The SaaS (Software as a Service) Business Podcast
The SaaS (Software as a Service) Business Podcast helps entrepreneurs start and grow their SaaS businesses. By interviewing people who have accomplished what you want to do, this podcast will provide you with resources and inspiration to grab a piece of this expanding market.
info_outline
019: A Campaign Against Email Attachments with Dave Koslow
01/09/2017
019: A Campaign Against Email Attachments with Dave Koslow
In this episode of the SaaS Business Podcast, Ron Gaver’s guest is Dave Koslow, co-founder of DocSend. Dave and Ron discuss how Dave and his co-founders discovered the problem that led to the creation of DocSend, a document sharing and monitoring tool. Dave details the various ways DocSend provides users with seamless, real-time feedback, listing its advantages over tools like email attachments and screen-sharing programs. This, in turn, opens a conversation about promoting asynchronous communication for business success and how businesses can use DocSend to bridge the communication divide separating them from their clients. Along the way, Dave discusses opportunities and pitfalls for early-phase startups doing product research and design. The full show notes contain a thorough listing of all resources mentioned in the episode and a full transcript of the entire episode. NOTICE After clicking the link above, you will be asked to enter your name and email address. By entering these, you are agreeing to receive email from us. To be removed from the email list, unsubscribe from any email message from us. Episode Outline Click any timestamp on the to start listening at the noted time. [00:00] Intro [02:24] Attachments and the Failure of Transparent Communication [05:15] Purpose-Built Platform for Data Sharing [06:11] External Communication Beyond Shared Content [08:39] Using DocSend to Study the Effectiveness of Pitch Deck Slides [09:08] Using DocSend with Your Existing Documents [10:11] Raising Funds with DocSend [11:53] Investors Value a Solid Startup Team [12:43] DocSend’s Study of Sequoia Capital’s Recommended Pitch Deck Slides [13:19] Using DocSend for Lead Capture [14:55] Using Lead Capture for Organizational Mapping and Networking [16:35] What Happens to Your Documents after You Hit Send? [17:36] How Are Attachments Performing? [18:17] Using DocSend to Evaluate Page Engagement [19:16] The Importance of Asynchronous Communication to Business Success [21:20] Getting User Feedback from DocSend [21:57] What Feedback Are You Missing with Email Attachments? [23:40] DocSend’s Feedback Is Easier Than PDFs [24:24] Using DocSend for Remote Live Presentations [25:55] DocSend’s Live Present Advantages over Screen Sharing Apps [27:35] DocSend’s Highlighting and Cursor Tools [28:00] DocSend’s Advantages over WebEx [28:42] DocSend’s Origin Story [29:33] How DocSend’s Team of Founders Met [31:55] How DocSend’s Founders Entered the Industry [34:20] The Character of DocSend’s CEO – Russ Heddleston [35:20] The “Perfect Co-Founding Team” According to Dave McClure [35:48] Brainstorming the Idea of DocSend [36:14] Finding the Need [37:06] The Need-Finding Hustle [39:16] DocSend’s Dachshund Delivery Service Marketing Campaign [40:28] Building with Heroku [41:07] Scaling with Heroku [42:25] Real-Time Messaging with Off-the-Shelf Components [43:09] DocSend and User Privacy [43:40] DocSend’s Experience Working with Ruby on Rails [44:30] DocSend’s Experience Creating a Website with Bootstrap [44:57] Funding: Seed Round and Series A [45:42] The Future of DocSend – Upcoming Developments [46:36] DocSend’s First Conference Experience [47:19] Dave Koslow’s Personal Influences [51:18] Conclusion
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/4972352
info_outline
018: Learn About Content Marketing for Startups with Nick Raithel
09/19/2016
018: Learn About Content Marketing for Startups with Nick Raithel
In this episode of the SaaS Business Podcast, Ron Gaver’s guest is Nick Raithel of Content Corps. Nick and Ron discuss the unique requirements startups have for content marketing. Nick points out some of the “dos” and “don’ts” of content marketing stressing the need to begin by building relationships with clients before trying to market their products or services. He describes road-mapping, a tool used by Content Corps to plot a client’s marketing course, delve into competitors’ tactics, and define success in advance. He discusses how road-mapping can save you time and money. He discusses the various types of content and channels for content marketing. One of his favorite types of content is email courses. When done correctly, email courses can help you win your customers’ loyalty. When done incorrectly, they may turn customers away because they are perceived as marketing. With email courses and content marketing in general, the idea is to lead with value and avoid creating content that is nothing more than a thinly concealed sales pitch. He examines the various ways entrepreneurs can use social media to amplify their content by building relationships and increasing audience exposure. He then points out that published books are often overlooked as a marketing tool to build personal authority and set you apart from your competitors. Nick closes out the show with the four most damaging content marketing mistakes aspiring entrepreneurs make and offers an exclusive bonus to listeners of the SaaS Business Podcast in the form of free course tools. See for transcript. Please see Disclosure* (below transcript) concerning affiliate links on this page. – Nick Raithel used #AskGaryVee (Gary Vaynerchuk) as an example of repurposing content. See the separate entry for Gary in this list for more information about him and what he does. Listen or read at 36:30. * – I’m a podcaster. I like audio. I can listen while I do other things. Audible is now part of Amazon.com. In this episode, Nick Raithel recommends Audible to those of us with busy lives as a way to educate ourselves on the go. New users receive a 30-day free trial, as well as one free story when they register. Listen or read at 40:53. * – I am an AWeber customer and affiliate. AWeber is email marketing software. I find it to be an affordable solution satisfying my current needs. AWeber employees and (and as far as I know disinterested) third parties have told me that messages sent by AWeber end up in the Spam folder less often than some of their competitors’ messages because of their conservative approach. Erik Harbison, the Chief Marketing Officer for AWeber, will be discussing the marketing stack for a SaaS company in an upcoming episode (it is in post-production now). The episode is about the various marketing tools he has used for SaaS companies more than it is about AWeber. This is in alignment with what Nick Raithel says in this episode. Listen or read at 22:53. – I am a Buffer user. Buffer is SaaS for social media automation. Buffer currently provides queues, schedules, and analytics for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Integrations with the browser and smartphones make buffering a post easy. Reposting (at least on the basic plan) turns into a manual process, which has driven me to another app for reposting and may eventually lead to me discontinuing Buffer. Buffer analyzes engagements with your posts and can suggest an optimized schedule based on maximum engagement. Buffer can monitor Instagram for engagement but does not provide the capability to post to Instagram. Listen or read at 19:11. – According to the site, Buzzsumo allows you to analyze “what content performs best for any topic or competitor,” and to “find the key influencers to promote your content.” The current pricing model has the starter plan for bloggers and small teams at too high a price point for me to try at this time. Other guests have recommended it, and I hear good things from elsewhere. If is seems like a tool you need and you can justify the price, I think you should give it a try. Listen or read at 19:28. – Content Corps Is Nick Raithel’s company specializing in content marketing services for startups. Their services cover the gamut of content marketing. Some specific areas of focus are road-mapping the customer’s current and future state, creating an editorial calendar for consistent content production, creating email courses, helping clients publish books to enhance their personal and brand authority, and tailored social media engagement. – Nick Raithel has provided two free courses as an exclusive bonus to SaaS Business Podcast listeners: “Deadly Mistakes in Content Marketing” and “The Faster Content Mini-Course.” According to Nick, the first is “a quick guide showing you seven mistakes you must avoid when doing content marketing,” and the second is “a short, actionable mini-course to help you learn faster ways to create killer content for your blog and social media.” Listen or read at 44:22. – Drip is email marketing software that allows you (according to the site) “to trigger an email, campaign or tag based on any action a user takes, be it expressing interest in a topic, downloading a sample chapter of your book, starting a trial of your software, or viewing your upgrade page.” Drip also provides a visual workflow design capability for your marketing campaigns. Listen or read at 04:54. – “Gary Vee” started out doing irreverent videos about wine. He is not your typical wine snob, and this set him apart. Add to that a fair amount of hustle and you will find Gary the author of five books ,* videos, a podcast, etc. His books are about the things has done and how to do them. His book Crush It is about personal branding and Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook is about standing on in a noisy world. Listen or read at 36:30. – Infusionsoft is a marketing stack for small businesses. They currently provide email marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) with all plans. Other plans provide sales automation and e-commerce. Listen or read at 22:53. – MailChimp is email marketing software. Listen or read at 22:53. – A Roman emperor’s reflections on Stoic philosophy, published from 170-180 AD. Nick Raithel alludes to this work in his discussion about how personal study into Stoicism can give an entrepreneur mental toughness when facing challenges and disappointments. Listen or read at 43:18. – Salesforce is one of the original SaaS companies to make it “big.” Originally customer relationship management (CRM) SaaS, it is now more of an ecosystem of apps and extensions. Founder and CEO Marc Benioff has chronicled the history of the company in his book * written with Carlyle Adler. , their annual expo, draws more than 100,000 people to San Francisco. If you click on the link provided, you should recognize some of the speakers. Nick Raithel mentions Salesforce as the model of what most SaaS businesses are not likely to become stating that most successful SaaS entrepreneurs are more like to become “quiet millionaires” like those studied in the book The Millionaire Next Door (see entry in this list). Listen or read at 42:30. * – When Nick Raithel discussed Stoic philosophy and its applicability to modern entrepreneurship, he specifically mentions *. To illustrate this similarity here is an excerpt from Amazon’s webpage [preceding link] about Letters from a Stoic: “This selection of Seneca’s letters shows him upholding the austere ethical ideals of Stoicism—the wisdom of the self-possessed person immune to overmastering emotions and life’s setbacks….” I’m not sure you can get that into 140 characters. It may be a bit too much for us today. Listen or read at 43:18. * – Nick Raithel mentioned Stoic philosophy having applicability to modern entrepreneurship. See the entries for Marcus Aurelius and Seneca in this list. Listen or read at 43:18 * by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko – Originally written in 1998 and revised in 2010, the book presents the results of a study of millionaires and identifies seven common traits. Nick Raithel mentioned the book as a good fit for SaaS entrepreneurs. Listen or read at 41:13. See for transcript. *Disclosure: Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. I may earn a commission if you purchase through these links. These commissions help to cover the cost of producing the podcast. I am affiliated only with companies I know and trust to deliver what you need. In most cases, affiliate links are to products and services I currently use or have used in the past. I would not recommend these resources if I did not sincerely believe that they would help you. I value you as a visitor/customer far more than any small commission I might earn from recommending a product or service. I recommend many more resources with which I am not affiliated than affiliated. In most cases where there is an affiliation, I will note it, but affiliations come and go, and the notes may not keep up.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/4675293
info_outline
017: Ocean, The Tech Accelerator
08/15/2016
017: Ocean, The Tech Accelerator
I interviewed Tim Sinclair in Episode 015. During the interview, Tim mentioned that he had gone through the inaugural class of the Ocean Accelerator. He also mentioned that Ocean is a faith-based tech accelerator. I had never even considered the intersection of faith-based organizations and tech accelerators and was immediately intrigued. I asked Tim if he could put me in touch with Ocean, which he did. Scott Weiss is the CEO of Ocean and James Clair is the Marketing Manager. UPDATE: Ocean came out with important news for potential applicants just before the podcast release. They have increased their seed funding for companies accepted into their 2017 class from $35,000 to $50,000. Everything was already in place for the episode release when the news came out, and it would have been difficult to alter the audio to make the change. Contents Episode Outline Click [Website] to go to the corresponding website location. Once on the website, you may listen to the episode starting at any timestamp [mm:ss]. Intro Accelerator Defined Accelerator Capital and Convertible Notes Ocean’s Founders Accelerators Versus Incubators Ocean’s Unique Spiritual Component Focusing on the Founder Non-Business Relationships and Stakeholders Ocean’s Message Ocean’s Five Capitals Maintaining Balance during a Business Venture Marketplace Success Ocean’s Work Ethic Ocean’s Program Overview Demo Day and Business Curriculum Keynote Speakers – Day One Keynote Speaker Discussion – Day Two and Beyond Ocean’s 2017 Program Plans Ocean’s Policy on Faith Faith as a Component of Business Ocean’s Program Weekly Program – Speakers and Workshops Syncing Program Behavior with Business Life Ocean’s Field Day – The Importance of Customer Dialogue Relocating as a Founder with Family Ocean’s Ideal Company and Founder Ocean Capital Ocean’s Origins at Crossroads Ocean’s Mentors Role of the Mentor Mentor Demographics Partners Brand Identity Kit Design Style Guide A Creative Space to Build Relationships Cincinnati as a Hotspot for Entrepreneurs Cincinnati’s Community Spirit Cincinnati as an Ideal Region for Startups Appropriateness of Cincinnati for Founders with Families Ocean’s Schedule for Applications Benefits of Demo Day Post-Demo Day Activities Universal Message of God’s Interest in Enterprises Conclusion Resources Mentioned in Episode Please see Disclosure* (below transcript) concerning affiliate links on this page. – According to the website, 805 Creative is an “Ohio-based creative agency dedicated to empowering our business partners with compelling ways to communicate their stories.” Listen or read at . – Also known as the Business Model Canvas. A strategic management template for visualizing a business’s partnerships, resources, revenue, and customers. Ocean’s program provides mentoring through the canvas creation process, focusing specifically on planning, the business model, the strategy canvas, and value proposition. Listen or read at . – “A trusted partner for high potential technology companies in Southwest Ohio,” according to the official website. Scott Weiss mentions it to emphasize the many organizations surrounding Cincinnati which make it an ideal place for entrepreneurs. Listen or read at . – Cintrifuse is Located in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. According to the website: “Cintrifuse acts as a connecter and supporter to create a global destination for entrepreneurial success. Cintrifuse connects the region’s high-potential, venture-backable startups to advice, talent, funding, and customers.” According to Scott Weiss: “Cintrifuse’s role is to coordinate all the activities, to minimize wasteful redundancy, and to get everyone in this broad region, which includes northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana and southwestern Ohio, to work cooperatively so that we share resources and share programming.” Listen or read at . – Business development method pioneered by Eric Ries. Lean Startup’s methodology is built on the principle that designing products to meet the needs of early customers can prevent many product failures and funding expenses in the future. The claim gained widespread renown after the publication of Ries’ bestseller,*. Listen or read at . – Ocean is an independent tech accelerator that is uniquely faith-based and focused on building founders. – Ocean’s application window is (currently) September 1 to October 31. Listen or read at . – Ocean Capital is a separate legal entity from the Ocean Accelerator but affiliated with the accelerator. It collects money from a broad range of investors. It puts money it into convertible notes for the companies in the accelerator. When investors get a return, the entity tracks the flow of money so that investors can be properly taxed. The entity does not have investment profits and losses. Listen or read at . – @OCEANAccel Episode Transcript Intro Ron Gaver: This is Episode 017 of the SaaS Business Podcast: Ocean, The Tech Accelerator Scott Weiss: One of the benefits of Ocean for any startup is [that] our demo day is on a large auditorium stage in one of the Crossroads buildings. This past year, we had 1,400 people attend live. We had 1,800 people stream it live. So that’s a total live audience of over 3,000. Last year, after we finished, we posted the stream (the stream’s downloadable). Ten thousand people downloaded the stream between last year’s demo day and this year’s demo day. So, if you’re launching a business, you get to come here. You get to go on a stage designed to speak to thousands. You get [a] professional production team fine-tuning your speech. You’re streamed live. Your slides are amazing. You get to launch your brand to, literally, thousands of potential customers and hundreds of potential investors. We work real hard to make sure that the audience has a high percentage of angels, angel funds, and customers. Ron Gaver: Hello and welcome to the show! I’m your host Ron Gaver. This is the podcast designed to help you put the pieces of the puzzle together to start, grow, and succeed in your SaaS business. Ron Gaver: Before we get into the show, I would like to personally invite you to visit our website. The URL is SaaSBusinessPodcast.com. When you visit, please be sure you sign up to get the FREE Resource Guide. This is a living guide that grows with the podcast. By signing up, you will always have access to the latest edition. Ron Gaver: For each show, you will also find extensive show notes on the website. Show notes now contain ALL links for resources mentioned in a show, an outline of the show, and a full transcript. I have designed these show notes to help you quickly find valuable information. To get to show notes, just enter the base URL, a forward slash, and the three-digit episode number. Ron Gaver: This podcast, the Resource Guide, and show notes are produced at considerable expense. They are my gift to you for your continuing growth and success. Ron Gaver: I interviewed Tim Sinclair in Episode 015. During the interview, Tim mentioned that he had gone through the inaugural class of the Ocean Accelerator. He also mentioned that Ocean is a faith-based tech accelerator. I had never even considered the intersection of faith-based organizations and tech accelerators and was immediately intrigued. I asked Tim if he could put me in touch with Ocean, which he did. Scott Weiss is the CEO of Ocean and James Clair is the Marketing Manager. Welcome Scott and James. Scott Weiss: Hey, how are you? Ron Gaver: Just fine, and you? Scott Weiss: We’re doing great up here. Thanks. Accelerator Defined Ron Gaver: Good. Alright, well let’s get right into it. For the sake of the audience: not everyone may fully understand exactly what an accelerator is, what you do as an accelerator; and then, beyond that question, I would like to know how Ocean is different. We’ll get into that, I’m sure, in a great deal of detail; but, first of all, what is an accelerator from your point-of-view, and what is an accelerator’s purpose and function? Scott Weiss: That’s a great question. I’ll lead off. So, let’s start with the founder. The founder has a great idea, and they work on it, they tinker on it, they devote themselves to it, and it gets to a point where they need some help; and that’s the role of investors. Whether they be friends, family, or angels, the capital they provide enables the idea to continue to move forward. Scott Weiss: Accelerators do two things: we provide a roadmap that allows the entire thing to accelerate—to speed up, to compress a year of business growth into a few months; and, secondly, we provide access to mentors that will enable the founder to have a far greater circle of knowledge than they have alone. There’s about 220 accelerators in the United States, and all of them do that. Most of them, including Ocean—ours—also provide a level of seed funding—a small amount of money that allows the founder to relocate and participate residentially in that accelerator, as well as enough money to keep the enterprise going. In essence, that’s—from my —what an accelerator does. Accelerator Capital and Convertible Notes Ron Gaver: Alright, then, you mentioned the aspect of capital. Scott Weiss: Mmhm. Ron Gaver: And so with the capital usually comes something on your end—there’s a bit of dilution as far as the founder’s ownership of the company, generally. Is that true across the board, or is it not? Scott Weiss: Well, actually, there’s a narrow range of what accelerators that provide capital get in exchange for that capital. Let’s start with Ocean, the accelerator that James and I are honored to work for. Our note, when the company accepts it, is a convertible note. It’s debt. It does not dilute the cap table. It maintains their equity ownership. And if that company raises subsequent money, the holders of the note—which is a separate guy who manages all that—determines whether or not we want to convert that note into equity at that time or simply get our money back with a modest interest rate. So that’s a very “founder-friendly” capital structure. On the other end, accelerators will take anywhere from 6-10% direct equity in the company in exchange for the capital they’re investing. That begins the dilution process for the founder, because they’re giving up direct shares or direct equity for the money. Ron Gaver: Well that’s good. I didn’t understand what the “convertible note” part meant. Now I understand. And that sounds like an excellent option for the founder to basically be able to pay that back if he or she so desires. Scott Weiss: Well, to be clear, it’s if the investor so desires. Ron Gaver: Oh, okay. Scott Weiss: It’s the investor’s choice. I’m not an investor in our fund because I work there, but if the investors say, “Hey, we really like Ron’s company, and we want to convert our debt into equity.” Boom! That happens. Or they say, “We really like Ron, but the company’s not our cup of tea. We’ll just take out money back.” And it’s money back with a very low interest rate. So the investor chooses, not the founder. Ron Gaver: Okay, and what did you say the dilution is, usually, on that, in your case? Or does it vary? Scott Weiss: There is no dilution with a convertible note. It only dilutes if it converts and the terms of the conversion are spelled out based on the amount of funds raised, so if the company goes out and raises money with an evaluation of three million bucks, and you’ve got fifty thousand dollars in seed capital from an accelerator that converts at fifty thousand, you can see that the dilution would be very, very modest. Ron Gaver: Alright. I didn’t understand, then. I’m sure that there are others who would not have understood that. Ocean’s Founders Ron Gaver: So, we’ve talked, just briefly, about what an accelerator is, and how it functions (at least, peripherally). Now I’d like to talk about how Ocean is different. I realize, from your webpage and from talking to you and from talking to Tim Sinclair (who went through your program), there were three founders, originally. They’re Tim, Tim, and somebody else whose name was never actually documented on that page. Scott Weiss: Chad. Ron Gaver: Those were your three founders? Scott Weiss: Tell you what: let me back up and just tell you what makes us different, and then we’ll jump into the story of how we got here. Ron Gaver: That’s great. Scott Weiss: Perfect. I’ll prattle on a little bit more, and then I’ll let James jump in. Accelerators Versus Incubators Scott Weiss: So, we’ve already covered in very high-level, broad strokes, what an accelerator is. The other important perspective is: there are 220 accelerators in the United States, and there are over 1,000 incubators. Let’s go sidewise. Very high-level—the difference between an accelerator and an incubator is that accelerators tend to be time-limited. You get accepted, and you get so many months in the program, and then you get out; and accelerators tend to give you money. Incubators generally have no time limit. You get in and you stay as long as you are getting value from the incubation. And, generally, you pay the incubator. Almost every university in the United States has an incubator, and students have access to it, but they’re paying for it with tuition dollars in order to that incubator. Ocean’s Unique Spiritual Component Scott Weiss: So there are 1,400 organizations out there trying to help high-tech entrepreneurs grow businesses faster, and we’re just like all of them. We’re just one of 1,400 and we think we’re pretty good (and we can talk about that later), but what makes us different—what makes us truly unique—is we are one of only two accelerators in the United States that integrate a spiritual journey with the business journey we take you on. And we do that because our focus is not exclusively on the business. Our focus is on the business and the founder, and the lens we look at it with is faith. James Clair: Yeah, to pop in and add onto what Scott was saying: when Scott was laying out exactly what an accelerator is, you can think of it like putting guard rails around an entrepreneur or packaging a program for an entrepreneur, to accelerate their business; not a package or a program for a business that leaves out the entrepreneur. All of our curriculum and program—its scope is centered on the founder as an individual because we understand that they have the ability to create multiple ventures that are successful. And they also have the ability to recover from a failed venture versus most businesses and products that don’t get off the ground. Unfortunately, most of them never recover. James Clair: So, this sustainability and life expectancy of a founder is much, much more valuable than an individual idea, and, like Scott said, our difference is that lens of faith. And you can think of it like an orientation point. So a lot of decisions are made, unfortunately, with a motivation for financial gain, as the first thought or sole inspiration. We believe that Scripture clearly lays out that God, and the disciplines and principles that He taught, are what should be our initial point of inspiration, and that financial decisions are simply a filter that we run those following decisions through. So, we don’t want to tether ourselves to our money. We want to tether ourselves to our faith and use smart, financial intellect and decision-making to forward our progress. Ron Gaver: Alright, I understand, and I think that I would certainly embrace having your faith at the center of all that you do and having God at the center of all that you do. Focusing on the Founder Ron Gaver: So you’re trying to focus more on the founder. Not only on the business, but also on the spiritual, the physical, the relational, and the intellectual because, you say, essentially, that the founder has a greater shelf life than any business, potentially. Scott Weiss: Well said. Ron Gaver: And then you explore the role of faith. One of your founders said that that is, arguably, the proper place for faith to be put in building the business and putting it all together, and so you’re trying, also, to build the person up, strengthen that person, and edify that person to bring the spiritual to bear on that person’s business so that that person is a more graceful founder or can more gracefully transition into that business and not burn out in the process? Non-Business Relationships and Stakeholders James Clair: Yeah, exactly, because, oftentimes, we can forget that there are non-business-related relationships at stake—most notably family, friends. So if we consider the entire amount of stakeholders that exist within an entrepreneur’s idea or their business venture, we want to make sure that we don’t exclude those relationships and the physical health that’s put at risk when a founder, unfortunately, is not tethering their decisions to the right source. A lot of people can identify with what it’s like to lose friends during a business venture, to have lost marriages, to gain weight, to go through physical ailments—a lot of people identify with that. Ocean’s Message James Clair: It’s not just the high-tech founders that come through our accelerator, and that’s also another layer to our uniqueness—that our message translates to a vast kingdom. And that’s our mission: to expand God’s kingdom; and we are looking to do it through the marketplace, or into the marketplace through entrepreneurs. But they have the ability to take that with them and transfer that to their families, to their friends, and then to future business associates, well after they’re out of their current venture. Ocean’s Five Capitals Ron Gaver: I find this idea to be very exciting because, looking at starting a business, one thing I would not be willing to sacrifice—or the things I would not be willing to sacrifice—would be my marriage, my family, and my health. My friends, maybe a little bit after that, but my marriage, my family, and my health—those are the things that God has given me to be a steward over, and those are the things that I must maintain. I have a mandate to do so, and I have a responsibility to do so. The sacrifice that goes along with losing those things is, in my mind, a failed proposition. Scott Weiss: We would agree. It’s also important for your listeners to know two things. We are trying to help the founder see these five capitals (and you articulated them already): [in ascending order, financial, intellectual (or ideas), physical (or health), relationships, and spiritual]—to see they have all five of these things, in different measure and at different times in their life, and the key to navigating a successful startup is to recognize that you have access to all five capitals. And while you’re watching the business, you don’t need to sacrifice your family, but you are going to impact your family. You simply will have far less time for your family. You will need to use many of your relationships to build your business, just to interview them (what do they think about your product?), to do your pitch, to ask for money possibly, to ask them to become a customer, or ask them to ask friends to become customers. Maintaining Balance During a Business Venture Scott Weiss: So, we try to help the founders understand: you’re not going to have a balanced life; you’re going to have an unbalanced life. Now, how do you enter that journey, recognizing its imbalance, and come out on the other end with healthy relationships intact? You do that by...
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/4575110
info_outline
016: Customer Success with Lincoln Murphy
07/18/2016
016: Customer Success with Lincoln Murphy
Lincoln Murphy’s focus is customer success. He’s currently the growth architect at , where he creates blueprints and playbooks for customer success managers and leaders. In the past, he founded and led customer success at . Using customer success to drive growth across the entire customer lifecycle, he has helped over four hundred SaaS and enterprise software companies accelerate growth and retain valuable customers. Contents On the website, click any timestamp to start listening to the episode at the noted location. Intro Pre-SaaS Career in Supply Chain Management Early SaaS Company for Mail Center Management Early Days of SaaS Before SaaS Was SaaS Resistance to SaaS Adoption Role of Corporate IT in SaaS Adoption SaaS Business Model Business Architecture SaaS as a Business Architecture and SaaS Revenue Models Recent Career Sixteen Ventures “The SaaS Guy” Contrarian Views Freemium in SaaS Thought Leadership (or Getting Things Out of Your Head and Moving On) Facts and the Contrarian Point-of-View Customer Success Management Customer’s Desired Outcome Customer’s Required Outcome Customer’s Appropriate Experience Appropriate SaaS Experience Solve for Success Not Happiness Successful Customers Advocate But Want More Happy Customers May Not Be Getting Value and Then Churn The Appropriate Success Vector Customer Success and Company Valuation Churn Customers to Save and Customers to Let Go When Churn Becomes a Non-Issue Individual Contributions to the Customer’s Desired Outcome Personal Recommendations Make Your Customers Powerful Operationalize Customers Making you Powerful Proactively Convert on Success Milestones Customer Lifecycle Success Tools to Monitor Customer Progress Understand Desired Outcome Before You Operationalize Start with the Customers and Tools Will Become Apparent Saas Networking Recommendations Resources Mentioned in Episode Please see * (below transcript) concerning affiliate links on this page. – This blog post by Lincoln Murphy on Sixteen Ventures discusses how Customer Success can impact the valuation of your company. Listen or read at . –Customer success management app mentioned by Lincoln Murphy as an alternative to Gainsight to measure customer success milestones. Listen or read at. * – Book by Nick Mehta, Dan Steinman, and Lincoln Murphy. Lincoln did not mention the book during the interview. I recommend you digest the information in this podcast episode, read Lincoln’s Customer Success: The Definitive Guide, and then read the book. The book is broken down into three parts: (1) Customer Success: The History, Organization, and Imperative; (2) The Ten Laws of Customer Success; and (3) Chief Customer Officer, Technology, and Future. Each of the Ten Laws is covered in a chapter. – This is a 2016 update to Lincoln’s original post . A PDF of the guide is available . If this podcast episode interests you, I would recommend you read this next. I brought this up during the interview. Listen or read at . – According to the website, FlipMyFunnel is a “B2B Marketing and Sales Conference.” Lincoln Murphy mentioned that he would be speaking at the 2016 conference in Austin, Texas, but the conference moves. Check the website for info. Listen or read at . – Lincoln Murphy’s former employer. Gainsight is a customer success management platform to measure customer success milestones. According to the website, Gainsight is: “Community, Best Practices, and Platform to Drive Business Transformation.” If you scroll to the bottom of their homepage (as of this writing), you’ll see several useful guides listed. I have not checked them thoroughly, but they look good. Listen or read at . – PaaS (Platform as a Service) for web app development and deployment. Lincoln Murphy mentioned this during the interview because he was once involved with a startup that was a competitor. That statup is gone, but Heroku remains and is well-respected. Listen or read at . * – Book by Robert Cialdini about the factors that influence us to say, “Yes.” According to his research, there are six such factors or principles: reciprocation, consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. This is a well-written book and must-read for anyone interested in how people are influenced. Lincoln Murphy recommended this book. Listen or read at . – According to the website: “Intercom is a customer platform with a suite of products for live chat, marketing, feedback, and support.” Lincoln Murphy mentioned this with other tools to operationalize customer success. Listen or read at . Lincoln Murphy on Twitter . Listen or read at . – Ruby on Rails is an MVC (model-view-controller) framework based on the Ruby programming language used for web development. Mentioned in passing by Lincoln Murphy. Listen or read at . – SaaS Business Model graphic by Lincoln Murphy on Sixteen Ventures site. I mentioned this during the interview with Lincoln Murphy because it has his definition of customer success. Listen or read at . – European B2B SaaS conference. Listen or read at . – Annual conference, podcast, academy, and extensive blog about SaaS. According to the website: “SaaStr began in 2012 as a simple attempt via a WordPress blog, together with a few answers on Quora, to help share back Jason M. Lemkin’s learnings of going from $0 to $100m ARR with the next generation of great SaaS and B2B entrepreneurs.” Mentioned by Lincoln Murphy. Listen or read at . – According to the site: “SIIA is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry.” Mentioned by Lincoln Murphy in passing at . – Sixteen Ventures is a company founded by Lincoln Murphy. The site contains blog articles about SaaS back to 2007 and Lincoln’s current speaking. Mentioned in numerous places during the interview. Listen or read at , ,, , , and . – PDF by Lincoln Murphy mentioned during interview. Listen or read at . – Customer success management app mentioned by Lincoln Murphy as an alternative to Gainsight to measure customer success milestones. Listen or read at. – According to the website, Winning by Design has a “proven customer-centric SaaS process for sales organizations” to assist with the design, implementation, and scaling of SaaS sales organizations. See their for more information. This is Lincoln Murphy’s place of employment as of this writing. Episode Transcript Intro Ron Gaver: This is the SaaS Business Podcast, episode 16, an interview with Lincoln Murphy. Lincoln Murphy: I’ll tell you what: this is one of the most powerful concepts that I’ve ever come across in business, and that’s kind of a big statement, but I believe it to be true If you understand what your customer’s desired outcome is, what they need to achieve, and the way they need to achieve it, I think it changes everything. Ron Gaver: Hello, welcome to the show. I’m your host, Ron Gaver. Thank you for listening. This is the podcast designed to help you put the pieces of the puzzle together to start, grow, and succeed in your SaaS business. Before we get started with the show, I would like to invite you to visit the podcast website. The URL is . On the website, the most important thing to do is to sign up to get your copy of the current free download. This will also put you on the list for future free downloads and updates. For your convenience, there’s also a page on the website for each episode, where you will find show notes for the episode. The show notes will contain links to resources mentioned in the episode. Just enter the base URL, a forward slash, and the three-digit episode number. If you enjoy this podcast and find the content to be valuable, please consider giving us a five-star rating on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Five-star ratings help the show stay visible so that new listeners can easily find us. Ron Gaver: [Guest intro. See for text.] Welcome, Lincoln. Lincoln Murphy: Hey, Ron. How are you? Ron Gaver: Fine! How are you? Lincoln Murphy: I’m doing well. Good to be here. Pre-SaaS Career in Supply Chain Management Ron Gaver: Let’s move back to 2004, roughly. You’re getting ready to go to San Francisco, you’re about to board an airplane, and your task is to go out to San Francisco and lay off a bunch of employees (or at least give them the bad news). Lincoln Murphy: Yeah. Ron Gaver: I think you had it pretty much up to your eyebrows at that point. What did you do? Lincoln Murphy: I called my boss, and I told him that I wasn’t coming out and that I was done. That’s not what I signed on to do. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. I didn’t believe in the reason that we were laying off people, anyway. This was to move jobs—not the people, but to move jobs—from San Francisco to Dallas, and I knew that, fundamentally, the people were good people. I didn’t want to do that for them. Lincoln Murphy: But I also knew, fundamentally, this was the connection between us and our trading partners. This was in supply chain management, and if we lost these people with all this institutional knowledge—the systems were not great, we weren’t all working off of one centralized database of customer data or trading-partner data, we weren’t working off of one centralized form of documentation, processes weren’t documented—I knew if we lost these folks, we would lose the relationship with our trading partners. And even in a situation where you have two giant corporations coming together, it still relies on just a handful of human connections. Lincoln Murphy: And I thought it was a bad idea all around, and I had it at that point and was lucky enough (I don’t know how it played out like this), got off the phone with my boss, called the airline, got a full refund (I don’t know how that happened), and I said, “That’s a good sign; this was the right decision.” Then I decided, “Well, I quit my job. Let me figure out what to do.” So I started a company, and it turned out to be a SaaS company, at the time. Early SaaS Company for Mail Center Management Ron Gaver: And you characterize that as a mail-center management for large businesses in the Texas area? Lincoln Murphy: Yeah. From a supply-chain-management standpoint, you have very structured data that moves between, what we call, trading partners; and it’s what allows products to flow from supplier to vendor, and invoices and purchase orders and everything else to flow; and it’s all structured, and it’s all heavily—I don’t want to say regulated, but there’re rules in place, and that’s cool. Lincoln Murphy: But then I saw a part of the organization that isn’t structured, yet a lot of really important information and other types of things—packages, things like that—flowed through this mail center. So you think of the mailroom at some companies, but your large companies actually have very sophisticated, very large mail centers, and there’s a whole industry out there involving mail-center management; and I said, “Look, I think that is an area of the enterprise that could be automated—not fully automated, but we could bring technology there and maybe provide visibility into the process and have it not be such a black box, where some really important information (things like checks and packages) are coming in.” And I said, “Let me just take that and run with it.” And—you know what—we did. Lincoln Murphy: I pulled in some partners and we built a product—very much a minimum, viable product based off of what we now know as customer development (didn’t really have the term for that), but I spent a lot of time going to industry meetups. I spent time with the post office, trying to understand how mail is routed through the U.S. Postal Service. I spent time with anybody that would let me go to their mail center and their mailroom. I remember Greyhound was nice enough to let me have some access. Pitney Bowes was a company that did a lot of outsourced mail-center management. I got to sort of piggyback on what they were doing for other companies. I went down to Exxon in Houston and toured there. Lincoln Murphy: Actually, I’ll tell you a little trick I used: I went to a company that does inbound mail-sorting automation; because I thought, “I want to, number one, be able to connect into their technology for our product.” But what I ended up doing was having them take me to some of their clients to show me their products in action, which also allowed me to get my foot in the door at ExxonMobil and at Frito-Lay, and a couple of other big companies, and so I met the right people based off of an interest in buying and also partnering with these makers of these really big, automated, mail-sorting machines. So that was a little hack that I used. But the bottom line is: I started understanding this market a little bit better and understanding what the needs were. And so you take a company like ExxonMobil that actually has a very distributed workforce, yet all of the mail comes in through their Houston mail center and then it has to be sent out. One of the things we did was created a way to view your mail. It comes in the mailroom, it goes on one of these sorters, those sorters actually have really high-speed cameras, we take the picture, and now that can be visible to somebody in Alaska, working on the North Slope above the Arctic Circle. They don’t actually have to get the physical mail sent to them; they can go through and say, “I don’t need that. I don’t need that. I actually do need that.” And that actually cuts down on the cost of sending mail across the world, which, for a company like that, is actually a pretty significant cost savings. Lincoln Murphy: Bottom line is: very interesting, lots of customer-development work, a lot of understanding of the market; and then, ultimately, the understanding that, no matter what, that market was not as exciting as I thought it was. It was just really slow to take up new technology—a lot slower than I was willing to or comfortable with waiting out—and we ended up selling to a competitor; I like to say I ended up not owing too many people too much money. But I learned a lot. Early Days of SaaS Ron Gaver: This was in a time when SaaS was not as ubiquitous as it is now. How is it that you decided that that was the right place, that was the right thing to do, SaaS was the answer? How was it you even came to know about SaaS at that particular time? Lincoln Murphy: In all of the supply-chain-management stuff that I was doing—this will kind of go back to even the early ’90s, when I got into that world—it was a network-centric, business architecture. If you think about the way that information is passed between companies, none of that really matters if you can’t actually connect to the other companies. It absolutely relies on having this network centricity. And that was kind of the world that I grew up in. It was all about, ultimately, what we would refer to as B2B ecommerce. At the same time, of course, B2C ecommerce was coming up, and I was doing a lot of work with Web technologies. Even as the supply-chain world sort of evolved, we started taking on these dedicated networks and what we called value-added networks where—if you think about it—it was literally a server that two companies would dial in to—literally dial in to with old-school modems and things like that. You would have different types of computers, and we would have different format standards that we would use, and we’d upload a file to these systems. Those systems would translate the file into what the other company could use, and that was how we did business. Lincoln Murphy: Well, we started moving that to the Internet, started using more standard technologies, more standard formats and things like that. I was doing a lot of really hardcore business work, using Internet technologies, so when I decided to move outside of where I had been in the supply-chain management world into creating a startup, Web technologies—that was what I knew more than anything else. I really had no idea how you would even build an on-parameter client-server piece of software, and I had no real interest in that. And like you said, SaaS wasn’t a thing yet. And, certainly, ASPs—application service providers—had been around. People were “delivering” software over the Web. I saw this as a way to, not just deliver software, but if everybody signs into the same system (what we now know as multitenancy and things like that)—if everybody’s signing into the same product, the same system—now we have that network centricity. And I wasn’t really sure what we could do with that, but I did know what we’ve seen with companies like Workday that sort of upset or displaced previous types of products, like PeopleSoft in the human capital management space. One of the reasons Workday really took off is the fact that, for a distributed company, all they have to do is have Internet access to be able to get to the system. They don’t have to have a server set up in a room somewhere and then dedicated circuits, or even VPNs, to get to this centralized server that, for all of their remote offices, all they have to have is Internet access. Lincoln Murphy: Well, I saw that same thing in this case, where, at a company like Exxon, all they have to do is scan the content, put it on the server (which is on the Web), and then all the different remote locations could all log into that; and you don’t have to have any of that dedicated IT infrastructure. So I saw that as a real positive. It was kind of two-fold: (1) I didn’t come from an enterprise-software background, so that wasn’t even on my radar, and (2) I really saw the benefits of having everything on the Web. So that’s kind of how I went into that. Before SaaS Was SaaS Lincoln Murphy: It was hard to find information, certainly, on this, because there wasn’t one thing that we called it. We didn’t call it SaaS, didn’t call it Cloud, so we kind of had to just feel around in the dark, but we eventually realized that this was a SaaS company. Right around the time we were getting ready to exit this venture, I think SaaS was becoming a term. But it was a real learning experience from all sorts of angles, and, you said it yourself: it wasn’t ubiquitous. Really going out and selling this stuff to very staid, old-school companies who were technologically forward in the places where it mattered to them—Exxon was technology forward when it came to drilling, and some of the other companies were really technologically forward when it came to supply-chain management—but when it came to things like this, especially in a part of the business that was kind of considered a cost center (not really that important), they were not really looking to take any chances; and, of course, the management of the mail centers were not looking to take any chances, so they would bring IT in, and IT would say, “We have a lot of concerns.” And it was all of the things that I’d heard. Later on, you heard there were challenges for SaaS. We went through all of those, and so it was not ubiquitous. Lincoln Murphy: But at that time, when SaaS was becoming a term, you would hear things from Silicon Valley (from investors and pundits and the press) that SaaS is everywhere and it’s the next big thing, which was true. It was absolutely the next big thing. But in terms of being everywhere, in terms of being the norm or the way that you do business, it was hard. It was rough. And so we had a major uphill battle. When I came out...
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/4521578
info_outline
015: An Uncommon Startup Experience with Tim Sinclair
06/27/2016
015: An Uncommon Startup Experience with Tim Sinclair
Tim Sinclair is founder and CEO of . Before founding RingR, Tim had an established career in broadcast radio. The idea for RingR grew out of Tim’s frustrations with trying to get high-quality recorded audio for interviews conducted electronically using the telephone or Skype. For such interviews, the host can produce a high-quality recording on one end, but if the guests do not have good recording equipment on their end, the audio quality for the guests’ recording is often low. If the host records the guests from the telephone, audio quality is generally low. If the host records the guests from Skype, internet artifacts such as warble and drop out often occur. Tim conceived RingR as a way to get high-quality, recorded audio for all parties by recording each person’s audio locally on a smartphone, transmitting the data to a server, and syncing the audio files together. In the end, host and guest sound as good as the local recording. RingR has come out of beta, and I wanted to get the story from Tim of how he developed the product and stood the company up. On the website, click any timestamp to start listening to the episode at the noted location. Please see Disclosure* (below transcript) concerning affiliate links on this page. Full episode transcript follows Resources Mentioned. Resources Mentioned in Episode – According to the website: “Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a secure cloud services platform, offering compute power, database storage, content delivery and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow.” Tim Sinclair discusses RingR’s positive experience with AWS starting at . that may not be exactly what Tim describes in the episode but seems like a reasonable option to explore. * – EarPods are my favorite in-ear listening and speaking device for iPhone. EarPods do not close the ear canal and allow you to listen to your surrounding environment while talking and listening. I do not know if they work with Andriod phones since the jack has four bands (left ear, right ear, microphone, and common). EarPods are mentioned in this episode as a good interface for recording on an iPhone using RingR. Listen at for discussion. * – This book by Bob Goff is about showing love in remarkable ways. It was mentioned by Tim Sinclair in this episode. Tim takes inspiration from this book about how to interact with his customers. Listen to the discussion starting at . – Tim Sinclair is a graduate of the inaugural class of the Ocean Accelerator. Ocean is a faith-based accelerator providing seed funding, mentors, legal assistance, a well-attended demo day, a 5-month curriculum focused on founders first and business second, and more. For Tim’s story with Ocean in this episode, begin listening at . Ocean will be featured in an upcoming episode (tentatively 017). * – RingR is an app for recording high-quality audio from geographically separated speakers and synching the audio files into one high-quality recording. Typical uses are for podcasts and broadcast, but the app has been used for remote medical consultation, legal deposition, and employment interviews. Participants may record on an iPhone, Android phone, or desktop computer. The creation of RingR is the subject of this episode. For a technical description, begin listening at @RingR_US @RingRApp – According to their website: “Serra Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm investing in technology companies in emerging Midwest technology centers and selected other geographies. Sectors we focus on include information technology, devices/instrumentation and agricultural technologies.” In this episode, Tim Sinclair discusses obtaining his original funding from Serra Ventures. Listen starting at for the story. – Tim is the founder and CEO of RingR. For a short bio, listen to the introduction at . For an invitation to connect, listen at . Full Episode Transcript Ron Gaver: This is SaaS Business Podcast episode 15, an interview with Tim Sinclair. Tim Sinclair: Surprise, I believe, is the key to most every emotion. Great horror movies are great because of suspense and surprise. Great comedians—it’s all about timing and saying something at a time that nobody expected. They don’t see it coming. They’re surprised and—boom—all of a sudden they’re laughing out loud because they didn’t see that coming. And for us—I think—when we surprise a customer, a user, with a great experience or with something that we say or that we do, not only is it a good feeling for them and a good experience for them (and it endears them to RingR), but it’s something they’re more likely to share with other people, and like I said earlier, that’s going to be our best marketing ever. Ron Gaver: Hello, welcome to the show. I’m your host, Ron Gaver. Thank you for listening. This is the podcast designed to help you put the pieces of the puzzle together to start, grow, and succeed in your SaaS business. Before we get started with the show, I would like to invite you to visit the podcast website. The URL is SaaSBusinessPodcast.com (that’s S-a-a-S, SaaS with two a’s business podcast dot com). On the website, the most important thing to do is to sign up to get your copy of the current, free download. This will also put you on the list for future free downloads and updates. For your convenience, there’s also a page on the website for each episode where you will find show notes for the episode. The show notes will contain links to resources mentioned in the episode. Just enter the base URL, a forward slash, and the three-digit episode number. If you enjoy this podcast and find the content to be valuable, please consider giving us a five-star rating on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Five-star ratings help the show stay visible so that new listeners can easily find us. [Intro – See top of page for text.] Welcome, Tim. Tim Sinclair: Hey, thank you, Ron. I appreciate the opportunity to be on the show. It really means a lot. Ron Gaver: Glad to have you on. Let’s start out with the problem you originally identified and how you came to the point of wanting to develop RingR. Tim Sinclair: I’ve spent 18 years in radio, hosting shows, working the production room, did literally thousands of interviews, and really got tired of that stereotypical, telephone-interview sound (sounds like you’re in a tin can or on the moon or whatever). And you know, even Skype—now that some have gone to using Skype and recording those calls for interviews—you still get that warble and drop out and internet artifacting stuff in the calls. And so, I had a friend who’s in the industry who’s one of the artists we played at the radio station I worked at, and I just sent him an e-mail and said, “Dave, answer these questions, record it into the voice memos app of your iPhone and then send me the file. I’ll see if that’s something I can use on the air, and he did it, and it sounded unbelievable. And so, I began to think, “What if we could actually have a phone conversation and his device would record him while we talked like that?” And then I went, “Well, if we can get the phone to do that, then we could get my phone to do the exact same thing, and we’ll just piece the two perfect-sounding audio files together on the other end and sound like we’re in the same room having a conversation rather than in different parts of the world.” And so, that little idea is really what turned into RingR and what led us to the products we have today. Ron Gaver: Originally, then, this started out with you manually piecing together a couple of files or streams from you and a guest and then trying to automate the process. Tim Sinclair: Yeah, correct. People have been doing this in the radio and podcasting world for quite some time. It’s called a double-ender. Basically, you record on each end and then somebody has to somehow send one file to the other person, so you can do it on reel-to-reel back in the day or put in into some sort of digital file, and do all that. And what we wanted to do was kind of two-fold: (1) automate the process, but (2) make it possible with mobile, because while most podcast hosts and radio hosts have a studio they use, most guests do not. They have to somehow jerry-rig some microphone/computer combination on Skype or whatever on their end, and find a place to record. So we thought if we can (1) automate the process and (2) make it mobile so that all you really have to do is really have a phone conversation, all you need is your smartphone or your tablet, and you can plug in your or just hold the phone up to your face like you normally would. That would be ideal, especially for the guest, because then they don’t have to create an account for anything. They don’t have to sign up on Skype, try to find a microphone, sit in a room that’s not echoey—you know all those things that you want for a good-sounding conversation. The phone does all that work for you. The mic is good. It’s a unidirectional mic. It blocks out background noise. Everybody knows proper mic technique when it comes to a phone call: hold it to your face. That’s it. Same thing with EarPods. They automatically keep that mic just a few inches from their mouth. We try to combine all of that into one product. Ron Gaver: The double-ender, for those who may not know, is where two parties at separate locations each record their end of a conversation and then someone later syncs the two recordings together. Tim Sinclair: Correct. Ron Gaver: And usually, there’s some sync signal; some sound. People will sometimes clap or snap their fingers. I’ve even heard of people singing “Happy Birthday” together to sync up. That’s a double-ender. You’ve basically perfected the double-ender electronically. Tim Sinclair: That’s been the goal, yeah for sure, … to allow you to record without really any equipment or any studios, and then put those two files together on the back-end and provide you with something that you can easily use or edit and get into a podcast or broadcast. Ron Gaver: You’ve envisioned this for podcasting and broadcasting. Do you have other applications in mind as well? Tim Sinclair: Those were our first two obvious choices for markets to go into, but we’ve talked with lawyers who need to do long-distance depositions even some doctors who need to do medical consultations. There are some job interview possibilities: if you want to save the job interview for transcription or you want to share with your boss or with your team, so they can be in on the interview you just did and hear more of what the person had to say who might be interviewing for a job. There’s all sorts of audio collection services that are trying to put together either stories of your life or to get audio for video. I mean there’s …. Seems like every day, we find a new potential use for what we’re doing, and it’s exciting to watch that market expand. Ron Gaver: Currently, the front-end recording device for RingR is either an iPhone or an Android phone. Tim Sinclair: Correct. Ron Gaver: And you’re moving into a browser-based RingR system? Tim Sinclair: Yeah, it won’t necessarily be browser-based, but it will be available on your desktop or laptop. We’re fooling around with a couple potential things right now. We’re hoping in three or four weeks to begin beta testing, and it would allow you to login to your RingR account and launch a call from there. And it will allow your guest to just follow a simple link in an e-mail on their computer and start the call from there. Ron Gaver: So, in that implementation, the guest just needs to follow a link to start the call. When guests use an iPhone or an Android, they also have to download the app. Tim Sinclair: Correct. They do not have to sign up. They do not have to create an account or give their e-mail address or any of that kind of stuff. They literally just have to have the app on their phone, and then they tap a code in the e-mail invitation that you send them and that automatically—much like a conference call would today—jumps them right into the call, and once you’re both there, you start recording. Ron Gaver: That’s what RingR is. We’ve talked a little bit about how you got the idea. Next phase: you’ve got an idea. How did you start to get the idea developed? What was your first step? Tim Sinclair: I knew, not being a technical guy, that I wasn’t the one to try to code anything or put this together. I really have no experience in that realm and figured that I had to find some people with some app development, and probably audio experience, in order to make this happen. And I talked with a number of people. It’s kind of an idea that was rolling around my head for a couple of years and I would mention it to a friend, or whoever, over time that I thought might know something, and they all thought, “Man, that sounds like a cool idea, but I don’t really know how to do it.” It got left at that. About 18 months ago, I was having lunch with another friend, and he had just started a company with a couple of his friends, and I knew it was app based. And I said, “What do you think of this?” And he goes, “We can do that.” I kind of looked up from my food and went, “Really?” He said, “The two guys I’m working with, Kris and Dan, have their PhDs in computer science with an audio and media focus. This would be like a dream-come-true kind of project for them.” And so, we started talking, and they got excited about it, and the rest is kind of history. They gave me the bill—what it would cost. That was the next major potential stumbling block for us, but we took it to a venture capital group locally who was very interested in the project, and they jumped on board pretty quickly, and we’ve been moving forward ever since. Ron Gaver: On your website, you show four team members, yourself, Chad, Kris, and Dan. You went to one of those guys with the idea. Was it Chad? Tim Sinclair: Yes, it was. Ron Gaver: And he’s the one who said, “We can do it”? Tim Sinclair: He is. I don’t think he regrets it. Ron Gaver: Good. And how long did it take to get from, “Gee, I’ve got this idea, and I think it’s really cool,” and you started talking it up, until you got it to Chad and he said, “Hey, yeah, we can do that”? Tim Sinclair: Well, it probably was rolling around in my head for two years, maybe three, of this should be doable, but I had enough other things on my plate, and it wasn’t anything I wanted to invest a whole lot of time or energy in, and so, it just would come up once every four or five months when I was talking to a friend who is in the tech space and that was about it. And it was sort of that time, again, when I met with Chad. It was May of 2014, and he said, “We can do that.” And by the next week, I had the quote from his company as to what it would cost to get going. So, I took that to this venture capital group. I made a phone call to them on Thursday, we met on Friday, they offered money on Monday, and by the end of that month we were incorporated, we were funded, and we were starting to develop the product. Ron Gaver: That doesn’t sound like the normal startup experience. Tim Sinclair: It is not—I have learned. I didn’t know any better. I was too dumb to realize it, but I have talked with many in this field, and no, it is very, very unusual. Ron Gaver: You were very fortunate to find Chad, and Chad was hooked up with a couple of stellar developers. You made a call to a venture capital group on a Thursday and had funding on the following Monday. Did you already know this venture capital group? Tim Sinclair: I didn’t. I hadn’t even thought about what it would cost to do this until I got the bill from them. So then … I called a guy who I’ve known for years. He’s kind of like a father figure (in terms of age, at least) and said, “You’re the best business guy I know. What do I do here?” And he said, “Well, I invest with in Champaign. You should at least give them a call. They almost always want a product and some proof that it works, but you can at least share your idea, and they can give you some help.” And I said, “Okay, I might as well do that.” So, that afternoon, [which] was Thursday, I called them, and they called back Thursday night, and we set up the meeting for the next day. They said, “Bring your business plan.” I didn’t have a business plan. I didn’t have a name. I had nothing, so I opened up Google Docs and made a bunch of stuff up. I mean, it was fairly accurate, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I made up the name RingR. And I walked in there as if I knew what I was doing, and Halfway through the meeting, the guy I was talking to said, “Rob, come in! You gotta hear this!” And so then, I’m talking with two of the partners of the firm, and on Monday morning, I got an e-mail from them offering basically some starting capital to get going, and I said, “Sure, why not?” I had no idea what I was getting into. And … like I said, we incorporated, we got things squared away with Chad and Kris and Dan, and started development pretty much right way. Ron Gaver: Did you even take Chad or Kris or Dan with you to that meeting, or was it just you solo? Tim Sinclair: No, it was just me. Chad is local, but the other two guys don’t live in the same state. In fact, one of them doesn’t even live in the same country. Kris is our CTO; he’s based out of the UK. And Dan is in Virginia, and then Chad and I are in Illinois. I went to the meeting solo. Again, I had no idea what I was doing, but whatever it was worked and at least 18 months later we’re still here. Ron Gaver: That’s a great story. Tim Sinclair: Yeah, it’s (again) unusual and you know any entrepreneur that I [tell] I called Thursday, met Friday, had money on Monday, pretty much chokes and then wants to kill me because that’s just not how it goes, but for whatever reason, it was orchestrated that way, and we were in the right place at the right time. These guys felt confident in my ability to sell the product [and] my industry knowledge, and the idea was innovative enough and new enough with very little, if any, competition in the space that they decided to take a chance. Ron Gaver: So, you had an idea. For about two years it’s rolling around in your head. Was it one of those ideas you just couldn’t let go of? Was it one where you’re driving down the road thinking about it day-in and day-out and just couldn’t let it go, or was it just something that surfaced every now and then? Tim Sinclair: No, it was one of those things that would come back quite often to me, and I’m kind of entrepreneurial, in that I always feel I’ve got a good idea rolling around in there somewhere, but either I try and it doesn’t work or I just forget about it. This was one of those things where I’m like, “This has got to work, there’s no reason that this could not happen.” And I think it would be big. I could see lots of different potential applications for it, so I couldn’t shake it, but I didn’t know what to do with it either, and finally, I sat down to lunch with the right person who at least started the dominoes, and we’ve been moving forward since that point. Ron Gaver: So, you had an idea then you just came into this great development team—a UX guy and two Ph.D. developers who just happen to specialize in audio and digital media. They’ve got a company, give you the bill, or at least give you the price tag, and then you go and get the money. You’ve got money. What happens next? Tim Sinclair: Well, that was sort of the honeymoon period. I was still working in radio. I had a full-time job, and I was...
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/4472063
info_outline
014: The Mind of a Disruptor with Jay Samit
05/31/2016
014: The Mind of a Disruptor with Jay Samit
Jay Samit is a serial disruptor, a change agent, an innovator, an educator, and the author of the international best-seller . For over three decades, he has been at the forefront of global trends. He has pioneered breakthrough advancements in mobile video, Internet advertising, e-commerce, social networks, eBooks, and digital music used by billions of consumers every day. Combining innovation with commercial success, Jay is a dealmaker. He has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for startups. His list of partners and associates includes Apple, Bill Gates, Coca-Cola, Facebook, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Paul Allen, Reid Hoffman, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, United Airlines, the Vatican, Verizon, and the White House. He has held senior management roles at Sony, Universal Studios, and SeaChange International, a leading global multiscreen-video-software company. Jay is a trend spotter. His predictions of the future tend to be accurate because he is constantly working with those creating it. Please see Disclosure* (below) concerning affiliate links on this page. Key Segments Click any timestamp to start listening at the noted location. “I got into this field and was amazed when you wake up one day, and dozens of your friends have become billionaires, and it’s not like anybody went to special schools or had special this or that, but 70% of the world’s richest billionaires were all self-made. They have the same 24 hours in a day that you and I do, so there must be something different that they’re doing with their time. What is it? How can I learn to do that? How can I emulate it, and how can I do it no matter what continent, what country, what city, [or] what education I have? Most of these people didn’t go to top universities. Many didn’t even go to college. Sir Richard Branson, [who] started 12 companies now that have market caps over a billion dollars, didn’t even go to school. What is he doing [that’s] different? Can I do that? That’s what Disrupt You!, disrupting yourself, is all about.” Jay’s book is split into three parts: (1) self-disruption, the internal process of disrupting your personal value chain; (2) business-disruption, the process of disrupting the value chain of a business or industry; and (3) world-disruption, the process of using the principles of disruption to solve big, non-business, world problems (like climate change, education, and healthcare). Jay says Disrupt You! is a new paradigm with predictive and repeatable methodologies for breaking the patterns that limit personal success and growth that anyone can use to become a disruptor. Jay says that the need to disrupt starts out in our childhood. Parents, teachers, and others who mean well constantly reinforce and tell us what we can’t do, what we won’t be, and what we’re not good at. We grow up and begin to believe that we have a certain type of personality, that we’re not good at math or public speaking. “We put blinders on and then society gives us shackles. In fact, you are completely malleable, and once you realize you can change your preconceived limitations, it then makes it easier to look at the world as having the same flexibility, the same porousness, the same [potential] for you to disrupt. And so when you look at the self-made billionaire in their 20’s, that’s what they’re doing, and they have the advantage that they don’t have the preconceived ways of doing things that we have developed into habits.” Changing yourself into a disruptor is a matter of introspection. Jay likes to say, “It’s akin to major surgery, but you’re holding the scalpel.” Becoming a disruptor is a state of mind; it’s about becoming a silver-lining person. When you have problems, instead of saying “woe is me,” ask yourself if others have them too. Maybe the problem has scale. Maybe if you solve the problem, you could solve it for millions of people. Your phone now connects you to 6 billion consumers. If you’re right for just a nanosecond, you could become a billionaire. “Once you get into [the mindset of a disruptor], you realize that our world has changed so dramatically, that we have access to tools that weren’t around 2, 5, [or] 10 years ago, [and] that you may be the first person to apply these tools, that somebody else invented, to solve a problem.” Jay uses a popular traffic app, Waze, which sold for a billion dollars with no revenue, as an example of the size of the market potential that technology allows us to reach with our ideas. You don’t have to be in the technology business to use social, mobile, and broadband to scale up. How did Jay begin to understand the concept of disruption? Jay discusses a friend who found great success manufacturing and selling PC accessories like dust covers when PCs were new. Without ever learning how to use a computer, this friend sold his company for 135 million dollars. Jay asked himself what his friend had seen that he was missing. His friend had seen a simple opportunity. A similar thing happened when the iPhone came out. People ran out to buy the phone and then bought a $15 case to go with it. It’s about looking for the holes in the market. The value-chain concept comes into play because so many people look at the totality of a business, but most parts of a business don’t generate a profit. Focus on capturing value and find the link you can disrupt. Jay gives four examples of businesses that have disrupted their markets: (1) Airbnb, the world’s largest hotel chain, has no hotels; (2) Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no cars; (3) Facebook, the world’s largest media company, creates no content; and (4) Alibaba, the world’s largest retailer, has no inventory. All of these businesses were basically just a big data play. Take the essence of eBay, or any other two-sided marketplace, and realize that you can do this in any category and retain the value. There’s a new way to look at a business that involves focusing on the part where you can capture the most value and not bothering with all the other parts. In the book, Jay states that a business or product consists of the sum of the value of five links in the value chain: (1) R&D; (2) design, (3) production; (4) marketing and sales; and (5) distribution. People think that they have to reinvent the entire thing or that billion-dollar ideas come from having an epiphany, but it is really about isolating the one piece of a business you can disrupt and creating a better value chain. Jay says that the number one business for failing is restaurants. People think that if they have a good recipe, they could open a good restaurant, but recipe is probably the least important factor in a restaurant’s success. Somebody took a look at restaurant value chain and figured out that if you have too many items on the menu and people don’t order all of them in sufficient quantity, wasted food becomes lost profit. Jay gives a detailed example of Benihana, a nationally recognized name in the restaurant industry, that has built its success on a limited menu to reduce food waste and using shared seating arrangements to fill tables. In the process of looking at the value chain, you look at the value chain as a whole, drill down to take a closer look at individual links in the chain, and find the one link that can be disrupted. Jay asks what has changed in the way people do things that you couldn’t do before? He encourages us to apply modern tools to habits and problems nobody has developed a solution for yet. Jay challenges people to write down three problems a day for a month as an exercise. He gives an example that someone found through this exercise of monitoring prescription drug compliance with a timer integrated into the cap of the container. If you disrupt a technology or product, you either create an entirely new market, consumer base, or user, or you destroy or displace the market for the technology it replaced. Jay uses a fun example from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones shoots a sword-wielding opponent to illustrate the technological shift from knives to swords to guns. An example of a modern technological shift is the smartphone’s replacement of a wide variety of devices and tools. Jay asks, “What does that new world of people living with this device open up that you couldn’t do before? … When we talk about wearables or the internet-of-things, what are the next things that you can now do that solve problems that we didn’t have a way to solve? … This isn’t just for techies. We all use technology.” Jay takes a glass-half-empty look at some technologies that are expected to displace workers in the years to come. According to Jay, “Disruption isn’t about what happens to you; it’s about how you respond to what happens to you. So, if you know all those things are happening, where [are] the opportunities? What are all the new things that you can do that put you surfing the wave of change as opposed to drowning under the tidal wave?” Jay discusses an innovative and humanitarian application of 3D printing. An entrepreneur is using 3D printers to manufacture prosthetics for growing children. He can provide affordable prosthetics to young children who formerly would not have received one until their growth had slowed because of the cost to custom manufacture the device. To make this even better for the children, he went to Disney and licensed characters so that children can have a cool, character-themed prosthetic. This entrepreneur didn’t invent the technology, but he found a link in the value chain that he could disrupt, serves an underserved audience that will line up to buy his product, and makes the world a better place. Jay discusses slaughter-free meat and plastic in over-fished oceans as opportunities. Jay is dedicating the last third of his life to teaching people how to do this because he believes that our society is fundamentally changing. There are 2.3 billion millennials in one generation, more people than were on the planet in their grandparents’ generation. There won’t be enough corporate jobs for all of them. The educational system designed to produce factory workers will not give people the skills they need in a world that doesn’t need as many factories. This situation brings about the disenfranchisement of people, which leads to instability, can bring down governments, and changes our society. Jay suggests that we show all these people how they can be a couple of clicks away from knowledge, prosperity, great new markets, and equal access to consumers because most goods are digitally available globally. Jay’s concept of becoming a disruptor and looking at your personal value chain involves seeing yourself as The Brand of One, the individual as a product. Why would somebody not buy you-the-product and how do you improve it? Jay’s concept of disrupting your personal value chain has four links: (1) R&D is perceiving your environment; (2) production is your actions and responses; (3) marketing and sales is how you present yourself to the world; and (4) distribution is how you spend your time and focus your energies. You start by understanding your personal value chain then present yourself to the world in a different way to rebrand yourself. Jay talks about getting out of college during a jobless recession. He wanted to work in Hollywood creating special effects, but he couldn’t find a job. For $1, he printed 100 business cards for a non-existent computer graphics company (for which he did not even make himself the boss). With some hustle, he got hundreds of thousands of dollars of post-production work and then hired people with talent and skills who wanted jobs. “Where do 3D printing experts come from? Virtual reality experts? Bitcoin experts? Internet of things experts?” They started like Jay did when he had $1’s-worth of business cards. Jay says, “They’re self-proclaimed experts who then work hard to grow and defend the turf they wisely stake out. There’s nothing stopping anybody from being the expert of the next big thing.” According to Jay, “You’ve gotta be a little creative to rise above the noise in anything. If you’re looking for a way to blaze a new trail without creativity, wrong! No one ever led a nation or a company by following in the footsteps of somebody else. … There’s so much opportunity. Ideas are easy. Execution takes work. Success isn’t guaranteed, but if you work at it, you will find out what it takes to be successful, and you will be successful.” In the book, to get yourself into the mindset of figuring out where you’re going and what you want to do, Jay gives four different segments to develop steps for a disruptor’s map: aspirations, priorities, resources, and deadlines. Jay states, “If you don’t know where you want to be in five years, congratulations, you’ll definitely not be there. If you don’t know how to get to there, that’s OK. Work backwards from a goal but give it a deadline. … So, you work backwards … and you don’t need to know all the steps ’cause here’s what’s gonna happen: once you have that insight, you only need insight and drive to succeed. Those are the only two things [you need] in life. Everything else can be hired. Once you have that insight, you’re gonna start exploring down that path. You’re gonna’ start talking to potential customers. You’re gonna do all these iterations of your business in your head when you’re not burning capital, when it doesn’t cost any money, and everybody is trying to kill your idea until you come up with that zombie idea that can’t be killed. And when you’re doing that, you’re going to uncover things that nobody else [has] discovered yet because nobody’s gone that far down the path. And at that point in the path, you may pivot in a direction that you didn’t even see.” Jay gives an example of three guys who started an online video dating service named Tune-in Hook-up. Nobody wanted to use the dating service, but they looked at their data and noticed that a lot of people were watching the videos. They pivoted into YouTube and became billionaires. Most successful businesses have pivoted. LinkedIn started as a resume repository. eBay started as a place for collectors to find old, used things. Jay says, “You’ll find [your pivot] if you’re looking at your data and you’re paying attention.” Jay discusses his concept of the zombie idea: “Everybody always tells you, ‘Nurture your idea. Fondle it. Help it to grow.’ That’s [wrong]. You wanna figure out every way that idea’s gonna fail because … the second you go in the marketplace, that’s what your competition and reality [are] going to do to it. [F]ind … ten people who will benefit from this business and will spend time with you (not friends or family). … [H]ave them tell you [what’s wrong with it] … [and have them] come back again and again until they come back and say, ‘Oh, I would pay for that. That makes sense. Wow, that’s useful!’ Then go with that data [and get funding]. … There is no shortage of capital. VCs last year put $40 billion into the hands of startups. Crowdfunding is now greater than that.” Jay believes that there is only one advantage the United States has on the rest of the world, and that is that we do not have a fear of failure. He uses the example of two guys who started a company to synchronize traffic lights. The idea was way ahead of its time and bombed. But they didn’t give up when their first company failed. The next company Bill Gates and Paul Allen started was Microsoft. Jay discusses the difference between failing and failure: “Failing is trying something that you learn doesn’t work; failure is throwing in the towel.” Jay suggests that you could talk to people involved in the early stages of any now large and very successful company and have them tell you a story about a board meeting when they were thinking about pulling the plug before they pivoted or made some other change. Google was once on the table for Excite to buy for $600,000, but the deal fell through. Jay goes on to say, “We call private companies that have market caps over a billion dollars unicorns. There are now over 200 unicorns. The size of our market now that we’re all interconnected is massive. You can scale from zero to a billion very, very quickly, and it doesn’t take anything special except really looking at the market from a disruptor’s mindset.” To help listeners, Jay offers a free copy of his toDisrupt You! at jaysamit.com or by reaching out to him on Twitter @jaysamit. To find ideas, start with simple problems and start looking to see who else might have that problem. Jay emphasizes, “The more people you solve [a problem] for, the more money you can make.” Concerning the ability to get started, Jay says: “Now, there’s no excuse. You can get the learning for free. You can reach your market for free. You have social media. The cost of launching a startup is 95% cheaper than it was ten years ago because all the networked architecture is in place. All you have to do is be the catalyst for what the change is, and Disrupt You! tries to spark you.” Concerning our ultimate motivations, Jay says, “The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose. … If you’re not fulfilled by what you’re doing, and you’re staying in a job you don’t like, how long are you gonna stay? A year? Two years? Five years? Are you gonna trade your whole life, and why would you give up the only life you have for something you don’t want? … You can be what you want. You can be successful in the field that you choose to be. The only thing stopping most people is fear.” In the book, Jay refers to “the illusion of security.” Many people are fooled into thinking they have security because they have a good job. Jay cites that of the original Fortune 500 companies, only 57 are left on the list. Jay states that this “illusion of security” robs us of ambition and autonomy. Jay briefly discusses positive thinking stating: “Scores of scientific studies have proven that visualizing success makes all things possible. … When you are in a positive state of mind, it releases dopamine. It lights up the neurotransmitters across your synaptic nerves like a Christmas tree, and suddenly … you are more creative, you increase your intelligence, you increase your energy, and you even close more sales. Success doesn’t make you happy. Being happy creates success.” : See chapters 9 through 13 of Disrupt You! for additional information and examples about disrupting each link of the value chain. Jay discusses the concept of using other people’s money (OPM): “What if I told you that I could get you millions of dollars from people who don’t want you to pay it back, aren’t gonna charge you any interest, and don’t want equity in your company? You should be leaning into that speaker right now and listening. Here’s how it works. You’re going after a specific audience. Solve for that audience and [ask yourself], ‘Who else wants that audience?'” Jay gives an example of getting $60 million from McDonalds to help him launch Sony Connect (a digital music store to compete with iTunes). Through a large campaign, McDonalds had an increase in same store sales and Sony Connect got 20 million new customers; everybody was happy. “Solve for others and you’ll solve for you.” Jay gives the following recommendations for things that have had a profound influence on him: (1) “Have kids. It’s a great motivation. You don’t wanna let ’em down. You won’t give up. I think fear either immobilizes you or pushes you to challenge your perceived limits.” (2) “Find a mentor. I really think you can find people...
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/4404116
info_outline
013: Service More Than Software with Blair Williams
04/04/2016
013: Service More Than Software with Blair Williams
Blair Williams is a software engineer and entrepreneur. He is the owner and lead programmer for Caseproof.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/4268325
info_outline
012: Bad Employee, Good Entrepreneur with Tom Tancredi
03/07/2016
012: Bad Employee, Good Entrepreneur with Tom Tancredi
In 2009 Tom Tancredi and his twin brother, Dominic, founded Dom and Tom, a digital development shop. To date, they’ve launched over 250 projects across multiple platforms including Web, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Google Glass, Oculus, iBeacon, and Android Wear. Their customers include GE, Hearst Publications, Tyson Foods, Esquire Magazine, Priceline, Bloomberg, Cliff’s Notes, and the Emmys. In 2015, they made the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in America for the second year in a row. Before starting Dom and Tom, Tom worked as a film projectionist, gymnastics coach, preschool teacher, bartender, collections agent, client relations for a law firm, and an executive assistant, all within five years. He says that he was a horrible employee jumping from one job to the next in less than a year, but believes this experience ultimately made him a better boss.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/4181661
info_outline
011: Entrepreneurs and Money: Steps and Missteps with Dan Franks
11/30/2015
011: Entrepreneurs and Money: Steps and Missteps with Dan Franks
Dan Franks calls himself a lifetime serial entrepreneur (not necessarily out of the womb). He started building websites for clients while in middle school, he started two podcasts, and together with three partners, he launched Podcast Movement, the largest conference in the world specifically for podcasting, and from there they branched out into single-day regional events, and even a six-day cruise dedicated to podcasting.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3965284
info_outline
010: Do Less and Live More with Ari Meisel
11/16/2015
010: Do Less and Live More with Ari Meisel
For years, Ari Meisel worked eighteen-hour days in the construction industry, but in 2006, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory disease of the digestive tract aggravated by stress and considered incurable. He was forced to find ways to get things done in less time because there were some days when he could only manage to work for an hour. He needed to simplify his life and somehow continue to be productive. Necessity drove Ari to optimize, automate, and outsource much of his life, and in the process, the system he calls Less Doing was born.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3951918
info_outline
009: Keep Your SaaS Out of Legal Trouble with David Lizerbram
11/09/2015
009: Keep Your SaaS Out of Legal Trouble with David Lizerbram
David Lizerbram is an attorney in San Diego, California. He founded his law firm in 2005 to provide legal services to entrepreneurs locally and nationwide. He has provided legal guidance on multimillion-dollar funding rounds, negotiated strategic partnerships, managed international intellectual property portfolios, and advised many innovative startups.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3928550
info_outline
008: How to Earn Your Customer's Attention with Tom Schwab
11/02/2015
008: How to Earn Your Customer's Attention with Tom Schwab
Tom Schwab began his professional life as a U.S. Navy officer running a nuclear power plant on an aircraft carrier. As his family grew, he decided to separate from the Navy and went into industry. He later started his own business selling alternatives to crutches, and along the way, cultivated his skills in marketing.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3906332
info_outline
007: "Dude, You Could Sell This Stuff" with Joey Kissimmee
10/26/2015
007: "Dude, You Could Sell This Stuff" with Joey Kissimmee
Joey Kissimmee says that he’s not techy, but he has created iPhone apps, SaaS products, WordPress themes, and is now working on WordPress plugins.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3884741
info_outline
006: Calling Cards Nobody Throws Away with Emily Chase Smith
10/18/2015
006: Calling Cards Nobody Throws Away with Emily Chase Smith
Emily Chase Smith was a practicing attorney before leaving the law for a literary calling. Now, she helps entrepreneurs get their stories on paper by either ghostwriting their books or coaching them through the writing process. She explains why SaaS entrepreneurs should consider writing a book and why a book is your best calling card. She describes the differences between traditional publishing, self-publishing, and hybrid publishing. She talks about how she helps her clients get their books finished.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3869915
info_outline
005: How to Turn a Desire into a SaaS Solution with Corstiaan Hesselink
10/11/2015
005: How to Turn a Desire into a SaaS Solution with Corstiaan Hesselink
Corstiaan Hesselink is the creator of the Reflect app, an extension for Evernote. Reflects provides a convenient way for you to reflect on (remember, review, and rethink) all that you have saved in Evernote. Reflect was born because Corstiaan, an avid Kindle reader, wanted a tool to help him review the tagged high-lights he had saved in Evernote while reading Kindle books. Unable to find such a tool, he built one and then put it up on Beta List. When Reflect started to attract interest, he knew he was on to something. Corstiaan does a deep dive into the technology of the stack that is Reflect, talks about his plans to monetize Reflect, and discusses how a small app can become a big project.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3854204
info_outline
004: How to Create Killer SaaS Products with Neil Patel
10/04/2015
004: How to Create Killer SaaS Products with Neil Patel
What makes a killer SaaS product? How do you get customers and keep them?
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3836679
info_outline
003: People are the Key to Developing Successful Products with Daniel J. Lewis
09/28/2015
003: People are the Key to Developing Successful Products with Daniel J. Lewis
Daniel J. Lewis discusses his SaaS product My Podcast Reviews stressing the importance of talking to people before developing your product.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3779196
info_outline
002: Dane Maxwell on SaaS and the Five Levels of Consciousness
09/21/2015
002: Dane Maxwell on SaaS and the Five Levels of Consciousness
Dane Maxwell discusses how to create SaaS products, why he created The Foundation, the importance of being present in whatever you do, and the power of perseverance.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3779172
info_outline
001: Sujan Patel on Building Business Relationships, SEO, and 100 Days of Growth
09/21/2015
001: Sujan Patel on Building Business Relationships, SEO, and 100 Days of Growth
Sujan Patel shares excellent marketing and growth tips for SaaS business owners based on his ten years of Internet marketing experience.
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3779150
info_outline
000: SaaS Business Podcast, Episode 0 – The Meta-Episode
08/26/2015
000: SaaS Business Podcast, Episode 0 – The Meta-Episode
Introduction:
/episode/index/show/rongaver/id/3760875