Growing Veed.io from $0 to $5 million ARR in 2 years with Sabba Keynejad

In this talk from MicroConf Europe 2021, Sabba Keynejad walks through his journey of building Veed from $0 to $5M ARR in 2 years.
While the growth was quick, Sabba says that this was a "overnight success, ten years in the making".
He and his team tried a handful of other startup ideas along the way and Sabba talks about the mistakes and lessons learned that eventually led them to Veed.
Listen along to follow his incredible startup story and to hear his 6 tactics to help you grow your own SaaS.
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[@johnpslick6239]

This guy is great. I was rooting for him about 60 seconds in.

[@oluwashinapeter]

This feels like just the perfect clip i needed to watch. I recently slowed down operations on my startup after burning through $35k , ran out of money, couldn't generate enough revenue, Investors bailed out and multiple rejections. On the bright side, we discovered a new problem that businesses are dying to pay for and I'm going back to get a job to build on the side. This was very inspiring to watch. Now I have the energy to try again. Thanks Sabba : )

[@MicroConf]

Glad to hear it! Thanks for watching.

[@El_Diablo_12]

19:50 make something people search for 21:50 build traction 22:37 it takes awhile 27:00 video creation and editing market 27:30 1.5 million monthly traffic 28:10 more focus on growth, instead of on product

[@strauss7151]

I love Veed. Glad to know they are doing well

[@gbengaogun]

What a terrific story!

[@popnjon]

Awesome talk. Sabba is a great founder.

[@AdeMolajo]

I love this product. I use final cut but the subtitle tool brought me to veed. So many other simple features. They’ve nailed it.

[@zubairself]

A very inspiring story indeed!

[@StarContract]

What a great talk

[@thomasduthie]

Thank you! Very interesting!

[@MrArtist1971]

Great video. Thanks!

[@falcone9412]

How much should salaries cost? He said they are a team of 50 to 60. If the average salary is 50k, that's approx. 3M/year. For that kind of drain, the ARR should be close to 10M/year.

[@drichards4426]

To reach that revenue mark in 18 months is still good. Trimming costs is relatively easy especially when you capture that much value of a market.

[@RobWalling]

Growing from zero to $5M in ARR in two years is unheard of in bootstrapped companies. Expecting them to be at $10M sounds like you’ve expected that they’ve raised $10M in funding prior to this. When you bootstrap your tend to run salaries right up against ARR. Very different from raising venture. And in either case, you’re going to maximize for growth and so would not be optimizing for profitability. Finally, I believe a big chunk of their staff is on lower cost areas of the world so I would expect their average salary is less than $50k.

[@falcone9412]

@@RobWalling Thank you for the response. I was taught payroll should be between 15% and 30%, with the higher end in service industries. However, as you pointed out, that could be a benchmark for established businesses rather than those in an active growth phase.

[@drichards4426]

@@RobWalling well put.

[@eduardomaes]

Excellent!

[@MicroConf]

Many thanks!

[@AndrewRusinas]

Growing veed is illegal in my country 😂

[@rafiuddin99]

LMAO 😂

[@samuilplamenov4749]

That’s why probably Ycombinator stayed away. They don’t mind using veed, but growing is a conflict of interest

[@TheHeathbr]

vveed?

[@marcusshamase2050]

Really inspiring story. 👏

[@watevakid]

great talk, thanks for sharing!

[@MicroConf]

Thanks for watching. :)

[@TheBlackManMythLegend]

very useful to hear mate

[@MicroConf]

Glad to hear it

[@nickb193]

0:30 -> I think most people are exactly the same as that... I can 'code' but i'm not a developer! :D

[@omarshiha3965]

Why they always skip the part of how did they market for it ? How to do marketing without a budget ?

[@MicroConf]

Early stage marketing can be challenging. In the early days, if you don’t have budget to invest, you’ll have to invest your time. I talk about 20 B2B SaaS Marketing strategies in my new book, The SaaS Playbook (saasplaybook.com)

[@marcelfahle]

Who's Dave?

[@maurom627]

Do u need to have any tutorial plugged in or is all the softs on soft

[@ringosalonen8233]

So they bootstrapped to series A, right? Curious about the reason they decided to raise fund.

[@drichards4426]

Not sure they needed one.

[@RobWalling]

This was recorded last October (2021). Veed bootstrapped for another four months and raised their Series A in Feb, 2022. That doesn’t change anything he says in this talk, though.

[@drichards4426]

@@RobWalling also, since they had so much of the business already built raising a round makes so much more sense. The vision they have in mind will likely be versus attainable.

[@ringosalonen8233]

@@RobWalling Yes,bootstrapping to $5M ARR in 2 years is impressive growth. Great sharing!

[@kheoxmeta]

it works because no software is managing dubtitles and audio tracks at the same time i litteraly searched for the solution everywhere xD i dont even understand why adobe didnt do it for mkv files, they re totally useless every streamer us mkv files

[@basimalrebeaa7014]

Thanks to the author! Crack works well

[@filemonek123]

I just checked veed's site its not that well, hopes to building stuff tho ;d

[@saibadam]

10years is kinda overnight

[@troooooper100]

holy mic is bad

[@rezzob]

Just reality check for those interested. at $2M ARR they had 60 employees. At $60k average that is a loss in millions. even at $5M ARR that’s still a loss. point being, be realistic and clear about your strategic goals. eg the best path forward for what he explained, seems to me, to be selling Veed to a major player sooner rather than later before losing the competitive edge.