SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 799: SaaS: How He Grew To $200k MRR, $2m Raised at $7m Cap
Oct 1, 2017
19:28
Olin Hyde. He's the co-founder and CEO of LeadCrunch.ai, an intelligent demand generation platform that accelerates sales with high precision analytics and content delivery. In less than 10 months since they've launched, the company has grown to more than 90 customers and are getting 300% higher sales conversion rates.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Humans
- What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
- Favorite online tool? — Salesloft
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Olin hoped he would have known how important linear algebra is
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:38 – Nathan introduces Olin to the show
- 02:09 – The last exit of Olin was Auto-Semantics that analyzed social media feeds
- 02:22 – It was sold to ai-one
- 02:28 – Olin spent 2 years with ai-one
- 02:38 – LeadCrunch started with healthcare
- 02:51 – LeadCrunch has beat IBM Watson
- 02:59 – LeadCrunch is using their targeting technology to help mid-market companies find their next best customers
- 03:17 – Olin shares why they're targeting SMBs
- 03:34 – Olin likes to work with people who help others make their dreams come true
- 03:43 – LeadCrunch's first product was Private Alpha with 1,070 small businesses signups
- 03:56 – LeadCrunch stays away from the enterprise because they like the idea of democratizing the power of AI to enable everyone to achieve their dreams
- 04:08 – LeadCrunch's business model is a combination of subscription and on-demand
- 04:42 – It is still early for LeadCrunch's SaaS model, so most of their revenue is from on-demand
- 04:53 – With on-demand, LeadCrunch got 130 rebooks from customers in just 90 days
- 05:17 – Average customer pay is $20K
- 06:05 – Olin won't call their revenue ARR, but on-demand
- 06:40 – LeadCrunch has a customer success function
- 06:50 – LeadCrunch was launched in August 2015
- 07:27 – Trailing 12 months revenue is around a million dollars
- 07:36 – Monthly revenue is around $200K in bookings
- 07:46 – The product was launched in September 2016
- 08:04 – LeadCrunch was initially bootstrapped and has raised about $2M in capital
- 08:36 – LeadCrunch has kept the cap of $6M
- 09:33 – LeadCrunch has around 90 lifetime customers and 55 on their current product line
- 10:50 – Olin shares the weirdest thing he did to get a customer
- 11:44 – Gross margin
- 12:03 – LeadCrunch optimizes for growth and not for margins yet
- 12:48 – Customer payback period is 2.1 months
- 13:15 – On-demand customers pay as LeadCrunch delivers
- 13:36 – LeadCrunch's CAC decreases as they get more customers
- 13:57 – Paid spent is around $6500
- 14:41 – LeadCrunch does A/B tests to discover new funnels
- 14:58 – LeadCrunch is influenced by Traction of Justin Mires
- 15:18 – LeadCrunch is conservative and capital efficient
- 15:35 – Team size is 15
- 16:04 – "We could get cash flow positive in 60 days if we want to"
- 17:40 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Work with people that you believe in the most.
- Revenue models vary depending on which model works best for the company.
- Cash flow positive is great, but you shouldn't have to sacrifice your people to reach it.
Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives