The Gong

An update on an upcoming dashboard launch and an experiment with a career coach network.

Update on progress of Riveter (riveterworks.com) since our last episode in December 2020.

An update from the past two months from the founder of riveterworks.com.   Growth is steady but not crazy, we might have had the wrong revenue stream even though it worked a little, and we didn't get into Y Combinator.

We (the founders of Riveter) talk about how advertising is going, how we are working on growth and engagement, and a product dilemma. 

We (the founders of Riveter) share why a few business models didn't work, and how we've found some traction with ads.

We (the founders of riveterworks.com) talk about a brutal week. Had to let an employee go, uncertainty about the business. Every startup goes through it, I suppose. But it's not easy.

We (the founders of riveterworks.com) talk about some traction we've had going Direct to Consumer (averaging 13% Week over Week growth!) and what challenges remain.

I share how we (the founders of riveterworks.com) tried selling to outplacement companies as a complimentary product, why we thought it was a good idea, why it didn't work, and what we're doing about it.

Holly Epstein Ojalvo is a long time media leader, writing and editing for places like USA Today, Quartz, and the New York Times.   Unfortunately, she was let go in May, making Holly one of Riveter's potential users. She became an even better user to interview when she wrote her popular NYT Article, How To Manage the Emotional Impact of Getting Laid Off.   Enjoy this as a user interview, a pleasant conversation, or a set of advice about how to thrive in unemployment.   @heoj https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollyepsteinojalvo/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/smarter-living/coronavirus-laid-off-career-advice.html

You never know where your first customers come from. But when they find you, you hold on tight and take good care of them.   One of Riveter's early customers was True Talent Group, the Minneapolis - based recruiting firm. Enjoy this interview with True Talent Group CEO and Founder, Stacey Stratton.   http://truetalentgroup.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/true-talent-group https://www.linkedin.com/in/staceystratton

How we test assumptions. And what it feels like - both good and bad - to do a pivot.

A small pivot. A big ambition. A new hire. 

Sharing the story of my week- how to recruit our 4th employee, what we're doing with our newest customer, and some big personal news!

It's a podcast about sales at startups. Except this time, the startup is my own. Let's talk about where to find I found my first customers.

Two months ago, I founded a company. I'll talk about how I'm approaching sales at this startup- what's going well, what's hard, what works, and what doesn't.   This episode is about the early customer research phase, learning about the problem before building a product to solve it. 

Mary D'Onofrio joined Bessemer in 2018 to start the firm's growth investment practice. She primarily focuses on cloud software and developer platforms, with recent investments including LaunchDarkly, HashiCorp, and BigID. Mary also developed Bessemer's Cash Conversion Score and is one of the key architects behind the BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index (^EMCLOUD), which serves as a benchmark for public cloud companies. Previously, Mary worked in Equity Capital Markets at Morgan Stanley. She holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and graduated cum laude with a politics degree from Princeton University.   www.linkedin.com/in/mary-d-onofrio-a125b2154/ @mcadonofrio

A recorded version of a toast I gave at my family's Passover Seder about what we can learn from plagues past, and why we should all strive towards in these difficult times.

Nicole Alvino is the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of SocialChorus, a company that has raised >47m to build better employee communication and engagement platforms for companies like AT&T, AB Inbev, Dow Chemical, and more. Nicole started her career at Enron, and founded SocialChorus right before the 2008 market crash, so she's no stranger to dealing with macro challenges and coming out on the other side stronger than ever. @SocialChorus http://socialchorus.com/ @nalvino https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolealvino/

Marc Randoph is the Founder and first CEO of Netflix. Today, Netflix is one of the largest companies in the world, valued at $150 billion. When Marc started it, it was nothing more than an idea. Marc is the author of: That Will Never Work: The Birth of NETFLIX and the Amazing Life of an Idea www.marcrandolph.com www.amazon.com/That-Will-Never-Work-Netflix/dp/0316530204

Chini Krishnan is the CEO and Founder of GetInsured, which builds the technology behind state healthcare marketplaces for California, Idaho, Pennsylvania, and others. The company is 15 years old and has dealt with huge macro changes like Obamacare. https://company.getinsured.com/ https://www.bvp.com/team/chini-krishnan/

Hector Hernandez is the VP of Sales and Customer Success at LaunchDarkly, the feature management firm with over $130m raised and customers like Microsoft, IBM, and NBC.   We talk about how the current global coronavirus pandemic influences plans, changes customer conversations, and redefines what it means to be a leader.   https://www.linkedin.com/in/hectorhernandez1/ https://launchdarkly.com/

Cat Lee is one of the most experienced consumer tech growth execs of the last decade. She had early leadership positions at Facebook and Pinterest and had a lot of visibility and agency over how those two companies made strategic decisions around growing their user bases. Cat is now a Partner at Maveron, focused on consumer tech. @catleecatlee www.maveron.com

Yancey Strickler is a writer and entrepreneur. He is the cofounder and former CEO of Kickstarter, author of This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World, and the creator of Bentoism. Yancey has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and one of Fast Company's Most Creative People. He cofounded the artist resource The Creative Independent and the record label eMusic Selects. He's spoken at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals, Web Summit, MIT, and events around the globe. Yancey grew up in Clover Hollow, Virginia, and began his career as a music critic in New York City. @ystrickler

Ana Marshall is the founder and managing partner of Silicon Drive, a high performance and creative marketing team. We function as an addition to any existing team, filling in holes and augmenting efforts to move companies to the next level. We have helped over 40+ companies scale customer acquisition goals, drive revenues from $0 to $25MM and implement product and/or marketing strategies to close Seed through Series C investments.   www.linkedin.com/in/anaamarshall/ https://1silicondrive.com/ https://medium.com/@silicondrive/a-secret-lingerie-box-delivered-by-postmates-confidential-9628f70c8423

Gary Swart was an early CEO at Upwork (formerly oDesk), now a public company and the largest freelancer marketplace in the world. He is now a partner at Polaris Partners, investing in technology and healthcare companies. Prior to oDesk, Gary was the vice president of worldwide sales for Intellibank, responsible for building the direct and indirect sales organization and channel development. Previous to Intellibank, he was a business unit executive for IBM's Rational Software Product Group. www.polarispartners.com www.linkedin.com/in/garyswart/

Liana Kadisha Cohn is the Founder and President of Switch (joinswitch.com) one of the leading online jewelry rental marketplaces. She's as close as one can be to their customers and shares insights on growing a user base in a competitive e-commerce model.   https://www.instagram.com/misskadisha/?hl=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/liana-kadisha-cohn-42abb6ab/

This is a special episode. No guest, but I do share an article I recently wrote about how to understand if your startup is too early. Getting timing right is almost 50% of the equation to determine a startup's success, and being honest internally about the status of your technology is important in creating a strategy to sell successfully. Enjoy the new format, and comment or tweet your thoughts @alubarsky2!

Jeffrey J Fox is the author of 12 books, including the bestseller (and one of my favorite business books) How to Become a Rainmaker which, by the way, he will be giving away 4 free copies of to anyone who tweets or posts on LinkedIn with #thegongsales.   Jeffrey Fox, through his company Fox & Company, consults with top-notch organizations around the world. He is consigliere to CEOs and senior executives. Fox & Company is in the business of helping clients grow revenues and increase gross margins.   Prior to starting Fox & Company, Jeffrey worked in senior positions for high powered consumer and industrial marketing companies like his role for Vice President, Marketing and a Corporate Vice President of Loctite Corp., doing almost $1b in sales. Jeffrey is the winner of Sales & Marketing Management magazine's "Oustanding Marketer Award", and the National Distributors Association award as the nation's "Best Industrial Marketer". He is the subject of a Harvard Business School case study that is rated one of the top 100 case studies and is thought to be the most widely taught marketing case in the world.   Jeffrey graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, CT, where he was a Capitol Area Scholar. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. He has served as an elected Trustee of Trinity College, where he has won several alumni awards, including Person of the Year. He served on the Board of Directors of Saint Francis Hospital, one of the top 100 hospitals in the United States.  

Our guest today is Andrew Holliday. Andrew is a marketing leader with experience building campaigns for companies as large as Wendys and Whole Foods and as focused as True Temper Golf. Andrew's focus is on how to tell stories to the right people in the right places- something he's learned to do well with his own right as the founder of multiple marketing agencies, like Special Sauce Branding.   Andrew has founded multiple marketing agencies, currently focused on helping small and medium-sized business with quality products in their quest for steady revenue from the right customers.   Please enjoy my conversation with Andrew Holliday.   https://specialsaucebranding.com/ https://medium.com/@andrew_holliday

Bernie Schroeder is currently the director of the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center at San Diego State University, where he has built a leading entrepreneurship program and has helped hundreds of startups get their first clients.   Where Bernie really cut his teeth was marketing- founding CKS Partners, one of the world's first integrated marketing agencies and managing the advertising spend of tech companies like Yahoo and Amazon, eventually bringing his company public with almost 9000 employees and $1b in revenue.   Bernie is the author of 4 books including the most recent one, Startup Culture Mindset.   www.bernieschroeder.com www.amazon.com/STARTUP-CULTURE-MINDSET-Building-Amazing-ebook/dp/B081DJY8X4

Today's guest is a Salesforce alum who has turned into a master of marketing. Tricia Gellman is a 3 time Chief Marketing Officer for both public companies and venture-backed startups like Salesforce, Drift, and Checkr.   Tricia has been around the block, dropping inside knowledge of Steve Jobs lessons, a Salesforce OG Squad secret society, and the first questions that founders asked their customers.   Please enjoy my conversation with Tricia Gellman.   www.linkedin.com/in/gellmansfmarketing/ www.drift.com

Cole Schafer is an expert in both writing and sales. Cole is the writer, marketer, and hopeless romantic behind Honey Copy, one of the best business writing coaching sites that I've found. Cole has written sales, advertising, and website copy for companies as wide-ranging as The Hustle, Capital.com, The American Ultimate Disc League, and others. He specializes in writing words that help sell, in his words, "like a Florida snow cone vendor on the hottest day of the year".   Cole has been immensely successful with the business, earning 5X the industry average for a copywriter. After reading some of his work at honey copy.com, I think you'll see why.     www.honeycopy.com https://gumroad.com/l/oneminplz

Our guest today is Sam Trachtenberg. This episode is different than usual, as Sam is not a seller, but a buyer. Sam has been VP of Operations at companies as big as AdRoll, buying products to help over 500 employees and spending many millions of dollars every year, and COO at companies as new as WhereTo, his current venture-backed startup where not a single tool gets bought and implemented without his approval.   Speaking with Sam taught me how the person on the other side of the phone thinks. We talk about what the conversation looks like when his team says they need a product, stories of terrible sales processes, and how he decides whether to build or to buy a product.    Understanding the buyer and their needs and learning to speak their language is the name of the game in early-stage sales. I loved talking to Sam, because it gave a peek into what happens after the call. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Sam Trachtenberg.   www.whereto.com

"You never really know who can help you. You never really know who you can help."   That's my favorite quote from my conversation with 6 time VP of Sales and author of "Addicted to the Process," Scott Leese.    Scott has taken 5/6 of the startups he's worked with from pre-revenue to >20m ARR (annual recurring revenue) in under 3 years. So basically, he crushed it.   Scott is also the founder of Surf and Sales, a micro-conference bringing people together to learn about sales while in a fun, interactive, surfing environment.   He's smart, he's fun, he's super cool. Ladies and gentlemen, Scott Leese.     Addicted to the Process: tinyurl.com/rtxr4m9 Scott Leese Consulting: scottleeseconsulting.com/

Our guest today is Viv Faga.   Viv has led marketing as a VP or CMO at Salesforce, Yammer (which sold to Microsoft for 1.2b) and Zenefits. Today, she's the operating partner at Emergence that focuses on early-stage SAAS investing.    Marketing fundamentals are crucial to early-stage success, and Viv and her colleagues argue that founders should hire a marketer before they hire a salesperson. We talk about the different ways CEOs respond to marketing ideas, how category creation works, and how culture at companies like Salesforce and Yammer directly supported the success of those companies.   Learn more about Viv and Emergence capital at emcap.com or @vivfaga on Twitter.

Our guest today is Patrick Mateer. Patrick's story as the founder of Seal the Seasons is amazing, and I particularly love it because I watched him start the company 5 years ago and grow it into a very impressive food startup.   So, what is Seal the Seasons (@sealtheseasons on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter), and who is Patrick.   Seal the Seasons partners with local farmers to sell locally-grown frozen fruit 365 days a year in nearby grocery stores. Seal the Seasons currently operates in five different regions of the United States (Southeast, Northeast, Midwest, Pacific Northwest & Pacific Southwest) with 4-9 products available in each region.    The company was founded in 2014 by Patrick Mateer, a local food entrepreneur who founded the company while in college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Go Heels. Mateer is a 2017 recipient of the Forbes 30 Under 30 for Social Entrepreneurs, as well as a winner of the 2018 Specialty Food Association Leadership Award for Vision.    Seal the Seasons began by selling produce in North Carolina-based retailers in the fall of 2016, expanding to new regions in the fall of 2018 and winter of 2019. Seal the Seasons is now available in 30 states and more than 3,000 conventional and natural grocery stores.   Patrick has been through the mill of early stage sales, fumbling around a new industry, working tirelessly to build trust, and always doing what's right for the customer. We have a great conversation with lessons anyone can take away into food, tech, or any other industry.

Derek Rahn has spent his entire career in sales, doing all jobs from an intro level SDR to, currently, the VP of Sales at LeadGenius. Derek has led some major deals, including getting LeadGenius into Google. He thinks a lot about what it takes to train young SDRs, how to move a company's sales strategy upmarket, and what AI means for the future of sales.   My favorite part of the conversation is our discussion about how a startup needs to prepare itself for selling larger clients. I'm obsessed with the value of selling to small companies and getting everything possible out of the fast sales cycles and fast feedback loops before moving to larger clients. Derek has been through that multiple times and knows that crossing the chasm from small client to large takes many startup lives. We talk a lot about how to survive that crossing.   I learned a lot from Derek and took quite a few notes, including the quote: startups selling to startups is like drunk people selling each other beer at a bar. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Derek Rahn.   twitter.com/derekrahn linkedin.com/in/derek-rahn-5b5155b

This is a special episode, as our guest, Kyle Morris, is host of the Kaizen podcast, all about sales operations in the early stages. We took this opportunity, two podcasters podcasting together, to interview each other. So you'll hear Kyle start by interviewing me for the first half of the episode. I talk about how I think about selling something as seemingly futuristic as self-driving cars, how to gain customer trust, and one pretty crazy story about I got a group of nudists as one of my previous startups' biggest clients.   Then, we turn the table and I ask Kyle about his experiences leading companies through the early stages, and everything he's learned. Kyle spent time as a director of lead generation and of operations at Gigya, a company acquired by SAP. Kyle grew his sales team from 7 people to 75 in multiple markets, and learned a ton about managing a team during that process.   Currently, Kyle is the founder of SifData, which helps companies reduce churn and grow pipeline, and Kicksaw, a firm focused on helping companies scale.   www.linkedin.com/in/kylemorris1/ kicksaw.com/podcast

Our guest today is Carthele Kelly. Carthele started selling in Pharmaceuticals, one of the largest field sales machines in the world. He moved into tech shortly after, as the first hire at LeadGenius, growing to Head of Sales, and Director of Sales Development at Zenefits where he hired dozens of sales reps for his team. Throughout, he has been a Mentor at the famed accelerator, 500 Startups, teaching hundreds of founders about early-stage sales.   Cart and I spend a lot of time on specific stories and strategies that he implemented before taking things to a higher level. It was great to get into the nitty-gritty, and I hope you enjoy this episode with Carthele Kelly.   www.linkedin.com/in/carthelekelly/

Doug Landis has had leadership sales positions that include CSO at Box and Sr. Director of Sales Productivity at Salesforce. Currently he is the Growth Partner at VC Firm Emergence Capital. Doug has thought a ton about how a startup should sell to larger companies and how a sales leader should approach tough decisions and fruitful relationships.  ----more---- emcap.com @douglandis

J. Ryan Williams is a San Francisco-based executive coach who is deeply passionate about the professional and personal development of high potential leaders and organizations. As a coach and advisor, J. Ryan is trusted by founders and CEOs backed by the world's top venture funds, US Navy SEALs and former Top Gun fighter pilots as well as aspiring executives.     Before launching his coaching and facilitation practice, J. Ryan spent over 10 years helping build some of the fastest-growing companies backed by Silicon Valley-based venture capital firms and has been instrumental for multiple companies as they grew from $0-$100M in revenue including the direct leadership which launched a $58M sales team and created a 2 year training curriculum for 350 employees and sales coaching for the CEO of InVision App, who has gone on to close 95% of the Fortune 100. 

Lars Nilsson started his career selling for Xerox at the peak of their technology dominance in America and learning from the best sales organization in the country. He took that experience to become VP of Sales at companies like Hewlett Packard, Cloudera, and Arcsight. Today, Lars works with startups at True Ventures to advises startups from pre-revenue to pre-IPO about setting up effective sales organizations. @larsnilsson65 on Twitter linkedin.com/in/lanilsson/

Suhas Ghante is an aerospace engineering-yogi-turned-startup-salesman. He's led sales at multiple companies in both B2B and B2C scenarios and is one of the most thoughtful, trustworthy people in the industry. If Suhas recommends it, I try it.   Suhas's sales career has brought him through startups at Y Combinator, 500 Startups, and more. He's got lots of wisdom to share and was the perfect guest with whom to launch this show.