Omer (00:11.840)
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.
This Week's episode is an interview with the co founder of a Singapore based startup that helps businesses respond within minutes to potential leads.
The co founders actually worked together on a previous startup which failed.
But they learned some valuable lessons from that experience and when the time was right, they decided to launch their second startup.
Together we talk about how they built the business that did over $350,000 in revenue last year and how they're now actually using that business to fund their latest product.
There are some great lessons here which this co founder learned the hard way so hopefully you won't have to make some of those same mistakes.
I think you'll enjoy this episode.
All right, today's guest is the co founder of lucep, a sales acceleration tool that helps companies increase their lead conversion rate and boost revenue by providing faster access to interested leads.
Lucip's customers include companies such as Starwood Hotels, Jaguar, Land Rover, and Citibank, to name a few.
The company was founded in 2014 and is based in Singapore.
So today I'd like to welcome Zal Dastura to the show.
Zal, welcome.
Zal Dastur (01:47.170)
Thank you very much for having me, Omar.
Omer (01:49.090)
Now, first thing I always like to ask is trying to figure out what motivates my guests.
So is there a favorite quote that resonates with you and if not, then what gets you out of bed in the morning every day?
Zal Dastur (01:59.790)
I mean, you know, it's quite funny you should say that, only because we.
I have two screens in my office and what I did is when I set them up as the wallpaper, I downloaded about 20 to 30 different quotes and I set them on a timer.
So basically every day when I go into the office, both of the screens change and there's a motivational quote on each screen.
But if you had to ask me sort of what what is my favorite and or what kind of gets me up in the morning.
And I would say that it's the Gandhi quote, which is be the change you want to see in the world.
And I think that that sort of lets me live how I want to live.
Omer (02:44.850)
That's very cool.
Now I want to we'll get into loose a bit more.
I want to talk about the kind of where the idea came from and how you built the business.
But before we get into that, let's talk A little bit about what you were doing before you founded this startup.
Because as from what I understand, this is your second startup and it's your second startup with the same co founder.
Give us a little overview of what you were doing with your first startup.
Zal Dastur (03:14.810)
Cool.
So, yeah, that's right.
This is my second startup with the same co founder.
And the first startup that we came together was we were in Bangalore, India.
And actually the story is kind of funny.
I was working in Singapore.
My partner Kaish had just left Accenture in the UK to start this, and he called me up one day and admittedly I was out at the bars with some of my friends and already had a few drinks, and he kind of calls me up out of the blue and he's like, look, you know, I have three questions to ask you.
And I said, yeah.
He's like, you know what?
Do you enjoy what you're doing?
And I said, no, not really.
He said, do you see it going anywhere?
I said, no, not really.
He's like, so what are you doing with your life?
And I said, not much.
And so he said, why don't you come to India and help me with this?
And I said, okay, look, let me think about it.
And he said, yeah, that's no problem.
Take all the time you need, but you have one hour.
Otherwise I'm offering it to somebody else.
So I was like, okay.
I thought about it for a little while.
I called up my parents, have chat with them, obviously.
And the next day I walked into my office and handed my resignation.
And one month later, I was on a flight to Bangalore.
Wow.
Yeah, I mean, that business was an interesting business.
What we did is we took a model that worked very well in the US and the UK and Europe, and we tried to bring it to India, which was we were doing lead generation for like, what they call mice venues, so meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions.
Basically any space in a hotel that wasn't a room.
You know, we were trying to help bring weddings or events to that.
And, you know, it's really funny.
Obviously, you know, after two years, we kind of ran out of money.
But the mistakes that we made in that case, you know, we didn't know anything about funding.
So I think we went and spoke to three very large VCs, of which Sequoia was one.
There's another very large VC in India called Accel, and there was a third one that we spoke to.
And basically all three of them kind of politely said no, obviously, because we were a very small company at that time and kind of, you know, not within their sort of funding bracket.
But we didn't understand any of that and we thought, oh well, if these three guys have said no, then nobody will fund us, you know.
And it's funny, it was only years later that Kaish and I were, we'd met up with the head of digital for Taj Hotels, which is the largest hotel chain in India.
And he told us that we were the first ever startup to get a company wide agreement with Taj Hotels and that the model that he used with us is the model that they now use for all of the copycats that came after us.
And I mean that at least made us feel like we weren't total fools, you know.
And I think at the time the market really wasn't ready for what we did.
And in the seven years that's happened, like, you know, India as a country in terms of how they use the Internet and how comfortable they are with the Internet because there weren't any large Internet companies then, companies like Snapdeal didn't exist.
Flipkart, which is sort of the Amazon equivalent over there, had just sort of started.
So people weren't really comfortable putting credit card details online and it was wrong place, wrong time.
But also like a lot of our naivety in the business and I guess learning lessons and that's what it was really all about.
But it was a very interesting experience.
I'm in Indian myself, but I've never lived in India.
So at least for those two years to go there and live there.
And my, and my partner is the same, you know, he's of Indian origin but never really lived in India.
I think for both of us it was quite a transformative experience.
Omer (07:13.180)
So you guys ran out of money and then we ran out of money
Zal Dastur (07:18.860)
because we figured, we only figured the model that worked a lot later on.
So originally we were charging commission and what would happen is that sort of, you know, the, we would send the business to a hotel and the hotel would turn around and then say, okay, but actually you know what, I don't pay any commission on room nights or I don't pay any commission on F and B or oh yeah, I've written the check for your commission, but it's sitting here in my office and I'm not going to mail it to you, so if you want it, you have to come and get it.
Like, you know, it's just all of these different things.
And once we found out that actually what we need the hotel to preload credit onto the, onto their own account and we distribute a lead, we charge them like a couple bucks, but what we do is we distribute that to five or six hotels.
And that model started working, but we just ran out of money, as many startups do when you don't manage your cash flow correctly.
And I think that sort of experience really set us up for how we manage our business now because we monitor our cash flow so tightly.
Omer (08:26.320)
So what did you do after you shut down that first startup?
Did you guys go back to kind of like a regular job or did you start sort of thinking straight away about the next startup?
Zal Dastur (08:36.800)
No, no.
So Kaish went to work for Credit Suisse and he was like a very senior IT project manager over there and in fact managed one of their largest moves of, of people in Asia.
So they were in one several buildings and they, they set up a whole new building and he helped move that and all with all the work that's required.
And I actually joined as a partner in a, in a boutique digital agency in Singapore.
So I came on and was there for a little while.
So I think we were both doing that for about a year or two.
And then, and then we started messing around with ideas and looking at the problems that we were seeing in small businesses and trying to understand how we can work together.
So there was, you know, and then we started working actually at the same company because Kaish joined and then he said, look, why don't you come and help me?
He became the CEO of that company.
It was an audio visual system integration company here in Singapore.
And a lot of the problems that we saw within that company led us to develop the sort of solution in the way that we did, particularly how the company managed their sales team and how sort of inefficient the whole process was.
Omer (09:56.320)
So tell me about how did you come up with the idea for lucep?
So you saw this problem.
Do you remember the moment when you guys had that aha moment?
Zal Dastur (10:06.890)
I mean, to be honest, it was.
I don't think it was one moment.
We.
So we developed our like customer engagement platform and that, you know, we've sold that platform to large banks and hospitals and medical clinics.
And so what happened was we kind of looked at it and we're like, well, what else can we do with this software?
You know, like, how else can we adjust it and change it?
And it came when we started discussing.
So basically the problem that we faced was one, nobody within the company was accountable for leads.
Two, all the online leads were going to the lady in charge of marketing and what she would do is Instead of allocating the lead to the person who was better suited for it or the person whose industry it was, she would give the lead to the person who bought her lunch last week or the person that she liked the most.
So she wasn't exactly.
Yeah, it's not the ideal scenario.
And we thought, okay, that's really strange.
And the other thing was the management had no visibility on how the leads were being distributed within the organization because they would come into a mailbox and then they would send them out, and you weren't really seeing who got what and then who was held accountable for it.
And the other thing that we would do is, you know, because we were sort of, I would say, senior management, and we want to test the sales team.
So we would send in fake leads to see how long it took them to respond.
We would call them at lunchtime to see if there was anybody that picked up.
And we were just like, this is ridiculous, you know, because they weren't doing it.
And we knew that we were losing business as a result of this, which is how we sort of came up with the idea of Blusep.
And then we thought, well, if these guys need this, there must be hundreds of thousands, hopefully millions of businesses out there that need the same sort of help.
And that's how we came up with this idea.
Omer (12:08.980)
Okay, so great.
So you guys have got the idea you think that this business has some potential, but you're now second time founders, so, you know, hopefully wiser and more experienced.
So what did you guys talk about doing differently the second time around?
Zal Dastur (12:28.610)
Well, I think one of the big things that we did differently was we made sure we were quite lucky in the sense that we had developed a couple of products that helped generate revenue for our business.
So they were products that we had already built and we had licensed to large companies.
And what we did is in the sort of friends and family realm that we.
We went around and asked for some money.
Once they gave us that money, we made sure that we at least had sort of Runway for like two years.
And we knew that the products that we had sold would continue to generate revenue.
So I think, as I said, cash flow and making sure that there was money in the bank is something that was very paramount in our mind.
And that's something that we held onto.
And I think we just monitored our finances a lot closer, and we were very careful about how we got the money and where we got it from.
I think, you know, we were comfortable in the situation that we had, and we knew that we would have to go out for funding at some point.
We just wanted to put that off for as long as possible.
Omer (13:43.370)
So I just want to be clear about one thing.
The company that you're talking about that you and Kaish kind of went to work at and where he was a CEO, did that become kind of like the mother company for what you sort of where you built lucep, or is that kind of a completely separate entity?
Zal Dastur (14:03.630)
What happened is it was.
You see, we were the R and D division of a company, and what we did is we.
That company was going to get sold, and we didn't want to get sold with it.
So we did sort of a management buyout with the approval of the board of directors and the CEO of the company, sorry, the managing director of the company, who ended up being one of our investors as well.
So we took that whole.
Our whole team and division independent because we didn't want to be part of this sale.
Omer (14:36.650)
Got it.
Okay.
And so the product you talked about earlier, the customer engagement platform, that was kind of like the first product that you guys had in market and where you use what you used to generate early revenue.
Zal Dastur (14:51.790)
Yeah, yeah, it was.
I mean, we were lucky that we managed to sell it to a few large global clients and as well as in Singapore, into a few very established companies over here.
Omer (15:04.590)
Got it.
Okay.
All right.
So you've got this idea.
How did you go about building the first version of the product?
Zal Dastur (15:14.590)
So, okay, this is quite interesting because as with everything, it's a new idea.
We didn't know whether we were the only ones that thought it was a good idea.
So we spent, I think about a month or two kind of hacking together an mvp, trying to come up with something.
And what we said is that we were going to launch a private beta.
And our goal was we said if we could get 30 companies to sign up to the beta and use us, then we might be onto something.
And I think in the timeframe that we had, we ended up signing 100 companies up.
Omer (15:56.260)
Nice.
Zal Dastur (15:57.460)
So I think that that led us to believe that, okay, you know what if 100 companies see value?
And look, I'll admit that 100 companies were people that I knew, and I was just calling up anybody I'd ever met and trying to pitch them this idea.
Right.
But, you know, and because there was no money, there's always that kind of debate involved.
But we had at least 100 companies that said, yeah, you know what, that sounds like a good idea, and I'd like to go through the registration process.
And that led Us to believe that.
Okay, you know what, maybe we are onto something here because, you know, we set our goal of 30 and we thought that would be a hard target to reach and we got 100 with not that much difficulty.
Omer (16:39.200)
So.
So did you have a landing page that you were driving traffic to or was this like you were just going and just telling people about it?
Zal Dastur (16:45.280)
Well, you know, we, we, it was both.
I mean, we had, we set up a landing page, we signed up to like, you know, all the beta list sites and everything.
I think we got actually rejected from beta list, you know, for, for whatever reasons we.
I remember spending like two days and nights in my office signing up to like every kind of early subscription site that there was.
But yeah, we had a landing page, we had a very basic website, but a lot of it was just me on the phones, like just trying to work people.
Omer (17:20.510)
Okay, so, so you were just kind of like cold calling, telling them about this product, how it was going to help them, and then just trying to see how many people you could persuade to, to kind of put their hand up.
Zal Dastur (17:31.710)
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, it was, it's a little embarrassing to admit because, you know, between, especially in the early days when we had nothing automated, right.
It was just kind of like us trying to work stuff out.
You could sign up on our site and we'll take you through the registration process and we have to give you like a snippet of code, which it's like four lines that you put onto your website, usually in your footer, and it could take like three weeks for us to get that to you.
You know, now obviously it's done instantly.
As soon as you sign up, the code is generated for you right there and then.
But in the, in those kind of days, like it took a while for that code to come to you.
And obviously, like, we noticed like how much of a, like once you don't get the customer at the point where they're signing up, how difficult it is to then go back and get them to even just embed the code or do anything with that.
Omer (18:27.660)
Yeah, I mean, totally.
I mean, I think in the early days it's like that, right?
I mean, if you're spending too much time time worrying about automation in the early days, you're probably doing something wrong.
And it kind of reminded me of, I had Tom Leong, who's the founder of a Seattle based startup called Anthology.
And what they do is they take, I guess, tech talent, who, people who can submit their resumes and they basically match them to employers who are looking for, looking to hire people.
And so, you know, in the early days, they talked about this algorithm that they had that would take a potential applicant and match them to relevant companies.
Right.
But in reality, all they had was like an HTML form that would submit this information.
And in the background, Tom was the one who was manually looking through the company information and these people and saying who would be a good match here.
Zal Dastur (19:26.450)
Right.
Omer (19:27.210)
And that was fine.
It worked for them in the early days.
Zal Dastur (19:29.540)
I mean, you have to do what you have to do.
I remember.
So, obviously getting on the Android App Store is quite straightforward.
Getting on the Apple App Store, however, is less than straightforward.
And so for the first, like, particularly for all of our beta users, we were requiring them to give us their UDID numbers.
I'm not sure if you've ever heard of a udid.
I hadn't until this process.
And this is like a very unique number on your iPhone, which is not your serial number.
And the process that you have to go through to get it is, you know, like just to get the app, you had to do so much work as a customer.
So, you know, getting the, Getting the app on the App Store was a really big step for us.
But again, the fact that we had people that were willing to go and, you know, log into itunes and find that you did and send us the.
You did just told us like, okay, these people are willing to actually work for this tool, so it must be of value.
Omer (20:31.800)
So you had about 100 companies sign up.
Did you.
Did you actually have a product at that point?
Zal Dastur (20:36.520)
I mean, we had like, what?
Yeah, we, we had sort of a
Omer (20:40.600)
product, I guess what you'd worked in the first couple of months to kind of.
Zal Dastur (20:44.360)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
We had that.
Omer (20:46.920)
Okay.
Before we get any further, I think one thing I want to just kind of clear up is give the listeners just a quick overview of what lucep were like, how it works.
So basically from the point where they can go to a business's website, see your form, fill that in and ask, you know, say that they want to be contacted through to the back end when whoever at the company gets notified on their mobile device and kind of reaches out to that customer, you just kind of explain what's happening in between there.
Zal Dastur (21:21.850)
Sure.
I mean, I think you cover it fantastically, actually.
But yeah, what.
So what we do, there are a couple of things that there's sort of the stuff that you see and the stuff that you don't see.
Right.
So one of the.
When you come to the website, what we have is it's, it's a widget that sits on your site and that code can be embedded into anything from like a white paper download form to a contact us form.
We also have like pop outs and rollover options as well.
And the idea being that we want to just kind of have a tool that invites visitors to engage with the business.
And what we're developing actually now is we're developing an artificial intelligence engine, right?
And what that engine is going to do is that engine is going to start sitting there and calculating like, okay, for every lead that's raised.
So let's say somebody comes from a LinkedIn post on a 2 o' clock on a Wednesday afternoon.
After about 10 seconds, our widget pops up.
They see it, they fill it in and they send a lead.
Then the artificial intelligence gets positively rewarded for that.
And then let's say somebody comes from Facebook, they try after eight seconds for the widget to open up.
The person closes the widget and then maybe 15 or 20 seconds later reopens it and fills it in.
The artificial intelligence engine, you know, calculates that, okay, maybe people from Facebook need a little bit of time.
So in the background and you don't have to do anything because it's working on the sort of hundreds of thousands of sites that we're going to be on.
It's calculating and understanding what is the best way to engage with specific Personas.
So that's all kind of set and forget for you as the, as the customer, but as a visitor, what happens?
You come to the page, this, our widget sits on all of your pages.
And the reason, you know, that sounds like it's not very impressive, but what you'll find and what our customers have found that shocking is that if you had 100 people visit your website last month without the widget and 10, 8 or 10, you know, filled in a contact us form, you had that same hundred with the widget, you're looking at like 15 or 18.
So in terms of like just encouraging people and getting people to do like fill out a form, having it floating on the website whenever they need it really creates a big difference.
What happens is as soon as they fill out that form, they usually put in their name, their phone number, there's a little drop down menu to say what you're interested in.
You say, get a call back.
Now what that will do is it sends an instant notification to the LUCEP app, which is on your sales team's phone.
So let's say you have five guys in your Sales team, all five will get the notification that there is a new lead.
But where we're a bit different is it's the first person to sort of grab that lead that gets the data.
So it's kind of like Uber.
You know, when they push out Uber, the first driver to say, yep, I'm free, gets that passenger.
And the reason we do this is because, one, you don't want multiple people from the same company calling.
That's very embarrassing.
And two, it really helps in terms of understanding accountability.
Right.
So as soon as the salesperson gets the lead, obviously they'll get the name, the phone number, they get the country they're calling from, they get what they're interested in.
But we'll also send you an entire visit history.
So how many times has this visitor come to your site before and what did they look at each time they came to your site?
How much time did they spend looking at it?
So you can see that, okay, you know what, this guy, he came to our site, he spent five minutes reading about product A, he went to product B, only spent one minute there.
So not very interested.
Then he went to our pricing page, which means that he's quite interested.
And on the pricing page is where he raised the inquiry.
So when you can see that kind of history, you know, as a salesperson, and I know this because I am a salesperson, like, you know, I want to know which product to pitch right off the bat.
I don't want to have to spend the first two or three minutes of the call trying to figure out what this customer wants.
And the other thing that's incredible is the ability to respond within 5, 10 minutes.
Whereas most companies, when you go and talk to them, they talk about how their response time is within 24 or 48 hours.
What we're telling you is that's not good enough.
If you're not responding within five or 10 minutes to an online lead, your chances of even contacting that lead dropped by about 21 times.
So what we're doing is we're making sure that we're encouraging visitors to become leads and then by allowing the sales team to respond immediately, where we're increasing the conversion rate from leads to customers.
Omer (26:01.930)
Okay, cool.
So just so I've understood you, you have this pop up that contact us form that your customers can implement.
And I assume that's just some, some JavaScript that they to.
Zal Dastur (26:16.020)
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
Omer (26:18.340)
So if you have a potential customer that.
If they have a potential customer that comes along, they can fill out that form and say, hey, here's my name, phone number or whatever, and you know, please contact me.
You guys take that submission on the back end and then you distribute that out to everyone who's a designated user on that, on, on your platform through to their mobile device.
Zal Dastur (26:45.700)
Well, designated user from that company.
Right.
Even within the company, we can segregate that.
So, for example, if you have a sales team that specifically looks after a particular product, then we'll just notify that sales team.
Or if you.
We have companies which have obviously one website and offices around the world.
So if somebody pulls a lead from the U.S. we make sure that a U.S. salesperson is responding instead of someone from, you know, Singapore or India or something like that.
Omer (27:14.230)
Got it.
And then you kind of give them, you talked about the kind of the Uber type example where you give them an opportunity to kind of self identify themselves as, you know, I'm kind of taking accountability for following up with this lead.
You also send them relevant information about the lead beyond the sort of the explicit information that the user entered into the form.
So that could be maybe the product that they were looking at when they submitted the form or.
Zal Dastur (27:44.320)
Yeah, yeah, it's usually like the, it's like the, the page that they were on and what other pages they visited on your site, how much time they spent on those respective web.
Respective pages.
And even if they've been to your site, like, let's say they came to your site two weeks ago, what did they look at two weeks ago?
Got it.
Omer (28:03.450)
Okay, cool.
So I want to kind of go back to the point where you were with a hundred businesses who've signed up and shown interest.
You've got the early makings of a product.
I want to understand a little bit about growth and what you did to get the first few paying customers and then how you kind of built momentum and brought more customers on and kind of the things you were doing.
So, so, so tell me about those early days and how you took those hundred potential businesses and converted them into your early customers.
Zal Dastur (28:46.080)
I mean, I love that you're, you're saying early days because really it was, you know, January 1, 2016, was when we went live with it, which is like four or five months ago, which,
Omer (28:55.280)
which is the latest version of this
Zal Dastur (28:56.880)
version of the product.
Yeah, exactly.
And what, so what we did is, I think from the very beginning we said, okay, great, we've got these hundred people.
We wanted 30.
So that means that, you know, there's some interest.
Right, that's great.
And we weren't getting too excited.
I think you know, if you've done startups before, you're always in sort of a realist mode.
And what we then said is, we want to get people to pay for this.
And we said, I don't care what they pay for it, but we want them to pay something.
So I think from January, we offered a deal that if you, if you, if you signed up and paid, you know, it was $1 per user or per salesperson per month.
Right?
That's our, that's our pricing model.
We charge per salesperson per month.
And in February, it was $2 per salesperson per month.
And that's how we, when we were starting to go out to clients and we were saying that, okay, look, thanks a lot, but now you're gonna have to pay.
But, but we can do this offer for you for the first year.
And we got people to start paying.
That's what we were like, okay, okay.
So people are actually willing to, you know, whether that was $24, whether it was $12, whatever it might be, they were just willing to put some money down.
And that helped us be a bit more comfortable.
And then I think from March onwards, we just started charging what our normal rate was.
And you know, it's incredible because we have quadrants that we analyze when we look at our customers, right?
So the quadrants are like, you know, it's basically a division of traffic and leads, right?
So we know that if you're high traffic, high lead customer, chances are you are going to be in a good position to pay.
If you are a low traffic, low lead customer, you're not going to want to pay and we'll just keep it on your site anyway.
So I think what we did is we started looking at our clients like this and then we started attacking the ones that were high traffic, high leads, and low traffic, high leads.
Right.
And those two, if you fell within those two brackets, we felt, okay, you would be more than likely to pay.
Because when we look at a company, we have three criteria that we sort of came up with which helps us identify whether a business is ready for this product.
And that's usually like, do you spend more than 10 or $15,000 a year on digital marketing?
Which means that you understand that the web and the online space is a good way to get business is your transaction value.
So that the average ticket size above $1,000, because anything below that tends to fall within more along the realms of E commerce.
And then thirdly, and probably most importantly for us, it's usually where the research is conducted online but the transaction itself is, is conducted offline.
And that requires, when the transaction is conducted offline, it's usually a more relationship sell.
It's usually like a complex cell.
As I said, nobody, nobody goes to a lawyer or accountant and buys their services online.
You know, you want to go and meet them and understand some of the work they've done.
And that's really the types of businesses that we work for.
Most of our businesses are in fact software companies or software service companies.
They're just the ones that get it and their values are higher.
So those are the guys that we kind of go after and they're the ones that if you meet those criteria, you're spending that kind of money, you'll see the leads.
And, and honestly, like I think, and again this, you know, counting from January 1st, I think we've probably had only two companies, one or two companies that have put us on their site and then taken us off.
And we've had no company that's gotten business down the app that's removed us.
Because I think once you see that, and you know, we have these testimonials that come back from our customers that once you see the sort of delight that we give your customer when you're responding within five or 10 minutes, and we see it all the time because our SLAs particularly, we have to sort of practice what we preach.
And if somebody comes onto the site and you register, you're getting a call from someone in our team, you know, and you're getting that call quick and that kind of, wow, okay, you guys really are responsive.
And when it happens in another business, when somebody's actually asked for the call back and you're responding within five or 10 minutes, no matter what time, day or night, it's really incredible to see the response that comes from our clients, customers.
Omer (33:42.470)
Yeah, I saw that on the form on your website and I think that was my initial reaction was like, okay, these guys are eating their own dog food, as we say here in Microsoft land.
But I can't remember what it was.
And I was thinking, well, it's probably the middle of the night in Singapore.
And I was like, I wonder what would happen if I filled out this form.
Zal Dastur (34:05.600)
Somebody would have called you.
Most likely it would have been me.
Omer (34:09.520)
Interesting.
So you don't sleep either?
Zal Dastur (34:13.360)
I mean, does anybody really, you know, especially if you're in a startup.
But no, you know, our, our phones sort of lie next to us on the beds and, and we have a particular tone for when, for when the LUCEP leads Come in and it's loud enough to wake us up.
Omer (34:32.839)
You're serious, right?
Zal Dastur (34:34.039)
Yeah, I'm dead serious.
I mean, we've got a team, right?
So it will go to everybody in that team.
But chances are, I think I, you know, within our company, I kind of hold the record because my response time to leads is under seven seconds.
Wow.
Yeah, wow.
Omer (34:56.850)
Give me an idea.
So how many customers do you guys currently have using this product?
Zal Dastur (35:00.930)
We've got about 220 odd businesses that have signed up and that leads to about four to 500 users because we have, on average, about two and a half users per customer.
Omer (35:17.410)
Okay, got it.
And then in terms of revenue, where are you guys with that right now?
Zal Dastur (35:22.810)
I mean, you know, it's.
I would say we're in terms of monthly revenue, we're sort of in the mid to low thousands every month.
So, you know, nobody's Ipoing anytime soon.
We're very lucky that we have products that we've sold in the past that help generate revenue for the business, and that allows us to.
Because we're entirely bootstrapped.
So we haven't gone for funding yet.
And it's the products that we've sold to large enterprise that kind of keeps the lights on and keeps us ticking.
Omer (35:52.770)
So we talked a little bit about this briefly before we started recording, but give, give the listeners a sense of, like, what those products, there's the, the kind of the old other products are doing for you in terms of revenue, because they, they.
I think that they're kind of a significant factor in, in you guys being able to not go out there and, and be kind of forced into a situation where you're having to find investors.
So I'm kind of curious in terms of both the revenue they're bringing in, but also what's the overhead of continuing to build, maintain, support those products while you're trying to build this new product.
Zal Dastur (36:31.220)
So, I mean, the revenue, it is the entire reason that we're not been able to go out and get funding.
So we started in our first year we did $250,000.
Last year we did half a million.
And this year we're on track to do about a million.
Now what we have is we actually have about 25, 27 global partners.
They include the likes of Accenture and companies like Whitlock and things like that that go out and distribute our product for us.
And so in terms of the overhead, yeah, we have one guy who sits there in our company and his job is to manage enterprise accounts.
And we have One developer that does upgrades and changes and things like that when they need to be done, basically when our integration partner cannot do them, if they're a bit more complicated, then we look after them.
But the idea and the way that the company is transitioning is we're transitioning to less time spent on the large enterprise and more time spent on this.
Omer (37:44.810)
So you said you're on track to do a million dollars this year, and I know that's Singapore dollars, right?
Which is probably about US$750,000.
Yeah.
And to go from, from zero to $750,000 a year in three years is pretty good going.
And I'm just curious how you guys are able to do that if there isn't kind of.
It doesn't seem like there's a lot of people on your team kind of focused or spending much time on that product.
So how.
Zal Dastur (38:27.530)
There was.
So for the first two years of our existence, that's all we did.
And that two years allowed us to close the deals that have, have worked for us and allowed us to establish our sort of relationships with the dealers and go out there and distribute this product.
And I might be being a bit generous with the amount of time that we spend because obviously for us it's important that the clients that are paying are serviced.
And so, yeah, we deal with our dealers and we sort of move.
But whenever there's a big sort of crisis or an emergency, our team sort of springs into action to help.
But it really was the first two years where we established our networks and established our dealer relationships and established our customers that's allowed us to do this because kind of once that train got started, then it kind of the momentum carried it and has kept carrying it now.
Right, because now what happens is we get, you know, one of our partners is a company called Synechron, and they're the sort of one of the largest financial service software integrators in the world.
I mean, they're a listed company and they, you know, they come to us all the time with, hey, you know, we've got this bank or hey, we've got this project and why don't we try to do this?
And it's because of the work that we did to establish that relationship that now means the dealers are the ones that are finding us the business and bringing it to us.
Omer (40:04.680)
So you put in the work, and after the first two years, you guys were doing 500,000 in revenue, or let's say 300 and something in US dollars a year.
Why not keep running with that business.
Why did you launch lucep?
Zal Dastur (40:29.640)
Well, I mean, I think primarily the reason has got to do with growth.
The sort of product that we created and were using was really only applicable for sort of three markets.
And those were like banking, medical and government.
And those are very, very slow moving industries.
And we didn't see that kind of that rocket ship growth that we were looking for.
And I think we made this decision that we needed a product or we wanted a product that really would provide us with that, with that and this, I mean it was going to go and it was as a lot of people said it would become a nice lifestyle business.
Which is a polite way of saying, okay, you're never going to grow into anything large.
So I think we, we had bigger ambitions than that.
Omer (41:26.700)
Got it.
Okay.
If you could go back and sort of tell yourself some, sort of give yourself some advice when you started out on this journey, something that you wish you'd known when you kind of started, what would, what would that be?
Zal Dastur (41:38.300)
I would have gone back and I would have slapped my past self and I would have told him that he needs to sort out the company structure much earlier.
I think when we, when we formed the company, you know, we were in a hurry.
It was a, it was, we were like friends and family.
We all had this like romantic notion of what starting a company was going to be.
And you think everything's going to be great and everybody's pointing in the same direction and life is going to be joyous and we're going to sell the company for 200 million in two years.
But of course, as anybody that's ever started a company goes, never works out like that, you know, and we didn't prepare for the tough times and we didn't estimate going through those tough times.
And you know, what we should have done is we should have at the very beginning had a serious discussion and agreed upon things like the shareholder agreement, the vesting agreement, what was going to happen if a founder left.
Like all of that very boring but really important documentation.
You know, we didn't have that in place at the beginning and then as we sort of progressed with the company, we, you know, that that would have been really important.
And the other thing that we had was that, you know, it's really important to agree at the very beginning who is leading the ship.
Because we, at the, at the beginning we were three co founders and we're only two now.
But when we were three it was very much a leading by committee and that can be quite problematic for decisions to get made.
So I think it's important that you pick a CEO.
And I'm not the CEO.
My partner is the CEO, and we decided that.
And he's the guy that sort of mans the rudder, as it were, to decide which direction we're going in.
But I think at the beginning, you know, we were all kind of like, oh, well, we're all partners and we'll all take every decision together.
And, you know, and it just, everything took so long.
And.
And the other thing was you.
You get a lot of dissent and everybody thinks that their ideas are important, and sometimes you just need someone to say, right enough, I don't care anymore.
This is what we're doing.
And everybody has to get on board with that, regardless of what your.
Your ideas were.
Omer (44:03.070)
And did you.
Did you guys feel like that was kind of resolved and in place the second time you went and started a company?
Zal Dastur (44:09.390)
Well, no, I'm actually talking about the second time because the first time there wasn't really any corporate structure, but nothing really happened where there was a problem.
The company just kind of grew and then, well, it didn't.
And then we closed it and that was it.
Whereas now where actually getting revenue and things are happening.
And, you know, it's really important when people start understanding, like, what their shares mean, when they're going to get their shares.
What happens if somebody who had shares leaves the company?
You know, that became quite a divisive moment within our company, and we realized that we really need to have these documents in place and we should have done them a lot, a lot earlier.
And I know that that's not necessarily the sexy startup response that people want, but really, like, if you're out there listening and you are thinking about starting a company or you've just started a company, like, it's not sexy, but go and make sure that all of these documents are in place because, you know, if you can't sort this stuff out when things are good, then when things go bad, it becomes very difficult.
Omer (45:21.280)
That is excellent advice.
All right, it's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions, and when you try and answer them as quickly as possible.
Ready?
Zal Dastur (45:32.480)
Sure.
Okay.
Omer (45:35.120)
What's the best piece of business advice that you've ever received?
Zal Dastur (45:40.560)
Okay, so this one, I would say is higher for attitude, not for aptitude.
I think in the past we've made this mistake a lot where, where we, like in our first company in India, we went and poached someone from one of our competitors and we, you know, she came and she got a very high salary, but her attitude was toxic and, and literally I think she was fired within the first two weeks.
But, but the kind of damage that it does is incredible, you know, and startup life is not for everybody.
You know, it really requires a specific type of person, and that person has to be sort of adaptable and, and, and understanding, I feel.
And, and yeah, really, when you make that mistake of hiring the wrong person and the toxic atmosphere that they.
Even one person, and when you're only a company of like four or five people, one person is like 20, 25% of your company.
Right.
If 25% of your company is toxic, like, you're going to have a problem.
And we've even faced it in our other company where we brought on somebody and it didn't work out, and it probably took us a lot longer than it should to get rid of him.
But, you know, just the atmosphere and everything while they're there, it is really, you know, and one, it's just not productive to have these type of people in the company.
So I would say that, yeah, something that we really look for is we hire for the attitude of the person, not the aptitude.
Omer (47:11.180)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Zal Dastur (47:14.140)
So the book I'm going to recommend, and it's one that I just finished reading, it's not my favorite book and it's not even my favorite business book, but I do think that it is the book that may have the single largest impact on your listeners.
And that book is.
Have you, have you heard of it?
It's called Search Inside Yourself by Chadming Tan.
Omer (47:36.900)
No, I haven't.
Zal Dastur (47:38.100)
And what this book is, and I think I might have butchered his name.
So if you're listening, I'm very sorry, but what the book is is, you know, Google, their famous rule about having 20% of your time is allocated to your own personal project.
So Meng, as he's referred to, he was like, you know, employee number 100 at Google.
And he, he started this sort of mindfulness course and it ended up becoming the most popular course course in Google.
Like it was the most oversubscribed course.
