OpsLyft Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

hey folks my guest today is ayush kumar he's a software engineer by heart with a deep passion for building products for developers all around the world he's now building opslift.com which simplifies operational complexities for cloud management are you sure you're ready to take us to the top yep absolutely hey thanks nathan for uh you know uh inviting me to report uh like podcast uh like wonderful to be here yeah what does cloud management mean is that like keeping my aws spend low or setting up you know my servers in the most operationally efficient way or what's it mean yeah i think uh cloud management in general to me uh really means around that given that more and more organizations in current days are like really uh you know running every piece of their workload upon the cloud right uh so as and when basically the organization kind of like really hits a certain size and scale right uh the cloud footprint like really grows up like on a massive levels per se there are like hundreds of machines being running and in fact thousands in some cases uh there are like huge amounts of data that is kind of being stored etc etc so the overall uh i would say a requirement of managing this entire infrastructure and keeping it stable and uh also at the same point in time ensuring that all of your applications are running at the lowest amount of cost being possible also right so all that requires like a huge amount of time and effort for engineers on a day-to-day basis right and that's where i would say the complexity part of the management of the cloud operations like really comes about uh wherein engineers in today's state like really find it uh you know time consuming and hard to like really solve the problems around uh uh you know managing this entire cloud infrastructure understood you know so that's what's hoping that we do and so help me understand how you price this what are customers paying on average per month to use your technology yeah i think uh these typically sell uh into the category of the customers which are who are spending above i would say in the bracket of i would say two to ten million dollars annually on the cloud right uh so our price point usually like ranges uh somewhere between uh twenty thousand dollars two hundred thousand dollars uh annual yeah sorry twenty to a hundred thousand yeah and what would you say a sweet spot is like is forty or 50 000 bucks a year appropriate or is that too low i think uh our sweet spot typically should range around i would say 30 to 40 k per month sorry and is it a flat fee or do you only get paid if they save money on their cloud spend uh no i think uh it's a mix of both i think ours is a usage based pricing wherein you know the more and more basically customers uh uh you know uh use our platform to like really uh analyze more and more resource so our pricing is majorly focused around the resource uh based pricing right uh measured by what so you say utility what kind of utility how do you measure it yeah so our utility measurement criteria typically revolves around the two factors first is basically how much of the i would say savings potential are we able to like really generate for the customers right so i think let's say if you say that we're able to generate like 100 000 per month right so that's one criteria that we generate and then secondly i would say on the basis of the utility that uh how much uh of the number of resources that we are basically able to like analyze and produce opportunities against people so i think that's the truth so what what's what would like one resource be like one server what do you mean number of resources yeah so the number of resources here as you like rightly mentioned it would be either a one server or as a regular storage device that you kind of really subscribe in the cloud an ip address etc etc so all i would say the constructs uh that like infrastructure as service by default like really offers you right that would be a resource i see okay put this all on a timeline for me when you launch the business i think uh we launched our business full-time in december 2020 uh i think it's been roughly around you can say uh you know uh uh 15 to 18 months for us running this business right so yeah that's that's it when we launched do you remember when you uh landed your first paid customer or are you guys still pre-revenue uh i think uh we landed our first customer somewhere i think around in february uh 20-20 if i could remember correctly right within the two months so uh we were bootstrapped i think in the first year of our business right uh so our only source of money was basically from our customers so yeah i think that's when we landed up our first customer 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 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 evaluation 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 frowner path 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 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 real time valuation data points founders share with us on the show so attraction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raised they sold 22 to 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 these 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 founderpath 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 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 now are you still bootstrapped or have you raised uh we have raised i think a capital in this year itself uh i think uh we released i think about half a million dollars so far yeah okay so you raised half a million bucks this year and caught a pre-seed round was that like family and friends or an investor i think uh it was uh it was a mix of i would say family and friends plus uh like some notable indian investors across in india and the us right so that's what's basically the pc ground to the system i see i see and most people are selling you know 10 to 20 of their business in their seed round were you sort of in that same range uh sorry i didn't follow you on this question most people like so you raised 500 grand you sold equity most people are selling 10 to 15 10 to 20 percent of their equity in their pre-seed round did you sell about the same amount i think ours was like quite less in that sense uh because i think uh we were already generating a significant revenue uh you know uh uh like before we raised out basically our seat uh like receipt round right so i think i think uh uh i can't definitely can't disclose out the number of uh equity that we kind of like really sold but i think uh it was much lower than two what basically uh uh you know uh like to typically what we see companies selling out in the previously dropped yeah okay so i won't push you harder but fair to say you sold less than ten percent of the business in that round i don't yeah okay fair enough fair enough okay so first customers back in 2020 do you remember who it was how did you land that first customer i think uh ours was typically uh the first customer was one of the largest i would say uh you know uh news leading apps across india it's by the name of in shorts uh that's basically one of the news editing apps here in india right so uh we landed our first customer i think uh uh through references only we connected i did a lot of networking across different different founders right and we've got an intro to the cto et cetera he liked the product and things like that and that's where i think uh like things went and then i think so far all the customers that we have got uh are through basically organic ways only that uh our customers refer us to basically other customers and that's all kind of like basically like acquired customers so far yeah so from one customer in 2020 to how many customers are you using are we using you down today i think around 10 at this point in time you know that we have current customers okay got it i mean so can i take 10 times 40 000 acv i mean you guys are doing about 400 000 bucks a year in revenue right now roughly around roughly around the same yeah so why take capital why can't you fund yourself from that revenue it's it's growth actually i think uh so think from this perspective right uh that uh like it's about uh fueling the momentum of the growth right uh we knew i think at some point in time right uh that we need to basically invest more in our r d at a faster pace to rule out basically things to acquire customers even more right uh at a faster pace in fact so like uh initially our sales cycle was basically that we were going from one customer to another right uh that okay hey uh uh until we basically uh you know reach a product market fit we have to kind of like really follow the cycle because uh uh you know uh the revenue that we get we like fuel our r d etc etc right but of course uh how big are you how much r d are you spending like how big is your team today and how many are engineers i think currently uh we are uh like 20 people in total of the company amongst which i think we are half the companies basically already i see and which part of india are you based in i think we are currently based out of in delhi ncr like noida to be very specific yeah are you seeing more and more competition from just other software companies hiring in delhi and pune and chennai and bangalore uh yeah of course i think that's there you know uh uh like uh given that i think india is a booming uh market in terms of uh startups also as well right more and more startups are like really coming so uh talent acquisition is definitely you know one big of a problem uh that we definitely focus uh like our experience uh given that we are also a young startup uh and uh uh yep so definitely it's a challenge for us right now yeah and help me understand a little bit about growth if you're doing 30 or 35 000 bucks a month today in revenue where were you exactly a year ago do you remember uh i think a year ago we were somewhere i think uh in the like i would say lower brackets of you know sixteen to twenty thousand dollars on some somewhere i think around that yeah so nice growth congratulations maybe doubling year over year which is nice um what's the plan moving forward you just raise this capital what are you going to spend it on more r d hires more r d definitely i think uh you know and our target is to basically kind of see that how uh you know we can basically quickly uh you know uh scale apart basically in revenues and even like achieve more i would say growth uh in terms of our revenues right and of course i think r d is a primary focus uh at this point in time to kind of like really nail down upon the product uh uh like and the features kind of like which are like really working well for the customers like even more investing in that et cetera et cetera and discovering the newer problems things like that i think yeah more or less aren't doing only yeah and ayush a lot of first time sas founders or even second and third time have a lot of trouble signing enterprise deals right out of the gate you've got 10 customers paying on average 40 grand a year how did you convince them that it was worth spending 40 grand a year on your brand new startup i think our customer obsession has kind of like really led us to do so right i think one of the things that differentiates us basically i think strongly with respect to our competitors you know in the market is that we do anything and everything that basically that uh customers especially even like when we are at this stage right uh that i think our inability to say no to a customer's demand is basically like like given us a basically a very favorable like advantage that uh the things that basically it's our competitors weren't willing to kind of like offer to our uh customers you know in terms of a product feature service etc right i think we said yes to almost everything and i think that's where uh you know we've been able to kind of like really convince most of the people that it's what's kind of like doing business with us because uh uh we uh could basically go up to up like solving customers problem to the levels that i think we couldn't have like really imagined like so far right so i think that's that's i would say the primary thing that we have been able to kind of like really help like do so that's why customers like really love us for that reason very cool let's wrap up here with the famous five i use number one favorite business book uh i would say no i would say uh business book the hard thing about hard things yeah number two is there a ceo you're following or studying uh no not really uh i think that at this point in time yeah i do not idolize anybody but yeah there are like number of people whom i could idolize but i couldn't name any specific number three what's your favorite online tool for building ops lift uh online sorry online for what is just your favorite online tool one you use a lot uh i think favorite online tool at this point in time for me would be twitter i would say you know that's where i spend most of my time on number four how many hours of sleep ticket every night uh hours of sleep i think i uh at this point in time five or six maybe yeah that's okay not bad and what's your situation married single kids i am single right now okay no kids in how old are you uh at this point i'm 27 years old 27. last question something you wish you knew when you were 20 um when i was 20 um i think yeah i think at that point in time coming from basically the roots of india i think i wish uh i had known uh uh you know uh to like really also uh explore i would say uh things outside my academic constructs i was really focused on basically securing uh you know a good amount of grades etc but yeah i think had i basically been more open-minded uh or that exposure would have been basically given to me to like really explore things outside my academic books etc that would have been like really fruitful guys there you have it op slips launch back in 2020 to help you manage your cloud spend and your cloud setup they've got 10 customers paying average 40 000 bucks a year today so about 35 000 a month in revenue from 16 000 a month just a year ago so nice growth they just raised a five hundred thousand dollar pre-seed round we're able to do it by selling less than ten percent of their business which is great good economics there 20 folks on the team 10 engineers look to continue developing product thank you for taking us to the top yeah thank you thank you that this was like really helpful 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 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 fundraise 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 sas 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 for that at nathan lacka dot com forward slash slack in the meantime i'm hanging out with you here on youtube i'll be in the comments for the next 30 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 to push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that i appreciate your guys support all right i'll be in the comments see ya