SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

EP 602: Findo Raises $7M, Passes 80k Users, 700 Pay $10 to Use AI to Find Their Files Quickly with CEO Gary Fowler

18 Mar 2017

22 min

3881 words

2 speakers

18 Mar 2017

Audio

Description

Gary Fowler. He's the co-founder and CEO of Findo, a smart search across multiple platforms for email, files, and folders. Gary has over 23 years of startup experience and is an award-winning CEO, a senior executive, a speaker with over 7 technologies startup and a successful IPO for the company CKSW. Gary is known as the go-to startup CEO that gets stuff done. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Intercom Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Never If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Gary wished he could look back and spend more time getting deeply involved with his first startup Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:34 – Nathan introduces Gary to the show 02:08 – Gary shares what Findo is 02:15 – The challenge that we have nowadays is the large, vast amount of information that we have 02:25 – An average person has around 3000 items 02:58 – "We're an AI tool, so it's learning all the time" 03:15 – Findo has a monthly subscription model 03:23 – Advance is $499/month and ultimate is $999/month 03:48 – Average customer pay per month 04:01 – Findo was founded by David Yang who built 9 startups including ABBYY 04:21 – Gary was the co-founder and CEO for the US corporation 04:36 – Gary shares why they had to spin out ABBYY 05:05 – Gary bought the IP from ABBYY 05:33 – Gary shares how they found the person who did their independent evaluation 06:08 – Average cost of buying the IP 06:19 – Gary shares where they got their capital 06:36 – Gary has raised $7M 06:45 – Gary is currently on seed 2 06:51 – Gary's major seed contributors 07:40 – Gary shares why they call their current round, seed 2 08:38 – Gary had an equity priced round 08:56 – Findo was launched in April 2016 09:06 – Gary started the most successful accelerator, GVA LaunchGurus, in Russia, prior to Findo 09:31 – 60% of the companies have raised money 10:04 – Gary raised capital to fund the accelerator 10:58 – None of the companies have exited yet 11:25 – Gary shares why he left GVA LaunchGurus for Findo 12:00 – Team size is 26 12:22 – Why Gary chose the people from Europe 13:10 – Findo just came out of beta 13:15 – Findo has over 80K customers 13:19 – Percentage of paying customers 14:15 – Average MRR 14:25 – Findo is currently moving into the model of reason strategy 14:50 – Gross customer churn 15:10 – Between 5-10%, but most come back 16:15 – The problem that 12% of the population have 17:13 – CAC 18:58 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Find a solution to the most common problem. Follow your intuition when it it's time to make a move. Your contributors play a big role to your company's growth—make sure they are suited to you and your company. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip's email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn't have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible. Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books. The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11" secure even when he left it in the airplane's back seat pocket Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Chapters

1. What is the main topic discussed in this episode? 2. What is Findo and how does it help users manage information? 3. What challenges does Findo address in today's information overload? 4. How many users does Findo currently have and what is their conversion rate? 5. What is Findo's business model and pricing structure? 6. What insights does Gary Fowler share about startup success? 7. What are the expected growth and churn rates for Findo? 8. How did Findo's founding team come together?

Featured

Nathan Latka

Gary Fowler

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 15.772 Nathan Latka

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 Findo and how does it help users manage information?

16.272 - 39.946 Nathan Latka

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, this week's winner is Charlie Daggs, okay? He was a middle manager at a manufacturing company. He wants to break free and he won the $100 I give out every Monday.

Chapter 3: What challenges does Findo address in today's information overload?

40.046 - 57.3 Nathan Latka

For your chance to win, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes right now and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it. Top Tribe, you know I don't have a lot of time to waste. That's why I use FreshBooks to send out invoices and make sure I'm collecting my money.

Chapter 4: How many users does Findo currently have and what is their conversion rate?

57.741 - 66.341 Nathan Latka

To get your free month, go to nathanlatka.com forward slash FreshBooks and enter the top in the How Did You Hear About Us section. Nathan Latka here.

Chapter 5: What is Findo's business model and pricing structure?

66.381 - 77.135 Nathan Latka

This is episode 602. And coming up tomorrow morning, we hear from the CEO of Velasca, who's 29 years old with one kid. His name's Enrico Casati.

Chapter 6: What insights does Gary Fowler share about startup success?

77.376 - 90.653 Nathan Latka

They've sold 20,000 Italian shoes to over 15,000 men, and they're growing so fast. They did $1.6 million in 2016 revenue, and they've raised over $750,000 to date.

Chapter 7: What are the expected growth and churn rates for Findo?

91.004 - 95.668 Nathan Latka

Good morning, everybody. Nathan Latka here. Our guest this morning is Gary Fowler.

Chapter 8: How did Findo's founding team come together?

95.688 - 119.49 Nathan Latka

He's the co-founder and CEO of Findo. Findo is a smart search across multiple platforms for email, files, and folders. Gary has over 23 years of startup experience. He's an award-winning CEO, a senior executive, and speaker with over seven technology startups and a successful IPO with the company CKSW. Gary is known as the go-to startup CEO that gets stuff done.

119.51 - 127.559 Nathan Latka

Gary, are you ready to take us to the top? I'm ready. Good. Okay. Thanks for joining us. So tell us what Findo does and what's your revenue model. How do you generate money?

128.62 - 155.659 Gary Fowler

So Findo, the challenge that we all have today is that we have a tremendous amount of information that's within our own personal cloud, Nathan. And that amount of information, if you look at it, the average person has about 300,000 items. Well, the internet, the number of websites in 1996 was only 257,000. And that number is doubling every year.

156.22 - 181.573 Gary Fowler

So think about all the email addresses and all the information in your email addresses. Your Dropbox, your Box, your Google Drive, your OneDrive, your drive on your laptop. All this information in these disparate places. What we allow it to do is to be able to search from one place using natural language. We're an AI tool. So it's learning all the time.

182.295 - 189.527 Gary Fowler

So those hundreds and hundreds of emails that you get every day to be able to search through them and provide insights.

190.489 - 195.497 Nathan Latka

So Mike, and then real quick before I ask this question, how do you generate revenue?

195.68 - 218.827 Gary Fowler

So we have a subscription model. So the subscription model is a monthly basis. We've got an advance at $4.99 per month, and we've got the ultimate at $9.99 per month. So what that means is that you can search as far back with as many accounts that you want with the ultimate, and the advanced is a six months worth of history.

219.087 - 221.35 Nathan Latka

Okay, so this is a SaaS platform.

221.33 - 221.751 Gary Fowler

Yes.

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