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Anand Kulkarni, co-founder of LeadGenius. Anand left his job as a researcher and teacher at Berkeley to develop a tool that uses automation technology to find effective sales leads. Listen as Nathan and Anand talk over starting an SaaS business and exactly how to run an effective fundraising round.

Famous 5
Favorite Book? \\u2013 Only The Paranoid Survive
What CEO do you follow? \\u2014 Elon Musk
What is your favorite online tool? \\u2014 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? \\u2014I wish I had known how much fun it is to start a company - I would have started sooner!
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:22 \\u2013 Nathan\\u2019s introduction
01:54 \\u2013 Welcoming Anand to the show
02:10 \\u2013 LeadGenius is AI for sales - \\u2018top of the funnel automation\\u2019
02:45 \\u2013 One client is using it to map out every IT director in every Brazilian telecom company, and obtain their contact details
03:30 \\u2013 Charges between $2k and $1 million a month
03:50 \\u2013 Started in 2011
03:55 \\u2013 Total revenue in 2015 was $8 million
04:20 \\u2013 Worked with 200 customers in February 2015
04:37 \\u2013 Annual revenue of $40k per user
05:00 \\u2013 LTV to CAC ratio of about 10
06:00 \\u2013 Spending about $15k to acquire a customer
06:30 \\u2013 Some salary costs associated with accessing certain kinds of data
07:30 \\u2013 Currently have net negative churn
07:40 \\u2013 That means that growth from existing accounts offsets any loss of customers
08:45 \\u2013 About to release a new email product
09:05 \\u2013 Total MRR in February was about $700k
09:30 \\u2013 50 team members locally, plus 500 outsourced
10:00 \\u2013 Raised $8 million total; the last round was a series A of $6 million
11:10 \\u2013 How do you make the decision about when to raise another round?
12:50 \\u2013 Pre-money valuation in the last round was in the tens of millions
13:35 \\u2013 \\u2018A good partner pays for themselves\\u2019 - think about partners, not valuation
15:34 \\u2013 Connect with Anand on twitter
18:00 \\u2013 Famous Five

3 Key Points:
If you\\u2019re deciding whether to run an investment round, look hard at the milestones for your business. Is investment right now going to make significant progress toward those goals?
Don\\u2019t just look at valuations when you\\u2019re choosing partners. They should bring something significant to the business beyond investment
Whatever you\\u2019re planning to do, or dreaming you can do: start. It\\u2019ll be fun.

Resources Mentioned:
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Host Gator \\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Leadpages \\u2013 The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
Audible \\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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