In this episode, Eliad Saporta, CEO of Coriunder talks about how he grew his company to 50 high-value customers by building an affiliate network primarily through attending conferences in their niche.
We talk about,
- What Coriunder is all about
- How they hit 50 customers with around $20k ACV
- How they got their first set of customers using his previous background as a consultant
- How they are using conferences in their niche to build a huge network of affiliates & get newer clients
- How they typically end up converting a huge percentage of warm leads bought by their affiliates
- How their churn & expansion looks like
- Team, funding status & future vision
Transcript
if we look at analyze the marketing that we are doing, it's mainly
Eliad:the conference scene being speakers or getting the foot on the ground.
Eliad:We haven't done any booths
Eliad:for that sake.
Eliad:It's more working around the conferences itself and meeting people throughout
Eliad:those networking events, et cetera, which proven itself and really building
Eliad:a stronger relationship with the current affiliates that we have on the network.
Upendra:hello everyone.
Upendra:Welcome to the B2 V SaaS podcast.
Upendra:Today we have Elliot support us.
Upendra:Elliot here is the founder and CEO of a company called er.
Upendra:Hey, Elliot, welcome to the show.
Upendra:Hey, thanks for having us.
Upendra:All right, Elliot, so let's get started and let's try to understand what your
Upendra:company and product does and why customers
Eliad:pay you money.
Eliad:Sure.
Eliad:So we are payments oriented user management platform.
Eliad:What does it mean?
Eliad:We're the backbone of different types of financial institutions coming from
Eliad:payment service provider for card processing, alternative payment methods,
Eliad:all the way to FinTech marketplaces.
Eliad:We're looking to manage their onboarding process, user management,
Eliad:and everything on the financial element like subscription and payments et.
Upendra:Looks like you mentioned a lot of things here, so I wanna get
Upendra:a sense of, you know so maybe you can help us understand this way.
Upendra:So just pick one customer of yours or maybe a prominent customer of
Upendra:yours and just help me understand how they're using your product.
Upendra:Right?
Upendra:That
Eliad:could be more easier.
Eliad:Yeah.
Eliad:I'll take a use case that, let's say close to heart.
Eliad:It's a startup FinTech startup called Cosmo.
Eliad:Cosmo provides like a alternative banking for Thai employees
Eliad:coming to work in Israel.
Eliad:They provide them with a prepaid card issued by one of the local issue.
Eliad:It's a Visa card connected to a mobile wallet, which is in
Eliad:essence their banking platform.
Eliad:The employers transfer the salaries into the application.
Eliad:Our platform manages the balances, transfers between users, the full
Eliad:onboarding, kyc, and all of the relationship between the employer
Eliad:and the employee using the app.
Eliad:And Cosmo is a startup, uses us as the backend for their functionality.
Eliad:So they develop a very nice looking application and every backend
Eliad:functionality interfaces for the employers, everything is managed by our.
Eliad:A consolidated backend service to manage everything with payments onboarding,
Upendra:such so, so let's try to understand a bit about
Upendra:your customers here, right?
Upendra:So how, like, who exactly are you selling this particular product to?
Upendra:Is it financial institutions who are looking for these, you know, payment,
Upendra:you know, payment management systems?
Upendra:Or are these real businesses who are looking for a fancy UI and
Upendra:all of these, you know, systems?
Eliad:So it's less businesses are we B2B to to B, let's say
Eliad:B2B to C, kind of a operation.
Eliad:We sell to the payment service provider who are selling services
Eliad:to merchants, meaning businesses.
Eliad:And these businesses are using the platform to cater for different customers
Eliad:doing interactions on the platform.
Eliad:So if you look at Cosmo for example, it's a FinTech startup looking
Eliad:to build the next payment service provider for Thai employees.
Eliad:In that, We have some payment service provider in the payments industry.
Eliad:So imagine competitors to Stripe and Square, the kind of smaller provider
Eliad:working with the bigger banks and trying to, let's say, introduce different
Eliad:merchants from different industry, which Stripe might not be accommodating or
Eliad:let's say easy to use in that use case.
Eliad:So our clients are leveraging our technology in order to sell their
Eliad:services onto two businesses.
Upendra:So can, can you say you're a competitor of Stripe?
Upendra:Can I assume that?
Upendra:Yeah.
Eliad:So I'm a technology provider for Stripe competitor.
Eliad:So Stripe as a whole provides services to the businesses as a consolidate
Eliad:both license and technology.
Eliad:We provide the technology, our customers bring the license and start selling to the
Eliad:same customers that Stripe are selling to.
Upendra:Got it.
Upendra:So essentially Stripe can use your backend to power all of their financial,
Upendra:you know, whatever management systems.
Upendra:Right?
Upendra:So essentially you specifically sell to companies like Strip
Upendra:Yeah, something like that.
Upendra:Yeah, yeah.
Eliad:Got it.
Eliad:Specifically Stripe has an amazing system, but Yes.
Eliad:Yeah.
Eliad:So smaller competitors that can start from scratch, building a
Eliad:technology to compete with Stripe.
Eliad:Leverage our
Upendra:technology.
Upendra:Yes.
Upendra:Got it.
Upendra:So that, that's, that's that looks pretty interesting.
Upendra:So let's try to understand, you know, your customers, your revenues of today, right?
Upendra:So approximately how many customers, how many paying customers
Upendra:you have on your platforms.
Eliad:Fantastic.
Eliad:So we started in about mid:Eliad:Currently have about 50 enterprise level customers.
Eliad:They all pay us a setup fee to start and set them up with what's called the white
Eliad:label, which gives them a branded look and feel of our backend system, dedicated
Eliad:databases in terms of segregation of the data between user to user.
Eliad:And then after that, they pay us a monthly minimum and transaction fee.
Eliad:The monthly minimum can rage for the startups at around $500 a month, which
Eliad:is certain amount of transactions.
Eliad:When you have the payment service provider can pay, it's up to
Eliad:$2,000 a month with the minimum.
Eliad:And we charge extra for different modules and functionality such
Eliad:as car issuing, iPads and so on, which are addons to the plans.
Eliad:So we don't have free customers, we don't have a free plan.
Eliad:Got it.
Eliad:We only have paying customers to begin with.
Upendra:Right.
Upendra:So I wanna understand how big these deals are.
Upendra:Right?
Upendra:How big your customers, how.
Upendra:Your customer typically pays you on an average.
Upendra:So what's that range looks like?
Upendra:Is it $10,000?
Upendra:Is it a hundred thousand dollars?
Upendra:Is it a million bucks?
Upendra:How does that in terms of lifetime?
Eliad:It's different between the lifetime value and let's say specifically
Upendra:I'm talking about acv, right?
Upendra:Something that they pay you on an annual basis approximately.
Eliad:So it's around, it's an average customer.
Eliad:They will pay about $20,000 a year.
Upendra:So we were you, you know, 12 months before today,
Upendra:how many customers did you have?
Upendra:And 12
Eliad:months before Today we were about 35 paying customers.
Eliad:Got
Upendra:it.
Upendra:So you, you, you are growing at, around, you know, it's approximately 20, 30%
Upendra:year on you, something like that.
Upendra:Yeah.
Upendra:Got it.
Upendra:All right.
Upendra:Yes, sir.
Upendra:So, yeah, so let's, let's go back to, you know, your zero to one journey, right?
Upendra:I wanna understand, right.
Upendra:So how, how did, how did you, how did it all started?
Upendra:I mean, where did you get your first five customers from?
Upendra:Just talk about
Eliad:that story.
Eliad:started in payments in around:Eliad:already built the name was doing conferencing as speaker panelist,
Eliad:et cetera, with for companies.
Eliad:I either was the COO of, or consulting to different FinTech startups in the
Eliad:us, South Africa, in here in Israel.
Eliad:Then there, there was an opportunity to pivot from being an operator
Eliad:of a payment service provider to become a provider to other service
Eliad:provider with the technology we built.
Eliad:And that way we kind of shifted.
Eliad:So when we got the word out that we are ready to go and we have a technology
Eliad:to compete and to facilitate it came with the combination of the services
Eliad:we knew how to bring as consultants.
Eliad:And on the other hand, giving a technology that came from not as a
Eliad:developers building a system, but whether as operators, building a.
Eliad:To serve other platforms in the process.
Eliad:So, so, so,
Upendra:so you hired a consultancy company before that, is that what you're
Eliad:saying?
Eliad:No, I, I was the.
Eliad:I was doing the consultancy and then when I shifted gears from being a consultant
Eliad:to a service provider, people leveraged from getting both technology and advice in
Eliad:one package when we started the company.
Upendra:Got it.
Upendra:All right, so, so I wanna sort of deep dive and understand how
Upendra:you exactly got these customers.
Upendra:I know you, you've been in that space, so you must have.
Upendra:You know, had, you must have those warm leads out there, right?
Upendra:You must, a lot of people must have known you.
Upendra:Right?
Upendra:But talk about that journey.
Upendra:How did you manage to convince them to use your platform?
Upendra:How difficult it was?
Upendra:Like how did it all span out during those first, you know, first five customers?
Eliad:So if you look at the first lead that came in, so at the beginning it was,
Eliad:and up until now, if you search us online, you wouldn't find marketing campaigns.
Eliad:You mainly find, let's say we are growing, but it's more word of mouth.
Eliad:We've been a very wide and extensive affiliate.
Eliad:Other payment consultant that got to know the system and we pay very
Eliad:handsome referral fee for everyone I paying customer to us and giving
Eliad:the fact all customers are paying, it's easier in terms of conversion.
Eliad:Mm-hmm.
Eliad:. And I think when we show, it's a combination between the product itself
Eliad:and our understanding of the market and the fact that if we are the one
Eliad:providing the service, you get the personal attention and to start.
Eliad:I started the company myself with the freelance developer working part-time,
Eliad:but with already a working system.
Eliad:So the fact that they got the, you know, face to face treatment from the
Eliad:CEO of the company, even though there wasn't many people behind me, gave
Eliad:them the extra attention they needed.
Eliad:Mm-hmm.
Eliad:. And then one client brought another one of them, went to a conference, talked
Eliad:about his system, showed a bit, someone else called us and kind of grew from.
Eliad:And I think very quickly about, about, I think three months, we already were
Eliad:five paid customers we had from Malta, from Hong Kong, and from the US.
Eliad:Two customers, imagine complete different territories just happened
Eliad:to meet each other in a conference and all referred one to another.
Eliad:Got it.
Upendra:And, and now let's, let's come back, right?
Upendra:Let's come back to today.
Upendra:Right?
Upendra:So you mentioned you've got, you've gained around 15 customers in the past one year.
Upendra:And so where are these customers coming from in terms of, you know,
Upendra:top of an Allegion, where exactly are, how exactly are they discovering
Upendra:you and have you been doing any marketing or something like that?
Upendra:So what exactly is working for you?
Eliad:In terms, if we look at analyze the marketing that we are doing, it's
Eliad:mainly the conference scene being speakers or getting the foot on the ground.
Eliad:We haven't done any booths for that sake.
Eliad:It's more working around the conferences itself and meeting people throughout
Eliad:those networking events, et cetera, which proven itself and really building
Eliad:a stronger relationship with the current affiliates that we have on the network.
Eliad:It's a lot of the leads that we got throughout the years came
Eliad:from the actual service providers.
Eliad:We integrated two because as a provider, technology provider for our customers,
Eliad:we integrate to a lot of third parties.
Eliad:We aggregate a lot of connectivity, and these providers usually don't want to
Eliad:have a lot of platforms connect to them.
Eliad:So once they have a platform of choice or someone they can trust in
Eliad:terms of the integration they refer to that you want to integrate to us,
Eliad:use this and this platform in order to do so, and that's, that's proven.
Eliad:What we can see in the last year that the type of customer, in terms
Eliad:of customer profile has grown.
Eliad:We now have two NA listed companies as clients.
Eliad:We have some unicorns that are using our platform, which we've never
Eliad:thought at the beginning the would that we get that type of exposure.
Eliad:Mm-hmm.
Eliad:, but it all came from, you know, An acquaintance during a conference came from
Eliad:there, and then one thing led to another.
Eliad:Surprisingly enough, you would say, okay, if you're doing it from conferences, how
Eliad:did covid, let's say the period of time when we were actually working from home,
Eliad:baking cookies with the kids, but that actually got a lot of people talking
Eliad:behind the scenes and people that you used to meet in conferences suddenly hitting
Eliad:you up on LinkedIn and what's going on.
Eliad:And then kind of encouraging more work because everybody
Eliad:was looking for workarounds.
Eliad:Mm-hmm.
Eliad:in terms of how to build their business.
Eliad:Right.
Eliad:So that's kind of prove it.
Eliad:So
Upendra:you've mainly mentioned three things, right?
Upendra:You talked about your affiliate network, you talked about, you know, existing
Upendra:customers and service providers, you know, referring you and you talked about,
Upendra:you know, you doing conferencing and you know, doing that networking, right?
Upendra:Let's speak for example, conferencing, right?
Upendra:I mean, I just wanna pick your brain and understand how exactly
Upendra:do you view this channel list?
Upendra:I mean, how exactly do you calculate your roi?
Upendra:Do you go to every conference and how exactly do you say, Hey,
Upendra:it worked for me here, right?
Upendra:Because it's pretty hard to put a number on it, right?
Upendra:So, okay.
Upendra:I went to this conference, I ended up converting 10 leads.
Upendra:Now I got to customers.
Upendra:Is it that simple or what exactly is your strategy here with
Upendra:respect to going to conferences?
Eliad:I think we analyze the, the, let's say the traffic that's come
Eliad:to the conference and what kind of channels do you have to meet there?
Eliad:So if a conference is mainly I think for example, only lectures,
Eliad:that's not the type of cu then conference that we'll push to go to.
Eliad:Yes.
Eliad:If being at that conference gets us a speaking engagement, fantastic.
Eliad:Because you can leverage the video coming from that, from that conference.
Eliad:And let's try proven yourself.
Eliad:Let's say an expert in the field that that kind of brings traffic on its
Eliad:own, the YouTube videos, and then doing the social work, you know, couple
Eliad:of LinkedIn campaigns, et cetera.
Eliad:But if you look at the, let's say, more aware, the type of service
Eliad:provider working with the target audience are because the meaning
Eliad:theirs, meaning merchants, et cetera.
Eliad:When we go there and mingling between the service provider,
Eliad:they're paying for the boots.
Eliad:And you'll be surprised at how many of them are looking for other technology
Eliad:in order to incorporate in it.
Eliad:So the bigger the conference and the bigger the audience coming in, they'll
Eliad:hire the potential to meet potential affiliates or potential clients in it.
Eliad:And the fact that in roi, and in my count, if I go to a conference and I close one
Eliad:paying customer, that's fantastic because I've covered the expense of the truck.
Eliad:But if I came back with about five new affiliates that can bring more merchant.
Eliad:Within a period of one quarter, that conference will convert about five x
Eliad:around that because every affiliate will try to refer to three potential
Eliad:customers and will close, let's say 30% of what that affiliate brings in.
Eliad:So it's good conversion on that part.
Eliad:So we look at conference, we definitely don't go to any
Upendra:conference.
Upendra:Yeah.
Upendra:So let's try to quantify this.
Upendra:So approximately how many conferences did you attend in the past
Eliad:12 months?
Eliad:In the last 12 months I've been to.
Eliad:And out of them we converted about eight customers from those different
Eliad:conferences or from connection came from those conferences?
Eliad:Yes.
Eliad:Sure.
Upendra:So you can attribute it to that particular conference there.
Upendra:Right.
Upendra:And is it you just going out there and talking on talking there, or is it a, is
Upendra:it your team going out there, you know, having a booth or something like that?
Eliad:So we've been bootstrapping the company for the six, last six years.
Eliad:So it's not like we spent the budget.
Eliad:So up until now it's with me doing the conference.
Eliad:I'm gonna speak in a conference in Romania about banking, so
Eliad:that's gonna have the potential.
Eliad:, the following year, it's in:Eliad:We start sending my COO to some of the conferences, not to speak, but more to
Eliad:mingle, stuff like that because, you know, family obligation and some other work.
Eliad:So I'm trying to take the number of flights that I'm
Upendra:doing and do you have to pay them anything to basically get this
Upendra:opportunity to speak on those conferences?
Eliad:No, it's really the other way around.
Eliad:Sometimes they pay for the hotels, they pay for the
Eliad:flights, depending on the level.
Eliad:There are use cases, that sponsorship comes with the panel, et cetera, which
Eliad:we haven't done that up until now.
Eliad:We have never sponsored the conference.
Eliad:More connections.
Eliad:We spread the world with our networks or get other people to
Eliad:come to the conferences themselves.
Eliad:So the full wood strap
Upendra:approach.
Upendra:Got it.
Upendra:Right.
Upendra:So you mentioned something , you know, affiliate network,
Upendra:bringing in a lot of clients.
Upendra:Right?
Upendra:So, so like, just talk to me about this network that you built over years.
Upendra:How did it all start and what, what sort of incentive do you sort of
Upendra:give your affiliates and how do you sort of, you know, you know, build
Upendra:that network on a regular basis?
Upendra:Let's talk about this affiliate network.
Eliad:Imagine at the end of the day, the affiliates are usually consultants
Eliad:to other startups bringing that, and consultants usually help each
Eliad:other in the process because they know how to consult, let's say 70%
Eliad:of the different topics and the 30%.
Eliad:They use other consultants to help them.
Eliad:And these thing, not by paying them, but just listen, I have a friend.
Eliad:I have a client.
Eliad:I need, I need a favor.
Eliad:Help me at that.
Eliad:So I've always been the guy to help without having asked anything in return.
Eliad:And then when that consultant consults, a company suddenly brings me on to
Eliad:have an advice and a conversation.
Eliad:And then yet, by the way, he's doing a technology that can help you.
Eliad:So building over the years, even the catchers, my last name is
Eliad:support and everybody laughs that supporter will support you.
Eliad:So it's kind of that kind of network of consultant that we sometime call to
Eliad:consult or even refer ourselves to these consultants, client of ours that are
Eliad:looking for advice in certain issues.
Eliad:So you scratch my back as scratchers.
Eliad:Usually when the consultant refers the the client to us, we keep leveraging the
Eliad:relationship with the consultant and keep pushing back and forth with the client
Eliad:together because there's an incentive.
Eliad:The client wants to see that the consultant didn't just
Eliad:throw him at us and just left.
Eliad:See that we do have a relationship with them and it's not
Eliad:like, like a one time thing.
Eliad:Of referral.
Eliad:I think right now the network in terms of our mailing list and the, when we
Eliad:do the events for the affiliates, about 50 plus affiliates working with us in
Eliad:general, some closer in in the area that we talk three times four month
Eliad:times a month, and actually let's say brainstorming advice or brainstorming
Eliad:clients and some once a quarter suddenly come out of nowhere said, listen, I
Eliad:have a lead for you, this and this.
Eliad:Meet them here.
Eliad:And we try, whenever there's big conferences in London,
Eliad:we usually meet all of them.
Eliad:But then auto though, maybe.
Upendra:So how do you incentivize these you know, your affiliate percent?
Eliad:So our commission base is significantly higher in the market.
Eliad:We give 10% off the top.
Eliad:So whatever the client invoice pays us mm-hmm.
Eliad:We give the affiliate 10%.
Eliad:There's full transparency.
Eliad:And the affiliates, it's forever.
Eliad:It's, I porter.
Eliad:It's forever.
Eliad:As long as the, long as the client is paying us, we'll pay the affiliate.
Eliad:Even if the affiliate didn't bring any more leads besides that first one.
Eliad:Mm-hmm.
Eliad:, we'll always pay for.
Eliad:It gives them the motivation.
Eliad:Suddenly seeing an incoming transfer for the commission say, oh, I might have
Eliad:another client for Corian to do something.
Upendra:Got it.
Upendra:All right.
Upendra:Right.
Upendra:So let's, let's move, move forward, right?
Upendra:So I wanna understand your conversion strategy, right?
Upendra:So now you've got, you have your affiliates bringing in a lot of leads.
Upendra:You go to conferences, lot of people discover, you know, they
Upendra:know what your company and product.
Upendra:Right.
Upendra:Now what happens?
Upendra:Talk about the sales cycle.
Upendra:How do you end up convert?
Upendra:Warm lead who just knew about your, who just, you know, got to know about
Upendra:your product to a paying customer.
Upendra:What's the journey look like?
Upendra:How long does it take?
Upendra:What are the manual steps involved in there?
Upendra:Just talk about that process.
Eliad:So we usually, let's say they bridge the, let's say the introduction
Eliad:conversation, already scheduling it for about an hour, and we try to squeeze a
Eliad:teaser of the system during that session.
Eliad:And when we schedule it, we use currently for our scheduling up.
Eliad:And when you schedule through there, we actually get exposed to our
Eliad:YouTube channel, which we launch, I think six or eight months ago, and
Eliad:has kind of these five minute videos across different features of the.
Eliad:By the time that let's say warm lead comes into doing the introduction
Eliad:email, he already grabbed a couple of videos to have a look at.
Eliad:So it kind of triggers his interest.
Eliad:I talk.
Eliad:And then when we explain about the system, what we do, we try to give a
Eliad:teaser for the last couple of minutes.
Eliad:Listen, we can talk the talk, but that he show you for a couple of
Eliad:minutes how we walk the walk, and that always leaves like a warm taste.
Eliad:At the end of the conversation we're trying to finish.
Eliad:It's usually, let's say about 60% of the time we actually end up sending
Eliad:the price proposal and the draft of the agreement at the end of the conversation.
Eliad:The convers
Upendra:just after the first conversation.
Upendra:Right?
Upendra:So you end up sending
Eliad:at the end.
Eliad:At the end of it.
Eliad:At the end, Matt, it's, it's different when you get a cold lead coming,
Eliad:let's say sign up on the website.
Eliad:Yeah.
Eliad:Because for there, you see it's a longer sale.
Eliad:But when it comes from the affiliate, he already brainwashed them about the fact
Eliad:that this is the solution of choice.
Eliad:We know he's looking for a system, otherwise he wouldn't
Eliad:have spent the time coming in.
Eliad:So that's why we prefer to invest, you know, their resources on the
Eliad:team, tutoring, our affiliates on the system, et cetera, rather
Eliad:than throwing money on campaign.
Eliad:The growth is relatively, let's say smaller because we're not spending
Eliad:huge amount of money on marketing getting 50, 60 leads a month.
Eliad:We are getting five, six qualified leads.
Eliad:Then we convert the majority of them in that month or the following month.
Eliad:Got it.
Eliad:So, so you, you've,
Upendra:you've done this first, you had this first conversation.
Upendra:You send them a price proposal and all, like, what happens after that?
Upendra:Let's just say they're willing to sort of go forward.
Upendra:How long does it take for them to sort of start using your product
Upendra:and integrating it with themselves?
Upendra:When, when exactly do they end up paying you that first dollar
Upendra:of revenue after that first?
Eliad:So they pay a set up to begin with in order for us to even start the setup
Eliad:process to show seriousness on their side.
Eliad:Our pricing is on the website and it's very transparent, so they see that it's
Eliad:no surprises, and because of that, we do not give discounts on that part.
Eliad:So it's not like, you know, back and forth, I'll pay
Eliad:you half and sorts of that.
Eliad:But then they, once we got to a point that they sign, the
Eliad:urgency starts on their end.
Eliad:They want to be up and running as soon as possible because it's fully branded,
Eliad:fully ready to go when they start.
Eliad:So they don't need to do a lot of daring besides, you know, pointing
Eliad:DNS records to our, to our service.
Eliad:So we usually take about three.
Eliad:Set them up and everything and fully test the setup and
Eliad:schedule the training session.
Eliad:Now, some of the training session is done by YouTube with all the videos that
Eliad:I've mentioned, which is part training, part marketing, but the rest of it, it's
Eliad:a one-on-one conversation, either with myself or the COO or the training staff.
Eliad:Just because it's as much as the system is fully operational, easy to maintain,
Eliad:sometimes talking with the examples around the functionality helps them to
Eliad:grasp the system much faster, and you see them, let's say onboarded much quicker.
Eliad:The ones are using only YouTube.
Eliad:You see it takes a bit longer to start running, right?
Eliad:The one that doing a full one hour session, start processing within days.
Eliad:So, got it.
Eliad:That's fun to
Upendra:see.
Upendra:So let, let's try to understand about your churn and expansion.
Upendra:A right, I mean, it's, you've been here for five years, right?
Upendra:So how does your churn look like?
Upendra:So how often does the customer sort of stay with you and like, do you have
Upendra:any metrics and how do you measure.
Eliad:In terms of statistics, we do lose a customer or two a year, and
Eliad:the main reason is they decided to shift the the business elsewhere.
Eliad:Not, not elsewhere.
Eliad:Mainly the focus of the business elsewhere.
Eliad:They're not shifting to another technology provider besides, we can name
Eliad:two clients throughout our life cycle that move to another provider from us.
Eliad:Which we understand the reasons, you know, you can get everything right a
Eliad:hundred percent of the time, but the majority of them decided to shift.
Eliad:The business wasn't worthwhile in terms financially then number
Eliad:of merchant number, but it's
Upendra:still two to three customers a year, right?
Upendra:Something like that.
Upendra:If you got around 50.
Upendra:So it's, it's
Eliad:something like that.
Eliad:Because it's easy to onboard, it's easier also down the line saying
Eliad:about, okay, I've done my experiment.
Eliad:I didn't, I don't want to invest more money in the business.
Eliad:I'm flexible enough because we don't tie them to the agreement as much
Eliad:as they're a term in the agreement.
Eliad:I've never penalized someone for asking to leave before ahead of time.
Eliad:It happens that, you know, down the line, we did have customers that left but came
Eliad:back six, seven months, a year after because they wanted another niche with
Eliad:another partner and they took another
Upendra:label.
Upendra:So talk about the expansion strategy here.
Upendra:So, so for example, once you onboard somebody, is there, is there a way for
Upendra:them to, for example, convert a $5,000 ACV customers to sell, let's say $50,000?
Eliad:It's mainly connectivity.
Eliad:So when they start, they have a set in mind on which providers they're
Eliad:gonna work with because they had previous relationship and the previous
Eliad:their clients that they know that they're gonna abor to the platform.
Eliad:But then usually we let them feel comfortable, warm, and fuzzy with
Eliad:the provider they brought in.
Eliad:And then our partnership team starts pushing another provider that we
Eliad:already have in the network and we already integrated and we see
Eliad:that it's working nice with other.
Eliad:Those introduction help them to expand the business.
Eliad:So we encourage them to find other providers, not to put all the eggs
Eliad:in one basket and work with one main provider, but to start allocating
Eliad:resources and distribute the merchants between different providers.
Eliad:That gives them the ability to scale.
Eliad:And when the
Upendra:customer, I'm talking about, I'm talking about them paying you a lot.
Eliad:The second year we, we charge, we charge per transaction, the minimums.
Eliad:It's nice to start with, we want the customer to process as much as possible.
Eliad:The more they process, the more they pay us.
Eliad:All right, so you are the customer stays around.
Upendra:Yeah.
Upendra:Yeah.
Upendra:So you are inclined to grow their business so that you
Upendra:know your deal size goes right.
Upendra:Exactly.
Upendra:And do you also do any feature based.
Eliad:So that's what they talked about in terms of the modules and,
Eliad:and when they expand the business, suddenly they consumer services.
Eliad:The main focus as we see in the product led growth is the fact that we
Eliad:provide paid features that we charge our client once and give him the tool
Eliad:to charge each and every sub client of his on each one of those so they
Eliad:can actually pay us a hundred dollars a month, but sell it for a thousand.
Eliad:5,000 depending on their pricing, and they're fully flexible
Eliad:to do whatever they want.
Eliad:And
Upendra:who exactly in your team does, does this part, right?
Upendra:Is there a customer success team who's regularly interacting with
Upendra:the customer and sort of pushing
Eliad:them for It's, it's the, it's the account managers who are doing, let's say,
Eliad:both support and doing the appell, even the, the size of the team and the way that
Eliad:we operate, because it's still a skeleton team in general, but we've automated a
Eliad:lot of the work processes, so we don.
Eliad:They have a large team at this point.
Eliad:So they do a lot of day to day activity with the client, and then when they see
Eliad:different issues, they suggest some of the paid features and say the cost to the
Eliad:benefit is just, let's say ridiculous.
Eliad:It's $50 and you can make 5,000 on the emergency.
Eliad:So
Upendra:let's talk about this team, right?
Upendra:So how big is your team and how many folks doing what
Eliad:as of today?
Eliad:Yeah, so we currently are 12 people on the.
Eliad:Etc.
Eliad:Six development team and six support and let's say a sales on that 60
Upendra:50.
Upendra:So you mentioned something, right?
Upendra:So you mentioned you, you sort of work with around five or six, you know,
Upendra:qualified leads per month, right?
Upendra:So do you also work with, you know, co-leads in that sense?
Upendra:Right?
Upendra:So do you, do you have any co-leads coming in?
Upendra:Right?
Upendra:So how, how does that, you know, funnel look.
Upendra:So, because I, I'm assuming you need to put in a lot of effort to sort of
Upendra:nurture them and convert them there.
Upendra:The sales cycle could be much longer than it is in, in this case.
Upendra:So, so do you have any personal actually, Dealing with all those cool leads
Upendra:and maybe a or somebody like that?
Upendra:Do, do or do you just ignore them?
Upendra:What, what happens there?
Upendra:Just No.
Eliad:No.
Eliad:God.
Eliad:God forbid, we don't ignore anyone.
Eliad:So we do have the incoming leads that are coming, either from the
Eliad:small campaigns we're doing and the social networks, but not really paid
Eliad:campaigns, but just, you know, organic.
Eliad:So we have a, a girl on the team that handles the partnerships.
Eliad:She handles all the incoming and outreach as well because there are list
Eliad:of registered service providers that we can target that are either using other
Eliad:technical providers or only referral agent for some of the banks we work with.
Eliad:Mm-hmm.
Eliad:So we are right now helping them grow from just being a referral agent themselves
Eliad:to suddenly have technology with us and then helping them grow their business.
Eliad:So we do a lot of outreach
Upendra:for those.
Upendra:But is it just one person doing all of this, you know, handling.
Eliad:She handles everything coming in and then the actual
Eliad:sales still me handling
Upendra:within the team.
Upendra:Right.
Upendra:And how does the conversion look like for this particular funnel where a co lead
Upendra:sort of discovers you and you know, you,
Eliad:so that's obviously the conversion is lower
Eliad:coming from the affiliate, but I think it stands about the 20%, 10 to 20% conversion
Eliad:on the, and the cold leads coming.
Eliad:It takes longer.
Eliad:So if, let's say qualified lead can take up to, let's say two, three
Eliad:weeks to close, let's say call lead might take a month or two to close
Eliad:because it wasn't in their focus.
Eliad:The qualified lead comes, they're already one.
Eliad:We know that they're searching for a solution.
Eliad:That's just finding the right one.
Eliad:And finalizing colleagues might not have even thought about
Eliad:changing a technology provider.
Eliad:And suddenly we come with the idea.
Eliad:So it might take.
Upendra:Got it.
Upendra:So talk about the future here, right?
Upendra:So how I, how so it looks like you are around one or 2 million in, in terms
Upendra:of ar, how exactly are you gonna scale that to, let's say 10 million, right?
Upendra:What exactly is gonna happen from
Eliad:now on?
Eliad:So we're expanding territories and expanding different verticals.
Eliad:So when we started the company to begin with, we were focused on one
Eliad:vertical, which was payment processing.
Eliad:And now when you see embedded finance another, let's say terminology
Eliad:in the business, just doing payment processing isn't enough.
Eliad:So we accommodate as a backend system, payment processing, card issuing for
Eliad:the prepaid cards and closed loop prepaids and, and loyalty cards.
Eliad:And we do the virtual I bands, which is connecting to the banking.
Eliad:Mm-hmm.
Eliad:. So we aggregate a lot of service provider for a banking infrastructure.
Eliad:For car and the payment processing.
Eliad:So we do see the vertical for banking growing significantly
Eliad:in the last 12 months.
Eliad:We do see the processing growing steadily in the same rate that it was before.
Eliad:And then once we expanded these, the different verticals we
Eliad:started expanding territory wise.
Eliad:In terms of the affiliate networks that we've built, we were mainly focused to
Eliad:begin with in the European side of the world, and now we're starting expanding
Eliad:the network in the us which we started getting a lot of more traction there.
Eliad:And specifically within Europe, we're start thinking about going to specific
Eliad:conferences in Pacific Territories when we analyze the competition there.
Eliad:So we have started to find an affiliate that serves as the sales
Eliad:agent in a territory with, let's say, warmer relationship, not just the
Eliad:10%, but 20, which would actually be the brand ambassador per territory.
Eliad:So I, that approach stays the same.
Eliad:If he doesn't convert, we don't pay anything.
Eliad:So it's not like paying a.
Eliad:Such, we'll just give it higher incentive.
Upendra:What exactly do these affiliates do on a regular basis?
Upendra:Are they simple consultants?
Eliad:Usually Some of them are doing affiliation as a business, meaning
Eliad:they refer different types of, let's say, consult different types
Eliad:of clients, but to different types of, let's say service providers.
Eliad:Mm-hmm.
Eliad:, some are very niche, so they either responsible to bring, let's say,
Eliad:processing accounts to different banks or to different merchants,
Eliad:and suddenly someone like us comes along, so it kind of ties things.
Eliad:But a lot of them just doing that as a day to day and make enough money,
Eliad:let's say, from the referrals from previous businesses, you know, to make
Eliad:it month over month and growing and
Upendra:grow.
Upendra:Got it.
Upendra:And one last question.
Upendra:Are you completely bootstrapped as of
Eliad:today?
Eliad:Yes, we have.
Eliad:We had one investor to begin with and then we paid him out about a year ago.
Eliad:That's, that's amazing.
Eliad:We, we went to complete from a small investors, let's say not even a seed, so
Eliad:under the friends and family category way.
Eliad:Then there was an opportunity to give them the interest and everything else
Eliad:and pay them out, which we've done over a year ago, and now we're a hundred
Eliad:percent, let's say, employee owned.
Eliad:All right,
Upendra:so what's the vision here?
Upendra:Are you gonna scale it to, let's say, five or 10 million?
Upendra:And are you gonna sell this company off, or are you gonna,
Upendra:what exactly is the vision here?
Eliad:If, if I'm looking at, say, a potential thing, I don't, there
Eliad:is either being acquired another company or merged into a bigger
Eliad:company to do something bigger.
Eliad:Mm-hmm.
Eliad:, our plan down the line is to get licenses ourself, financial licenses to
Eliad:provide additional services such as, you know, if the technology comes with the
Eliad:license altogether as a package has much more impact than just providing the.
Eliad:And for that you have two approaches.
Eliad:Either get the license, raise money from investors in order to take the
Eliad:license, but getting a license takes about a year worth of work, logistics
Eliad:and everything, and bureaucracy, or to merge with a company that already has
Eliad:the licenses together and to come as a stronger, bigger entity on that part,
Eliad:which we had several discussion over the years, but when the time comes,
Eliad:we'll make the the right decision.
Eliad:All
Upendra:right, Elliot, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.
Upendra:Hope you scale.
Upendra:Thank you.
Upendra:You are co to much, much greater.
Eliad:Thank you, Frank.