Ry Walker. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Astronomer.io, a big data infrastructure company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Astronomer is an AngelPad batch #9 company and has raised $2M from the likes of 500 Startups, CincyTech, Router Ventures and SocialStarts. Astronomer measures, connects and centralizes data—making it super simple for anyone from business users to data scientists to quickly create and monitor their data and pipelines. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – 7 Habits of Highly Effective People What CEO do you follow? –  Dennis Mortensen Favorite online tool? — Fabricator Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Ry would tell himself to be bold and to be confident   Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:35 – Nathan introduces Ry to the show 03:17 – Astronomer helps companies figure out how to use their data to benefit their business 03:22 – Astronomer works with early stage startups and big companies 03:41 – Some companies in the web analytics space are Mixpanel, Amplitude, Google Analytics 03:57 – Astronomer helps companies get the right data from their inside companies 04:32 – Astronomer is called data engineering, as a service 04:39 – Astronomer does the work for their customer while building the platform 04:51 – Astronomer has a flat price of 6K and 10K monthly 05:14 – Astronomer has their private cloud edition for their customers 05:33 – Astronomer was launched in May 2015 05:36 – Astronomer was at Collision Conference when they pivoted after the first day 06:13 – They realized that their biggest problem was to get companies to send them the data to run the analysis 06:35 – The number one issue in the space is the onboarding 07:03 – Ry explains the type of company they are 08:02 – The Angelpad is one of the most important pivots Astronomer did 08:13 – Angelpad’s model 08:46 – What Ry was thinking when they got into Angelpad 09:30 – First year revenue 09:38 – 2016 revenue 09:57 – Team size and location 10:08 – Astronomer has raised $2M in 2 years 10:31 – Last round was at $1.1M and a convertible note 10:40 – Average MRR 12:04 – Astronomer currently has 20 customers 12:14 – Customer churn 12:17 – Astronomer currently has a net negative churn of 48% 12:46 – Ry explains the net negative churn of 48% 13:33 – CAC 13:38 – Astronomer just started with paid CAC this year 14:00 – Astronomer started with $600 14:21 – LTV 15:40 – Last round of funding was in August 16:21 – Ry explains the amount they are burning 16:42 – Ry is thinking now of the post-seed round 16:52 – It’s a $3-5 M upround 17:14 – The valuation Ry is aiming for 17:40 – “We don’t really want to bump our valuation too much” 20:30 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: The number one issue in data analytics is the onboarding. Know your valuation and understand the data that had led you to that valuation. Believe in yourself—be bold and confident.   Resources Mentioned: 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 Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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