Podcasts about bowery capital

Episode brought to you by More StaffingRyan Denehy is the Founder and CEO at Electric AI, an IT platform that empowers SMBs with user-friendly tools and guidance to streamline their IT management and secure their business.Electric, valued over $1B has raised over $200M to date and is backed by GGV Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Primary Venture Partners, Greenspring Associates, 01 Advisors, Bowery Capital, The Slack Fund, Vintage Investment Partners, and Atreides Management.Ryan joins Blaine & Ramon to give a first hand look at what it takes to build a unicorn, how to level up as an entrepreneur, and some hot takes on current market affairs.Join 15k founders and marketers & get our pod highlights delivered directly to your inbox with the DTC Pod Newsletter!On this episode of DTC pod we cover:1. Importance of Spending Control2. Value of Experienced Advisors3. Persistence in Challenging Situations4. Significance of Self-Awareness Growth5. Product-Market Fit Exploration6. Strategic Business Pivots7. CEO Evolution and DelegationTimestamps00:00 Low barriers allow starting any type of business.09:33 Successful DVD distribution leads to sponsorship deal.15:30 Learned perseverance through years of daily skateboarding.21:33 Focus on solving specific problems for customers.26:52 Unknowingly found product-market fit through mountain biking.30:06 Founders need creativity and abstract thinking.34:59 Transition from experimentation to disciplined business operations.39:25 Founder transitions rapidly from customer focus to management.46:11 CEO aspirant emphasizes learning, adapting to challenges.54:59 You control spending and bank account balance.Shownotes powered by CastmagicPast guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day Squares, Prose, Arrae, Olipop, Ghia, Rosaluna, Form, Uncle Studios & many more. Additional episodes you might like:• #175 Ariel Vaisbort - How OLIPOP Runs Influencer, Community, & Affiliate Growth• #184 Jake Karls, Midday Squares - Turning Your Brand Into The Influencer With Content• #205 Kasey Stewart: Suckerz- - Powering Your Launch With 300 Million Organic Views• #219 JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass For Brands• #223 Lauren Kleinman: The PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook• ​​​​#243 Kian Golzari - Source & Develop Products Like The World's Best Brands-----Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you.Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter here  and our DTC brand directory hereFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTok Ryan Denehy - Founder and CEO at Electric AIRamon Berrios - Co-Founder of CastmagicBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of Castmagic

Maia Benson and Joe Lynch discuss A SaaS Gal in VC Land. Maia is a SaaS gal in VC land and a Managing Director at Forum Ventures where she works with SaaS founders from inception to scale.  About Maia Benson Maia Benson is a Managing Director at Forum where she works with SaaS founders from inception to scale.  She has spent over 20 years founding, building and scaling award-winning SaaS products for Entrepreneurs and SMBs at places like LexisNexis, Pitney Bowes and most recently at Shopify, where she helped found, launch and scale their Shipping and Fulfillment products from inception to 60%+ merchant adoption and $Bs of transportation spend. About Forum Ventures Forum Ventures is the leading early-stage fund, program and community for B2B SaaS startups. Founded in 2014 as Acceleprise, we're on a mission to make the B2B SaaS journey easier, more accessible and successful for early-stage founders, through pre-seed and seed-stage funding, high touch programming, corporate perks and introductions, and an active SaaS community. Forum For Founders, our pre-seed program, provides founders with $100k in funding and 15 intense weeks of talks, events, mentorship and 1:1 guidance focused on go to market and fundraising. Forum Seed, our seed fund, backs exceptional SaaS startups at the seed-stage both from within and outside of our pre-seed program. With over 250 portfolio companies, Forum founders have gone on to raise from NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Uncork Capital, 8VC, Founders Fund, Menlo Ventures, Canaan, Bowery Capital, Susa Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, SV Angel, True Ventures and many more. Our private peer community for Innovation executives -- The Innovation Forum -- brings together like-minded intrapreneurs from all backgrounds to share best practices, insights, and advice, and support one another. In addition to our incredible peer community, members get access to industry trend reports, collaborative events, emerging technology, and startup introductions. Key Takeaways: A SaaS Gal in VC Land Forum Ventures is the top choice for early-stage B2B SaaS companies looking for funding. Forum Ventures is different and better for the following reasons: Founder-focused: Their team consists of former SaaS founders, offering deep understanding of the early-stage journey and expertise in GTM, sales, and fundraising. Pre-seed and seed investments: They empower early-stage B2B SaaS companies with pre-seed and seed funding, ranging from $100k to $2 million. High-touch programs: Beyond funding, they provide high-touch programs like "Forum For Founders" (15 weeks of talks, mentorship, and guidance) and a dedicated fundraising track. Thriving community: They foster an active SaaS community with over 450 founders, mentors, and experts, offering connections, support, and valuable insights. Accessibility champions: Committed to diversity and inclusion, they strive to make the B2B SaaS ecosystem more accessible to underrepresented founders. Proven success: With over 250 successful pre-seed and seed investments, their track record speaks for itself. Fractional co-founder approach: They act as a "fractional co-founder" with world-class expertise, helping startups navigate crucial steps like product development, go-to-market strategy, and fundraising. Mission-driven: Driven by a genuine passion for aiding founders, they prioritize their success and strive to make the B2B SaaS journey easier and more impactful. Learn More About A SaaS Gal in VC Maia Benson | LinkedIn Forum Ventures | LinkedIn Forum Ventures | Homepage The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Michael Cardamone, CEO and General Partner at Forum Ventures. Located in New York, NY, USA, Forum Ventures is the leading early-stage fund, program, and community for B2B SaaS startups. Founded in 2014 as Acceleprise, they are on a mission to make the B2B SaaS journey easier, more accessible, and successful for early-stage founders, through pre-seed and seed-stage funding, high-touch programming, corporate perks and introductions, and an active SaaS community.  With over 250 portfolio companies, Forum founders have gone on to raise from NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Uncork Capital, 8VC, Founders Fund, Menlo Ventures, Canaan, Bowery Capital, Susa Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, SV Angel, True Ventures and many more. Michael Cardamone focuses on developing our investment strategy with the mission to make the B2B SaaS journey easier, more accessible, and more successful for early-stage founders. As one of the first 30 employees at Box, as well as leading partnerships at AcedemixDirect, Michael has had direct experience growing SaaS companies from small startups to large-scale enterprises. He is also an angel investor in a dozen companies including a seed investment in Flexport. Michael shares insights about his background in tech, the evolution of Foreign Ventures, and their unique approach to investing in startups. He discusses the challenges of raising pre-seed capital in the current market and outlines the criteria they look for in founders and startups. Michael also explains the differences between Foreign Ventures and other venture funds, emphasizing their hands-on approach and extensive resources.  Visit Forum Ventures at , and on . Reach out to Michael at , and on . _______________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at:    Check out our other podcasts here:   For Investors check out:   For Startups check out:   For eGuides check out:   For upcoming Events, check out    For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group    Please , share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of .

Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds focused on SaaS. In the past, Jason has led investments in Algolia, Pipedrive, Salesloft, TalkDesk, and RevenueCat to name a few. Prior to SaaStr, Jason was an entrepreneur, selling EchoSign to Adobe for $100M where it is now a $250M ARR product. Rick Zullo is the Co-Founder and General Partner at Equal Ventures. Prior to co-founding Equal Ventures, Rick was an investor at Lightbank, Prior to Lightbank, Rick worked with investment firms Foundation Capital, Bowery Capital, and Lightview Capital. In Today's Episode We Discuss: 1. Why Venture Capital Needs It's Jerry Maguire Moment: Why does Rick believe that VC needs it's "Jerry Maguire" moment? What needs to change? What needs to stay the same? Why does Jason believe we will see even more mega funds in 2024 and 2025? 2. Unicorns are So 2019: Why does Jason believe that "unicorn investing is mostly dead for bigger funds and none of them are looking for a $1BN outcome anymore?" Why does Rick believe that multi-stage fund investing at seed simply does not make sense? What does Rick believe many founders need to know when they take multi-stage money at seed? Of the over 1,000 unicorns created over the last few years, how many of them do Rick and Jason feel are actually unicorns today? 3. Efficiency and Growth: We Need it All: Why does Jason believe, as a founder you should be embarrassed if you ever had a RIF (reduction in force)? Last year many founders got a pass on growth as they were more efficient. Is that pass over? Do they need to get back to growth? What is the single biggest reason that companies do not scale from seed to Series A? What happens to the many companies with years of runway but no product-market-fit? Are we entering a new age of efficient company building or will we go back to high burn environments and excessive spending? 4. Entering the World of LPs: If Jason and Rick were to advise LPs today on how much to discount the value of their venture books, what advice would they give? How have markups completely corrupted the venture ecosystem? How does LPs being incentivized by paper-marks make the industry even more screwed? What are the single biggest misalignments between GP and LP?

Welcome to a new episode on the Modern SaaS Finance Podcast hosted by David Appel, head of Software/SaaS at Sage Intacct. Todays guest is Michael Brown, General Partner at Bowery Capital and experienced investor with a demonstrated history in the venture capital industry. On this episode, Michael shares insight into what has changed in fund-raising, how companies should preserve cash, how they should double-down on growth and the important metrics to use in guiding each of these. Listen to the full episode for all the great insights shared! For more episodes on the Modern SaaS Finance, subscribe to our podcast channel on any major streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, Audible, etc. If you are a SaaS finance leader or expert and will like to join our Modern SaaS Finance community, click here to request access. Explore more SaaS finance tips and best practices here. About Bowery Capital Bowery Capital is an early-stage venture capital investor focused exclusively on founders looking to modernize business through technology. As more and more internet natives drive purchasing decisions, Bowery Capital believes that roughly $468B will change hands over the next 10 years as old products are replaced with new. In addition, the firm believes that the key ingredient to early success is revenue and customer growth, and as such provides various products and services through their Acceleration Team that portfolio companies can leverage to develop a strong early base. This combination of a focused thesis and support system are the cornerstones of Bowery Capital's investment approach.

Kevin Zhang is a Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, a Venture Capital firm with over $4B in AUM. Previously Kevin attended Columbia University and is currently an advisor at Almarowks, Columbia's startup accelerator.  Before joining Bain, Kevin led business development at Addepar was the Head of Product at Fundera (company by NerdWallet), and was a VC at Bowery Capital. Twitter of Host: @mbitpodcastTwitter of Guest: @kevinzhang

This week we dove into 1) Vendor consolidation with insights from Mark Roberge, former CRO of Hubspot 2) Marketing automation growth 3) Covid's impact on how sales leaders should think through data, coaching, and analytics 4) Prioritizing what tools to get and when as an early stage company. This report, in partnership with G2, is meant to serve as a guiding framework for anyone evaluating sales, marketing, customer success or management software solutions. Link to the report: https://bowerycap.com/blog/sales/2021-startup-sales-stack-report

This week we dove into 1) Vendor consolidation with insights from Mark Roberge, former CRO of Hubspot 2) Marketing automation growth 3) Covid's impact on how sales leaders should think through data, coaching, and analytics 4) Prioritizing what tools to get and when as an early stage company. This report, in partnership with G2, is meant to serve as a guiding framework for anyone evaluating sales, marketing, customer success or management software solutions. Link to the report: https://bowerycap.com/blog/sales/2021-startup-sales-stack-report

In Episode 37, Mike Brown, coaches founders and executives of companies on where to direct their time and focus in the seed stage to prevent the need to raise a bridge round. Mike is a Managing Partner of Bowery Capital which is a firm based in San Francisco that focuses on seed stage companies and legacy replacement in and around technology. Hear from his experience on the type of thinking, decisions, and metrics that ensure they are positioned for success.

Produced by Foundersuite (www.foundersuite.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors. This episode is with Michael Kim of Cendana Capital (https://www.cendanacapital.com/), a "fund of funds" that invests in very early stage venture capital funds. In this episode, Michael talks about why he started Cendana Capital and how he raised his fund, the types of emerging VCs he prefers to invest in (and what he's looking for when meeting a new VC), the evolution of seed investing, tips for raising an inaugural fund, the process for raising capital from a FoF, and much more. The VC funds that Cendana Capital has invested in include: US Seed: 11.2 Capital, Accelerator Ventures, Angular Ventures, Bowery Capital, Collaborative Fund, Forerunner Ventures, Founder Collective, Freestyle Capital, IA Ventures, L2 Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, MHS Capital, Montage Ventures, Moxxie Ventures, Neo, NextView Ventures, Silicon Valley Data Capital, Spider Capital, Susa Ventures, Uncork VC (fka SoftTech VC), Wave Capital and XYZ Ventures US Pre-Seed: Better Tomorrow Ventures, Bolt VC, Engineering Capital, K9 Ventures, Mucker Capital, Notation Capital, PivotNorth Capital, Rhapsody Venture Partners, Root Ventures and Wonder Ventures International Seed: 01VC, Blackbird Ventures (AUS and NZ), Cherubic Ventures, ChinaRock Capital Management, Entree Capital, Golden Ventures, Leo Capital, Moonfire, Saama Capital and System.One How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $3 Billion since 2016. Create a free account at https:/www.foundersuite.com/

INTRO Joseph Trodden joins host Collin Stewart on the Predictable Revenue podcast.  Joseph is an experienced consultant providing structure and clarity for visionary entrepreneurs who want to focus on reaching their next level. He focuses specifically on what he calls “the Inflection Point” - the pivotal moment when a founder relinquishes control and takes the first step towards turning the business into an organization. Joseph shares why founders never get this right the first time (2:36), who to hire first and why (8:39), the pros and cons of the player/coach (22:13), who to bring on as the second key hire (28:59), and how entrepreneurs should psychologically prepare for letting go (30:07).   You remember Goldilocks and the Three Bears. A flaxen-haired and doe-eyed ingenue stumbles into the furry quadrupeds' family home and samples each of their porridge, chairs, and beds. In each instance, after some grumbling at the inadequacy of the first two she tries, she settles on one bowl, one seat, and one mattress as “just right”.      SHOW NOTES:  More blog posts for early stage founders/sales leaders: The key to getting your first 10 customers isn’t sales – it’s product   Getting your first 100 customers with Salesflare Co-Founder Jeroen Corthout   How to build and evolve your first sales playbook with Bowery Capital’s Andrew Oddo  

Greg interviews Michael Brown of Bowery Capital. Mike has a very unique view on career paths focusing on asymmetry (high upside with limited downside). This mindset has allowed Mike to make bold moves through Richard Branson's Virgin Group and AOL Ventures before starting his own early stage venture fund. Mike expresses the importance of mentorship in career development.

If you’re not outsourcing your company’s IT, you soon may be. Ryan Denehy, CEO & Founder of Electric AI, is on a mission to make that possible. He’s successfully scaled 3 technology businesses. After starting & selling one to Gannett, he did it again & sold Swarm to Groupon. He’s now leading NY-based Electric, which created the world’s first automated IT platform. It’s backed by top investors like GGV Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Bowery Capital, and Primary Venture Partners. Electric ensures that the Wifi works, computers are setup on time for new hires, security is rock solid, and the right apps are in place for the right employees. All thru one dashboard. In just 3 years, Ryan has scaled the company to approx 200 full-time employees. And in this 20-minute conversation, he reveals how.

Drew McElroy is the cofounder of Transfix which provides trucking brokerage services in the United States. The company has raised close to $130 million from top tier investors which include NEA, Lerer Hippeau, Founder Collective, Expansion Venture Capital, Corigin Ventures, Bowery Capital, Canvas Ventures, G Squared, Deep Fork Capital, Charge Ventures, and Thayer Street Partners to name a few. 

Drew McElroy is the cofounder of Transfix which provides trucking brokerage services in the United States. The company has raised close to $130 million from top tier investors which include NEA, Lerer Hippeau, Founder Collective, Expansion Venture Capital, Corigin Ventures, Bowery Capital, Canvas Ventures, G Squared, Deep Fork Capital, Charge Ventures, and Thayer Street Partners to name a few. 

Michael Katz is the cofounder and CEO of mParticle which is a customer data platform for multi-channel consumer brands. The company has raised $120 million from top tier investors such as Greylock Partners, Google Ventures, Battery Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Social Capital, Correlation Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Golden Ventures, and Bowery Capital to name a few. Prior to this Michael Katz founded Interclick which he sold to Yahoo for $300 million. 

Michael Katz is the cofounder and CEO of mParticle which is a customer data platform for multi-channel consumer brands. The company has raised $120 million from top tier investors such as Greylock Partners, Google Ventures, Battery Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Social Capital, Correlation Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Golden Ventures, and Bowery Capital to name a few. Prior to this Michael Katz founded Interclick which he sold to Yahoo for $300 million. 

Innovation takes risks. Often you have to see what others are missing. The opportunities that are being overlooked. Guy Horrocks and his companies have led the way to create new solutions to unknown possibilities. Guy co-founded the world’s first iPhone app company Polar Bear Farm to build iPhone Apps before there was even an App Store. Today he is leading the way on what is possible on managing your privacy in a digitally connected world. Throughout the episode, Guy and I chat about technology, innovation, the world of Startups, Entrepreneurship, and more.LinksSolve: https://www.solve.ioTwitter: https://twitter.com/GuyHorrocksInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/guyhorrocks/About Guy HorrocksGuy Horrocks is the co-founder of Solve, a data infrastructure startup based in New York and New Zealand. Solve is a hybrid of SaaS and open source, where we will deploy the entire data infrastructure into the customer’s owned environment. This means a company owns both the data, as well as the underlying source code, providing the benefits of both build vs. buy. Guy previously was the CEO and co-founder of Carnival.io a mobile marketing automation platform that helped companies with push notifications, in-app messaging and analytics.Customers included Target, Sephora, Expedia, T-Mobile, MAC Cosmetics, OREO and AB InBev. Carnival was acquired by Sailthru in 2016, where Guy served as VP of Mobile and Partnerships prior to their sale in 2018 to CM Group / Campaign Monitor. Carnival was backed by leading investors including Google Ventures, Gary Vaynerchuk, Lerer Hippeau and Bowery Capital.Prior to Carnival, Guy co-founded the world’s first iPhone app company Polar Bear Farm, helping as a pioneer of the jailbreak market pre-iTunes Appstore. Guy’s first company was BSA Technologies, a blood spatter analysis forensic startup, helping forensic scientists determine the point of impact at crime scenes.Guy loves helping early-stage startups, he is an investor in www.getmaude.com, www.dropelfabrics.com, www.otherland.com, www.raakachocolate.com, www.butler-nyc.com, andfor the last 8 years has run a monthly Kiwi entrepreneur “Flat White Meetup” at Happy Bones inSoho.

On this edition of The Predictable Revenue Podcast, co-host Collin Stewart welcomes Andrew Oddo, Director of Growth at Bowery Capital. Andrew is a veteran sales professional who turned VC. He’d helped countless growing companies build their outbound sales machine, as well as crushed a quota or two in his time. Throughout the pod, Collin and Andrew do deep dive into early-stage sales planning. If you’re a budding company looking to solidify your sales process and grow your team – this pod is a must-listen.  Highlights include: Andrew’s sales journey (7:44), the benefits of a documented sales playbook (11:50), the pieces of the playbook (19:07), the ICP and buyer persona (22:30), channels and messaging (32:44), arming your team (47:12), maintaining quarterly playbook reviews (59:31), sales lightning round (1:03:44), cold call Collin (1:10:03).

On this edition of The Predictable Revenue Podcast, co-host Collin Stewart welcomes Alexandra Adamson, Executive Director of sales advocacy organization Women in Sales. From her time at renowned recruiting firm Betts Recruiting, to her tenure as Director of Talent at Bowery Capital, to her current role helping lead Women in Sales – Alexandra has been supporting sales professionals and sales teams for years. Throughout the pod, Collin and Alexandra discuss how to find support (and give support!) in your sales career. Highlights include: Alexandra’s journey (14:36), Women in Sales (23:40), the subtle art of job descriptions (31:33), taking ownership of your career (33:07), finding a mentor (37:12), sales lightning round (49:14), and Cold call Collin (53:14).

On this week's episode, as part of The SaaS Revolution Show Episode 100 special, we are taking you to that SaaStock New York stage for the chat Nic Poulos, Partner at Bowery Capital had with David Cancel, CEO of Drift about the stellar journey of reaching 70,000 customers in three years in an incredibly oversaturated vertical. David Cancel needs no introduction. The five-time founder who has achieved 4 exits in his 20-year career had three options in front of him as he left HubSpot where he served as Chief Product Officer. He could do nothing, he could get into the venture capital world or he could do the whole rollercoaster ride one more time. He opted for the third and Drift was born. What it has grown to be is a whole new category of conversational marketing, shifting the buying process in B2C and B2B. Inherently slow and passive, Drift is turning it into a real-time two-sided conversation. David and Nic's conversation is a treasure trove of insights about hyper growing, something possible and attainable even when you have thousands of competitors. Listen on to hear: Why Drift is so customer-driven and what it helps them know How they have designed their sales process What is the future of differentiation in SaaS Drift's Chief Marketing officer David Gerhardt has played a major role in their success. He is one of many speakers joining us at SaaStock 18 in October. As part of the Episode 100 celebrations, we would like to offer you a 100 euro discount for tickets. Go to https://www.saastock.com and use code saasrevolution100

Produced by Foundersuite.com, "How I Raised It" is an interview series that goes behind the scenes with startup founders who have successfully raised capital. This episode is with Sergio Villasenor, CEO of Elliot (https://www.helloiamelliot.com/). Sergio raised capital from Susa Ventures, Bowery Capital, BAM Ventures, Flexport, SV Angel and Acceleprise. Recorded on January 18, 2018.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted David Aronica, Business Development Manager at Splash to discuss “Hiring Your First BDR." Splash is an event marketing platform that enables users to create event experiences. The end-to-end Splash platform empowers users to create memorable event experiences through beautiful design, powerful planning and analysis tools, and meaningful integration of email marketing and social media. Splash enables brands like Facebook, Spotify, Salesforce and Anheuser-Busch to attract more of the right people, easily scale out their process and workflow, and capture the 1000's of data points every live event throws off, to inform future events and rest of your marketing mix. In today’s episode, David joins us to discuss hiring your first BDR. He initiated the conversation by providing his opinion on whether managers should spend more time training or hiring new BDR's. In the past, he's spent time hiring too many new BDR's, which led to layoffs due to the fact he didn’t have the time to train them and invest in his team. David discusses hiring veteran versus younger, millennial BDR's and what he sees as the ideal business development representative candidate. Initially, he hired veteran BDR's that he thought could fall in love with the product and wanted to move up quickly in the organization. He allows these more senior BDR's to see the metrics and parameters upon which they are ranked on per month. David goes on to discuss hiring millennial BDR's and the keys to managing them. David looks for solution-oriented, tenacious personalities that are coachable in these younger hires and he makes it his goal to embrace all individual learning styles as a manager. When it comes to both veteran and millennial BDR's, David believes that being completely transparent about expectations leads to relationships where new hires trust him and understand why he does what he does. He touches on the mistakes he's made in scaling out his teams in the past, among them: not training ramped up reps, not providing clarity around what it takes to get promoted, and only looking at numbers instead of investigating the deeper issue. David’s final thoughts on hiring your first BDR are to invest in them, since they are the future of your organization.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted David Aronica, Business Development Manager at Splash to discuss “Hiring Your First BDR." Splash is an event marketing platform that enables users to create event experiences. The end-to-end Splash platform empowers users to create memorable event experiences through beautiful design, powerful planning and analysis tools, and meaningful integration of email marketing and social media. Splash enables brands like Facebook, Spotify, Salesforce and Anheuser-Busch to attract more of the right people, easily scale out their process and workflow, and capture the 1000's of data points every live event throws off, to inform future events and rest of your marketing mix. In today’s episode, David joins us to discuss hiring your first BDR. He initiated the conversation by providing his opinion on whether managers should spend more time training or hiring new BDR's. In the past, he's spent time hiring too many new BDR's, which led to layoffs due to the fact he didn’t have the time to train them and invest in his team. David discusses hiring veteran versus younger, millennial BDR's and what he sees as the ideal business development representative candidate. Initially, he hired veteran BDR's that he thought could fall in love with the product and wanted to move up quickly in the organization. He allows these more senior BDR's to see the metrics and parameters upon which they are ranked on per month. David goes on to discuss hiring millennial BDR's and the keys to managing them. David looks for solution-oriented, tenacious personalities that are coachable in these younger hires and he makes it his goal to embrace all individual learning styles as a manager. When it comes to both veteran and millennial BDR's, David believes that being completely transparent about expectations leads to relationships where new hires trust him and understand why he does what he does. He touches on the mistakes he's made in scaling out his teams in the past, among them: not training ramped up reps, not providing clarity around what it takes to get promoted, and only looking at numbers instead of investigating the deeper issue. David’s final thoughts on hiring your first BDR are to invest in them, since they are the future of your organization.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Evan Bartlett, Head of Inside Sales at ZocDoc to discuss “Hiring Your First Sales Representative." ZocDoc is an online medical care scheduling service, for end users integrating information about medical practices and doctors' individual schedules in a central location. Each month, millions of patients use ZocDoc to find in-network neighborhood doctors, instantly book appointments online, see what other real patients have to say, get reminders for upcoming appointments and preventive checkups, fill out their paperwork online, and more. With a mission to give power to the patient, ZocDoc’s online marketplace delivers the accessible and simple experience patients expect and deserve. ZocDoc is free for patients and available across the United States via ZocDoc.com In today’s episode, Evan joins us to discuss hiring your first sales representative. The conversation started by discussing when to hire the first sales representative. This included the process of building a sales process and its link to the go-to-market strategy. Next Evan discussed when to identify the market and key factors in this process. Evan then summarized the details around the background and skillsets of a sales representative. Evan discussed his thoughts around the structure of the hiring process and the onboarding and ramp up process for new sales representatives. Next Evan discussed setting benchmarks for the first hire and tying those metrics to compensation. In this hiring process, Evan discussed how he made several mistakes and how he pushed ahead. We then transitioned to expanding the sales team from 1 to 100. Evan discussed how to maintain culture despite high growth. Next Evan described how the hiring process shifts with a larger team and how these sales representatives differ from the original team. Evan then discussed the importance of repeatable sales to the business and how he thinks about that skill in hiring new sales representatives. Evan closed out the session by providing his go-to tactics and tricks in the hiring process.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Evan Bartlett, Head of Inside Sales at ZocDoc to discuss “Hiring Your First Sales Representative." ZocDoc is an online medical care scheduling service, for end users integrating information about medical practices and doctors' individual schedules in a central location. Each month, millions of patients use ZocDoc to find in-network neighborhood doctors, instantly book appointments online, see what other real patients have to say, get reminders for upcoming appointments and preventive checkups, fill out their paperwork online, and more. With a mission to give power to the patient, ZocDoc’s online marketplace delivers the accessible and simple experience patients expect and deserve. ZocDoc is free for patients and available across the United States via ZocDoc.com In today’s episode, Evan joins us to discuss hiring your first sales representative. The conversation started by discussing when to hire the first sales representative. This included the process of building a sales process and its link to the go-to-market strategy. Next Evan discussed when to identify the market and key factors in this process. Evan then summarized the details around the background and skillsets of a sales representative. Evan discussed his thoughts around the structure of the hiring process and the onboarding and ramp up process for new sales representatives. Next Evan discussed setting benchmarks for the first hire and tying those metrics to compensation. In this hiring process, Evan discussed how he made several mistakes and how he pushed ahead. We then transitioned to expanding the sales team from 1 to 100. Evan discussed how to maintain culture despite high growth. Next Evan described how the hiring process shifts with a larger team and how these sales representatives differ from the original team. Evan then discussed the importance of repeatable sales to the business and how he thinks about that skill in hiring new sales representatives. Evan closed out the session by providing his go-to tactics and tricks in the hiring process.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Jason Dorfman, Inside Sales Manager at Rubrik, to discuss "Sales Recruiting 101 for Founders." Founded in 2014, Rubrik offers live data access for recovery and application development by fusing enterprise data management with web-scale IT, and eliminating backup software. This marks the end of a decade-long innovation drought in backup and recovery, the backbone of IT. Within minutes, businesses can manage the explosion of data across private and public clouds. Rubrik is trusted by some of the world's leading companies, including Driscoll's, JLL, the Tampa Bay Rays and Berkeley College. In today's episode, Jason joins us to discuss sales recruiting 101 for founders. He starts by touching on the importance of building your product and getting market validation before hiring your sales team. He discusses how to think about hiring your first salesperson and whether it should be a lead generating SDR or an inside sales rep with closing experience.He talks about how what he pitches candidates on has shifted as the company has grown from startup to 400+ employees and how his interview style has changed with that growth. Jason tells us his favorite question to ask during the interview process and recommends using recruiters as a resource to fill pipeline. He says he allocates about 30% of his time to recruiting and finds it to be seasonal - spending a lot of his time in interviews and on phone screens. For Jason, when it comes to hiring, the most important thing is finding the right people. He even urges managers to be willing to fall short of hiring goals if you haven't found the right people during an interview process. He says every time you hire a salesperson, you should believe there is a chance they can be the number 1 salesperson at your company. Finally, Jason advises anyone who is hiring to be patient, keep a cool head and think long term - even if you are under intense pressure to fill roles - and he leaves us with a great quote: "good people fix bad process, good process and bad people is not a good situation."

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Jason Dorfman, Inside Sales Manager at Rubrik, to discuss "Sales Recruiting 101 for Founders." Founded in 2014, Rubrik offers live data access for recovery and application development by fusing enterprise data management with web-scale IT, and eliminating backup software. This marks the end of a decade-long innovation drought in backup and recovery, the backbone of IT. Within minutes, businesses can manage the explosion of data across private and public clouds. Rubrik is trusted by some of the world's leading companies, including Driscoll's, JLL, the Tampa Bay Rays and Berkeley College. In today's episode, Jason joins us to discuss sales recruiting 101 for founders. He starts by touching on the importance of building your product and getting market validation before hiring your sales team. He discusses how to think about hiring your first salesperson and whether it should be a lead generating SDR or an inside sales rep with closing experience.He talks about how what he pitches candidates on has shifted as the company has grown from startup to 400+ employees and how his interview style has changed with that growth. Jason tells us his favorite question to ask during the interview process and recommends using recruiters as a resource to fill pipeline. He says he allocates about 30% of his time to recruiting and finds it to be seasonal - spending a lot of his time in interviews and on phone screens. For Jason, when it comes to hiring, the most important thing is finding the right people. He even urges managers to be willing to fall short of hiring goals if you haven't found the right people during an interview process. He says every time you hire a salesperson, you should believe there is a chance they can be the number 1 salesperson at your company. Finally, Jason advises anyone who is hiring to be patient, keep a cool head and think long term - even if you are under intense pressure to fill roles - and he leaves us with a great quote: "good people fix bad process, good process and bad people is not a good situation."

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Bobby Long, VP of Sales at Dedrone, to discuss "Insight Selling In The Modern Market." Dedrone is the first automated drone security platform; an extension of physical and cyber security into the airspace that protects a vulnerability gap exploited by the advances in consumer and commercial drone technology. Their most notable references include the Clinton-Trump presidential debates, the Suffolk County prison in New York, the Royal Family of Qatar, Citi Field (the New York Mets' stadium), and the World Economic Forum in Davos. In today's episode, Bobby joins us in the studio to discuss insight selling in the modern market and why he takes this approach. First, he talks about the differences between solution selling and insight selling. He defines solution selling as "Sales 101" where you get a deal by finding customer pain points and fitting your solution to those pain points within your prospect's budget. Bobby sees most companies using solution selling and sees an opportunity to differentiate by using insight selling, which he says allows you to position yourself as a subject matter expert and establish credibility and legitimacy. Bobby says that if you employ insight selling the right way, you form more of a partnership with your prospect or customer, leading to a higher rate of renewals. He discusses the challenges of insight selling and why it's not for every rep, along with some of the difficulties he's faced teaching reps how to insight sell and some solutions for getting around them. Finally, Bobby says not to be afraid of making visionary statements during the sales cycle versus just talking about what your product does, and he recommends reading this Harvard Business Review article.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Bobby Long, VP of Sales at Dedrone, to discuss "Insight Selling In The Modern Market." Dedrone is the first automated drone security platform; an extension of physical and cyber security into the airspace that protects a vulnerability gap exploited by the advances in consumer and commercial drone technology. Their most notable references include the Clinton-Trump presidential debates, the Suffolk County prison in New York, the Royal Family of Qatar, Citi Field (the New York Mets' stadium), and the World Economic Forum in Davos. In today's episode, Bobby joins us in the studio to discuss insight selling in the modern market and why he takes this approach. First, he talks about the differences between solution selling and insight selling. He defines solution selling as "Sales 101" where you get a deal by finding customer pain points and fitting your solution to those pain points within your prospect's budget. Bobby sees most companies using solution selling and sees an opportunity to differentiate by using insight selling, which he says allows you to position yourself as a subject matter expert and establish credibility and legitimacy. Bobby says that if you employ insight selling the right way, you form more of a partnership with your prospect or customer, leading to a higher rate of renewals. He discusses the challenges of insight selling and why it's not for every rep, along with some of the difficulties he's faced teaching reps how to insight sell and some solutions for getting around them. Finally, Bobby says not to be afraid of making visionary statements during the sales cycle versus just talking about what your product does, and he recommends reading this Harvard Business Review article.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Jen Grant, Chief Marketing Officer at Looker, to discuss “Marketing Stack Essentials.” Founded in 2011, Looker is a business intelligence software and big data analytics platform that helps you explore, analyze, and share real-time business analytics easily. Approaching the Business Intelligence industry in a new way, Looker believes that businesses can only thrive when information is easily accessible and consistently defined across the entire organization. Looker’s customers include industry leaders like Kohler, Nordstrom, Lyft, Athena Health, and Spotify, amongst others. In today’s episode, Jen joins us in the studio to discuss everything from her early brief career as an actress with voiceover skills (no pressure on us!) to building marketing tool stacks that work well now, and scale smoothly later. Jen challenges us to think about where we put our precious marketing budget, and who owns those tools within your organization so that you’re actually getting your money’s worth. A critical part of the discussion was digging in on the variety of places you can go to learn about your tools – from Facebook Groups to G2 Crowd, and the order in which you should be implementing your stack. Finally, we finished up by asking Jen if she had only one marketing tool to use for the rest of time what would it be and she gave us sound advice here without hesitation. Tune in to find out which one tool she would use and hear more from Jen Grant!

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Jen Grant, Chief Marketing Officer at Looker, to discuss “Marketing Stack Essentials.” Founded in 2011, Looker is a business intelligence software and big data analytics platform that helps you explore, analyze, and share real-time business analytics easily. Approaching the Business Intelligence industry in a new way, Looker believes that businesses can only thrive when information is easily accessible and consistently defined across the entire organization. Looker’s customers include industry leaders like Kohler, Nordstrom, Lyft, Athena Health, and Spotify, amongst others. In today’s episode, Jen joins us in the studio to discuss everything from her early brief career as an actress with voiceover skills (no pressure on us!) to building marketing tool stacks that work well now, and scale smoothly later. Jen challenges us to think about where we put our precious marketing budget, and who owns those tools within your organization so that you’re actually getting your money’s worth. A critical part of the discussion was digging in on the variety of places you can go to learn about your tools – from Facebook Groups to G2 Crowd, and the order in which you should be implementing your stack. Finally, we finished up by asking Jen if she had only one marketing tool to use for the rest of time what would it be and she gave us sound advice here without hesitation. Tune in to find out which one tool she would use and hear more from Jen Grant!

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Grant Halloran, CMO at Anaplan, to discuss "Analyst Relation Strategies That Work." Anaplan is driving a new age of connected planning. Large and fast-growing organizations use Anaplan’s cloud platform in every business function to make better-informed plans and decisions and drive faster, more effective planning processes. Anaplan also provides support, training, and planning transformation advisory services. In our episode today, Grant joins the podcast to discuss analyst relation strategies that work. First, he talks about how the landscape over the last 10 years has shifted from working strictly with Gartner and Forrester to working with newer, independent analysts that produce their own research and blogs, as these smaller guys can be very important to companies serving niche type markets, while continuing to work with the two giants. He says to nail analyst relations, you must start by engaging analysts very early on. He stresses the importance of a CEO or founder working with analysts, as they want to hear why you've decided to enter the market you have, and not to think of analyst relations as a marketing function for a CMO or Head of Sales to figure out. He's helped companies become Gartner Magic Quadrant leaders and touches on ways to help your company get there, including the need to become a paying customer. He gives pointers if you get to a point where you feel you've invested in analyst relations and aren't seeing any traction in write-ups or reports. Grant says that your pitch to an analyst is a level above a normal sales pitch, and that running your sales pitch by an analyst for feedback and to see how you differentiate from competition is a good idea. He talks about quantifying and measuring success with the analyst community and explains how Anaplan does this. Grant wrapped up by urging CEO's to make analyst relations one of their top 3 or 4 priorities and saying that having a good attitude towards the community will resonate with analysts and help you in the long run.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Grant Halloran, CMO at Anaplan, to discuss "Analyst Relation Strategies That Work." Anaplan is driving a new age of connected planning. Large and fast-growing organizations use Anaplan’s cloud platform in every business function to make better-informed plans and decisions and drive faster, more effective planning processes. Anaplan also provides support, training, and planning transformation advisory services. In our episode today, Grant joins the podcast to discuss analyst relation strategies that work. First, he talks about how the landscape over the last 10 years has shifted from working strictly with Gartner and Forrester to working with newer, independent analysts that produce their own research and blogs, as these smaller guys can be very important to companies serving niche type markets, while continuing to work with the two giants. He says to nail analyst relations, you must start by engaging analysts very early on. He stresses the importance of a CEO or founder working with analysts, as they want to hear why you've decided to enter the market you have, and not to think of analyst relations as a marketing function for a CMO or Head of Sales to figure out. He's helped companies become Gartner Magic Quadrant leaders and touches on ways to help your company get there, including the need to become a paying customer. He gives pointers if you get to a point where you feel you've invested in analyst relations and aren't seeing any traction in write-ups or reports. Grant says that your pitch to an analyst is a level above a normal sales pitch, and that running your sales pitch by an analyst for feedback and to see how you differentiate from competition is a good idea. He talks about quantifying and measuring success with the analyst community and explains how Anaplan does this. Grant wrapped up by urging CEO's to make analyst relations one of their top 3 or 4 priorities and saying that having a good attitude towards the community will resonate with analysts and help you in the long run.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Brian Kelly, CEO at Kissmetrics, to discuss "Optimizing New Product Launches." Kissmetrics is a behavior analytics and engagement platform that was built to help marketers and product teams increase conversions, drive engagement and grow retention. Over 900 companies, like Unbounce, SendGrid, Outbrain, Lucid Software, and more use Kissmetrics to quickly identify and take action on roadblocks across their growth cycles. In our episode today, Brian joins the podcast to discuss ways for companies to optimize new product launches, something Kissmetrics recently did with their release of “Kissmetrics Campaign” and the rollout of their Customer Engagement Automation platform. He discusses how Kissmetrics goes from ideation stage to the actual release of a new feature or product, and explains that in this process he relies heavily on feedback from customers. Kissmetrics’ latest product launch was a big paradigm shift, from the analytics side to the engagement side, so he explains how first important it was to get internal buy in from team members. After getting buy in, The Company prioritized teaching team members as much as possible about the product, and held internal lunch and learns which included getting and giving demos and going through non formal certifications. Next, Brian focused on how to roll out the product externally. An early adoption beta program allowed Kissmetrics to have a constant feedback loop at the earliest possible stage and helped them optimize features, functionality and design of the product for users. When it was time to figure out pricing, Brian stressed the importance of making pricing models easy to understand as prospective clients can get fed up if pricing is too complex. Brian wrapped up by explaining that getting feedback from prospective users outside of your company on features and products is crucial.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Brian Kelly, CEO at Kissmetrics, to discuss "Optimizing New Product Launches." Kissmetrics is a behavior analytics and engagement platform that was built to help marketers and product teams increase conversions, drive engagement and grow retention. Over 900 companies, like Unbounce, SendGrid, Outbrain, Lucid Software, and more use Kissmetrics to quickly identify and take action on roadblocks across their growth cycles. In our episode today, Brian joins the podcast to discuss ways for companies to optimize new product launches, something Kissmetrics recently did with their release of “Kissmetrics Campaign” and the rollout of their Customer Engagement Automation platform. He discusses how Kissmetrics goes from ideation stage to the actual release of a new feature or product, and explains that in this process he relies heavily on feedback from customers. Kissmetrics’ latest product launch was a big paradigm shift, from the analytics side to the engagement side, so he explains how first important it was to get internal buy in from team members. After getting buy in, The Company prioritized teaching team members as much as possible about the product, and held internal lunch and learns which included getting and giving demos and going through non formal certifications. Next, Brian focused on how to roll out the product externally. An early adoption beta program allowed Kissmetrics to have a constant feedback loop at the earliest possible stage and helped them optimize features, functionality and design of the product for users. When it was time to figure out pricing, Brian stressed the importance of making pricing models easy to understand as prospective clients can get fed up if pricing is too complex. Brian wrapped up by explaining that getting feedback from prospective users outside of your company on features and products is crucial.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Lincoln Murphy, Customer Success Consultant at Sixteen Ventures, to discuss "Customer Success Driven Sales." Sixteen Ventures is a consulting agency focused on helping SaaS and Cloud vendors identify, acquire and keep more customers to bring about growth and profitability. In today’s episode, Lincoln joins us in the studio to discuss why it’s essential for all companies to be using customer success driven sales. He explains that the idea of customer success driven sales came from seeing that churn was a byproduct of companies selling to customers who didn’t fit their customer profile and wouldn’t achieve success as a client. Murphy says that bringing on “bad fit” customers and sacrificing long term growth to hit short term numbers by signing customers who won't achieve success in working with you will ultimately negatively impact your business. To start doing customer success driven sales, he says first a team must figure out what a bad fit customer looks like through five different inputs: technical fit, functional fit, competence fit, experience fit and cultural fit. He’s seen companies go from struggling with sales to a 40x increase in account size by being deliberate in who to work with, and discusses how using “success milestones” can help your company do the same. Lincoln wrapped up by explaining that customer success driven sales, and customer success in general, are really the reasons companies exist in the marketplace and those who understand this and focus on it are the ones that will reach their desired outcomes.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Lincoln Murphy, Customer Success Consultant at Sixteen Ventures, to discuss "Customer Success Driven Sales." Sixteen Ventures is a consulting agency focused on helping SaaS and Cloud vendors identify, acquire and keep more customers to bring about growth and profitability. In today’s episode, Lincoln joins us in the studio to discuss why it’s essential for all companies to be using customer success driven sales. He explains that the idea of customer success driven sales came from seeing that churn was a byproduct of companies selling to customers who didn’t fit their customer profile and wouldn’t achieve success as a client. Murphy says that bringing on “bad fit” customers and sacrificing long term growth to hit short term numbers by signing customers who won't achieve success in working with you will ultimately negatively impact your business. To start doing customer success driven sales, he says first a team must figure out what a bad fit customer looks like through five different inputs: technical fit, functional fit, competence fit, experience fit and cultural fit. He’s seen companies go from struggling with sales to a 40x increase in account size by being deliberate in who to work with, and discusses how using “success milestones” can help your company do the same. Lincoln wrapped up by explaining that customer success driven sales, and customer success in general, are really the reasons companies exist in the marketplace and those who understand this and focus on it are the ones that will reach their desired outcomes.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Jonathon Ende, Founder & CEO at SeamlessDocs, to discuss “Public Sector SaaS: Selling Into Government.” SeamlessDocs' public sector SaaS platform helps government clients not only digitize their existing forms, but also process and track them. The company aims to be “the future of government forms,” bringing modern, intuitive user experience to the government-citizen interface. Though perhaps not the sexiest market, the opportunity is massive: US federal & state budgets alone exceed $10 Trillion. Unlike many software companies that sell into government today, SeamlessDocs is 100% focused on the public sector vertical. Jonathon, therefore, has embraced the idiosyncracies of selling into government, seeing them as potential moats rather than challenges to be avoided. Think how often you personally face agony over DMV appointments or jury summons. Attaching a service cost to all of those incidents, then multiplying by a 9-figure factor (applicable citizen-users) makes clear the scale & ubiquity of the problem SeamlessDocs is solving. And the buyers are there: efficient, paperless, user-friendly citizen interaction would mean billions in cost savings for under-resourced governments. Jonathon founded SeamlessDocs in 2011 alongside CTO Chaci Camejo. Today, SeamlessDocs employs over 40 FTEs, operating largely out of its New York City headquarters. Customers range from the State of New Jersey to the City of Los Angeles. Since founding, the business has raised ~$17MM in venture financing from Seed through a Series B approximately a year ago, from Motorola Solutions, Govtech Fund, and others. In today's episode, Jonathon will walk us through his framework for successful sales in public sector SaaS. Selling into government isn’t a simple prospect. As many horizontal players who have dipped their toes into government prospects know, budgets can be opaque, sales cycles can be long, and existing systems are often a nightmare. Jonathon and I discuss the realities of public sector SaaS sales today. In short, it may not be as bad as you think. That said, it takes a deep understanding of your customer universe, and Ideal Customer Profile within it, to build credibility early in these sales processes. As Jonathan details, there are absolutely buyer champions out there in government. Ensure your public sector SaaS solution (and sales team) is truly understands prospects’ issues, concerns and limitations, and you can activate them. We cover topics such as: sales strategies, lead qualification, sales team organization, sales team education, and other topics uniquely germane to public sector SaaS. Jonathon Ende is the Founder & CEO at SeamlessDocs, a role he has held since founding the business in 2011. Prior to SeamlessDocs, Jonathon was the co-founder of The Alley, a technology share space here in NYC. Jonathon served as CEO to two companies even earlier in his career, including LegalLogix, the first business he founded, back in 2010. Few modern, sales-oriented SaaS CEOs client (and prospect) bases are 100% government / public sector; Jonathon, however, is that rare find, making him a perfect guide to today's podcast topic. Happy listening!

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Jonathon Ende, Founder & CEO at SeamlessDocs, to discuss “Public Sector SaaS: Selling Into Government.” SeamlessDocs' public sector SaaS platform helps government clients not only digitize their existing forms, but also process and track them. The company aims to be “the future of government forms,” bringing modern, intuitive user experience to the government-citizen interface. Though perhaps not the sexiest market, the opportunity is massive: US federal & state budgets alone exceed $10 Trillion. Unlike many software companies that sell into government today, SeamlessDocs is 100% focused on the public sector vertical. Jonathon, therefore, has embraced the idiosyncracies of selling into government, seeing them as potential moats rather than challenges to be avoided. Think how often you personally face agony over DMV appointments or jury summons. Attaching a service cost to all of those incidents, then multiplying by a 9-figure factor (applicable citizen-users) makes clear the scale & ubiquity of the problem SeamlessDocs is solving. And the buyers are there: efficient, paperless, user-friendly citizen interaction would mean billions in cost savings for under-resourced governments. Jonathon founded SeamlessDocs in 2011 alongside CTO Chaci Camejo. Today, SeamlessDocs employs over 40 FTEs, operating largely out of its New York City headquarters. Customers range from the State of New Jersey to the City of Los Angeles. Since founding, the business has raised ~$17MM in venture financing from Seed through a Series B approximately a year ago, from Motorola Solutions, Govtech Fund, and others. In today's episode, Jonathon will walk us through his framework for successful sales in public sector SaaS. Selling into government isn’t a simple prospect. As many horizontal players who have dipped their toes into government prospects know, budgets can be opaque, sales cycles can be long, and existing systems are often a nightmare. Jonathon and I discuss the realities of public sector SaaS sales today. In short, it may not be as bad as you think. That said, it takes a deep understanding of your customer universe, and Ideal Customer Profile within it, to build credibility early in these sales processes. As Jonathan details, there are absolutely buyer champions out there in government. Ensure your public sector SaaS solution (and sales team) is truly understands prospects’ issues, concerns and limitations, and you can activate them. We cover topics such as: sales strategies, lead qualification, sales team organization, sales team education, and other topics uniquely germane to public sector SaaS. Jonathon Ende is the Founder & CEO at SeamlessDocs, a role he has held since founding the business in 2011. Prior to SeamlessDocs, Jonathon was the co-founder of The Alley, a technology share space here in NYC. Jonathon served as CEO to two companies even earlier in his career, including LegalLogix, the first business he founded, back in 2010. Few modern, sales-oriented SaaS CEOs client (and prospect) bases are 100% government / public sector; Jonathon, however, is that rare find, making him a perfect guide to today's podcast topic. Happy listening!

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Mark Birch, an Enterprise Sales Executive at Stack Overflow, to discuss "Leveraging Internal Champions." Stack Overflow is the world's largest and most trusted community for software developers. A question and answer website for professional and enthusiast programmers, Stack Overflow caters to developers and provides a forum for learning, knowledge sharing, and career advancement. The Company also provides enterprise customers with a powerful database to reach out to a targeted talent pool as well as package reports for corporate customers. Mark joined us in the studio to discuss ways of leveraging internal champions during the enterprise sales cycle. He reflects upon his experiences at Stack Overflow, as well as his background as the Founder of the Enterprise Sales Forum, a 10,000 person global B2B sales community of enterprise sales professions. As a part of our discussion of leveraging internal champions, Mark discusses the process of identifying, coaching, and providing digestible information to internal champions. He also provides insights into the ways that champions can assist with mapping a purchasing path within organization and providing insight into the segments within the business where gaps may emerge. We conclude the discussion identifying best practices and identifying scenarios in which you build credibility and avoid the painful "stall, evade, quiet" cycle of losing a champion.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Mark Birch, an Enterprise Sales Executive at Stack Overflow, to discuss "Leveraging Internal Champions." Stack Overflow is the world's largest and most trusted community for software developers. A question and answer website for professional and enthusiast programmers, Stack Overflow caters to developers and provides a forum for learning, knowledge sharing, and career advancement. The Company also provides enterprise customers with a powerful database to reach out to a targeted talent pool as well as package reports for corporate customers. Mark joined us in the studio to discuss ways of leveraging internal champions during the enterprise sales cycle. He reflects upon his experiences at Stack Overflow, as well as his background as the Founder of the Enterprise Sales Forum, a 10,000 person global B2B sales community of enterprise sales professions. As a part of our discussion of leveraging internal champions, Mark discusses the process of identifying, coaching, and providing digestible information to internal champions. He also provides insights into the ways that champions can assist with mapping a purchasing path within organization and providing insight into the segments within the business where gaps may emerge. We conclude the discussion identifying best practices and identifying scenarios in which you build credibility and avoid the painful "stall, evade, quiet" cycle of losing a champion.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Michael Katz, CEO and co-founder of mParticle, to discuss "Creating Engineering Urgency During Your Sales Cycle." mParticle provides a single API to connect a company's entire marketing stack, giving customers the freedom and flexibility to build a modern data infrastructure to reduce the complexity of multiple API connections. The Company's technology offers customers access to up to 150 (and growing) different APIs, creating turnkey data connections and providing enterprise-grade security while improving market outcomes and maximizing IT productivity. Trusted by many of the world's leading brands, including Airbnb, Spotify, Jet, EA, and Gilt, mParticle offers a single customer view and the ability to quickly test and coordinate marketing engagements across vendors.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Michael Katz, CEO and co-founder of mParticle, to discuss "Creating Engineering Urgency During Your Sales Cycle." mParticle provides a single API to connect a company's entire marketing stack, giving customers the freedom and flexibility to build a modern data infrastructure to reduce the complexity of multiple API connections. The Company's technology offers customers access to up to 150 (and growing) different APIs, creating turnkey data connections and providing enterprise-grade security while improving market outcomes and maximizing IT productivity. Trusted by many of the world's leading brands, including Airbnb, Spotify, Jet, EA, and Gilt, mParticle offers a single customer view and the ability to quickly test and coordinate marketing engagements across vendors.

We're happy to announce that our guest Sean Ellis released his new book today, covering customer activation amongst many other growth hacking tips and stories. If you like what you hear in today's podcast, we encourage you to check out “Hacking Growth,” now available for purchase on Amazon! This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Sean Ellis, CEO and founder of GrowthHackers, to discuss “Optimizing Your Team for Customer Activation.” GrowthHackers helps companies achieve sustainable customer and revenue growth. The business has multiple dimensions, spanning content, community, training and software. GrowthHackers.com, since its launch in 2013, has grown into the foremost online community for the “growth hacking” movement. Now a well-known destination, the site offers an impressive trove of growth hacking resources both proprietary and user-submitted. All content is surfaced, commented on, and filtered by the community of GrowthHackers members, now hundreds of thousands strong. Last year, Sean and his team dramatically expanded the scope of GrowthHackers’ offerings by releasing “Projects,” a purpose-driven software to help teams achieve and manage their growth objectives. This year, the team launched formal consulting and training offerings for companies seeking to adopt key growth hacking techniques and concepts. In our episode today, Sean discusses a concept he sees as fundamental to the future of growth hacking: customer activation. Customer activation is best described as that “a-ha!” moment when a customer experiences a product’s true value for the first time. Customer activation, in other words, is a proxy for that “first taste” of product-market fit. Importantly, achieving customer activation is a cross-functional effort: sales, marketing, customer success, and even product must all be aligned and communicating in order to understand what that “a-ha” moment is and how to optimize for it. If your teams and objectives are too siloed, you run the risk of missing this critical org-wide goal. In today’s episode, Sean explains how startup leaders should think about structuring their teams to ensure that customer activation is front and center. He shares several examples of how he helped companies like Dropbox and LogMeIn find and maximize product-market fit by testing for customer activation. Make sure to subscribe to the Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast for a new episode every week!   Sean Ellis is the CEO of GrowthHackers. He founded the business in 2010, the same year in which he coined the term “growth hacker” (in this blog post). Sean was also the founder and CEO of Qualaroo, a SaaS voice-of-customer solution serving large companies like Uber, Starbucks, Spotify, Burger King and Intuit. Qualaroo was acquired 2016. Prior to founding Qualaroo in 2012, Sean served as a key early growth / marketing executive at a range of technology businesses including Dropbox, Eventbrite, Lookout, LogMeIn, and Uproar. Sean is also a longtime angel investor, has formally advised many startups (including, most recently, Mavenlink), and has served as a Guest Lecturer at Harvard Business School. Sean holds a BA from the University of California, Davis, and lives in Newport Beach, CA. I also wanted to share a few resources for anyone that would like to learn more about Sean, GrowthHackers, or the growth hacking strategies they have developed. As mentioned above, we encourage you to check out Sean's new book, released just today: “

We're happy to announce that our guest Sean Ellis released his new book today, covering customer activation amongst many other growth hacking tips and stories. If you like what you hear in today's podcast, we encourage you to check out “Hacking Growth,” now available for purchase on Amazon! This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Sean Ellis, CEO and founder of GrowthHackers, to discuss “Optimizing Your Team for Customer Activation.” GrowthHackers helps companies achieve sustainable customer and revenue growth. The business has multiple dimensions, spanning content, community, training and software. GrowthHackers.com, since its launch in 2013, has grown into the foremost online community for the “growth hacking” movement. Now a well-known destination, the site offers an impressive trove of growth hacking resources both proprietary and user-submitted. All content is surfaced, commented on, and filtered by the community of GrowthHackers members, now hundreds of thousands strong. Last year, Sean and his team dramatically expanded the scope of GrowthHackers’ offerings by releasing “Projects,” a purpose-driven software to help teams achieve and manage their growth objectives. This year, the team launched formal consulting and training offerings for companies seeking to adopt key growth hacking techniques and concepts. In our episode today, Sean discusses a concept he sees as fundamental to the future of growth hacking: customer activation. Customer activation is best described as that “a-ha!” moment when a customer experiences a product’s true value for the first time. Customer activation, in other words, is a proxy for that “first taste” of product-market fit. Importantly, achieving customer activation is a cross-functional effort: sales, marketing, customer success, and even product must all be aligned and communicating in order to understand what that “a-ha” moment is and how to optimize for it. If your teams and objectives are too siloed, you run the risk of missing this critical org-wide goal. In today’s episode, Sean explains how startup leaders should think about structuring their teams to ensure that customer activation is front and center. He shares several examples of how he helped companies like Dropbox and LogMeIn find and maximize product-market fit by testing for customer activation. Make sure to subscribe to the Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast for a new episode every week!   Sean Ellis is the CEO of GrowthHackers. He founded the business in 2010, the same year in which he coined the term “growth hacker” (in this blog post). Sean was also the founder and CEO of Qualaroo, a SaaS voice-of-customer solution serving large companies like Uber, Starbucks, Spotify, Burger King and Intuit. Qualaroo was acquired 2016. Prior to founding Qualaroo in 2012, Sean served as a key early growth / marketing executive at a range of technology businesses including Dropbox, Eventbrite, Lookout, LogMeIn, and Uproar. Sean is also a longtime angel investor, has formally advised many startups (including, most recently, Mavenlink), and has served as a Guest Lecturer at Harvard Business School. Sean holds a BA from the University of California, Davis, and lives in Newport Beach, CA. I also wanted to share a few resources for anyone that would like to learn more about Sean, GrowthHackers, or the growth hacking strategies they have developed. As mentioned above, we encourage you to check out Sean's new book, released just today: “

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Bobbi Jo Price, Head of Sales at ClearCare, to discuss “Organizational Restructuring As You Move Upstream.” ClearCare is a front-to-back office software solution for private duty home care agencies. ClearCare’s web and mobile platform offers scheduling, integrated telephony, two-way caregiver messaging, and marketing tools that help streamline care planning and automate back office tasks. Bobbi joins us to discuss the difficult task of organizational restructuring as you move upstream and how to restructure your sales team for high ACV sales, a process many startups find themselves undergoing as their product moves upstream. She walks us through everything from the differences between low and high ACV selling, the sales team retraining that this transition requires, coordinating sales and on-boarding efforts, and managing expectations across departments. We also talk about when a startup should be looking to hire outside sales talent versus promoting existing members during this transition to enterprise clients. Lastly, we touch upon effective strategies for maintaining employee morale during the ups and downs of this restructuring process. This topic of organizational restructuring as you move upstream comes up a lot and we hope you enjoy it.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Bobbi Jo Price, Head of Sales at ClearCare, to discuss “Organizational Restructuring As You Move Upstream.” ClearCare is a front-to-back office software solution for private duty home care agencies. ClearCare’s web and mobile platform offers scheduling, integrated telephony, two-way caregiver messaging, and marketing tools that help streamline care planning and automate back office tasks. Bobbi joins us to discuss the difficult task of organizational restructuring as you move upstream and how to restructure your sales team for high ACV sales, a process many startups find themselves undergoing as their product moves upstream. She walks us through everything from the differences between low and high ACV selling, the sales team retraining that this transition requires, coordinating sales and on-boarding efforts, and managing expectations across departments. We also talk about when a startup should be looking to hire outside sales talent versus promoting existing members during this transition to enterprise clients. Lastly, we touch upon effective strategies for maintaining employee morale during the ups and downs of this restructuring process. This topic of organizational restructuring as you move upstream comes up a lot and we hope you enjoy it.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Eileen Wiens, VP of Emerging & SMB Sales at Intacct, to discuss "Hiring Sales Generalists Versus Sales Specialists." Intacct is the largest private ERP vendor that provides cloud-based financial management and accounting applications for businesses and CPA firms. The company's applications are used by more than 8,500 organizations from startups to public companies and are designed to improve business performance and make finance more productive. In this podcast episode, Eileen joins us to discuss whether early stage startups should hire sales generalists - individuals with great sales acumen but less experience selling in the specific space - or sales specialists - individuals with very specific knowledge and domain expertise in a particular space - when building out their sales teams. Having led multiple sales teams throughout her career and toying with this question of hiring sales generalists versus sales specialists, Eileen has an in-depth understanding of how a successful sales team operates and shares with us what she looks for in the ideal sales representative. In addition, Eileen shares her insights on the optimal sales interview format, sales team training and motivation, and best practices for new hire on-boarding.

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Eileen Wiens, VP of Emerging & SMB Sales at Intacct, to discuss "Hiring Sales Generalists Versus Sales Specialists." Intacct is the largest private ERP vendor that provides cloud-based financial management and accounting applications for businesses and CPA firms. The company's applications are used by more than 8,500 organizations from startups to public companies and are designed to improve business performance and make finance more productive. In this podcast episode, Eileen joins us to discuss whether early stage startups should hire sales generalists - individuals with great sales acumen but less experience selling in the specific space - or sales specialists - individuals with very specific knowledge and domain expertise in a particular space - when building out their sales teams. Having led multiple sales teams throughout her career and toying with this question of hiring sales generalists versus sales specialists, Eileen has an in-depth understanding of how a successful sales team operates and shares with us what she looks for in the ideal sales representative. In addition, Eileen shares her insights on the optimal sales interview format, sales team training and motivation, and best practices for new hire on-boarding.