Scaleup Q&A: ApplyBoard co-founder Meti Basiri on achieving 12,525% revenue growth in three years

ApplyBoard co-founders Meti, Massi, and Martin Basiri — three brothers who came from Iran to study in Canada and stayed — have had a big year. In May, they raised a $55 million Series B funding round. In October, they were included in the CIX Top Ten Growth winners at the Canadian Innovation Exchange in Toronto. In November, the company topped Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 list. And in December, Meti and Massi were named on three Forbes Top 30 Under 30 Lists: Immigrants, Education, and Big Money.

For this month's Scaleup Q&A, we spoke with Meti Basiri (CMO) about why they're committed to Canada, what it takes to build a high-growth mission-oriented tech company, and why he doesn't believe in bootstrapping.*

RE$EARCH MONEY: How did you and your brothers identify the original business opportunity? 

Meti Basiri: My older brother Martin came to Canada in 2010. Within the first few months, he satisfied our parents that my twin brother and I should come here for our undergrad, rather than wait for graduate school. He really wanted to get us accepted, so he was literally walking into schools to do the whole process of applying for us.

We went to a few traditional agencies for help, but they told us, "Oh, don't even try. You're not going to get visas." We didn't listen to them. So with Martin supporting from here, we submitted the application, got the visa, and came.

From the start, a lot of families back in Iran started asking us to do it for them, too. At that time, international students to Canada paid three times more than domestic students. We needed money for tuition fees, so we started charging people here and there to help them with their applications. It was never really a business—it was just a problem that existed.

We did it for a few months, and that's it. But we always imagined making this process simpler for international students. There were no platforms; people were just Googling their options. How could we make it faster and easier for students, and more importantly, give students the choice they deserve?

In January 2015, after we'd finished school and gone our own ways, we realized, "Oh, that's a cool business." Then, in May of that year, we came together and started the company.

R$: Why did the traditional agencies originally tell you it wouldn't work?

MB: Lack of information. They try to sell you what is easy and available for them, based on the information they have access to. The agencies we met with were telling Iranian students to go elsewhere. Fortunately, with our platform, those traditional partners and the recruitment agents have the tools to make the right decision.

R$: How did you grow the company?

MB: We went through hell. [Laughs] But it was a good hell. In 2015, we successfully raised our first round, which was crucial for us. We got to the position that we had a couple of hundred bucks in a bank account and three or four employees. We were planning to either take a line of credit or sell our car to sustain the business for another couple of months. But we had a minimal viable product and about twenty students that used it. So we could prove that it works because a small or medium agency wouldn't do more than 20 students in a year. We raised the money and invested in our software, and we hired a few more people.

In 2016, we learned that we needed to pivot. We'd gone to a market that was very high risk, and we ended up losing about $150,000 to $200,000. It was a bad situation, but at least we proved that we had more students on the platform.

In 2017, we had good traction and good growth. We started working with recruitment partners. The spike started happening, then we got more funding, and when that kicked in, the numbers started growing. We went into new markets, and we were able to put massive effort behind our future growth. And then in 2019 we received a lot of the spotlight. We became the fastest growing tech company and got the CIX award. A lot of good stuff happened.

R$: What happened with that high-risk market and what did you learn?

MB: We looked at the total numbers of a particular country, and we saw that it sends 10,000 students to Canada. We advertised there and we got a good number of students. But in international education, the visa step is very political. Approval can go from 60% to 20%. We had a lot of students get rejected.

After that, we became more data-oriented. We won't go to a market if we haven't gathered information from the last five years. We do our research. Now we have live data. We can tell you what the approval rate looks like, age difference, gender, level of education and so on for the countries where we have market share. We can anticipate our success rate more accurately, which also helps a lot of our partners do a better job on enrollment.

R$: Are your university and college partners primarily Canadian or are you now in different markets?

MB: We focus a lot on Canadian schools. We're a Canadian company, and we're trying to improve what can be done in Canada. We've gone to the US, and now we'll be in a bunch of other countries in 2020. But for the next three years, at least 50% of our business will stay in Canada.

R$: It sounds like external funding really was important for you to level up. Has the experience been positive?

MB: We love it. I don't actually believe in bootstrapping. Let me rephrase that: I believe in bootstrapping when you run a service company. But if you want to solve a big problem, you need to have external resources. Education is not a small problem. I believe if you have a vision and you're trying to make a global impact, funding is always good.

Funding also provides you with greater risk. We launched a brand this year that is going to be as successful as ApplyBoard, called ApplyProof. It's an identification and verification system for international students accepted to Canadian schools, so that immigration can verify their documents. If we didn't have funding, we would never have invested in that brand. Why? Because we're not going to take a risk on seeing if something works or not.

ApplyBoard is extremely healthy in terms of financials. We're not WeWork. We're a healthy business, and I think being immigrants really helps, because coming to a country and not having a lot of money, you always want to be extremely lean. If something doesn't add value to our employees or our customers, we're not going to do it.

R$: Do you have competitors, other than small scale service providers?

MB: There are a few now trying to do the same model, but they haven't recognized how much tech is involved. We're far in front of them. We also have other advantages, like patents. To be honest, I would love competition, because it makes us work hard. Three brothers came to this country from Iran as immigrants eight years back, and we became a threat to a lot of previous businesses. Now, three other brothers could come to this country from somewhere else and become us. It's fun. We learn from each other. It just depends on how you look at it.

R$: How do you make the transition from family business to scaling company?

MB: Good mentors! And good executive coaches.

R$: What have you learned about building systems?

MB: Our biggest investments are in our people, our R&D, and our process. We've had amazing leaders join us in the last few months. They love our mission. I think that's the culture that we have built around our office: the diversity, the ratio of more females than males — 52% to 48% — which is very rare in a tech company. These are the things that I think make the company strong and long-term-oriented.

What we're truly trying to do is change people's lives. In our meetings internally, we never ask how many students we enrolled in our partner schools. Rather, we say, How many lives did we change? One of core values is student success. It comes from our heart. I'm very blessed to be in Canada and be a Canadian now. We're providing that opportunity to people.

R$: What is the role of government for your company? Have there been programs that have been useful to you for your success and growth?

MB: Yes, IRAP was really nice early on. Now we're doing SR&ED, but it's so inefficient. To get $30,000, you spend $30,000 on human resources. Maybe that's my next business idea.

R$: What about Global Affairs?

MB: I love trade commissioners! Whenever I've met them, they've been super supportive. Their mentality is awesome. One of their job responsibilities is helping Canadian brands to grow. So very early on they noticed that we're not only a Canadian brand, we're making their job in the education sector easier. I love them.

R$: How do you manage your university and college partnerships?

MB: By sending them students that desire to study on their campuses, and by being very transparent. They know we're not in the business of pushing one school over other schools. I think that transparency is really appreciated. If the students select one of our partner schools, we're going to help them.

R$: What are your growth aspirations today?

MB: Well, we had 12,525% growth in revenue from 2015 to 2018.

R$: So you want to continue on the 12,000% growth plan?

MB: Don't give me a heart attack! No, I think that's a massive dream to have. It's a dream that could come true, but I think we'd need ten more of everyone in this company, every single person, and I cannot duplicate them myself. I tried on the copy machine, but it didn't come through.

R$: Will you need to open offices in other countries?

MB: Hopefully not. We're trying to build a system where anyone from any part of the world can work with us. My goal is that if people move to Mars someday, they still can work for ApplyBoard.

R$: Do many of your employees currently work from home?

MB: We have 60 or 70 people on the ground in about 27 countries, and we actually have a lot of people in our Canadian office who work from home.

R$: What are your next steps?

MB: The next step is to grow our market share in Canada, because we are still not even 3% of this market. We have massive room to grow. And then continue going abroad.

R$: Do you have any advice for younger companies that are starting to grow faster?

MB: Persistence. Look at building a startup like running a marathon. It's not about who makes it as fast as possible; it's who makes it to the end. And you're not going to be a winner if you go alone.

R$

*This interview has been edited and condensed.