Abel Zhao

Co-Founder & CEO, FreeD Group · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutive

Abel Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of FreeD Group, an enterprise SaaS company providing proprietary AI solutions and digital commerce tools. Under his leadership, the company raised a $15 million Series B round and acquired Connexus Travel from Swire Group.

16statements → 9claims → 1claims resolved → 3.81/5average certainty → 1.19/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated →

0 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 8 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 7 assertions · 1 opinion · 1 insight · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 8 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Abel argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Free D Group aims to IPO its travel unit at $250M+ valuation
“So for that particular entity, we're aiming to IPO in 24. So hopefully that actually gave us a but minimal IPO. We're looking at two hundred fifty million at least the evaluation.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 15:46 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Abel Zhao on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Abel Zhao said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Free D Group's largest enterprise contract is a $7M Korean smart city
“And then there's a big guys out there. So the governments or telcos or airports and stuff like that, that could actually go from a 100,000 dollars to all the way to seven million dollars per project. That's basically the largest one we have, which is a smart c…”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 5:40 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Insight
Charging SaaS fees improves enterprise customer stickiness more than free access
“Well, because actually when you're creating a SaaS feed that actually creates from the customer perspective, you don't charge them anything, actually that lowered the stickiness and then also lower the loyalty we find. And then, so when you charge them anythin…”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 10:41 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Free D Group expects $100 million in 2023 revenue, 50% ARR
“So we're hoping that actually with all those strategic alignments put into place, it will help us to achieve the a hundred million revenue this year. And the amount that at least we're looking at, hoping that at least 50% of that's ARR.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 15:18 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Free D Group's take rate: under 2% in China, 10-20% in EMEA
“I mean typically, for example, if we, because actually we work with a wide range of suppliers for all the other the merchants from different markets, for example, if it's in China the other the take rate's actually quite quite, quite sad. We're talking about b…”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 4:30 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Free D Group maintains a 10% weighted average take rate
“I would say around 10%.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 4:59 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Large corporations generated 60-65% of Free D Group's 2022 revenue
“From the test fee side, one time solution to right now, if you look at 20, 22 number those actually, the total large corporation state takes about 60, 65%, and then the small merchants takes about 30%.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 7:01 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Opinion
Zhao says competing in B2C travel against Greater China incumbents is suicidal
“We realized that actually what we're trying to do on the B to C side, it's kind of, especially in this part of the market, greater China area, it's suicidal. So basically we cannot compete with the big guys.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 9:20 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Disclosure
Free D Group processes approximately $20 million in quarterly GMV
“So last 30 days, I go for last quarter, it's around twenty million dollars.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 10:16 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bootstrapped Free D Group grew revenue from $14M in 2021 to $35M
“So 20, 21, we need about fourteen million revenue. And then this year, so so we closed 20, 20 to thirty five million.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 12:41 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Disclosure
Free D Group acquired Hong Kong's largest travel management company
“So one of those actually we acquired two companies, whether it's in based in Hong Kong, which is the largest TMC company for the greater in the markets.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 14:29 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Free D Group aims to IPO its travel unit at $250M+ valuation
“So for that particular entity, we're aiming to IPO in 24. So hopefully that actually gave us a but minimal IPO. We're looking at two hundred fifty million at least the evaluation.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 15:46 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Disclosure
Free D Group is entirely bootstrapped with no outside capital
“No, we're bootstrapped.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 16:00 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Disclosure
Free D Group's enterprise software requires 10% to 20% custom code
“For our SaaS models, for example, 80% of those actually are SaaS components. I mean, that means ready to use and ready to launch to the market, but because actually they're bigger guys, so they more or less have, they have around between 10 to 20% customizatio…”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 7:34 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Disclosure
Free D Group serves 70 to 80 paying SaaS customers globally
“Right now globally we have about 80, 70, 80.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 10:01 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Free D Group generated less than $2 million in 2020 revenue
“So 20 20, when we first started to switch the business model from B to C to B to B to C so we only did around less than two million dollars in revenue in 2020, because actually that's when COVID first happened.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 12:20 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Engineers make up 62% of Free D Group's 250 employees
“62%.”
Abel Zhao Jan 20, 2023 ▶ 16:18 Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Japan with local farmers

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Bootstrapped to $35m Revenue, $15m recurring, $20m One Time Connecting Smart cities in Jap Jan 20, 2023 8m
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