How Fincome CEO Martin Courau grew Fincome to $36K revenue and 23 customers in 2023.

guys fincum.co they launched their MVP back in June they raised a Million Dollar pre-seed Round including 250k of non-dilutive capital from the French government had called a two percent cost to Capital they've used that to be Scrappy they've now got 23 oh sorry they've got under 100 paying customers but more than one paying customer these customers paying on average call it 130 to 150 per month a couple thousand bucks a monthly requiring Revenue as they look to keep scaling and extending their Runway hey folks my guest today is Martin carrot he's the former private Equity investor turned SAS entrepreneur he's an HEC Paris graduate and started at Goldman Sachs in London and Morgan Stanley in London before moving to PE after a student's strategy Consulting today he's the co co-founder of fincom that's with an e on the end fincum.com which is a real-time financial data platform for SAS Martin you ready to take it to the top absolutely let's go all right what kind of real-time data well so right now we update it every day but uh we're moving to closer to real time with updates coming in around every 20 minutes that's three times an hour and depending on the system uh we're pushing that limit because we want our clients to have the threat as data possible okay but what what so it's mainly the SAS companies but is it is it data that the CFO uses data that the tech people use I assume it's Finance fincom right it is so we're a financial data platform so basically we provide either the CFO and the finance team or the founder with the live financial data and kpis that they need to understand what's going on in their business on a day-to-day basis or even on an hour per hour business and to make the right decisions based on that and are companies paying you already for the product or are you pre-launch you know we launched a few months ago and we're scanning up our user base right now mainly through uh direct Acquisitions and Partnerships that's great okay so so walk me through sir what's an average customer pay for the platform so right now we're pricing it at around 100 euro per month uh we have a small discount for the annual plan else it's a basic month month to month plan and we're going to push that price point up to uh probably 150 uh almost 200 depending on the features because we have a big feature roadmap that we're delivering with a lot of features being pushed in the coming weeks and that's going to allow us to uh go for higher price points because we're delivering more value in our product and what's the I'm trying to go to it's not working for some reason what's the correct URL the website I'll send it to you right now okay with any at the end ah thin car oh God I got it Finn .com dot Co that's what I for some reason I don't know maybe you're in Paris right yeah we might have some some issues with uh us connections we've had that before we're I think I think that's what it is but let me I'll try and open it in an incognito window so I can ask better questions but like what what is the home page of like the big bold text across your homepage say so it's in French it's not translated yet but the uh the tagline is a 360 vision of the performance of your SAS in real time very cool okay so so folks are paying on average 130 bucks a month um and are you pricing based off number of seats or is it amount of data in the platform or how do you price so we're pricing it uh by the feature so basically you're gonna have a plan with a limited limited access to uh our feature that's mainly going to serve smaller clients that don't necessarily need to have the more advanced analytics feature that we offer and then we're going to have a Pro Plan for larger companies with bigger teams that need access to analytics that need access to cost analysis that need access to wider data sources that we can plug into our system that's how we're pressing it right now miracle and then take me back here so you launched a couple months ago but when did you write the first line of code for the platform was it 2022 or 2021 it was early 2022. yeah okay we spent 2021 sitting and getting the team together we started coding early 2022 uh we put the first version in June we pushed the uh updated version in September and we've been uh working on this one ever since how much money did you personally spend on the MVP before launching it honestly not that much I mean we have we raised fun but fundamentally uh we have this bootstrapping culture that we try to uphold uh honestly below 50 Grands and who didn't work uh so at the start we got our start with an agency and for the that was for the front end for the uh the back end and the algorithm which is where the real value lays uh that was our third associate uh Lucas who's uh who's our CTO very cool which agency did you use and are you would you recommend him are you still using them today no we're not using them because we're kind of outgrown their purpose uh it's a french-based agency called Blue Square we really recommend these guys they're great for trying to launch an MVP uh in France they're very agile they know the ropes they'll provide you with a ton of useful inputs this certainly uh saved us a lot of time and US helped us avoid a lot of mistakes to help you get the MVP live in addition with your third you know your CTO who did the back end work absolutely yeah yeah oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you 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 88 days and even set goals for evaluation this year now the secret valuation is there's many different ways to value a SAS business so the reason you're going to see three or four different evaluations inside of your founder path dashboard this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SAS company you're going to get a different valuation a VC is going to pay a different valuation private Equity Firm is different if you're going to 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 here right so the teal is what a VC would pay yellow is what private equity and red is if 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 Founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raise they sold 22 percent of their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to see companies that have sold the whole business well here 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 data set of SAS valuation than what you can get now inside of founder path and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second but if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash evaluations 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 inside the platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview okay very cool now how did you guys I mean it sounds like you raised but how did you pay your bills all last year when you were pre-revenue um our own assets basically okay so you just saved up some money before you quit and said okay savings every year well private Equity you know yeah it's uh it's a great career uh you know it was tough choosing to to leave it but you know the uh the draw of Entrepreneurship was just too strong but it's a it's a very well paid career so yeah we did have some money saved and uh we've been living on that ever since and uh well that changed obviously after we raised yeah now when did you raise what year we closed in July of 2022. okay and how much did you raise where is the million total we're out okay and as I said I'd be like your pre-seed round and then look most people were selling most people are selling like 15 to 20 in their pre-seat around were you serving that same range no lower than that okay good so that you are you you well then we there's something to learn from here because I'm always trying to help Founders avoid dilution so how are you able to give up less than 15 in your pre-seed round so uh we raised some non-diluted financing in that round so that's Equity plus some debt uh how would you raise debt though in your pre-revenue uh in France you can have access to loans even pre-revenue there's not grants it is a loan so you do have to pay it back but it's a loan that's specifically tailored for very early stage companies uh Martin it's like it's like two percent right it's like two or three percent interest rate something super low well the cost interestingly the cost has tripled since we raised so it's a lot is more expensive now yeah oh interesting we got to fix rate locked in but now we're looking to erase some more uh because obviously now we have revenues or we're trying to extend our Runway and raise a bit more non-dilutive in addition to the equity that we already raised and the cost has has gone up quite dramatically so what is it now just like Curious six seven eight nine percent yeah it is I think it's six now it used to be two interesting okay but again before it's it's it's basically subsidized by the government to help encourage startups absolutely absolutely yeah so how much of the million that you raised was that program versus peer equity it was uh pretty much 75 pure Equity 25 on dilutive oh okay so 250 and 750 split that's not that's not terrible um and then I guess fast forward to your first customer tell us that story how did you land them so it's it's a it's a great SAS they have this wonderful gross trajectory and we've been talking to them for about a year and a half I mean they've been in our ecosystem ever since we uh we started the company uh actually it was the agency that we worked with that introduced us to to these guys and we basically build the MVP uh not entirely based on their uh needs but we definitely get their needs in minds and uh they were a big inspiration for us they were pretty much the starting point of okay so we know there's a pain point we're trying to address it how do we provide value ahead of time did you ask them to say hey we're going to build this for you can you pay us a thousand bucks no we did not it's we tried looking into that I mean we probably tried that it's not something that's very deeply rooted in French culture uh they're more of a c then I get the checkbook out that's a prayer that's fair so yeah okay then fast forward to today how many paying customers uh so we don't disclose that number because uh we'll only disclose it when we reach a certain Milestone but we are scaling over our acquisition quite rapidly uh especially through uh Partnerships and direct acquisition and uh what Milestone are you waiting for like 100 customers 50 customers absolutely waiting for 100 waiting for 100 okay cool when do you think you can break 100 customers next semester hopefully oh you think sometime in the next six months yeah absolutely yeah that's the plan oh okay okay cool well I mean what 100 customers at you know each paying 130 bucks a month that would put your revenues at like 13 Grand a month so maybe you're at you know half of that or you know two three four thousand in mrr today something like that yeah well hey every million dollar month company has to start with 2 000 a month in mrr right so you're Off to the Races absolutely I mean we're we're pretty satisfied with the trajectory I mean of course we're starting from nothing and uh but yeah we're looking forward to hitting that Milestone and being able to communicate and uh so how are you getting new customers today right the first one you went really specific on them I mean what's the growth Channel today so we're kind of uh we we have a very uh trial by error approach so we're pretty much trying everything see what sticks uh what works really well is uh pretty much cold calling right now so more of a sale driven approach right now uh giving us time to build a brand and to develop all the inbound leads which we're starting to get with a Content strategy which is starting to Bear fruits focused on you know posting uh blog articles a lot of LinkedIn LinkedIn posts posts a lot of events uh we do a lot of co-branded webinars with companies that have uh bigger notoriety and a bigger following than we do and that's a great way to attract leads for us and we're starting to look into Partnerships uh we've got two lined up one with a uh well the French QuickBooks which is called Penny Lane and we're trying to build their analytics um platform because that's something we don't necessarily have in our product right now and we're also looking to internationalize group Partnerships and we have one lined up with a revenue-based financing provider which is based in a neighboring country and who could give us access to its land base oh very interesting okay and when you look at look at your own runaway today you mentioned you're looking for some more non-led capital and you're surprises now six percent instead of two percent right um how are you managing your own burn today what is your net burn per month so we're keeping its under watch from the close close watch we don't naturally disclose that number but it is a top priority for us we're trying to squeeze as much efficiency out of every Euro that we spend and that what do you want to stay under do you have a limit per month that you want to stay under in terms of netburn yeah 50 Grands 50. yeah yeah if we hit 50 that would be bad news then again it depends on how fast they're growing but it's always a balancing act yeah so so let's say you're burning 30 40 grand net burn a month today does that leave you with more than 12 months of Runway oh yeah absolutely okay so what's driving a need to raise non-dilutive Capital right now we're pretty much conservative and we're trying to extend it as much as possible because there's so much uncertainty uh in the ecosystem today I mean we're seeing a lot of companies a lot of companies who are our own clients having delayed uh series A's or canceled series B's and that just leaves them in a really really bad place so the idea for us raising additional non-diluted capital is really to get to secure uh extra months basically to give us the time to roll out our roadmap and to reach our targets well Martin we're rooting for a man in the meantime though let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite Business book uh The Outsiders which is a shame but it's a great book you know you know there's some books that I've read that I just love and some of them like very rarely get mentioned by Founders The Outsiders is one of them and no one ever tell recommends them but when I hear someone that does it I know we're the same person because I love that book all right and guys Martin what is it eight is it eight or nine nine of the most Capital efficient founders of the CEOs ever yeah this it's not I think I think it's nine yeah no a lot of data you know a lot of uh really going into the recipes that you use to to yeah to to just achieve this fantastic track record over the years and just so consistent so fantastic it's very very good number two is their CEO you're currently following or studying uh well the the colinson brothers over at stripe love these guys number number three what's your favorite online tool for building fin gum uh oh that's a good question uh one that has a particular soft spot in my heart is shield for tracking my LinkedIn analytics I mean it's not Central to what we do but it's just so well made just so well designed and It just fits my my my needs so well that you know I thought wow you know I got I got a lot to learn uh from these guys what's it called is it she is it shieldapp.ai yeah that's that should be the one yeah that's a good one yeah it is right okay number four uh how many hours of sleep do you get every night oh that that varies greatly uh I try to uh sleep is massive importance for my well-being so I try to hit a seven hours minimum okay and I want to build my entire day around my sleep cycle that's good and what's your situation married single kids uh I'm at not merits but uh with a long-term partner which I'm hoping to matter one day she says yes it's very cool okay no kids and how old are you 33 33 last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. grow your network uh get out there speak to as many people as you can you'll always learn something guys fincum.co they launched their MVP back in June they raised a Million Dollar pre-seed Round including 250k of non-dilutive capital from the French government I'd call it a two percent cost to Capital they've used that to be Scrappy they've now got 23 oh sorry they've got under 100 paying customers but more than one paying customer these customers paying on average cost 130 to 150 per month a couple thousand bucks a monthly requiring Revenue as they look to keep scaling and extending their Runway uh we're certainly rooting form we'll see what happens next Martin thanks for taking us to the top thank you for having me one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm 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 our poo 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 p.m Central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM 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 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