Shashank Murali. He’s a BITS Pilani alumni. He’s a co-founder and CEO at TapChief – a platform to seek advice from industry professionals. Previously, he built and sold Edvice, an on-demand tutoring app, to HashLearn. He had a product for Hashlearn before he decided to set on a path to democratize knowledge sharing with TapChief. Apart from startups and tech, Shashank enjoys cricket, psychedelic music, and swears by Pink Floyd.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Everything Store
What CEO do you follow? – Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Favorite online tool? – Trello
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “To persist more”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:25 – Nathan introduces Shashank to the show
02:11 – Shashank shares what TapChief is
- 02:25 – TapChief charges from the expert’s pay
02:36 – TapChief is similar to Clarity.fm
- 02:44 – Shashank shares how TapChief is different from Clarity
- 03:14 – TapChief has a various of offerings
03:25 – TapChief is a marketplace
03:39 – The 2 sides of TapChief:
- 03:45 – Experts ask for a consultation charge and TapChief gets a fee from that
- 04:30 – Experts monetize their knowledge using TapChief
05:33 – Average order size
06:14 – Shashank believes that their market would still grow
06:40 – TapChief was launched in a B2C play
07:07 – TapChief takes 20% from the experts’ charges
07:21 – Average number of experts in the platform
07:31 – TapChief was launched in February 2016
07:48 – Average number of students who have purchased from TapChief
08:28 – TapChief is giving the experts options to present themselves better
09:05 – 1000 out of 5000 experts in TapChief had conversations already
09:31 – Shashank shares how they measure their growth
- 09:58 – What Shashank primarily measures
10:16 – TapChief has raised $150K with a team of 10
10:40 – The number of hours TapChief has crossed
- 10:50 – Average monthly minutes of interactions
11:25 – Shashank shares how they leverage the number of students
12:25 – Revenue goal for 2017
- 12:42 – Shashank’s focus is on the number of minutes of interactions
13:02 – Shashank’s plan is to grow the number of minutes
14:10 – Shashank is open to B2B collaborations
- 14:45 – Shashank explains why a business would pay for collaboration
15:18 – Where the majority of the revenue is coming from
15:46 – 2016 total revenue
16:35 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

We are experts in our own field and there are platforms where you can monetize your knowledge.
You don’t always have to focus on the revenue—there are metrics that should be considered.
Be more persistent—especially in the things that are most important to you.

Resources Mentioned:

Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
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.
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
Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket
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 601: TapChief Passes 75,000 Minutes Of Experts Teaching Students, $150k Raised, Team of 10 with 23 yo CEO Shashank Murali

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders