How Whatagraph CEO Andrius Malinauskas grew to $3.7M revenue and 2.5K customers in 2024.

hello everyone my guest today is justice malinovski he found that a company called a water graph he's a serial entrepreneur with more than eight years of experience in business development and sales he loves data-driven sales strategies and SAS as it is they've managed to grow what a graph from scratch to 30 employees and $500,000 in annual recurring revenue justice you ready to take it to the top yes hello a little Newton okay so just to be clear 30-plus employees today $500,000 in ARR so it's more than two hundred oh really success rates changing go ahead quite fast and we're so if you're doing $600,000 in air are today where were you about a year ago so a year ago we were basically half of that so we're growing at least twice a year so and we're expecting to grow five times a year starting this year so instead just to be clear today you're today you're doing about $50,000 a month or six hundred grand a year a year ago you're doing about $25,000 a month yes correct correct this is great okay let's take a step back what does the company do so yeah so in short what we are doing so we're visualizing and automating the process for marketing analytics reporting so for example marketing agents have their own clients and they want to report for them so they automate all the process so the data collection visualization part and sending of the reports to their clients so actually they save up to four hours per client per week on the reporting suggesting they're selling on the performance you're selling to marketing agencies exclusively so we're selling to marketing agencies brands also as it is so usually it's bigger brands because they have a bigger corporate level on their company so they need to report to heads or they need to report to their departments so actually it needs to be a bigger company but also we're used by private businesses who wants to more let's say in a simple way to understand marketing performance of their marketing channel how many customers are you working with today so we're working with more than two and a half thousand customers for now 2,500 yeah okay and then what do they pay on average per month so an average our account deal size in their eyes because you know we're private counsel have a business account so in which we're focusing most as you mentioned the marketing agencies so marketing agents are paying more than hundred per month on average and the small deals I mean the private businesses are paying it depends because it can be five dollars or ten dollars per month it depends how much sources they're using so you know okay just be clear if we do an average you're doing fifty grand a month right now and revenue divided by thirty five hundred customers each one pays about twenty dollars a month yeah so if we collect them all together but that's what an average that's what an average is right so we put one together it's twenty bucks I totally understand though there's a wide range so let's let's dive into that so someone paying you five bucks a month versus a hundred bucks a month what are you up selling them typically the number of seats actually yes actually the the smallest clients are like only about five percent of our farm base you know just as Mike my question everybody what are you upselling against what a wire but actually parents are paying for us depending on how much data sources they have for example if they're five Facebook accounts on their on their business side so they're paying for those five accounts if marketing agency has hundred clients with five data sources each they're paying for 500 data sources okay so number of data sources anything else and also seats sometimes but usually they're quite covered with the five seats which we are bringing for them at the beginning of the deal okay and what about due to any feature based upselling yes so feature based on selling get their eyes on the two subscription-based so actually if you're a bit buying for example our professional tier so you're getting one type of features and if you're buying em for example you know enterprise level solution so you're getting wide label and etc so actually where you can buy sort of like feature by feature but you can buy difference here which includes for example white label okay interesting so like white label is your most powerful kind of feature based upsetting yeah of course because parking digits once a white label their reporting yeah very good okay take me back to the beginning of this thing when you launched what year so we launched five years ago so it was early 2014 I guess okay 24 and tell me more about you man I mean what were you doing in 2014 we said you know what I'm gonna go launch a comfort so yeah so I was doing marketing I had a marketing agency back back in Europe so we were focusing mainly on a big client who has there who needs full spectrum of the services so for example doing the marketing of the performance I mean performance marketing plus also branding and you know web development but our main core was of course performance marketing so I saw that we're spending too much time on the reporting and the clients still don't understand what we're presenting presenting to them so I saw the niche that we could provide the reports with infographics so actually people there they were able to understand the data more let's say user friendly way and of course in the faster time so it was when went from both sides so we don't need to spend any time preparing reports we can only spend time for explaining them value suggestions just just to be clear you launched an agency and then you basically built software on top of the agency yeah actually it was a tool for ourselves but then our cars started recommending us nd how big did you how big did you build the agency to in terms of revenue before you went all-in on the software so actually it was quite small agency so it was like not more than 200 K year on the revenue side okay so and I exited that company so how did you get how did you get the first ten customers on what a graph so it was like quite easy because I just called some random companies which I thought needs our solution so before I started building the platform which we have now so before I landed the client so actually they said yes and they are ready to transfer the money so then I said okay sorry but I don't have how did you say how did you how did you find them so usually we still do that so we find companies LinkedIn but in fact those days also I did the same so I used LinkedIn for searching for the company okay gimme gimme very specific though you go on LinkedIn what do you search for so actually I'm using you know sales navigator all the time so you're able to build the search on your needs so for example you're searching for social media agency which is more than let's say 10 or 20 employees so that means they have more than 100 or 250 clients so that means they need to do the reporting because they're big and of course I was searching for english-speaking countries of course and of course I was searching for North America more because they valued the time more okay so you find you find one of these targets a social media agency english-speaking 10 to 20 employees in North America what do you then do to reach out so actually I did just random phone call to the company how'd you get the phone number so you can find on the website okay so you would just go into a website from LinkedIn you look up you look up that and then you hit the secretary how do you get by the secretary yes so it's quite easy I just got to the Account Manager and I actually don't remember because you know what they did the calls to be done remember your script so you call me you call me I pick up and you say I want to sell you something and I say oh this is the secretary I'm not interested I'm not going with the selling topic again tell me just as we're treating our guest tell me tell me what you said yeah so actually you know before you do your homework so first of all you search for what kind of cards that work with you work you review their portfolio first and secondly you need to research all your all your target companies employees so for example I'm targeting for PPC specialists so basically a called up like I don't remember exactly the number but it was like more than 100 companies which I called up of course it didn't get through with all the secretaries but sometimes I just got the easily like bring me to for example Natan because he's special specialist in PPC so I just calling up I want to speak with Maiden and she say you Don you'd call the company the secretary I pick up you would know the name of the PPC specialist at the company you'd ask the secretary to connect you to that person and why she's gonna say well do you have a meeting scheduled yeah so I'm not I do have a meeting scheduled but we were speaking earlier or something you know say you a push it Allah yeah not like lying still but you know or also sometimes I used the line but you know I'm able to save some time on the reporting and usually there is like if the agents is still like 10 or 20 employees the secretary is not like a real secretary is much she's more like you know also doing some stuff in the office and sometimes it happened that she's doing the reporting also so I said like ok so I have a solution for reporting and I think you do that and you want to save the time so because really prepare the homework and of course I knew the backdoors also in the agency what's happening backstage when you need to prepare the reporting interesting okay talk to me about the company today so or have you bootstrap to raise capital so we bootstrapped till the year 2019 and so we just raised some funding so it was 600 k euros at the beginning of February so in $750,000 US dollars yeah you know convertible note or priced equity around its price that we didn't around its pre serious a so we're now focusing on Cirrus say at the beginning of 2020 and how much do you hope to raise in the series a so to say our focus is to reach at least four million investment in URIs okay sorry so four million is what you want to raise in q1 in 2020 yeah and what valuation would you hope to raise that at so uh it should be more than 20 mil okay got it 20 million pre 20 million pre-money yes okay and then backtrack to where you were today so when you just did the current raise what was that like a five or ten million pre so what you mean about pre seriously yeah so the money you just raised the seven hundred thousand not one valuation so this valuation that come to this closest sorry that's according to our negotiation with the VC who the hell cares about the VC fund you're the CEO I mean give me a range are you talking like a five five million inch something in that range yes to this range okay got it good and then did you raise from folks overseas or did you raise from US investors from European investors oh very good right yeah so it's two VC funds back here in Europe okay great and then walk me through the team size today how many people so now we have 32 