Maria Seidman. She is the CEO and co-founder of Yapp, the top platform for event applications. Prior to Yapp, she was the GM for mobile and VP for Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. She has her MBA from Stanford and her BA from Yale and resides in New York City.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – How
• What CEO do you follow? – Stewart Butterfield
• Favorite online tool? — FullStory and Slack
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Take more risks”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:41 – Nathan introduces Maria to the show
• 02:29 – Yapp already has 85K apps published on their platform since they started
• 02:28 – Yapp was founded in 2011 and launched in 2012
• 02:56 – Maria left Warner Bros in 2010, then she met her co-founder for Yapp and they started in 2011
• 03:40 – Yapp’s market is professional events or the “mice industry”
• 03:54 – Yapp provides event technology for organizers who are in corporations or associations
  • 04:25 – Yapp isn’t for casual events
• 04:56 – Yapp is a SaaS business and charges monthly fees
• 05:17 – Nathan shares how his former business, Heyo, was seasonal and the churn was difficult to manage
• 05:40 – Maria shares how Yapp attracts customers because of its affordability and its ability to adapt to different types of events
  • 06:10 – Yapp has an internal communications tool
• 06:44 – Most customers are having multiple events per year
• 07:00 – Yapp’s pricing starts at $400 up to their volume pricing which is annual
• 07:32 – Small organizations tend to avail of Yapp more
• 08:34 – Team size is 5, all remote
  • 08:48 – 3 are engineers, 1 in marketing and Maria is in charge of other tasks
• 09:12 – Yapp started with a small debt round for capital, but was bootstrapped after the growth
• 10:19 – The investors were supportive of Yapp
• 10:45 – Maria aims for Yapp to be a group of tools targeting marketing and events
• 12:14 – Yapp is in a competitive market and can’t share their numbers
• 12:42 – Yapp is focused on their ARPU and is going deeper on the enterprise
• 13:16 – Maria shares the weirdest thing she did to get customers was sneak into tradeshows
• 15:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. The seasonality of the business affects churn drastically so having a second revenue stream is a must.
2. Smaller groups are having more events than corporations are having within the frame of a year.
3. Applications that are versatile get more users, especially from the business market.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Spencer Coon. He’s the co-founder of HiBox.co and Joincube. He has over 5 years of experience in enterprise collaboration software and 7 years working internationally. He has managed teams across 3 continents and 5 countries. Previously, he was in investment banking at JP Morgan in New York City.  

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Black Swan
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Intercom
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Spencer wished he knew that technology was going to be more of his passion

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:50 – Nathan introduces Spencer to the show
• 02:20 – HiBox is a collaboration app for teams
  • 02:31 – It has an artificial intelligence to bring everything together and enhance productivity
• 03:19 – HiBox is a SaaS model with a 14-day free trial
  • 03:30 – It has 3 different versions, including a pro version and an enterprise version
• 03:57 – ARPU is $32 a month
  • 04:03 – An average account has 7-8 people
• 04:55 – Spencer wanted to have his own product, so he left JP Morgan
  • 05:13 – He wanted to create something tangible and has been passionate about Latin America
• 05:39 – Spencer started HiBox in Buenos Aires
  • 05:46 – It’s less competitive to start a business in Latin America with talented people and their rates are more competitive
• 06:16 – There are 5 people on the tech team and 15 people in total
  • 06:28 – Most of the team is in Barcelona
• 06:36 – Spencer left JP Morgan in 2012 and went to another company where he met his now business partner
• 07:28 – First year revenue was less than $10K
• 07:43 – HiBox is Spencer’s first baby as an entrepreneur
• 08:00 – Spencer used up his savings to start HiBox
• 08:41 – HiBox has raised some seed rounds
  • 08:54 – It was more difficult to access VC funds in the USA because HiBox is based in Latin America
  • 09:16 – They had 2 priced rounds with a total of $500K funds raised
  • 10:00 – Spencer is still in the middle of negotiations for their next round
• 10:20 – Over 10K companies have signed up to HiBox and there are 35K active users
• 10:38 – HiBox is their main focus at the moment
• 10:42 – Joincube is an enterprise social network focused on multi-national companies in Latin America
• 11:13 – There are 300 companies paying for HiBox
• 11:30 – MRR is around $10K for the pro version
• 11:54 – Last month’s revenue
• 13:05 – Joincube will become HiBox corporate
• 13:34 – Gross monthly churn is 6.2%
• 15:10 – Spencer shares why their product would still be beneficial for their clients after the upgrade
  • 15:46 – It’s almost similar to Intercom, but better
• 16:00 – CAC is $233
  • 16:10 – Most are used for online ads
  • 16:26 – It is a fully weighted CAC
  • 16:38 – $3K was spent on paid advertising last month
• 16:57 – Spencer is hoping that the business will be profitable at the outset
  • 17:32 – They’re doing as many tests as they can
• 18:05 – ARR target by the end of 2017
• 19:00 – Weirdest thing we ever did to acquire clients was tell them I lost a bet and would give them a 50% discount forever
• 20:00 – Gross margin
• 20:48 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. It’s never too late to start your entrepreneurial journey.
2. Starting your business in a country with less competition is a cost-efficient and wise decision.
3. An upgrade should NOT affect customer loyalty and their experience with your product.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Spencer Bogart. He’s a managing director and the head of research for Blockchain Capital, the premier venture firm for investing directly in the blockchain companies. Prior to joining Blockchain Capital, Spencer was a VP of Equity Research where he covered traditional software and internet stocks. He had his first industry report on blockchain technology and is the most active analyst covering bitcoin.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Zero to One
• What CEO do you follow? – Balaji Srinivasan
• Favorite online tool? — Telegram
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I just wish I would have spent more time on bitcoin”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:48 – Nathan introduces Spencer to the show
• 03:10 – Crypto hedge fund has created a “honey pot” for hackers
  • 03:18 – The “honey pot” is actually bigger on the exchanges
• 04:23 – Most companies are now making bitcoins more accessible
  • 04:45 – Spencer shares how to use Coinbase
• 05:00 – Spencer has predicted that there’s a sub 25% chance that the US SEC is approving a bitcoin ETF
  • 05:21 – It is difficult for regulators to get comfortable with bitcoin
  • 05:30 – Spencer shares the pros and cons of approving a bitcoin ETF
  • 06:02 – There has been changes in US SEC’s administration that could be favorable with the approval
  • 06:39 – There’s an ETF that was disapproved, but appealed and it was then granted
  • 07:34 – There are speculators who moved in beforehand
• 08:03 – Blockchain Capital is a VC firm that has focused on blockchain for the last 4-5 years
  • 08:14 – The last fund they did was their own ICO
  • 08:23 – Their cap was a $10M offering
  • 08:33 – Their offering’s sold out in just 10 minutes
  • 08:50 – They are currently raising their fourth fund
• 09:10 – The industry has been changing consistently
  • 09:36 – “We’re just all hands on deck”
• 10:08 – Blockchain Capital’s fund one was $3-5M and fund two was $15M
  • 10:40 – Target fund for the fourth one is $250M
• 11:12 – Spencer shares about their Civic deal
  • 11:50 – Civic allows you to provide your identity to others without them getting your identity
  • 12:28 – Civic’s ICO
• 12:50 – Spencer discusses with his team how they handle situations where they had an initial investment of token sales
  • 13:22 – Tokens are not dilutive
  • 13:57 – People who bought into token issuance won’t directly benefit from the acquisition of companies
  • 14:08 – There’s a lot of demand for under-line technology
• 15:35 – Spencer shares the problems Civic is trying to solve
  • 16:18 – Civic wanted to sell enough tokens to get the attributions abroad to create an initial user base
  • 16:35 – A company won’t sell its equity upfront
• 17:45 – Spencer made their acquisition and token issuance in two totally different time frames
  • 18:13 – Token offerings have different models
• 20:19 – Nathan asks Spencer how an entrepreneur can manage his money in order to run the business vs. what to keep
  • 20:31 – Most of the funds that have been raised should be converted to dollars so they can pay the bills
  • 21:05 – Spencer is liquidating usually 80%
  • 21:19 – “Do yourself a favor, convert into a currency that you can actually pay your bills in and pay the developers in”
• 21:57 – Spencer believes that Coinbase is the biggest brand in the space, especially in exchange
• 22:38 – Nathan asks Spencer, “what if any government starts normalizing crypto?”— the demand for the exchange would decrease drastically
  • 22:58 – Coinbase was incentivized to not see widespread government adoption of cryptocurrency because they need people to put money into their system
  • 23:20 – Spencer believes that if this happens, this will be a high class problem for Coinbase
  • 23:25 – There are companies who are using Coinbase, not just for exchange
• 26:24 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Bitcoin is becoming more accessible to people because of the demand.
2. The government’s regulation on cryptocurrency is still in its beginnings.
3. Liquidation of the funds depends on the company’s decisions regarding what they need and their what their goals are.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Jayesh Parmar. He’s a serial entrepreneur with two decades of event industry experience. Currently, he’s the CEO and co-founder of Picatic and is listed as one of the world’s top 10 tech entrepreneurs disrupting the event industry.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Amy
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Failure is just a data point”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:44 – Nathan introduces Jayesh to the show
• 02:10 – Picatic brings people together and does things that are absolutely different from others
  • 02:22 – Picatic has given away a product for free
  • 02:55 – Picatic has changed the ballgame with their pro product
  • 03:13 – Picatic offers Picatic Anywhere which is a new ticketing service
• 04:00 – The bigger stream for Picatic is the commission-based stream
• 05:00 – Average pay for Picatic varies
• 05:26 – Picatic has a basic product which is free and the pro product which is commission-based
  • 05:33 – Base rate is a dollar and commission rate is 2.5% per ticket
  • 05:46 – Stripe is on top of Picatic
• 06:18 – Enterprise API ranges from $5K to $100K depending on the API calls and ticket sales
• 06:58 – Event businesses are seasonal, but Picatic has partnered with different venues and organizations that aren’t seasonal
• 08:00 – Picatic was launched in 2008 as a side project
• 08:20 – Picatic went through Extreme Startup and got $250K with 10% equity
• 08:33 – Picatic has raised $1.5M as additional capital
• 09:22 – First year revenue is less than $10K
• 09:48 – 2015 revenue is less than a $100K
• 10:05 – As an event organizer, Jayesh wanted to de-risk events
• 10:31 – Picatic has pivoted from their previous model
• 11:40 – 2016 revenue
  • 12:22 – The revenue is around $1.2M
• 12:40 – Team size is 15 based in Vancouver, Canada
• 13:55 – 2017 goal
• 14:05 – Picatic grows 100% year over year
• 14:25 – Jayesh has been going to different events to market his Picatic by being a doorman
• 16:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Don’t stick with your current business model just because—test other models that your company could benefit from.
2. The online ticketing world is consistently improving.
3. The best way to get your business out there is by marketing it yourself.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Ransu Salovaara. He’s the CEO of TokenMarket, the leading token sale advisory and information hub based on Gibraltar. He’s also an advisor for numerous blockchain startups.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Digital Gold
• What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kalanick
• Favorite online tool? — Coinbase
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Don’t be so arrogant, don’t think that you know it all. Listen more, talk less

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:28 – Nathan introduces Ransu to the show
• 02:00 – In February 2014, Ransu’s friend called him and asked if he knew about bitcoin
  • 02:14 – His friend told him to get into bitcoin
• 02:50 – Ransu is like the Bloomberg of crypto stuff
• 03:07 – Ransu gets money from the commission of their services to raise money for startups
• 03:15 – Ransu is involved in Firstblood
  • 03:55 – Ransu shares what he knows about Joe Zhou of Firstblood
• 04:21 – Christoph of DAO was in Episode 781 of The Top
• 04:55 – TokenMarket didn’t exist yet during the DAO
• 05:15 – Ransu is getting 7% of their deal with the startup
• 05:52 – Ransu shares how they advise startups who are looking into raising money
  • 06:28 – Ransu believes that startups focus more on building their company
• 06:46 – TokenMarket markets ICOs by going into different community platforms
  • 06:52 – BitcoinTalk, Twitter, Facebook and Telegram are some of the community platforms
• 07:33 – There are 5000 investors in the ICO field
• 08:40 – Ransu shares why startups won’t just use ether
• 09:38 – Civic is one of the ICOs that TokenMarket just recently advised
  • 09:57 – Civic has a KYC system
  • 10:24 – Civic has raised $33M
• 11:07 – TokenMarket has advised Edgeless, which is their TokenMarket’s first ICO
  • 11:23 – Edgeless raised $3M
• 13:25 – For the first time, Ransu feels that the USA is falling behind in the crypto world
• 13:58 – Ransu’s rule of thumb for startups
• 14:50 – Nathan shares why he thinks ICOs are a scam, and how they actually are not scams
• 17:00 – The hype of crypto explained
• 17:20 – Ransu believes that crypto is the beginning of the new digital assets era
• 18:48 – Every month, the market gets better
• 19:15 – Nathan shares what he thinks about Uber’s surge pricing and its relativity with ICOs and the crypto world
  • 20:08 – Modern day businesses and startups are the best concepts to go launch ICOs or token issuance
  • 21:38 – There are ICOs with the same concept as Uber and Airbnb, but are still not at par with the two
• 22:40 – Ransu often receives different pitches and some have concepts that are difficult to execute
  • 23:00 – An ICO fail because of the team, the market, the demand, their failure to deliver and lack of tokens
• 24:45 – Transitioning from a regular startup to an ICO is difficult
• 27:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Companies looking into their ICO should focus on building their business and strengthening its foundation and service first and foremost.
2. Not all concepts work for an ICO.
3. Cryptocurrency is the beginning of the new digital asset era.

Resources Mentioned:

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

Olin Hyde. He’s the co-founder and CEO of LeadCrunch.ai, an intelligent demand generation platform that accelerates sales with high precision analytics and content delivery. In less than 10 months since they’ve launched, the company has grown to more than 90 customers and are getting 300% higher sales conversion rates.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Humans
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Salesloft
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Olin hoped he would have known how important linear algebra is

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:38 – Nathan introduces Olin to the show
• 02:09 – The last exit of Olin was Auto-Semantics that analyzed social media feeds
  • 02:22 – It was sold to ai-one
• 02:28 – Olin spent 2 years with ai-one
• 02:38 – LeadCrunch started with healthcare
• 02:51 – LeadCrunch has beat IBM Watson
• 02:59 – LeadCrunch is using their targeting technology to help mid-market companies find their next best customers
• 03:17 – Olin shares why they’re targeting SMBs
  • 03:34 – Olin likes to work with people who help others make their dreams come true
  • 03:43 – LeadCrunch’s first product was Private Alpha with 1,070 small businesses signups
  • 03:56 – LeadCrunch stays away from the enterprise because they like the idea of democratizing the power of AI to enable everyone to achieve their dreams
• 04:08 – LeadCrunch’s business model is a combination of subscription and on-demand
• 04:42 – It is still early for LeadCrunch’s SaaS model, so most of their revenue is from on-demand
• 04:53 – With on-demand, LeadCrunch got 130 rebooks from customers in just 90 days
• 05:17 – Average customer pay is $20K
• 06:05 – Olin won’t call their revenue ARR, but on-demand
• 06:40 – LeadCrunch has a customer success function
• 06:50 – LeadCrunch was launched in August 2015
• 07:27 – Trailing 12 months revenue is around a million dollars
• 07:36 – Monthly revenue is around $200K in bookings
• 07:46 – The product was launched in September 2016
• 08:04 – LeadCrunch was initially bootstrapped and has raised about $2M in capital
  • 08:36 – LeadCrunch has kept the cap of $6M
• 09:33 – LeadCrunch has around 90 lifetime customers and 55 on their current product line
• 10:50 – Olin shares the weirdest thing he did to get a customer
• 11:44 – Gross margin
  • 12:03 – LeadCrunch optimizes for growth and not for margins yet
• 12:48 – Customer payback period is 2.1 months
• 13:15 – On-demand customers pay as LeadCrunch delivers
• 13:36 – LeadCrunch’s CAC decreases as they get more customers
• 13:57 – Paid spent is around $6500
  • 14:41 – LeadCrunch does A/B tests to discover new funnels
  • 14:58 – LeadCrunch is influenced by Traction of Justin Mires
  • 15:18 – LeadCrunch is conservative and capital efficient
• 15:35 – Team size is 15
• 16:04 – “We could get cash flow positive in 60 days if we want to”
• 17:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Work with people that you believe in the most.
2. Revenue models vary depending on which model works best for the company.
3. Cash flow positive is great, but you shouldn’t have to sacrifice your people to reach it.

Resources Mentioned:

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