How Vonuspos CEO Esteban Maldonado grew Vonuspos to $94.9K revenue and 5K customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is esteban amaldonado he has been working for the past 12 years in pepsico sorry pepsi mexico and latin america in several positions starting at senior financial planning and finished as finance director for it innovation area for latin america in 2013 he decided to quit his job and invest his savings into his new company vanospose which again now has thousands of users and customers in more than 10 countries helping small retailers improve their sales and profits esteban are you ready to take us to the top yes okay so tell us what the company does and what your revenue model is well uh our company held a small business and retail niche and get more productive optimize some process since the purchase process until the sale process so we developed a very very simple solution it's a web-based software and basically a point of sale and we offer in mexico and several countries of latin america okay so is there a is a physical hardware peer it's a point of sale physical thing or it's only software it's only software okay we we offer also some hardware solutions but we are focused uh in the in the software okay so on average what's one of your customers pay per month for the software it's very it's very cheap uh we we have an annual uh fee and the customer pay 150 bucks uh for the company and they have only four years or per year yes per year yeah and unlimited users and limit products and it's it's a only one fee that's great and how many customers have you scaled to today right now we have uh close to 5000 customers across latin america and some countries of on the south of the united states okay so 5 000 customers paying obviously 150 bucks per year that means you're doing about 62 000 per month right now is that right that's right that's great and what have you kind of been growing at year over year so what were you doing a year ago in november 2017 well we for this year we have a a a growth of the 40 percent we expect that that growth the next year for about 200 because we are working on some synergies and alliance with some electronic payments uh companies here in in mexico okay so if you're doing 62 000 today and you grow 40 over the past year that means a year ago you were doing maybe 45 000 per month is that right that's correct okay and have you done this all bootstrapped or have you raised capital and we raise capital we have an a private equity company that is support us okay and so how much capital have you raised to date uh for now we raise five hundred thousand okay five hundred half a million dollars sorry half a million dollars yes that's right that's great and esteban let's get more of your story here so what year did you launch the company in sorry could you repeat what year what year did you launch the company in uh well we launched the company in 2014. okay with the first customer yes we we started working in the in the code uh at mid of 2013 and in q3 of 2004 we launched the first version of bonus 2014. 2014. yes that's right and how many people work at the company today right now we have a team of 20 people okay 20 and is everyone based in your in your mexico office yes that's right we have a several uh we have a couple of offices and one is located in san luis potosi that is in this center of mexico and the other one is in monterey mexico that is where where are you located oh very good okay so 20 folks mexico based you've scaled to over 5 000 customers 62 thousand dollars per month churn is really critical in any sas company what is your churn today uh our turn is is is very high because we are focused in a small business we have a churn rate for about between 10 and 50 percent monthly monthly yeah okay 10 and 10 and one five percent uh between 10 and fifteen i can't tell if you're saying one five or five zero five no no no sorry between ten and fifteen okay fifteen one five one five yeah yeah okay good okay so ten percent and and so why is churn so high how do you get that down well uh we have a uh uh some um uh for example here in mexico the eighty percent of the small business and they they don't have success and has to close uh their business uh in in the in the first four or five years when they uh start the the business right so and we have a a very big uh mortality in in the business in indus in the size of the of the business and i mean you've done an incredible job signing up 5 000 customers how have you done that what are your big growth channels well uh we are in the first places of organic search uh is you looking for in spanish software point of sale in the cloud and so we have a very good position in in digital marketing and and the old sales that we made is directly customer uh the customer directly with us we have a a a small sale task force and and we um we open the account and it's a direct on contact and so when you add in your sales team plus any money you're spending on ads how much are you paying to get a new customer that pays you 150 bucks per year the customer acquisition cost for us is between 30 and 40 bucks per customer okay so your payback would be what four or five months yes that's right and where are you spending that money when where where in facebook mainly in facebook mainly and maybe the eighty percent is facebook and the 20 in google okay google ads yes very good and uh any other channels you're using besides organic uh facebook ads google ads and just high placement for certain keywords well uh we we have also recently uh an a and a senior an alliance with uh it's a local bank but it's um that is property of citibank it's called banamex and they are offer or software for their customers this is the other channel that we have right now okay interesting very good uh and then you know what do you know i mean churn is something you're trying to tackle but what do you know it's one of the first things you've got to get a new customer to do so they activate and get value from your platform and don't turn sorry nothing sure what's the what do you know that you have to get a new customer to do so that they're less likely to churn okay well um we are working a lot of in in support in training for the customers and we offer uh a very cheap and well it's not a cheap it's a free account free trial for 30 days so we we try to convert that customers and also with the paid customer that we have already we are working a lot and to analyze if they are using the system and if they don't use them we offer a special training what does use mean though is that they don't they're not processing any checkouts through it as they're doing less than a certain amount of volume what does use mean yes and we check if they say if they have some activity for example the hair of the system are the sales the point of sale so we analyze if they have sales in the during a week or during a month and if we if we don't detect some activity we call we call them directly i see very good all right any plans to raise additional capital uh well for now uh we we are conti in continue activity working uh to see if we can raise some additional capital right now we are in break even uh but right now or grow rates are not the the best one to raise capital in the united states so we want to to have a a very good next year in the in the first half of the year and then if we have the the the right kpis maybe start working to raise home capital in in some bcs in in california or maybe austin do you have do you have an office in the u.s anywhere well we have a small office in palo alto it's a sales representative and but this is the only office that we have right there i see and and if you did raise capital how much do you want to raise how much well we are uh maybe uh two million dollars this is this is the the plan that we have uh two million dollars uh for exchange of the 20 of the company okay so what you're saying there is you're valuing the company essentially at what is that 10 million dollars pre-money 12 or sorry 8 million 8 million pre-money 10 million posts yes that's right this is that we are looking for interesting okay very good and right now you're doing just a little less of a million so that's about a 9 or 10x kind of revenue multiple today but obviously you're growing and maybe that'll be higher next year that's that's right okay very good to spawn let's uh wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book my favorite is the one thing number two is there a ceo you're following or studying right now my my my story a ceo that you're following right now uh bismarck with which company waistline wise line ceo number three what's your favorite online tool for building a company my favorite tool is slack number four how many hours of sleep to get every night um like between five and six okay and what's your situation married single kids marriage with kids how many kids three three wow and how are you fifteen fourteen and one how old are you a whole 41 41 last question what do you wish your 20 year old self knew the what what do you wish you knew when you were 20 in...