Amarpreet Kalkat. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Frrole, an AI (artificial intelligence) startup that is redefining consumer intelligence. He loves building things, be it product, revenue streams, teams or organizations.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kalanick
Favorite online tool? — Klout
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Amarpreet would tell himself to focus and prioritize

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:22 – Nathan introduces Amarpreet to the show
01:50 – Frrole provides consumer intelligence
- 01:53 – Frrole relies on public data to build insights about the consumers
- 02:07 – Frrole works with companies’ marketing teams
02:35 – eBay and Flipcut are some of Frrole’s customers
02:44 – It is crucial for marketing teams to understand their customers
02:57 – Frrole works with eBay’s shipping insides team
- 03:02 – eBay wants to understand their customer’s shipping experience
03:34 – Frrole has data partnerships with Twitter and Facebook
- 03:40 – Frrole has official access to data
04:11 – Frrole looks at the attributes and annotations as a guide for the data they need
04:30 – Frrole is SaaS business and customers pay them for the insights
05:00 – Average customer pay per month is around $32K per year
05:28 – “Personally, I don’t believe in locking customers in”
05:37 – Frrole has a 30-day walk out clause
05:46 – Most of Frrole’s customers pay quarterly
06:08 – Frrole started as a B2C in the news discovery product, in 2012
- 06:14 – In 2014, Frrole pivoted to a B2B model
06:46 – Frrole currently has 13 team members
- 06:52 – The team is in Bangalore and Amarpreet goes back and forth between Bangalore and San Francisco
- 07:11 – Amarpreet is currently in San Francisco looking for a sales guy
- 07:25 – Amarpreet ideally looks for a co-founder kind of role
- 07:39 – Amarpreet is willing to give 5-10% equity
07:49 – Frrole has raised a couple of small angel rounds
- 08:00 – Frrole has raised a total of $250K
08:05 – Frrole currently has 18 paying customers
08:23 – Average MRR
08:45 – Average customer churn
09:36 – Frrole has 1 sales guy in Bangalore
09:50 – CAC
- 10:15 – Frrole spends $500-1K a month for paid marketing
10:39 – Frrole is recently experimenting with LinkedIn for marketing
- 11:18 – Frrole sponsors an email list and a banner ad
- 11:28 – It worked out okay
12:00 – Frrole is currently breaking even
- 12:10 – Salaries in Bangalore are way less than in the USA
- 12:26 – The best web developer in India would cost around $30K
13:58 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Customers will use your product if they see the value – locking in is not always necessary.
Marketing people need to dig deeper to understand and serve their customers well.
Know what your priorities are and focus in.

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
Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
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
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

EP 636: Bangalore Startup Hits $40k MRR Helping 18 Customers Get Consumer Data Using Social Intelligence with Frrole CEO Amarpreet Kalkat

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders