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Clarity

Liam Gooding

San Francisco, London, Barcelona

I'm the cofounder & CEO of Trakio, a customer analytics platform with a powerful mobile dashboard to connect your team to your customer data.

I've successfully raised multiple investments from insitituions/funds and individual angels in Europe and Silicon Valley. And we have paying customers! As CEO, I've been responsible for many areas in the company. I can help with practical data-driven approaches to Marketing (with a specialism in content marketing!), outbound sales, Customer Success (Onboarding, Retention, Experience), Recruiting, Strategy, raising investment and of course, analytics!

I also have an engineer background and have implemented Lean Startup methodologies in multiple teams. So I can help with challenges such as early customer development, product management, developer resource planning and recommend SaaS tools and workflow.

As a personal passion, I focus on data-driven customer acquisition ("growth hacking") and retention ("customer success management"). I wrote the book on applying Pirate Metrics ("Growth Pirate!") to startups and have also been consulting around applying advanced analytics in larger enterprises.

I'm comfortable working with callers who are pre-launch, early stage or later stage. I have a particular focus on B2B SaaS and thats where most of my recent experience and focus has been.

Other stuff I've done: I've raised angel and early venture funding. I've founded and sold a coworking space. I've founded and sold a digital agency. I've built 2 B2B SaaS startups. I also occasionally give lectures at local universities.

I travel between San Francisco, London or Barcelona. After a call request, I'll message to schedule a mutually convenient time if I'm in a distant timezone from you.

$2.50/min

14 Calls

22 Reviews

44 minutes
Avg. call

Growth Hacking Lean startup Customer Acquisition Start-ups Customer Development SaaS Lead Generation Early-stage Startups Customer Experience Predictive Analytics

Call me to talk about

SaaS B2B Growth Strategy

Growing a great SaaS B2B business requires an understanding of the full customer lifecycle. I wrote a book on the subject, and own a B2B SaaS platform that allows other B2B SaaS owners to manage that lifecycle! So it's an area I know quite a bit about.

SaaS Growth Hacking

I drove nearly 100k unique visitors to our B2B SaaS blog in our first year and built a targeted mailing list of over 5,000 customers. There was no team or major ad budget - just a very targeted strategy backed by data-driven experimentation. I've written a book on understanding the strategy behind successful growth hacks and can work through both the strategy and tactics with you.

Analytics, Predictive Analytics, Data Science

Do you realise how much hidden value is in your raw data? As the CEO of trakio, I've worked with hundreds of subscription-based companies, analysing billions of data points from millions of users. I can help you to apply the same predictive analytics process in your company no matter how large or small you are. I can help from the very early strategy and planning stages, through technical implementation, understanding insights and taking action.

Lean Startup

As a serial entrepreneur (and engineer) I've managed bootstrapped and seed funded startups with a strict Lean Startup approach. I can help you in keeping a disciplined customer development approach and how this fits into your agile development and product management.

Answers 13
Reviews 22

Answers

Liam Gooding answered

We are looking for a rewards strategy for our health mobile app, but must reward our users with something that will enhance health not worsen it!

I think my question would be have you looked back into the strategy of physical rewards for health motivation? Rather than recommend services offering gym discounts, health supplement discounts etc. I'd rather go back into the reasons why you want to offer rewards in the first place.

From most industry best practice and studies into motivation, if you make the process transactional (do good thing, get spa discount), you'll actually lower motivation in the long run and damage any possibility of turning the healthy activity into a habit.

Example 1: Studies where patients were paid money for adherence have repeatedly shown poor results, as patients begin to cheat the system and created something transactional.

Example 2: CrossFit started from day 1 with an idea of standardised measurement (i.e. quantified self) and competitive leaderboards (i.e. feedback loops). Even though there are no mechanisms to stop an athlete from lying about their own time, the organisation has created an entire culture and international business off of the idea of people competing with themselves and baselining against strangers around the world. Standardisation, feedback loops, and gradual difficulty progression are all key ingredients to how CrossFit achieve this.

Instead, I'd focus on how your rewards program can be intrinsically rewarding.

I wont say "gamification" for the sake of dropping a b-word but if you pick up a book called 'Drive' you'll get a good primer into the underlying psychology of how/why game/reward systems can improve a positive behaviour.

I've passively been around the health tech industry for the last few years so happy to follow up on a call, I also have a few contacts who might be helpful.

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Product Development

Product Design

Liam Gooding answered

Starting two businesses at once. Is it recommended for a new entrepreneur?

In my personal experience, whenever I've tried to run multiple businesses, at least one or all of them have failed (failed meaning either zero or very little revenue)

Looking at my friends (95% of which are tech entrepreneurs or lifestyle business owners) any of them who have tried multiple businesses at once, either one or all of them have failed.

There's usually a period where you think "Hey this is possible, it's working great!" and you see a bit of growth or a bit of traction, but it's only 2 years in that you look back and realised that you have 2 projects turning over £50k each, when you could have had a single project turning over £500k

Now looking at your current situation from what you've told us:

1) Starting a business with a cofounder who is as committed as you is an order of magnitude better than starting something on your own

2) As a non-technical entrepreneur, I would advise staying away from the onlne business until you have either a technical cofounder or at least £100k in your back pocket in disposable investment

3) Does the clothing business excite you? I'm thinking not, as when something really excites you, you shouldn't even be considering anything else. So maybe neither of these projects are right for you.

My advice: go and get a job working for the company you wish you had created. Find a company where the product, industry, culture, brand... everything is something you love and wish you had done yourself. Work there for however long it takes to find something that creates a burning passion inside of you, and provides you with the right network, connections, experiences (and maybe cofounders or investors) to get it started.

My biggest regret in my entrepreneurial career is that I didn't spend any time looking at how other entrepreneurs had done it. I just read about it and dove in, and spent many, many hungry years making all the same mistakes that everyone before me had already made!

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Start Ups

Entrepreneurship

Internet Entrepreneur

Liam Gooding answered

Ready to raise money from friends and family. What are the rules and possible pitfalls?

As a UK entrepreneur where this stuff has totally different (i.e. relaxed) rules, I can't comment on the specifics there.

However, as someone who has taken early 'angel' money from friends I can give this advice:

1) Keep it as separated from your personal relationship as possible. This means making repayments on time (if it's a loan) and doing realistic and fair equity deals.

2) Create a basic written agreement - you probably don't need to use professionals yet. Stick to the important details and keep a copy each. Any good lawyer can turn something written on the back of a napkin into a legally binding contract, so don't worry about that for now. Make an agreement and if the company becomes worth anything, you can spend some money to redraft that agreement if needed.

3) Make sure everyone is totally clear that as soon as the money is handed over, there's a 90% chance it's gone already. Don't make any promises to "personally repay every penny if it doesn't work out" because thats not how business works. Treat your friends/family with professional respect and trust that they fully understand the risks of investing or borrowing to startups.

4) Be transparant with them on progress, so any bad news doesn't arrive suddenly. In the 90% chance that it burns and you lose all of their money, you need to be able to repair your relationship afterwards and that will be a lot easier if they've been with you on the journey

I borrowed money from friends as loan capital on 2 occasions, and on both occasions was fortunate enough to have everything work out great and I repaid the money with a great return.

Happy to talk further over a call on handling this as an entrepreneur.

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Fundraising

angel investing

Start-ups

Liam Gooding answered

I've been offered a full-time role with a low salary at an early stage startup. I want to know the best way to propose equity. What is standard here?

Speaking very broadly, startups tend to offer equity to engineers at around 2-4x the rate of marketing hires.

So straight away, you're likely to get a pretty bad deal on equity.

Realistically as employee #5 and in a marketing role, you're probably not going to get a deal on equity that will mean anything significant unless the company exits BIG. Like, $100m+ big. And does so without a stupid amount of liquidation. Anything beyond C round and employee options are basically 0 (the founders wont be great either, if it's any consolation)

But anyways. It really boils down to the salary discount you're taking. You need to realise this is basically you investing personal cash into the business - so what is that investment worth?

