The Founder's Playbook: Recent Episodes
Chris Vasquez
Imagine that you are friends with hundreds of the most successful Entrepreneurs, Executives & Investors on the planet.
Now imagine that each one of them has a playbook detailing their most valuable strategies, lessons and tactics that have allowed them to build and lead wildly successful companies... and now they’re yours.
That is what The Founder’s Playbook Podcast delivers.
Hosted by Entrepreneur & Philanthropist, Chris Vasquez, this show is built to empower you with the mindset, tools and actionable advice to help you actualize your full potential as an entrepreneur and human being.
Whether you’re thinking about “taking the leap” into entrepreneurship, or you want to take your business to the next level, our mission is help you maximize your success and impact.
Connect with Chris on social media & share any questions that you would love for us to cover on the show!
LinkedIn: Chris Vasquez (Quantum Talent Group) Instagram: @chrisvasquezofficial www.thequantumtalentgroup.com
Greg Segall is the Founder & CEO at Alyce. Previously, he was CEO and Founder at See Fit. Greg received his Bachelor's degree from Boston University.
On this episode:
- Hear Greg’s evolution as an entrepreneur.
- Discover how he grew his business and sold it.
- Learn why greg was dissatisfied after selling his business.
- Chris and Greg discuss the mindset you need to find fulfillment besides just chasing money.
- Greg tells a story of buying keywords in the early days of Google.
- Learn the 3 Pillars of Giving.
Key Takeaways:
- Ensure you build repeatability in your agency business.
- Become the best and you don’t have to worry about the competition.
- A CEO's job is to always say no.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “If you’re not spending 50% of your time looking for new business and 50% of your time working, your agency is not going to work.”
Eric is the co-founder and CEO of Ramp (http://ramp.com), the only corporate card that helps companies spend less. He previously co-founded Paribus, a digital tool that automates price protection and shipping guarantees at online retailers (acq. in 2016 by Capital One). Eric is an active New York-based angel investor. He graduated from Harvard with a BA in Economics and East Asian Studies, and was raised in Las Vegas.
EXCLUSIVE for The Founder's Playbook listeners, get a FREE Platform Plan + $500 Bonus!
Sign Up Here: https://ramp.com/partners/the-founders-playbook
On this episode:
- Eric explains the background of ramp and how they tackled price adjustment policies.
- Learn when you should take a calculated risk.
- Hear how you can set up for a successful exit.
- Discover how to successfully acquire funding for your venture.
- Get the steps to grow to the next level by finding and hiring other talented team members.
Key Takeaways:
- Once you have an idea, take time to see if it’s a real need.
- Businesses get bought, they rarely get sold.
- Often, the most talented people know the other most talented people in their space.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “Stress is good but you shouldn’t be in a panic.”
Kris Rudeegraap is the co-founder and CEO of Sendoso, the leading Sending Platform. Kris has more than a decade of sales experience and has spent time at Talkdesk, Yapstone, and Piqora. During that time, he discovered that creating meaningful engagements through direct mail and gifting was an effective way to drive demand and increase sales—which helped inspire the idea for Sendoso. Kris is a California native and CSU-Chico alum currently residing in the Bay Area.
On this episode:
- Learn how Kris built an epic brand.
- Discover how you can dominate in a crowded market.
- Kris breaks down the founding and purpose of his company, Sendosa.
- Discover how to scale your own SaaS venture.
- Hear the obstacles that Kris had to overcome in his business early on.
Key Takeaways:
- Create Minimum Viable Product first.
- You can't continue to hold something old in your hand while reaching for something new.
- You can't rely on a friend's responses to know if you have a market product fit.
Tweetable Quotes:
- "Celebrate micro-milestones." – Kris Rudeegraap
About Andrew Gazdecki:
I’m Andrew Gazdecki and I’ve been an entrepreneur for longer than I can remember. I like to build stuff, mostly companies, and try to tell a story that goes beyond what the company does to how it’s changing markets.
I've started two companies, Bizness Apps and Altcoin.io, both acquired.
I have been featured in NYT, Forbes, WSJ, Inc.com, and Entrepreneur Magazine, as well as prominent industry blogs such as Mashable, TechCrunch and VentureBeat.
Awards and accolades:
2014 - Inc. 500 #58 Fastest Growing Company
2014 - Inc. 500 #2 Fastest Growing Company in San Francisco
2015 - Inc. 500 #91 Fastest Growing Company
2015 - Entreprenuer.com: Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America
2015 and 2016 - G2 Crowd: Top 50 SMB Products
2015 and 2016 - TINYPulse: Top 10% for Employee Happiness
2017 - Inc. Magazine's 30 Under 30 Entrepreneurs
On this episode:
- Andrew shares his background as an entrepreneur.
- Learn how to build a profitable software company from the ground up.
- Learn the 0-1 process for building a product.
- Discover when you should consider monetizing.
Key Takeaways:
- Watch trends when determining what product to create.
- Create strong relationships with buyers over time, even if you’re not yet ready to sell.
- Be someone that people want to root for.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “As long as I’m having fun, I’m happy.” – Andrew Gazdecki
- “Leverage is the name of the game.” – Chris Vasquez
Maju was previously a Vice President at Amazon. He managed all global logistics (referred to as Global Mile), as well as all Amazon Prime fulfillment technology teams worldwide. In his role he looked after the entire business unit spanning business, product, engineering, and operations. Maju rose the ranks at Amazon, becoming one of the company’s fastest rising engineering stars. He eventually led one of the largest global engineering teams at the company – a team consisting of thousands.
It can’t be denied that Amazon has changed consumer expectations for shopping online and raised the bar for retailers. It’s why companies like Bolt need to exist. We bring that same instant, One Click Checkout experience to the rest of retail. Maju played a critical role in scaling the products and technology that power worldwide Amazon Prime Fulfillment, which shaped consumer expectations around delivery speed.
On this episode:
- Maju shares the secrets to leadership, operational excellence, and scaling.
- Learn how to build a self-managing business.
- Find out how to scale your business.
- Get the fundamental pieces you need to build a team that can take your vision to the next level.
- Hear why Maju transitioned to Bolt from Amazon.
Key Takeaways:
- Define what excellence looks like for your team.
- Communicate clearly with a firm action plan.
- Surround yourself with problem solvers.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “Whatever you create upfront is what scales.” – Chris Vasquez
- “A company can’t be better than their teams.” – Chris Vasquez
Shishir Mehrotra is the cofounder and CEO of Coda, a new doc for teams that combines documents, spreadsheets, and powerful building blocks into a single canvas. Shishir was formerly an executive at YouTube, overseeing the YouTube product. Over his 6 years tenure, he helped grow YouTube to the world's largest video destination, one of Google's largest and fastest growing businesses, and the platform of choice for a new generation of video creators. Prior to Google, Shishir spent 6 years at Microsoft and held leadership roles in the Windows, Office, and SQL Server divisions. Before Microsoft, Shishir was the founding CEO of Centrata. Shishir is an MIT graduate, and was awarded the Technology Review's TR35 ("35 innovators under 35") award in 2012. He has been an advisor to Spotify since 2015 and joined the board in June 2017. On this episode:
- Learn why Shishir made the difficult decision to leave YouTube and start a company of his own.
- Shishir explains why he was hesitant to found his own company.
- Discover how to stand out in a crowded marketplace.
- Learn the secrets to hiring well.
- Discover how to properly manage and develop your expectations.
Key Takeaways:
- Great businesses have an incredibly simple core thesis.
- Be brutally honest when you’re wrong.
- Ask every candidate you interview to do a presentation.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “By the time the whole world thinks a category exists, you can’t start the company anymore."
- “Entrepreneurship is full of naysayers.”
Chris sits down with Jim Benton.
Jim Benton, CEO of Chorus.ai, is a revenue-generating visionary; translating customer needs into innovative solutions. As Co-Founder of ClearSlide and later as CEO of Apollo, Jim helped create the Sales Engagement category. From Evite to AdBrite to ClearSlide, Jim has expanded new categories and scaled revenue teams to grow from zero to tens of millions in high-margin SaaS revenue. Beginning his career as a practitioner, Jim credits his success to a highly successful and methodical SMB + Enterprise sales motion. He is still part of YC-Backed Apollo’s board.
On this episode:
- Jim explains how sales was his path to entrepreneurship.
- Learn about the origins of ClearSlide and how Jim learned to pitch the concept effectively.
- Discover how Jim and his team built and leveraged their network.
Key Takeaways:
- You must know how to start building and scaling teams.
- With a start-up, you must be comfortable making things happen, picking up the phone, finding ways to teach yourself and learn.
- Get comfortable delegating.
- Make sure your steps are in alignment with your company vision.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “I always have believed that people can achieve anything if they just know what they want.”
- “If you're aligned and setting bold goals, then really it's about execution from there and understanding what's blocking us and having the right time to talk through it. It's a lot easier to challenge and push people to do the best work.”
“It's not about the metrics. It's not actually how we did on the items. As I always tell the team, it's how we communicated and came together to see eye-to-eye on actually, where we stand.”
Sid Viswanathan is the Co-founder and President of Truepill. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering. He then joined Johnson & Johnson, working in the medical device and pharmaceutical sectors. In 2010, Sid founded his first company, CardMunch, a business-card scanning app.
Within a year the business was acquired by LinkedIn. Sid joined the company as Product Manager and saw CardMunch named one of Time Magazine’s Best Apps of 2012. After nearly four years at LinkedIn, he was ready for his next startup venture. Through his conversations with Co-founder Umar Afridi, it became clear that the pharmacy industry was ripe for a technological revolution. In 2016 Truepill shipped its first prescription and has since expanded its services to deliver an end-to-end, direct-to-patient experience unlike anything else in the marketplace.
On This Episode:
- Sid shares the background of True Pill and what led to it starting as a company.
- Hear the first “a-ha” moments Sid and his team had in their business.
- Learn how to grow your company to your first hundred customers.
- Chris and Sid discuss the importance of having strongly defined core values.
Tips from Sheldon's Playbook:
- Try to build solid relationships with those who are in the industry you want to grow in.
- Your mindset must continually evolve as you grow your team – while still staying true to your core values.
- Rewrite your job description every six months.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “Either you gotta get back or you’re going to die.”
- “Our level of success will never exceed our level of personal development.”
Sheldon Lewis is co-founder and Managing Director of Blueprint. Prior to co-founding Blueprint, Lewis was Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Business Development at PayLease where he identified and executed strategic initiatives to accelerate the Company’s growth trajectory. Prior to PayLease, Lewis was a
Senior Associate with Mainsail Partners, a San Francisco-based growth equity firm, where he was responsible for sourcing and executing new investments, as well as working with portfolio companies. Early in his career, Lewis was an Analyst with Piper Jaffray’s Technology Investment Banking group where he executed mergers and acquisitions and capital markets transactions in alternative energy, Internet, software, and semiconductor sectors. Prior to Piper Jaffray, Lewis held positions at Deloitte, Transition Partners Limited, and Sargent Bickham Lagudis. Lewis is a graduate of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Tips from Sheldon's Playbook:
- Put in the reps.
- Don’t be ashamed of rejection.
- Find a good partner who you can be Yin and Yang with.
Tweetable Quotes:
The leader is always the bottleneck. – Chris Vasquez
Chris Ronzio started his first business when he was 14, and throughout his entrepreneurial journey, developed a passion for technology, efficiency, and making business easier. He is energized by progress and driven by process.
Chris spent a decade building a national video production company that would net over $3 million and sold that business before turning 25, at which point he started a consulting agency called Organize Chaos. After working directly with hundreds of entrepreneurs, Chris and his team created a software tool to help organize small and growing businesses.
This software turned startup success story, called Trainual, provides a way to capture every process, policy, and procedure for every role and responsibility in a single scalable knowledge base, making it easy to train and grow your teams.
At the heart of this work is a desire to help business leaders find the time to do more of what they love.
By providing a way to document and delegate what you do, and create a scalable operations manual, Trainual is doing just that for business owners, team leaders, and hiring managers worldwide.
Additionally, Chris is an investor, part-owner, and/or on the board of 5 other companies, an Inc Magazine columnist, and the author of “100 Hacks To Improve Your Business.”
He recently launched the Process Makes Perfect podcast, interviewing top authors and experts in building business systems and processes to explore their strategies and advice for scaling teams and companies into power-house organizations that can survive and even thrive without the owner at the helm.
Chris was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when he was 7 years old and never one to back away from a challenge, he developed a determination not to let his disease define his potential and played for multiple all-star baseball and basketball teams, today continues as a triathlete, all while balancing his breakout business success.
As a speaker, Chris combines his experience as a life-long diabetic, a serial entrepreneur, startup leader and athlete to share unique lessons and actionable insights that resonate with all types of professional audiences.
Bill Macaitis offers board advisory services where he shares his cumulative go-to-market knowledge leading marketing for the three fastest-growing SaaS companies in history: Slack (CRO/CMO), Zendesk (CMO), and Salesforce (SVP Marketing). He has achieved 5 exits over his career.
Bill now enjoys helping other companies achieve hyper-growth by developing cutting edge marketing strategies, helping them build out their own world-class marketing team, and implementing modern marketing tech stacks.
On This Episode:
- Bill talks about how optimism plays a role in his business success.
- Learn the importance of automation.
- Hear the story of Bill’s first start-up.
- Get secrets to branding a B2B company.
- Learn how to develop helpful metrics for your team.
Chris and Bill discuss how to stay innovative without waiting to move forward.
Key Takeaways
-
- The marketing playbook is always evolving.
- Infuse personality into your products to create an emotional bond with your customer. Don’t be afraid to have fun.
- Money is not as important as the mission.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “Your brand goes way beyond your logo.”
- “The lid of your success is you.”
Since 2019, Elisa Steele has served as Chair, Board of Directors at Namely, Inc., a financial and human capital management software company, where she served as Chief Executive Officer from 2018 to 2019. Ms. Steele previously served as Chief Executive Officer and President of Jive Software, Inc., a collaboration software company, which was acquired in June 2017. Ms. Steele was a member of the Jive Software executive leadership team since 2014. Prior to joining Jive Software, Ms. Steele served as Chief Marketing Officer and Corporate Vice President, Consumer Apps & Services at Microsoft Corporation, a worldwide provider of software, services and solutions, and Chief Marketing Officer of Skype, an Internet communications company, from 2012-2014. Ms. Steele also has held executive leadership positions Yahoo! Inc. and NetApp, Inc. Ms. Steele has served as a member of the board of directors of Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc., a learning and human capital management software company, since 2018. Ms. Steele holds a B.S. from the University of New Hampshire and an M.B.A. from San Francisco State University.
On This Episode:
- Learn the belief systems that Elisa has carried through her career.
- Find out how sales helped Elisa get hooked on the idea of impact.
- Discover the keys to creating a solid product for your customer.
- Get tips regarding how to pivot.
- Elisa explains what you should takeaway from failure.
Key Takeaways
-
- Develop a broad collection of experiences in life and business.
- Don’t be afraid to innovate in uncharted territory.
- Build an advisory board around you.
Tweetable Quotes:
- Good leaders respect and admire the talents in their people.
- If you don’t have a diverse team, you’re not going to perform at your top performance.
- Be yourself and be okay with that.
- Marketing is about influence.
Andrew co-founded Outreach in 2014 and served as VP of Product Strategy. He began his career in design, working for agencies in the Bay Area until 2009 when he moved to Seattle and transitioned to designing product at Pelago. He has since left his role at Outreach and is now working on solving problems in climate change.
He is driven by the idea that certain technologies will significantly move our society forward, and that if we can simply dream of the future, we can work our way backward from that dream and find our path forward. He is also a passionate believer in setting exceptionally high bars, and working to find a way to reach them. He holds a BFA from the California College of Design and lives in Seattle with his wife and his adorable (but spoiled) dog Cody.
On This Episode:
- Andrew and Chris go back before the genesis of Outreach and the failed venture that led them there.
- Learn how to pivot from failure.
- Andrew explains how to become a successful product owner.
- Learn common pitfalls when trying to serve your customer base.
Key Takeaways
-
- Take time to look at the data from your failures.
- Test really rough ideas as soon as possible to see if there is interest.
- Know when to pivot.
Tweetable Quotes:
- "You want strong visceral reactions."
- "Nobody pays for a hammer, they pay for what a hammer gets you."
Quentin was CTO of Dropbox, a company that’s brought millions of consumers, teams, and business onto the cloud. As CTO, he was integral to taking the company public, leading the engineering, product, design, and growth teams throughout the process. Quentin also helped broaden the company’s portfolio with the HelloSign acquisition and the recent launch of their new team-oriented collaboration product, Dropbox Spaces.
Prior to Dropbox, Quentin spent nearly two decades with Microsoft, starting as a software engineer, then product manager, and eventually leading the entire family of data products — from Microsoft SQL Server, the BI products, no-SQL, and ML capabilities on-prem and in Azure. After Microsoft, Quentin joined SAP and helped to build the company’s growth strategy, first as their CTO, then leading strategy, corpdev, M&A and strategic partnerships. As a part of that role, he helped SAP spin-up an emerging business unit with a venture mindset for working directly with the startup community.
On This Episode:
- Learn how crucial a clear vision is to your career path.
- Discover the importance of becoming. self-aware of your own limitations.
- Hear the key philosophies to building high-performing teams.
- Get a few helpful interview questions to ask potential team members.
- Quentin shares how he chooses what founders he makes bets on.
Key Takeaways
To be a full-stack leader you must possess the following qualities:
-
- Vision
- Strategy
- Leadership
- Management
- Technical Accuity
- Business Accuity
Tweetable Quotes:
- It’s very easy to mask people dysfunction with short-term success.
Dr. Pantas Sutardja is founder, president and CEO of Latticework.
A legend in the storage industry, Dr. Sutardja has over 25 years of experience in the storage and semiconductor industry. He began his career at IBM Almaden Research Center where he developed the company’s first CMOS read channel chip. Dr. Sutardja and his brother would eventually team up to create Marvell Technology Group Limited in 1995, turning a startup into a publicly traded global leader in storage with several billion storage chips sold to date.
Now, Dr. Sutardja has turned his storage sights to the hybrid cloud with Latticework leading the development of hybrid cloud-edge solutions to meet consumer demand for more storage and bandwidth related to skyrocketing data and video usage. The company’s first product, Amber, is the first personal storage device that provides consumers with security and privacy not available in public offerings.
In his personal life, Dr. Sutardja is a noted philanthropist, establishing the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at UC Berkeley, and, with his wife, creating a private foundation with an initial focus on education and medical fields.
Dr. Sutardja holds BS, MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from University of California, Berkeley.
On This Episode:
- Learn how to turn your hobby into a career.
- Pantas trajects the abnormal trajectory of his career from childhood onward.
- Discover the power of a challenge.
- Chris and Pantas define what it means to work hard.
Key Takeaways
- Having a cushion when you start your first business is incredibly valuable.
- When someone says, “you can’t do it” let that be a challenge.
- Your team must have authentic confidence in themselves.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “Management has to lead by example.”
- “Your culture is a summation of your behaviors.”
Tracy leads the people experience programs at Zenefits including employee engagement, compensation, benefits, learning and development, employee relations, talent acquisition, and employment branding. Prior to Zenefits, she held HR leadership roles at Genesys, MobiTV, Inc., and Organic Inc. Passionate about the impact of inclusive business cultures, she taught at San Francisco State University for over 10 years, where she demystified human resources management for newcomers to the field. Tracy holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Sonoma State University. Holding a bachelor’s degree in English from Sonoma State University, Tracy was also a member of the faculty at San Francisco State University where she demystified human resources management for newcomers to the field for over 10 years.
On This Episode:
- Learn how HR has changed due to the pandemic
- Discover the best ways to keep communication open when working remotely.
- Tracy explains what companies should look for in leaders.
Key Takeaways
- Work is no longer about where you go, it’s what you do and who with.
- How you incentivize people is important, be mindful of how you reward your team.
- Hire people who have a predisposition to your values.
Tweetable:
- “Your either a builder, an optimizer, or a maintainer.”
- “Don’t just hire for the job, hire for the team.”
Blair Shane is currently Partner & CMO at Sequoia Capital where she leads a team focused on helping founders build legendary companies. Her experience makes her well suited to helping a partnership and portfolio made up of diverse, intelligent and driven individuals drive results. Prior to Sequoia, Blair was CMO & Associate Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she revitalized its marketing function. She joined Stanford from the California Academy of Sciences where, as CMO, she re-opened the museum in 2008 and launched new programs such as NightLife and variable pricing to rejuvenate attendance. Before that, Blair spent seven years at Charles Schwab where she was VP of marketing planning and integration. In whatever job she is in, Blair is passionate about creating new possibilities and getting what may be perceived as impossible done.
On This Episode:
- Learn the qualities that you should adopt to be successful.
- Discover how to take your product to market and ensure it's well-received.
- Chris and Blair define the difference between brand marketing and performance marketing.
- Blair describes her own evolution.
Doug Winter is the co-founder and CEO of Seismic, a unicorn SaaS company valued at over $1B based out of San Diego, CA. Prior to Seismic, Doug also successfully built and sold his last company, Objectiva Software Solutions, for $90M.
Key Points:
- How Doug decided that Seismic was an idea worth going "all in" on.
- How to build a foundation that scales
- How Doug and his co-founders approached built a high performing company culture
- The most important keys to raising capital (and if you should)
- Leadership Do's and Don'ts based on Doug's experience building numerous companies
Key Quotes:
- "At some point, you gotta be a little bit stupid and just go for it."
- “Get customer validation early and often."
- "You can build an incredible product, but if you don't know how to sell it, don't know how to take it to market, no one is ever going to know about it."
- "If you don't know who your first ten customers could be or should be, then you probably haven't thought through things enough..."
Doug Winter
https://seismic.com/
About Scot Chisholm:
Scot is the CEO & Co-Founder of Classy, a social enterprise that creates world-class online fundraising software for nonprofits, modernizing the giving experience to accelerate global social impact. Since 2011, thousands of nonprofits have collectively raised nearly two billion dollars on the Classy platform, tackling social and environmental issues of every kind.
Scot co-founded Classy when one of the largest cancer organizations in the country refused to accept the money he raised during a fundraising pub crawl held to honor his mom, a two-time breast cancer survivor. Scot was inspired to start Classy to make it easier for anyone to support a cause that’s meaningful to them, while at the same time making it easier for organizations to make lasting connections with the next generation of supporters. Based in San Diego, CA, Classy has over 200 employees and has raised $40 million to-date in growth capital from prominent technology investors, including Mithril Capital Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Hinge Capital and Bullpen Capital. Classy is well known for its company culture and social enterprise business model that includes the Classy Awards, now the largest social impact award show in the country, its early support of the Pledge 1% movement, and its employee giving program called #ClassyGives. Most recently, Classy was recognized as a Glassdoor Best Place to Work, San Diego Union-Tribune Top Workplace and Entrepreneur Best Company Cultures.
Scot’s recent recognitions include Glassdoor as a “Top CEO in the United States”, San Diego Business Journal as one of the “40 Next Top Business Leaders Under 40” and the “500 Most Influential Business Leaders in San Diego”, and Businessweek as one of the “Top 5 Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs.” Scot currently serves on the Leadership Council for the California Nature Conservancy, on the Board of Directors at Street Soccer USA and ASC San Diego and on the Advisory Board at Team Rubicon, having previously served a four-year term on the founding Board of Directors. Scot is also an active investor, investing out of a fund called Tall Timbers that includes public and private investments with a focus on SaaS and socially responsible businesses.
Scot is a frequent speaker on social entrepreneurship, trends in giving, and the journey of scaling a startup-for-good. Past speaking appearances include Amazon’s Imagine A Better World Conference; TEDx; Dreamforce; SaaStr; Collision; SOCAP; AFP; Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC); and Inbound.
Prior to Classy, Scot worked at Booz Allen Hamilton and helped create and lead their Lean Six Sigma practice on the west coast. Scot received a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
On This Episode:
- Learn how Classy went from a passion project to full-fledged business.
- Hear how to create and market your product offering.
- Discover the way to create a culture that scales.
- Find out what early-stage entrepreneurs MUST get right from the beginning.
About Scot Chisholm:
Scot is the CEO & Co-Founder of Classy, a social enterprise that creates world-class online fundraising software for nonprofits, modernizing the giving experience to accelerate global social impact. Since 2011, thousands of nonprofits have collectively raised nearly two billion dollars on the Classy platform, tackling social and environmental issues of every kind.
Scot co-founded Classy when one of the largest cancer organizations in the country refused to accept the money he raised during a fundraising pub crawl held to honor his mom, a two-time breast cancer survivor. Scot was inspired to start Classy to make it easier for anyone to support a cause that’s meaningful to them, while at the same time making it easier for organizations to make lasting connections with the next generation of supporters. Based in San Diego, CA, Classy has over 200 employees and has raised $40 million to-date in growth capital from prominent technology investors, including Mithril Capital Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Hinge Capital and Bullpen Capital. Classy is well known for its company culture and social enterprise business model that includes the Classy Awards, now the largest social impact award show in the country, its early support of the Pledge 1% movement, and its employee giving program called #ClassyGives. Most recently, Classy was recognized as a Glassdoor Best Place to Work, San Diego Union-Tribune Top Workplace and Entrepreneur Best Company Cultures.
Scot’s recent recognitions include Glassdoor as a “Top CEO in the United States”, San Diego Business Journal as one of the “40 Next Top Business Leaders Under 40” and the “500 Most Influential Business Leaders in San Diego”, and Businessweek as one of the “Top 5 Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs.” Scot currently serves on the Leadership Council for the California Nature Conservancy, on the Board of Directors at Street Soccer USA and ASC San Diego and on the Advisory Board at Team Rubicon, having previously served a four-year term on the founding Board of Directors. Scot is also an active investor, investing out of a fund called Tall Timbers that includes public and private investments with a focus on SaaS and socially responsible businesses.
Scot is a frequent speaker on social entrepreneurship, trends in giving, and the journey of scaling a startup-for-good. Past speaking appearances include Amazon’s Imagine A Better World Conference; TEDx; Dreamforce; SaaStr; Collision; SOCAP; AFP; Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC); and Inbound.
Prior to Classy, Scot worked at Booz Allen Hamilton and helped create and lead their Lean Six Sigma practice on the west coast. Scot received a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
On This Episode:
- Learn how Classy went from a passion project to full-fledged business.
- Hear how to create and market your product offering.
- Discover the way to create a culture that scales.
- Find out what early-stage entrepreneurs MUST get right from the beginning.
About David Fano:
I am a serial entrepreneur and senior leader known for building high growth teams. Most recently I served as Chief Growth Officer of WeWork, where I was responsible for driving their rapid expansion and as a result increasing revenue 100% year-over-year for 4 consecutive years to a $4 billion annual run rate.
Trained as an architect, my interests and expertise lie in connecting technology and data to help people work. Working cross functionally , I enable new insights into the knowledge management of technology, and develop approaches that leverage data to deliver value and drive business performance. I received his Master of Architecture with honors from Columbia University and was an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University's GSAPP from 2006 - 2012. I have led seminars and workshops focusing on the impact of technology on design processes at conferences such as Autodesk University, RTC North America and AIA's Technology in Architectural Practice.
On This Episode:
- David shares his background in architecture and why he got disenchanted with the industry.
- Learn how David quickly scaled to $4 BILLION.
- Find out the keys to building a high performing team.
Key Takeaways:
- Make sure you don’t expand to quickly into other products. Focus on your blue ocean.
- When it comes to leading a team, you must have a combination of autonomy and structure.
- Just because something worked a certain way today doesn’t mean it will work the same way tomorrow.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “Every level is a new devil.”
- “Systematically build empathy.”
- “You don’t have an awesome career by yourself.”
- “The answer doesn’t have to be ‘start a company.’”
Sergey Sundukovskiy, Ph.D. has over 20 years of experience serving in capacities of Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer and Chief Product Officer. Sergey specializes in implementation of subscription based high volume SaaS platforms, with strong emphasis on early stage product development and market deployment. Specific areas of expertise include A/B Testing, Big Data, Video Management, eCommerce, RTB platforms and Cloud Computing.
Sergey often mentors first-time founders and advises early stage Startups with emphasis on Product Development, Product Market Testing, Public Relations, Product Marketing, Team Building, Customer Success and Organizational Management
On This Episode:
- Sergey shares the steps to building a successful company.
- Find out how to determine your audience.
- Get a play-by-play for taking a product from idea to market.
Key Takeaways:
- Select an idea that is adjacent possible.
- Build a product that is both sustainable and economically feasible.
- Think of debt as fuel.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “Ideas are not products and products are not companies.”
- “It’s never too early to start building culture.”
In the past two decades, Nowell Outlaw's achievements include five career exits, four acquisitions, and an IPO; the acquisition, transformation, and resuscitation of two businesses; building two other profitable companies and helping to scale a startup’s revenues from $0 to $30MM in less than 36 months. And most recently, the turn-around and acquisition of a $50MM Series C VC funded AI company.
On This Episode:
- Learn how Nowell assesses opportunities to partner with companies.
- Hear the pros and cons of venture capital.
- Get key principles regarding leadership.
Key Takeaways:
- Your pitch has to be value.
- Venture Capital is an accelerant to large growth.
- Your attention to your customer is paramount.
Nowell Outlaw:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nowelloutlaw/
Kyle’s foray into B2B tech sales started in 2013 when he joined Looker as the 6th employee. Over the next 6 years, he grew the SDR team from 1 to 60+ as the company scaled from $100k in ARR to $100m+, and was acquired by Google for $2.6b. Kyle is now the VP of Revenue Growth & Enablement for Clari, an AI-driven revenue operations & sales analytics platform, where he leads Growth Marketing, SDR, and Enablement.
Key Takeaways:
- The job of the leader is to provide what and why needs to happen, not necessarily how it needs to happen.
- Weekly metrics win the day
- The process is what matters most
- Don’t send emails that are just about you.
- Personalize the first line in your email
Kyle Coleman:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyletcoleman
Rahul is the founder and CEO of Superhuman, the fastest email experience in the world. Superhuman users get through their inbox twice as fast as before — and many see Inbox Zero for the first time in years! In 2019, Superhuman raised $33M in a Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Previously, Rahul founded Rapportive, the first Gmail plugin to scale to millions of users, which was acquired by LinkedIn.
On This Episode:
- Learn how Rahul entered the productivity space.
- Hear Rahul's process for hiring team members.
- Discover the biggest challenge Rahul and his team faced when scaling.
Key Takeaways:
- Have a cohesive leadership team.
- Hire leaders who know how to operate at a larger scale.
- Set your values up front.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “The customer should build your product for you." – Chris Vasquez
Rahul Vohra
- superhuman.com
Jeetu Patel is Chief Product Officer at Box. He leads the company's product strategy, driving Box’s long-term roadmap and vision for cloud content management in the enterprise. Previously, as Chief Strategy Officer and SVP of Platform at Box, Jeetu led the creation of the Box Platform business unit, overseeing product strategy, marketing, and developer relations. He grew the team from a nascent product to a revenue-generating business line and key element on Box’s overall suite of offerings. He also led corporate development & M&A strategy as well as Box for Industries.
Before joining Box, Jeetu was General Manager and Chief Executive of EMC’s Syncplicity business unit which he grew from $0 to $100M in 2.5 years. Prior to EMC, Jeetu was president of Doculabs, a research and advisory firm co-owned by Forrester Research focused on collaboration and content management across a range of industries, including financial services, insurance, energy, manufacturing, and life sciences.
Jeetu holds a B.S. in Information Decision Sciences from the University of Illinois Chicago.
On This Episode:
- Jeetu discusses how COVID-19 has impacted their day to day operations.
- Learn how Jeetu keeps his team motivated even when he can’t be with them in person.
- Hear how injustice has inspired Jeetu’s team.
- Discover the key to hiring a good team.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “There's no two right answers in most issues.”
“Extremely smart people do insanely logical things for exactly right reasons that kill businesses all the time.”
Jeetu's Top Plays:
- You have to articulate purpose to bring people together.
- Disruption only comes when you are successful.
- Build something a few people love as opposed to something that everybody likes.
Jeetu Patel:
- twitter.com/Jpatel41
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeetupatel/
Chris Yeh is the co-author, along with Reid Hoffman, of Blitzscaling, the book that explains how to build world-changing companies like Amazon, Alibaba, and Airbnb in record time.
A writer, investor, and entrepreneur, Chris has had a ringside seat in the world of startups and scaleups since 1995. His books help founders, venture capitalists, corporate leaders, policymakers, and everyday people better understand how the internet has changed the way we work together to build amazing organizations.
Hundreds of companies, from garage-dwelling startups to Fortune 50 titans have tapped his knowledge and insights to accelerate and transform their businesses.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “During tough times, because there is less competition there’s more room for people who are really serious about starting companies to build their business before the competition comes in.”
- “The whole point of business Is to make money.”
- “The most powerful force in the universe must be the Google Calendar.”
Chris Yeh's Top Plays:
- Increase the value of your company through the “network effect."
- Your organization should feel like an alliance as opposed to a family.
- Calendar out your personal work tasks.
- Achieve a critical level of scale.
- Build a team of specialists.
Chris Yeh:
- ChrisYeh.com
- The Chris Yeh Podcast
- twitter.com/chrisyeh
Jeff Diana is an Investor & former Executive at several legendary tech companies. He is also an advisor for companies like Calendly & Twine Labs.
Jeff is the former Chief People Officer at Atlassian, a now $42 Billion dollar company with the highest revenue/valuation multiple of any company in history traded in the stock exchange.
He was responsible for the recruitment, growth and development of Atlassian's most important asset – its people – across its global presence, as well as for the growth and protection of Atlassian's unique corporate culture.
Prior to joining Atlassian in 2012, Jeff was CPO at SuccessFactors (an SAP company), where he built a new HR function from the ground up, played an integral role in designing the company's roadmap, and hosted speaking engagements with customers worldwide. Previously, Jeff was Chief HR Officer at Safeco, where he helped drive a re-invention and growth strategy and handled key negotiations on the people aspects of a merger with Liberty Mutual. Jeff has also held HR leadership roles at Microsoft, General Electric and Bell South. Jeff holds a master's degree in sociology from the University of South Carolina-Columbia, and a master's degree in HR management from the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. He's also on the advisory board for Smart Recruiters.
Tweetable Quotes:
- "No founder is an expert in everything." – Jeff Diana
- "Put your freaking investors to work." – Jeff Diana
- "Think business first and then figure out how to translate that into the function you’re working, that will always differentiate you." – Jeff Diana
Jeff Diana's Top Plays:
- Have a clearly defined mission.
- What you do and how you do it matter equally.
- Understand your zone of genius.
- Narrow down your concept until you can’t narrow it any further.
- Find your friction points with team members and investors early on.
Laying the groundwork for why I created the show, and exactly what you can expect from myself and our guests.