EP 447: $0 to $13M Agency Revenue in 10 Years with RaizLabs CEO Greg Raiz

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

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

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2016

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Greg Raiz, founder of Raizlabs – a technology innovation firm for design custom applications, web platforms and other cutting-edge software. Listen how Greg earned the respect of startups and Fortune500 companies through his business.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Blink
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk

Favorite online tool? — Invision
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? – “Just make sure to stop and smell the roses”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:41 – Nathan introduces Greg to the show
02:10 – What Raizlabs does and how it makes money
- 02:14 – It is a software design company
- 02:21 – Build iphone and android apps
02:45 – Average project size and price
- 03:10 – Raizlabs as a product business service
- 03:22 – Raizlabs helps with the technology side of the business
03:35 – Greg started Raizlabs in 2003
03:47 – Greg was making $ 60-70,000 when he was working with Microsoft
- 03:57 – Greg was 23 when he left Microsoft
04:11 – First year revenue in 2013
- 04:25 – Greg was living off his savings
04:55 – Total revenue in 2015
05:10 – 80 people in team
05:35 – Business has been cash deposited for more than a year
- 05:44 – Margin and business capital
06:09 – “Paying yourself as a CEO has always been a challenge”
- 06:23 – Reasonable salary
- 06:58 – Total annual personal expenses
07:37 – Total savings back then
07:53 – Greg had a day job when he was just starting his company
08:20 – Total monthly headcount expenses on an average
08:55 – Greg uses Basecamp and other tools
- 09:24 – Spending on tools
09:47 – How Greg feels when their client earns more than them
- 10:00 – They did some good stuff for HubSpot
10:25 – Just released an interesting product for The Perkins School for the Blind
- 10:35 – Challenge for micro-navigation
- 10:50 – How to get people to the bus stop
- 11:10 – Launched earlier this week
11:30 – RunKeeper as a client
- 11:37 – Fitness mapping idea
- 12:10 – Design development of the product with the iphone GPS
- 12:40 – Success to take in-house
13:04 – Equity with the companies
13:25 – How much RunKeeper pays Greg
- 13:40 – Charged 15K early on
14:20 – Exploring apps that can help the employees betterment
- 14:41- Methodology on how to facilitate feedback
14:48 – Product exploration and incubation
15:05 – Connect with Greg on his website and Twitter
16:40 - The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

As an entrepreneur, you have to manage your stability and your company’s.
It is not about how much other companies earn – it is about how you become a part of their success.
You can never turn back time – pause and enjoy the beauty of the present.

Resources Mentioned:

Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to quality of Toptal developers.
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.
@graiz – Greg’s Twitter handle
Raizlabs.com – Greg’s business website
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Transcript

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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.
0:09.0	You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.
0:16.0	I'm now at $20,000 per talk.
0:18.0	Five and six million.
0:19.0	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.
0:28.2	Okay, Top Tribe.
0:29.3	This week's winner of the 100 bucks is Rhett Gillens.
0:33.2	He's in the restaurant industry and he feels stuck.
0:36.1	He wants to start his own software business.
0:37.8	So congratulations, Rhett, for your guys' chance to win 100 bucks every Monday morning.
0:43.2	Simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now in order to enter and then text the word
0:47.8	Nathan to 3344 to prove that you subscribed.
0:53.0	Folks, many of you heard I made a big league acquisition of a business.
0:56.7	Nathanlaka.com forward slash send later is the name of the business.
1:00.6	And I didn't want to give up equity to a developer because I'm a business guy.
1:04.0	So what I did is I used a website to find a guy named Hee Shaming.
1:08.7	I paid He over $12,000 to help me build send later and the
1:13.3	site that i am using now is called topitol at nathanlaka dot com forward slash t o p t a l i will build
1:20.7	send later into a big business and i will take it public by the time i turn 30 i'll tell you more
1:25.5	later on in the episode nathan lakka here coming up tomorrow morning, you're going to hear from Peter, who
	...

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