SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 106: He's 28, In Poland, and wants a $20m Valuation!
08 Nov 2015
Chapter 1: What is the focus of The Top podcast?
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. 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 top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, every Monday I give one of you 100 bucks to invest in your idea and get to the top. To enter for your chance to win 100 bucks, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes right now and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it. This week's winner was Matt Wolfe in Chicago at the DDB Agency.
Coming up tomorrow morning, you guys will hear from Jason Zook. And I have just flat out asked him, did going through three different dads make you more creative? Good morning, Top Tribe. I am here in studio with my Starbucks green tea. I'm warmed up and you guys are going to love our guest today. His name is Greg Piotrczynski.
Now, Greg is the CEO and co-founder at Growbots, a 500 startups company. GrowBot's goal is to create AI or artificial intelligence for sales. Greg is a serial entrepreneur and he was running three companies in China and Europe before GrowBot and developed more than 200 different web and mobile products over the last six years. He's an automation freak and a growth geek.
He's an advisor at Lean Startup Machine and Founder Institute. Greg, are you ready to take us to the top? Yes, I'm ready. Okay, 200 web and mobile products over the last six years. Are you crazy?
Not really. I was running two different kinds of application shops. So altogether, we've built more than 200 different products for our customers. Tell me what an application shop is. So I've had a software house in Shanghai that was focused on providing enterprise class software outsourcing services. And I also had a social media company that was building different kind of social applications.
And I also had a gamification company that was building different kind of products. from simple advert games to very advanced enterprise platforms that were helping employees of big corporations such as Private Waterhouse, Hoopers, or MTV to learn new things and interact with each other.
So Greg, the top tribe's going, this guy's accomplished so much. How old is he? How old are you now? I'm 28 right now. 28. Okay, very good. So, and just to be clear, that Shanghai house you had, these are like dev shops, right? You built dev shops and then sold dev time to enterprise clients?
Yes, that was the first company that I started when I was 21. And the other ones were rather product companies, not service companies.
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Chapter 2: How did Greg Piotrczynski become a serial entrepreneur?
The $600,000 that you raised, was that on a convertible note or was that an A round? Okay, it was convertible note. Okay.
So we are in the official startup classification. We are still pre-seed company and we are going to raise our seed round within next three months.
Is the seed round going to be capped or uncapped?
It will be normal equity round.
So it'll be capped?
Yes.
And give me a range. What are you hoping your cap is going to be around?
I'm hoping to get something in between $15 to $20 million.
Okay, so let's back into that. Because a lot of folks when we have on the show, and we have a lot of SaaS entrepreneurs. So we had, I don't know if you know a gentleman named Alex Moore. He runs a company called Boomerang. That's episode 33. And they're doing $3.5 million in ARR. And in that episode, we talked about SaaS valuations. But back us into that.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Greg face while building Growbots?
All right. Number one, man. What's your favorite business book? All right. So it's Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberts from HubSpot. Okay. Number two.
Is there a CEO that you're following or studying right now?
So can I mention two? Yes, please. All right. So I think that in selling the vision of the company, the number one is definitely Mark Zuckerberg. So if you follow him on Facebook, you'll see how he's expressing the mission of the company. And this is like the best example in the world, in my opinion, right now.
And when we talk about SaaS companies, I think the guy you should follow is Parker Conrad from Zenefits. because he is both humble and very aggressive on the business strategy.
So I just love to listen to this guy. That's great. And guys, if you're interested in more software as a service entrepreneurs like Greg and like folks we've already mentioned, you'll like episode 65 with Sean Cohen. He's the head of operations at AWeber. And I flat out asked him, I said, Sean, is AWeber getting acquired? His answer will surprise you. So you'll like that episode.
And Greg, if people want to get the links to the books that you're recommending and the links to the people that you're following, we'll post those in the show notes at NathanLatka.com forward slash the top 106. Again, forward slash the top 106. Okay, Greg, number three, is there a favorite online tool you have like Evernote?
I think it's rapportive. It's simply the plugin to your email that allows you to find an email to anyone.
Great. Number four, yes or no, Greg, do you get eight hours of sleep every night? Not really. Not really.
How many?
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Chapter 4: What growth strategies is Growbots implementing?
Thanks a lot for inviting me. I hope you enjoyed. Okay, Top Tribe, I'll see you bright and early tomorrow morning. And don't forget, before you go listen to other episodes, subscribe to the show on iTunes right now for your chance to win $100 next Monday. This week's winner was Matt Wolfe from DDB Agency in Chicago.
If you like this episode, go in iTunes right now and listen to the episode from yesterday morning with David Abrams. He did $35,000 in October and is building his business specifically to sell it.