Episoder
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Devin Bramhall, growth advisor and former CEO of Animalz—the content marketing agency for companies like Amazon, Google, and Intercom—shares candid stories about 3xing the agency's revenue to $11.5M in only 2 years.
Devin Bramhall is a content marketing legend.
After 3xing revenue to $11.5M in only 2 years at Animalz, she went on to build a successful consulting biz while growing her marketing podcast, Don't Say Content.
This week, Devin joins Alex to discuss:
How she scaled AnimalzHer advice for startups thinking about contentHow she grew her podcast -
Eloise (Shuttleworth) Salisbury, newly named Chief Customer Officer at AutogenAI, recounts lessons from 5 years of building Iterable's customer success program from the ground up, how she's approaching her first 90 days in a new CS leadership role, and why she founded Women in SaaS.
What does it take to build an enterprise-level customer success program?
Eloise Salisbury, Chief Customer Officer at AutogenAI, joins us this week to break down what she learned scaling Iterable's customer success program.
Eloise joined Iterable, a cross-channel marketing enablement platform, after their Series B.
In her five years with the company, she scaled their CS to an international audience, introduced an enterprise CS and implementation track, which ultimately helped the company grow to a $2 billion valuation.
In today’s episode, Alex and Eloise discuss:
how to build mid-market and enterprise CS teamswhat makes an ideal CS/sales relationshiphow she's approaching the first 90 days at AutogenAIwhy she founded Women in Saas (and her advice for women in tech leadership) -
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Derek Osgood, Founder & CEO of Ignition, shares product marketing lessons from leading 9 major launches at PlayStation, reinventing a software category at Rippling, and founding Ignition—a product management platform.
Derek Osgood is a career product marketer turned founder.
He's made a career out of leading product launches at PlayStation and Rippling before founding Ignition, a go-to-market platform designed to help businesses launch products.
In today’s show, Derek joins Alex to talk about:
how his PlayStation game launch experience lends itself to SaaShow Rippling thought about reinventing a product categorytransitioning to the role of founder at his own companyhis best practices for a successful product launch -
Jen Igartua, CEO at Go Nimbly, shares what she's learned in her 8 years of building a service-based business, plus tons of advice for RevOps teams.
Jen Igartua, CEO of Go Nimbly, joins Alex on this week's episode to talk all things RevOps.
First she uncovers what went into building her RevOps consultancy, including how they developed their service offerings, how they stay profitable, and how they recruit talent.
Then, Jen and Alex dive deep into RevOps, where Jen shares tips on building a RevOps roadmap, structuring a RevOps team, and picking your tool stack.
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Casey Armstrong, CMO of ShipBob, shares marketing lessons from his 5 years growing ShipBob to a $1b valuation.
Casey Armstrong knows his way around ecommerce marketing – he's led both B2B and B2C marketing teams during his career.
On this week's episode, Alex and Casey go deep on ShipBob’s startup marketing strategy, including:
Why they started with only a few channelsCasey's advice for partnering with bigger brandsHow they built out their marketing teamHow their messaging has evolved with their ICP -
Open AI's Conor Dragomanovich shares his personal sales career growth story at Productboard, where he went from founding AE to VP of Commercial Sales in only 5 years.
As a two-time founding AE, Conor Dragomanovich knows all about what it takes to start and build a successful sales team.
On today's episode, Conor and Alex chat about
Productboard's early product-led sales processWhat it was like to transition into an enterprise roleThe transition from managing reps to managing managersHow to hire a founding AEWhat sales looks like at OpenAI -
Chris Gadek, CRO at AdQuick, shares the company's growth story and best practices for out-of-home advertising in B2B.
Out-of-home advertising is one of the most underrated strategies for B2B startups.
Billboards might feel like a tactic reserved for large corporations, but Chris Gadek from AdQuick actually recommends them for Series A startups.
That's why he's joining us for a crash course on running out-of-home ads.
On this week's episode, Alex and Chris discuss:
Building AdQuick's two-sided marketplaceHow AdQuick digitized an old-school industryWhat you need to run a strong billboard campaign -
Lish Barber, Senior Director of Enablement at Sigma Computing, shares stories and lessons from building early enablement programs at iHeartMedia, Algolia, and Sigma Computing.
After starting her career in sales at iHeartMedia, Lish Barber accidentally fell into a sales operations role overnight.
It was there that she started her long career in enablement — building programs for technical products like Algolia and Lattice before landing her current role at Sigma Computing.
In today's episode, Lish and Alex talk all things enablement, including:
How to balance product vs. process in technical sales education What goes into a great sales kickoffWhere sales enablement sits on a cross-functional teamWhat tools should be in every enablement tech stack -
Pete Hancock, former VP of National Sales at Yelp and current SVP of Global Sales at Restream, shares stories from the early days of Yelp's go-to-market plan.
During his 11 years at Yelp, Pete Hancock helped the then-startup grow from $1m in revenue to over $750m.
He also built a rigorous sales program that trained thousands of AEs.
In this episode, Alex and Pete discuss:
What sales looked like in the earliest days of YelpYelp’s intense sales training programHow they built a community marketplace around the productPete’s transition to selling national accountsThe impact Yelp’s sales culture has had on the broader industry -
Kyle Norton, CRO of Owner, shares learnings from launching Shopify's retail POS program and building Owner's sales team.
Kyle Norton has led sales teams at two unicorn companies — League and Shopify.
While leading sales at League, he grew revenue to $20 million and scaled their sales team to 40 reps.
3 years later, he joined Shopify as Head of Revenue for their retail division to help roll out their point-of-sale products.
In today's episode, Kyle joins Alex to discuss:
Building 3 sales motions from scratch at LeagueWhy he made the move from startups to ShopifyShopify's POV sales pitchWorking with a first-time founder at Owner -
Hector Hernandez, CRO at Teleport, shares sales lessons from taking two developer-focused platforms — LaunchDarkly and Teleport — upmarket.
When Hector Hernandez joined LaunchDarkly in 2017, they already had $1 million in revenue. Instead of focusing just on scaling, they were looking for a sales team to help them evolve past their PLG motion.
Since then, Hector has helped LaunchDarkly grow to over $60M in revenue and a $3B valuation.
3 years later, he repeated his success with Traceable AI—helping them reach a $60M series B.
On today's episode, Alex and Hector go behind the scenes to uncover:
What it’s like to join a company in scale modeHow to move upmarket in the developer tech spaceHow selling to developers changed in 2023How to enable a great remote sales culture -
Jason Fishkind recounts Sprinklr's sales journey from $5m to $500M in ARR.
Sprinklr is one of the biggest names in social media management, but it didn't start out that way.
As Sprinklr's first AE, Jason Fishkind helped the company 100x their growth from $5M to $500M ARR -- accelerating them through their IPO and earning a valuation of over $4 billion.
On today's episode, Jason joins us to talk about a decade of sales growth at Sprinklr, including:
What it was like to sell social media in the early daysCharacteristics of a successful sellerHow he kept up with Sprinklr’s growthTips for selling enterprise AI tools -
Robby Allen, CRO of AgentSync, shares sales leadership stories from his time as Director of Sales Development at Zenefits.
Zenefits is one of the most infamous hypergrowth stories in SaaS history, growing to over $70 million ARR and a $4 billion valuation from 2013 to 2016.
But their hypergrowth came at a cost. Insurance compliance issues resulted in millions of dollars of fines, a leadership shakeup, and mass layoffs in 2017.
Robby Allen was there for all of it — bringing some key lessons from Zenefits to his next venture, leading sales at AgentSync.
On today's episode, Alex and Robby discuss:
Transitioning from SDR to sales leaderSpinning up Zenefits' outbound strategyWhy AgentSync hired scrappy AEs before enterprise repsThe difference between being a CRO and VP of SalesWorking with Jason Lemkin at SaaStr -
Chris Orlob shares his unlikely origin story as Gong's first marketer, sales leadership advice, and what it was like to transition entrepreneurship at Pclub.
In 2015, Chris faced tough competition when his newly founded company, Conversature, went up against Gong -- the eventual category winner.
Although he was forced to close his doors just one year later, a new one opened at Gong.
After joining as Gong's Head of Product Marketing, Chris started Gong Labs, one of the most successful content marketing programs in SaaS, and helped grow Gong from $200k to $200M ARR and a $7.2B valuation.
In 2022, he left Gong and leveraged his audience into co-founding Pclub.io — a sales learning platform, and QuotaSignal — a tech-enabled revenue team hiring service.
On today's episode, Alex and Chris discuss:
Going from competitor to Product Marketing Director at GongThe explosive growth of Gong LabsTransitioning from marketing to sales leadershipCo-Founding Pclub.io and QuotaSignal -
Todd Busler shares how his path from first go-to-market hire to VP of Sales at Heap led him to found his own tech company, Champify.
Being an early sales hire is a great test run for being a founder.
As the first sales hire at Heap, Todd helped the company grow from $300k to $40 million ARR and 10x their average contract value.
Six years later, he co-founded Champify, helping GTM teams sell more effectively with one innovative tool.
In today’s episode, Alex and Todd discuss:
How internal sales competition led to Heap’s growthThe evolution of Heap's competitive messagingHow the sales landscape has changed over timeThe differences between being an early sales hire vs. a founder -
Nico Dato, CMO of Entrata, shares lessons from growing Podium from a single-product review platform to a nine-figure, multi-product lead gen platform.
When Nico Dato joined Podium in 2015, they were a single-product review tool for SMBs with under $1m in revenue.
Over a 7-year period, Nico helped grow Podium to a multi-product lead conversion platform with over $100m in revenue.
For those counting at home, that's 100x growth.
In today’s episode, Alex and Nico discuss:
How Podium grew primarily through webinars and industry tradeshowsThe two most important relationships for every marketing leader (spoiler: it's Product and Sales)Why MQLs are a deceptive metricPlanning Entrata's massive user conferenceWhy you shouldn’t sleep on Utah as a tech hub -
Marie Gassée, Head of Go-to-market at Column, shares stories of growing self-serve at Box and Confluent.
Marie Gassée has an impressive track record building growth programs.
She led the launch of Box’s product-led motion and helped Confluent commercialize its open-source developer community.
But none of that growth came easy.
On today's episode, join Alex & Marie as they discuss:
Building Box’s self-serve programSelling to open-source users at ConfluentEarly growth lessons from ColumnScaling herself along her career journey -
Joseph Schmitt, VP of Success at UpKeep, shares his learn-by-doing approach to growing Customer Success teams.
Joseph Schmitt is exactly the type of growth story we like to tell—from a few perspectives.
He’s had a surprisingly fast personal career arc from entry-level support to senior Customer Success leader and also helped grow two startup customer success teams from the ground up.
On today’s show, Joseph and Alex chat about:
Transitioning from entry-level support to management & senior leadershipJoining UpKeep as their first CS hireHiring and retaining UpKeep’s CS team for the past 6 yearsStructuring UpKeep’s CS teamsWorking with a non-tech-savvy customer baseAdvice for early CS hires -
Peep Laja, co-founder of Wynter, CXL, and Speero, shares lessons from bootstrapping multi-million-dollar businesses from scratch. Plus, he shares messaging lessons from Wynter.
Peep Laja is an expert at bootstrapping companies.
He started by turning his in-house marketing experience into a consultancy…
He took that consultancy and scaled it into an agency…
He used the profits from his agency to bootstrap an e-learning business…
And then he took the profits from his elearning business to bootstrap a SaaS company.
In today’s episode, Peep and I discuss:
The founding stories behind his three companiesAdvice for company positioning and messagingWhy he moves upmarket as fast as possibleWynter’s growth and marketing strategy -
Peter Kazanjy, author of Founding Sales and co-founder of Atrium, shares sales advice for startup founders and early sales hires.
Pete Kazanjy literally wrote the book on founder sales.
As a three-time startup founder, Pete knows the ins and outs of building an early-stage sales team.
On today's episode, Alex and Pete discuss:
Pivoting his first startup to TalentBinWriting Founding SalesEvolving past founder-led salesDemocratizing sales metrics at AtriumThe datafication of salesBuilding the Modern Sales Pros community - Se mer
