Eric Rea, co-founder and CEO of Podium.com which is based in Utah. He’s a software engineer at the International Atomic Agency and before that, the founder of FineGrain. He worked at Walmart as a software engineer and he has also interned at Orange Soda.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Multipliers
- What CEO do you follow? – Phil Knight
- Favorite online tool? – Domo and Apple Notes
- Do you get 8 hours of sleep? – “I get 7”
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “You can always tell them to go to hell tomorrow” – Warren Buffet
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:46 – Nathan introduces Eric to the show
- 02:20 – Podium helps businesses generate reviews which drives purchase decisions
- 02:30 – Podium charges $299 a month per location
- 02:48 – Podium is a SaaS business
- 02:58 – Average customer pays $499
- 03:20 – Podium was launched in 2013
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- 03:25 – Eric started Podium because of his dad’s business
- 04:01 – Team size
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- 04:44 – All employees are working full-time
- 04:50 – Team is based in Utah
- 05:35 – Podium raised $4M in total
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- 05:50 – First seed round was in 2014 and $500K was raised
- 05:57 – Raised $3.5M in December of 2015
- 06:36 – Eric has given up 20% of the business for the seed round
- 07:38 – Podium has 25000 customers per location
- 08:13 – Podium has $1M in MRR
- 08:45 – Podium’s gross monthly customer churn is around 1%
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- 09:10 – Net churn is negative 2% monthly
- 09:50 – Average CAC
- 10:12 – Average LTV is $12K
- 11:00 – 2015 ARR is $1.8M
- 11:30 – 2016 ARR is around $11M
- 11:41 – Goal for 2017 ARR is $25M
- 12:55 – Connect with Eric through his website and Twitter
- 15:05 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- It’s important to have some capital in case you make mistakes – with no capital, just 1 mistake will sink you.
- Find a solution to the simplest problems to streamline your business processes.
- The SMB market will continually grow, creating more opportunities for startups.
Resources Mentioned:
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
- Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
- 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.
- 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
- @EricWilliamRea – Eric’s Twitter handle
- Podium.com – Eric’s business website
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives