706: This 31 Year Old Raised $1.3M To Help You Be More Efficient

Vinay Patankar. He’s the CEO of Process Street, the simplest way to manage your teams’ recurring processes and workflows. Vinay sets up new clients, onboard employees and manages content publishing with his tool. He also co-host the podcast Business Systems Explored where he deep dives into business systems with industry experts.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk, Zach Nelson and Marc Benioff
• Favorite online tool? — io
• 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 you can make money on the internet”

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:50 – Nathan introduces Vinay to the show
• 01:28 – Process Street is a tool that helps companies build and manage their workflows and processes
• 01:34 – Process Street is a SaaS product, charging on a monthly or yearly subscription based on the number of users one has
• 01:44 – The vision is to make workflows easy
• 02:28 – Process Street is from an intuitive perspective
• 02:53 – Average customer pay
• 03:42 – Process Street has options for pricing and incentives for annual contracts
• 04:04 – Process Street was launched in 2013 as a side project
• 04:10 – Seed round was raised a year and a half ago
• 04:20 – Team size is 21
• 04:30 – Total raised was $1.3M
• 04:47 – Process Street went through Angel Cloud
• 05:10 – Nathan thinks that the one who will win the space is the one who is better at distribution
• 05:42 – Distribution is the key in finding a scalable sales process and getting the pricing right
• 05:57 – The space is very fragmented
• 06:34 – Vinay thinks they don’t need to beat the competition, they just need to grab enough volume of shares
• 06:52 – Process Street focuses on SEO
  • 07:04 – They measure their rank from targeted keywords
• 07:28 – Process Street has a marketing team that helps with distribution
  • 08:13 – SEO is cost-effective
• 08:35 – CAC from the SEO efforts
• 09:06 – MRPU
• 09:17 – Process Street doesn’t spend in other marketing channels
• 09:26 – Process Street invests in sales deeper into their funnels
• 10:00 – Expansion rate varies depending on the size of the customer
• 10:28 – Process Street has a healthy expansion revenue
• 11:26 – 15 of the team are focused on marketing
• 11:35 – Process Street is still working on their headcount expenses
• 11:56 – Process Street will adjust and optimize pricing
• 12:29 – Average number of customers
• 12:41 – MRR
• 13:03 – Process Street’s goal is to raise an A round at the first or second quarter of 2018
• 13:20 – Target MRR by the end of 2017
• 13:35 – Process Street has no paid acquisition
• 14:50 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

1. The one that will scale in the project management space is the one that is better at distribution.
2. You don’t always need to beat your competitors, just gain your shares and increase your volume.
3. There is real money that can be made on the internet.

 

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