Rickard Carlsson. He’s the CEO of Detectify, a Stockholm-based security startup selected as one of Sweden’s super talents, in 2015, by the Swedish business publication, Veckans Affärer. He has lived and worked in Sweden, USA and India and holds an MSc of applied physics and electrical engineering.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Home Improvement Books
• What CEO do you follow? – N/A 
• Favorite online tool? — Google Calendar
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Know more about how to build a great team”

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:43 – Nathan introduces Rickard to the show
• 01:35 – Detectify integrates security testing into the development workflow
• • 01:49 – Detectify makes sure that the safety testing is brought to development
• 02:08 – Pipedrive uses Detectify as a part of their security
• • 02:25 – Security is important for Pipedrive so they use Detectify to automate a large part of their security detecting
• 02:54 – Average pay per customer is €80
• 03:10 – Detectify was launched in 2014
• 03:50 – Rickard’s co-founders who worked for the biggest tech companies had the idea of Detectify
• 04:44 – Rickard met his co-founders at his previous job and they were Angel investors to Detectify
• 04:58 – Rickard was a business consultant for McKinsey
• 05:54 – Rickard started a startup to learn new things
• 06:21 – Detectify has 4 founders and the split is not the usual 25% each
• 06:41 – Detectify has now raised €2.5M
• 06:49 – The last round was a priced equity round
• 07:13 – Rickard does everything except coding including sales
• 07:42 – Detectify managed to get 1-2 important Angels on board
• 08:09 – Detectify is currently serving 350 customers
• 08:20 – Majority of the customers are the long-paying customers
• 08:45 – There’s an increasing number of larger customers
• 08:55 – MRR is around $30K
• 09:10 – Nathan has released interview videos on Youtube
• 09:45 – Team size is around 25
• • 10:09 – Salaries in Europe are much smaller than in the USA
  • 10:18 – 2/3 of the team are full-time engineers
• 11:17 – Gross customer churn
• 11:26 – Detectify has no paid acquisition
• 11:30 – Detectify has 2 outbound sales people who just started
• 12:00 – The team is based in Sweden
• 12:17 – LTV
• 12:47 – Detectify has a few enterprise customers
• • 13:00 – Deals are usually a year contract with an upfront payment
• 13:25 – Rickard won’t disclose what the salespeople get for every $10K deal they close
• 15:36 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

• An eagerness to learn new things is a great motivator to start one’s own business.
• Security is simply a necessity.
• Having different brackets of customers allows for more growth.

 

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible – 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