SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 682: Why Tech Companies Are Opening Salt Lake City Offices With CloudCherry CEO Vinod Muthukrishnan
Jun 6, 2017
20:14
Vinod Muthukrishnan. He was first a sailor then a strategist and now an entrepreneur. He was fortunate and has worked in diverse and challenging environments starting with the Merchant Navy, a high energy mobile first financial technology startup where he had a strategy and global sales. Now, he currently serves as co-founder and CEO of a company called Cloudcherry, a tech startup based in Pleasanton, California with offices in Singapore, India and a new location Vinod will show.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – High Output Management
- What CEO do you follow? – Nick Mehta
- Favorite online tool? — Trello
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4.5-5
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Vinod wished he knew programming back then
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 00:46 – Nathan introduces to the show
- 01:22 – The new location is in Salt Lake City
- 01:36 – Cloudcherry has 74 people
- 01:40 – They are based in India and Singapore
- 01:47 – Cloudcherry has raised $7M with a total of around $9.5M raised
- 01:56 – Cloudcherry is a custom platform for millennials
- 02:13 – Millennials have complicated journeys with the brands they work with
- 02:21 – In 2017, if you want to understand your customers, you have to be in all the platforms
- 02:47 – Cloudcherry is a feedback platform on speed across all platforms
- 03:07 – Cloudcherry has an inspirational wall in their office where employees can post things they find inspirational
- 03:18 – "You need to walk into your office every day and be inspired on what you believe in"
- 03:40 – Whoever visits their office can put their names on the wall
- 03:50 – Cloudcherry has the 6 pillars of their culture: freedom, ownership, smart work, passion and some more
- 04:03 – Vinod introduced Nathan to some of the people in the office
- 04:40 – The office is 2000 sq. ft.
- 05:05 – Vinod shows Nathan the view from the office
- 05:27 – Cloudcherry was launched in 2014
- 05:34 – Cloudcherry is a SaaS business
- 05:48 – Cloudcherry had their last fund raising September 2016
- 05:58 – Cloudcherry has close to 100 customers
- 06:05 – "The massive push now is to grow the business in North America"
- 06:37 – The team in America targets mid-market and enterprise businesses
- 06:47 – Average customer pay per month is a couple of hundred from SMBs
- 06:57 – Mid-market and enterprise average a thousand dollars a month
- 07:23 – Cloudcherry has a complex mix of customers
- 07:58 – They are doing more than 88K per month
- 08:13 – Cloudcherry has almost zero customer churn with SMB at the moment
- 08:35 – Cloudcherry's enterprise churn is higher than SMBs
- 09:00 – Most of Cloudcherry's customers are with them for 18-20 months
- 09:33 – Cloudcherry ran out of the market in 2015
- 09:48 – SMBs are customers whose ARPU is south of 20K
- 10:18 – Cloudcherry currently has 35% of mid-market and enterprise customers and 65% of SMBs
- 11:10 – Cloudcherry 's time to recover CAC is around 12 months
- 12:09 – Average CAC is $7K-12K
- 12:25 – LTV is around $36K
- 12:35 – "Some amount of the optimism needs to be weighed with intellectual honesty"
- 12:45 – The greatest predictor of LTV for Vinod is the churn
- 13:10 – Cloudcherry focuses on customer delight
- 13:22 – Cloudcherry got feedback on how delighted their customers are
- 13:45 – If a customer stays with you, it will impact your churn and LTV
- 14:11 – Cloudcherry is still burning cash at the moment
- 14:34 – "We have money to burn from growth"
- 14:47 – December 2017 goal MRR
- 15:32 – SaaS business should continuously grow in numbers
- 16:57 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Make your employees look forward to going to the office every day.
- When your customers are satisfied with your business, the numbers will just follow.
- SaaS businesses should constantly track their numbers.
Resources Mentioned:
- 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
- Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
- Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- 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
- 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