How Hi Platform CEO Vinícius Fagundes grew Hi Platform to $22.8M revenue with a 179 person team in 2024.

guys highplatform.com was launched in 2017 the four co-founders owned 20 together and other investors from an earlier acquisite you know merger deal on the other eighty percent today the company is doing 13 million bucks in ARR up from 11 million about 11.5 million about a year ago they raised a seven million dollar round of funding their first outside funding last year at a 40 million evaluation which was about a 3X valuation multiple and the co-founders have gotten smart they bought back a bunch of equity over the years they now own 40 together which is great as Marcelo and team focus on growing High platform.com hey folks my guest today is Marcelo puglisi he's been an entrepreneur since the early 2000s and participated in the launch of eight different startups since 2017 he's been the CEO of high platform the largest customer experience SAS platform in Brazil he participated in fundraising operations M A and mentoring processes uh processes is a fan of conscious capitalism behavioral economics and corporate culture and he's a married father one kid named Benjamin uh graduated in MBA with specializations in management and sales Innovation Marcelo you ready to take us to the top all right so just to be clear put us on a timeline for us what year did High platform launch and when did you join as CEO uh We've launched uh January 2017 and me and three other co-founders and since day one I was the CEO of the company okay and why do I have your start date as 2000 oh I started other businesses uh in 2000 uh with other guys so my journey started as an entrepreneur started here in Brazil and in mid uh June 2000 uh with a company called direct talk and we've stayed uh for a while in the market and actually High platform direct talk originated High platform uh we got some of them so it's the same it's the same cap table then right it's a different cap table uh but with also when did when did you cut that then when did direct platform stop in high start uh January 2017. okay we got it yeah but with if with a different cap table and uh a different different some different products uh but me as as one of the founders how did you do that right so there's a lot of folks listening right now that might have raised a 200 300 500 000 seat round two three years ago and they're going man I love my investors I want to make them whole but this business is not working I want to shut it down and launch their own version of high platform how do you shut down that thing without pissing off the old investors at DirecTV uh we actually didn't shut down uh we merged with another startup it was a a Brazilian startup for uh uh social media Customer Care customer care care and I we started speaking talking with their investors and they are they were very into uh they wanted to invest in in some chatbot products here in Brazil and direct talk used to have this product and and these guys they they just asked me uh could you speak with the the other Founders and and see if you can work together uh can you can you imagine an angle where you put all these products together and the conversations went went pretty well uh the products were very uh complementary so okay so understood you you sold you merged that business then you're done and you move into high platform 2017. now you with your three other co-founders did you guys play nice on day one did you just split Equity evenly or was it sort of lopsided oh we actually we were we had a very little uh of of the shares so we got together the four of us with very close participations uh but we've worked the past three years uh to have more shares and to uh even balanced more our our positions 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 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 I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview so when you started Martell like if somebody owned more why did you guys read it whoever that was was going to earn like or have more at the beginning uh yeah but that that was not that much different uh the difference was not the Gap was not that large uh and uh we we've uh we actually did get along pretty well and it was easy to choose our uh roles as Executives uh despite of the the shares we used to have okay so you need to own about 25 then at the start somewhere right around there no actually we we had uh way little than that because the investors are from both companies that merged they came together so we have a very uh how can I say that in English but uh we have a very fast of fragmented fragmented cap table uh so how much how much let me just ask it this way how how much of the company did you guys as the four Founders not own oh we actually had uh 20 of the company okay so other people investors from the merge company they own the other 80 and you guys split the 20 four ways five percent each yeah yeah I see and Marcelo why do that you're like a talented executive you're well known in Brazil why get involved with something where you only own five percent why not go start your own thing and own 100 uh my wife asked me that uh I'm not your wife but I still think that question yeah that's a very good one uh uh Nathan to be really honest I was so much into the business I was so excited about uh uh Division and the goal and and of course the challenge uh that really I I wasn't to me and I I've chosen the the the path uh the difficult one because uh with we've doubled our participation in the last two years so we've uh we bought shares from other uh yeah that's it that's it but I it was I it was a tough a a tough uh challenge where did you get the money to buy out earlier investors bonuses but where did you get the money from was it profits yeah bonuses from the company so you you have earned bonuses from the company since 2017 and you used your personal money to buy out earlier investors based off your bonuses yeah that's it I see if you're earning all those bonuses though how do you convince the early investors to sell at a price that you can actually purchase shares using your bonus dollars uh we had some we had some guys on the cap table that uh were on the on the company for a while uh they were tired uh they had a minority position so they didn't vote and they didn't participate on the company so they were not happy with this uh position and to then uh the even even though we bought a little a more cheap uh they had they had a good return so it was a good deal to to everyone yeah now guys I'm asking all these questions because High has significant revenues you know Marcel when we last spoke back in June I think it was of 2018 or 2019 you said something like you had 1100 customers paying on average a thousand dollars USD a month so you guys are doing 700 800 000 a month in Revenue back then right uh yes yes we we are doing uh what...