Jeroen Corthout. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, the intelligent CRM that startups and small businesses love to use. Prior to Salesflare, he was helping companies to implement their new CRM, marketing and sales. Salesflare kicked off when he and his co-founder, Lieven, found a way to automate their CRM data. Salesflare’s mission is to automate everything in sales, but the irreplaceable human contact. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Alchemist What CEO do you follow? – Jeroen has been reading the biographies of Tony Hsieh, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos Favorite online tool? — Zapier How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jeroen wished he had started these bigger projects earlier   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:38 – Nathan introduces Jeroen to the show 02:16 – Salesflare helps mostly startups to make their sales consistently productive, to have the right data, and to communicate and manage the pipeline better 02:28 – Salesflare sells licenses 02:40 – Salesflare’s price point is $30/month when you pay annually and $35 if monthly 02:58 – Salesflare started halfway through 2013 03:04 – Jeroen and Lieven were working in a software company 03:20 – Jeroen knew there was no solution to keep files automatically 03:28 – Salesflare basically pulls all the CRM data for you 03:49 – On top of a lot of data, Salesflare is building automation and intelligence 03:52 – There’s an automatic to-do list and body temperature indicator 04:12 – Salesflare is largely self-funded, some from accelerators 04:24 – Telenet Kickstart and iMinds are the accelerators from Belgium 04:37 – Salesflare got $25K from one accelerator without equity and the other one had a convertible loan of $50K 05:10 – Salesflare has raised a total of $700K 05:28 – Jeroen was in the consulting field 05:49 – Salesflare is currently building a convertible round with investors and has raised $250K; the target is $350K 06:57 – Salesflare has over 100 customers 07:14 – Jeroen believes that people don’t usually trust small companies, even if they have great products 08:00 – Average revenue 08:19 – Salesflare is based in Antwerp, Belgium 08:24 – Team size is 6 08:30 – 3 are building the product and the other 3 are sales and customer service 08:55 – Jeroen likes people to think that they are bigger than they are 09:02 – Nathan believes that some people like small companies because of their flexibility 10:40 – Nathan tells Jeroen that his assumption of “it’s not good if it’s free” is a completely false assumption 11:28 – Most people stick to Salesflare after the trial period 11:40 – There’s currently a big market of CRMs 11:46 – Salesflare is aiming at sales automation and there’s very little competition in that space 12:12 – Salesflare is moving faster than their competition 12:17 – Hubspot's distribution channel is huge and Salesflare won’t be able to compete with that 12:23 – But Salesflare can compete on the profit side 12:37 – Salesflare has a low churn 13:12 – Salesflare got their first customer at the end of 2015 14:00 – Salesflare has a blog, does outbound emailing and builds their online presence for customer acquisition 14:36 – Salesflare does content distribution through Facebook’s paid advertising 14:47 – Most of Salesflare’s recent customers are from Product Hunt 15:23 – Jeroen has no idea of the number of trials they’ve had since the launch 15:45 – Jeroen tracks the conversion, instead 16:05 – In the past week, there were 250 new trial signups 16:15 – The conversion to paid customer is around 10-15% 16:30 – Salesflare tries to show its value as quickly as possible 17:10 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: If you’re still unsure of starting a new business, find other ways to get involved in that space to understand how it works. Some businesses offer a free product to show their value to the customer right away. Competing with a free product with a large distribution channel isn’t easy, but you can generate a higher profit margin.   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