POPULARITY
From San Francisco's Silicon Valley to Tel Aviv's Silicon Wadi, software business entrepreneur Yochi Slonim made a name for himself in global tech hubs around the globe. Notably, he was co-founder of billion-dollar Mercury Interactive, which HP acquired for $4.5 billion, and previous to that a leader at Tecnomatix, which sold to UGS and was acquired by Siemens. Those big deals that came on the heels of several other Yochi Slonim software startups. But Slonim's not in software development anymore. Not for the software industry, anyway. He's now leveraging his tech chops to develop something with far more potential impact: drugs. On this epsiode of the Business of Biotech, we'll learn about his foray into biopharmaceuticals with Anima Biotech, a company he's been building for the past ten years and which boasts pipeline partnerships with heavyweights Abbvie, Takeda, and Lilly. You've listened along for years -- now you can watch along, too! Go to bioprocessonline.com/solution/the-business-of-biotech-podcast, where you can put faces to voices as you watch hundreds of interviews with the world's best biotech builders. While you're there, subscribe to the #BusinessofBiotech newsletter at bioprocessonline.com/bob for more real, honest, transparent interactions with the leaders of emerging biotech. It's a once-per-month dose of insight and intel that you'll actually look forward to receiving! Check it out at bioprocessonline.com/bob!
In this episode, I was lucky enough to interview Ron Gidron, the CEO and founder of xtype, a platform engineering solution for ServiceNow customers. Ron shares insights from his background growing up on a farm in Israel to becoming an entrepreneur in the tech industry. Despite his humble beginnings, Ron's journey led him to work with companies like Mercury Interactive before venturing into entrepreneurship. He emphasizes the entrepreneurial spirit he developed from his farming roots, highlighting the similarities between farming and entrepreneurship.Ron reflects on his past experiences, including a failed startup attempt, and shares valuable lessons learned, particularly emphasizing the importance of choosing the right partners and listening to advice, such as that from his wife. He discusses the evolution of X Type, from its inception to acquiring its first customers, which involved understanding real problems within the ServiceNow ecosystem and building relationships through conversations and trials. Ron underscores the significance of solving genuine problems and navigating the complexities of enterprise sales, emphasizing the need for patience and persistence.Tune in to the latest episode of The First Customer Podcast to hear more about Ron's remarkable story which proves that entrepreneurial spirit knows no bounds!Guest Info:xtypehttp://www.xtype.ioRon Gidron's LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/rongidron/Connect with Jay on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jayaigner/The First Customer Youtube Channelhttps://www.youtube.com/@thefirstcustomerpodcastThe First Customer podcast websitehttps://www.firstcustomerpodcast.comFollow The First Customer on LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/company/the-first-customer-podcast/
This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to create a serious business by daring to focus on some fundamental flaws of one enterprise platform. My guest is Ron Gidron, Founder and CEO of Xtype. Ron's a tech entrepreneur on a mission. He's got close to 3 decades of experience in sales, product management, and marketing of highly technical software products. He's worked for Mercury Interactive, Symantec, and Automic Sofware (acquired by CA) The technical scaling challenges he experienced on his journey inspired him to start xtype in April 2021. Their mission: to help ServiceNow development teams to deliver at speed the business demands without compromising quality or compliance. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ron to my podcast. We explore what's broken when it comes to scaling and building large enterprise systems. Ron explains why he decided to bet on ServiceNow (instead of staying platform agnostic). He elaborates on why he decided to target the largest organizations in the world first. He shares some big lessons on becoming a platform player that gets noticed and what he had to do differently to gain the traction he aspired to. Here's one of his quotes Coming from that space, you think, 'Hey, I can retrofit the toolchain and just build some integrations from Salesforce from ServiceNow. And I'll just run the tools that already exist. That is a huge mistake. Not because it doesn't work technically, technically you could probably do it, but because that overlooks the power of the ecosystem itself. There is a reason why Salesforce folks love Salesforce. There is a huge reason why ServiceNow folks love ServiceNow. During this interview, you will learn four things: What it takes to build traction momentum in a platform-centric eco-system. How to get attention from the largest companies in the world when you're building a new product. What to never do when you're building a product that's dedicated to one specific platform. Ron's first principles when it comes to funding or no funding. For more information about the guest from this week: Ron Gidron Website: Xtype Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection Get my free, 1 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Yes, it's actually daily. And yes, people actually stay subscribed (Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say) My promise: It's short. To the point. Inspiring. And valuable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's take a look on what the movie Barbie did to reach such an overwhelming success, and what Tech CEOs can learn about their approach to marketing. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Barbie's Approach to Marketing Christopher Lochhead opens up the dialogue with pointing out the things that the Barbie producers did that made it a blockbuster win, particularly with what they did on the marketing side. According to Christopher, Barbie pulled off the greatest “lightning strike” framework of any brand in 2023. One of the notable things that stood out was that Barbie spent $145M on producing the film, while spending almost $150M on marketing. Let that sink in: $145M to make it, $150M to build it up. Most companies would consider it outrageous to do such a thing, opting to focus their resources on building the product and spending what's left on marketing, if any. And this is why most of those companies fail to make a mark and carve out a market early on in their product's lifecycle. How about Barbie? Well, it spent a combined $295M, but that marketing approach resulted in $1B in sales. $145M to make it, $150M to build. $1B in revenue. Barbie's Missed Opportunity That said, Christopher did point out a few missed avenues that Barbie could've made to take advantage of their marketing strategy. For one thing, they left the digital space widely untapped, spawning newsletters and enticing new generations of girls to getting into collecting Barbies and other related merchandise. Another thing they could've done is get older fans together and start building out a community in the digital sphere and talk all things Barbie. Not only does it heavily hit people in their nostalgia, but it can also help expose those older generation's children into Barbie, and then you are back to point no. 1. The Recession that Never Came One of the things that Christopher also noticed with Barbie's approach is that people are still bracing for a recession that seemingly never came, or at least was not as full-blown as we were expecting it to be. While everyone else was still timidly testing the waters, Barbie decided it would make a big splash instead. So for Tech CEOs out there, it may not be the time to be holding down the fort. Rather, it should be a good time to try and hurl some lightning strikes in the market and see if you strike gold. To hear more about Christopher Lochhead's views on Barbie's success and how it can teach tech CEOS about marketing, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Don't forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books: Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche A Marketer's Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy The 22 Laws of Category Design: Name & Claim Your Niche, Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different
Our guest today is Sean Kline CEO of Turbotek. In today's episode, Sean will enlighten us on the current state of the economy and its impact on small to mid-sized business owners. Additionally, he will guide us on how to utilize technology to achieve maximum success. At Turbotek, a Small Business IT Company, Sean is in charge of leading and managing the company. He ensures that all resources are efficiently utilized, providing quality services to customers in a cost-effective manner. Before joining Turbotek, Sean held various positions in notable companies such as RSA, Mercury Interactive (acquired by HP), Empirix, and Teradyne, where he worked in product management, marketing, sales, and technical roles. Sean holds a BA in Computer Science from Cornell University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. After listening to today's episode, visit Sean's website for a thirty-point cybersecurity readiness checklist which he will personally review with business owners.
Apple announced some powerful new stuff at their Worldwide Developer Conference. And, as usual, many people in the business press, Twitter, and in Silicon Valley didn't see what happened in plain sight. So here we are again, explaining why this new category is different from the other virtual and reality augmentation devices out there, and why it is important. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Don't just launch products, launch categories Let me put it to you this way. Google launches products, aka Google Glass. Facebook, launches products, aka Oculus. Meanwhile, Apple does Category Design. It's fascinating to us that category design hides in plain sight. Because what most people got wrong is they think that Apple introduced a product called Vision Pro. And yes, of course, they did that. But they did not make the same mistake that Google and Facebook made, which is they just launch products; Apple designs categories. And they tell you that's exactly what they're doing. Press Release for Apple Vision Pro Here's the headline: introducing Apple Vision Pro, Apple's first spatial computer. And what you have is the new product and brand Apple vision Pro. And they tell you what it is. It's a spatial computer. It's not a VR/AR headset. It's not some kind of other variety – It's a spatial computer. And if you go on to read the press release, what you'll discover is that Tim Cook's quote sums the whole thing up. “Today marks the beginning of a new era for computing,” said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. Just as the Mac introduced us to personal computing, and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro introduces us to spatial computing. And that, my friends, is the difference between marketing a category and just a product. Creating a new computing platform And this is what most people miss. And the reason they did it at their worldwide developer conference, is because they want the vision pro spatial computer to become a new compute platform. Just like the iPhone became a new compute platform, the personal computer became a new compute platform. That's what they're doing here. The iPad, etc. became a new platform, a new category of technology, not just a product that they gave to people. Launching a product without a category is like a loose cannon When Google launched Google Glass, they launched a product, they never articulated a problem that that product solved. They never evangelized a different future with that product. What they did was show a bunch of features. And because they didn't provide the strategic context for understanding of what the product was, aka category, they left it up to customers and the media to decide. Google Glass Demo Well, what happened? If you don't control your own category narrative, somebody else will. And so what emerged about Google Glass? Well, number one, because they did the launch in Silicon Valley, the people who used it immediately got the nickname of “glass-holes”, because it was rich assholes using Google Glass and beta and early release driving around in their Tesla's and the like, that sort of drew the ire of much of the world. To hear more on what Apple did right with the launch of their new category, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006,
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, myself and Eddie Yun, co-founder & co-creator of Category Pirates, tackle what's going on with what Elon Musk is now doing at Twitter; specifically, the move to charging people for their Validation Verification– once coveted, now purchasable – Blue Checkmarks. This is part of a new thing we're doing with our Category Pirates newsletter called Pirate Perspectives. So if you are interested and haven't subscribed to Category Pirates yet, now's the best time to check it out. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Twitter removes the Blue Check. Kinda. The conversation starts with Christopher and Eddie Yoon discussing Twitter's recent decision to remove Legacy Blue Checkmarks and only allowing verified accounts for those who pay. Eddie argues that this move is a step towards aligning Twitter's incentives with its users by making them pay for the service rather than monetizing their data through an advertising model. However, he suggests that Twitter could offer a tiered pricing structure to accommodate different budgets. The two acknowledge that this move has caused a lot of controversy, with some users upset about losing their Legacy Blue checkmarks, while some are given Blue checkmarks even though they didn't ask for one. Christopher mentions that Elon Musk paid for verified accounts for Stephen King, LeBron James, and others, and they are angry about the change given their prior stance about it. Elon Musk and the missed opportunity with repurposing the blue checkmark Christopher and Eddie then talk about the recent decision by Twitter to remove the blue checkmark verification for some users. Christopher mentions that he appreciates the verification process before because it helps him identify real people on the platform. They also discuss the success of OpenAI's GPT chat and the importance of delivering a valuable user experience. Eddie agrees and mentions that incentivizing creators can improve the overall ecosystem by improving content and reducing fraud. They agree that Elon Musk and Twitter missed an opportunity to position the repurposing of blue checkmarks as an improvement to the user experience rather than a takeaway. To hear more about these category pirates' hot takes on what is happening to Twitter and the social media space, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Don't forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books: Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche A Marketer's Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
This Lochhead on Marketing episode is a short one, almost like a bedtime story with Uncle Lochhead. I recently did a post on LinkedIn that blew up in a way that I didn't quite expect. It was meant to be a humorous post about Marketing, but it seems to have cut quite deep in some, and others found it relatable. I thought it would be fun to read to you so we could share a few chuckles about it. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Conversation CFO to CMO: “Our revenue is going down, so we must cut your marketing budget” CMO: "I'm confused, Marketing is how we drive revenue?” CFO: “The macro environment is tough and we need to cut costs.” CMO: “But, Marketing is how we drive revenue?” CFO: “Yes, but Marketing is the fastest and easiest way to cut costs!” CMO: “But, if we need revenue, don't we need Marketing more than ever?” CFO: “Not sure what they're teaching today at Marketing MBA school, but we're cutting your Marketing budget 30%.” CMO: “OK, so when revenue goes down, the best strategy is cut Marketing?” CFO: “YES! I believe you've got it!” To check out how people reacted and responded to this “conversation”, check out the post on LinkedIn. If you like this and are interested in joining different business and marketing conversations, join us at Category Pirates today! Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
Pirate Lochhead is sailing the seven seas this week, so we're dropping a legendary conversation that he had recently with Mike Maples Jr. and Ann Miura on the Starting Greatness Podcast. They discuss the recent SVB bank run that lead to a variety of situations and accusations by “experts” on social media. They also discuss what lessons a Founder can learn by studying the cause and effect of such crisis and circumstances. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. How a crisis can make us better Mike opens up the discussion by stating that while crisis is something we do not wish to happen on anyone, it can be a valuable source of information and introspection on what Founders can improve upon within their own companies and organizations. No one saw it coming Ann Miura shares that the SVB bank run has caught her completely unawares, as did most of the companies in Silicon Valley. Even those who had their teams monitoring SVB activities only caught wind of the situation a day or two before it happened, and by then it was already too late even for them. The Difference between the Public and the Founders Ann also observed that while people on social media and the news media are shouting doomsday scenarios and blaming each other over the situation, the Founders that she was working with at Floodgate had their head down and was busy finding ways to mitigate the situation, and looking at possible scenarios to move forward, should the SVB run not get resolved in the near future. It showed a stark contrast on how the mind of a Founder operates in crisis situations, and it should be something that a lot of business leaders should emulate if they themselves suffer through a sudden situation that needed their immediate focus and levelheadedness. To hear more from Mike Maples Jr. Ann Miura, and the Pirate Lochhead himself, download and listen to this episode. Check out more Starting Greatness episodes! Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
There is a fundamental tectonic change happening in the way work gets done – White Collar knowledge work to be specific. This new technology is creating a new category of worker beyond what has been the sort of top of the pyramid, the Knowledge Workers. There's a new layer above the Knowledge Worker emerging called the Creator Capitalist – someone who gets paid not simply to apply knowledge, but to create it. And that's because the value of existing knowledge is dropping exponentially every day with the emergence of AI. Today, let's talk about how this is already becoming a radically different future right in front of our eyes, powered by chatGPT. What is ChatGPT? ChatGPT is the fastest growing application or website in the history of humanity by quite a lot. And while there are users that only see it as a minor amusement at the moment, people have been heavily using it for their jobs and businesses already. There are entrepreneurs, writers and other related enterprises that use it to write newsletters, blog posts, and even outlines for book ideas. Of course, you don't just put it the prompt and take the ChatGPT output as it is. While it is doing a pretty good job, even with niche-y things, there's still room for improvement, as well as giving it the old human touch. But the biggest thing here is, it saves people time. Time that could be better spent on improving other aspects of your business. How ChatGPT can innovate your craft In terms of creating content, whether it be an blog article, newsletter, or marketing content, there is so many ways you can take advantage of this technology. As mentioned earlier, you can use it to write first drafts to flesh out an idea you have and refine it afterwards to make it more unique and correct stuff that seem off-point to what you had in mind. You can also use in something as simple as improving the readability and format of the thing you've already written beforehand. You can even use ChatGPT to learn new things before creating your content by providing it with sources and different templates on which to base the content you intend to create later. The AI is as smart as you make it to be While the AI has a lot of capabilities that it can do, it all still boils down to how we use it. An example would be the prompts that we give ChatGPT to execute. Being too vague or general with your prompts can yield confusing and subpar results, as multiple users have observed. So it is best to do some research from prompt engineers on how to maximize the results of your requests to the AI, so you'll get the best quality of content or feedback all the time. To learn more on how you can use ChatGPT and other AI technology to create content and code, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. Don't forget to grab a copy (or gift!) of one of our best-selling books: Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One The Category Design Toolkit: Beyond Marketing: 15 Frameworks For Creating & Dominating Your Niche A Marketer's Guide To Category Design: How To Escape The “Better” Trap, Dam The Demand, And Launch A Lightning Strike Strategy
Pirate Lochhead is sailing the seven seas this week, so we're dropping a legendary conversation that he had recently with Anna Furmanov on the Modern Startup Marketing podcast. They discuss creative marketing category design, guns, human composting and more. Yes, human composting. Just… listen, trust me. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. What does “Creative” mean to you? The conversation starts off with Anna asking for Christopher's definition on being a creative. Christopher shares that in order to consider something as being “creative”, it has to be something new. “Being creative is bringing into being something that did not exist. You can take an existing thing and innovate on top of it and create something new. But at the end of whatever the creative process is, it yields a new creation. And sometimes that's a doodle on a page. And sometimes it's a new piece of code. There's lots of different acts of creation that bring new things into the world. But fundamentally, I think creation is about exactly that.” – Christopher Lochhead On when you feel the most creative Continuing on the topic of creativity, Anna asks when Christopher felt the most creative, whether its on a specific project, a certain period of time, or something else entirely. “So for me, creativity, really at a high level, comes in two ways. One is just pure inspiration. Right – you're out on a walk, you're washing the dishes, you're in the shower, your whatever it is you're doing, an idea comes into your head. Because I'm a writer, I get sentences delivered to my head, and/or power ideas hiding in paragraphs. And then I'll have to immediately get to a piece of paper or my iPhone and write that shit down. That can happen anytime, all the time. My wife will see me running across the house to grab a pen or to grab my phone and start talking to it, so I don't forget the idea.” – Christopher Lochhead Thinking about thinking One of the things Christopher pointed about how people perceive thinking is that they misconstrue having thoughts as “thinking”. Having thoughts just means an idea or a thought that pops in your head, without much effort put into it, almost like a kneejerk reaction. Thinking, on the other hand, is actually taking that thought and processing it. It's the suspension of that immediate and reflexive thought that one can really get into deeper details of the topic, and even find out why it elicited that sort of reaction from you and other people around you. To hear more from Christopher Lochhead and his conversation with Anna Furmanov on the Modern Startup Marketing Podcast, download and listen to this episode. Check out more Modern Startup Marketing Podcast episodes! Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
It's been a crazy handful of days in Silicon Valley. But now that the federal government has made their announcements and has the ball rolling, I wanted to spend a few minutes with you just clarifying some things that seem to be creating confusion in the recent Silicon Valley Bank situation. There seems to be more confusion about what just happened with the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and what the federal government just did as there was about COVID. So let me see if I can break this down for all of you. There is no Bank Bailout for the Silicon Valley Bank Let me say that again: there was no bank bailout here. The executives got fired. None of the investors, creditors, nobody doing business with the bank, in that sense, are getting any of their money back, particularly the investors in the board. The Silicon Valley Bank is gone. The Effect on the US Finance The President has said that this will not cost taxpayers' money. You may choose to believe it or not, but that is the current position of the government on the matter. What they're saying is if there's any protection money required, it will come from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC is an insurance company managed by the federal government, which is paid for by Wall Street and the banks. They pay insurance fees to the FDIC for drastic instances such as these. Making that point clear as soon as possible was a good move by the federal government, because if they have wavered in their decision to do so, twisted narratives about bank bailouts and conjuring the past instances of it happening would have been a bad blow to the US government's image. The Silicon Valley Bank Depositors will get their money back White there's no direct timetable for when the depositors can get their full funds back, the federal government, via the FDIC, came in and said that they will make sure that the people will get 100% of their money back. Here's where most of the confusion lie at the moment, because there are some who spin the narrative like this resembles the recent FTX crash. But unlike the FTX crash where the money is in large parts gone, the Silicon Valley Bank's money is still there. The main issue at the moment is that there were some horrendous mistakes in investing the money, which caused it to be stuck and become inaccessible at the moment. So when a bank run happened, they didn't have enough cash. And that's what caused this. But the money is still there, unless we learn otherwise after the ongoing investigations. To hear more updates and suggestions on how Silicon Valley, the federal government, and the FDIC can prevent such a crisis from happening again, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
It's been a crazy handful of days in Silicon Valley. But now that the federal government has made their announcements and has the ball rolling, I wanted to spend a few minutes with you just clarifying some things that seem to be creating confusion in the recent Silicon Valley Bank situation. There seems to be more confusion about what just happened with the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and what the federal government just did as there was about COVID. So let me see if I can break this down for all of you. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. There is no Bank Bailout for the Silicon Valley Bank Let me say that again: there was no bank bailout here. The executives got fired. None of the investors, creditors, nobody doing business with the bank, in that sense, are getting any of their money back, particularly the investors in the board. The Silicon Valley Bank is gone. The Effect on the US Finance The President has said that this will not cost taxpayers' money. You may choose to believe it or not, but that is the current position of the government on the matter. What they're saying is if there's any protection money required, it will come from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC is an insurance company managed by the federal government, which is paid for by Wall Street and the banks. They pay insurance fees to the FDIC for drastic instances such as these. Making that point clear as soon as possible was a good move by the federal government, because if they have wavered in their decision to do so, twisted narratives about bank bailouts and conjuring the past instances of it happening would have been a bad blow to the US government's image. The Silicon Valley Bank Depositors will get their money back White there's no direct timetable for when the depositors can get their full funds back, the federal government, via the FDIC, came in and said that they will make sure that the people will get 100% of their money back. Here's where most of the confusion lie at the moment, because there are some who spin the narrative like this resembles the recent FTX crash. But unlike the FTX crash where the money is in large parts gone, the Silicon Valley Bank's money is still there. The main issue at the moment is that there were some horrendous mistakes in investing the money, which caused it to be stuck and become inaccessible at the moment. So when a bank run happened, they didn't have enough cash. And that's what caused this. But the money is still there, unless we learn otherwise after the ongoing investigations. To hear more updates and suggestions on how Silicon Valley, the federal government, and the FDIC can prevent such a crisis from happening again, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
Silicon Valley Bank's collapse went off like a bomb on March 10th 2023. And I want to reach out to you and essentially share with you the conversations that I've been having with many friends, many entrepreneurs, many VCs, in the last 24 hours or so. That said, let's talk about what's really going on; specifically, what the media talking heads and idiot, ‘thought leaders' on the internet are getting very, very wrong. Second, we'll discuss a few ideas on what you can do immediately to shore up your situation if you are a Silicon Valley Bank customer, or even if you are working in the tech world. And then thirdly, let's talk about the crisis from the perspective of your company, and what you can do moving forward. The Silicon Valley Bank Collapse As of now, what is clear is that Silicon Valley Bank went down in part, because of some combination of getting caught in a cash crunch. It appears they made some bad long term bond decisions at low interest rates. And as you know, the US government has been raising interest rates from about 0.25% roughly a year ago, to about 4.75% now a year later. This has caught a lot of people off guard. This is not to say there wasn't a mistake on SVB's part, but what we do know is that there were some combination of over investing in long term bonds, and the interest rates going up that aggravated the problem. Here's a link to the Wall Street Journal article breaking all of what has happened so far. Media and Thought Leaders' “thoughts” on the matter First of all, there's a thread growing around that says, “Oh, this is the billionaires in Silicon Valley doing corrupt things, and now they're getting their comeuppance.” This is not the case. If there was something incompetent or illegal that took place in the Silicon Valley Bank, we'll find out once the investigations are done. But for now, it is affecting a lot of people in the space, and not just those billionaires they are harping about. This is not some cash crunch hurting billionaires. It is hurting the people who didn't get paid on Friday, because their employer just froze their bank. This is the entrepreneur who DM me on Twitter yesterday saying they have their entire 20 million of VC funding at SVB, and asking what they can do now. These entrepreneurs and CEOs don't know how they're going to pay their people, don't know how they're going to pay their bills. It appears that the FDIC is saying that people will get their guaranteed 250,000 on Monday, but over 90% of the deposits in this bank are in excess of that. So it's really not much protection. And while it seems that much of this money will come back to its rightful owner, it's not clear what percentage and in what timeframe. Running a business with no money is fucking hard. And that's what's going on here. To learn more about the Silicon Valley Bank situation and how your business can cope with crisis of this magnitude, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
Silicon Valley Bank's collapse went off like a bomb on March 10th 2023. And I want to reach out to you and essentially share with you the conversations that I've been having with many friends, many entrepreneurs, many VCs, in the last 24 hours or so. That said, let's talk about what's really going on; specifically, what the media talking heads and idiot, ‘thought leaders' on the internet are getting very, very wrong. Second, we'll discuss a few ideas on what you can do immediately to shore up your situation if you are a Silicon Valley Bank customer, or even if you are working in the tech world. And then thirdly, let's talk about the crisis from the perspective of your company, and what you can do moving forward. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Silicon Valley Bank Collapse As of now, what is clear is that Silicon Valley Bank went down in part, because of some combination of getting caught in a cash crunch. It appears they made some bad long term bond decisions at low interest rates. And as you know, the US government has been raising interest rates from about 0.25% roughly a year ago, to about 4.75% now a year later. This has caught a lot of people off guard. This is not to say there wasn't a mistake on SVB's part, but what we do know is that there were some combination of over investing in long term bonds, and the interest rates going up that aggravated the problem. Here's a link to the Wall Street Journal article breaking all of what has happened so far. Media and Thought Leaders' “thoughts” on the matter First of all, there's a thread growing around that says, “Oh, this is the billionaires in Silicon Valley doing corrupt things, and now they're getting their comeuppance.” This is not the case. If there was something incompetent or illegal that took place in the Silicon Valley Bank, we'll find out once the investigations are done. But for now, it is affecting a lot of people in the space, and not just those billionaires they are harping about. This is not some cash crunch hurting billionaires. It is hurting the people who didn't get paid on Friday, because their employer just froze their bank. This is the entrepreneur who DM me on Twitter yesterday saying they have their entire 20 million of VC funding at SVB, and asking what they can do now. These entrepreneurs and CEOs don't know how they're going to pay their people, don't know how they're going to pay their bills. It appears that the FDIC is saying that people will get their guaranteed 250,000 on Monday, but over 90% of the deposits in this bank are in excess of that. So it's really not much protection. And while it seems that much of this money will come back to its rightful owner, it's not clear what percentage and in what timeframe. Running a business with no money is fucking hard. And that's what's going on here. To learn more about the Silicon Valley Bank situation and how your business can cope with crisis of this magnitude, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™!
