Rob Nelson, founder and CEO of Grow – a business intelligence platform. Nathan came across Rob when he was doing research in the intelligence space and Grow provided a lot of good feedback. Rob is a listener of The Top and happily accepted Nathan’s invitation to be a guest on The Top.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – The ONE Thing
- What CEO do you follow? – Aaron Skonnard
- Favorite online tool? — Calendly
- Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Don’t ever quit”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:25 – Nathan introduces Rob to the show
- 02:00 – Grow is a powerful business intelligence platform and made specifically for SMBs
- 02:13 – Rob founded Grow in 2014
- 02:25 – Rob had a software company which was bootstrapped
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- 02:34 – Rob struggled pulling up data from different platforms
- 03:29 – Rob sold the company and had a great exit
- 04:10 – Grow is a SaaS model and has subscription based pricing
- 04:20 – Grow doesn’t charge based on the number of users
- 05:10 – Grow charges based on the number of metrics used
- 05:20 – Grow’s RPU is $600 a month
- 05:30 – Users pay monthly but there’s a 12-month commitment
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- 06:06 – “If we can’t get them hooked with the product in the first 3 days, they can walk away”
- 06:18 – 75% of the people continue after the 30-day trial period
- 07:05 – Rob doesn’t know their exact churn
- 07:29 – Grow’s usage stats
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- 07:44 – Half of their customers log-in everyday
- 07:50 – 92% of the customers are logging in at least twice a month
- 08:00 – Grow is currently serving 600 customers
- 08:08 – Rob started with the concept in January 2014
- 08:30 – Rob hired a technical co-founder and gave him 20% of the business
- 09:00 – Rob and his team are based in Utah
- 09:45 – Team size is 70
- 09:58 – Grow raised a series A round and seed round
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- 10:12 – Total amount raised was $13 million
- 10:14 – Total of $9 million was raised in series A
- 10:25 – Both are priced equity round
- 10:44 – Rob is a huge fan of bootstrapping during his first venture
- 11:28 – Rob decided to raise for Grow because bootstrapping just wouldn’t work
- 11:50 – Total 2014 revenue is about $80
- 12:20 – 2015 revenue is $150,000
- 13:00 – Goal for 2016 revenue
- 13:33 – Rob closed the series A in July
- 14:03 – Fully-weighted CAC is about $3,500
- 15:00 – Why do you think Dasher didn’t work out?
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- 15:20 – “It’s hard to build a company on $20 or $30 a month”
- 16:35 – Connect with Rob through his website
- 18:05 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- USE your experience to IMPROVE your business.
- Explore other options—if bootstrapped worked first, that doesn’t mean it will work again.
- Don’t EVER quit.
Resources Mentioned:
- 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 developers.
- Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the 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.
- Assistant.to – The site Nathan uses to book meetings with one email.
- 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.
- Grow.com – Rob’s business website
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives