Applying AI to Lead Generation: Rev CEO Jonathan Spier (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What year did you move back to B2B tech?

Jonathan Spier: 2020. In fact, it was the very beginning of 2020. Right around that time, COVID hit. I spent most of that year being a stay-at-home dad and a homeschool teacher which, it turns out, I’m not good at.

Sramana Mitra: How old are your kids?

Jonathan Spier: Just one. He’s 13. It was good fun. At the end of that year, I was ready to go back to B2B. That’s how I met my first company.

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573rd Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting NOW: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 573rd FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, April 28, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

568th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Abinash Saikia, EnCloudEn (Part 4)

Abinash Saikia: I had learned a lot of stuff. There are three things you could do. LinkedIn is one. Second is, if you have a connection, that is even better. What also works are cold emails. It has worked in my case. If you have the right message to the right person in the company, you get noticed. The hit rate is not very high. At the same time, if you have the right message, email also works.

Sramana Mitra: LinkedIn is a very good tool to research who are the right people you need to get connected to. The warmer the introduction you can get, the better. Cold email and cold LinkedIn work, but if you can work your network, that is always a desirable way. The point that you are making is that cold contact also works. If you have something relevant, people are willing to talk to you. There is a bit of a playbook.

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573rd Roundtable for Entrepreneurs Starting in 30 Minutes: Live Tweeting by @1Mby1M

Today’s 573rd FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable for Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, April 28, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. CLICK HERE to join. PASSWORD: startup  All are welcome!

IPOs 2021: Analysis of Zeta Global’s Acquisitions

According to recent research, the media owners’ advertising global revenues grew by 22% in 2021 to reach a record $710 billion and is expected to grow by another 12% this year. Digital advertising sales that include search, social, video, banners, and digital audio increased by 31% to reach $442 billion. Zeta Global (NYSE:ZETA) is a leading player in the advertising market that is continuing to expand its market share through acquisitions.

Applying AI to Lead Generation: Rev CEO Jonathan Spier (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did you get millions of bookings prior to having a product?

Jonathan Spier: A big portion of that was because of spending time upfront to identify a vision that the right people care about and then connecting with those right people.

Sramana Mitra: Where did that vision come from?

Jonathan Spier: My co-founder was our original visionary. It was the team overall. We had a great team. It was a joint vision between us and customers.

Best of Bootstrapping: Bootstrapped Unicorns

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

While it doesn’t happen that often, Bootstrapped Unicorns do exist.

My 2014 Entrepreneur Journeys book, Billion Dollar Unicorns, has a whole section on this topic. You can read an excerpt on my blog titled Bootstrapped Unicorns. In this piece, I discuss three companies, Zoho, eClinicalWorks, and Veeam, that have bootstrapped to about a billion dollars in revenues.

Revenues NOT valuation.

That puts their valuations in the five to ten billion range or beyond. So they are Unicorns (billion dollar valuation) many times over.

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568th 1Mby1M Entrepreneurship Podcast with Abinash Saikia, EnCloudEn (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about the acquisition itself. At what point did you start speaking with the acquirer? I introduced you to a whole bunch of people as well. We were working on getting you in front of people. Discuss when did you start this process and how you put one foot after the other.

Abinash Saikia: At our peak, we were close to a million dollars in revenue. Towards the end of the year, the pandemic hit and we were not able to close the deals, but we were in that range. When the pandemic hit, it was a very uncertain time. We knew that we had some backup in terms of funding but not a whole lot. We know that we’re going through a phase where sales would drop significantly.