Apr 11, 2018 · 24m · top-founders
991 He's Built 400+ Chatbots Making $800k in The Process
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Mixergy founder Andrew Warner joins Nathan Latka to discuss how he generated $800,000 with Bot Academy by applying early email marketing playbooks, consulting models, and conversational copywriting to the emerging chatbot industry.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 40.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 2.9 Guest teaching 1.4 Guest disagreement 0.0 Nathan pushing back 0.4
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 9:31 Andrew deflects the notion of abandoning services prematurely
In an otherwise friendly conversation, Andrew mildly pushes back against the premise that consulting revenue distracts from building software by arguing strong consulting demand can self-fund product development.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 9:31 Nathan drills down on the operational trade-off between services and softwareNathan refuses to accept Andrew's general answer about pursuing revenue and specifically demands to know how he balances short-term cash flow with software development time.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 18:54 Andrew breaks down why Facebook Messenger outperforms traditional live chatAndrew educates Nathan and the audience with a concrete user example demonstrating how Facebook Messenger retains user sessions after a website tab is closed.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 22:54 Nathan cites accurate operational metrics for Zapier and SegmentNathan displays deep industry knowledge by citing specific customer counts, MRR figures, and episode references for leading SaaS API platforms.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introducing Andrew Warner and the Shift to Chatbots | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Nathan introduces Andrew Warner warmly, referencing their personal backstory, and asks why he is shifting his attention to chatbots. Andrew shares his historical experience with email marketing to illustrate why he is betting on messaging platforms. | |
| Bot Academy Business Model, Pricing, and Traction | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | Nathan asks detailed questions about Bot Academy's pricing, revenue, and historical traction, calculating estimated revenue metrics on the fly. Andrew explains how charging for consulting and training validates market demand and finances future software products. | |
| Timing the Transition from Agency Services to Software | 3 | 2 | 0 | 2 | Nathan presses Andrew on how he decides to sacrifice lucrative consulting cash flow to build software products. Andrew responds by explaining that acute customer pain points clearly signal when to transition into software development. | |
| Crafting Conversational Micro Commitments, Tagging, and Onboarding | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Nathan and Andrew compare their practical tactics for chatbot copywriting, micro-commitments, and subscriber onboarding. Andrew educates on the power of tagging user responses and mentions paying an agency $12,000 to design onboarding funnels. | |
| Sponsor Feature on ProsperWorks Automated CRM Platform | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | This segment consists entirely of a solo sponsor feature by Nathan promoting ProsperWorks CRM. | |
| Facebook Messenger Advantages Over Traditional Web Chat Tools | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Nathan asks how Facebook Messenger will compete with traditional web chat tools like Intercom. Andrew explains Facebook Messenger's structural retention advantage over traditional website pop-ups when visitors close their browser tabs. | |
| The Famous Five Rapid Fire Questions with Andrew Warner | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | During the Famous Five rapid fire round, Andrew praises Nathan's aggressive interviewing style, and Nathan demonstrates domain knowledge by referencing revenue figures for Zapier and Segment. | |
| Episode Conclusion and Reflections on Entrepreneurial Focus | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Nathan wraps up the episode by summarizing Andrew's career trajectory and thanking him for appearing on the show. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Latka: Andrew Warner started a $30M email marketing company
“He started a thirty million dollar company built on email marketing back when email marketing was just getting started.”
Latka: Andrew Warner has interviewed over 1,500 startup founders
“Many of you know Andrew from his company Mixergy and where he's interviewed over 1500 entrepreneurs and startup founders such as the founders of Airbnb, Twitch, Groupon, and LinkedIn.”
Warner: Chat marketing is today's shift from physical mail to email
“Email is now becoming outdated. We're all shifting to messaging, and I feel like the same opportunity that existed back when we shifted from paper mail to email is happening now in chat.”
Warner: Bot Academy charges $2,000 for courses or done-for-you agencies
“At this point, it's 2000 dollars for each option. So 2000 dollars, we teach you how to do it, we set you up and show you how to do it as a business, tell you how to charge for it, how to demo it, the whole thing. Or if you want us to build it, you pay 2000 dol…”
Warner: Bot Academy has graduated approximately 400 students to date
“I don't know the exact numbers, but it's somewhere around 400 people.”
Warner: Building a subscriber list via chat is easier than email
“You can build an email list now, but it's pretty hard as opposed to building a chat list. People who are going to say, yes,
Sign me up.
I want to hear from you via chat.
That's much easier at this point.”
Warner: Bot Academy has generated about $800k in revenue
“We're about 800,000 in revenue from right now when we're not sure even where the big money is going to come from.”
Warner: App analytics platform Kochava bootstrapped to over $10M ARR
“This is a 10 plus million dollar a year software company, all bootstrapped, giving analytics to app makers.”
Warner: Start as a consultant to get paid for finding software ideas
“If you do it as a consultant, you start to see the problems that people have firsthand, and then who knows, maybe you have just a big consulting company, or maybe you augment it with a little bit of software, and then you have recurring revenue from software. …”
Warner: Customers will prepay for unbuilt software if the pain is severe
“I think when you find a problem that people have that's a big enough problem, they'll pay you even before the software is built, even before the solution is built, and I think that that's where we're going to see it.”
Warner: Building and maintaining chatbots is a viable standalone business
“Just doing, creating bots and maintaining it for people and showing them a real return on investment, that's a strong enough business. I've seen companies really thrive that way.”
Warner: I actually invested in chatbot platform ManyChat
“I use ManyChat. I love them. I actually invested in the company.”
Warner: Emulate short text messages with friends for chatbot copy
“Don't go long. Keep it short. If you really want to get a sense of how long you should make it or how it should feel, look at your text messages with some of your favorite people.”
Warner: Elaborate chatbot flowcharts are unmaintainable and impossible to delegate
“People have these, like, elaborate flow charts that are too confusing for them, and they'll never maintain it. Or they'll, worse, they'll be the only ones to maintain it, and then they can't hire people to help build on it. You're right. Keep it really short.”
Warner: I paid $12,000 to structure Mixergy's email onboarding process
“I hired a company, I paid them 12,000 dollars to help me structure my onboarding process for Mixergy, and it made a huge difference.”
Warner: Message chat subscribers daily for 2-3 days, then switch to weekly
“Largely because people find it overwhelming to get too many messages via chat from a company, and so if you're coming in daily, your unsubscribes increase, I've been close to the companies that make software that manages this, they're finding the same things t…”
Warner: Facebook Messenger website embeds will have an advantage over Intercom
“Here's why I think that's better than Intercom, and I love Intercom, but I think that they're gonna have an advantage over Intercom because of this.”