How Softr Reached $2.2M in Seed Funding and 10K+ Users with a No-Code Airtable Platform (Interview with CEO Mariam Hakobyan)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Hello everyone, my guest today is Mariam Hakobyan. She is the founder of a company called softr.io, an easy to use no code platform for building powerful applications on Airtable in ten minutes. No learning curve, no design skills required. Mariam, you ready to take us to top?

Mariam Hakobyan

00:14>> Yeah, thanks a lot Nathan. Thanks a lot for the invite.

Origins: From Software Engineering to No-Code

Nathan Latka

00:16You bet. So this is a very sort of niche thing, there is no code, there is Airtable, were you doing sort of Airtable consulting or something before this? How did you get into it?

Mariam Hakobyan

00:25>> No, we weren't. In fact, we actually didn't start from Airtable. So originally both of the co founders have been software engineers ourselves, so we have been just building software products for more than ten years and seen so much repetition in every other company, in every other application we built. And we kind of thought, why not have a platform where everything is offered as building blocks and then companies and individuals on top build only what's unique to

00:49>> their business. That's how we kind of started Softr in the first version We imagined for it to be really a full stack application builder and having the database just inside Softr. But over time, once we started talking to customers, understanding their needs, we just realized there is huge demand on having some kind of front end for the Airtable. So there is lots of people already using Airtable for their operations, for their daily use, daily life even.

01:17>> Yeah, that's where we started. So it's just one back end for us, it's the way we started, but for sure we are going to have other back ends like Google Sheets, Notion potentially, external APIs, and also our own collections. But Airtable is really just one first step for us.

Current Users and Paying Customers

Nathan Latka

01:34And how many customers do you have today?

Mariam Hakobyan

01:37>> Well, we have more than 10 k users using the platform actively and several 100 paying customers. Yep, that's where we stand currently.

Launch Story: August 2020 and Product Hunt

Nathan Latka

01:47That's right. And taking back to day one, when did you launch the company?

Mariam Hakobyan

01:50>> We launched actually end of August. So it's almost like six, seven months with the product is out there. And the first version even wasn't a web app builder. It was just a static website builder. And that was kind of our first MVP. We launched it on Product Hunt. We became number one product of the day. And, however, we have

Nathan Latka

02:08been This building the product was in 2020.

Mariam Hakobyan

02:11>> Yeah. 2020, August 25. So, yeah. End of end of August. And prior to that, we have been building the product for about one and a half years, just bootstrapping and also kind of not working alongside our full time jobs.

Product Hunt Results: Visitors and Sign-ups

Nathan Latka

02:24When you did the product launch, what happened? How many used the website? How many new sign ups?

Mariam Hakobyan

02:30>> Yeah. So we got around 12 k visitors. Have written a blog post about that, if I remember the numbers. And out of those, I think we got around 10 paying customers excluding us being on the paid plan. But yeah, around 10 customers. That wasn't that much. It

Nathan Latka

02:47was How many new sign ups? How many new sign ups?

Mariam Hakobyan

02:50>> Several hundreds.

Pricing Model and Recent Changes

Nathan Latka

02:51Okay. Got it. So 10 new paid. And what are paying customers paying you on average to use technology?

Mariam Hakobyan

02:58>> Yeah, so on average it's around right now it's €79 per month monthly plan or €65 per year. So actually, have just recently, it's almost a month that we have changed the pricing. Prior to that, it was a bit different pricing, bit lower end, on the lower end, but it was also the first version of the product. So now we kind of have identified more concrete customer types and really customer target groups. And based on their needs,

03:26>> have changed also our pricing model.

Nathan Latka

03:28And so what last month, what MRR did you guys hit?

Mariam Hakobyan

03:33>> So let me not mention specifically the numbers, but it's more than several thousands.

Nathan Latka

03:40Let's

Mariam Hakobyan

03:40>> You put it this

Nathan Latka

03:42said several 100 customers, 300, and you said $79 price point. Can I multiply those together? That would be about $23,000 a month in revenue.

Mariam Hakobyan

03:50>> Approximately.

Nathan Latka

03:51Okay. Do you think you can break 100,000 this year?

Mariam Hakobyan

03:55>> That's the aim. Yes.

Growth Channels: Twitter, YouTube, and SEO

Nathan Latka

03:57How will you do that? Where are you getting new customers today?

Mariam Hakobyan

04:00>> Well, so far our main like all of this growth has been really organic through word-of-mouth and through people sharing with their own community. So usually what happens if you search for Softr in Twitter, will see what people talk about Softr. And usually, We have really huge community which are really engaged and they build something they share with their own communities, talk about Softr. So, so far, most of the growth has been through these kind of social

04:26>> and organic channels. We are also now

Nathan Latka

04:28starting Can you be specific? Can you name one or two of these Facebook groups or Slack groups?

Mariam Hakobyan

04:32>> Yeah, mainly Twitter. Now, Twitter has been the biggest audience group for us. The biggest audience has come from there, but right now, as we expand it towards more SMB space as well, we also have lots of customers coming from YouTube. People looking for different ways to build something with Airtable. And, yeah, going forward, we also are spending very much rooting towards content SEO. This is something we started. And more organic, so we are in favor of

05:00>> really trying more the organic way of growth. Of course, we are gonna experiment with ads, etcetera, and different ways of also influencer marketing and other channels. But really, the organic growth, like long term. It's it's a product led growth type of company and this is this is really at the core of the company.

Seed Round: $2.2M Priced Equity Round

Nathan Latka

05:18Now have you guys bootstrapped this today or did you raise capital?

Mariam Hakobyan

05:21>> Yeah. We just recently like, recently in January, we raised the first first round, our seed round. But before that, it has been all bootstrapped and the I don't think we already have. Sorry. Sorry.

Nathan Latka

05:31Can you repeat that? Did you raise?

Mariam Hakobyan

05:33>> $2,200,000.

Nathan Latka

05:35Okay. And why do you need $2,200,000 to build this? Why sell a big chunk of your company?

Mariam Hakobyan

05:41>> Yeah. It's a great question. So we have been, at some point, we have been thinking whether we should raise or not. But as you might know, no code space is really booming, right? There's lots of competitors coming up. Space is really huge and it's moving, growing at an exponential pace. So first of all, the product itself is a really complex product. In order to really build something meaningful so you can cover as many use cases as

06:06>> possible, you really have to have a team. And just technically and effort wise, it's really something that we realized if we just bootstrap, it's gonna be almost impossible to also outcompete the competition. And that is the main reason we decided to go the VC road.

Nathan Latka

06:22Got it. When you guys raised, was that a priced equity round or a safe? A traditional safe?

Mariam Hakobyan

06:27>> It's a priced equity round.

Nathan Latka

06:29You did decide to price it. Why did you decide to price it instead of doing a safe?

Mariam Hakobyan

06:33>> Well, at the time we already kind of were at the stage of similar some other companies that we knew. Like, we were able to roughly the company and come up with like, think where do we see ourselves, what valuation we potentially see for ourselves. And we just decided to go that route rather than postponing it. Because long term I think that's almost similar in the end in terms of result.

Nathan Latka

07:00And so what did you choose to value the company at?

Mariam Hakobyan

07:03>> I I can't mention the name numbers specifically, but yeah, it was it's it's something that I mean, just in comparison, there were some other companies that were in the market in the similar space for three years, like two, three years. They haven't even launched publicly but within just six months we managed to reach already several k revenues and have quite already several thousands of users. So we were at a good point comparably with even some other

07:32>> like stage companies who had raised money previously. So that kind of felt for us that, yeah, it would be a fair kind of valuation and fair price point for us.

Nathan Latka

07:42I won't push harder here, but can you give us a range? Is it above or below 10,000,000?

Mariam Hakobyan

07:48>> Approximately close to that.

Team Composition and Hiring Plans

Nathan Latka

07:50Right around. Okay. Fair enough. Walk me through your team. Who's building this with you?

Mariam Hakobyan

07:55>> So it's two co founders. Both of us are technical and product from a technical and product background. We have engineering team. It's nine people, just nine people so far. Most of most of them engineers, two co founders and UX person. And now hiring also for some more people.

