815: SaaS: He's Replacing the iClicker Growing From $800k ARR to $1.5m ARR in 6 months
Johnny Warstr\xf6m. He\u2019s the CEO and founder of Mentimeter. He\u2019s an engineer from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He\u2019s worked in 10 countries and visited over 60. He loves adventures and growing his company and he\u2019s getting married soon.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? \u2013 The Hard Thing About Hard Things
- What CEO do you follow? \u2013 Sebastian Siemi\u0105tkowski
- Favorite online tool? \u2014 Intercom
- 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 \u201cDo more crazy stuff\u201d
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Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:44 \u2013 Nathan introduces Johnny to the show
- 02:21 \u2013 Johnny founded Mentimeter with his three friends right out of university
- 02:38 \u2013 Mentimeter is an interactive presentation
- 03:00 \u2013 You can connect the audience's\u2019 phones with the presentation and they can vote or participate
- 03:53 \u2013 Mentimeter has a free and premium model
- 04:04 \u2013 Mentimeter has over 10M users and 400K presenters who lead meetings
- 04:31 \u2013 The presenters are the ones who pay
- 04:50 \u2013 Mentimeter currently has 6K enterprise customers
- 05:03 \u2013 Mentimeter is purely a B2B SaaS
- 05:36 \u2013 Average customer pay per month is $150 a year
- 05:56 \u2013 Mentimeter also offers packages
- 06:13 \u2013 ARR is around $1.5M
- 06:47 \u2013 Mentimeter was launched in 2003 and was initially bootstrapped as a side project
- 07:00 \u2013 Johnny was part of Telecom and his co-founders were managing consultants
- 07:18 \u2013 It took them 2-3 months to build Mentimeter and they showed it to their bosses
- 07:40 \u2013 Mentimeter had their $350K angel round in 2004 and they have a total of $500K funds raised
- 07:52 \u2013 Team size is 16 and everyone is based in Stockholm
- 08:25 \u2013 Mentimeter has no paid activities and relies fully on organic growth
- 08:53 \u2013 The goal of Mentimeter is to be a mass market product
- 09:38 \u2013 Mentimeter has 1 in sales, 9 in product and 6 in marketing
- 10:27 \u2013 Mentimeter was part of 500 Startups last spring
- 11:17 \u2013 Fully weighted CAC
- 11:42 \u2013 Payback period is almost instant
- 12:20 \u2013 The team has been doing different experiments to increase customer engagement
- 13:48 \u2013 Mentimeter is on -5 net churn
- 14:22 \u2013 Mentimeter has a licensed model
- 14:51 \u2013 1% monthly churn
- 15:18 \u2013 Some do not continue with their annual plan
- 15:44 \u2013 Mentimeter won\u2019t give money back, but there\u2019s a 40-day refund
- 17:00 \u2013 Johnny shares about a big, annual event in Europe that he\u2019s a big fan of
- 17:00 \u2013 Mentimeter has a built-in, voting module which functions as a simulation for a contest
- 17:37 \u2013 Mentimeter received a lot of attention from that event 2 years ago
- 18:12 \u2013 2017 revenue goal is $2.3M
- 18:17 \u2013 2016 revenue was $800K
- 18:52 \u2013 Johnny targets $10M in ARR for 2019
- 19:22 \u2013 \u201cWe\u2019re not looking for funding at the moment\u201d
- 19:38 \u2013 Johnny isn\u2019t interested in selling the company at the moment
- 21:33 \u2013 The Famous Five
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3 Key Points:
- Keep an open mind\u2014your side project can be your next successful business.
- Business ideas can come from the most unexpected of places\u2014don\u2019t discount your ideas.
- Success gained from organic traffic IS possible.
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Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero \u2013 The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- 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