SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 726: This $500k/mo+ Entrepreneur Says Key is Minimizing Expenses
Jul 20, 2017
23:20
Heather Marie. She's the founder and CEO of Shoppable, a technology company that helps media companies, brands and retailers bring the checkout experience to anywhere a consumer discovers or engages with their products. While with Shoppable, she won the 2013 Women in Digital Award from L'Oreal, was named 1 of the 10 Most Powerful Millennials in Manhattan by Gotham Magazine, and 1 of the 11 Tech Gurus Changing the Luxury Game by Refinery29. The company was a 2014 Webby Award Honoree for Online Shopping, a 2016 Webby Honoree for Technical Achievement and named one of the 100 Brilliant Companies by Entrepreneur Magazine.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Never Eat Alone
- What CEO do you follow? – Jennifer Hyman
- Favorite online tool? — Boomerang for Gmail
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Just how long everything takes"
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:07 – Nathan introduces Heather to the show
- 02:07 – Shoppable creates a technology that helps people buy what they see online
- 02:37 – People see products in every place
- 02:50 – Shoppable created a patent pending technology that provides different locations to shop that is outside the traditional retail shop
- 03:20 – Heather started the company in 2011
- 03:36 – Heather pitched Shoppable to a number of different retailers
- 03:49 – Shoppable launched a technology with The Wall Street Journal
- 04:00 – The Wall Street Journal branding was able to bring in a bunch of retailers and advertisers
- 04:40 – Shoppable has grown to under 30M products across the whole platform
- 05:28 – Shoppable brings the technology to where the consumers already are
- 05:40 – com uses Shoppable on their website and customers can buy directly from the website
- 07:24 – Shoppable brings the technology to different types of companies
- 07:40 – Shoppable is also integrated with publications such as WSJ, Condé Nast and others
- 07:58 – Shoppable is a SaaS company and charges annually for licenses
- 08:20 – Average customer pay is 5 figures
- 09:11 – Prior to Shoppable, Heather was at post acquisition of com
- 09:26 – Heather was a founding member of Affinity Labs
- 10:21 – Heather got into Affinity right after college
- 10:39 – The exit with Monster was all cash with an additional incentive
- 10:49 – Heather made it for 2 years after the acquisition, doing research on Shoppable
- 11:45 – Heather had to make Shoppable work
- 12:01 – Heather knew that she would start her own company
- 12:21 – Heather had debt that she was able to pay off after the acquisition
- 12:55 – Heather kept a part of the money for Shoppable
- 13:40 – Heather also had to downsize her condo to keep her expenses low
- 15:13 – There are ways you can increase your buffer
- 15:33 – Heather had to change her habits
- 16:22 – Shoppable has raised $5M
- 16:33 – The last round was a year ago
- 16:43 – Heather isn't selling to Shopify
- 16:55 – Shoppable is above breaking even
- 17:24 – Team size is 20 and they are all based in New York
- 17:53 – Heather went on a business trip to NY and on her second day, she thought that Shoppable was made for NY
- 18:31 – Shoppable has around 438 merchants and 2000 brands
- 18:38 – One merchant could have hundreds of brands
- 19:15 – Average ARR
- 21:13 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- As an entrepreneur, you need to know how to manage money well.
- Building a company requires research and an action plan—especially if that company is your first and last shot at building one.
- Be aware that things in business and in life may take longer that what you're expecting.
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