Founder Interview
How Vonza Reached Close to $400K in Total Annual Revenue with About 150 Paying Subscribers (Interview with Co-Founder Uyi Abraham)
- Interview Date
- March 24, 2022
- Interviewee
- Uyi AbrahamCo-Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Total Revenue (2021)
$400K
Total Revenue (2020)
$200K
Paying Subscribers (2022)
150
Team Size (2022)
25
Profitable (2022)
Yes
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Uyi Abraham during his interview with Nathan Latka recorded in March 2022 and represent a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Vonza’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Vonza generated close to $400K in total revenue in 2021, including subscriptions, consulting, and done-for-you services
- 02Prior year total revenue was approximately $200K in 2020
- 03The company had approximately 150 paying monthly subscribers as of early 2022
- 04Vonza was bootstrapped and profitable at the time of the interview
- 05The team totaled 25 people across five continents, with 8 engineers based primarily in Pakistan
- 06Vonza was founded in 2020 and grew almost entirely through word-of-mouth with virtually zero marketing spend
- 07The company had 5,000 total sign-ups on the platform, with about 2,000 having paid for a one-time special offer
- 08Uyi Abraham found his CTO on Upwork, who became an equity partner and built out the technical team
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total Revenue (2021) | $400K | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Total Revenue (2020) | $200K | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Subscription MRR (2022) | $20K+ | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Paying Monthly Subscribers (2022) | 150 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Total Platform Sign-Ups (2022) | 5,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| One-Time Special Purchasers (2022) | 2,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Team Size (2022) | 25 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Engineers (2022) | 8 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Year Founded | 2020 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Profitable (2022) | Yes | Founder interview, March 2022 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Vonza brought in close to $400K in total revenue in 2021, combining subscription fees with consulting and done-for-you services. The prior year total was approximately $200K in 2020. Growth has been driven almost entirely by word-of-mouth with virtually no marketing spend.
Customers
As of early 2022, Vonza had approximately 150 paying monthly subscribers on its platform. An additional 2,000 customers had purchased a one-time special offer, and 5,000 total users had signed up, leaving a large pool of free users the team had not yet focused on converting.
Team
The team stood at 25 people spread across five continents, including Pakistan, India, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and the United States. Eight engineers, based primarily in Pakistan, were recruited through Upwork by the CTO, who is also an equity partner.
Profitability and Funding
Vonza was profitable at the time of the interview and had been bootstrapped since founding, with Uyi Abraham personally investing close to a million dollars over two years and supplementing that with contributions from friends. The company was in early conversations to raise $5,000,000 from outside investors.
Growth Strategy
Word-of-Mouth and Virality
Uyi Abraham credited virtually all of Vonza's customer growth to word-of-mouth, noting the company had spent close to zero on marketing.
Consulting and Done-for-You Services as a Funding Engine
Rather than raising outside capital, Vonza funded its product development by generating revenue from consulting and done-for-you services. This allowed the team to stay bootstrapped and profitable while building out the core platform.
Product Depth Over Breadth
The team prioritized making the all-in-one platform more robust before investing heavily in marketing, believing that a stronger product would convert more of the existing free user base and attract new paying customers once a go-to-market motion was in place.
Planned Marketing Investment
At the time of the interview, Vonza was preparing to hire a dedicated marketing team and build an onboarding function to convert free users to paid plans, with the fundraise intended to accelerate this effort.
Partnership Development
Uyi Abraham mentioned exploring strategic partnerships as an additional growth lever alongside the planned marketing buildout, aiming to reach creators who were still using 12 or more separate tools and were unaware of Vonza.
Best Quotes
“So what vonza does is that we make it easy for creators to create and sell online courses, memberships, products, and pretty much run the entire business in one place. So before vonza, I as a creator, somebody like you too, you know, we need like 12 plus tools to do what vonza does for them.”
“So right now, about a 100 something, that puts us at about 20 something thousand a month in MRR.”
“we've grown all this while with just word-of-mouth, virtually spending zero marketing. So we feel like if we have a little bit more fund to put into marketing, it will help us to tell our story faster and help us to serve our customers better.”
“We are profitable.”
“our product is a lot better now than it was a year ago. And also too we kind of we build a lot more brand equity, we get a lot more sign ups than before, we're getting more conversions than before, and also too you know we're working on getting somebody to really spare the marketing because we've really not done any marketing since”
“A creators lot don't know that now it's easy to get one good tool to run your business instead of 12. So they're still using 12 tools because they just don't know that vonza is around. So we believe as we tell this message and help creators to see and use vonza, they're going to really love it.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured Vonza at an early stage in March 2022, when the company had approximately 150 paying subscribers, close to $400K in 2021 total revenue, and was just beginning conversations with outside investors. The figures here are a point-in-time snapshot reported by Uyi Abraham and do not reflect the company's current performance. Visit the Vonza company profile on GetLatka for the latest available data.
View Vonza’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Background
- 1:08What Vonza Does for Creators
- 1:58Customer Count and MRR
- 2:45Free-to-Paid Conversion Strategy
- 3:21Fundraising Plans and Valuation
- 6:18Why Raise While Profitable
- 7:22Total Revenue Including Consulting
- 8:25Team Size and Global Structure
- 9:01Finding the CTO on Upwork
- 9:16Equity Structure
- 9:55Revenue Goals for the Year
- 11:01Engineering Team
- 11:19Profitability and Founder Capital
- 12:14Product Roadmap and Go-to-Market
- 13:18Famous Five Rapid Fire
Introduction and Background
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Doctor. Uyi Abraham. He came to America with only a $100 in a suitcase of clothes. With over twenty years as a creator, he was frustrated with the complexity and the time required to simply create and sell online. He is looking to fix that with vonza. Follow along at vonza.com. Doctor Uyi, you ready to take us to the top?
Uyi Abraham
00:18>> Hey, Nathan. I'm so glad to be here, man. I've been looking forward to be on this show for a long time.
Nathan Latka
00:23Oh, are you a big listener?
Uyi Abraham
00:25>> I am. I binge binge watch on this show. In fact, my wife knows your voice, you know. So when I told her I was coming, she was like, yay. Then when I came to New York, I was at the Founder's Summit, which was the best SaaS Founder's event I've ever been to. I text my wife that this is the greatest event I've ever been. She's like, did you tell Nathan I say hi? I say, yeah. I
00:47>> told you hi. So my wife said hi, you know. So I've binge watched on the show, man. Thank you for all you do for the culture, you know.
Nathan Latka
00:54You bet. Well, I hope you enjoyed meeting everyone at Founderconf. I know you got some one on one time with Henry Schuck, the CEO of ZoomInfo in the VIP room. I hope that was valuable, but I'm looking forward to focusing on you today. Okay?
Uyi Abraham
01:03>> Yes. Let's do it.
Nathan Latka
01:05Alright. So vonza, what are people paying you for?
What Vonza Does for Creators
Uyi Abraham
01:08>> So what vonza does is that we make it easy for creators to create and sell online courses, memberships, products, and pretty much run the entire business in one place. So before vonza, I as a creator, somebody like you too, you know, we need like 12 plus tools to do what vonza does for them. So you need one platform for your courses, another one for membership, another one for scheduling, another one for payments, and it's just all
01:34>> about the place. It's a very stressful experience for creators and just people just starting out in business. So what we did was that we built a really good, easy, and simple all in one platform that helps anybody with a knowledge, a content, or something to offer online to easily grow their business online, monetize it, and also to serve their customers.
Nathan Latka
01:55I love that. Okay, and how many paying customers do you have today?
Customer Count and MRR
Uyi Abraham
01:58>> So we've done so right now, have about 5,000 customers that have paid us. We we did our one time specials, and also to we have about about 20 something thousand dollars in MRR right now, but we have about 5,000 that have signed up for our platform and about 2,000 that paid us for one time special that we offered at 30 times.
Nathan Latka
02:24How many are paying a monthly recurring fee?
Uyi Abraham
02:27>> So right now, about a 100 something, that puts us at about 20 something thousand a month in MRR.
Nathan Latka
02:35Okay. Got it. So about a 100 customers pay $200 a month, something like that?
Uyi Abraham
02:40>> Some more, some less. Yeah. Over a 100, probably cost a 150.
Free-to-Paid Conversion Strategy
Nathan Latka
02:45A 150. Okay. Got it. Okay. Well, this is great. So so how are you converting people that are free, 5,000 of them, to a paid plan?
Uyi Abraham
02:54>> So right now, we really have just been really focused on really the product, you know, because starting a SaaS company and being bootstrapped is a full time work, you know. So we really have not spent a lot of time trying to monetize those freeloaders, so to speak, on the platform. But right now, we're looking at, you know, raising some funds and also to, you know, building a good marketing team and onboarding team and help those who
03:18>> are just kind of stuck on the free plan to become paying customers.
Fundraising Plans and Valuation
Nathan Latka
03:21How much are you looking to raise right now?
Uyi Abraham
03:24>> Right now, we're trying to raise $5,000,000.
Nathan Latka
03:26At what valuation?
Uyi Abraham
03:28>> Probably at 40.
Nathan Latka
03:3040,000,000 pre money or post?
Uyi Abraham
03:33>> Pre.
Nathan Latka
03:34Pre money. Okay. Interesting. And how's it going?
Uyi Abraham
03:38>> We're just in the beginning process of doing that in the midst of talking to different investors right now. So I'm hoping that in the next two or three months, we should be able to close with the right partner.
Nathan Latka
03:49And you're bootstrapped to this point, or have you raised already?
Uyi Abraham
03:52>> We are bootstrapped to this point.
Nathan Latka
03:54Oh, 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
04:18your 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
04:42get 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
05:04not 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
05:30going 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. Alright. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but if
05:52you 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 the
Why Raise While Profitable
Nathan Latka
06:18interview. Doctor. Uyi, you got $20,000 a month in revenue. Why go give up a bunch of equity? Why why why go do a a raise? Why not just keep building and using profits from customers?
Uyi Abraham
06:27>> Yeah. The probably the reason is because, you know, our competitors, you know, they've raised a ton of money Thank you. Kajabi, they just raised $550,000,000 last year. Know, Teachable just sold Thinkific, the public now, they raised like 300 and something million last year. So they put pressure on us and to kind of get a little fund so we can grow a little faster, hire more team because we've grown all this while with just word-of-mouth, virtually spending
06:56>> zero marketing. So we feel like if we have a little bit more fund to put into marketing, it will help us to tell our story faster and help us to serve our customers better.
Nathan Latka
07:07And if you're doing $20,000 a month today in revenue, where were you exactly a year ago?
Uyi Abraham
07:11>> Probably about 15.
Nathan Latka
07:1215. Okay. That's obviously, that's not a lot of growth. It's gonna be hard to get a 40,000,000 valuation when you only five can new MRR the past twelve months.
Total Revenue Including Consulting
Uyi Abraham
07:22>> Yeah, well you see too, you know, it's not just only, we're doing a lot more than 20 something thousand, right? Because we also do consulting and done for you services, which is not included, but at least this year, last year, we generated over 300, close to $400,000 from our subscription plus done for you services and consulting services as well. So a year before that was about 200,000 in kind of that money we brought in. So you
07:53>> look at it that way, you see that there's a lot of growth, but also to considering that we've really just, you know, been focused on the product and not spend a lot of money on marketing. Then also to, another reason we're looking at our valuation as that is the size of the market. The market is so huge, right? So we're not seeing it just as only what we're doing right now, but we're seeing, hey, in two,
08:16>> three years from now, could we be that $40,000,000 company? Could we be that $50,000,000 company, right? So that's kind of how we're also looking at valuation.
Team Size and Global Structure
Nathan Latka
08:25And, doctor Uyi, how many on the team today?
Uyi Abraham
08:28>> So we have about 24, 25 people.
Nathan Latka
08:33Where are they all based?
Uyi Abraham
08:35>> Our tech team is based in Pakistan, India, Malaysia, but our support team is based in The USA. So we are in about five continents, Pakistan, Malaysia, United Kingdom, Belgium, all over the place.
Nathan Latka
08:51And what is that like? I mean, is your engineering centralized in any of one of those locations?
Uyi Abraham
08:56>> In in Pakistan.
Nathan Latka
08:58How did you find the team in Pakistan? Like, what's their website?
Finding the CTO on Upwork
Uyi Abraham
09:01>> So the first place I went to was Upwork. So our CTO is also a partner with me. I found him at Upwork, and he was the one that pretty much just helped to recruit and build the technical team.
Nathan Latka
09:13How much equity did you give him?
Equity Structure
Uyi Abraham
09:16>> I don't wanna really share that right now.
Nathan Latka
09:1850 was it more or less than, you know, 30%?
Uyi Abraham
09:21>> Definitely, it's less than that because That's me, my wife, and our chief engineer will have equity. They're also leaving like a 10% pool for future employees.
Nathan Latka
09:32Mhmm. So do do all 25 employees today have at least some equity?
Uyi Abraham
09:37>> No. Just right now. Just the the co founders for right now.
Nathan Latka
09:42I see. I see. Okay. So looking at raising capital, $20,000 a month in revenue, that's pure SaaS.
Uyi Abraham
09:47>> There's other plus. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
09:49Sorry?
Uyi Abraham
09:50>> 20,000 plus. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
09:52Yeah. But just SaaS revenue, 20,000.
Uyi Abraham
09:54>> Yeah. Yeah.
Revenue Goals for the Year
Nathan Latka
09:55How much how much will you do this year if you add up all of your revenue altogether?
Uyi Abraham
09:59>> I'll probably gonna get to about 40,000 this year or more in just MRR. But our goal this year is to get to $1,000,000 in ARR this year, right?
Nathan Latka
10:09But when you say ARR, you mean total sales, consulting
Uyi Abraham
10:12>> No, no, just subscriptions. Just in subscriptions. Yeah. Because that's really what investors care about, you know.
Nathan Latka
10:18How are you gonna grow fast? I mean, you've only added 5,000 in MR the past twelve months. What makes you think you can add 50,000 in the next six months?
Uyi Abraham
10:25>> Yeah, because our product is a lot better now than it was a year ago. And also too we kind of we build a lot more brand equity, we get a lot more sign ups than before, we're getting more conversions than before, and also too you know we're working on getting somebody to really spare the marketing because we've really not done any marketing since, So we believe that it's gonna really help us to grow faster. They've also
10:48>> been looking at some partnerships and stuff. So we are really just, you know, planning to get to that 1,000,000 ARR this year.
Nathan Latka
10:56I see. Okay. And of the 25, how many on your team, how many are engineers?
Engineering Team
Uyi Abraham
11:01>> Pure engineers, probably about eight.
Nathan Latka
11:05Pakistan. Right? Eight in Pakistan?
Uyi Abraham
11:07>> Yeah. Mostly.
Nathan Latka
11:08And so what do what do you pay per month to your engineering team altogether?
Uyi Abraham
11:13>> Don't wanna disclose that right now because I'm gonna put in the information right there, but it's pretty pretty decent.
Profitability and Founder Capital
Nathan Latka
11:19Are you profitable today or no?
Uyi Abraham
11:22>> We are profitable.
Nathan Latka
11:24Okay. And did you put any of your own money in the business?
Uyi Abraham
11:27>> Yeah. I put a lot of my money into the business.
Nathan Latka
11:29How much?
Uyi Abraham
11:31>> A lot.
Nathan Latka
11:33I don't know what a lot are we talking, like, 10,000 or a million?
Uyi Abraham
11:37>> A little bit under in two years. We've building now for two years, a little bit under, but close to yeah.
Nathan Latka
11:43Okay. You've put in a little under than a million dollars.
Uyi Abraham
11:45>> Yeah. But but also got I also got investments too from friends, you know, that put in a couple of money in initially to that also help us as well. But we primarily just grew it from the consulting of rather fund the business from our consulting and done for you services.
Nathan Latka
12:03Yeah. That's makes a the primary way. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Very cool, Doctor. Uyi. Okay. So you're building your building. Talk to me quickly about product before we wrap up. What's next on the product roadmap?
Product Roadmap and Go-to-Market
Uyi Abraham
12:14>> So right now, we're just trying to go deeper in making our product a little bit better and stronger, you know, but we are trying to add some more features like SMS and CRM, you know, which we believe would be a good game changer, because a lot of our creators that use the platform are also coaches as well. A lot of coaches, they need more than just a scheduling tool. They need to be able to map out
12:37>> their, put their customers, their clients in a funnel system and help them to get results faster. So those are the features that we are planning to bring up soon. But the primary thing we really focus right now is that we really have a really, really good product and we're just trying to build that, you know, go to market engine to help take this product to a lot of people. A creators lot don't know that now it's
13:01>> easy to get one good tool to run your business instead of 12. So they're still using 12 tools because they just don't know that vonza is around. So we believe as we tell this message and help creators to see and use vonza, they're going to really love it.
Famous Five Rapid Fire
Nathan Latka
13:18Well, doctor Uyi, I love the story. On that note, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book?
Uyi Abraham
13:25>> I will say Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
Nathan Latka
13:27Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Uyi Abraham
13:30>> I would say Zeb Evans of ClickUp.
13:34>> Yep.
Nathan Latka
13:35Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building a business?
Uyi Abraham
13:38>> I would say ClickUp. I use it every day.
Nathan Latka
13:41Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Uyi Abraham
13:44>> Average five.
Nathan Latka
13:45And what's your situation, doctor Uyi? Married, single, kids? You mentioned your wife earlier.
Uyi Abraham
13:49>> Married.
Nathan Latka
13:50Any kids?
Uyi Abraham
13:51>> Three children. Three. Three. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
13:54Wow. How how old are you?
Uyi Abraham
13:56>> I'm 40.
13:57>> 40 years old. Last question.
Nathan Latka
13:58Something you wish you knew when you were 20.
Uyi Abraham
14:02>> To be, okay, I would say to be more courageous, right? Because in my twenties I was a little bit more concerned about what people would think and all of that stuff, So I'm now just more like, just more confident in following my dreams. But you know another thing that is so interesting, Nathan, before you go, when we started building this all in one platform too, like two years ago, a couple of people that were telling us
14:26>> in these big names that just focus on one tool, just focus on one tool. When the last two years, you see now many software companies now don't just offer just one product. Many software companies now are now trying to be like two, three, four products now. So we feel like we're kind of a pioneer because in 2018, we started thinking about a really good all in one tool, and now we see a lot of people are
14:49>> trying to catch up with, you can't just offer just one product these days. I said, if you're really, really good at it, you need to help up your customers to use less tools, you know, it's a better experience for them.
Nathan Latka
14:59Guys, Doctor. Uyi, he's funding his business from agency work, but he's slowly growing that SaaS revenue, now doing $20,000 a month in revenue, competing with like Kajabi, Thinkific, Teachable, helping course creators run their businesses online. He's got hundred one and fifty paying customers, paying about a $280 a month. He is profitable today. They're looking at raising 5,000,000 at a 40,000,000 valuation in the next six months. We'll see how that goes. Team at 25 today with eight
15:25engineers. Alright, Doctor. Uyi, thanks for taking us to the top.
Uyi Abraham
15:28>> Thank you so much, Nathan.
Nathan Latka
15:31One 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
15:57Central. 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
16:19fundraise, 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 wanna 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 for
16:41that 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 got
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