SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Tobyn Sowden. He's the CEO of Redbrick, the second fastest growing software company in Canada and the birthplace of a product called Shift. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – How to Win Friends and Influence People What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — InVision Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I would tell myself technical, all the way" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:39 – Nathan introduces Tobyn to the show 02:00 – Profit Guide named Redbrick as the second fastest software company in Canada, by measuring revenue growth 02:25 – Profit Guide measured a whole 5 year period 02:30 – Redbrick had $200K revenue in 2010 and $10-20M in 2015 03:00 – Redbrick was launched in 2010 03:15 – Redbrick started from an app distribution perspective 03:38 – Redbrick has developed their own tools to track 04:20 – Redbrick's main software is Deskmetrics, which is integrated into Shift 04:31 – Deskmetrics currently has 500K active users 05:00 – Not all who downloads are active users 05:08 – The number of downloads are tracked 05:34 – SDK is a software development kit 05:59 – Deskmetrics provides consulting services 06:06 – Facebook is one of Deskmetrics' sources for customer acquisition 06:40 – Redbrick is currently spending around $30K for Facebook paid acquisition 06:54 – Redbrick is working with a team on Facebook and is committed to growing their spending into millions of dollars for growth 07:33 – Tobyn shares the idea of Shift 08:07 – Shift had a preview in September and people liked it 08:12 – Shift allows you to switch around your Gmail and google accounts 08:51 – Tobyn increased their team size and hired more developers 09:08 – Shift is a SaaS business with $20/year subscription fee 09:31 – Shift primarily uses Facebook for advertising 09:49 – Shift has around 30K installs and 10K active users 10:00 – Shift's free-to-paid conversion rate is around 4-5% 10:23 – Shift is 3-months old 10:48 – Tobyn needed to decide if they will launch Shift on December 20th or wait until 2nd week of January 11:16 – Shift is doing great at the moment and there's definitely a market for it 11:40 – Tobyn shares why they decided that Shift be a desktop download 12:53 – Tobyn wants to avoid integrations that will make Shift look like a browser 13:15 – Redbrick has 3 parts: the app distribution side, Deskmetrics and Shift 13:35 – The app distribution side is the major revenue stream 13:45 – Tobyn believes that their path is the app distribution side 14:16 – Team size is 37 and they're based in Victoria BC in Vancouver, Canada 14:31 – There are small teams in Poland and Brazil 15:12 – Deskmetrics is primarily a desktop software analytics platform 16:15 – An average customer pays $500 monthly 16:36 – Tobyn was charging per number of users, but they changed it 17:14 – Deskmetrics was launched in 2016 17:45 – Redbrick has a lot of predictive models that they used in terms of CAC 19:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Facebook is one of the best places, at the moment, for paid advertising. You can always go and develop more products, but recognize when it's wise to stick to the path you're already on. Charging per head can at times restrict your customers from using your product to its fullest potential. 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 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

Patrick McGinnis. He's the author of The 10% Entrepreneur which focuses on living your startup dream without leaving your day job, which was just published by Penguin Portfolio. He's also credited for coining up with the term "fear of missing out". He's a graduate of Harvard business school and is living in New York City. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup What CEO do you follow? – Sheryl Sandberg Favorite online tool? — Quip Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6-12 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Patrick wished he had more confidence in his abilities and more open to trying new things Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:30 – Nathan introduces Patrick to the show 02:10 – Patrick is a Wall Street refugee 02:21 – Patrick has his own advisory firm 02:29 – Patrick built up his portfolio of over 20 investments 03:04 – Patrick worked with his friend in Real Influence for free 03:14 – They sold $300K-$400K 03:19 – The business didn't push through and Patrick sold his shares 03:35 – Patrick was 33 03:46 – After a year, Patrick's friend asked him if he was interested in investing in a startup 03:51 – Ipsy has raised $100M 04:08 – Patrick is one of the first investors of Ipsy 04:32 – Ipsy's co-founder is Michelle Phan 04:49 – Patrick's friend who is the CEO of Ipsy met Michelle through Funny or Die 05:46 – Michelle's huge fan base made Ipsy spend zero on CAC 06:00 – How Patrick decided to invest in Ipsy 06:03 – Patrick's friend was already raising a round 06:33 – Patrick's friend already had a lead 06:38 – Patrick started his venture capitalist path in 2000 06:48 – Most of the deals Patrick looks at are simple deals 06:53 – Patrick invested in Ipsy in 2012 07:50 – Ipsy is one of Patrick's most successful investments 08:00 – Another one of his investments was Bluesmart 08:24 – He also invested in Affinity which is a big data company 09:04 – How many deals do you have to make to ensure there's a big exit in the portfolio? 09:12 – When Patrick started investing, he thought of the possible mistakes he could make as an investor 10:03 – As an investor, you have to invest in your area of expertise 10:08 – Second, think of the deal as a commercial deal, even with friends 10:21 – Third, don't follow other people 10:39 – Stay away from "will-to-be" syndrome 11:09 – Patrick was working with AIG's private equity fund 11:41 – Patrick shares why he wrote a book 11:48 – Patrick always talks to people about what he does as an investor 12:12 – As Patrick met with more and more people, he realized that he could actually help people believe in what he does 12:25 – "It's been a blast actually and I love writing, anyway" 12:56 – Patrick shares why he decided to have a publisher rather than self-publish his book 13:02 – Patrick wasn't a well-known media figure and a publisher would help his credibility 13:12 – Patrick got a great editor 13:24 – Patrick wanted to go global 13:34 – Patrick has sold an average of 50K copies 13:40 – A book update is given every 6 months 14:00 – Patrick gets around 10% royalties on sales 14:26 – Patrick's book is a bestseller in South Korea 14:48 – Patrick had an advance of around $100K prior to his book launch 14:58 – Patrick has an agent who is with UTA 15:38 – Patrick met his agent through his friend 16:02 – If you are generous to the world, it comes back to you in so many different ways 16:25 – "If you want to publish a book, you should know how hard it is" 16:40 – Publishing a book is like running a startup 16:54 – Patrick shared on a couple of podcasts which boosted his sales 17:03 – Patrick's book is in physical bookstores, too 17:20 – Patrick was also live in CNN Espanol in South America 17:37 – Amazon's ranking is always updated 17:44 – Patrick also has a group who does social media for him 18:22 – Launching a book is a process 18:56 – Patrick has a day job that covers the bills 19:12 – "Freelancing is great in terms of flexibility, but you build zero wealth" 19:48 – Patrick also invests in commercial real estate 20:04 – Patrick shares how he and his friend get dividends from real estate 23:25 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Investing in your friend's business is a commercial deal, so invest wisely. Be prepared—publishing a book is not a walk in the park and involves several processes. Freelancing is great in terms of flexibility, but you build zero wealth. 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 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 list

Clate Mask and he has been educating and inspiring entrepreneurs for over a decade. He's recognized by the small business community as a truly visionary leader. His passion for small business success stems from his personal experience, taking Infusionsoft from a struggling startup to an 8-time Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000 winner. As CEO, he's leading Infusionsoft on its mission to create and dominate the market of sales and marketing software for small businesses. Under Clate's leadership, the company has landed 4 rounds of venture capital including a $55M series D led by Bain, with contributions from prior investors including Signal Peak Ventures and Goldman Sachs. He's also named Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, a Top 100 Small Business Influencer by Small Business Trends, and one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2013 by Goldman Sachs. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm and The Advantage What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff Favorite online tool? — Thumbtack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Never If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Clate wished he knew that business, not law, was the path for him AND that building a team and culture is far more fun than making money. Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Clate to the show 02:28 – When you serve small businesses, make sure you have the right target customers 02:35 – There are 27M small businesses 03:02 – "You got to get it right. You got to get the market fit" 03:20 – Infusionsoft focuses on businesses with 2-25 employees but the sweet spot is 2-10 employees 03:28 – Average customer pay per month is $250-300 03:54 – "It's CRM, marketing automation, sales automation, e-commerce on one suite" 04:03 – Majority of Infusionsoft's revenue is SaaS 04:10 – Infusionsoft's $3.4B payments processed 04:36 – Infusionsoft created their own payment solution 2 years ago 05:04 – It triggers all kinds of Infusionsoft's automation 05:50 – Infusionsoft started in 2002, as a software company 05:56 – Infusionsoft pivoted in 2007 and decided to really go for it 06:16 – "We started, like every small business, with no intention to build something big" 06:34 – Clate saw how Salesforce moved upfront quickly and that opened up the opportunity for Infusionsoft 06:43 – "Why not be the Quickbooks to sales and marketing software" 06:53 – Infusionsoft's dark days 06:56 – In the first 3 years, every day was a fight for survival 07:43 – The second dark day for Infusionsoft was when their product market fit went off and the churn rate went up to a 8% gross monthly customer churn 08:08 – Infusionsoft had raised $17M when their churn skyrocketed 08:38 – Infusionsoft's churn rate is usually 2-2.5% 09:15 – Infusionsoft has raised a total of $125M and about half was capital for the business 10:00 – "When you create something that's growing, there's always a new investor who wants to replace an old investor" 10:27 – When the round becomes "over-subscribed", you have to take a percentage of what you've raised and make it available for your existing shareholders to sell some shares 11:09 – Infusionsoft currently has around 600 employees and still continues to grow 11:20 – Infusionsoft has around 135K users 11:30 – Infusionsoft just completed their 10 year adverse completion 11:56 – There are more things coming up for Infusionsoft 12:27 – Average MRR 13:19 – Clate shares why they haven't gone public 13:58 – What happens is private money is easier to raise 14:06 – Historically, public valuation was better than private valuation, but that shifted over the years 15:00 – When the market changed in 2014, Clate had decided that it's better to stay private as long as they could 15:30 – Infusionsoft is currently between $100M – 150M ARR 15:51 – The leverage that Clate pulled to turn their monthly churn 16:10 – Infusionsoft is serious about helping small businesses succeed 16:22 – The breakage model that results in you having a lot of churn 16:45 – Infusionsoft says "no" to thousands of businesses every month 17:06 – The challenge when you serve small businesses is you that have to tweak and adjust to get the LTV-CAC ratio right 17:17 – Infusionsoft is currently at $4 LTV for a dollar CAC 17:44 – The LTV-CAC ratio is the number that every SaaS business has to manage well 18:15 – It's better to look at your revenue in unit churn 18:42 – The upfront fee was the number one factor for Infusionsoft's churn moving from 8% to 2% 21:05 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: When you serve small businesses, make sure you have the RIGHT target customers and be committed to helping your customers. Going public requires a deep understanding of how adaptable you can be in an ever changing market. The LTV-CAC ratio is the number that every SaaS business has to manage well—that's the trick. 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

Amarpreet Kalkat. He's the CEO and co-founder of Frrole, an AI (artificial intelligence) startup that is redefining consumer intelligence. He loves building things, be it product, revenue streams, teams or organizations. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kalanick Favorite online tool? — Klout Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Amarpreet would tell himself to focus and prioritize Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:22 – Nathan introduces Amarpreet to the show 01:50 – Frrole provides consumer intelligence 01:53 – Frrole relies on public data to build insights about the consumers 02:07 – Frrole works with companies' marketing teams 02:35 – eBay and Flipcut are some of Frrole's customers 02:44 – It is crucial for marketing teams to understand their customers 02:57 – Frrole works with eBay's shipping insides team 03:02 – eBay wants to understand their customer's shipping experience 03:34 – Frrole has data partnerships with Twitter and Facebook 03:40 – Frrole has official access to data 04:11 – Frrole looks at the attributes and annotations as a guide for the data they need 04:30 – Frrole is SaaS business and customers pay them for the insights 05:00 – Average customer pay per month is around $32K per year 05:28 – "Personally, I don't believe in locking customers in" 05:37 – Frrole has a 30-day walk out clause 05:46 – Most of Frrole's customers pay quarterly 06:08 – Frrole started as a B2C in the news discovery product, in 2012 06:14 – In 2014, Frrole pivoted to a B2B model 06:46 – Frrole currently has 13 team members 06:52 – The team is in Bangalore and Amarpreet goes back and forth between Bangalore and San Francisco 07:11 – Amarpreet is currently in San Francisco looking for a sales guy 07:25 – Amarpreet ideally looks for a co-founder kind of role 07:39 – Amarpreet is willing to give 5-10% equity 07:49 – Frrole has raised a couple of small angel rounds 08:00 – Frrole has raised a total of $250K 08:05 – Frrole currently has 18 paying customers 08:23 – Average MRR 08:45 – Average customer churn 09:36 – Frrole has 1 sales guy in Bangalore 09:50 – CAC 10:15 – Frrole spends $500-1K a month for paid marketing 10:39 – Frrole is recently experimenting with LinkedIn for marketing 11:18 – Frrole sponsors an email list and a banner ad 11:28 – It worked out okay 12:00 – Frrole is currently breaking even 12:10 – Salaries in Bangalore are way less than in the USA 12:26 – The best web developer in India would cost around $30K 13:58 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Customers will use your product if they see the value – locking in is not always necessary. Marketing people need to dig deeper to understand and serve their customers well. Know what your priorities are and focus in. 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 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

Amit Shanbhag. He bootstrapped RocketReach from 0 to over 300K registered users in its first year. RocketReach and RocketReach API are trusted by some of the largest companies on the planet like Apple, Google, Chase and Morgan Stanley—just to name a few. He has more than a dozen patents and has started his professional life writing code for geostationary satellites. He's also a judge for the MIT $100K competition and hopes to invest more time and money back into the startup ecosystem. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – N/A What CEO do you follow? – Sundar Pichai Favorite online tool? — Google Search Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 4-5 If you could let your 20-year old self know one thing, what would it be? – Amit would tell the young ones to take risks, give everything you're doing a good shot, and that worrying isn't productive Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:28 – Nathan introduces Amit to the show 02:08 – Amit was in Episode 465 and just passed 100K paying customers 03:03 – RocketReach has 300K signup users 03:31 – RocketReach has doubled its growth 04:00 – "We tried to go more into the lead generation space" 04:21 – The end customers hold RocketReach responsible for higher quality data, which is out of their control 05:04 – RocketReach is similar to LeadGenius 05:10 – LeadGenius charges higher for their data 05:48 – LeadGenius uses a combination of people and software to gather data 05:56 – Amit wants RocketReach to rely purely on software, without human intervention 06:25 – The other problem with the lead generation space is when the users don't follow up with the leads generated for them, then put the blame on RocketReach for not having quality leads 06:51 – Amit isn't sure if Lead Genius is doing something about this problem 07:36 – CAC is quite high 07:52 – The lead generation part of RocketReach hasn't really piloted 08:17 – RocketReach was getting $3K – 7K per delivery set, but the retention rate is low 09:00 – RocketReach is using a lot of open APIs like AngelList and Crunchbase 10:17 – Most of the APIs that RocketReach uses are paid APIs 10:55 – Amit has decided that RocketReach will not continue down the lead generation path 11:06 – Amit wants customers to think of RocketReach as a productivity tool that is accessible on their browsers 11:26 – "We wanted to become more of a de facto productivity tool for sales" 11:33 – RocketReach focuses on features that can make a team more productive 12:17 – RocketReach doesn't have the self-serve team feature on their website, at the moment 12:57 – RocketReach currently has 7 team members and is still bootstrapped 13:02 – RocketReach has one of the highest revenues per employee in the lead generation space 13:12 – If RocketReach had continued with the lead generation model, it would have made sense to raise 13:25 – RocketReach is trying to scale without hiring a sales team 14:20 – RocketReach has an average of $70 monthly RPU 14:30 – But the number of paying users is complicated 15:25 – RocketReach's 120K users mentioned in Episode 465 is the number of registered users 16:13 – Amit doesn't see the need to reveal the number of paying customers 17:18 – Customers are paying anywhere from 1K-50K 17:42 – Gross customer monthly churn is 7% 17:53 – The churn has gone down a bit 18:56 – RocketReach has 2 different revenue streams 20:40 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The lead generation space isn't as easy as it seems. It IS possible to stay bootstrapped while, at the same time, scaling your business. Take risks, give your best shot, and worry less! 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 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

