EP 553: Prospectify Raises $1M at $4M Post Money Valuation, $25k MRR, for Better Prospecting with CEO Matt Ekstrom

Matt Ekstrom. He's one of the founders of Prospectify and formerly co-founded HiringSolved. He's in-charge of all things revenue for Prospectify, which is a promising sales and intelligence platform.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Sales Acceleration
• What CEO do you follow? – Gary Vaynerchuk
• Favorite online tool? — Google Search and HubSpot
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I would have studied more about startups and being an entrepreneur"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:30 – Nathan introduces Matt to the show
• 01:55 – Prospectify is a SaaS model
• 02:14 – Prospectify's long term goal is to be able to scale personalization from the sales standpoint
• 02:25 – Prospectify has monthly subscriptions
• 02:45 – Prospectify's pricing:
• • 03:25 – The prices from the website are $40, $190, $490, and $975
• 03:33 – Average customer pay per month is $352
• 03:50 – Prospectify was launched in February 2016, and was in beta in January 2016
• 04:16 – Current number of customers is around 100
• 04:46 – MRR is over $20K
• 05:09 – Prospectify is based in Phoenix
• 05:20 – Prospectify just closed their first month
• • 05:25 – It was in Angels and a million dollar round
• 05:45 – Matt shares why he decided on an equity round and not a convertible note
• 06:31 – Matt uses the trajectory to argue for higher valuation
• 07:29 – Prospectify is about to launch their company search which includes 12 million companies starting in the USA
• 08:10 – The people Prospectify has targeted
• 08:18 – Prospectify's customer base is diverse
• 08:45 – Annual customer churn
• 09:45 – Matt shares what he will do to keep customers paying and NOT cancel after receiving all the data
• 11:10 – Prospectify's top data sources
• • 11:22 – Matt shares what they used to validate the concept of Prospectify
• 12:18 – Fixed cost per month for crawling
• 13:11 – Matt shares where to get credits
• 14:00 – Customer LTV
• 14:34 – Current team size
• • 14:45 – Headcount expenses
• 16:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Keep people up to date—that way, they will keep on paying.
• Decide whether an equity round or convertible note will be most advantageous for you.
• Discern what is the right track and try to stay on it.

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
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives