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Hal Howard, 20-year Microsoft veteran who gave up a stable, secure position leading the Dynamics ERP development team to satiate a spark of creativity. Today, he\u2019s the founder of Komiko, a sales intelligence tool that helps their businesses understand what engagement with customers is working.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 Execution
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013 Satya Nadella
• Favorite online tool? \u2014 Vinfolio
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\u2014 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 \u201cDon\u2019t worry man. Everything\u2019s going to work out just fine\u201d

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:45 \u2013 Komiko is a sales intelligence tool that helps their businesses understand what engagement with customers is working
  • 02:12 \u2013 Komiko is integrated with different sources
  • 02:20 \u2013 A cloud-based subscription-based model
• 02:37 \u2013 Hal was at Microsoft for 20 years
  • 02:59 \u2013 left Microsoft because he wanted to build something new
  • 03:16 \u2013 \u201cThere are still unexplored technologies around business applications\u201d
• 03:54 \u2013 Customer pays an average of $30-35 a month per user
  • 04:00 \u2013 Team size ranges from 3 to 500
  • 04:11 \u2013 There are currently 2000 paying seats across 50 businesses in total
• 04:33 \u2013 Average MRR is $60K
• 05:19 \u2013 Team size is 10
  • 05:37 \u2013 8 are engineers
• 05:48 \u2013 Hal and his co-founder are doing both sales and product engineering
  • 06:00 \u2013 Hal is more on the design
• 06:30 \u2013 Komiko is now a complimentary CRM
  • 06:38 \u2013 Partnered with Salesforce and most of their customers are using Salesforce
• 07:19 \u2013 CRM is in a different decision set compared to Komiko
  • 07:40 \u2013 Komiko works with corporate clients to help them understand what engagement works and what doesn\u2019t
• 07:59 \u2013 \u201cWe don\u2019t lose customers\u201d
  • 08:05 \u2013 In Komiko\u2019s lifetime, they\u2019ve only lost 4 customers so far, 1 was acquired
• 08:28 \u2013 CAC is mostly inbound and Komiko was listed in AppExchange
  • 08:44 \u2013 Hal and his co-founder alone were able to drive a lot of customers, mostly from referrals and the businesses they\u2019ve worked with before
  • 08:51 \u2013 Just started an outbound campaign in early 2017
  • 08:59 \u2013 Has a partnership with GameSite
    • 09:20 \u2013 GameSite\u2019s focus is how customers engage with the product
    • 09:35 \u2013 GameSite is building a platform for customer success and Komiko\u2019s metric will help the overall customer solution
  • 09:48 \u2013 Komiko raised some capital
    • 10:03 \u2013 Total fund raised is around $2M
    • 10:23 \u2013 Initial round was convertible note and then the seed round is priced round
  • 10:37 \u2013 2017 revenue target is at least a million dollars
  • 11:04 \u2013 2016 revenue is $15K
  • 11:23 \u2013 Gross margin is around 75%
  • 12:09 \u2013 Hal won\u2019t easily sell Komiko, but he might consider for at least $25M
  • 14:43 \u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

1. Nurture the network that you have, it will always help you in some way down the road.
2. You have the option leave your comfort zone, you can explore and create something new.
3. It\u2019s possible to not lose customer IF you consistently help the customers see value in your product.

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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