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How we built an affiliate network to get 50 customers of $20K ACV
Episode 2024th November 2022 • B2B SaaS Podcast • Upendra Varma
00:00:00 00:28:43

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In this episode, Eliad Saporta, CEO of Coriunder talks about how he grew his company to 50 high-value customers by building an affiliate network primarily through attending conferences in their niche.

We talk about,

  • What Coriunder is all about
  • How they hit 50 customers with around $20k ACV
  • How they got their first set of customers using his previous background as a consultant
  • How they are using conferences in their niche to build a huge network of affiliates & get newer clients
  • How they typically end up converting a huge percentage of warm leads bought by their affiliates
  • How their churn & expansion looks like
  • Team, funding status & future vision

Transcripts

Eliad:

if we look at analyze the marketing that we are doing, it's mainly

Eliad:

the conference scene being speakers or getting the foot on the ground.

Eliad:

We haven't done any booths

Eliad:

for that sake.

Eliad:

It's more working around the conferences itself and meeting people throughout

Eliad:

those networking events, et cetera, which proven itself and really building

Eliad:

a stronger relationship with the current affiliates that we have on the network.

Upendra:

hello everyone.

Upendra:

Welcome to the B2 V SaaS podcast.

Upendra:

Today we have Elliot support us.

Upendra:

Elliot here is the founder and CEO of a company called er.

Upendra:

Hey, Elliot, welcome to the show.

Upendra:

Hey, thanks for having us.

Upendra:

All right, Elliot, so let's get started and let's try to understand what your

Upendra:

company and product does and why customers

Eliad:

pay you money.

Eliad:

Sure.

Eliad:

So we are payments oriented user management platform.

Eliad:

What does it mean?

Eliad:

We're the backbone of different types of financial institutions coming from

Eliad:

payment service provider for card processing, alternative payment methods,

Eliad:

all the way to FinTech marketplaces.

Eliad:

We're looking to manage their onboarding process, user management,

Eliad:

and everything on the financial element like subscription and payments et.

Upendra:

Looks like you mentioned a lot of things here, so I wanna get

Upendra:

a sense of, you know so maybe you can help us understand this way.

Upendra:

So just pick one customer of yours or maybe a prominent customer of

Upendra:

yours and just help me understand how they're using your product.

Upendra:

Right?

Upendra:

That

Eliad:

could be more easier.

Eliad:

Yeah.

Eliad:

I'll take a use case that, let's say close to heart.

Eliad:

It's a startup FinTech startup called Cosmo.

Eliad:

Cosmo provides like a alternative banking for Thai employees

Eliad:

coming to work in Israel.

Eliad:

They provide them with a prepaid card issued by one of the local issue.

Eliad:

It's a Visa card connected to a mobile wallet, which is in

Eliad:

essence their banking platform.

Eliad:

The employers transfer the salaries into the application.

Eliad:

Our platform manages the balances, transfers between users, the full

Eliad:

onboarding, kyc, and all of the relationship between the employer

Eliad:

and the employee using the app.

Eliad:

And Cosmo is a startup, uses us as the backend for their functionality.

Eliad:

So they develop a very nice looking application and every backend

Eliad:

functionality interfaces for the employers, everything is managed by our.

Eliad:

A consolidated backend service to manage everything with payments onboarding,

Upendra:

such so, so let's try to understand a bit about

Upendra:

your customers here, right?

Upendra:

So how, like, who exactly are you selling this particular product to?

Upendra:

Is it financial institutions who are looking for these, you know, payment,

Upendra:

you know, payment management systems?

Upendra:

Or are these real businesses who are looking for a fancy UI and

Upendra:

all of these, you know, systems?

Eliad:

So it's less businesses are we B2B to to B, let's say

Eliad:

B2B to C, kind of a operation.

Eliad:

We sell to the payment service provider who are selling services

Eliad:

to merchants, meaning businesses.

Eliad:

And these businesses are using the platform to cater for different customers

Eliad:

doing interactions on the platform.

Eliad:

So if you look at Cosmo for example, it's a FinTech startup looking

Eliad:

to build the next payment service provider for Thai employees.

Eliad:

In that, We have some payment service provider in the payments industry.

Eliad:

So imagine competitors to Stripe and Square, the kind of smaller provider

Eliad:

working with the bigger banks and trying to, let's say, introduce different

Eliad:

merchants from different industry, which Stripe might not be accommodating or

Eliad:

let's say easy to use in that use case.

Eliad:

So our clients are leveraging our technology in order to sell their

Eliad:

services onto two businesses.

Upendra:

So can, can you say you're a competitor of Stripe?

Upendra:

Can I assume that?

Upendra:

Yeah.

Eliad:

So I'm a technology provider for Stripe competitor.

Eliad:

So Stripe as a whole provides services to the businesses as a consolidate

Eliad:

both license and technology.

Eliad:

We provide the technology, our customers bring the license and start selling to the

Eliad:

same customers that Stripe are selling to.

Upendra:

Got it.

Upendra:

So essentially Stripe can use your backend to power all of their financial,

Upendra:

you know, whatever management systems.

Upendra:

Right?

Upendra:

So essentially you specifically sell to companies like Strip

Upendra:

Yeah, something like that.

Upendra:

Yeah, yeah.

Eliad:

Got it.

Eliad:

Specifically Stripe has an amazing system, but Yes.

Eliad:

Yeah.

Eliad:

So smaller competitors that can start from scratch, building a

Eliad:

technology to compete with Stripe.

Eliad:

Leverage our

Upendra:

technology.

Upendra:

Yes.

Upendra:

Got it.

Upendra:

So that, that's, that's that looks pretty interesting.

Upendra:

So let's try to understand, you know, your customers, your revenues of today, right?

Upendra:

So approximately how many customers, how many paying customers

Upendra:

you have on your platforms.

Eliad:

Fantastic.

Eliad:

So we started in about mid 2016.

Eliad:

Currently have about 50 enterprise level customers.

Eliad:

They all pay us a setup fee to start and set them up with what's called the white

Eliad:

label, which gives them a branded look and feel of our backend system, dedicated

Eliad:

databases in terms of segregation of the data between user to user.

Eliad:

And then after that, they pay us a monthly minimum and transaction fee.

Eliad:

The monthly minimum can rage for the startups at around $500 a month, which

Eliad:

is certain amount of transactions.

Eliad:

When you have the payment service provider can pay, it's up to

Eliad:

$2,000 a month with the minimum.

Eliad:

And we charge extra for different modules and functionality such

Eliad:

as car issuing, iPads and so on, which are addons to the plans.

Eliad:

So we don't have free customers, we don't have a free plan.

Eliad:

Got it.

Eliad:

We only have paying customers to begin with.

Upendra:

Right.

Upendra:

So I wanna understand how big these deals are.

Upendra:

Right?

Upendra:

How big your customers, how.

Upendra:

Your customer typically pays you on an average.

Upendra:

So what's that range looks like?

Upendra:

Is it $10,000?

Upendra:

Is it a hundred thousand dollars?

Upendra:

Is it a million bucks?

Upendra:

How does that in terms of lifetime?

Eliad:

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

Upendra:

I'm talking about acv, right?

Upendra:

Something that they pay you on an annual basis approximately.

Eliad:

So it's around, it's an average customer.

Eliad:

They will pay about $20,000 a year.

Upendra:

So we were you, you know, 12 months before today,

Upendra:

how many customers did you have?

Upendra:

And 12

Eliad:

months before Today we were about 35 paying customers.

Eliad:

Got

Upendra:

it.

Upendra:

So you, you, you are growing at, around, you know, it's approximately 20, 30%

Upendra:

year on you, something like that.

Upendra:

Yeah.

Upendra:

Got it.

Upendra:

All right.

Upendra:

Yes, sir.

Upendra:

So, yeah, so let's, let's go back to, you know, your zero to one journey, right?

Upendra:

I wanna understand, right.

Upendra:

So how, how did, how did you, how did it all started?

Upendra:

I mean, where did you get your first five customers from?

Upendra:

Just talk about

Eliad:

that story.

Eliad:

So my backstory, I was, I started in payments in around 2011, so I

Eliad:

already built the name was doing conferencing as speaker panelist,

Eliad:

et cetera, with for companies.

Eliad:

I either was the COO of, or consulting to different FinTech startups in the

Eliad:

us, South Africa, in here in Israel.

Eliad:

Then there, there was an opportunity to pivot from being an operator

Eliad:

of a payment service provider to become a provider to other service

Eliad:

provider with the technology we built.

Eliad:

And that way we kind of shifted.

Eliad:

So when we got the word out that we are ready to go and we have a technology

Eliad:

to compete and to facilitate it came with the combination of the services

Eliad:

we knew how to bring as consultants.

Eliad:

And on the other hand, giving a technology that came from not as a

Eliad:

developers building a system, but whether as operators, building a.

Eliad:

To serve other platforms in the process.

Eliad:

So, so, so,

Upendra:

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

Eliad:

saying?

Eliad:

No, I, I was the.

Eliad:

I was doing the consultancy and then when I shifted gears from being a consultant

Eliad:

to a service provider, people leveraged from getting both technology and advice in

Eliad:

one package when we started the company.

Upendra:

Got it.

Upendra:

All right, so, so I wanna sort of deep dive and understand how

Upendra:

you exactly got these customers.

Upendra:

I know you, you've been in that space, so you must have.

Upendra:

You know, had, you must have those warm leads out there, right?

Upendra:

You must, a lot of people must have known you.

