Yet again, David Okuniev, Co-founder of near-unicorn Typeform, sat down with the GetLatka team to discuss his new role inside Typeform and what’s next. Okuniev shared with Latka how and why he stepped away from Typeform’s most recent product addition, what new product is about to launch in beta, and what’s next for Typeform.
Co-founder David Okuniev launched Typeform in 2013 as a product that provides users with a solution. The company’s most recent Series C round places its value at nearly a billion dollars. As a result of his co-founder journey to unicorn status, Okuniev was able to identify his most passionate part of the process. He’s now chosen to spend his time on early-stage product building with a small R&D team at Typeform, and he loves it.
- $935m valuation post-money
- $135m Series C funding
- 130,000 Customers
- Nearly 500 employees
Early-stage niche product building results in $3m ARR product
After its launch as a Typeform product in 2019, VideoAsk has grown to $3m ARR. Okuniev stepped away from the successful new product to move on to developing other products for Typeform. “I now run a small R&D team to spin out new products,” Okuniev explained. “VideoAsk is one of those products,” he added.
Beta launch nears with a list of a few hundred
Okuniev’s latest B2B SaaS product is Relayed.ai. It’s a new solution designed to tackle the inefficiencies of the video and meeting space. Ideally, it will use AI to connect conversations, meetings, and follow-ups to glean critical learnings and action steps resulting in fewer, better meetings. Okuniev explained that Relayed has been under wraps while in development but is nearly ready for the beta launch. So far, the only product announcement Okuniev made was a LinkedIn post that garnered “a few hundred” sign-ups to his beta list. He’s planning on promoting the launch more widely in short order.
Small R&D team of two
Lakta showed his surprise that Typeform Co-Founder Okuniev’s R&D team was only comprised of two people. He noted, “It’s me, the product manager, designer, front-end developer, and another product person who does front and back-end development.” Okuniev explained that the two of them are spinning up all new products inside the Typeform organization.
Repeating $75m Typeform development
As Typeform hit $75m in ARR, Okuniev, an original founder, grew tired of his role and yearned to get back to product development. With Typeform’s recent valuation approaching unicorn status at $935m, Okuniev explained that his R&D team is following the same development pattern. “We are product designers solving problems,” he explained.
Gradually adding resources, expanding Typeform to a team of 500
With the launch of Relayed, Okuniev is following the pattern set by the recent product win, VideoAsk. “You don’t need that many people to launch a product. Too many makes it go slow,” noted Okuniev. Instead, VideoAsk added people to the team as needed, allowing the organization to stay nimble and move fast. For Relayed, Okuniev plans on adding another engineer and then a paywall.
Inside vs. out? Internal development vs. acquisition?
Latka queried Okuniev as to why he would build new products inside Typeform instead of developing them independently as a new company. Okuniev first quipped, “I’m loyal.” Then added, “Inside the company, there aren’t the same funding pressures. We are free to explore without as much pressure.” Latka posed the question, why not acquire a tool instead of building it, to which Okuniev replied, “It’s not our thing. It’s a moonshot, not strategic. We want to do it our way.”
Fluid R&D Roadmap
Of particular surprise was that Okuniev admitted that his R&D approach did not include a systematic roadmap for product development. Instead, he explained that the goal was to make more human interactions around video collection. Okuniev sees his latest B2B SaaS as not just data collection but messaging and conversation.
Useful conversational tool
“We think this conversational tool could be beneficial. We want to make it as helpful as possible so people can do their best work,” Okuniev explained. His vision for Relayed is that it can capture insights from Zoom meetings and build an inbox of communication focused on just the key messages, insights, and critical next steps.
130,000 customers and growing
Typeform currently serves over 130,000 customers. The B2B SaaS product continues to add enterprise features to grow the business. “We want to make Typeform more relevant inside people’s processes, to imbed in deeper inside the day-to-day business,” revealed Okuniev. Latka shared that he’s a satisfied Typeform customer, using it to drop data into Airtable. “It’s very dependent on our user flows,” quipped Latka.
$135m Series C round closed in March 2022
Typeform recently closed a Series C round of $135m in March at a post-money valuation of $935m. While he wouldn’t reveal specifics, co-founder Okuniev shared that less than half of the funding was secondary. He explained that some early investors sold their stake, and the founders took some money off the table.
Employees cashed out up to 50% of options in Series B
Okuniev clarified that in the Series B funding round, employees could sell up to 50% of their vested options, which some did. “None of that happened in the Series C,” clarified Okuniev.
Next steps for $935m Typeform
When Latka asked about his ambition to go public with an IPO, Okuniev quipped, “Private is the new public, thanks to Elon Musk.” He added that now is definitely not the time to go public, but he might revisit the possibility in a couple of years.
Right timing for term sheets
Okuniev admitted that “the timing was good for us. We closed funds before the downturn.” He added, “if we were raising today, it would be harder to get the multiples we got.” Okuniev noted that Belgian investment company Sofina led the Series C along with several US investors who had supported Typeform in earlier rounds.
Famous Five with David Okuniev
Typeform co-founder David Okuniev, who now leads the internal R&D team of two, shared that the last book he read was Humankind by Rutger Bregman. David doesn’t follow any particular CEO. His favorite tool to build Relayed in Figma for design. He sleeps 7 hours per night and is married with three children. 45-year-old David says he wishes, at 20, he would have known that everything was going to be OK.
