School of Startups

Cindy Padnos is an innovator and an advocate for all things entrepreneurial. She is a founder (both of a VC-backed tech startup and a VC firm), with a passion for enabling experimentation that can lead to the discovery of new business models and unique points of leverage. Cindy bleeds B2B/Enterprise Tech – gaining the moniker “Queen B2B” and a place at the table with the top institutional investors in the category.

Cindy has been working with enterprise technology startups for more than 20 years - as a founder, operating executive, adviser, or investor. She founded Illuminate Ventures, a seed and early-stage venture capital firm that invests exclusively in enterprise cloud and mobile software companies. Illuminate seeks entrepreneurs that are "re-inventing the enterprise" with products that deliver dramatic productivity and decision making improvements while leveraging better, faster, cheaper - cloud technologies and innovative business models.

In this episode we cover:

• 00:00 - Intro
• 02:09 - Early SaaS Experience from Raising VC Capital to Acquisition
• 15:00 - The Decision Behind Illuminate Ventures and Transformation to what it is today (Metrics)
• 22:21 - Experience & Perspective on the Volatility of Deal Flow Investments with the COVID-19 Pandemic
• 24:10 The Value of a Dollar & Current Challenges in the COVID-19 Environment
• 26:18 How Founders Deal with the Slow Down in Decision to Buy or Renew Software from Customers and Some Strategies for the New Normal
• 31:34 What Illuminate Ventures Share with Startups Beyond Capital Support
• 38:46 What is a Founder Heroic & Why Any Founder Should Aim to Become One
• 40:54 Cindy’s Winner Startup Criteria for Investing
• 42:29 Cindy’s Turn Down Startup Criteria for not Investing

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Get in Touch With Cindy:

Cindy’s LinkedIn

Cindy’s Twitter

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Emilia is an expert in online marketing, enterprise content management, content strategy, growth hacking, and entrepreneurship.She started her career as a content manager at a marketing agency, managing multiple projects for enterprises and SMB’s. In 2015, Emilia founded ContenTools, a streamline content creation software. Ever since then, she has been a full time serial entrepreneur. Last year, Contentools joined operations with GrowthHackers, a company originally founded by Sean Ellis, in order to offer a full stack of software for growth and marketing using A.I. at its core.

Emilia is currently the CEO of GrowthHackers, an online community for the growth obsessed to connect and get inspired from other top marketers in the industry. In today's interview, Emilia shares her experience on how she managed to grow her company to the point it is today.

In this episode we cover:

-Building and maintaining a network for growth

-Effective channels for growth

-Growth strategies for startups

-Growth through acquisition

-Growth acceleration programs

-Tools for GrowthHacking

-Growth Experiments

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Get in touch with Emilia:

Emilia's Email

Emilia's Twitter

Emilia's Linkedin

Links and mentions:

Growth Master Training Course

GrowthHackers website

GrowthHackers Conference

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Rand is an author, co-founder, and CEO of SparkToro, a company focused on allowing software that connects audience intelligence at every marketer's fingertips. Rand is a tech entrepreneur, blogger, and leader in the field of Search Engine Optimisation. He is a frequent keynote speaker for events around the marketing and startup world as well as a best selling author of Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World.

In this episode we cover:

• 00:00 - Intro
• 00:58: - Stepping down as Moz CEO, was the right decision?
• 03:14 - An Unusual $1.3M Round of Funding & Avoiding the Plague
• 10:00 - Why Raising Capital VS Bootstrapping
• 13:16 - Get Richer, die Trying & the Genetic Lottery
• 17:50 - An Unusual Time to Launch & Was it the Right Decision?
• 21:02 - Where to Focus your Marketing Efforts & Rand Best Practices
• 33:58 - Why Podcasting & Episodic Content are a Powerful Tool to Build Connections
• 39:08 - How to Leverage SEO in 2020
• 46:10 - What’s Rand a Lifer Of?
• 47:20 - A Question For Rand Fishkin from Eric Vardon
• 49:04 Outro

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Get in touch with Rand:

Rand’s LinkedIn

Rand’s Twitter

Mentions:

Where you Should Start Marketing

Casey Henry

Melanie Deziel

Eric Vardon

Books:

Lost and Founder

The Content Fuel Framework

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Thomas Petersen (@Hello_World) is a serial entrepreneur and startup expert in Service & Product Design, Innovation, Branding, UI/UX and just generally building great innovative Start-Ups from scratch. He has worked with hundreds of different organizations spanning from early stage startups all the way to large Fortune 500 companies. Thomas also co-founded Hello Group in 2006 which was sold to NOA Group in 2018, while spending time with a company called 80/20 before they were acquired by Square in 2012.

He was the Creative Director at Square for 5 years, where he developed some of the core products and services that exist there today, taking it from a start-up idea all the way until their successful IPO.

He is now the Co-Founder and CEO at First Principle, a Creative Venture Studio focused on starting, helping and funding businesses, including founding several companies such as WeekendHacker and Ghostnote. At First Principle, Thomas and his team help entrepreneurs and corporations create category defining products around the world. Some industry leaders they’ve worked with to build these startups, include: Adobe, Intel, Verizon, HP, Fidelity, Sony, Google, CitiBank, Nokia, Amazon among many others.

In this episode we cover:

-Creative Venture Studios: what they do

-Validating your ideas as quickly as possible

-Ranking idea products that are most profitable

-Underrated growth strategies for startups to utilize when starting off

-The importance of design principles

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Get in touch with Thomas:

Thomas' Twitter

Links and mentions:

First Principle

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Gary Swart is a tech and healthcare investor at Polaris Partners and a former executive with experience in general management of all size organizations, including leading sales, operations, staffing, and strategy.

Up until April 2014, Gary was the CEO of oDesk (UpWork now), the world's largest online workplace. He guided the company to industry leadership and through a merger with eLance, while serving as a leading voice for the future of work and the emerging online work industry.

Gary is passionate about helping entrepreneurs build their businesses, where he regularly shares his knowledge and provides mentorship on how to craft a successful path with fellow business people and anyone building their career.

In this episode we cover:

- Going through a merger and getting the acquired by IBM

- Leaving IBM and Gary’s career path criteria for choosing a position

- Growth and development in your career that's not too steep that you go off of the cliff

- Turning down an offer on Netflix as employee #3

- Making the decision to merge

- Why merge with a better business model (oDesk & eLance merge)

- User Experience as the best marketing tool.

- Insights of the Future of Work and the landscape after COVID-19

- Hiring talent criteria as a SaaS founder

- Investing trends surrounding Healthcare and Technology

- Adding value to a company post-acquisition

- Productivity and effective leadership habits advice (Hint: ABR)

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Get in touch with Gary:

Gary's LinkedIn

Books:

That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea

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Andy is an expert on Marketing, Business Strategy, Leadgen, SaaS, Digital Transformation, User Onboarding, and UX.

He is a marketer, founder, speaker, and mentor with over 10 years of experience in Saas, Digital Transformation, and Growth.

Andy's focus is on the HX (Human Experience), making sure that companies invest resources in creating a great employee experience to support successful change management processes that lead to enhanced customer experience.

Over the past years, Andy has been working directly (as a founder or head of marketing) and indirectly (as a mentor or consultant) with over 200 companies in North America and Europe and he's now in charge of marketing operations at ExB Group, an AI/ML-driven natural language processing platform that provides cognitive process automation for insurers.

In this episode we cover:

-Current COVID-19 Strategy

-Pre & Post Investment SaaS company Grow Advice

-Lead Generation VS Product Focused

-The importance of U/X (Tips & strategies)

-Effective Marketing Budgets

-Trial to Paid VS Enterprise Focused

-Sales Cycles & how to shorten them

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Get in touch with Andy:

Andy's LinkedIn

Andy's Twitter

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Tom Hunt joins us for a 1-on-1 interview on the School of Startups podcast. Tom has vast experience at building startups and SaaS businesses from scratch.

After graduating from the Imperial College in London, he decided to build Virtual Valley, a marketplace connecting online entrepreneurs and virtual assistants from scratch whilst travelling the world. He then sold 90% of the businesses in 2017. He then built up Repairly as the COO, which was on demand mobile phone repair delivery service.

He is now the Co-Founder of BCast, a podcast hosting platform for high growth businesses.

Tom is also the Managing Director at SaaS Marketer, where they publish biweekly SaaS growth case study and runs his own podcast: Confessions Of A B2B Marketer. At SaaS Marketer, he also helps SaaS businesses grow with their own profitable podcast.

Finally, Tom is an Angel investor at different companies, such as Gleam, Dusk Foundation, Taz.com, Ebsta, Parabola Labs and Stashbee.

In this episode we cover:

- Exiting his first business after get burnt out

- Deciding on moving forward on a startup vs. shutting down at Repairly

- The value of launching your own podcast for your startup

- Why he decided to start angel investing in startups

- Underrated growth hacks that startup founders should consider and work really well

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Get in touch with Tom:

Tom's LinkedIn

Mentions:

bCast Podcast

SaaS Marketer

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Andrew Gazdecki is a storyteller and has been an entrepreneur for a very long time, he started his first company, Bizness Apps, while still in college, which was an affordable mobile app development platform for small businesses, and initially, raised around $100,000 in funding. By the time Bizness Apps was acquired by private equity firm Think3, they had grown to $10M in annual recurring revenue, operating in 40 countries, and employing over 100 people.

His second business, Altcoin.io, was a decentralized exchange (DEX) for trading digital assets, by trading on their decentralized, non-custodial platform, traders could protect their assets. Altcoin.io became a champion of security in a market dominated by custodial platforms that put users’ funds at risk. By challenging the status quo, they were defending the rights of traders everywhere – a story that their prospects loved. This eventually led the company to be acquired by global investment firm BnkToTheFuture.

In this episode we cover:

• 01:54 - How Andrew as  College Student Built BiznessApss in 2010
• 13:28 - At $10 MM in ARR, Was Exiting the Right Decision?
• 23:12 - Building Microaquire & Current Vision
• 32:43 - Streamlining the Sales Process of a SaaS company
• 37:31 - What's more important, the content you publish, or where you publish it?
• 45:42 - Long-Term Strategies in the Market for Buyers & Sellers on the Post-COVID Environment
• 49:16 - What has Changed on Acquisition Deals, & Some Trends As Startups Emerge from Lockdowns
• 50:46 - Valuations that Sell Quickly in 2020 and Comparison from 2019
• 52:22 - How Does the Rest of 2020 Looks like for Andrew Gazdecki

Get in touch with Andrew:

Andrew’s Linkedin

Andrew’s Twitter

Mentions:

SMBs

Forbes

Entrepreneur Magazine

Nathan Latka

Eddie Maachalani

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How our team at Horizen Capital partners with SaaS companies and helps them grow. We share our process to help you understand how we work together.

Layout and build a 5 Tier System (Team, Costs, Website, Product and Marketing Plan) for a roadmap for the next 12 months.

Step 1) Audit of business. We need to understand the unit economics and metrics. We review your financial health, potential cost savings, review team structure (org chart) and responsibilities, review the product and website.

Step 2) Competitor analysis. Review all your competitors product, features, growth %, exit amount, valuations, capital raised, marketing strategy to define where the gaps are.

Step 3) Optimize the website

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Churn is a challenge that every single SaaS owner faces in the journey of building their own company. In this episode, I'll talk about how to IDENTIFY and PREVENT churning customers.

In this episode we cover:

• 00:00 - Intro
• 00:30 - Identify at-risk customers: Low NPS scores.
• 01:27 - Identify at-risk customers: Low software usage.
• 02:22 - Identify at-risk customers: Increase in support tickets.
• 03:35 - Identify at-risk customers: Lack of awareness about learning materials.
• 04:30 - Identify at-risk customers: Changes in team members.
• 05:10 - Engage at-risk customers: Deliver outstanding onboarding experience.
• 06:15 - Engage at-risk customers: Use triggers to automate tasks.
• 07:17 - Engage at-risk customers: Start the renewal process early.
• 08:22 - Engage at-risk customers: Provide cohesive communication.

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