Top Founders

Latest Episodes:

690: MarTech Chart Gets 1m+ Uniques, Future of CRM, Passive Monetization with CEO Scott Brinker Jun 14, 2017

Show notes

Scott Brinker. He publishes the chief marketing technologist blog known as ChiefMartec.com and is the program chair for Martech Conference Series. He's the author of the book Hacking Marketing published by Wiley. He's also the co-founder of Ion Interactive, a provider of interactive content marketing software to many of the world's leading brands. He has a degree in computer science from Columbia University and Harvard University and an MBA from MIT.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Innovator's Dilemma
What CEO do you follow? – Brian Halligan
Favorite online tool? — Trello
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "That software can rewrite the rules of the world"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:44 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show
01:36 – There are over 3600-3800 B2B SaaS companies that Scott has worked with
01:57 – Scott was researching the companies all by himself
02:22 – Scott is a co-founder/CTO of B2B SaaS company, Ion Interactive
- 02:32 – There's also the ChiefMartec blog that Scott started 8 years ago
- 03:00 – Scott is into how technology changes the way one manages one's marketing
- 03:14 – Scott is also looking at the toolsets that enable the technology in marketing
03:35 – Ion Interactive is a SaaS company
04:44 – Chief Martec got millions of impressions in 2016
05:30 – Chief Martec's Alexa ranking
06:03 – If you can create something of value, you can succeed
06:53 – Scott gets paid for most of his speaking gigs
07:28 – It's not an easy path when you're just starting to pitch to conferences
08:08 – Scott started his chart because of a speaking engagement at a conference
08:40 – The first significant paying gig that Scott remembered was when a SAS hired him for a Southeast Asian tour to present the hybrid art and science of marketing
- 09:23 – It was for 2 weeks
09:35 – Martech Conference was launched in 2014 in partnership with Third Door Media
- 09:51 – It was actually Third Door Media's event and they just contacted Scott for content
- 10:08 – Scott took care of the speaker side and everything that involved content
11:00 – All the sectors in the space excite Scott
12:27 – Scott doesn't agree that the CRM space is going to zero
13:15 – There's so much innovation and value
13:30 – The CRM companies who have been in The Top
14:00 – The CRM space is still a hot space
14:52 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

The marketing space has never been better because of the limitless potential of technology.
If you can create something of value, you CAN succeed.
Software can rewrite the rules of the world.

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

689: Barbara Corcoran from Sharktank is Looking For These Deals with Partner Phil Nadel Jun 13, 2017

Show notes

Phil Nadel. He's the co-founder and managing director of Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners, one of the largest and most active AngelList syndicates where investors can invest alongside him and Barbara on the same terms in promising high growth startups.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? — Laughly
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7.5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Savor the moment, be in the moment"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:55 – Nathan introduces Phil to the show
01:24 – Barbara and Phil believe in the syndicate model
- 01:32 – It is a great opportunity for investors who would like to invest but don't have a lot of money to put into each deal
01:49 – Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners on AngelList
02:08 – The syndicate was launched 3 years ago
- 02:16 – They have syndicated 38 deals
02:34 – Barn and Willow is a company they've recently syndicated
02:51 – Barn and Willow deal with window treatments
- 03:18 – They have a direct manufacturing supply chain
- 03:24 – It's an innovative company
03:45 – The companies that Barbara invests on Shark Tank are separate from the companies in the syndicate
04:05 – The value of doing the syndicate is the deal flow that Barbara gets from her exposure in Shark Tank
04:20 – Each of the syndicate backers have the option to opt in or opt out of any investments
04:33 – The most likely exit scenario is an acquisition and that's how an investor makes money
- 04:47 – IPO is also another route
04:53 – There was no exit yet from the syndicate portfolio
05:38 – There is paperwork in backing a syndicate
05:45 – The AngelList platform is handling all the investor details
05:51 – The structure of the deal can have a few different formats
06:04 – It's either a convertible note that converts into equity or straight equity
06:30 – All backers are combined into 1 entity
06:56 – The LLC is managed by an independent third party company called Assure Fund Management
- 07:05 – Assure will consult the syndicate if there will be a major decision
07:40 – The AngelList is managing the risks for the syndicate
08:00 – The syndicate has put in $7.5M
08:28 – The syndicate is very true to Barbara's mission
08:44 – Barbara wants people to invest with her, share their ideas with her, and bring their knowledge
08:56 – "Our backers are fantastic in terms of their networks"
09:38 – With a VC, what you have is strictly financial investors
10:40 – People love Barbara
11:15 – The deals are only available to accredited investors
- 11:23 – To be an accredited investor, you need to meet some of the criteria including net worth or income
- 12:00 – The syndicate is very clear that there is a chance of losing money for each investment
12:06 – The idea is to build a portfolio
12:37 – Phil has been to different platforms like FundersClub and OurCrowd
12:53 – The reason why Phil and Barbara chose AngelList
13:35 – The picture behind Phil was a picture frame from one of their portfolio companies called Meural
- 13:54 – They have thousands of art pieces from different museums around the world
- 14:32 – It retails from $600
15:27 – The syndicate does equity and note and only invests in post-revenue companies
- 15:43 – At least $15-20K a month in revenue
- 15:52 – "We are focused on companies that are capital efficient"
17:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Syndicates is a great option for small investors and it will help them get into the investing game.
Investors need to be responsible with their investments—meaning research the deal and own their decisions and the consequences of saying yea or nay.
Savor the moments in life and be IN the moment.

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

688: W/ 4 Kids, He Quit Job to Launch Leather Briefcase Company Breton with CEO Joseph May Jun 12, 2017

Show notes

Joseph May. He's the founder of the Breton Company. He launched his company in 2016 by running a Kickstarter campaign for a modern day briefcase. Prior to Breton, he worked as an attorney at a couple of different law firms and was director of operations and in-house counsel at a company called Freshly Picked.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Shoe Dog
What CEO do you follow? – Steve Jobs
Favorite online tool? — Grum
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? – "Keep going"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:22 – Nathan introduces to the show
01:19 – Joseph left the legal company because there was no fun
01:23 – When Joseph was at Freshly Picked, he found out that he really liked to create products and be part of the design process
01:33 – Joseph had the idea of Breton when he was in Italy
01:59 – Joseph was 33 when he left Freshly Picked where he was getting $70-80K
- 02:28 – Joseph had kids when he started Breton
03:28 – Joseph is showing Nathan an example of the briefcase
03:45 – On Kickstarter, Joseph did $240K and $280K for Indiegogo
03:54 – Kickstarter is the biggest website to start and Indiegogo has Indiegogo on demand
- 04:29 – The total for both campaigns was 1200 units
05:00 – At Freshly Picked, Joseph learned a lot about Instagram marketing
05:38 – Zach from Episode 178 had his hand on the Kickstarter campaign and has a network which has done over $60M in funding campaigns
06:00 – Zach worked with Joseph
06:38 – Joseph had a lot of manufacturing contacts from Freshly Picked
06:44 – Joseph got a quote from overseas and moved their manufacturing to Asia, switched up their whole campaign and changed the price point
07:14 – Breton is totally bootstrapped
07:47 – Total sales as of today is $400K in revenue and 1900 units
08:06 – Goal for 2017 is to launch more Kickstarter campaigns
08:37 – The bestseller is the modern day briefcase which is $199
08:54 – It takes around $65 to produce a bag
- 09:04 – The leather is from Italy
- 09:16 – Jeremy really wants to have a high-quality bag
09:26 – $20-30 dollars is spent on marketing per bag
09:58 – Average profit per bag
10:28 – Jeremy had dark traffic on ly
- 10:42 – There's no exact influencer who has driven the most sales to Instagram
- 10:51 – Mollyblogger has sold 17 units within an hour
- 11:07 – Mollyblogger is Joseph's friend
11:25 – For every $500 per post, Jeremy expects to get 5 sales
11:33 – Breton now has 40K followers
11:50 – It's difficult to calculate the return because it takes time before a customer purchases
12:21 – Joseph had a campaign in Fall where he had help, but now he's doing it on his own
12:40 – One of Joseph's growth strategy is to get people on their email list
- 12:44 – The main focus now is to make people aware of Breton and aggregate the information
13:40 – The bags are made with wax cotton which is water-resistant
14:03 – Customers often look for the look
14:30 – The bags are made to last
14:38 – Team size is 2.5
14:51 – Joseph won't give up a part of the company
- 15:49 – "I don't know exactly what we're doing"
16:48 – Chubbies Shorts is effectively using Instagram
16:55 – Breton's Instagram
17:24 – There's a big percentage of women buying the Breton bags, too
18:58 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Choose a job where you can earn and have fun at the same time.
Nurture your connections and network.
Don't give up a part of your company if you're not confident doing so.

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

687: Monaco Bored Him, Now Places Ads on DIgital Billboards with VistarMedia CEO Jeremy Ozen Jun 11, 2017

Show notes

Jeremy Ozen. He's the president and co-founder of Vistar Media. He was previously a Goldman Sachs European Special Situations in London monitoring a portfolio of venture investments. He also has a BS in Material Science Engineering and a BSc in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Sam Walton's Biography
What CEO do you follow? – 3G Capital Founders
Favorite online tool? — Gmail Calendar
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? – Jeremy wished he had not taken life so seriously and not every day is the end of the world

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:43 – Nathan introduces Jeremy to the show
01:15 – Vistar Media connects a technology to a software that runs digital billboard
01:35 – Vistar Media makes money by selling the technology or ads to the advertisers or agencies
01:52 – Vistar Media pays the media to access the platform then charges advertising agencies to use their technology
02:18 – VistarMedia doesn't have a financial risk because the system is a real-time system
- 02:28 – There is a real-time buying of ad inventory
02:53 – VistarMedia's technology can adjust to digital ones
- 03:06 – VistarMedia uses data for telecoms especially the location data of consumers to analyze where the consumers are within a day
04:20 – Jeremy started with Goldman Sachs in London
04:45 – Goldman had 2 groups, one is in stocks and the other is the special situations
05:20 – Jeremy stayed with Goldman for 2 years
05:22 – Jeremy then went to a hedge fund based in Monaco
06:12 – Jeremy became friends with people in Monaco
- 06:30 – There was a guy who has a very successful business in Poland
07:31 – Jeremy accepted and liked the concept of knowing something that is already working
08:10 – Jeremy has a friend who was working for a company that was founded by Google in 2010
- 08:23 – They're one of the first to do programmatic advertising
- 08:59 – Jeremy then realized that what this company was doing for online advertising would eventually be the way for every type of advertising
10:54 – When Jeremy started, they knew the out-of-home advertising space was growing in terms of how much is digital
11:19 – Vistar Media needed to work with different media outlets explaining to them how to integrate into their system
- 11:28 – The idea of programmatic advertising was totally foreign to them
11:39 – Vistar Media was launched in 2012
12:48 – Team size is 55
12:52 – Vistar Media raised in 2013 a convertible round
13:15 – Vistar Media hasn't raised a series A and will not raise one
14:01 – The biggest expenses of Vistar Media is the cost of media
15:20 – Jeremy has thought of buying Upfront
16:01 – Vistar Media has a difference in capital with the billboard guys
16:43 – Jeremy would describe themselves as the biggest billboard company in the USA
- 16:46 – They have all these big partners that work with them
17:29 – Vistar Media is bringing the billboard companies new money
18:02 – Vistar Media is the only player of programmatic advertising out-of-home
18:15 – $7B has been spent on billboards annually
18:27 – Jeremy is now 31
18:51 – Personally, when Jeremy started Vistar Media, they thought they were building a VC tech like business
19:12 – Jeremy built a business to have an exit at some point
19:48 – The best way to grow your value is by growing your business
20:05 – Jeremy is paying himself $50K a year
20:35 – Goal for 2017
21:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Going from one field to another is not that difficult if you really want and need a change.
You grow your value by growing your business.
There's a time to work hard and a time to play hard.

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

686: $225M Raised by Data Focused Ex-Isralei Fighter Pilot, is Kaminario Next IPO? With CEO Dani Golan Jun 10, 2017

Show notes

Dani Golan who oversees strategy, a go-to market, and overall company operations at Kaminario. Previously, Dani served as president and general manager of Performix technology which was acquired by Nice Systems in 2006. Prior to Performix, he served as an executive responsible for leading new ventures at EMC. He holds a BSc of electrical engineering, summa cum laude at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and an MBA from The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Prior to his professional career, Dani served as a fighter pilot and officer in the Israeli Air Force.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Goal
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — Skype
How many hours of sleep do you get?— Quite inconsistent
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Dani would tell himself to focus on what's important

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:44 – Nathan introduces Dani to the show
01:33 – Being a fighter pilot and an entrepreneur are similar things for Dani
01:57 – Kaminario is an infrastructure for the cloud
02:47 – Kaminario brings efficiency to data sets, data centers and data bases
02:50 – Kaminario is the development of net generation data storage infrastructure
03:02 – Most of Kaminario's customers are net generation business models
- 03:13 – They needed a completely different data infrastructure that can grow with them
- 03:37 – Legacy enterprises generates more data
03:51 – Kaminario has raised a total of $280M including their latest round of $75M
04:30 – Kaminario is dealing with 2 of hottest markets in IT: flash and cloud
- 04:42 – Flash created the opportunity for Kaminario to be in the greatest revolution for IT
05:40 – If you're pushing your valuation to perfection, there is no perfection in IT
06:05 – Make sure you have a fair valuation for your company
06:24 – The sentiment of investors is that they appreciate the growth in the past but now they're asking for real businesses, especially when it comes to IT
- 06:49 – Investors want to see pass the profitability
07:09 – Kaminario is closed to profitability
07:30 – Kaminario's past investors have also participated and shared significantly
09:00 – Businesses should protect their employees
09:44 – When you are getting money for the company, 3 means you have to get $3M to the investors
10:40 – "Valuation is bullsh*t if you have crazy terms"
10:50 – Employees are far more important than actual valuation
11:05 – Kaminario was launched in 2008 on April fools' day which is the same as Apple
11:57 – Kaminario now has thousands of customers
12:21 – How fast a specific customer is going to buy more is one of the metrics that Kaminario measures
12:51 – Kaminario is doing serve and apply which is software, hardware and service
13:30 – Kaminario sells to cloud providers or to the SaaS companies
- 13:44 – The SaaS is the larger revenue source
13:57 – By 2019, the total cloud market will be 175B
- 14:03 – Around 120B are SaaS companies
15:32 – SaaS companies charge their customers monthly
- 15:37 – SaaS companies pay Kaminario a one-time fee for infrastructure
- 15:46 – There is an on-going payment for maintenance
16:20 – The expansion revenue
- 16:28 – If a SaaS company started with $300K, they will go over $1M by the end of 12 months
17:45 – Team size is 250 but the inside sales team isn't that big
18:17 – Kaminario has a presence in the market
18:57 – Data grows exponentially every year
19:23 – Normally, customers would start cautiously and would just eventually gain trust in Kaminario
19:55 – First metric to measure the 3x growth is by capacity
20:45 – Kaminario is the most scalable product in the market
- 20:50 – Kaminario can fit roughly 12 terabytes of 400K iPhones
21:48 – Kaminario has never lost a customer
22:00 – Kaminario is a big funnel
22:12 – Kaminario's revenue stream is 50% from new sign-ups and 50% from existing
24:04 – Kaminario's last round was closed in Q4 of 2016
24:41 – When you are in Kaminario's business, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon
25:00 – Kaminario's number one competitor is EMC
26:06 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Valuation is useless if you're aiming for perfection, there will always be flaws.
Focus on keeping your employees and customers happy.
A customer won't easily trust a product at first so you have to earn that trust, ensuring they stay longer.

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

685: He Loved A Product, So Acquired Whole Business with Doc Signing Signix CEO Jay Jumper Jun 09, 2017

Show notes

Jay Jumper. He's the founder, CEO and President of SIGNiX. As a highly regarded entrepreneur, Jay has worked to establish the company as the leading cloud-based digital signature solution which is a hot space. He has more than 20 years in financial services and technology management experience. Additionally, Jay graduated from University of Tennessee in 1985 with a BS in marketing.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Trump: The Art of the Deal
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban
Favorite online tool? — Email
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jay would tell himself that hard work and perseverance outdoes anything else

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:45 – Nathan introduces Jay to the show
01:33 – SIGNiX is the only cloud-based digital signature company in North America
- 01:44 – SIGNiX is an independent e-signature solution
02:00 – Jay shows Nathan a visual of a cloud-based digital signature
- 02:08 – Put a signature on the overlight, not on the document
- 02:48 – You depend on the e-signature vendor to be around forever so they can validate the signature
- 02:56 – On the overlight is a hyperlink that redirects the person to the e-signature provider
03:38 – With SIGNiX, every signature is embedded onto the document
03:52 – SIGNiX is a SaaS model
04:08 – SIGNiX focuses on security
04:32 – 80% of SIGNiX is sold to software partners
- 04:37 – SIGNiX enables software partners to capture the e-signature market that is sitting on their software
- 05:05 – Software partners can privately label SIGNiX so they can rebrand it according to whatever the product is
05:25 – SIGNiX does a revenue share with their software partners
05:32 – SIGNiX gives their software partners a highly robust digital signature solution
06:08 – SIGNiX's pricing on their website
- 06:10 – $240 per seat equals to 240 transactions a year
06:22 – SIGNiX's emphasis is on supporting their partners
06:54 – SIGNiX goes to different industries and tries to match pricing based on the industry
07:37 – SIGNiX has very robust APIs which is the core of the business
08:11 – The key things that SIGNiX offers: everything is embedded in the document and documents can be deleted from SIGNiX
- 08:18 – A dependent e-signature always has 2 copies, one for the company and one for the customer
09:04 – What SIGNiX is doing is much more difficult
09:30 – Team size is 50
10:00 – SIGNiX was launched in 2002 and was acquired from another company
10:12 – ProNvest is a robo advisor that Jay also owns
10:45 – SIGNiX is a bigger revenue stream for Jay
10:57 – The market for e-signature is very large
11:35 – ProNvest provides management counseling to the 41K marketplace
- 11:47 – In 2007, more people in 41K are taking their money out rather than contributing
- 12:06 – Jay really wanted a tool set to work with their 41K providers to help them retain their assets
- 12:17 – Jay wanted the providers to retain their assets through electronic signatures
12:24 – SIGNiX called Jay
- 12:40 – The company was struggling and Jay became an investor in the company
- 12:52 – Jay invested around 50% of the company
- 13:05 – There was an offer from a public company to buy the company after Jay invested
- 13:22 – The offer was 5x what Jay paid for
- 14:00 – In 2001, it was good to have a ".com" but in 2002, Jay needed to have revenue
14:23 – Jay saw the need for having SIGNiX regardless of its previous company struggles
14:33 – Jay really bolted SIGNiX and passed it on an incubator
15:04 – The previous company just spent money on the technology and was burning cash
15:43 – SIGNiX now has 670K customers
- 15:52 – It is a combination of seats and customers
16:30 – Average MRR
16:57 – SIGNiX gives discounts to their partners
17:18 – If you're working with a software company, you have to figure out a number that works for their customers
18:02 – The number that Jay gave was an annual number
18:20 – SIGNiX does not focus on their competitors because they have a very different product
18:48 – SIGNiX wants to go and find the top software developers in every industry and partner with them
- 19:03 – First thing that SIGNiX looks for in a software partner is their position and role in their particular industry
- 19:10 – Ziplogix partnered with SIGNiX and named their solution, Digital Ink
- 19:25 – SIGNiX has a large portion of realtors in their network
- 19:35 – SIGNiX doesn't mind being behind the scenes
19:55 – SIGNiX is not a reseller and it becomes the key feature of the product
20:18 – SIGNiX doesn't have a standard percentage split because it varies per company
20:49 – Jay did a lot of self-funding for SIGNiX, but has also raised capital which is an 8-figure total
21:18 – ProNvest is the largest investor in SIGNiX but they needed outside investors to scale
21:38 – The funding rounds SIGNiX had in 2016 had a total of around $90M
23:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Develop and scale your product until you become a totally different product from your competitors.
A business that is struggling does NOT mean that it will struggle forever; decide if the company is worth acquiring and if you can grow it into a profitable business.
It's okay if you're not in the limelight—so long as you're getting paid and revenue continues to multiply.

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
Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
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
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

684: How to Raise Your First Round of Funding with Healthcare API, Redox Founder Niko Skievaski Jun 08, 2017

Show notes

Niko Skievaski. He's the co-founder of Redox, a modern API for healthcare. He also used to do some work at Epic.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Moments of Magic
What CEO do you follow? – Judith Faulkner
Favorite online tool? — Calendly
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? – Niko would have asked himself to start something rather than working in a big bank

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:40 – Nathan introduces Niko to the show
00:59 – Redox connects applications to software developers
01:04 – Redox's business model is licensing connections to various healthcare systems
01:25 – Niko deals with healthcare because he believes it is important
01:33 – Niko has also talked to developers that made an impact on patients' lives
01:46 – "From our perspective, we really see a technology innovation healthcare something that is absolutely needed"
02:20 – Redox charges software developers and software developers charge the healthcare system
- 02:38 – Redox initially becomes a sub-contractor of software vendors
03:21 – Redox charges per the number of connections a developer has in the healthcare system which is a monthly model
- 03:48 – Depending on the interface, the charge changes a bit
- 03:52 – It is a SaaS model
04:08 – Most developers connect to 1-3 healthcare systems
- 04:15 – Each connection system is around a thousand dollars
04:25 – Redox was founded in 2014
04:34 – Niko was in the corporate world and was working at Wells Fargo
- 04:46 – Niko went to Epic to get his hands on data because he studied Economics and wanted to understand what he could do to improve the healthcare data
- 05:07 – When Niko got to Epic, they didn't actually have the data
- 05:17 – Niko learned a lot from Epic about the provider workflow
05:29 – Since healthcare is digitized, the challenge is how to get the data out of the cloud to software developers
05:43 – Niko's CTO and co-founder, James, was helping startups hook up with various healthcare systems
05:59 – The idea of Redox is to make an engine that can scale across multiple health systems
06:16 – Redox was bootstrapped and has raised capital
06:30 – Niko and his co-founder have started different companies until they decided to do Redox
- 06:50 – They brought in another co-founder to round up Redox
07:00 – Niko and his co-founders worked in a co-working space and saved some money from their consulting gigs
07:21 – Redox raised a small seed round of $350K in 2014, then they hired some developers
07:40 – The co-founders were only getting $35K each when they were starting
- 08:05 – They made sacrifices in order to start Redox
- 08:51 – They have to convince themselves that if things don't work, they just have to get a job
09:11 – Entrepreneurs can easily get a job
09:30 – Redox has raised a couple of rounds
09:40 – The first application they had can determine the amount of blood loss by taking a picture
10:06 – It took Redox 10 months to get live with their first customer
10:17 – Redox raised their round A early
10:29 – The developer community was really excited and was supportive of Redox
10:52 – Redox was getting 1K MRR from their first customer
11:00 – The first round was a priced round
11:11 – You can raise based on your traction or based on potential
- 11:28 – Redox was based on potential
11:38 – Redox's pitch to their investors
- 11:40 – Digital health is one of the fastest growing spaces for venture capital
- 11:44 – There are too many companies trying to start something innovative in the healthcare space
- 11:47 – The common problem that they have is sharing data with the legacy system
- 12:10 – Redox really has a great team
- 12:30 – It's not about the MRR, it's about the potential of working with the army of software developers who are innovating in this space
- 12:53 – Redox's marketing strategy is getting the developers first, then the developers will drag Redox to the healthcare system
13:10 – Valuation
13:24 – Redox has closed another $9M with their series B round in January
13:40 – Total amount raised is $14M
13:48 – The new additional investor is Intermountain Healthcare System
14:20 – Redox currently has 100 healthcare systems across USA
15:13 – Redox has around $400K MRR
15:45 – Customer churn
16:13 – CAC
16:44 – Team size is 35 who are mostly developers
16:59 – Redox is a developer platform
- 17:06 – Most are based in Wisconsin and some are based around USA
17:46 – Niko won't sell Redox even if they already had an acquisition offer before
- 18:08 – Niko didn't think that the company acquiring Redox would be able to solve the problem as fast as Niko and the team
18:32 – Niko will accept an acquisition offer only if the company will be able to do it faster than Niko and the team
19:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

The continuous innovation in the healthcare space needs a data source that is stable.
Stick with your principles and be focused on where you want the company to go.
Raising capital can be based on your traction or the potential of 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
Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
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
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

683: These 4 pHD's Choose Entrepreneurship, Raise $75M for Data Indexing Tool Collibra with CEO Felix Van De Maele Jun 07, 2017

Show notes

Felix Van de Maele. He's the CEO and one of the co-founders of Collibra which he took the idea of funding to more than years of record growth and industry leadership. He's responsible for the company's global business strategy. Prior to Collibra, Felix served as a researcher at the Semantics of Technology and Applications Research Laboratory at a university in Brussels where he focused on the technology crawlers on the semantic web and semantic data integration. He holds a masters in computer science and software engineering from that university and masters of general management from Vlerick Business School.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm
What CEO do you follow? – n/a
Favorite online tool? — Evernote
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? – "I won't change much"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:39 – Nathan introduces Felix to the show
01:33 – Collibra is a SaaS company helping larger organizations to better find, understand and control their data
01:47 – Collibra started in financial services
- 01:53 – Every bank needs data governance, which is what Collibra does
- 01:58 – Data governance is needed for regulatory compliance
02:16 – Collibra now covers different industries
02:25 – Collibra was launched in 2008
02:31 – Collibra raised capital
- 02:40 – Collibra raised a seed round of €800K as Felix's first company
- 02:48 – They bootstrapped after their profitability tripled every year
- 00:57 – They've raised their first bigger round which is a series B of $20M in 2014
- 03:14 – In December 2016, they did a $50M series C round
03:27 – Felix is now 32 and has been focusing on Collibra for almost a decade now
04:00 – Felix uses the analogy of the library and the index card that is used in a library to elaborate data governance
- 04:09 – A library card with all its information is similar to an organization with all its data
- 04:27 – Collibra wants to get to the Amazon of the notifications of data
04:46 – Collibra is similar to a search engine for data sets
- 04:59 – Now everybody does data and it's chaos
05:14 – Collibra has close to 200 customers
05:25 – RPU is $200-250K annually
05:41 – Average customer pay per month is 20K
05:46 – Collibra has annual plans with cash upfront
06:13 – Collibra started with a perpetual model which is a licensing fee upfront, then they have the software
- 06:29 – There's an annual maintenance fee which is 20% of the initial fee
06:46 – ARR is $10-30M
07:00 – The idea of Collibra
- 07:13 – Felix had 4 options after graduation
- 07:23 – Felix was inspired by a book he read and thought that he could start his own business
07:57 – Collibra has 4 founders
- 08:25 – The equity is just 25%
08:55 – The founders split the shareholders from their management
- 09:06 – "We try to separate the 2 as much as possible"
09:40 – The investors own a different range in Collibra
09:55 – The percentage of the company that they give away during the series C depends on the trajectory and how much money is raised
10:12 – The biggest round for Collibra is the series B
10:39 – Collibra's trajectory is to have $100M ARR as quickly as possible
10:59 – The picking of investors is mostly because of the valuation, but there are other factors involved
11:27 – Collibra picked Matthew of Iconic because he clicked well
12:00 – Customer churn is 3-4%
12:30 – Net revenue expansion
12:52 – CAC
- 13:30 – Some of Collibra's customers have been with them for several years
14:08 – Collibra looks at their sales efficiency and their marketing efficiency
- 04:13 – The marketing dominance they're spending to generate $1 of ARR is around 0.8-0.9
- 14:30 – It costs $1 in sales and marketing to generate $1 in ARR
- 14:42 – Payback time is around 12 months
14:54 – Team size is 210
- 15:00 – Biggest team is in New York, engineering team is in Brussels and sales and marketing in London
- 15:30 – The HQ transferred to New York because most of the customers are in USA
16:25 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

There are so many data sources available and it's difficult to know which one has the most accurate data.
You need to find a way to govern the data that you have—this helps in regulatory compliance.
Sometimes, ignorance IS bliss—it can cause you to take more risks.

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
Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
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
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

682: Why Tech Companies Are Opening Salt Lake City Offices With CloudCherry CEO Vinod Muthukrishnan Jun 06, 2017

Show notes

Vinod Muthukrishnan. He was first a sailor then a strategist and now an entrepreneur. He was fortunate and has worked in diverse and challenging environments starting with the Merchant Navy, a high energy mobile first financial technology startup where he had a strategy and global sales. Now, he currently serves as co-founder and CEO of a company called Cloudcherry, a tech startup based in Pleasanton, California with offices in Singapore, India and a new location Vinod will show.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – High Output Management
What CEO do you follow? – Nick Mehta
Favorite online tool? — Trello
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4.5-5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Vinod wished he knew programming back then

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:46 – Nathan introduces to the show
01:22 – The new location is in Salt Lake City
01:36 – Cloudcherry has 74 people
- 01:40 – They are based in India and Singapore
01:47 – Cloudcherry has raised $7M with a total of around $9.5M raised
01:56 – Cloudcherry is a custom platform for millennials
02:13 – Millennials have complicated journeys with the brands they work with
- 02:21 – In 2017, if you want to understand your customers, you have to be in all the platforms
02:47 – Cloudcherry is a feedback platform on speed across all platforms
03:07 – Cloudcherry has an inspirational wall in their office where employees can post things they find inspirational
- 03:18 – "You need to walk into your office every day and be inspired on what you believe in"
- 03:40 – Whoever visits their office can put their names on the wall
03:50 – Cloudcherry has the 6 pillars of their culture: freedom, ownership, smart work, passion and some more
04:03 – Vinod introduced Nathan to some of the people in the office
04:40 – The office is 2000 sq. ft.
- 05:05 – Vinod shows Nathan the view from the office
05:27 – Cloudcherry was launched in 2014
05:34 – Cloudcherry is a SaaS business
05:48 – Cloudcherry had their last fund raising September 2016
05:58 – Cloudcherry has close to 100 customers
- 06:05 – "The massive push now is to grow the business in North America"
06:37 – The team in America targets mid-market and enterprise businesses
06:47 – Average customer pay per month is a couple of hundred from SMBs
- 06:57 – Mid-market and enterprise average a thousand dollars a month
07:23 – Cloudcherry has a complex mix of customers
- 07:58 – They are doing more than 88K per month
08:13 – Cloudcherry has almost zero customer churn with SMB at the moment
08:35 – Cloudcherry's enterprise churn is higher than SMBs
09:00 – Most of Cloudcherry's customers are with them for 18-20 months
09:33 – Cloudcherry ran out of the market in 2015
09:48 – SMBs are customers whose ARPU is south of 20K
10:18 – Cloudcherry currently has 35% of mid-market and enterprise customers and 65% of SMBs
11:10 – Cloudcherry 's time to recover CAC is around 12 months
- 12:09 – Average CAC is $7K-12K
12:25 – LTV is around $36K
12:35 – "Some amount of the optimism needs to be weighed with intellectual honesty"
12:45 – The greatest predictor of LTV for Vinod is the churn
13:10 – Cloudcherry focuses on customer delight
- 13:22 – Cloudcherry got feedback on how delighted their customers are
13:45 – If a customer stays with you, it will impact your churn and LTV
14:11 – Cloudcherry is still burning cash at the moment
- 14:34 – "We have money to burn from growth"
14:47 – December 2017 goal MRR
15:32 – SaaS business should continuously grow in numbers
16:57 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Make your employees look forward to going to the office every day.
When your customers are satisfied with your business, the numbers will just follow.
SaaS businesses should constantly track their numbers.

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
Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
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
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

681: Tai Lopez, Gary V Paid Him To Grow Instagram with Classy Savant CEO Eduardo Gonzalez Jun 05, 2017

Show notes

Eduardo Gonzales. Two years ago, he started working on Instagram as a broke college student with a vision to become one of the largest influencers with literally zero dollars in investment. He learned the game and began growth hacking on different Instagram pages. Today, he stands with over 5M followers combined across multiple different niches on Instagram.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Think, Grow, Prosper and The Alchemist
What CEO do you follow? – Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg
Favorite online tool? — com
How many hours of sleep do you get?— At least 4
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wished I would have studied more programming"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:40 – Nathan introduces Eduardo to the show
01:26 – "The power of social media is absolutely limitless"
- 01:30 – You can have a more intimate relationship between brands and consumers
01:56 – Social media is a great way to target people on mobile devices
- 02:05 – There's now a geographical private system where you want your followers to be
02:44 – Eduardo helped Tai Lopez with social media marketing
02:50 – Eduardo was one of the first people to help Movement Watches
- 03:00 – Movement Watches approached Eduardo when he was still on Tumblr
- 03:04 – Eduardo started growing on Tumblr as a luxury blogger and was able to grow a couple hundred thousand followers there
- 03:13 – Movement Watches was a small startup; Eduardo stayed with them and now they're at Nordstrom
- 03:40 – Eduardo was getting 15% for every affiliate
- 03:50 – When Movement Watches moved to Instagram, they paid Eduardo per post
03:59 – Eduardo charges per post depending on the page, the content of the post, and the type of following they want to engage
04:20 – For 380K followers in a luxury niche, it will $125-150 per post that will last a day
- 04:38 – The page's visual team will create content and then Eduardo will pick the one that matches his page
05:03 – One of Tai Lopez's marketers is Eduardo's friend and they approached Eduardo
05:26 – Tai Lopez did a lot of giveaways and online marketing courses
- 05:37 – He wanted to add value to people
- 05:57 – During giveaways, Tai had a large list of influencers that he reached out to
06:15 – The marketing team would ask Eduardo for a consultation regarding the strategy
- 06:32 – Eduardo also has a team who make content so they can make the content and reach out to Eduardo's influencers
06:55 – Tai Lopez does social media growth and he likes to grow his followers
- 07:00 – Tai targeted to have 10K followers when he came to Eduardo
- 07:10 – Tai now has around 500K followers
07:31 – Eduardo created the visual content for Tai
- 07:36 – Eduardo figured out the best schedule to post Tai's content
- 07:42 – Eduardo was able to track all the analytics
- 07:46 – As the following grew, Tai was able to know the best time to post, where the followers were coming from and where the most engaging followers come from
- 07:54 – They weeded out non-performing pages and created a list of pages that performed well until they reached 10K
- 08:07 – It took Eduardo a week and a half to reach 10K followers
- 08:10 – Tai paid Eduardo $5K
08:24 – The one page Tai is getting more followers is Big Toys
- 08:39 – The age groups on the page are 18-24 and 25-34 and mostly are in USA
- 08:54 – Because of the large age group, a lot of them are interested in the online courses that Tai offers
09:04 – Sometimes people would actually come to Eduardo and ask him if they should buy a page
- 09:12 – People do buy pages, but when you rebrand a page, you lose some of the following and it isn't as organic
- 09:24 – You can buy a page that is as close or as similar to the message that you want to convey
09:45 – Eduardo has worked with Gary V on his social media growth
- 09:58 – The work was almost similar with what Eduardo did for Tai
10:20 – Eduardo has worked with Secret Entourage
- 10:28 – They wanted to promote their online marketing sources
10:46 – Eduardo is also in the process of working with Rolls-Royce
11:17 – Eduardo has a lot people who have a large number of followers
- 11:26 – Eduardo has 5M and with co-founder, Goodlife, they'll have 10-11M followers combined
- 11:42 – Dan Fleyshman and Branden Hampton are some of the people they've worked for
- 12:13 – Dan and Brendan grew their own networks and pages and they acquired some
12:31 – Eduardo started working with small campaigns
13:15 – Eduardo launched his consulting company, Classy Savant, in 2016
13:25 – 2016 revenue was around $40K
13:30 – 2017 goal is at least $100K
14:00 – Eduardo collaborated with Mr. Goodlife and he has another partner
- 14:12 – Eduardo also has a few interns and photographers
14:37 – One of the most well-known tools that Eduardo uses is com
- 14:48 – You can check a public account's statistics and what they use for their posting
15:02 – com is where you can pull all sorts of information
- 15:24 – You can know who your top followers are, your most recent, and your first followers
- 15:55 – It works well too when you switch your Instagram from public to business account
16:27 – You can always Google the top hashtags
- 16:46 – You have to keep your hashtags from 5 to 15
18:25 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Dream BIG even if you have to start small.
It is now easier for brands to reach out to their target consumers because of social media.
Gaining followers in Instagram isn't that simple—you have to have a goal and a planned strategy to reach that goal.

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
Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
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
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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