782: Crypto: With $50k MRR, He's Buildling Crypto Database To Track Accuracy

Bruce Pon. He’s the CEO and founder of BigchainDB and he’s been playing in the crypto world.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Mungerisms by Charlie Munger
• What CEO do you follow? – Vitalik Buterin
• Favorite online tool? — Streak CRM
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— At least 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Buy bitcoin earlier”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:03 – Nathan introduces Bruce to the show
• 02:44 – Bruce built BigchainDB to manage data
• 02:55 – Bitcoin is a payments cryptocurrency in a global network while Ethereum is a business logic in a global network
• 03:11 – People pass trusted data over the blockchain network for enterprise use cases and consumer applications
  • 03:32 – From the business logic, you can exchange bitcoin and other types of value
• 03:42 – The problem with the use case on top of the bitcoin blockchain 3 years ago was it didn’t scale
• 04:04 – Bruce was building io which is putting intellectual property into the blockchain
  • 04:25 – You can sell your intellectual property over the network
  • 04:48 – It was built over the bitcoin blockchain and got difficult to develop over time
  • 04:54 – Ascribe.io needed meta data about the creative work, author and licensing model
  • 05:04 - Ascribe.io isn’t just built for bitcoin—it’s like trying to using a Lamborghini to move your house
  • 05:49 - Ascribe.io had AI, scientists and other PhDs who told them that building Ascribe.io wasn’t worth it
• 06:09 – Team size is around 20 and is based in Berlin
• 06:24 – BigchainDB has raised $6M in price round series A
• 06:41 – Open source software is traditionally a dual license model
• 06:53 – BigchainDB is looking at an enterprise model
  • 07:00 – They’re looking into the ICO craze too
• 07:21 – BigchainDB is like a SaaS model
  • 07:27 – They’re looking at per transaction charges but it may not work for the long-run
• 07:54 – BigchainDB just released their 1.0
  • 08:08 – They give premium support
• 08:27 – Bruce is looking into 5-6 figures per month for their starting price point
• 08:58 – One-third of the work in businesses happen in the back office
• 09:13 – Blockchain allows you to have a single source of truth
• 09:29 – BigchainDB unlocks the opportunity for different organizations to have a single source of truth
• 09:48 – When you can make IoT, AI and blockchain tools, you can track the product from the inception until it gets to the customer’s hand
  • 10:01 – The customer will now understand how the product is made
  • 10:03 – The regulators will know that the product followed the guideline
  • 10:07 – The company will know if there’s a recall or quality issue and they will know where exactly the product is
• 10:40 – BigchainDB can work with different kinds of products
• 11:20 – Blockchain is definitely auditable
  • 11:30 – Before the product comes to you, it will be signed by entities with a cryptographic key in every process
  • 12:00 – With AI, you can also see who is in the very process of making your product
• 12:34 – The key metric Bruce is measuring is the number of people that are building upon them
• 12:56 – Target MRR is $100K by end of 2017
• 13:03 – BigchainDB is currently at $50-60K MRR
• 13:19 – Number of customers
• 13:44 – There are 300 developers in BigchainDB’s channels and there are 5K clones of their software
• 13:54 – BigchainDB has 1K monthly downloads of their whitepaper
• 14:45 – The ratio of developer to clone is the 300 developers to 5K clone requests
• 16:05 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Data that is passed over the blockchain network can be used for enterprise use case and consumer applications.
2. The beauty of blockchain is that it is auditable and has accountability capabilities.
3. Some tools that are built over the bitcoin network won’t always work; even if you have the best people in the industry.

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