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Russ Heddleston. He\u2019s the CEO and co-founder of DocSend. Previously, he was a product manager for Facebook. He arrived at the B2B acquisition of the product Pursuit.com. Russ also had roles in Dropbox, Greystripe and Trulia. He received a BS in Computer Engineering and MS Computer Science at Stanford along with an MBA from Harvard.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 Good to Great
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013\xa0 Keith Krach
• Favorite online tool? \u2014 Gmail and Slack
• 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 \u201cDo things well and be patient with them\u2014and then, they will turn out well later\u201d

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:33 \u2013 Nathan introduces Russ to the show
• 02:03 \u2013 Pursuit was a human resources to management referral program for employees
• 02:22 \u2013 Russ shopped their company to Facebook
• • 02:38 \u2013 Russ explains why they made this decision
• 03:38 \u2013 Russ was the product manager for Facebook\u2019s pages team
• 03:55 \u2013 Russ worked both for the brands and personalities
• 04:15 \u2013 DocSend was launched in 2013
• • 04:24 \u2013 DocSend\u2019s first version was made in 2010
• 05:18 \u2013 First year revenue was zero
• • 05:27 \u2013 \u201cWe were focused on growth\u201d
• 05:50 \u2013 DocSend was doing something of very high value; not necessarily for a broad user base
• 06:40 \u2013 DocSend has been approached by a hedge fund
• 06:59 \u2013 Most salespeople are using DocSend long term
• 07:37 \u2013 Average customer pay per month
• 08:42 \u2013 Most deals of DocSend are outbound deals
• 09:00 \u2013 Average enterprise prices:
• • 09:24 \u2013 The price varies from $50-90 per month
  • 09:40 \u2013 Outbound target for a team of 30 and above
  • 10:10 \u2013 Average contract value depends on the size of the company
• 10:30 \u2013 Team size is 25 with 6 sales people
• 10:42 \u2013 Team location is San Francisco with 1 in New York
• 11:08 \u2013 Pricing plan was introduced a year after DocSend launched
• 11:35 \u2013 The current number of DocSend\u2019s paying companies
• • 11:48 \u2013 There\u2019s a mix of logo and seat count
  • 12:04 \u2013 Average seats per company
• 12:45 \u2013 Total number of users under paid plan
• 13:03 \u2013 DocSend has raised capital for $10M in VC and $1M in venture debt
• 14:03 \u2013 Venture debt was done post-series seed
• 15:00 \u2013 Average MRR
• • 16:16 \u2013 Possible minimum average MRR
• 17:00 \u2013 Russ shares the difference of inbound self-serve and outbound
• • 17:25 \u2013 Russ gets excited with outbound
• 18:25 \u2013 Gross monthly customer churn
• • 19:01 \u2013 The churn for self-serve is quite high, but not for outbound
  • 19:45 \u2013 Net negative churn
• 20:12 \u2013 The expansion would benefit the team
• 20:38 \u2013 As the company gets bigger, the more they need DocSend
• 20:48 \u2013 DocSend closed their last financing last year
• 21:00 \u2013 DocSend doesn\u2019t need to raise capital at the moment
• • 21:25 \u2013 \u201cWe don\u2019t need to get acquired\u201d
• 23:00 \u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

• Focusing on growth rather than revenue is never bad thing.
• Improve your product until you are no longer expendable to your customers.
• Do things well and be patient with them\u2014in time, they will turn out for the better.

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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