How Fitbots CEO Vidya Santhanam grew to $532K revenue and 50 customers in 2023.

what is going on youtube you know we are just two weeks away from founder 500 in austin texas on september 1st and 2nd there's over 500 b2b sas founders all coming together you don't want to miss it ticket prices increase every three days i have it on automatic accelerator every three days and we're almost sold out you can see there's about nine left when you go to the event bright link about nine left and it's updating real time so check it out today it's founderpath.com and then in the upper left you can hover over our product drop down and click the event stream i'll also put in the description here of the youtube video i'd love to see you there hey folks my guest today is vidya santam she's the co-founder of fitbots and leads growth she started the company after a 16-year career her last company being mind minetree where she led strategic talent and leadership building video you ready to take us to the top absolutely noon all right you told me before you listened to the show so this should be really easy interview right i've memorized all your questions by the so you should just do the whole show i'm just going to leave here all right tell tell us about so what is fitbots what are people paying you for yeah absolutely uh so fitbots we are nokia's company we have both the sas product for okrs along with the network of okr coaches the problem that we really solve is the big problem of misalignment especially when teams are hybrid and ceos are really struggling to get everybody focused on outcomes so that's where we come in interesting so when you say your sas that helps teams manage their okrs what does that mean usually yeah so so we have a product uh we have an okrs product and along with that we have a network of okr certified coaches so let's see a team wants to get spun up on okrs they take a subscription from our software along with a coach from our network yeah so guys this is one of those things like it's one of the things we look at at founder path the one where deciding which bootstrap founders to give capital to if they have like a healthy business cadence which means there's like a monthly review of okrs every quarter they're looking at last month's okrs and protecting the next ones we like this kind of business discipline video is building this nicely at fitbots okr stands for objectives and key results now video there's a lot of sort of frameworks around this people have heard of you know i would say some of the older guys would be like vern harnish and rockefeller habits this sort of a version traction is sort of a newer version just to be clear you're not selling like a new way to do okrs you're selling software to empower systems that already exist to do okrs right that's correct nathan um so uh objectives and key results as you rightly call them it's very similar to the revolution around agile which happened a few years ago uh when tools like asana and all came up ajit was already a known concept so it's very similar to okay we're not really here to educate the market on the framework we are trying to help companies to adopt tokyo's using our software i love that okay so what are companies paying you on average per month to use the technology um so we get um the annual contract value is about ecb so it's about 500 dollars okay and are you charging based off team size or product features what do you charge based off of um we charge per person per user per month or user pro any product based up selling or no matter what you plan you're on you get all the product functionality yeah so we have three plans and uh the plans which are of course you know the the more expensive ones have got uh stronger integrations i see okay so the average company is paying 500 bucks per year though um uh the average company is paying around six thousand dollars for you oh six thousand us dollars per year that's true that's right oh amazing okay got it got it um okay very interesting and then put this all on a timeline for me when did you write the first line of code for the company yeah um so we we launched in we we started the company in 2018 me and my tech co-founder kashi uh we launched the okrs product in 2019 um and from there we in the same year we actually realized that many teams being new to okrs used to come over to us and say that hey tell us more about okrs and how to use it correctly we're familiar with it but we want to know how to use it correctly um so we got certified as opr coaches coached about 650 plus teams ran about thousand plus check-in meetings and built the product as we were close to users um uh so from there wait what did you get certified through like certified from from who um we got certified from the okrs training us they're one of the global best in okrs also bringing the certifications into asia pacific um so the learning that we had nathan was that not every problem in the world can be solved only with software so you need some amount of um handholding for teams as well so that they do it correctly so that was our learning 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 it 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 valuation this year now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a sas business so the reason you're going to see three or four different valuations inside of your frowner 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 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 raised 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 valuations 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 interesting okay so you you think about in 2018 you really launch it 2019 then right right and how did you get your first customers did this coaching company give you a bunch of early customers after you graduated as coaches yeah so we we got our first customer through our own network so um and and from the first customer we we took that uh experience and we got the second customer the first were really through networks okay very cool i love that i love that flow and now fast forward today how many customers are you working with oh we have 50 customers 5-0 that's correct that's that's wonderful okay so um how are you we talked about your first customer what came from your own network how are you adding new customers today because you rank very high on g2 you're getting a lot of word of mouth i imagine yeah that's right uh our top two sources for leads are through inbound so we write a lot of content to nokias um because we're also we have a lot of expertise around okrs with the software so that's converted into high quality content and and we get leads to inbound um and the second source is through reference refers could be either through our own customers or through word of mouth um or through reviews like on g2 so these are okay okay and 50 customers times 500 bucks a month means you're doing about 25 000 a month in revenue yeah you're absolutely correct amazing and what were you exactly one year ago um we were about close to about 14 uh kmrr okay so last year at this time you're doing 14 000 a month yeah a little lesser than that we closed the year last year we closed the year at 14k so we're probably doing a little lesser than but more about 100 than year over year growth have you done this all bootstrapped yeah we were bootstrapped for about two years maybe the first two years and then um so we really learned how to use capital efficiently then we raised a precede round in 2020. interesting 2020 precede now i love how you preface that statement you said you learned how to be capital efficient you must because you know my show you know you know i love it when people are bootstrapped but tell me about this how did you discover ways that you could spend a dollar and make two dollars the capital efficiency um so the first and foremost is um i think in in the context to how we organize the teams um so we had to uh so this was a toss-up um so it's it's it's very easy to keep hiring and then burning quickly so we have to be very capital efficient in how many members of the team that we had to hire and how quickly can we build using the existing team um we again optimized on cloud space and then we started writing content did very we actually didn't do google ads at all we didn't have the money at that point of time to spend on ads so we just started building a lot of content led uh lead generation as an engine and in order to get leads so these were the three tactics that we used in the early stage and talk about contents like what's a keyword you rank really high for on google actually rank for okr's software coaching for some reason okay our coaching yeah because i think it's also because of the network that we've built um so so that's one of the top um keywords the other is um around okrs templates because interesting yeah so we've got about 100 plus templates and that helps us rank up as well yeah i'm seeing you know you're competing like miro ranks for that better works ranks there okay our templates.com ranks for that keyword as well i mean atlassian's ranking here how do you how do you try and outrank you know hubspot smartsheet how do you try and outrank some of these this massive players that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in bc yeah so i would look at it as a judo move so you don't need to necessarily be the um strongest to actually survive so that's how we look at it from a mindset perspective um so for us it's really about creating high quality content and distributing it and constantly working on our seo though it's a long term strategy um so we we basically do a lot of collaborative posts as well so we work with global okr coaches we work with founders or practice tokyos uh to collaborative posts and then keep amplifying it on our social media as well so these are some of the leads and how much has all this marketing generated in terms of new signups last month um we had about 40 um around 55 trials and about 15 high quality demos which came in and how many closed new customers we closed five five new customers a third that's a 30 close rate on demos that's pretty good yeah very cool video and when you did the pre-seed round how much was that for it was for 250k usd 250k and can i ask what valuation that was at yeah that was it uh two million and did that feel fair to you at the time um so uh uh when we were actually raising um our precede round we we actually wanted to use it to accelerate our growth so at that point of time i think if i look back yeah i wish you know it was more but yeah at that point of time it seemed fair to us as founders and are you are you the sole founder here do you have co-founders i have a co-founder my co-founder is was my ex-colleague in the previous company that we i worked in oh great each other from our workplace and then he's my tech co-founder and both of us started fitbots together do you guys split 50 50 at the beginning were you friendly yeah we're friendly and uh we split 50 50. oh that's very cool um that's that's great now that obviously the preceding investors come in 250 on a 2 million around so they buy caught around 10 of the business so each of you guys own like 40 40ish percent 45 today they own 10 percent yeah that's correct that's accurate that's awesome well listen we're certainly rooting for you are you looking for more capital now or you plan to bootstrap from here on out so we are looking for more capital and looking to place it on growth so we find us is a very big market for okr software so really looking to double down on them how much capital are you looking for well like what's the smallest amount you could get today to drive growth yeah we're looking for uh two million so we're looking to raise about two to three million at the moment and how much equity do you think you have to sell for that i think we need to part with about 20 is what i believe okay so you think you could get sort of like a six seven a six or eight million dollar valuation correct that's right interesting have you opened it up you have a term sheet you have a lead yet or if you're just getting started yeah so we just actually got started about a month ago and still looking for the lead at the moment interesting yeah i mean valuations are so compressed right now i mean look you're doing 25 000 bucks a month in revenue we just closed 145 million dollar fund this morning for bootstrap founders you know we could get you like 5x of your mrr it's not 2 million bucks right it's only what is that you know call it 150 000 bucks but you can come back and take more capital every like 30 45 days would you ever look at non-dilutive options yeah absolutely i think and and they are a lot more founder friendly um because you still have control of the company and in fact i just signed up for that uh just before the call oh no for founder path that's right oh that's amazing well i hope let me just ping my team right now on stock and say give vidya an amazing offer she gave me a great interview okay we'll see what we can do for you thank you nathan we tell founders all the time we say look even if you don't take money from us if you have an offer from us you can use it as leverage with the vcs to try and get better terms from them you know what i mean yeah absolutely very cool i am certainly rooting for you uh and thanks so much for supporting the show and listening how many episodes you think you've listened to i've listened to about uh 25 episodes of yours but i keep doing that every day in fact i just keep looking at your episodes because i think there's a lot to learn from founders bootstrapped in other ways and it's just great learning when you're scaling a sas business when you open the app your itunes up and you're looking at episodes to play how do you decide which ones to click what do you look for in the title um so i usually search for um zero to one and i saw your most recent one with missile yeah and how they scaled from zero to two so that was really interesting for me um the other is there's a thing which comes on youtube the notifications so i usually look at that as well yeah the type form founder as well so that was like 75 million er so that was really exciting that's awesome well listen i'm certainly rooting for you let's wrap up your video with the famous five number one favorite business book um i like predictable revenue by aaron rose that's a good one number two is there a ceo you're following or studying yeah so i follow um so so it's kind of hard to say with awfully i've been following with anjali sooth as well as uh g from lemnist i did a podcast with g with lem from lenders so i think he's he's really done a lot to bootstrap and grow his company he certainly has number three what's your favorite online tool for building fitbots um i would say um hubspot we are on hubspot so i i think it's really uh it's a good tool nvidia number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night um i try and get about six to seven hours okay that's a good amount and situation married single kids married with kids i have a 11 year old oh amazing one kid and do you mind me asking how old you are i'm 43. amazing okay last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. i wish i had learned uh how to scale sas business i wish sas was known when i was 20. and i wish i had learned how to scale it back then guys she cut her teeth in corporate then went out on her own in 2018 launching fitbot she started by getting officially certified as an okr consultant they've coached hundreds of companies on implementing lkrs and said you know what now we're going to launch software to help people do this they've done that they now have 50 customers paying for the software on average 500 bucks a month so 25 000 a month in revenue that's more than 100 to your rear they were doing 13 000 a month a year ago they've done this all fairly capital efficiently they raised 250 000 bucks pre-seed back in 2020 at a 2 million valuation looking now to raise a a seed round call it 2 million willing to sell call it 15 to 20 percent of business we'll see what happens next maybe we can sort of use founder path and non-dilutive capital but in the meantime video we're rooting for you and thanks for taking us to the top thank you nathan it's a pleasure being here thank you very much one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm 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 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 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we 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