How Teamforce AI CEO Vivek Kumar grew Teamforce AI to $738K revenue and 100 customers in 2024.

hello everybody my guest today is vivek is vivek kumar we'll talk to uh john here in a second but vivek is the founder and ceo of a company called click it they help enterprises and mid-size businesses reduce turnover by giving frontline employees a voice before clickety worked at blackstone in new york as a management consultant and then graduated from the wharton school at the university of pennsylvania or maybe those were obviously reversed but vic are you ready to take us to the top let's do it all right introduce john here how do you guys work together john's one of our co-founders very good so just there's two of you guys or there's more there's one more he's in india who's the smartest who's the best looking this one right here no john who's the smartest smartest man i think the guys who code okay so vic are you kind of leading the dev team and john you're the business guy depender is our dev team uh i kind of uh investors in the business than john customers and product ah very good okay good and did you get i mean the equity conversation always tough did you guys just say 33 33 33 how'd you do it uh it's not exactly that dependent and i had been working on something for a few years in india and then we brought john on board uh last year who pursued who john you went after them or they came after you uh i would say it was a it was a mutual it was kind of so diplomatic i love this that's the right answer john all right let's get on to the rest of the interview what's click it do vivek and how do you make money uh so we make it easy for organizations to collect feedback from non-desk bound workers which is about when you think about the us workforce 80 million workers are hourly and most of them don't have a easy voice to provide sentiment about how they're feeling in the workforce we make it easy through a kiosk and we charge organizations dollars per employee per month to be able to provide this information okay that's your only pricing plan no expansion revenue opportunities uh there are expansion revenue opportunities for enterprises uh but the basic pricing is about three dollars per employee so would you say that's a fair average you look across all your seats the average seat's about three bucks a month correct okay and what's the founding story when did you launch what year we've been around for a few years but we launched this offering about three months ago and it's already been getting good traction in the market because there's not really any great uh um substitutes that are available to kind of capture voices in a scalable way for non-desk bound workers who quantify that so you know how many seats on the platform today what's good traction uh in total across different solution sets we have we probably get about 10 000 responses a day um primarily a mix of enterprises and mid-sizes and warehouse logistics and then we also do some small and medium businesses on the side john vivek danced around the question how many seats on the platform okay we have we have over 100 customers uh the new product offering we have uh several hundred employees using it um across uh you know half a dozen or so different large organizations okay so i am curious are you so 100 logos using you guys give me a general sense of average team size are we talking kind of startups are we talking thousand person teams the the so the when we talk about all the customers those are mostly like smaller businesses um the new offering that quebec mentioned those are enterprise mid to mid to large size organizations so companies that have you know over a thousand employees in some cases okay and what do you so i want to kind of get you know phrase get more of the story you guys are in a beautiful spot right and that most people have on the show they're doing some big amount of you know you know revenue the problem with those shows are they're not actionable because people listening are where you guys are or they're in corporate thinking about leaving to be right where you guys are so this is gonna be very very valuable uh where are you guys at today so you're three months in so what's revenue today per month so total revenue per month is between ten and twenty thousand dollars about half of that's recurring so about ten thousand a month and recurring the new offering that john uh is talking about more detail it's about uh a thousand a month and recurring so within three months we've hit a thousand an mrr with a new offering that's great so a hundred logos paying you about a hundred bucks per month right they get about 10 grand per month in sales right there you just launched a new offering why why um why go to two offerings so quick it's like you haven't given the first one chance yet to scale we did actually try to scale it what we found is we run into some roadblocks going into the the mid-size and higher end of the market it was more targeted customers uh in the hotel space who were logging into wi-fi um and and while we were growing incrementally month on month what we wanted to do was actually grow a much larger business and that's part of the reason john came on board was to help us think about where we could take the business beyond what we were doing kind of with a lifestyle type business and make it more into a high growth opportunity so john what month did you join i joined a little over a year ago okay that was in may of 2017. yeah and then he was exploring what we could do that whole time okay and when vivek when did you and your other cofounder really start working on this we had something completely different in india back in 2012 jan of 2012 we wanted to get more people online for free in india we really had a good background in the wi-fi space and we we knew we understood that but we didn't know what to kind of do with that in terms of monetization uh ended up coming back to the us serving a lot of small hotels with getting guest feedback over wifi managing their networks and then realized wait you know you could set up kiosks that obviously rely on wi-fi host everything in the cloud and collect employee feedback in a scalable way for non-desk bound workers and that's sort of how we arrived on this story okay so between 2012 and 2017 i mean how did you and your other co-founder how did you support yourself did you have money did you did you raise capital we've raised about 750 000 over that course that whole time in fact just closed some more capital recently but because we were living in india our costs were very low we did have some trickles of revenue so we managed to not die we were good cockroaches and now that we've sort of found something that's better product market fit we are investing more and looking to raise more money uh to kind of really grow what looks like a good opportunity so 750 in uh you know back since 2012 you said you just raised an additional amount how much total in what company so far uh 750's total raise we're looking to click another 250 and just close a little bit more on friday another 25 on friday so what what what vehicle are you doing this on it's a rolling note or something right convertible notes with caps that have gone up over the years interesting like natural accelerators or something in some ways i mean we did do an accelerator here in pittsburgh called no no no no sorry sorry i meant natural accelerators on the cap like it increases five percent each year uh yeah roughly i don't think we've been i mean our first cap note was 2 million way back in 2012 or most recent is at 5 million did you keep those early investors on the cap table you didn't reset right we did not there was debate about whether to do that they'd kill you they would and it's not the right thing to do it's not no they would kill you you did the right thing um okay very good so so capital's in raising additional 250 route sounds like the note will allow you to go up to a million which is what you're trying to close out now the additional 250. um where is i mean where is the growth coming from today right so where where are you signing up new customers from yeah yeah john um we've actually so far we've been getting um a lot of referrals a lot of work working on networks we're based in pittsburgh and the bay area but kind of this part of the country is where a lot of our customers are for the new offering so warehouse distribution centers we can expand that for right now we're trying to stay laser focused on that offering we have you know having said that we have started to pick up a couple unaffiliated customers just through outbound going to trade shows things like that yeah yeah yeah the top tools are warehouse logistics fast food retail manufacturing and we're even getting some interest in health care as well any any metrics yet on churn so far zero but we don't have enough of a large sample size in terms of our turn of customers or production employee turnover no no no sorry turn off customers none i mean in our hotel business it was 99 retention uh about 125 paying customers in this space the uh three customers to date zero so far in the three months interesting and and any metrics said on like cac and lifetime value or no it's just too early in the hotel space we know that in this it's too early um but some of our mid sizes are about you know a thousand a month one of them is much larger than the other two so yeah uh you know you could assume it's tough to say because there isn't any churn but we can invest more money to acquire those customers than we could in the past yeah what's the team size today two of us another co-founder and then some folks in india maybe about seven or eight full time or part time almost all full-time that's great so so are you i mean are you running i don't think you're running profitably right now right on 10 grand a month no we net burns about 20k a month okay got it and so so how do you manage runway right now like obviously you're trying to close additional tranches buy yourself extra time which that's what a good ceo would be doing but what's your run right today uh my goodness we almost died like three months ago you can ask john and anyone else on the team about it uh i think it's like yeah you've got to find a way to survive and the thing is if we wouldn't have hit our pilots our pilots wouldn't have converted to paying customers there might not be a company today but although we don't have a lot of cash in the bank we're probably the opportunity for qriket is probably better than it's ever been whereas maybe a year ago we had 100k in the bank and we were growing incrementally and investors weren't excited about that story so there's a lot to say about continuing to have momentum and hit in the short term and have a bigger story even if you don't have a lot of cash in the bank versus having a lot of cash and not knowing what you're doing i'd much rather have what we have than some friends who have a lot more cash and are trying to figure out their product markets john when you realized couple months ago that this thing is like crap how are you doing payroll why do you stick around this is and i'm not trying to cause friction but this is something that happens in every single startup and no one ever talks about it so what did vivek tell you that made you stick around well i mean i i think there was just that there was a mutual investment i i knew you know over a year ago what i was signing up for um i think there's you got to have a sense of risk aversion or i'm sorry risk tolerance um in order to know that those tough times are going to come i think honestly if they don't then uh if you're kind of in your going through a brand new product and you don't run into some tough times like that you're probably not doing something right um so you know it was to be expected and and it was really just looking at the uh you know the opportunity that was there and to be fair john actually you know he's not just talking the talk he actually walked the walk so he agreed to modify his compensation package he took a severe pay cut and he doubled down on his equity almost more than that so he really he really is validating backing up his belief and what we're able to do and that meant a lot that's great how how long can you guys afford to do this right so like you all have i assume had great jobs for it you saved up some money then you're all taking pay cuts now you're you're buying yourself additional time i mean how long how long of a roadway have you bought yourself i mean you know as long as there's customer validation and growth and there's the opportunity to keep executing the money will come i mean investors are looking for the store and the opportunity for all that it's the hardest part is really making sure you have something customers really want you want to be flooded in that demand we've never felt what that's like although we're starting to feel like we literally can't keep up with with what our customers want on this and that they're willing to pay for so um you know hopefully we don't have to worry about like hopefully we've survived the valley of death there might be some of those but hopefully that it was the most severe one definitely about three or four months ago and hopefully we never have to go through that again um but but yeah that's good um how'd you guys land on we didn't really talk much about the idea how did you land on this particular customer to build something for do you guys have backgrounds in the space um actually well no we um the background that we have is really in gathering insights in it in a very um effective and actionable way and that's what was happening in the hotel space through the course of um you know over several months after i joined uh just going out to different industries talking to people about the thing that we've built and seeing how it applies um we came across a very large uh logistics provider who kind of kind of keyed us onto something we started exploring it further and just discovered this real need in the marketplace um and and just figure out what we would have to build in order to make it work for them and in the course of that make it work for you know everybody who's like them very good all right guys let's wrap up here with the famous five vivek number one what's your favorite business book oh business well right now it's uh probably jason lemkin's from uh impossible to inevitable number two john this one's for you is there a ceo you're following or studying right now uh i mean elon musk just vivek back to you number three what's your favorite online tool online tool oh um probably using uh linkedin the most but i don't know if it's the favorite all right and that vivek let's stick with you for these last couple here so how many hours of sleep you get every night uh recently it's probably been about six and what's your situation married single kiddos single with serious girlfriend okay good so not married no kids that you know of no kids that i know run around pittsburgh somewhere you just don't know about them oh yeah i'm just kidding i'm kidding all right and how old are you uh 33 30 33 with a question mark vivek last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew oh man so much uh the only thing that matters is growth and finding that product market fit and really making sure you make something people want sounds generic but it's so true guys there you have it from vivek and john at click it the other founder over in india launched really back in 2012 raised some capital for a different idea brought john in a couple months ago in 20 well actually about a year ago in 2017 just launched a new product a couple months ago here in 2018 now about 100 customers paying 100 bucks per month 10 grand per month in pure sas revenue sounds like some professional services on top of that which is helping them with their you know cash you know they've raised 750 grand vivx out raising about another 250 right now again trying to hit product market fit for their new click it product vivek john thank you both for taking us to the top thanks so much