Hey - Marc here.

Happy Saturday morning, motivated B2B SaaS Founders!

Here's at least one tip to keep in mind as you grow your B2B SaaS company:

Today's issue takes about 5 minutes to read.

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In today's issue, I share some key takeaways from a recent interview between Nathan Latka, the host of Daily Interviews with SaaS Founders, and Takeshi Aida, the founder of MiiTel. They discussed how he hit $20m in revenue with just $15m raised!

After joining Mitsubishi Corporation, Takeshi engaged in automotive trading, planning and executing sales/marketing initiatives in overseas markets, cross-border investment deals and new company formations, large government bidding deals, and M&A deals, among others.

About MiiTel

Takeshi founded RevComm in July 2017. RevComm provides this self-coaching tool called "MiiTel" and "MiiTel for Zoom," a service that uses artificial intelligence to visualize sales calls, call center operations, and meetings. They launched MiiTel in November 2018.

MiiTel is a revolutionary communication platform — an AI-powered smart PBX telephone system that improves sales coaching and increases conversion rates. It is more than just a regular IP phone; it's an all-in-one tool that automatically records all your calls and has the speech-to-text capability.

MiiTel's system also works seamlessly and supports integration with different CRMs such as Salesforce and Hubspot. The company has expanded to more than 40,000 users in 4 years in Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the United States.

P.S. With a total of 200 employees — an engineering team of 80, MiiTel now has 1,600 customers. Miitel raised a Series A of $15M at a $150M valuation in June 2021.

Challenges

Their startup idea already exists.

A fair comparison is that they're effectively like Gong and Chorus, but for Asia. MiiTel consists of two parts — IP phone cloud and conversation analytics. They provide this one-stop service for only $79, while their competitors cost around $100 to $240.

Advice to Other Founders

Leveraging in-person events can be a highly effective method for driving SaaS growth.

When they initially began, they already had 30 companies onboard. At a Salesforce event, he kept introducing this self-coaching tool and offered a closed beta version; if they liked it, they could become a paying customer once the official launch took place. This strategy worked wonderfully for them.

Boost your revenue with smart upselling.

Offer customers related products necessary for the product they're already purchasing. Enterprise customers usually pay them $140/ID monthly, including cold charge, mobile, and storage options. Enterprise customers typically store more data; for an extra $69, they could get two months' worth of recording storage.

Spend time and social network on philanthropic activities.

His foundation owns 90% of his share. From the attack strategy perspective, that is thoughtful tax planning. But he's leveraging his wealth and influence for good — he's making a positive difference in the world today. He is still willing to pay taxes to the Japanese government for society.

Bonus

Takeshi is 33 and married with one daughter.
His favorite online tool for building MiiTel is Slack.
He loves philosophy. He likes the The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant.
Takeshi started his business at 28. His advice to his 20-year-old self is to start a business earlier.

TL;DR

Miitel – think of it like Gong but for the Asia Pacific, plus extra things added on top. He's got over 1,600 paying customers doing over $1.6m a month in revenue, up from $800k a month just a year ago. Done this very capital efficiently, they raised $15m in a series they had called $150m valuations back in 2020. Hasn't raised since, so very efficient growth. 200 on the team, 80 Engineers, 30 sales reps, 110+ net dollar retention as TK looks to scale.

PS Here is a link to the full interview if you are interested in listening to the full episode: Gong of Japan Hits $20m in revenue with just $15m raised! Prime takeover target?

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See you again next week.

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