Gavin Wheeldon. With over 15 years of experience working in technology led or enabled businesses, Gavin has a deep understanding of the impact of technology on the bottom line of an organization. He sold his last business, Applied Language Solutions, a global language technology and service business, and has used some of the earnings to set up a new company, Purple WiFi.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Who Moved My Cheese
- What CEO do you follow? – Jack Welch
- Favorite online tool? — InsightSquared
- 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? – “I’d rather read more of finance”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:24 – Nathan introduces Gavin to the show
- 02:29 – Gavin travels a lot and is frequently reliant on public WiFi—that’s where the idea for Purple WiFi came from
- 03:02 – Gavin sold his last company for over $60M
- 03:20 – His last company was in the translation and interpretation industry
- 03:23 – They used machine learning to translate languages with incredible accuracy
- 03:43 – Theirs is also a human editing in between so the translation is perfect
- 03:59 – Gavin was 36 when he sold it
- 04:02 – It was completely bootstrapped
- 04:44 – There’s no particular single owner of the space
- 04:54 – Fon does domestic hotspot and other traditional utility wifi
- 05:38 – Purple Wifi is the next generation of wifi
- 06:03 - Purple WiFi is SaaS business, charging annually depending on the number of wifi points
- 06:14 – For a single venue, the price is $13 a month
- 06:22 – Purple WiFi also caters to stadiums and airports
- 06:45 – An airport can average a hundred access points
- 07:10 - Purple WiFi currently has 17K installations
- 07:15 – It ranges from restaurants up to a whole city
- 07:53 – They now have around 80K access points
- 08:03 – Average MRR is close to a million
- 08:25 – Purple WiFi offers discount for bigger venues
- 09:00 – Sales cycle varies every hour
- 09:19 – A physical venue owner is usually clueless about what is happening in the venue
- 09:50 - Purple WiFi is channel-based and sells through partners
- 09:55 – Some of the partners are Telstra and Singtel and other national carriers
- 10:23 – Team size is over 100
- 10:30 – 45 are focused on sales and partnerships
- 10:46 – Telcos are usually built with partners
- 11:09 – They can build their own access points but it takes years and a huge investment
- 11:40 – Purple WiFi partners with half of the service providers in the USA
- 12:37 – Purple WiFi partners with Cisco and Ruckus for the access points
- 13:06 - Purple WiFi does post visit reviews which prompt the user to review the coffee shop or hotel
- 13:19 – There was around 500 increase in TripAdvisor reviews
- 13:21 – 600-700% increase in CRM generation
- 13:28 – The value of Purple Wifi can be seen from day 1
- 13:43 - Purple WiFi was launched in 2013
- 13:48 – First year revenue was $200K
- 13:59 – 2014 revenue was around $600K
- 14:13 - Purple WiFi consistently grows over 100% year over year
- 14:34 – 2017 target revenue
- 14:48 – Gross margin is 80%
- 14:59 – One of the challenges is the location and the huge number of data
- 15:35 - Purple WiFi is processing around 500K data from all of their access points in a day
- 15:50 – Purple WiFi has net negative churn and gross customer churn is 12% yearly
- 17:00 – LTV is around 10 years
- 17:10 – Most enterprise customers are signing 3-5 years with an upfront payment
- 17:33 - Purple WiFi has raised $13M
- 17:51 – The costs usually go to engineering and sales
- 18:07 - Purple WiFi spends on event sponsorship too
- 18:24 – They track the events prior to sponsorship
- 18:50 – Payback period is around 12 months
- 19:25 – Average CAC
- 19:39 - Purple WiFi is headquartered in Manchester, UK and US office is in Austin, Texas
- 20:26 - Purple WiFi is tremendously valuable for conferences
- 23:04 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Public wifi solutions are becoming more and more of a necessity especially for establishments and events.
- Having your own wifi solution allows you to gather data more than you could otherwise.
- Study your business before starting 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
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives