How Reeview.app Raised $1.1M Seed and Reached 32 Paying Customers Weeks After Launch (Interview with CEO Claudiu Cioba)

Introduction and What Reeview.app Does

Nathan Latka

00:00Hello, everyone. My guest today is Claudiu Cioba. He's building a company called reeview.app. He's been a product designer for the past fourteen years working as a consultant with startups and enterprise companies such as Uber to help them deliver amazing products. Claudiu, are you ready to take us to top?

Claudiu Cioba

00:15>> Yes, absolutely, Nathan. Let's go.

Nathan Latka

00:17Great. So if people want to follow along, can find us at reeview.app. What's the business do?

Claudiu Cioba

00:26>> So basically what we do, we are an automated platform that find, deliver, and collect the video reviews for ecommerce stores.

Nathan Latka

00:34How do find these? Like, is this like if I buy a shirt from Lululemon and I casually write a Twitter post but I don't actually tag them and they have no way to find it, you have software that can help you go find it?

How the YouTube Integration Works

Claudiu Cioba

00:44>> What we do is we are currently a YouTube partner and we have an integration with YouTube, so we automatically find relevant product videos on YouTube. So for all of the products in an online store, we go to YouTube, straight YouTube for positive video reviews or unboxing videos or how to videos, and then we bring those back into our application. Interesting.

Nathan Latka

01:04What do companies pay for this on average?

Pricing Tiers

Claudiu Cioba

01:09>> Right now, a lot of our companies are free, but the ones that are paying, they're paying about somewhere between $39 and $99 We also have some companies at $299 depending on the number of products and the size of their store.

Nathan Latka

01:22How many customers are you working with today?

Customer Count and Early Traction

Claudiu Cioba

01:24>> Today, we have 88 customers, out of which I think we have more than 30 that are paying or something like that, 32, unless I check. We just launched, I think, two weeks from now.

Nathan Latka

01:36That's great. 32 paying $40 or $50 a month, what? It's about $1,600 a month in MRR, something like that?

Claudiu Cioba

01:42>> Something like that, yes.

Nathan Latka

01:43How did you get the 88 people using it? That's always a good story.

How the First 88 Users Were Acquired

Claudiu Cioba

01:47>> Well, this is all organic search. We actually had a beta period in January and February. We already had some beta users that were very happy with the app even though we were just testing an MVP. Then everyone came from Shopify organically. There was no marketing outreach. We just started marketing about three weeks ago when we launched on Product Hunt, and we haven't started even our sales, our full sales process.

Product Hunt Launch and Partnerships

Nathan Latka

02:13How many websites did you get from the Product Hunt launch?

Claudiu Cioba

02:17>> Sorry. How many websites, like clients?

Nathan Latka

02:19How many views did you get from the Product Hunt launch that year?

Claudiu Cioba

02:24>> Hundreds. In terms of hundreds, yeah. It wasn't a very big deal. What we did obtain from the Product Hunt launch was partnerships. So some very interesting partnerships came out of that and visibility in the ecosystem.

Nathan Latka

02:35Yep, yep. Okay, got it. Hundreds of people came from Product Hunt. Did you get any of your paid customers? It wasn't a huge thing, but you were number three on the day, I believe, and you got about 300 upvotes.

Claudiu Cioba

02:47>> Yes. I think I've had about five demos with some large stores during that week because they saw us on Product Hunt. We did something very interesting, which was almost like a premiere with Chris Messina, our friend. He was the one that hunted the product and along with Nicole, Elizabeth DeMarie. I'm just saying Nicole because you know her. Yeah, yeah. We did a live launch event. We had two events, Design and Cocktails, me being a product designer

03:14>> and Chris being a designer, so we spoke about the design aspect of the product being a visual solution. That got people's attention and we posted those live events on social media, which was very helpful.

Nathan Latka

03:24Got it. Hundreds of sign ups. Now, are you and Nicole the co-founders?

Claudiu Cioba

03:28>> No, I'm just a single founder.

Nathan Latka

03:31Okay, got it. So you own 100% of the business?

Claudiu Cioba

03:33>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

03:34Okay. Any plans to raise or no?

Announcing the $1.1M Seed Round

Claudiu Cioba

03:36>> Well, let's make it official right now. This is the first time I'm talking about it and I'm being very grateful about it. I just closed the seed round of $1,100,000 last week. We haven't yet posted it anywhere, but it's due to be posted simply because we're redesigning our marketing materials, so we want to launch our new blog and everything with some news. I mean, look,

Nathan Latka

03:58this is why people listen to the show. You get information and data way before it hits press or anywhere else. I appreciate that. Now, why was it important to you to raise? Why couldn't you mean, obviously, you give up a chunk of your what'd raise? Was it a cap or a priced round?

Claudiu Cioba

04:12>> It on a cap. Cap? 5. For 5 mil, yes, 5 mil post valuation.

Nathan Latka

04:18Yeah, so I mean, look, you're selling 20% of business. That's fairly dilutive. Why was that important for you?

Why Raise and Cap Table Structure

Claudiu Cioba

04:23>> Well, there are two aspects for that. For me, what I noticed early on in this business in e commerce, it's not about what you do, it's about who you know. For me, that became very important. All of the angel investors that are part of this round are high influencers in this ecosystem. I'm talking about cofounders of some of the biggest platforms as well. I haven't yet checked with them, so I can't mention any names. I hope

04:49>> you understand that.

Nathan Latka

04:50No, I do. But, Claudiu, I do want to point out the trend, This is becoming a very popular way to raise capital. VCs are having issues getting these rounds because folks like you don't care about the VCs. They want to go do a super angel round. They want to get five influential people to put in $200K each and there's no anchor.

Lead Investor Ed Baker and the Snowball Effect

Claudiu Cioba

05:05>> For me, I was very fortunate. It was like a snowball. I can mention one of my lead investors and also good friend, Ed Baker. He's former VP of Growth from Facebook and VP of Growth at Uber. I was part of his Facebook exit ten years ago. I was his lead product designer, so that's how I know him. Once he started sending out some emails, it was like a big snowball effect. In a matter of two weeks,

05:30>> I think, we ended up with close to $3,000,000 in checks. I started choosing people and most of them came in with half. I think all of them came in with half, actually, except Yeah.

Nathan Latka

05:42That's great. Don't say who, but what is the largest check size of the 1,100,000 from any one person?

Claudiu Cioba

05:48>> It's 500K.

Nathan Latka

05:50Okay, got it. The rest? Yeah.

Claudiu Cioba

05:52>> And then we're going as low as 20K. So I went as low as 20K simply because of the influence. All of these angels, they're heavily invested in helping and they're very active. This is something that what I noticed from VCs, they might not be as invested in your company and as helpful during these beginning stages. They might provide some intros in the beginning, then they're probably going to go quiet and just rely that you

06:16>> do your own thing. But I've handpicked the angels, so it's a cherry picking process, and I'm very happy with the people that are part of the company right now.

Nathan Latka

06:25Yeah, this makes a ton of sense. How many individual LPs were to check?

Claudiu Cioba

06:30>> I think it's nine. Think it's nine. Nine people on the cap table. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

06:34Nine LPs. Very cool. Okay. Well, congrats on getting that done. Thanks for the news here on the show, which we love. 32 customers today. How do go from 32 to 3,000?

Platform Expansion and Growth Plans

Claudiu Cioba

06:42>> Well, first of all, we are expanding on multiple platforms. Right now, we have just launched on Shopify. We are already functioning on WooCommerce and Magento, but we haven't officially launched simply because it's a big marketing effort, so we do want to focus a lot of our energy on each platform one at a time. And we are launching on all of these platforms in the upcoming months. WooCommerce is coming in June, in just a few weeks from

07:04>> now, and then we have Magento. On all of these platforms, we are already well connected and have very good visibility because of our angels, and we will be well promoted. Even with Shopify, we got featured twice on the Shopify blog in just two weeks from launching. By the way? Sorry? When

Nathan Latka

07:20did you launch what year?

Claudiu Cioba

07:21>> April 5. This Yeah, this year, April 5. We're fresh. We're just getting started. That's one plan to scale. The other plan to scale is through partnerships. This is something that I've noticed.

07:36>> It's very easy to obtain a lot of SMBs through a single partnership through agencies. We even have some prolific Shopify agencies whose founders are angel investors in our company.

07:49>> With a single agency, you can get access to hundreds of paying customers.

Nathan Latka

07:52Yep. What's your team size today? How many people?

Team Size and Structure

Claudiu Cioba

07:55>> It's me, the founder, who's handling the design, another junior designer. Then we have five full time engineers located right here in Transylvania. Even though this is a US company because I used to live in The US and now I'm back in Romania, the engineering team is Romanian. And then the marketing department, have two people and one on sales. I think that makes it about under 10, close to under 10.

Nathan Latka

08:19Yep. Two marketing, one sales, five engineers, then you guys. Does a salesperson carry a quota or no? Too early?

Claudiu Cioba

08:26>> They do No, not. They do not carry a quota. We are hiring though, so we're establishing a support team over here that's locally from you that's easier to manage to provide 24/7 support. We're expanding on marketing. We're expanding on SDR on sales. The company right now is expanding in terms of personnel,

08:43>> I think in a month from now, it could very well double.

Nathan Latka

08:46Very cool. What about churn?

08:48Obviously, a little early, but anyone canceling?

Churn and Customer Health

Claudiu Cioba

08:52>> Not the paying customers. We haven't had paid customers that have canceled. Shopify is a high churn ecosystem. Mean, everyone can open up a store and we've seen so many irrelevant stores signing up, just installing the app, not doing anything and then just closing their store or something like that simply because it's so easy to do it with Shopify. But from the paying customers, nobody has canceled. We are actually doing case studies with the with the larger

09:16>> ones. They're providing us with video testimonials, with text testimonials, you know, all everything's going well.

Nathan Latka

09:21Do you have

09:22a general sense of what you're what like,

Claudiu Cioba

09:23>> I mean, what are you

Nathan Latka

09:24comfortable paying to get a new $50 a month customer?

CAC Philosophy and Cost Structure

Claudiu Cioba

09:27>> I think it's too early right now to say. Again, we just launched a month from now. I need more data to be able to provide you with an accurate number. Otherwise, I would just throw a number at you and

Nathan Latka

09:38everything What are comfortable with, though? So in other words, if you start running experiments and you see that you can spend $500 to get a $50 a month customer, would you keep spending that $500 over and over again?

Claudiu Cioba

09:47>> No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I try to scale on lower cost, and so far I've been able to do that. Even our cost of running our app is underneath $1,000 It's a matter of hundreds of dollars. We don't have any costs.

10:03>> In terms of cost, everything is pretty low, and I try to be a scraper when it comes to that. So I don't know, we'll see. Right now, I'm not paying $500 for a $50 customer. No way. These are product led growth customers.

Nathan Latka

10:16I'm trying to get a sense of how aggressive you will be. Are you trying to optimize for a twelve month payback period when you start writing these tests, or a six month payback period, or do want to get paid back in month one?

Claudiu Cioba

10:26>> We shall see. I think we shall see. But it's gonna be definitely towards the six month period, I think.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

10:32Yeah. This is great. Well, congrats on getting off the ground. Let's wrap up here with the famous five number one, Claudiu. What's your favorite business book?

Claudiu Cioba

10:39>> I mean, right now, I'm reading a lot of books from Ryan Holiday on stoicism. I think that's very, you know, very important for anyone in the business, you know, to have a great a writer.

Nathan Latka

10:48Unbelievable. He can write out so many topics so deeply. It's really incredible.

Claudiu Cioba

10:52>> Ryan Holiday.

Nathan Latka

10:53Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Claudiu Cioba

10:56>> I mean, I'm a designer. You know, I really appreciate Figma, and you're gonna ask me about my favorite apps and whatever that means. Figma, and I definitely appreciate the CEO of Figma, Dylan. You know, he's I mean, he's been amazing with the company. What a guy.

Nathan Latka

11:07You listened to the show. You knew what to expect when you came on. Right?

Claudiu Cioba

11:10>> Just a bit. Yeah. Just a

Nathan Latka

11:11That's great. Well, I appreciate you pushing through. I know you're battling a little sickness today, so I appreciate all that, Ray. Thank you.

Claudiu Cioba

11:16>> Figma is your favorite tool.

Nathan Latka

11:17Number four, how many hours of sleep are you getting every night?

Claudiu Cioba

11:20>> A minimum of six, and I take a half an hour nap every single day for the past ten years, I think, and it's been working for me.

Nathan Latka

11:26Wow. I love that. What's your situation? Married, single kids?

Claudiu Cioba

11:30>> Married, one kid.

Nathan Latka

11:31One kid. And how old are you?

Claudiu Cioba

11:33>> 33. I turned 33, like, five days ago.

Nathan Latka

11:36Nice. We're we're the same age. It's great. Alright. Take me back to your 20 year old self. What's something

Claudiu Cioba

11:40>> you wish he knew? Just get out more. Let people know what you're doing. Get out more. You know? Make yourself known in the industry.

Nathan Latka

11:48Guys, Reeview.app announcing here live. They just raised a million bucks or a million 1 on a 5,000,000 cap. They have initial early traction. They just launched a couple months ago already. Shopify has featured them twice. They've got 32 customers paying about $40 to $50 bucks a month, so about 1,500 ish in MRR growing rapidly. They've got seven people total on the team, five engineers in Romania. Claudiu owns a 100% except what he's just raised on and

12:09obviously what the angels are taking there. Really strategic angel round, no anchor VC. Rather, he took strategic super angels. We'll see how it pans out. Claudiu, thank you for taking us to the top.

Claudiu Cioba

12:18>> Thank you so much, Nathan. Have a good one.

Nathan Latka

12:21One 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

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13:27that 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. We gotta

13:46push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys' support. Alright.

Claudiu Cioba

13:51>> I'll

Nathan Latka

13:51be in the comments. See you.