Top Founders

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760: This Site Has Sold $3m Worth of Athletes Old Gear Aug 23, 2017

Show notes

Brendan Candon. He's the co-founder and CEO of SidelineSwap, an online marketplace for athletes to buy and sell their sports gear. The company has over 100K users, participated in 500 startups and has raised $1.5M in venture funding.

Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Leaders Eat Last What CEO do you follow? – Jack Ma Favorite online tool? — Slack and Appear How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Brendan wished he could have been more active in entrepreneurship while in school

Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:20 – Nathan introduces Brendan to the show 01:43 – Brendan was in Episode 359 of The Top 02:33 – Brendan believes that SidelineSwap will make $5-6M in sales by the end of 2017 02:43 – SidelineSwap just launched their iOs app 03:28 – SidelineSwap is where athletes list their items for free 03:35 – You can list any new or used sports equipment 03:43 – SidelineSwap takes a 12% cut 03:49 – Their top KPI is gross merchandise volume 03:53 – They look at the number of sales they drive to the platform 04:51 – SidelineSwap currently has 15K sellers and around 23K buyers 05:22 – There are 2 sides of a marketplace: 05:30 – SidelineSwap gets supplies from the sellers which drive traffic 05:35 – There should be a balance between supply and demand 05:45 – SidelineSwap started by their search to see how many people had sports gear lying around 05:58 – They went to former college athletes, professionals and others in the industry 06:35 – They got some highly desirable gear from former known athletes 06:39 – SidelineSwap started with social media to drive traffic to the website 06:45 – They now have around 70K Instagram and Facebook followers 07:34 – SidelineSwap has marketing ads highlighting some gear that can be considered collector's items 08:25 – Total transaction volume since the launch of SidelineSwap is around $3.5M 08:35 – 70% happened in just the first 6 months 08:57 – Brendan thinks that getting the right supplies affects their growth significantly 09:08 – SidelineSwap also educates the buyers on the items that they're getting 09:30 – SidelineSwap tries to avoid jockstraps 09:43 – There are also different accessories that target the younger buyers 10:28 – eBay started in a similar way as SidelineSwap 11:00 – "We want to be the resource for every sports family" 11:21 – SidelineSwap wants to build the best possible shopping experience 11:45 – Average order value is $80 11:56 – SidelineSwap focuses on the number of gear listed 12:23 – In May, there were 3K buyers and 1500 sellers 12:48 – SidelineSwap has recently $1.5M in summer 12:56 – Total will be around $3.5 including a current negotiation 13:23 – Brendan shares how he pitched SidelineSwap as a marketplace 13:45 – Brendan believes there will be a sporting goods marketplace 14:19 – SidelineSwap is currently growing 30%, month over month 14:43 – Current team size is 10, some are in Boston and some are in New York 17:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points: There will be a marketplace for sports equipment in the near future. For every business, aim to achieve a balance with your supply and demand. Research where you can find the BEST resources for your supply—this will attract your target market.

Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

759: He Shares How He Built His Company On Top of Cryptocurrency Ethereum and Why Aug 22, 2017

Show notes

Eric Tang. He's a computer programmer and co-founder of Live Peer, a decentralized video live streaming platform incentivized with the blockchain. He was introduced to the blockchain in 2014, and it's pretty much everything that Eric thinks about now.

Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Jerry Colonna Favorite online tool? — MetaMask 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? – Eric would tell himself to be more focused and worry less

Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:06 – Nathan introduces Eric to the show 02:07 – Wowza does video transcoding in a centralized way 02:30 – One of the big CDN players is Akamai 02:59 – There are two different cases for why people would use Live Peer over the other players in the industry 03:05 – Live Peer is in a decentralized world 03:11 – App developers nowadays are building decentralized applications 03:18 – The applications do not have a server 04:13 – They can duplicate their projects over the blockchain 04:17 – Live peer is the only solution for decentralized apps 05:20 – The government wouldn't be able to figure out the IP of Live Peer 06:06 – The idea of blockchain is the participants are the stakeholders 06:16 – When you use Facebook live, you're just a user and not actually benefiting from it 06:27 – In a decentralized world, if you're a participant of Live Peer, you earn tokens which grow and become more valuable 07:07 – From an ecosystem standpoint, the companies building businesses around bitcoin and ethereum are early coin holders 07:28 – Joseph Lubin, Ethereum's co-founder, is now hiring 400 people for ConsenSys to build applications around the ethereum ecosystem 07:55 – Ethereum provides a smart contract platform which bitcoin doesn't provide 08:47 – How Ethereum and bitcoin are competitors and how they are not competing explained 09:17 – Anyone can build their own bitcoin blockchain but they won't be always successful 10:18 – Eric thinks co-blockchains will also exist 10:50 – Eric thinks bitcoin is a great way to hold value as it has a great network now 11:11 – Ethereum has its own value and for a completely different purpose 11:29 – We use the ethereum platform to hold our tokens 11:50 – In the open blockchain world, anyone can be an investor 12:10 – There's just more risk in investing earlier 12:44 – Can someone cheat the system by having fake miners grow the value earlier? 13:00 – Some are pumping the tokens and selling them 13:13 – When a company comes, Eric would have them hold their tokens at first 13:48 – If you have a lot miners, you're already contributing a lot to the network 14:00 – The network will leverage the access capacity 14:12 – if you spun out a bunch of miners, Live Peers will have a large capacity in terms of amount of transcoding and live streaming work we can do 14:23 – This creates a cheaper price for the amount of live streaming 14:43 – Nathan makes a comparison using Live Peer 1 and Live Peer 2 as competitors 14:49 – When investors spend money on the 2 companies and contribute more resources, the prices of the service will go down for the consumers 15:07 – The longer they spend money, the more users they can drive 15:55 – If Nathan launches an email marketing tool, how can he create traction if people don't understand crypto 16:18 – There's actually a need for people to simplify the complexity of crypto 16:59 – Eric is thinking of providing incentives for individual stakeholders to get new users on board 17:23 – The big investors can put aside a big percentage of tokens and just incentivize it 17:37 – It's like an employment equity pool 17:54 – The early participants will benefit more from the ecosystem 18:03 – The first bitcoin transaction was 10K bitcoins for a pizza 18:16 – The bitcoin price to buy a pizza is a little over $2500 (a coin) 20:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points: More developers are building decentralized applications because of the security piece. The participants in the blockchain are the stakeholders as well. The one who will win is those who can spend more money and contribute resources for a longer span of time—this will attract more users and create cheaper prices for the consumers.

758: The Ex-Stock Exchange Brain Behind Ethereum Blockchain Aug 21, 2017

Show notes

Anthony Diiorio. He's a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, community organizer and thought leader in the field of digital currencies, blockchain technology, and decentralized technology. He's the founder and CEO of Decentral and Jaxx and co-founder of the Ethereum project. He previously served as the chief digital officer of The Toronto Stock Exchange.

Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — LastPass 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? – Anthony wished he didn't waste his time in university

Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:55 – Nathan introduces Anthony to the show 01:38 – Anthony got into the industry in 2012 and thought that crypto was going to be more important than the internet 01:57 – Before, there was disruption in the internet—now, you can send value without third parties getting involved 02:21 – We're now moving onto the age of the movement of value 02:34 – Some third party disruptions come from banks and credit bank companies 02:53 – You can remove third parties in the value chain and connect more individuals at a lower cost 03:11 – With smart contract, you can now automate on blockchain and see a reduction cost 03:38 – A blockchain is a ledger system or an accounting system that tracks entries using cryptographics 04:20 – Digital currency didn't work before because there was no technology for it 04:48 – Since you can't duplicate something digital, you can claim what is yours 05:33 – Decentralized ledgers track what people are sending and receiving 05:57 – The decentralized networks are replacing centralized services 06:14 – Blockchain is the technology, bitcoin is the example of that technology 06:22 – All cryptocurrencies have blockchains below them 06:28 – Bitcoin is the first one to have its blockchain 06:30 – Ethereum has a blockchain behind it 06:39 – Blockchain makes the transactions visible and transparent 06:50 – Blockchain provides trust between two individuals 07:40 – Tokens are coins but are found on other platforms 07:45 – Ethereum is a platform that is made to build other platforms on top of it 07:51 – Ethereum provides the infrastructure layer 08:05 – There are now tons of projects building coins on the ethereum platform 08:38 – Bitcoin has its own coin while ethereum is like a product that incentivizes people to contribute to the network 09:39 – Ethereum is like an SDK depending on the developers 11:03 – Anthony had a talk with someone who's in the cannabis industry 11:06 – Anthony is creating a coin card system where you can buy any coin or currency in convenience stores 11:18 – Banks don't want to set up accounts for bitcoin companies because they're scared 11:47 – Anthony sees the same characteristics within the crypto space and cannabis space 12:40 – Ethereum is from Decentral, the hub that Anthony made in 2013 12:55 – Anthony sees people jumping to the crypto space without even researching 13:15 – Look online before investing because scams are everywhere 13:47 – Anything that states there's a fixed return is fishy so you should seek advice 14:03 – Do your due diligence 14:39 – Decentral is the brand and Jaxx is the product 14:48 – Anthony shares his initial experience with the industry 15:13 – Anthony bootstrapped Etherium 15:23 – Anthony left Etherium in 2015 to focus on the wallet space 15:30 – Anthony realized that the wallet is the browser for the technology 15:51 – The wallet contains the value of movement 15:56 – Anthony developed a multi-chain, multi-platform digital wallet that enables managing and receipt of valuable digital assets 16:23 –When you start your Jaxx, you're creating a key for your transactions 16:41 – You are in full control of your wallet 16:55 – Jaxx makes money through integration partners like ShapeShift 17:09 – Anthony made $60M from ShapeShift transactions 17:50 – Jax just signed 70 partnerships in the space 18:25 – The fund that Anthony used for Jaxx 18:45 – Jaxx is currently profitable and made $150K last month 19:03 – There are exchanges globally that enable you to buy and sell cryptocurrencies rather than wire transfers to your bank account 19:13 – There's also a bitcoin ATM and Anthony has it 19:32 – Jaxx's goal is to become the default interface that the masses can use to understand the power of blockchain 21:46 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points: With cryptocurrencies, you can send value without the disruption of third parties. Do your due diligence—while cryptocurrency is a hot space for investors, the chances of getting scammed is also very high. The power of blockchain isn't only beneficial for those who are already in the space, but for everyone.

757: She Launched a $20m Cannabis VC Firm After Her Parents Passed Away Aug 20, 2017

Show notes

Emily Paxhia. She's the founder of Poseidon Asset Management and she shifted her focus entirely to the cannabis industry, in 2013. Since that time, she's taken her experience of researching markets, companies and strategic opportunities and turned them entirely to the world of cannabis. Her focus on understanding where the market is headed rather than where it has been, has been critical to developing a diverse portfolio of companies that span the sector. With over 15 years working with Fortune 500 companies—developing products, resolving strategic errors and addressing new target audiences—her work has been fundamental to stewarding her companies' portfolios along the paths to success.

Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Mark Zuckerberg Favorite online tool? — Asana How many hours of sleep do you get?— 3-5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wished I had took it easier"

Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:04 – Nathan introduces Emily to the show 01:53 – Poseidon is a VC firm for cannabis 02:02 – Emily was from an industry where companies were looking to expand their market share 02:09 – Emily saw the cannabis industry as an opportunity—there was a demand for products 02:30 – Emily's parents passed away from cancer and she was told by some that cannabis could have helped her parents 02:43 – A dying cancer patient is prescribed medication that has side effects, then is issued more meds to handle the side effects—which is a difficult cycle 02:58 – Using cannabis appropriately could actually help with the side effects 03:05 – More and more cancer patients are experiencing relief while using cannabis 03:38 – Emily and her brother were 16 and 21 when their parents passed 04:07 – Prior to Poseidon, Emily was with Miner % Co. Studio 04:44 – As a financial professional, Emily had to assess her risk tolerances 05:04 – It's important to be mentally and financially invested 05:09 – Emily also had great support to bring Poseidon to life 05:53 – Current fund size is $20M going $25M 06:11 – Emily's brother is her business partner 06:36 – Emily shares a story when her brother brought in a company that Emily disagreed with at first 06:38 – In 2015, they've invested in a company called Surna 06:43 – The company had gone public and was in a lot of trouble 07:00 – Morgan had the idea to buy out the founders of Surna 07:15 – Morgan joined the board and helped the company get on track again 07:40 – Emily shares a time when the reverse happened; she brought in a company that Morgan was hesitant with at first 07:48 – The company was Wurk 08:00 – Emily was interested with Keegan's presentation 08:35 – Keegan was in Episode 735 of The Top 09:20 – There is an assumption that Emily and Morgan are always high—this is NOT true 09:44 – Emily takes cannabis for stomach pain, but it doesn't get her high 10:26 – Emily sees the cannabis industry as a wellness industry 10:50 – Emily is interested with business technology solutions that help businesses run smoothly 11:00 – She's also interested in agricultural technology solutions as well 12:06 – "Honestly, if I could, I would solve the banking issue in California" 12:21 – Banks are still dropping businesses and credit cards 12:35 – It gets challenging when someone loses their banking relationship 13:00 – Emily is currently in San Francisco 13:23 – Poseidon is modest in stating their expected returns 13:31 – Emily wanted to capture the growth of industry 13:59 – Poseidon has been running 40-44% IR 14:13 – Poseidon has 3 phases of diligence: 14:20 – They receive lots of emails and Emily tries to read and respond as much and as quickly as possible 14:56 – Emily meets the founders and the team as part of their due diligence 15:06 – The last phase is from getting into the details of actual financial projections to sourcing potential co-investments 15:25 – Poseidon currently has 30 active companies in their portfolio 15:28 – Over 40 in the lifetime of the portfolio 15:55 – Typical deal size is $500K to a million dollars 17:02 – Emily and her brother are talking about a company they want to launch 17:38 – Emily's three babies from their portfolio are: 17:42 – Flow Kana: a processing center working with small farmers 18:17 – Headset is a machine-data analytics company 18:37 – Emily really likes Wurk 18:49 – Baker is also exciting because it creates market opportunity 21:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points: To become successful, one must research the field in question. There's a great demand for new product and technology in the cannabis industry as the supply is low. Carry your past experience and knowledge into your current and future endeavors—employ the skills that transfer across disciplines.

756: Meet The 21 Year Old Who Runs His Own $5m Hedge Fund Aug 19, 2017

Show notes

Julian Marchese. Julian was introduced to Nathan by a mutual friend and he's the CEO and portfolio manager at Marchese Investments in New York City. Julian is only 21 and was already featured in Bloomberg, CNBC and Dragon's Den, which is Shark Tank of Canada, where he managed to get 4 out of 5 dragons in the den that showed interest.

Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Market Wizards What CEO do you follow? – Peter Jones Favorite online tool? — Quantocracy.com How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Multi-strategy"

Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:51 – Nathan introduces Julian to the show 01:47 – Going into the hedge fund world has always been Julian's passion 01:55 – Julian was introduced to the world of investing by his parents when he was 11 years old 02:50 – When Julian turned 18, he decided to start his own firm 02:58 – He waited until he reached the legal age 03:27 – Julian took a course in Toronto and people in press found it fascinating that he was studying trading at a very young age 03:48 – A lady took it upon herself to take Julian's story and publish it 04:05 – Some of Julian's first investors saw his story from the media 05:00 – Julian wanted to build a community for young learners like himself 05:10 – A lady emailed Julian because she wanted her daughter to join 05:36 – Julian met the lady and her daughter when they were in Toronto 05:51 – 2 years later, the lady invested $75K for 1% of Julian's management company 06;11 – The management company has raised $675K with a $4M valuation 06:38 – Hedge funds usually have multiple entities who have different roles 07:28 – Julian also pays himself for personal expenses which is around $25K to $30K 07:53 – The other costs are on the management company side 08:44 – The investors make money from the GP interest accumulated 09:43 – Julian was able to raise the $6M capital through value generation 09:45 – "I've been managing money since October 2015" 10:07 – The best months for Julian are the months where the market is down 10:28 – Julian latest deal was an institutional money manager 11:03 – Julian isn't doing traditional investments 11:42 – Julian explains how he does his investments 11:45 – First, they're able to trade volatility and how much the market moves up or down 11:59 – Most people invest in the stock market, they want to benefit with the stocks are up, but they also want protection when things go down 12:21 – One of Julian's strategies is to systematically sell insurance 13:04 – The investment return depends on the investors 13:40 – If you put in a million dollars in October 2015, today you will now have $1.2M 13:50 – You can take it all or leave any amount you want 14:09 – They now cater to different types of clients 14:36 – Julian doesn't worry too much about what other hedge funds usually worry about 15:10 – Julian worries more about their process and how can they develop more 15:20 – The real risk for Julian is when there's something wrong with his analysis process 15:45 – Strategies are reciprocal 17:04 – Julian has multiple strategies and none of those strategies are correlated 17:53 – Brexit can affect the volatility strategy but it's a selective strategy and not always in the market 19:03 – "The main risk to us are not macro events like a stock market crashing" 19:40 – Julian makes money from 53-55% of their trades 19:49 – They try to limit their exposures 20:02 – "The risks are very circumstantial" 21:20 – Julian is unsure of his future positioning, but it's completely content specific 23:23 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points: Having multiple strategies can help you stay on track. Start as early as possible—you are building your skills and knowledge base for the future. People desire taking risks in trading and stocks, but they also need the securities in place.

755: Want to Invest in BitCoin But Don't Understand It? Listen to This. Aug 18, 2017

Show notes

Tom Kineshanko. He's been investing in cryptocurrencies, also called digital assets or tokens, since 2013. He founded and exited the first bitcoin and ethereum fund in Canada, invested in the ethereum cloud sale and has made 10x the returns in bitcoin after ethereum classic, golem and several other tokens. He's also the founder and general partner at First Block Capital, a digital asset fund manager where Tom leads investments in new token issuance. He's also the founder and CEO of Walter.ai—a company that is building a distributed Bloomberg terminal—which intends to make the best supplier of market data to the cryptocurrencies market.

Famous Five: Favorite crypto-related book? – Introducing Ethereum and Solidity What CEO do you follow? – Brian Armstrong and Olaf Carlson Favorite online tool? — Cryptocurrencies exchanges How many hours of sleep do you get? — 8 plus If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wish I understood which industries were sort of young-man game versus old-man game"

Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:05 – Nathan introduces Tom to the show 02:31 – There's a market of new old coin tokens and there's little information about it 03:12 – "This is liquid venture capital" 03:15 – The tokens represent an exposure to startup projects 03:25 – As people know, investing in startups is about qualitative information rather than quantitative 03:45 – Tom decided to apply the distributing models in building companies 04:50 – Tom shares the common way to build companies 05:10 – Blockchain ecosystem has a technology that is a combination of 4 different technologies 05:15 – The technology allows secure transfer of value on the internet even without a third-party approval 05:28 – Blockchain is a secure transfer layer that overlays on your internet 06:06 – You can track the activity on the blockchain because it's an open source 06:16 – The tricky part is to identify who's doing what 06:46 – Every time there's a transaction on bitcoin blockchain, you're leaving clues to who you are and what you're up to 07:43 – The best use case of bitcoin blockchain is a stored value 08:22 – The issue with bitcoin blockchain is that it's not yet as trusted as gold 08:27 – Tom believes though that bitcoin blockchain will be as trustworthy as gold 08:38 – As an investor, you want to be diversified across multiple blockchains 08:56 – Every one of these tokens is the unit of currency within a blockchain 09:32 – Bitcoin is a unit in a chain with 21M units 09:38 – Tom uses the analogy of a train with several carts to explain bitcoin and blockchain 10:08 – Ethereum is a place you can go to build blockchains and host them 10:45 – If bitcoin becomes as trusted as gold, it can be worth billions of dollar 10:55 – "You can never prove that any blockchain is secure because there's always a bug they might find in the future" 11:03 – The longer you wait to find the bug, the more trusted it becomes 12:07 – Tom believes that the way blockchain is built is the way companies will be built in the future 12:15 – For investors interested in technology, go to Coinbase.com which is a mutual friend of Tom's 13:01 – Coinbase has different types of cryptocurrencies or tokens 13:05 – Tom recommends buying bitcoins on Coinbase 13:09 – Then open up a Poloniex.com account where you can buy whatever you want using bitcoins 13:54 – The people who took advantage of the gold rush didn't look for gold, but created something that can be of use for gold 14:50 – In the crypto world, you can design a microeconomy with incentives 14:55 – The people will join your microeconomy and work for you to get the incentives 15:08 – The incentives are the bitcoins 15:51 – Walter is creating an army of people who contribute data in exchange for a reward 15:55 – The people are getting paid with tokens 16:29 – Crypto businesses are difficult 16:52 – The easiest way to get good returns in the space is to buy tokens which are units of currency in micro-economies 17:14 – Tom uses the analogy of buying Facebook IPO 19:20 – There are games where you can earn cryptocurrencies and online casinos for cryptocurrencies 19:53 – When you buy cryptocurrencies, you are already in a crypto economy where you need to do your due diligence 20:33 – Ethereum is one of the currencies that you need to run apps 21:21 – A token is like a packet (in relation to IP protocols) 21:54 – Blockchain is the protocol layer upon which tokens are transferred around 23:33 – Tokens are also called cryptocurrencies 23:15 – A miner is someone who runs an algorithm on his own piece of hardware that checks for activity within a blockchain 24:48 – The ways that you can contribute data varies 25:51 – It's the first time in history that you can have liquid venture capital in the industry 25:58 – There's an extreme demand, but with a limited supply 26:44 – Tom believes that now is a good time to participate in cryptocurrencies 27:31 – Tom shares to Nathan the questions that Nathan can ask a guest who is into investing in cryptocurrencies: 27:40 – What are tokens? How do you make a venture capital investment? 28:06 – Do you have a personal relationship with MetaStable and Polychain? 29:35 – What is the history of cryptocurrencies? 30:12 – Another question can be their strategy of trading 31:00 – Why people should use Walter: 31:05 – All of us in the space need to support a good project and invest in the right projects so we can all have a good return 31:21 – Walter is building a global community of contributors who are researching the space and gathering information in exchange for incentives 31:42 – "Get involved and join the conversation" 33:18 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points: Bitcoin may not be as trusted as gold, but it will be in the future. Building a crypto business isn't easy, but the demand is here. Study and research an industry before jumping in, and know the RIGHT questions to ask.

754: They've Passed $15M in Revenue Using Breakfast Meetups for Growth Aug 17, 2017

Show notes

Louis Jonckheere. He's one of the co-founders of Showpad which is the second company that he's founded. He and his co-founders founded the mobile development agency, In The Pocket, in 2010 where he still is on the board. Prior to In The Pocket, he was a strategic project manager at NetLog where he first met one of his co-founders. He also holds a masters degree in law and business and he's currently the Chief Product Officer at Showpad.

Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Google Apps How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "That you should've sold your first company sooner"

Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:21 – Nathan introduces Louis to the show 02:05 – Louis is the one responsible for product design and engineering, and he's also in charge of the product marketing team 02:36 – Louis collaborates with their sales team 02:50 – Louis asks their sales team about the improvements they could make to the product depending on customer feedback 03:13 – Showpad is a sales enablement platform 03:22 – Showpad creates a content management system for their clients 03:47 – The marketing team uses Showpad to reach salespeople 04:14 – The salespeople are in the same company 04:27 – 90% of what marketing creates never gets used 04:47 – Showpad is used internally in businesses 05:36 – Showpad is a SaaS business 05:51 – Average contract value is $50-60K per land deal 06:46 – A customer that signed-up can grow up to an average of 140% in 12 months 07:04 – The upsell happens gradually 07:43 – Showpad uses Stripe for credit card payments 07:58 – Showpad also uses Salesforce, NetSuite and HubSpot 08:12 – Showpad currently has 997 customers 08:30 – ARR is a bit over $20M 08:35 – Showpad has a big group of SMB customers 09:05 – Showpad only has annual contracts so they're not focused on MRR 09:15 – ARR goal this year is around $25-28M 09:48 – Team size is 220 with 30 sales people 10:00 – Showpad was launched in 2012 10:11 – Showpad was bootstrapped for 2 years 10:35 – The "bootstrapping mentality doesn't get you to scale" 10:45 – Paid advertising spend was around $60-70K in a month 10:58 – Consists mostly of AdWords and LinkedIn ads with some Facebook ads 11:25 – Total money raised is $61M and the last round was a series C 12:15 – Showpad has been very lucky with their investors 12:58 – Showpad will be Louis' first financial win 13:07 – In The Pocket is a profitable mobile agency 13:51 – Gross annual churn in 2016 was 6% 14:15 – As a platform matures, churn risk increases 14:42 – Net churn is around 30-35% in revenue 15:03 – Showpad has lost around 1-2 customers since they started 15:33 – CAC for the key cohort 15:42 – The golden rule for SaaS is for every dollar spent, you should get a quarter in return within 12 months 16:00 – Showpad currently has a 12-month payback 17:02 – LTV is around 5 years 17:28 – LTV in dollars is around $250K over 5 years 17:52 – Showpad is always aggressive with their targets 18:50 – Showpad has been adding dynamic mind maps to their product 19:33 – Most enterprise customers have been spending money on agencies to build a custom navigation presentation 19:48 – This is already a part of what Showpad offers 20:14 – The best marketing strategy for Showpad is events sponsorships 20:40 – Showpad has rented party buses for their customers in Europe 21:12 – Gross margin is 85% 21:25 – Revenue target by the end of 2017 is $28M to 30M 22:30 – 2016 revenue was $16.5M 24:21 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points: Marketing teams should coordinate with sales teams to find how they can make that successful deal. Don't discount a marketing strategy that may seem unconventional; it could be the very strategy that works. Reach for the best—set an aggressive target for your company.

753: With His Tool, Mobile Browsing on Spotty Wifi Doesn't Suck Aug 16, 2017

Show notes

Shlomi Gian. He has served as PacketZoom's Chief Executive Officer since June of 2016. He joined the company after spending 4 years at Akamai, where he founded the emerging mobile business unit and service—the head of mobile market development. Before that, he was the general manager of mobile solutions at Cotendo that invented Mobile CDN back in 2011 before it was acquired by Akamai.

Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Built to Last What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Mix Rank How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Shlomi would tell himself how exciting it is to do your own thing

Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Shlomi to the show 02:13 – PacketZoom helps mobile applications work better, especially when networks fail to deliver their service 03:15 – PacketZoom can make an application work in places where they don't usually work, like in trains and elevators 03:31 – PacketZoom eliminates roadblocks and gets you on the express lane 03:40 – PacketZoom is a SaaS business 03:43 – PacketZoom charges per daily active user 04:10 – A daily active user is anyone who uses the system up to certain usage point 04:18 – Now, a daily active user is measured by the number of calls and how many megabytes have been used 04:40 – Average customer pay is $400-4K per application 05:28 – PacketZoom has raised capital through an investor round 05:35 – Total raised is around $6M 05:54 – The founder of the company started the company in 2013 06:33 – After Akamai's acquisition of Cotendo, Shlomi was looking for a cutting-edge technology to bring into Akamai 06:43 – PacketZoom seemed to be the one that fits but doesn't have enough commercial traction 06:51 – At the time, the investors were looking for a CEO who had a business background and could grow PacketZoom in the market 07:03 – Shlomi met the investors through a headhunter 07:18 – Shlomi fell in love with the product and he decided to leave his comfort zone at Akamai 08:06 – PacketZoom started out selling to enterprise and now they're focusing on developers 08:26 – The headhunter was tied to the investors 08:54 – MRR was closed to none before Shlomi joined 09:20 – PacketZoom has a difficult product to built 09:34 – PacketZoom currently has 68 customers 09:59 – PacketZoom is tracking a few KPIs and the number of SDK installed 10:30 – The goal is to hit 15-20M active users by the end of the year 10:40 – PacketZoom is on track and halfway to their goal 10:57 – "We're doubling our activity since I joined" 11:11 – PacketZoom relies heavily on partnerships 11:27 – PacketZoom is partnered with ChinaCache, a large CDN public company selling exclusively in China 11:38 – PacketZoom also has resellers and they already have 3 European resellers 11:50 – PacketZoom is expanding to Asia and Latin America 12:12 – PacketZoom is the perfect partner for their resellers because the resellers are already selling performance 12:30 – The percentage PacketZoom gets depends on the partnership's commitment 12:45 – The partners take away the cost of operation and sales in their territories 13:00 – PacketZoom aims to work with larger partners who are willing to make greater commitments 13:17 – 2017 revenue goal is millions of dollars; they want to prepare for a series B eventually 13:46 – PacketZoom is close to passing the $88K MRR which can equate to a little over $1M in ARR 14:55 – PacketZoom just opened their office in Asia and are opening one soon in Europe 15:17 – PacketZoom has 3 sales people 15:24 – Company size is 20 15:54 – Paid marketing spend is less than $10K 16:48 – Zero customer churn for PacketZoom 18:29 – PacketZoom is a very unique product 19:21 – Assumed LTV 20:21 – The team is spread out in different states and countries 20:40 – Gross margin 20:58 – PacketZoom relies on other cloud infrastructures 21:19 – Gross margin now is 60-80% but will definitely change soon 23:55 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points: You may find the right company at the wrong time, but in order to make it work takes you making a decision. A company can definitely raise money on pre-revenue if the investors see its uniqueness and potential to grow. Start to build as early as possible.

NEW: SaaS Database nathanlatka.com/producthunt Today! Aug 15, 2017

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752: They Think Retailers Want Their Own Version of Amazon Aug 15, 2017

Show notes

Adrien Nussenbaum. He's the co-founder and CEO of Mirakl which was founded back in 2012. He's currently based at the company's Boston office and is responsible for the business' growth in both the business to consumer and business to business sectors.

Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Hemingway What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Instacart How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I would have helped my wife use Instacart"

Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:50 – Nathan introduces Adrien to the show 01:20 – Mirakl is a technology company that allows retailers, distributors and manufacturers relaunch and operate an online marketplace of third–party vendors 01:45 – Mirakl is similar to Amazon 02:10 – Mirakl is a technology solution and most of their customers are large enterprise companies 02:39 – Mirakl doesn't compete with Amazon but allows their customers to have their own marketplace 03:05 – Mirakl's technology would allow Best Buy to have different merchants on their website 03:20 – From the consumer's perspective, they can purchase different products from different merchants within one website 03:28 – Mirakl currently has 125 customers in 25 countries 03:41 – Mirakl is a SaaS business 03:58 – Mirakl takes a small percentage of their clients' generated revenue 04:24 – Mirakl provides companies a technology that leverages 12 years of experience in operating 05:13 – Mirakl's cut depends on the revenue bracket they've set 05:49 – Mirakl's charges vary per industry 06:15 – Mirakl's customers charge retailers a certain percentage and Mirakl charges depending on those percentages 06:52 – Generally speaking, the charge is more than 5% 07:20 – Mirakl allows companies to operate a new business 08:15 – The additional earnings a company can get will be from the partnerships they have with other retailers using the Mirakl's platform 09:19 – Mirakl was launched in 2012 09:26 – Mirakl was initially bootstrapped using the money from the previous company acquisition 09:36 – Splitgames was acquired by FNAC in Europe 10:04 – Mirakl raised $2M in the first round and $20M in 2015 10:23 – Both were equity rounds 10:30 – Adrien was the founder of Splitgames and it was initially bootstrapped, but raised later on 11:30 – Adrien is French and he thinks that they are more conservative when it comes to risk than Americans 11:48 – Adrien's risk level when he started Mirakl was fair 11:56 – Mirakl has 2 founders 12:06 – The split was 50/50 but there's a bit more for the one who had the idea 13:02 – Adrien's had a background in banking prior to Splitgames 13:28 – Team size is 160 13:36 – 40% engineering and 25-30% sales 14:05 – Mirakl spends money on programs and lead generation 14:44 – Mirakl makes industry reports with people like Gardner 15:05 – Last month's total paid ads spend was around $30-40K 15:58 – Mirakl sells something that is strategic for their customers 16:42 – Payback period is less than a year 18:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points: Creating relationships will not only nurture your network, but increase your opportunities for revenue as well. One can be considered radical or conservative when it comes to taking risks; choose to which degree of risk you're most comfortable taking. In pitching to clients, you have to give them the assurance that your product is valuable to them and that they will NOT be needing any other product.

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