The Top Entrepreneurs In Money, Marketing, Business And Life

JazzHR CEO Pete Lamson explains how the company uses $25 Amazon giftcards to drive customer conversions. It's working. The company has over 3000 paying customers today and $6m in ARR. 

JD Graffam makes an interesting argument for buying companies instead of starting new ones. 

After receiving his MBA from Stanford, Steven Benson worked in Sales at IBM, HP and Google where he was Google Enterprise's Top Sales Executive in 2009. In 2012 Steven founded Badger Maps, the #1 Sales App in the Apple App Store, which helps Field Sales People be more successful. How do you put touch on such a low price point? The sales cycle is quick, about 3 weeks, so we're able to put touch on most free trials even though starting price point is $35 a seat.  Marketing, Sales, and customer success all tied together but manage themselves in pods. There is no variable comp, including the sales roles. Everyone is on salary and everyone owns equity so they can take part in upside.  What is revenue growth? Back in December 2016 we were doing $130k, now in August 2017 we're at about $180k in MRR so about 80% yoy growth rate.  We're using bank debt, 19% interest rate with LighterCapital, to fund growth because its non dilutive.  In July 2017 spent about $15k on paid marketing. Has sales team of 30 that works those

I really enjoyed this interview with Dave for two big reasons: He’s playing in a space that is not typical for B2B SaaS He’s using freemium consumer adoption to drive enterprise leads at a very low CAC of $80 which he makes back in well under 12 months. Dave is the CEO of TeamSnap. He has more than 20 years of experience in technology leadership positions. He was previously CEO of SANRAD, a venture-funded storage networking company, which he joined in 2006. He also helped found LeftHand Networks, a Boulder-based company sold to Hewlett Packard. Prior to that, Dave was with Hewlett-Packard. An avid skier and wannabe competitive cyclist, Dave lives in Boulder with wife Deb and two children, Mariel and Gabe. He enjoys reading, cooking and microbreweries Revenue Model: Over 1m teams use TeamSnap and 250,000 of those teams pay Dave $80 per year to use TeamSnap to manage team communication, logistics, and more. The average team has 30 people ranging from coaches, to players, to players parents. TeamSnap leverages

Rob Frohwein. Back in 2008, he recognized that companies like eBay offered automated access to small business transactional data via APIs. He also realized that small businesses could simply share this data to allow underwriters to make better, faster credit decisions and provide a great user experience. Because of that, he co-founded Kabbage in Atlanta, Georgia, to leverage the power of real-time data automation through technology. The company has since expanded to serve all small businesses throughout the U.S., providing billions of dollars to more than 100,000 customers.

Tom Coburn. He’s the cofounder and CEO of Jebbit. He left Boston College to pursue the company and is currently in the Forbes 30 under 30 list. He’s also the cofounder of Enjoy Life Education, a non-profit that empowers teens to be the best versions of themselves, and SSC Ventures which invests in Boston College entrepreneurs.

 Zach Benson. He’s the cofounder and CEO of Assistagram and he’s one of the standouts in the world of online entrepreneurship, especially, influencer marketing. He’s a TedX speaker, social media trainer for international brands like The 4 Seasons, Ritz Carlton and Vice Roy. He was a past participant on “So You Think You Can Dance”. He doesn’t only manages his own Instagram network of millions, he’s also guiding other influencers and Fortune 500 companies through Assistagram to social media success.

Nadim Hossain. He has over 17 years of experience in building marketing and selling cloud applications. Prior to founding BrightFunnel, he was VP of marketing at Power Reviews, paving the way for a $170M exit. He was also the marketing executive at Salesforce from 2007-2010. He has a BA from Cornell and an MBS from Stanford.

Greg Harris. His company is Quantum Workplace and he started with a vision to create tangible measures for leadership strength inside of companies. His company surveyed tools for measuring employee engagement and recognizing the best places to work. It’s grown into an engagement platform that talent-minded companies use now to accelerate performance.

Harpreet Singh. He’s one of the cofounders of Kvantum. He’s in a lot of positions based in data science including big companies like Target and Sapient.

Garrett Moon. He’s the CEO and founder of CoSchedule, the web’s most popular marketing calendar and the fastest growing startup in North Dakota. As a thought leader, Garrett has been blogging and speaking about content marketing, social media marketing, and startup businesses for more than six years.