Bill Brice. He’s currently the CEO of AlphaTrust Corporation which he launched in 1998, to capitalize on the sustained long-term shift from paper-based document businesses to fully electronic document processes. Bill is considered as one of the industry’s pioneers and he’s a leading authority of electronic signatures, especially around generating real economic impact and brand enhancement. He served as chairman of the board for the Electronic Signature and Records Association and is currently a member of the board of directors. Before his electronic signatures company, he started his entrepreneurial career, when in college, by co-founding Brice Foods and is chairman and CEO. He grew the company into a global enterprise best known for its chain of frozen yogurt stores. The company grew into 1500 franchise locations and 43 countries with manufacturing operations on 4 different continents. For his work, he was awarded as The Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the International Franchise Association, which is the world’s oldest and largest organizations representing franchising worldwide. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Crossing the Chasm What CEO do you follow? –  N/A Favorite online tool? — HubSpot Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “At that time, I wished I would know what happened with the internet before it happened”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:23 – Nathan introduces Bill to the show 02:36 – Bill was based in Dallas and that’s where he started his yogurt company 02:57 – Bill’s was the first company to bring frozen yogurt in Texas 03:15 – Frozen yogurt was first popularized in California 03:32 – Bill wanted to pioneer the first operational chain selling frozen yogurt in Texas 03:39 – Bill has turned to franchises and now has 1500 franchise locations 04:00 – The first franchise was $150K, $20K franchise fee and 5-6% royalties 04:34 – The frozen yogurt company had $150M in revenue 04:50 – In 1996, the franchise sold because someone wanted to buy it 05:09 – Franchise valuation is similar with other businesses 05:31 – The franchise was cash flow multiple 05:42 – 6-10x was the best multiple 06:15 – Bill was making a lot of software on the side of the yogurt business 06:53 – Bill was annoyed by the amount of paperwork a business had to go through 07:16 – A computer was about automating business 07:35 – Bill had a completely different team for his yogurt company than his e-signature company 07:41 – AlphaTrust is completely privately owned and funded 08:00 – Being privately funded allows them to focus on what they are doing 08:20 – AlphaTrust is in a specialized segment of a market 09:10 – AlphaTrust started on the enterprise businesses in the late 90s 09:24 – Some of AlphaTrust’s clients are General Motors, ADP and AT&T 09:36 – Some of the big companies have millions of documents processed yearly 09:42 – AlphaTrust specializes in the high performance processing of documents 09:52 – AlphaTrust’s customers still deploy and embed their software on premise 10:12 – AlphaTrust also operates cloud systems for their customers, but they support the plan and model the customers want 10:38 – The pro-side of AlphaTrust is quite small 10:53 – It accounts for only 10-15% of the revenue 10:56 – The rest of the revenue comes from licenses 11:50 – Average initial contract value is $50K-$500K 12:00 – Some of the customers pay for perpetual licenses 12:40 – AlphaTrust currently has 300 large enterprises 13:10 – Team size is 20 13:22 – AlphaTrust does direct sales, but they also have partner channels  13:46 – AlphaTrust has 20-30 specialists around the world who are part-timers 14:36 – AlphaTrust is happy with how they’re doing at the moment 14:59 – Bill MIGHT sell the company to Salesforce if an offer comes 16:10 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: The franchise business is the same as any other business – even when it comes down to the valuatio