Ukrainian Entrepreneur Bootstrapped with a Paycheck to $7M ARR: Nikita Sherbina, CEO of AIScreen (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Was it just you and your Ukrainian developers at this point?

Nikita Sherbina: No. One was a developer and the other was a designer. I’m the Product Sanager, Sales. One guy was building it. Another guy was designing it. I was trying to build a sales team and thinking about different features. If you have a couple of people, you can do a lot. I don’t think you even need a good developer. You need to solve before you build.

Sramana Mitra: I agree.

Nikita Sherbina: You can always hire people.

Sramana Mitra: In 1Mby1M, we have a maxim. Do not write a line of code until you figure out who’s your customer and what that customer wants and needs. Let’s talk about product roadmap. You were still working on screens. Your apps were all powering different screen environments.

Nikita Sherbina: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Is healthcare now emerging as your biggest market?

Nikita Sherbina: No, actually digital menu boards – restaurant and retail. All malls are open again.

Sramana Mitra: So it’s back to your original thesis.

Nikita Sherbina: Also advertisements.

Sramana Mitra: You’re still using the model of selling with Ukrainian salespeople?

Nikita Sherbina: No, it’s hard to scale. You need to think of scale all the time. Where can I leverage with less amount of work and time? Direct sales do not work very well for us.

Sramana Mitra: The price point is too small for direct sales.

Nikita Sherbina: Yes. It’s just too much to handle. We believe that small teams perform the best and are trying to keep the teams as small as possible.

Sramana Mitra: What go-to-market strategy converts for you the best?

Nikita Sherbina: We are changing our go-to-market strategy. At this point, we gained some customers and people just know us.

Sramana Mitra: Is it pure word-of-mouth?

Nikita Sherbina: No, we have positioned in the market compared to other digital signage companies. We position ourselves as middle-priced.

Sramana Mitra: You’re at about $5 million annual revenue?

Nikita Sherbina: Yes, we’re at $7 million now.

Sramana Mitra: What is the AI element to this? You have AI on your name.

Nikita Sherbina: You have screens. Imagine you’re in retail. You want to understand what kind of customers watch your screen. We have different sensors on the screen that can understand who you are, your age, gender, and how many people are next to the screen, and the duration. It can learn and understand who watches those screens.

Sramana Mitra: This $7 million ARR business that you’ve built, is it more in the multi-location mid-sized business category or is it more in the single location category.

Nikita Sherbina: It’s mostly medium and large-sized businesses. We have big customers who have multiple locations all around the world.

Sramana Mitra: You’re still completely bootstrapped?

Nikita Sherbina: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: That’s great.

Nikita Sherbina: The key is to get together with like-minded people. You can build everything.

Sramana Mitra: How many people are you now?

Nikita Sherbina: 15 people.

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic! Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Ukrainian Entrepreneur Bootstrapped with a Paycheck to $7M ARR: Nikita Sherbina, CEO of AIScreen
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