Gavin Wheeldon. With over 15 years of experience working in technology led or enabled businesses, Gavin has a deep understanding of the impact of technology on the bottom line of an organization. He sold his last business, Applied Language Solutions, a global language technology and service business, and has used some of the earnings to set up a new company, Purple WiFi.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Who Moved My Cheese
What CEO do you follow? – Jack Welch
Favorite online tool? — InsightSquared
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I’d rather read more of finance”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:24 – Nathan introduces Gavin to the show
02:29 – Gavin travels a lot and is frequently reliant on public WiFi—that’s where the idea for Purple WiFi came from
03:02 – Gavin sold his last company for over $60M
- 03:20 – His last company was in the translation and interpretation industry
- 03:23 – They used machine learning to translate languages with incredible accuracy
- 03:43 – Theirs is also a human editing in between so the translation is perfect
- 03:59 – Gavin was 36 when he sold it
- 04:02 – It was completely bootstrapped
04:44 – There’s no particular single owner of the space
- 04:54 – Fon does domestic hotspot and other traditional utility wifi
05:38 – Purple Wifi is the next generation of wifi
06:03 - Purple WiFi is SaaS business, charging annually depending on the number of wifi points
- 06:14 – For a single venue, the price is $13 a month
- 06:22 – Purple WiFi also caters to stadiums and airports
- 06:45 – An airport can average a hundred access points
07:10 - Purple WiFi currently has 17K installations
- 07:15 – It ranges from restaurants up to a whole city
- 07:53 – They now have around 80K access points
08:03 – Average MRR is close to a million
08:25 – Purple WiFi offers discount for bigger venues
09:00 – Sales cycle varies every hour
09:19 – A physical venue owner is usually clueless about what is happening in the venue
09:50 - Purple WiFi is channel-based and sells through partners
- 09:55 – Some of the partners are Telstra and Singtel and other national carriers
10:23 – Team size is over 100
- 10:30 – 45 are focused on sales and partnerships
10:46 – Telcos are usually built with partners
- 11:09 – They can build their own access points but it takes years and a huge investment
11:40 – Purple WiFi partners with half of the service providers in the USA
12:37 – Purple WiFi partners with Cisco and Ruckus for the access points
13:06 - Purple WiFi does post visit reviews which prompt the user to review the coffee shop or hotel
- 13:19 – There was around 500 increase in TripAdvisor reviews
- 13:21 – 600-700% increase in CRM generation
- 13:28 – The value of Purple Wifi can be seen from day 1
13:43 - Purple WiFi was launched in 2013
13:48 – First year revenue was $200K
13:59 – 2014 revenue was around $600K
14:13 - Purple WiFi consistently grows over 100% year over year
14:34 – 2017 target revenue
14:48 – Gross margin is 80%
- 14:59 – One of the challenges is the location and the huge number of data
15:35 - Purple WiFi is processing around 500K data from all of their access points in a day
15:50 – Purple WiFi has net negative churn and gross customer churn is 12% yearly
17:00 – LTV is around 10 years
- 17:10 – Most enterprise customers are signing 3-5 years with an upfront payment
17:33 - Purple WiFi has raised $13M
- 17:51 – The costs usually go to engineering and sales
- 18:07 - Purple WiFi spends on event sponsorship too
- 18:24 – They track the events prior to sponsorship
- 18:50 – Payback period is around 12 months
- 19:25 – Average CAC
19:39 - Purple WiFi is headquartered in Manchester, UK and US office is in Austin, Texas
20:26 - Purple WiFi is tremendously valuable for conferences
23:04 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Public wifi solutions are becoming more and more of a necessity especially for establishments and events.
Having your own wifi solution allows you to gather data more than you could otherwise.
Study your business before starting your business.

Resources Mentioned:

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
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
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

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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749: He's Making $9.6m Off Those Horrible Airport WiFi Connections