Rob Nelson, founder and CEO of Grow – a business intelligence platform. Nathan came across Rob when he was doing research in the intelligence space and Grow provided a lot of good feedback. Rob is a listener of The Top and happily accepted Nathan’s invitation to be a guest on The Top. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The ONE Thing What CEO do you follow? –  Aaron Skonnard Favorite online tool? — Calendly Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Don’t ever quit”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:25 – Nathan introduces Rob to the show 02:00 – Grow is a powerful business intelligence platform and made specifically for SMBs 02:13 – Rob founded Grow in 2014 02:25 – Rob had a software company which was bootstrapped 02:34 – Rob struggled pulling up data from different platforms 03:29 – Rob sold the company and had a great exit 04:10 – Grow is a SaaS model and has subscription based pricing 04:20 – Grow doesn’t charge based on the number of users 05:10 – Grow charges based on the number of metrics used 05:20 – Grow’s RPU is $600 a month 05:30 – Users pay monthly but there’s a 12-month commitment 06:06 – “If we can’t get them hooked with the product in the first 3 days, they can walk away” 06:18 – 75% of the people continue after the 30-day trial period 07:05 – Rob doesn’t know their exact churn 07:29 – Grow’s usage stats 07:44 – Half of their customers log-in everyday 07:50 – 92% of the customers are logging in at least twice a month 08:00 – Grow is currently serving 600 customers 08:08 – Rob started with the concept in January 2014 08:30 – Rob hired a technical co-founder and gave him 20% of the business 09:00 – Rob and his team are based in Utah 09:45 – Team size is 70 09:58 – Grow raised a series A round and seed round 10:12 – Total amount raised was $13 million 10:14 – Total of $9 million was raised in series A 10:25 – Both are priced equity round 10:44 – Rob is a huge fan of bootstrapping during his first venture 11:28 – Rob decided to raise for Grow because bootstrapping just wouldn’t work 11:50 – Total 2014 revenue is about $80 12:20 – 2015 revenue is $150,000 13:00 – Goal for 2016 revenue  13:33 – Rob closed the series A in July 14:03 – Fully-weighted CAC is about $3,500 15:00 – Why do you think Dasher didn’t work out? 15:20 – “It’s hard to build a company on $20 or $30 a month” 16:35 – Connect with Rob through his website 18:05 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: USE your experience to IMPROVE your business. Explore other options—if bootstrapped worked first, that doesn’t mean it will work again. Don’t EVER quit.   Resources Mentioned: 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  developers. Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the 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. Assistant.to – The site Nathan uses to book meetings with one email. 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. Grow.com – Rob’s business website Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives