Victor Rosenman. He’s the CEO and founder of Feedvisor. Before founding Feedvisor, he was the founder of an innovative marketing startup and a senior R&D manager at Sun Microsystems. Victor holds a BSc in computer science and an executive MBA from Kellogg Northwestern.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Black Swan
• What CEO do you follow? –  Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Whatsapp
• 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? – “Whenever you make a decision, you need to think a little bit longer”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:47 – Nathan introduces Victor to the show
• 01:24 – Feedvisor is a decision support system for large ecommerce vendors that sell through marketplaces
• 02:57 – Most of the e-commerce that joins Feedvisor has significant business on Amazon
• • 03:06 – Before joining Feedvisor, they will be doing marketplace management through Amazon
  • 03:32 – Feedvisor makes the numbers on the marketplace right
• 03:50 – Feedvisor looks into a load of various numbers so they can tell which price is right
• • 04:05 – Stock is almost similar to Amazon where there’s competition in prices
  • 04:20 – To look into the numbers and make decisions is tough
• 04:42 – Feedvisor decides more on pricing, replenishment and assortment
• 05:02 – Feedvisor charges a monthly subscription
• 05:15 – Average customer pay is $2-3K a month
• 06:06 – Undercuts is getting information and automated price adjustments
• 06:20 – For every revenue Undercuts gets through the system, they pay a rev share
• 06:40 – Not going through Feedvisor’s system will not make sense for the clients
• • 06:49 – “There’s no way you’ll be fast by doing things manually”
• 06:55 – The rev share is a portion of the entire fee
• 07:20 – Average rev share percentage
• 07:38 – Majority of Feedvisor’s revenue is coming from their fixed revenue stream
• 07:45 – Feedvisor was founded in 2011
• 07:55 – Feedvisor was initially bootstrapped for a year
• 08:00 – Feedvisor got an initial seat funding in 2012
• • 08:03 – It was for $500K
  • 08:11 – It was all equity
• 08:15 – To date, Feedvisor has raised $33M
• 08:34 – Feedvisor’s funding experience wasn’t easy but it was fair
• 08:46 – Feedvisor was initially from Israel
• 09:12 – Israel has a powerful VC ecosystem
• • 09:18 – It’s not different than Silicon Valley
• 09:48 – Feedvisor’s revenue just before raising a round
• 10:00 – When Feedvisor raised a seed round, Victor didn’t know about the e-commerce business
• • 10:16 – Feedvisor was primarily rev share when they started
  • 10:47 – Feedvisor raised funding in Q4
• 11:45 – Victor pitched to the investors slowly
• 12:00 – In the end, Angel investor is much more of a personal business
• 12:55 – The series B was done with a common valuation
• • 13:09 – The common valuation for series B is 60%-150%
• 13:30 – Team size
• 13:40 – Feedvisor has around 500-600 customers
• 14:12 – Average MRR
• 14:57 – Churn is quite low
• 15:50 – Feedvisor is close to net negative revenue churn
• 16:10 – Feedvisor focuses on value
• 16:57 – By optimizing Feedvisor, they create an ROI
• 17:58 – Feedvisor is charging a fair amount and they understand their customers
• 18:55 – Feedvisor finds customers through brand building initiatives and content marketing
• • 19:02 – Feedvisor invests a lot on brand building
  • 19:10 – “When you think Feedvisor, you think it’s a reliable solution”
  • 19:34 – Feedvisor does their own conferences
  • 19:47 – Feedvisor creates an environment where people can learn
• 20:21 – Feedvisor has paid $3-4K for content marketing
• • 20:57 – It is about investing into everything that can help you position yourself, not just content marketing
• 21:44 – LTV
• 22:23 – CAC
• 23:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• People want their businesses not to just be automated, but also precise at the same time.
• Building your brand creates a great reputation and image for your business.
• Making big decisions requires careful consideration and time.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Scott Brinker. He publishes the chief marketing technologist blog known as ChiefMartec.com and is the program chair for Martech Conference Series. He’s the author of the book Hacking Marketing published by Wiley. He’s also the co-founder of Ion Interactive, a provider of interactive content marketing software to many of the world’s leading brands. He has a degree in computer science from Columbia University and Harvard University and an MBA from MIT.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Innovator’s Dilemma
• What CEO do you follow? – Brian Halligan
• 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? – “That software can rewrite the rules of the world”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:44 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show
• 01:36 – There are over 3600-3800 B2B SaaS companies that Scott has worked with
• 01:57 – Scott was researching the companies all by himself
• 02:22 – Scott is a co-founder/CTO of B2B SaaS company, Ion Interactive
  • 02:32 – There’s also the ChiefMartec blog that Scott started 8 years ago
  • 03:00 – Scott is into how technology changes the way one manages one’s marketing
  • 03:14 – Scott is also looking at the toolsets that enable the technology in marketing
• 03:35 – Ion Interactive is a SaaS company
• 04:44 – Chief Martec got millions of impressions in 2016
• 05:30 – Chief Martec’s Alexa ranking
• 06:03 – If you can create something of value, you can succeed
• 06:53 – Scott gets paid for most of his speaking gigs
• 07:28 – It’s not an easy path when you’re just starting to pitch to conferences
• 08:08 – Scott started his chart because of a speaking engagement at a conference
• 08:40 – The first significant paying gig that Scott remembered was when a SAS hired him for a Southeast Asian tour to present the hybrid art and science of marketing
  • 09:23 – It was for 2 weeks
• 09:35 – Martech Conference was launched in 2014 in partnership with Third Door Media
  • 09:51 – It was actually Third Door Media’s event and they just contacted Scott for content
  • 10:08 – Scott took care of the speaker side and everything that involved content
• 11:00 – All the sectors in the space excite Scott
• 12:27 – Scott doesn’t agree that the CRM space is going to zero
• 13:15 – There’s so much innovation and value
• 13:30 – The CRM companies who have been in The Top
• 14:00 – The CRM space is still a hot space
• 14:52 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. The marketing space has never been better because of the limitless potential of technology.
2. If you can create something of value, you CAN succeed.
3. Software can rewrite the rules of the world.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Phil Nadel. He’s the co-founder and managing director of Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners, one of the largest and most active AngelList syndicates where investors can invest alongside him and Barbara on the same terms in promising high growth startups.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Laughly
• 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? – “Savor the moment, be in the moment”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:55 – Nathan introduces Phil to the show
• 01:24 – Barbara and Phil believe in the syndicate model
  • 01:32 – It is a great opportunity for investors who would like to invest but don’t have a lot of money to put into each deal
• 01:49 – Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners on AngelList
• 02:08 – The syndicate was launched 3 years ago
  • 02:16 – They have syndicated 38 deals
• 02:34 – Barn and Willow is a company they’ve recently syndicated
• 02:51 – Barn and Willow deal with window treatments
  • 03:18 – They have a direct manufacturing supply chain
  • 03:24 – It’s an innovative company
• 03:45 – The companies that Barbara invests on Shark Tank are separate from the companies in the syndicate
• 04:05 – The value of doing the syndicate is the deal flow that Barbara gets from her exposure in Shark Tank
• 04:20 – Each of the syndicate backers have the option to opt in or opt out of any investments
• 04:33 – The most likely exit scenario is an acquisition and that’s how an investor makes money
  • 04:47 – IPO is also another route
• 04:53 – There was no exit yet from the syndicate portfolio
• 05:38 – There is paperwork in backing a syndicate
• 05:45 – The AngelList platform is handling all the investor details
• 05:51 – The structure of the deal can have a few different formats
• 06:04 – It’s either a convertible note that converts into equity or straight equity
• 06:30 – All backers are combined into 1 entity
• 06:56 – The LLC is managed by an independent third party company called Assure Fund Management
  • 07:05 – Assure will consult the syndicate if there will be a major decision
• 07:40 – The AngelList is managing the risks for the syndicate
• 08:00 – The syndicate has put in $7.5M
• 08:28 – The syndicate is very true to Barbara’s mission
• 08:44 – Barbara wants people to invest with her, share their ideas with her, and bring their knowledge
• 08:56 – “Our backers are fantastic in terms of their networks”
• 09:38 – With a VC, what you have is strictly financial investors
• 10:40 – People love Barbara
• 11:15 – The deals are only available to accredited investors
  • 11:23 – To be an accredited investor, you need to meet some of the criteria including net worth or income
  • 12:00 – The syndicate is very clear that there is a chance of losing money for each investment
• 12:06 – The idea is to build a portfolio
• 12:37 – Phil has been to different platforms like FundersClub and OurCrowd
• 12:53 – The reason why Phil and Barbara chose AngelList
• 13:35 – The picture behind Phil was a picture frame from one of their portfolio companies called Meural
  • 13:54 – They have thousands of art pieces from different museums around the world
  • 14:32 – It retails from $600
• 15:27 – The syndicate does equity and note and only invests in post-revenue companies
  • 15:43 – At least $15-20K a month in revenue
  • 15:52 – “We are focused on companies that are capital efficient”
• 17:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Syndicates is a great option for small investors and it will help them get into the investing game.
2. Investors need to be responsible with their investments—meaning research the deal and own their decisions and the consequences of saying yea or nay.
3. Savor the moments in life and be IN the moment.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Joseph May. He’s the founder of the Breton Company. He launched his company in 2016 by running a Kickstarter campaign for a modern day briefcase. Prior to Breton, he worked as an attorney at a couple of different law firms and was director of operations and in-house counsel at a company called Freshly Picked.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Shoe Dog
• What CEO do you follow? – Steve Jobs
• Favorite online tool? — Grum
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Keep going”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:22 – Nathan introduces to the show
• 01:19 – Joseph left the legal company because there was no fun
• 01:23 – When Joseph was at Freshly Picked, he found out that he really liked to create products and be part of the design process
• 01:33 – Joseph had the idea of Breton when he was in Italy
• 01:59 – Joseph was 33 when he left Freshly Picked where he was getting $70-80K
  • 02:28 – Joseph had kids when he started Breton
• 03:28 – Joseph is showing Nathan an example of the briefcase
• 03:45 – On Kickstarter, Joseph did $240K and $280K for Indiegogo
• 03:54 – Kickstarter is the biggest website to start and Indiegogo has Indiegogo on demand
  • 04:29 – The total for both campaigns was 1200 units
• 05:00 – At Freshly Picked, Joseph learned a lot about Instagram marketing
• 05:38 – Zach from Episode 178 had his hand on the Kickstarter campaign and has a network which has done over $60M in funding campaigns
• 06:00 – Zach worked with Joseph
• 06:38 – Joseph had a lot of manufacturing contacts from Freshly Picked
• 06:44 – Joseph got a quote from overseas and moved their manufacturing to Asia, switched up their whole campaign and changed the price point
• 07:14 – Breton is totally bootstrapped
• 07:47 – Total sales as of today is $400K in revenue and 1900 units
• 08:06 – Goal for 2017 is to launch more Kickstarter campaigns
• 08:37 – The bestseller is the modern day briefcase which is $199
• 08:54 – It takes around $65 to produce a bag
  • 09:04 – The leather is from Italy
  • 09:16 – Jeremy really wants to have a high-quality bag
• 09:26 – $20-30 dollars is spent on marketing per bag
• 09:58 – Average profit per bag
• 10:28 – Jeremy had dark traffic on ly
  • 10:42 – There’s no exact influencer who has driven the most sales to Instagram
  • 10:51 – Mollyblogger has sold 17 units within an hour
  • 11:07 – Mollyblogger is Joseph’s friend
• 11:25 – For every $500 per post, Jeremy expects to get 5 sales
• 11:33 – Breton now has 40K followers
• 11:50 – It’s difficult to calculate the return because it takes time before a customer purchases
• 12:21 – Joseph had a campaign in Fall where he had help, but now he’s doing it on his own
• 12:40 – One of Joseph’s growth strategy is to get people on their email list
  • 12:44 – The main focus now is to make people aware of Breton and aggregate the information
• 13:40 – The bags are made with wax cotton which is water-resistant
• 14:03 – Customers often look for the look
• 14:30 – The bags are made to last
• 14:38 – Team size is 2.5
• 14:51 – Joseph won’t give up a part of the company
  • 15:49 – “I don’t know exactly what we’re doing”
• 16:48 – Chubbies Shorts is effectively using Instagram
• 16:55 – Breton’s Instagram
• 17:24 – There’s a big percentage of women buying the Breton bags, too
• 18:58 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Choose a job where you can earn and have fun at the same time.
2. Nurture your connections and network.
3. Don’t give up a part of your company if you’re not confident doing so.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Jeremy Ozen. He’s the president and co-founder of Vistar Media. He was previously a Goldman Sachs European Special Situations in London monitoring a portfolio of venture investments. He also has a BS in Material Science Engineering and a BSc in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Sam Walton’s Biography
• What CEO do you follow? – 3G Capital Founders
• Favorite online tool? — Gmail Calendar
• 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? – Jeremy wished he had not taken life so seriously and not every day is the end of the world

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:43 – Nathan introduces Jeremy to the show
• 01:15 – Vistar Media connects a technology to a software that runs digital billboard
• 01:35 – Vistar Media makes money by selling the technology or ads to the advertisers or agencies
• 01:52 – Vistar Media pays the media to access the platform then charges advertising agencies to use their technology
• 02:18 – VistarMedia doesn’t have a financial risk because the system is a real-time system
  • 02:28 – There is a real-time buying of ad inventory
• 02:53 – VistarMedia’s technology can adjust to digital ones
  • 03:06 – VistarMedia uses data for telecoms especially the location data of consumers to analyze where the consumers are within a day
• 04:20 – Jeremy started with Goldman Sachs in London
• 04:45 – Goldman had 2 groups, one is in stocks and the other is the special situations
• 05:20 – Jeremy stayed with Goldman for 2 years
• 05:22 – Jeremy then went to a hedge fund based in Monaco
• 06:12 – Jeremy became friends with people in Monaco
  • 06:30 – There was a guy who has a very successful business in Poland
• 07:31 – Jeremy accepted and liked the concept of knowing something that is already working
• 08:10 – Jeremy has a friend who was working for a company that was founded by Google in 2010
  • 08:23 – They’re one of the first to do programmatic advertising
  • 08:59 – Jeremy then realized that what this company was doing for online advertising would eventually be the way for every type of advertising
• 10:54 – When Jeremy started, they knew the out-of-home advertising space was growing in terms of how much is digital
• 11:19 – Vistar Media needed to work with different media outlets explaining to them how to integrate into their system
  • 11:28 – The idea of programmatic advertising was totally foreign to them
• 11:39 – Vistar Media was launched in 2012
• 12:48 – Team size is 55
• 12:52 – Vistar Media raised in 2013 a convertible round
• 13:15 – Vistar Media hasn’t raised a series A and will not raise one
• 14:01 – The biggest expenses of Vistar Media is the cost of media
• 15:20 – Jeremy has thought of buying Upfront
• 16:01 – Vistar Media has a difference in capital with the billboard guys
• 16:43 – Jeremy would describe themselves as the biggest billboard company in the USA
  • 16:46 – They have all these big partners that work with them
• 17:29 – Vistar Media is bringing the billboard companies new money
• 18:02 – Vistar Media is the only player of programmatic advertising out-of-home
• 18:15 – $7B has been spent on billboards annually
• 18:27 – Jeremy is now 31
• 18:51 – Personally, when Jeremy started Vistar Media, they thought they were building a VC tech like business
• 19:12 – Jeremy built a business to have an exit at some point
• 19:48 – The best way to grow your value is by growing your business
• 20:05 – Jeremy is paying himself $50K a year
• 20:35 – Goal for 2017
• 21:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Going from one field to another is not that difficult if you really want and need a change.
2. You grow your value by growing your business.
3. There’s a time to work hard and a time to play hard.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Dani Golan who oversees strategy, a go-to market, and overall company operations at Kaminario. Previously, Dani served as president and general manager of Performix technology which was acquired by Nice Systems in 2006. Prior to Performix, he served as an executive responsible for leading new ventures at EMC. He holds a BSc of electrical engineering, summa cum laude at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and an MBA from The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Prior to his professional career, Dani served as a fighter pilot and officer in the Israeli Air Force.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Goal
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A
• Favorite online tool? — Skype
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— Quite inconsistent
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Dani would tell himself to focus on what’s important

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:44 – Nathan introduces Dani to the show
• 01:33 – Being a fighter pilot and an entrepreneur are similar things for Dani
• 01:57 – Kaminario is an infrastructure for the cloud
• 02:47 – Kaminario brings efficiency to data sets, data centers and data bases
• 02:50 – Kaminario is the development of net generation data storage infrastructure
• 03:02 – Most of Kaminario’s customers are net generation business models
  • 03:13 – They needed a completely different data infrastructure that can grow with them
  • 03:37 – Legacy enterprises generates more data
• 03:51 – Kaminario has raised a total of $280M including their latest round of $75M
• 04:30 – Kaminario is dealing with 2 of hottest markets in IT: flash and cloud
  • 04:42 – Flash created the opportunity for Kaminario to be in the greatest revolution for IT
• 05:40 – If you’re pushing your valuation to perfection, there is no perfection in IT
• 06:05 – Make sure you have a fair valuation for your company
• 06:24 – The sentiment of investors is that they appreciate the growth in the past but now they’re asking for real businesses, especially when it comes to IT
  • 06:49 – Investors want to see pass the profitability
• 07:09 – Kaminario is closed to profitability
• 07:30 – Kaminario’s past investors have also participated and shared significantly
• 09:00 – Businesses should protect their employees
• 09:44 – When you are getting money for the company, 3 means you have to get $3M to the investors
• 10:40 – “Valuation is bullsh*t if you have crazy terms”
• 10:50 – Employees are far more important than actual valuation
• 11:05 – Kaminario was launched in 2008 on April fools’ day which is the same as Apple
• 11:57 – Kaminario now has thousands of customers
• 12:21 – How fast a specific customer is going to buy more is one of the metrics that Kaminario measures
• 12:51 – Kaminario is doing serve and apply which is software, hardware and service
• 13:30 – Kaminario sells to cloud providers or to the SaaS companies
  • 13:44 – The SaaS is the larger revenue source
• 13:57 – By 2019, the total cloud market will be 175B
  • 14:03 – Around 120B are SaaS companies
• 15:32 – SaaS companies charge their customers monthly
  • 15:37 – SaaS companies pay Kaminario a one-time fee for infrastructure
  • 15:46 – There is an on-going payment for maintenance
• 16:20 – The expansion revenue
  • 16:28 – If a SaaS company started with $300K, they will go over $1M by the end of 12 months
• 17:45 – Team size is 250 but the inside sales team isn’t that big
• 18:17 – Kaminario has a presence in the market
• 18:57 – Data grows exponentially every year
• 19:23 – Normally, customers would start cautiously and would just eventually gain trust in Kaminario
• 19:55 – First metric to measure the 3x growth is by capacity
• 20:45 – Kaminario is the most scalable product in the market
  • 20:50 – Kaminario can fit roughly 12 terabytes of 400K iPhones
• 21:48 – Kaminario has never lost a customer
• 22:00 – Kaminario is a big funnel
• 22:12 – Kaminario’s revenue stream is 50% from new sign-ups and 50% from existing
• 24:04 – Kaminario’s last round was closed in Q4 of 2016
• 24:41 – When you are in Kaminario’s business, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon
• 25:00 – Kaminario’s number one competitor is EMC
• 26:06 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Valuation is useless if you’re aiming for perfection, there will always be flaws.
2. Focus on keeping your employees and customers happy.
3. A customer won’t easily trust a product at first so you have to earn that trust, ensuring they stay longer.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Jay Jumper. He’s the founder, CEO and President of SIGNiX. As a highly regarded entrepreneur, Jay has worked to establish the company as the leading cloud-based digital signature solution which is a hot space. He has more than 20 years in financial services and technology management experience. Additionally, Jay graduated from University of Tennessee in 1985 with a BS in marketing.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Trump: The Art of the Deal
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban
• Favorite online tool? — Email
• 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? – Jay would tell himself that hard work and perseverance outdoes anything else

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:45 – Nathan introduces Jay to the show
• 01:33 – SIGNiX is the only cloud-based digital signature company in North America
  • 01:44 – SIGNiX is an independent e-signature solution
• 02:00 – Jay shows Nathan a visual of a cloud-based digital signature
  • 02:08 – Put a signature on the overlight, not on the document
  • 02:48 – You depend on the e-signature vendor to be around forever so they can validate the signature
  • 02:56 – On the overlight is a hyperlink that redirects the person to the e-signature provider
• 03:38 – With SIGNiX, every signature is embedded onto the document
• 03:52 – SIGNiX is a SaaS model
• 04:08 – SIGNiX focuses on security
• 04:32 – 80% of SIGNiX is sold to software partners
  • 04:37 – SIGNiX enables software partners to capture the e-signature market that is sitting on their software
  • 05:05 – Software partners can privately label SIGNiX so they can rebrand it according to whatever the product is
• 05:25 – SIGNiX does a revenue share with their software partners
• 05:32 – SIGNiX gives their software partners a highly robust digital signature solution
• 06:08 – SIGNiX’s pricing on their website
  • 06:10 – $240 per seat equals to 240 transactions a year
• 06:22 – SIGNiX’s emphasis is on supporting their partners
• 06:54 – SIGNiX goes to different industries and tries to match pricing based on the industry
• 07:37 – SIGNiX has very robust APIs which is the core of the business
• 08:11 – The key things that SIGNiX offers: everything is embedded in the document and documents can be deleted from SIGNiX
  • 08:18 – A dependent e-signature always has 2 copies, one for the company and one for the customer
• 09:04 – What SIGNiX is doing is much more difficult
• 09:30 – Team size is 50
• 10:00 – SIGNiX was launched in 2002 and was acquired from another company
• 10:12 – ProNvest is a robo advisor that Jay also owns
• 10:45 – SIGNiX is a bigger revenue stream for Jay
• 10:57 – The market for e-signature is very large
• 11:35 – ProNvest provides management counseling to the 41K marketplace
  • 11:47 – In 2007, more people in 41K are taking their money out rather than contributing
  • 12:06 – Jay really wanted a tool set to work with their 41K providers to help them retain their assets
  • 12:17 – Jay wanted the providers to retain their assets through electronic signatures
• 12:24 – SIGNiX called Jay
  • 12:40 – The company was struggling and Jay became an investor in the company
  • 12:52 – Jay invested around 50% of the company
  • 13:05 – There was an offer from a public company to buy the company after Jay invested
  • 13:22 – The offer was 5x what Jay paid for
  • 14:00 – In 2001, it was good to have a “.com” but in 2002, Jay needed to have revenue
• 14:23 – Jay saw the need for having SIGNiX regardless of its previous company struggles
• 14:33 – Jay really bolted SIGNiX and passed it on an incubator
• 15:04 – The previous company just spent money on the technology and was burning cash
• 15:43 – SIGNiX now has 670K customers
  • 15:52 – It is a combination of seats and customers
• 16:30 – Average MRR
• 16:57 – SIGNiX gives discounts to their partners
• 17:18 – If you’re working with a software company, you have to figure out a number that works for their customers
• 18:02 – The number that Jay gave was an annual number
• 18:20 – SIGNiX does not focus on their competitors because they have a very different product
• 18:48 – SIGNiX wants to go and find the top software developers in every industry and partner with them
  • 19:03 – First thing that SIGNiX looks for in a software partner is their position and role in their particular industry
  • 19:10 – Ziplogix partnered with SIGNiX and named their solution, Digital Ink
  • 19:25 – SIGNiX has a large portion of realtors in their network
  • 19:35 – SIGNiX doesn’t mind being behind the scenes
• 19:55 – SIGNiX is not a reseller and it becomes the key feature of the product
• 20:18 – SIGNiX doesn’t have a standard percentage split because it varies per company
• 20:49 – Jay did a lot of self-funding for SIGNiX, but has also raised capital which is an 8-figure total
• 21:18 – ProNvest is the largest investor in SIGNiX but they needed outside investors to scale
• 21:38 – The funding rounds SIGNiX had in 2016 had a total of around $90M
• 23:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Develop and scale your product until you become a totally different product from your competitors.
2. A business that is struggling does NOT mean that it will struggle forever; decide if the company is worth acquiring and if you can grow it into a profitable business.
3. It’s okay if you’re not in the limelight—so long as you’re getting paid and revenue continues to multiply.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Niko Skievaski. He’s the co-founder of Redox, a modern API for healthcare. He also used to do some work at Epic.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Moments of Magic
• What CEO do you follow? – Judith Faulkner
• Favorite online tool? — Calendly
• 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? – Niko would have asked himself to start something rather than working in a big bank

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:40 – Nathan introduces Niko to the show
• 00:59 – Redox connects applications to software developers
• 01:04 – Redox’s business model is licensing connections to various healthcare systems
• 01:25 – Niko deals with healthcare because he believes it is important
• 01:33 – Niko has also talked to developers that made an impact on patients’ lives
• 01:46 – “From our perspective, we really see a technology innovation healthcare something that is absolutely needed”
• 02:20 – Redox charges software developers and software developers charge the healthcare system
  • 02:38 – Redox initially becomes a sub-contractor of software vendors
• 03:21 – Redox charges per the number of connections a developer has in the healthcare system which is a monthly model
  • 03:48 – Depending on the interface, the charge changes a bit
  • 03:52 – It is a SaaS model
• 04:08 – Most developers connect to 1-3 healthcare systems
  • 04:15 – Each connection system is around a thousand dollars
• 04:25 – Redox was founded in 2014
• 04:34 – Niko was in the corporate world and was working at Wells Fargo
  • 04:46 – Niko went to Epic to get his hands on data because he studied Economics and wanted to understand what he could do to improve the healthcare data
  • 05:07 – When Niko got to Epic, they didn’t actually have the data
  • 05:17 – Niko learned a lot from Epic about the provider workflow
• 05:29 – Since healthcare is digitized, the challenge is how to get the data out of the cloud to software developers
• 05:43 – Niko’s CTO and co-founder, James, was helping startups hook up with various healthcare systems
• 05:59 – The idea of Redox is to make an engine that can scale across multiple health systems
• 06:16 – Redox was bootstrapped and has raised capital
• 06:30 – Niko and his co-founder have started different companies until they decided to do Redox
  • 06:50 – They brought in another co-founder to round up Redox
• 07:00 – Niko and his co-founders worked in a co-working space and saved some money from their consulting gigs
• 07:21 – Redox raised a small seed round of $350K in 2014, then they hired some developers
• 07:40 – The co-founders were only getting $35K each when they were starting
  • 08:05 – They made sacrifices in order to start Redox
  • 08:51 – They have to convince themselves that if things don’t work, they just have to get a job
• 09:11 – Entrepreneurs can easily get a job
• 09:30 – Redox has raised a couple of rounds
• 09:40 – The first application they had can determine the amount of blood loss by taking a picture
• 10:06 – It took Redox 10 months to get live with their first customer
• 10:17 – Redox raised their round A early
• 10:29 – The developer community was really excited and was supportive of Redox
• 10:52 – Redox was getting 1K MRR from their first customer
• 11:00 – The first round was a priced round
• 11:11 – You can raise based on your traction or based on potential
  • 11:28 – Redox was based on potential
• 11:38 – Redox’s pitch to their investors
  • 11:40 – Digital health is one of the fastest growing spaces for venture capital
  • 11:44 – There are too many companies trying to start something innovative in the healthcare space
  • 11:47 – The common problem that they have is sharing data with the legacy system
  • 12:10 – Redox really has a great team
  • 12:30 – It’s not about the MRR, it’s about the potential of working with the army of software developers who are innovating in this space
  • 12:53 – Redox’s marketing strategy is getting the developers first, then the developers will drag Redox to the healthcare system
• 13:10 – Valuation
• 13:24 – Redox has closed another $9M with their series B round in January
• 13:40 – Total amount raised is $14M
• 13:48 – The new additional investor is Intermountain Healthcare System
• 14:20 – Redox currently has 100 healthcare systems across USA
• 15:13 – Redox has around $400K MRR
• 15:45 – Customer churn
• 16:13 – CAC
• 16:44 – Team size is 35 who are mostly developers
• 16:59 – Redox is a developer platform
  • 17:06 – Most are based in Wisconsin and some are based around USA
• 17:46 – Niko won’t sell Redox even if they already had an acquisition offer before
  • 18:08 – Niko didn’t think that the company acquiring Redox would be able to solve the problem as fast as Niko and the team
• 18:32 – Niko will accept an acquisition offer only if the company will be able to do it faster than Niko and the team
• 19:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. The continuous innovation in the healthcare space needs a data source that is stable.
2. Stick with your principles and be focused on where you want the company to go.
3. Raising capital can be based on your traction or the potential of your business.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Felix Van de Maele. He’s the CEO and one of the co-founders of Collibra which he took the idea of funding to more than years of record growth and industry leadership. He’s responsible for the company’s global business strategy. Prior to Collibra, Felix served as a researcher at the Semantics of Technology and Applications Research Laboratory at a university in Brussels where he focused on the technology crawlers on the semantic web and semantic data integration. He holds a masters in computer science and software engineering from that university and masters of general management from Vlerick Business School.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm
• What CEO do you follow? – n/a
• Favorite online tool? — Evernote
• 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? – “I won’t change much”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:39 – Nathan introduces Felix to the show
• 01:33 – Collibra is a SaaS company helping larger organizations to better find, understand and control their data
• 01:47 – Collibra started in financial services
  • 01:53 – Every bank needs data governance, which is what Collibra does
  • 01:58 – Data governance is needed for regulatory compliance
• 02:16 – Collibra now covers different industries
• 02:25 – Collibra was launched in 2008
• 02:31 – Collibra raised capital
  • 02:40 – Collibra raised a seed round of €800K as Felix’s first company
  • 02:48 – They bootstrapped after their profitability tripled every year
  • 00:57 – They’ve raised their first bigger round which is a series B of $20M in 2014
  • 03:14 – In December 2016, they did a $50M series C round
• 03:27 – Felix is now 32 and has been focusing on Collibra for almost a decade now
• 04:00 – Felix uses the analogy of the library and the index card that is used in a library to elaborate data governance
  • 04:09 – A library card with all its information is similar to an organization with all its data
  • 04:27 – Collibra wants to get to the Amazon of the notifications of data
• 04:46 – Collibra is similar to a search engine for data sets
  • 04:59 – Now everybody does data and it’s chaos
• 05:14 – Collibra has close to 200 customers
• 05:25 – RPU is $200-250K annually
• 05:41 – Average customer pay per month is 20K
• 05:46 – Collibra has annual plans with cash upfront
• 06:13 – Collibra started with a perpetual model which is a licensing fee upfront, then they have the software
  • 06:29 – There’s an annual maintenance fee which is 20% of the initial fee
• 06:46 – ARR is $10-30M
• 07:00 – The idea of Collibra
  • 07:13 – Felix had 4 options after graduation
  • 07:23 – Felix was inspired by a book he read and thought that he could start his own business
• 07:57 – Collibra has 4 founders
  • 08:25 – The equity is just 25%
• 08:55 – The founders split the shareholders from their management
  • 09:06 – “We try to separate the 2 as much as possible”
• 09:40 – The investors own a different range in Collibra
• 09:55 – The percentage of the company that they give away during the series C depends on the trajectory and how much money is raised
• 10:12 – The biggest round for Collibra is the series B
• 10:39 – Collibra’s trajectory is to have $100M ARR as quickly as possible
• 10:59 – The picking of investors is mostly because of the valuation, but there are other factors involved
• 11:27 – Collibra picked Matthew of Iconic because he clicked well
• 12:00 – Customer churn is 3-4%
• 12:30 – Net revenue expansion
• 12:52 – CAC
  • 13:30 – Some of Collibra’s customers have been with them for several years
• 14:08 – Collibra looks at their sales efficiency and their marketing efficiency
  • 04:13 – The marketing dominance they’re spending to generate $1 of ARR is around 0.8-0.9
  • 14:30 – It costs $1 in sales and marketing to generate $1 in ARR
  • 14:42 – Payback time is around 12 months
• 14:54 – Team size is 210
  • 15:00 – Biggest team is in New York, engineering team is in Brussels and sales and marketing in London
  • 15:30 – The HQ transferred to New York because most of the customers are in USA
• 16:25 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. There are so many data sources available and it’s difficult to know which one has the most accurate data.
2. You need to find a way to govern the data that you have—this helps in regulatory compliance.
3. Sometimes, ignorance IS bliss—it can cause you to take more risks.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Vinod Muthukrishnan. He was first a sailor then a strategist and now an entrepreneur. He was fortunate and has worked in diverse and challenging environments starting with the Merchant Navy, a high energy mobile first financial technology startup where he had a strategy and global sales. Now, he currently serves as co-founder and CEO of a company called Cloudcherry, a tech startup based in Pleasanton, California with offices in Singapore, India and a new location Vinod will show.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – High Output Management
• What CEO do you follow? – Nick Mehta
• Favorite online tool? — Trello
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4.5-5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Vinod wished he knew programming back then

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:46 – Nathan introduces to the show
• 01:22 – The new location is in Salt Lake City
• 01:36 – Cloudcherry has 74 people
  • 01:40 – They are based in India and Singapore
• 01:47 – Cloudcherry has raised $7M with a total of around $9.5M raised
• 01:56 – Cloudcherry is a custom platform for millennials
• 02:13 – Millennials have complicated journeys with the brands they work with
  • 02:21 – In 2017, if you want to understand your customers, you have to be in all the platforms
• 02:47 – Cloudcherry is a feedback platform on speed across all platforms
• 03:07 – Cloudcherry has an inspirational wall in their office where employees can post things they find inspirational
  • 03:18 – “You need to walk into your office every day and be inspired on what you believe in”
  • 03:40 – Whoever visits their office can put their names on the wall
• 03:50 – Cloudcherry has the 6 pillars of their culture: freedom, ownership, smart work, passion and some more
• 04:03 – Vinod introduced Nathan to some of the people in the office
• 04:40 – The office is 2000 sq. ft.
  • 05:05 – Vinod shows Nathan the view from the office
• 05:27 – Cloudcherry was launched in 2014
• 05:34 – Cloudcherry is a SaaS business
• 05:48 – Cloudcherry had their last fund raising September 2016
• 05:58 – Cloudcherry has close to 100 customers
  • 06:05 – “The massive push now is to grow the business in North America”
• 06:37 – The team in America targets mid-market and enterprise businesses
• 06:47 – Average customer pay per month is a couple of hundred from SMBs
  • 06:57 – Mid-market and enterprise average a thousand dollars a month
• 07:23 – Cloudcherry has a complex mix of customers
  • 07:58 – They are doing more than 88K per month
• 08:13 – Cloudcherry has almost zero customer churn with SMB at the moment
• 08:35 – Cloudcherry’s enterprise churn is higher than SMBs
• 09:00 – Most of Cloudcherry’s customers are with them for 18-20 months
• 09:33 – Cloudcherry ran out of the market in 2015
• 09:48 – SMBs are customers whose ARPU is south of 20K
• 10:18 – Cloudcherry currently has 35% of mid-market and enterprise customers and 65% of SMBs
• 11:10 – Cloudcherry ‘s time to recover CAC is around 12 months
  • 12:09 – Average CAC is $7K-12K
• 12:25 – LTV is around $36K
• 12:35 – “Some amount of the optimism needs to be weighed with intellectual honesty”
• 12:45 – The greatest predictor of LTV for Vinod is the churn
• 13:10 – Cloudcherry focuses on customer delight
  • 13:22 – Cloudcherry got feedback on how delighted their customers are
• 13:45 – If a customer stays with you, it will impact your churn and LTV
• 14:11 – Cloudcherry is still burning cash at the moment
  • 14:34 – “We have money to burn from growth”
• 14:47 – December 2017 goal MRR
• 15:32 – SaaS business should continuously grow in numbers
• 16:57 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Make your employees look forward to going to the office every day.
2. When your customers are satisfied with your business, the numbers will just follow.
3. SaaS businesses should constantly track their numbers.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Eduardo Gonzales.  Two years ago, he started working on Instagram as a broke college student with a vision to become one of the largest influencers with literally zero dollars in investment. He learned the game and began growth hacking on different Instagram pages. Today, he stands with over 5M followers combined across multiple different niches on Instagram.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Think, Grow, Prosper and The Alchemist
• What CEO do you follow? – Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg  
• Favorite online tool? — com
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— At least 4
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished I would have studied more programming”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:40 – Nathan introduces Eduardo to the show
• 01:26 – “The power of social media is absolutely limitless”
  • 01:30 – You can have a more intimate relationship between brands and consumers
• 01:56 – Social media is a great way to target people on mobile devices
  • 02:05 – There’s now a geographical private system where you want your followers to be
• 02:44 – Eduardo helped Tai Lopez with social media marketing
• 02:50 – Eduardo was one of the first people to help Movement Watches
  • 03:00 – Movement Watches approached Eduardo when he was still on Tumblr
  • 03:04 – Eduardo started growing on Tumblr as a luxury blogger and was able to grow a couple hundred thousand followers there
  • 03:13 – Movement Watches was a small startup; Eduardo stayed with them and now they’re at Nordstrom
  • 03:40 – Eduardo was getting 15% for every affiliate
  • 03:50 – When Movement Watches moved to Instagram, they paid Eduardo per post
• 03:59 – Eduardo charges per post depending on the page, the content of the post, and the type of following they want to engage
• 04:20 – For 380K followers in a luxury niche, it will $125-150 per post that will last a day
  • 04:38 – The page’s visual team will create content and then Eduardo will pick the one that matches his page
• 05:03 – One of Tai Lopez’s marketers is Eduardo’s friend and they approached Eduardo
• 05:26 – Tai Lopez did a lot of giveaways and online marketing courses
  • 05:37 – He wanted to add value to people
  • 05:57 – During giveaways, Tai had a large list of influencers that he reached out to
• 06:15 – The marketing team would ask Eduardo for a consultation regarding the strategy
  • 06:32 – Eduardo also has a team who make content so they can make the content and reach out to Eduardo’s influencers
• 06:55 – Tai Lopez does social media growth and he likes to grow his followers
  • 07:00 – Tai targeted to have 10K followers when he came to Eduardo
  • 07:10 – Tai now has around 500K followers
• 07:31 – Eduardo created the visual content for Tai
  • 07:36 – Eduardo figured out the best schedule to post Tai’s content
  • 07:42 – Eduardo was able to track all the analytics
  • 07:46 – As the following grew, Tai was able to know the best time to post, where the followers were coming from and where the most engaging followers come from
  • 07:54 – They weeded out non-performing pages and created a list of pages that performed well until they reached 10K
  • 08:07 – It took Eduardo a week and a half to reach 10K followers
  • 08:10 – Tai paid Eduardo $5K
• 08:24 – The one page Tai is getting more followers is Big Toys
  • 08:39 – The age groups on the page are 18-24 and 25-34 and mostly are in USA
  • 08:54 – Because of the large age group, a lot of them are interested in the online courses that Tai offers
• 09:04 – Sometimes people would actually come to Eduardo and ask him if they should buy a page
  • 09:12 – People do buy pages, but when you rebrand a page, you lose some of the following and it isn’t as organic
  • 09:24 – You can buy a page that is as close or as similar to the message that you want to convey
• 09:45 – Eduardo has worked with Gary V on his social media growth
  • 09:58 – The work was almost similar with what Eduardo did for Tai
• 10:20 – Eduardo has worked with Secret Entourage
  • 10:28 – They wanted to promote their online marketing sources
• 10:46 – Eduardo is also in the process of working with Rolls-Royce
• 11:17 – Eduardo has a lot people who have a large number of followers
  • 11:26 – Eduardo has 5M and with co-founder, Goodlife, they’ll have 10-11M followers combined
  • 11:42 – Dan Fleyshman and Branden Hampton are some of the people they’ve worked for
  • 12:13 – Dan and Brendan grew their own networks and pages and they acquired some
• 12:31 – Eduardo started working with small campaigns
• 13:15 – Eduardo launched his consulting company, Classy Savant, in 2016
• 13:25 – 2016 revenue was around $40K
• 13:30 – 2017 goal is at least $100K
• 14:00 – Eduardo collaborated with Mr. Goodlife and he has another partner
  • 14:12 – Eduardo also has a few interns and photographers
• 14:37 – One of the most well-known tools that Eduardo uses is com
  • 14:48 – You can check a public account’s statistics and what they use for their posting
• 15:02 – com is where you can pull all sorts of information
  • 15:24 – You can know who your top followers are, your most recent, and your first followers
  • 15:55 – It works well too when you switch your Instagram from public to business account
• 16:27 – You can always Google the top hashtags
  • 16:46 – You have to keep your hashtags from 5 to 15
• 18:25 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Dream BIG even if you have to start small.
2. It is now easier for brands to reach out to their target consumers because of social media.
3. Gaining followers in Instagram isn’t that simple—you have to have a goal and a planned strategy to reach that goal.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Oleg Campbell. He was born in Ukraine and starting working as a programmer at the age of 19. He moved to Canada when he was 22 and founded his first startup at 24 successfully. Then at 27, he founded Reply.io and he’s currently living between Ukraine and San Francisco building this company.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Losing My Virginity
• What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin
• Favorite online tool? — Chart Model
• 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? – “Be more fearless”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:45 – Nathan introduces Oleg to the show
• 01:28 – Oleg is a programmer and read Kawasaki’s, Rich Dad Poor Dad, and Tim Ferriss’, 4-Hour Work Week, which influenced him to build a software for himself
  • 01:58 – Oleg found out that his first business was a lifestyle business when they failed to grow it
  • 02:02 – The technology was built on top of QR code
  • 02:22 – The highest revenue the company reached was $150K annually
• 02:32 – Oleg put the business in autopilot, took the money and invested in a new venture
• 02:28 – Oleg has never saved any money, but just invested it into businesses
• 03:21 – Oleg founded his first startup while he was working full-time
• 03:37 – With Reply, Oleg invested what he took from his salary from his previous startup
  • 03:45 – Initial investment was around $30K
• 03:55 – Oleg hired 2 developers to build the product and Oleg started working on marketing and sales
• 04:08 – The developers are in Ukraine and it cost Oleg only $2000 per month
• 04:46 – Oleg found the developers through online job postings
  • 04:58 – There are websites in Ukraine where developers hang out
• 05:18 – Reply focuses on replacing routine sales tasks with AI and automation
  • 05:25 – Reply now automates sending emails, follow-ups and initiating phone calls
  • 05:44 – The development team is building more features to automate more sales tasks
• 05:53 – Reply is a SaaS business
  • 05:57 – Plans start from $25 to $120 per user
  • 06:03 – Average pay per user is $90 per month

• 06:14 – Reply was launched in 2015
• 06:18 – Current team size is 34
  • 06:28 – There’s a sales team in Canada and the development and marketing teams are in Ukraine
  • 06:50 – There are 15 developers
  • 07:20 – Reply spends an average of $4K for developers
• 08:04 – Reply has 1000 customers right now
• 08:15 – Average MRR
• 08:21 – Reply just hit $100K in monthly revenue
• 08:42 – Reply raised capital a year ago with a small $400K seed round
  • 08:54 – One of the investors reached out to Reply and to raise a round
  • 09:13 – It was on a convertible note
  • 09:17 – It was in March 2016
  • 09:24 – Reply is now close to closing a big round of funding
• 09:34 – Oleg decided to find out when it would be a good time to raise money
  • 09:42 – Oleg reached out to some investors and used his software called Outreach
  • 10:03 – In 3 weeks, Oleg met 15 investors
  • 10:11 – Oleg then found out that they were still early for a round A
• 10:32 – The sample email Oleg sent to the investors
• 11:26 – Reply has been profitable for the last 4 months
• 11:38 – Oleg has been operating at right around zero
• 12:08 – Most of Reply’s money is spent on headcount and they’re just starting with advertising
  • 12:18 – They are now spending on AdWords
• 12:43 – Churn is, in terms of numbers, would be close to 5% and in terms of revenue sharing, it would be closer to 3%
• 13:12 – Reply’s customers are adding more seats
• 13:39 – CAC would be around $200 but will still varies and organic is definitely lower
• 14:03 – LTV is if you just take all our customers, it would be close to $100
  • 14:19 – But in terms of bigger accounts, it will be much lower to a few grand at least
• 14:36 – Reply launched in Product Hunt some of their free products as lead generation tools
  • 14:59 – They have a great number of fans in Product Hunt
• 15:09 – Reply also creates content and promotes it
  • 15:16 – Reply recently interviewed a lot of sales experts and they created articles
• 15:43 – After the launch in Product Hunt, Reply had 10K visitors and 600 signups
  • 16:02 – In terms of LTV, it will be close to 60K which is added from the Product Hunt launch
• 16:25 – Oleg won’t sell the company for a million
• 16:32 – Oleg’s valuation is around $20-30M
• 16:47 – Oleg has a co-founder and the split is around 60/40
• 17:27 – Reply provides equity to employees who have been with them for a year
• 19:12 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. If you want to put your money to use, you can continue to invest in different businesses.
2. Outsourcing developers from other countries is more cost-efficient.
3. Be more realistic and be fearless.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Rob Emrich. He’s a serial entrepreneur, currently involved in his latest venture as the founder and CEO of The Mobile Majority. He’s founded and served as chief executive at 6 startups in social ventures including Road of Life, which distributed as $70M dollar curriculum; BULX, which was acquired by Dealyard in 2011; and Boundaryless Brands, which was acquired in 2011 along with SpeakerSite. Know more about Rob at his website.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Goal
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A
• Favorite online tool? — Spark Email Client
• 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? – “Have fun”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:40 – Nathan introduces Rob to the show
• 01:26 – Rob just bought Gimbal and will use that name
  • 01:55 – They’re taking the name most especially because of the .com in Gimbal’s website
• 02:15 – Rob believes that what drives success in online marketing is data
• 02:58 – Most of Rob’s previous companies were in the ecommerce space
• 03:22 – Mobile phone ends up being the bridge between the online world and the offline world
  • 03:31 – Rob was missing data regarding targeting and attribution
  • 03:46 – There’s no way to know if an offline campaign is effective
• 04:36 – The technology Rob bought that has the data can now run campaigns and know that you were on that campaign
• 05:05 – Offline behavior ends up becoming an incredibly strong signal of intent and is an accurate way to measure attribution
• 05:21 – Gimbal uses Beacon
  • 05:37 – Beacons are usually a 2-flow energy and Qualcomm invested around over a hundred million dollars for the technology
  • 06:01 – Beacons are precise when working with GPS
• 06:53 – Qualcomm spun out beacons in 4 other companies to develop the culture of innovation
  • 07:28 – When they spun out in 2014, it became a challenge for big companies to innovate
• 08:20 – The valuation
• 08:44 – The deal structure that Rob had with Qualcomm was a mix of different things: cash, debt and equity
• 08:57 – Total funding from Mobile Majority was around $25M
• 09:03 – Mobile Majority was launched in 2012
• 09:38 – Rob has gone through things after his first exit
  • 10:05 – “I’m going big at this point”
• 10:16 – Rob is currently 37 and has no kids
• 10:33 – Team size is around 100
• 11:20 – Primary line of business is essentially acting as a media and advertising operating system for large media companies
  • 11:41 – They target individual people
  • 11:44 – “We understand identity very, very well”
  • 13:09 – They were getting revenue share
• 13:42 – When CBS creates content, that content generates users and Mobile Majority exposes them to more user data and will sell their operated properties
• 14:30 – Mobile Majority is different from Outbrain because Mobile Majority’s ads are more targeted
• 15:10 – Mobile Majority now has 10K end customers
  • 16:00 – Total advertising purchase range is between $10M-100M
• 16:15 – Average percentage taken by Mobile Majority varies
  • 17:08 – Instead of charging towards content, Mobile Majority will only hit specific people who are on the list
• 18:46 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. There’s a lot of missed data in the offline world that is still not easy to track.
2. Knowing and understanding your target audience is more effective and cost-efficient for you.
3. Just go on with your life and have fun, create businesses while you still can.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Alessandro Biggi. He’s the CEO at Zooppa, the first open-source creative agency. Previously, he was the CEO and founder of a company called 20lines, an app to share leading short stories acquired by HarperCollins Publisher, in January 2016. He’s also worked for JP Morgan, The Boston Consulting Group, and as an adjunct professor in Venice.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Zero to One
• What CEO do you follow? – Ricardo Donadon
• Favorite online tool? — Slack
• 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? – Alessandro wished he would have studied some hard skills like engineering

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:46 – Nathan introduces Alessandro to the show
• 01:22 – Zooppa relies on technology to engage with over 400K creatives around the world
• 01:58 – Zooppa is like a marketplace, connecting creatives to people who need a project done
• 02:02 – Zooppa has 2 models in creating content
  • 02:07 – First is the open model which is open to everyone to show their creativity
  • 02:18 – The second one is the VIP which is only offered to top producers on the platform to participate and win the project
• 02:46 – Average project size depends on the creation needed
  • 02:56 – An open model can go from $50K-150K
  • 03:12 – Average can be $40K
• 03:18 – Zooppa was launched 10 years ago, in Italy
  • 03:25 – Zooppa expanded to New York, Seattle, Venice, Milan and London
• 03:42 – Alessandro just joined Zooppa 1 month ago after selling 20lines
  • 03:50 – Alessandro was also an investor in Zooppa
• 04:20 – Zooppa was founded by H-Farm’s founders
• 04:41 – Zooppa has raised around $8M
• 04:50 – Alessandro joined Zooppa after the last round
• 04:57 – There’s a plan to develop more revenue streams for Zooppa
• 05:21 – Zooppa’s vision is to inspire people use their creativity for a purpose
• 06:00 – Alessandro accepted Zooppa as a challenge
  • 06:07 – Alessandro feels that there’s more that he can do
• 06:48 – Zooppa is now planning to distribute a big part of their equity to new and old employees
• 07:07 – Alessandro does other things aside from Zooppa like investing in a restaurant
• 07:36 – Alessandro’s first company was inspired by Zooppa
• 08:05 – Zooppa’s average total transaction volume is $4-5M
• 08:14 – Zooppa usually runs 50-60 projects a year
• 08:28 – Zooppa takes care all of the projects and campaigns
• 09:15 – Zooppa takes a percentage for every project
  • 09:43 – It is 50%
• 10:09 – Zooppa just opened their New York office
  • 10:15 – Zooppa still continues to expand
• 10:48 – Creatives can go to Zooppa’s website and see if there are projects that they can take on
• 11:17 – Zooppa works with big brands
• 11:39 – Zooppa has 25 people on the team
• 11:46 – Zooppa is cash-flow positive
• 12:00 – Zooppa currently focuses on sustaining themselves on their own
• 12:30 – Alessandro is now 29 and he was 27 and a half when he sold 20lines
• 12:50 – Alessandro was working at 20lines for a couple of years
  • 13:02 – The publishing space is a hard space to be in
  • 13:05 – The team decided that they’d grow better with a bigger group
  • 13:10 – They had a talk with HarperCollins for about a year
  • 13:33 – It was a soft landing
• 14:54 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Don’t stick with a company where you don’t see growth happening—sell it and move on.
2. You can always learn something from someone who is older much more experienced.
3. If you can sustain your company on what you currently have, don’t raise a round.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Gadi Shamia. He’s the chief operating officer at Talkdesk, the world’s leading call center software platform. It’s backed by DFJ, Storm Ventures and Salesforce Venture. Talkdesk has grown 8x over the past 2 years and has over 250 employees along with their thousand customers including Box, Shopify, Dropbox and Weather.com. Prior to Talkdesk, Gadi founded a company that was acquired by SAP and now generates $5M in global business. He was also a senior VP at SAP and a general manager at ReachLocal.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Innovator’s Dilemma
• What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff
• Favorite online tool? — Gmail and Slack
• 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? – Gadi wished he knew that he would be fine so that he could stress less about it

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:44 – Nathan introduces Gadi to the show
• 01:26 – EchoSign was acquired by Adobe
• 01:31 – TopManage was acquired by SAP
• 01:53 – Talkdesk is a cloud-based call center solution
  • 01:58 – It is fully-integrated
• 02:26 – Talkdesk charges users per license fee
• 02:44 – Talkdesk is a SaaS company
• 02:54 – Average pay per customer varies
  • 03:01 – A company with 50 users would pay $5K-7K a month
  • 03:28 – Per seat cost is around $65-125 depending on the subscription
• 04:02 – Gadi joined Talkdesk 3 years ago
• 04:16 – The call center space is an interesting market
  • 04:22 – It is still dominated by all players such as Avaya, Cisco and Genesis
• 04:35 – Talkdesk already has a proven product
  • 04:41 – Talkdesk has a couple of hundred customers who like the product and has been using Talkdesk for years
• 04:53 – Tiago, Talkdesk’s CEO, was one of the reason Gadi joined Talkdesk
  • 05:14 – Tiago is the co-founder and his co-founder left Talkdesk after 4 and a half years
• 05:50 – Gadi believes that co-founders leave because they might not feel as excited as they were in the early stages
  • 06:01 – Co-founders staying is also devastating for the company
  • 06:10 – When a co-founder can say that he’s leaving and he has done his job, it’s a healthy company
• 06:44 – Talkdesk has broken the million ARR
• 06:57 – Talkdesk had 50 people when Gadi came in
• 07:17 – Tiago was the only salesperson at Talkdesk when he started it and he was able to get remarkable brands to use Talkdesk
• 07:43 – Gadi met Tiago through Gadi’s friend from Storm Ventures
  • 08:06 – Gadi and Tiago met in 2014 several times
• 08:38 – Talkdesk currently has 1200 customers
  • 08:48 – There are around 50K seats
• 09:06 – Average MRR
• 09:43 – Alot of Talkdesk customers are e-commerce customers and they are seasonal
• 10:32 – Talkdesk is at a net negative churn
• 11:00 – Talkdesk talks to their customers about their seasonal needs and adjusts the annual licensing fee
• 11:42 – Talkdesk respects Workday, Salesforce and works with ServiceNow
• 12:48 – The best companies will get 110-120 in aiming net revenue expansion
• 13:03 – Most companies that have worked with Talkdesk benefit from it and grow
  • 13:10 – DoorDash grew from 40 seats to 800
• 13:38 – Talkdesk currently has a team of 250 people
• 14:40 – Talkdesk’s growth is mostly from new sign-ups
• 14:56 – Talkdesk has raised a total of $24.5M
  • 15:01 – The last round was in 2015
• 15:15 – Talkdesk is neither raising rounds or talking to Salesforce
• 15:34 – Talkdesk focuses on building a real business
• 16:24 – Talkdesk is still burning cash
• 16:53 – Most of Talkdesk’s customers pay annually upfront
• 18:13 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. When a cofounder leaves, it means he’s done his job and the company is healthy
2. Be in a company where you believe in the product and know that you can accelerate its growth.
3. Building a real business is about the service you provide your customers in helping them achieve growth.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where people are clicking and scrolling on the website
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Mike Winn. He’s the CEO and founder of the company called DroneDeploy, the leading cloud-software platform for commercial drones and he’s on the mission to make the sky successful and productive for everybody. The company focuses on the agricultural and construction industries, but its large customers are from almost every industry across 130 countries. He has collected more than 8M acres of aerial imagery. Prior to joining Deploy, Mike worked at Google and was a RC helicopters hobbyist.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Effective Executive
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Gmail
• 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 can pretty much do whatever you set your mind to”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:26 – Nathan introduces Mike to the show
• 02:20 – DroneDeploy has raised $31M from VCs
  • 02:26 – DroneDeploy had 3 rounds and the last one was in July 2016
• 03:00 – DroneDeploy was launched in 2013
  • 03:05 – It stated in Edinburg, UK and was moved to the USA
• 03:25 – Mike got married in the middle of the incubator program
• 04:03 – Mike’s wife, Carrie, has always been supportive
• 04:15 – Mike was an account manager and selling AdWords at Google
  • 04:30 – After 18 months, he moved to another team
• 04:56 – Mike was 27 when he started DroneDeploy
  • 05:24 – Mike had £100K grant money to back him up
  • 05:39 – Mike was paying himself £1500
• 05:53 – DroneDeploy’s Twitter has unbelievable aerial imagery
• 06:05 – DroneDeploy make software for drones
  • 06:13 – Primary industries are agriculture and construction, but they also touch other industries that exist
• 06:43 – DroneDeploy only focuses on software
• 06:56 – DroneDeploy is a SaaS business
  • 07:08 – Customers can try DroneDeploy for free
  • 07:12 – For commercial use, pay is $100 a month
• 07:26 – DroneDeploy has 2 channels
  • 07:34 – To get more accurate data and large 3D plans, try the business plan which is $300 a month
  • 07:44 – The other channel is to expand by the number of seats
  • 08:21 – One seat is $100
• 08:30 – DroneDeploy has over a thousand paying businesses
• 08:56 – The drone market is still young, but growing really fast
• 09:52 – Team size is 60
• 10:15 – Nathan publishes on Youtube—Check it out!
• 10:36 – Mark Cuban predicted that the first trillionaire will be from the AI space
• 11:00 – Mike’s co-founders have PhDs in machine learning
• 11:10 – Mike sees the path of DroneDeploy becoming a trillion dollar business
• 12:03 – In the future, you don’t only want drones to collect data but to take action as well
• 13:07 – DroneDeploy currently works with B2B
• 13:32 – What is interesting about drones is the technology community
• 13:50 – Drone provides the bird’s eye view for the farmers
• 14:23 – One of the farmers who used DroneDeploy found a fungus when he saw that a certain part of the land was different in color
• 15:02 – In construction, it easier to work around with a drone especially when there’s a disaster, like an earthquake
• 15:47 – CAC
  • 15:55 – DroneDeploy has a successful blog
  • 16:17 – DroneDeploy has an NPS of around 40
• 16:52 – 6 people in the team are on sales and the rest are engineers
• 17:15 – Churn
  • 17:45 – The use of a drone is seasonal
• 18:01 – DroneDeploy is looking at what the customers want to do and how they can get consumers to use drones throughout the whole year
• 18:36 – MRR is around $100K
• 18:58 – DroneDeploy still burns cash monthly
  • 19:30 – DroneDeploy can still manage until 2018 without additional capital
• 20:27 – Mike would bet on DJI winning the drone hardware space
• 21:38 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. The drone market is still very young, but is growing rapidly.
2. The future of the AI industry is promising and it’s very likely that the first trillionaire will be from the AI space.
3. You can turn your hobby into a business, just put your mind to it.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Andrew Yates. He’s the CEO and founder of Artesian and they want to make sellers more effective at engaging with buyers using smart data and new techniques to create the right impact. He’s been involved in the sales and marketing for the past 25 years and is aiming to make a difference to people by creating software companies that make a meaningful dent in the universe.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Escape Velocity
• What CEO do you follow? – Godfrey Sullivan
• Favorite online tool? — Microsoft Outlook, GeckoBoard, Salesforce
• 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 wished I knew more how money and leverage finance works”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:13 – Nathan introduces Andrew to the show
• 01:46 – Artesian provides a sales acceleration platform
  • 01:56 – With Artesian, you can track every single customer, prospect and competitor every day and manage your pipeline risk
  • 02:11 – Artesian’s phrase is “customer curious businesses”
• 02:44 – Artesian combines thermographic data with the real-time contextual intelligence
• 02:50 – You can ask Artesian to find you a company that fits a certain profile
• 03:15 – Artesian has natural language processing science that scans over 10M sources of structured and unstructured data
• 03:47 – Artesian started providing their service in 2010
• 03:54 – Artesian currently has 30K paying subscribers with 100 large enterprise customers
  • 04:09 – Artesian covers a broad sector
  • 04:20 – Artesian’s customers are in high value, relationship-oriented, sales engagement
• 04:30 – Team size is 60
• 04:38 – Artesian’s goal is to accelerate more in 2017
• 04:50 – Average pay per customer is $10K to over $2M per year
• 04:59 – Artesian licenses to software per user, per month basis
• 05:04 – 68% of target ARR for 2017 has been contracted
• 05:38 – Before, Artesian’s licenses were cheaper
• 06:08 – The 30K customers are the number of seats from 120 enterprise customers
• 06:43 – Artesian made the decision to take down their cash burn in terms of investment
  • 07:04 – Artesian was burning $300K-400K a month
• 07:15 – Artesian has raised $40M in equity and debt
• 07:50 – MRR is $700K
• 08:24 – Customer retention is around 93 and 120 in terms of net
• 09:10 – Artesian is now number in the GT crowd ranking in terms of the most popular and most intelligent platform
• 09:59 – Artesian uses a team of researchers to build deep and cool data sets
• 10:39 – Artesian also invites users to define their own sales triggers
• 11:40 – Nathan had Danielle in Episode 318
• 12:00 – Andrew thinks that a market consolidation practice is inevitable
  • 12:26 – A scenario where companies could join forces to give broader reach and greater depth—a better customer experience is definitely more valuable
• 12:47 – Andrew also drives growth for Artesian
• 12:58 – It is important to spend time speaking with other companies that are active in the same space
  • 13:14 – The companies can be quite different and quite complementary
• 13:29 – The last round was a bridge round
• 13:49 – Artesian is currently equipped to keep going, without investments, for the next 2 years
• 14:08 – By the middle of 2017, Artesian will be in a cash flow, breakeven profitability state
• 14:40 – CAC
  • 14:41 – Artesian was tracking 1x in Year 1
  • 15:08 – Artesian uses great people to drive adoption
  • 15:13 – Artesian has 5 methods inside the platform
  • 15:25 – Artesian uses customer relationship management and what the system is telling them to do
  • 15:42 – Running 89% daily user engagement
• 16:15 – Artesian launched a way to build a smart calendar for each user every day
  • 16:29 – Artesian is partnered with FullContact and others that provide social profiles
• 16:56 – Artesian is spending $60-70K on acquisition depending on the segment
• 17:20 – LTV is 5.2 years
  • 17:30 – Artesian tracks this by looking at the average of customers they’re holding on to
  • 17:40 – HBC is one of their customers
• 19:28 – Andrew would be interested in talking with Salesforce to share the value
• 19:38 – 50% of Artesian is owned by institutions
• 19:46 – Andrew has 2 co-founders
• 21:27 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Companies in the same space should talk more—they can find out how they’re different and how they complement each other.
2. Being transparent shows that you want people to see your value and learn from it.
3. Handling your finances and controlling what you burn wisely will help your company manage without additional capital.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Ramin Sayar. He’s currently the president and CEO of Sumo Logic, an industry-leading SaaS-based company backed by some great VCs and he has an impressive list of customers and partners. Previously, he was the senior VP and GM at VMware, where he developed the product and business strategy and led the fastest growing aspect of that business. Previously, he had multiple executive roles with leading companies such as HP Software, Mercury Software, Tibco software, iPlanet Software, AOL and Netscape.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Good to Great
• What CEO do you follow? – Tom Reilly
• Favorite online tool? — Twitter and LinkedIn
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— Around 6-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Ramin would tell himself that the flow and steady path will pay off in the long run

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:22 – Nathan introduces Ramin to the show
• 03:32 – Sumo Logic helps customers build, run and secure modern apps in a simple and easy to consume service of profitability
• 03:57 – Sumo Logic is a SaaS business
  • 04:04 – Priced and licensed depending on the data ingested and the duration of retention
• 04:25 – Average RPU varies
• 05:35 – Sumo Logic has a mass of service for their customers
  • 05:45 – Sumo Logic has some free services
• 06:18 – Customers’ buying pattern is consistent
• 06:43 – $15K-150K is the average contract price
• 07:34 – Sumo Logic has over 1300 paying customers
  • 07:42 – 51% is enterprise and the other half is midmarket and SMBs
• 08:22 – Sumo Logic was capitalized through 5 rounds
  • 08:34 – Total amount raised is over $160M
• 08:52 – Nathan had Tim Draper at Episode 129 from DFJ which Ramin mentioned
• 09:14 – Sumo Logic is 7 years old
• 09:33 – Sumo Logic’s founding roots came from the security roles
  • 09:38 – Not all users have access to data being generated
  • 09:48 – The founders believed that there should be a simpler way for more users to access data
  • 10:32 – The team initially felt that there was a competitive advantage in technology and an innovative way to deliver data analytics as a service
• 11:03 – Sumo Logic currently has 30K users
• 11:17 – Their vision was to democratize machine data
• 11:50 – Visa has been with Sumo Logic for a few years now
  • 12:04 – Visa started with their fraud detection cases
  • 12:23 – A few years ago, Visa launched a service with Apple
  • 12:32 – Visa uses Sumo Logic for business insights such as activation and patterns regarding how users use multiple credit card applications
• 12:58 – Medidata is trying to disrupt the pharmaceutical industry in the clinical trial process
  • 13:23 – Medidata used Sumo and decided they’re going to transfer to the public cloud infrastructure service
  • 13:42 – Medidata is an example of a different, non-tech company using the technology that Sumo Logic provides
• 14:10 – Sumo Logic assimilates, collects, ingests and analyzes different sources of data
  • 14:25 – Sumo Logic then purposely tailors the analysis through their machine learning algorithms to address 3 distinct use cases
  • 14:52 – Sumo Logic helps in continuous development
  • 15:07 – Sumo Logic provides one single platform that analyses information and puts it into context so that developers and other teams can get the 360 degree, holistic view of the information
  • 15:39 – Sumo Logic analyses a lot of patterns
• 16:34 – Ramin joined Sumo Logic 2 years ago
• 17:06 – In choosing a CEO, it comes with understanding the core values and culture of the company and how they relate to what the founders want
  • 17:20 – If there are odds, make sure to address them
  • 17:25 – Second is to make sure that there’s an alignment syndicate in founding members in terms of what the outcomes would be
  • 17:36 – Some CEOs are brought in to scale the company and in other cases, they are brought in to turn over the team or change the company’s direction
• 18:10 – One of the 2-3 founders of Sumo Logic is still on the team
• 19:00 – Average ARR
• 19:30 – “We don’t try to make consumers consume what they can’t initially”
• 19:40 – SaaS companies often have to prove their value and constantly fight to earn the business
• 19:56 – More customers are now signing multimillion year deals with Sumo Logic
  • 20:09 – The customers are seeing Sumo Logic’s value
• 21:12 – The enterprise segment for Sumo Logic is broad
• 21:26 – When Ramin first came to Sumo Logic, the focus was security
  • 21:43 – Ramin realized that most of their customers are development ops, tech ops and liability engineers, so they pivoted a bit
• 22:25 – For a SaaS company, the LTV to CAC that modern investors look for are the payback period and the magic number has to be 3.0 and more
• 22:50 – The other metrics that Sumo Logic tracks
• 24:09 – Sumo Logic’s payback period is between the 1-2 year mark
  • 25:13 – The enterprise, midmarket and SMBs have different payback periods
• 25:39 – Team size is 250
• 27:33 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Create guidelines when it comes to looking for your CEOs—they should align with the company’s cultures, beliefs, and goals.
2. SaaS companies often have to prove their value and are constantly fighting to earn business.
3. Users’ access to data can be very limited and complicated; however, simpler and more innovative ways are being discovered as technology continues to advance.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Jeroen Corthout. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, the intelligent CRM that startups and small businesses love to use. Prior to Salesflare, he was helping companies to implement their new CRM, marketing and sales. Salesflare kicked off when he and his co-founder, Lieven, found a way to automate their CRM data. Salesflare’s mission is to automate everything in sales, but the irreplaceable human contact.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Alchemist
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeroen has been reading the biographies of Tony Hsieh, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Zapier
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jeroen wished he had started these bigger projects earlier

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:38 – Nathan introduces Jeroen to the show
• 02:16 – Salesflare helps mostly startups to make their sales consistently productive, to have the right data, and to communicate and manage the pipeline better
• 02:28 – Salesflare sells licenses
• 02:40 – Salesflare’s price point is $30/month when you pay annually and $35 if monthly
• 02:58 – Salesflare started halfway through 2013
  • 03:04 – Jeroen and Lieven were working in a software company
  • 03:20 – Jeroen knew there was no solution to keep files automatically
• 03:28 – Salesflare basically pulls all the CRM data for you
• 03:49 – On top of a lot of data, Salesflare is building automation and intelligence
  • 03:52 – There’s an automatic to-do list and body temperature indicator
• 04:12 – Salesflare is largely self-funded, some from accelerators
  • 04:24 – Telenet Kickstart and iMinds are the accelerators from Belgium
  • 04:37 – Salesflare got $25K from one accelerator without equity and the other one had a convertible loan of $50K
  • 05:10 – Salesflare has raised a total of $700K
• 05:28 – Jeroen was in the consulting field
• 05:49 – Salesflare is currently building a convertible round with investors and has raised $250K; the target is $350K
• 06:57 – Salesflare has over 100 customers
• 07:14 – Jeroen believes that people don’t usually trust small companies, even if they have great products
• 08:00 – Average revenue
• 08:19 – Salesflare is based in Antwerp, Belgium
• 08:24 – Team size is 6
  • 08:30 – 3 are building the product and the other 3 are sales and customer service
• 08:55 – Jeroen likes people to think that they are bigger than they are
• 09:02 – Nathan believes that some people like small companies because of their flexibility
• 10:40 – Nathan tells Jeroen that his assumption of “it’s not good if it’s free” is a completely false assumption
• 11:28 – Most people stick to Salesflare after the trial period
• 11:40 – There’s currently a big market of CRMs
• 11:46 – Salesflare is aiming at sales automation and there’s very little competition in that space
• 12:12 – Salesflare is moving faster than their competition
• 12:17 – Hubspot's distribution channel is huge and Salesflare won’t be able to compete with that
  • 12:23 – But Salesflare can compete on the profit side
• 12:37 – Salesflare has a low churn
  • 13:12 – Salesflare got their first customer at the end of 2015
• 14:00 – Salesflare has a blog, does outbound emailing and builds their online presence for customer acquisition
• 14:36 – Salesflare does content distribution through Facebook’s paid advertising
• 14:47 – Most of Salesflare’s recent customers are from Product Hunt
• 15:23 – Jeroen has no idea of the number of trials they’ve had since the launch
  • 15:45 – Jeroen tracks the conversion, instead
  • 16:05 – In the past week, there were 250 new trial signups
  • 16:15 – The conversion to paid customer is around 10-15%
• 16:30 – Salesflare tries to show its value as quickly as possible
• 17:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. If you’re still unsure of starting a new business, find other ways to get involved in that space to understand how it works.
2. Some businesses offer a free product to show their value to the customer right away.
3. Competing with a free product with a large distribution channel isn’t easy, but you can generate a higher profit margin.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Adam Jankovits and his goal is to become an outstanding marketing technologist. He is a person who brings together strengths in marketing, technology and social interaction. He’s got an MBA and consultancy background, but also has a strong interest in technology and social-networking skills. His focus right now is on his company, LeadBerry.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Founders at Work
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A
• Favorite online tool? — Slack
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— Currently 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Adam would tell himself to take networking very seriously

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:10 – Nathan introduces Adam to the show
• 01:45 – LeadBerry is a B2B lead generation software that converts website visitors to sales leads
  • 01:58 – The basic idea is that there’s no code needed and you just connect LeadBerry to Google Analytics
  • 02:09 – LeadBerry does 2 things: aims to identify B2B visitors and provides real-time valuable data
• 02:50 – LeadBerry is still currently on pre-revenue
• 03:05 – LeadBerry’s free beta was launched in October 2016
• 03:15 – LeadBerry just recently removed the free beta and launched the paid version on the third week of April
• 04:10 – LeadBerry’s idea
  • 04:31 – LeadBerry was first built in-house
• 04:40 – Since October, LeadBerry already had over 2K subscribers
  • 04:47 – Most of them are companies
• 04:59 – LeadBerry has generated over 2M leads
• 05:03 – “The numbers and the feedback kept us pushing”
• 05:17 – LeadBerry doesn’t have a guarantee that their customers will convert to the paid version
  • 05:36 – Adam has a plan on how they can possibly convert their customers to paying ones
• 06:16 – Adam is the CEO and founder of the agency, Brandlift
  • 06:26 – Brandlift generates signups through PR, marketing and performance campaigns
• 07:00 – The amount Adam and Brandlift have invested in LeadBerry
• 07:17 – LeadBerry currently has 3 people in the team who are also working Brandlift
  • 07:24 – Brandlift agency has 20 people
• 07:36 – LeadBerry currently spends $3-4K a month into their performance channel
• 08:25 – Adam is spending around $50K total in pre-revenue
• 09:04 – Nathan talked to a lot of agencies where they build solutions in their agency and spin out the solution as a SaaS business
• 09:25 – Adam has used LeadBerry in Brandlift
• 09:35 – LeadBerry is completely bootstrapped
• 09:52 – Brandlift was launched in 2010
  • 10:00 – Brandlift is a full-service digital agency
• 10:45 – LeadBerry is using different sources like FullContact, Hunter and Clearbit to generate leads
  • 10:56 – LeadBerry always tries to explore new and unexplored options in generating leads
• 11:10 – Brandlift’s first year revenue
  • 11:29 – Adam was 28 when he launched Brandlift
  • 12:25 – Net revenue is around $150K
  • 12:41 – Topline revenue is around $1M
  • 12:51 – Brandlift is based in Hungary and Los Angeles
• 13:36 – Adam shares how LeadBerry is different from other lead generation software
  • 14:00 – LeadBerry has absolutely no development work that needs to be done if you want to get started with LeadBerry
  • 14:28 – LeadBerry integrates with Google Analytics
• 15:10 – LeadBerry won’t need the Google Analytics code
  • 15:32 – You can connect your Google Analytics’ profile with just 2 clicks
  • 15:48 – Google Analytics helps in the identification part
  • 16:34 – LeadBerry pulls out the leads for you which saves you time
• 17:10 – You can use LeadBerry’s online interface on a daily basis or connect your CRM and it will automatically sync data
• 17:36 – Adam won’t sell LeadBerry for $100K and is not currently thinking about it
• 18:57 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Most lead generation businesses made the software for their own use, saw its value, and then spun it out as a SaaS business.
2. Lead sources often verify their leads with each other.
3. Starting as a free software for a couple of months may lead customers to see the value in your product and convert into paid customers.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Steve McLaughlin. He’s one of the founders and CEO of Financial Technology Partners. He is a former senior banker at Goldman Sachs, covering fintech for over 20 years. He was recently named Investment Banker of the Year, ranked number 2 banker in Silicon Valley by The Information, and he’s top ranked on Institutional Investors. Online Finance 35 listed him as one of the most influential people in fintech.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Jack: Straight from the Gut
• What CEO do you follow? – Jack Dorsey
• Favorite online tool? — Uber
• 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? – “I wished I knew where all the stocks are going”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:40 – Nathan introduces Steve to the show
• 02:27 – Steve’s company advises firms across the entire fintech landscape on raising capital and M&A—they’re on the sales side helping people figure out where to get money, how to get money, what the valuation is, what the structure is
• 02:53 – Total transaction volume you were involved with last year
  • 02:58 – Financial Technology Partners transaction volume was around $10-15B
• 03:09 – Which of these 3 industries are you most excited about, like where your most interesting deals would be in?
  • 03:34 – It’s really across the board, anywhere from the B2B payments to consumer payments to online lending companies like Prosper or GreenSky and the payment space like Marketo
• 04:08 – Any other players you see in the space besides those two, Betterment and Wealthfront?
  • 04:11 – Steve appreciates Riskalyze who are behind the scenes providing the same kind of technology to RAAs and other advisors or someone like BlackRock who he advised last year
• 04:45 – FutureAdvisor is a startup going initially after the consumer side, they pivoted a little bit to be a B2B player
• 05:23 – Blackrock acquired FutureAdvisor for a $150M back in August 27, 2015
• 06:32 – FTP generally gives advice for doing large transactions and are paid on success
  • 06:47 – It’s either commission or a percentage based on the value of the deal
  • 07:38 – Deal size varies. On a multi-million dollar deal, it can be a percent and a $100M deal, it can be 7% depending on the scale and deal size
• 08:02 – Nathan asks: How do you value a wealth technology company like Betterment?
  • 08:29 – Steve looks at start the factors affecting Wealthfront or Betterment and what they think the companies will look like in 7 or 10 years
• 10:08 – Andy of Wealthfront was in Episode 498
• 10:20 – The growth of Wealthfront and Betterment are the ETFs in their assets and management
  • 10:37 – Steve would use ETFs as a metric to try to predict what Wealthfront and Betterment are going to look like in 5 to 10 years
• 11:03 – Steve personally thinks that they can have a lot of winners—there are a lot of companies in the mutual funds industry that didn’t win and a lot that are dead
  • 11:15 – So there’s no saying that the guys who invented the popularized robo advisors are going to be the winners
  • 11:28 – Steve also thinks that Wealthfront and Betterment are going to do quite well and he sees them from afar, he’s a big fan and he anticipates they’re going to be winner
  • 11:34 – Wealthfront and Betterment have already proven that at some extent, they’ve outlasted lots of other guys
  • 11:55 – Steve thinks Wealthfront and Betterment care a lot about the consumers behind the platform and they realized that their people actually manage their money correctly over the course of time
• 13:05 – Riskalyze has various risks tools and robo advisor tools that they sell into RIAs
  • 13:15 – RIA stands for Registered Investment Advisor
• 13:55 – All the models could succeed, there’s hundreds of mutual fund companies that did incredibly well
  • 14:17 – These are fintech companies
• 14:59 – Nathan is a big fan of Warren Buffett who goes to all the annual meetups and just sticks to his advice
  • 15:09 – “I’m not going to be active. I’m never going to beat the market. I’m never going to do this stuff and just going to put it in a passive, low exchange ratio, Vanguard, SMP and 500 index and that’s what I do”
  • 15:19 – Nathan was hoping that Andy or Jon could convince him to take a shot at one of them, throw $10K in both rooms, see what happens over a few years and do a comparison
  • 15:45 – Why isn’t Warren Buffett recommending Betterment and Wealthfront?
• 15:47 – Steve thinks that Warren Buffett probably doesn’t know much about Betterment and Wealthfront
  • 15:52 – What Steve likes about Betterment and Wealthfront is they’re going to have really forensic case studies on stats of the population
  • 16:21 – There will be perfect comparable data on which is better
• 18:36 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Wealth tech companies are becoming more difficult to valuate, thus a need for case studies and empirical data.
2. Empirical data can help inform your decisions, but the FINAL decision rests on your judgment.
3. How do you value a company? Look at the factors affecting their growth over a period of time.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Jon Stein. He’s the CEO and founder of Betterment. With his passion about making life better and his career experience advising banks and brokers, he founded Betterment in 2008. Jon is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Business School. He holds a Series 72463 and he’s a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst). His interests lie in the intersection of behavior, psychology and economics. What excites him most about his work is making everyday activity and products more efficient, accessible and easy to use.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Greenhouse
• 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? – Jon could have taken risks a bit earlier in life

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:15 – Nathan introduces Jon to the show
• 02:05 – Betterment is the largest independent investment advisor online
  • 02:10 – Betterment manages your money in the way old institutions can’t
  • 02:19 – Betterment automates the best practices of investing and the same technology drives the cost down for you
  • 02:32 – Betterment is leading in their industry
• 02:45 – Betterment charges a fee that is the percentage of the asset finder management
  • 02:50 – It is 2.5%, which is the lowest in the industry
• 03:15 – “We have to put our customers’ best interest first”
• 03:30 – Betterment currently manages $8.2B
• 03:50 – Jon studied economics and behavioral biology as an undergraduate
  • 03:58 – When Jon graduated from Harvard, 80% of the graduates took to the finance industry
  • 04:47 – Jon didn’t want to follow the people he knew in finance
  • 04:31 – Jon wanted to help people so he thought he’d study medicine
• 04:50 – Jon found himself back in New York, consulting banks
  • 04:58 – It was 2001-2002 when Jon got his pre-med from Harvard
  • 05:13 – Jon was 23 when he went back to New York, in 2003
  • 05:45 – The banks were not paying attention to what their customers wanted
  • 06:58 – Jon realized that the industry was fundamentally flawed
  • 07:12 – There was no scaled advisor that served the market and the people like Jon could
• 07:28 – Jon started at Columbia Business School in 2008 and he already the idea for Betterment even before he started there
• 08:10 – Jon didn’t know how to code when he started and just learned in business school
• 08:46 – Jon didn’t have student debt while he was in business school and he saved some money from his consulting
• 09:14 – During the early days, Jon and his co-founders didn’t need a lot of money
• 09:30 – Jon and his co-founders have invested their own money into Betterment
  • 09:39 – Their initial investment was less than 400K
• 10:14 – Betterment has raised a total of $205M
• 10:34 – “I always wanted to build a company that would impact the lives of millions of people for the better”
• 11:04 – From Day 1, Jon knew that Betterment would be a capital intensive business
• 11:20 – Team size is 220
  • 11:26 – About half of the team are engineers and product managers
  • 11:31 – Most of the team is involved in building the business
• 12:14 – Most of Betterment’s customers are from word-of-mouth
• 12:46 – Betterment’s paid acquisition
• 13:03 – Betterment’s goal as a company is to make noise
• 13:11 – There’s now a better way to manage money
• 14:11 – People should put their money in Betterment rather than in Vanguard because they’re burning money
  • 14:18 – Betterment can make them more money on their assets
  • 14:39 – Warren Buffett is an active investor himself
  • 14:45 – Jon thinks that Warren Buffett’s advice was great during his time, but the technology has moved forward
• 15:11 – Betterment will make you more money than you would make in a single fund
  • 15:27 – Betterment’s website has all the information about how they work
• 16:00 – Betterment’s role is to maximize people’s money
• 16:07 – Vanguard is a fund company that sells you funds
• 16:10 – Betterment is independent from their funds
• 17:17 – “We are growing faster than any firm in the history of this space”
• 17:42 – People are becoming aware of what Betterment is doing
• 18:21 – 240K customers have invested in Betterment
  • 18:44 – There’s no minimum amount to invest
• 19:24 – “We’re building an institution for the next century and we’re not interested at selling right now”
• 19:35 – Betterment’s revenue is driven from their 2.5% of the asset management finder
• 19:48 – Average revenue
• 21:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Just because it has worked in the past, does NOT mean it will still work today.
2. There are better ways to manage your money, especially with the new advancements we have in technology.
3. Take risks as early on as you can.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Dean Graziosi—he knows how to create success. From extremely humble beginnings, he started with a firewood business in high school to a collision repair shop and his first real estate deal before he turned 20. From there, he created a multi-million dollar real estate business, became a New York Times best-selling author multiple times,  and is one of the most watched real estate and success trainers of our generation. He maximizes his success and profits on each of his endeavors along his evolution and his businesses have generated nearly one billion dollars in revenue. He’s obsessed with sharing his success along this journey with the world.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment
• What CEO do you follow? – Ernest Shackleton
• Favorite online tool? — N/A
• 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? – “Don’t believe your thoughts, they lie to you most of the time. If you could just observe your thoughts and throw away the shit that doesn’t serve you, man, you could just go a lot faster”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:22 – Nathan introduces Dean to the show
• 02:28 – Dean skipped college
• 02:42 – When Dean was 16, he would buy wrecked cars and flip them in his garage
  • 03:00 – He has bought some of the cars for $500 to $5000
• 03:11 – Dean got his first real estate deal at 18 with no money down
  • 03:17 – Mrs. Laprezzti gave him a deal with no money down
  • 03:20 – Dean paid Mrs. Laprezzti monthly and he renovated the place
• 03:49 – Dean’s social studies teacher who was also a real estate agent gave Dean leads of people who had houses that were not selling
  • 04:45 – Dean gave Mrs. Laprezzti $2500 a month for a 4-unit apartment, for 3 years
  • 05:05 – Mrs. Laprezzti needed $2K for her expenses for the condo
  • 05:31 – Dean didn’t care that he may be paying more
  • 05:48 – Dean promised that he’d pay her in 3 years
  • 05:55 – At the end of 3 years, Dean had the room fully rented and he was able to get a bank loan and pay Mrs. Laprezzti off
  • 06:10 – Dean was making $4200 when he rented out the place, then he sold it
  • 06:24 – Dean still owns around 400 houses, right now
• 06:56 – Dean’s dad was born during the Depression
  • 07:20 – His dad was a mechanic and a collision repair shop guy
• 07:26 – Dean evolved by maxing out on the equity he could gain from each of his houses
  • 07:38 – After the condo, Dean got an old, rundown mansion and turned it into 10 apartment units
  • 07:53 – Dean refinanced the apartments and bought more apartments
  • 08:00 – It was the late 80s and early 90s when Dean transferred to upstate New York
    • 08:09 – Dean bought some land and went into the process of subdividing
  • 09:10 – Back then, Dean was just hustling for the next property, taking the cash, and making a creative deal
    • 09:30 – “There’s always a creative deal”
    • 09:45 – It’s about buying off-market deals
  • 10:21 – Average revenue from all of Dean’s properties is $380K
    • 10:45 – The market value for 380 units is around $20M
    • 10:54 – Dean is half leveraged in all of the units
  • 11:45 – Dean authored a couple of books because he is obsessed with marketing and sales
  • 12:10 – Dean’s last 2 books are self-published
  • 12:21 – Dean’s first book was with a publisher
    • 12:24 – Dean didn’t want an advance deal from his first book
    • 12:31 – Dean used to get 35-40% of gross sales
    • 12:43 – Dean’s first book is Totally Fulfilled
  • 12:46 – Dean’s latest book is Millionaire’s Success Habits
  • 13:01 – Most of the publishers don’t market your book and rely on you to market your own book
  • 13:07 – Dean sold a million copies of his second book
    • 13:10 – Dean had an infomercial running everyday, offering the book on TV
    • 13:25 – “You definitely need a marketing mechanism if you need to write a book”
  • 13:38 – Dean’s most effective marketing strategy is giving away free books
    • 13:42 – Dean has an incoming infomercial with Larry King, who has impacted Dean’s life
    • 13:56 – Dean met Larry King through mutual friends
    • 14:01 – Dean told Larry that he made an impact on Dean’s life, gave his book to Larry and asked Larry if he can interview him
    • 14:09 – Larry came to Dean’s studio
    • 14:22 – 8 years ago, Dean watched Larry interview Joel Osteen
    • 14:59 – Dean did the first interview show on TV without scripts, teleprompters or voiceovers
    • 15:09 – The show broke a hundred million dollars in sales
  • 16:05 – Dean only negotiated for a bigger share in book sales because he knew that his books would sell
  • 16:25 – Millionaire’s Success Habits is a hardcover book and still ships that way, there is no ebook
  • 17:00 – com is for people who have the ability to find success trainers that are qualified
    • 17:10 – They have courses and high-performance coaching
    • 17:25 – It’s a step-by-step on how to become a high achiever
    • 17:33 – They just broke $220K in sales
    • 17:55 – 100% of the money is going back in
    • 18:10 – “It’s a feel good, it’s a legacy thing”
    • 18:13 – They might sell Growth in 3 years
    • 18:19 – Dean and his 2 co-founders split Growth equally
  • 19:08 – Dean started a $100K year mastermind with Joe Polish
  • 20:13 – When you go and share one of your greatest strategies, others will shares theirs. too, and it multiplies
  • 20:35 – “Mastermind has been the greatest lift of anything I’ve ever done”
  • 22:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Persevere and be patient, the right time will come.
2. Sharing your strategies for success doesn’t create more competition; instead, it gives others permission to share how they became successful as well.
3. Don’t let your thoughts stop you—observe them and throw out the shit that doesn’t serve you.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

René Lacerte. He’s the founder and CEO of Bill.com, the leading business payments company. He’s a fintech industry vettor and has been working to simplify business payments since 1999, when he founded PayCycle, which was later acquired by Intuit in 2009. Bill.com is now working to help bridge the digital divide between banks and businesses by partnering with 3 of the top US banks and 45% of the top hundred accounting firms. He believes that banks play a critical role in the advancement of fintech. While technology advancement since Silicon startups are divided by or driving much of the industry change, René believes that banks are and will remain the center of the financial universe for quite some time.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Advantage
• What CEO do you follow? – Pete Kight
• Favorite online tool? — Dropbox
• 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? – “Don’t stress over the hard decisions”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:22 – Nathan introduces René to the show
• 02:07 – Andy from Wealthfront disagrees that banks will remain to be the center of the universe
• 02:27 – Bill.com makes close to $40B a year
  • 02:32 – The average transaction is $1700 to $2000
• 03:16 – “We make doing business really easy”
• 03:17 – Bill.com automates the back office of businesses
  • 03:24 – They take all the paperwork, workflow, payments and integration with the accounting software
• 03:40 – Bill.com charges per seat, per subscription and transaction fees
• 04:15 – The subscription model is their main revenue stream
• 04:36 – Bill.com charges .49 cents for every electronic payment and $1.49 for paper
• 05:30 – The fintech space is a natural viral coefficient space
• 06:00 – Bill.com had $110M from venture capital
• 06:12 – René was 32 when he started PayCycle, in 1999
• 06:20 – René worked in Intuit prior to PayCycle and stayed there for 5 years
• 06:34 – René had some experience innovating products from Intuit
• 06:54 – René grew up in a family of entrepreneurs
  • 07:04 – One of René’s grandfather’s businesses is an automatic data processing company
  • 08:26 – René’s father went back to college to understand more about business
• 09:16 – The idea of Bill.com is that there’s a better way to take advantage of technology to make payroll easier
• 09:58 – Bill.com helps define and automate the back office
• 10:06 – PayScale does online payroll and started with household payroll, which Intuit doesn’t want to do
  • 10:47 – PayScale raised $150K
  • 11:23 – PayScale was acquired by Intuit for $170M
• 12:21 – Average number of paying customers of Bill.com
• 13:16 – “If we get customers active and get them using it, they don’t churn”
  • 13:26 – They’re active when they already have paid for Bill.com
  • 14:04 – Average customer pay per month is $100
  • 14:15 – You can try it for the first month, for free
  • 15:00 – Bill.com automates some of their tools to make the customer feel that they need the product
  • 15:18 – Bill.com does A/B testing to check how they can get their customers engaged
  • 15:52 – Bill.com is adding thousands of new businesses a month
• 16:56 – René tracks how many months the payback will be when it comes to CAC
  • 17:23 – Payback target is 10-13 months
• 18:07 – LTV is around 5 years
• 18:48 – René has raised $50M
• 19:39 – René’s strategy is to maintain a strong relationship with VC
• 19:53 – Team size is 225
• 20:10 – Bill.com was launched in 2008
• 21:07 – Bill.com isn’t selling anything and not partnered with anybody, today
• 22:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. It is important to engage your customers.
2. Banks are and will remain to be the center of the financial universe.
3. Hard decisions and their consequences will pass, so don’t let them bother you too much.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Laurent Le Moal. He brings extensive knowledge of digital payments in emerging markets to PayU where he serves as the CEO. He culminated an 11-year career at PayPal as general manager for continental Europe, Russia, Middle East and Africa, leaving a billion dollar development vision across diverse geographies. Prior to PayPal, he founded an Italian startup called Talent Manager. He built a 40-person team there and now the startup has expanded to France and Spain. He also has experience in McKinsey and Antal International. He leads PayU’s strategic direction and development and is currently building on the company’s position and high-growth markets all around the world. Given the company’s focus on being an expert in a local market in which it operates, Le Moal leads the creation and implementation of payment methods which best suits PayU’s customers all around the world.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Chris Skinner
• Favorite online tool? — The Top Inbox
• 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? – “Just go and experience more”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:19 – Nathan introduces Laurent to the show
• 02:22 – PayU is a payment gateway which is basically serving merchants
• 02:43 – PayU has their own original platform
• 02:53 – “I believe that payments are extremely local and regional”
• 02:58 – Since Laurent joined PayU, they moved from pure payments to actual financial services offering credit solutions
• 03:22 – Payment is still the bigger market for PayU
• 03:34 – Laurent thinks that financial services is strategic move for payment companies
• 03:56 – Nathan had Monish Anand in Episode 617 who talks about data science
• 04:25 – “The ability to offer credit is the ability to manage risks”
  • 04:38 – All banks are using the same credit score model
  • 04:48 – If you go to India and want to address 90% of the population, then have the means to repay their debt
  • 05:16 – If you have a technology that does credit scoring, then the rest of credit is just mechanics
• 05:40 – Talent Manager is Laurent’s first company
  • 05:54 – Laurent started small in Milan
  • 06:39 – Laurent was 25 when he started Talent Manager in 1997
  • 06:56 – It was easy to get consumers
  • 07:20 – Laurent raised around €5M for their first round
  • 08:01 – It was growing fast
  • 08:22 – Laurent goes to India and sees companies with a high burn rate, which is a couple of hundred million rupees a year
  • 09:26 – Talent Manager was able to have a couple of million in revenue
  • 09:36 – Talent Manager’s software was sold
• 10:29 – Paypal started in 2004 with 3 people in Europe
  • 10:35 – They were looking for someone to do a market study about the potential for PayPal outside of eBay
  • 11:00 – PayPal expanded outside of eBay
• 11:22 – When you go to a high-growth market like India, most of the companies are still trying to increase the engagement of consumers
• 11:47 – Laurent had different stock options with PayPal
• 13:01 – PayU is part of Naspers, which is a diversified group and one of the biggest technology investors for the high-growth market
• 13:28 – PayU has their payment business and a fintech arm which is investing in interesting startups
• 13:56 – For PayU, the opportunity is not to just be an operator, but an investor
• 14:04 – Laurent believes that in fintech, it is difficult to scale your business
• 15:08 – Laurent invested Monese who is building the new bank for “unbanked” people
• 16:11 – Laurent shares how he got into PayU
  • 16:30 – Laurent join Naspers and PayU on the basis that he’d manage the business and transform it into a financial service company
• 16:53 – In 2016, PayU ‘s total payment transaction was around $18B
• 17:12 – Growth rate is around 40% year over year
• 17:20 – PayU forecasts to maintain their growth rate
  • 17:24 – PayU sees a really big push in India where the growth is around 70%
  • 17:30 – Laurent sees India as the most exciting market in the world
• 17:50 – Laurent sees their financial services to be continuously building in the coming years
  • 18:10 – Laurent wants 10% of their revenue to come from credit
  • 18:24 – Credit is the consumer credit where you give money to people and make money based from the interest rate
  • 18:38 – “What is important is when you start credit from scratch, it’s actually to build your portfolio in a very consistent way”
• 19:06 – PayU takes 1-3% per transaction
• 19:35 – Team size is close to 1500 from 4 main regions and they have 16 offices
• 20:54 – In fintech, there are regulations including money laundering regulations
• 21:53 – Average ARR in 2016
• 22:24 – PayU just launched LazyPay in India
  • 22:35 – The concept is to give you the possibility to buy something online then pay your debt later
  • 23:43 – The merchants love it
• 24:08 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. The payment gateway space is expanding and more startups are giving people easier access to credit.
2. Regulations are necessary, especially when it comes to managing those who try to take advantage.
3. Just go out there, gain more knowledge, and experience MORE.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives