Episodes
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In this riveting episode, Palash Soni, CEO of Gold Cast, shares his bold journey from an HBS dropout to tech startup success. His company, revolutionizing B2B marketing with AI video campaigns, thrived amid Covid uncertainty, defied odds with rapid growth, and now raises questions about the future of SaaS innovation. Tune in to dive into his riveting tales, fundraising adventures, and insights on crafting a venture that stands out in the saturated software market.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
Palash details Gold Cast's emergence in 2020.Harvard dropout bets big on AI video SaaS.Growth hack: Calendar invites boost attendance.Goldcast's branding edge over competitors.Second product's success signifies an inflection.Founders grapple with a saturated SaaS future.Resources:
GoldcastCurotecConnect with Palash Soni:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
10:22 - We didn't have Visas to work with and it was, you know, 2020 May Republican government. So we had to get through visas and we also were kind of perceived as late to market even though the market was created two months back. But just because so many people had raised so much money, all of a sudden we were under a lot of scrutiny, like a lot of questions around why this company should exist. So, the other angle was that we had the stick-in-neck problem of we needed money or VCV money to get a visa. The only way we could get a visa is this visa called an O-1 visa. Some people like advertise it as Einstein Visa, which it is not called by the US government, but it's essentially for entrepreneurs or PhDs or people who are doing outstanding work in their fields.13:07 - The equation for me and for everyone has flipped in the last two years to saying, okay, what, like, VC money is not a given and it should only be raised when there is a venture scale opportunity to go after. And we are still figuring that out. We have a very strong thesis around having an end-to-end video platform that can change the game for marketers and enterprises, but it's still early, like it's a decently complicated product piece that we are building. So we have early proof points that we can raise another round and justify that valuation. But yeah, we need proof stuff out before we race. So the short answer is we will, we are on that path, but it's not the only path we can take.27:01 - So we actually preach the opposite, Brian, that you should not just have MQLs as the end goal of webinars. So what we say and what we do also in our own motion is that webinars are part of like a bigger content motion, right? So the, the most results from webinars is obtained when you do it, and then you let the content live in many other places and operationalize that content in ways where it can generate value. 24:00 - I do think that the chasm is starting to be crossed with AI B2B, AI products. I think, you know, businesses are starting to move from, you know, starting to move from early adopters to like early majority with AI products. So it might be, if my, you know, assumption there is correct, it might be a good time in the next couple of years to really sell it. 42:04 - Same thing is with software, right? It's all the obvious opportunities have been picked off in the last 10 years. Even the most non-obvious have been picked off. So as a result, I think two things are happening, which at least I see anecdotally and then probably data will verify it, is that it is also, it has become a lot more, it's a, it's become a lot harder for younger founders to succeed in SaaS because you genuinely need a lot of depth and, and tribal knowledge of having worked in an enterprise or having been super deep in some, some area to actually come up with an insight that can lead to a venture scale product. So that's one. And in general, I think that realization dawned on a little late on everyone including founders and venture community that this is not the 1960s, this is like the 1990s of cars, but the underwriting of everything in the Zera era was being done as if it's 1960s. So that led to all of this over-digestion of capital. I do think with AI there is a new pool of opportunities that is coming in. -
Dive into the dynamic world where corporate meets creativity with Amer, a serial entrepreneur with five startups and a vision for shaking up traditional business models. Explore the high-stakes thrills of entrepreneurship and discover how AI is revolutionizing video production—all in this invigorating chat loaded with lessons and laughter.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
The tough transition from corporate to founderBuilding five companies with two successful exitsPioneering short-form video contentIntroducing AI to modern video productionThe balance of tech and human touch in businessResources:
LucihubCurotecConnect with Amer Tadayon:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
03:26 - Well, I think that you do one of two things. Either you realize you just can't do it and you move on and you go back into, you know, corporate America or you say, okay, let me see if I can do this again and not relive the same lessons. And that's the hard part, I think, is to remember the mistakes you made and not apply them a second or a third or a fourth time for me. I had to learn the same mistake a few times and then finally, finally not apply it. 16:38 - I think that's a really, I think that's the future of a lot of these SaaS companies because everyone's, you know, all the product categories that can be fully automated I think have already been done. It's hard to do things new that, you know, haven't been done before. And, you know, kind of taking human component, integrating humans into your product experience, but delivering it at a SaaS product, I've seen a lot of businesses do some really cool things.15:46 - It's human. It's human editors. Now we leverage a ton of AI tools to accelerate it, but at the end of the day, you know, I always say, you know, design and what we do is subjective, and subjective is always gonna need a human touch. So, you know, there's a lot of hype around AI replacing editors and filmmakers and all of this stuff. And, you know, I think it's gonna accelerate things, but I just don't think, our who we are as people is, you know, you're not gonna let technology tell you what looks great. 27:40 - I don't think you can stop innovation and the progress. I think you're gonna have to figure out how to work with it, right? And that's what we're trying to do. We're saying, Hey, how do we do this? And, you know, we're not eliminating people by any means. We're actually just accelerating the work and being able to do more with less. And I think what's cool about being a startup in this day and age is AI is woven into the fabric and into the DNA of this business, right? We started AI at our core. And so, you know, we embrace all of this. 37:05 - I I think they're either gonna have to find a way to leverage technology to be more efficient, or they're just not gonna get business anymore. I mean, it's the reality of it you know when I had my production company, what is it, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was harder to do this. So you could justify charging a lot more for it. But the tech is really democratizing a lot of this, right?And so we talked to an agency last week in LA who said, our client will is willing to pay us one 10th of what they used to pay us two years ago to do this, these videos. And we stopped doing them because it just didn't make sense. -
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Join us as we unravel the inspiring bootstrapping saga of Sana Kumar, Founder and CEO of Kovai.co. With a gripping tale of growth from niche product programming to leading three booming SaaS products, Sana shares wisdom on entrepreneurship, the challenges of multi-product focus, and leveraging AI for innovation. Tune in for a hearty blend of tech talk and founder foresight!
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
Bootstrapped a niche SaaS to 300 peopleCreated LinkedIn content as a CEODiscovered a gap in Document 360Killed a product after 4-year runEmphasized scaling current productsResources:
KovaiCurotecConnect with Saravana Kumar:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
03:51 - The problems typically what large companies face at some point, they all need to talk to each other. You might need a customer data from your SAP system into your Salesforce. And from Salesforce, some data need to go into your workday and all these things. So that is where the specialty of this Microsoft product, sits in the middle, it connects everything together and helps you to build that kind of integrated systems.20:49 - There's kinda like two ways you can think about a SaaS product, either verticalized or horizontal and like a Calendly or you know, like a Document 360 or you know, a QuickBooks. Those are like horizontal SaaS products. And you know, I think once you kind of feel like, I think horizontal focus, like just purely horizontal focus worked, a decade or two decades ago better than it does now. And I think in order to go to market, well with a horizontal product, you kind of have to like put it into verticals. So you have to say, you know, even if the product itself is horizontal, you still have to like market and sell it as, you know, healthcare focus or tech focus or maybe construction or whatever the vertical is. And then if you've got a verticalized product, like a product that's initially designed for one industry, then I think the expansion opportunities you have to like figure out what other sort of similar industries you can move it to.11:24 - So they're talking about Lotus Notes and they're comparing Lotus to Microsoft and they're saying, you know, Lotus, Lotus's advantage in the market is that they're creating, they're the first groupware products that is, you know, serving the enterprise use case. And they're like, this is probably gonna give Lotus Notes a competitive advantage over Microsoft for years to come.31:51 - So let's talk about bootstrapping. I think it's super awesome. Like anytime I hear about, you know, SaaS companies that have achieved scale and especially bootstrapping it, you know, it's, it's certainly very hard to build a SaaS company because there's a ton of upfront RND and then when you do start getting customers, typically it's like small chunks of money on a monthly basis. It's not like you're selling a big consulting contract where you have a huge down payment. So you know, it takes a while to kind of get the steam engine going to be profitable. So like why, why did you bootstrap, why didn't you raise capital and, you know, how did you fund the company? Like how did all that get going?36:48 - And nowadays you just spin up like, you know, you just install Node JS or Laravel or Ruby on Rails and you've got like a full application scaffolding to like, you can write, write an app in like, a couple weeks if you're really good and fast and you know, simple app and so like technology's no longer remote. I think the moat nowadays, unless you have like some super difficult to get data that's core to your application, you know, the technology itself is not the mote, but the mote is distribution of the technology, the ability to acquire, acquire customers -
Dive into the fascinating world of HoldCos with Brent Beshore, the mastermind behind a 15-company empire. From untangling the definition of a HoldCo to exploring the gritty details of CEO transitions, this episode uncovers the delicate art of building a lasting business conglomerate. Join us for an insightful blend of strategy revelations and Brent's personal entrepreneurial journey that's anything but linear. Don't miss this masterclass on nurturing small giants!
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
What exactly is a HoldCo?HoldCo vs. Private Equity specifics.Unpacking the 'adolescent phase' of a business.The challenges of centralizing business operations.Insightful strategies for hiring CEOs.Adapting to unexpected business conditions.Balancing cash flow and reinvestment decisions.Resources:
Permanent EquityCurotecConnect with Brent Beshore:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
02:14 - The nature of what a HoldCo is, you know, by nature it's usually there's no terminal end date to a HoldCo versus a private equity fund usually as a 10 year lifespan. So we're kind of in the blend of between you know, we've got a 30 year initial term. We can also renew, we can go longer than 30 years if we want to. So we have a lot of the functionality of a HoldCo, but technically each fund is its own private equity fund. I mean, private equity broadly just means you buy equity and private company. So technically a HoldCo is also a private equity firm in the sense that it buys equity in private companies.36:39 - Brian: They're not ever fully responsible for their own failures or successes. But, you know, especially failures, specially failures, which is what you want. You want people to own their success and their failures and be responsible for their success and failures. And it's, you know, it makes sense that the way that works in a single company applies when you have a portfolio of companies. So it kind of, I had to hear it from you to fully soak in the why part, but it, it makes total sense at that point.
Brent: Well, here's another one that's kind of like this, that's an insight that's hard earned. And when I say it initially, you're gonna say, wait, what? Because I would've said the same thing, which is, small businesses don't have access to good talent. And you're like, no, wait a minute, is that making fun of or is that poking fun at at small businesses?28:59 - We should see clear opportunities and we should be able to clearly see the lids on that business that's been holding it back. And then we're really honest with people, Hey, these are the things we wanna do after close, this is what we want to help you guys with. This is how we wanna be operationally involved so that we all win together. And they're like, great, we don't know anything about that stuff. So help us. We need help. 25:19 - So John Malone, the cable industry was his thing. He didn't care about anything else. He wanted to be in the media, cable business, and he was gonna go as deep as possible as he could do it. And he built an incredible business based on that. He used a tremendous amount of debt. He was able to finance a lot of it through pre-tax dollars. It was brilliant, right? I mean, he actually created the term EBITDA, right? So the term EBITDA we used, like John Malone actually created that so that he could get banks to understand how to finance his operations. That's how smart he was.50:35 - We don't always hit home runs. We're hitting a lot of foul balls and we're hitting a lot of ground and rule singles, you know, I mean, so it's not like this is not an exact science and we don't have it all figured out. So just as you know, take everything with a grain of salt. We've done this for a long time. We've worked with a lot of CEOs and I would say we keep getting humbled over and over and over again. And I think this is just, look, the thistles and thorns of operating business -
Dive into this exhilarating episode as Ignite!’s CEO Jessica Sliwerski returns to unpack an extraordinary year of 5X growth, pivotal Series B funding, and a seismic impact on student reading. Discover how Ignite! Reading is changing the game for kids nationwide. It's a heartfelt saga of innovation, human-centric tech, and a mission to mold the future of education.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
5X company growth in just a year.Over 16,000 students served nationally.Raised a game-changing Series B.Honestly human-driven teaching success.Rigorous tutor certification process.Resources:
Ignite! ReadingCurotecE33: Solving the Reading Crisis in America with Ignite! Reading’s Jessica SliwerskiConnect with Jessica Sliwerski:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
11:22 - It's not because anyone is evil, it's because the system isn't designed in a way that is going to make “the main thing” the main thing. And so nobody's really, it's like if no one's accountable and it's not the thing that every single person is obsessing about, then yeah, this is gonna keep happening. So that's one part of the problem historically.25:48 - So I often feel like I'm such an imposter because I run a tech company and I can't even, you know, figure out how to make Netflix work on my television in my living room. And so the answer to your question is that in terms of the experience for the customer, it is a deeply human experience because it's tutors that are, you know, video conferencing through our secure platform meeting one-on-one with kids and doing direct instruction that is synchronous, there is no app per se. And what we figured out how to do adding ignite reading that is unique in our space is how to scale something that is so human intensive. And typically in EdTech, what you have are a lot of software products and it's pretty easy to scale a software product, but the problem is that you can't get the quality of outcomes because the act of learning to read is hard.26:59 - Humans don't like to do hard things. And so when you put an asynchronous app in front of a little kid in a classroom and you say, do this for 15 to 20 minutes a day and that's how you're gonna get extra support to learn how to read, that's not gonna work. It's gonna work for a very small percentage of kids who are hyper compliant and for whom learning to read is not hard. So they're just gonna do the app, but for the vast majority of kids, it's going to look like a head on a desk and them just pressing buttons and not otherwise engaged. And so what we've had to figure out is how to scale something that is so heavily reliant on humans and what our flywheel is for the recruitment, the development, the ongoing performance management and the quality control of this tutor force that as of today is, you know, about 1300 part-time employees.28:04 - It's like a classic like entrepreneur problem where you know, you have this idea, I wanna help all these kids learn to read and I wanna teach non-educators to be tutors and they're gonna meet virtually and it's gonna be amazing. And then you start building it and you're like, oh sh*t, these are people, there's a whole HR side to this that is no small thing that we have to figure out. And we now need to back into all of these pieces around how do you recruit and not just recruit but recruit a diverse tutor force because we want kids to be able to see people who look like them or, you know, affirm their identities and cultures or speak their home language. 58:30 - I've always been someone in like building companies that's, you know, been one of the first employees and I thought it was cool when we got to 30 people and I thought it was cool when we got to 60 people and now we're at a hundred people and it's still only just the beginning and it's kind of wild to think about where we could be this time next year. And there's this part of me that is like, can I do this? You know, like imposter syndrome is particularly with my inner voice, I mean, it is just, it, it's real and I've learned to embrace it. 59:28 - But to be a good CEO more than just vision, you also have to surround yourself with a good team. So you've got this amazing vetting process for your tutors. It sounds like you probably bet for people who share your vision and your passion for the mission as well for your internal employees. And you've already, you know, we were talking about the metrics on the tutor pipeline and you're like actually I have a person that handles that and I don't really know. And that's actually a good thing for a CEO in my opinion. I think the better you are at delegating and letting go of certain details or certain details that if it's related to vision and strategy, the CEO in my opinion should continue to own. But I think, you know, when you get into the minutia, the better you are at letting go and delegating to competent people that you trust, the more effective you're gonna be at building a big company. -
Dive into the podcast world with Grain CEO Jeff Whitlock as we unravel Grain's AI-driven meeting evolution, the merger that molded its future, and the star-studded story of Mike Adams. Get an insider's look into raising VC funds, the trials of startup life, and the riveting roadmap that Grain's cooking up, all topped off with some candid Silicon Valley talk.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
Grain's AI Transforms Note-taking.Grain and Startups’ Merger Insight.SaaS Frameworks vs. Intuition.Raising VC Funds: Pros & Cons.The Future Roadmap for Grain.Resources:
GrainCurotecConnect with Jeff Whitlock:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
05:00 - Yeah, we had fun, fun that we thought that was fun. We joked to Mike, you're famous, you're old startup was mentioned in this show, but in his experience he kind of realized we're doing a lot of these remote learning sessions. To be honest, this experience around recording them is not very good. And so that was kind of the initial gist of the idea. So it started, grain started off just very much as this idea that all these meetings are gonna be moving onto from kind of analog conversation, digital conversations, and there's a lot of value in these meetings. We should make it a lot easier that for them to be, a lot easier to record and make them accessible and useful.8:16 - And so, we made some tough mistakes I think during that period. Really important lesson for entrepreneurship is like, money doesn't solve your problems. You know, I think we raised probably, I think when I first started entrepreneur, it was like, hey, if I can just raise that big round, success will be there and learn that that's not true. In fact, too much money can cause its own problems. It causes you to kind of be a little lazy and try to cut corners and hire people to solve problems. And I've just learned, and we've just learned time and time again that like the founders have to at least come up with a solid V one on most most things. It is really hard to sort of outsource that.10:33 - So we've had just a huge, huge number of new competitors join in that are kind of more like 2 to 3-year-old companies, whereas like the original ones like 4 to 5-year-old companies. So that's been interesting to try to compete with them. And they often have like new fresh blood, fresh capital and, we're still kind of going on and, that's been a really interesting to kind of think about the strategic and market dynamics of our industry and one with like obvious value but not great moats. And so that's been really interesting and not necessarily enough network effects for like there to be obvious winner take all quickly23:16 - I would be much more, I'd say cautious in taking VC money. I think, I think when I started my entrepreneurial journey, I just like, this is the way you do it. You know, get an idea, you get a little bit early traction, you sweat equity and then once you can raise money you should raise money because then you can pay yourself and grow and blah, blah, blah. I think there was like a very much like this is the path and I didn't consider many other paths. I would say if I were to do it again, obviously I think this time around I'd be in a position where I would have a little bit more starting capital and people who would maybe, maybe invest, but just as like, friends, family angels, which I didn't have the first time around.44:25 - Yeah, so the way I think about it is at a high level, well first of all there's a strategy and the strategy is essentially, in my opinion, it's defining where are you playing in the market and what's your theory on how you're going to capture the opportunity or win and that strategy should inform all your decisions then. So that's kind of at the macro level. And we could talk more about strategy if you want how I think about it then you have, at the micro level, I have some kind of like broad based heuristics that kind of, we don't perfectly follow, but they give you rough guidelines. So at this stage in grain, we spend about 80/20 or 75/25 we call offense and defense. Offense are features that we feel are like moving the product forward and going to help us get new business either, either by selling new people, getting more people to convert or maybe getting more people to upgrade. So it's like going to build the business and make it go forward. -
Dive into the cutting-edge world of real estate with Stash Geleszinski, Co-Founder of Nëdl – the data platform predicting property transactions before they hit the market. Discover how Nëdl is transforming brokerage with predictive analytics, empowering players to anticipate and capitalize on upcoming deals. Expect stories from the trenches of the commercial real estate industry and insights into the tech that's shaping its future.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
Data drives real estate's future.Nëdl predicts market moves.Stories of commercial real estate.Tech intersects with property deals.The rollercoaster of brokerage life.Resources:
NëdlCurotecConnect with Stash Geleszinski:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
13:01 - Well, no, the loan comes due, right? Like you've gotta do, when a loan matures, you've gotta do one of four things. You can refinance it, you can sell it, you can pay it off, or you can give it back to the bank depending on the situation. So there are only four potential outcomes.27:36 - So how do we get into those markets? I think it starts with just looking and identifying what the patterns are and it's like if you look at the deals that trade, they'll tell you what. And then, so if you look at the deals that have traded and then you look on their history for the past six to 12 months, you can figure out what the tells are and then you can extrapolate that forward on the rest of the properties in that market or sub-market. And that's really, you know, what we're doing. So each property is gonna have its own functionality or difference of operation, but the data will tell you if you know where to look.38:29 - There seems to be a certain set of buyers though that they have found a way to exploit the system in that way and that's the business model. And occasionally they will buy a deal, so you will see them in the property records. So you're like, okay, they're legit. But then you get into bed with them in a transaction and it's like, oh my God, this is terrible. What are we doing? So I don't know, we've had a couple of those and so when we see them in our CRM system, it's like, do not call this person. Do not, I will disown you if you call.43:31 - Stash: I've heard of lenders not showing up to closings and buyers almost being delusional thinking that they are going to do it and then they end up not. But I've never, and I've talked with others, nobody has ever heard of a lender showing up with their funds, but then the buyer failing to show up with their funds.
Brian: So what, what'd you do to send the money back to the lender and cancel the deal?
Stash: Yeah, the escrow or the lender pulled it back through a CH, I guess, or a wire and you know, I think we gave him like a week like, okay, get your money together and then we can, you know, everybody was on the fence because everybody lives on fees, right? Lenders live on fees, brokers live on fees, sellers live on fees, you know, what have you. So we're all trying, you know, we all have a vested interest. Buyers live on fees, we all have a vested interest to get this deal done. Well, a week came and went and you know, the relationship is no more, but it was just the strangest thing.44:50 - The best deals actually are the ones where you go out, you get the purchase price, you do your marketing, you have a bunch of tours, you have a competitive bidding process. And then once you've agreed on price, on price and terms and the letter of intent, then you just hand it off to the attorneys and then they take it from there. -
Dive deep with a former poker professional turned tech entrepreneur, as he shares a riveting journey of scaling a SaaS company in the competitive world of fantasy sports. From a strategic acquisition to multiplying revenues, gear up for insights on growth levers, product development, and the thrills of business gambles that pay off big.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
Secrets to 50-80x business growth.Crucial SaaS metrics for success.Content creation that drives views.Power of affiliate channels explored.Strategic bets in consumer SaaS.Resources:
SaberSimCurotecConnect with Andy Baldacci:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
08:59 - It's only been recently that I feel like we've really taken much market share from our competitors because when you are telling someone who has made money for years doing things a specific way that the way they're doing it is not good you, it is just not an argument you're gonna be likely to win. And so for where we grew was on the back of all of the serious but still recreational players who tried to figure out these tools and just couldn't get past it. Like even when I try to use 'em now, I don't even know where to begin sometimes and it takes me so much time. So it's like if you're just doing this as a part-time thing, just literally like a couple hours, you have no expectations of going pro or anything else. Like you're not gonna be able to figure it out and it's like bad product.15:56 - Brian: So I want to go back to the poker stuff 'cause that's pretty interesting. I heard the guys on my first million talk about how the degenerate poker players always make the best entrepreneurs.
Andy: I think I view it as you're going, so one of the biggest things to me is just like prioritization by understanding like probabilistic thinking in the sense of people just always say like, oh this is risky, or oh, this is gonna be like, we're gonna get some benefit out of this. But they don't try to quantify the scale of either the risk or the benefit. Like how big of an impact, neither direction is it, and then how often does that happen? And it's like without those components you miss everything. And it's, it's like when people, casual fans, even serious fans when they talk about like betting on sports, it's like, oh I guess in this Super Bowl it was super close, so it's like not the best example but like any of the times where there's been just a really lopsided matchup, they're like, oh yeah, like earlier I guess in the season it's like the ravens or the chiefs are gonna crush this team.18:17 - Like when people talk about someone being results oriented outside of poker, that's seen as a good thing in poker, that's like a horrible thing. It's you use that as like, oh you're being way too results oriented right now because you cannot control the outcome of this specific hand. You can control your process and just because you lost the hand does not mean you made a bad decision. But in day-to-day life, that is like the opposite lesson that's taught. And so I think that mindset is probably the biggest driver of, of success. But I also think a lot of people with anything, it's like you have the experts in one thing, there's some clever name for it, but it's like experts in one thing assume they're gonna be an expert in the other thing and and it's like rarely do skills transfer one to one or even close to that.42:28 - What actually happens is that we have a very healthy top of funnel that is generating a lot of new customers and they are churning at a very high rate. I mean not like, well I guess some people would say it would be insane, but like say you have a 50% renewal rate after that first month. Okay then what is it after the second month? What about after the third? And there is some point where like they're staying and I think there is a lot we can do on those earlier stages, but because we have healthy top of funnel, it's not an existential problem at all. It is a growth opportunity for us to figure out how do we get these people who might not be, who might be like earlier in their journey up to a place where they can benefit from our tools. 39:59 - I think that's where it's like people get too stuck on just the number without asking like what is it actually measuring? And so part of it is what is, if someone just plays football and just subscribes to us during football and cancels at the end of the season, is that churn? I don't think so. I think it's only churn if they don't come back next season, then they have left us. But like if all they're doing is playing football and they play football with us for the season and then cancel, like that's not true. That is their like contract duration effectively. And like if they leave before that we messed up. But if they leave at the end of the season, like no, like that's not necessarily the case. So seasonality plays a big role in that and it makes it hard to measure what your like true churn is. -
Dive into the high-stakes game of business acquisitions with our insightful speaker, who sheds light on due diligence, financial pitfalls, and leveraging government loans. Whether it's about vibrating excitement from snowboarding trips or critical business strategies, this episode is a treasure trove of knowledge for aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned business buyers alike.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
A deep dive into the acquisition process.Exploring SBA loans and financial models.Unpacking due diligence best practices.Navigating seller relationships and trust.Leveraging government loans for growth.Resources:
New Image LeasingCurotecConnect with Will Wilder:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
22:44 - Yeah, I mean if you look across people looking at business acquisitions, there's a million different ways you can slice it. I think the most important thing is upfront, being really clear about what's gonna work for you. You know, some people will have a very specific business thesis. So they came from software development at, you know, wherever and that they think they have a competitive advantage there.26:41 - You're gonna spend a lot of time like the diligence process from issuing an LOI to actually closing for me was three months and it was like a month and a half before the LOI from when I first heard about the business to actually having an offer that was signed and on everyone's plate. So I mean that's even kind of fast I think, right? Yeah, that's relatively fast. So I mean that was four and a half months combined. But if you end up with a seller that's not gonna sell, you don't believe 'em for whatever reason, there's a big potential that you spend five months, six months chipping away at getting a deal done with someone that's ultimately never gonna happen.41:15 - Most of the cash would come from these investors. They would still largely do lending for 75 or 80% of the deal, but the other 20% would pretty much all come from investors. Those deals would typically be the CEO would get 8% of the company upfront, another 8% based on performance, and typically another 8% on at the backend at sale or other performance levers. So start at eight and potentially go up to 24-ish percent. All of that is negotiable between you and your investors. So not fixed in stone, but that's one model of it50:39 - And those deals can be fantastic. You don't have to have the expertise, you can bring in systems that you've developed elsewhere to help grow the business. You've got a guy running it that really knows it well. So there's a lot of reasons why you would wanna do that. The SBA won't let you, you can have the seller stay on for up to a year. There has been some changes to this, but that's still generally the rule. And really as an employee though, stay on as an employee or even a contractor. And within that year it really has to be focused on transitioning the business.59:58 - So you need to figure that out and there's a bunch of ways that you can work around that, but you don't wanna find that out when you close, you'll wanna see if you have any major customer concentration. That was something that we dealt with here and a lesson learned from me was beyond just getting comfortable that yeah, we have a high, high customer concentration, but they either are contractually obligated to us or there's a reason why they're using us or it'd be really hard for them to switch. You can get comfortable with that. What I didn't do enough about is I really needed to actually get down to all of the leases, individual house leases with that customer. And if I'd done that, I would've understood, great, these guys are awesome, they have a great relationship with us, they're gonna keep using us. -
Dive into the exhilarating tale of NeuroFlow, a company breaking barriers between mental and physical health through innovation and audacity. From late-night coding for a pitch at South by Southwest to cross-country trips without an overnight bag, the founders navigated fundraising challenges, transforming a vision into a multi-million-dollar business.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
NeuroFlow's daring demo at SXSW '17.Scaling with a mission-driven approach.Tactics for navigating tough funding rounds.Strategic growth through significant raises.Blending tech with human healthcare goals.Resources:
NeuroFlowCurotecConnect with the guests:
Adam PardesChris MolaroConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
24:20 - So it didn't help, the top line didn't help the bottom line. What you found was there was a reluctance to pay for stuff like this. Like a therapist would say, why am I gonna do this? Like there's, I have a line outside the door of people, so the demand with no shortage demand and there's no incentive to just add this additional work to the table. And that was a, I think a hard lesson for us because we wanted to help these therapists, you know, basically usher them into the 21st century using technology and data the same way every other medical professional is using. But the market just wasn't ready for that.20:32 - Once you have access, then you have to focus on quality. Are they delivering evidence-based care? So that's where the measurement-based care side of things comes in and we can talk about that from a NeuroFlow perspective, but now we're measuring, that's great. How about identifying people in the first place? Because there's also lots of challenges around people not self-identifying or not being identified within a greater healthcare system and then tying that into their overall healthcare. So not just treating behavioral health as, okay, great, we've identified them, we've found them a provider, we know they're delivering quality care, but we're gonna have that go treated in a silo. Like if someone has diabetes or obesity or COPD or any of these things, you're not just looking at that within a vacuum you're thinking, okay, well how does that relate to your lifestyle? How does it relate to social determinants like access to healthy food, you know, ability to pay for healthcare. 32:50 - Last year we identified 33,000 people of high risk of suicide that we were able to intervene with. And I don't think it's melodramatic to say like we've saved some lives. We, you know, those are 33,000 people that were struggling, many of which were urgent to the point where they had a plan and they felt hopeless. Our technology alerted the health system, our customer so that they were able to reach out in a timely way and get that person to the right level of care. And so that's what the technology is doing today from a hardware component. The only remnants of that today are we have APIs that integrate with wearables like the Apple Watch and so forth. So if you're exercising and so forth, that's a data point that goes into the risk stratification triage engine.52:13 - I don't think that was ever a good way to run a business, but you know, now it's certainly not even an option to run it that way anymore. And so we are on a path to, and we think that with our growth trajectory and the stability of our customers, we can sustain ourselves. Now, that's not to say we won't raise again because there are strategic reasons that you wanna raise again.45:31 - You know, 141 investors told us no, our first round, I remember one investor, in particular, said, Chris, we love the market. We think BH is a big opportunity. We think you're solving it in the right way. We just don't think that you are the right CEO. Wow. I mean that was, that was really hard to hear. But it was, you know, Adam has always been good in terms of anchoring us, going back and saying, okay, look, what could we take from that to learn to get better and to use it moving forward? -
Dive into the transformative world of corporate retreats with Jared Kleinert, Founder & CEO of Offsite. Exploring the evolution of workspaces, Jared shares his vision of bringing people together for impactful gatherings. Discover the blend of technology and hospitality shaping the future of remote and hybrid companies. It's more than just a venue – it's about connecting, solving, and inspiring. Join us for an insider look at reinventing offsite retreats!
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
Offsites are multi-day team-building experiences.Offsite offers end-to-end retreat planning.Insights into a dual service/software business model.Navigating the post-pandemic remote work evolution.The success of detail-oriented investor updates.Resources:
OffsiteCurotecConnect with Jared Kleinert:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
09:03 - I feel bad for early WeWork employees. One of our team members was relatively early at WeWork. I have a couple friends that were like first 50 or so. I feel bad for them and sort of, you know, we don't have to feel too bad for VCs, but like, you know, you feel bad for the people that invested in that and it didn't go their way. That being said, I do think the commercial real estate space is going to crumble and that's good for offsite because we would have even more business.16:51 - And a lot of companies have started that way, like take what was a manual process and automated away should be the formula for a great company, but we gotta do things that don't scale and see if it's a viable company to start. I also am not a technical founder, so my first move was seeing if I could get companies to pay for someone or something else to plan their offsites29:33 - If I look at the competitive landscape, if I look at the market size, it's like we have as good of a shot as anyone to build the category, defining a company or get up there with the, you know, top two or three. It's not gonna be easy to get there, but the path seems pretty clear. Like I'm doing annual planning right now, I'm like, okay, these metrics are kind of easy to define, they're gonna be hard to hit, but you know, there's pretty clear definition of what we need to do now. It's just a matter of executing. But I think that's a pretty privileged position to be in versus sort of having so many unknown unknowns and not knowing like what the north star is or who you're building for or why it's important. Like all these things are pretty clear for us. And you know, we have as good of a shot as anyone to win, which is all, all you can ask for.41:30 - I think everyone skips that part. Like go interview your top paying clients, go, you know, do research to the point where it seems stupid and repetitive, but like you should get to the point where you can build an entire profile where you know every nuanced thing about your ideal client profile. Like the phrases they would use to describe your product or service, where they go to get their information online, what communities they're a part of, like go do very deep customer development work, step one, step two, run quick and cheap marketing experiments like a week long and you know, a hundred dollars or like if you're a Fortune 1000, it might be a month long and a $10,000 budget, but that relative to like scaling it, that's very small but quick and cheap experiments. 56:29 - On average the ones that are doing monthly updates are growing faster, are more successful than the ones that do quarterly or, or no updates at all. I think it's mostly, it's like an exercise in self-reflection on behalf of the founders and making sure that they're thinking about the business programmatically and, and systemically. It's also the communication with investors. People can offer support, bail them out, like when you need help. -
Dive into Nik's astonishing tech voyage from crypto mining teen prodigy in Russia to selling his No Code marketplace for millions. Now a Thiel Fellow with his sights set on the Metaverse, Nik shares invaluable startup wisdom and teases his latest ventures. Tune in for a blend of raw entrepreneurial spirit, hard-hitting advice, and a peek into the future of AI and smart glasses.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
Nik's early crypto-mining hustle.Building and selling a No Code platform.Lessons from raising $3M in venture capital.The importance of co-founders.Nik's intriguing new AR/VR venture.Resources:
StealthCurotec Hiring Platform from ReferralsSmart GlassConnect with Nik Shevchenko:
LinkedInEmailConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
41:02 - I have a theory on this, you know, there's all these like schools of thought that say, you know, launch early, launch often, you know, speed to market. Which all that stuff is true. Like you have to be fast, you can't be slow. If you're slow then you're never gonna go anywhere. So you still have to be action-oriented. But I think a lot of these like, these theories of like you should be embarrassed of your first MVP.13:10 - I was still in Russia and then I joined 500 Startups and in 500 I basically started my second company, which is a talent marketplace with Love No Code, And I've been working on that for three years. I've been building the team from Russia and then I left Russia even before the war, and I was just started to travel. I traveled to like at least 30 different countries.16:57 - I worked on this for like three years and my investors were like, Nik, you know, okay, you're doing this thing and you know, we kind of like hit, hit the ceiling basically. It stopped, it stopped growing really aggressively. So, and like I just kept talking to like a lot ad lot of other people and they were all basically the same. Like, Nik, you know, you're a smart guy and you're building a cool thing and now you know your company's just basically growing. Like it's just a couple percentages months, four months. And I was like, yeah, you're actually right and this is how we made the decision to sell. 22:38 - We were thinking that we'll just spend, spend a lot of money on the marketing and then, you know, it'll like [grow] and then we'll get customers and then we'll like re how do you say, recur them, you know, with our product basically. But what happened is we bought marketing, people came and then they left from the product and we were just left with nothing. So this is number one, never scaled prematurely before the product31:25 - if you're a startup, don't solve any problem until you've solved product market fit. And like there's all different kinds of businesses. Like if you're building like an HVAC company and you want to like scale it up to a national billion dollar HVAC company that services HVAC units, like you don't need to verify product market fit. Like, you know, obviously there's HVAC installations in every house and everyone has one and they break, so yeah. You know, like it's obvious there's product market fit there, you just need to be like competitive in the landscape and it's like price and service and quality and all, you know, sales capabilities. So there's no product market fit challenge there. -
Dive into an enthralling tale of a critical care nurse turned tech founder tackling healthcare inefficiencies head-on. Sara Well, Founder & CEO of Dropstat shares her journey, from grueling nursing shifts to creating a life-saving staffing solution. Her startup, Dropstat, pioneers AI in forecasting and optimizing staff resources, addressing burnout, and saving lives. Listen in as we peel back the curtain on healthcare innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit that drives it.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
Sarah Well discusses healthcare inefficiency.The stress and burnout in nursing careers.Dropstat's AI staffing solution in hospitals.The impact of tech on bedside healthcare.The importance of staff retention and safety.Resources:
DropstatCurotecConnect with Sara Well:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
2:21 - One of the things that I remember was said to me was, well, you're going from this 12-hour workday working three plus shifts a week as a nurse, how are you gonna manage these 80 hour weeks that that founder's work? And I was like, that's a walk in the park compared to patient management especially in a critical care setting where you really don't have like bodily autonomy.09:05 - We're looking at like a 38% net decrease, I'm looking around and like, how are we gonna survive this? It's not good now and it's projected to get a whole lot worse. So to me, this just felt like, well, how would Amazon solve this problem? Would they tolerate this kind of process efficiency and overspending, which is literally driving hospitals and health systems into insolvency, right? And it just felt like it needed some technology and lives could literally be saved.15:49 - Nobody gets fired from using a broken process that's been used for years, right? Someone will get fired if you try to bring in a new technology and it messes up the OR schedules, meaning there's so much at stake and the margin of error is so narrow that coupled with the fact that no one's really incentivized on a c-suite level to bring in that innovation, right? Like they're, maybe from a marketing perspective, they get their name in light more if they write the research than if they bring in the new product. They're, they're really, most of our health systems people don't realize are kind of marketing companies that are run by attorneys, right?28:06 - I would say the hard part is convincing an organization to pay for an additional subscription or SaaS product. They're, you know, they look at their expenses like, you know, well, I'm already paying for all these products, you know, why would I bring in an additional product? So, you have to communicate value. Typically, nobody walks into a healthcare organization and picks up all, you know, 150 facilities. So they're gonna give you some proof of concept facilities, you can prove value there, show that they are, the return on investment is let's say 15 to 1, 8 to 1. You know, for every $1 spent on the product, you're saving 15 and you're saving 1 or 8. And that's actually the same formula that, that we use to gain investment as well, right? Like, here's how your $1 turns into 5, turns into 10. So for us, communicating the value to our clients has been really successful for our growth process.48:13 - I think the most important thing is like just keep listening, you know, keep listening to feedback that you get from clients, feedback that you get from the board and feedback that you get from experienced founders. But ultimately your intuition is what got you there and your intuition and being able to filter in or out some of that advice is you, you need the same skillset that you would utilize when you take care of a child, a loved one, a pet. And you know, sometimes you'll just know something's wrong and there's nothing clinically that you can see, but that intuition is typically right. -
Dive into a riveting story of resilience as Suzie Dergham CEO of Guru Experience pivots her start-up company from the brink of failure to a thriving employee-owned enterprise. Join us for an episode filled with raw insights on navigating the tumultuous tech world, transforming a passion for art into cutting-edge technology, and the staunch commitment to customer experience that is redefining the museum industry.
Suzie's unexpected pivot from art to tech CEO.Overcoming company debt and stagnation.The essential shift from devices to cloud-based tech.The challenge of the museum industry's long sales cycle.Aligning tech product scalability with growth.Guru's transition to an employee-owned company.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.Resources:
Guru Experience Co.CurotecConnect with Suzie Dergham:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
7:45 - There's a lot of grant proposals that go into these things, which contributes to our sales cycle as we can probably jump into. But it tends to be funded by some sort of accessibility grant. You know, something that is educational accessibility is a big one. Giving people the ability to, you know, use screen readers or enlarged text or things like that. But that definitely means that museums have to, you know, find, find the money to support it and then, and then provide it.14:54 - That lasted for like, you know, a week or two when, you know, very quickly I became the COO and was just kind of running management and all of our client stuff and pretty much everything we were doing, which then led me to have access to everything. And it very quickly, it became clear that the way the company was going, it probably wasn't gonna be around for much longer than a month or two. 24:21 - I started to learn more about the startup world of like, you know, they may be investing 20 or 30 in their portfolio and they'd rather see you shoot for the moon or just completely, you know, fail and back out. Whereas that's not how I operate. I'm more of an operator at my heart of like, you know, making things work. And if we grow 5% in five years, then I think that's success. We're growing. Whereas to a VC that's not, and they don't wanna wait around for that. 36:09 - So that's when we started brainstorming like, well, with this lowball offer, like we've just gotta beat it. And the clock is ticking. We've got about a month before this offer expires. And if we're able to come up with, you know, just, just slightly higher than what they came in as there's not really gonna be a choice. They're gonna kind of have to go with ours 'cause it's a, a better offer. 55:30 - Don't be afraid of the things you don't know, and find advisors. That's probably one of the best things that, you know, happened for me was I found people who were, they believed in me and helped me believe in myself, but also being, you know, I'm probably transparent to a fault with my team, which sometimes, you know, can make people worried or concerned, but it builds a level of trust that the team knows that I'm there for them and they're there for me, and that we're in this together. -
Gabe Lullo, CEO of Alleyoop and renowned sales trainer, shares his experiences and expertise in the SaaS market and outbound sales. The importance of outsourcing prospecting and building effective sales development teams is emphasized. The role of vision, execution, and strong leadership in achieving sales success is explored. Hiring and training successful Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) are discussed, along with personalized incentives and strategies for overcoming challenges. The effectiveness of video and AI in sales outreach, as well as embracing change and pivoting in business, are also highlighted.
Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
Sales development reps (SDRs) emerged in the tech and SaaS space, but the role has now expanded to other industries.Outsource prospecting agencies, like the SDR agency Gabe works with, can provide a productive and competitive environment for SDRs.Companies must have a strong go-to-market vision and execution plan in order to succeed in sales.CEOs must have a rock-hard vision and product-market fit to effectively incorporate sales support functions.The hiring process at Allego involves a collective effort where team members vote on potential hires, ensuring a good fit.Tracking video outreach allows for better analytics and more informed follow-up.Pivoting is a best practice for companies to navigate changing market demands.Resources:
AlleyoopCurotec E46: The Future of AI Workforce Automation and Autonomous Robots – Cache Flow PodcastConnect with Gabriel Lullo:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
27:52 - If you attach a human to a list of intent, you know, you can take over markets, right? So that is really, really good data to go after because to your point, they're seeing what's going on, the scoops are coming in and, you know, we all know timing is probably the most important thing in sales. And if that is already, if you already know that magic eight ball about the timing piece, you know, everything else is just pretty much, you know, whether or not you can figure out how to sell it or not.36:28 - We look for people who have grit, we look for people who wanna go the extra mile. We look for hungry people who want to, you know, really make their mark. And that's what we, that's what we look for when it comes to hiring. And we usually get it right, sometimes we don't. But when we do our coaching, the training, you know, really takes 'em to the whole another level.44:30 - I think right now automation has created so much stuff getting thrown your way through automation that you have to figure out ways to cut through the noise and be relevant. And that's the big piece of it. I think personalization is important, but not like it used to be. You know, people are like, oh wow, I saw you went to the same college as my buddy Fred did, you know, I'm be like, that's not personalization like it used to be. Everyone sees through that these days. It's relevance that wins. And if you can be relevant and stick out and do something different, maybe like create a custom video or do something that is human, people are gonna gravitate towards that over all the static emails that are being sent.50:43 - I guarantee if we didn't have video, it probably would've not happened because of that relationship is so much more important when you see the person. So that was one of the reasons why we did it. The other reason is to your point is you know, you're cutting through the noise. So you can create a short personalized video as an SDR and send that out and then you can track it. So it gives you an opportunity to track it as well. So you can see did they watch it? How long, how long did they watch it for? Did they watch it more than once? Did they click on any links or go to our website at the end? And it really gives you some analytics behind it and then allows you to maybe make a call. 57:45 - And I think pivoting is like a word that really needs to be adopted by so many founders right now. Like, there's a lot of companies doing very, very well, and I think a lot of them, the ones that are know how to pivot and are accepting that as a best practice. And so pivoting is something we all have to, you know, really embrace and change is, is a good thing and if, if you adapt to it. And so I couldn't agree more. -
Join us as we explore the incredible journey of Recruit CRM, a company that successfully built recruitment CRM software for India's steep job market. We learn how they pivoted from providing recruiting to companies needing delivery drivers to creating a CRM for staffing firms. Despite initial skepticism, they achieved exponential growth without raising any venture capital or debt, and overcame challenges through a winning team and focused financial metrics.
Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast.
They began with a different product called My Stuff, targeting large logistics and delivery companies.After realizing it wasn't working, they pivoted to focus on staffing software for staffing firms.Staffing firms in India typically employ less skilled recruiters who handle low-level positions, making it difficult for them to implement software solutions without management support.Making the decision to focus on Recruit CRM as the last company they will ever start.Go-to-market teams should be available in the language that customers need.Managers are essential for team growth and development.Resources:
Recruit CRMCurotecConnect with Shoanak Mallapurkar:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
24:46 - This is the last company that I'm ever gonna do. I'm pretty clear I want to keep growing this till the day I die. Now we might do more products and we might buy companies at some point and we might do more than staffing and recruitment in eight years or 10 years or 15 years or whatever. But this is, I'm never going to start something from zero again. I'm never gonna sell this.48:23 - You need to have more money in your bank, like the number in your bank account when you refresh the app on the first of every month needs to be more than it was the first of last month. Like that's the most core KPI we have. Which it is. Our bank balance has gone up every single month since we've been in existence. 31:11- So you're not telling someone to get the job done. You're telling someone what KPIs they need to do and then they get the job done through a bunch of other people. And the moment you can get to that stage, the leverage increases exponentially. 'cause the moment you're a manager or managers, you can be, you can have multiple, you can add as many layers as you want, as long as you've set up the company the right way. 42:44 - See most other companies cannot do this 'cause it's too much of a time investment. Like, it's just too much time. Like this, this stuff takes like, like the first year we did this, we literally spent over 50% of every single person's time in the company doing either hiring or training kids. 'cause like kids need a lot of attention. And you can only do this if like, I'm gonna run this company till I die. Right? So I'm looking at this from like a 50 year horizon5:55 - I love when people build businesses that scratch their own itch as opposed to like, you know, in the tech world there's so many tech people that just go in and build companies and niches they know nothing about just 'cause they think it's a cool niche and there's money there. I think the most successful companies are companies that the founders understood a specific market wedge or a pain point and went into a market very intentionally because they understood the market. -
Join us for a fascinating episode where our host Brian Dainis engages in an intriguing conversation with Xavier, the CEO of Presto, a restaurant automation company. Delve into the world of AI and discover how it's revolutionizing order-taking in the restaurant industry, leading to improved consistency, efficiency, and enhanced customer experiences. We'll also explore the vital role of AI in self-driving cars and its promising applications across industries, focusing on the potential for elevated safety and convenience. Lastly, we'll discuss the entrepreneurial journey, comparing experiences with and without venture capital funding, emphasizing the importance of staying true to your vision and maintaining control over your company's trajectory.
By using AI to streamline order taking, restaurants can increase the speed of service, average check size, and overall efficiency, while enabling staff to focus on higher-value tasks.The convenience and lifestyle benefits of self-driving cars are immense, from transporting kids to reducing automotive-related deaths.Valuations in the growth stage SaaS industry were slashed by 80% after the dot-com bust.College education can provide discipline in problem-solving and encourage the pursuit of excellence.Not everyone needs college to succeed; self-taught individuals can excel with creativity and online learning.Building a real-time content personalization solution for email marketing was a game-changing pivot for their company.Bootstrapped companies can still thrive and attract customers, proving there's room for organic growth.
Xavier Casanova, a distinguished tech entrepreneur, boasts over two decades of experience in Silicon Valley, where he has excelled in building SaaS companies from the ground up. As the CEO and Founder of Presto, a leader in restaurant automation, Xavier brings a wealth of experience in product management, marketing, sales, business development, finance, and technology, having developed numerous SaaS products and web applications from scratch. His impressive track record includes both VC-backed and bootstrapped successes, making him a notable figure in the tech industry. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow Podcast:Resources:
PrestoCurotec MailchimpSalesforceLiveClickerWaymoFireclickKlaviyoConnect with Xavier Casanova:
LinkedInX (Twitter)Connect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
09:48 - “We're trying to learn from the human and actually replicate what a human would do. And it's also similar in the way that your example actually is a good one. In the automotive space, these self-driving cars, right? You still need to have a driver kind of monitor what the AI is doing and take over when, when the AI is not responding properly, which is one of our principles as well.”25:30 - Xavier: “It didn't last long, but there was a time when Covid-19 hit that we thought “oh, you know, maybe the economy's going to tank”. And then rebounded, and then this surge of optimism lasted for about a year.”
Brian: “Was like four weeks of uncertainty during Covid-19 that it was like everything's getting funded.”
Xavier: “Everything's getting funded, everybody's working from home. Everybody can build the company in their like garage. But it didn't last long, the dot-com, the boom and lasted three or four years, because really it started in late nineties and went all the way to 2000-2001. So that one felt longer and more irrational than this last one.”06:27 - “But I think a lot of times when you have new technology like this, a lot of people are looking for problems to solve with that technology. And there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there thinking about what we could do with this technology with large language models and so on. And Presto actually is in a unique position because we actually have a problem that can be solved today with that technology. And that's exciting, that the market is growing and it's going to be a big market and AI is a perfect fit for what we're trying to do in the restaurant, which is automate the restaurant.”39:23 - “If you can see a path where you're able to build a first prototype, you're able to convince a few people to pay you a bit of money, buy your product, be your early partners, and you see a path for organically growing that business, I would definitely avoid the VC route because first of all, it will stay out of your company and you'll have control of your destiny.”40:20 - “Sometimes you have to build a very complex product before it can add value, and that's expensive. So, a company like Presto, for example, is a good example of a company that needs capital because of all the things that are involved in making our drive-through solution work. It's a very complex product with a lot of components. There's a lot of engineering, there's AI technology that needs to be built. That's a very difficult company to start as a bootstrap company. But VCs love these type of companies and investors love these type of companies because you can clearly see that with investment, you're opening up an opportunity that's gigantic and in a high growth space and so on.” -
In this podcast episode, host Brian Dainis engages in a captivating conversation with Ian Landsman, the Founder of HelpSpot, a key player in the competitive world of help desk software. They delve into HelpSpot's unique position in this market, the challenges of competing with industry giants, and the delicate balance between customer customization and product development in the realm of SaaS. The episode explores the power of cold outreach, the significance of IP addresses in consulting, and emerging trends in tech, including AI's potential impact on customer service jobs and chatbot services. Tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs will find this discussion a fascinating dive into the tech industry's intricacies and the future of customer support.
The cost of advertising for help desk software keywords on Google can reach up to $140 per click.Exploring alternative advertising platforms, like Microsoft Ads, can offer more cost-effective options.Balancing the cost of customization with the potential benefits and impact on overall product development is crucial.Leveraging existing customers as brand advocates can drive word-of-mouth referrals and attract new customers.Productizing services and entering the SaaS world is a common goal for companies, driven by the perception of higher profitability and recurring revenue.The number of answers a person can provide in a day varies, but it can be as high as 80 or even hundreds.
Ian Landsman is the Founder and 100% Owner of UserScape, Inc., a company that created HelpSpot, a web-based help desk software application. With over 19 years of experience in the industry, Ian has successfully navigated the world of software entrepreneurship. His journey is marked by his ability to find the right balance in product development, maintain user engagement through his blog, and his passion for good design. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow:Resources:
HelpSpotUserScapeCurotec ZendeskGoogle AdsMicrosoft AdsApolloZoomInfoSlackConnect with Ian Landsman:
LinkedInX (Formerly Twitter)Connect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
09:02 - “And so kind of our core bread and butter customer would be like a big company where we are in a department of IT or a medium-sized company where we are the entire customer-like support platform. But it also has a lot of, so that's like your traditional like standard IT use case, like an IT organization uses IT to manage it ticketing for people with IT problems. Then there's also the other side of it, which is sort of just end-user customer service. So you sell a product and you're just managing those primarily email accounts in our case where people are maybe asking for refunds or questions or whatever the case may be. And HelpSpot manages all that for you.”15:27 - “And then when you get a click or whatever. It's like not usually a person who's just going to buy right there. It's often they're researching and then they're going to go bring it back to the committee. The committee's analyzing several options. They have a list of questions, so we do get people who just show up and buy, but that is definitely the exception to the rule. It's usually more of they want a demo and that whole kind of thing. So it's a little bit different than what a lot of people might have, their SaaS these days where they're really optimizing for total self-service and people being able to convert instantly. Because the decision maker is the one on the page. That's very often not the case for us that the decision maker is the one looking at it.”21:34 - “There can be stuff along those lines with customer-specific stuff I've always done, we've given them the option to basically… we've only actually done this maybe four or five times, but if they really needed something and they're like “we'll pay you for it”, whatever. And we have professional services too, which will just do stuff with our API and things like that. And I have given people in the past the option to basically move something to the front of the line. So it's like still our IP, we own it, but we'll add this feature for you, but it's going to be $5,000 or $10,000 or whatever, just basically prioritize it and then we will add it as a feature rather than building it like as something through the API or whatever.”27:23 - “We've always had a strong kind of word of mouth. The help desk is the kind of tool, unlike a lot of SaaS tools, really even B2B ones, where people are using it 40 hours a week. They come into work and they use HelpSpot. And then they use HelpSpot all day long until they leave work. And so there is like a stickiness there where they're going to take it with them to other jobs. So that's also always been the other big avenue. It's just managers or people who become managers in other jobs and they're like, “Hey, I used HelpSpot at my last job and it's great”. And they're coming into an organization that either isn't using anything or they're using any something that's not supported anymore or whatever and or built in-house.”32:25 - Brian: “We still close deals all the time from cold email and LinkedIn and yeah, it comes in all the time.”
Ian: “Give me your top two or three tips here.”
Brian: “So you have to be very specific. So your campaign has to be like, so niche and so tailored and then the messaging has to be so niche and so tailored that the person reading it questions if possibly like, you actually handwrote the email. Don't do links or any images in the email”
Ian: “Just a plain white email.”
Brian: “Yeah. Plain white email. Make it look like you sent it and then I'll put like font for the logo and just like color the font, the color of the brand. So it kind of looks like a logo, but it's just like a font logo. And then just keep it like really strips down basic email short like three to five sentences. Do like five to seven touch points over a month or two.” -
In this episode, Marin Smiljanic, the CEO and co-founder of Omnisearch, discusses his vision of revolutionizing search beyond text-based engines, including audio, video, and documents. The conversation covers the evolution of Amazon, the future of search engines, and challenges in the Chinese tech scene. The episode also delves into theoretical discussions within the Matrix prequel, exploring robot rights movements, human control, and Omnisearch's journey in the B2B space.
Marin Smiljanic is the Co-Founder and CEO of Omnisearch, leading a dynamic career in technology and entrepreneurship. With experiences ranging from being a Software Development Engineer at Amazon, where he contributed to projects like Alexa's email feature, to founding QuickNews and QN Technologies, Marin's journey reflects his commitment to innovation and software engineering expertise. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow:
Unlike other search vendors, Omnisearch aims to provide a holistic solution, allowing customers to handle all their search needs in one place.S3's underlying architecture from 2006 is still largely in place today.Move fast and break things was retired at Facebook, and replaced with move fast and ship working software.B2B vs B2C: B2B products can have bigger success if tailored to customer needs.WeChat's success in China might be due to centralized data tracking instead of separate companies.The concept of consciousness in technology is complex and debatable.The robots turn to harvesting humans for energy, setting the stage for the Matrix movie.Resources:
OmnisearchQN TechnologiesCurotec AlgoliaWeChatElasticConnect with Marin Smiljanic:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
14:05 - “I would say that what is good there, and that's kind of an extreme case of what you'll sometimes see in big tech, is you really get to witness a masterclass of distributed systems, scalability, all these, important concepts that back when we were taking distributed systems in college, the examples there would've been like, simple client-server architectures or something that at most had a couple of machines, then you go to S3 and that's like hundreds of thousands of machines. So definitely your intuitions about this, your ways of reasoning about systems. They change very fundamentally, in ways that you couldn't do in smaller companies.”15:18 - “The downside of S3, you alluded to this, it's a very mature product, which means there's no cowboy-ish approach. There's no major incentive, I would even say to ship it super fast. Rather, it's like, don't break first order of business, don't break things. So that can be a little bit frustrating when you're a young eager beaver and want to ship things, get things into production as soon as you can. And then it's like, ah, but did you think of this angle? And then you have got to think about that angle. So it, it helps with discipline, but maybe it's not the most exciting part.”57:27 - “So getting the lead to the CEO and then the CEO getting that customer to sign up and the CEO's onboarding that customer. That's like, I think in early days, like when the CEO, the Founder, when it's like a five-person team or a two-person team or whatever. That's, I think, the way that it needs to be done. So that you can actually get that real-time feedback from customers like, oh, this feature doesn't work, or I hate this or I need this. And that's like, if you start to see a theme emerge from first customer, second customer, third customer saying the same things and it's obvious that you need to fix that because you're talking to them and they're giving you that info, but the feedback cycle might be like so much longer or not even there if you're trying to do PLG too early.”26:38 - “I'm involved in another company that did that just like did an acquisition and they acquired asset was monetized on ads. But the way that the company's going to monetize that asset is through like a B2B sales channel, not ads, but selling… Basically like a data product and the monetization is 100x or it's more than 10x. The traffic is monetized. It might not be 100x, but it's like more than 10x for sure.”56:05 - I've actually subscribed to the opposite school of thought, that the PLG is “Product-Led Growth” for the listeners. So we've talked about Product Led Growth on other episodes, but essentially Product-Led Growth is like building in features to your product that are like an onboard to your product. So the user doesn't have to talk to a sales team to use your product. They can just like go click a button, sign up, put a credit card in, and then there's like an onboarding ramp right into the product that helps them, like a wizard or something or like a step one, step two, step three onboarding that helps them get set up in your product ecosystem. But doing Product-Led Growth or PLG too early in the lifecycle of a company, I think is a disservice. That's at least the school of thought I subscribed to. Because if you're not fully validated yet and you start to try to do PLG, like if it's not working, what do you start to troubleshoot first? Is it like your ads aren't the right copy, is your landing page not right? Is your PLG not right? Or is your product and your product thesis as a whole not right? Like where do you start to troubleshoot?” -
In this episode, Stephen Blum, the Founder and CTO of PubNub, discusses their proprietary message bus connecting billions of devices, scaling challenges, and managing a world record-breaking event. They explore PubNub's rapid product launch, customer feedback-driven development, and transition to automated scalability. The conversation also delves into the impact of WebSockets on communication, the current state of San Francisco, including remote work effects, homelessness, and tech scene dispersal, as well as the COVID-19 impact on cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.
Stephen Blum is the Founder and CTO of PubNub, a trailblazing real-time communication infrastructure that powers telemedicine apps, online learning platforms, multiplayer gaming, on-demand delivery apps, and more. With over a decade of experience leading PubNub, he has driven the development of a highly reliable and fast Multi POP Realtime Data Stream Network. Stephen's career journey showcases his expertise in real-time technology and innovation. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Cache Flow:
PubNub also supports Atlassian products like Jira and Confluence, providing notifications for page updates.Building scalable tech requires careful consideration of memory usage and bug fixes to handle high concurrency.They re-architected and rewrote the message bus to create a globally distributed system, similar to a CDN.Many companies, including Twitter and LinkedIn, have embraced web sockets to power live-streaming and real-time communication features.San Francisco's office buildings are mostly empty as remote work has become the new normal, leading to high vacancy rates.Tech workers are moving away from San Francisco to more affordable and remote-friendly locations like Lake Tahoe and Austin.The crime rates in cities like Philadelphia have risen, creating safety concerns for residents.Resources:
PubNubCurotec AkamaiAtlassianClubhouseConnect with Stephen Blum:
LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Dainis:
LinktreeQuotables:
20:31 - “So if you build this wonderful [product] over a year, it doesn't matter because you have to throw away half of it. So just launch as soon as possible. So before we jump to something else, this is the same thing. Even within an existing big business, when you're launching a new product, you could spend one year, two years on a product and the product could maybe have been, most likely fail. So instead of building this wonderful architecture and plan and all these tests and everything like that, just get to market as quickly as possible. Start getting customer's feedback. Because guess what? Day one, you'll have zero customers, right? Launch day one, zero customers. So now that you've launched, you can have some other team members work on getting customer feedback, attracting customers, getting people on board while you continue to build on the rest of what your vision was.”18:17 - “The year before push notifications became a thing there was no way to communicate with the device. No standardization when we just wanted to be able to provide an experience that allowed you to track a dot on the map. [As simple as] maybe a taxi's picking you up. Something simple like that. Or having multi-user collaboration on a page. That was really hard. You could do it. It was really easy to do in a room. You can have devices connect over your Wi-Fi or your LAN and communicate over a socket, but then you'd run into permissions issues depending on what target platform you're on, what the app is doing, or what the web browser is doing. There was no uniform communication across all that. So we're like, ‘Why don't we make it super-duper easy and provide an API.’”12:18 - “I was kind of thinking from a business perspective, where it is a lot of fun to sort of imagine a business that you could sit back and to kind of take care of itself. And that's a lot of where the inspiration of, you know, the, the freemium model and software as a service comes in specifically with PubNub.”01:16 - “But when you have a lot of devices, the problem comes in uh oh, how are you going to do that with a single message bus? You can't, you have to do a whole bunch of extra work. And so what we did was write our own proprietary message bus that was intended specifically to connect billions of devices, and we did it, we succeeded. It's really cool. We've got lots of games connected to us. So multiplayer gaming, we make phones ring, which if you didn't know that when your phone rings, you may have known, you might not know. That's a signal that goes to the device and we send those signals.”43:53 - “Reputation and the merits that you have along the way and what you achieve that becomes the, the currency. And I, you know, the ultimate question comes in like, “Hey, once you get to the Elon, Elon Musk level of wealth, what do you do?” Well, you can see what he's doing now. Like he could just retire for the rest of his life, you know, for a million lives. He never has to work again. But you get to the point where, you know, you want to, you want to keep pushing forward, you want to keep pursuing. And it's not about money anymore at that point.” - Show more
