Seymour Duncker. He’s the co-founder and CEO of a company called iCharts, the leader in cloud business intelligence and analytics and a seasoned entrepreneur who has been both a consumer and developer of visual analytics. Before founding iCharts, Seymour assisted SAP’s senior management in driving the company’s product strategy and was an early team member at 2 enterprise software startups before that.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Inevitable
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — NetSuite and Salesforce
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Spend a little more time outdoors”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:26 – Nathan introduces Seymour to the show
• 03:12 – iCharts is a cloud-based business and intelligence analytics solution platform
• 03:24 – iCharts is a SaaS model
• 03:36 – iCharts partners with NetSuite which is a cloud-based EOP
  • 03:48 – NetSuite uses iCharts as an embed BI (Business Intelligence) engine that powers iCharts for NetSuite’s customers
  • 04:05 – iCharts is like an app inside NetSuite
• 04:55 – iCharts can take any kind of data and visually represent it so that people can interact and analyze the data
• 05:16 – The analogy of iCharts is like the car's’ navigation system which is separated from the car’s build
• 05:55 – iCharts considers SaaS businesses as an ecosystem and NetSuite is a large ecosystem
• 06:05 – iCharts has a mixed business model
• 06:24 – iCharts is also looking into exclusive partnerships with a SaaS platform to distribute iCharts
• 06:55 – Pricing starts at $15K per annum depending on the number of users on a platform
• 07:54 – Seymour arrived in the USA, in 2010
• 08:10 – Seymour is from Germany
• 08:50 – When Seymour had an idea for a cloud-based business intelligence platform, he was thinking about where to build it
• 09:27 – Back then, it was easier to sell in the USA than in Germany
• 10:10 – Being in California was also a great idea for Seymour’s wife, so they built iCharts in the USA
• 10:37 – Team size is 60
  • 10:56 – Sales team has 20 people
• 11:35 – The majority of iCharts’ market
• 11:49 – iCharts will know the pain points of the users of NetSuite
• 12:53 – iCharts will already have an idea of the customer’s needs
• 13:45 – iCharts has around 200 customers
• 14:04 – iCharts started focusing on various markets
• 14:25 – iCharts has raised $23M to date but they were initially bootstrapped
• 15:07 – Churn is around 5-7%
• 16:20 – CAC
• 16:32 – iCharts is highly profitable from the initial time they closed a deal
• 17:04 – There’s an advantage of growing faster and burning yourself as you grow too fast
• 17:44 – At the end of the day, it’s all about having a high-functioning team that produces quality
• 18:04 – Average ARR
• 18:21 – iCharts also offers additional services for their larger customers
• 20:13 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Build your business wherever you’d like to—even if it means leaving your home country.
2. Having a well-functioning team that produces QUALITY will drive your revenue and contribute to the success of your business.
3. Make time for rest and vacations; this will relax and regenerate 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
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• 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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Daniel Fagella. He started a mixed martial arts gym when he was an undergrad and sold it after getting a UPenn graduate degree in cognitive science. He did turn his grad school thesis on skill development into an ecommerce business that grew for 4 years, reaching $4.2M in top line sales and recently sold it for a million dollars with 90% paid upfront. He’s now using his funds for TechEmergence.com in order to influence global AI policy for the better.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Plutarch’s Lives
• What CEO do you follow? – Last bio he read was Marcus Aurelius’
• Favorite online tool? — Asana
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Daniel would tell himself that dealing with the existential human condition could be done by contributing to a much bigger world

