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The company
Turkey-based company kovan studio believes that building successful startups is a repeatable science. Over the last ten years, it has built, grown, and sold two successful software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses: an API microservices company called Restpack, which it sold in 2017, and an all-in-one platform to announce product updates called AnnounceKit, which it sold in 2019.
Over the past two years, the company has been busy building two more businesses: UserMotion, an AI-powered product-led revenue platform for identifying the hottest product-qualified leads; and CompanyEnrich, a company data provider and lookalikes finder.
Combined, Kovan’s businesses boast 1,100 customers in 51 countries. The company’s success, it believes, is a result of its simple approach. “Having fancy titles and corporate hierarchies is not our thing,” says the company’s website. “We love simple processes, fewer apps and boards. We spend our energy solving problems, not creating them.”
This conscious decision to simplify its processes is evident in the way it manages its payments. Instead of trying to navigate the complexities of this itself, it has offloaded everything to Paddle – and is saving a lot of time and money as a result.
The challenge
Turkey has strict banking regulations. We had initially wanted to use Stripe, but it didn’t support Turkish companies, so we had to use a local payment provider instead.”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
Unfortunately, this added a lot of complexity to kovan’s payment infrastructure.
The local payment provider’s system was outdated – requiring XML data transfers – and didn’t support certain card types, like American Express. This forced kovan to manually convert USD to Turkish Lira, which was time consuming and often inaccurate, especially during periods of economic instability in Turkey which made currency conversions unpredictable and risky.
Eventually, kovan was incorporated in the US and joined Stripe’s Atlas program. While this made its payments processes smoother, it was only a matter of time before it faced more issues.
With Stripe, we had to manage our tax obligations ourselves, which took time away from growing our business.
Moreover, as we began the sale of Restpack, we faced even more complications. Stripe accounts were tightly bound to our company – and that made ownership transfer difficult.”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
The solution
Kovan realized it needed a better approach. It had heard about Paddle and was impressed by its Merchant of Record (MoR) model, which would enable it to offload its payments processes and take on associated liabilities, such as collecting sales tax and ensuring compliance.
Another big selling point was the fact that, unlike Stripe at the time, Paddle would allow kovan to operate as a Turkish company.
The Turkish government supports companies that bring in foreign currency, so using Paddle would give us additional financial benefits”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
Paddle also promised easy account transfers, which would simplify the acquisition process and allow kovan to sell AnnounceKit without the complexities it faced when selling Restpack.
We began a slow transition, initially testing Paddle with new customers while keeping existing customers on Stripe”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
The full transition went smoothly:
Over time, we fully migrated to Paddle, even incentivizing existing customers to switch by offering them discounts. Our CTO led the integration, and from a technical perspective, Paddle's API and documentation were easy to work with. Before long, we had over two-thirds of AnnounceKit customers using Paddle.”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
With this success under its belt, kovan made the decision to fully implement Paddle for its newer products.
Today, Paddle is our default payment provider for CompanyEnrich; we no longer use Stripe at all.”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
kovan hasn’t looked back since. In fact, it has embraced even more of Paddle’s offering, using Metrics for business insights and activating Retain features to automate payment recovery.
The results
Choosing Paddle has proven to be a great decision for kovan. Since implementing the platform, it has realized multiple benefits:
Simplified exit
Paddle simplified the process of selling AnnounceKit. In fact, switching payment systems took just one day instead of weeks because Paddle provided a single invoice point.
With Paddle, we simply contacted support, shared our account details with the buyer, and Paddle updated the company info, the whole process was smooth and hassle-free for us as the sellers, as well as the buyers – who, during acquisition discussions, said our organized payment and tax setup was a major selling point.”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
Reduced operational overheads
As a MoR, Paddle has eliminated the need for kovan to manually handle taxes and compliance across multiple jurisdictions.
With Paddle, payments are a non-issue, it frees up our time to focus on what matters most: Our products and our customers.”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
Improved business insights
By leveraging Metrics, kovan can analyze monthly recurring revenue (MRR), growth rates, and revenue by pricing plan. This has informed Kovan’s strategic decision to increase its pricing tiers.
We noticed that our lower-tier plans weren’t driving significant growth, so we used insights from Metrics to adjust our pricing strategy, which has improved revenue."
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
Reduced involuntary churn
Using Retain features, kovan has automated payment retries, significantly reducing churn.
Previously, we manually retried failed payments over a month or two, Retain automates this process. With AnnounceKit, for example, payment failures accounted for nearly half of our churn, so automating retries has been a game-changer.”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
The results soon became clear.
Early churn signals like failed payments were super useful. When Paddle started showing failed payments, we built a simple rule: If failed 2x → CS reached out with an email, and it was followed by discount offers when the subscription fully cancelled.
Another thing is that tracking patterns in churn or downgrades helped us refine our customer success playbooks.”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
Enhanced local operations
As a Turkish company, kovan can operate internationally while maintaining its local business presence and accessing government incentives.
We are seeing more Turkish startups adopting Paddle because it eliminates the need to incorporate in the US. With growing awareness, I see Paddle becoming even more popular in Turkey – which is fantastic.”
Amirali Nurmagomedov, Co-Founder, kovan studio
The future
With Paddle as its foundation for payments and revenue operations, kovan is well-positioned to continue its track record of success.
As the company expands its latest ventures, UserMotion and CompanyEnrich, it does so with the confidence that its payments infrastructure will scale seamlessly.
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