David Tavor. He has more than 20 years of experience as a general manager and founder of Biotech Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Company. He served as a fighter pilot and a commander in the Israeli Air Force and retired with the rank of a colonel. Mr. Tavor holds an MA degree in political science and national defense studies and MBA studies. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Born to Life What CEO do you follow? – Steve Jobs Favorite online tool? — David's common sense Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— About 3 or 4 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Lean on yourself" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:15 – Nathan introduces David to the show 02:04 – ParaSonic develops an ultra-sonic bomb that destroys lice and lice eggs 03:39 – ParaSonic developed a comb that treats lice in just one stroke of the comb 03:50 – The clinical trial was just completed and it was a success 04:52 – ParaSonic started in 2014 05:08 – The company was established within a technological incubator 05:16 – The incubator has 23% equity 05:45 – The incubator had put in $600K 05:51 – ParaSonic has raised an additional $1.6M 05:56 – ParaSonic is also in the process of raising $2M 06:28 – The rounds are equity rounds 07:28 – David's wife, Dana, is also part of the company 08:11 – ParaSonic has 5 team members who are mostly engineers 08:46 – The comb is going to be an over-the-counter product 09:05 – There will be 3 types of combs 09:25 – The comb's bristles are disposable 10:17 – David is also a chairman of 2 other companies 10:46 – One company developed a toothbrush where you can see your plaque through an app while you're brushing 12:17 – David is a freelancer for Colgate 13:30 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Developing a product in an industry that you are already familiar with is best for you. Consumers will believe in your product when you use the product yourself. Trust and lean on yourself. 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 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

Alessio Alionco. He's the founder and CEO of Pipefy, which is part of 500 Startups. He's a passionate product manager. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin Favorite online tool? — Yesware and Salesforce Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Alessio would tell himself to be aggressive with his goals Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:56 – Nathan introduces Alessio to the show 02:12 – Pipefy is a workflow cooperation software 02:21 – Alessio got Pipefy's idea from his previous company 02:36 – Alessio uses a CRM to manage Pipefy 02:45 – Pipefy has a dozen of processes 03:12 – "We coordinate people's work" 03:36 – Pipefy provides guidelines for a smooth, business process 03:48 – Pipefy is more of a people coordination solution and Zapier is similar to IFTTT 04:00 – Pipefy charges per user, per month 04:10 – Average customer fee is $200/month 04:20 – Pipefy started at the end of 2014 04:26 – Pipefy had its beta 04:36 – Pipefy released pre-signups in April 2015 04:51 – Pipefy became one of the most voted products of the day 05:23 – There was no revenue in 2015 05:32 – Pipefy started charging in August 2016 05:47 – Pipefy now has more than 400 paying customers 06:00 – Average MRR 06:54 – Pipefy offered a special price for customers who renew their subscriptions 07:00 – Pipefy has more than 60K customers who use them for free 07:24 – Only a small portion of the customers converted 07:40 – SMBs don't have business processes in place and aren't willing to pay for one 08:06 – Pipefy wants to focus on companies that are close to being considered enterprise companies 08:42 – Pipefy has raised a seed round of $2.2M 08:50 – Some of the investors are Zendesk's founders, Valour Capital, Redpoint Ventures, FundersClub and AngelList 09:06 – Pipefy has raised a total of $2.6M 09:13 – Team size is 33 09:32 – 27 are in Brazil and 6 are in San Francisco 09:55 – Pipefy is still hiring more people 10:00 – CAC 10:30 – Overall CAC is around $900 per company 10:50 – LTV is still hard to predict 11:34 – Pipefy's per seat pricing 12:10 – Pipefy negotiates deals with companies with over 10K employees 12:33 – 2017 revenue goal 12:50 – "It's really a huge funnel to raise the seed round" 13:00 – The series A dynamic is completely different 13:26 – 2016 total revenue 14:00 – Pipefy is aiming for a $200K MRR which is 10x the growth 16:05 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The best time to switch to a paid version of your product requires careful consideration to ensure the conversion takes place. Some SMBs rely on free business software and services for their processes—therefore, you may need to adjust your target audience. Be aggressive with your goals and just go for 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 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

Christopher Gibson. He's the co-founder and CEO of Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company leveraging the latest automation, computation and biological tools to perform drug discovery at scale. Chris holds a BS in bioengineering, a BA in managerial studies, and a bioengineering PhD from the University of Utah. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Perry Fell Favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 5.3 to 5.4 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Chris wished he knew where he was going to go so he could get to where he is now, faster Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:42 – Nathan introduces Chris to the show 02:12 – Recursion shortcuts the long, arduous path of drug discovery into the market 02:24 – Recursion combines the best elements of biology, automation, and computation 02:34 – Recursion partners with large pharmaceutical companies 02:45 – Recursion partnered with Sanofi Genzyme 02:51 – Sanofi had drugs that didn't end up in the market 03:10 – The challenges involved in being target-based 04:00 – Recursion earns from partnerships and royalties 04:20 – Recursion also has an internal pipeline for the drugs that they've developed themselves 04:43 – Recursion doesn't earn from the internal pipeline 05:51 – Recursion and what they receive from their partners 06:28 – There are partnerships with very, little upfront 06:34 – There are partnerships that have 8 figures, upfront 06:46 – The number of scientists that will work on the drug is also considered 07:22 – If Recursion is successful with their deals, they get royalties 08:38 – The royalties' lifeline 08:56 – Recursion has 40 people 09:25 – Recursion was launched in 2013 09:34 – They sat in their office until January 2014 10:01 – Chris was part of a program where he was paid a stipend, so he broke even 10:20 – Chris' parents were excited about his PhD 10:37 – Recursion has raised $19M in equity and $5M non-diluted from grants and private foundations 11:28 – Recursion's valuation as a platform company 12:14 – If Recursion will be successful, they will impact the society in a big way 12:41 – It is vision-based 12:54 – First year revenue was 6 figures 13:12 – "Our deals have been strategic in terms of the way we put them together" 13:45 – 2017 target 16:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Different sources of revenue benefit a company. The valuation of your company depends on how your company is currently performing and how well they will perform in the industry. First year revenue isn't always nil. 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 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

Gregg Freishtat. He's a technology executive with over 20 years of experience leading innovative and transformative companies. He founded 4 venture-backed startups, all of which had successful exits and is now building a company called SalesWise. He's deeply rooted in venture capital and the management of internet technology companies having led several through acquisitions. He's also handled developing and disruptive technologies, convergence of telecom plus internet, personal finance and online banking, web-based analytics and digital media, such as online marketing and currently relationship intelligence. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Mark Benioff Favorite online tool? – FullStory Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Don't sell your first company for $20M, when you can sell it for $50M" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Gregg to the show 01:59 – SalesWise is a business relationship intelligence platform 02:03 – SalesWise helps sales leaders gain visibility of the most important relationships they have 02:17 – SalesWise is a SaaS company, but doesn't charge per seat 02:21 – SalesWise believes in democratizing data 02:31 – SalesWise prices based on the company size 02:52 – Average customer pay per month 02:53 – $500/month for entry level companies with less than 100 employees 03:00 – A company with 2K employees pays $2500 a month 03:11 – SalesWise was founded in 2015 and their current product was launched 4 months ago 03:33 – Gregg sold his last company to Outbrain 04:23 – SalesWise was bootstrapped for 6-8 months 04:50 – Gregg has raised a total of just over $3M 04:58 – All priced rounds 05:02 – Gregg's initial capital was a convertible note 05:12 – SalesWise has 12 team members and is currently hiring sales and marketing people 05:46 – SalesWise's current number of customers 06:00 – Average MRR 06:10 – The whole team is based in the Atlanta Tech Village 06:30 – Anticipated customer churn 07:16 – Some of SalesWise's competitors are Salesforce and Xero 08:17 – The guys in the BI space, like Domo and Tableau 08:43 – SalesWise isn't into web scraping 08:38 – SalesWise uses Clearbit 08:55 – SalesWise is breaking the linear relationship you have with email 09:29 – SalesWise walked directly into the APIs of Salesforce and Gmail 10:45 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Use your frustration as motivation to make things better. Keep building companies – you're constantly learning and contributing to the industry while doing so. Don't settle for less or devalue yourself and your company – reach beyond your expectations. 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 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

Matthieu Vaxelaire. He's the CEO of Mention where he moves all Trello cards to the right and closes deals. He splits his time between Paris and New York City. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Rand Fishkin Favorite online tool? — Hull Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Do more things and read less as you learn much more by doing than reading" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:17 – Nathan introduces Matt to the show 01:37 – Mention is Google Alert on steroids 01:51 – Mention is a SaaS business 02:05 – Mention has different segments of customers 02:08 – The SME customers pay an average of $65 monthly 02:13 – The mid-market customers pay an average of $400 monthly 02:25 – Average customer pay per month 03:20 – Most of Mention's customers don't like sharing their information 03:40 – Ogilvy uses Mention to track the campaigns they're building for their clients 04:17 – Mention is also an inferential tool 04:49 – Mention raised capital at an early stage 05:03 – Mention raised a total of $500K 05:11 – There are 45 people on the team and 10 are in NY, the rest are in Paris 05:50 – Prior to Mention, Matt worked at eFounders which is a startup studio 05:57 – Mention was one of the startups built by eFounders 06:20 – Mention has over 600K users and over 4K paying customers per month 06:42 – Mention's free version 07:20 – Mention uses a number of features 07:53 – There's no touch sales in the SME market 08:01 – The mid-market is inside-sales driven 08:15 – There are 2 groups of inside-sales teams: the inbound and outbound with 6 people in each group 08:50 – Average MRR 09:28 – Mention is more focused on gross MRR churn 09:35 – SME gross churn is 2% 10:43 – Mention is almost in a negative net churn 11:20 – Mention has an average of 10K signups per month 11:47 – Mention is currently spending $5-10K on paid advertising 12:04 – Mention is exploring other advertising options like G2 Crowd 12:20 – Mention's first trial result with G2 Crowd isn't that encouraging 12:44 – Mention uses a strong open-content strategy to drive people to their website 13:17 – CAC 14:00 – Matt is willing to spend up to $1K to generate new mid-market customers 14:17 – 2017 goal 14:58 – Mention is currently in the process of raising 15:07 – An $800K MRR by the end of December 2017 is a good number 17:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Sometimes, you got to spend to acquire those new customers. Paid advertising isn't the only solution to drive traffic to your site. Get out there and start moving—you learn more by doing than by reading. 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 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

In Episode #629, Nathan interviews Jennifer Reyna. She's got a lot of energy and more importantly, she studied business creation and development in Mexico. She's created 3 startups so far, Agri DeliCo which is a socio-company, Brain Fusion which is embedded in software development, and Gaszen or gas management. They've raised over $650K in Mexico and have developed their own working product. She's a mother, lover, sister, and daughter that enjoys her life and lives with zero regrets. She said, after all, there's only one life and she's in a constant pursuit of the best version of herself. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Lean Startup What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "That hard work can make everything happen for sure" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:34 – Nathan introduces Jennifer Reyna to the show 02:22 – Jenny realized that people complain about their gas 02:38 – Jenny created a device that works with stationary tanks 02:48 – Gaszen has an application where the consumer can see his gas consumption, statistics, and choose the best gas supplier 02:59 – Gaszen monetizes through selling information to gas suppliers 03:08 – Gaszen also monetizes from a consumer who wants automation 03:34 – Gaszen isn't in the market yet and is still finishing its development 03:41 – Gaszen will start selling in April 03:43 – Gaszen already approached gas suppliers and has pre-ordered from them 03:57 – There are already 2 gas suppliers who have bought from Gaszen 04:05 – Gaszen also has real estate clients 04:31 – Gaszen has partnered with 3 real estate firms 04:35 – Gaszen is currently in discussion with 15 more real estate firms in Mexico 04:48 – The firm buys the device for $77 04:59 –The device will go directly to the buyer of the house 05:21 – Gas suppliers get a discounted price for buying the device in bulk 05:48 – Mexico has problems with gas suppliers giving updates 06:08 – Each gas supplier bought 5k units of the device 06:19 – The amount per piece will be $50 06:38 – Having clients before the actual launch of the product is good for Gaszen 06:49 – Gaszen's first Kickstarter 07:07 – Gaszen raised 80K Mexican peso 07:19 – Gaszen had 111 backers 07:41 – Gaszen is B2B focused 07:48 – Gaszen has raised their first seed round with a total of $350K 08:05 – It was an equity round 08:14 – Gaszen started 2 years ago 08:26 – Gaszen had Angel investors and won the biggest Hackathon in the world 08:47 – Gaszen raised $300k with Angel investors 09:13 – From the gas suppliers, Gaszen charges after the 6-month trial, a monthly fee is charged per device or per device and user 09:32 – Gaszen charges 9 Mexican pesos per automated service 09:59 – Gaszen has no MRR currently 10:23 – The team has 5 people in management and 3 junior engineers 10:43 – The team is based in León Guanajuato, México 11:03 – It costs Gaszen $36 to make the device 11:30 – The whole device is made in Mexico 11:43 – The volume needed per year is 50K units in order to get a better price 12:13 – Gaszen wants to keep manufacturing in Mexico, if possible 13:45 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Look at the most common problem and create a solution. If you can keep sourcing and manufacturing locally and with a good price, the better. Keep at it—hard work definitely pays off. 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 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

In Episode #628, Nathan interviews Iddo Gino. He's the CEO and co-founder of RapidAPI which he founded when he was 16 years old. He's listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list and previously, he was the co-organizer at Hacking Gen Y. Originally from Israel, Iddo, currently resides in San Francisco, California where he runs RapidAPI and runs JavaScript projects on the side. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Stewart Butterfield Favorite online tool? — GitHub Do you get 8 hours of sleep? — 6-7 hours If you could let your 10-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wish I knew what I didn't know back then" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:22 – Nathan introduces Iddo to the show 01:57 – RapidAPI let developers find APIs online 02:09 – RapidAPI has a marketplace model where developers can pay for the APIs 02:16 – RapidAPI's processing fee is from 10% - 25% 02:30 – The fee depends on the API vendor 02:46 – RapidAPI is like a point connection for developers to find APIs 02:55 – Iddo was part of Hacking Gen Y 03:09 – Iddo realized how powerful APIs were while he was at Hacking Gen Y 03:18 – Iddo created the first version of RapidAPI 03:41 – Together with Iddo is his co-founder, Mickey Haslavsky 03:49 – Team size is 20 03:58 – The engineering team is in Israel and marketing and sales teams are in San Francisco 04:10 – Developers' salaries in Israel 04:34 – RapidAPI just announced their seed round in November 04:44 – Total amount raised was $3.5M and an equity round 05:00 – RapidAPI started as an open-source project 05:40 – There are 148K apps or projects that have used Slack in RapidAPI 05:54 – Slack is a free API and the service is free, but there are paid APIs 06:43 – Average MRR 07:06 – The fee is charged from the API and not the consumer 07:16 – Any consumer transaction in RapidAPI is free 07:31 – One of the most popular paid APIs is Twilio 08:01 – If someone connects to Twilio API through RapidAPI, that's when RapidAPI takes the processing fee 08:31 – "RapidAPI is all about neighboring developers to connect with APIs" 08:40 – RapidAPI will soon open a facility for developers 09:12 – Iddo volunteered for Hacking Gen Y and helped Hackathons 09:21 – Iddo was working on creating apps and websites prior to RapidAPI 09:36 – Iddo is currently 19 and his parents are just excited for him and what he does 09:54 – Iddo still thinks of going back to college, but is currently enjoying RapidAPI's success at the moment 11:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: APIs are powerful and having a one point connection is beneficial for the developers. In the process of helping people, you also learn from them. Being an entrepreneur at an early age opens you up to the opportunity to learn more. 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 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

In Episode #627, Nathan interviews Mark Mader. He's the CEO of Smartsheet. He's passionate about delivering superior, customer experiences. Mark strives to find innovative ways for customers to collaborate more intelligently using the Smartsheet platform and its partner ecosystem. Prior to Smartsheet, Mark served as SVP of Global Services for Onyx Software, leading the consulting and consumer operation team in America, Europe and Asia. In 2015, he was recognized as Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of Technology for the Pacific NorthWest. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Play Bigger What CEO do you follow? – Stat Mandella Favorite online tool? — Tripit Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self know one thing, what would it be? – "You tell me what the major trends are in the next 3 decades, in tech, and I would make you a lot of money" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Mark to the show 02:21 – Smartsheet is a software SaaS company 02:27 – The people who subscribe to Smartsheet are teams and enterprise teams 02:47 – Smartsheet is similar to Trello's space but in the enterprise class 02:57 – Smartsheet has everything from time tracking to other things that are more diverse in nature 03:23 – Smartsheet serves 65K distinct brands on a paid basis 03:30 – Each brand pays an average of $1K annually 03:36 – The range is $200 to $1.6M annually 04:08 – Average MRR is $5.4M 04:20 – Smartsheet has been growing really well for the past 4 years 04:43 – "As you grow bigger, the gross rate is more challenging" 04:47 – Smartsheet isn't only focused on getting new customers, but on helping their customers grow as well 05:23 – 2016 revenue 05:37 – 2017 target ARR 06:10 – First year revenue was zero 06:37 – Smartsheet's promise didn't change, but how they brought the product to the market changed dramatically 06:55 – 60% of Smartsheet's revenue came from customers who learned about Smartsheet organically 07:18 – Smartsheet's first million ARR was in 2010 08:02 – Smartsheet has raised a total of $70M 08:16 – Mark feels that they have a really good platform 08:21 – Team size 08:55 – Have the balance sheet in your model if you want to invest more this year 09:06 – Smartsheet is still trying to focus on efficiency in their growth model 09:34 – Smartsheet's current status is that they have the decision to slow their growth or drive profit overnight 09:57 – "Control your own destiny" 10:06 – Smartsheet is currently not cash flow positive, but still a healthy business 10:20 – Smartsheet is based in Seattle, Washington and will have an office in Boston 10:48 – Smartsheet has a diverse funnel 11:02 – Smartsheet spends millions of dollars in paid advertising a year 11:34 – One of Smartsheet's keys to growth is to go where the action is 11:39 – "Dominate in the world of collaborative, work management and partner effectively with the tools people use and love" 11:50 – "Partner with the places where heat exists" 12:08 – It's about having an ecosystem mindset 12:30 – Gross customer churn 13:17 – Smartsheet has a broad population service 13:31 – "The key to sustain long-term growth is not just keeping up, but expanding" 13:59 – Smartsheet can still grow by 30% in 2017, without new customers 14:17 – Smartsheet charges the people who create new work in their application 15:00 – Smartsheet's safe LTV 15:25 – Smartsheet looks at their specific sources and campaigns 16:06 – Smartsheet's cohort analysis 17:22 – Smartsheet's last round of raising was in 2014 19:16 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Focus not only on acquiring new customers, but helping your current customers to grow their company. The key to sustaining long-term growth is not just keeping up, but expanding. Dominate in the world of collaborative, work management and partner effectively with the tools people use and love. 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 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

In Episode #626, Nathan interviews Derek Thompson. He's a Senior Editor at The Atlantic, one of the biggest media companies out there. His first book, Hit Makers, is about the science of hits, pop culture, and technology and why people like what they like. He currently resides in New York. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Homo Deus What CEO do you follow? – Mark Zuckerberg Favorite online tool? — Evernote Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Take more risks because people are fundamentally resilient and can handle the downside of those risks" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Derek to the show 02:15 – The reason people go into journalism is because they seek answers to questions 02:21 – For Derek, the best reason to write a book was to answer questions 02:29 – Derek loved writing about what people like 02:33 – People say a book has to have an "elevator pitch" 02:39 – Books are more of a broken elevator 03:36 – "Creativity is the ability to come up with surprising answers to familiar problems" 04:36 – Derek wrote his book to allow himself the opportunity to be curious about anything he found interesting 05:00 – Derek worked with Penguin Publishing 05:10 – Derek had an agent, Dell Ross, who was Derek's proposal doctor 05:35 – Derek and his agent sent the proposal to every publisher they could reach 05:43 – Derek also talked directly to publishers 06:06 – There are a lot of different audiences for a single book 06:10 – Derek's agent was his first audience member 06:18 – Derek picked his agent because she's unsentimentally intelligent and has a motherly approach 07:27 – Hit Makers came out in February 2017 08:08 – The rating in Amazon was quite high for a first-time book writer 08:40 – "Self-publishing is riskier" 09:15 – The average amount an author gets for the book sales 10:30 – Derek hasn't talked about his advance with his agent 10:58 – The delta was probably about 2X 11:11 – There are publishers who believed that Derek's book wouldn't work at all 11:20 – Almost all book proposals from first-time authors are rejected and the best example of this is J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter 12:46 – "The future of popularity is a very tricky business" 13:13 – The easiest metaphor for the science of popularity is the weather 14:09 – One of the theses in the book was to ask the question: is virality a myth? 16:45 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Creativity is the ability to come up with surprising answers to familiar problems. Most book proposals from first-time authors are rejected, but there will be that ONE who will believe in you. People are fundamentally resilient, so TAKE that risk – the regrets of not taking that risk will be more difficult to handle. 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 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

In Episode #625, Nathan interviews Josh McCarter. He's the co-founder and CEO of Booker Software, a leading business management and marketing solution serving over 10,000 health and beauty businesses. Josh has served in a variety of senior executive board roles at various technology companies including Arbitech, Spafinder and Autobytel. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Make Big Happen What CEO do you follow? – Steve Case, author of The Third Wave Favorite online tool? — OpenTable Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Startups are a blast, but they are not easy" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:23 – Nathan introduces Josh to the show 01:59 – Booker is a business management and marketing solution for health and wellness businesses 02:08 – Booker is like OpenTable 02:16 – Booker does everything for a business to run 02:31 – Booker gains revenue from their subscriptions averaging $150-250 monthly 02:48 – Booker also has merchant processing 02:53 – Booker also sells its add-on product, Frederick 03:50 – Josh started to focus on the spa industry because of the technology from his previous company 04:25 – "It's important to understand what type of customers you serve best" 05:31 – Josh shares how he spun out of business in his previous company 06:00 – Make sure you have the right type of structure when you spin out a business 06:10 – Give preferences to the shareholders 06:18 – It took Josh 6-9 months to get all the right structures and licensing in place 06:30 – Josh had a series A for $150K in 2011 06:42 – Spafinder had put in the initial capital for Booker 07:17 – Booker's current team size is around 200 07:26 – Booker has raised a total of a million 07:47 – You have to do a proper valuation for a spin out 08:30 – First year revenue 09:00 – Booker is currently at 10K locations 09:20 – There is a fee per location 09:34 – A company who has more locations pays more 10:05 – Average MRR 10:25 – Booker does a lot of upselling and retention 10:41 – Booker makes sure that they keep their existing customers happy 10:50 – "You've got to focus on upsell opportunities" 11:20 – Booker's merchant processing 11:37 – Online booking for spas is more common 11:58 – First Data is Booker's newest investor 12:54 – Average total transactions 13:15 – Josh is currently not in any acquisition talks and isn't raising a round 13:23 –"We've got some good runway" 14:05 – Gross customer churn 14:30 – "50% of our churn is the people who ran out of business" 14:39 – Failure rate of the SMB market is quite high 15:00 – CAC 15:05 – Most SMBs in SaaS and marketing business spend $1500-3500 to acquire new customers 15:40 – Frederick came to Booker for partnership 16:10 – Frederick was able to look at how SMBs are retaining their customers 17:22 – Frederick was able to get high conversion and retention metrics 18:14 – Frederick is integrated heavily into Booker 18:38 – Team location 20:16 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: It's important to understand what type of customers you serve best. Make sure you have the right type of structure in place when you spin out a business. Startups are a blast, but they're definitely not easy—be willing to put in the work. 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 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

Dave Currie. He's an entrepreneur-leader in the sales intelligence space, specifically for advertising, media, and the tech industry. Since 2014, he's directed the company on a rapid innovation and growth trajectory. They are recognized by their customers and the industry as one of the largest, agile, fast-growing, private companies and the best place to work in America—the company, TheListInc.com. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Kyle Porter Favorite online tool? — N/A Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Absolutely If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Balance is as important right now as you thought about it then. Being healthy is #1. Work and everything fall into place when you got your priorities stacked up the right way" Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:40 – Nathan introduces Dave to the show 03:20 – The List is also known from their other products 03:34 – Winmo was launched last year 03:41 – Winmo is the lead brand 03:52 – Winmo is a subscription-based, sales intelligence platform 04:01 – Winmo provides sales intelligence to national advertisers 04:28 – Winmo has an annual subscription 04:45 – Annual subscription increases the valuation 04:55 – Winmo has been completely bootstrapped since day 1 05:09 – The List started in 1995 and went online in the early 2000s 05:25 – Dave came into The List in 2005 05:45 – The List is a joint venture with a company in the UK 06:08 – The team currently has 85 members 06:27 – Average annual customer pay 06:38 – Winmo initially charges $400-500 per user annually 07:07 – CAC 07:14 – "We're very deliberate with our marketing efforts" 07:24 – 2014 paid marketing expenditure was around $100K, but was toned down currently to $50K 08:03 – The $50K would go to Google AdWords and some retargeting 08:17 – Dave's target CAC 08:50 – Dave's looking into 25% conversion rate 09:17 – Winmo has 4 targets in the UK and USA 09:44 – Winmo also sells to marketing services agencies 10:19 – Winmo has a good customer retention 10:46 – Winmo is just a bit stronger in the media space over the agency 11:30 – Winmo's customer retention is a bit lower than revenue retention 12:05 – Lifetime Value 12:24 – Dave calculates retention on a 90-day cycle 13:06 – The question of when you consider a customer a "new customer" 14:10 – Average number of customers 15:35 – Average MRR 15:52 – Dave shares what is considered healthy in his business' space 16:28 – Dave is part of the succession team of The List 16:46 – Dave and the team is not looking into going out and will just stick to being bootstrapped 17:05 – Dave won't sell the company for $90M or higher 19:30 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Be deliberate with your marketing – it pays off in the end. A healthy business can stay bootstrapped for a very long time, and still be OK. Regardless of whether you're young or old, new to business or not, balance is KEY. 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 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

In Episode #623, Nathan interviews Richard Brasser. He's the foremost expert in helping companies increase the effectiveness and influence of their Salesforce's strategic use of social communication. He does this through his company, rFactr. Richard pursues his focus in enabling salespeople to leverage social communication and build more meaningful relationship. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – Tony Robbins Favorite online tool? — Outlook Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Very rarely If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Richard wished he knew the concept of compounding interest and the concept of deferred asset allocation Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:34 – Nathan introduces Richard to the show 02:15 – Companies need to engage their buyers in a more meaningful way 02:32 – rFactr is focused on enhancing sales people's ability to connect with people 02:51 – rFactr's platform is called a social port 03:15 – rFactr has a per month/per user model 03:26 – rFactr is not a marketplace 03:33 – rFactr is directly plugged into companies' CRMs 03:55 – Average customer pay per month 04:15 – rFactr has channel activations 04:40 – rFactr's starting price is $5K a month 04:49 – rFactr was launched in 2009 04:57 – rFactr was bootstrapped for the first 8 years 05:04 – rFactr had a seed round and will probably have a series A 05:17 – rFactr has raised a total of $9M 05:32 – Richard played golf on tour for 7 years 05:45 – Richard made a good amount from playing golf 06:01 – Richard was already 7 years in business when he needed someone for the operations and finance side of the company 06:08 – Richard's partner was just exiting his software company when he joined rFactr 06:25 – Nathan tells Richard about Episode 615 where he had Shin as a guest whose company makes carbon fiber golf shafts 06:47 – Richard hasn't seen Shin's product 07:05 – The seed round is an equity round 07:17 – The last round was in 2010 07:40 – The company has been around for 16 years, but the main product was developed 9 years ago 07:51 – Richard's company started as a strategy and consulting firm 08:33 – Richard shares how the first company was valuated 09:31 – Team size is 18 09:39 – rFactr has 220 paying customers 09:44 – Average MRR 10:29 – Richard shares why they're having the small companies together with the biggest ones 11:25 – Gross customer churn 11:37 – CAC 12:08 – rFactr has no paid marketing 12:23 – Team's location 13:45 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Small companies may not be able to pay as much as the big companies, but the level of help they need is similar. Use your money from your exit for your new company. Paid marketing isn't always necessary—know your options to better decide if it's right for you. 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 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

In Episode #622, Nathan interviews Nektarios Liolios. He's the CEO and co-founder of Startup Bootcamp, Financial Technology, and Insurance Technology—the leading innovation program in the financial and insurance industry. They provide funding, mentorship, office space in the heart of London, Singapore, New York and Mumbai and access into their global network including investors and VCs, up to 10 folks, each time they do it. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Nektarios wished that at 20, he would have known that he didn't know everything and to be less scared Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:28 – Nathan introduces Nektarios to the show 02:08 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech is a network of accelerators 02:17 – It is cohort-based 02:24 – The programs are industry focused programs 02:58 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech has 400 companies that have graduated 03:12 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech was launched in January 2014 03:29 – Nektarios shares how Startup Bootcamp FinTech started 03:56 – "To add real value, you need to be super sharp in your focus" 04:20 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech doesn't take investments, but they take equity 04:30 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech takes 6% equity 05:52 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech has a variety of programs 06:35 – One of their teams is in Singapore 07:30 – Walnut Algorithms of France is part of their program 07:47 – It was built thinking it would revolutionize the algorithm industry 07:57 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech usually works with pre-seed startups 08:05 – Their products are not ready to launch yet 08:38 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech had 60 companies that are FinTech focused 08:52 – Buzzmove is one of the companies that have raised the most 09:05 – It provides accurate data for home insurance 09:25 – It is a data provider solution 09:35 – It sells to insurance providers 09:54 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech programs are funded by the industry players 10:26 – Nektarios shares what drives their company 11:07 – Who will win, Betterment or Wealthfront? 11:49 – It is difficult for Nektarios to discern which company will succeed 12:25 – Nathan shares his interview with Andy of Wealthfront 12:58 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech is the only program with the global reach 13:08 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech offers every entrepreneur in the globe access to their network 13:24 – The Global Insurance Accelerator is their only competition 13:34 – Nektarios shares what he thinks of the insurance space 13:58 – Insurance people are relevant to the industry 14:24 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech creates fund structure for every program 14:42 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech needs a minimum amount to run a program 15:05 – Every location of Startup Bootcamp FinTech has 5 people 15:53 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech isn't driven by a commercial perspective 17:40 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: To add real value, you need to be razor sharp in your focus. Insurance space has so much potential to be a lucrative space—it's less crowded and there are so many problems to solve. Just go for it—take the consequences as it's going to be a ride. 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 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

In Episode #621, Nathan interviews Nevin Shetty. He's the co-founder and CEO of Blueprint Registry, an innovative wedding registry platform where you can shop for products from a variety of retailers based on the layout of your home. The company has generated over $10M in their first 2 years of operation. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Smarter Faster Better What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — SimilarWeb Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I should've learned computer programming" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:25 – Nathan introduces Nevin to the show 02:00 – Blueprint Registry is a wedding registry platform for newly-engaged couples 02:23 – Blueprint Registry gets commission from the retailers on their platform 02:38 – An example of Blueprint Registry's partners is Target 02:43 – Nevin explains how their platform works and how it is different from the traditional wedding registry 03:08 – Instead of couples going to different retailers physically, they can just go to Blueprint Registry 03:23 – Blueprint Registry has a unique visual representation of your home 03:45 – Blueprint Registry was conceptualized in January 2015 03:49 – Nevin shares how he came up with the idea 04:04 – Blueprint Registry's co-founder is a designer 04:13 – Nevin found his co-founder through networking 04:55 – The equity conversation with the co-founder 05:21 – Blueprint Registry was launched in 2014 05:29 – Blueprint Registry did $225K of gross sales 05:44 – Average cart value 05:53 – Blueprint Registry raised $700K with friends and families 05:58 – Blueprint Registry did $4M in sales in 2015 06:04 – Blueprint Registry did $6M in sales in 2016 06:12 – Blueprint Registry has had 2000 users 06:19 – Blueprint Registry is originally focused on weddings but now they have people who use them for baby registries, house warming parties, and fundraising 06:40 – Blueprint Registry spends the most on development and marketing 07:25 – Team size 07:46 – Blueprint Registry just closed a million dollar seed round 08:00 – It was an equity round 08:09 – The friend and family round was a convertible note 08:12 – Nevin shares why he decided to have an equity round 08:45 – Blueprint Registry's value depends on gross and growth 08:55 – 2017 target revenue 09:09 – Blueprint Registry deals with seasonality 09:30 – There's no monthly subscription 10:20 – Nevin wants to keep Blueprint Registry as accessible as possible 10:35 – Blueprint Registry was founded in New York and they stayed for a year and a half 10:38 – Blueprint Registry is currently based in Seattle 11:15 – Blueprint Registry's biggest competitors 11:26 – The wedding registry market is a huge market 11:38 – Zola, Myregistry, Honeyfund are some of the newest in the market 11:53 – Blueprint Registry has the lowest fees 12:00 – 2.5% of credit card processing fee 12:25 – Nevin will accept Zola's $20M imaginary acquisition depending on their vision 13:43 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Finding co-founders is easy, choosing the right one is hard. In a saturated space, having the best features that set you apart can make all the difference. An acquisition will not always depend on the price. 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 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

Peep Laja. He's the founder of CXL. He was voted as the most influential, conversion rate optimization expert in the world. He helps fast-growing companies grow faster through his services, coaching and CXL Institute's certification programs along with his world-favorite optimization blog. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Used to be Ready, Fire, Aim What CEO do you follow? – No Favorite online tool? — Google Analytics and Intercom Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Peep wished that he had thought bigger when he was younger Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:33 – Nathan introduces Peep to the show 02:18 – CXL is an optimization company 02:30 – CXL does conversion optimization 02:40 – CXL also teaches about conversion optimization and everything a company needs to grow fast 03:13 – CXL has been an agency model for the longest time 03:31 – Conversion XL Institute was launched in 2016 03:41 – It also has a monthly subscription 03:52 – MRR as an agency 04:11 – In running an agency, it doesn't make sense to work with small businesses 04:59 – CXL has a minimum engagement of 3 months 05:06 – The size of the client determines their length of stay with CXL 05:17 – CXL agency currently has an average of 15 clients 05:26 – Team size is 10 05:32 – Agency people are mostly based in Estonia 05:38 – Peep is based in Austin and is mostly working on the institute side 05:54 – Peep only steps into the agency, if needed 06:08 – CXL has a blog where most lead generation happens 06:19 – CXL has 2 full-time writers for the blog 06:35 – Average MRR 07:10 – Peep is working on the scaling aspect of the institute 07:32 – "Self-paced is not a good model for learning" 07:40 – Coursera, Udacity and other e-learning platforms struggle with churn 08:16 – CXL Institute added live courses which are happening in real time 08:30 – The participation rate is way higher than the self-pace courses 08:38 – The reasons why the participation rate is higher 09:01 – Self-pace is priced at $99 a month 09:04 – Live courses have a one-time fee per course and there are 2 courses per month which are priced from $299 to $499 10:08 – Average number of students per course 10:41 – CXL Institute has their predominant list 10:47 – CXL Institute also uses retargeting 10:56 – CXL Institute is now starting to explore affiliate marketing 11:09 – List size 11:24 – The blog was launched at the end of 2011 11:43 – The pop-up is the most effective CTA that drives more opt-ins 12:18 – Peep shares how to make a pop-up for a blog 12:33 – CXL Institute is using Bounce Exchange 12:50 – "We try not to annoy the users" 13:04 – Bounce Exchange CEO was in Episode 253 of the Top 13:27 – CXL Institute does a revenue-share model with the instructors 13:34 – The instructors are marketing their classes on their own, as well 14:18 – The live course inclusions 15:02 – It is like a one day workshop 15:30 – The big companies are the ones who buy the self-paced courses 15:52 – CXL Institute currently has 1 certification program 16:04 – CXL Institute is adding 2-3 certifications quarterly 16:30 – Peep initially thought the self-paced would be for small businesses 17:30 – Annual signup is 20-25% 18:10 – CXL Institute is having a conference called CXL Live 18:16 – A whole resort is booked for the conference 18:30 – The conference will be at Hyatt Regency Hill Country ,in San Antonio 18:38 – A ticket includes a 2-night stay and meals 18:50 – The conference will be on April 5-7 18:55 – Visit live.conversionxl.com for more details 21:15 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: As an agency, the amount of time spent working with small and big companies is the same, so it's better to stick with the big ones. Self-paced learning faces more churn than live courses. Think big and don't just settle on what you think you can do—aim higher. 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 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

Paul Trappitt. He's currently the CEO and co-founder of Smartbeat. Before Smartbeat, he was the senior business analyst at National Australia Bank and a senior project lead at SignIQ. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Start with Why and The Startup Owner's Manual What CEO do you follow? – Gary Vaynerchuk Favorite online tool? — HubSpot Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wish I knew smartphones were coming" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:22 – Nathan introduces Paul to the show 01:45 – Smartbeat helps small businesses to navigate the complex omni channel 02:30 – Paul shares how one of their paying customers uses Smartbeat 03:02 – Smartbeat is about the people that are already using your business 03:10 – Smartbeat turns customers into raging fans 03:20 – Smartbeat is currently focusing on brick-and-mortar businesses 03:51 – Paul explains how they can help Jim, the café owner 05:14 – Smartbeat provides Wi-Fi to business owners and other technologies 05:50 – Smartbeat targets your audience in social media 06:32 – Smartbeat is a SaaS business 06:39 – Pricing starts at $250 a month 07:06 – Smartbeat currently has 5 customers 07:12 – Paul had a Wi-Fi company for 3 years 07:38 – Paul's Wi-Fi business did $20K in 2016 07:44 – Paul pivoted because there was too much competition in the Wi-Fi space 08:23 – Smartbeat raised $150K in Australia 08:39 – It was an equity round 08:55 – Paul shares how he came up with the valuation 10:10 – Smartbeat started in 2015 10:18 – Team size is 6 and they are all based in Australia 10:30 – Paul shares how they find their customers 10:55 – Smartbeat built their list organically through networking 12:35 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Don't be afraid to pivot—you'll know when it's time. One way to build your network is by spreading news about your product in social gatherings. Technology is unpredictable so you have no choice but to adapt. 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 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

Ry Walker. He's the co-founder and CEO of Astronomer.io, a big data infrastructure company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Astronomer is an AngelPad batch #9 company and has raised $2M from the likes of 500 Startups, CincyTech, Router Ventures and SocialStarts. Astronomer measures, connects and centralizes data—making it super simple for anyone from business users to data scientists to quickly create and monitor their data and pipelines. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – 7 Habits of Highly Effective People What CEO do you follow? – Dennis Mortensen Favorite online tool? — Fabricator Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Ry would tell himself to be bold and to be confident Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:35 – Nathan introduces Ry to the show 03:17 – Astronomer helps companies figure out how to use their data to benefit their business 03:22 – Astronomer works with early stage startups and big companies 03:41 – Some companies in the web analytics space are Mixpanel, Amplitude, Google Analytics 03:57 – Astronomer helps companies get the right data from their inside companies 04:32 – Astronomer is called data engineering, as a service 04:39 – Astronomer does the work for their customer while building the platform 04:51 – Astronomer has a flat price of 6K and 10K monthly 05:14 – Astronomer has their private cloud edition for their customers 05:33 – Astronomer was launched in May 2015 05:36 – Astronomer was at Collision Conference when they pivoted after the first day 06:13 – They realized that their biggest problem was to get companies to send them the data to run the analysis 06:35 – The number one issue in the space is the onboarding 07:03 – Ry explains the type of company they are 08:02 – The Angelpad is one of the most important pivots Astronomer did 08:13 – Angelpad's model 08:46 – What Ry was thinking when they got into Angelpad 09:30 – First year revenue 09:38 – 2016 revenue 09:57 – Team size and location 10:08 – Astronomer has raised $2M in 2 years 10:31 – Last round was at $1.1M and a convertible note 10:40 – Average MRR 12:04 – Astronomer currently has 20 customers 12:14 – Customer churn 12:17 – Astronomer currently has a net negative churn of 48% 12:46 – Ry explains the net negative churn of 48% 13:33 – CAC 13:38 – Astronomer just started with paid CAC this year 14:00 – Astronomer started with $600 14:21 – LTV 15:40 – Last round of funding was in August 16:21 – Ry explains the amount they are burning 16:42 – Ry is thinking now of the post-seed round 16:52 – It's a $3-5 M upround 17:14 – The valuation Ry is aiming for 17:40 – "We don't really want to bump our valuation too much" 20:30 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The number one issue in data analytics is the onboarding. Know your valuation and understand the data that had led you to that valuation. Believe in yourself—be bold and confident. 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 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

Monish Anand. He's a banker, a technologist, and a Fintech evangelist. Above everything else, he's a father. He spent 20+ plus years in corporate working for large banks and technology companies only to realize that they were not solving big problems and quite frankly, were often part of the problem. His company, Datasigns Technologies, aims to provide underserved and unserved access to optimal credit. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Calvin and Hobbes What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Google Calendar and Google Task Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wish I knew what Internet was" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:35 – Nathan introduces Monish to the show 02:20 – Datasigns Technologies started last year 02:32 – Datasigns Technologies gives credit ratings 02:38 – 400M people in India apply for loans yearly 02:42 – Less than 107 get loans from banks and other financial institutions 03:00 – Datasigns Technologies tries to bridge the gap between the credit givers and credit takers 03:15 – Datasigns Technologies has grade scoring algorithms 03:35 – Monish believes that the calculus used to determine credit worthiness is not good enough 04:03 – Datasigns Technologies calculates data from sources and turns them into algorithms 04:10 – Monish shares his driver's experience applying for a loan 05:18 – Datasigns Technologies relies on mobile data 05:48 – Datasigns Technologies has a mobile app 06:06 – Datasigns Technologies' marketing explained 06:35 – Datasigns Technologies has a tie-up with micro-small to medium enterprises 07:00 – Datasigns Technologies does financial literacy for the enterprises 07:21 – There are 75K people who now understands Datasigns Technologies 07:54 – Datasigns Technologies has around 10K app downloads 08:07 – Datasigns Technologies has closed 600 loans 08:20 – Loan terms 09:24 – Datasigns Technologies was Angel funded, last year 09:31 – They have raised around $400K on an equity round 09:39 – Datasigns Technologies is raising another round of $5M 09:50 – Nathan breaks down the math 10:27 – Datasigns Technologies' interest rate varies from 22-26% 10:46 – Interest rates, in India, are much higher than in the USA 11:27 – Datasigns Technologies is the only company in India that is mandated by financial institutions to acquire customers 12:00 – Loan sharks charge 3% a month 12:40 – Datasigns Technologies has a processing fee and a basic interest rate 13:03 – How Datasigns Technologies makes money 13:43 – Datasigns Technologies helps banks build their books 14:00 – Why Datasigns Technologies is raising $5M 14:22 – Team size is 17 14:36 – All based in Bangalore, India 14:45 – Monish shares why he started Datasigns Technologies 15:05 – "There are people who deserve loans, but are not getting loans from the banks" 16:30 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Be the solution—not just part of the problem. There are people who deserve a loan, but are not given a chance—Monish wants to change that. The fintech space is one of the hottest spaces, at 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 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

McCabe Callahan who has been an entrepreneur his entire life. He began with a coffee shop named Mugs Coffee Lounge, which has been operating successfully in Fort Collins, Colorado, since 2002. He began a company called Community Funded, in 2011, out of his passion for providing technology that connects, supports and empowers people. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – E-Myth and Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Pay attention to numbers" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:32 – Nathan introduces McCabe to the show 02:33 – Mugs Coffee Lounge is McCabe's first real business 02:43 – McCabe went to Colorado State University 02:50 – McCabe was coming back from Europe when he had the idea of the Mugs Coffee Lounge 02:56 – Mugs Coffee Lounge was the first wireless internet café in Fort Collins 03:11 – Building relationships is the key to a successful coffee lounge 03:36 – First year revenue 04:04 – McCabe is 36; but when he was 24, he was already opening 5 coffee shops 04:22 – Total topline of all the coffee shops and restaurants 04:58 – McCabe didn't raise any capital 05:31 – McCabe's credit card debt when he started Mugs Coffee Lounge 05:48 – McCabe also had debt from other sources 06:43 – "Coffee is a good business to be in—there's no recession" 06:58 – McCabe shares where he sells his business to 07:07 – McCabe's income is now generating well 07:16 – McCabe did $1.6M in sales in 2016 07:30 – McCabe shares how he started with Community Funded 08:17 – McCabe had to find a way to secure a loan to open up a location 08:31 – The amount McCabe wanted to loan 08:45 – 2009-2010 was the hardest time for McCabe 09:41 – McCabe was about to give up when one of his regulars offered help 10:05 – 5 months after the McCabe's next shop opened, he heard about NPR's Kickstarter 10:20 – McCabe thought, "What if he could something like Kickstarter, but for communities?" 10:44 – Community Funded started out bootstrapped and just recently raised a round 11:03 – Community Funded first round raised $40K-75K 11:29 – Total funding was $2.3M 11:38 – Rounds are equity round 11:50 – McCabe shares Community Funded's valuation 12:18 – People believed in Community Funded's vision 12:38 – Community Funded's is a SaaS model 13:46 – Sample of fundraising raised in Community Funded 14:26 – Community Funded's focus 14:53 – Current Community Funded's revenue and revenue goal for 2017 15:54 – Total transaction volume in 2016 16:03 – 2016 total revenue 17:21 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Lack of funds is not a hindrance in building a company. There's nothing wrong sharing your problems with your regulars – you don't know who can offer you help. Stick and pay close attention to your 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 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. Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Shin Sakane. He's the founder and CEO of Seven Dreamers. Seven Dreamers is daring to create technology that has never been seen in the world. Shin has a PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry from the University of Delaware. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Path What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Facebook Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Get global experiences, visit so many different countries, cultures..." Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:44 – Nathan introduces Shin to the show 02:20 – Seven Dreamers creates technology that the world has not seen yet 02:30 – First product is the fully automated carbon golf shaft 02:35 – Second product is the nascent nasal airway stent 02:58 – There's no connection between the products 03:16 – Seven Dreamers wanted to develop something that is not yet available anywhere 04:00 – Seven Dreamers was launched in 2011 04:20 – Seven Dreamers has raised over $75M 04:29 – The money was mainly spent on product development 05:05 – The nasal stent currently has more sales than the golf shaft 05:27 – The golf shaft price is $1200 - $120K 05:53 – The most popular model sells for $1800 06:10 – The golf shaft was launched in 2014 06:30 – 400 shafts/month are being sold 07:35 – The way to make a golf shaft 09:06 – Team size 09:45 – 2016 total revenue 10:30 – It took Seven Dreamers 11 years to develop laundroid 11:15 – Seven Dreamers has spent $15M for product development 11:33 – Shin shares how they came up with the idea of laundroid 12:13 – Laundroid was initially limited 12:50 – Laundroid's price is $15K 13:38 – The 3 products are completely different—from the suppliers to the technologies 14:08 – Most of the product ideas come from Shin 14:43 – The last round they raised 15:03 – Shin shares the valuation of each of their products 15:30 – "Everything counts" 16:12 – The nasal airway stent is currently their biggest money maker 16:25 – Average MRR $1M 16:53 – 2017 goal is $80M 17:07 – Seven Dreamers are working on their sales and marketing 17:14 – "We do our own marketing" 17:34 – Advertising cost 18:40 – Seven Dreamers spent money on sponsoring athletes 19:09 – The number of golf shaft complete sets that have sold 21:15 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Think outside the box—have a solution to a problem, then create a product. Study and know your market well so that your product speaks directly to a need. Be creative and innovative. Resources Mentioned: 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. 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 Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Todd Olson. He's the CEO and founder of Pendo, a product experience platform that helps product managers deliver successful products. Before Pendo, Todd served as VP of products at Rally Software Development which he led through its public offering. Todd joins Rally in its acquisition of 6th Sense, the company he founded and served as president and CTO. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Aaron Levie Favorite online tool? — 15Five Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wish I knew more at 21, than I thought I knew" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:42 – Nathan introduces Todd to the show 02:17 – Pendo provides a solution that helps companies build an application to improve its experience 03:00 – Optimizely uses Pendo to understand the people who are in their trial and onboarding flow 03:32 – Pendo is different to Intercom's space 04:01 – Pendo is a SaaS company 04:21 – Pendo was launched in 2013 05:11 – Todd experimented with different technologies 05:26 – "Every product has key set features" 05:45 – Todd founded 6th Sense and sold it to Rally 06:24 – First year revenue is zero 06:55 – Todd invested $1.2M to start Pendo 07:11 – Pendo has raised a seed round 07:44 – It was a million dollar convertible note 08:15 – Pendo has raised a total of $31M 08:26 – Team size 08:55 – "All of our customers are top-tier" 09:43 – Average customer pay per month 09:52 – Pendo serves mid-market to enterprise companies 10:20 – Todd shares what drives their expansion revenue 10:50 – Pendo increases prices by adding products to existing plans 10:55 – Pendo has tier-prices based on features 11:17 – Todd shares why adding products is their main expansion driver 12:30 – Average number of customers 12:45 – Future target market 13:00 – Average customer churn 13:35 – Pendo has a net negative churn 13:49 – Todd explains net negative churn 14:54 – CAC and LTV ratio is healthy 15:26 – Pendo's expansion plan 15:44 – Average MRR 17:25 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Treat all your customers as if they are top-tier customers. Expansion drivers will depend on what suits the company. Be more confident. Resources Mentioned: 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. 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 Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Sahil Arora. He's an entrepreneur, author, and a guitarist and defies what you think someone his age could do. Tune in to learn his entrepreneurial story, from creating the Vuzelaa Group to jumpstarting Tabverts—a company that broadcasts ads in taxis all over India. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Steve Jobs What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — No Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "You could get a Lamborghini at the age of 10" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:15 – Nathan introduces Sahil to the show 01:35 – Vuzelaa Group is the parent company which Sahil started when he was 16 01:51 – Under Vuzelaa Group, they created Tabverts; a company that broadcasts ads in taxis all over India 02:11 – Tabverts' pricing 02:45 – Tabverts was launched in 2016 03:06 – Sahil is the sole founder of Vuzelaa Group 03:20 – Sahil shares how he found people on Twitter and got them on board 03:59 – Sahil shares how he convinced them to join 04:55 – Sahil shows Nathan his sample pitch 06:28 – Sahil is 18 now 06:45 – There are around 10K cabs in India with Tabverts' hardware 06:50 – Sahil shares how he funded Tabverts 07:05 – Sahil spent $100K in the early stage of the business 07:12 – Sahil raised $500K in an equity round 07:32 – The $500K was from a VC based in India 07:50 – The brands that pay Sahil 08:18 – Sahil shares how the brand, Snapdeal, pays him 08:40 – Average pay per second 09:45 – Tabverts' customers can track their ads' performance through an app 10:14 – The clicks on the tablet can also be tracked 10:37 – Sahil shares how the ads' loophole functions 11:00 – Team size 11:08 – MRR is $70K 11:35 – Sahil shares how his team operates 11:56 – Sahil dropped out of high school and won't go to college 12:26 – Tabverts has a predictive revenue stream 12:35 – Sahil's future plans for Tabverts 13:18 – How Tabverts deals with the cabs 14:05 – The key metrics Tabverts tracks 14:38 – 2017 goal 14:50 – Sahil shares what he does with the revenue he gets 15:23 – Cost per hardware 15:48 – Sahil shares how their tabs work 16:16 – Tabverts only shows the ads that may be interesting for the people riding in cabs 16:47 – Tabverts is tied up with Uber 16:57 – The amount Tabverts pays Uber 17:55 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Entrepreneurship knows no age. Continue to grow your company by investing consistently. You can find your clientele through social media – you just have to have the right pitch. Resources Mentioned: 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. 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 Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Charles Ramsey. He's the CEO of Sauce Labs and has been in that position since April 2015, and has served as Chief Revenue Officer from February to April 2015. Prior to that, he's had 25 years of industry experience—he was a venture partner at JMI Equity and held a number of roles at Quest Software, including VP of marketing and sales. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Finding Your North Star What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — No Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wish I'd become a CEO sooner in my career" Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:27 – Nathan introduces Charles to the show 03:03 – Sauce Labs has just raised a significant amount, $70M 03:45 – Sauce Labs has raised a total of $130M 04:04 – Charles shares how they decide to raise capital 04:14 – Sauce Labs checked their ability for an acquisition 04:42 – Sauce Labs had great timing 04:54 – Sauce Labs does automated testing in the cloud for web app and mobile devices 06:38 – Sauce Labs' market is about continuous integration and delivery 07:17 – Sauce Labs is SaaS based with an annual subscription and self-service 07:58 – Sauce Labs has invested in pre-sell and technical support 08:30 – Average transaction fee is $50K annually 08:56 – The fee varies from the number of parallel testings the customer wants 09:20 – The concurrency of 50 09:45 – Sauce Labs is growing organically 10:11 – Sauce Labs is an 8 year old company 10:33 – "The founders started the company with the notion of automated testing from day 1" 10:54 – 3 years ago, a number of ISVs realized that they wanted to leverage selenium 12:03 – One of the founders is still in Sauce Labs and all of them are still on the cap table 12:41 – Team size 13:20 – Sauce Labs currently has 3500 customers 13:58 – Sauce Labs' 90-day post-transaction clause window 14:17 – Depending on the complexity of the environment, it can require professional services 14:26 – Charles shares what their technical team does 14:58 – Average ARR 16:00 – Average pay of self-serve customers 16:59 – Valuation 17:46 – Sauce Labs wants to focus on the enterprise companies 19:15 – Gross annual customer churn 19:46 – Sauce Labs is currently at net negative revenue churn 19:54 – CAC 20:00 – Sauce Labs is doing paid marketing 21:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Do your research—know what your customer wants and needs. Focus your energy on the strengths of your company. Take courage, take the leap. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Dr. Milton Chen. He's the co-founder and CEO of VSee, and has a PhD from Stanford on the design of video collaboration. Additionally, he was the co-founder of XMPP Video Standard which is now used by Google Talk and Facebook Chat. He has deployed VSee for Hillary Clinton, Angelina Jolie, Linkin Park and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Zero to One What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff Favorite online tool? — Rapportive Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Milton would tell himself not to be as naïve and clueless Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Milton to the show 02:20 – Vsee is a SaaS company 02:31 – Vsee offers mobile app and call center workflow 03:04 – Price range is $49-499 per medical provider per month 03:30 – Milton explains how VSee provides a service to client, Trinity Health 04:30 – Milton assures their client security and confidentiality 05:05 – Vsee was launched in 2008 05:33 – Milton went to graduate school because he wanted to become a professor 05:46 – Milton now loves everything about startups 06:03 – Vsee's initial investment 06:24 – It was an equity investment 06:42 – Milton was clueless about valuations and didn't know what he was doing 06:59 – Milton started VSee after graduate school with zero knowledge about business 07:15 – Milton was just grateful that people wanted to invest in VSee 07:35 – Vsee currently had a thousand paying customers 09:00 – Average number of nurses in VSee 09:23 – First year revenue 10:11 – Average amount raised 10:40 – Team size is 52 and they are based in Sunnyvale, CA 12:12 – VSee is currently cash flow mutual 12:51 – Vsee invests in making sure their customers feel secure 13:18 – Milton shares how their technology is built into Facebook Messenger 14:00 – Milton doesn't get royalties 14:40 – Vsee started as a general video conference market 14:50 – Milton shares how they pivoted to the health industry 15:34 – Vsee has an inside sales team 15:41 – Vsee has 3 sources for sales 16:22 – Vsee is currently not into paid marketing 17:40 – Vsee has close to 100% customer retention 18:17 – Vsee is on a net negative churn 19:20 – 2017 revenue target 20:56 – Vsee's last closed round was in 2011 21:10 – Milton is just focused on acquiring more customers and is not interested in any acquisition talks 22:47 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Everyone has to start somewhere – even if it means being naïve and clueless. Getting into a market with less competition could mean more customers and sales. Paid marketing won't always work so test everything, first, before investing in a certain marketing strategy. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Ryan Buckley. He's a serial entrepreneur, a founder and CEO of Scripted and Toofr. He focuses on solving the problems that marketers and business owners deal with on a daily basis such as connecting businesses with writers. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Rework What CEO do you follow? – Josh Pigford Favorite online tool? — HubSpot CRM Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Ryan would tell himself not to be so stressed and just say "yes" as much as possible Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:15 – Nathan introduces Ryan to the show 01:40 – Scripted is marketplace that matches businesses with writers 01:45 – Scripted has a subscription fee 02:19 – Scripted has raised a total of $15M 02:23 – Scripted was launched in 2011 02:26 – Ryan started in screenwriting 02:40 – Ryan shares how he started Scripted 03:04 – "We just followed the market" 03:12 – Toofr came before Scripted 03:50 – Ryan shares how Toofr came to life 04:17 – Ryan was using Genius software and had a drip campaign 04:35 – Ryan learned about Phyton 05:14 – Toofr is different from the original script 05:29 – Toofr is a SaaS model 05:32 – RPU 05:45 – Ryan put up the paywall in 2013 06:32 – Ryan used Toofr to learn web development 06:37 – Toofr is completely bootstrapped 06:45 – Team size 07:40 – Toofr has a hundred customers 08:00 – Gross customer churn 08:40 – Toofr relies solely on organic traffic 08:55 – Ryan shares why he thinks people leave Toofr 09:20 – Ryan shares the improvements that he can make to reduce churn numbers 10:10 – Toofr has 16K registered users 10:27 – Toofr's competition 10:59 – "Hunter kicks my ass in SEO" 11:30 – Toofr has better data 11:59 – Toofr has multiple sources 13:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Learn as you go — as you build your business, be mindful of all the opportunities to learn. There are great advantages in working with a small team. Use your competition as motivation to make yourself better. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Craig Fitzpatrick. He's a serial entrepreneur, self-professed child nerd, and CEO of PageCloud. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Biography of Steve Jobs What CEO do you follow? – Steve Jobs Favorite online tool? — N/A Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Jump in while there's still nothing to lose" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:22 – Nathan introduces Craig to the show 01:48 – PageCloud is a SaaS business 02:10 – PageCloud is different from Weebly and Wix, but they are in the same space 03:28 – PageCloud has reinvented the experience for desktop publishing and puts it into your browser 03:56 – Average customer pay per month 04:08 – RPU 04:22 – PageCloud was launched in September 2014 04:48 – Craig started PageCloud as a hobby 04:48 – Craig has been frustrated with desktop publishing in the past 05:20 – Craig shares how he started the planning and creating of PageCloud 06:15 – Craig's previous company 06:45 – Team size 06:52 – The team is based in Canada 07:05 – PageCloud is well-funded 07:17 – PageCloud has raised a few rounds 07:40 – First three rounds are convertible note and the fourth one is a priced round 07:55 – Average number of customers 08:15 – MRR 08:24 – PageCloud was in Kickstarter 09:00 – Below $200K MRR 09:23 – Craig shares how they pre-sell: 10:00 – They built a landing page from TechCrunch's promo video 10:30 – Craig did a lot of marketing before the launch 11:19 – Starting price point 11:30 – Average number of units sold 12:21 – Craig learned how to do effective marketing in 6 months 12:40 – Craig put in $1M in paid advertising 12:56 – The payback was just after a month 13:10 – Gross customer churn 14:30 – CAC 14:50 – LTV 15:32 – 2017 goal 17:01 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Don't be afraid to invest in marketing – it shows that you believe in your product. Be innovative—make a change in an industry that is quite stationary. There is no time better than the present to get started. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Mats Horn. He's the CEO and founder of the Swedish tech company, Tinitell. Together with a team of Scandinavian industrial designers, telecom experts and engineers, he developed one of the first wearable devices with cellular connectivity for voice and data. Tinitell wrist phone is an ingeniously simple wearable phone for kids with call and smart location features as well as an intuitive, one button, voice guidance interaction. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Sapiens What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Mats would tell himself to not be in a rush and take life as "unseriously" as possible Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:31 – Nathan introduces Mats to the show 02:12 – Tinitell is a simple mobile phone that kids wear 02:20 – It's a smart locator for parents 02:35 – Kids can make and receive calls 02:57 – Tinitell is independent from its smartphone administrators 03:03 – It is like a robot in a simple product 03:13 – The smartphone app is how the parents control what's in it 03:36 – Tinitell needs to have a SIM card and it is already provided 03:50 – Tinitell is partnered with a telco 04:48 – Tinitell was launched in Kickstarter in 2014 04:54 – Shipping started after a year and a half 05:16 – Tinitell has shipped 15K units 05:30 – Tinitell sold 1,102 units in Kickstarter 05:41 – Tinitell has raised $150K in Kickstarter 05:51 – "It's tough making the world's smallest mobile phone" 06:03 – Tinitell has put it in additional $4M for funds 06:18 – "Most money came from VC companies" 06:25 – Tinitell has raised thrice 06:36 – All are equity rounds 06:53 – Mats shares why he raised in smaller rounds 07:35 – In doing smaller rounds, Mats and his team wouldn't dilute themselves 08:03 – Mats was working as a consultant before Tinitell 08:25 – Mats realized that he wanted his own company 08:29 – Mat's idea of Tinitell 09:15 – Team size is 30 09:25 – Average number of customers 09:43 – The critical numbers of Mats 10:12 – Mats looks at the conversion rate and general market activity 10:50 – Tinitell's competition 11:20 – What people should look at in conversion rate 11:40 – Tinitell has 4 colors 12:03 – The bestsellers are the darker colors 12:36 – Markup vs. cost 13:49 – Mats shares about making a physical product 15:15 – Mats shares how he finds his suppliers 15:32 – "I knew I had to go to China" 15:48 – Mats has to have a network of suppliers 16:29 – Mats reached out to everyone he knows who could possibly help him 18:00 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Know your numbers and track them consistently. Your network can be your advantage in sourcing and creating your product. Enjoy life—take things slow and don't be in a rush. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Peter Schlecht. He's the founder and CEO of The SaaS Co whose aim is to change sales through artificial intelligence as they have launched their new product, Lisa. He's a 30-year old from Germany—a poker and e-sports playing, politician who became an entrepreneur. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Der Weg zum erfolgreichen Unternehmer What CEO do you follow? – Felix Staeritz Favorite online tool? — OneTap Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Stop earlier with politicians, don't do your masters and study entrepreneurship earlier" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:15 – Nathan introduces Peter to the show 01:37 – Peter makes more money in entrepreneurship than being a politician 01:58 – The SaaS Co is an agency for B2B lead generation 01:55 – The SaaS Co is subscription based 02:06 – The SaaS Co's focus is Lisa 02:14 – Lisa is a bot for salespeople 02:18 – Lisa reads and replies to your email 02:52 – Lisa doesn't delete emails and won't reply if she can't find an answer to an email 03:08 – The SaaS Co was founded in July, 2014 03:17 – First year revenue 03:22 – The SaaS Co was selling the service of full-sales for tech companies 03:34 – The SaaS Co specializes in appointment setting for B2B tech companies 03:51 – The SaaS Co was providing 4 services 04:23 – The payment depends on a company size 04:44 – The fee for every qualified lead 05:05 – Current number of customers 05:19 – MRR 06:12 – No charge for Lisa, at the moment 06:20 – Anyone can sign up for Lisa 06:41 – The SaaS Co was bootstrapped until last year 06:53 – The SaaS Co raised €500K from angels and €300K from The European Union funding 07:55 – Peter shares how they get new customers 09:03 – The SaaS Co doesn't buy leads from other sources for verification 09:08 – The SaaS Co uses datavalidations.com to validate their leads 09:38 – Peter uses Full Contact 09:50 – The SaaS Co finding leads process 11:15 – The SaaS Co scrapes data from open sources 11:40 – The SaaS Co tried other sources, but the price point has to be considered 12:10 – Team size 12:16 – There are 17 developers and the rest are on sales 12:30 – No paid marketing, at the moment 12:44 – Customer churn 13:06 – The SaaS Co needs to keep on adding new customers to sustain growth 13:55 – The SaaS Co's big focus is on Lisa and Peter believes she will add more value to the company 14:55 – The SaaS Co is based in Berlin 15:15 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: There are many things to consider when it comes to subscribing to other sources for leads; price is a major factor. One way to get people to sign up for a new product is to offer it for free. Get into business early as early as possible. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Christof Wittig. He's a serial, software entrepreneur and investor. Currently, he's the founder and CEO of Hornet Networks, the world's second largest gay social network and is a managing partner of Strive, based in San Francisco. He's an investor and board member of various companies including Enish, Metago, KeepSafe, VirtaHealth, Black Medicine, Movie Pilot, Box Fish and App Annie. He has been active in the US, Germany, and throughout Asia. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Zero to One What CEO do you follow? – Sami Inkinen Favorite online tool? — Capshare.com Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Christof wished he told himself to be bold, that he didn't need a degree, and to follow his dreams Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:19 – Nathan introduces Christof to the show 03:09 – Strive and Hornet came at the same time to Christof 03:32 – Hornet started as a side project 03:50 – Christof exited Servo Software before Hornet 04:00 – Hornet is Christof's first consumer business 04:10 – Servo Software was launched in 2004 05:02 – Christof sold Servo software in 2010 05:20 – Hornet's capital came from that exit 05:48 – Christof is now 48 05:58 – Nathan had Sean Howell, Hornet's co-founder in Episode 440 06:20 – Sean focused on marketing 06:50 – Sean and Christof are running it together 07:10 – Hornet had a subscription model and premium option 07:50 – Hornet's revenue is 2/3 from subscription and 1/3 from ads 08:00 – Hornet's future revenue model 08:28 – GHI 09:02 – Hornet raised their $8M in their Series A 10:05 – Hornet's focus is the advertising revenue 10:46 – "Our focus is to get more engagement" 10:57 – Engagement is measured through sessions 11:12 – Peak days 11:30 – User base 11:41 – 3M monthly active and 1.5M daily active 12:09 – The key metrics to track the number of sessions 12:30 – Christof shares about Tinder 13:16 – Hornet sells CPM and provides premium exposure 14:00 – Hornet has a feed model to drive more organic traffic 14:34 – Hornet has the following features 15:20 – Hornet's published price for CPM 15:56 – The number of advertisers currently working with Hornet 16:28 – Hornet uses TFP for their ads 17:10 – Hornet has the largest gay media newsroom in the USA 17:30 – The story feed makes the interaction in the gay community easier 18:05 – Christof shares where they spend the $8M 18:25 – Hornet also spends in marketing 18:39 – Christof wants users to understand that Hornet isn't just about dating 19:00 – User growth 19:30 – Hornet takes the new concept of the gay app to the next level 20:14 – Hornet is about creating a new digital space for the gay community 21:35 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: They gay community needs a place where it's not just about dating, but having interactions with the whole community. The focus isn't always on the number of users, specially if you're driving traffic well. A degree isn't as important as just following your dreams. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Chris Golec. He's the CEO and founder of Demandbase. Chris is an entrepreneur and prior to starting Demandbase, founded one of the most successful B2B software and data solutions in the late 90s called Supplybase. With previous positions at GE and DuPont, Chris uses his wealth of experience to position Demandbase as one of the most rapidly expanding B2B marketing companies in the space. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – N/A What CEO do you follow? – Keith Krach Favorite online tool? — Amazon and Skype Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Go for it sooner" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:22 – Nathan introduces Chris to the show 02:10 – Demandbase is a marketing technology company focused on B2B marketers 02:46 – Demandbase sells subscriptions to large enterprises 03:10 – Chris used his experience in GE to find what salespeople need 03:40 – Average customer pay per month 04:09 – Demandbase has raised $90M 04:51 – Demandbase was launched in 2007 05:20 – Demandbase started pushing the account-based marketing technology 05:32 – Chris explains what an account-based marketing technology is 06:03 – Supplybase was in a supply-chain space 06:37 – Chris started as a consultant 07:04 – Chris saw the huge opportunity from his clients' experiences 07:33 – Chris shares how he determines the red flags in revenue plans 09:05 – First year revenue 10:17 – Demandbase had their first round in 2007 for $2.5M 10:33 – It was an equity round 11:00 – Chris shares what he deems important to know before raising a round 11:07 – Have a goal 11:22 – Know that "it's not easy raising money" 12:00 – Demandbase currently has 400 customers 12:23 – Average MRR 12:40 – Team size is under 250 13:44 – Gross customer churn 13:59 – "Even if we don't add any customers this year, we'll still grow by 10% next year" 14:14 – Chris shares how the teams are designated by customers 15:00 – CAC 15:13 – Average contract value 15:40 – Demandbase is in San Francisco 16:55 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: When you see an opportunity, go for it! Raising money is not a walk in the park – know your goal beforehand. Don't wait around, go for your dreams as soon as you can. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Andy Lürling and his business partner, Menno Bischops. Andy has over 15 years of experience in the startup world and is truly a serial entrepreneur. He has tons of experience in corporate and the corporate environment including strategy, business development and product development in entertaining and series gaming, VR, AR and online applications. He and Menno are working on a company called VRee. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Exponential Organization - Andy What CEO do you follow? – Andy Lürling Favorite online tool? — Google Maps and Google Docs Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Go for it—just do it" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:21 – Nathan introduces Andy and Menno to the show 02:05 – LUMO Labs is a 2-year accelerator 03:30 – LUMO labs is all capital at this point 04:27 – The size of the funds that LUMO Labs has contributed 05:08 – The number of investment rounds LUMO Labs has made 05:20 – Official launch of LUMO Labs 06:30 – Menno shares what VRee does 07:00 – The full-body VR experience 07:26 – The VR suits, headset and goggles are wireless 08:05 – It is like augmented laser tag 08:42 – VRee also offers e-sports 09:18 – The capital VRee has raised 09:50 – The grant is non-dilutive 10:05 – Menno shares how they earn from VRee 10:29 – VRee is currently showcasing what their platform can offer 10:43 – VRee has revenue, but it's not substantial yet 11:11 – VRee is usually used in pop-up events 11:30 – VRee is in current talks with VR arcades for permanent installation 12:42 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Accelerators is a great avenue for startups to get going. You may have to start small and that may mean intermittent revenue. Just go for it, take courage and just do it! Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Enrico Casati. He is the co-founder and CEO Velasca, a company that specializes in handcrafted shoes. Enrico is based in Milan, Italy. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The 4-Hour Workweek What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Adabra Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Know your audience before doing anything business related" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:43 – Nathan introduces Enrico to the show 02:03 – Velasca is an online brand focused on hand-crafted shoes 02:26 – Velasca was self-funded and had a VC round 02:39 – Velasca had raised €750K 03:01 – It was an equity round 03:18 – Enrico's dad was an entrepreneur but not a shoe maker 03:31 – Enrico shares how the idea of Velasca started 03:51 – It was 4 years ago when Enrico started Velasca 04:34 – Enrico shares about one of their products 04:52 – The source of the raw materials 05:30 – The cost to make the Artista shoes 05:52 – 2.4 markup 06:47 – Net margin 06:52 – Depends on the marketing budget you want to spend 06:59 – High growth pace 07:32 – "We invest so much on marketing" 08:10 – Velasca has spent €20K on marketing in January 2017 08:38 – Enrico had the first idea of Velasca in the summer of 2012 08:52 – The first collection on their website was launched in May 2013 09:25 – The first year was about the testing 09:34 – Since September 2014, Velasca has grown in people 09:43 – Current team size is 10 09:54 – Around 15K customers have bought from Velasca 10:17 – Average check out value 10:50 – Customer repurchase rate 11:52 – CAC 12:00 – LTV 12:10 – "The lifetime is really worth the cost we're spending" 12:45 – Velasca has sold around 20K pairs of shoes 12:56 – Velasca's best-seller is the Black Oxford 13:16 – "Versatility is what makes the shoes' 14:00 – First year revenue is €60K 14:04 - €200K the second year 14:08 - €1.6M the third year 14:43 – Topline revenue 15:25 – Enrico's goal is to reach €4M 16:06 – Enrico spends more on paid advertising 18:08 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Study your product, first, before putting it in public. Invest paid marketing that performs well. Your relationship with your customers will reflect on your customer retention. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Gary Fowler. He's the co-founder and CEO of Findo, a smart search across multiple platforms for email, files, and folders. Gary has over 23 years of startup experience and is an award-winning CEO, a senior executive, a speaker with over 7 technologies startup and a successful IPO for the company CKSW. Gary is known as the go-to startup CEO that gets stuff done. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Intercom Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Never If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Gary wished he could look back and spend more time getting deeply involved with his first startup Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:34 – Nathan introduces Gary to the show 02:08 – Gary shares what Findo is 02:15 – The challenge that we have nowadays is the large, vast amount of information that we have 02:25 – An average person has around 3000 items 02:58 – "We're an AI tool, so it's learning all the time" 03:15 – Findo has a monthly subscription model 03:23 – Advance is $499/month and ultimate is $999/month 03:48 – Average customer pay per month 04:01 – Findo was founded by David Yang who built 9 startups including ABBYY 04:21 – Gary was the co-founder and CEO for the US corporation 04:36 – Gary shares why they had to spin out ABBYY 05:05 – Gary bought the IP from ABBYY 05:33 – Gary shares how they found the person who did their independent evaluation 06:08 – Average cost of buying the IP 06:19 – Gary shares where they got their capital 06:36 – Gary has raised $7M 06:45 – Gary is currently on seed 2 06:51 – Gary's major seed contributors 07:40 – Gary shares why they call their current round, seed 2 08:38 – Gary had an equity priced round 08:56 – Findo was launched in April 2016 09:06 – Gary started the most successful accelerator, GVA LaunchGurus, in Russia, prior to Findo 09:31 – 60% of the companies have raised money 10:04 – Gary raised capital to fund the accelerator 10:58 – None of the companies have exited yet 11:25 – Gary shares why he left GVA LaunchGurus for Findo 12:00 – Team size is 26 12:22 – Why Gary chose the people from Europe 13:10 – Findo just came out of beta 13:15 – Findo has over 80K customers 13:19 – Percentage of paying customers 14:15 – Average MRR 14:25 – Findo is currently moving into the model of reason strategy 14:50 – Gross customer churn 15:10 – Between 5-10%, but most come back 16:15 – The problem that 12% of the population have 17:13 – CAC 18:58 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Find a solution to the most common problem. Follow your intuition when it it's time to make a move. Your contributors play a big role to your company's growth—make sure they are suited to you and your company. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Shashank Murali. He's a BITS Pilani alumni. He's a co-founder and CEO at TapChief – a platform to seek advice from industry professionals. Previously, he built and sold Edvice, an on-demand tutoring app, to HashLearn. He had a product for Hashlearn before he decided to set on a path to democratize knowledge sharing with TapChief. Apart from startups and tech, Shashank enjoys cricket, psychedelic music, and swears by Pink Floyd. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Everything Store What CEO do you follow? – Vijay Shekhar Sharma Favorite online tool? – Trello Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "To persist more" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:25 – Nathan introduces Shashank to the show 02:11 – Shashank shares what TapChief is 02:25 – TapChief charges from the expert's pay 02:36 – TapChief is similar to Clarity.fm 02:44 – Shashank shares how TapChief is different from Clarity 03:14 – TapChief has a various of offerings 03:25 – TapChief is a marketplace 03:39 – The 2 sides of TapChief: 03:45 – Experts ask for a consultation charge and TapChief gets a fee from that 04:30 – Experts monetize their knowledge using TapChief 05:33 – Average order size 06:14 – Shashank believes that their market would still grow 06:40 – TapChief was launched in a B2C play 07:07 – TapChief takes 20% from the experts' charges 07:21 – Average number of experts in the platform 07:31 – TapChief was launched in February 2016 07:48 – Average number of students who have purchased from TapChief 08:28 – TapChief is giving the experts options to present themselves better 09:05 – 1000 out of 5000 experts in TapChief had conversations already 09:31 – Shashank shares how they measure their growth 09:58 – What Shashank primarily measures 10:16 – TapChief has raised $150K with a team of 10 10:40 – The number of hours TapChief has crossed 10:50 – Average monthly minutes of interactions 11:25 – Shashank shares how they leverage the number of students 12:25 – Revenue goal for 2017 12:42 – Shashank's focus is on the number of minutes of interactions 13:02 – Shashank's plan is to grow the number of minutes 14:10 – Shashank is open to B2B collaborations 14:45 – Shashank explains why a business would pay for collaboration 15:18 – Where the majority of the revenue is coming from 15:46 – 2016 total revenue 16:35 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: We are experts in our own field and there are platforms where you can monetize your knowledge. You don't always have to focus on the revenue—there are metrics that should be considered. Be more persistent—especially in the things that are most important to you. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Sushma Sharma, the CEO of Konversai. She's a lawyer turned entrepreneur. She has law degrees from The University of Oxford and Columbia University and has worked in two prominent Wall Street law firms and set up a department of practical law at City University of Hong Kong. Sushma has taught thousands of students and seen some the most privileged humans as well as some of the least privileged in her life journey spanning 3 continents to where she has lived and worked over the last 15 years. Konversai was born as her solution to the problems facing mankind today. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – N/A What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Don't doubt yourself and just keep doing what you're doing. There's a time and place for everything" Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:30 – Nathan introduces Sushma to the show 03:19 – Konversai is a social conversation platform 03:28 – Sushma shares the types of conversations in Konversai 04:43 – Konversai's focus is the knowledge from personal experience 04:21 – Sushma's philosophy is "nothing valuable is free" 04:25 – Konversai has a credit system 04:33 – The charge is .50 cents for one month for creating a box in Konversai 04:54 – "I want to make people feel accountable for what they're putting up" 05:25 – Sushma shares how they make revenue from a paid conversation 06:09 – Konversai gets 10% from the amount paid 06:36 – The seeker is the one who pays the service 07:02 – There are 2 sides of the business: the seeker and the provider 07:22 – Konversai has under a thousand current providers 08:00 – The number of buyers 08:19 – Sushma's target was to get the providers as well as the buyers, too 08:40 – The traction has been quite slow 09:21 – Sushma explains why they have to use Stripe 09:25 – Konversai is a global company and the currency has to be considered 10:02 – Some users are quite hesitant to fill out the Stripe sign-up form 11:10 – Konversai is only 3 months old 11:40 – Konversai has raised $1.3M in a seed round, in November 12:20 – It is a convertible note/safe 12:42 – Average order value 13:30 – Current revenue 13:46 – "It is growing every month" 15:21 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Nothing valuable is free. The way you win is by doing things consistently. Don't doubt yourself and keep doing what you're doing—there's a time and place for everything. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Michael Kaplan. He's the CEO and founder of Taivaco which is a media technology company. He's also the former director of marketing at Sanyo and was appointed at San Francisco Water Bay Front Committee. Michael speaks Chinese, French and Japanese. He attended The University of Redlands, Waseda University in Tokyo, George Mason University and Chinese Culture University. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – It's Not My Department What CEO do you follow? – John Cleese and Ken Okuyama Favorite online tool? — Any.do Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "The more you listen to other people, the more success finds you" and "Be a nice person" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:28 – Nathan introduces Michael to the show 02:07 – Michael shares why January 20th is a special day 03:15 – Taivaco was set out to solve an invisible problem and ended up solving more problems 03:47 – An archive isn't an accurate description 03:50 – Organizations are struggling to manage their media 04:17 – One of Taivaco's original ideas was to digitize media 05:08 – Taivaco helps companies find their content within their media or discover what DAM (Digital Asset Management) software does 05:50 – Taivaco incorporates both software and manual work 06:01 – "This is not a software that we sell, this is a service that we do" 06:15 – Taivaco is a service-only company 06:26 – Taivaco was launched in 2016 06:33 – Taivaco is currently on pre-revenue 06:49 – Taivaco has done under 10K in pre-revenue 07:00 – Taivaco version 1.0 will be available in April 07:12 – Taivaco was originally self-funded 07:20 – Michael put in 20K in Taivaco 07:27 – Taivaco just closed their "seedling" round for less than 50K 07:43 – Long term plan is to have another round 07:56 – Michael shares how they actually make a sale 08:32 – Sabra Design is one of Taivaco's paying customers 08:39 – Sabra Design came to Taivaco to ask for their service 09:04 – Taivaco got less than a thousand for the job 09:10 – Taivaco has already reached out to potential clients to scale up 10:17 – Michael explains why it is taking them more time to close a deal 10:50 – Taivaco doesn't specialize in digitizing and they do it for a minimal cost 11:23 – Taivaco annotates content which nobody has done before 12:12 – Michael shares their annotation process 12:46 – The charge for annotation will depend on the volume 13:20 – Taivaco will have a subscription model for the annotation 14:10 – Taivaco's goal is to make their service as easy and possible for their clients 15:34 – Taivaco is making money through annotation 16:27 – The metrics that Taivaco is measuring in pricing 17:09 – "We have to provide the whole thing" 18:21 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Try to solve one problem and you might end up solving more problems. Do something that is new in the market to stand apart. Take things at your own pace and don't rush. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Olivier Magnan-Saurin. He's the CEO and co-founder of Fidzup which provides innovation retargeting solutions for brick-and-mortar businesses such as retail chains and shopping centers. Olivier founded Fidzup right after school, in between school, and a little bit of freelancing works. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – On M'Avait Dit Que C'Etait Impossible: Le Manifeste Du Fondateur de Criteo What CEO do you follow? – Jean-Baptiste Rudelle Favorite online tool? — Pipedrive Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Create your own company" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:10 – Nathan introduces Olivier to the show 01:42 – Fidzup provides marketing platforms for physical retailers 02:04 – For physical retailers, clicks don't have any value 02:25 – Fidzup sells advertising campaigns to retailers 02:38 – Fidzup is a CPC model and gets paid for every in-store visit 03:20 – Fidzup is currently working with 2500 retailers in Europe 03:43 – Fidzup was created in 2011 03:58 – In 2014, Olivier decided to start an advertising platform 04:11 – Fidzup tracks the retailer using Wi-Fi or sensor 04:57 – Fidzup is able to track 80% of the customers entering the store 05:16 – Olivier shares how they get the customer's phone information 05:56 – When a customer opens an online ad, they can track that customer 06:43 – Average online campaign cost per brand 07:20 – Fidzup buys CPM and sells CPE 08:00 – Fidzup has recently raised $3.7M 08:39 – Team size 08:50 – Olivier hopes to double their team size 09:00 – First year revenue 09:50 – 2016 total revenue 10:04 – Average annual pay per customer 11:00 – Ad volume per year 11:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Online advertisement is not always valuable to brick-and-mortar businesses, these businesses still rely on physical advertisement. Be patient with yourself and your company—growth takes time. If you're in stuck between joining a company or creating your own, choose the latter. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Will Dinkel. He's the CEO and co-founder of Nova. Prior to founding Nova, Will developed his passion for enterprise sales while working in various technology and sales roles at CloudFlare and HP. Will studied engineering in Harvard Business School. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Presenting to Win What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kimmel Favorite online tool? – Apple Notes Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— "I try" If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wish my 20-year old self was more ambitious" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:42 – Nathan introduces Will to the show 02:08 – Nova AI is a sales product that uses AI to help set appointments more effectively 02:25 – Nova helps sales reps, they don't necessarily get leads 02:52 – Nova creates personalized emails and merged templates 03:08 – Nova charges per seat 03:30 – "What we do is very unique" 03:39 – Nova is a smart, workflow product 04:08 – Average pay per seat is $150 04:28 – Nova started in 2015 05:01 – Nova's co-founder is from MIT 05:15 – Team size 05:40 – Will shares how it's like in San Francisco 06:00 – Nova has raised $2.2M 06:20 – Salesforce Ventures is one of Nova's investors 06:54 – The space is getting bigger and bigger 07:15 – Will shares why he raised and went to YC 07:50 – Nova just crossed 100 customers 08:10 – Average seat number per customer 08:40 – Nova is now looking into a bigger number of seats per customer 08:55 – Nova has around a thousand sales reps using them 09:15 – Will's focus is to make sure the team is functioning well 10:20 – Average MRR 10:45 – Growth rate target in 2017 10:51 – Will is looking into adding additional people to the team, 3 per class 11:51 – Nova uses their own wrinkle for SDR 12:10 – Gross customer churn 12:35 – People are mostly happy with Nova 12:55 – Nova's paid marketing 13:47 – How do you beat a company like Yesware? 14:05 – Focus on what you do best and don't get dragged into trying to do everything that everyone else does 16:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Focus on what YOU do best—you will lose when you focus on what others are doing. Offer something unique and it will make you stand out amongst the crowd. Be ambitious, act sooner than later. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Tatyana Mitkova. She's the CEO and founder of ClaimCompass, a company that helps airline passengers submit a claim online for cancelled, delayed or overbooked flights. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – How to Win Friends and Influence People What CEO do you follow? – Kathryn Minshew Favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Her life is to become more and more interesting with every decision she makes that takes her out of her comfort zone" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:26 – Nathan introduces Tatyana to the show 01:42 – ClaimCompass get airlines to pay up to $680 for cancelled flights 01:51 – Flights could be delayed, cancelled or overbooked 02:05 – ClaimCompass can help you get paid for your lost baggage 02:13 – ClaimCompass is based on the regulations in Europe 02:29 – More than 90% of airline passengers are unaware of their rights 02:46 – ClaimCompass tries to speed up the claiming process for passengers 02:49 – ClaimCompass has a web app and passengers can submit a claim online 03:03 – ClaimCompass makes money by keeping a 25% success-based commission 03:25 – ClaimCompass is growing 75% month over month, in the last 3 months 03:39 – In January, ClaimCompass will reach a thousand claims 03:43 – Average claim refund is $420 03:58 – Average MRR 04:11 – ClaimCompass has their own internal software for their claims management system 04:36 – ClaimCompass has established relationships with more than 50 airlines 04:55 – Team size 05:24 – ClaimCompass was launched, in 2016, as a side project 05:48 – Tatyana and the co-founders have their own stories about getting frustrated with an airline 06:04 – Tatyana has a legal background 06:24 – ClaimCompass was bootstrapped and got into the 500 Startups program, in Europe, 2 months ago 06:40 – ClaimCompass has raised $150K 07:02 – Plans for 2017 07:10 – "Our goal is to reach as many passengers as possible" 07:50 – CAC 08:20 – ClaimCompass' paid ads expenses are increasing 08:53 – ClaimCompass had their demo day on the 15th of February at the 500 Startups program 09:00 – Tatyana believes they will have their seed round in 6 months 09:51 – Tatyana is looking to raise a million in their next round 10:12 – One of ClaimCompass' biggest competitors is AirHelp 11:00 – Tatyana believes that if they partnered with online travel agencies, they can reach more people 11:18 – Flight Right and Refund.me are some of ClaimCompass' competitors, too 11:31 – Some of ClaimCompass competitors' business models can make you lose money 13:00 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: More than 90% of airline passengers are unaware of their rights – we should know our rights to make an appropriate claim. Not all business models are the same – study the company first, to be aware of the charges. Every step out of your comfort zone, leads to something far more interesting for you. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Nathan interviews Patrick O'Luanaigh. He started as a programmer and designer at Codemasters 20 years ago, working on micro machines V3. Prior to founding nDreams, in 2006, he was a creative director at Eidos where he was responsible for the design and gameplay of all the titles there including the well-known Tomb Raider Legend and Hitman Blood Money. nDreams is now 50 people strong and pivoted to solely focusing on virtual reality 3 years ago. nDreams has launched 6 VR titles to date. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Chimp Paradox What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Brendan Iribe Favorite online tool? — Box Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Life is too short to play it safe, you gotta take your risk. It's so much more exciting even though it is scary, you just gotta do it. Be brave!" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Patrick to the show 02:07 – The greatest challenge of VR (virtual reality) at the moment is the limited number of hardware available 02:16 – "We are still figuring out how to make the very best games in the experience of VR" 02:36 – nDreams' game that has generated the most income is Perfect Beach 03:02 – nDreams' key metric is the number of units sold 03:18 – nDreams has sold 250K units 03:49 – nDreams has 50 people in the team 03:56 – Ideas come from anyone in the studio 04:05 – They work with the best idea and do an estimate 04:25 – There's a lot of things to learn in VR 04:30 – nDreams focuses on gameplay 04:49 – Perfect can be purchased on Google Play Store or your VR digital store 05:16 – Mobile version currently costs $2.99 05:20 – The high-end version costs around $7.99 05:40 – nDreams has earned 75K from Perfect 05:50 – The challenge of PlayStation VR is the price 06:06 – Patrick has not heard of other competitors who have sold as much VR as they have 06:44 – It's hard to tell the total potential basis for the VR space 07:00 – Patrick started the company 10 years ago 07:36 – nDreams was bootstrapped but they raised capital for VR 08:06 – nDreams has raised around $6M 08:14 – Patrick started the business even before the start of the VR market 08:41 – 2016 top line revenue 09:30 – Patrick can predict which games will do well even when they're still early in the market 09:43 – nDreams is trying out different games and genres 09:53 – "We're in the stage of learning what works well" 10:08 – In nDreams' released games, SkyDIEving is the only one that's for free 10:48 – Perfect Beach was from an experiment 11:08 – Gunner's expenses 11:45 – nDreams is launching more games this year 12:30 – Patrick shares where most people are buying their games 13:15 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Being in a space that is new can be challenging because of the limited data and resources. You learn in every process you take . Life is too short to play it safe—be brave and take those risks! Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Allan Wille. He was on The Top on December 12, 2016, Episode 506. His company, Klipfolio, raised $7.9M in the past and has grown to 7000 paying customers. They create dashboard software for companies who want to monitor their business processes. Klipfolio is into something incredible, tune in as Allan shares about it on today's episode. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – What CEO do you follow? – Favorite online tool? — Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:22 – Nathan introduces Allan to the show 02:52 – Klipfolio is an online and cloud based, and they create real-time dashboard software for SMBs 03:03 – There are over 7000 companies globally who uses Klipfolio 03:15 – Klipfolio just had a $12M Series B raise 03:33 – Klipfolio has a total of $19.9M total raised 03:41 – Klipfolio already has good investors in their cap table 03:56 – Allan shares how he came up with the Series B 04:19 – The initial intent was to bring in new investors 04:30 – Things turned out differently from the initial intent 04:47 – RPU 04:55 – MRR 05:02 – 2017 MRR goal 05:52 – Klipfolio licenses per number of dashboards 06:25 – Allan wants customers to see Klipfolio's value first 06:35 – CAC 07:20 – LTV 07:33 – Team size 08:00 – Klipfolio believes in product first policy 08:21 – Most of the investment will go into Klipfolio's product 08:35 – Allan shares where they spend most of their CAC 09:00 – Klipfolio will add more people in sales and support 09:13 – "We're actually gonna put a lot of effort in content strategy" 09:37 – Allan is friends with Craig Fitzpatrick from Pagecloud, who talks about content marketing, too 10:26 – Allan wants the system to be more efficient to maximize user experience 10:44 – Allan was able to get a great valuation 11:06 – Allan shares how things happened during the valuation 12:23 – Allan shares the offer he received 12:55 – The questions Allan had before accepting the offer 13:30 – The first offer was a low-ball 15:03 – "In many cases, terms are probably more important than valuation—multiple or the actual preimposed" 15:54 – "We got to basically where we wanted to be" 16:35 – Allan was happy with the terms 16:45 – One of the terms is 1x multiple 17:14 – The other term includes an anti-dilution clause 18:20 – Nathan closing the episode 3 Key Points: There are cases where terms are more important than valuation. Content strategy plays a big role in marketing – invest in it. Go in the direction you want to be. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Mike Cook. He founded XOR Data Exchange to bring privacy and accountability back to data management. Today, his organization works with the nation's largest financial institutions to fight fraud and manage risk. You might have never seen Mike presenting the newest consumer tech, but rest assured every digital entity in America is safer under his watchful eye. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – How to Win Friends and Influence People What CEO do you follow? – Sam Yagan Favorite online tool? — Periscope Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "That you should go to anger management" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Mike to the show 02:10 – Mike mentions how XOR Data Exchange works 02:54 – Mike wanted to create a company where financial institutions can share their data with one another 03:16 – XOR Data Exchange is a B2B model 03:21 – XOR Data Exchange will eventually help consumers 04:04 – Mike shares how XOR Data Exchange will work in between companies 04:31 – Companies like AIG and JP Chase Morgan store data 05:32 – XOR Data Exchange changes the mentality of the pipe 06:25 – XOR Data Exchange generates revenue by building pre-exchanges 07:17 – XOR Data Exchange charges transaction fees based on return data 07:38 – XOR Data Exchange is a pay-as-you-go model 07:43 – XOR Data Exchange is building a new exchange focusing on financial services companies where companies can exchange fraud information 08:10 – XOR Data Exchange was launched in January 2014 08:20 – First year revenue is nothing 08:27 – Mike put in his own money in XOR Data Exchange 08:34 – Mike sold his company ID Analytics to fund XOR Data Exchange 08:40 – Mike sold ID Analytics in 2012, which he started in 2000 08:56 – Mike was 17 when he started ID Analytics 09:15 – Mike had 2 other co-founders 09:26 – Mike tried to work in a big company after his exit 09:56 – Mike has raised $6M and will close $2M, today 10:53 – The last round was in August 2015 11:22 – Most of the money from the current round is from the previous investors 11:36 – Mike shares about his Angel investors 12:40 – "Raising a Series B in this environment is not the easiest thing to do" 12:51 – Mike explains what he means by this 13:20 – XOR Data Exchange is working with big customers 13:45 – "If you work with the top 6, 7, 8 financial services companies, you're really covering 90% of America" 14:05 – XOR Data Exchange has dozens of companies 14:23 – Team size 14:26 – XOR Data Exchange is not yet cashflow positive 15:05 – 2017 goal 15:25 – Most of the XOR Data Exchange employees are tech and based in Austin 17:30 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Reinvest your money in something that you believe in. The financial service space isn't the easiest environment to raise a Series B. If you work with the top 6, 7, or 8 financial services companies, you're really covering 90% of America. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Alex Fishman, the founder and CEO of Bugsee, a bug reporting tool for iOs and Android. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Henry Worth Favorite online tool? – Gmail Do you get 8 hours of sleep?—I wish If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "You want start playing in the startup ecosystem as early as possible when you have less commitments and less things to worry about" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Alex to the show 01:31 – Bugsee is bug reporting tool for iOs and Android 01:51 – Bugsee provides video network and blog, leading out to the event 02:15 – You will not only know that the app crashed, but what led it to crash 02:50 – Bugsee is a SaaS model and they price based on the app size 03:19 – For an app that has 500K users, it will cost $500 03:40 – Bugsee provides different levels of value 04:33 – Average customer pay per month 04:45 – Bugsee started in January 2016 05:01 – Bugsee started charging in December 2016 05:20 – Bugsee has 1100 sign ups and 30% have used Bugsee 06:22 – Alex mentions why he calls users as customers, too 06:40 – Most customers are given free tier to continue using Bugsee 07:11 – New customers use the plan available 07:30 – The limitations of Bugsy's free plan 08:52 – Number of paying customers 09:20 – Bugsee is funded by K9 Ventures 09:33 – Bugsee has raised $1.2M 09:40 – Bugsee had a previous failed attempt 09:53 – The cap table had been reset by Bugsee 10:43 – The previous attempt was in July 2015 10:57 – Team size 11:05 – The team is remote 11:24 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Users are also customers, regardless of whether you sell them on something or not. Having a failed attempt does NOT mean you should give up. Start playing in startup field as early as possible and while you're still free of obligations. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Magnus Åström. He's the CEO and founder of Now Interact, a machine-learning, SaaS platform for omni channel optimization. He's also the founder of InLead, a business consultant and operations company which was sold in 2010 and prior to that, he was founder of Primelog, a transportation management SaaS platform which was sold in 2006. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Blue Ocean Strategy What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "It's all about focus" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:35 – Nathan introduces to the show 02:17 – Primelog started in 2000 02:29 - Primelog connects transportation providers with transportation buyers 02:57 - Annual revenue 03:10 – Primelog was sold to Swedish group 04:44 – They raised 4.5M 04:57 – Inlead's idea is to help customers sell in C-level 05:39 – Inlead turned out to be too heavy on the consultancy side, so Magnus sold it 05:48 – It didn't turn out as a software play 06:10 – Inlead's annual revenue was $1.5 M 06:27 – Now Interact offers machine-based algorithm software to large businesses 06:40 – The software personalizes how each customer is offered a customer service channel 07:00 – Businesses get less calls from customer service 07:30 – Now Interact tracks the data of how customers behave on a website and how they interact with a customer service 08:06 – Magnus goal is to get telco giants like AT&T and Verizon as customers 09:04 – Now Interact has a group that chooses their customization 09:22 – Now Interact is a SaaS model 09:31 – Average customer pay per month is $10K 09:39 – Now Interact was founded in 2010 09:45 – Now Interact raised $100K in 2012 10:46 – Now Interact has raised a total of $7M 11:20 – Customer churn 11:31 – Team size 11:47 – Headquartered in Stockholm 12:04 – CAC is $30K 12:22 – Now Interact has salespeople and are doing paid content marketing 12:58 – "Sales play a lot" 13:30 – Magnus discusses what they'll do with the capital they've raised 13:45 – Some would go to the expansion in the USA 14:05 – 2015 total revenue 14:30 – 2016 total revenue 15:00 – Magnus shared how he negotiated for the valuation 15:45 – The top 3 most important terms when negotiating 15:48 – The preference structure, the lock-in and the investors you want to have 18:00 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: You can choose to close your company if it is not going in the direction you intended it to go. Valuation is not always everything—there are more things to consider when negotiating. Stay focused, don't take on more than you can handle. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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

Zach Supalla. He's the CEO and co-founder of Particle, a venture backed startup that's making it easier to build internet connected hardware and other things. Particle is the most, widely used IoT platform with a developed community of a hundred thousand users and is listed as one of Fast Company's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in 2015, of the Internet of Things. Zach has been featured on CNN, The Wall street Journal, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, Mashable and more. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Lawson Favorite online tool? — Slack and Asana Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "You don't have to be an engineer to be an engineer" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:35 – Nathan introduces Zach to the show 02:16 – Zach used to be a management consultant 02:45 – While Zach was doing his MBA, he interned in Groupon's sales operation 03:07 – Zach did engineering 03:21 – Particle is an IoT platform 03:44 – Particle helps manufacturers connect their physical product to the internet 04:11 – Particle does the whole communication stack between the physical device and web 04:40 – Particle has raised $10M 04:50 – Particle generates revenue in 4 ways 04:55 – Particle works with large companies and sells them subscriptions, data plans, hardware, and professional services 05:24 – Main revenue stream is from the hardware 05:54 – Hardware pricing ranges from $5-50 06:09 – For Keurig, they added hardware to plug into the back of the coffee maker 06:45 – The hardware volume for Keurig is in the thousands 07:00 – Particle has customers who will be deploying millions of hardware products by 2018 07:28 – Security is part of Particle's story 07:37 – Zach shares about the webcam botnet incident 08:09 – The Mirai botnet in Liberia explained 08:32 – Zach shares how Particle works to secure everything from the device to the in between communication 08:50 – Typical, cheap webcams that are in the market and manufactured in China are not secure 09:23 – There are products that people aren't unplugging and are considered unsecure 09:45 – Particle started in 2012 09:59 – Zach first launched a product in Kickstarter named Spark Socket 10:07 – The product was unsuccessful 10:21 – It was frustrating, but it turned to be a huge benefit 10:51 – Zach relaunched a new product in Kickstarter, in 2013, called Spark Core 11:20 – Zach was inspired by his dad who is deaf to create the first product 12:20 – Zach shares what is important in launching a Kickstarter campaign 12:28 – Zach looks at any Kickstarter campaign as an experiment 12:33 – Zach made sure that they nailed the marketing on their first launch 13:43 – "We're definitely advocates of the lean startup mentality" 14:13 – 2013 revenue 14:41 – 2014 revenue 15:43 – Zach shares where the scale is coming from 15:58 – When Zach launched the product, they weren't targeting enterprise stores 16:28 – Zach was originally creating development tools then shifted to management tools 16:43 – The growth started in selling deaf kits 17:00 – They started making modules, then the software platform 17:26 – One of the challenges a hardware startup faces is going from being a product to a company 17:56 – 2017 revenue goal 18:08 – Team size is 35 18:21 – Half of the team is from San Francisco and the other half are all over 18:50 – Particle is not facing a problem yet with their people who work in China 19:03 – Zach created a program while he was in China, where he lived for 4 months 19:22 – Zach has a deep trusting relationship with their people in China 21:14 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Solve your own problems and make the people around you, your inspiration. See the beauty in a failure – it can be a way for you to create something better. One of the most difficult challenges a hardware startup faces is going from being a product to a company. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal 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. 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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket 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 Mal