Dominik Vacikar. He is currently an Associate at Hummingbird VC, but was previously the co-founder of Spaceship and some other startups, including Growth at Nestpick. Listen as Dominik gives us an inside look at the workings of Spaceship and why he was chosen by Hummingbird for a very specific task.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Zero to One
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — Stripe
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Dominik wishes he wasn’t so hard on himself, so long as he was progressing

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:35 – Nathan introduces Dominik to the show
02:00 – Spaceship started as a side project when Dominik had their lead generation tool in social media
03:02 – Dominik shares how Spaceship works
- 03:18 – Spaceship searches your entire target audience and provides you with prospect data
03:35 – Spaceship is pay-as-you go
03:51 – 10% of Spaceship’s customers are on a monthly plan
04:10 – Spaceship was launched in October 2015
04:30 – 2015 revenue
04:55 – Current total revenue
05:12 – Dominik shares why he turned to Hummingbird
06:33 – Spaceship was bootstrapped
06:52 – Spaceship’s current team size
07:20 – Dominik has been with Hummingbird for 2 months
07:30 – Hummingbird wants Dominik to build a radar for startups
- 07:54 – The radar will track interesting companies and identify them
08:29 – Dominik shares how their product is different from Crunchbase
09:31 – Dominik shares the variables they use to identify the startups
10:30 – The current biggest problem is updating the data as frequently as possible
11:45 – Hummingbird is good at identifying the funders’ DNA
12:08 – Hummingbird’s main area of expertise
13:00 – Hummingbird might be interested in a Series A
13:21 – Hummingbird’s ARR target
14:05 – Nathan asks Dominik about Spaceship’s founder
14:37 – Dominik is active on Twitter and LinkedIn
16:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Growth comes in many forms—sometimes from within your own company or from the help of others.
Develop your expertise by drawing knowledge from other fields and markets.
Your progress determines your future and YOU set the pace.

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
@chichikid – Dominik’s Twitter handle
LinkedIn – Dominik’s LinkedIn account
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

EP 535: He's 24 yo Founder, Now VC at Hummingbird

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders