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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Zero to One
• What CEO do you follow? – Balaji Srinivasan
• Favorite online tool? — Telegram
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I just wish I would have spent more time on bitcoin”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Only the Paranoid Survive
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Skype, Slack and other product tools
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “It’s going to be okay”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Sales Bible
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Tim Cook
• Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator and Lynda
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Relax man, you’re going to make it”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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

Famous Five:

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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

JT McCormick. He’s an American businessman, author and speaker. Most recently, he served as President of Technology company HeadSpring before his current role as president & CEO at Book in a Box.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Cyrus the Great
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Slack
• 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? – It’s not about the high school diploma. It’s about the work ethic and the sacrifice you’re willing to put in to achieve greatness

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:47 – Nathan introduces JT to the show
• 02:08 – It is possible to buy a bestseller from Book in a Box
  • 02:23 – The cost will depend on many factors
• 02:40 – One of Nathan’s friends spent almost $250K on Book in a Box because he wanted to put out a book and increase his speaking fee
  • 03:15 – There are many people who paid more than $250K to get a book out
• 03:21 – Nathan read his friend’s book and thought it was trash, but his friend’s speaking fee increased
  • 03:33 – It’s still a positive ROI
• 04:02 – Book in a Box specializes in ensuring the books are filled with valuable and meaningful content
• 05:11 – Book in a Box has made it possible for authors to publish their book
• 05:27 – JT just met a professional speaker who has been in the business for 22 years, but never had a book
  • 05:34 – He never got the time to write a book
  • 05:41 – Book in a Box will just interview him and write the book for him
  • 05:52 – “Your book written in your tone, your voice”
• 06:09 – Nathan shares how Book in a Box makes you spill the beans
• 06:41 – Cost is $25K which is $5K a month for five months
• 06:58 – The quality of the books are the same as the ones from Barnes and Noble
• 07:13 – Nathan got a deal from Portfolio Random House
• 07:37 – Book in a Box provides proposals and manuscripts for their clients to bring to publishing houses
• 08:00 – Book in a Box has worked with a total of 500 authors
• 08:31 – Book in a Box launched in 2015
• 09:00 – Book in a Box is one of the unicorn companies in the startup world
• 09:13 – “We, as Book in a Box, have no debt, no private equity, no VC money and we are extremely profitable”
• 09:27 – Book in a Box has changed pricing a couple of times
  • 09:38 – When JT met Tucker and Zach, the co-founders, he was actually looking for someone to write his book
  • 10:14 – Tucker offered JT three pricing models, $10K, $18K and $30K and JT chose the latter because he wanted a high-quality book
  • 10:51 – JT explained how the pricing turned out to be just one pricing model which is $25K
• 11:33 – Total revenue since 2015 is $11.3M
• 12:07 – Book in a Box currently averages 25-30 books a month which has continuously grown to 50-75 a month
• 12:29 – Team size is 30 full-timers with over 100 freelancers
• 13:13 – “We’re a relationship company”
• 14:17 – Book in a Box treats their freelancers with respect and pays them on time
• 15:05 – Book in a Box helps with marketing and book sales
  • 15:14 – Customers go to Book in a Box for one of three reasons; credibility, thought leadership or lead generation
  • 15:48 – Book in a Box created Thought Leader Media
    • 16:01 – Pricing starts at $15K to up to $75K yearly
    • 16:17 – The pricing varies depending on the author needs
    • 16:51 – Thought Leader Media just rolled out in Q1
    • 16:58 – 35 out of 250 published books are in Thought Leader Media
  • 17:10 – Total book sales from Book in a Box authors
  • 18:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Those who want to have a book written, but can’t manage to start can simply utilize companies such as Book in a Box.
2. Pricing is crucial in every business—it’s either you make it big or lose everything.
3. Respect and an excellent work ethic are keys to success.

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

Sharat Potharaju and Ravi Pratap Maddimsetty, co-founders of MobStac. 

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Traction
• What CEO do you follow? – Ed Catmull who wrote Creativity Inc for Ravi
• Favorite online tool? — Rapportive
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “That entrepreneurship is a very, very painful journey”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:07 – Nathan introduces Sharat and Ravi to the show
• 02:23 – Sharat and Ravi were classmates since fifth grade and were roommates in college
• 02:53 – MobStac is trying to solve the problem of online to offline device connections
  • 03:04 – They use the technology of WiFi, bluetooth and beacons in mobile devices
• 03:17 – Beaconstac is one of MobStac’s products
  • 03:22 – It is a SaaS-based product that uses Bluetooth beacon technology
  • 03:29 – It allows businesses to gather analytics
  • 03:34 – It charges monthly
• 03:47 – Beaconstac is MobStac’s main revenue stream
• 04:08 – Businesses use bluetooth beacons that can be deployed to physical stores
  • 04:18 – Beaconstac’s platform can then be used to track marketing and analytics
• 04:27 – Pricing starts at $49 to $99 monthly
  • 04:34 – The price will vary depending on the number of beacons deployed in any physical location
  • 04:45 – Average cost per beacon is $5 monthly which is on top of the starting price
• 05:25 – Beaconstac has a mixed group of customers, from mom and pop stores to enterprises
  • 05:57 – Some would pay $50 a month and $5000 a month for others
• 06:04 – There are currently around 10K beacons deployed in total
• 06:27 – MobStac is a software company
  • 07:03 – MobStac has partnered with a Chinese OEM who makes the hardware
• 07:35 – The pay for the hardware is a one-time cost
  • 07:40 – “You own the beacons once you pay for the beacons”
  • 07:43 – Charge per beacon is $22
  • 07:50 – The margin is very small
• 08:07 – They make revenue mostly from the software and not from the hardware
• 08:15 – MobStac was launched in 2010
  • 08:24 – It was focused in building products in the mobile space
• 09:20 – After pivoting, first year revenue was not zero but it was small
• 09:35 – 2014 revenue was less than $250K with 10-15 people on the team
  • 09:54 – Current team size is 20
• 10:00 – The company is based in Bangalore, India but Sharat goes to New York as well
• 10:17 – Last month total MRR is close to $25K
  • 10:22 – Target ARR by the end of 2017 is 500K
  • 10:37 – Which was only from the Beaconstac product
• 10:56 – Beaconstac currently has 100 customers
• 11:12 – One of Beaconstac’s biggest customer is Google India
  • 11:14 – Google has deployed over 2000 beacons at 117 train stations
  • 11:28 – It is the largest public Wi-Fi project in the world
  • 11:32 – The beacons are used to send notifications and awareness to people who are waiting at the stations
  • 11:46 – Sample notification
• 12:20 – MobStac has raised $3.5M
• 13:07 – The strangest customer acquisition strategy they’ve done
• 14:10 – Google has made the beacon technology compliant with the chrome browser
  • 14:23 – Someone who is near a beacon can receive a notification as long as he has a chrome browser and bluetooth on; no need to download an app
• 15:15 – One of their customers is a freelancer who bought a beacon so whenever he goes to an event, the beacon will send a notification to other attendees to market his services
• 15:56 – MobStac isn’t spending anything on paid marketing
  • 16:01 – Ravi does some content marketing for the company
• 16:37 – Cap table
  • 17:31 – Sharat and Ravi still own more than half of the company
• 19:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Don’t be scared to pivot if it is for the betterment of your company.
2. The easiest and cheapest way to market your product is by using it.
3. Entrepreneurship is definitely not an easy route—prepare your mindset for a rough (but worth it) journey.

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

Patrik Fagerlund. He’s been working with mobile internet since the 90s. He’s an engineer by training and now, he’s the CEO and founder of Widespace, a mobile adtech company. Outside of work, he loves spending time with his family with his four kids and his wife along with many activities and sports.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Business Insider
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Slack and Flatly
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Be what you want to be”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:00 – Nathan introduces Patrik to the show
• 02:36 – Widespace is a mobile advertising campaign
  • 02:40 – It was spun out in 2007 from what Patrik thought was a great media channel
• 03:04 – Patrik sold media fueled by their technology
  • 03:10 – Selling media per CPM which is $10 per impression
  • 03:31 – This was the business model in 2009
• 04:00 – $2M was the total ad spend for the previous model and 40% went to the company
  • 04:26 – Team size was 9
• 04:38 – Widespace's current business model spent $30M for ads
• 04:40 – Team size is 130
• 04:41 – “We’re moving into selling technology at a rapid space”
• 04:49 – Widespace extends their tools and technology for both the supply and demand
• 05:09 – Widespace focuses more on selling their technology
• 05:28 – The model is close to SaaS, but the pricing depends on the volume and usage
• 06:11 – Of the top 50 global advertisers, Widespace serves 70% of them
  • 06:24 – Widespace works with most of the umbrella agency companies in the world
• 06:51 – The tech of Widespace is a full-stack offering
  • 07:01 – The algorithm is based on interests
  • 07:18 – If Widespace goes against other legacy technologies in adtech, Widespace will outperform them
• 07:46 – A customer pays 50% of their ad spend to make use of Widespace’s technology
  • 07:54 – It’s a volume game, the more a customer pays, the less Widespace charges
• 08:04 – If a customer puts $20M into Widespace’s system, it will go down to below $10M
• 08:53 – Average ARR is around $4M
• 09:06 – Since Widespace is a full-stack, they service both demand and supply
• 09:11 – There’s a cap on the demand side and a supply cap to serve the supply
  • 09:26 – The suppliers are the top publishers in the world
• 09:45 – Widespace takes a cut from the demand and supply side
• 09:56 – Widespace charges on the extended version of the algorithm as well
• 10:11 – Last year’s processed ad spend is shy of $40M
• 10:49 – 2016 total revenue is around $17M
• 11:04 – Widespace was initially bootstrapped
• 11:16 – Widespace has raised close to $30M
  • 11:33 – Over the years, Widespace had propositions from strategics but they turned them down
• 12:08 –Widespace is currently working with 500 suppliers/publications
  • 12:17 – Widespace keeps control of their supply and has deeper integration
• 13:07 – A few years ago, Widespace was the only one who was servicing the publishers
• 13:40 – Widespace doesn’t have any exclusivity
• 15:02 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Adjust your technology depending on the needs of your target market.
2. Find the right partners with whom you can grow your business.
3. Be what you want to be!

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

Eyal Hertzog. He’s been a venture-backed technology entrepreneur for over 20 years. He’s the founder of Metacafe, Israel’s fastest growing video sharing site which has reached over 15M uniques at its peak. Previously, he founded Contact Networks which was one of the first social networks in 1999. He’s now at Bancor Network and has been an outspoken thought leader on cryptocurrency in Israel and is a talented piano and bass musician.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Spider and the Starfish
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Google Keep
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “You never stop evolving”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:49 – Nathan introduces Eyal to the show
• 02:40 – Bancor is a non-profit organization which is in a new model that has been rising recently
• 03:36 – Similarly to Etherium, Bancor is also a token that is solving the problem of liquidity
• 04:00 – Eyal talks about any kind of liquidity that works today with crypto tokens
  • 04:14 – There is a token that represents gold and a token that represents a dollar which you can convert back to gold and dollars
  • 04:24 – “Real assets from the real world are already represented in the blockchain”
• 04:47 – Bancor provides a different way that doesn’t require traders to bid for an asset; it automatically finds a market trait according to a certain formula
• 05:09 – Nathan shares about his interview with Joe Zhou who is the founder of Firstblood
• 05:56 – The pricing of ether and other cryptocurrencies is always changing
  • 06:25 – Bancor provides a much better solution than cryptocurrencies exchanges, like what Coinbase is doing, for liquidity
  • 06:46 – Bancor is an alternative way to convert cryptocurrencies
  • 06:52 – The exchanges that are based on smart contracts are automated so they won’t require central services
• 07:14 – Bancor did their own ICO for their token which is BNT or banking network token that will be used in Bancor’s network of token conversion
• 07:26 – Within three hours, Bancor raised $153M
  • 07:44 – It was in June 12, 2017
• 08:03 – Bancor was very open during their ICO and told people that everyone who will invest in 2 hours will have an opportunity and they will get exactly the same rate
• 09:11 – There are currently 20 people involved in Bancor’s operation
  • 09:31 – Bancor liquidates as little as possible which is less than 10%
• 10:11 – Bancor currently has 12445 token holders
• 10:22 – Eyal has worked with VCs for a long time prior to Bancor
• 12:05 – People who hold a lot of cryptocurrencies are called “whales”
• 12:29 – The goal of people in the crypto world is to build a new financial ecosystem
• 13:14 – The foundation where the proceeds from the crowdsale go is called V Protocol
  • 13:27 – The foundation sold 50% of the tokens and the other 50% went to different buckets
• 14:07 – Bancor runs on the ethereum blockchain so they already have miners and won’t need miners for their own tokens
• 15:18 – Nathan summarizes Bancor’s figures
• 16:40 – Eyal had a dream to build something that will have a cultural effect or something that will change how we do things
  • 17:07 – When Eyal learned about bitcoin, he thought that it would be a huge, cultural evolution one day
• 17:55 – In terms of completed ICOs, Bancor ranks number one
• 18:28 – Eyal shares where the demand for Bancor came from
• 20:34 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. There are better ways to do cryptocurrency exchanges that benefit the token holder more.
2. Be open to your investors, so you can earn their trust.
3. You are always learning and evolving.

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

Mitchell Reichgut. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Jun Group. Prior to founding Jun Group in 2005, he led Bates Interactive, the online unit of Bates Worldwide Advertising which is now owned by WPP. As general manager and creative director, he helped grow Bates Interactive into a 70-person integrated unit with clients such as EDS, Warner-Lambert and many others. Before joining Bates, he was the creative director at Think New Ideas. He began his career as Art Director at Grey Advertising where he created print and TV ads for clients. Throughout his career, he’s worked with major brands in the industry including Procter and Gamble, Parker Brothers, Reebok and others.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Anything written by Seth Godin
• What CEO do you follow? – Jack Welch
• Favorite online tool? — Google Calendar
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Mitchell wished he knew the kind of discipline it took to make things work

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:05 – Nathan introduces Mitchell to the show
• 03:08 – The “Jun” in Jun Group means truth
• 03:11 – Mitchell founded his company believing that advertising can be transparent, honest and deliver tangible results
• 03:19 – Jun Group’s job is to get millions of people to engage with videos and visit websites of the Fortune 500 brands
• 03:38 – Nathan reads Jun Group’s website line
• 03:52 – Mitchell gives an example of a spaghetti sauce brand that targets Hispanic mothers who are 35 and up, in the USA
  • 04:01 – Jun Group will use the video of the brand to connect with their target market on their phone, tablets and computers
  • 04:16 – Customers can opt-in in exchange for something like rewards points
• 04:38 – Jun Group is an in-app solution
• 05:37 – Jun Group only charges when someone chooses to engage and the client gets the value of what they’re paying for
• 06:06 – When you don’t interrupt people, they tend to watch to the end
  • 06:08 – Jun Group gets 90% of people to watch a 30-second ad until the very end
  • 06:13 – 3-5% of the viewers are visiting the brand’s website
• 06:50 – From the publisher, the brand will appear in a mobile app
  • 07:29 – Each app integration creates an interaction depending on the app user’s behavior
• 07:46 – In web environment, app developers pay CPI
• 07:52 – Jun Group never had a pop-up and they never interrupt
• 08:14 – Jun Group has a sophisticated tech platform that works well with app developers
• 08:21 – “Apps are complex business”
• 08:41 – Jun Group was bootstrapped until 2015
  • 08:47 – Then they had a private equity deal with Howard Capital
  • 08:58 – They’ve raised $28M
  • 09:09 – They’ve decided to raise because they found the right partner
• 09:55 – Growing an adtech business is quite unusual and requires hard work
• 10:02 – Jun Group has brands, app publishers and consumers that they need to take care of
• 10:27 – Jun Group is an adtech platform and not really an agency
• 10:30 – Most adtech platforms lose money and want to grow fast
• 10:49 – Jun Group has been growing slowly, but steadily and profitably
• 11:13 – The revenue comes from commitments from brands and media buying platforms, some are per project and some are per annual commitment
• 12:00 – Jun Group’s pricing model varies depending on what the ad is
• 12:34 – A CPM (cost per thousand) in the industry usually costs $8 up
• 12:40 – Jun Group charges cost per engagement which is more than the average CPM
• 13:22 – Mitchell left Bates and started Jun Group at home
• 13:31 – Mitchell didn’t really plan to be an entrepreneur
• 13:53 – Mitchell get into the adtech industry with his partner when it was just starting
• 14:12 – By 2008 and 2009, Jun Group was earning $1-2M in revenue
  • 15:08 – Jun Group usually take a percentage from the sales they make
• 15:39 – Most of the money goes back to the campaign
• 16:05 – Jun Group had debt with WTI or Western Technology Investment that helped the company grow
  • 16:34 – The debt was in millions
• 17:05 – The media spent through Jun Group’s system
• 17:18 – Jun Group is still cash flow positive
• 17:53 – Jun Group really had a strategic partnership with their seed round
• 18:44 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Have the right partners who will not just provide the funds but help the company grow.
2. Adtech isn’t an easy industry with fast growth; it takes time and the right model to thrive in it.
3. It takes firm, hard discipline to make things work.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Evan Leong. He’s the VP of Product at Devslopes, a learn-to-code platform focused on taking beginners to paid professionals to curated project-based videos. He’s always been involved with startups since 2015, when he took the leap from a corporate job to join the startup world full-time.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Good to Great
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Trello
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Follow your instincts, follow your gut, and don’t let age stop you from what you want to do

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:05 – Nathan introduces Evan to the show
• 02:31 – Devslopes is a learn-to-code platform for iOs, MacOS and TvOs
  • 02:39 – A version for Windows will be available soon too
• 02:48 – Devslopes is similar to Treehouse
• 03:00 – Devslopes has been around for a year and a half
• 03:10 – Devslopes has just converted to SaaS
  • 03:22 – They garnered 130 subscriptions just after the launch
• 03:33 – Average pay per customer is a little over $20 a month
• 04:05 – Devslopes was funded through Kickstarter and an investor
  • 04:15 – They raised $190K in Kickstarter
• 04:35 – Devslopes’ CEO is a good salesperson and they had a strong community even before Kickstarter
• 05:04 – The Kickstarter campaign was blasted around
• 05:11 – The community size is around 10K
• 05:22 – Devslopes has raised an additional of $300K from Redfoo of LMFAO
• 05:42 – Devslopes was launched in March 2016
• 05:53 – First year revenue was $600K
• 06:04 – 2017 goal is to reach a million
• 06:39 – Devslopes has large courses that will take people more time to stick with them
• 06:48 – Devslopes is pumping out target topics which are 2-3 hour courses
• 07:13 – Team size is 8
• 07:48 – The CEO started in e-learning marketplaces
• 08:05 – By the time Devslopes started, the CEO already had 40K students on Udemy
• 08:33 – Devslopes gets students from affiliates too
• 09:12 – Devslopes want to fully dive into the learning experience
  • 09:32 – They liked the idea of having everything in one program so they created the SaaS model
• 10:17 – Devslopes publishes to affiliates the content that the affiliates want to promote
• 10:26 – Udemy likes to promote 30-60 hour courses
• 10:43 – Devslopes is also on Skillshare, Learnability and Inkydeals
  • 10:58 – 90% of the content goes to Udemy and the rest are spread out to the rest
• 11:08 – 90% of the revenue is from Udemy, too
• 11:30 – Devslopes is just starting to use Facebook ads which is their only paid marketing
• 12:05 – CAC
  • 12:11 – Most of what Devslopes gets from Facebook ads is social presence but no paid leads yet
• 12:44 – The charge of Udemy fluctuates depending on how they promote their content
• 13:21 – Evan focuses on the product and handles the team
• 13:37 – Devslopes currently have 5K iOs downloads and a couple of thousand from Mac
• 15:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. With the advancement in technology, more people are opting to learn from the comfort of their own home.
2. Target your market so it will be easier for the company to adapt a new business model.
3. Customers will stick with your product if it is of value to them.

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

Joe Zhou. He’s the founder and CEO of FirstBlood, an eSports startup that recently broke the speed record for crowdfunding, specifically in the crypto world. Prior to founding FirstBlood, Joe co-founded Alt-Options, a Boston based fintech or financial technology startup that built the first American style option trading platform for digital currencies. Joe holds a BSBA from Boston University Questrom School of Business and an entrepreneur residence at Babson College.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Lean Startup
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• 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? – Joe wished he was less concerned about how he was perceived in school

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:11 – Nathan introduces Joe to the show
• 03:00 – FirstBlood is a platform that allows players to play games, not just for fun but for money
• 03:23 – FirstBlood charges money for each game or tournament played
• 03:49 – FirstBlood was launched in April 2016
  • 03:55 – Joe’s co-founder, Anik, is also a big gamer
  • 04:08 – They were both fans of League of Legends
  • 04:14 – They attended a Hackathon where they were challenged to build an application that has never existed before
• 05:00 – Joe co-founded Alt-Options while he was still in college
  • 05:15 – The technology was built from scratch
  • 05:18 – There were about 2K users during the testing phase
  • 05:50 – It was bootstrapped and $50K was raised from families and friends
  • 06:02 – There were a group people who wanted to get into the space and Joe worked with them as a consultant for half a year
• 06:44 – Joe decided to do the token issuance because of the support they were getting
  • 06:55 – DAO was successful until hackers were able to get into it due to a bug
  • 07:19 – FirstBlood was one of the most promising projects that was going to DAO
  • 07:26 – DAO or Decentralized Autonomous Organization is like a decentralized venture capital firm; it was managed by every person who has a token in it
  • 07:52 – FirstBlood was operating under Project Tron in the DAO community
  • 08:15 – After the bug, FirstBlood started building what was needed to run a successful crowdfunding campaign
  • 08:52 – Joe and Anik gave talks and presented multiple ethereum meetups regarding their project
  • 09:37 – Joe came home with a budget of 3-5 years runway for the entire team
  • 09:46 – They’ve raised $5M in funding
  • 09:52 – Team had 6 people and now they have 15 people
  • 11:14 – They’ve calculated the ethereum’s pricing and deployed the contract to the network
  • 11:51 – FirstBlood raised the money in just the first four blocks and processed in just 7 minutes
  • 12:41 – FirstBlood has sold 465,313 ether tokens
• 13:10 – Joe shares why they released their own FirstBlood tokens
  • 13:16 – Ethereum has some limitations
  • 13:34 – The FirstBlood tokens are given unique utilities that are crucial to making the network work
  • 13:42 – First layer is the transactional level utility where both ether and FirstBlood tokens work
  • 14:20 – Witness program utility can only be run by FirstBlood tokens
• 14:52 – DotA is the first mobile strategy game and now is a stand alone
  • 15:53 – When a game is settled, a set of information is sent to a network of witness nodes
  • 16:02 – Witness nodes will then run tests using computational power to fetch the data and cross reference the data to make sure that it is valid
  • 16:14 – The data then gets published into the blockchain and smart contract
  • 16:32 – The winner of the games will pay a small percentage fee to the network
• 17:40 – The token price isn’t that important for the team
• 18:14 – The ratio of the token is arbitrary
• 19:24 – A lot of Dapps don’t have a real money function yet
• 19:39 – FirstBlood is closed to launching the beta
• 19:59 – Currently, there are 1592 people who have FirstBlood tokens
• 20:51 – Joe doesn’t think that it’s risky for them to have a lot of people handling the network
  • 21:06 – The selection process has a cap rate on how one will get selected
  • 21:19 – “We did cap at 1% for a maximum impact”
• 22:20 – Joe can’t disclose the amount he owns from FirstBlood tokens
  • 22:50 – The allocation for founders is around 10% of the tokens
• 23:24 – Nathan asks Joe if it’s possible to cash out a million tokens into real dollars if he ever needs it
• 24:35 – FirstBlood made the headlines because they raised a $5M equivalent to ether
  • 26:38 – The fund is owned by the project
  • 27:08 – The ether can be used to keep buying the project
• 27:30 – Some of the money from the funds are used to pay the team
• 28:03 – FirstBlood liquidates 80% of the ether post cross-sales and 20% remains in the smart contract
• 28:39 – FirstBlood has around $4M in the bank that pays salaries and other company expenses
• 29:55 – The technology of FirstBlood has made people more interested in the project
• 31:00 – The decision to raise $5M was from the advice they’ve received regarding what it takes to increase network profitability
• 31:51 – Ether was valued when Joe liquidated the 372K shares at $11 per share
• 32:38 – Joe didn’t wait for the share value to increase because they needed the money to get the project running
• 34:25 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. In crypto, startups create their own currency if they think their network will be better of with it.
2. Listen to your advisory board—if it’s time to raise for specific purpose, your business might be better of because of that decision.
3. People will become interested in your project if it’s first in the space and they believe in your technology.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Alex Yakubovich. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Scout RFP. Prior to Scout, he was a co-founder of another startup which was acquired by LivingSocial in 2012. At that company, he led the operations team and helped the company become the largest online ordering providers in the country. He attended Case Western Reserve University where he studied mechanical engineering.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Shoe Dog
• What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff  
• Favorite online tool? — Salesforce
• 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? – Take big risks

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:25 – Nathan introduces Alex to the show
• 02:58 – Scout RFP helps companies make online purchases by finding suppliers and the best deals
• 03:14 – One of their newest customer’s is Beam Suntory who makes Jim Beam bourbon
  • 03:56 – They use Scout RFP to source for the best deals on raw materials that they use to make their liquor
• 04:15 – Scout RFP is a SaaS model
• 04:20 – Scout RFP charges per user basis
  • 04:47 – They charge only the buyers who are making the purchase and not the suppliers
• 05:00 – Scout RFP also has different tools that they offer depending on the plans
• 05:34 – Average per seat is $5K annually
  • 05:53 – All contracts are annual contract
• 05:59 – Scout RFP has raised capital: $27.5M in total
• 06:27 – Alex’s last company just raised $500K and it had a great exit
• 07:00 – Alex has thought about what it’s like to have big companies involved in your company
• 07:30 – The capital allowed them to not skim and invest on growth upfront
• 07:49 – Current team size is 50
  • 07:59 – Half is the engineering and product side and half is for the sales side
• 08:29 – The exit price of the first company was in the tens of millions
• 09:37 – Alex has co-founders who were with him in the first company
• 10:43 – There are over 100 companies that use the platform
• 11:10 – The number of seats per company depends on the company
• 11:54 – Scout RFP has overall users and paid users
  • 12:12 – Paid users is more than 3K
• 13:05 – Scout RFP is part of Silicon Valley Sourcing Leaders Group
  • 13:31 – The group is about networking and sharing information and knowledge
  • 13:49 – There are now sourcing leaders programs in New York
  • 14:00 – The group helped Scout RFP to acquire new customers
  • 14:30 – The organization hosts their companies
• 15:18 – Gross customer churn
• 15:31 – Logo churn is not that high
• 16:00 – Scout RFP has 17% net negative churn
• 16:58 – Scout RFP has a customer success team, a sales team, ADPR team and management team
• 17:38 – As a business grows with Scout RFP, the LTV grows as well
  • 18:22 – The average deal size per business is quite consistent, about 10
• 19:09 – CAC to LTV ratio is 3
• 19:25 – Payback period is around 15 months
• 20:17 – Paid acquisition costs are around $40K a month
  • 20:49 – They do LinkedIn ads, some Facebook and Google, and a lot of tradeshows
• 21:23 – Gross margin is 85-90%
• 21:44 – Target ARR this 2017
  • 22:14 – Scout RFP is currently over $1.2M in MRR
• 23:54 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. An acquisition is an opportunity to build a bigger and better business.
2. Being in a group with your target market is a big opportunity for you to acquire new leads.
3. Let your big questions guide you in growing your business.

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

Bruce Pon. He’s the CEO and founder of BigchainDB and he’s been playing in the crypto world.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Mungerisms by Charlie Munger
• What CEO do you follow? – Vitalik Buterin
• Favorite online tool? — Streak CRM
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— At least 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Buy bitcoin earlier”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:03 – Nathan introduces Bruce to the show
• 02:44 – Bruce built BigchainDB to manage data
• 02:55 – Bitcoin is a payments cryptocurrency in a global network while Ethereum is a business logic in a global network
• 03:11 – People pass trusted data over the blockchain network for enterprise use cases and consumer applications
  • 03:32 – From the business logic, you can exchange bitcoin and other types of value
• 03:42 – The problem with the use case on top of the bitcoin blockchain 3 years ago was it didn’t scale
• 04:04 – Bruce was building io which is putting intellectual property into the blockchain
  • 04:25 – You can sell your intellectual property over the network
  • 04:48 – It was built over the bitcoin blockchain and got difficult to develop over time
  • 04:54 – Ascribe.io needed meta data about the creative work, author and licensing model
  • 05:04 - Ascribe.io isn’t just built for bitcoin—it’s like trying to using a Lamborghini to move your house
  • 05:49 - Ascribe.io had AI, scientists and other PhDs who told them that building Ascribe.io wasn’t worth it
• 06:09 – Team size is around 20 and is based in Berlin
• 06:24 – BigchainDB has raised $6M in price round series A
• 06:41 – Open source software is traditionally a dual license model
• 06:53 – BigchainDB is looking at an enterprise model
  • 07:00 – They’re looking into the ICO craze too
• 07:21 – BigchainDB is like a SaaS model
  • 07:27 – They’re looking at per transaction charges but it may not work for the long-run
• 07:54 – BigchainDB just released their 1.0
  • 08:08 – They give premium support
• 08:27 – Bruce is looking into 5-6 figures per month for their starting price point
• 08:58 – One-third of the work in businesses happen in the back office
• 09:13 – Blockchain allows you to have a single source of truth
• 09:29 – BigchainDB unlocks the opportunity for different organizations to have a single source of truth
• 09:48 – When you can make IoT, AI and blockchain tools, you can track the product from the inception until it gets to the customer’s hand
  • 10:01 – The customer will now understand how the product is made
  • 10:03 – The regulators will know that the product followed the guideline
  • 10:07 – The company will know if there’s a recall or quality issue and they will know where exactly the product is
• 10:40 – BigchainDB can work with different kinds of products
• 11:20 – Blockchain is definitely auditable
  • 11:30 – Before the product comes to you, it will be signed by entities with a cryptographic key in every process
  • 12:00 – With AI, you can also see who is in the very process of making your product
• 12:34 – The key metric Bruce is measuring is the number of people that are building upon them
• 12:56 – Target MRR is $100K by end of 2017
• 13:03 – BigchainDB is currently at $50-60K MRR
• 13:19 – Number of customers
• 13:44 – There are 300 developers in BigchainDB’s channels and there are 5K clones of their software
• 13:54 – BigchainDB has 1K monthly downloads of their whitepaper
• 14:45 – The ratio of developer to clone is the 300 developers to 5K clone requests
• 16:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Data that is passed over the blockchain network can be used for enterprise use case and consumer applications.
2. The beauty of blockchain is that it is auditable and has accountability capabilities.
3. Some tools that are built over the bitcoin network won’t always work; even if you have the best people in the industry.

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

Christoph Jentzsch. His background is in Theoretical Physics and he’s been part of the Ethereum project since 2014 as a lead tester. At the end of 2015, he co-founded Slock.it, working on decentralized sharing economy through the connection of blockchain and IoT (Internet of Things). One of the more famous projects that he was part of was the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Zero to One
• What CEO do you follow? – God
• Favorite online tool? — GIthub
• 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? – “Avoid the bug in the DAO”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:50 – Nathan introduces Christoph to the show
• 02:20 – DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization
  • 02:26 – It is a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain which aims at connecting people to pull their funds together and run small contracts
  • 02:45 – It failed and all the people got refunded
• 03:10 – Christoph believes that Anthony Di Iorio is one of the founders of Ethereum
• 03:24 – As a lead tester for Ethereum in 2014, Christoph was responsible for driving tests
  • 03:39 – Consensus tests are for client implementation
• 04:10 – Nathan’s analogy of cryptocurrency using railroad tracks
• 04:55 – Augur has launched their own token on top of Ethereum
  • 05:18 – They created their own token of value in exchange of the virtual currency of ether
• 05:47 – There has been a lot of ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) lately and there has been opinions around them
• 06:03 – Bitcoin was always meant for virtual currency
  • 06:09 – While Etherium has a virtual currency too called ether, its actual purpose is to be an open source platform to build decentralized applications or Dapps
  • 06:22 – People now create simple Dapps issuing a token on the Ethereum blockchain to fund Dapps projects
  • 06:32 – People thought DAO was an ICO but it wasn’t
  • 06:35 – DAO has collected a hundred million dollars in ether
  • 06:44 – After that, many ICOs have gone out
• 07:40 – There are only a few hundred people who send ether into their contract
• 08:11 – There was an article Nathan had read regarding Bitcoin’s current problem
  • 08:28 – The main problem is public blockchains are not scaling
  • 08:38 – In the protocol, one blockchain can only have 1 megabyte
  • 09:04 – There is now a high demand that leads to a higher price
• 10:33 – Everybody can take part in the cryptocurrency game
  • 11:45 – People can create their own blockchain but they’re missing the network effect
  • 12:18 – There are some minors who control the network
  • 12:48 – As long as there are users in the system, they don’t mind the minors
  • 12:54 – Minors serve the blockchain, but Christoph believes the users are the ones in-charge
  • 13:21 – After the DAO failed, there was a discussion of how things should be done
  • 13:27 – Some are saying to split the blockchain into 2 versions: the new version is where people get refunded and the old version is the hackers who have the money
  • 14:58 – There are now 2 Ethereum classes: ethereum classic and ethereum
• 15:19 – Christoph’s focus is now on Slock.it where they’ve built a decentralized sharing economy
  • 16:02 – It is built over the public ethereum and they don’t have tokens
  • 16:17 – They’re using ether as a payment
  • 16:33 – Most startups are called ICOs and make their own tokens to fund themselves
• 16:40 – Slock.it is VC funded with a seed funding of $2M
• 18:06 – Slock.it isn’t currently getting any payment but they will in the future
• 18:38 – Slock.it collaborates with Innogy
  • 18:51 – Innogy allows electric charging stations to connect with smart contracts in the blockchain
  • 19:00 – A user can charge his car, making him enter the smart contract
  • 19:10 – If you’re the owner of a charging station and you have an electric car, you can set the price for the station and offer it to public
• 20:05 – Noke padlocks can now be open and closed through Bluetooth and Slock.it has added a payment option where it can be opened by paying
• 20:34 – Slock.it can be integrated into the device and it is different from Airbnb
  • 21:28 – As long as the ethereum blockchain is alive, the Noke padlock can be used through Slock.it
• 22:10 – Christoph currently resides in Germany
• 22:45 – “As of now, crypto is not a very good currency”
• 23:23 – Ether is as volatile as bitcoin
• 23:45 – You can definitely exchange your tokens for real dollars, but it’s not an efficient system
• 24:03 – Paying people with ether isn’t that easy at the moment
• 24:12 – Currency is the least interesting aspect
  • 24:19 – There’s a limitation in scalability and in privacy
• 24:40 – Christoph thinks ethereum, smart contracts and blockchains own up as programmable money
• 25:55 – Slock.it is currently integrated into an existing hardware
  • 26:20 – There are currently thousands of charging stations under Slock.it
• 26:36 – Team member is currently 14
• 26:48 – The seed round was in February 2017
• 28:02 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Some startups are coming out as an ICO to fund themselves, but not all of them are legal.
2. Cryptocurrency still isn’t very stable so as a business owner, paying your people with this currency isn’t efficient.
3. Public blockchains are not scaling and there’s a protocol that needs to be followed.

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

Brandon Bruce. He’s the COO and co-founder of Cirrus Insights, the sales plugin for Gmail and Outlook. The company is number 41 on the Inc. 5000 and the fastest growing company in Tennessee. Brandon once raced his bicycle 508 miles across Death Valley in 35 hours and 7 minutes.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Energy Bus
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Google Drive and 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? – “I would’ve tried to start a full-fledged company earlier”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:50 – Nathan introduces Brandon to the show
• 02:25 – Brandon was in Episode 226 of The Top
  • 02:38 – They had $550K in funding
• 02:48 – The team back then was 55-60 and now it’s 70
• 02:59 – No additional funding has been raised
• 03:16 – Cirrus Insights is a fast-growing company that didn’t rely too much on VC
• 03:35 – 5 years ago, Cirrus Insights wanted to solve the problem of going back and forth between Gmail and Salesforce
• 03:53 – Cirrus Insights brings Salesforce into the inbox
  • 04:05 – They also help sales reps to seamlessly update Salesforce from the back end
  • 04:13 – Salesforce isn’t actually a CRM
• 04:38 – Cirrus Insights just launched Flight Plans, which is an extension of their philosophy
  • 04:42 – It is fully built-in to Outlook and Gmail
  • 04:44 – It allows people to setup a sequence of sales touches
  • 04:58 – It’s personalized and low scale
• 05:51 – Cirrus Insights’ growth is mostly from the Salesforce app exchange
  • 06:00 – Continued growth is still from word-of-mouth
• 06:31 – Cirrus Insights has passed 100K seats with an average seat price of $6
  • 06:53 – The average seat price has gone up now
• 07:19 – Flight Plans is a new tier
  • 07:24 – Cirrus Insights is the product name and Flight Plans is going to be an addition
  • 07:27 – There are now 3 additions to the product
• 08:18 – Cirrus Insights has just passed $1M in MRR
• 09:00 – Customers are choosing Cirrus Insights over others because some are overpaying and underutilizing marketing operations
• 09:29 – Marketing and sales are now working as a team with Cirrus Insights
• 09:58 – Cirrus Insights now charges $8 per seat
• 10:32 – Marketing operation has 4 big, unicorn companies
• 10:49 – There are now hundreds of tools in marketing operation and it will be interesting to see a consolidation
• 11:04 – Brandon is thinking customers will just utilize the best tools for the job
• 11:33 – Cirrus Insights is trying to position themselves to be the best at what they do
  • 11:43 – They’re also continuing to offer more in the future
• 13:00 – Gross customer churn: 15-20% annually, but they’re targeting to lower it down to 10%
  • 13:30 – There’s a lot less churn in the enterprise
• 14:17 – Net annual revenue churn is still negative and net seat churn is below 10%
• 15:16 – Most of the new leads are from word-of-mouth, with some small scale paid acquisition
  • 15:22 – They’re more focused on the content that can drive more people
  • 15:25 – Brandon has read The Slow Sale which is about how slowing down can win more deals
• 16:30 – Budget for paid marketing is $25-50K
  • 16:43 – They’ve done sponsorship for conferences, but the ROI is getting low
  • 17:25 – Check out their podcast: Our Love Hate Relationship with Sales, which drives sales as well
• 18:22 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. As saturated as the market is, there’s still a way for your business to stand out.
2. Marketing and sales teams are looking for tools that will not just help them with their workload, but encourage them to work together.
3. If your company constantly adds value, word-of-mouth will be your driver of sales.

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