Conor Lee, founder and CEO of HipLead. The company helps leading B2B companies scale their outbound sales with high quality lead generation outbound campaigns. Before founding HipLead, Conor founded several other companies including TellFi which was in the Y Combinator, Winter 2011 batch. Prior to that, he worked as a lobbyist in statewide political campaigns.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk
Favorite online tool? – Zapier
Do you get 8 hours of sleep? – No
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Conor wished he had spent more time in tech than in politics

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:30 – Nathan introduces Conor to the show
02:07 – Conor shares what happened to TellFi
- 02:58 – Conor had a co-founder who wanted to keep it going
- 03:19 – Conor shares how the exit happened
04:10 – HipLead helps companies scale their outbound sales
04:35 – HipLead’s pricing
04:55 – Current number of customers is 30
05:18 – HipLead was launched in 2013
05:30 – Conor is the solo founder, but he had a co-founder for awhile
06:25 – Conor has the majority of the shares of the company
07:35 – Conor and Nathan discuss cap tables
08:00 – Conor hired a lawyer for his legal documents
- 08:17 – Use the startup attorneys
08:31 – HipLead is bootstrapped
08:50 – HipLead’s loan
09:20 – Conor shares why he got the loan
10:00 – Conor shares how the loan works
- 11:30 – The type of loan is only for specific companies
- 12:00 – The company name that provides the loan is Lighter Capital and it is based in Seattle
12:21 – Annual customer churn: less than 15%
12:58 – CAC
13:09 – Customer’s LTV
14:15 – First year revenue
15:40 – 2015 revenue: $900,000
15:50 – Current ARR
15:59 – Conor is also looking into raising capital
16:10 – Team size of 16
16:29 – Team location is in San Francisco and other remote locations
18:35 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

We need to be more open about exits—there are times where you just have to pull the plug.
If you need funds and do not want to share equity, try a bank loan.
Make sure your legal documents are in order, especially in the case of a split from your co-founder.

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 542: HipLead Hits $120k MRR Helping 30 Customers Get More Leads with CEO COnor Lee

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders