BROADCASTS.com

b'

Boris Shakhnovich, president of PDF Filler. He manages the daily operation and marketing campaigns but he is also responsible for the mission and vision of the company. Prior to his work at PDF Filler, Boris earned a PhD in Bioinformatics and he\\u2019s a Bioinformatics Professor at Boston University. He later moved to Harvard University to work with Systems Biology.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \\u2013 Guerilla Marketing
• What CEO do you follow? \\u2013\\xa0 Marc Benioff

• Favorite online tool? \\u2014 Google Analytics
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?\\u2014 No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \\u2013 \\u201cThat doing is more important than knowing\\u201d

\\xa0

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:40 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Boris to the show
• 02:30 \\u2013 Boris is the president and co-founder
• 02:47 \\u2013 PDF Filler is a document management platform
• • 02:51 \\u2013 It allows people to do end-to-end document generation
• 03:40 \\u2013 PDF Filler is a SaaS business model and they charge per month
• • 03:46 \\u2013 3 tiers: professional, non-professional, and business
  • 03:50 \\u2013 Business is the most expensive at $15 a month
• 03:58 \\u2013 Average customer pays per month
• 04:10 \\u2013 In 2008, the founder started the business and ran it by himself until the end of 2011
• 04:25 \\u2013 Boris joined the company 5 years ago and applied marketing technology to it
• 04:39 \\u2013 PDF Filler has now close to 200,000 customers
• 04:58 \\u2013 Monthly RPU
• 05:16 \\u2013 PDF Filler was needed when it launched so it grew organically
• 05:30 \\u2013 Gross customer churn per month is low
• 06:28 \\u2013 PDF Filler works with the government institutions
• 06:58 \\u2013 PDF Filler\\u2019s digital marketing platform
• • 07:08 - PDF Filler runs 60 million keywords on top of SEO and other SEM platforms
  • • 07:19 \\u2013 Brings 4 million website views monthly
  • 07:30 \\u2013 Internal CRM with A/B Testing
• 08:22 \\u2013 \\u201cWe have a marketing technology that allows us to find sites that would be interested in collaborating with us and we have that as a partnership program\\u201d
• • 09:00 \\u2013 It is part-human and part-code
  • 09:36 \\u2013 Semantic search technology
  • 10:06 \\u2013 They write every code in house
• 10:50 \\u2013 They have one of the largest SEM platforms and account in Google
• 11:44 \\u2013 PDF Filler makes money on the first payment of their customers
• 12:20 \\u2013 There are 160 team members divided across Boston
• 12:52 \\u2013 PDF Filler is completely bootstrapped
• 13:14 \\u2013 First year revenue was about $20,000
• 13:36 \\u2013 2015 total revenue is double digit millions
• 13:55 \\u2013 Future plans with the business:
• • 14:17 \\u2013 Doing a lot of partnerships with private and government companies
  • 14:43 \\u2013 PDF Filler is a zero salespeople company
• 15:45 \\u2013 Do you have an appetite for acquisition? Have you done it before?
• • 15:50 \\u2013 Absolutely, but we haven\\u2019t done it before and are in the process of doing that now
  • 16:05 \\u2013 \\u201cLooking for companies that are complimentary to us and we can add value\\u201d
  • 16:40 \\u2013 \\u201cWe would buy a competitor of a part of the business, not the whole business\\u201d
  • 17:28 \\u2013 They are currently looking into mail merge space, CRM space, and signature space
• 17:56 \\u2013 Connect with Boris through his LinkedIn and website
• 20:28 \\u2013 The Famous Five

\\xa0

3 Key Points:

• If you can, strive to have a partnership with BOTH private and government agencies.
• A GREAT marketing technology will create TONS of organic website visits.
• DOING is extremely more important than knowing.

\\xa0

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 the quality of Toptal\\xa0 developers.
• Host Gator\\xa0\\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the 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.
• Assistant.to \\u2013 The site Nathan uses to book meetings with one email.
• Acuity Scheduling \\u2013 Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Drip \\u2013 Nathan uses Drip\\u2019s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel.
• PDFfiller.com \\u2013 Boris\\u2019 business website
• LinkedIn \\u2013 Boris\\u2019 LinkedIn account
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives