EP 562: Illumineto Raised $700k raised, Passes 100 Customers with DC Team with CEO Nick Caruso

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Nathan Latka

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

4.6 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2017

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nick Caruso. He’s the CEO and founder of Illumineto. He’s the VP of Sales in Eastern US & Canada with Notable Solutions and he was there for 6 years. Before that, he was at Kofax as a federal sales manager and he also served the country in the Marine Corps as a Captain.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Built to Last
What CEO do you follow? – Drew Houston
Favorite online tool? — API.ai
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Nick wished he knew that starting a company was not as hard as he thought it would be and wished he’d started earlier

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:06 – Nathan introduces Nick to the show
01:45 – Illumineto is a SaaS company and they charge monthly
02:00 – Nick has been in the technology field for 20 years and in sales for 15 years
02:15 – Nick wasn’t able to find a tool to help him close more deals
02:34 – Illumineto focuses on the individual sales rep and not the whole company
02:58 – Illumineto has a lot of sales reps from Fortune 500 companies
03:14 – Illumineto has been running for 6 months now
03:48 – Illumineto currently has a thousand of sign ups or users that represent several hundreds of logos
04:25 – Illumineto was founded in mid 2015
- 04:30 – Beta in 2016
04:50 – Nick has sunk in $700K before starting
05:00 – Illumineto had an Angel round
05:23 – Illumineto has 3 co-founders
- 05:32 – All of them had successful exits in different companies
- 05:55 – There are 5 Angel investors
06:15 – Current team size is 4
06:50 – Average pay per user per month is $30
07:00 – Average MRR
- 08:00 – Nick won’t disclose the amount, but Illumineto is profitable
09:00 – Nathan explains why he asks for numbers
10:15 – Illumineto has more than 100 paying customers
10:30 – Gross customer churn
- 10:52 – 0% churn rate on paying customers
11:31 – Illumineto had paid advertising
- 12:07 – They had thousands of people coming in for the premium model
12:50 – Illumineto leverages their connections in LinkedIn to get their customers from IBM
13:11 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

It is possible for a startup to be profitable in as early as 6 months.
Leveraging your connections can help you engage with customers and increase sales.
Start your business as soon as you can, you’ll learn as you go.

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
Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
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 is Charlie Dags.
0:32.5	Okay, he was a middle manager at a manufacturing company.
0:35.8	He wants to break free, and he won the $100 I give out
0:39.3	every Monday. For your chance to win, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes right now and then
0:45.1	text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it. Nathan Latka here. This is episode
0:52.4	562. Coming up tomorrow morning, you'll learn from Devin, who founded Insight Pool, which is just nearing $300,000 in monthly recurring revenue, helping 100 big brands find influencers.
1:05.1	Good morning, guys. Nathan Latke here. Our guest today is Nick Caruso. He's one of the C's, the CEO and founder of
1:11.0	Illuminedetto, and specifically more about his background quickly before we jump in. He was
1:15.6	vice president of sales and at an eastern U.S. and Canada at notable solutions. He was there
1:20.1	for many years, about six years. Before that, he was at Kofax as a federal sales manager,
1:24.4	and before that, a project manager at a large company. And also
1:29.1	previous to that between 1998 and 2002 served the country in the United States Marine Corps as a
1:34.7	captain. Very good. So Nick, thank you for your service. Are you ready to take us to the top?
1:39.2	Sounds fantastic. I'm ready. All right. Good. Tell us first what Illuminato does and how you generate
1:43.5	revenue.
	...

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