How Tagove CEO Laduram Vishnoi grew to $780K revenue and 1.3K customers in 2017.

hello everyone my guest today is laruram vishnoy he is the ceo of tagovi he which is a which is a a interactive chat tool which we'll dive in here into a second but he loves to research in artificial intelligence machine learning chat bots nlp and neuro science ladaram are you ready to take us to the top yeah hi okay tell us about to govi what does the company do and what's your revenue model how do you make money okay so takovi is a live chat software uh with video chat remote core browsing and chatbot within customer websites and in their mobile apps so their customer they can talk with like video call and even the like agent can take over customer screen via our remote core browsing tools and help them in real time and what's your and what's the business model do people pay you monthly is it sas it's a sas subscription model um pay per month per agents as well okay what's the average kind of uh customer pay you per month would you say so 50 dollar per agent per month uh is is like average cost and per by by per customer is like 150 okay so it's usually three three seats per sign up yes yes that's correct yeah that's great and how many agents do you have now today using the platform so we have around 1300 agents oh great and can i multiply the 300 times 50 to get around the monthly recurring revenue you're doing about 65 000 a month that's correct yes that's great when did you launch the company so we launched in april okay so great this is amazing so you're brand new you've gone from nothing to 65 000 in mrr in a year this is fantastic tell me how you did it okay okay so uh after we launch it we heavily focus on digital marketing so seo content marketings and also like a lot of social medias and posting guests for guest content on like big uh big magazines as well so we focus like heavily on uh the digital marketing and we reach it here what was your most successful guest blog post which blog okay so we posted a lot of on forbes and uh forbes yes so forbes bring uh quite decent traffic to us interesting and how did you get the guest blog article on there are you a writer or you worked with a guest writer okay so i was running my software development company before this company and in that company like i was already related to forbes as well and from that um i had already had a network and we we took it from there that's amazing and have you bootstrapped the company or have you raised capital okay so we've been to 500 startups uh in last october and we raised like 150 000 from them after demo day of 500 startup we raised 200 000 and uh i just put my personal money like around 400 000 in the company you put your own money in yeah okay so 150 from 500 startups plus 200 000 after demo day that's 350 plus 400 000 yourself so about 750 000 into the company that's correct yeah okay now everyone's gonna be wondering nathan who is this rich guy you're having on the show where did you get all that money to put in the company so i earned that money from my previous company that i already told you like i was running my software development company and i i got the money from that company okay got it that's helpful and and is that company still running or you shut it down no we shut it down because tagovai started taking off yes that's correct how many people today are at to govi uh we are total 23 people 23 and where are you guys all based okay so uh we are four kai san francisco um we have two guys in london office and rest in our india office so san fran london and india team of 23 total yep that's great and uh again launched back in 2016. how did you get your first 10 customers so uh basically all online we we never reach out to the customer customer always come to us and um when we launched our beta program in first month we got like around 400 signups so that was where from all social media seo all seo content marketing and seo so we listed top on google for like multiple keywords for what keywords what keyword was your best so so co-browsing co-browsing software co-browsing yes co-browsing what does co-browsing have to do with your product okay so co-browsing is isn't like let's say um you talking with a customer uh on live chat and customer will say that okay i'm having problem here can you help me out agent don't know like what the hell you talk about yeah so agent can take over customer screen with one click of buttons so that's like remote screen but within the browser oh i see this you're actually if i search co-browsing right now into google you show up for me in the number four spot and the title is co-browsing software with live chat and video chat that's correct yes interesting so this is this drove you a lot of your first early customers yes that's correct yeah interesting um do you have an seo background how did you know how to write this article to get that placement on google yeah so um when i was running my software development company uh i was like i was managing like around 200 clients um through their marketings and their seo and their contents and everything i was managing for those those clients so i had a background um as a as a tech guy i had background on that side i see that makes good sense what are you um tell me more about the unit economics on these customers so what's your churn so um initially last year was higher around 15 to 20 percent than monthly or annually that was monthly okay 15 to 20 logo churn per month yes okay so that was yeah so that was really high uh because uh software unstabilities and um there was like a lot of customers asking they they have like specific requirements and something like that then we reduce down uh so if we talk about this month we have a zero turn last month around uh two for two point something percent or something like so we reduce down now that's right and we're recording here at the end of november 2017 if you're listening to this later now give us a sense of growth uh back in december of 2016 what were you doing in that month do you remember uh yes mainly heavily focused on product actually well sorry what were you doing in terms of revenue in december 2016 uh around 10 000. 10 000 per month and now today you said you're at 65 000 right that's correct yeah so what's the plan are you going to keep bootstrapping this you're going to go out and raise more capital what do you want to do so we uh for now we are keep bootstrapping whatever we're doing it we like heavily focus on it probably we're going to raise sometime next year like april may uh we'll be planning to raise a big round probably next year how much do you want to raise ideally probably like three four million somewhere three to four million and what valuation are you going to aim for you think so our last last race was on five million evolution and probably next will be 10 12 million that 5 million valuation that was the 200 000 you raised after 500. that's correct so they put in 200 000 bucks on a 5 million and was that a cap on a note or a true equity evaluation that's not okay that was a note so five million dollar cap so now you're going to raise next year so sometime 2018 you want to raise three to four million and what valuation sorry did you say you wanted to get somewhere 10 to 12. okay so you want to sell like three well do like 20 to 40 percent of your company something like that that's good yeah interesting what do you think you need to do to to get that valuation like what is what are you gonna do over the next six months to you know get bigger okay so two things um in the revenue-wise we heavily focus on growth and we wanted to uh take like sixty five thousand to hundred and twenty hundred and thirty thousand that was the the first revenue side so we and the second side we are heavily focused on ai and machine learning and uh chatbot as well so we adding that feature in our product as well so that will like increase our revenue to the next level as well so you think that that's what's going to take you from your current rate up to about 130 grand yeah easily let me ask you a question if somebody came in today and said you know we love the business we'll offer you three million dollars to buy the whole thing would you sell so uh offered last month uh was 12 million and we declined 12 million who was it from so there was few bankers from new york and there was like private uh equity farm nobody likes the bankers from new york do they nobody likes these just kidding by the way a lot of these pe guys pay me a lot of money to get deals so i can't say that i'm not a fan of pe i have to say that i love pe right but sometimes they're like they're in excel sheets the whole time they don't understand the market all the time yeah yeah so so that was that was the thing so we were thinking that is is really early for us for now um that's why uh we declined offer we would really want to go to like at least 100 million in fewer times but a lot of room i have to get in your head for a second because there are people listening right now going i hope nathan pushes him here because if i got a 12 million dollar check for a company that was only doing 700 grand in annual revenue so almost 15x they're thinking i would take that in a heartbeat but i have to make some inferences about you if you put 400 grand into your own company you've already built wealth you're not looking like 12 million bucks is not going to make a big difference in your life you already have money and now you're going for the big shot you want to do 100 million yeah that's correct yeah would you recommend somebody else if they were uh entrepreneur with very little in the bank building this in your same shoes but they didn't have your wealth already do you think they would be more likely and they should maybe take a 12 million dollar deal they possibly they they should take this 12 million deal because uh is like 2.5 x for our investor like like a last investment like we raised on 5 million and they get like 2.5x so is is okay is not really bad they should take it uh but like our focus is not sell the company right now because we can see like there is a really good growth and we can take this company to 100 million easily yeah there's a lot of i mean how do you win the space i mean look i just had brian halligan on from hubspot they're going aggressively here drift is going aggressively here intercom is going aggressively here facebook just released the messenger embed for the websites they're going aggressively here like how do you win by the way i would love to see you win how do you win how do you beat these guys okay so uh our focus is the two things is personalized um communication within uh within customer so these uh like even like hubspot or intercom or drift they're mainly focusing on chat uh our our focus is not like highly focused on chat but we focusing on video and co-browsing and we are like the major player uh in the market for cobras like we own 25 percent of united states uh market and in in cobra house so the personalities who else is competing with you in the co-browsing space so there is a few small small company company called paga that was like they owned something that was very ca yeah that's that's correct and there is an open source company the open source software they own like 20 22 percent or something um that's the open source um and there is a few small smaller companies as well yeah like we heavily yeah pegasus that seo stuff you gave me earlier pega owns the article right above you guys oh yeah but they're very big company they're a really big company yeah so is what i'm hearing you saying is you think your advantage on these other big guys intercom drift hubspot is you're going to focus on the co-browsing niche that's correct yeah makes a lot of sense interesting um how are you what are you paying right now to acquire customers so uh our acquiring a customer our cost is really really low because mainly we're getting customers from seo and search engine optimization on our social media content and content marketing and those things right so for now is like 60 70 um heck so people are paying you then 50 bucks a month so you're getting your money back in two months almost that's correct do you require people pay all up front annually or they can pay monthly our 80 customers are monthly um like 20 days annually okay and last month what did you spend just on paid marketing facebook ads google ads etc uh around 1500 okay so very little not a lot yeah what are you going back to some of the economics on this with churn coming down now you've gotten it to be better how much or what do you value every new customer what do you think they're worth to you in terms of their lifetime uh around we think around like six seven hundred dollars got it so you're assuming they're staying with you for let's see what is that about that's only assuming like a 12 month lifetime value though right yeah so so we we are in the market from 12 months and like total our customer they stay with us like every nine to 10 months so we just we just value from there a lot of them i i love this story i love this story what are you uh as you're building out your team are you you have remote locations i think you said you had three locations right now for 23 people are you building in any one of these locations more than the others so for now we focusing on san francisco office because we're getting like a lot of client uh from us and even like even we have a client all over the place like we have a client from um japan australia and argentina like we have a bank from argentina and even like uh small small bank from uh europe as well that's where like why we are focusing on three location because there is a time difference so when customer from euro tried to contact us here in san francisco we are sleeping here so we can't support those customers that's why we keeping the our three team as a three different place that makes sense what are you guys cashful positive yes we are god by how much like by a lot or you're operating right at breakeven uh we are like last month our expenses was somewhere around 50 to 53 000. okay so you're keeping about 12 grand you did 65 last month you're giving out 12 grand to the bottom line in the bank that's correct and because of how much you raised how much runway do you have in the bank like or you have 200 grand in the bank 500 grand in the bank yeah so somewhere around 250 grand in the bank and so how do you as ceo decide when to ramp up your expenses and get more aggressive on acquisition or higher faster versus keep making 12 grand per month in free cash flow and keep pushing the bank account okay so so this is a really good point yeah or give yourself a raise yeah okay so so by next month because this is holiday time uh we we are hiring at least like three to four guy here in san francisco uh but that's from january because uh december is just like half a month will be holiday and um we are just just just diluting this month we are looking at the guy we taking interview every like every second day as well and from january we are hiring like three guys mainly for customer success uh why customer success because we have a uh like a lot of our existing customer and we can grow with them so let's say samsung they came to us for one country and now we are with like three countries now and samsung we wanted to go to like 22 countries in europe so we wanted they want to deploy our product to 22 countries in europe so we can help them to grow and um also like uh help them to measure their the traffic or the chat or like everything as well how much does samsung just samsung pay you per month uh it's 20 000 a year for one country yeah so that's it spain is 20 000 uh turkey is 10 000 india is 10 000. so that's like around 40 000. okay so they're okay so i mean that's a pretty significant maybe five ten percent of your monthly revenue is coming from samsung uh less than that less okay good good stuff lot of ram let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book um intelligence emotional emotional intelligent number two is there a ceo you're following or studying right now yeah so second number is um the autobiography of yogi yogi great yeah so so so that's that's that's that's one of my favorite book yeah so this is there a ceo though that you're following or studying or would you just say yogi so so that's the that's the nothing about the ceo but is about personal life and like how you can go about your personal life to the ceo and then okay how how can are are there any ceos though that you're studying right now that you like um yeah i like read about elon musk and uh steve jobs i really like i i highly follow them number three besides your own what's your favorite online tool [Music] um salesforce number four how many hours of sleep to get every night five to six okay that's pretty good and what's your situation married single do you have kids i'm single single okay no kids and how old are you i'm 28 28. okay last question ladaram take us back eight years what do you wish your 20 year old self knew i'm sorry what like what is chris take us back eight years what is something that you wish you knew when you were 20. okay okay i didn't know a lot of things at that time i i wish i like know a lot more or more about programming or more about the internet and computer science when i was in india i wasn't aware about these things that much there you guys have it from ladaram he wishes he knew more about programming he built himself up a cash cushion doing consulting that allowed him to launch to govi which is really a co-browsing product that also touches the chat bot and live chat space he launched it in 2016 went through 500 startups where he raised 150 grand after that he raised 200 grand from investors on a 5 million cap he also put in an additional 400 grand of his own money so 750 grand into the company in less than 12 months they've gone from no customers to 1300 customers paying 50 bucks a month so about 65 grand in monthly recurring revenue including samsung which is a big deal churn was really high at 15 per month they've now dropped that down to two to three percent per month spending 70 bucks to acquire new customers and getting paid back in the first two months which is great with their team of 23 based in san francisco london and india lada ram thank you for taking us to the top thank you nathan