How Venios Reached $3M in 2022 Revenue with Zero Churn Serving 100 Power Grid Operators (Interview with CEO Jonas Danzeisen)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, 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 100 power grid operators spread across Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, India, South America, Pan powering over a million substations to help these power grid operators optimize their systems and most importantly, decentralize the power grid, which is more sustainable. They're growing quick. They might raise, call it, 2 to 4,000,000 here. I call it a 40 to

00:2450,000,000 valuation. We'll see what Jonas does. Hey, folks. My guest today is Jonas Danzeisen. He's building a tool called venios. That's venios.com. It's power grid real time operating system. Jonas, you ready to take us to the top?

Jonas Danzeisen

00:38>> Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully. Yeah. We're working on that. We're working

Nathan Latka

00:40on So how'd you get who are you selling to? Are you selling to governments, or who's using this?

Who Venios Sells To: Grid Operators and DSOs

Jonas Danzeisen

00:45>> So so our solution is used by grid operators, by DSOs or DNO's, distribution system operators. So the owners of the local monopoly, the owners of the grid, the the suppliers, the utilities, basically. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

00:57All around the world, are you focused on a particular geo?

Geographic Expansion Across Europe, India, and South America

Jonas Danzeisen

01:00>> Oh, we started in Germany, then rather fast went into Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland. Now we do have activities whole Europe and also first activities in South America and also in India. So expanding because we are solving a physical problem by using IT, and the physical problem is everywhere where you start to integrate renewables locally into your infrastructure.

Nathan Latka

01:25So I'm a I'm a power grid operator in in The Netherlands. What am I paying you to help me with?

The Problem Venios Solves: Decentralizing the Power Grid

Jonas Danzeisen

01:32>> So the the point is that 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, 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 it's like filling up the champagne pyramid from the bottom line. So you need to know where are glasses, how full

02:00>> are the glasses, where is some more champagne needed, where do I have too much champagne. And so this complexity, we help with our solution to handle and this is exactly the pain we are solving. So integration of EVs, integration of heat pumps, integration of AC. AC is less a topic in The Netherlands, but a big topic in India. Integration of PV, of course. Decentralized generation is a big topic. Combined heat and power integration. All the decentralized

02:32>> assets, because in the old world, we do have big power plants, coal, nuclear, gas, and now we're building this system or we're transforming this system into decentralized system with small assets. So Understood. What is the

Pricing Model: Per Substation and Contract Structure

Nathan Latka

02:47what is the average power grid operator pay you per month or per year to use your technology?

Jonas Danzeisen

02:53>> 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 based on counting points, like households or industry, and we do, to differ a little, have option to be

03:12>> referring on the amount of substations. And it depends on how many substations you have, and so basically how big is your grid. So in So what is the price per substation? So what is the price per substation?

03:29>> So let me say it like this. If we if you have a project volume of $100 an estimated project volume of $100 you have implementation fee for the first

03:44>> year, and you have a SaaS fee, and the SaaS fee is roughly 30% to 35, and the rest is implementation, and the SaaS fee is ongoing. And it can depend if you have a small utility from several €10,000 SaaS fee up to, if you are a big utility in India or big utility in The Netherlands, to several 100,000. Jonas, try and simplify

Nathan Latka

04:06this 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 use your technology across all their substations? Are we talking 20,000 a year, 2,000,000 a year, 20,000,000 a year? Where are you generally?

Jonas Danzeisen

04:20>> No. It's between so it's between depending on the size, it's between 50 to 300.

Nathan Latka

04:27$300,000 per year?

Jonas Danzeisen

04:29>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

04:30Okay. Okay.

Jonas Danzeisen

04:31Got it.

04:31>> From 50 to 300,000.

Nathan Latka

04:33And if someone's paying you $300,000 per year, how many substations do they have?

Jonas Danzeisen

04:39>> Then you are in the in the area of several 10,000 substations between depending on the infrastructure quality and and what is happening between,

04:50>> I would say, 30 to a 100,000 substations.

Nathan Latka

04:54Okay. And if someone's only paying you $50,000 per year, how many substations do they likely have?

Jonas Danzeisen

05:04>> Fully full rollout is in the should be in the area of

05:14>> from a 150 to five 100, depending on on the complexity of the of the infrastructure.

Nathan Latka

05:20Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 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 Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second, but you log in, you connect

05:43your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time. You can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna

06:07get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna 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

06:29not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna 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

06:55going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll 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 dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. 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

07:17if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation 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. Alright. Let's jump back into

07:43the interview. And then to keep building that out. So let's say I have 500 substations. I'm paying you a SaaS fee of $50,000 per year. You're also then gonna charge me an implementation fee of about what?

Jonas Danzeisen

07:56>> So so as mentioned, so implementation is is one. We do have 30% implementation, 70

Nathan Latka

08:0630% of what we what percent you're taking? So 30% of the ACV you just gave me?

Jonas Danzeisen

08:11>> If 50,000 is SaaS fee, then you have an implementation project of roughly a 150 to 200.

Nathan Latka

08:21Okay. Got it. So the setup just to go live is a 150,000, and the recurring fee on the back end is $50,000 per year.

Jonas Danzeisen

08:27>> Yeah. And you should have on this?

Nathan Latka

08:30You should have really, really high net dollar retention then because after someone pays a big setup fee, they never should cancel. Right?

Zero Churn and Customer Retention

Jonas Danzeisen

08:37>> That's so we do have a so we don't have a churn rate. Churn rate is zero.

Nathan Latka

08:43When did you launch the company? First customer was in what year?

Company History: Founded Ten Years Ago

Jonas Danzeisen

08:47>> We started ten years ago.

Nathan Latka

08:49Okay. 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 de churn down to a 100 substations?

Jonas Danzeisen

09:03>> So we so with small customers, we we start normally with a full rollout. So and with big customers, we normally start in one region, like having a region A and then going from A to B to C and then growing into the infrastructure because it's highly profitable. And if you have already started with one region, then it's relatively cheap to because we are you can see our solution like the enterprise service bus kind of solution because

09:36>> we are connected to GI, geoinformation system, to asset information system, to SCADA system, to all the solutions that are existing at the utility, and building then up a real time virtual twin for planning and for control of the infrastructure. And, yeah, the value is so we have customers with return of invest of less than one year.

Nathan Latka

10:00With what less than one year?

Jonas Danzeisen

10:03>> Return of invest.

Nathan Latka

10:05I see. My my my question, I mean, I under I appreciate the extra context you gave, 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?

Jonas Danzeisen

10:19>> No.

Nathan Latka

10:20So in ten years, you've had nobody even down not not cancel completely, but you haven't even had anyone downgrade one substation across your entire base?

Jonas Danzeisen

10:29>> So we do have structural changes within the infrastructure, of course. Then assets go out and new assets are coming in. But if you started to integrate our solution normally, we are in regions with a high criticality, so a lot of PV, a lot of dynamics in the infrastructure, and that our solution gives the value to bring transparency and controllability. And

Nathan Latka

10:54then I understand the product. I'm just asking about net dollar retention. That's all. Okay. Got it. So so how many if you add up all the individual power grid operators that currently rely on venios, how many of them are there

Jonas Danzeisen

11:07>> today? Roughly a 100.

Nathan Latka

11:10A 100. And if you add up all the substations that is are connected to your technology, how many is it it's gotta be in the millions, right?

Jonas Danzeisen

11:20>> It should be roughly a million, maybe maybe more. We we are working on that actually because we we do have a strong growth phase actually. And just imagine having, so we have two of three DSOs in Delhi in India, and one one street of Delhi is roughly like, 80%, 90% of Scandinavia. So Mhmm. Delhi is, like, massive.

Nathan Latka

11:47Jonas, talk to me more about your team. How many folks are full time?

Jonas Danzeisen

11:51>> Roughly thirty thirty people.

Nathan Latka

11:5330 people.

11:54>> Small time.

11:54And what's the breakdown? How many are engineers?

Jonas Danzeisen

11:58>> Most of them. Basically, all of them.

Nathan Latka

12:00Oh, okay. Are you an engineer?

Jonas Danzeisen

12:03>> Yes. I studied physics, and I've done my doctor in production science at the in the automotive industry at Dyna.

Nathan Latka

12:11Who sells?

Jonas Danzeisen

12:16>> In the beginning, I was a salesman, CEO and salesman, and then now we have a small sales team and growing. So we plan to double the team within the next twelve months.

Nathan Latka

12:27And are you bootstrapped to there? Have you raised capital?

Jonas Danzeisen

12:31>> From a US perspective, we are more or less bootstrapped. We have, like, investment of less than 1,000,000 into the company.

Nathan Latka

12:37And when did you raise that capital?

Jonas Danzeisen

12:40>> We do have some business angel that founded with started founding, and in the last decade, we do have one founding round and collected some money.

Nathan Latka

12:51What what year

Jonas Danzeisen

12:52>> was that? Actually,

12:55>> it was in 2018.

Nathan Latka

12:57So 2018, you did, like, a million dollar pre seed round?

Jonas Danzeisen

13:01>> Less. Because we do have, of course, the the angel round. So all in, there was investment of less than 1,000,000 into the company.

Nathan Latka

13:08Less than 1. Okay. That's great. So so capital efficient. And then just to confirm, you've got these subsidies power grid operators, they're all paying you again somewhere between 50,000 a year and $300,000 per year. Right?

13:21Yes. So if we take a 100 of those operators, and let's say they're all paying you the minimum of $50,000 per year, that would put you at MRR today of about $420,000 per month. Is that accurate?

Jonas Danzeisen

13:34>> This is a realistic region.

Nathan Latka

13:36It's what?

Jonas Danzeisen

13:38>> It's in this region. Yes.

Nathan Latka

13:41Oh, your your monthly revenue is in the 400 it's above $400,000.

Jonas Danzeisen

13:45>> It's a little less, but the the region is is correct.

Nathan Latka

13:49Can you break $400,000 a month this year, you think?

Jonas Danzeisen

13:53>> Sorry. I didn't get the question.

Nathan Latka

13:55Can you break $400,000 per month in revenue by December?

Jonas Danzeisen

14:00>> Break? Sorry. I I I

Nathan Latka

14:02Jonas, what do you plan to grow by this year? How much can you grow revenue this year?

Jonas Danzeisen

14:07>> Yeah. We're doubling.

Nathan Latka

14:08Okay. Doubling. Okay. And did you double so if you're doing, call it, $350,000 a month today, what were you doing exactly one year ago?

Jonas Danzeisen

14:17>> I have to check your numbers. Sorry. I'm I'm I'm on the forefront. So so I'm I'm at that point, we are we're planning to more or less double the next Jonas, I'm asking

Nathan Latka

14:30my question was the last

Revenue Growth: 250% in 2021, 20% in 2022

Jonas Danzeisen

14:31>> twelve months. Last twelve months was so we did have upgrows of 250% in 2021 and restructured and yeah. Restructured the company last year, so there was up growth of roughly 20%. I have to check the numbers in detail.

Nathan Latka

14:58Okay. So like a year ago, you were doing something like $280,000 per month, then you grew 20%. Yeah.

Jonas Danzeisen

15:03>> Two fifty to 80 something.

Nathan Latka

15:05Two fifty. Okay. That's great. Well, this is this is you have very efficient revenue per employee. Right? I mean, you're doing between, call it, 4 and 5,000,000 in ARR 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?

Jonas Danzeisen

15:23>> By offering valued solution to our customers and having a highly efficient implementation

15:33>> work. So normally, we could do an implementation of a customer up to 10,000 substations, was is roughly a million counting points within less

Team Breakdown: 30 People, 18 Engineers, 3 Sales Reps

Jonas Danzeisen

15:47>> than ten days, including all the infrastructure data and our competitors. Or if you go into the normal situation in this market, it's it's, like, half of the time, our competitors need to set up a PMO.

Nathan Latka

16:03Understood. And I got my math lot wrong.

Jonas Danzeisen

16:04>> And you're saying 90% implementation.

Nathan Latka

16:07Sorry. Yeah.

16:09I got my math slightly wrong. Sorry. If you're doing 5,000,000 run rate today with 30 people, you're doing more like a $160,000 per month in term I'm sorry, per year in revenue per employee, which is pretty standard for a private capital efficient SaaS company. So those numbers all check out. They look good. I mean, how do you go from a million substations to 2,000,000 substations? What's your expansion strategy, especially if you're the only one doing sales?

Jonas Danzeisen

16:32>> No. I'm not the only one. We do have a sales team.

Nathan Latka

16:34Well, you just told me that all 30 employees were engineers.

Jonas Danzeisen

16:37>> Yeah. But engineers could so engineers could only

16:43>> so from the background, they're engineers, but there, we do have people with an engineering background also in in sales.

Nathan Latka

16:50So of your full time team, how many folks are actually writing code on a daily basis?

Jonas Danzeisen

16:56>> We do have 18 people working in co development, and the rest is

17:06>> working with customers

Nathan Latka

17:10How many are sales reps with how many are sales reps with the quota?

Jonas Danzeisen

17:13>> Three.

Nathan Latka

17:14Okay. And how did you every SaaS one is listening right now. They always struggle with how to hire and structure their first sales hire.

17:21>> How did you come up

17:21with the quota for your first sales hire?

First Sales Hire and Building the Sales Team

Jonas Danzeisen

17:24>> So my first sales hire was now our chief sales officer, and so he was coming from the industry, and he supported me. We went both into the market, and now he is the head of the sales team, and we do have two colleagues within the sales team, and sales team will grow up to four to five people within the next twelve months.

Nathan Latka

17:48That's great. Any plans to raise capital, you're gonna stay bootstrap basically bootstrapped?

Fundraising Plans: $2M to $4M Raise for North America

Jonas Danzeisen

17:53>> We're thinking about for accelerating

17:57>> the market entrance also in North America? And

Nathan Latka

18:00How much would you consider raising?

Jonas Danzeisen

18:03>> We think about between two and four.

Nathan Latka

18:06And and do you think you can get, like, a 40 or 50,000,000 valuation?

Jonas Danzeisen

18:10>> That would be an interesting range.

Nathan Latka

18:13Mhmm. How do you get there today? I mean, it's has nothing to do with you. It's just the macroeconomic trends right now are just no one's writing checks.

Jonas Danzeisen

18:22>> So it's so being in the field of critical infrastructure, being in a field where customers couldn't go bankrupt, and being and and having super solid cash flows from our customers, we don't we are not faced with any liquidity problem at the moment. We do have a lot of

18:41>> capital institutions, I would say, that are asking about if it's possible to to invest in venios.

Nathan Latka

18:48And if you if you had a choice of raising 2,000,000 on a 40,000,000 valuation or taking 20,000,000 all cash upfront today to sell the whole company, which one would you take?

Jonas Danzeisen

18:58>> No. Selling the company is no option. So it's a multibillion dollar market. And so in Germany, the investment in the infrastructure in the next ten years is roughly 100,000,000,000. So European wide investment in infrastructure only on the electricity side is roughly 1,000,000,000,000. Globally, something between three and five, and there should be enough room for having several 10 or 100,000,000 revenue

19:29>> for IT to operate this critical infrastructure.

19:32>> Yeah. But you have to go capture that market.

Nathan Latka

19:34I understand it's big. It's taken you ten years to grow to $4.55000000 bucks in revenue. So what are you changing? Like, how do

Market Size and Long-Term Vision

Jonas Danzeisen

19:40>> you Now go it's kick starting. So the point is it's comp it's not selling books. It's a it's a complex technology. It's needed to work. You need to so we actually have platform generation four. So we we we put away our old platforms. So now we are we can compete with a big yeah, with the with the classical competitors, like Siemens, like ABB, like a Schneider. And now it's, like, doubling every year or more profitable is

Nathan Latka

20:12Well, you didn't double the past twelve months, just to be clear. You grew 20% the past twelve months. That's what you just told me.

Jonas Danzeisen

20:17>> Yeah. But the year but the year before, we more than doubled.

Nathan Latka

20:21Understood. Understood. Let's 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?

Jonas Danzeisen

20:35>> It's it's Faust from from Greta. It's a German r. It's a German book.

Nathan Latka

20:40Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Jonas Danzeisen

20:45>> So Is there a founder

Nathan Latka

20:47is there a founder that you're following or studying?

Jonas Danzeisen

20:52>> From a technology perspective, I think Elon Musk is pretty interesting.

Nathan Latka

20:59Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building venios?

Jonas Danzeisen

21:05>> Excellent.

Nathan Latka

21:07Number four, how many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Jonas Danzeisen

21:11>> Oh, last night, it was, like, three, but normally, I try to get between five or six and a half.

Nathan Latka

21:17And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Founder Advice

Jonas Danzeisen

21:20>> I do have two kids and I have a wife, but we're not married.

Nathan Latka

21:23Two kiddos? Okay. Great. And how old are you?

Jonas Danzeisen

21:27>> I'm

21:30>> 43.

Nathan Latka

21:3143. Last question.

21:32Something you wish you knew when you were 20 years old?

Jonas Danzeisen

21:38>> Knowing that founding a company is not searching after the right vision or idea, it's just the will to form markets, and that is important. The will to form something, to do something, not waiting on the brilliant idea. So we started with optimizing of EV and EV charging infrastructure. Now we are on the other side. So it's just do something. It's important.

Nathan Latka

22:08Guys, 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 100 power grid operators spread across Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, India, South America, Pan powering over a million substations to help these power grid operators optimize their systems and most importantly, decentralize the power grid, which is more sustainable. They're growing quick. They might raise, call it, 2 to 4,000,000 here. I call it a 40 to

22:3350,000,000 valuation. We'll see what Jonas does. But in the meantime, Jonas, thanks for taking us to the top.

Jonas Danzeisen

22:38>> Thanks.

Nathan Latka

22:39One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. 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

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