How Yeply CEO Antti Känsälä grew Yeply to $10.6M revenue and 10K customers in 2024.

hey folks my guest today is auntie kansa he has over 15 years of experience in startups from engineering to ceo a father and a keen outdoors person by heart he's always on a question prove the impossible and get done quickly he's now building yeply which is bike maintenance in your neighborhood auntie you're ready to take us to the top yes sir now assume you're using software for this you're not running around a thousand neighborhoods fixing bikes are you no no no no that was like way back in 2016 where we're starting our mission to change an industry we knew that we had to have a very strong tech backbone to be able to do this so tell me about the tell me about the marketplace right so obviously people understand a homeowner breaks a bike they need to pay to get their bike fixed what about the other side how do you get the bike fixers on the platform uh they're all we employ them all so it's all in-house uh it's not your typical platform business so what we do we have the platform but we also what we want to do is we want to change a complete industry we want to change the bike industry we're going to create a user experience that's something that they have not experienced ever before and if we keep it in-house then we're able to do that change the minute we let go of that we let go of the last the physical aspect of creating that so how many customers how many are in house uh there's about 70 people mechanics currently in housing yeah just bike fixers or the whole company uh buy pictures there's about 60 of them wow okay all companies okay probably somewhere close to 80 at the moment got it so but 72 okay 70 75 on the team total um tell me more about sort of how you make money uh obviously again my bike is broken and what geographies are you covering uh currently we're operating in europe so we started off in finland was probably the dumbest place to do bike maintenance but it's a very good place to pilot stuff uh then we're operating how uh in germany having nationwide coverage there the netherlands uh and then austria at the moment looking to open up the uk market still this year okay and how does i guess how do the economics work so how many bike fixes did you do last month uh it's about probably closer to 10 000 i would say last month so what we operate we started off as a pure consumer brand pure consumer uh company and then basically we have been adding uh b2b side to it along the way so if you look at this cucumbers where first time in the history of mankind these vast amounts of e-bikes were used for business critical applications and then the importance of keeping those bikes running uh becomes and then when we look at these bikes the data that we're able to gather from these bikes that used to be mechanical appliances and then turning into connected electronic devices so we're seeing a real change in the whole industry uh and what's going to happen and if we look at it today your first question was where do we make money what's the business there currently it's bikes we fix bikes we maintain bikes we keep those bikes running that's right before we before we talk about the future let's dive i want to dive deep on that first so what's the average bike fix how much does it cost we do our average revenue per customer is about 100 euros 110 euros depending on the market okay so 140 us dollar something like that yeah something like that i mean can i take 10 000 bike fixes times 140 bucks you did about 1.4 million in revenue last month uh we do that's on the consumer side we do that how about 110 140 and then if you look at these leads then of course the per bike revenue is a much lower amount as we're seeing them more often in bigger amounts so what's the per bike like i guess what was revenue last month total across 10 000 bike fixes uh that's probably somewhere around three to four hundred thousand last month oh what's going on there youtube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews 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the flatbed they have got 100 scooters back there and it's like they're charging them or something is that you guys in germany no what we do is basically our operational model it's a bit different we're operating like a classical ice cream truck so we go into a neighborhood and then we get people in that neighborhood to come to our truck and that's where we get the efficiencies the scalability of the model oh it's a moving thing it's not a physical store no it's not a physical store it's moving on basically one instance of it is a van another instance of it can be a trailer then we have these pop-up units so depending on if we're going to a company to maintain their employee bikes it might be a different kind of a unit if you're going to a basement it's a different kind of a unit going to a train station it's a different kind of unit understood how many so do you have to buy all these vans and trucks and flatbeds they're sitting on your balance sheet as assets right now uh at least so not sitting at classics least okay that must be a very that must be your second biggest cost per month uh yeah that's probably the second biggest cost of the month uh the the actual unit service units but then if we compare it to a traditional bike shop where you are looking at uh the the cost of your uh venue sure sure how many how many service units are you leasing currently uh currently it's probably somewhere around 25 um at the moment so it's so it's not a one to one you have 70 employees but it's not a one-to-one ratio then no no no because we if we look at like when we are fully optimized we should be having those service units running in three sips and then every single shift from one to nine so it's running basically morning shifts evenings it's night shifts and every single shift can have one to three yeplers as we call them how do you get coverage across all of europe with just 25 leased units and 70 full-time employees for if we look at the the fleets uh we are traveling so we have our bases in the biggest cities and then when we have fleet clients in other cities we're doing traveling so it's not the most efficient and that's what we're actually doing now is adding more and more physical presence to new cities optimizing our operations very interesting and if you're doing about 400 400 000 a month today in revenue what were you doing one year ago do you remember uh probably s jeremy was 50 i would say 100 150. and then what about what about the year before that in 2020 probably low right no one was traveling yeah yeah that was uh an interesting year for us 2020 when did you launch the business uh 2016 in finland so it was a lot a lot of the first years it was kind of um bootstrapping it together uh just fine tuning the concept me and tommy my co-founder being there like having our daily jobs in the evenings going to the vans and fine tuning and just um did you guys did you guys split equity 50 50 at the start yeah yeah yeah nice nice and are you still bootstrapped today or did you raise capital uh we raised capital uh now we got uh inventor uh the guys behind walt for example uh they joined us uh this uh february so how much did you raise uh that was 2.5 and that was your seat or that's your first money in right yeah that yeah that's basically our seed round we debated about like what do we call that round but we decided it's a seed round what we're doing most founders will sell between 15 and 20 percent of their business in the seed round is that's about what you sold yeah that's about right yep okay so that would be like 8.5 or eight pre-money 10 post money something like that yeah a bit higher actually okay we did some secondaries there as well so okay now they have about like that fifty percent what percent of the 2.5 million went out to secondaries no that was purely primaries so then on top of that there was secondaries and then after that they have that percentage of about okay so how much total did you raise including one day during the secondaries uh three point it was almost 3.5 um three point okay so explain it this is i have to ask this question it's the number one question i get early stage founders wanting to do secondaries you're one of the earlier ones i've heard get that done you did a million dollars of secondary in your seed round at a 4.8 million run rate how did you get that done uh that was basically to clean up our cap table if we look at it back in 2017 for us to open up our german business to get money for that we did crowdfunding and now basically this was one way of giving back to those people uh that believed in our concept when kind of institutional investors they they didn't even look at bike industry from that perspective so [Music] how much did you how much did you raise uh crowdfunding uh we did one round with 300k one round with half a mill okay so yeah yeah across how many investors or crowdfunding it's about 300 about 300 got it so the million that you got in a secondary really went to buying out those first 300 people not all of them there was uh the ones who wanted to sell at the opportunity to sell so i think about 50 60 of them were you personally and tommy able to take any money off the table as founders or no no no we're putting more money in uh okay okay interesting more commitment more commitment fair enough okay so so you've raised 3.5 recently 800k previously so about 4.2 million 4.3 million total yeah and then there's a couple of angels is a half a meal from angels when was that that was in 2018 or 19 somewhere along there and and why did you need that capital from them uh this was basically we did the first round we did was to open up our german business uh back in 2018 then we did a second round in 2019 to expand in germany but basically the second crowdfunding round it did not go as much into expansion as to kind of surviving through covet and and at the same time we of course expand a little bit but the plans were a little bit different than uh what actually happened we ended up opening up four new cities but it was a lot slower a lot more now you have 400 000 a monthly recurring revenue 280 000 of that monthly is obviously headcount expense but let's take out the headcount expense because you could say that's not pure sas it's expensive low margin let's just look at your high margin which is 120 000 that's left 120 000 obviously times 12 you're at about a 1.5 million run rate right you raised it something like a 10 to 11 12 x valuation multiple why so low i mean i see seed rounds on this stage raising it like 40 50 million valuations did your fixed headcount expenses hurt you here um i think it's that can be one thing kind of like how are we seeing are we seen as a uh a maintenance company or are we a tech company and i think we landed if we look at the evaluation multiple it was somewhere in between there between those two how many times are on the team well we raised the round we had a few and now we're just building if we look at our hq team now that's what we're building pulling in uh how many today though how many full-time engineers uh full-time engineers probably somewhere six seven at the moment six seven walking up then yeah got so 70 our bike fixers spread out europe six are engineers the rest are like admins growth marketing sales yep yep i see okay so how do you what's the plans or how do you scale this what we do is basically open up when we open up a new uh country we start with our fleet business so b2b uh operations we go basically have a nationwide coverage if you look at how we open up the netherlands back in uh last october november we started off with a nationwide coverage so having a few clients big cucumbers players whose bike fleets were taken care of nationwide then building our organization and then opening up our consumer business city by city so now for example in in the netherlands we started the consumer business in rotterdam now in march and then looking to open up our next city um during summer and so forth very cool well listen we're rooting for you we'll see what happens in the meantime now let's wrap up with the famous five number one last book that you read last book that i read uh it was probably i listened to a book i listened to books when we drive up north it was probably one of these fitness investigator stories so nothing related to business something get my mind completely out from it number two is there a founder you're following or studying um i i i really much enjoy talks with uh felix crowbar one of the co-founders of uh gorillaz is also on our board and our mentor so i really number three what's your favorite online tool for building yet please tool i think uh my newest favorite is probably a sauna that i just got introduced to number four how many hours i sleep to get every night uh i try to get something between seven and eight okay that's a good auntie and uh what's your situation married single kids married three kids three i see two two of them over your shoulder right yeah one ah there's the third yeah and these pictures are like 10 12 years old so now they're already 16 turning 16 turning 14 and 11 this year how old are you i'm 41 41 last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. not really i've been trying to live my life so that i enjoy every single day and i'm still happy living it like that things you can really impact guys there you have it yep please lunch back in 2017 in finland to help fix bikes bikes uh now they're doing 400 thousand dollars a month in revenue 280 000 of that goes out to head count 70 bike fixers spread all throughout europe they lease 20 pieces of movable equipment think of it like an ice cream truck going around to cities talking to working with consumers and businesses to repair and fix their bikes they did over 10 000 bike fixes last month just recently raised 3.5 million seed selling 15 to 20 percent of the business there a million of that was secondaries to early crowdfunding which those craft owners put in 800k but now looking to scale into new geographies 80 85 on the team total today we'll see what happens next auntie thanks for taking us to the top thank you nathan it was a pleasure having 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 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 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