StartADAM revenue, CEO Adam Stone, team size, customer count, churn, and more in 2023.

startadam.com they want you to install their application so that your Trail can talk to your jira board or your truck and talk to your slack hoop or your slack group can talk to your Microsoft teams group if your team is split up once they own that they'll then launch Services behind it so you can say hey in the Trello board at start atom we need a animated graphic designed for our product hunt launch and he will jump in and do that that's his bread and butter because he comes from speed Lancer where he raised one point he caught one million bucks for it to build that starting in 2015 pivoting now here this year into startadom.com to build distribution first and then go back to the marketplace model we will see what happens hey folks my guest today is Adam Stone he's a Serial entrepreneur in Forbes 30 under 30 list maker with experience in e-commerce Marketplace and SAS having found its speed lancery spun up the software that was built into a standalone SAS called start atom it's uh he's automating data automating management and start Adam unifies communication and project management tools helping teams align faster and get more done quicker Adam you ready to take it to the top let's do it all right I guess first question you spun this out of speed Lancer so let's start there what was speed Lancer and what year did you spin it out speed lenses started in 2015 basically my my business Endeavors started when I was 11 or 12 but I started in uh e-commerce when I was 14. and I couldn't hire people sitting next to me in high school and then universities so um I ended up being a big user of odesk and Elance at the time which merged to become upwork and so I decided to start my own freelancing Marketplace called speed Lancer and in 2015 there was no verticalized freelancing marketplaces we were probably the first one after Fiverr I guess if you count them as verticalized but we tried to eliminate the firing picking choosing recruiting process of Freelancers um we built a lot of Technology around that we raised a little bit of money but really VCS didn't really believe in us how much uh it was less than a million dollars over a number of years um a few different rounds but we did build amazing technology that we have a paid and pending on and stuff and so that led into star Adam because kovid led to a proliferation of freelancing marketplaces I don't know about you but it seems to me like every second business hobby business is a freelancing platform of some sort connecting people to companies now um and uh I guess I saw that Trend start to shift and so we've decided to bring our technology out for other uh agencies and marketplaces and and teams in general so start Adam uh is a communication project management app without an app we connect existing tools that you use together so for example you can create cross-platform communication groups between slack Microsoft teams uh WhatsApp telegram Discord SMS you could be chatting with a bunch of people clients whoever you like you're accounted through any tools we also extend that with Integrations to existing tools to bring them into the conversation so like very cool give us a sense of uh give a sense of Economics here right so it sounds like a great product what are companies paying on average to use the technology per month so we actually just launched like two weeks ago we're working at a pricing model right now um so happy to talk about a bit of the thoughts that's going into that but we have an API and then a sort of Standalone product what do you think you're going to launch in terms of what your pricing structure is you've got a pricing page on the website yeah we were looking at user-based pricing and now I think we're looking at um we want to incentivize all users in the company to use it so we're not so much looking at user-based pricing now it's more communication-based pricing are we going to charge per group per channel that we create sort of thing um and so it'll be like affordable but hopefully it'll scale up nicely as well for us what's on what happened with speed Lancer did you shut it down or someone else bought it or who's running that it's operating but to be honest we're winding it down as we're focusing on the SAS so it's the same entity and we actually raised around four star Adam and our new investors are very supportive of our vision um and so how much how much did you raise in that round uh we actually haven't announced it but happy to announce it here we're ready to go one point one seven five I think it was in the last one okay and you just CL like you just closed the money's hit you just closed it this week no the money we closed in April last year and we just watched the um we launched the product a couple of weeks ago on product hunt um it was a big build because we have a lot of Integrations that need to be developed with basically underlying Tech infrastructure that's built to scale my CTO is an AI Professor retired AI Professor from Brazil he built out the banking infrastructure in Brazil in the 1980s it's still used today um so our infrastructure is built to scale and so that was a very it was a long-winded process but I guess that's our emotional way oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for evaluation this year now the secret valuation is there's many different ways to value a SAS business so the reason you're going to see three or four different evaluations inside of your founder path dashboard this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SAS company you're going to get a different valuation a VC is going to pay a different valuation private Equity Firm is different if you're going to 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 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 not built off random data again you guys hear these interviews on YouTube all these datas are built from real-time valuation data points Founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raise they sold 22 percent of their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to 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 going out right now and you're raising your seed round well 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 data set of SAS valuation than what you can get now inside of founder path 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 if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash 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 all right let's jump back into the interview so you raised a million between 2015 and today you raised a million bucks for Speed Lancer and then you communicate to the board this isn't working we're going to do something new they said Adam we love your vision here's another 1.175 million so you raised about you call it 2.1 million to date across the combined entities yeah 1.9 or something like that yeah but it was actually different investors so our existing