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Ian Blair. He founded BuildFire while he was in college and has grown up to become one of the most successful app builders with 30 employees and close to 10K apps in the app store. His expertise is online marketing and growth hacking.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \\u2013 Good to Great
• What CEO do you follow? \\u2013 David Skok and Jason Lemkin
• Favorite online tool? \\u2014 Ahrefs
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\\u2014 7.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \\u2013 Ian wished he would have taken a crash course on how the world actually works

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:55 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Ian to the show
• 02:37 \\u2013 BuildFire is a mobile app building platform that allows non-technical people to build their own app with no coding required
• 02:50 \\u2013 BuildFire is like the WordPress for mobile app
  • 03:18 \\u2013 BuildFire allows customization
• 03:36 \\u2013 Ian started BuildFire in college
  • 03:40 \\u2013 BuildFire has a reseller program
  • 04:18 \\u2013 In 2013, they were making $300K a year
  • 04:32 \\u2013 It was just for white labelling
  • 04:42 \\u2013 BuildFire was officially built with the technology in 2014
• 05:02 \\u2013 BuildFire has raised $2.5M so far in a convertible note
• 05:46 \\u2013 It was in 2015 when BuildFire broke their $1M a year mark
• 06:20 \\u2013 In January of 2016, BuildFire 2.0 was launched where they added customization
• 06:48 \\u2013 Since then, things took off
• 07:05 \\u2013 In December 2016, BuildFire was doing a little less than $300K a month
• 07:33 \\u2013 This year, BuildFire is developing
• 07:59 \\u2013 BuildFire has an ongoing subscription fee and upfront payment
  • 08:20 \\u2013 BuildFire is getting close to $200K a month for their SaaS side
• 08:33 \\u2013 BuildFire is now leaning more into their professional services
• 09:15 \\u2013 Total number of customers
• 09:25 \\u2013 Customers pay starts at $59, $149 or $499 a month
  • 09:50 \\u2013 Average a month is around $400 per customer
• 10:40 \\u2013 Team size is 40
• 10:57 \\u2013 Ian self-funded BuildFire initially
  • 11:11 \\u2013 Their current CTO started the initial development for BuildFire
• 12:00 \\u2013 BuildFire gets customers mainly through online marketing
  • 12:20 \\u2013 Paid ads spend is around $10K a month
• 12:30 \\u2013 BuildFire also has a lot of organic traffic and they\\u2019re going to tradeshows as well
• 13:48 \\u2013 Monthly logo churn
• 14:25 \\u2013 Revenue churn
• 14:50 \\u2013 BuildFire is on its way to a more predictable revenue model by the end of 2017
• 15:31 \\u2013 CAC
• 17:00 \\u2013 SaaS businesses are capital intensive
• 20:00 \\u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

1. Listen to your customers and make adjustments to your products depending on their needs.
2. Online marketing is a necessity for every businesses.
3. College won\\u2019t teach you how the real world works.

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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