Upendra:

Right?

Upendra:

But talk about that journey.

Upendra:

How did you manage to convince them to use your platform?

Upendra:

How difficult it was?

Upendra:

Like how did it all span out during those first, you know, first five customers?

Eliad:

So if you look at the first lead that came in, so at the beginning it was,

Eliad:

and up until now, if you search us online, you wouldn't find marketing campaigns.

Eliad:

You mainly find, let's say we are growing, but it's more word of mouth.

Eliad:

We've been a very wide and extensive affiliate.

Eliad:

Other payment consultant that got to know the system and we pay very

Eliad:

handsome referral fee for everyone I paying customer to us and giving

Eliad:

the fact all customers are paying, it's easier in terms of conversion.

Eliad:

Mm-hmm.

Eliad:

. And I think when we show, it's a combination between the product itself

Eliad:

and our understanding of the market and the fact that if we are the one

Eliad:

providing the service, you get the personal attention and to start.

Eliad:

I started the company myself with the freelance developer working part-time,

Eliad:

but with already a working system.

Eliad:

So the fact that they got the, you know, face to face treatment from the

Eliad:

CEO of the company, even though there wasn't many people behind me, gave

Eliad:

them the extra attention they needed.

Eliad:

Mm-hmm.

Eliad:

. And then one client brought another one of them, went to a conference, talked

Eliad:

about his system, showed a bit, someone else called us and kind of grew from.

Eliad:

And I think very quickly about, about, I think three months, we already were

Eliad:

five paid customers we had from Malta, from Hong Kong, and from the US.

Eliad:

Two customers, imagine complete different territories just happened

Eliad:

to meet each other in a conference and all referred one to another.

Eliad:

Got it.

Upendra:

And, and now let's, let's come back, right?

Upendra:

Let's come back to today.

Upendra:

Right?

Upendra:

So you mentioned you've got, you've gained around 15 customers in the past one year.

Upendra:

And so where are these customers coming from in terms of, you know,

Upendra:

top of an Allegion, where exactly are, how exactly are they discovering

Upendra:

you and have you been doing any marketing or something like that?

Upendra:

So what exactly is working for you?

Eliad:

In terms, if we look at analyze the marketing that we are doing, it's

Eliad:

mainly the conference scene being speakers or getting the foot on the ground.

Eliad:

We haven't done any booths for that sake.

Eliad:

It's more working around the conferences itself and meeting people throughout

Eliad:

those networking events, et cetera, which proven itself and really building

Eliad:

a stronger relationship with the current affiliates that we have on the network.

Eliad:

It's a lot of the leads that we got throughout the years came

Eliad:

from the actual service providers.

Eliad:

We integrated two because as a provider, technology provider for our customers,

Eliad:

we integrate to a lot of third parties.

Eliad:

We aggregate a lot of connectivity, and these providers usually don't want to

Eliad:

have a lot of platforms connect to them.

Eliad:

So once they have a platform of choice or someone they can trust in

Eliad:

terms of the integration they refer to that you want to integrate to us,

Eliad:

use this and this platform in order to do so, and that's, that's proven.

Eliad:

What we can see in the last year that the type of customer, in terms

Eliad:

of customer profile has grown.

Eliad:

We now have two NA listed companies as clients.

Eliad:

We have some unicorns that are using our platform, which we've never

Eliad:

thought at the beginning the would that we get that type of exposure.

Eliad:

Mm-hmm.

Eliad:

, but it all came from, you know, An acquaintance during a conference came from

Eliad:

there, and then one thing led to another.

Eliad:

Surprisingly enough, you would say, okay, if you're doing it from conferences, how

Eliad:

did covid, let's say the period of time when we were actually working from home,

Eliad:

baking cookies with the kids, but that actually got a lot of people talking

Eliad:

behind the scenes and people that you used to meet in conferences suddenly hitting

Eliad:

you up on LinkedIn and what's going on.

Eliad:

And then kind of encouraging more work because everybody

Eliad:

was looking for workarounds.

Eliad:

Mm-hmm.

Eliad:

in terms of how to build their business.

Eliad:

Right.

Eliad:

So that's kind of prove it.

Eliad:

So

Upendra:

you've mainly mentioned three things, right?

Upendra:

You talked about your affiliate network, you talked about, you know, existing

Upendra:

customers and service providers, you know, referring you and you talked about,

Upendra:

you know, you doing conferencing and you know, doing that networking, right?

Upendra:

Let's speak for example, conferencing, right?

Upendra:

I mean, I just wanna pick your brain and understand how exactly

Upendra:

do you view this channel list?

Upendra:

I mean, how exactly do you calculate your roi?

Upendra:

Do you go to every conference and how exactly do you say, Hey,

Upendra:

it worked for me here, right?

Upendra:

Because it's pretty hard to put a number on it, right?

Upendra:

So, okay.

Upendra:

I went to this conference, I ended up converting 10 leads.

Upendra:

Now I got to customers.

Upendra:

Is it that simple or what exactly is your strategy here with

Upendra:

respect to going to conferences?

Eliad:

I think we analyze the, the, let's say the traffic that's come

Eliad:

to the conference and what kind of channels do you have to meet there?

Eliad:

So if a conference is mainly I think for example, only lectures,

Eliad:

that's not the type of cu then conference that we'll push to go to.

Eliad:

Yes.

Eliad:

If being at that conference gets us a speaking engagement, fantastic.

Eliad:

Because you can leverage the video coming from that, from that conference.

Eliad:

And let's try proven yourself.

Eliad:

Let's say an expert in the field that that kind of brings traffic on its

Eliad:

own, the YouTube videos, and then doing the social work, you know, couple

Eliad:

of LinkedIn campaigns, et cetera.

Eliad:

But if you look at the, let's say, more aware, the type of service

Eliad:

provider working with the target audience are because the meaning

Eliad:

theirs, meaning merchants, et cetera.

Eliad:

When we go there and mingling between the service provider,

Eliad:

they're paying for the boots.

Eliad:

And you'll be surprised at how many of them are looking for other technology

Eliad:

in order to incorporate in it.

Eliad:

So the bigger the conference and the bigger the audience coming in, they'll

Eliad:

hire the potential to meet potential affiliates or potential clients in it.

Eliad:

And the fact that in roi, and in my count, if I go to a conference and I close one

Eliad:

paying customer, that's fantastic because I've covered the expense of the truck.

Eliad:

But if I came back with about five new affiliates that can bring more merchant.

Eliad:

Within a period of one quarter, that conference will convert about five x

Eliad:

around that because every affiliate will try to refer to three potential

Eliad:

customers and will close, let's say 30% of what that affiliate brings in.

Eliad:

So it's good conversion on that part.

Eliad:

So we look at conference, we definitely don't go to any

Upendra:

conference.

Upendra:

Yeah.

Upendra:

So let's try to quantify this.

Upendra:

So approximately how many conferences did you attend in the past

Eliad:

12 months?

Eliad:

In the last 12 months I've been to.

Eliad:

And out of them we converted about eight customers from those different

Eliad:

conferences or from connection came from those conferences?

Eliad:

Yes.

Eliad:

Sure.

Upendra:

So you can attribute it to that particular conference there.

Upendra:

Right.

Upendra:

And is it you just going out there and talking on talking there, or is it a, is

Upendra:

it your team going out there, you know, having a booth or something like that?

Eliad:

So we've been bootstrapping the company for the six, last six years.

Eliad:

So it's not like we spent the budget.

Eliad:

So up until now it's with me doing the conference.

Eliad:

I'm gonna speak in a conference in Romania about banking, so

Eliad:

that's gonna have the potential.

Eliad:

But let's say we are starting right now, the following year, it's in 2023.

Eliad:

We start sending my COO to some of the conferences, not to speak, but more to

Eliad:

mingle, stuff like that because, you know, family obligation and some other work.

Eliad:

So I'm trying to take the number of flights that I'm

Upendra:

doing and do you have to pay them anything to basically get this

Upendra:

opportunity to speak on those conferences?

Eliad:

No, it's really the other way around.

Eliad:

Sometimes they pay for the hotels, they pay for the

Eliad:

flights, depending on the level.

Eliad:

There are use cases, that sponsorship comes with the panel, et cetera, which

Eliad:

we haven't done that up until now.

Eliad:

We have never sponsored the conference.

Eliad:

More connections.

Eliad:

We spread the world with our networks or get other people to

Eliad:

come to the conferences themselves.

Eliad:

So the full wood strap

Upendra:

approach.

Upendra:

Got it.

Upendra:

Right.

Upendra:

So you mentioned something , you know, affiliate network,

Upendra:

bringing in a lot of clients.

Upendra:

Right?

Upendra:

So, so like, just talk to me about this network that you built over years.

Upendra:

How did it all start and what, what sort of incentive do you sort of

Upendra:

give your affiliates and how do you sort of, you know, you know, build

Upendra:

that network on a regular basis?

Upendra:

Let's talk about this affiliate network.

Eliad:

Imagine at the end of the day, the affiliates are usually consultants

Eliad:

to other startups bringing that, and consultants usually help each

Eliad:

other in the process because they know how to consult, let's say 70%

Eliad:

of the different topics and the 30%.

Eliad:

They use other consultants to help them.

Eliad:

And these thing, not by paying them, but just listen, I have a friend.

Eliad:

I have a client.

Eliad:

I need, I need a favor.

Eliad:

Help me at that.

Eliad:

So I've always been the guy to help without having asked anything in return.

Eliad:

And then when that consultant consults, a company suddenly brings me on to

Eliad:

have an advice and a conversation.

Eliad:

And then yet, by the way, he's doing a technology that can help you.

Eliad:

So building over the years, even the catchers, my last name is

Eliad:

support and everybody laughs that supporter will support you.

Eliad:

So it's kind of that kind of network of consultant that we sometime call to

Eliad:

consult or even refer ourselves to these consultants, client of ours that are

Eliad:

looking for advice in certain issues.

Eliad:

So you scratch my back as scratchers.

Eliad:

Usually when the consultant refers the the client to us, we keep leveraging the

Eliad:

relationship with the consultant and keep pushing back and forth with the client

Eliad:

together because there's an incentive.

Eliad:

The client wants to see that the consultant didn't just

Eliad:

throw him at us and just left.

Eliad:

See that we do have a relationship with them and it's not

Eliad:

like, like a one time thing.

Eliad:

Of referral.

Eliad:

I think right now the network in terms of our mailing list and the, when we

Eliad:

do the events for the affiliates, about 50 plus affiliates working with us in

Eliad:

general, some closer in in the area that we talk three times four month

Eliad:

times a month, and actually let's say brainstorming advice or brainstorming

Eliad:

clients and some once a quarter suddenly come out of nowhere said, listen, I

Eliad:

have a lead for you, this and this.

Eliad:

Meet them here.

Eliad:

And we try, whenever there's big conferences in London,

Eliad:

we usually meet all of them.

Eliad:

But then auto though, maybe.

Upendra:

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

Eliad:

So our commission base is significantly higher in the market.

Eliad:

We give 10% off the top.

Eliad:

So whatever the client invoice pays us mm-hmm.

Eliad:

We give the affiliate 10%.

Eliad:

There's full transparency.

Eliad:

And the affiliates, it's forever.

Eliad:

It's, I porter.

Eliad:

It's forever.

Eliad:

As long as the, long as the client is paying us, we'll pay the affiliate.

Eliad:

Even if the affiliate didn't bring any more leads besides that first one.

Eliad:

Mm-hmm.

Eliad:

, we'll always pay for.

Eliad:

It gives them the motivation.

Eliad:

Suddenly seeing an incoming transfer for the commission say, oh, I might have

Eliad:

another client for Corian to do something.

Upendra:

Got it.

Upendra:

All right.

Upendra:

Right.

Upendra:

So let's, let's move, move forward, right?

Upendra:

So I wanna understand your conversion strategy, right?

Upendra:

So now you've got, you have your affiliates bringing in a lot of leads.

Upendra:

You go to conferences, lot of people discover, you know, they

Upendra:

know what your company and product.

Upendra:

Right.

Upendra:

Now what happens?

Upendra:

Talk about the sales cycle.

Upendra:

How do you end up convert?

Upendra:

Warm lead who just knew about your, who just, you know, got to know about

Upendra:

your product to a paying customer.

Upendra:

What's the journey look like?

Upendra:

How long does it take?

Upendra:

What are the manual steps involved in there?

Upendra:

Just talk about that process.

Eliad:

So we usually, let's say they bridge the, let's say the introduction

Eliad:

conversation, already scheduling it for about an hour, and we try to squeeze a

Eliad:

teaser of the system during that session.

Eliad:

And when we schedule it, we use currently for our scheduling up.

Eliad:

And when you schedule through there, we actually get exposed to our

Eliad:

YouTube channel, which we launch, I think six or eight months ago, and

Eliad:

has kind of these five minute videos across different features of the.

Eliad:

By the time that let's say warm lead comes into doing the introduction

Eliad:

email, he already grabbed a couple of videos to have a look at.

Eliad:

So it kind of triggers his interest.

Eliad:

I talk.

Eliad:

And then when we explain about the system, what we do, we try to give a

Eliad:

teaser for the last couple of minutes.

Eliad:

Listen, we can talk the talk, but that he show you for a couple of

Eliad:

minutes how we walk the walk, and that always leaves like a warm taste.

Eliad:

At the end of the conversation we're trying to finish.

Eliad:

It's usually, let's say about 60% of the time we actually end up sending

Eliad:

the price proposal and the draft of the agreement at the end of the conversation.

Eliad:

The convers

Upendra:

just after the first conversation.

Upendra:

Right?

Upendra:

So you end up sending

Eliad:

at the end.

Eliad:

At the end of it.

Eliad:

At the end, Matt, it's, it's different when you get a cold lead coming,

Eliad:

let's say sign up on the website.

Eliad:

Yeah.

Eliad:

Because for there, you see it's a longer sale.

Eliad:

But when it comes from the affiliate, he already brainwashed them about the fact

Eliad:

that this is the solution of choice.

Eliad:

We know he's looking for a system, otherwise he wouldn't

Eliad:

have spent the time coming in.

Eliad:

So that's why we prefer to invest, you know, their resources on the

Eliad:

team, tutoring, our affiliates on the system, et cetera, rather

Eliad:

than throwing money on campaign.

Eliad:

The growth is relatively, let's say smaller because we're not spending

Eliad:

huge amount of money on marketing getting 50, 60 leads a month.

Eliad:

We are getting five, six qualified leads.

Eliad:

Then we convert the majority of them in that month or the following month.

Eliad:

Got it.

Eliad:

So, so you, you've,

Upendra:

you've done this first, you had this first conversation.

Upendra:

You send them a price proposal and all, like, what happens after that?

Upendra:

Let's just say they're willing to sort of go forward.

Upendra:

How long does it take for them to sort of start using your product

Upendra:

and integrating it with themselves?

Upendra:

When, when exactly do they end up paying you that first dollar

Upendra:

of revenue after that first?

Eliad:

So they pay a set up to begin with in order for us to even start the setup

Eliad:

process to show seriousness on their side.

Eliad:

Our pricing is on the website and it's very transparent, so they see that it's

Eliad:

no surprises, and because of that, we do not give discounts on that part.

Eliad:

So it's not like, you know, back and forth, I'll pay

Eliad:

you half and sorts of that.

Eliad:

But then they, once we got to a point that they sign, the

Eliad:

urgency starts on their end.

Eliad:

They want to be up and running as soon as possible because it's fully branded,

Eliad:

fully ready to go when they start.

Eliad:

So they don't need to do a lot of daring besides, you know, pointing

Eliad:

DNS records to our, to our service.

Eliad:

So we usually take about three.

Eliad:

Set them up and everything and fully test the setup and

Eliad:

schedule the training session.

Eliad:

Now, some of the training session is done by YouTube with all the videos that

Eliad:

I've mentioned, which is part training, part marketing, but the rest of it, it's

Eliad:

a one-on-one conversation, either with myself or the COO or the training staff.

Eliad:

Just because it's as much as the system is fully operational, easy to maintain,

Eliad:

sometimes talking with the examples around the functionality helps them to

Eliad:

grasp the system much faster, and you see them, let's say onboarded much quicker.

Eliad:

The ones are using only YouTube.

Eliad:

You see it takes a bit longer to start running, right?

Eliad:

The one that doing a full one hour session, start processing within days.

Eliad:

So, got it.

Eliad:

That's fun to

Upendra:

see.

Upendra:

So let, let's try to understand about your churn and expansion.

Upendra:

A right, I mean, it's, you've been here for five years, right?

Upendra:

So how does your churn look like?

Upendra:

So how often does the customer sort of stay with you and like, do you have

Upendra:

any metrics and how do you measure.

Eliad:

In terms of statistics, we do lose a customer or two a year, and

Eliad:

the main reason is they decided to shift the the business elsewhere.

Eliad:

Not, not elsewhere.

Eliad:

Mainly the focus of the business elsewhere.

Eliad:

They're not shifting to another technology provider besides, we can name

Eliad:

two clients throughout our life cycle that move to another provider from us.

Eliad:

Which we understand the reasons, you know, you can get everything right a

Eliad:

hundred percent of the time, but the majority of them decided to shift.

Eliad:

The business wasn't worthwhile in terms financially then number

Eliad:

of merchant number, but it's

Upendra:

still two to three customers a year, right?

Upendra:

Something like that.

Upendra:

If you got around 50.

Upendra:

So it's, it's

Eliad:

something like that.

Eliad:

Because it's easy to onboard, it's easier also down the line saying

Eliad:

about, okay, I've done my experiment.

Eliad:

I didn't, I don't want to invest more money in the business.

Eliad:

I'm flexible enough because we don't tie them to the agreement as much

Eliad:

as they're a term in the agreement.

Eliad:

I've never penalized someone for asking to leave before ahead of time.

Eliad:

It happens that, you know, down the line, we did have customers that left but came

Eliad:

back six, seven months, a year after because they wanted another niche with

Eliad:

another partner and they took another

Upendra:

label.

Upendra:

So talk about the expansion strategy here.

Upendra:

So, so for example, once you onboard somebody, is there, is there a way for

Upendra:

them to, for example, convert a $5,000 ACV customers to sell, let's say $50,000?

Eliad:

It's mainly connectivity.

Eliad:

So when they start, they have a set in mind on which providers they're

Eliad:

gonna work with because they had previous relationship and the previous

Eliad:

their clients that they know that they're gonna abor to the platform.

Eliad:

But then usually we let them feel comfortable, warm, and fuzzy with

Eliad:

the provider they brought in.

Eliad:

And then our partnership team starts pushing another provider that we

Eliad:

already have in the network and we already integrated and we see

Eliad:

that it's working nice with other.

Eliad:

Those introduction help them to expand the business.

Eliad:

So we encourage them to find other providers, not to put all the eggs

Eliad:

in one basket and work with one main provider, but to start allocating

Eliad:

resources and distribute the merchants between different providers.

Eliad:

That gives them the ability to scale.

Eliad:

And when the

Upendra:

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

Eliad:

The second year we, we charge, we charge per transaction, the minimums.

Eliad:

It's nice to start with, we want the customer to process as much as possible.

Eliad:

The more they process, the more they pay us.

Eliad:

All right, so you are the customer stays around.

Upendra:

Yeah.

Upendra:

Yeah.

Upendra:

So you are inclined to grow their business so that you

Upendra:

know your deal size goes right.

Upendra:

Exactly.

Upendra:

And do you also do any feature based.

Eliad:

So that's what they talked about in terms of the modules and,

Eliad:

and when they expand the business, suddenly they consumer services.

Eliad:

The main focus as we see in the product led growth is the fact that we

Eliad:

provide paid features that we charge our client once and give him the tool

Eliad:

to charge each and every sub client of his on each one of those so they

Eliad:

can actually pay us a hundred dollars a month, but sell it for a thousand.

Eliad:

5,000 depending on their pricing, and they're fully flexible

Eliad:

to do whatever they want.

Eliad:

And

Upendra:

who exactly in your team does, does this part, right?

Upendra:

Is there a customer success team who's regularly interacting with

Upendra:

the customer and sort of pushing

Eliad:

them for It's, it's the, it's the account managers who are doing, let's say,

Eliad:

both support and doing the appell, even the, the size of the team and the way that

Eliad:

we operate, because it's still a skeleton team in general, but we've automated a

Eliad:

lot of the work processes, so we don.

Eliad:

They have a large team at this point.

Eliad:

So they do a lot of day to day activity with the client, and then when they see

Eliad:

different issues, they suggest some of the paid features and say the cost to the

Eliad:

benefit is just, let's say ridiculous.

Eliad:

It's $50 and you can make 5,000 on the emergency.

Eliad:

So

Upendra:

let's talk about this team, right?

Upendra:

So how big is your team and how many folks doing what

Eliad:

as of today?

Eliad:

Yeah, so we currently are 12 people on the.

Eliad:

Etc.

Eliad:

Six development team and six support and let's say a sales on that 60

Upendra:

50.

Upendra:

So you mentioned something, right?

Upendra:

So you mentioned you, you sort of work with around five or six, you know,

Upendra:

qualified leads per month, right?

Upendra:

So do you also work with, you know, co-leads in that sense?

Upendra:

Right?

Upendra:

So do you, do you have any co-leads coming in?

Upendra:

Right?

Upendra:

So how, how does that, you know, funnel look.

Upendra:

So, because I, I'm assuming you need to put in a lot of effort to sort of

Upendra:

nurture them and convert them there.

Upendra:

The sales cycle could be much longer than it is in, in this case.

Upendra:

So, so do you have any personal actually, Dealing with all those cool leads

Upendra:

and maybe a or somebody like that?

Upendra:

Do, do or do you just ignore them?

Upendra:

What, what happens there?

Upendra:

Just No.

Eliad:

No.

Eliad:

God.

Eliad:

God forbid, we don't ignore anyone.

Eliad:

So we do have the incoming leads that are coming, either from the

Eliad:

small campaigns we're doing and the social networks, but not really paid

Eliad:

campaigns, but just, you know, organic.

Eliad:

So we have a, a girl on the team that handles the partnerships.

Eliad:

She handles all the incoming and outreach as well because there are list

Eliad:

of registered service providers that we can target that are either using other

Eliad:

technical providers or only referral agent for some of the banks we work with.

Eliad:

Mm-hmm.

Eliad:

So we are right now helping them grow from just being a referral agent themselves

Eliad:

to suddenly have technology with us and then helping them grow their business.

Eliad:

So we do a lot of outreach

Upendra:

for those.

Upendra:

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

Eliad:

She handles everything coming in and then the actual

Eliad:

sales still me handling

Upendra:

within the team.

Upendra:

Right.

Upendra:

And how does the conversion look like for this particular funnel where a co lead

Upendra:

sort of discovers you and you know, you,

Eliad:

so that's obviously the conversion is lower

Eliad:

coming from the affiliate, but I think it stands about the 20%, 10 to 20% conversion

Eliad:

on the, and the cold leads coming.

Eliad:

It takes longer.

Eliad:

So if, let's say qualified lead can take up to, let's say two, three

Eliad:

weeks to close, let's say call lead might take a month or two to close

Eliad:

because it wasn't in their focus.

Eliad:

The qualified lead comes, they're already one.

Eliad:

We know that they're searching for a solution.

Eliad:

That's just finding the right one.

Eliad:

And finalizing colleagues might not have even thought about

Eliad:

changing a technology provider.

Eliad:

And suddenly we come with the idea.

Eliad:

So it might take.

Upendra:

Got it.

Upendra:

So talk about the future here, right?

Upendra:

So how I, how so it looks like you are around one or 2 million in, in terms

Upendra:

of ar, how exactly are you gonna scale that to, let's say 10 million, right?

Upendra:

What exactly is gonna happen from

Eliad:

now on?

Eliad:

So we're expanding territories and expanding different verticals.

Eliad:

So when we started the company to begin with, we were focused on one

Eliad:

vertical, which was payment processing.

Eliad:

And now when you see embedded finance another, let's say terminology

Eliad:

in the business, just doing payment processing isn't enough.

Eliad:

So we accommodate as a backend system, payment processing, card issuing for

Eliad:

the prepaid cards and closed loop prepaids and, and loyalty cards.

Eliad:

And we do the virtual I bands, which is connecting to the banking.

Eliad:

Mm-hmm.

Eliad:

. So we aggregate a lot of service provider for a banking infrastructure.

Eliad:

For car and the payment processing.

Eliad:

So we do see the vertical for banking growing significantly

Eliad:

in the last 12 months.

Eliad:

We do see the processing growing steadily in the same rate that it was before.

Eliad:

And then once we expanded these, the different verticals we

Eliad:

started expanding territory wise.

Eliad:

In terms of the affiliate networks that we've built, we were mainly focused to

Eliad:

begin with in the European side of the world, and now we're starting expanding

Eliad:

the network in the us which we started getting a lot of more traction there.

Eliad:

And specifically within Europe, we're start thinking about going to specific

Eliad:

conferences in Pacific Territories when we analyze the competition there.

Eliad:

So we have started to find an affiliate that serves as the sales

Eliad:

agent in a territory with, let's say, warmer relationship, not just the

Eliad:

10%, but 20, which would actually be the brand ambassador per territory.

Eliad:

So I, that approach stays the same.

Eliad:

If he doesn't convert, we don't pay anything.

Eliad:

So it's not like paying a.

Eliad:

Such, we'll just give it higher incentive.

Upendra:

What exactly do these affiliates do on a regular basis?

Upendra:

Are they simple consultants?

Eliad:

Usually Some of them are doing affiliation as a business, meaning

Eliad:

they refer different types of, let's say, consult different types

Eliad:

of clients, but to different types of, let's say service providers.

Eliad:

Mm-hmm.

Eliad:

, some are very niche, so they either responsible to bring, let's say,

Eliad:

processing accounts to different banks or to different merchants,

Eliad:

and suddenly someone like us comes along, so it kind of ties things.

Eliad:

But a lot of them just doing that as a day to day and make enough money,

Eliad:

let's say, from the referrals from previous businesses, you know, to make

Eliad:

it month over month and growing and

Upendra:

grow.

Upendra:

Got it.

Upendra:

And one last question.

Upendra:

Are you completely bootstrapped as of

Eliad:

today?

Eliad:

Yes, we have.

Eliad:

We had one investor to begin with and then we paid him out about a year ago.

Eliad:

That's, that's amazing.

Eliad:

We, we went to complete from a small investors, let's say not even a seed, so

Eliad:

under the friends and family category way.

Eliad:

Then there was an opportunity to give them the interest and everything else

Eliad:

and pay them out, which we've done over a year ago, and now we're a hundred

Eliad:

percent, let's say, employee owned.

Eliad:

All right,

Upendra:

so what's the vision here?

Upendra:

Are you gonna scale it to, let's say, five or 10 million?

Upendra:

And are you gonna sell this company off, or are you gonna,

Upendra:

what exactly is the vision here?

Eliad:

If, if I'm looking at, say, a potential thing, I don't, there

Eliad:

is either being acquired another company or merged into a bigger

Eliad:

company to do something bigger.

Eliad:

Mm-hmm.

Eliad:

, our plan down the line is to get licenses ourself, financial licenses to

Eliad:

provide additional services such as, you know, if the technology comes with the

Eliad:

license altogether as a package has much more impact than just providing the.

Eliad:

And for that you have two approaches.

Eliad:

Either get the license, raise money from investors in order to take the

Eliad:

license, but getting a license takes about a year worth of work, logistics

Eliad:

and everything, and bureaucracy, or to merge with a company that already has

Eliad:

the licenses together and to come as a stronger, bigger entity on that part,

Eliad:

which we had several discussion over the years, but when the time comes,

Eliad:

we'll make the the right decision.

Eliad:

All

Upendra:

right, Elliot, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

Upendra:

Hope you scale.

Upendra:

Thank you.

Upendra:

You are co to much, much greater.

Eliad:

Thank you, Frank.

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