Founder Interview
How HappyCo Moved Upmarket to Enterprise: 1,500 Customers and 112% Net Dollar Retention (Interview with CEO & Founder Jindou Lee)
- Interview Date
- June 19, 2019
- Interviewee
- Jindou LeeCEO & Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Customers (2019)
1,500 accounts
Net Dollar Retention (2019)
112%
Top-Line Growth (YoY) (2018)
60%
Total Funding Raised
$11M
Team Size (2019)
55 people
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Jindou Lee during the interview recorded in June 2019 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See HappyCo’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways
- 01HappyCo officially launched in 2012 and serves the multifamily property management industry in North America
- 02The company had 1,500 customer accounts as of June 2019
- 03Average contract value across the entire customer base was approximately $5,000
- 04Top 100 enterprise customers account for roughly 70% of total revenue
- 05Net dollar retention across the full customer base was 112%, with the top 100 enterprise customers at 160%
- 06Gross annual revenue churn was approximately 10%
- 07HappyCo grew top-line revenue 60% year over year in 2018 with a negative 10% EBITDA margin
- 08The company reached profitability in December 2018, and Jindou said it was on track for a positive 10% EBITDA margin in 2019
- 09CAC payback period for enterprise customers is approximately 12 months
- 10HappyCo had raised $11M in all-equity funding and had 55 employees as of June 2019
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Official Launch | 2012 | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Customers (2019) | 1,500 accounts | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Team Size (2019) | 55 people | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Team Size (2016) | 25 people | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Average Contract Value (full base) (2019) | $5,000 | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| ARPU (at launch) (2012) | $50 a month | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Gross Annual Revenue Churn (2019) | 10% | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Net Dollar Retention (2019) | 112% | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Top-Line Growth (YoY) (2018) | 60% | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| EBITDA Margin (2018) | -10% | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| CAC Payback Period (2019) | 12 months | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Total Funding Raised | $11M | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Cash in Bank (2016) | $110,000 | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Units Under Management (2019) | 1,900,000 | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Inspections, Period Not Stated (2019) | About 4,000,000 | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Cumulative Photos (2019) | 131,000,000 | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Photos Per Month (2019) | 6,000,000 to 7,000,000 | Founder interview, June 2019 |
| Top 100 Customers Share of Revenue (2019) | 70% | Founder interview, June 2019 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue and Contracts
Jindou Lee confirmed an average contract value of approximately $5,000 across the full 1,500-account customer base as of June 2019. The top 100 enterprise customers, whose contracts average around $70,000 a year, account for roughly 70% of total revenue. The company started out charging $50 a month and began moving upmarket to enterprise in 2016.
Customers and Retention
HappyCo served 1,500 accounts managing approximately 1,900,000 residential units as of June 2019. Gross annual revenue churn was approximately 10%, while net dollar retention across the full base was around 112%, so expansion more than made up for the churn. Jindou put the top 100 enterprise customers' dollar retention at about 160% over the prior twelve months.
Team
The company had 55 employees at the time of the interview in June 2019, up from 25 people in 2016. Jindou noted that people costs are the primary driver of capital needs in a SaaS business.
Profitability and Funding
HappyCo raised $11M in all-equity funding and reached profitability in December 2018 after targeting it following the company's last funding round in 2017. The company reported a negative 10% EBITDA margin in 2018, and Jindou said it was on track for a positive 10% EBITDA margin in 2019. At the time of the interview, HappyCo was raising again because customers wanted to invest: Jindou said it would probably be a $10M round, with only about half likely to hit the balance sheet, and possibly some debt from a traditional lender on top.
Growth Strategy
Cold Outreach to Validate Before Building
Jindou Lee cold-called 20 property management companies using screenshots on an original iPad before any software existed. Nineteen of the twenty signed up to pay $50 a month, giving the company its first paying customers and proof of demand before a single line of code was written.
Deliberate Upmarket Pivot to Enterprise
In 2016, HappyCo consciously shifted focus from SMB customers managing around 200 units to enterprise accounts managing 2,000 apartments and above. The trigger was a single inbound call from a company that owned and managed 110,000 units, which Jindou worked out was the equivalent of signing about a thousand SMB customers. Once live, that customer raised about one support ticket a month, the same as an SMB customer paying $50 a month.
Industry Conference Attendance
HappyCo attends major multifamily industry conferences including NMHC and NAA as a core customer acquisition channel. Jindou described a multi-touch attribution model for enterprise sales and said conferences perform well as part of that motion, with the company expecting to generate significantly more than one dollar of new ARR for every dollar spent.
Disciplined Budget Reinvestment
HappyCo had a planning framework for deciding where money that came in ahead of plan should go. In Q1 it came in $500,000 ahead of budget, so leadership picked two or three projects from a back-burner list to fund, one of them making existing employees happier by reevaluating their benefits and salaries.
Expansion Ahead of Churn
Net dollar retention of around 112% across the full customer base, and about 160% among the top 100 enterprise accounts, meant expansion from existing customers more than made up for gross revenue churn of about 10%. Asked whether expansion covered the churn, Jindou said it did.
Best Quotes
“I rang 20 companies, I cold call and I said, Hey, I've got this cool app. Can I come and show you? And I'll go in and demo the app. It's like screenshots on an iPad one fit nicely. They were trying to tap it. I'm like, No, no, these are photos. It's not an app. And we actually had 19 of the 20 people I met actually signed up to use the software before we had anything.”
“The moment that blew my mind was we had a call in 2016 and some guy rang and said, Hey, I want to use your software to do inspections. I'm like, Oh, great. How many properties do you manage? And he goes, Well, we own and manage 110,000 units. And I was just like, Yeah, we can handle that. And hung up the phone and we're like, Holy crap, we did the maths on that. And we're like, That's amazing. That would have been the equivalent of signing up, you know, a thousand SMB customers.”
“Last year, we grew at a 60% top line year over year. And then we had a minus 10% EBITDA margin. So we look at that pretty closely.”
“When we raised the last round of funding in 2017, our goal was to get profitable. And we'd got there in December last year.”
“All up in the portfolio, around the sort of 1,500 accounts.”
What Happened Next
At the time of this interview in June 2019, HappyCo had about 1,500 customer accounts and around 55 employees, had raised about $11M, all of it equity, and had turned profitable in December 2018. Jindou Lee said the company was in the middle of a fundraise because customers wanted to invest: probably a $10M round, with only about half likely to hit the balance sheet, and possibly some debt from a traditional lender on top. This page captures the company as it stood at that moment. Visit the HappyCo company profile for current figures.
View HappyCo’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:01Introduction and Background
- 1:59What HappyCo Does and Who It Serves
- 2:47Geographic Focus and Market Context
- 3:53Pricing and Average Contract Value
- 4:50The Pivot to Enterprise in 2016, Team Size and Funding
- 8:14Getting the First 100 Customers via Cold Outreach
- 10:00Customer Count, Units, and Usage Metrics
- 11:22Churn and Net Dollar Retention
- 12:37CAC Payback and Conference Strategy
- 15:37Growth Rate and EBITDA Margin
- 16:21Near-Payroll Crisis in 2016 and Path to Profitability
- 19:20Planned Fundraise and Debt Strategy
- 22:07Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions
Introduction and Background
Nathan Latka
00:01Hello, everyone. My guest today is Jindou Lee. He's a CEO and founder of HappyCo, a software provider to the multifamily property management industry. Before HappyCo, he worked in the video gaming industry on titles like Mortal Kombat and Gauntlet. He also founded and exited a few other tech companies, is an ex soccer player and studied graphic design at the University of South Australia. You're ready to take us to the top?
Jindou Lee
00:22Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it.
Nathan Latka
00:23Alright. So you basically stole all my audience's childhood with Mortal Kombat and Gauntlet,
Jindou Lee
00:23Oh,
00:30yeah. It was fun. It was games that I grew up with as well, right? And so getting to work on those titles was, well, it was kind of a double agent. It was really, really fun to be able to do that, but on the same token, you got to see how the sausage was made, and you're like, man, this isn't as as great as I I thought it would be. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
00:50Yeah. Yeah. We recently had Howard on, who's running StartEngine now, but he was the guy that bought Activision back in the day and obviously launched huge titles like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft and such. And once you realize how those things are made, you start to go, oh my gosh, the psychology is incredible.
Jindou Lee
01:06Yeah, I remember like there was one, you know, was going to like a recording studio trying to do the audio for, think it was maybe Gauntlet or one of those titles. And is what killed my whole childhood, right, in this one moment. So I was like really excited to go check out how the recording was done and this audio. And I think they were trying to record like the death sound, you know, like, that kind of
01:27stuff. And so I was like, all I'm gonna go in and check it out. I was trying to find the recording studio, and I couldn't find it. And finally, saw this sign, you know, like recording in progress or whatever. I looked in and I saw this guy,
01:41know, sort of the Simpsons character that's like overweight, eating pizza and has a box on his tummy, and then he's just going, I'm like, Oh, man, I thought there would be at least like some actor from Hollywood or something. But it was just the pizza guy and I was like, man, that really sucked.
What HappyCo Does and Who It Serves
Nathan Latka
01:59That's hysterical. Alright. Now you're building HappyCo. So tell us what the company does and is it pure play SaaS?
Jindou Lee
02:06Yeah, for the most part it's a SaaS model that we are adopting. So maybe I'll take a little bit from the top. So HappyCo, what we do is we actually believe in building stronger, healthier and happier communities. And you know, we actually believe that life is short and we want to help people live their best lives. So in a very roundabout way, we actually offer very beautiful, like Oracle, like easy to use people centric software and
02:33technology for the multifamily real estate industry.
Nathan Latka
02:36Who's actually
Jindou Lee
02:36It's it's property management companies. It's asset owners that that manage and own residential real estate, specifically in in the apartment industry.
Geographic Focus and Market Context
Nathan Latka
02:47Okay, companies bought. Okay, and any geographical kind of center and cities, rural?
Jindou Lee
02:54I mean, the huge focus for us is North America. So like multifamily as an asset class, like the apartment industry only really exists in The US
Nathan Latka
02:54Really? In
Jindou Lee
02:54Yeah, it's crazy because I came from Australia. So this accent you're hearing is an Irish. It actually throws people off and they hear and they look at me like, I don't know what to do. So in Australia, there is just single family, like for rentals, it's just single family
03:21or condos, right? So you can buy an apartment, but you can't really rent one
03:27that's institutionally owned. So really this only exists in The US. Having said that, it's actually starting to explode in other cities. I know in Europe, it's getting pretty huge now. South America is getting pretty big. And so I think it's starting to catch wind and everyone is trying to model The US sort of, the model that we have in The US. So it's getting pretty, yeah.
Pricing and Average Contract Value
Nathan Latka
03:53Okay, so these guys are paying. Now. We're short on time, I don't wanna go on every customer cohort. So I mean, on average, what would you say one of these folks are paying you per year to manage their properties?
Jindou Lee
04:03So what we actually... What we do is we actually sell software to them, right? To do
Nathan Latka
04:03Yeah. That's what
04:09I'm asking. What do they pay for the software?
Jindou Lee
04:11Between like... Anywhere between... On the enterprise side, between like a 50 to a 100 k ACV is what we typically see.
Nathan Latka
04:18Mhmm. But I... Again, if I force you to an average across your entire base, what would you say that kind of average ACV is?
Jindou Lee
04:24If I took out all the SMB, then I would say around the 70 ks.
Nathan Latka
04:28Okay. But but again, I guess what I'm asking really is the reason I'm asking an average is that will tell us who your like main cohort is. Do you have a like a large majority of your revenue made up from SMB?
Jindou Lee
04:39No. Our our main... Our our focus today is really on the enterprise side. So anyone that manages, you know, 2,000 apartments and above, our largest customer manages couple 100,000 units.
The Pivot to Enterprise in 2016, Team Size and Funding
Nathan Latka
04:50Okay. Historically, though, you now moving upmarket or have you always had kind of average ACVs of $70,000?
Jindou Lee
04:50No,
04:58we first started, our average ACV was maybe $500 a month, a year. Yeah. So we started off in the SMB space and that, we over time, probably in 2017, we made this jump from the SMB to enterprise.
Nathan Latka
05:15Okay. Yes. Yes. So see, I wanna understand that trend. So I wanna dive into that, but first, just so know why I'm asking. So today, what would you the average entire customer base? It's obviously lower than 70.
Jindou Lee
05:26That's a very tough question.
05:32Call it about $5,000 if you kind of average across all our customer base.
Nathan Latka
05:39So that's really helpful. Now take me back. When did you have the moment where you're like, I love these customers, but we've got to go upmarket?
Jindou Lee
05:46Yeah. So I can tell you exactly when it happened. So if you went back, so SMB is you might manage like 200 properties, right? Like 200 doors. So the moment that blew my mind was we had a call in 2016 and some guy rang and said, Hey, I want to use your software to do inspections. I'm like, Oh, great. How many properties do you manage? And he goes, Well, we own and manage 110,000 units. And I
06:12was just like, Yeah, we can handle that. And hung up the phone and we're like, Holy crap, we did the maths on that. And we're like, That's amazing. That would have been the equivalent of signing up, you know, a thousand SMB customers. And so we actually launched to them. And the cool part was with an SMB customer, you spend probably one support ticket a month on an SMB customer paying you $50 a month, right? And then
06:37with this enterprise customer that was paying way more, we only did one support ticket a month as well. And it was a very, it was an easy question to answer. Wasn't like, hey, how do I turn on my iPad? Yeah. It's that big moment. I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna keep doing that.
Nathan Latka
06:52That's smart. So okay, so when did you launch the company?
Jindou Lee
06:56We launched it in officially in 2012.
Nathan Latka
06:59Okay, pivot to enterprise was what year?
Jindou Lee
07:012016.
Nathan Latka
07:032016 pivot enterprise. Okay, and what's team size today?
Jindou Lee
07:07We're just around 55 people in the company.
Nathan Latka
07:10Oh, very good. And have you decided to bootstrap the company or did you take dilution and raise?
Jindou Lee
07:14We've we've we've we've we've
07:28we've we've we've
07:30We've we've raised raised about $11,000,000 today.
Nathan Latka
07:33Okay, I mean, not horrible, but still a big chunk. Why'd you have to raise? I mean, what is the most cost intensive thing about what you're doing?
Jindou Lee
07:43So like people, right? It's like hiring people. And then with SaaS models, as you probably know and your viewers know, there's this sort of valley of death where you kind of have to deal with stuff. You don't get enough revenue. And so you have to kind of figure out creative ways to do that. I would have to... If I went back and redid everything,
08:03I would probably not raise a single dollar.
Nathan Latka
08:05Yeah. Yeah. I mean, by the way, I think most founders generally would say that. Now was the 11,000,000 all equity or was there any debt?
Jindou Lee
08:12It was all equity.
Getting the First 100 Customers via Cold Outreach
Nathan Latka
08:14All equity, okay. Yeah, I think most founders would say that. So, alright, let's go, I know we're jumping around, but let's go back to the start here for a second. How'd you get the first 100 customers?
Jindou Lee
08:23Okay, so way I sort of started this was I actually own a bunch of real estate and I really love investing. And then through that process, I had property managers that would be managing my properties. And they were giving me these reports of the inspection reports of pen and paper. I'm like, what the hell is going on? I pay you good money to do this. And I found out there was no software. So I made some
08:49screenshots on an iPad one. So no camera, just iPad one. And I rang 20 companies, I cold call and I said, Hey, I've got this cool app. Can I come and show you? And I'll go in and demo the app. It's like screenshots on an iPad one fit nicely. They were trying to tap it. I'm like, No, no, these are photos. It's not an app. And we actually had 19 of the 20 people I met actually
09:08signed up to use the software before we had anything. So that was
Nathan Latka
09:08Did they pay?
Jindou Lee
09:08That's how it's... Yeah. So they signed up to pay $50 a month.
Nathan Latka
09:16Okay. So you had about, you had about, again, a thousand bucks kind of in presales?
Jindou Lee
09:20Yeah. It it wasn't a lot, but it was like, holy crap. Now I've got to actually build it. I've I've got the actual contracts from from that... From back in the day.
Nathan Latka
09:27That's so cool.
Jindou Lee
09:28It was so dodgy. It's just... Yeah.
Nathan Latka
09:30No. I'm thinking about that. Why do say it's dodgy? No. That gives a bad... That gives a negative rap to what you did. I think it's smart.
Jindou Lee
09:36Well, it's smart in hindsight, but the copy that I have on there is just, you know, I really pay you money. I'm like, oh my god, like, there's no sophistication in that whatsoever.
Nathan Latka
09:46That's the way we do it.
Jindou Lee
09:48Yeah. But, you know, and I went back the... I went back home and I was like, rang my co founder and I said, hey, can you build this at night for me? And he was working at another video gaming company. And he's like, yeah, I'll do it. And that's how we got started.
Customer Count, Units, and Usage Metrics
Nathan Latka
10:00That's great. So now fast forward, whatever, six, seven years, how many customers are you serving today?
Jindou Lee
10:07All up in the portfolio, around the sort of 1,500 accounts.
Nathan Latka
10:12Okay. 1,500 accounts. And then you have some roll update on your website, but give me the updated number. So 1,500 accounts, how many locations managed or doors managed?
Jindou Lee
10:21So we are at about 1,900,000 units on the management. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
10:25Okay. 1,900,000 kind of units. And then you also give quantitative metrics around inspections and photos. So how many inspections are you doing, call it annually today?
Jindou Lee
10:35Oh, jeez. I think we're we're we're around the 4,000,000 mark right at the moment. And for number of photos, this is cumulative number of photos, and it's very important that it's cumulative. We have about a 131,000,000 photos.
Nathan Latka
10:49What about just over the past year?
Jindou Lee
10:54I would say about maybe six or 7,000,000 would be over the past year.
Nathan Latka
10:58So actually not Yeah. That means growth rates kind of... You're only been in business seven or eight years and you have a 130,000,000 total and only seven over the past twelve months, that's actually declining in terms of usage.
Jindou Lee
11:07Oh, sorry. A month.
Nathan Latka
11:09Oh, got it.
Jindou Lee
11:09We we actually... Yeah. So so the
11:11last
Nathan Latka
11:11So about 84,000,000 over the past twelve months.
Jindou Lee
11:14Yeah. We've we've grown a lot in the last... I'd say last twenty four months has been... We've seen a lot... Most of our growth in the last twenty four months.
Churn and Net Dollar Retention
Nathan Latka
11:22Yeah. Yeah. Now churn's critical in a SaaS company. What's been your annual revenue or your gross annual revenue churn?
Jindou Lee
11:29It's really been just... So we really focus on enterprise. We don't look at SMB at
Nathan Latka
11:29Yes.
11:35Churn SMB, right? So I'm trying to see let's quantify the revenue loss there.
Jindou Lee
11:39In SMB, we would churn about maybe five accounts for the SMB a month.
Nathan Latka
11:39Okay.
Jindou Lee
11:39For enterprise, we've churned two accounts in the last
11:4812
Nathan Latka
11:48But Jindou, it doesn't matter. Let's not use the number of accounts because they're so different. That's why we measure revenue churn because then you look at just a dollar, not how many accounts make up the dollar. So revenue churn over the past twelve months has been about what you think.
Jindou Lee
12:02Oh, it's been maybe 10%, something
Nathan Latka
12:02Yeah. Even way
12:09Does your expansion as you upsell across your kind of three product tiers, then happy manage, happy insights, happy inspector, does it more than make up for the 10% lost?
Jindou Lee
12:18Yeah. So net dollar retention on average is around 112%.
Nathan Latka
12:23Okay. So you have 22% expansion then on the 10% churn.
Jindou Lee
12:26And if you split up the cohort to just enterprise, I think it's something along the top 100 customers have a 160%. The last twelve months have a 160% dollar retention.
CAC Payback and Conference Strategy
Nathan Latka
12:37Yeah. That's good. I wanna I wanna talk more about kind of your upsell motion here in a second. But I mean, can I do? Mean, I guess, tell me how you're adding new customers today. So if a new customer is coming on at a $70,000 ACV, what's your fully weighted CAC look like?
Jindou Lee
12:51So we look at it from a payback perspective.
Nathan Latka
12:54That's fine.
Jindou Lee
12:54It takes twelve months twelve months to pay back.
Nathan Latka
12:56Okay. So you'll spend $70,000 to get a new $70,000 a month customer. A year, a year, $70,000 a year customer.
Jindou Lee
13:02Fully loaded marketing, marketing events, customers, implementations has a portion of that and then all the sales team.
Nathan Latka
13:11Yeah. What's the last conference you went to that that worked really nicely for you?
Jindou Lee
13:15We go to all the industry conferences. Last one was NMHC, which is the national apartment, like the housing count... Multifamily council. And then we're going to NAA next week, which is the the big, big one. What's called? Apartment Association.
Nathan Latka
13:32National Apartment, NAA. Yeah. Very cool.
Jindou Lee
13:35That's the big one. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
13:37Yeah. That's good. And obviously, are sponsor fees involved there, but still generally, if you spend $10, you're gonna look to get $10 in new ARR?
Jindou Lee
13:46Way, way more than that. Yeah. Yeah. So what we do is we kind of run it like a multi touch attribution, and which is really tough in enterprise, as you know, because you talk to someone and it really is another 10 more touches before you even get to something exciting. So... But but the conferences, do really well for us.
Nathan Latka
14:04Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Okay. 2012, you scaled it at 1,500 customers. You're moving in the enterprise, but historically, the average is you said call it maybe $6,000 ACVs or $500 a month. I mean, if I multiply that, that
Jindou Lee
14:16Lower than that. Like, historically, it was, you know, $50 a month. Like, that's when we first started. Right? And then we started to... On average, if you took away all, let's say, the 1,400 customers and just took on the first... The top 100, then that would be that magic number, the 70 k.
Nathan Latka
14:36Okay. Got it. And and how... What percent of revenue do the top 100 customers represent, would you say?
Jindou Lee
14:42About 70% of the the revenue.
Nathan Latka
14:45Okay. I mean, yeah, so that's fairly that's fair. Okay, fairly significant. So yeah, and when did you sign your first enterprise deal? Was it was that call you had back in the day?
Jindou Lee
14:55Yeah, I think that was the one that we kind of always said that. That was the time when we went, oh, let's move to enterprise. We did have a few enterprise customers before that, but they were just big accounts. We didn't call them... We didn't classify them as such. So really, 2016 was the first time we we we made that switch consciously.
Nathan Latka
15:13Yeah. And then look, I mean, can I back into the math? So a 100 of your enterprise accounts, $70,000 ACVs, you're at about 7,000,000 run rate today without including your SMB cohort?
Jindou Lee
15:23Yeah, about that.
Nathan Latka
15:24That's good. And then you said that that represented out 70% of your total. So can I multiply that times 1.3 to get your kind of total run rate today or no?
Jindou Lee
15:34I think you could get... Yeah, they will be very close to that number. Yes.
Growth Rate and EBITDA Margin
Nathan Latka
15:37Okay. Well, I guess, let me ask you about growth rate, right? So if that's where you're at today, what would you put growth rate over the past twelve months?
Jindou Lee
15:46So last year, we grew at a 60% top line year over year. And then we had a minus 10% EBITDA margin. So we look at that pretty closely. This year, we're looking at a, well, we're on track to doing about 70 top line and then a 10% positive EBITDA margin this year.
Nathan Latka
16:04Yeah. So you're, you know, we can calculate E40 metric, 60% growth, negative 10% EBITDA would put about E50, which is pretty darn healthy.
Jindou Lee
16:12Yeah.
Nathan Latka
16:13How do you manage decisions around kind of fluctuating those two things, increase cash burn to drive growth, decrease cash burn, but lower growth?
Near-Payroll Crisis in 2016 and Path to Profitability
Jindou Lee
16:21So I think, so last year, what we did is, I hate fundraising, I'm really crap at fundraising. And in 2017 was our sort of last round of... So let me shift a little bit back, and hopefully this will resonate to some of your listeners. 2015, I think 2016, we raised a bunch of... A bit of capital, and we had about, maybe 25 people in the company at that stage. We had about $110,000 left in the bank.
16:48Next payroll was in three days, four days.
Nathan Latka
16:50What year was that?
Jindou Lee
16:52That was 2016. That was 2016.
Nathan Latka
16:56100 k left in the bank.
Jindou Lee
16:58Yep. 25 people on payroll. Next payroll cycle would be in three, four days. Like, that was pretty stressful. That's like the... You know, I remember going, I don't know if I can swear, but dang, we need to get this sorted. And like we were negotiating a term sheet and it just took forever. And then finally I rang one of our investors and I said, Hey, look, this round that you agreed to be in, we probably can't
17:22do it. Like, we may not be able to do it because we're running out of cash. And he's like, these are a bunch of Belgium guys, really great guys. They said, You know what? I'll wire you $500,000 and we'll get the paperwork sorted afterwards.
Nathan Latka
17:33There are investors on your cap table today?
Jindou Lee
17:35Our cap table today. And yeah, my co founder and I were sitting in my bedroom of our sort of living room, the studio apartment in San Francisco. That's how glamorous we are. We sat down and went, damn, like I never want to do this again. We saw the wire hit the bank account and we just went, phew, we dodged a bullet. And so I decided I don't want to have to do that again. So when we
17:57raised the last round of funding in 2017, our goal was to get profitable. And we'd got there in December last year.
Nathan Latka
18:05That's good. And so what today kind of, know, EBITDA margin is what, positive 10%?
Jindou Lee
18:10Positive 10%, yeah. On track to doing positive 10%.
Nathan Latka
18:12Yeah, yeah. And again, if you're doing 7,000,000 from enterprise and then multiply by 1.3, that's called 9,000,000 run rate monthly. That means you're taking what? I mean, $7.50 a month or talking about $75,000 in free cash flow monthly.
Jindou Lee
18:24Correct.
Nathan Latka
18:25You just let it pile up as a safety net?
Jindou Lee
18:28So what we do is we've spent a lot of time recreating a bit more discipline and structure in our organization. So what we do, we have a planning framework, which sounds really boring, but what it is is you would say, okay, now we have... So let's say in Q1, we take that for example. We actually came up $500,000 ahead of budget, right? So we go, okay, well, $500,000 ahead of budget. Then we go, how do we
18:51spend this money? And then we have a bunch of projects which we have all in our back burner. We go, we should invest in these two or three areas. One of it is actually to increase the, well, one of the projects was to make our existing employees happier. So what does that mean? Reevaluating their benefits and their salaries. But that's one project and there's another two more which we kind of picked and we sort of said,
19:15let's allocate that capital into these two or three projects. That's how we
Planned Fundraise and Debt Strategy
Nathan Latka
19:20Any plans to raise capital now?
Jindou Lee
19:22We are actually going through a fundraiser right now. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
19:25What's the right... I mean, what do you think the right amount is to raise currently?
Jindou Lee
19:30So we're doing it because we have a bunch of customers that want to put capital in the company. And for us,
19:39yeah, we don't need to raise that. We really just want... We're working on a few projects that would need our customers to back us. I don't know how to really give more away, but
Nathan Latka
19:39No.
19:47No. I'm just curious. Like, are you looking at, a $5,000,000 round, 10,000,000, 20,000,000?
Jindou Lee
19:51We're probably gonna do a $10,000,000 round. But only half of that will probably hit the balance sheet, and then we'll probably do a bit of debt on top of that as well if we choose to.
Nathan Latka
20:02So you think you'll do 5,000,000 in equity from customers and then 5,000,000 debt if you want to?
Jindou Lee
20:06I think something along those lines is what we're aiming for. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
20:10Which debt firm do you think you'll work with?
Jindou Lee
20:13We're going go with a very, very, a more traditional lender. We don't want to do any venture debt.
Nathan Latka
20:17Why is that?
Jindou Lee
20:18Because I think, like, I looked at it and I just think the venture that I think it's structured in a way to make your business,
20:28like, I don't know, it's not very friendly to a business, right? Because you have these covenants and you have all these different like cause that make you work a certain way. And if you change your business model, you can't change it because they're like, well, you said you were gonna do x and now we're gonna call back and we're gonna do it
Nathan Latka
20:43like any venture debt firms where they just... There were no covenants, no warrants, and no personal guarantees? It was just a simple interest rate?
Jindou Lee
20:50There's very few that will do that.
Nathan Latka
20:52Interesting. I do a deal with By by the way, surprise. I do this on the side. I would do a deal with you where it's no covenants, no warrants, no personal guarantees, 5,000,000 at a simple interest rate.
Jindou Lee
21:02I'll do that do any day.
Nathan Latka
21:03Okay. Let's chat a little I'm dead serious. I do this. My whole thing is like, saw some of these term sheets as well. And I'm going because they all listen to the show and they ask for interest to CEOs. And I started looking into the term sheets. I'm going, this is crazy. This is ridiculous. So I started lending myself. You know, by the way, I'm not getting rich from it, but I'm loaning it like, you know,
21:2310 to 15% kind of very simple interest. I get no equity, no covenants, no warrants, and it works nicely for me and the founders.
Jindou Lee
21:29Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a really good product that you have there because I looked at everything and it was just very sharky, right? And I'm like, well, this is no better than raising equity. But the ones that we're talking to at the moment are people that will base, they'll lend on your revenue
Nathan Latka
21:29Yep.
Jindou Lee
21:29Or your accounts receivable. And we're like, that's easy for us because we have good control over
Nathan Latka
21:29Yeah.
21:51Yeah. I will go up exposure into any one company up to one x ARR. So I max out at around nine with you guys. Five is easy.
Jindou Lee
21:58Yeah.
Nathan Latka
21:58Yep. Cool. Awesome. Happy. I'll send you a bullet, you know, email bullet version kind of thing after this and we'll see if we make something work. That'd be fun.
Jindou Lee
22:06Yep. No. That'd fun.
Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions
Nathan Latka
22:07Alright. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?
Jindou Lee
22:12I love all of them. I I really like Principles by Ray Dalio.
Nathan Latka
22:16Yep.
22:17Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now?
Jindou Lee
22:21CEO?
22:23Not at the moment. No. I I I think everyone has something to... I can learn from.
Nathan Latka
22:27Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building your company?
Jindou Lee
22:32We
22:35use Asana a lot.
Nathan Latka
22:36Okay. Number four, how many hours of sleep you eat in every night?
Jindou Lee
22:39How many how many what, Robert?
Nathan Latka
22:41Hours of sleep.
Jindou Lee
22:43Oh, man. I have a 18 old baby. So maybe between three to four. I don't know.
Nathan Latka
22:49Okay. So married one kiddo or more?
Jindou Lee
22:53One married one kid and a little tip, have a kid when you're much younger than than what I am.
Nathan Latka
22:58How old are you?
Jindou Lee
22:59I'm 39 this year.
Nathan Latka
23:00You're still young. Alright. Last question. What do you what do you wish your 20 year old self knew?
Jindou Lee
23:10Just do what you wanna do and then, yeah, don't live up to anyone else's expectations. It's your life and just choose how you wanna live your life.
Nathan Latka
23:10Guys
Jindou Lee
23:10That's what would say.
Nathan Latka
23:20Very cool. HappyCo started off making inspection sheets going from pen and paper to digital ties. Now they're doing about $9,000,000 in terms of ARR serving 1,500 customers, but their top 100 customers make up 70% of their revenue or about $7,000,000 in ARR. They've raised $11,000,000 to do this profitable, $75,000 a month going to the bottom line. They've grown about 60% year over year, 55 folks on the team, 10% annual revenue churn gross basis, 22% expansion for
23:43a 112% net revenue retention annually spending, call it a dollar to get a new dollar of ARR. Jindou, thank you for taking us to the top.
Jindou Lee
23:51Thank you.
Nathan Latka
23:53One 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
24:17Central. 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
24:38fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement, or something else. I don't
24:42want you to miss it.
24:43Additionally, if you wanna take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for b to b SaaS founders. You wanna 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 for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be
25:05in 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 gotta push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate
25:22your guys' support. Alright. I'll be in the comments. See you.