Chad Rubin. He builds e-commerce businesses. He owns a direct consumer e-commerce business called Crucial Vacuum and grew it from zero to a $20 million valuation in 7 years. He happens to be a Top 250 Amazon Seller. He co-founded Skubana with DJ Kunovac and built one of e-commerce’s hottest operational software. Skubana is the only software that you’ll ever need to manage and accelerate the growth of your ecommerce business. It’s beautiful, intelligent, and highly intuitive and it also incorporates every feature imaginable to drive your future success, especially in ecommerce.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – Virtual Freedom What CEO do you follow? – Gary Vaynerchuk Favorite online tool? — Trello or Asana Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Go after passion and change a major in college
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:28 – Nathan introduces Chad to the show 02:17 – Chad shares how he made the zero to $20M valuation for Crucial Vacuum 03:48 – Chad shares what he thinks is Walmart’s biggest mistake 04:27 – Skubana is making 50,000 orders a month 04:47 – Chad shares a mistake he made and how he lost money 05:08 – Chad had to minimize his headcount from 20 employees to 2 05:40 – Skubana is a SaaS business 06:00 – Number of customers that Skubana is currently serving 06:46 – Skubana’s pricing: 07:07 – Minimum of $999 a month 07:10 – Pricing is customized and is based on users 07:34 – Average RPU 08:00 – MRR 08:05 – Skubana did a seed round 08:41 – Raised 880,000 on the first seed round 08:45 – Chad put in $1M 08:59 – James Thompson is one of Skubana’s investors 09:43 – Chad messaged 10 people that he looked up himself to try and get them involved 10:10 – Chad starting building Skubana for 3 years and it just went live last year 10:29 – Chad raised the $880K when they had the prototype 11:15 – First year revenue 12:30 – Chad wanted Skubana to be available for everybody 12:40 – When Chad raised their pricing, a lot of their customers churned off 12:53 – Skubana is not an entry level software 13:27 – Chad individually called customers to inform them about the increase in pricing and they got emails too 14:12 – Most of Skubana’s RPU growth is coming from new customers 14:27 – Chad shares how people find Skubana 14:48 – Chad wrote a book and hit #7 bestseller 15:22 – Chad has a subscription list from their blog because they’re adding value 15:45 – Number of people on their list 16:22 – Skubana is pairing with other companies for a win-win sale 17:30 – Chad cares more about the quality of the customers as opposed to the quantity 18:05 – Chad shares about the successful webinars he held for certain companies 19:00 – Chad spends a lot of time guest blogging 19:25 – CAC is currently zero 21:20 – Team size 21:40 – Total overhead cost 22:00 – Team location is in NYC and New Jersey 22:10 – Chad is still thinking of raising another round 22:29 – Chad wants to raise $1M 23:30 – Connect with Chad through Youtube, Twitter and his email 25:10 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Mistakes happen for us to LEARN from it. Make your product KNOWN to the public at low costs by INCREASING your online presence. Need direction? Go hard after your passion!
Resources Mentioned:
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 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 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. 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 Youtube – Chad’s business Youtube channel Chad@Skubana.com – Chad’s email address @Ecommrenegade – Chad’s Twitter handle Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives