Will Dinkel. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Nova. Prior to founding Nova, Will developed his passion for enterprise sales while working in various technology and sales roles at CloudFlare and HP. Will studied engineering in Harvard Business School.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Presenting to Win
What CEO do you follow? – Travis Kimmel
Favorite online tool? – Apple Notes
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— “I try”
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wish my 20-year old self was more ambitious”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:42 – Nathan introduces Will to the show
02:08 – Nova AI is a sales product that uses AI to help set appointments more effectively
02:25 – Nova helps sales reps, they don’t necessarily get leads
02:52 – Nova creates personalized emails and merged templates
03:08 – Nova charges per seat
03:30 – “What we do is very unique”
03:39 – Nova is a smart, workflow product
04:08 – Average pay per seat is $150
04:28 – Nova started in 2015
05:01 – Nova’s co-founder is from MIT
05:15 – Team size
05:40 – Will shares how it’s like in San Francisco
06:00 – Nova has raised $2.2M
06:20 – Salesforce Ventures is one of Nova’s investors
06:54 – The space is getting bigger and bigger
07:15 – Will shares why he raised and went to YC
07:50 – Nova just crossed 100 customers
08:10 – Average seat number per customer
08:40 – Nova is now looking into a bigger number of seats per customer
08:55 – Nova has around a thousand sales reps using them
09:15 – Will’s focus is to make sure the team is functioning well
10:20 – Average MRR
10:45 – Growth rate target in 2017
10:51 – Will is looking into adding additional people to the team, 3 per class
11:51 – Nova uses their own wrinkle for SDR
12:10 – Gross customer churn
- 12:35 – People are mostly happy with Nova
12:55 – Nova’s paid marketing
13:47 – How do you beat a company like Yesware?
- 14:05 – Focus on what you do best and don’t get dragged into trying to do everything that everyone else does
16:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Focus on what YOU do best—you will lose when you focus on what others are doing.
Offer something unique and it will make you stand out amongst the crowd.
Be ambitious, act sooner than later.

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 597: Nova.ai Passes 100 Customers, $2.2M Raised To Help SDR's Sell More Using AI with CEO Will Dinkel

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders