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Why it’s tricky to grow our B2B services agency.
Episode 3220th March 2023 • B2B SaaS Podcast • Upendra Varma
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Francisco Navarro, CEO of LunarByte talks about how they have grown their B2B services firm close to 7 figure revenue. We talk about their 0 to 1 journey & difficulties in scaling a B2B agency. This episode is a bit special as I talk to a B2B Services founder here to compare & contrast how running & growing a services business varies when compared to a B2B SaaS company.

  • How LunarByte works with B2B companies helping them build their software
  • How they price their software services
  • How “word-of-mouth”, “review sites” etc. act as a top of funnel
  • How does he handle the predictability of scaling developer resources & why it’s tricky to grow fast
  • What’s their plan wrt hiring engineers offshore & Do their B2B clients impose any restrictions

Transcripts

Upendra Varma:

when you say you end up converting one or two

Upendra Varma:

customers on, on a monthly basis.

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

, right?

Upendra Varma:

So how do you allocate resourcing?

Upendra Varma:

I mean, how does that all work for you?

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

Because it's, there is no predictability here, right?

Upendra Varma:

So it's not like you've got a software to sell.

Upendra Varma:

I mean, you actually have.

Upendra Varma:

, a bunch of resources, right?

Upendra Varma:

So how do you make that decision, Hey, I'm gonna work with you now

Upendra Varma:

based on the resourcing I have.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

So that makes it pretty challenging.

Francisco Navarro:

That's one of the biggest challenges that we're trying to solve.

Francisco Navarro:

And, uh, growing, uh, you know, some of the growing pains that you

Francisco Navarro:

see, uh, because it's linear, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Like you have a new client, you need to hire a new developer, you

Francisco Navarro:

see a new client, new developer, and so you really have to stagger

Francisco Navarro:

your projects and say, we don't have the bandwidth to start tomorrow.

Francisco Navarro:

We have some of those clients that come in and say like, , we need you guys.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, please work on our project.

Upendra Varma:

Hello everyone.

Upendra Varma:

Welcome to the B2B SaaS podcast.

Upendra Varma:

Today we have Francisco Navarro with US Francisco here is the

Upendra Varma:

CEO, e o of a company called Luna.

Upendra Varma:

Hey, Francisco, welcome to the show.

Francisco Navarro:

Hey, Pendra.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, nice to meet you and thank you for having me on your show.

Francisco Navarro:

Exciting.

Upendra Varma:

Absolutely.

Upendra Varma:

So, Francisco, let's try to understand, right, so what, what your company

Upendra Varma:

does and how you end up making money.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah, for sure.

Francisco Navarro:

So we are a software development studio or agency based out of Seattle, Washington.

Francisco Navarro:

And, uh, in short we work with, uh, B2B companies or B2C companies that

Francisco Navarro:

don't have technology expertise.

Francisco Navarro:

So they come to us for, uh, their software engineering needs.

Francisco Navarro:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

So, so help me understand, how many sort of clients are you

Upendra Varma:

working with at, at this point of.

Francisco Navarro:

That's a good question.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, so I think we do a good job of retaining our clients, and so that means

Francisco Navarro:

that we always have ongoing projects.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, I would say at the moment we have maybe like six, seven

Francisco Navarro:

different projects in flights.

Francisco Navarro:

Yep.

Upendra Varma:

Across how many customers?

Upendra Varma:

Is,

Francisco Navarro:

is that, uh, six or seven different?

Francisco Navarro:

Uh oh, uh, that's a good question.

Francisco Navarro:

I would say at one project per customer at the moment, . Got it.

Francisco Navarro:

So like six for seven.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

So, so give us a sense of how these projects look like.

Upendra Varma:

What does the scope of this project look like and how do you engage

Upendra Varma:

with your customer on a typical.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah, for sure.

Francisco Navarro:

So part of the exciting thing of working in a, on a studio is that you have a

Francisco Navarro:

variety of different projects, right?

Francisco Navarro:

So like right now we're working with a customer on the auto automotive,

Francisco Navarro:

uh, auto, automotive industry.

Francisco Navarro:

We're working with a client on the, uh, aviation industry.

Francisco Navarro:

. Uh, we have a, a marketing agency that we have built some tools for.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, it's a really, really wide, uh, range of projects and overall, uh, they see

Francisco Navarro:

us as their software engineering team.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, they come to us for, you know, uh, full stack web applications.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, they come to us for mobile applications.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, so it can be quite exciting to you, you know, have different,

Francisco Navarro:

different projects going.

Francisco Navarro:

at the same time.

Francisco Navarro:

It can be a challenge just because of different technologies, different

Francisco Navarro:

business needs, uh, but I think we've done a good job of coping and

Francisco Navarro:

helping and learning with our clients.

Francisco Navarro:

Alright,

Upendra Varma:

so before understanding, you know, how

Upendra Varma:

you end up sort of, you know, converting them to a customer, right?

Upendra Varma:

Or a client, right?

Upendra Varma:

I wanna understand how you sort of price your, you know, consultancy

Upendra Varma:

business or whatever services that you provide us of today.

Upendra Varma:

So what happens?

Upendra Varma:

How exactly does that work?

Upendra Varma:

So can you just walk me through that process?

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah, for sure.

Francisco Navarro:

So part of it is always having a good website, having some tease and seo, right?

Francisco Navarro:

, I'm sure everyone else says that.

Francisco Navarro:

Um, so we did an okay job early on, and to be quite honest, uh,

Francisco Navarro:

one thing that really matters is like, uh, you know, word of mouth.

Francisco Navarro:

So what are people saying about you?

Francisco Navarro:

And anything that they say positively, hopefully any positive things, you

Francisco Navarro:

put it on your website, you put it on, uh, you know, uh, review websites

Francisco Navarro:

like Clutch, do co, et cetera.

Francisco Navarro:

Um, all those things matter.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, any review websites really matter.

Francisco Navarro:

So, , get 'em out there, make sure that people have good reviews

Francisco Navarro:

and all that traffic drives back, goes back to your site eventually.

Francisco Navarro:

So that's kind of the top of the funnel, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Um, a lot of, uh, uh, free consultations come from there.

Francisco Navarro:

Mm-hmm.

Francisco Navarro:

uh, just here's our project.

Francisco Navarro:

Here are the needs that we have, our business requirements here.

Francisco Navarro:

Here's who we are as a company.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, and usually we have a pretty good portfolio now that we can demonstrate

Francisco Navarro:

like, , here's how we can help you with your project based on our

Francisco Navarro:

experience and expertise that we have.

Francisco Navarro:

Um, and so I, I think we do a good job once we get over the

Upendra Varma:

question, so, right.

Upendra Varma:

So, I mean, so I wanna sort of, I want you to quantify this part, right?

Upendra Varma:

So like, on an average, how many, you know, inbound interests do

Upendra Varma:

you see, say, super per month?

Upendra Varma:

How does that number

Francisco Navarro:

look like?

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah, good question.

Francisco Navarro:

Um, you can see anything between like, you know, five to 10 potential,

Francisco Navarro:

uh, uh, leads that come in mm-hmm.

Francisco Navarro:

And so that's just a free consultation.

Francisco Navarro:

Right.

Francisco Navarro:

Or, or an email.

Francisco Navarro:

And some of those are going to go cold once you email them back, once you

Francisco Navarro:

try to set up a free consultation.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, and, and some of them will definitely get, uh, back, get back to you or jump on

Francisco Navarro:

a phone call and try to do a consultation.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, and, uh, part of that process is.

Francisco Navarro:

do they think you're a good fit?

Francisco Navarro:

Do their needs align with what you have to offer right now?

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, so we lose some of those, a couple of those two like things like, well,

Francisco Navarro:

we wanted to hire an agency, but now we wanna build our own internal team instead.

Francisco Navarro:

So, you know, those are difficult.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, it is still a loss, but, um, how can you compete with someone saying like, we

Francisco Navarro:

actually wanna build our team instead.

Francisco Navarro:

Right.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, but overall, we, we close probably, you know, I would say like, uh,

Francisco Navarro:

10%, five to 10% of the leads that.

Francisco Navarro:

So, so

Upendra Varma:

essentially you're saying that you get one or two

Upendra Varma:

new lead every month or so, right?

Upendra Varma:

Something on that range.

Upendra Varma:

. Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

. So, so I wanna understand, right?

Upendra Varma:

I mean, if you're seeing such, such amazing interest, right?

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

, how do you end when you say you end up converting one or two

Upendra Varma:

customers on, on a monthly basis.

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

, right?

Upendra Varma:

So how do you allocate resourcing?

Upendra Varma:

I mean, how does that all work for you?

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

Because it's, there is no predictability here, right?

Upendra Varma:

So it's not like you've got a software to sell.

Upendra Varma:

I mean, you actually have.

Upendra Varma:

A lot, a bunch of resources, services, right?

Upendra Varma:

So how do you make that decision, Hey, I'm gonna work with you now

Upendra Varma:

based on the resourcing I have.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

So that makes it pretty challenging.

Francisco Navarro:

That's one of the biggest challenges that we're trying to solve.

Francisco Navarro:

And, uh, growing, uh, you know, some of the growing pains that you

Francisco Navarro:

see, uh, because it's linear, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Like you have a new client, you need to hire a new developer, you

Francisco Navarro:

see a new client, new developer, and so you really have to stagger

Francisco Navarro:

your projects and say, we don't have the bandwidth to start tomorrow.

Francisco Navarro:

We have some of those clients that come in and say like, , we need you guys.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, please work on our project.

Francisco Navarro:

And it's funny cuz sometimes that takes like three months.

Francisco Navarro:

Like we had a, a potential project that we sent a proposal for three months

Francisco Navarro:

ago and they came back and they said like, we wanna start like next week.

Francisco Navarro:

Mm-hmm.

Francisco Navarro:

. And the answer is like, well , we can't.

Francisco Navarro:

Right?

Francisco Navarro:

Like we have to.

Francisco Navarro:

Stagger right now.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, it would've been great if you said yes three months ago, but

Francisco Navarro:

that's not how business works, right?

Francisco Navarro:

That's not how the p2p, uh, B2B space works.

Francisco Navarro:

So, um, we try our best to stagger the projects to hire a new developer.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, and it's part of the challenge.

Francisco Navarro:

We're still trying to solve that right now.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

So, so you mentioned you, you have around six to seven projects as of today, right?

Upendra Varma:

So mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

, when did you get that first project or first customer?

Upendra Varma:

Oh

Francisco Navarro:

boy.

Francisco Navarro:

So as every, you know, founder tells you, you kind of get whatever you can out

Francisco Navarro:

there when you first start your company.

Francisco Navarro:

So, uh, me and my co-founder used to be a software developers

Francisco Navarro:

in Seattle for tech startups.

Francisco Navarro:

That's her background.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, and he also worked at Starbucks and other tech companies actually in the area.

Francisco Navarro:

Um, so, you know, we started our company and we just went

Francisco Navarro:

out to some local meetup groups.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, talked to some businesses like local business meetups, uh, and there was

Francisco Navarro:

a guy that, uh, a uh, home inspection local company that needed a new website.

Francisco Navarro:

And so, no, uh, some new integrations, uh, with APIs.

Francisco Navarro:

And so we built it and it was a WordPress website.

Francisco Navarro:

You know, like every other good business out there, you start with WordPress . Yep.

Francisco Navarro:

And when.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, that was in late 2019, we started right before the pandemic.

Upendra Varma:

Yep.

Upendra Varma:

So it's, it's been around three months of, uh, three years, right?

Upendra Varma:

Yep.

Upendra Varma:

Three years.

Upendra Varma:

Yep.

Upendra Varma:

Three years in business.

Upendra Varma:

And what about the second customer?

Upendra Varma:

I just want you to put your customers on the timeline for me.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah, the second customer came in probably, uh, a

Francisco Navarro:

month, two months after the first one.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, and that's just how it goes, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Like the first few customers are really hard to get.

Francisco Navarro:

It takes time.

Francisco Navarro:

You don't have a portfolio, you don't have a history.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, so that's one of the biggest challenges for founders, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Like, how do you show up presence?

Francisco Navarro:

How do you show that you, uh, have a portfolio, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, but yeah, it took some

Upendra Varma:

time.

Upendra Varma:

So, so you mentioned you got around six active, you know,

Upendra Varma:

clients as of today, right?

Upendra Varma:

So mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

. So can you just, uh, sort of help me understand what

Upendra Varma:

was that top of funnel like?

Upendra Varma:

So basically how many, you know, calls, did you have to sort

Upendra Varma:

of, you know, go on mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

Before you ended up getting those six customers?

Upendra Varma:

Was it 60, was it 600?

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah, that's a good question.

Francisco Navarro:

The answer is you hustle, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Like you, you really have to hustle.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, and, uh, thankfully my, my family, my partners as immigrants,

Francisco Navarro:

my parents, you know, they started a business here in the States.

Francisco Navarro:

And so I've, I haven't been afraid of like, failure or, or, yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

So I

Upendra Varma:

just wanna understand that number.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So how hard was it for to sort of get those customers.

Upendra Varma:

. Francisco Navarro: Yeah, so I would

Upendra Varma:

of, uh, 250 business business cards.

Upendra Varma:

I bought, uh, a bunch of tickets to like local meetups.

Upendra Varma:

I bought, uh, all kinds of things that I thought were gonna be

Upendra Varma:

useful, and I just got out there.

Upendra Varma:

I just hit the ground.

Upendra Varma:

I started shaking hands, talking to local business owners.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, and again, after like, handing out all these business cards,

Upendra Varma:

like 200 business cards and talking to a bunch of people.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, we got our first, uh, WordPress customer, right?

Upendra Varma:

So that's just a reality.

Upendra Varma:

You gotta hustle and you gotta get out there and you gotta talk to

Upendra Varma:

people, right?

Upendra Varma:

So I, I was asking what happened after that first customer you mentioned, right?

Upendra Varma:

As of today, you, you see all of this in bond interest from SEO or

Upendra Varma:

sometimes from word of mouth, right?

Upendra Varma:

So I just want to understand where those other five clients actually listen.

Francisco Navarro:

Oh yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

So once you have that, right, like, so I guess, uh, the numbers game

Francisco Navarro:

is the more exposure you have, you start getting top of the funnel and

Francisco Navarro:

then you start closing deals, right?

Francisco Navarro:

So, um, I don't know if that helps, but, uh, yeah, like.

Francisco Navarro:

part of it's just getting out there and like doing as many consultations

Francisco Navarro:

as possible because it's simple, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Like the top of the funnel is gonna be a little wider.

Francisco Navarro:

Mm-hmm.

Francisco Navarro:

and then it just keeps getting error and error.

Francisco Navarro:

And so, uh, yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

Um, we do a good job once we get to the last stage of the, of the funnel.

Francisco Navarro:

We don't do as well at the top actually, but yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So let, let's talk about your, your pricing and, you

Upendra Varma:

know, Margin here as well.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So I wanna understand as an agency, right, so how do you end up sort of deciding on

Upendra Varma:

that contract value because there is no straightforward answer to that, right?

Upendra Varma:

And how much margins do you sort of end up making on that?

Upendra Varma:

And what, how do you pay your developer?

Upendra Varma:

What happens that, so just talk about the entire, you know, structure there.

Upendra Varma:

. Francisco Navarro: Yeah, for sure.

Upendra Varma:

So, uh, the biggest thing is you have to have a margin, a profit margin, right?

Upendra Varma:

Uh, if you don't have that, then you don't have a business.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, and that number is, uh, based on what other agencies

Upendra Varma:

are charging in the area, right?

Upendra Varma:

So, like a good rate right now is like, you know, $140 an hour, $130 an hour.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, so you have to make a 50% margin on that, uh, you know,

Upendra Varma:

with your, uh, internal resources.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, so based on that number, , it allows you to calculate sort of your salaries

Upendra Varma:

or what you can compensate your team.

Upendra Varma:

Um, and most of our projects are now six months to like eight months long.

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

, uh, and so that gives us a pretty good, wrong way.

Upendra Varma:

Right?

Upendra Varma:

Like if we have that hourly rate and we provide an estimate to the client

Upendra Varma:

in the proposal, um, most of our projects on average could be like

Upendra Varma:

around 80, a hundred thousand dollars.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, so yeah, that's kind of the average right now.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

So, and how much margins sort of do you take, you know, at the end of the day?

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

after paying.

Upendra Varma:

Employees, everybody.

Upendra Varma:

So what, like, how much of that, you know, do does the company make at the end of

Francisco Navarro:

the day?

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, before taxes and all the operational cost, of course, uh, you, you know,

Francisco Navarro:

I would say like probably 45% is a good, it's a good, uh, margin.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

That, that, that's pretty good actually.

Upendra Varma:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

So, yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

And we like to keep a lean, you know, like, we like to keep a

Francisco Navarro:

simple lean, uh, and that helps, uh,

Upendra Varma:

Got.

Upendra Varma:

Alright.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So, so talk about the resourcing aspect, right?

Upendra Varma:

So, so how does the, how, how do you grow here, right?

Upendra Varma:

So, I mean, what's, what's the vision here?

Upendra Varma:

So for example, so what happens if you start losing a customer?

Upendra Varma:

So now you've got an ideal developer there, right?

Upendra Varma:

And I think they're on your payroll, you're not definitely paying

Upendra Varma:

them on an hourly basis, right?

Upendra Varma:

So, so how do you manage with things like those?

Upendra Varma:

Because given the unpredictability here, That

Francisco Navarro:

is, uh, again, one of the toughest challenges

Francisco Navarro:

of being an agency, right?

Francisco Navarro:

So, uh, staggering your projects and then what if you lose an existing project?

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, we don't see that a lot for us.

Francisco Navarro:

I think we do a really good job of retaining our customers.

Francisco Navarro:

So like retention is very, very important.

Francisco Navarro:

And I think every founder, every.

Francisco Navarro:

B2B person knows that already and should know that they don't.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, once you retain a customer, their lifetime value just,

Francisco Navarro:

you know, can be really great.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, so that helps us a lot.

Francisco Navarro:

But, you know,

Upendra Varma:

retaining here here could be a bit tricky, right?

Upendra Varma:

I mean, your customer might end up building a software development

Upendra Varma:

team for themselves, right?

Upendra Varma:

There could be a number of reasons, right?

Upendra Varma:

It might not just be about you not serving them, right?

Upendra Varma:

It might be because they're taking a different path altogether, right?

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

. So retention is not something that you can control even you sort of.

Francisco Navarro:

Right.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

And so when we do lose a customer, thankfully, I usually try to like look

Francisco Navarro:

forward to having one or two other projects stagger down the road, down

Francisco Navarro:

the road, like one month ahead or something like that, or two months.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, but it's just all the variables you gotta play with and that's where

Francisco Navarro:

you have to keep your eye on it.

Francisco Navarro:

Right.

Francisco Navarro:

As a, as a founder and develop, uh, and c e o of the company, you just gotta

Francisco Navarro:

keep an eye on all, all those things.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

And talk about the team.

Upendra Varma:

Do you have like how many devs working?

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, we have, uh, we are a team of six people right now.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, plus we have, that's

Upendra Varma:

nicely matched, right?

Upendra Varma:

So six people working on six projects, and then you're,

Upendra Varma:

you're working with six clients.

Francisco Navarro:

Exactly.

Francisco Navarro:

And so that helps like, you know, kind of move the variables, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Like you have a little less work on one project, you move

Francisco Navarro:

a developer to another project.

Francisco Navarro:

But we try to keep a simple and only one, uh, one developer per two projects.

Francisco Navarro:

We don't like to spread 'em around too much.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, is that efficient for

Upendra Varma:

anyone?

Upendra Varma:

You know?

Upendra Varma:

And, and how long does this project go?

Upendra Varma:

Is it like months, years?

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah, I would say on average like six months to a year.

Francisco Navarro:

Um, and you know what's important here too is that our developers develop

Francisco Navarro:

a good relationship with the client, which helps with, uh, churn, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Like that way you retain the customers.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, but yeah, the projects are, uh, six months to a year

Upendra Varma:

and you decide upon the contract while you're at the beginning

Upendra Varma:

of the beginning of the IT itself, right?

Upendra Varma:

. Francisco Navarro: Exactly.

Upendra Varma:

Yep.

Upendra Varma:

We set a kickoff date and we say, here are the, uh, the requirements.

Upendra Varma:

Here's when we expect to finish the project.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, and one thing we try to do is always hand out like prototypes right away.

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

, we work together on projects right away.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So, so in a business like this, right?

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

, so scaling is always gonna be very tricky because you have mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

to scale your resources as well.

Upendra Varma:

And so what's the vision here for you particularly?

Upendra Varma:

So what are you planning to do in the next two to three years with

Upendra Varma:

respect to this particular company?

Upendra Varma:

. Francisco Navarro: Um, I think if,

Upendra Varma:

of like 10 people, that would be amazing and that's quite a challenge.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, but I think it's very doable.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, and uh, I think as a business, once you have like

Upendra Varma:

you're the seven figures, right?

Upendra Varma:

Uh, and you have a really good, uh, source of income, uh, and stream, uh,

Upendra Varma:

of revenue, it allows you to lower things that are interesting, right?

Upendra Varma:

Like we have had one or two, uh, B2B partners that have

Upendra Varma:

asked us to like help 'em.

Upendra Varma:

take their projects to actual market.

Upendra Varma:

And, and a couple of those projects are in the market right

Upendra Varma:

now as B2B software solutions.

Upendra Varma:

Uh, they want us to be their full like, uh, engineering team, uh,

Upendra Varma:

but also be participants and, and potentially, you know, uh, take a

Upendra Varma:

stake on some of these companies.

Upendra Varma:

So that's where I get excited because I think Lunar Buy has done such a great

Upendra Varma:

job of building some of these products.

Upendra Varma:

So like there is a lot of potential in the B2B space out there for

Upendra Varma:

tools that people are not aware of.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

And we build some of those, but.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

So, so talk about the team here, right?

Upendra Varma:

So are you being, you know, innovative here as well?

Upendra Varma:

Like are you hiring engineers, sort of, you know, countries where you

Upendra Varma:

can get them at a much cheaper cost?

Upendra Varma:

Or are you still like, where are these engineers based on based sort of.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah, that's a good question.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, one thing I like to say, you know, to my co-founder is that, uh, I

Francisco Navarro:

like to pursue passions and I like to see people that are passionate too.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, if you have a solid foundation of development and, and background,

Francisco Navarro:

uh, we can work with that.

Francisco Navarro:

We like to develop talent in house and keep those developers.

Francisco Navarro:

We like to see like, you know, Good players, a players who come in, uh, and

Francisco Navarro:

they still may not have all the skills.

Francisco Navarro:

They have some, uh, pa a lot of passion, but we like to develop

Francisco Navarro:

their skills a lot further.

Francisco Navarro:

And I do promise our developers, like they're gonna be challenged more than they

Francisco Navarro:

are, uh, working at a corporate suite, sitting in the co in the corner of a

Francisco Navarro:

conference room or somewhere like that.

Francisco Navarro:

Just cuz I've done that, uh, played that role, my co-founder played that role.

Francisco Navarro:

And like you're just mindly seeing moving tickets and Jira, right?

Francisco Navarro:

Like left to right and waiting for all the managers to tell you what to.

Francisco Navarro:

That, that's not the case here.

Francisco Navarro:

Like you're hitting the ground, you gotta code, you gotta do things.

Upendra Varma:

So, yeah.

Upendra Varma:

So my question is, where are these engineers based?

Upendra Varma:

Sort of, are they based sort of Seattle itself or are they

Upendra Varma:

from some other countries?

Upendra Varma:

Yeah,

Francisco Navarro:

it's funny cuz we have become fully remote now.

Francisco Navarro:

Uhhuh, , uh, but we do have a developers in Seattle.

Francisco Navarro:

We have developers in Seattle, in Portland now, and uh, LA but we are

Francisco Navarro:

all onshore in the us Our whole team, team is based in the us So have,

Upendra Varma:

have, have you thought of, you know, maybe expanding

Upendra Varma:

beyond, you know, beyond us, right?

Upendra Varma:

So because you might get them at a much cheaper.

Francisco Navarro:

That is always a good question.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

And I think that being remote should enable you to do that.

Upendra Varma:

Right.

Upendra Varma:

And you can get amazing talent outside of us, right?

Francisco Navarro:

So That's true.

Francisco Navarro:

That's true.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

So we have considered that in the past.

Francisco Navarro:

I think one of the attractive, uh, aspects for our business has been that

Francisco Navarro:

we're like, based on the US and many of our clients have actually come to

Francisco Navarro:

us because they took a project offshore and it was just hard to manage it.

Francisco Navarro:

They don't have the expertise to manage these projects.

Francisco Navarro:

Mm-hmm.

Francisco Navarro:

. So they come to us once they.

Francisco Navarro:

, we can meet with Francisco, downtown Seattle or with someone else, uh,

Francisco Navarro:

you know, one of his team members.

Francisco Navarro:

So, uh, we have considerate, and some projects have talked about like, uh,

Francisco Navarro:

we would be okay with you outsourcing.

Francisco Navarro:

So that's kind of in the works.

Francisco Navarro:

That's, no,

Upendra Varma:

I'm not talking about outsourcing.

Upendra Varma:

I'm just talking about building a remote team in a different country

Upendra Varma:

where you could, you know, hire them from a much, achieve a cost.

Upendra Varma:

That's

Francisco Navarro:

fair.

Francisco Navarro:

Yeah.

Francisco Navarro:

We, we have talked about that with some of our clients.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh,

Upendra Varma:

No, my question is, does, does a client really

Upendra Varma:

care where your employees sit?

Upendra Varma:

I mean, as long as they're getting, you know, value for their money.

Upendra Varma:

Mm-hmm.

Upendra Varma:

, do they really care about that?

Upendra Varma:

Hmm,

Francisco Navarro:

that's a good question.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, I would say some of them do.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, the majority of them probably do care that they're built, their

Francisco Navarro:

software is built in the us.

Francisco Navarro:

Um, in the B2B space that we're working in right now, like I mentioned, aviation,

Francisco Navarro:

uh, automotive industry, they actually, part of the, the business is that

Francisco Navarro:

they have to follow some regulations or some things with the federal

Francisco Navarro:

government or things like that, right?

Francisco Navarro:

So that helps that we are based in the us Uh, there are other

Francisco Navarro:

projects that are not like that.

Francisco Navarro:

And so those customers have talked about like, we would be okay if you

Francisco Navarro:

hire, uh, bringing a member from, you know, outside of the us uh, cuz it

Francisco Navarro:

is cheaper that that's just a reality and you don't always need to have.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, your best developer working on the project in the US and you can have a

Francisco Navarro:

good developer from Latin America or somewhere else working on the project.

Francisco Navarro:

So, mm-hmm.

Francisco Navarro:

. Yeah.

Upendra Varma:

Got it.

Upendra Varma:

Alright, Francisco, I think, uh, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

Upendra Varma:

You know, hope you reach your milestones as quickly as possible.

Upendra Varma:

Latuna invite.

Upendra Varma:

Thanks

Francisco Navarro:

Pendra.

Francisco Navarro:

Uh, I appreciate it man.

Francisco Navarro:

Thank you for having me on the show and uh, the best of you too.

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