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Dan Chapman – Former VP GTM at Full Story & Bento
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, host Julian Castelli interviews Dan Chapman, a go-to-market advisor and fractional Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) specializing in early-stage B2B SaaS companies. Dan shares his journey from a technical founder to a sales expert, emphasizing the importance of the “selling to learn” phase. He discusses key concepts such as product-market fit, the transition from founder-led sales, and the development of effective sales playbooks. The conversation provides valuable insights for tech founders on refining sales processes and achieving scalable growth.
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Timestamps
Introduction to the Podcast (00:00:02)
Julian Castelli welcomes listeners to the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, discussing its purpose and format.
Guest Introduction (00:01:20)
Julian introduces Dan Chapman, a go-to-market advisor specializing in early-stage B2B SaaS companies.
Dan’s Background and Journey (00:02:57)
Dan shares his unique path from technical founder to go-to-market expert, highlighting lessons learned from mistakes.
Military Experience’s Impact (00:04:03)
Dan discusses how his military background shaped his understanding of leadership and organizational dynamics.
Transition to Consulting (00:05:03)
After working at McKinsey and Google, Dan explains his decision to pursue advisory roles with startups.
Google’s Role in Startups (00:06:30)
Dan describes his experience at Google, helping acquired startups leverage distribution advantages for growth.
Selling to Learn vs. Selling to Scale (00:08:27)
Dan distinguishes between the two stages, emphasizing the importance of refining messaging before scaling.
Defining Product-Market Fit (00:09:37)
Dan elaborates on product-market fit, highlighting the need for traction, consistency, and momentum in sales.
Documenting the Learning Process (00:11:15)
Dan stresses the importance of founders documenting their sales processes to optimize learning and strategy.
Transitioning from Founder to Non-Founder Sales (00:13:05)
Dan discusses the challenges founders face when transitioning sales responsibilities to new team members.
Consistency in Sales (00:14:13)
Dan emphasizes the need for consistency in customer engagement and product usage during the selling phase.
Scaling Beyond the Founder (00:16:48)
Dan outlines strategies for founders to effectively scale sales beyond their personal efforts.
Sales Playbook Development (00:19:06)
Discusses the importance of having a structured sales playbook for effective training and onboarding of new salespeople.
Training New Salespeople (00:19:18)
Highlights the challenges faced when new salespeople lack proper training and understanding of the sales cycle.
Sales Process and Playbooks (00:20:23)
Explains the different types of sales processes and the necessity for tailored playbooks for transactional and enterprise sales.
Hiring a Sales Leader (00:22:29)
Details the ideal timing for hiring a sales leader based on company traction and the readiness of the sales team.
Resources for Sales Skills (00:25:25)
Recommends valuable books and resources for improving sales skills and understanding sales strategies.
Speaker 2 00:00:29 Hello, this is Julian Castelli. I’m the host of the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast, where each week I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders in the tech industry. past guests have included CEOs and CXOs of great companies like Work Front, CG healthcare, Radical Systems, in Moment, Vox, Pop me, the San Francisco 40 Niners, and many more. this episode is brought to you by Growth Elevated. Growth elevated is a community of tech CEOs and founders and CXOs who are committed to working together to share best practices and learnings in an effort to become better leaders. We do this through educational events and programs like this podcast, and we also have an annual summit in beautiful Park City, Utah. So if you like skiing and you like talking tech, you like talking growth.
Speaker 2 00:01:20 check us out at Growth elevated.com. Today I am excited to have a conversation with Dan Chapman. Dan is a go to market advisor and fractional CRO, and he focuses on very early stage B2B SaaS companies. He focuses on founder led sales and that whole topic of how do you go from founder sales to scaling sales? Dan learned to sell as an executive at Google, and then he put those skills to work at Bento Box and Click dimensions. Today, Dan helps technical founders from selling their first customers to hiring the team and setting the stage for scale. His unique background across multiple go to market roles, and a hands on approach helps founders navigate the critical inflection points that often derail startups in early days. Please welcome Dan. Hey.
Speaker 3 00:02:11 Thanks, Julie. Glad to be here.
Speaker 2 00:02:13 Yeah. Glad, glad, glad to, have you here today, Dan. You know, the the topic that, you really focus on is, is, is really critical, right? Because so many people, the innovation economy is fantastic.
Speaker 2 00:02:27 We have people coming in from all kinds of areas. They come from a domain problem that they see, they want to solve. Some come from technology and then they’re faced with this challenge of sales. Right. And so having someone like you that can help move from founder lead sales to scale is critical. And I’m looking forward to talking about that. Before we do, though, give me tell us a little bit about your your background. How did you get to become an expert on early stage tech sales, and how did your background lead you to choose this as as your passion?
Speaker 3 00:02:57 Yeah, well, I’d say, my background is a little different than a lot of other folks here. in this type of role, doing this type of work. And that actually started out as a technical founder myself, as a software developer, started a small dev shop and kind of learned the hard way, how to sell by making pretty much every mistake in the book. I didn’t so much cut my teeth learning to sell as like, knock my own teeth out, running into the wall over and over again.
Speaker 3 00:03:25 and so as I kind of matured in my career and shifted my focus more towards go to market leadership roles with later stage and growth stage tech companies, I really came to appreciate just how hard it is as a founder, especially if you’re coming from a technical background, to really be successful in those early days of getting your go to market launched. And so what I wanted to do is make that process easier for other founders and kind of give back in that way.
Speaker 2 00:03:51 That’s fantastic. And so you started out with some software. You also have some experience in leadership and strategy with both the military and McKinsey. Tell us a little bit about how that and how that shaped your journey.
Speaker 3 00:04:03 Yeah. So I actually started out in software development, and then I went to undergrad and to pay for undergrad I did ROTC, so I spent five years, almost five years as an infantry officer in the US Army, including some time overseas. And, you know, couldn’t imagine two more different chapter one and chapter two kind of stages of a career, but really great experience, really formative for me, helped me understand the messier human side of organizations and just how important it is to really have a mission and drive clear intent even in, you know, high stress, rapidly changing environments.
Speaker 3 00:04:45 And I think some of that experience is actually why I gravitate towards earlier stage and what can often be, you know, the messy and chaotic world of startups.
Speaker 2 00:04:55 I got it. And then. So then after that, you you you went to McKinsey for a little while, and then you worked at Google as well.
Speaker 3 00:05:03 That’s right. Yeah. So, you know, coming out of the military, you know, wanted to explore and kind of broaden my horizons a little bit. So did the thing that a lot of people do when they don’t know what they want to do next and went back to school, did an MBA and then joined McKinsey as a strategy consultant after that. I spent my first year as a generalist, and then in my second year, I really focused on on tech. That’s kind of what I was. I was drawn to, and then, left to go work at Google, where and I managed to kind of weasel my way into working with the corp dev team there, working with, startups that Google had acquired.
Speaker 3 00:05:42 But they were keeping as kind of standalone brands or entities. and that’s where I got to work with founders again. and so that’s really what gave me the push to go back to startups. And so I left Google and started doing that full time and spent, Did three different, roles with three different startups as a, as a go to market executive. over time was really fortunate that of those three teams, two of them exited another one. became a unicorn. and so I got to work with some very high quality teams, some great products. and got some, some amazing experiences along the way.
Speaker 2 00:06:17 That’s interesting. So when you’re at Google. You’re you’re required by Google. Do they do. I’m not sure. There’s a lot of variety, but the companies you worked with were they fairly stand alone. And were you kind of an advisor from Google and what were you helping them with?
Speaker 3 00:06:30 Yeah. That’s right. So, a lot of it was, figuring out from a go to market strategy perspective how to leverage the big distribution advantage that that Google could provide, because a lot of these startups had relatively nascent, you know, revenues, or, you know, distribution, especially relative to, you know, the massive sales organizations that the ads team or that YouTube had.
Speaker 3 00:06:53 So it’s like, how do we get plugged into those organizations? And then, you know, all the way down to some of the basics around, like, just how do we think about go to market, how do we think about, measuring what’s working and what’s not, those types of things.
Speaker 2 00:07:06 Oh, that’s sounds like a great, great experience. And so what what pushed you to kind of say, all right, now I want to go out and do this as an advisor.
Speaker 3 00:07:15 Yeah. So after my last full time role, I worked at the public company that acquired the last startup where I was CEO and head of sales. and I really enjoyed that experience. I kind of had the itch to go back to to earlier stage. And, you know, I spent some time reflecting and, and a lot of the lessons that I learned from kind of growth stage like series A, series B, series C, I realized some of those had, you know, those problems that we were working on.
Speaker 3 00:07:45 We could have made it easier on ourselves by starting earlier and setting the stage correctly from the beginning, as opposed to having to go back and kind of fix some of that stuff while we were scaling. and so I just kept getting pulled earlier and earlier, with the, the work that I was doing with clients. And I wanted to try going out on my own and, you know, seeing if I could create value in, by myself. So just took the leap, took the chance and, haven’t looked back.
Speaker 2 00:08:12 Well, fantastic. Let’s talk about some of the things you do with early stage founders. You know, one of the concepts you talked to me about was selling to learn versus selling to scale. What does that mean? And what what stage is that?
Speaker 3 00:08:27 Yeah. So a lot of founders, when they’re they come to me, they’re looking for help setting, a scalable foundation for go to market. And while I think that’s an admirable goal, oftentimes those founders, when I dig in, are actually in a different stage.
Speaker 3 00:08:43 They’re not ready to scale yet. They need to really refine they’re messaging their positioning, and even sometimes what the product does for their prospective customers. and in some of the, some cases, we’ve got customers who really don’t have much beyond a few design partners. And so they need to go and validate that what they are building will sell. and so I think of that as when you’re in the founder led sales mode, you should be really thinking about your objective is not creating scalable processes and playbooks, but rather learning and using that chance to optimize the fit between what you’re building and what the market needs.
Speaker 2 00:09:23 So we’re talking you know, we’re talking about product market fit. That is one of the most used and least understood, terms in early stage startups. What’s your definition for product market fit?
Speaker 3 00:09:37 Yeah. So I think there’s a couple components. and there’s a lot of people who’ve written much more detailed, you know, a perspectives on product market fit. And so I’m not going to try to, you know, rewrite all that.
Speaker 3 00:09:51 but I think the selling to learn phase is really about proving traction and, consistency, meaning that you’re actually able to sell your product and that that your customers, your early customers are using it and seeing value in the same way. That’s the selling to learn phase. And then I think to get to product market fit, you really also need to start to get into the selling to scale phase, which is that you need to prove that somebody that’s not the founder can sell this and that. You can actually you have some positive unit economics, meaning that the expected kind of post-acquisition value of a customer is greater than what it cost you to go and acquire a customer. and then the last piece of this is momentum, which is, you know, I’ve seen people talk about, you know, this is measuring like your inbound demand or the number of active deals that you’re working, but something like that, just depending on your go to market motion, needs to be compounding and accelerating over time to really feel like you have good product market fit.
Speaker 2 00:10:56 Terrific. So you’re you’re selling the learn. You’re you’re you’re figuring out what the problem you’re solving is. Do you have like a template for, for founders that you use to kind of like you find that they’re not organized enough and documenting what they’re learning. And how do you help them really crystallize that first stage?
Speaker 4 00:11:15 Yeah, it’s a good point.
Speaker 3 00:11:16 And and the key in what you just said is really writing things down and documenting it and then iterating over time. And, often founders are so busy, they wear many hats. And even if you’re in a team of 2 or 3 co-founders, often whoever is responsible for taking the product to market and doing selling is that’s not the only thing they’re responsible for. But I think, you know, of the activities that you can do, as a founder, writing down your process and building your own. You know, whether it’s like a one pager or a script, if you want. Some of that feels a little bit like too heavy. But, you know, doing the basics on that and then making sure you are reviewing your own calls and learning from them, each one like you is a is an opportunity.
Speaker 3 00:12:05 Don’t waste it. make sure you’re testing something out that’s very deliberate. And then when you find traction, make sure you’re repeating those things that work and discarding the things that don’t. Trying something else that’s new. That process, I’ve seen really help founders accelerate, especially with those first, you know, 10 to 20, conversations that they have with with new prospective customers. Those are really precious. And so you need to make sure you’re extracting as much value as possible out of that. so yes, I have some templates. but a lot of it is honestly just the forcing function of having a, you know, regular cadence with founders to go through this process and make sure that we are deliberate, about learning from from each and every conversation we have with prospective customers.
Speaker 2 00:12:50 Got it. Okay. So you’re working with founders. They’ve gotten their few initial sales. And, you know, they they’ve documented it based on some of the help that you’ve provided. So how do they make that bridge to non founder sales.
Speaker 2 00:13:05 That that’s a big one. And it’s really hard. But new people come in right. Because I think you and I talked previously as a founder you have this magic superpower right. You know the problem. You were passionate enough about the problem to start this business. You’ve you’ve built the product. You’re probably in love with the product, which has pros and cons. You’ve talked to customers, you can tell stories, but then you bring someone in who’s just knew. My goodness, that’s a that’s a giant chasm, right?
Speaker 3 00:13:32 Yeah, absolutely. And before I answer your question, there’s one other thing to that. That’s a bit of the founder sells magic, which is you can actually change the product, which hopefully.
Speaker 5 00:13:43 Hopefully, you know, so you have that that’s.
Speaker 2 00:13:45 Additional superpower.
Speaker 3 00:13:48 Yeah. Now if you’re if your first salespeople are also promising things and adding to your roadmap, maybe you actually haven’t solved for that one key part of the selling to learn, which is consistency. and so, you know, I’d say one, I think founders often bias towards wanting to bring somebody in, either as a full time sales person, or even sometimes as a, as an early sales leader.
Speaker 3 00:14:13 to early, I would say this selling to learn stages is really precious time. And being fully in control of the go to market is something that will only happen once. And so I would say make sure you really nail the criteria around selling to learn, which is that you’re actually getting people to pay for your product, not design partners, not, you know, 90% reduced rate below what you hope to be able to sell the product for. But like you’re actually selling your product and that you’re seeing consistency in both who you’re selling to. So like, what are my customers look like? You know, do I do I act? Can I take my early customer set and create an ICP from it pretty clearly as well as are they all using it the same way? One of the other things that’s.
Speaker 5 00:14:59 Selling it.
Speaker 2 00:15:01 To a consistent customer who’s using it the consistent way and probably, you know, getting getting consistent value that you can build upon. So those those four of the pillars. That’s right.
Speaker 5 00:15:12 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:15:13 And and I think the, the other piece like that we often see in early founder led selling is there’s especially for technical founders who come who really know the problem well. They’re often adding in whether it’s like an explicitly a line item. They’re adding in services to right to make the product work. And it goes sometimes beyond onboarding. But, you know, continuing to to maintain the product, or to help build other processes to make sure that product plugs in. And that’s in particular for like mid, upper mid market and enterprise sales. but and that’s okay. I think you just want to really make sure that you’re not having to pivot too heavily in what each customer’s implementation of your product looks like, too. and it’s fine at the beginning. Explorer.
Speaker 5 00:16:00 Sure. But yeah, like, you want to pick the one that seems to be having a.
Speaker 2 00:16:03 Services enabled product. again, it’s a it’s a superpower, but also could be a challenge in terms of having tight product that’s repeatable. Right.
Speaker 2 00:16:11 And you know, when you talk about lifetime value in scale, that’s probably where you start seeing the impact of some of that customization versus you consistency, which I know is one of your tenets there.
Speaker 5 00:16:22 Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:16:24 Okay. So you’ve done that. You’ve worked with the founder. They’ve done the discovery. They’ve done the learning. And now is that scary point. Like, I have to do something beyond myself. I have to scale. And, I think I wrote a blog way back when, you know, based on, you know, one of my founder experiences like, don’t we just need to hire salespeople? We just go hire salespeople or what’s the next step?
Speaker 5 00:16:48 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:16:50 I mean, I think that that can be right. I’ve seen, you know, I think people consider one of three paths. Usually they’re either looking to bring on an SDR because the primary problem is actually about lead generation. And the founder still wants to run those early conversations. But what they need help with is, is creating demand.
Speaker 3 00:17:08 And that can be successful, especially if it’s a very technical product. And it would take a while to hand off, to somebody that can run a full sale cycle and close. the second is they want to bring in 1 or 2. I think it’s really common and popular nowadays to bring in two A’s. I think the idea there being that if you hire two at the same time, you can validate if it’s not working well, whether you know, it’s more about the person and the fit for the background that that person has and the role and the need. or whether it’s just not ready to be handed off yet. and then the third option is bringing in somebody who will be, a sales leader, or, you know, go to market leader that, you know, usually has seen this before and is ready to go back and do another lap starting at zero. But but takes more of an IC role at the beginning. I think that that is the third one is it’s really rare to find somebody who has truly done 0 to 10 million or something like that, and wants to take another lap.
Speaker 3 00:18:09 I think the most I’ve ever seen somebody do is two times. Yeah. it’s.
Speaker 5 00:18:13 Pretty exhausting, right?
Speaker 3 00:18:15 It’s extremely exhausting.
Speaker 5 00:18:17 Let’s go back.
Speaker 2 00:18:18 And, you know, I was saying that the hiring salespeople almost ingest because, like, I learned the hard way that, you know, maybe it’s not the last thing you should do, but someone, you know, a good sales expert said that’s the last thing you should do. And his point was, you hire salespeople and you haven’t documented all the things you’ve learned And put them into a positioning framework and maybe have a sales deck and all the things that you talked about earlier. If you haven’t taken those and turn them into something that you can train someone with. It’s really going to be difficult for those salespeople because they’re not just coming in and selling to their friends, right?
Speaker 3 00:18:49 That’s right. Yeah. I mean, I think, what we talked about earlier, which was the even when you are in that selling to learn phase and you’re iterating and experimenting and you’re changing what you do from call to call, you’re talking about writing it down and building a playbook.
Speaker 3 00:19:06 But that’s not the stage where you should be handing it off. When you can reuse the same playbook and you’re not having to change it every time. That’s when I think that’s a requirement for sure.
Speaker 5 00:19:17 Yeah, because now.
Speaker 2 00:19:18 You have something you can train someone with, right? That’s right. I suspect you’ve seen several examples of salespeople coming in and not having that training and surprise there. You know, not only are they not the founder, but they haven’t had the training and therefore they don’t get the benefit of that cell to learn cycle.
Speaker 3 00:19:36 That’s right. And look in a you know, in a pinch you can it is much more time intensive as a founder, but you can run those conversations and those processes side by side with your first aid, but then you’re just putting the burden of the work on them to create the playbook. I’ve seen it, you know, work better when it’s the founder doing that work with, you know, an advisor or somebody else that knows what playbook building looks like.
Speaker 3 00:20:02 and then the your first day, he walks into something with a much better chance of being able to successfully ramp, especially in those first, you know, 30 to 60 days where it’s critical to.
Speaker 5 00:20:12 Get a key.
Speaker 2 00:20:13 Element of of, you know, you’re offering do you help them build that, that, that toolkit, that, that playbook and what what are the chapters in that playbook?
Speaker 4 00:20:22 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:20:23 So I mean, the really it depends on the selling process. For more transactional sales, you might need kind of like a one call closed script where you walk through everything from qualification and doing a mini demo of the product to position, you know, presenting pricing and then closing for, you know, enterprise sales cycles. It’s obviously much more drawn out. And you’ve got to have actually a series of playbooks around. Here’s how we run qualification and discovery calls. Here’s how we run demo and scoping calls. You know, here’s how we run our validation events. And then, you know, here’s how we run through the procurement process, legal and, you know, compliance and all those types of things.
Speaker 3 00:21:05 So it really does need to be fit to the market.
Speaker 2 00:21:09 The latter is an enterprise sales motion. The former is is much more of a, you know, SMB or that’s right. Higher, higher volume sales process. But you know, but but if you’re not a, a trained sales professional, you probably don’t have those playbooks lying around that you can just roll out.
Speaker 3 00:21:26 You know, and in fact, like there’s often you may be forgetting to do things like, hey, I’m running a sales, hoping to run a sales cycle, and eventually sell this product for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I need to have a, validation event or, you know, I need to to learn how to do a proof of concept, like some of those things. you know, just a founder may not be aware that that’s that’s generally how those that type of customer buys. So, yeah, a lot of these are just based off of best practice. And then we go from very early like first principles of, you know, how does this product need to be sold.
Speaker 3 00:22:03 And then we’re testing those over time and they’re kind of evolving. and then yeah, eventually your, your, your early sales people and your early sales later they’re going to create a different version of the playbook that doesn’t allow for founder magic. That’s a lot more detailed. that has, you know, some of the materials from your marketing, what your marketing team will eventually create around case studies in those types of things.
Speaker 5 00:22:25 Right.
Speaker 2 00:22:25 What are your thoughts on when to hire the sales leader?
Speaker 3 00:22:29 So I, I think it needs to be when you have pretty significant traction and multiple salespeople that are hitting and hopefully exceeding quota and ramping quickly. one of the challenges with hiring really good, like a VP of sales or VP of growth, as a startup, is that you’re asking somebody to take a pretty significant risk with their career. they tend to come from, you know, they tend to have done well and gotten with a company to series B, series C or beyond. And so the ones that you want are going to really rigorously do their diligence around the momentum that the company already has.
Speaker 3 00:23:10 and so you want to make sure that you have that like it’s I’ve worked with clients where we went out too early and just the caliber of candidates that responded to, you know, our posting was very different, even just three months later, because of how much more momentum we’ve been able to build and the, you know, the proof that we were succeeding in the market, and retaining customers and expanding customers, that type of thing. as well as just, you know, what’s your, your what’s your, you know, size of your company as a starting point, most of these, high quality VP’s are going to want to walk into a team of at least four A’s, all of whom are doing well, so that they can just build on something that’s successful.
Speaker 2 00:23:53 Awesome, awesome. That that makes that makes good sense. Terrific. So. So tell me where people can find you.
Speaker 3 00:24:05 well, feel free to visit my website, Dan Chapman. Com I’ve got a link there where you can book time with me, if that’s, something you’d like to chat about in more detail.
Speaker 3 00:24:16 I’m also just Dan at Dan chapman.com. If you want to shoot me an email and you can find me on LinkedIn, I’d be happy to connect. I need to be better about, about sharing some of these thoughts a little bit more consistently, consistently. but I’m planning to to start doing that soon. So look for for more content for me coming to.
Speaker 5 00:24:34 Well that’s.
Speaker 2 00:24:34 Terrific. And, anyone you want to shout out that the, that helped you, helped you, get to where you are now?
Speaker 3 00:24:42 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s too many to name individually, but, to all the founders and investors who believed in me when I was just starting out and getting back into startups, you know, coming out of big tech, Google and all that. to the teams I’ve been honored to lead who make the job just so rewarding. and the, you know, the founders who trust me now as an advisor and a fractional CRO, I’m truly grateful for the chance to get to help people out along the journey.
Speaker 2 00:25:10 Hey, another another thing we like to do is share some, you know, obviously people can come talk to you specifically, but I know you’ve got some. You like your your reader and you’ve got some books that you think are really valuable on this topic. What would you recommend if people want to start out by just reading reading up on the topic.
Speaker 3 00:25:25 Yeah. I mean, look, if you’re starting from zero, there’s a lot of good, like classic sales books. I’ll talk about one that is relatively newer and that I’ve really enjoyed. And, you know, kind of like put some of the principles to use with my clients, which is the jolt effect. It’s a, really about, it’s a follow up to kind of the challenger sale. and it’s a great newer one. If you’re struggling to get buyers to commit to changing and understanding what it takes. like if you’ve got prospects who understand that what their, you know, their current approach isn’t working, they understand the value that’s on the table, but they’re there’s something that’s holding them back,
Speaker 5 00:26:06 Or taking the plunge stick.
Speaker 2 00:26:09 Which is get things moving. That’s a good, good word for it.
Speaker 5 00:26:14 Yeah, it’s a great book.
Speaker 3 00:26:15 And, you know, we don’t have time to go into all the principles. but, you know, I’ve spent some time with my teams kind of going over some of those. And it’s a very practical book. It’s not just theoretical like you can put those lessons to use right away. I’m also a big fan of not just sales books, but kind of broader business, reads. And I really liked, The Outsiders, which is about, you know, it’s like a series of stories about unconventional CEOs and how they approached, you know, their business and created, outlier type results. a classic book on strategy, is good strategy, bad strategy. And then there’s one, called the Success Equation, which is it’s a bit of a humbling read because it’s, it talks about understanding the impact that luck and randomness have had on have on success and, and even, you know, how to quantify that.
Speaker 3 00:27:12 And I think it’s something that, frankly, those of us in the world of venture, you know, should keep in mind, when we when we think about what we’ve done in the past, and maybe that, you know, it’s not just about us being great, but a little bit of luck involved too.
Speaker 2 00:27:25 Of course there is. That sounds great. I’m going to I’m going to write those down and check them out. Dan, this has been great. Great great topic. I wish you best of luck. And I’m sure that your your clients are happy to work with you and really dive into this. There’s nothing more important than early sales, early stage sales, traction. And I love your focus on it and look forward to continuing our conversation. Thanks for joining us this morning.
Speaker 3 00:27:49 Yeah. Thanks, Julian.
Speaker 1 00:27:54 Thank you for listening to the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, would you please follow us and subscribe on your favorite podcast player and we’d be grateful if you recommend it to a friend.
Speaker 1 00:28:05 If you’d like more resources on how to become a better leader in business, we invite you to visit us at Growth elevated.com. We’ll be back next week with more insight from another great tech leader. Thank you.
Rob Seolas – Co Founder and CEO of ObservePoint
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, host Julian Castelli interviews Rob Seolas, co-founder and CEO of ObservePoint. Rob details his journey in establishing ObservePoint, a Tech Company focused on data privacy and governance in marketing technology. He discusses the initial challenges of finding product-market fit, securing enterprise customers, and the funding journey. Rob also highlights the importance of building a strong company culture and shares lessons learned, such as the value of mentorship and maintaining mental and physical health. The episode offers valuable insights for tech leaders and entrepreneurs navigating their own growth journeys.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Timestamps
Introduction to the Podcast (00:00:02)
Julian introduces the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast and its purpose of sharing insights from tech leaders.
Introduction of Rob Seolas(00:01:20)
Julian welcomes Rob Seolas, highlighting his achievements and role as co-founder and CEO of ObservePoint.
Background on ObservePoint (00:02:31)
Rob shares the inception of ObservePoint and its focus on data privacy and governance in marketing technology.
Catalyst for Starting ObservePoint (00:03:28)
Rob discusses the initial market pain points that drove the creation of ObservePoint, focusing on martech governance.
Challenges in Martech Implementation (00:04:34)
Rob explains the complexities faced by marketers managing various martech technologies on their websites.
Finding Product-Market Fit (00:05:53)
Rob recounts the journey to discover product-market fit, highlighting their first major customer, Turner.
Bootstrapping and Early Challenges (00:07:37)
Rob reflects on the challenges of bootstrapping and the difficulties faced with a lightweight product for heavyweight clients.
Raising Capital (00:10:09)
Rob discusses the decision to seek capital due to competition and the need for resources to grow.
Series A Funding Experience (00:11:10)
Rob shares insights from their successful Series A funding round and their growth trajectory post-funding.
Preparing for Series B (00:12:16)
Rob outlines the milestones that indicated readiness for a Series B funding round, including customer growth.
Technology Challenges and Growth (00:13:22)
Rob describes the technical challenges faced while scaling ObservePoint and the impact on customer retention.
Advice for Overcoming Challenges (00:14:55)
Rob offers advice on managing technology development and scaling effectively in a competitive market.
Proud Achievements and Company Culture (00:17:20)
Rob highlights significant accomplishments, including awards and the strong corporate culture at ObservePoint.
Company Culture and Connections (00:18:18)
Rob reflects on the enjoyable work experience and strong connections formed at ObservePoint.
Transition to Auto (00:19:05)
Julian prompts Rob to share his experience with a new business called Auto post-COVID.
Rebranding Auto (00:19:17)
Rob discusses rebranding the company from “First Secure Administrators” to “Auto” for better market alignment.
Challenges in the Automobile Industry (00:20:29)
Rob explains the instability in the auto market and the need for a tech-focused approach.
Spinning Off Metrics AI (00:21:10)
Rob shares the decision to create Metrics AI by extracting the tech side from Auto.
Lessons from Experience (00:22:14)
Rob reflects on the importance of finding coaches and expertise for business growth.
The Importance of Coaching (00:23:19)
Rob emphasizes the value of performance coaching for CEOs, comparing it to Olympic athletes.
Finding the Right Coaches (00:24:26)
Rob discusses the challenge of finding effective coaches and the perception of CEOs needing help.
Transitioning to Coaching (00:25:07)
Rob shares his experience with Petra, a coaching group focused on helping businesses scale.
Scaling Executive Teams (00:26:25)
Rob highlights the importance of executive teams evolving as businesses grow.
Mental and Physical Health (00:28:40)
Rob talks about the significance of longevity science and its impact on future leadership.
Recommendations for Longevity (00:30:15)
Rob suggests resources like Brian Johnson and David Sinclair for practical longevity advice.
Key Aspects of Health (00:32:09)
Rob outlines efficient exercise and diet strategies for maintaining health and longevity.
Mental Health Awareness (00:33:10)
Rob emphasizes the importance of mental and emotional health in overall well-being.
Contacting Rob Seolas (00:33:53)
Rob shares how listeners can connect with him via LinkedIn or email.
Speaker 1 00:00:02 Welcome to the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast with Julian Castelli. Each week, we talk with senior tech leaders to explore stories and insights about the challenges involved with growing technology companies. We hope that these stories can help you become a better leader and help you navigate your own growth journey.
Speaker 2 00:00:27 Hello and thank you for joining the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, where each week I talk to entrepreneurs and leaders in the tech industry. past guests have included CEOs and CXOs of great companies like Work Front, Healthcare, Rebecca Systems in Moment, Vox, Pop me, the San Francisco 40 Niners, and many more. this episode is brought to you by Growth elevated at growth elevated. We’re a community of tech founders, CEOs, and CXOs who are committed to working together to share best practices and learnings in an effort to become better leaders. We do this through educational programs like this podcast as well as our blog and of course, our annual tech summit up in the Wasatch Mountains of beautiful Utah. If you enjoy skiing and working and networking with other tech leaders, check us out at Growth elevated.com.
Speaker 2 00:01:20 Today I’m super excited to welcome Rob cialis to the podcast. Rob is a a technology leader and and CEO in Utah. He has a proven track record of driving, business transformations. And one example we’ll talk about today is, is the strategic rebranding of auto that that led to almost ten X revenue growth. His expertise is in talent acquisition, team building and strategic partnerships. And he’s used those those capabilities to to fuel growth and success. As co-founder and CEO of Observe Point, he expanded the company globally, securing strategic partnerships and achieving significant financial milestones. his leadership is marked by a focus on innovation, operational excellence, and cultivating a strong corporate culture. Please welcome to the show, Rob. Silas.
Speaker 3 00:02:13 Hi, Julien.
Speaker 2 00:02:14 Hey, Rob. How are you?
Speaker 3 00:02:15 I’m doing well. It’s great to be here.
Speaker 2 00:02:17 Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Great to have you on here. today, I’m looking forward to catching up with you. So, you know, tell us a little bit about Observe Point. You know, you and I got to know each other many years ago when you were the CEO of Observe Point.
Speaker 2 00:02:31 It’s a it’s a very successful company in Utah. You you raised several rounds and grew that for for several years. you know, give us a little background about that company, how you got involved in it, and what do they do with their customers?
Speaker 3 00:02:44 Yeah. You bet. Well, sir, point was just a terrific, you know, ride in a in a great company. And it’s even better company today. The company was co-founded by myself and John Pestana and we really understood that you’ve got to get your head around data privacy and governance and what’s happening on your website. And so we just recognized the need in the market and decided to kind of jump right in. And this was back in, 2011, 2012 when we really kind of got started.
Speaker 2 00:03:15 And it was it, was it the regulatory, was it driven by regulatory complexity, just cybersecurity complexity? What was the catalyst that you saw in the marketplace that said, hey, we can we can we can help people deal with this?
Speaker 3 00:03:28 Yeah, that that’s an important component now.
Speaker 3 00:03:30 But it was not a very important component in the early days. The early days when we started, the company was just around the pain of implementation and governance around martech, martech.
Speaker 2 00:03:41 So really marketing and all those, all those cookies and, and, tags that you’re putting on.
Speaker 3 00:03:45 Yeah. I mean, you better have an idea what’s happening on your website. Right? That’s that’s really what it comes down to today. Back then, it came down to you’re a marketing practitioner of an analytics team in a big digital company, and you’re trying to manage all these different martech technologies that are rapidly changing and understand what’s happening. And there’s just a need to kind of manage and govern that. And that’s kind of where we started. We’re almost at the execution layer, if you will.
Speaker 2 00:04:11 You know what? I’m remembering our conversations back then and and I recall you saying, like, hey, you might be in your second or third iteration of team leaders in marketing, and you have all the the baggage from previous teams still on the website, and you might not even know it.
Speaker 2 00:04:25 So you might have multiple different cookies or, or, automation, tools doing the same thing or maybe even working contradictory to each other. Right?
Speaker 3 00:04:34 Absolutely. Yeah. I do remember that conversation that was and still is a really standard pain point because large brands, large companies usually have a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and it’s pretty messy in there. And so who’s actually collecting what, when and where? Who owns that? has always been a real problem in the martech space on websites in particular. And now it’s it’s changed a little bit Now the market says you better govern and understand what’s happening on the website. And so part of the regulatory piece that you mentioned has really become a reflection of the growth of martech. And and frankly, at times, companies inability to not get every little piece of data that they possibly can on a, on somebody. And so that’s kind of a response to it saying, hey, you need to tell us what you’re actually collecting and make sure that’s all that you’re collecting.
Speaker 3 00:05:23 And, you know, that’s a difficult thing for, you know, marketers. that’s what I observed. Point exists. And that’s the problem that we solve.
Speaker 2 00:05:32 Oh, terrific. Okay, so you’d seen this problem. obviously you and your partner were very active in web marketing historically, so you kind of in this space, you saw it. And who were you? Who were you selling to? you know, how long did it take you to find that product market fit, where you understand the buyer and who had the pain at the customer?
Speaker 3 00:05:53 Well, in the early days, the initial thrust was into large enterprise, our first real key customer that really changed the business. And this is a kind of a story into itself, was we landed Turner. So Turner’s all the different Turner properties, including CNN, which at the time was one of the most trafficked websites in the world. And with that, we were able to really, really leverage that the, the, the problem that kind of that happened, you know, when, when people in, in our tech world say, you know, that first whale customer is really, you know, a dangerous customer because they can kind of like take you places you don’t necessarily want to go.
Speaker 3 00:06:32 And that’s that’s a little bit about what happened to us. But in a way that was a little bit unexpected. It was just that by being bootstrapped and, and then raising a really pretty modest series A, I think we were really under horsepower to try to attack a enterprise company as a really small brand. So we built kind of a lightweight product that. But for heavyweight type customers. and so we experience some real pain there. I would say the product market fit is only come in the last 2 or 3 years, where the market’s really kind of come to us in the technology chops of the company have really, improved dramatically. And because of that, you know, the company is well positioned now. And and that’s an interesting story too for people. Sometimes it takes time, which is the most frustrating answer anybody ever wants to hear.
Speaker 2 00:07:20 Oh, absolutely. That, you know, you’re under pressure the minute you take capital or even even before you said you bootstrapped. I mean, let me let me be really clear that that’s not a lower stress situation, right? Because you’re constantly trying to create capital.
Speaker 2 00:07:33 How long did you bootstrap like let’s let’s start. You started this company when in 2012.
Speaker 3 00:07:37 Well, we actually started before that, but it was not a real serious priority for myself or for my co-founder, John Pestana. I had sold a company with myself and two other founders to think partnership, and so I wasn’t particularly really ready to go out and do something. And, you know, John was, you know, figuring out how his transition from, you know, out of armature would eventually play out. And so it’s just a real light discussion. We really didn’t get going until we picked up Turner. Is that launch customer. Then we really.
Speaker 2 00:08:08 It was that early before you had even.
Speaker 3 00:08:10 Yeah we.
Speaker 2 00:08:11 Do it. So you get a whale very early okay. Now I see the gravity of that situation.
Speaker 3 00:08:16 That’s right. A couple developers, you know, you know, landing away. Right. We were bootstrapped and and our in the absurd point solution is a highly technical solution. It’s a highly, complex series of problems to solve.
Speaker 3 00:08:30 Imagine every single page on everybody’s website. Exactly. All the different martech technologies that are happening, the dynamic changes that happen every moment of every day. Being able to crawl all of that, catalog that and report that back to the brand with any type of accuracy. That’s a really hard problem to solve. And that nut’s now been cracked. But it was really hard in the beginning, and it made us, you know, the way it was going, wherever it really wanted.
Speaker 2 00:08:55 Okay. Yeah. He’s working. I see the boat being pulled by the whale. Especially if you only have a few few employees. You haven’t raised any capital yet. And so, you know, before that big enterprise customer, were you thinking you’re going to have a light, a light stack for kind of the SMB market or you really we just weren’t sure.
Speaker 3 00:09:14 Yeah, I don’t think we were sure. absurd point exists for anybody who has a website. And so I think we kind of thought, well, anybody who has a website, but it really turns out that the pain points exist highest at the enterprise level, and then they have the, the budget to be able to go out and to add a solution that helps resolve and remediate that for them.
Speaker 2 00:09:35 So when you, you know, again, whether it’s by a priori strategy or you, you get a whale hooked and starts pulling your boat around, you’ve got an enterprise customer, you’re starting to focus on the enterprise customer. Is that what drove you to say, hey, we need to put some capital in this and and do full time engagement. You know, for you and John.
Speaker 3 00:09:52 That was a big part of it for sure. The other was some entry of competition into the market. that that kind of changed, I think the outlook, we felt like the market was going to happen quickly, and if anybody else came in and got a big chunk, they’d catch up very quickly to where we were at. So it was time to the market.
Speaker 2 00:10:09 Yeah, actually, I think that’s a negative and a positive. Right. Because it’s a negative. You no longer have your own ocean, but positive is your validation that this is a real problem. People want to spend money to solve. Right.
Speaker 3 00:10:20 Exactly.
Speaker 2 00:10:22 Okay. So so when did you raise your, your first round and, and, you know, tell us a little bit about your, your, your funding journey, because sometimes we use those as benchmarks in terms of, you know, when you’re ready to raise a series A and, and, and what you learn from that experience. And then I know you guys raised a very successful series B and you know, you know, I’ve grown to to to be a very meaningful company at this point.
Speaker 3 00:10:43 Sure. We the first round was 2014 with Pelion, who are been absolutely fantastic people to work with. Chris Cooper and and Blake, who generally are best probably known through that firm, are just tremendous VC individuals. I mean, they they always are rooting for you. We never had an issue at all. Super positive experience with them.
Speaker 2 00:11:10 Fantastic. And so you raised that series A like, how large were you as a company at that point?
Speaker 3 00:11:16 we just crossed a million and RR and okay, $4 million round.
Speaker 2 00:11:21 Fantastic. And then, you know, how far did you grow before you started looking and saying, okay, maybe series B, we can double down here? Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:11:31 Well, when we, we had been like really serious bootstrapping. So when we decided to go ahead and, and, you know, take the loan, we were, we were eyes open that that’s really what it is. It’s an equity investment. But it’s kind of like a loan you have to pay back. And it just kind of changed the dynamics of like, we got to go. Obviously that money was raised to grow the business, not to sit there and with that, we very quickly went into negative burn, hired a lot of people, and kind of started going down that trajectory. So we were to almost at three years before we, raised our series B with Mercado,
Speaker 2 00:12:10 And, and, you know, what was the milestones you hit that kind of gave you say, okay, now we’re ready for a series B?
Speaker 3 00:12:16 Well, there are a couple, customer count came was coming up significantly.
Speaker 3 00:12:20 We had some, you know, really great wins with kind of exceptional brands, you know, Lowe’s American Express, you know, at one time, you know, 250 out of the fortune 500 companies. I think that number probably even higher now, obviously, as the company has grown. But we had we were getting significant early penetration, like we were starting to knock off these really big brands. And we have a, you know, credible NASCAR slide, if you will. And that was kind of.
Speaker 2 00:12:49 You had you had half the fortune 500.
Speaker 3 00:12:51 We had between that and some agencies that kind of service, those, we had very early deep penetration into that market. But that but that was also that same kind of problem. We were a lightweight product in a heavyweight market, and we did a great job punching above our weight class. optically, our a partnership with Adobe, that were incredible to work with. We just did an amazing job, I think punching above our weight class, but it was a hard technology problem to solve, and we were kind of really underpowered there.
Speaker 3 00:13:22 And that that led to just not being able to retain those customers on the basis that we wanted to. That led to a not not a, not negative retention, but overall just kind of real flat to soft retention. and then the problem we the problem started getting bigger and bigger. We had more of these bigger customers and it’s very difficult to catch up. This was also at a time when the technology landscape was different too. We couldn’t scale with AWS because AWS didn’t have some of the loops and hooks that we needed, and hadn’t even built out some of the functionality we were buying servers.
Speaker 2 00:13:59 Wow.
Speaker 3 00:14:00 Yeah, we were we were buying racks, buying servers because of what we were trying to do to solve this problem, to be accurate. And so it just became a much more expensive business. It became a much more, you know, hard, hard core engineering business, deeper technology business, especially with our customer base. And we were just probably under horsepower in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 00:14:22 So with the benefit of what you know now, you know, whether it be something you might have done differently, you know, you, you, you had this great traction and, and demonstration of need from the marketplace.
Speaker 2 00:14:34 Maybe, like you said, they’re punching above your weight in terms of the size of these companies. You know, what do you recommend to someone who’s got that kind of challenge today in terms of how do you, you know, catch up from a capital, from an expertise, from a capabilities perspective, what you know, if you could, like, rewrite the story, what? What would you have told your younger self?
Speaker 3 00:14:55 Yeah. I think, to really understand how long the lag is between, you know, in the creation of technology. Right. it just you can add a sales person and they can go out and contribute to the business, you know, within 60 to 90 days. And that’s at the time when a, generally a developer starts feeling relatively ramped and in the business, and their contributions are still much further down the way. I think it’s it’s a different landscape now. So I don’t know if the I don’t know if the exact same lessons kind of almost apply in the same way, but it does take longer and it’s harder to build tech.
Speaker 3 00:15:29 And so it just needs more time. And so when you scale, scale with the hard stuff, first, scale with the things that are more difficult to scale first, it’s easier to add the lighter weight stuff. And we kind of added all of it once. And so one, you know, even exacerbated the problem. More of what we had, you know, being a heavyweight with the lightweight, lightweight budget and kind of a lightweight, sized business talent, headcount experience, those type of things.
Speaker 2 00:15:57 Yeah. Scaling technology is hard no matter what. But then when you, when you have to go to enterprise, I mean quite often that’s an entirely separate chapter for companies as they go along the journey. And it I’ve never seen it be a six month exercise or a one year exercise. It always takes longer than than than you think. And it sounds like you had that challenge even maybe before you were ready, which is a blessing and a curse, I guess.
Speaker 3 00:16:23 Yeah, that’s right. It is a blessing and a curse.
Speaker 3 00:16:26 And I think a lot of the companies that come through it often, I think, you know, either have a they just basically solved that technology problem sooner. They’re able to solve it soon enough that it doesn’t become a little bit of a ticking time bomb later. And we were able to kind of diffuse it barely, and, and move forward, in the last 3 or 4 years. There’s, you know, since I’ve left the company, John stepped in to really focus on technology and product. Then it’s been a complete landscape change, and now the product market fit is really there for the business, and the business is primed for a pretty exceptional run going forward.
Speaker 2 00:17:08 Oh that’s exciting. So, you know, what were some of the we’re talking about the challenges, but talk about some of the things you’re most proud of at the journey and any, any milestones or accomplishments that, you want to highlight?
Speaker 3 00:17:20 Yeah. There was a couple different things I, I thought did particularly well in the business.
Speaker 3 00:17:25 I mean, we, we won the awards that you win when you do certain things. Right. We made the Deloitte 500 list on the on the tech side that’s, you know, an enviable list to to be able to get on, you know, 5 or 6 years we were, you know, multiple years were Mountain West capital, you know, top 50 fastest growing in the state of Utah. So and that continues still. So the lot is just tremendous thing. I think we built a really good culture, a culture that people that care about each other and are dedicated, trying to solve hard problems. I think that was, a really good piece. I think the company did a good job of finding talent every place you could find it. you know, we had we have we’ve had a, you know, an amazing story of somebody that started at the front desk. And, you know, she’s now in senior leadership, you know, over at a at a public company. that’s.
Speaker 2 00:18:18 Awesome.
Speaker 3 00:18:18 So those type of things, I think we did, you know, particularly well and I’m proud of that. I, I see people that I worked with, you know, currently and because I’m still on the board and while I was active as CEO and there’s a deep connection and I get a lot of people saying that was the funnest company in the funnest place and the most enjoyable work experience I’ve had. And I’ve heard that heard that enough times to to really believe that. And it means a lot to me.
Speaker 2 00:18:47 Well, that’s awesome that that speaks to the culture you’re able to build. And and I know that special bond you have with the with with those team members that helped you, helped you build it. So that’s a that’s it’s one of the real upsides of what’s often a very challenging process. Right.
Speaker 3 00:19:03 For sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:19:05 So okay, so you had a great run there. And then you, you you jumped into a business called auto and and you, you know, it feels like the impact was a little faster in this one.
Speaker 2 00:19:15 Tell it tell. Give us the quick overview of auto please.
Speaker 3 00:19:17 Right. Yes. it was, you know, Covid year, right. Coming right off. Covid is, so, you know, a lot of different businesses were trying to find the talent and I was looking for like a next opportunity. And I didn’t, you know, have a lot of familiarity with the founder or the investors at the time. But I was I was brought in by one of investors. I did know, and it was a great little company. It was servicing independent car dealers and it was a it was a tech play. And they had actually like homegrown, some pretty interesting tech, and it just needed a kind of more experienced, I think, scaler to come in and try to help scale the business. I think the first thing, the biggest thing to mention there is just kind of getting your branding and your and your feeling right for the for the market, for what you’re trying to communicate. There was a kind of a founder name called First Period Administrators, and I rebranded it as auto.
Speaker 3 00:20:12 And that really did just instantly.
Speaker 2 00:20:15 Tell us the before and after again, I think, I think I like the second one, but give us the the first name was what.
Speaker 3 00:20:20 First secured administrators.
Speaker 2 00:20:22 That’s a tough one. Yeah, that’s a tough one. I thought it was a lot easier to remember and logically associate with the industry. Right.
Speaker 3 00:20:29 Yeah. Auto with two T’s. It’s like it’s it’s been really great for that business. So you know grew the business a lot there. you know that’s an interesting space as well. There’s been so many businesses that have been really impacted by what’s happened in the marketplace, and that one in particular, you know everybody who’s been paying attention to the used car market and new car market knows the automobile industry is super, unstable with inventory problems for a long period of time, you know, shortages in parts and then inflation and interest rates. There was a lot of headwinds in that business. And, you know, ultimately, I thought the business could be better served by being more of a tech focused business.
Speaker 3 00:21:10 And the founder really had his original vision and wanted to continue going down that original vision. I really respect that. So, you know, we decided to spin off the technology side into a little business to see what that would look like, to kind of test the marketplace. And that’s that’s a quick company I’m involved with as a founder called metrics, metrics AI. So it’s basically pulled the tech out of out of auto enabled to leverage that into a different market, which has been it’s been a fun little couple of months doing that.
Speaker 2 00:21:40 Well, fantastic. Congratulations on that. So, you know, now you’re at a point where you’ve been through the grind at a at a business, you know, taking it, you know, through from from, bootstrap through series A through series B, getting to be a meaningful size company, you’ve been able to take some of your expertise and apply it to another, another tech company in the vertical, you know, software space for, for autos. you know what, if you look back at this, what what are some of the biggest lessons you you carry forward if you had a chance to do it again?
Speaker 3 00:22:14 that’s really hard.
Speaker 3 00:22:16 how much time do we have? Right.
Speaker 2 00:22:17 Pick. Pick 1 or 2.
Speaker 3 00:22:19 Yeah. I think anytime you you’ve been an operator, you look back. I think number one thing is, you know, find coaches and expertise. I did that observe point, but I did a little late. And so find others that you can really, help pull you out of the day to day part of the business. or if you’re the type of CEO and that is actually very outwardly facing the business and don’t spend a lot of time finding a coach that helps you integrate and pull that into the business on like an execution layer. Those are the things that are important to. And so the best. You know, we just got done watching the Olympics. Every single person that made the Olympic team that there for any major country had multiple coaches. Yes, multiple levels of performance, performance coaching, nutrition, coaching, all these different kind of things. And except for.
Speaker 2 00:23:11 That guy in the in the the handgun shooting who just kind of walked off the street and won.
Speaker 3 00:23:17 Well yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:23:18 Well there is.
Speaker 3 00:23:19 Yeah, yeah. He showed up late after buying a pack of Lucky’s, you know, across the street. I mean, it’s it’s pretty amazing what I love.
Speaker 2 00:23:26 Watching that again because like, you know it obviously was a was a big hit with the media. But I went and watched that and I noticed like, you know, all around him there’s the coaches huddling with all the other other people. And you know, sometimes you have just the Clint Eastwood style. He just comes and goes out and shoots. But we all look at that and say, that’s what you should be as a founder, right? Like, like that guy. But the truth is there were 50 competitors and everybody else was working with with with coaches.
Speaker 3 00:23:49 That’s right. Yeah. And it might be that he works diligently with the coach in prep.
Speaker 2 00:23:54 Yeah. Behind the scenes. Right.
Speaker 3 00:23:56 But not in performance in like in at the actual performance. And that’s probably a great lesson of coaching too, is find the type of style that works particularly for you and and what you’re particularly needing and kind of week on if you will.
Speaker 2 00:24:09 Yeah. So so okay so you’re looking back. You do that sooner. Where would you look. How do you find these people. Right. You talk to your your board. Do you talk to your your investors. Like how do you you know you’re it’s not it’s not as easy as you think. Right. There’s a reason why both you and I didn’t do that immediately.
Speaker 3 00:24:26 Yeah, I, I think there’s there’s a perception issue, that hopefully I think is changing, for, for a lot of, you know, CEOs, you know, I grew up with a and understanding CEOs like, you know, like Steve and, you know, nobody thought Steve We’ve needed a CEO coach because he didn’t need a CEO coach. But he you know, he’s a pretty unique individual. and there’s other parts of his life that, you know, maybe in with some hindsight, we don’t look at in the same glowing way that we did maybe at the time, especially with the work life balance that I think a lot of people have come to understand is a real high value to them.
Speaker 3 00:25:07 so finding performance coaching and doing that and there’s they’re all over the place. you know, that’s one of the things I’ve started to transition into because I just so believe in it. I’ve started, coaching with Petra. Petra is a been a tremendous, you know, group to join. There’s only about a dozen of us, to even, like, possibly come a coach. You have to have a pretty amazing track record as a 20 year plus, type of executive. And, you know, we come in to really try to help businesses, scale up into bigger, better, more performant businesses. And we really sit there at the execution layer. And it’s been that’s my favorite layer of the business. It’s kind of the most interesting to me, so I’ve really enjoyed doing it to basically sharpen my skills as well. And it makes me a better, better individual and a better person as a coach because I don’t want to stand in front of people without knowing and believing in what I say and what I do and and how I live my life.
Speaker 2 00:26:12 Well that’s awesome. That’s great to hear that, that you found that and are paying it forward through your experience and, and in partnership with this group like Petra and, I, I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying it.
Speaker 3 00:26:25 It’s it’s been pretty incredible experience. I’ve been in front of companies. I never thought I would buy asphalt companies, veterinarian, pharmaceutical supply companies. But you very quickly understand how important it is that executive teams scale and grow with the business. And so for, you know everybody that listens to to you, Julian, in this podcast, you know, you have to find people that work for you now and in the future. And that doesn’t mean that they’re along for the ride forever. Some people in early part of businesses that are amazing Swiss Army knives, you know, that’s where they should stay in the business on the executive team. And that’s probably one of the hardest things to learn as a CEO is there’s a time and a place for just about everybody, including yourself.
Speaker 2 00:27:12 And that is a huge that is a huge lesson.
Speaker 2 00:27:15 And it’s almost impossible to to come in with that expectation, right? Because there’s so many forces that are trying to emotionally and circumstantially and, and pressure wise, you know, causing you to fall into that trap. And it’s one of those ones that I find is the easiest to recognize. Looking backwards.
Speaker 3 00:27:33 Agreed. It’s certainly hard to see in the moment, isn’t it? And that’s why sometimes, you know, coaching or advising, whether you’re talking to your board and you hopefully you have that kind of VCs that I was lucky enough to have, that I could do those type of things and have those conversations. But that’s really important to be able to to, you know, get out of the weeds and really understand what’s working in the business and what’s not. And it’s tough to do that when you’re in there hacking away, building the path for everybody else. But that’s what you have to do at times as a CEO. So you know that going in between those altitudes, I think, has always been the most difficult challenge for CEOs trying to scale companies.
Speaker 2 00:28:11 I think that’s a great, great lesson. And, I’ve heard it many times before. I think that’s that’s something that, would be really valuable to learn. the other thing, going back to the Olympics, you’re very passionate about about mental and physical health and longevity. Yeah. I’m going to embarrass you a little bit, but I think you you you shared that, you know, you looked at your biological age, and it was it was incredibly impressive and better than mine. So, you know, talk to us a little bit about longevity.
Speaker 3 00:28:40 Well, I think if you know the future is going to be very different. And for one of the reasons is, I think longevity science is very quickly figuring out how we dramatically slow aging. my most recent test is, you know, I’m I turned 53 this year, and my DNA test, which not everybody believes in, says I’m 43.
Speaker 2 00:29:02 So congratulations. I just got ten years there. That’s fantastic.
Speaker 3 00:29:06 But, you know, being healthy is a great part of performance.
Speaker 3 00:29:10 If you can’t, if you want excellent performance on the outside, you have to have excellent performance I think on the inside. and part of that is having a focus on, you know, longevity and, and overall health and my sense of what longevity science is going to do is it’ll change the landscape. I mean, we might have a CEO who’s 100 years old on the inside, but we’ve done so much with the longevity that they, you know, function like a 35 year old with that kind of drive. And what does that mean for the future of leadership? I think that’s a big part of what’s going to be answered here in the next 20 to 30 years, because I think we’re that close.
Speaker 2 00:29:46 So I can’t think of anything more exciting. Right? It’s the it’s literally fountain of youth at the same time. I’ll use myself as an example. I get excited about that when I, when I hear the success someone like you has had. And then I get intimidated by the, the mass of information that, you know, and people trying to sell you this supplement or that, like, do you have a recommendation of one source? If I wanted to learn about longevity and something that has some practical but but, but you know, in a busy lives of CEOs.
Speaker 2 00:30:14 Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:30:15 The guy who’s the guy who’s probably got the most noise, but and the most accomplishments and the most science, while at the same time probably having the biggest number of detractors is Brian Johnson, who’s actually a Utah ex Utah. He’s ex Braintree Venmo.
Speaker 2 00:30:29 Okay.
Speaker 3 00:30:31 and it’s a fascinating story on its own, but he’s probably done the most to try to take this amount of knowledge. He’s like, he’s hired an entire staff and spends millions of dollars a year trying to analyze the information, and then he makes it all free. And then he says, this is what he’s doing. He’s now he does now have a product and supplement that he sells, but he encourages you to do it other ways to only do it that way if you’re too lazy to do it any other way. and I kind of like that approach. I think he’s honest in his approach and is about as good a source as anybody. Doctor David Sinclair and of the Harvard MIT lab, he’s probably the best. If you really want to get to right to a technical source.
Speaker 3 00:31:10 He’s been on Rogan most multiple times and multiple podcasts. So David Sinclair is a is a good initial taste of what longevity science has in the future as well, because he’s on the cutting edge of what they’re doing on the actual lab side of it. Brian Johnson’s on the actual cutting edge of how we practically apply that to our lives, which is really the really easy fundamentals. Sleep sleeps. The most important thing that you do if you don’t sleep for 24 hours, you’re basically blowing like a point one. You’re you’re essentially be DUI. That’s how bad our decision making is without 24 hours for most people. That’s number one. Number two is basic exercise. Nothing crazy like the for longevity. It’s the minimal amount of exercise with the maximal, input towards health and lifespan. So you’re not saying let’s go run a triathlon. That’s bad for the body. The longevity experts say let’s go the minimal with the most impact. So it’s efficiency which everybody in this audience will love.
Speaker 2 00:32:09 So what’s an example of that? What do you what do you what’s your go to.
Speaker 3 00:32:12 Well so like you can do like an hour workout and just do a like a light dumbbell hit workout and get kill two birds with one stone. You’re doing some weight training and you’re raising your heart rate in an interval type, hit oriented way. that’s like 35, 40 minutes a day. And between that and then a good diet. Mediterranean is probably the easiest. But there’s a lot of good diets. That’s where most people get hung up. Most people get way too wrapped around the axle of diet.
Speaker 2 00:32:41 Right. And the supplements and this and that powder and pill.
Speaker 3 00:32:45 And that’s why doing like the blueprint kind of way is easy, because you said, look, this is three years and millions of dollars of research. Use it this way if you don’t want to figure it out yourself. But if you want to buy it yourself, here’s how you do it. and then the last, the last couple that I think have to be mentioned is just a mental and emotional health. We are now, after living through Covid, really understanding what’s happening with mental health.
Speaker 3 00:33:10 And I think, you know, there’s questions on social media and all these other types of things. I think it’s much more aware than we’ve ever been, and it should be a healthy, normal part of our discussion in our health is our mental and emotional health. Because who wants to live forever if you’re not happy? Who wants to live? Who wants to live a long time? If you feel depressed or anxious all the time, right? So everybody has to be healthy, healthy mind and body.
Speaker 2 00:33:34 And the impact that it has on your team. Who wants to work for a grouch or someone who hasn’t slept for 24 hours, or someone who’s not happy meant, you know, mentally and physically. So I think that’s a great point and I’m grateful for you bringing that up. So, Rob, this has been a fantastic conversation. Where can people find you today?
Speaker 3 00:33:53 Easiest way is probably LinkedIn. Or if you want to send me an email. Feel free Robert Tsai.
Speaker 2 00:33:59 Awesome. Well, Rob, thanks for taking time today.
Speaker 2 00:34:01 I hope we’ll see you at the The Tech Summit in January. And well, appreciate appreciate you joining us today.
Speaker 1 00:34:12 Thank you for listening to the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, would you please follow us and subscribe on your favorite podcast player and we’d be grateful if you recommend it to a friend. If you’d like more resources on how to become a better leader in business, we invite you to visit us at Growth elevated.com. We’ll be back next week with more insight from another great tech leader. Thank you.
Trail Marker: How to Hire Slow and Hire Well
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, host Julian Castelli unpacks the 2nd half of the old adage Fire Fast/Hire Slow and digs into the details of how to hire well by hiring slow. He emphasizes the importance of a structured and data-driven hiring process, advocating for standardized job descriptions, candidate scorecards, and a consistent interview process. Key points include the philosophy of “hiring slow and hiring well,” the benefits of data-driven decisions, and the efficiency gained from a structured approach. The episode concludes with a call to action for leaders to refine their hiring practices to ensure better outcomes and stronger teams.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Timestamps
Introduction to the Podcast (00:00:02)
Julian Castelli welcomes listeners and introduces the theme of effective hiring in tech companies.
The Importance of Hiring Slowly (00:00:27)
Discussion on the balance between hiring slowly and ensuring quality hires without unnecessary delays.
Structured Hiring Processes (00:01:13)
Emphasis on using structured and data-driven approaches to improve hiring quality.
Challenges in Hiring (00:02:22)
Exploration of the difficulties and anxieties associated with the hiring process.
Refining the Hiring Process (00:05:22)
Suggestions for creating a structured hiring process to improve outcomes.
Standard Job Descriptions (00:06:25)
Importance of having standardized job descriptions across teams for clarity and consistency.
Defining Roles and Responsibilities (00:07:19)
Focus on specifying clear outcomes and responsibilities in job descriptions.
Professional Qualifications and Characteristics (00:08:17)
Advice on limiting qualifications and personal characteristics to ensure focused evaluations.
Screening Interview Process (00:10:23)
Recommendation for a preliminary screening to filter candidates before executive interviews.
Standardized Scorecards (00:10:30)
Introduction of a standardized scorecard for consistent evaluation of candidates.
Interview Structure and Evidence Gathering (00:11:30)
Outline of how to conduct interviews using scorecards to gather compelling evidence.
Scoring Candidates (00:14:18)
Explanation of how to score candidates based on their interview performance and characteristics.
Data-Driven Decision Making (00:16:08)
Highlighting the benefits of using data from scorecards to make informed hiring decisions.
Collaborative Review of Scores (00:17:07)
Encouragement for team discussions to refine candidate evaluations based on scorecard data.
Data-Driven Hiring Process (00:18:06)
Discussion on using data to identify top candidates through structured interviews and scorecards.
Structured Approach Benefits (00:18:55)
Explains how a disciplined, structured hiring process can lead to better outcomes without taking much extra time.
Confidence in Hiring (00:19:59)
Emphasizes the importance of structured job descriptions and processes in enabling confident hiring decisions.
Closing Remarks and Resources (00:20:28)
Encourages listeners to subscribe, recommend the podcast, and explore additional resources on leadership.
00:00:02
Welcome to the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast with Julian Castelli. Each week, we talk with senior tech leaders to explore stories and insights about the challenges involved with growing technology companies. We hope that these stories can help you become a better leader and help you navigate your own growth journey.
Speaker 1
00:00:27
Hey gang! Today’s topic is how to hire slow and how to hire well. Previously in the earlier podcast, we we identified the theme and it was a trail marker about firing fast and hiring slow. And the point about hiring slow is not so much that you want it to be a slow process, but you want to hire well. And that implies that sometimes you want to take your time to make sure you get it right. And today we’re going to talk about how to actually do that. The key to do that is using a structured hiring process. Structure and data is the key to increase the quality of your hires, and you’re going to be using standardized hiring tools to make sure that you can get it right. Simple.
Speaker 1
00:01:13
The simplest, summary is we want to have standardized job descriptions, standardized scorecards, and a standardized process. And by doing that across your teams consistently, you will get better and better at this. And you can make hiring a competitive advantage. Now, why are we talking about this today? You know we we said fire fast, hire slow. And we kind of left it there and said that’s just important. We talked about why that’s difficult. And one of the reasons it’s so difficult is that hiring is hiring is difficult. And some people are intimidated by the hiring process. And one of the reasons that your your instinct isn’t to go slow is like, you have a job that’s open. You have, work that’s not getting done. You have anxiety about the process. And so you tend to reach sometimes we all do. We tend to put hope into our equation. We tend to read experiences into candidates, hoping that they can develop into what we’re what we’re looking for, which is a solution, rather than using a data driven approach that really can help you both stack rank your candidates in a consistent manner.
Speaker 1
00:02:22
Get the input from all of your hiring professionals who are involved. Do it in a consistent way and get better and better at it. And most importantly, if you get to the point where you have a great process, you can have confidence that you can go hire an A player. Well, guess what, then you’re not going to be concerned about, you know, not firing someone faster when it’s not working out. You’re not going to try to rush a process because you’re going to have that confidence. So our our whole goal today is to talk about how to hire slow and how to hire. Well, okay. Now the reason we’re bringing this up is I have had conversations with management teams all the time, and I am surprised how few teams really take the time to create a structured hiring process. In fact, in many cases, hiring is as simple as passing out resumes and getting people on calendars and then having, you know, a slack exchange regarding, you know, who do you like best? What did you think? What did you think? you might have you might take think about all the time you’re taking you’re taking an interview time for candidates.
Speaker 1
00:03:26
You’re taking members of your executive team for hours to, to get do these interviews. And then maybe you’re getting back together, but, you know, maybe it’s, it’s a little bit less formal. That’s very expensive process. And you multiply that times five candidates, ten candidates, whatever it might be. Of course, this is an intimidating process. And you’re you’re really anxious to get it done quickly. And you’re really anxious that you might make a mistake. There’s lots of risk. So you know that that is not the best way to do it. And that leads to that that dynamic where you’re anxious anxious to fire fast and high or slow. And when you’re not data driven, when you’re not consistent, you can end up using circumstantial clues as to I liked that candidate or, you know, what do you think about that candidate? Okay, you like them, I missed maybe maybe I missed something in my interview must maybe I like them as well. Or you might default to kind of the resume too much and say, oh, I like that person who worked at so-and-so company.
Speaker 1
00:04:24
Let’s just go with them. That feels like the safe hire, right? The old adage, no one gets fired for hiring IBM. You know, same sort of thing. Maybe no one’s going to get fired by hiring someone who’s got a great resume, but you’re still maybe missing something because maybe they got lucky and got to work at a great company, but really weren’t critical for that factor. All these things can lead to mistakes, and mistakes can create mis hires. and, you know, ultimately you’re back in that same doom loop where now all of a sudden, if you hire someone poorly, you’ve wasted all that time, wasted all that money and fixing the problem. And now you’re stuck saying, man, should we stick with this person and give them more chance? Or should we fire fast? And then because you’re not confident in your hiring process, you get stuck in that doom loop even longer. So that those are all the reasons why I want to suggest it may be worthwhile spending some time really refining your hiring process and putting a little structure into it.
Speaker 1
00:05:22
And I think the good news that I want to share with you today is it’s not that hard. The key is structure and standardization and getting everyone to be on the same page. There are four things I want I want to talk about. The first is the standard job description okay. Then a standardized candidate scorecard, then a standard hiring process. And then ultimately, you know, a, a standard, review of all that to, to keep making the process better and better. Okay. So let’s go through those one at a time. A job description Everyone has job descriptions. This is pretty straightforward. But you know, obviously you should have a standardized company description. I shouldn’t have to say that, but I literally I’ve been at companies where people are creating their own ones. So marketing’s got one job description, R&D has another one. You know, the sales and marketing team may have a different one, may have a different one. There should be a standardized company description that’s attractive, that is is marketing oriented and really helps your company shine.
Speaker 1
00:06:25
That probably comes from the HR department, just like the last section of your job description. The compensation next steps that should be standardized probably come from your HR department. Okay, then there are three sections that really should come from the hiring manager, the person responsible for making this hire, and who has the problem that they’re trying to fill a role. Okay. Those three sections are the role responsibilities and outcomes, the professional qualifications that you’d like to have for this, this candidate and the personal characteristics. Okay. So there’s just three groups. Let’s go through them one at a time, okay. Roles and responsibilities and outcomes. Okay. It’s basically what is it that we are hiring you to do in this job? And the reason I like outcomes, if you can get to an outcome, you’re not just saying, hey, you know, you show up and do this job, you’re saying this is what success looks like, right? So if I’m hiring a financial professional, it’s not just close the books.
Speaker 1
00:07:19
It is. The books are closed by the 15th day of the month, consistently and accurately. And, you know, we improve our clothes from the 25th day to the 15th day. That’s an outcome. It shows the candidate what you’re trying to achieve, shows them what success look like. And yes, it also explains the responsibility. Now, it’s important not to just put so many, responsibilities and outcomes in there that you just, you know, you, you, you use a shotgun approach, okay? You’re probably to come up with a list of ten. I’m going to encourage you to do no more than five key responsibilities. Just like the same with qualifications and personal characteristics, I would encourage you to have, you know, a total of maybe 12 to 15, which means you have 4 or 5 of each. It doesn’t mean that those are the only ones, but very importantly, it means they’re the most important responsibilities. They’re the most important professional qualifications. They’re the most important personal characteristics.
Speaker 1
00:08:17
Remember, we are trying to really focus on the most important ones because everyone’s going to probe on those criteria, and we’re going to stack, rank and score the candidates on those criteria. So if you have ten responsibilities and ten qualifications and ten characteristics, guess what? First of all, you’re scattered. You can’t really find a unicorn that has everything great. So if everything matters, nothing really matters. But secondly, you’re not going to naturally go and have consistent comparisons because some people are going to focus on numbers six and eight and ten. Other people focus on two and four, and you’re not going to be able to have a consistent comparison across interviews. And you’re also not going to be able to score that many items like 30 different items, it becomes just unwieldy. So I like to see you have three groups times four would be 12 or 3 groups of five. You have 15 total. Okay. So you have that and that’s what you put in your job description. So you got company description.
Speaker 1
00:09:14
You have the job responsibilities and outcomes number. Section two. Section three is the professional qualifications you’re looking for. Section three are the personal characteristics of the person that role. That would be great. Then you have a standardized compensation. Next step. You put that job description out there. And that should be a very straightforward process okay. Now we get into the interviews. For process wise, I like to have a screening interviewer who is going through and screening and making sure that they have the professional qualifications, salary and availability taken care of. And that allows you to take maybe it’s a pile of 30 or 40 candidates and whittle it down to 5 or 6, right? So I definitely encourage you to have a screening process. You’re not taking your your executives time for screening. By the time they get to you, you know, they have the qualifications. You know that the salary and the job description works in terms of where they have to be location, availability, salary, all those things. So you can get really down to the most important outcomes and responsibilities and the most important personal characteristics.
Speaker 1
00:10:23
That’s where you have your senior people doing the interviews. Okay. So what I recommend doing is creating a standardized scorecard. And I say standardize. You should create one template for the company. And then the hiring manager should customize the specifics for each job role. And guess what? Those specifics the responsibilities and outcomes come right off the job description. So you take the 2 to 3 most important responsibilities and job outcomes, and you put them right into the scorecard. Then you take the most important 2 or 3 personal characteristics, and you put them right in the scorecard. And guess what? This is the same responsibilities and characteristics for everyone. They’re going to have the same scorecard. So Max you’re going to have six grading criteria. Let’s assume you go and take three and three. You’re going to have six responsibility or outcomes and six characteristics. That becomes the grid that you’re measuring scores on. Okay. Guess what. That also becomes your interview guide. Now you go through you have maybe five minutes of niceties and background.
Speaker 1
00:11:30
You kind of describe how much time you’re going to take for asking questions, and then boom, you’re going down those six sets of questions that you’re trying to ask to get compelling evidence. Okay, so if the responsibility is to to hire and train a sales team, okay, great. I’ve got to come up with a grade 1 to 5 on this person’s ability to do do that. And has that person driven that in the past? What is the compelling evidence I can use to give this guy a grade, or this woman a grade on their ability to hire and hire and train and manage salespeople? Well, I’m going to ask questions specifically about that. The scorecard is going to have a section for compelling evidence that, you know, what are the types of things that I’m going to look for. I might ask, you know, have they done it in the past? I might ask them to tell me stories about how they solve problems with sales teams in the past. I might ask them how they recruit.
Speaker 1
00:12:27
and I have a section on that scorecard for both the types of compelling evidence I’m looking for, as well as the notes. The answer, the question. Okay, again, this is a lot of structure, but it gives everybody a consistent way to evaluate how can I come up with a score on that specific criteria, of a of a job outcome. Another one might be a personal characteristic. Same sort of deal. Okay. Personal characteristic might be, you know, a get it, you know, get stuff done type of character who doesn’t quit until the job is done and is consistent, consistently completing work to to to above above standard. Right. Okay. So that’s a personal characteristic, you know, what does it mean? Okay. What’s the compelling evidence? I’m looking for evidence of doing it in the past. I’m looking at examples like, you know, where you know, how they how they manage to do that. I’m looking for, examples as to why they’re driven to to be detail oriented and get work done, and they can’t stand not having things done.
Speaker 1
00:13:28
So I’ve got some clues in terms of what compelling evidence looks like. I’m going to ask those questions, and then I’m going to take the notes. Right. And if someone knocks it out of the park, excuse me. If someone knocks it out of the park, I might be really impressed. I’m going to give this person a four or a five. I’m going to have the notes. Why? Oh, well, remember that story that this person told about, staying up till midnight? Because they had a board meeting the next night and they just had to get it done. I’m going to. I’m going to reference that story later on in the process, or I’m going to, you know, I’m going to take the notes related to what the evidence suggested. If I have a low score, maybe it’s a one. Hey man, this person’s only worked a couple times. And, you know, they really couldn’t speak to, you know, getting stuff done and taking that personal responsibility. In fact, some of the conversation made me a little nervous.
Speaker 1
00:14:18
I might take a note about what made me nervous and put a one down there. Okay, so standardized scorecards, they have 4 to 6 responsibilities and characteristics. They have the type of compelling evidence you’re looking for. They have a section for notes and they have a section for a grade. And you have to put a grade in one through five. All right. At the end of this process, when you’ve completed your interview, you are going to have a number. You know, it’s maybe it’s a 3.5, maybe it’s a 1.5, maybe it’s a 4.5. And your first interview, you’re going to have a number. You’re like, okay, well, I think I think this person was a 4.2. That’s what my average was. That’s pretty good. It’s a it’s in the in the fours. Now I go and interview 3 or 4 more people and I get better at this interview. Right. So let’s say I’m doing the sales person hire or the sales leader hire. By the time I’ve done the fourth one, I mean, I thought, you know, a four was, you know, candidate number one answer.
Speaker 1
00:15:14
But man, candidate number four really blew me away. I can go back and change my grades. The key is that the individual who’s making the grades stack ranks everyone they interview on that 1 to 5 scale. So if the best person I interview is much better than the second best person, and I get given that second best person, maybe a 4.4 or a five on something, and then someone sets the bar as this is what a five looks like, I can go back and say, okay, well, the second candidate, I’m going to give a five and I’m going to move that that first candidate back to a three. As long as you’re stack ranking the candidates compared to each other, that’s what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to you know, get the best candidate from the group that we’re able to to bring into the process. And if everyone does that consistently within their own scorecards, that’s perfectly fine. And when you add those scorecards up, ultimately I’m going to have a grade for this candidate.
Speaker 1
00:16:08
You’re going to have a great for this candidate. We’ll have hopefully 4 or 5, and we’re going to have grades for every candidate. And we’re going very quickly. See okay, you know who’s who’s winning in the stack rank candidate scorecard for total score. And then we can go see, you know, we can look at the scores for every character characteristic. And that gives you so much data. Think about that process. Imagine, you know, we’ve taken two weeks, we’ve interviewed five candidates and we have data. We know where everyone stands between 1 and 5. And we can drill into okay, how are they at this outcome. You know, what’s the evidence. You know who’s who, who scored them where. How are they at this personal characteristic. Why. You know, why is this person higher than that one. You have all the data now and and you can make a data driven decision, Okay. That is that is the scorecard process. Then after that, obviously you look at the scorecard, this is typically done in a Google sheet or a spreadsheet.
Speaker 1
00:17:07
So it’s a live document. You know, you can you can, once you’ve done your interviews, you can compare notes and you can get together and you can drill down and really go into the specifics of where you have conviction. And maybe there’s an area where you didn’t get to make every question, finish every question you wanted. Well, you can go to other people and say, hey, you know, on this on this criteria for I didn’t get a great story there, but I also didn’t have evidence that they’re not good at it. And you can go to someone who may have gotten a good, good story score and say, tell me what, what you what what did you hear on that, on that, characteristic that made you, give you the confidence to make that that score and their conviction is going to help you, and it’s going to be specific. It’s based on a specific characteristic you’re looking for. It’s going to be based on specific interview feedback that they got. It’s not going to be the kind of conversation I referenced earlier, like, well, I really like the guy, or I really like the gal or, you know, I think that, you know, this guy is going to do a good job.
Speaker 1
00:18:06
She seems seemed like a good egg. You know, whatever it might be, it’s going to be data driven, okay. And you get together and you look at that and guess what? If you don’t have a 4.5 or someone like whatever your criteria is, that feels great. Keep interviewing. Right. So you maybe have five. Let’s let’s interview ten and we’ve got ten. You’re going to have a a bell curve. And you know the top candidates are going to become obvious just from the data. And you know using this process I haven’t had a situation yet where, you know, I’ve had just like I didn’t feel best in my gut about the people with the best grades. It tends to line up, but it gives you much more conviction. Okay, so that’s the process. I think it really helps the reason we want to do this, why do we want to do it this way? It’s really not a lot much longer. It doesn’t take much more time. It takes a little work up time up front.
Speaker 1
00:18:55
It takes a little more discipline to make sure that everyone follows the process, but it ends up giving you data so you can make data driven decisions, and ultimately you’re going to have better outcomes. So that’s the process. we, you know, again, we comes back from fire fast and high or slow. That’s really hard. It’s painful. But if you actually hire in a structured way. So I might posit that instead of hiring slow hire in a structured way with data and with consistency, guess what? Maybe it doesn’t have to be so slow. Or at a minimum, it’s not going to be so painful. And when you have confidence that you can hire an a player, then firing someone is not risky because you know you can upgrade the position because you have a competitive advantage. You hire a players based on a data driven, structured process, and that gives you confidence to do that. And you can have that confidence if you have a structured job description, a structured candidate scorecard and a structured interview process.
Speaker 1
00:19:59
All right. So that is our trail marker for the day. I hope it’s helpful for you. we have a blog about this at Growth elevated.com. If you want to read there’s a little bit more detail there. And as always, please check out, other podcasts and blogs at Growth elevated.com if you want to learn how to be a better leader, and if you got topics for us or guests for the podcast, please send them our way at info at Growth elevated.com. Thank you.
Speaker 1
00:20:28
Thank you for listening to the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, would you please follow us and subscribe on your favorite podcast player and we’d be grateful if you recommend it to a friend. If you’d like more resources on how to become a better leader in business, we invite you to visit us at Growth elevated.com. We’ll be back next week with more insight from another great tech leader. Thank you.
Rob Castaneda – Founder & CEO of ServiceRocket
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, host Julian Castelli interviews Rob Castaneda, founder of ServiceRocket. They discuss the importance of SaaS companies understanding customer needs and filling service gaps beyond their core product offerings. Rob emphasizes the significance of building a profitable ecosystem with foundational partners to ensure dedicated attention and success. He shares insights from his experience with Atlassian, highlighting the need for a partner like ServiceRocket to provide professional services and support to customers, enabling them to fully utilize software within their unique business environments. The conversation also touches on the concepts from Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm” and the importance of recognizing that people, not logos, buy software.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Timestamps
Welcome to the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast (00:00:02) Introduction to the podcast and its purpose.
Introduction to Growth Elevated and Tech Summit (00:00:27) Promotion of the Growth Elevated community and its offerings.
Introduction to Rob Castaneda and Service Rocket (00:01:10) Background and introduction of Rob Castaneda, founder of ServiceRocket, and his association with Atlassian.
Rob’s Triathlon Experience (00:02:29) Rob shares his experience as a lousy triathlete and the challenges he faced.
Service Rocket’s Early Engagement with Atlassian (00:04:44) Rob narrates the early days of ServiceRocket’s collaboration with Atlassian and their role in promoting Jira.
Service Rocket’s Training Approach (00:11:41) Discussion about ServiceRocket’s training strategy and the transition from early adopters to the early majority.
Service Rocket’s Professional Services (00:18:11) Details about ServiceRocket’s professional services and their approach to enabling and empowering customers.
Conclusion and Overview of Service Rocket (00:19:49) Summary of ServiceRocket’s unique approach and the importance of understanding customer nuance.
These are the timestamps covered in the podcast episode transcription segment.
Filling the Gaps in SaaS Business (00:20:24) Discussion on the conventional wisdom of valuing SaaS companies based on subscription revenue and the potential gaps it leaves for customers.
Understanding the Customer’s Ecosystem (00:21:36) Exploration of the importance of understanding and catering to the customer’s ecosystem for successful SaaS adoption and expansion.
Building an Ecosystem (00:24:00) Insights into the process of building an ecosystem for SaaS companies and the role of foundational partners in the ecosystem.
Clarity and Communication with Partners (00:32:39) Importance of internal clarity and treating partners as an extension of the team for successful collaboration.
Journey of Building a Business (00:36:11) Challenges and lessons learned in the journey of building a business, including leadership, cultural understanding, and mentorship.
Networking and Mentorship (00:38:15) The significance of mentorship, networking, and paying it forward in business and leadership.
Where to Find Rob (00:40:13) Information on where to connect with Rob Castaneda, including his company website, LinkedIn, and his substack on leadership behaviors.
Thank you (00:40:46) Closing remarks and gratitude expressed by the speakers.
Podcast promotion (00:40:52) Encouragement for listeners to follow, subscribe, and recommend the podcast, along with a website invitation.
Closing (00:41:13) Final thank you and sign-off from the host.
Blake Harber – VP Sales of Workstream
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, host Julian Castelli interviews Blake Harber, a seasoned sales executive with experience in SaaS companies like HireVue and Lucid. Blake shares his journey at Workstream, an applicant tracking system for the hourly workforce. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Blake led a strategic pivot to focus on the restaurant sector, resulting in significant growth. He discusses scaling sales teams, achieving product-market fit, and leveraging networking and educational institutions for recruitment. The episode provides valuable insights into overcoming challenges and driving growth in technology companies.
Timestamps
Scaling Sales Team (00:18:09) Blake discusses hiring over 60 sales reps and the challenges of scaling.
Signs of Product Market Fit (00:18:29) The speakers explore the indicators that confirm achieving product market fit.
Market Pull and Sales Success (00:18:54) Blake explains how market demand accelerated their sales cycle and referrals.
Recruiting Strategies (00:20:38) Blake shares his effective recruiting methods and networking experience in Utah.
Growth and Revenue Milestones (00:23:01) Discussion on the company’s revenue growth from 1 million to over 20 million.
Funding Success (00:23:50) Blake details raising a $100 million Series B funding round and its implications.
Transition to Consulting (00:24:40) Blake talks about his move to consulting after stepping away from Workstream.
Engagement Flexibility (00:26:17) Blake describes his adaptable consulting engagements and their duration.
Focus on SMB Market (00:27:14) Blake clarifies his specialization in SMB and lower mid-market companies.
Contact Information (00:27:41) Blake shares how listeners can reach out to him for consulting opportunities.
Davis Bell – CEO of Canopy
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, we interview Davis Bell, CEO of Canopy, a SaaS platform for accounting practices. They discuss Canopy’s journey, including its growth from 100 to 170 employees and a 4-5x revenue increase since Bell joined in 2019. Bell highlights the challenges of prioritizing product development, navigating COVID-19, and raising capital, including a recent $35 million funding round. They also delve into leadership lessons, emphasizing transparency, team autonomy, and the importance of listening and curiosity in achieving better results. Bell shares insights on maintaining high employee engagement and navigating market challenges.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Timestamps
The journey of Canopy (00:00:02) David Bell discusses the growth and challenges faced by Canopy, a SaaS company serving accounting practices.
Raising funding (00:01:46) David Bell talks about Canopy’s successful funding round of $35 million and the challenges of raising capital during a tough economy.
What Canopy does (00:02:15) David Bell explains that Canopy is a firm-wide operating system for accounting firms, managing customer information, communication, collaboration, time tracking, and more.
Challenges and growth of Canopy (00:03:10) David Bell shares the challenges and growth of Canopy, including the decision to focus on practice management and the company’s revenue and team growth.
Building a system of record (00:06:02) David Bell discusses the challenges of building a comprehensive system of record for accounting firms and the decision to build the entire platform.
Raising capital and market challenges (00:07:47) David Bell talks about the challenges of raising capital, re-educating investors, and navigating market dynamics to secure funding.
Series A and Series B funding (00:09:16) David Bell discusses the traction in the marketplace that led to the successful Series A and Series B funding rounds for Canopy.
Investor value and confidence (00:11:37) David Bell emphasizes the importance of investors’ behavior during challenges and the value of topical expertise in investors.
Navigating COVID-19 impact (00:15:03) David Bell discusses the challenges of transitioning to remote work and the decision-making process regarding office and remote work arrangements.
Pride in the team and employee satisfaction (00:17:42) David Bell expresses pride in Canopy’s team, low attrition, and high employee NPS, highlighting the company’s positive work culture.
Employee NPS and Transparency (00:18:03) Discussion on the company’s employee Net Promoter Score (NPS) and the impact of transparency on employee satisfaction.
Leadership Conception (00:23:03) The evolution of the speaker’s leadership style, moving away from the traditional “visionary leader” model.
Impact of Curiosity on Decision-Making (00:25:12) The benefits of leading with curiosity and openness, with a specific example of how it led to a better outcome.
Financial Planning and Optionality (00:27:04) The importance of structuring financial plans to maintain control and optionality, with lessons learned from previous funding experiences.
Future Goals and AI Investment (00:30:46) The company’s future plans, including investment in AI and expansion into adjacent products.
Conclusion and Podcast Wrap-Up (00:32:51) Closing remarks and gratitude for the conversation, concluding the podcast episode.
Recommended Learning Resources (00:31:44) The speaker’s recommended newsletters and podcasts for staying informed and learning about AI and tech.
Amelia Wilcox – Founder & CEO of Nivati
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, host Julian Castelli interviews Amelia Wilcox, founder and CEO of Nivati. They discuss the company’s pivot during the pandemic from providing onsite massage therapy to virtual wellness services, addressing the increased need for accessible mental health resources. Amelia shares the challenges of adapting to market trends, selling to HR departments, and the impact of the economic downturn on venture-backed tech companies. She also talks about Nivati’s strategic shift to focus on healthcare and education sectors, her personal journey as an entrepreneur, and the importance of self-care and mentoring. Amelia recommends resources for personal and professional growth, including the “How I Built This” podcast and books like “Extreme Ownership.”
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Timestamps
Welcome to the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast (00:00:02) Introduction to the podcast and its purpose.
Introduction to NovoMoto and Amelia Wilcox (00:01:17) Description of NovoMoto’s business and Amelia Wilcox’s background.
Starting NovoMoto and Adapting to COVID-19 (00:02:10) Amelia explains how NovoMoto started and how they adapted to the challenges of COVID-19.
Challenges in Selling to Employers (00:05:02) Discussion about the challenges of selling NovoMoto’s services to employers and the business model.
Growth and Fundraising (00:06:00) Amelia discusses NovoMoto’s growth and recent fundraising success.
Impact of NovoMoto’s Services (00:07:14) Amelia shares the impact of NovoMoto’s services on mental health and well-being.
Educating Employers and Addressing Market Trends (00:09:16) Discussion about educating employers and addressing the growing awareness of mental health.
Business Model Challenges and Market Trends (00:10:44) Challenges in selling NovoMoto’s services to HR and addressing market trends in mental health.
Selling NovoMoto’s Services and Addressing Market Needs (00:13:42) Reasons why employers add NovoMoto to their benefits packages and addressing market needs.
Challenges in Selling to Employers and Market Trends (00:15:10) Challenges in selling NovoMoto’s services to employers and market trends affecting sales.
Adapting to Changes in the Venture Community (00:16:56) Discussion about the impact of changes in the venture community and potential pivots for NovoMoto.
Adapting to Business Challenges (00:17:47) Adapting to challenges in working with venture-funded businesses and addressing customer needs.
Please note that the timestamps are approximate and may vary slightly.
Identifying New Markets (00:17:56) Amelia discusses the need to pivot and focus on healthcare and education markets due to stalled revenue and competition.
Strategic Approach to New Markets (00:18:43) Amelia explains the approach of running campaigns and analyzing the focus within healthcare and education markets.
Exploring Opportunities in Healthcare (00:20:15) Amelia discusses the experimentation and efforts to explore specialized healthcare brokers and conferences.
Lessons Learned and Personal Growth (00:21:09) Amelia reflects on personal growth, fear of failure, and the realization of employability beyond entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurial Challenges and Mental Health (00:23:08) Amelia shares insights on the pressures of fundraising, burnout, and the importance of taking breaks.
Mentoring and Self-Care (00:25:45) Amelia discusses mentoring female entrepreneurs and the need for self-care during challenging periods.
Favorite Podcasts and Books (00:28:36) Amelia shares her favorite podcasts and books related to entrepreneurship, leadership, and mental health.
Closing Remarks (00:30:08) Julian concludes the conversation and encourages listeners to follow and subscribe to the podcast.
Dave Carruthers – Co Founder of Voxpopme
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, we speak with Dave Carruthers the Co Founder and former CEO of Voxpopme, a leading digital insights platform for large consumer product companies. Dave describes the lessons from his journey of expanding into the US market and growing the Company into an industry leader.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Timestamps
The founding of Voxpopme (00:00:02) The journey of building a tech company, the founding story, and the initial stages of Voxpopme’s creation.
The idea behind Voxpopme (00:01:03) The concept behind Voxpopme, the rise of video surveys, and the need for consumer brands to understand their customers better.
Challenges in introducing video surveys (00:04:01) Challenges faced in convincing corporate customers to adopt video surveys, including changing long-standing behaviors and relationships in the industry.
Moving Voxpopme to the US (00:10:00) The challenges and impact of moving Voxpopme from the UK to the US, including the decision to raise capital in the US and the strategic move of a co-founder to establish the base.
Critical hires for US expansion (00:17:00) The key hires made for go-to-market expansion in the US, including experienced salespeople, a customer success leader, and a VP of marketing.
Building a Reputation at Events (00:18:14) Discussing the impact of attending events and conferences in building a brand and attracting industry talent.
Challenges of Moving to the US (00:19:08) Exploring the difficulties and impacts of moving the company from the UK to the US, including hiring, compensation, and cultural differences.
Lessons from Geographical Expansion (00:21:49) Reflecting on the challenges and lessons learned from expanding into different regions, such as APAC and EMEA.
Scaling the Business and Hiring Challenges (00:25:02) Discussing the challenges faced in scaling the business and hiring senior roles, emphasizing the importance of storytelling and leadership.
Partnerships and Focus (00:28:01) Exploring the challenges and lessons learned from pursuing partnerships and the importance of focusing on core products for scaling.
Resilience and Leadership Transition (00:31:09) Discussing the resilience required in startup leadership and the self-awareness needed to transition leadership based on strengths and skills.
New Venture: Zeta (00:34:15) Introducing a new marketplace business, Zeta, focused on group buying in the outdoor industry and plans for expansion.
Connect with Dave Carruthers (00:36:23) Providing contact information for connecting with Dave Carruthers on LinkedIn and Twitter and accessing information about Zeta.
Deepak Sindwani – Co Founder of Wavecrest Growth Partners
In this Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast episode, Deepak Sindwani, co-founder of Wave Crest Growth Partners, shares his experiences in the growth equity sector, focusing on B2B software companies. He recounts his path from Bain Capital Ventures and Comcast Ventures to establishing his own growth equity firm, emphasizing the importance of resilience and humility. Deepak explains Wave Crest’s operating platform, which offers comprehensive support to portfolio companies, and details the success stories of some of his portfolio companies.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Timestamps
Welcome to the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast (00:00:02)
Introduction to the podcast and its purpose.
Deepak’s Journey to Wave Crest Partners (00:00:27)
Deepak Simone’s background and experience in the investing business.
Founding Wave Crest Partners (00:01:51)
Deepak’s entrepreneurial journey and the founding of Wave Crest Partners.
Initial Struggles and First Fundraising (00:05:04)
Challenges faced during the initial stages of founding the firm and raising the first round of capital.
Growth and Expansion of Wave Crest Partners (00:10:34)
The growth of Wave Crest Partners from two people to a team of 15 and the raising of their first fund.
Investment Strategy and Target Companies (00:12:04)
Defining growth equity and the target range for investment in companies.
Supporting Founders in Growth and Expansion (00:15:55)
The role of Wave Crest Partners in assisting companies in the $5 to $20 million ARR range with growth and expansion strategies.
Value-Added Support for Portfolio Companies (00:18:11)
The expertise and value-added support that Wave Crest Partners provides to portfolio companies on their growth journey.
The Wave Crest Operating Platform (00:18:55)
Deepak explains the five pillars of value and support offered to founder-led capital-efficient B2B software companies.
Impel (00:20:20)
Deepak discusses the journey of a company named Impel (formerly Spin Car) and its evolution from a digital merchandising solution to an augmented reality platform for the automotive industry.
Challenges and Adaptation during COVID-19 (00:23:15)
Deepak shares how Impel faced challenges during COVID-19, initially experiencing a downturn and then benefiting from the shift in consumer behavior.
Acquisition and Evolution (00:25:34)
Discussion on the acquisition of a conversational AI business and its integration into Impel’s product, leading to a change in the company’s vision and trajectory.
Growth and Partnership (00:28:03)
Deepak highlights Impel’s growth, diversification of risk for the founders, and the partnership between Wave Crest and the company.
Recommendations (00:30:23)
Deepak shares podcast and book recommendations, including “All In” podcast, “Smart Lists” podcast, and books by Charlie Munger and the philosophy of “Die with Zero.”
Contact Information (00:33:29)
Deepak shares how to connect with Wave Crest and himself for further discussions and collaboration.
Andy Barraclough – Co Founder and CEO of Voxpopme
In this episode of the Growth Elevated Leadership Podcast, we hear from Andy Barraclough – Co Founder and CEO of Voxpopme. Andy shares how he has led the innovation and R&D groups at the Company with a “Product First” approach. This has allowed the Company to be at the leading edge of real time video feedback and work with some of the largest consumer product companies in the world! Check out the podcast and let us know what you think!
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Chris Giles – Co-Founder & CEO of FanRally
Can the SaaS model be applied to professional sports? Join me as I speak with Chris Giles, CEO of FanRally who is pioneering a new subscription service for professional sports teams. Is this the wave of the future? Hear how Chris believes subscription and club benefits provide a way for teams to build more direct connectivity with their fans, and provide those fans with a more intimate, value added experience.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Lonnie Mayne – Former President of InMoment
Lonnie Mayne, former President of SaaS Company InMoment shares the story of how he helped grow the Company as a member of the early founding team. Later, as the Company grew Lonnie helped with mergers and acquisitions and played a critical role in shaping the unique culture of the Company that helped it compete for large clients like McDonalds. Lonnie’s impact with culture was a hit, so much so that he was soon speaking externally about his new “Red Shoes” culture, and he eventually wrote a book about it!
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Darren Dunn – Founder of Zartico
Darren Dunn shares the story of how he founded Zartico, and built the team that helped grow the Company into a successful data driven SaaS/DaaS company. Zartico is a Company that powers the possibility of place by helping tourism boards and destination management organizations understand the who, what, when and where of their visitors.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Eric Morgan – Former CEO of Workfront
Eric Morgan shares how as CEO he grew Workfront, a SaaS project management platform 5X in five years, and set the Company on a successful path to continued growth and an eventual $Billion+ strategic sale in 2020.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Trail Marker: Cap Table Vietnam
Does closing your next round feel as hard as finding a good outcome for a losing land war in Asia? Unfortunately, you are not alone in this difficult financing environment. I have talked with so many Founders and Tech leaders who are currently struggling to get new equity financing. In this episode, we explore some of the most challenging cap table “traps” to avoid, and some strategies for ensuring you don’t get stuck in a capital trap.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Scott Stone – Former Chief Strategy Officer of Chargeback
Wondering how to proactively position your company to be acquired some day? Strategic partnerships are a tried and true strategy.
In this episode of the Podcast, Scott Stone, former Chief Strategy Officer of Chargeback.com, explains how Chargeback formed and grew a successful partnership with Sift that allowed them to create a repeatable sales motion with mutual customers and prospects that accelerated their sales cycle. The process worked so well that it eventually triggered strategic discussions between the companies that led to Chargeback’s acquisition by Sift in 2021.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Trail Marker: The Struggle
Frustrated? Exhausted? Feel like you have nobody to turn to who can understand what you are going through? Welcome to the Struggle, you are not alone but…
In this Trail Marker we explore some of the unique pains, challenges and insecurities founders and entrepreneurial leaders face and a few ideas on how to successfully manage them.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
John Munro – Former CEO at Chargeback.com
John Munro shares how as CEO he grew Chargeback, a company that helps retailers manage credit card disputes, into a successful SaaS company and led the Company to a successful exit in 2021.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Jonas Fridrichsen – Former CRO at VerityStream
What is Product Market Fit? How do you know when you have it? In this episode, Jonas Fridrichsen, a multiple time CRO shares his definition of PMF. In addition, Jonas dives deep into what it takes to build out sales teams, the relationship between sales and customer success teams and the pros and cons of hiring new sales teams vs experienced veterans.
Learn more about Jonas here.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Bassam Salem – Founder & CEO of AtlasRTX
Today we welcome Bassam Salem, the Founder & CEO of AtlasRTX, to the podcast. Bassam shares how he built one of the original AI Assistant platforms for sales and marketing departments.
Bassam also discusses some of the benefits and challenges of bootstrapping his company, and shares some key insights about how to hire the absolute best people possible by ensuring they are aligned with Company values.
Learn more about Bassam’s company AtlasRTX here.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Joel Inman – CEO Lexicon Travel Technologies
Joel Inman shares insights from his 5 year journey leading Lexicon Travel Technologies. Joel shares some of the highs and lows of the journey as well as some valuable lessons learned during the experience.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Scott Beck – CEO of CHG Healthcare
Scott Beck shares how as CEO he grew CHG Healthcare into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, and how culture and listening to his team were the key secrets to his success!
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Trail Marker: Hire Slow. Fire Fast.
Julian digs deep into the well known but hard to execute concept of “Hire Slow and Fire Fast” and how to avoid the emotional temptations to do exactly the opposite.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Maile Keone – CEO Listen Technologies
Today Julian Castelli sits down with Maile Keone, CEO of Listen Technologies, Assistive Listening and Communication Solutions for Inclusive Experiences.
Maile discusses how she moved up the Executive ladder from VP of Marketing to VP of Sales & Marketing, to CMO, to CRO, and finally to CEO and her realizations and challenges along her leadership journey.
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Trail Marker: Who’s In Your Corner?
Julian dives deeper into the idea of having a mentor or coach. As a tech leader, its lonely at the top. Do you have a mentor or coach that can help you make better decisions? Who do you call when you need an objective, trusted voice that has your best interests at heart?
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Ernest Oriente – Founder of PowerHour
Today Julian Castelli sits down with Ernest Oriente, author and professional coach of 28 years with his company PowerHour.
Ernest shares how he built PowerHour and some of the critical lessons he helps business leaders learn and some of the most critical skills that he helps them with, including Executive Recruiting, Onboarding, Leadership Coahcing and Executive Productivity.
Company: PowerHour
Author of the book: Smart Match Alliances
For more resources on how to be a a better leader in business, please visit us at GrowthElevated.com, and follow us on LinkedIn.
Spotlighting Visionary Tech Leaders
Learn from the established leaders and innovative companies that have taken center stage on our podcast. Join us in celebrating the trailblazers who are shaping the future of technology.
What Do We Cover?
The Growth Elevated Leadership Podcasts covers technology leadership topics such as:
- The start up journey
- How to build great teams
- How to raise capital for your start up
- How to scale beyond the start up phase
- Organizational design best practices
- How to prepare yourself for exit
- How to lead your team through difficult times
- How Venture Funds Will Evaluate Your Company
- How PE Funds Think About Your Business
Our Mission
Our mission is to help as many tech leaders as possible climb the growth mountain. To us, climbing the growth mountain means building meaningful companies that have a positive impact in the world. It also means succeeding at growing these businesses so that they can create valuable returns and rewards for management teams, investors, customers, employees and communities.
ABOUT THE HOST
Julian Castelli is the founder of Growth Elevated. He has been leading Tech Companies for over 20 years as a Founder, CEO, COO, CFO, Board Chair, Board Director and Executive Coach. Julian has been hosting Tech Leaders at the annual Growth Elevated Ski + Tech Summit since 2018 and currently works helping to scale a number of exciting growth stage companies.
Be a Guest
We look forward to learning from all types of leaders, investors and advisors. We've had great discusions with Founders, CEOs,CFOs, CROs, CTOs Board Directors, Venture Capital Investors, PE Investors and Operating Partners, Executive Coaches and all sorts of Advisors. If your work involves helping Tech Companies win, we want to hear from you!
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Your input could shape the next episode. Let's make this podcast a conversation we all want to be a part of. Drop your suggestions below and let's explore the world of ideas together!