Reworking Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

hey folks my guest today is mike beck he's got a background in financial trading and selling complex software before setting up reliving a bdc software company focused on helping people preserve their loved ones life stories the pandemic forced a pivot to what is now reworking reworking.com heck of a domain name a b2b one-way video interview platform for employers mike you're ready to take us to the top absolutely what what an introduction how did you get reworking.com that had to be expensive i mean do you know why it wasn't and there was some people that that originally owned the domain um and you know they were when i offered them a price for it they they sent a ridiculous counter offer um but it was probably a month or two later they drastically dropped the offer so we ended up getting a great price for it you know and it fitted well we we purchased read i think it was re dash working and a few other various um takes on the domain but yeah rework and ended up landing out at our feet so you don't want to show i'm curious what the price is was it under 100 grand oh yes yeah yeah wait wait under wait wow under 10 yeah uh yeah yeah what that's incredible yeah your business guide and that's a great deal okay so what's the company do so we're we're a one-way video interview platform for employers in its shortest term i mean ultimately we combine the first three stages of the interview process so most employers the process of hiring people probably hasn't changed in decades it's always been cvs phone calling to do face-to-face interview and maybe another face-to-face interview after that and there's a huge amount of time wasted in those stages so we've built rework and that essentially just combines those first three stages into a one-way video interview platform so the employers just receive videos of candidates instead of cvs we still believe in cvs by the way you know we think cvs are absolutely fundamental um as well as having an extra face-to-face interview but we believe there's a better way of going about that whole process isn't it quicker for someone who's doing the hiring the hr manager to scan a bunch of csvs than it is to read to watch a four-minute video from a candidate oh absolutely i mean going through 100 cvs is going to be quicker than going through 100 videos where we save you the time is that you don't have to then conduct all of those phone call interviews and all of those face-to-face interviews with people that maybe don't present themselves that well or um can't communicate that or don't communicate to the way that you would like them to within your organization so you you're reducing the time um spent in in those areas and you know what we've a lot of the organizations that are using our platform currently have estimated about 10 hours saved per roll which is which is a huge amount of time tell me the back story here when you launch the company okay so we've been as as it is for most entrepreneurs we've been on a bit of a journey we uh we launched uh reliving uh that's a company relevant limited back in october 2018. um and you know i i've come from a backer a b2b selling um sales roles myself and i got involved with a fantastic organization called the alacrity foundation and the laxy foundation help entrepreneurs within the uk with guidance mentorship and and to help give them the skills to build their own software company and realize their dreams um i didn't go through that program but my co-founders and developers did how many co-founders you um so there's there's three of us all together four of us all together sorry did you just split 25 25 25 absolutely so um and then we also have investors so this is a um you know they went through the alacrity foundation program which is a fantastic opportunity for them and any entrepreneur that's looking to get in to become and run their own software company and i joined then at the later stage and i was given a task to to help grow a software within the family history space and you know it was b2c and i thought i'll i'll take on the challenge um we had a fantastic board of directors a really great network um and we set out a build in a platform that essentially helps people to record their life stories and preserve them for future generations to learn and develop from so just because we're short on time fast forward so when did you launch as reworking what year so we launched well we launched really reworking back in october 2020. so we're doing that yeah absolutely during the pandemic we realized that actually a b2c product um wasn't working for us we didn't have the cash flow we didn't have the um uh you know a huge user base we had about a thousand users on the platform how many so we decided uh this is it we had probably about 10 people paying it was it was we weren't we were not in a good position and how much weight did you guys have in the bank how much cash uh we had about six seven months how much is that like 50 60 70 grand a bit yeah a bit more than that actually so you know it was a difficult time for us but then i decided what what it realized with our network we had a fantastic network i was speaking to our partners and that's one thing we did do really well is that we had this great partnership um program going and so i speak to the partners speaking to the people within our network and we all realized that actually one of the features that reliving had the ability to record loved ones create question packs and record loved ones would be really would be would be great within the hiring process so we made the exact decision during the pandemic to say look let's just pivot the company let's just go for it we're going to really do this we've got to go all in so we decided and we pivoted it to a b2b product it took us seven months to turn it around to produce the mp minimum vapor product and then we launched reworking got it and how many customers you have today so we have just under 50 customers today okay and what do they pay per month so we have three price plans 35 pound a month 99 pound a month and 199 per month so on average our average selling price is about a hundred and hundred and six pounds per month okay 100 about 120 sort of usd uh i mean can i multi so you guys are doing about six grand a month in mr right now yeah well actually we're on about five at the moment okay but you know when we launched in in we released the mvp in october we released it pretty much to organizations that we knew within our network for free um and it's only been really since february that we've really injected money into our marketing and push forward how much have you guys raised today so we've raised 502 000 pounds and why was it why was it the right decision i mean i imagine you give up equity to do that right so now the founders are all at under 20 the investors own something like 20 percent why not just shut the business down last year and relaunch um i mean it was more we just knew that we had the technology already built the technology was there um it it we just needed to tweak it in certain areas in terms of the ui and some a few extra add a few extra core bits of features and functionality um and and the business is ready to go so um and we already we know our investment in our current investors are fantastic so they provide a huge amount of support to us anyway so it's just the right decision for us all time on the team right now there's so we have uh four employees and then we have two contractors does the four employees include you four founders correct okay so so how are you guys paying yourselves i mean there's not enough revenue to pay yourselves well we raised so this is the great thing you know we had our first kind of pre-seed funding through for reliving um and which was for how much which was for 250 000 uh and then we had um uh uh sorry we sorry raised 552 000. so you know and then we had we decided to build reworking and through the building we work in we decided to go for another round of investment uh and we and we got it so we just got you right just before and we raised the 302 000 absolutely so it's been successful for us and that's purely because of reworking and and you know the the future success what valuation did you raise the 300 000 on um we oh uh i'll have to double check that i believe is just under a million okay uh was it a safe or was it a price round you remember i can't look i think it was uh sorry can you see the question again like was it a convertible note or was it an actual equity round equity around yeah it was okay so you sold 30 percent another 30 so you guys own way less than 25 now each of you at this point we do but you know it's um it's we now own a percentage of a company that's worth something you know we have a solid product um we're growing within you know the work our customer base so it's it's worth it's been worth it for us yeah yeah i mean it's worth something if you can convince someone to pay a million valuation where you guys get to take liquidity right or something higher so you know this all comes down to growth right so where are you getting new customers today so we have we're for a marketing efforts basically we have inbound outbound and um you know i i'm i'd like to consider myself a pretty hardcore sales person so um i'm the main driver from the from the sales side uh but we are we're injecting we have a good strategic marketing strategy in place um and that's proven to be quite successful mike very good let's wrap up with the famous five number one favorite book oh so three i'll give you three uh talk like ted i also just read chris hadfield's astronaut's guide to life on earth um that was a fantastic book and there's another one also oleolarton a battle ready so if anyone's looking to change the way that they you know their work ethic that's that's fantastic number two is there a ceo you're following or studying uh three main ones uh sir terry matthews uh there's also professor simon gibson and also uh um there's paul allen he's the founder of ancestry.com and he's uh he's now running a company called saw which is a fantastic organization number three what's your favorite online tool for building the business uh development-wise trello because i can keep keeping um discussion with the the dev guys uh but i love right now i'm loving loom number four how many hours of sleep are you getting every night if you ask me this six months ago probably about four or five now i'm getting on average seven to eight and what's your situation like married single kids um i'm married with one child yeah married with one kid how are you i'm 33 33 last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 um uh to just go for it you know don't don't worry about risk um don't just just take every opportunity possible but then again i guess i've always been like that so i try to you know that's always been my kind of work ethic guys they pivoted from b2c to b2b sas and last year raised an additional 300 on a million valuation to help you capture recorded videos from folks you're looking at hiring making the interview process smoother and easier 50 customers today about six thousand dollars in mrr they've got four co-founders they split equity right down the middle 25 each but obviously a little bit diluted now they're looking to drive growth to see if they can continue uh to go up grow and again have a successful pivot back into the b2b sas space mike thanks for taking us to the top thank you very much 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 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