699: The Fired ConvertKit Co-Founder You've Never Heard Of, Father Made Me Feel "Not Worth Enough"

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