Workee Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Ihor Bauman. He is building a very cool tool called workee.net, helping freelancers to manage their business online. Ihor, are ready to [00:08] take us to the top? [00:09] >> Sure. [00:10] Okay. Hey. So how how does this work? What are freelancers using you for? [00:14] >> Mhmm. [00:15] >> Yes. So before start, we are helping not all freelancers. We have specific focus on those freelancers that have appointments online. So you can imagine teachers, health experts, coaches, psychologists, therapists, those who have scheduled appointments in a row, like three, five sessions where they consulting people. Workee works in two simple steps to imagine. First of all, we have the simplest website builder on the market that goes with booking, scheduling, and payments out of the box. So once [00:48] >> you sign up, already have your personal website where people can reach you directly and where people can book you, can pay for sessions for you, and can also buy some services from you. The main value from work is that your personal website is connected to back office activities. We are helping our users to manage their client managements through inbuilt CRM system. We're helping our users to send invoices, to manage their taxes, and to also manage their [01:16] >> work management flow together with different calendars sync out of the box. So this is how we work. [01:22] Do you take a percent of invoices paid through your platform? [01:25] >> Good question. So far, we are not taking any fees. You can go, you can just subscribe for thirty days of trial and then switch to paid subscriptions that is $19 per month, and you are 0% fee from the workee side. We like bidding in this way marketplaces because marketplaces, as you know, they are charging for every match they are making. But for our users that are having appointments, for them that doesn't make sense for paying for [01:56] >> every session because once they matched, they already have a client. They already I understand. Yep. [02:01] Yeah. And so how much are freelancers paying on average per month to use your software tools? [02:06] >> So if taking into account different softwares that our users are combining, [02:15] >> except of workee so our users in most cases are using Zoom, Calendly, personal websites, some CRM solution, and fees for invoices and payments. And roughly our users right now without work, they can pay something between 200 to $400 per month. [02:35] What is the app? What's the average, would you say? [02:38] >> Average from 200 to 400 per month. So as average, I guess, it will be 300 per month per month month month. Yeah. [02:45] And when did you launch the business? What year? [02:47] >> We launched last year in we went public on August last year, 2021. [02:55] Yeah. And how many customers do you have today? [02:57] >> So far, we have more than 3,500 users in The US. [03:05] 3,000 what? [03:06] >> Three three thousand and five hundred users in The US. [03:10] I see. So can I multiply 3,500 times $300 a month to get your revenue? [03:17] >> Yes. So we're charging $19 per month right now at the moment from our users and 300 it's how much people you have to pay if they are not using port. [03:30] Oh, I see. So I can take $19 times 3,500. You're doing about $67,000 a month right now on revenue? [03:37] >> So it's like not in this way because we have a lot of promotions and that's on all trials we have. So not all trials are active right now in terms of subscriptions. So we are roughly doing something below 1,000 per month. [03:51] Okay. So so 1,000 customers or 1,000 in revenue? [03:55] >> In revenue. [03:57] 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 connect [04:20] 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 gonna [04:44] 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 is [05:06] 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 you're [05:32] 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. But [05:54] 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 into [06:20] the interview. Okay. So you're doing a thousand dollars a month in revenue. How many of the 3,500 trials, how many are paying customers? [06:28] >> So far it's roughly 50. [06:31] Five zero. Okay. Why have only 50 converted? [06:34] >> We have so far some challenges in terms of their conversion to paid. Because currently you have only thirty days of trial and then you need to subscribe and some of our competitors they have freemium models so that's why we're also considering to launch freemium and then you will be able to upgrade to the subscription. Why freemium? Because we really see from the market the point that we make money only when you do. That's why for now [07:07] >> we also want to switch to the premium and then to allow our users to be subscription fee sorry, commission free if they're going to subscription. So yes, so far it's about about this way. [07:21] This is a lot of sign ups, though. So let's talk about that. How have you gotten so many sign ups? I know you're on G2, you're on Capterra. What other channels are you using to get customers or trials? [07:31] >> Yes. So, so far, we've been testing different channels like paid ads, social media and different social media platforms, etcetera. So far, we see that for us, it works the best. Content marketing, we're doing a lot of sale content in the internet, like blog. We inviting different experts from the market, opinion leaders to write blog together. Also, currently, we're actually working with influencers and bloggers local from The US market that help us to promote our history of [08:00] >> their network. And also, we're doing well with Quora marketing and paid search with Google. So that's all the best channels for us. [08:07] How much are you paying per month to Google? [08:11] >> Like, for the ads? [08:12] Yeah. Roughly 1,000. [08:15] Roughly 1,000 per month. Okay. And how are you funding this business? Did you raise capital or are you bootstrapped, Ihor? [08:21] >> Yes. So we bootstrapped from the early beginning until we joined Startup Wise Guys. It's the biggest acceleration program in Europe. And just recently, we announced about pre seat round raised by workee for 600,000 US dollars from a couple of VCs and Angel. [08:42] And what valuation did you raise that at? [08:45] >> Can't disclose right now, but it's some roughly couple of mil. [08:51] Something like 5,000,000? [08:53] >> Oh, something like that. [08:55] Most people in the pre seed are doing a convertible note, so it's not actually a priced round. Did you do a note or a priced round? [09:01] >> We do convertible note and SAFE. [09:05] Got it. So a convertible note will usually have a cap on it. Right? So you're saying that cap was like $4,000,000? [09:10] >> Yeah. [09:11] Okay. And 4,000,000 or 5,000,000? [09:14] >> It's roughly between. [09:16] I see. Okay. And so where are you spending that money? Where where do think you're gonna make big investments? Mhmm. [09:21] >> So far, we are investing into the team. We're growing as a team. We hire a couple of marketing guys. We couple hire a couple of development team members as well. And, yeah, it's also like increasing budgets for our marketing channels and partnering with clients and brokers. So that's like our main direction for spending. [09:44] Very cool. Now when people start paying, are they sticking around? Do you have any churn? [09:50] >> Sure. We have the churn roughly yeah. Sure. Like any business have churn. Our approximate lifetime value is roughly twelve months for the users. But, yeah, sure, we catch it. [10:04] Okay. So twelve months times $20 a month means your lifetime value in dollars is about $240. Is that right? [10:10] >> Yeah. Yes. [10:11] Okay. And tell me more about your team today. How many folks are full time? [10:17] >> Mhmm. So far, we have eight people full time. [10:20] And how many of those are engineers? [10:23] >> Engineers, three people. [10:25] Three people. Okay. And what do spend most of your time on? Product, engineering, sales? [10:30] >> Myself, it's about product and sales. [10:33] Product. So what's next on the product roadmap? What are you building? [10:37] >> We have couple of great integrations coming It is workee. So so far, pretty soon, it will be Zoom, full integration of Zoom release. Then we have PayPal, PandaDoc for online document signing, and some couple of integrations with accounting systems. [10:54] And Ihor, obviously, you need to manage your runway so you have time to build all these projects. How much are you burning in cash per month right now? [11:01] >> Per month, we right now bring something between 30 to 40,000. [11:07] Depends Okay. On what I Okay. Good. Very cool. We're rooting for you. In the meantime, then let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite business book? [11:16] >> Steve Jobs. [11:19] >> Biography of Steve Jobs. [11:21] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [11:25] >> I really like the CEO of ThunderDoc. Steve, yeah. [11:30] Two, is there what's your favorite online tool for building your business? [11:33] >> Online tool for building my business? I guess, Wise is very nice as well as Stripe. [11:39] Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night? [11:43] >> Again? [11:44] Sleep. How much sleep each Sleep? [11:45] >> Five, six hours. [11:47] Okay. And what's your situation? Married? Single? Kids? [11:50] >> Single. Like, my only kid is working. [11:54] Okay. And how old are you? [11:57] >> 26. [11:57] 26. Last question. [11:59] >> Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [12:05] >> Risk more. [12:06] Risk more. Guys, there you have it. Workee.net launched back in 2021. They've got 3,500 trials signed up using smart tactics like Quora marketing. They're burning $35,000 a month right now via their team of eight. They raised 600,000 pre seed round at a valuation between, call it 3 and 5,000,000, serving now 50 converted customers. These are freelancers that use Workee to manage their online businesses, invoices, management. If they didn't have workee, they'd to pay something like $200 to $300 [12:31] bucks a month for all these other tools. So workee is saving these freelancers money. Ihor, thanks for taking us to the top. [12:37] >> Thank you. Pleasure to be with you today. [12:40] 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 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 [13:06] 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 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 [13:28] 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 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 [13:50] 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 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. [14:09] We got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. All right. I'll be in the comments. [14:16] >> See you.