Founder Interview
How Jugl Reached $1.2M ARR and 400 Customers in Under 3 Years (Interview with CEO Arun Kumar)
- Interview Date
- July 12, 2023
- Interviewee
- Arun KumarCEO
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Annual Revenue (2023)
$1.2M
Customers (2023)
400
Seed Funding Received (2023)
$2.3M
Team Size (2023)
24
ARPU (2023)
$600 per month
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Arun Kumar during his interview with Nathan Latka in July 2023 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Jugl’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Jugl reached 400 paying customers as of July 2023
- 02Monthly recurring revenue was $100,000 at interview time, up from near zero a year prior
- 03Arun Kumar invested close to $800,000 of his own money before landing the first paying customer
- 04The company raised $2.3M of a $3M seed round, with the remainder expected to close within two months
- 05Jugl prices at $3 to $5 per user per month
- 06Gross annual churn is 10%
- 07The team has 24 employees, including more than 15 engineers spread across Poland, Brazil, the US, and India
- 08Arun grew his initial audience to 100,000 social media followers, which drove 500 early sign-ups
- 09At a conference in India called GetCo, approximately 240 attendees signed up via QR code
- 10The company was founded in 2020 and pivoted twice before settling on its current business-focused product
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Annual Revenue (2023) | $1.2M | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Monthly Recurring Revenue (2023) | $100,000 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Customers (2023) | 400 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| ARPU (2023) | $600 per month | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Pricing Per Seat (2023) | $3 per user per month | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Gross Annual Churn (2023) | 10% | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Seed Funding Received (2023) | $2.3M | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Team Size (2023) | 24 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Engineers (2023) | 15 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Free Trials Active (2023) | 30 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Monthly Burn (2023) | $105,000 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Founder Pre-Seed Investment | $250,000 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Capital Invested Before First Customer | $800,000 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Year Founded | 2020 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Social Media Followers (2023) | 100,000 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Conference Sign-Ups (GetCo India) (2023) | 240 | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Equity Diluted for Seed Round (2023) | 20% | Founder interview, July 2023 |
| Post-Money Valuation (2023) | $15M | Founder interview, July 2023 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Jugl grew from near-zero revenue in 2022 to $100,000 per month in monthly recurring revenue by July 2023, representing roughly $1.2M on an annualized basis. Arun Kumar attributed this growth to aggressive marketing, conference speaking, and leveraging his personal brand audience of 100,000 followers.
Customers
The company reached 400 paying organizations by July 2023. Early customers were onboarded selectively from a pool of 500 companies that signed up after Arun published his progress on social media. The median customer today has around 25 employees, with a target market of companies with 200 employees.
Team
Jugl employs 24 people as of July 2023, with more than 15 in engineering or technical roles. The team is fully distributed, with members in Poland, Brazil, the United States, and India. Arun follows a hire-fast, fire-fast, promote-fast philosophy to manage talent risk.
Funding and Burn
Arun bootstrapped the company with $250,000 from himself and a co-founder, then raised $2.3M of a $3M seed round at a $15M post-money valuation, diluting 20% of the company. Monthly burn at interview time was $105,000, and Arun expected to reach breakeven by end of 2023 or 2024.
Growth Strategy
Founder Personal Brand
Arun built a social media following of 100,000 people and published regular updates on his progress building Jugl. When he announced the product, 500 companies signed up to try it, giving him a warm pipeline to selectively onboard early customers.
Conference Speaking and Education
Arun spoke at business owner conferences, including a regional event in India called GetCo with around 1,200 attendees. He focused on educating business owners about the problem rather than pitching the product, then displayed a QR code for attendees to download the app. Approximately 240 people signed up at that single event.
International Expansion
Jugl pursued growth in non-English-speaking markets including Central America, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and El Salvador, targeting non-tech-savvy business owners who rely on WhatsApp and Telegram for employee communication. The company opened a Central America office and was launching in Malaysia and El Salvador at the time of the interview.
Free Trial and Hands-On Onboarding
Jugl offers a 30-day free trial with a complete use case, implementing the product in one department and providing a blueprint for measuring productivity before and after adoption. This approach reduces friction for non-technical buyers and builds confidence in the product's impact claims.
Reseller Network
Arun described plans to appoint resellers across international markets to accelerate distribution, complementing the direct sales and conference-driven approach already in place.
Best Quotes
“I am a good networker. I talk to people. I have my own social media channel. I publish and I talk my progress. I have around 100,000 followers. So as soon as I published, I have 500 companies who signed up. They want to try. But we spoke to people, and we selectively identified which company is suitable for us. And then we onboarded one by one. So now we have 400 organizations using our app very successfully.”
“First, initially, bootstrapped, a 250,000 invested by me and other co founder. And then we raised 2,300,000 so far, but my seed round is $3,000,000, and we'll be closing $3,000,000 in the next few months.”
“Closed as of it is a $3,000,000 seed round. I've not closed yet. I've received 2.3 so far, and I'll be receiving 700,000 in the next few months and close the 3,000,000 seed round in next two months.”
“I'm diluting 20% of my company for the $3,000,000”
“I'm I'm burning money today, and I should be able to achieve breakeven probably end of this year or next year.”
“Last month? I would say close to a $100,000. Sorry. A $105,000.”
“Again, aggressive marketing, and I use B2B means I always go and talk in a conference. It's an educated approach, right? You know, you educate business what problem they have because most of the business owners, they don't know that they have a problem, and they don't know that there is a solution.”
“Don't don't wait for others to believe in you.”
“pick one problem and stay focused and prepare for the changes. Market will demand something different than what you ask or what you plan for.”
What Happened Next
This interview captured Jugl at an early inflection point in July 2023, when the company had just scaled from near-zero to $100,000 per month in recurring revenue and was in the middle of closing a $3M seed round. The figures here reflect what Arun Kumar reported at that moment and are not current. Visit the Jugl company profile on GetLatka for the latest metrics and funding data.
View Jugl’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:00Introduction and Host Overview
- 0:42Arun's Background and CapDigisoft Agency
- 1:31How Jugl Was Founded and the Product Journey
- 2:35Customer Story: Bamboo in Central America
- 6:52Pricing Model and Unit Economics
- 9:36Company Launch, Pivots, and First Customer
- 11:53Personal Brand and Reaching 400 Customers
- 15:52Growth Tactics: Conferences and International Expansion
- 17:10Funding History and Seed Round Status
- 18:10Valuation and Equity Dilution
- 20:03Gross Churn and Retention Discussion
- 21:01Team Size and Hiring Philosophy
- 22:07Burn Rate and Path to Breakeven
- 22:30Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
- 24:41Closing Advice and Wrap-Up
Introduction and Host Overview
Nathan Latka
00:00Guys, there you have it. Twenty years ago, he launched his agency, Cap Digisoft. He says he always wanna launch a product that would impact millions. He's now building jugl. They're doing a $100,000 a month in revenue up from almost nothing just a year ago. He put in 250 k in a pre you know, up upfront to get it going and then raised another 2 raising 3,000,000 right now at 2.3 already wired on a 15,000,000 valuation, burning
00:19a $100 a month per month right now, but doesn't concern him. He got plenty of runway. Team of 24, 15 engineers. Again, a platform that helps you motivate, track, and measure employee engagement. Hey, folks. My guest today is Arun Kumar. He's building a tool called jugl. That's jugl.com. It's employee and client success management platform. Arun, you ready to take us to the top?
Arun's Background and CapDigisoft Agency
Arun Kumar
00:42>> Oh, yes, sir.
Nathan Latka
00:44Alright. Whenever I see a startup founder where they've got two jobs listed as present on their LinkedIn, I'm always curious. So you're doing jugl, but you also have capped Digisoft Solutions for the past twenty years. How do these things fuel each other?
Arun Kumar
00:57>> Yes. CapDigisoft is my first business. I own. It's a tech company. I have around 400 employees working globally operating from four countries. But I'm always passionate about product. You know, through product, we can be able to impact 100x or 1000x more than what you do through service industry. We formed a bigger opportunity, and I formed a dedicated team for jugl. And jugl is a separate entity, and we raised the funding, and it's going great. And by
01:29>> the way, thanks for having me on your show.
How Jugl Was Founded and the Product Journey
Nathan Latka
01:31Of course, you've been doing Cap to do so for almost twenty years. Juggle has been only three years. I love a story where a SaaS founder found a need via their agency. Is that the pattern you fall into here? Is Captidusoft an agency and that's how you discovered the idea for Juggle?
Arun Kumar
01:49>> I would say yes and no. I found this myself personally, not my team or anybody, because I know I want to form the product. Again, to keep the story interesting, through CapDigiSoft, always I invest under $2,250,000 every year to find the product which can impact millions of businesses. Mhmm. That makes sense. Juggle is my fifth try on those processes. Every time I invest, I learn something, and I decide, okay, I'm not going to impact millions of
02:24>> businesses from this product. So I scale down or I close. So jugl is my fifth venture like that. So I always explore. I always explore, invest.
Customer Story: Bamboo in Central America
Nathan Latka
02:35Alright. Let's talk about jugl. Give me a customer story. How's the customer using you today?
Arun Kumar
02:41>> You know, jugl is mainly designed for non tech business owners, right? And countries like Asia, Middle East, Central America, those people are non tech business owners. They don't have a proper tool to manage employee efficiency, employee communication, task force. They are not. And they are not tech savvy business owners either. So they are generally using the available tools like WhatsApp and then Telegram. They're using those tools, but those tools are not efficiently designed to manage employee
03:18>> communication and employee productivity.
03:21>> The problem, what we are trying to solve, again, when you introduce a new product like Slack and Microsoft Teams, it is a painful process for them. Mainly, they're getting user adaptation because the users are non tech people, the interface is different, the habit is different, approach is different, so they miserably fail when they introduce these kinds of tools.
Nathan Latka
03:41So Arun, can you give a real example? Can you name a company in Central America that's using you?
Arun Kumar
03:47>> Yeah. So that is a company called Bamboo. They have 200 employees. Their business is managing the building. They construct the apartments. They construct the shopping complex and manage it. And we have our office, Central America office in that building, so they are the first customer in Central America who worked up to us. So That's we have these 200 clients, and they're using WhatsApp for communicating between employees.
Nathan Latka
04:15Interesting. Now, is Bamboo, are they representative of your average or median customer today, about 200 employees?
Arun Kumar
04:21>> Yes. 200 employees is my average. That is my average customer size, employee size per organization.
Nathan Latka
04:29Oh, 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
04:52your 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
05:16get 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
05:38not 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
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06:26if 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
Pricing Model and Unit Economics
Nathan Latka
06:52the interview. Okay. And then give me a sense of how you price. What's a company like Bamboo gonna pay you on average per month or per year to use your technology?
Arun Kumar
07:00>> So before before the pricing, I want to talk about what is the impact jugl is giving so that you
Nathan Latka
07:05can Oh, Arun, sorry. My audience is extremely data driven, and they're technical, so I understand you wanna talk about impact and all that. Let's talk about that towards the end, though. So on average, what are these customers paying you per month or per year?
Arun Kumar
07:16>> It is anywhere between 3 to $5 per user per month.
Nathan Latka
07:20Okay. And now that we have that, so let's talk about the impact. How are you measuring, you know, the, know, the impact bamboo is having by using juglone their 200 employees?
Arun Kumar
07:29>> Right. You know, let us say they are paying $2,000 per month salary per employee. That ballpark is price. And juglone will impact and improve 10% of their productivity increase. Right? We claim up to 40%, but I'm talking about minimum. That means they are gaining $200 more productivity from the employee. So when you do the comparison, when you get $200 more productivity, paying $5 is a no brainer for people.
Nathan Latka
07:57Yeah. But people have to believe the number you gave about productivity gains and increases. Right? So, like, people that don't know you well would say, well, how do you measure a 40% increase? Right? How do
Arun Kumar
08:06>> you measure We have free trial, thirty days, and we give a complete use case. We take one department. We implement jugl, and then we also tell them how to measure that 10% to 20% productivity increase.
Nathan Latka
08:19How do know what their baseline productivity was to know that you improved it 200%?
Arun Kumar
08:23>> Because we give them a blueprint of how you can measure the the productivity before juggle and after juggle.
Nathan Latka
08:31But what what is the productivity metric? Like, you know, gallons of water, for example, or number of API calls, or what what is the actual thing you're measuring?
Arun Kumar
08:40>> See, again, you know, how many tasks they do and how efficient they do. These are the two datas we are looking for. Correct. And when you assign a task and there is no follow-up and there is no reminder for a task, employees always go slow on the task base, right? Not every employee is disciplined to check what is a task they could complete. No. So business owners doesn't have time to remind them, give the list in
09:07>> front of them. They don't have mechanism right now. But in juggle, they will get a reminder, hey, you have x number of tasks remaining. Correct? And if you do this, there is an encouragement waiting for you. It's a psychological motivation. It's not only a cost management. It's psychological motivation for people to complete it.
Nathan Latka
09:24I see. And then okay. So a company like that has 200 full time employees paying 3 to 5 per use dollars per user per month, that means the average customer is maybe paying you 600 to $1,000 per month, something like that.
Company Launch, Pivots, and First Customer
Arun Kumar
09:36>> Correct. Correct.
Nathan Latka
09:37Okay. Interesting. Now that we understand sort of the economics there, give me the backstory. When did you launch the company? What year?
Arun Kumar
09:43>> We launched three years ago, and interesting is we pivoted twice since we launched. We launched as a personal productivity and also business productivity app. We went to the market, and the market says, If you go to the personal, they say, Business is there. It's not for me. And when we go and present to the business, they say, Personal is there. It's not for me. Correct? So then we came back to the drawing board. We completely reengineered
10:13>> everything, exactly focused towards business. Correct. And then we go back
Nathan Latka
10:18Well, give me an example of that. Give me an example of something you you a feature you killed because it was too personal.
Arun Kumar
10:25>> Well, we okay. We introduced a new feature, Dan Cullen. The new feature is creating a workspace for the business, so nobody can get into the workspace. No disturbance whatsoever. See. Correct? In personal, you will see the message from business. Also, in personal, in the same screen, the distraction comes in.
Nathan Latka
10:41I see.
Arun Kumar
10:42>> In this space, we introduced the one workspace where business exactly fit into it, and then they don't have any distraction.
Nathan Latka
10:50I see. Okay. So you get going in 2020. When did you write the first line of code for the platform? Was that earlier?
Arun Kumar
10:56>> 2020. I think twenty twenty middle.
Nathan Latka
10:59Okay. Okay. And then how long how long were you writing code before you closed your first customer?
Arun Kumar
11:06>> I would say eight months.
Nathan Latka
11:08Okay. So my question to you as a business owner, how much of your money did you plow into this thing before you had your first customer?
Arun Kumar
11:16>> If I can say, close to $800,000
Nathan Latka
11:19Does that make you nervous?
Arun Kumar
11:22>> To some extent, but since because of my background, technology background, and other product experience, me personally, I felt that is a reasonable investment from my perspective because we have a chat engine. We have a chat system we built, and that is a custom chat system like Slack, like owning a custom chat system with a task for 800 k, I think that is a that is a brainer, no brainer for me personally.
Nathan Latka
11:47Okay. So then you got your first customer after that. Where did you find that first customer? Do you remember?
Personal Brand and Reaching 400 Customers
Arun Kumar
11:53>> You know, I am a good networker. I talk to people. I have my own social media channel. I publish and I talk my progress. I have around 100,000 followers. So as soon as I published, I have 500 companies who signed up. They want to try. But we spoke to people, and we selectively identified which company is suitable for us. And then we onboarded one by one. So now we have 400 organizations using our app very successfully.
Nathan Latka
12:18So today, you have 400 paying customers?
Arun Kumar
12:21>> Yes.
Nathan Latka
12:22Okay. And can I take the 400 paying customers times the average monthly ARPU you just told me? You're doing about $280,000 a month in revenue?
Arun Kumar
12:30>> I would say $100,000 would be reasonable because not every company has 200 employees. Many companies have 25 employees, 40 employees. It's all over the place.
Nathan Latka
12:41But you told me, quote, My medium number of employees is 200 earlier in the interview.
Arun Kumar
12:46>> That is our target market, but our launch strategy is not go to the bigger one, to the smaller one, get the product stability, and then go to the larger one. Now Okay, Arun, just to
Nathan Latka
12:55be clear, your median customer today then is not 200 employees, correct?
Arun Kumar
13:01>> See, again, as I said, we claim the ladder. The first ladder we claimed is 25 average employees. Okay? But I don't want to go into the 200 employees in the first step. I want to stabilize the product by introducing two two hundred, but now our target market is 200 employees. That is the same way.
Nathan Latka
13:19But a target market of 200 is different than what your median customer is today. So I understand what you're saying, but I just wanna clear that up for the audience.
Arun Kumar
13:26>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure. You can say that 25 employees is, but eventually, when you ask me next year, it will be a different number.
Nathan Latka
13:33I see. Okay. So if you're at about $100,000 a month today in revenue, where were you exactly one year ago so we can calculate growth?
Arun Kumar
13:40>> You're asking after one year?
Nathan Latka
13:42No. If you're at $100,000 a month today in revenue, where were you one year ago so we can calculate growth?
Arun Kumar
13:48>> I would say zero because we didn't have any revenue at all last year because last year, people were using it. We gave a free trial, so we don't have any revenue at all. We didn't have any revenue.
Nathan Latka
14:00Arun, you told me that you wrote the first line of code in 2020, and your first paying customer, you got eight months later. That would have been early twenty twenty one. But you just told me in 2022, which was last
Arun Kumar
14:08>> year, didn't know customer pays, it doesn't so when we get thousand dollar, $500 I don't really consider that as a revenue, but I can excitement is okay, we got one customer paying. But when you talk about revenue means we have five customers paying every month, that took a long time. We signed up the first customer, they're ready to pay, And we started focusing only on that one customer, what you want more, what you want more. So
14:32>> we didn't onboard the second customer for a long time, and we gave three months free trial for every other customer. Mhmm.
Nathan Latka
14:40So was 2022 total revenue under, call it, a million bucks or under 500 k?
Arun Kumar
14:46>> No. I would say less than under a thousand dollars.
Nathan Latka
14:48Okay. So under a 100,000. You've you've you've been scaled over the past twelve months from nothing to a 100 you did you collapsed collected a $100,000 last month in revenue. Correct?
Arun Kumar
14:59>> No. In 2021.
Nathan Latka
15:01Okay. But you just you just told me that your total monthly recurring revenue today is a $100,000 a month. Is that accurate?
Arun Kumar
15:07>> Twenty twenty twenty two, yes.
Nathan Latka
15:09You just told me that your total monthly recurring revenue today, so as of last month, was $100,000 That's July or 2023. Is that accurate?
Arun Kumar
15:17>> Yes.
Nathan Latka
15:19Okay. So if you're doing a $100,000 a month today and you were doing zero a year ago, that means you've added a $100,000 in new monthly recurring revenue in the past twelve months. Does that make
Arun Kumar
15:29>> That's right. That's right. Okay.
Nathan Latka
15:31How did you do that?
Arun Kumar
15:32>> Again, aggressive marketing, and I use B2B means I always go and talk in a conference. It's an educated approach, right? You know, you educate business what problem they have because most of the business owners, they don't know that they have a problem, and they don't know that there is a solution. So educating
Nathan Latka
15:48the last conference you spoke at where you got juggle customers from it?
Growth Tactics: Conferences and International Expansion
Arun Kumar
15:52>> I spoke in India, and we launched juggle in front of 1,001 business owners.
Nathan Latka
15:58Was that at SaaS Boomi, or what was the conference?
Arun Kumar
16:01>> It is not SaaS Boomi. It is, know, SaaS Boomi is a tech tech conference. But I chose a conference. It's called GetCo. They have one specific regional business owners all aligned. It's called Kidco launch, annual meet. And there are around twelve hundred hundred business owners represented in that.
16:21And what do
16:21>> you put
Nathan Latka
16:22in your slide deck to get people watching you on stage to convert to a jugl user?
Arun Kumar
16:26>> No. We I talk about problem. This is a problem business owners are facing. I ask a simple question, do you face this problem? And I ask them to raise their hands. And I
16:36>> them to raise I raise my hand and say, yes.
Nathan Latka
16:37You still don't have my email, though. You still don't have me signed up on jugl. How do you how do you get someone from raising hand to
Arun Kumar
16:44>> sign I have a QR code display on the screen. I said, okay. Can this QR code download the app? Our team will call you and onboard you.
Nathan Latka
16:52Interesting. So how many people scan that app from 1,200 total in the audience?
Arun Kumar
16:56>> I think 240, I would say, but I don't have exact number, but 240 session signed up on that particular conference.
Nathan Latka
17:03That's impressive. Okay. Very cool. Tell me more about how you've capitalized the business. Is it bootstrapped, have you raised capital?
Funding History and Seed Round Status
Arun Kumar
17:10>> First, initially, bootstrapped, a 250,000 invested by me and other co founder. And then we raised 2,300,000 so far, but my seed round is $3,000,000, and we'll be closing $3,000,000 in the next few months.
Nathan Latka
17:24When was the last close? What month?
Arun Kumar
17:28>> You mean, like, when I received the last investment in the seed Yeah. I received last week.
Nathan Latka
17:35Okay. So you closed a 2,300,000 seed round this this month?
Arun Kumar
17:38>> Closed as of it is a $3,000,000 seed round. I've not closed yet. I've received 2.3 so far, and I'll be receiving 700,000 in the next few months and close the 3,000,000 seed round in next two months.
Nathan Latka
17:51Okay. So sorry. You've done the first close of the 3,000,000 seed round. You've had and received 2,300,000 of wires. You tend to get the rest of the 3,000,000 here shortly and officially close the round in the next couple of
Arun Kumar
18:02>> Correct. Exactly right. Okay.
Nathan Latka
18:03What's the market like today? I mean, do you go out and sell 10% of the company for $3,000,000, or how do you think about it?
Valuation and Equity Dilution
Arun Kumar
18:10>> I'm diluting 20% of my company for the $3,000,000
Nathan Latka
18:15Okay. So it's a 15,000,000 post money valuation then. Correct. Does that feel fair to you?
Arun Kumar
18:21>> For me, yes. Why
Nathan Latka
18:22do you say that?
Arun Kumar
18:24>> Because we we did an intense study on valuation, and we also hired a consultant from California who is a very strong M and A expert, and, you know, we got opinion from him as well. And he says, Arun, this is fair value.
Nathan Latka
18:36Why would you use an M and A expert to come up with valuation when VC valuations are very different?
Arun Kumar
18:41>> I know that, and I have very close associated with VC firm as well and in many also, and I took advice from everybody. Mhmm.
Nathan Latka
18:50That's a 15x multiple on your current revenues. How do you make sure you grow into that valuation to prevent a down round in the future?
Arun Kumar
18:59>> We compare it with other products, and this valuation is based on the stickiness. Once customers start using this, it's stickiness.
Nathan Latka
19:06Can quantify that? What's your gross churn?
Arun Kumar
19:11>> You are saying, yes, my customer pays it more than 90%.
Nathan Latka
19:17That's annually?
Arun Kumar
19:18>> Yes, annually.
Nathan Latka
19:19On a gross basis?
Arun Kumar
19:20>> Yes, correct. Okay.
Nathan Latka
19:22So 10% gross annual churn. And do you have a playbook in place to expand revenue to make up the 10% hole?
Arun Kumar
19:28>> Yes.
Nathan Latka
19:29So is your expansion revenue last twelve months more than 10%?
Arun Kumar
19:33>> Yes. Yes. You saw the you saw the number. Right? The revenue wise.
19:38>> But we had under thousand under thousand last year, and this year, we will be hitting 1,000,000. So under thousand to 1,000,000 is one side. And then we will be appointing lot of resellers across international, And we are launching in Malaysia this month end, and we are launching in El Salvador this month, this week, matter of fact. And then, you know, so we'll be launching in Singapore. So we are expanding.
Gross Churn and Retention Discussion
Nathan Latka
20:03Right, Arun. Yeah. I understand that. New customers do not impact your historical net dollar retention. So I'm asking about customers you signed up a year ago. What you just told me is 10% of them will churn. And what I'm ask
Arun Kumar
20:16>> No. What was your question? Did you just repeat what you just said?
Nathan Latka
20:20Yeah. We're just we're talking about standard SaaS metrics, gross churn, expansion, and net dollar retention. Those numbers are all lagging that you look back at the last twelve months. You're not we don't care about future growth on those metrics.
Arun Kumar
20:33>> Okay. Okay. See, last month, we onboarded many customers. They used it, they started paying only for this year. I will know the retention data by next year.
Nathan Latka
20:45Oh, I see. So you don't have a full year of data.
Arun Kumar
20:47>> I don't have a full year data. But since I'm closely working with customers, I am able to give you the data that, you know, since they're onboarding new employees every day, that shows that the stickiness is there.
Team Size and Hiring Philosophy
Nathan Latka
21:01I see. I see. I see. That makes sense. What's your team size today on jugl? 24 employees. 24. How many engineers?
Arun Kumar
21:10>> I would say more than 15 engineers or tech people.
Nathan Latka
21:13And do you spread them out? Are they all remote, or are they based in one central location?
Arun Kumar
21:17>> No. They are all across the place. I have people from Poland. I have people from Brazil. I have people from The US. I have people from India.
Nathan Latka
21:25How did you find and run a recruiting process for an engineer in Brazil?
Arun Kumar
21:28>> You tell me. That is the biggest pain any tech entrepreneur will face. You know? Our philosophy is hire fast, fire fast, promote fast. So we learn from many other successful entrepreneurs, startup entrepreneurs. We follow the same, you know, because since it is a very specific tech engineering requirement, you know, you cannot judge by interview or you cannot judge by reading profile. You know, you have to hire them, take a risk of thirty days, forty days, assign,
22:02>> see if they are compatible for your vision. That is the only way we can find the talent.
Burn Rate and Path to Breakeven
Nathan Latka
22:07And Arun, are you burning money today? Are you breakeven or profitable?
Arun Kumar
22:10>> I'm I'm burning money today, and I should be able to achieve breakeven probably end of this year or next year.
Nathan Latka
22:16How much did you burn last month?
Arun Kumar
22:19>> Last month? I would say close to a $100,000. Sorry. A $105,000.
Nathan Latka
22:25Does that make you nervous or you're good with that?
Arun Kumar
22:28>> No, man. We work with data, so I'm not nervous.
Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions
Nathan Latka
22:30Alright. Very good, Arun. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, your favorite book.
Arun Kumar
22:35>> My favorite book?
22:38>> Man, the FAB book is The Hook, designed by the the great UI UX designer, how to create an app for engaging your users.
Nathan Latka
22:46What's the name of it? Sorry. The Hook? The Hook. The Hook. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?
Arun Kumar
22:52>> A CEO? Yep. Oh, okay. I love love Tim right now. He's awesome. He's doing great. And also, follow Sundar Pichai.
Nathan Latka
23:04Sundar Pichai. Very good. Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building jugl?
Arun Kumar
23:09>> Online tool for building jugl? Man, I use Juggl for my internal team process and everything. I love Juggl for example.
Nathan Latka
23:16Your own.
Arun Kumar
23:17>> Yeah.
Nathan Latka
23:19Can't be your own tool.
Arun Kumar
23:20>> Oh, it cannot be my own tool. I think we used before, what tool we used? Oh, man.
23:29>> Since we moved twelve months ago to jugl, I couldn't remember the product we used.
Nathan Latka
23:35Well, just think about tools that you used this morning.
Arun Kumar
23:37>> Right? Tula. Tula. Tula is the one we used before we used jugl.
Nathan Latka
23:42Number four. How many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Arun Kumar
23:45>> How many hours of sleep? Six six hours.
Nathan Latka
23:47And what's your situation? Are you married, single, kids?
Arun Kumar
23:50>> Married. I have two kids.
Nathan Latka
23:52Two kiddos. Okay. And how old are you?
Arun Kumar
23:54>> I am 40 Last
Nathan Latka
23:57question. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20 years old?
Arun Kumar
24:03>> Yeah. Don't don't wait for others to believe in you.
Nathan Latka
24:08Guys, there you have it. Twenty years ago, he launched his agency, Cap Digisoft. He says he always wanted to launch a product that would impact millions. He's now building jugl. They're doing $100,000 a month in revenue, up from almost nothing just a year ago. He put in 250 k in a pre you know, up upfront to get it going and then raised another 2 raising 3,000,000 right now at 2.3 already wired on a 15,000,000 valuation, burning
24:28a $100 a month per month right now, but doesn't concern him. He got plenty of runway. Team of 24, 15 engineers. Again, a platform that helps you motivate, track, and measure employee engagement. Arun, thanks for taking us to top.
Closing Advice and Wrap-Up
Arun Kumar
24:41>> Thank you, and I appreciate it. And I I wish you all the good luck for all the followers. And there is plenty of opportunity, team, I can tell you. But the thing is, like, pick one problem and stay focused and prepare for the changes. Market will demand something different than what you ask or what you plan for.
Nathan Latka
24:59One 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.
25:24Additionally, 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,
25:47a 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
26:08for that @nathanlatka.comslashslack. 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
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