when i met Jacob Vidal, About four years ago, he was the prototype of a future technology entrepreneur: a young, restless, decisive guy with dozens of ideas that by themselves could become the heart of a viable business. And time has confirmed that impression.
Some time later, and hand in hand with the co-founders Pablo Castro and Sergio Regueira, the embryo of the current Arengu was born: a tool designed to become a reference in the automation of the registration and acquisition processes. Now, with a larger team, and from its offices in A Coruña, it has just completed the first major milestone in its evolution: the closing of a worth 500,000 euros that will allow him to establish a growth that has only accelerated since his birth.
Currently, Arengu processes more than 800,000 registrations per month and continues to grow, working both with small startups and with clients such as , which managed to increase conversions by 37% using the technology of Arengu, or Grupo Posadas, a company listed on the Mexican stock exchange, which it helps to eliminate fraud in its registration processes.
To learn a little more about Arengu and this round, led by the venture capital fund the Business Angels group; the Raphael Garrido and the , online marketing group specialized in eCommerce, we have spoken with Jacobo.
You have just closed your first round of financing, how has the intra-history of this operation been?
Shortly after setting up the company around May-June 2018, it was when we met Jaime Novoa of K Fund.
We were in regular contact with him for almost a year, but they were more informal meetings to see how we were doing, what we were doing, how we were evolving, etc. because at that time we were not looking for financing, but rather we were more focused on the product and in validating that what we were doing really made sense, in fact, at that time we were called RocketForms.
Almost a year later, in April-May 2019 we started to have more serious talks with the K Fund teamthey proposed a more formal meeting and the three founders went to meet their team in Madrid and, to be honest, we left the meeting with very good feelings because we had really liked their team.
We had had more conversations with other investors than just talking to them, they already asked us for CAC, LTV, balance sheet, X-year financial plan, profitability analysis, etc. when the company was only a few months old. Nevertheless, With the K Fund team, the conversation focused much more on getting to know each other, They asked us a lot about the team, the product, our vision, ambitions, etc. We left with the idea that they really cared about us and that we wanted investors like them in the company.
After the summer, it was when they confirmed that they had also liked us and that’s when the negotiations for the round began, the truth is, everything was quite natural and there was nothing in which there was special friction. In the course of those negotiations, We also met the Partners team and Rafael Garrido. Both were very aligned with our philosophy and with what we did and we were also lucky to have them join the round. The operation was finally closed in December 2019.
What does it mean for you to have the support of these well-known investors in the sector?
Well, the truth is that we are very excited and grateful to have investors who have supported us from the first moment, who join the company and who have interests that are closely aligned with ours.
History of Arengu
How did the idea of creating Arengu come about?
We (Pablo Castro, Sergio Regueira and I) had started what is now Arengu as a personal project, Basically we had set up an API to create forms and that the data sent by users would be easily integrated with any system or CRM, since it was something that clients always asked us for when we developed a website.
We realized that the solution we had designed could not only cover a simple use case of a contact form that, for example, sends an email notification or saves the data in a CRM, but that we could cover it in a simple way more technically complex use cases: registration forms, forms with verification by email or SMS, social login, etc. All this thanks to the ability of our technology to connect with any system to send and receive data.
As users, we are tired of constantly giving our email and password to register or log in to websites or applications, and companies are concerned that this information is stored securely and that the experience is as simple as possible for the user. final. For this reason, we decided to focus our technology on simplify both the creation and implementation of these processes so that they are not a drama for companies, as well as significantly improve the end user experience so that they can get to register with just one click.
In just two years, just a year and a half, you have changed your name, your focus, duplicated your team, received the support of investors and, above all, you have made your tool evolve (a lot). How have you experienced this process?
Yes, the truth is that we have experienced quite a few changes in this period of time. When we started we called ourselves RocketForms. We had a simple solution that simply allowed us to create forms and integrate them with any system, we did not have anything that another competitor did not have and we were going to fight with functionalities that we did not have.
Shortly after, we iterated to a model of smarter forms, which basically allowed information to be enriched through the domain of an email without the user having to fill in that data. There we also had a problem: we did not have that data nor did we know how to obtain it without resorting to external providers, that was when clearbit brought out a form builder that did the exact same thing as us, but they had the data and now the forms, so again we decided to iterate.
In those iterations we had developed a flow engine that allowed us to add server-side logic to those forms and we realized that we could cover more complex use cases that required making calls to APIs or systems to make records, custom validations, checks in a database, enrich information, etc. At that moment we decided to change the name of the company so that they would not associate us with other form generators since we had something different and that went beyond a simple form.
All this stage of tests and iterations was possible thanks to the support we had from the group who decided to bet on us at a very early stage of the company.
From your point of view as an entrepreneur, what is the most valuable lesson you have learned from this whole process? What advice would you give to someone who is thinking of starting their own project?
One of the things that has helped us the most is go out and talk to people. It seems silly but many times we live in a bubble in which we believe we are better than anyone else until the market gives us a dose of reality and you rethink things. Although we have not radically pivoted, we have iterated a few times and changed the focus of the product thanks to the clients we were getting.
In this sense, a mistake The biggest thing we did was to create features if someone told us that they wanted to pay but that feature was missing, without really analyzing if it made sense for the product, analyzing if there was more demand, if it was going to turn the product into a Frankenstein, etc. It caused a feeling of swerving without focusing on the company and without solving a problem.
As a summary I would say that it is important talk to many people from many sectors to avoid bias and focus on solving a problem.
«Many times we live in a bubble in which we believe we are better than anyone else until the market gives us a dose of reality»
Arengu Strategy
In the field of forms, there are real international giants such as JotForm, Wufoo, Formstack or Typeform. Who are your real competitors? And what are the weapons to defeat them?
This is our eternal battle: although our technology can do a simple contact form or a survey, it doesn’t make sense for you to use Arengu for that, there are already much better solutions than ours that do it very well as Type form.
https:///online-form-tools/
our technology it is to make more complex use cases in a simple way and what you can’t do with a typical form builder. For example: if you want to make a registration form that automatically starts the session with your systems, passwordless registration forms, forms with email or telephone verification by OTP (by sending a code), etc. and that you can embed those inline forms on any page to attract new and more qualified users.
Really we are a complementary solution to identity providers What Auth0, Okta, OneLogin, etc, they manage users and identities, something that we do not do, and we provide the forms with a layer of customization and integrations that you cannot do with them. That is, we are between the authentication systems and the end user.
What are your clients like? What do they usually use Arengu for?
On the one hand, we help developers to reduce a lot of time in integrations and code maintenance of a task that is not the core of your business. On the other hand, we provide marketing teams the vision and control of this process – which normally depends on the technology department – through an interface that allows them to make changes without fear of breaking anything. So they can test their own strategies to improve conversions and scale their user acquisition process.
We work both with small startups and with clients of the size of privilege (part of VeePee), whom we help scale their user acquisition processes, or Posadas Groupa company listed on the Mexican stock exchange, which we help to eliminate fraud in its registration processes.
In general, you have opted for a very usable design, with drag and drop elements. What feedback have you received on this proposal?
The feedback in this sense is very good: we have opted for a low-code platform, that is, have a very visual and easy-to-use interface so that any user without the need for technical knowledge can use us. However, if you are a developer you can get much more out of the platform since it also allows customization with code.
Arengu’s future
What are your next steps? How will Arengu evolve in the coming months?
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