Founder Interview
How CustomerX Grew a Brazilian Customer Success SaaS to Almost 100 Customers Paying About $250 a Month (Interview with Leonardo Superti)
- Interview Date
- June 22, 2021
- Interviewee
- Leonardo SupertiCo-Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Customers (2021)
100
ARPU (2021)
$250 per month
Team Size (2021)
24
Gross Churn (2021)
1 to 1.5% per month
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Leonardo Superti during the interview recorded in June 2021 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See CustomerX’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01CustomerX was founded in 2017 and began selling in 2018
- 02The company had almost 100 customers as of June 2021, paying about $250 a month on average
- 03Gross churn was approximately 1 to 1.5% per month
- 04The team had 24 people, including 9 engineers and 3 sales reps
- 05CustomerX raised a seed round of BRL 1.5 million in 2021, selling 15% of the company
- 06The 2021 seed round implied a post-money valuation of BRL 10 million
- 07New customers from paid ads averaged 6 to 8 per month on a budget of just $100
- 08Expansion revenue was newly introduced and represented 10% of revenue at the time of the interview
- 09Leonardo has four co-founders, three of whom are technical, and equity was split evenly
- 10CustomerX targets the SMB segment in Brazil, where customer success software is largely underserved
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Year Founded | 2017 | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| Customers (2021) | 100 | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| ARPU (2021) | $250 per month | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| Gross Churn (2021) | 1 to 1.5% per month | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| Team Size (2021) | 24 | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| Engineers (2021) | 9 | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| Sales Reps (2021) | 3 | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| Paid Ads Spend (2021) | $100 per month | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| New Customers from Paid Ads (2021) | 6 or 8 per month | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| Expansion Revenue Share (2021) | 10% of revenue | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| Seed Round (2021) | BRL 1.5M | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| Equity Sold in 2021 Round | 15% | Founder interview, June 2021 |
| Post-Money Valuation (BRL) (2021) | BRL 10M | Founder interview, June 2021 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Leonardo priced CustomerX in Brazilian reais and said its almost 100 customers paid about $250 a month on average in dollar terms. The company had just started working on expansion revenue, which made up 10% of revenue in the month of the interview.
Customers
CustomerX had almost 100 customers as of June 2021, and Leonardo said most of them came from Google Ads. The company spent just $100 on Google Ads the month before the interview, and he said paid ads brought in six or eight new customers a month on average. Gross churn was running at approximately 1 to 1.5% per month.
Team
CustomerX had 24 people on the team, including 9 engineers and 3 sales reps. Leonardo said he had four co-founders and that they split equity evenly. Three worked on development, and Marcel moved between roles, from marketing into product.
Funding
CustomerX raised two rounds: the first in 2018 with an accelerator, and a seed round of BRL 1.5 million in 2021, selling 15% of the company. The 2021 round implied a post-money valuation of BRL 10 million. The company raised capital primarily to grow its marketing and sales team.
Growth Strategy
Google Ads as Primary Acquisition Channel
CustomerX acquired most of its customers through Google Ads, generating 6 to 8 new customers per month on a budget of just $100. Leonardo noted that spending more was not effective because the Brazilian market for customer success was still small at the time.
SMB Focus in an Underserved Market
CustomerX deliberately targets small and medium businesses in Brazil, where enterprise customer success tools are expensive and inaccessible. Leonardo described this as a blue ocean opportunity, with little direct competition at the SMB price point.
Expansion Revenue Development
At the time of the interview, CustomerX was actively building out expansion revenue by separating the software into distinct feature tiers. In the month of the interview, expansion revenue already represented 10% of total revenue.
Integration-Led Platform Strategy
Leonardo described CustomerX as a platform that helps companies understand their customers, built on a lot of integrations with CRMs, support software and ERPs.
Brazil-First Before International Expansion
Leonardo said he believed CustomerX could do a huge amount of work in Brazil before going to the United States: the company still had a lot of work to do at home.
Best Quotes
“Yes. It's a SaaS our our software is a platform that helps companies to understand their customers. So we have a lot of integrations with CRMs, with support of this softwares and ERPs and stuff.”
“We we got two rounds. The first one was in 2018 with an accelerator. And this year, we just raised another seed round.”
“One hundred. 100 customers.”
“Most of them come from Google Ads.”
“Six or eight a month in average.”
“We have a 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 yet. So we are raising it slowly.”
“No. They're staying. We have an average of 1% churn a month, 1.5%.”
“we are working now on expansion revenue. This month, we got we got 10% of our revenue on expansion, and we are starting working on this right now.”
“10,000,000 post money valuation Brazilian reais.”
What Happened Next
This interview captures CustomerX at a specific moment in June 2021, when the company had just closed a BRL 1.5 million seed round and had almost 100 customers, with a focus on small and medium businesses in Brazil. The figures here reflect what Leonardo Superti reported during the conversation and should be treated as a historical snapshot. For current revenue, customer count, team size, and other metrics, visit the CustomerX company profile on GetLatka.
View CustomerX’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Company Overview
- 0:20What CustomerX Sells
- 1:39Backstory and Co-Founders
- 2:25Fundraising History
- 4:30Customer Count
- 4:55Customer Acquisition via Google Ads
- 6:41Team Size and Structure
- 7:26Churn and Retention
- 7:40Expansion Revenue
- 8:20Product Vision and Market Opportunity
- 9:23Valuation and Round Details
- 10:32Year-Over-Year Growth
- 10:53Famous Five
Introduction and Company Overview
Nathan Latka
00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Leonardo Superti. He's an expert in customer relationship management who worked in small and large companies through his career. In 2017, he decided to change the side and invite some friends to build CustomerX, an SMB Brazilian customer success management platform. Leonardo, are you ready to take us to the top?
Leonardo Superti
00:19>> Yes. Let's go.
What CustomerX Sells
Nathan Latka
00:20Alright. So you're based in Brazil. You're building a customer success tool. Help me understand. What are you selling? Is it pure SaaS?
Leonardo Superti
00:27>> Yes. It's a SaaS our our software is a platform that helps companies to understand their customers. So we have a lot of integrations with CRMs, with support of this softwares and ERPs and stuff. And then When did you company? We begin the project in 2017 and start selling in 2018.
Nathan Latka
00:592018. 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?
Leonardo Superti
01:09>> $1.2100 reais Brazilian reais. You can just imagine, like, dollar because we have a different coin, but
01:24>> now the dollar worth 5 times more than a Brazilian real.
Nathan Latka
01:31So how many dollars are people paying you per month about?
Leonardo Superti
01:36>> $250. 250.
Backstory and Co-Founders
Nathan Latka
01:39Okay. And tell me more about the backstory. So you launched in 2017. Do you have cofounders?
Leonardo Superti
01:46>> Yes. I have four cofounders.
Nathan Latka
01:50Four cofounders. Did you split equity evenly?
Leonardo Superti
01:53>> Yes.
01:54>> Twenty five twenty five twenty five.
Nathan Latka
01:56Yes. Are all the cofounders still active?
Leonardo Superti
02:00>> Yes. Exactly. Three on development, three are very technical, and another one switching in a lot of positions. He already took marketing now in product, so Marcel is a
Nathan Latka
02:21joker. He does everything.
Leonardo Superti
02:24>> Yes.
Fundraising History
Nathan Latka
02:25And did you guys bootstrap, or have you raised capital?
Leonardo Superti
02:28>> We already raised capital.
Nathan Latka
02:30How much did you raise and when?
Leonardo Superti
02:34>> We we got two rounds. The first one was in 2018 with an accelerator. And this year, we just raised another seed round.
Nathan Latka
02:51How much did you raise in 2018?
Leonardo Superti
02:56>> 2,000 reais, something like
03:02>> $4,400.
03:05>> 400,000.
Nathan Latka
03:06Yes. $400,000.
Leonardo Superti
03:08>> That's yep.
Nathan Latka
03:10And then the raise that you did this year, how much did you decide to raise?
Leonardo Superti
03:15>> We raised 1,500,000 reais,
03:21>> $404,100,000 dollars. $400.
Nathan Latka
03:264,500,000. Right?
Leonardo Superti
03:28>> Yes. No. Sorry. I hate the numbers in English. This time, we raised
03:40>> let me read. I wrote 1,500,000 less than $400,000.
Nathan Latka
03:47Yes. Well, I I think it's $4,500,000, not not 400,000.
Leonardo Superti
03:53>> Yes. Yes.
Nathan Latka
03:55It's you're it's in the it's the Brazilian real. Correct?
Leonardo Superti
03:59>> Yes. Mhmm.
Nathan Latka
04:00Okay. No. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. So it's 400,000 you raised this year, and you raised 40,000, and you raised 40,000.
Leonardo Superti
04:07>> I see. Exactly. Exactly.
Nathan Latka
04:09Why did you need to raise capital to do this? Why couldn't you bootstrap?
Leonardo Superti
04:13>> Yeah. Because we need to to raise our our team, basically. We need more activity in marketing and sales, and the money we got from customers is not sufficient for that.
Customer Count
Nathan Latka
04:30How many customers do you have today?
Leonardo Superti
04:33>> Now we have almost 100 one thousand one hundred one hundred customers.
Nathan Latka
04:41One one thousand one hundred or one hundred?
Leonardo Superti
04:44>> One hundred. 100 customers.
04:46>> 100 customers.
Nathan Latka
04:47Okay. Yeah. And can I take 100 customers times $250 a month? You're doing about $25,000
Leonardo Superti
04:54>> a month in revenue?
Customer Acquisition via Google Ads
Nathan Latka
04:55Yeah. Exactly. I see. Okay. And how are you getting customers? Where are you signing them up from?
Leonardo Superti
05:02>> Most of them come from Google Ads.
Nathan Latka
05:05How much did you
05:07spend last month on Google Ads?
Leonardo Superti
05:13>> $100, just.
Nathan Latka
05:15Oh, okay. So not a ton.
Leonardo Superti
05:17>> Yes. Yes.
Nathan Latka
05:18100 dollars or 1,000?
Leonardo Superti
05:21>> No. 100.
Nathan Latka
05:22Just. Okay. How many customers did you get from a $100 of paid ads?
Leonardo Superti
05:30>> Six or eight a month in average.
Nathan Latka
05:33Okay. Well, that I mean, that's a that's a good deal. If each customer is paying $250 per month, and it only cost you $10 on paid ads Yes. Why not spend a lot more on paid ads?
Leonardo Superti
05:46>> We have a a bigger
05:51>> investment out there, but there is no change because here in Brazil, we don't have a big, big market for customer success yet. So we are raising it slowly.
Nathan Latka
06:04So you couldn't spend more. We are couldn't spend more on paid ads even if you wanted to because there's not enough demand. There's not a big enough market.
Leonardo Superti
06:11>> Yes.
Nathan Latka
06:12Interesting. Well, so are you looking to expand your market then, or are you just gonna keep operating in the same small market?
Leonardo Superti
06:20>> We are getting bigger customers slowly, but we have a focus on SMB because here in Brazil, other customer success offers is very expensive. Mhmm. So it's a blue ocean for us, something like that.
Team Size and Structure
Nathan Latka
06:41How many people are on your team today?
Leonardo Superti
06:44>> 24 people.
Nathan Latka
06:4524. How many engineers?
Leonardo Superti
06:47>> Nine. Nine.
Nathan Latka
06:48Okay. That's pretty good. How any sales reps or no?
Leonardo Superti
06:53>> Three sales.
Nathan Latka
06:55Do they have a quota?
Leonardo Superti
06:57>> What is quota? Sorry.
Nathan Latka
06:59A a sales target.
Leonardo Superti
07:03>> Yes. We are we are trying to double our our sales for this year, something like that.
Nathan Latka
07:11So you hope to get to 50,000 in monthly recurring revenue by December?
Leonardo Superti
07:16>> Yes.
Nathan Latka
07:17You think you can do it?
Leonardo Superti
07:19>> I'm not sure, but I hope so.
Nathan Latka
07:22Come on. You have to be all in.
Leonardo Superti
07:23>> Yes.
Nathan Latka
07:24Of course, we're gonna do it.
Leonardo Superti
07:25>> It's okay. We were good.
Churn and Retention
Nathan Latka
07:26What about churn?
07:28Are are customers sticking, are they leaving?
Leonardo Superti
07:31>> No. They're staying. We have an average of 1% churn a month, 1.5%.
Expansion Revenue
Nathan Latka
07:40Okay. Do you have any expansion revenue? In other words, can you take a customer from a year ago and upsell them anything extra?
Leonardo Superti
07:49>> We have
07:51>> we are working now on expansion revenue. This month, we got we got 10% of our revenue on expansion, and we are starting working on this right now. We are starting separating the software in different features, so we are starting to working more with expansion.
Product Vision and Market Opportunity
Nathan Latka
08:20Very cool. And tell me more about the product. What do you think is next in the world of customer support? What do you guys build on?
Leonardo Superti
08:30>> We are trying to to help the companies to understand their customers. This is our our biggest target. Our customers don't know
08:43>> anything about their customers. You know? Here in Brazil, it's a a really a really big problem.
08:52>> We we don't have future of using
08:58>> customer data platforms. We don't use this kind of softwares, and we are just starting this this this kind of platform here.
09:10>> And we've I believe that we can make a huge work here before going for United States and looking for another competitor. So we have a a a lot of work to do here.
Valuation and Round Details
Nathan Latka
09:23Yeah. You're building an interesting company. The question is, will
09:29you be able to get scale without raising a bunch of extra capital? When you raise the extra $400,000 or 1,500,000 reals this year,
Leonardo Superti
09:38>> how much of the company did you have to sell?
09:42>> 15%.
Nathan Latka
09:43Five zero or one five?
Leonardo Superti
09:47>> Sorry?
Nathan Latka
09:48Five zero percent? One one one One five. 15%. Okay. Got it. So you valued the company at about $3,000,000, something like that.
Leonardo Superti
09:58>> Yes.
Nathan Latka
09:59I see. Was that a fair valuation, or do you think it should be more or less?
Leonardo Superti
10:05>> 10,000,000 post money valuation Brazilian reais, like, $22,000,000 post money.
Nathan Latka
10:13What what I'm asking is, do you think that that was fair? Is that the right valuation?
Leonardo Superti
10:18>> I think so. I think it was good deal. We we made a 40 14,000 ARR multiple.
10:31>> A four 14 x multiple.
Year-Over-Year Growth
Nathan Latka
10:32Yep. 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?
Leonardo Superti
10:42>> Exactly one year.
10:47>> Less than 10. Okay. Thousand. Less than 10.
Nathan Latka
10:50More than a 100% year over year growth.
Leonardo Superti
10:52>> Yes. Mhmm.
Famous Five
Nathan Latka
10:53Well, 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?
Leonardo Superti
11:03>> Delivering Happiness '26.
Nathan Latka
11:05Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Leonardo Superti
11:09>> Yes. I really like Diego Gomes. Maybe you know him.
Nathan Latka
11:15Number what what company is he with?
Leonardo Superti
11:17>> Rock Content. From Brazil.
11:21>> Yep.
Nathan Latka
11:22Number three. What's your favorite online tool for building your company?
Leonardo Superti
11:28>> Trello.
Nathan Latka
11:30Say it again?
Leonardo Superti
11:31>> Oh, Trello? Yes.
Nathan Latka
11:32Yep. Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Leonardo Superti
11:36>> Seven hours.
Nathan Latka
11:37And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
Leonardo Superti
11:41>> Married, one one little girl, age of six.
Nathan Latka
11:44Oh, wow. How old are you?
Leonardo Superti
11:47>> I'm 33.
11:49>> 33.
Nathan Latka
11:50Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?
Leonardo Superti
11:54>> Well, I don't have a lot of problem on my my journey. So my my my advice would be
12:09>> work on this this way. It's good. We'll be fine.
Nathan Latka
12:14Guys, they're in Brazil building a customer success SaaS tool. They're growing a 100% year over year. Just raised at a $3,000,000 valuation. They raised about $400,000, so it's about 15% of the business. They just broke a $25,000 a month run rate or about $300,000 a year in terms of total run rate there, serving over 100 customers, again, for their customer success tool based down there in Brazil. Alright. Leonardo, thanks for taking us to the top.
Leonardo Superti
12:38>> Thank you, Nathan.
Nathan Latka
12:41One 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, 1PM
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