SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Gavin Wheeldon. With over 15 years of experience working in technology led or enabled businesses, Gavin has a deep understanding of the impact of technology on the bottom line of an organization. He sold his last business, Applied Language Solutions, a global language technology and service business, and has used some of the earnings to set up a new company, Purple WiFi. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Who Moved My Cheese What CEO do you follow? – Jack Welch Favorite online tool? — InsightSquared 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'd rather read more of finance" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:24 – Nathan introduces Gavin to the show 02:29 – Gavin travels a lot and is frequently reliant on public WiFi—that's where the idea for Purple WiFi came from 03:02 – Gavin sold his last company for over $60M 03:20 – His last company was in the translation and interpretation industry 03:23 – They used machine learning to translate languages with incredible accuracy 03:43 – Theirs is also a human editing in between so the translation is perfect 03:59 – Gavin was 36 when he sold it 04:02 – It was completely bootstrapped 04:44 – There's no particular single owner of the space 04:54 – Fon does domestic hotspot and other traditional utility wifi 05:38 – Purple Wifi is the next generation of wifi 06:03 - Purple WiFi is SaaS business, charging annually depending on the number of wifi points 06:14 – For a single venue, the price is $13 a month 06:22 – Purple WiFi also caters to stadiums and airports 06:45 – An airport can average a hundred access points 07:10 - Purple WiFi currently has 17K installations 07:15 – It ranges from restaurants up to a whole city 07:53 – They now have around 80K access points 08:03 – Average MRR is close to a million 08:25 – Purple WiFi offers discount for bigger venues 09:00 – Sales cycle varies every hour 09:19 – A physical venue owner is usually clueless about what is happening in the venue 09:50 - Purple WiFi is channel-based and sells through partners 09:55 – Some of the partners are Telstra and Singtel and other national carriers 10:23 – Team size is over 100 10:30 – 45 are focused on sales and partnerships 10:46 – Telcos are usually built with partners 11:09 – They can build their own access points but it takes years and a huge investment 11:40 – Purple WiFi partners with half of the service providers in the USA 12:37 – Purple WiFi partners with Cisco and Ruckus for the access points 13:06 - Purple WiFi does post visit reviews which prompt the user to review the coffee shop or hotel 13:19 – There was around 500 increase in TripAdvisor reviews 13:21 – 600-700% increase in CRM generation 13:28 – The value of Purple Wifi can be seen from day 1 13:43 - Purple WiFi was launched in 2013 13:48 – First year revenue was $200K 13:59 – 2014 revenue was around $600K 14:13 - Purple WiFi consistently grows over 100% year over year 14:34 – 2017 target revenue 14:48 – Gross margin is 80% 14:59 – One of the challenges is the location and the huge number of data 15:35 - Purple WiFi is processing around 500K data from all of their access points in a day 15:50 – Purple WiFi has net negative churn and gross customer churn is 12% yearly 17:00 – LTV is around 10 years 17:10 – Most enterprise customers are signing 3-5 years with an upfront payment 17:33 - Purple WiFi has raised $13M 17:51 – The costs usually go to engineering and sales 18:07 - Purple WiFi spends on event sponsorship too 18:24 – They track the events prior to sponsorship 18:50 – Payback period is around 12 months 19:25 – Average CAC 19:39 - Purple WiFi is headquartered in Manchester, UK and US office is in Austin, Texas 20:26 - Purple WiFi is tremendously valuable for conferences 23:04 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Public wifi solutions are becoming more and more of a necessity especially for establishments and events. Having your own wifi solution allows you to gather data more than you could otherwise. Study your business before starting your business. 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 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

Tomer Levy. He's the CEO and co-founder of Logz.io. Before co-founding Logz, he co-founded and was the CTO of Intigua, a company that innovated locker-like containers designed for large enterprises. Prior to Intigua, Tomer spent 6 years at Check Point, where he led its intrusion prevention system product from concept to market. He has an MBA for Tel Avi University, a BA in Computer Science, and is an enthusiastic kite surfer. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Grammarly How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Take it easy, you'll figure it out" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:20 – Nathan introduces Tomer to the show 02:06 – Logz is a logins company 02:12 – Some of their customers are Kantar Media and British Airways 02:30 – Logz solves systematic problems in web servers and databases 02:41 – Logz is a SaaS business 02:52 – Logz caters to IT operations and security team of a company 03:24 – You can subscribe to Logz' website directly and pay monthly 03:29 – Logz has 2 main cohorts 03:32 – SMBs would pay around $10-15K a year 03:41 – SMEs would usually pay annually that can grow to hundreds of thousands 03:58 – Average pay is $10K-40K in annual contract value 04:10 – Logz was launched in 2014 and the product end of 2015 04:30 – Logz has an inside sales team 04:38 – Logz offers an open source platform like ELK which is around $500K a month 04:58 – Instead of libraries, ELK will be installed in the servers and take all the data 05:12 – ELK visualizes the data and Logz offer ELK with more capabilities 05:27 – Logz is based on the open-source community 05:55 – Logz isn't the developer of the open source 06:05 – Logz built a solution on top of the open source for log management 06:30 – ELK is like google search for all of your log data 07:02 – There are also other companies who are doing open SaaS 07:10 – Pantheon for WordPress and similar with Cloudera are doing open SaaS too 07:38 – Github just recently offered Git open source as a service 08:03 – Tomer has been writing content even before the launch of the company 08:14 – Logz is number for ELK search and they contribute the most in the open source community 08:43 – Open source has to be good and easy enough to get started so it will have mass distribution 08:51 – But it has to get to a point that it is difficult to scale and make it production grade 09:04 – Logz currently has a thousand companies on board 09:17 – Some are paid customers and some are on free 09:35 – Logz has raised money but they could have built a lifestyle business 09:52 – Logz raised $24M and the last round was $15.6M in October 2016 10:07 – Team size is 70 10:54 – Logz started in October 2014 and ran their first product by February 2015 11:05 – Logz started with 5 non-paying customers after shifting to paid model 11:38 – As your company grow, people will realizes your company's value and be willing to pay for it 11:49 – Logz has 0 revenue in 2014 and 2015 revenue was around 6 figures 12:44 – Logz has already broken a million dollar runway 13:02 – Logz competes mostly with engineers setting up their own open source 13:10 – The commercial side, Logz competes with AWS or Amazon Web Services 13:45 – Gross margin 14:12 – Logz pays $1-5M to Amazon for hosting 15:20 – Minimum MRR 15:46 – Team is based in Telavi, Israel 15:59 – Logz also has a team in Boston where Tomer currently is 16:11 – Gross monthly customer churn 17:07 – "We're very much a land and expand business" 17:43 – Marketing team has 8 or 9 people and 7 sales people 18:10 – Fully weighted CAC 18:40 – Payback period 19:22 – Logz also invest in paid marketing with around $5k a month 19:50 – Logz invests massively in events this year 20:23 – Logz spends a few hundreds of dollars in sponsorships 22:17 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: When thinking about a business model, try and create on that is "land and expand". Starting as a free service is fine, but you need to make sure you're built to offer your customers more value behind the paywall. Great content coupled with great keywords builds great companies. 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 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

Derric Haynie. He's the CEO of Vulpine Interactive, a social media marketing agency that helps build contagious brand and passionate fans. Nathan met Derris at Los Angeles when they were at Sean Ellis' Growth Hacking event. Derris has an interesting story that goes from poker to social media to speaking, blogging, growth and digital marketing. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – They Ask You Answer What CEO do you follow? – Neil Patel Favorite online tool? — Queue How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8-9 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wished that I have been able to pursue business earlier and give up poker earlier" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:51 – Derric believes that his agency will grow and exist on its own 02:02 – The peak of poker for Derric was in 2009-10 when he was 24 02:21 – Derric was making mid 6 figures and working 3 hours a day doing poker 03:00 – Derric had a lot of great mentors in poker 03:19 – Those that are better than Derric are really geniuses 03:27 – Derris started to feel his personal boundaries 03:57 – Derric knows that he'll never be the grand master in poker 04:02 – The best player in poker takes all the money 04:55 – Derric didn't pay himself for the first year and a half of his agency 05:03 – It was in 2014 05:22 – Derric got funding in 2015 of a total of $150k from his poker friends 06:06 – Derric was telling himself that he's not focused on revenue but on learning and finding the opportunities 06:34 – Derric spent around $25K attending conferences and events 07:19 – Derris' wife is his co-founder and they started paying themselves just last year 07:28 – They now make $5000 a month 07:51 – Derric and his wife are trying to structure a company for growth and scalability 08:10 – Vulpine now has 2 part-time employees 08:50 – Raising a child cost Derric around $3000 a month 09:06 – Derric had a lavish life that he gave up 09:31 – Derric has sold a lot of things 10:28 – Team size is 4 10:37 – Typical customers for Vulpine are ecommerce and SaaS businesses 10:48 –They also have to be thought leaders with a willingness to create great content 11:00 – Vulpine is good at repurposing great content and content should be originally from the company 11:21 – 2016 revenue is around $70-80K 11:41 – Check agency/transparency to see their financial score sheet 11:57 – Target MRR is $100K by December 2017 12:07 – If they don't hit $50K MRR by December, they will stop the company 12:32 – Average contract size is $2K a month with 3 months minimum 13:56 – Derric has been advised too that the contract should be at least for a year 14:21 – Derric was thinking of the best value that he can provide for his client when he decided on the 3-month minimum 14:36 – Derric believes that if he can't consistently deliver month over month, he should be fired 15:12 – Derric currently has 14 customers with some pro bono 17:27 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Poker may bring more money than your business, but sometimes it's not about money. At a certain point in your life, you have to give up things that you're used to and learn something new. In business (especially pricing) always have a market study and comparison first, or ask for advice. 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 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

Hal Howard, 20-year Microsoft veteran who gave up a stable, secure position leading the Dynamics ERP development team to satiate a spark of creativity. Today, he's the founder of Komiko, a sales intelligence tool that helps their businesses understand what engagement with customers is working. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Execution What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella Favorite online tool? — Vinfolio How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Don't worry man. Everything's going to work out just fine" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:45 – Komiko is a sales intelligence tool that helps their businesses understand what engagement with customers is working 02:12 – Komiko is integrated with different sources 02:20 – A cloud-based subscription-based model 02:37 – Hal was at Microsoft for 20 years 02:59 – left Microsoft because he wanted to build something new 03:16 – "There are still unexplored technologies around business applications" 03:54 – Customer pays an average of $30-35 a month per user 04:00 – Team size ranges from 3 to 500 04:11 – There are currently 2000 paying seats across 50 businesses in total 04:33 – Average MRR is $60K 05:19 – Team size is 10 05:37 – 8 are engineers 05:48 – Hal and his co-founder are doing both sales and product engineering 06:00 – Hal is more on the design 06:30 – Komiko is now a complimentary CRM 06:38 – Partnered with Salesforce and most of their customers are using Salesforce 07:19 – CRM is in a different decision set compared to Komiko 07:40 – Komiko works with corporate clients to help them understand what engagement works and what doesn't 07:59 – "We don't lose customers" 08:05 – In Komiko's lifetime, they've only lost 4 customers so far, 1 was acquired 08:28 – CAC is mostly inbound and Komiko was listed in AppExchange 08:44 – Hal and his co-founder alone were able to drive a lot of customers, mostly from referrals and the businesses they've worked with before 08:51 – Just started an outbound campaign in early 2017 08:59 – Has a partnership with GameSite 09:20 – GameSite's focus is how customers engage with the product 09:35 – GameSite is building a platform for customer success and Komiko's metric will help the overall customer solution 09:48 – Komiko raised some capital 10:03 – Total fund raised is around $2M 10:23 – Initial round was convertible note and then the seed round is priced round 10:37 – 2017 revenue target is at least a million dollars 11:04 – 2016 revenue is $15K 11:23 – Gross margin is around 75% 12:09 – Hal won't easily sell Komiko, but he might consider for at least $25M 14:43 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Nurture the network that you have, it will always help you in some way down the road. You have the option leave your comfort zone, you can explore and create something new. It's possible to not lose customer IF you consistently help the customers see value in your product. 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 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

Jose Cayasso. He's a growth hacker, co-founder and CEO of Slidebean, 500 Startups alumni, and a frequent flyer miles hoarder. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup and Traction What CEO do you follow? – Josh Pigford Favorite online tool? — Amy@X.ai How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jose would tell himself that he had to quit his day job and create something for himself earlier Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:38 – Slidebean has an office in New York City and Costa Rica 01:56 – Slidebean is a web-based tool for making presentations 02:00 – Slidebean focuses on making presentation more efficient 02:20 – Slidebean is a subscription service 02:26 – Most of Slidebean's customers are previous PowerPoint users 02:38 – Team plans start at $49 a month 02:52 – A single presentation service is also available 03:00 – Most of the revenue are from the recurring model 03:14 – Jose started Slidebean in 2014 03:25 – Originally, it was focused on end users 03:40 – Slidebean shifted to businesses that are doing presentations monthly 03:58 – Churn went down from 15% to negative churn in revenue 04:15 – Gross customer churn is currently at 3.5% 04:42 – Jose tried different measures for Slidebean to improve the churn rate 05:09 – They changed the business model while keeping the subscription and premium value 05:28 – Slidebean caters to 2500 paying customers 05:45 – Average MRR is around $120K 06:06 – Jose is originally from Costa Rica and he's not a fan of outsourcing 06:14 – "I still believe that office collaboration is the best" 06:38 – There's a lot of talent in Costa Rica 08:07 – Team size is 22 08:17 – Slidebean has raised a small seed round 08:22 – "We're in the break of profitability" 08:25 – Slidebean is burning around $25K a month 08:43 – Slidebean has raised a total of $850K on a seed round 09:08 – CAC is around $150 09:15 – It's quite low because Slidebean competes in SEO 09:22 – Prezi is one of Slidebean's competition 09:35 – Slidebean targets keywords through AdWords 09:56 – LTV is around $1000 or 18 months 10:39 – Total marketing cost is around $25K-35K including head count cost 11:17 – Gross margin is around 75-80% 11:53 – 2017 target revenue is $2M 12:03 – They don't need to raise more money at the moment 13:00 – 2016 ARR is around $750K 15:25 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: A shift in business model can allow your company to grow while still retaining its value and growth. Find the right keywords for your business and use AdWords to target them, it can help lower your CAC. The earlier you create something for yourself in life, the better. 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 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

Jessica Lee. Nathan met Jessica a few months ago and Jessica toured Nathan in 500 Startups' office in San Francisco. She's the founder of Bitesize. She helps companies drive revenue with text message conversations. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – #GIRLBOSS What CEO do you follow? – Sophia Amoruso Favorite online tool? — Trello How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Everybody has the same kind of challenges and overcoming them is the REAL WORK Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:37 – HandStack and Bitesize are the same company 01:49 – Bitesize helps brands drive revenue through interactive text messaging 02:00 – A new movie studio has a new movie and wants to reach a million movie goers 02:10 – Bitesize will reach people by text message 02:20 – The messages will be from a movie character and the approach is interactive 02:42 – Bitesize will drive the person to a download link at the end of the conversation 03:01 – Building a list for text is the challenge for Bitesize 03:25 – Bitesize uses manual texting tool 03:40 – There's a law that's protecting consumers where you can't randomly message people with algorithms or without human intervention 03:56 – Bitesize helps client send text with manual human intervention 04:27 – Jessica shares how an actual message happens 04:30 – The company will create a group chat, add people, and click send manually 04:39 – People's reply will go to your app and you can continue to interact with them 05:08 – The difference with the usual group text and from Bitesize is, you don't get to see other people's messages 05:34 – Bitesize charges per text and data 05:42 – Per text charge is .25₵ 06:11 – Most of Bitesize's costs is from data 06:16 – Twilio is at .02₵ 06:45 – Data charges can go up to .16₵ 06:58 – BiteSize's clients pay them for their marketing skills too 07:15 – For a thousand new messages, an average of 6% will reply which a lot higher than social media ads 07:45 – A lot of Bitesize's customers will send millions of texts 08:13 – Revenue is measured by campaigns: 140 for the last 6 months 08:41 – Bitesize has raised $125K from 500 Startups 08:56 – Team size is 6 09:03 – 3 in the bay area and 3 elsewhere 09:26 – Average MRR 09:58 – 50% of the campaigns are paying quarterly and some campaigns are daily 10:20 – Each campaign pays an average of $10K to $100K for the .25₵ per text messages 10:43 – 10% of Bitesize's customers are from referrals 10:50 – Initially, Bitesize was focused on outbound sales 11:08 – "Because our product was so unique, people like to know what it is" 11:38 – Bitesize originally started with political campaigns 11:49 – Because of Jessica's background, most campaigns are for the democrats 12:29 – Jessica believes that Bitesize is a tool that is meant to connect people in a more meaningful way than ads 13:05 – 2013 revenue is around $250 13:17 – 2016 revenue is $300K for 6 months 13:30 – They pivoted to a more commercial use case in the final 6 months 13:40 – 2017 target 13:59 – "My hope is to grow organically" 16:05 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Texts can be very spammy but if done right, the return is better than with online ads. Messages should connect people in a more meaningful way. Growing organically is cheaper, and it creates more resonance, but it's harder to do. 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 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

Bo Jiang. He's the co-founder and CEO of Privacy.com, a new way to transact online without showing your credit card number or pin. He previously worked on mobile products with Hatch Labs, which is the venture studio that incubated Tinder and Pixie TV, which was acquired by Samsung. He holds a BS in Mathematics in MIT. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – High Output Management and Who What CEO do you follow? – Charlie Munger Favorite online tool? — Zoom 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? – "Pay attention and see things through" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:34 – Bo has always been interested with Bitcoin and Krypto frequency where the idea of Privacy came from 01:56 – Privacy was a side project in Bitcoin 02:00 – Bo didn't pay anything for Privacy 02:10 – Bo retained the domain as an investment for the company 02:51 – Bo shares how he made the deal of using the domain for free 03:10 – Domains are assets but the value won't grow that much 03:28 – Bo gave the domain owner less than 10% of the company 03;40 – Privacy has a browser extension and mobile app 03:44 – It allows you to create unique card number for every purchase you make online with just one click 04:00 – You can use any name or details and set your own credit limit 04:20 – It's actually a debit card which can be linked to your checking account 04:30 – Currently, there's nothing that is completely unhackable 04:42 – Privacy takes the best practices and security measures to ensure the client's security 05:25 – The cards from Privacy can't be use anywhere else 05:38 – Privacy makes money from interchange 05:43 – Every time that there's a transaction using a card, the merchant pays Visa, Visa shares the fee with the bank, and the bank shares the fee with Privacy 05:56 – If Nathan uses $100 on an Amazon checkout, Privacy will get around 1% 06:51 – Privacy has raised $3.5M 06:59 – Transaction volume is how Privacy's revenue grow 07:10 – Privacy is more focused on how much people have saved from using them 08:06 – Privacy was founded in 2014 and was launched as a beta first, a year ago 08:30 – Privacy currently has 150K users 09:15 – Privacy is growing in double digits, month over month in transaction volume 09:23 – Privacy has already broken a million transactions in just a month 09:50 – Team size is 10 based in New York City with some in Florida and Oregon 10:16 – Bo is still thinking of Privacy having a premium feature 10:31 – Average MRR is around $10K 10:57 – Bo was inside of Hatch Labs 11:20 – Bo thinks that Tinder work because it was the right product at the right time 11:55 – Hatch Labs was a venture studio and had 10-20 projects at a time 12:41 – What IC puts in every project in Hatch Labs depends on the project 13:06 – Bo left Hatch Labs a year and a half ago 15:14 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: While online shopping is becoming more of a necessity, online security can still be questionable so having an alternative to paying with a credit card is something people are looking for. Focus on your company's mission and the rest will follow. Don't overestimate or underestimate things – see through them. 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 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

Amanda Newman. When she was 26 and working as a relator in Liberty, Toronto, she created a website for local deals, events, and news. Soon, other realtors were approaching her about the website, and she realized it had the potential spread all across North America. Today, Park Bench, her company, has grown from a fun little marketing idea to help a struggling realtor, into a multi-million-dollar company with 27 employees and a rapid growth rate. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – DotCom Secrets What CEO do you follow? – Gary Vaynerchuk Favorite online tool? — DocuSign How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-9 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "To start writing down my goals" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:54 – Amanda was in episode 353 of The Top 02:11 – In 2016, Amanda was doing $80K in MRR 02:16 - $4500 from upfront payment 02:25 – They build neighborhood focused website for real estate agents 03:07 – Amanda had 215 customers in 2016 with $880K revenue in 2015 03:15 – Each customer is paying $350 a month with a total of $70K MRR 03:20 – 5% churn, CAC of $400 and LTV of 20 months 03:26 - $7000 LTV with 8 people in the team 03:31- Founded in 2014 03:38 - Park Bench builds neighborhood websites 03:40 – They have the technology that aggregates local content 03:46 – They sell the exclusive rights to the neighborhood sites which are run by 1 real estate agent per neighborhood 03:53 - Park Bench provides training and guidance on how to use the website and leverage it 04:05 – "They become a conductor of their community" 04:18 - Park Bench currently over 1000 customers 04:46 – They invested a lot on Facebook advertising 05:00 - Park Bench gets 60-100 realtor inquiries who want to be the digital mayor of their neighborhood 05:10 - Park Bench has 3000 sq. ft. office with 30 employees 05:16 – In May, Park Bench hit $628K in revenue which is their biggest month by far 05:38 – It's the total revenue 05:38 – Last month, Park Bench sold to 150 realtors who have paid upfront of $4500-5000 05:57 – Churn is now 2.75% with 65-70% renewal rate 07:18 - $628K May revenue divided by $5000 to get 126 customers 07:38 – 75 existing customers and 50 new customers 09:00 – CAC is $676 and LTV is around $13K or 3 years 09:51 – Currently, Amanda isn't sure where to spend their money so they're investing more on Facebook ads 09:58 – They track the leads they get daily 10:16 – The Facebook algorithm is making it more expensive now to get new customers 10:25 – They invest more on content and wanted to drive more organic traffic 10:40 – They spend $6500 on ads monthly 11:02 – "We're just growing our business" 11:23 – On personal wealth creation, Amanda only thinks of being happy 11:37 – "I don't have to raise money, I don't have to sell the company" 11:40 – Amanda loves her team and enjoys being a part of it 12:15 – Gross margin is over 90% 12:45 – The investment deal should be strategic and can be from, like Keller Williams, for Amanda to accept it 13:00 – Amanda wants to access to more real estate agents 13:41 - Park Bench has country managers who work with clients whenever they need to 13:54 - Park Bench is starting to offer realtors other things they need like in marketing 14:02 - Park Bench knows lead generation too 14:30 – Amanda's parents sold their company to invest in real estate 14:50 – Amanda is still thinking if she will invest in real estate too 15:04 – "At this point, our best return is to invest in ourselves" 15:27 – Amanda's dad has a foundation and is currently in Kenya 18:02 – The Famous Five 20:46 – $1.9M 2016 revenue 20:53 – 2017 target revenue is $6.3M and currently on track 3 Key Points: Have a reliable support system that will make your customers be stickier. With Facebook's ever changing algorithms, it's better to invest more on creating great content to drive more organic traffic and leads. Write down your goals so you can keep track of them. 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 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

Todd Johnson, a serial healthcare information technology entrepreneur committed to building great products, teams and companies. Todd has a track record of cultivating great ideas and great business that offer incredible company cultures and attention-grabbing brands. Before his current company, HealthLoop, Todd was the founder and CEO of Salar, a Baltimore, MD-based provider of acute care physician charge capture and documentation solutions. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The E-Myth Revisited What CEO do you follow? – Donald Trump and Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Gmail, Boomerang and Inbox 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? – Todd wished he could have took things less seriously Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:59 – Everyone needs healthcare at some point in their life 02:30 – Salar was able to replace paper processes at hospitals 03:08 – Salar was sold to the country's second largest medical transcription company 03:16 – It was a $15M exit 03:40 – Todd lives in Silicon Valley 03:57 – Todd has a couple of reasons why he chose to rent rather than to buy a property 04:37 – HealthLoop was initiated in 2009 and was an idea for over a year 04:51 – Todd joined HealthLoop in 2013 04:49 – The founder is a doctor from San Francisco 05:50 – He's still part of the board 06:28 – HealthLoop is a platform that automatically pushes notifications before and after a diagnosis or surgery 06:40 – It connects patients and doctors 07:00 – 5 years ago, there's no model around improving the quality of care 07:38 – Multiple parties benefit from an improvement in health care 08:28 – In order to retain the trust of the patients, you have to gain the doctor's trust as well 08:46 – HealthLoop has an enterprise subscription model 09:03 – Average contract is $120K to $150K that can escalate year over year 09:21 – They pre-pay the cases that they might have in a year 10:28 – HealthLoop's customers are very targeted 10:35 – The expansion per area depends on how the incentive shakes out 10:50 – HealthLoop is currently working with 70 groups and 20 hospitals 11:13 – HealthLoop has an older subscription model which some of their existing clients have 11:30 – HealthLoop has raised $21M 11:44 – HealthLoop is in an attractive space for competition 12:20 – They have 90% annual retention 12:43 – The institutional mindset 13:08 – Team size is 40 13:18 – 8 are in the sales team 13:53 – HealthLoop's current enterprise sales cycle is around 6-7 months on a 120 ACV 14:16 – CAC is quite high 14:55 – There are many competing organizations in the market 15:34 – LTV will depend per organization 16:07 – Todd is seeing a 150% growth from last year in terms of ARR 16:38 – There's so much unpredictability in the space which can be a bad thing 17:31 – Hospitals need to be thoughtful about spending cash 17:49 – HealthLoop will spend more on adapting to a new management 18:17 – HealthLoop's gross margin is around 70% 20:33 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: There's not enough consumer tech that is solely dedicated to healthcare. At least once in our lifetime, we will need healthcare, and the ability to have a quick, back-and-forth communication with your health provider is powerful. Because of the aging baby boomer population, healthcare is an incredibly attractive space for investors right now. 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 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

Chau Nguyen. He's the founder and CEO of Hirewire, an on-demand hiring app for hourly workers. In his previous venture, Chau hired over 20K people only to realize his hiring process was broken—and that's when he got the idea for Hirewire. To date, Chau has raised $4.1M in funding. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "There is no replacement for hard work" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:14 – Nathan introduces Chau to the show 01:47 – Chau's previous venture was Campus Special 01:50 – It's an online platform for college students 02:00 – They had 4K sales representatives meeting merchants 02:11 – Chau had Campus Special for 8.5 years before selling to a public company a few years back 02:28 – Chau was 25 when he launched Campus Special and he's 36 now 02:47 – Campus Special was doing $15M in revenue when he sold it for $25M 03:45 – The negotiation was just about what the buyers would pay for it 03:55 – It was bittersweet for Chau to sell Campus Special but still proud of it 04:27 – Chau owned 100% of Campus Special 05:00 – Chau stayed on board with the acquirer for a year 05:30 – Chau thought that he can use his past experience in hiring 06:15 – With Hirewire, Chau saw the need to invest heavily on the product and technology, hence the fund raise 06:29 – Initial raised was $2M and the next round was $2M as well 06:36 – Both rounds are convertible note 06:47 – Hirewire is a marketplace where employers and job seekers can connect 06:52 – It is a mobile app to speed up the process 07:00 – There's chatting with images and videos 07:06 – Next release will be focused on on-demand hiring 07:25 – Hirewire has a monthly subscription for employers and free for applicants 08:10 – Hirewire has a pay as you go model for small businesses 08:20 – The monthly subscription is usually for big companies like McDonalds 08:40 – Hirewire's core customer based are the recurring customers 08:48 – Hirewire focuses on the restaurant industry which has the highest turnover 09:08 – Hirewire charges per location per month, starting at $50 to $100 depending on usage 09:53 – Hirewire was first launched in Atlanta and was on beta for year 10:00 – They launched with nothing 10:24 – In one year, Hirewire got 4K employers to sign up, over 100K job seekers with around 1K people hired 10:56 – Hirewire has 2 drivers that allowed them to grow quickly 11:00 – First is hitting a pain point 11:44 – Second is doing the application online 12:14 – Hirewire is in 4K locations with 5K hiring managers 12:30 – Some locations can have at least 2 hiring managers 12:40 – Average MRR is a little over 200K 13:06 – Hirewire has been and is still testing pricing 13:31 – Gross customer churn 13:40 – A restaurant's churn could be 100-200% like losing an entire team 13:56 – Prior to launch, Chau was really afraid of what will happen but still think that they make the hiring process easier and faster 14:19 – Ultimately, people will stay where they're happy and making money 14:31 – Hirewire is retaining 95% of the employees which makes the churn 5% 14:50 – Team size is around 15 based in Atlanta 15:07 – Hirewire does paid acquisition 15:17 – 50% of the job seekers are from organic traffic 15:23 – Hirewire also uses social media channels to drive users and has spends $10-25K monthly 15:54 – Freightos has a marketplace model plus SaaS 16:38 – Chau's goal for Hirewire is to be very sticky with high retention on the employer side 17:19 – Hirewire is not making money on the marketplace aspect and just on the SaaS aspect 19:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: You can't stay at where you are forever, change is constant so move on and start anew. Leverage what you've learned in the past to create something that can refine the system. Always test your product first. 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 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