Top Founders

Latest Episodes:

780: SaaS: How Did He 2x ARR In Last 12 Months from $6m to $12m? Sep 12, 2017

Show notes

Brandon Bruce. He's the COO and co-founder of Cirrus Insights, the sales plugin for Gmail and Outlook. The company is number 41 on the Inc. 5000 and the fastest growing company in Tennessee. Brandon once raced his bicycle 508 miles across Death Valley in 35 hours and 7 minutes.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Energy Bus
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — Google Drive and Slack
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I would've tried to start a full-fledged company earlier"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:50 – Nathan introduces Brandon to the show
02:25 – Brandon was in Episode 226 of The Top
- 02:38 – They had $550K in funding
02:48 – The team back then was 55-60 and now it's 70
02:59 – No additional funding has been raised
03:16 – Cirrus Insights is a fast-growing company that didn't rely too much on VC
03:35 – 5 years ago, Cirrus Insights wanted to solve the problem of going back and forth between Gmail and Salesforce
03:53 – Cirrus Insights brings Salesforce into the inbox
- 04:05 – They also help sales reps to seamlessly update Salesforce from the back end
- 04:13 – Salesforce isn't actually a CRM
04:38 – Cirrus Insights just launched Flight Plans, which is an extension of their philosophy
- 04:42 – It is fully built-in to Outlook and Gmail
- 04:44 – It allows people to setup a sequence of sales touches
- 04:58 – It's personalized and low scale
05:51 – Cirrus Insights' growth is mostly from the Salesforce app exchange
- 06:00 – Continued growth is still from word-of-mouth
06:31 – Cirrus Insights has passed 100K seats with an average seat price of $6
- 06:53 – The average seat price has gone up now
07:19 – Flight Plans is a new tier
- 07:24 – Cirrus Insights is the product name and Flight Plans is going to be an addition
- 07:27 – There are now 3 additions to the product
08:18 – Cirrus Insights has just passed $1M in MRR
09:00 – Customers are choosing Cirrus Insights over others because some are overpaying and underutilizing marketing operations
09:29 – Marketing and sales are now working as a team with Cirrus Insights
09:58 – Cirrus Insights now charges $8 per seat
10:32 – Marketing operation has 4 big, unicorn companies
10:49 – There are now hundreds of tools in marketing operation and it will be interesting to see a consolidation
11:04 – Brandon is thinking customers will just utilize the best tools for the job
11:33 – Cirrus Insights is trying to position themselves to be the best at what they do
- 11:43 – They're also continuing to offer more in the future
13:00 – Gross customer churn: 15-20% annually, but they're targeting to lower it down to 10%
- 13:30 – There's a lot less churn in the enterprise
14:17 – Net annual revenue churn is still negative and net seat churn is below 10%
15:16 – Most of the new leads are from word-of-mouth, with some small scale paid acquisition
- 15:22 – They're more focused on the content that can drive more people
- 15:25 – Brandon has read The Slow Sale which is about how slowing down can win more deals
16:30 – Budget for paid marketing is $25-50K
- 16:43 – They've done sponsorship for conferences, but the ROI is getting low
- 17:25 – Check out their podcast: Our Love Hate Relationship with Sales, which drives sales as well
18:22 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

As saturated as the market is, there's still a way for your business to stand out.
Marketing and sales teams are looking for tools that will not just help them with their workload, but encourage them to work together.
If your company constantly adds value, word-of-mouth will be your driver of sales.

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

779: Foursquare CEO on Transition From Consumer Social Network to B2B Enterprise Data Company Sep 11, 2017

Show notes

Jeff Glueck. He became the CEO of Foursquare in January of 2016 after 18 months as the COO of the company. Prior to that, he was the CEO of Skyfire Labs, co-founder of Site59.com and CMO of Travelocity. Previously, he was a strategy consultant at Monitor Company and served as a White House Fellow in the Clinton Administration. He holds a master's degree from Oxford as a Marshall Scholar and a bachelor's degree from Harvard College.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Good to Great
What CEO do you follow? – Adam Neumann
Favorite online tool? — Stitcher
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? – "It's going to be okay when you take a risk"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:46 – Nathan introduces Jeff to the show
02:53 – Jeff has been with Foursquare for 3 years
- 02:55 – Jeff joined the company while it was evolving into a hot social network in 2012
03:10 – Foursquare developed the technology of Pilgrim that turned it into a powerful enterprise business
03:19 – Foursquare's early valuation was based on the fact that it would be the next big social media network
- 03:51 – The valuation was only made up because it wasn't based on revenue
03:57 – When Jeff entered, they raised a round and they're now growing over 60% in the past 3 years
04:13 – Foursquare is now more rationally valued
04:55 – Foursquare has a powerful community of people mapping the world
06:05 – Pilgrim is based on Foursquare's nearly 12B check-ins
06:13 – Foursquare is having more check-ins today than it did 2 years ago
- 06:30 – The check-ins are called explicit ground trips
- 06:55 – Everytime someone check-in, they're mapping the business for Foursquare
- 07:15 – The explicit ground trip makes the program powerful
08:06 – Foursquare launched the Pilgrim SDK which is a white label way for their developers to add in background content and give users a better experience
08:24 – Using the Pilgrim technology, Capital One can ask its user if they want to opt-in for being informed about how to receive rewards points
- 08:36 – People overwhelmingly opting-in
- 09:08 – The notification from Capital One encourages people to actually use their mobile wallet
09:18 – TouchTunes uses the Pilgrim technology
- 09:25 – TouchTunes runs 65K jukeboxes through mobile app
10:37 – Pilgrim technology has learned when to send notifications
- 10:47 – Pilgrim technology also informs their developers of the best time to send notifications
12:08 – When Jeff joined, he saw how everyone, including Fortune 500 companies, was using them for free
- 12:15 – Jeff told their CEO that they're actually losing money and that they needed to start charging customers
12:42 – Foursquare didn't lose even a single developer after putting up a paywall
12:49 – The model was licensed-based depending on the usage
14:15 – Three of the largest headphones in the world are Foursquare's customers
14:40 – Jeff understands how the market changes
- 14:55 – 92% of the consumer spending is far from the 8% they spend on e-commerce like amazon
- 15:10 – Foursquare has predicted how Chipotle's sales will go down by 30%
15:20 – "We're not investors, we're technologists"
16:16 – Jeff believes that Foursquare's mission is to be a location intelligence company
16:34 – Jeff is proud of Foursquare's technology; they can build tools that help companies
17:07 – Foursquare started out as a consumer company but now, more and more apps are using them for their applications
17:51 – Jeff believes that in the future, they can also make real estate better
18:45 – 90% of Foursquare's revenue is from B2B
19:34 – Foursquare's paying customers are some of the biggest brands in the world who want a company that is as good as Google Maps
19:58 – People don't want to be dependent on Google in the future
20:18 – "A lot of smart companies want to build differentiated mobile experiences in the future and we're helping them do that, that is our business"
21:48 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Even if your company can go IPO, it doesn't mean that it should.
Offering your services or products for free may work for the short-term, but if your service adds value to your customers, they WILL pay.
Focus on what your company is 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

778: SaaS: With $80M Raised, He Left Salesforce to Bring Finance Departments to The Cloud Sep 10, 2017

Show notes

Dave Kellogg. Dave has more than 20 years of experience in high growth companies. Dave has been CEO of MarkLogic, CMO of Business Objects and member of Aster Data board of directors. Dave steered MarkLogic to $80 million in revenues. Business Objects witnessed equally impressive growth as it reached a revenue of billion dollars under his able guidance. Tune in and listen to Dave as he discusses various financial metrics of Hostanalytics. Targeting small businesses and enterprise level businesses, this company has grown 4x over the past 3 years. Read on and find out what makes this SAAS business tick.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Chaos Monkeys
What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff
Favorite online tool? — WordPress
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 hours
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Go read Power: Why Some People Have It and Some Don't by Geoffrey Pfeffer

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:14 – Nathan introduces Dave to the show
03:19 – Host Analytics is a SAAS company that is disrupting the space for enterprise performance management
03:58 – Not dabbling in premise products at all
04:28 – Corporate finance does not scale up with growing company size; number of users for such a software is dependent on the centralization philosophy
04:42 – A big company might be heavily centralized with only a sprinkling of users, whereas a little company might have hundreds of users
04:52 – Pricing model is a combination of a fixed based fee and a user fee
05:00 – Fixed fee varies from 25k to 50k—both fixed fee and user fee are recurring
05:25 – User fee depends on the user type and to which extent the software features are being used
05:45 – Fixed fee per user per month may vary from a couple of hundred dollars to a thousand dollars
06:10 – Re-entered the startup world once he quit Salesforce and joined Hostanalytics
06:24 – Passed on the reigns at Mark Logic to Gary Bloom—Mark Logic is still doing very well
07:05 – Best strategy to exit a startup is to exercise 83B options
08:00 – Exercising all options results in FMP (Fair Market Value) equaling strike price
08:07 – You lose the optionality—shares might not increase in value at a later date
09:00 – Met VC's, entrepreneurs and angels while looking for a new opportunity after quitting MarkLogic
09:16 – Dave's buddies coaxed him to join Salesforce as CMO
09:39 – Learnt a lot about SAAS at Salesforce. However, he found out that he was more comfortable running smaller companies
09:58 – Dave met the founders of Host Analytics through a common friend who was on their board
10:31 – HostAnalytics was clocking revenues of $10 million when Dave joined them in 2014; a great board and a proven SAAS model are the other factors which compelled Dave to join the firm
11:20 – Revenues have grown 4x since 2014
11:42 – Founded in 2001, HostAnalytics grew via bootstrapping for seven years. They finally secured VC funding in 2008
12:01 – Raised $85 million to date
12:32 – Used 75 cent "I love EBITA" stickers and funnily enough, won customers due to that
13:47 – Servicing 700 customers, as of today
13:50 – Pareto's 80/20 principle is not applicable to them; they are bimodal with a dual focus on smaller businesses as well as enterprise businesses
14:20 – Both of them are run as different cohorts by different salesforces; revenues are split equally between small business and enterprise
14:50 – Each client is aggregating revenues of $70,000 per annum
15:13 – Payment terms are a tricky issue in SAAS
15:18 – While other SAAS players go for monthly and quarterly payments, HostAnalytics opts for annual payment
15:34 – If you are giving a discount smaller than your churn rate, then everybody wins
16:15 – Customer churn and revenue churn are surprisingly equal
16:25 – Spending on an average $1.5 to $ 2 for a dollar of AR to acquire a customer
17:16 – A team of 300 people out of which 100 are located in India, entire sales force of 60 is located in the US
17:23 – Company co-founded in US and India
18:10 – Average lifetime value of a client varies from 6x to 7x or half a million dollars
19:39 – Cloud penetration of this market is just 5%
19:57 – Finance department is 10 to 15 years behind sales in adoption of cloud
20:17 – 9.5 out of 10 people would say "Not now"
20:56 – Blended Gross Margin is lower since they have a slightly bigger services business than most SAAS companies
21:10 – ERP is a heart transplant. EPM is a knee transplant
21:20 – Services business helps reduce churn and create cash flow
22:57 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

A big company might be heavily centralized with few SAAS users, whereas a small company might have hundreds of SAAS users.
Focusing on services reduces churn and creates cash flow; however, gross margins are less compared to other SAAS companies due to this.
Focusing on small businesses as well as enterprise businesses is important—at HostAnalytics, revenue is split equally between these two models.

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

777: Will Masterclass Win Online Course Wars? Sep 09, 2017

Show notes

David Rogier. He's the CEO of MasterClass where he leads the company's vision of redefining digital learning by leveraging the expertise of world-class experts with the cutting-edge technology platform. David created MasterClass after seeing how the online education space was offering low-quality content and an unfair advantage of students.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Science of Shopping
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — Doodle
How many hours of sleep do you get?— Average 6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – David would tell himself that entrepreneurship will be the hardest thing he'll ever do

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:05 – Nathan introduces David to the show
03:05 – MasterClass offers classes from the absolute best in the world
- 03:14 – Online classes are offered both pre-recorded and live, both price at $90
03:31 – Students can study anytime they want and they have access forever
04:04 – Prior to MasterClass, David worked for a VC fund in the Bay area
- 04:21 – David worked for Michael Dearing of Harrison Metal
- 04:50 – Michael wrote David a check for $500K to start his idea for his business
- 05:03 – David tried almost everything to get an idea until he remembered his grandmother's story
- 05:49 – His grandmother applied for medical school while working in a factory
- 05:55 – She was rejected by almost 50 medical schools
- 06:20 – The reason she was rejected was because she was a woman, foreigner and Jewish
- 06:27 – One school accepted her and she became a doctor
- 06:53 – She told David that education is the only thing that people can't take away from him
07:04 – David thought of getting into the education space and studied it
07:53 – MasterClass was launched in May of 2015
08:00 – Total capital raised was around $50M
08:35 – The fund goes to expanding the team as well as production so they can shoot more classes
08:42 – Team size is currently 68 and will be 100 at the end of 2017
09:04 – Year One: number of students
10:13 – When they started, David was expecting a 10X increase in sales daily
- 10:38 – David cried after their first day of sales
11:18 – Reid Benson who is part of David's sales team and was formerly with Netflix, wasn't even scared after the launch
- 11:58 – Reid told David that their CAC was amazingly low
12:34 – The first 3 classes were led by Dustin Hoffman, James Patterson and Serena Williams
13:06 – The CAC for different subjects was actually close to each other
13:43 – Paid ads spent on Day 1 were less than $100K
14:14 – Paid advertising on different channels works well for MasterClass
- 14:22 – Instructors are also promoting their classes
15:00 – David can't disclose the deal they have with the instructors
- 15:13 – Most instructors teach because they really want to teach and not just to earn from it
15:51 – David shares how they handle instructors who don't want to teach, but want to share their knowledge
- 16:10 – Classes are designed by how instructors want to share their own craft
- 16:14 – Instructors have complete control over their class
- 16:28 – David shares what a class looks like for Serena Williams
17:24 – MasterClass partners with the instructors in their classes
18:17 – David shares why he won't share the deal with the instructors
- 18:38 – James Patterson teaches with MasterClass because of his own reasons
21:00 – David shares why instructors pick MasterClass over LinkedIn, which is more popular
21:50 – There are now 20 classes in MasterClass
22:07 – The number of classes should double, year over year
22:52 – Half to 80% of their first students haven't taken any online classes before
23:10 – Not all students are fans of the instructors
23:43 – David won't sell MasterClass for $300M
25:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Never miss an opportunity being offered to you, it was offered to you for a reason; so trust yourself and go for it.
Most successful people in their field want to share their craft through any way possible.
Education is one thing that people can't take away from you.

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

776: TextingBase Shares Margins, Cap Table, Valuation, More Sep 08, 2017

Show notes

Eric Beans. He's the CEO of Texting Base and before that, he was the CEO of Appuix. He was also the former co-founder of Premier Mortgage Capital and the author of Changing the World Through Texting Software. He was in the production as the producer and writer of LA Style Magazine and he's "Chef Beans" on Daytime.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Steve Jobs
What CEO do you follow? – Brett Kingstone
Favorite online tool? — Gusto
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? – "Make better choices on who I surround myself with"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:00 – Nathan introduces Eric to the show
02:43 – Eric wasn't really a chef and he made food for the person who was running the show
03:01 – Texting Base is a personalized, mass communication platform for texting which is similar to email
- 03:17 – It looks like it is personally written
03:23 – Texting Base charges monthly depending on the quantity of the messages
03:33 – Texting Base is a SaaS business
03:38 – Minimum charge which is also the average is $50 and will go up depending on the number of messages
03:55 – Customer number is almost 500
04:09 – Average MRR
04:21 – Texting Base was bootstrapped and raised $262K
- 04:47 – They had investors like Kimberly Partoll and Brett Kingstone who was a former CEO of an IPO company
05:29 – Gross margin is 566%
06:33 – 14% of the cost structure is Texting Base's messaging fee
06:52 – Server costs is around $900 a month
07:14 – Processing fee is 2.5%
07:47 – Gross margin is around 79%
08:05 – The higher the volume, the lower the charge Texting Base gets from the provider
- 08:09 – They had a contract for volume
- 08:23 – They negotiated with Twilio directly
- 08:35 – Volume should be at least 100K a month
09:18 – Eric started Texting Base in 2012
- 09:21 – Eric needed the product—no one had it so he left banking and started the business
- 09:37 – It took 3.5 years to launch
09:49 – Team size is 5
10:12 – Target customers for Texting Base are real estate and mortgage providers
10:21 – Texting Base uses email blasts to reach their clients
10:56 – Eric has used email providers until they started building their own list
11:24 – CAC was $28 and now it's around $18
11:47 – Current churn is about 2.87% monthly
12:23 – LTV is still a bit early
12:57 – Texting Base doesn't have contracts with customers
13:08 – Last month, $850 was spent on PPC
13:32 – Eric gave some equity of the company to the investors
- 13:53 – The people who are building the product also have equity
15:25 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

It takes time and patience to build a business, be sure that you're prepared for it.
Create your own solution to the problem and don't be surprised if you end up solving multiple problems along the way.
Your network can bring you places; nurture your relationships.

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

775: FinTech Founder: I'll Never Raise Capital Again! Sep 07, 2017

Show notes

Andy Swan. He's the founder of LikeFolio. The company uses social data to determine shifts in consumer behavior on Main Street before it becomes use for Wall Street. This is his third financial technology company. The second, MyTrade, was acquired by TD Ameritrade in 2007.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — Gmail
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "A little bit more about patience"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:07 – Nathan introduces Andy to the show
02:37 – MyTrade was geared directly towards option traders and active stock traders
- 02:50 – The technology allowed traders to copy someone's option trade which is very complicated
- 03:09 – It was sold because it was useless without a brokerage backend
- 03:48 – MyTrade had raised $500-600K and was sold just 3-4 months after the round
- 04:19 – Andy thought they had a good partnership with Ameritrade and that there was no plan of acquisition
- 05:06 – Andy stayed with Ameritrade for 3-4 years after the acquisition
- 05:30 – After 4 years, Andy and his brother spun off and created their own company
06:09 – Andy developed LikeFolio's technology after leaving Ameritrade
06:26 – LikeFolio sells insights on consumer behavior to professional investors and companies
06:35 – LikeFolio has a partnership with Twitter where they take every tweet and analyze it
- 06:54 – LikeFolio can map the trends in tweets and alert their clients about the shifts in behavior
07:40 – LikeFolio has different subscription plans
- 07:47 – LikeFolio's on-demand plan is $2K a month
- 07:56 – For extreme computing power and robust API, the plan costs $100-300K
08:11 – Most of the revenue is from the API plan
08:40 – LikeFolio On-Demand has just been launched
09:20 – Every contract of LikeFolio's is secure and LikeFolio isn't allowed to disclose anything
09:59 – Andy can't disclose the number of customers they have
11:18 – LikeFolio hasn't raised capital and Andy isn't planning on raising a round
- 11:38 – "I want to own it all"
12:02 – Andy doesn't want other people to have a say in his company and wants to be the decision maker in everything
12:36 – Andy's first company was Daytrade which was sold to a private equity
- 12:55 – It helped Andy to understand how to run a business in fintech
- 13:13 – Andy didn't raise money for Daytrade
14:03 – Team size is five; one in Louisville and four in Argentina
14:36 – One of toughest things LikeFolio faces is determining a tweet with the word "never"—it negates anything else in that tweet
- 15:01 – "I could NEVER live without weightwatcher" is missed by LikeFolio because it's a positive-negative sentiment
15:28 – LikeFolio takes a thousand tweets per month, per company so there will always be missed tweets
17:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

With technology today, consumers' behavior can now be tracked on different online platforms—this can help businesses provide the right product or service for you.
It's OK to be the only person responsible for your business; however, there's still a possibility that you may need help in the future.
Be patient!

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

774: CreativeLive's Chase Jarvis: If Linkedin Offered You $200m Do You Take It? Sep 06, 2017

Show notes

Chase Jarvis. He's one of the most influential photographers in the last 20 years. He's also the creator and CEO of CreativeLive. He's won awards for his images on six different continents, including his contributions to the Pulitzer Prize winning story Snow Fall—the acclaimed New York Times interactive story heralded as the "future of journalistic storytelling" and Emmy nominated for his work documenting the music scene in Seattle. In 2009, he created the Best Camera app which was the first photo app that shared images directly to social networks. It was #1 on iTunes, App of the Year on Wired and got many other awards. He's currently focused on his work as the founder and CEO of CreativeLive, the world's largest online education platform for creatives and entrepreneurs with over a thousand teachers, 1500 classes and 10K hours of classes.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Weiner
Favorite online tool? — Evernote
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? – Chase would tell himself that mental health is the most important thing

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:48 – Nathan introduces Chase to the show
02:48 – Nathan describes his experience with New York Times
03:11 – We are now in a weird and modern era of journalism and media
03:20 – "If you're really focused on innovating and breaking out of the norm, you can do it"
03:35 – Snow Fall is a story of an avalanche
- 03:40 – Chase's friend was a victim in an avalanche so the story was extra special to him
04:01 – Feature storytelling is continuing to grow and evolve
04:10 – Physical newspaper is dying and has becoming uninteresting
04:23 – Chase believes that there will be platforms in the future that are embedded with native bells and whistles that will continue to evolve
04:45 – "Journalism is moving in the same direction as tech"
05:02 – As platforms become more templated, we'll become more interactive and have exciting experience with our news
05:24 – "Timing is everything"
05:30 – Chase shares his experience with his Best Camera app
- 05:38 – Being the first was challenging
- 05:43 – The developer was in a legal snafu which slowed down the creation of the app and paralyzed Chase's business
- 05:57 – Companies had already asked Chase if they could buy his app
- 06:13 – Chase has spent 10 years identifying himself as an artist and entrepreneur
- 06:30 – Chase was struggling with his overall identity
- 07:30 – Chase just shut down his app; moved on and learned from it
08:11 – "I got more juice to go help other people break through some of those problems"
08:40 – Specifically, Chase owns all the intellectual property of his app
09:39 – "We need to overcome the psychology of being stuck in paralysis and analysis"
10:05 – Chase was in his late 30s in 2009
10:27 – Chase thinks that humans are generally resilient so he didn't dwell much on what happened
10:34 – 5 years later, Chase wrote about his failure on his blog
- 10:59 – It's more about having an impact on the world rather than just getting money
11:25 – Chase got into Instagram only a year and a half ago
- 11:35 – Chase was trying to preserve a legal position
11:53 – CreativeLive sells content that are created by the top experts in the world
- 12:01 – There's a premium model where customers can see how things are done
- 12:07 – There are channels that can be watched for free
12:33 – CreativeLive has a total of 10M students, paid and free users
13:12 – CreativeLive has a high conversion rate relative to peers and commerce
- 13:31 – Average conversion rate is 1-2%
13:39 – CreativeLive is curated to creators by creators
- 13:51 – It is more community focused and is not a two-sided marketplace
14:00 – Competitors' classes can be created by anyone which is very different from CreativeLive
15:07 – Chase has no desire to limit the creators in CreativeLive
15:29 – CreativeLive designs their contract and relationship with their creators
15:50 – Chase is confident in CreativeLive and the value it brings to people
16:58 – "We make you look great"
17:05 – CreativeLive only makes the extraordinary
17:24 – The challenge that Masterclass is facing
18:44 – CreativeLive was bootstrapped for the first 2 years
18:56 – CreativeLive has raised $58.8 M in total
19:30 – Chase won't sell CreativeLive for $200M, even if it's from LinkedIn
20:06 – CreativeLive's mission is for people to educate themselves and make a living
20:26 – Chase would only sell if the vision of the buyer aligned with them
22:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Don't dwell on your past mistakes, use them as motivation to move on and create better.
Contracts are made for a reason; study and check thoroughly before agreeing to one.
Stay aligned with your mission and vision.

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

773: Can $1m MRR Company Grow Into $10m Post Money Valuation? Sep 05, 2017

Show notes

Venkat Nagaswamy. He's the CEO of Mariana IQ. He brings a long and diverse background in high technology to apply artificial intelligence and deep learning to help marketers make account-based marketing at scale a reality. "Big Kat," as he was nicknamed by friends and colleagues, has led teams in creating analytics, technology and business development solutions at McKinsey, Juniper Networks and GE Plastics, among others. He's worked in enterprise and digital consumer hardware, SaaS, corporate and business unit strategy, market entry strategy, and product development. He's a proud graduate of the University of Michigan and the Georgia Institute of Technology. He holds an MBA and a Master's in Aerospace Engineering.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Good to Great
What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff and Mark Zuckerberg
Favorite online tool? — Calendly and Feedly
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? – "Being diligent and hard-working counts for a lot more than being smart and clever"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:54 – Nathan introduces Venkat to the show
02:54 – Venkat was in Juniper trying to implement account-based marketing
03:14 – Venkat is trying to solve the problems in account-based marketing
03:27 – People buy a monthly subscription to Mariana IQ which will allow them to run campaigns targeting the same audience across different platforms
03:37 – Mariana IQ is a SaaS business
03:43 – Average pay is $4K a month per customer
03:55 – Venkat started Mariana IQ three years ago with his three co-founders
04:02 – Venkat also uses their technology
04:16 – Venkat and his co-founders felt that marketers need more tools to be successful in the field
04:36 – First year revenue was zero
04:45 – Late 2015, Mariana IQ made $155K and $550K in 2016
04:59 – Venkat is expecting to get 5x more in annual revenue this year
05:17 – MRR in June was $70-80K
05:45 – Mariana IQ has around 20 customers
06:00 – Zendesk is one of Mariana IQ's clients
- 06:13 – Zendesk wanted to target larger companies and so they gave Mariana IQ their data
- 06:30 – Mariana IQ used their API to find the targeted companies for Zendesk
06:54 – Venkat shares their success rate at Mariana IQ
- 07:27 – "We got better quality, 4x the volume while keeping the cost the same"
07:36 – Mariana IQ has raised capital
- 07:39 – First seed round was in 2014 which was led by Blumberg Capital
- 07:58 – David Blumberg owns Blumberg Capital and Bruce Taragin is who is on Mariana IQ's board
- 08:05 – Blumberg Capital has been around for 34 years
- 08:19 – The first round was a convertible note round with $6M capital
- 08:47 – Mariana IQ did another round in 2016 which was a priced round
- 09:10 – Mariana IQ has raised a total of $4M
09:48 – Venkat doesn't worry about growing into their valuation
12:00 – In Mariana IQ's first year, they were only getting beta customers
12:41 – Venkat shares the unconventional way he attracted more customers; a video of him in the shower, singing
- 13:05 –The video was posted on Twitter and got a million views
- 13:38 – "I'm the worst singer on the planet"
13:57 – Gross margin is around 80%
14:10 – Gross customer churn is quite high, at 3%
14:22 – Revenue churn
14:55 – Full weighted CAC is $22K per customer
15:06 – Customer LTV is $200-250K
15:40 – Venkat is looking at increasing their CAC by spending more on sales and marketing to increase their volume
- 15:54 – They will add two more salespeople
16:23 – Last month, they spent $2k on marketing alone
17:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Marketers are constantly looking for alternative ways to become more effective and successful in their industry.
A business shouldn't worry about its valuation—as long as their confident with their product and continue to add value to their customers; it will work out in the end.
It's necessary for companies today to invest in their sales and marketing to increase that engagement with their 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

772: How Grant Cardone, Others Spend $25k To Get 100m Person Social Media Blasts Sep 04, 2017

Show notes

Jeremy Haynes whose company is Megalodon Marketing. He's building all kinds of personal brands for celebrities and entrepreneurs alike.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – 48 Laws of Power
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? — Infusionsoft, ClickFunnels and Stripe
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? – "Speed is power, but power is nothing without control"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:55 – Nathan introduces Jeremy to the show
02:28 – "Real results in real life"
02:33 – Jeremy's real life experiences have driven millions of dollars in infoproducts
02:43 – Jeremy only gives actionable advice
03:00 – Armando Montelongo is one of Jeremy's clients
- 03:02 – Armando had a show that ran from 2006-2009 which was called Flip This House, by A&E
03:10 – Jeremy brands himself as the largest go-to personality in digital agency
03:20 – 16 months after Megalodon's launch, Jeremy met Armando
- 03:28 – Armando explained to Jeremy how his TV show led to a business with $200M annual revenue in 2017
- 03:57 – $200M doesn't include any online revenue
- 04:05 – The entirety of its revenue came from selling event tickets to people over the phone and up-selling them
- 04:18 – There were 22K customers between 2006-2009 and the majority of customers have an average transaction value of $20K or more
- 05:18 – At first, Jeremy couldn't believe Armando's story because 2017 is the year of online advertising
- 05:35 – Armando paid Jeremy $5K per day to come in for 3 days in total
- 05:48 – Armando's business was built up on traditional media
- 06:05 – Jeremy did an assessment on Armando's business during his visit
- 06:15 – The business made 6-figures the first month of the launch after spending a mid 5-figures
- 06:30 – Armando is making a 7-figure revenue in the succeeding months
06:40 – Jeremy made 3 deals with Armando
- 06:48 – There was a monthly payment of $70K to pay for their social media partners
- 07:08 – Brandon Carter, Tai Lopez and Big Mike were some of his social media partners
- 07:14 – Dan Fleyshman and Branden Hampton from Elevator Studios have partnerships with big, social media brands
- 07:48 – $25K pays for 50 accounts to post to 100M people within 48 hours
08:38 – 33% of the social media activities is on Instagram as it's a powerful platform
- 09:00 – An account with 60K views in an hour can have 2% of that traffic go to the product
- 10:20 – There's a chrome plugin that helps you filter all Facebook posts
11:11 – Grant Cardone is the Number 1 sales trainer in the world
- 11:30 – Jeremy became a part of Grant's business as an email marketing manager; he trained 50 of his people to use Infusionsoft
- 11:46 – Jeremy ended up as a digital marketing specialist
- 11:50 – By Jeremy's sixth month, Grant's business was making a million dollars in digital revenue
- 12:28 – Jeremy started with $50K a year to $60K a year with a bonus
13:54 – Jeremy created an omnipresent advertising model for marketing automation
- 14:05 – Jeremy categorizes Grant's buyers
- 14:50 – Jeremy shows the buyers the ads they would want to see depending on their behavior and interests
- 15:21 – Jeremy shares an actual example using lead forms
- 15:43 – Jeremy tracks the leads from their customized URL and ads
- 16:29 – PlusThis is an Infusionsoft plugin where you can connect Facebook to Infusionsoft and generate an http post
- 16:47 – When a lead fills out a form, it will be generated to a campaign
- 16:51 – The first step in an marketing automation sequence will be an http post pushing the lead's data to the target audience where the lead should be
- 17:03 – Then, the audience will be connected to the ad that is made for them
- 17:10 – The sequence won't always be perfect
19:00 – Jeremy shares why people like him are needed to do this job
19:17 – People can hire from com
19:35 – Jeremy stayed with Grant for 13 months, then left to start his own agency
21:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Digital marketing is one of best ways to grow your revenue as a business.
Know your worth and show people why you're worth it.
Leave when you think it is the best time and/or option you have; then, continue to pursue your dreams.

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

771: $320M King of Mobile App Installs Sep 03, 2017

Show notes

Moshe Vaknin. He's been dreaming about his company YouAPPi since he bought his first iPhone 3. After a long and successful career working in a variety of positions, Moshe founded 3 successful startups before finally starting YouAPPi. As the CEO of the company, he brings vast experience in the fields of advertising, publishing and affiliate marketing, making him adept at identify opportunities that can be transformed into profitable realities.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – My Journey to Justice by Moshe Vankin
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — Whatsapp
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? – "Never give up"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:41 – YouAPPi is a platform that enables users, publishers and developers to solve growing challenges related to mobile app development
03:19 – As an example, King, the maker of Candy Crush, is always looking for high-quality users for candy crush
- 03:30 – High-quality users are the ones who play and purchase virtual items
- 03:45 – YouAPPi will find these high-quality users
- 03:53 – The process of finding high-quality users is complicated
- 04:12 – King will have a better ROI to optimize their investment by partnering with a company like YouAPPi
04:47 – YouAPPi has an agreement with 4500 developers and publishers
05:13 – YouAPPi knows users behavior better than anyone else
- 05:21 – Moshe explains how YouAPPi learns the shopping behavior of each user
- 05:44 – By learning what to recommend to certain users, YouAPPI can better drive sales
06:50 – YouAPPi can't track the users and other private data
07:30 – As long as the user is within YouAPPi's publishers' network they can identify your device ID and recommend apps
07:56 – YouAPPi is getting paid per app installation and usage
10:52 – YouAPPi pays 70% of their revenue to their publishers
- 10:56 – From $20, the publisher gets $14 and YouAPPi gets $6
11:05 – YouAPPi was launched in 2011
11:15 – First year revenue was $250K which is the total cut from $1M
- 11:44 – 2016 total cut was $80M
12:05 – YouAPPi has raised closed to $20M
- 12:17 – "We have to invest building the platform"
12:19 – Total number of employees is around 130 with 10 offices globally
13:05 – YouAPPi's platform is for their own consumption
- 13:24 – "Our business model is our platform"
13:44 – YouAPPi is currently running hot on momentum and Moshe won't probably sell YouAPPi before 2019
- 14:10 – IPO recommendations
15:04 – HQ is in the Bay Area and Moshe is currently in Israel
15:33 – Top 2 competitors are Aerosource and AppLovin
17:07 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

As long as you're on the right path, you can reach your dream.
A good relationship the people in your network can exponentially expand your business.
Never sell too early—if you've got a furnace full of momentum, to cash 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

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