Troy Sultan, founder and CEO of Resource, a company that’s trying to automate the recruitment process. Troy was the first recruitment officer at Grooveshark, and later left Google to return to his passion: startups. Listen as Troy and Nathan talk about Troy’s career path, managing co-founders, and why you shouldn’t rely on venture capital.

Famous 5
Favorite Book? – The War of Art
What CEO do you follow? — Gary Swart
What is your favorite online tool? — Mixmax
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? — Slow down to speed up. And think about what you’re really good at.

Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:10 – Nathan’s introduction
01:30 – Welcoming Troy to the show
01:47 – Troy founded a startup out of college, then joined early Grooveshark
02:10 – Grooveshark got sued for $17 billion
02:40 – Troy went into hiring at Google in 2013
03:00 – Built a startup in the last year of college - “we made every mistake”
04:00 – Decided to work with Grooveshark to learn about startup success
04:30 – Google was the next stage: seeing how a big company worked
05:00 – Lessons from Google? - “A lot of delegation is happening”
05:13 – The quality of your experience at a big company depends on your manager
05:26 – Troy then started Resource
05:54 – Part of the 500 Startups accelerator
06:06 – 5% equity; $125k investment
06:20 – 3 team members
06:33 – Trying to split equity equally, but people came on at different stages
07:00 – If everyone’s going to provide equal value, try to keep it equal
07:30 – “I don’t want to co-found a company with someone who’s not picking up where I’m weak”
08:05 – Charge a monthly flat rate of $5-8.5k for services. Month-by-month opt-in model
08:38 – Doing tens of thousands in revenue per month
09:10 – Customers “in the low double digits”
09:30 – Creating a hiring solution that’s part-human, part-software
09:54 – Most acquisitions are coming through social credibility
10:20 – No spending on marketing at the moment
10:40 – Not a SaaS company - they’re not looking at churn
11:00 – MRR varies depending on when people are hiring
11:50 – “If we do a good job, we get rid of customers...but hopefully they come back”
12:25 – Troy’s trying to hack his way to the next checkpoint
12:50 – In a good month Resource makes $50k in revenue
13:00 – Operating profitably - margins are good
13:30 – “We don’t want to rely on venture capital early on”
13:50 – Connect with Troy on Twitter or through his blog
15:20 – Famous Five

3 Key Points:
Slow down to speed up. It can be worth putting your short-term goals on hold to go corporate for a while and learn from the masters
Be certain that your business can make a profit on its own terms. If you rely on venture capital early on, you can go a long way with a bad idea.
Choose your co-founders carefully. If they’re not going to bring serious value, they’re probably not who you want to start a company with.
Resources Mentioned:
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
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.

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

He Quit Google To Invent Smart Way to Recruit, Doing Around $50k/mo in Sales, EP 272: Troy Sultan

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders