Dominik Vacikar. He is currently an Associate at Hummingbird VC, but was previously the co-founder of Spaceship and some other startups, including Growth at Nestpick. Listen as Dominik gives us an inside look at the workings of Spaceship and why he was chosen by Hummingbird for a very specific task.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – Zero to One What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Stripe Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Dominik wishes he wasn’t so hard on himself, so long as he was progressing
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:35 – Nathan introduces Dominik to the show 02:00 – Spaceship started as a side project when Dominik had their lead generation tool in social media 03:02 – Dominik shares how Spaceship works 03:18 – Spaceship searches your entire target audience and provides you with prospect data 03:35 – Spaceship is pay-as-you go 03:51 – 10% of Spaceship’s customers are on a monthly plan 04:10 – Spaceship was launched in October 2015 04:30 – 2015 revenue 04:55 – Current total revenue 05:12 – Dominik shares why he turned to Hummingbird 06:33 – Spaceship was bootstrapped 06:52 – Spaceship’s current team size 07:20 – Dominik has been with Hummingbird for 2 months 07:30 – Hummingbird wants Dominik to build a radar for startups 07:54 – The radar will track interesting companies and identify them 08:29 – Dominik shares how their product is different from Crunchbase 09:31 – Dominik shares the variables they use to identify the startups 10:30 – The current biggest problem is updating the data as frequently as possible 11:45 – Hummingbird is good at identifying the funders’ DNA 12:08 – Hummingbird’s main area of expertise 13:00 – Hummingbird might be interested in a Series A 13:21 – Hummingbird’s ARR target 14:05 – Nathan asks Dominik about Spaceship’s founder 14:37 – Dominik is active on Twitter and LinkedIn 16:10 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Growth comes in many forms—sometimes from within your own company or from the help of others. Develop your expertise by drawing knowledge from other fields and markets. Your progress determines your future and YOU set the pace.
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 Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket @chichikid – Dominik’s Twitter handle LinkedIn – Dominik’s LinkedIn account Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives