SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Aaron Klein. His career has largely been in the intersection of finance and technology. As co-founder and CEO at Riskalyze, he led the company twice to being one of The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Finance by Fast Company Magazine. Today, over 150 riskalyzers served thousands of advisors. Aaron has served as a Sierra College trustee and in his spare time, co-founded a school project for orphans and vulnerable kids in Ethiopia. Investment News has honored him as one of the industry's 40 Under 40 executives. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Extreme Ownership What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz Favorite online tool? — Twitter, Evernote and Uber 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? – "The most important skill that you will ever have in starting a company is making great hiring decisions" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:15 – Nathan introduces Aaron to the show 02:07 – Riskalyze's mission is to empower the world to invest fiercely 02:20 – An average consumer struggles to invest and understand the concept of investing 02:39 – Warren Buffett said "Stock for the one thing the American consumer refuses to buy when they were at their cheapest and only wants to buy at their most expensive" 02:48 – Riskalyze invented risk numbers that they can create for short-term 03:06 – Riskalyze's focuses on the short term 03:43 – The harm usually comes from short-term decisions 03:58 – Riskalyze needs a context to understand how to make a good short-term decision 04:11 – Investors who don't use Riskalyze would normally ask if the 2% down on their portfolio is still okay 04:18 – 8% of that portfolio is actually normal 04:56 – "We tend to stereotype people based on their age" 05:12 – The typical questions in the industry would often base on the age of the investor 05:41 – Riskalyze has a team of academics who delve into the data and methodology behind the risk number 06:00 – Riskalyze's technology helps the advisor assess how much risk they can handle in a quantitative-objective way 06:27 – Riskalyze works with financial advisors and helps their investors become more successful 06:45 – Riskalyze is a SaaS business 06:48 – Riskalyze is launching their auto-pilot platform 07:19 – Pricing starts at $145 a month 07:36 – Riskalyze was launched in 2011 07:41 – Prior to Riskalyze, Aaron was in a brokerage firm and saw firsthand how poorly average investors thought about risk 07:54 – Aaron told his financial advisor friend about the risk and they founded Riskalyze 08:07 – Equity was 50/50 at first 08:27 – They've raised and brought in investors along the way 09:03 – Investors have seen a good return of up to 10X 09:48 – Riskalyze is currently focused on going to financial advisors first 09:59 – Riskalyze was capital efficient 10:02 – First round of funding was around $420K all equity 10:23 – Riskalyze is a substantial business and their ARR was a multiple of the capital deployed 10:40 – Total funds raised to date is $24M 11:10 – Team size is 175 from 90 last October 11:24 – Based in Auburn, California 12:21 – Riskalyze currently serves 19K advisors 12:25 – There's no free plan 12:42 – Advisors are known to be money efficient 12:59 – Riskalyze tried a free version 13:23 – The plan was originally $99 a month 13:40 – After they tested to push the price up, their conversion rate tripled 14:10 – Gross annual churn 14:32 – Riskalyze typically loses an advisor to retirement or death 14:48 – Riskalyze found a solution for retirement 15:33 – Aaron doesn't have the number for their net expansion RPU yet 15:50 – Riskalyze rolled out their advisor product in March 2013 15:53 – Then, they went into hyper-growth mode, from 380 customers to 2000 16:24 – They lost track of the data with only 4 people 16:50 – Cost to acquire new customers 17:10 – LTV 18:00 – Nathan recommends Klipfolio as a dashboard for Aaron 18:15 – Aaron rolled out a premier tier of Riskalyze in February which is $225 19:18 – Average MRR 21:30 – Aaron shares why Warren Buffett recommends investing in Vanguard 21:31 – Vanguard fits the people who are in their 70s and 80s 22:04 – Buffett also said that going to an advisor isn't necessary 22:18 – Aaron believes that Vanguard should still be a part of a person's portfolio; but what about someone who is a risk 45 and Vanguard is a risk 78? 24:45 – Nathan never went to an advisor as he found them fishy 25:15 – Aaron doesn't have any financial advisors at the moment but he will in 2-3 years 25:20 – Aaron believes that an advisor can help him maximize the money that he has for the future 26:08 – The reason to use an advisor 26:32 – Riskalyze wants people to get risk aligned with the risk they can handle 26:48 – Advisor charges a flat fee based on the investor's asset 27:34 – The value of human vice 29:14 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: If an average consumer knows his risk number, he will be more confident to invest. An advisor will not only help you manage your money, but show you how you can grow it. Focus on your hiring—this will contribute to a fast-growing company. 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

Andrew Fischer. He's a seasoned entrepreneur with extensive business development and sales experience in digital media and enterprise software or SaaS. He's recently launched Choozle, a simple and digital marketing platform in the fall of 2012. Based in Denver, Colorado, Choozle is the world's fastest growing digital advertising platform. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Green Favorite online tool? — Evernote 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 will probably reinforce the message of focus" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:04 – Nathan introduces Andrew to the show 01:35 – Choozle is the fastest growing digital advertising platform because of Inc Magazine's annual ranking 01:45 – It will be Choozle's first year in Inc 02:02 – Choozle became profitable last year 02:16 – Choozle was launched in 2012 02:25 – Revenue is between $5-10M 02:29 – Team size is around 32 02:36 – Choozle raised a small round 02:54 – Choozle is a SaaS that installs on an agency level 03:07 – The lowest level of subscription is $99 for an agency with one client and up to $2K a month for unlimited accounts 03:21 – Average pay per customer is $300 a month 03:25 – Choozle has 250 clients 03:30 – Choozle offers hybrid-managed services 03:51 – Choozle is also an ad-tech company, so they take a percentage of media 04:03 – Media shares start at 40% 04:17 – Choozle is a premium player in the space 04:53 – 2016 revenue 05:00 – 2017 target revenue 05:34 – Majority of Choozle's revenue are coming from Q3 and Q4 05:51 – Choozle has raised $8.5M to date 06:02 – Choozle's grace capital is from non-traditional services like a family office 06:29 – The goal when they had a raise was to build a sustainable company 06:51 – The raise was an equity-based investment 07:02 – Average churn is 5-7% per month 08:03 – Andrew is currently happy with their churn rate 08:32 – LTV to be 08:52 – CAC 09:22 – Average payback period 09:34 – Choozle has 10 full-time salespeople, total team size is around 30 11:25 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The digital advertising space is quite saturated and the churn rate of a SaaS businesses is quite high. Aim for your company to not just be profitable, but sustainable as well. Don't limit who you allow as investors in your company. 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

Heather Marie. She's the founder and CEO of Shoppable, a technology company that helps media companies, brands and retailers bring the checkout experience to anywhere a consumer discovers or engages with their products. While with Shoppable, she won the 2013 Women in Digital Award from L'Oreal, was named 1 of the 10 Most Powerful Millennials in Manhattan by Gotham Magazine, and 1 of the 11 Tech Gurus Changing the Luxury Game by Refinery29. The company was a 2014 Webby Award Honoree for Online Shopping, a 2016 Webby Honoree for Technical Achievement and named one of the 100 Brilliant Companies by Entrepreneur Magazine. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Never Eat Alone What CEO do you follow? – Jennifer Hyman Favorite online tool? — Boomerang for Gmail 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? – "Just how long everything takes" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:07 – Nathan introduces Heather to the show 02:07 – Shoppable creates a technology that helps people buy what they see online 02:37 – People see products in every place 02:50 – Shoppable created a patent pending technology that provides different locations to shop that is outside the traditional retail shop 03:20 – Heather started the company in 2011 03:36 – Heather pitched Shoppable to a number of different retailers 03:49 – Shoppable launched a technology with The Wall Street Journal 04:00 – The Wall Street Journal branding was able to bring in a bunch of retailers and advertisers 04:40 – Shoppable has grown to under 30M products across the whole platform 05:28 – Shoppable brings the technology to where the consumers already are 05:40 – com uses Shoppable on their website and customers can buy directly from the website 07:24 – Shoppable brings the technology to different types of companies 07:40 – Shoppable is also integrated with publications such as WSJ, Condé Nast and others 07:58 – Shoppable is a SaaS company and charges annually for licenses 08:20 – Average customer pay is 5 figures 09:11 – Prior to Shoppable, Heather was at post acquisition of com 09:26 – Heather was a founding member of Affinity Labs 10:21 – Heather got into Affinity right after college 10:39 – The exit with Monster was all cash with an additional incentive 10:49 – Heather made it for 2 years after the acquisition, doing research on Shoppable 11:45 – Heather had to make Shoppable work 12:01 – Heather knew that she would start her own company 12:21 – Heather had debt that she was able to pay off after the acquisition 12:55 – Heather kept a part of the money for Shoppable 13:40 – Heather also had to downsize her condo to keep her expenses low 15:13 – There are ways you can increase your buffer 15:33 – Heather had to change her habits 16:22 – Shoppable has raised $5M 16:33 – The last round was a year ago 16:43 – Heather isn't selling to Shopify 16:55 – Shoppable is above breaking even 17:24 – Team size is 20 and they are all based in New York 17:53 – Heather went on a business trip to NY and on her second day, she thought that Shoppable was made for NY 18:31 – Shoppable has around 438 merchants and 2000 brands 18:38 – One merchant could have hundreds of brands 19:15 – Average ARR 21:13 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: As an entrepreneur, you need to know how to manage money well. Building a company requires research and an action plan—especially if that company is your first and last shot at building one. Be aware that things in business and in life may take longer that what you're expecting. 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

Charlie Gaudet. He's the best-selling author of The Predictable Profits Playbook. He's a keynote speaker and creator of predictable profits methodology—the most reliable way to systematically generate predictable profits for small businesses. He's been an entrepreneur since the age of 4, creating his first multi-million dollar business at 24 and has helped others generate millions through his strategy. He's received a lot of awards, recognitions and has given business advice around the world including INC, Forbes and Fox Business as well on podcast and radio. He was named one of the American Geniuses Top 50 Industry Influencers. He's a crossfitter, Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter and 3-time wrestling state champion. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife, 3 adorable kidpreneurs, and 1 badass dog. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Losing My Virginity What CEO do you follow? – Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Infusionsoft 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? – Charlie would tell himself to stay in line and pick one particular craft to master Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:53 – Nathan introduces Charlie to the show 02:08 – Charlie is no longer in real estate 02:38 – Charlie grew his real estate company to $3-4M before getting out of it 02:46 – They built 2 roads and 30 homes 02:54 – Charlie was in Episode 343 03:21 – Charlie wasn't having fun in real estate so he shifted 03:32 – Charlie has always been growing businesses 03:48 – Someone came to Charlie asking him to help grow his business and paid him $500 an hour 03:54 – It was in 2009 04:18 – Charlie went to $500 from hour to $2500 an hour 04:36 – Charlie realized that there is value in coaching 04:49 – Charlie ended up making 1.1M when he changed his model 05:35 – In 2016, 90% of Charlie's income was percentage-based 06:05 – Charlie is going to a more scalable model in 2017 06:34 – Having the business that is dependent on Charlie won't be good in the long run 06:53 – Charlie can build a system around his coaching model 07:40 – Charlie had a client in the financial space 07:44 – Charlie created 4 emails in the financial space for a 12-hour promotion that made $212K 07:56 – The client is a small business company 08:12 – Charlie had a client who was selling to lawyers who also brought in $200K from the 4 emails that Charlie curated 08:32 – In some cases, Charlie would get a percentage of top line revenue and for others, he would still get paid per hour 09:20 – The baseline payment will still depend on the client 09:38 – Charlie is highly recommended by his clients 10:26 – Charlie will also bring outside expertise to help him 10:53 – When Charlie got into a marketing promotion, they controlled the whole promotion 11:30 – Something is always bound to happen and Charlie tries to have a contingency plan 12:00 – Charlie has made most of their money from the incentive-based model 12:20 – Recently, Charlie found out that lost $75K from the incentive-based model 13:33 – Most of Charlie's clients are using Infusionsoft 13:39 – For every email that they blast out, they have built in tracking 14:331 – Nathan is confused as to why Charlie would switch from the real estate to incentive-based coaching, which is hard to predict 14:37 – Charlie's company is named Predictable Profits for a reason 15:26 – Charlie has different coaches delivering value 15:56 – Group coaching can work on a scalable format 18:25 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: If you lose interest in what you are doing; decide if it's time to take the leap and pivot to something new. Something is always bound to happen, so a contingency plan is necessary. If you focus on just one craft, you can grow consistently and exponentially. 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

Colin Day. He's the chairman and CEO of a company called iCIMS which he founded in 2000 with a vision to deliver applicant tracking software, emphasizing easy-to-use, unparalleled, customer service. iCIMS is the largest stand-alone provider of talent acquisition software in the industry and stands among Forbes top 100 fastest growing private cloud companies in the country Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella and Marc Benioff Favorite online tool? — Office 365 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? – "Trust your gut and trust your instincts" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:08 – Nathan introduces Colin to the show 01:47 – iCIMS know they're winning by customer base 02:02 – iCIMS is next to Oracle 02:37 – iCIMS has a bedrock product that is their applicant tracking system 03:07 – iCIMS is a SaaS business 03:39 – iCIMS has multiple products, but the main product is the tracking system 03:52 – It handles compliance around data 04:14 – Pricing varies 04:21 – Recruitment becomes an important part of a company when they reach 100 employees 04:37 – iCIMS has price buckets that fit the smaller market, mid-sized and high-end markets 05:10 – How Colin started a SaaS business in 1999 05:17 – Colin graduated from Cornell with a degree in Psychology 05:23 – Colin wanted to do something entrepreneurial 05:38 – Colin's first client was from New Jersey 05:56 – Colin was logged into Comrise's proprietary system 06:21 – Colin then thought to buy the rights to Comrise's proprietary system to start his own company 06:48 – Colin started as a recruiter in 1997 07:36 – The CEO of Comrise believed in Colin 08:43 – Colin saw an opportunity and bought the system 08:57 – The CEO of Comrise loaned Colin the capital for iCIMS 09:40 – When Colin was working as a recruiter, they couldn't find enough technology to work 09:55 – It was a "hey day" when Colin spun out 10:20 – The capital was called a payroll loan 10:48 – Colin will call the CEO every time he needed money 11:11 – Colin didn't negotiate equity upfront 11:37 – iCIMS was charging monthly 12:23 – Current team size is around 650 12:33 – In November, they'll be moving from New Jersey to Old Bell Labs HQ 13:06 – iCIMS has grown without any outside money other than the loaned capital 13:17 – iCIMS has brought in a private equity company 14:14 – The money from the private equity company went directly towards the equity and not on the operational side of the company 14:29 – Besides getting an outside investor, it is also a good choice to get a private equity company 15:22 – Colin has a desire to win 16:12 – iCIMS's mandate is to convince the world to be contrarian 16:51 – Colin wants iCIMS to be the definition of winning 17:30 – Colin tries to always stay focused 18:18 – CAC 18:43 – Average annual contract price is around $30K 19:50 – Average MRR 20:40 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Don't be afraid to ask someone about their business plan. Always desire to win and stay focused – it works. Trust your instincts; don't doubt yourself. 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

Scott Duffy. He's the co-host of Business & Burgers and a contributor at Entrepreneur.com. He's also listed as one of the top 10 keynote speakers of Forbes and Entrepreneur. He started working for bestselling author and speaker, Tony Robbins. He's been a part of early stage exits and worked with big brands like CBSSport.com, NBC internet, Fox.com. He sold his last company to Richard Branson's Virgin Group. He's the best-selling author of the book called Launch!. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – You Are a Badass at Making Money What CEO do you follow? – Dave Meltzer Favorite online tool? — Skype How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5.5 to 6 hours If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "You don't win by hard work alone" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:02 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show 01:51 – Scott wants to tell The Top tribe that it is all about being real and integrity 02:01 – Scott is doing a lot of work regarding mindset 02:05 – Scott has a new book coming out called Breakthrough 02:26 – It is being published by Entrepreneur Press 02:30 – Scott was working on the timeline 02:54 – Scott shares a story about failing 02:58 – Scott had a business called Smart Charter 03:04 – Scott was looking for distribution and ended up making a deal with Virgin 03:16 – Scott was putting in $10K-15K of his personal money 03:33 – Scott closed a deal and they moved to their new office 04:12 – Scott is now officially a part of the Virgin Group 04:42 – Scott wasn't paying himself nothing before he sold the company 04:54 – Prior to Smart Charter, Scott was a part of Sports 1 USA 05:20 – Majority of Scott's savings went to Smart Charter 05:51 – Instead of taking money out out Smart Charter, Scott decided to go all in 06:18 – Scott now has equity with Virgin 06:57 – Scott sold Smart Charter in 2008 07:10 – Scott learned that the biggest job of an entrepreneur has nothing to do with business 07:19 – The most important job for an entrepreneur is to protect himself 07:44 – Smart Charter had an equity pool prior to Virgin 08:22 – The possible deal from Virgin 09:17 – In a matter of weeks, everything changed with Virgin/Smart Charter 10:05 – On Scott's first day with Virgin, he knew that if he messed up, there wouldn't be another chance 10:28 – Scott's superpower is in getting distribution for early stage companies 10:51 – As a small company, dealing with big companies does not make you better 11:19 – The deal with Virgin didn't turn out the way Scott thought it would 12:26 – As an entrepreneur, Scott thinks he was played 12:53 – Entrepreneurs have to know how to repackage the things that have happened to them 13:09 – Business & Burgers is a search for the best burger in America and offers a side of great business advice 13:14 – They hit the best restaurant and talk to the top local entrepreneur 13:35 – Next episode is Daymond John from Shark Tank 15:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Don't be discouraged; sometimes, you just have to learn things the hard way. Entrepreneurs need to know how to protect themselves. Take time building relationships – relationships are everything. 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

Michael Segala. He's the CEO and co-founder of a company called SFL Scientific, a data science consulting firm that specializes in big data solutions. He's for leveraging machine learning in analytics techniques to arrive at insights to numerous industries— from healthcare to stock market predictions. Before founding the company, Michael worked as a data scientist in some of the well-known companies such as Compete Inc., Akamai Technologies and he also holds a PhD in Particle Physics from Brown University. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Challenger Sale What CEO do you follow? – Larry Page and Sergey Brin Favorite online tool? — Slack 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? – "Diversify my education, learn more than just science from the early set, it will help you out" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:09 – Nathan introduces Michael to the show 01:56 – The founding members of SFL Scientific are particle physicists 02:41 – They have a deeper understanding of the problem—from the academic and business perspective 02:58 – SFL Scientific is completely bootstrapped with $2K as their initial funds 03:07 – SFL Scientific got their first client only a few weeks after their launch 03:24 – The first client was a group of people from Stanford studying sleep apnea 03:30 – Sleep apnea is a disease that makes you stop breathing for a couple of minutes while sleeping and can lead to death 03:46 – The group's idea is to take the sound and record it through an iPhone app at night 03:59 – The group hired SFL Scientific to build an entire suite of AI machine-learning product solution 04:04 – SFL Scientific also got an FDA resolution for the product 04:30 – SFL Scientific is a complete professional-based consulting firm 04:40 – They write specific algorithms for the clients depending on their needs 05:18 – SFL Scientific got their first client in 2015 05:24 – Michael is now 31 05:44 – The pricing depends 06:17 – For a high-level R&D-based projects, the charge is hourly 06:34 – SFL Scientific does R&D-based projects with minimum requirements 07:10 – Most clients don't understand the scope of the project so SFL Scientific asks business questions or strategy 07:45 – SFL Scientific provides the possible end result 08:08 – First year revenue is low 6 figures 08:27 – SFL Scientific has 3 co-founders 08:38 – Michael does more on the sales stuff such as talking with client, one handles the technical and the other handles the implementation of behind-the-scenes coding 09:14 – Equity is almost equal with Michael getting 34% 09:37 – The first 2 years, they invested back into the company most of what they got 09:53 – They had some very low salaries 10:27 – SFL Scientific almost broke a million in 2016 10:42 – 2017 revenue might go over and above a million 10:57 – Team size is 10 11:30 – SFL Scientific currently has a dozen clients 11:38 – One of the clients takes up around 20% of the revenue and Michael knows that it is dangerous 12:00 – SFL Scientific has no churn yet 12:08 – SFL Scientific mitigates a couple of ways the employees can work on multiple projects at a time 12:24 – SFL Scientific doesn't invest only in one problem—go vertical to diversify the risks 13:12 – Looking at data science in general, the challenges are unanimous 13:34 – SFL Scientific is capable of understanding and solving cases from different industries 14:07 – Nathan just finished Thinking in Systems 15:48 – If you don't have decent data to support a model that is accurate to a certain degree, you're not going to get anywhere 17:03 – SFL Scientific looks at the potential of a project 17:16 – Michael is most excited with the health industry in terms of AI and machine learning 19:15 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Consider yourself lucky when you're completely bootstrapped and you end up getting your first client only after a few weeks of launching. It's quite risky to only solve one problem as a company; diversify your services so you have a greater chance of surviving. Study different fields and see how you can solve cases from these different industries. 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

Owen Sadeghpour. A year ago, he was the technical employee or founder at an earlier company and has raised over $50M. Now, he's working at a successful company. He's also got a different project called You Exec. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Blue Ocean Strategy and How to Win Friends and Influence People What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Squarespace How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-10 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "The older you get the more you realize that human relationships are 50% of your work" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:05 – Nathan introduces Owen to the show 01:46 – You Exec is a community of professionals that are looking to improve their careers or the way they have relationships with people 01:57 – You Exec creates incredible resources for free and for paid members 02:13 – The paid members have the advantage of more features than the free members 02:26 – Paid members pay $4/month 02:43 – You Exec also takes insightful books, like The Lean Startup, and summarizes them 03:30 – You Exec's content is usually posted on many different channels 03:35 – Some of these channels include Medium, LinkedIn and Facebook 03:56 – You Exec has a mailing list that people subscribe to 04:25 – You Exec used to be something else 04:33 – As a technical person, Owen would write technical articles which were posted on Hacker News, a Y-combinator news stream 04:43 – Owen's article landed on the front page 04:59 – Owen's first article was Google and Facebook Ad Traffic is 90% Useless 05:20 – Nathan shares how he found Owen and what piqued his interest in him 05:50 – Owen has been a follower of Hacker News 06:02 – The first article wasn't intentionally made to blow up 06:49 – When Owen submitted the article, it got 30 upvotes only after a few minutes 07:03 – The readers were mostly looking at the tools that Owen featured 07:16 – By the time Owen got 50-60 points, Owen noticed that it wasn't getting on the front page which was supposed to happen 07:27 – Owen got some coffee and after 6 hours, he got tons of emails and the article was on the front page 08:20 – Owen's objective in creating the article was to share with engineers that they're wasting their money 09:10 – The article got a total of 30K views 09:47 – Owen wants people to see You Exec's value; that's why they sign up 09:51 – Owen doesn't share You Exec's numbers 10:40 – You Exec has around 1k signups on the paid membership 11:11 – Owen has Google Analytics on while working so he saw where the referrals are coming from 11:56 – The first article still gets around 10 readers a day 12:20 – Owen focuses on insights to bring traffic 12:50 – Owen is passionate in improving patients' lives 13:08 – Owen believes that a media company is great, but his passion lies in helping individuals 13:44 – You Exec also pays for resources 14:25 – When You Exec pushes out a weekly newsletter, they include references to the creditor 14:50 – The article should save You Exec's members hours of work 15:25 – You Exec pushes out all the sources of things 16:44 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Create something of value and people will stick with you. More and more people are finding ways to shave hours off their workload WITHOUT sacrificing their quality of work. Relationships with your colleagues are KEY to having a great work experience. 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

Steve Olsher. He's the chairman and founder of Liquor.com. He's a New York Times best-selling author of What Is Your WHAT?: Discover The One Amazing Thing You Were Born To Do. He's also hosted the number 1 radio show, Reinvention Radio, and is a national keynote speaker and creator of the New Media Summit. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The $100 Startup What CEO do you follow? – Giovanni Marsico Favorite online tool? — io How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wished I would have trusted myself more" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:10 – Nathan introduces to the show 01:35 – Steve was in Episode 342 02:02 – Steve is still in the process of selling Liquor.com 02:14 – Liquor.com is on ad revenue but is moving into the monetization strategy in Q3 and Q4 02:20 – Monthly impression is currently $3M 02:32 – There's nothing in the bottom line revenue because it just goes back to the business 02:45 – Gross margin varies 03:51 – The company's valuation 04:07 – Average open rate 04:14 – Depending on the promotion, the click rate varies 04:41 – People are more interested with contests than new products 05:26 – Steve has been doing events 06:24 – Liquor.com was like a family business 07:04 – New Media Summit does live events for different types of viewers 08:00 – The idea is to connect with people who have high-visibility platforms 08:34 – New Media Summit is bringing in icons and influencers to events 09:06 – Most people are podcasters 09:25 – The people in New Media Summit are focused on understanding the value of teaching and sharing their knowledge 09:47 – New Media Summit takes care of the podcasters hotel accommodation and meals 09:57 – The event will accommodate only 150 people 10:17 – There will be an influencer and mastermind on the last day of the summit 10:49 – Attendees can pay in full which is $4997—the early bird price 11:10 – The marketing just started and they have sold 2 tickets for the early bird 11:17 – There are some who invested in Steve's products and services and paid a seat deposit to attend the summit 11:30 – Minimum price to attend is $1300 plus the seat deposit 12:28 – Part of Steve's revenue comes from buying stage time 12:44 – Steve can easily pay $10K for a highly-curated event with 100 people 13:19 – An event should have a revenue model or plan of action in order to recoup 14:44 – There are some events that people don't want to go back to because they are just pitch fests 14:49 – Steve doesn't speak at events where 1-10 people are selling 15:22 – Steve's call-to action during his speaking is to sign-up on an order form which has a lot of bonuses 16:34 – An event venue is quite expensive which can average to about $150K for a whole day event 17:00 – Steve is also making money from the events 17:28 – They've got everything covered before the event starts 17:38 – There will be services and products offered during the event 18:03 – Steve will also pitch to future speakers 19:35 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: An event should be well-planned and have a revenue model where they can recoup expenses. The main challenges in having an event is ensuring people attend and to have speakers who will NOT just sell during the event. Ad open rates always vary depending on the promotion. 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

Stephan Goss. He's the entrepreneur and technology executive behind his first company, Zeeto, which he started at the age of 22 and is still running today. He's led the company in expanding from a team of 3 people to 70 in just under 5 years and with the launch of the ad network, he plans on continuing the company's growth story in 2017. Previously, he founded Samples.com & Getitfree.us, which is the biggest free samples property on the internet. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Power of Habit What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Slack and Gmail How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8.5-9 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Keep going for it" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:04 – Nathan introduces Stephan to the show 01:56 – Stephan bought Samples.com 3 years ago and Getitfree.us for 6 figures 02:31 – Everything started with Samples.com 02:48 – Stephan left Switzerland when he was 19 and spent 10 months living in tent 03:31 – Stephan and some of his friends were running ad campaigns on the internet 03:55 – Everything is lead generation with Samples.com 04:03 – They acquire users for $1 and they get $1.25 in return 04:30 – Stephan was making a 20-30% margin at first 04:59 – One of their large clients called and asked for more targeted leads who offered $8 05:46 – Stephan came out with a decent approach to find targeted leads 06:22 – Stephan was spending $10K for ads 06:51 – Stephan had a business partner and they had some cash flow to begin with 07:14 – The model of Samples.com was good because they can get their ROI fast 07:34 – Samples.com is still running 07:55 – Stephan continued the question asking model for the targeted market and scaled it 08:26 – The lead value is more of a composition of all the answers 08:46 – 2016 total top line revenue was $39M and total ad spend was around $20-25M 09:18 – Samples.com currently has 25 people 09:25 – Stephan spent the bottom line money on investing on the Zeeto site 09:42 – Stephan is currently breaking even with Zeeto 09:55 – Stephan still gets his salary from the company 10:23 – Zeeto's model is taken from Samples.com's question-model 11:10 – Zeeto is similar to Google Adsense 11:20 – Regular CPMs from Adsense range from $5-20 11:33 – Zeetos' CPMs range from $400-2200 12:00 – From Nathan's research, podcasters earn $15-20 CPMs 12:11 – Nathan shares how he asks his advertisers about their CAC and his audience 12:44 – With Google Adsense, there will be around 3 ads per page 13:27 – The technology around Samples.com and Zeeto is considerably pretty hard 14:43 – Facebook and Google has all this data regarding leads that other big companies don't have 15:13 – Zeeto's goal is to help publishers have a better revenue model 15:21 – Zeeto's product has just been launched 16:32 – Stephan sees Zeeto as an additional feature to the paywall 17:01 – Zeeto is incremental 18:18 – It will be more complicated for Zeeto to write questions for each of the articles rather than by being an addition to the paywall 18:24 – "Questions are built to be more broad" 18:59 – Stephan doesn't know what is really going to work yet 19:25 – Stephan's goal this year is to see where they're going to fit in 19:50 – Anything that will drive people to the web will work well 20:19 – Stephan's sample call-to-action 20:34 – You can make custom questions fitted to the website 20:46 – The goal is to optimize questions for the best response rate 21:22 – Zeeto was built from scratch 21:54 – Nathan struggles with which of his advertisement he should show to his new subscribers 22:00 – Nathan sends them an email autoresponder 22:27 – Zeeto has a user group that has interesting attributes 23:07 – 3 advertisers are not enough to do it efficiently 23:14 – Zeeto now has 200 advertisers 23:37 – Zeeto is completely free and they'll send a check for the revenue share 25:05 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: It's easier for people to give out their details in exchange for something free. To collect your targeted leads, you need to have focused questions. Stay encouraged and Just keep going for it! 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