BROADCASTS.com

Vinod Muthukrishnan. He was first a sailor then a strategist and now an entrepreneur. He was fortunate and has worked in diverse and challenging environments starting with the Merchant Navy, a high energy mobile first financial technology startup where he had a strategy and global sales. Now, he currently serves as co-founder and CEO of a company called Cloudcherry, a tech startup based in Pleasanton, California with offices in Singapore, India and a new location Vinod will show.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 High Output Management
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013 Nick Mehta
• Favorite online tool? \u2014 Trello
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\u2014 4.5-5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 Vinod wished he knew programming back then

\xa0

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:46 \u2013 Nathan introduces to the show
• 01:22 \u2013 The new location is in Salt Lake City
• 01:36 \u2013 Cloudcherry has 74 people
  • 01:40 \u2013 They are based in India and Singapore
• 01:47 \u2013 Cloudcherry has raised $7M with a total of around $9.5M raised
• 01:56 \u2013 Cloudcherry is a custom platform for millennials
• 02:13 \u2013 Millennials have complicated journeys with the brands they work with
  • 02:21 \u2013 In 2017, if you want to understand your customers, you have to be in all the platforms
• 02:47 \u2013 Cloudcherry is a feedback platform on speed across all platforms
• 03:07 \u2013 Cloudcherry has an inspirational wall in their office where employees can post things they find inspirational
  • 03:18 \u2013 \u201cYou need to walk into your office every day and be inspired on what you believe in\u201d
  • 03:40 \u2013 Whoever visits their office can put their names on the wall
• 03:50 \u2013 Cloudcherry has the 6 pillars of their culture: freedom, ownership, smart work, passion and some more
• 04:03 \u2013 Vinod introduced Nathan to some of the people in the office
• 04:40 \u2013 The office is 2000 sq. ft.
  • 05:05 \u2013 Vinod shows Nathan the view from the office
• 05:27 \u2013 Cloudcherry was launched in 2014
• 05:34 \u2013 Cloudcherry is a SaaS business
• 05:48 \u2013 Cloudcherry had their last fund raising September 2016
• 05:58 \u2013 Cloudcherry has close to 100 customers
  • 06:05 \u2013 \u201cThe massive push now is to grow the business in North America\u201d
• 06:37 \u2013 The team in America targets mid-market and enterprise businesses
• 06:47 \u2013 Average customer pay per month is a couple of hundred from SMBs
  • 06:57 \u2013 Mid-market and enterprise average a thousand dollars a month
• 07:23 \u2013 Cloudcherry has a complex mix of customers
  • 07:58 \u2013 They are doing more than 88K per month
• 08:13 \u2013 Cloudcherry has almost zero customer churn with SMB at the moment
• 08:35 \u2013 Cloudcherry\u2019s enterprise churn is higher than SMBs
• 09:00 \u2013 Most of Cloudcherry\u2019s customers are with them for 18-20 months
• 09:33 \u2013 Cloudcherry ran out of the market in 2015
• 09:48 \u2013 SMBs are customers whose ARPU is south of 20K
• 10:18 \u2013 Cloudcherry currently has 35% of mid-market and enterprise customers and 65% of SMBs
• 11:10 \u2013 Cloudcherry \u2018s time to recover CAC is around 12 months
  • 12:09 \u2013 Average CAC is $7K-12K
• 12:25 \u2013 LTV is around $36K
• 12:35 \u2013 \u201cSome amount of the optimism needs to be weighed with intellectual honesty\u201d
• 12:45 \u2013 The greatest predictor of LTV for Vinod is the churn
• 13:10 \u2013 Cloudcherry focuses on customer delight
  • 13:22 \u2013 Cloudcherry got feedback on how delighted their customers are
• 13:45 \u2013 If a customer stays with you, it will impact your churn and LTV
• 14:11 \u2013 Cloudcherry is still burning cash at the moment
  • 14:34 \u2013 \u201cWe have money to burn from growth\u201d
• 14:47 \u2013 December 2017 goal MRR
• 15:32 \u2013 SaaS business should continuously grow in numbers
• 16:57 \u2013 The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Make your employees look forward to going to the office every day.
2. When your customers are satisfied with your business, the numbers will just follow.
3. SaaS businesses should constantly track their numbers.

\xa0

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 are people 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