Pricimetrics.com Revenue (2024)

[00:00] Pricimetrics. He's been a consultant in the pricing space for a long time. He's now building technology to help brands, SKUs, the corner grocery shop with over 250 SKUs, optimize pricing real time to quickly understand pricing profitability, margins with a click of a button. Taking what he knows from consulting in his head and putting it in software space. He's got 10 folks on the team today, one of which is their coder who's actually being paid. [00:19] The founders have put in a 100 k to build the MVP, and three folks on that 10 person sales team working for equity are looking to land their first sale here in the next couple of months. Hey, folks. My guest today is Mike Kimel. He spent almost thirty years in analytics and pricing since obtaining a PhD in economics from UCLA. He's made a lot of money for a number of companies and decided it was time for [00:37] him to make a world class pricing accessible to companies of all sizes. That's why he launched pricimetrics — with an i in the middle — .com. Mike, you ready to take us to the top? [00:46] >> Yes. Yes. I am. Thank you. [00:48] Alright. So what give me a story. You said you've made a lot of money for a lot of other companies. Who are you making rich? [00:54] >> Well, I've worked for a lot of Fortune 500 companies and multinational corporations, both as a consultant and as an employee. So over time, I I started out as kind of lowly minion in analytics and grew to run the pricing department for several large companies. [01:14] Interesting. So tell me how pricimetrics works. You did share a pretty show your pre revenue today. How are you, what's guiding how you build the software? Is it your own use case? Do you have some free users? How are you building MVP? [01:27] >> Well, we actually have built our MVP. To a large extent, this is the product that I always felt I needed when I was running pricing departments. Basically, what we do, what our software does is it finds the profit maximizing price for all of a company's SKUs. It also does a number of other things that are useful. For instance, it can tell you which products, which of your SKUs and which locations are responding well to being an [01:55] >> ad, which of them respond well to being in circular for companies that produce circulars, that kind of thing. So it basically identifies information about different products, how much you should charge for them. And it tells you what the It provides you with that information and it provides you with other information that allows you to run simulations, determine whether you're going to accept the guidance provided by the software or not. You can always override the company's the [02:26] >> software's guidance. And if you accept it, you know, in general, we will raise your profitability. [02:35] And Mike, what year did you launch or write the first line of code for the platform? [02:40] >> Well, originally the company was going to be basically just a vehicle for me to do more consulting. So that was 2019, but it really, it kind of grew about a year and a half ago or so, people started people from my past life started joining the company because they liked the idea. [03:02] Like joining full time as employees? [03:05] >> Joining part time. Everybody but me currently is part time. [03:09] And how many are part time today? [03:11] >> We have 10 people in the company right now. [03:14] And how do you pay them if you're pre revenue? [03:17] >> That is an excellent question. We have one person getting paid right now and that's our head coder. We we basically are bootstrapping right now, although we are looking to raise money. The rest of the team is working on equity. As I said, everybody kind of joined. This started out as a one person operation and people liked what they heard. They liked the idea of what we're planning to do, what we are doing and how. And so [03:50] >> little by little, people started joining. Next thing I knew, I had a company, sort of an accidental thing. [03:55] Mike, one of the things I look for obviously in any early stage founder, you've gotta be able to convince world class talent to join you. Right? You've gotta be very convincing. And so why do they believe you? Why do they believe the equity they're working for right now is going to be worth anything? [04:09] >> Well, everybody in the company just about with two exceptions are people who've known me for a long time. So in each of the cases, these are people some of them I've worked with. Most of these people, if I wanted to rip them off at some point, presumably I would have done it a long time ago. They know me, I know there's a trust factor. [04:35] 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 [04:58] your 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 [05:23] 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 not [05:45] built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder 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 going [06:10] 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 you [06:32] 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 interview. [07:00] I mean, they can trust you though, but still not know what the vision's gonna be. There's a lot of people that trust the founders they work with, but they don't know if the equity is gonna be worth anything. [07:09] >> That that's a good point. Basically, what we do have well, I'm not the only person with a background in analytics in the team. Additionally, [07:20] >> so the others, [07:24] >> they've had the opportunity to see what I can do with analytics. They've seen, they've had the opportunity to see what other people on the team can also do with their analytics skills. So it kind of between the skill set, knowing that the skill set is there, knowing that the others on the team have the ability to do X, Y and Z and knowing what the software is intended to do, it just sounded compelling to a number [07:56] >> of people. [07:57] You could have the best code on earth with the smartest PhDs, but if you can't sell, there's no business and the equity is worth nothing. Do you tell a story that makes them understand that, hey, you can sell. Mike can sell a million dollars worth of this product. [08:09] >> Well, actually that's a funny little story. I began by trying to sell the product myself. Turns out Mike can't sell. Mike can sell the vision to people who he knows and who he gets introduced to. Guess I'm speaking in third person now. But basically, among the people who have joined the company are three individuals. We have a three person sales team. So one of the guys who joined the company was VP of sales at a company [08:46] >> that I worked for in the past. He recently retired from his day job and he he's decided to join us. We also have an experienced SaaS sales another gentleman who most of his background is in finance. [09:02] Well, Mike, what are the salespeople doing today? Because you're you're pre revenue. Right? So how close are they to landing the first customer? [09:09] >> That's a great question. And until we go through this process, I really will not know. However, we had our first customer meeting last week that resulted in the customer basically seeing a demo of the product, liking what they saw and sending us some data so that we could begin a pilot project with them. [09:33] And you mentioned SKUs and pricing optimization. I'm looking at the website and looking at some of the screenshots you have here. Is this really the best fit for folks with like a thousand SKUs, big e commerce brands? [09:44] >> Well, I mean, a thousand SKUs or 250,000 SKUs. The software really doesn't care. It's a distillation of what I've been doing for thirty years plus what some of the other members of the team have been doing for. [09:58] My my point though is, Mike, is if there's someone listening right now that has an Etsy shop with three SKUs, they're not gonna get value from your tool. What's the minimum amount of SKUs someone would need to get value from your tool? [10:09] >> That's a great question. My guess is that probably if you've got less than 50 SKUs or so or you do very little in the way of transactions, you probably don't need the the product. But one of the things that we are aiming for, we have entered into a field where there there is competition. There are some established companies out there. There are companies that have been around for thirty years [10:38] Like who? [10:39] >> Software. Pros. Pros has been [10:41] >> around for, I don't know, since the eighties, I believe. And they're they're on the Nasdaq. I think last I checked, their market cap is about 1,500,000,000. So we're up against some established competitors. But what is different about us, aside from the fact that we think we do pricing better and we have reason to believe we do pricing better, it's not just we think, but we also have this vision where we're going to democratize this. You cannot [11:13] >> get pricing software at less than, call it, I got $150,000 $200,000 a year for an annual site license. We are shooting for something a little bit different. We want to be able to service the corner grocery store. This is software. [11:36] >> I've been in companies that have used a number of our competitors and I've actually been a user myself. I understand what they do, I understand the limitations of what they do and I understand how to make this accessible. So we have made software that is accessible to much, much smaller companies. There's an entire range of companies out there that could never afford a $250,000 a year site license. We are going to be providing the same [12:09] Understood. [12:10] >> Service at smaller companies. [12:11] That makes a lot of sense. But but over, you know, 100 SKUs, two fifty SKUs, something around that is where this gets valuable. Now I guess the question I have for you is you've got one person that you're actually paying, nine are working for equity. Are you still doing the consulting? Is the consulting business still a thing? [12:26] >> No. Our goal was not to be a consulting firm. [12:31] Why shut it off though? I mean, of the most successful SaaS companies start off as consulting. They do 1,000,000 in consulting, 2,000,000 in consulting until they can get the software built and then they start selling the SaaS. [12:41] >> I understand that. I didn't say we won't do consulting. I said our goal is not consulting firm, however. Our goal, when we look at it, our goal is to be something like a QuickBooks for pricing. QuickBooks sort of created an industry out there. Before that, everybody thought you need a bookkeeper, you need a person. And possibly even if you're complicated enough, you need to go to Arthur Andersen or Ernst and Young or whoever. Right now, if [13:12] >> you need you can tell the the bike shop around the corner, look, you need pricing help. And they'll say, yeah, but if I do, who am I gonna go to? McKinsey? I mean, you know, they can't afford it. We want to make this sort of service accessible to companies of all sizes. [13:30] I understand the product vision very clearly. I'm just trying to understand how you're going to get there. Right? So I guess Got it. The consulting that you were doing, did you own that consulting company? [13:40] >> Yes. I did some consulting. Yes. [13:43] But I guess why shut that I mean, if you truly understand the customer's problem, shouldn't your consulting business be growing, not you shutting it off? [13:54] >> You may be right. I may not be necessarily going about this the right way. Sometimes [14:01] There's no right or wrong way. I'm just trying to get in your head. [14:05] >> Long story short, it comes down to something that we discussed about four or five minutes ago, which is that I'm not the world's greatest sales guy. When I was focused on consulting, basically I had the same customers in year one that I had The customers that I had in year one, still had in year eight. [14:28] Got it. [14:29] >> What I am not good at is expanding business. [14:34] >> So basically, we have a sales team and I want them to focus more on selling the product rather than selling something that is [14:44] >> not [14:45] That makes sense. That makes sense, Mike. And you're bootstrapped today. Correct? Yes or no? [14:49] >> I'd say yes. The reason I I put the I'd say in there is that there has been some money put in the company by another member of the team. So but since he's part of the team, I would say that counts as bootstrapping as well. [15:04] I would agree with that. Very cool. And how much have you guys all put in together so far? [15:09] >> I think about a 100 k, give or take. [15:12] Does that make you nervous? [15:14] >> Well, I will be a lot more comfortable once we start bringing in our first few customers. [15:21] On that note, we're out of time. Let's wrap up, Mike, with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book? [15:27] >> You know, The Dogs of War. I've always liked that. [15:30] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [15:34] >> No. [15:34] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building pricimetrics? [15:40] >> Well, we use React for the front end, so probably that. [15:45] >> Okay. [15:46] Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? [15:51] >> Now I get a lot more than I used to. For a while, this [15:56] >> was a hectic job and it took a lot of time while we were knee deepened. Now I'm becoming far more redundant than I used to be and there's time for for me to sleep. [16:12] So, Mike, how many hours of sleep do you get? [16:15] >> I would say I'm up to about seven. [16:17] And what's your situation? Married? Single? Kids? [16:21] >> I am married, and I have a 12 year old kid. [16:25] Very cool. And how old are you? [16:28] >> That's I'm kind of old for an entrepreneur. I am 53. [16:33] Alright. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [16:38] >> You know, started companies other than consulting, I never really stuck with them. And I probably had I known, I would have stuck with a few of them for somewhat longer and made them work. [16:56] Guys, there we have a pricimetrics. He's been a consultant in the pricing phase for a long time. He's now building technology to help brands skews the corner grocery shop with over two fifty skews, optimize pricing real time to quickly understand pricing profitability margins with a click of a button. Taking what he knows from consulting in his head and putting it out in software space. He's got 10 folks on the team today, one of which is their [17:15] coder who's actually being paid. The founders have put in a 100 k to build the MVP, and three folks on that 10 person sales team working for equity are looking to land their first sale here in the next couple of months. We'll see what happens. Mike, thanks for taking us to the top. [17:27] >> Thank you. Much appreciated. [17:29] 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, 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 [17:54] Central. 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 [18:17] fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. 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