Varun Chandran. He’s the founder and CEO of Corporate360, a big data marketing software startup. He bootstrapped the company in 2012, grew the business into multimillion dollars in revenue with international clients and 40 employees across 5 countries. Prior to Corporate360, he worked for some of the leading technology companies like SAP, Oracle, Dell and Netapp in 3 different countries. He’s a college dropout and a national footballer. He loves data science and travelling. Under his leadership, Corporate360 became the first international startup from Kerala, bringing IT jobs that foster social empowerment.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – N/A
- What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
- Favorite online tool? — Google Apps
- How many hours of sleep do you get every night?— 4 hours
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Build something that changes lives”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:12 – Nathan introduces Varun to the show
- 02:00 – Corporate360 is a sales intelligence data company for B2B enterprises
- 02:08 – Corporate360 is a SaaS business that sells their software through subscription
- 02:30 – Corporate360 has standard pricing
- 02:38 – Typical deal size would range from 20K onwards, annually
- 02:48 – They have some monthly contracts, too
- 02:57 – “We are evangelizing data as a service model as opposed to buying a marketing list”
- 03:33 – Corporate360 was launched in 2013
- 03:40 – Team size is almost 70 in 5 countries
- 03:47 – Corporate360 is totally bootstrapped and they’re reenlisting profits back to the business to grow it
- 04:00 – Varun was 30 when he started Corporate360 and it was his first take on entrepreneurship
- 04:14 – Varun spent 8 years in the corporate world
- 04:26 – Varun had sales development and marketing roles
- 04:43 – Varun started the company with minimal capital of less than $10K
- 05:02 – Varun used the capital to learn data science and hired contractors from India and the Philippines
- 05:22 – The initial investment was for building the application, launching the website, and a basic outreach email campaign
- 05:55 – Customers use Corporate360 differently
- 06:01 – There’s inside sales, analytics, campaigns, marketing and for sales operations
- 06:18 – One of Corporate360’s customers is from Japan—they wanted to run a competitive attack and get competitive intelligent software
- 06:30 – The company from Japan started a subscription and they gave reference to teams in China, Singapore, and eventually to the Europe and US market
- 07:08 – Corporate360 is currently serving 300 customers
- 07:22 – They currently have 40K seats
- 07:28 – Seats per user license is sold only for inside sales
- 07:35 – Analytics and marketing are based on data and not per seat
- 07:58 – Corporate360 average deal size will be per user
- 08:04 – Varun shares how an inside sales deal works
- 08:52 – “We are not part of a data syndicate”
- 09:00 – Corporate360 source their data from their own algorithms
- 09:37 – FullContact focuses on getting data from syndicates
- 10:27 – Varun shares how they differ from other data sources
- 12:06 – When you subscribe to Corporate360, you can get a 360 degree viewpoint of 7 modules
- 12:22 – Corporate360 provides detailed information about the leads that they have and why they are the best fit for your company
- 13:30 – Average ARR
- 14:00 – Gross customer churn
- 14:16 – Corporate360 designs their services based on client feedback
- 14:46 – Churn is less than 10% annually
- 15:12 – Most of their customers are startups
- 15:51 – CAC
- 15:58 – Corporate360 doesn’t have field sales and just 7 account managers
- 16:20 – They tried LinkedIn ads as paid ads
- 16:34 – They spent $200K on LinkedIn last year
- 16:47 – The budget for paid acquisition will go down this year
- 17:15 – LTV can be from $45K to a million
- 17:36 – Corporate360 headquarters in Singapore
- 17:40 – They have a large BPO center in India and Philippines
- 19:40 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Small capital can go a long way—don’t be discouraged if you are beginning with little.
- THe data space is quite saturated—have something that sets you apart from the data syndicate.
- Build something that changes lives.
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