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Nick Caruso. He\\u2019s the CEO and founder of Illumineto. He\\u2019s the VP of Sales in Eastern US & Canada with Notable Solutions and he was there for 6 years. Before that, he was at Kofax as a federal sales manager and he also served the country in the Marine Corps as a Captain.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \\u2013 Built to Last
• What CEO do you follow? \\u2013\\xa0 Drew Houston
• Favorite online tool? \\u2014 API.ai
• 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 Nick wished he knew that starting a company was not as hard as he thought it would be and wished he\\u2019d started earlier

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:06 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Nick to the show
• 01:45 \\u2013 Illumineto is a SaaS company and they charge monthly
• 02:00 \\u2013 Nick has been in the technology field for 20 years and in sales for 15 years
• 02:15 \\u2013 Nick wasn\\u2019t able to find a tool to help him close more deals
• 02:34 \\u2013 Illumineto focuses on the individual sales rep and not the whole company
• 02:58 \\u2013 Illumineto has a lot of sales reps from Fortune 500 companies
• 03:14 \\u2013 Illumineto has been running for 6 months now
• 03:48 \\u2013 Illumineto currently has a thousand of sign ups or users that represent several hundreds of logos
• 04:25 \\u2013 Illumineto was founded in mid 2015
• • 04:30 \\u2013 Beta in 2016
• 04:50 \\u2013 Nick has sunk in $700K before starting
• 05:00 \\u2013 Illumineto had an Angel round
• 05:23 \\u2013 Illumineto has 3 co-founders
• • 05:32 \\u2013 All of them had successful exits in different companies
  • 05:55 \\u2013 There are 5 Angel investors
• 06:15 \\u2013 Current team size is 4
• 06:50 \\u2013 Average pay per user per month is $30
• 07:00 \\u2013 Average MRR
• • 08:00 \\u2013 Nick won\\u2019t disclose the amount, but Illumineto is profitable
• 09:00 \\u2013 Nathan explains why he asks for numbers
• 10:15 \\u2013 Illumineto has more than 100 paying customers
• 10:30 \\u2013 Gross customer churn
• • 10:52 \\u2013 0% churn rate on paying customers
• 11:31 \\u2013 Illumineto had paid advertising
• • 12:07 \\u2013 They had thousands of people coming in for the premium model
• 12:50 \\u2013 Illumineto leverages their connections in LinkedIn to get their customers from IBM
• 13:11 \\u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

• It is possible for a startup to be profitable in as early as 6 months.
• Leveraging your connections can help you engage with customers and increase sales.
• Start your business as soon as you can, you\\u2019ll learn as you go.

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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
• Freshbooks \\u2013 Nathan doesn\\u2019t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives