775: FinTech Founder: I'll Never Raise Capital Again!

Andy Swan. He’s the founder of LikeFolio. The company uses social data to determine shifts in consumer behavior on Main Street before it becomes use for Wall Street. This is his third financial technology company. The second, MyTrade, was acquired by TD Ameritrade in 2007.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Think and Grow Rich
• What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
• Favorite online tool? — Gmail
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “A little bit more about patience”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:07 – Nathan introduces Andy to the show
• 02:37 – MyTrade was geared directly towards option traders and active stock traders
  • 02:50 – The technology allowed traders to copy someone’s option trade which is very complicated
  • 03:09 – It was sold because it was useless without a brokerage backend
  • 03:48 – MyTrade had raised $500-600K and was sold just 3-4 months after the round
  • 04:19 – Andy thought they had a good partnership with Ameritrade and that there was no plan of acquisition
  • 05:06 – Andy stayed with Ameritrade for 3-4 years after the acquisition
  • 05:30 – After 4 years, Andy and his brother spun off and created their own company
• 06:09 – Andy developed LikeFolio’s technology after leaving Ameritrade
• 06:26 – LikeFolio sells insights on consumer behavior to professional investors and companies
• 06:35 – LikeFolio has a partnership with Twitter where they take every tweet and analyze it
  • 06:54 – LikeFolio can map the trends in tweets and alert their clients about the shifts in behavior
• 07:40 – LikeFolio has different subscription plans
  • 07:47 – LikeFolio’s on-demand plan is $2K a month
  • 07:56 – For extreme computing power and robust API, the plan costs $100-300K
• 08:11 – Most of the revenue is from the API plan
• 08:40 – LikeFolio On-Demand has just been launched
• 09:20 – Every contract of LikeFolio’s is secure and LikeFolio isn’t allowed to disclose anything
• 09:59 – Andy can’t disclose the number of customers they have
• 11:18 – LikeFolio hasn’t raised capital and Andy isn’t planning on raising a round
  • 11:38 – “I want to own it all”
• 12:02 – Andy doesn’t want other people to have a say in his company and wants to be the decision maker in everything
• 12:36 – Andy’s first company was Daytrade which was sold to a private equity
  • 12:55 – It helped Andy to understand how to run a business in fintech
  • 13:13 – Andy didn’t raise money for Daytrade
• 14:03 – Team size is five; one in Louisville and four in Argentina
• 14:36 – One of toughest things LikeFolio faces is determining a tweet with the word “never”—it negates anything else in that tweet
  • 15:01 – “I could NEVER live without weightwatcher” is missed by LikeFolio because it’s a positive-negative sentiment
• 15:28 – LikeFolio takes a thousand tweets per month, per company so there will always be missed tweets
• 17:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. With technology today, consumers’ behavior can now be tracked on different online platforms—this can help businesses provide the right product or service for you.
2. It’s OK to be the only person responsible for your business; however, there’s still a possibility that you may need help in the future.
3. Be patient!

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• 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
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• 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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives