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.
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.