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Sunil Thomas. He\\u2019s had a ton of experience working in tech companies and decided in 2013 to take the plunge himself and go all in with his 2 co-founders. They\\u2019ve since raised a total of $9.6 million \\u2013 $1.6 million seed and $8 million in series A. They launched revenue in 2016, broke $1.5 million in total sales and this May 2017, broke $400,000 in MRR out of about $5 million ARR. He wants to double that by the end of the year, amounting to $800,000. They have a team of 45 based between California, New York and India\\u2014again, making it easier for mobile applications to understand what the heck users are doing in their apps.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \\u2013 Play Bigger
• What CEO do you follow? \\u2013 Satya Nadella of Microsoft
• Favorite online tool? \\u2014 Slack
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\\u2014 7-8 hours
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \\u2013 I wish I knew as much as my kids knew at 13, I had no clue what I was doing at 20

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:44 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Sunil Thomas to the show
• 01:32 \\u2013 Sunil Thomas is the co-founder and CEO of CleverTap
• 01:46 \\u2013 CleverTap combines people-based analytics with user engagement, it can be used in your mobile app and website and you get to understand what they are doing
• 02:23 \\u2013 It is like a combination of Mix Panel plus App Boy for mobile apps and websites
• 03:17 \\u2013 The average customer pays them $2500 \\u2013 $3000 a month based on event data
• 03:37 \\u2013 The top cohorts pay $10,000 to $20,000 a month
• 04:21 \\u2013 CleverTap is one of the few companies that has both Accel and Sequoia as their funders and they have raised a total of $9.6 million dollars with a seed of $1.6 million and $8 million in series A
• 05:18 \\u2013 CleverTap started in 2013 and has 3 co-founders\\u2014Suyin has had various work experiences in the tech industry
• 05:56 \\u2013 CleverTap came about because of the need to engage users
• 06:47 \\u2013 Nathan says there are only a limited number of apps a person engages with on a daily basis
  • 07:02 \\u2013 Sunil says their business is targeted on the companies and not the consumers
  • 07:28 \\u2013 There are more than 10,000 apps that go into the app stores every day
  • 07:53 \\u2013 The pricing starts at $1000 a month
• 08:23 \\u2013 An average monthly active user does 15 to 20 events in your app
• 08:54 \\u2013 They currently have 200 paying customers and 2000 apps that are sending them live data
• 09:13 \\u2013 A plan of the company is to cover 10 million events a month for their free plan in 3 years
• 09:31 \\u2013 The conversion rate is 30% for those who are using the free plan to a paid plan
• 09:44 \\u2013 Nathan computes the revenue is at least $400,000 a month
• 10:05 \\u2013 In terms of competition, there are three sets of apps: apps that get app data for sales, attribution provider apps and the one about user engagement and app analytics where CleverTap is
• 11:19 \\u2013 Their growth churn is very low with everyone on the less than 1,000 plan who are still sticking around
• 11:51 \\u2013 The company started to monetize just a year ago and has a 400,000 growth rate
• 12:15 \\u2013 They have 45 people globally \\u2013 11 are in the US and 32 are in India with the core engineering team in India
• 13:10 \\u2013 To acquire new customers, they have marketing qualified leads from websites and they hit bigger accounts on the outbound, focusing on direct sales rather than marketing and advertising
• 14:41 \\u2013 The biggest expense is in the hosting
• 15:18 \\u2013 It was hard during the early days, but it has now come to a point where they are benefitting
• 15:55 \\u2013 In 2016, they broke $1.5 million in revenue and are targeting to get to $10 million by the end of the year
• 17:04 \\u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

1. Look for a need and fill the gap in today\\u2019s current technology.
2. Know your target market well!
3. You may start slowly at first, but it will pay off in the end.

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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
• 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\\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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives