How Meahana Is Building a Team Collaboration Platform on $100K Pre-Seed with 15 Beta Seats Across 2 Companies (Interview with Co-founder Matt Archer)

Introduction and Meahana Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Guys, Matt Archer launched Miyahan, I call it eighteen months ago, September 2020, started writing code. He's put in between 10,000, a $100,000 of his own capital to get this going. He has two businesses using it right now with 15 seats. Planning to start asking for money here in a couple months. We'll see what happens. Go to market. He's open to tap these super active LinkedIn groups where it's a bunch of agile user groups, user folks hanging

00:20out together because then hopefully they go on and start using his digital cloud collaborative space that they've built out. Hey, folks. My guest today is Matt Archer. He's a consultant turned entrepreneur. He was frustrated by the limits of tools available to lead collaborative working sessions with executives at Fortune 500 companies. Because of that, rather than accepting that status quo, he's now putting a tool called mihan mihanah.io to help teams think together better. Matt, great. Take us

00:44to the top.

Matt Archer

00:46>> Yeah. Nathan, thanks for for having me on. It's it's good to be here today.

Nathan Latka

00:50You bet. I always love someone that finds their own problem then build something. You're eating your own dog food. Obviously, the challenge is can you can you get the MVP built cheaply? Can you get your first customer on a beta plan? All those sorts of things. So explain me where you are. When did you guys write the first line of code for this platform?

Personal Investment and Commitment

Matt Archer

01:03>> Yeah. We started September '20 September 22 is when we actually started this whole process, made our first investment, our own personal money into the company and started the process. So we are a little over thirteen months into development.

Nathan Latka

01:21How committed are you? How much of your personal money have you put in so far?

Matt Archer

01:24>> I put in a lot. Not going to disclose that. I can

Nathan Latka

01:29tell A you lot is relative though, right? Are we talking like $10 or like a 100 more than a $100?

Matt Archer

01:34>> It's in between the two of those.

Nathan Latka

01:36Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. So a lot of money. So so I mean, is it true or false? If this fails, it would be personally very, very painful or no, this is play money for you?

Matt Archer

01:47>> It would be personal. I mean, I'm yeah. I mean, look, we're we're I'd love to say I'm independently wealthy. That's not necessarily the case. I've done well in my career, but we've got a lot riding on this.

Pre-Revenue Status and Market Signals

Nathan Latka

01:58Yep. Yep. Okay. So walk me through where you're at. It sounds like you're maybe pre revenue. So what signs are you getting from the market that it's worth it to keep spending your money building this thing?

Matt Archer

02:08>> Yeah. So, I mean, when I say we're pre revenue, we do have, we have people who are actually banging on our platform right now. So they're actually using it for the intended purpose, which is, to to really drive creative thinking, drive, collaboration within teams, in larger audiences. And we got people using the platform today.

Beta Users and Platform Usage

Nathan Latka

02:30How many teams use it today?

Matt Archer

02:32>> So we have, we got about 15 about 15 unique users leveraging the platform, and it's been mostly a the intent is a sales led model today. We found, just to be very transparent, it's been a little more difficult to get people to shift from their current kind of use case and the things that they're using today to support their collaborative discussions. And we're actually gonna shift that model, and that's what we're working on right now, shifting

03:01>> it from sales led to product led.

Nathan Latka

03:03What does that mean, 15 unique users? Is that companies or, like like, there's only fifth or there's only 15 seats across two companies on the platform today?

Matt Archer

03:10>> There's 15 seats across two companies. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

03:14Oh, I I guessed right. Okay. 15 unique seats across two companies. How did you get that first company on the platform? Where'd you find them?

Winning the First Beta Customer via Cold Email

Matt Archer

03:20>> I mean, it was through it was actually through direct outreach. So email, connected with some, you know, you know, folks that we had not known, which was super encouraging to us. They saw a gap in their business in the way that they were engaging their customer base, with the tools that they had. They liked the story, put them on a trial, and, they saw value immediately.

Nathan Latka

03:45Nobody opens cold emails though today, So you must be a very good copywriter. What was the subject line on that first email?

Matt Archer

03:50>> I can honestly tell you it's trying something new within the collaborative space, something along those lines and they picked up. They saw, again, they had a true issue.

Nathan Latka

04:01Oh, 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 2807 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 Founder Path. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you

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06:24into the interview. What was your strategy in the content in the cold email? Was there a lot of text or very vague, little text to peak curiosity?

Demo Process and Product Readiness

Matt Archer

06:32>> Yeah. It's just to peak curiosity. Let's just get people going to it was the second email that they opened. So the first one was there. Second one followed a couple days later, and they picked up and they reached out and said, let's see what we can do.

Nathan Latka

06:45Well, what was see what we can do? Was it a demo? Was it a beta sign up? What was the next step?

Matt Archer

06:50>> Yeah. So the next step for us was demo. So let's show we and and at that point, we had probably closer to an MVP. But we we showed them what we were doing, walked them through a a a sequence of of of, of activities that would support what they were doing.

Nathan Latka

07:08Is this like a prototype or were you actually showing the real website? What are those

Matt Archer

07:12>> showing the real website? Advanced

07:17>> this platform pretty quickly. Back in May when we started with some of these conversations, not even a prototype, we had a working tool and a working platform that we felt comfortable enough to go out and give. They saw value in it immediately, then they tested it. When I say they tested it, they didn't just take it for a test drive internally. They actually took it out and tested it with, an existing client of theirs. And they

07:42>> had tremendous confidence in it, that led to them wanting to use this more.

Timeline to First Paying Customer

Nathan Latka

07:47Okay. Why not? It sounds like they're great. It's going nice. Why not ask them to pay? What's taking so long to get the first paying customer?

Matt Archer

07:53>> It's not that it's it's not that we're not looking for them to pay. It's that we're continuing to evolve and learning from our customers and how they're using the platform so that we can continue to advance that. And as I said, we're shifting from a sales led model to a product led model. This is giving us a lot of intel on where we wanna focus our time and effort. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Nathan Latka

08:12But I guess how much runway have you given yourself? You're spending your own money on this bad boy. Eventually, you want it to be self sustainable. When are you gonna start asking for for money?

Matt Archer

08:20>> I mean, that's that's that's the next step. That is the next step.

Nathan Latka

08:23Oh, when? I mean, I have before Halloween this you know, next week or, you know, next year or when? Yeah.

Matt Archer

08:29>> I mean, we'd like to do it before end of year.

Fundraising Plans and Runway

Nathan Latka

08:31Okay. Okay. And again, why do you think you have I mean, are would you say or or does it is it make you nervous to ask for money or what's holding you back?

Matt Archer

08:39>> No. We wanna we wanna make sure that it's sustainable, right, so that we can continue to show value to our customer, and that it's not a we're asking you for this, it's that they want to give us this money because they see value in what they're doing.

Nathan Latka

08:54Okay. And what do you think you'll charge them? I mean, what do you think the ask will be?

Matt Archer

09:00>> I mean, we've got some ideas. We're continuing to market test. We understand where the competitive landscape is. We do think we have an offering that is different in this space. And we're probably going to charge a little bit of a premium, but we're also going to let the market dictate.

Nathan Latka

09:21What is the premium? I know nothing about the space, right? So are we talking like $1,000 per seat per year?

Matt Archer

09:26>> No, no, no. We're talking somewhere in the range of between 50 and $100 per seat for each user.

Nathan Latka

09:34And who are you anchoring that against? Who is in your space? You're looking at their pricing page going, okay, we need to be around that.

Matt Archer

09:40>> Yeah, so if you look at the world of like Miro, Mural, Concept Board, Storm Boards, these are all pure play whiteboards that have, found a way to digitize digitize Post it notes. Where we believe we're different is we're now we're giving you the opportunity to pull data seamlessly through the conversation without ever having to move stuff around as a facilitator. Mhmm.

Planned Pricing and Competitive Landscape

Nathan Latka

10:06Mhmm. Okay. So 50 to a 100 per month per user?

Matt Archer

10:09>> Correct. Somewhere in that range. We're trying to land that plan.

Nathan Latka

10:12What team size are you built for? 10 person team? Thousand person team?

Matt Archer

10:17>> I mean, we're building for enterprise long term. So we've always started with that in mind. How can we get to the biggest? Let's start with something much more functional where we can support them today based on our size.

Nathan Latka

10:31Very different product though, right? Building something for 10,000 teams that are 10,000 big is very different than a team that's a 100 big, right? So like, who are you building for today?

Matt Archer

10:38>> We're we're building for a 100, you know, a 100 to 200 people. Yes.

Nathan Latka

10:42Okay. Okay. Interesting. And so once you get your first paying customer, how do you go from two companies with 15 seats to 50 companies with 500 seats? What's your growth channel?

Target Customer Size and Enterprise Vision

Matt Archer

10:52>> Yeah. So again, we're shifting towards a product led growth strategy.

Nathan Latka

10:56What does that mean?

10:58That's a big buzzword.

Matt Archer

11:00>> Tell me what it actually It is. So again, gonna and this is why we're in this transition period. The big thing for us is looking at how can we offer more of a free experience so people can come to us. So starting off with either a freemium or free trial, we're still trying to figure out which approach we're going to take. Is it a try me or a freemium offering right off of the site? That's number

11:24>> one. Number two is we're going to do a much larger outreach to start to build some awareness to drive some traction to our website. We've got a couple of different options sitting in front of us, but we need to bring awareness that there's a different approach to collaboration.

Product-Led Growth Strategy

Matt Archer

11:40>> Those are some of the short term plays that we're gonna put in place. Again, we're still working out some of those details.

Nathan Latka

11:46But Matt, again, of that was all like super vaguely outreach where, what website, what link you're gonna promote. When you say free, you wanna test for you're already free. So how do you get more free? I mean, what specifically?

Matt Archer

11:57>> Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. We know our ICP and we know where we want to play. We're trying to find, and this is the God honest truth, we're trying to find the right channels where these consulting audiences are today as well as business users, we're going to the different user groups where these folks are and we're trying

Nathan Latka

12:17What's to the main user group?

Matt Archer

12:21>> An example could be like an agile user is a good place for us to start because these are folks that are running regular meetings, stand up meetings that need to feed into other systems, and we think we can do it differently than the way they're doing it today. It's just getting the messaging out there. We're working on that copy as we speak.

Nathan Latka

12:40Mhmm. Where are these agile user groups hosted? You're trying LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, Reddit, subreddits. What are you talking about?

Matt Archer

12:46>> Starting with LinkedIn, as a as a an initial place, and then we're gonna expand from there

Nathan Latka

12:51because it's a place LinkedIn groups?

Matt Archer

12:53>> Excuse me?

Nathan Latka

12:54Do people use LinkedIn groups? Is that an active community?

Go-to-Market Channels and LinkedIn Outreach

Matt Archer

12:57>> I mean, they're there, they're there, but it's a we're start. Again, we wanna start with some tests and see if it works and we're gonna expand from there.

Nathan Latka

13:06Interesting. Okay, and besides your own capital, bootstrap to date?

Matt Archer

13:12>> It's been our own capital and we do have some friends and family and a few angels that have given some hard earned money to us.

Nathan Latka

13:19Okay, so you do like a pre seed $100,000 round, something like that?

Matt Archer

13:22>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

13:23Okay. And when was that closed? Last year or this year?

Matt Archer

13:27>> It was this year, earlier this year.

Nathan Latka

13:28This year. Okay. And I guess, why did you need to go close that capital? What makes this expensive to build?

Pre-Seed Round and Capital Sources

Matt Archer

13:33>> Building a platform is expensive. I mean, we've we've outsourced some of the developments in the infrastructure. The architecture of it has been, has been expensive, maintaining a platform, as as you know, is is very expensive. So we, we just wanna make sure that we're continuing to evolve and advance the platform based off the needs of the market, and that's going to continue to require an investment.

Famous Five Rapid Fire

Nathan Latka

13:57All right, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, your

13:59favorite book?

Matt Archer

14:01>> My favorite book?

14:04>> Probably Mice and Men.

Nathan Latka

14:06Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

Matt Archer

14:11>> Yeah, I mean there's a ton. I'll go real simple Tim Cook right now.

Nathan Latka

14:18Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building Mi

Matt Archer

14:22>> My favorite online tool for building Mi Ahana?

14:27>> I mean, as as as a non technical person, I'll be honest with you, my favorite tool for this to build is more for outreach. Obviously, it's LinkedIn right now.

14:36>> Okay.

Nathan Latka

14:37Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

Matt Archer

14:39>> About five.

Nathan Latka

14:40End situation, married, single, kiddos?

Matt Archer

14:43>> Married with kids.

Nathan Latka

14:44How many kiddos?

Matt Archer

14:45>> Two.

Nathan Latka

14:46Nice. Okay. And how old are you?

Matt Archer

14:48>> I am 46.

Nathan Latka

14:50I ask because I wanna know last question here. What's something you wish you knew when you were 20?

Matt Archer

14:56>> I I wish I knew that this was not as scary as seemed to be when I was 20. I thought I needed to have all the answers. I thought I needed to have the perfect job and it was going to lead to other things. I should have jumped into this world of entrepreneurship as soon as I got out of school and just continued to try because at that point, there was so much less to lose. But

15:23>> it's a good reason to it feels good to be doing this now.

Nathan Latka

15:27Guys, Matt Archer launched Miyahan, I call it eighteen months ago, September 2020, started writing code. He's put in between 10,000, a 100,000 of his own capital to get this going. He has two businesses using it right now with 15 seats. Planning to start asking for money here in a couple months. We'll see what happens. Go to market, he's opened a tap. These super active LinkedIn groups where it's a bunch of agile user groups, user folks hanging

15:48out together because then hopefully they go on and start using his digital collaborative space that they've built out. We'll see what happens next. Thanks so much for taking us to the top, Matt.

Closing Thoughts and Advice for Entrepreneurs

Matt Archer

15:56>> Perfect. Thanks, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

15:58One 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 1PM

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