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Founder Interview

How WordLift Reached 1,166 Customers and 28% EBITDA Margin on €800K Raised (Interview with CEO Andrea Volpini)

Interview Date
August 18, 2022
Interviewee
Andrea VolpiniCEO and Founder
Watch
Watch the full interview

Company Metrics at Interview Time

Customers (2022)

1,166

EBITDA Margin (Q2 2022)

28%

Funding Raised (2022)

€800K

Valuation (2022)

€5.5M

CAC (Self-Serve) (2022)

€180

Historical Snapshot

These numbers were reported by Andrea Volpini during his interview with Nathan Latka in August 2022 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See WordLift’s current numbers.

Key Takeaways

  • 01WordLift had 1,166 active subscribers as of August 2022, up from 705 roughly 18 months prior
  • 02The company reported a 28% EBITDA margin in Q2 2022
  • 03Andrea and his co-founder retained more than 80% of the business after raising €800K
  • 04The €800K round was closed with Primo Ventures at a valuation of approximately €5.5M, selling roughly 15% equity
  • 05Self-serve customer acquisition cost was approximately €180 to €200 per customer
  • 06CAC payback period was approximately 1.5 months on average
  • 07Average customer lifetime was approximately 25 to 26 months
  • 08The biggest customer was paying approximately €300K per year, with pricing based on number of URLs
  • 09Team size was approximately 20 people, including 7 in tech, 6 in customer success, and 5 in sales
  • 10Growth was driven primarily by inbound SEO and participation in live events such as The Next Web

Company Metrics at Time of Interview

MetricValueSource
Customers (2022)1,166Founder interview, Aug 2022
EBITDA Margin (Q2 2022)28%Founder interview, Aug 2022
Funding Raised (2022)€800KFounder interview, Aug 2022
Valuation (2022)€5.5MFounder interview, Aug 2022
Equity Sold (2022)~15%Founder interview, Aug 2022
CAC (Self-Serve) (2022)€180Founder interview, Aug 2022
CAC Payback Period (2022)1.5 monthsFounder interview, Aug 2022
Average Customer Lifetime (2022)25 to 26 monthsFounder interview, Aug 2022
Average Customer LTV (2022)€1,300 to €1,400Founder interview, Aug 2022
Biggest Customer Annual Contract (2022)€300KFounder interview, Aug 2022
Team Size (2022)20Founder interview, Aug 2022
Engineers (2022)7Founder interview, Aug 2022
Customer Success Headcount (2022)6Founder interview, Aug 2022
Sales Reps (2022)5Founder interview, Aug 2022
InvestorPrimo VenturesFounder interview, Aug 2022

Growth Breakdown

Revenue

Andrea confirmed the company was profitable with a 28% EBITDA margin in Q2 2022. Pricing is based on the number of URLs managed, with the largest customer paying approximately €300K per year and self-serve customers averaging around €130 per month.

Customers

WordLift grew from 705 customers roughly 18 months before the interview to 1,166 active subscribers by August 2022, an addition of approximately 460 customers. Growth was attributed to inbound SEO, live events, and early-stage advertising efforts.

Team

The team stood at approximately 20 people at interview time, comprising 13 core employees and 7 to 8 full-time freelancers. The breakdown included 7 in technology, 6 in customer success, 5 in sales, and 2 in marketing.

Funding and Profitability

WordLift closed an €800K round with Primo Ventures at a €5.5M valuation in early 2022, selling approximately 15% equity while retaining more than 80% founder ownership. The company was profitable at the time of the raise and chose the round primarily for strategic network access rather than cash needs.

Growth Strategy

Organic Inbound SEO

Andrea credited inbound marketing and SEO as the primary driver of new customer acquisition, describing it as working terrifically well. This is consistent with the company's own product positioning around knowledge graphs and SEO automation.

Live Events and Partnerships

WordLift participated in and partnered with events such as The Next Web, which generated meaningful lead flow. Andrea described events as a reliable complement to inbound for signing new customers.

High-Touch Enterprise Sales

Enterprise clients representing approximately 70% of revenues required a high-touch sales process with higher acquisition costs. The company maintained 5 dedicated sales reps to manage this segment, with the largest contract reaching approximately €300K per year.

URL-Based Pricing Model

Pricing is anchored to the number of URLs a customer needs to manage, which creates natural expansion revenue as clients grow their web presence or add content types such as products and podcasts.

Strategic Investor for Market Expansion

The Primo Ventures round was chosen in part for the investor's network and tactical connections, including helping WordLift land its first contract with a major Italian insurance company. Andrea also noted plans to expand from Europe into the US market.

Best Quotes

“We build knowledge graphs. That's that's the reason people come to us. And and then using this knowledge graph, we can automate SEO at various level. And that's pretty unique.”
“No. No. A lot less than that. I mean, it was, you know, a little bit more than 5.”
“I mean, if we look at the the cohort of the of the, you know, average user getting a subscription for us, we're talking about one hundred eighty, two hundred euro for for acquisition.”
“So we have more than a thousand clients at the moment. And today, with the active subscription are 1,166.”
“The payback, it's, I mean, a few months. Basically, one one point five months on average.”
“It's it's Primo Ventures. They're quite well known in the Italian landscape and, you know, kind of they they they can bring us forward, I think, along our journey well while we are here.”
“I mean, we we have around 28% profit this in this quarter, if I look at, you know, q two. That's incredible. Yeah. But we raised money in in between.”

What Happened Next

This interview captured WordLift at a specific moment in August 2022, when the company had 1,166 customers, a 28% EBITDA margin, and had just closed an €800K round with Primo Ventures. Since then the company has continued to evolve its team, customer base, and product. Visit the WordLift company profile on GetLatka for current metrics and the latest reported figures.

View WordLift’s current profile and metrics

Full Transcript

Intro and Founder500 Event Announcement

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey guys, recording this here on what is it? Friday the nineteenth. Maybe you're seeing this on Monday at the latest, but wanna let you know we are almost sold out for Foundercomp Sorry, Founder500 in Austin, Texas here in about a week. It's gonna be an amazing event. 500 B2B SaaS founders. I'm looking at the attendee list. There's almost 60 founders with more than $67,000,000 in ARR. It's an incredible group of group. There's over a hundred and fifty

00:27with more than 1,000,000, more than a million revenue. It's an incredible group. You don't wanna miss it. Grab your hotel, grab your flight, grab a ticket right now. I'll put the link in the bio, in the description here on YouTube. And I think there's only about three tickets left. Okay, about three tickets left. I'd love to see you guys there. Don't be bashful. Grab your ticket now. Hey, folks. My guest today is Andy Volpini. He is

Introducing Andrea Volpini and WordLift

Nathan Latka

00:48the CEO and founder of wordlift.io, which is helping everyone with automating their SEO. Andy, ready to take us to the top?

Andrea Volpini

00:57>> Totally. Great.

Nathan Latka

00:58Alright. So there this is a very competitive space, you know, SaaS tools to help with SEO. What's your unique spin? What do customers pay you for?

What WordLift Does: Knowledge Graphs and SEO Automation

Andrea Volpini

01:06>> We build knowledge graphs. That's that's the reason people come to us. And and then using this knowledge graph, we can automate SEO at various level. And that's pretty unique. I mean, we help you create your own knowledge graph much like Google does, and these interacts with Google at some point so that you will enter into Google knowledge graph more easily and also reuse the knowledge graph for other, you know, SEO or digital marketing task.

Nathan Latka

01:32Why is the knowledge graph important? And can you give me an example of what that might look like for a company?

Andrea Volpini

01:37>> So so when you build a knowledge graph, you have these flexible data structure that that Google can read. And and by using these these data structure, you can also build other services like, I don't know, generating your product description or generating, you know, the description for the startup that that you work with within the SaaS space. So knowledge graph is kind of a starting point for your AI strategy, but it's also important for Google because it

02:03>> represents a new site map in terms of, you know, what are the concepts that matter for the business? How do we index them? What is the data, you know, behind the website? And that's way more important as we progress from, you know, traditional SEO into modern SEO.

Recap of Previous Interview: Passing $1M Run Rate

Nathan Latka

02:19And what I love about you guys, you came on the show back in April of last year. You had just brought I don't if you remember this. You had just broken a million dollar run rate. Do you remember that?

Andrea Volpini

02:27>> That's correct. That's correct.

Nathan Latka

02:28And most importantly, you told me you and your partner still owned more than 80% of the business, which is great. Right?

Andrea Volpini

02:35>> We're still doing. We're still doing.

Nathan Latka

02:36That's amazing. And you told me not only that, you're in control. You passed 1,000,000 in revenue. You guys are also very profitable. You told me on 85,000 a month in revenue, you took about 20,000 that month, about a year and half ago to the bottom line. Right?

Profitability: 28% EBITDA Margin in Q2 2022

Andrea Volpini

02:49>> Yeah. I mean, we we have around 28% profit this in this quarter, if I look at, you know, q two. That's incredible. Yeah. But we raised money in in between.

Nathan Latka

03:03Oh, you did. Okay. So tell me. So tell so tell me about tell me about that. How much did you decide? Because you told me you also told me that you declined an M and A offer for 5,000,000. Right. Did you end up raising?

Raising €800K from Primo Ventures at €5.5M Valuation

Andrea Volpini

03:15>> So so we we decided to raise a little bit of capital, and we closed the deal beginning of this year, €800,000, and we still have more than 80% of of the share. So we still are pretty much where we were, but we kind of rearranged the cap table, and we have more money to invest for, you know, growing the sales and the marketing team and and also the technology.

Nathan Latka

03:40And and what I mean, are you talking like a 10,000,000 valuation, or what valuation did you raise that at?

Andrea Volpini

03:45>> No. No. A lot less than that. I mean, it was, you know, a little bit more than 5.

Nathan Latka

03:50Okay. Yeah. So basically the same as the m and a offer that you got?

Andrea Volpini

03:55>> Yeah. I mean, it was pretty much the same, but, you know, I keep the control and I can grow the company and, you know, kind of bring the numbers up. Yep. And yeah.

Nathan Latka

04:04So raising 800 against 5,500,000 valuation, you guys decide to sell about 15% of the of the cap table, you know, the equity to the investor?

Andrea Volpini

04:12>> Pretty much. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

04:13And and why do that? You were so profitable and you were growing so quick.

Andrea Volpini

04:17>> Because because you need to have more more, you know, cash available and and and and, you know, in order to to to grow because, of course, the the customer acquisition cost is still quite low compared to the to the lifetime value. And so we we need to invest more in in acquiring client and also acquiring acquiring talent because, as you say, it's a very competitive space, but we need to have resources where, you know, kind of

04:43>> getting the best team that we want.

Nathan Latka

04:45Yep. Oh, 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

05:09connect your 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

05:34gonna get 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

05:55is not 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

06:21you're going 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.

06:43But if 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

07:09into the interview. What is your CAC today?

Customer Acquisition Cost and Enterprise vs Self-Serve

Andrea Volpini

07:14>> I mean, if we look at the the cohort of the of the, you know, average user getting a subscription for us, we're talking about one hundred eighty, two hundred euro for for acquisition. But then if you look at, you know, the enterprise client that runs, you know, 70% of our revenues, then the cost per acquisition is higher. And, you know, in that case, it's also high touch. We need the resources.

Nathan Latka

07:40Well, what's your range? Don't name the customer, obviously, but what does your biggest customer pay you per year today?

Biggest Customer and URL-Based Pricing Model

Andrea Volpini

07:47>> Oh, boy. I think in the range, I mean, it's it's it's it's like Or monthly. Yeah. I mean, if if we look at, you know, yearly, the biggest client would would probably give us, I don't know, maybe maybe maybe €300,000 per year. Could be more this year, but that's kind of, you know, the the

Nathan Latka

08:09the And why is it so much? Is it because they're tracking, like, so many keywords? Or what's the utility base? Like, what's the metric No.

Andrea Volpini

08:14>> The utility base is really the number of URLs. So so number of, sites, per URLs. And, you know, we we have to build, basically a dataset on on all these URLs, and then we have to annotate the URLs and bring, you know, business value that it's at least, I don't know, five times what they spend with us. And that's what we're looking at.

Nathan Latka

08:33Yep. That makes a lot of sense. So that's your biggest customer. But what does your average customer pay you per month, would you say?

Average LTV, Lifetime, and CAC Payback Period

Andrea Volpini

08:39>> So the lifetime value, it's around €1,300. And, you know, this is, you know, the payback period would be something between twenty five and twenty six months.

Nathan Latka

08:55Twenty five. On on a $180 spend?

Andrea Volpini

08:59>> On CAC? On a no. No. I mean, on a on a lifetime value that it's around 1,300, €1,400 lifetime.

Nathan Latka

09:11Yeah. And then you said your payback was twenty five months?

Andrea Volpini

09:15>> Yeah. I mean, the the time the time that that that stays with us on average.

Nathan Latka

09:19Oh, not the payback period. Just the total lifetime.

Andrea Volpini

09:22>> Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. The total lifetime period.

Nathan Latka

09:24Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The payback

Andrea Volpini

09:26>> no. The payback, it's, I mean, a few months. Basically, one one point five months on average.

Nathan Latka

09:32Yeah. Yeah. So your average customers are paying something like a $130 a month. You spend $200 to get them, so they pay back in one and a half months.

Andrea Volpini

09:41>> Yeah. Something like that.

Nathan Latka

09:42Interesting. And what is what is that plan? If someone signs up to you today for a $130, how many sites are they probably tracking and using you for?

Andrea Volpini

09:50>> They can they can build a graph for, you know, between three to 10 website depending on the number of, you know, content types that they need to cover. So we we scale also by content type. So by looking at, the site, you know, if you just have to deal with products, it's one thing. If you have to deal with products and podcasts, then it's, of course, more more expensive. But let's say between three and ten websites.

Customer Growth: 705 to 1,166 Customers

Nathan Latka

10:13I see. I see. And when you came on about a year and a half ago, this was about eighteen months ago, you said you had just passed, I think, 705 customers. How many customers do you have today?

Andrea Volpini

10:21>> Right. So we have more than a thousand clients at the moment. And today, with the active subscription are 1,166.

Nathan Latka

10:30Wow. 1,000. Okay. So so talk to us about that growth. How did you sign up 400 new customers over the past sixteen months?

Growth Tactics: Inbound SEO and Live Events

Andrea Volpini

10:37>> Yeah. It's really a combination of of activities. Inbound is working terrifically well, of course. I mean, everything that comes from from SEO and, you know, any initiatives that we do on on the inbound marketing is is working very well, as usual. We've done, participating at, The Next Web. We are partnered with The Next Web, so we usually also get some, some, you know, good generation from from events. So I would say inbound and events, and we're

11:06>> starting to kind of look at how we can increase the advertising to get more clients.

Nathan Latka

11:12Well, this is incredible growth. Right? You're doing 88,000 a month a year ago. Now you're doing almost double that. So a 100% year over year growth, very capital efficient. You've raised way less than what your total ARR is, right, to $1,800,000 run rate. Of course.

Andrea Volpini

11:24>> Yeah. You you would judge that negatively. I know. But, you know, for us, it was like I

Nathan Latka

11:30don't think it's negative. Andy, no. No. I don't think it's negative. I only think it's negative if the ratio between ARR and what you've raised is out of whack. If you raised $10,000,000 and spent it all to build a million dollar a month a year business, that's terrible.

Andrea Volpini

11:42>> Of course.

11:42>> Of course.

Nathan Latka

11:43Didn't do that.

Andrea Volpini

11:44>> Yeah. But I'm also I mean, we were growing the business quite fast, so I'm I'm quite happy about that. Of course, we are not, you know, leveraging on the capital that we raised at the moment as much as we we should because, of course, the hiring process, it's it's strategic and it's slow.

Nathan Latka

11:59And that's kind So you still have, like, $700, 800,000 in the bank, something like that?

Andrea Volpini

12:04>> Something like that.

Nathan Latka

12:05Yeah. Yeah. What is your team size today? How many people full time?

Andrea Volpini

12:08>> So so we have basically around 20 people. 13 are kind of the the the the core employees. And then we have other seven, eight freelancer that that work with us full time.

Nathan Latka

12:24What do they do?

Andrea Volpini

12:26>> So we we basically have, you know, seven in tech. And then, you know, we have six that are, you know, looking at client success, meaning that, you know, kind of assist the client and help them grow and, you know, do some some some activities on top of the license. And then and then we have, of course, you know, five sales Should be should be seven already, but we still have five. And then we have a couple

12:51>> doing marketing.

Nathan Latka

12:53Okay. So you have more well, that's your whole team then. You just gave me the breakdown of the full 20 team?

Andrea Volpini

12:58>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

12:59Sorry. The seven to eight freelancers, what do they do?

Andrea Volpini

13:01>> I mean, pretty much, know, distributed among these these different functions. I mean, it's not that we are kind of consolidating. It depends on on also, you know, we're we're globally based and, you know, the the team is remote in most cases. So depending on the skills.

Nathan Latka

13:19Yep. Very interesting. Okay. So good. That's five new hires since last time we chatted, which is great.

Andrea Volpini

13:24>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

13:25Let me ask you a question. Where are you based right now?

Andrea Volpini

13:29>> Now I'm on the beach, but but I'm I'm

13:34>> so but I'm usually in Rome. I'm usually in Rome.

Nathan Latka

13:36In Rome. So let me ask you a question. You guys were doing, when you raised 800,000 recently, about 1.5, you know, 1,600,000 run run run rate revenue. Yeah. Why didn't you you know, to save that 15% equity that you sold, why didn't you guys consider debt?

Andrea Volpini

13:53>> Because it's it you know, it's not it's a combination of factor. I mean, that can can we can easily get that at the moment. You know, if I go to a bank, can get a good deal. And and banks actually are looking for us because we we bring money in the bank. So but, it's not just about, as you know, it's not just about the cash. It's also about, you know, the network, and kind of structuring

14:16>> things. So, I mean, there is more than just, you know, the cash. If if it's just cash, you go to the bank, you get a good deal. If you're profitable, you you will not spend much. In any case, you know, the cost of money hasn't been high. Now it's just, of course, rising back, but hasn't been high. So, I mean, that is is, of course, an option, but I always used that in the past. But but

14:37>> I think it's also about system.

Nathan Latka

14:39Yeah. So who was that? It sounds like it a very strategic investor. Who was it?

Investor Profile: Primo Ventures and Strategic Value

Andrea Volpini

14:44>> It's it's Primo Ventures. They're quite well known in the Italian landscape and, you know, kind of they they they can bring us forward, I think, along our journey well while we are here.

Nathan Latka

14:59Yeah. And what's the top thing you think they can help you with?

Andrea Volpini

15:04>> Good question.

15:06>> Connections structure because, of course, in order to scale a I mean, I've been bootstrapping most of my businesses, so I know how how to do it. But if I have to create a company that it's worth, you know, 10 or maybe hundreds of million dollars, you know, what is the strategy there? And, you know, I need a little advice on that. And and and how how should I shape the structure? Because I'm always, you know, looking

15:32>> at high profitability, but but I might lose, you know, the focus on, you know, what is the overall business value. And and I need help for that, to be honest.

Nathan Latka

15:42So when you say help with business structure, do you mean literally your org chart or just the structure of the business? How much to burn? How much to invest?

Andrea Volpini

15:49>> I think it's a combination of both. I mean, the org chart is a is an important aspect. For instance, I would, you know, I I rather try to do everything myself and control everything because that's the typical founder, the typical bootstrapper. But then in reality, that doesn't scale. I mean, if you have to to move from a thousand client to 10,000 clients, what do you need? You know? Yep. And, and you need that kind of help,

Nathan Latka

16:10>> I think.

16:10Yep. No. That makes a ton of sense. I'm I'm asking these questions because I just I love learning from founders like you. I think it's great what you've built.

Andrea Volpini

16:17>> Oh, that's that's the work that you do. I mean, depending on the fact that, you know, you know, you you you you don't just lend the money, you know, to the to the company. I assume that you, you know, the advantage is that you can also help me grow. And that's that's what I value a lot out of, you know, your your approach.

Nathan Latka

16:33I mean, we we're at a so I'm struggling with this a little bit at Founderpath because I think we add way more value than most VCs. Right? So like, for example, for you, like coming on and I'm not trying to like sell you right now. I'm just using as an example. Right?

Andrea Volpini

16:46>> But No. No. But work in a company.

Nathan Latka

16:47Yeah. Yeah. But if we use, like, if we let's say we gave you a million bucks in debt and so instead of 800,000, you keep 15% equity. The next thing that I would do is I would sign up personally for Founderpath as a customer for WordLift. I would use it. I would record myself using it. I would then email it out to my list of 80,000 SaaS guys and say, I love WordLift, and you'll get sign

17:08ups and customers. Now I know that's like a very tactical direct ROI driven thing, but I just think that's more value than what even most VCs add.

Andrea Volpini

17:15>> Right. That's why it took me a while to to find the right VC because, you know, I want something, you know, someone that was on the field. And we we set up the first contract with the business with the biggest insurance in Italy because of them, because they have, you know, more tactical approach, which is not common in the VC world. So I don't know if that's a good point.

Nathan Latka

17:35Yeah. No. All VCs aren't bad.

Andrea Volpini

17:36>> Have a debt or do I wanna have less equity? You know, if I have control, I don't know if I wanna have debt Because personally, I'm kind of against that. Even though I know that the business is solid and I

Nathan Latka

17:46Wait. Tell me why. I wanna know why.

Andrea Volpini

17:49>> Ma, it's it's just a mentality. It's just a mentality. You know? I don't wanna have to deal with debts. I just wanna you know, I'd rather prefer to to to leave something on the table than than than dealing with debt. But it's a mentality issue. It's it's a limit if you want because, I mean

Nathan Latka

18:03But but try and dictate so when you say don't deal so, like, when you say don't deal with debt, it sounds like you've had an experience in the past that was a bad one with debt. So what do you mean by deal with?

Andrea Volpini

18:11>> Yeah. I mean, give you an example. When I was running an agency many years ago and, you know, the company was doing well and, you know, we're doing, I don't know, maybe 5,000,000 revenues at that point. But we still had, you know, maybe 2,000,000 debts with banks because, you know, they were you know, money were coming in. We were getting them, and payment terms were kind of different from a SaaS because in an agency, you do

18:35>> consultancy. You do the project, maybe the client is not happy, maybe we'll pay you today, maybe tomorrow, maybe we'll not. And so so we, you know, as we were growing, we kind of had these, you know, kind of growing and and and that was kind of a bad experience for me in the past that kind of, made a made a big different because it it it it's at at a point, I decided not to take any

18:58>> debts and and and to you know? And and and that's yeah. But it's a limited personal experience.

Nathan Latka

19:05Yeah. Yeah. No. I think that's really helpful to learn from. I mean, look, I think you're gonna go build a $100,000,000 plus company. The 15% know, I think bigger than that maybe. So the 15% equity you sold, you know, is gonna be worth more than $15,000,000, I think, very quickly. And so, like, we're always trying to think at Founderpath, how do we just, like, make it easy to deal with? So, like, no board, no covenants, no

19:23warrants, get money overnight. So I'll win you. You give me twelve months, Andy. I'll win you over. I promise. Okay?

Andrea Volpini

19:30>> I love that. I love that. I like that too. I know that, I mean, in order to to make also kind of, you know, moving from from Europe to The US, we'll we'll definitely need, you know, some some different kind of help.

Nathan Latka

19:42Yeah. That's the number that's a huge use case. People don't know this. You know, we we just raised a 145,000,000. We've already deployed 60,000,000. And of the 60,000,000 deployed, yeah, 60% of that, 60%, is non US.

Andrea Volpini

19:55>> Yeah. Because, I mean, I I see a lot of value there. Yeah. Honestly. I mean, I think that you should look a lot at companies outside of The US.

Nathan Latka

20:04Yeah. You're an exact great use case. Right? It's like a company like you that maybe you wanna expand to The US. Well, take money from Founderpath, expand to US. But we'll see what happens. I don't wanna turn this into a sales pitch, but I'm just thrilled for what you've built. You you've got capital efficiently. It's incredible. So if people wanna check it out again, guys, check out wordlift.io. That's the URL. Give Andy some love for being

20:23so transparent on the show. Andy, though, in the meantime, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite book.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Founder Reflections

Andrea Volpini

20:30>> Oh, boy. I'm I'm I'm reading Kurt Vonnegut. I love him. I mean, I forgot how much I love him.

Nathan Latka

20:35Who is it?

Andrea Volpini

20:36>> Kurt Vonnegut. Kurt Vonnegut.

Nathan Latka

20:39What's the book called?

Andrea Volpini

20:41>> It's

20:44>> Mattatoio n. 5. It's in Italian. I don't know the English.

Nathan Latka

20:47Okay.

Andrea Volpini

20:48>> Okay.

Nathan Latka

20:49Italian author. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Andrea Volpini

20:54>> CEO. Well, I mean, follow many CEOs, to be honest. But, yeah, who I'm looking at I'm looking at a lot of companies within the sectors. You know? I'm looking at, you know, people, of course, around Fishkin. It's a good leader, I think, in our space because he got out of SEO. And so it's someone to to look after. And, also, he's a super friendly person that, you know, I always, like to to to to to listen

21:20>> and to to read about.

Nathan Latka

21:21Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building WordLift?

Andrea Volpini

21:27>> Ah, boy. That's interesting. We use a lot of Trello. We use a lot of Zapier. We we use a lot of of course, we were running all the infrastructure on Azure. This is not really a tool, but it's it's a cloud infrastructure. It's very important for for companies like us.

Nathan Latka

21:47Number four. Yep. Go.

Andrea Volpini

21:49>> No. That's great.

Nathan Latka

21:50Yeah. Number four, how many hours of sleep are you getting every night?

Andrea Volpini

21:54>> Now I'm going down to to to six six and a half, but usually, I try to reach eight.

Nathan Latka

22:00Okay. Fair enough. And are you still married with two kids?

Andrea Volpini

22:03>> Yes. Yes. I actually had a wedding a month ago.

Nathan Latka

22:07Okay. Yeah. I think you told me you were married, but you were you weren't actually you hadn't had the ceremony yet last year.

Andrea Volpini

22:11>> Yeah. We we we went through the celebration. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

22:14Ah, congrats. That's very exciting. And did you have a birthday? Are you 44 now today?

Andrea Volpini

22:19>> My birthday is on on the March 10, so I'm 40 Oh,

Nathan Latka

22:23you're 45. Okay. Had two birthdays. Yeah. '45. Very cool. Last question here. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Andrea Volpini

22:32>> The life, it's easy. You know? That that once you set a goal and you have fun with with what you're doing, you're gonna achieve that goal, and and you don't need the and and, you know, the troubles that you go through. It wouldn't help my 20 years old.

Nathan Latka

22:48Guys, Andy's having fun. WordLift.io playing in the SEO space. Their big competitive advantage graphs, knowledge graphs, SEO optimization. They have over 1,166 customers today. They just broke $155,000 a month in revenue, up from 87,000 a month just a year ago. Healthy growth, 28% profit margin, which is incredible. They just raised from a strategic partner $800,000 at a 5,500,000 valuation, sold 14.5% of the business. But most of that cash still in the bank today.

23:14Fifth 20 people strong on the team. Again, growing nicely without having to spend a bunch of capital, which we love. Andy, congrats, and thanks for taking us to the top. One 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

23:37dashboards, 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 Central. 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

24:02bell 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 fundraise, a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you want to take this conversation deeper and further, we have by far the largest private Slack community for B2B SaaS founders. You want to get in there. We've

24:25probably 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 that 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

24:44a 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 to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. Alright, I'll be in the comments. See you.