And, and he, he claims that his goal is to create the sort of foundation for world peace by helping everybody understand about emotional intelligence and, and mindfulness.
And, and what he does is he takes it out of this whole, like, you know, oh, you have to be kind of a Buddhist monk and brings it into the reality of business and life and how like taking that extra moment, taking that extra breath when you are angry at a co worker or when, when you're trying to negotiate with a vendor and taking that, that just that one extra moment and being aware that what is happening, how, how big of an impact that can have on your relationships.
And let's be fair, like whatever business you're in, I don't care, like your business is going to be based on, on your human to human relationships.
And this book is just about how you can improve yourself and how you can improve your relationships with others.
And it's really like, you know, he talks about it saying that the course is life changing for a lot of people.
And I, and I kind of understand that because if you take a look at how you deal with your relationships and you can help improve that every aspect of your life, whether that's professional, personal, with your children, like that, it's just going to help.
Omer (49:29.410)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Zal Dastur (49:34.130)
If I had to say one, I would say tenacity.
And I have this sign that's stuck up on a yellow sticky note on my monitor, which I put it up on the first day and a big shout out to 3M and post it that it's still there three years later.
But I have this sign and I'm not calling myself a successful entrepreneur by any means, but it just says persistence pays.
And it just sits there and reminds me every day that you can't give up.
I read this Winston Churchill quote, which is success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
And if that doesn't describe anybody who's in a startup or any entrepreneur or like, I can't understand what, what would?
Omer (50:21.030)
You know, what's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Zal Dastur (50:27.750)
Okay, so one thing that I do every day while I'm getting ready for work, I decide the sort of one or two things that I'm going to get done in the day and that's, that's in the morning before I leave the house.
And I know, you know, people listening, they're going to be like, what, one or two, that that's all you accomplish.
But like, you know, when you're in a startup, there's things that come at you all day, every day.
You know, there'll be a client calling, there'll be some urgent thing that needs to be taken care of.
There's, there's always something.
But having those one or two things in the day lets me know what I prioritize.
And my day is not finished until those one or two things are done.
So if that means that they're done at like 9 o' clock at night, that's great.
But if that means that they're done at 12 o' clock or 11 o' clock at night, then that just has to be done.
Omer (51:12.790)
What's a new or crazy business idea that you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Zal Dastur (51:20.310)
Well, you know, that's a great question.
And for me it would be something actually involved with the environment.
Only because I see that there's so many of these new technologies that are coming out which are actually doing incredible things for the world.
Like there's one that converts plastic into kerosene.
I know that there's like a very young guy, I think he's like 21, 22, who Richard Branson has sort of funded, and he's set up this device that's cleaning all the plastic out of the ocean.
And I think I'd love to, if I had the time, love to get involved with something that is at the nexus of technology and sustainability.
Omer (52:06.350)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Zal Dastur (52:11.550)
I set myself goals at the beginning of every year, and those goals are more habit forming than anything else.
It's not like earn this much money or whatever.
And so for this year, that goal is to meditate every day.
And I think right now I'm at about a 90% success rate.
I wouldn't say that I've done it every single day, but definitely of a week, you know, six and a half, seven days of the week.
Six and six to six and a half days of the week.
Omer (52:37.960)
I do it nice.
Yeah.
It's amazing how many entrepreneurs and founders I talk to who actually meditate.
And maybe it might not be something they talk about a lot, but once you actually get under the hood, you realize that it's going on, it's going on a lot more than you think it is, people.
Zal Dastur (52:56.080)
Well, I think for an entrepreneur, it might be the only like 15, 20 minutes of the day that you get any sort of peace of mind.
I can see why it's appealing.
Omer (53:06.000)
Yeah, totally.
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Zal Dastur (53:12.640)
So I mean, outside of like when I think about what I do outside my work, I spend a lot of time with my friends.
I grew up in Singapore after living kind of around the world and I came back here and a lot of my friends are in their own businesses as well.
So we kind of help motivate each other and keep each other going.
But If I had to say passion, I would probably say for me, it's like Formula one.
And specifically in Formula one, the Ferrari team, I've been supporting them now for almost 15 years.
And, yeah, that's the only thing that I would only sport.
I watch every sport, but the only sport I would follow religiously is Formula one.
Omer (53:52.660)
Cool.
Zal, it's been a pleasure.
Um, thanks for taking the time to chat with me and for.
I should point out to folks that we started this conversation at 6am Your time in Singapore.
So I appreciate you taking the time in your early morning to.
To.
To chat with me and to share all this.
This.
This stuff and your.
Your experiences and your insights.
It's.
It's been.
It's been really enlightening to.
To hear about what you're doing with Lucette.
But also, I think it was just.
I think there were some really interesting lessons to kind of learn from what you did with your first startup and the things that you kind of learned from that and sort of did differently as you kind of set out on your next adventure.
So thanks for chatting and I wish you all the best.
Zal Dastur (54:47.150)
Thank you so much.
Amar, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us.
I mean, I had a lot of fun, so.
Yeah, thank you.
Omer (54:53.950)
Great.
Cheers.
