Top Founders

Latest Episodes:

710: How This SaaS Company is Using $20 Million to Scale Jul 04, 2017

Show notes

Allan Willie. He's the co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio, a software-as-a-service dashboard company with over 8500 paying customers including Jet.com, Zendesk, Aviva and Ikea. He previously co-founded a company called Espial, an internet device software firm that is now publicly traded on TSX. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and 2 daughters.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Lead by Greatness
What CEO do you follow? – Tobias Lütke
Favorite online tool? — SEO Plus Chrome plug in and Owler
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6.5-7.5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Listen, build something of value and then see if you could raise money"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:07 – Nathan introduces Allan to the show
01:50 – All of the meeting rooms in Klipfolio's office have different wallpaper
02:12 – Klipfolio is an online, cloud-based, dashboard vendor
02:18 – Klipfolio works with mid-sized businesses who use them for everything
02:40 – Nathan uses Klipfolio quite aggressively, especially for his Facebook live streams
04:17 – When Allan was last on The Top, he was passing 7K customers—now he has 8500 customers
04:36 – In January, Klipfolio announced a $12M raise which was an insight round from existing investors
- 05:14 – The initial round was to raise an external round
- 05:43 – "We did use market to validate"
06:12 – Klipfolio had verbal offers that were lucrative
- 06:40 – The valuation were multiples for some of the terms
07:00 – Klipfolio also had some acquisition discussions
08:08 – Allan won't call the acquisition discussions offers, because it would still have to go through a lot
08:59 – In every acquisition discussion, you want to layer how much information to present to another company
09:35- Customers usually get the $70 plan for the first month, then move up to $150 in a year
10:10 – Some of the customers are partners who can pay directly or pay as a partner
- 10:24 – 30% of Klipfolio's income come from their partner channels
10:35 – Last month revenue was $500-600K
11:16 – Klipfolio's valuation was between $700-800K
11:25 – Some of the VCs that Allan has talked to are putting terms in place with a higher valuation
11:47 – You have to sustain your valuation to get into the next round
12:34 – Anything on Klipfolio is being tracked
13:15 – The weirdest use case
- 13:25 – There are NGOs who use Klipfolio to push some of their metrics out
- 13:34 – Red Cross uses Klipfolio for flooding, zika virus and other stuff that is happening in Africa
14:11 – Churn has gone up slightly
14:35 – Klipfolio started paid ads for $120K a month
- 14:41 – Klipfolio has a blog about the lessons they've learned from Facebook Ads
- 15:24 – One of the cons of ads is that the conversion rate drops and churn goes up—which is normal
15:40 – CAC
15:54 – LTV
16:05 – LTV to CAC is still relatively healthy
16:26 – Team size is around 90
- 16:47 – The team is moving to a new space in November
18:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Maintain your valuation in order to get into the next round.
Not all acquisition talks are considered offers.
A company of great value has a better chance of raising money and getting acquired down the road.

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
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

709: 17,000 Using This To Manage Wardrobe Efficiently Jul 03, 2017

Show notes

Blake Smith. He's the CEO and co-founder of Cladwell, a clothing company that doesn't sell clothing. His goal is to fight for sustainability and human labor practices by enabling people to buy fewer, but better clothes. Blake was at The Top a year ago where he articulated that they passed 11,500 customers with each customer paying $6/month; so, they were doing about $70K MRR a year ago. They were at about 5% churn, monthly spending and at $17 to acquire new customers. They're based in Cincinnati and they've raised about $1.8M and $100K in revenue.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Wooden on Leadership
What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz
Favorite online tool? — Calendly
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 2
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Blake would tell himself the importance of following your curiosity as opposed to having a strategy or a plan

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:04 – Nathan introduces Blake to the show
01:59 – Cladwell's current customers is around 17K in number
02:06 – Cladwell is an everyday styling app
02:50 – When you go to the Cladwell's website, you'll click "buy"
02:58 – Cladwell is also downloadable in the App store
03:12 – Cladwell is doing pricing tests
- 03:45 – Cladwell looks at other SaaS products that customers are paying for
- 04:02 – Cladwell also looks at other workout apps
- 04:21 – Cladwell is looking into charging $9
- 04:41 – "We're going forward unless proven otherwise"
04:47 – Pricing tests never end, especially with SaaS
05:31 – Last month total revenue is around $60K
05:41 – Cladwell used to bill quarterly
05:49 – Cladwell is around 900K ARR
06:17 – 80% of Cladwell's customers are using the web app on their mobile devices
06:42 – Last year's revenue in the same month
07:19 – Marketing spend last year
07:32 – Cladwell has recently raised a $1.2M round
08:07 – 2016 total sales is $760K
09:35 – Blake explains how the app works on a daily basis
- 09:40 – Every morning, the Cladwell app gives a recommendation of what to wear
- 09:53 – Cladwell recommends 3 outfits basing on what's in your closet and the daily weather
- 10:18 – Cladwell will also know what you wore for 3 days
10:55 – The more that you use the app, the better the experience is
11:35 – Majority of Cladwell's users are working millennial moms
12:18 – People have tried Cladwell's ideas before and onboarding was the biggest issue
12:33 – Cladwell did something similar to Google venture's sprint design process
12:56 – Cladwell provides a feed of all the potential items in a person's wardrobe
- 13:34 – A female customer will have an average of 60-70 pieces of clothing in her wardrobe
13:58 – The onboarding process is now easier for customers because of the feed
15:30 – Team size is around 15
16:02 – Cladwell's currently spending is still TBD
16:18 – Churn rate is a bit high
16:50 – From the 17K customers, around 5K has downloaded the app
18:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Onboarding is one of the biggest challenges for a styling company, customers lose interest using the product.
More and more millennial mothers are finding it hard to manage their time; having an app that will save them time daily is heaven sent.
Follow your curiosity—it can lead you to something GREAT.

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
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

708: $35M Raised to Tell IT Departments What Alerts Are Important Jul 02, 2017

Show notes

Assaf Resnick. He's the founder and CEO of BigPanda, an algorithm-make IT operations platform that turns IT alert noise into insight, unifies fragmented operations and enables digital enterprises to attain dramatic or pretty high service levels. Prior to founding the company, he was an investor for Sequoia Capital where he focused on early stage companies across enterprise software, SaaS and the internet sector.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Goal
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — Salesforce
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? – "Start a company early"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:17 – Nathan introduces Assaf to the show
01:52 – Sometimes, Assaf would still ask himself why he left Sequoia
02:00 – Assaf spent 6 years in Sequoia and it was an opportunity of a lifetime
02:19 – Assaf started in Sequoia when he was 29
02:36 – Assaf was bitten by the entrepreneur bug, so he left Sequoia
03:30 – Assaf's stayed in Sequoia for personal career growth
03:43 – Sequoia is different from other VC firms
04:31 – For Assaf, Sequoia expresses the combination of opportunities in the market
05:33 – Assaf is proud of the deals that he had made with Sequoia
06:00 – Assaf found Snaptu to be an interesting deal they invested in
07:00 – BigPanda automates the ability of human-beings and IT operations to keep up with data centers that are radically evolved
07:50 – The big part of IT spending usually goes to the engineers
08:00 – In the data centers, they have to keep the software and infrastructure that is radically transforming running
08:40 – A data company needs to have a handful of tools, data centers and servers
09:15 – One of BigPanda's clients is a Fortune 50 and a large networking company
- 09:30 – The company now has SaaS offerings and gives the SLA (Service Level Agreement) that they promise to companies
- 10:15 – The company has teams of engineers in Ukraine, California and India that use 15 monitoring tools to see what is happening
- 10:37 – The company has 70K data points they need to keep track
- 11:05 – The amount of data engineers they need has become an issue
11:27 – The problems in the war room can be both preventative and reactionary
11:45 – BigPanda uses a lot machine learning and dynamic classroom instruction to get through the noise
12:10 – An alert can be a problem with the server and something that you can just leave out
13:31 – One should examine if the "if/then statements" are dynamic
13:45 – The "if/then statements" vary day by day, then variables change quickly
14:13 – BigPanda was launched in 2012
14:20 – BigPanda is a SaaS company which charges annually
14:45 – Pricing average
14:51 – BigPanda caters to very large companies
15:20 – Team size is 60
15:28 – BigPanda has raised almost $35M
15:46 – BigPanda has done a regional series B
16:08 – BigPanda partners with Sequoia, Mayfield and In Battery
16:28 – At the end of 2015, people started devaluing some unicorns
16:59 – When Assaf saw rain clouds forming, he thought it made sense to get a winter coat from a capital perspective
17:40 – BigPanda had plenty of pipelines
18:02 – Half of the company is based in Palo Alto and half is in Tel Aviv, Israel
- 19:03 – Half of the people are in engineering and product, the other half is marketing
19:49 – BigPanda is very disciplined with their model
20:39 – BigPanda has around 25 companies from Fortune 500
22:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

If you've committed to always being there for your client, you better follow through on that.
No matter how many engineers you have, there's always a chance of them missing a lapse in the data.
Start your business as early as possible.

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
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

707: Government Gives Him Power to Let Non-Accredited Investors Invest Jul 01, 2017

Show notes

Manny Fernandez. He's a Stanford University educated Angel investor, serial entrepreneur and best-selling author featured on CNBC's Make Me a Millionaire Inventor premier episode. He's been successfully investing his own ideas as well as taking companies from startup to exit. Recently, he was named by INC magazine as one of the 33 entrepreneurs to watch in 2016.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich
What CEO do you follow? – Steve Jobs
Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
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? –"Wisdom and experience beats, no matter how [many] great talents you have"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:11 – Nathan introduces Manny to the show
01:51 – Manny's first company was an investment property
- 02:10 – It was a 6-figure transaction
- 02:21 – Manny decided that he wanted to go from 1 investment to 10
02:39 – One of Manny's most notable investments is TaskRabbit
02:58 – Manny is the founder of SF Angels which has 32 members
- 03:08 – The deal flow comes from others
03:30 – The funds for an Angel round is $250K per year
03:46 – As an Angel, you're looking for the deal flow
04:46 – One of the members of SF Angels is an early investor of TaskRabbit and SF Angels was invited
05:00 – Angels can invest as an individual or as a group
05:32 – Everyone has different preferences
06:31 – Some of the investors in SF Angels are successful enough
07:01 – The potential of investing in SF Angels is different from real estate
07:11 – If you're investing in something that is really working well, results are astronomical
07:47 – Manny suggests to invest only what you can afford to lose
07:56 – Everyone has different financial workflow and abilities
08:31 – Manny has put in greater than normal in angel investing
- 08:49 – Normal is around 2-5%
09:19 – DreamFunded allows everyday Americans to invest as small as $1 into a company
09:35 – DreamFunded is the first platform in Silicon Valley to receive the approval to allow non-accredited investors to invest, so they're accepting accredited investors and ordinary people
10:03 – Manny has been on the screening community of TiE Angels
10:11 – Manny is good at doing his due-diligence
10:29 – DreamFunded applied as a registered funding portal
11:15 – Manny has personally vetted on the deals on DreamFunded
12:06 – DreamFunded has a legal disclosure where investors can see the minimum amount they have to close to in order to close the transaction
- 12:33 – The information is not readily available on the website
- 13:02 – Investors will get an email telling them the closing dates
13:23 – DreamFunded gets 5% upon closing and the 2%the company is offering
13:50 – There are over 30 companies that have closed deals in DreamFunded
- 13:56 – Over $35M total funds raised
14:07 – The non-accredited investor is still new
14:16 – DreamFunded has not released their total funds raised from non-accredited
14:36 – The first approval for non-accredited was received by DreamFunded in July 2016
14:54 – DreamFunded was launched fall 2014
15:01 – Average team size is 10
15:16 – DreamFunded's model changes overtime
16:02 – A company can raise its target and at the same time, receive an investment from a big company
17:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Invest only on what you afford to lose.
Investing in a company that is already working is smart, but venturing into other investment streams requires your due diligence.
Listen to your mentors, they are mentors for a reason.

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
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

706: This 31 Year Old Raised $1.3M To Help You Be More Efficient Jun 30, 2017

Show notes

Vinay Patankar. He's the CEO of Process Street, the simplest way to manage your teams' recurring processes and workflows. Vinay sets up new clients, onboard employees and manages content publishing with his tool. He also co-host the podcast Business Systems Explored where he deep dives into business systems with industry experts.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk, Zach Nelson and Marc Benioff
Favorite online tool? — io
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "That you can make money on the internet"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:50 – Nathan introduces Vinay to the show
01:28 – Process Street is a tool that helps companies build and manage their workflows and processes
01:34 – Process Street is a SaaS product, charging on a monthly or yearly subscription based on the number of users one has
01:44 – The vision is to make workflows easy
02:28 – Process Street is from an intuitive perspective
02:53 – Average customer pay
03:42 – Process Street has options for pricing and incentives for annual contracts
04:04 – Process Street was launched in 2013 as a side project
04:10 – Seed round was raised a year and a half ago
04:20 – Team size is 21
04:30 – Total raised was $1.3M
04:47 – Process Street went through Angel Cloud
05:10 – Nathan thinks that the one who will win the space is the one who is better at distribution
05:42 – Distribution is the key in finding a scalable sales process and getting the pricing right
05:57 – The space is very fragmented
06:34 – Vinay thinks they don't need to beat the competition, they just need to grab enough volume of shares
06:52 – Process Street focuses on SEO
- 07:04 – They measure their rank from targeted keywords
07:28 – Process Street has a marketing team that helps with distribution
- 08:13 – SEO is cost-effective
08:35 – CAC from the SEO efforts
09:06 – MRPU
09:17 – Process Street doesn't spend in other marketing channels
09:26 – Process Street invests in sales deeper into their funnels
10:00 – Expansion rate varies depending on the size of the customer
10:28 – Process Street has a healthy expansion revenue
11:26 – 15 of the team are focused on marketing
11:35 – Process Street is still working on their headcount expenses
11:56 – Process Street will adjust and optimize pricing
12:29 – Average number of customers
12:41 – MRR
13:03 – Process Street's goal is to raise an A round at the first or second quarter of 2018
13:20 – Target MRR by the end of 2017
13:35 – Process Street has no paid acquisition
14:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

The one that will scale in the project management space is the one that is better at distribution.
You don't always need to beat your competitors, just gain your shares and increase your volume.
There is real money that can be made on the internet.

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
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

705: With $8.8M Raised, Is This The Ultimate Machine Learning Tool? Jun 29, 2017

Show notes

Scott Clark. He's the co-founder and CEO of SigOpt, a Y-Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz backed, optimization as a service startup. Scott has been applying after-learning technologies in industry and academia for years. He holds a PhD for applied mathematics and an MS in computer science from Cornell University and a BS degree in mathematics, physics and computational physics from Oregon State University. He was chosen as one of Forbes' 30 under 30 in 2016.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? – Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz and Phil Knight
Favorite online tool? — Gmail and Slack
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self know one thing, what would it be? – Scott would tell himself that it doesn't get easier, so set up habits and processes to make things sustainable when you have the time and ability to do it because that will definitely help once things ramp up

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:44 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show
01:25 – SigOpt is optimization as a service
01:27 – SigOpt helps companies build different, complex AI and machine learning pipelines
01:41 – SigOpt is a SaaS model and the subscription is based on the number of models per month
01:53 – Pricing starts at $2500 a month and enterprise starts at $10K a month
02:13 – Average monthly RPU
02:33 – SigOpt usually engages at the executive level
02:38 – People wanted to use AI for their businesses but couldn't find the right person to do the work so they go with SigOpt
03:23 – One of SigOpt's client is Prudential
- 03:31 – Insurance companies are augmenting their traditional methods to the new data that is being collected
- 03:48 – As their data increases, the need for the best possible performance increases
04:26 – What SigOpt does is different from the traditional machine learning as a service companies
04:41 – Scott shares a specific example of how SigOpt works with credit card companies
- 04:44 – Fraud detection has been around for decades
- 05:28 – SigOpt fine tunes different knobs and levers in the configuration parameters that makes the machine model work
06:15 – SigOpt focuses on black box optimization
07:45 – SigOpt relies on the domain expertise of the person at the specific firm to build a deep learning model
08:31 – SigOpt applies an ensemble of global optimization techniques to the problem so they can efficiently configure the system
09:20 – SigOpt suggests different curvatures
09:58 – SigOpt has raised $8.8M to date
10:30 – SigOpt never sees the underlying data
11:11 – The entire system is designed to be hands-off
11:43 – SigOpt was launched end of 2013
11:51 – Number of paying customers is around a dozen
12:18 – Average MRR
12:25 – SigOpt prefer annual deals
12:54 – No churn yet
13:14 – Team size is 13
13:35 – The capital raised was spent on the team and the enterprise sales efforts
13:54 – 3-4 of the team are in sales
14:05 – CAC
14:22 – They sometimes visit their customers
14:55 – Investors like to make big bets on the new technologies
15:33 – The goal for the series A money
16:33 – Average expenses
17:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

The need for AI and machine-learning is growing fast and there's not enough people who are qualified to develop these products.
The headcount can eat up most of a company's expenses—especially in the technology industry.
Optimization services make a business more efficient leading to a less to none churn rate.

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
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

704: A Son Saving His Mom With Health Tech Product That Recognizes Seizures Jun 28, 2017

Show notes

Eric Dolan. He's the co-founder and CEO of Neutun. He has 5 years of startup experience and business management experience. He also has data science experience with a focus on product development and management. In 2014, his team received an award for Best Smartwatch App in the Hack the North Competition in Canada. Recently, Eric was named INC's 30 under 30, a list that recognizes the best young CEOs in America. He received his bachelor in business administration from University of Western Ontario and his post graduate specialization certificate from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, New York University School of Business and John Hopkins University.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
Favorite online tool? — Mixmax
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? – "Go more towards your business and tech side, that's where you're going to make more money"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:50 – Nathan introduces Eric to the show
01:42 – Eric is a Canadian and has been in US for 1.5 years
02:11 – Eric is currently in Canada during the interview
02:35 – Neutun is a software that makes it easier for patients to keep track of chronic diseases
02:44 – Eric's mom has epilepsy and it was difficult for them to manage the seizures and medications
03:06 – Neutun keeps track of the seizures and manages the medications on time
03:28 – Neutun is device-agnostic
- 03:37 – It allows users to use their existing smartphone to track
03:45 – Neutun makes money through lead generation
04:17 – Eric is looking at a million dollar runway for 2017
05:09 – Neutun's revenue is predictable for a SaaS business
05:56 – Neutun's initial model was a lead generator for pharmaceutical companies
06:02 – In the long term, Eric wanted Neutun to transition to a market-intelligence company
06:14 – Neutun wanted to address all chronic diseases
06:30 – Neutun has 10K organic users
07:15 – Neutun was launched late 2016
07:47 – People find Neutun mainly from word-of-mouth
08:18 – There are also doctors who are recommending Neutun
08:38 – Neutun makes money through scripts or prescriptions
09:08 – Average amount per script
10:23 – Neutun tries to benefit the user as much as possible
10:46 – Neutun also suggests sponsored medication
11:06 – Average medication expenses of a patient
11:42 – Neutun is almost similar with tracking steps
11:53 – Through Neutun's algorithms and AI, it can detect a seizure
- 12:11 – Then the recording will start
- 12:44 – Tracking the seizure is important for doctors
12:58 – With Neutun's data, doctors can prescribe more accurate medications
14:10 – The only way to prevent seizures is to do what doctors tell you to do and take the medications
14:37 – Neutun was initially bootstrapped
14:56 – Neutun has raised a million on a kiss convertible note
15:33 – Team size is 7
16:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

If patients can track their seizures accurately, doctors can prescribe a more appropriate prescription.
The advancement in technology is benefitting the health industry in many ways.
Go where you can earn well.

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
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

703: The "Accidental" $10k/mo Side Project Jun 27, 2017

Show notes

Paul Tyma. He's the founder and creator of a tool called Mailinator which is an email system. He's also a startup veteran and has focused on 4 Silicon Valley startups including Preemptive Solutions, Manybrain Inc which owns Mailinator, Home-Account.com which was acquired by Bills.com, and Refresh Inc which was acquired by LinkedIn. He's a frequent speaker, writer and author of one of the original books on Java called Java Primer Plus. Dr. Tyma has received his PhD from Syracuse University focused on Java/.Net performance.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Influence
What CEO do you follow? – Amy Errett and Bradley Kam
Favorite online tool? — Linode
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8.5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "How to talk to girls"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:53 – Nathan introduces Paul to the show
01:48 – Paul started his first company during his PhD
01:56 – After getting his PhD, Paul worked for Google
02:12 – Paul is still part of the board for Preemptive Solutions
02:18 – Refresh had a very visible exit and is currently at LinkedIn icebreakers
- 02:37 – The acquisition was in 2015
- 02:45 – Acquisition price
- 02:54 – Refresh was a consumer application
- 03:10 – Refresh has raised $10M in total
- 03:20 – The first round was a priced round
- 03:53 – Refresh had 100K users
- 04:30 – Refresh built its own identity from scratch
- 04:40 – The technology of Refresh
05:40 – Home-Account.com was built prior to Refresh
- 05:59 – Paul was a minor founder
- 06:15 – Option pool
07:23 – Selling a company and staying with the company who acquired it is a cliché in Silicon Valley
08:19 – Mailinator was a side project Paul built 13 years ago
- 08:30 – It was a receive only mail service
- 08:50 – Mailinator lets you create a disposable email
10:17 – Mailinator had some ads which paid for the server
11:30 – Mailinator now makes money from affiliates
11:47 – Mailinator's brand became strong
11:56 – There was a high usage from QA departments who tested their signups process and welcome email
- 12:11 – They asked Mailinator for additional features
- 12:40 – Hundreds of QA teams now are using and paying Mailinator
- 13:16 – Mailinator also has a private paid domain
13:40 – Pricing is $29 for single user and $129 for a team
13:56 – Average RPU is $35
14:31 – Average MRR
14:57 – Paul is now turning Mailinator into a business
15:21 – Churn is pretty high
15:48 – Less paid advertising
16:16 – Mailinator has 45K unique users a day
16:44 – 25K new inboxes are set up everyday
16:58 – "This is not a DAU product"
17:21 – Mailinator has not raised money
18:09 – Team size is 3
18:30 – Gross margin
- 18:59 – Server cost
19:53 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

A side project can definitely turn into something more—don't underestimate its potential.
An email does NOT reflect one's identity.
There are thousands of emails being made and sent every day—having a disposable one is almost a necessity.

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
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

702: With $5k Left in Her Bank TheMuse Was Launched, 50m Visit Annually and 600 Companies Pay Jun 26, 2017

Show notes

Kathryn Minshew. She's the CEO of founder of TheMuse.com, a career platform that is used by over 50M folks to find jobs, learn professional skills or advance in their careers. This platform is also used by hundreds of companies looking to grow their employer brand and to hire. Kathryn is a Harvard and Wall Street Journal contributor and she's spoken at MIT in Harvard along with the Today's Show. She's been named The Smart CEO's Future 50, INC's 35 under 35 and a Duke alum. Kathryn worked at Rwanda and Health Access Initiative and before founding The Muse, she was previously at McKinsey.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things and Traction
What CEO do you follow? – Jennifer Hyman, Elon Musk and Jeremy Johnson
Favorite online tool? — Boomerang and Pocket
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? – Kathryn wished she knew it was okay to be different and everything that is worth doing is hard

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:42 – Nathan introduces Kathryn to the show
01:35 – The Muse was founded to be the most trusted and beloved place for people to navigate their career
01:42 – The Muse is a marketplace with over 50M people who uses the site annually
02:00 – The Muse has over 600 companies which they help in hiring and employment
02:25 – "If you want really great people, you have to compete for them"
03:00 – The companies can reach more candidates through The Muse
03:19 – The Muse is a SaaS-enabled marketplace
03:31 – The Muse somehow competes with LinkedIn Recruit and Glassdoor
04:05 – Most companies in The Muse sign up for an annual subscription
04:24 – Average pricing is $20-30K but enterprise is higher than the mid-market businesses
04:54 – The Muse works with every business size in every industry
- 05:04 – The businesses are categorized by team size
05:25 – Companies that are subscribed have access to different tools on the website
06:11 – The marketplace on TheMuse.com is where companies can post their profiles and job listings
06:21 – The Muse has also developed more products
06:41 – One of The Muse's client has 50K to 150K employees
07:29 – The Muse also assists their Fortune 100 companies on their existing channels
08:12 – The Muse started targeting individual users
08:24 – The Muse was launched in 2011 having career related tools and content for individuals
08:31 – The Muse rolled out their first company profile after hitting 100K website visits per month
08:41 – The Muse have never had advertising on the website
08:58 – The Muse had their first 100K users in 6 months
09:05 – The initial cash for The Muse came from Kathryn's savings
- 09:39 – When Kathryn left McKinsey, she had $25K in savings
- 09:50 – Then Kathryn got an offer to work at Rwanda
- 10:28 – Kathryn was 25 at the time
10:56 – Kathryn has always thought that savings equate to freedom
11:34 – When Kathryn came back from Rwanda, she started a business similar to The Muse
- 13:02 – Kathryn spent $20K on her first company
- 13:23 – With only $5K left in savings, Kathryn together with her co-founder started The Muse
- 13:45 – Kathryn tried to keep her expenses low
14:24 – Kathryn started The Muse because she had all the questions and wanted answers
14:29 – The community then gave Kathryn the answers
15:02 – The Muse initially had 50 articles giving career advice and providing resources
15:10 – The first job listing was posted after a month as a test
15:29 – The Muse used to get paid for the job listing but it doesn't work that way now
16:17 – Kathryn shares how the conversation happened between her and the co-founders
- 17:11 – They wanted to work and make it happen
- 17:25 – The equity between them is almost even
17:54 – The Muse raised a round for $100K in 2012 and got into Y-combinator
18:41 – The Muse raised $10M in a series A in 2015, and $16M in a Series B: Q1 of 2017
19:12 – The Muse is closed to breaking even
19:31 – There are different ways in building a business and there's no one perfect path
19:53 – The Muse has 600 active businesses
- 20:10 – Some companies just closed or got acquired
21:35 – Average revenue
23:05 – The Famous Five
23:32 – Kathryn's book The New Rules of Work

3 Key Points:

You can start a business with minimal means and still grow it into a profitable one.
There is no one perfect path to building a business.
If a task or venture is hard, that's a good sign it's worth it.

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
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

701: Smart Desk King Sells $10,000,000+ Jun 25, 2017

Show notes

Duy Huynh. He's the founder of Autonomous.ai which builds smart office products to help people work smarter.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Zero to One
What CEO do you follow? – Stewart Butterfield
Favorite online tool? — Google Analytics
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? – "Focus on and build something really helpful to people"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:50 – Nathan introduces Duy to the show
01:20 – Subscribe to Youtube to see Duy using a smart desk
01:32 – Smart desk helps work smart the whole day
01:48 – "We don't care much about the money"
02:02 – Autonomous' mission is how they can help companies' work smarter
02:51 – Autonomous wants to reinvent every single item in an office
03:15 – One of Autonomous' products is the Cardboard
- 03:30 – It is created for people who want an affordable standing desk
- 04:05 – It sells for $19
- 04:17 – Cardboard is a fairly new product
04:42 – Autonomous was founded in 2014
05:10 – Autonomous has shipped around 100K units
05:16 – The best-seller is the SmartDesk
- 05:38 – It can keep you healthy and stay active in office
05:50 – Some of Nathan's friends have bought the Smartdesk
06:07 – Autonomous has raised $200K
06:18 – Prior to Autonomous, Duy really liked smart products
06:46 – Duy started Autonomous with his co-founders in a small apartment
08:25 – The seed money has helped Duy make the prototypes
09:00 – Duy has spent $100-200K on the products before raising the seed round
09:09 – Duy traveled to find the best suppliers
09:30 – Team size
- 09:43 – 4 are working in the NY office
- 09:46 – 10 in California and some in Vietnam and China
- 10:10 – Total of 40 people
10:22 – Autonomous is currently cash flow positive
10:35 – Duy isn't looking at raising another round at the moment
11:00 – Monthly expenses
11:40 – Autonomous is doing over $10M annually
12:18 – Most of the customers are founders
12:37 – Autonomous currently relies on word-of mouth
12:49 – Autonomous had a Kickstarter campaign
13:05 – Autonomous made $250K from their Kickstarter campaign
- 13:20 – It was for a thousand units
13:58 – Duy wanted to maintain a fair margin in the supply chain
14:36 – "They pay for what they get"
15:00 – Competitors' margin
15:19 – Gross profit
16:04 – The second and third best-selling products are the chair and stool, respectively
16:38 – Duy wouldn't take a deal from Herman Miller at the moment
16:41 – Autonomous isn't a furniture company
17:19 – On paper, Duy is the single founder but the co-founders have equity as well
18:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Smart products shouldn't just offer convenience, but make your life healthy and active too.
Price your product fairly—the value of the product should match the price.
Create something that will be really helpful for people.

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
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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