Maria Seidman. She is the CEO and co-founder of Yapp, the top platform for event applications. Prior to Yapp, she was the GM for mobile and VP for Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. She has her MBA from Stanford and her BA from Yale and resides in New York City.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – How
What CEO do you follow? – Stewart Butterfield
Favorite online tool? — FullStory and Slack
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Take more risks”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:41 – Nathan introduces Maria to the show
02:29 – Yapp already has 85K apps published on their platform since they started
02:28 – Yapp was founded in 2011 and launched in 2012
02:56 – Maria left Warner Bros in 2010, then she met her co-founder for Yapp and they started in 2011
03:40 – Yapp’s market is professional events or the “mice industry”
03:54 – Yapp provides event technology for organizers who are in corporations or associations
- 04:25 – Yapp isn’t for casual events
04:56 – Yapp is a SaaS business and charges monthly fees
05:17 – Nathan shares how his former business, Heyo, was seasonal and the churn was difficult to manage
05:40 – Maria shares how Yapp attracts customers because of its affordability and its ability to adapt to different types of events
- 06:10 – Yapp has an internal communications tool
06:44 – Most customers are having multiple events per year
07:00 – Yapp’s pricing starts at $400 up to their volume pricing which is annual
07:32 – Small organizations tend to avail of Yapp more
08:34 – Team size is 5, all remote
- 08:48 – 3 are engineers, 1 in marketing and Maria is in charge of other tasks
09:12 – Yapp started with a small debt round for capital, but was bootstrapped after the growth
10:19 – The investors were supportive of Yapp
10:45 – Maria aims for Yapp to be a group of tools targeting marketing and events
12:14 – Yapp is in a competitive market and can’t share their numbers
12:42 – Yapp is focused on their ARPU and is going deeper on the enterprise
13:16 – Maria shares the weirdest thing she did to get customers was sneak into tradeshows
15:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

The seasonality of the business affects churn drastically so having a second revenue stream is a must.
Smaller groups are having more events than corporations are having within the frame of a year.
Applications that are versatile get more users, especially from the business market.

Resources Mentioned:

804: SaaS: Yapp Passes 80,000 Events Powered

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

804: SaaS: Yapp Passes 80,000 Events Powered