How PreDo CEO Uffe Koch grew to $26.9K revenue and 5 customers in 2018.

hello everyone my guest today is uu Fekkai he's a 43 year old engineer married with three kids living on a farm in North Denmark he built up a top app agency from 2008 with 15 employees and produced over 120 apps for top Danish companies he then sold that company and co-founded pre-pre do to help companies capture create overview and progress out ideas from their employees alright are you ready to take it to the top oh yeah good all right so tell us first I want to dip dive more into your history and how you got into it but what does pre do do and how do you make money what's your revenue model okay so we are subscription-based software as a service platform where companies pay a fixed price based on their size for for giving access to getting access to the tool well what is the tool dude oh that's there okay so the tool does it helps company capture all the ideas that line in their employees heads it helps them create overview of them find duplicates and and areas and so on and then it basically helps them progress on those idea and execute on the good ones and weed out all the bad ones so so I mean a lot of people right now will use tools like Trello and they'll have a board called ideas and people will just dump ideas there this is like a much more robust version of that it's much more structured in that way and it also we go for for helping companies with with not all IT capable people so we we also work in production companies and so on we help capture ideas in different ways so you can catch ideas in the tool on email and even with boys and so on we're building that so so so blacksmith with with dirty hands can actually go speak to an Alexa in the in the corner of the production environment yeah so you're built into the workflows that already exists yeah yeah very good and what is the average restaurant pay per month so we are mostly having what we call medium companies what would in the u.s. probably be small they're paying phone for $49 a month okay for 49 you have notes there you must be doing conversion to Euro or US or something Danish kroner okay so four hundred forty nine US dollars per month on average and give me more the backstory here so what year did you launch company so so actually I yeah I had my company previous company where I was a consultancy and doing apps for other people and and I we got really good at that but but the the I also kind of grew tired of of always building on somebody else's visions and ideas and I got tired of working with with some really great customers and some less mature customers whose ideas were maybe not ready as already for maybe shouldn't have an app and so I I wanted to build on my own product and and built that up and then I I found an old friend with which has a marketing background and she was in in a kind of same situation as me so we decided to go for it and actually use what what we had we had worked on both of us worked on a lot of projects finding the good ideas and weeding out the bad ones and and and so what year was that that was last year Oh 2017 okay good 2017 yeah and so did you I mean what did you turn on revenue do you have any revenue in 2017 or no no we didn't have any but we had this we have stopped this year that's great so when did you officially you know close the first customer what month that was in January this year and how did you do it who was it how did you hide you close home well that was my network so it was actually the quite a big bank here in Denmark we closed with them so we we touch we got in touch with their innovation department and they they really want to renew themselves then in a highly competitive business with a lot of regulatory requirements and so on so they want to reinvent themselves mm-hmm and and what have you scaled to after that first customer what have you scaled to today how many customers we are we are used in 12 companies but five of those have paid customers the others on trial still okay got it so five companies paying about four and fifty bucks a month you doing call it $2,200 per month something like that yeah that's pretty okay and walk me through the trial process so when you sign people up for a trial what do they get on that trial and how do you make sure the trial - paid conversion rate you know goes high yeah so at the moment we're still a bit handheld in the way that we we come out with the product and and part doesn't unboard package with with some hours of us helping the company get ready for using the tool and getting getting the flow going of ideas so so so in that sense we're not a pure place as yet but we're going to be what seven boys are you charging we have all that's again Danish Kroners so that's in that's a five thousand dollars or something okay so there's a setup fee and then they can start paying five four hundred fifty bucks a month exactly exactly for now but we actually aiming to lower that and maybe even remove that when we when we scale why do you say that you know I know a lot of people Clayton mask for example infusions off back in 2012 their churn was eight or nine percent logo churn per month and then they started charging out thousand dollar setup fee no matter what and sure and dropped two percent and it's worked really well for them well that we honestly don't know what we're going to do but we're going in that sense we we just know that the hand has long body we're doing now won't scale mm-hmm yeah I mean it is a you know people say it's a long you know hard road to death the trick is like if you let anyone in the tool your churn then potentially comes addition you don't know how to focus on but what you're doing now is the other extreme which is extreme hand-holding but I bet you don't have any churn no no no churn yet yeah so so everybody is very happy with what we we're doing the and and employees are happy management and happy and so on what's it what's the team size today so we had two founders and then we have fall in terms now five in terms ok free or paid one paid okay guys - so basically two full-time and then one part-time yeah okay and are you guys bootstrapping this or you raise capital we boot forever oh that's great well you say that very quickly we burn where you burn by VC in the past no no no never never well we just we just don't have the need yet we might we might need to take in capital when when depending our scale journey how that's going to happen but but but Rana we don't need it and we have a we have a decent runway that's good well how do you have a decent runway I mean if you have two people full-time in one part-time but you're only making 2,200 bucks a month are the professional servicing fees just covering your major expenses yeah it's it's covering most of it and then we're also spending a bit of our our our savings from from previous adventures got it I had a pretty good exit from my previous town company give me a general sense about me know is that above a you know above a 5 million dollar exit I was below that okay but nor have a million yeah okay living on living on a farm in Denmark is pretty cheap so yeah I was about to say well how are we talking right now what's how's the internet connection like on a farm in the middle of Denmark oh you would believe it's actually it's actually a mobile two different mobile app links I have and then a firewall balancing that out it's it's horrible here so that's crazy yeah so where do you think most the growth is gonna come from over the next year I mean how are you getting new customers and how do you get more new customers so step one is we're spreading it through our network and references through them and and we're actually getting a lot of really good leads that way but we need we are starting our marketing efforts here online marketing efforts here in in May my partner my board has a has a background in that for a b2b company what does that mean no those like direct paid spend tough affiliate programs partners what is it I think it's going to be PR based mostly in the beginning and then then we go to to a paid I see I see it on and so what do you hope to be out by the end of this year in terms of monthly recurring revenue that's we should hit the the $10,000 mark that's your goal yeah very good that's a conservative goal okay good good good and is everyone everyone is based are you and your founder and in a in your same office or no yeah yeah we based in the same office we're so lucky that the our first customer actually invited us in to sit in there inside the bank there so we're sitting there cost-free that's great so okay good both you guys in Denmark your first customer lets you in the thing how do you know I mean this is gonna be a bad question you never want to talk about the downside but I mean how long are you giving yourself to figure out if this company's gonna be up go or a kill it I think we give it at least another year but we have so many ways of growing this so many ways of the potential future revenue streams one thing is the the capture and the overview and there but then we have some second one capture of ideas and overview of ideas and then but there are so many so many aggregate data over overtones that we can go through and and and generate reports and baselines and and it basically innovation reporting for people and and all our our interviews with the potential customers they they also yes to all of it so there should be many many avenues to to pursue yeah I can't say this is I don't know you well but I mean there are a lot of times where I see people that they've had an agency like what you had before building one-off apps for 5 10 20 grand a pop they do well they get sick of it they'd say I want to do software but it takes a while to get the software scaling so what they do as it scales for the first two years is they they go do what they were doing in the passages they take on more professional services work which is no fun but sometimes people get addicted to that cash flow which takes up a lot of their time and then they never actually build the SAS revenue how do you figure out how to balance your time we we hold each other very strict to that because we are very aware of we don't want to fall in that trap so we we basically talk about each each consultancy task we take in it should be something that leads to a recurring revenue somewhere we say no to a lot of tasks and so it's a good situation to be in in that sense so that's great let's wrap up here with our famous five number one what's your favorite business book so I think my favorite one is actually the corporate startup which I have right here I'm okay corporate startup which is which is about sort of the field we work in and the bank we work in is actually a case on that so so they that's one of my favorites right now number two is their CEO your following are studying currently a tif basis is so cool yeah number three what's your favorite online tool I should make you know Purdue but but other than that I I loved stripe number four how many hours of sleep are you getting every night eight okay that's pretty good and what's your situation married single you have kids alright with three children three kids okay very good and and how old are you I'm 43 43 last question what do you is your 20 year old self new oh that I should just go for it just jump out and create a company and be an entrepreneur from day one guys there you have it just go for it he built a very successful agency built over a hundred applications for folks in Denmark throughout Europe and throughout the world got sick of the professional services models sold that company for more than a million dollars but less than five million now doing software launched pre dot do in our pre do in 2017 focused on helping you capture your team's ideas organize them understand where duplicate ideas exists and put them under kind of one one you know thought bubble they've got two people so far him and his founder and then one part-time intern along with three other interns under them again doing about five customers currently paying four hundred fifty bucks a month so about twenty two hundred bucks in revenue supporting themselves off set up fees currently but they're looking obviously to move away from that oofah thank you so much for taking us to the top Thank You Nathan