How Propeller Crm CEO Eric Bouck grew to $30K revenue and 50 customers in 2016.

this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs to our number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue for customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what their marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have on now its twenty thousand dollars per top five in six weigh-ins his head back on global domination we just broke 100,000 unit full mark and I'm your host Nathan lakha okay job tribes this week's winner of a hundred bucks is Justin Goodwin he's in the HR industry specifically in the software the service case looking to increase his revenue so congratulations Justin's for your registrants to win a hundred bucks every Monday on the show to build your idea simply subscribe to the podcast in itunes now and then text or Nathan two three three four four four again text or Nathan two three three four four four guys if you want to be easy people to use to book your meetings back to back to match your calls to make sure people extra show up on a schedule you want to use acuity scheduling it's what I use for my podcast interviews and Nathan black accom /schedule I'll tell you more about how I use it later on in the episode this is episode 5 49 I'm Nathan Lac des and come up tomorrow morning you'll learn from Daniel of attentive they've raised 150 grand in Portugal to solve a very unique sales problem stops draw good morning Nathan laughter here our guest this morning is Eric bow and he is the CEO and founder at a company called propeller this theorem now before that prior to propeller Eric was super involved at Samsung he was co-founder and CEO at zigzag software which again he sold to Samsung prior to that back in September 2008 he was group of product manager at Dell am C and worked his way up there again before founding zig zag selling a samsung and then leaving the found propeller see our Eric are you ready to take it to the top absolutely all right so walk us through it tell us first what does propeller CRM do and how to generate revenue yeah so we're below CRM that still people actually want to use and we're doing that by focusing not just on making bid entry prettier but about actually empowering silk people to get their job done on a day-to-day basis so the big vision is to career based tools that salespeople can use for doing their email their phone calls study meeting cheering presentations documents doing research and have all that hiking happens the natural byproduct and what is the business model how do you make money it's a saspa saspa sis pretty typical we charged a you know per user per month we have multi plans and able plan and yeah and before I get more into kind of a story and and how you're different similar CRMs help give us a sense of kind of average revenue per customer per month for the platform i know you have multiple plan yeah absolutely so you know we're a we focused on the pretty low end of the market right now and we're going to make our way up the food chain average revenue per per account is around fifty dollars per month right now okay got it perfect and it's just obvious question eric and there are this is such a crowded space you know that in such a crowded says Mary crying how how on earth do you win so I think it's an interesting concepts that go into such a crowded market and a lot of people told me I was crazy to do it but I think if you look around there are so many different companies that seem to be thriving by creating their own little niche the value proposition and so I think for certain categories of product here and being one of them there's always gonna be opportunity if you can if you go ahead and differentiate yourself so what we've got right now is a reasonably unique of integration of deep integration with gmail combined with the ability to do multi-step email campaigns and have great reporting and everything on top of that and that mixed together does seem to find a group of customers that have looked at you know dozens of CRM sometimes and land on us and say this is the one for us it's what I'm looking for and if you just sort of their reasoning like ears and one actually here in contextual language on the phone calls when you say hey why'd you just start paying us and they tell you x is it I mean is it because these systems you built directly in their workflow and then also go to Salesforce or some other external sign in yeah or here we don't know another way to think about is you know a lot of the people out there probably going and looking at Salesforce plus you know for tau plus and outreach that I owe or persist a queue and you know plus you know yours inside and be kind of tight a collision secures her death you put all together and it gets really expensive or you know you go as you know kind of other products and maybe they do a good job of one thing but not the whole package and so I think you know us sitting together kind of an all-in-one for a certain kind of workflow which seems to be pretty effective for small companies that it seems to be working and proof is always in the pudding Rory guys out in terms of total customers are serving here in December 2016 yeah so your question was pretty early in our life cycle Jessica are somewhere yeah absolutely so we launched the product widely on number first the three months ago oh wow I we've been growing at twenty-one percent month over month we said we put up 25 percent month over month in November we got a little over 50 customers right now great boost Raptor of you raise capital totally misstep ok good and what's the decision now I'm sure you can raise capital if you wanted yeah it's uh you know we're a bit about it you know it had a you know an exit with zig zag and maybe some decent money out of that and arrow is decent money give us to Rayna well I can't disclose the actual numbers but I could say well worth it for two years of work that we put in I'm a big rails oh that doesn't help have a like like a million to a hundred million or give us a huge range I'll put it this way let's say it wasn't retirement money but it's better than car money so maybe let's go house money that's good that's good at doubtful okay so you're currently in 50 customers you're three months old growing about twenty one percent month-over-month the massive I guess is simple right 50 customers I'm 50 our crew mentoring about 2,500 bucks a month in our visit mr I know playlist and you have a good sense of a well I mean this will be good indication if people kind of our stickin have you have you lost anybody at any turn we have insurance I mean as you would expect and but basically we've also had some upgrades so our net sure and hovers right around zero process ok so again net net revenue turns on zero percent because of upgrades and how what are you doing to upgrade people is it is it you like contact based or what um it it's been a function of people add in you know we'll start out with a couple seats it works for them and then they'll add more they'll hire people so you know it's kind of a combination of those things and what's the what's a team look like so it's pretty small we've got we've got basically in five people seek out some part-timers you know an engineer you know designer marketing guide we're going to me it's a remote team so I'm actually the one it I'm in San Francisco I've gotta be folks in in Europe and then I've got my work and go to LA if somebody was interested I mean you're small enough we're kind of any of these guys could grab you early if you want it I mean if somebody came and offer to you you know a million bucks two million bucks to buy the business because they saw something in your tech or something like that would you do that kind of deal or just something you can see yourself working on for the next two or three decades yeah definitely definitely not a deal right now I mean we're really this is you know this is what I want to do for a long time so this is my you know this is my 10-year plan and I can't think of any better way to spend my time I'm having a blast and who do you think is leading the space currently and so forth come on a tournament I chose for you know if you look at if you look at the overall market it from the big players don't force the growing the fastest dynamics is probably the second decide if i pay attention to that and then there's a lot of there's a lot of interesting products that are coming out i think we're all going to do our parts to really improve the space and to start taking down sale for supper with the lower end what is the outgoing saying in the mid and small market who do you think is kind of leading right now in terms of what sales people are happy and excited to be using i hear some satisfaction reasonable satisfaction pipe drive a lot of people i think that's a reasonable product I think that I'm sponsors nursing stuff for sure yeah are there are their components of propeller that kind of integrate a I I've heard a few people actually in fact I had Timo on from pipes drive and I had to outreach guys on as well and I seeing a trend of people switching from pipe drive to outreach and they're specifically saying it's because outreach is just out engineered pipe drive in terms of AI and smart sales recommendations I will say outreach is a fantastic product I've been I've been really impressed with added a team a lot of people get value out of it and in an ass before we had any campaign functionality we certainly had people using outreach plus I've you know I don't have a good insight as to you know how well AI is going to be displacing people from my drive to other things i do see opportunities for AI for us particularly in the ability to get additional information out of out-of-state email signatures and other things to figure out who you should be emailing i think there's great opportunities but you know at the end of the day I think a lot of is really still productivity product and i think the AI ends up being the sprinkles that make it great as opposed to the core differentiator that's my personal view we'll see how it turns out and when you say so what's your gut tell you in terms of what will be the core differentiator I think it's making sales people successful so this is generic like how do you how do you make that more real for my listeners okay so I mean you really focus on how do you get sales people to get their emails on right so we've got we've gone in and we've made it so you don't have to put back and forth between gmail and you know and you're in your CRM it's all right there in one place hey you want to use email templates to get things going faster you can do that do people engage with your email do they click on link great we can tell you that you have to follow up with somebody we can make sure that you reminded to do that unless they get back to you first for phone calling you know down the road as we start to offer that you know how do you go through and make a bunch of phone calls and make sure that you're tracking whether something happened on those are not you know for setting up meetings can you do that and it really automate an easy way to get it to set up so that you know you don't think about scheduling and other things I know you use you know great little product for scheduling call we have here and I think there's opportunity that even further when you tie it all into the CRM and campaign yeah i used i think what i use a make magnetic on /schedule walk through what i use i believe it's acuity scheduling to bash these podcast episodes but yeah there's a lot of eric like it's a company like Cirrus insight switch does a lot of this everyone kind of has kind of different point solutions they put together how about everybody does is like is the burdens kind of wind just going to be the one that has the cheapest price you know prices that is where the motors game or the most expensive prices and perception right right this is an interesting question because I think there's certainly people that will come price no doubt but when you get to a certain level of company the prices with the really price insensitive if you can deliver the value because the value is you know not losing sales for making more sales and so if you have you know just any kind of reasonable size you know average deal price and you makes a few more sales the price of CRM is kind of nothing relative to that and so it really is can you make people more effective and our vision is you put all this into one rather than going out to a bunch of Point solutions and you can have a much more powerful effect and if they ultimately make make sales people more successful how are you how to your first five customers you know just a lot of talking to people to the year mean a co-working space which one work out a galvanized which highly recommend empowering San Francisco yeah that's fluid so you talk to and just person a person and how did you get up to like how are you scaling now is it's still one on one in four like in person conversations or no oh there's still some of that for sure but no it was much more around you know you know we did our their launch we've got a lot of word-of-mouth starting to do a bunch of content experiment a little bit we're paid but yeah it's pretty expensive in this space so much can be found on page so far you know you know in the thousand we know a lot going out to pyramid and you have any sense on kind of what lifetime value might be for some of these guys yet or knows it too early we worked with a few early customers while we were building it so we took revenue a little bit before the you know before launch so we do have a little bit of a sin right now we're looking at about a fifteen hundred dollar lifetime value okay so what I mean is it is it fair enough I can do the 1500 / 50 or swimming the average person's going to stay with you for about 30 months or about three years yeah you know and there's upgrades involved so you come on and one yes but that's about right that's what our software stepped up anyway when are you kind of following the typical kind of sales source model or pub some models 321 kacta LTV ratio I didn't really so you know right now we're just we're focused on you know doing experiments some of them are obviously very effective and some of them are not so you know ultimately that's what we want to get to all right guys I talked about this earlier but I schedule like so many bands really blow your mind I mean all my podcast interviews right hundreds of lunch Marge I talk to do monthly I schedule and you know what I do it so officially I'll get them all to agree to my calendar so all the calls are back to back to back that means I'm not switching in between tasks all day long I get them some cash so that can be very efficient it's so critical and I use it to look all the activity scheduling to do this at Nathan Lanka com /schedule it eliminates back and forth between me and people are trying to meet with it makes it very simple and most importantly they help me keep my no-show rate very low because it's a note reminder text you a very professional so good a native mac accom /schedule just sign up and you get a great deal you know you guys know this I hate people hard I make great deals and gather the CEO has given us a great deal if you sign up like normal people okay on their website you only get a 14-day free trial to use my link Nathan lock on board /schedule to get 45 days three okay it's the best it's free go to Nathan maka Khan boards on schedule right now the sign up and I'll see you there no it makes this end here definitely early and it helps to 60 r mention finding things that are working then double down so hey let's wrap up and give folks a little more context just on you personally let these are the famous fighters or one word answer is you ready are ready number one what's your favorite business book god I should have let's see i'd have to say maybe one that i enjoyed it's probably the one that helped me the most actually was both just a little bit more obscure for folks but it really taught me to be a great product manager it's called inspired by Marty Kagan awesome number two is their CEO your phone or studying right now not particularly I certainly not not individual when I watch a lot of them and been really impressed with with what you know a lot of been able to do number one in particular them number three is there a favorite online tool you have like top tell well I have a new favorite which I've been tweeting about a little bit too told web flow we recently just redid our website and just amazed at how great it was we went from never heard of the product to brandy website in a week Wow number four yes or no do you never to sleep every night right dip and what's your situation married single you have kids married no kids no kids we got to get a great dog nice and how are you 43 alright the last question take us back 23 years equity wish your 20 year old self new you know I've heard you ask other folks that question and refer your listener I IDK bolused there yes the spirits done and I could really enjoy the thing I've learned a lot of interesting details out of it good um you know I was there's a bunch of things that I could do differently but then again I would essentially end up at a different spot and you know with how great life is and wearing them right now I'm happy I am I just wouldn't want to change its money refrain it doesn't matter what you would change but if you're going to save our a listener right now is 19 years old if you're going to give him a tidbit you've learned over 23 years what would that tidbits be marry the right person there you guys marry the right person from Eric CEO and founder of propeller they just launched three months ago have 50 customers saying about 50 bucks a month looking to redefine the propeller of the CRM base Eric thank you for taking us to the south they do if you enjoy Derek today go back and listen to Manuel Silva yesterday he runs a 200 million dollar FinTech fund and they're very bullish on one of our most men cabbage and he break down where he sees syntek going he's a partner change on their own adventures right and early tomorrow morning and don't forget before you listen to any other episode subscribe on iTunes right now for your chance to win a hundred bucks every Monday