If you have been offerred a job at $100k and a startup offer you $70k, they're very simply saying "Please take $30k out of your pocket and put it into our bank account as an investor. Oh and you need to do that for a few years, because your equity vests over the next 4 years".

I'm a tech entrepreneur who has an employee equity pool in his company, but I'm very cynical about the standard practice of giving out options and how much motivation they actually provide to early hires. I think ownership as an intrinsic motivator can be done in more effective ways than a tiny fragment of financial ownership. And there are companies out there you will provide you with a great salary (120%-140% market) AND give you a sense of ownership and shared success in the company.

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Startups

Early-stage Startups

Compensation

Liam Gooding answered

For Initial Users: Sell User License or make it into SaaS?

Always default to SaaS and only offer one-off licenses in exceptional circumstances.

Is your product for individuals, SMB's or larger enterprise?

I've spoken with many entrepreneurs who have sold products on a per-license and all of them are either in the process of transitioning to, or are already, selling their product under a new SaaS model.

The cloud infrastructures in place today make launching a SaaS product much, much easier for the average developer. The common term for these is "PaaS" or "Platform As A Service" and they vary from very 'generic & flexible' cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Digital Ocean, to more specialised services like Heroku (Ruby on Rails), MongoHQ (MongoDB databases), PagadoBox (PHP).

All of these services have some kind of free tier for getting a new app started and for development, and then have very granular pricing for slowly scaling the cost of your cloud hosting with the size of your offering.

Nearly all platforms offer redundancy once you're on a paid tier, meaning if their physical hardware has a failure, your app will automagically be moved to a new piece of phsyical hardware and thus you'll have minimal/zero downtime. As you scale up, you can make this even more sophisticated with the right sys admin team working on it for you.

If you're launching a pretty simple B2B SaaS app like a project management or invoicing app, then your hosting costs will be negligible compared to your scale & revenue (excluding employee cost to manage). If you're launching something that involves media (pictures, videos, MP3's) then even on cloud PaaS, your hosting costs will still be quite significant, and you should have a chat with someone to estimate your costs first.

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SaaS

Web Hosting

Hosted Solutions

Liam Gooding answered

Struggling 8yr Old Startup on the Edge.

Hi,

Firstly, bravo for having the courage to post such an honest question. Only a true entrepreneur would be able to dig deep to find the courage to be so honest, particularly when the perception (and expectations) of entrepreneurs is to always "Put on a positive face and say everything is going great!"

1) You had $2M in annual revenue at some point, so you did *something* right and found a measure of p/m fit. This means there is a great chance you can recover this. But it might mean ripping your product and whole business functions apart and rebuilding just the best bits and the parts most relevant for today. Prepare for potential layoffs and new hires, as the business may look very different.

2) While the patent-troll issue sucks, I'm assuming there have been no permanent damages to the product or market-shifts that have affected you. So it could even just be a cashflow-gap that needs to be plugged with a bit of debt-financing

3) I've yet to discover a company making sales that isn't attractive to at least 1 investor. Every investor has different portfolio goals, personal goals and personal interests, flaws, strengths and traits. While the terms may not be super favourable because of your exposed position, there will be investment options if you can repackage and re-position the company correctly

4) Emotionally, I strongly recommend you find a few really close entrepreneur connections you can rely on for emotional support. Founders have *very* few people we can be emotionally open with, and it's important you find some people now so that they can be a part of creating the solid, rock hard foundation that you will need for the journey in front of you.

5) Winding down companies is easy (technically). The emotional problems are the hardest. Be sure to have a personal plan B in place (house payments, family maintenance). To start you off, know that entrepreneurs who have taken a journey such as yourself will *always* be in high demand for bigger startups willing to pay fat salaries. Just be sure you have the personal cash to survive for a few months while you find that job (and get your personal expenses in order NOW in case that happens.)

6) I'd love to do a call with you to see if I can offer any perspective about the current business. Message me and I'd be happy to help out ("on the cheap")

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Start-ups

bootstrapping

Liam Gooding answered

If the goal is to be an entrepreneur, given the digital age we live in, what skills should sales professionals develop?

"Cold calling is dead"

Sure. But look deep inside any major B2B SaaS startup and you'll find a ratio of sales people to developers of about 2:1

So if these companies aren't cold calling, what are they doing?

Well - they are making calls. They're doing a LOT of outbound sales calls actually. The difference is, they aren't cold. They're warm, they were developed through relationship development and referrals.

C++ developers will never feel comfortable picking up the phone and making 10 high quality calls a day, which means the sales professional is as valuable in tech startups as ever.

Because we know that sales skills are critical to scale a tech startup, your personal development should focus on the skills required for the earlier stages of a startup.

Good marketing (copywriting being 90% of what you'll need to master), public speaking, project management (agile literacy), technical literacy.

Happy to chat further on a call

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Sales

Customer Acquisition

Growth Hacking

Liam Gooding answered

How much of my company should I be giving up? This is the biggest decision of my life. Please help!

Hey,

A few points (and as someone who has sold a digital agency, I have some experience here)

1) "This is the biggest decision of my life"...

No it isn't. Not even close. I mean no disrespect but, agencies are easy to start back up. You build a team, build a client base, maybe take investors, scale it, sell it. Sit on your hands for the non-compete period, then start another one. Don;t sweat this too much, you aren't facing a decision that you can't work your way out of in a year or two.

So my tip number one: relax!

2) This investor is taking you for a ride

Giving yourself a minority ownership in an early-stage company or startup is a very, very bad idea. You need to feel like you have a "big win" ahead of you. A CEO shouldn't own a minority stake in the company she or he founded until you're doing $Millions in revenue

3) This guy is bringing very little to the table

He has no background in your area. If he's bringin money, sure. On £30k run rate you aren't hugely investible but hey, a £20k injection of cash at 20% equity might work for you. But seriously, right now you have a very early stage business and it's too early to see how his flower shop expertise would help.

4) It's really, really early for you

Taking investments into agencies is usually a bad idea until you have some solid revenue. £30k is very admirable and you should be proud to be more successful than a LOT of small business owners. But honestly, just keep selling and hustling.

Hire SLOW and fire fast. Move your sales reps to a basic and give them quotas. Use contractors to scale out delivery without taking on as much risk.

It sounds like you have the beginnings of a great agency. but from the information you've provided and from remembering my very early days where I transition from freelancer to agency, an investor right now would be a bad move for you.

Happy to jump on a call to discuss my specific experiences and how I scaled out my team and client base and then moved everything to SWEET retainers so we could sell the biz.

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New Business Development

Investors

Start-ups

Liam Gooding answered

Where can I find programmers willing to join a growing mobile start up for equity only?

Are you also a developer?

If you aren't a developer, you will probably need to offer 50% as a minimum and actually you're talking about a cofounder here. i.e. as soon as you can pay yourself $1,000 /mo, you both take $1,000 a month.

This is quite normal - it's how most 2-3 person teams startup. And don't worry, even if you've been working on your idea for months and feel like you've created loads of value - it's nothing until it's been executed correctly into a working product.

If you've invested any cash of your own so far (into anything other than your own salary) then there's an argument to convert this into debt on the company books or potentially adjust the 50/50 equity share *slightly*. As a rule of thumb, ask yourself how much equity you'd have given to an investor for $100k investment, and then use that as a scale to determine how much additional equity you should gain for the cash you invested.

I'm not saying you are but... if you're one of those guys who thinks you can offer a mobile developer 5% equity to build your entire product for free then you're going to get a harsh reality check when you go out into the talent market. There are startups in London who will pay the first 1-3 iOS developers £55,000 and 3-6% each (vested over 4 years).

I've hired a lot of developers before and I successfully recruited my own 'technical cofounder' (even though we're both developers) so happy to share more personal experience over a call.

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Technical Hiring

Business Development

Mobile applications

Liam Gooding answered

I just received approval for a loan for my startup. I was approved for more than I need. Should I take more?

Honestly, bank loans are the cheapest capital you'll ever get in your startup and while the cashflow burden of paying them back is a bitch, the small % interest rate is far more favourable than the equity cost of an investor.

Also, having the loan repayments factored into your business plan will enforce good practices and targets. Planning to bootstrap is the best bet (i.e. making enough sales to pay back the loan, and pay salaries), as then you'll have the *option* of whether to raise any angel/venture capital rather than having it forced upon you.

In my first two startups, I launched the businesses entirely on commercial debt. In my 4th (and current) I've used a mixture of investment and loans. Happy to talk further about both scenarios.

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Marketing Strategy

Loans

SaaS Sales

Liam Gooding answered

Which free strategies can I use to target university students?

While working as a promoter at my University campus (quite a few years ago!), I can promise you that your best options are:

- A popular facebook account
- Campus reps (usually attractive female students)
- Society/club presidents

For this to work, you'll find it much easier to start somewhere hyperlocal where you can physically get face-to-face with people. Once you've established strategies and processes, you can start scaling out locally. However, the promotions team I worked with *still* physically visit each University campus around the UK and Europe at least once a year to keep the relationships going with their regional managers.

It's not coincidence that Facebook started at Harvard, and it's where the founders attended...

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Online Marketing

Online Advertising

Reviews

3rd call with Liam. He continually exceeds expectations. Highly recommend!

Regan Kirk Source: Clarity

I have had x3 calls with Liam - every call I walk away with pages of actionable notes. Without a doubt my calls with Liam have fast tracked my business growth

Regan Kirk Source: Clarity

Liam provided extremely helpful actionable advice - 1 week after the call and I am already seeing results. Highly recommend.

Regan Kirk Source: Clarity

Unreal! - Highly recommend taking a call with Liam. Definitely worth the money

Regan Kirk Source: Clarity

Amazing, i felt a bit like i was at the crossroads with infinite paths until this call with Liam, i now have a clear vision of what i need to do.

Having the benefit of someone's knowledge who has been in my shoes is invaluable and will make this call worth the money many times over. Thanks once again and look forward to the next eye opener!!

Paul Moran Source: Clarity

Liam is the Man! Totally clued in growth minded entrepreneur with a treasure trove of valuable insights from building his killer company, trak.io from the ground up to a world class SaaS platform.
Liam came very prepared for the call and over delivered on the value. Highest recommendation!

Sedarius Tekara Perrotta Source: Clarity

Wow, wow, wow & wow. My call with Liam was ridiculously valuable. He was very prepared for the call and gave me a clear roadmap to solve the specific problems I'd raised to him. Great guy, super knowledgeable and obviously committed to helping people.
Thanks mate. Can't wait for the next call!

Dave Eddy Source: Clarity

Liam was great to speak with. He provided us with three specific tactics we could implement to grow our user base. He even researched our product and metrics before the call. Highly recommended!

Mason Gentry Source: Clarity

Liam was very informative and thorough with what I needed help with. I have been having trouble coordinating my technical hires for the development of my website and Liam walked me through some things I need to implement to be able to create efficiency. He advised me on some hiring changes I could make to prepare for the launch of my project. I was very satisfied with the quality of the call! Thanks Liam!

George Wong Source: Clarity

Time VERY well spent. Liam's got a ton of knowledge on building businesses, valuation, exit strategies, etc. I was very impressed with the amount of preparation Liam put into our call. We got right to it and didn't have to waste any time on background / fact finding. I highly recommend jumping on a call with Liam and expect this won't be the last time I do.

Josh Turner Source: Clarity

Best advice I have ever received!
Liam is a very smart and inspirational person and he has a lot of experience despite his young age. He didn't just give me "advice" but an actionable plan to follow as he would do with his own business.
Look forward to talking with him again!

Efi Mavridou Source: Clarity

Member since July 2014