Founder Interview
How KFactory Reached $25K in Monthly Revenue and 12 Factory Customers, Five Times Last Year (Interview with CEO Vlad Cazan)
- Interview Date
- April 13, 2022
- Interviewee
- Vlad CazanCEO and Co-Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Annual Revenue (2021)
$60K
Customers (2022)
12
Average Revenue Per Customer (2022)
$2,000 per month
Total Funding Raised (2022)
$1,000,000
Team Size (2022)
7
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Vlad Cazan during his interview with Nathan Latka recorded in April 2022 and represent a historical snapshot, not current figures. See KFactory’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01KFactory reported $60K in annual revenue for 2021
- 02The company served 12 manufacturing customers as of April 2022
- 03Average revenue per customer was approximately $2,000 per month
- 04More than 400 industrial equipments were monitored in real time on the platform
- 05KFactory raised a pre-seed round of €225,000 in 2020 and a second round of €600,000 in 2022
- 06Total funding raised reached approximately $1,000,000 by April 2022
- 07The two co-founders split equity 50/50 at founding and retained more than 60% combined after two rounds
- 08The company grew from 2 co-founders to 7 full-time employees by April 2022
- 09KFactory was founded in 2017 and signed its first customer at launch
- 10None of the 12 customers had been expanded to more than one plant as of the interview, though contracts for rollouts were signed
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Annual Revenue (2021) | $60K | Founder interview, April 2022 |
| Customers (2022) | 12 | Founder interview, April 2022 |
| Average Revenue Per Customer (2022) | $2,000 per month | Founder interview, April 2022 |
| Industrial Equipments Monitored (2022) | 400+ | Founder interview, April 2022 |
| Pre-Seed Round (2020) | €225,000 | Founder interview, April 2022 |
| Seed Round (2022) | €600,000 | Founder interview, April 2022 |
| Total Funding Raised (2022) | $1,000,000 | Founder interview, April 2022 |
| Team Size (2022) | 7 | Founder interview, April 2022 |
| Co-Founder Equity Retained (2022) | More than 60% | Founder interview, April 2022 |
| Year Founded | 2017 | Founder interview, April 2022 |
| Co-Founders | 2 | Founder interview, April 2022 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
KFactory reported $60K in annual revenue for 2021. By April 2022 the company was generating approximately $2,000 per month per customer across 12 customers, reflecting meaningful growth from the prior year.
Customers
The company started with its first customer at founding in 2017 and grew to 12 manufacturing customers by April 2022. All 12 customers were each installed in a single factory, with contracts signed to expand to additional plants during the summer of 2022.
Team
KFactory grew from 2 co-founders working without salaries in the early years to 7 full-time employees by April 2022. The two co-founders split equity 50/50 at the start and retained more than 60% of the business combined after two funding rounds.
Funding
KFactory closed a pre-seed round of €225,000 in 2020 and a seed round of €600,000 in 2022, bringing total funding raised to approximately $1,000,000. Before the first external investment, the co-founders funded operations themselves and went without salaries for several years.
Growth Strategy
Customer-Led Product Development
KFactory did not start with an idea pitched to investors. The founders began with one customer and built the platform together with customers over time, using real manufacturing feedback to shape the product.
Expansion Within Existing Accounts
After establishing a foothold in a single factory per customer, KFactory pursued expansion by rolling out the platform to additional plants within the same multinational companies. Contracts for multi-plant rollouts were signed by April 2022.
Modular Subscription Pricing
The platform is sold as a set of modules, with subscription fees based on the number of modules, equipments monitored, and users. This structure allows KFactory to grow revenue within each account as customers add modules and connect more equipment.
Focus on High-Value Industrial Verticals
KFactory targeted manufacturing sectors including automotive, textiles, printing, plastics, footwear, apparel, machine production, and food and beverage, focusing on companies with complex production lines where digitization delivers measurable productivity gains.
Virtual Engineers Product Line
At the time of the interview, KFactory was developing a concept called virtual engineers, described by Vlad Cazan as a unique concept worldwide, intended to be the next major product release and a new growth driver beyond the core monitoring platform.
Best Quotes
“We have started five years ago. And in 2020, we succeeded to close our first investment round. This year, we succeeded to close the second investment round. So we are doing this for five years already.”
“€600,000. In total, almost one In total, almost 1,000,000 US dollars raised until now.”
“We have 12 customers and 400 more than 400 equipments monitored in real time, industrial equipments.”
“We have started with our first customer. This is how we started the KFactory. So we are not a standard startup for having an idea going in front of investors and so on. We have started with one customer and we've built it”
“We are two co founders, and now we are seven full time employees.”
“We are working on these virtual engineers, which is a unique concept worldwide. So we have already a few customers and we are building now, we are working on this one, virtual engineers.”
“Usually when you are building a product or a platform like KFactory, you cannot burn phases. So in order to be able to extend to other plants or to other locations,”
“We didn't this simple. We didn't have salaries.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured KFactory at an early stage in April 2022, when the company had 12 customers, approximately $1M in total funding, and was preparing to expand into multi-plant deployments. The figures above are a point-in-time snapshot reported by Vlad Cazan during the recording and do not reflect the company's current state. Visit the KFactory company profile on GetLatka for the most up-to-date available data.
View KFactory’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and What KFactory Does
- 0:24Who Buys the Platform
- 2:21Founding Timeline and First Investment Round
- 3:09Second Round and Total Funding Raised
- 5:21Co-Founder Equity and Dilution
- 7:10First Customer and Platform Origins
- 7:3812 Customers and 400+ Equipments Monitored
- 9:25Single Plant Per Customer and Expansion Plans
- 10:18Why Multi-Plant Expansion Took Five Years
- 11:37Monthly Recurring Revenue and Growth
- 13:18Early Years Without Salaries
- 14:25Team Size and Co-Founder Equity Split
- 15:01Next Product: Virtual Engineers
- 15:18Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
Introduction and What KFactory Does
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Vlad Cazan. He's a co founder of KFactory, a growing startup in the first industry 4.0 platform funded by an investment fund in Romania. He's turning factories into smart factories. Vlad, are you ready to take us to the top?
Vlad Cazan
00:14>> Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss about KFactory and how we can, digitalize production lines in order to improve performance and productivity.
Who Buys the Platform
Nathan Latka
00:24So who's buying this kind of technology? Is it Amazon or Walmart, people with a lot of warehouses?
Vlad Cazan
00:30>> Our customers are factories, okay, manufacturing companies, which are willing to increase the performance and productivity of the production line. So we are a b to b platform and our customers are manufacturing companies.
Nathan Latka
00:48Can you name a couple of them that we might know?
Vlad Cazan
00:52>> Most of the customers are from automotive industry. We have a few customers here in Romania. Most probably you will know the name because they are not like big names which are producing, I don't know, phones or so I can name some So
Nathan Latka
01:16you're in automotive, textiles, printing, plastics, footwear, apparel, machine producers, food and beverage, all of these kind of folks that run warehouses. Now, what will one of these customers pay you on average per month or per year to use your technology?
Vlad Cazan
01:32>> We have multiple modules. So each module is having subscription fee, more pricing, depends on how many equipments you are monitoring, depends how many users. So there is no, let's say average can be from thousands to 10,000 per month or more, but depends. In some cases, the average, what is important to say is that we are charging small money comparing with benefits, but the benefits are huge and the the subscription fees
Nathan Latka
02:10But most customers that are paying you something like 2 or $3,000 per month.
Vlad Cazan
02:15>> Yeah. We can say like
Nathan Latka
02:16And put this on a timeline for me. When did you launch the business? What year do you remember?
Founding Timeline and First Investment Round
Vlad Cazan
02:21>> We have started five years ago. And in 2020, we succeeded to close our first investment round. This year, we succeeded to close the second investment round. So we are doing this for five years already.
Nathan Latka
02:36Okay. So you launched in 2017. You launched your first round of financing last year. How much?
Vlad Cazan
02:42>> The first round was 225 k Euro. And the second round Sorry.
Nathan Latka
02:48Vlad. Sorry. What you raised in you raised in 2021 was your first round. Right?
Vlad Cazan
02:54>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
02:55And how much? 225,000?
Vlad Cazan
02:57>> 225,000 euros.
Nathan Latka
03:02So about 270,000 United States dollars. That was your pre seed round. And then you raised more this year? Yes.
Second Round and Total Funding Raised
Vlad Cazan
03:09>> €600,000. In total, almost one In total, almost 1,000,000 US dollars raised until now.
Nathan Latka
03:21And most most founders in their seed round, right, are selling 10 to 20% of the business. What valuation did you raise at last year? Do you remember?
Vlad Cazan
03:32>> Usually, this is not public. Usually, we are right. The average is the first the first round is bigger because and the second round and the third round is lower. So the idea is to to go in third round with more than 60% of the company owned by the co founders. This is the
Nathan Latka
03:56So today today, the co founders own 60%?
Vlad Cazan
04:00>> More. More than this.
Nathan Latka
04:02Well, how much that's what I'm asking. How much have you guys been able to keep with two rounds of funding? Because funding means dilution.
Vlad Cazan
04:09>> Yeah. This is I'm I'm telling you, this is confidential. Usually, we are not disclosing this.
Nathan Latka
04:15Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out.
Vlad Cazan
04:35>> I'll show you how
Nathan Latka
04:36you 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 eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is
04:59because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna 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. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity And red is if you
Co-Founder Equity and Dilution
Nathan Latka
05:21sold 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 founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are
05:46a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll 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 dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right,
06:11we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link, this link, founderpath.com/products/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
06:36the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into the interview.
Vlad Cazan
06:43>> Okay. But it's more than 60%.
Nathan Latka
06:46Vlad? Got it. More than 60%. The reason I asked this question is because dilution is a very real thing, right? And over time, if you lose control of the business, you're screwed or you can be screwed. So that's why we asked the question, the more you can share, the more my audience learns. So I appreciate you being as open as you can. So got it. So you've scaled now. When did you sign your first customer?
First Customer and Platform Origins
Nathan Latka
07:10Was it back in 2017?
Vlad Cazan
07:13>> Yes. We have started with our first customer. This is how we started the KFactory. So we are not a standard startup for having an idea going in front of investors and so on. We have started with one customer and we've built it
07:32>> together with our customers, platform.
Nathan Latka
07:35And how many customers do you work with now today?
12 Customers and 400+ Equipments Monitored
Vlad Cazan
07:38>> We have 12 customers and 400 more than 400 equipments monitored in real time, industrial equipments.
Nathan Latka
07:50Say that last part. I don't understand.
Vlad Cazan
07:53>> We have more than 400 industrial equipments monitored in this moment in our platform, connected to our platform.
Nathan Latka
08:01Where individual warehouses?
Vlad Cazan
08:04>> We are not dealing with warehouses. We are monitoring production lines.
Nathan Latka
08:10Are production lines inside of warehouses?
Vlad Cazan
08:14>> Inside of factories.
08:16>> Factories, warehouses.
Nathan Latka
08:20Yeah.
Vlad Cazan
08:21>> It we have a production line in a factory, and then we have warehouses, raw material warehouses and finished goods warehouses. We are dealing with production lines, is between raw material warehouses and finished
08:38>> goods warehouses.
Nathan Latka
08:40So you are in warehouses. You are in finished goods warehouses.
08:45Just repeating literally what you just said to me back to you. So point being is, how many individual buildings or warehouses or production facilities are you currently installed in today?
Vlad Cazan
08:57>> We have installed the platform in 12 factories, not warehouses.
Nathan Latka
09:04Oh, sorry. So you've only installed this in 12 physical buildings. I thought 12 was your number of customers. Every customer has only used you in one factory?
Vlad Cazan
09:12>> One factory? Yeah, it's in one physical building.
Nathan Latka
09:17But why aren't customers, if they love your product, why aren't they installing you in all of their buildings, in multiple buildings, multiple factories?
Single Plant Per Customer and Expansion Plans
Vlad Cazan
09:25>> This is what is happening with the current customers. We have started with one factory, and now we are extending the solution to other factories outside the main one. So we are dealing with we are working with multinational companies. We started with one plant, and then we are extending to other plants. This is where we are now.
Nathan Latka
09:47Of your 12 customers today, how many have you installed in more than one plant?
Vlad Cazan
09:54>> None yet. We have now contracts signed with few customers to roll out in other plants, so most probably we'll have during the summer the rollout.
Nathan Latka
10:05Why not? I mean, you've been building this for five years. If it's working, these people should have you installed in all of their factories, all of their plants. Why are you just now five years in expanding into more than one plant per customer?
Why Multi-Plant Expansion Took Five Years
Vlad Cazan
10:18>> Usually when you are building a product or a platform like KFactory, you cannot burn phases. So in order to be able to extend to other plants or to other locations,
10:35>> you have to be prepared. And this is the moment we are prepared to do this. Until now,
10:41>> we've been focused on raising the number of customers. This is the most important for a startup and to increase the monthly recurring revenue.
Nathan Latka
10:52Monthly recurring revenue, we can take 12 customers times $2,000 a month average, you told me earlier, you're doing about 25, $26,000 a month in revenue?
Vlad Cazan
11:03>> Yeah. In this moment, yes.
Nathan Latka
11:05And if that's what you're doing today, what were you doing exactly one year ago? Do you remember?
Vlad Cazan
11:12>> Five times less.
Nathan Latka
11:15So you're doing about $5,000 per month a year ago?
Vlad Cazan
11:19>> Less than.
Nathan Latka
11:20Yeah. My question then is you you said you launched in 2017, and revenue was just $5,000 a month last year in 2021. How are you paying your people for three years where you basically were doing no revenue?
Vlad Cazan
11:33>> Investing
Monthly Recurring Revenue and Growth
Vlad Cazan
11:37>> our money and investors'money. So this was idea. We started the platform, then we looked for an investor. We found the first investor in 2021. Until then, of course, we're paying from our money.
Nathan Latka
11:54Well, that's what I'm asking, Vlad. That's 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, that's four years. So you guys were just investing, you've personally put in a lot of money basically to just pay yourself over those four years. Yeah. How much have you personally invested in the business?
Vlad Cazan
12:10>> We didn't calculate it exactly, but I think around
12:16>> $500,000 at least.
Nathan Latka
12:18Does that make you nervous?
12:22Is that like a lot of money for you or a little bit of money for you?
Vlad Cazan
12:27>> No. It's a lot of effort, a lot of time and of course money. So if you are prepared to do this, to invest effort, time, money, you can start, let's say, building a startup. Otherwise, after one year, you can be bankrupt and
Nathan Latka
12:48you go Well, there's a lot of founders listening right now, though, that don't have $500,000 sitting in the bank. Right? And they're building fine startups. They don't have to put in $500,000 of their own money. My question for you is where did you get that money from? Did you have a company before this that you sold or are you rich? Where did you get this money from?
Vlad Cazan
13:05>> No, I'm not rich. But as I told you, when I'm saying investment, it means also effort. So it's an opportunity cost. Of course, if I'm having
Early Years Without Salaries
Nathan Latka
13:18My question was how much money did you put in the business? Not how much opportunity cost did you put in the business. How much money did you put in? You said 500,000. Is that not accurate?
Vlad Cazan
13:26>> This is not money. This is not cash money. Investment doesn't mean only money.
Nathan Latka
13:33I'm asking you, though, how much money you put in personally as the founder. Calculating.
Vlad Cazan
13:38>> We don't know. We didn't calculate it.
Nathan Latka
13:40My question then is how where who was paying salaries for four years before you raised money last year?
Vlad Cazan
13:47>> We didn't this simple. We didn't have salaries.
Nathan Latka
13:50So how are you putting food on the table for your family?
Vlad Cazan
13:57>> Again, if you have money, if you have some some money and you can live two or three years without having revenue, then Okay. You can start to build a startup. Otherwise, I don't recommend So
Nathan Latka
14:11you saved up a bunch of money from a former job or whatever, and you went without pay for three or four years while you were building?
Vlad Cazan
14:18>> Yeah, exactly. You can do this.
Nathan Latka
14:20And were you the sole founder or how many people were on the team?
Team Size and Co-Founder Equity Split
Vlad Cazan
14:25>> We are two co founders, and now we are seven full time employees.
Nathan Latka
14:31Okay. Got it. So and that you guys as cofounders, did you split equity evenly at the beginning 5050?
Vlad Cazan
14:39>> Yeah. Usually, this is the the model.
Nathan Latka
14:42Well, I know usually that's why I asked. I'm asking what you did, The interview is about you. Did you guys split equity fiftyfifty?
Vlad Cazan
14:48>> Yeah, of course.
Nathan Latka
14:49Okay, interesting. Very cool. What's next as we wrap up here? What's next on the product roadmap? You're trying to expand into new factories, new product lines now. What's the next product release?
Next Product: Virtual Engineers
Vlad Cazan
15:01>> We are working on these virtual engineers, which is a unique concept worldwide. So we have already a few customers and we are building now, we are working on this one, virtual engineers.
Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
Nathan Latka
15:18Very cool. Let's wrap up here Vlad with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?
Vlad Cazan
15:24>> Life of Steve Jobs.
Nathan Latka
15:27Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Vlad Cazan
15:32>> Yeah. Steve Jobs and also the guy from Microsoft.
15:39>> Satya Nadella.
Nathan Latka
15:40Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building KFactory?
Vlad Cazan
15:45>> Only tool? Yep. But we are not using online tools. Only on sales, for example, we are using HubSpot. I I like HubSpot.
Nathan Latka
15:56Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Vlad Cazan
16:01>> I'm trying to sleep at least six, seven hours.
Nathan Latka
16:05And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
Vlad Cazan
16:09>> Married with kids.
Nathan Latka
16:11How many kids?
Vlad Cazan
16:12>> One daughter.
Nathan Latka
16:14Okay.
16:16Congrats Vlad, and how old are you?
Vlad Cazan
16:18>> I'm 41.
16:20>> 41.
Nathan Latka
16:21Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20?
Vlad Cazan
16:29>> No, hard to say. I cannot respond.
Nathan Latka
16:32Well, think about it. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.
Vlad Cazan
16:42>> Really, it's a a good question. I don't know to to respond right now. Maybe to to have some some knowledge about how to build a business. And to have in school some knowledge transfer regarding this from real entrepreneurs.
Nathan Latka
17:02Guys, KFactory is helping manufacturers, product lines, etcetera, digitize their warehouses and factories. They've got 12 customers today. They're doing $24,000 in monthly recurring revenue, up from 5,000 a month just a year ago. They raised about $1,000,000 to date. The co founders still own more than 60% of the business. They split it fiftyfifty at the start, looking to scale. Now they've gone from two people to seven people as they get ready for their next product line release,
17:25which is digitizing these engineers and workers. Vlad, thanks for taking us to the top.
Vlad Cazan
17:29>> Thank you.
Nathan Latka
17:32One 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
17:57Central. 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
18:19fundraise, 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
18:41up 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.
19:01We got 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.