SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders EP 601: TapChief Passes 75,000 Minutes Of Experts Teaching Students, $150k Raised, Team of 10 with 23 yo CEO Shashank Murali
Mar 17, 2017
20:05
Shashank Murali. He's a BITS Pilani alumni. He's a co-founder and CEO at TapChief – a platform to seek advice from industry professionals. Previously, he built and sold Edvice, an on-demand tutoring app, to HashLearn. He had a product for Hashlearn before he decided to set on a path to democratize knowledge sharing with TapChief. Apart from startups and tech, Shashank enjoys cricket, psychedelic music, and swears by Pink Floyd.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – The Everything Store
- What CEO do you follow? – Vijay Shekhar Sharma
- Favorite online tool? – Trello
- Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "To persist more"
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:25 – Nathan introduces Shashank to the show
- 02:11 – Shashank shares what TapChief is
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- 02:25 – TapChief charges from the expert's pay
- 02:36 – TapChief is similar to Clarity.fm
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- 02:44 – Shashank shares how TapChief is different from Clarity
- 03:14 – TapChief has a various of offerings
- 03:25 – TapChief is a marketplace
- 03:39 – The 2 sides of TapChief:
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- 03:45 – Experts ask for a consultation charge and TapChief gets a fee from that
- 04:30 – Experts monetize their knowledge using TapChief
- 05:33 – Average order size
- 06:14 – Shashank believes that their market would still grow
- 06:40 – TapChief was launched in a B2C play
- 07:07 – TapChief takes 20% from the experts' charges
- 07:21 – Average number of experts in the platform
- 07:31 – TapChief was launched in February 2016
- 07:48 – Average number of students who have purchased from TapChief
- 08:28 – TapChief is giving the experts options to present themselves better
- 09:05 – 1000 out of 5000 experts in TapChief had conversations already
- 09:31 – Shashank shares how they measure their growth
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- 09:58 – What Shashank primarily measures
- 10:16 – TapChief has raised $150K with a team of 10
- 10:40 – The number of hours TapChief has crossed
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- 10:50 – Average monthly minutes of interactions
- 11:25 – Shashank shares how they leverage the number of students
- 12:25 – Revenue goal for 2017
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- 12:42 – Shashank's focus is on the number of minutes of interactions
- 13:02 – Shashank's plan is to grow the number of minutes
- 14:10 – Shashank is open to B2B collaborations
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- 14:45 – Shashank explains why a business would pay for collaboration
- 15:18 – Where the majority of the revenue is coming from
- 15:46 – 2016 total revenue
- 16:35 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- We are experts in our own field and there are platforms where you can monetize your knowledge.
- You don't always have to focus on the revenue—there are metrics that should be considered.
- Be more persistent—especially in the things that are most important to you.
Resources Mentioned:
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
- Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
- Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible.
- Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books.
- The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket
- Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives