630: Mention Helping 4000 Customers With Google Alerts on Steroids, All Paying Minimum $60/mo for $240k in MRR with CEO Matthieu Vaxelaire

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Matthieu Vaxelaire. He’s the CEO of Mention where he moves all Trello cards to the right and closes deals. He splits his time between Paris and New York City.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• What CEO do you follow? – Rand Fishkin
• Favorite online tool? — Hull
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— 6-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Do more things and read less as you learn much more by doing than reading”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:17 – Nathan introduces Matt to the show
• 01:37 – Mention is Google Alert on steroids
• 01:51 – Mention is a SaaS business
• 02:05 – Mention has different segments of customers
• • 02:08 – The SME customers pay an average of $65 monthly
  • 02:13 – The mid-market customers pay an average of $400 monthly
• 02:25 – Average customer pay per month
• 03:20 – Most of Mention’s customers don’t like sharing their information
• 03:40 – Ogilvy uses Mention to track the campaigns they’re building for their clients
• 04:17 – Mention is also an inferential tool
• 04:49 – Mention raised capital at an early stage
• • 05:03 – Mention raised a total of $500K
• 05:11 – There are 45 people on the team and 10 are in NY, the rest are in Paris
• 05:50 – Prior to Mention, Matt worked at eFounders which is a startup studio
• • 05:57 – Mention was one of the startups built by eFounders
• 06:20 – Mention has over 600K users and over 4K paying customers per month
• 06:42 – Mention’s free version
• 07:20 – Mention uses a number of features
• 07:53 – There’s no touch sales in the SME market
• • 08:01 – The mid-market is inside-sales driven
  • 08:15 – There are 2 groups of inside-sales teams: the inbound and outbound with 6 people in each group
• 08:50 – Average MRR
• 09:28 – Mention is more focused on gross MRR churn
• • 09:35 – SME gross churn is 2%
  • 10:43 – Mention is almost in a negative net churn
• 11:20 – Mention has an average of 10K signups per month
• 11:47 – Mention is currently spending $5-10K on paid advertising
• • 12:04 – Mention is exploring other advertising options like G2 Crowd
  • 12:20 – Mention’s first trial result with G2 Crowd isn’t that encouraging
• 12:44 – Mention uses a strong open-content strategy to drive people to their website
• 13:17 – CAC
• • 14:00 – Matt is willing to spend up to $1K to generate new mid-market customers
• 14:17 – 2017 goal
• • 14:58 – Mention is currently in the process of raising
  • 15:07 – An $800K MRR by the end of December 2017 is a good number
• 17:10 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• Sometimes, you got to spend to acquire those new customers.
• Paid advertising isn’t the only solution to drive traffic to your site.
• Get out there and start moving—you learn more by doing than by reading.

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
• Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• 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
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives