Valuation
$15M
2024 Revenue
$3.1M(Est.)
Customers · 2022
50
Funding
$3.3M
Team
31
Founded
2018
Raffle Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)
Raffle is a Copenhagen-based enterprise AI search company founded in 2018 by Suzanne Lauritzen and a co-founder. The company builds AI-powered search tools that allow corporate employees and website visitors to find information the way consumers use Google, serving customers across insurance, banking, B2B software, and e-commerce verticals primarily in the Nordics.
As of January 2022, Raffle reported approximately $1.2 million in annual recurring revenue, up from roughly $240,000 in 2020, representing 305% ARR growth over that period. The company had 50 paying enterprise customers at an average contract value of $25,000 per year.
Raffle closed a $3 million seed round in 2020 at a $15 million post-money valuation and was in the process of closing a Series A round led by a US venture capital firm at the time of the interview. The company planned to use the new capital to expand across Europe before entering the US market in 2023.
Last updated
Raffle Revenue
Raffle reported approximately $1.2 million in annual recurring revenue as of January 2022, a figure Lauritzen confirmed during the interview. That figure represents 305% growth in ARR from the company's 2020 revenue of roughly $240,000, which the host characterized as approximately $20,000 per month at that earlier date.
With 50 paying customers at an average contract value of $25,000 per year, the implied monthly run rate at the time of the interview was approximately $100,000. Lauritzen confirmed the company had passed the $1 million ARR threshold. Revenue in the company's founding year of 2018 was described by Lauritzen as very limited, with only proof-of-concept activity underway.
GetLatka projects 2023 revenue in a range of approximately $2.4 million to $3.6 million, applying the trailing 305% growth rate as a ceiling and a conservatively decelerated rate as a floor, and labeling this a GetLatka estimate. The actual outcome will depend heavily on the deployment of Series A capital into sales and marketing.
Raffle Valuation, Funding Rounds
Raffle reached a $15M valuation in 2020.
Raffle has raised $3.3M in total funding across 2 rounds, with its most recent round in 2020.
| Year | Round | Amount | Valuation | % Sold | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Funding round | $3M | $15M | 20% | Estimated |
| 2018 | Pre Seed | $300K | - | - |
Founder / CEO
Suzanne Lauritzen
CEO
Suzanne Lauritzen is the CEO and co-founder of Raffle. She began her career in tech consulting and the dot-com industry in the 1990s. She previously founded LogBuy in the early 2000s, an employee engagement platform that was fully acquired in a split sale in 2016 and 2017, at which point Lauritzen and her co-founder were the sole owners of that business.
Raffle was co-founded in 2018 by Lauritzen and one other co-founder, each holding equal ownership stakes. Pre-Series A, each co-founder owned approximately 22% of the company. Net worth was not discussed in the interview. A GetLatka estimate of Lauritzen's equity value based on her approximately 22% stake and the $15 million seed-round post-money valuation would imply a floor of roughly $3.3 million, though the Series A valuation, which was not disclosed, would change that figure materially. This is a GetLatka estimate and should not be treated as a confirmed figure.
Q&A
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What's your age? | 51 |
| Favorite online tool? | - |
| Favorite book? | - |
| Favorite CEO? | - |
| Advice for 20 year old self | - |
Customers
Raffle had approximately 50 paying enterprise customers as of January 2022, up from 7 customers in October 2020. Named customers include Ilva, Visma, E.M., and Corp, spanning insurance, banking, B2B software, and e-commerce sectors. Customer acquisition has been concentrated in the Nordics, with planned expansion into Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands.
The average contract value as of January 2022 was $25,000 per year, equivalent to approximately $2,000 per month per customer. Lauritzen noted this represented a slight decrease from the prior $35,000 average cited in the October 2020 interview, and described the move toward the mid-market as intentional. Pricing and free-tier details beyond the ACV figure were not discussed in the interview.
Customer implementation time improved dramatically over the period: as of January 2022, Raffle could implement a new customer within two days, compared to approximately two months roughly 18 months earlier. Lauritzen attributed this to the product becoming a boxed solution that works out of the box without requiring custom AI training.
Raffle serves 50 customers.
Raffle Business Model
Raffle operates a direct sales model with five quota-carrying sales representatives. Each rep carries an annual new ARR quota of approximately $420,000, a target Lauritzen confirmed was unchanged from the October 2020 interview. The company sells annual contracts to enterprise and mid-market customers, with all revenue currently generated through direct sales rather than marketing channels.
The company reported a lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio of 5 to 1 as of January 2022, which Lauritzen described as conservative because the LTV calculation uses only a three-year customer lifetime rather than the five-year period she noted is more common. Using a $25,000 annual contract value over three years produces an LTV of approximately $75,000, implying a customer acquisition cost of approximately $15,000. Lauritzen noted that CAC spending is concentrated almost entirely on sales salaries and commissions, with minimal marketing expenditure, and that the company planned to invest more in marketing and branding in the coming year.
Net dollar retention was not known to Lauritzen at the time of the interview. Profitability, gross margin, burn rate, and runway were not discussed. The company uses an exit warrant program rather than a traditional stock option vesting schedule: warrants vest only upon a liquidity event defined as the sale of more than 50% of the company, and are forfeited if an employee leaves before that event.
Point-in-time figures shared on the GetLatka podcast, each linked to the exact moment it was said on camera.
Customers (2022)
50
“Suzanne Lauritzen: We have around 50 total. We have more customers than that, but paying customers and big corporates, like enterprise customers are 50.”
WatchRaffle Employees & Team Size
Raffle had 20 full-time employees and 8 part-time employees as of January 2022, for a total of 28 people associated with the company. Of the 20 full-time staff, 12 are engineers. The company also employs 5 quota-carrying sales representatives.
In October 2020, the total headcount including part-time employees was approximately 23. Lauritzen clarified that the earlier figure included part-time workers, and that full-time headcount has grown by approximately 5 people since then. The team is based primarily in the Nordics.
Raffle employs approximately 31 people as of 2026. It serves 50 customers that rely on its solutions.
| Year | Milestone | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Reached 31 employees (October 2024) | |
| 2023 | Reached 31 employees (November 2023) | |
| 2022 | Reached 20 employees (January 2022) | |
| 2021 | Reached 18 employees (November 2021) | |
| 2020 | Reached 15 employees (November 2020) | |
| 2020 | Reached 15 employees (October 2020) | |
| 2019 | Reached 8 employees (October 2019) |
Frequently Asked Questions about Raffle
What is Raffle's revenue?
Raffle generates an estimated $3.1M in annual revenue.
Who founded Raffle?
Raffle was founded by Suzanne Lauritzen.
Who is the CEO of Raffle?
The CEO of Raffle is Suzanne Lauritzen.
How much funding does Raffle have?
Raffle raised $3.3M across 2 rounds.
How many employees does Raffle have?
Raffle has 31 employees.
Where is Raffle headquarters?
Raffle is headquartered in Denmark.
Compare Raffle to the industry
Raffle operates across multiple industries. Browse revenue, funding, and growth data for Raffle in each sector below.
Full Interview Transcripts
AI Powered Internal Search Tool Grows 200%, Breaks $1m Run Rate, $15m Valuation in 2020Jan 12, 2022
[00:00] Hey folks, my guest today is Suzanne Lauritzen. She's professionally brought up in the tech consulting and dot coms of the 1990s. She's the founder of LogBuy in the early 2000s, an employee engagement platform, which was fully acquired in a split sale back in 2016, 2017, at which point her co founder and her were the sole owners. Today, she's the CEO and co founder of venture backed raffle.ai, inventing the future of enterprise search based off [00:24] AI. Suzanne, you ready to take us to the top? [00:27] >> Yeah. [00:28] Alright. So this is your second or third or fourth swing at it with some successful exits in the past. Correct? [00:35] >> Yes. It is. [00:36] Okay. What does it mean to empower your search with AI? Search for what? Who's using this? [00:44] >> Employees are using it, customers are using it on the website of our customers. So it's basically just the search that can find what you need, like Google can find what you need for consumers. We make the same search available for corporates. [01:01] Okay. Very cool. And remind us, I believe you founded this way back in 2018, right? [01:06] >> Yes. And do [01:08] you remember I I didn't ask you last time we spoke. Do you remember back in 2018 what your total revenue was your first year in business? [01:16] >> Oh, no. Was very, very limited. [01:23] >> I think we had maybe a bit of POCs going on, but it was very limited. [01:30] Yep. Yeah. Okay. Very cool. And then tell me about customers today, right? So you told us about your customers back in October 2020, but Nate, can you name any customers paying you today? [01:42] >> Yes. We have corp as a customer, we have E. M. As a customer, we have Visma as a customer, we have Ilva, which is like IKEA. So we have, yeah, we have lots of different kinds of customers, both within insurance, banking, B2B software and e commerce. [02:08] And how many total paying customers today? [02:12] >> We have around 50 total, know, We big have more customers than that, but paying customers and big corporates, like enterprise customers are 50. [02:24] It's impressive, Suzanne. I don't know if you remember back back in October 2020, you told me you had about seven. So you've significantly grown since then. Now has has your average contract value changed as well? Or is it still about $35,000 a year on average? [02:39] >> No. The contract value today is about €25,000. No. Sorry. Dollars. Dollars. $25. $25,000. Per year? Yes. [02:52] Okay. So maybe going down market just a smidge? Is that an intentional strategy or that just happens to be the customers you closed? [02:59] >> No. Yeah, it's intentional. I think we'll probably even go further down because we are targeting also the medium segment today and not only the enterprise market. So that's intentional. [03:13] Mhmm. Now, you have the 50 customers at a $25,000 ACV, that means you're at doing what about 1,200,000 in terms of run rate right now? [03:24] >> Little Yes. Yeah. [03:25] Yeah. $9,950 a million, something like that. You're about to pass a million dollar run rate. We'll put it that way. [03:30] >> Oh, yeah. We have passed a million. [03:32] Yeah. Okay. You're past a million. Fair. Yeah. That's very exciting. So you've done this, do believe you've also raised some capital, tell us about your last funding round. [03:42] >> Well, our last funding round was about $3,000,000, but right now, actually we are in the middle of an A round. I can't tell you anymore about that, but I can on Wednesday. So it's closing on Wednesday next week. [03:58] Oh, very that's a really big round. [04:01] 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 [04:24] your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what it 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 [04:49] get 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 [05:10] not 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 [05:36] going 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 [05:58] you 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 [06:24] interview. Don't share anything you can't, but about how much do you think they'll end up being for a range? And and just to be clear too, we're recording this on January 12. This will go out on February 25 just for timing purposes. [06:38] >> Yeah. But the thing is, don't know if I can if I can reveal that until Wednesday. So I I I know that's I I don't know what I can reveal, but but I'm happy to to tell you later on, and then you can clip it in or whatever, you know. [06:51] That's no problem. We we would love to do that. Let's talk about the strategy behind the raise. What what do you why do you need the money? That obviously comes with dilution. [06:59] >> Yes. We need the money to scale European wise. First of all, it's actually going to mean American. It's a US venture capital firm. So eventually, we'll also go to The US, but I think we'll wait one year to do that and just scale in Europe for now. So that's what we need the money for. It's basically sales. [07:20] Yeah. Most most folks, Suzanne, in their series a are selling 10 to 20% of the business. Were you sort of in that same range? [07:27] >> Mhmm. Yeah. [07:29] Okay. And and do you have to set up an employee stock option pool afterwards, or did you already have one set up anyway? [07:35] >> We already have one, actually. We do have a warrant program, an exit warrant program. [07:40] I don't know what that is. How does that work? [07:42] >> It works the way that you have you have the option to oh, you have warrants that will be released the day that we actually exit, which is the day where we sell more than 50% of the company. So you have to stay to the end, so to speak, or to the day that we exit to to get value for that money. If you don't stay, you will lose it. So it's basically a way to say to [08:09] >> people that we really want to stay on board for, you know, for the long run. [08:15] >> Yeah. [08:16] And what are those called? Sort of what warrants? [08:18] >> It's an exit warrant program. [08:22] Interesting. I like that. I have not heard that before. So that's interesting. [08:26] >> It's just a warrant program and it's just exit based. So I think that Yeah, exactly. The [08:32] >> Most people would probably just say it's a warm program. [08:35] Yeah, fair, fair, fair. I like your idea better though. That's kind of fun. Yeah. Okay. Talk to me about the customer growth. How have you gone from 7 to 50? Where are you getting these customers? [08:45] >> It's in The Nordics primarily, but we've just, I mean, we've just scaled the business, we have been much more clear in the vision now, we have a product now that can scale very rapidly. [09:00] >> And also we can now implement the customer within two days, which we were maybe two months doing, you know, just one and a half years ago, it would take us two months to actually implement the customer. So it's just more rapid now. It's a clearer vision, so. [09:21] And how many folks are on the team full time? [09:24] >> 20 is on the team full time, and then we have eight part time employees as well. [09:33] How many engineers? [09:36] >> We have 12 engineers on board. [09:38] Okay. [09:39] Now back in October 2020, you told me you had about 23 on the team. Did you have to let some people go, but still have that revenue growth maybe because of COVID or something? [09:48] >> No. I think what we what we calculated at that point was also the part time employees. So we haven't we haven't scaled that much. We have scaled about five full time employees since then, and then some part time employees as well. I see. But still, we have grown 305% in revenue or in ARR since then. [10:11] Yeah. I I don't care about team growth. I care more about revenue growth. I'd rather you build a billion dollar company with one person on it, you know? Exactly. Have you changed anything about your sales motion with your sales reps? Last time you told me you had five quota carrying reps and their quota targets were set at about $420,000 of new ARR per year. [10:27] >> It's the same. [10:30] Okay. [10:30] >> It's basically Mhmm. The [10:34] >> Well, it's well, I I wouldn't say that it was working perfectly before. It's working perfectly now. So that's the Did [10:42] you have to make any changes to make that happen or no? [10:45] >> Yes, I think the product has developed so that it's easier to implement, as I said before, so it's also easier to sell because it's a box product. It works off the box, so it works the same day that you actually get it, And you don't have to train on the AI anymore you did before. And then, I mean, it's just, we are also more mature, We have a bigger brand today. So it's always, as time goes, [11:15] >> it will always be easier to sell the product as others have, if your neighbor has it, you want it. So it's basically about that, I think. [11:25] No, I love the story. It makes a ton of sense. Now you've mentioned these exit warrants. You've talked about the 3,000,000 seed you did. Now was that seed, was that like traditional seed round you sold, you know, 20% of the business Yes. Back then [11:38] Okay. So it's like what, a 15,000,000 valuation, something like that? [11:42] >> Yeah. [11:43] Okay. Interesting. And did you were you the sole founder prior to that? [11:48] >> No. We are two founders owning, you know, equally [11:57] >> much, and then we have some investors from the very beginning that were angels that threw in money in pre seed. [12:04] How much was that over year? [12:07] >> That was already in 2018 actually. So they threw in, I would say it's about [12:20] >> k US from the beginning and that's what we lived from, so to speak for the first year. [12:28] >> Yep. [12:29] So is it fair to say sort of investors now today own about 40 before the series a, about 35% of the business? [12:37] >> Before the Yeah. Current [12:40] >> That's fair. Yeah. [12:41] Yeah. Yeah. And then you guys how much have you reserved for employees? [12:46] >> We have reserved 9% up Yeah. Until [12:51] Pretty fair you probably increased that after the series a. [12:54] >> Yes. Exactly. [12:55] Yeah. Can you [12:56] share what you're increasing that to or no? [12:59] >> No, because I'm not really sure yet. That's It's no not been set. Yes. [13:03] That's no problem. So 35 to investors, nine for employees, that means you and co founder own about 22 each [13:10] >> as That's of a very good calculation. Yes. [13:14] Okay. Very cool. That sounds like you're managing the cap table in a super healthy way. It'll be fun to see what you do with this new capital in terms of investing in sales and marketing. When you say moving to The US market, does that mean literally opening an office here or hiring sales reps here or what? [13:26] >> But not I don't think we're going to do it right now, I think we're going to do it in '23. So we are first going to expand in Europe, we have plenty of room in Europe, we have the whole Nordics, which we are only beginning there. And then we have Germany, of course, and The UK and The Netherlands that we're going to focus on. [13:51] Very interesting. Now you have a high ACV, which means you could have a high CAC as well. What are you spending to get a new $2,000 a month customer? Do you know? [14:01] >> Yes, our LTV or our customer acquisition cost is 5, I think, at the moment. [14:11] >> And that is only because we have an LTV only on three years that we calculate it with, so I've learned that five years is actually normal. So basically, [14:26] >> formula should be better, [14:29] >> we're quite conservative in that sense. So five from a conservative point of view. [14:35] Yep, fair enough. And if you're, again, if you're managing and you think your annual contract values are somewhere in the $25,000 a year range, multiplied by three years, you get up to about $75,000 there. So you're telling me that you're totally comfortable spending $15,000 to acquire that customer, a five to one LTV CAC. [14:53] Where are you spending that money? Is it on the sales rep commission or something else? [14:58] >> Right now, we only do direct sales, so it's primarily actually just on salaries. And of course commission bonus and stuff like that, but not so much on the marketing side. We're going to focus on that a lot more in the coming year. Mhmm. And also the branding, of course. [15:16] Yeah. Net dollar retention above a 100? [15:20] >> Sorry? [15:21] Do you know what your net dollar retention is? Is it above a 100? [15:25] >> I have no, I don't know. Okay. I actually saw that question. I don't know. Had to ask my accountant, I think. [15:32] That's funny. You're referencing the Latka SaaS report that you filled out and I was like, and you're going, what is this? What do you mean net dollar retention? [15:39] >> Yeah, exactly. [15:40] Yeah, yeah. You'll you'll guys will get to that soon. You're growing so fast right now. You probably don't even have time to think about it. But it's a great story, Suzanne. I hope you come back on in a year. Give us another update. In the meantime, today, let's close out with the famous five. Number one, favorite book. [15:55] >> Well, I think it's still Think Fast, Think Slow. [15:58] Yeah. You're consistent. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [16:03] >> No. [16:04] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building raffle? [16:09] >> What is my favorite one? [16:11] Online tool. I [16:16] >> I don't understand the question. Sorry. [16:19] A tool. A tool that you use, like a like a tool. Like Google Docs or Slack, Twilio, HubSpot, favorite online tool that you use. [16:29] >> Yeah. Okay. We use HubSpot. We use Slack. We use a lot, but I don't know if they're favorites. But yes. [16:35] Which one do you use the most? [16:37] >> I use HubSpot. I'm sales. [16:40] Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night? [16:44] >> I get seven. [16:46] Okay. And what's your situation? Married, single, kiddos? [16:51] >> I have a boyfriend and I have kids. Yeah. [16:54] Not married, two and two kids. Right? [16:57] >> Two kids. Yeah. [16:58] And have you had a birthday since we last chatted? You're looking younger, but I have to I have to ask. [17:03] >> Oh my god. [17:06] >> You I will put 50. [17:08] You're oh, happy birth. I was gonna say, sir, you said 48 last time. So 50 is right. Happy fiftieth. That's exciting. Don't look at day over 30, Suzanne. Alright. [17:17] >> Yeah. Okay. [17:18] Take us take us home. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [17:23] >> Yeah. I think I I think I would probably tell myself to relax a bit more, but I still don't. So I guess I'll live up and learn. [17:35] Guys, there you have it. Raffle.ai is AI powered search for the enterprise. They've got 50 paying customers that pay an average $2,000 a month. So 90,000, a $100,000 a month right now in revenue. Just broke a million dollar run rate up from $20,000 a month back in late twenty twenty, scaling nicely. Raised a seed round back in 2020, 3,000,000 on a 15,000,000 post money valuation. About ready to close a series a. Look out for that announcement [17:58] here soon as they look to scale in The US. Suzanne, thanks for taking us to the top. [18:03] >> Great. Thank you. Thank you. [18:07] 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 [18:32] 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 [18:55] 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 SaaS 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 [19:16] up for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty 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. [19:36] 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 you.
Raffle.ai Raises $3.4m for Customer Support Automation, 7 Enterprise Customers $35k ACV'sOct 13, 2020
Introduction hello everyone my guest today is suzanne laritzen she in 2018 joined forces with a professor from d2 and founded raffle.ai which deploys intelligent search tools for customer service that gives instant correct answers to your customers and employees while picking up great insights on consumer needs and employee satisfaction raffle reduces calls live chats and emails by 24 and unlocks a constant relearning cycle at the same time employees save eighty percent of the internal search time and get up to speed with new knowledge quickly the company has raised 3.5 million euros in the first 24 months and aims for a series a round late 2021 suzanne you're ready to take the top customer success and experience and automation is obviously very hot right now when did you guys launch the company in july 2018 so we own we are just two years old now and who owns more equity you were the professor we own the same oh very diplomatic of you just right down the middle 50 50. that's denmark i like that i wish i wish folks in the states are a little bit more like that so what's the what's the company do is it pure place ass uh sorry yeah it's pure yeah it's ai actually as a s as a service so it's um it's pretty new in that sense scalable ai has not been possible before but it is now so that's what we're sort of into so is your team super heavy on engineers how many engineers on the team yes we actually have uh 18 engineers and five in sales up until now so it's um yeah and those five folks in sales do they all have a quota yes okay so i'm gonna come okay yeah we just uh i mean we just started the sales part department actually just two months ago so that's pretty new and up until then it was just me selling so it's pretty new yeah and what's your total team size today it's 23 employees 23. okay and how's that compared to a year ago do you remember oh yeah i think we were about eight eight okay and and it sounds like you Raised guys raised capital right off the bat how much have you raised to date uh 3.5 million u.s and two rounds or one round it was uh actually three rounds the first two one was angels and then the second or the third one was venture what year was that angel round that was uh the angel the first angel was when we started out actually three weeks after and then and then second one was in is 2018 18 okay and and then in 19 in the beginning of 19 we had the second angel round and then in the beginning of 20 we had the venture round and can you break those down for me the first angel round in 2018 how much was that for uh that was about 200 000 and what were you guys raising on i mean a lot for a lot of sas founders the first raise is the hardest with your angels i mean you have a deck you're trying to convince your family your friends angels put money in what were you guys selling at that point what was the vision well i have sold another company just a year before i started the raffle and uh in that year i actually just prepared everything so i prepared the business plan i prepared investors i prepared the team so everything was sort of set when we started out in august or in july so so in that sense it wasn't i mean yeah we i just sold the vision and um now i said we didn't have any clients of course we didn't have any product basically we didn't have anything so but we had the idea and we had the right team i guess so that was what if you looked at your customers today on average what are they paying you per month to use raffle uh an average uh per year i would rather say that's a 35 000 usd okay so you're very much an enterprise sales motion yeah and with with that sort of motion how do you you just mentioned you're just now building out your first five folks on the sales team how do you determine what to put their quota at to sell thirty five thousand dollar year plans yeah well we just have a quota today that says one client a month and then that's going up to two clients a month uh within you know after three months and then after six months it's three clients a month so it's it's pretty straightforward in that sense okay but you don't have any sales reps that are that old that are closing four new thirty five thousand dollar your accounts yet right no well um no no not yet um i'm the one setting you well we do have one actually that's just sold last month but um yeah but i'm the one selling the most and right now still so is it fair to say if you expect new sales people to close one new 35 000 account annually each month over a 12-month period that annual quote is about 420 000 about half half a million dollars mm-hmm and one of the things that people always struggle with when they hire their first sales person is what the ratio of the quota to the full on target earnings should be what ratio have you used i'm not sure we have used any to be honest uh i was just uh we've just been very pragmatic in that sense and just sort of just sort of looked at what what is actually realistic what is possible so if you hired me suzanne and i hit your quota over the first year what would i make probably base plus commission total uh you'll probably make you probably make about 150 000 usd okay so my full ot for your sales team your first sales pair should be 150 000 base plus commission what percent of the 150 is commission uh it's about half okay got it so that's fair about 50 50. and your ratios work if my quota is half a million and my full on time earnings is 150 grand that's a 3 4x multiple those numbers works a lot of time a lot of time it doesn't work so that i'm going to see if you can scale the sales team let's go back to the second race so you raised 200 000 to get things going get your first sales how much was the second angel race for uh that was about double the first one okay so 400 and then the rest one was actually venture yeah and then in this year in 2020 you did what a three uh 2.9 million dollar round yeah okay walk me through some of the history here so you sell your first company into or sell a company in 2017 you then go to plan you start planning and blueprinting raffle ai walk me through getting your first customer who was it where'd you get them well actually we started out piloting uh with two customers uh we got them because they were sitting in the same um in the same space as we were uh they had uh some incubators from larger companies we were in sort of you know an environment where there were lots of smaller and bigger corporations with incubators and uh those two first clients we actually got from that what was the incubator space and where is it in the world it was um it was called pier 47 it was just in copenhagen um but um yeah so um yeah it's a larger company yeah okay so you were in uh pier 47 which is an incubation space in copenhagen because you were there you had two corporate clients that you piloted this with did both them convert into a paid account after the pilot mm-hmm that's right yeah well uh yes yes and no because they're not they're not today a client but they did at that at that point they actually paid for for that particular product but we went out of that product space and made another product afterwards we uh we launched our first product uh last summer in oh sorry 2019 and then the second Currently serving 7 customers product we launched in february this year this year so which is the product you launched this year that was the autopilot which is the the one funding the customers and taking first line and zero line support uh off the back of customer service employees so that you know you can have self-service on your on your website basically it's like it's like a customer comes to your website they ask a question in the chat you now using autopilot from raffle can suggest some answers and try and avoid them sending in an email ticket or phone call exactly i see and so how many customers do not have today uh we have seven customers today seven but they're all enterprise so it's high touches yes can i take that those seven customers our plan is to get 20 this year yeah sorry i think the internet connection broke you're fine i was just saying can i take those seven customers times 35 000 a Monthly recurring revenue year you're doing about a quarter million per year in terms of run rate yep yeah and how do you go from 7 to 20 this year uh well we have uh we have had a lot of pipeline that we just need to close off now actually so it's um that's basically more or less me and another girl that's going to close those and then the rest of the sales people are going to to close from first of january that's that's our plan anyway so and are obviously just raised from traditional venture capitalists 2.9 million dollars i'm unfamiliar with how dilutive series a rounds are in copenhagen like i'm in the united states you don't have to tell me how much equity you gave up but generally speaking in a series a how much are you giving up for the amount that you raised in copenhagen uh we have given up almost 50 percent okay so across your angels and your series a folks you've sold about 50 of the company yeah and you and your professor co-founder each still own 25 percent yeah a little little more 27 percent each year okay so okay each to co-founders and how does it make you feel does that feel fair well i don't uh i've actually been thinking about that since you since you last talked but i don't um i'm not in it for the money in particular of course that's nice and everything but i'm actually more in it to see a product that i invented on a piece of paper actually gets live and gets out there and i think this is amazing because we're going to we're going global with this now and we have the opportunity to go global because we have venture so we wouldn't have had that opportunity uh the the the other company i saw was um was bootstrapped so i owned 50 of that with my co-founder he always owned 50 of that we were 30 employees when we sold it we got 50 50 each it was a pure cash sale and that was beautiful but um but this is just completely different it took a long time to build that company because it was bootstrapped so now i wanted to do something you know it was venture backed goes quickly we can go global quickly and sort of that's that's just the condition suzanne how much did you sell that company for in 2017 i can't say i'm sorry can you can you share with me what you grew it to in terms of revenue before you sold uh yes it was uh around 3 million u.s okay so you have experience obviously doing this you did it the hard way in boots trapping now the question is can you take raffle and go from a quarter million run rate to three four five ten million dollar run rate um how are you how are you managing burn how are you managing burn today you've raised 2.9 million you're scaling your team how much burn are you comfortable with each month well we're burning uh i actually just uh she has the numbers i can tell by how she's looking at her yeah i do i do have my numbers i have 160 000 u.s and burn each month total burn or net burn uh that's total burn okay got it so add back about 20 000 in revenue your net burns about 140 000 a month yeah and based off how much cash you still have on the bank what you guys have 10 months around 11 months of runway uh 12. 12 months of runway got it that would mean you guys have what about was that 1.7 million in the bank something like that yes we are and we are going for an a round in september next year how much do you have around well we would we i would like to to raise about 10 million dollars but um let's see and and what do you think you have to get revenue to in order to raise 10 million at a valuation you want well um i would like to go to around 1.5 million dollars uh annual recurring uh and i think that's possible um in october next year okay that's great and when you look at what it's costing you right now to get a new 35 000 a year contract what's your best guess at cac currently um i haven't actually calculated that are you spending any money on ads uh yes we are but we are still figuring out the metrics yeah we're just we're just testing a lot of stuff um you know retargeting campaigns and all sorts of different campaigns but we don't have the metrics ready yet so we're planning to have the metrics ready about february next year and then we'll be able to say a lot more it's it's really it's really difficult to say anything right now at this early stage of course we're trying to figure it out did you publish suzanne i think people are going to want to learn how to raise like you raised 2.9 million recently did you publish your slide deck anywhere or no no we didn't are you opposed to publishing it in the show notes of this of this interview yes yes of course we can we can do that yeah i think people will learn a lot from that yeah all right okay let's let's wrap up suzanne here with the famous five for raffle ai number one what's your favorite business book uh that's uh think slowly think i i don't remember doing it fast and slow yeah exactly exactly that one man yeah number number two is there a ceo you're following or studying no number three what's your favorite online tool suzanne for growing raffle besides raffle well i wouldn't be the right one to say that actually because i don't have a clue it's my cco what do you use mostly online use slack trello something else i use i lose linkedin but that's old-fashioned i guess so uh yeah no linkedin's hip and cool still they just did a nice redesign right i use it number four suzanne how many hours of sleep do you get every night i get seven hours i think that's great and what's your situation married single kiddos um married or um well would you say fiance's fair enough anything and kids yeah how many kids two two when's the wedding when's the wedding date that's exciting no no i have been married before and those are my kids from my first marriage yeah but now you're engaged again right you said yeah yeah yeah i am but uh but it's not yeah i don't know no marriage is always sort of different you just sort of stay in sort of a nice happy fiance mode for a couple of years right exactly yeah okay that's great suzanne and can i ask how old you are i'm 48. 48. take us home here last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 um [Music] that's not that difficult guys there you have it she sold her first company after bootstrapping it and growing up to about 3 million bucks in revenue use that cash to plow it into raffle ai which is playing in the customer support automation space they've just passed seven enterprise accounts paying 35 000 annually on average so about a quarter million in terms of run rate they've raised 2.9 million dollars to do it they sold about 50 percent of the company to do it hoping to grow revenue to about 1.5 million in ar and q1 q2 q3 next year and then go out and do a series b raise of around 10 million bucks they're burning 140 000 in net burn per month right now with 1.8 million dollars in the bank so plenty of runway to figure it out as they scale their team up to 23 including 18 engineers suzanne thanks for taking us to the top thank you 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 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 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 laca.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 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 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