Charles Thiede. He’s the co-founder and CEO of the knowledge network platform called Zapnito. Zapnito helps organizations create privately, branded, expert communications and networks. He calls this “experts as a service”. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Lean Startup What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Product Hunt Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— I try to If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Do everything with courage” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:11 – Nathan introduces Charles to the show 01:41 – Zapnito is a SaaS platform 02:16 – The idea of Zapnito is to helps brands bring their audience back to the trusted sources of knowledge 02:40 – Zapnito’s Slack channel 02:51 – The platform behind the scene that pulls the audience and brands together 03:40 – Each brand has their own slack domain 04:40 – Average customer pay per year is £60K 05:38 – Zapnito started in trading in March 2013 05:48 – Started as a marketplace for experts in 2014 06:38 – First year revenue 07:12 – Zapnito currently has 12 customers 07:57 – Average MRR 08:50 – Team size is 12 09:36 – Charles doesn’t batch their sales calls 10:00 – Charles usually takes the calls 10:32 – Zapnito is based in London 10:50 – No customer churn and negative net churn 11:12 – The leverage Zapnito pulls to drive the RPU up 11:30 – “We focus on niche networks’ 11:50 – Zapnito has scaled their number of networks 12:10 – CAC 13:21 – Zapnito was bootstrapped and raised angel money 13:40 – Zapnito has raised £650K in priced equity round 14:02 – Zapnito had 3 rounds 14:50 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Continually pivoting is not a disadvantage to your company, as long as you just keep learning from the experience. Do not hesitate to hire the people that you need. Do everything with courage. 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 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