820: How to Bankrupt a $4m/yr Business then Relaunch as SaaS

Mateo Munoz. He's the COO and managing director of the Americas for Duuzra or Duzzra Group. Mateo has been a crucial part of the management team that helped the company turnaround from group consultancy to its second series A and is leading it from its service-based model to a SaaS-based model.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Never Eat Alone
• What CEO do you follow? – Falon Fatemi
• Favorite online tool? — Glow Baby and Slack
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Listen a little bit more"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:49 – Nathan introduces Mateo to the show
• 02:25 – Duuzra was launched in 2012 as an event technology company
  • 02:35 – It was on prem and they've worked with different companies
• 02:58 – They saw where the market was going; so, they started a solution on the cloud
  • 03:18 – They got a little bit of the model wrong and there was some mismanagement
  • 03:31 – They've burned $3M from 2012-2015
  • 03:40 – Their current CEO is from a venture-traditional bank
• 04:14 – Duuzra then rolled over and Mateo had to deal with the IRS because of their back taxes
• 04:52 – Duzzra Group is from UK
• 05:15 – Duzzra was opened up in USA as an Inc. founded by the original management group
• 06:12 – Duzzra had their Series A
• 06:45 – In 2016, Duzzra made over £2M
• 07:12 – Current team size is 30 from the 80 people in 2015
• 07:19 – Duzzra raised £2.3M in their series A
• 07:32 – 20 people are in the UK, the rest are remote and are from other countries
• 08:17 – Mateo was the VP in marketing and he also had his own advertising company
• 08:42 – Mateo was offered the MD role by the CEO, he also acquired some equity
• 09:11 – Series A was a typical venture, but it was done through private wealth
  • 09:28 – They're currently looking into raising £5M for series B
• 09:39 – Duzzra just released their SaaS product coming in as a beta product
• 10:05 – Target revenue for 2017
• 10:24 – Duzzra currently has a great team that is doing an amazing job
• 11:24 – The valuation will be important, but they also want the investors to be happy with their series B
• 12:30 – Duzzra has invested $400K on their new product
• 13:08 – An average pay per customer is $2500 a month
  • 13:11 – The benchmark for Duzzra's predictable revenue was the license for the actual event
• 13:39 – Duzzra is moving to a completely different model
  • 13:51 – Duzzra is now a content delivery and engagement tool with analytics on the back end
  • 13:58 – Applications can be packaged quickly and easily
• 14:36 – Duzzra currently has 10 paying customers for the SaaS side and they still have their full-service suite
• 15:13 – CAC is around $3500
• 17:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Sometimes you have to accept that there will be loss at times while building a company.
2. If the business can maintain its credibility (even after burning millions) investors will still trust you and will invest.
3. Listen to others and learn from them; don't try to do it all on your own.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives