airSlaterevenue, valuation & funding

00:01:38,200 --> 00:02:21,500 [Speaker 0] Top Tribe, good morning. Nathan Latka here, and our guest today is Boria Shaknovich, and he is the president of pdfFiller. And in addition to being responsible for the daily operations and marketing campaigns, he also participates in setting the mission and vision of the company. Prior to his work at pdfFiller, Boria's earned a PhD in bioinformatics and was subsequently a professor of bioinformatics at Boston University. He later moved to Harvard University to work on systems biology. He now uses his scientific background to develop interdisciplinary approaches to advance pdfFiller's core business. He's responsible for making sure that pdfFiller has a vibrant community of users through business development, demand generation, and customer analytics. Boria, are you ready to take us to the top? 00:02:22,600 --> 00:02:25,600 [Borya Shakhnovich] Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. 00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:29,420 [Speaker 0] Of course. And just to clear things up, you are the CEO and founder of pdfFiller, correct? 00:02:30,440 --> 00:02:35,090 [Speaker 1] Uh, I'm not. I'm the president and, uh, the co-founder. How about that? 00:02:35,090 --> 00:02:38,820 [Speaker 0] What's the, what's the difference? So you had a co-founder, and one was CEO, one was president, basically? 00:02:40,040 --> 00:02:41,600 [Speaker 1] Yes. Absolutely, yes. 00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:45,620 [Speaker 0] Makes perfect sense. Okay. Tell us what the business does and how you generate revenue. 00:02:45,620 --> 00:03:35,760 [Speaker 1] Yeah, absolutely. So, um, pdfFiller is a document management platform. So, uh, we allow people to essentially do end-to-end, uh, document generation. Uh, then, so, like, let's say for example you have, uh, a, you're a small dental office and you need to create a patient intake form. So we allow you to create that online. We allow you to add fillable fields on top of that. We allow you to, uh, you know, put that out on, in the world, and, uh, you know, have your customers or patients come in with a mobile device, fill it out. You get that information inside. So that's one of the use cases. We also, let's say you have a document that you need, um, signed, uh, by one of your, like a contract or something like that, by one of your partners. We allow you to do that as well. 00:03:35,760 --> 00:03:40,240 [Speaker 0] And what, what do you... And talk to me about your pricing model. Is it a SaaS business model? 00:03:40,240 --> 00:03:52,720 [Speaker 1] It's a SaaS business model. We charge per month or for a year up front. Uh, three tiers, professional, uh, personal, and business, uh, with the business being the most expensive at $15 a month. 00:03:52,720 --> 00:03:57,100 [Speaker 0] What is the... And just to kind of get a, make that clear, what does the average customer pay you per month? 00:03:58,660 --> 00:04:01,340 [Speaker 1] Uh, probably $10 a month. 00:04:01,340 --> 00:04:04,560 [Speaker 0] Okay, 10 bucks. Very good. And give us some more background. What year did you found the business in? 00:04:06,420 --> 00:04:07,180 [Speaker 1] Sorry, what was that? 00:04:07,180 --> 00:04:08,820 [Speaker 0] What year did you launch the business in? 00:04:08,820 --> 00:04:42,300 [Speaker 1] Oh. So, uh, the story went like this. In 2008, uh, the founder of the business, Vadim, uh, he started it as a lifestyle business, and then, uh, ran it, uh, until 2011, the end of 2011 by himself and one other person. And then I joined the company at the end of 2011, so five years ago exactly, and, uh, we applied some marketing technology to it, and we built out, um, a better product suite. And now we have, uh, close to 200,000 customers and 150 people working for the company. 00:04:42,300 --> 00:04:47,580 [Speaker 0] Okay, got it. And is that all pdfFiller, or is pdfFiller like a subsidiary of another larger business? 00:04:47,580 --> 00:04:49,130 [Speaker 1] No, it's all pdfFiller. 00:04:49,130 --> 00:04:49,200 [Speaker 0] Okay. 00:04:49,200 --> 00:04:50,620 [Speaker 1] Uh, so yeah. 00:04:50,620 --> 00:04:56,840 [Speaker 0] So can I... Am I doing the math correctly if you have 200,000 paying customers and I multiply that by 10, you're doing about two million bucks in monthly recurring revenue? 00:04:58,280 --> 00:05:00,320 [Speaker 1] [laughs] Uh, that's pretty close. 00:05:00,320 --> 00:05:08,400 [Speaker 0] That's close. Okay, good. And what is the, uh, so, so you joined, you said five years ago, but it was launched, what, in, in, did you say 2009-ish? 00:05:08,400 --> 00:05:09,280 [Speaker 1] 2008, yeah. Mm-hmm. 00:05:09,280 --> 00:05:11,860 [Speaker 0] 2008. Not a good year to launch a business. 00:05:11,860 --> 00:05:13,000 [Speaker 1] No, absolutely not. 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:13,220 [Speaker 0] [laughs] 00:05:13,220 --> 00:05:23,260 [Speaker 1] But, uh, because the product was so needed and so good, uh, it grew organically, uh, even up until 2011, and then we really accelerated it from then on. 00:05:23,260 --> 00:05:31,540 [Speaker 0] That's great. And walk... Do you, do you have numbers? It sounds like you're kinda the business guy. Do you have numbers and do you understand things like, you know, c- uh, gross customer churn per month? And if so, what is it? 00:05:33,420 --> 00:05:42,980 [Speaker 1] Um, yeah. So [laughs] I understand some of that. Um, so we have a pretty low gross customer churn, in the single digits. 00:05:42,980 --> 00:05:50,260 [Speaker 0] Okay. So, so, so, like, so bad SaaS churn would be, like, 9%, good would be 2%. Are you, you know, 2% or not? 00:05:51,764 --> 00:06:01,164 [Speaker 1] Uh, no, we're not. Uh, we're, we're a prosumer business. Uh, so we have a lot of, uh, the business divi- is divided into several as- uh, parts. 00:06:01,164 --> 00:06:01,724 [Speaker 0] Okay. 00:06:01,724 --> 00:06:40,124 [Speaker 1] So we have a lot of people that use it on a transactional basis, and we have a lot of people that essentially build their own business on top of pdfFiller. So for example, we have an API, uh, and integrators use that and ca- you know, in combination with CRM systems or ERP systems that they build out, right? So for customers. So we have, uh, and, and we have businesses that thrive on top of pdfFiller on a day-to-day basis. Like, you know, we work with government institutions, for example. So, um, the transactional part of the business is closer to the 9%. The, uh, the actual, you know, enterprise part of the business is much lower than 2%. 00:06:40,124 --> 00:06:44,184 [Speaker 0] I see. I see. I see. So maybe a weighted average of maybe five-ish percent, something like that. 00:06:45,604 --> 00:06:46,464 [Speaker 1] Exactly, yeah. 00:06:46,464 --> 00:06:55,804 [Speaker 0] Yep, yep. That's great. So, so l- let's get out of the numbers for a second and go back. You said you applied, when you joined you applied, quote, "marketing technology" to the platform. Tell us more about that. 00:06:58,544 --> 00:07:17,764 [Speaker 1] Yeah. So we built out one of the most sophisticated, uh, marketing platforms, digital marketing platforms. I'll give you some numbers. Um, we run 60 million keywords on top of SEO, SEM, uh, and other digital marketing channels with, uh, tens of millions of landing pages. 00:07:17,764 --> 00:07:17,774 [Speaker 0] Uh-huh. 00:07:17,774 --> 00:07:33,644 [Speaker 1] Uh, that brings about four million people to the website on a monthly basis. Uh, we, um, and then all of that is done automatically, essentially, right? So we have automatic keyword generation, automatic bid management. Uh, we have an internal CRM that has an internal 00:07:34,724 --> 00:07:57,024 [Speaker 1] AB testing system that optimizes not only the way that the site looks, but how people actually walk through the sites. So if you actually go to pdfFiller, you're gonna have a unique experience, uh, that depends on who you are, where you come from, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and, um, so we, we built all of that out inside of pdfFiller, and that's what pdfFiller runs on. 00:07:57,024 --> 00:08:14,484 [Speaker 0] According to nathanlatka.com/ahrefs, you guys between September and November went from about 40,000 referring pages to almost doubling that, 90,000. Is that because you launched a bunch of these landing pages kind of in an, an automatic fashion? 00:08:15,944 --> 00:08:16,844 [Speaker 1] Uh, 00:08:18,404 --> 00:08:39,144 [Speaker 1] n- no. Uh, we also have a, uh, marketing technology that allows us to find, uh, sites that would be interested in, uh, collaborating with us, and we actively have that as a program, as a partnership program. And, uh, you know, those are the sites that I refer to pdfFiller in one way or another. 00:08:39,144 --> 00:08:48,004 [Speaker 0] Did you do that though recently? I mean, when I look at this data, something happened between September and November where these things, like your backlinks, like quadrupled. 00:08:48,004 --> 00:08:58,004 [Speaker 1] [clears throat] Um, no, nothing special. It's probably, uh, uh, it's probably just Google catching up with our work that we've been doing over the last year or so. 00:08:58,004 --> 00:09:04,144 [Speaker 0] Okay. And, and, I mean, how are you doing this? I mean, is it all code, or are the, is it part human, part code? 00:09:04,144 --> 00:09:17,524 [Speaker 1] It's part human, part code. So we, we automatically find the sites and then, you know, we curate it, and then, uh, there are humans that actually, you know, get in touch with, uh, the website owners and stuff like that. 00:09:17,524 --> 00:09:19,024 [Speaker 0] That's fascinating. 00:09:19,024 --> 00:09:19,134 [Speaker 1] Yeah. 00:09:19,134 --> 00:09:30,504 [Speaker 0] Yeah, so tell me more about that. Like, do, do, is this, is there, like, a team of five dedicated just calling potential inbound, like, links every day, and then you negotiate to get pdfFiller kind of positioned in those backlinks? 00:09:31,824 --> 00:09:56,844 [Speaker 1] Um, no, not quite, uh, not quite five. Less than that. It's all about finding the right people that are relevant to the websites, and we do that through, uh, semantic search technology. So we find, uh, sites that have very similar interests to ours, and then the conversion rate, uh, backlinks is much higher than, because these people, you know, are in the space and are interested in, uh, pdfFiller's core business. 00:09:56,844 --> 00:10:04,524 [Speaker 0] And what tool are you using? Is it a tool that my audience can use as well to f- like, for their own business to find these kind of, uh, quality potential backlinks? 00:10:05,664 --> 00:10:10,704 [Speaker 1] No. We, we write everything in-house. We're in sort of digital engineering, uh, shop. 00:10:10,704 --> 00:10:31,324 [Speaker 0] Yep. No, it makes good sense. And I can just, again, looking at the nathanlatka.com/ahrefs, I can see, I mean, you've got almost 5,800 referring domains, 2.7 million organic keywords, and you get about a million views per month just from organic traffic, maybe more, maybe less. This, some of this data sometimes is behind or in front of, uh, where you're at. 00:10:31,324 --> 00:10:31,344 [Speaker 1] Mm-hmm. 00:10:31,344 --> 00:10:33,644 [Speaker 0] But, um, is that your key driver? Do you do any paid stuff? 00:10:34,764 --> 00:10:40,304 [Speaker 1] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, like I said, we run, uh, about 60 million keywords on top of AdWords. 00:10:40,304 --> 00:10:42,584 [Speaker 0] Oh. Oh, I didn't hear you say that. I thought you said or- organic. 00:10:43,704 --> 00:10:53,484 [Speaker 1] Uh, no. Well, we do it on SEO and SEM. So, uh, we have one, we have one of the largest, um, SEM, 00:10:54,564 --> 00:11:02,344 [Speaker 1] uh, platforms and accounts, uh, in Google, uh, certainly by the numbers. 00:11:02,344 --> 00:11:02,634 [Speaker 0] Uh-huh. 00:11:02,634 --> 00:11:33,784 [Speaker 1] Uh, and, uh, maybe not by spend, but, uh, certainly in terms of, like, the number of keywords that we run and how we run it. Uh, so we, like, have automatic generation of keywords. We have automatic bid management on top of these AdWords. Uh, we also have automatic creation of ads, and we run that across all of their, uh, digital marketing technologies, right? So, like, on top of, uh, contextual search, GDN, on top of, uh, remarketing, RLSA, and et cetera, all of that stuff. 00:11:33,784 --> 00:11:39,224 [Speaker 0] So with all this data, you're clearly a data-driven company. What are you guys willing to acquire, to pay to acquire a new customer? 00:11:40,544 --> 00:11:46,284 [Speaker 1] Uh, so we make money on, uh, the first payment. Um- 00:11:46,284 --> 00:11:47,444 [Speaker 0] So less than $10? 00:11:49,004 --> 00:11:50,984 [Speaker 1] Yeah, less than $10 a month. Yeah. 00:11:50,984 --> 00:12:09,716 [Speaker 0] Got it. And if I'm- Doing a back of the napkin kind of LTV calculation, if your weighted kind of gross monthly customer churn is 5%, they're staying for an average of 20 months at a, you know, ARPU around 10 bucks. Your lifetime value is about 200 bucks a pop. You're spending less than 10 to acquire it. Uh, Boris, that is math that, that would make any investor's heart sing. 00:12:09,716 --> 00:12:10,376 [Speaker 1] That's right. 00:12:10,376 --> 00:12:11,486 [Speaker 0] [laughs] 160- 00:12:11,486 --> 00:12:13,546 [Speaker 1] You're very good with, you're very good with the numbers, Nathan. 00:12:13,546 --> 00:12:15,216 [Speaker 0] Uh, quick, are you impressed? 00:12:15,216 --> 00:12:16,556 [Speaker 1] I am very impressed, actually, yes. 00:12:16,556 --> 00:12:19,186 [Speaker 0] Good. I want 5% of the business now. No, just kidding. [laughs] 00:12:19,186 --> 00:12:21,136 [Speaker 1] [laughs] 00:12:21,136 --> 00:12:23,776 [Speaker 0] All right. So you have 160 team members. Where are you guys based? 00:12:25,016 --> 00:12:30,356 [Speaker 1] Um, so the team is divided across, uh, Boston. So the s- 00:12:31,496 --> 00:12:40,816 [Speaker 1] the management and leadership is in Boston, and then we have a very large, uh, development, design, and even marketing, uh, office in Kyiv. 00:12:40,816 --> 00:12:42,016 [Speaker 0] Oh, in Ky- in, uh, in France? 00:12:43,246 --> 00:12:43,916 [Speaker 1] In- 00:12:43,916 --> 00:12:45,096 [Speaker 0] What did you say? 00:12:45,096 --> 00:12:45,206 [Speaker 1] In Kyiv. 00:12:45,206 --> 00:12:47,396 [Speaker 0] Oh, Ukraine. Ky- oh, Kyiv. Okay, got it. 00:12:47,396 --> 00:12:47,416 [Speaker 1] Yeah. 00:12:47,416 --> 00:12:50,656 [Speaker 0] Very cool. And, uh, self-funded or have you raised capital? 00:12:51,956 --> 00:12:53,606 [Speaker 1] Self-funded. Completely bootstrapped. 00:12:53,606 --> 00:13:01,356 [Speaker 0] That's, that's amazing. That's really amazing. Um, how many folks do you... How many co-founders are kind of on the cap table? Is it, is it pretty messy or no? 00:13:01,356 --> 00:13:02,496 [Speaker 1] No, it's just the two of us. 00:13:02,496 --> 00:13:06,586 [Speaker 0] Oh, just you two. Okay, great. Um, so he kinda started it, and you kinda joined pretty early on. 00:13:07,736 --> 00:13:08,715 [Speaker 1] Right, exactly, yeah. 00:13:08,716 --> 00:13:09,456 [Speaker 0] Got it. 00:13:09,456 --> 00:13:09,476 [Speaker 1] Mm-hmm. 00:13:09,476 --> 00:13:16,636 [Speaker 0] And then, um, I always like asking this 'cause it's usually embarrassing. What was your first year revenue? So that would've been, I guess, 2008. Do you remember? 00:13:16,636 --> 00:13:16,936 [Speaker 1] Uh, 00:13:18,406 --> 00:13:27,956 [Speaker 1] s- I wasn't there. Uh, so I only joined at the end of 2011, but, you know, the first year revenue, uh, was something like $20,000, something like that. 00:13:27,956 --> 00:13:30,456 [Speaker 0] [laughs] How things change, right? 00:13:30,456 --> 00:13:31,456 [Speaker 1] Yeah, that's right. 00:13:31,456 --> 00:13:31,656 [Speaker 0] Yep. 00:13:31,656 --> 00:13:32,256 [Speaker 1] That's right. 00:13:32,256 --> 00:13:36,636 [Speaker 0] Very good. And what, uh, what did, what were you guys-- what'd you pass in 2015 in terms of total revenue? 00:13:37,976 --> 00:13:41,816 [Speaker 1] Uh, w- in 2015. That was last year? 00:13:41,816 --> 00:13:42,176 [Speaker 0] Yep. 00:13:42,176 --> 00:13:42,536 [Speaker 1] Uh, 00:13:43,656 --> 00:13:46,156 [Speaker 1] it's double-digit millions. 00:13:46,156 --> 00:13:51,296 [Speaker 0] Double-digit millions. Okay, good. So, uh, when you say double digit, you mean above 10? 00:13:51,296 --> 00:13:51,776 [Speaker 1] Mm-hmm. 00:13:51,776 --> 00:14:00,456 [Speaker 0] Yeah. Now, what do you guys wanna do with the business? D- I mean, have you considered raising capital? Do you wanna sell it? Or is it just generating cash flow and making you guys filthy rich, so you don't wanna do anything with it? What do you wanna do? 00:14:00,456 --> 00:14:01,236 [Speaker 1] [laughs] 00:14:02,276 --> 00:14:21,076 [Speaker 1] Um, yeah, no, I mean, we're, we're definitely growing the business. The business is growing very fast. You know, we're very excited about where it's going, and, uh, we're very excited about, you know, moving it forward. Um, you know, we're doing a lot of partnerships. We're, we're, like, working on a very close partnership with Salesforce, for example, right now. 00:14:21,076 --> 00:14:21,555 [Speaker 0] Uh-huh. 00:14:21,556 --> 00:14:44,316 [Speaker 1] Um, and, uh, we're doing partnerships with government institutions, and we do a lot of, like, work for, for the government and taking them paperless and stuff. Um, so we're gonna continue growing that business and moving, uh, you know, into the enterprise space more and more. Uh, we have a lot of people that are coming in to us. Oh, by the way, um, I forgot to mention, we have zero salespeople. Um- 00:14:44,316 --> 00:14:46,085 [Speaker 0] So no touch. You're using SEM- 00:14:46,085 --> 00:14:46,085 [Speaker 1] Oh 00:14:46,085 --> 00:14:49,476 [Speaker 0] ... and kind of SEO and all this stuff that you're doing to get no-touch sales. 00:14:49,476 --> 00:15:38,976 [Speaker 1] Right. Exactly. So, uh, we're gonna be building out that, uh, you know, sales and customer support more and then going and, uh, doing these integrations into larger organizations because the technology is really powerful and, uh, a lot of people are really interested in using it and, uh, sort of it helps the, uh, customers to do end-to-end paperless, you know? You know, essentially, if you PDFfiller, you don't need to do anything, uh, with paper. And, uh, it also digitizes a lot of the data, so the majority of the customers get an ROI within, you know, the first few hours because, you know, the half an hour that's spent on typing in the information from paper into your CRM, all of that stuff is just saved, basically, with PDFfiller. And so your, you know, our customers love us because of that enormous ROI. 00:15:38,976 --> 00:15:50,916 [Speaker 0] Last question before I get into, uh, kind of the wrap-up, w- or wrap-up section here. Do you guys have an appetite for, for acquisitions in this space? It's very fragmented. Would you ever buy up smaller competitors at great prices? 00:15:50,916 --> 00:15:51,836 [Speaker 1] Yeah, absolutely. 00:15:51,836 --> 00:15:52,376 [Speaker 0] Have you done it before? 00:15:53,776 --> 00:15:58,216 [Speaker 1] Uh, we have not done it before, but we're actually in the process of doing that now. 00:15:58,216 --> 00:16:03,056 [Speaker 0] Oh, great. Obviously, it's probably, that's probably confidential, but how, how do you make decisions about which ones to go after or not? 00:16:05,116 --> 00:16:35,396 [Speaker 1] You know, I think that it's companies that are complementary to us. Uh, you know, uh, it's companies where we can add value, so, uh, where they're maybe doing, uh, one part of the business and we can actually transform, uh, by adding the functionality of PDFfiller on top of, like, their business and really accelerate the growth and improve their retention by making the product, you know, more comprehensive. We have one of the more sort of comprehensive solutions in the space. Um- 00:16:35,396 --> 00:16:39,256 [Speaker 0] Would you-- so you wouldn't buy or... buy a direct competitor. You'd only buy someone that's complementary? 00:16:40,516 --> 00:16:47,566 [Speaker 1] We would buy a direct competitor that's, uh, a direct competitor of part of the business, not, not of the whole business necessarily, right? 00:16:47,566 --> 00:16:47,596 [Speaker 0] Okay. 00:16:47,596 --> 00:17:06,606 [Speaker 1] So, like, we have, we have a signature solution, for example. We have a form solution. You know, we have a, you know, we have lots of, like, we have a mail merge solution. So we have lots of these competitors that are in different parts, and they're not growing as fast as we are, uh, but we can add, uh, PDFfiller on top of their functionality. 00:17:06,606 --> 00:17:06,636 [Speaker 0] Yeah. 00:17:06,636 --> 00:17:07,626 [Speaker 1] Or like PDF editing, for example. 00:17:07,626 --> 00:17:09,776 [Speaker 0] Upsell to their customers or things like that. 00:17:09,776 --> 00:17:14,376 [Speaker 1] Exactly. Right. Exactly. Or improve retention by offering, uh, a superior product. 00:17:14,376 --> 00:17:20,516 [Speaker 0] What general-- of the things you just mentioned, what general area is the c- company you're looking at buying now, what, what are they in? Like mail merge or something else? 00:17:22,436 --> 00:17:50,096 [Speaker 1] Yeah. Uh, so all the-- we are looking in all of those places, right? So we're looking in the mail merge sp- space. We're looking in the, you know, the CRM space. We're looking in the signature space. Uh, and there's a lot of companies, like you said, it's a really fragmented space. There are a lot of really, really small companies that are not growing very fast, and, you know, we can accelerate that by adding the marketing engine on top of it as well as, uh, in complementing the product offering. 00:17:50,096 --> 00:17:56,236 [Speaker 0] Very cool. Well, Boris, if people wanna follow you as you keep building this company, where's the best place for them to connect with you online? 00:17:57,344 --> 00:17:58,974 [Speaker 1] Um, [laughs] 00:18:00,524 --> 00:18:01,464 [Speaker 1] probably- 00:18:01,464 --> 00:18:02,344 [Speaker 0] The website 00:18:02,344 --> 00:18:03,094 [Speaker 1] ... on LinkedIn. 00:18:03,094 --> 00:18:03,204 [Speaker 0] LinkedIn. 00:18:03,204 --> 00:18:11,664 [Speaker 1] Yeah, on LinkedIn or website or something like that. Yeah. I'm actually unfortunately not on, uh, like Twitter and stuff like that, but although I probably should be. 00:18:12,704 --> 00:19:28,743 [Speaker 0] All right, guys. Earlier I mentioned I used a little unknown tool to do a lot of my email marketing and marketing automation called Drip. Nobody knew about this, nobody, until Clay Collins comes along with his big old, you know, fat checkbook at Leadpages, buys the company, and now, like everybody's using it. Okay? If you're not using it, let me just tell you very quickly why I use it now that the secret's kind of out of the bag. It's very simple. I don't like hiring developers. My favorite feature of Drip is the drag-and-drop interface where I can drag the email sequences together. Like, once someone views this blog post or opens this email, then do this, right? So life cycle marketing like that, folks, is the future. I hit Michael Stelzner so hard on this earlier in the year. You can't blast your lists anymore. You have to have smart marketing automation, and quite frankly, you try Infusionsoft, it's like holding two 100-pound dumbbells in each hand. The reason I love Drip, okay, it's more powerful than Infusionsoft, but it's light as a feather. Totally light. I mean, you can throw it, blow it, lift it. It's so easy. You can sign up for 60 days right now at NathanLatka.com/drip. That's the special link, NathanLatka.com/drip. I don't know why the hell I'm telling you people this. I like to keep tools that I really like to myself because it's a big advantage, but there it is. Go use it right now before I totally change my mind. NathanLatka.com/drip. 00:19:30,144 --> 00:20:10,664 [Speaker 0] Okay, Top Tribe, I have to tell you, many people go, "Nathan, you came out of nowhere. Your website's growing so fast. How'd you do it?" The answer is simple. So I use HostGator. I don't know if you guys know that, but I use HostGator. And the reason I do, they have, like about 4,500 free templates I can use, 'cause I don't code. They've got a great e-commerce plugin, and guys, I bug the heck out of their support. They've got 24/7 support, which I love. So what I've done is I've worked with them. You guys know I make great deals. If you go to HostGator.com/Nathan, you can sign up, get your own domain for 30% off and a 45-day money-back guarantee. Okay, again, I make great deals for you guys. Go to HostGator.com/Nathan to grab that now. 00:20:11,944 --> 00:20:28,444 [Speaker 0] That's okay. Hey, yeah, sounds like it's, whatever you're doing now is working, so I'd keep doing that. But Top Tribe, we'll link to that in the show notes at NathanLatka.com/thetop494. Again, /thetop494. Boris, it's time for the famous five. These are rapid-fire questions with quick one-word answers. You ready? 00:20:28,444 --> 00:20:28,784 [Speaker 1] Sure. 00:20:28,784 --> 00:20:29,824 [Speaker 0] What's your favorite business book? 00:20:31,704 --> 00:20:34,284 [Speaker 1] Uh, uh, Guerrilla Marketing. 00:20:34,284 --> 00:20:37,104 [Speaker 0] Number two, is there a CEO that you're following or studying right now? 00:20:39,084 --> 00:20:44,224 [Speaker 1] Uh, the CEO that I'm following is, um, 00:20:45,364 --> 00:20:49,464 [Speaker 1] oh, what's his name? Uh, the guy who leads Salesforce is just- 00:20:49,464 --> 00:20:50,584 [Speaker 0] Benioff. 00:20:50,584 --> 00:20:51,843 [Speaker 1] Yeah, Benioff. Yeah, exactly. 00:20:51,844 --> 00:20:54,484 [Speaker 0] If he offered you $100 million today for the business, would you sell? 00:20:56,684 --> 00:20:57,664 [Speaker 1] No. 00:20:57,664 --> 00:21:01,024 [Speaker 0] Number three, is there a favorite online tool that you have, like TopTal? 00:21:03,344 --> 00:21:08,033 [Speaker 1] Uh, favorite online tool. Um, what kind of an online tool? 00:21:08,033 --> 00:21:08,064 [Speaker 0] Anything. 00:21:08,064 --> 00:21:08,884 [Speaker 1] I use a lot of online tools. 00:21:08,884 --> 00:21:10,704 [Speaker 0] Whatever you use the most. 00:21:10,704 --> 00:21:12,264 [Speaker 1] Uh, whatever I use the most. 00:21:12,264 --> 00:21:12,884 [Speaker 0] Besides your own. 00:21:12,884 --> 00:21:16,524 [Speaker 1] Google Analytics. Google Analytics is probably the, the one that I use the most. 00:21:16,524 --> 00:21:19,124 [Speaker 0] And number four, yes or no, do you get eight hours of sleep every night? 00:21:20,344 --> 00:21:21,224 [Speaker 1] No. [laughs] 00:21:21,224 --> 00:21:24,064 [Speaker 0] [laughs] And what, what's your situation? Married, single, do you have kids? 00:21:25,304 --> 00:21:30,304 [Speaker 1] Um, I have a, a, yeah, I have a six-month, 16-month-old. 00:21:30,304 --> 00:21:32,403 [Speaker 0] Oh, wow. Okay, so married and one kid. 00:21:32,404 --> 00:21:32,854 [Speaker 1] Mm-hmm. 00:21:32,854 --> 00:21:34,504 [Speaker 0] And what's your... Are, are you... How old are you, Boris? 00:21:35,724 --> 00:21:36,624 [Speaker 1] I'm 38. 00:21:36,624 --> 00:21:40,544 [Speaker 0] Okay, so last question. Take us back 18 years. What do you wish your 20-year-old self knew? 00:21:42,444 --> 00:21:42,644 [Speaker 1] Uh, 00:21:43,844 --> 00:21:46,704 [Speaker 1] that doing is more important than knowing. 00:21:46,704 --> 00:22:12,954 [Speaker 0] Oh, wow. Love that. Top Tribe, there you have it. Doing is more important than knowing from Boris, who built, he joined early, early on as a co-founder at PDFfiller. They now are just doing something spectacular, over 200,000 customers, do over 10 million bucks in rev- way over 10 million bucks in revenue in 2015, all bootstrapped, which I love. Average customer's paying 10 bucks per month, doing over or around 2 million bucks in MRR with about 5% weighted gross churn. $10 CAC, $200- 00:22:12,954 --> 00:22:12,964 [Speaker 1] Yeah 00:22:12,964 --> 00:22:19,144 [Speaker 0] ... lifetime value with this team of 160 people between Boston and Kyiv. Boris, thank you for taking us to the top. 00:22:19,144 --> 00:22:20,664 [Speaker 1] Thanks, Nathan. I appreciate it. 00:22:21,964 --> 00:23:10,904 [Speaker 0] If you enjoyed Boris today, go back and listen to Chris Dever yesterday. Chris's company has over 15 million users and 90,000 in monthly recurring revenue with his company DocHub, making document signing easier. Top Tribe, I love giving away free money. I feel like Oprah giving away cars, and I have something special for you today. How many of you have heard our super sharp guests talk about success they've had with Facebook and Google Ads? Well, all of you listening right now, yes, if you're listening, you get $100 in free AdWords. Here's how you get it. Okay, again, thanks for listening. Get the free $100 from Google, right, when you sign up with my website host provider, HostGator. Go sign up now to get your free money. HostGator.com/Nathan. Again, that's HostGator.com/Nathan. 00:23:12,564 --> 00:23:24,504 [Speaker 0] Okay, Top Tribe, I'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning. And don't forget, before you listen to any other episodes, subscribe on iTunes right now for your chance to win 100 bucks every Monday. 00:23:27,484 --> 00:23:33,364 [Speaker 0] [outro music]