EP 562: Illumineto Raised $700k raised, Passes 100 Customers with DC Team with CEO Nick Caruso

Nick Caruso. He's the CEO and founder of Illumineto. He's the VP of Sales in Eastern US & Canada with Notable Solutions and he was there for 6 years. Before that, he was at Kofax as a federal sales manager and he also served the country in the Marine Corps as a Captain.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Built to Last
• What CEO do you follow? – Drew Houston
• Favorite online tool? — API.ai
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Nick wished he knew that starting a company was not as hard as he thought it would be and wished he'd started earlier

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:06 – Nathan introduces Nick to the show
• 01:45 – Illumineto is a SaaS company and they charge monthly
• 02:00 – Nick has been in the technology field for 20 years and in sales for 15 years
• 02:15 – Nick wasn't able to find a tool to help him close more deals
• 02:34 – Illumineto focuses on the individual sales rep and not the whole company
• 02:58 – Illumineto has a lot of sales reps from Fortune 500 companies
• 03:14 – Illumineto has been running for 6 months now
• 03:48 – Illumineto currently has a thousand of sign ups or users that represent several hundreds of logos
• 04:25 – Illumineto was founded in mid 2015
• • 04:30 – Beta in 2016
• 04:50 – Nick has sunk in $700K before starting
• 05:00 – Illumineto had an Angel round
• 05:23 – Illumineto has 3 co-founders
• • 05:32 – All of them had successful exits in different companies
  • 05:55 – There are 5 Angel investors
• 06:15 – Current team size is 4
• 06:50 – Average pay per user per month is $30
• 07:00 – Average MRR
• • 08:00 – Nick won't disclose the amount, but Illumineto is profitable
• 09:00 – Nathan explains why he asks for numbers
• 10:15 – Illumineto has more than 100 paying customers
• 10:30 – Gross customer churn
• • 10:52 – 0% churn rate on paying customers
• 11:31 – Illumineto had paid advertising
• • 12:07 – They had thousands of people coming in for the premium model
• 12:50 – Illumineto leverages their connections in LinkedIn to get their customers from IBM
• 13:11 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• It is possible for a startup to be profitable in as early as 6 months.
• Leveraging your connections can help you engage with customers and increase sales.
• Start your business as soon as you can, you'll learn as you go.

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