Ilya Semin, creator of Datanyze - a sales intelligence platform that’s the only thing Hubspot and Marketo will use. Datanyze has reached an ARR of $6 million in just two years - and they’re growing incredibly fast. Listen in to hear why Ilya took his first round of funding, how to have the tough conversations about equity, and why emotional intelligence is crucial for tech entrepreneurs.
Famous 5:
Favorite Book? – The Alchemist
What CEO do you follow? — None
Favourite online tool? — Manny [link skyped to Nathan]
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 that I’d started working on my EQ skills and learned how to communicate with people
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:09 – Nathan’s introduction
01:58 – Welcoming Ilya to the show
02:12 – Datanyze is a sales intelligence platform that’s offered as a subscription service. Customers include Hubspot and Marketo
02:30 – 500 customers, with an average annual contract of $20k
02:55 – Founded the business in 2012 - launched officially in 2014
03:20 – First year revenue was around $50k
03:40 – Mostly serve B2B companies and enterprise companies
03:58 – Raised $1.8 million in July 2014
04:20 – “We were profitable even then...but enterprise customers don’t like dealing with small companies”
05:00 – VCs included Google investments and Mark Cuban
05:30 – Total revenue in 2015 was $4 million, and by December 2015 there was a monthly run rate of $500k
07:21 – Churn is less than 1% per month
07:44 – Customer Acquisition Cost is around $9k
08:20 – “Almost all our customers pay up front”
08:55 – Have about 60 people based in San Martel, California
09:18 – How does a typical customer use Datanyze?
09:30 – If a sales rep is making a call, they can use Datanyze to access information about a company
10:07 – Datanyze can also help to generate potential leads and their contact details
11:00 – Have an inside sales team who set up around 15 demos per month
12:57 – Current revenue growth is 7% month-over-month
13:30 – Team salary costs are close to $500k per month
14:16 – “We’re close to break-even all the time”
14:38 – One other co-founder. They had the difficult conversation and didn’t split equity evenly
15:01 – Connect with Ilya through Linkedin or his blog
17:12 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Zero in on the market you want to serve - and find partners or investment to help you in that market
Learn to communicate. 85% of your success is down to emotional intelligence and ‘soft’ skills
Have the tough conversations about equity. All that an even split proves is that you aren’t communicating well enough
Resources Mentioned:
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
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