How Enquire AI Reached $1M to $2M in 2021 Revenue With 80 Institutional Clients and 40,000 Experts (Interview with CEO Cenk Sidar)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Cenk Sidar. He began his professional career fourteen years ago. Today, he's the co founder and CEO of enquire, formerly Global Wonks. Enquire provides the world's leading enterprises with an AI powered platform to leverage global subject matter expertise in real time. Follow along at enquire dot ai. Cenk, you ready to take us to the top?

Cenk Sidar

00:18>> Thank thank you. Thanks for having me.

Nathan Latka

00:20Who's so who's paying for this?

Cenk Sidar

00:22>> So basically, our clients are mostly Fortune 100 companies and also some investment groups, private equities, hedge funds that require on the ground insights for pre deal due diligence or any insights requiring research. We basically work with mostly the head of portfolio managers and also head of research for different organizations, and they engage our platform when they need outside expertise and insights.

Nathan Latka

00:57What does that mean? So I mean, people know traditional firms like GLG, right? Where you can say, I need to know more about the waste management space, and GLG will go find the top experts in waste management and connect you on a phone call with them. Are you effectively doing that but using code?

How the Expert Network Platform Works

Cenk Sidar

01:11>> So, yeah, we automate most of the process, but also the way we deliver insights is very different than other traditional expert networks. Basically, we have about 40,000 experts, and every single expert is searchable and transparent on our website. So basically, when a client signs on our platform, they can search an expertise and they can engage those experts on a real time basis. And we're really focused that much on the expert calls. We provide expert calls, we

01:43>> arrange expert calls for our clients, but our core product is Network Pulse. And Network Pulse is a product that you go to our platform and ask any business policy or security related question, and within minutes, you get real expert insights on the question to your dashboard automatically. So most of the cases, you don't even need to have one hour expensive expert call. You can get the insights you need within minutes to your platform.

Nathan Latka

02:18What incentivizes the experts to respond or request for enquire so quickly? Do you have 40,000 people on your payroll?

Expert Compensation and Gamification

Cenk Sidar

02:25>> No. Basically, we have a gamification for expert compensation. Every expert that provides approved response to a question gets paid somewhere between $20 to $50 and

02:40>> also basically answering a question and on top of getting paid for the answer they provide, they also become eligible for a higher value consulting engagement. It could be an expert call or it could be a report. Technically, we also create and provide visibility to experts from all over the world.

Nathan Latka

03:01Mhmm. But if I want to go find the world's top expert on B-fifty two bombers, they're not gonna be hanging on enquire to gamify, earning $20 to answer a question. Right? How do you go recruit do you have to recruit, like, the smartest people in the world? And if so, don't you pay them way more than $20 an answer?

Cenk Sidar

03:19>> So, Nathan, you'll be actually surprised, you know, about the caliber of people that we have in platform. Again, I'll just give an example about Network Pulse, but we have higher ticket engagement as well. So yeah, we basically continuously recruit experts to our platform. We have about close to 40,000 experts in any subject matter expertise you would imagine from the And

Nathan Latka

03:43Cenk, what does that mean? Does that mean you've paid at least a dollar to 40,000 people over the past twelve months?

Cenk Sidar

03:49>> No. Basically, those experts come to our platform and they built their profile very similar to how they built their LinkedIn profile, and they choose the engagements they would like to do. Some experts may say, I don't wanna answer questions for 50 I just wanna be eligible or available for expert calls, and then they get paid Understood. At a high

Nathan Latka

04:13Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this, you love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out.

Cenk Sidar

04:32>> I'll show

Nathan Latka

04:32you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the

04:55way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity and red is

05:18if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction, 1,200,000 seed round, 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well,

05:43here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round. Well, go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at, and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you.

06:08Alright. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right

06:33inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into the interview. How many though? I'm curious, though. How many how many did you pay? At least a dollar over the past thirty days.

Expert Engagement and Payment Volume

Cenk Sidar

06:43>> So I will say we have about, like, half of the experts somehow can engage through a platform through Network Pulse or call. I will say, like, about 15 to 20,000 people.

Nathan Latka

06:52But that's engaged. What makes this work is the money, right? The unification. How many made at least $1 in the past thirty days?

Cenk Sidar

06:59>> No, actually, the amount that I gave you was the number of people who Oh, got thousand. So here's the deal. So if you answer a question and your answer got approved by your AI who's assessing the quality of the response and your expertise and basically your relevance to the question, it means you automatically got paid. So we don't make people work for no compensation. And I should also explain that. We only match questions with the people

How Questions Get Matched and Answered in Eight Minutes

Cenk Sidar

07:31>> who have already expertise on that. For example, if the question about SaaS revenue models, you don't even need to do any work on that. You provide one paragraph answer within eight minutes. The average time that you spend answering a question is eight minutes, And if you make $50 in eight minutes, it's more than any other expert network's paying experts in an hourly basis.

Nathan Latka

07:56Understood. So you tell me if this math is right then. You said the average expert gets paid 20 to $50 per question. Let's just assume 20, the low end of what you gave. Yep. If you paid 20,000 of these folks at least a dollar in the past thirty days, we can take 20,000 times 20 per question. Right? So you spent in the past thirty days $400,000 paying experts to answer questions on the low Yeah.

Cenk Sidar

08:19>> More than last year. Yeah, probably. That made us probably But that's the

Nathan Latka

08:22last year, not the last thirty days.

Cenk Sidar

08:24>> No. I think you asked about the last year. So yeah. Exactly. So but don't forget, we charging our clients

Nathan Latka

08:29to ask Hold on. I know, Cenk, I know I understand that, but I just wanna make sure I get this right. It's 40,000 have built profiles. 20,000 have been paid at least a dollar in the past three hundred and sixty days, the past year.

Cenk Sidar

08:40>> Yep.

Nathan Latka

08:41I see. Okay. Not the last thirty days. Yep. I see. So in 2021, you had about four hundred to six hundred thousand dollars of expenses, went towards paying experts. Yeah.

Cenk Sidar

08:52>> Probably more. Yeah. Because because so basically,

08:58>> are days that we get a lot of questions about these days, we get all questions about Ukraine and Russia, right? And then all of our experts who have expertise in Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia political, risk gets pinged. Not many on North Korea, but maybe, like, something happening in that part of the world or maybe about the Fed interest rate conversation these days or Bitcoin regulation. Or questions that we receive really depends on the agenda of the global

09:25>> markets and the Understood.

Nathan Latka

09:28Yeah. Think the product is crystal clear. I'm not questioning that. All these use cases make complete sense. So I don't think we need to spend more time there. Think my audience gets it. I get it completely. I am curious though. So in 2021, how many questions went answered total?

Cenk Sidar

09:41>> Again, I am not sitting in front of my dashboard right, but in average a week, and of course, the number of questions increase every week as we onboard more clients. But I will say last year in total, we have about 35. So again, don't wanna give a wrong number, and we have about 4,000 questions answered last year, I believe.

10:03>> 3,500 to 4,000.

Nathan Latka

10:05Questions answered last year?

Cenk Sidar

10:07>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

10:08Okay, you just told me last year 20,000 experts were paid at least a dollar, but they only answered 4,000 questions. Don't you need at least a one to one ratio?

Cenk Sidar

10:18>> No. Here's the deal. Again, when you ask a question on a platform, you get minimum five, maximum eight responses. So that's the beauty about the product. So when you ask a question about regulation of Bitcoin in Russia, you're not getting one expert answering the question. They're you're paying

10:39>> $20 to five experts if they all give a good answer to one question.

Nathan Latka

10:42Exactly. Exactly. I see. Okay.

10:44And then the flip side of the marketplace, which I'm trying to build out here, that's why I'm asking all these questions.

10:50How many businesses spent at least a dollar to get a question answered on the platform last year?

Customer Count and Seat Structure

Cenk Sidar

10:56>> We have about 120 onboarded institutions. Know, some of the clients only use expert calls. Some of them use only network pulses. Some of them use both. I will say about 80 institutional clients, and I will say about one hundred-one 110 users, engage the platform and ask real time questions to the expert.

Nathan Latka

11:20So is that a way of saying you have 110 free users, but 80 of them are really paying your big paying customers?

Cenk Sidar

11:24>> No.

11:25>> 80 institutions and 110 users. So some institutions that use us, let's say, I'm just giving an example, like Starbucks may have five users

Nathan Latka

11:36that use So your you're averaging about 1.2 seats per enterprise or 1.3 seats per enterprise?

Pricing Model Transition to Unlimited

Cenk Sidar

11:43>> Yeah. But this year, we made a major difference in our pricing model. So we launched unlimited questions, and that's revolutionary in the consulting and the knowledge market. Now we're in a position to sell unlimited question packages per user

12:01>> clients. So technically, once you have the license, you can go and ask unlimited questions. In our previous model, we used to charge $300 per question, and now we're basically providing this unlimited model that will be very user friendly because they will be able to ask unlimited questions of 40,000 experts So really utilize the

Nathan Latka

12:25is it fair to say if you you just made this pricing change, right?

Cenk Sidar

12:28>> Yes. So if

Nathan Latka

12:29you had 4,000 questions asked last year at $300 a pop, you did about 1,200,000 total revenue last year.

Cenk Sidar

12:36>> This is on the network pulses. We have a lot of expert calls, we do a lot of consulting engagements. We have enterprise level we have enterprise level software. But just for

Nathan Latka

12:47pulse, is the 1,200,000 correct?

Cenk Sidar

12:49>> Yeah. We don't we don't announce the revenue numbers, but, you know, I think your math is pretty close for the network pulses, yes.

Revenue Discussion

Nathan Latka

12:55And you have a bunch of different revenue streams, which is smart, you're diversified, but about what percent of your total revenue would you say is just Pulse revenue?

Cenk Sidar

13:02>> At this point, we're not really providing this information on the public spaces, but I think I shared the information with you earlier

13:13>> for your survey. But basically, as of last year, I will say a large portion of our revenues came from the network pulses in the marketplace, but this year it will change significantly because we started providing API access to large third party data platforms, and the balance is gonna shift towards API and the Lumina product for 2022 numbers.

Nathan Latka

13:41Okay, but I wanna put up, we can round, you don't have to be specific, but last year you did somewhere between one and two million revenue, mainly Pulse. In 2022, you think that'll be more diversified and a higher revenue number?

Cenk Sidar

13:52>> A 100%. Exactly.

Nathan Latka

13:53Got it. Perfect. That's great. Have you bootstrapped this or raised?

Funding History and Series A

Cenk Sidar

13:56>> We just closed our Series A round. We raised about $5,500,000 A month ago, we closed the round. Before that, we did our seed, and two years ago, we did our angel round. So this is our third institution, second institutional round, third funding round, and we will be going towards our Series B round by the end of the year as our growth significantly increases with the new products I just highlighted.

Nathan Latka

14:29The seed that you did last year, how much was that?

Cenk Sidar

14:31>> It was 3,000,000.

Nathan Latka

14:323,000,000?

Cenk Sidar

14:33>> 2,200,000.

Nathan Latka

14:352.2. And the it was seed.

Cenk Sidar

14:38>> And angel was, like, $800,000.

Nathan Latka

14:40And what year was the 800?

Cenk Sidar

14:42>> Oh, good question. I think it was the 2018, '19 period. The And when did you launch? Actually I'm sorry. You asked me about the seat. The seat was two thousand twenty March when COVID just hit at that point.

Nathan Latka

14:55Yeah. When was the $800?

Cenk Sidar

14:59>> It was angel round. It was 2018 and '19. It was a like not one round, but it was a continuous race through semi.

Nathan Latka

15:07Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so you just raised a Series A at 5,500,000. Most folks are selling between sort of 10 to 20% of their business in a Series A. Were you sort of in that same range?

Cenk Sidar

15:17>> We are, but as I mentioned, we are making significant transition to become technology provider rather than to be a professional services provider. So let me briefly explain what I mean with that. Our marketplace that we just talked about, the number of questions, the number of clients that have access to, is a platform that clients can engage the experts directly. But now we basically implemented our technology to large enterprises. So we are in the process of engaging

15:52>> and implementing our technology to large professional services firm so that internal employees of these large organizations will be able to ask questions internally, and that will be pure SaaS play, and we are very excited about it. So that puts us more in the technology provider category than the service provider.

2022 Revenue Projection

Nathan Latka

16:16And so, again, if you sort of finished last year between 1 and $2,000,000 of revenue, what do you think you can grow to by the end of twenty twenty two?

Cenk Sidar

16:23>> Yeah, I think we are projecting to be somewhere about 5 to 7,000,000 this year.

Nathan Latka

16:28Interesting. Okay, that'd be So you're doing like $150,000 a month right now on revenue. You think you can get that up to like $500 to $600 grand?

Cenk Sidar

16:37>> Yes. Again, our Lumina product that we implement the knowledge management tool to large organizations, and we are working with the largest organizations of the world. They're like a $1 to $3,000,000 price value that we're providing right now. And also, we are building such partnerships for the API, basically integrating or creating a product with third party platforms. Imagine Bloomberg terminal. We we we do not like working with them right now, but I'm just giving you example. You

API Partnerships and Third-Party Distribution

Cenk Sidar

17:09>> have the, you know, full access point to the, like, platform terminal, and there we go a little slot that you will be able to ask a question. On the front end, you see Bloomberg or Dow Jones, but on the back end, you are seeing you're basically reaching out to our expert network and get real time content from our experts. I just gave the Bloomberg an example, but there are like 10 plus platforms that size we are

17:33>> working on providing our unique solution that brings human

Nathan Latka

17:37data and technology together. Got it. Again, think the audience totally understands the product. It makes a ton of sense to me. Help me understand growth, So if you're right, you know, 150 a month right now in revenue, where were you exactly a year ago?

Cenk Sidar

17:49>> I think a year ago at that time, this time, we're talking about half of it or even one third of it last year.

Nathan Latka

17:55Interesting. Interesting.

Cenk Sidar

17:56>> And when you very continuous growth pace, especially with the number of new API partnerships that we are bringing on the table.

Nathan Latka

18:06I get that. Cenk, though, when I asked you about your Series A and selling between 10 to 20%, you immediately went into like professional services, right? And how you're pivoting away from that, which is obviously if you're trying to maximize valuation, that's good because VCs are going to value professional services way less than pure software, 85% margin revenue. Is that code for telling me you sold maybe a little more than 20% of the business in your Series A?

Cenk Sidar

18:27>> Somewhere around there. Yeah, we were typical numbers.

Nathan Latka

18:30Why did Well, more than 20% wouldn't be typical Series A for SaaS company because your margin profile, it sounds like it's a little bit worse, but you're gonna improve that over time. I guess the reason I'm asking you is why do you need 5,500,000? It's very dilutive for you as the founder.

Technology Investment and AI Automation

Cenk Sidar

18:42>> Here's the deal, because we invest heavily in technology and, you know, that's in line with our vision moving from marketplace to technology provider. We invest a lot in data science, how we can automate and provide more scalable opportunities. For example, in the early days, we were able to run maybe 10 to 25 questions a day because we had to have a human eye looking at every response and checking the quality of the response and releasing to

19:13>> the client dashboard, right? So we were able to automate that with AI. So every response that is provided by the experts is automatically in real time assessed by our AI, so that if the quality is lower than our threshold, we don't project that response to the client dashboard. By demanding this AI, we can increase the number of questions we can run on the platform internally or externally for our clients.

Nathan Latka

19:40And Cenk, how many people are full time today?

Team Size and Engineering Headcount

Cenk Sidar

19:42>> So we have about 35 people full time.

Nathan Latka

19:46How many are engineers?

Cenk Sidar

19:48>> One third of them are technology people.

Nathan Latka

19:51Okay. So about, call it, 12. And when did you launch?

Company Launch and Early History

Cenk Sidar

19:55>> It's a tricky question because we launched the company in 2017, but the first two years were really building the supply side of the company, right? Building the platform with bringing experts to the platform, you know, trying the product with, like, a smaller number of experts and clients. Understood. Last two years, since we raised our seed round, you know, we have much more, like, structured,

20:24>> you know, growth and

Rapid Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

20:26Got it. Cenk, we're out of we're out of time here, so we gotta wrap up. Rapid fire questions here. One word answers if you can. Number one, favorite business book.

Cenk Sidar

20:33>> I like the the the Lean, the Eric

20:38>> Lean startup.

Nathan Latka

20:39Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Cenk Sidar

20:43>> Good question. I I, you know, I always I was like I was like Jack Bezos.

Nathan Latka

20:51Number three. What's your favorite online tool for building enquire?

Cenk Sidar

20:56>> I love Salesforce.

Nathan Latka

20:58Number three or four. What's your how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Cenk Sidar

21:02>> Probably like six.

Nathan Latka

21:03And situation, married, single, kids?

Cenk Sidar

21:06>> I'm actually single, divorced, two kids.

Nathan Latka

21:10Two kiddos. And how old are you, Cenk?

Cenk Sidar

21:12>> I'm 39 and the

Nathan Latka

21:14kids 30 are nine.

Cenk Sidar

21:15>> Yeah. The kids are seven and nine.

Nathan Latka

21:16Wow. Okay. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Cenk Sidar

21:22>> You know, starting a business is extremely benefit like, rewarding, but also stressful.

Nathan Latka

21:28Mhmm.

Cenk Sidar

21:28>> Because I built other business in the past.

Nathan Latka

21:30Guys, there you have it. Launched in 2017, enquire.ai is helping 80 enterprise accounts with 120 seats get big questions answered via their network of 40,000 experts. Those experts, 20,000 of them made at least a dollar last year in the platform. They spent between, call it, $400 to $600 grand last year paying out those experts and generate about 1 to $2,000,000 in revenue from these customers asking these big questions. They're now moving more to a pure SaaS play, looking

21:53to scale up to 6 or $7,000,000 in revenue this year. Just closed a Series A, 5,500,000 selling about, call it, 20% of the business as Cenk looks to scale. Cenk, thanks for taking us to the top.

Cenk Sidar

22:02>> Thank you, Nathan. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

Nathan Latka

22:06One 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 one

22:31p. M. Central. 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

22:52an acquisition, a big fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to 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

23:14are saying. Sign up 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. And 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

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