How Magnettu Reached $2,860 MRR with 11 Customers by Selling Through Podcasts (Interview with CEO Rafael Calle)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00They started coding the company back in May 2022. Today, they're doing $2,860 per month in revenue with a 120 ish cash in the bank, burning 7 k a month with a team of eight as they look to scale, raise $255,000 in their pre seed around last year at a 2,500,000 post money valuation. They sold 10%. Three cofounders building together. Again, trying to help you turn your employees into a marketing arm for the company. Right now, focused

00:22on the real estate broker, real estate agent relationship niche. Hey, folks. My guest today is Rafael Calle. He was born in Colombia but moved to Spain when he was 20. Since then, he's worked as a digital market manager for startups and multinational companies. In December 2021, he decided to quit his job and start magnettu, his third startup. It helps transform employees into your best marketing channel. Rafael, you ready to take us to top? Yeah. So I'm

Rafael Calle

00:48>> very happy to be here.

Customer Story: Real Estate Use Case

Nathan Latka

00:49Tell me tell me a customer story. Who's someone that's using you and how are they using you?

Rafael Calle

00:54>> Yeah, okay. So are mainly focusing on several, on different niches. But just to give you an example, real estate could be one. So real estate agents are needing to attract property owners in order to sell their properties. So what we do is we want to grant them a platform where they can get specific content to share on their social media and to attract these clients. So this content is completely customised to their personality, to their company

01:26>> goals, to their company tone of voice as well. So all what they need is just access to magnettu, find this content and share it on their social networks. At the same time, the marketing departments can check how many real estate agents are actually sharing content, the traction that this company is generating, and so on. So we are kind of converting these real estate agents, in this example, into a marketing channel for the real estate companies. So

01:54>> instead of going to Google Ads or to Facebook Ads, they just put the person upfront in order to attract clients because Understood.

Pricing and Seat Structure

Nathan Latka

02:03And what are companies paying on average per month to use this technology?

Rafael Calle

02:07>> So, we charge by SIP and it goes from €24 a month. 20 A four month per user. Depending on the on the on the on the content that you get and on the the frequency, then you pay up to 99 a month.

Nathan Latka

02:25Okay. Again, €24 per month, which is $26.27 United States dollars per month. And what's the average company when they sign up? What's the average number of seats they're buying?

Rafael Calle

02:35>> Yeah. We started with 10 seats. Right now, we are closing deals with 25 to 30 seats. Ideally, in one year, we're expecting to close deals with 50 to 100 seats.

Nathan Latka

02:49So, Rafael, is it fair to say your average customer is paying for 10 seats at $26 a month? Correctly. Okay. So $260 a month on average. Now that we understand the economics, let's get the backstory here. What year did you launch the business?

Origin Story and Problem Discovery

Rafael Calle

03:04>> Yeah. So I was actually facing the the issue. I was working as digital marketing manager for one of the leading real estate companies in Spain.

03:14>> And I was burning a lot of money spent on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and it was very expensive to acquire property owners online. So, I asked my real estate agents just to share content online in order to get those clients. But they were telling me, Rafael, I don't want to share boring content. If you share specific content and personalized content, then I will do it. So I ran a pilot and I asked my team to write

03:41>> manually this content for them. It was kind of a hassle because it was written manually, so it was not scalable. But we did it, and we selected some some of our real estate agents, and it really worked. It worked really well. Rafael, what

Nathan Latka

03:57what year, though, did you write the first line of code for magnettu?

Rafael Calle

04:02>> So I we grow the very first line of code back in 2022. It was, like, in May. It was a pretty, pretty lean

04:16>> let us say it was, like, our MVP was, yeah, May last year.

Nathan Latka

04:21Okay. And when did you want be your first paying customer?

First Paying Customer and Launch

Rafael Calle

04:25>> It was when we officially launched the product, it was October last year. On the very first month, we got the first paying client, which was really cool. Before that, we were just running pilots. So it was for free and we were just testing the concept. When we launched the product officially, the first client came in like the second day, which was really encouraging for our team.

Nathan Latka

04:53Oh, 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

05:16your 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

05:40get 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

06:02not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founders 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

06:28going 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 We're right, gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second, but

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07:16the interview. So how much did you spend between the first line of code, May 2022, and the first customer on October 2022? How much do you spend in that time frame on the MVP?

MVP Cost and Build Process

Rafael Calle

07:28>> Barely $200. It was very, very lean. And, actually, we got

Nathan Latka

07:34But what did you spend the 200 on?

Rafael Calle

07:36>> It was paying Webflow, which was no code platform, to start building the the the MBP,

07:45>> buying some design stuff online, fiber, and this kind of stuff. So that it was pretty lean. I I just crafted everything with my cofounder.

Nathan Latka

07:55So the rest was just you and your cofounder putting in sweat equity?

Rafael Calle

07:59>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

08:00Did you guys split equity evenly at the start 5050?

Rafael Calle

08:03>> Yeah. Then another co founder came in later on and and we we weren't equal at that time because he he he joined once we got our first investment round. So then we didn't split, like, equally with him.

Nathan Latka

08:21So when was the equity round? How much did you raise?

Pre-Seed Round: $255K at 10%

Rafael Calle

08:24>> We raised 255 k. That that's zero. And that was in October last year. So everything came at the same time. The very first client, the first investment round was such a nice amount for us.

Nathan Latka

08:39And how much of the company did you sell for the $255,000?

Rafael Calle

08:44>> 10%.

Nathan Latka

08:45Did that make you nervous at the time?

Rafael Calle

08:48>> No. Not at all. Not at all. To to be honest, I was kind of expecting it. And the Spanish market is kind of tough when it comes to valuation, and I thought it was fair and it was like smooth for us.

Nathan Latka

09:05That's great. So what is the split now? 10% investors, what, 40% you, 40% your first cofounder, and maybe 10% for the late cofounder, something like that?

Rafael Calle

09:14>> No. It's it's around 30 something for the very first two cofounders, 20 something for the third cofounder, and 10% for our investor.

Nathan Latka

09:26Any plans to raise more capital or you're good for a while?

Rafael Calle

09:29>> We're actually raising more and we have committed 70 ks. It's just an extension round in order to speed up the process. So we will be facing actually a seat round by the beginning of next year. That's like the idea. But to be fair, our runway right now is better than we thought it will be. So, we are not kind of needing to raise money now, but we are kind of acting in advance in order to go

10:02>> faster. So, we raised 70 ks from friends and family. We don't want to, we just want to be close at this stage with people that can add some value to the company in terms of advisory. So we feel that is the way to go right now.

Nathan Latka

10:19And how many paying customers do you have today?

Current Customers: 11 Companies in 5 Countries

Rafael Calle

10:22>> We're working with 11 companies in five countries.

Nathan Latka

10:25And how many seats do those 11 companies pay for?

Rafael Calle

10:29>> So, the average seats right now, we have 15 seats in average. The deal sizes are different because the very first clients came when we didn't have, like, an idea on what to charge for the service. So we started charging very low until one day one client told us, guys, I will pay, like, double for this service. So we understood that we needed to raise the pricing, but we will never raise the price to the, like, the

10:59>> founding clients, you know. So that's the commitment that we got with them.

Nathan Latka

11:03That's great. So 11 customers paying $260 per month on average would mean you're doing about $3,000 per month right now in revenue. Is that about right?

Rafael Calle

11:12>> That's right.

Nathan Latka

11:13And one year ago today, so July 2022, you were doing zero. Right? Zero.

Rafael Calle

11:18>> Yeah. We we you are actually growing around, I would say, 20% in average month by month.

MRR Confirmation: $3K Per Month

Nathan Latka

11:27Which is easy when you're dealing with small numbers. If you keep that up for a long period of time, that becomes very interesting. Tell me how you went from pilots between May and October last year to your first SaaS paying customer. Were the pilots free or did you charge for them?

Rafael Calle

11:43>> They were free and we were learning from different users, from different companies. So we started piloting the tool with real estate agents. Then we did it with some other industries. When we felt that the concept was already proved or proven, we decided to go live. It was very cool because I went to a podcast back in August. And through that podcast, we got our first client, and it was from Colombia. We weren't actually targeting clients in

12:21>> Colombia. I come from Colombia, but our idea was to start getting clients in Spain or Europe. But the very first client came from my country, which was very cool, and it came through inbound marketing, through a podcast. So I truly believe in the power of podcasting. I truly believe in the power of inbound marketing. And this is how we have been attracting clients since then. Rafael, what

Podcast as Growth Channel

Nathan Latka

12:46about managing your runway? You raised $255,000 last year. How much of that do you still have in the bank or have you spent it all?

Cash in Bank and Extension Round

Rafael Calle

12:52>> No, no, no. We still have around 120 ks. Then we'll have 70 ks that will be coming in soon.

Nathan Latka

13:01And are you profitable today or are you burning money every month?

Burn Rate and Team Composition

Rafael Calle

13:04>> We are burning money. We are burning around 7 k a month, which is not quite a lot if you consider that we are a team of eight. We have three developers. We have three people doing marketing. Then our co founding team, we have finance, and we have a full stack developer. Our CTO is full stack developer.

Nathan Latka

13:24Well, Rafael, we're rooting for you. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's your favorite book?

Rafael Calle

13:29>> So it will be The Alchemist from Paulo Coelho. It's a good one.

Nathan Latka

13:33Number two, is

13:34there a CEO you're following or studying?

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Rafael Calle

13:38>> Not to refer, especially. Rather than a CEO, I like to follow people that are doing great job as leader or something like that, for example, in sports. Now, I'm following a guy that is very young, actually. He's a tennis player. He's Paulo Alcaraz from Spain. He just won Wimbledon. I just try to admire people that is not on the same scope. Like Yep. I that's

Nathan Latka

14:06let's move forward here. Quick, quick quick answers if you can. These are rapid fire.

Rafael Calle

14:08>> What number three?

14:09>> What's your favorite

Nathan Latka

14:10favorite online tool for building the company?

Rafael Calle

14:14>> I love Loom.

14:15>> Loom.

Nathan Latka

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

Rafael Calle

14:19>> Oh, like, five or six, but this is because I have a little baby.

Nathan Latka

14:24Oh, congratulations. Okay. So are are you married? How many kids?

Rafael Calle

14:28>> Yeah. One. I have one daughter.

Nathan Latka

14:30Exciting. Ounce. Very exciting. Congrats. How old are you?

Rafael Calle

14:35>> I'm 36.

Nathan Latka

14:36Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Rafael Calle

14:40>> Take more more risks. Mhmm. Taking risks to payoff.

Nathan Latka

14:44They started coding the company back in May 2022. Today, they're doing $2,860 per month in revenue with a 120 ish cash in the bank, burning 7 k a month with a team of eight as they look to scale, raised $255,000 in their pre seed around last year at a 2,500,000 post money valuation. They sold 10%. Three co founders building together, again, trying to help you turn your employees into a marketing arm for the company. Right now,

15:07focused on the real estate broker, real estate agent relationship niche. Alright, Rafael. Thanks for taking us to top.

Rafael Calle

15:13>> Thanks a lot, Nathan. See you soon.

Nathan Latka

15:16One 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 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 one

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