courses about scrum and six sigma, which is already creating, some not passive income, but with very little effort. I've already recorded courses.

Nathan Latka

10:39Where do you give these? Where do you teach these things? What website?

Gokhan Gureser

10:43>> Kajabi, I use.

Nathan Latka

10:45Oh, so it's your own personal like, if I wanna go sign up for your Six Sigma course right now, what URL would I go to?

Gokhan Gureser

10:52>> Scrum6sigma.org. It's based on Kajabi platform.

Nathan Latka

10:58Sorry. What's the URL?

Gokhan Gureser

11:02>> Scrumsigma.org.

Nathan Latka

11:05Scrumsigma.org. This is your website, your consulting website?

Gokhan Gureser

11:10>> Yeah. This this I've made two years ago.

Nathan Latka

11:12It's not it's not working for me. Scrumsigma6.org.

Gokhan Gureser

11:16>> Sigma. 6sigma. 6sigma. Scrumsix. Sigma. Got it. Scrum6sigma.org. Yeah. You can have free yellow belt courses there. They are actually

11:31>> these courses, you learn how to improve processes and how to increase effectiveness.

Nathan Latka

11:36I still can't know. I understand. I understand understand what the course is, but I can't get to the site. Is it spelled out six?

Gokhan Gureser

11:45>> Scrumand6sixsigmaar.org.

12:01>> Shut up.

Nathan Latka

12:02Whatever. I can't get it to work. Maybe send it to me in the show in the in the chat, and I can I can I'll put it in the show notes? But point being is you use this can you use this consulting to to grow your main business. How long will you keep investing? Like, let's say none of the pilots convert into paid customers. How long will you stick with this before you say, okay, it didn't

12:20work. I gotta shut it down and move on.

Regulatory Tailwind and 2024 Growth Thesis

Gokhan Gureser

12:24>> So it will be, I think, one year. Why? Because in 2023, 50,000 EU companies and also 55,000 American companies will have to disclose their environmental impact. So this report will be published in twenty twenty four June. So we are preparing for that. So the real growth will be in 2024 and between March and June.

Nathan Latka

12:58Can you afford can you afford, based off your savings, to make no revenue from your company for the next two years until 2024?

Gokhan Gureser

13:07>> We will try. We will try our best.

Nathan Latka

13:09So are you like a really rich guy? I mean, how did you get so much No.

Gokhan Gureser

13:14>> Because we just we don't have lots of costs because our CTO, my CTO is already he's financing himself, and I'm financing myself, and that's all. And we hire two coders, like two developers from East Europe,

Monthly Burn and Team Structure

Gokhan Gureser

13:39>> and our costs are minimal currently. And also we expect How much

Nathan Latka

13:43do you spend per month all in?

Gokhan Gureser

13:47>> We must spend our,

13:50>> like, €6,000. So it's little.

Nathan Latka

13:55Okay. Very cool. Also

Gokhan Gureser

13:59>> yeah.

Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

14:01Great. Well, listen, we're obviously rooting for you. I love that you took a risk and you jumped out and you're doing this and you're staying very capital efficient. In the meantime, though, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Gokhan Gureser

14:16>> Purple Cow.

Nathan Latka

14:20Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Gokhan Gureser

14:28>> No. I don't follow.

Nathan Latka

14:29Number three. What's your favorite online tool for building carbonze?

Gokhan Gureser

14:35>> AWS.

Nathan Latka

14:37Number four.

14:38How how

14:40many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Gokhan Gureser

14:44>> Seven.

Nathan Latka

14:45Seven. And what's your situation? Married? Single? Kids?

Gokhan Gureser

14:49>> Single.

Nathan Latka

14:50Okay. And how old are you?

Gokhan Gureser

14:53>> 40.

Nathan Latka

14:5440. Last question.

14:56What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Gokhan Gureser

15:03>> Investors are willing to invest. I'm a brilliant guy. Didn't know this.

Nathan Latka

15:10All right. Very good. Well, we're rooting for you. Carbonze guys helps you measure your carbon footprint, which will be required here shortly based off regulation and laws. He's spending $6,000 a month right now to build this with his co founder, trying to stay lean mean, running 10 pilots right now with consulting companies like a big one in China that he hopes will love his product and then sell it through to their end customers. That's his distribution

Closing Summary and Wrap-Up

Nathan Latka

15:30channel. We'll see if he can make it happen. Gokhan, thanks for taking us to the top.

Gokhan Gureser

15:34>> Thank you, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

15:37One 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 alive. It is fun to watch every Thursday 1PM

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