Shashank Murali. He’s a BITS Pilani alumni. He’s a co-founder and CEO at Tapchief – a platform to seek advice from industry professionals. Previously, he built and sold Edvice, an on-demand tutoring app, to HashLearn. He had a product for Hashlearn before he decided to set on a path to democratize knowledge sharing with TapChief. Apart from startups and tech, Shashank enjoys cricket, psychedelic music, and swears by Pink Floyd.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Everything Store
• What CEO do you follow? –  Vijay Shekhar Sharma
• Favorite online tool? –  Trello
• Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “To persist more”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:25 – Nathan introduces Shashank to the show
• 02:11 – Shashank shares what TapChief is
• • 02:25 – TapChief charges from the expert’s pay
• 02:36 – TapChief is similar to Clarity.fm
• • 02:44 – Shashank shares how TapChief is different from Clarity
  • 03:14 – TapChief has a various of offerings
• 03:25 – TapChief is a marketplace
• 03:39 – The 2 sides of TapChief:
• • 03:45 – Experts ask for a consultation charge and TapChief gets a fee from that
  • 04:30 – Experts monetize their knowledge using TapChief
• 05:33 – Average order size
• 06:14 – Shashank believes that their market would still grow
• 06:40 – TapChief was launched in a B2C play
• 07:07 – TapChief takes 20% from the experts’ charges
• 07:21 – Average number of experts in the platform
• 07:31 – TapChief was launched in February 2016
• 07:48 – Average number of students who have purchased from TapChief
• 08:28 – TapChief is giving the experts options to present themselves better
• 09:05 – 1000 out of 5000 experts in TapChief had conversations already
• 09:31 – Shashank shares how they measure their growth
• • 09:58 – What Shashank primarily measures
• 10:16 – TapChief has raised $150K with a team of 10
• 10:40 – The number of hours TapChief has crossed
• • 10:50 – Average monthly minutes of interactions
• 11:25 – Shashank shares how they leverage the number of students
• 12:25 – Revenue goal for 2017
• • 12:42 – Shashank’s focus is on the number of minutes of interactions
• 13:02 – Shashank’s plan is to grow the number of minutes
• 14:10 – Shashank is open to B2B collaborations
• • 14:45 – Shashank explains why a business would pay for collaboration
• 15:18 – Where the majority of the revenue is coming from
• 15:46 – 2016 total revenue
• 16:35 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

• We are experts in our own field and there are platforms where you can monetize your knowledge.
• You don’t always have to focus on the revenue—there are metrics that should be considered.
• Be more persistent—especially in the things that are most important to you.

Resources Mentioned:

• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel
• Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal
• Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible.
• Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books.
• The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket
• Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives