Y42 Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Hey folks, my guest today is Hung Dang. He's the founder of y42. Started his career though in the live event business. And in 2014, he co founded Party Like Gatsby, a global event series hosting more than 100,000 guests. Driven by thin margins, he needed great data infrastructure that ultimately ended up 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, [00:23] which has helped him build his current company y42, an easy and scalable data platform. Hung, you ready to take us to top? [00:30] >> Cool. Nathan, I'm such a big fan. Thanks for having me on this podcast. Very excited. [00:35] You bet. What does y42 stand for? [00:38] >> 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, why is, you know like, why why, like, y42? And I'm being very pragmatic here. Hey. It's a 3letter.com domain. Okay? It's 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, [01:03] >> but that's the reality. [01:05] 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 wanna do their work faster? [01:16] >> 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 wanna stitch together five or six different tools like integration, orchestration, visualization, transformation, whatsoever. And so they wanna 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. At the same time, [01:45] >> so the only math that we really have to solve is, how don't we let them outgrow us? [01:50] Mhmm. [01:50] >> That's the whole business model. Fun fact, 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, [02:14] >> you know, who 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, [02:39] >> 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 I think moving forward, SME will play a very big role within our go to market as well. [03:01] 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? [03:08] >> Yep. So 10 to 30 k is the annual contract value. So it's somewhere in the middle of the average. It would be around 20 k. [03:19] Okay. Around 20 k. That's great. And then take me back to how you got this going. Now are you a sole founder? [03:24] >> Yes. I'm a solo founder. [03:26] So I wanna dig here a little bit because everyone always tells you like, oh, you need co founders, you need balance, but I 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 you own a 100% on day one? [03:42] >> Yes. Something along this line, but, you know, I I grew up in Vietnam actually, and I I came to Germany when I was eight. So I actually grew up, you know, not very wealthy, and so I 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, kinda left, of course, all in, I went back [04:05] >> into y42. I still you know, at at my previous company, I built a data solution very niche, just for the event industry. 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, 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, [04:28] >> 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 VC 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 [04:49] >> 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 yeah. Sorry to I extended the question a bit to sum it up. I am the solo founder. It has [05:12] >> massive advantage, but don't do that if you don't have the benefit of, you know, having some, you know, let's say success before that people are actually drawn to you and say, hey, I would join you on this mission because they've seen that I had a level of success before and doing that way, I'm capable of having roughly 10 to 20 people that have a small share in the company, but they are very strong. They are as [05:40] >> strong as an old co founder that I would have. Mhmm. So I feel like at the price of one, cofounder, I have roughly 20 cofounders. [05:48] So that's effectively you're talking about your employee stock option pool. What did you set that up? It's like they were talking like 10%, 20%. How big did you make that? [05:55] >> Actually, very big. So it's like a split right now deducting all the dilution through, you know, the the seed and the series a round. I think the effective split is 60/40 right now without 60 for me, 40 for the employees without calculating the VSOP pool, which has not been distributed yet. So it would be a rather fifty fifty split. [06:21] It's on a fully diluted basis. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. No. I love this. I 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? [06:33] >> I'm 30 by now. [06:34] I love this. Okay. So 30 years old, can I ask how much of your own money you put into the business? [06:39] >> It's gonna be in the 6 figures range. Okay. Yeah. [06:43] Okay. So between a 100,000 and a million bucks, your parents and your family are happy when you sold Mitrax, you gave a bunch back to the or Mitra, it sounds like you gave a bunch back to them. [06:52] >> Yep. Exactly. [06:54] What did your did your mom buy anything interesting when you gave her a bunch of money? [06:58] >> Yeah. I mean, so we are from Vietnam, like I've said. So, yeah, we we did buy a property, there in in Vietnam. [07:07] I I was I was curious if you're gonna say, like, you know, she bought, you know, a chicken farm or some really random thing, but okay. Property. It's pretty normal. Yeah. Anyways, you're all in on the business. You're you're scaling. When did you when did you write the first line of code for the business? [07:21] >> First line of code early two thousand twenty. [07:24] 2020. Okay. Yeah. And you wrote the initial code. Right? I mean, [07:27] >> you wrote the MVP? Yeah. Roughly 50% of the front end code that you would see was written by me. [07:33] Yep. Okay. And now it's not the case anymore. [07:36] >> It's getting less and less, but, yeah, it used to be written a lot by me. [07:40] And when did you get your first customer? Do you remember who it was? Can you tell that story? [07:46] >> Yes. It was an SMB, actually. Funnily, 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 angels, also a very close friend of mine. As a fun fact, he's the prince of Austria, technically speaking, coming from the house of Habsburg, which you know, I I know you're in The US. You don't know that, but it's the most influential, [08:12] >> yeah, aristocrat family that ever existed in Europe. [08:16] Is this this La Famiglia? [08:19] >> No. No. It's not La Famiglia. It's yeah. It's it's it's an angel of ours. Okay. 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 Filoro. They're making 8 they they're making over 1,000,000,000 in revenue. You know? Like, that's how big they are. Wow. And they [08:44] >> they don't have the data solution yet, they look at ours. It's like, wow. It's so easy and it's so simple. And this was in in September. To be fair, it took us six months until we onboarded them on the platform. So but they were the first, effective client. Like, it's signed ARR, not really realized, realized was roughly in in March, and so that was our very first client. [09:09] Yeah. And how many now have you scaled how many today now, Hung? [09:14] >> So it we went to pilot, you know, September, and it was more like friends and family are like begging, hey, please use our platform kind of attitude for a long time. So we were, you know, we're getting one or two customers that way until February, and where we raise our seed round end of February, and then we went to TechCrunch, you know, like, Frederick from TechCrunch. He was so kind to actually, hey. This is just some [09:41] >> 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 LinkedIn, 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, yeah, went [10:07] >> to market. And I'd be very honest to you. So I 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 the series A. And so that was early summer. And by that time, we had, 50 clients. [10:27] Five zero. Got it. Yep. And so you did I guess, you did a 3,000,000 or a 3,000,000 round earlier this year. Is that right? [10:33] >> Yep. Exactly. [10:34] And then what was the more recent round? [10:37] >> 31,000,000. [10:38] 31. Okay. And, that would you consider that, I guess, your series a? [10:42] >> Yeah. That was our series A. [10:43] Tell me about how you think I mean, you're you're obviously very dilution sensitive. You're a sole founder. Right? When you raise that kind of money, you you get diluted. Right? So how how'd you think about that round? [10:52] >> We diluted, you know, within the reasonable range, I would say. But I can say, yeah, we're confident that [11:02] Hung, I mean, I'd say reasonable series a, average series a. You're you're selling 15% of the business. Were you sort of in that same range? [11:10] >> A little bit more. A little bit more. [11:11] Okay. 15 to 20. Fair. Yep. 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. [11:21] >> Yeah. So first of all, you know, the kind of business that we are, it's a, I'm a big fan of Zeb Evans, and I know you just talked to him recently. 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 I know he made it work, but we cannot make it work as easily because we need to to have [11:45] >> 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 3,000,000 seat, 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 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 [12:10] >> round is probably one of the biggest round that Europe has ever seen for a SaaS startup in Europe, also probably, if not the biggest valuation also, and this puts us For for [12:21] a for a seed round. For a series a round. Series a. Series a. Yeah. [12:25] >> Yeah. For a SaaS, it was a 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, being able yeah. And, [12:39] obviously people how many people today? [12:42] >> We are 70 people today. [12:43] Seven zero. How many engineers? [12:46] >> 40 engineers. 40. [12:47] And you did see I mean, when that press came out, that enabled you that gave you leverage hiring top talent. [12:53] >> Yeah. But, it just came out, like, literally two weeks ago. So we were already at the size when that came out. And now, of course, we rather grow to, like, a 100 to a 150 people, 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. [13:14] Mhmm. 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 [13:22] >> we were raising the round, that was around, our number. Yes. [13:26] Got it. And that was I guess, raised around a couple maybe a month month ago was when you were raising. So you're [13:31] >> A couple of month ago. So when we got into the process, it was early summer. [13:36] Okay. But when you launched the process, you were already north of a million dollar run rate? [13:40] >> When we launched the process, we were at roughly 800 k. Okay. But there was 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, above the 1,000,000 range. [14:03] 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 2,000,000 run rate by the end of December, or is that too fast? [14:12] >> We don't think that's gonna happen, but Yeah. 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 salesperson. Only it's my colleague, We had one SDR and one marketeer. So that that was the total team. And this one salesperson is now, you know, also my, our VP of growth. And so he was doing that almost as an IC, and he [14:38] >> would close every possible deal out there. But now he has to step back and, you know, onboard new people in the sales team. And so we lose a lot of conversion, we lose, like, yeah, just because there's an onboarding process of new AEs. So we probably gonna continue the same trajectory until the end of the year. But by next year, of course, you know, we have a much higher ambition. It's a big year. [15:06] I was gonna say next year is a big big year for you. Can you go from a million dollar run rate to, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8,000,000, in twelve months? [15:12] >> That's the plan. Yes. That's that's a plan. We hope so too, but I I think yeah. I I'm gonna release it here first. I'm actually gonna release it at data council at the end of the year, big on stage, but you've heard it here first. We are in the process of releasing a completely new software that's probably gonna will really revolutionize, I don't know, the data industry, and we're gonna launch it, reveal it at data council. [15:43] >> Not gonna say exactly what it is because, you know, otherwise, I cannot reveal it at data council anymore. And I think that will put us on a trajectory of, yeah, go go to market using product led growth in Is it is it [15:57] a new module, like integrate model, orchestrate, visualize, or is it a whole new product? [16:01] >> It's a whole new architecture and infrastructure I see. Behind. So that's what we have been working on for the past, you know, six months by now, and we're very excited for 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 ARR in a short amount of time, and it's very unlikely for [16:26] >> the type of product that we have that is just so brutally big in order to still push it to the market, But I really feel the fundraising happens a lot also on this product on the product vision that is coming up next. Yep. [16:40] Well, I can't wait to see what you do. If you're doing about a $100,000 a month today, do you remember what you were doing exactly a year ago? [16:46] >> Around the same time in the year? Yeah. Sorry. [16:49] Like, one year ago, what was your revenue run rate? [16:54] >> I cannot tell you exactly that, but I think it was around 50 k. 50 k. ARR? Like, no. Like, 50 k in total around. [17:05] Oh, about it. So you're doing, like, like, $4,000 a month? [17:08] >> Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. [17:10] Yeah. So from $4,000 a month to a $100,000 a month, that's a good growth rate. [17:14] >> Yeah. Yeah. That's Let me count. Sorry. So we had around three customer in November last year. [17:20] Okay. [17:20] >> Yeah. Around that. [17:21] Around that. Yeah. Good growth makes it As I say, the valuation story, people are listening and they're gonna be going, wait, he raised at basically like 120x 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. Is there anything else, [17:40] Hung, that I missed that you definitely wanna touch on? [17:46] >> No, actually. [17:47] Awesome. You like that? Still think you'll be you'll you'll focus on selling to, again, the growth engineer, the head of data, that same job title? [17:54] >> Yeah. Data analyst, the 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, like, do the entire data pipeline, within one tool. And we offer also no code, no code platform for people that, you know, that are not very Yeah. Good with SQL, but we also offer SQL at the same time. And we really want to [18:21] >> as the philosophy is, we wanna bridge the gap between the business user and the engineers just because, 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 they make decisions based on that, and they have to be involved in that process. So we're almost solving, a philosophical problem. So it's not about, you know, [18:44] >> a technical problem. It's really an organizational and business problem that we're trying to solve, with the product. [18:50] Forward to seeing what you do. And, hey, I meant to ask you this too. When you raised that 3,000,000 seed earlier this year, what cap was that at? Was that, like, a 10 to 20 cap? [19:01] >> You mean valuation or, [19:03] like Oh, was that a price round or a note? [19:06] >> It was a priced round, actually. [19:08] >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [19:09] Was was the valuation around sort of maybe 20,000,000 back then? [19:12] >> It was a little bit less. [19:13] A little bit less. Okay. Fair. Great. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. You cannot say Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first one, but what is your favorite business book? [19:23] >> How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I know a lot of people say that, but I I think that's a very important book. [19:30] That's a good one. I'm trying to remember what Zeb said. You listened to that interview? That was a really good interview I had with him. I I'm excited to get that out and publish, but he said the same thing. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying? [19:41] >> Zeb Evans. [19:43] >> He's a good one. [19:44] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building the business? [19:47] >> I know I should say ClickUp, and but it's probably Slack. [19:51] Do you use ClickUp? [19:52] >> Yeah. Of course, we use ClickUp. [19:54] Did you switch to them, or were like, were you using someone else before? [19:57] >> We abandoned everything from ClickUp. [19:59] That's Who did you abandon? Name some who were you using? [20:03] >> We were using everything before, Jira, Asana, whatever. It's just, you know, all in one. And the thing is, I follow Zeb a lot because the way he builds a product, the same technologies also. Like, his front end is, you Angular twelve, thirteen by now. And, 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, the [20:28] >> way, how he does. I I love to get to know him. So, Zeb, if you ever hear that, you know, like, I have you on my LinkedIn even, but I haven't texted you yet. [20:37] So I I will introduce you. I will ping him real quick and ask if he's open to the intro. Bet he'll say yes, and I will see you up in intro. Okay? [20:43] >> Thank you so much, Nathan. [20:45] You bet. Alright. Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night? [20:48] >> I wish more than six hours, but it's only six because I'm I'm a person that produces a lot of hormones and in a good way, like, I'm very excited and just, 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 it's on average six hours. I wish it would be seven or eight. [21:12] And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? [21:16] >> Just broke up with my girlfriend of, yeah, almost three years. But I'm I'm yeah. It was I'm happy. [21:23] So Now you can invest a little bit more in yourself. Be happy. You're 30 years old, single, no kids. Last question, What do you wish you knew ten years ago when you were 20? [21:36] >> I think if you follow the process, life will be alright. [21:40] Guys, follow the process. He sold his first company, used his winnings to go all in as a sole founder owning a 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 $4,000 a month about a year goes to a healthy growth rate. Dollars [22:01] 31,000,000 series A raise sold between 15 to 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. [22:11] >> Nathan, thank you so much. [22:15] 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, 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. [22:40] 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 fundraise, [23:03] a big sale, a big profitability statement or something else. I don't want you to miss it. Additionally, if you wanna 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 up for [23:24] 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. We got [23:44] 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.