SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Alessandro Biggi. He's the CEO at Zooppa, the first open-source creative agency. Previously, he was the CEO and founder of a company called 20lines, an app to share leading short stories acquired by HarperCollins Publisher, in January 2016. He's also worked for JP Morgan, The Boston Consulting Group, and as an adjunct professor in Venice. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Zero to One What CEO do you follow? – Ricardo Donadon 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? – Alessandro wished he would have studied some hard skills like engineering Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:46 – Nathan introduces Alessandro to the show 01:22 – Zooppa relies on technology to engage with over 400K creatives around the world 01:58 – Zooppa is like a marketplace, connecting creatives to people who need a project done 02:02 – Zooppa has 2 models in creating content 02:07 – First is the open model which is open to everyone to show their creativity 02:18 – The second one is the VIP which is only offered to top producers on the platform to participate and win the project 02:46 – Average project size depends on the creation needed 02:56 – An open model can go from $50K-150K 03:12 – Average can be $40K 03:18 – Zooppa was launched 10 years ago, in Italy 03:25 – Zooppa expanded to New York, Seattle, Venice, Milan and London 03:42 – Alessandro just joined Zooppa 1 month ago after selling 20lines 03:50 – Alessandro was also an investor in Zooppa 04:20 – Zooppa was founded by H-Farm's founders 04:41 – Zooppa has raised around $8M 04:50 – Alessandro joined Zooppa after the last round 04:57 – There's a plan to develop more revenue streams for Zooppa 05:21 – Zooppa's vision is to inspire people use their creativity for a purpose 06:00 – Alessandro accepted Zooppa as a challenge 06:07 – Alessandro feels that there's more that he can do 06:48 – Zooppa is now planning to distribute a big part of their equity to new and old employees 07:07 – Alessandro does other things aside from Zooppa like investing in a restaurant 07:36 – Alessandro's first company was inspired by Zooppa 08:05 – Zooppa's average total transaction volume is $4-5M 08:14 – Zooppa usually runs 50-60 projects a year 08:28 – Zooppa takes care all of the projects and campaigns 09:15 – Zooppa takes a percentage for every project 09:43 – It is 50% 10:09 – Zooppa just opened their New York office 10:15 – Zooppa still continues to expand 10:48 – Creatives can go to Zooppa's website and see if there are projects that they can take on 11:17 – Zooppa works with big brands 11:39 – Zooppa has 25 people on the team 11:46 – Zooppa is cash-flow positive 12:00 – Zooppa currently focuses on sustaining themselves on their own 12:30 – Alessandro is now 29 and he was 27 and a half when he sold 20lines 12:50 – Alessandro was working at 20lines for a couple of years 13:02 – The publishing space is a hard space to be in 13:05 – The team decided that they'd grow better with a bigger group 13:10 – They had a talk with HarperCollins for about a year 13:33 – It was a soft landing 14:54 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Don't stick with a company where you don't see growth happening—sell it and move on. You can always learn something from someone who is older much more experienced. If you can sustain your company on what you currently have, don't raise a round. 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 Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Gadi Shamia. He's the chief operating officer at Talkdesk, the world's leading call center software platform. It's backed by DFJ, Storm Ventures and Salesforce Venture. Talkdesk has grown 8x over the past 2 years and has over 250 employees along with their thousand customers including Box, Shopify, Dropbox and Weather.com. Prior to Talkdesk, Gadi founded a company that was acquired by SAP and now generates $5M in global business. He was also a senior VP at SAP and a general manager at ReachLocal. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Innovator's Dilemma What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff Favorite online tool? — Gmail and Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6.5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Gadi wished he knew that he would be fine so that he could stress less about it Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:44 – Nathan introduces Gadi to the show 01:26 – EchoSign was acquired by Adobe 01:31 – TopManage was acquired by SAP 01:53 – Talkdesk is a cloud-based call center solution 01:58 – It is fully-integrated 02:26 – Talkdesk charges users per license fee 02:44 – Talkdesk is a SaaS company 02:54 – Average pay per customer varies 03:01 – A company with 50 users would pay $5K-7K a month 03:28 – Per seat cost is around $65-125 depending on the subscription 04:02 – Gadi joined Talkdesk 3 years ago 04:16 – The call center space is an interesting market 04:22 – It is still dominated by all players such as Avaya, Cisco and Genesis 04:35 – Talkdesk already has a proven product 04:41 – Talkdesk has a couple of hundred customers who like the product and has been using Talkdesk for years 04:53 – Tiago, Talkdesk's CEO, was one of the reason Gadi joined Talkdesk 05:14 – Tiago is the co-founder and his co-founder left Talkdesk after 4 and a half years 05:50 – Gadi believes that co-founders leave because they might not feel as excited as they were in the early stages 06:01 – Co-founders staying is also devastating for the company 06:10 – When a co-founder can say that he's leaving and he has done his job, it's a healthy company 06:44 – Talkdesk has broken the million ARR 06:57 – Talkdesk had 50 people when Gadi came in 07:17 – Tiago was the only salesperson at Talkdesk when he started it and he was able to get remarkable brands to use Talkdesk 07:43 – Gadi met Tiago through Gadi's friend from Storm Ventures 08:06 – Gadi and Tiago met in 2014 several times 08:38 – Talkdesk currently has 1200 customers 08:48 – There are around 50K seats 09:06 – Average MRR 09:43 – Alot of Talkdesk customers are e-commerce customers and they are seasonal 10:32 – Talkdesk is at a net negative churn 11:00 – Talkdesk talks to their customers about their seasonal needs and adjusts the annual licensing fee 11:42 – Talkdesk respects Workday, Salesforce and works with ServiceNow 12:48 – The best companies will get 110-120 in aiming net revenue expansion 13:03 – Most companies that have worked with Talkdesk benefit from it and grow 13:10 – DoorDash grew from 40 seats to 800 13:38 – Talkdesk currently has a team of 250 people 14:40 – Talkdesk's growth is mostly from new sign-ups 14:56 – Talkdesk has raised a total of $24.5M 15:01 – The last round was in 2015 15:15 – Talkdesk is neither raising rounds or talking to Salesforce 15:34 – Talkdesk focuses on building a real business 16:24 – Talkdesk is still burning cash 16:53 – Most of Talkdesk's customers pay annually upfront 18:13 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: When a cofounder leaves, it means he's done his job and the company is healthy Be in a company where you believe in the product and know that you can accelerate its growth. Building a real business is about the service you provide your customers in helping them achieve 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 Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where people are clicking and scrolling on the website Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Mike Winn. He's the CEO and founder of the company called DroneDeploy, the leading cloud-software platform for commercial drones and he's on the mission to make the sky successful and productive for everybody. The company focuses on the agricultural and construction industries, but its large customers are from almost every industry across 130 countries. He has collected more than 8M acres of aerial imagery. Prior to joining Deploy, Mike worked at Google and was a RC helicopters hobbyist. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Effective Executive What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Gmail 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? – "You can pretty much do whatever you set your mind to" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:26 – Nathan introduces Mike to the show 02:20 – DroneDeploy has raised $31M from VCs 02:26 – DroneDeploy had 3 rounds and the last one was in July 2016 03:00 – DroneDeploy was launched in 2013 03:05 – It stated in Edinburg, UK and was moved to the USA 03:25 – Mike got married in the middle of the incubator program 04:03 – Mike's wife, Carrie, has always been supportive 04:15 – Mike was an account manager and selling AdWords at Google 04:30 – After 18 months, he moved to another team 04:56 – Mike was 27 when he started DroneDeploy 05:24 – Mike had £100K grant money to back him up 05:39 – Mike was paying himself £1500 05:53 – DroneDeploy's Twitter has unbelievable aerial imagery 06:05 – DroneDeploy make software for drones 06:13 – Primary industries are agriculture and construction, but they also touch other industries that exist 06:43 – DroneDeploy only focuses on software 06:56 – DroneDeploy is a SaaS business 07:08 – Customers can try DroneDeploy for free 07:12 – For commercial use, pay is $100 a month 07:26 – DroneDeploy has 2 channels 07:34 – To get more accurate data and large 3D plans, try the business plan which is $300 a month 07:44 – The other channel is to expand by the number of seats 08:21 – One seat is $100 08:30 – DroneDeploy has over a thousand paying businesses 08:56 – The drone market is still young, but growing really fast 09:52 – Team size is 60 10:15 – Nathan publishes on Youtube—Check it out! 10:36 – Mark Cuban predicted that the first trillionaire will be from the AI space 11:00 – Mike's co-founders have PhDs in machine learning 11:10 – Mike sees the path of DroneDeploy becoming a trillion dollar business 12:03 – In the future, you don't only want drones to collect data but to take action as well 13:07 – DroneDeploy currently works with B2B 13:32 – What is interesting about drones is the technology community 13:50 – Drone provides the bird's eye view for the farmers 14:23 – One of the farmers who used DroneDeploy found a fungus when he saw that a certain part of the land was different in color 15:02 – In construction, it easier to work around with a drone especially when there's a disaster, like an earthquake 15:47 – CAC 15:55 – DroneDeploy has a successful blog 16:17 – DroneDeploy has an NPS of around 40 16:52 – 6 people in the team are on sales and the rest are engineers 17:15 – Churn 17:45 – The use of a drone is seasonal 18:01 – DroneDeploy is looking at what the customers want to do and how they can get consumers to use drones throughout the whole year 18:36 – MRR is around $100K 18:58 – DroneDeploy still burns cash monthly 19:30 – DroneDeploy can still manage until 2018 without additional capital 20:27 – Mike would bet on DJI winning the drone hardware space 21:38 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The drone market is still very young, but is growing rapidly. The future of the AI industry is promising and it's very likely that the first trillionaire will be from the AI space. You can turn your hobby into a business, just put your mind to 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 Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Andrew Yates. He's the CEO and founder of Artesian and they want to make sellers more effective at engaging with buyers using smart data and new techniques to create the right impact. He's been involved in the sales and marketing for the past 25 years and is aiming to make a difference to people by creating software companies that make a meaningful dent in the universe. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Escape Velocity What CEO do you follow? – Godfrey Sullivan Favorite online tool? — Microsoft Outlook, GeckoBoard, Salesforce 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? – "I wished I knew more how money and leverage finance works" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:13 – Nathan introduces Andrew to the show 01:46 – Artesian provides a sales acceleration platform 01:56 – With Artesian, you can track every single customer, prospect and competitor every day and manage your pipeline risk 02:11 – Artesian's phrase is "customer curious businesses" 02:44 – Artesian combines thermographic data with the real-time contextual intelligence 02:50 – You can ask Artesian to find you a company that fits a certain profile 03:15 – Artesian has natural language processing science that scans over 10M sources of structured and unstructured data 03:47 – Artesian started providing their service in 2010 03:54 – Artesian currently has 30K paying subscribers with 100 large enterprise customers 04:09 – Artesian covers a broad sector 04:20 – Artesian's customers are in high value, relationship-oriented, sales engagement 04:30 – Team size is 60 04:38 – Artesian's goal is to accelerate more in 2017 04:50 – Average pay per customer is $10K to over $2M per year 04:59 – Artesian licenses to software per user, per month basis 05:04 – 68% of target ARR for 2017 has been contracted 05:38 – Before, Artesian's licenses were cheaper 06:08 – The 30K customers are the number of seats from 120 enterprise customers 06:43 – Artesian made the decision to take down their cash burn in terms of investment 07:04 – Artesian was burning $300K-400K a month 07:15 – Artesian has raised $40M in equity and debt 07:50 – MRR is $700K 08:24 – Customer retention is around 93 and 120 in terms of net 09:10 – Artesian is now number in the GT crowd ranking in terms of the most popular and most intelligent platform 09:59 – Artesian uses a team of researchers to build deep and cool data sets 10:39 – Artesian also invites users to define their own sales triggers 11:40 – Nathan had Danielle in Episode 318 12:00 – Andrew thinks that a market consolidation practice is inevitable 12:26 – A scenario where companies could join forces to give broader reach and greater depth—a better customer experience is definitely more valuable 12:47 – Andrew also drives growth for Artesian 12:58 – It is important to spend time speaking with other companies that are active in the same space 13:14 – The companies can be quite different and quite complementary 13:29 – The last round was a bridge round 13:49 – Artesian is currently equipped to keep going, without investments, for the next 2 years 14:08 – By the middle of 2017, Artesian will be in a cash flow, breakeven profitability state 14:40 – CAC 14:41 – Artesian was tracking 1x in Year 1 15:08 – Artesian uses great people to drive adoption 15:13 – Artesian has 5 methods inside the platform 15:25 – Artesian uses customer relationship management and what the system is telling them to do 15:42 – Running 89% daily user engagement 16:15 – Artesian launched a way to build a smart calendar for each user every day 16:29 – Artesian is partnered with FullContact and others that provide social profiles 16:56 – Artesian is spending $60-70K on acquisition depending on the segment 17:20 – LTV is 5.2 years 17:30 – Artesian tracks this by looking at the average of customers they're holding on to 17:40 – HBC is one of their customers 19:28 – Andrew would be interested in talking with Salesforce to share the value 19:38 – 50% of Artesian is owned by institutions 19:46 – Andrew has 2 co-founders 21:27 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Companies in the same space should talk more—they can find out how they're different and how they complement each other. Being transparent shows that you want people to see your value and learn from it. Handling your finances and controlling what you burn wisely will help your company manage without additional capital. 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 Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Ramin Sayar. He's currently the president and CEO of Sumo Logic, an industry-leading SaaS-based company backed by some great VCs and he has an impressive list of customers and partners. Previously, he was the senior VP and GM at VMware, where he developed the product and business strategy and led the fastest growing aspect of that business. Previously, he had multiple executive roles with leading companies such as HP Software, Mercury Software, Tibco software, iPlanet Software, AOL and Netscape. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Good to Great What CEO do you follow? – Tom Reilly Favorite online tool? — Twitter and LinkedIn How many hours of sleep do you get?— Around 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Ramin would tell himself that the flow and steady path will pay off in the long run Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:22 – Nathan introduces Ramin to the show 03:32 – Sumo Logic helps customers build, run and secure modern apps in a simple and easy to consume service of profitability 03:57 – Sumo Logic is a SaaS business 04:04 – Priced and licensed depending on the data ingested and the duration of retention 04:25 – Average RPU varies 05:35 – Sumo Logic has a mass of service for their customers 05:45 – Sumo Logic has some free services 06:18 – Customers' buying pattern is consistent 06:43 – $15K-150K is the average contract price 07:34 – Sumo Logic has over 1300 paying customers 07:42 – 51% is enterprise and the other half is midmarket and SMBs 08:22 – Sumo Logic was capitalized through 5 rounds 08:34 – Total amount raised is over $160M 08:52 – Nathan had Tim Draper at Episode 129 from DFJ which Ramin mentioned 09:14 – Sumo Logic is 7 years old 09:33 – Sumo Logic's founding roots came from the security roles 09:38 – Not all users have access to data being generated 09:48 – The founders believed that there should be a simpler way for more users to access data 10:32 – The team initially felt that there was a competitive advantage in technology and an innovative way to deliver data analytics as a service 11:03 – Sumo Logic currently has 30K users 11:17 – Their vision was to democratize machine data 11:50 – Visa has been with Sumo Logic for a few years now 12:04 – Visa started with their fraud detection cases 12:23 – A few years ago, Visa launched a service with Apple 12:32 – Visa uses Sumo Logic for business insights such as activation and patterns regarding how users use multiple credit card applications 12:58 – Medidata is trying to disrupt the pharmaceutical industry in the clinical trial process 13:23 – Medidata used Sumo and decided they're going to transfer to the public cloud infrastructure service 13:42 – Medidata is an example of a different, non-tech company using the technology that Sumo Logic provides 14:10 – Sumo Logic assimilates, collects, ingests and analyzes different sources of data 14:25 – Sumo Logic then purposely tailors the analysis through their machine learning algorithms to address 3 distinct use cases 14:52 – Sumo Logic helps in continuous development 15:07 – Sumo Logic provides one single platform that analyses information and puts it into context so that developers and other teams can get the 360 degree, holistic view of the information 15:39 – Sumo Logic analyses a lot of patterns 16:34 – Ramin joined Sumo Logic 2 years ago 17:06 – In choosing a CEO, it comes with understanding the core values and culture of the company and how they relate to what the founders want 17:20 – If there are odds, make sure to address them 17:25 – Second is to make sure that there's an alignment syndicate in founding members in terms of what the outcomes would be 17:36 – Some CEOs are brought in to scale the company and in other cases, they are brought in to turn over the team or change the company's direction 18:10 – One of the 2-3 founders of Sumo Logic is still on the team 19:00 – Average ARR 19:30 – "We don't try to make consumers consume what they can't initially" 19:40 – SaaS companies often have to prove their value and constantly fight to earn the business 19:56 – More customers are now signing multimillion year deals with Sumo Logic 20:09 – The customers are seeing Sumo Logic's value 21:12 – The enterprise segment for Sumo Logic is broad 21:26 – When Ramin first came to Sumo Logic, the focus was security 21:43 – Ramin realized that most of their customers are development ops, tech ops and liability engineers, so they pivoted a bit 22:25 – For a SaaS company, the LTV to CAC that modern investors look for are the payback period and the magic number has to be 3.0 and more 22:50 – The other metrics that Sumo Logic tracks 24:09 – Sumo Logic's payback period is between the 1-2 year mark 25:13 – The enterprise, midmarket and SMBs have different payback periods 25:39 – Team size is 250 27:33 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Create guidelines when it comes to looking for your CEOs—they should align with the company's cultures, beliefs, and goals. SaaS companies often have to prove their value and are constantly fighting to earn business. Users' access to data can be very limited and complicated; however, simpler and more innovative ways are being discovered as technology continues to advance. 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 Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Jeroen Corthout. He's the co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, the intelligent CRM that startups and small businesses love to use. Prior to Salesflare, he was helping companies to implement their new CRM, marketing and sales. Salesflare kicked off when he and his co-founder, Lieven, found a way to automate their CRM data. Salesflare's mission is to automate everything in sales, but the irreplaceable human contact. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Alchemist What CEO do you follow? – Jeroen has been reading the biographies of Tony Hsieh, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Zapier 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? – Jeroen wished he had started these bigger projects earlier Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:38 – Nathan introduces Jeroen to the show 02:16 – Salesflare helps mostly startups to make their sales consistently productive, to have the right data, and to communicate and manage the pipeline better 02:28 – Salesflare sells licenses 02:40 – Salesflare's price point is $30/month when you pay annually and $35 if monthly 02:58 – Salesflare started halfway through 2013 03:04 – Jeroen and Lieven were working in a software company 03:20 – Jeroen knew there was no solution to keep files automatically 03:28 – Salesflare basically pulls all the CRM data for you 03:49 – On top of a lot of data, Salesflare is building automation and intelligence 03:52 – There's an automatic to-do list and body temperature indicator 04:12 – Salesflare is largely self-funded, some from accelerators 04:24 – Telenet Kickstart and iMinds are the accelerators from Belgium 04:37 – Salesflare got $25K from one accelerator without equity and the other one had a convertible loan of $50K 05:10 – Salesflare has raised a total of $700K 05:28 – Jeroen was in the consulting field 05:49 – Salesflare is currently building a convertible round with investors and has raised $250K; the target is $350K 06:57 – Salesflare has over 100 customers 07:14 – Jeroen believes that people don't usually trust small companies, even if they have great products 08:00 – Average revenue 08:19 – Salesflare is based in Antwerp, Belgium 08:24 – Team size is 6 08:30 – 3 are building the product and the other 3 are sales and customer service 08:55 – Jeroen likes people to think that they are bigger than they are 09:02 – Nathan believes that some people like small companies because of their flexibility 10:40 – Nathan tells Jeroen that his assumption of "it's not good if it's free" is a completely false assumption 11:28 – Most people stick to Salesflare after the trial period 11:40 – There's currently a big market of CRMs 11:46 – Salesflare is aiming at sales automation and there's very little competition in that space 12:12 – Salesflare is moving faster than their competition 12:17 – Hubspot's distribution channel is huge and Salesflare won't be able to compete with that 12:23 – But Salesflare can compete on the profit side 12:37 – Salesflare has a low churn 13:12 – Salesflare got their first customer at the end of 2015 14:00 – Salesflare has a blog, does outbound emailing and builds their online presence for customer acquisition 14:36 – Salesflare does content distribution through Facebook's paid advertising 14:47 – Most of Salesflare's recent customers are from Product Hunt 15:23 – Jeroen has no idea of the number of trials they've had since the launch 15:45 – Jeroen tracks the conversion, instead 16:05 – In the past week, there were 250 new trial signups 16:15 – The conversion to paid customer is around 10-15% 16:30 – Salesflare tries to show its value as quickly as possible 17:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: If you're still unsure of starting a new business, find other ways to get involved in that space to understand how it works. Some businesses offer a free product to show their value to the customer right away. Competing with a free product with a large distribution channel isn't easy, but you can generate a higher profit margin. 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 Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Adam Jankovits and his goal is to become an outstanding marketing technologist. He is a person who brings together strengths in marketing, technology and social interaction. He's got an MBA and consultancy background, but also has a strong interest in technology and social-networking skills. His focus right now is on his company, LeadBerry. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Founders at Work What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Slack How many hours of sleep do you get?— Currently 6 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Adam would tell himself to take networking very seriously Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:10 – Nathan introduces Adam to the show 01:45 – LeadBerry is a B2B lead generation software that converts website visitors to sales leads 01:58 – The basic idea is that there's no code needed and you just connect LeadBerry to Google Analytics 02:09 – LeadBerry does 2 things: aims to identify B2B visitors and provides real-time valuable data 02:50 – LeadBerry is still currently on pre-revenue 03:05 – LeadBerry's free beta was launched in October 2016 03:15 – LeadBerry just recently removed the free beta and launched the paid version on the third week of April 04:10 – LeadBerry's idea 04:31 – LeadBerry was first built in-house 04:40 – Since October, LeadBerry already had over 2K subscribers 04:47 – Most of them are companies 04:59 – LeadBerry has generated over 2M leads 05:03 – "The numbers and the feedback kept us pushing" 05:17 – LeadBerry doesn't have a guarantee that their customers will convert to the paid version 05:36 – Adam has a plan on how they can possibly convert their customers to paying ones 06:16 – Adam is the CEO and founder of the agency, Brandlift 06:26 – Brandlift generates signups through PR, marketing and performance campaigns 07:00 – The amount Adam and Brandlift have invested in LeadBerry 07:17 – LeadBerry currently has 3 people in the team who are also working Brandlift 07:24 – Brandlift agency has 20 people 07:36 – LeadBerry currently spends $3-4K a month into their performance channel 08:25 – Adam is spending around $50K total in pre-revenue 09:04 – Nathan talked to a lot of agencies where they build solutions in their agency and spin out the solution as a SaaS business 09:25 – Adam has used LeadBerry in Brandlift 09:35 – LeadBerry is completely bootstrapped 09:52 – Brandlift was launched in 2010 10:00 – Brandlift is a full-service digital agency 10:45 – LeadBerry is using different sources like FullContact, Hunter and Clearbit to generate leads 10:56 – LeadBerry always tries to explore new and unexplored options in generating leads 11:10 – Brandlift's first year revenue 11:29 – Adam was 28 when he launched Brandlift 12:25 – Net revenue is around $150K 12:41 – Topline revenue is around $1M 12:51 – Brandlift is based in Hungary and Los Angeles 13:36 – Adam shares how LeadBerry is different from other lead generation software 14:00 – LeadBerry has absolutely no development work that needs to be done if you want to get started with LeadBerry 14:28 – LeadBerry integrates with Google Analytics 15:10 – LeadBerry won't need the Google Analytics code 15:32 – You can connect your Google Analytics' profile with just 2 clicks 15:48 – Google Analytics helps in the identification part 16:34 – LeadBerry pulls out the leads for you which saves you time 17:10 – You can use LeadBerry's online interface on a daily basis or connect your CRM and it will automatically sync data 17:36 – Adam won't sell LeadBerry for $100K and is not currently thinking about it 18:57 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Most lead generation businesses made the software for their own use, saw its value, and then spun it out as a SaaS business. Lead sources often verify their leads with each other. Starting as a free software for a couple of months may lead customers to see the value in your product and convert into paid customers. 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 Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Steve McLaughlin. He's one of the founders and CEO of Financial Technology Partners. He is a former senior banker at Goldman Sachs, covering fintech for over 20 years. He was recently named Investment Banker of the Year, ranked number 2 banker in Silicon Valley by The Information, and he's top ranked on Institutional Investors. Online Finance 35 listed him as one of the most influential people in fintech. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Jack: Straight from the Gut What CEO do you follow? – Jack Dorsey Favorite online tool? — Uber How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4-5 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "I wished I knew where all the stocks are going" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Steve to the show 02:27 – Steve's company advises firms across the entire fintech landscape on raising capital and M&A—they're on the sales side helping people figure out where to get money, how to get money, what the valuation is, what the structure is 02:53 – Total transaction volume you were involved with last year 02:58 – Financial Technology Partners transaction volume was around $10-15B 03:09 – Which of these 3 industries are you most excited about, like where your most interesting deals would be in? 03:34 – It's really across the board, anywhere from the B2B payments to consumer payments to online lending companies like Prosper or GreenSky and the payment space like Marketo 04:08 – Any other players you see in the space besides those two, Betterment and Wealthfront? 04:11 – Steve appreciates Riskalyze who are behind the scenes providing the same kind of technology to RAAs and other advisors or someone like BlackRock who he advised last year 04:45 – FutureAdvisor is a startup going initially after the consumer side, they pivoted a little bit to be a B2B player 05:23 – Blackrock acquired FutureAdvisor for a $150M back in August 27, 2015 06:32 – FTP generally gives advice for doing large transactions and are paid on success 06:47 – It's either commission or a percentage based on the value of the deal 07:38 – Deal size varies. On a multi-million dollar deal, it can be a percent and a $100M deal, it can be 7% depending on the scale and deal size 08:02 – Nathan asks: How do you value a wealth technology company like Betterment? 08:29 – Steve looks at start the factors affecting Wealthfront or Betterment and what they think the companies will look like in 7 or 10 years 10:08 – Andy of Wealthfront was in Episode 498 10:20 – The growth of Wealthfront and Betterment are the ETFs in their assets and management 10:37 – Steve would use ETFs as a metric to try to predict what Wealthfront and Betterment are going to look like in 5 to 10 years 11:03 – Steve personally thinks that they can have a lot of winners—there are a lot of companies in the mutual funds industry that didn't win and a lot that are dead 11:15 – So there's no saying that the guys who invented the popularized robo advisors are going to be the winners 11:28 – Steve also thinks that Wealthfront and Betterment are going to do quite well and he sees them from afar, he's a big fan and he anticipates they're going to be winner 11:34 – Wealthfront and Betterment have already proven that at some extent, they've outlasted lots of other guys 11:55 – Steve thinks Wealthfront and Betterment care a lot about the consumers behind the platform and they realized that their people actually manage their money correctly over the course of time 13:05 – Riskalyze has various risks tools and robo advisor tools that they sell into RIAs 13:15 – RIA stands for Registered Investment Advisor 13:55 – All the models could succeed, there's hundreds of mutual fund companies that did incredibly well 14:17 – These are fintech companies 14:59 – Nathan is a big fan of Warren Buffett who goes to all the annual meetups and just sticks to his advice 15:09 – "I'm not going to be active. I'm never going to beat the market. I'm never going to do this stuff and just going to put it in a passive, low exchange ratio, Vanguard, SMP and 500 index and that's what I do" 15:19 – Nathan was hoping that Andy or Jon could convince him to take a shot at one of them, throw $10K in both rooms, see what happens over a few years and do a comparison 15:45 – Why isn't Warren Buffett recommending Betterment and Wealthfront? 15:47 – Steve thinks that Warren Buffett probably doesn't know much about Betterment and Wealthfront 15:52 – What Steve likes about Betterment and Wealthfront is they're going to have really forensic case studies on stats of the population 16:21 – There will be perfect comparable data on which is better 18:36 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Wealth tech companies are becoming more difficult to valuate, thus a need for case studies and empirical data. Empirical data can help inform your decisions, but the FINAL decision rests on your judgment. How do you value a company? Look at the factors affecting their growth over a period of 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 Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Jon Stein. He's the CEO and founder of Betterment. With his passion about making life better and his career experience advising banks and brokers, he founded Betterment in 2008. Jon is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Business School. He holds a Series 72463 and he's a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst). His interests lie in the intersection of behavior, psychology and economics. What excites him most about his work is making everyday activity and products more efficient, accessible and easy to use. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Greenhouse How many hours of sleep do you get? — 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jon could have taken risks a bit earlier in life Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:15 – Nathan introduces Jon to the show 02:05 – Betterment is the largest independent investment advisor online 02:10 – Betterment manages your money in the way old institutions can't 02:19 – Betterment automates the best practices of investing and the same technology drives the cost down for you 02:32 – Betterment is leading in their industry 02:45 – Betterment charges a fee that is the percentage of the asset finder management 02:50 – It is 2.5%, which is the lowest in the industry 03:15 – "We have to put our customers' best interest first" 03:30 – Betterment currently manages $8.2B 03:50 – Jon studied economics and behavioral biology as an undergraduate 03:58 – When Jon graduated from Harvard, 80% of the graduates took to the finance industry 04:47 – Jon didn't want to follow the people he knew in finance 04:31 – Jon wanted to help people so he thought he'd study medicine 04:50 – Jon found himself back in New York, consulting banks 04:58 – It was 2001-2002 when Jon got his pre-med from Harvard 05:13 – Jon was 23 when he went back to New York, in 2003 05:45 – The banks were not paying attention to what their customers wanted 06:58 – Jon realized that the industry was fundamentally flawed 07:12 – There was no scaled advisor that served the market and the people like Jon could 07:28 – Jon started at Columbia Business School in 2008 and he already the idea for Betterment even before he started there 08:10 – Jon didn't know how to code when he started and just learned in business school 08:46 – Jon didn't have student debt while he was in business school and he saved some money from his consulting 09:14 – During the early days, Jon and his co-founders didn't need a lot of money 09:30 – Jon and his co-founders have invested their own money into Betterment 09:39 – Their initial investment was less than 400K 10:14 – Betterment has raised a total of $205M 10:34 – "I always wanted to build a company that would impact the lives of millions of people for the better" 11:04 – From Day 1, Jon knew that Betterment would be a capital intensive business 11:20 – Team size is 220 11:26 – About half of the team are engineers and product managers 11:31 – Most of the team is involved in building the business 12:14 – Most of Betterment's customers are from word-of-mouth 12:46 – Betterment's paid acquisition 13:03 – Betterment's goal as a company is to make noise 13:11 – There's now a better way to manage money 14:11 – People should put their money in Betterment rather than in Vanguard because they're burning money 14:18 – Betterment can make them more money on their assets 14:39 – Warren Buffett is an active investor himself 14:45 – Jon thinks that Warren Buffett's advice was great during his time, but the technology has moved forward 15:11 – Betterment will make you more money than you would make in a single fund 15:27 – Betterment's website has all the information about how they work 16:00 – Betterment's role is to maximize people's money 16:07 – Vanguard is a fund company that sells you funds 16:10 – Betterment is independent from their funds 17:17 – "We are growing faster than any firm in the history of this space" 17:42 – People are becoming aware of what Betterment is doing 18:21 – 240K customers have invested in Betterment 18:44 – There's no minimum amount to invest 19:24 – "We're building an institution for the next century and we're not interested at selling right now" 19:35 – Betterment's revenue is driven from their 2.5% of the asset management finder 19:48 – Average revenue 21:05 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Just because it has worked in the past, does NOT mean it will still work today. There are better ways to manage your money, especially with the new advancements we have in technology. Take risks as early on as you can. 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 Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Dean Graziosi—he knows how to create success. From extremely humble beginnings, he started with a firewood business in high school to a collision repair shop and his first real estate deal before he turned 20. From there, he created a multi-million dollar real estate business, became a New York Times best-selling author multiple times, and is one of the most watched real estate and success trainers of our generation. He maximizes his success and profits on each of his endeavors along his evolution and his businesses have generated nearly one billion dollars in revenue. He's obsessed with sharing his success along this journey with the world. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment What CEO do you follow? – Ernest Shackleton Favorite online tool? — N/A 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? – "Don't believe your thoughts, they lie to you most of the time. If you could just observe your thoughts and throw away the shit that doesn't serve you, man, you could just go a lot faster" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:22 – Nathan introduces Dean to the show 02:28 – Dean skipped college 02:42 – When Dean was 16, he would buy wrecked cars and flip them in his garage 03:00 – He has bought some of the cars for $500 to $5000 03:11 – Dean got his first real estate deal at 18 with no money down 03:17 – Mrs. Laprezzti gave him a deal with no money down 03:20 – Dean paid Mrs. Laprezzti monthly and he renovated the place 03:49 – Dean's social studies teacher who was also a real estate agent gave Dean leads of people who had houses that were not selling 04:45 – Dean gave Mrs. Laprezzti $2500 a month for a 4-unit apartment, for 3 years 05:05 – Mrs. Laprezzti needed $2K for her expenses for the condo 05:31 – Dean didn't care that he may be paying more 05:48 – Dean promised that he'd pay her in 3 years 05:55 – At the end of 3 years, Dean had the room fully rented and he was able to get a bank loan and pay Mrs. Laprezzti off 06:10 – Dean was making $4200 when he rented out the place, then he sold it 06:24 – Dean still owns around 400 houses, right now 06:56 – Dean's dad was born during the Depression 07:20 – His dad was a mechanic and a collision repair shop guy 07:26 – Dean evolved by maxing out on the equity he could gain from each of his houses 07:38 – After the condo, Dean got an old, rundown mansion and turned it into 10 apartment units 07:53 – Dean refinanced the apartments and bought more apartments 08:00 – It was the late 80s and early 90s when Dean transferred to upstate New York 08:09 – Dean bought some land and went into the process of subdividing 09:10 – Back then, Dean was just hustling for the next property, taking the cash, and making a creative deal 09:30 – "There's always a creative deal" 09:45 – It's about buying off-market deals 10:21 – Average revenue from all of Dean's properties is $380K 10:45 – The market value for 380 units is around $20M 10:54 – Dean is half leveraged in all of the units 11:45 – Dean authored a couple of books because he is obsessed with marketing and sales 12:10 – Dean's last 2 books are self-published 12:21 – Dean's first book was with a publisher 12:24 – Dean didn't want an advance deal from his first book 12:31 – Dean used to get 35-40% of gross sales 12:43 – Dean's first book is Totally Fulfilled 12:46 – Dean's latest book is Millionaire's Success Habits 13:01 – Most of the publishers don't market your book and rely on you to market your own book 13:07 – Dean sold a million copies of his second book 13:10 – Dean had an infomercial running everyday, offering the book on TV 13:25 – "You definitely need a marketing mechanism if you need to write a book" 13:38 – Dean's most effective marketing strategy is giving away free books 13:42 – Dean has an incoming infomercial with Larry King, who has impacted Dean's life 13:56 – Dean met Larry King through mutual friends 14:01 – Dean told Larry that he made an impact on Dean's life, gave his book to Larry and asked Larry if he can interview him 14:09 – Larry came to Dean's studio 14:22 – 8 years ago, Dean watched Larry interview Joel Osteen 14:59 – Dean did the first interview show on TV without scripts, teleprompters or voiceovers 15:09 – The show broke a hundred million dollars in sales 16:05 – Dean only negotiated for a bigger share in book sales because he knew that his books would sell 16:25 – Millionaire's Success Habits is a hardcover book and still ships that way, there is no ebook 17:00 – com is for people who have the ability to find success trainers that are qualified 17:10 – They have courses and high-performance coaching 17:25 – It's a step-by-step on how to become a high achiever 17:33 – They just broke $220K in sales 17:55 – 100% of the money is going back in 18:10 – "It's a feel good, it's a legacy thing" 18:13 – They might sell Growth in 3 years 18:19 – Dean and his 2 co-founders split Growth equally 19:08 – Dean started a $100K year mastermind with Joe Polish 20:13 – When you go and share one of your greatest strategies, others will shares theirs. too, and it multiplies 20:35 – "Mastermind has been the greatest lift of anything I've ever done" 22:30 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Persevere and be patient, the right time will come. Sharing your strategies for success doesn't create more competition; instead, it gives others permission to share how they became successful as well. Don't let your thoughts stop you—observe them and throw out the shit that doesn't serve you. 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 Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives