Founder Interview
How Tive Hit $100M ARR and 1,300 Customers with IoT Supply Chain Tracking (Interview with CEO Krenar Komani)
- Interview Date
- May 13, 2026
- Interviewee
- Krenar Komani, CEOCEO
Company Metrics at Interview Time
Booked ARR
$100M
2025 Revenue
$67M
Customers
1,300
Team Size
300
Valuation (post-money)
$545M
Historical Snapshot
These numbers were reported by Krenar Komani during his interview recorded in May 2026 and are a historical snapshot, not current figures. See Tive’s current numbers.
Key Takeaways
- 01Tive hit $100M booked annual run rate in early May 2026, up from an $89M run rate at the end of January 2026
- 022025 recognized revenue was $67M, growing to a projected $100M in 2026, representing at least 50% year-over-year growth
- 03Revenue history: $250K in 2019, $2.5M in 2020, $10M in 2021, $19.5M in 2022, $29M in 2023, $45M in 2024, $67M in 2025
- 04Tive has 1,300 customer logos, 9 of which pay more than $1M per year
- 05The company has raised $140M in total funding, with the last round being $20M at a $525M pre-money valuation in late 2025
- 0660% of new ARR comes from upsell and expansion, while 45% comes from new business
- 07The team has 300 people, including 32 quota-carrying AEs and 11 SDRs
- 0858% of AEs hit 100% of quota and 60% hit over 70% of quota
- 09Trackers are priced in the $40 to $50 range per unit per month on annual contracts
- 10Tive nearly ran out of money in July 2019, with only $10,000 to $20,000 in the bank before securing a convertible note
Company Metrics at Time of Interview
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Booked ARR (May 2026) | $100M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Booked ARR (Jan 31, 2026) | $89M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Revenue 2025 | $67M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Revenue 2024 | $45M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Revenue 2023 | $29M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Revenue 2022 | $19.5M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Revenue 2021 | $10M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Revenue 2020 | $2.5M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Revenue 2019 | $250K | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Projected Revenue 2026 | $100M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| YoY Growth Rate | 50% | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Total Customers | 1,300 | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Million-Dollar-Plus Customers | 9 | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Team Size | 300 | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Quota-Carrying AEs | 32 | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| SDRs | 11 | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| AE Quota Attainment (100%) | 58% | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| AE Quota Attainment (70%+) | 60% | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Pricing Per Tracker Per Month | $40 to $50 | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| NDR | 60% | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| New ARR from Upsell/Expansion | 60% | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| New ARR from New Business | 45% | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Total Funding Raised | $140M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Last Round Amount | $20M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Last Round Pre-Money Valuation | $525M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Post-Money Valuation | $545M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Series B Amount | $50M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Series C Amount (2024) | $40M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Series A Amount | $12M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Series A1 Amount | $10M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Seed Round (2017) | $3M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Techstars Round | $200K | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| First Institutional Round (2016) | $250K | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Down Round Convertible Note (2019) | $100K | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Down Round Pre-Money Valuation | $11M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Prior Round Valuation (before down round) | $21M | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Moving Tracker Distance Per Quarter | 1.5B miles | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Active Trackers Per Quarter | 500,000 | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Data Points Per Ping | 15 | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Father-in-Law First Customer Price | $19.99/month | Founder interview, May 2026 |
| Year Founded | 2015 | Founder interview, May 2026 |
Growth Breakdown
Revenue
Tive grew from $250K in 2019 to $2.5M in 2020, $10M in 2021, $19.5M in 2022, $29M in 2023, $45M in 2024, and $67M in 2025. The company entered 2026 at an $89M booked annual run rate and crossed $100M booked ARR in early May 2026, representing at least 50% year-over-year growth.
Customers
Tive has 1,300 customer logos as of the interview date. Nine of those customers pay more than $1M per year. The company serves customers ranging from those buying 100 trackers per year to those buying tens of thousands, and 60% of new ARR comes from upsell and expansion within existing accounts.
Team
The team has grown to 300 people. The sales organization includes 32 quota-carrying AEs and 11 SDRs. 58% of AEs hit 100% of their quota and 60% hit over 70%, a metric the Chief Revenue Officer has focused on improving.
Funding
Tive has raised $140M in total funding across multiple rounds, starting with $250K from Hyperplane Ventures and Bolt in late 2016, a $3M seed in 2017, a $12M Series A, a $10M Series A1 in May 2021, a $50M Series B in early 2022, a $40M Series C in late 2024, and a $20M Series C1 in December 2025 at a $525M pre-money valuation.
Growth Strategy
Outbound Cold Email and Cold Calling
In 2018, when the company was struggling, Krenar hired two recent college graduates and launched an outbound cold email and cold calling motion. He credits this as the heartbeat of the company and says it taught him more about product and customer needs than anything else.
Land and Expand
60% of new ARR comes from upsell and expansion within existing customers. Customers typically start in one region or with one product line and expand globally or across product categories, driving significant revenue growth without requiring new logo acquisition.
Quota-Driven AE Productivity
Rather than simply hiring more AEs, Chief Revenue Officer Ricky focused on increasing AE productivity. The team tracks attainment closely, with a target of at least 70% of AEs hitting 70% or more of quota, and underperformers are managed out within two quarters.
Paid Search and Social Media Marketing
The marketing team runs paid search on Google and LinkedIn and is expanding into Facebook advertising. Krenar also personally invests time in social media. The team is beginning to invest in AEO in addition to SEO.
Product Market Price Fit and Hardware Iteration
An early lesson was that the best product does not sell itself if the price is wrong. Krenar traveled to China in 2018 to find manufacturing partners and built a single-use 2G tracker sold for $29, which unlocked customers buying 1,000 units at a time instead of 10.
Best Quotes
“hit 100 million of booked annual run rates, which is amazing. We will do very confident. We'll do 100 million in Revit of this year.”
“67 was the whole recognized revenue of the whole 2025. The December MRR, I don't know the exact number on top of my head, but I know we closed the year in January, because we do January, it's fiscal year. It was at 89 million of booked annual run rate. So we went from 89 to 100 between January 31st and May 5th, 6th, around there.”
“I learned that SDRs or BDRs, whatever you want to call it, that front line, that sphere is actually the heartbeat of the company. And I think many founders forget that. Many entrepreneurs forget that. I respect that job more than any other job since 2018.”
“I realized is I would start time again even if it went bankrupt. And when that mindset came to me, like I was walking and running and all over Massachusetts trying to just figure out what I'm going to do. But I realized this is something that I, it just has to be and time has to exist no matter what.”
“60 % of our new ARR is upsell expansion and 45 % is new business.”
“58 % of AEs hit 100 % of their quota, and 60 % hit over 70%. So if we're above 50, I would say hitting 70%, I'm very, happy.”
“I learned one thing, it's not all about product market fit. It's product market price fit.”
“after Opus came out in February, it's real. There is no doubt about that anymore. And where the world's going is, think of it this way, every package, every shipment, we will know what's happening with it. It's gonna speak.”
“We had $10,000, $10,000 to $20,000 in the bank. And then I had to raise a convertible note, secured convertible note, and got $100,000 at a down round.”
“time intelligence is going to be a big piece there, which I'm sharing again with you, which I haven't shared with anybody.”
What Happened Next
This interview was recorded in May 2026 and captures Tive at the moment Krenar Komani announced crossing $100M in booked annual run rate. The numbers, team size, customer count, and funding details reflect what was reported during that conversation and may have changed since. Visit the Tive company profile on getLatka for the most current metrics and funding data.
View Tive’s current profile and metricsFull Transcript
Chapters
- 0:03Introduction and $100M Revenue Milestone
- 0:53Revenue Growth Rate and 2025 Baseline
- 1:46Business Model: IoT Trackers and SaaS Platform
- 3:19How the Tracker Works and Data It Captures
- 6:52Data Volume and Live Dashboard Walkthrough
- 11:11Founding Story: Father-in-Law and First Customer
- 11:42Revenue History from 2019 to 2026
- 17:39Go-to-Market: Cold Calling and First AE
- 20:22Sales Team Structure and AE Attainment
- 24:08Pricing, Customer Count, and Million-Dollar Logos
- 25:10Capital Raised: Seed Through Series C1
- 27:35Near-Bankruptcy in 2019 and Resilience
- 29:24AI Vision and Autonomous Supply Chain
- 33:51Tive Intelligence and Future Roadmap
- 34:42Closing and Where to Follow Tive
Introduction and $100M Revenue Milestone
Nathan Latka
0:03Krenar Komoni is the CEO of Tive. He studied computer engineering and mathematics at Norwich university and later attended Tufts. He founded his current company, Tive T I V E in 2015, after watching his father-in-law spend hours on the phone tracking his truck fleet. won EY of the year in 2025. That's new England and name rock star of the supply chain by food logistics amongst many other things. We're going to jump into his story today. Crenar, you ready to take us to the top? I can't bury the lead. reached out literally hours ago because you posted on LinkedIn that you hit a massive revenue milestone. What was the milestone? And then we'll jump into your story.
Krenar Komani, CEO
0:28Yes, let's go ahead then. Yeah, huge milestone last week. hit 100 million of booked annual run rates, which is amazing. We will do very confident. We'll do 100 million in Revit of this year.
Nathan Latka
0:40Let's go. That's awesome. And what would that represent in terms of growth rate year over year? What were you one year ago?
Revenue Growth Rate and 2025 Baseline
Krenar Komani, CEO
0:53So one year ago we were at 67, so we'll do at least, looks like 100 this year, so at least 50 % growth.
Nathan Latka
0:57That's it. just to be clear, if we take MRR from December of 2025, you are at a 67 million run rate then.
Krenar Komani, CEO
1:06No, December MRR. So 67 was the whole recognized revenue of the whole 2025. The December MRR, I don't know the exact number on top of my head, but I know we closed the year in January, because we do January, it's fiscal year. It was at 89 million of booked annual run rate. So we went from 89 to 100 between January 31st and May 5th, 6th, around there.
Nathan Latka
1:28That's incredible growth. And guys, you want to listen to this whole interview because he's building something that's really interesting. You're seeing the world of AI, anyone that has a data mode really wins. And one way to build an impressive data mode is to have a SaaS plus business model. We have IoT plus SaaS. has, we're to get into in a second, but Tyve, what are, sorry, not Tyve, Crenar, why don't you explain your business model? What are you selling?
Krenar Komani, CEO
1:49So it's pretty straightforward. Customers come to us, they want to know what's happening with our shipments all over the world, whether it's strawberries, blueberries, servers, electronics, gaming consoles. So what we do is we sell them these trackers where they... I want to hold it up. You're opening up the website too. That's awesome. So what they do is they buy these trackers. So they sign up a contract. It's an annual contract. And they say, hey, I want to buy 1200 of these. And they commit to them. And they also sign up for our platform.
Nathan Latka
1:59Hold that up to the camera. Hold it up. Yeah. That's wild. Well, okay, hold that up again. So where does that get installed? Does it get installed on a truck like turning around a little bit? Okay, so there's our camera on there.
Krenar Komani, CEO
2:20And that is. Yeah, so we do, what we do, what customers do is they take this, they press the button right there, this turns on, they peel the sticker on the back, most of time they peel the sticker, and they open the trailer or the container when it's open already, it's at the dock, they load it up, the trailer and the container with, let's say, pallets of servers, pallets of electronics, pallets of gaming console, pallets of vacuum cleaners, whatever it is. They take this tracker and they place it usually on the last pallet. Sometimes they hide it because they don't want anybody to see it. Then they close the trailer. This thing is on. It's transmitting in real time using cellular connectivity. So 2G, 4G, 5G connectivity all over the world. So it tells customers where the shipment is in real time, but also it's telling its condition. Is it hot? Is it wet? Is it cold? Did somebody open the trailer? There's a little light sensor right there. Did this get dropped? There's a shock sensor. There's also an orientation sensor to see if something's tilted. So all of that data on top of location is being fed into our platform and then customers log in and see and monitor their shipments. So now they know, are those berries above 40 degrees Fahrenheit for more than an hour? Are those vaccines on a tarmac somewhere sitting at 90 degrees Fahrenheit? And they were able to immediately call the logistics company, call the carrier, call the trucking company and act on it. And we saved so many shipments, especially we even to these days with theft, we catch like we have a story recently with this company, the guy literally ⁓ with his wife was driving trying to find the driver who was stealing the, like it was just the truck full of metal. And they called the guy at the truck stop and called the police and they were able to save the shipment. It's pretty.
Nathan Latka
4:12How much data exhaust are you generating from one of those devices? Like in other words, if I took all the unstructured data and structured in a JSON file, how many rows of data points would I get just from that one tracker and one truck shipment?
Krenar Komani, CEO
4:27Per ping, I would say at least around 12 to 15. So think of XYZ of accelerometer, then you get temperature, then you get humidity, you get shock if it happens, light, and then location. You have GPS, you have Wi-Fi positioning, you have also cellular towers that we get. So there's around 15 or so points per ping. And then people can be pinging every five minutes, every 30 minutes. So if you do the math, we're... we've collected billions and billions of data points by now. And what does that help us?
Nathan Latka
4:58What do you run rating on that? Like if you look at, we're recording this May 12th, 2026. If you just look at last month, how many individual, I don't know what the right usage metric is. Is it number, how many total pings you captured across all customers? Is it number of installed devices, number of truck trips? What's the critical metric for you?
Krenar Komani, CEO
5:16Um, there's a, there's a few, uh, I, I almost got all of it on the dashboard live right now. Yeah.
5:16He's looking up his dashboard. I think he's looking. Go for it, go for it. Whatever you can show us is the more you can show us the better, the more we can learn.
5:28Okay, I'll try and do that. Let me see.
Nathan Latka
5:29This is, ⁓ this is so cool guys, while he's bringing that up again, what we're going to sort of go with on this is we're going back to his basement in 2007 when he had this idea all the way up to, you know, now a hundred million run rate. You know, this is not just software. Obviously there's production involved. IOT. I'll ask him if he's manufacturing these themselves, if he's making money on the hardware, if he's subsidizing at the start, just to get the long-term subscription contracts. We'll dive into all of that. .
Krenar Komani, CEO
5:53Yeah, so I think some of this is maybe not great to share or not as a little confidential, but I'll do it right there just for you. I don't want to do it for you, but let's see here. It's opening up. I'm loading a lot of data. I'm going from way back.
Nathan Latka
5:58I appreciate that. Tell me what you're looking at. Just describe it. Are you in like a Tableau file? Are you in your database? Where are you?
Krenar Komani, CEO
6:14No, so what we did is we built a very cool dashboard on our own. We pulled data from Salesforce, from NetSuite, from our platform, and then we used Cloth to build this unbelievable dashboard that does FBNA, does sales analytics, does all of our data around. Okay. Can I share? Okay. Let me see if I can make this quarterly.
6:30Yeah, hit the little share button under your face here in Riverside. You should see an up arrow. I love when founders come on and just teach us. say, Nathan, let me just screen share. I'll walk you through all of it. I'm excited for this.
6:50Presentation come on come on come on come on should I click presentation or something else? ⁓
Nathan Latka
6:54Click screen, click screen. All right, here we go. What are we looking at?
7:02So, all right. This is the moving trackers by period on the total distance miles. So this is on a monthly basis where more than half a million miles that are traveling trackers. Half a million, half a billion, sorry. What am I talking about? 500 million, yeah, B, B. So you can see here in 2019, when I was doing 100K or when I mentioned we were doing like
7:13half a billion be. No, it's B, billion.
Krenar Komani, CEO
7:31I don't know, 6-7 million miles per month that we were tracking. Now we're per quarter. I just changed it to quarterly. So now we're doing around one and a half billion per quarter.
7:40And is this across freight, rail, air, truck? What are the things you cover?
7:47Yes, it's all of it. It's all of it. It's over the road, it's over the air, it's over the ocean. So whatever the distance the trackers actually traveled, they could have traveled through all those modes of transportation. And then you can see here we have in a quarter, we have almost a half a million trackers that are moving in this last quarter.
7:55Okay, and then what do the things move on the right? Explain to the difference between some of the color trackers.
8:10⁓ I'm getting too much into detail, but yeah, so I'll explain the difference. So we have solo light, solo 5G, solo 2G, obviously it's dead. So we've stopped shipping that. As you can see. Well, that worked. The problem is GSM network and the 2G network stopped. So there's no connectivity anymore. If you turn on a 2G tracker, for instance, in China, it won't work. In United States, I think just T-Mobile has a little spots here and there. There's pretty much no 2G.
Nathan Latka
8:20So why did that not work? What happened there?
8:39So right now it's all 5G connectivity all over the world. So I'll explain the difference maybe if I stop sharing, I show you some trackers here quickly.
8:44Yeah, is there anything below this that is important for your story before you shut this down?
8:51Let me see if I'm going... No, I would really focus on moving because those are the most important ones. Yeah, the other ones are how many we just find.
8:52Active trackers, any data by period, tracker assignments by period. Okay, great. And real quick, just let's focus on the blue, focus on that blue graph for a second. Just you told us when you passed 100K of ARR, when did you put your point on the graph where you passed a million of ARR? What year?
Krenar Komani, CEO
9:12⁓ a million? ⁓ It was in 2020 around, I would say, this time here.
9:18and 10 million.
9:23Now you're making me, quizzing me. 10 million. It was... $2.5 million in 2020, dollars, 20, 20. Yeah, it was in 2021 sometime. Yeah, I would say in 2021, 20.
9:39Wow, so you So sorry, you went from 1 million in 2020 to 10 million in 2021?
9:49Yeah, it was at the end of 2019, I would say early 2020, we crossed that one million right here. And then by end of 2021 or mid like call it Q3, Q4 2021, we went to 10 million a book. We were growing very fast at that time because we signed up some really large customers. then you happen to have revenues were pretty exciting, too. I would share them, but I just do want information, I think.
Nathan Latka
10:00Wow. and when to just let's just finish the revenues. Go ahead. When did you, just finish the revenue
Krenar Komani, CEO
10:19Okay. ⁓
10:19story real quick and then I want to get your backstory on your basement. When did you, when did you break 50 million?
10:24So revenue in 2020. So let's go this way. We'll do 100 this year. 67 million last year. 45 in 2024. 29 million in 2023 revenue. 19 almost 20 million in 2022, 10 million in 2021. So that's when we did 10 million of actual revenue. Two and a half million of revenue in 2020 and 250k of revenue in 2019.
Nathan Latka
10:59Okay, take me back to your basement when you launched that you can stop screen sharing. What were you you were watching your father-in-law or how did you get this idea?
11:10So my background is in tech. I used to work for startups, but primarily doing chip design, RF chip design, 2G, 3G, 4G radios. And then I worked for an MIT startup where we build the world's most efficient base stations that go to cell towers. Fell in love with wireless, fell in love with radio frequencies. And back in 2015, got, I met my wife, I got married to my wife in 2010. So. It didn't click, but after a few years, Hangin' on, that's for sure. I'm not rich yet. Still a founder, still a pretty poor founder, living on salary, which is great, but I think our equity is gonna be valuable quite a bit one day.
Krenar Komani, CEO
11:37She married you before you were rich. Well, why is that? You haven't done a secondary, any kind of secondary?
11:57⁓ I did, but small. Being transplant, a few hundred thousand dollars, so maybe helped a little bit with a mortgage, but my wife doesn't work, so that's... Anyways...
12:03Yeah, a lot of founders are scared to ask for that. They're like, you know, they're growing and they end up with a hundred million of revenue, but they're broke because they didn't never did a secondary. What gave you the courage to ask for that? Just coach other founders.
12:17⁓ I would say one of my investors actually encouraged me quite a bit on Series A1, which gave me that courage. Otherwise, I wouldn't have the courage. And then from there, I built that courage to ask a little bit more. yeah, was from two Sigma mentors. got Billy Ilchev. He put a term sheet and he's like, Karnar, I think you should take a little bit off the table. It'll help you. So that was it. ⁓
12:37Yeah, that's good for you. That's awesome. Okay, tell us more of the story. So yeah, when I have your LinkedIn up here, but
12:46In 2015, with ⁓ my father-in-law and obviously known him for a few years now, but after this wireless experience and knowing where the technology was going, he was always on the phone trying to figure out where his truck drivers are. I'm trying to have dinner and he would get up off the table at 10 p.m., at 8 p.m. and I'm like, why can't this guy just sit and what he's doing is trying to figure out where the truck drivers are. Did they load? Did they offload? Did they unload the shipment? I'm like, you know what? His name is Adi. I'm like, I'll build a GPS tracker for fun and put it in your trucks. And he's like, go ahead. And he's like, there's a lot of companies asking me. I don't want to pay 50 bucks a month. I'm like, okay, you can pay me 19.99 a month. He's like, okay. I built this thing.
Nathan Latka
13:24Your first customer was your father-in-law paying you 19 bucks a month.
Krenar Komani, CEO
13:32Correct. On a truck. But I pivoted pretty fast from there. So that's the story. And then his friend wanted to track his trucks too. So this guy, Rasimi, had like 10 trucks. So I started tracking his trucks. So right now I'm tracking roughly 30 trucks in Worcester, Massachusetts. They're paying me around 19.9. I wanted that 99 cents. So it's like $19.99 a month on the invoices that I would make up myself. But what I realized is on the back of the shipment, on the back of the truck, One truck driver, Tony, showed me that there was this temperature sensor and he would be hauling fish and scallops and lobsters from New Bedford Mass. And he's like, I said, hey, bring me this sensor that's on the back of the truck. He brought it to me and I said, how do they get the data out of it? He said, well, at the end of the shipment, somebody takes this temperature logger, plugs into a computer, sometimes into a printer, and then sees what the temperature was and then decides whether they take this load or not. I'm like, wow. I got it. So I said, you know what I want to do? I to take this tracker that I built, put a battery, make it really low power and put it on the back of the truck. And being an engineer, I thought that if I designed the best tracker in the world, the longest lasting tracker on a battery, I'm just going to win. And what happened is we didn't fully win because it was expensive. And I tried to sell it for $100,000. It was $100 to make, almost $150 to make.
Nathan Latka
14:51What was, I don't understand, what was expensive?
15:01and I would sell it for $150, $200, and I would charge customers $50 a month. And I realized one thing, it's not all about product market fit. It's product market price fit. And I learned a big lesson there and then took myself and my VP of Technology, Martin, we went to China, which actually we're going to China again this week and next week.
Krenar Komani, CEO
15:23Doesn't your flight take off like right after this call?
15:29Yes, it does. So we're going and it was the same guy. We went to China in 20, like around 18, I think. early 2018. And we met every manufacturer out there that can make a tracker. And we built the world's first like single use 2G tracker that we sold for 29 bucks. And I saw customers, this is 2019, customers buying thousand at a time. I'm like, okay, this is different. I could barely sell 10 before, now I'm selling 1,000 at a time.
Nathan Latka
15:57Why was no one else doing this? Did you have some proprietary patent on battery technology that allowed you to produce this that no one else could?
16:08Not particularly, what we had is a, we have patents. We have patent on the overall solution and the system that obviously does an amazing job at making sure that the battery power of the trackers lasts as long as possible. And then when we went to China, what we wanted to do is find a partner there that actually would listen and work with us. So we could teach them a little bit of these things, because we wanted to move very fast. We didn't have the time to. engineer and design everything on our own. We wanted to change a partner in China so we can do this cycle very quick. But yeah, that would be I would say the proprietary thing that we had in the beginning is power consumption and a system way of making battery life last longer. Think of it if something's stuck in customs then change the ping rate. If you're going from ocean to road change the ping rate. Having that configuration change based on the events that are happening is a patent that we have. We have many other patents, but that's one thing.
17:06interesting. Tell me how you grew. What was your go-to-market strategy after your friends and family shipping scallops, right? Going from 2.5 to 10 million of revenue, what was your growth tactic there?
Krenar Komani, CEO
17:16Thank I think the biggest lesson that I learned ⁓ going from being a technical founder, I thought that, like I told you, that my product was the best and it would just sell itself and it didn't. And in 2018, when we're struggling quite a bit, I hired two out of college kids and what we started to do is just cold calling. And we started cold calling, cold calling, cold calling. And what I realized, it was cold email, cold call, cold email, cold call. And I learned so much about product. I learned so much about what customers want. I learned that's where I learned that our trackers cost a lot of money. We need to build something new. And I learned that SDRs or BDRs, whatever you want to call it, that front line, that sphere is actually the heartbeat of the company. And I think many founders forget that. Many entrepreneurs forget that. I respect that job more than any other job since 2018. because that's where the pulse of everything is. And then what I learned is I want to learn as much from that feedback and then build it and then hire great AEs that listen to that same feedback to the customer and then just grow and grow and grow and grow. That's how we grew. There's a lot of other stories on GoToMarkets, but that's one of the...
Nathan Latka
18:37What was your revenue when you hired your first quota carrying AE?
Krenar Komani, CEO
18:44The first quarter carrying AE, it was in 2018 in October. Dennis, what was our revenue? That was no revenue.
18:56Okay, you had a, how did you know what quota to give him if you don't have any revenue yet? You hadn't sold any yourself as the founder.
Nathan Latka
19:03Not grand, I would make quotas every quarter up. I'm like, let's try and do 50K this quarter. ⁓ And then we just grew from there.
Krenar Komani, CEO
19:09Interesting. So fast forward to today in 2026, how many total people are on the team and how many are STR's AEs?
19:22There's 300 people on the team. There's SDRs and AEs are fluctuating every week, month, because we were growing so fast. But right now we have around 32 AEs that I would say that are hired and working. And then SDRs around 11.
19:40And what do you consider a good attainment rate for those AEs? Do you want 50 % of them hitting quota, 10%, 90 %?
19:48So one thing our Chief Revenue Officer Ricky has done an amazing job over, he's been here for a little bit more than two years and that's one metric that we talked about is productivity of AEs going up because sometimes we say let's just hire as many AEs but he believed, I believe we said you know what let's get the productivity up. So right now, ⁓ do you want to show it? I have it. ⁓ It is.
Nathan Latka
20:06He's bringing up another dashboard, I can feel it. Where do you track this stuff, Salesforce?
Krenar Komani, CEO
20:17We do, but I actually, being very transparent here, I ask him to put it on a spreadsheet that way I can easily see it. ⁓
Nathan Latka
20:23This is so valuable for other founders watching. I appreciate it.
20:31Yeah, ⁓ I'll show you this.
20:32Okay, well I was bringing that up guys. Yeah, I mean, I get questions all the time. Nathan, is it five to one OT to quota ratio? How many A's should I hire? Should I hire them in batches or one by one? What should the attainment rate be? mean, what should base plus commission be? So we'll just learn directly from a hundred million AR here and Cronar will tell us.
Krenar Komani, CEO
20:53Well, yeah, we're right now, so the AEs here, I say 32, but the ones that are here are the ones that have quotas, So 58 % of AEs hit 100 % of their quota, and 60 % hit over 70%. So if we're above 50, I would say hitting 70%, I'm very, happy.
21:09and more. Yep. So mean, this is a terrible question for me to ask, but what do do with the ones that are zero to 50 %? Do you fire them or do you them a ramp up period, a grace period?
21:23Thanks ⁓ There is a grace period, there's ramp up. ⁓ Obviously if they need to go into a pip, they go into a pip but nobody lasts more than two quarters if they're not doing really really well.
21:37And in column S, when you have a 9.4 million quota there in row four, is that new ARR added in Q4? So how is Q4 2026 already here? Or is that, oh, that's Q1 2026. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, got it, got it. Interesting. It's interesting to see how your quota fluctuates. Like why was your quota bigger in Q4 2024 relative to today?
21:47Yes. Sorry, sorry, yeah, cue on. So again, quota is not what our target is. Our targets don't fluctuate. We have a pretty steady growth in the target side of things. But quota fluctuates because people leave or people quit or we actually let them go, right? Because of performance management.
22:08⁓ OIC. performance. Really interesting. That was really valuable. Okay, what other growth motions are you using today? Is it just sort of AESDRs or something else?
Nathan Latka
22:24Thank you.
Krenar Komani, CEO
22:27Like what, paid?
22:28Marketing too, quite a bit. I I personally do a lot, I try and do a lot on social media, but the marketing team does, they've done a really good job on paid search. So Google, LinkedIn, we're dabbling quite a bit on Facebook right now. And then quite a bit of SEO and then we're starting AEO right now.
Nathan Latka
22:48I didn't ask you this, are you still at like 20 bucks a truck per tracker or what's your average ACV these days?
22:58Call it in the $40- $50 range. Maybe more.
23:02per tracker per truck. I guess if we roll that up, I imagine you're selling to huge companies that are like, what would one logo pay you per year on average? Because they're buying for hundreds of thousands of trucks, right?
23:16So we have only 1,300 logos. So it depends on the customer. There's customers who buy, that's one thing we do really well is we can accommodate to customers who are gonna buy two trackers a week, let's say 100 trackers a year. Obviously we don't wanna get as many of those customers, but if they come in and they wanna buy, they're very welcome. So we have customers who buy 100 trackers a year, and then we have customers who are buying tens of thousands.
23:16Yeah. Do you have a million dollar per year customer yet? Let's go. Nice.
23:48Yeah yeah. Where we have, I think we have, we have around nine or nine to, yeah, it's almost 10 customers.
24:04that are million plus a year. What allows your sales reps to upsell or give that much value to them? Is it just number of trucks basically and number of trackers?
Pricing, Customer Count, and Million-Dollar Logos
Krenar Komani, CEO
24:08Yeah. ⁓ That's the easy one, yeah. I would say just expansion that way because they keep growing and growing. Think of a logistics company and then they just keep getting more customers into this and more customers and more customers. Or if you're a customer that you're shipping products, you say, okay, I'm going to start in this region and you open up another region, another region, you go global. Or you start tracking just one product of yours and then you expand into all the products. It's pretty exciting on the growth side. Land and expand. 60 % of our new ARR is upsell expansion and 45 % is new business.
Nathan Latka
24:50Yeah, makes a ton of sense. We've got about six minutes left. I want to spend three minutes on how you've capitalized the business and then three minutes on your future products. Like how are you thinking about AI and your world? So let's start on the capital side. I know you've raised rounds. When was the first round?
Capital Raised: Seed Through Series C1
Krenar Komani, CEO
25:10First round was in November 2016.
25:17Wow, okay, wait, this goes way back. When'd you write the first line of code for this thing?
25:24In June of 2015, that's when I started the company.
25:25Okay. So what was the first running found? Are we talking like 500 K from friends and family?
25:32Nothing. It was me working and taking half of the money to pay mortgage and food and then the other half of money to buy circuit boards. And then I did that probably around there for 18 months.
Nathan Latka
25:39So that was your own money. You put in 50K, 100K. Okay, then what?
Krenar Komani, CEO
25:50And then I raised from Hyperplane Ventures and Bolt, which was a hardware incubator in Boston, and Hyperplane Ventures is in Boston. And then we raised, think, 250k. And then we did another round of 200k when we got into Techstars. So we got into Techstars in 2017. So this was end of 2016 and then early 2017. And then in May of 2017, raised our first seed round. I think it was $3 million.
26:17Okay, okay. what, like looking back now, was that the right decision to raise that 3 million seed at that time?
26:22Thank you. ⁓ I think so, yes, but I think maybe we could have spent it better. I think we rushed a little bit on spend there. I don't think we wasted it particularly, but we were building a lot of things around software. We hired a lot of software engineers. ⁓
26:36What'd you waste money on?
Nathan Latka
26:52which was exciting because we kind of got the architecture right in the back end and all of that, but we had no customers. Just no customers. think that's where I learned that lesson and then we almost ran out of money in 2018 and that's where I had to lay off. We went from like 16 people down to six or seven people and that was a tough time and then we almost ran out of money in July of 2019. We had $10,000, $10,000 to $20,000 in the bank. And then I had to raise a convertible note, secured convertible note, and got $100,000 at a down round. But since then, it's just been up and down.
Krenar Komani, CEO
27:34Wait, how brutal was that? Like down around like it was a million, a million valuation or what?
Nathan Latka
27:41No, it was from 21 down to 11. It was not great. Yeah.
27:42That's terrible. Yeah, interesting. So so who priced the 21 million tech stars? no, the 3 million seed.
27:52The three million, was between NextU and Accomplice in Boston.
27:55I see. I mean, that's wild story. 10 K left in the bank. Did you ever seriously consider shutting the company down?
Krenar Komani, CEO
28:05No. So one thing that I realized is I believe in this, in the darkest moment of my life, and I would say time. The thing that kept me going is what I realized is I would start time again even if it went bankrupt. And when that mindset came to me, like I was walking and running and all over Massachusetts trying to just figure out what I'm going to do. But I realized this is something that I, it just has to be and time has to exist no matter what.
Nathan Latka
28:47love that. Finish up the funding story for us. You're to the races after that. When was this series A?
Krenar Komani, CEO
28:55A was end of 2020. We raised from our adventures. That was our first board member with Raju. And then we did an A1 very quickly in May of 2021. And then early 2022, we did series B. So that was 50 million. And then we did a series C. Oh, man. I was thinking it was like December of 24. And then December of 25 did a series C1. total, $140 million totally raised.
AI Vision and Autonomous Supply Chain
Nathan Latka
29:24How much was the series? What was the series seen in 2024? How much was that raised? Why were you needing to raise so much? Was it just hiring people or hardware or what was most expensive?
Krenar Komani, CEO
29:3640 million? it's hardware. Think of the growth rate and then inventory and obviously people. Where are we going to go and what we need? We need great talent, especially with what we're going to be able to do now.
29:53And how much did you raise in the A1 in May 2021?
Nathan Latka
30:00⁓ A1 was 10 I believe.
30:00And what about the A with REA? Okay, yeah, interesting. Do you regret one of the questions founders are asking me right now is Nathan valuations are down since 2021. Should I not raise? Should I wait? Like looking back at how you manage dilution as a founder, do you regret about how you negotiated any of these deals?
30:05A was 12. I don't. Yeah. I don't regret. ⁓
Krenar Komani, CEO
30:26No regrets. Are you comfortable sharing what Lastron's valuation was?
Nathan Latka
30:32Yeah, were last round where we raised 20 million at 525 pre. So I think it's very healthy. It's very like I think it's today where we are and the growth that we're having obviously it's been six months, seven months since the term sheet happened. We're valued.
Krenar Komani, CEO
30:37Okay. That feels super healthy to me. mean, if you're, you know, you're 67 million of revenue into 525 post, that was post money, right? 45. Okay. So you're trading at like a seven, eight, nine X multiple. mean, that feels like, yeah, of actual. I've not even run right. Yeah. That feels like a really healthy multiple that you can beat. can grow into that quickly. So Billy billion dollar company in the next 12 months. Right.
30:59Post-Vonu 545. got the actual revenue.
31:15there. All right, take us home here then. Take us home here and then you got to get on a flight to China to go talk to your to some of your vendors. Where do see the future of your space going? I mean, can you build a brain for these trucks to tell them where to turn and how to drive and how to avoid weather and shouldn't you just be running these transportation companies yourself? You have all the data.
31:16I think so. Thank So this is where the world's going and I think it's very exciting. We're really tracking what we're doing as you know, we're tracking the shipments on the trucks and a lot of shippers and customers know where these shipments are now. But the beauty is with artificial intelligence and finally with agents, I believe that autonomous supply chain is finally becoming something that's going to become a reality. When I started this company, you have these visions in your head like insights are going to happen, automated things are going to be calling and People don't have to be on the phone calls and emails and spreadsheets, but now with agents, if you asked me seven months ago, I'd be like, I don't know, but after Opus came out in February, it's real. There is no doubt about that anymore. And where the world's going is, think of it this way, every package, every shipment, we will know what's happening with it. It's gonna speak. AI agents are going to know what actions to take based on those, whether it's email, whether it's phone call. They're going to talk to other companies agents and resolve any issues. And then finally, humans are going to just look at dashboards if there's any challenges that they need to meet and go and tackle. But otherwise, agents are going to solve. And then at the end, the shipment's going to make it from point A to point B autonomously. And the shipment's going to make it on time and in full with full of coordination. And the world's going to be a better place and more efficient than it is today. And that's what really, really excites me about time. Because we're generating.
Nathan Latka
32:59Are you actively running any tests internally, like to test this vision, or are we still not there in terms of hardware or software or agents or model?
Krenar Komani, CEO
33:11Well, right now we've actively built workflows so that we can automatically do things so that ⁓ actually think of it as a shipment speaking and then based on where it is and what's happening, there's workflows and based on milestones, those workflows trigger things. And the next step right now that we're doing is AI agents that make phone calls. And then based on that, then we're going to take other actions. It's part of the vision, but I'm very confident that in six months, 12 months, especially in 24, 36 months, we're gonna get to 20, 30, I think, autonomous supply chains out there. And I believe time is gonna be the company that's gonna be the one that generates all this first-party data to make that a reality.
Tive Intelligence and Future Roadmap
Nathan Latka
33:51So what will your headline, what will your website headline be if five years from now?
Krenar Komani, CEO
33:59It's actually kind of changing around 30 days or so and time intelligence is going to be a big piece there, which I'm sharing again with you, which I haven't shared with anybody. yeah, so time intelligence is going to be there and that's going to start being the headline. Sorry, I kicked the camera.
Nathan Latka
34:08We love new info. Very cool, very cool. Well, hey, you take your time with your, he's wrestling his camera guys, cause he took this call last minute. He's in his brother's, I think, apartment or something or garage or something in New York. So we appreciate it, Krenar. Hey, if folks want to follow your story as you bring this vision to life, where can they find you online?
Krenar Komani, CEO
34:26There go. ⁓ Time.com and on LinkedIn, but yeah, that's it.
Closing and Where to Follow Tive
Nathan Latka
34:42Guys, what a story. Broke $100 million of revenue today. Again, helping back to his father-in-law, who he was charging $19 a month with a little thing in his back of his truck to track his truck back in 2015. First line of code, 2016, he put in $100K. By 2017, $3 million seed round at a $20 million valuation. First AE hired in 2018. By 2019, he got 30 trucks going around Massachusetts at $20 a pop, $250K of ARR. Fast forward a couple years to 2023.
34:52Yeah.
Krenar Komani, CEO
35:09Right. They've got 29 million bucks of revenue. ended up doing a series C and 24 out of 40 million bucks. And then fast forward again to today, series C one in 2025, 20 million bucks, 525 million pre-money at about 67 million of total revenue collected in 2025, but ending that year at an $89 million run rate. Now at a hundred million dollar run rate, 300 folks as he's tries to figure out how do we finally bring autonomous supply chain to the world in mass. He's doing it with all of his live trackers. He's growing with, 32 AES, 11 STRs, paid search, Google, LinkedIn, 1,300 customers, nine of which, this is crazy, nine of which paying more than a million dollars per year. That's how you know he's building something valuable. All right, Krenar, thank you for taking us to the top.
35:55Thank you, Nathan. Really appreciate it.