Published: Nov. 16, 2017, 10 a.m.
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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:
- Have a business model that will benefit not just your own company but your customers as well.
- Most people rely on business reviews before trying out a product or service.
- 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
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