Jay Jumper. He’s the founder, CEO and President of SIGNiX. As a highly regarded entrepreneur, Jay has worked to establish the company as the leading cloud-based digital signature solution which is a hot space. He has more than 20 years in financial services and technology management experience. Additionally, Jay graduated from University of Tennessee in 1985 with a BS in marketing.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Trump: The Art of the Deal
- What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban
- Favorite online tool? — Email
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-7
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jay would tell himself that hard work and perseverance outdoes anything else
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 00:45 – Nathan introduces Jay to the show
- 01:33 – SIGNiX is the only cloud-based digital signature company in North America
- 01:44 – SIGNiX is an independent e-signature solution
- 02:00 – Jay shows Nathan a visual of a cloud-based digital signature
- 02:08 – Put a signature on the overlight, not on the document
- 02:48 – You depend on the e-signature vendor to be around forever so they can validate the signature
- 02:56 – On the overlight is a hyperlink that redirects the person to the e-signature provider
- 03:38 – With SIGNiX, every signature is embedded onto the document
- 03:52 – SIGNiX is a SaaS model
- 04:08 – SIGNiX focuses on security
- 04:32 – 80% of SIGNiX is sold to software partners
- 04:37 – SIGNiX enables software partners to capture the e-signature market that is sitting on their software
- 05:05 – Software partners can privately label SIGNiX so they can rebrand it according to whatever the product is
- 05:25 – SIGNiX does a revenue share with their software partners
- 05:32 – SIGNiX gives their software partners a highly robust digital signature solution
- 06:08 – SIGNiX’s pricing on their website
- 06:10 – $240 per seat equals to 240 transactions a year
- 06:22 – SIGNiX’s emphasis is on supporting their partners
- 06:54 – SIGNiX goes to different industries and tries to match pricing based on the industry
- 07:37 – SIGNiX has very robust APIs which is the core of the business
- 08:11 – The key things that SIGNiX offers: everything is embedded in the document and documents can be deleted from SIGNiX
- 08:18 – A dependent e-signature always has 2 copies, one for the company and one for the customer
- 09:04 – What SIGNiX is doing is much more difficult
- 09:30 – Team size is 50
- 10:00 – SIGNiX was launched in 2002 and was acquired from another company
- 10:12 – ProNvest is a robo advisor that Jay also owns
- 10:45 – SIGNiX is a bigger revenue stream for Jay
- 10:57 – The market for e-signature is very large
- 11:35 – ProNvest provides management counseling to the 41K marketplace
- 11:47 – In 2007, more people in 41K are taking their money out rather than contributing
- 12:06 – Jay really wanted a tool set to work with their 41K providers to help them retain their assets
- 12:17 – Jay wanted the providers to retain their assets through electronic signatures
- 12:24 – SIGNiX called Jay
- 12:40 – The company was struggling and Jay became an investor in the company
- 12:52 – Jay invested around 50% of the company
- 13:05 – There was an offer from a public company to buy the company after Jay invested
- 13:22 – The offer was 5x what Jay paid for
- 14:00 – In 2001, it was good to have a “.com” but in 2002, Jay needed to have revenue
- 14:23 – Jay saw the need for having SIGNiX regardless of its previous company struggles
- 14:33 – Jay really bolted SIGNiX and passed it on an incubator
- 15:04 – The previous company just spent money on the technology and was burning cash
- 15:43 – SIGNiX now has 670K customers
- 15:52 – It is a combination of seats and customers
- 16:30 – Average MRR
- 16:57 – SIGNiX gives discounts to their partners
- 17:18 – If you’re working with a software company, you have to figure out a number that works for their customers
- 18:02 – The number that Jay gave was an annual number
- 18:20 – SIGNiX does not focus on their competitors because they have a very different product
- 18:48 – SIGNiX wants to go and find the top software developers in every industry and partner with them
- 19:03 – First thing that SIGNiX looks for in a software partner is their position and role in their particular industry
- 19:10 – Ziplogix partnered with SIGNiX and named their solution, Digital Ink
- 19:25 – SIGNiX has a large portion of realtors in their network
- 19:35 – SIGNiX doesn’t mind being behind the scenes
- 19:55 – SIGNiX is not a reseller and it becomes the key feature of the product
- 20:18 – SIGNiX doesn’t have a standard percentage split because it varies per company
- 20:49 – Jay did a lot of self-funding for SIGNiX, but has also raised capital which is an 8-figure total
- 21:18 – ProNvest is the largest investor in SIGNiX but they needed outside investors to scale
- 21:38 – The funding rounds SIGNiX had in 2016 had a total of around $90M
- 23:30 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Develop and scale your product until you become a totally different product from your competitors.
- A business that is struggling does NOT mean that it will struggle forever; decide if the company is worth acquiring and if you can grow it into a profitable business.
- It’s okay if you’re not in the limelight—so long as you’re getting paid and revenue continues to multiply.
Resources Mentioned:
- The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
- Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
- Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives