Dimitris Giannoccaro. He founded IAMIP, in 2013, after an extensive career in engineering and intellectual property together with some of the strongest leaders and inventors at ABB. The urgent need for digitizing an intellectual property world and maximizing the potential of intellectual property successfully has been felt during his work at his company.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – n/a
What CEO do you follow? – Björn Lilja of Kundo
Favorite online tool? — Slack
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I would never do this again”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:44 – Nathan introduces Dimitris to the show
01:31 – IAMIP is a typical SaaS company
01:56 – IAMIP is where users can collaborate in real-time in order to access all the patents
02:49 – IAMIP has 3 target groups: small startups, medium-size companies and corporations
03:06 – Small startups still need to know how to protect their solution
03:22 – Medium and corporations are big companies and they want to make sure no one is infringing on their rights
04:12 – If you want to get acquired later on, you want to make sure you don’t infringe on other’s rights
04:42 – Patents are important for product
04:58 – Patents are also filed on services
05:32 – As a consumer, the focus is on the usability of the product or service
05:40 – If you want to make money right and keep growing, you want to have your IP
06:08 – Team size is 14
06:19 – IAMIP was launched 3 years
06:23 – Average MRR is $60K
06:38 – IAMIP currently has 500 users
- 06:54 – There are 62 paying customers
07:18 – IAMIP raised 2 years ago, but it was initially bootstrapped
07:34 – Dimitris was 37 when he launched IAMIP
08:05 – IAMIP managed to have their first client after a few months
08:22 – IAMIP has 2 founders and the split is 50/50
08:59 – Dimitris regretted not inviting more people
09:55 – IAMIP has raised $1M on the first round
10:01 – IAMIP is in the process of raising an equity round
10:27 – Dimitris based the valuation on the future number of customers
11:08 – IAMIP didn’t give a discount on their first round which is an equity round
11:44 – Gross customer churn
12:16 – Dimitris’ tactic on having 0 churn
12:46 – 2016 revenue
13:08 – 2017 goal
13:16 – IAMIP has recently been accepted by the UCLA Amazon program
13:33 – CAC
13:59 – Everybody is part of the sales team
- 14:30 – All of the people on the team are engineers and the 7 spend additional time in sales
14:51 – LTV
16:17 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Patents are important for growing businesses in order to protect your solutions.
Having co-founders has its advantages and can be much better than doing it solo.
You CAN acquire new customers without an expert salesperson.

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

696: The Debate: Are Patents "Entrepreneurial" Or Unfair?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders