How Saasfounders CEO Dmitri Rodenko grew Saasfounders to $1.7M revenue and 36 customers in 2024.

hello everybody my guest today is dimitri radenko he it helps i.t business owners in uk and the us to find new big clients via linkedin and email for this purpose he created their unique b2b service center which helps them to find and build trust relations with top decision makers owners ceos and their sea level positions the approach has allowed their clients and their uh it has allowed their clients and them to confidentially increase business confidently increase business revenues over 6 000 customers obviously can't be a mistake so but dimitri let's jump in here are you ready to take us to the top yeah that's right okay let's start here so tell me about the company it's sas founders.net what do you guys do and how do you make money well you know that we are the community of people who want to do and who actually do their sas products so we're about 500 people now and well i'm before i have a previous business before and i actually do operating it it is the market research and market consulting company and after that another car another partner from israel came to me and told me okay admit to you let's earn more money not with the project which uh we know that you have more money less money there are certain ways yeah financial ways but let's let's make a stable uh income uh from the sas application and let's make from the sas approach and that's why we have established the community uh to help people to grow faster and so is it to me to just be clear is it a sas product or an info product uh well we have several one one is info product which helps people to get uh new clients with uh okay let's ignore let's ignore that one is there a sas product okay so we have another one we have a service we have a service okay ignore that ignore that one is there a sas product well so first of all for let's understand what what do we mean on the sas product so it's something where you charge a monthly recurring fee exactly that's what i'm talking about it's subscription based and we have we provide service on the subscription base okay but is it like a software or is it humans doing a service well it's part software and the part humans doing because linkedin doesn't allow us to automate the process totally so what do you charge per month for this on average well we have three free tires well there are some of them self-service which are then one is 150 another one is 250 when they can work in the team and another one is do it for them it is charged 1500 so on average what are people paying per month for this well uh if you consider it not like an informational product but sas product on average it's one 1 500 per month i thought you just said that was your upper tier excuse me i thought you just said your your biggest customers pay that what about the ones paying 150 bucks a month uh uh those they an average uh they pay maybe uh uh about 187 if we say how many dimitri let me do this a different way how many customers are you working with today on that platform 36 okay and what's your total monthly recurring revenue right now 15 000 per month 15 000 okay so we can take 15 000 right in an mrr divided by 36 customers on average they're paying 400 a month well yeah let's say so because they're a little bit different models but whatever well that's how you calculate an average right they're some of them are paying 150 bucks a month some are paying a thousand bucks a month but on average they're paying 400 bucks a month oh okay so yeah and what what exactly are they getting for this you're just you're helping them get linkedin connections not only they get the appointments with the founders or ctos of the other companies in us and uk who want to talk about some cooperation about new contracts and some business opportunities okay and and how much of this is a your human team running it versus the actual software that's what i don't understand well it's about 50 50 because we start the the software is responsible for gathering contacts and for sending messages but humans usually they they create scripts they create messages and on the later stages when the conversation become more personal and more let's say um more about uh well well more personal let's say so then human human humans work with it and they they try to make it well they try to close appointments what's your what's your what's your churn today on this product excuse me what's your turn today on this product uh i'm not sure that i understood you correctly churn it's the number one sass metric chart sure yeah the churn is about 11 per month yep okay so like this look this isn't really a sas product if you're turning 120 of your customer race every year might as well be a one-time fee uh the one-time fee for let's say for the biggest plan is uh 200 500 no dimitri my i'm trying to make a point here this isn't a sas product because your churn is way too high it might as well just be a one-time payment option and then you move on to the next customer you're you're basically like an agency well you know that's uh for example our average uh let's say ltv not only the time where we work with the clients is at least five to six months so we work on the constant basis that's not that much though that's my point a five to six month ltv is like nothing that's like potatoes in sas world you might as well that's something you might as well be an agency and charge a one-time fee up front not even worry about recurring revenue well you know that's uh the one-time fee is only one part because it's just like to have a set up then we go to uh on the constant monthly basis or minus months months by one month by months never mind i'm tr nevermind i'm trying to make a point um about about sas models in general talk to me more about capitalization have you bootstrapped the company or raised uh no we are bootstrapping so we are starting from ourselves so two partners who work from the very beginning so what's the total team size today 10 people 10 people where's everyone based uh we have two offices one is in kiev ukraine and another one is in israel okay so ukraine and israel very good and then how are you getting these customers where are you finding them well we do actually do we do uh we use that we go to the linkedin we find decision makers in iot outsourcing companies and we we use our tool uh to we use our approach to get new clients for us and when did you launch the company what year uh it is uh 2017 one year ago one year and a half very good all right dimitri let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book well favorite business book it's a good question okay let it be jim collins from good to great number two is there a ceo you're following or studying uh excuse me is there a ceo you're following or studying um we out well i follow jason lemkin number three what's your favorite online tool for building a business um what tool do you mean a tool that you use well i use reich for example to build the business okay reich w w-r-i-k-e just had them on the show they're good company number four how many hours of sleep you get every night how many hours do i what sleep sleep right well i have seven hours okay and what's your situation married single do you have kids uh married two kids and how are you uh 38 38 last question third 38 let's make it correct it's not 40 but 30. i said i said 38. what do you wish your last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew oh excuse me maybe yeah too quick because now it's a little bit late maybe i'm slow so could you repeat it please what do you wish your 20 year old self knew i don't get a question sorry what is something you wish you knew when you were 20 ah okay i get it uh maybe i don't get it for sure so you mean what do i miss uh if i could if i could be 20 right something you wish you knew ah okay i get it um good question [Music] are we send you i think i'd uh i i i have to understand that all the things that i do in my life need more patience patience patience they need much more patience than i expected before guys be patient again launched sas founders back in 2017. now 36 customers paying 400 bucks a month 15 grand per month in revenue churns too high at 11 though team of 10 between ukraine and israel they are bootstrapping getting their first 36 customers via linkedin targeting almost an account based marketing approach as they look to scale dimitri thanks for taking us to the top thank you thank you