How Meahana CEO Matthew Archer grew to $550K revenue with a 5 person team in 2025.

guys Matt Archer launched me a call it 18 months ago September 2020 started writing code he's put in between 10,000 and 100,000 bucks of his own Capital to get this going is has two businesses using it right now with 15 seats planning start asking for money here in a couple months we'll see what happens go to market he's hoping to tap these super uh active LinkedIn groups where it's a bunch of agile user groups user folks hanging out together because then hopefully they go on and start using his digital collaborative space that they've built out hey folks my guest today is Matt Archer he's a consultant ter turned entrepreneur he was frustrated by the limits of tools available to lead collaborative working sessions with Executives at Fortune 500 companies because of that rather than accepting that status quo he's now putting a tool called Mah Mahana doio to help teams think together better Matt gr take us to the top yeah Nathan thanks for uh for having me on it's it's good to be here today you bet I always love someone that finds their own problem then builds something you're eating your own dog food obviously the challenge is can you can you get the MVP built cheaply can you get your first customer on a beta plan all those sorts of things so so explain to me where you are when did you guys write the first line of code for this platform yeah we started uh September of 20 September 22 is when we uh we actually started this whole process made our first investment our own personal money into the company um and started the process so we are little over 13 months into uh into the development how committed are you how much of your personal money have you put in so far I I put in a lot um I put in a lot I'm not going to disclose that um what I can a lot is relative though right are we talking like 10 grand or like a more than 100 Grand it's in between the two of those okay fair enough fair enough okay so a lot of money so so I mean is it true or false um if this fails uh it would be personally very very painful or no this is play money for you uh it would be personal I mean I'm uh yeah I mean look we're we're I'd love to say I'm independently wealthy that's not necessarily the case I've done well in my career um but we've got a lot writing on this y y Okay so walk me through where you're at it sounds like you're maybe pre-revenue so what signs are you getting from the market that it's worth it to keep spending your money building this thing yeah so um I mean when I say we're pre-revenue we do have uh we have people who are actually banging on our platform right now so they're actually using it for the intended purpose uh which is um to to Really Drive creative thinking Drive uh collaboration within teams uh in larger audiences and we got people using the platform today how many how many teams use it today so we have we got about 15 about 15 unique users leveraging the platform and it's been mostly a uh the intent is a sales LE model today um we found just to be very transparent it's been a little more difficult to get people to shift from uh their current kind of use case and the things that they're using today to support their collaborative discussions um and we're actually going to shift that model and that's what we're working on right now shifting it from sales Le to product Le what does that mean 15 unique users is that companies or like like there's only 15 or there's only 15 seats across two companies on the platform today there's 15 seats across two companies yeah oh I guessed right okay 15 unique seats across two companies how did you get that first company on the platform where'd you find them I mean it was through it was actually through direct Outreach so email uh connected with some um you know uh you know folks that had not known which was super encouraging to us uh they saw a gap in their business in the way that they were engaging their customer base um with the tools that they had they liked the story uh put them on a trial and um they saw value immediately nobody opens cold emails though today so you must be a very good copywriter what was the subject line on that first email I I can honestly tell you it's trying something new within uh within the collaborative space something along those lines and they picked up they saw again they had a true issue 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 287 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 I'll show you how you 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 88 days and even set goals for valuation this year now the secret valuation is there's many different ways to value a SAS business so the reason you're going to see three or four different valuations inside of your founder paath dashboard this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SAS company you're going to get a different valuation a VC is going to pay a different valuation private Equity Firm is different if you're going to do a minority sale that's different and if you sell the whole business that's a different valuation you can see 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 sold 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 realtime valuation data points Founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raise they sold 22% 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 the 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 valuations than what you can get now inside of founder path and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're going to 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 founder path.com products SLV valuations or if you go to founder path.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 the platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview what was your strategy and the content of the cold email was there a lot of text are very vague little text to Peak curiosity yeah it's just to Peak curiosity let's just get people going it was the second email that they opened um so the first one was there second one followed a couple days later and they picked up and they reached out said let's let's let's see what we can do well what was see what we can do was it a demo was it a beta sign up what was the next step yeah so the next step for us was H it was a demo so let's show we and at that point we had probably closer to an MVP um but we we showed show them what we were doing walk them through a a sequence of of of uh of activities that would support what they were doing and prototype or were you actually showing the real website we were showing the real website we had the we've again we we Advanced this platform pretty quickly back in in May when we started with some of these conversations we had a working not not even a prototype we had a working tool and a working platform that we felt comfortable enough go out and give um they saw value in it immediately and then they tested it I say they tested it they didn't just take it for a test ride internally they actually took it out and tested it with an existing client of theirs uh and they had tremendous confidence in it uh that led to them wanting to use this more okay why not why it sounds like they're great it's going nice why not ask them to pay what's taking so long to get the first paying customer uh it's not that it's it's not that we're not looking for them to pay it's that we're continuing to evolve and learning from our customers and how they're using the platform so that we can continue to advance that and as I said we're shifting from a sales LE model to a product LE model this is giving us a lot of intel on where we want to focus our time and effort but I guess how much runway have you given yourself you're spending your own money on this bad boy eventually you want it to be self- sustainable when are you going to start asking for for money I mean that's that's that's the next step that is the next step but when I mean before Halloween this you know next week or you know next year or when I mean we'd like to do it before end of year okay okay and again why do you think you have I mean would you say are does it do it make you nervous to ask for money or what's holding back no we we we want we want to make sure that it's sustainable right so that we can continue to show value to our customer um and that it's not a we're asking you for this it's that they want to give us this money because they see value what they're doing okay and what do you think you'll charge them I mean what do you think the ask Will will be I mean we have we we've got some ideas um we're continuing to Market test we understand where uh where the the competitive landscape is um we do think we have a uh we have an offering that is different in this space and um we're probably going to charge a little bit of a premium but we're also GNA let the market kind of dictate what is the premium though I just I know nothing about the space right so are we talking like a $1,000 dollar per seat per year no no no no no we're talking we're talking in you know somewhere in the range of you know between $50 and $100 per seat uh for each user and who are you anchoring that against who is in your space who you know you're looking at their pricing page going okay we need to be around that yeah so if you if you look at the world of like Miro mural concept board storm boards these are all pure playay whiteboards that have uh found a way to digitize digitize Post-it notes and where we believe we're different is we're now we're giving you the opportunity to pull dat seamlessly through the conversation without ever having to move stuff around as a facilitator okay so 50 to 100 per month per user correct somewhere in that range we're trying to land that plane what team size are you built for 10 person team thousanders team it's I mean we we're we're building for Enterprise uh long term um so we've always started with that in mind how can we get to the biggest but let's start with uh something much more functional where we can support them today based on our size it's a very different product though right building something for 10 thou teams that are 10,000 big is very different than a team that's 100 big right so like who are you building for today we're building for a 100 you know 100 to 200 people yes okay okay interesting and so once you get your first pen customer how do you go from two companies with 15 seats to 50 companies with 500 seats what's your growth Channel yeah so again we're we're shifting towards a product Le growth strategy so what does that mean that's like a that's a big buzz word what tell me what it is so again we're gonna We and this is why we're in this this this transition period the big thing for us is looking at how can we offer more of a free experience so people can come to us so starting off with either fremium or free trial we're still trying to figure out which approach we're going to take is it a try me or a premium offering right off of the site that's number one number two is we're going to do a much larger uh Outreach to start to build some awareness to drive some traction to uh to our website we've got a couple of different options sitting in front of us uh but we need to bring awareness that there's a different approach to collaboration um and that that's those are some of the short-term plays that we're going to put in place again we're still working out some of those details Matt like again none of that was all like super Outreach where what website what link are you going to promote when you say free you want to test free you're already free so how do you get more free I mean what what specifically yeah that I mean that's a great we we know our we know our ICP and we know where we want to play we're we're we're trying to find and this is the god- honors truth we're trying to find the the right channels where uh these Consulting audiences are today uh as well as uh business users we're going to the different user groups where these folks are and we're trying to User Group uh any I mean an example could be again agile User Group um is is is a good place for us to start um because these are folks that are running regular meetings uh standup meetings that need to feed into other systems and we think we can do it differently than the way they're doing it today the it's just getting the messaging out there we're working on that copy as we speak where are these adile user groups hosted you're talking on LinkedIn groups Facebook groups Reddit subreddits what are you talking about uh starting with LinkedIn um as a as a an initial place and then we're gonna expand from there because it's LinkedIn groups excuse me do people use LinkedIn groups is that an active Community I mean they're they're there they're there but it's a it's it's a we're we're going to start again we want to start with some tests and see if it works and we're going to expand from there interesting okay and um besides your own Capital bootstop to dat uh it's been our own capital and we do have some friends and family and a few angels that have have given uh you know some hard-earned money to US okay so you do like a preed $100,000 round something like that yeah okay and when was that closed last uh last year or this year uh it was this year earlier this year year okay and I guess why did you need to go close that Capital what makes this expensive to build uh building a platform is expensive I mean out we we've Outsource some of the development some of the infrastructure and the architecture of it has been uh has been expensive then maintaining a platform as as you know is is very expensive so we uh we just want to make sure that we're continuing to evolve and and and Advance the platform based off the the needs of the market uh and that's going to continue to require an investment all right let's wrap over here with the famous five number one your favorite book my favorite book um probably Mice and Men uh number two is there a CEO you're following or studying yeah I mean there there there's a ton um shoot uh I'll go real simple Tim Cook right now number three what's your favorite online tool for building Miana my favorite online tool for building Miana um I mean as as as a non-technical person I'll be honest with you my favorite tool for this to build it's more for outreach uh obiously it's LinkedIn right now okay number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night about five and situation married single kiddos uh married with kids how many kiddos two nice okay and how old are you uh I am 46 I asked because I want to know last question here what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 um I I I wish I knew that this was was not as scary as it as it seemed to be when I was 20 I thought I needed to have all the answers I thought I needed to have the perfect job and it was going to lead to other things I should have jumped into this world of Entrepreneurship as soon as I got out of school and just continued to try uh because you know at that point there was so much less to lose um but it's a good reason to uh it's it feels good to be doing this now guys Matt arer launched Mahana call it 18 months ago September 2020 started writing code he's put in between 10,000 and 100,000 bucks of his own Capital to get this going he's has two businesses using it right now with 15 seats planning start asking for money here in a couple months we'll see what happens go to market he's hoping to tap these super uh active LinkedIn groups where it's a bunch of agile user groups user folks hanging out together because then hopefully they go on and start using his digital collaborative space that they've built out we'll see what happens next thanks so much for taking us to the top Matt perfect thanks Nathan one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1:00 p.m. 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 backend 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 1: p.m. central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on YouTube every day at 2 p.m. 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 acquisition a big fund raise a big sale a big profitability statement or something else I don't want you to miss it additionally if you want 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