Mikita Mikado. He’s the CEO of PandaDoc, a company founded to accelerate the way organizations transact. He’s an entrepreneur, engineer, and executive focused on creating self-sustaining companies.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – Pitch Anything What CEO do you follow? – Satya Nadella Favorite online tool? — Google Calendar How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Mikita would tell himself that he doesn’t have to focus on making so much money and just focus on learning as much as he can
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:24 – Nathan introduces Mikita to the show 02:03 – Jared Fuller was in episode 193 of The Top and is still part of PandaDoc 02:25 – PandaDoc helps organizations the way they transact 02:39 – all kinds of transactions 02:52 – PandaDoc focuses on deals that have substantial value and paperwork 03:06 – PandaDoc can build proposals, quotes, contracts and close deals in a digital fashion 03:30 – PandaDoc’s RPU has increased since last year 03:56 – Annual deals 04:10 – Average customer pay 05:10 – PandaDoc gets most of their customers from word of mouth 05:32 – Using SEO to expand operations 06:15 – PandaDoc gives their small customers templates that they can use in their deals 06:58 – The marketing team finds keywords that are most popular and relevant to them 07:20 – They use Moz and other tools to find keyword 07:59 – PandaDoc isn’t built on top of PDF 08:03 – The templates from PandaDoc are in HTML and not PDF 08:41 – QuoteRoller was the first product that was launched in 2011 08:56 – Pivot to PandaDoc at the end of 2015 09:06 – Team size is now 106 09:23 – The last year total raised was $4.5M in cash and $2M in debt 09:41 – Currently, debt has been paid 09:50 – Total amount raised is $19.5M 10:17 – PandaDoc has more than 7K customers 10:30 – 2 different cohorts of customers 10:55 – PandaDoc has a legacy product and a new product 11:22 – Gross churn is satisfactory 11:50 – From last year’s revenue churn, it was 9% 13:21 – Some inbound marketers use PandaDoc to close a deal then will stop using it 13:50 – 5% monthly logo churn is high for Mikita 14:38 – PandaDoc has around 100 team members and 2 are focused on target customers 15:13 – CAC and LTV varies 16:00 – Mikita is trying to get under 12 months of payback period 16:29 – Fully weighted CAC can be $1200 16:48 – How Mikita assumes CAC 18:47 – The industry’s rule of thumb for payback period is 1.13 of ACV or 14 month payback period 19:05 – PandaDoc has channels with a payback period of 6 months and 2 years 19:29 – PandaDoc has an outbound sales team that is their delta force 19:54 – The outbound sales team finds the industries that PandaDoc should target 21:05 – Paid spend total is under quarter of a million 21:19 – PandaDoc is closed to hit a million in MRR 22:08 – “We want to make an impact” 22:22 – This is a horizontal product 23:47 – PandaDoc focuses on workflow and the actual collaboration on the workflow 23:58 – “We want to system of records for deals or transaction” 24:05 – PandaDoc isn’t going to the CRM space 24:18 – Mikita has been in the CRM space before 24:43 – One of the challenges of CRM now is the emergence of AI 27:12 – Mikita’s consideration on price of acquisition 30:20 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Create a product that can serve a different market and fill the gap that the others haven’t seen. Let your goals guide you, but also keep in mind that having a business means being responsible for your employees. Multiple revenue cohorts will lead you to multiple marketing and sales strategies.
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 GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience 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 booksShow Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