Nathan Latka

08:11But no sales people?

Mariam Hakobyan

08:13>> No. No. It's not like no. I I guess in the next probably one year for sure. In the next years, I'm definitely thinking that there might there probably won't be sales team unless we start working heavily with enterprises. But so far, again, it's through growth and marketing channels. And it's heavily product led growth really. Yeah. More more from the content side, from social and all of the other aspects other than sales.

Churn Rate and Retention Strategy

Nathan Latka

08:38Churn is really critical in this kind of business. People will test it. They'll do one Airtable sort of mock up on the front end and then they'll leave. Right? What is your churn rate today and how do keep it low?

Mariam Hakobyan

08:47>> Yeah, so the churn rate has been fluctuating. So it's changing from month to month to be honest. It's something around 5% which is kind of typical to if you look at also similar companies. However, this is something still work in progress. We're very early, we still are figuring out typical customer target group for us. And also there are so many holes still in the product and in the onboarding even we just didn't have any onboarding so

09:14>> far. We are now only working on that. So we kind of, our goal was really to put out something in the market, even the MVP as soon as possible to get feedback, to get customers using it and paying it. And then really evaluate and validate for us what's the value like does this work really? Does this stick? And then really kind of deep dive and continue building the product.

Customer Acquisition Cost and Paid Ad Plans

Nathan Latka

09:36Got it. And I imagine as part of that $2,200,000 raise, you said things in your deck like here's how I plan to spend the money to drive growth. So One of those obviously is to get new customers. So what do you think it's gonna cost you? You're fully loaded CAC to get a new $80 a month customer.

Mariam Hakobyan

09:50>> Yep. So so far, again, it has been just zero zero I'm not counting, of course, the manual work. But we do expect to spend some so I can't mention a concrete number. But basically, we are heavily relying on having an onboard having an

10:11>> growth through content and SEO, really organic growth, but also spending the money through ads as well acquiring some customers. So it is gonna be in the range that we sell the products for.

Nathan Latka

10:26Mariam, what are you comfortable spending to get an $80 a month customer?

Mariam Hakobyan

10:33>> Well, I mean, I have to be honest. We haven't tried any started any any marketing.

Nathan Latka

10:39Mary, no. I know that. I know that.

Mariam Hakobyan

10:41>> We we have to experiment. Right?

Nathan Latka

10:42I know. My question is because this is this will this will tell us how aggressive you plan to be. I know you don't have any historical data. What I'm asking is as a CEO, as a founder, you just raise money, you're trying to deploy it. What are you comfortable spending to get a new $80 a month customer? What would you spend? Well,

Mariam Hakobyan

10:58>> we are gonna start spending like 5 to 10 k a month on ads, I assume, like, and also on all the other channels to experiment and see what works. And once we find out something that works, then we're gonna scale that obviously.

Nathan Latka

11:11I know that. But okay, so my question is, what are you how aggressive are you willing to spend to get a new $80 a month customer? Are you comfortable spending a thousand dollars to get $80 a month customer? Do you only wanna spend $80 Okay. Get $80 a month customer?

Mariam Hakobyan

11:23>> I see what you mean. No. Obviously not. Like, we are not gonna like no. For sure not. So we do want to stay on a good rate that we are also, at some point, we are profitable as well. Even though that's not really the end goal, but like double or triple or that for the beginning. But then at some point we will

11:41>> be Double or able run triple what?

Nathan Latka

11:42The monthly price?

Mariam Hakobyan

11:44>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:45Got it. But at some point we want

11:47$240. A 150 to $240 to get $80 a month customers.

Mariam Hakobyan

11:49>> What you'd be comfortable spending?

11:52>> Well, probably in the beginning, but then at some point we want to bring it at the level that it's much much lower than the price they would pay for sure. So we want to have the ROI positive.

Nathan Latka

12:02The price that they would pay monthly or annually?

Mariam Hakobyan

12:05>> Monthly or annually, it's up to the customer.

Nathan Latka

12:08Well, no, but it's very different. You spending one year of ACV to acquire customers is very different than spending one month of contract value to get the customer?

Mariam Hakobyan

12:18>> Can you repeat the question please again?

Nathan Latka

12:20I'm just to get a sense of how you plan to scale and if that's via paid ads, I'm trying to understand how aggressive you're willing to be in this space. The keyword Airtable and Airtable tools is very competitive. It costs a lot of money to run CPC ads in Google for this keyword. So I'm just trying to get into your brain about your risk tolerance. Are you comfortable spending one year of ACV to get a customer

12:37upfront or do you wanna be have not a lot of risk and recover your CAC on day one when they pay for that first $80 a month?

Mariam Hakobyan

12:44>> No. Potentially taking the risk and bringing more customers upfront and recovering from that.

Co-Founder Equity Split

Nathan Latka

12:50Yeah. Really interesting. Well, we'll see what happens. It sounds like you're also expanding on Airtable, so you have other keywords you can go after as well, which would be nice. Yeah. Very cool. Okay. Great. We talked about churn, we talked about that, we talked about your team. Talk to me about the founding again, founders at the beginning, it's always difficult to have the equity conversation. How do you guys do that or did you split it fifty

13:07fifty?

Mariam Hakobyan

13:08>> Yeah. Exactly. So we always have from the beginning. We we do believe we are both contributing equal ways and we just have split the company equally.

Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

13:16I see. Very cool. Well, that note, Mariam, let's wrap up here with the Famous Five. Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Mariam Hakobyan

13:25>> Crossing the Chasm.

Nathan Latka

13:26The what?

Mariam Hakobyan

13:27>> Crossing the Chasm.

13:29>> Crossing the Chasm is a good one.

Nathan Latka

13:30Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Mariam Hakobyan

13:33>> Say again, sorry?

Nathan Latka

13:34Is there a CEO that you're following or studying?

Mariam Hakobyan

13:37>> Yeah.

13:40>> Well, there are many. There's not someone I specifically follow. Like there are many I mainly on Twitter.

Nathan Latka

13:46Do you wanna pick one or move on?

Mariam Hakobyan

13:49>> Yeah, let's move on.

Nathan Latka

13:50Okay, number three. What's your favorite online tool for building software?

Mariam Hakobyan

13:53>> For building software? I like

13:58>> Well, I like Miro a lot. We use that a lot.

Nathan Latka

14:03Can you spell it?

Mariam Hakobyan

14:03>> Miro and Airtable, I would say. Like Airtable, yeah, is what we use.

Nathan Latka

14:08Can you spell the tool?

Mariam Hakobyan

14:11>> Miro, m I r o.

Nathan Latka

14:16M I r o. Great. Okay. Cool. Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Mariam Hakobyan

14:21>> Four or five?

Nathan Latka

14:22That's not healthy.

Mariam Hakobyan

14:25>> Well, if you have kids, that's, that's usually becoming a norm.

Nathan Latka

14:29How many kids do you have?

Mariam Hakobyan

14:31>> Two.

Nathan Latka

14:31Two kids. Okay. And married? Yes. And Mariam, do you mind me asking how old you are?

Mariam Hakobyan

14:39>> Well, around 30.

Nathan Latka

14:41Okay. The reason I asked you is I want you to take us back to your 20 year old self. What's something that you wish that she knew?

Mariam Hakobyan

14:48>> Yeah. I guess if I were to advocate 20 year old myself, what I would do, I would probably just right away join startups and just experiment with different companies, build something on my own. I think I started to jump into that space much later. I would change that.

Nathan Latka

15:06Right. Softr.io, a tool to help you take your Airtable on a no code way, generate a website, and move into other industries as well. They raised $2,200,000 at around a $10,000,000 valuation to build this thing out. Team of nine, Mariam, the co-founder,, split the company fifty fifty. They've got over 300 ish customers, say 10,000 total users. They all pay about $80 a month, call it $10 to 20 grand a month right now in revenue. As they look

15:26to continue to scale, they'll start turning on paid ads, move into additional verticals, we'll see what happens. Mariam, thanks for taking us to the top.

Mariam Hakobyan

15:32>> Thank you, Nathan. Thanks a lot.

Nathan Latka

15:35One more thing before you go. We have

15:37a 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 central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go

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