investors some of them followed on but yeah we had a different lead I see and then I guess when you did the original round in speed Lancer most folks even back in the day were selling you know 15 20 of the business in the pre-seed round is that sort of where you were uh we did pretty well um I'm not going to talk like actual valuations but if you talk about like our team being you know led by an AI Professor for example uh that was a big a big deal I think the fact that our journey has taken so long was actually kind of a benefit because the investors knew and trusted that we knew the problem set inside and out and they really just believed in US it also the timing is was everything right so if you look at April last year um I'm not talking about the April round I'm talking on the round before that before you even had Adam before that um yeah I'd say that was accurate yeah okay you sold about 15 20 yeah I mean look most folks I mean you're five six seven years and eight years in now at this point into the combined sort of entity so um hopefully we'll get a better evaluation you know obviously give up less less percent of the company I guess this begs the question though why not just shut down speed Lancer and start from scratch at the clean cap table I love these questions because they're not too relevant to like like the majority I found is listening wouldn't have to consider that question right so I love that you're asking it because it's relevant to people who are in this similar position but yeah to answer the question uh we did it to look after our investors the one so we we had these previous investors who owned us on an eight-year seven or eight year Journey with us right and backed us every step of the way um and so I it was important to me that their notes actually converted into something and our new investors were quite supportive of that the second thing is although we're building it SAS now our long-term vision is that we reintegrate Services into it so once we own the communication between say that you and me if we're communicating we don't have to do that by email anymore we could do it from your WhatsApp to my slack account for example what if in that channel you can say hey I actually like let's say we're collaborating together and you want a header graphic made for the podcast you could go at speed Lancer within the channel and say uh I need a header graphic made so I want to reintegrate Services down the line when we own the marketing distribution do you think that's a big enough value add to get people to switch I mean look the only what I just heard you say is like the friction I have when I use freelancer upwork or whatever is I've got to go post the job what you're saying is you never have to leave your communication tools you just tag speed Lancer and we know what the job is automatically and and I guess my question is do you dance a big enough is that a big enough value add to get people to stop you know using the upwork or the freelancer yeah I think if you own the distribution Channel and you plug in directly where it matters I do think so if you're the most convenient way to get work done then yes so for example we actually already speed lens already plugs into Trello Now using cell Adam and so you can set up a Trello board and send tasks the speed lines up from Trello and we're the first Marketplace to do that so I think yeah your ability though to get stuff done quickly in the marketplace is obviously very very dependent on how you recruit your folks doing the jobs and then how you create the businesses asking for the job so I guess talk about that Supply demand for a second how many folks in the past 30 days did at least you know a worker did at least one job via speed Lancer or start Adam yeah so I can talk to like when we were fully ramped up with speed Lancer right now we're in the ramping down stage so I think it's going to look like this for Speed Lancer like an arc where speed Lancer will come back once we own the distribution Channel because I don't really want to be paying for acquisition right now in such a it's a it's a red uh it's a red ocean right now in terms of freelancing platforms so I'm staying out of it we're not spending any money okay so you're avoiding the marketplace Risk by saying let me just get B2B SAS companies to stick Us in between their communication channels between slack and Microsoft teams once I own that then I'll go spin back up the marketplace it'll be easier and a bunch of other what we call superpowers right so you'll be able to do time tracking from within the communication you could maybe talk to something like chat GPT from within the channel so understood but but how do you so you're what you're saying is you're betting on your mouse Edge your your wedge right now is getting folks to use this communication tool but like how do you beat established firms that spend much more r d like click up Asana uh I mean they're jira I mean there's so many tools like this already how do you win yeah it's funny that's actually going in Our Deck right now and as our investors said it was it was very um very interesting of them it's a massive Market but it doesn't seem to be when it takes all so I'm just going to say it's like a trillion dollar industry like even Salesforce itself is 200 and 200 billion dollar market cap or whatever they are you can buy them all together you're you're edging on them multiple hundred billion dollar industry between CRM project management tools and other sasers what we do is sort of glue them together not necessarily in a zapier way but we do it through communication so how do we beat other tools where we're going to work with them so we're already getting leads from the Trello app store for example we're launching on the jira app how many how many leads did you get from the troll App Store last month um we've had like 700 or more today over the last couple of months wow okay and that's from that's actually in schools just started yeah yeah that's from one app store right so we're launching on Microsoft teams slack jira um and Trello so we're hoping that that's actually going to be a good distribution strategy for us SEO is also very good for us um which is great because my background happens to be in SEO so it's very handy um but yeah we want to work with other platforms and help them bring in their tools into the conversation Adam let's talk about the distribution though because there's people listening right now going I want to rank really high on Trello I want 700 leads per month from Trello right you're listed under the power up section of Trello Trello from what I can tell doesn't use anything like number of reviews of all that to decide who they show first second third so I'm going to start on profile right now you have great animations by the way but how do people find how do people find the app in the trail app store which is very busy yeah I think every app store is going to be different so we're learning and I'm happy to share more as we learn but what I do know about Trello in particular is there's a randomization component which to me is really nice because it means that they give everyone the opportunity so if you click on the communication uh category I think you said in two categories they give you two yeah which is communication and collaboration yeah there you go so if you click on communication collaboration and you click on it every time you'll see it's a different rotation yeah so what that means is we can actually predict a steady volume of traffic and insults from that interesting interesting okay got it so you're getting leads from Trello right now that's working nicely sorry what's the next app exchange you want to go to we're going to be on Jiro hopefully in the next couple of weeks we just revamping on Trello app to fix a bunch of onboarding issues um so hopefully that we'll see those changes in our analytics start to appear in terms of usage and activation um so jira is coming next and then slack we're just waiting for them to approve us and then Microsoft teams so what's let's talk about I mean up into the room is like okay why haven't you asked anyone to pay yet and why isn't at least one person paying it what's taking so long we only just set up analytics last week so we set up uh with a platform called amplitude so we're now able to see everything happening within our SAS so before that I felt like we were sort of walking around blind and I think now we can start to charge people we are working at a pricing model but here's a question here's the question that's going through our mind right if we charge per Channel we have an innate viral coefficient because if I want to use it and I want you to use it to communicate with me then I've onboarded a new user then let's say there's a 10 chance you're going to create your own channel if you create your if you if you take that 10 chance and invite someone else then we've created a two to one viral coefficient or maybe you've invited two people so do whatever you don't want to subscribe like this is a massive mistake Founders make those you don't want to charge for what's driving your viral coefficient it's why zapier doesn't charge by number like they charge by number of zaps for a reason not by number of things you've connected yeah so this is what we're trying to think about I don't I don't we're right in the process of modeling this out so it's it's a really great question I don't want to disincentivize that we might give a certain number of channels away for free but actually if they're all viral like we don't want to charge for that so how are we going to charge and do we have enough features like we definitely want to charge for our Trello and jira apps so we can charge for extensions but maybe the communication piece is our wedge and and I guess how do you know right now how many users love your platform how many like I've asked you today how many active users even if they're free how many active users do you have how would you measure that right now we're looking at insoles and distribution and we're working on usage so we just launched right we saw that the other the other day we had 17 people try to create a channel and then abandon the process so that's what I want to fix how many people how many installs today uh we get about 10 installs a day you know like total installs right now and start Adam uh including the Trello app we would have 700 or 800 or 900. okay and so how do you know like if you're gonna charge you can only charge put pricing in front of 10 people how do you sort that 800 to figure out which 10 to show pricing to first so right now we're trying to calculate who our power users are rather how to define the power users so we've got that in amplitude we've got a little uh metric set up called Power users and we can obviously change what we Define as that but those are the ones that we're trying to Define as billable users in theory and then we'll reach out to them and we'll say hey oh no but I want to know what the actual that's what I'm asking I wonder what the actual thing is right what is how do you know who a power user is it could be uh let's say let's say they have more than three active channels then I would call that a billable user or a power user maybe they're two I think they're two different concepts a power user is I think people have sent more than three messages in the last few days so they're actually using us and obviously the bar will get higher and higher as we get more users yeah I mean a lot of these premium tools the way they reversing your pricing is they say we only want to charge five percent of our base and we want only if we need to find the top five percent then of the power users based off number of contacts number of channels whatever and then that's how they figure out who to show pricing to that's diverse engineering so and see what they're willing to say right so yeah when you're in that process now we're certainly rooting for you we appreciate you coming on pre-launch we hope you come back on in a year give us an update but in the meantime let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite book oh favorite book it's going to be some psychology book I don't I don't know which one okay number two number two is there a CEO you're following or studying it's always like Elon Musk I I have to say yeah number three what's your favorite online tool for building start Adam my favorite SAS historically was always help Scout right now I'd have to say maybe amplitude number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night I get eight okay and situation married single kids uh I'm I'm partnered but not married I have a dog puppy all right and how old are you I'm 28 28 last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. it's a marathon not a Sprint guys there you have it start adam.com they want you to install their application so that your Trello can talk to your jira board or your truck and talk to your slack group or your slack group can talk to your Microsoft teams group if your team is split up once they own that they'll then launch Services behind it so you can say hey in the Trello board at start Adam we need a animated graphic designed for our product hunt launch and he will jump in and do that that's his bread and butter because he comes from speed Lancer where he raised one point he caught one million bucks for it to build that starting in 2015 pivoting now here this year into startadom.com to build distribution first and then go back to the marketplace model we will see what happens Adam thanks for taking us to the top yeah one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm 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 our poo 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 p.m 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 their 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 nathanlacka.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