Podcasts about clearslide

We're back with another episode live from ELC Annual 2024's podcast booth! Patrick discusses the practices and rituals around effective hiring & recruiting with a few speakers and roundtable hosts from ELC Annual 2024, including Lawrence Bruhmuller (SVP of Engineering @ Great Expectations), Eric Fettner (Co-Founder @ Job Sauce), and Scott Swedberg (CEO & Co-Founder @ Job Sauce). Scott shares insights & takeaways from his roundtable conversation on assessing career growth & determining next steps during this trend of eng orgs continuing to become flatter. Eric and Lawrence also stop by the booth to share about their unique partnership, hiring best practices, ensuring candidates maintain your org's engineering culture, and more.ABOUT SCOTT SWEDBERGScott Swedberg is CEO & Founder of The Job Sauce, a boutique recruiting firm for high-growth companies. He founded The Job Sauce as a career coaching company, and partners with ELC to support engineering leaders in their careers and talent acquisition. He and his wife, Lauryn, live in Denver with their daughter and cat.ABOUT ERIC FETTNEREric Fettner is co-founder of The Job Sauce, a high-touch recruiting firm serving Seed through pre-IPO startups. After helping launch the most successful vertical at Eventbrite (IPO September 2018), Eric was ready to take on something new. He began by building The Job Sauce as the premier provider of career services for tech workers. This focus on candidate experience revealed the horrible experience most recruiting firms provide, leading to the birth and success of The Job Sauce Recruiting, trusted by top startups funded by top VCs.ABOUT LAWRENCE BRUHMULLERLawrence Bruhmuller is currently the SVP of Engineering at Great Expectations, the open-source data quality solution used by thousands of data engineers in the industry. He has over 12 years of experience as an overall head of engineering, mostly focused on growth-stage startups. Previous roles include CTO roles at Pave and Optimizely, and VPE roles at WeWork, ClearSlide, and Symantec.Lawrence has been a part of small startups and also larger companies, and has developed products for individual users and also the world's largest enterprises. In particular, he has focused on delivering cloud-first products in the B2B application and developer tooling spaces.Lawrence is passionate about the intersection of engineering management and the growth stage of startups. He has written extensively on engineering leadership (https://lbruhmuller.medium.com/), including how to best evolve and mature engineering organizations before, during and after these growth phases. He enjoys advising and mentoring other engineering leaders in his spare time.Lawrence holds a Bachelors in Mathematics and Engineering from Harvey Mudd College, and a Masters in Applied Mathematics from Claremont Graduate University. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife Amy, and their three daughters.SHOW NOTES:What brought Scott Swedberg to ELC Annual 2024 & how he supports eng leaders (3:12)Summarizing Scott's ELC Annual roundtable discussion on career growth (5:39)Understanding how trends shift as technology evolves & investor priorities pivot (9:01)Final takeaways on exploring career growth & next steps (11:26)Eric Fettner & Lawrence Bruhmuller explain their recent partnership (14:19)Questions eng leaders should ask to aid calibration / alignment between partners (17:21)Ensuring new candidates reinforce the eng culture you're aiming to build (18:29)Strategies for adopting / adapting cultural practices while hiring & onboarding (20:33)Effective communication between eng leaders & talent partners (22:49)Lawrence explains Great Expectations' team structure (25:04)Recommendations for providing feedback between partners (26:37)The importance of timing when it comes to the hiring process (28:00)This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Mark Wendling is the Global VP of Data Cloud Sales and Alliances at Snowflake. He has a successful career in sales and has held various leadership positions in companies like S.C., Michael Page International, East Search Vision, ClearSlide, and Sumo Logic. Mark has been with Snowflake for the past seven years and has played a crucial role in scaling the company's sales organization.In this episode, Mark shares insights into how Snowflake organizes its commercial sales teams and the key skills young sellers need to learn. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on the customer's pain points and metrics, rather than just selling the product. Mark also discusses the significance of memory in sales, the value of being coachable, and the power of creating a vision for customers. He highlights the importance of tracking meaningful metrics and shares his approach to negotiation and pricing. Additionally, Mark provides advice on scaling sales teams and the importance of focusing on the ideal customer profile.Tune in and learn more about this episode of the Revenue Builders Podcast.HERE ARE SOME KEY SECTIONS TO CHECK OUT[00:02:03] Overview of Snowflake's commercial sales organization[00:11:08] Command of the message framework for social selling[00:12:07] Focusing on positive business outcomes and creating a vision[00:15:08] Drive, memory, and coachability as important characteristics[00:18:04] Using MEDDICC for qualifying and forecasting[00:21:21] Coaching reps to understand and influence metrics[00:23:02] The importance of reps knowing how they are measured[00:24:45] Focusing on the answers you need, not just want[00:27:29] Focusing on what you receive, not what you send[00:28:20] Top reasons for deals going awry: lack of a champion and failure to identify pain points[00:31:45] Understanding what matters to the customer and prioritizing give-get scenarios[00:34:10] The importance of memory and being prepared with give-gets[00:37:08] Need for exit criteria before moving to the next stage[00:39:53] Importance of having multiple paths to reach sales targets[00:48:22] Importance of equitable division of potential accounts[00:56:49] Educating reps on the risks and challenges of career advancementADDITIONAL RESOURCESLearn more about aligning customer-facing teams to improve execution: https://forc.mx/48o1jyPConnect and learn more about Mark Wendling.https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-wendling-0b1503/https://www.linkedin.com/company/snowflake-computing/HIGHLIGHT QUOTES[00:19:50] "It's not about the answers you want, it's about the answers you need."[00:25:02] "It's not about what you say. It's about all the signals that you receive and what you do with them."[00:32:45] "If you try to sell Snowflake, you're going to fail. If you sell change, you are going to succeed."

JP Bolen is the VP of Global Sales at Rubrik. He has a wealth of experience in sales and sales leadership, having worked at various companies such as Wallace Computer, PTC, Primo, Blade Logic, BMC Software, Dynamic Ops, VMware, ClearSlide, MongoDB, and ThoughtSpot.In this episode, JP emphasizes the importance of sales enablement and the three types of training: onboarding, ongoing, and field training. He shares his experience in implementing a comprehensive onboarding program at Rubrik, which includes interactive classes and real-life scenarios to help new hires become conversationally fluent in the problems Rubrik solves. JP also explains the concept of "winning the stage" in the sales process and how Rubrik measures conversion rates between different stages to identify areas for improvement. The conversation also touches on the significance of having a compelling point of view (POV) when engaging with customers and the role of continuous learning in sales success.Tune in to this conversation with John McMahon and John Kaplan on the Revenue Builders podcast.HERE ARE SOME KEY SECTIONS TO CHECK OUT[00:08:43] JP's initial perception of enablement and his transition into the role[00:09:50] Introduction to Rubrik's onboarding training challenges[00:13:00] A deconstructed approach to onboarding was implemented for better learning.[00:15:59] Onboarding is structured into three tracks for scalability and continuous learning.[00:18:04] The first track focuses on value-based conversations and messaging.[00:19:41] Importance of leaders following up and providing support[00:25:12] Empathy, listening, questioning, and curiosity in discovery[00:28:30] "Change the Game" initiative to drive mindset shift[00:37:39] Stage 1: Identifying pain, stakeholders, quantifying pain, developing champions[00:39:18] Stage 2: Creating a plan, technical validation, financial conversation[00:40:23] Importance of stage 1 and finding the real champion[00:43:12] Focus on understanding how deals got to their current stage[00:44:08] Importance of quantifying pain and understanding why they have to buy[00:45:17] Difficulty in conversion between stage 1 and 2[00:46:15] Implementing friction and champion go/no-go in stage 1 and 2[00:48:00] The importance of answering the 4 essential questions for success[00:49:17] Example of adding information to the framework[00:51:11] Initial challenges faced and the need for a common framework[00:53:55] Training reps to go into accounts with a compelling point of viewADDITIONAL RESOURCESLearn more about JP Bolen:https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpbolen/Download our Sales Transformation Guide for Leaders: https://forc.mx/3sdtEZJHIGHLIGHT QUOTES[00:05:11] “The single most important metric inside a company is sales productivity. You have quota, a product, and how well you perform against the quota. The variables and leverage points are obviously who you hire because that's going to dictate a lot. But once you get them in, it's how quickly they can actually understand the customer's problems, the things that customers are going through, the pains they have, and how well you differently address those problems and become productive with the skills and execution.”[00:57:10] “I remember you and I spoke a lot before I took this role. I talked to Grant Wilson a lot. At one point, I was talking to Grant about the things that we were doing. I was explaining to save the data. I was explaining these different pieces. And he said, ‘You're not enabling, like you're not just enabling, you're transforming, you're doing sales transformation inside of the company.'”

Carlos Delatorre is a seasoned sales leader with a career spanning several companies, including PTC, Oracle, Symantec, BMC, VMware, ClearSlide, MongoDB, Vera, and TripActions. He is also an active investor and advisor in several software companies and sits on the board of Yellow. In this episode, Carlos talks about the three basic things he considers when making a career move: market size, product differentiation, and the team. He also discusses the importance of focusing on the customer and the value proposition when selling. Additionally, Carlos delves into the complexity of a product and the selling environment, highlighting the importance of having a sales team that can effectively differentiate from the competition and create demand. ChaptersCarlos' background and achievements (0:01:16)Carlos' career moves and acquisitions (0:01:56)Carlos' decision-making process for his next move (0:02:30)Three basic things Carlos considers when making a career move (0:04:31)The importance of focusing on the customer and the value proposition when selling (0:06:00)The complexity of a product and selling environment (0:06:41)Carlos' lessons learned from climbing the sales leadership ranks (0:10:54)The importance of persistence and going as high as you need to go to get your message heard (0:15:58)The importance of paying attention to the little things about people (0:32:22)Importance of new logos and expansion revenue (0:43:12)Looking at conversion rates to learn from successful sales reps (0:45:23)The danger of only relying on existing new deals (0:48:18)Gaining insights from a combination of metrics (0:48:46)The importance of a Management Operating Rhythm (0:51:23)Defining priorities in each time frame (0:52:11)Quotable Phrases"If there's not a big market, there's a chance everything else could be okay, and then you just run out of market and you can't grow anymore." (0:04:48)"You're really trying to solve a problem for the customer, and that's what you're selling." (0:06:30)"You want to hire people that are going to be able to scale with the business." (0:09:40)"The role of technology is to make the sales process more efficient." (0:11:55)"Data is absolutely critical in sales." (0:13:45)"The most important thing is to focus on the customer and the value proposition." (0:16:20)"The future of sales is about being more customer-centric." (0:18:25)"COVID-19 has accelerated the trend towards digital selling." (0:20:15)"You have to be persistent and creative in sales." (0:11:34)"Your job as a manager is to make the sales reps self-sufficient." (0:18:14)"It's really about developing your people." (0:19:53)Additional ResourcesConnect with Carlos: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadelatorre/5 Questions to Answer in Every CFO Deal: https://forc.mx/46Dhqcq3 Strategies to Cultivate a Customer-First Mindset: https://forc.mx/3NP899K 

In this episode of Sales Ops Demystified, Tom Hunt is joined by Demar Amacker, Director of Revenue Ops at Zift Solutions. They discuss the value of frontline sales experience for a sales ops professional, how to help low-performing sales reps, and setting up Zift's Revenue Ops function and supporting team.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVER: [3:02] - Why due diligence is important when you make early decisions on where you work  [6:01] - How to choose the right boss for YOU [8:55] - Evaluating company values [10:31] - Being motivated by your first commission plan [14:21] - What are the right "Whys" before jumping into a sales career [19:46] - Avoid falling for the title bait We strive to be as accurate as possible with timestamps. They may off by a few seconds due to platform differences.MORE ON CARLOS:Carlos Delatorre has 25 years experience building high performance customer-facing teams at hyper-growth tech companies. As CRO of TripActions, Carlos oversees global Sales and Customer success. His previous roles include CEO of Vera, CRO at MongoDB (through IPO), SVP-Sales at ClearSlide, SVP-Sales at DynamicOps (acquired by VMware), AVP at BMC Software/BladeLogic and others. Carlos holds an M.B.A from Troy University as well as a B.A. from the University of Miami and lives in San Francisco with his wife, son, daughter and dog. You can also find him on twitter here.MORE ON RAMPED: Check us out at www.rampedcareers.com Interested in becoming a Ramped Professional? Sign up here: https://rampedcareers.com/candidate-form/ Interested in becoming a Ramped Corporate Partner? Email us at sales@rampedcareers.com

Olga V. Mack grew up in Siberia. It's rare for someone to become a world-class lawyer where she's from. Yet, here she is. Olga began her legal career with Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati where she studied IP, security, and privacy “before those things were cool.” From there, she moved in-house where she provided legal advice for companies like Visa , Zoosk, and Clearslide . After 15 years of practice, she received an offer out of the blue to become the CEO of Parley Pro , a contract lifecycle management platform. Today, she is molding the future of law from this position and bringing legal innovation to the masses. Topics covered: - Flirting with risk to unlock new opportunities - Asking CEOs directly where you can make the biggest impact - The value of industry knowledge - Why law needs to be held to a higher standard of service Hear more stories by subscribing to Innovative Legal Leadership on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any podcast platform. Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for Innovative Legal Leadership in your favorite podcast player.

Olga V. Mack grew up in Siberia. It's rare for someone to become a world-class lawyer where she's from. Yet, here she is. Olga began her legal career with Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati where she studied IP, security, and privacy “before those things were cool.” From there, she moved in-house where she provided legal advice for companies like Visa , Zoosk, and Clearslide . After 15 years of practice, she received an offer out of the blue to become the CEO of Parley Pro , a contract lifecycle management platform. Today, she is molding the future of law from this position and bringing legal innovation to the masses. Topics covered: - Flirting with risk to unlock new opportunities - Asking CEOs directly where you can make the biggest impact - The value of industry knowledge - Why law needs to be held to a higher standard of service Hear more stories by subscribing to Innovative Legal Leadership on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any podcast platform. Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for Innovative Legal Leadership in your favorite podcast player.

Devin Reed is the Head of Content Strategy at Gong and one of the top voices in B2B sales today. Devin was formerly was 2nd sales hire at Gong before transitioning into content strategy. Prior to that, he was in sales at Eventbrite, OneMob, On24 and ClearSlide. In this conversation, we get into: Devin's best stories of the early days of sales Being one of the first Gong sales hires How he's built one of the best brands on LinkedIn And much more... This podcast is brought to you by Gong.io, the #1 Revenue Intelligence Company, and Postal.io, A Curated Experience Marketing Platform that Helps You Cut Through the Noise. If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to grow this show and find the best guests possible for you. Follow The Podcast: Apple/Spotify: Millennial Sales Twitter: @TommyTahoe Instagram: @TommyTahoe YouTube: TommyTahoe Website: Millennialmomentum.net

Devin Reed is the Head of Content Strategy at Gong and one of the top voices in B2B sales today. Devin was formerly was 2nd sales hire at Gong before transitioning into content strategy. Prior to that, he was in sales at Eventbrite, OneMob, On24 and ClearSlide. In this conversation, we get into: Devin's best stories of the early days of sales Being one of the first Gong sales hires How he's built one of the best brands on LinkedIn And much more... This podcast is brought to you by Gong.io, the #1 Revenue Intelligence Company, and Postal.io, A Curated Experience Marketing Platform that Helps You Cut Through the Noise. If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to grow this show and find the best guests possible for you. Follow The Podcast: Apple/Spotify: Millennial Sales Twitter: @TommyTahoe Instagram: @TommyTahoe YouTube: TommyTahoe Website: Millennialmomentum.net

Chris sits down with Jim Benton. Jim Benton, CEO of Chorus.ai, is a revenue-generating visionary; translating customer needs into innovative solutions. As Co-Founder of ClearSlide and later as CEO of Apollo, Jim helped create the Sales Engagement category. From Evite to AdBrite to ClearSlide, Jim has expanded new categories and scaled revenue teams to grow from zero to tens of millions in high-margin SaaS revenue. Beginning his career as a practitioner, Jim credits his success to a highly successful and methodical SMB + Enterprise sales motion. He is still part of YC-Backed Apollo's board. On this episode: Jim explains how sales was his path to entrepreneurship.  Learn about the origins of ClearSlide and how Jim learned to pitch the concept effectively. Discover how Jim and his team built and leveraged their network. Key Takeaways: You must know how to start building and scaling teams.  With a start-up, you must be comfortable making things happen, picking up the phone, finding ways to teach yourself and learn.  Get comfortable delegating. Make sure your steps are in alignment with your company vision. Tweetable Quotes: “I always have believed that people can achieve anything if they just know what they want.” “If you're aligned and setting bold goals, then really it's about execution from there and understanding what's blocking us and having the right time to talk through it. It's a lot easier to challenge and push people to do the best work.” “It's not about the metrics. It's not actually how we did on the items. As I always tell the team, it's how we communicated and came together to see eye-to-eye on actually, where we stand.”  

Drashti is the Head of Brand and Marketing at Siilo, an Amsterdam based secure medical messaging app. She has over a decade of B2B product marketing and brand experience from Microsoft, Impraise, ClearSlide, and Iron Creative. In this conversation we unpack her career and life journey, from interning at Tom's shoes to leading a team of marketing professionals.

Make way for change: the change that you are creating within your sphere of influence and the change we would all like to see when it comes to women in tech._____________________________________________________Olga V. Mack is a blockchain and distributed ledger technology strategist, security professional, experienced board director, nationally-recognized author, public speaker, and impactful women’s advocate. She is the CEO of Parley Pro, a collaborative & intuitive contract platform. Olga was instrumental in passing AB 2658 and SB 838, which define blockchain and form a working blockchain group in California. She co-authored Fundamentals of Smart Contracts Security (Momentum Press, March 2019) and she is writing a book about blockchain and distributed ledger technology business models. Olga leads the Smart Contracts Security Alliance to help enterprises innovate in blockchain securely. She spoke at TEDxSanFrancisco about the impact potential of blockchain and smart contracts and at SXSW about blockchain business models. Olga was previously General Counsel at ClearSlide. She also worked at Zoosk, Visa, Yahoo, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. She serves on the California Law Revision Commission (appointed by Governor Jerry Brown).

Show Notes(2:27) Ankit studied Electrical Engineering with a focus on Communication and Signal Processing at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.(3:27) Ankit then worked for three years as a Senior Field Engineer at Schlumberger, an international oilfield services company.(4:23) Ankit then went to the US to pursue a Masters in Financial Engineering from the Walter Hass School of Business at UC Berkeley.(6:13) Ankit had an opportunity to intern as a data scientist at Facebook during his Masters and worked on detecting spam for Facebook pages.(8:27) Ankit worked full-time as a Quantitative Finance Analyst at Bank of America after finishing his degree, with projects such as building models to identify risk in bank portfolio and analyzing relevance opportunities for strategic investment.(9:46) Ankit discussed his transition to a Data Scientist role at ClearSlide, a B2B platform for Sales Enablement + Engagement.(11:32) Ankit discussed his work on sales forecasting algorithms at ClearSlide.(15:06) In 2015, Ankit moved to Bangalore to become the Head of Data Science and Analytics at Ruunr, a B2B platform that offers hyper-local logistics services that partners with merchants in India.(16:18) Ankit unpacked his thorough post “How Food Delivery Can Be a Sustainable Business” that reflects his experience at Ruunr.(18:35) Ankit talked about the similarities and differences of tech culture in Bangalore and San Francisco.(19:39) Ankit came back to the US and started working as a Data Scientist at Uber in early 2017.(20:34) Ankit discussed his work at Uber on user-level forecasting.(23:12) Ankit talked about the different types of problems that researchers at Uber AI Labs work on.(24:49) Ankit unpacked his in-depth technical post on Uber’s Engineering blog “Food Discovery with Uber Eats: Using Graph Learning to Power Recommendations” — including graph neural networks for food recommendations, the design of the data and training pipeline, and ways to incorporate more data for further improvement.(28:55) Ankit discussed the challenges with building the Uber Eats recommendation system in production.(32:15) Ankit has written a technical book called TensorFlow Machine Learning Projects — which teaches how to exploit the benefits (simplicity, efficiency, and flexibility) of using TensorFlow in various real-world projects.(34:43) Ankit gave his two cents on the battle of frameworks between TensorFlow and PyTorch.(36:26) Ankit shared his advice for academics looking to work in the industry: building end-to-end projects, learning how to build scalable pipelines, and keeping up with important research topics.(38:33) Ankit reflected on the benefits of his electrical engineering and financial analysis education towards his career in data science.(40:11) Closing segment.His Contact InfoLinkedInTwitterGitHubQuoraHis Recommended ResourcesGraphSAGEMeta-Graph: Few-Shot Link Prediction via Meta-LearningAnkit’s book "TensorFlow Machine Learning Projects” published with PacktAndrew NgGeoffrey HintonJeff Dean"Elements of Statistical Learning" by Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, and Jerome Friedman

Show Notes(2:27) Ankit studied Electrical Engineering with a focus on Communication and Signal Processing at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.(3:27) Ankit then worked for three years as a Senior Field Engineer at Schlumberger, an international oilfield services company.(4:23) Ankit then went to the US to pursue a Masters in Financial Engineering from the Walter Hass School of Business at UC Berkeley.(6:13) Ankit had an opportunity to intern as a data scientist at Facebook during his Masters and worked on detecting spam for Facebook pages.(8:27) Ankit worked full-time as a Quantitative Finance Analyst at Bank of America after finishing his degree, with projects such as building models to identify risk in bank portfolio and analyzing relevance opportunities for strategic investment.(9:46) Ankit discussed his transition to a Data Scientist role at ClearSlide, a B2B platform for Sales Enablement + Engagement.(11:32) Ankit discussed his work on sales forecasting algorithms at ClearSlide.(15:06) In 2015, Ankit moved to Bangalore to become the Head of Data Science and Analytics at Ruunr, a B2B platform that offers hyper-local logistics services that partners with merchants in India.(16:18) Ankit unpacked his thorough post “How Food Delivery Can Be a Sustainable Business” that reflects his experience at Ruunr.(18:35) Ankit talked about the similarities and differences of tech culture in Bangalore and San Francisco.(19:39) Ankit came back to the US and started working as a Data Scientist at Uber in early 2017.(20:34) Ankit discussed his work at Uber on user-level forecasting.(23:12) Ankit talked about the different types of problems that researchers at Uber AI Labs work on.(24:49) Ankit unpacked his in-depth technical post on Uber’s Engineering blog “Food Discovery with Uber Eats: Using Graph Learning to Power Recommendations” — including graph neural networks for food recommendations, the design of the data and training pipeline, and ways to incorporate more data for further improvement.(28:55) Ankit discussed the challenges with building the Uber Eats recommendation system in production.(32:15) Ankit has written a technical book called TensorFlow Machine Learning Projects — which teaches how to exploit the benefits (simplicity, efficiency, and flexibility) of using TensorFlow in various real-world projects.(34:43) Ankit gave his two cents on the battle of frameworks between TensorFlow and PyTorch.(36:26) Ankit shared his advice for academics looking to work in the industry: building end-to-end projects, learning how to build scalable pipelines, and keeping up with important research topics.(38:33) Ankit reflected on the benefits of his electrical engineering and financial analysis education towards his career in data science.(40:11) Closing segment.His Contact InfoLinkedInTwitterGitHubQuoraHis Recommended ResourcesGraphSAGEMeta-Graph: Few-Shot Link Prediction via Meta-LearningAnkit’s book "TensorFlow Machine Learning Projects” published with PacktAndrew NgGeoffrey HintonJeff Dean"Elements of Statistical Learning" by Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, and Jerome Friedman

In this episode of the Startup Selling Podcast, I interviewed CEO at Chorus, Jim Benton.   Jim joined Chorus.ai as CEO to bring Conversation Intelligence, the fastest-growing category in sales technology, to the masses.    As a former Co-Founder of ClearSlide and CEO of Apollo, Benton’s career is defined by revenue generation and applying the voice of the customer.    Chorus will continue delivering solutions to improve the consistency and quality of the customer experience, quota attainment, and shortening new-hire onboarding for high-growth teams, like those of Zoom and MongoDB.   Some of the topics that Jim and I discussed in this episode are:   Sales Productivity – connect rates and follow up meetings resulting from the initial conversation. How many times have phrases like “COVID” come up in your conversation? Tactical changes that can be made to the way that you’re operating your sales team.  How the work of a salesperson has changed as we enter into this new way of selling. The importance of getting clear on the problems and who the buyers are on the other side of the table. The importance of bringing both sides of the executive team to the meeting. The importance of authenticity. Give your team permission to be human in their conversation. Jim’s experience cold-emailing Steve Jobs and how he got a deal between Ticket Master and Apple. Links & Resources   Chorus.ai: www.chorus.ai   ClearSlide: www.clearslide.com   Jim Benton on LinkedIn:  www.linkedin.com/in/benton Listen & subscribe to The Startup Selling Show here: Stitcher | Spotify | iTunes | Soundcloud | SalesQualia.com   Thanks so much for listening! Tell a friend or ten about The Startup Selling Show, and please leave a review wherever you’re listening to the show.  

In this episode, we’re going to discuss how Marketers can use Conversation Intelligence to convert conversations into sales. Our guest today is Natalie Severino, who is VP of Marketing at Chorus.ai What is conversation intelligence? An emerging technology, conversational artificial intelligence (AI), uses messaging apps, speech-based assistants (like advanced IVR) using natural language, and chatbots to automate communications and deliver personalized customer experiences Key Audio Time Stamps:  (1:57) What is conversation intelligence? (6:01) Sales and marketing benefits to conversation marketing (8:35) How does conversation marketing help the Marketing dept? (12:12) Conversational intelligence versus conversation intelligence (15:20) What kind of training is required to train the AI? (18:30) An example of a company that has done conversation intelligence well (22:22) Why aren’t there more companies using AI in Marketing? (23:01) When does Natalie think AI will be in every sales and marketing team? (24:40) What Mark believes is going to happen with AI and conversation intelligence Show Notes:  Favorite AI Solution: Chorus.ai . Mark – explore our chatbot on Facebook marketing.  https://m.me/fanaticsmedia?ref=w6471331 BIO: Natalie Severino is the VP of Marketing for Chorus.ai., the #1 Conversation Intelligence platform for high-growth sales teams. Passionate about elevating the craft of Sales and helping B2B sales professionals win more, Natalie enjoys writing and speaking about sales technologies and trends. Natalie joined Chorus after more than 25 years at leading technology companies like Intuit, Logitech, Trend Micro and ClearSlide. She oversees all of marketing and sales development for Chorus, including product marketing, demand generation and communications. Chorus.ai, for example, offers a conversation intelligence platform that records, transcribes, and analyzes business conversations in real time to coach reps on how to become top performers.  

If you liked this episode, we bet that you’ll love our blog content. blog.drift.com/#subscribe Subscribe to never miss a post & join the 20,000+ other pros committed to getting better every day. ----- Get the notebooks out. Amy serves on the board of directors for Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), which have a combined market cap of ~$400B -- and she is the CEO and founder of Accompany, a relationship intelligence platform which has received over $40M in funding. She's also an ex-Google exec who ran Google Analytics for seven years, growing it from >1% to over 70% market share, and serves as an advisor to Hubspot, Optimizely, ClearSlide, BloomReach, Origami Logic and Datorama. She holds a BSEE and MSEE in hardware and network systems from Stanford University. Make sure you let Amy know you heard her on Seeking Wisdom by Tweeting @_amychang @dcancel and @davegerhardt. Here are two links we mention on this episode: Star Wars Myers Briggs Type: geekologie.com/2013/12/star-wars-characters-myers-briggs-person.php Creativity Inc. Summary: https://www.fastcompany.com/3027135/inside-the-pixar-braintrust PS. See you at HYPERGROWTH 2018? Tickets just went on sale last week. Use the promo code SEEKINGWISDOM at hypergrowth.drift.com

  (Aragon Live Podcast) – In this episode of Aragon Live, Jim Lundy, CEO and Lead Analyst at Aragon Research, and Michael Schultz, VP of Marketing and Business Development at ClearSlide, discuss this year’s Dreamforce 2017—and how to transform sales with Sales Engagement Platforms. Listen to the podcast for details. Transform Sales with Sales Engagement Platforms

There’s been a lot of debate and controversy around the lack of women and minorities being represented in tech companies from entry-level to the C-suite and board room. However, what isn’t showcased is how there is sisterhood within tech, where women are helping each other out, and enacting change at every level from schools to the board room. To talk about how women are investing and encouraging each other, I’ve invited Samantha Walravens who is the co-author of the new book Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech. If you’re a woman, minority, or male ally you’ll learn from Samantha how: Women like Maria Klawe at Harvey Mudd have tripled the number of women graduating with Computer Science degrees Women are connecting female founders to female angel investors and influencers to grow their startups Corporations are changing and disrupting the dynamics of the boardroom   This is the last episode of FemgineerTV but don’t worry it’s not the end... After hosting FemgineerTV and listening to audience members like you for the past 2 ½ years, myself and my sponsor Pivotal Tracker decided it was time for a fun format! Starting next month, I’m going to be launching a new show called Build. I think you’ll enjoy the new format for Build. Each week you’ll receive a short video on a topic to help you build a product, company, and career in tech. So stay tuned for the launch of Build :) Want to help us get the word out about Build? Please take a moment to leave a review on iTunes here. If you’ve never left a review, here is a quick tutorial on how to do. -- Poornima: Welcome to another episode of *Femgineer TV*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker, I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker, the founder of Femgineer.                                 In this show, I invite innovators in tech, and together we debunk myths and misconceptions related to building tech products and companies.                                 One of the most heated topics today is the lack of women and minorities represented in tech; from entry level, to the C suite, to the board room. While we all know this is already a problem, in today's episode, we're going to be talking about some of the solutions, and showing how there are companies and organizations enacting these solutions.                                 And to help us out, I've invited Samantha Walravens, who is the coauthor of the latest book, *Geek Girl Rising: Inside The Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech*. Thanks so much for joining us today, Samantha.   Samantha: Thanks for having me!   Poornima: Yeah, it's wonderful.                                 Let's start by talking about why you and your coauthor, Heather Cabot, decided to write this book.   Sharing The Unspoken Narrative of Women In Technology   Samantha: The inspiration for this book was a conversation I had about three years ago with a friend of mine, who's been in Silicon Valley for 20 years. She's a woman, she's the VP of sales in business development, and she's worked in a number of tech startups, and we were having coffee, and she said, "Sam, I cannot tell you what just happened in my performance group review, it was last week, and my manager commented on what I was wearing, the color of my dresses, the jewelry I wore, and he told me that I was too aggressive, and too bossy, and I needed to tone it down a bit." Meanwhile, she is the head of sales, and she was rocking her number out of the park. So she said, "Sam, you've got to write something." She knew I was a journalist. She said, "You've got to write something and you have to talk about this kind of discrimination and this kind of sexism in Silicon Valley."                                 Mind you this is before the *Newsweek* article came out, "What does Silicon Valley really think of women," people were discussing women in technology, but it really was not a top of mind—and so I started to do a little digging, and researching and interviewing women. And what I found was, yes, there's sexism, there is harassment, there's discrimination, there's unconscious bias, it's there, it's a problem we need to talk about it and deal with it.                                 But there was another narrative, another discussion that wasn't being told, which was: these women want to talk about the companies they were building, the technologies they were creating, the women who are supporting them and helping them along the way in their careers. There was this whole other narrative that was missing from the conversation that was happening in the national news media about sexism in Silicon Valley.                                 And I thought, "we have to discuss this." So, Heather Cabot, who's my coauthor, was in New York, I'm in San Francisco, we talked, and she said, "Sam, I've been researching this topic," it was kind of a coincidence, it was like one of those weird moments of weird fate. And she said, "I've been researching this topic, let's work together." So we put our heads together and we just started digging into the topic, and it's been three years now, and finally the book is coming out!   The Sisterhood That Is Supporting Women In Tech in Silicon Valley And Beyond   Poornima: So one thing I experienced early on in my career, and it keeps me motivated, is the women who inspired me. So, early on, when I was a college student in engineering school, I had a professor, and she had twins, and she was doing her research, and she was teaching, and she was leading the department, and I thought, "If she could do it, I could do it." And as I was reading the book, I noticed the theme of the sisterhood kind of coming up again and again.                                 Tell us how you discovered this theme as you started writing or as you were doing your research.   Samantha: Of course. Well, I too had a mentor back in my Silicon Valley days when I worked for a software startup during the dotcom boom in 1998 to about 2003, so I saw the dotcom boom and the bust happen, I was living through it, our company went public, stock went to 130, then went down to two, so I lived and breathed the dotcom boom and bust.                                 My manager/boss at that point was Carol Carpenter, who has since gone on to become—she was the CEO, actually CMO of ClearSlide and then CEO of ElasticBox, so she's a prominent woman in Silicon Valley, and she really pulled me up. She really, when I was lacking confidence, and I thought, "I can't do this," I'd just had my baby, my first baby, we were going public, and I thought, "I can't do this, this is crazy." We're working 24/7 and I have a newborn at home. She was the one who said, "Sam, you can do it, you can do it." And having that kind of mentorship and that kind of woman who was going through it herself pulling me up, really encouraged me.                                 So as we were researching the book, we started noticing these pockets around the startup universe, women who were supporting each other, investing in each other, encouraging each other in their careers and inspiring the next generation of girls and young women to pursue technology and continue their careers in technology.   Encouraging The Next Generation of Women To Consider Careers In Tech   Poornima: Yeah, that's great. I think you're absolutely right, that is a narrative that's missing from the media and more women need to know that that's out there as well, so that they don't feel like all there is is just what the media portrays.                                 Now, the first place that you write about change happening is at the primary school up to the high school level, so walk us through what that looks like.   Samantha: Well, fortunately, before Obama left office, he did create an initiative, a $4 billion initiative called "Computer Science for All" that is encouraging and putting funds towards creating computer science curriculum in schools throughout the country. I was so excited to read about Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, in the Chicago public schools now, computer science is a requirement for all high schools in Chicago. So I think we're going to see more of that.                                 When you look at the numbers, though, we still have a long way to go, cause 25% of high schools in the U.S. offer computer science, I think it's like 22% of girls, of students taking the computer science AP exam are girls, so we still have a long way to go.                                 What we noticed, though, it's sort of this grassroots movement of women who are encouraging the younger generations to start building, to start creating, to start coding. For example, we start our book talking about Debbie Sterling, who's the founder and the CEO of Goldie Blocks, and she's got this great—I have two little girls, we have it at home, it's a great toy that encourages girls to build, and there's a really fun, positive role model, Goldie, who builds a spinning machine and she has all these sorts of engineering—you wouldn't even know it's engineering, it's really just building Ferris wheels and building merry-go-rounds and all these fun things, along with the story, talking about Goldie and her friends, and how she's building these different fun games and amusement park rides. We have that in our household.                                 These are the kinds of things that women are doing to try to inspire the next generation. There is a woman in our book who started a company called Bitcode, she's actually working with the public schools to get them to use video to teach girls how to code. So if you have kids you know that they're on video, they're on YouTube, and they're really tech savvy. I have four kids, they can get around YouTube, and iMovie, and they're all over it. So, this tool is used in the public schools, to teach coding, using videos, to make it fun.   How Colleges Are Changing The Ratio Of Women Graduating With Computer Science Degrees Poornima: It's great, yeah, it's good to see these grassroots efforts, so that even if there is kind of a gap in terms of change for public schools or the school system in general, there's ways in which parents and teachers can supplement that.                                 So, the next place in which a lot of women and minorities drop off is at the college level, tell us who's working on changing that.   Samantha: Well, we had the most amazing experience at Grace Hopper in 2015. I believe you were there, and Heather and I, my coauthor and I went, and just to see, I think it was 12,000 women there in computing, and it is a true celebration. And to see the enthusiasm and the excitement and the bonding between these young women, it was so encouraging.                                 When you look at specific colleges, there's a lot being done to encourage more women in to pursue technology and computer science. I met with Maria Klawe, who's the president of Harvey Mudd, and wow! What a firecracker she is, she skateboards around campus, she's just a really fun, wonderful woman, and she implemented a program along with her colleagues a few years ago, where there are two tracks for computer science, so as a freshman you can take the gold track or the black track.                                 The gold track is for students who have not had any computer science experience in high school; the black track is for students who've had some experience. So, by doing this, the students who have not had experience don't feel so impostered, they don't have the confidence cause no one's had this experience, so they get through this year and I spoke to a couple of students who have taken these classes, and they say that by the end of the year, everyone's pretty much at the same level.                                 So, she, Maria Klawe, and her team has tripled the number of women graduating with computer science degrees at Harvey Mudd in the past ten years, and the number is, I hate to throw in all these numbers, cause they get little mind boggling at times, but 55% of the computer science graduates at Harvey Mudd are now women.   Poornima: That's great, it's a nice change to—the numbers go up.   Samantha: There's also Stanford. Another example of what's going on to encourage women to pursue computer science is Stanford University, of course a top institution, but they have a Women in Tech group called She++, which was started by Ayna Agarwal, and who was not even a computer science major by the way, but she started this group to encourage women and they had a Gala, every year, which gathers all the women in technology, not just Stanford. What they do is they go out into the communities and they take on high school students in different communities around the country and they support these young high school girls to start programs in their communities. For example, I live out in Marin County, and there is a girl who started a robotics happy schooler box program in Marin City, which is an underserved community in Marin County, and she runs this afterschool program in Marin City.                                 So all of these girls around the country who are starting these programs through She++ gather together for this gala, and I am telling you, if you could be there to see these college women, these high school girls who came, they were dressed to the nines, they were glamorous, I mean, talk about debunking the myths and breaking stereotypes about what a woman in tech looks like, I mean, we could have been in an LA nightclub, not to sound like—but they were so beautiful and wonderful and smart and excited to talk about their programs, and they were so excited to be in technology. And again, this is why Heather and I said, "This is a story that no one sees," you don't see this kind of enthusiasm around technology, you see, "Oh, it's so hard, numbers are dropping, it's all doom and gloom." And so we really wanted to tell that other story.   The Angel Investors And Others Who Are Supporting Female Founders   Poornima: OK. That brings us back to industry, and I know there's a lot going on at the corporate level, as well as startups. I'm of course partial to startups, so let's start there and talk about how the ecosystem is changing for women and minorities.   Samantha: There's a lot of momentum behind supporting female founders. For example, there are accelerator programs like the Women Startup Lab, which is down here at Menlo Park; there's MergeLane, which is in Colorado; there's The Refinery in Connecticut. These programs focus on female founders, and really giving them the tools, the skills they need to grow their company into a venture, fundable company. And they give the tools to learn how to pitch venture capitalists, and we all know the venture capital world is very male dominated.   Poornima: Yeah, it is a challenge. I know I've had my fair share of doing the fundraising.                                 So, there's a very common problem around women and minorities getting up and pitching their business to VCs, either male VCs not getting their idea, or they don't think it's a big enough market, or there's a lot of unconscious bias around it, so how are women getting their training to get over all of that?   Samantha: Well, you've started a company, so you know what it's like. The founders that we've met, that I've met in my journey with this book, are so passionate about their idea. But you can have an idea, and it's not going to go anywhere—you have to have the product market fit, you have to test the idea, you have to build your team out—and so these programs are really teaching women what they need to do to get to that level, to actually pitch to investors. But when you look at the numbers, I think it's 10% of the venture funding, globally, goes to female founders—it's still a really small percentage.                                 We've also noticed that there's women who are angels. So angel investors who fund companies at the early stages—for example, Joanne Wilson, aka Gotham Gal, who has a tremendous momentum in New York City, who has invested in a number of really great companies; Caren Maio, Nestio, Shanna Tellerman, Modsy—she finds these women, who have ideas that are big, that are scalable, and she nurtures them, and she's like the fairy godmother to these women. And there are other women that we talk about, we'd had to read the book to learn about all of them, but there are women who really take these female founders under their wing and support them on their journey.   Poornima: I think it's great that there are women like Joanne Wilson out there. Do you have a sense of how many companies she's invested in?   Samantha: Joanne Wilson has invested in around a hundred companies, and they're doing fantastic. One of them, Shanna Tellerman, started the company Modsy, which is an immersive, 3D environment for home décor, home design, and she told us that she created this project called “The Pinnacle Project,” at Park City, Utah, and it was Wednesday through Sunday, I think. And she invited Joanne, and Susan Lyne, and a bunch of angel investors, as well as a number of female founders, to come gather, network, ski, and have fun, and she said it was funny, because all the women were thinking, "We should be home, we should be working, we should be with the kids, we have so much to do," and she said she had to tell and remind people that, "This is what the guys do. They have a boys call and they pick off and it's all about business, whereas women don't have that sense of, “Let's go out to ski, or golf,” and that kind of networking, so it was an example of this pinnacle project, which is going to happen recurring every year, of, "OK, women, we can get together, have fun together, network, introduce each other to investors and influencers, and have fun while we're doing it. It's OK."   Poornima: Yeah. That's fantastic. And I think another thing you had mentioned pipeline ventures, or pipeline angels?   Samantha: Pipeline angels, yes, yes. Natalia Oberti Noguera is a force of nature and she started this angel investing group for women and I went through it and Heather went through it. I did it in San Francisco, Heather did it in New York, and basically it's a training, it's a bootcamp or a training program for women who are credited investors, to learn how to invest in female and minority-led companies. So it walked us through the process of how do you set evaluation on a company, what do you look for in a startup that you're investing in, what kind of traits you want to look for in the team, what's going to make this a good investment. So it trains women to invest as angels, and then you actually make an investment at the end.                                 We made an investment in a great startup—which I believe is still hush hush, underground at this point—but I believe we made a great investment and we're following the course of these early stage female founders, and it's really her goal to change the face of angel investing, to increase the amount of money going towards these early stage female founders.   Poornima: As we were doing research for your book and when I was reading it, I noticed that there was some astonishing findings, like only 11 companies that were founded by African-American women have received funding over a million dollars. So walk us through who is working to change this.   Samantha: Well, that number has actually increased, it's now 13 companies that have received more than a million dollars, but the numbers are still really low. One woman who is really on top of this problem is Kathryn Finney, who is the founder of DigitalUndivided, which is an organization whose main purpose is to increase the number of women, minorities in the tech world, latino women, and black women founders, and she just recently launched an accelerator, in Atlanta, Georgia, called the Big Innovation Center, and I think their first cohort is gathering this year to help skill up and prepare these minority founders to raise money.   How Tech Companies Are Growing Up And Changing How The Nature of Work   Poornima: So let's switch gears, and talk about corporations. We previously had Lisen Stromberg on the show, talking about the changes that were happening for parents—what have you seen?   Samantha: Well, what we've noticed is that Silicon Valley is growing up. They are trading in their ping-pong tables and foosball tables for nursing rooms, which is inspiring to see. When I started out, I had my Medela Pump in Style in a cold bathroom out of the courtyard of our startup, so it wasn't pretty, but we spent a day at Eventbrite not too long ago, and Julia Hartz, who's now the CEO of Eventbrite, it's very focused on woman, developing women in leadership positions and allowing for work-life balance. And I say that word, “work-life balance,” a term that is loaded, what she's trying to do with that company is focus on the whole person, not just the employee self.                                 For example, they have a program called “Take the time you need.” So if you need time to care for a child or to care for an adult, you can work from home, you can take time off, so she's really interested in her employees, and telling her employees, "You can do what you need to do, so you can live a life and you can be an employee."                                 And she also tells the women who are having babies at her company, she says, "You know what? You can get through the first six to nine months," it gets a lot easier, because a lot of women when they have their babies early on, they think, “I can't leave this poor creature alone with a daycare with a babysitter,” and she says, “If you can just get through that”—she's got two little girls herself—”If you can just get through that time, stick with it, come back, and we will support you while you're doing it,” which is fantastic.   Poornima: You also showcase companies like Power to Fly. Walk us through what Power to Fly is.   Samantha: Yeah, Power to Fly was started by Milena Berry and Katharine Zaleski. Katharine actually wrote an article apologizing to all the mothers out there. Before she had children, she was a little bit judgemental of mothers taking time off and having to leave work early, and then she had her first baby and she thought, "Oh, my gosh, this is really hard," so she and Milena got together and started this company, Power to Fly, which connects women with remote and flexible job positions, so they can actually care for their family and pursue careers in technology. The great thing about technology is that it can be done remotely. Especially if you're in coding, you don't have to be in an office 24/7, so Power to Fly works on that.                                 Another great program is Tina Lee started a program called MotherCoders, and she's based in San Francisco, a fabulous woman, her program retrains mothers in tech skills, so they can go off and they can—either they've taken time off or they have background in some other field, they can skill up in technology, and go out and get the tremendous amount of jobs that are available in technology as they get back to work.   Disrupting The Boardroom   Poornima: Well, that brings us to the boardroom, so walk us through what changes are happening there.   Samantha: The number of women holding board seats in our country is still very, very low, I think the number is 18% of board seats at Fortune 500 companies are held by women. So we still have a long way to go.                                 One real pioneer in this area is a woman, her name is Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, she's fabulous, she is the CEO and founder of a company called Joyus, a tech company, and she, a few years ago penned an article called "Tech Women Choose Possibility." And she really wanted to profile the women in Silicon Valley, in the startup world, who are doing great things, just founding great companies. There was a lot of positive response to that article, and so she created an organization called #choosepossibility.                                 Part of that organization is a group called, or an initiative called "The Boardlist." And basically it's a matchmaking tool that matches qualified, board-ready women with startup, tech companies, looking to fill board seats with women, so she made that happen, and they placed three women on the board, which it seems like it's very low, but what they're doing is they're connecting the VCs and the startup companies with these women, and a lot more placements have been made not directly through the platform, but just through the connections that have been made on this platform.   Poornima: OK, great, so it's good to know that there is some change happening at the board level as well.                                 Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Samantha, I know our viewers out there are going to enjoy reading your book, *Geek Girl Rising*. And for our viewers who are women, minority, and allies, is there anything else you would like to share with them in terms of resources?   Samantha: Yeah. I would love to see everybody come to our website. We have a gazillion resources on how you can join the digital revolution, just take a peek.   Poornima: Thanks for tuning in today and special thanks to our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker, for their help in producing this episode of *Femgineer TV*. If you've enjoyed this episode, then please be sure to share it with your friends, your teammates, your boss, and everyone so that they get to benefit from all the great resources, and subscribe to our channel to receive the next episode.                                Ciao for now! -- FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

John Lilly is a Partner at Greylock Partners, one of the world's leading venture funds of the past decade. At Greylock John has led investments in the likes of Instagram (acq by Facebook), Tumblr (acq by Yahoo) and Dropbox. John also sits on the board for Quip, Figma and ClearSlide just to name a few. Prior to Greylock, John was CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, used by more than 450 million people. John also co-founded Reactivity, an enterprise security infrastructure company acquired by Cisco in 2007, where he served as founding CEO and later CTO.   In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How John made his way into the wonderful world of VC following his time as CEO @ Mozilla? 2.) John has invested in the likes of Quip, Figma and Dropbox, so why are we seeing such a rise in productivity tools beyond Office and Google Apps? Will it always be a market of consolidation like we have seen with the likes of Quip? 3.) Does John believe the first boom of mobile is over? What about sensors makes John excited for the future of the phone? Does John agree with Ben Evans in viewing the phone as the sun of the solar system? 4.) Question from Sarah Guo: How does Greylock to continue to invest in the next big markets, rather than in what has made them successful before? What does the brainstorming sessions and meta-thinking look like internally? 5.) Question from Josh Elman: How does John view growing one's tribe and then growing together through all of your careers? What are the challenges and what is required in order to be successful? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: John’s Fave Book: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC, John on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. The Simba Hybrid. The most advanced mattress in the world. With a unique combination of two thousand five hundred conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam, it offers the perfect support for two people. A mattress that responds to you and your partner’s sleeping patterns. Delivered free, with a one hundred night sleep trial, free returns and a ten year guarantee. Start your free trial at simbasleep.com Cirrus Insight is a plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook.  It automatically updates activities in Salesforce so you don’t have to.  It was named #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange. Today, it serves over 150,000 sales people across 5,000 organizations using Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Cirrus Insight is perfect for sales, support, and success teams who want to save time, schedule 3x more appointments, track email opens and much more with Salesforce information at their fingertips in the inbox. www.cirrusinsight.com/20VC

Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Director of Felicis Ventures. An original “super-angel” investor, he was named to Forbes’ 2014 and 2015 Midas List and previously appeared as one of the top 15 tech angels by Businessweek. Aydin is well-known as an early backer of a number of iconic companies including Shopify (NYSE:SHOP), Fitbit (NYSE:FIT), Adyen, Clearslide, Credit Karma, and Rovio. More than 55 Felicis companies such as Brightroll, Climate Corp, Dropcam, Twitch, and Meraki, have been acquired by industry leaders such as Google, Amazon, Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, AT&T, Disney, Yahoo and Ebay.   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Aydin made his way into the world of VC from being a Senior Manager @ Google? 2.) What does Aydin suggest to all those looking to make the move into VC who have potentially, an unconventional background?? 3.) What caused Aylin's shift from angel investor to VC ? What was Aydin's investment strategy look like at the beginning and how has that evolved over time? How does Aydin look to differentiate Felicis from the plethora of seed funds? 4.) How does Felicis' stage agnosticity work in practicality for Aydin and the fund itself? How much of a role does valuation play in Felicis' investment decision making? 5.) Question from Rob Hayes @ First Round: How did the Rovio investment come about? Why do you say you are most proud if it? 6.) Question From Hiten Shah: How do you approach the topic of growing the organisation, whilst still supporting founders with the same time and quality? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Aydin's Fave Book: Anti-Fragile Aylin's Most Recent Investment: Diffbot As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Aydin on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

Sean was on the Founding team at Trulia (acq Zillow for $2.5bn), Sean was also the founder and CEO at Sequoia funded, Crunched (acquired by ClearSlide). On the investing side he is an investor at Correlation Ventures and a prominent angel investor in several marketplace companies including SeatGeek, NerdWallet, Zeel, Paintzen, Peach and the home improvement app Smith. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sean made his start angel investing in startups? 2.)How startups can deal with the mass of advice on offer to them today? What makes a great mentor? What should they look for and what should they be wary of? 3.) What are Sean's views on accelerator alumni? How can investors get early access to accelerator companies pre demo day? 4.)What does Sean make of companies attending multiple accelerators? What are the good reasons and what are the bad? 5.) As an angel investor now, how does Tom determine the 'eye of the tiger' within the entrepreneur? Having worked with many at Techstars, what are the commonalities amongst the successful entrepreneurs? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Sean's Fave Book: Robert Cialdini: Influence Sean's Fave Blog: CB Insights Sean's Most Recent Investment: NerdWallet As always, you can learn more about SyndicateRoom here: www.syndicateroom.com and see Sean's latest tweets here: www.twitter.com/SeanBlack

Ep 172 Matthew Bellows, the founder and CEO of Yesware which serves more than 750,000 salespeople. Listen as Nathan and Matthew talk about the field of software sales effectiveness and when to hire a salesperson. YOUR $100: Remember to subscribe to the show on itunes then text the word "nathan" to 33444 to confirm that you've done it to enter to win $100 every Monday on the show. Do this now. Stop reading this and do it! Click here to join the top tribe and instantly learn how Nathan made his first $10k at 19 years old: bit.ly/1SynoAg Top Entrepreneurs join Nathan Latka daily inspired by, Art of Charm, Pat Flynn, John Dumas, Entrepreneur on Fire, Chalene Johnson, Lewis Howes, School of Greatness, HBR Podcast, the StartUp podcast, Mixergy, Andrew Warner, AskGaryVee, and the great hosts of BiggerPockets! 3 Key Points: To be able to hire engineers to work on the projects they wanted, Yesware had to raise millions in capital instead of being bootstrapped. Sales effectiveness is a field in which companies offer the service of using software to market more effectively. Business is sometimes stereotyped as dry and boring. Matthew found that it could be creative and fun in contrary to his belief at 20. Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:00 – Nathan’s introduction to today’s show 02:03 – Matthew joins the show. 03:18 – Matthew just raised a total of 33 million in capital for his company. 03:40 – They needed to go the venture capital route for Yesware in order to hire the engineers they wanted. 03:57 – The company has 80 employees. Of which 30 are developers. About 25 people in the sales department. 06:04 – Yesware has about 750K registered users. They are well above 10 million in annual topline revenue. 07:02 – Yesware’s target customer is a company with 1K-2K employees and 200-300 salespeople. 08:51 – The business’s average deal size is 500$ per month. 10:08 – Hiring a salesperson depends widely on the product being sold. 13:05 – Matthew generally wants customers to install Yesware because they try to provide value as fast and much as possible. 15:27 – Matthew gives some advice on usage data . 16:15 – Yesware is in the field of sales effectiveness or sales consideration. Their competitors are InsideSales or ClearSlide. 17:24 – Matthew would like to end the year with a 30 million dollar run rate. 18:37 – Famous Five Resources Mentioned: Edgar – Nathan uses Edgar instead of other scheduling tools for Twitter because Edgar cycles through content over and over (buffer/others you have to re-input content over and over – time consuming). In the last several months, Edgar has driven Nathan over 3728 clicks that he didn’t have to work or pay for. Here isNathan’s Edgar Content Calendar: Yesware – Matthew’s business. LinkedIn – Matthew’s LinkedIn Reed Hastings – CEO Matthew follows The Alliance – Matthew’s favorite business book Hearthstone – Game Matthew plays NY Times – Article featuring Matthew Bellows Bio Matthew Bellows is Founder and CEO of Yesware. Yesware serves more than 750,000 salespeople at companies like Acquia, Adroll, Groupon, Salesforce, Twilio, Yelp and Zendesk.  Prior to Yesware, Matthew was the Vice President of Sales at Vivox. Before that, he served as General Manager at Floodgate (acquired by Zynga), as Founder/CEO of WGR Media (acquired by CNET Networks), and as VP Sales and Marketing of Interstep (acquired by Flycast/CMGI). Matthew earned his B.A from Naropa University and his M.B.A. magna cum laude from The Olin School for Business at Babson College. Famous 5 Favorite Book?— The Alliance by Reed Hoffman What CEO do you follow?— Reed Hastings What is your favorite online tool?— Not a tool, but Hearthstone Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?—Business is a lot more fun and creative than you think it is.   Listen to The Top if you want to hear from the worlds TOP entrepreneurs on how much they sold last month, how they are selling it, and what they are selling - 7 days a week in 20 minute interviews! Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop The Top is FOR YOU if you are: A STUDENT who wants to become the CEO of a $10m company in under 24 months (episode #4) STUCK in the CORPORATE grind and looking to create a $10k/mo side business so you can quit (episode #7) An influencer or BLOGGER who wants to make $27k/mo in monthly RECURRING revenue to have the life you want and full CONTROL (episode #1) The Software as a Service (SaaS) entrepreneur who wants to grow to a $100m+ valuation (episode #14). Your host, Nathan Latka is a 25 year old software entrepreneur who has driven over $4.5 million in revenue and built a 25 person team as he dropped out of school, raised $2.5million from a Forbes Billionaire, and attracted over 10,000 paying customers from 160+ different countries.   Oprah gets 60 minutes or more to make her guests comfortable to then ask tough questions. Nathan does it all in less than 15 minutes in this daily podcast that's like an audio version of Pat Flynn's monthly income report. Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop

Segment 1: Jeff Goins is the author of four books including his most recent best-seller The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do. Segment 2: Martin Shervington is a consultant, speaker, trainer and coach on all things Google+. As the community manager for both Plus Your Life and Plus Your Business!, his role is to support individuals and new businesses to use Google+. Segment 3: Raj Gossain drives Product and User Experience strategy and execution at ClearSlide. Prior to joining ClearSlide, Raj was VP & GM for new cloud & mobile collaboration apps at Cisco Systems where he ran the Project Squared team. Segment 4: Stan Slap is the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author off Bury My Heart at Conference Room B. His new book is called Under the Hood. Segment 5: Kevin Mullins is senior vice president of electronic services for IBC Bank where he directs the operational oversight of products and services including online banking, mobile banking, card services, ACH and corporate treasury management and merchant services.Sponsored by Sage, Nextiva and CorpNet. 

Rabiah Sutton, SBC Industry Chair, discusses an exciting event for small business leaders. Mike Payne, the Product Manager for Presenter at ClearSlide,talks about bringing team members together. Successful small business leaders, experts, accountants, lawyers and other specialists offer advice, guidance, strategies and suggestions to help small business managers increase profits, add sales, better manage cash flow, improve employee management and streamline operations.

Will BatsonfromClearSlidejoined us today for the inaugural edition of something new we are trying here called the Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast. The topic of our discussion primarily focused around making the most of SaaS trials and Will knows a thing or two about the topic having joined ClearSlide back in 2010 as their first sales hire when the busines had 2-3 customers. With thousands of customers today, $90MM+ in capital raised, and a ton of lessons learned Will was kind enough to share his expertise with an eye towards helping emerging companies think about SaaS trials.In our podcast Will talks about a number of topics including how to build "brand trust" early on to get a lead to trial your product, trial length versus value exchanged, how to deal with "trial fatigue" and force conversion to sign-up, when should your company not engage in trials, and finally how to get a trial customer to be your biggest evangelist. The full transcript can be foundhereif you want to read.  Give a listen and we hope you enjoy!

Will BatsonfromClearSlidejoined us today for the inaugural edition of something new we are trying here called the Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast. The topic of our discussion primarily focused around making the most of SaaS trials and Will knows a thing or two about the topic having joined ClearSlide back in 2010 as their first sales hire when the busines had 2-3 customers. With thousands of customers today, $90MM+ in capital raised, and a ton of lessons learned Will was kind enough to share his expertise with an eye towards helping emerging companies think about SaaS trials.In our podcast Will talks about a number of topics including how to build "brand trust" early on to get a lead to trial your product, trial length versus value exchanged, how to deal with "trial fatigue" and force conversion to sign-up, when should your company not engage in trials, and finally how to get a trial customer to be your biggest evangelist. The full transcript can be foundhereif you want to read.  Give a listen and we hope you enjoy!