Podcasts about mallard creatives

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Best podcasts about mallard creatives

Latest podcast episodes about mallard creatives

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
850: SaaS: How Promorepublic Went From $6k to $20k MRR

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2017 19:20


Max Percherskyi. He’s a passionate SaaS entrepreneur whose mission is to connect professional SaaS companies and startup hubs to help them form long-term relationships and good, win-win partnerships. Currently, he’s connecting angel institutional investors, cofounders, exceptional talent and partner companies across three different countries to make the PromoRepublic ventures succeed at a global scale. Prior to cofounding PromoRepublic, he worked in marketing agencies for ten years and was responsible for business development, digital marketing and sales. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Top 101 Growth Hacks What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin Favorite online tool? — WorkFlowly 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? – Max would tell himself that not all people will love him   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:37 – Nathan introduces Max to the show 02:22 – PromoRepublic is a social media content automation tool that helps SMBs create their social media presence 02:38 – PromoRepublic is a SaaS business 02:45 – Pricing starts at $15 a month for an annual package 02:55 – ACV is $20 a month 03:00 – Max was in Episode 403 03:27 – PromoRepublic will soon have a $100 plan 03:53 – CAC is now $150-170 04:18 – Paid channels spend varies every month 04:33 – Affiliate network is the one that is working now 05:28 – PromoRepublic has raised $1.85M in total 06:12 – Team size is 22 06:26 – PromoRepublic has 3 offices 07:30 – PromoRepublic hired a sales guy to sell their high value plans 08:29 – There’s commission for every plan sold 10:00 – PromoRepublic has around 5,500 customers, 3000 are from AppSumo 10:32 – Most of the customers from AppSumo just bought the product; some are active, some aren’t 12:33 – Last month’s MRR was $20K 12;54 – Logo churn is around 5.8% 14:07 – 2016 revenue was €110K 14:33 – 2017 total revenue will be around $300K 15:08 – PromoRepublic is going to receive a grant and will take an additional loan 17:25 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Your team size must align with your profitability. Paid advertising takes time—test to see which ads will work the best. Use your capital wisely.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
849: SaaS: Kinvey Acquired for $50m To Help Frontend Devs Be Backend Devs

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2017 25:35


Sravish Sridhar. He’s the VP and General Manager at Kinvey Progress and was previously the CEO and founder of Kinvey before it was acquired by Progress. He’s also an angel investor in multiple startups with successful exits. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – Matt Barbey Favorite online tool? — If This Then That 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 would never become a movie actor”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:50 – Nathan introduces Sravish to the show 02:18 – Kinvey’s acquisition closed on June 1st and was announced on June 28th 02:30 – Kinvey does “backend as a service”, which is a term that they coined 02:58 – Schneider Electric has a lot of apps that are used to interact with its hardware, employees and customers 03:13 – Kinvey is in charge of the backend features that an app needs 03:44 – “We make every frontend developer become a backend developer” 03:55 – Developers don’t have to learn the backend processes, they can simply drag and drop 04:07 – Kinvey has three types of customers: 04:10 – First, those who are building apps as a hobby or trial and pay nothing up to $200 a month 04:22 – Second, business edition customers who pay an average of $24K a year per application 04:44 – Lastly, enterprise edition customers who pay around 6 figures a year 05:03 – ACV is around $80K to $90K 05:24 – When Sravish came up with the idea for Kinvey, he knew it should be a venture-backed company 05:46 – Sravish funded the initial capital of $150K 06:06 – Kinvey has raised over $15M before the acquisition 06:30 – It took Kinvey 15 month to launch their product 06:43 – In the second year, they started to build their revenue 07:10 – In 2013, they were doing high 6-figures in revenue 07:24 – They broke their million dollar mark in 2014 07:54 – Sravish invested in startups to learn strategies and build his financial portfolio 09:20 – Sravish has three things he looks for when investing in a startup: 09:22 – The team’s relationship with each other 09:39 – The space of the startup 09:55 – The potential he has to help the startup to grow 10:40 – Kinvey has over 50 enterprise customers 12:54 – The acquisition of Kinvey by Progress was for $50M 13:13 – Sravish shares how the board and himself decided on the acquisition 14:40 – Sravish’s discussion with Progress 15:43 – Team size prior to acquisition was 44 and everyone stayed after the acquisition, current team size is 65-70 16:00 – Kinvey had multiple offers and it took them 2-3 months to decide 16:40 – Progress matched the best offer 17:00 – Kinvey and Progress are both based in Boston 17:58 – Kinvey had direct sales models and enterprise sales reps 18:10 – CAC is $95K to $100K and LTV is $2.1-2.2M 18:33 – Payback period is 13-14 months 19:04 – Kinvey has 98% retention rate 20:40 – Progress has been thoughtful with their employees’ restricted stock units (RSU) 23:40 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Choose the deal that will be a great fit for the long-term. Always consider the company and, most importantly, your team’s future when making decisions. Investing isn’t just about the financial gains, it’s about your ability to believe in and help a company grow and succeed.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
848: SaaS: Wistia Video King? $10m+ ARR, 10k+ Customers on Just $1m Raised!

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 19, 2017 20:58


Chris Savage. He’s the CEO and cofounder of Wistia, a leading video platform that enables business teams to harness the connective power of video. They help over 400K businesses connect better with their customers using video as the medium. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Masters of Doom What CEO do you follow? – Ben Chestnut Favorite online tool? — Quip 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? – “Persistence is the difference between success and failure”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:51 – Nathan introduces Chris to the show 02:17 – Wistia is a SaaS business 02:20 – Wistia is a platform where you can upload your videos and customize them for your site 02:49 – Wistia charges based on the number of videos 02:55 – ACV is $100 a month and it’s 25 cents per video 03:38 – Wistia is already 11 years old 04:09 – Wistia didn’t make money their first year 05:08 – Chris and his cofounder needed at least 15K a month to live 05:55 – Wistia made a mistake when they weren’t charging based on the storage 06:35 – Chris explains their decision to change their pricing 07:04 – Gross margin is in the 70s 07:43 – Total number of customers 08:00 – Wistia still has a free trial for 3 videos 08:05 – There are a few hundred thousand free users 09:21 – One the best things Wistia offers is inspirational and useful content for free accounts 10:05 – Wistia gets 15% of direct, attributable conversion from free accounts 10:30 – Wistia has raised two rounds with a total of $1M 11:09 – “We are very focused on long-term” 11:29 – Chris wants Wistia to be less complex for users 12:27 – Customer churn is 1.6% a month 12:47 – On a unit economic basis, Wistia is consistently expanding 13:11 – LTV is approaching $5K 13:20 – CAC 16:00 – Stretch goal in December of 2017 16:09 – Wistia is focused on profitability 17:06 – Wistia is doing a more than million dollars a month in revenue 17:22 – Wistia has raised less than what they’re making monthly 18:50 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Changing the price of your product won’t necessarily equate to profitability—balance is the key. Converting customers from free to paid takes a lot of testing and patience. Persistency is the difference between success and failure.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
847: SaaS: How DaPulse has 3x'ed Revenue YoY

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2017 21:08


Roy Mann. He’s a career entrepreneur, artist and 3D printing enthusiast. His experience is in the field of product development and marketing and before co-founding dapulse, Roy was part of Wix’s senior management team, which is a big, runway success. Prior to joining Wix, he founded the online social game, Save an Alien. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Avishai Abrahami Favorite online tool? — FullStory 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? – “Whatever you learn, you learn—and in the end, we all die”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:50 – Nathan introduces Roy to the show 02:27 – dapulse is a tool for managing operations for teams 02:38 – dapulse is a SaaS product 02:40 – dapulse has a free trial of 14 days 02:52 – ACV 04:00 – Roy was in Episode 404 of The Top 04:06 – Team size is 70 04:14 – 1/3 is in engineering and they’re expecting to grow to 100 this year 04:40 – Most of the team are in Israel and some are in the USA 05:00 – dapulse currently has 15K customers 05:15 – dapulse raised $25M at the start of 2017 05:34 – They’ve raised a total of $34M 06:13 – MRR is over $1M and $13M ARR 06:33 – dapulse is a B2B company, but their approach is like a B2C 07:06 – dapulse aims at individuals who will potentially purchase the product for their team 07:16 – dapulse has spent $1.5M just last month on online ads 07:45 – CAC 08:24 – Payback period 09:37 – dapulse’s campaign can attract a high number of customers 10:27 – Roy wants to build a product that fits everyone 10:42 – dapulse has a negative net revenue churn 11:18 – Monthly logo churn is between 1.5% to 2% 12:13 – Churn is calculated on the top line 13:48 – dapulse has -.05 net revenue churn 14:20 – dapulse sells to large companies through their Instagram ads 15:40 – dapulse doesn’t give an incentive for those who post about their user experience 16:47 – 2017 ARR goal is $17M 17:21 – December 2016 ARR is $6.5M 18:10 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: A B2C approach can still get you customers, even if you’re B2B company. If people gain value from your product and enjoy it, they will share about it. We all make mistakes, just make sure you learn and move on.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
846: SaaS: $50m Raised, $12m+ ARR To Incentivize Reviews and Influencers

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2017 19:10


Mark Organ. He’s the founder and CEO of Influitive, helping companies mobilize their advocates to produce massive increases in referral leads, reference calls, social media participation and more. He revolutionized B2B marketing and the founding CEO of Eloqua, the world leader in marketing automation software, which was acquired by Oracle for $871M. In between, he was the go-to marketing consultant for SaaS companies in North America and Asia.  Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Getting to Yes What CEO do you follow? – Dara Khosrowshahi Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn 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? – “How important it was to build new relationships with people”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Mark to the show 02:17 – Mark left Eloqua even before the acquisition 03:25 – It was the VCs that pushed Mark to leave 03:54 – Mark still had a great exit from the company 04:10 – Influitive helps companies grow by getting more value out of their happy customers 04:46 – Mark saw the importance of mobilized customers when he was still in Eloqua 05:13 – Influitive created communities where companies invite their customer advocates 05:51 – ACV is $50K annually 06:10 – Influitive currently has 270 customers 06:33 – ARR is close to $10M 06:51 – it would take 4-5 years for Influitive to reach their $100M ARR mark 07:02 – Influitive was founded in 2010 07:21 – Influitive has raised $50M 08:09 – Mark shares why he had to raise 09:13 – Influitive’s growth is faster than Eloqua’s 09:40 – 2016 revenue 10:05 – Influitive is averaging more than 50%, year-over-year growth 10:50 – Influitive is cash flow positive on some months 11:08 – Team size is 125 with 8 people in sales 11:22 – “I want all the sales guys to make money” 12:03 – Increased quotas make it impossible for salespeople to hit their numbers 12:55 – CAC is around $40K 14:10 – Payback period is a year to 15 months 17:01 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: VCs are there for a reason, trust them. Reaching one’s quotas takes a much longer time than it did a decade ago. Networking and relationships are crucial to your personal and business life.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
845: SaaS: 2014 $1.4m, Now $30m ARR how BirdEye Aiming To Be Hubspot 2.0

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2017 24:27


Naveen Gupta. He’s an entrepreneur with experience building startups and growing a hundred million dollar profit and loss statements. Before cofounding BirdEye, which is his current company, he held executive positions at RingCentral, Monster and Yahoo. He’s launched industry-leading products across advertising, consumer search, social media and monetization. He lives in Sunnyvale, California with his wife and two kids. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Predictable Revenue What CEO do you follow? – Brian Halligan Favorite online tool? — Outreach and ZoomInfo 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? – Naveen wished he would have taken more risks and pursued his dreams of starting a company   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Naveen to the show 02:19 – BirdEye is the leading SaaS product that helps businesses on their customer journey 02:54 – The two things that drive purchases are customer experience and business ratings 03:20 – BirdEye grows 160%, year-over-year in revenue 03:33 – BirdEye has 25K paying customers 04:40 – Business model is based on location and not per seat 05:20 – On average, a business would have 2-3 locations 05:47 – BirdEye caters from SMBs to enterprise businesses 06:07 – BirdEye has a broad platform which has different functionalities 07:42 – Pricing on SMBs start at $3K and $100K for enterprise per year 08:12 – ACV is around $5K 08:33 – 50% of the revenue is SMB, 30% mid-market enterprise and 20% for channels 09:00 – ACV is per location 09:24 – MRR is close to $2M 10:43 – BirdEye was launched in 2012 10:55 – They came up with the idea after looking for a surgeon with great reviews to take care of their mother 12:07 – BirdEye was initially bootstrapped 12:33 – BirdEye has raised a total of $33M 13:16 – Team size is 170 globally 13:48 – Around 60 are on engineering, 70 on the sales sides and the rest are in different departments 14:30 – BirdEye is investing heavily on hiring the best people 14:45 – CAC is around $1K for a new business 15:05 – Payback period is 3-4 months 15:21 – 60-70% of their contracts are paid up-front, annually 16:00 – Revenue churn 16:11 – Net churn is close to 0.5% 16:28 – BirdEye is still too young to calculate LTV 16:48 – Naveen’s estimate is 3-5 years 17:05 – Paid ads spent annually is $200K 17:55 – Gross margin is 85-90% 18:43 – To acquire new customers, they email potential clients and ask them if they want to know their competitors’ reputations and how they compare to them 19:24 – 2016 ARR was close to $13M and 2017 will be close to $30M 19:37 – 2015 ARR was $5M and 2014 was $1.5M 21:10 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Have a business model that will benefit not just your own company but your customers as well. Most people rely on business reviews before trying out a product or service. Hire the best people and you’ll have the best product and provide the best customer experience.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
844: SaaS: How Ignoring CAC Works for ~$100m ARR Expensify

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 15, 2017 26:21


David Barrett. He started programming at the early age of 6 and has been aspiring to become an expense report magnate ever since. He attended the University of Michigan where he worked in a virtual reality lab before moving to Texas to render 3D graphics engines for the video game industry. Next, he moved to California to join Travis of Uber in building a peer-to-peer file transfer technology called Red Swoosh, which was acquired by Akamai in 2007. In 2008, David left that company to start Expensify and has since been relieving the world’s frustration one expense report at a time. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Google Docs 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? – “It is possible for everyone else around you to be wrong and for you to be right”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:46 – Nathan introduces David to the show 02:38 – Expense reports have been overlooked 02:56 – David took the opportunity that will take care of expense reports 03:18 – Expense report is synonymous with any business 03:52 – David shares how his eagerness to help the homeless led him to create an expense report reimbursement app 05:09 – David was in Episode 655 of The Top 05:16 – Expensify isn’t looking to raise another round at the moment as they just raised $25M 05:23 – Expensify is currently profitable and not burning capital 05:27 – Team size is 120 05:33 – Expensify was founded in 2008 06:04 – Expensify currently has 42K customers 06:21 – Expensify also has millions of free users 06:49 – Pricing has a free account which offers 10 receipts a month and a paid account starts at $9 per active user 07:15 – Enterprise plans also start at $9 08:21 – ARR is still under $100M 09:44 – The expansion is the bulk of Expensify’s revenue growth 10:40 – Expensify has a $5 plan for a group 11:10 – Revenue retention is over 100% annually 11:24 – Every 3 years, a customer pays 500% more 12:55 – The most effective strategy to acquire customers is to hand their product to the individual employees and promote it within their own companies 14:14 – David shares how the payment shifts from the employee's personal card to the company’s expenses 16:16 – The target is to share to at least one other person 16:35 – Expensify doesn’t have any paid channels 16:40 – They do lots of conferences which is more for establishing brand leadership 17:25 – They spend a single digit million, annually, for their conference 17:32 – Their conference is ExpensiCon 18:00 – Only 100 selected people can join 19:35 – David believes that the cost of sales doesn’t equate to the cost of customer acquisition 21:38 – The most important decisions are not quantifiable 22:40 – David won’t sell Expensify for $300M 16:10 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Getting your own clients to refer you is the best way to grow your customer base. The most important decisions for your company are sometimes not quantifiable. Focus on the best possible brand or product you can offer.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
843: SaaS: Call Tracking Convirza on $10m ARR, Major Acquisition to Double Business

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 14, 2017 27:55


Jeremiah Wilson. He founded Convirza over 15 years ago. As the patent-holding inventor of The Maculon, the original, passive, remote conversation monitoring device and sales management system, he shaped the call tracking and marketing analytics industry. He’s positioned the capital raises and recent acquisition. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – 48 Laws of Power What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Salesforce App 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 I believed in myself more”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:51 – Nathan introduces Jeremiah to the show 02:22 – Convirza acquired a portion of their competitor’s assets to expand their customer base 02:56 – Jeremiah shares how they found out about the acquisition 03:29 – Call tracking is what drives the calls 04:00 – Convirza also listens to the calls with machine learning to check the quality of the call 04:46 – If a phrase that the sales agent used didn’t drive conversion, it should be changed 05:00 – Convirza tracks the attribution rate 06:20 – Convirza finds out which billboard led a prospect to call, the cost of the billboard and the actual sales made from those calls 06:54 – Convirza only focuses on where the lead came from and the conversation itself 07:01 – “Our objective is strictly the audio, strictly the call” 07:54 – Convirza is a SaaS business and charges a platform fee plus minutes 08:13 – ACV is around $600K 08:40 – ACV is per business 09:27 – Prior to Convirza, Jeremiah was a national trainer for a company in Ohio and was teaching people how to sell on the phone 10:35 – In 2000, salespeople were looking into live call recordings 11:20 – Jeremiah set-up the stick and the device that could plug into a computer and record calls 12:00 – Jeremiah started with 100 units which cost him $70K 12:20 – Convirza was launched in 2001 13:30 – Convirza had their first client within six months that paid $20K 13:47 – 2010 revenue is $3M 14:05 – Convirza listened to their clients in order to improve their product 14:17 – Convirza has raised $24M in total 14:46 – The investors are private investors 15:55 – Convirza has over a thousand customers 16:09 – Convirza has 50K unique businesses using them 16:42 – 2017 ARR goal is $10M 17:33 – Gross logo churn is 3% 17:44 – Convirza has been focused on having their net negative churn negative for the last 2 years 18:56 – Team size is 66 with 7 in sales and 25 as engineers 19:21 – They have a team of 40 in India who are augmented in their engineering 19:47 – Convirza has an office in Utah and California 20:08 – Pre-acquisition CAC is $1200 21:00 – From the acquisition, they gained around 500 customers (more than double of what they had) 21:23 – LTV is 4 years 21:41 – Convirza’s best source for customers is their webinars 21:52 – They partnered with similar associations and publications in the space to promote their webinars 22:54 – Payback period is 9 months 22:18 – Paid spend was around $6500 in July 2017 24:01 – Gross margin is 60% 24:24 – Convirza built their own platform 26:05 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Acquire a part of your competitor’s assets to grow your own business and customer base. Having another team in another country can be your secret key to success. Focus on one specific goal at a time.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
842: SaaS: Ukraine SEO Tool 3x MRR yoy from $20k July 2016 to $70k July 2017

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2017 21:47


Artem Borodatyuk. He’s the founder of NetPeak Group and cofounder of Seed Fund WannaBiz. He’s focused on the development of B2B SaaS product companies. His first SaaS company was an all-in-one SEO platform for professionals called Serpstat.com, with 2000 customers and 100K users. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – From Third World to First What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Google Spreadsheet 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? – “Find some experienced entrepreneur and mentor”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:44 – Nathan introduces Artem to the show 02:23 – Serpstat was born as a cure to a search tool that was built by Netpeak 03:00 – Netpeak is the biggest SEO agency in Eastern Europe 03:20 – Netpeak currently has 300 projects in 4 markets 03:38 – Netpeak was founded in 2007 and was initially bootstrapped 03:43 – They haven’t raised funds for the agency side of Netpeak 04:27 – 2016 revenue of the agency side of Netpeak was $5-$15M 04:50 – Serpstat was initially created to be used by Netpeak itself 05:35 – In April 2015, Serpstat became independent 07:00 – In 2016, Serpstat received $250K of funding for 15% equity from Digital Future, a local VC fund 07:41 – Serpstat will almost hit their $1M ARR mark 07:58 – July 2017 MRR 08:26 – Igor Gor is Serpstat’s evangelist; he markets their product 08:45 – Team size is 52 in Serpstat with 20 in marketing 09:25 – ACG is $69 09:39 – Total number of customers is between 1000 to 2000 paid customers 10:36 – Serpstat can be paid in monthly payments or a one-time payment 12:03 – Serpstat loses 1-3% of their users monthly 12:40 – CAC 13:50 – LTV 14:20 – Serpstat spends $2K monthly on AdWords and $1K on Facebook Ads 15:04 – Serpstat is based in Ukraine 15:38 – Serstat plans to expand globally soon 16:02 – Gross margin is around 89% 17:23 – In July of 2016, monthly revenue was $20K 17:54 – 2016 revenue is almost $190K 19:30 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Create a product that can be used by your own company; that way you can attest to its usability and value. Europe offers different recurring payment plans than what is offered in the US. Take an offered fund as an opportunity to grow your company.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
841: Why He Can Charge $1000 CPMs, $31m Raised Helping Create Better Content

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 12, 2017 22:44


Shaul Olmert. He’s the cofounder and CEO of Playbuzz, an award-winning, storytelling platform that empowers publishers, brands, and agencies worldwide to create interactive content for editorial and commercial purposes. The world’s top publishers and brands worldwide use Playbuzz's desktop and mobile-friendly storytelling tools to improve audience engagement, optimize social sharing, increase site traffic and lengthen page-viewing time. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – N/A What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Evernote 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? – Shaul would have told himself that everybody else in the world is as clueless as he is   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Shaul to the show 02:25 – Playbuzz is a platform that helps make one’s storytelling more compelling and engaging 03:10 – Playbuzz's tools are completely free for publishers 03:20 – Playbuzz currently has tens of thousands of publishers 03:24 – Playbuzz has market leaders using their toolset 03:46 – Playbuzz makes money when publishers opt-in to their monetization program 04:11 – Advertisers want to present their brands to the audience that is listening 04:54 – Playbuzz's revenue is in the dozens of millions on ad spent on the platform 05:18 – Playbuzz's volume is high and consistently growing 06:10 – Playbuzz manages the distribution of the content items which will benefit the publishers as well 07:00 – Nathan summarizes how he understands Playbuzz to work 07:50 – The brands create their content and Playbuzz shares them on their partnered website 08:16 – Playbuzz charges per view 08:35 – The charge depends on how long their content is being viewed or listened to 10:00 – Playbuzz is creating new ways to grow their engagement 10:37 – Playbuzz has two revenue streams 11:53 – Playbuzz has been around for 5 years and has been in the market for 3 years 12:36 – Playbuzz has 2 founders and 170 employees globally 12:54 – Playbuzz has raised a total of $31M 13:40 – Shaul shares what he thinks of Disney’s efforts in advertising 14:43 – “The more value we create, the more our value increases” 14:54 – Playbuzz is still burning capital and scaling up 15:10 – Playbuzz is constantly creating to optimize data 15:36 – The majority of the funds go to engineering, product and data 15:49 – Shaul believes that eventually they will win the war by having superior technology 16:50 – Shaul shares his take on using voice searches for collecting data 17:30 – Shaul is looking to take podcasts to a wider audience 19:15 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Content is KING. No matter how good your content is, if you can’t share it with an audience, it’s useless. Voice searches will change how we do advertising, and this change will happen soon.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
840: Ad Tech: $400m from Apple? Deal! FlashTalking Doing 15-40b Impressions/month

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2017 22:40


John Nardone. He’s the CEO of Flashtalking, a first generation adtech pioneer. He served as the founding board member of the Internet Advertising Bureau. He’s known for his groundbreaking work at Pepsi, Modern Media and Marketing Management Analytics and received the Adtech Industry Achievement Award in 2012. As CEO at [x+1], he helped transform that business into a top-rated data management platform or DMP. Rocket Fuel acquired the company for $230M in 2014. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Getting Naked What CEO do you follow? – Steve Jobs Favorite online tool? — Amazon and eBay 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 might have started having kids a little bit sooner”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:52 – Nathan introduces John to the show 02:40 – Flashtalking was a partner of [x+1], currently known as Rocket Fuel 02:45 – Days after the acquisition, John got an offer to work with Flashtalking 03:23 – John decided to give-in to the offer and saw Flashtalking as an opportunity to stay in adtech 03:39 – John joined Flashtalking in 2015 03:53 – Flashtalking had been around since 2000 and it was bootstrapped by the founders 04:25 – Flashtalking came to the US in 2010 05:36 – John joined the company, mainly because of his vision and excitement for innovation and marketing 06:43 – John has bought a part of the company 07:03 – Flashtalking uses real-time data to personalize the communication with each consumer 07:10 – A simple example is retargeting 08:04 – Retargeting can happen on multiple devices 08:27 – One of Flashtalking’s clients is Walmart 08:56 – Flashtalking analyzes the customer’s behavior on a website 09:54 – Smartphone and current devices have changed the way we consume digital marketing 10:50 – Location data is included with the data that Flashtalking gathers 11:13 – Flashtalking makes the decision for what kinds of ads to show to the customers 11:30 – Flashtalking charges per CPM 12:05 – There are discounts for those with bigger volumes 13:01 – Flashtalking is not currently using AI technology 14:10 – Flashtalking currently has 40 clients that account for 80% of the revenue 14:26 – Flashtalking focuses on their big, global clients 15:20 – Average volume of impressions is 15B to 40B a month depending on the season 17:00 – Flashtalking focuses on helping their clients improve and get the experience that will drive their success metrics 17:50 – Team size is 280 globally 17:56 – Flashtalking hasn’t raised any capital aside from the buyout and it has been profitable since Day 1 19:10 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Your vision will lead you to the companies that will help you grow, and eventually change the world. Technology has significantly affected how we consume advertising. There are specific markets where AI technology can be used well.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
839: Marketplace: Zola Wedding Registry Passes $120m GMV Run Rate

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2017 25:21


Shan-Lyn Ma. She’s the CEO and co-founder of Zola. Launched in October 2013, Zola is an online wedding registry for millennials. In just three years, it has become the fastest growing wedding registry in the country, seeing 10x revenue growth year-over-year and 3x growth in 2017. Over seven million guests have attended a Zola wedding and 350 million in gifts have been added by Zola couples. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – How to Create Products Customers Love What CEO do you follow? – Sheryl Sandberg Favorite online tool? — Headspace 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 stressing out about things do not make them better”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:47 – Nathan introduces Shan-Lyn to the show 02:32 – In Q4 of 2016, Zola reached $120M in GMV runway 03:30 – GMV is reflective of the number of wedding gifts that are given to couples when using Zola as a wedding registry 03:56 – Zola is an ecommerce business, it’s a typical retailer 04:40 – Most of the items offered in Zola are what the couples want as wedding gifts 04:50 – Zola has added Airbnb as this was requested by couples 05:20 – Zola takes a percentage from an Airbnb gift card purchased on Zola 06:14 – Zola goes after the brands that are usually requested by couples and some brands have reached out to Zola for their products to be on Zola’s website 06:54 – Since 2013, 300K couples have registered with Zola 07:25 – The number of new couples signed-up in 2016 08:10 – Over time, more and more couples are using Zola as their ONLY wedding registry 09:40 – More guests will buy from Zola if the couples are using Zola exclusively as their wedding registry 10:02 – Zola incentivizes couples by adding the gifts that they want 10:24 – There’s an additional feature where couples can bring any product to Zola 11:12 – First year revenue 11:38 – Zola had a seed round of funding of $500K in a convertible note 12:17 – Zola has raised additional capital with a total of $40M in VC funding 12:36 – Zola has passed through the typical startup life-cycle 14:14 – Paid ads spend is more than $100K 14:41 – The hot KPI that investors are looking for is the LTV:CAC ratio 15:51 – CAC depends on the channel and historical data of the channel’s performance 17:42 – “We are not trying to create more lifetime value” 18:30 – The challenge for Zola is getting newly engaged couples to find out about their services and sign-up for them 19:49 – Zola currently has over 50K products 20:22 – Zola just launched their new product, Zola Weddings, a free website for couples to manage their whole wedding 23:25 – The Famous Five   Key Points: Listen to your customers desires and needs and respond accordingly. LTV:CAC ratio is what investors are usually looking for in a company. Create more products that could be an extension of your existing products—this will encourage your clients to use your products more.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
838: SaaS: Conga Passes 9,000 Customers, $77m Raised for Documents, Contract, and Data Management

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2017 31:16


Matthew Schiltz. He’s an experienced, senior executive with a proven track record in building successful, high growth technology and cloud companies ranging from the private startup stage to public companies. He’s responsible for his current company, Conga, and its growth strategy which includes financing, driving global sales and expanding product offerings. His extensive executive management and leadership experience is driving strong company growth which has resulted in several Inc 500, Fast 50 and Top 100 Places to Work awards. Past CEO successes include Insightful Corporation, CourtLink, DocuSign, Tier 3 and Blue Box Group. He has received several industry accolades in recognition of his past successes and is considered an expert on software, technology, and cloud business practices. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People What CEO do you follow? – Dan Springer Favorite online tool? — Email 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? – Matt would let others know that SaaS technology is about the people   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:58 – Nathan introduces Matt to the show 03:07 – Matt is the first professional CEO hired for DocuSign 03:38 – Matt was also recruited by the board of Conga as their CEO 04:41 – Matt has worked with founders who are great in product and technology, but were not able to grow their company as a CEO 05:25 – The partnership with DocuSign’s founder was a successful experience 06:18 – Conga is one of the top 5 global ISV (Independent Software Vendors) in the Salesforce ecosystem 06:44 – Conga specializes in data and electronic contracts 06:57 – They take live, Salesforce data and turns it into dynamic documents that are automated 07:21 – Conga is pure SaaS play 07:45 – Renewal rate is astronomically high 08:08 – Conga has a negative revenue churn 08:44 – Conga has a mix of mid-market and enterprise customers 10:30 – The customers pay directly on the number of seats 11:05 – Customers can start with one product, then expand to five products 11:55 – Conga’s customer base is two thirds midmarket and one third enterprise 12:33 – Conga’s document generation product pricing starts at $200 monthly for 10 seats 12:59 – “It’s a pretty low risk threshold” 13:30 – The Salesforce AppExchange is the number one customer vehicle for Conga 16:06 – 80% of Conga’s customers regard them as offering a critical tool that they need to use 17:00 – Conga has over 9000 customers globally 17:30 – Conga is growing quickly 18:03 – Conga grew 200% last year and another 100% this year 19:59 – Conga is in a typical gross margin rate 20:10 – The majority of Conga is owned by Insight Venture Partners of New York 20:46 – Conga has announced Salesforce Ventures as a strategic investor in May 2017 21:15 – Matt shares how they decide which companies to acquire 21:50 – Is it a good strategic fit for Conga? 22:02 – Is it a great people fit? 22:30 – Conga has 250-500 employees 23:53 – Matt shares his thoughts on Conga taking the IPO route as a funding event 25:05 – DocuSign just announced their intention to go public 27:35 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Not all founders can grow their business; the right CEO can be the answer. The growth of a company isn’t based solely on the product, but the people who are behind it. The IPO route for funding is a fantastic place to start.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
837: SaaS: A Good Reason to Have Flat Growth at $200k MRR

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 8, 2017 17:41


Aseem Badshah. He’s the founder and CEO of Socedo which is a twenty person, B2B, social media demand generation company backed by Techstars Ventures, Vulcan Capital and Divergent Ventures. Before this company, he was the founder of Uptown Treehouse, a social media marketing agency working with brands like Uniqlo, Nike, Western Union and Lenovo. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella Favorite online tool? — Outreach 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? – “Be patient and focus, above all, on people”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:34 – Nathan introduces Aseem to the show 02:06 – Socedo helps B2B marketers find the relevant prospect on social media 02:37 – “The last 9 months have been all about efficiency” 02:47 – Socedo now has $4K in MRR per month per AE 03:42 – Socedo is now moving away from the outbound and ABM model 03:47 – Socedo targets SMB companies now 04:03 – Socedo has free trials on their website 04:18 – The point is to become a pipeline for their AEs 04:58 – Socedo is helping Pendo’s growth 05:08 – Socedo is looking at moving up their ACV 05:57 – Socedo helps B2B companies cut through the noise 06:24 – On the sales side, Socedo is more focused on selling to B2B as opposed to B2C companies 07:00 – Average MRR 07:23 – Aseem ties employee count to growth 07:45 – The idea of scaling too quickly isn’t really healthy 08:40 – Aseem wants to make sure that their focus is on the right segment of the market 10:00 – Everywhere in SaaS is crowded these days 10:21 – The outbound path is where Sodeco will bump into their competition 10:54 – Sodeco is specifically serving the B2B social media marketers who are underserved individuals 11:20 – Sodeco helps them grow their presence 12:34 – Hootsuite is great for marketers who are managing their content for their audience 13:00 – Sodeco finds and grows the audience by targeting the right prospects on social media 14:44 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Scaling up does NOT necessarily mean growing your team. Even though your market may be crowded, you can find a way to stand out. Managing your audience is a very different process from growing your audience.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
836: Crypto: $94m Raised to Be Enterprise Blockchain for Global Payments

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2017 25:09


Stefan Thomas. He’s the CTO of Ripple. He’s also the producer of the popular “What is Bitcoin?” video and the founder of the largest website for novice bitcoin users, WeUseCoins.com. He created a set of open-source bitcoin libraries called BitcoinJS, which today are maintained and used by Bitcoin businesses of all sizes including BitPay, Blockchain.info, BitAddress, Coinpunk and others. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Draw to Win What CEO do you follow? – Thomas Mcleod Favorite online tool? — StumbleUpon How many hours of sleep do you get?— 3 or 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Schedule your blocks of time. Clean up and separate your spaces. Tell yourself to stick to what you should be doing.   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:38 – Nathan introduces Stefan to the show 02:15 – Stefan got into crypto 7 years ago 02:22 – “What is Bitcoin?” video now has 10 million views and two versions 02:52 – Bitcoin is different from how current financial institutions work 03:27 – Blockchain has a lot of definitions and for Stefan, blockchain is a shared ledger 04:03 – With any technology, it is about how it can make a change that is beneficial to everyone 05:43 – Stefan currently focuses on their project, Inter Ledger, which is essentially a protocol that can tie different ledgers together 05:54 – It is an open project and Ripple is a contributor 06:44 – Some of the crypto users have gotten a little too mainstream 07:18 – People are now looking at the possibility of getting what they want without having to rely on clunky, shared ledgers 07:41 – Stefan sold WeUseCoins to a company who has invested in bitcoin 08:20 – Stefan didn’t make much from the exit 08:36 – Stefan is responsible for the technical vision of Ripple 09:00 – Ripple’s customers are mostly banks 09:05 – Banks license Ripple’s technology and software 09:33 – You can get the most from bitcoin technology without changing how financial institutions work 09:53 – Small banks can interoperate with other banks without going through huge hubs 10:04 – “Creating that efficiency by creating competition” 10:20 – Siam Commercial Bank in Thailand is one of Ripple’s customers 10:30 – Siam Commercial Bank and SBI Remit in Japan have partnered to license Ripple’s technology 10:40 – Thailand expats staying in Japan can now send money to Thailand through their partnership 12:18 – Shared ledgers are growing smaller and smaller with these new coins coming out and by private blockchains 12:27 – Stefan believes that the next interesting technology will be the interoperability of the blockchains and central ledgers 13:02 – Ripple has only been focused on payments, but there are hundreds of use cases for blockchain 13:28 – Payments is the underlying thing for any kind of asset movement 13:55 – Ripple is also focused on the crossing borders advantage to it 15:21 – Licensing fee of Ripple depends on their customers 16:21 – Team size is 170 16:36 – Ripple has raised $94M and has sold some digital assets 16:55 – Stefan joined Ripple before it was incorporated and he has equity 18:31 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Changes in technology are intended to make life better for the collective. With bitcoin technology, payments have become more efficient and convenient. The vision that you had years ago will definitely change overtime.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
835: $3m+ in Revenue, How to make a SaaS and Professional Service Model Work Together

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2017 20:27


Scott East. He founded his company MSIGHTS in 2004 to help marketers make better decisions with better data and reporting. His experience includes global ads and digital agencies of Fortune 20 telecom and AOL prior to founding MSIGHTS. He understands how to engage marketers as he has 20+ years in this area. His new book, The Cuttlefish Marketer: The Five Essential Traits of a Modern Marketer, focuses on helping marketers transform themselves into modern marketing leaders. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – E-Myth What CEO do you follow? – Jason Fried Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn Sales Navigator 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? – Scott wished he had focus more on “pull goals”, not “push goals”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:54 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show 02:38 – Scott wrote a book because it was on his bucket list 03:00 – Scott’s publisher is Advantage Media 03:46 – The book is now available on Amazon and Apple 04:06 – It has sold around a couple of hundreds of copies 04:20 – Scott worked on his book for 10 solid months 05:05 – MSIGHTS provides data management and performance reporting services for large marketing departments 05:21 – MSIGHTS’ primary model is a SaaS model and they charge based on the data they integrate 05:38 – “We giveaway licenses for free in our platform” 05:58 – Scott wants as many enterprise companies as possible to use their reporting for decision making 06:18 – MSIGHTS charges based on the volume that they’re integrating onto the system (in bulk) 07:00 – MSIGHTS’ professional service is a recurring service 07:40 – Scott shares why the SaaS model is different from a professional service, even if both services are recurring 08:24 – ACV is $250K per client 08:47 – MSIGHTS has 35 people 09:20 – Scott shares how the data they receive needs to be analyzed 10:15 – MSIGHTS integrated the data and added the translation key, but it took the founders more than an hour to decide if they would take it 11:03 – Scott self-funded the company 11:33 – MSIGHTS was officially launched in 2003 12:00 – First year revenue is around $150K 12:10 – 2013 revenue 12:31 – 2016 revenue was $3.21M 13:04 – Churn is less than 5% annually 13:30 – Some of their clients have been with MSIGHTS for five years plus 13:50 – MSIGHTS is still bootstrapped 14:15 – Blended gross margins is a low 85%, platform side is 80% plus and 70% on professional service 15:05 – Last month total revenue is around $264K 15:30 – CAC 15:54 – Payback period is around a month 17:53 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: If you want something and it’s within your reach, GO for it! Having a great product could mean you’re bootstrapped for years, even a decade. Professional services can be a recurring service.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
834: SaaS: He Hit 5x YoY Revenue Growth in Performance Marketing Space

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2017 21:06


Oscar Nelson. He’s the CEO of Musqot, the marketing technology and SaaS company he co-founded after spending 12 years in various marketing roles in small and large companies. Industry-wise, he’s had a mixed background from consulting, media, telecommunications and enterprise software. He considers himself a business generalist more than a specialist. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Five Dysfunctions of a Team What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin Favorite online tool? — DocuSign 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? – It is more important to focus on your cofounder than your business idea   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:52 – Nathan introduces Oscar to the show 02:18 – Musqot is a marketing performance management app 02:24 – Musqot helps their customers increase their marketing effectiveness and efficiency, enabling their marketing ROI 02:44 – ACV is around $25K annually 02:55 – Some customers pay 6 figures 03:04 – Musqot was founded in 2014 03:16 – On their second year, Musqot launched their beta product and just a year ago, they launched their real product 03:40 – Musqot was bootstrapped. They were able to sustain their first year without revenue through personal financial support and savings 04:05 – Oscar and his co-founder have initially put in around $100K for the company 04:47 – First year revenue 05:37 – 2017 target is $3M in ARR runway 06:12 – Musqot just recently passed their $100K MRR mark 07:06 – Musqot currently has 60 customers 08:14 – Musqot’s expansion is due to their support and onboarding efforts 09:13 – Team size is 25 with 20 full-time employees and 5 consultants 09:30 – 5 are in sales, 2 are in presales and onboarding, 1 in marketing and the rest are in development 10:45 – Musqot gets customers from different sources 11:00 – Musqot is on the Salesforce AppExchange 12:14 – Full weighted CAC 13:31 – Payback period is roughly a year or more 14:10 – Paid ads spend is around $20K monthly 14:50 – The bigger customers are happy and tend to stay longer than the smaller customers 15:32 – Logo churn is around 2% and revenue churn is negative 16:27 – Musqot has raised $1.2M 16:44 – Musqot’s HQ is in Stockholm, Sweden and Bangalore, India 17:40 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: A startup can thrive through personal savings and financial support if need be. Share your business ideas with your business partner and make sure that your thoughts and visions for the company are aligned. Plan carefully where you will place your paid ads.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
833: SaaS: Almost Broke, Pivots 2013, Now $5m+ in ARR in Social Hashtag Tracking Space

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2017 21:49


Tim Sae Koo. He’s a 26-year old, LA-based native residing currently in San Francisco, California. He’s dreamed to become the first Asian American president of the United States to solve impactful problems with a purpose. He found his legacy rules to be inefficient. He studied entrepreneurship at University of Southern California and graduated early to naively start a company and fulfill his original life mission. His company is TINT. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Delivering Happiness What CEO do you follow? – Mark Cuban Favorite online tool? — Wunderlist 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? – “It’s okay to make mistakes because that’s how you’re going to learn”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:53 – Nathan introduces Tim to the show 02:26 – TINT is a marketing software platform that works with B2C brands 02:37 – They help source the best customer content on social media 03:11 – TINT is SaaS based 03:19 – ACV is from $1K to 5K a month or $12K to $60K a year 03:31 – The variations in price depend on different options including the number of hashtags to track 03:58 – They have a high base price 04:14 – The moderation feature can also be included using manual moderation or machine-learning 04:41 – TINT was launched in 2013 04:48 – TINT is completely bootstrapped 05:00 – Tim raised $370K for the previous company before pivoting to TINT 05:18 – The initial product was a consumer application and the market was quite saturated—this led to the pivot to TINT 05:55 – The initial company was getting zero revenue with 5K users and 3 team members 06:35 – Tim and the founders were paying themselves $36K a year 06:54 – Tim worked while he was still in college 07:35 – Keep your expenses low 07:44 – TINT’s team size is around 30 07:52 – TINT currently has 700 customers 08:23 – Average MRR is around $700K 08:50 – 2017 goal is to get around $7.5M in revenue 09:15 – 2016 ARR is around $5M and cash basis is around $6M 10:08 – Current ARR is around $5.5M 10:30 – Tim hasn’t raised capital yet because he thinks he won’t be a good CEO if he does that 10:36 – Tim identifies himself more as a founder than a CEO 11:32 – TINT has always been profitable 12:16 – CAC is around $2K 13:00 – TINT is still figuring out the best channel for them to invest more 13:38 – Paid ads is $10-15K a month 14:10 – In the beginning, Tim used to acquire more customers by offering to draw any animal 15:20 – The main idea is to make something that can bring a smile to someone’s face and that will help them remember Tim 15:35 – Team members are based in different states and other countries like Dubai, Brazil and London 15:50 – There’s now a big push for a technology investment in Dubai 16:23 – Tim is now paying himself something modest, but nothing too grand 16:39 – Tim has two co-founders and half of the company is owned by the team; the other half for investors 17:35 – Tim shared how he started entrepreneurship and his plans for the future 18:20 – Tim might consider a $30M acquisition at the moment 20:10 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: The most successful in the entrepreneurial world are not the ones who know how to expand their revenue; they are the ones who know how to reduce their expenses. Think about how you can make people happy—this will make you memorable. Be the leader, not the boss.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

48 Days to the Work You Love Internet Radio Show
Did you miss your window of opportunity?

48 Days to the Work You Love Internet Radio Show

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2017 48:24


Questions: Dan, I teach online and make $21 an hour from home As a freelance copywriter I'm able to pay myself $3,500 every 2 weeks I just got hired by a great Christian college and am enjoying it immensely Can you go over the best practices for approaching someone to do a JV campaign? Is there any way I can partner with you or get any inside advice on Amazon Merch? I am 64 years old and seem to be going backwards in my career.  Am I too old to change careers?   Good News Cliff Feightner poem: Are you someone employers all dreamOf being part of their teamOr just skin and bonesSetting negative tonesJust working on your own scheme Quotation: “First, think. Second, dream. Third, believe. And finally, dare.”  Walt Disney — Tweet This Episode – 11-03-17 Title: N/A Subtitle: N/A Summary: As Thanksgiving and Christmas are fast approaching, Dan shares success stories and good news from around the world! This week's theme is: did you miss your window of opportunity? The world is constantly changing in one way or another and this reminds us that we, too, need to be adept to change. Dan encourages listeners that we're never too old or too set in our ways to change. He gives us the tools to stop, reflect, and find the work that will be both meaningful and profitable. Sponsored By: FreshBooks is offering a 30 day, unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to https://www.freshbooks.com/48days Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:56 – Preview of Today's Show on “Did you miss your window of opportunity?” Dan, I teach online and make $21 an hour from home As a freelance copywriter, I'm able to pay myself $3,500 every 2 weeks I just got hired by a great Christian college and am enjoying it immensely Can you go over the best practices for approaching someone to do a JV campaign? Is there any way I can partner with you or get any inside advice on Amazon Merch? I am 64 years old and seem to be going backwards in my career. Am I too old to change careers? Good News “First, think. Second, dream. Third, believe. And finally, dare.” – Walt Disney 03:20 – A poem from Cliff Feightner: Are you someone employers all dream Of being part of their team Or just skin and bones Setting negative tones Just working on your own scheme [spp-timestamp time=”03:24″] – The 48 Days Eagles Apply now for membership. New members get a video from Dan and a free 48 Days Eagles shirt! [spp-timestamp time=”05:15″]– FreshBooks is offering a 30 day, unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to https://www.freshbooks.com/48days 07:35 – A Texan dentist gave his patient a new smile 07:42 – The lady came in for a wisdom tooth extraction but the dentist saw a damaged front tooth 08:02 – Turned out the woman was in an abusive situation 08:20 – Dentist fixed her tooth for free 08:46 – Being able to use your skills to bless someone is an amazing thing 08:56 – Anne Olivarez was in Walmart, waiting in line behind a guy who was trying to pay groceries via a gift card 09:09 – After swiping the card several times, it was rejected 09:16 – The man didn't have any other means to pay for the groceries 09:20 – This lady, Anne, told him to just swipe her card 09:37 – The video that was posted went viral 10:03 – Dan and Joanne went out to eat and noticed that a lady's credit card would not go through at the cashier 10:34 – Dan told Joanne what happened and they were ready to help 10:43 – The manager came over, they entered the card number manually and the payment went through 10:54 – Look for ways you can bless other people [spp-timestamp time=”11:19″] – 80% of Puerto Rico still has no electrical power and Elon Musk contacted the governor saying he'd help the government restore the island's electrical grid thru solar power 12:58 – This is from a listener from the Philippines 13:13 – She says “thanks” for the words of wisdom 13:32 – During her time off, she built a system for her side business so that she could focus on her work 13:52 – The blessings of this business is putting two young women through school 14:11 – This month, they're moving to a new home and have setup goals for 2018 14:50 – Josh Monen says, As a freelance copywriter I'm able to pay myself $3,500 every 2 weeks [spp-timestamp time=”16:38″] – Find him at com 17:02 – Josh now focuses on the jobs that have direct impact on sales or copywriting [spp-timestamp time=”18:16″] – Audio clip from Brian, he and his wife recently launched Well + Main 19:02 – With this business, they are able to give back by giving proceeds to clean water missions around the globe 20:22 – Shannon says, I just got hired by a great Christian college and am enjoying it immensely [spp-timestamp time=”21:59 “]– Sign up at com to get notices when new content is up — NO Spam 22:15 – Jonathan says, Dan, I teach online and make $21 an hour from home 22:35 – Jonathan works for VIP Kid, a company from China 22:29 – The job is entirely at home [spp-timestamp time=”23:07″] – The company is always hiring and if anybody is interested, contact Jonathan directly 23:55 – Dan shares a story about Karen who wants to spend time working with her horses so she teaches online too [spp-timestamp time=”24:34″] – To ask Dan a question for the podcast – AskDan or email at askdan@48Days.com 24:42 – Chris says, Is there anyway I can partner with you or get any inside advice on Amazon Merch? [spp-timestamp time=”25:34″] – Check this out to know more about the Amazon Merch Program provenamazoncourse.com/48days 26:40 – Dan has a 48 Days Amazon Merch account and if you have a design, Dan can put it up for you on Amazon—if it sells, profit will be split 28:10 – Dan shares examples on how you can profit from Amazon merch 31:37 – Mike sent a note, Can you go over the best practices for approaching someone to do a JV campaign? 32:15 – Dan illustrates how JV works through affiliate commissions [spp-timestamp time=”33:24″] – Pat Flynn is the biggest in this area! 33:50 – There are a lot of things Dan promotes without any affiliate links [spp-timestamp time=”35:46″] – The person who organizes these JV campaigns is Matt McWilliams 36:19 – Approach someone if you have an established relationship with them — nurture relationships first 37:11 – Message from Steve, I am 64 years old and seem to be going backwards in my career. Am I too old to change careers? 37:45 – Dan doesn't think you're too old to change careers 38:04 – Look inward first 40:01 – “Determine what it is you want to do” 40:26 – Things are changing quickly these days and what you did 10 years ago might be obsolete today 41:14 – “Everybody is confronted in having to start over” 42:21 – Look at how you can change 43:45 – Assess your interests and passions and be realistic about the talents that you have 46:26 – Review all these ideas today and check which one resonates with you best! 48:06 – Dan closes today's podcast  3 Key Points: Use the skills you already have to be a blessing to others. Giving money is only ONE way you can make a difference. Change is the only constant thing in this world; don't fear change but look at the ways you can change. Resources Mentioned: To ask Dan a question for the podcast – AskDan or email at askdan@48Days.com The 48 Days Eagles Apply now for membership. New members get a video from Dan and a free 48DaysEagles shirt! Book on Mentoring One Minute Mentoring: How to Find and Work With a Mentor–And Why You'll Benefit from Being One The podcast timestamps are now clickable. Just go to any 48 Days Podcast and click on the timestamp of your interest. You will instantly be taken to that portion of the audio podcast. FreshBooks is offering a 30 day, unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to https://www.freshbooks.com/48days Our 48 Days Coaching Mastery Program: https://store.48days.com/products/coaching-mastery-program Free Guide on Interview Questions from Tom Mucha: http://questionsforinterviewer.com/questions-to-ask-interviewer Amazon Merch Program provenamazoncourse.com/48days Credits: Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives     The post Did you miss your window of opportunity? appeared first on Official Site Dan Miller.

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
832: SaaS: Machine Learning and AI for Re-Engaging Customers, $250k ACV and $1.5m Raised

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2017 16:49


Victor Szczerba. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Yeti Data, solving big data problems for customers. Prior experience includes running product strategy at the data division at SAP. He was a McKinsey consultant and sales VP for Tadpole Computer and Utopy. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Zero to One and How to Win Friends and Influence People What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — 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? – “How to be patient”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:44 – Nathan introduces Victor to the show 02:14 – Yeti Data makes virtual data warehouses 02:30 – Yeti Data’s model is an enterprise SaaS model 02:45 – An average customer pays Yeti Data $250-500K a year 03:02 – “We love universal usage of our data with inside of the customer” 03:19 – Clients get data from their customers’ behavior 04:24 – AI is a blanket term and machine learning is something very specific 05:08 – Victor shares how machine learning works and they put in details manually 05:52 – In digital marketing, there are ways to understand the customer and their purchasing behavior, but it still can be tricky 06:47 – Yeti Data currently has around 5 customers 07:07 – Yeti Data is close to reaching an $800K, ARR mark 07:31 – Yeti Data was launched 3-4 years ago and was in development mode for the first few years 07:50 – Yeti Data raised capital for RND and they’ve been really lean 08:07 – It was a convertible note 08:31 – 4% interest and 10% discount with a teaser for the second round 09:18 – On pre-revenue, Yeti Data has 3 core people and some consultants 10:03 – Amazon and Walmart have a software that is similar to Yeti Data 10:39 – Some companies that are in competition with Yeti Data are IBM and HP 11:08 – Yeti Data created a way to virtualize their data connections 12:00 – It is still too early for Yeti Data to have their metrics 13:00 – A good ARR of a million bucks can get Yeti Data to a good series A 14:30 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Regardless of how congested your market is, you can still find a way to stand out. Use your competition as motivation to push harder. Focus in on what you’re good at.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
831: You Have $10k, Should You Defer or Deduct?

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2017 28:21


Garrett Gunderson. He’s the chief wealth architect at Wealth Factory and author of the New York Times’ bestseller, Killing Sacred Cows. Wealth Factory helps entrepreneurs optimize cash flow, streamline their finances and keep more of their hard-earned money so they can make more powerful investments in their best wealth sector—their business. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Scaling Up and The War of Art What CEO do you follow? – Rich Christiansen Favorite online tool? — OmniFocus 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? – “It will be okay and I don’t mean to stress as much as I did”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Garrett to the show 02:10 – It took Garrett two years of contemplating before writing Killing Sacred Cows 03:26 – Garrett worked with a publisher and the promotion firm Green Leaf 04:30 – Garrett is earning higher royalties for his book deal than the usual 05:00 – The possibility for bigger redistribution impacted the book deal 05:35 – Garrett was able to sell copies of the book even before it came out 06:10 – Garrett decided to have a publisher because it was more relevant than to self-publish 07:10 – Garrett self-published The Rockefellers last year 08:22 – Garrett co-published New Rules to Get Rich with Nightingale 08:45 – Garrett has self-published a few books which are more profitable than the one he made with the publisher 09:30 – Just because you’re starting a business doesn’t mean you know about investing 10:00 – For investing, investor DNA needs to be considered 10:04 – The core values, drivers and diversification 10:43 – There’s no magic product or magic investment 11:40 – Nathan shares how he deals with his real estate investments 12:10 – People think they need to invest because the money is there 12:40 – It is more important to invest in the RIGHT opportunity and something that we KNOW 13:50 – There are good, bad and lucky investors—but don’t rely on luck 14:37 – In terms of taxes: 14:42 – Never confuse deferral with deductions 16:00 – Garrett shares his stance on deferrals 16:54 – Tax should be a secondary consideration 18:00 – Garrett shares how he makes money 18:14 – Garrett works with entrepreneurs with $1-10M in ARR 19:10 – Garrett doesn’t offer asset management, they’re more on financial and cash flow management side 19:40 – Garrett’s co-founder passed away in 2006 from a plane crash 20:20 – Wealth Factory’s income is steady and they’ve raised their fees substantially 21:20 – “We’re the very best people” 21:31 – 2017 revenue goal 22:27 – Wealth Factory has 10 new customers monthly 22:37 – Team size is 20 24:04 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Investing and starting a business are two very different things. Deferrals are different than deductions. Billionaires don’t have the best financial advice.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
830: SaaS: With $20m Raised, $10m+ ARR, He's For Enterprise Customer Management on Social Media

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2017 24:41


Josh March. He’s the founder and CEO of Conversocial, a customer engagement solution that helps businesses increase their customer loyalty by enabling effortless, in-the-moment, customer service to social and mobile channels. The largest global firms including Google, Sprint, Hertz and Hyatt Hotels turn to his platform to deliver an amazing, social, first, customer service experience at a large scale. He previously founded the leading social application platform, iPlatform, one of the world’s first Facebook preferred developer which was acquired in 2012. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Four Steps to the Epiphany What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz Favorite online tool? — Twitter How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Be more self-aware and your own thinking can become your bias   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Josh to the show 02:51 – iPlatform was sold to Betapond in 2012 03:28 – The acquisition was a mix of cash and equity 03:53 – Conversocial is an enterprise SaaS product 04:20 – Conversocial follows up on customers through social media sites 04:38 – Conversocial collects messages from different social media channels and analyzes them 05:04 – Conversocial has raised $20M of venture capital 05:33 – Conversocial started from iPlatform 06:00 – Josh saw that they needed to move quickly with Conversocial, so they raised funds 06:29 – The first round was $2.5M and was a priced equity round 07:24 – Some of Conversocial’s customers were an upsell from iPlatform 07:34 – Team size is around 100 08:00 – Josh was initially involved with the product development of Conversocial and as they grew and hired great people, he began shifting more of his time to customer acquisition 09:33 – Their biggest customer pays around a million dollars annually 09:50 – Conversocial also has customers who pay from $25K to $200K 11:00 – Conversocial focuses on customer care 12:00 – The need for a customer contact center is greatly increasing 12:28 – Conversocial currently has 200 clients 13:30 – Conversocial has passed their $10M ARR mark 14:12 – Conversocial has a higher logo churn with small companies 14:47 – Conversocial’s net churn is around 120% 16:21 – Josh flies a lot just to meet customers 17:48 – Fully weighted CAC varies dramatically depending on the deals 18:24 – Payback period is around 18 months 18:43 – Josh won’t sell to Sprinklr 19:10 – Josh thinks Sprinklr’s vision is far off of Conversocial’s vision 20:30 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Focus on the needs of the customers and figure out how you can solve their problems. Social media is being used not only for marketing, but for customer service as well. An entrepreneur should go the “extra mile” just to get a client.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
829: SaaS: Will He Get $25m Valuation on $1m ARR in Predictive Analytics Space?

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2017 23:40


Christopher Day. He’s been a successful entrepreneur, having sold two companies to a Fortune 100 company before turning 40. He’s had businesses from residential painting to investment banking doing cross-border M&A transactions. Along the way, he has found time to mentor other entrepreneurs and participates in helping solve legislative issues to foster entrepreneurial growth in the State of Indiana. He’s now building a platform with DemandJump that is looking to solve prescriptive analytics and qualified traffic. The DemandJump team has discovered marketers only have 20% visibility of their actual ecosystem. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Jack Welch Favorite online tool? — One Pager 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? – “The power of relationships”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:48 – Nathan introduces Christopher to the show 02:36 – DemandJump sells their platform on a subscription basis 02:41 – They have annual subscriptions and professional services 03:10 – 82% of the revenue is from SaaS, 1% is from a one-time payment and the rest is for the other model 03:48 – DemandJump allows marketers to have 100% visibility of their competitive ecosystem, which is the first time this has been made possible in history 04:57 – They show marketers where to focus to capture traffic from their competitors 05:15 – Average annual contract value is $45K with beta customers 05:30 – Average annual contract value now is $100K -$250K 05:43 – DemandJump has started to work with mid-market companies 06:00 – Self-service for mid-market will be from $200 to hundred million 06:27 – DemandJump currently has 22 customers 06:50 – DemandJump is getting close to their million dollar revenue mark 07:11 – DemandJump was launched in 2015 07:36 – The traffic cloud was built in October 2016 08:05 – 2016 revenue was $165K 08:20 – MRR by December 2016 was $10K 08:30 – 2017 goal is to hit $1.5 in ARR 08:54 – DemandJump raised $4M with 18 Angel investors on their board 10:08 – DemandJump is looking to raise another $5M with a 15% pre-money valuation 11;12 – Christopher sold software companies before 12:00 – Annual logo churn is 8-9% 12:24 – Annual revenue churn is almost the same with logo churn 13:00 – CAC is around $10K 13:31 – Most of DemandJump’s customers pay annually upfront 13:55 – Paid marketing spend was around $5K 14:19 – 40% of DemandJump’s budget goes to sales and marketing 15:49 – They will double or triple their paid marketing spend because of their target 17:20 – Assumed LTV is 36 months 18:54 – Team headcount is 17 19:29 – They’re all based in Indiana 19:40 – 7 are in engineering, 3 focus on customer success, 3 on sales, 2 on marketing and a newly hired CFO 21:17 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Marketers will have a HUGE advantage if they have 100% visibility of their ecosystem. Paid marketing should be aligned to your target market, otherwise you’re just wasting your money. Relationships and networking is of the UTMOST importance.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
828: AdTech: MobFox Acquired for $14m by Matomy, Now $36m+ in Ad Spend Annually

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 30, 2017 16:20


Gil Klein from MobFox where he’s the managing director and a C-level executive at Matomy Media Group. Having joined the company in 2006, he’s been the member of the executive management team since 2014. He previously served as senior VP of media and senior VP of clients for this particular group. He holds an MBA in International Management from the College of Management in Israel. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Brian O’Kelley Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Travel even more than you already have, experiment, take a lot of risks and spend as much time as you can with your family   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:57 – Nathan introduces Gil to the show 02:30 – Matomy is a global performance company that holds a few entities 02:44 – Gil personally runs and oversees MobFox, which is an mobile in-app audience SSP acquired by Matomy in 2014 03:15 – The acquisition was for $12M in cash 03:30 – Gil was with Matomy since 2006 and he helped the company grow 04:00 – MobFox makes money when their clients make money 04:17 – The tools of MobFox are usually for the developers and publishers focused on the in-app space 04:48 – MobFox tries to contact the best demand partners in the space like YuMe, AppNexus and PocketMath 05:50 – In 2015, MobFox generated $18M of the transaction volume 06:10 – MobFox’s charges depend on the deals they have 06:32 – MobFox usually keeps 17-20% of the transaction 06:56 – MobFox has grown to 36% 07:09 – Gil believes that MobFox is currently in a great space 07:51 – In 2017, Gil’s goal is to stretch as much as he can 08:21 – MobFox is currently working with 20-30K publishers, 4K are SDK-based 09:13 – MobFox currently has 180 DSP (Demand Side Platforms) 09:35 – A single DSP can have a thousand advertisers 09:42 – “We connect to a programmatic player” 10:00 – Current headcount of MobFox is 73-74 10:11 – 50 are engineers and the rest in sales, retention, HR and finance 10:26 – MobFox team is global 11:29 – Gil can and will do anything to get new customers, like suddenly showing up with presents and asking for a meeting 12:23 – “I try to listen to the customer” 13:15 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Set numbers for your goals, but aim to SURPASS those numbers. Find the best partnerships that you can where you can mutually benefit each other. Don’t hesitate to TAKE risks!   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
827: VC: $140m FinTech, InsurTech Fund on How They Invest

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 29, 2017 20:19


Andrew Pitz. He’s an investment manager at Transamerica Ventures, the global venture capital fund of Transamerica that specializes in investing in insurtech, fintech and enterprise software companies. There, he has led the firm's investments in PolicyGenius, Digital Currency Group, Everplans, SmartAsset and Hixme. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Venture Deals What CEO do you follow? – Jonah Goodhart and Vinny Lingham Favorite online tool? — Fortunes Term Sheet, Mattermark Daily, Crunchbase Daily How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Andrew wished he had understood domain names and technology   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:42 – Nathan introduces Andrew to the show 02:16 – Transamerica and AEGON are global investment and insurance firms 02:56 – $140K is the fund size they’re currently working with 03:04 – The fund was already set-up from the beginning 03:25 – Their first fund was in 2014, in the European market 03:47 – They had 17 unique companies with 23 investments 04:25 – They don’t share company information with their parent company 04:39 – They don’t want the corporate parent to be involved in the business 05:25 – They haven’t had any exits yet 05:39 – Andrews shares fund-to-fund deals with FinTech Collective 06:38 – They put in a $2M check and the total funds raised were $75K to $100K 06:55 – They put in $1M to another fund to fund the deal they had 07:00 – Their first fund was around $10M 07:28 – FinTech Collective is based in New York 07:38 – Some of the fintech companies they’ve invested in are Art Invest, MoneyLion, 401k and Elephant Tech 08:24 – Andrew gets his salary and bonuses from the deals 08:50 – Andrew shares how their boss missed deals that are worth billions now 09:30 – There are instances where they need to let some deals pass 10:00 – In a week, they’re receiving hundreds of newsletters from different companies (around 5000 in a year) 10:13 – Andrew studies 500 deals and meets with around 250 11:10 – Initial check size was $1-5M as a follow on investor 11:34 – Andrew chooses PolicyGenius and Hixme 12:40 – Andrew thinks PolicyGenius will have a good exit 13:07 – H2O as an open source 13:33 – Red Hat pioneered the open source 14:36 – The goal is to invest in direct technology and create partnerships 14:54 – Andrew shares the kind of partnerships they’re looking for 15:14 – Andrew wanted to do work in Asia because of the many opportunities 17:05 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: There are thousands of companies created daily—you have to research and choose which one to invest into wisely. Forming partnerships is MORE important than monetary gain. Technology can take you anywhere.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
826: AdTech: Bootstrapped to $1m-$10m With 20% EBIDTA Margin

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2017 19:53


Christian Geissendoerfer. He’s the CEO of Yoose, the leading expert in location-based advertising in Asia and Europe. He’s an entrepreneur passionate about building businesses and leading teams. He recently started something parallel to Yoose which is a German Accelerator in Southeast Asia that helps German startups expand into that region. He loves living in Singapore and Vietnam, traveling the world and learning languages. He’s fluent in German, English, French and Spanish. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – A Monk and the Riddle What CEO do you follow? – CEO Collaborative Group Favorite online tool? — Xero and Zapier How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Do it over again”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:50 – Nathan introduces Christian to the show 02:28 – Yoose is a location-based mobile advertising company 02:36 – Yoose helps brands to target people in specific geographic locations 03:28 – Yoose is aggregating inventory from different mobile networks 04:05 – Yoose is buying the inventory for the company and running campaigns on specific locations 04:25 – Yoose is selling a premium product 04:42 – Yoose charges per CPM 04:59 – There’s current request for CPC charges 05:23 – Yoose was launched in 2008, in Berlin, and moved to Singapore in 2010 06:00 – 2016 revenue is in the million dollar figure range 06:08 – Team size is 15 and the majority are based in Vietnam 06:16 – Yoose is a bootstrapped business 07:12 – Yoose is working on a different platform based on audience profiles and attribution 08:10 – Customers use Yoose over their competitors because of the full service they offer 08:49 – Yoose is also geographically focused 09:12 – Yoose is currently working with the major media agencies and secondary agencies 09:35 – There are 25-30 agencies in total 09:47 – Yoose has partnerships in different countries that they serve too 10:32 – Yoose and the partners both take a cut from the charges 10:45 – “We are transparent on costs on both sides” 11:00 – The EBIT (Earnings Before Interests and Taxes) margin in the space vary 11:14 – Yoose is in the middle of the margin, depending on the country 11:43 – At this stage, Christian is putting the capital back into the company 12:46 – Christian has put all his personal money into starting Yoose 13:08 – Christian has worked in France prior to Yoose 13:43 – Christian initially wanted to build something similar to Tinder 15:33 – German Accelerator works with the German government and has been in the US market for 5 years, they’re now expanding to Southeast Asia 16:05 – Christian gets his salary from the government 17:32 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Be transparent with your partners, so you’ll gain their trust. This will also lead to more partnerships. The corporate world can help shape and grow your skills but don’t regret taking another route to succeed. Create something that you want, yourself.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
825: SaaS: 4 Founders, 150 Customers Paying $30k for Pipeline and Revenue Management

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 27, 2017 23:32


Bonnie Crater. She’s the CEO of Full Circle Insights. She’s a 5-time VP of marketing and executive at many software companies in Silicon Valley. She’s been named one of the 100 Most Influential Women by the Silicon Valley Business Journal and one of the Top 20 Women to Watch by Sales Lead Management Association. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – N/A What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff Favorite online tool? — Docusign How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “My path has been just fine”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:53 – Nathan introduces Bonnie to the show 02:24 – Full Circle Insights helps marketing people accurately measure and track the impact of their marketing campaigns on pipeline and revenue 02:50 – Full Circle Insights has an annual contract and usual contract which pays $30K a year 03:00 – Full Circle Insights launched their product in 2012, but it was started in 2010 03:10 – “Never start a company on December 31st” 03:18 – The IRS would want a tax return for 1 day of business 03:51 – Bonnie quit her VP of marketing job prior to Full Circle Insights 03:58 – Bonnie was invited by her friends to start Full Circle Insights and there are 4 founders 04:20 – Two of the founders were from Salesforce, including Bonnie 04:49 – Full Circle Insights is built on Salesforce 05:01 – Full Circle Insights was on Salesforce’s AppExchange 05:54 – Bonnie was a CEO in 2001, but it was a failure and she had to hire and fire a hundreds of people 07:35 – Bonnie was a VP of marketing a couple of times with different companies after the failure 08:04 – Full Circle Insights was initially bootstrapped, they raised $11M 08:14 – They raised money because they were going broke 08:21 – They were paying themselves 08:50 – First capital was raised in 2012 09:12 – Her first product was built from the money the founders had put in 09:32 – Dan, the CTO, is the developer 09:53 – Full Circle Insights has around 150 customers 10:12 – Team size is 35 10:38 – 8 in engineering and product, 12 in sales, 4-5 in marketing, 7-8 in customer success and some in accounting 11:17 – Full Circle Insights have broken around $4M in ARR 11:33 – Full Circle Insights’ model is to double, then triple 12:33 – Full Circle Insights has 90% renewal rate 12:40 – Churn is usually from acquisition and CMO changes 13:26 – Bonnie was hoping to have a 100% renewal rate in the coming years 14:37 – Full Circle Insights has a sales rep who has a puppy that he brought to the tradeshow 14:53 – The puppy became a booth magnet and they were able to acquire new customers 15:25 – Fully weighted CAC is $18-20K 15:30 – Payback period is less than 6 months 16:30 – Lowest marketing expenses is digital marketing and the biggest is from tradeshows and events 17:31 – LTV 18:30 – Full Circle Insights’ new VP of sales 19:01 – ARR target is $7M 20:50 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Never start your business on the last day of the year. We all make mistakes and we just have to learn from it—just don’t make the same mistake twice. Be creative and do what you need to do to draw new customers in.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
824: Brilliant Ad Tech Hedge: $8m Managed Services Firm RockerBox Adds $1k/mo SaaS Product

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2017 15:40


Ron Jacobson. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Rockerbox and Hindsight. Ron was a project manager at AppNexus and a proud McGill alumni. Follow him on Twitter. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Made in America What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Mark Cuban Favorite online tool? — Spectacle 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? – “There are going to be a lot of highs and there are going to be a lot of lows, but you just got too keep moving”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:36 – Nathan introduces Ron to the show 02:01 – Rockerbox is an online marketing technology company 02:09 – Hindsight is a secondary offering which is an off-site analytics platform, complementary to Rockerbox 02:28 – Rockerbox is a management service and Hindsight is the SaaS part 03:00 – Rockerbox was launched in early 2014 03:03 – Team size is 18 03:13 – Target customers are marketers 03:25 – Rockerbox has partnerships with publishers and data providers 04:40 – Through different partnerships, they’re able to know the source of potential customers 05:25 – First year revenue was $640K gross 05:30 – 2015: under $2M , 2016 was around $4M and it will probably be $8M this year 05:48 – 10% of the customers are on Hindsight 06:50 – In 2016, Rockerbox has served 50 customers 07:19 – Hindsight currently has around 13 customers with a MRR of $16K 07:43 – Some of Rockerbox’s customers are Vimeo and Vanguard 08:16 – CAC and LTV 08:26 – No logo and revenue churn yet 08:50 – Some small companies can’t scale and their pricing is “take it or leave it” 09:32 – 5 team members are focused on Hindsight 09:59 – Hindsight is self-funded and is based on Rockerbox 10:14 – Ron shares why they raised funding despite doubling Rockerbox’s ARR 11:05 – Ron has reached out to people whom he hasn’t talked to for decades just to acquire new customers 11:16 – Ron shares the content of his email 13:10 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Having fewer customers with a larger paywall works well, it allows you to focus more on your customers’ needs. Stick to your pricing and your target market. Through the highs and lows, just KEEP MOVING.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
823: SaaS: Pre Rev SF Based with $3.3m Raised Aiming to Help SMB's Build Mobile Apps, Will People Pay?

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 25, 2017 16:15


Arun Saigal. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Thunkable, a Ycombinator-backed startup in San Francisco. Thunkable is a platform that allows anyone to build their own mobile app without needing to know how to code. Prior to Thunkable, Arun was the lead android developer at Quizlet. He also worked at Khan Academy, Aspiring Minds and Google. He holds a BS in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – High Output Management What CEO do you follow? – Shantanu Narayen Favorite online tool? — Google Calendar How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-7.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Investing in others is one of the best ways to invest in yourself”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:26 – Nathan introduces Arun to the show 02:13 – Thunkable is a drag-and-drop tool to make a mobile app 02:23 – The space is quite crowded 03:08 – Thunkable is simple but powerful enough for non-coders to have a powerful app 03:20 – Thunkable is currently free 03:34 – Thunkable has raised $3.3M to date 03:59 – Arun shares why they’ve raised first before implementing a paywall 04:07 – They wanted to hire the team and have the platform that they needed with the money raised 04:30 – They’ll start charging in a few months 04:48 – Thunkable was launched in 2016 04:53 – Team size is 10 05:16 – Thunkable has turned on their revenue for a small stream 05:35 – The charge is a high 5-figures and is an annual contract 06:16 – Long-term model: charge for a premium product 06:36 – When they turn-on their features, that’s when Thunkable will charge 07:25 – Arun saw problems they didn’t know existed from those who were building an app for Thunkable 08:30 – Arun wants to help people who really need an app for free to solve their problems 09:00 – The conversations they’ll have with people who will use Thunkable for profit 09:24 – Target price is $20 a month 09:40 – Arun believes they can maintain profitability 10:14 – Arun believes that SMBs need Thunkable more than the enterprise businesses 11:03 – Thunkable’s goal is to capture most of the apps from the app store 12:38 – December 2017 MRR goal is $10K 14:16 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Assist those who need help in any way that you can. Choose your timing wisely when it comes to putting up your paywall. You learn and grow by investing in other people.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
822: SaaS: 25 Years Old and $250k+ in MRR, Here's Trick to Starting With No Developers

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2017 22:36


Ian Blair. He founded BuildFire while he was in college and has grown up to become one of the most successful app builders with 30 employees and close to 10K apps in the app store. His expertise is online marketing and growth hacking. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – David Skok and Jason Lemkin Favorite online tool? — Ahrefs How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Ian wished he would have taken a crash course on how the world actually works   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:55 – Nathan introduces Ian to the show 02:37 – BuildFire is a mobile app building platform that allows non-technical people to build their own app with no coding required 02:50 – BuildFire is like the WordPress for mobile app 03:18 – BuildFire allows customization 03:36 – Ian started BuildFire in college 03:40 – BuildFire has a reseller program 04:18 – In 2013, they were making $300K a year 04:32 – It was just for white labelling 04:42 – BuildFire was officially built with the technology in 2014 05:02 – BuildFire has raised $2.5M so far in a convertible note 05:46 – It was in 2015 when BuildFire broke their $1M a year mark 06:20 – In January of 2016, BuildFire 2.0 was launched where they added customization 06:48 – Since then, things took off 07:05 – In December 2016, BuildFire was doing a little less than $300K a month 07:33 – This year, BuildFire is developing 07:59 – BuildFire has an ongoing subscription fee and upfront payment 08:20 – BuildFire is getting close to $200K a month for their SaaS side 08:33 – BuildFire is now leaning more into their professional services 09:15 – Total number of customers 09:25 – Customers pay starts at $59, $149 or $499 a month 09:50 – Average a month is around $400 per customer 10:40 – Team size is 40 10:57 – Ian self-funded BuildFire initially 11:11 – Their current CTO started the initial development for BuildFire 12:00 – BuildFire gets customers mainly through online marketing 12:20 – Paid ads spend is around $10K a month 12:30 – BuildFire also has a lot of organic traffic and they’re going to tradeshows as well 13:48 – Monthly logo churn 14:25 – Revenue churn 14:50 – BuildFire is on its way to a more predictable revenue model by the end of 2017 15:31 – CAC 17:00 – SaaS businesses are capital intensive 20:00 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Listen to your customers and make adjustments to your products depending on their needs. Online marketing is a necessity for every businesses. College won’t teach you how the real world works.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
821: Crypto: $17m Raised to Speed Up Mining Blocks Using New "Validators"

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 23, 2017 17:48


Jae Kwon. After graduating from Cornell in 2005 with a BS degree in Computer Science, he worked as a developer at Alexa and Yelp and has co-founded iDonethis, a productivity service. He since worked on open-source projects including a CoffeeScript compiler and interpreter written in Javascript, an end-to-end encrypted email system called Scramble.io, and a cryptocurrency exchange. He invented and refined The Tendermint Consensus Algorithm with the aim of liberating the blockchain from the costs and drawbacks of proof-of-work mining. His mission is to make the technology more accessible in order to accelerate the adoption of decentralized ledger technology. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Snow Crash What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — GitHub and Chat 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? – “Find the problem and solve it”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:37 – Nathan introduces Jae to the show 02:46 – Bitcoin is something that you want to be small and accessible 03:10 – Blockchain is not owned by any entity but is still secure 03:24 – Tendermint is one of the engines that enable the creation of blockchain 04:05 – Tendermint’s partner in Europe is Ponton 04:46 – Tendermint was initially self-funded by Jae 05:03 – Jae saw the need to build Tendermint 05:08 – People were struggling with bitcoin fork 05:51 – Proof of work is how bitcoin secures itself, which is like a lottery system 06:40 – The transaction fee for block reward in bitcoin is much smaller 07:55 – Proof of work in the blockchain has its drawbacks 08:30 – The validators are the users of Tendermint—they validate the block and sign off and vote on what the next block should be 09:20 – Jae’s opinion on Dash’s masternode 09:50 – Cosmos is the internet of blockchain 10:18 – Jae has all in his money in Tendermint 10:31 – Team size is 20 10:40 – Tendermint was funded through a fundraiser 11:00 – “We avoid the term ICO because we don’t want to be associated with a security offering” 11:13 – Tendermint released their own token and they’ll create the cosmos hub 11:30 – The tokens will allow you to vote on the blockchain 12:10 – Tendermint had a cap of $17M 12:32 – They were accepting bitcoin and ether in exchange of an atom 13:00 – Part of the liquidation went to the Cosmos software and development 14:00 – Out of the $17M, less than $3M has been liquidated so far 15:47 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: The block reward in the blockchain allows people to not just earn tokens, but contribute as well. Keep your liquidation conservative and focus on the development of your product. If you see a problem and you think you can create the solution, DO IT.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
820: How to Bankrupt a $4m/yr Business then Relaunch as SaaS

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2017 19:27


Mateo Munoz. He’s the COO and managing director of the Americas for Duuzra or Duzzra Group. Mateo has been a crucial part of the management team that helped the company turnaround from group consultancy to its second series A and is leading it from its service-based model to a SaaS-based model. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Never Eat Alone What CEO do you follow? – Falon Fatemi Favorite online tool? — Glow Baby and Slack 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? – “Listen a little bit more”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:49 – Nathan introduces Mateo to the show 02:25 – Duuzra was launched in 2012 as an event technology company 02:35 – It was on prem and they’ve worked with different companies 02:58 – They saw where the market was going; so, they started a solution on the cloud 03:18 – They got a little bit of the model wrong and there was some mismanagement 03:31 – They’ve burned $3M from 2012-2015 03:40 – Their current CEO is from a venture-traditional bank 04:14 – Duuzra then rolled over and Mateo had to deal with the IRS because of their back taxes 04:52 – Duzzra Group is from UK 05:15 – Duzzra was opened up in USA as an Inc. founded by the original management group 06:12 – Duzzra had their Series A 06:45 – In 2016, Duzzra made over £2M 07:12 – Current team size is 30 from the 80 people in 2015 07:19 – Duzzra raised £2.3M in their series A 07:32 – 20 people are in the UK, the rest are remote and are from other countries 08:17 – Mateo was the VP in marketing and he also had his own advertising company 08:42 – Mateo was offered the MD role by the CEO, he also acquired some equity 09:11 – Series A was a typical venture, but it was done through private wealth 09:28 – They’re currently looking into raising £5M for series B 09:39 – Duzzra just released their SaaS product coming in as a beta product 10:05 – Target revenue for 2017 10:24 – Duzzra currently has a great team that is doing an amazing job 11:24 – The valuation will be important, but they also want the investors to be happy with their series B 12:30 – Duzzra has invested $400K on their new product 13:08 – An average pay per customer is $2500 a month 13:11 – The benchmark for Duzzra’s predictable revenue was the license for the actual event 13:39 – Duzzra is moving to a completely different model 13:51 – Duzzra is now a content delivery and engagement tool with analytics on the back end 13:58 – Applications can be packaged quickly and easily 14:36 – Duzzra currently has 10 paying customers for the SaaS side and they still have their full-service suite 15:13 – CAC is around $3500 17:15 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Sometimes you have to accept that there will be loss at times while building a company. If the business can maintain its credibility (even after burning millions) investors will still trust you and will invest. Listen to others and learn from them; don’t try to do it all on your own.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
819: AdTech: Bake Off Leads to Major Acquisition and $100m+ In Media Spend Under Management

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2017 22:44


Sandy Lohr. She’s a mother, wife, dog lover and leader of one of the best advertising technology teams in Silicon Beach. Growing up in the industry, she transitioned from client side to tech provider over 2 years ago. Her team strives daily to help local businesses globally find the best customer with her company, MatchCraft.   Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Jab Jab Jab Right Hook What CEO do you follow? – Susan Wojcicki Favorite online tool? — Accompany How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Be humble”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:44 – Nathan introduces Sandy to the show 02:18 – MatchCraft performs well and keeps its customers 02:46 – MatchCraft is a tech company in the adtech space 02:52 – 2018 will be MatchCraft’s 20th year 03:02 – MatchCraft matches buyers and sellers and has mastered the craft for doing so 03:10 – MatchCraft has 2 founders who came up with the strategy in 1998 03:21 – Sandy is the CEO and she joined MatchCraft 2 years ago 03:40 – MatchCraft acquired the client side of the company in 2014 03:50 – MatchCraft has a technology platform that helps run programmatic searches 04:15 – MatchCraft has been doing it a long time with scalability 04:50 – MatchCraft is a managing service and SaaS model 04:59 – The managing service is 70% of the business 05:46 – MatchCraft doesn’t work with any merchants 06:06 – Resellers of MatchCraft have over 6000 sales reps globally 06:23 – Resellers pay MatchCraft their media fee 06:35 – For the managing service, the fee is 17% to 12% depending on the volume 07:08 – MatchCraft has strategy discussions with their resellers 07:27 – The SaaS model varies, too 07:57 – MatchCraft provides ad copy in different languages and formats 08:50 – On the SaaS side, fees can go up to 7% of media spend depending on the volume 09:50 – MatchCraft is a privately held company 10:33 – Prior to MatchCraft, Sandy was on the client side and she was working for Advance Publications Inc. 11:30 – Sandy shares what she was doing prior to MatchCraft 13:15 – Advance Local Inc. bought MatchCraft and Sandy is now the active CEO in MatchCraft 14:08 – Sandy’s background has always been in marketing and she enjoys learning about technology everyday 14:25 – MatchCraft’s team size is nearly 100 and they promote diversity with their global offices 15:13 – MatchCraft doesn’t have to raise capital 15:39 – “We have extremely aggressive goals” 16:19 – MatchCraft has grown 26%, year over year 16:45 – MatchCraft has processed more than $100M ad spend annually 17:03 – Sandy’s opinion on the idea of Time being sold and what she would do if they buy one of Time’s brands 19:43 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: There’s nothing you cannot learn that you really WANT to learn. If your product is performing well, people will remain loyal to you and to your product/service. Acquiring a company requires your due diligence—make sure it’s WORTH it.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
818: AdTech: Spongecell Passes $13m+ ARR, Lets Old Customers Go, $26m Raised

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2017 21:21


Ben Kartzman. He’s the CEO and founder of Spongecell, one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. Earlier, Ben worked at venture-backed Guidester (now Searchandise.net) in product and business development. He graduated with honors from Carnegie Mellon with a dual BS in Human Computer Interaction and Information & Decision Systems. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Five Dysfunctions of a Team What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Mint 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 stress about your first job—just find things that are interesting for you, follow your passion and do those things   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:55 – Nathan introduces Ben to the show 02:25 – Spongecell is one of the fastest growing companies because they are revenue driven 02:36 – It was in 2009 when Spongecell first measured their revenue 03:15 – 2017 revenue goal 03:30 – $26M has been invested in the company and their largest investors is Safeguard 04:27 – Nathan shares about his first investor report 04:50 – Spongecell is a dynamic and creative company in the adtech space 04:55 – Spongecell works directly with marketers 05:21 – Spongecell’s technology manages different creative variations 05:49 – The variations can grow very quickly 06:04 – Spongecell sells licenses to a platform and beyond that, it is based on usage 06:25 – The licenses are billed monthly and their biggest client is spending $3M a year 06:47 – Spongecell is working with hundreds of customers 07:20 – Spongecell is moving to target more enterprise customers 07:39 – To fire clients, Spongecell raises the minimum 08:47 – People are leaving because of the changes in the service 09:30 – Usage-based charges per impression 10:00 – For every 50 cents CPM, a company would spend $50K with Spongecell 10:15 – Spongecell doesn’t get involved with the media side 10:49 – Most clients have an allocated budget to be spent on Spongecell 11:50 – Spongecell has a base amount and the average usage is based on how people are using it 12:06 – Spongecell was launched in 2006 and they raised their first round in the same year 12:41 – In 2009, they saw the need for programmatic media, which is the buying and selling of ads through technology 13:22 – Spongecell has 95 people on the team 13:53 – Average ARR 14:35 – Spongecell’s intuition with their platform is one of the reason why companies choose them 15:40 – Spongecell has promised to set up an Amazon database so clients can look up the data 16:50 – Fully weighted CAC is changing as they’re slowly transitioning, but it is more than $5K 17:43 – Ideal cohort of customers for Spongecell 19:20 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: It’s not easy to let go of customers—however, there are times where it’s the best decision to make for your company. The transition to focus on enterprise clients isn’t as quick or as easy as it seems. Find your passion and GO with it.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
817: SaaS: DemandBase Raises $65m More, $90m+ ARR, Leading ABM Space, IPO Next?

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2017 21:53


Chris Golec. He’s built three, successful, technology businesses in the last 18 years. Today, he’s the founder and CEO of Demandbase and his mission is to transform B2B advertising, marketing and sales through innovations and digital technology. Today, hundreds of blue chip enterprises across financial services, hi-tech, manufacturing, healthcare and telecom industries have adopted a demand based on the B2B marketing platform and account-based marketing technology to dramatically improve the way they acquire and grow customers. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Straight from the Gut What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch and Sundar Pichai Favorite online tool? — Slack 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? – Don't start a company just to NOT work for someone else   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:50 – Nathan introduces Chris to the show 02:28 – In the last two years, Chris has seen that there’s a dramatic increase in demand 03:13 – Chris is seeing 50% growth in revenue this year 03:22 – Demandbase just closed funding of $65M in May 2017, which is on top of the $90M they’ve raised 03:50 – Chris shares the reason that they’ve raised another round 03:53 – The ABM category 04:10 – Demandbase has developed new innovations 05:27 – ABM is more of a business process and Demandbase is much more of a platform 05:41 – Demandbase has multiple products integrated into their solution 06:10 – Demandbase was launched in 2007 06:22 – Demandbase currently has a lot of options 06:33 – Salesforce and Marketo are getting into the ABM category as well 08:25 – By the end of 2017, they’ll pass the $100M revenue mark 09:00 – Demandbase’s customer expansion 09:44 – Current customer count is around 400-600 09:57 – Team size is 300 10:17 – Demandbase will probably break even or be cashflow positive in Q1 or Q2 of 2018 10:55 – Demandbase is increasing investments ahead of plan and that allows them to generate new products 11:13 – It makes new customers come to the platform 11:44 – Demandbase has offices in San Francisco, Seattle, New York and London 12:25 – Demandbase has 50-60 quota-carrying reps, 20-25 in marketing, 10-15 HR and the rest are in data, R&D and engineering 13:20 – Account-based marketing allows you to save a lot of money 13:58 – Customers pay annually 14:09 – Payback period is around 12 months 14:33 – Chris is lenient with their payback period 15:13 – LTV 15:30 – Chris won’t barter just to acquire new customers 17:44 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Raising a large amount of capital will help develop the business quickly. Account-based marketing can save you more money. When you start a company, you’re working for EVERYONE.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
816: Crypto: With $1b+ Cap, DASH Wants to be a Better Venmo

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 18, 2017 25:35


Ryan Taylor. He’s currently the CEO of the Dash Core Team. Dash is an innovative digital currency that offers a number of improvements over bitcoin. Ryan is an expert in the payments industry with over 15 years of experience in financial services and technology. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Mastering Bitcoin What CEO do you follow? – Jack Welch Favorite online tool? — BitInfoCharts 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? – “Don’t worry about what everyone else has to say, follow what you really want to do”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:41 – Nathan introduces Ryan to the show 02:21 – Dash is based on the bitcoin code base and operates with the same level of security 02:28 – Dash has improved in 3 areas: 02:31 – First is governance that allows people to vote on changes 02:49 – Second area is that it’s self-funded 03:14 – Dash has incentives for people to contribute to the network 03:25 – Dash received its own funding from the network itself to operate 03:44 – There are masternode owners in Dash 05:48 – Team size is 50 05:55 – Dash currently has 15 open positions 06:44 – Dash has a more sophisticated economic system than the early coins 07:00 – Getting donations for funds is what is primarily happening in the bitcoin world 07:46 – Alot of them are ICOs that don’t have an ongoing source of revenue to sustain themselves 08:15 – Ryan’s opinion on Civic’s model 09:00 – Dash currently has 4500-4600 masternodes, which is a marketplace 09:39 – An owner can own more than 1 masternode 09:52 – There’s no way to know the number of masternode owners 11:22 – The outcome of a vote 11:30 – There are people who don’t vote, but there’s a minimum threshold 12:30 – Utility-wise, Dash is aiming to create a world-class payment system 12:39 – Some tokens are focused on smart contracts while Dash focuses on the payment 13:05 – Dash is launching their landmark product next year called Evolution 13:42 – Dash is aiming to make payments as convenient and secure as possible 14:31 – The treasury is where they allocate transaction fees and block rewards that all cryptocurrency collect 14:55 – With Dash, 45% goes to miners, 45% to infrastructure or masternode owners and 10% is set aside to the treasury 15:33 – The treasury pot currently has $1.2M and the network is extremely well-funded 16:20 – Dash incentivises each component of the network for it to remain functional 16:44 – Dash has integrations that they’ve funded 17:00 – Charlie Shrem just gave them a proposal to create a US debit card 17:14 – Dash has worked with Alt36 17:36 – Dash has funded cards 18:00 – Dash’s miner plus masternode combo allows things to be done instantly 19:42 – Ryan left his job at a multi-million dollar hedge fund to start Dash 19:50 – Ryan believes that there’s monetary and non-monetary rewards at stake with Dash 20:10 – Dash has the potential to bring cryptocurrency to a whole new audience 20:30 – Most of those involved have put their own stake into the network 21:29 – “My incentives are perfectly aligned with the network, the way it should be” 22:18 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: A blockchain company that uses its own network to fund itself remains self-sustaining and self-functioning. Most ICOs rely on donations for funds, which can be unstable. Ignore the noise—do what YOU want to do.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
815: SaaS: He's Replacing the iClicker Growing From $800k ARR to $1.5m ARR in 6 months

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2017 23:53


Johnny Warström. He’s the CEO and founder of Mentimeter. He’s an engineer from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He’s worked in 10 countries and visited over 60. He loves adventures and growing his company and he’s getting married soon. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Sebastian Siemiątkowski Favorite online tool? — Intercom 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? – “Do more crazy stuff”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:44 – Nathan introduces Johnny to the show 02:21 – Johnny founded Mentimeter with his three friends right out of university 02:38 – Mentimeter is an interactive presentation 03:00 – You can connect the audience's’ phones with the presentation and they can vote or participate 03:53 – Mentimeter has a free and premium model 04:04 – Mentimeter has over 10M users and 400K presenters who lead meetings 04:31 – The presenters are the ones who pay 04:50 – Mentimeter currently has 6K enterprise customers 05:03 – Mentimeter is purely a B2B SaaS 05:36 – Average customer pay per month is $150 a year 05:56 – Mentimeter also offers packages 06:13 – ARR is around $1.5M 06:47 – Mentimeter was launched in 2003 and was initially bootstrapped as a side project 07:00 – Johnny was part of Telecom and his co-founders were managing consultants 07:18 – It took them 2-3 months to build Mentimeter and they showed it to their bosses 07:40 – Mentimeter had their $350K angel round in 2004 and they have a total of $500K funds raised 07:52 – Team size is 16 and everyone is based in Stockholm 08:25 – Mentimeter has no paid activities and relies fully on organic growth 08:53 – The goal of Mentimeter is to be a mass market product 09:38 – Mentimeter has 1 in sales, 9 in product and 6 in marketing 10:27 – Mentimeter was part of 500 Startups last spring 11:17 – Fully weighted CAC 11:42 – Payback period is almost instant 12:20 – The team has been doing different experiments to increase customer engagement 13:48 – Mentimeter is on -5 net churn 14:22 – Mentimeter has a licensed model 14:51 – 1% monthly churn 15:18 – Some do not continue with their annual plan 15:44 – Mentimeter won’t give money back, but there’s a 40-day refund 17:00 – Johnny shares about a big, annual event in Europe that he’s a big fan of 17:00 – Mentimeter has a built-in, voting module which functions as a simulation for a contest 17:37 – Mentimeter received a lot of attention from that event 2 years ago 18:12 – 2017 revenue goal is $2.3M 18:17 – 2016 revenue was $800K 18:52 – Johnny targets $10M in ARR for 2019 19:22 – “We’re not looking for funding at the moment” 19:38 – Johnny isn’t interested in selling the company at the moment 21:33 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Keep an open mind—your side project can be your next successful business. Business ideas can come from the most unexpected of places—don’t discount your ideas. Success gained from organic traffic IS possible.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
814: My Hero: $3m+ In Revenue in SF, She's Resisted Funding While Helping Companies Digitally Transform

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 16, 2017 21:15


Neha Sampat. She’s the CEO of Built.io, a 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant Vendor and 2016 Gartner Cool Vendor that provides a digital business platform that helps organizations excel their digital transformation. She’s a recognized industry leader and has led product marketing, cloud computing and online experiences for Sun Microsystems and VMware. She’s a proponent of diversity and outspoken advocate for nurturing women leaders in her industry. She was named the San Francisco Business Times’ 40 Under 40 honoree and one of 50 Women in Tech Dominating Silicon Valley in 2015. She is part of SF Business Times 2017 List of Most Influential Women in Business. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Moneyball What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Alfred 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? – “Do not start questioning yourself, you’re confident now. Keep that confidence, anything else will just slow you down”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:42 – Nathan introduces Neha to the show 02:42 – Built is a digital transformation platform 02:37 – Neha started Built 10 years ago when digital transformation wasn’t a thing yet 03:21 – Built sells products to enterprise companies 03:24 – Built is mainly a SaaS model, but they also offer services and license deals that may not be SaaS 03:37 – Built started as a professional services company 03:44 – Built is still bootstrapped 03:59 – “We’re not a typical Silicon Valley company at all” 04:08 – Built was made based on the real needs of customers 04:27 – Team size is around 200, spread across India and San Francisco 04:50 – The team in India is mainly the R&D team and the professional services team 05:20 – Built has a real economic advantage having the majority of their team in India 05:49 – Built is in the remote part of Mumbai 06:16 – The office in India is where Neha’s co-founder’s family is from 06:48 – Neha shared how they started building their office with a not-so-good internet speed in India 08:12 – Built is slowly transitioning mainly to SaaS model 08:45 – First million dollar year was in 2013 09:13 – Neha started Built with her co-founder in 2007, and Neha took an advisory role at first 09:42 – Neha used her own money to fund Built 10:03 – Neha was very careful in handling her money 10:16 – When Neha and her co-founder started Built, they wanted it to be a product company 10:30 – Neha’s co-founder was from the integration space and gave her the idea of transitioning to Built in 2013 11:30 – Average customer pay per month is $50K 12:00 – Built currently has thousands of trial signups and hundreds of paying customers 12:30 – Neha is a certified sommelier and when they go to conferences, they’ll have wine tasting events to get new customers 13:40 – Gross logo churn 13:48 – Built has a 90% retention rate and has maintained it 14:12 – Fully weighted CAC and payback period is less than 10 months 14:43 – Built tries to always get paid cash upfront 15:10 – Gross margin 15:24 – Some of the services are used to fund their SaaS 16:06 – Most of the marketing is for conferences 16:54 – End of 2017 revenue goal 17:28 – They’re focusing on doubling their SaaS revenue 19:11 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: If you build a product that begins by addressing people’s needs, you will always have customers. Don’t raise funds if you don’t need to, staying bootstrapped is an advantage. Cash is king, always try to get paid upfront.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
813: AdTech: Scoota Raised $10m, $5m in Revenues, Looking at US Expansion for Programmatic Ad Platform

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2017 20:18


James Booth. He’s the founder of Scoota and he founded it in 2008. Prior to that, he was the co-founder and CEO of a company that led Europe’s rich media, providing infrastructure. He sold that to DoubleClick and Google back in 2007. He’s won numerous awards for his service to online advertising, an active Angel investor and a non-executive to a number of startups. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – Joe Zawadzki, Jeff Green and Robert Grazioli Favorite online tool? — Gmail 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? – James hoped he knew the internet was coming   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:50 – Nathan introduces James to the show 02:21 – The company that James exited was Tangozebra 02:26 – They found the name by accident and in 1999, they couldn’t find a .com address 03:17 – It was initially bootstrapped and they eventually raised capital 03:49 – They had trouble articulating what they were doing 04:24 – They raised $1.6M and part of the business went to a media group for 5 years before it was sold 04:49 – Tangozebra was sold to Google for $30M 05:15 – After the exit, James spent 6 months creating a business plan 06:19 – James launched Rockabox (now Scoota) in 2007 with his co-founder, Torie 06:51 – James had put in his own money at the start of the business 07:08 – To date, they’ve raised £12M 07:15 – Scoota is a technology company specializing in programmatic technology 07:40 – Scoota charges a low cost per thousand fee with a benchmark of £1.50 per thousand 08:05 – There’s also a managing service where Scoota takes a percentage 08:37 – Self-service is high-margin and media is low 09:17 – Two-thirds of the revenue comes from the self-service side 09:30 – Team size is 30—based in London and looking to open a New York office 09:53 – Scoota has global campaigns as well 10:41 – In the early days, James would make up all sorts of things just to get new customers 10:59 – In 1999, James had a conversation with a journalist where he spilled out mockups that gave them the exposure they needed 12:17 – Suddenly, there was a story about them 13:00 – Average number of customers 13:33 – 40 agencies and hundreds of brands 14:04 – It was in 2013 when Scoota broke their million dollar ARR mark 14:26 – In 2016, Scoota hit $10M from their managing service side 15:50 – Average ARR in 2016 was a little under $5M 17:33 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Digital advertising has improved tremendously profitable and continues to grow. Continue to create something even after your first, big exit. At the start of every business, you have to do what you can to get the first customer.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
812: Crypto: $3m Raised, He's Build the SSL for Cryptocurrency

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 14, 2017 21:51


Zooko Wilcox. He’s the creator of Zcash and has more than 20 years of experience in open decentralized systems, cryptography and information security along with startups in general. He’s recognized for his work in Digicash, Mojonation and many other things that he has worked on. He’s also the founder of Least Authority. If you’re following him on Twitter, you’ll know that he sometimes blog about health science and is very active in Twitter and the crypto space. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Constellation Games What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Signal 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 he would start learning by doing than learning from going to school”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:44 – Nathan introduces Zooko to the show 02:28 – Zcash is a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin 02:55 – Zcash is like the SSL version of bitcoin 03:20 – Zooko explains why additional security is needed in the crypto space 04:33 – Bitcoin is mainly used for payment transactions 04:40 – Other uses of blockchain is widely proliferating and apply the same technology 05:18 – In any transaction, you need to protect not only the identity of the person, but the transaction in the system as well 05:38 – In bitcoin, there’s no identity needed for the bitcoin address but the flow of funds—where the bitcoin is going may be visible to anyone who’s in the blockchain 06:55 – Zooko shares his partnership with JP Morgan for their blockchain security solution 07:00 – They had an open, public blockchain which is as global as bitcoin 07:26 – The Zcash blockchain has had huge success going around the world 07:50 – It was successful because it made it to the top tier of the blockchain system 08:50 – Zooko really wanted Zcash currency to be more available globally and they received more users from China 10:00 – Yunbi is one of the exchangers in China 10:45 – The strategy was to attract users from different places 11:13 – Some crypto projects have pre-money and some have ICOs or pre-sale 11:44 – The Zcash blockchain started mining, where people can get their own Zcash tokens 12:44 – Zooko changed the algorithm for mining coins 14:30 – Zooko has raised $3M and promised investors that they will get a cut from the mining 15:28 – There are transaction fees, but it’s different from what the investors get from the mining 15:45 – It’s the miners who give the share of the reward over to the founder and they choose to do so 16:17 – Zcash is still early in the space 17:06 – The fundraising happened early 2015 17:50 – Zcash has a unique structure to their system 19:35 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: While blockchain system is known to be secure, it doesn’t hurt to have additional security features in place with cryptocurrency. ICOs and pre-sales are quite the trend for blockchain companies. You can’t learn everything from going to school—learn by DOING.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
811: Crypto: After $2m ICO, He's Building the Bloomberg Terminal for Crypto

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 13, 2017 24:57


Maksim Balashevich. He’s a former IBM software engineer and co-founder of a successful, hosting business in Belarus. He now manages the overall product and leads the Santiment team. He’s a veteran leader, having spent more than a decade trading successfully using Santiment and Elliot Wave as analysis. He’s also a guru in yoga and meditation. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – N/A What CEO do you follow? – Nick Szabo Favorite online tool? — Blockchain and Reddit 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? – Move faster to the same goal   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:53 – Nathan introduces Maksim to the show 02:30 – Santiment builds information for the emerging cryptocurrency token economy 03:30 – When Santiment had their ICO, they’ve established a token for their platform 03:36 – To get access to Santiment, you can buy the monthly subscription by paying in dollars or by depositing your tokens into the platform 04:12 – There’s no revenue on the SaaS side yet 04:33 – Santiment has raised $500K in July 2017 05:03 – Santiment has sold 45K tokens 05:17 – Santiment’s token name is San 05:44 – Santiment got 720 participants on their token sale 06:14 – Santiment has 8 full-time people and a few contractors 06:29 – Santiment hasn’t liquidated their funds yet 06:43 – Santiment got 12K ethereum from their presell, which they used to fund the development of the business 07:44 – Maksim is hoping to start charging in 3 months, but it seems like it will take 6 months 08:10 – From the community’s response, Maksim can’t charge for Santiment yet and people are asking for specific kinds of data 09:34 – It’s not that they will not charge, but they can’t charge just yet 10:00 – Maksim shares how Santiment works in the crypto economy 11:15 – Prior to ICO, Santiment didn’t take additional capital and just used the presell 11:46 – Maksim shares how they came up with the number of tokens to issue 11:49 – For crowdsale participants, it is 54% of their outstanding 12:04 – For presell participants, for every 12K ether contributed, Santiment will issue them 50M tokens 12:21 – The rest will be part of the team’s tokens, which is currently locked 13:55 – Maksim hasn’t seen any active competitors yet 14:34 – Iconomi is one of Santiment’s partners and is also in the same space 16:16 – Maksim’s prediction for the next blockchain that will do well 16:48 – Maksim personally likes Polkadot which connects blockchains 17:10 – There are also projects that introduce the token economy 17:24 – There’s a growing number of blockchain companies providing decentralized storage solutions 18:17 – Maksim shares the latest issue on hacking in cryptocurrency where $7M was stolen 21:00 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: When to charge for your service isn’t an easy to decision to make—you have to consider the community and the value that they want to get from the company. In recent hacking events with ICO, security issues are being called into question. If possible, start working towards your goals as EARLY as possible. Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
810: SaaS: With $70m Raised, White Board Videos Secret to VidYard 2x YoY Growth

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2017 26:51


Michael Litt. He’s the co-founder and CEO of a leading video marketing platform called Vidyard. While he’s not bringing leading video-based technologies to market, he serves as general partner at Garage Capital, a seed stage fund focused on supercluster companies looking to expand their networks in the Silicon Valley. He also sits as Communitech’s board of directors, a KW-based organization designed to help companies start, grow and succeed.  Famous Five: Favorite Book? – N/A What CEO do you follow? – Shannon Stubo Favorite online tool? — Coinbase 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? – You need a big support network and focus your energy into building a business   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:41 – Nathan introduces Michael to the show 02:16 – Michael was in Episode 414 of The Top and back then, they only had 132 people on their team 02:30 – Vidyard now has around 250 employees 02:38 – Vidyard has 3 offices 02:44 – Vidyard has launch multiple products including a self-serve product called Viewedit 03:13 – Vidyard just had 100K users sign up after launching Viewedit, which is free 03:33 – It’s currently a chrome extension 04:22 – Michael shares how they spent their last amount that was raised 04:51 – Vidyard had their series C in January of 2017 05:30 – Michael believes that the CFO should be the “house of no” 06:00 – Everybody should be accountable for their finances and Vidyard uses Adaptive Insights for budgeting 06:43 – Vidyard has to be very careful with their lifeline and maintain their cash flow 07:23 – Michael’s goal as the CEO 08:39 – Vidyard’s RPU has grown over time 08:53 – Target for upsell is 30% of net new revenue 10:03 – Annual logo churn 10:13 – Net retention 10:42 – Over thousands customers are using Vidyard’s platform 10:57 – Viewedit is being used in tons of organizations 11:46 – Michael believes Vidyard will double, year over year 13:00 – Streaming cost for Vidyard 13:11 – Vidyard streams over 50M videos a day 13:15 – Vidyard subscribed on the Netflix model 14:41 – Weirdest strategy Michael employed to get new customers 15:08 – The strategy was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk 17:17 – Michael shares how they were able to get customers from companies in other countries 19:10 – New CMOs in a company are one of the best target customers, so Michael looks out for new CMOs announcements 19:54 – Payback period is usually 18 months 21:02 – Payback period reflects your company’s status 21:20 – CAC 21:35 – Michael is also looking into zero-cost marketing 22:09 – Michael won’t sell Vidyard to Salesforce, even with a $300M offer 22:55 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Use your funds conservatively and make everyone accountable for budgeting. How your company is doing reflects on your payback period. Make sure you have a big support network in place.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
809: How This $12m Accounting Biz Moves from On-Prem to SaaS Model

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 11, 2017 23:54


Barry Clapp. He brings over 30 years of experience in sales and management to Centage. Beginning with IBM, he held successional positions with increasing responsibility on software and internet businesses. At DigitalGlobe, a satellite imagery company, he served as VP of international sales opening distribution in over 20 different countries. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Biography of Richard Branson What CEO do you follow? – Marcus Lemonis Favorite online tool? — Salesforce 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? – Be bolder, take more risks and get more equity from businesses with potential   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:43 – Nathan introduces Barry to the show 02:12 – Centage makes a budgeting and planning tool simple 02:20 – Every company budgets and most use Excel, which can be very difficult 02:49 – Centage automates budgeting to replace Excel 03:10 – Centage is a SaaS business 03:18 – Centage was launched in 2002 03:37 – Centage’s current business model is a changing from their previous licensing model 04:27 – Centage is in the SMB space and they have less competitors 04:55 – One of their competitors, Adaptive Insights, has just raised $175M 05:13 – Centage has raised a total of $13.5 M 05:50 – Barry shares what he did prior to Centage 06:24 – The top three PE firms for Barry, in Boston 07:16 – Centage’s customer pays an average of $35K to $40K a year 07:26 – Centage has also sold services in their first years 07:48 – Pricing is per seat 08:18 – Centage currently has a thousand customers or 10K users 08:46 – Most customers have 3 or more subsidiaries 09:06 – Barry is hoping to break the $30M ARR number 09:20 – Centage just launched their new product that is currently on beta 09:57 – 30% of Centage’s customers are on subscription and the 70% are installed on premises 11:07 – 2016 ARR was $12M 12:43 – Team size is around a hundred with some remote 13:13 – Average CAC 13:36 – Centage has an inside sales model 14:29 – Annual logo is quite higher than the previous model 14:41 – Centage has 80% retention rate 15:43 – Centage’s product has been continuously improving over the years 16:32 – Centage has always made 10-12% of their revenue from upselling 16:52 – Centage sells additional training 17:11 – Barry shares the weirdest thing they did to acquire new customers 18:50 – Gross margin 19:10 – Centage runs webinars, goes to tradeshows, spends at least $10K a month on Google AdWords and total marketing spend is around $100K a month 21:06 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Be BOLD and take risks now! Shifting from a previous model does NOT mean that you should force your current customers to shift as well. If people see value and how you can make life easier for them, they’ll stay loyal to your product.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
808: AdTech: AdForm Beats $40m Revenue Monetizing These 3 Days

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 10, 2017 23:11


Gustav Mellentin. He’s the founder and CEO of Adform in the adtech space. Before that, he was an engineer in the banking world with an MBA, and was also doing consulting. He just recently came back from a European holiday. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Daring Greatly What CEO do you follow? – Jorgin Vig Knudstorp Favorite online tool? — Vivino Wine App 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? – Be bold and do what you think is right   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:46 – Nathan introduces Gustav to the show 02:20 – Gustav shares his European holiday experience 02:30 – It was pure leisure 02:50 – Adform is a tech company that has developed an ad tech platform 03:13 – Adform typically takes a percentage of the spend in the trading model which is on a monthly fee 03:27 – Adform also has a per usage model for their application software 03:50 – Average fee from the data model starts at $5K 04:23 – Most of the revenue from Adform is from the trading space 04:42 – Adform’s data model is the fastest growing part of the business and 10% of the revenue comes from it 06:07 – Adform takes around 10% from the trading model 06:21 – Gustav believes 10% is healthy for spend 06:55 – Adform was launched in 2002 07:10 – Gustav shares how they came up with Adform 07:41 – First year revenue 08:15 – Adform has past their million dollar mark in revenue, in 2010 08:40 – Team size is 780 globally 09:01 – Adform was initially bootstrapped, then they raised $5M in equity and $20M from debt 10:23 – Gustav shares about the deal they made 10:40 – “At the end of the day, it’s all about trust” 12:50 – Adform has a great management team that is able to manage their number of employees 14:20 – Adform’s DMP or data management platform was launched 18 months ago 14:34 – Current number of customers is around a hundred 15:16 – Gustav has flown his whole team in 15:38 – Gustav shares what people do at their end-of-the-year party 16:18 – Target revenue by end of 2017 is $50M to $100M 17:00 – Gustav is one of the major shareholders of Adform 18:00 – Gustav shares what other entrepreneurs could learn from his story of entrepreneurship with his personal relationships 20:27 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Zero revenue can turn into millions if you focus on your goals. Keep your people happy and make them feel that they’re part of the company’s success. Entrepreneurship and personal relationships can grow at the same time.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
807: He Exited His Company Than Invests $1m Into Energy Company For Operations Roll

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 9, 2017 18:23


Christopher Engman, the founder of companies like Vendemore, Retain24, TaxiSystem and many others and he’s also an active investor. One of his companies, which he’s now active and an investor in is called Climeon. He’s also involved with Proof Analytics, Trigger Bee and many others. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Inside the Tornado What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn 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? – “Put learning fast in front of prestige”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:38 – Nathan introduces Christopher to the show 02:14 – All of the companies Christopher founded are profitable and are growing companies 02:50 – Christopher’s biggest exit was Vendemore 03:04 – Christopher ran it for 9 years 03:12 – Vendemore was initially bootstrapped and raised funds 03:51 – The exit was three years ago 04:42 – Christopher and his wife owned 75% of Vendemore 05:40 – Christopher took 50% of his Vendemore exit to start Climeon 05:53 – It has 350 shareholders 06:11 – Christopher believes that Climeon will be the next dominant player in mechanical engineering 07:13 – It is easier to raise funds if you have a number of shareholders 07:28 – The next round for Climeon will be a big round 08:08 – Christopher shares how Climeon works 09:50 – The process of energy transformation inside the Climeon 10:37 – Christopher believes in the potential of Climeon 11:24 – Team size is 40 11:41 – Climeon has less than 10 customers 12:10 – Climeon’s target clients are steel plants, cement plants and those in geothermal energy 12:36 – Christopher runs sales and marketing 12:42 – Climeon’s founder is in CTO side 12:54 – Christopher shares how he found out about Climeon 13:20 – Christopher’s shares in the company is quite big 14:05 – The starting contract value of Climeon 14:40 – Climeon is getting several hundreds of millions of dollars per client 14:51 – Christopher doesn’t get commission from the sales 16:40 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Building companies isn’t always about revenue, but the value you bring. If you believe in something, go for it. Turning heat into electricity is the future of energy.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
806: SaaS: Recruiting Tool w/ $60m Raised, 2000 Customers, Unleashes CRM

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 8, 2017 21:10


Daniel Chait. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Greenhouse, which designs tools that help create and navigate a new world of work. Daniel has been a technology entrepreneur in New York for nearly 20 years. Before Greenhouse, he co-founded Lab49, a global firm providing technology consulting solutions for the world’s leading investment banks. He’s a proud graduate of the computer engineering program at the University of Michigan. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Nudge What CEO do you follow? – Kim Scott Favorite online tool? — Trello How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The dotcom crash”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:35 – Nathan introduces Daniel to the show 02:10 – Greenhouse sells recruiting software that corporations use to design and execute their hiring process 02:40 – Greenhouse is a SaaS company 02:50 – Average customer pay per year varies 03:05 – The pricing model depends on the size of the company 03:40 – Greenhouse tends to price higher than their competitors’ because they offer a premium software solution 04:05 – Greenhouse is in the recruiting software space which is currently crowded 04:15 – Daniel shares some of their competitors depending on the categories 05:10 – The competition is extremely fragmented 05:33 – Greenhouse falls into all the categories, from the smaller ones to enterprise 06:05 – Greenhouse offers three tiers 06:24 – Greenhouse was launched in 2012 06:32 – First year revenue was around $50 07:33 – Post product revenue is around $1M 08:25 – Greenhouse currently has 2000 customers 09:03 – Team size is 195, based in San Francisco and New York 09:30 – Greenhouse has raised $16M from their series C round 09:53 – Daniel enjoyed doing their fund raising and he believes in their investors 10:13 – Every round is different 10:40 – This was the first time that Daniel raised outside the investment 11:19 – Greenhouse has a world-class retention rate 11:36 – 97% of their customers have renewed 11:55 – Most of the team is in inside sales 12:36 – Daniel shares where their expansion comes from 13:11 – Greenhouse’s newest product is Greenhouse CRM which is still in beta 14:10 – The inside sales team job is heat mapping the products used by a customer 14:41 – The expansion is through additional growth 15:15 – LTV-CAC ratio 15:48 – “We have a healthy ratio” 16:04 – Payback period 17:00 – The weirdest thing Daniel did to acquire new customers 17:43 – They went from market research to marketing 17:57 – ARR 18:07 – Daniel on hitting the $50M ARR mark by end of 2017 19:40 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Create something that will make you stand out in a competitive and crowded market. Focus on how you can increase your customer retention rate—perhaps it’s by adding new products that will better serve them. Raising a capital round can help you gain new customers.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
805: SaaS: 30,000 Customers Make Him King of Call Tracking and Attribution

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 7, 2017 21:18


Todd Fisher. He’s the co-founder and CEO of CallTrackingMetrics, a top rated call automation and lead management platform serving over 30K businesses around the globe. Todd developed the initial software and continues to be the driving technical force behind the company. He has also made a number of notable developments in the technical field, especially within the Ruby on Rails community. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – N/A What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Steve Jobs Favorite online tool? — it 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? – “Get your shit together”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:30 – Nathan introduces Todd to the show 02:00 – CallTrackingMetrics has 30K paying customers 02:45 – CallTrackingMetrics sells phone numbers and provides functionality and features to those 03:08 – It can track which ads resulted to a phone call 03:27 – CallTrackingMetrics was launched in 2011 03:40 – Todd started with Revolution Health Group in 2005, then in Captico in 2008 04:24 – Todd started with a website that accepts credit cards for CallTrackingMetrics 04:58 – Todd met his wife in 2008, and who is also part of the CallTrackingMetrics company 06:00 – First year revenue was around $10K MRR 06:26 – In 2012, CallTrackingMetrics had 1700 customers which became 5K in 2013 06:43 – Currently, they’re passing 30K customers 07:05 – Todd shares how they increased the number of their customers 07:42 – The first few customers found CallTrackingMetrics through a small landing page which was put into Google AdWords 08:30 – Todd’s conversation with Living Social’s founder, Erin 08:55 – Todd learned the RIGHT way to target customers through AdWords the HARD way 09:28 – Todd tracks their own app 09:46 – Last month, they spent 6-figures on AdWords and they also did other paid channels 10:49 – Average CAC 11:20 – Customers pay an average of $2K a month from a marketing agency 11:46 – Call tracking is an enhancer for their campaign 12:08 – CallTrackingMetrics has two types of customers 12:43 – 20% of the 30K customers are marketing agencies 13:16 – Last month’s MRR is around $1.2M 15:04 – Churn is around 6% monthly 15:43 – Team size is 23, 15:55 – 3 in sales, 2 in marketing, 5 engineers and most are in support 17:35 – The Famous Five 20:08 – CallTrackingMetrics is totally bootstrapped   Key Points: Continue to explore what you want to do until you find something that will make you content and happy. Ask around for opinions and don’t make decisions out of frustration. Create something that adds value and brings joy to others.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
804: SaaS: Yapp Passes 80,000 Events Powered

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2017 19:05


Maria Seidman. She is the CEO and co-founder of Yapp, the top platform for event applications. Prior to Yapp, she was the GM for mobile and VP for Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. She has her MBA from Stanford and her BA from Yale and resides in New York City. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – How What CEO do you follow? – Stewart Butterfield Favorite online tool? — FullStory and Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Take more risks”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:41 – Nathan introduces Maria to the show 02:29 – Yapp already has 85K apps published on their platform since they started 02:28 – Yapp was founded in 2011 and launched in 2012 02:56 – Maria left Warner Bros in 2010, then she met her co-founder for Yapp and they started in 2011 03:40 – Yapp’s market is professional events or the “mice industry” 03:54 – Yapp provides event technology for organizers who are in corporations or associations 04:25 – Yapp isn’t for casual events 04:56 – Yapp is a SaaS business and charges monthly fees 05:17 – Nathan shares how his former business, Heyo, was seasonal and the churn was difficult to manage 05:40 – Maria shares how Yapp attracts customers because of its affordability and its ability to adapt to different types of events 06:10 – Yapp has an internal communications tool 06:44 – Most customers are having multiple events per year 07:00 – Yapp’s pricing starts at $400 up to their volume pricing which is annual 07:32 – Small organizations tend to avail of Yapp more 08:34 – Team size is 5, all remote 08:48 – 3 are engineers, 1 in marketing and Maria is in charge of other tasks 09:12 – Yapp started with a small debt round for capital, but was bootstrapped after the growth 10:19 – The investors were supportive of Yapp 10:45 – Maria aims for Yapp to be a group of tools targeting marketing and events 12:14 – Yapp is in a competitive market and can’t share their numbers 12:42 – Yapp is focused on their ARPU and is going deeper on the enterprise 13:16 – Maria shares the weirdest thing she did to get customers was sneak into tradeshows 15:45 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: The seasonality of the business affects churn drastically so having a second revenue stream is a must. Smaller groups are having more events than corporations are having within the frame of a year. Applications that are versatile get more users, especially from the business market.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
803: SaaS: Email He Used To Get From $0 to $10k MRR

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2017 23:27


Spencer Coon. He’s the co-founder of HiBox.co and Joincube. He has over 5 years of experience in enterprise collaboration software and 7 years working internationally. He has managed teams across 3 continents and 5 countries. Previously, he was in investment banking at JP Morgan in New York City.   Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Black Swan What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Intercom 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? – Spencer wished he knew that technology was going to be more of his passion   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:50 – Nathan introduces Spencer to the show 02:20 – HiBox is a collaboration app for teams 02:31 – It has an artificial intelligence to bring everything together and enhance productivity 03:19 – HiBox is a SaaS model with a 14-day free trial 03:30 – It has 3 different versions, including a pro version and an enterprise version 03:57 – ARPU is $32 a month 04:03 – An average account has 7-8 people 04:55 – Spencer wanted to have his own product, so he left JP Morgan 05:13 – He wanted to create something tangible and has been passionate about Latin America 05:39 – Spencer started HiBox in Buenos Aires 05:46 – It’s less competitive to start a business in Latin America with talented people and their rates are more competitive 06:16 – There are 5 people on the tech team and 15 people in total 06:28 – Most of the team is in Barcelona 06:36 – Spencer left JP Morgan in 2012 and went to another company where he met his now business partner 07:28 – First year revenue was less than $10K 07:43 – HiBox is Spencer’s first baby as an entrepreneur 08:00 – Spencer used up his savings to start HiBox 08:41 – HiBox has raised some seed rounds 08:54 – It was more difficult to access VC funds in the USA because HiBox is based in Latin America 09:16 – They had 2 priced rounds with a total of $500K funds raised 10:00 – Spencer is still in the middle of negotiations for their next round 10:20 – Over 10K companies have signed up to HiBox and there are 35K active users 10:38 – HiBox is their main focus at the moment 10:42 – Joincube is an enterprise social network focused on multi-national companies in Latin America 11:13 – There are 300 companies paying for HiBox 11:30 – MRR is around $10K for the pro version 11:54 – Last month’s revenue 13:05 – Joincube will become HiBox corporate 13:34 – Gross monthly churn is 6.2% 15:10 – Spencer shares why their product would still be beneficial for their clients after the upgrade 15:46 – It’s almost similar to Intercom, but better 16:00 – CAC is $233 16:10 – Most are used for online ads 16:26 – It is a fully weighted CAC 16:38 – $3K was spent on paid advertising last month 16:57 – Spencer is hoping that the business will be profitable at the outset 17:32 – They’re doing as many tests as they can 18:05 – ARR target by the end of 2017 19:00 – Weirdest thing we ever did to acquire clients was tell them I lost a bet and would give them a 50% discount forever 20:00 – Gross margin 20:48 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: It’s never too late to start your entrepreneurial journey. Starting your business in a country with less competition is a cost-efficient and wise decision. An upgrade should NOT affect customer loyalty and their experience with your product.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life
802: Crypto VC: After $10m Raised in ICO for Fund 3, Now Demand High for $250m Fund 4

The Top Entrepreneurs in Money, Marketing, Business and Life

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2017 28:53


Spencer Bogart. He’s a managing director and the head of research for Blockchain Capital, the premier venture firm for investing directly in the blockchain companies. Prior to joining Blockchain Capital, Spencer was a VP of Equity Research where he covered traditional software and internet stocks. He had his first industry report on blockchain technology and is the most active analyst covering bitcoin. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Zero to One What CEO do you follow? – Balaji Srinivasan Favorite online tool? — Telegram 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 just wish I would have spent more time on bitcoin”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:48 – Nathan introduces Spencer to the show 03:10 – Crypto hedge fund has created a “honey pot” for hackers 03:18 – The “honey pot” is actually bigger on the exchanges 04:23 – Most companies are now making bitcoins more accessible 04:45 – Spencer shares how to use Coinbase 05:00 – Spencer has predicted that there’s a sub 25% chance that the US SEC is approving a bitcoin ETF 05:21 – It is difficult for regulators to get comfortable with bitcoin 05:30 – Spencer shares the pros and cons of approving a bitcoin ETF 06:02 – There has been changes in US SEC’s administration that could be favorable with the approval 06:39 – There’s an ETF that was disapproved, but appealed and it was then granted 07:34 – There are speculators who moved in beforehand 08:03 – Blockchain Capital is a VC firm that has focused on blockchain for the last 4-5 years 08:14 – The last fund they did was their own ICO 08:23 – Their cap was a $10M offering 08:33 – Their offering’s sold out in just 10 minutes 08:50 – They are currently raising their fourth fund 09:10 – The industry has been changing consistently 09:36 – “We’re just all hands on deck” 10:08 – Blockchain Capital’s fund one was $3-5M and fund two was $15M 10:40 – Target fund for the fourth one is $250M 11:12 – Spencer shares about their Civic deal 11:50 – Civic allows you to provide your identity to others without them getting your identity 12:28 – Civic’s ICO 12:50 – Spencer discusses with his team how they handle situations where they had an initial investment of token sales 13:22 – Tokens are not dilutive 13:57 – People who bought into token issuance won’t directly benefit from the acquisition of companies 14:08 – There’s a lot of demand for under-line technology 15:35 – Spencer shares the problems Civic is trying to solve 16:18 – Civic wanted to sell enough tokens to get the attributions abroad to create an initial user base 16:35 – A company won’t sell its equity upfront 17:45 – Spencer made their acquisition and token issuance in two totally different time frames 18:13 – Token offerings have different models 20:19 – Nathan asks Spencer how an entrepreneur can manage his money in order to run the business vs. what to keep 20:31 – Most of the funds that have been raised should be converted to dollars so they can pay the bills 21:05 – Spencer is liquidating usually 80% 21:19 – “Do yourself a favor, convert into a currency that you can actually pay your bills in and pay the developers in” 21:57 – Spencer believes that Coinbase is the biggest brand in the space, especially in exchange 22:38 – Nathan asks Spencer, “what if any government starts normalizing crypto?”— the demand for the exchange would decrease drastically 22:58 – Coinbase was incentivized to not see widespread government adoption of cryptocurrency because they need people to put money into their system 23:20 – Spencer believes that if this happens, this will be a high class problem for Coinbase 23:25 – There are companies who are using Coinbase, not just for exchange 26:24 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Bitcoin is becoming more accessible to people because of the demand. The government’s regulation on cryptocurrency is still in its beginnings. Liquidation of the funds depends on the company’s decisions regarding what they need and their what their goals are.   Resources Mentioned: Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost. 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