Jim Fowler, the founder and CEO of Owler– the crowd sourced competitive intelligence platform business professionals are using to out-smart their competitive insights and uncover the latest industry news and alerts. Prior to Owler, Jim founded Jigsaw in 2003 and was the CEO until it was acquired by Salesforce in 2010 for $ 175 million.
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Josh Ledgard, co-founder of KickoffLabs to The Top. KickoffLabs is a viral lead generation platform with amazing landing pages, lead capture forms, and e-mail marketing rolled into one seamless package.
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Nathan Putnam, an entrepreneur who’s currently working on a company called Monumetric. Their focus?—help people unlock the earning potential behind online content through data analysis and optimization strategies. As Nathan says, “What we do is not magic. It’s science.”
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Sue Zimmerman, the creator of the online Instagram course Ready, Set, Gram! In addition to her popular instruction, Sue is also a powerful speaker on prominent stages like Social Media Marketing World, and a highly sought after business coach. She's passionate about teaching business owners and marketing professionals how to leverage the power of Instagram to get tangible business results.
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Gavin Zuchlinski, the founder of Acuity Scheduling—the slickest way for businesses to automate and manage their appointments online, allowing clients to schedule themselves. He’s a self-professed tech geek and an espresso-maniac who wholeheartedly believes that business should be totally fun.
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Egbert Ootsburg, onto The Top. Egbert runs a company that designs apps for the scalding-hot consumer drone market. Listen as Egbert talks about his strong ambition to make a difference in the world and how he takes advantage of the drone market.
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Keith Perhac onto The Top. Keith is a marketing expert, developer, and designer. His goal is to take complex things and make them simple, understandable, and actionable for business owners. Today he is the CEO of SegMetrics and DelfiNet, technical marketing agencies that help companies create highly optimized sales funnels.
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Pablo Fuentes, founder and CEO of Proven—a company that specializes in small business HR solutions. In addition to his passion for helping both minorities and women start businesses, Pablo also owns a BA from UCLA and an MBA from Stanford.
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Yuri Elkaim, a nutrition fitness and fat loss expert, onto the podcast. Yuri is a New York Times best-selling author of “The All-Day Energy Diet” and “The All-Day Fat Burning Diet”. He's a former soccer player turned health crusader, and is most famous for helping people who've tried everything to lose weight but enjoyed very little success.
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Matt Tumbleson is the founder and CEO of Teckst – a New York based startup that's transforming customer service by directly connecting consumers with businesses via 2-way text messaging. His own frustrations with lengthy hold times and incompetent customer service representatives are why he decided to launch Teckst. Prior to jumping into entrepreneurship, Matt worked as the Creative and Marketing director of Seamless (now Grubhub), and worked as a graphics journalist at The Miami Herald.
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Johnson Emmanuel the founder and CEO of Clients Attraction, a company that specializes in online marketing strategies engineered to attract big-ticket clients. Listen as Johnson shares his story of starting a business in Nigeria, and how he used his passion for marketing to start chipping his path to the top.
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Pejman Ghadimi, a self-made entrepreneur and best-selling author born in Iran, raised in France, and crushing it in the United States since 1997. Listen as Nathan and Pejman talk bottom-line numbers, exotic cars, and what it takes to build a multimillion dollar business from scratch.
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Matt Schwartz, the president of MJS Executive Search –a 13-year old, New York based retained executive search firm that specializes in placing transformational talent to global Fortune 500 companies. His clients are included but not limited to Pepsi Co, American Express, Fidelity, New York Life, Equinox, and Pitney.
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Sweeney Daniel, a partner at Hustle and Grow and Click Bank University. He launched his first company in high school which lead him to working full time in digital marketing. He decided to leave the corporate grind and is now focused on helping others create their digital business while maintaining a fun lifestyle.
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Michael Litt started his first video company, Redwoods Media, as his undergraduate thesis project. He then evolved with his partner to create another successful video software company, Vidyard. He has learned the value of supportive family and friends throughout his life as an entrepreneur.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – Behind the Cloud
What CEO do you follow? — Mark Benioff
Favorite online tool? — Gmail
Do you get 8 hours of sleep? — I try to.
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? – If you want to be an entrepreneur, surround yourself with people who love and support you. Focus on those relationships.
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01:40 – Nathan introduces Michael
02:15 – He started at the University of Waterloo and Research in Motion
03:00 – He graduated at 25, and the Redwoods Media was built as his undergraduate thesis project
03:50 – He contracted businesses to sponsor their company
04:50 – They were passionate about the video company, and turned down jobs at places like Google
05:30 – Vidyard is a video platform for business
05:50 – They sell that technology to businesses on a monthly basis
06:10 – Average revenue per customer is about $30k
06:35 – They have an inside sales team
07:25 – Four categories of businesses and sales teams
07:50 – 132 people on their team, and they have almost doubled in the last year
08:15 – Growth pains are opportunities to learn
08:55 – Looking at retention instead of churn
09:25 – Gross retention is 95%
09:45 – Net retention is 135%
10:47 – They have raised $70 million in funding
11:00 – Customer acquisition cost is paid back in 1.5 years
11:15 – Average customer acquisition is $40000
11:45 – Customers stay for quite a long time, according to the numbers
13:27 – Why lifetime value is tricky
13:45 – They focus on payback period for their customers
14:25 – Being honest about their business and their numbers for customer acquisition costs
15:10 – They include hard costs, like any work supplies
15:40 – Total customers is private
16:05 – They are looking to triple the business for two years, and then double the business for the next three years
16:40 – It would show their potential to go public
17:00 – Building a fast growing, high-value business
17:25 – Tom Tunguz’s Blog
17:45 – Revenue is private.
18:15 – They broke through $1 million for their first full year of sales
18:45 – Michael has a holiday party every year at his office.
19:00 – Project Christmas has carried throughout their business
19:28 – The Fall is a great time to raise money
19:55 – Connect with Michael at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn
22:20 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Your first business ideas will develop into bigger, better projects.
Be honest about your company and spending.
Surround yourself with people who love and support you as you pursue your entrepreneurial dreams.
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.
Toptal – Great for business people to start building their app
Behind the Cloud - Michael’s favorite business book
Gmail – His favorite tool, besides his own
Tom Tunguz’s Blog – Learn about the best models that public companies use
Connect with Michael at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
Mathilde Collin, CEO and co-founder of Front. Her app has developed email and inbox features meant specifically for teams. Growing up in France, Mathilde realized that being an adult wasn’t fun—that getting a job usually meant a life of misery. She would not settle for that. She knew from the beginning that she had to create a job that she loved, and so Front was born.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? - The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? — Patrick Collison
Favorite online tool? — Front! and Slack.
Do you get 8 hours of sleep? — Yes.
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? – We can be happy at work. Get a job you love.
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01:40 – Nathan introduces Mathilde Collin
02:00 – Front App is an inbox for teams.
02:25 – A SaaS company founded in 2014
02:50 – She started the business when she was 22.
03:05 – She realized a lot of people didn’t like their job, and she wanted to solve that issue for herself.
03:35 – 2015 revenue was $1 million
04:00 – 1210 companies use Front
04:20 – A large variety of company sizes
04:50 – Why they raised millions in capital.
05:25 – Email is complicated, so you need to invest in resources and good engineering.
05:45 – She already had a loan from studying in France.
06:15 – They raised with key people who could help.
06:37 – They wanted to invest in hiring super qualified people.
07:05 – Team of 21 in San Francisco
07:15 – Monthly expenses are about $200k
07:50 – How did you get over the psychological barrier of that red line?
08:20 – Spending money when you have money.
08:35 – A more rational spending plan.
09:05 – She will keep that money in the bank.
09:45 – That extra money has allowed for growth.
10:20 – She has people under her responsibility.
10:55 – She has one cofounder.
11:05 – How they determined equity.
11:15 – An even split for people who will be there for the whole life of the company.
12:05 – They have no marketing team.
12:25 – She publishes content at blog.frontapp.com and @CollinMathilde on Medium and Twitter.
13:10 – Customer lifetime value: Customer churn is 3%
13:35 – Revenue churn is negative.
13:45 – They sell three plans.
14:10 – Selling the upsell versions to new teams in the same companies
15:00 – An inbound sales team
15:15 – Monthly and annual plans
15:35 – Lifetime value is about 33 months, or $6300
16:15 – Valuation was not disclosed
16:45 – Her goal is to make as many people possible happy at this company.
17:20 – They will try to go public eventually.
17:40 – They want to keep their product as it is, which would be difficult if it were acquired.
18:15 – Why customers churn
18:25 – They dislike how often changes happen.
19:05 – They grow 10% each month
19:30 – They would like to hit $300k this year.
19:45 – Connect with Mathilde on Twitter at @CollinMathilde
21:30 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Get a job that you love.
Starting a business is hard—all entrepreneurs go through challenges.
In the early stages of your company, keep perfecting your product.
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.
Toptal – Great for business people to start building their app
blog.frontapp.com and @CollinMathilde on Medium and Twitter – Follow Mathilde and her company!
The Hard Thing About Hard Things – The business book that completely changed Mathilde’s outlook on her business.
Slack – The tool that Mathilde and her team use a ton at Front
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives