Ilya Semin, creator of Datanyze - a sales intelligence platform that’s the only thing Hubspot and Marketo will use. Datanyze has reached an ARR of $6 million in just two years - and they’re growing incredibly fast. Listen in to hear why Ilya took his first round of funding, how to have the tough conversations about equity, and why emotional intelligence is crucial for tech entrepreneurs. Famous 5: Favorite Book? – The Alchemist What CEO do you follow? — None Favourite online tool? — Manny [link skyped to Nathan] Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? — I wish that I’d started working on my EQ skills and learned how to communicate with people Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:09 – Nathan’s introduction 01:58 – Welcoming Ilya to the show 02:12 – Datanyze is a sales intelligence platform that’s offered as a subscription service. Customers include Hubspot and Marketo 02:30 – 500 customers, with an average annual contract of $20k 02:55 – Founded the business in 2012 - launched officially in 2014 03:20 – First year revenue was around $50k 03:40 – Mostly serve B2B companies and enterprise companies 03:58 – Raised $1.8 million in July 2014 04:20 – “We were profitable even then...but enterprise customers don’t like dealing with small companies” 05:00 – VCs included Google investments and Mark Cuban 05:30 – Total revenue in 2015 was $4 million, and by December 2015 there was a monthly run rate of $500k 07:21 – Churn is less than 1% per month 07:44 – Customer Acquisition Cost is around $9k 08:20 – “Almost all our customers pay up front” 08:55 – Have about 60 people based in San Martel, California 09:18 – How does a typical customer use Datanyze? 09:30 – If a sales rep is making a call, they can use Datanyze to access information about a company 10:07 – Datanyze can also help to generate potential leads and their contact details 11:00 – Have an inside sales team who set up around 15 demos per month 12:57 – Current revenue growth is 7% month-over-month 13:30 – Team salary costs are close to $500k per month 14:16 – “We’re close to break-even all the time” 14:38 – One other co-founder. They had the difficult conversation and didn’t split equity evenly 15:01 – Connect with Ilya through Linkedin or his blog 17:12 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Zero in on the market you want to serve - and find partners or investment to help you in that market Learn to communicate. 85% of your success is down to emotional intelligence and ‘soft’ skills Have the tough conversations about equity. All that an even split proves is that you aren’t communicating well enough Resources Mentioned: Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible. Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts. Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+ 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