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Founder Interview

How Skiff Reached Five-Digit Monthly Active Users on $14.5M Raised with a Privacy-First Notion Alternative (Interview with Co-Founder and CEO Andrew Milich)

Interview Date
April 27, 2022
Interviewee
Andrew MilichCo-Founder and CEO
Watch
Watch the full interview

Company Metrics at Interview Time

Monthly Active Users (2022)

Five-digit MAU count

Total Raised

$14.5M

Cash in Bank (2022)

About $10M

Team Size (2022)

About 15 full-time

Individual Plan Price (2022)

About $10 per user per month

Historical Snapshot

These numbers were reported by Andrew Milich during his interview with Nathan Latka in April 2022 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Skiff’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways

  • 01Skiff had five-digit monthly active users as of April 2022, defined as any user who performed at least one action in the month.
  • 02The company raised about $4M in a pre-seed round in mid-2020 and $10.5M in a Series A in 2021, totaling $14.5M raised.
  • 03More than two-thirds of the $14.5M raised remained unspent, leaving about $10M in the bank at interview time.
  • 04The individual plan was priced at about $10 per user per month, with enterprise roughly double that per seat.
  • 05The team was about 15 full-time employees distributed globally across the Bay Area, New York, France, Israel, Hungary, Egypt, and Taiwan.
  • 06Andrew Milich and co-founder Jason split equity roughly equally, emphasizing the importance of a balanced co-founder relationship.
  • 07Skiff spent almost nothing on marketing, relying instead on privacy communities including DEF CON, Reddit privacy subreddits, Telegram, Discord, and Ethereum conferences.
  • 08The company had not yet launched self-serve subscriptions at interview time and was prioritizing MAU and DAU growth over revenue.
  • 09John Hennessy, former president of Stanford University, participated in the pre-seed round as an angel investor.
  • 10Andrew Milich started writing the first lines of code in November or December 2019 and was 25 years old at the time of the interview.

Company Metrics at Time of Interview

MetricValueSource
Monthly Active Users (2022)Five-digit MAU countFounder interview, Apr 2022
Total Raised$14.5MFounder interview, Apr 2022
Pre-Seed Round (2020)About $4MFounder interview, Apr 2022
Series A (2021)$10.5MFounder interview, Apr 2022
Cash in Bank (2022)About $10MFounder interview, Apr 2022
Team Size (2022)About 15 full-timeFounder interview, Apr 2022
Individual Plan Price (2022)About $10 per user per monthFounder interview, Apr 2022
Enterprise Plan Price (2022)About $20 per user per monthFounder interview, Apr 2022
Series A Dilution (2021)10 to 15%Founder interview, Apr 2022
Paid Seats (2022)More than 1,000Founder interview, Apr 2022
Founder Age25Founder interview, Apr 2022
Year Founded2020Founder interview, Apr 2022

Growth Breakdown

Revenue

Skiff had not yet launched self-serve subscriptions at the time of the interview and Andrew Milich declined to state an MRR figure, saying the number was not yet a primary focus. The company was pricing the individual plan at about $10 per user per month and enterprise at roughly double that per seat.

Customers and Users

The platform had more than 1,000 paid seats and five-digit monthly active users, with MAU defined as any user who performed at least one action in the month. The company was targeting continued month-over-month MAU growth and aimed to reach millions of users before prioritizing revenue scale.

Team

The team was about 15 full-time employees at interview time, distributed globally with concentrations in the Bay Area and New York as well as members in France, Israel, Hungary, Egypt, and Taiwan. Andrew Milich said the team would not need to grow significantly in the near term and that the focus was on continued product improvement.

Funding and Runway

Skiff raised about $4M in a pre-seed round in mid-2020 and $10.5M in a Series A in 2021, totaling $14.5M. More than two-thirds of that capital remained unspent, leaving about $10M in the bank, and the company was spending almost nothing on marketing with costs concentrated in engineering salaries and a small office.

Growth Strategy

Privacy Community Engagement

The team manually engaged privacy and security communities including DEF CON, LocoMocoSec, Reddit subreddits such as r/privacy and r/privacy tools, and Telegram and Discord channels focused on privacy tools. Andrew Milich described this as grinding those communities for the first eight months to get ideological clarity and early feedback.

Crypto and Web3 Conference Presence

Skiff targeted Ethereum conferences, DevConnect, NFT New York, and NFT Miami, recognizing that crypto-native users who value pseudonymity also tend to care deeply about privacy and data ownership. This gave the team access to an audience already aligned with the product's core value proposition.

Product-Led Growth with No Paywalls on Core Features

The team deliberately kept features critical to onboarding, such as templates and search through end-to-end encrypted data, free of charge. Andrew Milich explained that paywalling these features would hurt day-one experience and conflict with the company's mission.

Storage-Based Monetization as a Natural Upsell

Rather than gating engagement features, Skiff planned to monetize storage space, which scales linearly with usage and mirrors what users already pay for on Google Drive or Dropbox. This would create a natural net dollar retention path as users stored more files on the platform.

Live Events and Community Feedback Loops

Participation in live security and crypto events was credited as a key growth tactic, both for user acquisition and for receiving critical product feedback such as rewriting the privacy policy and improving the security model. This feedback loop helped the team refine the product before pursuing broader growth.

Best Quotes

“Skiff's vision is to be this kind of Web3 native, own your own data, privacy first, and end to end encrypted workspace. So a lot of that today is collaboration, you know, writing, sharing, sending documents and files.”
“We have some paying customers, a bunch of individuals, and then we're kind of we we have some kind of, I'd say, small to medium sized businesses up to a 100 people paying for Skiff, and they're rolling out a self serve enterprise option. Fingers crossed in the next couple days.”
“We haven't even launched self serve subscriptions. And so, honestly, the most important metrics for us are, like, our seven day retention, our, you know, month over month MAU and DAU growth, that kind of stuff. That's what we really, like, grind towards every day.”
“So we've gone with the most honest definition today, which is just you've logged in, you've created an account, anything. You've done any single action. So that's in the five digits right now.”
“We spend almost no money in marketing. We spend a little money on an office, although we're mostly remote. It's really just really good engineering.”
“Of the kind of 14,000,000 we raised, like, more than two thirds is still unspent, so we're we're trying to be cautious on that.”
“We just grinded a lot of privacy communities that we could. And, like, many of us are just members of those communities, either, like, you know, security conferences or Slack communities on privacy or r/privacy.”
“I think I had wish I had much more clarity that probably an amazing use of my time would just to continue becoming a better engineer.”

What Happened Next

This page captures Skiff as it stood in April 2022, before the company had launched self-serve subscriptions and while it was still in an early growth phase focused on monthly active users and community-driven acquisition. Andrew Milich described a company with about $10M in the bank, a team of roughly 15 engineers, and ambitions to reach millions of users before scaling revenue. For the latest recorded metrics and funding status, visit the Skiff company profile on GetLatka.

View Skiff’s current profile and metrics

Full Transcript

Introduction and Andrew's Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Andrew Milich. He's the cofounder and CEO of Skiff, a private end to end encrypted Web3 native collaboration platform. Previously, he was a Henry Ford II Scholar at Stanford University and worked on autonomous vehicles at SpaceX. Andrew, you ready to take us to the top?

Andrew Milich

00:15>> I'm ready. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

00:17You bet. What's the connection between autonomous vehicles and privacy and end to end encryption?

Andrew Milich

00:21>> That's a great question. So I've done some work, you know, unrelated on AVs, on security and on privacy before as well. But I actually think for a lot of our team and some people also have backgrounds and working on autonomy and space and safety critical applications, a lot of it is just loving to do engineering that is super intense, the best testing, the best security, the best performance. And I think that applies, you know, pretty clearly

00:44>> to working on stuff at SpaceX and autonomous vehicles and also to, you know, all the security and privacy work we do at Skiff.

Skiff's Vision as a Privacy-First Workspace

Nathan Latka

00:51Mhmm. Now if someone looked at your website and the screenshots you use, they might mistake you for for Notion. Right? So, like, you are in a sort of a, what, a more private version of Notion encrypted?

Andrew Milich

01:01>> Yeah. I'd say so Skiff's vision is to be this kind of Web3 native, own your own data, privacy first, and end to end encrypted workspace. So a lot of that today is collaboration, you know, writing, sharing, sending documents and files. But actually, in a few weeks, we're kind of broadening that vision significantly and bringing in kind of more aspects of the typical Google Workspace. So you'll see that in the next few weeks. But, yeah, I mean, we kind

01:22>> of built Skiff from the ground up to be a lot like the collaborative products that have evolved today, but significantly more private in its kind of foundations and the way the entire software is architected. And also more importantly, in the way the company is positioned where we don't have access to everything you write and you share, and you're the only person who owns your data.

Monetization Model and Paying Customers

Nathan Latka

01:40Very interesting. And so monetization model here would be what?

Andrew Milich

01:44>> Yeah. Great question. So that's pretty similar to SaaS products. You'll pay for a subscription or for kind of the storage and services you use. I think Skiff also has this option to sign in with a crypto wallet, and we're kind of actually announcing some huge partnerships on that front, you know, in the next month as well. But that opens up so many more possibilities. So, basically, like, monetizing a lot more in a granular way, services that

02:05>> people really wanna use. You know, your identity service is linked to your kind of financial services in this wallet and also to kinda more importantly, public key infrastructure, which which lets you actually communicate privately and securely with kinda anyone else in the world.

Nathan Latka

02:19Interesting. Pre revenue today or have some have a couple paying customers?

Andrew Milich

02:23>> We have we have some paying customers, a bunch of individuals, and then we're kind of we we have some kind of, I'd say, small to medium sized businesses up to a 100 people paying for Skiff, and they're rolling out a self serve enterprise option. Fingers crossed in the next couple days.

Nathan Latka

02:36That's awesome. It's a great it's a great time to be building. So that's exciting for you. What are folks paying on average per month for it?

Pricing Strategy and Comparables

Andrew Milich

02:43>> Great question. So, for the individual plan, people are paying, I believe it's $10 a month or maybe there's an annual plan discount. And enterprise is anywhere from, depending on the options you choose, you know, about double that.

Nathan Latka

02:55Okay. Got it. So maybe $20, $30. But but you're talking about per seat or for the whole enterprise?

Andrew Milich

03:00>> Per person per month.

Nathan Latka

03:01Yeah. Per person per month. Okay. Interesting. And, you know, pricing is one of those things that's very tricky. Your former boss, Elon, is going thinking about this right now with Twitter. Do you monetize? Do you not? What happens? But is $10 a month the right price point? How are you testing that? How are you trying to get that answer?

Andrew Milich

03:16>> That's a great question. Honestly, from a lot of the entrepreneurs we've spoken with, you know, at this stage in the company, you kind of throw a dart on the wall and look at just like the comps, the comparables. So I don't know if you have any great pricing resources because we'd love to look at them. But, you know, we've heard companies from Evernote to Google to, you know, many kind of API products just kind of choose

03:37>> a really simple and, you know, intuitive number that divides nicely and is reasonable with comparables and then kinda take it from there. So I don't know if you've seen any good resources on that either.

Nathan Latka

03:47Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders. But imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually, Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this. We've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect

04:11your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

04:35get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity And red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is

04:57not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're

05:22going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at, and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right, we're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but

05:44if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link, this link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. Alright. Let's jump back into

06:11the interview. I mean, I don't have any answers here. I mean, I think what where I do think there's a big gap here is what people never quantify with pricing is what you miss out on when you put up a paywall in terms of engagement Yeah. And what the opportunity cost is. Right? And so, like, I think a lot of people put up a paywall because they wanna make money if they've raised VC. But, ultimately, if

06:27you have no paywall, does your engagement go through the roof and you become the new de facto platform? It's a hard balance.

Andrew Milich

06:33>> Yeah. I I totally agree with that. I think a lot of the people on the team and, you know, the way the product is oriented today is to focus on growth and engagement and all that stuff. Like, we specifically don't wanna put paywalls on things that will make you kind of have a better experience on day one on Skiff. So for example, our templates feature, which lets you kind of share and use end to end encrypted

06:50>> templates, searching through end to end encrypted data, which some other products in privacy monetize, all of those are kind of just critical in migrating from any other product, or you'd expect that in your operating system or in, you know, all the kind of collaborative products you use today. And so it'd be rough for us or kind of, you know, against our mission to monetize these things that let people onboard on Skiff and have a good experience.

07:10>> So we we don't wanna monetize that.

Nathan Latka

07:13I think a really interesting way to think about pricing, but reverse engineering it for both you or anyone listening is to go is to ask yourself the question, what percent of your users do you want to be paying? And if you decide that it's 1%, well, then you go, okay. Well, what's the activation metric or the usage metric we're tracking? Yeah. And how high does it have to be to only hit 1% of our power users?

07:32So, like, for you might well, that might be templates, it sounds like, or something like that?

Andrew Milich

07:36>> Yeah. So one of the things we can monetize pretty easily is storage space. People are probably paying for storage space in their life already, whether it's on Google or it's on Dropbox or something else. And so that's something that's pretty common. Also, it's, you know, it scales linearly with what you'd expect. Like, you pay for more storage and you get more storage for your files. So that's pretty simple. I think for us also, enterprise and Teams

07:57>> is really natural to monetize too, of course. One, because, like, every business has expects to pay for their collaborative products. And two, just because they also might want, you know, either in their compliance process or they might want kind of things tweaked for them or something like that. So that's, you know, that's a big area we'll work on too.

Nathan Latka

08:15Interesting. Yeah. Storage is one of those things that's nice. If they use you more and you require uploads and templates, it's a natural upsell, natural net dollar retention. We'll sort of see what happens there. That's exciting. Okay. Put this on a timeline for me. When did you write the first line of code for the platform?

Company Timeline and Co-Founder Story

Andrew Milich

08:29>> Great question. So actually in late twenty nineteen. So November, December 2019 by myself.

Nathan Latka

08:35That's amazing. Okay. So are you still a founder on a 100% on day one?

Andrew Milich

08:39>> No. Well, I no. So I kind of was writing code in my free time, basically, after work, you know, eight or nine hours, which is exhausting for four, you know, four months or so. In that process, I started working with Jason, our cofounder and CTO. Jason is awesome. Jason was one of the only designers that I knew at Stanford, and he studied electrical engineering as well. And so we started collaborating. He was kind of across the

09:02>> country finishing a master's, started working together, and then the company was founded. COVID was also starting, and so, you know, we kinda took it from there.

Nathan Latka

09:11You guys just split fifty fifty?

Andrew Milich

09:13>> Yeah. Roughly that. I mean, I I've kind of set up a lot of a structure in those interim few months, and so then we kind of we we wanted to work together as equals.

Nathan Latka

09:21Alright. Fifty five forty five, something like that.

Andrew Milich

09:26>> Well, I think it is really important to have a cofounder who's not, you know, like, not a 95/5 split or, you know, a really unequal split just because there are so many rough and grinds, you know, grinding moments in that first few years that I think just having a cofounder was one of the only ways we got this far.

Nathan Latka

09:45Yeah. And

Andrew Milich

09:45>> Not that we're anywhere close to success yet. Just gonna add.

Nathan Latka

09:48Yeah. Yeah. But you're saying so, I mean, the flip side would be if you only if you have one founder, you can move much quicker because two people don't have to agree on everything.

Andrew Milich

09:55>> That's true. That's true. I think we found that for 90% of the time or more, like, we just agree on everything. We don't even make decisions. And then there are a few, you know, tough moments where you need to have a better process or agree on priorities or stuff like that.

Nathan Latka

10:08Yeah. Okay. I love that. Alright. So 2019, you're coding. You team up with Jason. How many customers are now serving today? Paying paying paying seats?

Andrew Milich

10:14>> Good question. So that's probably in the we don't really it's a small number right now. We're not really kind of, you know, really So tens of seats

Nathan Latka

10:22though or, like, a 100?

Andrew Milich

10:23>> No. No. No. No. It's it's orders of magnitude more, but the overall metric, you know, used on the platform is in the tens of thousands.

Nathan Latka

10:30Okay. Tens of thousands of seats used free and paid.

Andrew Milich

10:33>> Yeah. Exactly.

Nathan Latka

10:34Okay. And would you consider, like, 5% of them paying a good conversion rate?

Andrew Milich

10:38>> I think one to 5% is a Okay. You know, what we see as good comparables.

Nathan Latka

10:42Okay. So I'll keep I'll keep this vague in a big range.

Andrew Milich

10:45>> Fair to

Nathan Latka

10:45say you have between, like, a 100 and a thousand paid seats, something like that?

Andrew Milich

10:50>> It's more than a thousand paid seats.

Nathan Latka

10:51Okay.

Andrew Milich

10:52>> Just don't I don't It's more than that number. It's likely it's definitely well above a 100. I don't I I don't really know exactly what that number is.

Nathan Latka

10:59I could just be direct and ask the question I'm trying to reverse engineer, which is your MRR today is something like ten or twenty grand a month, something like that.

Andrew Milich

11:06>> Don't really know the number yet. I mean, Come on. To know

MAU Definition and Monthly Growth

Andrew Milich

11:10>> your monthly recurring revenue.

Nathan Latka

11:11It's gotta be in the it's something in that range.

Andrew Milich

11:12>> No. It's it's super important for the business. We haven't even launched self serve subscriptions. And so, honestly, the most important metrics for us are, like, our seven day retention, our, you know, month over month MAU and DAU growth, that kind of stuff. That's what we really, like, grind towards every day.

Nathan Latka

11:27What's your what's your month over month MAU growth?

Andrew Milich

11:30>> So it it's been pretty substantial. It's been, I think, over 30% for the last few months. There are things that change that a lot. Like, we had a YouTube video released about Skiff in China on Friday that probably bumped our growth up 30% in three days. So, well, it's unclear how sustainable those events are, but, you know, we're kinda aiming to do 30% month over month growth for the next year or so.

Nathan Latka

11:50And MAU, monthly active users. Right? A big question besides just growth is how you how do you define a monthly active user. Right? So is that a login? Is that more engagement than a login?

Andrew Milich

11:59>> Yeah. So we've gone with the most honest definition today, which is just you've logged in, you've created an account, anything. You've done any single action. So that's in the five digits right now.

Nathan Latka

12:09Five digits meaning, like, more than a thousand people doing that monthly?

Andrew Milich

12:12>> More than more than 9,010. 99. Yeah. But that said, I also know plenty of like, I'd love to know if you have any comparables on that because I know plenty of companies that define it as, like, much more strictly.

Nathan Latka

12:24No. No. I have no idea. I have no absolutely no idea. Everyone's different. Right? Everyone's

Andrew Milich

12:29>> get better, the more, you know, strict that definition. So

Nathan Latka

12:32>> Yeah. Yeah.

12:32And what I

Andrew Milich

12:33>> can tell you is

Nathan Latka

12:34I I there are I know plenty of stories where founders have really healthy MAU metrics. When you dig deeper, they define it as something very easy like a login, which is not a real indicator of product value. And then they they think they're stronger than they are, and they end up collapsing. So, I mean, you you obviously figure this out as you go along.

Andrew Milich

12:51>> Yeah. So Skiff is super privacy focused. We, you know, really collect as little information as we can. So, like, there's no client side tracking, anything like that. The stuff that matters to us is, like, you know, do you have like, are you creating documents? Are you, you know, coming back to the platform? That kind of stuff. And so really basic, like, stuff like that. How do you define seven like go ahead. Go ahead.

Nathan Latka

13:13How do you define seven day retention?

Andrew Milich

13:16>> We look at two options. One is, like, you know, in the last seven days, what percentage of users came on or after day x? So we'll look at that retention curve and then also the day the on day x retention curve.

Nathan Latka

13:28So they sign up today. How many times do they log back in in the same day versus over the next seven days after sign up?

Seven-Day Retention and Privacy-First Analytics

Andrew Milich

13:34>> Yeah. So, basically, like, after seven days, what percentage of users came back on or after day two, on or after day three, etcetera.

Nathan Latka

13:41Interesting. Interesting. Where day zero is always sign up date. Exactly. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. But but you're unable to tell why they might log in on day two, three, four, b, because they uploaded they wanna upload a template because you're not able to go and track a template upload.

Andrew Milich

13:57>> We have super basic stuff that's helpful for us to just also, like, track our kind of monetization metrics. So, like, if they, you know, end up using a lot of storage on Skiff, that could be something that would lead to higher retention, and we'll see them monetize, etcetera. But beyond that, we don't really track, like, you know, are they using this specific feature excessively, or are they doing something else like that? What we can know is,

14:19>> like, what percentage of users are downloading our mobile apps, and are those people coming back? You know, those for those who opt in the tracking on iOS, etcetera, you know, we can get some information like that. And, obviously, stuff like mobile apps, desktop apps leads to much higher retention in products like ours.

Nathan Latka

14:33Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. You've mentioned, I think well, have you bootstrapped or raised?

Fundraising History: Pre-Seed and Series A

Andrew Milich

14:38>> We've done a seed round and a series a.

Nathan Latka

14:40Ah, okay. Got it. So when was the seed round? What year?

Andrew Milich

14:43>> So start writing code end of twenty nineteen. The seed round was about June 2020. June, July. Maybe July.

Nathan Latka

14:50How much did you raise there?

Andrew Milich

14:52>> So we raised, I think, 2,500,000 initially, and then we ended up adding about 1,500,000 in from angel investors right after that. So it ended up being about 4.

Nathan Latka

15:014 on your pre seed round. Right?

Andrew Milich

15:03>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

15:04Traditional safe uncapped?

Andrew Milich

15:07>> No. We we had valuation caps. I don't think we've shared that externally, but we kinda had done two pretty, I think, you know, reasonable valuation caps at the time. I'll tell you from what you're looking at medium seed valuations today, it's probably 50% less or more.

Nathan Latka

15:2250%. Okay. So let me tell you what I'm seeing, then you tell me what you mean by when you say 50% less or more. So, like, what I'm seeing today is traditional seed round is like a million on a five cap. If you're really good, maybe 2,000,000 on a 10 cap or something like that.

Andrew Milich

15:33>> Got it. It was about that. I mean, I'm reading in the news, things have gone up in the last few months, but it was it was about that.

Nathan Latka

15:40What are you seeing? What do you what do you mean? Like, two on 20 or something?

Andrew Milich

15:43>> Yeah. I've seen that kind of stuff. I think for, you know, more experienced founders or with, you know, a lot of engineering experience and that stuff, I've seen it go into the twenties or more. And ours was well below that.

Nathan Latka

15:54I see. I see. So total today you raised four, or just in 2020, you raised 4,000,000?

Andrew Milich

15:58>> So in the seed round, we raised about four, four point one or two. Then in the series a, we raised 10 and a half.

Nathan Latka

16:05I see. Okay. Got it. So you've you've you've scaled. This is starting to make sense when you talk about your user numbers and where the growth is coming from. So you raised 10.5. That was this year?

Andrew Milich

16:14>> That was late last year.

Nathan Latka

16:16Late last year.

Andrew Milich

16:17>> End of last summer. Like, July, August, September. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

16:20Okay. And so would you need September it goes. What what makes this so expensive to build?

Andrew Milich

16:25>> We just hire engineers, honestly. We we spend almost no money in marketing. We spend a little money on an office, although we're mostly remote. It's really just really good engineering. I think, basically, we're building a product that hasn't been built before. That said, we also want to look and feel like the products you use and love today. And so it's just a lot of upfront cost on building something that's end to end encrypted, much more decentralized,

16:48>> and then making it really, really, really good.

Cash in Bank and Path to Series B

Nathan Latka

16:50Yeah. How far like, what revenue do you think you need to hit to actually go out and raise a competitive series b at some point?

Andrew Milich

16:57>> That's a great question. I think we wanna have at least 10 times or more as many users. We'll see what that looks like. I also think we don't need to kind of grow our team significantly. We have an incredible engineering team today, like, with amazing experience in, you know, security, blockchain, autonomy, all sorts of different stuff. And so I think, like, we just need to keep making our product better over the next year and, you know,

17:17>> not grow our team a huge amount. So really just start to kind of lead into that, hopefully, continuing 30% month over month growth.

Nathan Latka

17:23You didn't use the word revenue in that answer. So do you think you can raise a competitive series b without focusing on revenue as long as you double triple the user base?

Andrew Milich

17:31>> Yeah. It's a great question. So I think we more we wanna do much more than double or triple. Also, by the way, of the kind of 14,000,000 we raised, like, more than two thirds is still unspent, so we're we're trying to be cautious on that.

Nathan Latka

17:42But just to be clear, like, had about 10,000,000 in the bank still.

Andrew Milich

17:44>> Exactly. So we also definitely want the revenue to kinda match that 30% month over month growth, but the kind of most important thing is, like, we just cannot we'll we'll never generate significant revenue if we don't reach millions of users. And so the most important thing will be reaching millions millions of users.

Nathan Latka

18:00Mhmm. Mhmm. Why do you say that? I mean, I mean, now you could see a playbook here where this is it becomes an enterprise focused tool, very encrypted, very secure, and it becomes,

Andrew Milich

18:09>> like, a You know what I mean?

Nathan Latka

18:10I mean, it can do fifty, hundred million.

Andrew Milich

18:12>> That's a great point. That's a great point. I think we also wanna leave that option open. And so I don't think we need to kind of double our burn in the next six months too.

Nathan Latka

18:20Fair. Fair. Fair. Okay. And most what I'm seeing today in series a is your great founders are selling between maybe 10 to 15% of the business. Were you sort of in that same range?

Andrew Milich

18:27>> Yeah. Exactly.

Nathan Latka

18:28Okay. So you broke a $100,000,000 valuation then on the last raise?

Andrew Milich

18:32>> We're we're not revealing that much, but it was between 10 I'll give you that. That's a yes. Yeah. I I I couldn't say. I it really might not be, but it was between 10 and 15% dilution.

Nathan Latka

18:43Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. Well, I mean, people can do them. You you give us all the numbers we need to do the math. Right? 10 to 15% Yeah.

Andrew Milich

18:49>> You'll you'll come up you'll come up with a, you know, a comparable range.

Team Size and Remote Structure

Nathan Latka

18:52Yeah. You could you could argue, you know, nine ninety pre, you know, 99 99999 post something like that. Who But anyways, congrats on getting that done. Talk to me more about the team. How many how many folks are on the team today full time?

Andrew Milich

19:04>> Yeah. So we're about fifteen, fifteen to 20, all over the world. Bunch in the Bay Area. Some in New York, some in France, some in Israel, some in, Hungary and Egypt and, you know, the rest of the world. One in Taiwan.

19:15>> 15 full time.

Nathan Latka

19:16That's great. So how

Andrew Milich

19:17>> I guess, you this is

Nathan Latka

19:19a you wouldn't be able to raise what you're raising unless your MAU, your DAU, your seven day, all that was very, very healthy. Right? So this is very much like a product led growth function here. Right? How are you how are users finding you? I understand when one user finds you, how you expand in the team. How does that first user find you?

How Users Find Skiff: Community and Events

Andrew Milich

19:33>> So, honestly, we, product led growth, I think, is very difficult and also very time consuming as in, like, you will not see thousands of users immediately signing up. Like, the whole point of, like, compounding growth is, you know, it'll look flat, and then you look back and it looks flat, you look forward and it looks, you know, vertical in the whole, you know, like, compounding exponential growth. So, honestly, we just grinded a lot of privacy communities

19:55>> that we could. And, like, many of us are just members of those communities, either, like, you know, security conferences or Slack communities on privacy or r/privacy.

Nathan Latka

20:03Name a couple of those? Like, the conference name, the Slack group name?

Andrew Milich

20:05>> Yeah. Absolutely. So, like, security conferences, like, DEF CON, you know, LocoMocoSec is one we're working with right now, you know, all the Ethereum conferences, DevConnect, NFT New York, know, NFT Miami, all of those. You know? A lot of crypto people are also very kind of interested in privacy. Like, we've been on all the Twitter profiles that are, like, pseudonymous NFT people. Many of those people also really believe in privacy and owning their own data. So those conferences,

20:30>> like r/privacy, r/privacy tools, lots of subreddits on this, lots of Telegram and Discord channels on privacy and privacy tools, on, you know, just really getting into the communities like that. And many of them gave us really critical feedback as well. Like, rewrite your privacy policy. You know? Look at this product security model, etcetera. And so I think in this product led growth, it was, like, a lot of tuning in the first eight

20:52>> months to kind of get ideological clarity from these people, and now it's kind of picked up a lot in more sustainable growth.

Privacy, Crypto, and the DOJ Question

Nathan Latka

20:59Mhmm. So Department of Justice calls you ten years from now. You're a billion dollar company. They say one of your pseudonymous Twitter users, we've it's decided they're hiding money in Puerto Rico, and we need access to their private Skiff thing. Do you open up a backdoor for the Department of Justice or no?

Andrew Milich

21:12>> That's a great question. I think definitely not, and there's no legal precedent that we would do that.

21:18>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

21:19I just put it to you. Right? That's the question.

Andrew Milich

21:22>> Well, that said, we also you know, in a more decentralized platform, it'd be like, there's no way you could get some person to just release their wallet private key or something. And worst case, you know, they may get rid of it. So I think that's all the, you know, the awesome crossover between privacy and crypto here. Like, at a bare minimum, every crypto wallet is a private key, and so you could do all sorts of things

21:40>> with that private key, like communicating and sending messages and sending documents and collaborating.

Nathan Latka

21:45Yep. Yep. Very cool. Okay. Before we wrap up, do you think you can hit $3,000,000 in terms of run rate this year?

Andrew Milich

21:50>> I have no idea. I I look. I just pray. I never speculate about the future. I'll only, you know, look at the past.

Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

21:57Alright. Let's wrap up here with the Famous Five. Number one, favorite book.

22:07Or last one you read might be a better question.

Andrew Milich

22:10>> Yeah. I read

22:15>> I honestly read really nonfiction focused books, and so I've been reading a book about why Germany chose to declare war on The United States in World War two. That was just reviewed in New York Times.

Nathan Latka

22:24Do you know the do you know the name of the book?

Andrew Milich

22:26>> Yeah. It's called Hitler's American Gamble.

22:28>> Hitler's American Gamble.

Nathan Latka

22:29Interesting. Okay. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Andrew Milich

22:37>> Good question.

22:45>> I mean, I don't wanna jump on the SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, you know, fan train or anti fan train,

22:55>> But I look at that, I think, also, just we have some great angel investor CEOs, like Alexander, the CEO of Scale, and, you know, I think he's been a great role model too too. Also, David, the CEO of Retool.

Nathan Latka

23:07How'd you get the former president of Stanford University, John Hennessy, on your on your ride? How much equity do you have to give him?

Andrew Milich

23:14>> Good question. Honestly, we just asked him if he'd be interested in you know, he's extremely technical and understood Skiff quite well, so we would take any check from him. Also, both Jason and I grinded as much as we can, both tried to give as much and get so much from being at Stanford. Could not be more grateful for that.

Nathan Latka

23:33That's awesome. Okay. So he he maybe small angel check-in that those that 4,000,000 you raised back in 2019. Okay.

Andrew Milich

23:38>> Exactly. Exactly.

Nathan Latka

23:39Number three, besides your own, what's your favorite online tool for building Skiff?

Andrew Milich

23:43>> Wow. Okay. I have a deep answer on that. I actually am really enjoying GitHub Copilot. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's basically this, like, GPT-3 based AI code writing solution that GitHub built. And I don't just use it for writing code. I actually use it for writing comments too. And it's not always perfect, but it just, like, saves a lot of the annoying, you know, bracketing, for loop, while loop,

24:04>> commenting stuff too.

Nathan Latka

24:05Yep. No. I've heard great things about Copilot. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Andrew Milich

24:11>> Probably six to seven.

Nathan Latka

24:13Okay. Fair. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Andrew Milich

24:16>> Single.

Nathan Latka

24:17Alright. No kids. And how old are you?

Andrew Milich

24:19>> 25.

Nathan Latka

24:2025. Last question.

Andrew Milich

24:21>> Something you wish you knew five years ago when you were 20.

24:26>> I think I had wish I had much more clarity that probably an amazing use of my time would just to continue becoming a better engineer.

Nathan Latka

24:35Guys, there you have it. Skiff.org. He was noodling on it back in 2019, raised $4,000,000 in terms of pre seed rounds, sold 10 to 15% of the business. Sorry, 10 to 20% of the business. Then raised another 10,000,000 in 2021 as his monthly active users started taking off again for effective I would call it he wouldn't call this, but I would call it a very heavy privacy focused version of Notion, which there's a massive market for.

24:55Sold on that Series A between sort of 10 to 15% of the business. Now 15 engineers all remote as they continue to scale again, focusing on those core MAU, DAU metrics, signing people up from security conferences, Reddit profiles, Telegram, and Discord channels. We'll see where it goes next. But Andrew, in the meantime, thanks for taking us to the top.

Andrew Milich

25:13>> My pleasure. Thank you so much.

Nathan Latka

25:16One 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 one

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