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SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

EP 516: SalesHacker $2.5m 2015 Revenue Helping Sales Reps Get Smarter with CEO Max Altshculer

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

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

4.6683 Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2016

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Altschuler, CEO of Sales Hacker – a rapidly growing media company focused on the future of B2B sales. Max wrote the book Hacking Sales: The Playbook for Building a High Velocity Sales Machine which was recently published by Wiley. Aside from sales hack and angel investors, Max advises startups all around the globe.

Famous Five:

  • Favorite Book? – The 48 Laws of Power
  • What CEO do you follow? – N/A
  • Favorite online tool? — Boomerang
  • Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
  • If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Max wished he could have studied Psychology a bit more

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

  • 01:40 – Nathan introduces Max to the show
  • 02:07 – Sales Hacker is a media company ushering the future of sales
    • 02:35 – Sales Hacker does crowdsourcing of content on their blog and holds conferences throughout the year
    • 03:12 – The conferences are Sales Hacker’s main revenue stream
  • 03:20 – Sales Hacker’s last conference was in June 2016
    • 04:09 – The sponsored revenue for the last conference was $1.2 M
    • 04:14 – Ticket sales was $300-400K
    • 04:22 – Average ticket price was $400-500
    • 04:28 – Total attendees
  • 04:41 – The cost per conference is less than $1M
  • 04:53 – Max shares how they manage the cost of the conference
  • 05:51 – You need to find venue sponsorship
  • 05:57 – Max helps clients with bigger conferences like Pulse
  • 07:00 – Sales Hacker finds out which businesses are interested in the conference
  • 07:33 – Have prospective sponsors sign up and pay early
  • 09:15 – Sales Hacker’s average revenue per event depends on the event
  • 10:54 – Sales Hacker takes a percentage from the total profit of SaaSters
  • 11:30 – 2015 total revenue is $2.5M
  • 11:45 – Team size
  • 12:04 – Max shares why he didn’t build a SaaS business
  • 12:59 – Sales Hacker’s list size
  • 13:55 – Max’s goal for a VC round
  • 14:07 – Max is from Udemy
  • 14:35 – Max had 2 companies before Udemy
  • 15:20 – Max’s second business was Last Call
  • 15:45 – Max’s 3 favorite investments at the moment
  • 16:50 – The average amount Max is investing in a business
  • 18:00 – Max sets expectations of what he will and will not do for a company
  • 18:36 – Max is trying to invest in B2B companies
  • 19:21 – Connect with Max through LinkedIn, Twitter and his website
  • 21:30 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

  • Closing a business does NOT mean it was a failure – you gain experience and learn valuable lessons from that process.
  • Take the time to research and know where to invest.
  • Even if you’re working with SaaS businesses, that doesn’t mean you should or can build one as well.

 

Resources Mentioned:

  • Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
  • Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
  • 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 the quality of Toptal
  • 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.
  • 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
  • @MaxAlts – Max’s Twitter handle
  • LinkedIn – Max’s LinkedIn account
  • Sales Hacker – Max’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 sole mark.

0:23.9

And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.

0:27.8

Okay, Top Tribe.

0:29.0

This week's winner of the 100 bucks is Rhett Gillins.

0:32.8

He's in the restaurant industry and he feels stuck.

0:35.7

He wants to start his own software business.

0:37.2

So congratulations,

0:38.6

Rhett, for your guys' chance to win 100 bucks every Monday morning. Simply subscribe to the

0:44.1

podcast on iTunes now in order to enter and then text the word Nathan to 3344 to prove that you

0:50.4

subscribed. Many people asked me how I used email to sell my first company,

0:55.6

Heyo, and it's simple. You want to do things like open tracking so that you know when a potential

1:00.3

buyer actually opens your email or potential new customer. You also want to set reminders

1:05.0

so you can quickly know when to follow up with somebody if they haven't replied to you,

1:09.2

or use things like auto follow

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up sequences you can do all of this with a company called the top inbox.com in fact i liked it so

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much i bought the whole business go try it for free at the top inbox dot com right now

1:21.9

nathan latka here this is episode 516 coming up tomorrow morning you're going to learn from

...

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