Sandy Khaund. He’s the CEO of Upgraded, a platform for tickets using blockchain technologies. Previously, he was the CTO at InStadium, a sports venue ad network and senior director at Turner Broadcasting along with CEO of Iryrnsoft, a video-based learning for mobile devices. He was also the COO of teen social network at Piczo and director at Microsoft.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – The World is Flat
- What CEO do you follow? – Reed Hastings and Mark Zuckerberg
- Favorite online tool? — OneNote
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4.5
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The secret of life is doing what you do for free and getting someone to pay you for it”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 02:02 – Nathan introduces Sandy to the show
- 02:37 – Upgraded has a solution widget that addresses the problem of event tickets
- 02:52 – Alot of the tickets are fake and being sold on Craigslist
- 03:31 – The Cryptography has worked so well that there’s only one bitcoin
- 03:54 – Upgraded has a tokenization aspect which converts tickets into a blockchain ticket
- 04:02 – Another revenue model as an alternative to Stubhub
- 05:04 – Upgraded has already made less than $50K in revenue
- 05:11 – Sandy started Upgraded last March
- 05:30 – There are 4 full-time people on the team
- 05:45 – The cofounder was initially a consultant and Sandy has more in equity
- 06:07 – The initial fund was from Sandy’s personal savings
- 06:14 – Sandy took an Angel investment of $300K on a convertible note
- 06:33 – With 4% interest and $7M cap
- 07:11 – Sandy and the team are still talking about the ICO
- 09:00 – Right now, cryptocurrency relates to the currency valuation
- 09:12 – For Sandy, he’s more about the technology rather than the currency
- 11:10 – Sandy wants to make sure that what he will do what is right for the business
- 11:50 – Nathan talks about the regulations in ICOs
- 12:11 – Sandy had a talk with his attorney about ICOs and blockchain
- 12:40 – As of the moment, anything can happen
- 13:30 – There was also some acquisition talks with Upgraded but Sandy turned it down
- 14:03 – Sandy didn’t build Upgraded for the money
- 14:20 – “I just want to keep creating”
- 15:16 – Sandy thinks it is still too early for the company to do ICOs
- 15:45 – Nathan talks about the issue DAO had
- 17:41 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- While ICO is one of the hottest topics in blockchains, some companies would rather not delve into it at this time.
- Create a utility that can solve one of the most taken for granted problems.
- Do the work that you would do for free and then get someone to pay you for it.
Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives