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Conor Lee, founder and CEO of HipLead. The company helps leading B2B companies scale their outbound sales with high quality lead generation outbound campaigns. Before founding HipLead, Conor founded several other companies including TellFi which was in the Y Combinator, Winter 2011 batch. Prior to that, he worked as a lobbyist in statewide political campaigns.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013\xa0 Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? \u2013 Zapier
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep? \u2013 No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 Conor wished he had spent more time in tech than in politics

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:30 \u2013 Nathan introduces Conor to the show
• 02:07 \u2013 Conor shares what happened to TellFi
• • 02:58 \u2013 Conor had a co-founder who wanted to keep it going
  • 03:19 \u2013 Conor shares how the exit happened
• 04:10 \u2013 HipLead helps companies scale their outbound sales
• 04:35 \u2013 HipLead\u2019s pricing
• 04:55 \u2013 Current number of customers is 30
• 05:18 \u2013 HipLead was launched in 2013
• 05:30 \u2013 Conor is the solo founder, but he had a co-founder for awhile
• 06:25 \u2013 Conor has the majority of the shares of the company
• 07:35 \u2013 Conor and Nathan discuss cap tables
• 08:00 \u2013 Conor hired a lawyer for his legal documents
• • 08:17 \u2013 Use the startup attorneys
• 08:31 \u2013 HipLead is bootstrapped
• 08:50 \u2013 HipLead\u2019s loan
• 09:20 \u2013 Conor shares why he got the loan
• 10:00 \u2013 Conor shares how the loan works
• • 11:30 \u2013 The type of loan is only for specific companies
  • 12:00 \u2013 The company name that provides the loan is Lighter Capital and it is based in Seattle
• 12:21 \u2013 Annual customer churn: less than 15%
• 12:58 \u2013 CAC
• 13:09 \u2013 Customer\u2019s LTV
• 14:15 \u2013 First year revenue
• 15:40 \u2013 2015 revenue: $900,000
• 15:50 \u2013 Current ARR
• 15:59 \u2013 Conor is also looking into raising capital
• 16:10 \u2013 Team size of 16
• 16:29 \u2013 Team location is in San Francisco and other remote locations
• 18:35 \u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

• We need to be more open about exits\u2014there are times where you just have to pull the plug.
• If you need funds and do not want to share equity, try a bank loan.
• Make sure your legal documents are in order, especially in the case of a split from your co-founder.

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Resources Mentioned:

• 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
• Toptal\xa0\u2013 Nathan found his development team using Toptal 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
• Host Gator\xa0\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible.
• Audible\xa0\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\u2019s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books.
• The Top Inbox\xa0 \u2013 The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Jamf \u2013 Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11\u201d secure even when he left it in the airplane\u2019s back seat pocket
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives