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Ren\xe9 Lacerte. He\u2019s the founder and CEO of Bill.com, the leading business payments company. He\u2019s a fintech industry vettor and has been working to simplify business payments since 1999, when he founded PayCycle, which was later acquired by Intuit in 2009. Bill.com is now working to help bridge the digital divide between banks and businesses by partnering with 3 of the top US banks and 45% of the top hundred accounting firms. He believes that banks play a critical role in the advancement of fintech. While technology advancement since Silicon startups are divided by or driving much of the industry change, Ren\xe9 believes that banks are and will remain the center of the financial universe for quite some time.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 The Advantage
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013 Pete Kight
• Favorite online tool? \u2014 Dropbox
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\u2014 6-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 \u201cDon\u2019t stress over the hard decisions\u201d

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:22 \u2013 Nathan introduces Ren\xe9 to the show
• 02:07 \u2013 Andy from Wealthfront disagrees that banks will remain to be the center of the universe
• 02:27 \u2013 Bill.com makes close to $40B a year
  • 02:32 \u2013 The average transaction is $1700 to $2000
• 03:16 \u2013 \u201cWe make doing business really easy\u201d
• 03:17 \u2013 Bill.com automates the back office of businesses
  • 03:24 \u2013 They take all the paperwork, workflow, payments and integration with the accounting software
• 03:40 \u2013 Bill.com charges per seat, per subscription and transaction fees
• 04:15 \u2013 The subscription model is their main revenue stream
• 04:36 \u2013 Bill.com charges .49 cents for every electronic payment and $1.49 for paper
• 05:30 \u2013 The fintech space is a natural viral coefficient space
• 06:00 \u2013 Bill.com had $110M from venture capital
• 06:12 \u2013 Ren\xe9 was 32 when he started PayCycle, in 1999
• 06:20 \u2013 Ren\xe9 worked in Intuit prior to PayCycle and stayed there for 5 years
• 06:34 \u2013 Ren\xe9 had some experience innovating products from Intuit
• 06:54 \u2013 Ren\xe9 grew up in a family of entrepreneurs
  • 07:04 \u2013 One of Ren\xe9\u2019s grandfather\u2019s businesses is an automatic data processing company
  • 08:26 \u2013 Ren\xe9\u2019s father went back to college to understand more about business
• 09:16 \u2013 The idea of Bill.com is that there\u2019s a better way to take advantage of technology to make payroll easier
• 09:58 \u2013 Bill.com helps define and automate the back office
• 10:06 \u2013 PayScale does online payroll and started with household payroll, which Intuit doesn\u2019t want to do
  • 10:47 \u2013 PayScale raised $150K
  • 11:23 \u2013 PayScale was acquired by Intuit for $170M
• 12:21 \u2013 Average number of paying customers of Bill.com
• 13:16 \u2013 \u201cIf we get customers active and get them using it, they don\u2019t churn\u201d
  • 13:26 \u2013 They\u2019re active when they already have paid for Bill.com
  • 14:04 \u2013 Average customer pay per month is $100
  • 14:15 \u2013 You can try it for the first month, for free
  • 15:00 \u2013 Bill.com automates some of their tools to make the customer feel that they need the product
  • 15:18 \u2013 Bill.com does A/B testing to check how they can get their customers engaged
  • 15:52 \u2013 Bill.com is adding thousands of new businesses a month
• 16:56 \u2013 Ren\xe9 tracks how many months the payback will be when it comes to CAC
  • 17:23 \u2013 Payback target is 10-13 months
• 18:07 \u2013 LTV is around 5 years
• 18:48 \u2013 Ren\xe9 has raised $50M
• 19:39 \u2013 Ren\xe9\u2019s strategy is to maintain a strong relationship with VC
• 19:53 \u2013 Team size is 225
• 20:10 \u2013 Bill.com was launched in 2008
• 21:07 \u2013 Bill.com isn\u2019t selling anything and not partnered with anybody, today
• 22:45 \u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

1. It is important to engage your customers.
2. Banks are and will remain to be the center of the financial universe.
3. Hard decisions and their consequences will pass, so don\u2019t let them bother you too much.

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Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox \u2013 The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi \u2013 The juice was Nathan\u2019s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio \u2013 Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling \u2013 Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\u2019s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks \u2013 Nathan doesn\u2019t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives