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Gadi Shamia. He\\u2019s the chief operating officer at Talkdesk, the world\\u2019s leading call center software platform. It\\u2019s backed by DFJ, Storm Ventures and Salesforce Venture. Talkdesk has grown 8x over the past 2 years and has over 250 employees along with their thousand customers including Box, Shopify, Dropbox and Weather.com. Prior to Talkdesk, Gadi founded a company that was acquired by SAP and now generates $5M in global business. He was also a senior VP at SAP and a general manager at ReachLocal.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \\u2013 The Innovator\\u2019s Dilemma
• What CEO do you follow? \\u2013 Marc Benioff
• Favorite online tool? \\u2014 Gmail and Slack
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\\u2014 6.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \\u2013 Gadi wished he knew that he would be fine so that he could stress less about it

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:44 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Gadi to the show
• 01:26 \\u2013 EchoSign was acquired by Adobe
• 01:31 \\u2013 TopManage was acquired by SAP
• 01:53 \\u2013 Talkdesk is a cloud-based call center solution
  • 01:58 \\u2013 It is fully-integrated
• 02:26 \\u2013 Talkdesk charges users per license fee
• 02:44 \\u2013 Talkdesk is a SaaS company
• 02:54 \\u2013 Average pay per customer varies
  • 03:01 \\u2013 A company with 50 users would pay $5K-7K a month
  • 03:28 \\u2013 Per seat cost is around $65-125 depending on the subscription
• 04:02 \\u2013 Gadi joined Talkdesk 3 years ago
• 04:16 \\u2013 The call center space is an interesting market
  • 04:22 \\u2013 It is still dominated by all players such as Avaya, Cisco and Genesis
• 04:35 \\u2013 Talkdesk already has a proven product
  • 04:41 \\u2013 Talkdesk has a couple of hundred customers who like the product and has been using Talkdesk for years
• 04:53 \\u2013 Tiago, Talkdesk\\u2019s CEO, was one of the reason Gadi joined Talkdesk
  • 05:14 \\u2013 Tiago is the co-founder and his co-founder left Talkdesk after 4 and a half years
• 05:50 \\u2013 Gadi believes that co-founders leave because they might not feel as excited as they were in the early stages
  • 06:01 \\u2013 Co-founders staying is also devastating for the company
  • 06:10 \\u2013 When a co-founder can say that he\\u2019s leaving and he has done his job, it\\u2019s a healthy company
• 06:44 \\u2013 Talkdesk has broken the million ARR
• 06:57 \\u2013 Talkdesk had 50 people when Gadi came in
• 07:17 \\u2013 Tiago was the only salesperson at Talkdesk when he started it and he was able to get remarkable brands to use Talkdesk
• 07:43 \\u2013 Gadi met Tiago through Gadi\\u2019s friend from Storm Ventures
  • 08:06 \\u2013 Gadi and Tiago met in 2014 several times
• 08:38 \\u2013 Talkdesk currently has 1200 customers
  • 08:48 \\u2013 There are around 50K seats
• 09:06 \\u2013 Average MRR
• 09:43 \\u2013 Alot of Talkdesk customers are e-commerce customers and they are seasonal
• 10:32 \\u2013 Talkdesk is at a net negative churn
• 11:00 \\u2013 Talkdesk talks to their customers about their seasonal needs and adjusts the annual licensing fee
• 11:42 \\u2013 Talkdesk respects Workday, Salesforce and works with ServiceNow
• 12:48 \\u2013 The best companies will get 110-120 in aiming net revenue expansion
• 13:03 \\u2013 Most companies that have worked with Talkdesk benefit from it and grow
  • 13:10 \\u2013 DoorDash grew from 40 seats to 800
• 13:38 \\u2013 Talkdesk currently has a team of 250 people
• 14:40 \\u2013 Talkdesk\\u2019s growth is mostly from new sign-ups
• 14:56 \\u2013 Talkdesk has raised a total of $24.5M
  • 15:01 \\u2013 The last round was in 2015
• 15:15 \\u2013 Talkdesk is neither raising rounds or talking to Salesforce
• 15:34 \\u2013 Talkdesk focuses on building a real business
• 16:24 \\u2013 Talkdesk is still burning cash
• 16:53 \\u2013 Most of Talkdesk\\u2019s customers pay annually upfront
• 18:13 \\u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

1. When a cofounder leaves, it means he\\u2019s done his job and the company is healthy
2. Be in a company where you believe in the product and know that you can accelerate its growth.
3. Building a real business is about the service you provide your customers in helping them achieve growth.

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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
• Hotjar \\u2013 Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where people are clicking and scrolling on the website
• 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