Founder Interview
How Clappia Reached 10 Paying Customers in 7 Months with a $5 Per User Per Month Model (Interview with Ashutosh Thakur)
- Interview Date
- April 24, 2018
- Interviewee
- Ashutosh ThakurFounder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Paying Customers (2018)
10
Monthly Revenue (April 2018)
About $7,000
Pricing (2018)
$5 per user per month
Team Size (2018)
5
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Ashutosh Thakur during the interview recorded in April 2018 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Clappia’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Clappia launched in October 2017 and had been operating for seven months at the time of the interview
- 02The company had 10 paying customers and around 20 free users on a freemium plan
- 03Pricing was $5 per user per month with no limit on the number of apps created
- 04Monthly revenue was approximately $7,000 at the time of the interview
- 05Most of the first five customers came from contacts; the next five found Clappia through search, after the team posted on Quora and forums
- 06Clappia was bootstrapped at the time of the interview, with no outside investment raised
- 07The team of five was based in Bangalore, India, with three founders and two additional members
- 08SEO terms targeted include phrases like 'create app yourself' and 'business process apps'
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Year Founded | 2017 | Founder interview, Apr 2018 |
| Paying Customers (2018) | 10 | Founder interview, Apr 2018 |
| Free Users (2018) | Around 20 | Founder interview, Apr 2018 |
| Pricing Per Seat (2018) | $5 per user per month | Founder interview, Apr 2018 |
| Monthly Revenue (April 2018) | About $7,000 | Founder interview, Apr 2018 |
| Team Size (2018) | 5 | Founder interview, Apr 2018 |
| Founders (2018) | 3 | Founder interview, Apr 2018 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Clappia was generating approximately $7,000 per month in recurring revenue at the time of the interview, seven months after launching in October 2017. Ashutosh put total revenue over those seven months at around $80,000 to $90,000, and when Nathan asked whether that was the run rate, he answered: "It's total total revenue. Total. In the past seven months." The company charged $5 per user per month, with no cap on the number of applications a customer could build.
Customers
The company had 10 paying customers and around 20 users on a freemium plan. Larger customers had not churned, though the guest acknowledged losing a few smaller customers in the early months.
Team
Clappia had five team members in total, including three founders and two additional members, all based in Bangalore, India. A couple of interns were also set to join at the time of the interview.
Funding
Clappia was fully bootstrapped at the time of the interview. Ashutosh had been talking to investors but had not "really found somebody who can invest a good amount that we are looking for."
Growth Strategy
Personal Network for Early Customers
Most of Clappia's first five paying customers came from contacts, in Ashutosh's words: "Initial five, I'll say most of them came from contacts." Search brought in the next five.
Organic SEO and Content Distribution
The next five customers found Clappia through search engines after the team posted on Quora and other forums and optimized for terms like 'create app yourself', 'create apps in minutes' and 'business process apps'.
Freemium Plan to Drive Adoption
Clappia offered a freemium tier that attracted around 20 non-paying users at the time of the interview. This allowed potential customers to explore the platform before committing to a paid plan.
Solving Distribution as a Core Feature
Beyond app creation, Clappia addressed the problem of distributing applications to large numbers of employees, vendors, or customers, which Ashutosh described as a major pain point not solved by competing drag-and-drop tools.
Best Quotes
“So our pay per user is, so we don't charge on the number of applications. So the way Excel or Google Sheet doesn't charge you on the number of sheets that you create. The same way we want people to use applications everywhere. So it's pay per user per month, which is $5 per user per month. And there's no limit on the number of apps.”
“The total number of customers is ten ten paying customers. ... we have a freemium plan. So people use for a few use cases and they come and go and that's it. But 10 of the users have converted. They have paid really well.”
“It's total total revenue. Total. In the past seven months.”
“Initial five, I'll say most of them came from contacts, and the next five, you can say search engine optimization. So they Googled us, they were looking for some solutions. We posted in Quora, we posted on a few forums, and a few SEOs as well. And and they came to our website and they gave us a call and that we are looking for something like this.”
“So we are filling that gap. We are eating that market where people can create their own applications without any help of any external developer.”
“We have bootstrapped. We keep on going. I mean, we have allocated some time to go back to the investors and talk to them as well. I haven't really found somebody who can invest a good amount that we are looking for.”
“I see a big market opportunity. I see that people are looking for solutions, and most of the time people just look back to India for service based software solutions. Now, cost is increasing day by day here as well. The employee salaries are increasing as well.”
“So we did some homework before September 2017, so last year. ... from October 2017. So it's been seven months.”
What Happened Next
At the time of this April 2018 interview, Clappia was seven months old, bootstrapped and serving 10 paying customers from Bangalore, India. Ashutosh said the team kept going back to investors but had not yet found one who could invest the amount it was looking for, and was "experimenting every month" with whatever growth techniques worked. Visit the Clappia company profile on GetLatka for current figures and updates beyond this snapshot.
View Clappia’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:01Host Introduction and Guest Background
- 0:32What Clappia Does: Drag-and-Drop Business Apps
- 2:32Pricing Model: $5 Per User Per Month
- 2:53Average Customer Size and Seat Count
- 3:33Company Launch and Early Timeline
- 3:56Customer Count and Revenue to Date
- 4:51Churn and Seat Retention
- 6:07Funding History: Bootstrapped
- 6:41How the First 10 Customers Were Acquired
- 7:06SEO Keywords and Organic Growth Tactics
- 7:39Team Size and Location
- 8:07Founder Background Before Clappia
- 8:32Why the Founder Left a Stable Career
- 9:11Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions
Host Introduction and Guest Background
Nathan Latka
00:01Hello everyone. My guest today is Ashutosh Kumar. He's a tech entrepreneur who always... Is always up to something. He studied at at a tech school in India and then started his career as a software engineer at Cisco. He moved into product management role there and then joined a small startup called Calm.io, which was acquired by Nutanix. He's witnessed the IPO of that company, and has a software patent filed in his name. Currently, he's working on
00:24his new venture, that bridges the business apps innovation gap. Ashutosh, are you ready to take us to the top?
Ashutosh Thakur
00:31Yes, Nathan.
What Clappia Does: Drag-and-Drop Business Apps
Nathan Latka
00:32Very good. Alright. Tell us about Clappia. What's it do and how do you make money?
Ashutosh Thakur
00:37Yes. So Clappia basically is apps on clapps, and if you go to businesses, different non IT businesses, they have lots of application requirements, and they can't get it. The options that they have is either go to Salesforce or Oracle or hire your own team or get a freelancer, and that kind of difficult problems are there. Or somehow manage with existing solutions. So there's a huge gap. The pyramid, at the top of the pyramid you have Salesforce,
01:04Oracle, that kind of solutions. And then at the bottom of the pyramid you have some Gmail, WhatsApp, Registers, any kind of tool. So we are filling that gap. We are eating that market where people can create their own applications without any help of any external developer. And just like you create an Excel sheet and you can go ahead, just drag and drop
01:28application development platform is there.
Nathan Latka
01:30These are, know, so an event company might create a ticketing app or a company might create a reporting app or things like that?
Ashutosh Thakur
01:37Yes, yes, and the distribution as well. So what happens is there are solutions like that, which provide you a drag and drop application creation mechanism. So they give you an APK. Now imagine that you have an APK and you have to distribute it among 500 or 5,000 people. That itself, because on a scale, it itself become a very big problem. So we have solved that kind of problem. We have noted them down, brainstorm, and then figure
02:02out what is the problem that they are facing. So distribution of application is another problem that they face.
Nathan Latka
02:07And are these, just real quick, real quick. So are these people building applications for them to use inside their businesses or these are developers building apps for consumers?
Ashutosh Thakur
02:17Inside their businesses. So to collaborate with employees, vendors and customers as well at times.
Nathan Latka
02:23Very good, so this is B2B apps, not someone looking to build the next
Ashutosh Thakur
02:23No,
02:28no.
Nathan Latka
02:28Okay, and how do you make money? What do people pay you on average per month?
Pricing Model: $5 Per User Per Month
Ashutosh Thakur
02:32So our pay per user is, so we don't charge on the number of applications. So the way Excel or Google Sheet doesn't charge you on the number of sheets that you create. The same way we want people to use applications everywhere. So it's pay per user per month, which is $5 per user per month. And there's no limit on the number of apps. Yeah, yeah, that's the model.
Average Customer Size and Seat Count
Nathan Latka
02:53Okay. And I imagine when a company signs up with you, they're not just buying one user usually. On average, how many users are they typically buying?
Ashutosh Thakur
03:01So it ranges from, I have seen 10 users, most of the time it is effective when you have 10 users to 200 users.
Nathan Latka
03:10What would you say a fair average is though? 10, 15?
Ashutosh Thakur
03:15A 100, 100 is.
Nathan Latka
03:16As an average?
03:17Okay. So it's fair to say then a 100 times $5 a seat, the average company that signs up with you pays maybe $500 a month?
Ashutosh Thakur
03:25Yes. So we are new, so we sometimes give discounts as well.
Nathan Latka
03:28Okay. Got it. Got it. Very good. Give me more of the backstory here. When did you launch the company?
Company Launch and Early Timeline
Ashutosh Thakur
03:33So we did some homework before September 2017, so last year. And we reincorporated the company in October, and from October 2017. So it's been seven months, and yeah.
Nathan Latka
03:33And in these
03:51first seven months, what have you scaled to in terms of total customers?
Customer Count and Revenue to Date
Ashutosh Thakur
03:56So that's... The total number of customers is ten ten paying customers. Around 20 customers are as... There as well because we have a freemium plan. So people use for a few use cases and they come and go and that's it. But 10 of the users have converted. They have paid really well. So the total revenue is around 80 to 90 k USD.
Nathan Latka
04:17Sorry. What was 80 to 90 k? That's your run rate currently?
Ashutosh Thakur
04:22It's total total revenue. Total. In the past seven months.
Nathan Latka
04:25Okay. In the past seven months, you've done 80 to $90,000 in USD.
04:29What are you doing right now though per month? 5 or 10 k?
Ashutosh Thakur
04:33It's around 7 ks.
Nathan Latka
04:35$7,000. Okay. That's great. So just to be clear,
04:39you... People are paying a little bit more. Right? So if you have 10 customers, buying $5 per month seats, they're buying more than a 100 seats on average to get up to 700, right, or $7,000 a month? Yeah. Yeah.
Churn and Seat Retention
Ashutosh Thakur
04:51Yes. Yes.
Nathan Latka
04:51Okay. What about churn? Has everyone who signed up stayed with you or have you lost anybody?
Ashutosh Thakur
04:56We have lost a few of the customers. I mean, they had they had a limited number of customers only, so not a big... So bigger customers have not left us yet. So it's been seven months, so yeah.
Nathan Latka
05:07When people are That's a trend. When people are... What is your monthly churn right now? I mean, we talking like 10% or 2% or what?
Ashutosh Thakur
05:1610, 10%. I mean, I think 10 customers, you can't really say churn rate.
Nathan Latka
05:21It's
Ashutosh Thakur
05:21just And we can't, mean, you know
Nathan Latka
05:23Do they churn seats though? Like, so if they... If you... Right now you have, it sounds like about 700. Well, let me see. You've got over a thousand seats on the platform. Do they ever churn seats?
Ashutosh Thakur
05:36Yeah. They do. They do.
Nathan Latka
05:38So what's that churn rate? Because that's a much larger cohort, much larger sample size.
Ashutosh Thakur
05:46I'll have to check that.
Nathan Latka
05:47It's okay, by the way. You can just say it's... By the way, you're early enough where you might just not measure it. It's totally okay to say you're not measuring that right now. Are you not measuring it right now?
Ashutosh Thakur
05:56Yeah. We are not. We are not.
Nathan Latka
05:56Okay.
Ashutosh Thakur
05:56So we are basically kind of doing the guerrilla techniques, whatever works, and jumping on whatever the techniques that we have. And and experimenting every month as well.
Funding History: Bootstrapped
Nathan Latka
06:07Yep. That makes good sense. And then walk me through some of the funding history here. Have you bootstrapped the company or have you raised?
Ashutosh Thakur
06:13We have bootstrapped. We keep on going. I mean, we have allocated some time to go back to the investors and talk to them as well. I haven't really found somebody who can invest a good amount that we are looking for.
Nathan Latka
06:13Mhmm.
Ashutosh Thakur
06:13But but nevertheless, we always go back and then talk to them and then get to know what is the next step that we should be look... For.
Nathan Latka
06:36And how have you gotten these first 10 customers? How have you gotten them?
How the First 10 Customers Were Acquired
Ashutosh Thakur
06:41Initial five, I'll say most of them came from contacts, and the next five, you can say search engine optimization. So they Googled us, they were looking for some solutions. We posted in Quora, we posted on a few forums, and a few SEOs as well. And and they came to our website and they gave us a call and that we are looking for something like this. Can you help us? And then that's how we got.
SEO Keywords and Organic Growth Tactics
Nathan Latka
07:06So you used Quora, you used other forums. What SEO terms were you trying to rank for?
Ashutosh Thakur
07:12What is
Nathan Latka
07:12What SEO
07:14terms were you trying to rate... Range for?
Ashutosh Thakur
07:20So most of the time people were looking for things like Google calculation in Google form. Create app yourself, create apps in minutes.
Nathan Latka
07:20Yep.
Ashutosh Thakur
07:20That kind of terms that people are looking for. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
07:32Got it.
Ashutosh Thakur
07:32B2B apps in minutes. Business process apps. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
07:35And you're optimizing for those keywords. That's how four or five of your customers found you?
Team Size and Location
Ashutosh Thakur
07:39Yes. Yes.
Nathan Latka
07:39Okay. Very good. And what's the team size at today? Are you the sole founder?
Ashutosh Thakur
07:43No. We have five right now.
Nathan Latka
07:45Five founders or five teammates?
Ashutosh Thakur
07:48Five teammates. So three founders, two members we have. We have got a couple of interns as well who will be joining this month.
Nathan Latka
07:54Okay. And where are you guys based?
Ashutosh Thakur
07:57Bangalore, India.
Nathan Latka
07:58Everybody?
Ashutosh Thakur
08:00Yes.
Nathan Latka
08:00Oh, very good. And and give us more... So kind of give us more of the backstory here before 2017. What were you doing before this company?
Founder Background Before Clappia
Ashutosh Thakur
08:07So before I started, as I mentioned, I started as a software engineer at Cisco, and after that I joined a company in Calm.io, was cloud automation platform. Got acquired by Nutanix. Nutanix filed for an IPO, and I was working as a product manager there. So basically a product background, and then then moved into tried creating my own product, which is Clappia right now.
Why the Founder Left a Stable Career
Nathan Latka
08:32What drove you to leave that cushy job? I'm sure you were making good money. It was very safe.
Ashutosh Thakur
08:37I see a big market opportunity. I see that people are looking for solutions, and most of the time people just look back to India for service based software solutions. Now, cost is increasing day by day here as well. The employee salaries are increasing as well. So now, ultimately, you'll have to move people out and then get some system, some automatic system, or maybe
09:03modular approach so that with least effort you get maximum return. So that is something that I saw, and I jumped in to create that.
Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions
Nathan Latka
09:11Very good. I love the story. Alright. Let's wrap up here, Ashutosh, with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
Ashutosh Thakur
09:18It's Zero to One.
Nathan Latka
09:19Zero to One. Two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now?
Ashutosh Thakur
09:24Quite cliche. This is Steve Jobs.
Nathan Latka
09:29Number three, what's your favorite online tool
Ashutosh Thakur
09:31for I'm building a gonna Elon Musk.
09:35Asana, all the Asana.
Nathan Latka
09:37And number four, how many hours of sleep are you getting every night?
Ashutosh Thakur
09:41Around six. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
09:42Okay. That's good. What's your situation? Married, single, you have kiddos?
Ashutosh Thakur
09:47Single right now.
Nathan Latka
09:49So no kids that you know of, right?
Ashutosh Thakur
09:51No. No.
Nathan Latka
09:52Good. And how old are you?
Ashutosh Thakur
09:5529.
Nathan Latka
09:5529. Alright. Last question. What do wish your 20 year old self knew?
Ashutosh Thakur
10:00Don't worry. I mean, is gonna be okay.
Nathan Latka
10:03Guys, there you have it from Ash. Ash, just don't worry. Take the risk. He did a stint at Cisco then went through an IPO then in 2017 left to launch Clappia, which helps you build business applications for you to use internally with your other teams for reporting expense management, things like that. The company was founded in Bangalore. They've got five people totally bootstrapped serving 10 customers paying on average $700 a month for about $7,000 in monthly
10:26recurring revenue right now. Ashutosh, thank you for taking us to the top.
Ashutosh Thakur
10:30Thank you.