SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Sam Caucci. He's the CEO of Sales Huddle, a training and development team that is using game technology to help organizations better prepare their people for the workforce. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Meditations What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin Favorite online tool? — GrowBots How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Sam is a big believer that you have to over-network Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:52 – Nathan introduces Sam to the show 01:30 – Sales Huddle is a mobile game platform for employee training 01:43 – Sales Huddle has everything a business needs to learn 02:04 – Sales Huddle is a subscription business 02:10 – Pricing is from $5K to $15K 02:13 – There's a monthly recurring fee based on the number of employees on the platform 02:20 – 2016 revenue closed out at $1.2M 02:29 – MRR is around $800K 82 subscribed clients on the platform 02:58 – Sales Huddle has an initial integration fee for converting a client's current content into the platform 03:18 – Most companies pay Sales Huddle an upfront payment 03:36 – Sales Huddle tries to get companies to pay upfront first 04:03 – Sales Huddle has 100% retention 04:37 – Sam credits their 0 churn on the product not infringing on the customer's current learning stack yet 05:10 – Sales Huddle started as a part-time consulting company 6 years ago 05:26 – The development of the product was in middle of 2014 05:27 – Selling started in 2015 05:40 – Team size is now 20 06:05 – Sales Huddle is currently raising and has raised $400K 06:33 – The round was a kiss convertible note 06:41 – A kiss convertible note converts to an equity and is similar to safe note 07:44 – Many startups don't think of their sales pipeline 08:08 – Sales Huddle is currently in a strong position 08:40 – As a founder, Sam believes it is his responsibility to drive the shift with his team 08:58 – Sam can definitely raise money through sales, but they have to think of the worst case scenario 09:12 – Sam sees his company running a 100m dash; once they get to 200m, they will think about how to get to 300m 09:30 – ARR goal is around 100m and they're currently at 50m 10:16 – Sam just had a daughter 10:49 – Sam is building a team that is going to have your back in a bar fight 11:12 – Sales Huddle's competitors 11:43 – Sales Huddle just started to spend money on paid acquisition 11:59 – Sales Huddle is almost always breaking even 12:16 – Sales Huddle is burning $40K-60K a month 12:41 – The hardest shift for Sam 13:50 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: A great retention rate could mean you're not charging enough or your product is just that good. Be the founder that your team trusts—even to the point of trusting you that raising funds is not necessary. Always invest in growing your network! 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

Scot Wingo. He's the CEO of Spiffy. He's also a 4-time serial entrepreneur and industry thought leader in ecommerce and on-demand economy realm. He's appeared on CNBC's Today's Show and contributed his expertise to The Wall Street Journal, New York Times along with many other publications. He previously founded Stingray Software which he sold to Rogue Wave Software, AuctionRover which was sold to GoTo/Overture, and ChannelAdvisor that went public in 2013, under the stock symbol ECOM. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — LinkedIn How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4-6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "To trust your instincts and invest even more in your own companies" Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Scot to the show 01:29 – Spiffy is an on-demand car wash and detail company 01:33 – Customers pay for car washes and Spiffy is full-stock 01:59 – Spiffy is a pay-as-you-go model 02:02 – Some customers would request to have their car cleaned on a regular basis so they're currently working on a subscription plan 02:30 – Having your car cleaned is addicting 03:02 – Spiffy started in 2014 03:17 – Scot was 46 in 2014 03:26 – Scot loves building a company 04:00 – In 1999, AuctionRover started 04:14 – AuctionRover is a search engine for auction sites 04:16 – Scot always had a plan to develop software for sellers 04:20 – After getting acquired, they developed the software which turned into ChannelAdvisor 05:43 – They've raised $3M for AuctionRover 05:53 – AuctionRover started to get acquisition offers 06:16 – Scot was a fan of Goto 06:45 – Stingray put Scot in a position where it had to work 07:32 – Scot had accumulated personal debt to run Stingray 07:55 – Scot was 25 when he founded Stingray 08:03 – Scot had Stingray for 3 years before selling it to Rogue 08:11 – Acquisition price was around $7M 08:27 – It was software and Scot had a 30% margin 09:07 – Scot added $3M through fundraising 09:55 – Tim Draper was on Episode 129 10:17 – AuctionRover's acquisition price was $20-50M 10:43 – The negotiation with Goto to buy back AuctionRover 11:18 – Scot bought back AuctionRover for around $1M 11:37 – They bought it back in 2001 12:00 – When Scot IPOd ChannelAdvisor, everything was new to him and he had never taken a company that big before 12:07 – Scot's dad was a business person and was on Fortune Magazine 12:58 – Scot always has a higher goal 13:37 – "If you've raised a venture capital, you're going to have an exit" 13:47 – Scot wanted to see what an IPO process looked like 14:02 – Scot raised capital for ChannelAdvisor 14:14 – ChannelAdvisor helps retailers and brands sell on eBay, Amazon and other channels 14:26 – ChannelAdvisor raised a total of $90M before the IPO 15:08 – ChannelAdvisor's market price on Day 1 16:03 – Scot brought in a COO to help him 16:11 – After going public, the COO was promoted to president 16:20 – Scot felt he wasn't learning much more and the president wanted to step into the CEO role 16:27 – Scot felt it was a great time for the president to mature and take on the CEO position 16:47 – Scot just simply sent a letter to the board about him leaving 17:35 – Scot is more of a tactical entrepreneur 17:47 – "I just really like solving hard problems and scaling businesses" 17:55 – Everytime Scot would have a career change, it was in a different space 18:05 – Since Spiffy is consumer oriented, Scot believes he can scale it faster than ChannelAdvisor 18:27 – Scot's goal for Spiffy 19:35 – Scot had 2 physical car washes after selling his 2nd company 19:44 – Spiffy was an MVP in 2014 when it was launched 20:09 – There are reasons why customers don't like detailing 20:40 – 70% of Spiffy's revenue is from out-work consumers 21:11 – Spiffy just crossed the $200M runaway and is growing annually north of 100% 21:33 – Team size in the office is around 20 and around 60 technicians 22:06 – Spiffy has raised $7.5M on their series A 22:18 – Scot still gets excited raising funds 22:38 – Scot's aspiration for Spiffy is bigger than his checkbook 23:55 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Always aim higher when it comes to your goals. Going through multiple exits boosts your learning and experience. Always trust your instincts. 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

Dimitris Giannoccaro. He founded IAMIP, in 2013, after an extensive career in engineering and intellectual property together with some of the strongest leaders and inventors at ABB. The urgent need for digitizing an intellectual property world and maximizing the potential of intellectual property successfully has been felt during his work at his company. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – n/a What CEO do you follow? – Björn Lilja of Kundo 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? – "I would never do this again" Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Dimitris to the show 01:31 – IAMIP is a typical SaaS company 01:56 – IAMIP is where users can collaborate in real-time in order to access all the patents 02:49 – IAMIP has 3 target groups: small startups, medium-size companies and corporations 03:06 – Small startups still need to know how to protect their solution 03:22 – Medium and corporations are big companies and they want to make sure no one is infringing on their rights 04:12 – If you want to get acquired later on, you want to make sure you don't infringe on other's rights 04:42 – Patents are important for product 04:58 – Patents are also filed on services 05:32 – As a consumer, the focus is on the usability of the product or service 05:40 – If you want to make money right and keep growing, you want to have your IP 06:08 – Team size is 14 06:19 – IAMIP was launched 3 years 06:23 – Average MRR is $60K 06:38 – IAMIP currently has 500 users 06:54 – There are 62 paying customers 07:18 – IAMIP raised 2 years ago, but it was initially bootstrapped 07:34 – Dimitris was 37 when he launched IAMIP 08:05 – IAMIP managed to have their first client after a few months 08:22 – IAMIP has 2 founders and the split is 50/50 08:59 – Dimitris regretted not inviting more people 09:55 – IAMIP has raised $1M on the first round 10:01 – IAMIP is in the process of raising an equity round 10:27 – Dimitris based the valuation on the future number of customers 11:08 – IAMIP didn't give a discount on their first round which is an equity round 11:44 – Gross customer churn 12:16 – Dimitris' tactic on having 0 churn 12:46 – 2016 revenue 13:08 – 2017 goal 13:16 – IAMIP has recently been accepted by the UCLA Amazon program 13:33 – CAC 13:59 – Everybody is part of the sales team 14:30 – All of the people on the team are engineers and the 7 spend additional time in sales 14:51 – LTV 16:17 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Patents are important for growing businesses in order to protect your solutions. Having co-founders has its advantages and can be much better than doing it solo. You CAN acquire new customers without an expert salesperson. 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

Rickard Carlsson. He's the CEO of Detectify, a Stockholm-based security startup selected as one of Sweden's super talents, in 2015, by the Swedish business publication, Veckans Affärer. He has lived and worked in Sweden, USA and India and holds an MSc of applied physics and electrical engineering. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Home Improvement Books What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Google Calendar 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? – "Know more about how to build a great team" Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:43 – Nathan introduces Rickard to the show 01:35 – Detectify integrates security testing into the development workflow 01:49 – Detectify makes sure that the safety testing is brought to development 02:08 – Pipedrive uses Detectify as a part of their security 02:25 – Security is important for Pipedrive so they use Detectify to automate a large part of their security detecting 02:54 – Average pay per customer is €80 03:10 – Detectify was launched in 2014 03:50 – Rickard's co-founders who worked for the biggest tech companies had the idea of Detectify 04:44 – Rickard met his co-founders at his previous job and they were Angel investors to Detectify 04:58 – Rickard was a business consultant for McKinsey 05:54 – Rickard started a startup to learn new things 06:21 – Detectify has 4 founders and the split is not the usual 25% each 06:41 – Detectify has now raised €2.5M 06:49 – The last round was a priced equity round 07:13 – Rickard does everything except coding including sales 07:42 – Detectify managed to get 1-2 important Angels on board 08:09 – Detectify is currently serving 350 customers 08:20 – Majority of the customers are the long-paying customers 08:45 – There's an increasing number of larger customers 08:55 – MRR is around $30K 09:10 – Nathan has released interview videos on Youtube 09:45 – Team size is around 25 10:09 – Salaries in Europe are much smaller than in the USA 10:18 – 2/3 of the team are full-time engineers 11:17 – Gross customer churn 11:26 – Detectify has no paid acquisition 11:30 – Detectify has 2 outbound sales people who just started 12:00 – The team is based in Sweden 12:17 – LTV 12:47 – Detectify has a few enterprise customers 13:00 – Deals are usually a year contract with an upfront payment 13:25 – Rickard won't disclose what the salespeople get for every $10K deal they close 15:36 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: An eagerness to learn new things is a great motivator to start one's own business. Security is simply a necessity. Having different brackets of customers allows for more growth. 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

Don Mal. He's the CEO and co-founder of Vena Solutions which was established in 2011 and is the fastest growing provider of cloud-based corporate performance management software. Prior to Vena, he's owned several executive tech positions along the way with companies like Clarity Systems and IBM. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Who Moved My Cheese What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella Favorite online tool? — Dropbox 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 wish I knew that sales cures all" Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Don to the show 01:21 – Vena was the fastest company to acquire a hundred customers 01:29 – Vena is growing a 100%, year over year 02:05 – CPM or corporate performance management is budgeting, planning and forecasting financial performance 02:28 – A fastfood chain can use Vena's service to capture the sales of their burger 02:55 – CPM is about measuring results in a couple of different dimensions 03:16 – The Top had Glen Coates of Handshake and they're an inventory management 03:31 – Vena is more horizontal based and vertical industry based 04:20 – Vena doesn't compete with Bill.com and Expensify.com 04:31 – Annual RPU is $50K 04:53 – Vena was launched in 2011 05:02 – Team size is almost 200 05:18 – Vena has raised capital with equity rounds 05:49 – Don was running sales for a company in the same space that Don sold 06:02 – Don has already built credibility, so he was able to convince families and friends to invest 06:21 – Don has raised over a million to launch the business 06:50 – Don's process of closing 07:06 – Don was able to raise $3M from other sources 07:30 – If your friends and families can't write a $25K check, a $1k check will do 07:42 – Don has now raised a total of $50M 08:35 – Having the right kind of partner is important in raising a round 09:17 – Vena is approaching 350 paying customers 09:38 – Average MRR is $1.4M 09:47 – Vena finds new customers with a combination of inbound and outbound marketing 10:04 – Vena also nurtures their prospects through drip campaigns 10:22 – Total spend on paid acquisition is a couple of hundred grand a month 10:40 – Vena has a team that does the testing for new channels 11:05 – Don wants to keep their CAC below a 12-month cost of the revenue 11:38 – Don is looking at a 12-month payback 11:55 – LTV 12:05 – A customer stays with Vena up to 10 years 12:48 – Don sees the significant expansion of their platform 12:55 – Client starts with 2 user cases and can end up having more than 20 13:28 – Gross churn 13:39 – Vena has hit their net negative revenue churn 14:05 – Vena's dollar will turn into $1.20 with their current system 15:15 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Before a big round of fundraising, master your pitch and start with your friends and families. Make your product stick to your customers and you'll experience amazing growth. Have experts in your sales and marketing team; trust and release them to do their job. 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

Victor Levitin. He's the CEO of CrazyLister and last time he was at The Top was in late 2016. His company, Crazy Lister, has passed 2K customers, about 600K raised and about 30K in 2015 revenue. Each customer pays about $15 in monthly revenue. They've passed 25K in MRR with about 3% gross customer churn each month. They are based mainly in Tel Aviv with their team of 8. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About The Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin Favorite online tool? — Intercom 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? – "Start with SaaS, everything else does not compound" Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Victor to the show 01:25 – CrazyLister is the easiest way to create high-converting, mobile-optimized product listings for eBay 01:36 – Investors call CrazyLister, the Wix for eBay 01:49 – CrazyLister closed the door on their Tel Aviv office and focused on just working 02:14 – CrazyLister has recently hit $1M in ARR 02:38 – CrazyLister just passed 3.5 paying customers 03:13 – CrazyLister's growth is a combination of several tactics and strategies 03:26 – CrazyLister now nailed paid acquisition 03:47 – CrazyLister managed to get their CAC to LTV ratio to 1:8 04:01 – CrazyLister is spending $15K a month for paid acquisition 04:10 – To acquire a new customer costs $80 04:29 – CrazyLister is trying every paid acquisition 04:41 – CrazyLister is now focused on Google AdWords which is working quite well for them 04:58 – CrazyLister couldn't make it on Facebook 05:31 – CrazyLister targets specific customer needs in retail 06:15 – Victor has been in California for 2 months to discuss the future of CrazyLister 06:40 – Victor came to the conclusion that with the growth that they have experienced, raising a big VC round wouldn't be healthy for them 07:06 – Victor now focuses on making e-commerce easier for retailers 07:17 – CrazyLister will first prove traction beyond eBay then raise a not-so-big round to sustain growth 07:35 – It will be between $1-2M 07:40 – Current team size is 10 07:53 – CrazyLister just hit cash flow positive in March 08:03 – CrazyLister doesn't really need capital, but wants to grow beyond eBay 08:48 – CrazyLister now has 3 plans: $9/month, $25/month and $45/month 09:04 – The best customers for CrazyLister are the highest paying ones 09:35 – CrazyLister tries to understand their customer even before they upgrade 10:24 – As CrazyLister adds more features and updates, they increase their pricing 10:56 – CrazyLister has developed a feature that is beneficial for businesses 11:37 – Victor has 2 co-founders 11:51 – There are 3 main pillars in CrazyLister 11:55 – Victor and Max, the co-founder, are the business pillars 12:06 – The second pillar is the CTO 12:25 – The third pillar is the paid acquisition expert 12:45 – The paid acquisition expert is a full-time employee 14:00 – When CrazyLister began with paid acquisition, their budget was only $5K 14:08 – As the data becomes better, they've raised their budget as well 15:34 – CrazyLister now wants to replicate what they did to eBay to other channels 15:50 – 2016 total revenue 16:40 – As a seller/business, you constantly need to add listings on eBay, so there's a considerate need to use CrazyLister 17:03 – Gross churn per month 18:38 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Focus in on your goals, then see if you can raise a bigger round. Paid acquisition, if done well, can get you new customers consistently and help grow your company. Let your pricing reflect the valuable updates and developments you make to 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

Jon Ferrara. He's been recognized for pioneering innovation in the customer service management category for many years. Prior to founding Nimble, he was the creator and co-founder of the award-winning customer management product GoldMine. In 1999, Goldmine got acquired by FrontRange and he left to pursue other interests. During those years, he continued to watch the CRM market grow. He saw that most CRMs in the industry that were serving small businesses moved up market and became way more expensive and more complex—leaving the small business market totally underserved. It was at that point that Jon decided to create the next generation CRM product for small businesses called Nimble. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff Favorite online tool? — Buffer App How many hours of sleep do you get?— Around 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Start a business earlier" Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Jon to the show 01:42 – Jon was on Episode 643 of The Top 01:55 – Nimble has around 10K paying customers with a monthly RPU of $20 02:08 – 3% monthly churn 02:14 – CAC is around $5 02:24 – Team size is 25 02:43 – Nimble has recently closed a $9M round 03:07 – Acquiring SMBs is the exact same way they've scaled Goldmine 03:20 – The problem with most CRMs today is that only sales and marketing people use these systems when in fact, everyone in the company should use it 03:56 – Jon cold called every Novel reseller in the country when Goldmine was just starting 04:00 – "People sell what they know and know what they use" 04:15 – When Jon started Nimble, no one knew that social media would be the way to grow a business 04:30 – Jon looked around for influencers for Nimble's launch 04:48 – Nimble is the early pioneer of influencer marketing 05:08 – Nimble was getting 100K website views with 0 marketing spend 05:25 – As a company scales up, it should also touch the customers in different ways 05:43 – Nimble doesn't pay influencers 05:45 – To find influencers, you have to know the core influencers around your product 06:00 – You find ways on how to build a relationship with influencers 06:32 – Nimble will now try to get around with ad spend 06:41 – Jon always believed that there was another way to get access to customers 06:44 – Jon is going to replicate the strategy they used with Goldmine by partnering with people similar to Microsoft and Google and get their VARs to use Nimble and start recommending it 07:01 – Nimble just signed a deal with Microsoft where they can be a reseller of Nimble 07:12 – Microsoft can now give their VARs Nimble so their VARs can be better, smarter and faster in sales and marketing 07:33 – Nimble will work on top of Office 365 as the operating system of a business 07:57 – Microsoft is currently passing their revenue to the VARs 08:11 – The VARs are the one making the MRR which is 20% 08:30 – Nimble's average RPU is now around $30 08:41 – If you can help a business person with their sales and marketing needs, you're now opening yourself up to other functionalities for that customer 08:53 – Every business struggles with sales, marketing and relationship management 09:20 – Nimble just rolled out new pricing and marked on automation add-on 10:13 – March MRR is around $225K 10:25 – Nimble now has around 10.5K customers 11:31 – Without relying on the VARs, it's going to be a long term strategy for Nimble 11:48 – Microsoft has bundled Nimble inside of Outlook mobile, Office 365 and Outlook desktop 12:07 – It is like a free acquisition 12:32 – Jon won the deal with Microsoft because of their relationship 12:42 – In every business relationship, you want to know how the other person answers and what success looks like for that person 13:21 – Nimble is now a free plug-in with Office 365 13:37 – Users can use Nimble for free without paying $30 a month 13:42 – Nimble is like Rapportive on steroids 13:48 – Nimble has a limited feature for free users 14:14 – Business people are the ones who usually convert to paid users 14:33 – The market of Nimble is a very fragmented market 14:37 – Nathan mentions the people in the same market that were on The Top: 14:39 – Hatchbuck 14:55 – Pipedrive 15:02 – Close.io 15:08 – Contactually 15:29 – In a fragmented market, you need to be top of the line with your customers, influencers and with business products that people use 15:52 – Nimble continues to be rated as No. 1 17:00 – The way Nimble wins is how it executes the distribution channels 17:13 – Team size is currently 32 and based in Santa Monica and Ukraine 17:44 – You don't go to raise with a particular value in mind 17:53 – Let the market determine the value 18:06 – The last round raised was a series A 18:22 – Nimble has talked to a number of VCs and with this deal, they're bringing in a seasoned CEO 19:18 – What people are vetting for Nimble is the future 19:41 – "We're definitely going for a large exit with Nimble" 20:14 – Office 365 is now dominating the email cloud productivity space and they're just starting 20:48 – "And Nimble, I believe, is positioned today to dominate in this space" 22:05 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: In a fragmented market, you need to be TOP of line—a product that people will always recommend. You have to know how a potential client answers a question and how they define success when making a deal. Nurture your business relationships—this is KEY to your success. 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

Victor Rosenman. He's the CEO and founder of Feedvisor. Before founding Feedvisor, he was the founder of an innovative marketing startup and a senior R&D manager at Sun Microsystems. Victor holds a BSc in computer science and an executive MBA from Kellogg Northwestern. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Black Swan What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Whatsapp 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? – "Whenever you make a decision, you need to think a little bit longer" Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:47 – Nathan introduces Victor to the show 01:24 – Feedvisor is a decision support system for large ecommerce vendors that sell through marketplaces 02:57 – Most of the e-commerce that joins Feedvisor has significant business on Amazon 03:06 – Before joining Feedvisor, they will be doing marketplace management through Amazon 03:32 – Feedvisor makes the numbers on the marketplace right 03:50 – Feedvisor looks into a load of various numbers so they can tell which price is right 04:05 – Stock is almost similar to Amazon where there's competition in prices 04:20 – To look into the numbers and make decisions is tough 04:42 – Feedvisor decides more on pricing, replenishment and assortment 05:02 – Feedvisor charges a monthly subscription 05:15 – Average customer pay is $2-3K a month 06:06 – Undercuts is getting information and automated price adjustments 06:20 – For every revenue Undercuts gets through the system, they pay a rev share 06:40 – Not going through Feedvisor's system will not make sense for the clients 06:49 – "There's no way you'll be fast by doing things manually" 06:55 – The rev share is a portion of the entire fee 07:20 – Average rev share percentage 07:38 – Majority of Feedvisor's revenue is coming from their fixed revenue stream 07:45 – Feedvisor was founded in 2011 07:55 – Feedvisor was initially bootstrapped for a year 08:00 – Feedvisor got an initial seat funding in 2012 08:03 – It was for $500K 08:11 – It was all equity 08:15 – To date, Feedvisor has raised $33M 08:34 – Feedvisor's funding experience wasn't easy but it was fair 08:46 – Feedvisor was initially from Israel 09:12 – Israel has a powerful VC ecosystem 09:18 – It's not different than Silicon Valley 09:48 – Feedvisor's revenue just before raising a round 10:00 – When Feedvisor raised a seed round, Victor didn't know about the e-commerce business 10:16 – Feedvisor was primarily rev share when they started 10:47 – Feedvisor raised funding in Q4 11:45 – Victor pitched to the investors slowly 12:00 – In the end, Angel investor is much more of a personal business 12:55 – The series B was done with a common valuation 13:09 – The common valuation for series B is 60%-150% 13:30 – Team size 13:40 – Feedvisor has around 500-600 customers 14:12 – Average MRR 14:57 – Churn is quite low 15:50 – Feedvisor is close to net negative revenue churn 16:10 – Feedvisor focuses on value 16:57 – By optimizing Feedvisor, they create an ROI 17:58 – Feedvisor is charging a fair amount and they understand their customers 18:55 – Feedvisor finds customers through brand building initiatives and content marketing 19:02 – Feedvisor invests a lot on brand building 19:10 – "When you think Feedvisor, you think it's a reliable solution" 19:34 – Feedvisor does their own conferences 19:47 – Feedvisor creates an environment where people can learn 20:21 – Feedvisor has paid $3-4K for content marketing 20:57 – It is about investing into everything that can help you position yourself, not just content marketing 21:44 – LTV 22:23 – CAC 23:45 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: People want their businesses not to just be automated, but also precise at the same time. Building your brand creates a great reputation and image for your business. Making big decisions requires careful consideration and time. 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 Brinker. He publishes the chief marketing technologist blog known as ChiefMartec.com and is the program chair for Martech Conference Series. He's the author of the book Hacking Marketing published by Wiley. He's also the co-founder of Ion Interactive, a provider of interactive content marketing software to many of the world's leading brands. He has a degree in computer science from Columbia University and Harvard University and an MBA from MIT. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Innovator's Dilemma What CEO do you follow? – Brian Halligan Favorite online tool? — Trello 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? – "That software can rewrite the rules of the world" Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Scott to the show 01:36 – There are over 3600-3800 B2B SaaS companies that Scott has worked with 01:57 – Scott was researching the companies all by himself 02:22 – Scott is a co-founder/CTO of B2B SaaS company, Ion Interactive 02:32 – There's also the ChiefMartec blog that Scott started 8 years ago 03:00 – Scott is into how technology changes the way one manages one's marketing 03:14 – Scott is also looking at the toolsets that enable the technology in marketing 03:35 – Ion Interactive is a SaaS company 04:44 – Chief Martec got millions of impressions in 2016 05:30 – Chief Martec's Alexa ranking 06:03 – If you can create something of value, you can succeed 06:53 – Scott gets paid for most of his speaking gigs 07:28 – It's not an easy path when you're just starting to pitch to conferences 08:08 – Scott started his chart because of a speaking engagement at a conference 08:40 – The first significant paying gig that Scott remembered was when a SAS hired him for a Southeast Asian tour to present the hybrid art and science of marketing 09:23 – It was for 2 weeks 09:35 – Martech Conference was launched in 2014 in partnership with Third Door Media 09:51 – It was actually Third Door Media's event and they just contacted Scott for content 10:08 – Scott took care of the speaker side and everything that involved content 11:00 – All the sectors in the space excite Scott 12:27 – Scott doesn't agree that the CRM space is going to zero 13:15 – There's so much innovation and value 13:30 – The CRM companies who have been in The Top 14:00 – The CRM space is still a hot space 14:52 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The marketing space has never been better because of the limitless potential of technology. If you can create something of value, you CAN succeed. Software can rewrite the rules of the world. 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

Phil Nadel. He's the co-founder and managing director of Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners, one of the largest and most active AngelList syndicates where investors can invest alongside him and Barbara on the same terms in promising high growth startups. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Laughly How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Savor the moment, be in the moment" Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:55 – Nathan introduces Phil to the show 01:24 – Barbara and Phil believe in the syndicate model 01:32 – It is a great opportunity for investors who would like to invest but don't have a lot of money to put into each deal 01:49 – Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners on AngelList 02:08 – The syndicate was launched 3 years ago 02:16 – They have syndicated 38 deals 02:34 – Barn and Willow is a company they've recently syndicated 02:51 – Barn and Willow deal with window treatments 03:18 – They have a direct manufacturing supply chain 03:24 – It's an innovative company 03:45 – The companies that Barbara invests on Shark Tank are separate from the companies in the syndicate 04:05 – The value of doing the syndicate is the deal flow that Barbara gets from her exposure in Shark Tank 04:20 – Each of the syndicate backers have the option to opt in or opt out of any investments 04:33 – The most likely exit scenario is an acquisition and that's how an investor makes money 04:47 – IPO is also another route 04:53 – There was no exit yet from the syndicate portfolio 05:38 – There is paperwork in backing a syndicate 05:45 – The AngelList platform is handling all the investor details 05:51 – The structure of the deal can have a few different formats 06:04 – It's either a convertible note that converts into equity or straight equity 06:30 – All backers are combined into 1 entity 06:56 – The LLC is managed by an independent third party company called Assure Fund Management 07:05 – Assure will consult the syndicate if there will be a major decision 07:40 – The AngelList is managing the risks for the syndicate 08:00 – The syndicate has put in $7.5M 08:28 – The syndicate is very true to Barbara's mission 08:44 – Barbara wants people to invest with her, share their ideas with her, and bring their knowledge 08:56 – "Our backers are fantastic in terms of their networks" 09:38 – With a VC, what you have is strictly financial investors 10:40 – People love Barbara 11:15 – The deals are only available to accredited investors 11:23 – To be an accredited investor, you need to meet some of the criteria including net worth or income 12:00 – The syndicate is very clear that there is a chance of losing money for each investment 12:06 – The idea is to build a portfolio 12:37 – Phil has been to different platforms like FundersClub and OurCrowd 12:53 – The reason why Phil and Barbara chose AngelList 13:35 – The picture behind Phil was a picture frame from one of their portfolio companies called Meural 13:54 – They have thousands of art pieces from different museums around the world 14:32 – It retails from $600 15:27 – The syndicate does equity and note and only invests in post-revenue companies 15:43 – At least $15-20K a month in revenue 15:52 – "We are focused on companies that are capital efficient" 17:50 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Syndicates is a great option for small investors and it will help them get into the investing game. Investors need to be responsible with their investments—meaning research the deal and own their decisions and the consequences of saying yea or nay. Savor the moments in life and be IN the moment. 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