Mobal Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Guys, he's grown 200% year over year doing about a $1,500,000 run rate today. That's up from just 35 ish thousand dollars a month exactly one year ago when they closed their first round of funding, $2,000,000 on around a 10,000,000 post money valuation. Before that, they just had two early angel investors that put in a couple, you know, 10, 20, $30,000 a pop. Otherwise, him and his cofounder split equity 50-50 for their tool, mobal.io, which helps businesses keep [00:22] their metadata updated across many, many listing sites, whether that's Google Places or some other app exchange. Hey, folks. My guest today is Jakob Wikström. He is the founder of mobal.io. That's m o b a l. It helps with business profile automation. Jakob Wikström takes to the top. [00:38] >> Yeah. I'm I'm happy to be here. [00:40] What does that mean, business profile automation? [00:43] >> What business profile automation mean? That means actually like if you Google, let's say, a restaurant on the Google search engine, you see this info profile with pictures, reviews, opening hours, anything. It takes manual clicks to actually update it. Well, our software automates a lot of that updating in a nutshell. [01:04] So it's like metadata updates across many different listing sites? [01:08] >> And many different listing sites, yeah. And we believe like that sort of the world is consolidating into these bigger platforms. So again, Instagram, Facebook and really soon as well Apple is where we're integrating with the platform. [01:22] You have a lot of energy. Does that mean you're rich? Do you have a lot of customers already? [01:27] >> No. I don't know. I I think it's part of my personality. But but things are going well to answer your question also. [01:34] That's very cool. Okay. So what are you charging companies on average to use this technology per month? [01:40] >> So it's a good question. So again per month it changes dependence on how many locations you have. So again to take you through some really basics, again the Google profile listing or in Apple Maps the listing itself, the companies that actually need it are those who have foot traffic to their location. So again for example restaurants, car dealership, cafes, different retail companies, brick and mortar and so forth because customers use the search engines or maps to [02:07] >> actually find some kind of hyper local information. So yeah the pricing to come back to that again how we price the product is according to the features. Like if you want to, let's say that you're a restaurant and reviews are really your issue, then we can charge as well just for automating the reviews. [02:27] But Jakob, just give me an average real quick. What's the average customer pay you per month? [02:31] >> An average customer, I would say like, again, it depends on the locations, but let's say if it's one location, it could be everything between 40 and 60 depending on the automations. But then if it's 300 locations, it can go well under €10 as well per location. [02:48] Yep. Okay. But Jakob, make the math easy. You add up all your customers and divide by your revenue, right, what's the average customer paying per month? [02:54] >> The average customer paying per month, like are you talking about the whole customer base that we have? [03:02] Yes. [03:03] >> The annual the average contract value, I think it's about 5 k at this [03:09] Per year. Yeah. Okay. 5 k per year. That's great. And that average, what is that? For five locations, 10 locations? What's your typical user? [03:17] >> And typical user is a smaller chain like with the with that actually has the the like need for its business to run that the foot traffic has to go into to the location itself. [03:28] And put this on a timeline for me. When did you launch the company? What year? [03:32] >> We launched three years ago. And how we launched was that we actually started by just doing this manually as a service to the clients to update the listings. That was how we started. And from there we started to learn the pain points what the customers actually needed. Then we built a tool for ourselves to update the listings even more effectively ourselves and then customers started to ask us well-to-use it. And from there we became a SaaS [03:57] >> company. [03:58] So how much revenue did you do in your best year as just a service business before you launched the SaaS company? [04:04] >> As a service business, it was something closer to 1,000,000 that we did with the service business. Yeah. [04:10] And who's we? When you did 1,000,000 in revenue that year, how many full time employees did you have? [04:14] >> At that time, I think something maybe closer to 15 people before we then became a SaaS company and took a venture capital investment, which was one year ago. And then we at that point, we raised our seed seed round. [04:29] So how much did you raise in the seed? [04:32] >> 2,000,000. [04:33] Okay. 2,000,000. And most folks are are selling between 1520% of their company in their seed round. Is that the same for you? [04:40] >> Something in that ballpark. Yeah. [04:42] Okay. So you raised it like a 10,000,000 post money valuation, something like that? [04:46] >> In the ballpark. Yeah. [04:48] Oh, 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. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect [05:11] 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 because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna [05:36] 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 sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is [05:57] not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founders share with us on the show. So traction, 1,200,000 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 a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're [06:23] 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. Alright. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but if [06:45] 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 the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into the [07:11] interview. Okay. Was that the looking back now, was that the right decision? [07:16] >> It's definitely the decision. And again, like, I believe as in any sort of round you go and race, even if we've just raised like one proper, I think it's more about as well who you're partnering partnering up with. So again, like we we had the we're thankful to have as well Lifeline, which which was the company who venture capital company who invested in us. [07:36] Very good. Okay. So you raised two on 10. And how many it sounds like you have cofounders. How many of you guys launched the business? [07:42] >> So it's me and one other co founder as well. And and yeah, that was us two who started and then two business. [07:49] Yeah. Were you nice at the beginning? [07:50] You just split it fifty fifty? [07:51] >> No. Because we had two business angels as well in the beginning. So so they they as well played a part and and not only invested, they actually worked part time for for the first year to to get the business. [08:05] How much did they invest? [08:07] >> That was really like small amount. It's in the like amounts of tens of thousands so that they invested. So and and then after that sort of Two main after that yeah. [08:14] Two angels plus two co founders at the start, but ignoring that, I'm just curious how the co founder split the equity. Were you guys split equally or no? [08:21] >> Yeah. Equally. Yeah. With the cofounder. Yeah. [08:24] Oh, okay. Okay. And then how much did you give the two early angels? What percent of the business? Twenty, thirty, 50? [08:31] >> Like, the amount originally on the cap table, something like 10, 10%. Something in that ballpark. [08:41] Interesting. 10% today of your company, right, is worth a million bucks because you just raised it at 10,000,000 valuation. Why couldn't you mean, sounds it like you had a successful agency, why couldn't you use 50 k from the agency revenue to fund the software business and keep that equity from those angels? [08:55] >> That's definitely what we did after starting the company and again like beyond the equity itself, the money like we wouldn't, I think I really saw the value of Business Angels in the beginning when they joined the company because it was more than equity, it was network, it was both successful in building their own business, that was definitely a part of the agreement as well. Mhmm. And yeah, I would say that's my like, that's my take on [09:20] >> on the angels and and and as somebody said like, there's never a perfect cap table. And and I think but I but I would say I'm I'm really sorry [09:30] >> table is, a billion dollar company and I own a 100%. [09:32] That's perfect. [09:33] >> Well, that could that that's perfect in a sense. But again Perfect. But in a sense, it's perfect. But again, I think sharing your victories with others is like what what it what the whole story is about as well. [09:44] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're you're a nice guy. I mean, I'm kidding. I enjoy that too. You wanna [09:47] >> take a good seat with people. [09:48] Let's just say this, a cap table with no equity investors on it, only your team. That would be very cool. Alright. Talk me talk to me more about your your size today. How many customers are paying you? [09:59] >> Customers are a bit over 300 in And so can I take And we're like Europe and The US and really yeah, we're really in the beginning? Like we're still building the foundations to what we do. Again on a like the megatrend that we're working in and what we know that is happening already is that if you get all the information from the listing, let's say that you are gonna go to a restaurant, you don't go to [10:26] >> the website anymore, You just go to the listings. So the listings are becoming the new version of the website if people still use search engines as their way to consume info. And that's the really interesting part of what we are working with. [10:40] Can I take 300 customers times the $5,000 your average contract value? You guys are doing about a $1,500,000 run rate today? [10:49] >> Yeah. Something in that something in that ballpark. Yeah. [10:51] Okay. That would be about a $120,000 a month last month. Is that right? [10:55] >> Something in the ballpark. Yeah. [10:57] And help us understand growth. If you were around that today, where were you exactly one year ago? [11:02] >> One year ago, I think yeah. Now again, I don't remember exactly the number, but something closer to a 200% growth. [11:12] Okay. So you were you were like around 35, $40,000 a month about a year ago? [11:18] >> Something something in that ballpark. Yeah. You're really interested in the numbers. I think that's good. Businesses are driven with numbers. [11:23] Have you listened to have you listened to the show? [11:26] >> I have. [11:27] Okay. Well, then you know that I always ask numbers. Right? [11:29] >> It's good. [11:30] >> I I get bored otherwise. [11:31] Okay. Don't Yeah. [11:32] >> It's good. Alright. [11:34] Very cool. Got it. So so I guess walk me through how you're growing today. How are you signing up new customers? [11:42] >> So we're signing up new customers mainly like we're trying to get everyone to talk to us first. It's an interesting like model that I believe in like the whole self serve PLG model as well. But when you're early and we're really trying to listen to the customer as good as possible, I think doing that manually in the beginning works. And that's what we've noticed to work. So again, we really like SD to go into a practical [12:05] >> term like SDR activated demos all the way. [12:09] Mhmm. Okay. Interesting. So how many folks on the team today and how many are SDRs? [12:13] >> Folks on the team are are you thinking about the sales team? [12:17] Just your whole team? The whole team? [12:18] >> The whole team. We're 31 today. [12:21] How many sales reps? [12:23] >> And sales reps were five. [12:25] And do they all carry a quota? [12:28] >> Yeah, and different obviously like quotas depending if you're on SDR or AE. [12:34] What's the SDR quota? [12:37] >> SDR quota is in meetings. [12:40] How many? [12:42] >> It's a good question, I think 20 it meetings that we have as our quota. [12:46] Per month or week? [12:47] >> Month. [12:48] Per month, interesting. And then what's the AE target quota? [12:53] >> Again, it's dependent a bit on the market. It's dependent dependent on like which companies you're targeting. But it can be anything, again, dependent on ramp up on market, but let's say between one and and four k MRR. [13:07] So each each month, the AE has to convert the SDR meetings that get set up into one to four k of new MRR? [13:14] >> Yeah. Dependent on the market. Okay. [13:16] Yep. So so if they add four k every month for twelve months, they're adding $48,000 a month to the business or approximately 600 500, $600,000 a new ARR per AE, but you only have it sounds like one or two of them. Yeah. Very cool. Alright. You raised about a year ago. Any plans to raise this year? [13:34] >> We haven't thought about it at this point because again we're building so many foundational things to the company to actually scale effectively with capital. Well, as the name of the game is today, but we've always had that approach to have a really red line of sort of how we use capital. No, not today, but by the end of the year's year, who knows. [13:53] Why don't you have more than 300 customers? I mean, one thing you can do is obviously scrape listing websites and then reach out to every single founder. Feels like an outbound strategy here could you guys just would be printing money. [14:04] >> Yeah. No. I think it's a really really good point and that's a part of as well like building the machinery that we're we're gonna do. I think there's a lot of potential but still a lot of the sales work is done manually. Because at the same time I think we still have a lot to figure out with the product and how we will maximize the customer value. So that would be my answer. Even how much I [14:27] >> would like to scale endlessly, I mean as quickly as possible. Think we first have to really dig out and understand all our customers. [14:35] And when you look at how secure customers are, what has your net dollar retention been over the past twelve months? [14:41] >> It's been something about 100%. It's been the [14:45] A 100%? Yep. Okay. And what are you willing to spend in terms of CAC to get a new $5,000 a year customer? [14:54] >> Again, that's that's changing so much. So I I can't even give you give you a straight answer to that. It depends on like like looking two months back, it's very different than it than it's today. So [15:04] Alright. Fair enough. Jakob, on that note, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite book. [15:09] >> Favorite book, Ray Dalio's principles. That's a good one. Number two, is [15:13] there a CEO you're following or studying? [15:15] >> Well, the one I'm following at the moment and a new one is Steven Bartlett, the with the podcast. [15:22] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building mobal? [15:26] >> Favorite online tool? I would say Salesloft. [15:30] Number three, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? [15:33] >> I would say weekday seven, weekend nine. [15:37] Fair. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? [15:40] >> I'm in a relationship. Yeah. But unmarried. [15:43] Not married. Any kids? [15:44] >> No kids. [15:45] Okay. And how old are you, Jakob? [15:48] >> I'm 31. [15:49] 31. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [15:54] >> That's a good question. Well, to make more mistakes, maybe that would be like what I would have wanted to know. [16:02] Guys, he's grown 200% year over year doing about a $1,500,000 run rate today. That's up from just 35 ish thousand dollars a month exactly one year ago when they closed their first round of funding, $2,000,000 on around the 10,000,000 post money valuation. Before that, they just had two early angel investors that put in a couple, you know, 10, 20, $30,000 a pop. Otherwise, him and his cofounder split equity 50-50 for their tool, mobal.io, which helps businesses keep their [16:25] metadata updated across many, many listing sites, whether that's Google Places or some other app exchange. Jakob, thanks for taking us to the top. [16:32] >> Thank you. [16:33] 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, 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 Central. [16:59] 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 fundraise, [17:21] 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 up [17:43] for that @nathanlatka.comslashslack. 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. We got [18:02] 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.