1428 Bootstrapped and $12m in ARR. My kinda CEO!

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

Ceo, Entrepreneurs, Founders, Software, Business, Entrepreneurship, Saas, Startups

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2019

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Israel is Founder & CEO of Customerville (https://www.customerville.com/)

🕒 Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 – Nathan's introduction to today's show

0:30 – Why Max founded the company 15 years ago to scratch his own itch

1:30 – How he grew the business without venture capital

2:20 – Why they made the decision to pivot eight years ago

3:05 – How the average customer pays them $250k annually

4:05 – Why they decided to maintain bootstrapped

4:30 – How they funded the business with a small retail chain

5:30 – Why they serve more than 50 customers globally

6:00 – How they are doing around $1M in MRR right now

7:30 – Why they are growing 50%+ year over year

8:50 – How they've kept gross logo churn below 10% annually

10:00 – Why they are focusing on driving expansion revenue with new features going forward

10:15 – How their team has grown to around 40 full-time employees

10:45 – Why they spent up to $400k on Google AdWords in the past

12:10 – How they are evaluating new plans for growing their sales team

13:00 – Why they aren't in acquisition talks right now

14:00 – The Famous Five

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	My new book, How to Be a Capitalist, without any capital is out. You can get it at
0:04.9	Capitalistbook.com. Here's what Nicholas said on March 6th on Amazon. Incredibly incisive,
0:11.2	useful, and sensible. The author is not greedy and is in fact extremely generous and does
0:15.8	not hold back on the knowledge he imparts. I've barely made it halfway to the book,
0:19.8	and I'm already gushing over the book
0:21.3	because it's an absolute gem.
0:23.1	Nathan gets to the point, quick, shows proof,
0:25.4	and best of all,
0:26.3	shows you not just what to do,
0:27.4	but how to do it in explicit detail.
0:29.7	To say the book is actionable,
0:31.2	is an understatement.
0:32.8	Now, you guys, I listen to the podcast,
0:34.1	know I'm detail-oriented, so that review might not surprise you, but I hope you
0:37.5	grab the book. It's now a Wall Street Journal, instant national bestseller. Grab it at capitalist
0:42.7	book.com. Audible version is available, too. Launched company back about 15 years ago in 2003,
0:49.0	retail chains, you know, didn't pay himself for three or four years into that, then finally started taking a check before they pivoted in 2000.
0:55.1	It was about eight years ago. It was about 2010. For about two years, they kind of founder they were building.
0:58.9	Then they scaled really quickly for about, call it two, three years.
1:01.9	Stayed bootstrap. Today, they're serving over 50 enterprise clients, helping them do much better experience- driven surveying past a million bucks a month that's up 100% a year
1:11.9	over year or between 15% year over a year so healthy growth less than 10% revenue turn per year they've
1:17.3	got a team of 40 people based between Seattle and Spain looking to scale especially in the sales
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nathan Latka, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Nathan Latka and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.