EP 524: Podium Hits $1m MRR in 12 Months, $4m Raised with 6500 SMB Customers sub 1% Churn with CEO Eric Rea

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

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

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2016

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Eric Rea, co-founder and CEO of Podium.com which is based in Utah. He’s a software engineer at the International Atomic Agency and before that, the founder of FineGrain. He worked at Walmart as a software engineer and he has also interned at Orange Soda.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Multipliers
What CEO do you follow? – Phil Knight

Favorite online tool? – Domo and Apple Notes
Do you get 8 hours of sleep? – “I get 7”
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “You can always tell them to go to hell tomorrow” – Warren Buffet

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:46 – Nathan introduces Eric to the show
02:20 – Podium helps businesses generate reviews which drives purchase decisions
02:30 – Podium charges $299 a month per location
02:48 – Podium is a SaaS business
02:58 – Average customer pays $499
03:20 – Podium was launched in 2013
- 03:25 – Eric started Podium because of his dad’s business
04:01 – Team size
- 04:44 – All employees are working full-time
- 04:50 – Team is based in Utah
05:35 – Podium raised $4M in total
- 05:50 – First seed round was in 2014 and $500K was raised
- 05:57 – Raised $3.5M in December of 2015
06:36 – Eric has given up 20% of the business for the seed round
07:38 – Podium has 25000 customers per location
08:13 – Podium has $1M in MRR
08:45 – Podium’s gross monthly customer churn is around 1%
- 09:10 – Net churn is negative 2% monthly
09:50 – Average CAC
10:12 – Average LTV is $12K
11:00 – 2015 ARR is $1.8M
11:30 – 2016 ARR is around $11M
11:41 – Goal for 2017 ARR is $25M
12:55 – Connect with Eric through his website and Twitter
15:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

It’s important to have some capital in case you make mistakes – with no capital, just 1 mistake will sink you.
Find a solution to the simplest problems to streamline your business processes.
The SMB market will continually grow, creating more opportunities for startups.

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
@EricWilliamRea – Eric’s Twitter handle
Podium.com – Eric’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.
0:28.0	Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the 100 bucks is none other than Derek Roddenbeck.
0:36.3	He is an artist and he's looking to increase his revenue.
0:40.8	If you want your chance to enter and to win 100 bucks each Monday on the show,
0:45.5	simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it.
0:53.1	Again, text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it. Again, text the word Nathan to 33444. Many people ask me how I
0:59.9	used email to sell my first company, Heyo, and it's simple. You want to do things like open tracking
1:05.3	so that you know when a potential buyer actually opens your email or potential new customer.
1:10.2	You also want to set reminders
1:11.5	so you can quickly know when to follow up with somebody if they haven't replied to you or use
1:16.3	things like auto follow-up sequences. You can do all of this with a company called the top
1:20.8	inbox.com. In fact, I liked it so much. I bought the whole business. Go try it for free at
1:25.9	the top inbox.com right now.
1:29.4	Nathan Latka here.
1:30.4	This is episode 524.
1:32.1	Coming up tomorrow morning,
	...

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