EP 513: $50M Raised, Helping 50k Customers Get Accurate Contact Data with FullContact CEO Bart Lorang

Bart Lorang, a proven entrepreneur executive and manager in the global technology industry. He's very active in the startup community as an angel investor, strategic advisor, and speaker at many industry events. In fact, he supports entrepreneurs in his co-founder position and is managing director at V1.vc, a $5 million dollar, seed-stage fund dedicated to help crazy entrepreneurs change the world. More importantly, he's an entrepreneur himself. He's currently running FullContact which is responsible for communicating its vision and strategy. He's a visionary technologist with extensive experience conceiving, designing, building, marketing, and selling enterprise software solutions on a global scale.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Warren Buffett

• Favorite online tool? – DocuSign
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep? – No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – It's about how you make people feel.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:40 – Nathan introduces Bart to the show
• 02:35 – FullContact is a universal contact management platform
• 02:50 – FullContact is a SaaS business and payment is based on the number of contacts
• • 03:08 – Developers can pay for a developer platform
• 03:17 – The developer access is Bart's largest revenue stream
• 04:00 – FullContact is continually building new features
• 04:14 – FullContact also offers KPI services
• 04:37 – HubSpot uses FullContact
• 05:10 – FullContact was founded in 2010
• 05:30 – There is no application yet that is focused on contacts
• 06:01 – First year revenue
• 06:28 – Bart had a couple of businesses before FullContact
• 06:56 – FullContact was funded through raised capital
• 07:17 – How can someone look at that market and tell that it is too big to bootstrap?
• • 07:53 – "It's all about the size of your vision and how fast you want to execute"
• 08:30 – FullContact has millions of customers
• • 08:55 – FullContact has above 50,000 paying customers
• 09:03 – Bart shares what's included in the free plan and paid plan
• 09:40 – Average monthly RPU
• 10:05 – Bart discusses the type of individuals using FullContact
• 11:05 – Average MRR
• 11:40 – FullContact in ARR
• 12:54 – Gross customer churn
• 13:18 – FullContact has an inside sales team helping their customers
• 13:37 – CAC
• 14:20 – Team location: they have a global presence
• 14:30 – Team size: 210-220
• 14:40 – FullContact had their Series C last August 2016
• 15:08 – How are investors in this space thinking about the SaaS valuation?
• • 15:47 – They are looking at the SaaS business' multipliers
• 16:00 – FullContact's main competitors
• 16:35 – The MDM space
• 16:49 – Connect with Bart through FullContact and his email
• 18:18 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Analyze your business well and have a goal so you know where you're going to start.
• Funding is a very important part of business.
• It's NOT about how smart you are but how you make people feel.

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
• Bart@FullContact.com – Bart's email address
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives