Top Founders

Latest Episodes:

751: IoT Electricity Measuring King Raises $16m w/ $1.2 Million Revenue Aug 14, 2017

Show notes

Mark Chung. He's the CEO and co-founder of Verdigris, a Silicon Valley-based internet of things startup focused on smart buildings. Previously, he was a principal engineer for Net Logic, AMD and PA Semi. He graduated with electrical engineering from Stanford University and lives in Sunnyvale, California. When he's not building, he's spending time with his family.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – How the Mighty Fall
What CEO do you follow? – Mark Zuckerberg
Favorite online tool? — Pivotal
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Mark wished that he'd be more growth minded and started earlier

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:07 – Nathan introduces Mark to the show
02:04 – Verdigris is an artificial intelligence company launched in 2012
02:10 – Verdigris focuses on developing technology for commercial buildings that are managing their energy
02:22 – One of Verdigris largest customers is Jabil, a large manufacturing firm
- 02:28 – Verdigris sensors on Jabil's electric panels collects data from the whole facility
- 02:40 – Verdigris synthesizes the data into simpler and more understandable reports that facilities' managers can review
  - 02:49 – Then they can understand if they're losing money on electricity or potential equipment fail
- 03:21 – Verdigris is a combination of software and hardware
- 04:05 – Verdigris has a hybrid model
  - 04:11 – Verdigris charged on the hardware when it gets installed and a recurring fee for the software
  - 04:21 – The hardware is the bigger revenue stream
  - 04:47 – For a 2-bedroom house, it will cost $1K to install Verdigris
- 05:23 – Each clamp is $50 a piece
- 05:54 – Verdigris has raised a total of $16M
- 06:05 – The first round of funding was in 2012 and Verdigris was launched at the end of 2011
- 07:11 – Because Verdigris has a hardware component that enables the SaaS, it becomes a sticky product
  - 07:29 – Churn rate is lower than typical SaaS companies and retention rate is higher
- 07:46 – From a cost standpoint, hardware cost doesn't take all of equity capital
- 07:53 – You can also finance the hardware
- 08:34 – Verdigris measures the total amount of electricity measured
  - 08:54 – Currently, they've measured a few megawatts—enough to power a small neighborhood
- 10:00 – For the SaaS side, monthly subscription fee is $50 or $80 per box depending on the level of service
- 10:40 – Verdigris gets their sales directly and holds their data infrastructure
- 10:47 – Verdigris uses Verizon as their back end for all data communication
- 11:30 – Verdigris is focusing on the commercial space first
- 12:10 – Customers pay per month is between $50-80 on data plans
  - 12:28 - $1k a month is near average of what customers pay
- 12:44 – 80% of Verdigris's customers are paying customers
- 12:56 – Average MRR is around $260K
- 13:19 – Gross customer churn is zero
- 14:40 – Verdigris looks for customers who spend around $10K a month in electricity
- 14:56 – Team size is 30
  - 15:05 – 90% is engineering
  - 15:15 – There are 3 founders
  - 15:23 – The founders are all engineers, one being more business minded than the other two
- 16:02 – CAC
  - 16:07 – Verdigris doesn't do a lot of paid marketing
  - 16:43 – Verdigris has spent around $10K in 3 months for ads
- 16:49 – Most people learn about Verdigris through Verizon
  - 17:00 – Verizon's sales people in the field talk to their Fortune 500 customers selling different IT solutions
  - 17:19 – When the customer matches Verdigris' customer profile, the sales team tell them about Verdigris
  - 17:50 – Verizon found Verdigris
- 18:26 – 2017 revenue goal is over $5M which is 4x from last year's
- 20:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

With so many SaaS products available, having a SaaS product that uses proprietary hardware creates a sticky, hard to replace product.
Your target market should be curated with your pricing plans.
Building a partnership with an already established company is beneficial, especially if you're a new one.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

750: How to 3x Customer Revenue, Be More Than Just Document Signing Aug 13, 2017

Show notes

Mikita Mikado. He's the CEO of PandaDoc, a company founded to accelerate the way organizations transact. He's an entrepreneur, engineer, and executive focused on creating self-sustaining companies.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Pitch Anything
What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella
Favorite online tool? — Google Calendar
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Mikita would tell himself that he doesn't have to focus on making so much money and just focus on learning as much as he can

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:24 – Nathan introduces Mikita to the show
02:03 – Jared Fuller was in episode 193 of The Top and is still part of PandaDoc
02:25 – PandaDoc helps organizations the way they transact
- 02:39 – all kinds of transactions
02:52 – PandaDoc focuses on deals that have substantial value and paperwork
03:06 – PandaDoc can build proposals, quotes, contracts and close deals in a digital fashion
03:30 – PandaDoc's RPU has increased since last year
03:56 – Annual deals
- 04:10 – Average customer pay
05:10 – PandaDoc gets most of their customers from word of mouth
- 05:32 – Using SEO to expand operations
06:15 – PandaDoc gives their small customers templates that they can use in their deals
06:58 – The marketing team finds keywords that are most popular and relevant to them
- 07:20 – They use Moz and other tools to find keyword
07:59 – PandaDoc isn't built on top of PDF
08:03 – The templates from PandaDoc are in HTML and not PDF
08:41 – QuoteRoller was the first product that was launched in 2011
- 08:56 – Pivot to PandaDoc at the end of 2015
09:06 – Team size is now 106
09:23 – The last year total raised was $4.5M in cash and $2M in debt
- 09:41 – Currently, debt has been paid
- 09:50 – Total amount raised is $19.5M
10:17 – PandaDoc has more than 7K customers
- 10:30 – 2 different cohorts of customers
- 10:55 – PandaDoc has a legacy product and a new product
11:22 – Gross churn is satisfactory
- 11:50 – From last year's revenue churn, it was 9%
- 13:21 – Some inbound marketers use PandaDoc to close a deal then will stop using it
- 13:50 – 5% monthly logo churn is high for Mikita
14:38 – PandaDoc has around 100 team members and 2 are focused on target customers
15:13 – CAC and LTV varies
16:00 – Mikita is trying to get under 12 months of payback period
16:29 – Fully weighted CAC can be $1200
- 16:48 – How Mikita assumes CAC
18:47 – The industry's rule of thumb for payback period is 1.13 of ACV or 14 month payback period
19:05 – PandaDoc has channels with a payback period of 6 months and 2 years
19:29 – PandaDoc has an outbound sales team that is their delta force
- 19:54 – The outbound sales team finds the industries that PandaDoc should target
- 21:05 – Paid spend total is under quarter of a million
- 21:19 – PandaDoc is closed to hit a million in MRR
  - 22:08 – "We want to make an impact"
  - 22:22 – This is a horizontal product
- 23:47 – PandaDoc focuses on workflow and the actual collaboration on the workflow
  - 23:58 – "We want to system of records for deals or transaction"
- 24:05 – PandaDoc isn't going to the CRM space
  - 24:18 – Mikita has been in the CRM space before
  - 24:43 – One of the challenges of CRM now is the emergence of AI
- 27:12 – Mikita's consideration on price of acquisition
- 30:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Create a product that can serve a different market and fill the gap that the others haven't seen.
Let your goals guide you, but also keep in mind that having a business means being responsible for your employees.
Multiple revenue cohorts will lead you to multiple marketing and sales strategies.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

749: He's Making $9.6m Off Those Horrible Airport WiFi Connections Aug 12, 2017

Show notes

Gavin Wheeldon. With over 15 years of experience working in technology led or enabled businesses, Gavin has a deep understanding of the impact of technology on the bottom line of an organization. He sold his last business, Applied Language Solutions, a global language technology and service business, and has used some of the earnings to set up a new company, Purple WiFi.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Who Moved My Cheese
What CEO do you follow? – Jack Welch
Favorite online tool? — InsightSquared
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I'd rather read more of finance"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:24 – Nathan introduces Gavin to the show
02:29 – Gavin travels a lot and is frequently reliant on public WiFi—that's where the idea for Purple WiFi came from
03:02 – Gavin sold his last company for over $60M
- 03:20 – His last company was in the translation and interpretation industry
- 03:23 – They used machine learning to translate languages with incredible accuracy
- 03:43 – Theirs is also a human editing in between so the translation is perfect
- 03:59 – Gavin was 36 when he sold it
- 04:02 – It was completely bootstrapped
04:44 – There's no particular single owner of the space
- 04:54 – Fon does domestic hotspot and other traditional utility wifi
05:38 – Purple Wifi is the next generation of wifi
06:03 - Purple WiFi is SaaS business, charging annually depending on the number of wifi points
- 06:14 – For a single venue, the price is $13 a month
- 06:22 – Purple WiFi also caters to stadiums and airports
- 06:45 – An airport can average a hundred access points
07:10 - Purple WiFi currently has 17K installations
- 07:15 – It ranges from restaurants up to a whole city
- 07:53 – They now have around 80K access points
08:03 – Average MRR is close to a million
08:25 – Purple WiFi offers discount for bigger venues
09:00 – Sales cycle varies every hour
09:19 – A physical venue owner is usually clueless about what is happening in the venue
09:50 - Purple WiFi is channel-based and sells through partners
- 09:55 – Some of the partners are Telstra and Singtel and other national carriers
10:23 – Team size is over 100
- 10:30 – 45 are focused on sales and partnerships
10:46 – Telcos are usually built with partners
- 11:09 – They can build their own access points but it takes years and a huge investment
11:40 – Purple WiFi partners with half of the service providers in the USA
12:37 – Purple WiFi partners with Cisco and Ruckus for the access points
13:06 - Purple WiFi does post visit reviews which prompt the user to review the coffee shop or hotel
- 13:19 – There was around 500 increase in TripAdvisor reviews
- 13:21 – 600-700% increase in CRM generation
- 13:28 – The value of Purple Wifi can be seen from day 1
13:43 - Purple WiFi was launched in 2013
13:48 – First year revenue was $200K
13:59 – 2014 revenue was around $600K
14:13 - Purple WiFi consistently grows over 100% year over year
14:34 – 2017 target revenue
14:48 – Gross margin is 80%
- 14:59 – One of the challenges is the location and the huge number of data
15:35 - Purple WiFi is processing around 500K data from all of their access points in a day
15:50 – Purple WiFi has net negative churn and gross customer churn is 12% yearly
17:00 – LTV is around 10 years
- 17:10 – Most enterprise customers are signing 3-5 years with an upfront payment
17:33 - Purple WiFi has raised $13M
- 17:51 – The costs usually go to engineering and sales
- 18:07 - Purple WiFi spends on event sponsorship too
- 18:24 – They track the events prior to sponsorship
- 18:50 – Payback period is around 12 months
- 19:25 – Average CAC
19:39 - Purple WiFi is headquartered in Manchester, UK and US office is in Austin, Texas
20:26 - Purple WiFi is tremendously valuable for conferences
23:04 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Public wifi solutions are becoming more and more of a necessity especially for establishments and events.
Having your own wifi solution allows you to gather data more than you could otherwise.
Study your business before starting your business.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

748: How to Use Open Source Project As Lead Gen from $3m+ ARR Founder Aug 11, 2017

Show notes

Tomer Levy. He's the CEO and co-founder of Logz.io. Before co-founding Logz, he co-founded and was the CTO of Intigua, a company that innovated locker-like containers designed for large enterprises. Prior to Intigua, Tomer spent 6 years at Check Point, where he led its intrusion prevention system product from concept to market. He has an MBA for Tel Avi University, a BA in Computer Science, and is an enthusiastic kite surfer.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — Grammarly
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Take it easy, you'll figure it out"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:20 – Nathan introduces Tomer to the show
02:06 – Logz is a logins company
- 02:12 – Some of their customers are Kantar Media and British Airways
- 02:30 – Logz solves systematic problems in web servers and databases
02:41 – Logz is a SaaS business
02:52 – Logz caters to IT operations and security team of a company
03:24 – You can subscribe to Logz' website directly and pay monthly
03:29 – Logz has 2 main cohorts
- 03:32 – SMBs would pay around $10-15K a year
- 03:41 – SMEs would usually pay annually that can grow to hundreds of thousands
03:58 – Average pay is $10K-40K in annual contract value
04:10 – Logz was launched in 2014 and the product end of 2015
04:30 – Logz has an inside sales team
04:38 – Logz offers an open source platform like ELK which is around $500K a month
- 04:58 – Instead of libraries, ELK will be installed in the servers and take all the data
- 05:12 – ELK visualizes the data and Logz offer ELK with more capabilities
05:27 – Logz is based on the open-source community
05:55 – Logz isn't the developer of the open source
- 06:05 – Logz built a solution on top of the open source for log management
- 06:30 – ELK is like google search for all of your log data
07:02 – There are also other companies who are doing open SaaS
- 07:10 – Pantheon for WordPress and similar with Cloudera are doing open SaaS too
- 07:38 – Github just recently offered Git open source as a service
08:03 – Tomer has been writing content even before the launch of the company
08:14 – Logz is number for ELK search and they contribute the most in the open source community
08:43 – Open source has to be good and easy enough to get started so it will have mass distribution
- 08:51 – But it has to get to a point that it is difficult to scale and make it production grade
09:04 – Logz currently has a thousand companies on board
- 09:17 – Some are paid customers and some are on free
09:35 – Logz has raised money but they could have built a lifestyle business
- 09:52 – Logz raised $24M and the last round was $15.6M in October 2016
10:07 – Team size is 70
10:54 – Logz started in October 2014 and ran their first product by February 2015
11:05 – Logz started with 5 non-paying customers after shifting to paid model
11:38 – As your company grow, people will realizes your company's value and be willing to pay for it
11:49 – Logz has 0 revenue in 2014 and 2015 revenue was around 6 figures
12:44 – Logz has already broken a million dollar runway
13:02 – Logz competes mostly with engineers setting up their own open source
13:10 – The commercial side, Logz competes with AWS or Amazon Web Services
13:45 – Gross margin
14:12 – Logz pays $1-5M to Amazon for hosting
15:20 – Minimum MRR
15:46 – Team is based in Telavi, Israel
- 15:59 – Logz also has a team in Boston where Tomer currently is
16:11 – Gross monthly customer churn
17:07 – "We're very much a land and expand business"
17:43 – Marketing team has 8 or 9 people and 7 sales people
18:10 – Fully weighted CAC
18:40 – Payback period
19:22 – Logz also invest in paid marketing with around $5k a month
- 19:50 – Logz invests massively in events this year
- 20:23 – Logz spends a few hundreds of dollars in sponsorships
22:17 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

When thinking about a business model, try and create on that is "land and expand".
Starting as a free service is fine, but you need to make sure you're built to offer your customers more value behind the paywall.
Great content coupled with great keywords builds great companies.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

747: This This Six Figure Poker Player Quit to Launch Agency Aug 10, 2017

Show notes

Derric Haynie. He's the CEO of Vulpine Interactive, a social media marketing agency that helps build contagious brand and passionate fans. Nathan met Derris at Los Angeles when they were at Sean Ellis' Growth Hacking event. Derris has an interesting story that goes from poker to social media to speaking, blogging, growth and digital marketing.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – They Ask You Answer
What CEO do you follow? – Neil Patel
Favorite online tool? — Queue
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8-9
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wished that I have been able to pursue business earlier and give up poker earlier"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:51 – Derric believes that his agency will grow and exist on its own
02:02 – The peak of poker for Derric was in 2009-10 when he was 24
- 02:21 – Derric was making mid 6 figures and working 3 hours a day doing poker
- 03:00 – Derric had a lot of great mentors in poker
- 03:19 – Those that are better than Derric are really geniuses
- 03:27 – Derris started to feel his personal boundaries
- 03:57 – Derric knows that he'll never be the grand master in poker
- 04:02 – The best player in poker takes all the money
04:55 – Derric didn't pay himself for the first year and a half of his agency
- 05:03 – It was in 2014
05:22 – Derric got funding in 2015 of a total of $150k from his poker friends
06:06 – Derric was telling himself that he's not focused on revenue but on learning and finding the opportunities
- 06:34 – Derric spent around $25K attending conferences and events
07:19 – Derris' wife is his co-founder and they started paying themselves just last year
- 07:28 – They now make $5000 a month
07:51 – Derric and his wife are trying to structure a company for growth and scalability
08:10 – Vulpine now has 2 part-time employees
08:50 – Raising a child cost Derric around $3000 a month
09:06 – Derric had a lavish life that he gave up
- 09:31 – Derric has sold a lot of things
10:28 – Team size is 4
10:37 – Typical customers for Vulpine are ecommerce and SaaS businesses
- 10:48 –They also have to be thought leaders with a willingness to create great content
11:00 – Vulpine is good at repurposing great content and content should be originally from the company
11:21 – 2016 revenue is around $70-80K
11:41 – Check agency/transparency to see their financial score sheet
11:57 – Target MRR is $100K by December 2017
12:07 – If they don't hit $50K MRR by December, they will stop the company
12:32 – Average contract size is $2K a month with 3 months minimum
- 13:56 – Derric has been advised too that the contract should be at least for a year
- 14:21 – Derric was thinking of the best value that he can provide for his client when he decided on the 3-month minimum
- 14:36 – Derric believes that if he can't consistently deliver month over month, he should be fired
15:12 – Derric currently has 14 customers with some pro bono
17:27 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Poker may bring more money than your business, but sometimes it's not about money.
At a certain point in your life, you have to give up things that you're used to and learn something new.
In business (especially pricing) always have a market study and comparison first, or ask for advice.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

746: Bill Gates Was Great to Work With, But This Founder Wanted His Own Thing Aug 09, 2017

Show notes

Hal Howard, 20-year Microsoft veteran who gave up a stable, secure position leading the Dynamics ERP development team to satiate a spark of creativity. Today, he's the founder of Komiko, a sales intelligence tool that helps their businesses understand what engagement with customers is working.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Execution
What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella
Favorite online tool? — Vinfolio
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Don't worry man. Everything's going to work out just fine"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:45 – Komiko is a sales intelligence tool that helps their businesses understand what engagement with customers is working
- 02:12 – Komiko is integrated with different sources
- 02:20 – A cloud-based subscription-based model
02:37 – Hal was at Microsoft for 20 years
- 02:59 – left Microsoft because he wanted to build something new
- 03:16 – "There are still unexplored technologies around business applications"
03:54 – Customer pays an average of $30-35 a month per user
- 04:00 – Team size ranges from 3 to 500
- 04:11 – There are currently 2000 paying seats across 50 businesses in total
04:33 – Average MRR is $60K
05:19 – Team size is 10
- 05:37 – 8 are engineers
05:48 – Hal and his co-founder are doing both sales and product engineering
- 06:00 – Hal is more on the design
06:30 – Komiko is now a complimentary CRM
- 06:38 – Partnered with Salesforce and most of their customers are using Salesforce
07:19 – CRM is in a different decision set compared to Komiko
- 07:40 – Komiko works with corporate clients to help them understand what engagement works and what doesn't
07:59 – "We don't lose customers"
- 08:05 – In Komiko's lifetime, they've only lost 4 customers so far, 1 was acquired
08:28 – CAC is mostly inbound and Komiko was listed in AppExchange
- 08:44 – Hal and his co-founder alone were able to drive a lot of customers, mostly from referrals and the businesses they've worked with before
- 08:51 – Just started an outbound campaign in early 2017
- 08:59 – Has a partnership with GameSite
  - 09:20 – GameSite's focus is how customers engage with the product
  - 09:35 – GameSite is building a platform for customer success and Komiko's metric will help the overall customer solution
- 09:48 – Komiko raised some capital
  - 10:03 – Total fund raised is around $2M
  - 10:23 – Initial round was convertible note and then the seed round is priced round
- 10:37 – 2017 revenue target is at least a million dollars
- 11:04 – 2016 revenue is $15K
- 11:23 – Gross margin is around 75%
- 12:09 – Hal won't easily sell Komiko, but he might consider for at least $25M
- 14:43 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Nurture the network that you have, it will always help you in some way down the road.
You have the option leave your comfort zone, you can explore and create something new.
It's possible to not lose customer IF you consistently help the customers see value in your product.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

745: At $1.5m Revenue, Is This The New PowerPoint? Aug 08, 2017

Show notes

Jose Cayasso. He's a growth hacker, co-founder and CEO of Slidebean, 500 Startups alumni, and a frequent flyer miles hoarder.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup and Traction
What CEO do you follow? – Josh Pigford
Favorite online tool? — Amy@X.ai
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jose would tell himself that he had to quit his day job and create something for himself earlier

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:38 – Slidebean has an office in New York City and Costa Rica
01:56 – Slidebean is a web-based tool for making presentations
- 02:00 – Slidebean focuses on making presentation more efficient
- 02:20 – Slidebean is a subscription service
02:26 – Most of Slidebean's customers are previous PowerPoint users
02:38 – Team plans start at $49 a month
- 02:52 – A single presentation service is also available
03:00 – Most of the revenue are from the recurring model
03:14 – Jose started Slidebean in 2014
- 03:25 – Originally, it was focused on end users
03:40 – Slidebean shifted to businesses that are doing presentations monthly
03:58 – Churn went down from 15% to negative churn in revenue
04:15 – Gross customer churn is currently at 3.5%
04:42 – Jose tried different measures for Slidebean to improve the churn rate
- 05:09 – They changed the business model while keeping the subscription and premium value
05:28 – Slidebean caters to 2500 paying customers
05:45 – Average MRR is around $120K
06:06 – Jose is originally from Costa Rica and he's not a fan of outsourcing
- 06:14 – "I still believe that office collaboration is the best"
- 06:38 – There's a lot of talent in Costa Rica
08:07 – Team size is 22
08:17 – Slidebean has raised a small seed round
- 08:22 – "We're in the break of profitability"
08:25 – Slidebean is burning around $25K a month
08:43 – Slidebean has raised a total of $850K on a seed round
09:08 – CAC is around $150
- 09:15 – It's quite low because Slidebean competes in SEO
- 09:22 – Prezi is one of Slidebean's competition
- 09:35 – Slidebean targets keywords through AdWords
09:56 – LTV is around $1000 or 18 months
10:39 – Total marketing cost is around $25K-35K including head count cost
11:17 – Gross margin is around 75-80%
11:53 – 2017 target revenue is $2M
- 12:03 – They don't need to raise more money at the moment
13:00 – 2016 ARR is around $750K
15:25 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

A shift in business model can allow your company to grow while still retaining its value and growth.
Find the right keywords for your business and use AdWords to target them, it can help lower your CAC.
The earlier you create something for yourself in life, the better.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

744: Companies Pay Her $10-100k to Text Customers Funny Messages Aug 07, 2017

Show notes

Jessica Lee. Nathan met Jessica a few months ago and Jessica toured Nathan in 500 Startups' office in San Francisco. She's the founder of Bitesize. She helps companies drive revenue with text message conversations.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – #GIRLBOSS
What CEO do you follow? – Sophia Amoruso
Favorite online tool? — Trello
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Everybody has the same kind of challenges and overcoming them is the REAL WORK

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:37 – HandStack and Bitesize are the same company
01:49 – Bitesize helps brands drive revenue through interactive text messaging
02:00 – A new movie studio has a new movie and wants to reach a million movie goers
- 02:10 – Bitesize will reach people by text message
- 02:20 – The messages will be from a movie character and the approach is interactive
- 02:42 – Bitesize will drive the person to a download link at the end of the conversation
03:01 – Building a list for text is the challenge for Bitesize
03:25 – Bitesize uses manual texting tool
- 03:40 – There's a law that's protecting consumers where you can't randomly message people with algorithms or without human intervention
- 03:56 – Bitesize helps client send text with manual human intervention
04:27 – Jessica shares how an actual message happens
- 04:30 – The company will create a group chat, add people, and click send manually
- 04:39 – People's reply will go to your app and you can continue to interact with them
05:08 – The difference with the usual group text and from Bitesize is, you don't get to see other people's messages
05:34 – Bitesize charges per text and data
- 05:42 – Per text charge is .25₵
06:11 – Most of Bitesize's costs is from data
- 06:16 – Twilio is at .02₵
- 06:45 – Data charges can go up to .16₵
06:58 – BiteSize's clients pay them for their marketing skills too
07:15 – For a thousand new messages, an average of 6% will reply which a lot higher than social media ads
07:45 – A lot of Bitesize's customers will send millions of texts
08:13 – Revenue is measured by campaigns: 140 for the last 6 months
08:41 – Bitesize has raised $125K from 500 Startups
08:56 – Team size is 6
- 09:03 – 3 in the bay area and 3 elsewhere
09:26 – Average MRR
09:58 – 50% of the campaigns are paying quarterly and some campaigns are daily
- 10:20 – Each campaign pays an average of $10K to $100K for the .25₵ per text messages
10:43 – 10% of Bitesize's customers are from referrals
- 10:50 – Initially, Bitesize was focused on outbound sales
- 11:08 – "Because our product was so unique, people like to know what it is"
11:38 – Bitesize originally started with political campaigns
- 11:49 – Because of Jessica's background, most campaigns are for the democrats
12:29 – Jessica believes that Bitesize is a tool that is meant to connect people in a more meaningful way than ads
13:05 – 2013 revenue is around $250
13:17 – 2016 revenue is $300K for 6 months
- 13:30 – They pivoted to a more commercial use case in the final 6 months
13:40 – 2017 target
13:59 – "My hope is to grow organically"
16:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Texts can be very spammy but if done right, the return is better than with online ads.
Messages should connect people in a more meaningful way.
Growing organically is cheaper, and it creates more resonance, but it's harder to do.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

743: Will 28yo Privacy.com Founder Replace Credit Cards? Aug 06, 2017

Show notes

Bo Jiang. He's the co-founder and CEO of Privacy.com, a new way to transact online without showing your credit card number or pin. He previously worked on mobile products with Hatch Labs, which is the venture studio that incubated Tinder and Pixie TV, which was acquired by Samsung. He holds a BS in Mathematics in MIT.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – High Output Management and Who
What CEO do you follow? – Charlie Munger
Favorite online tool? — Zoom
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Pay attention and see things through"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:34 – Bo has always been interested with Bitcoin and Krypto frequency where the idea of Privacy came from
01:56 – Privacy was a side project in Bitcoin
02:00 – Bo didn't pay anything for Privacy
- 02:10 – Bo retained the domain as an investment for the company
02:51 – Bo shares how he made the deal of using the domain for free
- 03:10 – Domains are assets but the value won't grow that much
- 03:28 – Bo gave the domain owner less than 10% of the company
03;40 – Privacy has a browser extension and mobile app
- 03:44 – It allows you to create unique card number for every purchase you make online with just one click
- 04:00 – You can use any name or details and set your own credit limit
- 04:20 – It's actually a debit card which can be linked to your checking account
04:30 – Currently, there's nothing that is completely unhackable
- 04:42 – Privacy takes the best practices and security measures to ensure the client's security
- 05:25 – The cards from Privacy can't be use anywhere else
05:38 – Privacy makes money from interchange
- 05:43 – Every time that there's a transaction using a card, the merchant pays Visa, Visa shares the fee with the bank, and the bank shares the fee with Privacy
05:56 – If Nathan uses $100 on an Amazon checkout, Privacy will get around 1%
06:51 – Privacy has raised $3.5M
06:59 – Transaction volume is how Privacy's revenue grow
07:10 – Privacy is more focused on how much people have saved from using them
08:06 – Privacy was founded in 2014 and was launched as a beta first, a year ago
08:30 – Privacy currently has 150K users
09:15 – Privacy is growing in double digits, month over month in transaction volume
- 09:23 – Privacy has already broken a million transactions in just a month
09:50 – Team size is 10 based in New York City with some in Florida and Oregon
10:16 – Bo is still thinking of Privacy having a premium feature
10:31 – Average MRR is around $10K
10:57 – Bo was inside of Hatch Labs
- 11:20 – Bo thinks that Tinder work because it was the right product at the right time
- 11:55 – Hatch Labs was a venture studio and had 10-20 projects at a time
12:41 – What IC puts in every project in Hatch Labs depends on the project
13:06 – Bo left Hatch Labs a year and a half ago
15:14 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

While online shopping is becoming more of a necessity, online security can still be questionable so having an alternative to paying with a credit card is something people are looking for.
Focus on your company's mission and the rest will follow.
Don't overestimate or underestimate things – see through them.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

742: This Founder Crowns Real Estate Agents "Mayors", Grows From $700k to $6.4M in Under 12 Months Aug 05, 2017

Show notes

Amanda Newman. When she was 26 and working as a relator in Liberty, Toronto, she created a website for local deals, events, and news. Soon, other realtors were approaching her about the website, and she realized it had the potential spread all across North America. Today, Park Bench, her company, has grown from a fun little marketing idea to help a struggling realtor, into a multi-million-dollar company with 27 employees and a rapid growth rate.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – DotCom Secrets
What CEO do you follow? – Gary Vaynerchuk
Favorite online tool? — DocuSign
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-9
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "To start writing down my goals"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:54 – Amanda was in episode 353 of The Top
02:11 – In 2016, Amanda was doing $80K in MRR
- 02:16 - $4500 from upfront payment
- 02:25 – They build neighborhood focused website for real estate agents
03:07 – Amanda had 215 customers in 2016 with $880K revenue in 2015
- 03:15 – Each customer is paying $350 a month with a total of $70K MRR
- 03:20 – 5% churn, CAC of $400 and LTV of 20 months
- 03:26 - $7000 LTV with 8 people in the team
- 03:31- Founded in 2014
03:38 - Park Bench builds neighborhood websites
- 03:40 – They have the technology that aggregates local content
- 03:46 – They sell the exclusive rights to the neighborhood sites which are run by 1 real estate agent per neighborhood
- 03:53 - Park Bench provides training and guidance on how to use the website and leverage it
- 04:05 – "They become a conductor of their community"
04:18 - Park Bench currently over 1000 customers
04:46 – They invested a lot on Facebook advertising
05:00 - Park Bench gets 60-100 realtor inquiries who want to be the digital mayor of their neighborhood
05:10 - Park Bench has 3000 sq. ft. office with 30 employees
05:16 – In May, Park Bench hit $628K in revenue which is their biggest month by far
- 05:38 – It's the total revenue
05:38 – Last month, Park Bench sold to 150 realtors who have paid upfront of $4500-5000
05:57 – Churn is now 2.75% with 65-70% renewal rate
- 07:18 - $628K May revenue divided by $5000 to get 126 customers
- 07:38 – 75 existing customers and 50 new customers
09:00 – CAC is $676 and LTV is around $13K or 3 years
09:51 – Currently, Amanda isn't sure where to spend their money so they're investing more on Facebook ads
- 09:58 – They track the leads they get daily
- 10:16 – The Facebook algorithm is making it more expensive now to get new customers
- 10:25 – They invest more on content and wanted to drive more organic traffic
- 10:40 – They spend $6500 on ads monthly
11:02 – "We're just growing our business"
11:23 – On personal wealth creation, Amanda only thinks of being happy
- 11:37 – "I don't have to raise money, I don't have to sell the company"
- 11:40 – Amanda loves her team and enjoys being a part of it
12:15 – Gross margin is over 90%
12:45 – The investment deal should be strategic and can be from, like Keller Williams, for Amanda to accept it
- 13:00 – Amanda wants to access to more real estate agents
13:41 - Park Bench has country managers who work with clients whenever they need to
13:54 - Park Bench is starting to offer realtors other things they need like in marketing
- 14:02 - Park Bench knows lead generation too
14:30 – Amanda's parents sold their company to invest in real estate
14:50 – Amanda is still thinking if she will invest in real estate too
15:04 – "At this point, our best return is to invest in ourselves"
15:27 – Amanda's dad has a foundation and is currently in Kenya
18:02 – The Famous Five
20:46 – $1.9M 2016 revenue
20:53 – 2017 target revenue is $6.3M and currently on track

3 Key Points:

Have a reliable support system that will make your customers be stickier.
With Facebook's ever changing algorithms, it's better to invest more on creating great content to drive more organic traffic and leads.
Write down your goals so you can keep track of them.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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