How Typeform's Co-Founder Grew VideoAsk to $3M ARR With a Two-Person R&D Team

Imagine making a $100,000,000 on a silly simple tool like a form builder software. That's exactly what David Okuniev has done when he launched Typeform in 2012 with his one cofounder. It took him seven years to hit $20,000,000 in revenue, and he hit 50,000,000 revenue in 2021. This year, 2024, he's on pace to break a $100,000,000 of revenue. Now, despite this revenue growth and raising $135,000,000 at almost a billion valuation in 2022, David did not want

to be CEO. So he replaced himself. And by the way, you should do the same thing. He did this so he could build new products inside the company. He launched VideoAsk and grew to 3,000,000 of revenue before passing it off to the rest of the team. Now he's working on a new tool called Relay. To learn how David launches these new products inside his own company that all seem to be winners and do millions of revenue

very quickly, let's jump into the full interview where you'll see his product playbook. Hey folks, if we haven't met yet, my name is Nathan Latka. I launched and sold my first software company back in 2015 and went on to write a book about it, which you guys made a Wall Street Journal bestseller purchasing over 30,000 copies. Thank you so much for that. After the book, I launched this show and went on to create founderpath.com. I raised

a large fund to do non dilutive deals with B2B software founders. So far, we've invested in over 400 software founders totaling $150,000,000. Here in 2024, we're doing three to four new deals per week. So if you're looking for capital and don't wanna give up equity, go sign up at founderpath.com for free to get your offer. Alright. Let's jump into the interview. Hey, folks. My guest today is David Okuniev. If you listen to the show, you know

we've had Typeform one many times. Last time David and I spoke, he was launching Typeform's official second product VideoAsk. He's now on to something more exciting. We're gonna talk about it today. David, are ready to take us to the top? Yep. Alright. So you're just like... You just like going from zero to one. Right? You're like, once it breaks a million in revenue, you get bored, you move on to the next product.

Well, a bit further than that, but, yeah, I like the early stage of of product building and being a small team. It's where the juice is.

So pick up where we left off with video asking, we'll dive into the new product. So when you came on last, you were just launching the Paywall. I think you'd broke 1,200,000 maybe in ARR, but what's the status of that today? How's how's it going?

The the product's around 3,000,000 in in ARR, And so I stepped away from it around six months ago because I'm... Basically, I run a very small R and D team and we split up new products and VideoAsk was one of those new products. And then we built up the team around that and then I handed that over to the product team in Typeform. And now I'm working on a new product with just me and another developer,

and, yeah, we're we're actually about to release it. Well, start to beta release it with a few people. So Mhmm. Yeah. Excited.

This is this is... Okay. There's a bunch of stuff to unpack here. So so I guess first off, you left VideoAsk when it broke 3,000,000 in revenues. Did anything change about, that.

Before. Something. Yeah.

And and so what did you... I mean, how did you know it was ready to sort of pass off and that it wouldn't just crash and burn if you stopped focusing on it?

Well, it was more of a case that, you know, I... There was another idea coming up, and I wanted to explore the audio and meeting space, the voice, let's say, async audio and meeting space, and it's quite a hot space now, so I wanted to jump into that, and so I think it was time to move on.

Mhmm. Yeah. You're seeing sort of Slack ad in the bottom left. Hey. Use use audio to send messages or do do a do a walkie talkie style sort of thing. This is the space right now.

There's a bunch of products on the market doing async audio and also meeting insights. We we try to combine the two, like async conversations for less, so that you have less meetings and then using AI to enhance actual meetings and then actually even combining the two. Imagine starting a conversation async by voice, then jumping into a meeting, and then doing the follow ups with voice as well in an async... Well, async essentially.

So what's the name of the product?

It's called Relayed or Relayed, however you wanna spell it. Sorry. Pronounce it. R e l a y e d dot a I. And and, yeah, the promise is is fewer, better meetings, essentially. And we're just about to start letting people into the beta. So just head off to the website and and register, and we'll let you in soon.

How many... How... What's on the how many on the beta list right now?

Well, we we... I just... The only thing we've done so far is I did a LinkedIn post, like, last month, and we have a few 100 there. So hopefully now we'll get a few more people in and Typeform will promote it as well, so we'll start pushing it. But it's been pretty much under wraps up till now.

So I what's interesting here for anyone listening is, right, you guys are not... I mean, this is not a small company, right? I mean, you guys, I believe, you you just did a 135,000,000 series c at a 935,000,000 valuation. Right?

Mhmm. Yeah.

That that was pre money or post?

Post money valuation.

Okay. Post. So flirting was sort of unicorn ish status. And last time you came on the show, I mean, you said ARR was right around 48,000,000 in ARR. You guys are like 70 now. Right? A

bit bit bit more than that.

Bit more. So, like, the fact that you've sort of... And and you were one of the original founders. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. We're two co founders.

So the fact that you've been able to sort of create this little niche instead of a much larger company where you are able to stay very nimble and flexible and and basically be the r and d team, think is really interesting to learn about. So what is the team today? Right? So, like, the r and d team you're leading, what... Name name the roles of the people on that team.

It's just two people.

Really? Just you and an engineer?

Team. Now we're we're two. So I act as product manager, designer, and and now I'm doing front end development as well. And then I work with a guy called Neil, who's just a fantastic product person, super rounded, back end, front end, just also great product ideas and we make a duo basically in the company and we're splitting up these new products. I mean, just just to go back to why this is happening, I I

think we're kind of repeating what what what we did in the beginning with Typeform. We were just, you know, product designers trying to solve a problem, and then we had to become managers and CEOs. I was co CEO with my co founder. And eventually that

had its date on it and we grew tired of that and we wanted to get back to product. My co founder eventually left the company, but I carried on with the premise of being able to spin up new products and explore innovation within the vision of Typeform. And that's basically what I'm doing. So I did Typeform, then I did VideoAsk, and now I'm doing Relayed.

That's very interesting. So how do you... Let's say you launch the paywall here in a couple weeks, it starts to go up, you need more resources. How do you get more resources, engineers, whatever on this product outside of the main company?

Well, we're not launching a paywall in two weeks, but if we were and we needed to scale up the team. With VideoAsk, we didn't hire too much internally. Just gradually put people in the team. Honestly, a big believer you don't need that many people to launch a product and actually sometimes the more people you add to it, sometimes the slower you go. So we'll do a beta now, it's just the two of us. We'll probably add

another engineer just to give us a little bit more grunt. And then we'll need to build the paywall and all that stuff, maybe add an extra engineer. And then beyond that, we've got to see how it goes. But I do want to keep things nimble because I think you can move really fast if you have the right people.

And what's driving this sort of R and D roadmap? Is it really whatever you're curious about? Or do you have some systematic way to capture feedback from your user base and that's what's driving?

Nothing systematic. Just the same way that Typeform was built and VideoAsk was built. We just wanted to make more human interactions around data collection, so that's Typeform and and VideoAsk. Relay goes a bit of a tangent to that because it's not purely data collection. It's more about messaging and conversation.

Typeform is all about helping businesses have better relationships internally, externally. So we think of a purely conversational talk would be really useful. Plus, you know, we have... Our day to day lives at work is a lot of conversations and sometimes they can be really inefficient, they can take a lot of time, so we're trying to make it as helpful as possible to to try and help save people time so they can do

more of their best work.

And if relayed takes off and and works out perfectly, what does the world look like in two to three years? In terms of? Well, if everyone's using Relay. Right? Let's say your vision of what it should be works and gets adopted. What does the world look like?

Obviously, that'd be great. I mean, that means that people are not jumping into meetings immediately whenever they have something they want to say. They can actually resolve a lot of things very quickly just by hearing each other's voices. Then also because part of the product is very much about capturing meetings from Zoom, analyzing them, splitting them into chapters, getting insights. So we really want to help people that might miss a meeting to catch up very quickly

or to share meetings with other people so they can get the insights and go through it really quickly. I don't know how many times you've been shared a Zoom recording of a meeting and you can't sit there watching the whole Zoom recording. You want to just be able to just get the nuggets out and really quickly try to zoom in on certain sections. What we've built is basically an inbox for that kind of communications to ingest

your Zoom meetings. Later it will be other types of meetings as well, but right now we're focusing on Zoom. Also the inbox will be able to handle the async conversations with just audio messages as well. It's something to try, something quite new. It's quite exciting to be able to pull something a bit away from pure data collection and forms.

And, David, I mean, you're selling this. People are getting excited listening. Maybe a question they're thinking is, wait. Why is David Buildings inside of Typeform? Why not spin it out as its own thing? Why is that?

Anyway, I'm loyal. I don't know. Look, one good thing about being able to do it inside the company is that there's not the same pressures that founders have when they start a new product in terms of being able to get it funded and running out of funding, etcetera. So it's quite a comfortable situation for me and I'm free to really explore without too much pressure. Obviously, I'm trying to deliver products and might not all work, but

there is a space to be able to experiment and and and see what sticks.

Yep. And how many customers across the whole company? Say, think last time it came on, you guys were breaking a 100,000.

I have the latest numbers on top of me. Must be 130, 40, not sure the latest numbers.

Mhmm. A 130, that's great. And then you were very proud last time it came on, still profitable. It's gonna be hard to say profitable when you raise 135,000,000.

We've actually started investing a lot more in growing the team. We're nearing 500 people, so we flirted with being profitable and then we've reinvested now. Just trying to get onto a new growth curve, next stage of Typeform, trying to bring in more enterprise features, but as well trying to make Typeform more relevant in people's processes, right? Not just being a form, but being like you know, really embedded inside people's day

to day businesses.

Yeah. We're we're a customer. We feed all our Typeform data directly into our Airtable, which is like our marketing database, right, for our team. So we're... We we are very dependent on Typeform and our user flows, and we love it. Of the 135,000,000, how much that was secondary?

I can't disclose.

Can you give a more or less than 50%? Can you give a range?

It was it was much less than

50%. Much less than 50. And then strategically, why isn't... I mean, you've been around since 2011. So there are first employees sitting on options that with, like, no ability to, like, cash in. Obviously, you wanna release that pressure valve a little bit. Right? What was the importance We of doing

did that in the last round before. We didn't actually do this on on this round. Okay. There was oversubscribed.

So so secondary in terms of this round was more like early investors selling their stake or you... Founders taking some money off the table?

There's a combination of both. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But just to be clear, the series b you did back in 2017, you said

you We did some did allow employees to sell, if I remember, up to 50% of what they what they actually had. So there was quite quite a bit to take off the table, but it was much earlier.

Yeah. In terms of in term... When you say what they had, what what they what they had already vested. Right?

Yeah. What they had invested, they could sell up to 50%. I I think we also did. Can't quite remember. But... Yeah.

And what's next step? I mean, you say... You know, I guess we look at this Elon news, private is the new public, I guess, but do you wanna run or help run a publicly traded SaaS company in the next two or three years or no?

That's not my ambition, but let's see. Let's see where Typeform goes. I mean, in the next two, years, we're definitely gonna be looking... Be in that area of considering it. So so let's see. But who knows? I mean, everything's kinda trending down, so not a great time to to do... To be thinking about an IPO or... Well, definitely not doing one. So let's see.

Did you guys have term sheets before sort of a downturn above a billion dollar valuation? Or...

Yeah. The timing was quite good, I have to say.

For for the... The timing was good for them or for you?

For for us. For us. We we... Yeah. It happened just before the downturn.

Okay. So what I was asking is you didn't have term sheets for, a billion 5 and raising a 135,000,000, and then they they took them back and gave you a lower valuation, and you timed it perfectly.

What what I'd say is that if we were raising today, it would be harder to get those valuations because the multiples have gone down now, obviously. Yeah.

Yeah. No. That's great. Any strategic partners in the round?

As in, like, smaller angels.

Who who led? Who led the one thirty five?

Safina, which is a Belgian company. I'm actually from Belgium, so it's quite funny that they they end up lead... Leading. But we also brought in some some other US investors. Also, our current investors reinvested as well.

That's great. Alright. So four ninety ish approaching 500 on the team. Nice little r and d outfit going here. Hoping to change the way teams work by building, again, data collection, interactions, etcetera. Seems like really asynchron... If Relayed works, there's gonna be a lot of... Lot more asynchronous communication, less watching Zoom videos, searching for key moments. Right? It's all gonna be organized data.

Yeah. I mean, what we're hoping to do is that you can start a con... I think I mentioned this, but start a conversation, prepare people for a meeting, async, jump into the meeting, get all the insights. And then if there's any follow ups after, you can just package that all into one conversation, which would probably be like. So let's see.

And last question on this before we wrap up. Why not go buy a tool with... That already has some traction in the space and build on that?

No. That's just not something we've considered. I I think it's also because we're we're... This is a bit of a moonshot, and it was not something strategic that we said, like, we need to look in this area. This is just something that I'm needing. So, you know, I think we can do it our way and probably have a better result.

No technical debt to deal with. No customer transition. None of that stuff.

Yeah.

Alright, David. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's the last book that you read?

Humankind.

Humankind. Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying?

No. Don't... Not studying anyone.

Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building... We'll do Relayed.

Well, just coding really. I use Figma to design and coding in React and bunch of other technologies.

And number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night?

At the moment, not too bad. Like, seven hours.

It's pretty good. And what situation? Married, single, kids?

I'm married. Got kids.

Still three kids?

Three kids, but two from previous marriage. Yeah. My mother is not my my my... Is not from this marriage. My wife has another kid as well. So...

Three kiddos. That's great. And did you celebrate a birthday? Are you 40, 45 now or still 44?

I'm 45.

Yeah. 45. Very good. Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20.

Sorry?

Something you wish you knew back when you were 20.

Something that I wish I knew when I was 20. I probably answered this the same way before because I think you asked me. Everything's gonna be okay.

You're remarkably consistent. Figma was the same, kids were the same, the twenty year device is the same.

Yes, afraid. I'm done with having more kids, that's for sure.

Fair enough. Guys, there you're here to... David, co founder of Typeform launched in 2011, broke a million dollars in revenue back in 2014. Now up above $70,000,000 in AR, just raised $1.35. Very small portion of that was secondary at a 935,000,000 post money valuation, but now working on a very cool new tool called Relay. Just him and another engineer inside of Typeform. They're launching the beta here shortly after David posted about it on LinkedIn and built a pre... Sort of beta list of a couple 100 folks. We'll see what happens. David, thanks for taking us to the top.

Okay. Thanks.