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2024 Revenue

$11.7M(Est.)

Customers · 2021

175

Funding

$0

Team

84

Churn · 2020

21%

Founded

2008

Keboola.com Revenue (2024)

Keboola.com generated an estimated $11.7M in annual revenue in 2024. Source: GetLatka estimate

Keboola is a bootstrapped data integration and pipeline platform founded in 2011 in Prague, Czech Republic. The company began as a developer services agency and pivoted to a product-led SaaS model in 2015 when Pavel Dolezal joined as co-founder. As of August 2021, Keboola reported an annualized revenue run rate of $4.9 million, serving 175 paying customers across pay-as-you-go, SMB, and enterprise tiers.

The company reached profitability in 2020, generating $600,000 in profit, before deliberately reinvesting into a sales and marketing buildout in mid-2021. Keboola has remained fully bootstrapped through its growth from a $400,000 agency to a nearly $5 million ARR platform, with net dollar retention of 111% as of mid-2021.

Keboola's platform allows data engineers and analytical engineers to extract, warehouse, transform, and reverse-ETL data using a compute-minute billing model. Its marketplace hosts 1,400 community-built apps created by 400 external developers, extending the platform without direct engineering investment from the core team.

Last updated

Keboola.com Revenue

Keboola reported an annualized revenue run rate of $4.9 million as of August 2021, equivalent to roughly $408,000 per month. The company's revenue history shows a clear growth trajectory: $400,000 in agency revenue in 2015, $2.4 million in 2018, $4.1 million in 2019, $4.7 million in 2020, and $4.9 million on an annualized basis in 2021. Dolezal told Latka that growth between 2018 and 2019 ran at approximately 60%, before COVID-related customer losses slowed momentum in 2020.

Keboola.com Revenue GrowthReported revenue / ARR over time · latest figure estimated$0$2.5M$5M$7.5M$10M$12.5M200820102012201420162018202020222024$0$125K$837K$2.4M$4.7M$8.2M$11.7MSource: GetLatka.com interview on Mar 10, 2022 with Pavel Doležal
YearMilestoneSource
2024Keboola.com Hit $11.7m revenue in October 2024Estimated
2023Keboola.com Hit $7.5m revenue in November 2023Estimated
2022Keboola.com Hit $8.2m revenue in November 2022Not recorded
2021Keboola.com Hit $4.9m revenue in August 2021Watch[1]
2020Keboola.com Hit $4.7m revenue in January 2020Watch[2]
2019Keboola.com Hit $4.1m revenue in January 2019Watch[3]
2018Keboola.com Hit $2.4m revenue in January 2018Watch[4]
2017Keboola.com Hit $1.8m revenue in December 2017Video Slide
2016Keboola.com Hit $837k revenue in December 2016Video Slide
2015Keboola.com Hit $400k revenue in January 2015Watch[5]
2014Keboola.com Hit $125k revenue in December 2014Video Slide
2008Launched with $0 revenue

Growth from 2020 to the mid-2021 run rate was modest in absolute terms, reflecting the COVID impact on the customer base, particularly in hospitality and enterprise segments. The company added more than 50 new customers in the first half of 2021 after launching a pay-as-you-go, product-led motion, which Dolezal credited as a new growth driver alongside the existing enterprise and SMB channels.

Based on the trailing growth rate from 2020 to the annualized 2021 figure of roughly 4% to 5%, a GetLatka forward estimate for full-year 2022 revenue would range from approximately $5.1 million on a deceleration-adjusted basis to approximately $5.4 million if the pay-as-you-go channel accelerates. This is a GetLatka estimate using the trailing growth rate as a ceiling; Keboola did not provide a forward revenue target in the interview.

Keboola.com Valuation, Funding Rounds

We do not have funding information about Keboola.com yet.

No funding has been reported for Keboola.com yet.

Founder / CEO

Pavel Dolezal

CEO

Pavel Dolezal, 45 years old as of the August 2021 interview, is a co-founder of Keboola and serves as CEO. He joined the company in 2015 after the original founders, Petr Simecek and Milan Veverka, had built an internal automation tool inside their developer services agency. Dolezal proposed pivoting the business into a product company and joined as the third co-owner, earning his equity stake over a three-year vesting period rather than receiving it immediately. As of 2021, each of the three co-founders holds approximately 30% of the company.

Dolezal's equity stake of 30% in a bootstrapped company with $4.9 million in annualized revenue does not provide a straightforward basis for a net worth estimate, as no valuation has been established through a funding round or sale process. Net worth was not discussed in the interview, and GetLatka does not estimate it without a confirmed valuation anchor.

The company's original founders, Petr Simecek and Milan Veverka, remain on the cap table as co-owners. The agency they operated before the pivot had five to six employees and generated approximately $400,000 in revenue in 2015.

Q&A

QuestionAnswer
What's your age?48

Customers

Keboola had 175 paying customers as of August 2021, up from 124 at the end of 2020. The company added more than 50 new customers in the first half of 2021 following the launch of its pay-as-you-go product-led motion. Dolezal defined a customer as someone paying for the platform, not a free user.

The company segments customers into three tiers. Pay-as-you-go customers, the newest cohort, average approximately $3,000 in annual contract value. SMB customers pay between $50,000 and $250,000 per year. Enterprise customers pay $350,000 or more annually, not counting services. Named customer logos include Rohlik Group, a Czech grocery delivery company Dolezal described as a billion-dollar company, as well as Erste Bank, Rossum AI, Mall Group, and Red Bull.

Keboola also reported approximately 400 free users as of 2022, though this figure was referenced in a forward-looking context and was not the primary customer count discussed in the August 2021 interview. Dolezal cited a notable customer retention dynamic at Rossum AI, where the fourth consecutive head of data hire demanded a Keboola license as a condition of joining, illustrating the platform's stickiness within data teams.

Keboola.com serves 175 customers.

Keboola.com Business Model

Keboola generates revenue through three contract structures: a pay-as-you-go model billed by compute minutes on an annual basis, SMB annual contracts ranging from $50,000 to $250,000, and enterprise annual contracts starting at $350,000. The pay-as-you-go tier launched in early 2021 and produced 900 projects started in the first six months and 260 projects started in July 2021 alone.

The company reached profitability in 2020, generating $600,000 in profit. Dolezal told Latka that Keboola made a deliberate decision in mid-2021 to reinvest that cash into sales and marketing hiring, moving the company into a planned operating loss. Profitability as of the interview date was therefore negative by design, not by performance.

Net dollar retention was 119% in 2019, 105% in 2020, and 111% in mid-2021. Logo churn ran at 8% to 10% before COVID and rose to 21% in 2020 as customers in hospitality and other hard-hit sectors went bankrupt or scaled down. Dolezal noted that approximately 30% of the COVID-churned customers returned during 2020. The marketplace model, with 1,400 apps built by 400 community developers, extends the platform's utility without direct engineering cost to Keboola, supporting retention by allowing customers and partners to build their own connectors and internal applications.

Point-in-time figures shared on the GetLatka podcast, each linked to the exact moment it was said on camera.

Customers (2021)

175

“Nathan Latka: So, Pavel, just be clear, you have about 175 customers today. Pavel Dolezal: Yeah. And as a customer, we define somebody who's paying, not somebody who's using us for free, but who's paying.”

Watch

Net dollar retention (2021)

111%

“Pavel Dolezal: Net retention rate in dollars, 2019 was 119, and 2020 was 105%. Already now [August 2021], we are at 111%, so 11% on top this year.”

Watch

Gross churn (2020)

21%

“Pavel Dolezal: Last year, there was 21% in the base of customers who either went bankrupt or totally scaled down their businesses or stopped for a bit of the year. In the logos, I mean.”

Watch

Free users (2022)

400

“Pavel: Out of those 1,000, 400 are using Keboola to actually power their businesses as a freemium on daily and monthly basis.”

Watch

Keboola.com Employees & Team Size

Keboola had 56 employees as of August 2021, up from 48 two months prior. The team includes 28 internal engineers and 10 salespeople, all of whom carry quota. The sales team grew rapidly: the company had one salesperson in December 2020, added three in the first half of 2021, and reached 10 by August 2021. Dolezal hired Paul Donaki, formerly of Computer Associates and Rooncast, to lead inside sales and establish the outbound methodology and quota structure for the growing team.

Keboola.com employs approximately 84 people as of 2026, including 13 sales reps that carry a quota. It serves 175 customers that rely on its solutions.

Keboola.com Team GrowthReported headcount over time020406080100200820102012201420162018202020222024008484Source: GetLatka.com interview on Mar 10, 2022 with Pavel Doležal
YearMilestoneSource
2024Reached 84 employees (October 2024)Not recorded
2023Reached 84 employees (November 2023)Not recorded
2023Reached 84 employees (July 2023)Not recorded
2023Reached 84 employees (July 2023)Not recorded
2023Reached 91 employees (January 2023)Not recorded
2022Reached 94 employees (November 2022)Not recorded
2022Reached 94 employees (January 2022)Not recorded
2021Reached 56 employees (January 2021)Not recorded
2020Reached 42 employees (November 2020)Not recorded
2020Reached 42 employees (June 2020)Not recorded

Frequently Asked Questions about Keboola.com

What is Keboola.com's revenue?

As of 2024, Keboola.com generated an estimated $11.7M in annual revenue.

Who founded Keboola.com?

Keboola.com was founded by Pavel Dolezal.

Who is the CEO of Keboola.com?

The CEO of Keboola.com is Pavel Dolezal.

How many employees does Keboola.com have?

As of 2024, Keboola.com had 84 employees.

Where is Keboola.com headquartered?

Keboola.com is headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic.

Compare Keboola.com to the industry

Keboola.com operates across multiple industries. Browse revenue, funding, and growth data for Keboola.com in each sector below.

Full Interview Transcripts

Congrats! Bootstrapped founder hits $5mMar 10, 2022

[00:00] Founders, what's going on? You guys know I love in person events and they are back. The recording you're about to hear is from our most recent event where we had hundreds of founders come together, share intimate details, templates, KPIs, OKRs about their business, and it was something special, something special. We'd love to meet you in person. If you want to see the next live events we have coming up via our schedule. The link will be down [00:23] below in the description. If you're listening on iTunes, check this out on YouTube, you'll see the links in the description. Or you can just Google Founderpath or Latka next event. We'd love to see you in person. In the meantime, though, enjoy this recording. It's a good one. [00:37] >> So I'm gonna make this really quick because, like, yesterday was awesome. I'm not gonna teach you anything that John didn't teach you, Godard, Nathan or anything. So what I can do, I can share just our story. Where we what we did wrong, what we did good, and just like, yeah, talk, learn, share. Right? That's why we are here. Okay. So let me figure out how this works. Okay. Like this. Okay. So everybody here has been talking [00:59] >> about data. Right? Nathan is showing you, like, all the data points. Right? And then we saw G2, data, data, data. That's great. We love that. We love that. Data is everywhere. That's why we exist. We exist, you know, companies like you, enterprises, small, you know, SaaS companies to actually help with data. But data ecosystem has been, like, really hard for the last couple of years. When Snowflake started, they actually solved all of the big data [01:23] >> issues, you know, No more Hadoop wrangling. But there is, like, 20 different tools you need to use to process data into Snowflake and out of Snowflake. And it only starts with getting data in. So what we did, we actually oh, by the way, see G2. You know, we have the stars on G2 as well. We love G2. Right? So what we did, we actually, you know, like, put it all together into end to [01:43] >> end platform. So you don't have to have, you know, 20 different tools. You have one login. You can get data in. You can get all the connectors. We have the biggest marketplace in the in our space. We have 1,400 applications in our marketplace, developed by 400 different developers. You can actually, you know, create automations to power your data once it's in Snowflake to actually run it somewhere, put it in your Salesforce, you know, and just like [02:06] >> have it where you want to have it. Right? And last but not least, you have the data science part. Because a lot of people, you know, like, you get the data in, you look at it like Nathan did. Right? Perfect. But underneath that, there is a lot of machine learning models. And you need to have all of those parts, three parts working together. So, yeah, that's what we did. And in this part, you know, like, actually [02:28] >> people who started data are geeks. Right? They are nerds. They love their CICD pipelines. They love their DevOps tools. Right? Like, I was talking to that guy last night. Right? And he's like, yeah, he's actually really smart. Know, he spent like hour talking to him. He is smart. And he likes, you know, he he likes code. Right? So but then you go to business departments, nobody wants to code. People want to have click interfaces. And in [02:53] >> data, we see these two different personas, two different worlds. So what we had to do, we started with code. We started with APIs. And then we are slowly adding on interfaces for business users. That was Scott was saying yesterday, right, about small things, you know, like like putting together and stuff. Right? That's what we're trying to do. We are not in this for one year. We actually had that plan. Like yesterday, the guy from the credit [03:18] >> card company was saying about ten year, 10 x. Right? Plan three years, then go back one year, two years. That's what we did, you know, five years ago. And finally now, it's materializing. So what actually you get when you start using our platform? Well, inside your company, people don't do only the biggest, you know, like the largest use case that everybody is, you know, doing in the data world. You unlocked all of these small use cases. [03:44] >> And that's really, really cool. But enough about our product. I just wanted to make make sure kinda like like we have. So when when got out it was funny. When got out, I was, you know, like, asking who did who was there in 2000. I was there. I remember the, you know, like, boom and bust. Oh, that was hard. Right? And when we started Keboola, we were like, okay. We don't want to take venture money when [04:05] >> we start. We don't really care about it. We care, you know, about, you know, making best product. Because we had an agency which was actually doing cloud migrations, helping companies to go to cloud, companies like Red Bull, and then scale it. And more and more we were doing that, we saw that there is one issue. We were everybody was asking us to build a data platform for that. Integrate data. Right? Run it in Amazon. It's just [04:29] >> like we were lazy because we had done it so many times. We thought there has to be a better way. So we started to make automations internally. And then in 2014, we said, well, let's make it into a product. This should be a product, not an internal tool. Right? So we did. And we're like, well, are we gonna raise? Wow. That would be awesome. Right? Well, I was like, no. I don't think so. Because like once [04:50] >> you raise, you know, you you better know what you wanna do with the money. Right? You know, you you have to know how to use it. Right? In when when Gora was saying that when they were starting in 2000, they needed a million dollars to buy servers. I remember that. We were shipping 400 Dell servers. You know, it was crazy. You know, half of them didn't come. But in 2014, we did not need that. You know, [05:12] >> we had paying customers, you know, in in our in our agency, and just like start a machine, well, it didn't cost anything on Amazon. Right? So we're like, well, this is the great time to actually build a SaaS company without, you know, like, giving too much equity the way in the beginning. We can achieve product market fit without, you know, actually getting the VC money. So that's what we did. And we started to scale. We started [05:35] >> to scale first couple of years by referrals. You know, people started to use us. They started to grow their own companies. Right? And then some of them are now now now unicorns, like like Productboard or Rohlik Group in Europe. Right? And then something happened. I'm gonna show you what we did wrong and and what we can learn from it. So okay. So couple of lessons that we've learned the hard way when you are [05:58] >> actually going from agency or consultancy to product. First, it seems counterintuitive, but you have to let go your professional services revenue. We were making so much money doing professional services before, right? Helping all these people. They paid us dollars, cash, right? But then, when we actually wanted to do a product, we had to rethink that. We would not be able to support everyone. Right? So we had to actually give that money away to our partners. We [06:30] >> started to create a partner ecosystem. And that's the red line which is trending down. And people ask, well, what does it mean? Like like, when you go and, like, we put your product somewhere in the client and partner comes, how much money you make? How much money they make? Well, this is kinda like actually, the the table is comes from our our actual client Mall Group. When we actually started to implement there, we said, well, our [06:54] >> target, what we want to get is, let's say, 1. Right? $1. In the year one, we'll actually give them discounts, so we'll put 1.7 per our software. And we need to bring in partner. How much are they gonna make? So we then look back at the numbers. And in the first year, we made 0.7 of the target number we wanted, but our partners made four times that money. Four times. Right? And that was [07:19] >> the money we originally had in our cash flow when we were when we were a service company. Now we gave it away. Right? And it was actually one of the best one of the best decisions we made. Because like with that, we started to make an ecosystem of partners. And, you know, like yesterday, everybody talked about it. Partners. Partners. Partners. Right? Partners have a great way to help you to strengthen what you what you are doing [07:43] >> and help you actually they are like your extended arm. Right? So that's great. But there is also a bad side about it, and we made a huge mistake. Pascal was saying she's she just left, but she was saying yesterday, when when when when you were talking about the professional services, she was like, I hate them. Right? When I see professional services, I hate them. Well, yes, if you are Pipedrive, right, which is kinda like really SMB, [08:09] >> and you are just like churning through customers. But if you are doing enterprises, you really want professional services. And that's where we made our mistake, and that kind of participated in the dip that you saw. Because we went to enterprise level, enterprise customers, and we said, let's bring those partners that we developed. Right? Like, there are 50 people company, 50 people company, they're gonna do it. And no. That was our big mistake. And if you want to [08:35] >> know more, there's Fischer, my my my colleague, and he's the head of professional service. He can tell you everything about the mistakes. So that was that was that was a big learning. So another big learning. Yeah. Well, my my learning is it needs to be balanced. You don't want it for SMBs that you kinda, like, go like that. You want partners. But for for enterprises, yes, you want professional services. If you look at UiPath, UiPath, when [08:58] >> they went public, they had 47% in professional services of their recurring revenue. 47%. That's huge. Because they are enterprise. And another learning that we made is kinda like when you go to enterprise features or you want to develop new features and you are bootstrapped, you don't have to pay for it. That's a big learning. You know? There's a lot of customers who are willing to pay for it. If you go, you ask them, you work with [09:24] >> your customers, and they say, well, like, our data science hub. Right? Like, we went to we are working for Erste Bank. This is our, you know, screen from Productboard. And what I highlighted is all the features attribute attribute them to to a customer. Right? So what does each customer want? And we have a top 10 and top 50. Right? And then we go to them and say, well, listen. This is actually on our road map. [09:47] >> Right? That that ten x, three years thinking. Right? But we don't want to develop it now because we have other priorities and we don't have cash for it. Would you be willing to pay for it? Right? Yeah. Totally. We would. Right? How much? Well, can you give us 500,000 upfront? Yeah. No problem. And that's how we got our data science out. You know? So that's a big lesson. If you are bootstrapping, you don't have to do [10:13] >> everything yourself. Right? If you have a vision, you have a road map, and you have customers that you actually engage with, they can pay for the development upfront. We love that. Third lesson is and and Nathan is all about it. Right? Community. Community. Community. Right? Because that's something it's hard to replicate. So what we did five, four years ago, we actually we actually started to work with the with the with the women in tech group in [10:40] >> Czech Republic, which called Czech IT girls. And we actually developed a a data girls program. So it was, like, for all the lay it was originally we thought it's gonna be for small girls, but then it's quickly, you know, like, went totally out the opposite direction. And now there's been over 20,000 ladies around the world who went through that program and who actually learned how to work with data. That is so awesome. Because, like, when we [11:06] >> go somewhere and people actually have been using us before or went through our programs, they just want to use us because they know us. Right? They know that they can get to results 10 times faster. They know that because they have tried it. So this is actually a quote from one of our customers, Rossum AI, which is on the track to become another unicorn in in ML. And one day, the guy called me and was like, [11:34] >> what the fuck is happening? I'm like, what do you what do you what do you mean? And I was like, well, we need to buy you. I'm like, like, like a license. Right? I'm like, well, you said you don't want to buy us. You want to use the modern data stack and all the 20 tools because it feels cool and nice. Right? He was like, yeah. But I've been trying to hire people as head of our [11:54] >> data, you know, team, And this is the fourth one who came and said, well, I'm gonna join you, but only if you get a Keboola license. So that's the power of community. Right? It's hard to scale globally in the first year, second year. But if you go and you create your market, your niche, and you you kinda, like, get your mini brand, like, as Jason Lemkin says, in that, it's doable. And this is really powerful. And [12:18] >> those couple of first years that we actually did scale, we scaled through referrals. Right? So referrals, people who used us. So okay. Before I get to numbers, you know, like, how are we doing now? Well, during COVID pandemic, and that was where where the dip comes, we made two decisions. We made a decision to actually open up Keboola as a freemium to actually enable product led growth. And second decision, we made decision to go to enterprise [12:45] >> because that's where, you know, all the money kinda like for us was in the beginning, and they pay us a lot of money and they need us. It's somehow counter into counterintuitive. I can talk about it a little more, but this is kinda like the product led growth. So we started we opened up Keboola as a freemium last year. And last year, a lot of 3,000 companies actually started Keboola account. Now it's 4,000. Out of those [13:10] >> 3,000 last year, 1,000 actually started to engage. They did something. Connect the data, build pipelines, you know, did something. Out of those 1,000, 400 are using Keboola to actually power their businesses as a freemium on daily, daily and monthly basis. And we give them three hundred minutes of of platform for free. That's a lot. And out of those, already 100 actually paid with via their credit card. Now those 100, we already upsold 10. So that's the [13:40] >> power of product led growth. But it would not happen without those five years, you know, of developing community, developing partnerships, and developing the product. So that's really awesome, and we love it. By the way, our clients, the the the the black box, that's that's the amount of data they actually process within our platform every month. They take it from raw data into business insights and actions. They give it value and meaning. So next lesson or or [14:08] >> area, and Nathan was now talking about it. I'm I'm so I was I'm like, so sorry we didn't start, you know, like, the year when Founderpath actually started. Like, it's about financials. You were talking about it yesterday. When we started, we actually thought that every financial instrument is evil. Right? It's evil. Cash is the king. Right? We come from Europe, and we come from Eastern Europe, what you would call. So like my grandma would like never [14:34] >> take loans. Never, never, never ever. Right? So that was our mentality. Right? We started that, then we're like, only cash. Only money, baby. Right? And well, yes and no. As everything else, it's an instrument, and you should learn how to play it. You should learn how to use it. And we didn't, you know, soon enough. So if we would have known how to kinda, like, use it sooner, we would have scaled even faster. But we made [15:04] >> one great decision. We hired an internal internal person for, you know, like, what's it called, Fischer? [15:14] >> Head hunting, but internal. Right? And recruiting. She sits in Seattle, and she's been awesome. And that that's a real game changer. Bob was talking about that yesterday. We did it three years ago, and it was, like, really incredible. But we made one mistake in that regard. We didn't hire a CFO in fast enough. You know? And that's one thing I would do differently, totally. Since, like, early, you know, like, once we had a product market fit, [15:38] >> we started growing, our customers started recommending us, I would actually hire a professional who would help us, to actually work with financials. Because today, you have so many options. Right? Yes. Prepaid cash. Right? You can do short term debt. You can do, like, founders and family, right, to help you with that. But you also can do venture debt, venture financing. Or if you are in Europe, you can do a lot of subsidies from European Union. Right? [16:03] >> Nobody told us about it before. Right? And we were like, subsidies, that's only for bad guys. Well, yes and no. Right? And well, so that's that's kinda like my thing. If you are if you are bootstrapping, learn how to work with financial instruments. Cash is not the only financial instrument you have. Okay. So now what happened? Right? Well, we were overexposed. So remember that graph that Nathan is showing kinda like your exposure and, you know, [16:31] >> exposure to several clients. That what that that's what happened to us. So first, we were overexposed during the COVID into hospitality and retail industry in US. So our clients were just going bankrupt. Right? We had a client who was who was doing, like, three hundred thousand year went bankrupt. Right? A lot of the clients actually went into down sales and then started to pick up. Right? Because we actually started to take care of them. And that [16:57] >> was that was really, really interesting. Another client was in Asia. It was a big financial institution, and they lost 90% of their business within the first month of COVID. So that was it was kinda like it. And everybody says, well, overexposure to a couple of clients is bad. Well, yeah, in the ideal world, it is. But if you, again, are starting and bootstrapping and kinda like somebody, you know, you have a client who actually pays you [17:25] >> million dollars in advance, and it's aligned with your vision, that is pretty awesome. You can do a lot of stuff with that. And the bad stuff is you are overexposed. So, yeah, we got over that. We actually we actually, you know, reshuffled the company. We went into product led growth. We started, you know, like, working differently with enterprises, and now we are growing very nicely. So that's my couple of lessons, you know, like so, like, yeah. [17:52] >> Work with cash, bootstrap early, you know, like, work with your clients and build community. And always, always, you know, change. Godard was saying that. You know, the only constant we have is the change. Okay, thanks very much. Thanks, Pavel.

DevOps SaaS Data Tool Breaks $4.9m ARR Bootstrapped Using Its Marketplace To GrowAug 18, 2021

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Pavel Dolezal. He's building a very cool company called Keboola. He helps companies utilize data to grow their profits faster. Pavel, are you ready to take us to the top? [00:10] >> Yes, Nathan, I am. You for inviting me. [00:13] So is Keboola is this that's k e b o o l a, guys, if you wanna follow along. Is this for marketers or developers? [00:20] >> Well, it's actually for developers. It's for, you know, people that today would be called data engineers or analytical engineers. Mhmm. [00:27] And where did you get the idea? [00:29] >> Well, it's actually it's kinda like scratching our own knee. You know? So the company was actually founded over ten years ago. It was founded by Petr Simecek, and it was a developer shop, you know, helping companies to migrate to cloud. And they noticed over time, you know, everybody wanting the same things regarding data, to integrate, to warehouse, you know, to transfer transform that. And they just didn't want to do it again and again, you know, doing [00:52] >> the DevOps script. So they started to build an, you know, internal tool for automations. That was about 2,015 when I met them, and I was like, guys, you know, this internal tool, this is we should build a product company around it. So we got together. We, you know, like, we we actually rebranded Keboola as a as a product company, started to be, like, the name, so we kept it, and we've been going on since. [01:17] And and how big was the agency in 2015? What was agency revenue that year? [01:21] >> It was actually I don't really know, but I remember, but it was really small. It was five, six people. So I [01:28] >> Yep. [01:28] Yep. Got it. [01:29] >> I can dig it out. It was 400 k or something. [01:32] Well, so what happened, though? Did you buy the technology from them, or are they still on cap table or what? [01:38] >> No. No. No. We actually it was back then, it was it was two owners. It was Milan Veverka and Petr Simecek. And I joined as a as a as kinda like the third co owner, and we founded the product part of the company. So we just, like, we got rid of slowly the the the, you know, like, the revenue service revenue, which was you know, and started just focusing on the platform revenue. [02:00] I see. And when you joined, did they give you like, did you split it evenly? A third, a third, a third? [02:05] >> Yeah. It was actually it was actually hard. I had to make yeah. I had to actually I had to work for my share for three years. So it was not you know, it was actually how we like it. It was real, and it was really open. And we're like, yeah. We would really love you to be our partner and, you know, like, be cofounder of this, but, hey, you know, like, you are new. We don't know [02:22] >> you. So are you okay if you, you know, earn your share, you know, over the period of three years? I was like, I like it. I'm okay. I love it. You know? It's just how it should be. [02:31] So how much do you own today? [02:33] >> Oh, we we all three of us have a split, 30%, one third. [02:37] Oh, I see. Okay. Got it. So you own 30%. That's great. And then let's talk about, like, how customers are using SUSE. So how many customers are paying today for the tool? Mhmm. [02:46] >> Well, it's actually interesting. You know, like last year, it like around 115, 124 actually last year. And this year, we actually already added over 50 new customers. So because we we started a little bit different motion, we started a product led motion this year. So because before this year, you couldn't buy Keboola, you know, on the Internet. We were just growing by referrals and contract. [03:08] So, Pavel, just be clear, you have about a 175 customers today Yes. From a 124 a year ago. [03:13] >> Yeah. And as a customer, we define somebody who's paying, you know, not somebody who's using us for free, but who's paying. [03:19] And and about how much do they pay per month on average? [03:22] >> Well, it actually we split we split the the customers into enterprise, then we have SMBs. And in the SMBs, we also have growing startups. And then we have the pay as you go model, which is the product led, and that's just starting. So all those 50 average around 3,000 ARR. And then the SMBs, they would they would kinda, like, be somewhere between 50,000 to 250,000. And then we have couple of enterprises, and they are 350 north [03:51] >> in ARR, not counting the services. [03:55] Sorry. I'm confused. So add it all up. How much MRR did you guys do last month? [03:59] >> Last month, we we are now we are now actually doing 4.9 ARR, you know, on annualized basis. So divided by 12, it's kinda like something like 440 or something like that. [04:12] Yep. About $4.20, $4.30. Okay. Very interesting. And which segment is growing the fastest? Pay as you go, SMB, or enterprise? [04:19] >> Well, it's actually for for us now, it's it's it's to it's the enterprise, and it's the pay as you go. And that's just you know, we started to concentrate on pay as you go, and that was really interesting because during the COVID, everybody told us you should actually open up the product led, you know, pay as you go promotion. And we're like, okay. Okay. We don't have time for it, but then we did. And in the [04:40] >> first six months, we got 900 projects started. And in July, we got 260 projects started. And I'll just pay as they go? [04:48] Is it is it based on number of minutes in the system? Or no. I know it's a credit card, but what's the utility value? [04:54] >> Yeah. It's the number of minutes that the platform actually runs their jobs. So, you know, either you extract the data, whether you warehouse the data, whether you run the pipelines and, you know, like all the way from construction transformation to actually reverse ETL, It actually uses some compute time, which creates a job, so by number of minutes. [05:12] Number of minutes per month. Interesting. Okay. Got it. So that makes a lot of sense. What's the team size look like today? How many people? [05:21] >> Well, actually, two months ago, we were 48 people. Since then, we started to actually hire more and more people in sales and marketing, which we didn't have before. So as of current, we are 56 people. [05:31] And how many in sales? [05:33] >> Well, that's actually a funny story. Last December, we had one person in sales, then we hired three people into sales in first in the first half of this year. And as of today, we actually we actually have 10 people as of August. [05:49] And how many of those 10 carry a quota? [05:52] >> All of them. But they are on you, so they're just starting. [05:55] How do you set the quota for new reps? Mhmm. [05:58] >> That's actually, we hired we hired a guy who to run the inside sales, and his name is Paul Dan Hake. And he actually came to us with the methodology and how to actually do it. And so it's based on both outbound and inbound, like levels. So he actually set the first levels in the first half of this year, finding out the process, how many outbound calls he can actually do, set up the demos. And based on [06:21] >> that, you know, he set up the process for his reps that he is just hiring as of now. [06:27] So what's the name of the person you hired? [06:29] >> Sorry. Paul Paul Donaki. [06:31] Paul Donaki. And where is he from? [06:34] >> He's actually originally from Scotland, and he moved to Prague several years ago. [06:38] What company did he come from? [06:40] >> Oh, he actually he he came he came from Computer Associates, and then he was working for Rooncast, which is another SaaS startup. [06:48] Got it. So he's like your VP of sales, and he's now hiring new reps? Yeah. I see. Interesting. Okay. So you're not maybe but you don't have them on a quota yet. You're still trying to figure that out? [06:58] >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. [06:59] Okay. Why did you hire 10 right off the bat? Why not experiment two or three? [07:03] >> We actually did experiment. So we we well, all 10 are not in inside sales. So there are some people in enterprise sales as well. But we actually hired first we actually hired for the first poll, then we hired the second rep. We saw how they were ramping up and how it worked together with the pay as you go model. So upselling and doing outbound as well. And when after first two months, actually, both of them were [07:27] >> doing the numbers of outbound and the actually the the contacts progress to high pipeline, then we actually then we actually say, well, there is no time to wait, and we should really start scaling this, you know, faster than we were previously. Because until last year, we we pretty much didn't have sales. You know, we we were experimenting, now once here, we would have one person. You know, we have two people in Chicago or then three people [07:53] >> for some time, but we were just experimenting with that. But most of our growth look like? [07:57] You're at $420,000 a month today in revenue. Where were you a year ago? [08:02] >> A year a year ago, we actually we were we were in in 2000 in 2020, we actually ended four seven. 2019, we actually ended 4.1. And 2018, we actually ended 2.4. So we were [08:23] Pavel, you were what? [08:25] >> Sorry. No. I I said that we are we were growing you know, like, 2018, 2019, we're growing about sixty percent. But then the COVID year, like we got some we got some we got some people actually, like, little a little bit down. There was some COVID effect, especially in the hospitality and the enterprise, and then, like, we started to grow again. [08:43] Yep. Yep. Okay. Got it. So 4.9 now, four point seven a year ago, 4.1 before that, two point four million in 2018, and that's all up from an agency that was doing $400k in sales in 2015. [08:53] >> Yep. Exactly. [08:53] Did you [08:54] guys bootstrap this or raise capital? [08:56] >> No. It's all bootstrapped until now. Yeah. [08:59] We love that. Nice work, man. Congratulations. [09:02] >> Yeah. It's a team. [09:03] What's the toughest thing about doing about bootstrapping something like this? [09:07] >> You know, for us, it was actually a choice, you know, when we started because we saw that we were a little bit ahead of the market. So we're like, hey, we actually need to experiment with this. We need to see how to do it. And we had customers who paid us. So we were creating a mini brand in the Central And Eastern Europe and customers were totally happy. The toughest thing with that is But I think [09:30] >> it's actually embedded, especially in the beginning. You have to really juggle your resources, right? So you can't do five different experiments. But to be honest, when you are small, you cannot do five different experiments because your organization is not really set up for. If you do five, you cannot really devote attention to it. So you have to be very you know, you have to be very precise and very diligent in what you select to do. [09:56] Oh, it makes sense. And, obviously, your engineering team has a limited resource. Right? You can only build so many products so fast. How many engineers do you have today? [10:04] >> We have twenty eight twenty eight engineers and plus 400 actually engineers in our marketplace because we set up from the beginning as a platform. So we are not building, you know, the connectors to data or or actually or writers to systems. And most of that is built by community. So there was there's actually 1,400 apps in our marketplace, which was created by 400 different developers. And that's you know, the community is part we actually love a [10:30] >> lot. How [10:30] How did you convince 400 engineers to build 1,400 apps in your marketplace? Like, how do they make money? Why is it worth their time? [10:36] >> Well, they actually there are there are two reasons. First, like, I would say, like, a lot of them are are from our partners who are actually doing implementation of Keboola and stuff. And sometimes they would need something and they would just like, it's our philosophy. Like you shouldn't wait for us, right? To put it on the roadmap. We do the core system, the platform. So when they wanted something like special connector to Teradata, which they didn't [11:02] >> like our default, so they would create that for their customers, right, and open source it. And then the second part, which actually is really interesting, people inside the companies actually create their own applications for internal use. So that's how they productize the data because we see that data is not analytics only. Analytics is kinda like the step, right? You want to look at the data, but then it's about the actions that you do with the data. [11:31] >> How do you write it into the places where you consume data, like CRM, Intercom, everything? And how do you automate the use cases like Customer three sixty and stuff like that? So once they start doing that, they start actually write data into systems. They actually put that in production and created new apps. [11:50] Yep. Okay. That makes sense. Got it. So it's helping them build their own company. Maybe they run an agency. Their customers need it, they build the integration. Are they sticky, Pavel? These customers, what's the churn look like? [12:00] >> Yeah, it's actually really interesting, you know, like until the last year, we pretty much didn't know, you know, like the churn. So it was actually very, very good. And last year, we actually Until last year, we had eight to 10. And last year, there was like twenty one percent in the base of customers who either went bankrupt or totally scaled down their businesses or stopped for a bit of the year. Some of them, I would say, [12:29] >> like, thirty percent actually came back during last year, but, you know, some of them went out of the business. If you were a restaurant business in US and you had 15, you know, like, locations, COVID year hit you really bad. [12:41] Oh, you're talking twenty percent churn last year. Is that right? [12:44] >> Yep. Yep. [12:45] Do you have [12:46] >> In in the in the logo in the logos, I mean. Yeah. [12:49] What about the revenue? [12:51] >> Yeah. The revenue, actually, the revenue was pretty good. We actually expanded, you know, the the the revenue as well. So net retention rate, you know, in dollars was actually 2019 was 119, and 2020 was 105%. Already now, we are in 111%, so, like, 11% on top this year. [13:14] That's great. Yeah. So if you churn 20%, you expand 31%. Yeah. So from a net perspective, you're 111%. [13:21] >> Yeah. [13:21] That's really great. How are you getting new customers? [13:24] >> Well, it was until until last year was mostly referrals. People would know us. They would use us somewhere. They would go somewhere. They would take us or they would recommend something like we have a customer, Tomas Cupr, who is like super rock star in like he he built Rohlik Group, which is a billion dollar company out of Czech Republic. They do groceries, deliveries within two hours. And it is actually his third venture where he took [13:50] >> us. Right? So people take us with them. And during the COVID, we saw like how the world is changing. So we say, hey, let's accelerate that. You know, now is the time. You know, we have proven the product. People are happy with us. Now is the time to actually accelerate. [14:07] Yep. Yep. That makes a lot of sense. Alright. What's next for the product? You guys are you planning to stay bootstrapped? Are you planning to raise capital or what? [14:14] >> Well, next for the product from the product perspective, we are actually coming with with some new features for more for the developers, you know, within DevOps kind of like pipelines. But from the company perspective, [14:27] >> we are actually thinking what to do next because like we have now, we have cash, we have for foreseeable months and we are generating more and more money. So we'll see how it turns out next six months, to be honest. You know, we we got approached by a lot of people, but, you know, but until now, we were comfortable with bootstrapping. If we see that we can deploy more capital than we actually have, you know, for [14:52] >> market for operations, we'll think about it. Yeah. [14:54] Yep. Of of the $420,000 in monthly recurring revenue that you do, how much goes to the bottom line each month? [15:00] >> Mhmm. So we we if you if you can say bottom line, you mean, like, all the expenses or The cost. Yeah. Okay. So we actually until last year, end of last year, we were profitable, like and we had like 600,000 profit. And we started when we started hiring all those new people in June, July, we actually made the decision that we will go within the next six months, we'll we'll not be profitable and reinvest all of [15:28] >> that because we were hoarding the cash from last year. So as of now, like, we we are minus, but it's it's it's something that we made by decision to invest. Yeah. [15:38] Makes a lot of sense, Pavel. Let's wrap up here with Famous Five. Number one, what's your favorite book? [15:43] >> Well, a part of the, you know, like the normal ones, you know, you would say, actually, like, Sam Walton's Made in America or the, you know, book from the guys that made Aldi because that's really, you know, like, people who made the business from the bottom up into large, large scales. [15:58] Two, is there a founder you're following or studying? [16:00] >> Yeah. I was thinking about actually, I do found actually, I do follow a lot of founders that, you know, like, lately, you know, the guys from Fast, you know, thecom are really interesting, and I like a lot of new people actually who started who started things about the Bitcoin. But, you know, like, one of the people who are never never, you know, like, never never stops amazing me is Jack Dorsey, you know, from what he's doing, [16:22] >> like, so many different ideas. I I really love it. [16:25] Number three, is there what's your favorite online tool for building the business? [16:29] >> Yeah. Actually, it's it's the instant messages, I would say, and the data looker, you know, up to now. [16:34] Yep. Looker's good. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get? [16:38] >> Seven to eight. I cannot do less for longer [16:40] And periods of what's your situation, Pavel? Married, single, kids? [16:44] >> I'm married. I have three kids, yeah. [16:46] Three kids. And how old are you? [16:49] >> They are 10, 12, 13. [16:50] No. No. You. [16:51] >> Oh, me. I'm 45. [16:53] >> 45. [16:54] Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20? [16:58] >> Life goes really fast, know, like older you get, you know, like, just like enjoy it every day. [17:04] Guys, Keboola launched in 2011. They were an agency that did $400 in sales in 2015. Pavel came in and said, guys, there's a product here. Let's launch it. They spun it out in 2015, did 2,400,000 in sales in 2018, now at a $4,900,000 run rate. Really healthy growth, doing almost $420k a month in revenue. Very profitable. A 175 customers that have on average 2 or $3 per month for, again, this developer tool to help developers access [17:27] their data faster and dashboarding. Again, all bootstrapped, 56 on the team, 20 engineers, 10 sales reps. Most of those guys knew as they figure out their sales motion. Pavel, thanks for taking us to the top. [17:38] >> Thank you, Nathan. Have a great day. [17:41] 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 [18:06] 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 [18:28] fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to 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 [18:50] up 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. [19:10] We got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. [19:15] Alright, [19:15] I'll be in the comments. See you.

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