815: SaaS: He's Replacing the iClicker Growing From $800k ARR to $1.5m ARR in 6 months

Johnny Warström. He’s the CEO and founder of Mentimeter. He’s an engineer from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He’s worked in 10 countries and visited over 60. He loves adventures and growing his company and he’s getting married soon.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Sebastian Siemiątkowski
• Favorite online tool? — Intercom
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Do more crazy stuff”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:44 – Nathan introduces Johnny to the show
• 02:21 – Johnny founded Mentimeter with his three friends right out of university
• 02:38 – Mentimeter is an interactive presentation
  • 03:00 – You can connect the audience's’ phones with the presentation and they can vote or participate
• 03:53 – Mentimeter has a free and premium model
• 04:04 – Mentimeter has over 10M users and 400K presenters who lead meetings
  • 04:31 – The presenters are the ones who pay
• 04:50 – Mentimeter currently has 6K enterprise customers
• 05:03 – Mentimeter is purely a B2B SaaS
• 05:36 – Average customer pay per month is $150 a year
• 05:56 – Mentimeter also offers packages
• 06:13 – ARR is around $1.5M
• 06:47 – Mentimeter was launched in 2003 and was initially bootstrapped as a side project
  • 07:00 – Johnny was part of Telecom and his co-founders were managing consultants
  • 07:18 – It took them 2-3 months to build Mentimeter and they showed it to their bosses
• 07:40 – Mentimeter had their $350K angel round in 2004 and they have a total of $500K funds raised
• 07:52 – Team size is 16 and everyone is based in Stockholm
• 08:25 – Mentimeter has no paid activities and relies fully on organic growth
• 08:53 – The goal of Mentimeter is to be a mass market product
• 09:38 – Mentimeter has 1 in sales, 9 in product and 6 in marketing
• 10:27 – Mentimeter was part of 500 Startups last spring
• 11:17 – Fully weighted CAC
• 11:42 – Payback period is almost instant
• 12:20 – The team has been doing different experiments to increase customer engagement
• 13:48 – Mentimeter is on -5 net churn
• 14:22 – Mentimeter has a licensed model
• 14:51 – 1% monthly churn
  • 15:18 – Some do not continue with their annual plan
  • 15:44 – Mentimeter won’t give money back, but there’s a 40-day refund
• 17:00 – Johnny shares about a big, annual event in Europe that he’s a big fan of
  • 17:00 – Mentimeter has a built-in, voting module which functions as a simulation for a contest
  • 17:37 – Mentimeter received a lot of attention from that event 2 years ago
• 18:12 – 2017 revenue goal is $2.3M
• 18:17 – 2016 revenue was $800K
• 18:52 – Johnny targets $10M in ARR for 2019
• 19:22 – “We’re not looking for funding at the moment”
• 19:38 – Johnny isn’t interested in selling the company at the moment
• 21:33 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. Keep an open mind—your side project can be your next successful business.
2. Business ideas can come from the most unexpected of places—don’t discount your ideas.
3. Success gained from organic traffic IS possible.

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