Golee Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Tommaso Guerra. He is the founder and CEO cofounder and CEO of Golee. He graduated in The USA from Lynn University and has professional experience in Italy, Spain, and Florida across various sectors like marketing, real estate, and sales. He's been a footballer all his life playing for professional teams in Italy and for the American College in The United States, now building a SaaS solution for digitizing sports. Tommaso, you ready to take [00:23] us to the top? [00:24] >> Yeah. Hopefully. [00:26] So you're playing soccer, and do you have this idea on the soccer field or what? [00:31] >> Yeah. It is correct. When I was in Italy, maybe you can hear it from my accent, I was playing at the highest level, highest youth level. But then I moved to The United States. I played for the soccer team in in my college. And in The US, everything was different. In fact, we had people at the stadium, statistics on our games, highlights of the matches and so on. So when I came back to Italy, I wanted [01:00] >> build a software, a platform that could give value to the entire youth ecosystem, youth sports ecosystem. Eventually, it turned out to be not only a platform that gives visibility to the youth players, but also working tools for sports clubs and coaches and everybody involved in lives of a sport club. [01:24] And, Tommaso, what are these sports clubs paying on average per month to use Golee? [01:29] >> More we have a freemium mode so that you don't need to pay anything, and then you can start upgrading in different with different modules. On average, they pay €500 per year. [01:43] Okay. So call it like $650 United States dollars per year or approximately $60 a month, something like that. [01:51] >> That's correct. [01:52] Okay. And why did you decide to go with the freemium model? How many people are on the freemium waitlist? [01:57] >> More or less right now, we have 20% of our clients who are paying clients. Obviously, the past year and a half, it was a little bit different because of COVID. Before COVID, we had seventy percent of our clients who were paying clients, while right now it's only twenty percent. But we believe that we are right now changing the situation and getting back to the way it used to be before COVID. But COVID on one hand closed [02:27] >> sports activities, on the other hand it speeded up the process of digitization of the entire industry. In fact, right now we are onboarding hundreds of new clubs every month. [02:41] How many last month? [02:43] >> 200 and something. [02:45] Wow. Okay. And how many total, like, since you guys have launched, how many total are on the free plan or free or paid? [02:53] >> Right now, more or less 3,000. [02:55] Oh, wow. Okay. And you have 20% of those 3,000 that are actually paying? [02:58] >> Yeah. Right. Correct. [02:59] Wow. And is there any concentration here? [03:02] >> Are you mainly focused on US sports clubs or Italian sports clubs? Any geographic focus? So since we began here in Italy, most of our clients are in Italy. But in the past months, we started our process of internationalization. And so right now, have a few 100 clubs from Spain, UK, Colombia, and also from The US. [03:28] And Tommaso, 20% of 3,000. It sounds like you have about 600 paying clubs right now across those geographies? [03:34] >> Yeah. More or less. [03:36] Wow. Yeah. Okay. Give me more of the backstory here. When did launch the tool? When you're at the first line of code? What year? [03:42] >> So it was the first experiment started in 2017. Mhmm. And then eventually, we founded the company late twenty eighteen. And let's say the first months, we used them to to create our MVP. [03:58] Oh, 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. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect [04:21] 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 way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna [04:45] 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 if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is [05:07] 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, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're [05:33] going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll 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. [05:51] And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right. We're gonna [05:53] 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 inside the platform. [06:19] I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into the interview. [06:22] >> 2019, it was the the the first real year where we were on on the market, and it was only five of us at the time. At the beginning of 2020, obviously COVID came and it changed everything, but we got lucky enough. [06:39] Well, hold on. Hold on. How much did you grow revenue to in your first year in 2018? [06:42] Do you remember? [06:43] >> 2018, more or less €50,000. [06:45] Amazing. Okay. [06:47] That's pretty good for the first year. [06:48] >> Yeah. Yeah. Because it wasn't a full year. It was only a few months. [06:54] Mhmm. [06:54] >> And then eventually 2019, [06:58] >> we had some technical problems, we needed to close for a few months. But anyways, [07:06] >> we managed to do better than 2018, obviously, and our revenues were about 70,000 or €80,000. [07:16] >> And then 2020, it was a weird year because of COVID. And everything shut down, at least here in Europe. You were not allowed to play to play sports at all. [07:32] How much did your revenue decline? What was total revenue in 2020? [07:37] >> We got back to 50,000. [07:40] Okay. So about 70,000 United States dollars. And did that improve in last year in 2021? [07:46] >> Yeah, exactly. So in 2021, everything got shut down until July. In July, it reopened. And right now, closed this year with more or less €150,000 But right now, obviously during COVID, our monthly recurring revenue was about between [08:11] >> 3,000 and €7,000 per month. And right now it's growing every month, reaching now €30,000 [08:19] Yeah, 600 customers paying $50 a month on average is about thirty to thirty five thousand United States dollars per month. Something like that. [08:29] >> Yeah, exactly. [08:30] That's great. Well, congrats on the growth. Have you done this bootstrapped or did you decide to raise capital? [08:35] >> No. We decided to raise capital also because it was an industry that wasn't ready to, let's say, adopt new technology. Right? [08:45] So how much did [08:47] you raise in what year? [08:49] >> We raised in the past three years 2 millions. [08:53] When was the last fundraise? [08:55] >> Last fundraise was last year where we raised €700,000. Mhmm. [09:01] And and what would you consider that? Like your seed round or what? [09:06] >> Yeah, maybe. Maybe it still [09:11] >> not an early stage, but yeah, I would say seed round. The whole amount that we've raised is considered to be seed round. In fact, right now what we're doing is to get ready to do our series A towards in the second semester of this year. [09:25] Okay. So you're looking at potentially raising now or in the next, call it six months. How much how much are you targeting? How much do you hope to raise? [09:34] >> Between 7 and 12,000,000. It depends. [09:38] Let's just make the math easy. Let's say you raise 10,000,000. What valuation are you targeting? [09:43] >> We will give away maximum 22% of the company. [09:48] That's a very specific number. How do you get to 22%? [09:53] >> It's because [09:57] >> right now, in our cap table, we are really giving away a lot of stock options to our employees. [10:07] How much? [10:09] >> More or less 20%. Okay. And we want it to keep growing. And so we made a deal with current investors that if we managed to do another round with some dilution, we would unlock some other stock options. And this is something that we believe a lot on giving stock options to employees and to people who can help you to bring forward the company. [10:41] And, Tommaso, when you raised the $850,000 what valuation did you raise that at? [10:46] >> Last valuation was 7,000,000. [10:49] Okay. 7,000,000. Got it. So how much do current investors currently own of the business? [10:54] >> More or less 30%. [10:56] 30%. Okay. Would you change anything about how you raise capital to date? Or do you look back and go, know what? I did that the right way. [11:03] >> Yeah. So look, Italy, Europe in general is very different from The US market. And Italy is one of the latest countries. I mean, it is very behind the mentality and the openness of investors and bosses to give you money. Is a mess. So yeah, I would do something different. I would start right away in looking for money outside of Italy and not having traction only in Italy, also in Europe like we're doing right now. So it'd [11:40] >> be easier for us to to raise some money outside of Italy. [11:43] But How much [11:44] do you own of the business still today? [11:47] >> More or less 35 percent. [11:49] And then your co founder owns the other 15? [11:53] >> Yeah, exactly. Co founders and employees. [11:57] Well, you have the employee stock option pool of 20%, which you said. You said investors own 30%, which leaves about 50% for you and your co founder, right? [12:05] >> Yeah, exactly. The stock option pool is not only for employees, but also for everybody who is operating full time on [12:16] >> the project. [12:17] I see. Very cool. Now, if you want to go out and raise $10,000,000 on a $50,000,000 valuation, that would be selling around 20% of the business, but you have $400,000 in ARR today. You're asking for a valuation multiple, almost 150 times your forward looking revenue. Do you think you have to grow revenue a little bit before you go do that next raise? [12:37] >> Yeah, that's for sure. This is why we're looking to do this Series A in the second semester of twenty twenty two. [12:45] >> Want to reach this moment with three metrics very consolidated, which are clubs acquisitions. So right now we're working with more or less 3,000 sports clubs and we want to reach at least 10,000 sports clubs and in the pace that we're growing right now it is doable, completely doable. Second of all, we want to demonstrate the fact that we can scale internationally. So right now we're having the first clients outside of Italy, but we want to do [13:20] >> our Series A when we have over a thousand clients throughout Europe [13:29] >> and obviously increasing our revenue. So what we're looking to do is to reach €50,000 per month monthly recurring revenue. And that that would those will be the metrics that we're we're comfortable in in doing the the CVT. [13:49] Understood. Tell me more about your team today. How many folks are full time? [13:53] >> 20 people. [13:54] And how many engineers? [13:56] >> Nine. [13:57] Nine. Where'd you find everyone always has trouble hiring engineers. Where'd you hire? [14:01] >> So one of them, he was my one of my closest friend. And so it started out from him. They had a couple of friends in the university that joined our team very, very junior. And they knew another guy who was the CTO of a huge company here in Italy. And after one year that we were begging him to come to work with us, he finally decided to quit his job and join us in our project. And [14:37] >> little by little, this is how we're growing. It was, I mean, it still is pretty difficult to find capable IT developers. And I believe word-of-mouth in this case is the best. And obviously, you need to have a good project and good people that are working in the company. But this is how we manage to do it. [15:01] Guys, it's hard to find engineers. It's even harder if you require them to come into an office. I encourage you to think about hiring remote folks. You know, at Founderpath, we're fully remote, six people fully remote. And we use remote.com to manage payroll across many countries, across many geographies, to understand taxes and all that. They've given everyone here listening to the show a free access code. You can go to nathanlatka.com/remote to check that out. Tell me [15:23] more about your sales team, Tommaso. Do you have any full time sales reps? [15:26] >> Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, out of the 20 people, nine are in the IT department and the rest of it is in the business and marketing department. [15:37] What How many sales reps go with quota? [15:39] >> Yeah, exactly. So, what happens is that they don't do only sales. They do marketing and sales and customer care. We believe a lot in making them capable of doing different tasks, not only one specific task. [15:56] Understood, though. But how many sales How many people carry a quota? [16:00] >> Seven people. [16:02] Okay. So you do have seven that carry a quota, but they do sales and other things as well. [16:06] >> Yeah. Exactly. [16:06] What quota do you have them try and hit? [16:10] >> So right now, what what we're doing is that every single every three months, we we have a new objective because it changes so quickly. And it really it really changes also upon on what happens with COVID. Yeah. Obviously. So, make him we make all altogether the entire team decides the objectives for next quarter. [16:40] And Tommaso, you mentioned you added almost over 200 new clubs in the last thirty days. You spending money to add these folks? And if so, what's your customer or your freemium acquisition cost? [16:51] >> No. This is the freemium acquisition cost. [16:54] Okay. But how are they finding you, though? [16:57] >> So we're doing web marketing. And right now, our CAC on web marketing is pretty low. It's between €6 and €8. So every €6 we spend, we get a new registration. And then apart from web marketing, we have [17:16] >> partnerships with federations and important newspapers or, let's say, sports references within the country. [17:27] I see. So, if you convert 20% to your free registrations into paid accounts, you need five sign ups at $6 a pop to get one new paid customer. So you could kind of say your CAC is somewhere around $30 for a new $60 a month customer. [17:39] >> Yeah, this is correct. [17:40] Interesting. Very cool. Partnerships are working well for you as well. I'm not gonna ask about churn because COVID is really impacting your business, but you're back on [17:49] the growth track now. Let's wrap up here, Tommaso, with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? [17:56] >> Well, I would say I would say even if it's not a business book, I recently read Shoe Dog and That's a good one. Yeah, it is. [18:06] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [18:11] >> Not really. I follow let's say I wouldn't say Steve Jobs because everybody would say Steve Jobs, but I read books about how how the Netflix and how startups created their model. [18:27] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Golee? [18:31] >> Online tool for building Golee, you say? [18:34] Yep. [18:40] >> Not sure. [18:41] What's the two that you need? [18:42] >> Our internal organization, we use Trello. I don't Okay. Know if you [18:46] Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night? [18:49] >> Between, I'd say six on average. [18:53] Okay. And what's your situation, Tommaso? Married, single, kids? [18:58] >> No. I'm I have a girlfriend. [19:01] Okay. Not married. No kids. How old are you? [19:03] >> I'm 31. [19:05] >> 31. Last question. [19:06] What's something you wish you knew when you were 20? [19:11] >> I wish I knew how difficult it was to start a business. Not because I'm not doing anymore, but at least I was could have been more ready to do so. [19:23] Guys, Golee, spelled g o l l sorry, golee.it, launched back in 2017, now doing about $35,000 a month in revenue. Their last round was an $850,000 seed round on a $7,000,000 valuation. They're growing about over doubling year over year as they recover out of COVID. Again, software to help sports leagues, soccer specifically, capture virtual moments and bring them online quickly, track stats and things of that nature. Tommaso, thanks for taking us to the top. [19:50] One 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 [20:15] 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 the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big [20:37] fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna 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 are saying. Sign up [20:59] 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 counter those people. We [21:19] got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.