[SaaS Series] From Rejected Intern To Acquiring the Company With Tomas Milar

·44 min·4 clips

Tom Millar applied for an internship at Ink Paradise, got rejected, and later bought the company.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz hosts Tom Millar on the Inspired Insider Podcast as part of a SaaS series. Tom is the founder and CEO of Eqvista, a global equity management and real-time valuation platform. He starts by recounting his early venture, Startupper, an incorporation service in Hong Kong launched in 2011 without outside funding, which generated high margins and significant savings. A key anecdote involves Tom applying for an internship at Ink Paradise, getting rejected, and later acquiring the company, which he describes as 'closing the circle.' He explains that Ink Paradise had a sophisticated platform for managing equity via PDFs, inspiring his work. Tom then details the founding of Eqvista with a mission to make stock issuance simple and fast, emphasizing its self-service SaaS model. He highlights Eqvista's pricing advantage, charging $2 per shareholder compared to competitors' $25,000-$30,000 for A-round companies, and notes it's 80% less expensive. The discussion shifts to customer service, where Tom stresses answering emails and calls immediately, and adding a phone number to websites to increase trust. He talks about Eqvista's freemium model for early-stage companies, despite pushback from his team and investors. Tom explains Eqvista's role as a 'pricing infrastructure for private markets,' offering real-time valuations instead of static 409A reports based on outdated financial data. He describes it as a 'ticker price for private companies,' using a $300 billion dataset, public comps, and dynamic models to value diverse industries like AI, space shuttles, and nuclear labs. Use cases include equity management, 409A valuations, and serving VC portfolios for real-time insights. Tom mentions Eqvista is ranked number one on G2 and Clutch for equity management software. He also briefly discusses Checkly, a related company for banking services. The episode concludes with Tom sharing mentors like Vlad of mBank, emphasizing happiness and strategic thinking in entrepreneurship.

As heard by us

A practical freemium discussion that links product limits to when companies choose to pay.

Dr. Jeremy Weiss keeps the episode focused on the freemium question, and Tom Millar answers from a software perspective that lets early-stage companies begin free, stay free for a while, and then pay once the limits start to matter.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get a plainspoken look at freemium, premium features, and how software companies keep customers moving.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from INspired INsider Podcast