Johnny Warström. He’s the CEO and founder of Mentimeter. He’s an engineer from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He’s worked in 10 countries and visited over 60. He loves adventures and growing his company and he’s getting married soon.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? – Sebastian Siemiątkowski
Favorite online tool? — Intercom
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Do more crazy stuff”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:44 – Nathan introduces Johnny to the show
02:21 – Johnny founded Mentimeter with his three friends right out of university
02:38 – Mentimeter is an interactive presentation
- 03:00 – You can connect the audience's’ phones with the presentation and they can vote or participate
03:53 – Mentimeter has a free and premium model
04:04 – Mentimeter has over 10M users and 400K presenters who lead meetings
- 04:31 – The presenters are the ones who pay
04:50 – Mentimeter currently has 6K enterprise customers
05:03 – Mentimeter is purely a B2B SaaS
05:36 – Average customer pay per month is $150 a year
05:56 – Mentimeter also offers packages
06:13 – ARR is around $1.5M
06:47 – Mentimeter was launched in 2003 and was initially bootstrapped as a side project
- 07:00 – Johnny was part of Telecom and his co-founders were managing consultants
- 07:18 – It took them 2-3 months to build Mentimeter and they showed it to their bosses
07:40 – Mentimeter had their $350K angel round in 2004 and they have a total of $500K funds raised
07:52 – Team size is 16 and everyone is based in Stockholm
08:25 – Mentimeter has no paid activities and relies fully on organic growth
08:53 – The goal of Mentimeter is to be a mass market product
09:38 – Mentimeter has 1 in sales, 9 in product and 6 in marketing
10:27 – Mentimeter was part of 500 S tartups last spring
11:17 – Fully weighted CAC
11:42 – Payback period is almost instant
12:20 – The team has been doing different experiments to increase customer engagement
13:48 – Mentimeter is on -5 net churn
14:22 – Mentimeter has a licensed model
14:51 – 1% monthly churn
- 15:18 – Some do not continue with their annual plan
- 15:44 – Mentimeter won’t give money back, but there’s a 40-day refund
17:00 – Johnny shares about a big, annual event in Europe that he’s a big fan of
- 17:00 – Mentimeter has a built-in, voting module which functions as a simulation for a contest
- 17:37 – Mentimeter received a lot of attention from that event 2 years ago
18:12 – 2017 revenue goal is $2.3M
18:17 – 2016 revenue was $800K
18:52 – Johnny targets $10M in ARR for 2019
19:22 – “We’re not looking for funding at the moment”
19:38 – Johnny isn’t interested in selling the company at the moment
21:33 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Keep an open mind—your side project can be your next successful business.
Business ideas can come from the most unexpected of places—don’t discount your ideas.
Success gained from organic traffic IS possible.

Resources Mentioned:

Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
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

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