EP 529: $10m Raised, Pre-Revenue, Notion.ai Adds AI to Email Messaging with Co-Founder Guy Suter

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

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

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2017

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Guy Suter and he runs Notion.ai. His mission is to improve communication using artificial intelligence. Previously, he co-founded BitLeap and led the product to the world’s top selling appliance after 2008 acquisition by Barracuda. He started venture data backup, cloud storage, group chat, file sharing with Copy.com and CRM with Nutshell.com

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Brand New World
What CEO do you follow? – Jay Simons

Favorite online tool? — Picasso
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “How early stage capital works...and influence management has been the biggest learning experience”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:35 – Nathan introduces Guy to the show
02:10 – Guy and his co-founder started with a data backup company
02:46 – Notion.ai is currently on prerevenue
03:00 – Notion.ai started 3 years ago
03:47 – Notion.ai was launched in November 2016
04:18 – Digital communication was problematic
04:55 – Notion.ai has raised a total of around $10M
05:13 – Guy started with a lot of SaaS businesses
06:13 – Guy shares the revenue opportunities for Notion.ai
08:00 – There’s a huge barrier in entry to Notion.ai’s space
09:00 – Guy discusses the companies that are trying to make another category
09:40 – Notion.ai is beneficial to everyone who uses email to interact
10:40 – “Our goal is not to make the best email app In the world”
- 11:00 – Notion.ai has features that differentiate them from others and offer value
- 11:10 – Notion.ai is more “people-centric”; the focus is on relationships and what’s important based on the message
11:43 – Average number of downloads
- 12:09 – Notion.ai helps clean-up inboxes quickly
- 13:00 – Less than a million but more than tens of thousands of downloads
- 13:39 – The number of downloads consistently grows daily
13:55 – Team size and location
- 14:20 – Guy shares why they chose Michigan
- 15:50 – Notion.ai has someone that was from LinkedIn
16:00 – Connect with Guy through Twitter
17:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

The digital communication space has been problematic and we need a solution.
Raising big capital on pre-revenue IS possible, if you have a great product that helps people become more efficient in communicating.
Have patience, take time, focus on building the right culture, and get your team on board.

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
@GuySuter – Guy’s Twitter handle
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.
0:28.3	Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the 100 bucks that I give away every Monday is Kim
0:34.5	Dust.
0:35.4	She's in the entertainment industry and is currently working a full-time
0:39.7	day job and doing her side hustle on the side. Kim, congrats. For you, he has a chance to win
0:45.8	100 bucks every Monday. Simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now and then text the word
0:51.7	Nathan to 33444 to officially enter. Again, text the word Nathan to 3.3444 to officially enter. Again, text the word Nathan to 33444 to officially enter.
0:56.5	Again, text the word Nathan to 33444 after you've subscribed.
1:02.0	Guys, if you want an easy tool to use to book your meetings back to back, to batch your calls,
1:07.8	to make sure people actually show up on the schedule. You want to use acuity scheduling.
1:11.4	It's what I use for all my podcast interviews at Nathanlatka.com forward slash schedule.
1:16.2	I'll tell you more about how I use it later on in the episode.
1:19.2	Nathan Latka here, this is episode 529.
1:21.9	Coming up tomorrow morning, you're going to learn from Sean Livermore
1:24.7	and why he shut down a business that did $2 million in revenue.
1:28.2	It's a tough decision.
	...

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