How DocSend Grew to 2,800 Paying Companies on $11M Raised (Interview with CEO Russ Heddleston)

Nathan Latka

00:00This is the top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per talk. 5 and 6,000,000.

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00:52Nathan Latka here. This episode five eighty one. Coming up tomorrow morning, you're gonna learn from Calvin, the CEO of Simplero. It's a SaaS company with a team of just two people, but guess what? It makes 1,000,000 per year, and it's totally bootstrapped. This is what I mean. Why it's way more important. Don't worry about being a unicorn. Hit singles and doubles. Calvin is doing it, and boy, is he getting rich because of it. You don't wanna

01:28miss tomorrow's episode. Good

Introduction and Guest Background

Nathan Latka

01:32morning, guys. I'm Nathan Latka here. Our guest today is Russ Heddleston. He's the CEO and cofounder of DocSend. Previously, he was a product manager at Facebook where he arrived via the acquisition of his startup pursuit.com. Russ has also held roles at Dropbox, Greystripe, and Trulia. He received a BS in computer engineering and an MS in computer science from from Stanford along with an MBA from Harvard. Russ, are you ready to take us to the top?

Russ Heddleston

01:56Absolutely.

Pursuit.com and the Facebook Acquisition

Nathan Latka

01:57Very good. Well, thanks for joining. Tell us first real quick. So you arrived at Facebook via Pursuit. What did Pursuit do?

Russ Heddleston

02:05Pursuit was a system for human resources to manage their referral programs for employees, and so it was a very smart way of tracking and understanding who's making referrals, where those people coming from, and helping companies just manage that whole process more effectively, And after running that for a little over a year, we shopped it to LinkedIn and Facebook and decided to go with Facebook.

Nathan Latka

02:26I appreciate being transparent there and saying kind of you shopped it. A lot of people say never... You know, you never wanna sell your company. What what kind of made you guys decide to go through that if that was truly an intentional process?

Russ Heddleston

02:36It it was. We looked at our own numbers, and the theory that we had, we had a hypothesis we wanted to test it. And we got, you know, 40 companies signed up for the service, a few thousand users, and then the numbers just weren't looking like we wanted them to.

Nathan Latka

02:48And so we look at us?

Russ Heddleston

02:50Absolutely. So we would look at how many people were being referred, and we figured out that they were going out of band. Like, those hires were happening, and then we were like, why? And then we kinda dug into the psychology of what we're doing. And without it being a separate podcast, basically decided that some of our assumptions were incorrect in our product and that to change those assumptions would be a huge process. And we were just

03:09kinda out at that point. We've been doing a little over a year, raised about 500 k.

Nathan Latka

03:12Okay.

Russ Heddleston

03:13And Facebook's one of our first customers. So we went and talked to them. We talked to LinkedIn about, you know, you just like joining them. Yeah. And you're you're right. We totally decided to sell the company, and to shop it around. So that that just made the most sense for us.

Nathan Latka

03:26Yeah. Would you say a kind of soft landing talent acquisition more or less?

Russ Heddleston

03:29Oh, yeah. For sure. The the assets of the company weren't acquired, but we were all incredibly happy with the outcome.

Nathan Latka

03:35So you're a product manager at Facebook. What product were you on?

Russ Heddleston

03:38I was the product manager for the pages team. So anything with a like button on it, that's not a human being, like a like a like a profile. So that's a a pretty big swath of of what Facebook does is is included under pages.

Nathan Latka

03:50And you... Sorry. You said you're working with the personalities versus the brands or the brands?

Russ Heddleston

03:55Brands and personalities both have Facebook pages. So both of them have likes. You can't add them as a friend. And at the time, it was a very small team at Facebook, and, I got to have a great experience being there and growing that team out significantly over a couple of year periods.

Nathan Latka

04:08So let's let's jump into DocSend now. So what year did you make the decision to leave Facebook and start DocSend?

Founding DocSend and Early Product Vision

Russ Heddleston

04:15We started DocSend in 2013. So it's, you know, over three and a half years ago now that we started the company. And the very first version of it was, something that came from an insight I had, while I interned at Dropbox while was in business school in 2010, that is that sending attachments is just really not a great way to go. It just brings up a lot of problems, so we wanted to come up with a

04:39system that worked well for businesses to send documents as links and not attachments. And there are a few properties that we really wanted that were just missing from all the other systems out there around security and tracking and being able to update things and just insight in what what is happening when I send content or documents out to people. And so the first version of DocSend was was just that. That's just what we wanted. Very simple,

05:02easy to use system. Sign up, get going, just hit the ground running. And we launched that at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2014.

First Year Revenue and Early Growth Focus

Nathan Latka

05:10And what was, because usually this is an embarrassingly low number, which is which is obviously fine. But do you remember what your first year revenue was?

05:19If it was above zero.

Russ Heddleston

05:21No. We didn't charge any money for the first year, so it was for sure zero.

Nathan Latka

05:21Got it.

Russ Heddleston

05:21And we were just focused on growth. You couldn't pay us money if you wanted to. We launched the product, and we just wanted to see what happens. Where does it go? Who looks at it? Like, who's using it? And so we launched it. We saw a good spike. We saw nice growth after that, and we were really digging into

05:40the numbers around like who is using it, and it wasn't Facebook like growth numbers, like if you look at a consumer company versus a b to b company, it was clear that what DocSend was doing was a very high value, but it wasn't gonna be Facebook size in terms of, like, user account. We just aren't consumer. Everyone is using DocSend for a business application. But what happened in that year is that we took a hard look

06:02at everyone using DocSend. For instance, people use it in fundraising all the time. If you ask any venture capitalist about DocSend, they'll be like, yes. I get all DocSend links now. And that was really nice for us. Unfortunately, that's not a great business to be in. So we looked at some of the other cohorts of users that we had

Nathan Latka

06:18just on the samples, and that use case is not a good use case for you.

Russ Heddleston

06:22That's right. You can't build a big business around around

Nathan Latka

06:25It's like one time. Right?

Russ Heddleston

06:26Yeah. Exactly. After a few months, they successfully raise and they're done. And they're gone or it didn't work, which is unfortunately

Nathan Latka

06:33You need a transaction fee on that. Right?

Russ Heddleston

06:36Right. Yeah. This would be great. We actually did get approached by a hedge fund about about buying the company, and that would have been awful for everyone. But I I thought that was flattering in a way, I guess, that they were like, we've seen so many of your links that we would like... We we would like access to your data. Like, no. Yeah. Security and privacy are obviously paramount to us. But in any case, that

Identifying the Sales Team Use Case

Russ Heddleston

06:55wasn't a great use case. What we saw was that salespeople do use DocSend, and they use it kind of forever.

Nathan Latka

07:01Yep.

Russ Heddleston

07:01And salespeople are kinda similar to people fundraising. You're both selling something of high value. You have to have assets that describe the value that you're bringing, and you're trying to get a transaction done. And there's a lot on the line, so you wanna make sure that the up to date thing is always seen. You wanna understand who's looking at it, who cares, who doesn't care.

Nathan Latka

07:22So, Russ, if we if we fast forward, you... I I assume you have revenue today. Right?

Russ Heddleston

07:27We do.

Nathan Latka

07:27So what is the... When you turned on pricing, give us kind of a snapshot January 2017. What's the... We won't talk about every plan, so just give us an average. What's the average customer paying you per month?

Pricing Plans: Self-Serve vs Enterprise

Russ Heddleston

07:37It's it's it's it's broken out, in tiers. So there are basically two businesses we have. One is the self serve business. You can still come to DocSend, and you can still sign up and pay us $10 a month.

Nathan Latka

07:48Okay.

Russ Heddleston

07:48And that's great. Please do that. It's an awesome product. What we found was that we need to go after bigger teams and that the problem we solve is even more pronounced at large sales and marketing teams where, marketing doesn't know what content sales is using, and sales has a really hard time just finding and sending the content they need to to close deals. And so all the tracking is involved in that, but it's it's kind of

08:12a multiplayer game that we play. And so that's the enterprise plan we have, and that's where we make most of our money today.

Nathan Latka

08:18Like, more than 80%?

Russ Heddleston

08:23It is

Nathan Latka

08:23Like, DC eighty twenty BC eighty

08:26twenty kind of rules here?

Russ Heddleston

08:28That's right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's... Especially when we look forward to the next year as we go up market and sell bigger contracts. We used to be twenty eighty, and, yeah, eighty twenty is is a good rule of thumb in terms of what we look at. We don't focus on the self serve inbound stuff anymore.

Nathan Latka

08:28Got it.

Russ Heddleston

08:28It's more talking outbound deals.

Enterprise Pricing and Outbound Sales Economics

Nathan Latka

08:47And for that eighty eighty... Russ, for that 80%, so what's the average there? We have a lot of listeners that are in this space. Right? Salespeople, and they're gonna be going, hey. Should I try DocSend or not? Give give them a sense of kind of the average price for an enterprise.

Russ Heddleston

08:59It totally varies based on the size of team we target. So we've run this experiment where we target really big companies, you know, like 100 k plus deals, and looked at how long those take. And we've targeted really small deals, and we look at how long those take. We actually haven't found that a big difference in terms of time between... We we go by the number of salespeople using the product as our product.

Nathan Latka

09:18What do charge by that, Russ? Is that is that same no matter no matter the size?

Russ Heddleston

09:22It it varies. No. It varies between $50 and $90 per user per month depending on if there's screen sharing, if there's Salesforce involved in there. I think it comes out to around, like, 70 or $80 a user a month.

Nathan Latka

09:34Mhmm.

Russ Heddleston

09:34So let's just say roughly

09:35a thousand dollars user a year. We, for our outbound, only target teams of 30 and above. So that'd be about $30,000 a year in annual contract value for that. We found that, like, selling to a team at 10 is the same amount of time as selling to a team at 30. And if you have outbound, it's expensive, and so, you know, it needs to make sense. If you get up into the hundreds of salespeople, the time

09:59it takes to get that deal closed goes up significantly. So when you ask, like, what's your average annual contract value? Like any outbound company, the the answer is it depends on who we're targeting, and we can target various size. It's interesting because Dropbox has had a similar experience where they've gone way up market, they've closed some of those big logos. And then they've pulled back looking at how long those take, and just kind of the cost

10:20benefit there.

Nathan Latka

10:21What is what is the...

10:22Give us a target.

10:23Give us a sense of what your economics look like on that sales process. So, like, what's your what's your total team size currently, and what percentage of those are salespeople?

Team Size and Office Locations

Russ Heddleston

10:31The the total team size is around 25, and it is just six salespeople.

Nathan Latka

10:36Okay. Six. Great. So we'll call it a fourth. Alright. Good. And you guys are all based in San Fran?

Russ Heddleston

10:41We have one in New York and then five in San Fran.

Nathan Latka

10:44Okay. Got it. Sorry. No. Your total team. Are most of you guys in San Francisco?

Russ Heddleston

10:49Oh, other than the one guy, yes. Everyone's in San Francisco.

Nathan Latka

10:52Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Got you got your New York hustler going up there closing deals. Right?

Russ Heddleston

10:55That's right.

Nathan Latka

10:56Gotta have the feet on the street. Yep. Yep. Very good. And, okay, before we talk more kind of about product and why links are more important than attachments and things like that, so you launched in 2013, focused on usage, usage, usage. When did you introduce the pricing plan?

Russ Heddleston

11:09We introduced the pricing plan, I think in... Actually, a year later, almost exactly a year later when we launched. So it was in, like, March or April 2014.

Nathan Latka

11:19Okay. And if we fast forward to January 2017, whatever you care most about, whether it's seats or logos that have seats under them, how many of... You pick which one. How many of either of those do you have?

Customer Count and Seat Breakdown

Russ Heddleston

11:32So we actually have over 2,800 paying companies right now.

Nathan Latka

11:36Okay.

Russ Heddleston

11:36And we have... That's a fraction of the total number that are using DocSend. But among those 2,800, I really care about a mix of logo and, seat count.

Nathan Latka

11:36Okay.

Russ Heddleston

11:36And the the reason is that if, I actually don't even know off the top of my head which which brands I'm allowed to talk about.

Nathan Latka

11:57Don't say anything. But on on on average, all those 2,800 paying companies, how many seats per company would you say on average?

Russ Heddleston

12:04Well, no. It's bucketed between ones that are just a few. I don't... We don't really care a lot about them. And then amongst the 10 or above, I get really excited when it's like a team of 50 or more salespeople because that's that's a really interesting sale to get done. There's a sales ops person involved. There's a content marketing person involved. The sales and the marketing team need to work together effectively. The complexity of that sale

12:22really goes up. So the teams of 50 or more that we get locked into DocSend and actually buy into the value prop, that for me is really exciting because it it it feels like a whole different product and different sale and different company than what we launched in 2013, and the economics are way better.

Nathan Latka

12:38Yeah. So your target is obviously teams of 50 or more, but if you just... Total number of users on your platform right now that are under a paid plan is how many?

Russ Heddleston

12:46Oh gosh. I don't know off the top of my head.

Nathan Latka

12:49It's definitely above above.

Russ Heddleston

12:51Definitely, I mean, it's definitely above 10,000, I would guess.

Nathan Latka

12:55Got it. Got it. Cool. So that's good to that's good to understand. And then walk us through, some more of the history here. So bootstrapped or we raised capital?

Funding History: Venture Capital and Venture Debt

Russ Heddleston

13:02We've raised capital. We've raised about 10,000,000 in, venture capital and then another, million in venture debt. So around 11,000,000, in total.

Nathan Latka

13:12Happy about that, do regret it?

Russ Heddleston

13:14Oh, no. Super happy about that. August Capital led the A round. Howard Hartenbaum is on our board. He's fantastic. Jeff Clavier from SoftTech VC led our seed round, and he's on our board, and he's also fantastic. I think it's a team sport. I have a lot of admiration for the companies that bootstrap it and get it there. I think for us, having access to those networks and having access to that help has been really helpful for us.

13:38Even just having board meetings every couple months is just great to check-in every once in a while, look back, get an outside perspective, and make sure you're on track. So I've been very happy with the investors that we've we've picked to partner with.

Nathan Latka

13:51And, Russ, you said that was 10,000,000 total raised?

Russ Heddleston

13:54In... Yeah. 11,000,000 total including venture debt.

Nathan Latka

13:56Okay. Got it. Got it. Yeah. That's, a lot of folks are kind of... When did you tack on the venture debt? Was it as part of your series a?

Russ Heddleston

14:02No. It was, post series seed.

Nathan Latka

14:05Post series. Okay. So it's kinda like... You almost use it like a bridge between seed and series a?

Russ Heddleston

14:09Yeah. Actually, after we took on venture debt, wrote a blog post about it. I mean, there are some very important things to keep in mind with it just around the the... Like, with the ratio of venture debt to to money in the bank that you have. It's it's really a insurance policy and it extends your runway a little bit, but it can really come back to bite you depending on like a few different scenarios happening.

Nathan Latka

14:31Finance and things like that.

Russ Heddleston

14:33Well, obviously those sorts of things, but even if you get like a pretty good term sheet, just the way venture debt is structured, it will extend your runway some in some scenarios, but it's also kind of scary in terms of just the rights they have over you. And anyway, I'd like to use some scenarios.

Self-Serve vs Outbound Revenue Mix

Nathan Latka

14:48Russ, if you Skype me that link, we'll link to that in the show notes so people can check that out. It sounds like you got some valuable stuff there. Okay. Let's pull... So I'm gonna pull some of this math forward real quick. Okay? So 70 ARPU, you said at at a minimum of 10,000 seats. So it's fair to say you're doing above $700,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Right?

Russ Heddleston

15:03I can't talk about our revenue.

Nathan Latka

15:05Okay. Alright. That seat number, though, and the ARPU number, those are basically averages. Right? It's a minimum.

Russ Heddleston

15:11The, the

Nathan Latka

15:11Tell that math tell me why

15:14that math would be wrong, Russ. You told me earlier $70 ARPU was was average. Right? And you definitely have more than 10,000 seats. So why would you not have more than $700,000 in revenue monthly?

Russ Heddleston

15:23What... It... So it... The number of companies that are paying for it range between $10 a month and, basically, a $100 a user a month. And so there's quite the split there between the the ones that are just coming in and self serve and then the larger ones that we go afterwards. So, yeah, that that split is not something that I would like to talk about.

Nathan Latka

15:46Well, you you articulated it was basically eighty twenty, though. Correct?

Russ Heddleston

15:50In terms of the new stuff coming in, yeah. And the historical stuff, I don't know what it would break out into in total.

Nathan Latka

15:56Okay. Got it. So if we... So, basically, what you're saying is that $70 ARPU number, that's really on your on your cohort of folks you're newly targeting, right, which are more kind of enterprise level. That's not a reflection of the total 2,800 customers you have currently, which a lot of them are probably self serve at $10.

Russ Heddleston

16:10Many of them are. Yes.

Nathan Latka

16:11Yeah. Okay. Good. I just want to get a minimum number, Russ, just so so... And we don't have worry about how big you are, but let's say a minimum is 10, right, times times 2,800 customers. Right? So you're definitely doing more than 28,000... Or sorry. You're... And there's 10,000 seats. You're definitely doing more than $100,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Can we can we we can we put a base... So we can put a baseline on this.

16:30Correct?

Russ Heddleston

16:33You know what? I I could, but I I don't really see the benefit in it for me at this point, talking about... You want do the math correctly.

Nathan Latka

16:40You got... Yeah. I'll let... Audience, you guys can do the math. The reason, Russ, I think this kind of stuff is important is because it's rarely talked about. And, and and when people can understand some of these numbers, it helps them better understand strategies they can employ in their own businesses. Right? Maybe they consider venture debt if their economics look similar to yours or if they don't look similar. So thanks for being transparent.

Russ Heddleston

16:58Sure. Two two things to note on that that are important. When we look at our legacy business around, inbound and self serve, sometimes companies get that right, and you just take off at an incredible rate. And you're like, wow. This is super exciting. You've gotta be growing at 20% a month, with that type of number for that to be like, we've made it.

Nathan Latka

17:15You have to have kind of number, the self serve stuff?

Russ Heddleston

17:17Just the self serve inbound. Yeah. Because that one's hard to influence. What's exciting about outbound is that you control the destiny of that. And so what was exciting for me is when we got to the point where we can sell 50,000 a year deals, and we can do that in a minimum amount of time. And then it's really just a function of scaling up your sales team. The trick is not to do that too early, and

17:36the trick is to understand specifically what's going into that being successful and asking the question, can that scale? And so that's why I say in terms of new revenue that we make, having that be eighty twenty is pretty exciting for me, especially in terms of building out our our sales team this year, and they they really are two separate businesses. So when you ask questions about, like, the mix of the two, like, I... It's not even

17:57something I I pay a whole lot of attention to.

Nathan Latka

17:59Yep. Yep. In other words, you're not looking at an average across your entire customer base. You're definitely splitting out at a minimum into two cohorts. One is self serve, one is enterprise, probably more cohorts than just that.

Russ Heddleston

18:07There are more cohorts than just that, but but at a rough one, yeah, I get excited about the larger teams that are using us for slightly different reasons than the people who are using us for their fundraising or for other individual uses.

Nathan Latka

18:17Churn is critical in these kinds of businesses. If we just focus on kind of your enterprise cohort, what is your gross customer monthly churn, and how do you manage that? What what kind of utility are you are you trying to drive, you know, daily so people stay sticky?

Enterprise Churn and Net Negative Revenue Churn

Russ Heddleston

18:29Yeah. So we haven't lost a team of greater than 10 salespeople from DocSend. That's just churned. Yeah. So that's really exciting to me.

Nathan Latka

18:38Over your history, your life.

Russ Heddleston

18:39Yeah, over our history, our life. And the reason is that once a team adopts a system that connects sales and marketing like DocSend does, even if sales wants to get rid of it, marketing doesn't wanna get rid of it. The marketing side's good with it, sales like, no, we need that. And so it's hard to get the adoption, but it's hard to get rid of it as well. And that is a really attractive property for us.

18:59The the churn in the self serve stuff is is super high, but our our

Nathan Latka

19:02What is that for us to quantify that?

19:045% monthly, 10% monthly?

Russ Heddleston

19:06I don't know off the top of my head.

Nathan Latka

19:06What's high mean? What's high mean?

Russ Heddleston

19:06Well, those numbers are certainly high that you gave me. And the thing that matters there is the net promoter score that we get, and people are really happy with it. They're like, oh, I love DocSend, but but, yeah, of course, I'm not gonna pay for it anymore. I don't I don't really need it now, but I might use it again later this

19:23year. And so for me, that's... Oh, that's great. It's a nice product. They like it, but it's it's not a great business characteristic. I think, like, what is it? 11% monthly is kind of a general target for for companies to to aim for. If it's much above that, then that's pretty worrying.

Nathan Latka

19:38Have you have you hit kind of the magical net negative revenue churn just because your expansion activities are really working?

Russ Heddleston

19:43Oh, yeah. It's... In the enterprise, like, we have a churn yet of 10 or larger seats, and they mostly expand. There have been a couple of contractions, and when that happens, I I mean, I feel bad for the company. It's like, oh, that's really rough to have to cut part of your sales team.

Nathan Latka

19:43Isn't that

Russ Heddleston

19:43It's only happened a couple of times.

Nathan Latka

20:00Is that where you're... Is most of your expansion is is literally when your salesperson's on the phone with that company, are most of the expansion kind of benefits around team size, or is it they're expanding revenue because they're getting additional reporting features or things like that?

Russ Heddleston

20:12It's around seat count. I mean, so, Namely, was I think one of the... Like, company or other individual salesperson, who signed up, for DocSend, and then the rest of the team has since just really, adopted the whole thing and brought it on. So DocSend has grown, his family has grown, and that the company has been doing incredibly well.

Nathan Latka

20:29Doesn't that feel good?

Russ Heddleston

20:31It's great. I'm really happy for them, and I'm really happy for us, and then they can see the value in it. And as the company gets bigger, our product becomes stickier with them, which is a really nice characteristic for us.

Fundraising Status and Path Forward

Nathan Latka

20:41Hey, Russ, last question before we get into the the final five here. When was that last round of financing that you raised? When did you close that?

Russ Heddleston

20:47We closed that a little over a year ago.

Nathan Latka

20:51Okay. So you're either right now raising your next round or LinkedIn's about to give you a $100,000,000 acquisition offer. Which one is it?

Russ Heddleston

20:58We'd have... We don't have to raise more money at this point if we don't want to. That's the other really nice thing about doing larger enterprise sales in terms of controlling your own destiny, and the the cash up front characteristics of it are also, pretty attractive.

Nathan Latka

21:12You guys are profitable. You're not burning cash?

Russ Heddleston

21:15Well, we still have cash in the bank. We're not profitable, and there's also cash flow profitable and, like, accounting profitable. Yeah. I'll just leave it at that. I... We are not currently fundraising, and we don't currently need to get acquired. We're just very focused on growing our business, which is really the most fun part of it.

Nathan Latka

21:30Okay, top tribe. As many of you know, I sold Hayo, and everyone is always asked me what my expenses were when I was building Hayo. Well, a big expense was that I spent over $3 per month on financial services to keep me out of trouble in terms of taxes. You know, my mom would always holler at me, Nathan, you gotta keep all your receipts and put them in a freaking box or something to make sure you

21:49don't

21:50get an audit or things like this.

21:51I'm like, mom, I'm a millennial. You think I'm gonna keep all these receipts? I now use FreshBooks. I use their mobile app to take a picture of receipts, and it makes taxes a cinch. Additionally, I don't have to hire a $3,000 per month person to manage all my finances. It's like saving so much money and my mom's happy. Additionally, I don't waste a bunch of time creating invoices. I use their templates and I can avoid using

22:14word templates or excel files. I just use FreshBooks to quickly send out invoices, and it works like a charm. To get your free first month, go to nathanlatka.com/freshbooks and enter the top in the how did you hear about us section. Again, go to nathanlatka.com/freshbooks and enter the top in the how did you hear about us section. I'll quickly, guys, pull a lesson out just for SaaS entrepreneurs listening because a lot of people don't talk about it

22:42like Russ does. The difference between accounting profitable and and, you know, cash flow profitable. There are two very different things, especially considering we can pull cash forward from these enterprise deals so that can make you kind of accounting profitable in some sense, so read into that and study that obviously you see fit, But, Russ, thanks. Thanks for being transparent there. I appreciate it. Let's wrap up. Last five questions. These are like cake compared to what I've

23:03asked. Are you ready?

Russ Heddleston

23:04Sure. I promise.

Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions

Nathan Latka

23:06Number one, what's your favorite business book?

Russ Heddleston

23:09Oh, good to great.

Nathan Latka

23:10Number two, is there a CEO you're following or studying right now?

Russ Heddleston

23:14Oh, the CEO at DocuSign, Keith, is phenomenal. He actually just recommended a book to me, the the the Regis Touch that I I just started reading, which is phenomenal. I love what he's doing.

Nathan Latka

23:23Didn't that just get confirmed, like, today, I think. Right? New CEO?

23:28There's a... Did you did you read that news?

Russ Heddleston

23:31Oh, no. I don't know when when that was, confirmed. I haven't I haven't seen the news on that.

Nathan Latka

23:37Oh, oh, oh, I thought, because DocuSign was searching for a new CEO, and I think they said effective this week, Daniel Springer is taking over the reins from from... Oh, Keith was chairman, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got it.

Russ Heddleston

23:49And I think interim CEO.

Nathan Latka

23:50Yeah. Very good. Okay. So you're following him. Good. Number number three, besides your own, is there a favorite online tool you have?

Russ Heddleston

24:00Favorite online tool? Man, there's just so many of them. Sales or personal?

Nathan Latka

24:09What you use the most, whether it's personal or business.

Russ Heddleston

24:13Oh gosh. I I mean, other than, like, Gmail or Slack or Truly Wireless is a new one, that I like a lot.

24:20We use that for phone... All of

24:21our phone calling, stuff.

Nathan Latka

24:22Great. Number four, yes or no. Do you get eight hours of sleep every night?

Russ Heddleston

24:26Yes.

Nathan Latka

24:27And what's your situation? Married, single, do you have kids?

Russ Heddleston

24:30Single.

Nathan Latka

24:31Single. Nice.

Russ Heddleston

24:31With a girlfriend who's awesome.

Nathan Latka

24:33Awesome. No kids. Right?

Russ Heddleston

24:34No kids.

Nathan Latka

24:35Alright. And how old are you?

Russ Heddleston

24:36I'm 32.

Nathan Latka

24:37Alright. Last question, Russ. Take us back twelve years. What do you wish your 20 year old self knew?

Russ Heddleston

24:43Oh, 20 year old self. I I guess, patience. Do things well and be patient with them, and then they will turn out well later.

Nathan Latka

24:52Top Tribe. There you have it. Do things well, be patient with them, and good things will happen. Again, from Russ, Founder of DocSend founded in 2013, now a team of about 25 people mainly based in San Francisco with one out in LA or one out in New York, sorry, targeting now annual contract values or team sizes of at least 30 to or more, ideally 50 or more people. ARPUs, again, in terms of seat sizes ranging from

25:15$10 self serve all the way up to a $100 depending on feature sets and things like that. Raised $11,000,000 in capital last round about a year ago. They really successfully employed venture debt, it sounds like, as well, serving over 2,800 paying customers and over 10,000 seats. Russ, thank you for taking us to the top.

Russ Heddleston

25:32Great. Thank you, Nathan.

Nathan Latka

25:34If you enjoyed Russ today, go back and listen to Piatari yesterday. He self funded his company, to $400,000

25:40in monthly recurring revenue and now has over a thousand customers and helps them get business to business leads faster and close them quicker. 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

26:03a $100 in free AdWords. Here's how you get it. K? 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. 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 a $100 every Monday.