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Nathan Latka
What if you knew data behind the fastest growing SaaS companies today? Each morning join Nathan Latka as he spends 15 minutes interviewing SaaS founders. You'll learn how SaaS CEO's launched their startup and grew it into a real SaaS business. SaaS Founders range from bootstrapped to funded, MVP to 10,000 customers, pre revenue to pre IPO.
753: With His Tool, Mobile Browsing on Spotty Wifi Doesn't Suck
Shlomi Gian. He has served as PacketZoom’s Chief Executive Officer since June of 2016. He joined the company after spending 4 years at Akamai, where he founded the emerging mobile business unit and service—the head of mobile market development. Before that, he was the general manager of mobile solutions at Cotendo that invented Mobile CDN back in 2011 before it was acquired by Akamai. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Built to Last What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Mix Rank How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Shlomi would tell himself how exciting it is to do your own thing Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Shlomi to the show 02:13 – PacketZoom helps mobile applications work better, especially when networks fail to deliver their service 03:15 – PacketZoom can make an application work in places where they don’t usually work, like in trains and elevators 03:31 – PacketZoom eliminates roadblocks and gets you on the express lane 03:40 – PacketZoom is a SaaS business 03:43 – PacketZoom charges per daily active user 04:10 – A daily active user is anyone who uses the system up to certain usage point 04:18 – Now, a daily active user is measured by the number of calls and how many megabytes have been used 04:40 – Average customer pay is $400-4K per application 05:28 – PacketZoom has raised capital through an investor round 05:35 – Total raised is around $6M 05:54 – The founder of the company started the company in 2013 06:33 – After Akamai’s acquisition of Cotendo, Shlomi was looking for a cutting-edge technology to bring into Akamai 06:43 – PacketZoom seemed to be the one that fits but doesn’t have enough commercial traction 06:51 – At the time, the investors were looking for a CEO who had a business background and could grow PacketZoom in the market 07:03 – Shlomi met the investors through a headhunter 07:18 – Shlomi fell in love with the product and he decided to leave his comfort zone at Akamai 08:06 – PacketZoom started out selling to enterprise and now they’re focusing on developers 08:26 – The headhunter was tied to the investors 08:54 – MRR was closed to none before Shlomi joined 09:20 – PacketZoom has a difficult product to built 09:34 – PacketZoom currently has 68 customers 09:59 – PacketZoom is tracking a few KPIs and the number of SDK installed 10:30 – The goal is to hit 15-20M active users by the end of the year 10:40 – PacketZoom is on track and halfway to their goal 10:57 – “We’re doubling our activity since I joined” 11:11 – PacketZoom relies heavily on partnerships 11:27 – PacketZoom is partnered with ChinaCache, a large CDN public company selling exclusively in China 11:38 – PacketZoom also has resellers and they already have 3 European resellers 11:50 – PacketZoom is expanding to Asia and Latin America 12:12 – PacketZoom is the perfect partner for their resellers because the resellers are already selling performance 12:30 – The percentage PacketZoom gets depends on the partnership’s commitment 12:45 – The partners take away the cost of operation and sales in their territories 13:00 – PacketZoom aims to work with larger partners who are willing to make greater commitments 13:17 – 2017 revenue goal is millions of dollars; they want to prepare for a series B eventually 13:46 – PacketZoom is close to passing the $88K MRR which can equate to a little over $1M in ARR 14:55 – PacketZoom just opened their office in Asia and are opening one soon in Europe 15:17 – PacketZoom has 3 sales people 15:24 – Company size is 20 15:54 – Paid marketing spend is less than $10K 16:48 – Zero customer churn for PacketZoom 18:29 – PacketZoom is a very unique product 19:21 – Assumed LTV 20:21 – The team is spread out in different states and countries 20:40 – Gross margin 20:58 – PacketZoom relies on other cloud infrastructures 21:19 – Gross margin now is 60-80% but will definitely change soon 23:55 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: You may find the right company at the wrong time, but in order to make it work takes you making a decision. A company can definitely raise money on pre-revenue if the investors see its uniqueness and potential to grow. Start to build as early as possible. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
26:3016/08/2017
NEW: SaaS Database nathanlatka.com/producthunt Today!
02:0715/08/2017
752: They Think Retailers Want Their Own Version of Amazon
Adrien Nussenbaum. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Mirakl which was founded back in 2012. He’s currently based at the company’s Boston office and is responsible for the business’ growth in both the business to consumer and business to business sectors. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Hemingway What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Instacart How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I would have helped my wife use Instacart” Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:50 – Nathan introduces Adrien to the show 01:20 – Mirakl is a technology company that allows retailers, distributors and manufacturers relaunch and operate an online marketplace of third–party vendors 01:45 – Mirakl is similar to Amazon 02:10 – Mirakl is a technology solution and most of their customers are large enterprise companies 02:39 – Mirakl doesn’t compete with Amazon but allows their customers to have their own marketplace 03:05 – Mirakl’s technology would allow Best Buy to have different merchants on their website 03:20 – From the consumer’s perspective, they can purchase different products from different merchants within one website 03:28 – Mirakl currently has 125 customers in 25 countries 03:41 – Mirakl is a SaaS business 03:58 – Mirakl takes a small percentage of their clients’ generated revenue 04:24 – Mirakl provides companies a technology that leverages 12 years of experience in operating 05:13 – Mirakl’s cut depends on the revenue bracket they’ve set 05:49 – Mirakl’s charges vary per industry 06:15 – Mirakl’s customers charge retailers a certain percentage and Mirakl charges depending on those percentages 06:52 – Generally speaking, the charge is more than 5% 07:20 – Mirakl allows companies to operate a new business 08:15 – The additional earnings a company can get will be from the partnerships they have with other retailers using the Mirakl’s platform 09:19 – Mirakl was launched in 2012 09:26 – Mirakl was initially bootstrapped using the money from the previous company acquisition 09:36 – Splitgames was acquired by FNAC in Europe 10:04 – Mirakl raised $2M in the first round and $20M in 2015 10:23 – Both were equity rounds 10:30 – Adrien was the founder of Splitgames and it was initially bootstrapped, but raised later on 11:30 – Adrien is French and he thinks that they are more conservative when it comes to risk than Americans 11:48 – Adrien’s risk level when he started Mirakl was fair 11:56 – Mirakl has 2 founders 12:06 – The split was 50/50 but there’s a bit more for the one who had the idea 13:02 – Adrien’s had a background in banking prior to Splitgames 13:28 – Team size is 160 13:36 – 40% engineering and 25-30% sales 14:05 – Mirakl spends money on programs and lead generation 14:44 – Mirakl makes industry reports with people like Gardner 15:05 – Last month’s total paid ads spend was around $30-40K 15:58 – Mirakl sells something that is strategic for their customers 16:42 – Payback period is less than a year 18:50 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Creating relationships will not only nurture your network, but increase your opportunities for revenue as well. One can be considered radical or conservative when it comes to taking risks; choose to which degree of risk you’re most comfortable taking. In pitching to clients, you have to give them the assurance that your product is valuable to them and that they will NOT be needing any other product. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
20:1315/08/2017
751: IoT Electricity Measuring King Raises $16m w/ $1.2 Million Revenue
Mark Chung. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Verdigris, a Silicon Valley-based internet of things startup focused on smart buildings. Previously, he was a principal engineer for Net Logic, AMD and PA Semi. He graduated with electrical engineering from Stanford University and lives in Sunnyvale, California. When he’s not building, he’s spending time with his family. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – How the Mighty Fall What CEO do you follow? – Mark Zuckerberg Favorite online tool? — Pivotal How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Mark wished that he’d be more growth minded and started earlier Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:07 – Nathan introduces Mark to the show 02:04 – Verdigris is an artificial intelligence company launched in 2012 02:10 – Verdigris focuses on developing technology for commercial buildings that are managing their energy 02:22 – One of Verdigris largest customers is Jabil, a large manufacturing firm 02:28 – Verdigris sensors on Jabil’s electric panels collects data from the whole facility 02:40 – Verdigris synthesizes the data into simpler and more understandable reports that facilities’ managers can review 02:49 – Then they can understand if they’re losing money on electricity or potential equipment fail 03:21 – Verdigris is a combination of software and hardware 04:05 – Verdigris has a hybrid model 04:11 – Verdigris charged on the hardware when it gets installed and a recurring fee for the software 04:21 – The hardware is the bigger revenue stream 04:47 – For a 2-bedroom house, it will cost $1K to install Verdigris 05:23 – Each clamp is $50 a piece 05:54 – Verdigris has raised a total of $16M 06:05 – The first round of funding was in 2012 and Verdigris was launched at the end of 2011 07:11 – Because Verdigris has a hardware component that enables the SaaS, it becomes a sticky product 07:29 – Churn rate is lower than typical SaaS companies and retention rate is higher 07:46 – From a cost standpoint, hardware cost doesn’t take all of equity capital 07:53 – You can also finance the hardware 08:34 – Verdigris measures the total amount of electricity measured 08:54 – Currently, they’ve measured a few megawatts—enough to power a small neighborhood 10:00 – For the SaaS side, monthly subscription fee is $50 or $80 per box depending on the level of service 10:40 – Verdigris gets their sales directly and holds their data infrastructure 10:47 – Verdigris uses Verizon as their back end for all data communication 11:30 – Verdigris is focusing on the commercial space first 12:10 – Customers pay per month is between $50-80 on data plans 12:28 - $1k a month is near average of what customers pay 12:44 – 80% of Verdigris’s customers are paying customers 12:56 – Average MRR is around $260K 13:19 – Gross customer churn is zero 14:40 – Verdigris looks for customers who spend around $10K a month in electricity 14:56 – Team size is 30 15:05 – 90% is engineering 15:15 – There are 3 founders 15:23 – The founders are all engineers, one being more business minded than the other two 16:02 – CAC 16:07 – Verdigris doesn’t do a lot of paid marketing 16:43 – Verdigris has spent around $10K in 3 months for ads 16:49 – Most people learn about Verdigris through Verizon 17:00 – Verizon’s sales people in the field talk to their Fortune 500 customers selling different IT solutions 17:19 – When the customer matches Verdigris’ customer profile, the sales team tell them about Verdigris 17:50 – Verizon found Verdigris 18:26 – 2017 revenue goal is over $5M which is 4x from last year’s 20:50 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: With so many SaaS products available, having a SaaS product that uses proprietary hardware creates a sticky, hard to replace product. Your target market should be curated with your pricing plans. Building a partnership with an already established company is beneficial, especially if you’re a new one. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
23:5714/08/2017
750: How to 3x Customer Revenue, Be More Than Just Document Signing
Mikita Mikado. He’s the CEO of PandaDoc, a company founded to accelerate the way organizations transact. He’s an entrepreneur, engineer, and executive focused on creating self-sustaining companies. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Pitch Anything What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella Favorite online tool? — Google Calendar How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Mikita would tell himself that he doesn’t have to focus on making so much money and just focus on learning as much as he can Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:24 – Nathan introduces Mikita to the show 02:03 – Jared Fuller was in episode 193 of The Top and is still part of PandaDoc 02:25 – PandaDoc helps organizations the way they transact 02:39 – all kinds of transactions 02:52 – PandaDoc focuses on deals that have substantial value and paperwork 03:06 – PandaDoc can build proposals, quotes, contracts and close deals in a digital fashion 03:30 – PandaDoc’s RPU has increased since last year 03:56 – Annual deals 04:10 – Average customer pay 05:10 – PandaDoc gets most of their customers from word of mouth 05:32 – Using SEO to expand operations 06:15 – PandaDoc gives their small customers templates that they can use in their deals 06:58 – The marketing team finds keywords that are most popular and relevant to them 07:20 – They use Moz and other tools to find keyword 07:59 – PandaDoc isn’t built on top of PDF 08:03 – The templates from PandaDoc are in HTML and not PDF 08:41 – QuoteRoller was the first product that was launched in 2011 08:56 – Pivot to PandaDoc at the end of 2015 09:06 – Team size is now 106 09:23 – The last year total raised was $4.5M in cash and $2M in debt 09:41 – Currently, debt has been paid 09:50 – Total amount raised is $19.5M 10:17 – PandaDoc has more than 7K customers 10:30 – 2 different cohorts of customers 10:55 – PandaDoc has a legacy product and a new product 11:22 – Gross churn is satisfactory 11:50 – From last year’s revenue churn, it was 9% 13:21 – Some inbound marketers use PandaDoc to close a deal then will stop using it 13:50 – 5% monthly logo churn is high for Mikita 14:38 – PandaDoc has around 100 team members and 2 are focused on target customers 15:13 – CAC and LTV varies 16:00 – Mikita is trying to get under 12 months of payback period 16:29 – Fully weighted CAC can be $1200 16:48 – How Mikita assumes CAC 18:47 – The industry’s rule of thumb for payback period is 1.13 of ACV or 14 month payback period 19:05 – PandaDoc has channels with a payback period of 6 months and 2 years 19:29 – PandaDoc has an outbound sales team that is their delta force 19:54 – The outbound sales team finds the industries that PandaDoc should target 21:05 – Paid spend total is under quarter of a million 21:19 – PandaDoc is closed to hit a million in MRR 22:08 – “We want to make an impact” 22:22 – This is a horizontal product 23:47 – PandaDoc focuses on workflow and the actual collaboration on the workflow 23:58 – “We want to system of records for deals or transaction” 24:05 – PandaDoc isn’t going to the CRM space 24:18 – Mikita has been in the CRM space before 24:43 – One of the challenges of CRM now is the emergence of AI 27:12 – Mikita’s consideration on price of acquisition 30:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Create a product that can serve a different market and fill the gap that the others haven’t seen. Let your goals guide you, but also keep in mind that having a business means being responsible for your employees. Multiple revenue cohorts will lead you to multiple marketing and sales strategies. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
34:5713/08/2017
749: He's Making $9.6m Off Those Horrible Airport WiFi Connections
Gavin Wheeldon. With over 15 years of experience working in technology led or enabled businesses, Gavin has a deep understanding of the impact of technology on the bottom line of an organization. He sold his last business, Applied Language Solutions, a global language technology and service business, and has used some of the earnings to set up a new company, Purple WiFi. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Who Moved My Cheese What CEO do you follow? – Jack Welch Favorite online tool? — InsightSquared How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I’d rather read more of finance” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:24 – Nathan introduces Gavin to the show 02:29 – Gavin travels a lot and is frequently reliant on public WiFi—that’s where the idea for Purple WiFi came from 03:02 – Gavin sold his last company for over $60M 03:20 – His last company was in the translation and interpretation industry 03:23 – They used machine learning to translate languages with incredible accuracy 03:43 – Theirs is also a human editing in between so the translation is perfect 03:59 – Gavin was 36 when he sold it 04:02 – It was completely bootstrapped 04:44 – There’s no particular single owner of the space 04:54 – Fon does domestic hotspot and other traditional utility wifi 05:38 – Purple Wifi is the next generation of wifi 06:03 - Purple WiFi is SaaS business, charging annually depending on the number of wifi points 06:14 – For a single venue, the price is $13 a month 06:22 – Purple WiFi also caters to stadiums and airports 06:45 – An airport can average a hundred access points 07:10 - Purple WiFi currently has 17K installations 07:15 – It ranges from restaurants up to a whole city 07:53 – They now have around 80K access points 08:03 – Average MRR is close to a million 08:25 – Purple WiFi offers discount for bigger venues 09:00 – Sales cycle varies every hour 09:19 – A physical venue owner is usually clueless about what is happening in the venue 09:50 - Purple WiFi is channel-based and sells through partners 09:55 – Some of the partners are Telstra and Singtel and other national carriers 10:23 – Team size is over 100 10:30 – 45 are focused on sales and partnerships 10:46 – Telcos are usually built with partners 11:09 – They can build their own access points but it takes years and a huge investment 11:40 – Purple WiFi partners with half of the service providers in the USA 12:37 – Purple WiFi partners with Cisco and Ruckus for the access points 13:06 - Purple WiFi does post visit reviews which prompt the user to review the coffee shop or hotel 13:19 – There was around 500 increase in TripAdvisor reviews 13:21 – 600-700% increase in CRM generation 13:28 – The value of Purple Wifi can be seen from day 1 13:43 - Purple WiFi was launched in 2013 13:48 – First year revenue was $200K 13:59 – 2014 revenue was around $600K 14:13 - Purple WiFi consistently grows over 100% year over year 14:34 – 2017 target revenue 14:48 – Gross margin is 80% 14:59 – One of the challenges is the location and the huge number of data 15:35 - Purple WiFi is processing around 500K data from all of their access points in a day 15:50 – Purple WiFi has net negative churn and gross customer churn is 12% yearly 17:00 – LTV is around 10 years 17:10 – Most enterprise customers are signing 3-5 years with an upfront payment 17:33 - Purple WiFi has raised $13M 17:51 – The costs usually go to engineering and sales 18:07 - Purple WiFi spends on event sponsorship too 18:24 – They track the events prior to sponsorship 18:50 – Payback period is around 12 months 19:25 – Average CAC 19:39 - Purple WiFi is headquartered in Manchester, UK and US office is in Austin, Texas 20:26 - Purple WiFi is tremendously valuable for conferences 23:04 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Public wifi solutions are becoming more and more of a necessity especially for establishments and events. Having your own wifi solution allows you to gather data more than you could otherwise. Study your business before starting your business. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
26:2612/08/2017
748: How to Use Open Source Project As Lead Gen from $3m+ ARR Founder
Tomer Levy. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Logz.io. Before co-founding Logz, he co-founded and was the CTO of Intigua, a company that innovated locker-like containers designed for large enterprises. Prior to Intigua, Tomer spent 6 years at Check Point, where he led its intrusion prevention system product from concept to market. He has an MBA for Tel Avi University, a BA in Computer Science, and is an enthusiastic kite surfer. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Grammarly How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Take it easy, you’ll figure it out” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:20 – Nathan introduces Tomer to the show 02:06 – Logz is a logins company 02:12 – Some of their customers are Kantar Media and British Airways 02:30 – Logz solves systematic problems in web servers and databases 02:41 – Logz is a SaaS business 02:52 – Logz caters to IT operations and security team of a company 03:24 – You can subscribe to Logz’ website directly and pay monthly 03:29 – Logz has 2 main cohorts 03:32 – SMBs would pay around $10-15K a year 03:41 – SMEs would usually pay annually that can grow to hundreds of thousands 03:58 – Average pay is $10K-40K in annual contract value 04:10 – Logz was launched in 2014 and the product end of 2015 04:30 – Logz has an inside sales team 04:38 – Logz offers an open source platform like ELK which is around $500K a month 04:58 – Instead of libraries, ELK will be installed in the servers and take all the data 05:12 – ELK visualizes the data and Logz offer ELK with more capabilities 05:27 – Logz is based on the open-source community 05:55 – Logz isn’t the developer of the open source 06:05 – Logz built a solution on top of the open source for log management 06:30 – ELK is like google search for all of your log data 07:02 – There are also other companies who are doing open SaaS 07:10 – Pantheon for WordPress and similar with Cloudera are doing open SaaS too 07:38 – Github just recently offered Git open source as a service 08:03 – Tomer has been writing content even before the launch of the company 08:14 – Logz is number for ELK search and they contribute the most in the open source community 08:43 – Open source has to be good and easy enough to get started so it will have mass distribution 08:51 – But it has to get to a point that it is difficult to scale and make it production grade 09:04 – Logz currently has a thousand companies on board 09:17 – Some are paid customers and some are on free 09:35 – Logz has raised money but they could have built a lifestyle business 09:52 – Logz raised $24M and the last round was $15.6M in October 2016 10:07 – Team size is 70 10:54 – Logz started in October 2014 and ran their first product by February 2015 11:05 – Logz started with 5 non-paying customers after shifting to paid model 11:38 – As your company grow, people will realizes your company’s value and be willing to pay for it 11:49 – Logz has 0 revenue in 2014 and 2015 revenue was around 6 figures 12:44 – Logz has already broken a million dollar runway 13:02 – Logz competes mostly with engineers setting up their own open source 13:10 – The commercial side, Logz competes with AWS or Amazon Web Services 13:45 – Gross margin 14:12 – Logz pays $1-5M to Amazon for hosting 15:20 – Minimum MRR 15:46 – Team is based in Telavi, Israel 15:59 – Logz also has a team in Boston where Tomer currently is 16:11 – Gross monthly customer churn 17:07 – “We’re very much a land and expand business” 17:43 – Marketing team has 8 or 9 people and 7 sales people 18:10 – Fully weighted CAC 18:40 – Payback period 19:22 – Logz also invest in paid marketing with around $5k a month 19:50 – Logz invests massively in events this year 20:23 – Logz spends a few hundreds of dollars in sponsorships 22:17 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: When thinking about a business model, try and create on that is “land and expand”. Starting as a free service is fine, but you need to make sure you’re built to offer your customers more value behind the paywall. Great content coupled with great keywords builds great companies. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
24:2511/08/2017
747: This This Six Figure Poker Player Quit to Launch Agency
Derric Haynie. He’s the CEO of Vulpine Interactive, a social media marketing agency that helps build contagious brand and passionate fans. Nathan met Derris at Los Angeles when they were at Sean Ellis’ Growth Hacking event. Derris has an interesting story that goes from poker to social media to speaking, blogging, growth and digital marketing. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – They Ask You Answer What CEO do you follow? – Neil Patel Favorite online tool? — Queue How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8-9 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished that I have been able to pursue business earlier and give up poker earlier” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:51 – Derric believes that his agency will grow and exist on its own 02:02 – The peak of poker for Derric was in 2009-10 when he was 24 02:21 – Derric was making mid 6 figures and working 3 hours a day doing poker 03:00 – Derric had a lot of great mentors in poker 03:19 – Those that are better than Derric are really geniuses 03:27 – Derris started to feel his personal boundaries 03:57 – Derric knows that he’ll never be the grand master in poker 04:02 – The best player in poker takes all the money 04:55 – Derric didn’t pay himself for the first year and a half of his agency 05:03 – It was in 2014 05:22 – Derric got funding in 2015 of a total of $150k from his poker friends 06:06 – Derric was telling himself that he’s not focused on revenue but on learning and finding the opportunities 06:34 – Derric spent around $25K attending conferences and events 07:19 – Derris’ wife is his co-founder and they started paying themselves just last year 07:28 – They now make $5000 a month 07:51 – Derric and his wife are trying to structure a company for growth and scalability 08:10 – Vulpine now has 2 part-time employees 08:50 – Raising a child cost Derric around $3000 a month 09:06 – Derric had a lavish life that he gave up 09:31 – Derric has sold a lot of things 10:28 – Team size is 4 10:37 – Typical customers for Vulpine are ecommerce and SaaS businesses 10:48 –They also have to be thought leaders with a willingness to create great content 11:00 – Vulpine is good at repurposing great content and content should be originally from the company 11:21 – 2016 revenue is around $70-80K 11:41 – Check agency/transparency to see their financial score sheet 11:57 – Target MRR is $100K by December 2017 12:07 – If they don’t hit $50K MRR by December, they will stop the company 12:32 – Average contract size is $2K a month with 3 months minimum 13:56 – Derric has been advised too that the contract should be at least for a year 14:21 – Derric was thinking of the best value that he can provide for his client when he decided on the 3-month minimum 14:36 – Derric believes that if he can’t consistently deliver month over month, he should be fired 15:12 – Derric currently has 14 customers with some pro bono 17:27 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Poker may bring more money than your business, but sometimes it’s not about money. At a certain point in your life, you have to give up things that you’re used to and learn something new. In business (especially pricing) always have a market study and comparison first, or ask for advice. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
19:5310/08/2017
746: Bill Gates Was Great to Work With, But This Founder Wanted His Own Thing
Hal Howard, 20-year Microsoft veteran who gave up a stable, secure position leading the Dynamics ERP development team to satiate a spark of creativity. Today, he’s the founder of Komiko, a sales intelligence tool that helps their businesses understand what engagement with customers is working. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Execution What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella Favorite online tool? — Vinfolio How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Don’t worry man. Everything’s going to work out just fine” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:45 – Komiko is a sales intelligence tool that helps their businesses understand what engagement with customers is working 02:12 – Komiko is integrated with different sources 02:20 – A cloud-based subscription-based model 02:37 – Hal was at Microsoft for 20 years 02:59 – left Microsoft because he wanted to build something new 03:16 – “There are still unexplored technologies around business applications” 03:54 – Customer pays an average of $30-35 a month per user 04:00 – Team size ranges from 3 to 500 04:11 – There are currently 2000 paying seats across 50 businesses in total 04:33 – Average MRR is $60K 05:19 – Team size is 10 05:37 – 8 are engineers 05:48 – Hal and his co-founder are doing both sales and product engineering 06:00 – Hal is more on the design 06:30 – Komiko is now a complimentary CRM 06:38 – Partnered with Salesforce and most of their customers are using Salesforce 07:19 – CRM is in a different decision set compared to Komiko 07:40 – Komiko works with corporate clients to help them understand what engagement works and what doesn’t 07:59 – “We don’t lose customers” 08:05 – In Komiko’s lifetime, they’ve only lost 4 customers so far, 1 was acquired 08:28 – CAC is mostly inbound and Komiko was listed in AppExchange 08:44 – Hal and his co-founder alone were able to drive a lot of customers, mostly from referrals and the businesses they’ve worked with before 08:51 – Just started an outbound campaign in early 2017 08:59 – Has a partnership with GameSite 09:20 – GameSite’s focus is how customers engage with the product 09:35 – GameSite is building a platform for customer success and Komiko’s metric will help the overall customer solution 09:48 – Komiko raised some capital 10:03 – Total fund raised is around $2M 10:23 – Initial round was convertible note and then the seed round is priced round 10:37 – 2017 revenue target is at least a million dollars 11:04 – 2016 revenue is $15K 11:23 – Gross margin is around 75% 12:09 – Hal won’t easily sell Komiko, but he might consider for at least $25M 14:43 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Nurture the network that you have, it will always help you in some way down the road. You have the option leave your comfort zone, you can explore and create something new. It’s possible to not lose customer IF you consistently help the customers see value in your product. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
17:5609/08/2017
745: At $1.5m Revenue, Is This The New PowerPoint?
Jose Cayasso. He’s a growth hacker, co-founder and CEO of Slidebean, 500 Startups alumni, and a frequent flyer miles hoarder. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup and Traction What CEO do you follow? – Josh Pigford Favorite online tool? — [email protected] How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jose would tell himself that he had to quit his day job and create something for himself earlier Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:38 – Slidebean has an office in New York City and Costa Rica 01:56 – Slidebean is a web-based tool for making presentations 02:00 – Slidebean focuses on making presentation more efficient 02:20 – Slidebean is a subscription service 02:26 – Most of Slidebean’s customers are previous PowerPoint users 02:38 – Team plans start at $49 a month 02:52 – A single presentation service is also available 03:00 – Most of the revenue are from the recurring model 03:14 – Jose started Slidebean in 2014 03:25 – Originally, it was focused on end users 03:40 – Slidebean shifted to businesses that are doing presentations monthly 03:58 – Churn went down from 15% to negative churn in revenue 04:15 – Gross customer churn is currently at 3.5% 04:42 – Jose tried different measures for Slidebean to improve the churn rate 05:09 – They changed the business model while keeping the subscription and premium value 05:28 – Slidebean caters to 2500 paying customers 05:45 – Average MRR is around $120K 06:06 – Jose is originally from Costa Rica and he’s not a fan of outsourcing 06:14 – “I still believe that office collaboration is the best” 06:38 – There’s a lot of talent in Costa Rica 08:07 – Team size is 22 08:17 – Slidebean has raised a small seed round 08:22 – “We’re in the break of profitability” 08:25 – Slidebean is burning around $25K a month 08:43 – Slidebean has raised a total of $850K on a seed round 09:08 – CAC is around $150 09:15 – It’s quite low because Slidebean competes in SEO 09:22 – Prezi is one of Slidebean’s competition 09:35 – Slidebean targets keywords through AdWords 09:56 – LTV is around $1000 or 18 months 10:39 – Total marketing cost is around $25K-35K including head count cost 11:17 – Gross margin is around 75-80% 11:53 – 2017 target revenue is $2M 12:03 – They don’t need to raise more money at the moment 13:00 – 2016 ARR is around $750K 15:25 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: A shift in business model can allow your company to grow while still retaining its value and growth. Find the right keywords for your business and use AdWords to target them, it can help lower your CAC. The earlier you create something for yourself in life, the better. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
17:1608/08/2017
744: Companies Pay Her $10-100k to Text Customers Funny Messages
Jessica Lee. Nathan met Jessica a few months ago and Jessica toured Nathan in 500 Startups’ office in San Francisco. She’s the founder of Bitesize. She helps companies drive revenue with text message conversations. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – #GIRLBOSS What CEO do you follow? – Sophia Amoruso Favorite online tool? — Trello How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Everybody has the same kind of challenges and overcoming them is the REAL WORK Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:37 – HandStack and Bitesize are the same company 01:49 – Bitesize helps brands drive revenue through interactive text messaging 02:00 – A new movie studio has a new movie and wants to reach a million movie goers 02:10 – Bitesize will reach people by text message 02:20 – The messages will be from a movie character and the approach is interactive 02:42 – Bitesize will drive the person to a download link at the end of the conversation 03:01 – Building a list for text is the challenge for Bitesize 03:25 – Bitesize uses manual texting tool 03:40 – There’s a law that’s protecting consumers where you can’t randomly message people with algorithms or without human intervention 03:56 – Bitesize helps client send text with manual human intervention 04:27 – Jessica shares how an actual message happens 04:30 – The company will create a group chat, add people, and click send manually 04:39 – People’s reply will go to your app and you can continue to interact with them 05:08 – The difference with the usual group text and from Bitesize is, you don’t get to see other people’s messages 05:34 – Bitesize charges per text and data 05:42 – Per text charge is .25₵ 06:11 – Most of Bitesize’s costs is from data 06:16 – Twilio is at .02₵ 06:45 – Data charges can go up to .16₵ 06:58 – BiteSize’s clients pay them for their marketing skills too 07:15 – For a thousand new messages, an average of 6% will reply which a lot higher than social media ads 07:45 – A lot of Bitesize’s customers will send millions of texts 08:13 – Revenue is measured by campaigns: 140 for the last 6 months 08:41 – Bitesize has raised $125K from 500 Startups 08:56 – Team size is 6 09:03 – 3 in the bay area and 3 elsewhere 09:26 – Average MRR 09:58 – 50% of the campaigns are paying quarterly and some campaigns are daily 10:20 – Each campaign pays an average of $10K to $100K for the .25₵ per text messages 10:43 – 10% of Bitesize’s customers are from referrals 10:50 – Initially, Bitesize was focused on outbound sales 11:08 – “Because our product was so unique, people like to know what it is” 11:38 – Bitesize originally started with political campaigns 11:49 – Because of Jessica’s background, most campaigns are for the democrats 12:29 – Jessica believes that Bitesize is a tool that is meant to connect people in a more meaningful way than ads 13:05 – 2013 revenue is around $250 13:17 – 2016 revenue is $300K for 6 months 13:30 – They pivoted to a more commercial use case in the final 6 months 13:40 – 2017 target 13:59 – “My hope is to grow organically” 16:05 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Texts can be very spammy but if done right, the return is better than with online ads. Messages should connect people in a more meaningful way. Growing organically is cheaper, and it creates more resonance, but it’s harder to do. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
18:2207/08/2017
743: Will 28yo Privacy.com Founder Replace Credit Cards?
Bo Jiang. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Privacy.com, a new way to transact online without showing your credit card number or pin. He previously worked on mobile products with Hatch Labs, which is the venture studio that incubated Tinder and Pixie TV, which was acquired by Samsung. He holds a BS in Mathematics in MIT. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – High Output Management and Who What CEO do you follow? – Charlie Munger Favorite online tool? — Zoom How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Pay attention and see things through” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:34 – Bo has always been interested with Bitcoin and Krypto frequency where the idea of Privacy came from 01:56 – Privacy was a side project in Bitcoin 02:00 – Bo didn’t pay anything for Privacy 02:10 – Bo retained the domain as an investment for the company 02:51 – Bo shares how he made the deal of using the domain for free 03:10 – Domains are assets but the value won’t grow that much 03:28 – Bo gave the domain owner less than 10% of the company 03;40 – Privacy has a browser extension and mobile app 03:44 – It allows you to create unique card number for every purchase you make online with just one click 04:00 – You can use any name or details and set your own credit limit 04:20 – It’s actually a debit card which can be linked to your checking account 04:30 – Currently, there’s nothing that is completely unhackable 04:42 – Privacy takes the best practices and security measures to ensure the client’s security 05:25 – The cards from Privacy can’t be use anywhere else 05:38 – Privacy makes money from interchange 05:43 – Every time that there’s a transaction using a card, the merchant pays Visa, Visa shares the fee with the bank, and the bank shares the fee with Privacy 05:56 – If Nathan uses $100 on an Amazon checkout, Privacy will get around 1% 06:51 – Privacy has raised $3.5M 06:59 – Transaction volume is how Privacy’s revenue grow 07:10 – Privacy is more focused on how much people have saved from using them 08:06 – Privacy was founded in 2014 and was launched as a beta first, a year ago 08:30 – Privacy currently has 150K users 09:15 – Privacy is growing in double digits, month over month in transaction volume 09:23 – Privacy has already broken a million transactions in just a month 09:50 – Team size is 10 based in New York City with some in Florida and Oregon 10:16 – Bo is still thinking of Privacy having a premium feature 10:31 – Average MRR is around $10K 10:57 – Bo was inside of Hatch Labs 11:20 – Bo thinks that Tinder work because it was the right product at the right time 11:55 – Hatch Labs was a venture studio and had 10-20 projects at a time 12:41 – What IC puts in every project in Hatch Labs depends on the project 13:06 – Bo left Hatch Labs a year and a half ago 15:14 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: While online shopping is becoming more of a necessity, online security can still be questionable so having an alternative to paying with a credit card is something people are looking for. Focus on your company’s mission and the rest will follow. Don’t overestimate or underestimate things – see through them. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
19:3206/08/2017
742: This Founder Crowns Real Estate Agents "Mayors", Grows From $700k to $6.4M in Under 12 Months
Amanda Newman. When she was 26 and working as a relator in Liberty, Toronto, she created a website for local deals, events, and news. Soon, other realtors were approaching her about the website, and she realized it had the potential spread all across North America. Today, Park Bench, her company, has grown from a fun little marketing idea to help a struggling realtor, into a multi-million-dollar company with 27 employees and a rapid growth rate. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – DotCom Secrets What CEO do you follow? – Gary Vaynerchuk Favorite online tool? — DocuSign How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-9 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “To start writing down my goals” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:54 – Amanda was in episode 353 of The Top 02:11 – In 2016, Amanda was doing $80K in MRR 02:16 - $4500 from upfront payment 02:25 – They build neighborhood focused website for real estate agents 03:07 – Amanda had 215 customers in 2016 with $880K revenue in 2015 03:15 – Each customer is paying $350 a month with a total of $70K MRR 03:20 – 5% churn, CAC of $400 and LTV of 20 months 03:26 - $7000 LTV with 8 people in the team 03:31- Founded in 2014 03:38 - Park Bench builds neighborhood websites 03:40 – They have the technology that aggregates local content 03:46 – They sell the exclusive rights to the neighborhood sites which are run by 1 real estate agent per neighborhood 03:53 - Park Bench provides training and guidance on how to use the website and leverage it 04:05 – “They become a conductor of their community” 04:18 - Park Bench currently over 1000 customers 04:46 – They invested a lot on Facebook advertising 05:00 - Park Bench gets 60-100 realtor inquiries who want to be the digital mayor of their neighborhood 05:10 - Park Bench has 3000 sq. ft. office with 30 employees 05:16 – In May, Park Bench hit $628K in revenue which is their biggest month by far 05:38 – It’s the total revenue 05:38 – Last month, Park Bench sold to 150 realtors who have paid upfront of $4500-5000 05:57 – Churn is now 2.75% with 65-70% renewal rate 07:18 - $628K May revenue divided by $5000 to get 126 customers 07:38 – 75 existing customers and 50 new customers 09:00 – CAC is $676 and LTV is around $13K or 3 years 09:51 – Currently, Amanda isn’t sure where to spend their money so they’re investing more on Facebook ads 09:58 – They track the leads they get daily 10:16 – The Facebook algorithm is making it more expensive now to get new customers 10:25 – They invest more on content and wanted to drive more organic traffic 10:40 – They spend $6500 on ads monthly 11:02 – “We’re just growing our business” 11:23 – On personal wealth creation, Amanda only thinks of being happy 11:37 – “I don’t have to raise money, I don’t have to sell the company” 11:40 – Amanda loves her team and enjoys being a part of it 12:15 – Gross margin is over 90% 12:45 – The investment deal should be strategic and can be from, like Keller Williams, for Amanda to accept it 13:00 – Amanda wants to access to more real estate agents 13:41 - Park Bench has country managers who work with clients whenever they need to 13:54 - Park Bench is starting to offer realtors other things they need like in marketing 14:02 - Park Bench knows lead generation too 14:30 – Amanda’s parents sold their company to invest in real estate 14:50 – Amanda is still thinking if she will invest in real estate too 15:04 – “At this point, our best return is to invest in ourselves” 15:27 – Amanda’s dad has a foundation and is currently in Kenya 18:02 – The Famous Five 20:46 – $1.9M 2016 revenue 20:53 – 2017 target revenue is $6.3M and currently on track 3 Key Points: Have a reliable support system that will make your customers be stickier. With Facebook’s ever changing algorithms, it’s better to invest more on creating great content to drive more organic traffic and leads. Write down your goals so you can keep track of them. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
21:5605/08/2017
741: Exited for $15m, Now Tackling Healthcare Patient Doctor Relationships
Todd Johnson, a serial healthcare information technology entrepreneur committed to building great products, teams and companies. Todd has a track record of cultivating great ideas and great business that offer incredible company cultures and attention-grabbing brands. Before his current company, HealthLoop, Todd was the founder and CEO of Salar, a Baltimore, MD-based provider of acute care physician charge capture and documentation solutions. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The E-Myth Revisited What CEO do you follow? – Donald Trump and Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Gmail, Boomerang and Inbox How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Todd wished he could have took things less seriously Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:59 – Everyone needs healthcare at some point in their life 02:30 – Salar was able to replace paper processes at hospitals 03:08 – Salar was sold to the country’s second largest medical transcription company 03:16 – It was a $15M exit 03:40 – Todd lives in Silicon Valley 03:57 – Todd has a couple of reasons why he chose to rent rather than to buy a property 04:37 – HealthLoop was initiated in 2009 and was an idea for over a year 04:51 – Todd joined HealthLoop in 2013 04:49 – The founder is a doctor from San Francisco 05:50 – He’s still part of the board 06:28 – HealthLoop is a platform that automatically pushes notifications before and after a diagnosis or surgery 06:40 – It connects patients and doctors 07:00 – 5 years ago, there’s no model around improving the quality of care 07:38 – Multiple parties benefit from an improvement in health care 08:28 – In order to retain the trust of the patients, you have to gain the doctor’s trust as well 08:46 – HealthLoop has an enterprise subscription model 09:03 – Average contract is $120K to $150K that can escalate year over year 09:21 – They pre-pay the cases that they might have in a year 10:28 – HealthLoop’s customers are very targeted 10:35 – The expansion per area depends on how the incentive shakes out 10:50 – HealthLoop is currently working with 70 groups and 20 hospitals 11:13 – HealthLoop has an older subscription model which some of their existing clients have 11:30 – HealthLoop has raised $21M 11:44 – HealthLoop is in an attractive space for competition 12:20 – They have 90% annual retention 12:43 – The institutional mindset 13:08 – Team size is 40 13:18 – 8 are in the sales team 13:53 – HealthLoop’s current enterprise sales cycle is around 6-7 months on a 120 ACV 14:16 – CAC is quite high 14:55 – There are many competing organizations in the market 15:34 – LTV will depend per organization 16:07 – Todd is seeing a 150% growth from last year in terms of ARR 16:38 – There’s so much unpredictability in the space which can be a bad thing 17:31 – Hospitals need to be thoughtful about spending cash 17:49 – HealthLoop will spend more on adapting to a new management 18:17 – HealthLoop’s gross margin is around 70% 20:33 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: There’s not enough consumer tech that is solely dedicated to healthcare. At least once in our lifetime, we will need healthcare, and the ability to have a quick, back-and-forth communication with your health provider is powerful. Because of the aging baby boomer population, healthcare is an incredibly attractive space for investors right now. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
24:0504/08/2017
740: He's Helped 20,000 Land a Job, $4m Raised, $200k MRR
Chau Nguyen. He’s the founder and CEO of Hirewire, an on-demand hiring app for hourly workers. In his previous venture, Chau hired over 20K people only to realize his hiring process was broken—and that’s when he got the idea for Hirewire. To date, Chau has raised $4.1M in funding. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “There is no replacement for hard work” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:14 – Nathan introduces Chau to the show 01:47 – Chau’s previous venture was Campus Special 01:50 – It’s an online platform for college students 02:00 – They had 4K sales representatives meeting merchants 02:11 – Chau had Campus Special for 8.5 years before selling to a public company a few years back 02:28 – Chau was 25 when he launched Campus Special and he’s 36 now 02:47 – Campus Special was doing $15M in revenue when he sold it for $25M 03:45 – The negotiation was just about what the buyers would pay for it 03:55 – It was bittersweet for Chau to sell Campus Special but still proud of it 04:27 – Chau owned 100% of Campus Special 05:00 – Chau stayed on board with the acquirer for a year 05:30 – Chau thought that he can use his past experience in hiring 06:15 – With Hirewire, Chau saw the need to invest heavily on the product and technology, hence the fund raise 06:29 – Initial raised was $2M and the next round was $2M as well 06:36 – Both rounds are convertible note 06:47 – Hirewire is a marketplace where employers and job seekers can connect 06:52 – It is a mobile app to speed up the process 07:00 – There’s chatting with images and videos 07:06 – Next release will be focused on on-demand hiring 07:25 – Hirewire has a monthly subscription for employers and free for applicants 08:10 – Hirewire has a pay as you go model for small businesses 08:20 – The monthly subscription is usually for big companies like McDonalds 08:40 – Hirewire’s core customer based are the recurring customers 08:48 – Hirewire focuses on the restaurant industry which has the highest turnover 09:08 – Hirewire charges per location per month, starting at $50 to $100 depending on usage 09:53 – Hirewire was first launched in Atlanta and was on beta for year 10:00 – They launched with nothing 10:24 – In one year, Hirewire got 4K employers to sign up, over 100K job seekers with around 1K people hired 10:56 – Hirewire has 2 drivers that allowed them to grow quickly 11:00 – First is hitting a pain point 11:44 – Second is doing the application online 12:14 – Hirewire is in 4K locations with 5K hiring managers 12:30 – Some locations can have at least 2 hiring managers 12:40 – Average MRR is a little over 200K 13:06 – Hirewire has been and is still testing pricing 13:31 – Gross customer churn 13:40 – A restaurant’s churn could be 100-200% like losing an entire team 13:56 – Prior to launch, Chau was really afraid of what will happen but still think that they make the hiring process easier and faster 14:19 – Ultimately, people will stay where they’re happy and making money 14:31 – Hirewire is retaining 95% of the employees which makes the churn 5% 14:50 – Team size is around 15 based in Atlanta 15:07 – Hirewire does paid acquisition 15:17 – 50% of the job seekers are from organic traffic 15:23 – Hirewire also uses social media channels to drive users and has spends $10-25K monthly 15:54 – Freightos has a marketplace model plus SaaS 16:38 – Chau’s goal for Hirewire is to be very sticky with high retention on the employer side 17:19 – Hirewire is not making money on the marketplace aspect and just on the SaaS aspect 19:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: You can’t stay at where you are forever, change is constant so move on and start anew. Leverage what you’ve learned in the past to create something that can refine the system. Always test your product first. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
22:2803/08/2017
739: How Has She Has 3x'd Revenue to $700k MRR in Just 11 Months?
Mathilde Collin. She’s the CEO of Front, a SaaS company working on redesigning email for teams. She started with Y Combinator in the summer of 2014, and today has 20 employees and 1700 customers. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Zero to One What CEO do you follow? – Patrick Collison Favorite online tool? — Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 and a half If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “People that are struggling should be super motivated because that’s what everyone go through” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:04 – Nathan introduces Mathilde to the show 01:33 – Mathilde was in Episode 413 of The Top 01:43 – Back then, they had 1200 customers, $13M raised, around a million in revenue in 2015 01:53 – An average customer pays 200 a month leading to an MRR of $240K 01:58 – Gross churn was 3% 02:10 – Front now has 40 team members 02:13 – “We tripled our revenue” 02:15 – The number of customers didn’t triple because they had bigger companies using Front 02:43 – Current MRR is around $750K 03:02 – Front still has 80% of what they’ve raised last year 03:13 – Total capital raised was $14M 03:45 – Front is burning $250K a month 03:50 – Mostly from head count 04:29 – Churn has always been low 04:35 – Net churn has always been negative which -10% monthly 04:50 – User churn is around 3.5 - 4% 05:04 – MRR churn is low 05:30 – The teams that are paying Front more per month tend to be very sticky 06:10 – Gross margin is 88% 06:22 – Front APP is the easiest way to manage a shared inbox as a team 06:29 – A sample of shared inbox is support@contact or a social media account 06:37 – Front simplifies everything in one place 06:54 – For Front’s growth, they lend it and extend it 07:00 – Net negative churn is coming from existing customers 07:04 – Existing customers have been upgraded to new plans or added teams 07:10 – HubSpot started with 1 team and now they have 13 teams with Front 07:26 – Front now has a marketing team with 3 people 07:35 – Front has now done more advertising and content 07:41 – The most effective for Front is AdWords 07:52 – Monthly CAC is around $15K 08:03 – Front tracks sales qualified leads 08:26 – It takes 7 trials to get 1 new paying customer 08:38 – After the trial, the customer will be categorized as an enterprise or SMB and mid-market companies 08:50 – The goal is for the sales people to get the trial set up 09:02 – The sales cycle is 3 weeks 09:20 – 95% of the customer is going through 3 weeks than the offered 2 weeks 09:26 – People are using Front than Slack because Slack is usually for before synchronous communication 09:34 – Front is for a synchronous communication 09:40 – A synchronous is every communication that is done externally should have an upfront 09:49 – Slack messages can also be distracting with the team 10:13 – Front competes more with Intercom than with Slack 10:25 – Intercom is usually better for customer communication while Front is for general communication 10:43 – Front is an email client 11:40 – Customers are buying Front to replace email 11:46 – In other cases, Front replaces helpdesk solutions like Desk, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout, etc 12:12 – Mathilde won’t sell Front now even for $95M 12:25 – “I think I will sell when I’m not as confident as today” 12:37 – Front makes Mathilde happy 13:04 – Mathilde is now 28 13:15 – Front was launched in early 2015 13:29 – Mathilde wanted people to be happy at work so she made Front 15:07 – Mathilde has always been happy and confident that they can do a series B 15:56 - “I do have some inbound” 16:30 – Mathilde was part of an article in Entrepreneur.com 19:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Growth can be measured by several different metrics—the important thing isn’t the metric, it’s the important thing is consistency. Stay with what makes you and other people happy. People love reliability—if you can deliver that in a product or service you’re on to something. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
21:2302/08/2017
738: Is He The Future of Design Collaboartion? 1200 Customers and $3m in Revenues Say Yes!
Mariano Suarez-Battan. He’s the founder and CEO of MURAL, a digital whiteboard for exploring complex challenges visually. Global 2000 companies like IBM, Intuit, Steelcase, and Autodesk have deployed MURAL at scale to enhance collaboration in their digital workplace. A former startup in residence at IDEO, Mariano also founded Three Melons, a game studio that designed and published online games like Bola, which was acquired by Playdom and Disney in 2010. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Purple Cow What CEO do you follow? – Aaron Lewis Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – To trust in your gut always Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:12 – Bola has created games for large brands like Lego 02:23 – Back then, the social games industry was moving fast with Zynga, Playfirst and Playdom 02:31 – Mariano thought that, strategically, it made sense to grow bigger with those companies 02:45 – It was also a great decision, financially and professionally 03:00 – Mariano started Bola in Argentina 03:24 – Acquisition price was with stock and equity 04:12 – The cash was $4-5M 04:26 – $600K was the payback for the investors 04:44 – MURAL was a startup in residence in IDEO 05:03 – IDEO brought in Collaborative Fund as a funder for MURAL 05:10 – MURAL’s vision is to make every designer share their design thinking globally 05:36 – IDEO was like an incubator 05:49 – Prior to IDEO, MURAL has raised closed to $1M 05:59 – Collaborative Fund invested money on MURAL while IDEO made MURAL known to big companies like IBM 06:33 – Some of IDEO’s DNA are in MURAL 07:00 – MURAL’s pricing 07:02 – $12 per member per month and billed annually, $16 billed monthly 07:10 – The pricing on the website is for online customers 07:23 – A quarter of their customers are online and the rest are enterprise costumers 07:46 – MURAL is a SaaS business 08:22 – MURAL has over 40K active users monthly 08:58 – MURAL has no free plan but has introduced a free education plan to help kids 11:00 – MRR is around $280K 11:11 – Average ARR 12:06 – Currently, MURAL has raised a total of $2.4M 12:16 – Team size is 35 12:45 – Most are in product development and engineering 12:55 – Office is located in San Francisco 13:30 – Gross monthly churn 14:17 – Some of the customers are entrepreneurs selling to multiple departments 15:23 – MURAL churn on online customers is quite high 15:38 – Average cost per new customer 15:55 – One of MURAL’s new customer is from an event they’ve sponsored 16:04 – The cost of the sponsorship with other expenses was $3K 16:29 – What Mariano does is split up general cost with the number of new customers 16:50 – Gross margin is around 85% 18:45 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The investment in your company doesn’t always need to be cash. Before going into an acquisition or partnership, go on a vacation and think about it with a clear head. Having different revenue sources leads to different churn sources—focus on where churn is the least. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
21:4701/08/2017
737: 3000 Hotels Are Paying Them to Optimize Pricing, Investors Put in $50m
Patrick Bosworth. They launched in 2012 with 3 co-founders and are now at 105 people. They help hotels—specifically, they help hotel locations better optimize their pricing. They raised $51 million serving over 3000 individual hotel locations paying on average 17 grand per year. They will very soon be doing about a $50 million run rate, 75% gross margin which they tripled over the recent future. This is incredible how they worked that fixed cause structure to drive more growth and bring the margin up over time. They spend about $20,000 on CAC; so there is a super healthy payback period at about 14 months. They are based in San Francisco and Las Vegas. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – Matthew Prince Favorite online tool? — Gnome How many hours of sleep do you get?— trying to get 8, but is getting 7 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – I wish that I had believed that it was okay for me to be happy back then Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Patrick Bosworth to the show 01:23 – Patrick is the co-founder and CEO of Duetto Research, his focus is driving vision and growth at a company 01:50 – Patrick thinks his MBA from Harvard is crucial in the building of the company; a friend of Patrick’s convinced him of the opportunity to build a tech business and introduced him to co-founder Craig Weissman, who was at Sales Force at the time 02:15 – In the fundraising process, his MBA created credibility as well as his co-founder’s MBA from Cornell. Another co-founder also went to Harvard and they were all able to maximize their networks 03:01 – Patrick did the two-year program and it helped him get a grounding in business terminology considering his background was in the arts and in politics 03:37 – If the network is the main concern, there are short term programs, but they are expensive 04:02 – Nathan says he is willing to spend money for people who enter the program to get access to the network 04:23 – Duetto is a hotel software company leveraging on medium data to help hotel managers make smarter decisions on pricing optimization 04:47 – Duetto gets the demand from a particular hotel and picks the price for each customer segment, channel and room type for the next 13 months 04:57 – This has increased the revenue of the hotels from 6.5 to 8.5% which increases their profit from 75 to 100% 05:15 – Duetto gets revenue from the subscription payment that is paid annually based on the product they are buying and number of rooms in the hotel 05:42 – Patrick is surprised that companies are not taking advantage of the performance kicker 06:41 – Last month, 5% of the revenue came from the flat SaaS model 07:10 – The target customer varies – if it is a strong brand like the Marriott, they need to go directly to them rather than the real estate owner; in smaller brands including independent hotels, they need to go to the management company 08:32 – On a per property basis, they are getting $17,000 to $18,000 per hotel per year and it varies according to the number of rooms and products they are buying 08:50 – The company was founded in 2012 09:17 – Patrick and Marco worked on the business idea for about a year and met with Craig in September 2011; it took them 5 months to court him 09:52 – While Patrick and Marco were fundraising, they were only getting $1 - $2 million valuations but when Craig joined, it jumped up to $10 million 10:49 – Craig has more equity than Patrick 10:58 – They have raised four rounds of capital amounting to $58.3 million 11:33 – The payback period is 14 months and they are spending around $20,000 to acquire new customers 11:51 – They have literally not lost a customer in 5 years 12:55 – Selling to the lodging market is difficult because it is an old school industry that does not embrace technology quickly 13:17 – The company tried to spend more on additional sales reps or demand gen but the cash got spent inefficiently 14:12 – Duetto can grow by expanding their reach geographically 14:31 – By the end of the quarter, they are close to 3000 hotels in 98 countries 15:04 – There is a lag in gross and deferred bookings, but the current run rate is a fraction of Nathan’s calculation of $50 million 16:10 – The company has a larger services organization than most and they grew from 30% to 70% gross margin in the past year 17:06 – They staffed up sales globally and the services organization with the platform growth margin north of 95%, but the blended gross margin including the onboarding services dips down in the 70s 18:26 – They had a fixed cost structure 18:41 – Patrick says they did spend a million bucks a month during the early years and it was partly due to naiveté 19:56 – The investors have big expectations and they were the ones that reassured Patrick of the capital and growth 20:34 – In the last round in 2015, they were able to raise $30 million 21:55 – The investors changed their mindset in 2015 and in 2017 22:06 – They currently have 105 people based in San Francisco and Las Vegas 23:14 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: An MBA degree can give you a leg up in terms of the network it provides you. Know your market well, including all its idiosyncrasies. Study the changes in your investors’ expectations and work with them. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
25:4731/07/2017
736: How Mobile Analytics Company Went $0 to $4 Million in 12 Months
Sunil Thomas. He’s had a ton of experience working in tech companies and decided in 2013 to take the plunge himself and go all in with his 2 co-founders. They’ve since raised a total of $9.6 million – $1.6 million seed and $8 million in series A. They launched revenue in 2016, broke $1.5 million in total sales and this May 2017, broke $400,000 in MRR out of about $5 million ARR. He wants to double that by the end of the year, amounting to $800,000. They have a team of 45 based between California, New York and India—again, making it easier for mobile applications to understand what the heck users are doing in their apps. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Play Bigger What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella of Microsoft Favorite online tool? — Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-8 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – I wish I knew as much as my kids knew at 13, I had no clue what I was doing at 20 Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Sunil Thomas to the show 01:32 – Sunil Thomas is the co-founder and CEO of CleverTap 01:46 – CleverTap combines people-based analytics with user engagement, it can be used in your mobile app and website and you get to understand what they are doing 02:23 – It is like a combination of Mix Panel plus App Boy for mobile apps and websites 03:17 – The average customer pays them $2500 – $3000 a month based on event data 03:37 – The top cohorts pay $10,000 to $20,000 a month 04:21 – CleverTap is one of the few companies that has both Accel and Sequoia as their funders and they have raised a total of $9.6 million dollars with a seed of $1.6 million and $8 million in series A 05:18 – CleverTap started in 2013 and has 3 co-founders—Suyin has had various work experiences in the tech industry 05:56 – CleverTap came about because of the need to engage users 06:47 – Nathan says there are only a limited number of apps a person engages with on a daily basis 07:02 – Sunil says their business is targeted on the companies and not the consumers 07:28 – There are more than 10,000 apps that go into the app stores every day 07:53 – The pricing starts at $1000 a month 08:23 – An average monthly active user does 15 to 20 events in your app 08:54 – They currently have 200 paying customers and 2000 apps that are sending them live data 09:13 – A plan of the company is to cover 10 million events a month for their free plan in 3 years 09:31 – The conversion rate is 30% for those who are using the free plan to a paid plan 09:44 – Nathan computes the revenue is at least $400,000 a month 10:05 – In terms of competition, there are three sets of apps: apps that get app data for sales, attribution provider apps and the one about user engagement and app analytics where CleverTap is 11:19 – Their growth churn is very low with everyone on the less than 1,000 plan who are still sticking around 11:51 – The company started to monetize just a year ago and has a 400,000 growth rate 12:15 – They have 45 people globally – 11 are in the US and 32 are in India with the core engineering team in India 13:10 – To acquire new customers, they have marketing qualified leads from websites and they hit bigger accounts on the outbound, focusing on direct sales rather than marketing and advertising 14:41 – The biggest expense is in the hosting 15:18 – It was hard during the early days, but it has now come to a point where they are benefitting 15:55 – In 2016, they broke $1.5 million in revenue and are targeting to get to $10 million by the end of the year 17:04 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Look for a need and fill the gap in today’s current technology. Know your target market well! You may start slowly at first, but it will pay off in the end. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
19:4430/07/2017
735: Sell Cannabis? He's Raised $3m To Be Your Payroll Management System
Keegan Peterson. Keegan is a technology entrepreneur blazing a trail in the legal cannabis industry. He has worked for many software and services companies. He founded Wurk which helps cannabis businesses pay their employees while adhering to the Federal and State Regulations. Keegan is also a former division one athlete from Florida Atlantic University. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Stealing Fire What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Asana How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 to 6 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wish I would have started something earlier in my lifetime” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:19 – Nathan introduces Keegan to the show 01:53 – Cannabis is a fascinating industry that is a great place for technology to play a big part in it 02:31 – For a year, Keegan financed Wurk but they’ve now raised $3M from venture capital (VC) 03:09 – Cannabis businesses include growing, selling, and extracting the plant 03:29 – “Marijuana” and “Weed” have a negative stigma, unlike “Cannabis” 03:46 – Wurk makes profit by selling a service to their clients 03:56 – Wurk ensures cannabis businesses’ taxes are paid correctly and calculated correctly 04:33 – Payroll companies being backed by national banks cannot touch cash made from cannabis 04:54 – Wurk is a SaaS company and is in 17 legal cannabis states 05:17 – They sell their services directly to business owners 05:30 – They have hundreds of users on their platform 05:39 – Keegan launched Wurk 2 years ago, in August 2015 06:10 – They currently have 18 employees in 3 offices 06:28 – It’s NOT a requirement to smoke cannabis to work for Wurk 06:40 – They do look for people who believe in cannabis as a progressing industry 07:13 – Wurk provides a whole difference face to the industry 07:30 – “We are not the traditional cannabis business” 07:45 – A large portion of Wurk’s clients are in cannabis, but there are some clients that are not 08:12 – Most business owners in the business pay their employees in cash 08:27 – “We’re trying to help solve that issue” 08:42 – The average client payment per month ranges from $10 to $30 09:03 – Number of employees and number of states the business is in are factors in a client’s metrics that determine how much they pay to Wurk 09:55 – Wurk doesn’t charge per customer; they charge per employee 11:00 – They don’t have a lot of competition 11:16 – They have a low churn of 2 customers in 2 years 11:41 – Currently, they don’t have an average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) because they mostly get referrals 12:01 – They have 5 full-time sales reps with 1 chief revenue officer and other employees are on implementation 12:18 – Their sales reps earn through salaries and incentives 13:40 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: There are still industries that are not saturated. If there’s hole in an industry, there’s a market for a business that can fill that hole. Referrals or word of mouth is still one of the best ways to get a customer. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
15:4429/07/2017
734: Ex Finance Dad of 3 Wants to Own Your Home
Tye Schlegelmilch to the show. Tye is the founder of Hinged following a 16-year career in finance, and most recently as co-CIO for Fortress Investment Group which has about 70B assets in their management. Prior to that, Tye was with a variety of different finance firms including Goldman Sachs. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Snowball What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Skype and GoToMeeting How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 to 6 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wish I’ve been more measured with certain things in my life” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:08 – Nathan introduces Tye to the show 01:48 – Tye has a lot of friends who entered the entrepreneurial space 01:58 – As an engineer, he’s always been curious about how he can make things work better 02:13 – He moved out to Connecticut and bought a house 02:17 – Tye saw an opportunity in being able to get things done, understanding what needed to be done, and when it needed to be done in a home 02:37 – Diving into entrepreneurship was just a result of his curiosity 02:55 – Hinged is a holistic online platform for homeowners to better understand, manage, and control all aspects of home ownership 03:43 – Hinged’s business model is providing a full software solution for the service providers 04:05 – Hinged is highly selective with who they want (service providers) on their platform 04:20 – They take 5% of the revenue that goes through the platform to the provider that’s providing the maintenance or repair 04:39 – Hinged is a marketplace 05:23 – They have several hundred homeowners on the platform 05:43 – Across Fairfield and Westchester Country, they have a few hundred service providers in 50 different categories 06:57 – On an average user basis, there are 20%-40% who have spent money on the platform 07:31 – Hinged launched in Feb 2017 08:32 – Appliance repairs are the hottest category on their platform 09:40 – The average price of services done on Hinged is about $1500 10:19 – Tye funded everything on Hinged 10:54 – Internally, they just discussed capital-raising 11:13 – The industry Hinged is in is a “land-grab” so they’re looking into raising capital to expand 11:47 – Today there are 5 full-time employees and a development team from Cogniance 12:48 – They started with a sales team for service providers 13:02 – Teams are continuing to ramp on Hinged 13:35 – Hinged was very well thought out before Tye put money into it 14:05 – Tye’s salary in finance ranged from back office administration to major league baseball players 16:06 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: There will always be better ways to do things—keep on brainstorming. Don’t hold yourself back from your own curiosity. Be selective with who you work with; this will affect the quality of your product. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
19:2328/07/2017
733: With $50M Raised, He's Leading Cargo Container Software Space
Zvi Schreiber, founder and CEO of Freightos – the internet marketplace for the trillion-dollar international freight industry. Zvi was previously the CEO for Lightech which was acquired by G.E., and was also the founder and CEO of Unicorn Solutions which was acquired by IBM. Additionally, Zvi was the founder of G.ho.st, a predecessor of DropBox, which ended in a fire sale. He’s spoken widely and was in many articles and patents. He has a PhD in Computer Science and he’s the author of Fizz: Nothing Is as It Seems, which tells the history of physics as a novel. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Mixmax How many hours of sleep do you get? — 7 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “It’s okay for startups to take on a big conservative industry” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:08 – Nathan introduces Zvi to the show 02:23 – Freightos is targeting the world of international freight 02:45 – 90% of the products sold in the West are imported – the entire lifestyle is dependent on international freight 03:18 – The biggest cost components in the freight industry is the trucking, ocean liners, port handling, and airlines 04:38 – “This big industry is very inefficient” 04:52 – Asking for a quote from a big freight forwarding company can take about 3 days 05:45 – Freightos is the “Expedia” for freight 06:09 – Freightos makes money by taking a cut of the transaction 06:24 – They basically do the marketing for the seller 06:40 – Freight forwarders are companies that arrange freight like Expeditors and H. Robinson 06:59 – Some more known forwarders are UPS and FedEx 07:24 – The buyers in this marketplace are the import/export companies 08:46 – Freightos helps with importing/exporting and not door-to-door deliveries 09:15 – Freightos only takes 2% from the freight forwarders’ transactions 09:35 – They don’t take any percentage from the buyer’s end 10:02 – Many freight forwarders are using Freightos’ software to automate their own pricing 10:23 – Freightos is a SaaS business 10:33 – They’ve recently raised $25M from an investment round led by G.E. 11:21 – In 2016, 90% of their revenue came from SaaS because they’ve just launched the marketplace that year 11:35 – Without the SaaS, freight forwarders are not able to do instant pricing 11:54 – The SaaS platform is serving about 1,000 freight forwarders all around the world 12:04 – Freightos is the market leader for the SaaS 12:22 – There are only a few thousand freight forwarders that matter and Freightos has 1,000 of them as customers 12:35 – January 2012 was the launch date of Freightos 12:43 – Freightos’ team size is about 150 people across the world 13:17 – Every shipment involves 2 countries 13:26 – Their biggest office is in Jerusalem and Barcelona 14:07 – Their customers pay less than $1K/month to tens of thousands per month for the subscription 14:43 – The reason why most marketplace startups fail is because of the chicken-and-egg problem 15:06 – Freightos spent 4 years selling SaaS to companies 15:40 – Freightos’ first year revenue was 0 15:45 – Their first revenue came in 2013 16:25 – It was in 2015 when Freightos earned their first million 16:56 – Each month, there are about several hundreds to a thousand transactions in their marketplace 17:33 – Freightos is starting to educate freight forwarders and importers/exporters that they don’t need to wait anymore for pricing 18:16 – There are thousands of buyers already using their software 20:03 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Our lifestyle is heavily dependent on imported goods. Find an industry’s pain point and start from there. Don’t be afraid to create a startup in a big and conservative industry. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
23:2527/07/2017
732: Why AirBnB Is Using Jumio Along With Many Other Unicorns
Stephen Stuut. He’s the CEO of Jumio.com. He brings more than 25 years of experience fueling corporate growth and leading technology businesses. Before Jumio, he served as a CEO of TruePosition, a leader in location-based service technology. Prior to that, he was a president and CEO of Broadband Innovations delivering digital interactivity services to cable TV providers. During his 10 years, he has raised over $30M in equity from venture capital firms and strategic investors and ultimately sold the company to Motorola in December of 2005. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – A Book from McKinsey What CEO do you follow? – John Mallone and Greg Maffei Favorite online tool? — Outlook How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Travel just a little bit less when your kids are young” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:28 – Nathan introduces Stephen to the show 02:10 – Jumio is a SaaS business, particularly, trusted identity as a service 02:18 – Jumio does identity verification and document verification 02:35 – Jumio will validate the ID, making sure it isn’t fraudulent 02:40 – Jumio does biometric facial comparisons from the selfie picture and ID picture for identity verification 03:11 – Jumio’s customers are merchants who need to know the identity of a person 03:19 – Airbnb is one of Jumio’s customers 03:29 – Jumio caters to airlines, bitcoin companies and banks that have money-laundering requirements 04:13 – “The world is moving to the internet online clamors” 04:17 – Walking into a building and flashing your ID is quite inconvenient 04:58 – Some, like Nathan, don’t bother to change their license ID even if it’s unrecognizable 05:35 – Customers typically pay 1 year worth of transactions in advance 05:49 – Average contract price 07:17 – Stephen isn’t the founder but is a CEO who came in later 07:23 – The founder started Jumio after he argued with a credit card about his identification 08:15 – Jumio was founded in 2014 and Stephen came in 2 years after they launched 08:32 – Stephen was brought in by the investors 08:48 – Jumio has raised $60M to date 09:14 – Jumio just broke in 150K identity verifications in a single day 10:02 – The investors of Jumio 10:48 – Jumio has processed 26M verifications in 2016 10:55 – 2017 verification number 11:21 – The team in 2015 was around 90 and now it’s around 110 in the west and a thousand in India 12:01 – Jumio is a hybrid blend of computer vision, facial recognition and human integration into one 12:27 – Stephen is an optical engineer and has designed laser weapons 13:14 – Jumio is well-known in the fintech and economy space 13:25 – Jumio has a sales force direct with a team of around 20 13:50 – Jumio does trade shows in the marketplace 14:28 – Jumio has the top 4 unicorns as customers 15:34 – Different markets have different value that they see from the pricing activity 16:51 – “This is very much a grab the market share and its transactions” 17:40 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: It’s a relief to know that verifying your identification can be easily done. Pricing value affects different markets greatly. Spend more time with your kids while they’re young. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
21:4626/07/2017
730: How Two JP Morgan Men Sell $600k+ In Baby Clothes
Cam Miller and Akin Onal, the founders of MORI/BabyMori.com. Cam is the chief growth officer and co-founder at MORI. He is responsible for building out their essential babies’ brand and the creative use of marketing and technology. This summer, he represented the brand as one of the 500 startups at Mountain View Accelerator. Prior to MORI, he studied an MBA at London Business School, had various roles in Australia, France and the UK, and studied engineering business development finance and event management. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup (Cam) Most recent read book – Bhagavad Gita Favorite online tool? — Slack (Akin) How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-7/5 (Akin) If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wish I got into entrepreneurship a bit sooner” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:08 – Nathan introduces Cam and Akin to the show 01:47 – Cam and Akin met at JP Morgan 02:12 – There are a lot similarities between what they were doing at JP Morgan and what they are doing now 02:19 – MORI is a direct-to-consumer business model 02:33 – MORI has over 10K customers over 50 countries acquiring 1000 additional customers per month 02:57 – The non-subscription model is what MORI have on most countries 03:05 – MORI has really high repeat orders per month 03:13 – MORI is looking to relaunch a new and improved subscription model 03:31 – The sleeping bag has been their bestseller for the last 6 months 03:51 – A repurchase is when the same customer buys the same item, but a bigger size 04:35 – Half of the revenue per month comes from repeat customers 05:15 – The sweet spot on sales for repeat customers ends around 2-2.5 y/o 05:45 – Average cart price is $100 06:26 – MORI uses Klaviyo and MailChimp for their upsell 07:21 – The website’s product recommendation is manual 08:35 – 2016 topline sales was around $500K 09:00 – 2017 goal is $4M topline 10:03 – Cam and Akin have pivoted over 1 and half years 10:09 – MORI had a subscription model before the e-commerce 10:24 – After launching the latest collection in an ecommerce platform, sales went up 11:32 – The subscription is only for a specific product 13:20 – A repeat customer is the one who goes to the site to buy again 13:33 – The subscription model is almost phased out 14:22 – A lot of the products on the site are bundled, but they’re not part of the subscription 14:45 – The customer cohort of MORI outgrows them 15:53 – Paid acquisition last month was $50K 16:14 – They’ve recently launched a retargeting program 17:00 – MORI just closed a $2M round which was an equity round 17:28 – LTV 18:14 – LTV is measured on the growth trade and not on revenue 18:31 – Pre-money valuation 19:45 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The right model for your business can be proven by an increase of revenue. Keep in mind that your revenue growth is NOT the only basis of your LTV. Start entrepreneurship as early as possible. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
21:5524/07/2017
729: Will Edelman Digital Creator Lead New AI Marketing World?
David Dunne. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Velocidi, a marketing intelligence company that harnesses data for leading brands and agencies. In the 7 years since founding Velocidi, it enables marketers to make data-driven decisions that optimize marketing spend. David is currently leading the firm’s next chapter into artificial intelligence. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Selling the Invisible What CEO do you follow? – Richard Branson Favorite online tool? — Tidal How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Hurry up, things are changing fast, you have to move faster” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:07 – Nathan introduces David to the show 01:41 – Velocidi focuses on how AI can speed up insights 01:48 – Velocidi’s technology has always been enabling the process of analysts driving the insights 02:22 – The analysts are Velocidi’s customers 02:39 – Velocidi is a SaaS business selling licenses 03:01 – Pricing starts at $3K a month 03:23 – Average monthly RPU is around $6K 03:44 – Velocidi charges by the amount of data streams 04:20 – Velocidi uses API calls to bring in the data 04:42 – Velocidi was launched in 2010 05:19 – There are people who are with David in building Velocidi 05:44 – David was a part of a global business 06:11 – David was happy with Edelman, but he wanted to reinvent himself 07:46 – David was 43 when he started Velocidi 09:26 – Every entrepreneur takes risks 09:51 – David has always separated personal assets with work 10:15 – Velocidi was capital intensive for the first few years 10:56 – Velocidi has initially raised $3M from friends and families 11:01 – Velocidi just closed a $12M round 11:18 – David has ambitious plans for growing the business 11:49 – More capital allows you to have more options 12:10 – CAC 12:21 – Most of Velocidi’s customers are large global agencies 12:31 – Velocidi is expanding into other industries 13:45 – LTV to CAC ratio 13:58 – David tries to look at some of the classic businesses for comparison 15:19 – Velocidi focuses on what they can give to customers 16:04 – Velocidi keeps their customers for at least 5 years 16:54 – Some of Velocidi’s customers have thousands of customers and there’s a lot of room to grow 17:39 – Velocidi is innovating their product at a much faster rate 17:55 – The innovations depend on the customer's’ needs 18:21 – Velocidi is expanding their automated self-serve platform this year 18:40 – Velocidi has hundreds of customers 19:19 – Self-service means different things 20:08 – Analysts have been using excel and powerpoint 20:42 – Velocidi delivers the core-data and the clients tailor the data 21:11 – The quality of the data alongside a creative makes Velocidi’s clients standout 23:01 – David believes that data with creative is a better creative 23:55 – Average MRR 25:36 – David won’t sell Velocidi 26:53 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Entrepreneurs will always take risk—what matters is how big of a risk you’re willing to take. Focus on what you CAN commit to your customers. Things change faster than you think; so KEEP moving and don’t get left behind! Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
29:5723/07/2017
728: With $24m Raised, Why is He Buildling FinTech On Back of Advisors?
Aaron Klein. His career has largely been in the intersection of finance and technology. As co-founder and CEO at Riskalyze, he led the company twice to being one of The World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Finance by Fast Company Magazine. Today, over 150 riskalyzers served thousands of advisors. Aaron has served as a Sierra College trustee and in his spare time, co-founded a school project for orphans and vulnerable kids in Ethiopia. Investment News has honored him as one of the industry’s 40 Under 40 executives. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Extreme Ownership What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz Favorite online tool? — Twitter, Evernote and Uber How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The most important skill that you will ever have in starting a company is making great hiring decisions” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:15 – Nathan introduces Aaron to the show 02:07 – Riskalyze’s mission is to empower the world to invest fiercely 02:20 – An average consumer struggles to invest and understand the concept of investing 02:39 – Warren Buffett said “Stock for the one thing the American consumer refuses to buy when they were at their cheapest and only wants to buy at their most expensive” 02:48 – Riskalyze invented risk numbers that they can create for short-term 03:06 – Riskalyze’s focuses on the short term 03:43 – The harm usually comes from short-term decisions 03:58 – Riskalyze needs a context to understand how to make a good short-term decision 04:11 – Investors who don’t use Riskalyze would normally ask if the 2% down on their portfolio is still okay 04:18 – 8% of that portfolio is actually normal 04:56 – “We tend to stereotype people based on their age” 05:12 – The typical questions in the industry would often base on the age of the investor 05:41 – Riskalyze has a team of academics who delve into the data and methodology behind the risk number 06:00 – Riskalyze’s technology helps the advisor assess how much risk they can handle in a quantitative-objective way 06:27 – Riskalyze works with financial advisors and helps their investors become more successful 06:45 – Riskalyze is a SaaS business 06:48 – Riskalyze is launching their auto-pilot platform 07:19 – Pricing starts at $145 a month 07:36 – Riskalyze was launched in 2011 07:41 – Prior to Riskalyze, Aaron was in a brokerage firm and saw firsthand how poorly average investors thought about risk 07:54 – Aaron told his financial advisor friend about the risk and they founded Riskalyze 08:07 – Equity was 50/50 at first 08:27 – They’ve raised and brought in investors along the way 09:03 – Investors have seen a good return of up to 10X 09:48 – Riskalyze is currently focused on going to financial advisors first 09:59 – Riskalyze was capital efficient 10:02 – First round of funding was around $420K all equity 10:23 – Riskalyze is a substantial business and their ARR was a multiple of the capital deployed 10:40 – Total funds raised to date is $24M 11:10 – Team size is 175 from 90 last October 11:24 – Based in Auburn, California 12:21 – Riskalyze currently serves 19K advisors 12:25 – There’s no free plan 12:42 – Advisors are known to be money efficient 12:59 – Riskalyze tried a free version 13:23 – The plan was originally $99 a month 13:40 – After they tested to push the price up, their conversion rate tripled 14:10 – Gross annual churn 14:32 – Riskalyze typically loses an advisor to retirement or death 14:48 – Riskalyze found a solution for retirement 15:33 – Aaron doesn’t have the number for their net expansion RPU yet 15:50 – Riskalyze rolled out their advisor product in March 2013 15:53 – Then, they went into hyper-growth mode, from 380 customers to 2000 16:24 – They lost track of the data with only 4 people 16:50 – Cost to acquire new customers 17:10 – LTV 18:00 – Nathan recommends Klipfolio as a dashboard for Aaron 18:15 – Aaron rolled out a premier tier of Riskalyze in February which is $225 19:18 – Average MRR 21:30 – Aaron shares why Warren Buffett recommends investing in Vanguard 21:31 – Vanguard fits the people who are in their 70s and 80s 22:04 – Buffett also said that going to an advisor isn’t necessary 22:18 – Aaron believes that Vanguard should still be a part of a person’s portfolio; but what about someone who is a risk 45 and Vanguard is a risk 78? 24:45 – Nathan never went to an advisor as he found them fishy 25:15 – Aaron doesn’t have any financial advisors at the moment but he will in 2-3 years 25:20 – Aaron believes that an advisor can help him maximize the money that he has for the future 26:08 – The reason to use an advisor 26:32 – Riskalyze wants people to get risk aligned with the risk they can handle 26:48 – Advisor charges a flat fee based on the investor’s asset 27:34 – The value of human vice 29:14 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: If an average consumer knows his risk number, he will be more confident to invest. An advisor will not only help you manage your money, but show you how you can grow it. Focus on your hiring—this will contribute to a fast-growing company. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
33:0522/07/2017
727: Why People Pay Him $10m+/year or $4 on Every $10 in Ads Managed
Andrew Fischer. He’s a seasoned entrepreneur with extensive business development and sales experience in digital media and enterprise software or SaaS. He’s recently launched Choozle, a simple and digital marketing platform in the fall of 2012. Based in Denver, Colorado, Choozle is the world’s fastest growing digital advertising platform. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Green Favorite online tool? — Evernote How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I will probably reinforce the message of focus” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:04 – Nathan introduces Andrew to the show 01:35 – Choozle is the fastest growing digital advertising platform because of Inc Magazine’s annual ranking 01:45 – It will be Choozle’s first year in Inc 02:02 – Choozle became profitable last year 02:16 – Choozle was launched in 2012 02:25 – Revenue is between $5-10M 02:29 – Team size is around 32 02:36 – Choozle raised a small round 02:54 – Choozle is a SaaS that installs on an agency level 03:07 – The lowest level of subscription is $99 for an agency with one client and up to $2K a month for unlimited accounts 03:21 – Average pay per customer is $300 a month 03:25 – Choozle has 250 clients 03:30 – Choozle offers hybrid-managed services 03:51 – Choozle is also an ad-tech company, so they take a percentage of media 04:03 – Media shares start at 40% 04:17 – Choozle is a premium player in the space 04:53 – 2016 revenue 05:00 – 2017 target revenue 05:34 – Majority of Choozle’s revenue are coming from Q3 and Q4 05:51 – Choozle has raised $8.5M to date 06:02 – Choozle’s grace capital is from non-traditional services like a family office 06:29 – The goal when they had a raise was to build a sustainable company 06:51 – The raise was an equity-based investment 07:02 – Average churn is 5-7% per month 08:03 – Andrew is currently happy with their churn rate 08:32 – LTV to be 08:52 – CAC 09:22 – Average payback period 09:34 – Choozle has 10 full-time salespeople, total team size is around 30 11:25 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The digital advertising space is quite saturated and the churn rate of a SaaS businesses is quite high. Aim for your company to not just be profitable, but sustainable as well. Don’t limit who you allow as investors in your company. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
13:1921/07/2017
726: This $500k/mo+ Entrepreneur Says Key is Minimizing Expenses
Heather Marie. She’s the founder and CEO of Shoppable, a technology company that helps media companies, brands and retailers bring the checkout experience to anywhere a consumer discovers or engages with their products. While with Shoppable, she won the 2013 Women in Digital Award from L’Oreal, was named 1 of the 10 Most Powerful Millennials in Manhattan by Gotham Magazine, and 1 of the 11 Tech Gurus Changing the Luxury Game by Refinery29. The company was a 2014 Webby Award Honoree for Online Shopping, a 2016 Webby Honoree for Technical Achievement and named one of the 100 Brilliant Companies by Entrepreneur Magazine. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Never Eat Alone What CEO do you follow? – Jennifer Hyman Favorite online tool? — Boomerang for Gmail How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Just how long everything takes” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:07 – Nathan introduces Heather to the show 02:07 – Shoppable creates a technology that helps people buy what they see online 02:37 – People see products in every place 02:50 – Shoppable created a patent pending technology that provides different locations to shop that is outside the traditional retail shop 03:20 – Heather started the company in 2011 03:36 – Heather pitched Shoppable to a number of different retailers 03:49 – Shoppable launched a technology with The Wall Street Journal 04:00 – The Wall Street Journal branding was able to bring in a bunch of retailers and advertisers 04:40 – Shoppable has grown to under 30M products across the whole platform 05:28 – Shoppable brings the technology to where the consumers already are 05:40 – com uses Shoppable on their website and customers can buy directly from the website 07:24 – Shoppable brings the technology to different types of companies 07:40 – Shoppable is also integrated with publications such as WSJ, Condé Nast and others 07:58 – Shoppable is a SaaS company and charges annually for licenses 08:20 – Average customer pay is 5 figures 09:11 – Prior to Shoppable, Heather was at post acquisition of com 09:26 – Heather was a founding member of Affinity Labs 10:21 – Heather got into Affinity right after college 10:39 – The exit with Monster was all cash with an additional incentive 10:49 – Heather made it for 2 years after the acquisition, doing research on Shoppable 11:45 – Heather had to make Shoppable work 12:01 – Heather knew that she would start her own company 12:21 – Heather had debt that she was able to pay off after the acquisition 12:55 – Heather kept a part of the money for Shoppable 13:40 – Heather also had to downsize her condo to keep her expenses low 15:13 – There are ways you can increase your buffer 15:33 – Heather had to change her habits 16:22 – Shoppable has raised $5M 16:33 – The last round was a year ago 16:43 – Heather isn’t selling to Shopify 16:55 – Shoppable is above breaking even 17:24 – Team size is 20 and they are all based in New York 17:53 – Heather went on a business trip to NY and on her second day, she thought that Shoppable was made for NY 18:31 – Shoppable has around 438 merchants and 2000 brands 18:38 – One merchant could have hundreds of brands 19:15 – Average ARR 21:13 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: As an entrepreneur, you need to know how to manage money well. Building a company requires research and an action plan—especially if that company is your first and last shot at building one. Be aware that things in business and in life may take longer that what you’re expecting. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
23:2020/07/2017
725: How This $3.5m Real Estate Guy Jumped into Group Coaching
Charlie Gaudet. He’s the best-selling author of The Predictable Profits Playbook. He’s a keynote speaker and creator of predictable profits methodology—the most reliable way to systematically generate predictable profits for small businesses. He’s been an entrepreneur since the age of 4, creating his first multi-million dollar business at 24 and has helped others generate millions through his strategy. He’s received a lot of awards, recognitions and has given business advice around the world including INC, Forbes and Fox Business as well on podcast and radio. He was named one of the American Geniuses Top 50 Industry Influencers. He’s a crossfitter, Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter and 3-time wrestling state champion. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife, 3 adorable kidpreneurs, and 1 badass dog. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Losing My Virginity What CEO do you follow? – Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Infusionsoft How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Charlie would tell himself to stay in line and pick one particular craft to master Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:53 – Nathan introduces Charlie to the show 02:08 – Charlie is no longer in real estate 02:38 – Charlie grew his real estate company to $3-4M before getting out of it 02:46 – They built 2 roads and 30 homes 02:54 – Charlie was in Episode 343 03:21 – Charlie wasn’t having fun in real estate so he shifted 03:32 – Charlie has always been growing businesses 03:48 – Someone came to Charlie asking him to help grow his business and paid him $500 an hour 03:54 – It was in 2009 04:18 – Charlie went to $500 from hour to $2500 an hour 04:36 – Charlie realized that there is value in coaching 04:49 – Charlie ended up making 1.1M when he changed his model 05:35 – In 2016, 90% of Charlie’s income was percentage-based 06:05 – Charlie is going to a more scalable model in 2017 06:34 – Having the business that is dependent on Charlie won’t be good in the long run 06:53 – Charlie can build a system around his coaching model 07:40 – Charlie had a client in the financial space 07:44 – Charlie created 4 emails in the financial space for a 12-hour promotion that made $212K 07:56 – The client is a small business company 08:12 – Charlie had a client who was selling to lawyers who also brought in $200K from the 4 emails that Charlie curated 08:32 – In some cases, Charlie would get a percentage of top line revenue and for others, he would still get paid per hour 09:20 – The baseline payment will still depend on the client 09:38 – Charlie is highly recommended by his clients 10:26 – Charlie will also bring outside expertise to help him 10:53 – When Charlie got into a marketing promotion, they controlled the whole promotion 11:30 – Something is always bound to happen and Charlie tries to have a contingency plan 12:00 – Charlie has made most of their money from the incentive-based model 12:20 – Recently, Charlie found out that lost $75K from the incentive-based model 13:33 – Most of Charlie’s clients are using Infusionsoft 13:39 – For every email that they blast out, they have built in tracking 14:331 – Nathan is confused as to why Charlie would switch from the real estate to incentive-based coaching, which is hard to predict 14:37 – Charlie’s company is named Predictable Profits for a reason 15:26 – Charlie has different coaches delivering value 15:56 – Group coaching can work on a scalable format 18:25 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: If you lose interest in what you are doing; decide if it’s time to take the leap and pivot to something new. Something is always bound to happen, so a contingency plan is necessary. If you focus on just one craft, you can grow consistently and exponentially. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
20:2719/07/2017
724: The $70m+ Recruiting Company You've Never Heard Of
Colin Day. He’s the chairman and CEO of a company called iCIMS which he founded in 2000 with a vision to deliver applicant tracking software, emphasizing easy-to-use, unparalleled, customer service. iCIMS is the largest stand-alone provider of talent acquisition software in the industry and stands among Forbes top 100 fastest growing private cloud companies in the country Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella and Marc Benioff Favorite online tool? — Office 365 How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Trust your gut and trust your instincts” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:08 – Nathan introduces Colin to the show 01:47 – iCIMS know they’re winning by customer base 02:02 – iCIMS is next to Oracle 02:37 – iCIMS has a bedrock product that is their applicant tracking system 03:07 – iCIMS is a SaaS business 03:39 – iCIMS has multiple products, but the main product is the tracking system 03:52 – It handles compliance around data 04:14 – Pricing varies 04:21 – Recruitment becomes an important part of a company when they reach 100 employees 04:37 – iCIMS has price buckets that fit the smaller market, mid-sized and high-end markets 05:10 – How Colin started a SaaS business in 1999 05:17 – Colin graduated from Cornell with a degree in Psychology 05:23 – Colin wanted to do something entrepreneurial 05:38 – Colin’s first client was from New Jersey 05:56 – Colin was logged into Comrise's proprietary system 06:21 – Colin then thought to buy the rights to Comrise’s proprietary system to start his own company 06:48 – Colin started as a recruiter in 1997 07:36 – The CEO of Comrise believed in Colin 08:43 – Colin saw an opportunity and bought the system 08:57 – The CEO of Comrise loaned Colin the capital for iCIMS 09:40 – When Colin was working as a recruiter, they couldn’t find enough technology to work 09:55 – It was a “hey day” when Colin spun out 10:20 – The capital was called a payroll loan 10:48 – Colin will call the CEO every time he needed money 11:11 – Colin didn’t negotiate equity upfront 11:37 – iCIMS was charging monthly 12:23 – Current team size is around 650 12:33 – In November, they’ll be moving from New Jersey to Old Bell Labs HQ 13:06 – iCIMS has grown without any outside money other than the loaned capital 13:17 – iCIMS has brought in a private equity company 14:14 – The money from the private equity company went directly towards the equity and not on the operational side of the company 14:29 – Besides getting an outside investor, it is also a good choice to get a private equity company 15:22 – Colin has a desire to win 16:12 – iCIMS’s mandate is to convince the world to be contrarian 16:51 – Colin wants iCIMS to be the definition of winning 17:30 – Colin tries to always stay focused 18:18 – CAC 18:43 – Average annual contract price is around $30K 19:50 – Average MRR 20:40 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Don’t be afraid to ask someone about their business plan. Always desire to win and stay focused – it works. Trust your instincts; don’t doubt yourself. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
23:3718/07/2017
723: He Sold His Company to Richard Branson, Then Oil Tanked Him
Scott Duffy. He’s the co-host of Business & Burgers and a contributor at Entrepreneur.com. He’s also listed as one of the top 10 keynote speakers of Forbes and Entrepreneur. He started working for bestselling author and speaker, Tony Robbins. He’s been a part of early stage exits and worked with big brands like CBSSport.com, NBC internet, Fox.com. He sold his last company to Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. He’s the best-selling author of the book called Launch!. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – You Are a Badass at Making Money What CEO do you follow? – Dave Meltzer Favorite online tool? — Skype How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5.5 to 6 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “You don’t win by hard work alone” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:02 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show 01:51 – Scott wants to tell The Top tribe that it is all about being real and integrity 02:01 – Scott is doing a lot of work regarding mindset 02:05 – Scott has a new book coming out called Breakthrough 02:26 – It is being published by Entrepreneur Press 02:30 – Scott was working on the timeline 02:54 – Scott shares a story about failing 02:58 – Scott had a business called Smart Charter 03:04 – Scott was looking for distribution and ended up making a deal with Virgin 03:16 – Scott was putting in $10K-15K of his personal money 03:33 – Scott closed a deal and they moved to their new office 04:12 – Scott is now officially a part of the Virgin Group 04:42 – Scott wasn’t paying himself nothing before he sold the company 04:54 – Prior to Smart Charter, Scott was a part of Sports 1 USA 05:20 – Majority of Scott’s savings went to Smart Charter 05:51 – Instead of taking money out out Smart Charter, Scott decided to go all in 06:18 – Scott now has equity with Virgin 06:57 – Scott sold Smart Charter in 2008 07:10 – Scott learned that the biggest job of an entrepreneur has nothing to do with business 07:19 – The most important job for an entrepreneur is to protect himself 07:44 – Smart Charter had an equity pool prior to Virgin 08:22 – The possible deal from Virgin 09:17 – In a matter of weeks, everything changed with Virgin/Smart Charter 10:05 – On Scott’s first day with Virgin, he knew that if he messed up, there wouldn’t be another chance 10:28 – Scott’s superpower is in getting distribution for early stage companies 10:51 – As a small company, dealing with big companies does not make you better 11:19 – The deal with Virgin didn’t turn out the way Scott thought it would 12:26 – As an entrepreneur, Scott thinks he was played 12:53 – Entrepreneurs have to know how to repackage the things that have happened to them 13:09 – Business & Burgers is a search for the best burger in America and offers a side of great business advice 13:14 – They hit the best restaurant and talk to the top local entrepreneur 13:35 – Next episode is Daymond John from Shark Tank 15:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Don’t be discouraged; sometimes, you just have to learn things the hard way. Entrepreneurs need to know how to protect themselves. Take time building relationships – relationships are everything. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
17:3717/07/2017
722: This Machine Learning Agency did $800k Last Year
Michael Segala. He’s the CEO and co-founder of a company called SFL Scientific, a data science consulting firm that specializes in big data solutions. He’s for leveraging machine learning in analytics techniques to arrive at insights to numerous industries— from healthcare to stock market predictions. Before founding the company, Michael worked as a data scientist in some of the well-known companies such as Compete Inc., Akamai Technologies and he also holds a PhD in Particle Physics from Brown University. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Challenger Sale What CEO do you follow? – Larry Page and Sergey Brin Favorite online tool? — Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Diversify my education, learn more than just science from the early set, it will help you out” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:09 – Nathan introduces Michael to the show 01:56 – The founding members of SFL Scientific are particle physicists 02:41 – They have a deeper understanding of the problem—from the academic and business perspective 02:58 – SFL Scientific is completely bootstrapped with $2K as their initial funds 03:07 – SFL Scientific got their first client only a few weeks after their launch 03:24 – The first client was a group of people from Stanford studying sleep apnea 03:30 – Sleep apnea is a disease that makes you stop breathing for a couple of minutes while sleeping and can lead to death 03:46 – The group’s idea is to take the sound and record it through an iPhone app at night 03:59 – The group hired SFL Scientific to build an entire suite of AI machine-learning product solution 04:04 – SFL Scientific also got an FDA resolution for the product 04:30 – SFL Scientific is a complete professional-based consulting firm 04:40 – They write specific algorithms for the clients depending on their needs 05:18 – SFL Scientific got their first client in 2015 05:24 – Michael is now 31 05:44 – The pricing depends 06:17 – For a high-level R&D-based projects, the charge is hourly 06:34 – SFL Scientific does R&D-based projects with minimum requirements 07:10 – Most clients don’t understand the scope of the project so SFL Scientific asks business questions or strategy 07:45 – SFL Scientific provides the possible end result 08:08 – First year revenue is low 6 figures 08:27 – SFL Scientific has 3 co-founders 08:38 – Michael does more on the sales stuff such as talking with client, one handles the technical and the other handles the implementation of behind-the-scenes coding 09:14 – Equity is almost equal with Michael getting 34% 09:37 – The first 2 years, they invested back into the company most of what they got 09:53 – They had some very low salaries 10:27 – SFL Scientific almost broke a million in 2016 10:42 – 2017 revenue might go over and above a million 10:57 – Team size is 10 11:30 – SFL Scientific currently has a dozen clients 11:38 – One of the clients takes up around 20% of the revenue and Michael knows that it is dangerous 12:00 – SFL Scientific has no churn yet 12:08 – SFL Scientific mitigates a couple of ways the employees can work on multiple projects at a time 12:24 – SFL Scientific doesn’t invest only in one problem—go vertical to diversify the risks 13:12 – Looking at data science in general, the challenges are unanimous 13:34 – SFL Scientific is capable of understanding and solving cases from different industries 14:07 – Nathan just finished Thinking in Systems 15:48 – If you don’t have decent data to support a model that is accurate to a certain degree, you’re not going to get anywhere 17:03 – SFL Scientific looks at the potential of a project 17:16 – Michael is most excited with the health industry in terms of AI and machine learning 19:15 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Consider yourself lucky when you’re completely bootstrapped and you end up getting your first client only after a few weeks of launching. It’s quite risky to only solve one problem as a company; diversify your services so you have a greater chance of surviving. Study different fields and see how you can solve cases from these different industries. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
20:5116/07/2017
721: 543 Upvotes Got Him on HackerNews Front Page
Owen Sadeghpour. A year ago, he was the technical employee or founder at an earlier company and has raised over $50M. Now, he’s working at a successful company. He’s also got a different project called You Exec. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Blue Ocean Strategy and How to Win Friends and Influence People What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Squarespace How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-10 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The older you get the more you realize that human relationships are 50% of your work” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:05 – Nathan introduces Owen to the show 01:46 – You Exec is a community of professionals that are looking to improve their careers or the way they have relationships with people 01:57 – You Exec creates incredible resources for free and for paid members 02:13 – The paid members have the advantage of more features than the free members 02:26 – Paid members pay $4/month 02:43 – You Exec also takes insightful books, like The Lean Startup, and summarizes them 03:30 – You Exec’s content is usually posted on many different channels 03:35 – Some of these channels include Medium, LinkedIn and Facebook 03:56 – You Exec has a mailing list that people subscribe to 04:25 – You Exec used to be something else 04:33 – As a technical person, Owen would write technical articles which were posted on Hacker News, a Y-combinator news stream 04:43 – Owen’s article landed on the front page 04:59 – Owen’s first article was Google and Facebook Ad Traffic is 90% Useless 05:20 – Nathan shares how he found Owen and what piqued his interest in him 05:50 – Owen has been a follower of Hacker News 06:02 – The first article wasn’t intentionally made to blow up 06:49 – When Owen submitted the article, it got 30 upvotes only after a few minutes 07:03 – The readers were mostly looking at the tools that Owen featured 07:16 – By the time Owen got 50-60 points, Owen noticed that it wasn’t getting on the front page which was supposed to happen 07:27 – Owen got some coffee and after 6 hours, he got tons of emails and the article was on the front page 08:20 – Owen’s objective in creating the article was to share with engineers that they’re wasting their money 09:10 – The article got a total of 30K views 09:47 – Owen wants people to see You Exec’s value; that’s why they sign up 09:51 – Owen doesn’t share You Exec’s numbers 10:40 – You Exec has around 1k signups on the paid membership 11:11 – Owen has Google Analytics on while working so he saw where the referrals are coming from 11:56 – The first article still gets around 10 readers a day 12:20 – Owen focuses on insights to bring traffic 12:50 – Owen is passionate in improving patients’ lives 13:08 – Owen believes that a media company is great, but his passion lies in helping individuals 13:44 – You Exec also pays for resources 14:25 – When You Exec pushes out a weekly newsletter, they include references to the creditor 14:50 – The article should save You Exec’s members hours of work 15:25 – You Exec pushes out all the sources of things 16:44 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Create something of value and people will stick with you. More and more people are finding ways to shave hours off their workload WITHOUT sacrificing their quality of work. Relationships with your colleagues are KEY to having a great work experience. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
21:3015/07/2017
720: How Wealthy People Put On a Conference
Steve Olsher. He’s the chairman and founder of Liquor.com. He’s a New York Times best-selling author of What Is Your WHAT?: Discover The One Amazing Thing You Were Born To Do. He’s also hosted the number 1 radio show, Reinvention Radio, and is a national keynote speaker and creator of the New Media Summit. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The $100 Startup What CEO do you follow? – Giovanni Marsico Favorite online tool? — io How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished I would have trusted myself more” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:10 – Nathan introduces to the show 01:35 – Steve was in Episode 342 02:02 – Steve is still in the process of selling Liquor.com 02:14 – Liquor.com is on ad revenue but is moving into the monetization strategy in Q3 and Q4 02:20 – Monthly impression is currently $3M 02:32 – There’s nothing in the bottom line revenue because it just goes back to the business 02:45 – Gross margin varies 03:51 – The company’s valuation 04:07 – Average open rate 04:14 – Depending on the promotion, the click rate varies 04:41 – People are more interested with contests than new products 05:26 – Steve has been doing events 06:24 – Liquor.com was like a family business 07:04 – New Media Summit does live events for different types of viewers 08:00 – The idea is to connect with people who have high-visibility platforms 08:34 – New Media Summit is bringing in icons and influencers to events 09:06 – Most people are podcasters 09:25 – The people in New Media Summit are focused on understanding the value of teaching and sharing their knowledge 09:47 – New Media Summit takes care of the podcasters hotel accommodation and meals 09:57 – The event will accommodate only 150 people 10:17 – There will be an influencer and mastermind on the last day of the summit 10:49 – Attendees can pay in full which is $4997—the early bird price 11:10 – The marketing just started and they have sold 2 tickets for the early bird 11:17 – There are some who invested in Steve’s products and services and paid a seat deposit to attend the summit 11:30 – Minimum price to attend is $1300 plus the seat deposit 12:28 – Part of Steve’s revenue comes from buying stage time 12:44 – Steve can easily pay $10K for a highly-curated event with 100 people 13:19 – An event should have a revenue model or plan of action in order to recoup 14:44 – There are some events that people don’t want to go back to because they are just pitch fests 14:49 – Steve doesn’t speak at events where 1-10 people are selling 15:22 – Steve’s call-to action during his speaking is to sign-up on an order form which has a lot of bonuses 16:34 – An event venue is quite expensive which can average to about $150K for a whole day event 17:00 – Steve is also making money from the events 17:28 – They’ve got everything covered before the event starts 17:38 – There will be services and products offered during the event 18:03 – Steve will also pitch to future speakers 19:35 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: An event should be well-planned and have a revenue model where they can recoup expenses. The main challenges in having an event is ensuring people attend and to have speakers who will NOT just sell during the event. Ad open rates always vary depending on the promotion. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
22:4614/07/2017
719: Question Based Advertising is The Future, $40M In Sales Doesn't Lie!
Stephan Goss. He’s the entrepreneur and technology executive behind his first company, Zeeto, which he started at the age of 22 and is still running today. He’s led the company in expanding from a team of 3 people to 70 in just under 5 years and with the launch of the ad network, he plans on continuing the company’s growth story in 2017. Previously, he founded Samples.com & Getitfree.us, which is the biggest free samples property on the internet. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Power of Habit What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Slack and Gmail How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8.5-9 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Keep going for it” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:04 – Nathan introduces Stephan to the show 01:56 – Stephan bought Samples.com 3 years ago and Getitfree.us for 6 figures 02:31 – Everything started with Samples.com 02:48 – Stephan left Switzerland when he was 19 and spent 10 months living in tent 03:31 – Stephan and some of his friends were running ad campaigns on the internet 03:55 – Everything is lead generation with Samples.com 04:03 – They acquire users for $1 and they get $1.25 in return 04:30 – Stephan was making a 20-30% margin at first 04:59 – One of their large clients called and asked for more targeted leads who offered $8 05:46 – Stephan came out with a decent approach to find targeted leads 06:22 – Stephan was spending $10K for ads 06:51 – Stephan had a business partner and they had some cash flow to begin with 07:14 – The model of Samples.com was good because they can get their ROI fast 07:34 – Samples.com is still running 07:55 – Stephan continued the question asking model for the targeted market and scaled it 08:26 – The lead value is more of a composition of all the answers 08:46 – 2016 total top line revenue was $39M and total ad spend was around $20-25M 09:18 – Samples.com currently has 25 people 09:25 – Stephan spent the bottom line money on investing on the Zeeto site 09:42 – Stephan is currently breaking even with Zeeto 09:55 – Stephan still gets his salary from the company 10:23 – Zeeto’s model is taken from Samples.com’s question-model 11:10 – Zeeto is similar to Google Adsense 11:20 – Regular CPMs from Adsense range from $5-20 11:33 – Zeetos’ CPMs range from $400-2200 12:00 – From Nathan’s research, podcasters earn $15-20 CPMs 12:11 – Nathan shares how he asks his advertisers about their CAC and his audience 12:44 – With Google Adsense, there will be around 3 ads per page 13:27 – The technology around Samples.com and Zeeto is considerably pretty hard 14:43 – Facebook and Google has all this data regarding leads that other big companies don’t have 15:13 – Zeeto’s goal is to help publishers have a better revenue model 15:21 – Zeeto’s product has just been launched 16:32 – Stephan sees Zeeto as an additional feature to the paywall 17:01 – Zeeto is incremental 18:18 – It will be more complicated for Zeeto to write questions for each of the articles rather than by being an addition to the paywall 18:24 – “Questions are built to be more broad” 18:59 – Stephan doesn’t know what is really going to work yet 19:25 – Stephan’s goal this year is to see where they’re going to fit in 19:50 – Anything that will drive people to the web will work well 20:19 – Stephan’s sample call-to-action 20:34 – You can make custom questions fitted to the website 20:46 – The goal is to optimize questions for the best response rate 21:22 – Zeeto was built from scratch 21:54 – Nathan struggles with which of his advertisement he should show to his new subscribers 22:00 – Nathan sends them an email autoresponder 22:27 – Zeeto has a user group that has interesting attributes 23:07 – 3 advertisers are not enough to do it efficiently 23:14 – Zeeto now has 200 advertisers 23:37 – Zeeto is completely free and they’ll send a check for the revenue share 25:05 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: It’s easier for people to give out their details in exchange for something free. To collect your targeted leads, you need to have focused questions. Stay encouraged and Just keep going for it! Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
27:2713/07/2017
718: Air Pollution is Deadly, How Isralei Entrepreneur Is Cashing In
Ran Korber. He’s the CEO and founder of BreezoMeter. His ambition is to improve the health and quality of life for billions of people across the globe by providing accurate and actionable air quality data. It’s truly the leading air quality analytic company and one of Israel’s top 10 promising startups in 2015 with millions of daily users. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Zero to One What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Slack and HubSpot How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Keep going, you’re doing well” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:10 – Nathan introduces Ran to the show 01:57 – BreezoMeter helps companies to increase user engagement 02:38 – BreezoMeter makes the invisible visible by providing highly accurate, location-based, air quality which includes data that can be integrated to any device or technology 03:08 – Using BreezoMeter’s data, the Dyson air purifier turns on whenever the air quality outside is substandard 03:16 – A notification will be sent to the Dyson app as well 03:29 – Dyson is BreezoMeter’s customer and BreezoMeter tells Dyson’s customers about the air purifier 03:58 – The air purifier turns on automatically and, as an owner, you want to make sure that the product you bought is working 04:37 – BreezoMeter provides a license to their APIs 04:53 – Customers pay on a monthly basis 04:58 – BreezoMeter is data as a service 05:14 – All of BreezoMeter’s customers are enterprises 05:23 – The customers use BreezoMeter’s data in big volumes 05:49 – Average monthly RPU is higher than $1K a month 06:04 – Ran just read Jason Lemkin’s From Impossible to Inevitable 06:29 – BreezoMeter broke a million in sales last year 06:34 – Ran hopes they’ll break $10M in sales this year 06:54 – Ran is an environmental engineer 07:05 – In 2012, Ran was searching to buy a house for his family 07:10 – Ran’s wife has asthma and Ran knows how air pollution can have severe health effects 07:45 – We all want to protect our families 07:51 – Ran asks the bureau of protection and environment in Israel about the place with the cleanest air and they don’t have any data that can answer the question 08:08 – Together with Ran’s colleague, they built the app 08:19 – BreezoMeter was founded in 2014 08:26 – Team size 08:39 – BreezoMeter has raised $5M 08:48 – The last round was in July 2016 08:57 – The first round was a seed round with $2M 09:54 – All of BreezoMeter’s investors are approachable and they share the same vision 10:12 – Total number of users 10:46 – Dyson has an air purifier and you can download the Dyson link app that will show the air quality data 12:00 – Customers pay depending on the combination of the features they use and the volume of API calls 12:20 – BreezoMeter earns more from their features 13:03 – BreezoMeter doesn’t disclose their pricing because of their enterprise clients 13:48 – BreezoMeter caters to different industries 14:13 – CAC 15:51 – BreezoMeter raise funds to expand and increase their revenue 16:21 – For every sales rep, the revenue is $500K to $1M in annual revenue 16:37 – BreezoMeter has 4 sales rep 17:01 – The churn is due to some of the companies having medical devices 18:30 – BreezoMeter’s customers are paying at least $3K a month 19:32 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Air pollution directly impacts our health—therefore, knowing the air quality around us can inform our decisions regarding what products to use. A SaaS company that serves mainly enterprise businesses has a possibility of scaling faster. Keep on going and believe that you’re doing well. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
26:4212/07/2017
717: Why Moving Her Team to Brazil Was Genius
Emília Chagas. She’s the CEO of Contentools.com, a company that helps over 700 companies plan, create, distribute and analyze content. As a content manager for over 8 years, she has led video, book and web-based strategies at both enterprises and SMBs. She’s a 500 Startups entrepreneur and part of the Endeavor Promises Program. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Hooked and The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Eric Santos of Resultados Digitais/RD Station Favorite online tool? — ProfitWell and ChartMogul How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4-5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “How great life was” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:20 – Nathan introduces Emília to the show 01:58 – Emília is currently in Florianópolis, Brazil 02:21 – Emília’s average salary 02:54 – Emília currently has 30 people 03:03 – Average headcount expenses 03:24 – Contentools is a SaaS model 03:31 – Contentools offers a content marketing platform for companies with marketing teams 04:04 – Everything that a marketing team needs are converged into 1 software 04:13 – Average customer pay per month varies 04:46 – Contentools does scheduling and the processes of the content workflow 05:08 – Contentools has 300 customers, 700 companies are using the platform 05:21 – Some pay through their agencies 05:35 – Average MRR 05:48 – Around $70K per month 05:58 – Contentools has raised an Angel round and will raise a seed round next year 06:08 – Total funds raised was $500K 06:19 – Contentools was launched in 2015 06:30 – Emília has been working with startups and enterprises and they have the same problem dealing with content 06:53 – Contentools went beta in July 2015 07:11 – Emília has a big dream for Contentools 07:24 – SMBs need content solutions but no one is offering them one 07:39 – “Content is the beginning of marketing” 07:55 – The 4 founders still own 80% of the company 08:43 – All of Emília’s ideas are currently focused on Contentools 08:55 – Contentools wants to create more business intelligence features and content that are targeted more to the customers’ needs 09:42 – Emília won’t sell the company at the moment 10:01 – Contentools is growing 10-20%, month over month in revenue 10:13 – Churn is usually around 2% and last month was net negative churn 10:49 – 3% gross churn 11:12 – Contentools is up selling their number of users and projects 11:58 – CAC 12:35 – 4 people on the team are focused on inbound marketing and there are also remote people 13:08 – Contentools doesn’t have paid acquisition 13:47 – Contentools is adding 20-30 new customers a month 14:07 – The Angel round was in May 2017 14:24 – Contentools is updating their leads for their fundraising next year 14:40 – Valuation won’t be out of the market 16:04 – If you fail updating one status, it’ll all be gone 17:13 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Content solutions are often offered to enterprises, but SMBs need them too. One of the cheapest forms of marketing is your content. It’s not easy for a content manager to handle the processes and workflow, so a good content management tool is necessary. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
20:5411/07/2017
716: Putin is Making This Man $50 Million Per Year
Stu Sjouwerman. He’s a serial entrepreneur and currently the founder and CEO of KnowBe4.com. He’s a big Shark Tank fan. He’s based in Tampa, Florida. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Positioning What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — SurveyMonkey How many hours of sleep do you get?—6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished that my 21 old self knew that Bill Gates was going to go into Windows server, in about 1995” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:21 – Nathan introduces Stu to the show 01:46 – KnowBe4 is a new school IT 01:51 – KnowBe4 focuses on modern security and awareness training 02:08 – KnowBe4 is a SaaS company 02:46 – Average pay per user is $15/year 03:01 – The charge is annual upfront which is easier and most people prefer that 03:26 – KnowBe4 focuses on organizations with 50 users and up 03:36 – Average seat size varies 03:52 – Average seat size for SMBs is 200-300 and for enterprise 1500-3000 seats 04:21 – Stu sold his anti-virus company in 2010 04:35 – It was called Sunbelt and Stu’s 4th startup 04:56 – “We are growing like crazy” 05:01 – KnowBe4 did $7M in 2015, $24M in 2016 and is targeting $50M this year 05:26 – KnowBe4 does inbound marketing and they send newsletters to their list of 1.2M people 05:40 – The list was built over several years 05:57 – KnowBe4 was bootstrapped for 5 years and Stu spent around a million building the company 06:07 – In December 2015, they took $8M from VC 06:47 – Total fund raised was $13M 07:11 – It was easy for Stu to let go of 20% of the company 07:25 – Stu’s told Kevin Mitnick that he would give him 50% of his company in exchange for Kevin’s 30-year experience in hacking 08:34 – The cap table 09:10 – Stu is confident that KnowBe4 will earn $50M this year 09:20 – Churn is 15% annually 09:33 – It is relatively easy to predict whether a SaaS model will be profitable 09:43 – KnowBe4 serves 9500 companies 09:55 – Average ARR 10:22 – March revenue 10:58 – Enterprise sales come in March 11:10 – Team size is 290 11:27 – CAC is around $2600 11:39 – CAC to LTV ratio is 7 12:02 – CAC payback is instant 12:17 – Average selling price per year 12:42 – Stu likes Vladimir Putin 14:03 – Eagles programs are state-sponsored programs that are offensive cyberattacks 14:49 – USA also has offensive cyber weapons, same with China and Russia 14:58 – Hackers go after the weak link in IT security, which is the human 15:15 – It comes in the form of an email 15:33 – KnowBe4 sends frequent phishing attacks that are similar to legitimate ones 15:43 – This will make the team aware and cause them to be on top of their toes in case they receive an attack 16:02 – KnowBe4 has a phish alert button 16:30 – KnowBe4 trains people with the real stuff 16:41 – Stu used to play soccer and is very competitive 16:49 – Stu has 2 reasons why he wants to go public: 16:52 – First, because he has never gone public before 16:57 – Second is to expand further and faster 17:12 – KnowBe4’s biggest competitors are PhishMe and Wombat 17:26 – Stu gets their competitors’ information from Owler 17:45 – There’s a possibility of Stu acquiring one of their competitors once they go public 18:11 – Stu got $10M from his previous exit and he’s NOT doing KnowBe4 for the money 18:57 – The biggest problem Stu had with his previous company was social engineering 19:08 – “Nobody is really taking care of the human IT security” 20:30 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: There’s a big gap in human IT security and more and more people aren’t even aware they’re being hacked. Going public can help a company expand further and faster, and perhaps even acquire the competition. There is no such thing as retirement. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
22:5610/07/2017
715: This CEO Doesn't Care That VC Has Him By Throat
Ryan Sevey. He’s the CEO of Nexosis, an artificial intelligence and machine learning startup focused exclusively on developers. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Aha! How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Learn how to be true to yourself” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:25 – Nathan introduces Ryan to the show 01:55 – Nexosis was launched in 2015 01:59 – Nexosis offers a solution that big retailers are forecasting 02:24 – Nexosis has 300 developers who use their APIs 02:56 – Nexosis has developers from the retail space who have their point-of-sale data 03:11 – Nexosis will take the developers data and give out a result 04:13 – This result can help in the decision making for the future 04:34 – Nexosis gets people to be more proactive than reactive 04:52 – Nexosis found out how companies are using their historical data 05:14 – Nexosis adds more features to training 05:23 – Nexosis’s add-on layers 05:41 – With sentiment analysis, one good example is Wendy’s Twitter account 06:00 – You can use the number of tweets as a numerical value that can go back to your data 06:39 – One huge case involves a Wendy’s beside a convention center; Nexosis can predict future revenues 06:51 – Nexosis can predict future revenues and can understand the real impact of an event 07:23 – Nexosis focuses on the developer ecosystem 07:38 – Nexosis charges .10₵ per 1000 predictions 08:17 – Nexosis makes money once the developer talks to the enterprise and shows the API 08:43 – Nexosis charges the developers by consumption 09:24 – Average pay per customer depends on the data that they have which usually starts at $10K 09:42 – Nexosis was founded in 2015 09:53 – Ryan and his co-founder have been looking at machine learning since 2012 10:09 – Nexosis was originally considered an information security company 10:21 – Team size is 15 and they’re based in Ohio 10:38 – Nexosis has millions of API calls per month but their focus is on the number of developers 11:30 – Ryan’s vision is for developers to enjoy Nexosis, be it as a hobby or use in a professional way 11:55 – Nexosis is currently serving 100 different enterprise type of developers 12:26 – What Ryan sees is when a developer signs up, he’ll make 1-2 projects then invite his friend to try Nexosis 12:57 – Most of the developers are already in a company 13:10 – MRR 13:20 – Nexosis has raised a little less than $7M 13:39 – The long term goal for Nexosis is to raise more 13:56 – Twilio has survived their early days with VC funding 14:26 – Nexosis measures expansion rate rather than the churn 15:37 – Nexosis aims for 100% month over month growth and at the moment, they’re hitting it 16:30 – Consumption in terms of the number of predictions is over a million 17:55 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: There are companies who rely mostly on raising funds to scale. Knowing the data for your FUTURE can help in your decision making TODAY. No matter what—be true to yourself! Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
20:2309/07/2017
714: You Won't Believe What This Divorced Mom Raised $7 Million For
Sheri Atwood. She’s the founder and CEO of SupportPay. She’s also a former Silicon Valley executive and a child of a bitter divorce who also went through her own divorce a few years ago. She’s created SupportPay when a search for a better way communicate about child support systems with her ex-husband proved totally fruitless. SupportPay is the first-ever automated child support payment platform poised to transform the complex, time-consuming & stressful process that impacts nearly 300M parents exchanging more than $900B in child support & child expenses worldwide. With SupportPay, today’s modern families can spend less time managing and arguing about child support, and more time focused on raising happy, healthy children. Prior to starting SupportPay, she was a former vice-president at Symantec and also has been named #5 of 50 Women in Tech Dominating Silicon Valley and Top 40 Under 40 Executives in Silicon Valley. She’s energetic, resourceful and lives by the motto “don’t talk about it, be about it.” Famous Five: Favorite Book? – What Got You Here Won’t Get You There What CEO do you follow? – Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Marc Benioff Favorite online tool? — Stack Exchange How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Enjoy the path, enjoy the lessons as you go” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:23 – Nathan introduces Sheri to the show 02:37 – Sheri is going to lower the divorce rate by showing people that divorce just gets worst 02:49 – Millennials aren’t getting married but are having babies 03:10 – Sheri uses SupportPay and invented it because she didn’t have a solution 03:16 – Child support is made up of 2 things: a base payment that covers basic daily living expenses and then there’s other additional expenses 03:34 – The argument is about where the money is going and if it is enough to raise a kid 03:46 – While doing an expense report in Symantec, Sheri thought of the idea of SupportPay 04:04 – SupportPay started in 2011 04:38 – Sheri was raised by her single mom who was an alcoholic 04:48 – Sheri was one of the youngest VPs in Symantec and she was able to save money from her salary 04:57 – Sheri had multiple houses, cars, boats, gave his ex-husband a house and 2 years worth of salary in the bank 05:24 – Sheri bootstrapped SupportPay at first and she learned to code 05:40 – SupportPay has raised $7.1M total 05:49 – The series A was for $4.1M 05:59 – Sheri has talked to people and there was nothing to support parents 06:13 – Sheri also received calls from vendors thanking her 06:35 – SupportPay is a SaaS business 06:40 – Pricing starts at $9.99 a month 06:51 – There’s also a free version 06:55 – Each parent pays independently 07:05 – Average pay is $10 a month 07:28 – Sheri started hiring people in 2013 07:39 – Sheri learned to code the basic html, css and php by starting her own website 07:50 – Sheri self-studied from books that she found in Barnes and Nobles 08:08 – Team size is 25 and they just relocated to Sacramento, California from Silicon Valley 08:30 – Team has 14 engineers 08:39 – After raising $3M, Sheri realized she couldn’t sustain a business in Silicon Valley 08:45 – Sheri was burning $95K a month 09:08 – Sheri’s equity table is a mess now because of her tech people switching to another company for a better offer 09:16 – Sheri would have focused on revenue a little bit earlier 09:48 – Sheri didn’t have revenue until July of 2016 10:08 – SupportPay was processing $3M in child support 10:19 – SupportPay currently looks at processing $4M a month in child support 10:30 – SupportPay has over 43K customers with 2K paying customers 11:03 – MRR is close to $100K 12:12 – SupportPay has a free 30 day trial 12:27 – The value of the product is the history, which can be used in court 12:46 – SupportPay also provides certified report records 13:31 – Churn on active users is 3% annually 13:57 – Conversion rate from visitor to paid user is 12% 14:50 – The bigger valuation for SupportPay is how it solves the problem of child support 16:00 – After getting into fundraising, SupportPay focused on their revenue 16:25 – 2016 revenue 16:41 – Sheri has talked to Salesforce to get them involved in SupportPay 17:10 – Salesforce is trying to move government applications into the cloud 17:15 – SupportPay will get Salesforce into the government space quickly 17:30 – SupportPay is built on the salesforce platform 18:00 – Tim Draper invested in SupportPay as he saw the value 18:17 – Sheri’s goal for building SupportPay 20:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: More millennials are having babies, but are not getting married—this leads to more parents having problems with child support. Having one less argument regarding child support will alleviate stress for the whole family unit. The divorce rate isn’t getting any better, it’s just getting worst. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
22:5908/07/2017
713: You'll Never Guess What Salary They Gave Up To Launch Their Startup
Ryan Hungate. He’s the co-founder of Simplifeye, it’s the number one technology experience for healthcare providers, patients and their businesses. The company’s platform of software solution health care providers improve productivity, efficiency and profitability. Ryan is an orthodontist and previous Apple retail strategist and Zach is a previous founder and Wall Street alum with a background in Tech MNA. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup (Zach) What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Calendly How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 (Zach) 3 (Ryan) If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “How difficult business can actually be” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:11 – Nathan introduces Ryan and Zach to the show 01:54 – Ryan’s dad was a doctor 03:00 – Simplifeye tries to make doctors’ lives easier 03:28 – Simplifeye provides the patients’ information before they walk in during checkups 04:03 – Ryan and Zach are VC buddies 04:07 – They’ve raised money from their hedge fund friends 04:12 – They applied at AngelPad 04:35 – Simplifeye was a halfway project and they thought it would be big 04:52 – it was in 2015 when they got into AngelPad 05:02 – Zach gave up hundreds of thousands in a salary when he joined Simplifeye 05:14 – Ryan gave up his $500K salary 05:34 – They rationalize building a startup by getting validation from different capital companies 06:01 – They also know that they can be in every doctor’s office 06:17 – Simplifeye has raised $3.5M 06:24 – Angelpad’s terms 06:50 – It was September 2015 when Ryan and Zach came out to NY and ended up coming out with AngelPad strong 07:21 – Simplifeye’s customers are healthcare practitioners who pay on a monthly basis 07:25 – Simplifeye tries to involve everybody—to teams of doctors, nurses, dentists and others 08:18 – Average pay is $2400 a year 08:39 – Expansion revenue is based on the size of the practice 09:08 – Simplifeye is also HIPAA compliant chat 09:28 – Simplifeye started with the Apple watch 10:00 – Nathan had Laurence Girard on Episode 575 who talked about the HIPAA compliant chat 10:16 – Being HIPAA compliant is a huge advantage for you 10:20 – Doctors communicate with each other in an insecure manner 10:35 – The limited standard 10:56 – Doctors will pay a fee if they break the standard 11:29 – Simplifeye always tries to be transparent 11:46 – Having Simplifeye can make doctors feel better in their daily processes 11:53 – Simplifeye just passed 1000 office signups 12:03 – MRR 12:44 – Simplifeye has 90% annual retention 13:24 – Team size is 13 14:42 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Doctors feel more comfortable using HIPAA compliant products and services. You have to trust your product in order to take that leap from the corporate world. Enjoy what you’re doing and believe that you WILL be successful. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
18:1307/07/2017
712: How To Use a Distribution Channel to Get 200 Customers Paying $15k per Year
Seymour Duncker. He’s the co-founder and CEO of a company called iCharts, the leader in cloud business intelligence and analytics and a seasoned entrepreneur who has been both a consumer and developer of visual analytics. Before founding iCharts, Seymour assisted SAP’s senior management in driving the company’s product strategy and was an early team member at 2 enterprise software startups before that. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Inevitable What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — NetSuite and Salesforce How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Spend a little more time outdoors” Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:26 – Nathan introduces Seymour to the show 03:12 – iCharts is a cloud-based business and intelligence analytics solution platform 03:24 – iCharts is a SaaS model 03:36 – iCharts partners with NetSuite which is a cloud-based EOP 03:48 – NetSuite uses iCharts as an embed BI (Business Intelligence) engine that powers iCharts for NetSuite’s customers 04:05 – iCharts is like an app inside NetSuite 04:55 – iCharts can take any kind of data and visually represent it so that people can interact and analyze the data 05:16 – The analogy of iCharts is like the car's’ navigation system which is separated from the car’s build 05:55 – iCharts considers SaaS businesses as an ecosystem and NetSuite is a large ecosystem 06:05 – iCharts has a mixed business model 06:24 – iCharts is also looking into exclusive partnerships with a SaaS platform to distribute iCharts 06:55 – Pricing starts at $15K per annum depending on the number of users on a platform 07:54 – Seymour arrived in the USA, in 2010 08:10 – Seymour is from Germany 08:50 – When Seymour had an idea for a cloud-based business intelligence platform, he was thinking about where to build it 09:27 – Back then, it was easier to sell in the USA than in Germany 10:10 – Being in California was also a great idea for Seymour’s wife, so they built iCharts in the USA 10:37 – Team size is 60 10:56 – Sales team has 20 people 11:35 – The majority of iCharts’ market 11:49 – iCharts will know the pain points of the users of NetSuite 12:53 – iCharts will already have an idea of the customer’s needs 13:45 – iCharts has around 200 customers 14:04 – iCharts started focusing on various markets 14:25 – iCharts has raised $23M to date but they were initially bootstrapped 15:07 – Churn is around 5-7% 16:20 – CAC 16:32 – iCharts is highly profitable from the initial time they closed a deal 17:04 – There’s an advantage of growing faster and burning yourself as you grow too fast 17:44 – At the end of the day, it’s all about having a high-functioning team that produces quality 18:04 – Average ARR 18:21 – iCharts also offers additional services for their larger customers 20:13 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Build your business wherever you’d like to—even if it means leaving your home country. Having a well-functioning team that produces QUALITY will drive your revenue and contribute to the success of your business. Make time for rest and vacations; this will relax and regenerate you. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
23:2506/07/2017
711: Bootrapping into Silicon Valley
Daniel Fagella. He started a mixed martial arts gym when he was an undergrad and sold it after getting a UPenn graduate degree in cognitive science. He did turn his grad school thesis on skill development into an ecommerce business that grew for 4 years, reaching $4.2M in top line sales and recently sold it for a million dollars with 90% paid upfront. He’s now using his funds for TechEmergence.com in order to influence global AI policy for the better. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Plutarch’s Lives What CEO do you follow? – Last bio he read was Marcus Aurelius’ Favorite online tool? — Asana How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Daniel would tell himself that dealing with the existential human condition could be done by contributing to a much bigger world Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:20 – Nathan introduces Dan to the show 02:08 – Dan was studying skill development and goal setting science in psychology for his undergrad 02:17 – Schooling was expensive; Dan decided that he’d rather use himself as a skill development guinea pig than a pizza deliverer 02:40 – Dan started teaching and making money at the back of a carpet store 03:11 – Dan’s jiujitsu gym was the smallest business back then 04:03 – Dan sold the gym after 3-4 years with $250K ARR 04:14 – Dan was 25 when he sold the gym 04:41 – The membership fee was $157 05:07 – Dan sold it for over $100K with 10% upfront to his right-hand and friend 05:45 – The business ran for over 2-3 years after that 06:05 – Dan took $30K from the $113K 06:36 – Dan was also making $20K a month selling martial arts instructional resources online 07:09 – Dan was using Infusionsoft for his e-commerce business, Science of Skill 07:56 – The e-commerce was doing around $200K top line 08:42 – The biggest cost for Science of Skill was on merchant processing, customer acquisition, advertising and affiliates 09:26 – Dan likes to spend half of his CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) on acquisition 09:42 – The CLV for membership programs were around $100 and affiliates $50-60 10:00 – One of the affiliates was Survival Frog of Byron 10:23 – Byron drove Science of Skill into 6-figures 10:44 – Dan was paying affiliates upfront 11:15 – Byron of Survival Frog was on Episode 395 11:44 – There are agencies who get onto their email list by paying 12:14 – One of the agencies is com 13:02 – Finding the right people to advertise and won’t tag you as spam 13:11 – Dan will find firearm sites in com—go through the website owners and email them to find the right people to target 14:11 – Dan sold Science of Skill in February 2017 for a little over a million dollars 14:22 – Science of Skill was valued by the multiple of net 15:11 – Science of Skill revenue in 2016 16:27 – Dan’s ultimate goal 16:31 – The buyers are a private group of 2 buyers in Ohio who previously ran SaaS businesses then sold them to the government 17:05 – Science of Skill should be at Inc 500 for 2016 17:13 – Dan sold Science of Skill because he believed he has better and bigger things to do in life 17:25 – Dan’s core objective involves the global conversation of neuroscience and AI 17:48 – TechEmergence focuses on the business applications of AI 18:08 – TechEmergence is not making money, but will make money primarily through advertising 19:09 – The goal now is to scale and make traction 19:21 – Current cash burn 20:05 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: You can start your business literally anywhere. Focus on your goals and objectives, even if it means having to burn cash. The future will probably evolve around n_euroscience and AI. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
22:4405/07/2017
710: How This SaaS Company is Using $20 Million to Scale
Allan Willie. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio, a software-as-a-service dashboard company with over 8500 paying customers including Jet.com, Zendesk, Aviva and Ikea. He previously co-founded a company called Espial, an internet device software firm that is now publicly traded on TSX. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and 2 daughters. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Lead by Greatness What CEO do you follow? – Tobias Lütke Favorite online tool? — SEO Plus Chrome plug in and Owler How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6.5-7.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Listen, build something of value and then see if you could raise money” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:07 – Nathan introduces Allan to the show 01:50 – All of the meeting rooms in Klipfolio’s office have different wallpaper 02:12 – Klipfolio is an online, cloud-based, dashboard vendor 02:18 – Klipfolio works with mid-sized businesses who use them for everything 02:40 – Nathan uses Klipfolio quite aggressively, especially for his Facebook live streams 04:17 – When Allan was last on The Top, he was passing 7K customers—now he has 8500 customers 04:36 – In January, Klipfolio announced a $12M raise which was an insight round from existing investors 05:14 – The initial round was to raise an external round 05:43 – “We did use market to validate” 06:12 – Klipfolio had verbal offers that were lucrative 06:40 – The valuation were multiples for some of the terms 07:00 – Klipfolio also had some acquisition discussions 08:08 – Allan won’t call the acquisition discussions offers, because it would still have to go through a lot 08:59 – In every acquisition discussion, you want to layer how much information to present to another company 09:35- Customers usually get the $70 plan for the first month, then move up to $150 in a year 10:10 – Some of the customers are partners who can pay directly or pay as a partner 10:24 – 30% of Klipfolio’s income come from their partner channels 10:35 – Last month revenue was $500-600K 11:16 – Klipfolio’s valuation was between $700-800K 11:25 – Some of the VCs that Allan has talked to are putting terms in place with a higher valuation 11:47 – You have to sustain your valuation to get into the next round 12:34 – Anything on Klipfolio is being tracked 13:15 – The weirdest use case 13:25 – There are NGOs who use Klipfolio to push some of their metrics out 13:34 – Red Cross uses Klipfolio for flooding, zika virus and other stuff that is happening in Africa 14:11 – Churn has gone up slightly 14:35 – Klipfolio started paid ads for $120K a month 14:41 – Klipfolio has a blog about the lessons they’ve learned from Facebook Ads 15:24 – One of the cons of ads is that the conversion rate drops and churn goes up—which is normal 15:40 – CAC 15:54 – LTV 16:05 – LTV to CAC is still relatively healthy 16:26 – Team size is around 90 16:47 – The team is moving to a new space in November 18:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Maintain your valuation in order to get into the next round. Not all acquisition talks are considered offers. A company of great value has a better chance of raising money and getting acquired down the road. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
22:2204/07/2017
709: 17,000 Using This To Manage Wardrobe Efficiently
Blake Smith. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Cladwell, a clothing company that doesn’t sell clothing. His goal is to fight for sustainability and human labor practices by enabling people to buy fewer, but better clothes. Blake was at The Top a year ago where he articulated that they passed 11,500 customers with each customer paying $6/month; so, they were doing about $70K MRR a year ago. They were at about 5% churn, monthly spending and at $17 to acquire new customers. They’re based in Cincinnati and they’ve raised about $1.8M and $100K in revenue. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Wooden on Leadership What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz Favorite online tool? — Calendly How many hours of sleep do you get?— 2 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Blake would tell himself the importance of following your curiosity as opposed to having a strategy or a plan Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:04 – Nathan introduces Blake to the show 01:59 – Cladwell’s current customers is around 17K in number 02:06 – Cladwell is an everyday styling app 02:50 – When you go to the Cladwell’s website, you’ll click “buy” 02:58 – Cladwell is also downloadable in the App store 03:12 – Cladwell is doing pricing tests 03:45 – Cladwell looks at other SaaS products that customers are paying for 04:02 – Cladwell also looks at other workout apps 04:21 – Cladwell is looking into charging $9 04:41 – “We’re going forward unless proven otherwise” 04:47 – Pricing tests never end, especially with SaaS 05:31 – Last month total revenue is around $60K 05:41 – Cladwell used to bill quarterly 05:49 – Cladwell is around 900K ARR 06:17 – 80% of Cladwell’s customers are using the web app on their mobile devices 06:42 – Last year’s revenue in the same month 07:19 – Marketing spend last year 07:32 – Cladwell has recently raised a $1.2M round 08:07 – 2016 total sales is $760K 09:35 – Blake explains how the app works on a daily basis 09:40 – Every morning, the Cladwell app gives a recommendation of what to wear 09:53 – Cladwell recommends 3 outfits basing on what’s in your closet and the daily weather 10:18 – Cladwell will also know what you wore for 3 days 10:55 – The more that you use the app, the better the experience is 11:35 – Majority of Cladwell’s users are working millennial moms 12:18 – People have tried Cladwell’s ideas before and onboarding was the biggest issue 12:33 – Cladwell did something similar to Google venture’s sprint design process 12:56 – Cladwell provides a feed of all the potential items in a person’s wardrobe 13:34 – A female customer will have an average of 60-70 pieces of clothing in her wardrobe 13:58 – The onboarding process is now easier for customers because of the feed 15:30 – Team size is around 15 16:02 – Cladwell’s currently spending is still TBD 16:18 – Churn rate is a bit high 16:50 – From the 17K customers, around 5K has downloaded the app 18:00 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Onboarding is one of the biggest challenges for a styling company, customers lose interest using the product. More and more millennial mothers are finding it hard to manage their time; having an app that will save them time daily is heaven sent. Follow your curiosity—it can lead you to something GREAT. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
20:3503/07/2017
708: $35M Raised to Tell IT Departments What Alerts Are Important
Assaf Resnick. He’s the founder and CEO of BigPanda, an algorithm-make IT operations platform that turns IT alert noise into insight, unifies fragmented operations and enables digital enterprises to attain dramatic or pretty high service levels. Prior to founding the company, he was an investor for Sequoia Capital where he focused on early stage companies across enterprise software, SaaS and the internet sector. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Goal What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Salesforce How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Start a company early” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:17 – Nathan introduces Assaf to the show 01:52 – Sometimes, Assaf would still ask himself why he left Sequoia 02:00 – Assaf spent 6 years in Sequoia and it was an opportunity of a lifetime 02:19 – Assaf started in Sequoia when he was 29 02:36 – Assaf was bitten by the entrepreneur bug, so he left Sequoia 03:30 – Assaf’s stayed in Sequoia for personal career growth 03:43 – Sequoia is different from other VC firms 04:31 – For Assaf, Sequoia expresses the combination of opportunities in the market 05:33 – Assaf is proud of the deals that he had made with Sequoia 06:00 – Assaf found Snaptu to be an interesting deal they invested in 07:00 – BigPanda automates the ability of human-beings and IT operations to keep up with data centers that are radically evolved 07:50 – The big part of IT spending usually goes to the engineers 08:00 – In the data centers, they have to keep the software and infrastructure that is radically transforming running 08:40 – A data company needs to have a handful of tools, data centers and servers 09:15 – One of BigPanda’s clients is a Fortune 50 and a large networking company 09:30 – The company now has SaaS offerings and gives the SLA (Service Level Agreement) that they promise to companies 10:15 – The company has teams of engineers in Ukraine, California and India that use 15 monitoring tools to see what is happening 10:37 – The company has 70K data points they need to keep track 11:05 – The amount of data engineers they need has become an issue 11:27 – The problems in the war room can be both preventative and reactionary 11:45 – BigPanda uses a lot machine learning and dynamic classroom instruction to get through the noise 12:10 – An alert can be a problem with the server and something that you can just leave out 13:31 – One should examine if the “if/then statements” are dynamic 13:45 – The “if/then statements” vary day by day, then variables change quickly 14:13 – BigPanda was launched in 2012 14:20 – BigPanda is a SaaS company which charges annually 14:45 – Pricing average 14:51 – BigPanda caters to very large companies 15:20 – Team size is 60 15:28 – BigPanda has raised almost $35M 15:46 – BigPanda has done a regional series B 16:08 – BigPanda partners with Sequoia, Mayfield and In Battery 16:28 – At the end of 2015, people started devaluing some unicorns 16:59 – When Assaf saw rain clouds forming, he thought it made sense to get a winter coat from a capital perspective 17:40 – BigPanda had plenty of pipelines 18:02 – Half of the company is based in Palo Alto and half is in Tel Aviv, Israel 19:03 – Half of the people are in engineering and product, the other half is marketing 19:49 – BigPanda is very disciplined with their model 20:39 – BigPanda has around 25 companies from Fortune 500 22:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: If you’ve committed to always being there for your client, you better follow through on that. No matter how many engineers you have, there’s always a chance of them missing a lapse in the data. Start your business as early as possible. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
26:5702/07/2017
707: Government Gives Him Power to Let Non-Accredited Investors Invest
Manny Fernandez. He’s a Stanford University educated Angel investor, serial entrepreneur and best-selling author featured on CNBC’s Make Me a Millionaire Inventor premier episode. He’s been successfully investing his own ideas as well as taking companies from startup to exit. Recently, he was named by INC magazine as one of the 33 entrepreneurs to watch in 2016. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich What CEO do you follow? – Steve Jobs Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? –“Wisdom and experience beats, no matter how [many] great talents you have” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:11 – Nathan introduces Manny to the show 01:51 – Manny’s first company was an investment property 02:10 – It was a 6-figure transaction 02:21 – Manny decided that he wanted to go from 1 investment to 10 02:39 – One of Manny’s most notable investments is TaskRabbit 02:58 – Manny is the founder of SF Angels which has 32 members 03:08 – The deal flow comes from others 03:30 – The funds for an Angel round is $250K per year 03:46 – As an Angel, you’re looking for the deal flow 04:46 – One of the members of SF Angels is an early investor of TaskRabbit and SF Angels was invited 05:00 – Angels can invest as an individual or as a group 05:32 – Everyone has different preferences 06:31 – Some of the investors in SF Angels are successful enough 07:01 – The potential of investing in SF Angels is different from real estate 07:11 – If you’re investing in something that is really working well, results are astronomical 07:47 – Manny suggests to invest only what you can afford to lose 07:56 – Everyone has different financial workflow and abilities 08:31 – Manny has put in greater than normal in angel investing 08:49 – Normal is around 2-5% 09:19 – DreamFunded allows everyday Americans to invest as small as $1 into a company 09:35 – DreamFunded is the first platform in Silicon Valley to receive the approval to allow non-accredited investors to invest, so they’re accepting accredited investors and ordinary people 10:03 – Manny has been on the screening community of TiE Angels 10:11 – Manny is good at doing his due-diligence 10:29 – DreamFunded applied as a registered funding portal 11:15 – Manny has personally vetted on the deals on DreamFunded 12:06 – DreamFunded has a legal disclosure where investors can see the minimum amount they have to close to in order to close the transaction 12:33 – The information is not readily available on the website 13:02 – Investors will get an email telling them the closing dates 13:23 – DreamFunded gets 5% upon closing and the 2%the company is offering 13:50 – There are over 30 companies that have closed deals in DreamFunded 13:56 – Over $35M total funds raised 14:07 – The non-accredited investor is still new 14:16 – DreamFunded has not released their total funds raised from non-accredited 14:36 – The first approval for non-accredited was received by DreamFunded in July 2016 14:54 – DreamFunded was launched fall 2014 15:01 – Average team size is 10 15:16 – DreamFunded’s model changes overtime 16:02 – A company can raise its target and at the same time, receive an investment from a big company 17:15 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Invest only on what you afford to lose. Investing in a company that is already working is smart, but venturing into other investment streams requires your due diligence. Listen to your mentors, they are mentors for a reason. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
19:4501/07/2017
706: This 31 Year Old Raised $1.3M To Help You Be More Efficient
Vinay Patankar. He’s the CEO of Process Street, the simplest way to manage your teams’ recurring processes and workflows. Vinay sets up new clients, onboard employees and manages content publishing with his tool. He also co-host the podcast Business Systems Explored where he deep dives into business systems with industry experts. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk, Zach Nelson and Marc Benioff Favorite online tool? — io How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “That you can make money on the internet” Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:50 – Nathan introduces Vinay to the show 01:28 – Process Street is a tool that helps companies build and manage their workflows and processes 01:34 – Process Street is a SaaS product, charging on a monthly or yearly subscription based on the number of users one has 01:44 – The vision is to make workflows easy 02:28 – Process Street is from an intuitive perspective 02:53 – Average customer pay 03:42 – Process Street has options for pricing and incentives for annual contracts 04:04 – Process Street was launched in 2013 as a side project 04:10 – Seed round was raised a year and a half ago 04:20 – Team size is 21 04:30 – Total raised was $1.3M 04:47 – Process Street went through Angel Cloud 05:10 – Nathan thinks that the one who will win the space is the one who is better at distribution 05:42 – Distribution is the key in finding a scalable sales process and getting the pricing right 05:57 – The space is very fragmented 06:34 – Vinay thinks they don’t need to beat the competition, they just need to grab enough volume of shares 06:52 – Process Street focuses on SEO 07:04 – They measure their rank from targeted keywords 07:28 – Process Street has a marketing team that helps with distribution 08:13 – SEO is cost-effective 08:35 – CAC from the SEO efforts 09:06 – MRPU 09:17 – Process Street doesn’t spend in other marketing channels 09:26 – Process Street invests in sales deeper into their funnels 10:00 – Expansion rate varies depending on the size of the customer 10:28 – Process Street has a healthy expansion revenue 11:26 – 15 of the team are focused on marketing 11:35 – Process Street is still working on their headcount expenses 11:56 – Process Street will adjust and optimize pricing 12:29 – Average number of customers 12:41 – MRR 13:03 – Process Street’s goal is to raise an A round at the first or second quarter of 2018 13:20 – Target MRR by the end of 2017 13:35 – Process Street has no paid acquisition 14:50 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The one that will scale in the project management space is the one that is better at distribution. You don’t always need to beat your competitors, just gain your shares and increase your volume. There is real money that can be made on the internet. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
18:4630/06/2017
705: With $8.8M Raised, Is This The Ultimate Machine Learning Tool?
Scott Clark. He’s the co-founder and CEO of SigOpt, a Y-Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz backed, optimization as a service startup. Scott has been applying after-learning technologies in industry and academia for years. He holds a PhD for applied mathematics and an MS in computer science from Cornell University and a BS degree in mathematics, physics and computational physics from Oregon State University. He was chosen as one of Forbes' 30 under 30 in 2016. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz and Phil Knight Favorite online tool? — Gmail and Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 If you could let your 20-year old self know one thing, what would it be? – Scott would tell himself that it doesn’t get easier, so set up habits and processes to make things sustainable when you have the time and ability to do it because that will definitely help once things ramp up Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show 01:25 – SigOpt is optimization as a service 01:27 – SigOpt helps companies build different, complex AI and machine learning pipelines 01:41 – SigOpt is a SaaS model and the subscription is based on the number of models per month 01:53 – Pricing starts at $2500 a month and enterprise starts at $10K a month 02:13 – Average monthly RPU 02:33 – SigOpt usually engages at the executive level 02:38 – People wanted to use AI for their businesses but couldn’t find the right person to do the work so they go with SigOpt 03:23 – One of SigOpt’s client is Prudential 03:31 – Insurance companies are augmenting their traditional methods to the new data that is being collected 03:48 – As their data increases, the need for the best possible performance increases 04:26 – What SigOpt does is different from the traditional machine learning as a service companies 04:41 – Scott shares a specific example of how SigOpt works with credit card companies 04:44 – Fraud detection has been around for decades 05:28 – SigOpt fine tunes different knobs and levers in the configuration parameters that makes the machine model work 06:15 – SigOpt focuses on black box optimization 07:45 – SigOpt relies on the domain expertise of the person at the specific firm to build a deep learning model 08:31 – SigOpt applies an ensemble of global optimization techniques to the problem so they can efficiently configure the system 09:20 – SigOpt suggests different curvatures 09:58 – SigOpt has raised $8.8M to date 10:30 – SigOpt never sees the underlying data 11:11 – The entire system is designed to be hands-off 11:43 – SigOpt was launched end of 2013 11:51 – Number of paying customers is around a dozen 12:18 – Average MRR 12:25 – SigOpt prefer annual deals 12:54 – No churn yet 13:14 – Team size is 13 13:35 – The capital raised was spent on the team and the enterprise sales efforts 13:54 – 3-4 of the team are in sales 14:05 – CAC 14:22 – They sometimes visit their customers 14:55 – Investors like to make big bets on the new technologies 15:33 – The goal for the series A money 16:33 – Average expenses 17:40 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The need for AI and machine-learning is growing fast and there’s not enough people who are qualified to develop these products. The headcount can eat up most of a company’s expenses—especially in the technology industry. Optimization services make a business more efficient leading to a less to none churn rate. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
20:4929/06/2017
704: A Son Saving His Mom With Health Tech Product That Recognizes Seizures
Eric Dolan. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Neutun. He has 5 years of startup experience and business management experience. He also has data science experience with a focus on product development and management. In 2014, his team received an award for Best Smartwatch App in the Hack the North Competition in Canada. Recently, Eric was named INC’s 30 under 30, a list that recognizes the best young CEOs in America. He received his bachelor in business administration from University of Western Ontario and his post graduate specialization certificate from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, New York University School of Business and John Hopkins University. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Mixmax How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Go more towards your business and tech side, that’s where you’re going to make more money” Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:50 – Nathan introduces Eric to the show 01:42 – Eric is a Canadian and has been in US for 1.5 years 02:11 – Eric is currently in Canada during the interview 02:35 – Neutun is a software that makes it easier for patients to keep track of chronic diseases 02:44 – Eric’s mom has epilepsy and it was difficult for them to manage the seizures and medications 03:06 – Neutun keeps track of the seizures and manages the medications on time 03:28 – Neutun is device-agnostic 03:37 – It allows users to use their existing smartphone to track 03:45 – Neutun makes money through lead generation 04:17 – Eric is looking at a million dollar runway for 2017 05:09 – Neutun’s revenue is predictable for a SaaS business 05:56 – Neutun’s initial model was a lead generator for pharmaceutical companies 06:02 – In the long term, Eric wanted Neutun to transition to a market-intelligence company 06:14 – Neutun wanted to address all chronic diseases 06:30 – Neutun has 10K organic users 07:15 – Neutun was launched late 2016 07:47 – People find Neutun mainly from word-of-mouth 08:18 – There are also doctors who are recommending Neutun 08:38 – Neutun makes money through scripts or prescriptions 09:08 – Average amount per script 10:23 – Neutun tries to benefit the user as much as possible 10:46 – Neutun also suggests sponsored medication 11:06 – Average medication expenses of a patient 11:42 – Neutun is almost similar with tracking steps 11:53 – Through Neutun’s algorithms and AI, it can detect a seizure 12:11 – Then the recording will start 12:44 – Tracking the seizure is important for doctors 12:58 – With Neutun’s data, doctors can prescribe more accurate medications 14:10 – The only way to prevent seizures is to do what doctors tell you to do and take the medications 14:37 – Neutun was initially bootstrapped 14:56 – Neutun has raised a million on a kiss convertible note 15:33 – Team size is 7 16:50 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: If patients can track their seizures accurately, doctors can prescribe a more appropriate prescription. The advancement in technology is benefitting the health industry in many ways. Go where you can earn well. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
19:5028/06/2017