How Sheetgo Passed 1,000 Customer Logos and Stayed Profitable With a 19-Person Remote Team (Interview with CEO Yannick Rault van der Vaart)

Introduction and What Sheetgo Does

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Yannick Rolte. He's the CEO of sheetgo, which allows spreadsheet users to automate workflows, and he's doing this while advising other startups as well. Yannick, are you ready to take us to the top?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

00:12>> Sure.

How Sheetgo Differs from Airtable

Nathan Latka

00:13All right. So tell us about the business. I mean, it sounds a lot like Airtable.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

00:17>> Well, yeah. The difference would be that we work with the legacy systems at companies rather than have to implement something completely new, aka Excel, Google Sheets.

Product Walkthrough and Use Cases

Nathan Latka

00:28Tell me more about how that works. So if I use Google Sheets already, what would I add on with sheetgo?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

00:33>> You you use as basically as a layer, you can automate your workflows. Currently, being able to automate with others information flow spreadsheets, we are now in early release that you could actually implement it with Docs and Gmail, you can actually automate the entire workflow.

Nathan Latka

00:53Well, there's a lot of potential customers here. All those things have a lot of users. It'll be interesting to see what wedge you use. When did you write the first line of code for the technology?

Founding Story and First Customers

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

01:01>> Ten years ago.

Nathan Latka

01:03Oh, wow.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

01:03>> So this is an

Nathan Latka

01:04older company.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

01:05>> No. It's only from 2016. I could only start the company in 2016 because I was in another company. The first idea happened in almost ten years ago and the first concepts actually happened about a year later. But I couldn't really get out of my previous engagements until 2016.

Nathan Latka

01:24When did you have your first paying customer? What year?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

01:28>> That 2016 is when everything got started.

Nathan Latka

01:31Oh, okay. Got it. So first customer then Who was the first customer? Do you remember?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

01:35>> Good. Very, very good question.

Nathan Latka

01:39Or who were you targeting back then to get started?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

01:43>> Didn't know. We knew that this was useful for anyone. And what we wanted to do is just put it out there and see how many people would actually start using it. And we just had bets on a on a window door as to how many installs we'd have. And eventually, hey, maybe we should charge for this and see if anyone would pay for it. We didn't really we really wanted the market to tell us. Okay.

Nathan Latka

02:11So what are customers paying you today on average to use the technology?

Pricing and Contract Structure

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

02:17>> About 500, $600, but then we're moving more into a customer centric kind of company and that's going up quite That's per month?

Nathan Latka

02:27500 per month?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

02:30>> Per year for single users. And now we're having more and more team users that spend 1,000, 2,000, 10,000 a year.

Nathan Latka

02:38Okay, very cool. So you get your first customer back in 2016. How many customers are you now working with today?

Customer Count and Buyer Personas

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

02:44>> We have more. Over a thousand.

Nathan Latka

02:47Okay. Over a thousand. And are those individual seats or are those logos? And then there's a bunch of seats below them.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

02:52>> Yeah, those are logos.

Nathan Latka

02:54Those are logos. Okay. Cool. And are people the logos that are signing up, who's usually the one signing up? Is it the CTO or the head of marketing or something else?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

03:02>> Something else. Always someone that's trying to manage some process in their company.

Nathan Latka

03:10Educate us. We don't know your business. Who is that? Who is it? You're not helping me out here, man. Who is that usually?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

03:15>> I know. Know. Cool. So it could be someone that is wanting, is managing a budget and is wanting to interface with other departments and have the information be automated in terms of updating how information flows to the budget holder and to actions versus budgets. It could be someone in managing sales and wants to update the field sales. And it could be someone managing inventory or a company managing airplane parts of inventory in The US.

Nathan Latka

03:52Mhmm. And these these align with a bunch of the templates you have on the website as well. Inventory management, you know, cash flow, grade books. Do teachers use you a lot?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

04:01>> Teachers use us a lot. They help. We help them a lot with attendance tracking, grades. I've seen some districts work with sheetgo so that they can create student cards to see, so that the 130,000 students have a profile of what's happening with them so that the professors, teachers, and districts can follow what their students are doing. We've seen a lot of cases around that as well.

Nathan Latka

04:31So if a district signs up, that's one of your 1,000 logos, but they might sign up a 100 seats for all their teachers. How many seats is a logo usually signing up for? What's the average you're seeing?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

04:43>> Right now, it's a range. So we've moved from a user perspective to a business perspective. So we really thought about the end user until, let's say, last year, we started really thinking about accounts late last year. We're now really expanding on that.

Nathan Latka

05:01So So Yannick, the question is of the current thousand, like, they usually signing up for just one seat or are they signing up for thousands of seats? What what's the average seats number of seats?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

05:09>> No. It's the average is in the in the it's above 10, below a 100, really depends. We're still not moving up market to that far level yet. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

05:20And and each seat you says that one user license is about $500 a year. Right?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

05:25>> Yes. Of course, when there's companies, the the prices change when we have company licenses.

Nathan Latka

05:32Yep. Obviously, you give probably volume discounts once people are signing up for hundreds and hundreds seats.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

05:36>> That's right. Exactly. Yep.

Nathan Latka

05:38Yeah. Now, conservatively, can I do the math though? A thousand, you know, a thousand logos at five seats a pop or 10 seats a pop at $450 a month. I mean, are you guys doing what? About $500,000 a month in revenue?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

05:49>> No, we're not there. We're not even close to that just yet. Okay.

Nathan Latka

05:54When do you think you can break that?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

05:56>> Yeah.

05:59>> Right now we've been really, really focused on product and

06:05>> I'd say that we're now set up for growth. So the idea is 2022 really focused on commercial team. We are, I'd say that two thirds of the company's engineers and we only have less than a handful of folks in the commercial team, including marketing and sales.

Revenue Today and Run Rate

Nathan Latka

06:27And so what is revenue today? Is it more like 50 to 60 thousand dollars a month?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

06:31>> It's probably a little bit more in that ball range.

Nathan Latka

06:36Well, know, $83,000 a month is a big number. That's a million dollar run rate. Are you north of a million dollar run rate yet?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

06:41>> We're around just we're almost Okay.

Nathan Latka

06:44Fair enough. Yeah. And help me understand growth. If you're around that today, how much monthly recurring revenue were you doing exactly a year ago?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

06:51>> We're at a we're about without really focused on the commercial side, we are at about sorry about that. It's very late here in Europe. We're about about a 100% or so.

Nathan Latka

07:05Got it. So you're doing about $35,000 a month about a year ago.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

07:11>> I'd say that's the number. Yeah.

Team Size and Remote Setup

Nathan Latka

07:13Got it. And it's clear to me how you're growing. You're sort of adding more seats. I understand that. Tell me more about your team. How many folks are on your team today?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

07:19>> We are 19.

Nathan Latka

07:2119. All remote?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

07:24>> Mostly remote. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Actually, today, everybody's remote. We used to have a hybrid. Now we're all remote.

Funding History and Profitability

Nathan Latka

07:30Got it. And now have you guys bootstrapped this, or did you decide to raise capital?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

07:34>> We raised a little bit of capital.

07:37>> And here in in well, in Spain, the team is divided between Brazil and Spain mostly. We raised a little bit of capital in Spain, not much. So we're actually run as a profitable company.

Nathan Latka

07:50Mhmm. How much have you raised to date total?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

07:53>> About 1,000,000.

Nathan Latka

07:55Okay. About a and when was the last round?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

07:58>> The last official round was 2018. We've we've had some convertible notes that came in, but the last round was 2018. End of twenty eighteen.

Nathan Latka

08:11And how much did you raise back then?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

08:13>> We raised in dollars around $600,000.

Nathan Latka

08:20Okay. And would you do that same thing again? Do you regret raising capital? Could you have bootstrapped?

Reflections on Raising Capital

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

08:27>> I think I do regret raising that amount of capital. I think we should have raised money in The US. I live in Europe and I'm American. So we should have raised in The US and a lot more capital for the kind of market we're going after. And I'm glad that you kind of put on the table, air table at the beginning of this call. But the kind of market we're going after is so big that I

08:51>> think this requires a lot of capital and I would want to have been able to put more resources into commercialization. So with two salespeople today, there's only so much you can grow.

Nathan Latka

09:05Mhmm. And so when you raised 600,000, 700,000 in 2018, what valuation did you raise at?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

09:14>> So we raised at less than I would have wanted. Let's say south of 10,000,000.

Nathan Latka

09:22Mhmm. And why do you say that's less of than what you what you would have wanted?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

09:27>> I think that first, we should have raised a lot more money because I think the value of what we do is is very, very high.

09:36>> That's the reason.

Nathan Latka

09:37Well, just to just to play devil's advocate, Yannick. Launched in '26 you launched in 2016, and it's taken, you know, it's taken five years, and and you're still under 1,000,000 revenue. That's really slow growth if you wanna be a venture backed company and play that game.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

09:52>> Sorry. I lost you for a second.

Nathan Latka

09:53Can you hear me now? Yeah. I was saying being devil's advocate, you launched in 2016 and it's taken you five years and you're still not doing more than 1,000,000 revenue. That's very that's too slow growth to go be a venture backed company if you wanna play that I agree.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

10:06>> I agree. That's why it's not enough money. So what we need to focus on is

Nathan Latka

10:13Well, you raised all that money, though, and you and you weren't able to get grow that's what I'm saying is you raised one point, you know, two, three million, and you weren't able to get growth. Why would you why why is the answer throw more money at it?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

10:23>> Because the kind of product that we're creating is so scalable that we need to put a lot of focus on product and technology.

10:35>> And so I'd say that that's part of the reason. I do think that focusing so fast on

10:46>> commercialization when the product's not ready is not a good idea. And I'd say that we probably focused, we started taking too many shortcuts on the product and the tech. I have seen other companies that have gone stealth for a while,

11:05>> traction, active users, and then going after clients. And I think that's a good good approach for this kind of size of market.

Churn and Net Dollar Retention

Nathan Latka

11:14Got it. Are you what's your churn look like today?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

11:18>> We're about a 100% net retention.

Nathan Latka

11:21But peel back. What's gross churn look like?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

11:26>> We're at about industry average, which is at 3% or so net 3% gross monthly.

Nathan Latka

11:33Got it. So you're churning about 36% annually, you're expanding 36% for net of a 100.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

11:39>> That's right.

Growth Channels: SEO and Marketplaces

Nathan Latka

11:40Interesting. Okay. Very cool. What about getting new users? Are you doing any paid ads right now, or what's the number one growth channel?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

11:46>> It's all mostly organic SEO and marketplaces.

Nathan Latka

11:50Mhmm. Which marketplace drives you the most leads per month?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

11:53>> It's Google.

Nathan Latka

11:55Google. What? You're in the Google App Exchange?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

11:59>> No. It's called it's called the Google Workspace marketplace. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

12:04How many leads do get from there each month?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

12:08>> We get a decent amount. I mean, I'd say it's probably half or so of our leads.

Nathan Latka

12:14I don't know how many leads total you get.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

12:16>> Yeah. I'm not privy to say. Sorry.

Nathan Latka

12:20You don't wanna share how many leads you get? Why is that confidential? You've already shared revenue and valuation.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

12:25>> Yeah. I think valuation mostly most people can discern from the information we have already. And

Nathan Latka

12:33You shared revenue. That wasn't revenue. Most people would call revenue way more sensitive than the number of leads you're getting. I'm just trying to figure out why you wouldn't share how many leads you're getting per month.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

12:41>> Yeah. Because I think I feel I'm not sure I feel completely comfortable in sharing as much information as you're asking. I don't think I was privy to no. No. I don't think. I wasn't privy to all the information you were gonna be asking before this call.

Nathan Latka

12:57Okay. We've published about 3,000 episodes, one a day since 2015. Did you listen to any of the other very short episodes before agreeing to come on?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

13:05>> I have not listened to your episodes. No.

Nathan Latka

13:08Then then I totally understand why you would be surprised. Sorry about that. I'm surprised you agreed to something without a little bit of background. I know what you're jumping into.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

13:16>> I think you yeah. I think you're right. You you and I have been going back and forth in some emails, and the emails were interesting in terms of the kind of information you were you were sharing and and I was providing.

13:31>> So so, yeah, I think you're right. Understood. I'm not put putting as much time into this. As I said, Well,

Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

13:38I won't I won't push harder than on the lead stuff. We'll wrap up here, yeah, Yannick, with some easy stuff with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

13:47>> I'd say Losing My Virginity is a common one that, that I I like to share.

Nathan Latka

13:54Two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

13:58>> I'd say Elon Musk, like most people.

Nathan Latka

14:01Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building sheetgo?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

14:06>> Online tool for building sheetgo?

Nathan Latka

14:08Correct. A tool that you use.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

14:11>> In what sense? Building what specifically? Sorry.

14:14>> No problem. We'll skip that question.

Nathan Latka

14:16Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

14:20>> Between six six and a half or so. I have five children.

Nathan Latka

14:24Okay. Well, five kid okay. So are you married with five kids?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

14:28>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

14:28Wow. Holy cow. How old are you?

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

14:31>> 45.

14:32>> 45. Last question.

Nathan Latka

14:33Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

14:37>> I wish I would have done when I was 20.

Nathan Latka

14:39Just something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

14:41>> Oh, to become an entrepreneur, apparently, earlier. Yeah. But probably it. Became an entrepreneur at 30.

Nathan Latka

14:50Guys, sheetgo enables you to use Google Sheets to get way more out of out of your life in terms of productivity templates for inventory management, cash flow, income statement, other stuff. Launched in 2016, they raised about 1,100,000 ish today, 700,000, 600,000 back in 2018. 19 people on the team today, two sales folks, call it eight or nine engineers as they look to continue to scale. They were doing about $35,000 a month in revenue about a year

15:13ago, now over $70,000 a month as they continue to grow. Yannick, thank you for taking us to the top.

Yannick Rault van der Vaart

15:18>> Alright. Thanks, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

15:21One 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

15:46Central. Additionally, remember these recorded Founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. To make sure you don't miss any of that, make sure you click the subscribe button below here on YouTube, the big red button and then click the little bell notification to make sure you get notifications when we do go live. I wouldn't want you to miss breaking news in the SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big

16:09fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up

16:30for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We

16:50got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.