EP 524: Podium Hits $1m MRR in 12 Months, $4m Raised with 6500 SMB Customers sub 1% Churn with CEO Eric Rea

Eric Rea, co-founder and CEO of Podium.com which is based in Utah. He's a software engineer at the International Atomic Agency and before that, the founder of FineGrain. He worked at Walmart as a software engineer and he has also interned at Orange Soda.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Multipliers
• What CEO do you follow? – Phil Knight

• Favorite online tool? – Domo and Apple Notes
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep? – "I get 7"
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "You can always tell them to go to hell tomorrow" – Warren Buffet

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:46 – Nathan introduces Eric to the show
• 02:20 – Podium helps businesses generate reviews which drives purchase decisions
• 02:30 – Podium charges $299 a month per location
• 02:48 – Podium is a SaaS business
• 02:58 – Average customer pays $499
• 03:20 – Podium was launched in 2013
• • 03:25 – Eric started Podium because of his dad's business
• 04:01 – Team size
• • 04:44 – All employees are working full-time
  • 04:50 – Team is based in Utah
• 05:35 – Podium raised $4M in total
• • 05:50 – First seed round was in 2014 and $500K was raised
  • 05:57 – Raised $3.5M in December of 2015
• 06:36 – Eric has given up 20% of the business for the seed round
• 07:38 – Podium has 25000 customers per location
• 08:13 – Podium has $1M in MRR
• 08:45 – Podium's gross monthly customer churn is around 1%
• • 09:10 – Net churn is negative 2% monthly
• 09:50 – Average CAC
• 10:12 – Average LTV is $12K
• 11:00 – 2015 ARR is $1.8M
• 11:30 – 2016 ARR is around $11M
• 11:41 – Goal for 2017 ARR is $25M
• 12:55 – Connect with Eric through his website and Twitter
• 15:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• It's important to have some capital in case you make mistakes – with no capital, just 1 mistake will sink you.
• Find a solution to the simplest problems to streamline your business processes.
• The SMB market will continually grow, creating more opportunities for startups.

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
• @EricWilliamRea – Eric's Twitter handle
• Podium.com – Eric's business website
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives