How Chantico Technology, Inc. CEO Gina Sanchez grew to $1.2M revenue and 100 customers in 2024.

guys chantico technology is doing 35 000 a month today across five customers with a hundred paid seats at 350 bucks a pop she's invented this idea called recursion partitioning they've got a thousand events that help Ria advisors understand how their portfolios might perform if some combination of these a thousand outputs these a thousand events combined together helps them do sort of disaster planning in an efficient way just scaling here nicely 425 000 pre-seed raised last year to 5 million cap raising a little bit more this year as she looks to scale with a team of eight hey folks my guest today is Miss Gina Sanchez she's the CEO of shantiko technology and investment and Technology software publisher in addition she served as chairwoman of the Los Angeles County Employee Retirement Association Board of retirement and as a member of the board of directors for Cedar Sinai Hospital social service is an Advisory Board member for the UCLA masters of Financial and engineering program Gina you ready to take us to the top I'm ready to do it you've got your plate full you're doing a lot of stuff how much time can you spend on gentico uh well I spend all my time on Tico actually so you know I I have uh one last year as a public service to L.A County Employee Retirement Association which I've done for six years um and uh and you know I launched cantico technology actually last year in 2021 uh at the end of 2021 and we got going in 2022 uh with fundraising and secured our first round of uh pre-t funding in 2022 so this has been what I live and breathe for since that moment that's awesome okay so tell us why you launched this I mean how did you discover this problem um well so I actually ran a uh a consulting company for a decade and in that time period um and before that I was a portfolio manager at American Century Investment Management um where I had started using recursive partitioning in addition to kind of your traditional regression analysis for for data anal you know for data analysis and what I found was that while regression was really good at kind of guessing what the what the average expectation would be requires the partitioning was really good at guessing the extremes and so you know when you ask like what are the describe your product in five words we forecast extreme events that's what we do and that's what quite frankly that's when we lose money as portfolio managers and that's when we get fired as investment managers or wealth managers and so you know I started um crafting this product in the form of a consultancy product about a decade ago so I spent um you know once I had lifted out of Ravena Global economics where I had launched a consultancy that was profitable we were able to adequately spend that out I earned him out over three years and in that time period I kind of gave myself the agenda and latitude to build the kind of research agenda I wanted to build and with my client they've um really focused on on this technology and effectively created the prototype for what we've been to become the IP that we plan out into chantico technology and so that IP actually has 10 years of client testing behind it that's wild okay I I want to come back to the idea of recursion partitioning here in a second but first to get going in 2021 you mentioned a seat around I think you said in 2022 what was the size of that round so um so we actually raised uh 425 000 in 2021 uh sorry in 2022 uh from 2045 Ventures ULU Ventures a handful of of individuals and we're um we added to that actually early this year um and so we're just finalizing the second half of that feed round which it's been the prolonged food around anybody who's been raising money knows how painful it's been to find uh and and secure precede funding but we I think one of the things that have kept us in front of um the the early stage Venture companies is that our product is the exact kind of product you need when markets are volatile you couldn't get more volatile markets in the last few years so and strangely you know we were really concerned that that the Meltdown in Silicon Valley Bank was going to be um it was going to be sort of you know a real death blow uh to our funding process but actually our funding set up after that probably because people like she came to us saying hey I know you're not fully built yet but can we subscribe to whatever you have and so we're actually pre-filling um just access to the data engine to access to the analysis engine and so you know I think that's probably what has kept us in the game while other uh other early stage companies are are having troubles oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you 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slash evaluations or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products click on get your evaluation 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 all right let's jump back into the interview a couple quick questions here so most folks were telling you know 15 20 of our company and pre-seed rounds these days are you sort of in that same range is Kate say that again most folks in pre-seed rounds today are selling 15 to 20 of their business are you in that same range that's exactly what we're doing yeah we're exactly doing with that so we filled 10 so far we're selling the other 10 that's great yeah so something like a two two and a half million valuation something like that so we're actually selling at a five million evaluation okay so then you're selling less than if you're if okay well I guess 500 000 right got it got it got it yeah that makes sense yeah yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense so going svb is obviously in for conducts to the audience we're recording this on Wednesday March 22nd so SUV you know call that was that 10 days ago something around there Gina I mean that is the definition I would say of you know recursion partitioning in an extreme events so people are gonna be wondering how how if if no one else in the world can predict these things how is Gina saying she could predict it so how would your technology have identified and told before the managers about svb ahead of time well it's not going to tell portfolio advantages about spb when it tells portfolio managers is how their portfolios respond to different um uh to different economic events and what happens when they happen in succession right so while people understand how their portfolio might act when interest rates rise what we do is we help them understand what is the exact set of conditions that will lead to the worst performance that they will have and so what combination of events and that's really where we don't have to predict the event we don't have to predict that the pandemic will happen we just simply have to predict that oil prices will go up that interest rates will go up and that the FED balance sheet will start to retrench that tends to be a death blow to a number of portfolios it doesn't matter what caused it and so I think a lot of people try to focus on the crystal abolishness of it we're not in the business of focusing on the crystal ball we're just basically trying to say whatever event happens if you get a series of events this is the combination that you want to be aware of right on the flip side if you're investing for growth you know so if we're looking at deal by deal investment into a venture portfolio or PE portfolio we look for the series of attributes or aspects that will lead to outsized Performance and so you know this goes in both directions it actually handles both Tails um and so it sells in both markets but in those down markets when people are getting really nervous sometimes you have to reset expectations and say hey if interest rates are rising and you know that that may not be the case anymore but it it was for the last year um and the FED balance sheet is not expanding you know our expectations have to be lower so let's reset your expectations so that you don't terminate us um even if we're doing really well as a as a manager right because the hard part here I don't mean to call you off it's just where it's it's a fast show and I want to get a lot in um isn't the hard part the creative energy required to think of the craziest things that can happen and if so absolutely yeah so like I mean but how can you possibly so let's say tomorrow I'm making this up a Russian submarine hits the internet cable line in the Atlantic Ocean and cuts internet communications off between you know Europe and the US I mean how can you possibly think of all the crazy things that could happen tomorrow across geopolitics economies everything yeah but let's take that crazy example that you've just put out well what would naturally happen you'd have a natural file in e-commerce almost immediately that Fallen e-commerce is going to result in the fallen in at least is to Temporary fall in profitability depending on how long that outage happens that temporary fall and productivity could actually manifest into other elements like a fall in in labor so you could see labor Cuts right you could see wages and we can tell you how your portfolio will act in those so it isn't about guessing the event it's about guessing how the event is going to evolve in terms of elements that can be predicted right labor shortage interest rate rights like you have a list of 300 items you don't care what we have a list of over a thousand items actually and we don't care then you don't care about what the event is you care about here are the Thousand potential outcomes of any random event and if you combine event number you know outcome number seven with outcome number six and and 999 that would be bad for your portfolio precisely and the other thing Nathan is that we also not every portfolio cares about all of those events so sometimes that happens in your portfolio is immune to it right that's also valuable information so what we're looking for are the events that cause these the biggest differences um in your expectations and focus you on those six or seven things and anything that could cause those six or seven outcomes right so now you as a manager can stay focused and you're not worried about every number that flies at you this sounds very valuable right if it works what's the average customer paying you today to use the technology per month or per year um so we're actually selling this into um three different channels and so if you look at we're selling the SAS product and the SAS product has uh the the standard kind of fees you know 350 per user per month right so think about that as about five thousand dollars per view there per year and our month is not just one user is your average customer signing up 10 users no no no the average customer is actually sending up a signing up bundle right so so how many though typically there are these teams of two using your teams of 200 using you depends our our very first client is going to be a team at 75. so you know we that's a fairly large ones well you said going to be are you pre-revenue today and you're looking to land your first customer so we actually have our first customers so our first customer is is basically coming on we technically we had had different plans this is like the art of the pivot um we were planning this very very you know organized debate around with all of our clients that we had signed up to do beta feedback well now we're just selling uh so so we've gone from beta users to users so the ones that are already paying not the ones you're gonna land in the future one's already paying how many seats are they buying on average um well we're still just with our beta realm so they only bought 20 seats in the beta round right and so we're going to grow those to those 20 feeds we're all we're we're already planned to become 75 feet right we're just doing it faster than we had planned and okay so you have on the platform today across all paying customers to about 20 seats no actually we have more than that uh so we have about a hundred seats of beta customers in 20 seat increments that we had that we had sort of planned into this bait around so you know that's kind of where we are we're yeah what I have to understand though is like there's very different motions with sales SAS companies especially ones that are selling kind of investment Tech investment SAS you could go sell the Blackstone a thousand seats and you're building only for Blackstone you could also sell to individual rias where they're only buying two seats and you want to go sell a thousand different logos two seats a pop I'm trying to understand what your motion is so how many logos are those hundred seats spread across five oh okay so average team sizes of 20 something like that 20. yes exactly okay I got it very cool okay so talk to me about the use case of the land and expand right this is typical SAS how do you go from 20 seats in One logo to 75 what are they what are you learning what are they telling you um so part of it is really just the educational process and so if for example the logos that we have right now are really primarily registered investment advisors and so there's an education process that has to happen people have to learn how to use that they have to understand what they're seeing um so we're educating them on what the alerts mean how to use them how to use the dashboard on a daily basis how to use it to sort of prioritize your communication with clients and so as as that sort of expands within the company you know we can increase uh the the expansion happens there um we're also partnering with platforms where we can sell to multiple logos you know through through a discountings right so you know we are working with with various uh Partnerships that we're in the we're in the process of actually um signing so we haven't signed up I can't tell you who they are but there are some good women's and big ones I want to ask I want to ask for customer names that's obviously sensitive but um I can say so 350 on average per month per seat you mentioned 100 see it's multiplying those would put you at about 33 000 a month today in revenue is that accurate yeah and that is our goal our goal really was to cover um initially was just to cover our run rate so that we weren't dependent on a capital market so that we could sort of keep going oh that's your goal or that's where you're at today about 30. no no that's actually that's where we at that was that was our goal for this was just to cover our red rate yeah so you know survival is everything sustainability of course so if you're at about 30 35 000 bucks a month today in Revenue where were you a year ago so we can calculate growth rate zero so we had yeah and we have an infinite run rate right now but you know we're actually so we're we're targeting um targeting about a million to two million dollars of Revenue um next year that's our goal and of course you get that crazy Runway at that crazy growth rate at the beginning um that million dollars um can get to about 10 million dollars reasonably um uh with with we have really good confidence that we can get to 10 million where we're really going to need our Venture backers to get behind us is growing from 10 to 100. that's that's a that's a you know much much deep different path right so many folks are full-time on the team today um so we have eight um full-time people um co-founders no I have co-founders so uh myself our chief technology officer Gregory Hansen and our chief Revenue um were you nice to each other at the start you guys just split Equity evenly amongst the three of you no I have most of the equity okay that's great well we're at it we're out of time for today we're certainly rooting for you we hope the second party round closes nice and smoothly and we hope you you know double trip over the next 12 months in the meantime though let's wrap up here with the rapid fire Famous Five number one favorite book uh favorite books Bridget Jones's Diary Number Two is there a CEO you're following or studying um I actually follow several several CEOs you know I mean I I think that um I can't really name one right now that's okay number number three what's your favorite online tool for building a chantico uh well actually we have a few favorite tools um I love Carta it has made our life easy I love Gusto because we were so small and we need the support so I have two that's great and how many hours of sleep do you get every night less than I want to about six six we always ask we don't know if people are healthy you know and situation Gina married single kiddos Mary any kids running around or just a startup no no I don't think I could do this with children honestly I think it would be a challenge oh yeah that's tough stuff and can I ask about how old you are I'm 50. last question something you wish you knew back when you were 20 years old um I I that's a tough one um I think I I think I I wish I knew that um I wish I knew how successful that I would become you know it it is I think the reason that bridge a chance of diary of my favorite book is because it is about sort of that inner you know that that that inner kind of monologue we tell ourselves about how you know we have these insecurities and I will tell you that going through Adventure round forces you to overcome those yeah that's right guys shantico technology is doing 35 000 a month today across five customers with 100 paid seats at 350 bucks a pop she's invented this idea called recursion partitioning they've got a thousand events that help Ria advisors understand how their portfolios might perform if some combination of these a thousand outputs these a thousand events combined together helps them do sort of disaster planning in an efficient way just scaling here nicely 425 000 pre-seed raised last year to five million cap raising a little bit more this year as she looks to scale with a team of eight Gina thank you so much for taking us to the top thank you one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm 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 our poo 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 p.m Central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central to make sure you don't miss any of that make sure you click the Subscribe button below here on 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