SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Mathilde Collin. She's the CEO of Front, a SaaS company working on redesigning email for teams. She started with Y Combinator in the summer of 2014, and today has 20 employees and 1700 customers. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Zero to One What CEO do you follow? – Patrick Collison Favorite online tool? — Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 and a half If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "People that are struggling should be super motivated because that's what everyone go through" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:04 – Nathan introduces Mathilde to the show 01:33 – Mathilde was in Episode 413 of The Top 01:43 – Back then, they had 1200 customers, $13M raised, around a million in revenue in 2015 01:53 – An average customer pays 200 a month leading to an MRR of $240K 01:58 – Gross churn was 3% 02:10 – Front now has 40 team members 02:13 – "We tripled our revenue" 02:15 – The number of customers didn't triple because they had bigger companies using Front 02:43 – Current MRR is around $750K 03:02 – Front still has 80% of what they've raised last year 03:13 – Total capital raised was $14M 03:45 – Front is burning $250K a month 03:50 – Mostly from head count 04:29 – Churn has always been low 04:35 – Net churn has always been negative which -10% monthly 04:50 – User churn is around 3.5 - 4% 05:04 – MRR churn is low 05:30 – The teams that are paying Front more per month tend to be very sticky 06:10 – Gross margin is 88% 06:22 – Front APP is the easiest way to manage a shared inbox as a team 06:29 – A sample of shared inbox is support@contact or a social media account 06:37 – Front simplifies everything in one place 06:54 – For Front's growth, they lend it and extend it 07:00 – Net negative churn is coming from existing customers 07:04 – Existing customers have been upgraded to new plans or added teams 07:10 – HubSpot started with 1 team and now they have 13 teams with Front 07:26 – Front now has a marketing team with 3 people 07:35 – Front has now done more advertising and content 07:41 – The most effective for Front is AdWords 07:52 – Monthly CAC is around $15K 08:03 – Front tracks sales qualified leads 08:26 – It takes 7 trials to get 1 new paying customer 08:38 – After the trial, the customer will be categorized as an enterprise or SMB and mid-market companies 08:50 – The goal is for the sales people to get the trial set up 09:02 – The sales cycle is 3 weeks 09:20 – 95% of the customer is going through 3 weeks than the offered 2 weeks 09:26 – People are using Front than Slack because Slack is usually for before synchronous communication 09:34 – Front is for a synchronous communication 09:40 – A synchronous is every communication that is done externally should have an upfront 09:49 – Slack messages can also be distracting with the team 10:13 – Front competes more with Intercom than with Slack 10:25 – Intercom is usually better for customer communication while Front is for general communication 10:43 – Front is an email client 11:40 – Customers are buying Front to replace email 11:46 – In other cases, Front replaces helpdesk solutions like Desk, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout, etc 12:12 – Mathilde won't sell Front now even for $95M 12:25 – "I think I will sell when I'm not as confident as today" 12:37 – Front makes Mathilde happy 13:04 – Mathilde is now 28 13:15 – Front was launched in early 2015 13:29 – Mathilde wanted people to be happy at work so she made Front 15:07 – Mathilde has always been happy and confident that they can do a series B 15:56 - "I do have some inbound" 16:30 – Mathilde was part of an article in Entrepreneur.com 19:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Growth can be measured by several different metrics—the important thing isn't the metric, it's the important thing is consistency. Stay with what makes you and other people happy. People love reliability—if you can deliver that in a product or service you're on to something. 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

Mariano Suarez-Battan. He's the founder and CEO of MURAL, a digital whiteboard for exploring complex challenges visually. Global 2000 companies like IBM, Intuit, Steelcase, and Autodesk have deployed MURAL at scale to enhance collaboration in their digital workplace. A former startup in residence at IDEO, Mariano also founded Three Melons, a game studio that designed and published online games like Bola, which was acquired by Playdom and Disney in 2010. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Purple Cow What CEO do you follow? – Aaron Lewis Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – To trust in your gut always Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:12 – Bola has created games for large brands like Lego 02:23 – Back then, the social games industry was moving fast with Zynga, Playfirst and Playdom 02:31 – Mariano thought that, strategically, it made sense to grow bigger with those companies 02:45 – It was also a great decision, financially and professionally 03:00 – Mariano started Bola in Argentina 03:24 – Acquisition price was with stock and equity 04:12 – The cash was $4-5M 04:26 – $600K was the payback for the investors 04:44 – MURAL was a startup in residence in IDEO 05:03 – IDEO brought in Collaborative Fund as a funder for MURAL 05:10 – MURAL's vision is to make every designer share their design thinking globally 05:36 – IDEO was like an incubator 05:49 – Prior to IDEO, MURAL has raised closed to $1M 05:59 – Collaborative Fund invested money on MURAL while IDEO made MURAL known to big companies like IBM 06:33 – Some of IDEO's DNA are in MURAL 07:00 – MURAL's pricing 07:02 – $12 per member per month and billed annually, $16 billed monthly 07:10 – The pricing on the website is for online customers 07:23 – A quarter of their customers are online and the rest are enterprise costumers 07:46 – MURAL is a SaaS business 08:22 – MURAL has over 40K active users monthly 08:58 – MURAL has no free plan but has introduced a free education plan to help kids 11:00 – MRR is around $280K 11:11 – Average ARR 12:06 – Currently, MURAL has raised a total of $2.4M 12:16 – Team size is 35 12:45 – Most are in product development and engineering 12:55 – Office is located in San Francisco 13:30 – Gross monthly churn 14:17 – Some of the customers are entrepreneurs selling to multiple departments 15:23 – MURAL churn on online customers is quite high 15:38 – Average cost per new customer 15:55 – One of MURAL's new customer is from an event they've sponsored 16:04 – The cost of the sponsorship with other expenses was $3K 16:29 – What Mariano does is split up general cost with the number of new customers 16:50 – Gross margin is around 85% 18:45 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The investment in your company doesn't always need to be cash. Before going into an acquisition or partnership, go on a vacation and think about it with a clear head. Having different revenue sources leads to different churn sources—focus on where churn is the least. 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

Patrick Bosworth. They launched in 2012 with 3 co-founders and are now at 105 people. They help hotels—specifically, they help hotel locations better optimize their pricing. They raised $51 million serving over 3000 individual hotel locations paying on average 17 grand per year. They will very soon be doing about a $50 million run rate, 75% gross margin which they tripled over the recent future. This is incredible how they worked that fixed cause structure to drive more growth and bring the margin up over time. They spend about $20,000 on CAC; so there is a super healthy payback period at about 14 months. They are based in San Francisco and Las Vegas. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – Matthew Prince Favorite online tool? — Gnome How many hours of sleep do you get?— trying to get 8, but is getting 7 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – I wish that I had believed that it was okay for me to be happy back then Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Patrick Bosworth to the show 01:23 – Patrick is the co-founder and CEO of Duetto Research, his focus is driving vision and growth at a company 01:50 – Patrick thinks his MBA from Harvard is crucial in the building of the company; a friend of Patrick's convinced him of the opportunity to build a tech business and introduced him to co-founder Craig Weissman, who was at Sales Force at the time 02:15 – In the fundraising process, his MBA created credibility as well as his co-founder's MBA from Cornell. Another co-founder also went to Harvard and they were all able to maximize their networks 03:01 – Patrick did the two-year program and it helped him get a grounding in business terminology considering his background was in the arts and in politics 03:37 – If the network is the main concern, there are short term programs, but they are expensive 04:02 – Nathan says he is willing to spend money for people who enter the program to get access to the network 04:23 – Duetto is a hotel software company leveraging on medium data to help hotel managers make smarter decisions on pricing optimization 04:47 – Duetto gets the demand from a particular hotel and picks the price for each customer segment, channel and room type for the next 13 months 04:57 – This has increased the revenue of the hotels from 6.5 to 8.5% which increases their profit from 75 to 100% 05:15 – Duetto gets revenue from the subscription payment that is paid annually based on the product they are buying and number of rooms in the hotel 05:42 – Patrick is surprised that companies are not taking advantage of the performance kicker 06:41 – Last month, 5% of the revenue came from the flat SaaS model 07:10 – The target customer varies – if it is a strong brand like the Marriott, they need to go directly to them rather than the real estate owner; in smaller brands including independent hotels, they need to go to the management company 08:32 – On a per property basis, they are getting $17,000 to $18,000 per hotel per year and it varies according to the number of rooms and products they are buying 08:50 – The company was founded in 2012 09:17 – Patrick and Marco worked on the business idea for about a year and met with Craig in September 2011; it took them 5 months to court him 09:52 – While Patrick and Marco were fundraising, they were only getting $1 - $2 million valuations but when Craig joined, it jumped up to $10 million 10:49 – Craig has more equity than Patrick 10:58 – They have raised four rounds of capital amounting to $58.3 million 11:33 – The payback period is 14 months and they are spending around $20,000 to acquire new customers 11:51 – They have literally not lost a customer in 5 years 12:55 – Selling to the lodging market is difficult because it is an old school industry that does not embrace technology quickly 13:17 – The company tried to spend more on additional sales reps or demand gen but the cash got spent inefficiently 14:12 – Duetto can grow by expanding their reach geographically 14:31 – By the end of the quarter, they are close to 3000 hotels in 98 countries 15:04 – There is a lag in gross and deferred bookings, but the current run rate is a fraction of Nathan's calculation of $50 million 16:10 – The company has a larger services organization than most and they grew from 30% to 70% gross margin in the past year 17:06 – They staffed up sales globally and the services organization with the platform growth margin north of 95%, but the blended gross margin including the onboarding services dips down in the 70s 18:26 – They had a fixed cost structure 18:41 – Patrick says they did spend a million bucks a month during the early years and it was partly due to naiveté 19:56 – The investors have big expectations and they were the ones that reassured Patrick of the capital and growth 20:34 – In the last round in 2015, they were able to raise $30 million 21:55 – The investors changed their mindset in 2015 and in 2017 22:06 – They currently have 105 people based in San Francisco and Las Vegas 23:14 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: An MBA degree can give you a leg up in terms of the network it provides you. Know your market well, including all its idiosyncrasies. Study the changes in your investors' expectations and work with 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 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

Sunil Thomas. He's had a ton of experience working in tech companies and decided in 2013 to take the plunge himself and go all in with his 2 co-founders. They've since raised a total of $9.6 million – $1.6 million seed and $8 million in series A. They launched revenue in 2016, broke $1.5 million in total sales and this May 2017, broke $400,000 in MRR out of about $5 million ARR. He wants to double that by the end of the year, amounting to $800,000. They have a team of 45 based between California, New York and India—again, making it easier for mobile applications to understand what the heck users are doing in their apps. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Play Bigger What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella of Microsoft Favorite online tool? — Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-8 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – I wish I knew as much as my kids knew at 13, I had no clue what I was doing at 20 Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Sunil Thomas to the show 01:32 – Sunil Thomas is the co-founder and CEO of CleverTap 01:46 – CleverTap combines people-based analytics with user engagement, it can be used in your mobile app and website and you get to understand what they are doing 02:23 – It is like a combination of Mix Panel plus App Boy for mobile apps and websites 03:17 – The average customer pays them $2500 – $3000 a month based on event data 03:37 – The top cohorts pay $10,000 to $20,000 a month 04:21 – CleverTap is one of the few companies that has both Accel and Sequoia as their funders and they have raised a total of $9.6 million dollars with a seed of $1.6 million and $8 million in series A 05:18 – CleverTap started in 2013 and has 3 co-founders—Suyin has had various work experiences in the tech industry 05:56 – CleverTap came about because of the need to engage users 06:47 – Nathan says there are only a limited number of apps a person engages with on a daily basis 07:02 – Sunil says their business is targeted on the companies and not the consumers 07:28 – There are more than 10,000 apps that go into the app stores every day 07:53 – The pricing starts at $1000 a month 08:23 – An average monthly active user does 15 to 20 events in your app 08:54 – They currently have 200 paying customers and 2000 apps that are sending them live data 09:13 – A plan of the company is to cover 10 million events a month for their free plan in 3 years 09:31 – The conversion rate is 30% for those who are using the free plan to a paid plan 09:44 – Nathan computes the revenue is at least $400,000 a month 10:05 – In terms of competition, there are three sets of apps: apps that get app data for sales, attribution provider apps and the one about user engagement and app analytics where CleverTap is 11:19 – Their growth churn is very low with everyone on the less than 1,000 plan who are still sticking around 11:51 – The company started to monetize just a year ago and has a 400,000 growth rate 12:15 – They have 45 people globally – 11 are in the US and 32 are in India with the core engineering team in India 13:10 – To acquire new customers, they have marketing qualified leads from websites and they hit bigger accounts on the outbound, focusing on direct sales rather than marketing and advertising 14:41 – The biggest expense is in the hosting 15:18 – It was hard during the early days, but it has now come to a point where they are benefitting 15:55 – In 2016, they broke $1.5 million in revenue and are targeting to get to $10 million by the end of the year 17:04 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Look for a need and fill the gap in today's current technology. Know your target market well! You may start slowly at first, but it will pay off in the end. 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 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

Keegan Peterson. Keegan is a technology entrepreneur blazing a trail in the legal cannabis industry. He has worked for many software and services companies. He founded Wurk which helps cannabis businesses pay their employees while adhering to the Federal and State Regulations. Keegan is also a former division one athlete from Florida Atlantic University. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Stealing Fire What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Asana How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 to 6 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wish I would have started something earlier in my lifetime" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:19 – Nathan introduces Keegan to the show 01:53 – Cannabis is a fascinating industry that is a great place for technology to play a big part in it 02:31 – For a year, Keegan financed Wurk but they've now raised $3M from venture capital (VC) 03:09 – Cannabis businesses include growing, selling, and extracting the plant 03:29 – "Marijuana" and "Weed" have a negative stigma, unlike "Cannabis" 03:46 – Wurk makes profit by selling a service to their clients 03:56 – Wurk ensures cannabis businesses' taxes are paid correctly and calculated correctly 04:33 – Payroll companies being backed by national banks cannot touch cash made from cannabis 04:54 – Wurk is a SaaS company and is in 17 legal cannabis states 05:17 – They sell their services directly to business owners 05:30 – They have hundreds of users on their platform 05:39 – Keegan launched Wurk 2 years ago, in August 2015 06:10 – They currently have 18 employees in 3 offices 06:28 – It's NOT a requirement to smoke cannabis to work for Wurk 06:40 – They do look for people who believe in cannabis as a progressing industry 07:13 – Wurk provides a whole difference face to the industry 07:30 – "We are not the traditional cannabis business" 07:45 – A large portion of Wurk's clients are in cannabis, but there are some clients that are not 08:12 – Most business owners in the business pay their employees in cash 08:27 – "We're trying to help solve that issue" 08:42 – The average client payment per month ranges from $10 to $30 09:03 – Number of employees and number of states the business is in are factors in a client's metrics that determine how much they pay to Wurk 09:55 – Wurk doesn't charge per customer; they charge per employee 11:00 – They don't have a lot of competition 11:16 – They have a low churn of 2 customers in 2 years 11:41 – Currently, they don't have an average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) because they mostly get referrals 12:01 – They have 5 full-time sales reps with 1 chief revenue officer and other employees are on implementation 12:18 – Their sales reps earn through salaries and incentives 13:40 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: There are still industries that are not saturated. If there's hole in an industry, there's a market for a business that can fill that hole. Referrals or word of mouth is still one of the best ways to get a customer. 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 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

Tye Schlegelmilch to the show. Tye is the founder of Hinged following a 16-year career in finance, and most recently as co-CIO for Fortress Investment Group which has about 70B assets in their management. Prior to that, Tye was with a variety of different finance firms including Goldman Sachs. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Snowball What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Skype and GoToMeeting How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 to 6 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wish I've been more measured with certain things in my life" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:08 – Nathan introduces Tye to the show 01:48 – Tye has a lot of friends who entered the entrepreneurial space 01:58 – As an engineer, he's always been curious about how he can make things work better 02:13 – He moved out to Connecticut and bought a house 02:17 – Tye saw an opportunity in being able to get things done, understanding what needed to be done, and when it needed to be done in a home 02:37 – Diving into entrepreneurship was just a result of his curiosity 02:55 – Hinged is a holistic online platform for homeowners to better understand, manage, and control all aspects of home ownership 03:43 – Hinged's business model is providing a full software solution for the service providers 04:05 – Hinged is highly selective with who they want (service providers) on their platform 04:20 – They take 5% of the revenue that goes through the platform to the provider that's providing the maintenance or repair 04:39 – Hinged is a marketplace 05:23 – They have several hundred homeowners on the platform 05:43 – Across Fairfield and Westchester Country, they have a few hundred service providers in 50 different categories 06:57 – On an average user basis, there are 20%-40% who have spent money on the platform 07:31 – Hinged launched in Feb 2017 08:32 – Appliance repairs are the hottest category on their platform 09:40 – The average price of services done on Hinged is about $1500 10:19 – Tye funded everything on Hinged 10:54 – Internally, they just discussed capital-raising 11:13 – The industry Hinged is in is a "land-grab" so they're looking into raising capital to expand 11:47 – Today there are 5 full-time employees and a development team from Cogniance 12:48 – They started with a sales team for service providers 13:02 – Teams are continuing to ramp on Hinged 13:35 – Hinged was very well thought out before Tye put money into it 14:05 – Tye's salary in finance ranged from back office administration to major league baseball players 16:06 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: There will always be better ways to do things—keep on brainstorming. Don't hold yourself back from your own curiosity. Be selective with who you work with; this will affect the quality of 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 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

Zvi Schreiber, founder and CEO of Freightos – the internet marketplace for the trillion-dollar international freight industry. Zvi was previously the CEO for Lightech which was acquired by G.E., and was also the founder and CEO of Unicorn Solutions which was acquired by IBM. Additionally, Zvi was the founder of G.ho.st, a predecessor of DropBox, which ended in a fire sale. He's spoken widely and was in many articles and patents. He has a PhD in Computer Science and he's the author of Fizz: Nothing Is as It Seems, which tells the history of physics as a novel. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Mixmax How many hours of sleep do you get? — 7 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "It's okay for startups to take on a big conservative industry" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:08 – Nathan introduces Zvi to the show 02:23 – Freightos is targeting the world of international freight 02:45 – 90% of the products sold in the West are imported – the entire lifestyle is dependent on international freight 03:18 – The biggest cost components in the freight industry is the trucking, ocean liners, port handling, and airlines 04:38 – "This big industry is very inefficient" 04:52 – Asking for a quote from a big freight forwarding company can take about 3 days 05:45 – Freightos is the "Expedia" for freight 06:09 – Freightos makes money by taking a cut of the transaction 06:24 – They basically do the marketing for the seller 06:40 – Freight forwarders are companies that arrange freight like Expeditors and H. Robinson 06:59 – Some more known forwarders are UPS and FedEx 07:24 – The buyers in this marketplace are the import/export companies 08:46 – Freightos helps with importing/exporting and not door-to-door deliveries 09:15 – Freightos only takes 2% from the freight forwarders' transactions 09:35 – They don't take any percentage from the buyer's end 10:02 – Many freight forwarders are using Freightos' software to automate their own pricing 10:23 – Freightos is a SaaS business 10:33 – They've recently raised $25M from an investment round led by G.E. 11:21 – In 2016, 90% of their revenue came from SaaS because they've just launched the marketplace that year 11:35 – Without the SaaS, freight forwarders are not able to do instant pricing 11:54 – The SaaS platform is serving about 1,000 freight forwarders all around the world 12:04 – Freightos is the market leader for the SaaS 12:22 – There are only a few thousand freight forwarders that matter and Freightos has 1,000 of them as customers 12:35 – January 2012 was the launch date of Freightos 12:43 – Freightos' team size is about 150 people across the world 13:17 – Every shipment involves 2 countries 13:26 – Their biggest office is in Jerusalem and Barcelona 14:07 – Their customers pay less than $1K/month to tens of thousands per month for the subscription 14:43 – The reason why most marketplace startups fail is because of the chicken-and-egg problem 15:06 – Freightos spent 4 years selling SaaS to companies 15:40 – Freightos' first year revenue was 0 15:45 – Their first revenue came in 2013 16:25 – It was in 2015 when Freightos earned their first million 16:56 – Each month, there are about several hundreds to a thousand transactions in their marketplace 17:33 – Freightos is starting to educate freight forwarders and importers/exporters that they don't need to wait anymore for pricing 18:16 – There are thousands of buyers already using their software 20:03 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Our lifestyle is heavily dependent on imported goods. Find an industry's pain point and start from there. Don't be afraid to create a startup in a big and conservative industry. 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 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

Stephen Stuut. He's the CEO of Jumio.com. He brings more than 25 years of experience fueling corporate growth and leading technology businesses. Before Jumio, he served as a CEO of TruePosition, a leader in location-based service technology. Prior to that, he was a president and CEO of Broadband Innovations delivering digital interactivity services to cable TV providers. During his 10 years, he has raised over $30M in equity from venture capital firms and strategic investors and ultimately sold the company to Motorola in December of 2005. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – A Book from McKinsey What CEO do you follow? – John Mallone and Greg Maffei Favorite online tool? — Outlook How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Travel just a little bit less when your kids are young" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:28 – Nathan introduces Stephen to the show 02:10 – Jumio is a SaaS business, particularly, trusted identity as a service 02:18 – Jumio does identity verification and document verification 02:35 – Jumio will validate the ID, making sure it isn't fraudulent 02:40 – Jumio does biometric facial comparisons from the selfie picture and ID picture for identity verification 03:11 – Jumio's customers are merchants who need to know the identity of a person 03:19 – Airbnb is one of Jumio's customers 03:29 – Jumio caters to airlines, bitcoin companies and banks that have money-laundering requirements 04:13 – "The world is moving to the internet online clamors" 04:17 – Walking into a building and flashing your ID is quite inconvenient 04:58 – Some, like Nathan, don't bother to change their license ID even if it's unrecognizable 05:35 – Customers typically pay 1 year worth of transactions in advance 05:49 – Average contract price 07:17 – Stephen isn't the founder but is a CEO who came in later 07:23 – The founder started Jumio after he argued with a credit card about his identification 08:15 – Jumio was founded in 2014 and Stephen came in 2 years after they launched 08:32 – Stephen was brought in by the investors 08:48 – Jumio has raised $60M to date 09:14 – Jumio just broke in 150K identity verifications in a single day 10:02 – The investors of Jumio 10:48 – Jumio has processed 26M verifications in 2016 10:55 – 2017 verification number 11:21 – The team in 2015 was around 90 and now it's around 110 in the west and a thousand in India 12:01 – Jumio is a hybrid blend of computer vision, facial recognition and human integration into one 12:27 – Stephen is an optical engineer and has designed laser weapons 13:14 – Jumio is well-known in the fintech and economy space 13:25 – Jumio has a sales force direct with a team of around 20 13:50 – Jumio does trade shows in the marketplace 14:28 – Jumio has the top 4 unicorns as customers 15:34 – Different markets have different value that they see from the pricing activity 16:51 – "This is very much a grab the market share and its transactions" 17:40 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: It's a relief to know that verifying your identification can be easily done. Pricing value affects different markets greatly. Spend more time with your kids while they're young. 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 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

Cam Miller and Akin Onal, the founders of MORI/BabyMori.com. Cam is the chief growth officer and co-founder at MORI. He is responsible for building out their essential babies' brand and the creative use of marketing and technology. This summer, he represented the brand as one of the 500 startups at Mountain View Accelerator. Prior to MORI, he studied an MBA at London Business School, had various roles in Australia, France and the UK, and studied engineering business development finance and event management. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup (Cam) Most recent read book – Bhagavad Gita Favorite online tool? — Slack (Akin) How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-7/5 (Akin) If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wish I got into entrepreneurship a bit sooner" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:08 – Nathan introduces Cam and Akin to the show 01:47 – Cam and Akin met at JP Morgan 02:12 – There are a lot similarities between what they were doing at JP Morgan and what they are doing now 02:19 – MORI is a direct-to-consumer business model 02:33 – MORI has over 10K customers over 50 countries acquiring 1000 additional customers per month 02:57 – The non-subscription model is what MORI have on most countries 03:05 – MORI has really high repeat orders per month 03:13 – MORI is looking to relaunch a new and improved subscription model 03:31 – The sleeping bag has been their bestseller for the last 6 months 03:51 – A repurchase is when the same customer buys the same item, but a bigger size 04:35 – Half of the revenue per month comes from repeat customers 05:15 – The sweet spot on sales for repeat customers ends around 2-2.5 y/o 05:45 – Average cart price is $100 06:26 – MORI uses Klaviyo and MailChimp for their upsell 07:21 – The website's product recommendation is manual 08:35 – 2016 topline sales was around $500K 09:00 – 2017 goal is $4M topline 10:03 – Cam and Akin have pivoted over 1 and half years 10:09 – MORI had a subscription model before the e-commerce 10:24 – After launching the latest collection in an ecommerce platform, sales went up 11:32 – The subscription is only for a specific product 13:20 – A repeat customer is the one who goes to the site to buy again 13:33 – The subscription model is almost phased out 14:22 – A lot of the products on the site are bundled, but they're not part of the subscription 14:45 – The customer cohort of MORI outgrows them 15:53 – Paid acquisition last month was $50K 16:14 – They've recently launched a retargeting program 17:00 – MORI just closed a $2M round which was an equity round 17:28 – LTV 18:14 – LTV is measured on the growth trade and not on revenue 18:31 – Pre-money valuation 19:45 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The right model for your business can be proven by an increase of revenue. Keep in mind that your revenue growth is NOT the only basis of your LTV. Start entrepreneurship as early as possible. 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 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

David Dunne. He's the CEO and co-founder of Velocidi, a marketing intelligence company that harnesses data for leading brands and agencies. In the 7 years since founding Velocidi, it enables marketers to make data-driven decisions that optimize marketing spend. David is currently leading the firm's next chapter into artificial intelligence. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Selling the Invisible What CEO do you follow? – Richard Branson Favorite online tool? — Tidal How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Hurry up, things are changing fast, you have to move faster" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:07 – Nathan introduces David to the show 01:41 – Velocidi focuses on how AI can speed up insights 01:48 – Velocidi's technology has always been enabling the process of analysts driving the insights 02:22 – The analysts are Velocidi's customers 02:39 – Velocidi is a SaaS business selling licenses 03:01 – Pricing starts at $3K a month 03:23 – Average monthly RPU is around $6K 03:44 – Velocidi charges by the amount of data streams 04:20 – Velocidi uses API calls to bring in the data 04:42 – Velocidi was launched in 2010 05:19 – There are people who are with David in building Velocidi 05:44 – David was a part of a global business 06:11 – David was happy with Edelman, but he wanted to reinvent himself 07:46 – David was 43 when he started Velocidi 09:26 – Every entrepreneur takes risks 09:51 – David has always separated personal assets with work 10:15 – Velocidi was capital intensive for the first few years 10:56 – Velocidi has initially raised $3M from friends and families 11:01 – Velocidi just closed a $12M round 11:18 – David has ambitious plans for growing the business 11:49 – More capital allows you to have more options 12:10 – CAC 12:21 – Most of Velocidi's customers are large global agencies 12:31 – Velocidi is expanding into other industries 13:45 – LTV to CAC ratio 13:58 – David tries to look at some of the classic businesses for comparison 15:19 – Velocidi focuses on what they can give to customers 16:04 – Velocidi keeps their customers for at least 5 years 16:54 – Some of Velocidi's customers have thousands of customers and there's a lot of room to grow 17:39 – Velocidi is innovating their product at a much faster rate 17:55 – The innovations depend on the customer's' needs 18:21 – Velocidi is expanding their automated self-serve platform this year 18:40 – Velocidi has hundreds of customers 19:19 – Self-service means different things 20:08 – Analysts have been using excel and powerpoint 20:42 – Velocidi delivers the core-data and the clients tailor the data 21:11 – The quality of the data alongside a creative makes Velocidi's clients standout 23:01 – David believes that data with creative is a better creative 23:55 – Average MRR 25:36 – David won't sell Velocidi 26:53 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Entrepreneurs will always take risk—what matters is how big of a risk you're willing to take. Focus on what you CAN commit to your customers. Things change faster than you think; so KEEP moving and don't get left behind! 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 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