SmartCue Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

Introduction hey folks my guest today is robin singby he helps deliver perfect live sales demos via his software tool getsmartq.com robin you ready to take us to the top i am yes uh thanks for having me on the show nathan tell us more tell us more about the business so can you maybe give us a customer example who's paying you and what are they paying you for sure so so we have we have about six Currently serving 6 customers customers right now and uh we have delivered um smart cue to them that enables their sas sales teams deliver like the tagline says deliver the best product demos most of them are based in the us we have a couple in europe so early days but but we have we have uh pretty good traction and and we're getting some great feedback from the customers when did you launch the business uh well you know we've been we've been building it for the better part of this year and we've officially started selling it uh in september of 2021. so it's the last last month when did you write a first line of code uh i want to say we wrote it on january 26th of this year which happens to be you know uh it's a it's a it's a big uh holiday in india so so that's why i remember the date very cool and and when you who who'd you write it with did you write all the code you have co-founders uh no uh it's it's just me i have a team a dev team uh that's that's doing the coding for me i i do have a technical background but uh i i try not to mess with the code itself i'll look after the the sales side of the house how much have you paid the dev team so far to get the product where it is today uh so we've we've put in about 8k uh for our own money uh who's that smart kid well it's me and my ex-co-founder who's no longer with the company so okay you gotta tell me more about that this happens all the time but people rarely think about it so you gotta tell me what happened yeah well uh unfortunately i don't think i have a juicy story there you know i think we started it together and the plan was to do it together uh but my co-founder you know uh he was still working at a different company at the time they got acquired and he got a pretty decent retention offer so so we just had to part ways and make it well but how about all the details i mean how did you get the equity back uh well so so we we reestablished the new c core uh redid our paperwork uh and and in that instead of you know being an equal split uh we we kind of had had him take uh some share of the company for the time and effort that he put in and that that he will hopefully to continue to put in in terms of referrals and introductions and how much is that we're talking five percent or like 30 percent oh no no no no not that big uh it's it's in the single digits okay got it so more like five percent yeah okay um okay got it so okay so you got that taken care of you're now sort of running the show oh 95 of the business how are you bootstrapped outside of the 8k you've put in Bootstrapped yes just bootstrap all my own money okay very cool so you're you're all in now um talk to me about what customers pay you per month on average so we're we're charging 49 per user per month uh and you know a couple of these customers have actually signed annual contracts with us which is pretty good uh again validation of what we're doing uh and um a couple of them are still on trial so they you know they're still on the 30-day 45-day trial but but we're looking at pretty good engagement numbers and adoption numbers from them so we're very confident that they'll convert into paying customers so when you say six customers are those six seats six users no six companies and we i want to say 18 users right now okay got it so three on average three is team size yep you can say that okay got it so each one each company is paying you on average 150 bucks a month right now yes i see okay so you went from nothing Monthly recurring revenue sort of launched sales about a month ago to now six customers paying 150 a month for about 900 bucks a month in revenue right yes that is right there zero to one k and and in 30 days that's a book title right there hey you know i mean i'm glad i got on this uh podcast nathan you made me feel a lot better than i was before i got on this call about the 1k we have in the bank well i mean look the um i don't know why it's shocking but everyone starts at zero so yeah everyone went to their first dollar their first 500 their first grand it happens to everybody so yeah um so tell us how you did it where'd you get these six how'd you land these six customers uh it's it's really just uh you know my network uh over the years i've always been in b2b sas uh you know i've been part of multiple health tech startups uh all in the enterprise sas space uh and so you know i'd like to believe that i built up a lot of goodwill um and connections for my network and uh most of them actually are from my network we have two that were you know sort of cold um referrals you know i posted messages on slack groups and stuff like that i wanted to tell me a slap group you posted them yeah actually that's what i was going to say i think i posted a message in one of your um slack groups and i got a i got a a lead from there and october 21st thursday today i was actually on a call with that with the founder of that company who said yes let's uh let's let's uh pilot smart queue so when do i get my 20 affiliate commission i'm just kidding i'm kidding no that's great i love hearing that okay good so you're you're taking a target approach in sas groups um well well actually no maybe not sas groups what specific slack groups are you gonna target if you keep using that as a channel uh so so i'm trying to target uh sales enablement sas groups and trying to target a product marketing sas groups because uh you know it's it's interesting that this function of building maintaining creating and delivering demos resides in different functions in different companies depending on their stage depending on the industry so whether it's a sales enablement function that that that manages that process sometimes in a little more mature companies uh and in some other companies it's a it's a hybrid of product and product marketing teams that actually are responsible for doing it and then there are just sales teams which have like sales engineers or solution consultants uh that actually manage and create these demos so i'm trying to target you know these type of roles at sas companies and and trying to find whether slack channels or linkedin groups uh where i can actually you know spread the word and get some interest going i mean when you look at like t sheets and intuit acquired t sheets for 350 million bucks because t sheets ranked number one in the intuit app exchange there's a very clear model for growing a big sas company by dominating one app exchange it just strikes me as very obvious that what you should be doing only is dominating the number one spot in the zoom app exchange for sales tools why aren't you playing there uh you know we i think we will uh i think it's just we're still so early that we want to make sure that we have the product nailed down validated getting some real good user feedback uh you know building up the product based on user feedback and then going into one of these channels right distribution channel so whether it's the zoom app store or the salesforce app store or like you know going through apps but salesforce's salesforce will be too tough it's too mature of an app store you'll never get to the top ranking zoom is the opposite it's so brand new if you move quick you rank high you dominate that spot for the next 10 years and you build a 100 million dollar business pretty pretty quick i just understand why aren't you why isn't that like the number one priority i don't know i guess i guess it'll have to be we'll have to explore that you know right now the you know the whole focus really was was to try and land a few customers you know you'll have to cut me some slack and i've just been doing this for a month now i'm like okay what's the best way to do it well look i i could be wrong by the way i'm i'm just i'm being polarizing on purpose right i mean it just strikes me in this from what a very little i understand that's what i would be doing yeah yeah absolutely i think you're probably right uh i think i'm gonna look at it real quick because that's the next step right i mean in terms of what we're trying to do next is uh one get a technical co-founder to get a growth marketer on board uh and raise some money some funding along the way as well uh and then uh really focus on on on you know getting that that scale and traction quickly how much do you want to raise uh we're looking to raise about two million dollars why do you need two million dollars to build this uh we don't need two million dollars to build uh smart queue but i think uh we could use all the dollars that we can get to actually acquire customers but you don't know how to acquire customers but you don't have a customer you don't know how to spend money to acquire customers do you uh you know we have hypotheses uh that whether it is you know on seo whether it is actually doing you know a google linkedin ads we're actually trying to trying to spend money on video instead of just doing you know blogs and that kind of content actually doing video content so we have ideas on how we want to spend some of that money uh but i think that's insanity and you're gonna sell such a big chunk of your business if you raise two million bucks at this stage when the in my opinion the clear free no you don't even pay for it go to market is like dominating the zoom app exchange like why i just don't understand i mean you'd have to sell you probably raised two million on four pre maybe five cap right like a safe but it's so diluted why would you do that uh so so i i guess it's going to be a discussion but we're talking to a few investors and we're looking to raise two million on a on a 10 million uh valuation insanity that's so crazy well is it though is it though nathan because uh you know if you look at look at other companies in this space so if you talk about some of the bigger ones which is like mind tickles of the world world's chorus dot ai gong is a big one those are some of the more established names they're like almost touching billion dollars might take across the billion dollar valuation and then no no gongs it said one song's 7.5 billion chorus flash sold to zoom info recently where investors yeah 600 million yeah but that wasn't a good exit that was a shitty exit that was a terrible exit for for how much they raised sure right so like i don't understand why you use them as comps uh well and on on the other hand the smaller companies like you know if you talk about walnut.io that actually just raised a 15 million series a they raised uh they raised a six million uh seed round uh there's nevada there's demo flow so so the the space is heating up um and uh honestly the advice i got is uh from from quite a few people is that raise as much as you can so that you don't like you know you don't you don't go back to investors with your hat in your hand that you know you're out of money like six months um and then who are those who are those people that you're getting that advice from uh so these are these are some of my uh bosses from some of our previous companies that have exited um they've kind of you know run and exited multiple startups so so you know i mean i do value their opinion uh but you know again you know i'm going out and saying that this is how much i want to raise this much valuation just like you said that hey that's kind of crazy no one would give you this money no no i didn't say that actually i did not say no one will give you it i think you could get that easy i still think it's silly from a dilution perspective everyone thinks success is how much you raise i don't know yeah yeah no i and that's that's not my point right my point is not to raise so that i can show off but it is so that i i want to be able to build the business so that it's it sustains itself and uh you know i i don't get into that crazy cycle of trying to raise every six to twelve months and about robin the second the second if you raise two million bucks you can't just sit you you have to go spend that you increase your burn that is what becomes the crazy cycle a bootstrapper who only spends what his customers pay him or her is sustainable they will outlast the vc back competitor every time and they will probably win every time an example is called tracking metrics versus chorus right bootstrap 20 million bucks in arr very sustainable the raising bc is not a path to sustainability it's the opposite they want you to go to a billion or zero faster that's the opposite of sustainable okay in my opinion okay yeah i don't know that i think that's that's fair it's uh you know um i think it may also depend on the people you raise from like what is that bc's investment philosophy uh some of the folks i'm talking to i think i i think you know we're on the same same level robin find me a vc that doesn't want you to go to a billion or zero in the next two years find me a vc that says you know robin it's cool just build a nice sustainable business that flatlines at 20 million revenue but it's very profitable and you pay yourself dividends if you find a vc that says that yeah fair enough and and that is obviously not my vc pitch and and of course i want to grow the company but i i don't want to i don't want to go crazy right i want to do it my way um i i realize that i do need external funding uh this is why that's what i'm gonna understand why why have you why have you told yourself that story i think it's a false narrative you know i i i think i think that there is some merit in what you're saying and i think i will go back and evaluate you know what you're saying uh if that fits into inter how i'm thinking of of running the business and where i see myself in in the next 12 to 18 months but i think over the past 10 months since we've been building the business uh this approach of raising this sort of money and this sort of valuation seemed to sit well um with me you know what's going to suck you know it's really going to suck you're going to raise 2 million out of 10 free yeah fine whatever your buddies that you you take your buddy your old bosses money whatever great great for you then you're gonna keep growing revenue and you're gonna get a six million dollar acquisition offer and you still own seventy percent of the business you'd love to take that deal because it makes you rich very quick uh right it gets blocked you can't do that because you have to sell for at least a couple times the valuation that the folks just put money in at so now you're stuck on this like mouse trap where it's like ip or bust your optionality is drastically decreased right well but but i mean wouldn't i actually be in a good good space if something like that happened nathan like you know all things considered you know i'm trying to build something new it's risky uh it looks like i've done well enough where someone is offering me a good chunk of money that you know it's like okay you've built something really valuable now of course there's the difference in valuations like i'll give you six versus you know you're valued at ten uh you know sure there may be some cardboard but but for me i'm like oh okay so you know my idea was cool enough where people want to actually give me money for it now i just make you feel good does that make you feel good deep down and making you it gives you gives you light and bubbly inside that that someone will pay me money for a reporter no they're not getting you they're not paying you for your troll tools they're they're they're they're signing you up for a track that is billion or nothing uh in the next two years on a vc track where you're raising every 12 months otherwise risking a down round you know happiness levels are harder to manage all sorts of stuff and they're not they're not using your product are they the vcs yeah obviously not but i don't know i mean if i if i get into the right vcs you know get introduced to the right uh you know right pipeline of customers um you know have that cohort get that sure yes yes network cohort customers of course yes all sounds great i mean look by the way yeah and if they put me on uh if they put me on a billion dollar track you know billionaire bus bust i think it's still okay as a first time founder solo founder now uh you know if i'm put on that track and and you know what are the odds on day one right like 90 percent of going bust and like i don't know 95 going bust and five percent of going to a billion that's okay because one i've hedged my bets right which i don't know what what do you see money i'm sorry what about what is wrong what about the percentage that is you grow to a three million or five million dollar business that you own 95 percent of and you're making personally 2 million bucks a year why can't that be a percentage of the outcome uh i don't know you've got a 60 shot of doing that you've got the largest everyone listening right now if you're starting out you've got the largest percent shot at bootstrapping to a million to two to three to five and building a beautiful life right that is your big that is like the least risky way to sort of build a great company the second you raise vc the odds that you go to zero are much higher but also you slightly increase the odds that you go up to you know be one of the one out of you know a thousand billion dollar unicorns yeah yeah anyways we can debate this all day long i'm being a little bit he's just here to just push it right but but ultimately it's obviously your decision and you'll make you'll make the right one for you at this time so this is good tell me more about the product so it looks like what i'm getting is basically a pop-up on zoom calls to prompt me to say the right things in like my sales pitch is that sort of the use case right now yeah so i think you nailed it like if you want to simplify what smart queue does is think of it as a teleprompter for your sales team when they're on these zoom calls so depending on where they are it'll contextually sort of cue you up tell you what to say uh depending on your industry use case like you know the problem with sales demos or product demos today is that they suck because they're very vanilla very cookie cutter and not always personalized right um and i would love by the way if that was a header on your website the the zoom teleprompter for sales people and ideally add a niche on the end for sales people and healthcare yeah but you communicate that i got it instantly the second i scrolled down like it makes perfect sense so yeah i'm writing it down because i'm like oh yeah i should probably put it on my website well that's right your idea not mine you said it yeah um okay cool but yeah that's what it is yeah and and how are you so moving forward you're targeting slack groups you're testing some other stuff six customers today are you higher what's the team size right now how many people uh you're me right now how much do you pay the dev team per month uh like i said you know put in 8k and we're putting in about a thousand dollars a month okay and where are they based argentina krakow somewhere else actually in india you're based in bangalore bangalore interesting bangalore four people very cool are you going through like cody toss or a firm like that are you you know these people directly no you know i i know these folks yeah that's very cool all right let's wrap up the famous five number one robin favorite business book uh zero to one uh by by peter thiel number two ceo you're following or studying uh this guy called vijay shakur sharma of okay number three what's your favorite online tool for building a business uh louis yeah that's good one number four how many hours of sleep to get every night do you want an average yes i want to say like five all right not bad and what's your situation married single kids married nine years no kids oh wow okay and how old are you 36 36 last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. it that that it's it's easy enough to start a business and it's okay to fail guys there you have it get smart queue launched here in 2021 just started pricing in september so called a month two months ago they went from nothing to a thousand dollars a month in revenue and under thought 45 days now looking to scale considering raising 2 million bucks at a 10 million valuation we'll see what happens there but he's basically put an 8k to get the mvp built he owns over 95 of the business and leverages a dev team in bangalore for people he pays 1k per month to keep pushing the product forward again teleprompter for sales people on zoom we'll see what happens next rob and thanks for taking us to the top thank you so much nathan for having me one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 p.m central it's called shark tank for sas 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 1 pm central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m 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 sas world whether it's an acquisition a big fundraise a big sale a big profitability statement or something 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 sas 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 for that at nathan lacka dot com forward slash slack in the meantime i'm hanging out with you here on youtube i'll be in the comments for the next 30 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 got to push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that i appreciate your guys's support all right i'll be in the comments see ya