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Naveen Gupta. He\u2019s an entrepreneur with experience building startups and growing a hundred million dollar profit and loss statements. Before cofounding BirdEye, which is his current company, he held executive positions at RingCentral, Monster and Yahoo. He\u2019s launched industry-leading products across advertising, consumer search, social media and monetization. He lives in Sunnyvale, California with his wife and two kids.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 Predictable Revenue
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013 Brian Halligan
• Favorite online tool? \u2014 Outreach and ZoomInfo
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\u2014 4-5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 Naveen wished he would have taken more risks and pursued his dreams of starting a company

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:40 \u2013 Nathan introduces Naveen to the show
• 02:19 \u2013 BirdEye is the leading SaaS product that helps businesses on their customer journey
• 02:54 \u2013 The two things that drive purchases are customer experience and business ratings
• 03:20 \u2013 BirdEye grows 160%, year-over-year in revenue
• 03:33 \u2013 BirdEye has 25K paying customers
  • 04:40 \u2013 Business model is based on location and not per seat
  • 05:20 \u2013 On average, a business would have 2-3 locations
• 05:47 \u2013 BirdEye caters from SMBs to enterprise businesses
• 06:07 \u2013 BirdEye has a broad platform which has different functionalities
• 07:42 \u2013 Pricing on SMBs start at $3K and $100K for enterprise per year
• 08:12 \u2013 ACV is around $5K
• 08:33 \u2013 50% of the revenue is SMB, 30% mid-market enterprise and 20% for channels
• 09:00 \u2013 ACV is per location
• 09:24 \u2013 MRR is close to $2M
• 10:43 \u2013 BirdEye was launched in 2012
  • 10:55 \u2013 They came up with the idea after looking for a surgeon with great reviews to take care of their mother
• 12:07 \u2013 BirdEye was initially bootstrapped
• 12:33 \u2013 BirdEye has raised a total of $33M
• 13:16 \u2013 Team size is 170 globally
  • 13:48 \u2013 Around 60 are on engineering, 70 on the sales sides and the rest are in different departments
  • 14:30 \u2013 BirdEye is investing heavily on hiring the best people
• 14:45 \u2013 CAC is around $1K for a new business
• 15:05 \u2013 Payback period is 3-4 months
• 15:21 \u2013 60-70% of their contracts are paid up-front, annually
• 16:00 \u2013 Revenue churn
• 16:11 \u2013 Net churn is close to 0.5%
• 16:28 \u2013 BirdEye is still too young to calculate LTV
  • 16:48 \u2013 Naveen\u2019s estimate is 3-5 years
• 17:05 \u2013 Paid ads spent annually is $200K
• 17:55 \u2013 Gross margin is 85-90%
• 18:43 \u2013 To acquire new customers, they email potential clients and ask them if they want to know their competitors\u2019 reputations and how they compare to them
• 19:24 \u2013 2016 ARR was close to $13M and 2017 will be close to $30M
• 19:37 \u2013 2015 ARR was $5M and 2014 was $1.5M
• 21:10 \u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

1. Have a business model that will benefit not just your own company but your customers as well.
2. Most people rely on business reviews before trying out a product or service.
3. Hire the best people and you\u2019ll have the best product and provide the best customer experience.

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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