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Clarity

Mykel Nahorniak

Washington, DC

CEO at Localist; angel at K Street Capital; CAT 3 bike racer; passionate about all things Web and business.

Raised capital, set the vision, culture and strategy of the company, hired a team, scaled from an incubator into a healthy growth-stage business.

$6.67/min

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Business Development Strategy Marketing Strategy Product Development Company Culture Information Architecture Management Strategic Partnerships Sales Process

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Raising Capital

I've successfully raised capital, bought out investors, and have sat in too many VC pitch meetings to count. I know what angels and VCs are looking for, and how a pitch needs to change depending on who you're speaking with. Learn the subtleties of investor pitching and what should (and shouldn't) be said.

Identifying True KPIs for Your SaaS Business

SaaS companies have no shortage of data, but what data is a true measuring stick for your company? I can walk you through the metrics that matter for your business, so you continue to focus on the things that matter. A solid set of KPIs is an excellent early warning sign for an impending challenge, or explosive growth.

Bootstrapping Organic Growth

I’ve organically grown a SaaS business from its first dollar to 8-figures in ARR. It’s not for everyone, but it is possible. Happy to share my experience.

Answers 11
Reviews 2

Answers

Mykel Nahorniak answered

What type of person fits becoming a mentor for sales leadership to help develop my skills in sales management and become a sales director?

A couple things: sales leadership and company culture are very closely linked. The sales management style at an AT&T kiosk is much different than the sales management style at an enterprise software startup. Try to find someone not necessarily in the same space, but in a company that closely aligns with your company's culture.

Next, find someone with a proven track record of leadership. There's a big difference between a manager and a leader. You don't need to hire them, just take them out for coffee (or, hell, find them on Clarity :)). But they have to be a good leader. See if you can talk to their direct reports, or surreptitiously ask your friends/network if they have a manager they look up to.

Ultimately, management is about people, so the industry really doesn't matter. A good sales leader can inspire the team without having to know the ins and outs of the industry or product.

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Business Development

Sales Management

Mykel Nahorniak answered

Comp package consultant to advise startup exec candidates?

That's a great question. I hope I understood it properly.

In terms of the comp landscape, tools like glassdoor.com are great for finding market value salaries for specific titles/locations. No need to hire someone there.

For the rest, it seems like the expertise would be spread between an HR exec, or a CEO. I'd recommend reaching out to retired CEOs who are in mentorship programs at local incubators. They've been there and done that, so they know what goes into negotiating and retaining folks. They're used to walking through these types of challenges with startups.

If this is a one-time thing, I'd be happy to hop on a call to talk about these challenges as well.

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Legal Advice

Talent Acquisition

Mykel Nahorniak answered

How do I sell and win over a big company to partner/fund me to create their (cooperate) accelerator?

Need way more information than this.

For starters, you need to know the following:
What are their reasons for wanting to create an incubator?
What are their needs?
Can you meet those needs?
When are they planning to make a decision?
Who would be making the decision?
Are they committed to starting an incubator, or evaluating if they should at all?
What does the decision process look like?
Can they afford you?
What are potential roadblocks for you specifically?

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Incubators

Accelerator

Raising Venture Capital

Mykel Nahorniak answered

What is the optimum selling strategy of making a big ticket sale of X product/service (>$500,000) to a large enterprise?

1) Establishing yourself as a consultant, doing a consultative selling approach.
2) Figuring out who the _strategic_ person is. That's who you need to talk to. With enterprise businesses that size, purchasing decisions are made for long-term strategic benefit.
3) "Custom" is the key word. Don't talk about what you've done for others, talk about what you can do for them. Again reinforcing #1, ask lots of questions that tease out their unique goals and position your product around those goals.

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Business Strategy

Business Development

B2B Marketing Strategy

Mykel Nahorniak answered

How to consolidate email accounts between different sales staff?

I'm assuming you use something like Google Apps to handle your mail. If so, you can set up a "Group" called something like sales@company.com. You can then add each rep's individual email as a member of that group.

Any contact forms, lead generation forms, or materials should point to that email address. Any inquiries you get will then go to all members of the group, and you can manage who is responsible for which inquiry separately.

As an alternative, if you have a "Sales Manager" type role in place, just have sales@company.com go to you, and forward qualified leads to each rep in a round-robin. It takes more manual work, but would allow for an equitable lead spread.

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SaaS - Enterprise & SMB B2B

Small Business Development

Sales Process

Mykel Nahorniak answered

How did WhatsApp go from a valuation of $1.5 billion in Feb 2013 to $19 billion in Feb 2014?

In short, someone was willing to pay $16bn, therefore it's worth $16bn.

Trying to tie intrinsic value to private companies is tough, and doesn't follow a logical path. If you look at Facebook's angle, it becomes pretty clear:

When you have 1 billion users, but still want to grow, you have to pay for it. FB looked at the WhatsApp acquisition purely from a user acquisition perspective, they paid $45 per user, which is a justifiable fee on their end. What makes it crazy is there were a lot of users involved. Because Facebook has become a mobile app company, and WhatsApp adds to the company portfolio, it makes long-term sense.

Additionally, much of WhatsApps user base was international, which is a huge untapped chunk of the world for Facebook. Acquiring WhatsApp allowed FB to make a big international splash in no time.

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Entrepreneurship

Valuation

Venture Financing

Mykel Nahorniak answered

Can I get a lot of traffic to my website by posting articles everyday?

_Can_ you? Sure, but it's probably not the most effective way. What you're describing is "content marketing," and it's usually very good at improving the middle and bottom of the funnel. Meaning, when someone already knows about your site, your content marketing can help convert them to a trialer, or customer.

If you care about increasing conversions, absolutely do content marketing.

If you care more just about raw traffic numbers, you'd be better off doing something like search engine marketing (SEM), PR, and general marketing. Each of those drive the top of the funnel, and not much else.

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Blogging

Adsense

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Mykel Nahorniak answered

What is a good process and timeframe for rolling our your beta with a 100 testflight user group?

More information needed, I think. What goals do you want to accomplish with this beta? In terms of process and timeframe for actually _rolling out_ the beta, I don't think there's anything special that needs to be done.

When it comes to gathering feedback from those user segments, however, it would make sense to target them.

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iOS Development

Mobile Technology

Business Process

Mykel Nahorniak answered

How do you sell prospective student leads (email address, phone number, etc.) to online universities?

1) Identify schools that have admission rates as close to 100% as possible (most schools are over 100%, not sure if ANY are below 100%, so like below 110% admission is very low).

2) Identify schools that have low student retention rates.

3) Look for folks in the Admissions department.

The selling process is like any other. Identify compelling cases for why they'd want/need your list. "Having trouble finding students? We can help"

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Lead Generation

Adult Education

Higher Education

Mykel Nahorniak answered

What questions are generally asked by Corporate Accounting Firms at first meeting?

Good question.

Not many questions need to be asked when it comes to accounting. Accountants really need two things: access to your accounting software for the general ledger, and access to copies of your bank statements.

They can figure out almost everything they need to with those two pieces of information.

In terms of keeping things proprietary, there's not much we withhold. They obviously need to know all the numbers to be able to work with you, and it can be helpful to keep them apprised of strategic plans, so they can advise on cash flow if they know it may be tight in the future.

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Corporate Development

CEOs

Business Development

Mykel Nahorniak answered

How to foster the culture of your marketplace community in a web app?

Great question.

There's no magic bullet, but here are some bullet points for what has helped us over the years:

1) Be authentic to your product and your company. Share, and repeat that authentic voice wherever you can.

2) Identify patterns in your "high usage" members and encourage all members to do the same.

3) Don't bend to every request of the customer; be confident in what you're delivering, establishing yourself as a thought leader.

4) Try to drive any and all communication with your members through the channels you're targeting. For example, if someone emails you a support question, re-paste it in your community (along with your response) and respond to the requester individually telling them their answer is at the URL.

5) Communicate transparently in terms of what your intentions are with the marketplace and what you're doing to improve it.

It's tough without knowing more about your specific market place. Happy to chat to get more in-depth.

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Web Applications

Company Culture

Online Marketplace

Reviews

Myke was undeniably one of the best CEO's that I've had the privilege to work for, not because of how smart, passionate, or talented he is, but because he makes himself 100% available to his employees at all times and genuinely cares about everyone's well-being. He constantly challenged each of us in the company to wear different hats and sought feedback in every facet of the Localist business - from new tech specs or design features on Localist itself to his own management style within the office. Indeed, I can't begin to express how much personal growth I have achieved in just the short time spent at Localist but I know deep down that Myke is largely responsible for all of it. My decision to leave Localist for personal reasons was a tough one to make, but I know that while I've lost a CEO, I've gained a lifelong friend and business colleague.

Tom Nelson Source: LinkedIn

Localist is very lucky to have Mykel for his talents and varied abilities. His eye for design is great, as well as his sense for building relationships to build the business. Mykel stays in the thick of things and relentlessly moves the business forward. I would start a business with Mykel any time.

Andrew Hayward Source: LinkedIn

Member since May 2012