Insight
Van Wieren: Startups Serving Everyone Serve No One; Dominate a Niche Pond
“Essentially we tried to be there for everyone. So we were there for no one. And two years ago we sat down because every day we saw another competitor and we were a tiny fish, a fish in the big ocean. And we thought it's better to become like a big fish in a sm…”
Insight
Van Wieren: In Crises, Capture Customer Time If You Cannot Get Money
“In times of crisis, if you can't get their money, you can at least get their time.”
Insight
Van Wieren prefers diluting equity to scale fast over retaining total ownership
“You don't want to dilute that much, but I rather now know within five years, hey, we'll start taking over the world or not, then in, in 20 years, and I keep all my equity.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Van Wieren: Starred ACV Is ~$10K for Candidate Experience, ~$20K for Engagement
“And if you look at the candidate experience side, it's more or less 10,000 ACVs, so 10,000 per year, and employee engagement is more like 20,000 per year.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Van Wieren: Starred Has ~150 Legacy Clients and 70-80 New Focus Clients
“The customer satisfaction business, and that's still the majority of our revenue. So that's around 150 clients, and we have around 70, 80 clients in the new focus.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Van Wieren: Starred reaches $2M ARR split between legacy and new product
“So it's around two million right now, and it's split equally amongst the two.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Van Wieren: Starred candidate experience business doubles yearly, signing Brex and Robinhood
“In our focus, we're doubling every year, and we're signing also big American companies, or at least big tech companies like Elastic, Robinhood, Brex.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Van Wieren: Starred operates at 20% profit margin on $170K monthly revenue
“About 20%.”
Disclosure
Van Wieren: Starred took $1.5M government-backed loan, holds no VC funding
“We only got a bank loan government-backed bank loan of 1.5 million, but we don't have a VC yet.”
Disclosure
Starred Is in Talks to Divest Its Legacy Business
“And we are also having some conversations with other companies, maybe to acquire our legacy business.”
Disclosure
Van Wieren Would Consider Selling Starred Legacy Business at 3x-5x Revenue
“But if there's a company offering a three to five X, for instance, it's definitely worth looking at.”
Disclosure
Starred plans to raise $3M-$4M Series A at 20%-30% dilution
“Around three to four million, we would say. And what valuation would you try and get? Yeah, I think it's a typical Series A, so I think you would give away, or at least how it works here in Europe, 20 to 30% of the company.”
Assertion Supported
Van Wieren: Poor candidate experience cost Virgin $5M yearly in cancellations
“So Virgin is one of our clients, and they found out that in the beginning they were offering quite a bad candidate experience, and it was costing them five million per year, bottom line, because people were canceling their subscription.”
Disclosure
Starred scales customer base to 250 enterprise and tech clients
“We are working for 250 clients on the one hand for big corporates like Nestle Heineken DHL, but also for many tech companies like Spotify Deliveroo, Takeaway”
Disclosure
Starred was generating approximately $100,000 in monthly revenue a year ago
“So a year ago we were around a hundred.”
Disclosure
Van Wieren took a 4% government loan backed by a personal warrant
“So on the one hand it's there's a warrant, so there's risk for me, but on the other hand, the interest is very low and you can use it. Four percent.”
Disclosure
Van Wieren: Starred secured a €1.5 million government loan
“1.5 million.”
Disclosure
Starred burns $50,000 monthly but intends to accelerate its spending
“So now on average 50 grand per month. So that's, I think, okay, but it will accelerate.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Starred saw 30% response rates on early outbound email campaigns
“So when we were sending a hundred emails, we got like 30 replies.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Starred experiences roughly ten percent annual revenue churn
“Annually, like, 10%.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Spotify expanded its Starred usage from two countries to twenty
“For instance, Spotify, we first signed them in the Netherlands and Belgium, and they're now using it in like 20 countries.”
Disclosure
Starred currently misses its 12-month CAC payback goal due to over-investing
“So as, so what we would be willing to pay has, so we're aiming for that we that we can make the customer acquisition calls back in 12 months, but right now, and that's also what you're seeing when you're over investing. It's yeah, that, that's, that amount is …”
Disclosure
Starred Stopped Selling Legacy Product in Early 2020 to Focus
“You can't find our legacy product any longer. So that's also something we changed beginning of this year. We said, if you really want to focus, we should stop selling in our legacy business.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Starred charges its SaaS customers an average of 600 per month
“So it's a typically software as a service model, so we charge On average 600 per month.”
