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Mariano Suarez-Battan. He\u2019s the founder and CEO of MURAL, a digital whiteboard for exploring complex challenges visually. Global 2000 companies like IBM, Intuit, Steelcase, and Autodesk have deployed MURAL at scale to enhance collaboration in their digital workplace. A former startup in residence at IDEO, Mariano also founded Three Melons, a game studio that designed and published online games like Bola, which was acquired by Playdom and Disney in 2010.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 Purple Cow
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013 Aaron Lewis
• Favorite online tool? \u2014 LinkedIn
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\u2014 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 To trust in your gut always

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:12 \u2013 Bola has created games for large brands like Lego
• 02:23 \u2013 Back then, the social games industry was moving fast with Zynga, Playfirst and Playdom
  • 02:31 \u2013 Mariano thought that, strategically, it made sense to grow bigger with those companies
  • 02:45 \u2013 It was also a great decision, financially and professionally
• 03:00 \u2013 Mariano started Bola in Argentina
• 03:24 \u2013 Acquisition price was with stock and equity
  • 04:12 \u2013 The cash was $4-5M
  • 04:26 \u2013 $600K was the payback for the investors
• 04:44 \u2013 MURAL was a startup in residence in IDEO
  • 05:03 \u2013 IDEO brought in Collaborative Fund as a funder for MURAL
  • 05:10 \u2013 MURAL\u2019s vision is to make every designer share their design thinking globally
  • 05:36 \u2013 IDEO was like an incubator
  • 05:49 \u2013 Prior to IDEO, MURAL has raised closed to $1M
  • 05:59 \u2013 Collaborative Fund invested money on MURAL while IDEO made MURAL known to big companies like IBM
  • 06:33 \u2013 Some of IDEO\u2019s DNA are in MURAL
• 07:00 \u2013 MURAL\u2019s pricing
  • 07:02 \u2013 $12 per member per month and billed annually, $16 billed monthly
  • 07:10 \u2013 The pricing on the website is for online customers
• 07:23 \u2013 A quarter of their customers are online and the rest are enterprise costumers
• 07:46 \u2013 MURAL is a SaaS business
• 08:22 \u2013 MURAL has over 40K active users monthly
• 08:58 \u2013 MURAL has no free plan but has introduced a free education plan to help kids
• 11:00 \u2013 MRR is around $280K
• 11:11 \u2013 Average ARR
• 12:06 \u2013 Currently, MURAL has raised a total of $2.4M
• 12:16 \u2013 Team size is 35
  • 12:45 \u2013 Most are in product development and engineering
  • 12:55 \u2013 Office is located in San Francisco
• 13:30 \u2013 Gross monthly churn
• 14:17 \u2013 Some of the customers are entrepreneurs selling to multiple departments
• 15:23 \u2013 MURAL churn on online customers is quite high
• 15:38 \u2013 Average cost per new customer
  • 15:55 \u2013 One of MURAL\u2019s new customer is from an event they\u2019ve sponsored
  • 16:04 \u2013 The cost of the sponsorship with other expenses was $3K
  • 16:29 \u2013 What Mariano does is split up general cost with the number of new customers
• 16:50 \u2013 Gross margin is around 85%
• 18:45 \u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

1. The investment in your company doesn\u2019t always need to be cash.
2. Before going into an acquisition or partnership, go on a vacation and think about it with a clear head.
3. Having different revenue sources leads to different churn sources\u2014focus on where churn is the least.

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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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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