How we built an affiliate network to get 50 customers of $20K ACV

Eliad: 00:00:00

if we look at analyze the marketing that we are doing, it's mainly the conference scene being speakers or getting the foot on the ground. We haven't done any booths for that sake. It's more working around the conferences itself and meeting people throughout those networking events, et cetera, which proven itself and really building a stronger relationship with the current affiliates that we have on the network.

Upendra: 00:00:21

hello everyone. Welcome to the B2 V SaaS podcast. Today we have Elliot support us. Elliot here is the founder and CEO of a company called er. Hey, Elliot, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having us. All right, Elliot, so let's get started and let's try to understand what your company and product does and why customers

Eliad: 00:00:38

pay you money. Sure. So we are payments oriented user management platform. What does it mean? We're the backbone of different types of financial institutions coming from payment service provider for card processing, alternative payment methods, all the way to FinTech marketplaces. We're looking to manage their onboarding process, user management, and everything on the financial element like subscription and payments et.

Upendra: 00:01:02

Looks like you mentioned a lot of things here, so I wanna get a sense of, you know so maybe you can help us understand this way. So just pick one customer of yours or maybe a prominent customer of yours and just help me understand how they're using your product. Right? That

Eliad: 00:01:14

could be more easier. Yeah. I'll take a use case that, let's say close to heart. It's a startup FinTech startup called Cosmo. Cosmo provides like a alternative banking for Thai employees coming to work in Israel. They provide them with a prepaid card issued by one of the local issue. It's a Visa card connected to a mobile wallet, which is in essence their banking platform. The employers transfer the salaries into the application. Our platform manages the balances, transfers between users, the full onboarding, kyc, and all of the relationship between the employer and the employee using the app. And Cosmo is a startup, uses us as the backend for their functionality. So they develop a very nice looking application and every backend functionality interfaces for the employers, everything is managed by our. A consolidated backend service to manage everything with payments onboarding,

Upendra: 00:02:04

such so, so let's try to understand a bit about your customers here, right? So how, like, who exactly are you selling this particular product to? Is it financial institutions who are looking for these, you know, payment, you know, payment management systems? Or are these real businesses who are looking for a fancy UI and all of these, you know, systems?

Eliad: 00:02:22

So it's less businesses are we B2B to to B, let's say B2B to C, kind of a operation. We sell to the payment service provider who are selling services to merchants, meaning businesses. And these businesses are using the platform to cater for different customers doing interactions on the platform. So if you look at Cosmo for example, it's a FinTech startup looking to build the next payment service provider for Thai employees. In that, We have some payment service provider in the payments industry. So imagine competitors to Stripe and Square, the kind of smaller provider working with the bigger banks and trying to, let's say, introduce different merchants from different industry, which Stripe might not be accommodating or let's say easy to use in that use case. So our clients are leveraging our technology in order to sell their services onto two businesses.

Upendra: 00:03:09

So can, can you say you're a competitor of Stripe? Can I assume that? Yeah.

Eliad: 00:03:13

So I'm a technology provider for Stripe competitor. So Stripe as a whole provides services to the businesses as a consolidate both license and technology. We provide the technology, our customers bring the license and start selling to the same customers that Stripe are selling to.

Upendra: 00:03:30

Got it. So essentially Stripe can use your backend to power all of their financial, you know, whatever management systems. Right? So essentially you specifically sell to companies like Strip Yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah.

Eliad: 00:03:38

Got it. Specifically Stripe has an amazing system, but Yes. Yeah. So smaller competitors that can start from scratch, building a technology to compete with Stripe. Leverage our

Upendra: 00:03:46

technology. Yes. Got it. So that, that's, that's that looks pretty interesting. So let's try to understand, you know, your customers, your revenues of today, right? So approximately how many customers, how many paying customers you have on your platforms.

Eliad: 00:03:58

Fantastic. So we started in about mid 2016. Currently have about 50 enterprise level customers. They all pay us a setup fee to start and set them up with what's called the white label, which gives them a branded look and feel of our backend system, dedicated databases in terms of segregation of the data between user to user. And then after that, they pay us a monthly minimum and transaction fee. The monthly minimum can rage for the startups at around $500 a month, which is certain amount of transactions. When you have the payment service provider can pay, it's up to $2,000 a month with the minimum. And we charge extra for different modules and functionality such as car issuing, iPads and so on, which are addons to the plans. So we don't have free customers, we don't have a free plan. Got it. We only have paying customers to begin with.

Upendra: 00:04:45

Right. So I wanna understand how big these deals are. Right? How big your customers, how. Your customer typically pays you on an average. So what's that range looks like? Is it $10,000? Is it a hundred thousand dollars? Is it a million bucks? How does that in terms of lifetime?

Eliad: 00:04:59

It's different between the lifetime value and let's say specifically

Upendra: 00:05:02

I'm talking about acv, right? Something that they pay you on an annual basis approximately.

Eliad: 00:05:07

So it's around, it's an average customer. They will pay about $20,000 a year.

Upendra: 00:05:11

So we were you, you know, 12 months before today, how many customers did you have? And 12

Eliad: 00:05:16

months before Today we were about 35 paying customers. Got

Upendra: 00:05:19

it. So you, you, you are growing at, around, you know, it's approximately 20, 30% year on you, something like that. Yeah. Got it. All right. Yes, sir. So, yeah, so let's, let's go back to, you know, your zero to one journey, right? I wanna understand, right. So how, how did, how did you, how did it all started? I mean, where did you get your first five customers from? Just talk about

Eliad: 00:05:35

that story. So my backstory, I was, I started in payments in around 2011, so I already built the name was doing conferencing as speaker panelist, et cetera, with for companies. I either was the COO of, or consulting to different FinTech startups in the us, South Africa, in here in Israel. Then there, there was an opportunity to pivot from being an operator of a payment service provider to become a provider to other service provider with the technology we built. And that way we kind of shifted. So when we got the word out that we are ready to go and we have a technology to compete and to facilitate it came with the combination of the services we knew how to bring as consultants. And on the other hand, giving a technology that came from not as a developers building a system, but whether as operators, building a. To serve other platforms in the process. So, so, so,

Upendra: 00:06:25

so you hired a consultancy company before that, is that what you're

Eliad: 00:06:28

saying? No, I, I was the. I was doing the consultancy and then when I shifted gears from being a consultant to a service provider, people leveraged from getting both technology and advice in one package when we started the company.

Upendra: 00:06:41

Got it. All right, so, so I wanna sort of deep dive and understand how you exactly got these customers. I know you, you've been in that space, so you must have. You know, had, you must have those warm leads out there, right? You must, a lot of people must have known you. Right? But talk about that journey. How did you manage to convince them to use your platform? How difficult it was? Like how did it all span out during those first, you know, first five customers?

Eliad: 00:07:00

So if you look at the first lead that came in, so at the beginning it was, and up until now, if you search us online, you wouldn't find marketing campaigns. You mainly find, let's say we are growing, but it's more word of mouth. We've been a very wide and extensive affiliate. Other payment consultant that got to know the system and we pay very handsome referral fee for everyone I paying customer to us and giving the fact all customers are paying, it's easier in terms of conversion. Mm-hmm. And I think when we show, it's a combination between the product itself and our understanding of the market and the fact that if we are the one providing the service, you get the personal attention and to start. I started the company myself with the freelance developer working part-time, but with already a working system. So the fact that they got the, you know, face to face treatment from the CEO of the company, even though there wasn't many people behind me, gave them the extra attention they needed. Mm-hmm. And then one client brought another one of them, went to a conference, talked about his system, showed a bit, someone else called us and kind of grew from. And I think very quickly about, about, I think three months, we already were five paid customers we had from Malta, from Hong Kong, and from the US. Two customers, imagine complete different territories just happened to meet each other in a conference and all referred one to another. Got it.

Upendra: 00:08:17

And, and now let's, let's come back, right? Let's come back to today. Right? So you mentioned you've got, you've gained around 15 customers in the past one year. And so where are these customers coming from in terms of, you know, top of an Allegion, where exactly are, how exactly are they discovering you and have you been doing any marketing or something like that? So what exactly is working for you?

Eliad: 00:08:35

In terms, if we look at analyze the marketing that we are doing, it's mainly the conference scene being speakers or getting the foot on the ground. We haven't done any booths for that sake. It's more working around the conferences itself and meeting people throughout those networking events, et cetera, which proven itself and really building a stronger relationship with the current affiliates that we have on the network. It's a lot of the leads that we got throughout the years came from the actual service providers. We integrated two because as a provider, technology provider for our customers, we integrate to a lot of third parties. We aggregate a lot of connectivity, and these providers usually don't want to have a lot of platforms connect to them. So once they have a platform of choice or someone they can trust in terms of the integration they refer to that you want to integrate to us, use this and this platform in order to do so, and that's, that's proven. What we can see in the last year that the type of customer, in terms of customer profile has grown. We now have two NA listed companies as clients. We have some unicorns that are using our platform, which we've never thought at the beginning the would that we get that type of exposure. Mm-hmm. but it all came from, you know, An acquaintance during a conference came from there, and then one thing led to another. Surprisingly enough, you would say, okay, if you're doing it from conferences, how did covid, let's say the period of time when we were actually working from home, baking cookies with the kids, but that actually got a lot of people talking behind the scenes and people that you used to meet in conferences suddenly hitting you up on LinkedIn and what's going on. And then kind of encouraging more work because everybody was looking for workarounds. Mm-hmm. in terms of how to build their business. Right. So that's kind of prove it. So

Upendra: 00:10:11

you've mainly mentioned three things, right? You talked about your affiliate network, you talked about, you know, existing customers and service providers, you know, referring you and you talked about, you know, you doing conferencing and you know, doing that networking, right? Let's speak for example, conferencing, right? I mean, I just wanna pick your brain and understand how exactly do you view this channel list? I mean, how exactly do you calculate your roi? Do you go to every conference and how exactly do you say, Hey, it worked for me here, right? Because it's pretty hard to put a number on it, right? So, okay. I went to this conference, I ended up converting 10 leads. Now I got to customers. Is it that simple or what exactly is your strategy here with respect to going to conferences?

Eliad: 00:10:44

I think we analyze the, the, let's say the traffic that's come to the conference and what kind of channels do you have to meet there? So if a conference is mainly I think for example, only lectures, that's not the type of cu then conference that we'll push to go to. Yes. If being at that conference gets us a speaking engagement, fantastic. Because you can leverage the video coming from that, from that conference. And let's try proven yourself. Let's say an expert in the field that that kind of brings traffic on its own, the YouTube videos, and then doing the social work, you know, couple of LinkedIn campaigns, et cetera. But if you look at the, let's say, more aware, the type of service provider working with the target audience are because the meaning theirs, meaning merchants, et cetera. When we go there and mingling between the service provider, they're paying for the boots. And you'll be surprised at how many of them are looking for other technology in order to incorporate in it. So the bigger the conference and the bigger the audience coming in, they'll hire the potential to meet potential affiliates or potential clients in it. And the fact that in roi, and in my count, if I go to a conference and I close one paying customer, that's fantastic because I've covered the expense of the truck. But if I came back with about five new affiliates that can bring more merchant. Within a period of one quarter, that conference will convert about five x around that because every affiliate will try to refer to three potential customers and will close, let's say 30% of what that affiliate brings in. So it's good conversion on that part. So we look at conference, we definitely don't go to any

Upendra: 00:12:11

conference. Yeah. So let's try to quantify this. So approximately how many conferences did you attend in the past

Eliad: 00:12:16

12 months? In the last 12 months I've been to. And out of them we converted about eight customers from those different conferences or from connection came from those conferences? Yes. Sure.

Upendra: 00:12:27

So you can attribute it to that particular conference there. Right. And is it you just going out there and talking on talking there, or is it a, is it your team going out there, you know, having a booth or something like that?

Eliad: 00:12:38

So we've been bootstrapping the company for the six, last six years. So it's not like we spent the budget. So up until now it's with me doing the conference. I'm gonna speak in a conference in Romania about banking, so that's gonna have the potential. But let's say we are starting right now, the following year, it's in 2023. We start sending my COO to some of the conferences, not to speak, but more to mingle, stuff like that because, you know, family obligation and some other work. So I'm trying to take the number of flights that I'm

Upendra: 00:13:04

doing and do you have to pay them anything to basically get this opportunity to speak on those conferences?

Eliad: 00:13:09

No, it's really the other way around. Sometimes they pay for the hotels, they pay for the flights, depending on the level. There are use cases, that sponsorship comes with the panel, et cetera, which we haven't done that up until now. We have never sponsored the conference. More connections. We spread the world with our networks or get other people to come to the conferences themselves. So the full wood strap

Upendra: 00:13:30

approach. Got it. Right. So you mentioned something you know, affiliate network, bringing in a lot of clients. Right? So, so like, just talk to me about this network that you built over years. How did it all start and what, what sort of incentive do you sort of give your affiliates and how do you sort of, you know, you know, build that network on a regular basis? Let's talk about this affiliate network.

Eliad: 00:13:49

Imagine at the end of the day, the affiliates are usually consultants to other startups bringing that, and consultants usually help each other in the process because they know how to consult, let's say 70% of the different topics and the 30%. They use other consultants to help them. And these thing, not by paying them, but just listen, I have a friend. I have a client. I need, I need a favor. Help me at that. So I've always been the guy to help without having asked anything in return. And then when that consultant consults, a company suddenly brings me on to have an advice and a conversation. And then yet, by the way, he's doing a technology that can help you. So building over the years, even the catchers, my last name is support and everybody laughs that supporter will support you. So it's kind of that kind of network of consultant that we sometime call to consult or even refer ourselves to these consultants, client of ours that are looking for advice in certain issues. So you scratch my back as scratchers. Usually when the consultant refers the the client to us, we keep leveraging the relationship with the consultant and keep pushing back and forth with the client together because there's an incentive. The client wants to see that the consultant didn't just throw him at us and just left. See that we do have a relationship with them and it's not like, like a one time thing. Of referral. I think right now the network in terms of our mailing list and the, when we do the events for the affiliates, about 50 plus affiliates working with us in general, some closer in in the area that we talk three times four month times a month, and actually let's say brainstorming advice or brainstorming clients and some once a quarter suddenly come out of nowhere said, listen, I have a lead for you, this and this. Meet them here. And we try, whenever there's big conferences in London, we usually meet all of them. But then auto though, maybe.

Upendra: 00:15:34

So how do you incentivize these you know, your affiliate percent?

Eliad: 00:15:38

So our commission base is significantly higher in the market. We give 10% off the top. So whatever the client invoice pays us mm-hmm. We give the affiliate 10%. There's full transparency. And the affiliates, it's forever. It's, I porter. It's forever. As long as the, long as the client is paying us, we'll pay the affiliate. Even if the affiliate didn't bring any more leads besides that first one. Mm-hmm. we'll always pay for. It gives them the motivation. Suddenly seeing an incoming transfer for the commission say, oh, I might have another client for Corian to do something.

Upendra: 00:16:07

Got it. All right. Right. So let's, let's move, move forward, right? So I wanna understand your conversion strategy, right? So now you've got, you have your affiliates bringing in a lot of leads. You go to conferences, lot of people discover, you know, they know what your company and product. Right. Now what happens? Talk about the sales cycle. How do you end up convert? Warm lead who just knew about your, who just, you know, got to know about your product to a paying customer. What's the journey look like? How long does it take? What are the manual steps involved in there? Just talk about that process.

Eliad: 00:16:33

So we usually, let's say they bridge the, let's say the introduction conversation, already scheduling it for about an hour, and we try to squeeze a teaser of the system during that session. And when we schedule it, we use currently for our scheduling up. And when you schedule through there, we actually get exposed to our YouTube channel, which we launch, I think six or eight months ago, and has kind of these five minute videos across different features of the. By the time that let's say warm lead comes into doing the introduction email, he already grabbed a couple of videos to have a look at. So it kind of triggers his interest. I talk. And then when we explain about the system, what we do, we try to give a teaser for the last couple of minutes. Listen, we can talk the talk, but that he show you for a couple of minutes how we walk the walk, and that always leaves like a warm taste. At the end of the conversation we're trying to finish. It's usually, let's say about 60% of the time we actually end up sending the price proposal and the draft of the agreement at the end of the conversation. The convers

Upendra: 00:17:30

just after the first conversation. Right? So you end up sending

Eliad: 00:17:32

at the end. At the end of it. At the end, Matt, it's, it's different when you get a cold lead coming, let's say sign up on the website. Yeah. Because for there, you see it's a longer sale. But when it comes from the affiliate, he already brainwashed them about the fact that this is the solution of choice. We know he's looking for a system, otherwise he wouldn't have spent the time coming in. So that's why we prefer to invest, you know, their resources on the team, tutoring, our affiliates on the system, et cetera, rather than throwing money on campaign. The growth is relatively, let's say smaller because we're not spending huge amount of money on marketing getting 50, 60 leads a month. We are getting five, six qualified leads. Then we convert the majority of them in that month or the following month. Got it. So, so you, you've,

Upendra: 00:18:14

you've done this first, you had this first conversation. You send them a price proposal and all, like, what happens after that? Let's just say they're willing to sort of go forward. How long does it take for them to sort of start using your product and integrating it with themselves? When, when exactly do they end up paying you that first dollar of revenue after that first?

Eliad: 00:18:29

So they pay a set up to begin with in order for us to even start the setup process to show seriousness on their side. Our pricing is on the website and it's very transparent, so they see that it's no surprises, and because of that, we do not give discounts on that part. So it's not like, you know, back and forth, I'll pay you half and sorts of that. But then they, once we got to a point that they sign, the urgency starts on their end. They want to be up and running as soon as possible because it's fully branded, fully ready to go when they start. So they don't need to do a lot of daring besides, you know, pointing DNS records to our, to our service. So we usually take about three. Set them up and everything and fully test the setup and schedule the training session. Now, some of the training session is done by YouTube with all the videos that I've mentioned, which is part training, part marketing, but the rest of it, it's a one-on-one conversation, either with myself or the COO or the training staff. Just because it's as much as the system is fully operational, easy to maintain, sometimes talking with the examples around the functionality helps them to grasp the system much faster, and you see them, let's say onboarded much quicker. The ones are using only YouTube. You see it takes a bit longer to start running, right? The one that doing a full one hour session, start processing within days. So, got it. That's fun to

Upendra: 00:19:41

see. So let, let's try to understand about your churn and expansion. A right, I mean, it's, you've been here for five years, right? So how does your churn look like? So how often does the customer sort of stay with you and like, do you have any metrics and how do you measure.

Eliad: 00:19:53

In terms of statistics, we do lose a customer or two a year, and the main reason is they decided to shift the the business elsewhere. Not, not elsewhere. Mainly the focus of the business elsewhere. They're not shifting to another technology provider besides, we can name two clients throughout our life cycle that move to another provider from us. Which we understand the reasons, you know, you can get everything right a hundred percent of the time, but the majority of them decided to shift. The business wasn't worthwhile in terms financially then number of merchant number, but it's

Upendra: 00:20:22

still two to three customers a year, right? Something like that. If you got around 50. So it's, it's

Eliad: 00:20:28

something like that. Because it's easy to onboard, it's easier also down the line saying about, okay, I've done my experiment. I didn't, I don't want to invest more money in the business. I'm flexible enough because we don't tie them to the agreement as much as they're a term in the agreement. I've never penalized someone for asking to leave before ahead of time. It happens that, you know, down the line, we did have customers that left but came back six, seven months, a year after because they wanted another niche with another partner and they took another

Upendra: 00:20:55

label. So talk about the expansion strategy here. So, so for example, once you onboard somebody, is there, is there a way for them to, for example, convert a $5,000 ACV customers to sell, let's say $50,000?

Eliad: 00:21:07

It's mainly connectivity. So when they start, they have a set in mind on which providers they're gonna work with because they had previous relationship and the previous their clients that they know that they're gonna abor to the platform. But then usually we let them feel comfortable, warm, and fuzzy with the provider they brought in. And then our partnership team starts pushing another provider that we already have in the network and we already integrated and we see that it's working nice with other. Those introduction help them to expand the business. So we encourage them to find other providers, not to put all the eggs in one basket and work with one main provider, but to start allocating resources and distribute the merchants between different providers. That gives them the ability to scale. And when the

Upendra: 00:21:44

customer, I'm talking about, I'm talking about them paying you a lot.

Eliad: 00:21:48

The second year we, we charge, we charge per transaction, the minimums. It's nice to start with, we want the customer to process as much as possible. The more they process, the more they pay us. All right, so you are the customer stays around.

Upendra: 00:21:59

Yeah. Yeah. So you are inclined to grow their business so that you know your deal size goes right. Exactly. And do you also do any feature based.

Eliad: 00:22:07

So that's what they talked about in terms of the modules and, and when they expand the business, suddenly they consumer services. The main focus as we see in the product led growth is the fact that we provide paid features that we charge our client once and give him the tool to charge each and every sub client of his on each one of those so they can actually pay us a hundred dollars a month, but sell it for a thousand. 5,000 depending on their pricing, and they're fully flexible to do whatever they want. And

Upendra: 00:22:31

who exactly in your team does, does this part, right? Is there a customer success team who's regularly interacting with the customer and sort of pushing

Eliad: 00:22:37

them for It's, it's the, it's the account managers who are doing, let's say, both support and doing the appell, even the, the size of the team and the way that we operate, because it's still a skeleton team in general, but we've automated a lot of the work processes, so we don. They have a large team at this point. So they do a lot of day to day activity with the client, and then when they see different issues, they suggest some of the paid features and say the cost to the benefit is just, let's say ridiculous. It's $50 and you can make 5,000 on the emergency. So

Upendra: 00:23:05

let's talk about this team, right? So how big is your team and how many folks doing what

Eliad: 00:23:08

as of today? Yeah, so we currently are 12 people on the. Etc. Six development team and six support and let's say a sales on that 60

Upendra: 00:23:18

50. So you mentioned something, right? So you mentioned you, you sort of work with around five or six, you know, qualified leads per month, right? So do you also work with, you know, co-leads in that sense? Right? So do you, do you have any co-leads coming in? Right? So how, how does that, you know, funnel look. So, because I, I'm assuming you need to put in a lot of effort to sort of nurture them and convert them there. The sales cycle could be much longer than it is in, in this case. So, so do you have any personal actually, Dealing with all those cool leads and maybe a or somebody like that? Do, do or do you just ignore them? What, what happens there? Just No.

Eliad: 00:23:50

No. God. God forbid, we don't ignore anyone. So we do have the incoming leads that are coming, either from the small campaigns we're doing and the social networks, but not really paid campaigns, but just, you know, organic. So we have a, a girl on the team that handles the partnerships. She handles all the incoming and outreach as well because there are list of registered service providers that we can target that are either using other technical providers or only referral agent for some of the banks we work with. Mm-hmm. So we are right now helping them grow from just being a referral agent themselves to suddenly have technology with us and then helping them grow their business. So we do a lot of outreach

Upendra: 00:24:26

for those. But is it just one person doing all of this, you know, handling.

Eliad: 00:24:30

She handles everything coming in and then the actual sales still me handling

Upendra: 00:24:33

within the team. Right. And how does the conversion look like for this particular funnel where a co lead sort of discovers you and you know, you,

Eliad: 00:24:39

so that's obviously the conversion is lower coming from the affiliate, but I think it stands about the 20%, 10 to 20% conversion on the, and the cold leads coming. It takes longer. So if, let's say qualified lead can take up to, let's say two, three weeks to close, let's say call lead might take a month or two to close because it wasn't in their focus. The qualified lead comes, they're already one. We know that they're searching for a solution. That's just finding the right one. And finalizing colleagues might not have even thought about changing a technology provider. And suddenly we come with the idea. So it might take.

Upendra: 00:25:12

Got it. So talk about the future here, right? So how I, how so it looks like you are around one or 2 million in, in terms of ar, how exactly are you gonna scale that to, let's say 10 million, right? What exactly is gonna happen from

Eliad: 00:25:23

now on? So we're expanding territories and expanding different verticals. So when we started the company to begin with, we were focused on one vertical, which was payment processing. And now when you see embedded finance another, let's say terminology in the business, just doing payment processing isn't enough. So we accommodate as a backend system, payment processing, card issuing for the prepaid cards and closed loop prepaids and, and loyalty cards. And we do the virtual I bands, which is connecting to the banking. Mm-hmm. So we aggregate a lot of service provider for a banking infrastructure. For car and the payment processing. So we do see the vertical for banking growing significantly in the last 12 months. We do see the processing growing steadily in the same rate that it was before. And then once we expanded these, the different verticals we started expanding territory wise. In terms of the affiliate networks that we've built, we were mainly focused to begin with in the European side of the world, and now we're starting expanding the network in the us which we started getting a lot of more traction there. And specifically within Europe, we're start thinking about going to specific conferences in Pacific Territories when we analyze the competition there. So we have started to find an affiliate that serves as the sales agent in a territory with, let's say, warmer relationship, not just the 10%, but 20, which would actually be the brand ambassador per territory. So I, that approach stays the same. If he doesn't convert, we don't pay anything. So it's not like paying a. Such, we'll just give it higher incentive.

Upendra: 00:26:45

What exactly do these affiliates do on a regular basis? Are they simple consultants?

Eliad: 00:26:50

Usually Some of them are doing affiliation as a business, meaning they refer different types of, let's say, consult different types of clients, but to different types of, let's say service providers. Mm-hmm. some are very niche, so they either responsible to bring, let's say, processing accounts to different banks or to different merchants, and suddenly someone like us comes along, so it kind of ties things. But a lot of them just doing that as a day to day and make enough money, let's say, from the referrals from previous businesses, you know, to make it month over month and growing and

Upendra: 00:27:18

grow. Got it. And one last question. Are you completely bootstrapped as of

Eliad: 00:27:21

today? Yes, we have. We had one investor to begin with and then we paid him out about a year ago. That's, that's amazing. We, we went to complete from a small investors, let's say not even a seed, so under the friends and family category way. Then there was an opportunity to give them the interest and everything else and pay them out, which we've done over a year ago, and now we're a hundred percent, let's say, employee owned. All right,

Upendra: 00:27:45

so what's the vision here? Are you gonna scale it to, let's say, five or 10 million? And are you gonna sell this company off, or are you gonna, what exactly is the vision here?

Eliad: 00:27:52

If, if I'm looking at, say, a potential thing, I don't, there is either being acquired another company or merged into a bigger company to do something bigger. Mm-hmm. our plan down the line is to get licenses ourself, financial licenses to provide additional services such as, you know, if the technology comes with the license altogether as a package has much more impact than just providing the. And for that you have two approaches. Either get the license, raise money from investors in order to take the license, but getting a license takes about a year worth of work, logistics and everything, and bureaucracy, or to merge with a company that already has the licenses together and to come as a stronger, bigger entity on that part, which we had several discussion over the years, but when the time comes, we'll make the the right decision. All

Upendra: 00:28:36

right, Elliot, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Hope you scale. Thank you. You are co to much, much greater.

Eliad: 00:28:42

Thank you, Frank. I appreciate it.