SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 834: SaaS: He Hit 5x YoY Revenue Growth in Performance Marketing Space
Nov 5, 2017
21:06
Oscar Nelson. He's the CEO of Musqot, the marketing technology and SaaS company he co-founded after spending 12 years in various marketing roles in small and large companies. Industry-wise, he's had a mixed background from consulting, media, telecommunications and enterprise software. He considers himself a business generalist more than a specialist.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
- What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin
- Favorite online tool? — DocuSign
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – It is more important to focus on your cofounder than your business idea
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:52 – Nathan introduces Oscar to the show
- 02:18 – Musqot is a marketing performance management app
- 02:24 – Musqot helps their customers increase their marketing effectiveness and efficiency, enabling their marketing ROI
- 02:44 – ACV is around $25K annually
- 02:55 – Some customers pay 6 figures
- 03:04 – Musqot was founded in 2014
- 03:16 – On their second year, Musqot launched their beta product and just a year ago, they launched their real product
- 03:40 – Musqot was bootstrapped. They were able to sustain their first year without revenue through personal financial support and savings
- 04:05 – Oscar and his co-founder have initially put in around $100K for the company
- 04:47 – First year revenue
- 05:37 – 2017 target is $3M in ARR runway
- 06:12 – Musqot just recently passed their $100K MRR mark
- 07:06 – Musqot currently has 60 customers
- 08:14 – Musqot's expansion is due to their support and onboarding efforts
- 09:13 – Team size is 25 with 20 full-time employees and 5 consultants
- 09:30 – 5 are in sales, 2 are in presales and onboarding, 1 in marketing and the rest are in development
- 10:45 – Musqot gets customers from different sources
- 11:00 – Musqot is on the Salesforce AppExchange
- 12:14 – Full weighted CAC
- 13:31 – Payback period is roughly a year or more
- 14:10 – Paid ads spend is around $20K monthly
- 14:50 – The bigger customers are happy and tend to stay longer than the smaller customers
- 15:32 – Logo churn is around 2% and revenue churn is negative
- 16:27 – Musqot has raised $1.2M
- 16:44 – Musqot's HQ is in Stockholm, Sweden and Bangalore, India
- 17:40 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- A startup can thrive through personal savings and financial support if need be.
- Share your business ideas with your business partner and make sure that your thoughts and visions for the company are aligned.
- Plan carefully where you will place your paid ads.
Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- 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
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- 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