The Top - EP 549: Propeller CEO on Why He'll Win CRM Space After Exit to Samsung with Eric Bouck — He'll Win CRM Space After Exit to Samsung

In Episode #549, I interview Eric Bouck. He’s the CEO and founder of Propeller, a CRM that lets you sell from gmail. Prior to Propeller, Eric was the co-founder and CEO of Zigzag Software which was eventually sold to Samsung. He also spent some time working as a director for Samsung. He also worked as a Group Product Manager at Dell EMC and spent 4 years with this company. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Inspired What CEO do you follow? – N/A Favorite online tool? — Webflow Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Marry the right person” Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:26 – I introduce Eric to the show 02:05 – Propeller is the CRM that creates daily tools that salespeople can use to set their meetings, do their email and phone calls, share presentations and documents, and research etc. 02:31 – Propeller is a SaaS business and they have monthly and annual subscriptions 02:50 – Average revenue per customer monthly 02:54 –$50 per month 03:15 – How does Propeller win on a very crowded market? 03:24 – There’s a lot of companies who try to make their own niche 03:42 – Propeller has a unique mix of deep integration with Gmail combined with the ability to do multiple step campaign 04:45 – Propeller is an all-in-one CRM – you won’t be needing another product 05:10 – Propeller was launched September 1st 05:15 – Growth is 21% month over month 05:22 – A little over 50 customers at the moment 05:26 – Propeller is bootstrapped 05:39 – Eric got decent money from the exit 06:23 – No revenue churn at the moment 07:00 – Team size, they are also remote 07:36 – Eric is not open to acquisition talks at the moment 08:00 – The leading companies in the CRM space are Salesforce and Dynamics 08:35 – Pipeline and Hubspot are getting positive feedback as well 09:00 – Eric shares his opinion of Outreach 09:25 – Eric mentions Propeller having an AI 09:55 – The core differentiator of the products 10:04 – An example of how Propeller makes getting your emails done easier 11:00 – Nathan’s acuity to batch schedule 11:20 – CRM pricing 11:42 – Deliver the VALUE 12:00 – Eric shares their vision as a company to make salespeople more effective 12:12 – Eric shares how he got their first 5 customers 12:46 – Eric has also spent for paid marketing 12:58 – LTV is $1500 13:30 – CAC LTV ratio 15:10 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: If your market is crowded, you have to work HARDER to differentiate yourself. The value is not in losing sales or making more sales—the value is found in whether or not you provide an effective product. Don’t live with regrets—it’s gotten you to where you are now.