Ry Walker. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Astronomer.io, a big data infrastructure company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. Astronomer is an AngelPad batch #9 company and has raised $2M from the likes of 500 Startups, CincyTech, Router Ventures and SocialStarts. Astronomer measures, connects and centralizes data—making it super simple for anyone from business users to data scientists to quickly create and monitor their data and pipelines.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
What CEO do you follow? – Dennis Mortensen
Favorite online tool? — Fabricator
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Ry would tell himself to be bold and to be confident

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:35 – Nathan introduces Ry to the show
03:17 – Astronomer helps companies figure out how to use their data to benefit their business
- 03:22 – Astronomer works with early stage startups and big companies
03:41 – Some companies in the web analytics space are Mixpanel, Amplitude, Google Analytics
03:57 – Astronomer helps companies get the right data from their inside companies
04:32 – Astronomer is called data engineering, as a service
- 04:39 – Astronomer does the work for their customer while building the platform
- 04:51 – Astronomer has a flat price of 6K and 10K monthly
05:14 – Astronomer has their private cloud edition for their customers
05:33 – Astronomer was launched in May 2015
- 05:36 – Astronomer was at Collision Conference when they pivoted after the first day
- 06:13 – They realized that their biggest problem was to get companies to send them the data to run the analysis
06:35 – The number one issue in the space is the onboarding
07:03 – Ry explains the type of company they are
08:02 – The Angelpad is one of the most important pivots Astronomer did
08:13 – Angelpad’s model
08:46 – What Ry was thinking when they got into Angelpad
09:30 – First year revenue
09:38 – 2016 revenue
09:57 – Team size and location
10:08 – Astronomer has raised $2M in 2 years
- 10:31 – Last round was at $1.1M and a convertible note
10:40 – Average MRR
12:04 – Astronomer currently has 20 customers
12:14 – Customer churn
12:17 – Astronomer currently has a net negative churn of 48%
- 12:46 – Ry explains the net negative churn of 48%
13:33 – CAC
- 13:38 – Astronomer just started with paid CAC this year
- 14:00 – Astronomer started with $600
14:21 – LTV
15:40 – Last round of funding was in August
16:21 – Ry explains the amount they are burning
16:42 – Ry is thinking now of the post-seed round
- 16:52 – It’s a $3-5 M upround
- 17:14 – The valuation Ry is aiming for
- 17:40 – “We don’t really want to bump our valuation too much”
20:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

The number one issue in data analytics is the onboarding.
Know your valuation and understand the data that had led you to that valuation.
Believe in yourself—be bold and confident.

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
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

EP 618: Astronomer.io 2 Yrs Old, Hits $60K MRR, $2m Raised Helping Companies Makes Sense of Data with CEO Ry Walker

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders