How Qusek Reached $25,000 in Revenue in Its First Year and Launched an RPA Subscription Business (Interview with CEO Hector Jimenez)

Host intro and company overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, he's 23 years old. He's got a $25,000 of revenue last year. His first company launched it, started out as an agency and said, you know, I like recurring revenue better. So he launched a software company that helps you with robotic process automation, especially clients like ecommerce clients. They get hundreds of emails or or messages on WhatsApp. He helps you automate those. Hoping to double revenue this year. Four customers today pay $50 a month for that

00:22RPA to what he's hoping to scale. Hey, folks. My guest today is Hector Jimenez. He helped grow a startup from 50 k in USD to 500 k in annual revenue in twelve months. He's an agency owner helping startups increase revenue through growth marketing and robotic process automation. The company is called qusek.com. Hector, are ready to take us to the top?

Agency vs RPA business model breakdown

Hector Jimenez

00:43>> Yeah, I'm ready.

Nathan Latka

00:44All right. So just to be clear, you are making money on an agency model right now. Are you building any internal software?

Hector Jimenez

00:50>> No. We currently have two models. The first one is the agency and the second one is robotic process automation, which we sell as a subscription model. But this new branch is basically like 10% of our revenue and 90% comes from agency clients.

Nathan Latka

01:06Yep, yep. Well, SaaS companies always start with, I mean, start with an agency. So you're 90% agency, 10% SaaS today. Tell us what folks are paying you for. Give us an example of a customer.

Hector Jimenez

01:17>> Sure, for example, we have clients who have a community on social media, say TikTok or Instagram, but they're having problems monetizing, right? So maybe they have a course academy and they have a community, but their hands are filled with a bunch of WhatsApp messages and they're not doing email marketing neither, right? So what we do in Qusek is that we help them see the data that comes to their website and to optimize

Client example: WhatsApp chatbot and Facebook ads

Hector Jimenez

01:47>> their flows, basically. So to give you a very clear example, last year we worked with a client who was receiving around 500 WhatsApp messages per day and the CEO was just overwhelmed with that. So we built a WhatsApp chatbot. And in that way we helped them go from 200 users to 1,200 users in two months. We also did Facebook ads for them. So that's basically what we do. We're basically a marketing agency, but what we like

Weekly full-funnel reporting approach

Hector Jimenez

02:13>> to do with our clients is follow-up weekly. So on a weekly basis, we analyze all the metrics going from top of the funnel, name, social media, reach, engagement, all the way to the bottom, like retention metrics. So how many people churned, how many people renewed their subscription. And yeah, I guess in a nutshell, that's what we do.

Nathan Latka

02:37And so, Hector, understanding that, how much revenue did you do on the agency side in 2022?

2022 agency revenue: $25,000

Hector Jimenez

02:43>> In 2022 for me, I did 25 k. It's my first year, and it was 25 k US dollars.

Nathan Latka

02:50So $25,000 last year. That was and that was the that's the first year you'd launched the agency?

Hector Jimenez

02:56>> True. Yes.

Nathan Latka

02:57When did you start writing code to launch the RPA business?

Hector Jimenez

03:02>> To be honest, I don't do the RPA part.

RPA business structure and UiPath tooling

Hector Jimenez

03:06>> My business partner does it. He's not even a coder. Formally, he's taken some courses online and he uses UiPath. So I focus more on like bringing like with the clients that I have, I see the problems they have regarding manual processes. Like for instance, we have a marketing agency that used to invest around one hour of time per week creating their marketing report. So a lot of copying and pasting from Facebook to your PowerPoint presentation, from

03:37>> Google Analytics to Canva, you name it. And what we did was that with my business partner, I brought the client and he basically builds the infrastructure code to automate that Do guys split equity?

Nathan Latka

03:50You split it fiftyfifty or what?

Hector Jimenez

03:52>> Yeah, the RPA part, we do fiftyfifty.

Nathan Latka

03:55Oh, 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

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06:19I guess I I'm getting confused here. So there's an agency. You're doing some, you say your clients and you say he does RPA, but you say co founder, but you're not really co founders. What's the structure here? Is there one company that's split fifty fifty and you bring on new clients and he does RPA work?

Hector Jimenez

06:34>> So the company is split in two parts. We have the agency side where it's basically 100% equity for me. And then we have the RPA side. The RPA side is split fifty fifty between this business partner and me.

Nathan Latka

06:47I see. Okay, that makes sense. So how much did you guys do on the RPA side last year?

RPA MRR and low-cost subscription strategy

Hector Jimenez

06:51>> On the RPA, really not a lot. Like we currently have a monthly recurring revenue of around $200 per month four clients. So what we're going for

07:04>> right now is basically a low cost model. Because what we notice is that here in Mexico, a lot of the companies that do RPA, they usually charge a very high initial fee for the development of the automation. But what we wanna do is more like win money long term. So basically our business is retaining clients at a low cost. And basically that's the business model.

Nathan Latka

07:31So what's the plan for this year? What do you want to grow revenue to?

Hector Jimenez

07:37>> In the agency side, we want to get to let me translate it to

2023 revenue goals and ambition discussion

Hector Jimenez

07:43>> dollars because I have a very clear Mexican pesos. But this year we want to close at basically we want to double our revenue from last year, which if I was doing Trevente give me a second.

07:59>> So we want to reach 50 ks this year for the agency side and for RPA 50 ks this year. And for the RPA side, we want to reach at least 100 k in Mexican pesos,

Nathan Latka

08:15100 k Hector, how do you mean, look, you look like a young guy. These are the best years of your life. You have the most energy. You can hustle the hardest. You can sleep the least. Know, everyone has to start at 10 k a month in revenue. So I'm not giving you a hard time for that. But, like, these do not seem like ambitious goals. I mean, how do you go from 25 to how do you

08:32get to 500,000 in revenue in a year?

Hector Jimenez

08:36>> I'm sorry. I didn't understand the question.

Nathan Latka

08:38This is not this why do you get excited about going from 25,000 a year in revenue to 50,000 a year in revenue? I mean, why not set why not go after and go build a million 500,000 a year business or million dollar a year business and challenge yourself to think about how you would get to that?

Hector Jimenez

08:53>> Yeah. I think that would be a more interesting approach probably. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:59Well, I mean, don't just agree with me. You've chosen to go a different route. So why didn't you I mean, why are you choosing to not be aggressive?

Delegation challenges and personal limiting beliefs

Hector Jimenez

09:06>> The thing is like, I've tried to I've had a lot of trouble with the part of delegation. So I think that that's something that's more like personal, like limiting belief that I have to break, which I'm working on. So yeah, basically, I guess that's basically the, like the root of why I haven't been more aggressive. Like I really wanna have higher goals, but yeah, basically that's what's been holding me back, but it's something I'm working on.

Nathan Latka

09:33Well, it seems like you have a high degree of empathy. So take us through a story where you try to delegate something, it didn't work, and now you're nervous to do it again.

Hector Jimenez

09:41>> Yeah. So basically last year, as you said in the introduction, we helped a client go from selling

Client growth story and losing focus on acquisition

Hector Jimenez

09:51>> it was 1,000,000 pesos a month, which is dollars 5 to 500 ks. So it was basically a 10x growth. Right. And the thing that happened was that we got so into the operation of the business that I basically left the acquisition side. I forgot about it. I forgot acquiring new clients because I didn't delegate correctly. So yeah, that's basically that was what happened last year. We had very good results with our clients, but I kind of

10:26>> forgot about acquiring new clients. So yeah, that was my main setback.

Nathan Latka

10:31I mean, if you helped a customer go from 5 k to 500 k or 50 k a month in revenue and you're only making like I mean, you're making nothing. Are you scared to ask people to pay you?

Hector Jimenez

10:42>> Yeah. I think that would be that's the that's something that I've been dealing with, like how to charge more. Definitely.

Nathan Latka

10:50Just look into your camera right now and say, Nathan, the price is $10,000 per month. That's what you owe me. Okay. Ready? Go.

Hector Jimenez

10:57>> Nathan, the price is $10,000 per month. That's what you owe me.

Nathan Latka

11:01Perfect. See, I did I had to do this early on in my career. I'm like, man, it's so nerve wracking asking for someone to pay me $10,000 a month. I've never made that. This is, you know, ten ten years ago. Then you look in the mirror, you do it over and over. And once you can say it with confidence, and then you say it on the phone to a prospect or on a Zoom call, then they

11:16believe you because you say it was so much authority. And before you know it, you've got a FreshBooks, you know, invoice coming into your bank or a wire coming in for, you know, $50,000 year annual contract, then boom, you're off to the races.

Hector Jimenez

11:27>> Great.

Pricing structure: retainer plus commission model

Nathan Latka

11:28How did you come up with your pricing structure today?

Hector Jimenez

11:31>> So basically at the beginning, since it's been a year, it's been a lot of trial and error. Right? And basically what we did at first was we charged a low ticket and but where we won was the commission part and that kind of worked. But as I told you, like last year, it wasn't sustainable because since we had so much skin in the game because the real money was in making our client grow, we started to

12:03>> invest a lot of time growing the client instead of growing the agency. And basically our pricing structure,

12:09>> I guess it's not really clear. We basically try to negotiate with the client and a price that seems fair. And I think that's also why I'm not charging as much as I would like to.

Nathan Latka

12:19So you would tell a customer, hey, we get to keep 5% of whatever new revenue we drive you. We're not gonna charge you an upfront fee.

Hector Jimenez

12:28>> Not that extreme, but we do a really low, like for instance, right now the average ticket price is like, I guess 500 a month and we get like a 5% commission fee on additional revenue.

Nathan Latka

12:47And then it's just so hard though, every month you're having to debate with your clients if you drove new revenue or not, and then you have to go chase and calculate the 5% and chase it, right?

Hector Jimenez

12:57>> It's not that hard to calculate it because fortunately we have like, we track everything. So everything we do like email marketing and everything, we have links to track traffic and revenue from that.

Attribution and commission tracking

Nathan Latka

13:09Well, You send out an email blast and you drive 10,000 new dollars of revenue for one of your customers. And they say, well, yeah, Hector, you wrote the email, but we did all the work on the landing page. We did all the work on calls to close the leads. Like, no. We're not giving you credit for the full 10,000 of sales. I mean, I imagine you debate that stuff all the time.

Hector Jimenez

13:27>> Yeah. Fortunately, that that has not been a problem so far.

Nathan Latka

13:32Interesting. Well,

13:34I'm bringing up because it doesn't seem you have $25,000 in total revenue for the year. Like, you can't build a a empire around that. Right? So whether it's working or not, like, the the the the the proof is in the pudding here. I just I've I've know a lot of founders who start off trying to charge a percent of upside they drive, and you just end up in endless debates about attribution. So, look, we'll see where

13:55you pivot over the next year. I hope you obviously grow. I hope the RPA business also takes off. But for now, we're out of time. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite book.

Hector Jimenez

14:06>> Favorite book, The Cold Start Problem by what's his name? The ex chief of oh, Andrew Chen, ex chief of growth of Uber.

Nathan Latka

14:14Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Hector Jimenez

14:19>> I wouldn't say a CEO, but what's his name? Pieter Levels. Pieter Levels, indie hacker. He's he basically has like eight startups. I highly recommend following him.

Nathan Latka

14:30Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building qusek?

Hector Jimenez

14:34>> I would say, Zapier and carrd.co.

Nathan Latka

14:40Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Hector Jimenez

14:43>> Between five and seven.

Nathan Latka

14:47And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Hector Jimenez

14:49>> Single.

Nathan Latka

14:50Okay. And how old are you?

Hector Jimenez

14:52>> I'm 23.

14:54>> 23.

Famous Five: books, tools, habits, and advice

Nathan Latka

14:55Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Hector Jimenez

15:01>> I wish I knew about growth hacking back then. Definitely. Growth hacking.

Nathan Latka

15:05Guys, he's 23 years old. He's got a $25,000 of revenue last year. His first company launched it, started out as an agency and said, you know, I like recurring revenue better. So he launched a software company that helps you with robotic process automation, especially clients like ecommerce clients. They get hundreds of emails or or messages on WhatsApp. He helps you automate those. Hoping to double revenue this year. Four customers today pay $50 a month for that

15:28RPA to what he's hoping to scale. Hector, thanks for taking us to top.

Hector Jimenez

15:33>> Thank you.

Nathan Latka

15:35One 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 one

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