How Y42 CEO Hung Dang grew Y42 to $13.7M revenue and 50 customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is hongdong he's the founder of y42 started his career though on the live event business and in 2014 he co-founded party like gatsby a global event series hosting more than a hundred thousand guests driven by thin margins he needed great data infrastructure that ultimately ended up uh ended up with him building a tool called mitra intelligence which ended up being acquired by a german fortune 100 company there he realized a massive need which has helped him build his current company y42 an easy and scalable data platform hong you're ready to take us to the top cool nathan i'm such a big fan thanks for having me on this podcast very excited you bet what does y 42 stand for you know i'd be very pragmatic 42 is the answer to everything in the universe if you have read the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy uh why is you know like why why like why 42 and i'm being very pragmatic here hey it's a three-letter.com domain okay it's uh that's unbeatable so you cannot beat us in seo i know i lose a lot of romance when i say that to the nerds out there that follow us because of the name but that's the reality oh my god i love this okay this is great so so tell me a little bit more about who's using this tool is is it really the marketing team that knows does not know how to code or is it really like data engineers that want to do their work faster um so our go-to-market is very simple we acquire companies that hire their first data engineer data analyst the first data person so to say and this data person doesn't want to stitch together five or six different tools like integration orchestration visualization uh transformation whatsoever and so they want to go with an all-in-one tool and this is why we are the very natural choice for any company that starts out with a data journey uh at the same time so the only math that we really have to solve is uh how do we let them outgrow us um that's the whole business model uh fun fact uh like you said in the beginning i actually built this tool with smes in mind so i was running the entire data pipeline for this german fortune 100 company that acquired us and i analyzed you know the data and i had to build that infrastructure for other people to consume and so i feel in the event industry you have a lot of data so you have like huge amount of people you know we were analyzing all the events from ed sheeran justin bieber the biggest festival whatsoever and there are hundreds of thousands of people producing billions of data points but the people who were consuming this data were not the most sophisticated and so this is why we had to build something very easy and scalable but also in a setup of you know a rather big company but somehow you know it works out very well for startups this value proposition and this is how we went to market however we see a very increasing interest from smes which yeah would be harder for us to close as a young startup and which is why we didn't focus until this point but uh i think moving forward sme will play a very big role within our go to market as well let's circle back to that in a second but first your current customers i mean what are they paying you on average per month to use the technology all in one yeah um so 10 to 30 k is the annual contract value um so it's somewhere in the middle the average would be around 20k okay around 20k that's great and then take me back to how you got this going now are you a soul founder yes i'm a solo founder so i want to dig here a little bit because everyone always tells you like yo you need co-founders you need balance but i think you had a bit of a financial win when you sold amitri did you pour basically all of those winnings back into y42 and that's why you own 100 on day one um yes something along this line but you know i um i grew up in vietnam actually and i i came to germany when i was eight so um i actually grew up you know not very wealthy and so i uh i wanted to take a lot of the money that i made and give it to my family and my parents that was very important to me so and whatever was you know kind of left uh of course you're all in i went back into uh y42 i still you know at my previous company i built a data solution very niche just for the event industry um and this time i wanted to go all in and say hey i can build it globally i can make this you know i can uh yeah build a company in europe a data stack that the world has not yet seen and so that's why i came back into the game and to be fair you know when when i say it came in with little money i could have done it for a long time by myself and this is why i started out with hey i'm the solo founder i'm gonna dictate how it goes i don't really need pc money and i'm gonna build it you know from a clean slate it doesn't matter how long it takes me but i'm gonna build this tool that solves the problem first principle and i don't wanna stitch together six different tools to solve that you know problem and basically you know like battling complexity with complexity so really how do i solve it clean slate i could have spent like two three years building it right but would have been a bad choice because we need customer feedback along the way and this is why uh yeah sorry to i extended the question a bit uh to sum it up i am the solo founder it has massive advantage uh but don't do that if you don't have the benefit of you know having some uh you know let's say success before that people are actually drawn to you and say hey i will join you on this mission because they've seen that no i had a level of success before and doing that way i'm capable of having roughly 10 to 20 people that you know have a small share in the company but they are very strong they're as strong as you know an old co-founder that i would have so i feel like at the price of one co-founder i have roughly 20 co-founders so that's effective you're talking about your employee stock option pool what did you set that up is like everything like 10 20 how big did you make that uh actually very big um so it's like a split right now deducting all the dilution through you know the the seed and the series a round um i think the effective split is 60 40 right now uh without 60 for me for the for the employees without calculating the vsa pool which has not been distributed yet so it would be a rather 50 50 split it's on a fully diluted basis yeah yeah yeah no i love this i love the model i love that it's a sole founder you can make decisions you can play a long-term game because you had your own success how old are you i'm 30 by now i love this okay so 30 years old can i ask how much of your own money you put into the business um it's gonna be in the six figures range uh okay okay so we're doing a hundred thousand and a million bucks um your parents and your family are happy when you sold metrics you gave a bunch back to the or mitra it sounds like you gave a bunch back to them huh yeah exactly what did your did your mom buy anything interesting when you gave her a bunch of money um yeah i mean so we are from vietnam like i said so yeah we we did buy a property uh there in in vietnam i was i was curious we were gonna say like you know she bought you know a chicken farm or some really random thing but okay property that's pretty normal anyways you're all in on the business um you're you're scaling when did you when did you write the first line of code for the business um first line of code early 2020 2020. okay and you wrote the initial code right i mean you wrote the mbp yeah roughly 50 of the front end code that you would see was written by me yep okay i know it's not the case anymore it's getting less and less but uh yeah it used to be written a lot by me and when did you get your first customer do you remember who it was can you tell that story uh yes um it was an smb actually finally i just said we don't chase after smes but it was one because we came in with a strong recommendation from one of our business ages also a very close friend of mine uh as a fun fact he's the prince of austria technically speaking uh coming from the house of uh habsburg which you know i know you in the us you don't know that but it's the most influential uh yeah yeah uh aristocrat family that ever existed in europe uh is this this la la la family farmer no no it's not rafa it's uh yeah it's it's it's it's uh an angel of ours he's a very good friend of mine and he did everything he could you know he was driving us around introducing to all the smes and they really need a data solution right and so we we came to this company called philo they're making eight fig uh they're making uh over a billion in revenue you know like that's how big they are and um they they don't have the data solution yet and they look at hours it's like wow it's so easy and so simple uh and this was in in uh september to be fair it took us six months until we onboarded them on the platform so but they were the first effective client um like it's sign ar not really realized uh realized was roughly in in march uh and so that was our very first client um yeah and how many now have you scaled how many today now hun um so it we went to pilot um you know september and it was more like friends and family are like begging hey please use our platform uh kind of attitude for a long time um so we were you know we're getting one or two customers that way um until february and where we raise our seat round end of february and then we went to techcrunch you know like uh frederick from techcrunch he was so kind to actually hey it's just some random berlin data startup like you know i'm just gonna write a very nice article about them i think it was like the longest techcrunch article he has written in a long time linking my link in the video and so so really the the reason why we started growing so fast was because of the one techcrunch article of frederick who i'm still very thankful for until this day and this is when it marks when we really uh yeah went to market um and i'd be very honest to you um so i love to you know review as much numbers as i can and i want to do that very truthfully until one point in time which was when we raised this usa and so that was early summer um and by that time we had uh 50 clients five zero got it and so you did i think i said a three million or a three million round earlier this year is that right yeah exactly and then what was the more recent round um 31 million 31 okay and um that would you consider that i guess your series a yeah that was i was usa tell me about how you think i mean you're obviously very dilution sensitive you're a sole founder right when you raise that kind of money you get diluted right so how'd you think about that round uh we diluted you know within the reasonable range i would say but i can say um yeah with confidence that uh hung i mean i'd say reasonable series a average series a you're selling 15 of the business were you sort of in that same range um a little bit more a little bit more okay 15 to 20. fair um yep okay and and so i guess why take the dilution tell me about the strategy behind the money where you plan to spend it yeah um so first of all you know the kind of business that we are it's a um i'm a big fan of seth evans and i know you just talked to him recently um it's a very similar model that we're playing like an all-in-one tool that you know just replaces them all and this kind of tool and i know he made it work but we cannot make it work as easily because we need uh to to have the trust factor like the stamp hey this is something you know i'm i'm trusting them with my data infrastructure this is a random three million seat uh you know dollar seed round company i'm not gonna trust that they will be around much longer so it's a huge trust factor that we actually win uh by you know diluting putting ourselves out there to be fair we're based in europe we're based in berlin and so you have to know that this round is probably one of the biggest round that europe has ever seen for a sas startup in europe also probably if not the biggest valuation also um and this puts us for a seed round floss sewers thursday series a yeah for sas usa in europe probably one of the biggest rounds also biggest valuation that europe ever had and that puts us in an extremely favorable place of being able to hire the best people um being able yeah and how many people how many people today uh we have 70 people today seven zero how many engineers uh 40 engineers 40. and you did see i mean when that press came out that enabled you that gave you leverage hiring top talent yeah but it just came out like literally two weeks ago so we were already at the size uh when that came out and now of course we rather grow to like 100 to 150 people uh and they're you know like doubling the team makes it much easier to get the same quality that we have or even a bit higher when we double the team now hung 50 customers at that 20 000 average acv that puts you right around a million dollar run rate today is that about accurate when we were raising the round that was around our number yes got it and that was i guess you raised around a couple maybe a month month ago was when you were raising so you're not a couple of months ago so when we got into the process it was early summer okay but when you launched the process you were already north of a million dollar run rate uh when we launched the process we were at roughly 800k but there was um we had a contractual upsell also within like so we for example start up we give them hey a discount until the end of the year and if we were counting the contractual upsell then it would go you know uh above the 1 million range very very cool so what so i mean maybe you're at like 1.2 1.3 today what do you think you'll finish this year at can you get up to 2 million run rate by the end of december or is that too fast uh we don't think that's going to happen but yeah i'm still the reason why is you know you have to understand that this number that we accomplished we were like a very small team we had one sales person uh only it's my colleague bachai we had one sdr in one market here so that that was the total team and this one says person is now you know also my our vp of growth um and so he was doing that almost as an ic and he would close every possible deal out there but now he has to step back and you know on board a new uh people in the sales team um and so we lose a lot of conversion we lose uh like uh yeah just because there's an onboarding process of new aes um so we probably gonna continue the same trajectory until the end of the year but by next year of course you know um we have a much higher ambition it's a big year as i say next year is a big big year for you can you go from a million dollar runway to you know five six seven eight million uh in 12 months yes and we hope so too but i think um yeah i i'm gonna release it here first i i'm actually gonna release it at data council at the end of the year uh big on stage but you've heard it here first uh we are in the process of releasing a completely new software uh that's probably gonna will really revolutionize uh i don't know the data industry and we're going to launch it uh reveal it at data council uh i'm not going to say exactly what it is because you know otherwise i cannot review it at data council anymore and i think that will put us on a trajectory of um yeah go go to market um using product like growth is it a new module like integrate model orchestrate visualize or is it a whole new product it's a whole new architecture and infrastructure i think behind so that's what we have been working on for the past you know six months by now we're very excited for that to launch and i think that would change the trajectory a lot and of course you know the fundraising that we did i mean yeah we we cracked that you know we did some ar in a short amount of time and it's very unlikely for the type of product that we have that is just so brutally big in order to still push it to the market uh but i really feel um the fundraising happens a lot also on this product uh on the product vision that is coming up next well i can't wait to see what you do if you're doing about a hundred thousand dollars a month today do you remember what you were doing exactly a year ago uh around the same time in the year yeah like one year ago what was your revenue on right um i cannot tell you exactly that but i think it was around 50k 50k ar like like 50k in total around oh about it so you're doing like like four thousand dollars a month yeah something like that yeah yeah so for four thousand dollars a month to a hundred thousand dollars a month that's a good growth rate yeah that's uh let me count sorry so we had around three customer in november last year okay yeah around that around yeah good growth makes as i said the valuation story people are listening and they're gonna be going wait he raised that basically like 120 x revenue multiple right but if they believe your story if you look at your background if you look at your growth rate these things start to sort of make sense right so that's sort of why i asked the question but we're excited to see what you release um is there anything else song that i missed that you definitely want to touch on um no actually awesome like that still think you'll be you'll focus on selling to again the growth engineer the head of data that same job title yeah data analyst head of engineer i think the type of product that we are is yeah we are an all-in-one tool that you know helps people integrate with data visualize orchestrate uh like do the entire data pipeline uh within one tool and we offer also no code low code platform for people that you know that are not very good with sql but we also offer sql at the same time and we really want to as a philosophy is um we want to bridge the gap between the business user and the engineers just because um yeah i'm an engineer you know like i love to write code i love to write sql but at the end of the day my counterparts they're consuming the data they you know they make decisions based on that and they have to be involved in that process so we're almost solving like a philosophical problem uh so it's not about you know a technical problem it's really a an organizational and business problem that we're trying to solve looking forward to seeing what you do and hey i meant to ask you this too um when you raise that 3 million seed earlier this year what cap was that at was that like 10 20 cap uh did you mean valuation or was that a priced round or a note um it was a price round actually oh yeah yeah yeah was the valuation around sort of maybe 20 million back then uh it was a little bit less a little bit less okay fair great let's wrap up here with the famous five um you cannot say hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy for the first one but what is your favorite business book um how to win friends and influence people by the accounting i know a lot of people say that but i like i think that's a very important book that's a good one um i'm trying to remember what zeb said you listened to that interview we had that was a really good interview i had with him i'm excited to get that out and publish but he said the same thing um number two is there a ceo you're following or studying steph evans he's a good one number three what's your favorite online tool for building the business uh i know i should say click up uh and but it's probably slack do you use click up yeah of course we use clicker did you switch to them or were you using someone else before we abandoned everything from flickr who did you abandon name someone who were you using uh we were using everything before gyra asana whatever it's just you know all in one and the thing is i follow seb a lot because the way he builds a product the same technologies also like his front end is your angular 12 13 right now and um like everything he does is extremely similar to the way i think also and so and i'm sure there's a lot of problems he already solved before where i can just mimic uh the way uh how he does it i love to get to know him so zap if you ever hear that you know like uh i have you on my linkedin even but i haven't texted you yet i will i will introduce you guys i will ping him real quick and ask him he's open to the intro i bet he'll say yes and i will see up an intro okay thank you so much nathan you bet all right number four how many hours of sleep to get every night i wish more than six hours but um it's only six because i'm i'm a person that produces a lot of uh hormones and in a good way like i'm very excited and she's oh i have a million ideas again i cannot fall asleep because of that so it's a rather positive stress that doesn't let me fall asleep and stay asleep long enough but so it's on average six hours i wish it would be seven or eight and what's your situation married single kids um just broke up with my girlfriend uh of yeah almost three years uh but i'm yeah it was i'm happy so now you can invest a little bit more on yourself be happy you're 30 years old single no kids last question hung what do you wish she knew uh 10 years ago when you were 20 um i think if you follow the process um life will be all right guys follow the process he sold his first company uses winnings to go all in as a sole founder owning 100 of y42.com again a new way to manage your data in an easy way growth engineers you know analysts heads of data are using it they're growing about 50 customers today they just passed a million dollar run rate earlier this year up from four thousand dollars a month about a year ago so healthy growth rate 31 million series a raise sold between 15 and 20 of the business as they look to scale attracting great talent 70 on the team today check them out at y42.com hung thanks for taking us to the top nathan thank you so much one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas 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 central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on youtube every day at 2 p.m 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 sas 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 sas 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 up for that at nathan lacka dot com forward slash slack in the meantime i'm hanging out with you here on youtube i'll be in the comments for the next 30 minutes feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode 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 we got to push them away click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that i appreciate your guys's support all right i'll be in the comments see ya