Heather Marie. She’s the founder and CEO of Shoppable, a technology company that helps media companies, brands and retailers bring the checkout experience to anywhere a consumer discovers or engages with their products. While with Shoppable, she won the 2013 Women in Digital Award from L’Oreal, was named 1 of the 10 Most Powerful Millennials in Manhattan by Gotham Magazine, and 1 of the 11 Tech Gurus Changing the Luxury Game by Refinery29. The company was a 2014 Webby Award Honoree for Online Shopping, a 2016 Webby Honoree for Technical Achievement and named one of the 100 Brilliant Companies by Entrepreneur Magazine.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Never Eat Alone
What CEO do you follow? – Jennifer Hyman
Favorite online tool? — Boomerang for Gmail
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Just how long everything takes”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:07 – Nathan introduces Heather to the show
02:07 – Shoppable creates a technology that helps people buy what they see online
02:37 – People see products in every place
02:50 – Shoppable created a patent pending technology that provides different locations to shop that is outside the traditional retail shop
03:20 – Heather started the company in 2011
03:36 – Heather pitched Shoppable to a number of different retailers
03:49 – Shoppable launched a technology with The Wall Street Journal
04:00 – The Wall Street Journal branding was able to bring in a bunch of retailers and advertisers
04:40 – Shoppable has grown to under 30M products across the whole platform
05:28 – Shoppable brings the technology to where the consumers already are
05:40 – com uses Shoppable on their website and customers can buy directly from the website
07:24 – Shoppable brings the technology to different types of companies
07:40 – Shoppable is also integrated with publications such as WSJ, Condé Nast and others
07:58 – Shoppable is a SaaS company and charges annually for licenses
08:20 – Average customer pay is 5 figures
09:11 – Prior to Shoppable, Heather was at post acquisition of com
09:26 – Heather was a founding member of Affinity Labs
10:21 – Heather got into Affinity right after college
10:39 – The exit with Monster was all cash with an additional incentive
10:49 – Heather made it for 2 years after the acquisition, doing research on Shoppable
11:45 – Heather had to make Shoppable work
12:01 – Heather knew that she would start her own company
12:21 – Heather had debt that she was able to pay off after the acquisition
12:55 – Heather kept a part of the money for Shoppable
13:40 – Heather also had to downsize her condo to keep her expenses low
15:13 – There are ways you can increase your buffer
15:33 – Heather had to change her habits
16:22 – Shoppable has raised $5M
16:33 – The last round was a year ago
16:43 – Heather isn’t selling to Shopify
16:55 – Shoppable is above breaking even
17:24 – Team size is 20 and they are all based in New York
17:53 – Heather went on a business trip to NY and on her second day, she thought that Shoppable was made for NY
18:31 – Shoppable has around 438 merchants and 2000 brands
18:38 – One merchant could have hundreds of brands
19:15 – Average ARR
21:13 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

As an entrepreneur, you need to know how to manage money well.
Building a company requires research and an action plan—especially if that company is your first and last shot at building one.
Be aware that things in business and in life may take longer that what you’re expecting.

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
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

726: This $500k/mo+ Entrepreneur Says Key is Minimizing Expenses

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