Published: Oct. 11, 2016, 9 a.m.
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Mark Ross, a man who\\u2019s spent 20 years working in senior level global technology management, and owns board-level experience with Fortune 500 financial services companies. He\\u2019s the co-founder of GridMarkets and senior level advisor for a number of startups. Listen as Mark discusses why he jumped into entrepreneurship and how it differs from big-time corporate life.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? \\u2013 The Tipping Point
- What CEO do you follow? \\u2013 Elon Musk
- Favorite online tool? \\u2014 Slack
- Do you get 8 hours of sleep?\\u2014 \\u201cNever\\u201d
- If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? \\u2013 \\u201cStartups are a whole lot harder than you think\\u201d
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Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:42 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Mark to the show
- 02:07 \\u2013 What is GridMarkets and how does it generate sales?
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- 02:18 \\u2013 Power extensive engineering applications
- 02:40 \\u2013 Serve studios that make animations and simulations
- 03:33 \\u2013 Similar with dark-power concept
- 04:08 \\u2013 Agreements with the suppliers
- 04:20 \\u2013 GridMarkets has their own grid
- 05:00 \\u2013 Idea of GridMarkets started in 2011
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- 05:47 \\u2013 SaaS in the sense of push-button
- 06:39 \\u2013 Give credits to new customers
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- 07:20 \\u2013 Offering credit hours at $ 1.60
- 07:30 \\u2013 Credit numbers per month is over a million at the moment
- 07:57 \\u2013 GridMarkets is self-funded and 10 people invest in the company
- 09:46 \\u2013 Valuation of GridMarkets
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- 10:15 \\u2013 Investors\\u2019 different valuation
- 10:40 \\u2013 Number of current customers
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- 11:00 \\u2013 Fantastic feedbacks from customers
- 11:20 \\u2013 MRR
- 11:48 \\u2013 Team size
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- 12:26 \\u2013 There\\u2019s a lot specific skills and knowledge needed
- 12:50 \\u2013 The demand would justify having our own machine
- 13:10 \\u2013 Amount a computer can handle per month
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- 14:00 \\u2013 Millions of computer hours needed to serve studios
- 15:00 \\u2013 Spinning up machines
- 15:45 \\u2013 Connect with Mark through his email
- 18:06 \\u2013 The Famous Five
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3 Key Points:
- It won\\u2019t hurt to give your customer something for free to start off.
- Invest in your people.
- Value your customer\\u2019s feedback and learn from it.
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Resources Mentioned:
- Toptal\\xa0\\u2013 Nathan found his development team using Toptal\\xa0 for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn\\u2019t have to hire a co-founder due to quality of Toptal\\xa0 developers.
- Host Gator\\xa0\\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
- Freshbooks\\xa0\\u2013 The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
- Leadpages\\xa0 \\u2013 The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
- Audible\\xa0\\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\\u2019s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.
- Mark.Ross@gridmarkets.com \\u2013 Mark\\u2019s email address
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
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