Sam Caucci. He’s the CEO of Sales Huddle, a training and development team that is using game technology to help organizations better prepare their people for the workforce.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – Meditations What CEO do you follow? – Jason Lemkin Favorite online tool? — GrowBots How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Sam is a big believer that you have to over-network
Time Stamped Show Notes:
00:52 – Nathan introduces Sam to the show 01:30 – Sales Huddle is a mobile game platform for employee training 01:43 – Sales Huddle has everything a business needs to learn 02:04 – Sales Huddle is a subscription business 02:10 – Pricing is from $5K to $15K 02:13 – There’s a monthly recurring fee based on the number of employees on the platform 02:20 – 2016 revenue closed out at $1.2M 02:29 – MRR is around $800K 82 subscribed clients on the platform 02:58 – Sales Huddle has an initial integration fee for converting a client’s current content into the platform 03:18 – Most companies pay Sales Huddle an upfront payment 03:36 – Sales Huddle tries to get companies to pay upfront first 04:03 – Sales Huddle has 100% retention 04:37 – Sam credits their 0 churn on the product not infringing on the customer's current learning stack yet 05:10 – Sales Huddle started as a part-time consulting company 6 years ago 05:26 – The development of the product was in middle of 2014 05:27 – Selling started in 2015 05:40 – Team size is now 20 06:05 – Sales Huddle is currently raising and has raised $400K 06:33 – The round was a kiss convertible note 06:41 – A kiss convertible note converts to an equity and is similar to safe note 07:44 – Many startups don’t think of their sales pipeline 08:08 – Sales Huddle is currently in a strong position 08:40 – As a founder, Sam believes it is his responsibility to drive the shift with his team 08:58 – Sam can definitely raise money through sales, but they have to think of the worst case scenario 09:12 – Sam sees his company running a 100m dash; once they get to 200m, they will think about how to get to 300m 09:30 – ARR goal is around 100m and they’re currently at 50m 10:16 – Sam just had a daughter 10:49 – Sam is building a team that is going to have your back in a bar fight 11:12 – Sales Huddle’s competitors 11:43 – Sales Huddle just started to spend money on paid acquisition 11:59 – Sales Huddle is almost always breaking even 12:16 – Sales Huddle is burning $40K-60K a month 12:41 – The hardest shift for Sam 13:50 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
A great retention rate could mean you’re not charging enough or your product is just that good. Be the founder that your team trusts—even to the point of trusting you that raising funds is not necessary. Always invest in growing your network!
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 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