How Reworking Reached Just Under 50 Customers with a B2B Video Interview Platform (Interview with Mike Beck)

Introduction and Domain Story

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Mike Beck. He's got a background in financial trading and selling complex software before setting up Reliving, a b to c software company focused on helping people preserve their loved one's 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 ready to take us to the top?

Mike Beck

00:19>> Absolutely. What an introduction.

Nathan Latka

00:21How'd you get reworking.com? That had to be expensive.

Mike Beck

00:24>> I mean, do you know what? It wasn't. There was some people that originally owned the domain. And when I offered them a price for it, they sent a ridiculous counter offer. 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 purchased reworking and a few other various takes on the domain. But yeah, reworking ended up landing

00:55>> at our feet,

Nathan Latka

00:56so it's You don't wanna show them? I'm curious what the price is. Was it under $100,000?

Mike Beck

01:00>> Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Way way under. Way under.

Nathan Latka

01:03Under $10,000?

Mike Beck

01:03>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What? I know. That's incredible.

Nathan Latka

01:07Yeah. You're a business guy then. That's a great deal. Okay. So what's the company do?

What Reworking Does

Mike Beck

01:11>> So we're we're a one way video interview platform for employers. In its shortest term, I mean, 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 call interview, 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 Reworking that essentially just combines those

01:41>> 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 as well as having an extra face to face interview, but we believe there's a better way of going about that whole process.

Nathan Latka

01:59Isn't it quicker for someone who's doing the hiring HR manager to scan a bunch of CVs than it is to read, to watch a four minute video from a candidate?

Time Savings for Employers

Mike Beck

02:07>> Oh, absolutely. I mean, going through a 100 CVs is going to be quicker than going through a 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 can't communicate that well or don't communicate to the way that you'd like them to within your organization. So you're reducing the

02:30>> time spent in those areas. And do you know what, lot of the organizations that are using our platform currently have estimated about ten hours saved per role, which is a huge amount of time.

Nathan Latka

02:43Tell me the backstory here when you launched the company.

Backstory: Reliving and the Alacrity Foundation

Mike Beck

02:45>> Okay. So we've been, as it is for most entrepreneurs, we've been on a bit of a journey. We launched Reliving, as a company, Reliving Limited back in October 2018. And, you know, I've come from a B2B selling sales roles myself. And I got involved with a fantastic organization called the Alacrity Foundation. The Alacrity Foundation help entrepreneurs within The UK with guidance, mentorship, and to help give them the skills to build their own software company and realize

03:23>> their dreams. I didn't go through that program, but my co founders and developers did.

Nathan Latka

03:29I was Putting five co founders. How many co founders do you have?

Mike Beck

03:32>> So there's three of us all together four of us all together. Sorry.

Nathan Latka

03:34Did you just split 25, 25, 25?

Mike Beck

03:37>> Absolutely. So and then we also have investors. So this is, 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 help grow a software within the family history space. And, you know, it was B2C and I thought I'll take on the

04:05>> challenge. We had a fantastic board of directors, a really great network. And we set out building a platform that essentially helps people to record their life stories and preserve them for future generations to learn and develop from.

Nathan Latka

04:22Just because we're short on time, fast forward. So when did you launch as Reworking? What year?

The Pivot to Reworking in 2020

Mike Beck

04:27>> So we launched Reworking back in October 2020. Last year? Yeah, absolutely. During the pandemic, we realized that actually a B2C product wasn't working for us. We didn't have the cash flow. We didn't have the, you know, huge user base. We had about a thousand users on the platform.

Nathan Latka

04:46How many were paid?

Mike Beck

04:47>> Decided this is it. We had probably about 10 people paying. It was it was we weren't in we were not in a good position.

Nathan Latka

04:54And how much money did you guys have in the bank? How much cash?

Mike Beck

04:57>> We had about six, seven months.

Nathan Latka

05:00Okay. Which which how much is that? Like, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000?

Mike Beck

05:03>> A bit yeah. A bit

05:04>> more than that, actually. So, you know, it was a difficult time for us, but then I decided what I realized with our network, we had a fantastic network. I was speaking to our partners and that's one thing that we did do really well is that we had this great partnership program going. And so I was speaking to the partners, speaking to the people within our network, and we all realized that actually one of the features that

05:25>> Reliving had, the ability to record loved ones, create question packs and record loved ones would great within the hiring process. So we made the executive decision during the pandemic to say, look, let's

Nathan Latka

05:39just pivot the company. Let's just go for it.

Mike Beck

05:41>> If we're going really do this, we've got to go all in.

Nathan Latka

05:43Understood. And

Mike Beck

05:43>> we pivoted it to a B2B product. It took us seven months to turn it around to produce the minimum viable product. And then we launched Reworking.

Nathan Latka

05:53Got it. And how many customers do you have today?

Customer Count and Pricing

Mike Beck

05:55>> So we have just under 50 customers today.

Nathan Latka

05:58Okay. And what do they pay per month?

Mike Beck

06:00>> So we have three price plans, £35 a month, £99 a month and £199 a month. So on average, our average selling prices were £106 per month.

Nathan Latka

06:09Okay. About 120 sort of USD. I mean, can I also, you guys are doing about $6,000 a month in MRR right now?

Mike Beck

06:16>> Yeah. Well, actually around about 5,000 at the moment.

Nathan Latka

06:19Okay.

Mike Beck

06:19>> 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. And it's only been really since February that we've really injected money into our marketing and and push forward.

Funding Raised to Date

Nathan Latka

06:34How much have you guys raised to date?

Mike Beck

06:36>> So we've raised £502,000.

Nathan Latka

06:39And why was it the right I mean, imagine you give up equity to do that, right? So now the founders are all at under 20%, the investors own something like 20%. Why not just shut the business down last year and relaunch?

Mike Beck

06:52>> I mean, was more, we just knew that we had the technology already built. The technology was there.

06:58>> We just needed to tweak it in certain areas in terms of the UI and of the few extra, add a few extra core bits of features and functionality. And and the the business is ready to go. So and we already we know our our investment in our current investors are fantastic, so they provide a huge amount of support to us anyway. It's many the right decision

Team Size and How the Founders Are Paid

Nathan Latka

07:17are for full time on the team right now?

Mike Beck

07:20>> There's so we have four employees and then we have two contractors.

Nathan Latka

07:24Does the four employees include you four founders?

Mike Beck

07:27>> Correct.

Nathan Latka

07:28Okay. So so how are you guys paying yourselves? I mean, there's not enough revenue to pay yourselves.

Mike Beck

07:33>> Well, we raised so this is the great thing, you know. We had our first kind of pre seed funding through for Reliving.

Nathan Latka

07:40The Which was for how much?

Mike Beck

07:41>> Which was for 250,000. And then we had sorry, so we raised 552,000. So you know, and then we had, we decided to build Reworking. And through the build and the Reworking, we decided to go for another round of investment. And we and we got it. We got it And just 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 What of

Valuation and Round Details

Nathan Latka

08:11what valuation did you raise the $300,000 on?

Mike Beck

08:15>> We oh. I'll have to double check that. I believe it's just under 1,000,000.

Nathan Latka

08:20Okay. Was it a safe or was it a priced round? Do you remember?

Mike Beck

08:24>> I can't log. I think it was sorry. Can you say the question again?

Nathan Latka

08:28Like, was it a convertible note or was it an actual equity round?

Mike Beck

08:31>> Equity round. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:32It was. Okay. So you sold 30%. That's another 30%. So you guys own way less than 20% now, each of you at this point.

Mike Beck

08:37>> We we do, but you know, it's it's we now own a percentage of a company that's worth something. You know, we have a solid product. We're we're growing within, you know, our customer base, so it's worth it's it's been worth it for us.

Customer Acquisition Strategy

Nathan Latka

08:53Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's worth something if you can convince someone to pay a million dollar valuation where you guys get to take liquidity, right, or something higher. Yeah. So, you know, it's all coming down to growth. Right? So where are you getting new customers today?

Mike Beck

09:05>> So we have for our marketing efforts basically, we have inbound outbound and you know, I'd like to consider myself a pretty hardcore salesperson. So I'm the main driver from the sales side. But we are we're injecting, we have a good strategic marketing strategy in place and that's proven to be quite successful.

Famous Five: Favorite Books

Nathan Latka

09:26Mike, very good. Let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, favorite book?

Mike Beck

09:29>> Oh, so three. I'll give you three. Talk Like TED.

CEOs the Founder Follows

Nathan Latka

09:48Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Mike Beck

09:52>> Three main ones. Sir Terry Matthews, there's also Professor Simon Gibson, and also there's Paul Allen. He's the founder of ancestry.com. And he's he's now running a company called Soar, which is a fantastic organization.

Favorite Tools and Personal Life

Nathan Latka

10:09Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building the business?

Mike Beck

10:13>> Development wise, Trello, because I can keep keep in discussion with the the dev guys. But I love right now, I'm loving Loom.

Nathan Latka

10:22Number four, how many hours of sleep are you getting every night?

Mike Beck

10:26>> If you asked me this six months ago, probably about four or five. Now, I'm getting on average seven to eight.

Nathan Latka

10:31And what's your situation like? Married, single, kids?

Mike Beck

10:34>> I'm married with with one child. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

10:36Married with one kiddo. How old are you?

Mike Beck

10:39>> I'm 33.

10:40>> 33.

Advice for Younger Self

Nathan Latka

10:41Last question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Mike Beck

10:47>> To just go for it, you know. Don't don't worry about risk. 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.

Nathan Latka

11:02Guys, they pivoted from B2C to B2B SaaS and last year raised an additional $300,000 on a million dollar valuation to help you capture recorded videos from folks who are looking at hiring, making the interview process smoother and easier. 50 customers today, about $6,000 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, see if they can continue to go

11:24up, grow and again, have a successful pivot back into the B2B SaaS space. Mike, thanks for taking us to the top.

Mike Beck

11:29>> Thank you very much.

Nathan Latka

11:32One 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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