David Hauser: Serial Entrepreneur's Big Exit

In this episode, Dave interviews David Hauser, a life-long serial entrepreneur. He founded and grew a company called Grasshopper to $30M in sales together with other businesses. David started his serial entrepreneurship way back in highschool when he founded Return Path, an email performance management system. Listen as David walks us through his experiences building and selling his profitable businesses and the core, underlying values that helped them grow.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:33 – Introducing David Hauser 01:28 – David founded and grew Grasshopper to $30M in sales 01:31 – A big part of that $30M in sales was brilliant marketing 02:01 – After 6 years, David sold Grasshopper for a large sum of money 02:30 – He founded Chargify and secured Mark Cuban as an investor 02:35 – He also founded Return Path which was VC funded 02:49 – Other companies he founded were: PopSurvey, Deck Foundry, Temper, io, Package Fox, and National Entrepreneurs Day 03:52 – How David founded the National Entrepreneurs Day: 04:46 – David and his partner Seemac, questioned why there wasn’t any Entrepreneurs Day in the US 05:04 – They looked into what they could do and had Pres. Obama assign temporary days for 4 straight years 05:19 – They lobbied to get their cause to congress and the senate—but, it didn’t go through 05:46 – Grasshopper’s core purpose was to make entrepreneurs succeed so pushing the National Entrepreneurs Day was one way to do this 06:11 – It is also personal for both David and Seemac 06:26 – Dave mentions the video, Entrepreneurs Can Change the World 06:46 – The video went viral with 1.3M views 07:59 – David’s thought process: just do it! 09:15 – When David started Grasshopper, they charged $10/month for users to access their system online 09:40 – Dave shares about David Cummings who sold Pardot for a hundred million 10:01 – He has a blog that talks discusses medicine vs. vitamins 10:11 – Dave relates David Cummings’ blog to Grasshopper 10:56 – Grasshopper repackaged phone services and sold it to the right group of people 11:30 – Grasshopper’s marketing is all in-bound 12:15 – When Grasshopper started, they were buying traffic to get people to their website 12:50 – They were good at getting keywords 13:07 – They did a lot of paid advertising 14:34 – David discusses channel marketing 15:10 – Before Grasshopper, the name was Got V Mail 15:23 – When they decided to rebrand to Grasshopper, they came up with different ideas 15:50 – They thought of getting real grasshoppers and dipping them in chocolate 16:16 – Ideas were internally exchanged 16:25 – They decided to mail chocolate covered grasshoppers to people 17:04 – They used FedEx to send 5000 envelopes 17:52 – They got a phone call from the police or FBI saying they can’t just mail envelopes to different senators 18:13 – They explained and the envelopes were released 18:42 – They created a conversation about Grasshopper 19:03 – Everyone was directed to the video Dave mentioned 19:17 – The total cost of this marketing tactic was between $110-115K 19:23 – The case study is available at Grasshopper’s resource section 20:36 – How they built the 5000 names in their list 22:05 – They used an outsourced platform for discrete tasks 22:43 – They did pretty well and they only spent about $1000 for all the addresses 25:08 – Whether you are born an entrepreneur or not, there are areas you can learn 25:25 – You can train someone to become a business owner, but you cannot create an entrepreneur 26:06 – Return Path is an email performance management tool which David founded in highschool 26:46 – His friend came along with the concept and David made the prototype 27:03 – He was under 18, so his parents were required to sign allowing David to enter into this contract 27:42 – He was deeply involved in the process 28:35 – When David left for college, it was a small business—today, they’re doing probably about $100M/year 29:27 – Culture has been really important 30:01 – David put time into discussing real core values and purposes 30:24 – He challenged everyone who walked into the office to ask any employee what their core values and purposes are 30:52 – Core values were integrated into everything 31:52 – Even though David was the founder of Chargify, it was still different than Grasshopper 32:47 – “Culture is extremely important” 33:06 – The best case for a SaaS business is doubled by Grasshopper 33:55 – Culture is a combination of environment, the people, the values, and the process 36:07 – Dave and David mentions Start with Why by Simon Sinek 37:10 – David realized that his goal is to build and scale a business 37:54 – Connect with David Hauser at com or in Twitter 40:24 – David is happy to help others 40:49 – Dave closes the podcast

3 Key Points:

Think like you did when you were a kid – believe in the impossible. If you believe in something, do whatever it takes to promote that vision. Culture is the combination of environment, people, the values, and the process.

Resources Mentioned:

Entrepreneur's Organization – The EO Network Entrepreneurs Can Change the World – Grasshopper’s viral video Start with Why by Simon Sinek – Book mentioned by Dave in relation to culture