Matthieu Vaxelaire. He’s the CEO of Mention where he moves all Trello cards to the right and closes deals. He splits his time between Paris and New York City.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Rand Fishkin Favorite online tool? — Hull Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Do more things and read less as you learn much more by doing than reading”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:17 – Nathan introduces Matt to the show 01:37 – Mention is Google Alert on steroids 01:51 – Mention is a SaaS business 02:05 – Mention has different segments of customers 02:08 – The SME customers pay an average of $65 monthly 02:13 – The mid-market customers pay an average of $400 monthly 02:25 – Average customer pay per month 03:20 – Most of Mention’s customers don’t like sharing their information 03:40 – Ogilvy uses Mention to track the campaigns they’re building for their clients 04:17 – Mention is also an inferential tool 04:49 – Mention raised capital at an early stage 05:03 – Mention raised a total of $500K 05:11 – There are 45 people on the team and 10 are in NY, the rest are in Paris 05:50 – Prior to Mention, Matt worked at eFounders which is a startup studio 05:57 – Mention was one of the startups built by eFounders 06:20 – Mention has over 600K users and over 4K paying customers per month 06:42 – Mention’s free version 07:20 – Mention uses a number of features 07:53 – There’s no touch sales in the SME market 08:01 – The mid-market is inside-sales driven 08:15 – There are 2 groups of inside-sales teams: the inbound and outbound with 6 people in each group 08:50 – Average MRR 09:28 – Mention is more focused on gross MRR churn 09:35 – SME gross churn is 2% 10:43 – Mention is almost in a negative net churn 11:20 – Mention has an average of 10K signups per month 11:47 – Mention is currently spending $5-10K on paid advertising 12:04 – Mention is exploring other advertising options like G2 Crowd 12:20 – Mention’s first trial result with G2 Crowd isn’t that encouraging 12:44 – Mention uses a strong open-content strategy to drive people to their website 13:17 – CAC 14:00 – Matt is willing to spend up to $1K to generate new mid-market customers 14:17 – 2017 goal 14:58 – Mention is currently in the process of raising 15:07 – An $800K MRR by the end of December 2017 is a good number 17:10 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Sometimes, you got to spend to acquire those new customers. Paid advertising isn’t the only solution to drive traffic to your site. Get out there and start moving—you learn more by doing than by reading.
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 Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE 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 Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives