Ep 193 Jared Fuller (Recovering) CEO of PandaDoc, a company that’s focused on making the digitization of documents a simply smooth process. Listen as Nathan and Jared talk about venture debt, the hidden value of recurring revenue, and Jared’s famous title of “Recovering CEO”.
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:05 – Nathan’s introduction to today’s show
01:28 – Living as a “Recovering CEO”
01:55 – Recurring revenue is the way to go
02:09 – Screwed up lots of stuff, but that’s OK
02:23 – MRR before everything crashed
02:50 – Fought over stupid stuff that had nothing to do with getting customers
03:20 – Make sure you start a company with someone who’s done it before
04:12 – Get focused on getting shit done
05:55 – Talking about PandaDoc—going after the document as a whole
06:50 – How PandaDoc makes money
06:55 – Panda could be profitable tomorrow if it wanted to be
07:50 – Talking venture debt (Square1 and Silicon Valley Bank)
08:12 – The revenue and books on PandaDoc are SO good venture debt made sense
09:35 – 4% interest rate
11:00 – People raise money in a short-sighted way—huge mistake
11:45 – 25 team members in Belarus and 40 people in San Francisco
13:20 – The library of free templates is the secret sauce of PandaDoc’s SEO success
14:35 – The big deals are in outbound client acquisition
15:40 – Jared@PandaDoc.com
Famous 5
Favorite Book? – Leadership and Self-Deception
What CEO do you follow?— No
What is your favorite online tool?— YesWare
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?—Understand the value of recurring revenue—stop relying on project based fees
3 Key Points:
Recurring revenue is the key to happiness and success.
Start a business with people you can REALLY trust and (ideally) people that have done it before.
Do NOT raise money in a short-sighted way.
Resources Mentioned:
Edgar – Nathan uses Edgar instead of other scheduling tools for Twitter because Edgar cycles through content over and over (buffer/others you have to re-input content over and over – time consuming). In the last several months, Edgar has driven Nathan over 3728 clicks that he didn’t have to work or pay for.
Host Gator - Powerful web hosting made easy and affordable.
Leadership and Self-Deception – Jared’s favorite book
YesWare -- The tool Jared couldn't live without
Square1 and Silicon Valley Bank – The big players in venture debt
Credits
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
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