How Theumg///Salence CEO Eynar Isayev grew to $322.2K revenue and 80 customers in 2023.

hey folks my guest today is anar isaiah he's building a great tool called salence.io he was born and grew up in the czech republic he's a three-time founder and ceo multicultural mindset has been in space tech and loves space tech in terms of being enthusiastic about the space but again currently focused on salen's his sales automation tool ain't are you ready to take us to the top absolutely nathan thank you very much for having me well you know what to expect it sounds like you listen to the show right not quite as much as i would but as i would like but yes i did listen to a few episodes all right so how is salence doing what what are you guys doing and how are you competing in this sales space obviously there's a lot of funding going into this space right now absolutely i mean just about right now you can you can judge from my background i'm hoping between two investment investor meetings and um you know the the interview just caught me in the middle of a traffic jam that you know i got stuck so i just pulled over and uh it's good that i had my laptop next to me i'm you know so we're raising the funds right now we have the working prototype i think the reason nathan that you you know you we're having this interview is because of the way uh we've been bootstrapping the company ever since we started it back in 2019 2010 uh we started with an agent model that the story dates back to 2017 when i started my first business it was an events management company and one the channel is one of the sales channels uh brought us 500 000 dollars in the first year of operations and that will that that's when i realized that you know this channel could be used as something um essentially as a separate standalone service so that was the b2b marketing based on that we started developing you know what channel was that that made 500k it's um it's essentially um a multi-channel outreach uh sequence uh we've learned how to do the market research in terms of identifying the ideal prospects for the c-level conferences that we were organizing and then um how to find the contact details and then essentially it was all about creating a multi-channel sequence that would at the end of the day increase the likelihood of the prospects giving back to us and uh starting a conversation you know because i've started the company without the the outside financing it was all about being inventive about the the sales methods that i could use that would essentially lift the company from zero in terms of financing so you launched in 2019 um how many customers are you now serving today uh so we have 80 customers right now 8-0 and what do they pay for the sales tool at the start up front so the thing is right now we have the working prototype if i understand your question correctly nathan um well what are they paying an average per month is there a sas play it is a sas uh they're paying around 2 000 pounds so they're paying a premium right now because the prototype is still operated by the account manager internally and so we're looking to have our first fundraise uh happen this month so that we can uh get the uh services ready by october the the solution the software itself just to be clear you have 80 current customers paying 2 300 u.s dollars per month that's like 180 000 a month in revenue correct correct well and here's the thing uh some of our some of our customers are having are putting their campaigns on polls simply because the campaigns are effective and they have way too many leads that they can handle and um we have a three months post agreement so what we're having right now on average a month is forty thousand dollars that's our monthly revenue got it so last month you did forty thousand dollars and what were you doing a year ago in terms of monthly recurring revenue well overall we've been operational for the past ten months and we've made a little over two hundred and fifty 000 us dollars um i thought you said you launched in 2019 in 20 sorry in 2020 january 23rd that's what that's when the company was so that's a long story short the events management company had a stiff and the spin-off was this agency that that started selling from july uh 20 20. i see so what did you finish december at last year how much mrr 68 000 that was essentially from july to december um october being the most profitable months we've clocked 35 000 dollars how much did you in december just december of last year number it was 25 000 okay got it so you run from 25 grand a month to about 40 000 40 000 per month over the past seven months yeah you're right and and you've bootstrapped this so far correct exactly yes that's absolutely so what you're out raising you're in between investor meetings right now doing this interview from your car how much are you looking to raise well right now we're raising a preceded round despite the fact that we're having the clients we still consider ourselves ourselves the sas agency assass uh sas business so we're raising 150 000 um to complete the development of the software we have the backing from the investors for the seat stage um at a 1.1 million value at a 1.1 um million dollar investment ticket i have no idea what that means 1.1 million valuation our valuation is 11 million dollars but uh we're raising 1.1 million uh dollars for the cheat stage now you had 150 you were raising 150 k so how much are you raising we're raising 150 000 right now to complete the software development okay so and our plan is to get it done by october because we already have a backing from an investor that wants to see the software already you know we're all over the place you just said you're gonna raise 1.1 million and then you said you're raising 150k and then you set your bootstrap but you already have an investor so like let's get this straight so how much have you already raised to date total in the company all right here we go nathan once again we'll take it as a as a straight timeline uh right now we're bootstrapping um and uh no one has given you money that you have no investors in the company absolutely right okay so right now we're raising at the precede stage uh 150 thousand dollars at what valuation at five million dollars okay that's what i was missing so you're raising 150 at five million right now and then you want to go out later and raise 1.1 million at 11 million valuation you're absolutely right that's uh that's something that we're looking to uh have to raise in october november the software is about to be released we just need this remaining hundred and fifty thousand to really get the software off the ground and have it released um and we're pretty much going with uh with a favorable evaluation how much money personally have you put into business excuse me how much money personally have you put into the business hundred thousand dollars exactly is that does that make you nervous absolutely not it makes me excited well and is that like for you are you like some rich guy i've made my money myself where did you actually previous exit uh i didn't make an exit that was the events management company in fact when i started the my my business activities when i was 21 i didn't drop out of college um as you did and then have had the 10 million um dollar exit um for me it was that i uh still continued the education it was a more of a tribute to my parents i suppose and then um but i still i had to i had to do something because you know the university is not gonna the piece of paper wouldn't get me that far that far so that's when i started the events management uh company and that's where i um well we as a company made a million dollar in in profits in 2019 just before the kovid came i see that money to pour it into assailants now now what's your team size today are how many full-time employees we have 10 employees right now how many engineers two engineers okay god and how many do you think you have to hire with 150k to get the software done two two more got it where are they based ukraine is that a good place to hire developers from i i believe it's one of the best places why is that quality versus cost what's it cost to get a senior developer in ukraine between two to four thousand dollars a month okay that's pretty darn good now where are you based right now czech republic close to you and not not too far yeah i mean we were to have a branch and uh when we when we had the events management company i had i opened up three branches actually uk india and uh and and ukraine and the branch that we have in ukraine we're using that as to kind of expand the software engineering team interesting now how are you getting new customers what's your fully weighted cat well um it's the it's the cold outreach uh the the very the very sequence the very kool-aid that uh um kind of we're prescribing to our clients uh email linkedin um and then on top of that uh some uh paid ads on google and linkedin yeah very cool and who did your website by the way it's beautiful especially considering that the software's not actually ready and you're building a waitlist oh thank you thank you nathan uh his name is um igor he's uh he's a ux developer from from estonia he's part of the team how'd you find him oh he's part of your team full time no he's not a full-time right now but i'm hoping he's going to be full-time um i mean by the time we raise the funds uh how i found him skipping that's how i raise the business overall i i think like one thing um that i'm missing is a is a is a it's a brilliant scouter you know a brilliant hr manager in in our company because that's scouting specifically what platform did you find eager on linkedin fiverr somewhere else dribble got beyond so you just cold messaged him on behance he did a good job for you you paid him for an initial project and now you want to hire him full time well here's the thing i looked at his artwork and i liked it i found him on linkedin contacted him said hey there's something interesting i'd like to discuss with you we got on a call we started discussing he kind of felt passion about the idea and there we go we have the website now already how much did you pay for the website design 1500 okay that's pretty darn so that's pretty that's pretty fair good good nice work there very cool all right listen you're out raising so i'm gonna let you go let's wrap up quickly here with the famous five number one favorite business book um favorite business book reach that poor dad number two is there a ceo you're following are studying steve jobs he's deceived so i'm not hungry number three what's your favorite online tool ar for building the business besides your own gmail all right number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night and what's your situation married single kids married with kid how many one kid one kid the next one is about to you know pop out very cool and how are you how old are you 25. 25. last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20. hearing myself as a mentor when i'm 25. guys there you have it his agency did uh 1 million in revenue back in 2019 he used that to spin out a sas tool called salence.io playing in the sales uh space sales process but he's got 80 customers already he's doing about 40 000 a month in revenue from 25 000 a month just about six months ago he's raising a hundred thousand dollars right now at a five million dollar evaluation we'll see if you can get it done in our congratulations and thanks for taking us to the top thank you very much nathan 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 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 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