Anh Vu, the founder and CEO of Avocode - a tool to connect front-end designers and back-end developers and make fantastic collaboration simple. Anh’s background is in design, but he’s building a SaaS business with negative churn and great profits by being totally on top of his numbers.

 

Famous 5:

 

• Favorite Business Book? – The Startup Playbook
• What CEO do you follow? — Hiten Shah
• Favorite online tool? — Chart Mogul

• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? —Measure everything, be really data driven, and focus on retention

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:13 – Nathan’s introduction
• 01:50 – Avocode makes it easy for front-end designers to share information with back-end developers
• 02:50 – The designer uploads the design into Avocode, where all the team can access it, leave notes, and make revisions. Then the developer can access all the design assets through Avocode
• 03:25 – As of May 2016,  $50k MRR
• 03:57 – Launched in February 2015
• 03:54 – $250k annual revenue in 2015
• 04:20 – Currently working with the 500 Startups accelerator
• 04:53 – 2800 customers on one of two plans
• 06:00 –  Average revenue per customer is $27
• 06:40  – Some users were on boarded in a pre-order process and pay less than average
• 07:17 – User churn is 7% monthly
• 07:28 – Net revenue churn is -1%
• 07:50 – Some users stay and purchase more and more seats - so revenue churn is negative
• 08:40 – Upselling more seats to your current customer base is a KEY SaaS strategy
• 09:23 – There are 14 people in An’s team, based in the Czech Republic
• 09:43 – Monthly expenses are $35k
• 10:10 – They’re profitable
• 11:20 – Currently spending nothing on customer acquisition
• 12:01 – The average business-plan customer stays for 18 months
• 13:12 – Most of the customer base is startups and enterprise businesses
• 14:00 – Growing at 15% month over month
• 14:18 – Planning to start their first capital raise in August 2016
• 15:20 – Discussing partnerships with companies like Adobe and Sketch
• 16:07 – Follow Anh on Twitter

• 18:45 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

• Upsell your current customer base
• Plan partnerships and exit strategies - early
• Measure everything

Resources Mentioned:

• Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
• Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
• Leadpages  – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
• 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