How Yeply Reached $4.8M Revenue and 80 Team Members Fixing Bikes Across Europe (Interview with CEO Antti Känsälä)

Introduction and Background

Nathan Latka

00:00Hey, 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?

Antti Känsälä

00:17>> Yes, sir.

Business Model and In-House Mechanics

Nathan Latka

00:19I assume you're using software for this. You're not running around a thousand neighborhoods fixing bikes, are you?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Geographies and Market Coverage

Nathan Latka

00:37So 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?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

01:21So how many are in house?

Antti Känsälä

01:22>> There's about 70 people, mechanics, currently in house.

Nathan Latka

01:25Seven zero? Yeah. Just bike fixers or the whole company?

Antti Känsälä

01:29>> Bike fixers, there's about 60 of them.

Nathan Latka

01:32Wow. Okay.

Antti Känsälä

01:33>> The whole company. Probably somewhere close to 80 at the moment.

Nathan Latka

01:37Got 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?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Revenue per Customer and Monthly Volume

Nathan Latka

02:07Okay. And how does I guess, do the economics work? So how many bike fixes did you do last month?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

03:13So, 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?

Antti Känsälä

03:20>> We do our average revenue per customer is about a €100, €110 depending on the market.

Nathan Latka

03:26Okay. A 140 US dollar or something like that.

Antti Känsälä

03:29>> Yeah. Something like that.

Nathan Latka

03:30So I mean, can I take 10,000 bike fixes times a $140? You did about 1,400,000 in revenue last month?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

03:48So what's the per bike? Like, I guess what was revenue last month total across 10,000 bike fixes?

Antti Känsälä

03:53>> That's probably somewhere around 3 to 400,000 last month.

Nathan Latka

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06:22the 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?

Mobile Service Unit Operations

Antti Känsälä

06:33>> 70%. You're pretty close to the the cost structure there.

Nathan Latka

06:37Yeah. Interesting. Got it. So just to be clear, that's about $280,000 a month paying out salaries to these 70 fixers.

06:47And 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?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

07:18Oh, it's a moving thing. It's not a physical Yes.

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

07:41Understood. 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?

Antti Känsälä

07:50>> They're leased. So not sitting as assets.

Nathan Latka

07:53Leased. Okay. That must be a very that must be your second biggest cost per month.

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

08:12How many how many service units are you leasing currently?

Antti Känsälä

08:16>> Currently, it's probably somewhere around 25 at the moment.

Nathan Latka

08:20So it's so it's not a one to you have 70 employees, but it's not a one to one ratio then?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

08:44How do you get coverage across all of Europe with just 25 leased units and 70 full time employees?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

09:10Very interesting. If you're doing about $400,000 a month today in revenue, what were you doing one year ago?

Antti Känsälä

09:16>> Do you remember?

09:18>> Probably sort of Germany was 50. I would say hundred, hundred and fifty. Something like that.

Nathan Latka

09:25And then what about and what about the year before that in 2020? Probably low, right? No one was traveling because Yeah. Of

Antti Känsälä

09:31>> Yeah. That was an interesting year for us. 2020.

Nathan Latka

09:34When did you launch the business?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

09:53You guys split equity fiftyfifty at the start?

Antti Känsälä

09:56>> Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

Nathan Latka

09:58Nice. And are you still bootstrapped today or did you raise capital?

Antti Känsälä

10:01>> We raised capital. Now we got Inventure, the guys behind Wolt, for example, they joined us this February.

Nathan Latka

10:11So how much did you raise?

Antti Känsälä

10:13>> That was 2.5.

Nathan Latka

10:15And that was your seed, that's your first money in, right?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Seed Round and Inventure Investment

Nathan Latka

10:25What most founders are doing now is selling between 15 to 20% of their business in the seed round. Is that about what you sold?

Antti Känsälä

10:31>> Yeah. That's about right. Yep.

Nathan Latka

10:33Okay. So that would be, like, 8.5 or eight pre money, 10 post money, something like that.

Antti Känsälä

10:39>> Yeah. A bit higher, actually. We did some secondaries there as well. So Ah, okay. Now they have about like that 50%.

Nathan Latka

10:46What percent of the 2,500,000 went out to secondaries?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

10:57So how how much total did you raise, including

Secondary Sale and Cap Table Cleanup

Antti Känsälä

11:00>> one Including the secondaries, three point it was almost 3.5.

Nathan Latka

11:05Three 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?

Antti Känsälä

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

Crowdfunding History

Nathan Latka

11:45And how much did you how much did you raise crowdfunding?

Antti Känsälä

11:50>> We did one round with 300 k, one round with 0.5 a mil.

Nathan Latka

11:56Okay. So it's 800 k total.

Antti Känsälä

11:57>> Yeah. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

11:59Across how many investors or or crowdfunds?

Antti Känsälä

12:01>> It's about 300 about 300.

Nathan Latka

12:04Got

12:05it. So the million that you got in the secondary really went to buying out those first 300 people?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

12:17Were you personally and Tommy able to take any money off the table as as founders or no?

Antti Känsälä

12:22>> No. No. We're putting more money in.

Nathan Latka

12:24Ah, okay. Okay. Interesting.

Antti Känsälä

12:25>> More commitment. More commitment.

Nathan Latka

12:27Fair enough. Okay. So so you've raised 3.5 recently, 800 k previously. So about 4,200,000, 4,300,000 total.

Antti Känsälä

12:35>> Yeah. And then there's a couple of angels. There's a 500,000 from angels.

Nathan Latka

12:39When was that?

Antti Känsälä

12:40>> On top of that. That was in 2018 or '19, somewhere along there.

Nathan Latka

12:45Mhmm. And and why did you need that capital from them?

Antti Känsälä

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

Nathan Latka

13:21you 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

Engineer Headcount and Team Breakdown

Nathan Latka

13:43mean, I see seed rounds in this stage raising at like $40 to $50,000,000 valuations. Did your fixed headcount expenses hurt you here?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Scaling Strategy and New Market Playbook

Nathan Latka

14:06How many engineers are on the team?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

14:16How many today, though?

Antti Känsälä

14:17>> How many

Nathan Latka

14:17full time engineers?

Antti Känsälä

14:19>> Full time engineers, probably somewhere six, seven at the moment.

Nathan Latka

14:23Six, seven. Okay.

14:25Got it. So 70 are bike fixers spread out across Europe. Six are engineers. The rest are like admins, growth, marketing, sales.

Antti Känsälä

14:33>> Yep. Yep.

Nathan Latka

14:34I see. Okay. So how do what's you the plan? Sorry. How do you scale this?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

15:20Very 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?

Antti Känsälä

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.

Famous Five: Books, Tools, and Habits

Nathan Latka

15:45Number two, is there a founder you're following or studying?

Antti Känsälä

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

Nathan Latka

16:03Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Yeply?

Antti Känsälä

16:07>> My favorite tool, I think my newest favorite is probably Asana that I just got introduced to.

Nathan Latka

16:14Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?

Antti Känsälä

16:17>> I try to get something between seven and eight.

Nathan Latka

16:20Okay. That's good, Antti. And what's your situation? Married, single kids?

Antti Känsälä

16:24>> Married, three kids.

Nathan Latka

16:26Three kids. See two two of them over your shoulder. Right?

Antti Känsälä

16:29>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

16:30One There's the third.

Antti Känsälä

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.

Nathan Latka

16:39How old are you?

Antti Känsälä

16:40>> I'm 41.

Nathan Latka

16:4241. Last question.

Antti Känsälä

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.

Closing Summary

Nathan Latka

16:57Guys, 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

17:213,500,000 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.

Antti Känsälä

17:36>> Thank you, Nathan. It was a pleasure having me.

Nathan Latka

17:40One 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.

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