Kenny Ewan. He is in charge of the overall strategic direction for WeFarm where he oversees the day-to-day activities of the business. After graduating, he spent 7 years in Peru running an international NGO, specializing in work with indigenous communities. Kenny played the lead role in developing WeFarm, before launching it as a startup in 2015.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Chaos Monkeys
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Slack
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I’m happy to let him make mistakes”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:18 – Nathan introduces Kenny to the show
• 01:49 – WeFarm is a growth focus model
• 02:29 – WeFarm offers their services to farmers
  • 02:37 – WeFarm leads farmers to the sellers and WeFarm will take a small transaction commission
• 03:00 – WeFarm offers information in the space
  • 03:08 – A farmer in Kenya who has no internet access can ask WeFarm a question, through SMS, for free
  • 03:30 – 10-15 people in WeFarm’s network will try to answer the question
  • 03:45 – The people who answer want to share their knowledge about farming
• 04:12 – WeFarm has generated revenue, but they’re still on pre-profit
• 04:20 – WeFarm just closed a seed round for $1.7M
• 04:27 – WeFarm started as an Impact project for Google and they won
  • 04:36 – They used the prize as capital
  • 04:42 – The prize was £500K
• 05:04 – Team size is 20 and is still growing; they’re around the globe
• 05:41 – WeFarm uses radio to connect with more farmers
  • 05:51 – WeFarm partnered with radio stations and invited farmers on
  • 06:00 – 4-5K people were joining WeFarm in just an hour
  • 06:12 – WeFarm also partners with businesses where farmers buy
• 06:45 – WeFarm currently has 140K farmers on their platform
• 06:55 – WeFarm measures activity by the number of users who actively contribute every month
• 07:55 – WeFarm is also available online
• 08:15 – WeFarm has a super active marketplace
• 08:32 – WeFarm doesn’t incentivize people who answer inquiries, just like Quora
• 08:50 – WeFarm’s roadmap this year
• 09:00 – WeFarm has 20 people
• 09:30 – WeFarm already has a couple of commercial contacts with a major retailer in UK
  • 09:48 – “We have validated our revenue sources”
• 10:00 – 2017 target revenue is around $50K
• 11:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. A business does NOT always have to be revenue focused; helping people can be a goal in and of itself.
2. We have a responsibility to help guide those who need it and access those who still do not have the internet.
3. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, but be sure to learn from them.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Tyler Tate. He’s the CEO of Crema.co, the coffee market place. Previously, he co-founded TwigKit, which is an enterprise search software and was the first design lead at Nutshell, which is a SaaS CRM platform. In each case, he used product strategy and design thinking to play its part in envisioning, designing and building products from the ground up. He’s also co-authored the book called Designing the Search Experience which Morgan Kaufmann published in 2013. He’s spoken at numerous conferences. While at TwigKit, he consulted for organizations such as The Financial Times, Thomson-Reuters, Qualcomm, Vodafone, ITV, Rolls-Royce, BASF and Gemalto, helping them design search-driven applications. He’s originally from Alabama, went to University of Kentucky, and spent 7 years in UK. He’s also lived in Seattle and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay area.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Tyler prefers reading blogs at the moment
• What CEO do you follow? – Michael Dubin
• Favorite online tool? — Trello
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Tyler wished he realized earlier how important a network is

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:35 – Nathan introduces Tyler to the show
• 02:41 – In TwigKit, Tyler was selling an expensive software product to large companies
• 03:00 – Tyler learned that he’d rather do something that is more marketing-driven than sales-driven—something that is more consumer-driven than enterprise
• 03:14 – Tyler’s realization in switching to a coffee company from a SaaS business
• 03:28 – At Nutshell, Tyler was the first design hire
• • 03:33 – Nutshell has 3 founders and a CTO
  • 03:53 – Tyler, together with the whole team, was able to build something from the ground up
  • 04:01 – Tyler had some equity in the business
• 04:38 – Tyler had put in $15K to Crema
• 05:05 – Tyler sold his equities back to TwigKit and Nutshell
• 06:03 – Tyler started working with Crema early 2015
• • 06:08 – Tyler did a Kickstarter campaign and made $25K
  • 06:19 – Tyler closed and had an Angel round
  • 06:25 – A total of $325K was raised and $150K came from 500 startups
  • 06:48 – 500 startups had a deal of $150K for 6% which is a standard deal
• 07:21 – Crema is a marketplace for coffee drinkers to subscribe to roast-to-order beans
• • 07:35 – Crema has a platform fee on every order
  • 07:43 – When you buy $18 worth of coffee, Crema takes a $9 platform fee and the other $9 goes to the roaster
  • 07:58 – The price that you pay is almost similar to retail price and the roaster price is above their typical wholesale price
  • 08:15 – The total price includes shipping and other fees
  • 09:00 – $9 is a flat fee no matter the order size
  • 09:46 – Crema’s concept is a single-origin emphasis
  • 10:12 – Crema does the co-production for the roasters
  • 10:24 – Crema has a storytelling team that write journalistic write-ups for their website
• 10:43 – Team size
• 11:06 – Crema currently has 15 roasters
• • 11:11 – With a total of 60 types of coffee beans
• 11:27 – Crema had 750 customers in  January 2017
• • 11:30 – Generated $17K  on the platform
• 11:44 – Crema’s growth is 28% month over month
• • 11:48 – “We’re targeting something like 10x growth”
  • 12:07 – Crema’s growth metric is based on GMV and revenue
• 13:55 – Average cart value is $17 for a typical purchase
• 14:08 – Each box of coffee is shipped individually
• 14:43 – A customer spends an average of $23 a month on the website
• 15:05 – Crema started in Kickstarter in October
• • 15:13 – Crema has been generating organic traffic since then
• 15:48 – Crema has spent $5K for Facebook paid ads
• • 16:06 – CAC is around $20-25 to convert website visitors to subscribers
• 17:02 – Crema ran surveys about people’s coffee drinking preferences
• 17:29 – Crema had sample packs for new customers allowing them to try 4 different types of coffee
• 20:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Shifting from B2B to B2C is a breeze when you really know who you want to target.
• Great storytelling can engage consumers and connect them to the product.
• Do not hesitate to meet people, move around, and build a network for yourself.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Jon Ferrara. He’s in CRM—a relationship management entrepreneur and noted speaker about social media’s effects on sales marketing. He’s reimagined the CRM by building a simply smarter social sales and marketing platform. His most recent venture is called Nimble.com. It’s the first CRM that works for you by building the updated contact data for you and then works with you everywhere you work. He’s best known as the co-founder of GoldMine Software, one of the early pioneers in the Salesforce automation and customer relationship management in software categories for SMBs. He’s recently been recognized by Forbes as one of the Top 10 Social CEOs and Top 10 Social Sales people in the world.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich
• What CEO do you follow? –  Marc Benioff
• Favorite online tool? — Buffer
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep? — 7-8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Not to sweat shit so much”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:17 – Nathan introduces Jon to the show
• 02:13 – There was no Outlook, CRM or Salesforce when Jon had the idea of GoldMine
• • 02:31 – Jon started on $5K with no bank loans and VC
  • 02:35 – Jon ran GoldMine for 10 years, had 5M customers around the globe, sold it and retired at 40
• 02:44 – GoldMine was a software platform
• • 02:55 – GoldMine started as a floppy disk until it became a CD
• 03:28 – Jon started GoldMine in 1989 and sold it in 1999
• • 03:38 – GoldMine passed $70M in annual revenue, with 250 team members worldwide
• 04:00 – ARR wasn’t necessary before when it comes to valuation
• • 04:22 – Jon sold GoldMine for $125M in cash with no strings attached
• 04:55 – A year after GoldMine was sold, Jon was diagnosed with a head tumor
• • 05:07 – “The most important thing you have around you is your health, next is your family, then your passion and business”
  • 05:19 – Jon was 41 when they found the tumor
  • 05:27 – “We are on this planet to grow our souls”
• 05:51 – After the tumor, Jon spent next 10 years of his life with his family and friends, adding value to people
• 06:15 – Jon got into photography and worked as the photographer for USC football for 10 years
• 06:42 – “You need to be your own advocate”
• • 06:56 – Jon found a doctor who developed the technology to have a radiation beam reach the center of your head without touching any vital nerves
  • 07:17 – The tumor disappeared after 7 weeks of radiation treatment
  • 07:42 – The radiation is like burning the seed inside the watermelon without burning the watermelon’s skin
• 08:18 – Jon started in social media in 2006-2008
• • 08:33 – Jon saw that relationship managers are contact managers
  • 08:58 – Jon looked at CRM and saw the gap
  • 09:07 – You have to use salespeople to use CRM
  • 09:08 – “That’s why they’re called salesforce because you force salespeople to use it”
• 09:27 – Nimble’s team was formed in 2010, Alpha in 2011, and they turned the paywall in 2013
• 09:36 – “Just like with GoldMIne, I was early to the idea of an intelligent social relationship manager that works for you”
• 09:57 – Business is social and life is social
• 10:11 – First year revenue
• 10:21 – Jon got their first customer for Nimble the same way he got their first customer for GoldMine:
• • 10:36 – Jon had a trusted advisor for his prospect
  • 10:51 – Jon got his first $50K revenue in GoldMine from resellers
  • 10:56 – Jon grew the $50K by mobilizing writers who write about technology and business
• 11:10 – In 2009-2011, there was no reseller because everything was cloud
• • 11:27 – Jon looked for influencers
• 11:36 – Jon put in his own $3M to the company
• • 11:48 – Jon also got some cash from Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis and others
  • 12:05 – Jon’s money went to the company’s capitalization
• 12:20 – Nimble currently has 100K customers and 10K paying companies
• • 12:31 – An average of 3 seats per company
• 12:36 – Nimble is a SaaS business and is generating 80K website visitors with zero marketing
• • 12:43 – Trial to paid conversion is 20%
• 13:05 – Nimble started at $15 per user per month
• • 13:08 – It recently rolled out to $25 and will have $45 and $65 buckets with a $99 mark automation add on
  • 13:16 – “Sales and marketing should never have been split apart”
  • 14:07 – $200K average MRR
• 14:15 – Gross churn is about 3%
• • 14:22 – “We provide a lot of value and satisfaction to our customers”
• 14:32 – Nimble just rolled with Microsoft Outlook mobile by providing 40M handsets for free
• 15:04 – CAC is really small because they don’t have a large team
• • 15:25 – You don’t need to spend or overspend in order to build a company
  • 15:35 – It is great to find people who want to grow with your help
  • 15:42 – Rather than hiring a sales guy, Jon would rather hire someone who truly cares about the customer experience
• 16:16 – Jon’s team is based in Santa Monica with remote workers in USA and Ukraine
• 16:53 – 2017 target revenue
• 18:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Engage with your customers and add value – don’t always think about the sales.
• Share your passion with people on a daily basis, don’t be afraid to bare your soul and make those connections.
• You don’t need to spend more to build a business – find people who are willing to grow the business with you.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Ben Cantey. He’s a San Francisco entrepreneur and has a passion about solving problems and changing lives through technology. He teaches entrepreneurship and lean methodology at universities and high schools on his free time. He’s launching some bad-ass technology with a handful of math geniuses in a parking space.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Rough Riders
• What CEO do you follow? –  Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Yesware
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 8 1/2
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Execute faster”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:18 – Nathan introduces Ben to the show
• 01:51 – Park Evergreen revolutionizes the way parking is sold and managed at airports
• • 01:55 – Airports currently use a whole stack of services, suppliers and contractors that are outdated
• 02:15 – Park Evergreen uses geolocation technology to bring physical parking online
• • 02:25 – Travelers can find a reserve pay per parking through Park Evergreen’s app
• 02:35 – Park Evergreen is somehow a marketplace
• • 02:49 – Park Evergreen is more focused on the traveler’s experience
  • 02:54 – Ben and his co-founders came from the consulting space
• 03:10 - Park Evergreen started out with customers who wanted to find paid street parking
• • 03:23 – Park Evergreen currently has a couple of deals
  • 03:30 – Park Evergreen started growing their revenue in June
• 03:54 – Ben is just happy that they got a great product market fit
• 04:03 – Most USA airports are now going into modernization projects
• 04:44 – There’s an interesting balance between travelers who prefer to leave their cars and those who prefer to just take an Uber car
• • 04:53 – Park Evergreen’s average customers are business travelers who are gone for only a couple of days
  • 05:18 – The airport modernization includes parking expansion
• 05:54 – Travels tend to get cheaper each year and more and more people are travelling
• 06:02 – The millennials demographic has the most frequent business and pleasure trips
• 06:28 – The parking growth is growing 4-5% per airport, per year
• 06:34 – Park Evergreen was founded in 2016
• • 06:43 – Park Evergreen didn’t want to compete with parking meters and pay machines
  • 07:08 – Park Evergreen was making a couple of thousand a month
  • 07:22 – Park Evergreen made $15K topline
  • 07:33 – Park Evergreen’s biggest cost was for CAC
  • 08:02 – “It’s a tough market, people are used to their options”
  • 08:10 – Park Evergreen pivoted because they’re tired of their mobile apps parking solutions
  • 08:18 – SpotHero and ParkWhiz are the biggest in the space
• 08:28 – Park Evergreen has raised $150K from 500 startups
• 08:43 – Team size is 5
• • 09:01 – The equity is divided by 5 co-founders
  • 09:19 – Park Evergreen is bootstrapped and the 2 co-founders have been building everything for free
  • 09:25 – Ben is in charge of closing deals and doing the strategy
  • 09:40 – It’s a balanced team
  • 10:03 – The team had some contractual work on the side and some have full-time jobs
• 11:11 – Park Evergreen charges a flat fee per space that they manage per month
• • 11:39 – The average is $100 per space
• 11:55 – The average top 10 US airports manage 18K parking spaces
• • 12:00 – Some double or triple 18K
  • 12:10 – Park Evergreen’s market size in terms of market space is over 4M
• 12:50 – When a traveler books his flight, he books his parking space, too
• • 13:06 – Park Evergreen shows the traveler 2 hours before his flight, the fastest route to the airport and to the parking space
  • 13:22 – Park Evergreen can tell you exactly how long it will take a traveler to go from one place to another around the airport
• 13:46 – “I want our travelers to know when they look at their phones in the  morning, before they leave their house, what time will they arrive at the gate, ready to get on the plane”
• 14:20 – Park Evergreen started their user acquisition in March for the contracts
• 14:30 – Park Evergreen is using SMS initially
• 15:08 – “The only way to park is to use Park Evergreen”
• 15:18 – Park Evergreen is doing 500 spaces for their initial pilot
• 15:35 – Park Evergreen’s contracts are on an expansion plan
• 16:16 – As soon as you get to the airport, you can get a Park Evergreen ticket with a code that you will use to text
• • 16:45 – You can pay Park Evergreen ahead of time via text
• 18:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Airport parking is a great space to be in at the moment because of the modernization projects that are on the way.
• To stay competitive in this space, provide the best traveler experience that you can.
• It’s can be quite difficult to broaden people’s understanding of their options, but that does NOT mean you shouldn’t try.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Jim Sweeney. He’s the CEO and one of the founders of Clarify Medical. He began his entrepreneurial journey at Sharp Hospital where he worked full-time delivering hospital supplies while still in high school. He then spent 3 years in the US Army Medical Corps where he ran a remote, medical service dispensary serving 2500 families in Germany. He received a degree in business from San Diego State University. James has founded 12 medical companies including Caremark, Caps, Corum, Bridge Medical, CardioNet and co-founded Owned Outcomes. He’s also led a successful leveraged buyout or LBO with McGaw Labs which he took public and is now owned by BBraun. His financing history includes raising venture capital and expansion capital for his ideas leading to over $25B in exit values of companies he founded.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Zero to One
• What CEO do you follow? –  David Hale
• Favorite online tool? — N/A
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Between 4-6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jim wished he knew “that the government would have the amount of influence on health care that they have, today”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:49 – Nathan introduces Jim to the show
• 02:53 – Clarify Medical has a first-mover advantage in the dermatology space
• • 03:00 – They have well-established treatments for various skin diseases
  • 03:17 – They’ve developed a device that will enable people to self-treat at home, using their smartphones
  • 03:33 – The device will be launched directly to the patients
  • 03:40 – The device is called Clarify Mobile UVB treatment system
• 03:59 – There are over 33M Americans who suffer from skin disease
• 04:21 – The device can be connected through the smartphone
• 04:51 – Jim has raised a little over $2B in venture capital
• 04:55 – Jim had an exit value of $25B for his companies
• 05:06 – There are exits via IPO and sales
• 05:40 – Jim shares why he decided to have an LBO with McGaw Labs
• • 05:56 – Jim had been an employee of the company so he acquired the company with prior knowledge of what their issues were
  • 06:26 – The deal was in mid-October 1990
  • 06:33 – The company’s valuation
  • 07:27 – Jim bought the company with his friends
• 07:47 – The Clarify Mobile UVB treatment system device will sell for $600 or can be leased for $39 per month
• 08:15 – Jim expects to have long relationships with their patients because some of their skin diseases are life-long conditions
• 08:30 – If the device didn’t exist, patients would spend $100 annually for therapeutic drugs which have various side-effects
• 09:30 – Obamacare has allowed Clarify to go directly to the consumers
• 09:43 – Jim thinks the total costs of Obamacare haven’t been exposed
• 10:35 – Jim expects more medical companies will go directly to consumers
• • 10:42 – The bad news is that people will spend more directly from their pockets than in the past
  • 10:50 – The good news is doctors are now seen as customers
  • 11:11 – The solution for healthcare is for patients to be more engaged with their healthcare providers
• 11:33 – Clarify will start generating revenue from the device later this year
• 11:36 – Jim has already raised $6M and is still looking to raise another $12-15M in the next few months
• 12:00 – Jim doesn’t have a scientific explanation on how he came up with the pre-money valuation
• • 12:22 – All of Clarify’s financing at this point is from their pre series A round
• 12:43 – Team size is 12 but will double in the next few months
• • 12:50 – The company is based in San Diego
• 13:00 – Jim can’t disclose the cost of making the device
• • 13:43 – The cost will carry a respectable margin
  • 13:47 – The app will be sold for $9.99 per month, on a subscription basis
• 14:25 – Jim believes that Clarify’s valuation will be into the billions for IPO exits
• 15:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• More healthcare providers are now going directly to consumers and are skipping the third-party service.
• Knowing a company by heart will make it easier for you to make a fair valuation.
• Making your employees a share holder of your company will definitely change their attitude towards the job, leading to a more successful company.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Bill Brice. He’s currently the CEO of AlphaTrust Corporation which he launched in 1998, to capitalize on the sustained long-term shift from paper-based document businesses to fully electronic document processes. Bill is considered as one of the industry’s pioneers and he’s a leading authority of electronic signatures, especially around generating real economic impact and brand enhancement. He served as chairman of the board for the Electronic Signature and Records Association and is currently a member of the board of directors. Before his electronic signatures company, he started his entrepreneurial career, when in college, by co-founding Brice Foods and is chairman and CEO. He grew the company into a global enterprise best known for its chain of frozen yogurt stores. The company grew into 1500 franchise locations and 43 countries with manufacturing operations on 4 different continents. For his work, he was awarded as The Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the International Franchise Association, which is the world’s oldest and largest organizations representing franchising worldwide.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm
• What CEO do you follow? –  N/A
• Favorite online tool? — HubSpot
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “At that time, I wished I would know what happened with the internet before it happened”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:23 – Nathan introduces Bill to the show
• 02:36 – Bill was based in Dallas and that’s where he started his yogurt company
• • 02:57 – Bill’s was the first company to bring frozen yogurt in Texas
  • 03:15 – Frozen yogurt was first popularized in California
  • 03:32 – Bill wanted to pioneer the first operational chain selling frozen yogurt in Texas
• 03:39 – Bill has turned to franchises and now has 1500 franchise locations
• • 04:00 – The first franchise was $150K, $20K franchise fee and 5-6% royalties
• 04:34 – The frozen yogurt company had $150M in revenue
• 04:50 – In 1996, the franchise sold because someone wanted to buy it
• 05:09 – Franchise valuation is similar with other businesses
• 05:31 – The franchise was cash flow multiple
• • 05:42 – 6-10x was the best multiple
• 06:15 – Bill was making a lot of software on the side of the yogurt business
• • 06:53 – Bill was annoyed by the amount of paperwork a business had to go through
  • 07:16 – A computer was about automating business
  • 07:35 – Bill had a completely different team for his yogurt company than his e-signature company
• 07:41 – AlphaTrust is completely privately owned and funded
• • 08:00 – Being privately funded allows them to focus on what they are doing
• 08:20 – AlphaTrust is in a specialized segment of a market
• • 09:10 – AlphaTrust started on the enterprise businesses in the late 90s
  • 09:24 – Some of AlphaTrust’s clients are General Motors, ADP and AT&T
  • 09:36 – Some of the big companies have millions of documents processed yearly
  • 09:42 – AlphaTrust specializes in the high performance processing of documents
  • 09:52 – AlphaTrust’s customers still deploy and embed their software on premise
  • 10:12 – AlphaTrust also operates cloud systems for their customers, but they support the plan and model the customers want
• 10:38 – The pro-side of AlphaTrust is quite small
• • 10:53 – It accounts for only 10-15% of the revenue
  • 10:56 – The rest of the revenue comes from licenses
• 11:50 – Average initial contract value is $50K-$500K
• • 12:00 – Some of the customers pay for perpetual licenses
• 12:40 – AlphaTrust currently has 300 large enterprises
• 13:10 – Team size is 20
• 13:22 – AlphaTrust does direct sales, but they also have partner channels 
• 13:46 – AlphaTrust has 20-30 specialists around the world who are part-timers
• 14:36 – AlphaTrust is happy with how they’re doing at the moment
• 14:59 – Bill MIGHT sell the company to Salesforce if an offer comes
• 16:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• The franchise business is the same as any other business – even when it comes down to the valuation.
• Working with big enterprises can set you apart in a saturated space.
• Saying “yes” to an acquisition isn’t a terrible idea; instead, it’s just a good way to exit.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Tobyn Sowden. He’s the CEO of Redbrick, the second fastest growing software company in Canada and the birthplace of a product called Shift.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – How to Win Friends and Influence People
• What CEO do you follow? –  N/A
• Favorite online tool? — InVision
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I would tell myself technical, all the way”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:39 – Nathan introduces Tobyn to the show
• 02:00 – Profit Guide named Redbrick as the second fastest software company in Canada, by measuring revenue growth
• • 02:25 – Profit Guide measured a whole 5 year period
  • 02:30 – Redbrick had $200K revenue in 2010 and $10-20M in 2015
• 03:00 – Redbrick was launched in 2010
• 03:15 – Redbrick started from an app distribution perspective
• • 03:38 – Redbrick has developed their own tools to track
  • 04:20 – Redbrick’s main software is Deskmetrics, which is integrated into Shift
  • 04:31 – Deskmetrics currently has 500K active users
• 05:00 – Not all who downloads are active users
• • 05:08 – The number of downloads are tracked
  • 05:34 – SDK is a software development kit
• 05:59 – Deskmetrics provides consulting services
• 06:06 – Facebook is one of Deskmetrics’ sources for customer acquisition
• • 06:40 – Redbrick is currently spending around $30K for Facebook paid acquisition
  • 06:54 – Redbrick is working with a team on Facebook and is committed to growing their spending into millions of dollars for growth
• 07:33 – Tobyn shares the idea of Shift
• • 08:07 – Shift had a preview in September and people liked it
  • 08:12 – Shift allows you to switch around your Gmail and google accounts
• 08:51 – Tobyn increased their team size and hired more developers
• 09:08 – Shift is a SaaS business with $20/year subscription fee
• 09:31 – Shift primarily uses Facebook for advertising
• 09:49 – Shift has around 30K installs and 10K active users
• 10:00 – Shift’s free-to-paid conversion rate is around 4-5%
• 10:23 – Shift is 3-months old
• 10:48 – Tobyn needed to decide if they will launch Shift on December 20^th or wait until 2^nd week of January
• 11:16 – Shift is doing great at the moment and there’s definitely a market for it
• 11:40 – Tobyn shares why they decided that Shift be a desktop download
• • 12:53 – Tobyn wants to avoid integrations that will make Shift look like a browser
• 13:15 – Redbrick has 3 parts: the app distribution side, Deskmetrics and Shift
• • 13:35 – The app distribution side is the major revenue stream
  • 13:45 – Tobyn believes that their path is the app distribution side
• 14:16 – Team size is 37 and they’re based in Victoria BC in Vancouver, Canada
• • 14:31 – There are small teams in Poland and Brazil
• 15:12 – Deskmetrics is primarily a desktop software analytics platform
• 16:15 – An average customer pays $500 monthly
• 16:36 – Tobyn was charging per number of users, but they changed it
• 17:14 – Deskmetrics was launched in 2016
• 17:45 – Redbrick has a lot of predictive models that they used in terms of CAC
• 19:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Facebook is one of the best places, at the moment, for paid advertising.
• You can always go and develop more products, but recognize when it’s wise to stick to the path you’re already on.
• Charging per head can at times restrict your customers from using your product to its fullest potential.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Patrick McGinnis. He’s the author of The 10% Entrepreneur which focuses on living your startup dream without leaving your day job, which was just published by Penguin Portfolio. He’s also credited for coining up with the term “fear of missing out”. He’s a graduate of Harvard business school and is living in New York City.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup
• What CEO do you follow? –  Sheryl Sandberg
• Favorite online tool? — Quip
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6-12
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Patrick wished he had more confidence in his abilities and more open to trying new things

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:30 – Nathan introduces Patrick to the show
• 02:10 – Patrick is a Wall Street refugee
• 02:21 – Patrick has his own advisory firm
• • 02:29 – Patrick built up his portfolio of over 20 investments
• 03:04 – Patrick worked with his friend in Real Influence for free
• • 03:14 – They sold $300K-$400K
  • 03:19 – The business didn’t push through and Patrick sold his shares
  • 03:35 – Patrick was 33
• 03:46 – After a year, Patrick’s friend asked him if he was interested in investing in a startup
• • 03:51 – Ipsy has raised $100M
  • 04:08 – Patrick is one of the first investors of Ipsy
  • 04:32 – Ipsy’s co-founder is Michelle Phan
  • 04:49 – Patrick’s friend who is the CEO of Ipsy met Michelle through Funny or Die
  • 05:46 – Michelle’s huge fan base made Ipsy spend zero on CAC
• 06:00 – How Patrick decided to invest in Ipsy
• • 06:03 – Patrick’s friend was already raising a round
  • 06:33 – Patrick’s friend already had a lead
• 06:38 – Patrick started his venture capitalist path in 2000
• • 06:48 – Most of the deals Patrick looks at are simple deals
  • 06:53 – Patrick invested in Ipsy in 2012
• 07:50 – Ipsy is one of Patrick’s most successful investments
• • 08:00 – Another one of his investments was Bluesmart
  • 08:24 – He also invested in Affinity which is a big data company
• 09:04 – How many deals do you have to make to ensure there’s a big exit in the portfolio?
• • 09:12 – When Patrick started investing, he thought of the possible mistakes he could make as an investor
  • 10:03 – As an investor, you have to invest in your area of expertise
  • 10:08 – Second, think of the deal as a commercial deal, even with friends
  • 10:21 – Third, don’t follow other people
  • 10:39 – Stay away from “will-to-be” syndrome
• 11:09 – Patrick was working with AIG’s private equity fund
• 11:41 – Patrick shares why he wrote a book
• • 11:48 – Patrick always talks to people about what he does as an investor
  • 12:12 – As Patrick met with more and more people, he realized that he could actually help people believe in what he does
  • 12:25 – “It’s been a blast actually and I love writing, anyway”
• 12:56 – Patrick shares why he decided to have a publisher rather than self-publish his book
• • 13:02 – Patrick wasn’t a well-known media figure and a publisher would help his credibility
  • 13:12 – Patrick got a great editor
  • 13:24 – Patrick wanted to go global
• 13:34 – Patrick has sold an average of 50K copies
• • 13:40 – A book update is given every 6 months
  • 14:00 – Patrick gets around 10% royalties on sales
  • 14:26 – Patrick’s book is a bestseller in South Korea
• 14:48 – Patrick had an advance of around $100K prior to his book launch
• • 14:58 – Patrick has an agent who is with UTA
  • 15:38 – Patrick met his agent through his friend
• 16:02 – If you are generous to the world, it comes back to you in so many different ways
• 16:25 – “If you want to publish a book, you should know how hard it is”
• • 16:40 – Publishing a book is like running a startup
  • 16:54 – Patrick shared on a couple of podcasts which boosted his sales
  • 17:03 – Patrick’s book is in physical bookstores, too
  • 17:20 – Patrick was also live in CNN Espanol in South America
  • 17:37 – Amazon’s ranking is always updated
  • 17:44 – Patrick also has a group who does social media for him
  • 18:22 – Launching a book is a process
• 18:56 – Patrick has a day job that covers the bills
• 19:12 – “Freelancing is great in terms of flexibility, but you build zero wealth”
• 19:48 – Patrick also invests in commercial real estate
• • 20:04 – Patrick shares how he and his friend get dividends from real estate
• 23:25 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Investing in your friend’s business is a commercial deal, so invest wisely.
• Be prepared—publishing a book is not a walk in the park and involves several processes.
• Freelancing is great in terms of flexibility, but you build zero wealth.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Clate Mask and he has been educating and inspiring entrepreneurs for over a decade. He’s recognized by the small business community as a truly visionary leader. His passion for small business success stems from his personal experience, taking Infusionsoft from a struggling startup to an 8-time Inc. 500 and Inc. 5000 winner. As CEO, he’s leading Infusionsoft on its mission to create and dominate the market of sales and marketing software for small businesses. Under Clate’s leadership, the company has landed 4 rounds of venture capital including a $55M series D led by Bain, with contributions from prior investors including Signal Peak Ventures and Goldman Sachs. He’s also named Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, a Top 100 Small Business Influencer by Small Business Trends, and one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2013 by Goldman Sachs.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm and The Advantage
• What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff
• Favorite online tool? — Thumbtack
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Never
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Clate wished he knew that business, not law, was the path for him AND that building a team and culture is far more fun than making money.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:18 – Nathan introduces Clate to the show
• 02:28 – When you serve small businesses, make sure you have the right target customers
  • 02:35 – There are 27M small businesses
• 03:02 – “You got to get it right. You got to get the market fit”
• 03:20 – Infusionsoft focuses on businesses with 2-25 employees but the sweet spot is 2-10 employees
  • 03:28 – Average customer pay per month is $250-300
• 03:54 – “It’s CRM, marketing automation, sales automation, e-commerce on one suite”
• 04:03 – Majority of Infusionsoft’s revenue is SaaS
• 04:10 – Infusionsoft’s $3.4B payments processed
• 04:36 – Infusionsoft created their own payment solution 2 years ago
  • 05:04 – It triggers all kinds of Infusionsoft’s automation
• 05:50 – Infusionsoft started in 2002, as a software company
  • 05:56 – Infusionsoft pivoted in 2007 and decided to really go for it
  • 06:16 – “We started, like every small business, with no intention to build something big”
• 06:34 – Clate saw how Salesforce moved upfront quickly and that opened up the opportunity for Infusionsoft
  • 06:43 – “Why not be the Quickbooks to sales and marketing software”
• 06:53 – Infusionsoft’s dark days
  • 06:56 – In the first 3 years, every day was a fight for survival
  • 07:43 – The second dark day for Infusionsoft was when their product market fit went off and the churn rate went up to a 8% gross monthly customer churn
  • 08:08 – Infusionsoft had raised $17M when their churn skyrocketed
  • 08:38 – Infusionsoft’s churn rate is usually 2-2.5%
• 09:15 – Infusionsoft has raised a total of $125M and about half was capital for the business
  • 10:00 – “When you create something that’s growing, there’s always a new investor who wants to replace an old investor”
  • 10:27 – When the round becomes “over-subscribed”, you have to take a percentage of what you’ve raised and make it available for your existing shareholders to sell some shares
• 11:09 – Infusionsoft currently has around 600 employees and still continues to grow
• 11:20 – Infusionsoft has around 135K users
• 11:30 – Infusionsoft just completed their 10 year adverse completion
• 11:56 – There are more things coming up for Infusionsoft
• 12:27 – Average MRR
• 13:19 – Clate shares why they haven’t gone public
  • 13:58 – What happens is private money is easier to raise
  • 14:06 – Historically, public valuation was better than private valuation, but that shifted over the years
• 15:00 – When the market changed in 2014, Clate had decided that it’s better to stay private as long as they could
• 15:30 – Infusionsoft is currently between $100M – 150M ARR
• 15:51 – The leverage that Clate pulled to turn their monthly churn
  • 16:10 – Infusionsoft is serious about helping small businesses succeed
  • 16:22 – The breakage model that results in you having a lot of churn
  • 16:45 – Infusionsoft says “no” to thousands of businesses every month
• 17:06 – The challenge when you serve small businesses is you that have to tweak and adjust to get the LTV-CAC ratio right
  • 17:17 – Infusionsoft is currently at $4 LTV for a dollar CAC
  • 17:44 – The LTV-CAC ratio is the number that every SaaS business has to manage well
• 18:15 – It’s better to look at your revenue in unit churn
  • 18:42 – The upfront fee was the number one factor for Infusionsoft’s churn moving from 8% to 2%
• 21:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. When you serve small businesses, make sure you have the RIGHT target customers and be committed to helping your customers.
2. Going public requires a deep understanding of how adaptable you can be in an ever changing market.
3. The LTV-CAC ratio is the number that every SaaS business has to manage well—that’s the trick.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Amarpreet Kalkat. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Frrole, an AI (artificial intelligence) startup that is redefining consumer intelligence. He loves building things, be it product, revenue streams, teams or organizations. 

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kalanick
• Favorite online tool? — Klout
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Amarpreet would tell himself to focus and prioritize

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:22 – Nathan introduces Amarpreet to the show
• 01:50 – Frrole provides consumer intelligence
  • 01:53 – Frrole relies on public data to build insights about the consumers
  • 02:07 – Frrole works with companies’ marketing teams
• 02:35 – eBay and Flipcut are some of Frrole’s customers
• 02:44 – It is crucial for marketing teams to understand their customers
• 02:57 – Frrole works with eBay’s shipping insides team
  • 03:02 – eBay wants to understand their customer’s shipping experience
• 03:34 – Frrole has data partnerships with Twitter and Facebook
  • 03:40 – Frrole has official access to data
• 04:11 – Frrole looks at the attributes and annotations as a guide for the data they need
• 04:30 – Frrole is SaaS business and customers pay them for the insights
• 05:00 – Average customer pay per month is around $32K per year
• 05:28 – “Personally, I don’t believe in locking customers in”
• 05:37 – Frrole has a 30-day walk out clause
• 05:46 – Most of Frrole’s customers pay quarterly
• 06:08 – Frrole started as a B2C in the news discovery product, in 2012
  • 06:14 – In 2014, Frrole pivoted to a B2B model
• 06:46 – Frrole currently has 13 team members
  • 06:52 – The team is in Bangalore and Amarpreet goes back and forth between Bangalore and San Francisco
  • 07:11 – Amarpreet is currently in San Francisco looking for a sales guy
  • 07:25 – Amarpreet ideally looks for a co-founder kind of role
  • 07:39 – Amarpreet is willing to give 5-10% equity
• 07:49 – Frrole has raised a couple of small angel rounds
  • 08:00 – Frrole has raised a total of $250K
• 08:05 – Frrole currently has 18 paying customers
• 08:23 – Average MRR
• 08:45 – Average customer churn
• 09:36 – Frrole has 1 sales guy in Bangalore
• 09:50 – CAC
  • 10:15 – Frrole spends $500-1K a month for paid marketing
• 10:39 – Frrole is recently experimenting with LinkedIn for marketing
  • 11:18 – Frrole sponsors an email list and a banner ad
  • 11:28 – It worked out okay
• 12:00 – Frrole is currently breaking even
  • 12:10 – Salaries in Bangalore are way less than in the USA
  • 12:26 – The best web developer in India would cost around $30K
• 13:58 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Customers will use your product if they see the value – locking in is not always necessary.
2. Marketing people need to dig deeper to understand and serve their customers well.
3. Know what your priorities are and focus in.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Amit Shanbhag. He bootstrapped RocketReach from 0 to over 300K registered users in its first year. RocketReach and RocketReach API are trusted by some of the largest companies on the planet like Apple, Google, Chase and Morgan Stanley—just to name a few. He has more than a dozen patents and has started his professional life writing code for geostationary satellites. He’s also a judge for the MIT $100K competition and hopes to invest more time and money back into the startup ecosystem.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – N/A
• What CEO do you follow? – Sundar Pichai
• Favorite online tool? — Google Search
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 4-5
• If you could let your 20-year old self know one thing, what would it be? – Amit would tell the young ones to take risks, give everything you’re doing a good shot, and that worrying isn’t productive

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:28 – Nathan introduces Amit to the show
• 02:08 – Amit was in Episode 465 and just passed 100K paying customers
• 03:03 – RocketReach has 300K signup users
• 03:31 – RocketReach has doubled its growth
• 04:00 – “We tried to go more into the lead generation space”
• 04:21 – The end customers hold RocketReach responsible for higher quality data, which is out of their control
• 05:04 – RocketReach is similar to LeadGenius
• 05:10 – LeadGenius charges higher for their data
  • 05:48 – LeadGenius uses a combination of people and software to gather data
• 05:56 – Amit wants RocketReach to rely purely on software, without human intervention
• 06:25 – The other problem with the lead generation space is when the users don’t follow up with the leads generated for them, then put the blame on RocketReach for not having quality leads
  • 06:51 – Amit isn’t sure if Lead Genius is doing something about this problem
• 07:36 – CAC is quite high
• 07:52 – The lead generation part of RocketReach hasn’t really piloted
• 08:17 – RocketReach was getting $3K – 7K per delivery set, but the retention rate is low
• 09:00 – RocketReach is using a lot of open APIs like AngelList and Crunchbase
• 10:17 – Most of the APIs that RocketReach uses are paid APIs
• 10:55 – Amit has decided that RocketReach will not continue down the lead generation path
• 11:06 – Amit wants customers to think of RocketReach as a productivity tool that is accessible on their browsers
  • 11:26 – “We wanted to become more of a de facto productivity tool for sales”
  • 11:33 – RocketReach focuses on features that can make a team more productive
• 12:17 – RocketReach doesn’t have the self-serve team feature on their website, at the moment
• 12:57 – RocketReach currently has 7 team members and is still bootstrapped
• 13:02 – RocketReach has one of the highest revenues per employee in the lead generation space
• 13:12 – If RocketReach had continued with the lead generation model, it would have made sense to raise
• 13:25 – RocketReach is trying to scale without hiring a sales team
• 14:20 – RocketReach has an average of $70 monthly RPU
  • 14:30 – But the number of paying users is complicated
• 15:25 – RocketReach’s 120K users mentioned in Episode 465 is the number of registered users
• 16:13 – Amit doesn’t see the need to reveal the number of paying customers
  • 17:18 – Customers are paying anywhere from 1K-50K
• 17:42 – Gross customer monthly churn is 7%
  • 17:53 – The churn has gone down a bit
• 18:56 – RocketReach has 2 different revenue streams
• 20:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. The lead generation space isn’t as easy as it seems.
2. It IS possible to stay bootstrapped while, at the same time, scaling your business.
3. Take risks, give your best shot, and worry less!

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

David Tavor. He has more than 20 years of experience as a general manager and founder of Biotech Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Company. He served as a fighter pilot and a commander in the Israeli Air Force and retired with the rank of a colonel. Mr. Tavor holds an MA degree in political science and national defense studies and MBA studies.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Born to Life
• What CEO do you follow? – Steve Jobs
• Favorite online tool? — David’s common sense
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— About 3 or 4
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Lean on yourself”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:15 – Nathan introduces David to the show
• 02:04 – ParaSonic develops an ultra-sonic bomb that destroys lice and lice eggs
• 03:39 – ParaSonic developed a comb that treats lice in just one stroke of the comb
  • 03:50 – The clinical trial was just completed and it was a success
• 04:52 – ParaSonic started in 2014
  • 05:08 – The company was established within a technological incubator
  • 05:16 – The incubator has 23% equity
  • 05:45 – The incubator had put in $600K
• 05:51 – ParaSonic has raised an additional $1.6M
  • 05:56 – ParaSonic is also in the process of raising $2M
  • 06:28 – The rounds are equity rounds
• 07:28 – David’s wife, Dana, is also part of the company
• 08:11 – ParaSonic has 5 team members who are mostly engineers
• 08:46 – The comb is going to be an over-the-counter product
• 09:05 – There will be 3 types of combs
  • 09:25 – The comb’s bristles are disposable
• 10:17 – David is also a chairman of 2 other companies
  • 10:46 – One company developed a toothbrush where you can see your plaque through an app while you’re brushing
• 12:17 – David is a freelancer for Colgate
• 13:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Developing a product in an industry that you are already familiar with is best for you.
2. Consumers will believe in your product when you use the product yourself.
3. Trust and lean on yourself.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Alessio Alionco. He’s the founder and CEO of Pipefy, which is part of 500 Startups. He’s a passionate product manager.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup
• What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin
• Favorite online tool? — Yesware and Salesforce
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Alessio would tell himself to be aggressive with his goals

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:56 – Nathan introduces Alessio to the show
• 02:12 – Pipefy is a workflow cooperation software
• • 02:21 – Alessio got Pipefy’s idea from his previous company
  • 02:36 – Alessio uses a CRM to manage Pipefy
  • 02:45 – Pipefy has a dozen of processes
• 03:12 – “We coordinate people’s work”
• 03:36 – Pipefy provides guidelines for a smooth, business process
• 03:48 – Pipefy is more of a people coordination solution and Zapier is similar to IFTTT
• 04:00 – Pipefy charges per user, per month
• 04:10 – Average customer fee is $200/month
• 04:20 – Pipefy started at the end of 2014
• • 04:26 – Pipefy had its beta
  • 04:36 – Pipefy released pre-signups in April 2015
  • 04:51 – Pipefy became one of the most voted products of the day
• 05:23 – There was no revenue in 2015
• 05:32 – Pipefy started charging in August 2016
• 05:47 – Pipefy now has more than 400 paying customers
• 06:00 – Average MRR
• 06:54 – Pipefy offered a special price for customers who renew their subscriptions
• 07:00 – Pipefy has more than 60K customers who use them for free
• • 07:24 – Only a small portion of the customers converted
  • 07:40 – SMBs don’t have business processes in place and aren’t willing to pay for one
  • 08:06 – Pipefy wants to focus on companies that are close to being considered enterprise companies
• 08:42 – Pipefy has raised a seed round of $2.2M
• • 08:50 – Some of the investors are Zendesk’s founders, Valour Capital, Redpoint Ventures, FundersClub and AngelList
  • 09:06 – Pipefy has raised a total of $2.6M
• 09:13 – Team size is 33
• • 09:32 – 27 are in Brazil and 6 are in San Francisco
  • 09:55 – Pipefy is still hiring more people
• 10:00 – CAC
• • 10:30 – Overall CAC is around $900 per company
• 10:50 – LTV is still hard to predict
• 11:34 – Pipefy’s per seat pricing
• 12:10 – Pipefy negotiates deals with companies with over 10K employees
• 12:33 – 2017 revenue goal
• 12:50 – “It’s really a huge funnel to raise the seed round”
• • 13:00 – The series A dynamic is completely different
• 13:26 – 2016 total revenue
• 14:00 – Pipefy is aiming for a $200K MRR which is 10x the growth
• 16:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• The best time to switch to a paid version of your product requires careful consideration to ensure the conversion takes place.
• Some SMBs rely on free business software and services for their processes—therefore, you may need to adjust your target audience.
• Be aggressive with your goals and just go for it.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Christopher Gibson. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company leveraging the latest automation, computation and biological tools to perform drug discovery at scale. Chris holds a BS in bioengineering, a BA in managerial studies, and a bioengineering PhD from the University of Utah.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? –  Perry Fell
• Favorite online tool? — Slack
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 5.3 to 5.4
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Chris wished he knew where he was going to go so he could get to where he is now, faster

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:42 – Nathan introduces Chris to the show
• 02:12 – Recursion shortcuts the long, arduous path of drug discovery into the market
• • 02:24 – Recursion combines the best elements of biology, automation, and computation
• 02:34 – Recursion partners with large pharmaceutical companies
• 02:45 – Recursion partnered with Sanofi Genzyme
• • 02:51 – Sanofi had drugs that didn’t end up in the market
• 03:10 – The challenges involved in being target-based
• 04:00 – Recursion earns from partnerships and royalties
• • 04:20 – Recursion also has an internal pipeline for the drugs that they’ve developed themselves
  • 04:43 – Recursion doesn’t earn from the internal pipeline
• 05:51 – Recursion and what they receive from their partners
• • 06:28 – There are partnerships with very, little upfront
  • 06:34 – There are partnerships that have 8 figures, upfront
  • 06:46 – The number of scientists that will work on the drug is also considered
  • 07:22 – If Recursion is successful with their deals, they get royalties
  • 08:38 – The royalties’ lifeline
• 08:56 – Recursion has 40 people 
• 09:25 – Recursion was launched in 2013
• • 09:34 – They sat in their office until January 2014
• 10:01 – Chris was part of a program where he was paid a stipend, so he broke even
• 10:20 – Chris’ parents were excited about his PhD
• 10:37 – Recursion has raised $19M in equity and $5M non-diluted from grants and private foundations
• 11:28 – Recursion’s valuation as a platform company
• • 12:14 – If Recursion will be successful, they will impact the society in a big way
  • 12:41 – It is vision-based
• 12:54 – First year revenue was 6 figures
• 13:12 – “Our deals have been strategic in terms of the way we put them together”
• 13:45 – 2017 target
• 16:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Different sources of revenue benefit a company.
• The valuation of your company depends on how your company is currently performing and how well they will perform in the industry.
• First year revenue isn’t always nil.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Gregg Freishtat. He’s a technology executive with over 20 years of experience leading innovative and transformative companies. He founded 4 venture-backed startups, all of which had successful exits and is now building a company called SalesWise. He’s deeply rooted in venture capital and the management of internet technology companies having led several through acquisitions. He’s also handled developing and disruptive technologies, convergence of telecom plus internet, personal finance and online banking, web-based analytics and digital media, such as online marketing and currently relationship intelligence.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Good to Great
• What CEO do you follow? –  Mark Benioff
• Favorite online tool? –  FullStory
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Don’t sell your first company for $20M, when you can sell it for $50M”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:18 – Nathan introduces Gregg to the show
• 01:59 – SalesWise is a business relationship intelligence platform
• • 02:03 – SalesWise helps sales leaders gain visibility of the most important relationships they have
• 02:17 – SalesWise is a SaaS company, but doesn’t charge per seat
• • 02:21 – SalesWise believes in democratizing data
  • 02:31 – SalesWise prices based on the company size
• 02:52 – Average customer pay per month
• • 02:53 – $500/month for entry level companies with less than 100 employees
  • 03:00 – A company with 2K employees pays $2500 a month
• 03:11 – SalesWise was founded in 2015 and their current product was launched 4 months ago
• 03:33 – Gregg sold his last company to Outbrain
• 04:23 – SalesWise was bootstrapped for 6-8 months
• 04:50 – Gregg has raised a total of just over $3M
• • 04:58 – All priced rounds
  • 05:02 – Gregg’s initial capital was a convertible note
• 05:12 – SalesWise has 12 team members and is currently hiring sales and marketing people
• 05:46 – SalesWise’s current number of customers
• 06:00 – Average MRR
• 06:10 – The whole team is based in the Atlanta Tech Village
• 06:30 – Anticipated customer churn
• 07:16 – Some of SalesWise’s competitors are Salesforce and Xero
• • 08:17 – The guys in the BI space, like Domo and Tableau
• 08:43 – SalesWise isn’t into web scraping
• 08:38 – SalesWise uses Clearbit
• 08:55 – SalesWise is breaking the linear relationship you have with email
• 09:29 – SalesWise walked directly into the APIs of Salesforce and  Gmail
• 10:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Use your frustration as motivation to make things better.
• Keep building companies – you’re constantly learning and contributing to the industry while doing so.
• Don’t settle for less or devalue yourself and your company – reach beyond your expectations.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Matthieu Vaxelaire. He’s the CEO of Mention where he moves all Trello cards to the right and closes deals. He splits his time between Paris and New York City. 

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? –  Rand Fishkin
• Favorite online tool? — Hull
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Do more things and read less as you learn much more by doing than reading”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:17 – Nathan introduces Matt to the show
• 01:37 – Mention is Google Alert on steroids
• 01:51 – Mention is a SaaS business
• 02:05 – Mention has different segments of customers
• • 02:08 – The SME customers pay an average of $65 monthly
  • 02:13 – The mid-market customers pay an average of $400 monthly
• 02:25 – Average customer pay per month
• 03:20 – Most of Mention’s customers don’t like sharing their information
• 03:40 – Ogilvy uses Mention to track the campaigns they’re building for their clients
• 04:17 – Mention is also an inferential tool
• 04:49 – Mention raised capital at an early stage
• • 05:03 – Mention raised a total of $500K
• 05:11 – There are 45 people on the team and 10 are in NY, the rest are in Paris
• 05:50 – Prior to Mention, Matt worked at eFounders which is a startup studio
• • 05:57 – Mention was one of the startups built by eFounders
• 06:20 – Mention has over 600K users and over 4K paying customers per month
• 06:42 – Mention’s free version
• 07:20 – Mention uses a number of features
• 07:53 – There’s no touch sales in the SME market
• • 08:01 – The mid-market is inside-sales driven
  • 08:15 – There are 2 groups of inside-sales teams: the inbound and outbound with 6 people in each group
• 08:50 – Average MRR
• 09:28 – Mention is more focused on gross MRR churn
• • 09:35 – SME gross churn is 2%
  • 10:43 – Mention is almost in a negative net churn
• 11:20 – Mention has an average of 10K signups per month
• 11:47 – Mention is currently spending $5-10K on paid advertising
• • 12:04 – Mention is exploring other advertising options like G2 Crowd
  • 12:20 – Mention’s first trial result with G2 Crowd isn’t that encouraging
• 12:44 – Mention uses a strong open-content strategy to drive people to their website
• 13:17 – CAC
• • 14:00 – Matt is willing to spend up to $1K to generate new mid-market customers
• 14:17 – 2017 goal
• • 14:58 – Mention is currently in the process of raising
  • 15:07 – An $800K MRR by the end of December 2017 is a good number
• 17:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Sometimes, you got to spend to acquire those new customers.
• Paid advertising isn’t the only solution to drive traffic to your site.
• Get out there and start moving—you learn more by doing than by reading.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

In Episode #629, Nathan interviews Jennifer Reyna. She’s got a lot of energy and more importantly, she studied business creation and development in Mexico. She’s created 3 startups so far, Agri DeliCo which is a socio-company, Brain Fusion which is embedded in software development, and Gaszen or gas management. They’ve raised over $650K in Mexico and have developed their own working product. She’s a mother, lover, sister, and daughter that enjoys her life and lives with zero regrets. She said, after all, there’s only one life and she’s in a constant pursuit of the best version of herself.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Lean Startup
• What CEO do you follow? –  Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Slack
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “That hard work can make everything happen for sure”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:34 – Nathan introduces Jennifer Reyna to the show
• 02:22 – Jenny realized that people complain about their gas
• • 02:38 – Jenny created a device that works with stationary tanks
  • 02:48 – Gaszen has an application where the consumer can see his gas consumption, statistics, and choose the best gas supplier
  • 02:59 – Gaszen monetizes through selling information to gas suppliers
  • 03:08 – Gaszen also monetizes from a consumer who wants automation
• 03:34 – Gaszen isn’t in the market yet and is still finishing its development
• • 03:41 – Gaszen will start selling in April
  • 03:43 – Gaszen already approached gas suppliers and has pre-ordered from them
• 03:57 – There are already 2 gas suppliers who have bought from Gaszen
• 04:05 – Gaszen also has real estate clients
• • 04:31 – Gaszen has partnered with 3 real estate firms
  • 04:35 – Gaszen is currently in discussion with 15 more real estate firms in Mexico
• 04:48 – The firm buys the device for $77
• • 04:59 –The device will go directly to the buyer of the house
• 05:21 – Gas suppliers get a discounted price for buying the device in bulk
• 05:48 – Mexico has problems with gas suppliers giving updates
• 06:08 – Each gas supplier bought 5k units of the device
• • 06:19 – The amount per piece will be $50
• 06:38 – Having clients before the actual launch of the product is good for Gaszen
• 06:49 – Gaszen’s first Kickstarter
• • 07:07 – Gaszen raised 80K Mexican peso
  • 07:19 – Gaszen had 111 backers
• 07:41 – Gaszen is B2B focused
• 07:48 – Gaszen has raised their first seed round with a total of $350K
• • 08:05 – It was an equity round
• 08:14 – Gaszen started 2 years ago
• 08:26 – Gaszen had Angel investors and won the biggest Hackathon in the world
• • 08:47 – Gaszen raised $300k with Angel investors
• 09:13 – From the gas suppliers, Gaszen charges after the 6-month trial, a monthly fee is charged per device or per device and user
• 09:32 – Gaszen charges 9 Mexican pesos per automated service
• 09:59 – Gaszen has no MRR currently
• 10:23 – The team has 5 people in management and 3 junior engineers
• • 10:43 – The team is based in León Guanajuato, México
• 11:03 – It costs Gaszen $36 to make the device
• • 11:30 – The whole device is made in Mexico
• 11:43 – The volume needed per year is 50K units in order to get a better price
• 12:13 – Gaszen wants to keep manufacturing in Mexico, if possible
• 13:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Look at the most common problem and create a solution.
• If you can keep sourcing and manufacturing locally and with a good price, the better.
• Keep at it—hard work definitely pays off.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

In Episode #628, Nathan interviews Iddo Gino. He’s the CEO and co-founder of RapidAPI which he founded when he was 16 years old. He’s listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list and previously, he was the co-organizer at Hacking Gen Y. Originally from Israel, Iddo, currently resides in San Francisco, California where he runs RapidAPI and runs JavaScript projects on the side.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? –  Stewart Butterfield
• Favorite online tool? — GitHub
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep? — 6-7 hours
• If you could let your 10-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wish I knew what I didn’t know back then”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:22 – Nathan introduces Iddo to the show
• 01:57 – RapidAPI let developers find APIs online
• 02:09 – RapidAPI has a marketplace model where developers can pay for the APIs
• 02:16 – RapidAPI’s processing fee is from 10% - 25%
• • 02:30 – The fee depends on the API vendor
• 02:46 – RapidAPI is like a point connection for developers to find APIs
• 02:55 – Iddo was part of Hacking Gen Y
• • 03:09 – Iddo realized how powerful APIs were while he was at Hacking Gen Y
• 03:18 – Iddo created the first version of RapidAPI
• 03:41 – Together with Iddo is his co-founder, Mickey Haslavsky
• 03:49 – Team size is 20
• 03:58 – The engineering team is in Israel and marketing and sales teams are in San Francisco
• 04:10 – Developers’ salaries in Israel
• 04:34 – RapidAPI just announced their seed round in November
• • 04:44 – Total amount raised was $3.5M and an equity round
• 05:00 – RapidAPI started as an open-source project
• 05:40 – There are 148K apps or projects that have used Slack in RapidAPI 
• 05:54 – Slack is a free API and the service is free, but there are paid APIs
• 06:43 – Average MRR
• 07:06 – The fee is charged from the API and not the consumer
• 07:16 – Any consumer transaction in RapidAPI is free
• 07:31 – One of the most popular paid APIs is Twilio
• 08:01 – If someone connects to Twilio API through RapidAPI, that’s when RapidAPI takes the processing fee
• 08:31 – “RapidAPI is all about neighboring developers to connect with APIs”
• 08:40 – RapidAPI will soon open a facility for developers
• 09:12 – Iddo volunteered for Hacking Gen Y and helped Hackathons
• 09:21 – Iddo was working on creating apps and websites prior to RapidAPI
• 09:36 – Iddo is currently 19 and his parents are just excited for him and what he does
• 09:54 – Iddo still thinks of going back to college, but is currently enjoying RapidAPI’s success at the moment
• 11:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• APIs are powerful and having a one point connection is beneficial for the developers.
• In the process of helping people, you also learn from them.
• Being an entrepreneur at an early age opens you up to the opportunity to learn more.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

In Episode #627, Nathan interviews Mark Mader. He’s the CEO of Smartsheet. He’s passionate about delivering superior, customer experiences. Mark strives to find innovative ways for customers to collaborate more intelligently using the Smartsheet platform and its partner ecosystem. Prior to Smartsheet, Mark served as SVP of Global Services for Onyx Software, leading the consulting and consumer operation team in America, Europe and Asia. In 2015, he was recognized as Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of Technology for the Pacific NorthWest.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Play Bigger
• What CEO do you follow? –  Stat Mandella
• Favorite online tool? — Tripit
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20-year old self know one thing, what would it be? – “You tell me what the major trends are in the next 3 decades, in tech, and I would make you a lot of money”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:40 – Nathan introduces Mark to the show
• 02:21 – Smartsheet is a software SaaS company
• 02:27 – The people who subscribe to Smartsheet are teams and enterprise teams
• 02:47 – Smartsheet is similar to Trello’s space but in the enterprise class
• • 02:57 – Smartsheet has everything from time tracking to other things that are more diverse in nature
• 03:23 – Smartsheet serves 65K distinct brands on a paid basis
• 03:30 – Each brand pays an average of $1K annually
• • 03:36 – The range is  $200 to $1.6M annually
• 04:08 – Average MRR is $5.4M
• 04:20 – Smartsheet has been growing really well for the past 4 years
• • 04:43 – “As you grow bigger, the gross rate is more challenging”
• 04:47 – Smartsheet isn’t only focused on getting new customers, but on helping their customers grow as well
• 05:23 – 2016 revenue
• 05:37 – 2017 target ARR
• 06:10 – First year revenue was zero
• 06:37 – Smartsheet’s promise didn’t change, but how they brought the product to the market changed dramatically
• • 06:55 – 60% of Smartsheet’s revenue came from customers who learned about Smartsheet organically
• 07:18 – Smartsheet’s first million ARR was in 2010
• 08:02 – Smartsheet has raised a total of $70M
• 08:16 – Mark feels that they have a really good platform
• 08:21 – Team size
• 08:55 – Have the balance sheet in your model if you want to invest more this year
• 09:06 – Smartsheet is still trying to focus on efficiency in their growth model
• 09:34 – Smartsheet’s current status is that they have the decision to slow their growth or drive profit overnight
• 09:57 – “Control your own destiny”
• 10:06 – Smartsheet is currently not cash flow positive, but still a healthy business
• 10:20 – Smartsheet is based in Seattle, Washington and will have an office in Boston
• 10:48 – Smartsheet has a diverse funnel
• • 11:02 – Smartsheet spends millions of dollars in paid advertising a year
• 11:34 – One of Smartsheet’s keys to growth is to go where the action is
• • 11:39 – “Dominate in the world of collaborative, work management and partner effectively with the tools people use and love”
  • 11:50 – “Partner with the places where heat exists”
  • 12:08 – It’s about having an ecosystem mindset
• 12:30 – Gross customer churn
• 13:17 – Smartsheet has a broad population service
• 13:31 – “The key to sustain long-term growth is not just keeping up, but expanding”
• 13:59 – Smartsheet can still grow by 30% in 2017, without new customers
• 14:17 – Smartsheet charges the people who create new work in their application
• 15:00 – Smartsheet’s safe LTV
• • 15:25 – Smartsheet looks at their specific sources and campaigns
• 16:06 – Smartsheet’s cohort analysis
• 17:22 – Smartsheet’s last round of raising was in 2014
• 19:16 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Focus not only on acquiring new customers, but helping your current customers to grow their company.
• The key to sustaining long-term growth is not just keeping up, but expanding.
• Dominate in the world of collaborative, work management and partner effectively with the tools people use and love.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

In Episode #626, Nathan interviews Derek Thompson. He’s a Senior Editor at The Atlantic, one of the biggest media companies out there. His first book, Hit Makers, is about the science of hits, pop culture, and technology and why people like what they like. He currently resides in New York.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Homo Deus
• What CEO do you follow? –  Mark Zuckerberg
• Favorite online tool? — Evernote
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Take more risks because people are fundamentally resilient and can handle the downside of those risks”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:40 – Nathan introduces Derek to the show
• 02:15 – The reason people go into journalism is because they seek answers to questions
• 02:21 – For Derek, the best reason to write a book was to answer questions
• • 02:29 – Derek loved writing about what people like
• 02:33 – People say a book has to have an “elevator pitch”
• • 02:39 – Books are more of a broken elevator
• 03:36 – “Creativity is the ability to come up with surprising answers to familiar problems”
• 04:36 – Derek wrote his book to allow himself the opportunity to be curious about anything he found interesting
• 05:00 – Derek worked with Penguin Publishing
• • 05:10 – Derek had an agent, Dell Ross, who was Derek’s proposal doctor
  • 05:35 – Derek and his agent sent the proposal to every publisher they could reach
  • 05:43 – Derek also talked directly to publishers
  • 06:06 – There are a lot of different audiences for a single book
  • 06:10 – Derek’s agent was his first audience member
• 06:18 – Derek picked his agent because she’s unsentimentally intelligent and has a motherly approach
• 07:27 – Hit Makers came out in February 2017
• 08:08 – The rating in Amazon was quite high for a first-time book writer
• 08:40 – “Self-publishing is riskier”
• 09:15 – The average amount an author gets for the book sales
• 10:30 – Derek hasn’t talked about his advance with his agent
• • 10:58 – The delta was probably about 2X
• 11:11 – There are publishers who believed that Derek’s book wouldn’t work at all
• 11:20 – Almost all book proposals from first-time authors are rejected and the best example of this is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter
• 12:46 – “The future of popularity is a very tricky business”
• 13:13 – The easiest metaphor for the science of popularity is the weather
• 14:09 – One of the theses in the book was to ask the question: is virality a myth?
• 16:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Creativity is the ability to come up with surprising answers to familiar problems.
• Most book proposals from first-time authors are rejected, but there will be that ONE who will believe in you.
• People are fundamentally resilient, so TAKE that risk – the regrets of not taking that risk will be more difficult to handle.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

In Episode #625, Nathan interviews Josh McCarter. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Booker Software, a leading business management and marketing solution serving over 10,000 health and beauty businesses. Josh has served in a variety of senior executive board roles at various technology companies including Arbitech, Spafinder and Autobytel.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Make Big Happen
• What CEO do you follow? –  Steve Case, author of The Third Wave
• Favorite online tool? — OpenTable
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Startups are a blast, but they are not easy”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:23 – Nathan introduces Josh to the show
• 01:59 – Booker is a business management and marketing solution for health and wellness businesses
• • 02:08 – Booker is like OpenTable
  • 02:16 – Booker does everything for a business to run
• 02:31 – Booker gains revenue from their subscriptions averaging $150-250 monthly
• • 02:48 – Booker also has merchant processing
  • 02:53 – Booker also sells its add-on product, Frederick
• 03:50 – Josh started to focus on the spa industry because of the technology from his previous company
• 04:25 – “It’s important to understand what type of customers you serve best”
• 05:31 – Josh shares how he spun out of business in his previous company
• • 06:00 – Make sure you have the right type of structure when you spin out a business
  • 06:10 – Give preferences to the shareholders
  • 06:18 – It took Josh 6-9 months to get all the right structures and licensing in place
• 06:30 – Josh had a series A for $150K in 2011
• 06:42 – Spafinder had put in the initial capital for Booker
• 07:17 – Booker’s current team size is around 200
• 07:26 – Booker has raised a total of a million
• 07:47 – You have to do a proper valuation for a spin out
• 08:30 – First year revenue
• 09:00 – Booker is currently at 10K locations
• • 09:20 – There is a fee per location
  • 09:34 – A company who has more locations pays more
• 10:05 – Average MRR
• 10:25 – Booker does a lot of upselling and retention
• • 10:41 – Booker makes sure that they keep their existing customers happy
  • 10:50 – “You’ve got to focus on upsell opportunities”
  • 11:20 – Booker’s merchant processing
  • 11:37 – Online booking for spas is more common
• 11:58 – First Data is Booker’s newest investor
• 12:54 – Average total transactions
• 13:15 – Josh is currently not in any acquisition talks and isn’t raising a round
• • 13:23 –“We’ve got some good runway”
• 14:05 – Gross customer churn
• • 14:30 – “50% of our churn is the people who ran out of business”
  • 14:39 – Failure rate of the SMB market is quite high
• 15:00 – CAC
• • 15:05 – Most SMBs in SaaS and marketing business spend $1500-3500 to acquire new customers
• 15:40 – Frederick came to Booker for partnership
• • 16:10 – Frederick was able to look at how SMBs are retaining their customers
  • 17:22 – Frederick was able to get high conversion and retention metrics
  • 18:14 – Frederick is integrated heavily into Booker
• 18:38 – Team location
• 20:16 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• It’s important to understand what type of customers you serve best.
• Make sure you have the right type of structure in place when you spin out a business.
• Startups are a blast, but they’re definitely not easy—be willing to put in the work.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Dave Currie. He’s an entrepreneur-leader in the sales intelligence space, specifically for advertising, media, and the tech industry. Since 2014, he’s directed the company on a rapid innovation and growth trajectory. They are recognized by their customers and the industry as one of the largest, agile, fast-growing, private companies and the best place to work in America—the company, TheListInc.com.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? –  Kyle Porter
• Favorite online tool? — N/A
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Absolutely
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Balance is as important right now as you thought about it then. Being healthy is #1. Work and everything fall into place when you got your priorities stacked up the right way”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:40 – Nathan introduces Dave to the show
• 03:20 – The List is also known from their other products
• • 03:34 – Winmo was launched last year
  • 03:41 – Winmo is the lead brand
• 03:52 – Winmo is a subscription-based, sales intelligence platform
• 04:01 – Winmo provides sales intelligence to national advertisers
• 04:28 – Winmo has an annual subscription
• 04:45 – Annual subscription increases the valuation
• 04:55 – Winmo has been completely bootstrapped since day 1
• 05:09 – The List started in 1995 and went online in the early 2000s
• 05:25 – Dave came into The List in 2005
• 05:45 – The List is a joint venture with a company in the UK
• 06:08 – The team currently has 85 members
• 06:27 – Average annual customer pay
• • 06:38 – Winmo initially charges $400-500 per user annually
• 07:07 – CAC
• • 07:14 – “We’re very deliberate with our marketing efforts”
  • 07:24 – 2014 paid marketing expenditure was around $100K, but was toned down currently to $50K
  • 08:03 – The $50K would go to Google AdWords and some retargeting
  • 08:17 – Dave’s target CAC
  • 08:50 – Dave’s looking into 25% conversion rate
• 09:17 – Winmo has 4 targets in the UK and USA
• • 09:44 – Winmo also sells to marketing services agencies
• 10:19 – Winmo has a good customer retention
• • 10:46 – Winmo is just a bit stronger in the media space over the agency
• 11:30 – Winmo’s customer retention is a bit lower than revenue retention
• 12:05 – Lifetime Value
• • 12:24 – Dave calculates retention on a 90-day cycle
• 13:06 – The question of when you consider a customer a “new customer”
• 14:10 – Average number of customers
• 15:35 – Average MRR
• 15:52 – Dave shares what is considered healthy in his business’ space
• 16:28 – Dave is part of the succession team of The List
• 16:46 – Dave and the team is not looking into going out and will just stick to being bootstrapped
• 17:05 – Dave won’t sell the company for $90M or higher
• 19:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Be deliberate with your marketing – it pays off in the end.
• A healthy business can stay bootstrapped for a very long time, and still be OK.
• Regardless of whether you're young or old, new to business or not, balance is KEY.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

In Episode #623, Nathan interviews Richard Brasser. He’s the foremost expert in helping companies increase the effectiveness and influence of their Salesforce’s strategic use of social communication. He does this through his company, rFactr. Richard pursues his focus in enabling salespeople to leverage social communication and build more meaningful relationship. 

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm
• What CEO do you follow? –  Tony Robbins
• Favorite online tool? — Outlook
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Very rarely
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Richard wished he knew the concept of compounding interest and the concept of deferred asset allocation

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:34 – Nathan introduces Richard to the show
• 02:15 – Companies need to engage their buyers in a more meaningful way
• 02:32 – rFactr is focused on enhancing sales people’s ability to connect with people
• 02:51 – rFactr’s platform is called a social port
• • 03:15 – rFactr has a per month/per user model
• 03:26 – rFactr is not a marketplace
• 03:33 – rFactr is directly plugged into companies’ CRMs
• 03:55 – Average customer pay per month
• • 04:15 – rFactr has channel activations
• 04:40 – rFactr’s starting price is $5K a month
• 04:49 – rFactr was launched in 2009
• 04:57 – rFactr was bootstrapped for the first 8 years
• 05:04 – rFactr had a seed round and will probably have a series A
• 05:17 – rFactr has raised a total of $9M
• 05:32 – Richard played golf on tour for 7 years
• • 05:45 – Richard made a good amount from playing golf
• 06:01 – Richard was already 7 years in business when he needed someone for the operations and finance side of the company
• 06:08 – Richard’s partner was just exiting his software company when he joined rFactr
• 06:25 – Nathan tells Richard about Episode 615 where he had Shin as a guest whose company makes carbon fiber golf shafts
• • 06:47 – Richard hasn’t seen Shin’s product
• 07:05 – The seed round is an equity round
• • 07:17 – The last round was in 2010
• 07:40 – The company has been around for 16 years, but the main product was developed 9 years ago
• 07:51 – Richard’s company started as a strategy and consulting firm
• 08:33 – Richard shares how the first company was valuated
• 09:31 – Team size is 18
• 09:39 – rFactr has 220 paying customers
• 09:44 – Average MRR
• 10:29 – Richard shares why they’re having the small companies together with the biggest ones
• 11:25 – Gross customer churn
• 11:37 – CAC
• • 12:08 – rFactr has no paid marketing
• 12:23 – Team’s location
• 13:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Small companies may not be able to pay as much as the big companies, but the level of help they need is similar.
• Use your money from your exit for your new company.
• Paid marketing isn’t always necessary—know your options to better decide if it’s right for you.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

In Episode #622, Nathan interviews Nektarios Liolios. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Startup Bootcamp, Financial Technology, and Insurance Technology—the leading innovation program in the financial and insurance industry. They provide funding, mentorship, office space in the heart of London, Singapore, New York and Mumbai and access into their global network including investors and VCs, up to 10 folks, each time they do it.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup
• What CEO do you follow? –  N/A
• Favorite online tool? — Slack
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Nektarios wished that at 20, he would have known that he didn’t know everything and to be less scared

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:28 – Nathan introduces Nektarios to the show
• 02:08 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech is a network of accelerators
• • 02:17 – It is cohort-based
  • 02:24 – The programs are industry focused programs
• 02:58 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech has 400 companies that have graduated
• 03:12 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech was launched in January 2014
• 03:29 – Nektarios shares how Startup Bootcamp FinTech started
• • 03:56 – “To add real value, you need to be super sharp in your focus”
• 04:20 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech doesn’t take investments, but they take equity
• • 04:30 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech takes 6% equity
• 05:52 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech has a variety of programs
• 06:35 – One of their teams is in Singapore
• 07:30 – Walnut Algorithms of France is part of their program
• • 07:47 – It was built thinking it would revolutionize the algorithm industry
• 07:57 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech usually works with pre-seed startups
• • 08:05 – Their products are not ready to launch yet
• 08:38 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech had 60 companies that are FinTech focused
• 08:52 – Buzzmove is one of the companies that have raised the most
• • 09:05 – It provides accurate data for home insurance
  • 09:25 – It is a data provider solution
  • 09:35 – It sells to insurance providers
• 09:54 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech programs are funded by the industry players
• 10:26 – Nektarios shares what drives their company
• 11:07 – Who will win, Betterment or Wealthfront?
• 11:49 – It is difficult for Nektarios to discern which company will succeed
• 12:25 – Nathan shares his interview with Andy of Wealthfront
• 12:58 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech is the only program with the global reach
• 13:08 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech offers every entrepreneur in the globe access to their network
• 13:24 – The Global Insurance Accelerator is their only competition
• 13:34 – Nektarios shares what he thinks of the insurance space
• • 13:58 – Insurance people are relevant to the industry
• 14:24 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech creates fund structure for every program
• 14:42 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech needs a minimum amount to run a program
• 15:05 – Every location of Startup Bootcamp FinTech has 5 people
• 15:53 – Startup Bootcamp FinTech isn’t driven by a commercial perspective
• 17:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• To add real value, you need to be razor sharp in your focus.
• Insurance space has so much potential to be a lucrative space—it’s less crowded and there are so many problems to solve.
• Just go for it—take the consequences as it’s going to be a ride.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

In Episode #621, Nathan interviews Nevin Shetty. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Blueprint Registry, an innovative wedding registry platform where you can shop for products from a variety of retailers based on the layout of your home. The company has generated over $10M in their first 2 years of operation.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Smarter Faster Better
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — SimilarWeb
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I should’ve learned computer programming”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:25 – Nathan introduces Nevin to the show
• 02:00 – Blueprint Registry is a wedding registry platform for newly-engaged couples
• 02:23 – Blueprint Registry gets commission from the retailers on their platform
• 02:38 – An example of Blueprint Registry’s partners is Target
• 02:43 – Nevin explains how their platform works and how it is different from the traditional wedding registry
• • 03:08 – Instead of couples going to different retailers physically, they can just go to Blueprint Registry
  • 03:23 – Blueprint Registry has a unique visual representation of your home
• 03:45 – Blueprint Registry was conceptualized in January 2015
• • 03:49 – Nevin shares how he came up with the idea
• 04:04 – Blueprint Registry’s co-founder is a designer
• • 04:13 – Nevin found his co-founder through networking
  • 04:55 – The equity conversation with the co-founder
• 05:21 – Blueprint Registry was launched in 2014
• • 05:29 – Blueprint Registry did $225K of gross sales
  • 05:44 – Average cart value
• 05:53 – Blueprint Registry raised $700K with friends and families
• 05:58 – Blueprint Registry did $4M in sales in 2015
• 06:04 – Blueprint Registry did $6M in sales in 2016
• 06:12 – Blueprint Registry has had 2000 users
• 06:19 – Blueprint Registry is originally focused on weddings but now they have people who use them for baby registries, house warming parties, and fundraising
• 06:40 – Blueprint Registry spends the most on development and marketing
• 07:25 – Team size
• 07:46 – Blueprint Registry just closed a million dollar seed round
• • 08:00 – It was an equity round
  • 08:09 – The friend and family round was a convertible note
  • 08:12 – Nevin shares why he decided to have an equity round
  • 08:45 – Blueprint Registry’s value depends on gross and growth
• 08:55 – 2017 target revenue
• 09:09 – Blueprint Registry deals with seasonality
• 09:30 – There’s no monthly subscription
• 10:20 – Nevin wants to keep Blueprint Registry as accessible as possible
• 10:35 – Blueprint Registry was founded in New York and they stayed for a year and a half
• • 10:38 – Blueprint Registry is currently based in Seattle
• 11:15 – Blueprint Registry’s biggest competitors
• • 11:26 – The wedding registry market is a huge market
  • 11:38 – Zola, Myregistry, Honeyfund are some of the newest in the market
• 11:53 – Blueprint Registry has the lowest fees
• • 12:00 – 2.5% of credit card processing fee
• 12:25 – Nevin will accept Zola’s $20M imaginary acquisition depending on their vision
• 13:43 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Finding co-founders is easy, choosing the right one is hard.
• In a saturated space, having the best features that set you apart can make all the difference.
• An acquisition will not always depend on the price.

Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives