journy.io Revenue & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Hey folks, my guest today is Hans Ott. He's a software engineer with a strong interest in domain driven design and functional programming. Deeply in love with clean code, and he'll do anything to motivate other developers to leave the campground cleaner, as they say. He's now building journy.io. That's with no e helping you better manage customer data across all your teams. Hans, are you ready to [00:21] take us to the top? [00:22] >> Yes. Yes. So journy is a customer data platform. We're especially focused on the B2B. So, we basically collect data from all kinds of sources and then we, create like unified customer profiles of users and accounts within your product. We and then you can use this data to calculate like which customers are healthy and which kind of stage they are. Are they qualified for your product? Like have they tried out this feature, [00:51] >> this feature? And then basically try to detect churn and then sync all this data back to all the tools you're already using like your CRM like HubSpot for example or Intercom for chatting with your customers. And so we want to share all that data all build this intelligence in one place and share this knowledge to all the tools you're using. [01:15] You can add really interesting elements to each of our customers'profiles. For example, tell me which ones have a healthy score, who's gone through the onboarding, what they pay, who needs attention, things like that. One of the things that you're able to give feedback on is, is the onboarding done or not? How are you able to give other software companies that kind of intelligence? Do they have to install a journy JavaScript on their site? [01:35] >> Yeah, there are a couple of ways you can do it, but a lot of organizations are using Segment already. Do you know that? Yep. Yeah, so they send already all their data, all their analytics to Segment and we are basically like a destination. So you can immediately, like with a few clicks, you can attach all your analytics data to us and then we receive this and build these [01:57] So someone someone listening wants to use journy would attach their segment account to journy and that's how you're rating their customers? [02:05] >> That's that's the fastest way, but of course we also have our own APIs and SDKs that you can use to integrate or to send your analytics data to us. [02:14] How many companies have connected their analytics to you? [02:18] >> Well, we're still like in an early phase in that regard. So we spend a lot of time trying to think. We originally started as like an attribution platform. So which channels and campaigns bring you the most and best customers. But we pivoted it to this customer data platform and so that took a while and to build like all these things and get it like there is a lot of technical stuff involved and so it took a [02:48] >> long time to build this great platform. So there are a lot of moving parts like you have. You need to have this segment destination. [02:57] >> Need What's have the number? [02:59] How many connected accounts? [03:01] >> Yeah, there are a few accounts onboarding. So and one paying customer. [03:07] Hey, we love that. You shouldn't be shy to share that. Everyone has to start at zero. Okay. So you have one paying customer and how many connected accounts you said? [03:15] >> And there are a couple of accounts onboarding right now. Trying out our integration. [03:22] And what is the one paying? How much are they paying? [03:25] >> Well, they are not paying. I think I don't know the number by not exactly, but they're they they don't leverage like all the features that we have right now. And we're trying to push that, of course, that they use all kinds of features. They didn't integrate their product yet, but so I think they are paying €100. [03:50] Okay. So about a 120 US dollars per per month, which is great. The reason I ask is this is like a magical moment every founder has to go through is what pricing do you launch with? And obviously you're going to experiment a ton over the next, you know, many months, but why did you pick this price point to start? [04:05] >> Yeah. So it's based on the number of contacts that you have because for every contact we have to keep recalculating things and so forth. And so it's based on the amount of contacts that you can play with a slider on our website to see what kind of price you would pay. So [04:26] >> it scales with your customer base basically. [04:29] Yep. So 20,000 contacts would be about €1,000 per month. What's the math behind this? Is it just a ratio you're applying? [04:35] >> Well, looked at other people who are in this space compared with our pricing and we're actually a lot cheaper than most platforms out there. So I think we have a great pricing at this moment. But of course, we still have to test and play with this, of course. [04:57] Who do you compete with directly? [05:00] >> We compete with like a number of, I think, customer success tools like there is Vitally or Salesmachine. I don't know if you know them. So a couple of products that are, but they are really focused on the customer success side and we want to take it broader than that and also focus on the sales because if you have a customer onboarding, some customers try the right features and then your sales can focus on the right customers [05:33] because if you have a [05:34] >> long list of customers you need to call, you want to prioritize and sort them by their adoption score or whatever. [05:43] Hans, when did you write the first line of code for journy? [05:47] >> I think it was like almost two years ago, I think. But we were still, my co founder and I were still having other jobs. And so it was kind of a side project. And then at some point we decided, okay, we want to take this further, work on it full time. And then we found the seeding and then did things. [06:13] Oh, did raise a seed round of capital? [06:16] >> Yes. Yes. [06:17] How much did you guys raise? [06:20] >> 450,000. [06:21] Was that last year? [06:23] >> It was like in February, I think. [06:26] Okay. Of this year? Yeah. Okay. And did you raise that on sort of a cap or a note or a priced round? [06:35] >> Well, I don't know if I can share these details. [06:43] Was there a valuation attached or was there a cap on it? Like was it debt, a convertible note? [06:47] >> It was a cap, What a cap? [06:49] Oh, I see. I see. So obviously driving evaluation when you're pre revenue is all about your ability to tell a really good story about what you could build, the value you could create. So what valuation did you end up raising the 450,000 at? [07:02] >> I don't know these exacts actually. [07:06] >> Yeah. Because my co founder is more focused on this part, but I don't know the exacts about it. It's been a while since I looked at these things. [07:16] Hans, I mean, I mean, I imagine someone listening right now is going go, wait a second. This is the co founder of a company. They raised capital and this guy doesn't know how much of the company he sold in the round. He doesn't know the valuation. Would be like one of the main things that every early stage founder would make sure they're focused on is minimizing dilution. [07:31] >> Well, since we didn't, how do you say this? [07:40] >> Well, I don't know if I can share these things. [07:46] Well, how much of the company do you own? Let's just talk about your own stuff. [07:51] >> Well, don't want to share this knowledge either. [07:56] Okay. Many did you find this yourself or how many co founders do you have? [08:00] >> Well, we're with two co founders. And so we started the company on ourself and then we found the seed. [08:08] And did you guys just agree at the beginning, just split it right down the middle or did one of you guys take more because you were investing your own money or leaving a bigger job or something like that? [08:16] >> Well, it's very [08:22] >> even, I would say. [08:24] And why is that? You know, sometimes people don't split evenly, sometimes they split it evenly, but why did you guys decide on even? [08:32] >> Well, we think we're both in this journey together, so it's important that we're both as even invested in this project. And so that's super important that we can trust each other and that we are willing to fight both for for the same reason. [08:52] Why did you have to I mean, this doesn't sound like a huge technical problem. You're connecting basically to a segment API feed and then making it look pretty with these customer cards. Why did you have to go raise capital and sell equity to get this going? Like, couldn't you use, you know, a little bit of savings or pre sell some customers? [09:08] >> Because there are like a lot of moving parts and you're syncing to CRMs and you don't want to mess up any data because often these systems don't have any [09:22] >> backup systems or some companies use. But often, like your CRM has only this one version and you can go roll back. And so you don't want to mess up this data. And so we're really focused on building a great platform and there are a lot of moving parts in it. You have to build these great APIs that you can use in your product. The developer experience has to be good and so we needed a lot of [09:49] >> functionality to come. It doesn't look like much from the outside but there are a lot of things that you need to solve and like identity resolution and all those kinds of things, basically. [10:01] Mhmm. But there's I mean, what you're kind of what you just said is you want to build a great tool, you have to raise money. [10:05] >> I can [10:05] tell you there's a lot of great founders that do not raise money. They pre sell the idea and they fund themselves and keep all the equity. Why didn't you go that path? Does anyone do either you or your co founder sell? Are you salesperson? [10:16] >> Yeah. Eve is more the commercial minded person, but he was also a programmer in his early days. So he knows a lot about the technical stuff as well. [10:27] How many folks are on the team now today? Just the both of you? [10:30] >> No. We're with five full time people working on a product. And then we have some other very talented students who are also like entrepreneurs working for us. And so, yeah, we're doing it with that team. [10:47] If we're being conservative and say five full time people at very small salaries, right? You're spending $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a month on headcount annually that burns through all of your seed money. Right? Does that make you nervous? And how do you manage burn? [11:02] >> Well, we're very confident about we don't worry about that part. Of course, there's always some worrying. I guess that's normal, but we're seeing this space and it's growing and it's a really cool place. Yeah, like market to be in. And so we're not that scared that we're going to run out of money eventually. So we just want to focus on building that product and finding the customers and making them happy and then it will come. [11:35] Where, where, what do you know? You mentioned you have four people on pilots right now. What activation metrics do you know that they need to hit in order to increase likelihood they start paying? [11:46] >> Well, I think it's like how quickly can they integrate with our APIs? Are they getting the right amount of actionable knowledge about from that from this data? [12:01] How do you measure that, though? [12:04] >> Well, of course, we're using our own tool to collect data from our customers. We're using our own tool. And so in that way, we can also play with our own features and know what we have to improve. But other than that, it's it's still finding like a bit that market fit and what are the features we have to focus on and a lot of talking with the customers and seeing what they are interested in to know [12:37] >> what kind of insights they want to know, what kind of insights they want to send back. And so it's still a lot of figuring out right now. [12:45] And Hans, over the past seven days, how many customers have you talked to? [12:52] >> I'm not sure. I think about like seven or something like that. [12:59] And what's your process? You get on Zoom, you ask them questions, you write down what they like and say they're willing to pay for what the process look like. [13:05] >> Yeah, we we try to design like a survey that encompasses like all the right questions like what kind of tools you use right now, what kind of CRM do you like, would you like to see which stage a customer is that it automatically goes from this stage to another stage and so forth? And so [13:32] >> they need to push their business further and to break down those boundaries between like all the teams, the customer success and the sales and so forth. [13:44] Very cool. What is your guys'goal for next year? What revenue do you hope [13:48] >> you guys will hit? [13:50] >> Well, I think our targets were to have like 50 paying customers. So but of course it will be more than that that we want. But right now we're just focused on finding the right feature sets and finding the right customers that can support that. [14:12] Hans, on that note, let's wrap up [14:15] with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book? [14:19] >> It's Atomic Habits. [14:20] James Clear. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [14:25] >> Yeah. I'm very fan of Nat Friedman, the CEO from GitHub. [14:32] >> Yes. [14:33] I'll just say GitLab or GitHub? [14:34] >> GitHub. Number three. [14:35] What's your favorite online tool for building the business? [14:39] >> GitHub. Besides GitHub? [14:41] >> I think it's [14:48] >> you surprised me. I think it's my editor right now because I've wrote a lot of code for that. It's like beach peace storm. That's what's that's the name [14:57] number for how many hours of sleep do get every night? [15:00] >> Eight. [15:01] And what's your situation on? Are you married, single, kids? [15:05] >> I have a girlfriend and we have two cats. [15:07] Oh, okay. How old are you? [15:09] >> I'm 27. [15:11] >> 27. [15:12] Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20? [15:15] >> That it's never too late to start learning anything. Like I'm very busy with music as well. And so I should have started earlier with music. I kind of realized this very late. And so it's never too late to start learning anything basically as long as you're passionate. [15:34] Guys, journy.io helps you understand which customers are hot, which ones need help. Tie to your segment data and other data sources to tell you that. Started as a side project in 2019, raised some seed capital in February this year, $450,000, and just landed their first paying customer, which we love at a $120 a month, hoping to hit 50 paying customers in 2022 as they look to scale with their team of five. Hans, thank you for taking [15:56] us to the top. [15:57] >> Thank you. [15:59] 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 [16:25] 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 [16:47] 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 [17:09] 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, I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We got [17:28] 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.