Seymour Duncker. He’s the co-founder and CEO of a company called iCharts, the leader in cloud business intelligence and analytics and a seasoned entrepreneur who has been both a consumer and developer of visual analytics. Before founding iCharts, Seymour assisted SAP’s senior management in driving the company’s product strategy and was an early team member at 2 enterprise software startups before that.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Inevitable
• What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
• Favorite online tool? — NetSuite and Salesforce
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Spend a little more time outdoors”

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:26 – Nathan introduces Seymour to the show
• 03:12 – iCharts is a cloud-based business and intelligence analytics solution platform
• 03:24 – iCharts is a SaaS model
• 03:36 – iCharts partners with NetSuite which is a cloud-based EOP
  • 03:48 – NetSuite uses iCharts as an embed BI (Business Intelligence) engine that powers iCharts for NetSuite’s customers
  • 04:05 – iCharts is like an app inside NetSuite
• 04:55 – iCharts can take any kind of data and visually represent it so that people can interact and analyze the data
• 05:16 – The analogy of iCharts is like the car's’ navigation system which is separated from the car’s build
• 05:55 – iCharts considers SaaS businesses as an ecosystem and NetSuite is a large ecosystem
• 06:05 – iCharts has a mixed business model
• 06:24 – iCharts is also looking into exclusive partnerships with a SaaS platform to distribute iCharts
• 06:55 – Pricing starts at $15K per annum depending on the number of users on a platform
• 07:54 – Seymour arrived in the USA, in 2010
• 08:10 – Seymour is from Germany
• 08:50 – When Seymour had an idea for a cloud-based business intelligence platform, he was thinking about where to build it
• 09:27 – Back then, it was easier to sell in the USA than in Germany
• 10:10 – Being in California was also a great idea for Seymour’s wife, so they built iCharts in the USA
• 10:37 – Team size is 60
  • 10:56 – Sales team has 20 people
• 11:35 – The majority of iCharts’ market
• 11:49 – iCharts will know the pain points of the users of NetSuite
• 12:53 – iCharts will already have an idea of the customer’s needs
• 13:45 – iCharts has around 200 customers
• 14:04 – iCharts started focusing on various markets
• 14:25 – iCharts has raised $23M to date but they were initially bootstrapped
• 15:07 – Churn is around 5-7%
• 16:20 – CAC
• 16:32 – iCharts is highly profitable from the initial time they closed a deal
• 17:04 – There’s an advantage of growing faster and burning yourself as you grow too fast
• 17:44 – At the end of the day, it’s all about having a high-functioning team that produces quality
• 18:04 – Average ARR
• 18:21 – iCharts also offers additional services for their larger customers
• 20:13 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

1. Build your business wherever you’d like to—even if it means leaving your home country.
2. Having a well-functioning team that produces QUALITY will drive your revenue and contribute to the success of your business.
3. Make time for rest and vacations; this will relax and regenerate you.

 

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