How TakeTask CEO Sebastian Starzynski grew TakeTask to $1.5M revenue and 16 customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is sebastian sarzynski he's the ceo and founder at take task a field force management application for companies with this as dispersed workforce he's also the co-founder of the education of the future foundation with loc which localizes the resources of khan academy foundation in poland he's a futurist and evangelist of artificial intelligence big data the internet of things nanotechnology collaborative economy and human engagement sebastian are you ready to take it to the top sure why not all right take task all right so where are you guys competing how do you fit in with like base camp click up monday jira how do you fit in uh we are like monday jura click up for deskless workers so uh most of them cover the the you know workers that are at the computer we covered eighty percent of uh workers that have no access on daily basis the computer they're individual name a couple jobs that that you would serve that you would fit shop employees uh you know filled you know service maintenance guys also factory workers that you know uh work in the factory but they actually go around the facility you know so they're you know most of the jobs actually but you know you and me work with a computer so we don't think about all the jobs that are done not at the computer but most of them like 80 is done without the computer on daily basis and so name one of these name a company in one of these jobs like with an amazon fulfillment worker in their warehouse in iowa be an example yeah yeah for example most of our clients now are uh retail chains so you have those uh shop clerks you know in a grocery uh they they have you know like hccp which is a quality food quality and and safety uh controls like merchandising all of the stats that you know you have both recurring and ad hoc tasks on the shop floor and instead of getting all this information different you know channels of communication like you get something with an sms you get something printed on the back of the store and so on so we just have one channel with which is a kind of communication which is structured as simple tasks you know so you know it helps you know to organize the work it makes the work you know easier and can you actually name a specific retail chain that uses you yeah for example shell now we have a global contract with shell we are implementing it already in four countries there are another one so a cashier at shell might use you to manage when like the peanuts in row three are almost out and how to organize the peanuts next to the almonds next to the cashews oh they're they're a bit different these cases yeah but for example placing a poster of a new promotion or uh checking daily checking the prices of their competitors we have an ai feature which is reading the the the the prices from the the monoliths when you know the employees going to check the prices and there is a gps stamp temp stamp and and the ai is reading those those numbers of course all checking the temperatures and the the quality of food you know you can just just write another piece of paper then but then you don't know if this temperature was actually checked at that time and we we give this time stamp so you know the the the quality of this audits are much more uh you know a little bit higher yeah great so you have just to summarize from your website petrol stations like shell beauty and drug stores fashion non-food retail transport logistics and utilities give me a job those are all your kinds of customers give me a general sense of what they're paying you on average per month or per year to use your technology it's it's based on number of users and the chosen plan um so most of the clients uh get in the entire you know the advanced plan which is the medium one which is 15 euros per user per month uh we have some clients with a lower plan which is eight euros and and some of them with the highest one which is 22 years plus uh azure cloud cost yeah so each client has a separate azure cloud because it's a it's not a full south where you just just plug it into the application and you know get your uh entrance code and and and so on uh and swipe your card it's an enterprise software so you need to you know sign a deal and we have to implement it so it takes about two weeks to implement it within the company but you have a separate private cloud so all your data is secured they have a white label app uh for your own and that that that's a bit different and sebastian i don't know when one of the folks paying you 15 euros per month per user per month i don't know how many users they typically sign up with so make the map easy for me when a customer usually signs up 100 yeah the average deal is uh about uh four and a half thousand euros per month something okay so call it 5 000 u.s dollars per month or about 60 000 sort of acvs no were you always there or did you move up market oh we we moved a bit up you know because at the beginning of course you have to give some some discounts you know people you know you you chase every every kind of client so we also have some smaller clients um and and and then you know when you have a better you know better product or you know better recognizability on the market uh so so you you can go to two bigger clients and have bigger tickets you know our biggest actually client is the polish government this is a funny story it's a we deployed a covet monitoring uh home quarantine monitoring application so there are like 9 million user accounts up to date so you know they are making sometimes hundreds of thousands of tasks per day now so wow average client you know they they make up to 100 or 200 tasks per month yeah a thousand tasks per month and and those guys they can do hundreds of thousands of tasks per day but it shows you know the scalability of the app you know so it's it's it can really uh a huge system and you mentioned you've scaled since start date when was start date when did you launch so the product was lined something like three years ago we oh we love the company though it was like four and a half years ago so we had this first crowdfunding campaign where we um got some money for you know developing the the mvp and then we got our first client which platform was that on uh it was a polish platform you know it's it's beast fund uh we are from poland so we used what's it what's it called sorry beast fund these bees fund yeah it's like like from bees so but it was like a very small ticket at that time it could be up to 100 000 euros so so generally it was just a very small ticket and but with with this 100 we got some grants from eu and so on so we had something like about 200k and we built the mvp in one year and then based on this mvp we got our first uh global client which is shell so it was really really what year was that uh it was so we we started in 17 yeah and we launched the product in a18 and in 2018 how many customers did you end with and how much total revenue would you guess it was like a 100k something like this the total revenue the next year we had 250 um and last year we have 1.2 million and what did you do last month in terms of mrr so you know we have different so it's like 50k mrr um but total revenue up to date was something like uh 1.2 million so we actually have the same revenue as we had last the total last year so we should end up with something like 2 million it sounds like about yeah it sounds like about half your revenue then is sas and the rest is something else what's the rest oh it's implementations you know it's some additional what do you charge for that implementation it depends on like the minimum charge is about five to seven thousand dollars uh but we have clients uh with bigger implementations that can be fifty or uh seventy thousand dollars so it really depends you know what they need if they need some integrations or so this kind of stuff so we are not very you know happy with making two big integrations but uh if for example the client requires some some additional features that are in line with our product so it's actually they're paying for the development of some features so it's it's a good way to check if the feature is is is important for the client of course but also it gives you funds to to found a feature sebastian about how many customers do you have today we have now 16 customers six zero sixteen one six got it sixteen percent as i said we are enterprise software so it's it doesn't grow so fast we are now going slowly to uh to launch more like a sas product we we are now talking with several smaller horika like restaurant chains and we see very good fit over there but this will be smaller tickets um and it will be launched you know on one server one app so much faster implementation this sort of stuff so we should be ready with this till the end of the year uh we are now testing it with eight uh small retailers okay very cool that makes a lot of sense now you have raised some capital ignoring grants and everything else how much total capital have you raised today one million okay about one million and the last round i think was about 140 000 united states dollars in december oh yeah we we had this accelerator from battletron it was 270 000 it was in september and then we had the last round of 170 which was like a kind of a bridge round of 170 so so the last second part of 2020 we had something like 400. got it and the last round of 2020 which was 170 000 it sounds like what valuation did you raise that at oh it was a convertible loan so both of them were convertible notes actually so they will be converted with the next round so there was no valuation um you know we want to go for around um once we made something like 100k so then the valuation should be about 10 million sorry the what was the cap on the note if it was uh if it was if there's a note not a priced round um so there are you know we have different uh different so there was a cap that was like five million yeah but it was you know with accelerators it's a bit different because they give a bit different value and so on it was based uh on on some previous uh some previous um investment of those funds so uh it was more complicated but yeah we will probably go for something like 10 plus million with the next round so just to be clear the convertible node if you raise 170 000 at a 5 million cap assuming your next round is higher than a 5 million valuation and that note converts at the cap you essentially sold about 3.5 percent to your business for 170 000. and and if you go out and raise it a 10 million evaluation here in the next couple months how much capital do you think you'll look to raise uh we'll probably go for like two or three million why is that the right number you think oh it's it's based on on the needs because we we are almost good with the tech part we have you know like 11 developers it's mostly full stack and regulars um and uh we need something like two or three additional developers but most of the the money will go for uh sales for for business development so we want to launch a sales team in uk or ireland um of five people and then maybe in in in in germany or france so these are like like um the sales teams plus you know all the marketing plus launching the full sas with all those growth hacking it will you know it will simply require this amount we just calculated it's something that we need money for another one and a half two years you know to to get to a point of something like 500 k month recurring revenue so and then when you can go through a higher a round sebastian how much equity do you still own oh so it depends if you count the convertible loans or not assume they're converting assume they converted yeah me and my founder and my co-founder we own over 50 so what we should end up after the a round it would be slightly above 50 percent so after the a round we would probably have like 52 53 something like that and you're at like 60 62-ish right now something like that oh we don't now we have like 70-something but some of the convertible loans are not converted so yeah yeah we have something like 60 something you know i see i see who else owns the rest of it do you give options to employees yeah yeah we have a couple of uh you know we have an eso plan for not everything is ready you know we just just started to do the esop uh this year so you know uh it goes for the next couple of year years yeah to be launched not everything is allocated so we still have some shares to be allocated uh mostly you know with the next hires um so you know if we have some so we have some shares you know for the sales director and this sort of stuff and the esop stands for equity stock option plan for those of you that are thinking about doing this yourself sebastian it's obviously a smart move to recruit even better talent to have that plan set up even if it's unallocated equity what did you decide to set that up is it is it a 10 esop plan or 20 but how much equity do you set aside no it's like um in total it's something like eight percent eight percent okay cool so you and your co-founder own seventy percent currently your esop plan is about eight percent and then you have some earlier investors no no so this you know the esop is together with you know in the 70 percent yeah okay got it so you and your co-founder own about 60 the esop plan is eight percent on top of that where's the other 20 it's it's uh we have one one polish small seed vc uh owning something like five percent and then the rest of it is owned by different angel investors because with this crowdfunding we had over 100 people uh now it went down to something like uh like 80 but still we have a lot of you know like small investors we'll probably once we we plan to go to us with not this round but the next round so probably then we'll pack them two to one entity and they will be as as one entity in the cup table yeah but this is not something that we need to do now uh it's it's will once we incorporate in us then then we'll do this this couple quick questions just because we're running out of time here you mentioned 11 engineers but what's the total team size today 20. 20 people okay great so about 50 engineers any quota carrying sales reps or no no no not in okay so that's why you know we wanted to make now this is what i said after the the fundraising we want to jump already to a five uh people uh business development team and but not in poland but in ireland or uk you know to to to already have a pan-european outreach mm-hmm that mexico makes a lot of sense we tried with some business development in a business developer instant poland but they are too much focused on the polish market and and we do not want to focus only on the polish market and sebastian what's it costing you to get a new customer today do you track cac no it's it's very hard to track it you know honestly because you know the the sales cycle is very long and and uh you know um and there is a you you can have a customer we just signed a deal with the biggest uh copper mining corporation in poland and it's one of the biggest in the world and it took just us like i don't know two months you know to to sign the deal and we are after one week we're in the middle of implementation of the system so in one or two weeks we'll implement everything yeah so this will be a very fast and easy implementation yeah but another one you know it took us over one year yeah and now the implementation is after six months is still going because this is the one with with 50k implementation so they had a huge implementation uh project yeah very cool all right let's wrap up here with the famous five number one what's your favorite book sebastian oh my god there are so many uh life 3.0 or uh lifespan uh or you know oh my god like i read something like three or four books per month but but oh oh guns genesis and steel also very good guns wet and steel guns germs guns germs and steel or german diamonds generally german jared diamond's books are really really very good number two is there a ceo you're following or studying i don't know as we as everyone a bit elon musk yeah but but it is like a you know high profile so it's rather looking at his boldness you know and and yeah but but i would say maybe this one you know number three what's your favorite online tool for building the platform um honestly uh we do not do we do not use any tools to build the platform we we use um you know we use click up yeah but it's it's more a task management you know tool great so number four how many hours of sleep to get every night oh eight hours and what's your situation married single kids yeah when i'm married i have two uh boys like teen already teens how old are you sebastian i'm 46 okay take us home what's something you wish you knew when you were 20. oh my god don't do so many business at the same time and i had some times when i was owning you know like seven different businesses and trying to run them so it was stupid i was really up take tasks launched in 2017 they did their first hundred thousand dollars in revenue in 2018 today this year they'll break two million dollars in revenue serving 16 enterprise accounts they are essentially task management for desk-less workers they work with companies like shell fashion retail etc uh the founders still own about 70 of the business along with their employees they raised caught about a million bucks today looking to go out and raise two to three million on a 10 million valuation here in the next six to 12 months we'll see what happens sebastian thanks for taking us to the top thank you to you for your time and and for the for the possibility to talk one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm 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 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