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:20 – Nathan introduces Dan to the show
• 02:08 – Dan was studying skill development and goal setting science in psychology for his undergrad
• 02:17 – Schooling was expensive; Dan decided that he’d rather use himself as a skill development guinea pig than a pizza deliverer
• 02:40 – Dan started teaching and making money at the back of a carpet store
  • 03:11 – Dan’s jiujitsu gym was the smallest business back then
  • 04:03 – Dan sold the gym after 3-4 years with $250K ARR
  • 04:14 – Dan was 25 when he sold the gym
  • 04:41 – The membership fee was $157
  • 05:07 – Dan sold it for over $100K with 10% upfront to his right-hand and friend
  • 05:45 – The business ran for over 2-3 years after that
  • 06:05 – Dan took $30K from the $113K
• 06:36 – Dan was also making $20K a month selling martial arts instructional resources online
• 07:09 – Dan was using Infusionsoft for his e-commerce business, Science of Skill
• 07:56 – The e-commerce was doing around $200K top line
• 08:42 – The biggest cost for Science of Skill was on merchant processing, customer acquisition, advertising and affiliates
• 09:26 – Dan likes to spend half of his CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) on acquisition
• 09:42 – The CLV for membership programs were around $100 and affiliates $50-60
• 10:00 – One of the affiliates was Survival Frog of Byron
• 10:23 – Byron drove Science of Skill into 6-figures
• 10:44 – Dan was paying affiliates upfront
• 11:15 – Byron of Survival Frog was on Episode 395
• 11:44 – There are agencies who get onto their email list by paying
  • 12:14 – One of the agencies is com
• 13:02 – Finding the right people to advertise and won’t tag you as spam
• 13:11 – Dan will find firearm sites in com—go through the website owners and email them to find the right people to target
• 14:11 – Dan sold Science of Skill in February 2017 for a little over a million dollars
• 14:22 – Science of Skill was valued by the multiple of net
• 15:11 – Science of Skill revenue in 2016
• 16:27 – Dan’s ultimate goal
• 16:31 – The buyers are a private group of 2 buyers in Ohio who previously ran SaaS businesses then sold them to the government
• 17:05 – Science of Skill should be at Inc 500 for 2016
• 17:13 – Dan sold Science of Skill because he believed he has better and bigger things to do in life
• 17:25 – Dan’s core objective involves the global conversation of neuroscience and AI
• 17:48 – TechEmergence focuses on the business applications of AI
• 18:08 – TechEmergence is not making money, but will make money primarily through advertising
• 19:09 – The goal now is to scale and make traction
• 19:21 – Current cash burn
• 20:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. You can start your business literally anywhere.
2. Focus on your goals and objectives, even if it means having to burn cash.
3. The future will probably evolve around n_euroscience and AI.

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
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• 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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Allan Willie. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio, a software-as-a-service dashboard company with over 8500 paying customers including Jet.com, Zendesk, Aviva and Ikea. He previously co-founded a company called Espial, an internet device software firm that is now publicly traded on TSX. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and 2 daughters.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Lead by Greatness
• What CEO do you follow? – Tobias Lütke
• Favorite online tool? — SEO Plus Chrome plug in and Owler
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6.5-7.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Listen, build something of value and then see if you could raise money”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:07 – Nathan introduces Allan to the show
• 01:50 – All of the meeting rooms in Klipfolio’s office have different wallpaper
• 02:12 – Klipfolio is an online, cloud-based, dashboard vendor
• 02:18 – Klipfolio works with mid-sized businesses who use them for everything
• 02:40 – Nathan uses Klipfolio quite aggressively, especially for his Facebook live streams
• 04:17 – When Allan was last on The Top, he was passing 7K customers—now he has 8500 customers
• 04:36 – In January, Klipfolio announced a $12M raise which was an insight round from existing investors
  • 05:14 – The initial round was to raise an external round
  • 05:43 – “We did use market to validate”
• 06:12 – Klipfolio had verbal offers that were lucrative
  • 06:40 – The valuation were multiples for some of the terms
• 07:00 – Klipfolio also had some acquisition discussions
• 08:08 – Allan won’t call the acquisition discussions offers, because it would still have to go through a lot
• 08:59 – In every acquisition discussion, you want to layer how much information to present to another company
• 09:35- Customers usually get the $70 plan for the first month, then move up to $150 in a year
• 10:10 – Some of the customers are partners who can pay directly or pay as a partner
  • 10:24 – 30% of Klipfolio’s income come from their partner channels
• 10:35 – Last month revenue was $500-600K
• 11:16 – Klipfolio’s valuation was between $700-800K
• 11:25 – Some of the VCs that Allan has talked to are putting terms in place with a higher valuation
• 11:47 – You have to sustain your valuation to get into the next round
• 12:34 – Anything on Klipfolio is being tracked
• 13:15 – The weirdest use case
  • 13:25 – There are NGOs who use Klipfolio to push some of their metrics out
  • 13:34 – Red Cross uses Klipfolio for flooding, zika virus and other stuff that is happening in Africa
• 14:11 – Churn has gone up slightly
• 14:35 – Klipfolio started paid ads for $120K a month
  • 14:41 – Klipfolio has a blog about the lessons they’ve learned from Facebook Ads
  • 15:24 – One of the cons of ads is that the conversion rate drops and churn goes up—which is normal
• 15:40 – CAC
• 15:54 – LTV
• 16:05 – LTV to CAC is still relatively healthy
• 16:26 – Team size is around 90
  • 16:47 – The team is moving to a new space in November
• 18:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Maintain your valuation in order to get into the next round.
2. Not all acquisition talks are considered offers.
3. A company of great value has a better chance of raising money and getting acquired down the road.

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
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• 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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Blake Smith. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Cladwell, a clothing company that doesn’t sell clothing. His goal is to fight for sustainability and human labor practices by enabling people to buy fewer, but better clothes. Blake was at The Top a year ago where he articulated that they passed 11,500 customers with each customer paying $6/month; so, they were doing about $70K MRR a year ago. They were at about 5% churn, monthly spending and at $17 to acquire new customers. They’re based in Cincinnati and they’ve raised about $1.8M and $100K in revenue.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Wooden on Leadership
• What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz
• Favorite online tool? — Calendly
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 2
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Blake would tell himself the importance of following your curiosity as opposed to having a strategy or a plan

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:04 – Nathan introduces Blake to the show
• 01:59 – Cladwell’s current customers is around 17K in number
• 02:06 – Cladwell is an everyday styling app
• 02:50 – When you go to the Cladwell’s website, you’ll click “buy”
• 02:58 – Cladwell is also downloadable in the App store
• 03:12 – Cladwell is doing pricing tests
  • 03:45 – Cladwell looks at other SaaS products that customers are paying for
  • 04:02 – Cladwell also looks at other workout apps
  • 04:21 – Cladwell is looking into charging $9
  • 04:41 – “We’re going forward unless proven otherwise”
• 04:47 – Pricing tests never end, especially with SaaS
• 05:31 – Last month total revenue is around $60K
• 05:41 – Cladwell used to bill quarterly
• 05:49 – Cladwell is around 900K ARR
• 06:17 – 80% of Cladwell’s customers are using the web app on their mobile devices
• 06:42 – Last year’s revenue in the same month
• 07:19 – Marketing spend last year
• 07:32 – Cladwell has recently raised a $1.2M round
• 08:07 – 2016 total sales is $760K
• 09:35 – Blake explains how the app works on a daily basis
  • 09:40 – Every morning, the Cladwell app gives a recommendation of what to wear
  • 09:53 – Cladwell recommends 3 outfits basing on what’s in your closet and the daily weather
  • 10:18 – Cladwell will also know what you wore for 3 days
• 10:55 – The more that you use the app, the better the experience is
• 11:35 – Majority of Cladwell’s users are working millennial moms
• 12:18 – People have tried Cladwell’s ideas before and onboarding was the biggest issue
• 12:33 – Cladwell did something similar to Google venture’s sprint design process
• 12:56 – Cladwell provides a feed of all the potential items in a person’s wardrobe
  • 13:34 – A female customer will have an average of 60-70 pieces of clothing in her wardrobe
• 13:58 – The onboarding process is now easier for customers because of the feed
• 15:30 – Team size is around 15
• 16:02 – Cladwell’s currently spending is still TBD
• 16:18 – Churn rate is a bit high
• 16:50 – From the 17K customers, around 5K has downloaded the app
• 18:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Onboarding is one of the biggest challenges for a styling company, customers lose interest using the product.
2. More and more millennial mothers are finding it hard to manage their time; having an app that will save them time daily is heaven sent.
3. Follow your curiosity—it can lead you to something GREAT.

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
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• 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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Assaf Resnick. He’s the founder and CEO of BigPanda, an algorithm-make IT operations platform that turns IT alert noise into insight, unifies fragmented operations and enables digital enterprises to attain dramatic or pretty high service levels. Prior to founding the company, he was an investor for Sequoia Capital where he focused on early stage companies across enterprise software, SaaS and the internet sector.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Goal
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A
• Favorite online tool? — Salesforce
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Start a company early”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:17 – Nathan introduces Assaf to the show
• 01:52 – Sometimes, Assaf would still ask himself why he left Sequoia
• 02:00 – Assaf spent 6 years in Sequoia and it was an opportunity of a lifetime
• 02:19 – Assaf started in Sequoia when he was 29
• 02:36 – Assaf was bitten by the entrepreneur bug, so he left Sequoia
• 03:30 – Assaf’s stayed in Sequoia for personal career growth
• 03:43 – Sequoia is different from other VC firms
• 04:31 – For Assaf, Sequoia expresses the combination of opportunities in the market
• 05:33 – Assaf is proud of the deals that he had made with Sequoia
• 06:00 – Assaf found Snaptu to be an interesting deal they invested in
• 07:00 – BigPanda automates the ability of human-beings and IT operations to keep up with data centers that are radically evolved
• 07:50 – The big part of IT spending usually goes to the engineers
• 08:00 – In the data centers, they have to keep the software and infrastructure that is radically transforming running
• 08:40 – A data company needs to have a handful of tools, data centers and servers
• 09:15 – One of BigPanda’s clients is a Fortune 50 and a large networking company
  • 09:30 – The company now has SaaS offerings and gives the SLA (Service Level Agreement) that they promise to companies
  • 10:15 – The company has teams of engineers in Ukraine, California and India that use 15 monitoring tools to see what is happening
  • 10:37 – The company has 70K data points they need to keep track
  • 11:05 – The amount of data engineers they need has become an issue
• 11:27 – The problems in the war room can be both preventative and reactionary
• 11:45 – BigPanda uses a lot machine learning and dynamic classroom instruction to get through the noise
• 12:10 – An alert can be a problem with the server and something that you can just leave out
• 13:31 – One should examine if the “if/then statements” are dynamic
• 13:45 – The “if/then statements” vary day by day, then variables change quickly
• 14:13 – BigPanda was launched in 2012
• 14:20 – BigPanda is a SaaS company which charges annually
• 14:45 – Pricing average
• 14:51 – BigPanda caters to very large companies
• 15:20 – Team size is 60
• 15:28 – BigPanda has raised almost $35M
• 15:46 – BigPanda has done a regional series B
• 16:08 – BigPanda partners with Sequoia, Mayfield and In Battery
• 16:28 – At the end of 2015, people started devaluing some unicorns
• 16:59 – When Assaf saw rain clouds forming, he thought it made sense to get a winter coat from a capital perspective
• 17:40 – BigPanda had plenty of pipelines
• 18:02 – Half of the company is based in Palo Alto and half is in Tel Aviv, Israel
  • 19:03 – Half of the people are in engineering and product, the other half is marketing
• 19:49 – BigPanda is very disciplined with their model
• 20:39 – BigPanda has around 25 companies from Fortune 500
• 22:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. If you’ve committed to always being there for your client, you better follow through on that.
2. No matter how many engineers you have, there’s always a chance of them missing a lapse in the data.
3. Start your business as early as possible.

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
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• 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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Manny Fernandez. He’s a Stanford University educated Angel investor, serial entrepreneur and best-selling author featured on CNBC’s Make Me a Millionaire Inventor premier episode. He’s been successfully investing his own ideas as well as taking companies from startup to exit. Recently, he was named by INC magazine as one of the 33 entrepreneurs to watch in 2016.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich
• What CEO do you follow? – Steve Jobs
• Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? –“Wisdom and experience beats, no matter how [many] great talents you have”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:11 – Nathan introduces Manny to the show
• 01:51 – Manny’s first company was an investment property
  • 02:10 – It was a 6-figure transaction
  • 02:21 – Manny decided that he wanted to go from 1 investment to 10
• 02:39 – One of Manny’s most notable investments is TaskRabbit
• 02:58 – Manny is the founder of SF Angels which has 32 members
  • 03:08 – The deal flow comes from others
• 03:30 – The funds for an Angel round is $250K per year
• 03:46 – As an Angel, you’re looking for the deal flow
• 04:46 – One of the members of SF Angels is an early investor of TaskRabbit and SF Angels was invited
• 05:00 – Angels can invest as an individual or as a group
• 05:32 – Everyone has different preferences
• 06:31 – Some of the investors in SF Angels are successful enough
• 07:01 – The potential of investing in SF Angels is different from real estate
• 07:11 – If you’re investing in something that is really working well, results are astronomical
• 07:47 – Manny suggests to invest only what you can afford to lose
• 07:56 – Everyone has different financial workflow and abilities
• 08:31 – Manny has put in greater than normal in angel investing
  • 08:49 – Normal is around 2-5%
• 09:19 – DreamFunded allows everyday Americans to invest as small as $1 into a company
• 09:35 – DreamFunded is the first platform in Silicon Valley to receive the approval to allow non-accredited investors to invest, so they’re accepting accredited investors and ordinary people
• 10:03 – Manny has been on the screening community of TiE Angels
• 10:11 – Manny is good at doing his due-diligence
• 10:29 – DreamFunded applied as a registered funding portal
• 11:15 – Manny has personally vetted on the deals on DreamFunded
• 12:06 – DreamFunded has a legal disclosure where investors can see the minimum amount they have to close to in order to close the transaction
  • 12:33 – The information is not readily available on the website
  • 13:02 – Investors will get an email telling them the closing dates
• 13:23 – DreamFunded gets 5% upon closing and the 2%the company is offering
• 13:50 – There are over 30 companies that have closed deals in DreamFunded
  • 13:56 – Over $35M total funds raised
• 14:07 – The non-accredited investor is still new
• 14:16 – DreamFunded has not released their total funds raised from non-accredited
• 14:36 – The first approval for non-accredited was received by DreamFunded in July 2016
• 14:54 – DreamFunded was launched fall 2014
• 15:01 – Average team size is 10
• 15:16 – DreamFunded’s model changes overtime
• 16:02 – A company can raise its target and at the same time, receive an investment from a big company
• 17:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Invest only on what you afford to lose.
2. Investing in a company that is already working is smart, but venturing into other investment streams requires your due diligence.
3. Listen to your mentors, they are mentors for a reason.

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
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• 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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives