Anand Kulkarni, co-founder of LeadGenius. Anand left his job as a researcher and teacher at Berkeley to develop a tool that uses automation technology to find effective sales leads. Listen as Nathan and Anand talk over starting an SaaS business and exactly how to run an effective fundraising round.
Famous 5
Favorite Book? – Only The Paranoid Survive
What CEO do you follow? — Elon Musk
What is your favorite online tool? — Gmail
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? —I wish I had known how much fun it is to start a company - I would have started sooner!
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:22 – Nathan’s introduction
01:54 – Welcoming Anand to the show
02:10 – LeadGenius is AI for sales - ‘top of the funnel automation’
02:45 – One client is using it to map out every IT director in every Brazilian telecom company, and obtain their contact details
03:30 – Charges between $2k and $1 million a month
03:50 – Started in 2011
03:55 – Total revenue in 2015 was $8 million
04:20 – Worked with 200 customers in February 2015
04:37 – Annual revenue of $40k per user
05:00 – LTV to CAC ratio of about 10
06:00 – Spending about $15k to acquire a customer
06:30 – Some salary costs associated with accessing certain kinds of data
07:30 – Currently have net negative churn
07:40 – That means that growth from existing accounts offsets any loss of customers
08:45 – About to release a new email product
09:05 – Total MRR in February was about $700k
09:30 – 50 team members locally, plus 500 outsourced
10:00 – Raised $8 million total; the last round was a series A of $6 million
11:10 – How do you make the decision about when to raise another round?
12:50 – Pre-money valuation in the last round was in the tens of millions
13:35 – ‘A good partner pays for themselves’ - think about partners, not valuation
15:34 – Connect with Anand on twitter
18:00 – Famous Five
3 Key Points:
If you’re deciding whether to run an investment round, look hard at the milestones for your business. Is investment right now going to make significant progress toward those goals?
Don’t just look at valuations when you’re choosing partners. They should bring something significant to the business beyond investment
Whatever you’re planning to do, or dreaming you can do: start. It’ll be fun.
Resources Mentioned:
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
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