Charles Thiede. He’s the co-founder and CEO of the knowledge network platform called Zapnito. Zapnito helps organizations create privately, branded, expert communications and networks. He calls this “experts as a service”.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Lean Startup
- What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
- Favorite online tool? — Product Hunt
- Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— I try to
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Do everything with courage”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:11 – Nathan introduces Charles to the show
- 01:41 – Zapnito is a SaaS platform
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- 02:16 – The idea of Zapnito is to helps brands bring their audience back to the trusted sources of knowledge
- 02:40 – Zapnito’s Slack channel
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- 02:51 – The platform behind the scene that pulls the audience and brands together
- 03:40 – Each brand has their own slack domain
- 04:40 – Average customer pay per year is £60K
- 05:38 – Zapnito started in trading in March 2013
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- 05:48 – Started as a marketplace for experts in 2014
- 06:38 – First year revenue
- 07:12 – Zapnito currently has 12 customers
- 07:57 – Average MRR
- 08:50 – Team size is 12
- 09:36 – Charles doesn’t batch their sales calls
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- 10:00 – Charles usually takes the calls
- 10:32 – Zapnito is based in London
- 10:50 – No customer churn and negative net churn
- 11:12 – The leverage Zapnito pulls to drive the RPU up
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- 11:30 – “We focus on niche networks’
- 11:50 – Zapnito has scaled their number of networks
- 12:10 – CAC
- 13:21 – Zapnito was bootstrapped and raised angel money
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- 13:40 – Zapnito has raised £650K in priced equity round
- 14:02 – Zapnito had 3 rounds
- 14:50 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Continually pivoting is not a disadvantage to your company, as long as you just keep learning from the experience.
- Do not hesitate to hire the people that you need.
- Do everything with courage.
Resources Mentioned:
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
- Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
- 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.
- 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
- Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket
- Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives