Ep 190 Matt Smith, the founder of Latergramme and Thinkific. Listen as Nathan and Matt talk about how the latter left a 10K MRR business to work on a marketing platform for Instagram.

Bio
Matt previously started 2 profitable self-funded startups. Most recently he co-founded Latergramme, a visual content marketing platform that makes visual marketing a snap. The app one to aggregate, curate, schedule and optimize visual marketing campaigns across all visual social media networks.

Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:00 – Nathan’s introduction to today’s show
01:29 – Matt joins the show.
02:30 – Thinkific is a platform that allows one to create, market, and sell online courses.
03:53 – Matt created Latergramme at a hackathon while he was also work on Thinkific.
04:20 – Latergramme allows one to create a publishing schedule for Instagram that automates marketing.
05:17 – Matt was making about 10K MRR (monthly recurring revenue) when he left Thinkific for Latergramme. His brother is still CEO.
07:00 – Matt believes his company Latergramme is well on its way to over 100K MRR by the end of 2016.
07:35 – The app was created in 2013, but wasn’t launched until May 2014. They did a beta list launch.
08:40 – Leading up to the May release, Matt built an audience of 20K through bloggers, article writers, and other online influencers.
09:30 – Matt built a VIP program as a marketing tactic and spent most of his evenings up to the release writing to potential users personally.
10:54 – Latergramme is currently free, but the business has 50K MRR soon to be 88K MRR. (1 million ARR).
11:30 – The business is focusing on expanding user-base as its priority right now.
11:56 – The government covers a huge portion of salary for the people working at Latergramme. There are grants for SAAS based businesses in Vancouver.
12:37 – Latergramme has about 40K active users.
13:25 – 5% churn.
14:16 – Latergramme does no paid acquisition. Maybe in the future.
15:31 – 25-30% month over month growth goal for 2016.
16:42 - Rocketship.vc is an investment group that’s been giving Latergramme a hand.
18:42 – As the founder of the company, Matt pays himself south of 100K.
21:25 – Find out what Nathan’s doing after selling his business Heyo at nathanlatka.com/whatsnext on February 4th.
22:08 – Famous Five

Famous 5
Favorite Book? – Thinking Fast and Slow
What CEO do you follow?— Hiton Shah
What is your favorite online tool?— Fitbit
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Trying to
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?— You don’t need a job.

3 Key Points:
The government grants money to SAAS based businesses in the city of Vancouver.
Latergramme does no paid acquisition but nevertheless projects to grow 25-30% per month. Matt hyped up the business by writing emails to influencers in the field who would write articles about the service.
A convertible note is a short-term debt that converts into equity. Read more about it at Tech Crunch.

Resources Mentioned:
Edgar – Nathan uses Edgar instead of other scheduling tools for Twitter because Edgar cycles through content over and over (buffer/others you have to re-input content over and over – time consuming). In the last several months, Edgar has driven Nathan over 3728 clicks that he didn’t have to work or pay for.
@symana – Matt’s Twitter
LinkedIn – Matt’s LinkedIn
Latergramme – Matt’s business
Thinkific – Create, market, sell online courses
Thinking Fast and Slow – Matt’s favorite book
Fitbit – Online tool Matt uses
RocketshipVC – Venture capital group backing Matt
Convertible Note – What is it?

Credits
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

 

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