Sramana Mitra: Now, do you also do the A/B testing on landing page optimization and things like that? Because that would be part of your lead generation process, right? João Aroso: That’s a very clever question and a part of our roadmap because that obviously affects the end result. However, currently we rely only on
Sramana Mitra: How do you do your own lead generation? Can you walk me through a use case and use your own situation to explain how your technology works? How you do your own lead generation using your technology?
Sramana Mitra: At the point at which this switch is happening, what are the dynamics of the company? Do you have customers? Are you still operating with that 1.5M in financing? João Aroso: We’re still operating with the 1.5M in financing, but we’re starting a new fundraise. We have some early customers in Portugal and Italy.
Sramana Mitra: So then how long did you do this business? And what kind of revenue levels or what kind of scale were you able to achieve? João Aroso: We did that business for two years and one of my co-founders from my first startup is still there today. I left, but the company is
Sramana Mitra: What kind of deal was it? What were you charging? What were they charging you to let you sell on there through them? João Aroso: It was a revenue share model. We had a very light minimum commitment, around a $100K a year. Everything was revenue shared.
João is a serial entrepreneur who has built several businesses from Portugal. His current company has found its path to scalability with the advent of Generative AI. He discusses challenges of business models and pricing in great depth.
Sramana Mitra: When you raised the credit capital, you got four term sheets from the credit capital side. How many customers or SMBs were on your platform? Felix Rodriguez: A little over 500. Sramana Mitra: And what was the total amount of transactions that you were seeing on that? Felix Rodriguez: Half a billion a year in
Sramana Mitra: Did you raise the seed round through your own network or through a startup network? Felix Rodriguez: We had a process to raise funding, and they certainly made introductions. But I had taken matters into my own hands. I was inviting investors to Demo Day. I sent out a cold email to Pat Matthews,