Yeply Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Antti Känsälä. He has over fifteen years of experience in startups from engineering to CEO. A father and a keen outdoors person by heart, he's always on a quest to prove the impossible and get shit done quickly. He's now building Yeply, which is bike maintenance in your neighborhood. Antti, you ready to take us to the top? [00:17] >> Yes, sir. [00:19] I assume you're using software for this. You're not running around a thousand neighborhoods fixing bikes, are you? [00:24] >> Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. That was like way back in 2016, where we started our mission to change an industry, we knew that we had to have a very strong tech backbone to be able to do this. [00:37] So tell me about the marketplace, right? So obviously, people understand a homeowner breaks a bike they need to pay to get their bike bike fixed. What about the other side? How do you get the bike fixers on the platform? [00:48] >> They're all, we employ them all. So it's all in house. 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, want to change the bike industry, we want 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 [01:12] >> let go of that, we let go of the last, the physical aspect of creating that customer. [01:21] So how many are in house? [01:22] >> There's about 70 people, mechanics, currently in house. [01:25] Seven zero? Yeah. Just bike fixers or the whole company? [01:29] >> Bike fixers, there's about 60 of them. [01:32] Wow. Okay. [01:33] >> The whole company. Probably somewhere close to 80 at the moment. [01:37] Got it. So but 70 okay. Seventy, seventy five on the team total. Tell me more about sort of how you make money. Obviously, my bike is broken. And what geographies are you covering? [01:49] >> Currently, we're operating in Europe. So we started off in Finland, which is probably the dumbest place to do bike maintenance, but it's a very good place to pilot stuff. Then we're operating in Germany, having nationwide coverage there, The Netherlands, and then Austria at the moment. Looking to open up The UK market still this year. [02:07] Okay. And how does I guess, do the economics work? So how many bike fixes did you do last month? [02:14] >> 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 company. And then basically we have been adding B2B side to it along the way. So if you look at this Q commerce 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 becomes. And then [02:45] >> 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 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. [03:13] So, Antti, we before we talk about the future, let's dive I wanna dive deeper on that for a second. So what's the average bike fix? How much does it cost? [03:20] >> We do our average revenue per customer is about a €100, €110 depending on the market. [03:26] Okay. A 140 US dollar or something like that. [03:29] >> Yeah. Something like that. [03:30] So I mean, can I take 10,000 bike fixes times a $140? You did about 1,400,000 in revenue last month? [03:37] >> We do — that's on the consumer side. We do that, about 110, 140. And then if we look at these fleets, then of course, the per bike revenue is a much lower amount as we're seeing them more often in bigger amounts. [03:48] So what's the per bike? Like, I guess what was revenue last month total across 10,000 bike fixes? [03:53] >> That's probably somewhere around 3 to 400,000 last month. [03:59] 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 [04:22] 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 [04:46] 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 [05:08] 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 [05:34] 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 [05:56] 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 [06:22] the interview. Wow. Okay. And so I guess a big chunk of that goes out to paying these 70 fixers. Right? They have spread out. What is that? Seven 70%, 80% of the spend? [06:33] >> 70%. You're pretty close to the the cost structure there. [06:37] Yeah. Interesting. Got it. So just to be clear, that's about $280,000 a month paying out salaries to these 70 fixers. [06:47] And and so how do you, I guess, how do you keep or or I guess just to be clear, when we see, like, in Austin, Texas, I'll see sometimes trucks driving around and then within the flat bed they have got a 100 scooters back there, and it's like they're charging them or something. Is that you guys in Germany? [07:01] >> 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. [07:18] Oh, it's a moving thing. It's not a physical Yes. [07:21] >> 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. Going to a basement, it's a different kind of a unit. Going to a train station, it's a different kind of a unit. [07:41] Understood. How many so do you have to buy all these vans and trucks and flatbeds that are sitting on your balance sheet as as assets right now? [07:50] >> They're leased. So not sitting as assets. [07:53] Leased. Okay. That must be a very that must be your second biggest cost per month. [07:57] >> Yeah. That's probably the second biggest cost of the month. The the actual unit service units. But then if we compare it to a traditional bike shop where you are looking at the the cost of your venue Sure. Sure. [08:12] How many how many service units are you leasing currently? [08:16] >> Currently, it's probably somewhere around 25 at the moment. [08:20] So it's so it's not a one to you have 70 employees, but it's not a one to one ratio then? [08:25] >> 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 shifts, and then every single shift from one to nine. So it's running basically morning shifts, evening shifts, night shifts, and every single shift can have one to three yeplers, as we call them. [08:44] How do you get coverage across all of Europe with just 25 leased units and 70 full time employees? [08:51] >> For if we look at the the fleets, 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. [09:10] Very interesting. If you're doing about $400,000 a month today in revenue, what were you doing one year ago? [09:16] >> Do you remember? [09:18] >> Probably sort of Germany was 50. I would say hundred, hundred and fifty. Something like that. [09:25] And then what about and what about the year before that in 2020? Probably low, right? No one was traveling because Yeah. Of [09:31] >> Yeah. That was an interesting year for us. 2020. [09:34] When did you launch the business? [09:36] >> 2016 in Finland. It was a lot of the first years. It was kind of bootstrapping it together, just fine tuning the concept. Me and Tommy, my co founder being there, like, up in our daily jobs in the evenings, going to the vans and fine tuning it. [09:53] You guys split equity fiftyfifty at the start? [09:56] >> Yeah. Yeah. Nice. [09:58] Nice. And are you still bootstrapped today or did you raise capital? [10:01] >> We raised capital. Now we got Inventure, the guys behind Wolt, for example, they joined us this February. [10:11] So how much did you raise? [10:13] >> That was 2.5. [10:15] And that was your seed, that's your first money in, right? [10:17] >> 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. [10:25] What most founders are doing now is selling between 15 to 20% of their business in the seed round. Is that about what you sold? [10:31] >> Yeah. That's about right. Yep. [10:33] Okay. So that would be, like, 8.5 or eight pre money, 10 post money, something like that. [10:39] >> Yeah. A bit higher, actually. We did some secondaries there as well. So Ah, okay. Now they have about like that 50%. [10:46] What percent of the 2,500,000 went out to secondaries? [10:50] >> 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. [10:57] So how how much total did you raise, including [11:00] >> one Including the secondaries, three point it was almost 3.5. [11:05] 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 early ones I've heard get that done. You did a million dollars of secondary in your seed round at a 4,800,000 run rate. How did you get that done? [11:20] >> 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 that believed in our concept when institutional investors, they didn't even look at bike industry from my perspective. So Mhmm. It was [11:45] And how much did you how much did you raise crowdfunding? [11:50] >> We did one round with 300 k, one round with 0.5 a mil. [11:56] Okay. So it's 800 k total. [11:57] >> Yeah. Yeah. [11:59] Across how many investors or or crowdfunds? [12:01] >> It's about 300 about 300. [12:04] Got [12:05] it. So the million that you got in the secondary really went to buying out those first 300 people? [12:10] >> Not all of them. There was the ones that wanted to sell had the opportunity to sell. I think about fifty, sixty of them. [12:17] Were you personally and Tommy able to take any money off the table as as founders or no? [12:22] >> No. No. We're putting more money in. [12:24] Ah, okay. Okay. Interesting. [12:25] >> More commitment. More commitment. [12:27] Fair enough. Okay. So so you've raised 3.5 recently, 800 k previously. So about 4,200,000, 4,300,000 total. [12:35] >> Yeah. And then there's a couple of angels. There's a 500,000 from angels. [12:39] When was that? [12:40] >> On top of that. That was in 2018 or '19, somewhere along there. [12:45] Mhmm. And and why did you need that capital from them? [12:49] >> This was basically we did the first round we did was to open up our German business back in 2018, then we did a second round in 2019 to expand in Germany. Basically, the second crowdfunding round, it did not go as much into expansion as to kind of surviving through COVID, and at the same time, we of course expanded a little bit, but the plans were a little bit different than what actually happened. We ended up opening [13:17] >> up four new cities, but it was a lot slower, a lot more. Now [13:21] you have 400,000 in 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 SaaS, it's expensive, low margin. Let's Let's just look at your high margin, which is which is the 120,000 that's left. 120,000, obviously, times 12. You're at about a 1,500,000 run rate. Right? You raised it at something like a 10 to eleven, twelve x valuation multiple. Why so low? I [13:43] mean, I see seed rounds in this stage raising at like $40 to $50,000,000 valuations. Did your fixed headcount expenses hurt you here? [13:50] >> I think that can be one thing. Kind of like how are we seen? Are we seen as a maintenance company or are we a tech company? And I think we landed, if we look at the valuation multiple, it was somewhere in between there, between those two. [14:06] How many engineers are on the team? [14:07] >> When 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. [14:16] How many today, though? [14:17] >> How many [14:17] full time engineers? [14:19] >> Full time engineers, probably somewhere six, seven at the moment. [14:23] Six, seven. Okay. [14:25] Got it. So 70 are bike fixers spread out across Europe. Six are engineers. The rest are like admins, growth, marketing, sales. [14:33] >> Yep. Yep. [14:34] I see. Okay. So how do what's you the plan? Sorry. How do you scale this? [14:40] >> What we do is basically open up when we open up a new country, we start with our fleet business, so b to b operations. We go basically have a nationwide coverage. If we look at how we opened up in The Netherlands back in last October and November, we started off with a nationwide coverage, having few clients, big Q commerce players, whose bike fleets we're taking care of nationwide, then building our organization, and then opening up our [15:08] >> consumer business city by city. So now, for example, in The Netherlands, we started the consumer business in Rotterdam now in March, and then looking to open up our next city during summer and so forth. [15:20] Very cool. Well, listen, we're rooting for you. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, though, let's wrap up with the famous five. Number one, last book that you read? [15:28] >> Last book that I read [15:31] >> it was probably I listened to a book. I listened to books when we drive up north. It was probably one of these Finnish investigator stories. So nothing related to business. Something getting my mind completely out from it. [15:45] Number two, is there a founder you're following or studying? [15:52] >> I really much enjoy talks with Felix Kroeber, one of the co founders of Gorillas, is also on our board and our mentor, so I really [16:03] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Yeply? [16:07] >> My favorite tool, I think my newest favorite is probably Asana that I just got introduced to. [16:14] Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night? [16:17] >> I try to get something between seven and eight. [16:20] Okay. That's good, Antti. And what's your situation? Married, single kids? [16:24] >> Married, three kids. [16:26] Three kids. See two two of them over your shoulder. Right? [16:29] >> Yeah. [16:30] One There's the third. [16:31] >> Yeah. And these pictures are, like, 10, 12 years old. So now they're already 16 turning 16, turning 14, and now they're 11 this year. [16:39] How old are you? [16:40] >> I'm 41. [16:42] 41. Last question. [16:43] >> Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [16:47] >> Not really. Been trying to live my life just so that I enjoy every single day, and I'm still happy living it like that. Don't worry about things you can really impact. [16:57] Guys, there you have it. Yeply launched back in 2016 in Finland to help fix bikes. Now they're doing $400,000 a month in revenue. 280,000 of that goes out to headcount, 70 bike fixers spread all throughout Europe. They lease 25 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. Did over 10,000 bike fixes last month. Just recently raised [17:21] 3,500,000 seed, selling 15 to 20% of the business there. A million of that was secondaries to early crowdfunding, which those crowdfunders put in 800 k, but now looking to scale into new geographies. Eighty, eighty five on the team total today. We'll see what happens next. Antti, thanks for taking us to top. [17:36] >> Thank you, Nathan. It was a pleasure having me. [17:40] One more thing before you go. 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 Central. [18:06] 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, [18:28] 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 up [18:49] 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. We [19:09] got 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.