How Kunveno CEO Yannick Dickel grew to $54.5K revenue and 5 customers in 2024.

conveno.de launched because him and his two buddies built it internally at a big company called Trump they said we need to spin this bad boy out Trump said here's some money six figures give us 20 of the new company they spun it out now they've got caught five paying customers paying on average you know caught 500 bucks ish per month doing 2500 per month right now in Revenue hoping to double Revenue to five thousand a month by December and then go out and raise call it 500k out of 2.5-ish postpone evaluation we'll see if he can get it done tough market right now again they are helping you drive up your employee engagement with their platform conveno.de hey folks my guest today is Yannick Dickel he's building a company called conveino.de it's a B2B SAS appreciation platform Yannick you ready to take us to the top yeah sure all right so you launched in 2022 it looks like it's you know you're playing in the HR Tech space a leading appreciation platform for employees what does that mean that's right we started last year I mean um HR Tech yeah we sometimes we struggle with the term maybe let's say work Tech because we're doing it mainly for the workforce and Enterprise for Enterprise customers so we are building a B2B app and that integrates also in in other apps for example Microsoft teams and our ultimate goal is to increase Employee Engagement through fun and easy rituals which will be placed on our platform and also empowers teams for example to celebrate their successes online and can you be really specific what do you know Employee Engagement can mean a lot of things what specifically what kind of Engagement I mean team engagement so our focus is on engaging teams making sure everyone feels valued in the team and is seen for his or her engagement in the team um yeah so that's yeah that's right please be specific so there's there's thousands of Founders listening right now that have a team of five people on their customer success team they want to get more engagement from the customer success team they would use your tool to what get more from the customer success team to get on more zoom calls or to respond to more slack messages or to go on more vacations together what is it what do you mean by engagement I mean ultimately what we can measure is making sure everyone feels appreciated how do you measure that um by for example by asking our users and how appreciated do you feel from your team colleagues from your organization from the sales department for example in your case so that's what we what we typically ask our users and we can see and already a good good numbers and success why can't I just set up a free type form and email my whole team hey do you feel appreciated yes or no answer the survey uh you could you could do that but I mean um in our with our tool you can you are reminded for example to uh just to give positive feedback to someone who helped you out in a project or in other work environments so that's pretty much what we do we bring people together we make sure everyone feels valued and to have a possibility to give to give positive feedback I mean when I want to get positive feedback to somebody I found about they going slack and I publicly say great job on this it looks wonderful and then people hit all the like and heart emojis why why is your solution better than what I just described I mean you can do that for a smaller um for smaller teams I'd say up to maybe 100 people but in larger organizations and that what we that's what we target from say uh 100 to uh larger than three thousand five thousand people it's hard to uh to get it going with uh such as like a channel so that's what we what we focus on and to make sure like the whole organization is is within that framework and how do you think about pricing what do one of these customers use that they use you today what do they pay per month or per year on average um on average they pay to a US dollar per month per user so that's pretty much uh for in our uh in our case for for almost every employee that do all your companies today you mentioned your core you know your Target customer has more than 100 ftes so are all your customers today larger than 100 FTS uh yeah they are right okay I see and do they usually buy a package that for the whole entire team or do they test it with a small team first um it depends on the on the size of of the customer we typically we we split it onto um T-shirt sizes with customers so it's SM and L uh large and so for example for a large customer with 3 000 user states start with let's say 500 users and then sort of roll it out for for the other ones oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built it into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out 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these interviews on YouTube all these datas are built from real-time valuation data points Founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raise they sold 22 percent of their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to see companies that have sold the whole business well here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round well go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down what they raised what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold there's never been a larger data set of SAS valuation than what you can get now inside of founder path and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second but if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash evaluations or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products click on get your evaluation here and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl again all that valuation data live right inside the platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview if you took an average of just the average number of seats right that a company might pay you for what would the average be across your full customer base something like you know 150 200 um no probably a bit more more than like 500 to a thousand yeah okay wow so that's big so they're so these are like 5 000 person companies paying you for 500 to a thousand seats right right okay okay so 500 seats on average are two bucks to see I mean folks are paying an average maybe a grand per month or you're targeting 12 000 per year contracts that's right that's right interesting okay very cool all right now that we understand sort of pricing today and sort of where you're at today give us the back story here you launched it last year are you sole founder uh no we're a team of three founders and we got two knowledge about each other working for a large Manufacturing Company actually in Germany uh called Trump and then we got to know a very positive work environment and Company culture but we also got to know how quickly things can change for example during lockdown times during covert Etc so we decided back then we decided to do something to keep people attached to their teams and ultimately to to their company so we established what you could say a sort of a prototype for what we are currently developing with conveno and we are also a corporate spin-offs so we we started um with Trump and now we're we're doing it uh as our own business and uh yeah developing the system even more this Trump since the corporate spinopters Trump own a chunk of the company today yeah but only a minority stake in the company right okay so they took like 10 or 20 percent and then the three of you guys split the rest right right that's it I see I see okay very cool very interesting what was that like was it hard to convince Trump to let you take the technology with your two buddies out of the company and spin it all I mean they also profit from from our business because they're a customer themselves so I I think it's quite beneficial for for both sides and also um for example for for employer branding topics that's quite interesting to to get such a topic flying I guess yeah yeah okay so Trump was your first customer tell me how you got your second customer what's the story there I mean uh like all founders usually start with cold Outreach so that that was quite interesting for us because none of us had much sales experience beforehand so yeah we started to to make some calls and to get uh like a couple of pilot customers first and now we are actually having like a split in in sales because we yeah we continue to do um like traditional Outreach direct sales but also are engaging in a partner sales Channel which is quite interesting because for example change change agencies Consultants can also sell our product with a non-existing project or with an existing customer and they're getting up to 20 of Revenue of the first two years so that's quite interesting for them to have recurring revenues as for example a consultant for us because um you know kind of customer acquisition costs are quite low when we when we engage in partner sales well and more importantly is the the CAC there is fully variable it only gets paid out if the sale happens which is nice but that makes a lot of sense so those partner channels cold Outreach was your first customer fast forward today how many organizations are you working with uh currently we have 14 customers um some of them are already paying some of them are still in a trial period um so how many are out of how many of them are out of the trial period you know real paying customers real paying customers we've got five right now and what's the process of moving someone from a trial to paid is the trial free trial is for you exactly and we're making sure that the value is already been felt by the by the customer in the trial period and then we we start to to talk to them and to to go into like a corporation mode for um follow on to for example 12th month um how do you measure value during a trial period I mean you can always measure measured with engagement so if like all the employees are active users and start to use our platform to start to write uh thank you to to other colleagues other provide successes together and then we're doing like a spot we where we are then do you feel appreciated by your colleagues that's what we what we start when we start a try period And then after two months for example and we can see um improved values of our service so that's what we what we call successful understood okay you told me earlier on average ten thousand dollar twelve thousand dollar per year contracts you know times five paying customers it puts you about five thousand a month right now on revenue is that about right uh that's about right a little a little less um but that's that's uh yeah and where will it where were you exactly one year ago at this point it's been calculated grow three zero zero yes we we did our first uh uh yeah deal in late December of last year yeah that's that's great and have you self-capitalize the company and bootstrap or did you sell equity in raise um I mean because we are spin-off we we got our first funding um from Trump uh but now we're doing like our first real funding round end of the year so end of um December maybe early January yeah how much are you looking to raise uh 500k and if someone is here just right now an investor and writes you 500k check what percent of the company are you willing to give them I mean that's that's depending on what we what we're able to do in the next few months I'd say but um we uh we would uh yeah talk it out I guess what valuation are you targeting in December um something around like a two to three and a half million okay so you're only saw something like 20 to 25 of the company right right yeah interesting and what what do you think you have to go Revenue to by December this year to get a 2.5 million post money valuation I mean we are currently looking at uh something around 30 000 US dollar err and I'm confident and we that we can at least triple it by the end of the year well right now you're at 5 000 a month or about 60 000 ARR right what do you mean you're at 30 000 ARR um thirty thousand is is our current number because uh some of our customers as I said previously they um they don't pay right now they're in free trial I'm sorry you just I just asked you about two and a half minutes ago five customers times a thousand dollars per month puts you at five thousand a month in Revenue your response was a little bit lower than that that puts you at about 50 60 000 of air oh mrr is is uh two and a half thousand uh right now okay got it so so not a little bit less half of what I just described so possible got it got it okay so you want to go from thirty thousand AR to sixty thousand AR between now and December and you believe at that if you hit that you'll be able to get a 2.5 post money evaluation yep why do you believe that that'd be a 41.7 x multiple on Top Line rabbit forward-looking revenues yeah and I guess it's valid because our sales pipeline is pretty uh full right now and also partner sales is ramping up so that's uh that's a big big topic for federal evaluation right how many of your current five paying customers came from partners uh one right already one anyway what metrics in the top of your funnel will you point to in terms of when investors ask proof that your partnership channel is growing um I mean Partners we we already uh signed for um for partner sales agreements so that's uh that's actually what we what we look at right now and then also um opportunities we are we're discussing right now with our partner sets organizations I see I see and then I guess Trump initially capitalized you how much did they put in the company on day one last year uh I'm actually not allowed to to speak about that um but let's say um it's it's uh like a six figure number do you still have more than 80 of that money in the bank or have you burned through most of it uh We've earned most of it because uh we we had like a big r d spent the last few months to to get our platform scalable uh for example all the Integrations uh we we are able to offer right now for Microsoft teams Etc um so that's that's pretty much what we what we spent the funding on Yannick how big is big what what sorry what's that you said you spent big on R D how big is big I mean we're talking about uh 25 000 per month for external um development right now okay and and how many months have you engaged that group uh for nine months no nine months okay so nine times 25k we spent about 230 000 on development so far right right how do you know if that development team is like doing good or bad work you know people always Founders always struggle with this I mean we we see we see the um we see our product right now which is uh far beyond what we had uh in the beginning of the year and also uh customer feedback I'd say because many of the features we developed uh rights with our customers so we we sat down with them we asked asked them what they need what they what they wish for a product wise so it's it's pretty it's pretty um yeah a couple of uh strongly coupled to to our customers right now who guides them or who drives that team are one of the co-founders like engineering based right right he's a full stack developer and he used to do it for like a couple of years in all sorts of settings so he's uh quite experienced and also leading a development team that's great how many folks are full-time at the company today not including contractors uh three only the three founders okay I love that okay and then how many are on the Contracting team uh one full-time and I'd say 0.5 FTE um like on the spot Consulting for for other topics well how many are on the engineering team the contract uh all of them all of them I know how many uh 1.5 so like oh wow you're spending 25 000 a month for 1.5 ftes that's right holy cow uh I guess what's the purpose of outs there's not a lot of there's not a lot of Arbitrage there from what I can tell based in terms of cost pricing value Etc so why not just hire this person full time we thought about it and we will probably do it next year but for I mean for this year it was the better better fit for us to do it externally but we will sure surely um yeah internalize it all right we'll see what happens in the meantime let's wrap up here with the famous five number one Yannick what's your favorite book uh favorite book I'd say a lead startup from Eric Greece number two is their CEO you're following or studying uh lately I've been following Alexander Winker CEO of celona's process mining number three what's your favorite online tool for building conveino uh I have to say chat CPT in the last few months number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night definitely okay in situation married single kids a married one daughter oh that's great and how old are you 32 last question Yannick something you wish you knew when you were 20 years old uh Network deep not broad let's say guys there you have it conveno.de launched because him and his two buddies built it internally at a big company called Trump they said we need to spin this bad boy out Trump said here's some money six figures give us 20 of the new company they spun it out now they've got caught five paying customers paying on average you know caught 500 bucks ish per month doing 2500 per month right now in Revenue hoping to double Revenue to five thousand a month by December and then go out and raise call it 500k out of 2.5-ish post money valuation we'll see if he can get it done tough market right now again they are helping you drive up your employee engagement with their platform conveino.e Yannick thanks for taking us to the top one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1 pm Central it's called Shark Tank for SAS 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 our poo CAC LTV you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every Thursday 1 p.m 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 SAS World whether it's an 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