How Venios CEO Jonas Danzeisen grew Venios to $6.2M revenue and 100 customers in 2024.

guys venios has just hit 350 000 per month in Revenue up from 250 000 per month a year ago they're working with over a hundred power grid operators spread across Germany Netherlands Austria Switzerland India South America powering over a million substations to help these power grid operators optimize their systems and most importantly decentralize the power grade which is more sustainable they're growing quick they might raise we'll call it two to four million here I call it a 40 to 50 million valuation we'll see what Jonas does hey folks my guest today is Jonas and sazan he's building a tool called venios that's v-e-n-i-o-s.com it's power grid real-time operating system Jonas you ready to take us to the top yeah hopefully yeah we're working on that all right so how did you get who are you selling to are you selling to governments or who's using this so so our solution is used by grid operators but dsos or dnos distribution system operators so the owners of the local Monopoly the owners of the grid the suppliers the utilities basically yeah all around the world are you focused on a particular Geo oh we started in Germany then a rather fast went into Netherlands Austria and Switzerland now we do have activities uh in in whole Europe and also first activities in South America and also in India so uh expanding because we are solving a physical problem by using it and the physical problem um is everywhere where you start to integrate Renewables uh locally into your infrastructure and so I'm a power grid operator in in the Netherlands um what am I paying you to help me with so um the the point is that um the the old infrastructure the grid is built like a champagne pyramid so this is the old perspective having the pyramid having big bottles of champagne uh filling it from the top and then it goes down now if you start to transform your arm system into a decentralized renewable system then you have uh it's like filling up the the champagne pyramid from the from the bottom line so you need to know where our glasses how full are the glasses where's some more champagne needed where do I have too much champagne and so this complexity um we help with our solution to handle and um this is uh exactly the pain we are solving so integration of EVS integration of heat pumps integration of AC AC is less a topic and the Netherlands quite a big Topic in India um integration of of PV of course decentralized generation is a big topic uh combined seating power integration and and all the decentralized um um acids because in the old world we do have big power plants called nuclear gas and now we're building this system are we transforming this system into decentralized system with small assets so understood what is this what is the average power grid operator pay you per month or per year to use your technology oh this is based on the amount of substations so in the utility domain on the Monopoly side on the infrastructure side normally you have a payment um based on on Counting points like households or industry and we do two different little um have an option to be um um referring on on the amount of substations and um it depends on how many substations you have and so basically how big is your grid so in um so what is the price per substation so what is the Presby substation um so so let me say it like this um if we uh if you have uh if you have a project volume of a hundred dollar an estimated project of 100 you have an implementation fee for the first um for the first um year and you have a SARS fee and the SAS fee is roughly 30 to 35 and the rest is implementation and the SAS fee is ongoing and it can depend if you have a small utility uh from several ten thousand Euros SAS fee up to if you are a big utility uh in India or big utility in the Netherlands to several hundred thousand um this is this is this is complex I get it you have a lot of different options but try and simplify this for my audience on average what is a power operator paying you per month or per year to user technology across all their substations are we talking 20 000 a year or two million a year 20 million a year where are you Jeff no it's between uh so it's between uh depending on the size it's between 50 to 300 300 000 per year yeah okay okay and 50 to 300 000. and if someone's paying you 300 000 per year likely how many substations do they have uh then you're in the in the area of several 10 000 substations between depending on the infrastructure quality and and what is happening um between um I would say 32 100 000 substations okay and if someone's only paying you fifty thousand dollars per year how many substations do they likely have um fully uh full rollout isn't they get should be in the area of [Music] um uh from 150 to 500 depending on the complexity of the of the infrastructure 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 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 and then to keep building that out so let's say I have 500 substations I'm paying you a SAS fee of 50 000 per year you're also then going to charge me an implementation fee of about what uh so so as mentioned so implementation um is um is one or uh we do have um 30 implementation 72 30 of what we don't know what percent you're taking so 30 of the ACV you just gave me if 50 000 is then you have an implementation project of roughly 150 to 200. okay got it so the setup just to go live is 150 000 and the recurring fee on the back end is fifty thousand dollars per year yeah you should have really really high net dollar retention then because after someone pays a big setup fee they never should cancel right that's it so we do have uh so we don't have a trend right shoulder is zero when did you launch the company first customer was uh we started 10 years ago okay so call it 2012 2013. 12. and since then you've had no one has started using you and then stopped using you or started you with a thousand substations and then d uh churn down to 100 substations so we um so with small customers um we um we start normally with the football out so and with big customers we normally start in one region like having having a region a and then going from A to B to C and then growing into the infrastructure uh because it's highly profitable and if you have already started with one region then it's uh relatively cheap to to uh because um we are something you can see our solution like the Enterprise service bus are kind of solution uh because we are connected to GI Geo information system to asset information system to skate our system to all the solutions that are existing at the utility and building them up a real-time virtual twin for uh planning and and for control on the infrastructure and yeah the value is so we have customers uh with return to invest of less than one year with what less than one year uh return of in West I see my my question though I mean I under I appreciate the extra contagious but that wasn't my question my question was has anyone started in region a b and c and then downgraded to only using you in region a no so in 10 years you've had nobody even doubt not not cancel completely but you haven't even had anyone downgrade one substation across your entire base so we do have structural changes within the infrastructure of course then uh um assets go out in new assets are coming in but if you started to to um to integrate our solution normally um we are in in regions with a higher criticality so a lot of PV a lot of Dynamics in the infrastructure and then our solution gives the value to bring transparency and controllability um and they understand the product I'm just asking about net dollar retention that's all okay got it so how many if you add up all the individual powerboard operators that currently rely on venios how many of them are there today uh roughly a hundred a hundred and if you add up all the substations that are connected to your technology how many is it it's got to be in the millions right there should be roughly a million maybe maybe more we are working on that actually because um we um we do have a strong growth phase actually and um just imagine um having um so we have two of three uh dsls in Daily and in India and one yeah so uh one Shield of Delhi is roughly like 80 90 of Scandinavia so Billy is like massive Jonas talk to me more about your team how many folks are full time what's the breakdown how many are engineers oh the most of them uh basically all of them oh okay are you an engineer yes I studied uh physics and I've done my doctor and uh production signs at in the automotive industry who sells um in the beginning I was a Salesman CEO and salesman and then uh now we have a small sales team and uh growing so we plan to double um uh the team within the next 12 months nru bootstrap today have your race capital um from a U.S perspective we're more or less bootstrapped um we have like investment of less than a million into the company and when did you raise that capital uh we do have some business angels that found it with our star and the founding and um in the last decade we do have one founding ground and collected somebody what what year was that actually um it was in 2018. so 2018 you did like a Million Dollar pre-seed Round a lot less because we do have of course um the the angel round so all in there was investment of lessons less than one minute okay that's great so so Capital efficient and then just to confirm you've got these subsidies uh power grid operators they're all paying you again somewhere between 50 000 a year and three hundred thousand dollars per year right yes so if we take a hundred of those operators and let's say they're all paying you the minimum of fifty thousand dollars per year that would put you at mrr today of about 420 000 per month is that accurate this is uh realistic region it's what it's uh in this region yes oh your monthly revenue is in the 400 it's above 400 000. it's a little less but the the region um is is correct can you break 400 000 a month uh this year you think so I didn't get the question can you break 400 000 per month in Revenue by December break sorry what do you plan to grow by this year how much can you grow Revenue this year uh yeah we're doubling okay doubling okay and did you double so if you're doing 350 000 a month today what were you doing exactly one year ago to check the numbers so uh um on the um on the Forefront so so I'm at that point we are we're planning to more or less double the next uh Jonas I'm asking my question was the last backwards last 12 months was um so we did have um upgrows of 250 percent in 20 21 and restructured and yeah restructured the company last year so there was a growth of roughly 10 20 I have to check the numbers in detail okay so like a year ago you were doing something like 280 000 per month then you grew 24 250 to 80 something 250. okay that's great well this is this is um you have very efficient Revenue per employee right I mean you're doing between caught four and five million and AR annual revenue today with a team of 33. that's a lot of efficient or team of 30. that's a lot of efficiency how do you get that much revenue per employee by offering uh valued solution to our customers and having a highly efficient implementation um um work so normally we could do an implementation of a customer uh up to 10 000 substations was is roughly a million counting points within less than less than 10 days including all the infrastructure uh data and our competitors or if you go into the normal uh situation in this market it's um it's like half of the time our competitors need to set up a pmo understood and I got my maps uh implementation sorry yeah um I got my math slightly wrong sorry if you're doing five million run rate today with 30 people you're doing more like 160 000 per month I'm sorry per year in Revenue per employee which is pretty standard for a private uh Capital efficient uh SAS company so those numbers all check out they look good I mean how do you go from a million substations to two million substations what's your expansion strategy especially if you're the only one doing sales no I'm not the only one but you have a sales team well you just told me that all 30 employees were engineers yeah but but I think it is so Engineers could only uh um so from the background the engineers but there we do have um people with an engineering background also in in sales so of your full-time team how many folks are actually writing code on a daily basis um we do have uh 18 people uh working in co-development and the rest is um um working with customers uh um uh how many are sales reps with how many are sales reps with the quota Street okay and how did every SAS one was listening right now they always struggle with how to hire and structure their first sales hire how did you come up with the quota for your first sales hire so um my first sales higher was now our chief sales officer and um so he was uh he was coming from the industry and um he supported me like we we went both into the market and um now he's he's the head of the sales team and we do have two colleagues within the system and sales team will grow um up to four to five people within the next 12 months that's great any plans to raise Capital you're going to stay bootstrap basically bootstrapped ah we're thinking about for accelerating um um the market entrance also North America and how much would you consider raising uh we think about between two and four and and do you think you get like a 40 or 50 million valuation that would be uh an interesting range how do you get there today I mean it has nothing to do with you it's just the macroeconomic trends right now or just no one's writing checks so it's um so being in the field of critical infrastructure being in the field where customers couldn't go bankrupt and being and and having super solid cash flows from our customers we don't so we're not faced with any uh liquidity problem at the moment we do have a lot of um um a capital um institutions I would say um that are asking about uh if it's possible to to invest in business and if you had a choice of raising 2 million on a 40 million valuation or taking 20 million all cash up front today to sell the whole company which one would you take no Senator the company is no option so it's a multi-billion dollar market and um so in Germany the investment in the infrastructure in the next 10 years is roughly a 100 billion um so european-wide investment in infrastructure only on the electricity side is roughly 1 trillion globally something between three and five um and but there should be enough room for having a several 10 or 100 million Revenue um uh for it for to operate this critical infrastructure yeah but you have to go capture that market I understand it's big it's taking you 10 years to grow to four and a half five million bucks in Revenue so what are you changing like how do you know it's now it's kickstarting um so the point is it's a complex it's not selling books it's it's a complex technology it's needed to work you need to so we're actually a platform generation four so we we we put away our old platforms so now we are we can compete with with a big yeah with it with a classical comparison like a Siemens like ADB like a Schneider and now it's like doubling every year or more profitable is uh well you didn't double the past 12 months just to be clear you grew 20 the past 12 months that's what you just told me yeah but yeah yeah uh before we more than come I understood understood Let's uh we're rooting for you obviously I'm just pushing you here so let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's the last book that you read um uh it's uh it's false from from good it's a German uh uh number two is their CEO you're following or studying so is there a Founder is there a Founder that you're following or studying from a technology perspective I think um Elon Musk is pretty interesting number three what's your favorite online tool for building videos number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night oh last night it was like three but normally I try to get between five or six and a half and what's your situation married single kids I do have two kids and I don't have a wife but we're not married two kiddos okay great and how old are you uh I'm uh 43 43 last question something you wish you knew when you were 20 years old knowing that um founding a company is not searching up to the right Vision or idea it's just to the the will to form markets and that is important to the will to form something to to do something not waiting on the brilliant idea so we started with optimizing our EV and EV charging infrastructure now we are on on the other side so it's just do something it's it's important guys venos has just hit 350 000 per month in Revenue up from 250 000 per month a year ago they're working with over a hundred power grid operators spread across Germany Netherlands Austria Switzerland India South America powering over a million substations to help these powerboard operators optimize their systems and most importantly decentralize the power grid which is more sustainable they're growing quick they might raise we'll call it two to four million here I call it a 40 to 50 million evaluation we'll see what Jonas does but in the meantime Jonas thanks for taking us to the top thanks one 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