SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

How To Grow a $10 Million Annual Recurring Revenue SaaS Business Jared Fuller Episode 193

07 Mar 2016

21 min

4094 words

2 speakers

07 Mar 2016

Audio

Description

Ep 193 Jared Fuller (Recovering) CEO of PandaDoc, a company that’s focused on making the digitization of documents a simply smooth process. Listen as Nathan and Jared talk about venture debt, the hidden value of recurring revenue, and Jared’s famous title of “Recovering CEO”. Time Stamped Show Notes:01:05 – Nathan’s introduction to today’s show01:28 – Living as a “Recovering CEO”01:55 – Recurring revenue is the way to go02:09 – Screwed up lots of stuff, but that’s OK02:23 – MRR before everything crashed02:50 – Fought over stupid stuff that had nothing to do with getting customers03:20 – Make sure you start a company with someone who’s done it before04:12 – Get focused on getting shit done05:55 – Talking about PandaDoc—going after the document as a whole06:50 – How PandaDoc makes money06:55 – Panda could be profitable tomorrow if it wanted to be07:50 – Talking venture debt (Square1 and Silicon Valley Bank)08:12 – The revenue and books on PandaDoc are SO good venture debt made sense09:35 – 4% interest rate11:00 – People raise money in a short-sighted way—huge mistake11:45 – 25 team members in Belarus and 40 people in San Francisco13:20 – The library of free templates is the secret sauce of PandaDoc’s SEO success14:35 – The big deals are in outbound client acquisition15:40 – [email protected] Famous 5Favorite Book? – Leadership and Self-DeceptionWhat CEO do you follow?— NoWhat is your favorite online tool?— YesWareDo you get 8 hours of sleep?— NoIf you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?—Understand the value of recurring revenue—stop relying on project based fees 3 Key Points:Recurring revenue is the key to happiness and success.Start a business with people you can REALLY trust and (ideally) people that have done it before.Do NOT raise money in a short-sighted way. Resources Mentioned:Edgar – Nathan uses Edgar instead of other scheduling tools for Twitter because Edgar cycles through content over and over (buffer/others you have to re-input content over and over – time consuming). In the last several months, Edgar has driven Nathan over 3728 clicks that he didn’t have to work or pay for.Host Gator - Powerful web hosting made easy and affordable.Leadership and Self-Deception – Jared’s favorite bookYesWare -- The tool Jared couldn't live withoutSquare1 and Silicon Valley Bank – The big players in venture debt CreditsShow Notes provided by Mallard Creatives Listen to The Top if you want to hear from the worlds TOP entrepreneurs on how much they sold last month, how they are selling it, and what they are selling - 7 days a week in 20 minute interviews! Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop The Top is FOR YOU if you are: A STUDENT who wants to become the CEO of a $10m company in under 24 months (episode #4) STUCK in the CORPORATE grind and looking to create a $10k/mo side business so you can quit (episode #7) An influencer or BLOGGER who wants to make $27k/mo in monthly RECURRING revenue to have the life you want and full CONTROL (episode #1) The Software as a Service (SaaS) entrepreneur who wants to grow to a $100m+ valuation (episode #14). Your host, Nathan Latka is a 25 year old software entrepreneur who has driven over $4.5 million in revenue and built a 25 person team as he dropped out of school, raised $2.5million from a Forbes Billionaire, and attracted over 10,000 paying customers from 160+ different countries. Oprah gets 60 minutes or more to make her guests comfortable to then ask tough questions. Nathan does it all in less than 15 minutes in this daily podcast that's like an audio version of Pat Flynn's monthly income report. Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop

Chapters

1. What is the main topic discussed in this episode? 2. What does it mean to be a 'Recovering CEO'? 3. Why is recurring revenue essential for business success? 4. How did PandaDoc achieve its profitability? 5. What are the advantages of using venture debt? 6. How does PandaDoc leverage SEO for growth? 7. What strategies does PandaDoc use for customer acquisition? 8. What are the key metrics PandaDoc focuses on for growth?

Featured

Nathan Latka

Jared Fuller

Transcription

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

0.031 - 9.046 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.

Chapter 2: What does it mean to be a 'Recovering CEO'?

9.526 - 21.245 Nathan Latka

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.

Chapter 3: Why is recurring revenue essential for business success?

21.265 - 24.07 Nathan Latka

We just broke our 100,000-unit sold mark.

Chapter 4: How did PandaDoc achieve its profitability?

24.09 - 27.135 Nathan Latka

And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.

Chapter 5: What are the advantages of using venture debt?

27.875 - 51.342 Nathan Latka

Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the 100 bucks is Dustin Goodwin. He's in the HR industry, specifically in the software as a service space, looking to increase his revenue. So congratulations, Dustin. For your guys' chance to win 100 bucks every Monday on the show to build your idea, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now and then text the word Nathan to 33444.

51.582 - 63.298 Nathan Latka

Again, text the word Nathan to 33444. Coming up tomorrow morning, you guys hear from Angela Romero, and he walks through the right way to do real estate investing.

Chapter 6: How does PandaDoc leverage SEO for growth?

64.527 - 66.069 Nathan Latka

Okay, Top Tribe, good morning.

Chapter 7: What strategies does PandaDoc use for customer acquisition?

66.089 - 87.315 Nathan Latka

I've got my coffee, and you're really gonna love our guest today. His name is Jared Fuller. He is a recovering CEO. I love that. Hustler and troublemaker, along with a three-time entrepreneur obsessed with sales, marketing, and SaaS. That's software as a service. Jared is currently VP of Partnerships at PandaDoc. You can catch his tweets at FullerFreedom on Twitter.

87.375 - 88.957 Nathan Latka

Jared, are you ready to take us to the top?

89.578 - 90.058 Jared Fuller

Let's do it.

90.279 - 94.71 Nathan Latka

Very cool. So first off, how did we, I forget, how did we get connected? YEC.

95.251 - 95.731 Jared Fuller

I'm a member.

96.092 - 97.193 Nathan Latka

Ah, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

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Chapter 8: What are the key metrics PandaDoc focuses on for growth?

97.213 - 103.122 Nathan Latka

And you're in San Francisco, right? Correct. Okay. So you say recovering CEO. Tell me about the crash. What are you recovering from?

103.142 - 123.149 Jared Fuller

Oh, gosh. So PandaDoc, I think, is my fourth startup. The first one was a marketing agency based out of DC. Scaled that to about 25 employees. And then I realized that recurring revenue was the way to go. So I started JobHive, was CEO, co-founder of that, raised a Series A, had backers like Foundry Group.

123.43 - 123.61

How much?

123.59 - 142.258 Jared Fuller

We did about $3 million in funding. Okay. And screwed up a bunch of stuff, a lot. Found product market fit, found lots of customers, figured out... How many customers? We had about 150 paying customers in enterprise. And then we had about 10,000 active job seekers.

143.32 - 146.745 Nathan Latka

So what was like MRR at its peak before it crashed or you moved on?

146.827 - 160.066 Jared Fuller

Uh, so we got up to about a hundred K MRR, um, with Panda, uh, with job high, but then things kind of went South with co-founders. And, uh, you know, I got stuck into a whole bunch of stuff that just was not what I signed up for. It's not what I wanted.

160.727 - 166.135 Nathan Latka

Um, what was it? Tell us the shit. It's in the past. Now you can say it. There's no, no lawsuits coming.

166.368 - 181.97 Jared Fuller

Uh, yeah. So basically I just did a corporate formation wrong, right? Like, uh, we wrapped up our stock, uh, founder stock and something that was not equitable and fair to the rest of the company and the founders. And we basically just fought over stupid stuff that wasn't acquiring customers for, uh, you know, way too long.

182.25 - 194.995 Jared Fuller

I mean, are you talking about like vesting schedules or who owned what in the company? Right. So, um, improper allocations, I'll put it that way. And, uh, Yeah. So in other words, pick your founders very, very carefully.