Founder Interview
How WeCP Hit $1M ARR with 50 Customers While Staying Bootstrapped (Interview with CEO Abhishek Kaushik)
- Interview Date
- July 13, 2022
- Interviewee
- Abhishek KaushikCEO and Co-Founder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
ARR (2022)
$1M
Customers (2022)
50
Avg Contract Value (2022)
$20,000
Biggest Customer (2022)
$150,000
Team Size (2022)
25
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Abhishek Kaushik during his interview with Nathan Latka in July 2022 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See WeCP’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01WeCP reached $1M ARR in 2022, up from $250K ARR the prior year
- 02The company serves 50 paying customers as of July 2022
- 03Average annual contract value is $20,000 per customer
- 04The largest single customer pays $150,000 per year
- 05WeCP was founded in 2019 and has remained fully bootstrapped through $1M ARR
- 06The first five or six customers all came through direct referrals from one enterprise to the next
- 07WeCP has 25 team members, mostly based in Bangalore, with plans to open a US office
- 08Abhishek Kaushik was planning to raise $3M to fund a global enterprise sales expansion
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| ARR (2022) | $1M | Founder interview, July 2022 |
| ARR (2021) | $250,000 | Founder interview, July 2022 |
| Revenue (2019) | $60,000 | Founder interview, July 2022 |
| Customers (2022) | 50 | Founder interview, July 2022 |
| Avg Contract Value (2022) | $20,000 | Founder interview, July 2022 |
| Biggest Customer ACV (2022) | $150,000 | Founder interview, July 2022 |
| Team Size (2022) | 25 | Founder interview, July 2022 |
| Year Founded | 2019 | Founder interview, July 2022 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
WeCP grew from $60K in revenue in 2019 to $250K ARR in 2021 and reached $1M ARR by mid-2022. The jump was driven primarily by landing and expanding large enterprise accounts, with the biggest single customer paying $150,000 per year.
Customers
The company had 50 paying customers as of July 2022, with seven classified as large enterprise accounts. The first five or six customers were all acquired through direct referrals, with one enterprise recommending WeCP to the next.
Team
WeCP has 25 people in total, co-founded by Abhishek Kaushik and his CTO. The team is headquartered in Bangalore, with early-stage plans underway to open a US sales office.
Funding
WeCP was fully bootstrapped through $1M ARR. At the time of the interview, Abhishek was planning to raise $3M to fund senior enterprise sales hires and global expansion.
Growth Strategy
Referral-Led Early Growth
The first five or six customers all came through direct referrals, with each enterprise customer recommending WeCP to another. Abhishek credited this viral word-of-mouth as the foundation of the company's early customer base.
Enterprise Focus
WeCP deliberately targeted mid-market and large enterprise accounts, which drove the majority of revenue growth. Abhishek noted that the three-times revenue jump came from enterprise selling, with smaller customers contributing much smaller ticket sizes.
Expansion Within Accounts
WeCP grew revenue inside existing accounts by expanding seats across departments and upselling additional features such as project-based assessments and face-to-face interview tools.
Recent Investment in Marketing and Sales
After relying entirely on referrals in the early years, WeCP began investing in marketing and outbound sales efforts to supplement organic growth and reach new enterprise accounts globally.
Best Quotes
“We are SaaS. So we help technical hiring managers and recruiters use our software to sort of create talent pool or screen name business point test, review them face to face, and in one click onboard them to the companies.”
“We basically launched our product when we acquired first customer paying us $5,000 as an MRR, that was an MRR. And we started as a very simple use case. It was just to assess their internal engineers, you know, to on on different technical skills. And that's what we drew. Then we the second customer came from the first customer because we got a referral. And third customer came from the second customer because we got a referral. So for, you know, first five, six customer came via customer referral, and that's how we started our increasing our customer base.”
“Year ago, we were roughly 250 k, which is just, you know, which was our ARR.”
“Most of our growth came from, you know, referrals from one enterprise to another enterprise. And because enterprise, we we landed in standard, so majority of our revenue, you know, the three h jump that you see came from enterprise selling.”
“We are bootstrapped.”
“The the only reason that I I was looking for to raise is to actually expand globally, you know, in enterprises. So it does more majority like sales expenses. So, you know, how to give salary to, you senior sales people who can go ahead and build relations on the ground and, you know, activate large enterprises.”
What Happened Next
This interview captures WeCP at a specific moment in July 2022, when the company had just crossed $1M ARR on a fully bootstrapped basis with 50 customers and was actively planning its first outside raise. The figures here reflect what Abhishek Kaushik reported at that time and should not be read as current performance. Visit the WeCP company profile on GetLatka for the latest available data on revenue, customers, and funding.
View WeCP’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Company Overview
- 0:24SaaS Product or Recruiting Agency?
- 0:50What WeCP Actually Does
- 1:58Founding Story and First Customers
- 4:57Average Contract Value and Pricing
- 6:21Revenue Growth: $250K to $1M ARR
- 6:38How WeCP Finds New Customers
- 7:13Largest Customer and Bootstrapped Status
- 8:33Upsell and Expansion Strategy
- 9:01Plans to Raise and Valuation
- 11:08Why Raise: Global Sales Expansion
- 11:59Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Habits
- 13:16Closing Thoughts and Wrap-Up
Introduction and Company Overview
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey, folks. My guest today is Abhishek Kaushik. He's a programmer, CEO, sales, marketing. He wears all the hats at his bootstrap company, which is now north of a million dollars in AR in just twenty months on their way to 5,000,000 by 2025 is what he says. He loves talking about first principles, internalization, psychology, hiring at early stage, and he's doing this all at wecreateproblems.com. Abhishek, you ready to take us to the top?
Abhishek Kaushik
00:23>> Yeah. Sure.
SaaS Product or Recruiting Agency?
Nathan Latka
00:24Alright. So just to be clear, are you are you like a recruiting agency or are you selling software to help people recruit software people?
Abhishek Kaushik
00:31>> We are SaaS. So we help technical hiring managers and recruiters use our software to sort of create talent pool or screen name business point test, review them face to face, and in one click onboard them to the companies.
Nathan Latka
00:47So it's really an applicant tracking system?
What WeCP Actually Does
Abhishek Kaushik
00:50>> Not not it's not an ATS. We are we are coding test first, We are coding test and code pair tool first. And, you know, candidate sourcing and onboarding happens to integrations.
Nathan Latka
01:02Okay. So you are you you help people run engineering tests to engineering candidates to see if they're a good fit. Right.
Abhishek Kaushik
01:10>> Right.
Nathan Latka
01:10Okay. And this is great. Okay. So that makes sense. So what are what are companies on average paying you per month to use your technology?
Abhishek Kaushik
01:20>> Roughly, currently, we have 50 plus customers for all our big customers. And largely, cater to enterprise because we are enterprise software. So we have roughly seven large enterprise as our customer today.
Nathan Latka
01:36Okay. So you have your seven first customers today?
Abhishek Kaushik
01:39>> Yeah. They are our large enterprise.
Nathan Latka
01:43How many customers do you have today that are paying you? That's my question.
Abhishek Kaushik
01:47>> 50 plus, roughly 50.
Nathan Latka
01:48Five zero.
Abhishek Kaushik
01:50>> Yeah. Five zero.
Nathan Latka
01:51Oh, wow. Okay. This is great. And and then I guess put this on give me the backstory here. What year did you launch the business?
Founding Story and First Customers
Abhishek Kaushik
01:58>> So launching a business happened in 2019. We we basically launched our product when we acquired first customer paying us $5,000 as an MRR, that was an MRR. And we started as a very simple use case. It was just to assess their internal engineers, you know, to on on different technical skills. And that's what we drew. Then we the second customer came from the first customer because we got a referral. And third customer came from the second
02:33>> customer because we got a referral. So for, you know, first five, six customer came via customer referral, and that's how we started our increasing our customer base. And then we used we recently started spending on our marketing, you know, and our sales effort. So pretty much that's where I'm at.
Nathan Latka
02:52So so you started at $500 a month a couple years ago. What are customers paying you per month today?
Abhishek Kaushik
03:00>> So when we started, you know, roughly one and a half year back, when we launched our product in '19 right? We it was $5,000 MRR, not 500. So it was $5,000 MRR. And from there, we currently our average contract value is roughly $20,000.
Nathan Latka
03:23It's Per month or per year?
Abhishek Kaushik
03:26>> Per it's it's annual contract value, which is per year.
Nathan Latka
03:30Okay. Got it. So you're doing about $1,500 per month or $20,000 per year across 50 customers. I mean, so can we take 50 customers times 1,500? You're doing about $80,000 a month in revenue right now?
Abhishek Kaushik
03:45>> Yeah, slightly more than that.
Nathan Latka
03:48Oh, 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
04:11your 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
04:35get 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
Average Contract Value and Pricing
Nathan Latka
04:57not 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
05:23going 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
05:45if 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
06:11the interview. So you're north of a million dollar run rate. And if you're at $85,000 a month today in revenue, where were you exactly a year ago? Do you remember?
Revenue Growth: $250K to $1M ARR
Abhishek Kaushik
06:21>> Oh, year ago, we were roughly 250 k, which is just, you know, which was our ARR.
Nathan Latka
06:30Okay. 250 k to a million. That's great. So where did most of the growth come from? Explain to me how you're finding new customers.
How WeCP Finds New Customers
Abhishek Kaushik
06:38>> So it came from enterprises. Most of our growth came from, you know, referrals from one enterprise to another enterprise. And because enterprise, we we landed in standard, so majority of our revenue, you know, the three h jump that you see came from enterprise selling. All the rest of the customers are very small ticket sizes. So we're still trying to figure out our ICP. Mhmm. But we we have settled down somewhere on mid enterprise and large enterprise
07:05>> all around the world. So
Nathan Latka
07:06that's And and what is the don't tell me the customer logo, but what does your largest customer pay you per year?
Largest Customer and Bootstrapped Status
Abhishek Kaushik
07:13>> It's 150 k.
Nathan Latka
07:15150,000. Wow. That's impressive. And are you guys bootstrapped or or you've raised capital?
Abhishek Kaushik
07:21>> We are bootstrapped.
Nathan Latka
07:23I love this. I love this. This is a great story. Okay. So totally bootstrapped. And and are you the sole founder or how many are on the team?
Abhishek Kaushik
07:30>> Oh, we have two cofounders, me and my CTO. And in total, we are roughly 25 people in the company.
Nathan Latka
07:3825 people. And where are you guys based?
Abhishek Kaushik
07:41>> So most of the team is here based on Bangalore HQ. But we're trying to, you know, relocate to and we're trying to start up an office in US, the area. So we're in the process right now, but everyone's based on Bangalore.
Nathan Latka
07:58Interesting. And what are some of the problems you're running into in terms of launching an office in The United States?
Abhishek Kaushik
08:05>> Not so far. I mean, we've just got the delivery fee. It was fairly simple. And now we're trying to land to couple of, you know, large, more enterprises to set up a sales team there. And once once I guess, like, you know, once we figure out how to spin up a sales team in US, we'll probably be setting up our offices and stuff. But, yeah, it's a very early stage discussion that's going on. Right? That's all.
Upsell and Expansion Strategy
Abhishek Kaushik
08:33>> Probably, but I'm rethinking about, you know, situations. So let's see.
Nathan Latka
08:38Very cool. And there's a lot of people wondering this. Right? How can a b to b SaaS company set up a US based sales office? Everyone's thinking about this. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Alright. Talk to me a little bit more expansion. Right? So when you're upselling customers, what are you what more are they buying? Is it a seat based upsell, feature based upsell, something else?
Plans to Raise and Valuation
Abhishek Kaushik
09:01>> It's mostly seats and, you know, expanded seats across different departments. We also saw some, you know, upselling around features. So for example, we had coding assessments and, you know, some department purchase our project based assessments where, you know, they can do live projects. Some departments purchase face to face interviews. So they were expansion across features as well, but, you know, majorly around seats.
Nathan Latka
09:30Interesting. Very cool. This makes sense now. Are you do plan to stay bootstrapped or are you planning to raise?
Abhishek Kaushik
09:38>> Well, we are looking to expand now. So we are planning to raise, especially slightly, like a series around, not a small amount.
Nathan Latka
09:47How much are you looking to raise?
