Paul Tyma. He’s the founder and creator of a tool called Mailinator which is an email system. He’s also a startup veteran and has focused on 4 Silicon Valley startups including Preemptive Solutions, Manybrain Inc which owns Mailinator, Home-Account.com which was acquired by Bills.com, and Refresh Inc which was acquired by LinkedIn. He’s a frequent speaker, writer and author of one of the original books on Java called Java Primer Plus. Dr. Tyma has received his PhD from Syracuse University focused on Java/.Net performance.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Influence
What CEO do you follow? – Amy Errett and Bradley Kam
Favorite online tool? — Linode
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8.5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “How to talk to girls”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:53 – Nathan introduces Paul to the show
01:48 – Paul started his first company during his PhD
01:56 – After getting his PhD, Paul worked for Google
02:12 – Paul is still part of the board for Preemptive Solutions
02:18 – Refresh had a very visible exit and is currently at LinkedIn icebreakers
- 02:37 – The acquisition was in 2015
- 02:45 – Acquisition price
- 02:54 – Refresh was a consumer application
- 03:10 – Refresh has raised $10M in total
- 03:20 – The first round was a priced round
- 03:53 – Refresh had 100K users
- 04:30 – Refresh built its own identity from scratch
- 04:40 – The technology of Refresh
05:40 – Home-Account.com was built prior to Refresh
- 05:59 – Paul was a minor founder
- 06:15 – Option pool
07:23 – Selling a company and staying with the company who acquired it is a cliché in Silicon Valley
08:19 – Mailinator was a side project Paul built 13 years ago
- 08:30 – It was a receive only mail service
- 08:50 – Mailinator lets you create a disposable email
10:17 – Mailinator had some ads which paid for the server
11:30 – Mailinator now makes money from affiliates
11:47 – Mailinator’s brand became strong
11:56 – There was a high usage from QA departments who tested their signups process and welcome email
- 12:11 – They asked Mailinator for additional features
- 12:40 – Hundreds of QA teams now are using and paying Mailinator
- 13:16 – Mailinator also has a private paid domain
13:40 – Pricing is $29 for single user and $129 for a team
13:56 – Average RPU is $35
14:31 – Average MRR
14:57 – Paul is now turning Mailinator into a business
15:21 – Churn is pretty high
15:48 – Less paid advertising
16:16 – Mailinator has 45K unique users a day
16:44 – 25K new inboxes are set up everyday
16:58 – “This is not a DAU product”
17:21 – Mailinator has not raised money
18:09 – Team size is 3
18:30 – Gross margin
- 18:59 – Server cost
19:53 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

A side project can definitely turn into something more—don’t underestimate its potential.
An email does NOT reflect one’s identity.
There are thousands of emails being made and sent every day—having a disposable one is almost a necessity.

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

703: The "Accidental" $10k/mo Side Project

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