employees in the company so we have a developer's numbers of the developers it's like seven and the rest is like sales team marketing UX you are designers okay 32 people where's everyone based so we have two locations one is Lithuania Vilnius and another one is Amsterdam in Midlands okay good and then I'm turns critical in a SAS company what's your turn today so our turn is quite still low it's about four percent on the revenue side revenue turn per month yeah and is that gross or net it's not it's net so that adds back expansion revenue yeah okay got it so you're turning about 44 48 percent of your revenue every year actually no because we are able to retain the customers after some time also volume is you know said four percent revenue term per month you multi by twelve it's 48 yeah so yeah so I never calculate actually the yearly turn so it's like really nice number but I have a monthly number online on my hand already okay oh so you don't know what the annual churn is yeah so the annual churn is not more than forty percent okay so forty percent on an annual revenue turn and then why are people churning if they do turn what do they do are they leaving so actually the main reason why they're churning us we did some research as we are focusing more on marketing agents because we started with like more small businesses or small marketing agencies we're now moving on more to enterprise level marketing agencies so we are doing some different features for them and small ones you know don't want to pay that much what the prices are going to pay mm-hmm interesting talk to him how you're getting new customers today so what's your fully weighted CAC to get a new $20 a month customer yeah so actually we're with the $20 customers but different they're only inbound and still service but mainly we're focusing on the leads for coming in and willing to pay more than 150 200 a month so we're working with the sales team on that and also marketing is paid mainly for that so it's a refocus so what is though what is fully weighted CAC though on my team it's $100 a month account yeah so we're getting return investment 3 months or 3 months yeah okay so so whether it's $100 month account or a $20.00 month count you're signing up your spending with our you know 60 bucks or 300 bucks to get them in yeah interesting and where are you spending that money besides headcount and salary so only we're working with paid marketing and of course SEO and some kind of writing okay good are you I imagine you're burning capital today right because you just raised you're investing in growth so we're only in growth so actually our company was able to finance itself so we're using all the money for only marketing and upscale you're not financing itself but you just raise $750,000 which I imagine you're reinvesting now right yes so how aggressive are you being are you burning like 10 grand a month or a hundred grand a month so we're burning now nearly hundred thousand tomorrow okay well you're happy to do that because you have you know still have 500 grand in the bank right of course yeah very good win and then you want to try and hit break even before q1 when you go look to do your next round so I think we're going to be break even at the lates creep Q free so all the forecasts shows that everything is okay for now and and I hope that will overcome the forecast also very good just as I used to do yeah we're at a time let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book oh so I think it's scaling up by Eric Ries number two is there a CEO you're following or studying I think it's really interesting question the first person is definitely me because I'm always reviewing what I'm doing but the next one they want to be very you know name is CEO justice yeah so a little Musk okay number four number three what's your favorite online tool for building the company for now definitely the bear metrics it's one of the best tools to track the performance of the company number four how many hours of sleep to get every night usually seven eight hours it's a must for me and winter situation married single kids so you'll okay no kiddos and how are ya I'm twenty twenty or twenty eight twenty eight twenty eight okay last question what do you is your 20 year old self knew actually the no nothing nothing you mean what what I knew what it was no what's something you wish you knew when you were twenty okay so uh sorry I missed the question then so I wish I knew that you need to start earlier on you know International sauce business because I really love this house and I'm really falling they're older SAS industry so also shout out for faster community so I think it's one of the best things which I found also guys he just raised someone fifty thousand dollars on somewhere near a five million dollar pre-money valuation helping companies and agencies understand and marketing and analytics with dashboards twenty five hundred customers paying twenty bucks month doing fifty grand a month right now in revenue that's six hundred thousand bucks an air are use LinkedIn sales navigator early on to target their first ten customers to ultimately scale doubling year-over-year now again burning about a hundred grand that's net burn a hundred grand net burn per month but they have plenty of cash in the bank team of 32 in Lithuania and the Netherlands four percent revenue turned per month forty percent annual revenue term getting paid back on their CAC in about three months as justice looks to scale before doing his next round in q1 of 2020 justice thank you for taking us off again