Mikita Mikado. He’s the CEO of PandaDoc, a company founded to accelerate the way organizations transact. He’s an entrepreneur, engineer, and executive focused on creating self-sustaining companies.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Pitch Anything
• What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella
• 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? – Mikita would tell himself that he doesn’t have to focus on making so much money and just focus on learning as much as he can

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:24 – Nathan introduces Mikita to the show
• 02:03 – Jared Fuller was in episode 193 of The Top and is still part of PandaDoc
• 02:25 – PandaDoc helps organizations the way they transact
  • 02:39 – all kinds of transactions
• 02:52 – PandaDoc focuses on deals that have substantial value and paperwork
• 03:06 – PandaDoc can build proposals, quotes, contracts and close deals in a digital fashion
• 03:30 – PandaDoc’s RPU has increased since last year
• 03:56 – Annual deals
  • 04:10 – Average customer pay
• 05:10 – PandaDoc gets most of their customers from word of mouth
  • 05:32 – Using SEO to expand operations
• 06:15 – PandaDoc gives their small customers templates that they can use in their deals
• 06:58 – The marketing team finds keywords that are most popular and relevant to them
  • 07:20 – They use Moz and other tools to find keyword
• 07:59 – PandaDoc isn’t built on top of PDF
• 08:03 – The templates from PandaDoc are in HTML and not PDF
• 08:41 – QuoteRoller was the first product that was launched in 2011
  • 08:56 – Pivot to PandaDoc at the end of 2015
• 09:06 – Team size is now 106
• 09:23 – The last year total raised was $4.5M in cash and $2M in debt
  • 09:41 – Currently, debt has been paid
  • 09:50 – Total amount raised is $19.5M
• 10:17 – PandaDoc has more than 7K customers
  • 10:30 – 2 different cohorts of customers
  • 10:55 – PandaDoc has a legacy product and a new product
• 11:22 – Gross churn is satisfactory
  • 11:50 – From last year’s revenue churn, it was 9%
  • 13:21 – Some inbound marketers use PandaDoc to close a deal then will stop using it
  • 13:50 – 5% monthly logo churn is high for Mikita
• 14:38 – PandaDoc has around 100 team members and 2 are focused on target customers
• 15:13 – CAC and LTV varies
• 16:00 – Mikita is trying to get under 12 months of payback period
• 16:29 – Fully weighted CAC can be $1200
  • 16:48 – How Mikita assumes CAC
• 18:47 – The industry’s rule of thumb for payback period is 1.13 of ACV or 14 month payback period
• 19:05 – PandaDoc has channels with a payback period of 6 months and 2 years
• 19:29 – PandaDoc has an outbound sales team that is their delta force
  • 19:54 – The outbound sales team finds the industries that PandaDoc should target
  • 21:05 – Paid spend total is under quarter of a million
  • 21:19 – PandaDoc is closed to hit a million in MRR
    • 22:08 – “We want to make an impact”
    • 22:22 – This is a horizontal product
  • 23:47 – PandaDoc focuses on workflow and the actual collaboration on the workflow
    • 23:58 – “We want to system of records for deals or transaction”
  • 24:05 – PandaDoc isn’t going to the CRM space
    • 24:18 – Mikita has been in the CRM space before
    • 24:43 – One of the challenges of CRM now is the emergence of AI
  • 27:12 – Mikita’s consideration on price of acquisition
  • 30:20 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

1. Create a product that can serve a different market and fill the gap that the others haven’t seen.
2. Let your goals guide you, but also keep in mind that having a business means being responsible for your employees.
3. Multiple revenue cohorts will lead you to multiple marketing and sales strategies.

 

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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• 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