Johnny Warström. He’s the CEO and founder of Mentimeter. He’s an engineer from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He’s worked in 10 countries and visited over 60. He loves adventures and growing his company and he’s getting married soon.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Sebastian Siemiątkowski
• Favorite online tool? — Intercom
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Do more crazy stuff”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:44 – Nathan introduces Johnny to the show
• 02:21 – Johnny founded Mentimeter with his three friends right out of university
• 02:38 – Mentimeter is an interactive presentation
  • 03:00 – You can connect the audience's’ phones with the presentation and they can vote or participate
• 03:53 – Mentimeter has a free and premium model
• 04:04 – Mentimeter has over 10M users and 400K presenters who lead meetings
  • 04:31 – The presenters are the ones who pay
• 04:50 – Mentimeter currently has 6K enterprise customers
• 05:03 – Mentimeter is purely a B2B SaaS
• 05:36 – Average customer pay per month is $150 a year
• 05:56 – Mentimeter also offers packages
• 06:13 – ARR is around $1.5M
• 06:47 – Mentimeter was launched in 2003 and was initially bootstrapped as a side project
  • 07:00 – Johnny was part of Telecom and his co-founders were managing consultants
  • 07:18 – It took them 2-3 months to build Mentimeter and they showed it to their bosses
• 07:40 – Mentimeter had their $350K angel round in 2004 and they have a total of $500K funds raised
• 07:52 – Team size is 16 and everyone is based in Stockholm
• 08:25 – Mentimeter has no paid activities and relies fully on organic growth
• 08:53 – The goal of Mentimeter is to be a mass market product
• 09:38 – Mentimeter has 1 in sales, 9 in product and 6 in marketing
• 10:27 – Mentimeter was part of 500 Startups last spring
• 11:17 – Fully weighted CAC
• 11:42 – Payback period is almost instant
• 12:20 – The team has been doing different experiments to increase customer engagement
• 13:48 – Mentimeter is on -5 net churn
• 14:22 – Mentimeter has a licensed model
• 14:51 – 1% monthly churn
  • 15:18 – Some do not continue with their annual plan
  • 15:44 – Mentimeter won’t give money back, but there’s a 40-day refund
• 17:00 – Johnny shares about a big, annual event in Europe that he’s a big fan of
  • 17:00 – Mentimeter has a built-in, voting module which functions as a simulation for a contest
  • 17:37 – Mentimeter received a lot of attention from that event 2 years ago
• 18:12 – 2017 revenue goal is $2.3M
• 18:17 – 2016 revenue was $800K
• 18:52 – Johnny targets $10M in ARR for 2019
• 19:22 – “We’re not looking for funding at the moment”
• 19:38 – Johnny isn’t interested in selling the company at the moment
• 21:33 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Keep an open mind—your side project can be your next successful business.
2. Business ideas can come from the most unexpected of places—don’t discount your ideas.
3. Success gained from organic traffic IS possible.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Neha Sampat. She’s the CEO of Built.io, a 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant Vendor and 2016 Gartner Cool Vendor that provides a digital business platform that helps organizations excel their digital transformation. She’s a recognized industry leader and has led product marketing, cloud computing and online experiences for Sun Microsystems and VMware. She’s a proponent of diversity and outspoken advocate for nurturing women leaders in her industry. She was named the San Francisco Business Times’ 40 Under 40 honoree and one of 50 Women in Tech Dominating Silicon Valley in 2015. She is part of SF Business Times 2017 List of Most Influential Women in Business.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Moneyball
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Alfred
• 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? – “Do not start questioning yourself, you’re confident now. Keep that confidence, anything else will just slow you down”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:42 – Nathan introduces Neha to the show
• 02:42 – Built is a digital transformation platform
• 02:37 – Neha started Built 10 years ago when digital transformation wasn’t a thing yet
• 03:21 – Built sells products to enterprise companies
• 03:24 – Built is mainly a SaaS model, but they also offer services and license deals that may not be SaaS
• 03:37 – Built started as a professional services company
• 03:44 – Built is still bootstrapped
  • 03:59 – “We’re not a typical Silicon Valley company at all”
• 04:08 – Built was made based on the real needs of customers
• 04:27 – Team size is around 200, spread across India and San Francisco
  • 04:50 – The team in India is mainly the R&D team and the professional services team
  • 05:20 – Built has a real economic advantage having the majority of their team in India
  • 05:49 – Built is in the remote part of Mumbai
  • 06:16 – The office in India is where Neha’s co-founder’s family is from
  • 06:48 – Neha shared how they started building their office with a not-so-good internet speed in India
• 08:12 – Built is slowly transitioning mainly to SaaS model
• 08:45 – First million dollar year was in 2013
• 09:13 – Neha started Built with her co-founder in 2007, and Neha took an advisory role at first
• 09:42 – Neha used her own money to fund Built
  • 10:03 – Neha was very careful in handling her money
• 10:16 – When Neha and her co-founder started Built, they wanted it to be a product company
  • 10:30 – Neha’s co-founder was from the integration space and gave her the idea of transitioning to Built in 2013
• 11:30 – Average customer pay per month is $50K
• 12:00 – Built currently has thousands of trial signups and hundreds of paying customers
• 12:30 – Neha is a certified sommelier and when they go to conferences, they’ll have wine tasting events to get new customers
• 13:40 – Gross logo churn
  • 13:48 – Built has a 90% retention rate and has maintained it
• 14:12 – Fully weighted CAC and payback period is less than 10 months
• 14:43 – Built tries to always get paid cash upfront
• 15:10 – Gross margin
  • 15:24 – Some of the services are used to fund their SaaS
• 16:06 – Most of the marketing is for conferences
• 16:54 – End of 2017 revenue goal
  • 17:28 – They’re focusing on doubling their SaaS revenue
• 19:11 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. If you build a product that begins by addressing people’s needs, you will always have customers.
2. Don’t raise funds if you don’t need to, staying bootstrapped is an advantage.
3. Cash is king, always try to get paid upfront.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

James Booth. He’s the founder of Scoota and he founded it in 2008. Prior to that, he was the co-founder and CEO of a company that led Europe’s rich media, providing infrastructure. He sold that to DoubleClick and Google back in 2007. He’s won numerous awards for his service to online advertising, an active Angel investor and a non-executive to a number of startups.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm
• What CEO do you follow? – Joe Zawadzki, Jeff Green and Robert Grazioli
• Favorite online tool? — Gmail
• 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? – James hoped he knew the internet was coming

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:50 – Nathan introduces James to the show
• 02:21 – The company that James exited was Tangozebra
  • 02:26 – They found the name by accident and in 1999, they couldn’t find a .com address
  • 03:17 – It was initially bootstrapped and they eventually raised capital
  • 03:49 – They had trouble articulating what they were doing
  • 04:24 – They raised $1.6M and part of the business went to a media group for 5 years before it was sold
  • 04:49 – Tangozebra was sold to Google for $30M
• 05:15 – After the exit, James spent 6 months creating a business plan
  • 06:19 – James launched Rockabox (now Scoota) in 2007 with his co-founder, Torie
  • 06:51 – James had put in his own money at the start of the business
  • 07:08 – To date, they’ve raised £12M
• 07:15 – Scoota is a technology company specializing in programmatic technology
• 07:40 – Scoota charges a low cost per thousand fee with a benchmark of £1.50 per thousand
  • 08:05 – There’s also a managing service where Scoota takes a percentage
• 08:37 – Self-service is high-margin and media is low
• 09:17 – Two-thirds of the revenue comes from the self-service side
• 09:30 – Team size is 30—based in London and looking to open a New York office
• 09:53 – Scoota has global campaigns as well
• 10:41 – In the early days, James would make up all sorts of things just to get new customers
  • 10:59 – In 1999, James had a conversation with a journalist where he spilled out mockups that gave them the exposure they needed
  • 12:17 – Suddenly, there was a story about them
• 13:00 – Average number of customers
  • 13:33 – 40 agencies and hundreds of brands
• 14:04 – It was in 2013 when Scoota broke their million dollar ARR mark
• 14:26 – In 2016, Scoota hit $10M from their managing service side
• 15:50 – Average ARR in 2016 was a little under $5M
• 17:33 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Digital advertising has improved tremendously profitable and continues to grow.
2. Continue to create something even after your first, big exit.
3. At the start of every business, you have to do what you can to get the first customer.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Zooko Wilcox. He’s the creator of Zcash and has more than 20 years of experience in open decentralized systems, cryptography and information security along with startups in general. He’s recognized for his work in Digicash, Mojonation and many other things that he has worked on. He’s also the founder of Least Authority. If you’re following him on Twitter, you’ll know that he sometimes blog about health science and is very active in Twitter and the crypto space.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Constellation Games
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A
• Favorite online tool? — Signal
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “That he would start learning by doing than learning from going to school”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:44 – Nathan introduces Zooko to the show
• 02:28 – Zcash is a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin
• 02:55 – Zcash is like the SSL version of bitcoin
• 03:20 – Zooko explains why additional security is needed in the crypto space
• 04:33 – Bitcoin is mainly used for payment transactions
• 04:40 – Other uses of blockchain is widely proliferating and apply the same technology
  • 05:18 – In any transaction, you need to protect not only the identity of the person, but the transaction in the system as well
  • 05:38 – In bitcoin, there’s no identity needed for the bitcoin address but the flow of funds—where the bitcoin is going may be visible to anyone who’s in the blockchain
• 06:55 – Zooko shares his partnership with JP Morgan for their blockchain security solution
  • 07:00 – They had an open, public blockchain which is as global as bitcoin
  • 07:26 – The Zcash blockchain has had huge success going around the world
  • 07:50 – It was successful because it made it to the top tier of the blockchain system
  • 08:50 – Zooko really wanted Zcash currency to be more available globally and they received more users from China
  • 10:00 – Yunbi is one of the exchangers in China
  • 10:45 – The strategy was to attract users from different places
  • 11:13 – Some crypto projects have pre-money and some have ICOs or pre-sale
  • 11:44 – The Zcash blockchain started mining, where people can get their own Zcash tokens
  • 12:44 – Zooko changed the algorithm for mining coins
• 14:30 – Zooko has raised $3M and promised investors that they will get a cut from the mining
  • 15:28 – There are transaction fees, but it’s different from what the investors get from the mining
  • 15:45 – It’s the miners who give the share of the reward over to the founder and they choose to do so
• 16:17 – Zcash is still early in the space
• 17:06 – The fundraising happened early 2015
• 17:50 – Zcash has a unique structure to their system
• 19:35 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. While blockchain system is known to be secure, it doesn’t hurt to have additional security features in place with cryptocurrency.
2. ICOs and pre-sales are quite the trend for blockchain companies.
3. You can’t learn everything from going to school—learn by DOING.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Maksim Balashevich. He’s a former IBM software engineer and co-founder of a successful, hosting business in Belarus. He now manages the overall product and leads the Santiment team. He’s a veteran leader, having spent more than a decade trading successfully using Santiment and Elliot Wave as analysis. He’s also a guru in yoga and meditation.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – N/A
• What CEO do you follow? – Nick Szabo
• Favorite online tool? — Blockchain and Reddit
• 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? – Move faster to the same goal

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:53 – Nathan introduces Maksim to the show
• 02:30 – Santiment builds information for the emerging cryptocurrency token economy
• 03:30 – When Santiment had their ICO, they’ve established a token for their platform
• 03:36 – To get access to Santiment, you can buy the monthly subscription by paying in dollars or by depositing your tokens into the platform
  • 04:12 – There’s no revenue on the SaaS side yet
• 04:33 – Santiment has raised $500K in July 2017
  • 05:03 – Santiment has sold 45K tokens
• 05:17 – Santiment’s token name is San
• 05:44 – Santiment got 720 participants on their token sale
• 06:14 – Santiment has 8 full-time people and a few contractors
• 06:29 – Santiment hasn’t liquidated their funds yet
• 06:43 – Santiment got 12K ethereum from their presell, which they used to fund the development of the business
• 07:44 – Maksim is hoping to start charging in 3 months, but it seems like it will take 6 months
• 08:10 – From the community’s response, Maksim can’t charge for Santiment yet and people are asking for specific kinds of data
  • 09:34 – It’s not that they will not charge, but they can’t charge just yet
• 10:00 – Maksim shares how Santiment works in the crypto economy
• 11:15 – Prior to ICO, Santiment didn’t take additional capital and just used the presell
• 11:46 – Maksim shares how they came up with the number of tokens to issue
  • 11:49 – For crowdsale participants, it is 54% of their outstanding
  • 12:04 – For presell participants, for every 12K ether contributed, Santiment will issue them 50M tokens
  • 12:21 – The rest will be part of the team’s tokens, which is currently locked
• 13:55 – Maksim hasn’t seen any active competitors yet
• 14:34 – Iconomi is one of Santiment’s partners and is also in the same space
• 16:16 – Maksim’s prediction for the next blockchain that will do well
  • 16:48 – Maksim personally likes Polkadot which connects blockchains
  • 17:10 – There are also projects that introduce the token economy
  • 17:24 – There’s a growing number of blockchain companies providing decentralized storage solutions
• 18:17 – Maksim shares the latest issue on hacking in cryptocurrency where $7M was stolen
• 21:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. When to charge for your service isn’t an easy to decision to make—you have to consider the community and the value that they want to get from the company.
2. In recent hacking events with ICO, security issues are being called into question.
3. If possible, start working towards your goals as EARLY as possible.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Michael Litt. He’s the co-founder and CEO of a leading video marketing platform called Vidyard. While he’s not bringing leading video-based technologies to market, he serves as general partner at Garage Capital, a seed stage fund focused on supercluster companies looking to expand their networks in the Silicon Valley. He also sits as Communitech’s board of directors, a KW-based organization designed to help companies start, grow and succeed. 

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – N/A
• What CEO do you follow? – Shannon Stubo
• Favorite online tool? — Coinbase
• 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? – You need a big support network and focus your energy into building a business

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:41 – Nathan introduces Michael to the show
• 02:16 – Michael was in Episode 414 of The Top and back then, they only had 132 people on their team
• 02:30 – Vidyard now has around 250 employees
• 02:38 – Vidyard has 3 offices
• 02:44 – Vidyard has launch multiple products including a self-serve product called Viewedit
  • 03:13 – Vidyard just had 100K users sign up after launching Viewedit, which is free
  • 03:33 – It’s currently a chrome extension
• 04:22 – Michael shares how they spent their last amount that was raised
  • 04:51 – Vidyard had their series C in January of 2017
  • 05:30 – Michael believes that the CFO should be the “house of no”
  • 06:00 – Everybody should be accountable for their finances and Vidyard uses Adaptive Insights for budgeting
  • 06:43 – Vidyard has to be very careful with their lifeline and maintain their cash flow
• 07:23 – Michael’s goal as the CEO
• 08:39 – Vidyard’s RPU has grown over time
• 08:53 – Target for upsell is 30% of net new revenue
• 10:03 – Annual logo churn
• 10:13 – Net retention
• 10:42 – Over thousands customers are using Vidyard’s platform
• 10:57 – Viewedit is being used in tons of organizations
• 11:46 – Michael believes Vidyard will double, year over year
• 13:00 – Streaming cost for Vidyard
  • 13:11 – Vidyard streams over 50M videos a day
  • 13:15 – Vidyard subscribed on the Netflix model
• 14:41 – Weirdest strategy Michael employed to get new customers
  • 15:08 – The strategy was inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk
  • 17:17 – Michael shares how they were able to get customers from companies in other countries
  • 19:10 – New CMOs in a company are one of the best target customers, so Michael looks out for new CMOs announcements
• 19:54 – Payback period is usually 18 months
  • 21:02 – Payback period reflects your company’s status
• 21:20 – CAC
  • 21:35 – Michael is also looking into zero-cost marketing
• 22:09 – Michael won’t sell Vidyard to Salesforce, even with a $300M offer
• 22:55 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Use your funds conservatively and make everyone accountable for budgeting.
2. How your company is doing reflects on your payback period.
3. Make sure you have a big support network in place.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Barry Clapp. He brings over 30 years of experience in sales and management to Centage. Beginning with IBM, he held successional positions with increasing responsibility on software and internet businesses. At DigitalGlobe, a satellite imagery company, he served as VP of international sales opening distribution in over 20 different countries.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Biography of Richard Branson
• What CEO do you follow? – Marcus Lemonis
• Favorite online tool? — Salesforce
• 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? – Be bolder, take more risks and get more equity from businesses with potential

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:43 – Nathan introduces Barry to the show
• 02:12 – Centage makes a budgeting and planning tool simple
  • 02:20 – Every company budgets and most use Excel, which can be very difficult
  • 02:49 – Centage automates budgeting to replace Excel
• 03:10 – Centage is a SaaS business
• 03:18 – Centage was launched in 2002
• 03:37 – Centage’s current business model is a changing from their previous licensing model
• 04:27 – Centage is in the SMB space and they have less competitors
• 04:55 – One of their competitors, Adaptive Insights, has just raised $175M
• 05:13 – Centage has raised a total of $13.5 M
• 05:50 – Barry shares what he did prior to Centage
• 06:24 – The top three PE firms for Barry, in Boston
• 07:16 – Centage’s customer pays an average of $35K to $40K a year
• 07:26 – Centage has also sold services in their first years
• 07:48 – Pricing is per seat
• 08:18 – Centage currently has a thousand customers or 10K users
  • 08:46 – Most customers have 3 or more subsidiaries
• 09:06 – Barry is hoping to break the $30M ARR number
• 09:20 – Centage just launched their new product that is currently on beta
• 09:57 – 30% of Centage’s customers are on subscription and the 70% are installed on premises
• 11:07 – 2016 ARR was $12M
• 12:43 – Team size is around a hundred with some remote
• 13:13 – Average CAC
  • 13:36 – Centage has an inside sales model
• 14:29 – Annual logo is quite higher than the previous model
• 14:41 – Centage has 80% retention rate
• 15:43 – Centage’s product has been continuously improving over the years
• 16:32 – Centage has always made 10-12% of their revenue from upselling
  • 16:52 – Centage sells additional training
• 17:11 – Barry shares the weirdest thing they did to acquire new customers
• 18:50 – Gross margin
• 19:10 – Centage runs webinars, goes to tradeshows, spends at least $10K a month on Google AdWords and total marketing spend is around $100K a month
• 21:06 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Be BOLD and take risks now!
2. Shifting from a previous model does NOT mean that you should force your current customers to shift as well.
3. If people see value and how you can make life easier for them, they’ll stay loyal to your product.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Gustav Mellentin. He’s the founder and CEO of Adform in the adtech space. Before that, he was an engineer in the banking world with an MBA, and was also doing consulting. He just recently came back from a European holiday.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Daring Greatly
• What CEO do you follow? – Jorgin Vig Knudstorp
• Favorite online tool? — Vivino Wine App
• 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? – Be bold and do what you think is right

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:46 – Nathan introduces Gustav to the show
• 02:20 – Gustav shares his European holiday experience
  • 02:30 – It was pure leisure
• 02:50 – Adform is a tech company that has developed an ad tech platform
• 03:13 – Adform typically takes a percentage of the spend in the trading model which is on a monthly fee
  • 03:27 – Adform also has a per usage model for their application software
• 03:50 – Average fee from the data model starts at $5K
• 04:23 – Most of the revenue from Adform is from the trading space
• 04:42 – Adform’s data model is the fastest growing part of the business and 10% of the revenue comes from it
• 06:07 – Adform takes around 10% from the trading model
  • 06:21 – Gustav believes 10% is healthy for spend
• 06:55 – Adform was launched in 2002
• 07:10 – Gustav shares how they came up with Adform
• 07:41 – First year revenue
• 08:15 – Adform has past their million dollar mark in revenue, in 2010
• 08:40 – Team size is 780 globally
• 09:01 – Adform was initially bootstrapped, then they raised $5M in equity and $20M from debt
• 10:23 – Gustav shares about the deal they made
  • 10:40 – “At the end of the day, it’s all about trust”
• 12:50 – Adform has a great management team that is able to manage their number of employees
• 14:20 – Adform’s DMP or data management platform was launched 18 months ago
  • 14:34 – Current number of customers is around a hundred
• 15:16 – Gustav has flown his whole team in
  • 15:38 – Gustav shares what people do at their end-of-the-year party
• 16:18 – Target revenue by end of 2017 is $50M to $100M
• 17:00 – Gustav is one of the major shareholders of Adform
• 18:00 – Gustav shares what other entrepreneurs could learn from his story of entrepreneurship with his personal relationships
• 20:27 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Zero revenue can turn into millions if you focus on your goals.
2. Keep your people happy and make them feel that they’re part of the company’s success.
3. Entrepreneurship and personal relationships can grow at the same time.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Christopher Engman, the founder of companies like Vendemore, Retain24, TaxiSystem and many others and he’s also an active investor. One of his companies, which he’s now active and an investor in is called Climeon. He’s also involved with Proof Analytics, Trigger Bee and many others.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Inside the Tornado
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A
• Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Put learning fast in front of prestige”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:38 – Nathan introduces Christopher to the show
• 02:14 – All of the companies Christopher founded are profitable and are growing companies
• 02:50 – Christopher’s biggest exit was Vendemore
  • 03:04 – Christopher ran it for 9 years
  • 03:12 – Vendemore was initially bootstrapped and raised funds
  • 03:51 – The exit was three years ago
  • 04:42 – Christopher and his wife owned 75% of Vendemore
• 05:40 – Christopher took 50% of his Vendemore exit to start Climeon
  • 05:53 – It has 350 shareholders
• 06:11 – Christopher believes that Climeon will be the next dominant player in mechanical engineering
• 07:13 – It is easier to raise funds if you have a number of shareholders
  • 07:28 – The next round for Climeon will be a big round
• 08:08 – Christopher shares how Climeon works
  • 09:50 – The process of energy transformation inside the Climeon
• 10:37 – Christopher believes in the potential of Climeon
• 11:24 – Team size is 40
• 11:41 – Climeon has less than 10 customers
• 12:10 – Climeon’s target clients are steel plants, cement plants and those in geothermal energy
• 12:36 – Christopher runs sales and marketing
• 12:42 – Climeon’s founder is in CTO side
• 12:54 – Christopher shares how he found out about Climeon
  • 13:20 – Christopher’s shares in the company is quite big
• 14:05 – The starting contract value of Climeon
• 14:40 – Climeon is getting several hundreds of millions of dollars per client
• 14:51 – Christopher doesn’t get commission from the sales
• 16:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Building companies isn’t always about revenue, but the value you bring.
2. If you believe in something, go for it.
3. Turning heat into electricity is the future of energy.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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 Chait. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Greenhouse, which designs tools that help create and navigate a new world of work. Daniel has been a technology entrepreneur in New York for nearly 20 years. Before Greenhouse, he co-founded Lab49, a global firm providing technology consulting solutions for the world’s leading investment banks. He’s a proud graduate of the computer engineering program at the University of Michigan.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Nudge
• What CEO do you follow? – Kim Scott
• Favorite online tool? — Trello
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The dotcom crash”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:35 – Nathan introduces Daniel to the show
• 02:10 – Greenhouse sells recruiting software that corporations use to design and execute their hiring process
• 02:40 – Greenhouse is a SaaS company
• 02:50 – Average customer pay per year varies
  • 03:05 – The pricing model depends on the size of the company
• 03:40 – Greenhouse tends to price higher than their competitors’ because they offer a premium software solution
• 04:05 – Greenhouse is in the recruiting software space which is currently crowded
  • 04:15 – Daniel shares some of their competitors depending on the categories
  • 05:10 – The competition is extremely fragmented
  • 05:33 – Greenhouse falls into all the categories, from the smaller ones to enterprise
• 06:05 – Greenhouse offers three tiers
• 06:24 – Greenhouse was launched in 2012
• 06:32 – First year revenue was around $50
• 07:33 – Post product revenue is around $1M
• 08:25 – Greenhouse currently has 2000 customers
• 09:03 – Team size is 195, based in San Francisco and New York
• 09:30 – Greenhouse has raised $16M from their series C round
• 09:53 – Daniel enjoyed doing their fund raising and he believes in their investors
  • 10:13 – Every round is different
  • 10:40 – This was the first time that Daniel raised outside the investment
• 11:19 – Greenhouse has a world-class retention rate
  • 11:36 – 97% of their customers have renewed
• 11:55 – Most of the team is in inside sales
• 12:36 – Daniel shares where their expansion comes from
• 13:11 – Greenhouse’s newest product is Greenhouse CRM which is still in beta
• 14:10 – The inside sales team job is heat mapping the products used by a customer
  • 14:41 – The expansion is through additional growth
• 15:15 – LTV-CAC ratio
  • 15:48 – “We have a healthy ratio”
• 16:04 – Payback period
• 17:00 – The weirdest thing Daniel did to acquire new customers
  • 17:43 – They went from market research to marketing
• 17:57 – ARR
  • 18:07 – Daniel on hitting the $50M ARR mark by end of 2017
• 19:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Create something that will make you stand out in a competitive and crowded market.
2. Focus on how you can increase your customer retention rate—perhaps it’s by adding new products that will better serve them.
3. Raising a capital round can help you gain new customers.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Todd Fisher. He’s the co-founder and CEO of CallTrackingMetrics, a top rated call automation and lead management platform serving over 30K businesses around the globe. Todd developed the initial software and continues to be the driving technical force behind the company. He has also made a number of notable developments in the technical field, especially within the Ruby on Rails community.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – N/A
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Steve Jobs
• Favorite online tool? — it
• 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? – “Get your shit together”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:30 – Nathan introduces Todd to the show
• 02:00 – CallTrackingMetrics has 30K paying customers
• 02:45 – CallTrackingMetrics sells phone numbers and provides functionality and features to those
  • 03:08 – It can track which ads resulted to a phone call
• 03:27 – CallTrackingMetrics was launched in 2011
• 03:40 – Todd started with Revolution Health Group in 2005, then in Captico in 2008
• 04:24 – Todd started with a website that accepts credit cards for CallTrackingMetrics
• 04:58 – Todd met his wife in 2008, and who is also part of the CallTrackingMetrics company
• 06:00 – First year revenue was around $10K MRR
• 06:26 – In 2012, CallTrackingMetrics had 1700 customers which became 5K in 2013
  • 06:43 – Currently, they’re passing 30K customers
• 07:05 – Todd shares how they increased the number of their customers
  • 07:42 – The first few customers found CallTrackingMetrics through a small landing page which was put into Google AdWords
  • 08:30 – Todd’s conversation with Living Social’s founder, Erin
  • 08:55 – Todd learned the RIGHT way to target customers through AdWords the HARD way
• 09:28 – Todd tracks their own app
• 09:46 – Last month, they spent 6-figures on AdWords and they also did other paid channels
  • 10:49 – Average CAC
• 11:20 – Customers pay an average of $2K a month from a marketing agency
  • 11:46 – Call tracking is an enhancer for their campaign
• 12:08 – CallTrackingMetrics has two types of customers
• 12:43 – 20% of the 30K customers are marketing agencies
• 13:16 – Last month’s MRR is around $1.2M
• 15:04 – Churn is around 6% monthly
• 15:43 – Team size is 23,
  • 15:55 – 3 in sales, 2 in marketing, 5 engineers and most are in support
• 17:35 – The Famous Five
• 20:08 – CallTrackingMetrics is totally bootstrapped

• Key Points:

1. Continue to explore what you want to do until you find something that will make you content and happy.
2. Ask around for opinions and don’t make decisions out of frustration.
3. Create something that adds value and brings joy to others.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Maria Seidman. She is the CEO and co-founder of Yapp, the top platform for event applications. Prior to Yapp, she was the GM for mobile and VP for Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. She has her MBA from Stanford and her BA from Yale and resides in New York City.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – How
• What CEO do you follow? – Stewart Butterfield
• Favorite online tool? — FullStory and Slack
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Take more risks”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:41 – Nathan introduces Maria to the show
• 02:29 – Yapp already has 85K apps published on their platform since they started
• 02:28 – Yapp was founded in 2011 and launched in 2012
• 02:56 – Maria left Warner Bros in 2010, then she met her co-founder for Yapp and they started in 2011
• 03:40 – Yapp’s market is professional events or the “mice industry”
• 03:54 – Yapp provides event technology for organizers who are in corporations or associations
  • 04:25 – Yapp isn’t for casual events
• 04:56 – Yapp is a SaaS business and charges monthly fees
• 05:17 – Nathan shares how his former business, Heyo, was seasonal and the churn was difficult to manage
• 05:40 – Maria shares how Yapp attracts customers because of its affordability and its ability to adapt to different types of events
  • 06:10 – Yapp has an internal communications tool
• 06:44 – Most customers are having multiple events per year
• 07:00 – Yapp’s pricing starts at $400 up to their volume pricing which is annual
• 07:32 – Small organizations tend to avail of Yapp more
• 08:34 – Team size is 5, all remote
  • 08:48 – 3 are engineers, 1 in marketing and Maria is in charge of other tasks
• 09:12 – Yapp started with a small debt round for capital, but was bootstrapped after the growth
• 10:19 – The investors were supportive of Yapp
• 10:45 – Maria aims for Yapp to be a group of tools targeting marketing and events
• 12:14 – Yapp is in a competitive market and can’t share their numbers
• 12:42 – Yapp is focused on their ARPU and is going deeper on the enterprise
• 13:16 – Maria shares the weirdest thing she did to get customers was sneak into tradeshows
• 15:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. The seasonality of the business affects churn drastically so having a second revenue stream is a must.
2. Smaller groups are having more events than corporations are having within the frame of a year.
3. Applications that are versatile get more users, especially from the business market.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Spencer Coon. He’s the co-founder of HiBox.co and Joincube. He has over 5 years of experience in enterprise collaboration software and 7 years working internationally. He has managed teams across 3 continents and 5 countries. Previously, he was in investment banking at JP Morgan in New York City.  

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Black Swan
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Intercom
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Spencer wished he knew that technology was going to be more of his passion

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:50 – Nathan introduces Spencer to the show
• 02:20 – HiBox is a collaboration app for teams
  • 02:31 – It has an artificial intelligence to bring everything together and enhance productivity
• 03:19 – HiBox is a SaaS model with a 14-day free trial
  • 03:30 – It has 3 different versions, including a pro version and an enterprise version
• 03:57 – ARPU is $32 a month
  • 04:03 – An average account has 7-8 people
• 04:55 – Spencer wanted to have his own product, so he left JP Morgan
  • 05:13 – He wanted to create something tangible and has been passionate about Latin America
• 05:39 – Spencer started HiBox in Buenos Aires
  • 05:46 – It’s less competitive to start a business in Latin America with talented people and their rates are more competitive
• 06:16 – There are 5 people on the tech team and 15 people in total
  • 06:28 – Most of the team is in Barcelona
• 06:36 – Spencer left JP Morgan in 2012 and went to another company where he met his now business partner
• 07:28 – First year revenue was less than $10K
• 07:43 – HiBox is Spencer’s first baby as an entrepreneur
• 08:00 – Spencer used up his savings to start HiBox
• 08:41 – HiBox has raised some seed rounds
  • 08:54 – It was more difficult to access VC funds in the USA because HiBox is based in Latin America
  • 09:16 – They had 2 priced rounds with a total of $500K funds raised
  • 10:00 – Spencer is still in the middle of negotiations for their next round
• 10:20 – Over 10K companies have signed up to HiBox and there are 35K active users
• 10:38 – HiBox is their main focus at the moment
• 10:42 – Joincube is an enterprise social network focused on multi-national companies in Latin America
• 11:13 – There are 300 companies paying for HiBox
• 11:30 – MRR is around $10K for the pro version
• 11:54 – Last month’s revenue
• 13:05 – Joincube will become HiBox corporate
• 13:34 – Gross monthly churn is 6.2%
• 15:10 – Spencer shares why their product would still be beneficial for their clients after the upgrade
  • 15:46 – It’s almost similar to Intercom, but better
• 16:00 – CAC is $233
  • 16:10 – Most are used for online ads
  • 16:26 – It is a fully weighted CAC
  • 16:38 – $3K was spent on paid advertising last month
• 16:57 – Spencer is hoping that the business will be profitable at the outset
  • 17:32 – They’re doing as many tests as they can
• 18:05 – ARR target by the end of 2017
• 19:00 – Weirdest thing we ever did to acquire clients was tell them I lost a bet and would give them a 50% discount forever
• 20:00 – Gross margin
• 20:48 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. It’s never too late to start your entrepreneurial journey.
2. Starting your business in a country with less competition is a cost-efficient and wise decision.
3. An upgrade should NOT affect customer loyalty and their experience with your product.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Spencer Bogart. He’s a managing director and the head of research for Blockchain Capital, the premier venture firm for investing directly in the blockchain companies. Prior to joining Blockchain Capital, Spencer was a VP of Equity Research where he covered traditional software and internet stocks. He had his first industry report on blockchain technology and is the most active analyst covering bitcoin.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Zero to One
• What CEO do you follow? – Balaji Srinivasan
• Favorite online tool? — Telegram
• 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? – “I just wish I would have spent more time on bitcoin”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:48 – Nathan introduces Spencer to the show
• 03:10 – Crypto hedge fund has created a “honey pot” for hackers
  • 03:18 – The “honey pot” is actually bigger on the exchanges
• 04:23 – Most companies are now making bitcoins more accessible
  • 04:45 – Spencer shares how to use Coinbase
• 05:00 – Spencer has predicted that there’s a sub 25% chance that the US SEC is approving a bitcoin ETF
  • 05:21 – It is difficult for regulators to get comfortable with bitcoin
  • 05:30 – Spencer shares the pros and cons of approving a bitcoin ETF
  • 06:02 – There has been changes in US SEC’s administration that could be favorable with the approval
  • 06:39 – There’s an ETF that was disapproved, but appealed and it was then granted
  • 07:34 – There are speculators who moved in beforehand
• 08:03 – Blockchain Capital is a VC firm that has focused on blockchain for the last 4-5 years
  • 08:14 – The last fund they did was their own ICO
  • 08:23 – Their cap was a $10M offering
  • 08:33 – Their offering’s sold out in just 10 minutes
  • 08:50 – They are currently raising their fourth fund
• 09:10 – The industry has been changing consistently
  • 09:36 – “We’re just all hands on deck”
• 10:08 – Blockchain Capital’s fund one was $3-5M and fund two was $15M
  • 10:40 – Target fund for the fourth one is $250M
• 11:12 – Spencer shares about their Civic deal
  • 11:50 – Civic allows you to provide your identity to others without them getting your identity
  • 12:28 – Civic’s ICO
• 12:50 – Spencer discusses with his team how they handle situations where they had an initial investment of token sales
  • 13:22 – Tokens are not dilutive
  • 13:57 – People who bought into token issuance won’t directly benefit from the acquisition of companies
  • 14:08 – There’s a lot of demand for under-line technology
• 15:35 – Spencer shares the problems Civic is trying to solve
  • 16:18 – Civic wanted to sell enough tokens to get the attributions abroad to create an initial user base
  • 16:35 – A company won’t sell its equity upfront
• 17:45 – Spencer made their acquisition and token issuance in two totally different time frames
  • 18:13 – Token offerings have different models
• 20:19 – Nathan asks Spencer how an entrepreneur can manage his money in order to run the business vs. what to keep
  • 20:31 – Most of the funds that have been raised should be converted to dollars so they can pay the bills
  • 21:05 – Spencer is liquidating usually 80%
  • 21:19 – “Do yourself a favor, convert into a currency that you can actually pay your bills in and pay the developers in”
• 21:57 – Spencer believes that Coinbase is the biggest brand in the space, especially in exchange
• 22:38 – Nathan asks Spencer, “what if any government starts normalizing crypto?”— the demand for the exchange would decrease drastically
  • 22:58 – Coinbase was incentivized to not see widespread government adoption of cryptocurrency because they need people to put money into their system
  • 23:20 – Spencer believes that if this happens, this will be a high class problem for Coinbase
  • 23:25 – There are companies who are using Coinbase, not just for exchange
• 26:24 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Bitcoin is becoming more accessible to people because of the demand.
2. The government’s regulation on cryptocurrency is still in its beginnings.
3. Liquidation of the funds depends on the company’s decisions regarding what they need and their what their goals are.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Jayesh Parmar. He’s a serial entrepreneur with two decades of event industry experience. Currently, he’s the CEO and co-founder of Picatic and is listed as one of the world’s top 10 tech entrepreneurs disrupting the event industry.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Amy
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Failure is just a data point”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:44 – Nathan introduces Jayesh to the show
• 02:10 – Picatic brings people together and does things that are absolutely different from others
  • 02:22 – Picatic has given away a product for free
  • 02:55 – Picatic has changed the ballgame with their pro product
  • 03:13 – Picatic offers Picatic Anywhere which is a new ticketing service
• 04:00 – The bigger stream for Picatic is the commission-based stream
• 05:00 – Average pay for Picatic varies
• 05:26 – Picatic has a basic product which is free and the pro product which is commission-based
  • 05:33 – Base rate is a dollar and commission rate is 2.5% per ticket
  • 05:46 – Stripe is on top of Picatic
• 06:18 – Enterprise API ranges from $5K to $100K depending on the API calls and ticket sales
• 06:58 – Event businesses are seasonal, but Picatic has partnered with different venues and organizations that aren’t seasonal
• 08:00 – Picatic was launched in 2008 as a side project
• 08:20 – Picatic went through Extreme Startup and got $250K with 10% equity
• 08:33 – Picatic has raised $1.5M as additional capital
• 09:22 – First year revenue is less than $10K
• 09:48 – 2015 revenue is less than a $100K
• 10:05 – As an event organizer, Jayesh wanted to de-risk events
• 10:31 – Picatic has pivoted from their previous model
• 11:40 – 2016 revenue
  • 12:22 – The revenue is around $1.2M
• 12:40 – Team size is 15 based in Vancouver, Canada
• 13:55 – 2017 goal
• 14:05 – Picatic grows 100% year over year
• 14:25 – Jayesh has been going to different events to market his Picatic by being a doorman
• 16:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Don’t stick with your current business model just because—test other models that your company could benefit from.
2. The online ticketing world is consistently improving.
3. The best way to get your business out there is by marketing it yourself.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Ransu Salovaara. He’s the CEO of TokenMarket, the leading token sale advisory and information hub based on Gibraltar. He’s also an advisor for numerous blockchain startups.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Digital Gold
• What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kalanick
• Favorite online tool? — Coinbase
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Don’t be so arrogant, don’t think that you know it all. Listen more, talk less

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:28 – Nathan introduces Ransu to the show
• 02:00 – In February 2014, Ransu’s friend called him and asked if he knew about bitcoin
  • 02:14 – His friend told him to get into bitcoin
• 02:50 – Ransu is like the Bloomberg of crypto stuff
• 03:07 – Ransu gets money from the commission of their services to raise money for startups
• 03:15 – Ransu is involved in Firstblood
  • 03:55 – Ransu shares what he knows about Joe Zhou of Firstblood
• 04:21 – Christoph of DAO was in Episode 781 of The Top
• 04:55 – TokenMarket didn’t exist yet during the DAO
• 05:15 – Ransu is getting 7% of their deal with the startup
• 05:52 – Ransu shares how they advise startups who are looking into raising money
  • 06:28 – Ransu believes that startups focus more on building their company
• 06:46 – TokenMarket markets ICOs by going into different community platforms
  • 06:52 – BitcoinTalk, Twitter, Facebook and Telegram are some of the community platforms
• 07:33 – There are 5000 investors in the ICO field
• 08:40 – Ransu shares why startups won’t just use ether
• 09:38 – Civic is one of the ICOs that TokenMarket just recently advised
  • 09:57 – Civic has a KYC system
  • 10:24 – Civic has raised $33M
• 11:07 – TokenMarket has advised Edgeless, which is their TokenMarket’s first ICO
  • 11:23 – Edgeless raised $3M
• 13:25 – For the first time, Ransu feels that the USA is falling behind in the crypto world
• 13:58 – Ransu’s rule of thumb for startups
• 14:50 – Nathan shares why he thinks ICOs are a scam, and how they actually are not scams
• 17:00 – The hype of crypto explained
• 17:20 – Ransu believes that crypto is the beginning of the new digital assets era
• 18:48 – Every month, the market gets better
• 19:15 – Nathan shares what he thinks about Uber’s surge pricing and its relativity with ICOs and the crypto world
  • 20:08 – Modern day businesses and startups are the best concepts to go launch ICOs or token issuance
  • 21:38 – There are ICOs with the same concept as Uber and Airbnb, but are still not at par with the two
• 22:40 – Ransu often receives different pitches and some have concepts that are difficult to execute
  • 23:00 – An ICO fail because of the team, the market, the demand, their failure to deliver and lack of tokens
• 24:45 – Transitioning from a regular startup to an ICO is difficult
• 27:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Companies looking into their ICO should focus on building their business and strengthening its foundation and service first and foremost.
2. Not all concepts work for an ICO.
3. Cryptocurrency is the beginning of the new digital asset era.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Olin Hyde. He’s the co-founder and CEO of LeadCrunch.ai, an intelligent demand generation platform that accelerates sales with high precision analytics and content delivery. In less than 10 months since they’ve launched, the company has grown to more than 90 customers and are getting 300% higher sales conversion rates.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Humans
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Salesloft
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Olin hoped he would have known how important linear algebra is

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:38 – Nathan introduces Olin to the show
• 02:09 – The last exit of Olin was Auto-Semantics that analyzed social media feeds
  • 02:22 – It was sold to ai-one
• 02:28 – Olin spent 2 years with ai-one
• 02:38 – LeadCrunch started with healthcare
• 02:51 – LeadCrunch has beat IBM Watson
• 02:59 – LeadCrunch is using their targeting technology to help mid-market companies find their next best customers
• 03:17 – Olin shares why they’re targeting SMBs
  • 03:34 – Olin likes to work with people who help others make their dreams come true
  • 03:43 – LeadCrunch’s first product was Private Alpha with 1,070 small businesses signups
  • 03:56 – LeadCrunch stays away from the enterprise because they like the idea of democratizing the power of AI to enable everyone to achieve their dreams
• 04:08 – LeadCrunch’s business model is a combination of subscription and on-demand
• 04:42 – It is still early for LeadCrunch’s SaaS model, so most of their revenue is from on-demand
• 04:53 – With on-demand, LeadCrunch got 130 rebooks from customers in just 90 days
• 05:17 – Average customer pay is $20K
• 06:05 – Olin won’t call their revenue ARR, but on-demand
• 06:40 – LeadCrunch has a customer success function
• 06:50 – LeadCrunch was launched in August 2015
• 07:27 – Trailing 12 months revenue is around a million dollars
• 07:36 – Monthly revenue is around $200K in bookings
• 07:46 – The product was launched in September 2016
• 08:04 – LeadCrunch was initially bootstrapped and has raised about $2M in capital
  • 08:36 – LeadCrunch has kept the cap of $6M
• 09:33 – LeadCrunch has around 90 lifetime customers and 55 on their current product line
• 10:50 – Olin shares the weirdest thing he did to get a customer
• 11:44 – Gross margin
  • 12:03 – LeadCrunch optimizes for growth and not for margins yet
• 12:48 – Customer payback period is 2.1 months
• 13:15 – On-demand customers pay as LeadCrunch delivers
• 13:36 – LeadCrunch’s CAC decreases as they get more customers
• 13:57 – Paid spent is around $6500
  • 14:41 – LeadCrunch does A/B tests to discover new funnels
  • 14:58 – LeadCrunch is influenced by Traction of Justin Mires
  • 15:18 – LeadCrunch is conservative and capital efficient
• 15:35 – Team size is 15
• 16:04 – “We could get cash flow positive in 60 days if we want to”
• 17:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Work with people that you believe in the most.
2. Revenue models vary depending on which model works best for the company.
3. Cash flow positive is great, but you shouldn’t have to sacrifice your people to reach it.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Harry Kargman. He’s a passionate entrepreneur who bootstrapped Kargo over 17 years into the leading mobile brand advertising marketplace. He’s obsessed with art, design and New York and has been helping steward the ad council in a partnership for New York.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Only the Paranoid Survive
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Skype, Slack and other product tools
• 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? – “It’s going to be okay”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:08 – Nathan introduces Harry to the show
• 02:41 – Kargo is the largest brand advertising company for mobile
  • 02:45 – Their focus is on high end brands that are highly creative
• 03:16 – Kargo is a technology company
  • 03:43 – They built a technology that will make an ad on mobile a high end brand experience
  • 04:12 – The ad renders perfectly on a mobile page
• 05:52 – Kargo works with around 98% of the major media companies and publishers
• 06:21 – Most of Kargo’s customers are Fortune 1000 companies
• 07:13 – Kargo charges as a technology play for publishers, like a SaaS model
  • 07:28 – It is integrated into the media that runs on the platform
• 07:50 – Kargo also takes a percentage of media that runs through the platform
• 08:21 – Kargo is focused on quality as they’ve turned down a lot of publishers
  • 08:41 – Kargo only has the best quality for advertisers
• 09:00 – The average cut Kargo is taking
  • 09:25 – Harry shares how they’re taking the cut with the kind of service that they provide
  • 10:29 – The vision that Kargo has is that they’re on equal partnerships
• 11:14 – In 2015, Kargo passed $100M in annual revenue
  • 11:18 – The growth, year over year, is around 100%
• 11:56 – 2017 is a big year for Kargo where they’re building a technology that is new to the market
  • 12:23 – Kargo has an AdLab that they try to bring to advertisers
• 13:11 – Kargo is 15-20% SaaS and 85% is media
• 13:22 – The goal for next year
• 13:58 – Total team size is 270
• 14:25 – Kargo will have a partnership with NBC in 2018
• 15:07 – Kargo is completely bootstrapped
• 15:32 – Before pivoting, Kargo was trying to build software and services for operators
  • 15:38 – However, operators wanted to take 18 months to 2 years for testing which is impossible for startups
• 16:18 – Kargo just got into the water, expecting major media companies to sell their ads and media properties
• 17:36 – The Famous Five
• 19:12 – Harry’s wife, Jill Kargman of Odd Mom Out will be on tour

3 Key Points:

1. Develop a product that will make Fortune 1000 companies need you.
2. Regardless of the size of the deal, maintain equal partnership with your partners.
3. Stay bootstrapped as long as you can and as long as you want.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Irv Shapiro. He’s responsible for the overall business strategy and corporate leadership as the CEO of DialogTech. DialogTech provides the industry a leading, actionable, marketing analytics platform for businesses that value inbound sales calls. The company was named an Inc 500 company in servicing close to 5000 businesses worldwide—ranging from emerging companies to the world’s largest enterprises.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Purple Cow
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? —The Top Inbox
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I should have stayed in architecture school”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:04 – Nathan introduces Irv to the show
• 02:51 – DialogTech is Irv’s third rodeo in the industry
• 03:10 – Metamor Technologies is a system information business that built large office systems
  • 03:35 – It scaled to 500 people and was sold to Corestaff
  • 03:51 – It was sold in 1997 for $38M
• 04:11 – After Metamor, Irv started Edventions which was in the early days of the internet when schools were concerned about internet safety and its environment
• 04:40 – Edventions provided a safe internet environment
  • 04:51 – In 2000, everything crashed and it was sold to Edison Schools
• 05:17 – DialogTech’s team size is 150
• 05:20 – Current revenue is at $40M
• 05:25 – 2016 revenue was $35M
• 05:30 – DialogTech raised a total of $60M
• 05:45 – DialogTech did their A round in July of 2007
• 06:15 – DialogTech helps companies who receive inbound calls to become more effective, efficient and close more sales
• 06:37 – DialogTech does four things technology-wise:
  • 06:59 – It tells the customer’s behavior on your website
  • 07:04 – The data then can be used by the marketing team
    • 07:33 – An example of this is a life insurance call
  • 08:18 – Tracking is by a unique phone number
  • 09:38 – When a website is visited, a unique phone number is shown
• 10:14 – DialogTech is a SaaS model, but is in essence a cloud model
• 10:32 – Charges vary if the calls are in a batch or if it is an unlimited plan
• 10:37 – Customers pay between $150K a month to over $100K a month
• 10:55 – DialogTech has almost 5K customers
• 11:19 – Irv shares a growth tactic they tried that didn’t work
  • 12:36 – They sent burner phones to over 200 marketing executives that have videos on them that will play after opening the phone
  • 12:55 – They’ve spent over $20K for the campaign but they were not able to get a single sale
• 13:20 – Annual logo churn is around 8-9%
• 13:35 – Monthly revenue churn on the enterprise side is around .4%
• 13:47 – DialogTech has around 98% revenue retention
• 14:59 – 3K of their 5K customers are legacy customers who are at a lower price point
• 15:09 – Irv believes that they will reach $40M in revenue by end of 2017
• 15:30 – The volume of calls that DialogTech processes requires a technology that needs funds
• 15:55 – Gross margin is around 65%
• 16:38 – CAC depends on segment
• 16:43 – Gross margin payback is 18-24 months
  • 16:59 – Irv explains how they compute it
• 17:45 – LTV is 5-7 years for enterprise customers
• 18:13 – DialogTech has around 40 engineers, 50 in sales overall, 12-15 customer support, and the rest in back end
• 19:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Target goals can be reached with a consistent model and growth tactics in play.
2. We learn from our mistakes, so don’t be afraid to make them.
3. Weigh the pros and cons of raising capital; if there is a need, then go for it.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Andreas Antonopoulos. He’s a technologist and serial entrepreneur. He has become one of the most well-known and well respected in bitcoin. He’s the author of Mastering Bitcoin, published by O’Reilly Media. Andreas is also considered the best technical guide in bitcoin and The Internet of Money—another term that he coined—is his book about why bitcoins matter.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Digital Gold
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A
• Favorite online tool? — Trello
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “What you’re worrying about is really not worth worrying about, just go for it”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:50 – Nathan introduces Andreas to the show
• 03:17 – Cryptocurrency is still volatile
• 03:20 – Most ICOs nowadays still converts 60-80% of funds
• 04:00 – There’s no single system in crypto
  • 04:21 – Andreas thinks that it isn’t the matter of ideology, but a matter of being a rational actor
• 04:48 – From a regulatory perspective, Andreas foresees that more than 90% of the ICOs will fail
  • 05:00 – Founders get rich because of the investors not doing much to evaluate the ICOs
  • 05:20 – There’s a lot of immature products coming to ICOs
  • 05:47 – The cycle will just burn through a lot of money
• 06:12 – Andreas isn’t involved in any ICOs and he’s actually against investing in them
• 06:50 – ICOs can be seen as another space for crowd funding which bridges the gap between angel investment and VC
  • 07:15 – At this time, there’s a lot of risk in ICO
• 07:44 – Cryptocurrency is the application of networks and market economics to the flow of money internationally
  • 07:50 – Just like the internet was the application of a flat network system to communication around the world
  • 08:23 – It is a system that doesn’t belong to any company or to any one person
  • 08:27 – It removed intermediaries in banking and finance
  • 09:00 – You don’t have to trust the person you’re dealing with, but just trust the platform
  • 09:32 – It is extremely important for developing nations
• 10:28 – Andreas shares how cryptocurrency protected his mom’s cash retirement from failing Greek banks because of Greece’s current economy
• 11:12 – Nathan shares a sample scenario with ISIS using cryptocurrency to attack Greece
  • 11:28 – Andreas shares why the US shouldn’t have spent 20 years bombing them as it led them to acquire weapons
• 13:30 – If Kim Jong-Un wants to acquire weapons in cryptocurrency, there’s no current way to regulate it
  • 14:42 – The ability of the government to control the money leads to corruption and oppression of people
  • 15:03 – “No, you can’t control money”
• 15:50 – Andreas is more interested in insuring that people who are trapped in poverty have the means to provide for basic necessities
• 16:50 – Andreas’ point regarding the future of the world depending on cryptocurrency
• 17:56 – ICO is a productive application of capital and investment, believing that there will be a return
• 18:31 – There’s a lot of people speculating about the future
• 19:11 – The comparisons between different cryptocurrencies and their market capital are not useful
  • 19:24 – It is mostly based on speculation at the moment
• 20:50 – Andreas’ primary advice is not to buy crypto, but to earn it
  • 20:55 – It is an online visual economy
  • 21:22 – He has been earning his cryptocurrencies for the past 3 years
  • 21:44 – The speaking deal of Andreas is in bitcoin, plus 20%
  • 22:06 – He liquidates his tokens on a monthly basis
  • 23:00 – There are some establishments that receive cryptocurrencies
  • 23:45 – There are also a lot of BTMs or bitcoin automated machines available
  • 24:22 – There are also local traders for cryptocurrencies but you just have to be cautious
• 25:12 – The questions Nathan should be asking for a pitch of a $5M crypto hedge fund
  • 25:30 – Crypto funds are holding crypto for thousands of investors
  • 25:40 – Their security should be a thousand times better and most companies can’t do that
  • 26:00 – It’s easy to hack on a computer
  • 26:35 – This is very similar to DAO
  • 26:44 – The better way is to hold crypto funds individually by putting them into a wallet
• 27:24 – “You can’t keep information securely concentrated in one place”
• 28:57 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. As of this moment, it is not that wise to invest in an ICO.
2. The future of cryptocurrency can have both a positive or negative effect on people.
3. Don’t buy cryptocurrency, earn it.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Alex Austin. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Branch, a leading mobile deep linking platform with solutions that unify mobile user experience and measurement across devices, platforms and channels. He founded Branch back in 2014 while attending Stanford Graduate School of Business. Before founding Branch, Ale founded Kindred Prints, had engineering roles at NASA and holds many research papers under his name. 

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Mistborn Trilogy
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — JMP Statistical Analysis
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – You have to start your own company, don't wait. There is never the right time.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:04 – Nathan introduces Alex to the show
• 02:46 – Alex shares how he moved from NASA to a deep linking platform
  • 03:33 – Alex realized that he hated school and loves building instead
  • 03:57 – Alex still does building projects on his free time
• 04:33 – Alex started Branch when they were building the Kindred app
  • 04:46 – The problem they faced was discovery as it was hard for people to find the app
  • 05:36 – The only way people find Kindred is through the app store
  • 05:48 – Alex created an ability to link to their photobooks with the ideal model
  • 06:00 – They were able to do deep linking which is the ability to link to a page inside an app and have people discover the app for the content inside
  • 06:12 – Branch was then able to solve a general problem
  • 06:28 – Alex then decided to sell Kindred
  • 07:34 – They didn’t see Kindred as a billion dollar company
  • 07:47 – When they started Branch, people were already asking them about the technology
• 08:30 – Currently, 40% of the app ecosystem is using Branch today
  • 08:42 – Airbnb is one of the apps that uses Branch—if you use it to find a property, then send a link to a friend, that link would be a branch link
• 09:05 – The goal is to get 90% of the app ecosystem to use Branch
• 09:26 – Google will allow you to search data on the web and Branch will search through all the pages
• 09:37 – Branch charges through the usage of the link
• 09:41 – The ultimate goal is to build a discovery platform
• 09:47 – Branch is a SaaS business
• 10:19 – For big companies, the charge is actually by tier
• 10:47 – Average deal size for enterprise client is $55-60K annually
• 10:57 – Branch just started selling to enterprise
• 11:03 – Branch was launched in 2014
• 11:09 – The platform was initially being given away
  • 11:33 – They only turned on their paywall more than 7 months ago
• 11:39 – Branch raised $117M
  • 11:57 – It was a priced seed round and a carryover from Kindred
• 12:38 – Team size is around 120 with 65 engineers
• 13:40 – The weirdest marketing tactic they did was they went to Stack Overflow and answered questions back linking to their product
• 14:38 – Branch just started a meetup group where people can talk about mobile growth
• 15:22 – Over 26K developers are using the SDKs
• 15:33 – When they first started, they’ve worked on different series of ideas that failed to work
  • 15:51 – It took a couple of months for them to gain momentum
• 16:40 – Number of paying customers
  • 17:18 – 99% of the revenue comes from enterprise customers
• 18:35 – The app ecosystem is like Yahoo, in 1995
  • 18:53 – Google allowed the access to the information on the web
• 19:19 – Branch is built as SaaS because it keeps the lifeline long
• 19:55 – How Alex delivers his pitch
• 20:18 – Alex doesn’t want to have competition and they always make sure to kill off those who start to compete
  • 20:57 – The platform is designed to have a network effect
  • 21:36 – EOCO is the company that closed after competing with Branch
• 22:20 – Alex’s wife is a VC but she’s not invested in Branch
• 24:28 – Alex isn’t really doing Branch for the money alone
• 24:58 – Alex sees Branch as his contribution to make a great impact
• 26:00 – “There’s always a big company to go after”
  • 26:13 – Google launched a product last year which is a direct replica of Branch
• 29:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Develop a solution to a problem and customers will flock to you.
2. As shady as your tactic may be, organic traffic is still the best source of traffic.
3. There will always be bigger companies than yours; don’t let it stop you from improving and growing.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Evan Liang. He’s the CEO and co-founder of LeanData which he founded after managing a data cleanup project at his first company and felt the pain of cleaning Salesforce data by hand. Prior to LeanData, he was the GM and VP of products at Caring.com where he grew a small acquisition within the company’s main business. Generally, he owned 50% of the company’s revenue over 2 years. Before Caring.com, Evan worked at Shasta Ventures, a leading venture capital firm focused on end-user driven businesses. Before that, he worked in project management at eBay and business development at Microsoft where he helped launched the Xbox 360. Evan started his career at Battery Ventures where he specialized in software and ecommerce investments. He holds his MBA from Kellogg and BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Rich Hagberg
• Favorite online tool? — Slack
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I want to be an entrepreneur and not a VC first”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:03 – Nathan introduces Evan to the show
• 03:04 – LeanData helps marketing and sales scale their lead management processes
  • 03:11 – They’re focused on two business processes: lead routing and marketing attribution
• 03:20 – Cloudera is one of their customers
  • 03:30 – With all the leads that are coming into Cloudera’s system, LeanData will figure out which sales rep should follow up
• 03:43 – LeanData works well with lead scoring predictive vendors
• 04:30 – LeanData is a SaaS business
• 04:36 – Average customer pays $20-30K a year
  • 04:42 – Large enterprises are paying 6 figures
• 04:54 – The pricing depends on the number of seats
• 05:24 – Marketing attribution is an upsell from the product
• 05:34 – LeanData was launched in 2012
• 05:46 – Evan has always been passionate with startups and he was just waiting for the right idea to come along
• 06:18 – Evan was at Caring when he saw the problem that LeanData was able to solve
  • 06:40 – They had a large amount of data in Salesforce that was a big mess
• 07:25 – First year revenue of LeanData was $200K
• 08:08 – LeanData raised $1.3M from their seed round
  • 08:19 – Total funds raised $18M
  • 08:28 – The seed round was a priced round
• 09:12 – Current team size is 50
  • 09:28 – 15 are engineers, 15 in sales, 5 in marketing, 8 in CS
• 09:48 – LeanData currently has 250 enterprise customers
• 10:13 – MRR is around $600K and ARR is around $7.5M
• 10:34 – The weirdest marketing strategy of LeanData’s was sending pizzas to people
  • 11:00 – It was a marketing campaign and the customers picked the pizza place where they wanted their pizzas from
  • 11:27 – The problem was some chosen pizza places wouldn’t deliver so one of the SDRs would have to buy the pizza and deliver it
  • 11:56 – They were still able to get some sales from that campaign
• 12:08 – The primary CAC is for events
  • 12:32 – One event is the Lunch and Learn Event
  • 13:05 – They spent around 600K in strategizing conferences over a year
  • 13:17 – Paid advertising spend is less than 10K
• 14:04 – Annual logo churn is 15%
• 14:13 – LeanData is currently net negative revenue churn
• 14:30 – ARPU expansion is between 5-10%
• 14:48 – LTV is around 5 years
• 15:35 – LeanData’s competitors in the ABM lead scoring space
• 16:27 – Gross margin is 80%
  • 16:42 – LeanData benefits from Salesforce
  • 17:16 – LeanData doesn’t need backend servers
• 17:30 – Evan answers about their exit strategy since it seems like Salesforce is the only one who can acquire them
• 18:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Organizing your data is crucial for the company’s operations.
2. The weirdest marketing strategy can take people aback and still win business for you.
3. The exit of a company depends upon the possibility of an acquisition; however, there will always be other options.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Sandy Khaund.  He’s the CEO of Upgraded, a platform for tickets using blockchain technologies. Previously, he was the CTO at InStadium, a sports venue ad network and senior director at Turner Broadcasting along with CEO of Iryrnsoft, a video-based learning for mobile devices. He was also the COO of teen social network at Piczo and director at Microsoft.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The World is Flat
• What CEO do you follow? – Reed Hastings and Mark Zuckerberg
• Favorite online tool? — OneNote
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The secret of life is doing what you do for free and getting someone to pay you for it”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:02 – Nathan introduces Sandy to the show
• 02:37 – Upgraded has a solution widget that addresses the problem of event tickets
  • 02:52 – Alot of the tickets are fake and being sold on Craigslist
• 03:31 – The Cryptography has worked so well that there’s only one bitcoin
• 03:54 – Upgraded has a tokenization aspect which converts tickets into a blockchain ticket
  • 04:02 – Another revenue model as an alternative to Stubhub
• 05:04 – Upgraded has already made less than $50K in revenue
• 05:11 – Sandy started Upgraded last March
• 05:30 – There are 4 full-time people on the team
• 05:45 – The cofounder was initially a consultant and Sandy has more in equity
• 06:07 – The initial fund was from Sandy’s personal savings
• 06:14 – Sandy took an Angel investment of $300K on a convertible note
  • 06:33 – With 4% interest and $7M cap
• 07:11 – Sandy and the team are still talking about the ICO
• 09:00 – Right now, cryptocurrency relates to the currency valuation
• 09:12 – For Sandy, he’s more about the technology rather than the currency
• 11:10 – Sandy wants to make sure that what he will do what is right for the business
• 11:50 – Nathan talks about the regulations in ICOs
• 12:11 – Sandy had a talk with his attorney about ICOs and blockchain
• 12:40 – As of the moment, anything can happen
• 13:30 – There was also some acquisition talks with Upgraded but Sandy turned it down
• 14:03 – Sandy didn’t build Upgraded for the money
  • 14:20 – “I just want to keep creating”
• 15:16 – Sandy thinks it is still too early for the company to do ICOs
• 15:45 – Nathan talks about the issue DAO had
• 17:41 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. While ICO is one of the hottest topics in blockchains, some companies would rather not delve into it at this time.
2. Create a utility that can solve one of the most taken for granted problems.
3. Do the work that you would do for free and then get someone to pay you for it.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

 C. Lee Smith. He’s the CEO of SalesFuel, a multi-million dollar sales enablement firm he founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1989. SalesFuel leverages critical insights that enables its clients to acquire, develop and retain their best employees and customers. The company is launching a brand new product called TeamKeeper that will revolutionize the way managers manage and develop their people which leads to a happy, business culture and a reduction in turnover.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Sales Bible
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Tim Cook
• Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator and Lynda
• 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? – “Relax man, you’re going to make it”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:02 – Nathan introduces Lee to the show
• 02:42 – SalesFuel does sales enablement
  • 02:48 – It helps salespeople to sell better, close more deals and be the trusted advisors for their client
• 03:23 – SalesFuel leverages critical insights for both sales prospects and employees
• 03:35 – SalesFuel has 3 SaaS products: AdMall, TeamKeeper and one still in the works
• 03:59 – TeamKeeper is already up and working
• 04:13 – AdMall is for media companies
• 04:22 – When Lee started the company, the idea was to provide business intelligence based on business type
  • 04:35 – SalesFuel currently has over 450 types of businesses that they’re researching
• 04:41 – The research team is the second largest team in SalesFuel with 10-15 people
• 04:57 – Total team size is 30-40
• 05:08 – 2016 total sales is $6-10M
• 05:30 – SalesFuel was on the internet in 1995 with a few companies still new to the web when they had their first product
• 05:56 – It was in 1997 when SalesFuel built their first web application
• 06:25 – An AdMall customer pays an average of $500-1K a month
• 06:51 – AdMall’s pricing model is based on the size of the sales team
  • 07:41 – The price depends on the range of the number of employees
  • 07:59 – For a digital agency, they have a different price because of the numbers of tools that they use
• 08:21 – SalesFuel currently has 1500 customers
• 09:21 – Columbus is a foodie town
  • 10:03 – Lee sent packs of dry ice cream from a local artisan to their potential clients
  • 10:09 – Lee had calls returned to him—he thinks it was the weirdest marketing strategy he ever used
  • 11:10 – Lee closed a deal from that marketing strategy
• 12:06 – SalesFuel is 100% bootstrapped
• 12:38 – First year revenue is around $100K
• 12:50 – Revenue in 2000 was around a million
• 13:45 – 2010 revenue is close to $3M
• 14:40 – SalesFuel’s retention rate year over year is above 98%
  • 15:20 – SalesFuel has client and revenue growth year over year
  • 15:54 – Logo churn is equal to revenue churn
• 16:34 – CAC
  • 16:48 – SalesFuel gets their leads from thought leadership and business development
  • 17:23 – For research and blog, SalesFuel spends a little over $250K annually
• 17:45 – SalesFuel currently has 2 SDRs
  • 18:02 – Product team has close to 18 people
  • 18:15 – Sales and marketing team has 10 people and the rest are in operation
• 19:23 – SalesFuel has around 100 new customers every year
• 20:52 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. A slow hustle is never a bad strategy— grow slowly and consistently.
2. There are tons of new ways to gain customers; be creative, bold and just go for it.
3. Believe that you can and will make it!

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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

Chris Mann. He has over 25 years of experience in product management and strategy. In 2010, he joined Bizo and created a marketing automation system for B2B paid advertising and led the company through its $175M acquisition by LinkedIn. He was also involved in LinkedIn’s advertising business. Prior to Bizo, Chris held product leadership role in IBM and Coremetrics. Today, he is the CEO leading Brightfunnel.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Hard Thing About Hard Things and High Output Management
• What CEO do you follow? – Russ Glass
• Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Come from the heart”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:00 – Nathan introduces Chris to the show
• 02:53 – Chris was the head of product at Bizo when they were just starting with 15 people
• 03:31 – Chris began advising for Brightfunnel when there were only 18 people in the company
  • 03:41 – He was still at LinkedIn at the time and the previous CEO told Chris to join them
  • 03:58 – Chris joined as head of product and the transition was planned for him to take the CEO seat
  • 04:06 – Chris took the CEO seat in April
• 04:30 – Chris had to stay with LinkedIn after the acquisition
• 04:55 – Chris thinks LinkedIn won’t have a mature and dominant advertising platform from a scale standpoint
  • 05:22 – “The scale would never get to Facebook”
• 06:20 – Chris has been in the advertising game for 8 years
• 06:35 – Back at Bizo, Chris built something like Brightfunnel
  • 06:49 – When Bizo came to LinkedIn, they acquired Fliptop
  • 07:18 – LinkedIn isn’t the company you should go to when you want to improve your advertising
  • 07:39 – Chris solved the problem and he knows B2B marketing well
• 08:24 – Chris talks about the transition
  • 08:46 – The transition has been smooth
  • 08:53 – Chris has built great credibility and relationships within the company
  • 09:13 – The company just had a record quarter where new ARR was three times more than last year
• 10:33 – In B2B marketing today, there isn’t a measurement platform that can see every single marketing activity
  • 10:49 – Brightfunnel puts the data together in a way that it is understandable for the marketers to optimize
• 11:55 – Brightfunnel is SaaS-based with an annual subscription
• 12:08 – ASP last quarter was $93K which is great for a cloud company
• 12:35 – 150 marketers have touched Brightfunnel
• 13:33 – Brightfunnel doesn’t take any deal less than $30K
• 13:44 – Average ARR per customer is around $50K
• 13:53 – Team size is 45, 1/3 engineers with 8 in marketing and 6 in sales
• 15:00 – When Brightfunnel was at a Marketo’s conference, the head of marketing brought in puppies
  • 15:30 – There were a lot of people who came to their booth
• 15:57 – Cost per lead has been around $59 across all programs
  • 16:10 – Conversion is 30% of their pipeline
• 17:38 – For $1M a quarter for a new ARR, Chris wants to have 5M pipeline
• 18:00 – Team is based in San Francisco with 2 remote
• 18:24 – Brightfunnel just crossed the 70-customer mark
• 19:09 – Average ARR
• 19:50 – Logo churn is around 10% annual
• 20:20 – RPU expansion is around 20-25%
• 21:41 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. The transition from one company to another is always a learning experience.
2. LinkedIn won’t have a mature and dominant advertising platform.
3. Marketers need a platform like Brightfunnel that will help them become more effective with their campaigns.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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