How Kahuna CEO Sameer Patel grew Kahuna to $3.6M revenue and 100 customers in 2018.

hello everyone my guest is Samir Patel he joined a company called kahuna in August of 2016 as its CEO before Kahuna's Samir was GM at s AP and success factors where I live a team responsible for making sa P a leading provider of collaboration solutions serving over 35 million subscribers Samir received a Bachelor at bachelor's and master's degrees from Babson College and Boston University Samir are you ready to take us to the top alright so so what is kahuna and what is the business models it's as if the fat company focused on customer engagement for consumer marketplaces so everybody from if you are classified you're right sharing like an uber or Airbnb or a door - or Yelp or an open table when you bring buyers and sellers together kahuna helps you find the right buyer spin them up get them on board and get them on the on the platform same for the sellers gives you the analytics to figure out who's your most profitable buyer way should be doubling down where should you fix your stuff and hopefully grow your market so give us an example for uber let's say they onboard a thousand new drivers in New York City next month that obviously then they're there that they're selling their services I'm the buyer as the consumer that wants that uber trip in New York how do you work with both sides so if you're on a you know so I'll use curve the curve is a customer of ours they do write tax sales in New York they used to Hoonah the idea here is you spent a ton of money on both sides which a typical business doesn't have if you're not a marketplace right in the marketplace you gotta sell money to borrow up sellers and fire our buyers you spent all this money bringing them to your site getting them engaged Kahuna picks up the ball right from that point when they land on one of your properties and guides them through step one step two and whatever that step is by your definition to say loyal buyer loyal seller right so we'll we'll get them will nudge them through the registration process we'll make sure that if your definition is if a drug if a passenger doesn't take three point four five rides they're not a royal drug customer Kuna will stay on them till we get you to that place right if someone's dormant they came they signed up the user once they haven't come back with we'll wake those people up yeah so you know if you're a marketplace right now you it is supremely expensive for you to go and get people to pay attention to what you're doing and to come to your site but once that happens you need somebody to really get your customer acquisition costs covered you need to drive them through a very very systematic process to get them to a point where every time they think of taking a ride they will take you they'll use curb every time you think of restaurant they'll use your service secure consumer service if you want delivery they'll use you not somebody else right so we wake up every day trying to solve that on both sides because if you don't have both sides working you can spin up buyers and sellers but if you got if you got if I got a lot of buyers in Austin a lot of drivers in California it doesn't make it doesn't help so we can help you with those kinds yep that makes good sense to me or walk me I don't know it on every customer core I'm sure you have a bunch segmented but generally speaking what does the customer pay you per month for this kind of service just ready at all it's all an activity in a volume-based right we've got customers repairs you know three thousand dollars a month my customers pay us thirty thousand okay well I don't know what do you think is more of a fare average you know four or five grand a month or twenty thirty grand a month I mean it's really hard right like it I don't think there is one I think it's just basically depending on the size and the volume of your businesses if you're in a small country somewhere in the world and you know you've got a curtail user base that can never grow over five million or ten million it's going to be on the smaller end if you're selling across world domination and you are 12 countries it's gonna you know you selling you spending twenty thirty thousand dollars for CRM at that point in time is a drop in the box yeah all right 2016 is when you joined a CEO why did you join do they pursue you or you pursued them no they found me and I got into it pretty quickly so I will not you know I won't they definitely came to me first but it didn't take long for me to fall in love with just a core of what this company is built why becomes you Donnie was they were they raising a VC round and they said you gotta bring in a CEO go find one no I think I think I think at the point where Kahuna was four years into its life it was you know they'd been assisted been tremendous technology build on the as far as the company was concerned the question now was how do we find someone who can help them figure out market that we go Oscar that we can actually own dominate only the stock leadership around on the technology space Iran know exactly we build stuff kind of what I love to do and so you know when I walked in and I started going through the interview process I quickly realized that you know I did have a bit of an unfair advantage the work that was done before I came up on the technology side was actually unique was different you know the pedigree of Kahuna the co-founder on the technology side was a co-founder of Sugar CRM your house real quick how many co-founders were there just one or two okay are they both still with the company active the technology one is they both are active yes the technology founder is head of data science in the building and Adam our chick who was the other co-founder he's he's on the board oh great okay very good and give me a general census you know size today how many folks are on the team total we got about a really shy of 40 okay the team is based in Redwood City we have just opened offices in Asia on the sales and customer success side and but we're pretty concentrated at the team you know all engineering right here in Redwood City is over 40 folks and over the years you know 2012 to 2016 they grew then you've driven more growth between 2016 and today what are you right now in terms of total customers using the platform well you know close to 100 customers using the platform our growth mainly so far has been international every country on the planet right now is racing to build out there with Zillow there Airbnb there uber there door - so but just the growth we're seeing outside the US right now is phenomenal we're starting to see growth in the US as well now the growth in the u.s. is much more verticalized market basis so you know we're not a jobs market place that we do jobs just for the gig econ for example or you know people who are saying hey we're going to try to do like a marketplace it's a doctor's for example so there's a lot of vertical eyes once in the US but there are massive land grabs happening in every other part of the world and Kahuna's got you know leading customers in Asia leading customers in Latin America and so we're just systematically building out a pretty wide berth so over the past months what did you guys grow at 30 percent a hundred percent forty percent where you at private company but way over hundred so we're growing you know we're growing really really fast I think our you know our as we are investing heavy on the sales and marketing side we're actually starting to see really good on the ground traction on the go-to-market side consistently across all the doors are you just using revenue to drive this quarter if you guys raise capital to fuel additional growth we raise capital Kahuna is backed by soft tech Sequoia Capital and and and Tenaya capital and we've raised close to fifty million five zero one five five zero five zero and did you say Timmy on the end the venture jet shop I'm sorry did you say Timmy ax on the end is one of the investors the venture dad shop no Taniya Taniya and I have yeah so that company was all it was all equity all equity okay very good good and then um let's kind understand understand more about kind of how you driven this growth so economics and its ads coming are obviously very very critical what is your churn today and how do you manage that I mean I think you know and it's no different from any size company on the turn side I mean I think I think in our case it's a function of you know having to do a lot more diligence on the viability of the customers record inaka remember we are going after a slew of marketplaces some of them are early stage some of them are mid stage late stage and just like you know there are many of them are venture backed companies as well at least at the lower end right so the same venture economics that apply to any other company applied to them as well so we you know we've been fortunate to align ourselves with companies that are right at that point where growth matters you know and we're not we we have to figure out exactly when we get into those companies well to manage that because the last thing we need is our entire customer base following the usual SAS economics of you know one in ten will survive right we don't we don't need that something we don't to be chasing you happy although I'm asking this question of specific doesn't want understand...