Founder Interview
How Workee Converted 50 of Its 3,500 US Trial Users to a Flat $19 Per Month Plan with No Platform Fees (Interview with Founder Ihor Bauman)
- Interview Date
- March 24, 2022
- Interviewee
- Ihor BaumanFounder
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Paying Customers (2022)
50
Price per Month (2022)
$19
Total Funding (2022)
$600,000
Trial Users (2022)
3,500
Team Size (2022)
8
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Ihor Bauman during his interview with Nathan Latka recorded in March 2022 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Workee’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Workee launched publicly in August 2021 and had 50 paying customers by March 2022
- 023,500 users signed up for the 30-day free trial in the US
- 03Subscription price is $19 per month with zero platform fees on transactions
- 04Workee raised a $600,000 pre-seed round via convertible note and SAFE
- 05The team is 8 people full time, including 3 engineers
- 06Monthly cash burn is between $30,000 and $40,000
- 07Customers stay roughly 12 months, which the founder confirmed works out to about $240 in lifetime value
- 08Ihor spends most of his time on product and sales
- 09Top growth channels are blog content marketing, influencer partnerships, Quora marketing, and paid Google search
- 10Workee was spending roughly $1,000 per month on Google paid ads
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Paying Customers (2022) | 50 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Trial Users (2022) | 3,500 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Price per Month (2022) | $19 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Funding Round (2022) | $600,000 Pre-Seed | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Team Size (2022) | 8 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Engineers (2022) | 3 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Monthly Cash Burn (2022) | $30,000 to $40,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Google Paid Ads Spend (per month) | $1,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Customer Lifetime (months) (2022) | 12 months | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Customer LTV (2022) | $240 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Year Founded | 2021 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
| Convertible Note Cap (2022) | $4,000,000 to $5,000,000 | Founder interview, March 2022 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue and Pricing
Workee charges $19 per month per user with no transaction fees. At the time of the interview, 50 of the 3,500 trial users had converted to paid subscriptions.
Customers and Trials
The company signed up 3,500 trial users in the US since its August 2021 public launch. Conversion from the 30-day trial to paid was an acknowledged challenge, and Ihor noted the team was considering a freemium model to improve it.
Team
Workee had 8 full-time employees in March 2022, with 3 of them engineers. Ihor was actively hiring marketing and development team members using the pre-seed capital.
Funding and Burn
Workee raised a $600,000 pre-seed round through a convertible note and SAFE from a couple of VCs and an angel investor after going through the Startup Wise Guys accelerator in Europe. Monthly cash burn was between $30,000 and $40,000, with the majority going toward team growth and marketing.
Growth Strategy
Blog Content Marketing
Ihor credited content marketing as one of the top-performing channels, including publishing blog posts and inviting industry experts and opinion leaders to contribute content that drives organic traffic.
Influencer and Blogger Partnerships
Workee was actively working with US-based influencers and bloggers to promote the product through their networks, which Ihor identified as a strong acquisition channel.
Quora Marketing
Ihor specifically called out Quora marketing as a channel that was working well for Workee, helping the team reach freelancers searching for solutions to business management problems.
Paid Google Search
Workee was spending roughly $1,000 per month on Google paid ads to drive trial sign-ups, complementing the organic content and influencer efforts.
Freemium Model Consideration
Recognizing that the 30-day trial was limiting conversion relative to freemium competitors, Ihor said the team was planning to launch a freemium tier to let users experience the product longer before upgrading to a paid subscription.
Best Quotes
“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.”
“So far, we are not taking any fees. 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. 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 every session because once they matched, they already have a client.”
“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.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured Workee at an early stage in March 2022, just months after its August 2021 public launch, with 50 paying customers and a freshly closed $600,000 pre-seed round. The figures here are a point-in-time snapshot reported by Ihor Bauman and do not reflect the company's current state. Visit the Workee company profile on GetLatka for the latest available data.
View Workee’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and What Workee Does
- 0:15Target Freelancer Niche
- 0:48Product Overview: Website Builder, Booking, and Payments
- 1:22Pricing Model and Zero Transaction Fees
- 2:01What Freelancers Spend on Other Tools
- 2:45Launch Date and Trial User Count
- 6:20Paying Customers and Conversion Challenge
- 6:34Freemium Model Consideration
- 7:21Growth Channels: Content, Influencers, Quora, and Paid Search
- 8:07Google Ad Spend
- 8:15Funding and Startup Wise Guys
- 8:42Valuation and Convertible Note Structure
- 9:16Where the Pre-Seed Money Goes
- 9:44Churn and 12-Month Customer Lifetime
- 10:11Team Size and Engineers
- 10:33Product Roadmap and Integrations
- 10:54Monthly Cash Burn
- 11:07Famous Five Rapid Fire
Introduction and What Workee Does
Nathan Latka
00:00Hey, 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
00:08take us to the top?
Ihor Bauman
00:09>> Sure.
Nathan Latka
00:10Okay. Hey. So how how does this work? What are freelancers using you for?
Ihor Bauman
00:14>> Mhmm.
Target Freelancer Niche
Ihor Bauman
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
Product Overview: Website Builder, Booking, and Payments
Ihor Bauman
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.
Pricing Model and Zero Transaction Fees
Nathan Latka
01:22Do you take a percent of invoices paid through your platform?
Ihor Bauman
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.
What Freelancers Spend on Other Tools
Nathan Latka
02:01Yeah. And so how much are freelancers paying on average per month to use your software tools?
Ihor Bauman
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.
Nathan Latka
02:35What is the app? What's the average, would you say?
Ihor Bauman
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.
Launch Date and Trial User Count
Nathan Latka
02:45And when did you launch the business? What year?
Ihor Bauman
02:47>> We launched last year in we went public on August last year, 2021.
Nathan Latka
02:55Yeah. And how many customers do you have today?
Ihor Bauman
02:57>> So far, we have more than 3,500 users in The US.
Nathan Latka
03:053,000 what?
Ihor Bauman
03:06>> Three three thousand and five hundred users in The US.
Nathan Latka
03:10I see. So can I multiply 3,500 times $300 a month to get your revenue?
Ihor Bauman
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.
Nathan Latka
03:30Oh, I see. So I can take $19 times 3,500. You're doing about $67,000 a month right now on revenue?
Ihor Bauman
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.
Nathan Latka
03:51Okay. So so 1,000 customers or 1,000 in revenue?
Ihor Bauman
03:55>> In revenue.
Nathan Latka
03:57Oh, 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
04:20your 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
04:44get 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
05:06not 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
05:32going 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
05:54if 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
Paying Customers and Conversion Challenge
Nathan Latka
06:20the 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?
Ihor Bauman
06:28>> So far it's roughly 50.
Nathan Latka
06:31Five zero. Okay. Why have only 50 converted?
Freemium Model Consideration
Ihor Bauman
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.
Growth Channels: Content, Influencers, Quora, and Paid Search
Nathan Latka
07:21This 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?
Ihor Bauman
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.
Google Ad Spend
Nathan Latka
08:07How much are you paying per month to Google?
Ihor Bauman
08:11>> Like, for the ads?
Nathan Latka
08:12Yeah. Roughly 1,000.
Funding and Startup Wise Guys
Nathan Latka
08:15Roughly 1,000 per month. Okay. And how are you funding this business? Did you raise capital or are you bootstrapped, Ihor?
Ihor Bauman
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.
Valuation and Convertible Note Structure
Nathan Latka
08:42And what valuation did you raise that at?
Ihor Bauman
08:45>> Can't disclose right now, but it's some roughly couple of mil.
Nathan Latka
08:51Something like 5,000,000?
Ihor Bauman
08:53>> Oh, something like that.
Nathan Latka
08:55Most 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?
Ihor Bauman
09:01>> We do convertible note and SAFE.
Nathan Latka
09:05Got it. So a convertible note will usually have a cap on it. Right? So you're saying that cap was like $4,000,000?
Ihor Bauman
09:10>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
09:11Okay. And 4,000,000 or 5,000,000?
Ihor Bauman
09:14>> It's roughly between.
Where the Pre-Seed Money Goes
Nathan Latka
09:16I see. Okay. And so where are you spending that money? Where where do think you're gonna make big investments? Mhmm.
Ihor Bauman
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.
Churn and 12-Month Customer Lifetime
Nathan Latka
09:44Very cool. Now when people start paying, are they sticking around? Do you have any churn?
Ihor Bauman
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.
Nathan Latka
10:04Okay. So twelve months times $20 a month means your lifetime value in dollars is about $240. Is that right?
Ihor Bauman
10:10>> Yeah. Yes.
Team Size and Engineers
Nathan Latka
10:11Okay. And tell me more about your team today. How many folks are full time?
Ihor Bauman
10:17>> Mhmm. So far, we have eight people full time.
Nathan Latka
10:20And how many of those are engineers?
Ihor Bauman
10:23>> Engineers, three people.
Nathan Latka
10:25Three people. Okay. And what do spend most of your time on? Product, engineering, sales?
Ihor Bauman
10:30>> Myself, it's about product and sales.
Product Roadmap and Integrations
Nathan Latka
10:33Product. So what's next on the product roadmap? What are you building?
Ihor Bauman
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.
Monthly Cash Burn
Nathan Latka
10:54And 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?
Ihor Bauman
11:01>> Per month, we right now bring something between 30 to 40,000.
Famous Five Rapid Fire
Nathan Latka
11:07Depends 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?
Ihor Bauman
11:16>> Steve Jobs.
11:19>> Biography of Steve Jobs.
Nathan Latka
11:21Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Ihor Bauman
11:25>> I really like the CEO of ThunderDoc. Steve, yeah.
Nathan Latka
11:30Two, is there what's your favorite online tool for building your business?
Ihor Bauman
11:33>> Online tool for building my business? I guess, Wise is very nice as well as Stripe.
Nathan Latka
11:39Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?
Ihor Bauman
11:43>> Again?
Nathan Latka
11:44Sleep. How much sleep each Sleep?
Ihor Bauman
11:45>> Five, six hours.
Nathan Latka
11:47Okay. And what's your situation? Married? Single? Kids?
Ihor Bauman
11:50>> Single. Like, my only kid is working.
Nathan Latka
11:54Okay. And how old are you?
11:57>> 26.
11:5726. Last question.
Ihor Bauman
11:59>> Something you wish you knew when you were 20.
12:05>> Risk more.
Nathan Latka
12:06Risk 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
12:31bucks a month for all these other tools. So workee is saving these freelancers money. Ihor, thanks for taking us to the top.
Ihor Bauman
12:37>> Thank you. Pleasure to be with you today.
Nathan Latka
12:40One 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
13:06Central. 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
13:28fundraise, 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
13:50up 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.
14:09We 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.
Ihor Bauman
14:16>> See you.