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Paul Tyma. He\u2019s the founder and creator of a tool called Mailinator which is an email system. He\u2019s also a startup veteran and has focused on 4 Silicon Valley startups including Preemptive Solutions, Manybrain Inc which owns Mailinator, Home-Account.com which was acquired by Bills.com, and Refresh Inc which was acquired by LinkedIn. He\u2019s a frequent speaker, writer and author of one of the original books on Java called Java Primer Plus. Dr. Tyma has received his PhD from Syracuse University focused on Java/.Net performance.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 Influence
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013\xa0 Amy Errett and Bradley Kam
• Favorite online tool? \u2014 Linode
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\u2014 8.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 \u201cHow to talk to girls\u201d

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:53 \u2013 Nathan introduces Paul to the show
• 01:48 \u2013 Paul started his first company during his PhD
• 01:56 \u2013 After getting his PhD, Paul worked for Google
• 02:12 \u2013 Paul is still part of the board for Preemptive Solutions
• 02:18 \u2013 Refresh had a very visible exit and is currently at LinkedIn icebreakers
• • 02:37 \u2013 The acquisition was in 2015
  • 02:45 \u2013 Acquisition price
  • 02:54 \u2013 Refresh was a consumer application
  • 03:10 \u2013 Refresh has raised $10M in total
  • 03:20 \u2013 The first round was a priced round
  • 03:53 \u2013 Refresh had 100K users
  • 04:30 \u2013 Refresh built its own identity from scratch
  • 04:40 \u2013 The technology of Refresh
• 05:40 \u2013 Home-Account.com was built prior to Refresh
• • 05:59 \u2013 Paul was a minor founder
  • 06:15 \u2013 Option pool
• 07:23 \u2013 Selling a company and staying with the company who acquired it is a clich\xe9 in Silicon Valley
• 08:19 \u2013 Mailinator was a side project Paul built 13 years ago
• • 08:30 \u2013 It was a receive only mail service
  • 08:50 \u2013 Mailinator lets you create a disposable email
• 10:17 \u2013 Mailinator had some ads which paid for the server
• 11:30 \u2013 Mailinator now makes money from affiliates
• 11:47 \u2013 Mailinator\u2019s brand became strong
• 11:56 \u2013 There was a high usage from QA departments who tested their signups process and welcome email
• • 12:11 \u2013 They asked Mailinator for additional features
  • 12:40 \u2013 Hundreds of QA teams now are using and paying Mailinator
  • 13:16 \u2013 Mailinator also has a private paid domain
• 13:40 \u2013 Pricing is $29 for single user and $129 for a team
• 13:56 \u2013 Average RPU is $35
• 14:31 \u2013 Average MRR
• 14:57 \u2013 Paul is now turning Mailinator into a business
• 15:21 \u2013 Churn is pretty high
• 15:48 \u2013 Less paid advertising
• 16:16 \u2013 Mailinator has 45K unique users a day
• 16:44 \u2013 25K new inboxes are set up everyday
• 16:58 \u2013 \u201cThis is not a DAU product\u201d
• 17:21 \u2013 Mailinator has not raised money
• 18:09 \u2013 Team size is 3
• 18:30 \u2013 Gross margin
• • 18:59 \u2013 Server cost
• 19:53 \u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

• A side project can definitely turn into something more\u2014don\u2019t underestimate its potential.
• An email does NOT reflect one\u2019s identity.
• There are thousands of emails being made and sent every day\u2014having a disposable one is almost a necessity.

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Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox\xa0 \u2013 The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio \u2013 Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar \u2013 Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you\u2019re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling \u2013 Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator\xa0\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible\xa0\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\u2019s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives