How Trust Chain Global CEO Giancarlo De Lio grew to $360K revenue and 5 customers in 2022.

hey folks my guest today is john carlo de leo he's an entrepreneur and seasoned technology entrepreneur should say an investor has been successful in building companies and products across many different industries with over 20 years of experience in building he's had sea sea has held c-suite level roles acted as an advisor and an investor and his highlights include co-founding vital hub and care kit health and now trust chain global the first end-to-end transaction platform for commodities john hall are you ready to take to the top yes definitely all right so just be clear just the web 3 technology on blockchain or is it a sas play it's uh it's starting off as it started off as a sas plane we're moving into the web 3 um technology play as well okay and when did you get going when what year was the first line of code written uh so we started in september of uh 2021 okay 20 okay well you didn't spend much time as a sas company then if you're already transitioning out of that huh well no that's right so we um we started off as as a sas play um thinking that you know we're going to do a bunch of services that would be great for people in the commodities industry and realizing that um they need to grow into that and they need to change the platform really quickly after customer discovery and going through some pilots and tests and tests and we we moved from just providing certain key services and features like um kycs and aml checks to actually going full blown now to providing the full intense solution and adding our own escrow and pay net pay master services underlining the whole the entire platform but you can do that as a sas company why decide to go to web3 uh we're we're looking at what three because of the uh blockchain part of the transparency the whole the whole issue in the in this space that we're dealing with is transparency fraud uh inefficiencies and things like that and so i'll use a quick example for you um everyone knows about the ppe industry you know kovacain pp industry became a massive commodity play um in a very very short time it's already it's already grown into um you know multi-billion dollar commodity out there but the biggest issue that's happened with this has exposed a lot of issues with the process the way people have been doing businesses and transparency and fraud and the title ownership of a lot or something that's being held and how that and how that needs to be transferred over and provided to a buyer after that they purchased it there's a lot of like proxy and resellers out there who actually don't own the titles and the ownership until that title owner comes at the end and um it's all done very inefficiently but if moving into a web 3.0 blockchain kind of model then the ownership in the title will move very easily over that and it'd be tracked properly and it would be done in a digital manner versus the way that happens now okay and so help me understand some customers that are already paying you to use this or are you guys pre-revenue right now uh we just we just signed our first set of customers and we have our new book on the books you have what our revenue booked on the books 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 it 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 valuation this year now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a sas business so the reason you're going to see three or four different valuations inside of your frowner 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 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 valuations than what you can get now inside of founder path and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're going to 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 evaluations or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products click on get your evaluation 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 okay but any any of that revenue actually being realized so do you have paying customers that already paid for a month of access or something like that yeah we have a couple right now that have already started uh paying for uh a month of access so tell me tell me those stories what are they paying for and like what are some of the industries using you so there so we have a copper deal so someone buying precious metals and they're using they're using our platform for the very first part is due diligence so our platform does uh kyc know your client and aml checks on people so a seller comes to our platform and says hey i've got um i've got this copper lot that i want to sell so i've got five tons of copper that i want to sell um i go onto our platform we verify that the seller is real we say that's a real person we do verification on their company that's great and then they have the ability to then they pay right so they sign up with their credit card and then the monthly fees and basically what they do is they get to uh create their sop standard operating process their workflow of how they want their deal to be completed and they go out there and they promote just like they do with the broker channel a buyer comes in and then they're paying just on the monthly fee they get access to all these tools that allow them to do exactly what we just did with them which was buyer comes in i can check do due diligence on them know if they're a real buyer uh anti-money laundering are there any issues do they have any fraud or cases around them um what's their ranking out there in the world like are they a legitimate business owner or a personal operator out there and then they go through our process of actually doing the deal like you know um signing we have e-signing built in so signing your nda's signing proper documents uploading your bank statements which and things like that that we can verify um all of that kind of stuff so they go through that entire process and our monthly fee allows them to manage the deal and and do due diligence and do all of those understood understoods and so what are they paying on average to use that all the things you just described so right now that's 199 a month that they they used to do that and then our second revenue model is on the our escrow and pay master services but current customers today on average are paying 200 bucks a month to use the technology yes okay got it got it and so what month did you sign up your first customer was that just in february that was just in february yeah okay god and so how many customers out today couple four or five we have five customers in total right now five okay and and so how have you found them right the precious metal example where did you find that customer well so are uh a few of us that have joined the company like myself i've been uh doing the commodities uh trading wait are you a founder i'm a founder oh god i got it okay yeah so i'm i'm my partner katrin and myself are the two founders of the company and so my background the last um 18 plus months i got into commodities and so the first of the customers that we have are through uh our internal network and then we've now been outward like one of the customers that we just signed on which is full spectrum testing was a proper full sale which was we went out we we prospected them we found them went through the entire process pitched them on the concept of the platform what you get to do why it's a good idea and so that was the one that we recently just press released on and that was like a full prospect the re the the customers that we have right now the the first set like the copper deals in example have been through our internal network that would be able to do one-to-one relationships on that we brought in very quickly into this the one you just ran the full process on i mean you can't run an outbound sales playbook at 200 bucks a month there's not enough margin to play with the cover sales expenses no so why are you charging too little why are you charging so little because our our main our business our main business model is them using our s chrome pay master services that's where we are a bank where we're we're modeling on that's where our main revenue is going to be coming from where they're at we're actually acting as the escrow the third party holding the money and then paying out everyone's commissions and we're making money on the fees that we're charging out so i understand that but you can't afford at 200 bucks a month to go do the kind of outbound prospecting you just described so either your pricing has to change or the sales model has to change what's more likely to change um most most likely what's uh is the pricing needs to increase um i think right now as any new startup we've decided to go with this pricing to focus on getting um decent clients on there and running through it's going to grow and change the business and that that monthly fee is going to change as we turn on more features and we're providing more services for people so giancarlo first customer less than 45 days ago you got five today at 200 bucks a month about a thousand dollars a month in revenue today is that accurate that's right and and talk to me more about the team you mentioned your co-founders just you too right now right now we are the we're the we're the two co-founders but we have our develop our core development team that we have which is uh three people and we have our uh small bd team who are about four people uh a part of the bd team as well okay so so nine people total full time that's right and how are you paying for those folks obviously there's not enough revenue to do that so who's covering the bill uh so it's a combination of uh some of them are equity based we did do a small raise with uh n49p um in toronto one of the investment groups that we did when was that uh that was january that we announced it and how much did you raise there uh right there we raised 350 000 us okay great and so that's funding the growth today that's right yeah yeah most in their pre-seat rounds are selling 10 to 20 percent of their business were you sort of in that same range uh no we were less oh you're less than you sold less than 10 percent yeah how did you negotiate that that means you were getting a valuation above three million pre-revenue basically well because of some of the the the numbers that we had booked like the the contracts they already booked on onto the system before bringing them in and um and and don't forget to like the contracts that we have it's not about that monthly it's about those other services so like the copper deal that we're bringing on board the the services fee that we're charging them not just the monthly but the other fees of like the escrow and the other pieces like that and the procurement fee that we're doing that though that one deal is a 200k deal for us i guess i don't understand how those other components work so why even mess around with the 200 sas fee if the big opportunity is the 200k and other fees you're gonna get well because at the end of the day you have to wait for these clients to actually do the deals on the platform right they could because they may not complete a deal there's gonna be a lot of times where they have a lot they tried to get a buyer on there it didn't work out they moved to the next fire the next buyer so you know there there's a fee that we're trying we're trying to find the sweet spot for that fee that we're charging so in between while we're waiting for them to actually close a deal because the deal commodity deals they don't happen in 24 hours 48 hours right even with our platform trying to help people speed things along and cut through a lot of the um uh stuff out there cut through a lot of the fat and make things a lot faster and more efficient you're still um there's still that weight period right so you know you may not close a full deal in until 10 business days or longer right but again that that it all it all varies depending on what the industry is which commodity and so you need something monthly that you're charging to uh to cover certain bills but you understand the question right 200 000 bucks in fees annually compared to a 2400 acv sas contract seems way way it seems like it's a distraction right yeah i i i would say it's it's a it's a valid statement but at the same time i think right now as we're growing that might change what what what this might change but right now um well if you don't actually believe that this copper that had come out of this metals business is gonna put 200 grand worth of stuff through you it makes total sense why you're going the sas route right but then say that if that's what you believe like are you not sure that they're gonna get this kind of project volume through the platform no we're we're sure that each deal that comes in that the volume will be there that the volume will be there it's the time in between and as a growing company we have you know we have the clients on there but we're also waiting for those deals to close and a lot of times that they're they're using our tools just to test things out to see if that buyer's real or to test things out you know because of that we want to charge them something for using our tools if they don't even put a deal through the platform if they're just using it to do due diligence on somebody or just to do if they're just using it for those purposes and they're not actually posting a deal on our platform we need to charge them something for using the system yeah so in 2024 what do you think you're gonna make more money from the sas fees and people that don't use your thing for other stuff or fees on closed deals and escrow accounts things like that we'll make more money on closed deals and escrow account and pay master services and fees with our ramp up with getting more of the larger clients on there okay very good on that note here let's wrap up with the famous five number one favorite business book uh oh it was a business book oh uh because i was going by lord of the flies is my favorite book i didn't i really realize this is what are the flies lord of the flies works number two is there a ceo you're following or studying uh one of my favorite ceos has always been steve jobs number three what's your favorite online tool for building trust chain uh one of the tools we're using right now gross genius number four how many hours of sleep to get every night six and giancarlo what's your situation married single kids uh married uh two kids two kiddos okay and how old are you uh 42. i just turned 42. congrats happy birthday thank you all right last question here something you wish you knew back when you were 20 uh uh when i was 20 um to [Music] choose your uh to uh to not always work with friends and family there you go guys don't don't always work with something there's a horse is there a horror story you want to tell us about no no i think i think it's just you know it's it's it's it's it's good to meet new people um and build relationships then always just stick with the same people that you always know guys launched in 2021 trust chain helps people especially in the world of personal protective equipment understand who actually owns that pallet can i actually buy it from them or are they just sitting in the middle as a broker that doesn't actually have control of these assets he's now applying that same logic to other industries that need it like precious metals and commodities and things of that nature an end-to-end solution they've got five customers on the platform today paying 200 bucks a month so a grand a month in sas fees but he's more bullish on the other fees they're gonna be able to help uh get out of customers effectively when the customers use their platform for things like escrow we'll see what happens 350k raise at a valuation higher than 3.5 million to fund the growth to date nine folks full time on the team john carlo thanks for taking us to the top thank you for the time this is great thank you 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 1pm 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 the 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 fund raise 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 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