Abhishek Kaushik
09:50>> Roughly between 3 to 5,000,000.
Nathan Latka
09:533 to 5,000,000. And and what valuation are you hoping that you get?
Abhishek Kaushik
09:58>> Well, right now, so I mean, we're trying to raise at at roughly 17 mil valuation. 17.
Nathan Latka
10:0917?
Abhishek Kaushik
10:12>> 17. Yeah.
Nathan Latka
10:13And and have you had any pushback so far from investors?
Abhishek Kaushik
10:19>> Yeah. We had pushbacks. We had pushbacks and a couple of discussions that are already going on. So in fact, we got one of the valuation done at 60, you know, just just three minutes back. 60,000,000, you know, for, you know, for a a paycheck between 3 to 5,000,000. So yeah. But we couldn't go forward with that because of certain other complexities, but let's see.
Nathan Latka
10:47Why didn't you close that deal?
Abhishek Kaushik
10:50>> It's just the, you know, dumbest complexities. It's pretty yeah. It was something that I I would I don't know. I should share.
Nathan Latka
11:00Why do you need an extra $3,000,000? You have a scrappy team or I assume you're profitable today. Why do you need the money?
Why Raise: Global Sales Expansion
Abhishek Kaushik
11:08>> So even, you know, I know this, you know, answer to this question very clearly. The the only reason that I I was looking for to raise is to actually expand globally, you know, in enterprises. So it does more majority like sales expenses. So, you know, how to give salary to, you senior sales people who can go ahead and build relations on the ground and, you know, activate large enterprises. Had made, like, know, of 50 large enterprises
11:36>> around the world. What what amazingly, like, global service indicators. So it's like, hey, you have to hire salespeople on the ground for these enterprises. We're gonna hire very senior people. So, you know, it's just just the salary expenses.
Nathan Latka
11:50Yep. Makes a lot of sense. Hey, this is a great story, obviously, rooting for you guys. Let's wrap up here now with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book.
Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Habits
Abhishek Kaushik
11:59>> Oh, so I think not business book, but I I like this book called Deep Work. It's a self book. So but I've
Nathan Latka
12:08What is it called?
Abhishek Kaushik
12:09>> Deep Work.
Nathan Latka
12:10Deep Work?
Abhishek Kaushik
12:11>> Deep Work.
12:12>> Yep.
Nathan Latka
12:13Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? Sorry? Is there a CEO that you're following or studying?
Abhishek Kaushik
12:22>> Yeah. I follow Elon Musk. I follow CEOs like you guys.
Nathan Latka
12:29Number three. What's your favorite online tool for building WeCP?
Abhishek Kaushik
12:35>> Miro.com.
Nathan Latka
12:37Miro is a good one.
12:38Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get?
Abhishek Kaushik
12:42>> I do six to eight.
Nathan Latka
12:44Okay. That's good. And what's your situation? Married, single, kids?
Abhishek Kaushik
12:47>> Single.
Nathan Latka
12:48Okay. No kids?
Abhishek Kaushik
12:50>> No kids.
Nathan Latka
12:51And how how old are you?
Abhishek Kaushik
12:54>> I'm 28 now.
Nathan Latka
12:5728. Alright. Last question, Abhishek. What's something you wish you knew back when you were 20?
Abhishek Kaushik
13:04>> Well, so I I would wish that I would have started earlier, maybe at at at 20, because I started at 22, I guess.
Closing Thoughts and Wrap-Up
Nathan Latka
13:16Guys, start faster. Their company's called wecreateproblems.com. They went from, call it, $10,000, $20,000 a month a year ago to now $85,000 per month, north of a million dollar run rate, all bootstrapped. They're looking at raising 3,000,000 now in a series a, hoping to get north of a 60,000,000 valuation. We'll see if he can pull it off. Obviously, a tough market, but what they've done to date has been really impressive. They help, again, recruiting teams give out
13:35coding tests to quickly figure out if engineers are fit or not, and even do live work and live projects together as a test as they manage that pipeline, that recruiting flow. Abhishek, thanks for taking us to the top.
Abhishek Kaushik
13:45>> Thank you, Nathan.
Nathan Latka
13:48One 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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