EP 515: 0 to $300k MRR in 16 Months Helping 300 ECommerce Brands Streamline with Skubana CEO Chad Rubin

Chad Rubin. He builds e-commerce businesses. He owns a direct consumer e-commerce business called Crucial Vacuum and grew it from zero to a $20 million valuation in 7 years. He happens to be a Top 250 Amazon Seller. He co-founded Skubana with DJ Kunovac and built one of e-commerce’s hottest operational software. Skubana is the only software that you’ll ever need to manage and accelerate the growth of your ecommerce business. It’s beautiful, intelligent, and highly intuitive and it also incorporates every feature imaginable to drive your future success, especially in ecommerce.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Virtual Freedom
• What CEO do you follow? –  Gary Vaynerchuk

• Favorite online tool? — Trello or Asana
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Go after passion and change a major in college

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:28 – Nathan introduces Chad to the show
• 02:17 – Chad shares how he made the zero to $20M valuation for Crucial Vacuum
• 03:48 – Chad shares what he thinks is Walmart’s biggest mistake
• 04:27 – Skubana is making 50,000 orders a month
• 04:47 – Chad shares a mistake he made and how he lost money
• • 05:08 – Chad had to minimize his headcount from 20 employees to 2
• 05:40 – Skubana is a SaaS business
• 06:00 – Number of customers that Skubana is currently serving
• 06:46 – Skubana’s pricing:
• • 07:07 – Minimum of $999 a month
  • 07:10 – Pricing is customized and is based on users
• 07:34 – Average RPU
• 08:00 – MRR
• 08:05 – Skubana did a seed round
• • 08:41 – Raised 880,000 on the first seed round
  • 08:45 – Chad put in $1M
• 08:59 – James Thompson is one of Skubana’s investors
• 09:43 – Chad messaged 10 people that he looked up himself to try and get them involved
• 10:10 – Chad starting building Skubana for 3 years and it just went live last year
• 10:29 – Chad raised the $880K when they had the prototype
• 11:15 – First year revenue
• 12:30 – Chad wanted Skubana to be available for everybody
• 12:40 – When Chad raised their pricing, a lot of their customers churned off
• 12:53 – Skubana is not an entry level software
• 13:27 – Chad individually called customers to inform them about the increase in pricing and they got emails too
• 14:12 – Most of Skubana’s RPU growth is coming from new customers
• 14:27 – Chad shares how people find Skubana
• • 14:48 – Chad wrote a book and hit #7 bestseller
  • 15:22 – Chad has a subscription list from their blog because they’re adding value
  • 15:45 – Number of people on their list

• 16:22 – Skubana is pairing with other companies for a win-win sale
• 17:30 – Chad cares more about the quality of the customers as opposed to the quantity
• 18:05 – Chad shares about the successful webinars he held for certain companies
• 19:00 – Chad spends a lot of time guest blogging
• 19:25 – CAC is currently zero
• 21:20 – Team size
• • 21:40 – Total overhead cost
• 22:00 – Team location is in NYC and New Jersey
• 22:10 – Chad is still thinking of raising another round
• • 22:29 – Chad wants to raise $1M
• 23:30 – Connect with Chad through Youtube, Twitter and his email

• 25:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Mistakes happen for us to LEARN from it.
• Make your product KNOWN to the public at low costs by INCREASING your online presence.
• Need direction? Go hard after your passion!

Resources Mentioned:

• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
• Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
• 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.
• 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
• Youtube – Chad’s business Youtube channel
• Chad@Skubana.com – Chad’s email address
• @Ecommrenegade – Chad’s Twitter handle
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives