803: SaaS: Email He Used To Get From $0 to $10k MRR

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

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

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2017

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Spencer Coon. He’s the co-founder of HiBox.co and Joincube. He has over 5 years of experience in enterprise collaboration software and 7 years working internationally. He has managed teams across 3 continents and 5 countries. Previously, he was in investment banking at JP Morgan in New York City.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Black Swan
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? — Intercom
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? – Spencer wished he knew that technology was going to be more of his passion

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:50 – Nathan introduces Spencer to the show
02:20 – HiBox is a collaboration app for teams
- 02:31 – It has an artificial intelligence to bring everything together and enhance productivity
03:19 – HiBox is a SaaS model with a 14-day free trial
- 03:30 – It has 3 different versions, including a pro version and an enterprise version
03:57 – ARPU is $32 a month
- 04:03 – An average account has 7-8 people
04:55 – Spencer wanted to have his own product, so he left JP Morgan
- 05:13 – He wanted to create something tangible and has been passionate about Latin America
05:39 – Spencer started HiBox in Buenos Aires
- 05:46 – It’s less competitive to start a business in Latin America with talented people and their rates are more competitive
06:16 – There are 5 people on the tech team and 15 people in total
- 06:28 – Most of the team is in Barcelona
06:36 – Spencer left JP Morgan in 2012 and went to another company where he met his now business partner
07:28 – First year revenue was less than $10K
07:43 – HiBox is Spencer’s first baby as an entrepreneur
08:00 – Spencer used up his savings to start HiBox
08:41 – HiBox has raised some seed rounds
- 08:54 – It was more difficult to access VC funds in the USA because HiBox is based in Latin America
- 09:16 – They had 2 priced rounds with a total of $500K funds raised
- 10:00 – Spencer is still in the middle of negotiations for their next round
10:20 – Over 10K companies have signed up to HiBox and there are 35K active users
10:38 – HiBox is their main focus at the moment
10:42 – Joincube is an enterprise social network focused on multi-national companies in Latin America
11:13 – There are 300 companies paying for HiBox
11:30 – MRR is around $10K for the pro version
11:54 – Last month’s revenue
13:05 – Joincube will become HiBox corporate
13:34 – Gross monthly churn is 6.2%
15:10 – Spencer shares why their product would still be beneficial for their clients after the upgrade
- 15:46 – It’s almost similar to Intercom, but better
16:00 – CAC is $233
- 16:10 – Most are used for online ads
- 16:26 – It is a fully weighted CAC
- 16:38 – $3K was spent on paid advertising last month
16:57 – Spencer is hoping that the business will be profitable at the outset
- 17:32 – They’re doing as many tests as they can
18:05 – ARR target by the end of 2017
19:00 – Weirdest thing we ever did to acquire clients was tell them I lost a bet and would give them a 50% discount forever
20:00 – Gross margin
20:48 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

It’s never too late to start your entrepreneurial journey.
Starting your business in a country with less competition is a cost-efficient and wise decision.
An upgrade should NOT affect customer loyalty and their experience with your product.

Resources Mentioned:

Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
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

Transcript

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0:00.0	founder of highbox quit investment banking and the banking sector in general for highbox and
0:04.5	his other company join cube they're bringing the two together with the goal of hitting 50 million
0:08.6	sorry 50 thousand dollars in monthly recurring revenue by the end of the year currently
0:12.4	highbox is doing about 10 grand per month serving 300 customers of different team sizes each
0:16.8	paying about 32 bucks per month helping them with, on-demand video conferencing,
0:21.8	among other things.
0:23.0	A new product coming out called Beamer, which will help folks understand change logs
0:26.1	and ideally help current users understand what's being changed and how they can access
0:29.8	and use new products.
0:30.8	They've raised $1 million distributed team across Buenos Aires, Austin, and Barcelona.
0:37.2	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.
0:46.6	You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.
0:53.2	I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell
0:56.9	bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000 unit sold mark. And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.
1:04.4	Many of you listening right now don't have time to listen to every B2B SaaS CEO that I've interviewed.
1:09.6	If you want to get access to the database I've
1:11.2	created with year-over-year growth rates, customer accounts, margins, and many, many other
1:15.2	data metrics and data points, you can go to g-et-l-a-tK-A.com. Here's the thing, though,
1:21.6	this database, I keep it to myself. It's so freaking valuable. And to preserve the quality of the data and make sure that
1:28.6	the people that have access to it have a true advantage, I'm only letting 10 companies on each
1:33.0	month. So we're full this month, but you can go to gitlatka.com to get on the waiting list for
1:37.1	next month. And look, there's big people on the waiting list. I mean, the biggest vCs you've
	...

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