SAFA Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

SAFA had no paying customers as of April 2022 and was pre-revenue. The company was in discussions with two to three development partners, including LHP Engineering, which had soft committed $25,000 to the SAFE round and was in talks about a potential paid pilot arrangement. Two additional smaller companies in the robotics field, specifically in agri-tech and mobile robotics, were also being considered as pilot partners and were expected to pay.

Gulaya said the company was targeting a beta program in Q2 or Q3 2022, with beta customers expected to pay a discounted fee relative to a full license. The first fully paying customer was anticipated in Q1 2023, coinciding with the planned full product release.

On pricing, Gulaya said the company was benchmarking against competitors rather than setting its own rates, given its pre-revenue stage. IBM Doors, a leading enterprise requirements management platform, starts at $50,000 for an enterprise application and charges $500 to $1,600 per additional user seat, plus fees for add-on functionality. SAFA was evaluating a per-seat pricing model consistent with how IBM Doors and Jama Software structure their offerings.

SAFA is a B2B SaaS platform targeting engineering teams in safety-critical industries. The company had not yet established its own pricing at the time of the April 2022 interview and was using competitor benchmarks to frame its eventual model. Gulaya indicated the most likely pricing structure would be per-seat, based on the number of engineers actively using the platform within a given team, consistent with how IBM Doors and Jama Software price their products.

The company was pre-revenue and profitability was not discussed. No figures for gross margin, burn rate, runway, churn, LTV, CAC, or ARPU were disclosed, as the company had not yet begun charging customers. Revenue per account, conversion rates, and usage volume metrics were not applicable at this stage and were not addressed in the interview.

SAFA's go-to-market approach at the time centered on development partnerships and a planned beta program, with a nominal paid pilot structure under consideration for at least one partner. The company was also evaluating usage-based pricing tied to the number of software runs or tests completed per month as an alternative to per-seat fees, though no final pricing decision had been made.

SAFA had approximately six team members as of April 2022, all working part time. Gulaya noted the company technically had no full-time employees at that stage. The team included a lead front-end engineer, lead engineer Alberto, AI engineer Jin Feng, and Gulaya himself, with Professor Jane Cleland-Huang also involved. No further breakdown of roles or hiring plans was provided in the interview.