How Claap Raised $3M on a $14.5M Pre-Money Valuation with 3,000 Waitlist Signups (Interview with Co-Founder Pierre Touzeau)

Introduction and Pierre's Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Pierre Touzeau. He's the co founder of Claap. He's currently building the future of asynchronous communication and a work from anywhere world. He started his career at L'Oreal where he learned how the best brands become and remain world renowned leaders. Before Claap, he was VP of Marketing at three sixty Learning, an organization famous for its meeting limitation policies, where he helped the company grow from 25 to over 200 people and more

00:20than $30,000,000 in ARR. Pierre, are you ready to take us to the top?

Pierre Touzeau

00:25>> Yeah. Did I'm you

Nathan Latka

00:27get any equity at three sixty Learning as VP of Marketing or no?

Pierre Touzeau

00:30>> Yes, got some and it's funny because right now I have the opportunity to invest like small tickets in small startup and it's like, it's a it's good to be on the other side of like the like founder, like from founder and employee to like first time like investor as well.

Nathan Latka

00:45So you're doing some angel investing then, Yeah. Yeah. Lot of a lot of Station F stuff. I hear something special is happening there.

Pierre Touzeau

00:51>> Yes, Station F actually like we know quite well because the Hogs and Vaz actually like invested in Claap and we are like very friend with them.

Nathan Latka

01:00Very cool. Tell us what Claap does.

What Claap Does: Asynchronous Meeting Platform

Pierre Touzeau

01:02>> Yeah, so basically like the idea of Claap, it's an asynchronous meeting platform And the basic idea is to say that we are living maybe the largest shift in our work since the last industrial revolution, which is working from anywhere. It's going to define our work for the upcoming twenty to forty years. But we have, you know, like this one big issue, which is like back to back meetings have become the norm. And basically, like what we've

01:23>> noticed that when we are in the same office and let's say I want to align with you on a product prototype, a spreadsheet, like a deck, etcetera, just going to take me like five minutes. I'm going to see you with my desktop, maybe like show my screen, ask a few questions. I'm going to get like some precise feedback and then I can move on. But the problem is like those five minutes have turned into thirty minutes

01:44>> Zoom call by default when we all switch to like full remote. And the idea behind what we call asynchronous meeting is to make it like super easy to share like video updates of your screen, then to collect like precise feedback, what we call in context feedback tied to a specific minute, but also like zone of your screen. And then to turn this feedback into like next steps and decisions, but without the need to be in the

02:06>> same room at the same time. We like the idea behind this is to create a new format for like quick alignment and decision making. But we were kind of stuck between like two options, you know, like asynchronous written communication, which is like flexible but limited like that, like context and interactivity. So when we're stuck, we always revert to meetings. And the idea of Claap is to create this new format that combines the flexibility of asynchronous communication

02:32>> with like the contextualization and interactivity of a meeting.

How Claap Differs from Loom and Zoom

Nathan Latka

02:35Got it. Yeah, this makes perfect sense. You know, I found myself using Loom a ton to do this sort of thing, right? So how do you beat companies like Loom? And I imagine Zoom will also get into this at some point.

Pierre Touzeau

02:45>> Yeah. So I think like the main difference with like Loom, Loom it's more like for video sharing. Like if you want to share like an update, it's like perfect, but it's not like build to basically like collect feedback and make decisions. It's not also, it's not a system of record. And we like the idea of Claap is to really like build this kind of asynchronous like decision making workflow, which is like you share an update, then

03:09>> you get feedback, then you turn feedback into next steps. And that scale you basically like you also become a system of record for all the people in the company. So you create transparency and scale.

Revenue Model and Freemium Approach

Nathan Latka

03:20And what's the revenue model? How do you make money?

Pierre Touzeau

03:22>> So it's a freemium model. So like the idea is to have like a free plan, which is like basically like people starting to like record the claps and then like inviting people to comments and claps, etcetera. And then that's clearly to have like a revenue model based on like a video creator.

Pre-Revenue Status and Private Beta Metrics

Nathan Latka

03:38Have you

03:39turned that on yet or are you still pre revenue?

Pierre Touzeau

03:41>> So we are still pre revenue. We launched the private beta actually like around like one month ago. And right now it's really like close private beta and we have like around maybe, I would say like monthly active user, around like 100 monthly active user, around like 20 to 30 like daily active users. And we have like around 3,000 people in the wait list, a bit more. And the idea is really to iterate first and like, you

04:07>> know, like understand what drives like adoptions, activation and also like virality. And that's really like the goal of like this super like close private data process.

First Line of Code and MVP Development

Nathan Latka

04:18When did you guys write the first line of code for Claap?

Pierre Touzeau

04:21>> So actually it was like around October, November. The first task we wanted to know was we like the video recording system, you know, like managing like all the kind of costs related to that. But we really accelerated on the development in January.

Nathan Latka

04:38Okay. And how much have you spent on the MVP so far?

Pierre Touzeau

04:42>> What do you mean by that?

Nathan Latka

04:43How much money have you spent building the MVP so far?

Pierre Touzeau

04:47>> Not a lot, to be honest. I think maybe 150 to Okay. One

Nathan Latka

04:53And so what is your goal? When do you guys want to launch pricing?

Planned Pricing and Public Beta Timeline

Pierre Touzeau

04:57>> It's a good question. I think we want to have like a pricing model we define when we open the product to public beta because like, you know, like the I think like at first we were like a bit naive. We wanted to launch like the pricing model in like one year or two years. But we realized that if you launch a product that is like free from the beginning and then you launch the paid plan maybe

05:20>> one year after, you it's going to be like super hard to do it. So what we want to do is we need to have like the pricing plan ready when we open the beta.

Nathan Latka

05:29So what do you think the pricing plan will be? And when do you think you'll open it? How much time?

Pierre Touzeau

05:34>> I think we'll open it like, so basically we are going to do it in two steps. So we are going to accelerate onboarding in September because we have like some good feedback on the product usage and we have like a better understanding of like the go to market that works. So we plan to keep like the private, the accelerate on boardings and then the public beta, I think it will be probably by end of the year

06:00>> or early And next

Nathan Latka

06:02what will that price point be? Do you think the starting price point?

Pierre Touzeau

06:05>> It's a good question, to be honest. I'm not ready to answer. I think it's But do think

Nathan Latka

06:10it'll be like consumer $5 a month thing or like an enterprise $500 a month minimum?

Pierre Touzeau

06:14>> No. I think it will be like somewhere between like 10 to $20 a month per video creator.

Nathan Latka

06:19And what utility based upsell like will you build? Is it like would a per seat model work or a number of recorded videos per month work or like what's the usage metric?

Pierre Touzeau

06:27>> Yes. So basically, I think like the it it will be like based on like the the video recorded. But then the question is also in terms of features limitation. The idea of Claap is really to build a new decision making system and we are going to launch a lot of features linked to that. For example, one of the primitive feature of Claap is what we call in context feedback. So it's really like feedback type with specific

06:51>> like minute but also like zone of your like video. And right now it's more like text plus like emoji feedback. But tomorrow we'll have like for example, system of like polls, system of like video feedback or voice feedback, etcetera.

Nathan Latka

07:05And what niche are you building it for though? Right? So like, if you look at like frame.io for video editing, they do a good job of this, but it's for a very specific niche. Like, are you targeting salespeople or product engineers or something else?

Pierre Touzeau

07:15>> Yeah. So like the goal for Claap is really to build a product for like anyone in the company. And it's funny that you mentioned like frame.io because it was like part of like the the testing we made to launch like this feature. We use like, we kind of act frame.io to like understand, okay, what drives adoption, what drives engagement on a video. If you want, we like collect feedback. So for us, like the goal is to

07:39>> like build a product that anyone in the company can use. But it's in terms of like go to market, What we've noticed, like the product teams as we like the basic, like the early adopters because they have like super like visual use cases like they want to.

Nathan Latka

07:54Don't you have to go super deep on that niche? Like if you try and be everything for everyone in the company, you just get diluted. But if you build specifically for a product manager, you can go really deep and just dominate and charge more.

Pierre Touzeau

08:04>> I don't know because I think in the end, like our end goal and our mission is we to, you know, like help people work from anywhere. What we've noticed, if you want to work from anywhere and free your calendar from back to back meetings, you need to master asynchronous communication. And basically, idea is to say the way it's done today it's mostly like limited to like asynchronous written communication. With Loom you add context, but you don't

08:31>> have like the whole decision making system. And we like the idea is to like and the mission of Claap is to democratize like this way of like making decisions and like aligning internally. So I guess like it would change like the mission of the company to say this is like just for product teams. And the second point is

Nathan Latka

08:50Can't your mission change over time? I mean, don't all big companies start by dominating one niche? I mean, of course everyone has a

Pierre Touzeau

08:55>> And brand I think like the second point to answer your question is more like the added value we also have for product teams is like one of the big nightmare you have as a product manager is like cross team communication. Like as a company grow, it becomes like super hard to like align with like your sales team, your customer success team, your marketing teams, etcetera. And you are kind of stuck because you want to align them,

09:18>> you want to collect their feedback. But at the same time, you want to keep like shipping like features like really fast.

Nathan Latka

09:24Got it.

Pierre Touzeau

09:25>> And we need to have like a product that speaks to both like product teams, but also like sales teams, etcetera, in terms of like usage and complexity.

Fundraising Story: From $500K Target to $3M Round

Nathan Latka

09:34Pierre, we're running short on time here. I'm going try and sneak in a bunch of questions here quickly. You mentioned you raised some capital. How much have you raised?

Pierre Touzeau

09:40>> Yeah, so raised $3,000,000.

Nathan Latka

09:433,000,000?

Pierre Touzeau

09:44>> Yes, 3,000,000.

Nathan Latka

09:45Okay. And how did you, obviously you're sort of pre product, right? How did you raise that 3,000,000 on a valuation that wasn't, you know, super low?

Pierre Touzeau

09:51>> Yes, so actually like what we did, it was like a funny story, but we wanted to raise at first like 500 ks dollars in January. But before that, we added like a lot of VCs on LinkedIn for a few months. And we prepared like a landing page like for a few months, like some social media posts, etcetera. And when we announced like Claap on LinkedIn, we had like, I think around maybe 45,000 views on the post,

10:21>> hundreds of people like registered to the beta and we had like a lot of requests for like VCs and I think like and the round was in the end like super competitive. We had like one term sheet in a few days and in three weeks we had like 15 term sheets And that's how we basically went from like 500 to 3,000,000.

Nathan Latka

10:41And what was the valuation on that?

Valuation and Co-Founding Team

Pierre Touzeau

10:43>> The valuation like pre money was around like 14,500,000.

Nathan Latka

10:48Okay. So 17,500,000 post. And who is we? Who's on the co founding team? You, who else?

Pierre Touzeau

10:53>> Yeah, me and Robin.

Nathan Latka

10:56Did

10:57you guys just split equity right down the middle?

Pierre Touzeau

11:00>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:00Really? So you're a nice guy, fiftyfifty.

Pierre Touzeau

11:03>> Yeah. You know, like we we've known each other for like fourteen years. We are, we like best friends and I feel like the and the contribution is we like the same.

Nathan Latka

11:13Yeah. What's the team size today? How many people?

Team Size and Engineers

Pierre Touzeau

11:16>> Yes. So, we're going to be nine in September.

Nathan Latka

11:18How many engineers?

Pierre Touzeau

11:20>> Five engineers.

Nathan Latka

11:21Five engineers. Okay. Interesting. And how much of your own money have you put in the business? You had a little exit, I guess, because you had some equity in your previous company, right?

Pierre Touzeau

11:29>> Yes, but actually like none because like we incorporated the right for the fundraising announcement, like, like when we had like the term sheet, we are not incorporated yet.

What Excited VCs: Category Narrative and Prototype

Nathan Latka

11:39Oh, wow. Okay. Got it. And what got these VCs so excited? Were they VCs that you guys already had relationships with because they saw what you built previously or how did they find the LinkedIn post?

Pierre Touzeau

11:49>> Yes, I guess it's like, it's kind of like it's what people need right now. And you like we spend a lot of time really like iterating on like on the positioning and the narrative before like making the announcement to make sure like it speaks and it resonates to people. I think like what this is like is when you come with like a strong narrative, which is not about like creating a new product, but like creating a

12:14>> new category. And then like we also like work with like for a few months before just to basically like test the ideas. So basically like what we did, we did some consulting missions and the idea was to take maybe like the fifteen, twenty different products on the market and test them as if it was like our own MVPs and to really like understand, okay, what are like the right use cases? What drives like engagement? What drives

12:40>> like availability, etcetera? And in the end, we had like a prototype, which was like, I feel like quite precise and we were like super like, I guess accurate to explain, okay, this is like the reason why, for example, we need to have like this in context feedback feature. This is like the reason why we need to basically like store like recordings like this way, etcetera. And I think it was like the mix between, yeah, like the

13:06>> category narrative, but also like the product design

13:11>> we came up with, like with the prototype.

Nathan Latka

13:15Yep, that makes a lot of sense. I'm trying to look back on your LinkedIn right now to find that initial post, but I can't find it. But that is how you really got term sheet. That's how you got everything going. So it makes a lot of sense. Okay, so launch is coming. We talked through how you built the beta list 300 folks. There's 3,000 on the waiting list right now. You're letting them on one by one

13:36product engineers is the focus. This all makes a lot of sense. Anything I'm missing that you want to chat about for the last minute?

Website, Free Tools, and Waitlist Growth Strategy

Pierre Touzeau

13:45>> No. What kind of question do you have? I think maybe like because we you you mentioned that you like the the website, maybe a few things we did at the beginning, like, you know, like between like the rules.

Nathan Latka

13:59Who'd pay? Who'd you pay to do the website?

Pierre Touzeau

14:03>> I did it myself.

Nathan Latka

14:04Well, that's and it looks really good. It looks like an agency did it. It looks really nice.

Pierre Touzeau

14:08>> Okay. No. I I think that's that's a cool stuff because, you know, like before I was like VP of marketing and I had like, you know, like a team of like a lot of people and in then you are like nuts and zen and but I love to build stuff and it's super funny when you go back to be like a founder is like you need to build stuff on your own. So, you know, I did

14:29>> like most of the stuff on like Photoshop, on Figma, on Webflow, etc. And you can really like, yeah, it's good to be like an individual contributor sometimes. And yeah, and really enjoy like the building the website. And you know, like one of the things we did that was super successful because you know, one of the key when you want to build like a category is that you need to own the problem. Like you need to kind

14:53>> of build the cognitive link between like the enemy, like the prem, in our case like back to back meetings and the category. So that people when they think about back to back meetings, they are going to think about like Claap. So one of the things we did for example was to launch a meeting calculator. It's on our website as well. And basically, you connect your Google Calendar and then you are going to see a lot of

15:15>> like stats around like your number of meetings, like the type of meetings you have, etc. And we did like a small product launch product launch in April. And actually we got a lot of traction and visibility through like this small launch. And I think

Nathan Latka

15:32this meeting calculator app is really smart. This is where you got a lot of new signups from. This is you're building the beta list.

Pierre Touzeau

15:38>> Yeah, exactly. I think it's part of this. We like basically like the waitlist, we had it like from the initial announcement in January with like the meeting calculator and also with like the fundraising announcement campaign we did in June. And I think like all the time is like, you know, when you don't have like any product, you need to speak about the absence of the product. I need to kind of like repeat like the same narrative

16:03>> like about beating the enemies. And that's exactly what we did for a few months.

Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

16:07Pierre makes a lot of sense. Let's wrap up quickly here with the famous five. Number one, favorite book?

Pierre Touzeau

16:12>> I would say play bigger.

Nathan Latka

16:14Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Pierre Touzeau

16:17>> Yeah, I love Dave Cancel.

Nathan Latka

16:18Number two, is there an online tool that you really enjoy or like?

Pierre Touzeau

16:23>> I would say Claap, but right now I discovered June, but so for analytics, it's really cool.

Nathan Latka

16:29Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Pierre Touzeau

16:32>> Sorry?

Nathan Latka

16:33Sleep per night.

Pierre Touzeau

16:34>> I would say between seven to eight hours.

Nathan Latka

16:37And situation, married, single, kids?

Pierre Touzeau

16:39>> Single.

Nathan Latka

16:40Okay. And how old are you?

Pierre Touzeau

16:42>> 32.

16:43>> 32.

Nathan Latka

16:44Last question, something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Pierre Touzeau

16:47>> Tough question. I would say maybe human psychology. Learn psychology? No, human psychology.

Closing Summary

Nathan Latka

16:56There you guys have it. Guys, Claap launched a couple of months ago, 3,000 on their wait list, did a $3,000,000 round on 17.5 and nine right now growing the company, two co founders, they were nice. They split at fiftyfifty. Again, they believe in the future of asynchronous communication using their tool with a lot of utility value. Highlight parts of the video where you're talking about, use it at your system of record. We'll see if they can

17:14beat Loom and others playing in the space. Pierre, thanks for taking us to the top.

Pierre Touzeau

17:18>> Thanks, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

17:21One 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 one

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