Founder Interview
How EDGENeural AI Was Building an Edge AI Development Platform with a $600 Per Seat Pricing Model (Interview with Co-Founder and CTO Sarvesh Devi)
- Interview Date
- November 10, 2021
- Interviewee
- Sarvesh DeviCo-Founder and CTO
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Seed Funding Raised (2021)
Under $1M
Platform License Price (2021)
$600 per seat per month
Per Device Fee (2021)
$10 per device per month
Team Size (2021)
9
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Sarvesh Devi during the interview recorded in November 2021 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See EDGENeural AI Pvt Ltd’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01EDGENeural AI closed its first seed round in June 2021 for under $1M, confirmed as approximately a few hundred thousand dollars
- 02The platform would charge $600 per seat per month for licensing and $10 per device per month for deployed edge hardware
- 03The company was pre-revenue at the time of the interview, with first paid customers expected within 30 days
- 04All 9 team members were engineers, split between technology and business functions
- 05The two co-founders split equity 50/50 at founding
- 06Sarvesh personally invested $30,000 of his own money to bootstrap the MVP
- 07The company was officially formed in late 2019 and began building in early 2020
- 08Paid POCs were structured based on time spent, with none exceeding $10,000
- 09EDGENeural AI planned to raise a next round of $5M to $10M within four to six months of the interview
- 10The company targeted a revenue goal of $50,000 in the near term before raising the next round
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Seed Funding Raised | Under $1M | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Platform License Price (2021) | $600 per seat per month | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Per Device Deployment Fee (2021) | $10 per device per month | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Team Size (2021) | 9 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Number of Engineers (2021) | 9 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Number of Founders | 2 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Founder Personal Bootstrap Investment | $30,000 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| MVP Build Cost (2021) | Between $10,000 and $100,000 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
| Year Founded | 2019 | Founder interview, Nov 2021 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
EDGENeural AI was pre-revenue at the time of the interview. The company had run paid and partially paid POCs, none exceeding $10,000, and expected to convert its first paying customers within 30 days of the recording.
Customers
All customers at the time were reference-based, coming through previous connections or referrals. Several prospects had reviewed the $600 per seat pricing and indicated willingness to pay, but had not yet been charged.
Team
The company had a 9-person team, all engineers, split between technology and business functions. The two co-founders held a 50/50 equity split, with Sarvesh leading technology and his co-founder leading business development.
Funding
EDGENeural AI bootstrapped for its first year, with Sarvesh personally contributing $30,000. The company closed a seed round in June 2021 for under $1M and was planning a follow-on raise of $5M to $10M within four to six months of the interview.
Growth Strategy
Reference-Based Customer Acquisition
All early customers came through personal and professional referrals. Sarvesh described the company as entirely reference-driven, relying on existing connections to introduce the platform to new prospects.
Paid and Partial POCs to Prove Value
The team used proof-of-concept engagements to demonstrate that their platform could improve AI model performance on edge hardware. Earlier POCs were free to establish credibility, with later ones structured around time spent to begin generating revenue.
Developer Ecosystem Focus
EDGENeural AI positioned itself as a developer-centric platform, building tools and utilities for engineers working on edge AI. Sarvesh noted that selling to developers requires a different approach than traditional enterprise sales, prioritizing product quality and ecosystem fit over hard selling.
Dual Pricing Model for Recurring Revenue
The company designed a two-part pricing structure: a $600 per seat per month platform license and a $10 per device per month deployment fee. The per-device recurring fee was intended to scale revenue as customers deployed more edge hardware.
Partnership Strategy Alongside Product Development
In addition to building the platform, EDGENeural AI was actively partnering with other companies in the edge AI ecosystem. These partnerships were cited as a key reason for the planned $5M to $10M raise, alongside growing the sales team and expanding from India to the US.
Best Quotes
“We are building a platform, software defined platform, which basically works for facilitating development on AI models on edge. And our customers are more or less developers and enterprise customers or users who are going to use this platform to build AI models for edge devices.”
“So typically for licensing, they they would pay around $600 a month. Okay. For to use this platform per user and to deploy the models on actual hardware. It's a $10 per month per device.”
“I mean, right now the amount we have kept it undisclosed.”
“Yes. Under 1,000,000.”
“We are not at all nervous. And I would think that the, as I said, right, this is a developer ecosystem. If you're trying to sell something on to developers, it's very hard to hard sell, I would say. So that is why having no, no revenue is, is not a nervous moment for us. It's a kind of challenging moment for us so that we are making this product a healthy product for developers and edge ecosystem to come.”
“I would say of not 100 grands, but between 10 grands to 100 grands.”
“me, myself started coding from day one. So that is how I kind of, we kept the cost low, bootstrapped ourselves. So we, we had our own $30,000, $40,000 of bootstrapped on our own.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured EDGENeural AI at a very early stage in November 2021, when the company was pre-revenue and preparing to onboard its first paying customers. Sarvesh Devi described plans to raise a follow-on round of $5M to $10M and expand the team into the US market. Visit the EDGENeural AI company profile on GetLatka for the latest recorded metrics.
View EDGENeural AI Pvt Ltd’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Company Overview
- 0:28What EDGENeural AI Builds and Who Buys It
- 0:58Enterprise Customer Examples
- 1:25Pricing Model: Per Seat and Per Device
- 3:01Company Founding and Early History
- 3:35Co-Founders and Equity Split
- 4:04How the First Customers Were Acquired
- 4:29Seed Round and Funding Disclosure
- 5:18Plans for Next Fundraise
- 7:57Pre-Revenue Status and POC Strategy
- 9:25Team Size and Engineering Focus
- 10:26MVP Build Cost and Bootstrapping
- 11:34Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
- 12:35Closing Thoughts and Wrap-Up
Introduction and Company Overview
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Sarvesh Devi. He's the co founder and CTO of edgeneural dot ai, a software engineer, designer, and architect. He obtained a master's degree in computer engineering from Syracuse University in New York. He has experience spanning over twelve years in designing complex products and developed more than 100 edge AI models in technological areas like driverless cars, robots, and filed six plus patents in the field of autonomous vehicles. Sarvesh, are you ready to
00:24take us to the top?
Sarvesh Devi
00:26>> Sure. Yeah, I'm up for it.
What EDGENeural AI Builds and Who Buys It
Nathan Latka
00:28All right. So the URL of the website, if you want to follow along is edgeneural.ai. What are you building and who's buying it? Who are you selling to?
Sarvesh Devi
00:35>> We are building a platform, software defined platform, which basically works for facilitating development on AI models on edge. And our customers are more or less developers and enterprise customers or users who are going to use this platform to build AI models for edge devices.
Enterprise Customer Examples
Nathan Latka
00:58Can you give us an example? Can you name any of your maybe enterprise customers who are paying you today?
Sarvesh Devi
01:03>> I mean, we have many of them. I wouldn't name them, but basically they are some of the customers which are AI companies who are building models for cloud cloud these days or cloud solutions these days. And they would want to deploy or put their models, AI models on edge. And they are these are our customers. They will be using our platform to hold those models.
Pricing Model: Per Seat and Per Device
Nathan Latka
01:25Got it. And what are customers paying you on average to use this technology?
Sarvesh Devi
01:30>> So we have a different way to cost in terms of pricing the customer. We charge a license base to use this platform and we also charge
01:46>> per model per device basis when they've been the model actually gets deployed on the edge hardware.
Nathan Latka
01:54So so the the I understand the model. The question though, I'm trying to understand, are you doing like SMB work, mid market enterprise? What's the average customer paying per month on this per license per model per per device?
Sarvesh Devi
02:04>> So typically for licensing, they they would pay around $600 a month. Okay. For to use this platform per user and to deploy the models on actual hardware. It's a $10 per month per device.
Nathan Latka
02:18Oh, interesting. And can you give my audience a sense of like what that device might be? Can you name some that they might be familiar with?
Sarvesh Devi
02:24>> So the name name could be like as small as Raspberry Pi or Jetson Nano or Jetson Xavier, Intel Movidius, Intel Movidius Sticks, Xilinx devices, Qualcomm devices, and so on. So all Robotics, RB5 platforms.
Nathan Latka
02:43So 600 per seat to just use the technology and then $10 per installed device. Is that $10 per device one time or recurring?
Sarvesh Devi
02:50>> Recurring.
Nathan Latka
02:52Recurring. Okay, interesting. So if someone uses it deploy on a Raspberry Pi and they wanna keep using that Raspberry Pi and the tech that they built with your tool, they'd have to keep paying that every month?
Company Founding and Early History
Sarvesh Devi
03:01>> Correct.
Nathan Latka
03:01Okay. Very cool. Give us more of a background here. When did you launch the business?
Sarvesh Devi
03:06>> EDGENeural is started around like early twenty twenty. We officially formed the company in late twenty nineteen. But we started in 2020 and that's when the COVID hit us. So we started probably like around one and a half year ago. The platform idea that we started developing was kind of got out of our previous experiences so far and it started a year back.
Co-Founders and Equity Split
Nathan Latka
03:35I understand. Okay. And who is we? How many founders?
Sarvesh Devi
03:38>> We are two founders.
Nathan Latka
03:39Two founders. Did you guys just split equity fifty fifty at the start? Yes. You're a nice guy. Yeah.
03:49What is the other who what's your partner do?
Sarvesh Devi
03:52>> So I am a CTO and he's a a business he's looking into the business. So he's a COO or CBO, you could call it as. He he looks after the business part of it, and
How the First Customers Were Acquired
Nathan Latka
04:04I'm looking after the technology piece Do you remember how you guys got your first customer? I guess that was gonna be last year.
Sarvesh Devi
04:12>> Yeah. I mean, I think currently our customers are all reference based. We are either getting it through our previous connections or our reference connections or the connections which we whom we are referring, got referring to. And that's how we are getting our customer.
Seed Round and Funding Disclosure
Nathan Latka
04:29And did you guys boot did you bootstrap the business or have you decided So to raise
Sarvesh Devi
04:33>> we did bootstrap for first year, but this year we closed our first round, first seed round in June 2021. Okay.
Nathan Latka
04:41And how much did you decide to raise?
Sarvesh Devi
04:44>> I mean, right now the amount we have kept it undisclosed.
Nathan Latka
04:48Oh, is this just recent?
Sarvesh Devi
04:50>> Yeah. Just recent.
Nathan Latka
04:51What's the advantage keeping a number like that undisclosed? I mean, don't you want to put out headlines to attract better talent, better customers, etcetera?
Sarvesh Devi
04:59>> I mean, we would want to I mean, we have specifically made it undisclosed. We would want I mean, we have I mean, to be very honest, we we raise a small round just to launch our product. But now
Nathan Latka
05:12Like, like, like, under 1,000,000, Sarvesh?
Sarvesh Devi
05:14>> Yes. Under 1,000,000.
Nathan Latka
05:15I see. Okay. So it's like an angel friends and family round, couple 100,000.
Plans for Next Fundraise
Sarvesh Devi
05:18>> Yeah. Correct. So and then, we are soon going to launch our next round, within next four to six months.
Nathan Latka
05:25Mhmm. And how much do you plan to raise there?
Sarvesh Devi
05:29>> We plan to raise between 5 to $10,000,000.
Nathan Latka
05:31And and why is that the right amount? What will 5 to 10,000,000 help you do?
Sarvesh Devi
05:36>> Basically, would want to what we are trying to build is a is a niche problem and complex AI problem. So we would want to have our product mature. We are not just building a product, but we are also partnering with various companies. So we would want to have our sales team grow. We are also trying to switch our India office to US. So that is where we that's that's the step that we are taking in. So
06:02>> that is why we would want to raise our next round, like a big amount than than what we had previously.
Nathan Latka
06:09And and how much revenue do you think you have to do to be able to go raise five to ten million bucks?
Sarvesh Devi
06:14>> See, currently we have pre revenue. We would expect to go some revenue this year again, like just with the beta customers and not with like just a referential customers, I would say. But in men, two to three years down the line, would see a revenue of around $5,000,000
Nathan Latka
06:33Well, yeah, but what do you want to go raise 5 to 10,000,000 like fairly soon? What do you think you have to get revenue to before you go raise that round?
Sarvesh Devi
06:42>> I mean, that revenue is going to be very small. Would expect for a year or so will be like a very small revenue of $50,000
Nathan Latka
06:51So what story are you going to tell in that seed deck to go raise 5 to 10,000,000 basically with no revenue?
Sarvesh Devi
06:59>> See, as I said, right, we are a developer ecosystem or eco centric company. We build utilities or tools for developers to utilize. So it's a highly deep tech product. The ecosystem that we are in is also niche. It's not mature. So right now, even today, now, we have to much like make sure our customers learn why the product is needed. So we have to kind of How do
Nathan Latka
07:29you measure that, though? I mean, the ultimate measuring stick of that is do they pay for it? Is it so viable? They're willing to pay for it. No one's paying for it yet. So how do guys have confidence you're building the right thing? What metric are you tracking to build that confidence?
Sarvesh Devi
07:38>> We are working with a bunch of customers with a POC. So for few of the customers that we had to run the POCs, we had to improve their performance in terms of model and efficiency. And we had to prove that their model could perform better if we if
07:55>> they use edge AI app studio platform.
Pre-Revenue Status and POC Strategy
Nathan Latka
07:57Are those paid POCs?
Sarvesh Devi
07:59>> Some of
08:00>> them are partial paid POCs.
Nathan Latka
08:02I see. How did you structure? I mean, obviously every Founder like, you know, starts with POCs. How did you structure the contract value on those POCs?
Sarvesh Devi
08:12>> Based upon how much time we are going to spend on that. That's the only value that we added. Earlier, the POCs were were free. I mean, we were we wanted to prove the value of platform and that's where we kind of made the POC, understood the timelines that we we would spend to make this POC happen. And after that, once that is done, we would basically use that time and to charge our next customers for POC.
Nathan Latka
08:40Are any of the paid POC's paying you more than $10,000 to prove out the concept?
Sarvesh Devi
08:44>> No.
Nathan Latka
08:45Okay. Interesting. So how do you you said earlier that you're going to charge $600 per seat and then $10 per device. How do you know that pricing is going to work if no one's paying it yet?
Sarvesh Devi
08:56>> So we are currently in talks with few of the customers. They are not paying customers, but they are going to soon going to be converted to a paid customers. And that is a plan that we have kind of put in front of them. And that is how we are evolving in terms of our business plan and how, what price structure is good to number at.
Nathan Latka
09:16So you showed this to them and they said, yes, I'm willing to pay. You just haven't captured their credit card yet and actually moved them to paid. I see. Okay. What's the team like today? How many people?
Team Size and Engineering Focus
Sarvesh Devi
09:25>> So we are nine member team and split between technology and business team.
Nathan Latka
09:31How many engineers? Sorry? How many engineers?
Sarvesh Devi
09:36>> All of them are engineers.
Nathan Latka
09:38Yeah. All nine engineers. Very cool. And when are you officially turning on the paywall? Mean, you know when you think you'll have your first paid customer?
Sarvesh Devi
09:47>> Soon, in a month or so.
Nathan Latka
09:49In a month. Okay. So before the end of the year? Yes. Okay. Does it make you nervous that you don't have any paying yet or are you guys are on track? You're on plan.
Sarvesh Devi
09:57>> We are not at all nervous. And I would think that the, as I said, right, this is a developer ecosystem. If you're trying to sell something on to developers, it's very hard to hard sell, I would say. So that is why having no, no revenue is, is not a nervous moment for us. It's a kind of challenging moment for us so that we are making this product a healthy product for developers and edge ecosystem to come.
MVP Build Cost and Bootstrapping
Nathan Latka
10:26And Sarvesh, how much have you guys spent so far to build the MVP to where it is today? Are we talking like $10 or a $100 or more?
Sarvesh Devi
10:32>> I would say of not 100 grands, but between 10 grands to 100 grands.
Nathan Latka
10:39Okay. And so how have you kept costs low? I mean, nine engineers for thirteen or fourteen months of work has got to be more than a $100 to build the MVP, right?
Sarvesh Devi
10:50>> Not, not that much. I mean, we kind of, we started, I mean, me, myself started coding from day one. So that is how I kind of, we kept the cost low, bootstrapped ourselves. So we, we had our own $30,000, $40,000 of bootstrapped on our own.
Nathan Latka
11:07Oh, so you put in 30,000 of your own money? Yes. Oh, I see. Does that make you nervous or that excite you?
Sarvesh Devi
11:14>> That does excite me. I mean, because
11:18>> having our own money and putting that and then building something out of my own pocket, it does sound challenging and exciting.
Nathan Latka
11:26Sarvesh, I don't know. Is that meaningful for you? Is that like all of your savings? You have to make this work? You're all in?
Sarvesh Devi
11:33>> Yes, all in.
Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
Nathan Latka
11:34He's all in guys. You heard it here first. Good stuff, Sarvesh. Listen, we're rooting for you. In the meantime, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?
Sarvesh Devi
11:48>> Don't remember on top of my mind, seven habits of highly effective people.
Nathan Latka
11:52Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Sarvesh Devi
11:57>> Elon Musk.
Nathan Latka
11:58Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building EDGENeural?
Sarvesh Devi
12:04>> VS Code.
Nathan Latka
12:06VS Code?
Sarvesh Devi
12:07>> Yes.
Nathan Latka
12:08Number how many or four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Sarvesh Devi
12:12>> Sorry?
Nathan Latka
12:13How many hours of sleep do you get?
Sarvesh Devi
12:16>> Six hours.
Nathan Latka
12:17Okay. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
Sarvesh Devi
12:20>> Married.
Nathan Latka
12:21How many kids?
Sarvesh Devi
12:22>> Two. Two.
Nathan Latka
12:23Okay. And how old are you?
Sarvesh Devi
12:25>> I'm 38.
12:26>> 38.
Nathan Latka
12:27Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?
Sarvesh Devi
12:31>> Would have started a startup when I was 20.
Closing Thoughts and Wrap-Up
Nathan Latka
12:35Guys, he's all in. Wrote the first line of code in 2019 for EDGENeural. Got going in 2020 with a bunch of paid POCs. No paid customers yet, but they are on their way there. They're gonna charge $600 per seat and then $10 per installed device. They've raised a couple $100,000 in a pre seed round. He's put in $30 of his own money. So he's all in. Team of nine, hoping to go raise a seed round of
12:545 to 10,000,000 here in the next couple months. We'll see what happens. Their first paid customer should be on board here in the next thirty five days as well. Sarvesh, we're rooting for you. Thanks for taking us to the top.
Sarvesh Devi
13:04>> Thank you. Thank you, Nathan.
Nathan Latka
13:07One 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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