Shlomi Gian. He has served as PacketZoom’s Chief Executive Officer since June of 2016. He joined the company after spending 4 years at Akamai, where he founded the emerging mobile business unit and service—the head of mobile market development. Before that, he was the general manager of mobile solutions at Cotendo that invented Mobile CDN back in 2011 before it was acquired by Akamai.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – Built to Last
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — Mix Rank
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Shlomi would tell himself how exciting it is to do your own thing
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:18 – Nathan introduces Shlomi to the show
02:13 – PacketZoom helps mobile applications work better, especially when networks fail to deliver their service
03:15 – PacketZoom can make an application work in places where they don’t usually work, like in trains and elevators
03:31 – PacketZoom eliminates roadblocks and gets you on the express lane
03:40 – PacketZoom is a SaaS business
03:43 – PacketZoom charges per daily active user
04:10 – A daily active user is anyone who uses the system up to certain usage point
04:18 – Now, a daily active user is measured by the number of calls and how many megabytes have been used
04:40 – Average customer pay is $400-4K per application
05:28 – PacketZoom has raised capital through an investor round
05:35 – Total raised is around $6M
05:54 – The founder of the company started the company in 2013
06:33 – After Akamai’s acquisition of Cotendo, Shlomi was looking for a cutting-edge technology to bring into Akamai
06:43 – PacketZoom seemed to be the one that fits but doesn’t have enough commercial traction
06:51 – At the time, the investors were looking for a CEO who had a business background and could grow PacketZoom in the market
07:03 – Shlomi met the investors through a headhunter
07:18 – Shlomi fell in love with the product and he decided to leave his comfort zone at Akamai
08:06 – PacketZoom started out selling to enterprise and now they’re focusing on developers
08:26 – The headhunter was tied to the investors
08:54 – MRR was closed to none before Shlomi joined
09:20 – PacketZoom has a difficult product to built
09:34 – PacketZoom currently has 68 customers
09:59 – PacketZoom is tracking a few KPIs and the number of SDK installed
10:30 – The goal is to hit 15-20M active users by the end of the year
10:40 – PacketZoom is on track and halfway to their goal
10:57 – “We’re doubling our activity since I joined”
11:11 – PacketZoom relies heavily on partnerships
11:27 – PacketZoom is partnered with ChinaCache, a large CDN public company selling exclusively in China
11:38 – PacketZoom also has resellers and they already have 3 European resellers
11:50 – PacketZoom is expanding to Asia and Latin America
12:12 – PacketZoom is the perfect partner for their resellers because the resellers are already selling performance
12:30 – The percentage PacketZoom gets depends on the partnership’s commitment
12:45 – The partners take away the cost of operation and sales in their territories
13:00 – PacketZoom aims to work with larger partners who are willing to make greater commitments
13:17 – 2017 revenue goal is millions of dollars; they want to prepare for a series B eventually
13:46 – PacketZoom is close to passing the $88K MRR which can equate to a little over $1M in ARR
14:55 – PacketZoom just opened their office in Asia and are opening one soon in Europe
15:17 – PacketZoom has 3 sales people
15:24 – Company size is 20
15:54 – Paid marketing spend is less than $10K
16:48 – Zero customer churn for PacketZoom
18:29 – PacketZoom is a very unique product
19:21 – Assumed LTV
20:21 – The team is spread out in different states and countries
20:40 – Gross margin
20:58 – PacketZoom relies on other cloud infrastructures
21:19 – Gross margin now is 60-80% but will definitely change soon
23:55 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
You may find the right company at the wrong time, but in order to make it work takes you making a decision.
A company can definitely raise money on pre-revenue if the investors see its uniqueness and potential to grow.
Start to build as early as possible.
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 books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
