Scott Duffy. He’s the co-host of Business & Burgers and a contributor at Entrepreneur.com. He’s also listed as one of the top 10 keynote speakers of Forbes and Entrepreneur. He started working for bestselling author and speaker, Tony Robbins. He’s been a part of early stage exits and worked with big brands like CBSSport.com, NBC internet, Fox.com. He sold his last company to Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. He’s the best-selling author of the book called Launch!.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – You Are a Badass at Making Money
• What CEO do you follow? – Dave Meltzer
• Favorite online tool? — Skype
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5.5 to 6 hours
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “You don’t win by hard work alone”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:02 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show
• 01:51 – Scott wants to tell The Top tribe that it is all about being real and integrity
• 02:01 – Scott is doing a lot of work regarding mindset
• 02:05 – Scott has a new book coming out called Breakthrough
  • 02:26 – It is being published by Entrepreneur Press
  • 02:30 – Scott was working on the timeline
• 02:54 – Scott shares a story about failing
  • 02:58 – Scott had a business called Smart Charter
  • 03:04 – Scott was looking for distribution and ended up making a deal with Virgin
  • 03:16 – Scott was putting in $10K-15K of his personal money
  • 03:33 – Scott closed a deal and they moved to their new office
  • 04:12 – Scott is now officially a part of the Virgin Group
• 04:42 – Scott wasn’t paying himself nothing before he sold the company
• 04:54 – Prior to Smart Charter, Scott was a part of Sports 1 USA
• 05:20 – Majority of Scott’s savings went to Smart Charter
• 05:51 – Instead of taking money out out Smart Charter, Scott decided to go all in
• 06:18 – Scott now has equity with Virgin
• 06:57 – Scott sold Smart Charter in 2008
• 07:10 – Scott learned that the biggest job of an entrepreneur has nothing to do with business
  • 07:19 – The most important job for an entrepreneur is to protect himself
• 07:44 – Smart Charter had an equity pool prior to Virgin
• 08:22 – The possible deal from Virgin
• 09:17 – In a matter of weeks, everything changed with Virgin/Smart Charter
• 10:05 – On Scott’s first day with Virgin, he knew that if he messed up, there wouldn’t be another chance
• 10:28 – Scott’s superpower is in getting distribution for early stage companies
• 10:51 – As a small company, dealing with big companies does not make you better
• 11:19 – The deal with Virgin didn’t turn out the way Scott thought it would
• 12:26 – As an entrepreneur, Scott thinks he was played
• 12:53 – Entrepreneurs have to know how to repackage the things that have happened to them
• 13:09 – Business & Burgers is a search for the best burger in America and offers a side of great business advice
  • 13:14 – They hit the best restaurant and talk to the top local entrepreneur
  • 13:35 – Next episode is Daymond John from Shark Tank
• 15:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Don’t be discouraged; sometimes, you just have to learn things the hard way.
2. Entrepreneurs need to know how to protect themselves.
3. Take time building relationships – relationships are everything.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Michael Segala. He’s the CEO and co-founder of a company called SFL Scientific, a data science consulting firm that specializes in big data solutions. He’s for leveraging machine learning in analytics techniques to arrive at insights to numerous industries— from healthcare to stock market predictions. Before founding the company, Michael worked as a data scientist in some of the well-known companies such as Compete Inc., Akamai Technologies and he also holds a PhD in Particle Physics from Brown University.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Challenger Sale
• What CEO do you follow? – Larry Page and Sergey Brin
• 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? – “Diversify my education, learn more than just science from the early set, it will help you out”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:09 – Nathan introduces Michael to the show
• 01:56 – The founding members of SFL Scientific are particle physicists
  • 02:41 – They have a deeper understanding of the problem—from the academic and business perspective
• 02:58 – SFL Scientific is completely bootstrapped with $2K as their initial funds
• 03:07 – SFL Scientific got their first client only a few weeks after their launch
• 03:24 – The first client was a group of people from Stanford studying sleep apnea
  • 03:30 – Sleep apnea is a disease that makes you stop breathing for a couple of minutes while sleeping and can lead to death
  • 03:46 – The group’s idea is to take the sound and record it through an iPhone app at night
  • 03:59 – The group hired SFL Scientific to build an entire suite of AI machine-learning product solution
  • 04:04 – SFL Scientific also got an FDA resolution for the product
• 04:30 – SFL Scientific is a complete professional-based consulting firm
  • 04:40 – They write specific algorithms for the clients depending on their needs
• 05:18 – SFL Scientific got their first client in 2015
• 05:24 – Michael is now 31
• 05:44 – The pricing depends
  • 06:17 – For a high-level R&D-based projects, the charge is hourly
• 06:34 – SFL Scientific does R&D-based projects with minimum requirements
• 07:10 – Most clients don’t understand the scope of the project so SFL Scientific asks business questions or strategy
  • 07:45 – SFL Scientific provides the possible end result
• 08:08 – First year revenue is low 6 figures
• 08:27 – SFL Scientific has 3 co-founders
  • 08:38 – Michael does more on the sales stuff such as talking with client, one handles the technical and the other handles the implementation of behind-the-scenes coding
  • 09:14 – Equity is almost equal with Michael getting 34%
  • 09:37 – The first 2 years, they invested back into the company most of what they got
  • 09:53 – They had some very low salaries
• 10:27 – SFL Scientific almost broke a million in 2016
• 10:42 – 2017 revenue might go over and above a million
• 10:57 – Team size is 10
• 11:30 – SFL Scientific currently has a dozen clients
• 11:38 – One of the clients takes up around 20% of the revenue and Michael knows that it is dangerous
• 12:00 – SFL Scientific has no churn yet
• 12:08 – SFL Scientific mitigates a couple of ways the employees can work on multiple projects at a time
• 12:24 – SFL Scientific doesn’t invest only in one problem—go vertical to diversify the risks
• 13:12 – Looking at data science in general, the challenges are unanimous
• 13:34 – SFL Scientific is capable of understanding and solving cases from different industries
• 14:07 – Nathan just finished Thinking in Systems
• 15:48 – If you don’t have decent data to support a model that is accurate to a certain degree, you’re not going to get anywhere
• 17:03 – SFL Scientific looks at the potential of a project
• 17:16 – Michael is most excited with the health industry in terms of AI and machine learning
• 19:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Consider yourself lucky when you’re completely bootstrapped and you end up getting your first client only after a few weeks of launching.
2. It’s quite risky to only solve one problem as a company; diversify your services so you have a greater chance of surviving.
3. Study different fields and see how you can solve cases from these different industries.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Owen Sadeghpour. A year ago, he was the technical employee or founder at an earlier company and has raised over $50M. Now, he’s working at a successful company. He’s also got a different project called You Exec.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Blue Ocean Strategy and How to Win Friends and Influence People
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Squarespace
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-10
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The older you get the more you realize that human relationships are 50% of your work”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:05 – Nathan introduces Owen to the show
• 01:46 – You Exec is a community of professionals that are looking to improve their careers or the way they have relationships with people
• 01:57 – You Exec creates incredible resources for free and for paid members
• 02:13 – The paid members have the advantage of more features than the free members
• 02:26 – Paid members pay $4/month
• 02:43 – You Exec also takes insightful books, like The Lean Startup, and summarizes them
• 03:30 – You Exec’s content is usually posted on many different channels
  • 03:35 – Some of these channels include Medium, LinkedIn and Facebook
• 03:56 – You Exec has a mailing list that people subscribe to
• 04:25 – You Exec used to be something else
• 04:33 – As a technical person, Owen would write technical articles which were posted on Hacker News, a Y-combinator news stream
  • 04:43 – Owen’s article landed on the front page
  • 04:59 – Owen’s first article was Google and Facebook Ad Traffic is 90% Useless
• 05:20 – Nathan shares how he found Owen and what piqued his interest in him
• 05:50 – Owen has been a follower of Hacker News
• 06:02 – The first article wasn’t intentionally made to blow up
  • 06:49 – When Owen submitted the article, it got 30 upvotes only after a few minutes
  • 07:03 – The readers were mostly looking at the tools that Owen featured
  • 07:16 – By the time Owen got 50-60 points, Owen noticed that it wasn’t getting on the front page which was supposed to happen
  • 07:27 – Owen got some coffee and after 6 hours, he got tons of emails and the article was on the front page
  • 08:20 – Owen’s objective in creating the article was to share with engineers that they’re wasting their money
  • 09:10 – The article got a total of 30K views
• 09:47 – Owen wants people to see You Exec’s value; that’s why they sign up
• 09:51 – Owen doesn’t share You Exec’s numbers
• 10:40 – You Exec has around 1k signups on the paid membership
• 11:11 – Owen has Google Analytics on while working so he saw where the referrals are coming from
• 11:56 – The first article still gets around 10 readers a day
• 12:20 – Owen focuses on insights to bring traffic
• 12:50 – Owen is passionate in improving patients’ lives
• 13:08 – Owen believes that a media company is great, but his passion lies in helping individuals
• 13:44 – You Exec also pays for resources
  • 14:25 – When You Exec pushes out a weekly newsletter, they include references to the creditor
  • 14:50 – The article should save You Exec’s members hours of work
• 15:25 – You Exec pushes out all the sources of things
• 16:44 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Create something of value and people will stick with you.
2. More and more people are finding ways to shave hours off their workload WITHOUT sacrificing their quality of work.
3. Relationships with your colleagues are KEY to having a great work experience.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Steve Olsher. He’s the chairman and founder of Liquor.com. He’s a New York Times best-selling author of What Is Your WHAT?: Discover The One Amazing Thing You Were Born To Do. He’s also hosted the number 1 radio show, Reinvention Radio, and is a national keynote speaker and creator of the New Media Summit.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The $100 Startup
• What CEO do you follow? – Giovanni Marsico
• Favorite online tool? — io
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished I would have trusted myself more”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:10 – Nathan introduces to the show
• 01:35 – Steve was in Episode 342
• 02:02 – Steve is still in the process of selling Liquor.com
• 02:14 – Liquor.com is on ad revenue but is moving into the monetization strategy in Q3 and Q4
• 02:20 – Monthly impression is currently $3M
• 02:32 – There’s nothing in the bottom line revenue because it just goes back to the business
• 02:45 – Gross margin varies
• 03:51 – The company’s valuation
• 04:07 – Average open rate
  • 04:14 – Depending on the promotion, the click rate varies
  • 04:41 – People are more interested with contests than new products
• 05:26 – Steve has been doing events
• 06:24 – Liquor.com was like a family business
• 07:04 – New Media Summit does live events for different types of viewers
  • 08:00 – The idea is to connect with people who have high-visibility platforms
• 08:34 – New Media Summit is bringing in icons and influencers to events
  • 09:06 – Most people are podcasters
  • 09:25 – The people in New Media Summit are focused on understanding the value of teaching and sharing their knowledge
  • 09:47 – New Media Summit takes care of the podcasters hotel accommodation and meals
  • 09:57 – The event will accommodate only 150 people
  • 10:17 – There will be an influencer and mastermind on the last day of the summit
  • 10:49 – Attendees can pay in full which is $4997—the early bird price
  • 11:10 – The marketing just started and they have sold 2 tickets for the early bird
  • 11:17 – There are some who invested in Steve’s products and services and paid a seat deposit to attend the summit
  • 11:30 – Minimum price to attend is $1300 plus the seat deposit
• 12:28 – Part of Steve’s revenue comes from buying stage time
• 12:44 – Steve can easily pay $10K for a highly-curated event with 100 people
• 13:19 – An event should have a revenue model or plan of action in order to recoup
• 14:44 – There are some events that people don’t want to go back to because they are just pitch fests
• 14:49 – Steve doesn’t speak at events where 1-10 people are selling
• 15:22 – Steve’s call-to action during his speaking is to sign-up on an order form which has a lot of bonuses
• 16:34 – An event venue is quite expensive which can average to about $150K for a whole day event
• 17:00 – Steve is also making money from the events
  • 17:28 – They’ve got everything covered before the event starts
  • 17:38 – There will be services and products offered during the event
  • 18:03 – Steve will also pitch to future speakers
• 19:35 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. An event should be well-planned and have a revenue model where they can recoup expenses.
2. The main challenges in having an event is ensuring people attend and to have speakers who will NOT just sell during the event.
3. Ad open rates always vary depending on the promotion.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Stephan Goss. He’s the entrepreneur and technology executive behind his first company, Zeeto, which he started at the age of 22 and is still running today. He’s led the company in expanding from a team of 3 people to 70 in just under 5 years and with the launch of the ad network, he plans on continuing the company’s growth story in 2017. Previously, he founded Samples.com & Getitfree.us, which is the biggest free samples property on the internet.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Power of Habit
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Slack and Gmail
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8.5-9
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Keep going for it”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:04 – Nathan introduces Stephan to the show
• 01:56 – Stephan bought Samples.com 3 years ago and Getitfree.us for 6 figures
• 02:31 – Everything started with Samples.com
• 02:48 – Stephan left Switzerland when he was 19 and spent 10 months living in tent
• 03:31 – Stephan and some of his friends were running ad campaigns on the internet
• 03:55 – Everything is lead generation with Samples.com
  • 04:03 – They acquire users for $1 and they get $1.25 in return
• 04:30 – Stephan was making a 20-30% margin at first
• 04:59 – One of their large clients called and asked for more targeted leads who offered $8
• 05:46 – Stephan came out with a decent approach to find targeted leads
• 06:22 – Stephan was spending $10K for ads
• 06:51 – Stephan had a business partner and they had some cash flow to begin with
• 07:14 – The model of Samples.com was good because they can get their ROI fast
• 07:34 – Samples.com is still running
• 07:55 – Stephan continued the question asking model for the targeted market and scaled it
  • 08:26 – The lead value is more of a composition of all the answers
• 08:46 – 2016 total top line revenue was $39M and total ad spend was around $20-25M
• 09:18 – Samples.com currently has 25 people
• 09:25 – Stephan spent the bottom line money on investing on the Zeeto site
• 09:42 – Stephan is currently breaking even with Zeeto
• 09:55 – Stephan still gets his salary from the company
• 10:23 – Zeeto’s model is taken from Samples.com’s question-model
• 11:10 – Zeeto is similar to Google Adsense
  • 11:20 – Regular CPMs from Adsense range from $5-20
  • 11:33 – Zeetos’ CPMs range from $400-2200
• 12:00 – From Nathan’s research, podcasters earn $15-20 CPMs
• 12:11 – Nathan shares how he asks his advertisers about their CAC and his audience
• 12:44 – With Google Adsense, there will be around 3 ads per page
• 13:27 – The technology around Samples.com and Zeeto is considerably pretty hard
• 14:43 – Facebook and Google has all this data regarding leads that other big companies don’t have
• 15:13 – Zeeto’s goal is to help publishers have a better revenue model
• 15:21 – Zeeto’s product has just been launched
• 16:32 – Stephan sees Zeeto as an additional feature to the paywall
• 17:01 – Zeeto is incremental
• 18:18 – It will be more complicated for Zeeto to write questions for each of the articles rather than by being an addition to the paywall
• 18:24 – “Questions are built to be more broad”
• 18:59 – Stephan doesn’t know what is really going to work yet
• 19:25 – Stephan’s goal this year is to see where they’re going to fit in
• 19:50 – Anything that will drive people to the web will work well
• 20:19 – Stephan’s sample call-to-action
• 20:34 – You can make custom questions fitted to the website
  • 20:46 – The goal is to optimize questions for the best response rate
• 21:22 – Zeeto was built from scratch
• 21:54 – Nathan struggles with which of his advertisement he should show to his new subscribers
  • 22:00 – Nathan sends them an email autoresponder
• 22:27 – Zeeto has a user group that has interesting attributes
• 23:07 – 3 advertisers are not enough to do it efficiently
• 23:14 – Zeeto now has 200 advertisers
• 23:37 – Zeeto is completely free and they’ll send a check for the revenue share
• 25:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. It’s easier for people to give out their details in exchange for something free.
2. To collect your targeted leads, you need to have focused questions.
3. Stay encouraged and Just keep going for it!

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Ran Korber. He’s the CEO and founder of BreezoMeter. His ambition is to improve the health and quality of life for billions of people across the globe by providing accurate and actionable air quality data. It’s truly the leading air quality analytic company and one of Israel’s top 10 promising startups in 2015 with millions of daily users.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Zero to One
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Slack and HubSpot
• 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? – “Keep going, you’re doing well”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:10 – Nathan introduces Ran to the show
• 01:57 – BreezoMeter helps companies to increase user engagement
• 02:38 – BreezoMeter makes the invisible visible by providing highly accurate, location-based, air quality which includes data that can be integrated to any device or technology
• 03:08 – Using BreezoMeter’s data, the Dyson air purifier turns on whenever the air quality outside is substandard
  • 03:16 – A notification will be sent to the Dyson app as well
• 03:29 – Dyson is BreezoMeter’s customer and BreezoMeter tells Dyson’s customers about the air purifier
• 03:58 – The air purifier turns on automatically and, as an owner, you want to make sure that the product you bought is working
• 04:37 – BreezoMeter provides a license to their APIs
  • 04:53 – Customers pay on a monthly basis
• 04:58 – BreezoMeter is data as a service
• 05:14 – All of BreezoMeter’s customers are enterprises
  • 05:23 – The customers use BreezoMeter’s data in big volumes
• 05:49 – Average monthly RPU is higher than $1K a month
• 06:04 – Ran just read Jason Lemkin’s From Impossible to Inevitable
• 06:29 – BreezoMeter broke a million in sales last year
• 06:34 – Ran hopes they’ll break $10M in sales this year
• 06:54 – Ran is an environmental engineer
• 07:05 – In 2012, Ran was searching to buy a house for his family
  • 07:10 – Ran’s wife has asthma and Ran knows how air pollution can have severe health effects
  • 07:45 – We all want to protect our families
  • 07:51 – Ran asks the bureau of protection and environment in Israel about the place with the cleanest air and they don’t have any data that can answer the question
  • 08:08 – Together with Ran’s colleague, they built the app
• 08:19 – BreezoMeter was founded in 2014
• 08:26 – Team size
• 08:39 – BreezoMeter has raised $5M
  • 08:48 – The last round was in July 2016
  • 08:57 – The first round was a seed round with $2M
• 09:54 – All of BreezoMeter’s investors are approachable and they share the same vision
• 10:12 – Total number of users
• 10:46 – Dyson has an air purifier and you can download the Dyson link app that will show the air quality data
• 12:00 – Customers pay depending on the combination of the features they use and the volume of API calls
  • 12:20 – BreezoMeter earns more from their features
• 13:03 – BreezoMeter doesn’t disclose their pricing because of their enterprise clients
  • 13:48 – BreezoMeter caters to different industries
• 14:13 – CAC
• 15:51 – BreezoMeter raise funds to expand and increase their revenue
• 16:21 – For every sales rep, the revenue is $500K to $1M in annual revenue
• 16:37 – BreezoMeter has 4 sales rep
• 17:01 – The churn is due to some of the companies having medical devices
• 18:30 – BreezoMeter’s customers are paying at least $3K a month
• 19:32 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Air pollution directly impacts our health—therefore, knowing the air quality around us can inform our decisions regarding what products to use.
2. A SaaS company that serves mainly enterprise businesses has a possibility of scaling faster.
3. Keep on going and believe that you’re doing well.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Emília Chagas. She’s the CEO of Contentools.com, a company that helps over 700 companies plan, create, distribute and analyze content. As a content manager for over 8 years, she has led video, book and web-based strategies at both enterprises and SMBs. She’s a 500 Startups entrepreneur and part of the Endeavor Promises Program.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Hooked and The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Eric Santos of Resultados Digitais/RD Station
• Favorite online tool? — ProfitWell and ChartMogul
• 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? – “How great life was”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:20 – Nathan introduces Emília to the show
• 01:58 – Emília is currently in Florianópolis, Brazil
• 02:21 – Emília’s average salary
• 02:54 – Emília currently has 30 people
• 03:03 – Average headcount expenses
• 03:24 – Contentools is a SaaS model
• 03:31 – Contentools offers a content marketing platform for companies with marketing teams
• 04:04 – Everything that a marketing team needs are converged into 1 software
• 04:13 – Average customer pay per month varies
• 04:46 – Contentools does scheduling and the processes of the content workflow
• 05:08 – Contentools has 300 customers, 700 companies are using the platform
  • 05:21 – Some pay through their agencies
• 05:35 – Average MRR
  • 05:48 – Around $70K per month
• 05:58 – Contentools has raised an Angel round and will raise a seed round next year
  • 06:08 – Total funds raised was $500K
• 06:19 – Contentools was launched in 2015
• 06:30 – Emília has been working with startups and enterprises and they have the same problem dealing with content
• 06:53 – Contentools went beta in July 2015
• 07:11 – Emília has a big dream for Contentools
• 07:24 – SMBs need content solutions but no one is offering them one
• 07:39 – “Content is the beginning of marketing”
• 07:55 – The 4 founders still own 80% of the company
• 08:43 – All of Emília’s ideas are currently focused on Contentools
• 08:55 – Contentools wants to create more business intelligence features and content that are targeted more to the customers’ needs
• 09:42 – Emília won’t sell the company at the moment
• 10:01 – Contentools is growing 10-20%, month over month in revenue
• 10:13 – Churn is usually around 2% and last month was net negative churn
• 10:49 – 3% gross churn
• 11:12 – Contentools is up selling their number of users and projects
• 11:58 – CAC
  • 12:35 – 4 people on the team are focused on inbound marketing and there are also remote people
  • 13:08 – Contentools doesn’t have paid acquisition
  • 13:47 – Contentools is adding 20-30 new customers a month
• 14:07 – The Angel round was in May 2017
• 14:24 – Contentools is updating their leads for their fundraising next year
• 14:40 – Valuation won’t be out of the market
• 16:04 – If you fail updating one status, it’ll all be gone
• 17:13 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Content solutions are often offered to enterprises, but SMBs need them too.
2. One of the cheapest forms of marketing is your content.
3. It’s not easy for a content manager to handle the processes and workflow, so a good content management tool is necessary.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Stu Sjouwerman. He’s a serial entrepreneur and currently the founder and CEO of KnowBe4.com. He’s a big Shark Tank fan. He’s based in Tampa, Florida.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Positioning
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — SurveyMonkey
• 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 wished that my 21 old self knew that Bill Gates was going to go into Windows server, in about 1995”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:21 – Nathan introduces Stu to the show
• 01:46 – KnowBe4 is a new school IT
  • 01:51 – KnowBe4 focuses on modern security and awareness training
• 02:08 – KnowBe4 is a SaaS company
• 02:46 – Average pay per user is $15/year
  • 03:01 – The charge is annual upfront which is easier and most people prefer that
• 03:26 – KnowBe4 focuses on organizations with 50 users and up
• 03:36 – Average seat size varies
  • 03:52 – Average seat size for SMBs is 200-300 and for enterprise 1500-3000 seats
• 04:21 – Stu sold his anti-virus company in 2010
• 04:35 – It was called Sunbelt and Stu’s 4th startup
• 04:56 – “We are growing like crazy”
• 05:01 – KnowBe4 did $7M in 2015, $24M in 2016 and is targeting $50M this year
• 05:26 – KnowBe4 does inbound marketing and they send newsletters to their list of 1.2M people
  • 05:40 – The list was built over several years
• 05:57 – KnowBe4 was bootstrapped for 5 years and Stu spent around a million building the company
• 06:07 – In December 2015, they took $8M from VC
• 06:47 – Total fund raised was $13M
• 07:11 – It was easy for Stu to let go of 20% of the company
• 07:25 – Stu’s told Kevin Mitnick that he would give him 50% of his company in exchange for Kevin’s 30-year experience in hacking
• 08:34 – The cap table
• 09:10 – Stu is confident that KnowBe4 will earn $50M this year
• 09:20 – Churn is 15% annually
• 09:33 – It is relatively easy to predict whether a SaaS model will be profitable
• 09:43 – KnowBe4 serves 9500 companies
• 09:55 – Average ARR
• 10:22 – March revenue
• 10:58 – Enterprise sales come in March
• 11:10 – Team size is 290
• 11:27 – CAC is around $2600
• 11:39 – CAC to LTV ratio is 7
• 12:02 – CAC payback is instant
• 12:17 – Average selling price per year
• 12:42 – Stu likes Vladimir Putin
• 14:03 – Eagles programs are state-sponsored programs that are offensive cyberattacks
• 14:49 – USA also has offensive cyber weapons, same with China and Russia
• 14:58 – Hackers go after the weak link in IT security, which is the human
  • 15:15 – It comes in the form of an email
• 15:33 – KnowBe4 sends frequent phishing attacks that are similar to legitimate ones
  • 15:43 – This will make the team aware and cause them to be on top of their toes in case they receive an attack
• 16:02 – KnowBe4 has a phish alert button
• 16:30 – KnowBe4 trains people with the real stuff
• 16:41 – Stu used to play soccer and is very competitive
• 16:49 – Stu has 2 reasons why he wants to go public:
  • 16:52 – First, because he has never gone public before
  • 16:57 – Second is to expand further and faster
• 17:12 – KnowBe4’s biggest competitors are PhishMe and Wombat
• 17:26 – Stu gets their competitors’ information from Owler
• 17:45 – There’s a possibility of Stu acquiring one of their competitors once they go public
• 18:11 – Stu got $10M from his previous exit and he’s NOT doing KnowBe4 for the money
• 18:57 – The biggest problem Stu had with his previous company was social engineering
• 19:08 – “Nobody is really taking care of the human IT security”
• 20:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. There’s a big gap in human IT security and more and more people aren’t even aware they’re being hacked.
2. Going public can help a company expand further and faster, and perhaps even acquire the competition.
3. There is no such thing as retirement.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Ryan Sevey. He’s the CEO of Nexosis, an artificial intelligence and machine learning startup focused exclusively on developers.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Aha!
• 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? – “Learn how to be true to yourself”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:25 – Nathan introduces Ryan to the show
• 01:55 – Nexosis was launched in 2015
  • 01:59 – Nexosis offers a solution that big retailers are forecasting
• 02:24 – Nexosis has 300 developers who use their APIs
• 02:56 – Nexosis has developers from the retail space who have their point-of-sale data
  • 03:11 – Nexosis will take the developers data and give out a result
  • 04:13 – This result can help in the decision making for the future
• 04:34 – Nexosis gets people to be more proactive than reactive
• 04:52 – Nexosis found out how companies are using their historical data
• 05:14 – Nexosis adds more features to training
• 05:23 – Nexosis’s add-on layers
• 05:41 – With sentiment analysis, one good example is Wendy’s Twitter account
  • 06:00 – You can use the number of tweets as a numerical value that can go back to your data
• 06:39 – One huge case involves a Wendy’s beside a convention center; Nexosis can predict future revenues
• 06:51 – Nexosis can predict future revenues and can understand the real impact of an event
• 07:23 – Nexosis focuses on the developer ecosystem
• 07:38 – Nexosis charges .10₵ per 1000 predictions
• 08:17 – Nexosis makes money once the developer talks to the enterprise and shows the API
• 08:43 – Nexosis charges the developers by consumption
• 09:24 – Average pay per customer depends on the data that they have which usually starts at $10K
• 09:42 – Nexosis was founded in 2015
• 09:53 – Ryan and his co-founder have been looking at machine learning since 2012
• 10:09 – Nexosis was originally considered an information security company
• 10:21 – Team size is 15 and they’re based in Ohio
• 10:38 – Nexosis has millions of API calls per month but their focus is on the number of developers
• 11:30 – Ryan’s vision is for developers to enjoy Nexosis, be it as a hobby or use in a professional way
• 11:55 – Nexosis is currently serving 100 different enterprise type of developers
• 12:26 – What Ryan sees is when a developer signs up, he’ll make 1-2 projects then invite his friend to try Nexosis
• 12:57 – Most of the developers are already in a company
• 13:10 – MRR
• 13:20 – Nexosis has raised a little less than $7M
• 13:39 – The long term goal for Nexosis is to raise more
• 13:56 – Twilio has survived their early days with VC funding
• 14:26 – Nexosis measures expansion rate rather than the churn
• 15:37 – Nexosis aims for 100% month over month growth and at the moment, they’re hitting it
• 16:30 – Consumption in terms of the number of predictions is over a million
• 17:55 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. There are companies who rely mostly on raising funds to scale.
2. Knowing the data for your FUTURE can help in your decision making TODAY.
3. No matter what—be true to yourself!

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Sheri Atwood. She’s the founder and CEO of SupportPay. She’s also a former Silicon Valley executive and a child of a bitter divorce who also went through her own divorce a few years ago. She’s created SupportPay when a search for a better way communicate about child support systems with her ex-husband proved totally fruitless. SupportPay is the first-ever automated child support payment platform poised to transform the complex, time-consuming & stressful process that impacts nearly 300M parents exchanging more than $900B in child support & child expenses worldwide. With SupportPay, today’s modern families can spend less time managing and arguing about child support, and more time focused on raising happy, healthy children. Prior to starting SupportPay, she was a former vice-president at Symantec and also has been named #5 of 50 Women in Tech Dominating Silicon Valley and Top 40 Under 40 Executives in Silicon Valley. She’s energetic, resourceful and lives by the motto “don’t talk about it, be about it.”

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
• What CEO do you follow? – Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Marc Benioff
• Favorite online tool? — Stack Exchange
• 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? – “Enjoy the path, enjoy the lessons as you go”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:23 – Nathan introduces Sheri to the show
• 02:37 – Sheri is going to lower the divorce rate by showing people that divorce just gets worst
• 02:49 – Millennials aren’t getting married but are having babies
• 03:10 – Sheri uses SupportPay and invented it because she didn’t have a solution
• 03:16 – Child support is made up of 2 things: a base payment that covers basic daily living expenses and then there’s other additional expenses
• 03:34 – The argument is about where the money is going and if it is enough to raise a kid
• 03:46 – While doing an expense report in Symantec, Sheri thought of the idea of SupportPay
• 04:04 – SupportPay started in 2011
• 04:38 – Sheri was raised by her single mom who was an alcoholic
• 04:48 – Sheri was one of the youngest VPs in Symantec and she was able to save money from her salary
  • 04:57 – Sheri had multiple houses, cars, boats, gave his ex-husband a house and 2 years worth of salary in the bank
• 05:24 – Sheri bootstrapped SupportPay at first and she learned to code
• 05:40 – SupportPay has raised $7.1M total
  • 05:49 – The series A was for $4.1M
• 05:59 – Sheri has talked to people and there was nothing to support parents
• 06:13 – Sheri also received calls from vendors thanking her
• 06:35 – SupportPay is a SaaS business
• 06:40 – Pricing starts at $9.99 a month
  • 06:51 – There’s also a free version
  • 06:55 – Each parent pays independently
  • 07:05 – Average pay is $10 a month
• 07:28 – Sheri started hiring people in 2013
• 07:39 – Sheri learned to code the basic html, css and php by starting her own website
  • 07:50 – Sheri self-studied from books that she found in Barnes and Nobles
• 08:08 – Team size is 25 and they just relocated to Sacramento, California from Silicon Valley
• 08:30 – Team has 14 engineers
• 08:39 – After raising $3M, Sheri realized she couldn’t sustain a business in Silicon Valley
  • 08:45 – Sheri was burning $95K a month
  • 09:08 – Sheri’s equity table is a mess now because of her tech people switching to another company for a better offer
  • 09:16 – Sheri would have focused on revenue a little bit earlier
  • 09:48 – Sheri didn’t have revenue until July of 2016
  • 10:08 – SupportPay was processing $3M in child support
• 10:19 – SupportPay currently looks at processing $4M a month in child support
• 10:30 – SupportPay has over 43K customers with 2K paying customers
• 11:03 – MRR is close to $100K
• 12:12 – SupportPay has a free 30 day trial
• 12:27 – The value of the product is the history, which can be used in court
• 12:46 – SupportPay also provides certified report records
• 13:31 – Churn on active users is 3% annually
• 13:57 – Conversion rate from visitor to paid user is 12%
• 14:50 – The bigger valuation for SupportPay is how it solves the problem of child support
• 16:00 – After getting into fundraising, SupportPay focused on their revenue
• 16:25 – 2016 revenue
• 16:41 – Sheri has talked to Salesforce to get them involved in SupportPay
  • 17:10 – Salesforce is trying to move government applications into the cloud
  • 17:15 – SupportPay will get Salesforce into the government space quickly
  • 17:30 – SupportPay is built on the salesforce platform
• 18:00 – Tim Draper invested in SupportPay as he saw the value
• 18:17 – Sheri’s goal for building SupportPay
• 20:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. More millennials are having babies, but are not getting married—this leads to more parents having problems with child support.
2. Having one less argument regarding child support will alleviate stress for the whole family unit.
3. The divorce rate isn’t getting any better, it’s just getting worst.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Ryan Hungate. He’s the co-founder of Simplifeye, it’s the number one technology experience for healthcare providers, patients and their businesses. The company’s platform of software solution health care providers improve productivity, efficiency and profitability. Ryan is an orthodontist and previous Apple retail strategist and Zach is a previous founder and Wall Street alum with a background in Tech MNA.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup (Zach)
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A
• Favorite online tool? — Calendly
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 (Zach) 3 (Ryan)
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “How difficult business can actually be”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:11 – Nathan introduces Ryan and Zach to the show
• 01:54 – Ryan’s dad was a doctor
• 03:00 – Simplifeye tries to make doctors’ lives easier
• 03:28 – Simplifeye provides the patients’ information before they walk in during checkups
• 04:03 – Ryan and Zach are VC buddies
  • 04:07 – They’ve raised money from their hedge fund friends
  • 04:12 – They applied at AngelPad
  • 04:35 – Simplifeye was a halfway project and they thought it would be big
  • 04:52 – it was in 2015 when they got into AngelPad
• 05:02 – Zach gave up hundreds of thousands in a salary when he joined Simplifeye
• 05:14 – Ryan gave up his $500K salary
• 05:34 – They rationalize building a startup by getting validation from different capital companies
  • 06:01 – They also know that they can be in every doctor’s office
• 06:17 – Simplifeye has raised $3.5M
• 06:24 – Angelpad’s terms
• 06:50 – It was September 2015 when Ryan and Zach came out to NY and ended up coming out with AngelPad strong
• 07:21 – Simplifeye’s customers are healthcare practitioners who pay on a monthly basis
• 07:25 – Simplifeye tries to involve everybody—to teams of doctors, nurses, dentists and others
• 08:18 – Average pay is $2400 a year
• 08:39 – Expansion revenue is based on the size of the practice
• 09:08 – Simplifeye is also HIPAA compliant chat
• 09:28 – Simplifeye started with the Apple watch
• 10:00 – Nathan had Laurence Girard on Episode 575 who talked about the HIPAA compliant chat
  • 10:16 – Being HIPAA compliant is a huge advantage for you
• 10:20 – Doctors communicate with each other in an insecure manner
  • 10:35 – The limited standard
  • 10:56 – Doctors will pay a fee if they break the standard
  • 11:29 – Simplifeye always tries to be transparent
  • 11:46 – Having Simplifeye can make doctors feel better in their daily processes
• 11:53 – Simplifeye just passed 1000 office signups
• 12:03 – MRR
• 12:44 – Simplifeye has 90% annual retention
• 13:24 – Team size is 13
• 14:42 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Doctors feel more comfortable using HIPAA compliant products and services.
2. You have to trust your product in order to take that leap from the corporate world.
3. Enjoy what you’re doing and believe that you WILL be successful.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Seymour Duncker. He’s the co-founder and CEO of a company called iCharts, the leader in cloud business intelligence and analytics and a seasoned entrepreneur who has been both a consumer and developer of visual analytics. Before founding iCharts, Seymour assisted SAP’s senior management in driving the company’s product strategy and was an early team member at 2 enterprise software startups before that.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Inevitable
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — NetSuite and Salesforce
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Spend a little more time outdoors”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:26 – Nathan introduces Seymour to the show
• 03:12 – iCharts is a cloud-based business and intelligence analytics solution platform
• 03:24 – iCharts is a SaaS model
• 03:36 – iCharts partners with NetSuite which is a cloud-based EOP
  • 03:48 – NetSuite uses iCharts as an embed BI (Business Intelligence) engine that powers iCharts for NetSuite’s customers
  • 04:05 – iCharts is like an app inside NetSuite
• 04:55 – iCharts can take any kind of data and visually represent it so that people can interact and analyze the data
• 05:16 – The analogy of iCharts is like the car's’ navigation system which is separated from the car’s build
• 05:55 – iCharts considers SaaS businesses as an ecosystem and NetSuite is a large ecosystem
• 06:05 – iCharts has a mixed business model
• 06:24 – iCharts is also looking into exclusive partnerships with a SaaS platform to distribute iCharts
• 06:55 – Pricing starts at $15K per annum depending on the number of users on a platform
• 07:54 – Seymour arrived in the USA, in 2010
• 08:10 – Seymour is from Germany
• 08:50 – When Seymour had an idea for a cloud-based business intelligence platform, he was thinking about where to build it
• 09:27 – Back then, it was easier to sell in the USA than in Germany
• 10:10 – Being in California was also a great idea for Seymour’s wife, so they built iCharts in the USA
• 10:37 – Team size is 60
  • 10:56 – Sales team has 20 people
• 11:35 – The majority of iCharts’ market
• 11:49 – iCharts will know the pain points of the users of NetSuite
• 12:53 – iCharts will already have an idea of the customer’s needs
• 13:45 – iCharts has around 200 customers
• 14:04 – iCharts started focusing on various markets
• 14:25 – iCharts has raised $23M to date but they were initially bootstrapped
• 15:07 – Churn is around 5-7%
• 16:20 – CAC
• 16:32 – iCharts is highly profitable from the initial time they closed a deal
• 17:04 – There’s an advantage of growing faster and burning yourself as you grow too fast
• 17:44 – At the end of the day, it’s all about having a high-functioning team that produces quality
• 18:04 – Average ARR
• 18:21 – iCharts also offers additional services for their larger customers
• 20:13 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Build your business wherever you’d like to—even if it means leaving your home country.
2. Having a well-functioning team that produces QUALITY will drive your revenue and contribute to the success of your business.
3. Make time for rest and vacations; this will relax and regenerate you.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Daniel Fagella. He started a mixed martial arts gym when he was an undergrad and sold it after getting a UPenn graduate degree in cognitive science. He did turn his grad school thesis on skill development into an ecommerce business that grew for 4 years, reaching $4.2M in top line sales and recently sold it for a million dollars with 90% paid upfront. He’s now using his funds for TechEmergence.com in order to influence global AI policy for the better.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Plutarch’s Lives
• What CEO do you follow? – Last bio he read was Marcus Aurelius’
• Favorite online tool? — Asana
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Daniel would tell himself that dealing with the existential human condition could be done by contributing to a much bigger world

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:20 – Nathan introduces Dan to the show
• 02:08 – Dan was studying skill development and goal setting science in psychology for his undergrad
• 02:17 – Schooling was expensive; Dan decided that he’d rather use himself as a skill development guinea pig than a pizza deliverer
• 02:40 – Dan started teaching and making money at the back of a carpet store
  • 03:11 – Dan’s jiujitsu gym was the smallest business back then
  • 04:03 – Dan sold the gym after 3-4 years with $250K ARR
  • 04:14 – Dan was 25 when he sold the gym
  • 04:41 – The membership fee was $157
  • 05:07 – Dan sold it for over $100K with 10% upfront to his right-hand and friend
  • 05:45 – The business ran for over 2-3 years after that
  • 06:05 – Dan took $30K from the $113K
• 06:36 – Dan was also making $20K a month selling martial arts instructional resources online
• 07:09 – Dan was using Infusionsoft for his e-commerce business, Science of Skill
• 07:56 – The e-commerce was doing around $200K top line
• 08:42 – The biggest cost for Science of Skill was on merchant processing, customer acquisition, advertising and affiliates
• 09:26 – Dan likes to spend half of his CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) on acquisition
• 09:42 – The CLV for membership programs were around $100 and affiliates $50-60
• 10:00 – One of the affiliates was Survival Frog of Byron
• 10:23 – Byron drove Science of Skill into 6-figures
• 10:44 – Dan was paying affiliates upfront
• 11:15 – Byron of Survival Frog was on Episode 395
• 11:44 – There are agencies who get onto their email list by paying
  • 12:14 – One of the agencies is com
• 13:02 – Finding the right people to advertise and won’t tag you as spam
• 13:11 – Dan will find firearm sites in com—go through the website owners and email them to find the right people to target
• 14:11 – Dan sold Science of Skill in February 2017 for a little over a million dollars
• 14:22 – Science of Skill was valued by the multiple of net
• 15:11 – Science of Skill revenue in 2016
• 16:27 – Dan’s ultimate goal
• 16:31 – The buyers are a private group of 2 buyers in Ohio who previously ran SaaS businesses then sold them to the government
• 17:05 – Science of Skill should be at Inc 500 for 2016
• 17:13 – Dan sold Science of Skill because he believed he has better and bigger things to do in life
• 17:25 – Dan’s core objective involves the global conversation of neuroscience and AI
• 17:48 – TechEmergence focuses on the business applications of AI
• 18:08 – TechEmergence is not making money, but will make money primarily through advertising
• 19:09 – The goal now is to scale and make traction
• 19:21 – Current cash burn
• 20:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. You can start your business literally anywhere.
2. Focus on your goals and objectives, even if it means having to burn cash.
3. The future will probably evolve around n_euroscience and AI.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Allan Willie. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Klipfolio, a software-as-a-service dashboard company with over 8500 paying customers including Jet.com, Zendesk, Aviva and Ikea. He previously co-founded a company called Espial, an internet device software firm that is now publicly traded on TSX. He lives in Ottawa with his wife and 2 daughters.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Lead by Greatness
• What CEO do you follow? – Tobias Lütke
• Favorite online tool? — SEO Plus Chrome plug in and Owler
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6.5-7.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Listen, build something of value and then see if you could raise money”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:07 – Nathan introduces Allan to the show
• 01:50 – All of the meeting rooms in Klipfolio’s office have different wallpaper
• 02:12 – Klipfolio is an online, cloud-based, dashboard vendor
• 02:18 – Klipfolio works with mid-sized businesses who use them for everything
• 02:40 – Nathan uses Klipfolio quite aggressively, especially for his Facebook live streams
• 04:17 – When Allan was last on The Top, he was passing 7K customers—now he has 8500 customers
• 04:36 – In January, Klipfolio announced a $12M raise which was an insight round from existing investors
  • 05:14 – The initial round was to raise an external round
  • 05:43 – “We did use market to validate”
• 06:12 – Klipfolio had verbal offers that were lucrative
  • 06:40 – The valuation were multiples for some of the terms
• 07:00 – Klipfolio also had some acquisition discussions
• 08:08 – Allan won’t call the acquisition discussions offers, because it would still have to go through a lot
• 08:59 – In every acquisition discussion, you want to layer how much information to present to another company
• 09:35- Customers usually get the $70 plan for the first month, then move up to $150 in a year
• 10:10 – Some of the customers are partners who can pay directly or pay as a partner
  • 10:24 – 30% of Klipfolio’s income come from their partner channels
• 10:35 – Last month revenue was $500-600K
• 11:16 – Klipfolio’s valuation was between $700-800K
• 11:25 – Some of the VCs that Allan has talked to are putting terms in place with a higher valuation
• 11:47 – You have to sustain your valuation to get into the next round
• 12:34 – Anything on Klipfolio is being tracked
• 13:15 – The weirdest use case
  • 13:25 – There are NGOs who use Klipfolio to push some of their metrics out
  • 13:34 – Red Cross uses Klipfolio for flooding, zika virus and other stuff that is happening in Africa
• 14:11 – Churn has gone up slightly
• 14:35 – Klipfolio started paid ads for $120K a month
  • 14:41 – Klipfolio has a blog about the lessons they’ve learned from Facebook Ads
  • 15:24 – One of the cons of ads is that the conversion rate drops and churn goes up—which is normal
• 15:40 – CAC
• 15:54 – LTV
• 16:05 – LTV to CAC is still relatively healthy
• 16:26 – Team size is around 90
  • 16:47 – The team is moving to a new space in November
• 18:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Maintain your valuation in order to get into the next round.
2. Not all acquisition talks are considered offers.
3. A company of great value has a better chance of raising money and getting acquired down the road.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Blake Smith. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Cladwell, a clothing company that doesn’t sell clothing. His goal is to fight for sustainability and human labor practices by enabling people to buy fewer, but better clothes. Blake was at The Top a year ago where he articulated that they passed 11,500 customers with each customer paying $6/month; so, they were doing about $70K MRR a year ago. They were at about 5% churn, monthly spending and at $17 to acquire new customers. They’re based in Cincinnati and they’ve raised about $1.8M and $100K in revenue.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Wooden on Leadership
• What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz
• Favorite online tool? — Calendly
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 2
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Blake would tell himself the importance of following your curiosity as opposed to having a strategy or a plan

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:04 – Nathan introduces Blake to the show
• 01:59 – Cladwell’s current customers is around 17K in number
• 02:06 – Cladwell is an everyday styling app
• 02:50 – When you go to the Cladwell’s website, you’ll click “buy”
• 02:58 – Cladwell is also downloadable in the App store
• 03:12 – Cladwell is doing pricing tests
  • 03:45 – Cladwell looks at other SaaS products that customers are paying for
  • 04:02 – Cladwell also looks at other workout apps
  • 04:21 – Cladwell is looking into charging $9
  • 04:41 – “We’re going forward unless proven otherwise”
• 04:47 – Pricing tests never end, especially with SaaS
• 05:31 – Last month total revenue is around $60K
• 05:41 – Cladwell used to bill quarterly
• 05:49 – Cladwell is around 900K ARR
• 06:17 – 80% of Cladwell’s customers are using the web app on their mobile devices
• 06:42 – Last year’s revenue in the same month
• 07:19 – Marketing spend last year
• 07:32 – Cladwell has recently raised a $1.2M round
• 08:07 – 2016 total sales is $760K
• 09:35 – Blake explains how the app works on a daily basis
  • 09:40 – Every morning, the Cladwell app gives a recommendation of what to wear
  • 09:53 – Cladwell recommends 3 outfits basing on what’s in your closet and the daily weather
  • 10:18 – Cladwell will also know what you wore for 3 days
• 10:55 – The more that you use the app, the better the experience is
• 11:35 – Majority of Cladwell’s users are working millennial moms
• 12:18 – People have tried Cladwell’s ideas before and onboarding was the biggest issue
• 12:33 – Cladwell did something similar to Google venture’s sprint design process
• 12:56 – Cladwell provides a feed of all the potential items in a person’s wardrobe
  • 13:34 – A female customer will have an average of 60-70 pieces of clothing in her wardrobe
• 13:58 – The onboarding process is now easier for customers because of the feed
• 15:30 – Team size is around 15
• 16:02 – Cladwell’s currently spending is still TBD
• 16:18 – Churn rate is a bit high
• 16:50 – From the 17K customers, around 5K has downloaded the app
• 18:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Onboarding is one of the biggest challenges for a styling company, customers lose interest using the product.
2. More and more millennial mothers are finding it hard to manage their time; having an app that will save them time daily is heaven sent.
3. Follow your curiosity—it can lead you to something GREAT.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Assaf Resnick. He’s the founder and CEO of BigPanda, an algorithm-make IT operations platform that turns IT alert noise into insight, unifies fragmented operations and enables digital enterprises to attain dramatic or pretty high service levels. Prior to founding the company, he was an investor for Sequoia Capital where he focused on early stage companies across enterprise software, SaaS and the internet sector.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Goal
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A
• Favorite online tool? — Salesforce
• 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? – “Start a company early”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:17 – Nathan introduces Assaf to the show
• 01:52 – Sometimes, Assaf would still ask himself why he left Sequoia
• 02:00 – Assaf spent 6 years in Sequoia and it was an opportunity of a lifetime
• 02:19 – Assaf started in Sequoia when he was 29
• 02:36 – Assaf was bitten by the entrepreneur bug, so he left Sequoia
• 03:30 – Assaf’s stayed in Sequoia for personal career growth
• 03:43 – Sequoia is different from other VC firms
• 04:31 – For Assaf, Sequoia expresses the combination of opportunities in the market
• 05:33 – Assaf is proud of the deals that he had made with Sequoia
• 06:00 – Assaf found Snaptu to be an interesting deal they invested in
• 07:00 – BigPanda automates the ability of human-beings and IT operations to keep up with data centers that are radically evolved
• 07:50 – The big part of IT spending usually goes to the engineers
• 08:00 – In the data centers, they have to keep the software and infrastructure that is radically transforming running
• 08:40 – A data company needs to have a handful of tools, data centers and servers
• 09:15 – One of BigPanda’s clients is a Fortune 50 and a large networking company
  • 09:30 – The company now has SaaS offerings and gives the SLA (Service Level Agreement) that they promise to companies
  • 10:15 – The company has teams of engineers in Ukraine, California and India that use 15 monitoring tools to see what is happening
  • 10:37 – The company has 70K data points they need to keep track
  • 11:05 – The amount of data engineers they need has become an issue
• 11:27 – The problems in the war room can be both preventative and reactionary
• 11:45 – BigPanda uses a lot machine learning and dynamic classroom instruction to get through the noise
• 12:10 – An alert can be a problem with the server and something that you can just leave out
• 13:31 – One should examine if the “if/then statements” are dynamic
• 13:45 – The “if/then statements” vary day by day, then variables change quickly
• 14:13 – BigPanda was launched in 2012
• 14:20 – BigPanda is a SaaS company which charges annually
• 14:45 – Pricing average
• 14:51 – BigPanda caters to very large companies
• 15:20 – Team size is 60
• 15:28 – BigPanda has raised almost $35M
• 15:46 – BigPanda has done a regional series B
• 16:08 – BigPanda partners with Sequoia, Mayfield and In Battery
• 16:28 – At the end of 2015, people started devaluing some unicorns
• 16:59 – When Assaf saw rain clouds forming, he thought it made sense to get a winter coat from a capital perspective
• 17:40 – BigPanda had plenty of pipelines
• 18:02 – Half of the company is based in Palo Alto and half is in Tel Aviv, Israel
  • 19:03 – Half of the people are in engineering and product, the other half is marketing
• 19:49 – BigPanda is very disciplined with their model
• 20:39 – BigPanda has around 25 companies from Fortune 500
• 22:20 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. If you’ve committed to always being there for your client, you better follow through on that.
2. No matter how many engineers you have, there’s always a chance of them missing a lapse in the data.
3. Start your business as early as possible.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Manny Fernandez. He’s a Stanford University educated Angel investor, serial entrepreneur and best-selling author featured on CNBC’s Make Me a Millionaire Inventor premier episode. He’s been successfully investing his own ideas as well as taking companies from startup to exit. Recently, he was named by INC magazine as one of the 33 entrepreneurs to watch in 2016.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich
• What CEO do you follow? – Steve Jobs
• Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
• 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? –“Wisdom and experience beats, no matter how [many] great talents you have”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:11 – Nathan introduces Manny to the show
• 01:51 – Manny’s first company was an investment property
  • 02:10 – It was a 6-figure transaction
  • 02:21 – Manny decided that he wanted to go from 1 investment to 10
• 02:39 – One of Manny’s most notable investments is TaskRabbit
• 02:58 – Manny is the founder of SF Angels which has 32 members
  • 03:08 – The deal flow comes from others
• 03:30 – The funds for an Angel round is $250K per year
• 03:46 – As an Angel, you’re looking for the deal flow
• 04:46 – One of the members of SF Angels is an early investor of TaskRabbit and SF Angels was invited
• 05:00 – Angels can invest as an individual or as a group
• 05:32 – Everyone has different preferences
• 06:31 – Some of the investors in SF Angels are successful enough
• 07:01 – The potential of investing in SF Angels is different from real estate
• 07:11 – If you’re investing in something that is really working well, results are astronomical
• 07:47 – Manny suggests to invest only what you can afford to lose
• 07:56 – Everyone has different financial workflow and abilities
• 08:31 – Manny has put in greater than normal in angel investing
  • 08:49 – Normal is around 2-5%
• 09:19 – DreamFunded allows everyday Americans to invest as small as $1 into a company
• 09:35 – DreamFunded is the first platform in Silicon Valley to receive the approval to allow non-accredited investors to invest, so they’re accepting accredited investors and ordinary people
• 10:03 – Manny has been on the screening community of TiE Angels
• 10:11 – Manny is good at doing his due-diligence
• 10:29 – DreamFunded applied as a registered funding portal
• 11:15 – Manny has personally vetted on the deals on DreamFunded
• 12:06 – DreamFunded has a legal disclosure where investors can see the minimum amount they have to close to in order to close the transaction
  • 12:33 – The information is not readily available on the website
  • 13:02 – Investors will get an email telling them the closing dates
• 13:23 – DreamFunded gets 5% upon closing and the 2%the company is offering
• 13:50 – There are over 30 companies that have closed deals in DreamFunded
  • 13:56 – Over $35M total funds raised
• 14:07 – The non-accredited investor is still new
• 14:16 – DreamFunded has not released their total funds raised from non-accredited
• 14:36 – The first approval for non-accredited was received by DreamFunded in July 2016
• 14:54 – DreamFunded was launched fall 2014
• 15:01 – Average team size is 10
• 15:16 – DreamFunded’s model changes overtime
• 16:02 – A company can raise its target and at the same time, receive an investment from a big company
• 17:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Invest only on what you afford to lose.
2. Investing in a company that is already working is smart, but venturing into other investment streams requires your due diligence.
3. Listen to your mentors, they are mentors for a reason.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Vinay Patankar. He’s the CEO of Process Street, the simplest way to manage your teams’ recurring processes and workflows. Vinay sets up new clients, onboard employees and manages content publishing with his tool. He also co-host the podcast Business Systems Explored where he deep dives into business systems with industry experts.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk, Zach Nelson and Marc Benioff
• Favorite online tool? — io
• 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? – “That you can make money on the internet”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:50 – Nathan introduces Vinay to the show
• 01:28 – Process Street is a tool that helps companies build and manage their workflows and processes
• 01:34 – Process Street is a SaaS product, charging on a monthly or yearly subscription based on the number of users one has
• 01:44 – The vision is to make workflows easy
• 02:28 – Process Street is from an intuitive perspective
• 02:53 – Average customer pay
• 03:42 – Process Street has options for pricing and incentives for annual contracts
• 04:04 – Process Street was launched in 2013 as a side project
• 04:10 – Seed round was raised a year and a half ago
• 04:20 – Team size is 21
• 04:30 – Total raised was $1.3M
• 04:47 – Process Street went through Angel Cloud
• 05:10 – Nathan thinks that the one who will win the space is the one who is better at distribution
• 05:42 – Distribution is the key in finding a scalable sales process and getting the pricing right
• 05:57 – The space is very fragmented
• 06:34 – Vinay thinks they don’t need to beat the competition, they just need to grab enough volume of shares
• 06:52 – Process Street focuses on SEO
  • 07:04 – They measure their rank from targeted keywords
• 07:28 – Process Street has a marketing team that helps with distribution
  • 08:13 – SEO is cost-effective
• 08:35 – CAC from the SEO efforts
• 09:06 – MRPU
• 09:17 – Process Street doesn’t spend in other marketing channels
• 09:26 – Process Street invests in sales deeper into their funnels
• 10:00 – Expansion rate varies depending on the size of the customer
• 10:28 – Process Street has a healthy expansion revenue
• 11:26 – 15 of the team are focused on marketing
• 11:35 – Process Street is still working on their headcount expenses
• 11:56 – Process Street will adjust and optimize pricing
• 12:29 – Average number of customers
• 12:41 – MRR
• 13:03 – Process Street’s goal is to raise an A round at the first or second quarter of 2018
• 13:20 – Target MRR by the end of 2017
• 13:35 – Process Street has no paid acquisition
• 14:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. The one that will scale in the project management space is the one that is better at distribution.
2. You don’t always need to beat your competitors, just gain your shares and increase your volume.
3. There is real money that can be made on the internet.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Scott Clark. He’s the co-founder and CEO of SigOpt, a Y-Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz backed, optimization as a service startup. Scott has been applying after-learning technologies in industry and academia for years. He holds a PhD for applied mathematics and an MS in computer science from Cornell University and a BS degree in mathematics, physics and computational physics from Oregon State University. He was chosen as one of Forbes' 30 under 30 in 2016.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz and Phil Knight 
• Favorite online tool? — Gmail and 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? – Scott would tell himself that it doesn’t get easier, so set up habits and processes to make things sustainable when you have the time and ability to do it because that will definitely help once things ramp up

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:44 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show
• 01:25 – SigOpt is optimization as a service
• 01:27 – SigOpt helps companies build different, complex AI and machine learning pipelines
• 01:41 – SigOpt is a SaaS model and the subscription is based on the number of models per month
• 01:53 – Pricing starts at $2500 a month and enterprise starts at $10K a month
• 02:13 – Average monthly RPU
• 02:33 – SigOpt usually engages at the executive level
• 02:38 – People wanted to use AI for their businesses but couldn’t find the right person to do the work so they go with SigOpt
• 03:23 – One of SigOpt’s client is Prudential
• • 03:31 – Insurance companies are augmenting their traditional methods to the new data that is being collected
  • 03:48 – As their data increases, the need for the best possible performance increases
• 04:26 – What SigOpt does is different from the traditional machine learning as a service companies
• 04:41 – Scott shares a specific example of how SigOpt works with credit card companies
• • 04:44 – Fraud detection has been around for decades
  • 05:28 – SigOpt fine tunes different knobs and levers in the configuration parameters that makes the machine model work
• 06:15 – SigOpt focuses on black box optimization
• 07:45 – SigOpt relies on the domain expertise of the person at the specific firm to build a deep learning model
• 08:31 – SigOpt applies an ensemble of global optimization techniques to the problem so they can efficiently configure the system
• 09:20 – SigOpt suggests different curvatures
• 09:58 – SigOpt has raised $8.8M to date
• 10:30 – SigOpt never sees the underlying data
• 11:11 – The entire system is designed to be hands-off
• 11:43 – SigOpt was launched end of 2013
• 11:51 – Number of paying customers is around a dozen
• 12:18 – Average MRR
• 12:25 – SigOpt prefer annual deals
• 12:54 – No churn yet
• 13:14 – Team size is 13
• 13:35 – The capital raised was spent on the team and the enterprise sales efforts
• 13:54 – 3-4 of the team are in sales
• 14:05 – CAC
• 14:22 – They sometimes visit their customers
• 14:55 – Investors like to make big bets on the new technologies
• 15:33 – The goal for the series A money
• 16:33 – Average expenses
• 17:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• The need for AI and machine-learning is growing fast and there’s not enough people who are qualified to develop these products.
• The headcount can eat up most of a company’s expenses—especially in the technology industry.
• Optimization services make a business more efficient leading to a less to none churn rate.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Eric Dolan. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Neutun. He has 5 years of startup experience and business management experience. He also has data science experience with a focus on product development and management. In 2014, his team received an award for Best Smartwatch App in the Hack the North Competition in Canada. Recently, Eric was named INC’s 30 under 30, a list that recognizes the best young CEOs in America. He received his bachelor in business administration from University of Western Ontario and his post graduate specialization certificate from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, New York University School of Business and John Hopkins University.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? –  Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Mixmax
• 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? – “Go more towards your business and tech side, that’s where you’re going to make more money”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:50 – Nathan introduces Eric to the show
• 01:42 – Eric is a Canadian and has been in US for 1.5 years
• 02:11 – Eric is currently in Canada during the interview
• 02:35 – Neutun is a software that makes it easier for patients to keep track of chronic diseases
• 02:44 – Eric’s mom has epilepsy and it was difficult for them to manage the seizures and medications
• 03:06 – Neutun keeps track of the seizures and manages the medications on time
• 03:28 – Neutun is device-agnostic
• • 03:37 – It allows users to use their existing smartphone to track
• 03:45 – Neutun makes money through lead generation
• 04:17 – Eric is looking at a million dollar runway for 2017
• 05:09 – Neutun’s revenue is predictable for a SaaS business
• 05:56 – Neutun’s initial model was a lead generator for pharmaceutical companies
• 06:02 – In the long term, Eric wanted Neutun to transition to a market-intelligence company
• 06:14 – Neutun wanted to address all chronic diseases
• 06:30 – Neutun has 10K organic users
• 07:15 – Neutun was launched late 2016
• 07:47 – People find Neutun mainly from word-of-mouth
• 08:18 – There are also doctors who are recommending Neutun
• 08:38 – Neutun makes money through scripts or prescriptions
• 09:08 – Average amount per script
• 10:23 – Neutun tries to benefit the user as much as possible
• 10:46 – Neutun also suggests sponsored medication
• 11:06 – Average medication expenses of a patient
• 11:42 – Neutun is almost similar with tracking steps
• 11:53 – Through Neutun’s algorithms and AI, it can detect a seizure
• • 12:11 – Then the recording will start
  • 12:44 – Tracking the seizure is important for doctors
• 12:58 – With Neutun’s data, doctors can prescribe more accurate medications
• 14:10 – The only way to prevent seizures is to do what doctors tell you to do and take the medications
• 14:37 – Neutun was initially bootstrapped
• 14:56 – Neutun has raised a million on a kiss convertible note
• 15:33 – Team size is 7
• 16:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• If patients can track their seizures accurately, doctors can prescribe a more appropriate prescription.
• The advancement in technology is benefitting the health industry in many ways.
• Go where you can earn well.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Paul Tyma. He’s the founder and creator of a tool called Mailinator which is an email system. He’s also a startup veteran and has focused on 4 Silicon Valley startups including Preemptive Solutions, Manybrain Inc which owns Mailinator, Home-Account.com which was acquired by Bills.com, and Refresh Inc which was acquired by LinkedIn. He’s a frequent speaker, writer and author of one of the original books on Java called Java Primer Plus. Dr. Tyma has received his PhD from Syracuse University focused on Java/.Net performance.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Influence
• What CEO do you follow? –  Amy Errett and Bradley Kam
• Favorite online tool? — Linode
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “How to talk to girls”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:53 – Nathan introduces Paul to the show
• 01:48 – Paul started his first company during his PhD
• 01:56 – After getting his PhD, Paul worked for Google
• 02:12 – Paul is still part of the board for Preemptive Solutions
• 02:18 – Refresh had a very visible exit and is currently at LinkedIn icebreakers
• • 02:37 – The acquisition was in 2015
  • 02:45 – Acquisition price
  • 02:54 – Refresh was a consumer application
  • 03:10 – Refresh has raised $10M in total
  • 03:20 – The first round was a priced round
  • 03:53 – Refresh had 100K users
  • 04:30 – Refresh built its own identity from scratch
  • 04:40 – The technology of Refresh
• 05:40 – Home-Account.com was built prior to Refresh
• • 05:59 – Paul was a minor founder
  • 06:15 – Option pool
• 07:23 – Selling a company and staying with the company who acquired it is a cliché in Silicon Valley
• 08:19 – Mailinator was a side project Paul built 13 years ago
• • 08:30 – It was a receive only mail service
  • 08:50 – Mailinator lets you create a disposable email
• 10:17 – Mailinator had some ads which paid for the server
• 11:30 – Mailinator now makes money from affiliates
• 11:47 – Mailinator’s brand became strong
• 11:56 – There was a high usage from QA departments who tested their signups process and welcome email
• • 12:11 – They asked Mailinator for additional features
  • 12:40 – Hundreds of QA teams now are using and paying Mailinator
  • 13:16 – Mailinator also has a private paid domain
• 13:40 – Pricing is $29 for single user and $129 for a team
• 13:56 – Average RPU is $35
• 14:31 – Average MRR
• 14:57 – Paul is now turning Mailinator into a business
• 15:21 – Churn is pretty high
• 15:48 – Less paid advertising
• 16:16 – Mailinator has 45K unique users a day
• 16:44 – 25K new inboxes are set up everyday
• 16:58 – “This is not a DAU product”
• 17:21 – Mailinator has not raised money
• 18:09 – Team size is 3
• 18:30 – Gross margin
• • 18:59 – Server cost
• 19:53 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• A side project can definitely turn into something more—don’t underestimate its potential.
• An email does NOT reflect one’s identity.
• There are thousands of emails being made and sent every day—having a disposable one is almost a necessity.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Kathryn Minshew. She’s the CEO of founder of TheMuse.com, a career platform that is used by over 50M folks to find jobs, learn professional skills or advance in their careers. This platform is also used by hundreds of companies looking to grow their employer brand and to hire. Kathryn is a Harvard and Wall Street Journal contributor and she’s spoken at MIT in Harvard along with the Today’s Show. She’s been named The Smart CEO’s Future 50, INC’s 35 under 35 and a Duke alum. Kathryn worked at Rwanda and Health Access Initiative and before founding The Muse, she was previously at McKinsey.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things and Traction
• What CEO do you follow? –  Jennifer Hyman, Elon Musk and Jeremy Johnson
• Favorite online tool? — Boomerang and Pocket
• 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? – Kathryn wished she knew it was okay to be different and everything that is worth doing is hard

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:42 – Nathan introduces Kathryn to the show
• 01:35 – The Muse was founded to be the most trusted and beloved place for people to navigate their career
• 01:42 – The Muse is a marketplace with over 50M people who uses the site annually
• 02:00 – The Muse has over 600 companies which they help in hiring and employment
• 02:25 – “If you want really great people, you have to compete for them”
• 03:00 – The companies can reach more candidates through The Muse
• 03:19 – The Muse is a SaaS-enabled marketplace
• 03:31 – The Muse somehow competes with LinkedIn Recruit and Glassdoor
• 04:05 – Most companies in The Muse sign up for an annual subscription
• 04:24 – Average pricing is $20-30K but enterprise is higher than the mid-market businesses
• 04:54 – The Muse works with every business size in every industry
• • 05:04 – The businesses are categorized by team size
• 05:25 – Companies that are subscribed have access to different tools on the website
• 06:11 – The marketplace on TheMuse.com is where companies can post their profiles and job listings
• 06:21 – The Muse has also developed more products
• 06:41 – One of The Muse’s client has 50K to 150K employees
• 07:29 – The Muse also assists their Fortune 100 companies on their existing channels
• 08:12 – The Muse started targeting individual users
• 08:24 – The Muse was launched in 2011 having career related tools and content for individuals
• 08:31 – The Muse rolled out their first company profile after hitting 100K website visits per month
• 08:41 – The Muse have never had advertising on the website
• 08:58 – The Muse had their first 100K users in 6 months
• 09:05 – The initial cash for The Muse came from Kathryn’s savings
• • 09:39 – When Kathryn left McKinsey, she had $25K in savings
  • 09:50 – Then Kathryn got an offer to work at Rwanda
  • 10:28 – Kathryn was 25 at the time
• 10:56 – Kathryn has always thought that savings equate to freedom
• 11:34 – When Kathryn came back from Rwanda, she started a business similar to The Muse
• • 13:02 – Kathryn spent $20K on her first company
  • 13:23 – With only $5K left in savings, Kathryn together with her co-founder started The Muse
  • 13:45 – Kathryn tried to keep her expenses low
• 14:24 – Kathryn started The Muse because she had all the questions and wanted answers
• 14:29 – The community then gave Kathryn the answers
• 15:02 – The Muse initially had 50 articles giving career advice and providing resources
• 15:10 – The first job listing was posted after a month as a test
• 15:29 – The Muse used to get paid for the job listing but it doesn’t work that way now
• 16:17 – Kathryn shares how the conversation happened between her and the co-founders
• • 17:11 – They wanted to work and make it happen
  • 17:25 – The equity between them is almost even
• 17:54 – The Muse raised a round for $100K in 2012 and got into Y-combinator
• 18:41 – The Muse raised $10M in a series A in 2015, and $16M in a Series B: Q1 of 2017
• 19:12 – The Muse is closed to breaking even
• 19:31 – There are different ways in building a business and there’s no one perfect path
• 19:53 – The Muse has 600 active businesses
• • 20:10 – Some companies just closed or got acquired
• 21:35 – Average revenue
• 23:05 – The Famous Five
• 23:32 – Kathryn’s book The New Rules of Work

3 Key Points:

• You can start a business with minimal means and still grow it into a profitable one.
• There is no one perfect path to building a business.
• If a task or venture is hard, that’s a good sign it’s worth it.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Duy Huynh. He’s the founder of Autonomous.ai which builds smart office products to help people work smarter.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Zero to One
• What CEO do you follow? –  Stewart Butterfield
• Favorite online tool? — Google Analytics
• 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? – “Focus on and build something really helpful to people”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:50 – Nathan introduces Duy to the show
• 01:20 – Subscribe to Youtube to see Duy using a smart desk
• 01:32 – Smart desk helps work smart the whole day
• 01:48 – “We don’t care much about the money”
• 02:02 – Autonomous’ mission is how they can help companies’ work smarter
• 02:51 – Autonomous wants to reinvent every single item in an office
• 03:15 – One of Autonomous’ products is the Cardboard
• • 03:30 – It is created for people who want an affordable standing desk
  • 04:05 – It sells for $19
  • 04:17 – Cardboard is a fairly new product
• 04:42 – Autonomous was founded in 2014
• 05:10 – Autonomous has shipped around 100K units
• 05:16 – The best-seller is the SmartDesk
• • 05:38 – It can keep you healthy and stay active in office
• 05:50 – Some of Nathan’s friends have bought the Smartdesk
• 06:07 – Autonomous has raised $200K
• 06:18 – Prior to Autonomous, Duy really liked smart products
• 06:46 – Duy started Autonomous with his co-founders in a small apartment
• 08:25 – The seed money has helped Duy make the prototypes
• 09:00 – Duy has spent $100-200K on the products before raising the seed round
• 09:09 – Duy traveled to find the best suppliers
• 09:30 – Team size
• • 09:43 – 4 are working in the NY office
  • 09:46 – 10 in California and some in Vietnam and China
  • 10:10 – Total of 40 people
• 10:22 – Autonomous is currently cash flow positive
• 10:35 – Duy isn’t looking at raising another round at the moment
• 11:00 – Monthly expenses
• 11:40 – Autonomous is doing over $10M annually
• 12:18 – Most of the customers are founders
• 12:37 – Autonomous currently relies on word-of mouth
• 12:49 – Autonomous had a Kickstarter campaign
• 13:05 – Autonomous made $250K from their Kickstarter campaign
• • 13:20 – It was for a thousand units
• 13:58 – Duy wanted to maintain a fair margin in the supply chain
• 14:36 – “They pay for what they get”
• 15:00 – Competitors’ margin
• 15:19 – Gross profit
• 16:04 – The second and third best-selling products are the chair and stool, respectively
• 16:38 – Duy wouldn’t take a deal from Herman Miller at the moment
• 16:41 – Autonomous isn’t a furniture company
• 17:19 – On paper, Duy is the single founder but the co-founders have equity as well
• 18:50 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Smart products shouldn’t just offer convenience, but make your life healthy and active too.
• Price your product fairly—the value of the product should match the price.
• Create something that will be really helpful for people.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Connor Gillivan. He’s a 27-year old serial entrepreneur and published author. He started his first company out of his college dorm room and built it to sell over $20M in products on Amazon.com. After he became an expert on hiring online, he co-founded FreeeUp, an online hiring marketplace focused on connecting the top 1% freelancers with business owners. He’s the author of Free Up Your Business: 50 Secrets to Bootstrap Million Dollar Companies.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Shoe Dog
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — Jira
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished I knew to stay focused on what I do best”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:47 – Nathan introduces Connor to the show
• 01:32 – Connor makes 20% to 30% of the gross margin of a product on Amazon
• • 01:38 – Net profits end up being from 5%-15%
• 02:04 – It was 6 years ago when Connor started his business
• 02:15 – Connor earned on the first year of the business
• 02:51 – Connor has scaled up his first company
• 03:00 – The company still operates with $1-2M in revenue per year
• 03:08 – The team is composed of freelancers who are based around the world
• 03:27 – The 3 founders, including Connor, are getting their pay quarterly
• 03:40 – Connor now spends his time on his second business FreeeUp
• 03:52 – Connor’s first company is Portlight
• • 04:05 – Average price point was  $75-100
• 04:25 – FreeeUp was launched in 2015
• 04:29 – Connor and his co-founder learned about hiring freelancers through Odesk and Elance, which merged and is now called Upwork
• 04:36 – They didn’t like the process of posting job ads and going through every applicant
• 04:46 – FreeeUp has a better solution where the business owner doesn’t have to do the upfront work
• 04:58 – FreeeUp finds the top 1%  candidates for the business owners
• 05:18 – Toptal is more focused on top developers and designers
• 05:23 – FreeeUp’s freelancers are specialized on e-commerce business operations
• • 05:35 – There’s no upfront free
• 05:43 – FreeeUp has a standard markup that they charge on their clients for hourly rates
• 06:06 – The minimum charge is $2 and 20% for the higher price
• 06:55 – There are over 500 freelancers on FreeeUp
• 07:28 – FreeeUp’s system can measure the amount they’re paying their freelancers
• 07:37 – The biggest metric is the hours billed to the client
• 08:01 – Average billing per hour is $10
• 08:18 – FreeeUp is keeping $60K-80K in revenue per month
• 09:11 – FreeeUp has around 1500 signups on the platform
• 09:16 – FreeeUp bills between 300-500 people who are utilizing their workers
• 09:45 – 2000-2500 people have been billed since FreeeUp started
• 09:58 – FreeeUp has a referral program where clients can refer other people who would want to use FreeeUp and they receive $0.50 for every hour that has been billed
• 10:28 – FreeeUp is more hands on with their client
• 10:56 – Most clients start slow and when they see FreeeUp’s benefits, they’ll use it more
• 11:10 – Team size is 20-25 part-time people
• 11:51 – Connor is currently in Orlando, FL
• 12:11 – Both of Connor’s businesses are bootstrapped
• 12:21 – Total transaction volume for 2016 is a bit over a million
• 12:33 – 2016 average revenue
• 12:44 – 2017 projected transaction volume is $3-4M
• 13:20 – Connor puts his money back into his businesses to scale them
• 13:47 – Connor splits the 20% from FreeeUp
• 14:32 – Since April, FreeeUp has grown 1000%
• 15:20 – FreeeUp started winning in the ecommerce industry
• 15:58 – FreeeUp now offers digital marketing as well and try to find different areas that will interest more clients
• 17:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• There are more business owners relying on outsourcing for their needs and share with others just how beneficial outsourcing is.
• Ensure you have backup funds for your company.
• Focus on what you do best.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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

Dan Gamito. He now leads partnerships and B&D for a company called ManyChat. Formerly, he led the customer success team for ConvertKit.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – N/A
• What CEO do you follow? – Des Traynor
• Favorite online tool? — Calendly
• 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? – “Just chill out”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:47 – Nathan introduces Dan to the show
• 01:16 – ManyChat is marketing automation platform for Facebook Messenger
• 01:28 – ManyChat is a SaaS business
• 01:38 – Nathan uses ManyChat and struggles with the emotional factor
• 02:11 – Users struggle with emotion because of the automation side of ManyChat
• 02:14 – Think about how people use messenger
• 02:29 – Dan suggests in keeping your messages informal, straight to the point and write what people would find valuable in EVERY sentence
• 02:49 – People are now shifting to Messenger from email marketing
• 02:57 – Messenger is different from email
• 03:05 – Nathan shares how he struggles figuring out what messages to set
• 03:54 – How can people use ManyChat in a simple way?
• • 04:04 – Dan challenges us to look at our phones and see who we want to talk to at that moment
  • 04:17 – Build the interactions up from the bottom
  • 04:19 – The goal is to make people want to have a live chat conversation with you
• 04:51 – ManyChat can be part of your funnel
• 05:49 – ManyChat has a partnership with Sean of Soul Space Media
• • 06:04 – Sean’s wife had a case study of ManyChat on their podcast
  • 06:10 – DigitalMarketer did a case study, as well
• 07:05 – For 0-500 subscribers, pricing is $10
• 07:18 – Average customer pay
• 07:51 – ManyChat has been around for about a year and a half
• 08:38 – ManyChat has raised a seed round from 500 Startups
• 09:02 – ManyChat has raised around a million
• 09:19 – ManyChat has over 40K bots
• 10:26 – Dan on leaving ConvertKit
• • 10:33 – Dan was Nathan’s first hire at ConvertKit
  • 10:45 – Dan did everything to add value to the company, more specifically in customer success
  • 10:56 – Dan has launched his own software product prior to ConvertKit
  • 11:27 – Dan saw Nathan trying to compete with Infusionsoft
  • 11:41 – Dan was like a silent co-founder
  • 12:12 – Dan ended up not being a good fit for ConvertKit
  • 12:54 – Both Dan and Nathan are both headstrong and their communication broke down
  • 13:16 – Nathan terminated Dan on short notice
  • 13:50 – Dan was naïve and inexperienced during that time
  • 14:19 – “I walked in completely unprepared”
  • 15:01 – Nathan gave an offer to Dan
  • 15:30 – Nathan explains how equity works in startups
  • 16:16 – Dan thought he didn’t value himself very much
  • 19:10 – Dan is now almost 30
• 19:31 – Dan was pursued by ManyChat’s CEO Mike
• • 19:55 – “He believed in me”
  • 20:13 – Dan approached ManyChat with what he could add to it and the structure that he could build 
  • 20:21 – Dan knew he could do it by heart
• 20:36 – Team size is over 15
• 20:49 – Dan still has no equity
• 21:03 – Dan joined ManyChat in November of 2016
• 22:38 – “Time-boxing things and putting expectations around things is never going to work”
• 24:00 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• In new work opportunities, know your contract by heart.
• Know your worth—don’t undervalue yourself.
• Automation can sacrifice the emotional and interpersonal interaction with your customers.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• 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