Mitchell Reichgut. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Jun Group. Prior to founding Jun Group in 2005, he led Bates Interactive, the online unit of Bates Worldwide Advertising which is now owned by WPP. As general manager and creative director, he helped grow Bates Interactive into a 70-person integrated unit with clients such as EDS, Warner-Lambert and many others. Before joining Bates, he was the creative director at Think New Ideas. He began his career as Art Director at Grey Advertising where he created print and TV ads for clients. Throughout his career, he’s worked with major brands in the industry including Procter and Gamble, Parker Brothers, Reebok and others.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Anything written by Seth Godin
• What CEO do you follow? – Jack Welch
• Favorite online tool? — Google Calendar
• 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? – Mitchell wished he knew the kind of discipline it took to make things work

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:05 – Nathan introduces Mitchell to the show
• 03:08 – The “Jun” in Jun Group means truth
• 03:11 – Mitchell founded his company believing that advertising can be transparent, honest and deliver tangible results
• 03:19 – Jun Group’s job is to get millions of people to engage with videos and visit websites of the Fortune 500 brands
• 03:38 – Nathan reads Jun Group’s website line
• 03:52 – Mitchell gives an example of a spaghetti sauce brand that targets Hispanic mothers who are 35 and up, in the USA
  • 04:01 – Jun Group will use the video of the brand to connect with their target market on their phone, tablets and computers
  • 04:16 – Customers can opt-in in exchange for something like rewards points
• 04:38 – Jun Group is an in-app solution
• 05:37 – Jun Group only charges when someone chooses to engage and the client gets the value of what they’re paying for
• 06:06 – When you don’t interrupt people, they tend to watch to the end
  • 06:08 – Jun Group gets 90% of people to watch a 30-second ad until the very end
  • 06:13 – 3-5% of the viewers are visiting the brand’s website
• 06:50 – From the publisher, the brand will appear in a mobile app
  • 07:29 – Each app integration creates an interaction depending on the app user’s behavior
• 07:46 – In web environment, app developers pay CPI
• 07:52 – Jun Group never had a pop-up and they never interrupt
• 08:14 – Jun Group has a sophisticated tech platform that works well with app developers
• 08:21 – “Apps are complex business”
• 08:41 – Jun Group was bootstrapped until 2015
  • 08:47 – Then they had a private equity deal with Howard Capital
  • 08:58 – They’ve raised $28M
  • 09:09 – They’ve decided to raise because they found the right partner
• 09:55 – Growing an adtech business is quite unusual and requires hard work
• 10:02 – Jun Group has brands, app publishers and consumers that they need to take care of
• 10:27 – Jun Group is an adtech platform and not really an agency
• 10:30 – Most adtech platforms lose money and want to grow fast
• 10:49 – Jun Group has been growing slowly, but steadily and profitably
• 11:13 – The revenue comes from commitments from brands and media buying platforms, some are per project and some are per annual commitment
• 12:00 – Jun Group’s pricing model varies depending on what the ad is
• 12:34 – A CPM (cost per thousand) in the industry usually costs $8 up
• 12:40 – Jun Group charges cost per

Evan Leong. He's the VP of Product at Devslopes, a learn-to-code platform focused on taking beginners to paid professionals to curated project-based videos. He's always been involved with startups since 2015, when he took the leap from a corporate job to join the startup world full-time.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Good to Great
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Trello
• 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? – Follow your instincts, follow your gut, and don't let age stop you from what you want to do

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:05 – Nathan introduces Evan to the show
• 02:31 – Devslopes is a learn-to-code platform for iOs, MacOS and TvOs
  • 02:39 – A version for Windows will be available soon too
• 02:48 – Devslopes is similar to Treehouse
• 03:00 – Devslopes has been around for a year and a half
• 03:10 – Devslopes has just converted to SaaS
  • 03:22 – They garnered 130 subscriptions just after the launch
• 03:33 – Average pay per customer is a little over $20 a month
• 04:05 – Devslopes was funded through Kickstarter and an investor
  • 04:15 – They raised $190K in Kickstarter
• 04:35 – Devslopes' CEO is a good salesperson and they had a strong community even before Kickstarter
• 05:04 – The Kickstarter campaign was blasted around
• 05:11 – The community size is around 10K
• 05:22 – Devslopes has raised an additional of $300K from Redfoo of LMFAO
• 05:42 – Devslopes was launched in March 2016
• 05:53 – First year revenue was $600K
• 06:04 – 2017 goal is to reach a million
• 06:39 – Devslopes has large courses that will take people more time to stick with them
• 06:48 – Devslopes is pumping out target topics which are 2-3 hour courses
• 07:13 – Team size is 8
• 07:48 – The CEO started in e-learning marketplaces
• 08:05 – By the time Devslopes started, the CEO already had 40K students on Udemy
• 08:33 – Devslopes gets students from affiliates too
• 09:12 – Devslopes want to fully dive into the learning experience
  • 09:32 – They liked the idea of having everything in one program so they created the SaaS model
• 10:17 – Devslopes publishes to affiliates the content that the affiliates want to promote
• 10:26 – Udemy likes to promote 30-60 hour courses
• 10:43 – Devslopes is also on Skillshare, Learnability and Inkydeals
  • 10:58 – 90% of the content goes to Udemy and the rest are spread out to the rest
• 11:08 – 90% of the revenue is from Udemy, too
• 11:30 – Devslopes is just starting to use Facebook ads which is their only paid marketing
• 12:05 – CAC
  • 12:11 – Most of what Devslopes gets from Facebook ads is social presence but no paid leads yet
• 12:44 – The charge of Udemy fluctuates depending on how they promote their content
• 13:21 – Evan focuses on the product and handles the team
• 13:37 – Devslopes currently have 5K iOs downloads and a couple of thousand from Mac
• 15:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. With the advancement in technology, more people are opting to learn from the comfort of their own home.
2. Target your market so it will be easier for the company to adapt a new business model.
3. Customers will stick with your product if it is of value to them.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Joe Zhou. He's the founder and CEO of FirstBlood, an eSports startup that recently broke the speed record for crowdfunding, specifically in the crypto world. Prior to founding FirstBlood, Joe co-founded Alt-Options, a Boston based fintech or financial technology startup that built the first American style option trading platform for digital currencies. Joe holds a BSBA from Boston University Questrom School of Business and an entrepreneur residence at Babson College.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Lean Startup
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• 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? – Joe wished he was less concerned about how he was perceived in school

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:11 – Nathan introduces Joe to the show
• 03:00 – FirstBlood is a platform that allows players to play games, not just for fun but for money
• 03:23 – FirstBlood charges money for each game or tournament played
• 03:49 – FirstBlood was launched in April 2016
  • 03:55 – Joe's co-founder, Anik, is also a big gamer
  • 04:08 – They were both fans of League of Legends
  • 04:14 – They attended a Hackathon where they were challenged to build an application that has never existed before
• 05:00 – Joe co-founded Alt-Options while he was still in college
  • 05:15 – The technology was built from scratch
  • 05:18 – There were about 2K users during the testing phase
  • 05:50 – It was bootstrapped and $50K was raised from families and friends
  • 06:02 – There were a group people who wanted to get into the space and Joe worked with them as a consultant for half a year
• 06:44 – Joe decided to do the token issuance because of the support they were getting
  • 06:55 – DAO was successful until hackers were able to get into it due to a bug
  • 07:19 – FirstBlood was one of the most promising projects that was going to DAO
  • 07:26 – DAO or Decentralized Autonomous Organization is like a decentralized venture capital firm; it was managed by every person who has a token in it
  • 07:52 – FirstBlood was operating under Project Tron in the DAO community
  • 08:15 – After the bug, FirstBlood started building what was needed to run a successful crowdfunding campaign
  • 08:52 – Joe and Anik gave talks and presented multiple ethereum meetups regarding their project
  • 09:37 – Joe came home with a budget of 3-5 years runway for the entire team
  • 09:46 – They've raised $5M in funding
  • 09:52 – Team had 6 people and now they have 15 people
  • 11:14 – They've calculated the ethereum's pricing and deployed the contract to the network
  • 11:51 – FirstBlood raised the money in just the first four blocks and processed in just 7 minutes
  • 12:41 – FirstBlood has sold 465,313 ether tokens
• 13:10 – Joe shares why they released their own FirstBlood tokens
  • 13:16 – Ethereum has some limitations
  • 13:34 – The FirstBlood tokens are given unique utilities that are crucial to making the network work
  • 13:42 – First layer is the transactional level utility where both ether and FirstBlood tokens work
  • 14:20 – Witness program utility can only be run by FirstBlood tokens
• 14:52 – DotA is the first mobile strategy game and now is a stand alone
  • 15:53 – When a game is settled, a set of information is sent to a network of witness nodes
  • 16:02 – Witness nodes will then run tests using computational power to fetch the data and cross reference the data to make sure that it is valid
  • 16:14 – The data then gets published into the blockchain and smart contract
  • 16:32 – The winner of the games will pay a small percentage fee to the network
• 17:40 – The token price isn't that important for the team
• 18:14 – The ratio of the token is arbitrary
• 19:24 – A lot of Dapps don't have a real money function yet
• 19:39 – FirstBlood is closed to launching the beta
• 19:59 – Currently, there are 1592 people who have FirstBlood tokens
• 20:51 – Joe doesn't think that it's risky for them to have a lot of people handling the network
  • 21:06 – The selection process has a cap rate on how one will get selected
  • 21:19 – "We did cap at 1% for a maximum impact"
• 22:20 – Joe can't disclose the amount he owns from FirstBlood tokens
  • 22:50 – The allocation for founders is around 10% of the tokens
• 23:24 – Nathan asks Joe if it's possible to cash out a million tokens into real dollars if he ever needs it
• 24:35 – FirstBlood made the headlines because they raised a $5M equivalent to ether
  • 26:38 – The fund is owned by the project
  • 27:08 – The ether can be used to keep buying the project
• 27:30 – Some of the money from the funds are used to pay the team
• 28:03 – FirstBlood liquidates 80% of the ether post cross-sales and 20% remains in the smart contract
• 28:39 – FirstBlood has around $4M in the bank that pays salaries and other company expenses
• 29:55 – The technology of FirstBlood has made people more interested in the project
• 31:00 – The decision to raise $5M was from the advice they've received regarding what it takes to increase network profitability
• 31:51 – Ether was valued when Joe liquidated the 372K shares at $11 per share
• 32:38 – Joe didn't wait for the share value to increase because they needed the money to get the project running
• 34:25 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. In crypto, startups create their own currency if they think their network will be better of with it.
2. Listen to your advisory board—if it's time to raise for specific purpose, your business might be better of because of that decision.
3. People will become interested in your project if it's first in the space and they believe in your technology.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Alex Yakubovich. He's the co-founder and CEO of Scout RFP. Prior to Scout, he was a co-founder of another startup which was acquired by LivingSocial in 2012. At that company, he led the operations team and helped the company become the largest online ordering providers in the country. He attended Case Western Reserve University where he studied mechanical engineering.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Shoe Dog
• What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff
• Favorite online tool? — Salesforce
• 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? – Take big risks

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:25 – Nathan introduces Alex to the show
• 02:58 – Scout RFP helps companies make online purchases by finding suppliers and the best deals
• 03:14 – One of their newest customer's is Beam Suntory who makes Jim Beam bourbon
  • 03:56 – They use Scout RFP to source for the best deals on raw materials that they use to make their liquor
• 04:15 – Scout RFP is a SaaS model
• 04:20 – Scout RFP charges per user basis
  • 04:47 – They charge only the buyers who are making the purchase and not the suppliers
• 05:00 – Scout RFP also has different tools that they offer depending on the plans
• 05:34 – Average per seat is $5K annually
  • 05:53 – All contracts are annual contract
• 05:59 – Scout RFP has raised capital: $27.5M in total
• 06:27 – Alex's last company just raised $500K and it had a great exit
• 07:00 – Alex has thought about what it's like to have big companies involved in your company
• 07:30 – The capital allowed them to not skim and invest on growth upfront
• 07:49 – Current team size is 50
  • 07:59 – Half is the engineering and product side and half is for the sales side
• 08:29 – The exit price of the first company was in the tens of millions
• 09:37 – Alex has co-founders who were with him in the first company
• 10:43 – There are over 100 companies that use the platform
• 11:10 – The number of seats per company depends on the company
• 11:54 – Scout RFP has overall users and paid users
  • 12:12 – Paid users is more than 3K
• 13:05 – Scout RFP is part of Silicon Valley Sourcing Leaders Group
  • 13:31 – The group is about networking and sharing information and knowledge
  • 13:49 – There are now sourcing leaders programs in New York
  • 14:00 – The group helped Scout RFP to acquire new customers
  • 14:30 – The organization hosts their companies
• 15:18 – Gross customer churn
• 15:31 – Logo churn is not that high
• 16:00 – Scout RFP has 17% net negative churn
• 16:58 – Scout RFP has a customer success team, a sales team, ADPR team and management team
• 17:38 – As a business grows with Scout RFP, the LTV grows as well
  • 18:22 – The average deal size per business is quite consistent, about 10
• 19:09 – CAC to LTV ratio is 3
• 19:25 – Payback period is around 15 months
• 20:17 – Paid acquisition costs are around $40K a month
  • 20:49 – They do LinkedIn ads, some Facebook and Google, and a lot of tradeshows
• 21:23 – Gross margin is 85-90%
• 21:44 – Target ARR this 2017
  • 22:14 – Scout RFP is currently over $1.2M in MRR
• 23:54 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. An acquisition is an opportunity to build a bigger and better business.
2. Being in a group with your target market is a big opportunity for you to acquire new leads.
3. Let your big questions guide you in growing your business.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Bruce Pon. He's the CEO and founder of BigchainDB and he's been playing in the crypto world.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Mungerisms by Charlie Munger
• What CEO do you follow? – Vitalik Buterin
• Favorite online tool? — Streak CRM
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— At least 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Buy bitcoin earlier"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:03 – Nathan introduces Bruce to the show
• 02:44 – Bruce built BigchainDB to manage data
• 02:55 – Bitcoin is a payments cryptocurrency in a global network while Ethereum is a business logic in a global network
• 03:11 – People pass trusted data over the blockchain network for enterprise use cases and consumer applications
  • 03:32 – From the business logic, you can exchange bitcoin and other types of value
• 03:42 – The problem with the use case on top of the bitcoin blockchain 3 years ago was it didn't scale
• 04:04 – Bruce was building io which is putting intellectual property into the blockchain
  • 04:25 – You can sell your intellectual property over the network
  • 04:48 – It was built over the bitcoin blockchain and got difficult to develop over time
  • 04:54 – Ascribe.io needed meta data about the creative work, author and licensing model
  • 05:04 - Ascribe.io isn't just built for bitcoin—it's like trying to using a Lamborghini to move your house
  • 05:49 - Ascribe.io had AI, scientists and other PhDs who told them that building Ascribe.io wasn't worth it
• 06:09 – Team size is around 20 and is based in Berlin
• 06:24 – BigchainDB has raised $6M in price round series A
• 06:41 – Open source software is traditionally a dual license model
• 06:53 – BigchainDB is looking at an enterprise model
  • 07:00 – They're looking into the ICO craze too
• 07:21 – BigchainDB is like a SaaS model
  • 07:27 – They're looking at per transaction charges but it may not work for the long-run
• 07:54 – BigchainDB just released their 1.0
  • 08:08 – They give premium support
• 08:27 – Bruce is looking into 5-6 figures per month for their starting price point
• 08:58 – One-third of the work in businesses happen in the back office
• 09:13 – Blockchain allows you to have a single source of truth
• 09:29 – BigchainDB unlocks the opportunity for different organizations to have a single source of truth
• 09:48 – When you can make IoT, AI and blockchain tools, you can track the product from the inception until it gets to the customer's hand
  • 10:01 – The customer will now understand how the product is made
  • 10:03 – The regulators will know that the product followed the guideline
  • 10:07 – The company will know if there's a recall or quality issue and they will know where exactly the product is
• 10:40 – BigchainDB can work with different kinds of products
• 11:20 – Blockchain is definitely auditable
  • 11:30 – Before the product comes to you, it will be signed by entities with a cryptographic key in every process
  • 12:00 – With AI, you can also see who is in the very process of making your product
• 12:34 – The key metric Bruce is measuring is the number of people that are building upon them
• 12:56 – Target MRR is $100K by end of 2017
• 13:03 – BigchainDB is currently at $50-60K MRR
• 13:19 – Number of customers
• 13:44 – There are 300 developers in BigchainDB's channels and there are 5K clones of their software
• 13:54 – BigchainDB has 1K monthly downloads of their whitepaper
• 14:45 – The ratio of developer to clone is the 300 developers to 5K clone requests
• 16:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Data that is passed over the blockchain network can be used for enterprise use case and consumer applications.
2. The beauty of blockchain is that it is auditable and has accountability capabilities.
3. Some tools that are built over the bitcoin network won't always work; even if you have the best people in the industry.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Christoph Jentzsch. His background is in Theoretical Physics and he's been part of the Ethereum project since 2014 as a lead tester. At the end of 2015, he co-founded Slock.it, working on decentralized sharing economy through the connection of blockchain and IoT (Internet of Things). One of the more famous projects that he was part of was the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Zero to One
• What CEO do you follow? – God
• Favorite online tool? — GIthub
• 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? – "Avoid the bug in the DAO"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:50 – Nathan introduces Christoph to the show
• 02:20 – DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization
  • 02:26 – It is a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain which aims at connecting people to pull their funds together and run small contracts
  • 02:45 – It failed and all the people got refunded
• 03:10 – Christoph believes that Anthony Di Iorio is one of the founders of Ethereum
• 03:24 – As a lead tester for Ethereum in 2014, Christoph was responsible for driving tests
  • 03:39 – Consensus tests are for client implementation
• 04:10 – Nathan's analogy of cryptocurrency using railroad tracks
• 04:55 – Augur has launched their own token on top of Ethereum
  • 05:18 – They created their own token of value in exchange of the virtual currency of ether
• 05:47 – There has been a lot of ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) lately and there has been opinions around them
• 06:03 – Bitcoin was always meant for virtual currency
  • 06:09 – While Etherium has a virtual currency too called ether, its actual purpose is to be an open source platform to build decentralized applications or Dapps
  • 06:22 – People now create simple Dapps issuing a token on the Ethereum blockchain to fund Dapps projects
  • 06:32 – People thought DAO was an ICO but it wasn't
  • 06:35 – DAO has collected a hundred million dollars in ether
  • 06:44 – After that, many ICOs have gone out
• 07:40 – There are only a few hundred people who send ether into their contract
• 08:11 – There was an article Nathan had read regarding Bitcoin's current problem
  • 08:28 – The main problem is public blockchains are not scaling
  • 08:38 – In the protocol, one blockchain can only have 1 megabyte
  • 09:04 – There is now a high demand that leads to a higher price
• 10:33 – Everybody can take part in the cryptocurrency game
  • 11:45 – People can create their own blockchain but they're missing the network effect
  • 12:18 – There are some minors who control the network
  • 12:48 – As long as there are users in the system, they don't mind the minors
  • 12:54 – Minors serve the blockchain, but Christoph believes the users are the ones in-charge
  • 13:21 – After the DAO failed, there was a discussion of how things should be done
  • 13:27 – Some are saying to split the blockchain into 2 versions: the new version is where people get refunded and the old version is the hackers who have the money
  • 14:58 – There are now 2 Ethereum classes: ethereum classic and ethereum
• 15:19 – Christoph's focus is now on Slock.it where they've built a decentralized sharing economy
  • 16:02 – It is built over the public ethereum and they don't have tokens
  • 16:17 – They're using ether as a payment
  • 16:33 – Most startups are called ICOs and make their own tokens to fund themselves
• 16:40 – Slock.it is VC funded with a seed funding of $2M
• 18:06 – Slock.it isn't currently getting any payment but they will in the future
• 18:38 – Slock.it collaborates with Innogy
  • 18:51 – Innogy allows electric charging stations to connect with smart contracts in the blockchain
  • 19:00 – A user can charge his car, making him enter the smart contract
  • 19:10 – If you're the owner of a charging station and you have an electric car, you can set the price for the station and offer it to public
• 20:05 – Noke padlocks can now be open and closed through Bluetooth and Slock.it has added a payment option where it can be opened by paying
• 20:34 – Slock.it can be integrated into the device and it is different from Airbnb
  • 21:28 – As long as the ethereum blockchain is alive, the Noke padlock can be used through Slock.it
• 22:10 – Christoph currently resides in Germany
• 22:45 – "As of now, crypto is not a very good currency"
• 23:23 – Ether is as volatile as bitcoin
• 23:45 – You can definitely exchange your tokens for real dollars, but it's not an efficient system
• 24:03 – Paying people with ether isn't that easy at the moment
• 24:12 – Currency is the least interesting aspect
  • 24:19 – There's a limitation in scalability and in privacy
• 24:40 – Christoph thinks ethereum, smart contracts and blockchains own up as programmable money
• 25:55 – Slock.it is currently integrated into an existing hardware
  • 26:20 – There are currently thousands of charging stations under Slock.it
• 26:36 – Team member is currently 14
• 26:48 – The seed round was in February 2017
• 28:02 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Some startups are coming out as an ICO to fund themselves, but not all of them are legal.
2. Cryptocurrency still isn't very stable so as a business owner, paying your people with this currency isn't efficient.
3. Public blockchains are not scaling and there's a protocol that needs to be followed.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Brandon Bruce. He's the COO and co-founder of Cirrus Insights, the sales plugin for Gmail and Outlook. The company is number 41 on the Inc. 5000 and the fastest growing company in Tennessee. Brandon once raced his bicycle 508 miles across Death Valley in 35 hours and 7 minutes.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Energy Bus
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Google Drive and 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? – "I would've tried to start a full-fledged company earlier"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:50 – Nathan introduces Brandon to the show
• 02:25 – Brandon was in Episode 226 of The Top
  • 02:38 – They had $550K in funding
• 02:48 – The team back then was 55-60 and now it's 70
• 02:59 – No additional funding has been raised
• 03:16 – Cirrus Insights is a fast-growing company that didn't rely too much on VC
• 03:35 – 5 years ago, Cirrus Insights wanted to solve the problem of going back and forth between Gmail and Salesforce
• 03:53 – Cirrus Insights brings Salesforce into the inbox
  • 04:05 – They also help sales reps to seamlessly update Salesforce from the back end
  • 04:13 – Salesforce isn't actually a CRM
• 04:38 – Cirrus Insights just launched Flight Plans, which is an extension of their philosophy
  • 04:42 – It is fully built-in to Outlook and Gmail
  • 04:44 – It allows people to setup a sequence of sales touches
  • 04:58 – It's personalized and low scale
• 05:51 – Cirrus Insights' growth is mostly from the Salesforce app exchange
  • 06:00 – Continued growth is still from word-of-mouth
• 06:31 – Cirrus Insights has passed 100K seats with an average seat price of $6
  • 06:53 – The average seat price has gone up now
• 07:19 – Flight Plans is a new tier
  • 07:24 – Cirrus Insights is the product name and Flight Plans is going to be an addition
  • 07:27 – There are now 3 additions to the product
• 08:18 – Cirrus Insights has just passed $1M in MRR
• 09:00 – Customers are choosing Cirrus Insights over others because some are overpaying and underutilizing marketing operations
• 09:29 – Marketing and sales are now working as a team with Cirrus Insights
• 09:58 – Cirrus Insights now charges $8 per seat
• 10:32 – Marketing operation has 4 big, unicorn companies
• 10:49 – There are now hundreds of tools in marketing operation and it will be interesting to see a consolidation
• 11:04 – Brandon is thinking customers will just utilize the best tools for the job
• 11:33 – Cirrus Insights is trying to position themselves to be the best at what they do
  • 11:43 – They're also continuing to offer more in the future
• 13:00 – Gross customer churn: 15-20% annually, but they're targeting to lower it down to 10%
  • 13:30 – There's a lot less churn in the enterprise
• 14:17 – Net annual revenue churn is still negative and net seat churn is below 10%
• 15:16 – Most of the new leads are from word-of-mouth, with some small scale paid acquisition
  • 15:22 – They're more focused on the content that can drive more people
  • 15:25 – Brandon has read The Slow Sale which is about how slowing down can win more deals
• 16:30 – Budget for paid marketing is $25-50K
  • 16:43 – They've done sponsorship for conferences, but the ROI is getting low
  • 17:25 – Check out their podcast: Our Love Hate Relationship with Sales, which drives sales as well
• 18:22 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. As saturated as the market is, there's still a way for your business to stand out.
2. Marketing and sales teams are looking for tools that will not just help them with their workload, but encourage them to work together.
3. If your company constantly adds value, word-of-mouth will be your driver of sales.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Jeff Glueck. He became the CEO of Foursquare in January of 2016 after 18 months as the COO of the company. Prior to that, he was the CEO of Skyfire Labs, co-founder of Site59.com and CMO of Travelocity. Previously, he was a strategy consultant at Monitor Company and served as a White House Fellow in the Clinton Administration. He holds a master's degree from Oxford as a Marshall Scholar and a bachelor's degree from Harvard College.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Good to Great
• What CEO do you follow? – Adam Neumann
• Favorite online tool? — Stitcher
• 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? – "It's going to be okay when you take a risk"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:46 – Nathan introduces Jeff to the show
• 02:53 – Jeff has been with Foursquare for 3 years
  • 02:55 – Jeff joined the company while it was evolving into a hot social network in 2012
• 03:10 – Foursquare developed the technology of Pilgrim that turned it into a powerful enterprise business
• 03:19 – Foursquare's early valuation was based on the fact that it would be the next big social media network
  • 03:51 – The valuation was only made up because it wasn't based on revenue
• 03:57 – When Jeff entered, they raised a round and they're now growing over 60% in the past 3 years
• 04:13 – Foursquare is now more rationally valued
• 04:55 – Foursquare has a powerful community of people mapping the world
• 06:05 – Pilgrim is based on Foursquare's nearly 12B check-ins
• 06:13 – Foursquare is having more check-ins today than it did 2 years ago
  • 06:30 – The check-ins are called explicit ground trips
  • 06:55 – Everytime someone check-in, they're mapping the business for Foursquare
  • 07:15 – The explicit ground trip makes the program powerful
• 08:06 – Foursquare launched the Pilgrim SDK which is a white label way for their developers to add in background content and give users a better experience
• 08:24 – Using the Pilgrim technology, Capital One can ask its user if they want to opt-in for being informed about how to receive rewards points
  • 08:36 – People overwhelmingly opting-in
  • 09:08 – The notification from Capital One encourages people to actually use their mobile wallet
• 09:18 – TouchTunes uses the Pilgrim technology
  • 09:25 – TouchTunes runs 65K jukeboxes through mobile app
• 10:37 – Pilgrim technology has learned when to send notifications
  • 10:47 – Pilgrim technology also informs their developers of the best time to send notifications
• 12:08 – When Jeff joined, he saw how everyone, including Fortune 500 companies, was using them for free
  • 12:15 – Jeff told their CEO that they're actually losing money and that they needed to start charging customers
• 12:42 – Foursquare didn't lose even a single developer after putting up a paywall
• 12:49 – The model was licensed-based depending on the usage
• 14:15 – Three of the largest headphones in the world are Foursquare's customers
• 14:40 – Jeff understands how the market changes
  • 14:55 – 92% of the consumer spending is far from the 8% they spend on e-commerce like amazon
  • 15:10 – Foursquare has predicted how Chipotle's sales will go down by 30%
• 15:20 – "We're not investors, we're technologists"
• 16:16 – Jeff believes that Foursquare's mission is to be a location intelligence company
• 16:34 – Jeff is proud of Foursquare's technology; they can build tools that help companies
• 17:07 – Foursquare started out as a consumer company but now, more and more apps are using them for their applications
• 17:51 – Jeff believes that in the future, they can also make real estate better
• 18:45 – 90% of Foursquare's revenue is from B2B
• 19:34 – Foursquare's paying customers are some of the biggest brands in the world who want a company that is as good as Google Maps
• 19:58 – People don't want to be dependent on Google in the future
• 20:18 – "A lot of smart companies want to build differentiated mobile experiences in the future and we're helping them do that, that is our business"
• 21:48 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Even if your company can go IPO, it doesn't mean that it should.
2. Offering your services or products for free may work for the short-term, but if your service adds value to your customers, they WILL pay.
3. Focus on what your company is good at.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Dave Kellogg. Dave has more than 20 years of experience in high growth companies. Dave has been CEO of MarkLogic, CMO of Business Objects and member of Aster Data board of directors. Dave steered MarkLogic to $80 million in revenues. Business Objects witnessed equally impressive growth as it reached a revenue of billion dollars under his able guidance. Tune in and listen to Dave as he discusses various financial metrics of Hostanalytics. Targeting small businesses and enterprise level businesses, this company has grown 4x over the past 3 years. Read on and find out what makes this SAAS business tick.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Chaos Monkeys
• What CEO do you follow? – Marc Benioff
• Favorite online tool? — WordPress
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 hours
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Go read Power: Why Some People Have It and Some Don't by Geoffrey Pfeffer

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:14 – Nathan introduces Dave to the show
• 03:19 – Host Analytics is a SAAS company that is disrupting the space for enterprise performance management
• 03:58 – Not dabbling in premise products at all
• 04:28 – Corporate finance does not scale up with growing company size; number of users for such a software is dependent on the centralization philosophy
• 04:42 – A big company might be heavily centralized with only a sprinkling of users, whereas a little company might have hundreds of users
• 04:52 – Pricing model is a combination of a fixed based fee and a user fee
• 05:00 – Fixed fee varies from 25k to 50k—both fixed fee and user fee are recurring
• 05:25 – User fee depends on the user type and to which extent the software features are being used
• 05:45 – Fixed fee per user per month may vary from a couple of hundred dollars to a thousand dollars
• 06:10 – Re-entered the startup world once he quit Salesforce and joined Hostanalytics
• 06:24 – Passed on the reigns at Mark Logic to Gary Bloom—Mark Logic is still doing very well
• 07:05 – Best strategy to exit a startup is to exercise 83B options
• 08:00 – Exercising all options results in FMP (Fair Market Value) equaling strike price
• 08:07 – You lose the optionality—shares might not increase in value at a later date
• 09:00 – Met VC's, entrepreneurs and angels while looking for a new opportunity after quitting MarkLogic
• 09:16 – Dave's buddies coaxed him to join Salesforce as CMO
• 09:39 – Learnt a lot about SAAS at Salesforce. However, he found out that he was more comfortable running smaller companies
• 09:58 – Dave met the founders of Host Analytics through a common friend who was on their board
• 10:31 – HostAnalytics was clocking revenues of $10 million when Dave joined them in 2014; a great board and a proven SAAS model are the other factors which compelled Dave to join the firm
• 11:20 – Revenues have grown 4x since 2014
• 11:42 – Founded in 2001, HostAnalytics grew via bootstrapping for seven years. They finally secured VC funding in 2008
• 12:01 – Raised $85 million to date
• 12:32 – Used 75 cent "I love EBITA" stickers and funnily enough, won customers due to that
• 13:47 – Servicing 700 customers, as of today
• 13:50 – Pareto's 80/20 principle is not applicable to them; they are bimodal with a dual focus on smaller businesses as well as enterprise businesses
• 14:20 – Both of them are run as different cohorts by different salesforces; revenues are split equally between small business and enterprise
• 14:50 – Each client is aggregating revenues of $70,000 per annum
• 15:13 – Payment terms are a tricky issue in SAAS
• 15:18 – While other SAAS players go for monthly and quarterly payments, HostAnalytics opts for annual payment
• 15:34 – If you are giving a discount smaller than your churn rate, then everybody wins
• 16:15 – Customer churn and revenue churn are surprisingly equal
• 16:25 – Spending on an average $1.5 to $ 2 for a dollar of AR to acquire a customer
• 17:16 – A team of 300 people out of which 100 are located in India, entire sales force of 60 is located in the US
• 17:23 – Company co-founded in US and India
• 18:10 – Average lifetime value of a client varies from 6x to 7x or half a million dollars
• 19:39 – Cloud penetration of this market is just 5%
• 19:57 – Finance department is 10 to 15 years behind sales in adoption of cloud
• 20:17 – 9.5 out of 10 people would say "Not now"
• 20:56 – Blended Gross Margin is lower since they have a slightly bigger services business than most SAAS companies
• 21:10 – ERP is a heart transplant. EPM is a knee transplant
• 21:20 – Services business helps reduce churn and create cash flow
• 22:57 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. A big company might be heavily centralized with few SAAS users, whereas a small company might have hundreds of SAAS users.
2. Focusing on services reduces churn and creates cash flow; however, gross margins are less compared to other SAAS companies due to this.
3. Focusing on small businesses as well as enterprise businesses is important—at HostAnalytics, revenue is split equally between these two models.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

David Rogier. He's the CEO of MasterClass where he leads the company's vision of redefining digital learning by leveraging the expertise of world-class experts with the cutting-edge technology platform. David created MasterClass after seeing how the online education space was offering low-quality content and an unfair advantage of students.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Science of Shopping
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Doodle
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— Average 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – David would tell himself that entrepreneurship will be the hardest thing he'll ever do

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:05 – Nathan introduces David to the show
• 03:05 – MasterClass offers classes from the absolute best in the world
  • 03:14 – Online classes are offered both pre-recorded and live, both price at $90
• 03:31 – Students can study anytime they want and they have access forever
• 04:04 – Prior to MasterClass, David worked for a VC fund in the Bay area
  • 04:21 – David worked for Michael Dearing of Harrison Metal
  • 04:50 – Michael wrote David a check for $500K to start his idea for his business
  • 05:03 – David tried almost everything to get an idea until he remembered his grandmother's story
  • 05:49 – His grandmother applied for medical school while working in a factory
  • 05:55 – She was rejected by almost 50 medical schools
  • 06:20 – The reason she was rejected was because she was a woman, foreigner and Jewish
  • 06:27 – One school accepted her and she became a doctor
  • 06:53 – She told David that education is the only thing that people can't take away from him
• 07:04 – David thought of getting into the education space and studied it
• 07:53 – MasterClass was launched in May of 2015
• 08:00 – Total capital raised was around $50M
• 08:35 – The fund goes to expanding the team as well as production so they can shoot more classes
• 08:42 – Team size is currently 68 and will be 100 at the end of 2017
• 09:04 – Year One: number of students
• 10:13 – When they started, David was expecting a 10X increase in sales daily
  • 10:38 – David cried after their first day of sales
• 11:18 – Reid Benson who is part of David's sales team and was formerly with Netflix, wasn't even scared after the launch
  • 11:58 – Reid told David that their CAC was amazingly low
• 12:34 – The first 3 classes were led by Dustin Hoffman, James Patterson and Serena Williams
• 13:06 – The CAC for different subjects was actually close to each other
• 13:43 – Paid ads spent on Day 1 were less than $100K
• 14:14 – Paid advertising on different channels works well for MasterClass
  • 14:22 – Instructors are also promoting their classes
• 15:00 – David can't disclose the deal they have with the instructors
  • 15:13 – Most instructors teach because they really want to teach and not just to earn from it
• 15:51 – David shares how they handle instructors who don't want to teach, but want to share their knowledge
  • 16:10 – Classes are designed by how instructors want to share their own craft
  • 16:14 – Instructors have complete control over their class
  • 16:28 – David shares what a class looks like for Serena Williams
• 17:24 – MasterClass partners with the instructors in their classes
• 18:17 – David shares why he won't share the deal with the instructors
  • 18:38 – James Patterson teaches with MasterClass because of his own reasons
• 21:00 – David shares why instructors pick MasterClass over LinkedIn, which is more popular
• 21:50 – There are now 20 classes in MasterClass
• 22:07 – The number of classes should double, year over year
• 22:52 – Half to 80% of their first students haven't taken any online classes before
• 23:10 – Not all students are fans of the instructors
• 23:43 – David won't sell MasterClass for $300M
• 25:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Never miss an opportunity being offered to you, it was offered to you for a reason; so trust yourself and go for it.
2. Most successful people in their field want to share their craft through any way possible.
3. Education is one thing that people can't take away from you.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives