LeadFuze CTO exited due to family strain and technical scaling limits
Justin McGill · EP 537: Raised $150k Then CTO Left, Now He's Cruising $30k MRR with LeadFuze CEO Justin McGill · Jan 12, 2017 · at 10:58
Justin McGill is the CEO of LeadFuze. He explains the circumstances behind the departure of his co-founder and CTO following a technical crisis at the startup.
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“So a couple of reasons, I think you know, certainly family issues we're a big part of that. You know, he was needing to be involved quite a bit on, on the product, obviously as a startup early stage, you're hustling. Right. And so when you have a wife and kids that, that maybe don't understand that because your previous 10 years, you weren't necessarily, you know, that involved in a business, like you had a contracting job in his case. And so, you know, this was a little different and it required a little more. So I think that's one thing, but then number two, you know, he had never gotten to a point with any of his little side projects that he had where there were demands, you know, like there were customers and it was growing and this was kind of beyond what his experience level was at quite frankly.”
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McGill: LeadFuze does not plan to raise another funding round
“We don't plan on doing another round, you know, like this is going to be just basically a, it's a one shot deal. You know, we kind of have the business structured where we're not going to need to raise more.”
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“So we're at about 20, just under 20% which is way too high. And I've got a whole story for that, but and then revenue churn is right about 20% again, way too high.”
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“So we, I bought him out essentially. So he's no longer, you know, he no longer has a stake.”
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“We just recently raised some money, like a small round, a 150,000. We may end up adding another a 100,000 or so, but we raised a 150,000. We've got some awesome investors like Rob Walling of drip, who I know you've talked about their product. They just recentl…”
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“We're not doing any paid advertising, right? So I guess to Calculate our CAC here. We're kind of looking at more our salaries to be honest. So between Damien and myself kind of on the sales and marketing side, what was like where we spend time? Like I'm obviou…”