Jeff Epstein is the founder of Ambassador, a SaaS company that helps businesses track and optimise referrals to make their affiliates really work for them. Jeff manages a team of 43 people and made over $3.5 million in revenue in 2015. Listen in as he and Nathan break down Ambassador’s numbers and talk referrals, reaching negative churn, and not sweating the small stuff.

Famous 5
Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
What CEO do you follow? — Gary Vaynerchuk
What is your favorite online tool? — Slack
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Definitely no
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? —That it would be okay. I was really worried about things that didn’t matter.

Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:20 – Nathan’s introduction
01:45 – Welcoming Jeff to the show
02:05 – Raised just under $2.5 million in 2015 to grow their team
02:36 – Ambassador helps companies track and manage referrals
03:10 – Currently serving over 300 customers
03:21 – Per-user revenue averages $1500 per month
03:50 – Company started in 2009 and launched in 2010
04:10 – Jeff started an affiliate marketing company in college. He built his own software to support an affiliate idea he had - then realised the software was a better idea
04:50 – Revenue in the first year was almost nothing
07:00 – Funded real estate investments with the revenue from selling his first business
07:28 – Revenue in 2015 was $3.5 million
08:11 – Ambassador is a SaaS business
08:40 – Churn decreased as Ambassador moved up-market
09:16 – “We now require onboarding for every customer”
09:55 – Around 10% annual customer churn
10:40 - Measure both gross churn and net churn
12:15 - Net dollar churn is currently negative
13:00 - “Customer acquisition cost isn’t our biggest concern at the moment”
13:55 - “On our own referral programme we pay $525 per customers”
14:30 - Advertising in paid channels was around $25-50k in February 2016
15:33 - On average customers are paying $15-30k per year, and acquisitions cost $2-7k
16:15 - Most of the team are based in Detroit; some are in Colorado and some are remote
17:05 – Connect with Jeff on Twitter
19:20 – Famous Five

3 Key Points:
Everything will be okay. Don’t get worked up over small things.
High-value customers are often more committed. They’ve invested more in you and so churn is likely to be lower.
Don’t worry if revenues are low when you start out. All businesses start somewhere.
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

EP 300: This Law Student Quit to Build Referral Program Business Doing $2MM+ Per Year

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders