Arif Momin, CEO and co-founder of CStorePro technologies – the leading provider of mobile and cloud based operations management for retail businesses. He has an MBA from University of California. Berkley and BS in Computer Engineering from Michigan State University.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Innovator’s Dilemma
What CEO do you follow? – Mark Zuckerberg

Favorite online tool? — JIRA
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? – “Move fast and willing to fail a little quicker. Don’t regret the old stuff”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:40 – Nathan introduces Arif to the show
02:05 – Arif used the network that his MBA provides
02:16 – What is CStorePro and how it generates revenue
- 02:22 – CStorePro modernizes the operation of a single-operated store
- 02:50 – Customers pay CStorePro $ 59 a month
03:02 – Arif was from a different company
03:40 – Raise under $ 1 million
- 03:45 – All convertible note
03:48 – Number of unique customers as of September 2016 is 32,000
- 04:09 – Number of paying customers is about 15,000
04:20 – MRR
04:30 – CStorePro was founded in 2011
04:44 – Arif’s first business turned into a lifestyle company
05:04 – Zero first year revenue
05:33 - $ 350,000 revenue in 2015
05:40 – Revenue goal in 2016
06:07 – CStorePro clients are store owners
06:17 – Gross monthly customer churn
- 06:33 – Current churn is 5%
07:25 – Lifetime value
- 07:41 – Calculated lifetime is 3 years
08:40 – Best number to quantify CStorePro’s data
- 09:00 – Number in August is 13 million
09:10 – Team size and based in Houston
10:25 – Current customer acquisition cost
- 10:31 - $ 180 to get a trial customer
- 10:45 - $ 360 per paying customer
11:04 – Currently not in a capital raise
11:11 – Not raising funding and not selling
- 11:25 – “We don’t need it and the time is not right”
- 11:33 – There’s a huge opportunity in the business
11:50 – Total head count cost per month
12:24 – They’ve got access to financial resources
12:40 – Connect with Arif through CstorePro.com
14:40 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Give your business more time to grow.
Tracking your churn has its advantages.
Be prepared to fail – the earlier you fail, the earlier you learn.

Resources Mentioned:

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 quality of Toptal developers.
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Freshbooks – The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.
CstorePro.com – Arif’s business website
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

EP 452: 70k MRR, CSTOREPRO, Data play, <1m Raised, <5% monthly churn

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders