How DeckRobot Raised $2.5M and Targets 15x Growth Helping Enterprises Create Slide Decks Faster (Interview with Tony Urban)

Introduction and What DeckRobot Does

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Tony Urban. He's running a company called DeckRobot, which makes slide decks with one click. He's an ex McKinsey folk who turned into a serial entrepreneur. Tony, you ready to

Tony Urban

00:11>> take us to the top? Sure thing.

Slide Decks Produced on the Platform

Nathan Latka

00:13Alright. Slide decks are obviously a hot space. Everyone's pitching. Everyone wants capital. How many decks did you produce in the past twelve months, you say?

Tony Urban

00:21>> Myself, I probably produced like 20.

Nathan Latka

00:24No. I mean, all your users using your technology.

Tony Urban

00:26>> Oh, all users, like, thousands and thousands.

Nathan Latka

00:28Thousands. Thousands. Don't even know.

Tony Urban

00:30>> Yeah. It's, like, many thousands.

Nathan Latka

00:32Many thousands. Well, let's have look....

Tony Urban

00:33>> Like, one user producing 7,000 slides a month.

Nathan Latka

00:37Wow. And is that... Who are these power users? Are they are they agencies typically?

Tony Urban

00:42>> So they are internal agents. It's like designers working for big professional services firms like Big four, Big Street. Yep. So they're just slide machines.

Customer Count and Growth Inside Accounts

Nathan Latka

00:51Now when you... They're slide machines. That's what you were at McKinsey. Right? So you jumped into this in in 2017. You came on back in 2019 and talked about your growth. You passed, I think, about 10 customers at that point. How many customers are you serving now today?

Tony Urban

01:05>> Yeah. So right now it's more, but not that more, it's less than 20. Secret is easy, which is growing inside system accounts. So we don't really start with like small pilots and then small scale projects, and it just gets more and more. So our largest customers having like 200,000, 250,000 PowerPoint users. So we might have ended up having five customers, so will be more than enough to become Unicorn.

Nathan Latka

01:30So you have between sort of ten and twenty total customers right now.

Tony Urban

01:34>> Yeah. Yeah.

Pricing Structure and Customer ROI

Nathan Latka

01:35Help help me understand a little bit around what they pay per month on average.

Tony Urban

01:40>> That's really different. That's why we don't publish our pricing on the website. I would only say that it's like more than 10 times they pay for Microsoft Office itself, and the reason is very simple, the productivity gain is such that they have at least 200% ROI, but it really differs. You know, an auditor would spend different time in PowerPoint and the designer than a real estate agent or metals factory producer.

Nathan Latka

02:10Yep. Let me ask you a question a bit differently. Don't name the customer, but the customer that pays you the most per month, what do they pay per month?

Tony Urban

02:18>> Yeah. So they pay $1.97.

Nathan Latka

02:20A $197,000 per month?

Tony Urban

02:23>> No. No. No. $1.97 per user per month.

Nathan Latka

02:26Okay. Got it. And how many users how many users do they have?

Tony Urban

02:29>> For the largest one?

Nathan Latka

02:30For your largest customer. Yeah.

Tony Urban

02:32>> Yeah. It will be another one if you take the largest steps of revenue overall. But the biggest accounts we're right now having 15,000 employees, but they have different price tag.

Nathan Latka

02:42Got it. What I'm trying to get to is just the the Yeah. What... What's the one company you work with that pays you the most, and what do they pay you all in? Like if

Tony Urban

02:48>> you try if you if you try to set the largest contract we have, I wouldn't disclose it.

Nathan Latka

02:52Tony, I'm not asking for you to name the largest customer. I'm trying to ask you how large your swap is between your lowest priced customers and your most... And the ones paying you the most. I'm just asking you all in the customer that pays you the most.

Contract Tiers: Smallest, Average, and Largest

Tony Urban

03:05>> Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So we have three tiers of customers. The smallest contracts are anywhere from 100 k to 300 k. The average is 300 to 700 k, and the biggest are the multimillion engagements.

Nathan Latka

03:17So Okay. Got it. It's so

03:19If someone so someone listening right now, might go, wait a second. Somebody's making slide decks and paying Tony 300 or $700,000 per year to make slide decks. I don't understand. Help them understand.

Tony Urban

03:30>> Yeah. That's very easy. So if you count the amount of time you spend on PowerPoint and multiply by your salary only, you'll already be surprised. So most of our customers are making slides like two hours a day, five hours a day, earning $100,000, $115,000 per year after fancy MBAs. And that does not include the office cost, etcetera. And this is just the one small reason of having DeckRobot. Actually, the bigger reason is to win the proposals.

04:01>> They have a bigger win rate, win your business, and that's where a lot of decks are used. And one more reason, large corporations want their documents to be on brand, to be consistent, and that's what we do.

Fundraising History and Why They Raised

Nathan Latka

04:14And, Tony, last time you came on, you said you'd raised about $200,000. Have you stayed bootstrapped since then, or did you raise more capital?

Tony Urban

04:21>> No. Raised a bit more, so we announced overall 2,500,000.

Nathan Latka

04:26Okay. So you raised another 2,300,000?

Tony Urban

04:29>> Since then, yeah. Looks like

Nathan Latka

04:30Why did you why did you need to raise more capital?

Tony Urban

04:33>> Well,

04:34>> I asked myself the same question every time we raised two or three minutes. So quick answer, enterprise sales cycle is quite long, so we can afford growing sustainably at a slow pace based on the cash we have from the business, but that's going to be slow. So if you look at our competitors like think-cell, it took them ten years, more than ten years to be substantial in this size.

05:00>> Venture capital is basically a short living drug, which gets you high in terms of your growth. So it just helps you to have more people everywhere, in the product development, in the sales, so that's why we decided to do this. So last time, yeah. Go ahead.

Nathan Latka

05:15The team... So you raised additional capital. I think you did a... What was it? A $700,000 convertible note 2018 and then a $1,500,000 priced seed round in 2020. Right?

Tony Urban

05:25>> Yep.

Team Size, Seniority Upgrade, and Engineers

Nathan Latka

05:26And and walk me through the team today. Last time you came on, you said about 20 people. How many folks today?

Tony Urban

05:31>> Pretty much the same.

Nathan Latka

05:32Okay.

Tony Urban

05:33>> But

Nathan Latka

05:33But right down here.

Tony Urban

05:34>> But there is... Yeah. Right now, there is 18. But what we do, we consistently improve the creative of our employees. So whether we fire those who do not perform as we want, or we just grow existing employees. So from the time we spoke with you last, I think we have five with us, and they've really progressed nice. So if you look at our team two years ago, it was much more junior, lot of support roles. Right

06:05>> now, all the support is outsourced, and the folks in the team are very senior. So that's how we want to stay we want to stay small in terms of headcount.

Nathan Latka

06:15I I understand. How many of the 20 are engineers?

Tony Urban

06:19>> So right now, are half.

Nathan Latka

06:22So 10 of them are engineers.

Tony Urban

06:24>> Yeah. But I think I think that that that

Nathan Latka

06:27>> do a quota?

Tony Urban

06:28They Say again?

Sales Team Structure and Quota-Carrying Hunters

Nathan Latka

06:29>> The other 10, are they sales reps? And if so, how many carry a quota?

Tony Urban

06:34>> Sales, sales plus operations. So you have also talents, you have ops, you have finance, so

Nathan Latka

06:42Yeah. So, Tony, the question was, of the ones that are in sales, how many of them are carrying a quota?

Tony Urban

06:47>> Three. Okay. Got but but we have... Just to be honest, we have a split of sales process. So we have presale, which has no quotas. We have post sale, which also has no quotas, because unlike other startups, we try to have this one man show where one salesperson is covering everything from the lead generation to account success. We decided early on to split it. It makes no sense.

Nathan Latka

07:12So if there's no quota pre sale, there's no quota post sale, who's carrying a quota?

Tony Urban

07:15>> Yeah. Only hunters. Those three people who are hunters, they have quotas.

Nathan Latka

07:20They have a closed meeting deals fee booked?

Tony Urban

07:23>> No. For the hunters, the cash quota. The sales quota. Yeah. Of course.

Nathan Latka

07:29And what is that what is that annual cash quota? Is it, like, a million bucks? Something like that?

Tony Urban

07:33>> A bit over that.

Nathan Latka

07:35Okay. And if they hit their quota, can they make about one fifth of the quota target? So call, like, $200,000 ish, something like that?

Tony Urban

07:42>> Yeah. So, basically, it's a percentage. So they bonus prorate on what they exceed for the quarter. We have quite generous bonus structure because we want to grow.

Nathan Latka

07:55Yeah. No. That's obviously important scaling those sales teams. So so where have you used the additional capital you raised if your team size is still basically the same as it was two years ago?

Tony Urban

08:04>> Yeah, so first of all, it is not the same as it was a year ago when the COVID hit. When COVID started, we downsized the team and left only the more senior folks. Then we basically replaced junior folks by senior folks when we raised capital. So in terms of headcount, we try to stay pretty much the same. In terms of the team costs, it actually changed a lot, and that's how we want to do it. So

08:29>> we want to have a small team. Like our biggest competitor making hundreds of millions of revenue, they have like 50 folks in the whole team, including secretaries, so that's pretty much the target stake. And they understand that a senior machine learning engineer can make the same as 10 junior folks.

Revenue Growth Target of 15x in 2021

Nathan Latka

08:49Yep. And and what is your goal what is your goal for this year? What revenue run rate do you think you can pass this year?

Tony Urban

08:56>> That we do not disclose, but the growth rate we plan is over 15 x. So we have to grow

Nathan Latka

09:03What do mean by that?

Tony Urban

09:05>> I mean, on every dollar we made January this year, we'll try to have $15 by December, so growing one five, 15 times.

Nathan Latka

09:16Are you on track to grow? You on track to grow?

Tony Urban

09:19>> So far, so far, but we'll see. The q four is the most important for enterprise sales. So that's basically the crucial quarter when you can say, hey, we made it or we actually. Target.

Revenue Not Disclosed: Why the Contract Math Overstates It

Nathan Latka

09:31Now earlier you said you had between ten and twenty customers and the average ACV is between 300 and $700,000. So we just take a middle $500,000 average ACV times 15 customers, that would be at about a 7,500,000 run rate today. Is that accurate?

Tony Urban

09:49>> No, I said that correct because you did not encounter the fact that some of the customers already made the first initial stages when they have the pilot, then they have a small contract, which is 100 ks to 300 ks, and then scaled up. So different customers have different life cycle. So if you do the math, you did the way you will overestimate the revenue here, but as I mentioned before, we do not disclose financial results, so

10:15>> we'll give you the exact number. I'm sorry.

Nathan Latka

10:17So if you're not if you're not at $7,500,000 run rate today, is that something you can break this year, or do you need to wait another year to do that?

Tony Urban

10:24>> I think most likely it's gonna happen next year.

Nathan Latka

10:27Next year. Okay. Yeah. Interesting, and what's next? I mean, many people argue a slide making tool is sort of a product, not a business. How do you make this a business? What other product things are you thinking about?

Competitive Landscape: think-cell, Templafy, and Others

Tony Urban

10:38>> Yeah, well, if you look at our competitors,

10:41>> some of them are making like hundreds of millions in ARR. So it's quite a business. If you talk about SaaS with the margin rate.

Nathan Latka

10:49Name your competitor with hundreds of millions in revenue.

Tony Urban

10:51>> think-cell.

Nathan Latka

10:53think-cell?

Tony Urban

10:54>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:55Okay. You can check it. And they and they only do slide decks?

Tony Urban

10:59>> Oh, they do much better than DeckRobot. They do a plugin for PowerPoint, which helps you making data charts faster. It's a very

Nathan Latka

11:10They niche do a ton of stuff, data automation process flow, Gantt charts, waterfall charts, the human does a slide Yeah.

Tony Urban

11:17>> It's basically charts. It's just charts and slides. So it's a small thing, but they already generate them a ton of income, and they're not, like, proactively

11:28>> looking for new customers. They don't have, like, large sales force. They don't have a fancy marketing budget. So it gives you the order of magnitude how can a weather like us or them Mhmm. Perform in this market. So the market is like $100,000,000 already, and

Nathan Latka

11:46How do you know how you know they're doing with a 100,000,000 revenue?

Tony Urban

11:49>> Oh, that's very easy. You can check the number of users they have, they publish it. They have over 800,000 users right now, and you can check the pricing. At some point, the pricing was open on the website,

12:01>> so if you multiply one by another, you can reconfirm it with a lot of firms in the market, which know that

Nathan Latka

12:08Because someone says they have 800,000 users, doesn't mean all those users are paying. Actually, they're probably not. They're probably a very small percent.

Tony Urban

12:15>> No. Actually, in that case,

12:18>> they actually shut down the trial, probably they renewed, but they almost don't have trial users. Almost a 100% of the users have to pay.

Nathan Latka

12:26How do you know that the 800,000 number doesn't include a bunch of grandfathered people that are on a free trial?

Tony Urban

12:31>> Sure. Let's say I had some other data points, which we confirmed by initial assumption. So I'm pretty confident that they're making over 100,000,000 a year, actually way over that.

Nathan Latka

12:42What other data points?

Tony Urban

12:44>> Oh, that is close to this matter. You can also check if there is a company called Templafy. They raised a bunch of venture capital.

Nathan Latka

12:55Do you spell it?

Tony Urban

12:56>> Templafy, t as Thomas, e as in equal, like template, and then amplify Got it. F and y at the end. I think the rates are already, like, 60 mil or 50 mil to put that.

Nathan Latka

13:08Yeah. But this is more like a digital asset management play internal for companies to connect other companies Yeah.

Tony Urban

13:13>> They're pretty much the same.

Nathan Latka

13:14Not a slide not a slide deck tool.

Tony Urban

13:17>> They basically change in slide decks and changing logos in your documents. So it's pretty much the same on

Nathan Latka

13:23PandaDoc is sort of another company sort of playing in this space. So, I mean, is this is this sort of where you see DeckRobot going?

Tony Urban

13:31>> It's the same space, so no matter how you position it to investors or someone else, these folks we see on the competitive landscape, these folks we compare to, Templafy, think-cell, UpSlide, but whatever they claim on their websites, whatever they tell the investors, they play in our niche.

13:50There is

13:51>> a lot of other great folks around the block which are not existent in enterprise markets, pitch.com, beautiful.ai. Pitch is not our competitors.

Nathan Latka

14:02Yep. Tony, do you think they can break a million dollar run rate this year?

Tony Urban

14:06>> Say again?

Nathan Latka

14:07Do you think that you guys can break a million dollar run rate this year?

Tony Urban

14:10>> Oh, yeah. Where is it?

Nathan Latka

14:12>> Oh, well, congratulations then.

Tony Urban

14:13So between a million and 7,000,000 in revenue then. Not at 7,000,000, but north of a million.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Personal Life

Nathan Latka

14:18>> Yeah. Alright. Let's wrap up here, Tony, with the famous five.

14:22Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Tony Urban

14:25>> You know, it keeps changing.

14:28>> I wouldn't say that I have one favorite as of now.

14:32I think

14:32>> the latest latest one I read was The Sales Acceleration Formula, which suggested to all sales entrepreneurs. It's really a good one.

Nathan Latka

14:41Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Tony Urban

14:47>> I would say Andre from Miro. I think they became Unicorn last year.

Nathan Latka

14:54>> Yep.

Tony Urban

14:55Number three I heard a

14:56>> lot of great things about them. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

14:57Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building the company?

Tony Urban

15:05>> Also good question.

15:09>> I would say outgrow is pretty good. We have recently discovered them because one of our competitors is using. They help you to structure your outreach and the way you take on the leads, not the customer, but leads. It's pretty important one.

Nathan Latka

15:27Right.

15:28>> Number four, how many hours do get every night?

Tony Urban

15:31>> I try to optimize for eight hours.

Nathan Latka

15:33What does old fashioned?

15:35Kids?

Tony Urban

15:37>> I'm married. I don't have kids.

Nathan Latka

15:39No kids?

Tony Urban

15:39>> Yeah.

15:39>> I don't

15:39have kids.

Nathan Latka

15:41>> We'll see we'll see how how long it will be.

15:44Old are you?

Tony Urban

15:45>> Oh, I'm 30 years old.

Nathan Latka

15:4730 years old. Yeah. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Tony Urban

15:53>> I wish I moved to California earlier.

15:58>> Yes. Especially before the COVID, it was useful to get the right insights from the right people. Right now, it's bit different.

Nathan Latka

16:06Guys, they have a deckrobot.com launch in 2017. They've raised $2,300,000 today to two to twenty ten engineers. They broke at a million dollar run rate, but not at 7,000,000 yet. They're serving 15 enterprise customers that pay between, call it, a $100,000 and $700,000 per year for their deck creation tools. Tony, thanks for taking us to the top.

Tony Urban

16:26>> Thank you, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

16:28One 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

16:52central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at two p. M. Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button, and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition,

17:13a big fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You wanna get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign

17:34up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode. If you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We

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17:59>> See you.