SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Tom Coburn. He's the cofounder and CEO of Jebbit. He left Boston College to pursue the company and is currently in the Forbes 30 under 30 list. He's also the cofounder of Enjoy Life Education, a non-profit that empowers teens to be the best versions of themselves, and SSC Ventures which invests in Boston College entrepreneurs.

Zach Benson. He's the cofounder and CEO of Assistagram and he's one of the standouts in the world of online entrepreneurship, especially, influencer marketing. He's a TedX speaker, social media trainer for international brands like The 4 Seasons, Ritz Carlton and Vice Roy. He was a past participant on "So You Think You Can Dance". He doesn't only manages his own Instagram network of millions, he's also guiding other influencers and Fortune 500 companies through Assistagram to social media success.

Nadim Hossain. He has over 17 years of experience in building marketing and selling cloud applications. Prior to founding BrightFunnel, he was VP of marketing at Power Reviews, paving the way for a $170M exit. He was also the marketing executive at Salesforce from 2007-2010. He has a BA from Cornell and an MBS from Stanford.

Greg Harris. His company is Quantum Workplace and he started with a vision to create tangible measures for leadership strength inside of companies. His company surveyed tools for measuring employee engagement and recognizing the best places to work. It's grown into an engagement platform that talent-minded companies use now to accelerate performance.

Harpreet Singh. He's one of the cofounders of Kvantum. He's in a lot of positions based in data science including big companies like Target and Sapient.

Garrett Moon. He's the CEO and founder of CoSchedule, the web's most popular marketing calendar and the fastest growing startup in North Dakota. As a thought leader, Garrett has been blogging and speaking about content marketing, social media marketing, and startup businesses for more than six years.

Max Percherskyi. He's a passionate SaaS entrepreneur whose mission is to connect professional SaaS companies and startup hubs to help them form long-term relationships and good, win-win partnerships. Currently, he's connecting angel institutional investors, cofounders, exceptional talent and partner companies across three different countries to make the PromoRepublic ventures succeed at a global scale. Prior to cofounding PromoRepublic, he worked in marketing agencies for ten years and was responsible for business development, digital marketing and sales. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Top 101 Growth Hacks What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin Favorite online tool? — WorkFlowly How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Max would tell himself that not all people will love him Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:37 – Nathan introduces Max to the show 02:22 – PromoRepublic is a social media content automation tool that helps SMBs create their social media presence 02:38 – PromoRepublic is a SaaS business 02:45 – Pricing starts at $15 a month for an annual package 02:55 – ACV is $20 a month 03:00 – Max was in Episode 403 03:27 – PromoRepublic will soon have a $100 plan 03:53 – CAC is now $150-170 04:18 – Paid channels spend varies every month 04:33 – Affiliate network is the one that is working now 05:28 – PromoRepublic has raised $1.85M in total 06:12 – Team size is 22 06:26 – PromoRepublic has 3 offices 07:30 – PromoRepublic hired a sales guy to sell their high value plans 08:29 – There's commission for every plan sold 10:00 – PromoRepublic has around 5,500 customers, 3000 are from AppSumo 10:32 – Most of the customers from AppSumo just bought the product; some are active, some aren't 12:33 – Last month's MRR was $20K 12;54 – Logo churn is around 5.8% 14:07 – 2016 revenue was €110K 14:33 – 2017 total revenue will be around $300K 15:08 – PromoRepublic is going to receive a grant and will take an additional loan 17:25 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Your team size must align with your profitability. Paid advertising takes time—test to see which ads will work the best. Use your capital wisely. 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

Sravish Sridhar. He's the VP and General Manager at Kinvey Progress and was previously the CEO and founder of Kinvey before it was acquired by Progress. He's also an angel investor in multiple startups with successful exits. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – Matt Barbey Favorite online tool? — If This Then That How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I would never become a movie actor" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:50 – Nathan introduces Sravish to the show 02:18 – Kinvey's acquisition closed on June 1st and was announced on June 28th 02:30 – Kinvey does "backend as a service", which is a term that they coined 02:58 – Schneider Electric has a lot of apps that are used to interact with its hardware, employees and customers 03:13 – Kinvey is in charge of the backend features that an app needs 03:44 – "We make every frontend developer become a backend developer" 03:55 – Developers don't have to learn the backend processes, they can simply drag and drop 04:07 – Kinvey has three types of customers: 04:10 – First, those who are building apps as a hobby or trial and pay nothing up to $200 a month 04:22 – Second, business edition customers who pay an average of $24K a year per application 04:44 – Lastly, enterprise edition customers who pay around 6 figures a year 05:03 – ACV is around $80K to $90K 05:24 – When Sravish came up with the idea for Kinvey, he knew it should be a venture-backed company 05:46 – Sravish funded the initial capital of $150K 06:06 – Kinvey has raised over $15M before the acquisition 06:30 – It took Kinvey 15 month to launch their product 06:43 – In the second year, they started to build their revenue 07:10 – In 2013, they were doing high 6-figures in revenue 07:24 – They broke their million dollar mark in 2014 07:54 – Sravish invested in startups to learn strategies and build his financial portfolio 09:20 – Sravish has three things he looks for when investing in a startup: 09:22 – The team's relationship with each other 09:39 – The space of the startup 09:55 – The potential he has to help the startup to grow 10:40 – Kinvey has over 50 enterprise customers 12:54 – The acquisition of Kinvey by Progress was for $50M 13:13 – Sravish shares how the board and himself decided on the acquisition 14:40 – Sravish's discussion with Progress 15:43 – Team size prior to acquisition was 44 and everyone stayed after the acquisition, current team size is 65-70 16:00 – Kinvey had multiple offers and it took them 2-3 months to decide 16:40 – Progress matched the best offer 17:00 – Kinvey and Progress are both based in Boston 17:58 – Kinvey had direct sales models and enterprise sales reps 18:10 – CAC is $95K to $100K and LTV is $2.1-2.2M 18:33 – Payback period is 13-14 months 19:04 – Kinvey has 98% retention rate 20:40 – Progress has been thoughtful with their employees' restricted stock units (RSU) 23:40 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Choose the deal that will be a great fit for the long-term. Always consider the company and, most importantly, your team's future when making decisions. Investing isn't just about the financial gains, it's about your ability to believe in and help a company grow and succeed. 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