How Futurefit CEO Hamoon Ekhtiari grew Futurefit to $4.4M revenue and 3 customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is hamon aktiri he's the ceo and founder of a company called future fit a global launch pad for audacious innovation previously he was the director of strategy innovation for the executive vice president at telus he's passionate about unlocking the potential of people organizations and societies to reimagine and build the future moon you're ready to take it to the top ready all right so futurefit.ai is the website what's the company doing how do you guys make money sure feature fit ai essentially the google maps for jobs and skills and it allows organizations and governments to help people upskill and reskill for a world that is impacted by automation the way we make money is through sas licensing with our partners and clients as well as transaction fees from learning and training providers okay i don't understand the product um is this like indeed like a recruiting tool no this is a to help you learn any skill you want from around the world no matter where you are it identifies your capabilities and and skills and then recommends pathways to get to the next job uh inside inside or outside the organization you're at okay so is this like i can go on you know udemy or creative live and teach or i can go to a greenhouse and learn coding or let you know or is it like that so yeah it integrates uh it integrates dozens of those various online providers and it also connects to labor market information so it allows you to explore jobs based on automation potential growth change demand and so it connects what you want to do next with where you are today and at the pathway to get there just like a google maps might so i'm living in austin texas right now i might say you know what this summer i want to go and live in dublin for six months tell me what and i want to be in i want to be doing front end coding right you'll basically check the job board say these are what's available and then you'll say take the this course from you to me this course from greenhouse this this one from treehouse and get ready to get accepted exactly yeah so you set your destination it locates where you're starting from and then gives you the pathway to get there interesting okay very good what do people pay for this uh individuals pay nothing uh governments and enterprises pay a licensing fee based on the particular agreement we have with them uh for users okay um give me an average what's the average company or government gonna pay permission yeah average average is about a hundred dollars a month per user okay how many users typically are with the individual government uh wouldn't it within a program that they might run anywhere from uh 500 to 5000 users okay so i'm taking 500 times 100 so you're charging 50 grand a month minimum uh on on the when it is uh invested into the user uh data side yes that's that's what they would uh that's the that's what they would i'm just trying to get because there's a bunch of different customer stories you can tell on average what's the customer gonna pay you per month per month it's anywhere from 20 to 80k that they pay per month yeah per month okay got it so 20 so someone that's paying 20 000 per month um how many people will be on that and just be clear these are governments or companies that are paying who are wanting to essentially use your platform to recruit and get talent yeah or help their existing talent find their next opportunity okay so a 20 000 per month payment that company or government is it has probably how many users on your platform so for for twenty thousand dollars a month they have a group of about two thousand users on the platform okay got it great all right and then put this on the timeline for me when you launch the company uh so this was launched about a year ago uh and so we're now in in in operation with our first group of partners uh in north america middle east and east asia so 2018 is when you launched and then how many actual paying customers are you working with today 22 okay 22. now if i take 22 times a minimum of 20 thousand dollars per month that puts you at 440 000 per month yeah so i mean again private company but uh the numbers i'm just talking numbers you just gave me 22 customers at 20 000 per month minimum that multiplication is 440 grand per month you've built that in less than 12 months so the revenue numbers on the company nathan i can't directly share but you just gave me two very specific numbers and it's a multiplication problem it's very easy you said 20 000 is the minimum contract per month you then said you had 22 customers i multiply those i'm not making stuff i'm only going up data you just gave me so why would one of those two numbers not be accurate nathan i i i'm not sure what the approach this conversation is but this is not you know the approach is very the listen we've done 3 000 of these the approach is very simple i like to make sure i get to the actual data so that the strategies you share with my audience we know are grounded in data so what you just told me is you've essentially gotten 22 customers over the past 12 months paying you a minimum of 20 grand per month those are numbers you just told me so what what i shared with you nathan was not that every one of those customers the exact same use case on the ground i did tell you some of them were based on transaction fees from the provider side some of them were fees they were paying us uh on on the on the individual user side so look if if this is where this is where we pause this and stop this i'm happy to do that that is uh no this is not what i think by the way i don't think you would want to pause or stop right now because people are very confused and will probably not be great for your brand to not clear this up so i'm going to try and help you clear it up what you're telling me is you have two different pricing models one is sas based one is transaction volume based is that accurate correct but nathan i i just this is not what i understood this conversation was going to look like with this with this uh approach and level of detail on the numbers this is a private company we're talking about the moon you understand you told me those two numbers you told me 20 000 average per month and you told me 22 customers i'm simply multiplying numbers you just told me i'm not asking you to share something private that you don't want to share i'm taking things you already gave me and multiplying nathan i shared with you an example of a use case suite you know i said average amount i said i was very clear my question i said what's the average customer pay per month and i even asked it two or three times and you said twenty thousand to eighty thousand i have the quote right here twenty thousand eighty thousand dollars per month so all i'm asking is just correct that it sounds like that's not the case just correct it so maybe you have one or two that pay that but the rest are on some other model what's the other model nathan i feel like that i had no idea that this was going to be a model where you were gonna uh take like i i thought this was gonna be about the business and what what the health of the business is based off number of customers by the way did you listen to any other episodes before you came on they're very short and easy to listen to 15 minutes did you listen to any others nathan i i i don't think this is as either of us would have intended for this thing i'm simple look you if you i don't i i never commit i've grown a sas company before i've raised cap but i've grown it i would never take a meeting and not prepare by at least listening to a minute or two of a host i'm about to go live with if you did that with any of the 3000 episodes we've published you would know this is the same style we do on every podcast so why did you accept coming onto an interview with me and not at least listen to a minute or two of one of the past 3000 podcasts nathan i my my my best sense of this i i don't know what your approach on this is but i what i'm asking here is if if your goal is to take this and turn this around and say hey look at uh look at this guy that is not why i i i had hoped to engage with you it was on the challenge and the problem that we're trying to solve it's what i understand that's exactly what i want to focus on that's why my first questions were making sure i clearly understand the product that's why i asked questions to understand that your ability to solve that and scale it is directly correlated to your ability to close and grow customers and the pricing models you choose to put around that that's what i'm asking about so what happened here is you gave me an average i asked very specifically we have the recording i said what is the average customer paying per month and you said twenty thousand per month up to eighty thousand you i then said well how many customers have you scaled to since you launched a year ago and you said twenty two i understand what you're telling me that you don't wanna go deeper in the details here but my audience in their head are saying well an average customer's paying 20 000 per month he just did 22 customers what i what i didn't like and look i i clearly could have done my homework with you...