How vFairs Grew from $0 to Over $30M in Revenue: Muhammad Younas' Lessons from Six Years of Scaling

Introduction and the $30M+ Revenue Milestone

Muhammad Younas

00:02>> Hello, everyone. My name is Muhammad Younas and I'm the Founder and CEO of vFairs. vFairs is an all in one event management platform. We help companies run virtual events, in person events and hybrid events. Over the next twenty minutes, what I'll be doing is that I'll walk you through just some of the learnings that I have had over the past six years in growing the company from $0 to over $30,000,000 in revenue. So let's get started.

Lesson 1: Interview Prospects and Build the MVP With Them

Muhammad Younas

00:33>> See, since yesterday, have heard a couple of times and I'm just going to double down on that one is that the best thing that you can do for your startup when you're growing from $0 to $1,000,000 in revenue is that you interview prospects and then somehow figure it out what you want to build for them. And by the time you would have built your MVP, you would already have some of those prospects who will convert into

Becoming Your Own Customer: The Virtual Job Fair Story

Muhammad Younas

01:00>> customers. So again, something that you would have heard many times, but one thing that I'm just going to add on top of that is just think about if you yourself can become your own customer. So in our case, the very first MVP we built was we started helping companies do virtual job fairs. But other than having those customers who were running virtual job fairs using our software, what we did was we actually ran hundreds of virtual

01:33>> job fairs ourselves and actually made hundreds and thousands of dollars in revenue by running those virtual job fairs. So again, in many cases, it might not be possible with your product, but if somehow you are in that sweet spot where you can use your own product to actually achieve the ROI, then you already have a case study from day one. You would exactly know what it takes to achieve that success that you're trying to preach through

01:57>> your software. So again, step number one is that when you're building your MVP, when you're building that first version of the product, interview a lot of prospects, see if they resonate with what you have with the vision that you have for your product. And then again, if you can, if it's applicable in your product, try to use your own product, try to see that ROI yourself because then you would be able to just have that conversation

Lesson 2: Validate Fast With Paid Media

Muhammad Younas

02:23>> with the customer where you both can see things from the same angle. Now, once you have done that, again, what has worked really well for us, and I highly recommend to wherever it's applicable, is that you validate fast and one way to do that is through paid media. In our early stages, we spent a lot of money on paid ads because we wanted to see that some of those keywords, some of those pinpoints that we have

02:52>> in mind that vFairs is solving, do a lot of other people resonate with that or not? And again, it's just a very quick way of validating it. And again, in our case, it worked out really, really well. You can do that through outbound, you can do it through a lot of other places, but again, for us, this one worked out really well. A few ways that you can do that is that you can focus on competitor

03:13>> keywords, long tail keywords, some of the most expensive keywords that exist in your category, but will help you understand what that prospect look for. And again, if you are in the right direction or not.

Lesson 3: Connect With Leads Immediately

Muhammad Younas

03:27>> Once you have done that, once you have got that first lead or first couple of prospects who want to learn a bit more about your company, the very first thing that you can do to impress that prospect is to actually get in touch with them very, very quickly. See the prospect, if someone is looking to solve their problem, they're not just going to reach out to you, they're going to reach out to tens of other companies

03:50>> as well. But the company that wins most of the time is that who is able to connect with that prospect earliest with the right solution. If I'm a prospect, if I'm trying to solve a particular problem for my company, if I have seen that great product, I'm going to stop my search. So again, you would be a small company in that zero to one or zero to ten million dollars stage, but somehow figure it out how

04:16>> 24/7, if someone is going to knock on your door, how can you make sure that you're the first one to connect with that prospect? Because if you have done that and if you have a decent enough product, you would see that you will have a much more higher conversion rate. So again, the very first things of getting started is that work with customers to create that MVP, validate fast, either through paid media or through outbound,

04:41>> etcetera, but the moment you get connected with the prospect, try to be in touch with them very, very quickly. That can be the single biggest advantage that you can have in those initial years. The next thing is that as you have had those initial ten, twenty, 30 customers, you want to see what are the problems you can solve for that particular prospect, for that particular customer. In our case, we used to get in touch with our

How vFairs Landed Its First $100K Deal

Muhammad Younas

05:09>> customers. We would ask them, can you tell us a bit more about your job function? What else do you do? And some of these companies told us that other than doing virtual job fairs, we also do in person job fairs. And again, we use a company called, that starts with C and we are facing a lot of problems with them, with the product, with the customer support, with the UI and everything. And we're like, you know

05:32>> what, when is your next event that you're using that product for? One of the companies told us that we're going to have our in person job in the next three months. We told them that how about we build an MVP for you, a product for you that you can use for your next in person event in three months or less with an agreed set of functionalities. Really just by having that conversation, they were already our customers.

05:54>> They said, you know what, if we'll build in the next two months, we're going to replace that other really, again, a high profile company with your product. So it's just by having the conversation with your customer, how else you can solve their problem. We went from a virtual job fair company to also starting supporting in person job fairs. So that's how we got our first 100K deal. The next thing that you can do once you

Lesson 4: Ask for Internal Referrals and References

Muhammad Younas

06:19>> have proven yourself to a particular stakeholder to a business unit within a particular department is just ask them, can you recommend me to other people? Can you recommend me to other departments where this product can be used? And you will be surprised that if you have given someone a great product with an amazing customer support, by asking for a reference, how many companies would be willing to do that? I see often and often again that not

06:46>> many people ask for those references or ask for those testimonials or ask for those reviews. We do that and we have seen that it has helped us expand from one department in a global Fortune 500 company to over 50 plus departments across 100 plus countries just by asking for those internal referrals or external references. So again, do that. Ask them how else and who else can benefit from this particular product and you'll be surprised at how

07:19>> many of them will help you connect, again, internally with a lot of other departments or externally with other people who have a similar problem that your product is solving.

07:30>> And the best way to keep on earning a customer trust is that you work with them to show them what's coming next and actually point out that this is the problem that you highlighted, this is the timeline that by which I can deliver it to you, and this is how it's going to look like. The more you share your future roadmaps with the customer and you make them part of the process, you build a kind of

07:57>> a customer advisory board, ask them for what else should be happening in your product,

08:06>> will see something in you that typically most of the other big companies would never be able to do. This is where you can stand out. You can stand out where you make those customers actually the CN makers of what should be coming in the product. And again, as that aligns with the vision of your product, consistently share that customer facing roadmap with your customers. And again, you will see that that will help you earn trust, that

08:26>> will help you retain them, and that will help you get a lot of other references from a lot of other departments.

Ranking Number One by Staying Close to Customers

Muhammad Younas

08:33>> See, by the time you would grow from zero to ten, ten to 20, you will see that you start becoming a big company that end up might be having the same challenges that these customers were having with the big boys before they signed up with you. And at that time, you just have to go and just always stay true to your initial vision and mission of why you build that product and what help you grow from

09:00>> a $0 company to a 10 or $20,000,000 company. In our case, when we build our product, we knew that one of the things that has helped us stand out is that we didn't see ourselves just in a software as a service industry, just in a tech industry. We knew that we are helping companies do virtual events, in person events, job fairs, conferences, trade shows, open days, so many complex type of events. And one of the things

09:32>> that helped us stand out was our customer support. So we as a company just always had this vision that for us, the success would be what do our customers say about us? And by staying true to that vision, which is, again, we'll not consider ourselves just to be in the tech industry, we'll consider that we are also in the hospitality industry, we will kind of be very close to our customers all the time, It helps us

09:58>> just break that grid where just a couple of years back, we were a new entrant in many of these industries, but now we'll consistently rank number one, both in virtual events and the event management software category. So just always stay close to your customer, figure out that why they like you. It might be because of the product, it might be because of the customer support, it might be a combination of two, but whatever that initial secret

10:20>> sauce was, you just have to make sure that you don't lose that sight as you grow. Again, for us, that was a customer support and we made sure that any point if we have to make any decision of where we're going to make a compromise, that's the part where we'll never make the compromise, which is on the customer support. We want to make sure that we double down on that one because that's one of the reasons

Lesson 5: Track NPS at Product and Team Level

Muhammad Younas

10:41>> that initially our customers signed up with us. And one of the ways to keep on doing that is that very early on, start making sure that you're tracking the NPS both for your product and for your customer support. Both the things are really important. One is very different than the other, specifically if you are in an industry like ours. You want to make sure that you're consistently tracking the NPS of the product. Anytime you are getting

11:09>> any detractor, you reach out to that particular prospect and a customer and ask them, what would it take for them to become a promoter rather than a detractor? And the same thing should happen with anyone who has a customer facing role. If you have any AE, any customer success, any project manager, anyone who's communicating with a prospect or with a customer, you want to make sure that you have that kind of small line that says in

11:38>> the signature line, give me feedback or rate our customer support and consistently track that. For us, anytime we get any of those surveys filled up by any of our customers, within ten minutes or less, A, either we thank them for giving us a nine or a 10 in BK promoter, or if it's a neutral or a detractor kind of a feedback, we get in touch with them and we ask them, again, thank you for your feedback.

12:05>> Can you elaborate a bit more of how and what we can do in order to kind of convert you from a detractor to promoter? Just again, tracking that NPS both at a product level and at your team level is extremely important in order to make sure that you consistently deliver the customer support that you wanted to deliver.

Summary and Closing Takeaways

Muhammad Younas

12:24>> So again, just over the last twenty minutes, I showed you that in order to build that initial MVP, try to interview a lot of prospects, work with them to build that initial MVP of the product. If you can become your own customer of the product, there's nothing that can beat that. Validate fast. And the way to validate fast is that you can spend it on Google, on paid media, you can do outbound, but try to validate

12:47>> very, very fast and get those initial set of customers who would sign up with you. Once they do sign up with you or once they show a bit of an interest in your product, the very first impression that you can give them is that you connect with them early. If a lead comes in, try to connect with them in ten minutes or less because the earlier you will connect with them, the better chances you will have

13:05>> that you are the first one giving that demo. And again, if you can solve that problem, they will sign up with you. Once you have done that, just always make sure that you deliver an exceptional customer support to that particular company. And as you have done that, ask them how else you can solve, what other problems you can solve for them. Ask them for references, ask them to connect you with other companies or other organizations or

13:28>> other departments wherever they feel that your product can solve that problem. And as you have done that, make sure that you always keep your customers as part of the decision making process of your future roadmaps. Always track your NPS, NPS for the product, NPS for the individuals because that will help you consistently stand out. Thank you.