Question for this company / anyone who runs similar businesses - is $1MM ARR enough to pay 7 people? I'd be interested to know what they do in EBITDA and how they think about salaries.
This is actually a general question I have about start-ups. The economics of having a business that makes $1 - $10mm in revenue and hires 7 - 100ish people is still difficult for me to understand. Yes, you can raise equity or debt because equity / debt holders believe in a certain business model and then use that capital to pay people, but to be a standalone business without VC or bank funding, you need cash flow (not revenue) that can pay engineers market value.
Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money
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Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money
#62Hey guys, My name is Mike. I'm co-founder and product at Everhour. I'd be happy to answer your questions if any. Feel free to ask here or on Medium.
Hey, congrats! We are going a similar path with https://fulfilli.com/ . We haven't raised funding to this day, hence a few questions: 1) do you plan to raise money from now on? 2) Do you have any traction in the US and is your ambition to become a market leader there? 3) Do you think it's possible to get a significant traction in the US without "being local"?
(1) We do not consider investments ATM. We have enough cashflow to implement all short-term ideas. But of course I do not exclude such an opportunity in the future. We always start with small experiments and increment.
(2) We have no ambitions to market leadership. Moreover, I'm not sure that this is possible. The requirements for ideal time tracker are very different based on industry and company size. If we want to be a leader, we will have to add all the features. But then we will become difficult to use and this will have a negative impact on existing customers. While our main market is the US, we have customers from 70 countries. We will continue our expansion on top markets, instead of focusing on one.
(3) I think it depends on the product. We have a fairly low ARPU - about $50. Our main client is SMB. They don't visit us and no personal meetings required. If you do enterprise - I think it makes more sense.
Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money
#63Congrats! Love to see more and more of these stories. Is this a trend lately to see more companies going for cash-flow at the outset?
Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money
#64Question for this company / anyone who runs similar businesses - is $1MM ARR enough to pay 7 people? I'd be interested to know what they do in EBITDA and how they think about salaries. This is actually a general question I have about start-ups. The economics of having a business that makes $1 - $10mm in revenue and hires 7 - 100ish people is still difficult for me to understand. Yes, you can raise equity or debt beca…
> "Product: Everhour. HQ: Minsk, Belarus"
Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money
#65Question for this company / anyone who runs similar businesses - is $1MM ARR enough to pay 7 people? I'd be interested to know what they do in EBITDA and how they think about salaries. This is actually a general question I have about start-ups. The economics of having a business that makes $1 - $10mm in revenue and hires 7 - 100ish people is still difficult for me to understand. Yes, you can raise equity or debt beca…
Depends on where you are located. If its a US Based company, obviously not enough revenue to sustain 7 employees.
The company is based in Belarus where salaries are lower than US: https://blogs.elenasmodels.com/en/average-monthly-salary-in-...
Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money
#66Hey guys, My name is Mike. I'm co-founder and product at Everhour. I'd be happy to answer your questions if any. Feel free to ask here or on Medium.
FTA: > 5) The advantages of annual billing How do you encourage customers to choose annual billing?
No special tricks. Firstly, it's cheaper and we try to emphasize this in our interface, and secondly, some do not want to receive an invoice each month, they want to pay only once.
Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
FTA: > 5) The advantages of annual billing How do you encourage customers to choose annual billing?
I'd love to know the same question. We are making our way to $1mm ARR and have very low churn, but no annual billing option. Do you give a discount at all?
We don't offer a discount except for volume. If the client has 50+ employees, then we negotiate.
Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money
#68Question for this company / anyone who runs similar businesses - is $1MM ARR enough to pay 7 people? I'd be interested to know what they do in EBITDA and how they think about salaries. This is actually a general question I have about start-ups. The economics of having a business that makes $1 - $10mm in revenue and hires 7 - 100ish people is still difficult for me to understand. Yes, you can raise equity or debt beca…
Depends on where you are located. If its a US Based company, obviously not enough revenue to sustain 7 employees. The company is based in Belarus where salaries are lower than US: https://blogs.elenasmodels.com/en/average-monthly-salary-in-...
obviously?
Not every employee must be a high paid engineer. And there are certainly non SV based engineers that are totally fine with less than 100k $ per year?
Being based in Germany, I calculate around 100k€ revenue per employee myself, maybe a bit more.
Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
FTA: > 5) The advantages of annual billing How do you encourage customers to choose annual billing?
I'd love to know the same question. We are making our way to $1mm ARR and have very low churn, but no annual billing option. Do you give a discount at all?
If you are in B2B segment, try offering annual plans (or even multi year plans) without any discount. It is very tough to get approval for spending any amount of money on products in corporate setting. But the amount in the approval request is not something any one cares about.
Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money
#70Hey guys, My name is Mike. I'm co-founder and product at Everhour. I'd be happy to answer your questions if any. Feel free to ask here or on Medium.
Ever thought about a WakaTime integration?