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SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

699: The Fired ConvertKit Co-Founder You've Never Heard Of, Father Made Me Feel "Not Worth Enough"

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

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

4.6683 Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dan Gamito. He now leads partnerships and B&D for a company called ManyChat. Formerly, he led the customer success team for ConvertKit.

Famous Five:

  • Favorite Book? – N/A
  • What CEO do you follow? – Des Traynor
  • Favorite online tool? — Calendly
  • How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
  • If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Just chill out”

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

  • 00:47 – Nathan introduces Dan to the show
  • 01:16 – ManyChat is marketing automation platform for Facebook Messenger
  • 01:28 – ManyChat is a SaaS business
  • 01:38 – Nathan uses ManyChat and struggles with the emotional factor
  • 02:11 – Users struggle with emotion because of the automation side of ManyChat
  • 02:14 – Think about how people use messenger
  • 02:29 – Dan suggests in keeping your messages informal, straight to the point and write what people would find valuable in EVERY sentence
  • 02:49 – People are now shifting to Messenger from email marketing
  • 02:57 – Messenger is different from email
  • 03:05 – Nathan shares how he struggles figuring out what messages to set
  • 03:54 – How can people use ManyChat in a simple way?
    • 04:04 – Dan challenges us to look at our phones and see who we want to talk to at that moment
    • 04:17 – Build the interactions up from the bottom
    • 04:19 – The goal is to make people want to have a live chat conversation with you
  • 04:51 – ManyChat can be part of your funnel
  • 05:49 – ManyChat has a partnership with Sean of Soul Space Media
    • 06:04 – Sean’s wife had a case study of ManyChat on their podcast
    • 06:10 – DigitalMarketer did a case study, as well
  • 07:05 – For 0-500 subscribers, pricing is $10
  • 07:18 – Average customer pay
  • 07:51 – ManyChat has been around for about a year and a half
  • 08:38 – ManyChat has raised a seed round from 500 Startups
  • 09:02 – ManyChat has raised around a million
  • 09:19 – ManyChat has over 40K bots
  • 10:26 – Dan on leaving ConvertKit
    • 10:33 – Dan was Nathan’s first hire at ConvertKit
    • 10:45 – Dan did everything to add value to the company, more specifically in customer success
    • 10:56 – Dan has launched his own software product prior to ConvertKit
    • 11:27 – Dan saw Nathan trying to compete with Infusionsoft
    • 11:41 – Dan was like a silent co-founder
    • 12:12 – Dan ended up not being a good fit for ConvertKit
    • 12:54 – Both Dan and Nathan are both headstrong and their communication broke down
    • 13:16 – Nathan terminated Dan on short notice
    • 13:50 – Dan was naïve and inexperienced during that time
    • 14:19 – “I walked in completely unprepared”
    • 15:01 – Nathan gave an offer to Dan
    • 15:30 – Nathan explains how equity works in startups
    • 16:16 – Dan thought he didn’t value himself very much
    • 19:10 – Dan is now almost 30
  • 19:31 – Dan was pursued by ManyChat’s CEO Mike
    • 19:55 – “He believed in me”
    • 20:13 – Dan approached ManyChat with what he could add to it and the structure that he could build 
    • 20:21 – Dan knew he could do it by heart
  • 20:36 – Team size is over 15
  • 20:49 – Dan still has no equity
  • 21:03 – Dan joined ManyChat in November of 2016
  • 22:38 – “Time-boxing things and putting expectations around things is never going to work”
  • 24:00 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

  • In new work opportunities, know your contract by heart.
  • Know your worth—don’t undervalue yourself.
  • Automation can sacrifice the emotional and interpersonal interaction with your customers.

 

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

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is the top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base.

0:09.4

You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.

0:16.1

I'm now at $20,000 per talk.

0:18.3

Five and six million.

0:19.3

He is hell bent on global domination. We just broke our $100,000 unit sold mark Five and six million. He is hell bent on global domination.

0:21.2

We just broke our 100,000 unit soul mark.

0:23.9

And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.

0:27.1

Hello, everybody.

0:28.0

This is episode 699, and like every morning, it is a new one for you.

0:32.6

Be sure to tune in tomorrow morning when I talk to Connor Gillivan.

0:35.9

He has three million projects completed. It's

0:39.3

kind of like upwork and top talent freelancer. The big question is, will he beat them?

0:44.1

Tune in tomorrow and see his answer. I asked him straight up. Good morning, everybody. My guest

0:48.1

this morning is Dan Gamito. He is the product marketing manager and customer success leader based

0:53.1

at a Portland, Oregon for a company called ManyChat.

0:56.0

Or sorry, he now leads partnerships and BD at ManyChat.

0:59.0

Formerly, he led the customer success team at a company called ConvertKit.

1:04.0

Dan, are you ready to take us to the top?

1:05.8

I am ready.

1:06.7

So ManyChat is obviously playing in the automated kind of bot space.

1:10.1

Tell us what it does in a sentence and what's your revenue model.

1:12.3

How do you make money?

...

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