SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 588: Zirra Raises $3M, Hits $50k MRR Helping You Get Company Data with CEO Aner Ravon
04 Mar 2017
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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.
Chapter 2: What is Zirra and how does it help retail investors?
I'm now at $20,000 per top.
Chapter 3: What products does Zirra offer to its customers?
Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination.
Chapter 4: How did Zirra transition from free to paid services?
We just broke our 100,000-unit sold mark. And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.
Chapter 5: What challenges did Zirra face when monetizing their services?
Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the 100 bucks is Rhett Gillins. He is a restaurant industry. He's in the restaurant industry and he feels stuck.
Chapter 6: How does Zirra generate revenue from its different customer segments?
He wants to start his own software business. So congratulations, Rhett, for your guys' chance to win 100 bucks every Monday morning. Simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now in order to enter and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you subscribed. All right, guys, I talked about this earlier, but I schedule like so many meetings that would blow your mind.
I mean, all my podcast interviews, right?
Chapter 7: What is the significance of Zirra's data collection process?
Hundreds of entrepreneurs I talk to monthly. I schedule and you know what? I do it so efficiently.
Chapter 8: How does Zirra differentiate itself from competitors like PitchBook?
I 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 to batch so that I can be very efficient. It's so critical. And I use a tool called Acuity Scheduling to do this at nathanlakka.com forward slash schedule. It eliminates the back and forth between me and people I'm trying to meet with.
It makes it very simple. And most importantly, they help me keep my no-show rate very low because they send out reminders. Helps you look very professional. So go to NathanMacka.com forward slash schedule to sign up and you get a great deal. You know, you guys know this. I hit people hard. I make great deals. And Gavin, 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, nathanmacka.com forward slash schedule to get 45 days free. Okay, it's the best. It's free. Go to nathanmacka.com forward slash schedule right now to sign up and I'll see you there. Nathan Latka here. This is episode 588.
And coming up tomorrow morning, you'll hear from the CEO of Heptio, which breaks down why growing Kubernetes adoption with $8.5 million raised from Excel Venture Capital is so important. Now, if you don't know what Kubernetes is, you want to tune in tomorrow and learn from Craig. Good morning, folks. Nathan Latke here.
Our guest today is Anur Ravan, and he is the co-founder and chief product officer of his new company called Zira. Now, Zira's mission is to solve the education and entry pain of the retail investor when it comes to equity investments. Before this company, he spent his time at Celtic as VP of Media and head of the business unit. Anur, are you ready to take us to the top? Yeah, absolutely.
Very good. So tell us, what does Xero do and how do you generate revenue? OK, so we basically step into the void of between data and actual analysis of companies. We see that retail investors or even not just retail investors, people who are looking to invest from on behalf of venture capital firms or private equity firms invest.
There is a big void between the data collection and the footwork and the actual decision making about the company, whether the company is worth investing in and if so, under what conditions. And we're trying to automate that process and make this process much easier for them so they can focus on their investment decisions and not on data collection and footwork.
And so give us an example of like I'm on the site right now. And by the way, make sure your microphone is not brushing up against your clothes just so we can make sure we have good audio quality. OK, sure. So how do you make money? Is it a software platform or pay as you go or what? Well, it's a service. We have a few options. One is a la carte. It's pay-as-you-go. You can order.
We have two main products which we offer. One is what we call a spotlight report, which is a screening report or an investment brief. We typically charge $49 for it, but we also package it with subscriptions. And then for the more I would say for corporate investment, corporate investors or more or more structured customers, we also offer value packages which are monthly subscription based.
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