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Glen Coates. He\u2019s the co-founder and CEO of Handshake. It focuses on putting the right product on every shelf in every store. He goes between Sydney, San Diego and New York City.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013 Dave Yarnold
• Favorite online tool? \u2014 Boomerang for Gmail
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?\u2014 Yes
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 Glen wished he knew how intense running this company was going to be and to spend a lot more time making music and going surfing.

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:37 \u2013 Nathan introduces Glen to the show
• 02:15 \u2013 Handshake is about getting the right product on every shelf, in the world
• • 03:30 \u2013 Handshake brings the Amazon-like buying and selling platform to businesses
  • 03:55 \u2013 Handshake Rep is the mobile app used by sales reps who work for the brand
  • 04:21 \u2013 Handshake Direct is the mobile and web-based ecommerce for B2B
• 05:00 \u2013 Handshake is a SaaS business and they sell to manufacturers and distributors
• 05:10 \u2013 Handshake\u2019s customers are the manufacturers, distributors, and their customers who log into Handshake
• 05:22 \u2013 Handshake has a similar model to Salesforce
• 05:40 \u2013 Glen started working with Handshake in 2010 and got their first customer in 2011
• 05:51 \u2013 First year revenue
• 06:16 \u2013 Average number of customers at the moment
• 06:51 \u2013 The pricing model is per seat per year for Handshake Rep, Handshake Direct is made-to-order
• 07:37 \u2013 Average customer pay per month
• 08:24 \u2013 December 2016: total average revenue range
• 09:35 \u2013 Handshake used to have monthly contracts
• • 09:59 \u2013 Most of the contracts now are annual contracts
• 10:07 \u2013 Total capital raised is around $24M inclusive of Series B
• • 10:29 \u2013 Series B closed in February 2016
• 10:40 \u2013 Handshake isn\u2019t in any acquisition talk
• 12:03 \u2013 What Glen and his team is building is grand in scale and requires a lot of hard work
• 12:44 \u2013 Team size and location
• • 13:05 \u2013 Glen shares the number of people per team
• 14:10 \u2013 LTV
• • 14:15 \u2013 \u201cI don\u2019t think much about lifetime value\u201d
  • 16:51 \u2013 \u201cI care about delivering 100% growth with a better payback period than I care about delivering 200% growth with like a terrible payback period\u201d
  • 17:05 \u2013 Handshake growth is 100% annual
• 17:30 \u2013 Glen shares the flagged payback period in VC communities
• 18:48 \u2013 Glen is currently burning close to $500K a month
• 18:56 \u2013 Glen thinks that it should take at least 6 months before having to raise again
• 19:50 \u2013 Glen usually raises for a couple of years and each time he raises gives them 2 years of runway
• 20:15 \u2013 Gross annual customer churn
• • 20:30 \u2013 Churn has come down when they shifted their market
  • 21:25 \u2013 Glen shares what they did to combat high monthly churn
  • 22:38 \u2013 Handshake always has a negative revenue churn
• 23:30 \u2013 Glen wouldn\u2019t sell Handshake for Nathan\u2019s sample offer
• 25:10 \u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

• It\u2019s difficult to create a SaaS that is web-based and mobile-based \u2013 it takes hard work.
• Delivering 100% growth with a better payback period is better than delivering 200% growth with a terrible payback period.
• Raising usually takes 6 months and it is the CEO\u2019s responsibility to decide how he can leverage each raise.

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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