Building a Venture Scale Enterprise AI Company from Spain: David Villalon, CEO of Maisa (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s stay with the journey. Let me first focus on the journey, then we’ll draw extrapolations and big conclusions. You identified a use case in invoice processing that took advantage of your product’s functionality, allowing a business user to use your product to make this happen. Did you close that deal?

David Villalon: Yes, and it’s still ongoing.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you charge them?

David Villalon: It was pay-per-use. They were our first client, and now we have a different pricing model. They’re the only ones with that pricing at this moment. We charged just enough to break even — not to make or lose money — because our goal was to have a happy customer.

Sramana Mitra: So, what did you extrapolate from this happy customer? Did you try to sell this use case to other people? What was repeatable based on what you learned from this customer?

David Villalon: That’s a really good question. What was repeatable at that moment was that we could run in production. Everything we did ensured the client’s success and helped us figure out how to scale, make it easy to use, and let the user control it. We discovered a lot about this space while building that use case.

We started with the hard part, so most of our learnings were around product and UX rather than technology. On the tech side, it was mainly about infrastructure and scalability.

We learned a lot about user experience—what happens when a user enters the platform, how they go from zero to one use case. Once the client had one use case running, they wanted ten more because they understood the value.

Our key learnings were twofold: first, there was clearly value—someone was willing to pay, so we knew we were onto something. Second, they understood the product. That led us to reflect on UX and development and decide to double down on building a studio.

Sramana Mitra: What were the other ten use cases that this company wanted to do once they understood it?

David Villalon: They’re still developing them. Many are in operations and finance.

Sramana Mitra: So, it’s mostly in finance and operations?

David Villalon: Yes. That’s a challenge we still face because it’s hard for people to conceptualize. I’m still trying to make it easy to understand that if there’s a complex process involving human thinking in front of a computer—opening an Excel file or a PDF, searching or interacting with information—it’s often something we can automate.

This is common in finance because of all the Excel sheets, PDFs, and quantitative data. It’s also common in legal and HR, with things like payroll and pay slips.

But the range of possible use cases is so wide that people don’t know where to start, which is why we began with invoice processing.

Sramana Mitra: And having one proven use case helps you get into an organization. The way to approach this is to take a successful use case, have a reference, and use that to enter a similar organization.

David Villalon: I completely agree, and that’s what we’re doing today. We usually approach users with use case ideas that we know will work for them. We know who to target and where, which is part of our strategy and why we’re scaling now.

I don’t know if you know the story of Notion, but it’s very meaningful.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me.

David Villalon: Yes. Notion can be used for everything—databases, websites, documents. In its early days, you could do a lot, but it wasn’t as clearly positioned as it is today. They decided to position themselves as a note-taking app, targeting Evernote’s market.

Once users started taking notes, they discovered they could also do documentation, track finances, and more. This aligns with what you said about use cases and platforms.

Sramana Mitra: Horizontal platforms are powerful but hard to bring to market without a specific use case to enter enterprises.

It’s always good to have a use case you can build, deliver, and use as an entry point. Did you then start talking to finance organizations about the invoice processing use case?

David Villalon: Yes, and we still do. It remains an unsolved problem.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me more about what kinds of companies are you going after now? Talk about geography and focus areas.

David Villalon: We’re focusing on Europe, especially Spain, with some interesting opportunities in the U.S. We target regulated industries—banking, finance, energy, infrastructure, supply chain, and manufacturing, including automotive.

Those are the sectors we’re focused on now because we understand their use cases and can scale effectively. This will evolve geographically and vertically, but these industries are our foundation.

The good thing is that success in one vertical often translates to others. For example, if we build for banking and finance, we can apply those solutions in supply chain finance, and vice versa. That compounding of knowledge adds value to our platform.

Sramana Mitra: How many customers do you have now?

David Villalon: Around 15. We only sell to large corporations at the moment. These are very large clients, and we have a few million in ARR—over five million.

That’s also a conscious decision. We could open our platform to everyone, but that would distract us.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Building a Venture Scale Enterprise AI Company from Spain: David Villalon, CEO of Maisa
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