Henri Kajula, Founder of Envera:”I think that EBITDA is not a great metrics for SaaS. If it’s too high, you haven’t been bold enough to grow your company. If you really believe in your business model, you should put all in.”

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It’s has been said, that the best advice comes from peer entrepreneurs. This goes for Henri Kajula, Founder of Envera, who has pivoted from energy certificates into digital water consumption monitoring and fast growing energy management SaaS. Envera helps property owners save their money and time with these services.

In 2014, Henri was running a startup focusing on energy certificates. He had over 300 properties income statements and energy consumptions data in his table. Almost without an exception, water was the second largest on-going cost item, while heating was the largest. Water prices in Finland had risen over 70 % during the past ten years.

He soon drafted a business plan in the name of “Fiksuvesi” (Smartwater) and pivoted the business from energy certificates to water saving. The team worked hard and went through a great number of properties in Western and Southern Finland. Water consumption of Envera’s customers decreased over 20% on average, but the company often had problems proving savings: in many cases, the property owners had no idea about their water consumption.

Envera came up with an idea to digitalize analogue water meters with a remote monitoring IoT solution based on optical reading and data analysis. Soon after launch of the remote monitoring service, business started to scale very fast.

Today Envera reads more than 6 000 water meters minute by minute, reporting its customers about water consumption and thousands of water leakages annually. The customer base is roughly doubling every year.

“For us, the hardware enables SaaS. Recurring service model enables the highest valuation. The biggest focus is not the valuation, but understanding your earning logic helps to execute your strategy.” Henri explains.

“Our target is to grow fast and SaaS metrics help us to execute our growth strategy. I want to make sure, that investors receive their investment back with a significant multiplier.” says Henri “I think that EBITDA is not a great metrics for SaaS. If it’s too high, you haven’t been bold enough to grow your company. If you really believe in your business model, you should put all in.”

Envera helps to save resources. In 2030, world’s freshwater reserves are available only for 60% of the world’s population.

“More than else, it’s really important that we work hard in the area, which helps our customers to save water, nature, and money. The less is more. Everyone wins” Henri says.

“My primary target is to create a strong growth culture and take care of our employees. As I have been hiring all the people, I really feel responsible for their livelihood. With a strong culture of expertise, enthusiasm and accountability, the company will have a good future, regardless of the owner.

The more committed the people are, the stronger the company is. Instead of dilution, I feel that the value of my own equity stake has increased significantly every time I have sold my shares to our key players.”

Päivi is Founder of BackedByCFO with greatest passion to help SaaS & e-commerce to grow faster.