SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Jack Dorsey's Last Boss Tells True Story in Episode 191 with Tony Stubblebine

06 Mar 2016

22 min

4288 words

2 speakers

06 Mar 2016

Audio

Description

EP 191 Tony Stubblebine, the CEO and co-founder at Coach.me. Listen as Nathan and Tony talk about different branches of coaching and the latter’s claim to fame as Jack Dorsey’s last boss. Bio Tony Stubblebine co-founded Coach.Me (formerly knows as Lift) on the idea that positive reinforcement and community support could be deployed universally to help people achieve their goals. Prior to Coach.Me, he was the founder and CEO of CrowdVine Event Social Networks, which builds simple and powerful social software to help people connect and meet. He was part of the Wesabe launch team, Director of Engineering at Odeo.com and Engineering Lead for O’Reilly Media. He is the author of Regular Expression Pocket Reference (O’Reilly). Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:00 – Nathan’s introduction to today’s show 01:54 – Tony joins the show. * 02:27 – Tony refused to be interviewed for the book Hatching Twitter so that he could write his own book one day. His claim to fame is ‘the last boss of Jack Dorsey.’ 05:01 – Tony talks about Coach.me which hit 1 million users. 07:16 – Mechanically Coach.me was a success because it was successful in revenue, conversion, and results from the service. 09:10 – Coach.me takes a 50% cut of coaching fees as a revenue source. 10:03 – Digital coaching is when the coaching happens on a messaging based relationship. Coaches can pay a smaller cut to use the tools from Coach.me. 11:18 – In 2014, they grossed 82K$, 2015 they grossed 650K$. They project 2 million dollars in 2016. 12:22 – There are roughly 5K coaches in the database, of which there are varying degrees of commitment by the coaches. 13:49 – Rolling notes can be open or closed based on a business’s scaling. 14:34 – Tony talks about LTV (lifetime value) and how his business interacts with the metric. 16:12 – Many people tend to hire more than one coach. Unlike other branches of coaching, Coach.me has enough information to know what’s working and what isn’t. 16:47 – Jack Dorsey was a good employee while he worked under Tony. * 17:42 – Host Gator: Powerful web hosting made easy and affordable 18:20 – Famous Five Famous 5 * Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things * What CEO do you follow?— Evan Williams * What is your favorite online tool?— Evernote Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Sometimes If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?— Have faith in yourself to work on a life mission instead of thinking about salary and location of a job. 3 Key Points: 1. Digital coaching is a branch of coaching when the client maintains constant communication through digital media. 2. Rolling notes is a way of raising funds that can be open or closed depending on business scalability. Burned money is cash that is leaving the bank account while running a business. 3. Many people tend to hire more than one coach. Unlike other branches of coaching, Coach.me has enough information to know what’s working and what isn’t. 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 * Coach.me – Tony’s business * LinkedIn – Tony’s LinkedIn * The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Tony’s favorite business book * Evan Williams - CEO Tony follows * Evernote – Tony’s favorite online tool Credits Show 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 is Tony Stubblebine's claim to fame? 3. How did Coach.me achieve 1 million users? 4. What revenue model does Coach.me use for coaching fees? 5. What are the projected revenues for Coach.me in upcoming years? 6. How does Coach.me differentiate itself in the coaching industry? 7. What insights does Tony have about Jack Dorsey's work ethic? 8. How does the lifetime value of clients impact Coach.me's business model?

Featured

Tony Stubblebine

Nathan Latka

Transcription

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

0.031 - 15.777 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 Tony Stubblebine's claim to fame?

16.277 - 21.245 Nathan Latka

I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination.

Chapter 3: How did Coach.me achieve 1 million users?

21.265 - 38.146 Nathan Latka

We just broke our 100,000 unit sold mark. And I'm your host, 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.

Chapter 4: What revenue model does Coach.me use for coaching fees?

38.227 - 51.341 Nathan Latka

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.

Chapter 5: What are the projected revenues for Coach.me in upcoming years?

51.581 - 66.876 Nathan Latka

Again, text the word Nathan to 33444. All right, Top Tribe, coming up tomorrow morning, I've got Catherine and Alan with me, and they're going to break down how to sell 10,000 best-sell journals. And they have a surprise.

Chapter 6: How does Coach.me differentiate itself in the coaching industry?

68.003 - 72.59 Nathan Latka

Top Tribe, good morning to you. Our guest today is Tony Stubblebine.

Chapter 7: What insights does Tony have about Jack Dorsey's work ethic?

72.73 - 93.201 Nathan Latka

Tony co-founded Coach.me, which was formerly Lyft, on the idea that positive reinforcement and community support could be deployed universally to help people achieve their goals. Prior to Coach.me, he was the founder and CEO of Crowdvine Event Social Networks, which built simple, powerful social software to help people connect and meet.

Chapter 8: How does the lifetime value of clients impact Coach.me's business model?

93.181 - 115.542 Nathan Latka

He was part of the Wasabi launch team, director of engineering at Odeo.com, and engineering lead for O'Reilly Media. He's the author of Regular Expression Pocket Reference via O'Reilly. Tony, are you ready to take us to the top? All right, let's go to the top. I'm ready. Nice. I'm excited. So first off, real quick, why does Odeo ring a bell? Isn't that what Twitter came out of? It is.

115.882 - 135.37 Tony Stubblebine

I was the head of engineering at Odeo, probably Jack Dorsey's last boss. That's probably my management claim to fame. And I'm Twitter employee number six. Twitter user number six. But I only worked there during the Odeo days, not after Twitter got spun out into its own company.

135.39 - 145.643 Nathan Latka

So I won't go deep into this, but since you had a firsthand kind of view, which book that articulates or movie that articulates kind of the Twitter founding story is most accurate?

146.244 - 164.573 Tony Stubblebine

You know, for the book Catching Twitter, I'm the only person at Odeo who refused to be interviewed for that book. And basically I did it so that I could write my own book one day. Okay. Because I'm the only person who can credibly say, no, everything in the book is wrong. You didn't talk to me. I know what actually happened, and I'm ready to tell all.

165.114 - 171.347 Nathan Latka

So you'd say there is not a good story out there right now that captures it accurately.

171.988 - 196.78 Tony Stubblebine

You know, the thing about hatching Twitter, which is the most complete, is that two things that people should know. The article form, which was really about kind of stirring up controversy, I think it appeared in The New Yorker, was total bullshit. The book itself is basically true. The story rang true. Almost all of the facts that I knew about were wrong in some minor way as I read the book.

196.76 - 219.601 Tony Stubblebine

But the actual story of it felt true. And to me, the Twitter story was kind of the story of salvation. It was a product that came out of a company where it's sort of behind You know, the team was behind the whole way through. And it wasn't that the co-founders were feuding or that there was any sort of scandal.

219.681 - 230.445 Tony Stubblebine

It was just they're constantly trying to upgrade the team in order to keep up with what Twitter ended up being, which, you know, obviously had nothing to do with where we started, which was podcasting.

230.712 - 232.276 Nathan Latka

Oh, Odeo was podcasting?

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