How New Genre Hit $400K in Revenue in Its First Year Working With Accel Europe (Interview with CEO Mihai Toma)

Introduction and Studio Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00He sold a bar menu for $200 back when he was 16 years old. Fast forward today, he's running a creative studio paying $2 a month in the new up and coming London Art District called newgenre.studio. That's his website. Working with, call it, 20 customers this year. We're trying to double his revenue up to $800,000. We'll see if he can do it. He's working with firms like Excel, putting on their events and doing their content marketing and

00:22other firms as they think about event organizations, branded content. Also has his own application called attach. App, the easiest way to send proposals on the internet, which he's launched and building the MVP list for the waitlist for it right now. We'll see what happens next. Hey folks, my guest today is Mihai Toma. He's a creative entrepreneur based in London as the co founder and CEO of newgenre, a creative studio crafting brands, products, and experiences for ambitious

00:44leaders. His clients include Excel, Gravity, Sketch, who we've had on the show, among others. Apart from newgenre, he's also currently building attached. App, the easiest way to send, review, and get proposals approved on the Internet. Mihai, you're ready to take us to the top?

Mihai Toma

00:59>> Yeah. Definitely. So what do

Two Businesses: Studio vs. SaaS App

Nathan Latka

01:00you do? You have your you have your feet in two buckets right now. Your own your own software company with attached app versus client work for other people. Which one do you enjoy more?

Mihai Toma

01:10>> I think, I think they're both equally important for me. The app side and the founder aspect of it kind of started from the design studio. So I started my career as a graphic designer, branding and identity for a cybersecurity firm in London called Tessian. So I joined that company right after they received a big funding round, and I love the aspect of scaling a business from the design side, focusing on strategy, focusing on design systems and

01:42>> then taking it into development. So I found that I love doing that for other clients. And then it was a point where I realized that there's all these entrepreneurs coming to me for help. Early stage, you know, seed before series A, and I realized that I could be doing the same thing. I am in the same mind frame, and that's where my team and I at newgenre started. And

Career Origins and First Client at 16

Nathan Latka

02:10so what year was that? When did you land your first client?

Mihai Toma

02:13>> First client.

Nathan Latka

02:15Yep. First client, what year?

Mihai Toma

02:17>> First client? 2014.

Nathan Latka

02:202014. Okay. And so how many folks today are full time at the agency?

Mihai Toma

02:24>> Two so for context, the first client was when I was 16. Mhmm. So I was still in school when I was hustling and I I I was doing design work for other people. I remember the the first project that I had was a menu in in a in a How

Nathan Latka

02:45much did you charge for it?

Mihai Toma

02:48>> The first client? Remember, I was 16. I was in my bedroom. I was an amateur. And I think that was $200.

Nathan Latka

02:55Mhmm. For a bar menu. And then fast forward to today, how many folks are full time at the at the agency?

Team Structure and Freelancer Network

Mihai Toma

03:00>> So our team is four. So it's myself, my co founder Jack, and then we have two full time folks plus a team of freelancers. This is our specialists that we onboard based on each project.

Nathan Latka

03:13And how many how many like freelancers did you pay, you know, something last year?

Mihai Toma

03:17>> I would say around 10.

Nathan Latka

03:1910. Okay. And these are people like an animator in case a client needs animation done?

Mihai Toma

03:24>> Yes. These these are like New York Times, illustrator, motion designers, copywriters, strategists. Depends on the scale of the project. If, you know, in 2014, I was was the guy and I was a kid in a bedroom charging $200 for a menu. Now, you know, we we work with top startups and we create strategy, the design, but also their products directly and projects.

Nathan Latka

03:53What's the average package? I mean, I remember we had Gravity Sketch on maybe it was maybe the month or two ago, really impressive product, a beautiful application. I love it. Are people paying you $5 a month retainers and you ask them to commit to a twelve month retainer? How do you structure your pricing packages?

Mihai Toma

04:07>> No. We we only have for for the clients, usually we only have two ways. One is fixed pricing. So it's it's a meaty project. Usually this includes a brand evolution or a brand revolution. This includes the strategy or the design system. And then often people come to us

Nathan Latka

04:28for What is that price point? A fixed pricing package?

Pricing Packages and Minimum Engagement Fee

Mihai Toma

04:31>> So our minimum engagement fee is 10 ks. So we don't touch projects less than 10 ks. But on average, a project is around 30 to 50 ks.

Nathan Latka

04:41Oh, 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

05:05your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what 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 get

05:29a 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.

Mihai Toma

05:42>> Right? So

Nathan Latka

05:43the 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 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

06:06by 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 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

06:32what 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 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

06:57ahead 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 interview. And the biggest project you worked on last year was what? A 100, 200 k, something else?

Mihai Toma

07:11>> The lifetime like, the lifetime value of a project, I would

Nathan Latka

07:15say. Your biggest your biggest customer.

Mihai Toma

07:17>> 8 80 k.

Nathan Latka

07:1880 k. Okay. Good. So so you have a couple of so are you what are you working at? Like ten, twenty customers per year on average, something like that?

First Year: 44 Projects and Revenue

Mihai Toma

07:24>> So last year because we established newgenre as a company in April of last year. So in one month, we're gonna be turning one. Given that, you know, I've been doing this freelance a number of years beforehand and working in design for even more than that. My co founder, he was leading a web agency beforehand. But in our first year, we actually did 44 projects. Oh, wow. But this includes different levels. So we would do small like

07:59>> brochure websites, but we also do, you know, whole brand projects for, you know, companies like Gravity Sketch.

Nathan Latka

08:06Gravity I mean, can I take can I take 44? I mean, can I take 44 projects at 10:15 k pop up and you guys did like $405,100,000 bucks last year in revenue?

Mihai Toma

08:15>> Approximately, yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:16That's great. So how do you mean, I know a lot of folks that run agencies, it's always hard to decide who to hire full time, who not hire full time because clients sort of ebb and flow that's hard to predict, right? So how much revenue do you think you'll do this year? And how do you plan ahead for staffing needs?

Mihai Toma

08:30>> I think the design business is quite safe in terms of scaling because you only bring people that you need and you know based on expected income. The way we hire, first we hire people as freelancers. We get a taste of how they work, what they do. Both of our employees are long time friends of ours that we worked in the past, you know, for a number of years. So the risk is also lower. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

09:04Okay. That makes sense. But but I mean, how would you like, you have four people full time right now. How will you decide when it's time to hire another full time or two full time?

Mihai Toma

09:13>> I think when we have two two consecutive really busy months, when we have to work weekends and and time is, you know, time is not there, then we know that it's time to to hire more friends.

Hiring Philosophy and Staffing Strategy

Nathan Latka

09:29Someone else. Yeah. That makes a lot.

Mihai Toma

09:31>> I think my advice for a lot of people hiring is it's not a direct proportionate game where, you know, you hire more people, you think you directly do more more work, but rather sometimes it's the other way around. You hire more people, that just means more problem. Mhmm. So I think it's it's good to bring the right amount of people for the job. Mhmm. Keep it as small as you can get the work done.

Nathan Latka

09:58Of course. And then what do you guys think you'll do this year in terms of revenue? Can you double?

Mihai Toma

10:03>> We hope so. So we we made a lot of big changes. Actually, we just moved in a new beautiful studio.

Nathan Latka

10:10That's a big expense. How much do you pay for

10:12the studio lease?

Mihai Toma

10:13>> That's expensive.

Nathan Latka

10:14You'd think that.

10:16Come on, what's the number? I'm curious.

Studio Space in London Design District

Mihai Toma

10:18>> Okay. So we just moved in the Design District in London. It's a new neighborhood. Only with architectural studios, interior designers, web agencies, animation studios, a very fertile ground for the sort of work that we do. And we have a 50 square meter studio. I'm not sure what's that in feet, maybe 500.

10:44>> We pay less than £2,000 per month.

Nathan Latka

10:47Oh, great. That's that's really good.

Mihai Toma

10:50>> This is what we found is way below the market rate in London. And we got very lucky because it's a new neighborhood. This was built last year.

11:03>> And they want to create a community here, and they're willing to lower the price point to get a lot of these cool trendy studios in and then, you know, have them for a number of years in the space.

Nathan Latka

11:18That's great. So on that, you hope to double the revenue. So maybe go from 400,000 to $800,000 this year in revenue. Talk to me about how many customers you think you'll work with this year. If you did 44 last year, how many this year you think?

Mihai Toma

11:32>> So we did 44 projects.

Nathan Latka

11:34How many customers?

Mihai Toma

11:35>> I would say 20 to 30.

Nathan Latka

11:38Okay. And so how many customers you think you'll work on this year?

Customer Strategy: Fewer, Bigger Clients

Mihai Toma

11:41>> I think fewer. You'll do less, but higher price? Yes. Why? Now we matured as a as a studio, we matured our relationships. And we are having less conversations with small ticket clients and more ongoing long term relationships with bigger clients. So these are Excel, other venture funds,

Nathan Latka

12:05and What do Excel pay aides do? What do you work on for them?

Mihai Toma

12:09>> So annually, we would we would do around 80 k.

Nathan Latka

12:11No. But, like, what what's the actual project they have you work on?

12:15Is it their website or something else?

Mihai Toma

12:17>> Not not their website. This is something they wouldn't change as often. It's not something that you do once a year. Now for Excel, we are Excel Europe's design team. We work on a number of projects from conferences,

12:35>> events, and then a lot of their thought leadership and content building assets. What's a link I could

Work for Accel Europe

Nathan Latka

12:42go to to view some work you did for Excel?

Mihai Toma

12:45>> Definitely. You can I mean, it's all over the press? Anything that Excel Europe did for the last years. If you see a visual there, it's most likely newgenre's work. One, if you want to see, was the FinTech Summit

13:02>> twenty twenty two, Eva?

Nathan Latka

13:03Yep. So these graphics, I'm on their website right now, the Future of European FinTech and Excel's FinTech Summit twenty twenty two. They've got these graphics. It says, you know, it's like a it's like a bar chart, 1,000,000,000, 5,000,000,000, 10,000,000,000. It's like an infographic. Are you doing all the infographic work? Yeah. I see. Or where it's like a wave and it says two thousands, 20 tens, and today, did like the wave graphic and all that?

Mihai Toma

13:24>> Yeah. And for that, it was also an in person event. So it was the stage design. It was like all the marketing, the landing page and invitations, swag, everything around that as an experience was created by my team. Very, very cool.

Nathan Latka

13:42Well, yeah, it's a lot of work. I assume it went well though, right?

Mihai Toma

13:46>> Yeah, it went well. It was a fantastic event. We were in person as well. It was do you know Monzo, the fintech? Yep. Yep. So the CEO of Monzo was there. There were there were executives from from Stripe, Trade Republic, and essentially,

14:07>> top executives from all sort of fintech, both Europe

Nathan Latka

14:10Very cool. Let's wrap up here with the last five minutes. I want to talk about your application that you're building. So it's called Attach, the easiest way to send proposals on the Internet. So how do you is this is this doing well? Is it a side project? Does it have any users today?

Attach App: Building the MVP

Mihai Toma

14:22>> This we just started. It's it's being built. The way we it all started was we wanted to send better proposals to our clients when we started newgenre. And instead of sending PDFs and instead of sending emails, we created a internal app where we will send web pages as a proposal. So you'd have all the information, but it will be interactive, and you can create a much better experience. And additionally, you can track when a prospect opens

14:55>> your proposal. You can see how much time they spend on a proposal and why they didn't reply

Nathan Latka

15:01for But I mean, there's already things like Docssend. I mean, bunch of companies already do this. So what are you trying

Mihai Toma

15:05>> to do that you can't get already? I think what we want to do is listen to all the small to medium businesses. This is this is targeted exclusively to service based business and try to build all the functionality that they're missing in in the rest of them. So for instance, a lot of these businesses also want to show the portfolio or show very complicated timelines. And we found that that is a sort of functionality that is

15:36>> missing from

15:38>> like other competitors. So right now, we're building it. We have great relationships with a number of investors. So March, April, when we have the MVP, very excited to show it and put it out in the world.

Nathan Latka

15:51Very good. Alright, we're out of time here. Let's wrap up, Mihai, with the famous five. Number one, what's the last book that you read?

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Mihai Toma

15:57>> Last book that I read? That's very good. I think it was a negotiation book. What was it called? Never split the difference by Chris Boss.

Nathan Latka

16:08Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Mihai Toma

16:13>> Yes, this is the CEO of a design agency called Collins, and his name is Leland Maschmeyer, if I didn't butch his name.

Nathan Latka

16:22Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building newgenre?

Mihai Toma

16:27>> I would say Figma.

16:28>> Figma.

Nathan Latka

16:29Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Mihai Toma

16:32>> I don't compromise on sleep. I get eight hours. It's great. Don't wake up with an alarm.

Nathan Latka

16:38And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Mihai Toma

16:41>> I am in a relationship.

Nathan Latka

16:42Okay. No kids yet?

Mihai Toma

16:44>> No kids.

Nathan Latka

16:45Alright. And it sounds like you're 25. You were 16, right, in 2012 or 2014?

Mihai Toma

16:51>> I'm gonna be turning 25 this year.

Advice: Take Life at Its Natural Pace

Nathan Latka

16:54Ah, 24. Okay, great. Last question, something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Mihai Toma

17:02>> I think that's a very good question.

17:07>> To take life at its natural pace.

Nathan Latka

17:11Guys, there you have it. He sold a bar menu for $200 back when he was 16 years old. Fast forward today, he's running a creative studio paying $2 a month in the new up and coming London Art District called newgenre.studio. That's his website. Working with, call it, 20 customers this year. We're trying to double his revenue up to $800,000. We'll see if he can do it. He's working firms like Excel, putting on their events and doing

17:33their content marketing and other firms as they think about event organizations, branded content. Also has his own application called attach. App, the easiest way to send proposals on the internet, which he's launched and building the MVP list for the waitlist for it right now. We'll see what happens next. Mihai, thanks for taking us to the top.

Mihai Toma

17:49>> Thank you, Nathan. Have a lovely day.

Nathan Latka

17:52One 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

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