How Seva Exchange Corporation CEO Anitha Beberg grew Seva Exchange Corporation to $27.3K revenue and 10 customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is anita beberg she's an alumni of the silicon valley founder institute is the founder and ceo of seva exchange which is a platform using machine learning technologies to galvanize global volunteerism by reinventing time banking and other mutual reciprocity-based services for the modern digital economy check her out at seve exchange dot com and ether are you ready to take us to the top yes all right by the way save ava save up spa when did you guys launch when you when did you write the first line of code oh we only we only started building our product probably december 2000 uh 2019 so it's in two years almost almost two years okay and walk me through what are companies or what are non-profit like who are you serving who are your customers well what i wanted to do because while our mvp launched in march 2020 as you know what happened march 2020 the pandemic so i decided just throw this out there to communities our platform really is uh there is nothing else like this where anyone can ask for help when they're in need and anyone can offer help any way they would like to whether it's through time of service through uh fundraising like money donations through goods donations and even lending out stuff so no one can give you any excuse that they can't help their community on our platform because we're giving you every option well so who's paying for it like is it the government of the community or an hr lead or something who's paying yeah so it would be the public sector that would pay for this cities smaller towns we're going after those um because we don't want to charge members however for non-profits i mean what do non-profits need they always need volunteers and they always need money so our platform helps them with both so they would pay because they have uh we've created features for them that's conducive for them and then we've also uh uh included like an enterprise version so businesses can connect it's like we're bridging the gap and building a completely new ecosystem of connecting all of these different sectors and so anita what's the average city or non-profit paying you per month to use this technology you've built uh honestly the best number when if it's a large city we have to like separate so i know there's a borough in new york uh hud is it hudson no it's uh no red hook i think it's red hudson's another uh one in new york but so it would you would have to break it down i mean honestly if it's like 10 million people the whole point of our platform is to build trusted communities so if facebook were to be redone like envisioned i would say that it would be save exchange well so sorry just to dig i just want to get a sense of pricing though so you price based off number of citizens the city's managing uh yes yes for the citizens however right now if you are a community a neighborhood it's free for neighborhoods and then it's only 15 for a smaller community of let's say 200 to 500 we'll just give it to you for 15 bucks just to start it off it's really based on the features that you need okay so it's 15 per month for a smaller community of 200 to 500 people yes okay got it and when did you sign up your first paid community do you remember yes that was last year because we had already negotiated with them it was the poor people's campaign it was a non-profit in alaska anchorage alaska holy mackerel okay so last year first customer now how many customers are you working with today well we've got uh 224 communities onboarded that from around the world so are they all paying they're not all paying but it's okay i'm not i'm not focused on paying i'm focused on getting people on there right without the humans the people to volunteer there's nothing right it doesn't matter how fancy a platform sure you on board them and then you can upsell but how many have you successfully got onto a paid plan out of the 2024. we've got several non-profits now and several communities paying but it's i don't really want to give numbers right now we we got to work we focused all this time on building this incredible software and now i'm shifting focus to converting our clients we've got like an 80 000 backlog of clients that we can convert right now so i don't know okay okay got it but but so 224 onboarded and maybe like like 10-ish 20-ish or so have you gotten over to paid and that's your focus sort of moving forward is to convert more of those over to paid plans yes yes how have you funded yourself to date if you've you've basically sort of been pre-revenue um i had a few uh like friends and then mostly family yeah that's the original angel round not quite it was very informal so it's just people who knew me well do they do that did you give them did you sell them equity um it's a safe oh okay well that's pretty standard i mean are we talking like a hundred thousand bucks raised or like a million bucks raised uh no but a quarter million okay 25 000. no quarter million so two quarter million yeah yeah okay and that was back last year you said in 2020 no no i was i because it's family i just get it as needed so it's about 250 at this point yeah but when did you do your first i guess your first dollar on this on this safe was it oh yeah definitely pre-coded because i i actually met with someone who is a cio of a company it was a friend of my mother's and i was going to talk to him about technical people and he literally wrote me a check for 10 grand that day that's very cool yes but that's not you know that's not a normal occurrence as i've learned sure but okay but this is great you hustled your way you've gotten some seed funding here you raised on like on a safe um now you mentioned you mentioned you might be thinking about sort of going out looking at additional capital are you looking at raising more or no i am right now wanting to raise 1.5 million uh for equity round of 20 20 okay so how am i so got it so you're trying to raise that evaluation of what what would that be nine million post money something like that okay you want to sell 20 for 1.5 million yeah okay and and why is that the right amount uh just because my teammate uh we've we've looked both of us have looked and studied like jason calcane's you've heard of him this weekend started we looked in all different ways and how we would convert based on how much we're just starting post revenue um the the stage we're in how much we built the product where we're located we're in the silicon valley our team is strong so all of those factors that put in it kind of helps you figure out your evaluation so got it so 1.5 on basically a six pre or 7.5 million post means you'd be selling 20 of the business now do you think you need to really get revenue going in order to go get that valuation or you can raise that valuation right now with the 224. i can raise that right now if i get more and more clients i the valuation will go up so i'm it's better people if they want and then it'll be a um yeah i think the valuation definitely will much be higher so i'm doing both because i can't stop i'm still trying to sell it to as many people and i'm fundraising at the same time but right now i mean again 224 you mentioned you know a handful are paid at 15 bucks sort of per city or community so if you've got 10 at 15 bucks a month mrr today is about 150 bucks so post revenue but not sort of scaling and yeah it's not that much but again if i if i get enterprises it's a dollar to two dollars per employee per month so like i said i'm not trying to make a buck off the the citizens who are going to be volunteering and helping out it's really off the non-profits and enterprises based on the features i love that you keep saying we tell us about your team how many folks uh let's see we've got martin hoyce he is my digital strategist he's from england um originally uh he's been with me the longest well how many total anita i i don't know oh total well he's i had to do a shout out to him he's basically my cow co-founder uh about seven and we have a team in india of about seven mm-hmm they're contract developers did you find them via kodi toss or any of those tools or these developers that you met like one-on-one personally and hired them um no it was a personal recommendation from another friend and i did not regret that i'm very blessed they think of this as their baby and that's very rare to get yeah i know very cool so you own most the equity but your friend it sounds like has a little bit as well plus you've sold 250 grand worth to your friends and family yes i mean friends and family it's always they they're not they're not in it to to make a ton of money i mean i just want to pay them back essentially at least at least that very cool okay uh well this makes a lot of sense what about getting new cities on board how are you growing well i'm actually working with community organizers one in uh oakland the city of oakland and uh san francisco so as you know the city of oakland is and and also chicago so having people there who are part of the community this is the person i'm working with is africa williams she's also joining my team it's weird every time i meet someone i talk about it like can i join can i join i wish i could pay all of...