EP 535: He's 24 yo Founder, Now VC at Hummingbird

Dominik Vacikar. He is currently an Associate at Hummingbird VC, but was previously the co-founder of Spaceship and some other startups, including Growth at Nestpick. Listen as Dominik gives us an inside look at the workings of Spaceship and why he was chosen by Hummingbird for a very specific task.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Zero to One
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A
• Favorite online tool? — Stripe
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Dominik wishes he wasn't so hard on himself, so long as he was progressing

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:35 – Nathan introduces Dominik to the show
• 02:00 – Spaceship started as a side project when Dominik had their lead generation tool in social media
• 03:02 – Dominik shares how Spaceship works
• • 03:18 – Spaceship searches your entire target audience and provides you with prospect data
• 03:35 – Spaceship is pay-as-you go
• 03:51 – 10% of Spaceship's customers are on a monthly plan
• 04:10 – Spaceship was launched in October 2015
• 04:30 – 2015 revenue
• 04:55 – Current total revenue
• 05:12 – Dominik shares why he turned to Hummingbird
• 06:33 – Spaceship was bootstrapped
• 06:52 – Spaceship's current team size
• 07:20 – Dominik has been with Hummingbird for 2 months
• 07:30 – Hummingbird wants Dominik to build a radar for startups
• • 07:54 – The radar will track interesting companies and identify them
• 08:29 – Dominik shares how their product is different from Crunchbase
• 09:31 – Dominik shares the variables they use to identify the startups
• 10:30 – The current biggest problem is updating the data as frequently as possible
• 11:45 – Hummingbird is good at identifying the funders' DNA
• 12:08 – Hummingbird's main area of expertise
• 13:00 – Hummingbird might be interested in a Series A
• 13:21 – Hummingbird's ARR target
• 14:05 – Nathan asks Dominik about Spaceship's founder
• 14:37 – Dominik is active on Twitter and LinkedIn
• 16:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Growth comes in many forms—sometimes from within your own company or from the help of others.
• Develop your expertise by drawing knowledge from other fields and markets.
• Your progress determines your future and YOU set the pace.

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
• @chichikid – Dominik's Twitter handle
• LinkedIn – Dominik's LinkedIn account
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives