773 - Saket Kumar (Vitt) On Growing Your Startup On Your Terms W/ Non-Dilutive Financing

Mat Sherman: [00:01:00] All right, how's it going, everyone. Welcome to another episode of forward thinking founders, where we talk to founders about their companies, their visions for the future, and how the two collide. I'm very excited to be talking to you. Saket Kumar, who is a co-founder of Vitt welcome to the show. How's it going? 

Saket Kumar: Yeah, I'm really good. , it's a lovely day here in London. Classic December gloom. 

Mat Sherman: Pretty good. Uh, you know, it's nine o'clock in the morning, , productive morning and already on the second cup of coffee, which will probably come out in this episode with my, you know,energy.

But you know, what, what can you do? Um, well, this, this, this podcast is not about coffee or energy or weather this is about your company and what you're working on. So my first question for you is what, what are you working on? What, what is Vitt.

Saket Kumar: Vitt is fast non-dilutive founder-friendly cash for growing SaaS, businesses, both venture backed and bootstrap giving founders instant access to cash up front rather than monthly billing.

The mission statement, very simple, letting founders both own [00:02:00] and grow their business so if you're a SaaS business, , that wants to raise capital and you'd have some contracts that you've signed , you can come to us. 

Mat Sherman: All right. So let's, let's say I'm a start up, but we'll try which I am. Um, what, stage do you kind of entertain, funding a company and just like, walk me through actually, just kind of the average experience of a startup that comes to you and gets funding.

Saket Kumar: So in terms of what type of startup and like what stage, like we start like pretty, pretty early on. So anything above a hundred thousand annual recurring revenue, which is roughly 8.4 K monthly, , and we scaled way up, , and the only kind of requirement at least for right now is that you have monthly billing, , on your end customers, at least some customers with develop, , to your second question of what the. You come on on vitt.Sh , it's a tacky joke for shell script. Um, sh you register your account, you verify your account, and then you're on the Vitt dashboard. [00:03:00] And all you need to do is connect a couple of data sources, um, get bank account and your accounting information, and potentially a Stripe, which is less than 10 clicks.

You put in how much you want to fund out. So let's say you want to get a 100k you put that in, and then we get back to you within 24 hours with an offer.

Mat Sherman: And tell me, why did you decide to start this?

Saket Kumar: Cool. So I was a VC for three years out here in Europe. , initially had a fund called global founders capital in the later, out of fund based out in Berlin. And I just saw these like phenomenal businesses. Come in, , come into, into offices and just unnecessarily selling kind of 20, 25% of the business, , for what felt like, kind of no reason, right? Like once a company, is that relatively mature?

Like, why are you selling that much, your business? So I think that was the kind of Genesis. Right. Um, and I think the second thing is I kind of dived in more to that space. I just realized in particular that there were a bunch of bootstrap founders who had been really locked out of capital markets. You know, if you have a steady state business, Yeah, 200k or 300k growing [00:04:00] 20% year on year, it's kind of absurd that the financing options for you are a pretty non-existent like ventures aren't interested in those sorts of companies, banks aren't going to lend to those sorts of companies.

And so, yeah, the more we dove into this space, we realize both that they're venture backed companies who are probably giving up too much dilution, but then there's a whole range of bootstrapped companies who, look little to no kind of financing on. 

Mat Sherman: I'm curious, what do you spend your time on, like on a day to day? Like, do you spend your time similar to how you spend your time as a VC or is that a little different funding startups as a founder yourself? 

Saket Kumar: Um, so yeah, it's a bit different from being, from being a VC for sure. I mean, the team's pretty small. We're managing, I'm managing kind of many, many hats, all at once, all at the same time. Um, so a typical day, like we let's kick it off with the daily, so we do that, at 8:15, as kick it off, see what everyone's working on. And then, so for example, I can even open up my calendar and just talk you through what I did today.

That's probably probably the most fun and most accurate. So synced to the team around a couple of organizational issues, had a [00:05:00] couple of customer calls. We had a couple of inbound investors who we gave a, gave an update to. Chatted about product. Um, a couple of changes we want to make on the UX, um, did a lot of sales, right?

So getting customers through the funnel and, and a lot of cost support as well. So, you know, people say, Hey, I don't understand this, or whatever, and response to that. So it's like, you know, just jumping around, doing a million different things or unplugging all the, as many holes as I can, I guess, for want of a better way.

Mat Sherman: Obviously you don't fund like every company in the world. Like I got an idea yesterday, great. Like funding, right. So I guess my question is there a stage that is, you know, too early? Um, I guess it's before that, that revenue mark, but is there also a stage that's too late, or do you work with kind of any stage of company once they're in a certain amount revenue.

Saket Kumar: So right now, , we'll talk to anyone who's above that 100k ARR at a certain point, um, for like a super large scale, it's possible for you to kind of get cheaper cost of financing potentially. Right. You might be able to get a bank loan, you know, like for [00:06:00] example, zoom right. Is able to just do a bond issuance.

Right. I'm at a very extreme example, but even, you know, if you're like a five coming in a SaaS business, I mean, you know, customers still talk to us. I still have a dearth and options, to be honest. So like we scale pretty like pretty deeply without, without customers. I mean, beyond a certain point 

yeah. Maybe that's your social capital and we'll convenience. What's the capital, but yeah, we got pretty big. 

Mat Sherman: And tell me kind of, what's the big vision here, you know, in 5, 10, 15 years, where do you see kind of it being in the. 

Saket Kumar: Cool. So, I mean, I think like step one is lending out, right? Giving a kind of new source of capital from any founders out there. But I think what I'm really excited by. What's the step beyond that. Right? Which is, I think capital's coming into the space pretty ubiquitously, right? There's quite a few players out there doing all kinds of types of financing from e-commerce to SaaS, to all across the spectrum. And I think what we're really excited by is that if you're a eSaaS business, I think in two, three years, Your options will become increasingly complex.

Right? Right now it's [00:07:00] essentially equity or nothing, and it's slowly becoming equity and players I costs and then nothing. And I'm sure that more and more complex and sophisticated financial products will be built. And then as that happens, I think that second order effect of. I almost need an investment banker on your team.

Right. But if you're a 2M ARR saaS business, like Goldman's not gonna service you. Right. Um, the economics don't make sense. And I think that's all excited about it's like bringing essentially those, almost the way to view it as like DCM kind of substance into, into products, data driven products , for our founders.

Right. We kind of jokingly call it kind of Goldman SaaS. Um, but I think that's the kind of, I think that's the kind of vision coming, going forward, right? Like really, you know, everyone's trying to build a CFA as a service or a new bank, but why doesn't someone just build Goldman on a web app. Um, and I think that's what we want to be in.

Mat Sherman: Goldman SaaS I'm not going to forget that. That's that's awesome. That's good. Um, but, okay. So to make that happen, which is a really exciting vision and need some help, right? I mean, it takes a village to [00:08:00] make a startup work and scale. So my question for you is how can the forward thinking founders, community help? Are you hiring, looking for capital yourself, looking for founders to fund, you know, how can we assist 

Saket Kumar: , so firstly, like if you're a founder apply, right.Vitt.Sh even if you're not looking for financing, um, a you'll be surprised at how convenient the flow is, but also be like any product feedback we love.

Right. If you say, Hey, this is a friction here. I didn't like this. This is unclear. It's super appreciated. Right? all feedback is always super, super appreciated. So yeah, if you, if I were running a SAS business, um, got to Vtt.sh and apply. And the second thing is that we're always hiring for, for fantastic people.

Um, they have going on career page and, uh, and just apply it. Like we, we like to believe that we're building one of the best teams on the planet. Um, we're very picky, but that means your potential. Future colleagues are often phenomenal and we're always looking for more phenomenal people.

Mat Sherman: And if someone wanted to learn more or find you online, where can they find you? Do you have a website, social [00:09:00] media, email address, you know, where can they find you? 

Saket Kumar: Cool. Um, so the website is search. So V I T t.sh email, just ping me directly saket@vitt.sh. I said, and then you also DM me on Twitter, which is . K U M a R. My DMs areis always open. Um, so even if you don't want to talk about it and there's just something you think has been helped you in, just ping me.

I like to be, you know, people's lucky breaks. People have been very kind to me and my career. I'd try to help as best as I can. 

Mat Sherman: All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast and best of luck building this out. Thanks for awesome. Thanks for having me have a lovely day.