Eric Bouck. He’s the CEO and founder of Propeller, a CRM that lets you sell from gmail. Prior to Propeller, Eric was the co-founder and CEO of Zigzag Software which was eventually sold to Samsung. He also spent some time working as a director for Samsung. He also worked as a Group Product Manager at Dell EMC and spent 4 years with this company.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Inspired
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — Webflow
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Marry the right person”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:26 – Nathan introduces Eric to the show
02:05 – Propeller is the CRM that creates daily tools that salespeople can use to set their meetings, do their email and phone calls, share presentations and documents, and research etc.
02:31 – Propeller is a SaaS business and they have monthly and annual subscriptions
02:50 – Average revenue per customer monthly
- 02:54 –$50 per month
03:15 – How does Propeller win on a very crowded market?
- 03:24 – There’s a lot of companies who try to make their own niche
- 03:42 – Propeller has a unique mix of deep integration with Gmail combined with the ability to do multiple step campaign
04:45 – Propeller is an all-in-one CRM – you won’t be needing another product
05:10 – Propeller was launched September 1^st
- 05:15 – Growth is 21% month over month
- 05:22 – A little over 50 customers at the moment
05:26 – Propeller is bootstrapped
05:39 – Eric got decent money from the exit
06:23 – No revenue churn at the moment
07:00 – Team size, they are also remote
07:36 – Eric is not open to acquisition talks at the moment
08:00 – The leading companies in the CRM space are Salesforce and Dynamics
- 08:35 – Pipeline and Hubspot are getting positive feedback as well
09:00 – Eric shares his opinion of Outreach
09:25 – Eric mentions Propeller having an AI
09:55 – The core differentiator of the products
- 10:04 – An example of how Propeller makes getting your emails done easier
11:00 – Nathan’s acuity to batch schedule
11:20 – CRM pricing
- 11:42 – Deliver the VALUE
- 12:00 – Eric shares their vision as a company to make salespeople more effective
12:12 – Eric shares how he got their first 5 customers
12:46 – Eric has also spent for paid marketing
12:58 – LTV is $1500
13:30 – CAC LTV ratio
15:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

If your market is crowded, you have to work HARDER to differentiate yourself.
The value is not in losing sales or making more sales—the value is found in whether or not you provide an effective product.
Don’t live with regrets—it’s gotten you to where you are now.

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
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

EP 549: Propeller CEO on Why He'll Win CRM Space After Exit to Samsung with Eric Bouck

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders