How Viewst Reached $180K Revenue and 15 Enterprise Customers in 2022 (Interview with CEO Victoria Duben)

Intro and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, she was doing $300 a month a year ago, and last month, she broke $15,000 in MRR. She's helping 15 enterprise accounts. These are accounts that spend $25,000 to $30,000 a day on ads. She's helping them manage all their different ads. Right? So banner sizes, ad creatives, mixing them up, measuring results, all of that on viewst.com. She disclosed a $1,500,000 pre seed round at north of a $10,000,000 cap that was on a safe. She's gonna have

00:22team she's has a team of 11, and she turned down recently a $20,000,000 acquisition offer. Hey, folks. My guest today is Victoria Dubin. She's an ex pro tennis player and got her MS in physics and and applied math, spent ten years working in investment banking, and then started from started from analytics and ended up with with trading and project management. She's a second time founder, used to live in four countries, and never gave up on her

00:45dreams. Now building viewst, that's viewst.com, which is ads production, project management, and scaling. Victoria, are ready to take us to the top?

Victoria Duben

00:55>> Yeah. Thanks for introduction.

How Enterprise Customers Use Viewst

Nathan Latka

00:57You bet. You bet. Okay. So tell us the story of a customer who's using you and exactly how they use you.

Victoria Duben

01:03>> Okay. So, like, most of our customers are either, like, big brands or performance marketing managers, but they have one thing in common. So their, like, media budgets start from, like, $25,000 to $30,000 daily. So they have to produce a lot of different banners for different channels, first of all. And second, you know, they do a lot of testing, and that's why they need a very simple and affordable tool in order to scale their banners, their variations, and

01:31>> run a lot of AB tests.

Nathan Latka

01:33Interesting. Okay. So are you using AI to generate more creatives for them, or is it more like they upload a CSV with a bunch of headlines and you mix and match all the things together?

Victoria Duben

01:42>> Okay. So, of course, you know, AI is a big topic right now, and it's it's a huge whirlwind trend. But to be honest, it's not applied to generating layered visuals as for now, just either, like, plain images or very good quality text, but not actually like banners. And we are working on it. But we apply AI to small features like removing background, one of them, and also, like, resizing. So whenever you have a mock up of

AI Features and Banner Resizing

Victoria Duben

02:12>> a banner, then you can resize it to all different sizes perfectly. So that's why we use AI and we keep, like, improving this. And yeah. So that's about, like, AI.

Nathan Latka

02:26That's great. Okay. And so what does the average customer pay you per month to use this technology?

Pricing and Contract Structure

Victoria Duben

02:31>> You know, most of our customers are, like, corporations. I mean, like, okay, agencies and big brands. And so usually, they sign up for a year. And our bay like, basic tariff plan for enterprises starts from $12,000 yearly. But, you know, it depends on how many team members they invite to the platform. So, you know, 12,000 is for five people, and more you invite, like, more you pay.

Nathan Latka

02:59Yeah. Would you say, though, five a five person team is your sweet spot, or is it more like 10 people is the average?

Victoria Duben

03:05>> You know, I would say it's, like, seven to 10.

Nathan Latka

03:08Okay. So more like your average contract value might be, like, 20,000 a year or something like that.

Victoria Duben

03:12>> Yep. That's that's true.

Nathan Latka

03:14Give me the backstory here. When did you launch the business? What year?

Founding Story and Tennis Background

Victoria Duben

03:19>> 2020.

Nathan Latka

03:20'20. Were you still playing tennis at the time or no?

Victoria Duben

03:23>> You know, I still play tennis right now, but, of course, you know, not professional, but I enjoy playing it, and this is, like, my best way to network with different people.

Nathan Latka

03:34That's amazing. Were you I mean, did you teach yourself how to code, or, like, what came first? Tennis or or the or or software and coding?

Victoria Duben

03:43>> Tennis. You know, it's it started when I was, like, four years old, and my first competition happened when I was, like, probably, like, seven years old. And I earned my first money with tennis when I was, like, nine years old.

Nathan Latka

03:55Oh my gosh. Amazing. What was the highest rank you worked your way to in the USTA rankings?

Victoria Duben

04:01>> You know, I quit when I was 15 because of the injury, so, like, I I didn't get much. Unfortunately, I'm not, like, I don't know, Serena Williams, for instance. But I would say that I, yeah, I played good, and, you know, it helped me to

04:17>> actually earn some money while studying at the university. So I was coaching people, and that was the best way to network, as I as I told you.

Nathan Latka

04:25Oh, 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

04:49your 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

05:13get 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

05:35not 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

06:00going 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

06:22if 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

06:49the interview. That's awesome. Okay. So you started going in 2020. How'd you get your first customer?

Getting First Customers via AppSumo

Victoria Duben

06:56>> Oh, you know, I would say let's let's divide customers and, like, freemium users. So, initially, we started with freemium users, and our first users came from AppSumo. Of course, they paid, like, lifetime deals, but, like, it's one time payment. And our first corporate client came just recently, you know, in August, actually, so several months ago.

Nathan Latka

07:20So so how does that work? I mean, you know, AppSumo is really like it's there's not enterprise customers hanging out on AppSumo. Right? So you're now serving a very different niche than where you launched on AppSumo. How did that work? Would you do AppSumo again?

Victoria Duben

07:33>> Probably not. But, you know, I would I would advise other SaaS founders to try AppSumo because, you know, this is probably the easiest way and low hanging fruit to talk to your audience. I mean, to because there are a lot of there are a lot of users from, like, marketing, especially. And if you develop something for marketing, I don't know, email marketing or SEO marketing or some kind of tool for or production, you know, content production

08:04>> tool, for instance. It's a it's a good place to test it and to get a lot of feedback. And, you know, when you build something for b to b customers, anyway, you need to develop product to a certain point to make it interesting and valuable for professional teams. But on the way to this point, you start with like small guys, probably small businesses or freelancers and absolutely the place where you can find a lot of them.

Current Customer Count and Revenue

Nathan Latka

08:31Yep. Okay. Now fast forward to today. How many customers are you working with now?

Victoria Duben

08:35>> Okay. It depends. If we are talking about, like, how many checks we've signed, it's probably it's probably right now it's 15 starting from July this year. But if you're talking about users, these are No. No.

Nathan Latka

08:50Them customers.

Victoria Duben

08:53>> Okay. So, like, for instance, one corporation, but they have several team members who are using it.

Nathan Latka

09:00So paying that's one customer, one logo.

Victoria Duben

09:03>> Yeah. That's that's 15 right now.

Nathan Latka

09:0515. Okay. So 15 times $20,000 on average per year. You're at, like, 25,000 a month in revenue, something like that?

Victoria Duben

09:14>> Less because we've started with smaller teams and we lifted up our prices two times this year. So the in in September in October, it was, like, 15 k.

Nathan Latka

09:25Amazing. Okay. So $15,000 a month last month. And what were you doing exactly one year ago? Do you remember?

Fundraising: $1.5M SAFE Round

Victoria Duben

09:32>> A year ago, it was like, I don't know, $300.

Nathan Latka

09:36300. It's amazing. Okay. So so you're scaling nicely now. Have you bootstrapped or decided to raise capital?

Victoria Duben

09:44>> You know, we've just okay. I would say that we are still in the process of raising, but we've already collected what we were targeting to. But we still have a lot of interest, so probably will be

Nathan Latka

09:56How much did you already close on?

Victoria Duben

09:58>> Okay. It's 1,500,000.

Nathan Latka

10:00Okay. And so this would be, like, a pre seed round, basically?

Victoria Duben

10:04>> You know, I would like, this 1,500,000 came in safes, but we are already in the conversation with the two, like, ad tech we see and one big agency to make it price round.

Nathan Latka

10:18Okay. But it's not priced yet. So 1,500,000 on safes. Do the safes have a cap?

Valuation Cap and Growth Multiples

Victoria Duben

10:24>> Yes.

Nathan Latka

10:25So Five, ten million cap?

10:27Alright. How how

10:29did you how did you get a higher cap with with 15,000 a month in revenue?

Victoria Duben

10:33>> You know, to be honest, like, whenever I keep looking through a table at founder's Founderpath, I'm I'm impressed, you know, how great are companies you are talking about. Like, I mean, in terms of their multiples, how how far they managed to get with while bootstrapping. You know? For me,

Nathan Latka

10:54it's You're talking about in in Founderpath. You go to the valuations page and you see a bunch of deals that recently closed.

Victoria Duben

11:00>> Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, I love, like, getting back to the to this table, you know, to keep me kinda like, to see some benchmarks. But I would say that whenever you even even during this current economic conditions and, you know, potential downturn, the multiples are still kinda, I would say, high. Of course, you know, they fell down since last year, but, I mean, they're still high. And especially when you've when when you found quite a

11:30>> massive market pain and, like, the growth over the last several months were good? Because in revenue, we we we have grown, like, 76% month over month over the last six months.

Nathan Latka

11:44Yeah. But just fair point. Mean, you're going from a dollar to $2 a month is a 100% growth. You know?

Victoria Duben

11:50>> Low base effect, of course. Yes.

Nathan Latka

11:52Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Now look. I'm not trying to take away, by the way, from what you've built. I think it's incredible. Right? You've gone to 15,000 a month in revenue. But raising at I mean, let's say it was a 10,000,000 cap. It's only was higher than that, but that's a 55 x multiple on your current revenue. Right? I mean, let me ask you a question. If someone offered you 2,000,000 all cash upfront today to

Turning Down a $20M Acquisition Offer

Nathan Latka

12:08sell the business, would you sell?

Victoria Duben

12:10>> Nope.

Nathan Latka

12:11Or 2,000,000 all cash upfront?

Victoria Duben

12:13>> Nope. No problem. I was actually, several months ago, we were offered to sell the whole company for $20,000,000. Why? Because I

Nathan Latka

12:21Victoria, come on. That would be crazy for you not to take that cash off the table and go do something new.

Victoria Duben

12:26>> Because, you know, I love what you do what I do. I mean, then I I see big potential in what I do.

Nathan Latka

12:30Yeah. But you'll love it tomorrow to start it from scratch, but now you're $20,000,000 richer.

Victoria Duben

12:35>> No. I

Nathan Latka

12:36just find that so I I I mean, look. Part of this is my own war stories. Right? Like, I built built ship company $2,000,000. Heyo. Right? It's it's in my book. Right? Page six, my tax returns. And we got an offer to sell for 6,500,000 all cash. And I said no. Because I'm like, oh, I love it. I'm building a big team. You know what? I slaved for four more years and barely grew and then

12:56flash sold it and wasted four precious years of my life when I could have been way richer, way younger. I just find it hard to believe that you could say no to a 20,000,000 all cash upfront offer when you're doing $10 a month in revenue.

Victoria Duben

13:10>> Yes. Sorry. You know, it's my fault. It's not it it wasn't like 12 20,000,000, like, cash upfront. So it was partially cash and partially, like, equity in the new company, like, actually, Unicorn. But anyway, you know, this is my second venture. Probably probably I've mentioned about this. And, you know, I really because I used to work for ten years in investment banking and when I was, like, an employee. And now I have the, like, creative freedom,

First Startup and Lessons Learned

Victoria Duben

13:35>> and I love what I do, and I love people I meet. And, you know, I see a big potential, and I have a great team. So I just want to keep working on this particular project.

Nathan Latka

13:45That's all fair. What happened to your first startup? Did you sell it or shut it down or what?

Victoria Duben

13:48>> Oh, no. I just shut it down, and, you know, it was actually very painful. And probably I should have done this, like, earlier, several months earlier, maybe one year earlier. But, you know, when it's the first time you are too attached to what you do, like a small kid of yours and, you know, even numbers were kinda screaming just, you know, stop, stop, stop, but I couldn't. So this is one advice I wanna give to other

14:15>> founders when numbers say, like, you know, it doesn't work, means it doesn't work. Just don't do this.

Nathan Latka

14:21Funny. Alright. How many folks are full time on viewst today?

Team Size and Use of Funds

Victoria Duben

14:25>> 11.

Nathan Latka

14:2611. How many how many engineers?

Victoria Duben

14:29>> Seven. Seven.

Nathan Latka

14:30Wow. Okay. And are you writing code?

Victoria Duben

14:34>> Like, I used to, but I'm not. I'm not a technical founder.

Nathan Latka

14:38Okay. Not anymore. Not anymore. Okay. So 11 folks on the team. You just raised 1 point where are gonna spend the 1,500,000?

Victoria Duben

14:45>> Okay. So, you know, I I'm very inspired with the case of Basecamp, so I don't wanna grow a really huge team. But I understand that I need to hire, like, several more engineers, maybe two to three. And, anyway, we got to the point where we found our product market fit, we need to invest slightly into go to market strategy, like, test some marketing hypothesis. So currently, we don't have we have zero marketing budget. So all our

15:14>> growth is organic. But, you know, we need to start testing some hypothesis and maybe to hire, like, some junior sales.

Nathan Latka

15:23Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens. We're out of time, though. In the meantime, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, Victoria, what is your favorite business book?

Victoria Duben

15:32>> Well, that's okay. I I love one by Netflix, which is, like, how we build the culture of freedom and responsibility. And it helped me a lot communicating the things to my team. Second, probably, you know, by Horowitz, the hard things about hard things.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

15:51Yep. Yep. That's very good. Two good ones. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Victoria Duben

15:58>> Okay. I don't have one. You know?

Nathan Latka

16:02Okay.

16:03Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building viewst?

Victoria Duben

16:10>> Like, could you give me an example? So I'm just

Nathan Latka

16:13trying to A tool that you use a lot, Trello, Jira, Google Docs.

Victoria Duben

16:17>> Yeah.

16:22>> I don't know. Probably, you know, since I'm currently in the process of,

16:26>> like, market growth and development, so probably, you know, HubSpot CRM, it helps me a lot this way.

Nathan Latka

16:32Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Victoria Duben

16:36>> Eight hours. Not less.

Nathan Latka

16:37Good. And and so what's your situation? Married, single, kids?

Victoria Duben

16:41>> Married.

Nathan Latka

16:42No kids?

Victoria Duben

16:43>> No no kids.

Nathan Latka

16:44Okay. And can I ask how old you are?

Victoria Duben

16:47>> 39.

Nathan Latka

16:4839 years young.

16:49Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Victoria Duben

16:53>> You know, sometimes I think, you know, I'm a little bit jealous to those young entrepreneurs, and maybe I should start building something earlier.

Nathan Latka

17:02Mhmm.

Victoria Duben

17:02>> Because I've started when I was, like, 33 with my first venture. But on the other hand, I think, you know, that experience I acquired while working for big corporations, it helps me a lot right now. So I'm probably happy with like, I don't know. I'm I don't know what to change. Nothing.

Nathan Latka

17:21Guys, she was doing $300 a month a year ago, and last month, she broke $15,000 in MRR. She's helping 15 enterprise accounts. These are accounts that spend $25,000 to $30,000 a day on ads. She's helping them manage all their different ads. Right? So banner sizes, ad creatives, mixing them up, measuring results, all of that on viewst.com. She just closed a $1,500,000 pre seed round at north of a $10,000,000 cap that was on a safe. She's gonna

17:43have team she's has a team of 11, and she turned down recently a $20,000,000 acquisition offer. You have guts, Victoria. We love you. Thanks for taking us to the top.

Victoria Duben

17:52>> Thanks for inviting.

Nathan Latka

17:55One 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 one

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