Omer (00:10.160)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode I took to Saba Kainajad, the co founder of VEED IO, a UK based SaaS startup that provides a simple online video editor.
Saba and his co founder Tim were frustrated working with complex and time consuming video editing software.
They realized that for many tasks these products were overkill and eventually that led them to joining forces to build a simple online video editing tool.
They failed to raise seed funding, so they had to work contract jobs during the day and then they worked on their business at night.
A few months later they applied to YC and made it to the final interview.
They flew out to the YC offices in Mountain View excited to be on a cusp of a big break.
But they were rejected by YC because they weren't making any money.
So back in London, 48 hours later, the founders implemented a paywall and had their first 20 paying customers.
It was a promising sign that they were solving a worthwhile problem and that helped them to keep going.
But by August, they had less than one month's Runway left and they knew they were going to struggle to make payroll.
So they literally doubled their prices overnight with little to no impact on user growth.
Today they're generating over $10,000 in MRR and are growing at 50% month over month.
The key takeaway from this story is that failure is a part of any entrepreneur's life.
It's how you bounce back that matters.
And there's some really interesting lessons here in this interview, so I hope you enjoy it.
Saba, welcome to the show.
Sabba Keynejad (02:05.980)
Thank you very much.
Omer (02:07.820)
So what gets you out of bed?
What inspires or motivates you to work on your business every day?
Sabba Keynejad (02:12.160)
Well, the thing that actually gets me out of bed every morning is when our render node goes down.
But jokes aside from that, we absolutely love creating content at Vite and, you know, making your products for other people exactly the same thing.
I just don't think there's anything cooler to do that.
So we just absolutely love it.
Omer (02:28.560)
So for people who aren't familiar, tell us, what does the product do, who is it for, and what's the main problem you're helping to solve?
Sabba Keynejad (02:39.020)
Sure.
So VEED is a simple online video editing platform and unlike most other editing platforms, it's very easy to use, it's collaborative, and we can render Videos much faster than your average laptop.
Our users are anything from big companies like Facebook and Pinterest to influencers, entrepreneurs and hobbyists.
And for all these people, they want to make content but they don't want to have to dive into an Adobe platform which is, you know, designed for making long form content.
They just want to make sure sharp, you know, bits of content, add subtitles, captions and get it out on social.
Omer (03:13.940)
Now I came across you and VEED on LinkedIn when you posted a summary of 2019 very succinctly where you listed out your three top failures and there were pretty significant ones and how you turned things around and basically took this bootstrapped business to.
I mean at the time I saw that you were on track for about 150k ARR and growing at about 50% month over month.
But before that there was sort of a couple of times where it looked like the business was going to go nowhere, it was just going to get shut down and, and I think it's a fascinating story.
I also really appreciated, you know, your transparency to talk about this stuff.
And so immediately when I saw that I thought I need to get this guy on the show and talk to him.
So I'm glad we were able to, to make this work and you know, I'm really excited about sharing this story with, you know, with our audience here.
Before we sort of get into this roller coaster ride and you how you sort of turn things around, let's talk about how did you guys come up with the idea for this product?
Sabba Keynejad (04:35.860)
Sure.
So maybe like four or five years ago I was working as a creative in London at production companies and startups and on one of the contracts I was doing I was being paid a pretty good day rate to basically edit videos for a social media company.
And the social media manager asked me to add text to a video about 10 times that day.
And that's kind of all I did.
And I was just amazed that they weren't able to do it themselves.
Like they were more than creatively capable of doing it.
They did all the images themselves, they do all the posting themselves, but when it came to video there was a massive bottleneck and they were kind of like using MacBook Airs, which aren't the most powerful and probably weren't able to use the really complicated software.
So at the time I was also making gifs on giphy and giphy has this really great editor for adding text for trimming GIFs.
So I thought if we can make something like the GIPHY editor, but for videos I had it in the browser that could be a really powerful tool.
And it kind of fitted really well in what I was doing at the time.
I was creating content myself.
I was into technology, I was building apps and websites and I just kind of thought I could bring those two things together in a really nice way.
Omer (05:49.910)
And how did you get together with your co founder, Tim?
Sabba Keynejad (05:52.470)
Really interesting story.
We actually met online years ago when we were both in university.
We met on a forum which was doing this, like, online hackathon and you would meet into different, like, groups via location.
So the idea was meet some people in London and we met at this Starbucks in Angel Islington and then just got on really, really well.
And from that point on, we've been kind of like building for years, little things, testing ideas.
None of them really went anywhere because we're both students.
But then once he finished university, that's when we were like, okay, let's do this for real.
Omer (06:27.690)
And so what's the split?
Are you sort of the design guy and he's a developer, or you guys do both bits of everything?
Sabba Keynejad (06:34.890)
Yeah, exactly.
So he focuses on development, I focus on design.
In the early days, we'd both kind of do a bit of everything, but as time has gone on, yeah, I focus more on design and growth.
He does more product and development.
Omer (06:47.950)
Okay, so you've got this idea and you think there's an opportunity for a business.
What did you guys do next?
Like, did you try to validate the idea?
Did you build an mvp?
What were the next steps you took?
Sabba Keynejad (06:59.790)
Well, I'm not sure if this was in the LinkedIn post, but there was a really big failure that we made around this sort of time.
And that was we got into the King's College London University accelerator where Tim was studying once he graduated, and we didn't have that much Runway, maybe about four months each.
But on this accelerator, there was opportunities every three or four months to win grant funding from previous successful alumni.
We thought the idea of a simple online video editor probably wasn't sexy enough to win this money.
So we decided to start tweaking our idea and added the word AI in there and stuff like that.
And basically the good news is we won every competition during that year and must have.
Yeah, I think we must have had about £50,000 in prize money.
We got flown to Dubai to present the idea.
A VC gave us some desk space, but fundamentally it didn't work.
Omer (07:53.310)
So what was the idea?
Sabba Keynejad (07:54.990)
It was an automated editing product for E commerce, for fashion.
So, like Catwalk videos that you'd see on, I think they're on like, Amazon, asos, you know, lots of really big e commerce websites.
Omer (08:05.630)
Okay, so if I understood this correctly, you had an idea for simple video editing, and when you had this opportunity in this accelerator, you thought that idea is too simple, so you made it more complicated.
Sabba Keynejad (08:21.820)
Exactly.
Omer (08:23.740)
Love it.
Okay, and then, so how did things end up with that?
Sabba Keynejad (08:27.100)
So we were kind of getting somewhere, but we only had about one month's Runway left.
So we ripped out all of the complex parts and kind of left the simple online video editor.
And with a couple of months Runway left, we put it on Product Hunt, read a few blogs, optimized landing pages, and then we were out of money at this point.
And it was kind of sad, so we had to go back to contracting.
But the good news was the MVP was live and it had a few, few users at that point in time.
Omer (08:56.360)
And how are you getting the word out, apart from like Product Hunt and sort of things like that?
Did you sort of have an idea of who your target customer was and how to find them, or was it.
Let's just try to get this in front of anybody who will pay attention.
Sabba Keynejad (09:10.730)
Yeah, I suppose, like, we had a bit of an idea of who our potential user might be, but it's very different to who they are now.
So it was kind of just like, throw it at the wall, let's see what sticks.
Let's just try and get some traction.
And all we did was the initial Product Hunt launch, and then we would answer questions on Quora, which I've heard quite a few people do on this podcast of a trend.
And, yeah, just, you know, get the initial stuff up.
Do you know, 2030 answers?
And we'd see maybe 20, 30 people a day coming to the site.
Omer (09:40.690)
Okay, and when was that?
Like, when did you kind of go through the accelerator?
Sabba Keynejad (09:45.970)
So we started the accelerator in September 2017, and then we left September 2018.
So that was a full year.
That's the point.
Which we ran out of money, went back to contracting until March 2019.
Omer (10:01.090)
Okay, so were you doing any work on the product in that time when you went back to contracting, or were you guys, like, thinking this was a done deal and it was time to move on?
Sabba Keynejad (10:11.330)
The first month we needed a bit of a break, but we kind of started seeing user numbers go up a bit.
So we hired a couple of guys to help us out, and we'd work evening and weekends, just grinding, just keep pushing.
Omer (10:23.890)
Were you making any money at the time?
Sabba Keynejad (10:25.730)
No, the product was making no Money?
Omer (10:27.680)
Were you charging or.
It was just like a free product.
Sabba Keynejad (10:30.320)
Completely free.
Omer (10:31.520)
Okay.
And then Sometime in early 2019, you tried to raise some seed funding.
What happened there?
Sabba Keynejad (10:40.560)
Yeah, so, I mean, at this kind of time, we had, like, 30,000 monthly users, so it was looking pretty good.
And all the investors that I've previously spoke to and kept in touch with always said, oh, we, you know, look for great founders, and, you know, you guys are great founders, but it's not the right time.
And so, yeah, we just kind of went around and spoke to a load of people, and we just didn't get any commitment.
And we were just like, you know what?
This is just wasting our time.
We should really get back to focusing on the product and, you know, just going for it, really.
Omer (11:11.110)
Okay.
So you try to raise funding, it doesn't go anywhere.
And was it.
Was it that user number that kind of kept you guys going?
Like, was that the thing that you just kind of felt like, okay, no, we're onto something here?
Sabba Keynejad (11:25.490)
Exactly.
Like, we, you know, we were in the space of, like, four months, five months.
We went from, like, you know, 10 users a day to, you know, about a thousand users a day.
And so we were like, there's something here.
There's something here.
Like, we know there's a problem.
We can.
We can do this.
Omer (11:39.410)
Okay.
And so both of you guys are working or contracting during the day, and then you're working on this business at night, which, you know, anybody who does that or anybody listening to that knows how tough that is to go through, you know, a full day of work and then kind of have the energy to put into this kind of project, you know, every night, day after day, week after week, is.
Is not an easy thing to do.
Sabba Keynejad (12:05.580)
It was actually mornings.
We did mornings, so it's okay.
Omer (12:09.180)
Okay, that's different.
Sabba Keynejad (12:10.300)
Yeah, we just woke up early, you know, like 5:00am and then, because that's.
I feel like that's the most productive time of the day, so we just get a few hours in.
In the morning.
Omer (12:18.210)
Okay, cool.
So you're contracting.
You're building this business on the side in the mornings, not at night.
And then it was around, I guess, summertime that you guys applied for Y Combinator.
Sabba Keynejad (12:31.970)
Yeah, that's right.
Omer (12:33.250)
Okay, so what happened there?
Sabba Keynejad (12:35.890)
Sure.
So my contract came to an end after five months, so I went.
I had about six months Runway left.
Tim was still in his contract, so I went full time on the product again.
And during this time, we put an application into ic.
A couple of weeks later, all happened very Fast.
We got a telephone interview, so we went through that and then we got invited to go interview at the office in Mountain View.
So, on that note, Tim quit his contract as well.
And we're like, we're going all in.
We're going to Y Combinator, we're going to make this work.
And just didn't look back, really.
So, yeah, Tim quits his job.
Two weeks after that, we're on a plane, fly over there, check into our Airbnb, and, you know, we're nervous, but we're putting a lot of work in.
We think we're doing quite well.
We've got, you know, 35,000 monthly users.
We're growing at a good speed.
We've got a great team behind us.
And, yeah, going to the interview, it was intense.
Come out.
And then we're just, like, waiting, waiting, waiting.
And then we get this rejection email.
I remember on the staircase of the Green Tortoise Hotel, and the rejection email said, why are you not charging your users?
You're really rejected because we don't know why you're not charging your users.
So we get this rejection on a Thursday.
And we thought, you know, what if we can get ourselves paid users by Monday, that shows that we have a lot of grit, that we've determined that we can get this done.
So after the first night of feeling sorry for ourselves, the next day, we get up first thing in the morning and we start building our accounts, our payment features, our logins, like, a lot, and we just kind of grind for the next two, three days, absolutely hammering it out.
And then on Sunday, we just, you know, 24 hours before the Monday comes around, we put it live.
And, like, instantly straight away, we got a paid user come through and we were like, so, so excited.
And we're like, you know what?
We might actually just do this.
And then over the next 24 hours until the Monday, we got about 20 paid users on $5 a month at the time.
And we were like, oh, my God, they're going to say yes to this.
Like, that's.
That's an incredible turnaround.
So we wrote them an email saying, hey, we've now charged our users.
We've taken your feedback on board.
We really want to do this.
We want to.
You know, we're super, super excited.
Will you reconsider?
And then, unfortunately, a few hours later, we got rejection, another rejection from the original rejection, saying that we can't change our minds on this decision, which obviously they could have done.
But.
So, yeah, we got turned down.
But we did leave with our heads high, we took a chance and we had our first paid users at that point as well.
So that was almost like the hardest bit done.
Omer (15:20.950)
Yeah, and I guess it's got to be tough.
If you just apply and just fill out the form and they just tell you, no thanks, that's one thing.
But then to go through that stage and then a phone interview and then to get on a plane and have these in person kind of conversations, it kind of feels like you're so close to getting through that.
That's got to kind of hurt more, right?
Sabba Keynejad (15:51.110)
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, yeah.
Just going to San Francisco, you're in the office, you feel like you're kind of already there.
You think you've got good numbers, you've got a great product.
Yeah, it was really tough.
But I, you know, I do think after we left San Francisco, we definitely, definitely came back better to London than when we left.
You know, we had paid users, we had all the infrastructure built.
You know, we were ready to roll, basically.
Omer (16:17.260)
And how did you get people onto the paid plan?
Like did you kind of say, okay, you know, the people are used to the free product and so what did you offer them in the paid plan that they couldn't get in the free product?
And did you send an email out to people about it or did people just sign up once you roll this out?
Sabba Keynejad (16:36.980)
So we were planning to make it paid, but we were thinking for a long time about the right way to do it and, oh, we'll do something where you get like a week free and then, you know, then it's paid or like a usage based system.
But because we only had the weekend to do it, we were very limited with our options.
Right.
So what we ended up doing is putting a watermark on the video, effectively making it redundant for any brands or businesses to use it on their social media.
So the second we put watermarks on there, all the users that actually found value in the product paid for it straight away.
Omer (17:13.000)
Interesting.
Okay, so you, you kind of signed up about 20 people.
That was, that was, I guess around what, June time?
Sabba Keynejad (17:23.880)
June.
Exactly, exactly the 5th of June, it went live.
Omer (17:27.240)
Okay.
So you start the year, try to raise seed funding, you get rejected there, that doesn't happen.
So you guys sort of figure out how to make some money and get some contracts and sort of build this business on the side.
Then in June time, you get rejected from yc.
But the upside of that is that that rejection forced you to really think about charging people and that got you paying customers.
It was a handful, but it was still paying customers.
And then kind of looks like, you know, maybe this is the breakthrough.
Okay, Things are kind of going to look better here.
Right.
This is how the story's supposed to go.
But then in August, you guys got to a point where you had about a month of Runway left, and you were kind of close to shutting down.
Sabba Keynejad (18:19.760)
Yeah.
So, as I mentioned, when we had that phone interview and we were going to San Francisco for the interview, Tim left his job, too.
So it ended up that we had maybe three, two, three months Runway left.
We also had a couple of people working part time for us, keeping the product going.
And it looked like we were running out very, very soon.
And, you know, our monthly recurring revenue was kind of coming up, but it looked like we were going to miss it by a month.
And it would have been better contracting, unfortunately, and it's just not the run we wanted.
So we just all dug really deep, and then we put the prices up from the $5 to $10, and we were getting there, and it was like looking better.
Instead of like a month gap, it was like a two week gap.
And then again, we doubled it to 20, and that gap just completely closed.
And we pretty much sailed through running out of our savings to the company paying for everyone, like, absolutely perfectly.
It was dramatic, but fun.
And now really pleased to be out the other side.
And at that point, like, no one could tell us we couldn't do it.
Right.
We had enough money to pay for the team, for the servers.
We were growing.
We didn't need to contract again.
It was incredibly like.
It was just amazing.
Yeah.
Omer (19:32.640)
How did you start changing the pricing?
Did you grandfather in people who had already started paying five bucks a month, or did you just tell everybody the price is going up?
How did you handle that?
Sabba Keynejad (19:43.030)
Yeah, so we grandfathered everyone in.
So all the people at $5.
We still have some of those guys today.
$10.
That was only there for, you know, maybe a month, so not so many of them.
It was actually relatively simple.
And I think that is.
It was more of a confidence thing.
Like, we didn't think the product was that valuable because we built it and we're on the other side.
But actually, there's a lot of people getting a lot of value out of it, and they're more than willing to pay for it.
Omer (20:06.630)
Yeah.
And when I look at this today and, you know, I see some of the brands on your homepage with people using it at Facebook and vannamedia and Visa and so on, to me, it still feels like there's a disconnect between that.
Like 20 bucks a month, it feels like a consumer product.
Sabba Keynejad (20:25.810)
Exactly.
Yeah.
And you know what?
Earlier today I was listening to another podcast you did on pricing and, you know, not selling seats, which is technically what we do, but, you know, do it based on value and how much you use it.
And so we've just had some conversations today about implementing that this week.
So, yeah, we're changing.
We're always changing.
We're trying to, you know, always trying to improve, to find more value and provide more value for our users as well.
Omer (20:49.760)
Yeah, I mean, it sort of seems to me that also you kind of have a one plan right now, like monthly or annually, but there's probably an opportunity, like I'm sure there's something you could offer that there are clients that would happily pay, you know, 100 bucks a month for.
Sabba Keynejad (21:05.760)
Yeah, exactly.
Omer (21:06.640)
And I'm sure you guys are probably already thinking about that.
Sabba Keynejad (21:08.880)
We're literally deploying team accounts right now, which is 100 bucks a month, and I love it.
The other thing.
Omer (21:15.140)
And you and I didn't talk about this before.
Sabba Keynejad (21:17.660)
Exactly.
I mean, the other thing that we're doing is we're looking at all the data and, you know, we can see that 20% of the users are just doing so much editing and they've got crazy amounts of storage, you know, the videos, and they're transcoding and transcribing and translating all of this content.
And, you know, if we put those guys on value based pricing, we'll get so much more a month from that.
Omer (21:40.900)
So you double the prices, you double the prices again.
And I think as we've just talked about, there's an opportunity to do that beyond just adding sort of the paywall and increasing prices.
Have you guys been doing anything else from a marketing perspective to find customers?
Sabba Keynejad (22:02.580)
So I think there's two things that we've been doing since then.
One of them is I probably spend five hours a day speaking to our users.
It is crazy.
I really love it though, and it gives me a really good insight to who they are, what they want and what they're looking for and what their goals are.
And then I kind of funneled that information into the product so we can think about how our landing page communicates to them and, you know, make sure the tooling and the editor is right for them.
And that's been incredible for us.
I mean, just today we had loads of shout outs on social media with, you know, marketers using the tool, telling their friends, and that's been incredible for people referring each other.
So I think about 10% of our users now have been referred, which is great.
Omer (22:43.630)
Love it.
Before you tell me more, can you give me an example of how you've implemented that?
So you talked about, hey, here's how we've updated the homepage to talk to them.
Give us an example of that.
Because I think that's a really important point that sometimes we forget is as a founder, it's easy to think about how you see the product and how you want to describe it, but when you talk to your customers, they often see it a different way.
And so I'm curious about, you know, is there some.
Some example of that that you can share with us, that these conversations helped you to improve your messaging?
Sabba Keynejad (23:16.610)
So the second paid user signs up for our platform, they get a welcome email, and a day later they get a hi, I'm Saba.
This is the story so far.
And then at the end of that story, it's like, tell me why you chose VEED.
And then I have probably over 100 responses to that one question alone.
And everyone likes it because it's simple and it's a great way to do subtitles, Right?
And if you look at our homepage now, the first thing that you can see that it's simple online video editing.
Video editing made simple.
Sorry.
And it's a great place to add subtitles and grow your audience.
So it's, you know, taking exactly what they like about it and what they want from it into the, you know, the first banner of the page.
Omer (23:58.890)
Love it.
Love it.
Because that's probably like when those people, those customers are telling other people about the product and the referrals.
That's probably what they're saying.
They're saying, oh, yeah, it's this online video software editing software that lets you do this.
Sabba Keynejad (24:14.410)
Yes, exactly.
Omer (24:16.010)
And you've nailed that on the homepage.
I think that's great.
The great example.
Okay, great.
So what about in terms of anything else, like content marketing, reaching out to brands, outbound stuff?
Have you been doing anything like that?
Sabba Keynejad (24:34.370)
Yeah, we tried a bunch of outbound and it just didn't fly.
It just didn't work.
Unfortunately, something that we did get really good at that we're still trying to get better at is I started discovering that if you look at the general acquisition channel with different categories of businesses, they're incredibly similar.
So.
So, like, social publishers obviously rely on social media to bring their traffic in.
And a lot of web tools for, like, video editing and Image Editing, about 80% of all their traffic was coming from search.
So people would Google stuff like add image to video, subtitle video.
And we thought, okay, let's make landing pages for every one of these kind of like long tail keywords and then try and rank for them.
So I wrote about, you know, 20 landing pages.
It took forever.
Got them up and then what we would do is we'd launch each one of those landing pages on Product Hunt.
And then so what that did was brought the initial bit of traffic through, which was great.
And then we got a bit of social traction as well.
So people tweeting about it on Twitter, and a couple of days later, there'd be a couple of articles saying, hey, this is a great place to add text to your video.
This is a great place to subtitle your video.
And that kind of got those initial backlinks and that initial traffic.
And we could start seeing ourselves ranking in a couple of weeks on the first page of Google.
And then as our tool was like an actionable utility, unlike the other articles, which were just explaining how to do it in, like, imovie, we started ranking really well.
And like today we're probably at number one or two for most of those keywords.
Omer (26:04.870)
So mostly the growth has come from word of mouth and being good at SEO.
Sabba Keynejad (26:11.430)
Yeah, exactly.
Omer (26:13.430)
And when did you start hiring people?
Because you said you've got a team of what, four or five people now?
Sabba Keynejad (26:18.380)
Yeah.
So the initial hires that we made, Mate and Vilco, are still with us today, and they're absolutely incredible.
We couldn't have done any of this without them.
We hired them when we went back to contracting, and we did that because we were getting good day rates, you know, working in technology companies in London, so we're able to hire remotely, so we could kind of keep both things going.
And then, you know, slowly they started saying to their mates, like, you know, this is a really cool startup, like, do you want to join us?
And then the team's kind of grown organically since then.
Omer (26:49.930)
And where are these guys based?
Sabba Keynejad (26:51.610)
One's in Serbia, one's in Budapest.
And we've just hired Josie.
She is German, but living in Vietnam right now.
So, yeah, all over the place, really.
Omer (27:01.530)
So what's next for you guys?
Sabba Keynejad (27:04.010)
I think maybe founders always feel like their products never finished.
I want to get.
Omer (27:08.890)
Of course, it never will be.
Right.
Sabba Keynejad (27:10.810)
I want to get to 1.0 so badly.
No, yeah, I think, you know, we want to get our timeline editing done so you can do multiple videos.
And then the other thing we want to build applications to connect, you know, the whole ecosystem up so you can edit on your phone, then your laptop, and, you know, improve our collaboration features and also start offering B2B packages as well.
So we get a lot of inbound B2B requests, but we just haven't been able to fulfill them just yet because we're just too small.
And this is.
I think the theme of not raising money in bootstrapping is we've got enough to pay everyone and we're growing at a great rate.
So, you know, that's something we're going to have to address in four months and we're okay with that.
So, yeah, we just have to grow at the same speed as the company.
Omer (27:51.850)
Now, what was the big lesson or takeaway for you from these failures over the course of that year?
Sabba Keynejad (28:01.530)
Yeah, I mean, I think.
I don't want to say don't give up, but it kind of feels like it was the fact that we just kept going and kept pushing through, you know, that we really learn how to turn failure into success and not, you know, not let it bother us, you know, and just having that great determination to keep pushing through and believing in it.
Yeah, it's cliche as it sounds.
I think that's probably it.
Omer (28:25.060)
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think in your.
The LinkedIn post, you'd said that failure is a part of life.
It's how you bounce back from it.
Right?
It's.
That's the lesson.
Right.
In terms of.
Really, it comes back to resilience.
Sabba Keynejad (28:38.030)
Yeah, definitely.
Omer (28:39.870)
And one thing, I guess is in the earlier days when you didn't have that many users using the product, what kept you guys going then?
I mean, when you have like 10,000 users or whatever, like, you're like, oh, yeah.
I mean, people like it, right?
And they're using it and we're onto something.
But in the earlier days, when you don't have that many people there, I think that's where a lot of people get stuck in terms of, am I on the wrong path?
Is this the wrong idea?
Am I wasting my time?
So what was it for you?
Was it just about you believed in the idea?
You just passionate about building this thing?
What was it that kept you guys going?
Sabba Keynejad (29:21.040)
I think there was a few things.
Like, one of them was the fact that I thought that we learned all the lessons we needed to learn and we.
We've done the thing that we shouldn't have done and now we're gonna do it.
Right.
And I just was so, you know, really wanted to execute on that And I thought we were the right people to do it.
Like, we had, you know, the perfect combination of skills and, you know, experience in this industry and which I just thought would be the right people to do it.
So, yeah, we just wanted to do it so bad that we just kept going.
And I think this comes back to, like, picking the right idea.
And more than anything, if it was another idea, maybe we would have let it go.
But we were just so excited about it and we just wanted to execute upon it.
Omer (30:03.120)
And now you guys are focused on that 1 million ARR number.
That's the big goal for you guys?
Sabba Keynejad (30:09.040)
Yeah.
I think I'm tempted to say we're going to hit it by summer, by June, but we'll have to see.
Omer (30:14.480)
Well, I'll make the same offer to you as I made to somebody else.
So on episode 220, I interviewed a guy called Riley Chase.
He'd been on my radar for a while back in 2018, like on Twitter and LinkedIn.
And he was just talking about what he was doing and how he was trying to build a SaaS business.
You can get the whole story.
Go and listen to the episode.
But at the end of the day, I kind of started talking to him and I said, get to about 8 and a half K in MRR, which roughly about 100K a year ARR, and I'll get you on the show.
And less than a year, he was like, I've done it.
And it was just great to sort of have him on.
And we talked about how he got there and he's kind of on a similar journey now as well, to.
He's doing really well.
He got some money from Earnest Capital and my buddy Tyler Trinkas.
And so he's really kind of gone from a sort of similar story to you in terms of struggling.
Actually got fired from his job because they found out he was kind of moonlighting and they thought there was a conflict of interest, which actually turned out to be a really good thing.
So I'll kind of make the same offer to you.
Like, you know, you get to that 1 million ARR number and then let's have you back.
And maybe we have, you know, you.
Maybe you and Tim, and let's kind of continue the story and see what else we can learn from what you guys have done.
Sabba Keynejad (31:34.890)
That sounds amazing.
Thank you so much.
Omer (31:37.210)
Yeah, my pleasure.
All right, let's wrap up and get onto the Lightning round.
So, going to ask you seven quick fire questions.
Just try and answer them as quickly as you can.
Sabba Keynejad (31:47.650)
You ready?
Yeah.
Let's go.
Omer (31:49.780)
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
Sabba Keynejad (31:52.500)
Charge your users.
Omer (31:54.260)
Yeah.
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Sabba Keynejad (31:57.380)
I really like Shoe Dog and I think it's a great example of how long it takes to actually build a business and that it's not easy.
And also I think it's just a really nicely well written story that's very entertaining.
Omer (32:09.380)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Sabba Keynejad (32:14.510)
I think the ability to spot trends and have an understanding of how they affect the world and how things are changing.
Omer (32:21.470)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Sabba Keynejad (32:24.910)
I think having amazing people work with you just means you sleep easier at night.
Omer (32:30.430)
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Sabba Keynejad (32:35.310)
I did say that I spent about five hours speaking to users every day and the majority of them don't know how to use video calling software.
So I'd like to make very easy to use video calling software that's just very accessible and very user friendly.
Omer (32:50.680)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Sabba Keynejad (32:54.600)
I used to be a pancake topper.
Omer (32:57.000)
A what?
Sabba Keynejad (32:57.960)
A pancake topper.
I used to top pancakes.
Omer (33:01.880)
Okay.
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Sabba Keynejad (33:06.990)
I love snowboarding and sailing and being in the outdoors.
Omer (33:09.630)
Really love it.
Sabba Keynejad (33:10.990)
Great.
Omer (33:11.630)
All right, so if people want to find out more about VEED IO or give it a try, they can go to VEED.
That's V double ed IO.
And if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Sabba Keynejad (33:26.830)
So my email is SIO and I'm S A B8A on Twitter and Instagram too.
Omer (33:34.350)
Awesome.
Saba, thank you for joining me.
Thank you for sharing your story.
As I said, when I came across your post on LinkedIn, I was like, I need to get this guy on.
I think there's a really, really interesting story and you haven't disappointed.
So I know that a lot of people will really enjoy this episode and to hear your story and sort of the ups and downs that you guys have gone through.
And I think it's going to inspire a lot of people who maybe are in a similar situation now to keep going and possibly look at failure in a different way.
Maybe it's not.
Failure is maybe just another hurdle that's in your way to getting to success.
Right.
I hope that's going to help people as well.
Yeah.
So thank you.
And yeah, I wish you guys all the best.
And yeah, let's stay in touch.
And definitely I'm pretty excited about the idea of getting you guys back when you hit that next big milestone.
Sabba Keynejad (34:39.840)
Yeah, see?
At 1 million.
ARR.
Omer (34:41.280)
Then there we go.
Sabba Keynejad (34:42.960)
Thanks so much.
Omer (34:43.680)
Yeah, thank you.
All the best.
Sabba Keynejad (34:44.920)
Cheers.
Take care.
Bye.
