Michael Kaplan. He’s the CEO and founder of Taivaco which is a media technology company. He’s also the former director of marketing at Sanyo and was appointed at San Francisco Water Bay Front Committee. Michael speaks Chinese, French and Japanese. He attended The University of Redlands, Waseda University in Tokyo, George Mason University and Chinese Culture University.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – It’s Not My Department
What CEO do you follow? – John Cleese and Ken Okuyama
Favorite online tool? — Any.do
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The more you listen to other people, the more success finds you” and “Be a nice person”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:28 – Nathan introduces Michael to the show
02:07 – Michael shares why January 20^th is a special day
03:15 – Taivaco was set out to solve an invisible problem and ended up solving more problems
- 03:47 – An archive isn’t an accurate description
- 03:50 – Organizations are struggling to manage their media
- 04:17 – One of Taivaco’s original ideas was to digitize media
- 05:08 – Taivaco helps companies find their content within their media or discover what DAM (Digital Asset Management) software does
05:50 – Taivaco incorporates both software and manual work
06:01 – “This is not a software that we sell, this is a service that we do”
06:15 – Taivaco is a service-only company
06:26 – Taivaco was launched in 2016
06:33 – Taivaco is currently on pre-revenue
- 06:49 – Taivaco has done under 10K in pre-revenue
07:00 – Taivaco version 1.0 will be available in April
07:12 – Taivaco was originally self-funded
- 07:20 – Michael put in 20K in Taivaco
07:27 – Taivaco just closed their “seedling” round for less than 50K
07:43 – Long term plan is to have another round
07:56 – Michael shares how they actually make a sale
08:32 – Sabra Design is one of Taivaco’s paying customers
- 08:39 – Sabra Design came to Taivaco to ask for their service
- 09:04 – Taivaco got less than a thousand for the job
09:10 – Taivaco has already reached out to potential clients to scale up
10:17 – Michael explains why it is taking them more time to close a deal
10:50 – Taivaco doesn’t specialize in digitizing and they do it for a minimal cost
11:23 – Taivaco annotates content which nobody has done before
- 12:12 – Michael shares their annotation process
- 12:46 – The charge for annotation will depend on the volume
- 13:20 – Taivaco will have a subscription model for the annotation
14:10 – Taivaco’s goal is to make their service as easy and possible for their clients
15:34 – Taivaco is making money through annotation
16:27 – The metrics that Taivaco is measuring in pricing
17:09 – “We have to provide the whole thing”
18:21 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Try to solve one problem and you might end up solving more problems.
Do something that is new in the market to stand apart.
Take things at your own pace and don’t rush.

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 599: Taivaco Helps Brands FInd Old Offline Content to Digitize and Annotate With $50K Raised, CEO Michael Kaplan

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