Latka logo

Founder Interview

How Venly Grew to 50 Paying Customers and 500K Free Wallet Users After a €2M Seed Round (Interview with Co-Founder Gerbert Vandenberghe)

Interview Date
November 4, 2021
Interviewee
Gerbert VandenbergheCo-Founder
Watch
Watch the full interview

Company Metrics at Interview Time

MRR (Nov 2021, currency not stated)

40K

Paying Customers (2021)

50

Post-Money Valuation (2021, currency not stated)

7M

Total Raised (Seed, Apr 2021)

€2,000,000

Free B2C Users (2021)

500K

Historical Snapshot

These numbers were reported by Gerbert Vandenberghe during his interview with Nathan Latka recorded in November 2021 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Venly’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways

  • 01Gerbert said Venly was at 'just about 40' in monthly recurring revenue in November 2021, up from roughly 5-6k when the seed closed in April — no currency is stated for either figure on the recording [05:36], [05:48]
  • 02The company had 50 paying B2B customers across its wallet, NFT API, marketplace, and Shopify plugin products as of November 2021
  • 03Venly raised approximately €2M (about $2.4M) in a seed round closed in April 2021 at a 7,000,000 post-money valuation
  • 04The team grew from 4 people at the time of the seed close to 14 people by November 2021
  • 05Free B2C users grew from around 100K to 500K users on the Venly web wallet — free accounts that generate no revenue; Gerbert said 'we only monetize b to b' [06:26]
  • 06Pricing starts at $49 per month for the wallet product after a free tier covering up to 500 monthly active users
  • 07The Sandbox, described as the largest blockchain gaming studio, was a notable customer using Venly social logins
  • 08Venly was founded by four co-founders who split equity evenly at 25% each
  • 09Lead investor High-Tech Gründerfonds was joined by Block Rocket, imec, and an angel investor
  • 10The company was actively hiring business developers as of November 2021

Company Metrics at Time of Interview

MetricValueSource
MRR (Nov 2021, currency not stated)40KFounder interview, Nov 2021
Paying Customers (2021)50Founder interview, Nov 2021
Free B2C Users (2021)500KFounder interview, Nov 2021
Free B2C Users (earlier in 2021)100KFounder interview, Nov 2021
Seed Round (Apr 2021)€2,000,000Founder interview, Nov 2021
Post-Money Valuation (2021, currency not stated)7MFounder interview, Nov 2021
Team Size (2021)14Founder interview, Nov 2021
Team Size at Seed Close (Apr 2021)4Founder interview, Nov 2021
Wallet Pricing Entry Point (2021)$49 per monthFounder interview, Nov 2021
Free Tier Threshold (Monthly Active Users) (2021)500Founder interview, Nov 2021
Number of Co-Founders4Founder interview, Nov 2021
Year of First Customer2018Founder interview, Nov 2021

Growth Breakdown

Revenue

Gerbert put Venly at 'just about 40' in monthly recurring revenue in November 2021, up from roughly 5-6k at the April seed close. He said the team hoped to end the year around 50 to 60k — a target, not an achieved figure. No currency is stated for any of these numbers on the recording.

Customers

The company had 50 paying B2B customers across its product lines as of November 2021. On the B2C side, free wallet users grew from around 100K to 500K earlier in 2021, driven by onboarding through customers like The Sandbox. Those accounts are free and produce no revenue — Gerbert said Venly only monetizes B2B.

Team

Venly scaled from 4 co-founders at the seed close to 14 people by November 2021. Growth was concentrated in marketing and management, with 6 engineers on the development team and active hiring underway for business developers.

Funding

Venly closed a seed round of approximately €2M (about $2.4M) in April 2021 at a 7,000,000 post-money valuation. Investors included lead investor High-Tech Gründerfonds, Block Rocket, imec (which had invested pre-seed and followed on), and an angel investor.

Growth Strategy

Viral B2C Onboarding Through B2B Customers

Venly's primary growth lever was virality: when end users signed up through a customer's application such as The Sandbox, they created a Venly wallet account. That single account could then be used across multiple blockchain games, compounding user growth without direct B2C marketing spend.

Free Tier to Paid Conversion

The wallet product offered a free tier up to 500 monthly active users, lowering the barrier for development studios to adopt the product. Once studios scaled past that threshold, they converted to paid plans starting at $49 per month.

Cross-Sell Across Product Lines

Venly offered multiple products including web wallets, an NFT API, an NFT marketplace, and a Shopify plugin. Customers who started with wallets could be upsold NFT management and NFT analytics, increasing revenue per account over time.

Targeting Gaming Studios

Venly focused on blockchain gaming studios as a core customer segment, positioning its technology as a way to handle complex blockchain infrastructure so studios could focus on gameplay. The first customer, a gaming studio from Cyprus, was signed after a single 10-minute call.

Seed Capital to Build Sales and Marketing

The April 2021 seed round was used primarily to scale the marketing and sales teams. The team grew from 4 people in April 2021 to 14 by November, with headcount additions concentrated in marketing and management to accelerate customer acquisition.

Best Quotes

“So we're basically a SaaS company, so building applications on top of blockchain is pretty difficult. It's a very difficult technology, and making user friendly applications on top of blockchain is even more difficult. So we actually make it more easy for development studios, games, for example, to build user friendly games on top of blockchain without any knowledge of blockchain.”
“The post money valuation was $7,000,000.”
“So we have High-Tech Gruenderfonds, which is a very large German investor. So they have very good connections. The they took the lead, and Frank really believed in the company from the first time he met Tim, our CEO, and he helped us close the seed rounds.”
“Yes. Correct. And we grow b to c, we grew from around 100,000 users to 500,000.”
“So we we have customers like, for example, The Sandbox. It's the largest blockchain gaming studio that creates a metaverse, and they use our social logins to onboard new people to their application. So people logging in through The Sandbox, through their social logins, they create a venly account. So they sign up through through actually our customers, and they can use the same wallet to sign up through or to to play multiple games from multiple customers.”
“I think it's the best, and it's fair, and everybody is equally involved in the the project and the business. So it was a good decision.”

What Happened Next

This interview captured Venly in November 2021, seven months after the company closed a €2,000,000 seed round in April of that year and grew from four people to fourteen. Gerbert Vandenberghe reported 50 paying B2B customers and 500,000 free consumer wallet accounts on that recording date, and said the team hoped to end the year at a higher monthly run rate — a target, not an achieved figure. The numbers here should be read as a historical snapshot. Venly has continued to develop its blockchain wallet, NFT API and marketplace products since this conversation. Visit the Venly company profile on GetLatka for the most current available data.

View Venly’s current profile and metrics

Full Transcript

Chapters

Introduction and Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Gerbert von Don Bettehay. After finishing his master's, he started his career as a business analyst and project manager working on IT projects. When Ethereum launched, he was convinced about the possibilities of the technology to disrupt old models and create new businesses. So he started his own business with some colleagues around this new technology. He's now building venly.io to help make the blockchain more user friendly. Gerbert, you ready to take us

00:22to the top?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

00:23>> Yeah. Sure. Alright.

Revenue Model and Product Overview

Nathan Latka

00:25Tell me who you're selling this to and how you guys make money. What's the revenue model?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

00:30>> So we're basically a SaaS company, so building applications on top of blockchain is pretty difficult. It's a very difficult technology, and making user friendly applications on top of blockchain is even more difficult. So we actually make it more easy for development studios, games, for example, to build user friendly games on top of blockchain without any knowledge of blockchain.

Nathan Latka

00:57Interesting. And what are companies paying on average per month to use your technology?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

01:02>> It depends. We have multiple product slides. So we have web wallets. We have an NFT API to mint NFTs. We have an NFT marketplace place and a Shopify plugin to create NFTs, and they all follow a different pricing model. So based on the products that they choose to use, they have different pricing.

Nathan Latka

01:23Well, which one is the the thing that's close to a SaaS product?

Pricing and Free Tier Structure

Gerbert Vandenberghe

01:28>> Well, they are all with a monthly billing. For example, the wallets, we have a widget version where people actually create a venly wallet using social logins. It starts with a free tier, so it's very easy to use for software developers to get started. If they're successful, very successful. And up to five hundred monthly active users, it's free to use, and then it starts at $49 a month.

Paying Customer Count

Nathan Latka

01:51I see. How many paying customers do you have today across all of your product lines?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

01:56>> We have about 50 paying cost customers.

Nathan Latka

01:58Five zero?

First Customer Story

Nathan Latka

02:00>> Yes.

02:00Nice. Take me back to the first customer. Who was it, and do you remember how you got them?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

02:06>> Yes. The first customer was a gaming studio from Cyprus, and I had a call with the CEO, and he was immediately sold by the product. So for gaming studios, easy customer onboarding is very important, so they wanna focus on gameplay. So after ten minutes of of talking to him, he said, yes. We're gonna take it.

Nathan Latka

02:29Very cool. Okay. So that was your first customer. Now what year was that?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

02:35>> That was 2018.

Seed Round and Capital Raised

Nathan Latka

02:362018. You've now since grown. So help me understand. Have you bootstrapped the business, or did you decide to raise capital?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

02:44>> We closed our seed round in April this year.

Nathan Latka

02:47Okay. And how much did you raise?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

02:50>> About €2,000,000. So it will be about $2,400,000.

Nathan Latka

02:55Mhmm. And why did you need this capital?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

03:00>> To grow, to scale the team,

Nathan Latka

03:02to Well, what specifically, though?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

03:05>> Well, the product was already live. We wanted to build out the product a bit, so we need to scale a little bit the product team, but mainly to build out a sales team.

Team Growth and Hiring

Nathan Latka

03:14Mhmm. Okay. But and so how many people on the team today, and how many are sales?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

03:20>> So we were four people in April when we closed the seed round. Now we are 14 people. Mainly, the marketing team has been scaled, and the development team, we are still looking for good business developers.

Nathan Latka

03:33How many people on the engineering team?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

03:37>> Six.

Nathan Latka

03:38Six. Okay. Pretty good. Yes. And then and then the rest are sort of marketing, sales, management?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

03:45>> Yeah. Indeed. Yes. Mainly marketing and management, and and we we are looking actively looking for good business developers.

Seed Round Valuation and Equity Sold

Nathan Latka

03:53I see. Now when you raise the 2,400,000 seed, obviously, most people in their seed, they're selling 15 to 20% of the business. How much did you decide to sell in your seed round?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

04:02>> It will be similar to that. Yes.

Nathan Latka

04:05Okay. About 20%?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

04:06>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

04:07Okay. So you guys what? You raised it, like, a $10,000,000 to $11,000,000 valuation, something like that?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

04:14>> The post money valuation was $7,000,000.

Nathan Latka

04:187,000,000? Yes.

Gerbert Vandenberghe

04:19>> Mhmm. 7,000,000.

Nathan Latka

04:20Okay. Very cool. So so you sold about you sold more than you sold about twenty five twenty five, almost 30% of the business.

Gerbert Vandenberghe

04:27>> 12 yeah. 25, 26, maybe. Something like that.

Investors and Syndicate

Nathan Latka

04:31Do you tell me about the partners you chose to raise from.

Gerbert Vandenberghe

04:36>> So we have High-Tech Gruenderfonds, which is a very large German investor. So they have very good connections. The they took the lead, and Frank really believed in the company from the first time he met Tim, our CEO, and he helped us close the seed rounds. Then we have TheoHA Capital. It's a very new Belgian blockchain VC, but they are well connected in the blockchain space. There is Block Rocket, which is accelerator in Germany around blockchain technology.

05:12>> Then there's imec. Imec is one of the top incubators. So they already invested earlier before the seed, and they did a follow-on investment during the seed. And then there's an angel investor as well who trained the seed.

MRR Growth from Seed to Today

Nathan Latka

05:30So you brought on a lot of folks. That sounds like a good group of people. What was revenue when you guys raised the capital? Do you remember?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

05:36>> I think it's it was around 5 k MRR.

Nathan Latka

05:415,000 a month?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

05:42>> 6 k. Yeah. Yep.

Nathan Latka

05:43And what what will you be at by the end of this year, do you think?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

05:48>> Currently, we have just about 40, so we'll hope to end the year around 50 to 60 k.

Nathan Latka

05:55So you're you're at 14,000 right now?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

05:58>> 40. Four zero.

Nathan Latka

06:00Four zero. Oh, that's in that's a ton of growth. So you went from 5,000 a month eight months ago to 40,000 a month now today. Is that right?

B2C User Growth and Virality

Gerbert Vandenberghe

06:07>> Yes. Correct. And we grow b to c, we grew from around 100,000 users to 500,000.

Nathan Latka

06:15Visitors?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

06:17>> B to c users, yes, who use our web a lot.

Nathan Latka

06:21Interesting. Okay. So that's driving a lot of the growth of the recurring revenue?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

06:26>> Not really because we only monetize b to b.

Nathan Latka

06:29I see. How are people finding you?

The Sandbox and Customer Acquisition

Gerbert Vandenberghe

06:33>> So we we have customers like, for example, The Sandbox. It's the largest blockchain gaming studio that creates a metaverse, and they use our social logins to onboard new people to their application. So people logging in through The Sandbox, through their social logins, they create a venly account. So they sign up through through actually our customers, and they can use the same wallet to sign up through or to to play multiple games from multiple customers. So it's

07:01>> one account that that they can use over multiple blockchain games.

Nathan Latka

07:04Mhmm. But you mentioned you have 50 customers right now. So they must pay, like, 800 or to a thousand dollars a month on average. Right?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

07:12>> Yes. Something like that.

Nathan Latka

07:14Interesting. And what enables you to charge them more or less? What are you upselling?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

07:21>> So the more users they have, the higher the price goes, and then we can upsell multiple services. For example, if they just use the web wallets, we can start upselling the NFT management solution, for example, or the NFT analytics.

Co-Founders and Equity Split

Nathan Latka

07:38Very interesting. And did you guys decide do you have any co founders, or did you launch it by yourself, 100%?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

07:44>> No. We are with four founders. Four? So we yes.

Nathan Latka

07:49Did you split it evenly?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

07:52>> Yes. So we started it all together. We were actually all IT consultants on one certain IT company, and then Ethereum we launched, and we all believed in Ethereum and decided to to start a company together.

Nathan Latka

08:04Wow. What a story. Okay. So 25%. Do you regret that? Do you regret splitting it evenly?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

08:11>> No. I think it's the best, and it's fair, and everybody is equally involved in the the project and the business. So it was a good decision.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

08:19Mhmm. Mhmm. Very cool. Alright. Let's wrap up here with the famous five, Gerbert. Number one, what's your favorite book?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

08:26>> Lord of the Rings.

Nathan Latka

08:28Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

08:34>> No. Not really.

08:35Number

08:35>> three I've learned a lot of doing.

Nathan Latka

08:38Well, that's good. What's your favorite online tool for building venly?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

08:44>> HubSpot.

Nathan Latka

08:46Number four. How many hours of sleep do you eat every night?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

08:50>> Seven.

Nathan Latka

08:51Okay. That's pretty good. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

08:57>> Kids. Yes. Living together.

Nathan Latka

08:59Very cool. Okay. How many kiddos?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

09:04>> 86.

Nathan Latka

09:07You you have 86 kids?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

09:10>> No. I I thought you said kilos. Sorry. No. I have two kids, and my wife also has a daughter. So we do I see.

Nathan Latka

09:17See. Sorry. I should have been I shouldn't have said kids. I'm like, wait. What? 86 kids. Holy cow. Okay. You you have two kids.

Gerbert Vandenberghe

09:23>> That would be incredible. Yeah. I have two, and my wife also has a daughter. So we have three kids in total.

Nathan Latka

09:29I see. Okay. And how old are you?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

09:32>> I have to count. I'm 42. 40? 43. Yes.

Nathan Latka

09:3842. Happy early birthday. Last question, Gerbert. What is something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Gerbert Vandenberghe

09:47>> That it would be so much fun to build out a a company with good cofounders.

Nathan Latka

09:53Guys, there you have it. Venly, building a tool to help make blockchain more accessible. They went from 5,000 a month in revenue now to 40,000 a month in revenue over the past eight months. They raised their seed round just recently, raising 2,400,000 at a 7,000,000 valuation. 50 customers, 14 on the team, and six engineers, and Gerbert is hiring. He wants more engineers. So reach out. In the meantime, Gerbert, thanks for taking us to the top.

Gerbert Vandenberghe

10:16>> Yeah. Thanks a lot. And we're also hiring business developers, so they're also very welcome to join us.

Nathan Latka

10:22Guys, check it out at venly.io. Thanks, Gerbert.

Gerbert Vandenberghe

10:26>> Thanks a lot. Enjoy the evening.

Nathan Latka

10:29One 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

10:54Central. Additionally, remember these recorded Founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM 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 SaaS world, whether it's an acquisition, a big

11:16fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've probably talked about your tool if you're running a company or your firm if you're investing. You can go in there and quickly search and see what people are saying. Sign up

11:38for that at nathanlatka.com/slack. In the meantime, I'm hanging out with you here on YouTube. I'll be in the comments for the next thirty minutes. Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We

11:58got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.