Top Founders

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800: Crypto: He's Advisor Behind Worlds Top ICO's Oct 02, 2017

Show notes

Ransu Salovaara. He's the CEO of TokenMarket, the leading token sale advisory and information hub based on Gibraltar. He's also an advisor for numerous blockchain startups.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Digital Gold
What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kalanick
Favorite online tool? — Coinbase
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? – Don't be so arrogant, don't think that you know it all. Listen more, talk less

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:28 – Nathan introduces Ransu to the show
02:00 – In February 2014, Ransu's friend called him and asked if he knew about bitcoin
- 02:14 – His friend told him to get into bitcoin
02:50 – Ransu is like the Bloomberg of crypto stuff
03:07 – Ransu gets money from the commission of their services to raise money for startups
03:15 – Ransu is involved in Firstblood
- 03:55 – Ransu shares what he knows about Joe Zhou of Firstblood
04:21 – Christoph of DAO was in Episode 781 of The Top
04:55 – TokenMarket didn't exist yet during the DAO
05:15 – Ransu is getting 7% of their deal with the startup
05:52 – Ransu shares how they advise startups who are looking into raising money
- 06:28 – Ransu believes that startups focus more on building their company
06:46 – TokenMarket markets ICOs by going into different community platforms
- 06:52 – BitcoinTalk, Twitter, Facebook and Telegram are some of the community platforms
07:33 – There are 5000 investors in the ICO field
08:40 – Ransu shares why startups won't just use ether
09:38 – Civic is one of the ICOs that TokenMarket just recently advised
- 09:57 – Civic has a KYC system
- 10:24 – Civic has raised $33M
11:07 – TokenMarket has advised Edgeless, which is their TokenMarket's first ICO
- 11:23 – Edgeless raised $3M
13:25 – For the first time, Ransu feels that the USA is falling behind in the crypto world
13:58 – Ransu's rule of thumb for startups
14:50 – Nathan shares why he thinks ICOs are a scam, and how they actually are not scams
17:00 – The hype of crypto explained
17:20 – Ransu believes that crypto is the beginning of the new digital assets era
18:48 – Every month, the market gets better
19:15 – Nathan shares what he thinks about Uber's surge pricing and its relativity with ICOs and the crypto world
- 20:08 – Modern day businesses and startups are the best concepts to go launch ICOs or token issuance
- 21:38 – There are ICOs with the same concept as Uber and Airbnb, but are still not at par with the two
22:40 – Ransu often receives different pitches and some have concepts that are difficult to execute
- 23:00 – An ICO fail because of the team, the market, the demand, their failure to deliver and lack of tokens
24:45 – Transitioning from a regular startup to an ICO is difficult
27:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Companies looking into their ICO should focus on building their business and strengthening its foundation and service first and foremost.
Not all concepts work for an ICO.
Cryptocurrency is the beginning of the new digital asset era.

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

799: SaaS: How He Grew To $200k MRR, $2m Raised at $7m Cap Oct 01, 2017

Show notes

Olin Hyde. He's the co-founder and CEO of LeadCrunch.ai, an intelligent demand generation platform that accelerates sales with high precision analytics and content delivery. In less than 10 months since they've launched, the company has grown to more than 90 customers and are getting 300% higher sales conversion rates.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Humans
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? — Salesloft
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? – Olin hoped he would have known how important linear algebra is

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:38 – Nathan introduces Olin to the show
02:09 – The last exit of Olin was Auto-Semantics that analyzed social media feeds
- 02:22 – It was sold to ai-one
02:28 – Olin spent 2 years with ai-one
02:38 – LeadCrunch started with healthcare
02:51 – LeadCrunch has beat IBM Watson
02:59 – LeadCrunch is using their targeting technology to help mid-market companies find their next best customers
03:17 – Olin shares why they're targeting SMBs
- 03:34 – Olin likes to work with people who help others make their dreams come true
- 03:43 – LeadCrunch's first product was Private Alpha with 1,070 small businesses signups
- 03:56 – LeadCrunch stays away from the enterprise because they like the idea of democratizing the power of AI to enable everyone to achieve their dreams
04:08 – LeadCrunch's business model is a combination of subscription and on-demand
04:42 – It is still early for LeadCrunch's SaaS model, so most of their revenue is from on-demand
04:53 – With on-demand, LeadCrunch got 130 rebooks from customers in just 90 days
05:17 – Average customer pay is $20K
06:05 – Olin won't call their revenue ARR, but on-demand
06:40 – LeadCrunch has a customer success function
06:50 – LeadCrunch was launched in August 2015
07:27 – Trailing 12 months revenue is around a million dollars
07:36 – Monthly revenue is around $200K in bookings
07:46 – The product was launched in September 2016
08:04 – LeadCrunch was initially bootstrapped and has raised about $2M in capital
- 08:36 – LeadCrunch has kept the cap of $6M
09:33 – LeadCrunch has around 90 lifetime customers and 55 on their current product line
10:50 – Olin shares the weirdest thing he did to get a customer
11:44 – Gross margin
- 12:03 – LeadCrunch optimizes for growth and not for margins yet
12:48 – Customer payback period is 2.1 months
13:15 – On-demand customers pay as LeadCrunch delivers
13:36 – LeadCrunch's CAC decreases as they get more customers
13:57 – Paid spent is around $6500
- 14:41 – LeadCrunch does A/B tests to discover new funnels
- 14:58 – LeadCrunch is influenced by Traction of Justin Mires
- 15:18 – LeadCrunch is conservative and capital efficient
15:35 – Team size is 15
16:04 – "We could get cash flow positive in 60 days if we want to"
17:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Work with people that you believe in the most.
Revenue models vary depending on which model works best for the company.
Cash flow positive is great, but you shouldn't have to sacrifice your people to reach 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

798: Mobile Ad Tech Passes $100m in Revenues Sep 30, 2017

Show notes

Harry Kargman. He's a passionate entrepreneur who bootstrapped Kargo over 17 years into the leading mobile brand advertising marketplace. He's obsessed with art, design and New York and has been helping steward the ad council in a partnership for New York.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Only the Paranoid Survive
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? — Skype, Slack and other product tools
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's going to be okay"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:08 – Nathan introduces Harry to the show
02:41 – Kargo is the largest brand advertising company for mobile
- 02:45 – Their focus is on high end brands that are highly creative
03:16 – Kargo is a technology company
- 03:43 – They built a technology that will make an ad on mobile a high end brand experience
- 04:12 – The ad renders perfectly on a mobile page
05:52 – Kargo works with around 98% of the major media companies and publishers
06:21 – Most of Kargo's customers are Fortune 1000 companies
07:13 – Kargo charges as a technology play for publishers, like a SaaS model
- 07:28 – It is integrated into the media that runs on the platform
07:50 – Kargo also takes a percentage of media that runs through the platform
08:21 – Kargo is focused on quality as they've turned down a lot of publishers
- 08:41 – Kargo only has the best quality for advertisers
09:00 – The average cut Kargo is taking
- 09:25 – Harry shares how they're taking the cut with the kind of service that they provide
- 10:29 – The vision that Kargo has is that they're on equal partnerships
11:14 – In 2015, Kargo passed $100M in annual revenue
- 11:18 – The growth, year over year, is around 100%
11:56 – 2017 is a big year for Kargo where they're building a technology that is new to the market
- 12:23 – Kargo has an AdLab that they try to bring to advertisers
13:11 – Kargo is 15-20% SaaS and 85% is media
13:22 – The goal for next year
13:58 – Total team size is 270
14:25 – Kargo will have a partnership with NBC in 2018
15:07 – Kargo is completely bootstrapped
15:32 – Before pivoting, Kargo was trying to build software and services for operators
- 15:38 – However, operators wanted to take 18 months to 2 years for testing which is impossible for startups
16:18 – Kargo just got into the water, expecting major media companies to sell their ads and media properties
17:36 – The Famous Five
19:12 – Harry's wife, Jill Kargman of Odd Mom Out will be on tour

3 Key Points:

Develop a product that will make Fortune 1000 companies need you.
Regardless of the size of the deal, maintain equal partnership with your partners.
Stay bootstrapped as long as you can and as long as you want.

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

797: SaaS: How He Did $30m 2016 Revenue And Will Hit $40m This Year Sep 29, 2017

Show notes

Irv Shapiro. He's responsible for the overall business strategy and corporate leadership as the CEO of DialogTech. DialogTech provides the industry a leading, actionable, marketing analytics platform for businesses that value inbound sales calls. The company was named an Inc 500 company in servicing close to 5000 businesses worldwide—ranging from emerging companies to the world's largest enterprises.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Purple Cow
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? —The Top Inbox
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? – "I should have stayed in architecture school"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:04 – Nathan introduces Irv to the show
02:51 – DialogTech is Irv's third rodeo in the industry
03:10 – Metamor Technologies is a system information business that built large office systems
- 03:35 – It scaled to 500 people and was sold to Corestaff
- 03:51 – It was sold in 1997 for $38M
04:11 – After Metamor, Irv started Edventions which was in the early days of the internet when schools were concerned about internet safety and its environment
04:40 – Edventions provided a safe internet environment
- 04:51 – In 2000, everything crashed and it was sold to Edison Schools
05:17 – DialogTech's team size is 150
05:20 – Current revenue is at $40M
05:25 – 2016 revenue was $35M
05:30 – DialogTech raised a total of $60M
05:45 – DialogTech did their A round in July of 2007
06:15 – DialogTech helps companies who receive inbound calls to become more effective, efficient and close more sales
06:37 – DialogTech does four things technology-wise:
- 06:59 – It tells the customer's behavior on your website
- 07:04 – The data then can be used by the marketing team
  - 07:33 – An example of this is a life insurance call
- 08:18 – Tracking is by a unique phone number
- 09:38 – When a website is visited, a unique phone number is shown
10:14 – DialogTech is a SaaS model, but is in essence a cloud model
10:32 – Charges vary if the calls are in a batch or if it is an unlimited plan
10:37 – Customers pay between $150K a month to over $100K a month
10:55 – DialogTech has almost 5K customers
11:19 – Irv shares a growth tactic they tried that didn't work
- 12:36 – They sent burner phones to over 200 marketing executives that have videos on them that will play after opening the phone
- 12:55 – They've spent over $20K for the campaign but they were not able to get a single sale
13:20 – Annual logo churn is around 8-9%
13:35 – Monthly revenue churn on the enterprise side is around .4%
13:47 – DialogTech has around 98% revenue retention
14:59 – 3K of their 5K customers are legacy customers who are at a lower price point
15:09 – Irv believes that they will reach $40M in revenue by end of 2017
15:30 – The volume of calls that DialogTech processes requires a technology that needs funds
15:55 – Gross margin is around 65%
16:38 – CAC depends on segment
16:43 – Gross margin payback is 18-24 months
- 16:59 – Irv explains how they compute it
17:45 – LTV is 5-7 years for enterprise customers
18:13 – DialogTech has around 40 engineers, 50 in sales overall, 12-15 customer support, and the rest in back end
19:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Target goals can be reached with a consistent model and growth tactics in play.
We learn from our mistakes, so don't be afraid to make them.
Weigh the pros and cons of raising capital; if there is a need, then go for 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

796: Crypto: Kim Jong-un Crypto Funded Nukes vs. Billions Out of Poverty Sep 28, 2017

Show notes

Andreas Antonopoulos. He's a technologist and serial entrepreneur. He has become one of the most well-known and well respected in bitcoin. He's the author of Mastering Bitcoin, published by O'Reilly Media. Andreas is also considered the best technical guide in bitcoin and The Internet of Money—another term that he coined—is his book about why bitcoins matter.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Digital Gold
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — Trello
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? – "What you're worrying about is really not worth worrying about, just go for it"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:50 – Nathan introduces Andreas to the show
03:17 – Cryptocurrency is still volatile
03:20 – Most ICOs nowadays still converts 60-80% of funds
04:00 – There's no single system in crypto
- 04:21 – Andreas thinks that it isn't the matter of ideology, but a matter of being a rational actor
04:48 – From a regulatory perspective, Andreas foresees that more than 90% of the ICOs will fail
- 05:00 – Founders get rich because of the investors not doing much to evaluate the ICOs
- 05:20 – There's a lot of immature products coming to ICOs
- 05:47 – The cycle will just burn through a lot of money
06:12 – Andreas isn't involved in any ICOs and he's actually against investing in them
06:50 – ICOs can be seen as another space for crowd funding which bridges the gap between angel investment and VC
- 07:15 – At this time, there's a lot of risk in ICO
07:44 – Cryptocurrency is the application of networks and market economics to the flow of money internationally
- 07:50 – Just like the internet was the application of a flat network system to communication around the world
- 08:23 – It is a system that doesn't belong to any company or to any one person
- 08:27 – It removed intermediaries in banking and finance
- 09:00 – You don't have to trust the person you're dealing with, but just trust the platform
- 09:32 – It is extremely important for developing nations
10:28 – Andreas shares how cryptocurrency protected his mom's cash retirement from failing Greek banks because of Greece's current economy
11:12 – Nathan shares a sample scenario with ISIS using cryptocurrency to attack Greece
- 11:28 – Andreas shares why the US shouldn't have spent 20 years bombing them as it led them to acquire weapons
13:30 – If Kim Jong-Un wants to acquire weapons in cryptocurrency, there's no current way to regulate it
- 14:42 – The ability of the government to control the money leads to corruption and oppression of people
- 15:03 – "No, you can't control money"
15:50 – Andreas is more interested in insuring that people who are trapped in poverty have the means to provide for basic necessities
16:50 – Andreas' point regarding the future of the world depending on cryptocurrency
17:56 – ICO is a productive application of capital and investment, believing that there will be a return
18:31 – There's a lot of people speculating about the future
19:11 – The comparisons between different cryptocurrencies and their market capital are not useful
- 19:24 – It is mostly based on speculation at the moment
20:50 – Andreas' primary advice is not to buy crypto, but to earn it
- 20:55 – It is an online visual economy
- 21:22 – He has been earning his cryptocurrencies for the past 3 years
- 21:44 – The speaking deal of Andreas is in bitcoin, plus 20%
- 22:06 – He liquidates his tokens on a monthly basis
- 23:00 – There are some establishments that receive cryptocurrencies
- 23:45 – There are also a lot of BTMs or bitcoin automated machines available
- 24:22 – There are also local traders for cryptocurrencies but you just have to be cautious
25:12 – The questions Nathan should be asking for a pitch of a $5M crypto hedge fund
- 25:30 – Crypto funds are holding crypto for thousands of investors
- 25:40 – Their security should be a thousand times better and most companies can't do that
- 26:00 – It's easy to hack on a computer
- 26:35 – This is very similar to DAO
- 26:44 – The better way is to hold crypto funds individually by putting them into a wallet
27:24 – "You can't keep information securely concentrated in one place"
28:57 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

As of this moment, it is not that wise to invest in an ICO.
The future of cryptocurrency can have both a positive or negative effect on people.
Don't buy cryptocurrency, earn 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

795: SaaS: With $117m Raised, Google Tried to Kill Him But He's Winning App Deeplinking Wars Sep 27, 2017

Show notes

Alex Austin. He's the CEO and co-founder of Branch, a leading mobile deep linking platform with solutions that unify mobile user experience and measurement across devices, platforms and channels. He founded Branch back in 2014 while attending Stanford Graduate School of Business. Before founding Branch, Ale founded Kindred Prints, had engineering roles at NASA and holds many research papers under his name.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Mistborn Trilogy
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — JMP Statistical Analysis
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? – You have to start your own company, don't wait. There is never the right time.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:04 – Nathan introduces Alex to the show
02:46 – Alex shares how he moved from NASA to a deep linking platform
- 03:33 – Alex realized that he hated school and loves building instead
- 03:57 – Alex still does building projects on his free time
04:33 – Alex started Branch when they were building the Kindred app
- 04:46 – The problem they faced was discovery as it was hard for people to find the app
- 05:36 – The only way people find Kindred is through the app store
- 05:48 – Alex created an ability to link to their photobooks with the ideal model
- 06:00 – They were able to do deep linking which is the ability to link to a page inside an app and have people discover the app for the content inside
- 06:12 – Branch was then able to solve a general problem
- 06:28 – Alex then decided to sell Kindred
- 07:34 – They didn't see Kindred as a billion dollar company
- 07:47 – When they started Branch, people were already asking them about the technology
08:30 – Currently, 40% of the app ecosystem is using Branch today
- 08:42 – Airbnb is one of the apps that uses Branch—if you use it to find a property, then send a link to a friend, that link would be a branch link
09:05 – The goal is to get 90% of the app ecosystem to use Branch
09:26 – Google will allow you to search data on the web and Branch will search through all the pages
09:37 – Branch charges through the usage of the link
09:41 – The ultimate goal is to build a discovery platform
09:47 – Branch is a SaaS business
10:19 – For big companies, the charge is actually by tier
10:47 – Average deal size for enterprise client is $55-60K annually
10:57 – Branch just started selling to enterprise
11:03 – Branch was launched in 2014
11:09 – The platform was initially being given away
- 11:33 – They only turned on their paywall more than 7 months ago
11:39 – Branch raised $117M
- 11:57 – It was a priced seed round and a carryover from Kindred
12:38 – Team size is around 120 with 65 engineers
13:40 – The weirdest marketing tactic they did was they went to Stack Overflow and answered questions back linking to their product
14:38 – Branch just started a meetup group where people can talk about mobile growth
15:22 – Over 26K developers are using the SDKs
15:33 – When they first started, they've worked on different series of ideas that failed to work
- 15:51 – It took a couple of months for them to gain momentum
16:40 – Number of paying customers
- 17:18 – 99% of the revenue comes from enterprise customers
18:35 – The app ecosystem is like Yahoo, in 1995
- 18:53 – Google allowed the access to the information on the web
19:19 – Branch is built as SaaS because it keeps the lifeline long
19:55 – How Alex delivers his pitch
20:18 – Alex doesn't want to have competition and they always make sure to kill off those who start to compete
- 20:57 – The platform is designed to have a network effect
- 21:36 – EOCO is the company that closed after competing with Branch
22:20 – Alex's wife is a VC but she's not invested in Branch
24:28 – Alex isn't really doing Branch for the money alone
24:58 – Alex sees Branch as his contribution to make a great impact
26:00 – "There's always a big company to go after"
- 26:13 – Google launched a product last year which is a direct replica of Branch
29:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Develop a solution to a problem and customers will flock to you.
As shady as your tactic may be, organic traffic is still the best source of traffic.
There will always be bigger companies than yours; don't let it stop you from improving and growing.

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

794: SaaS: How He Used Pizza to Hit $7.5m in ARR and $18m Raised for his Lead Scoring Tool Sep 26, 2017

Show notes

Evan Liang. He's the CEO and co-founder of LeanData which he founded after managing a data cleanup project at his first company and felt the pain of cleaning Salesforce data by hand. Prior to LeanData, he was the GM and VP of products at Caring.com where he grew a small acquisition within the company's main business. Generally, he owned 50% of the company's revenue over 2 years. Before Caring.com, Evan worked at Shasta Ventures, a leading venture capital firm focused on end-user driven businesses. Before that, he worked in project management at eBay and business development at Microsoft where he helped launched the Xbox 360. Evan started his career at Battery Ventures where he specialized in software and ecommerce investments. He holds his MBA from Kellogg and BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? – Rich Hagberg
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? – "I want to be an entrepreneur and not a VC first"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:03 – Nathan introduces Evan to the show
03:04 – LeanData helps marketing and sales scale their lead management processes
- 03:11 – They're focused on two business processes: lead routing and marketing attribution
03:20 – Cloudera is one of their customers
- 03:30 – With all the leads that are coming into Cloudera's system, LeanData will figure out which sales rep should follow up
03:43 – LeanData works well with lead scoring predictive vendors
04:30 – LeanData is a SaaS business
04:36 – Average customer pays $20-30K a year
- 04:42 – Large enterprises are paying 6 figures
04:54 – The pricing depends on the number of seats
05:24 – Marketing attribution is an upsell from the product
05:34 – LeanData was launched in 2012
05:46 – Evan has always been passionate with startups and he was just waiting for the right idea to come along
06:18 – Evan was at Caring when he saw the problem that LeanData was able to solve
- 06:40 – They had a large amount of data in Salesforce that was a big mess
07:25 – First year revenue of LeanData was $200K
08:08 – LeanData raised $1.3M from their seed round
- 08:19 – Total funds raised $18M
- 08:28 – The seed round was a priced round
09:12 – Current team size is 50
- 09:28 – 15 are engineers, 15 in sales, 5 in marketing, 8 in CS
09:48 – LeanData currently has 250 enterprise customers
10:13 – MRR is around $600K and ARR is around $7.5M
10:34 – The weirdest marketing strategy of LeanData's was sending pizzas to people
- 11:00 – It was a marketing campaign and the customers picked the pizza place where they wanted their pizzas from
- 11:27 – The problem was some chosen pizza places wouldn't deliver so one of the SDRs would have to buy the pizza and deliver it
- 11:56 – They were still able to get some sales from that campaign
12:08 – The primary CAC is for events
- 12:32 – One event is the Lunch and Learn Event
- 13:05 – They spent around 600K in strategizing conferences over a year
- 13:17 – Paid advertising spend is less than 10K
14:04 – Annual logo churn is 15%
14:13 – LeanData is currently net negative revenue churn
14:30 – ARPU expansion is between 5-10%
14:48 – LTV is around 5 years
15:35 – LeanData's competitors in the ABM lead scoring space
16:27 – Gross margin is 80%
- 16:42 – LeanData benefits from Salesforce
- 17:16 – LeanData doesn't need backend servers
17:30 – Evan answers about their exit strategy since it seems like Salesforce is the only one who can acquire them
18:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Organizing your data is crucial for the company's operations.
The weirdest marketing strategy can take people aback and still win business for you.
The exit of a company depends upon the possibility of an acquisition; however, there will always be other options.

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

793: Will This Funded Event Ticketing Company ICO? Sep 25, 2017

Show notes

Sandy Khaund. He's the CEO of Upgraded, a platform for tickets using blockchain technologies. Previously, he was the CTO at InStadium, a sports venue ad network and senior director at Turner Broadcasting along with CEO of Iryrnsoft, a video-based learning for mobile devices. He was also the COO of teen social network at Piczo and director at Microsoft.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The World is Flat
What CEO do you follow? – Reed Hastings and Mark Zuckerberg
Favorite online tool? — OneNote
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? – "The secret of life is doing what you do for free and getting someone to pay you for it"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:02 – Nathan introduces Sandy to the show
02:37 – Upgraded has a solution widget that addresses the problem of event tickets
- 02:52 – Alot of the tickets are fake and being sold on Craigslist
03:31 – The Cryptography has worked so well that there's only one bitcoin
03:54 – Upgraded has a tokenization aspect which converts tickets into a blockchain ticket
- 04:02 – Another revenue model as an alternative to Stubhub
05:04 – Upgraded has already made less than $50K in revenue
05:11 – Sandy started Upgraded last March
05:30 – There are 4 full-time people on the team
05:45 – The cofounder was initially a consultant and Sandy has more in equity
06:07 – The initial fund was from Sandy's personal savings
06:14 – Sandy took an Angel investment of $300K on a convertible note
- 06:33 – With 4% interest and $7M cap
07:11 – Sandy and the team are still talking about the ICO
09:00 – Right now, cryptocurrency relates to the currency valuation
09:12 – For Sandy, he's more about the technology rather than the currency
11:10 – Sandy wants to make sure that what he will do what is right for the business
11:50 – Nathan talks about the regulations in ICOs
12:11 – Sandy had a talk with his attorney about ICOs and blockchain
12:40 – As of the moment, anything can happen
13:30 – There was also some acquisition talks with Upgraded but Sandy turned it down
14:03 – Sandy didn't build Upgraded for the money
- 14:20 – "I just want to keep creating"
15:16 – Sandy thinks it is still too early for the company to do ICOs
15:45 – Nathan talks about the issue DAO had
17:41 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

While ICO is one of the hottest topics in blockchains, some companies would rather not delve into it at this time.
Create a utility that can solve one of the most taken for granted problems.
Do the work that you would do for free and then get someone to pay you for 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

792: SaaS: $7m ARR Founder Used Ice Cream To Get Customers, How? Sep 24, 2017

Show notes

C. Lee Smith. He's the CEO of SalesFuel, a multi-million dollar sales enablement firm he founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1989. SalesFuel leverages critical insights that enables its clients to acquire, develop and retain their best employees and customers. The company is launching a brand new product called TeamKeeper that will revolutionize the way managers manage and develop their people which leads to a happy, business culture and a reduction in turnover.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Sales Bible
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Tim Cook
Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn's Sales Navigator and Lynda
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? – "Relax man, you're going to make it"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:02 – Nathan introduces Lee to the show
02:42 – SalesFuel does sales enablement
- 02:48 – It helps salespeople to sell better, close more deals and be the trusted advisors for their client
03:23 – SalesFuel leverages critical insights for both sales prospects and employees
03:35 – SalesFuel has 3 SaaS products: AdMall, TeamKeeper and one still in the works
03:59 – TeamKeeper is already up and working
04:13 – AdMall is for media companies
04:22 – When Lee started the company, the idea was to provide business intelligence based on business type
- 04:35 – SalesFuel currently has over 450 types of businesses that they're researching
04:41 – The research team is the second largest team in SalesFuel with 10-15 people
04:57 – Total team size is 30-40
05:08 – 2016 total sales is $6-10M
05:30 – SalesFuel was on the internet in 1995 with a few companies still new to the web when they had their first product
05:56 – It was in 1997 when SalesFuel built their first web application
06:25 – An AdMall customer pays an average of $500-1K a month
06:51 – AdMall's pricing model is based on the size of the sales team
- 07:41 – The price depends on the range of the number of employees
- 07:59 – For a digital agency, they have a different price because of the numbers of tools that they use
08:21 – SalesFuel currently has 1500 customers
09:21 – Columbus is a foodie town
- 10:03 – Lee sent packs of dry ice cream from a local artisan to their potential clients
- 10:09 – Lee had calls returned to him—he thinks it was the weirdest marketing strategy he ever used
- 11:10 – Lee closed a deal from that marketing strategy
12:06 – SalesFuel is 100% bootstrapped
12:38 – First year revenue is around $100K
12:50 – Revenue in 2000 was around a million
13:45 – 2010 revenue is close to $3M
14:40 – SalesFuel's retention rate year over year is above 98%
- 15:20 – SalesFuel has client and revenue growth year over year
- 15:54 – Logo churn is equal to revenue churn
16:34 – CAC
- 16:48 – SalesFuel gets their leads from thought leadership and business development
- 17:23 – For research and blog, SalesFuel spends a little over $250K annually
17:45 – SalesFuel currently has 2 SDRs
- 18:02 – Product team has close to 18 people
- 18:15 – Sales and marketing team has 10 people and the rest are in operation
19:23 – SalesFuel has around 100 new customers every year
20:52 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

A slow hustle is never a bad strategy— grow slowly and consistently.
There are tons of new ways to gain customers; be creative, bold and just go for it.
Believe that you can and will make 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

791: BrightFunnel Marketing Tech Passes $3m ARR, 70 Customers Sep 23, 2017

Show notes

Chris Mann. He has over 25 years of experience in product management and strategy. In 2010, he joined Bizo and created a marketing automation system for B2B paid advertising and led the company through its $175M acquisition by LinkedIn. He was also involved in LinkedIn's advertising business. Prior to Bizo, Chris held product leadership role in IBM and Coremetrics. Today, he is the CEO leading Brightfunnel.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Hard Thing About Hard Things and High Output Management
What CEO do you follow? – Russ Glass
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? – "Come from the heart"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:00 – Nathan introduces Chris to the show
02:53 – Chris was the head of product at Bizo when they were just starting with 15 people
03:31 – Chris began advising for Brightfunnel when there were only 18 people in the company
- 03:41 – He was still at LinkedIn at the time and the previous CEO told Chris to join them
- 03:58 – Chris joined as head of product and the transition was planned for him to take the CEO seat
- 04:06 – Chris took the CEO seat in April
04:30 – Chris had to stay with LinkedIn after the acquisition
04:55 – Chris thinks LinkedIn won't have a mature and dominant advertising platform from a scale standpoint
- 05:22 – "The scale would never get to Facebook"
06:20 – Chris has been in the advertising game for 8 years
06:35 – Back at Bizo, Chris built something like Brightfunnel
- 06:49 – When Bizo came to LinkedIn, they acquired Fliptop
- 07:18 – LinkedIn isn't the company you should go to when you want to improve your advertising
- 07:39 – Chris solved the problem and he knows B2B marketing well
08:24 – Chris talks about the transition
- 08:46 – The transition has been smooth
- 08:53 – Chris has built great credibility and relationships within the company
- 09:13 – The company just had a record quarter where new ARR was three times more than last year
10:33 – In B2B marketing today, there isn't a measurement platform that can see every single marketing activity
- 10:49 – Brightfunnel puts the data together in a way that it is understandable for the marketers to optimize
11:55 – Brightfunnel is SaaS-based with an annual subscription
12:08 – ASP last quarter was $93K which is great for a cloud company
12:35 – 150 marketers have touched Brightfunnel
13:33 – Brightfunnel doesn't take any deal less than $30K
13:44 – Average ARR per customer is around $50K
13:53 – Team size is 45, 1/3 engineers with 8 in marketing and 6 in sales
15:00 – When Brightfunnel was at a Marketo's conference, the head of marketing brought in puppies
- 15:30 – There were a lot of people who came to their booth
15:57 – Cost per lead has been around $59 across all programs
- 16:10 – Conversion is 30% of their pipeline
17:38 – For $1M a quarter for a new ARR, Chris wants to have 5M pipeline
18:00 – Team is based in San Francisco with 2 remote
18:24 – Brightfunnel just crossed the 70-customer mark
19:09 – Average ARR
19:50 – Logo churn is around 10% annual
20:20 – RPU expansion is around 20-25%
21:41 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

The transition from one company to another is always a learning experience.
LinkedIn won't have a mature and dominant advertising platform.
Marketers need a platform like Brightfunnel that will help them become more effective with their campaigns.

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

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