SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 782: Crypto: With $50k MRR, He's Buildling Crypto Database To Track Accuracy
Sep 14, 2017
19:14
Bruce Pon. He's the CEO and founder of BigchainDB and he's been playing in the crypto world.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Mungerisms by Charlie Munger
- What CEO do you follow? – Vitalik Buterin
- Favorite online tool? — Streak CRM
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— At least 8
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Buy bitcoin earlier"
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 02:03 – Nathan introduces Bruce to the show
- 02:44 – Bruce built BigchainDB to manage data
- 02:55 – Bitcoin is a payments cryptocurrency in a global network while Ethereum is a business logic in a global network
- 03:11 – People pass trusted data over the blockchain network for enterprise use cases and consumer applications
- 03:32 – From the business logic, you can exchange bitcoin and other types of value
- 03:42 – The problem with the use case on top of the bitcoin blockchain 3 years ago was it didn't scale
- 04:04 – Bruce was building io which is putting intellectual property into the blockchain
- 04:25 – You can sell your intellectual property over the network
- 04:48 – It was built over the bitcoin blockchain and got difficult to develop over time
- 04:54 – Ascribe.io needed meta data about the creative work, author and licensing model
- 05:04 - Ascribe.io isn't just built for bitcoin—it's like trying to using a Lamborghini to move your house
- 05:49 - Ascribe.io had AI, scientists and other PhDs who told them that building Ascribe.io wasn't worth it
- 06:09 – Team size is around 20 and is based in Berlin
- 06:24 – BigchainDB has raised $6M in price round series A
- 06:41 – Open source software is traditionally a dual license model
- 06:53 – BigchainDB is looking at an enterprise model
- 07:00 – They're looking into the ICO craze too
- 07:21 – BigchainDB is like a SaaS model
- 07:27 – They're looking at per transaction charges but it may not work for the long-run
- 07:54 – BigchainDB just released their 1.0
- 08:08 – They give premium support
- 08:27 – Bruce is looking into 5-6 figures per month for their starting price point
- 08:58 – One-third of the work in businesses happen in the back office
- 09:13 – Blockchain allows you to have a single source of truth
- 09:29 – BigchainDB unlocks the opportunity for different organizations to have a single source of truth
- 09:48 – When you can make IoT, AI and blockchain tools, you can track the product from the inception until it gets to the customer's hand
- 10:01 – The customer will now understand how the product is made
- 10:03 – The regulators will know that the product followed the guideline
- 10:07 – The company will know if there's a recall or quality issue and they will know where exactly the product is
- 10:40 – BigchainDB can work with different kinds of products
- 11:20 – Blockchain is definitely auditable
- 11:30 – Before the product comes to you, it will be signed by entities with a cryptographic key in every process
- 12:00 – With AI, you can also see who is in the very process of making your product
- 12:34 – The key metric Bruce is measuring is the number of people that are building upon them
- 12:56 – Target MRR is $100K by end of 2017
- 13:03 – BigchainDB is currently at $50-60K MRR
- 13:19 – Number of customers
- 13:44 – There are 300 developers in BigchainDB's channels and there are 5K clones of their software
- 13:54 – BigchainDB has 1K monthly downloads of their whitepaper
- 14:45 – The ratio of developer to clone is the 300 developers to 5K clone requests
- 16:05 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Data that is passed over the blockchain network can be used for enterprise use case and consumer applications.
- The beauty of blockchain is that it is auditable and has accountability capabilities.
- Some tools that are built over the bitcoin network won't always work; even if you have the best people in the industry.
Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives