753: With His Tool, Mobile Browsing on Spotty Wifi Doesn't Suck

Shlomi Gian. He has served as PacketZoom’s Chief Executive Officer since June of 2016. He joined the company after spending 4 years at Akamai, where he founded the emerging mobile business unit and service—the head of mobile market development. Before that, he was the general manager of mobile solutions at Cotendo that invented Mobile CDN back in 2011 before it was acquired by Akamai. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Built to Last What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Mix Rank How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Shlomi would tell himself how exciting it is to do your own thing Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Shlomi to the show 02:13 – PacketZoom helps mobile applications work better, especially when networks fail to deliver their service 03:15 – PacketZoom can make an application work in places where they don’t usually work, like in trains and elevators 03:31 – PacketZoom eliminates roadblocks and gets you on the express lane 03:40 – PacketZoom is a SaaS business 03:43 – PacketZoom charges per daily active user 04:10 – A daily active user is anyone who uses the system up to certain usage point 04:18 – Now, a daily active user is measured by the number of calls and how many megabytes have been used 04:40 – Average customer pay is $400-4K per application 05:28 – PacketZoom has raised capital through an investor round 05:35 – Total raised is around $6M 05:54 – The founder of the company started the company in 2013 06:33 – After Akamai’s acquisition of Cotendo, Shlomi was looking for a cutting-edge technology to bring into Akamai 06:43 – PacketZoom seemed to be the one that fits but doesn’t have enough commercial traction 06:51 – At the time, the investors were looking for a CEO who had a business background and could grow PacketZoom in the market 07:03 – Shlomi met the investors through a headhunter 07:18 – Shlomi fell in love with the product and he decided to leave his comfort zone at Akamai 08:06 – PacketZoom started out selling to enterprise and now they’re focusing on developers 08:26 – The headhunter was tied to the investors 08:54 – MRR was closed to none before Shlomi joined 09:20 – PacketZoom has a difficult product to built 09:34 – PacketZoom currently has 68 customers 09:59 – PacketZoom is tracking a few KPIs and the number of SDK installed 10:30 – The goal is to hit 15-20M active users by the end of the year 10:40 – PacketZoom is on track and halfway to their goal 10:57 – “We’re doubling our activity since I joined” 11:11 – PacketZoom relies heavily on partnerships 11:27 – PacketZoom is partnered with ChinaCache, a large CDN public company selling exclusively in China 11:38 – PacketZoom also has resellers and they already have 3 European resellers 11:50 – PacketZoom is expanding to Asia and Latin America 12:12 – PacketZoom is the perfect partner for their resellers because the resellers are already selling performance 12:30 – The percentage PacketZoom gets depends on the partnership’s commitment 12:45 – The partners take away the cost of operation and sales in their territories 13:00 – PacketZoom aims to work with larger partners who are willing to make greater commitments 13:17 – 2017 revenue goal is millions of dollars; they want to prepare for a series B eventually 13:46 – PacketZoom is close to passing the $88K MRR which can equate to a little over $1M in ARR 14:55 – PacketZoom just opened their office in Asia and are opening one soon in Europe 15:17 – PacketZoom has 3 sales people 15:24 – Company size is 20 15:54 – Paid marketing spend is less than $10K 16:48 – Zero customer churn for PacketZoom 18:29 – PacketZoom is a very unique product 19:21 – Assumed LTV 20:21 – The team is spread out in different states and countries 20:40 – Gross margin 20:58 – PacketZoom relies on other cloud infrastructures 21:19 – Gross margin now is 60-80% but will definitely change soon 23:55 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: You may find the right company at the wrong time, but in order to make it work takes you making a decision. A company can definitely raise money on pre-revenue if the investors see its uniqueness and potential to grow. Start to build as early as possible. 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 GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more 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