How CustomerX CEO Leonardo Superti grew CustomerX to $390.2K revenue and 100 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is leonardo super t�� he's an expert in customer relationship management���� who worked in small large companies through his�� career in 2017 he decided to change the site and���� invite some friends to build customer x and smb�� brazilian customer success management platform���� leonardo are you ready to take us to the top�� yes let's go all right so you're based in brazil���� you're building a customer success tool help me�� understand what are you selling is it pure sass���� yes it's a sass sas our software is a a platform�� that helps companies to understand their customers���� so we have a lot of integrations�� with crms with super chic���� softwares and erps and stuff and then company���� we begin the project in 2017 and start selling�� 2018 2018. okay and help me understand today when���� customers are signing up for this tool that you've�� built what are they paying per month on average���� uh 1.2 hundred hay ice brazilian ice�� um you can just imagine like a dollar���� because we have a different coin but now the�� dollar worth 5 000 more than a brazilian hell���� so how many dollars are people paying per month�� about um 250 dollars 250 okay and tell me more���� about the back story so you launched in 2017 do�� you have co-founders yes i have uh for co-founders���� for co-founder did you split equity evenly yes 25�� 25 25 huh yes are all the co-founders still active���� yes exactly three on development three�� are very technical and another one���� switching uh in a lot of positions he already�� took marketing now with in product so marcel is a a joker he does everything yes and did you�� guys bootstrap or have you raised capital���� we already raised it how much did�� you raise and when um we we got two���� rounds of the first one was in 2018 uh with an�� accelerator and this year we just raised another���� seed round how much did you raise in 2018 2 000 hey ice something like um�� hundred dollars four hundred thousand���� hundred thousand dollars and then the raise that�� you did this year how much did you decide to raise���� uh we raised 1.5 million hey i's uh 400 400 000���� or 400 4.5 million right yes no sorry um i hate�� the numbers in english uh this time we raised a uh let me read i wrote 1.5 million less than four�� hundred thousand dollars yes uh well i i think���� it's 4.5 million dollars not not 400 000 yes�� yes it's you're it's the brazilian real correct���� yes okay no yeah yeah you're right so it's�� 400 000 you raised this year and you raised 40���� thousand and you raised 40 exactly i see exactly�� why why did you need to raise capital to do this���� why couldn't you bootstrap yeah because we need�� to to raise our our train basically we need more���� activity in marketing and sales and�� the money we got from customers is not���� sufficient for that how many customers do you have�� today now we have almost 100 100 100 customers���� one 1 100 or 100 100 100 customers 100�� customers okay and i take 100 customers���� times 250 dollars a month you're doing�� about 25 000 a month in revenue yes exactly���� i see okay and how are you getting�� customers where are you signing them up from���� uh most of them come from google ads how�� am i looking last month on google ads uh���� one hundred dollars just oh okay so not a ton�� yes yes 100 100 or 1 000 no 100 just okay how���� many customers did you get from a hundred�� dollars of paid ads um six are age a month���� in average okay well i mean that's a that's a�� good deal if each customer is paying 250 per month���� and it only costs you 10 bucks on paid ads why�� not spend a lot more on paid ads we have a bigger investment out there but there is no change�� because here in brazil we don't have a big���� big market for customer success�� yeah so we are raising it um slowly���� so you you couldn't spend more paid ads even�� if you wanted to because there's not enough���� demand they're not a big enough market�� yes interesting well so are you looking���� to expand your market then or are you just�� going to keep operating the same small market we are getting bigger customers slowly�� but we have a focus on smb because���� uh here in brazil other customer�� success offers is very expensive so it's a blue ocean for us something like�� that how many people are on your team today���� uh 24 people 24 how many engineers nine nine�� okay that's pretty good how many sales reps or no���� uh three sales do they have a quota�� what is cool sorry a sales target���� um yes we are we are trying to double our�� our sales for this year something like that���� so you hope to get to 50 000 in monthly recurring�� revenue by december yes do you think you can do it���� uh i'm not sure but i hope so come on you have to�� be all in yes of course we're gonna do it yes okay���� what about churn are our customers�� sticking or are they leaving���� no they're saying uh we have um an average of�� one person turn a month 1.5 percent okay do you���� have any expansion revenue in other words can you�� take a customer from a year ago and upsell them���� anything extra uh we have uh uh we are working�� now on expansion revenue this month we got���� we got 10 percent of our revenue on expansion and�� we are starting working on this right now we are���� starting separating the software�� in different uh features so we are���� starting to work in more refresh expansion�� very cool and tell me more about the product���� what do you think is next in the world of�� customer support what are you guys building���� we are trying to to help the companies�� to understand their customers this is our���� our biggest target our customers don't know�� anything about their customers you know���� here in brazil it's a really a really big problem���� we we don't have a future of using uh customer�� data platforms we don't use this kind of softwares���� and we are just starting this this this kind of�� platform here and we i believe that we can make a���� huge work here before going for united�� states and looking for another competitor���� so uh we have a a lot of work to do here�� yeah you're building an interesting company���� the question is will you be able to get scale�� without raising a bunch of extra capital when you���� raise the extra 400 000 or 1.5 million reals this�� year how much of the company do you have to sell���� uh 15 percent five zero or one five sorry five�� zero percent one one five one five fifteen percent���� okay got it so you value the company at about�� three million dollars something like that yes���� without a fair valuation or do you think it should�� be more or less um 10 million plus money valuation���� brazilian has like two two million dollars money�� but what i'm asking is do you think that was fair���� is that the right valuation ah i think so�� i think it was a good deal we we made a 40���� 14 000 arr multiple a 14x multiple yep and if you�� were doing if you're doing 25 000 a month today���� do you remember what you�� were doing exactly a year ago���� uh exactly one year um less than 10 okay more�� than 100 year over year growth yes well hey���� this is a great story we're rooting for you�� leonardo let's wrap up here with the famous five���� number one what's your favorite book�� um delivery happiness when you see it���� number two is there a ceo you're following�� or studying yes i i really like geoff gomez yeah number three what's your favorite�� online tool for building your company um yes number four how many hours�� of sleep do you get every night���� seven dollars and what's your�� situation married single kids���� married one one little girl age of�� six oh wow how old are you um 33���� 33 last question what's something�� you wish you knew when you were 20 well uh i don't have a lot of uh problem on�� my my journey so my my my advice would be work on this this way it's good we'll be fine�� guys they're in brazil building a customer success���� staff school they're going 100 year-over-year�� just raised at a 3 million valuation there is���� about 400 000 so it's about 15 of the business�� they just broke a 25 000 a month to run rate���� or about 300 000 a year in terms of total run�� rate they're serving over 100 customers again���� for their customer success tool base down there in�� brazil all right leonardo thanks for taking us to���� the top thank you later 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 2pm�� central to 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