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about what most people are missing about the biggest category battle in a decade OpenAI & Microsoft vs. Google. Even some of the smartest people in business can't see what's happening here, as most people don't have a category design lens; they have a competition lens. The competition lens is about winning a comparison game with other companies, which at most leads to a small piece of the market share, and rarely leads to being the category leader of said field. So join us as we dig into how to view the new AI category battle through the category lens, beyond product brand, and business model. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Categories Matter Before we look into things through the category lens, we need to point out why categories matter so much. The simple answer is: categories matter because that's how human brains make sense of information. “Here's a simple example: If I say to you: ‘automobile', you know what that is. And then if I say to you muscle car, you know that a muscle car is a subcategory of automobile. Because the way the human mind works is that you and I ascertain information, and we need to put it somewhere in a file folder, because we need to sort that shit out and make sense of it.” – Christopher Lochhead The second piece of it is, each of these categories and subcategories, these folders in our mind are also a hierarchy of value. Whichever is valuable or not is how they are perceived by everyone, and we collectively give some things higher values than others, even if it sometimes doesn't make sense why some things are more expensive than things that are actually important. Remember, there was a point in time where nobody paid for water. And then Evian showed up and got people to pay a premium price for a free product they had in their tap. OpenAI vs Microsoft So we get to the meat of the dialogue, which is about Microsoft & OpenAI and their new product, ChatGPT. ChatGPT represents a new category called consumer AI. Though there have been previous AI technologies that have been launched it the web before, none are as well-defined and has had a impact as big as ChatGPT. This in turn got people thinking if Microsoft is muscling in on the Search War. Well, not exactly – because Microsoft already lost that battle with their Bing search engine. Google controls about 83% market share of searches online, compared to Microsoft Bing's 9.9%. So clearly, Google is the Category King in that regard. ChatGPT, however, is a whole other product and a different category altogether. ChatGPT does not search for the answer, it creates the answer based on the collective information that is available to it. It's not he old category of Search, but a new category called Answer. After the success of OpenAI & ChatGPT grew and garnered more positive feedback from the market, Google has decided to create its own version of it. Which is ironic, as they fell into the same trap that Microsoft found themselves in with Bing before. To learn more about the surge of new categories from AI, and how to treat these new categories from a category lens perspective, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.
This episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different is part of a very special two-part series that we are doing on how to design a legendary career, company and category. This two-part series is a masterclass on how to have a legendary career in technology from 2 different perspectives. On this episode, we have a dialogue with the legendary Joe Sexton. Joe Sexton has been a material contributor to creating well over $40 billion in market value over his legendary career. He's one of the most legendary sales revenues and frankly, overall company leaders I've met or ever had the pleasure of working with. There are many people who would easily pay $25,000 to have lunch with Joe, and today you got him for free and on repeat. So sit back and let this conversation take you into new heights and ideas in the next hour or so. How to Change to Conversation in Tech Industries Christopher and Joe reminisce on the time they spent working together, what they learned from each other during that time, and how they were able to apply what they had learned from each other to their own practices after they pursued their own paths. For Joe Sexton, it was all about changing the conversation about things. Whether he went to McAfee, CrowdStrike, and other different fields in tech, his understanding in improving their business and becoming business leaders in their respective categories was on how to change the conversation, i.e. making a radical change in the usual perspective of a certain product, or creating a new one for a problem that people didn't think of solving before. Know What You Know, and Execute Joe Sexton has taken may advisory roles over the course of his career, and have heard from CEOs that doesn't seem to know what exactly their company does, or what they do in it. “I've spoken literally to well over 100 CEOs in my board role. I've heard pitch after pitch after pitch, and 99 times out of 100, after a half hour of passionate talk and presentation by the CEO, I say, “I've been doing these 35 years, and I don't understand what you said. I mean, I only understand what you do.”” – Joe Sexton On the other hand, Joe has also worked with people who knew what they were good at, and got his help so they could focus on the thing they're good at, rather than stretching themselves thin. Of course, it doesn't mean that you only stay on that level for the rest of your company's development, but learning where you can help your business grow, especially during its start, can spell success or failure in startups and the like. Joe Sexton on Creating Your Opportunities When asked about how he would create opportunities for himself when he got started, Joe replies that that is one of the questions that young people ask him. To answer the question, Joe shares that one must have a good track record on their field and the data to back it up. Because when it's time to compete in the market, these two things will speak for themselves, rather than coming up with a soft pitch and hoping for the best. It's like explaining what you are worth to a company or a potential investor, without needing to resort to technical babble or telling your story from scratch. Having that track record and reputation and the data to back it up means that they have something to look into before you even meet, and that could put them at ease. To learn more about How To Design A Legendary Career, Company, And Category, download and listen to this episode. Bio Joe Sexton Mr. Joe Sexton is an accomplished technology executive who's been part of creating over $40 billion in value. He's served as CEO, President, CRO and SVP, advisor and/or board member for more than a dozen category designing technology firms. He is the former President of Worldwide Field Operations at AppDynamics. ($3.7B purchase by Cisco) Prior to AppDynamics, he spent significant time in senior leadership roles at McAfee ($5B public co), Mercury Interactive ($4.
In this podcast, I talk to Ajay Sabhlok about his career. Ajay is the Vice President of IT Enterprise Applications at Rubrik. Previously Ajay was Senior Director of IT Applications for Global Services, Marketing and Enterprise Data at VMware. Before VMware, Ajay worked at Logitech, Mercury Interactive, Siebel Systems, and Oracle. He has a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and a post graduate diploma in Software Technolgy. I hope you enjoy!
In this podcast, I interview Ajay Sabhlok. Ajay is the Vice President of IT Enterprise Applications at Rubrik. Previously Ajay was Senior Director of IT Applications for Global Services, Marketing and Enterprise Data at VMware. Before VMware, Ajay worked at Logitech, Mercury Interactive, Siebel Systems, and Oracle. He has a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering and a post graduate diploma in Software Technolgy. I hope you enjoy!
With pandemics and global health concerns in the headlines, it is good to know there are companies like Anima Biotech leveraging advanced technology to accelerate pharma solutions. Under the leadership of Co-founder and CEO Yochi Slonim, the team at Anima Biotech is advancing mRNA Lightning, a novel platform for the discovery of small molecule mRNA drugs and their mechanisms of action. If you do not understand what this means, take a listen as we promise you will be fascinated and learn something new. In this episode, we discussed: - How Yochi made the leap to founding a company that is at the leading edge of the intersection of technology and medical discovery. - How using AI and machine learning is a complete game changer in #medtech. - Why mRNA Lightening is so critical to the swift discovery and treatability process for existing and evolving diseases. - How their differentiated approach combines high-scale phenotypic screening that automates millions of experiments in live mRNA biology with MOAi technology using AI to elucidate the mechanism of action of active molecules. - Why the best people and best solutions require a global team to make up Anima and so their eye is on expansion and partner networks. Yochi Slonim is a serial entrepreneur in software and biotech who has built multiple companies through all phases of growth all the way to IPOs and large M&A exits. As a Co-founder and CEO of Anima Biotech, he is driving the company's vision and strategy, fundraising, and partnering. Prior to Anima, Yochi was a co-founder of Mercury Interactive. As CTO and VP R&D from the company's early days, he created product vision and strategy and led a multi-product organization of 200 developers. After going public and reaching revenues of over $1B annually, Mercury was acquired by HP for $4.5B. In 2000, Yochi was the founder and CEO of Identify. The company reached revenues of $50m in less than 5 years and was acquired by BMC in 2006 for $150m in cash. Yochi founded ffwd.me, a unique startup acceleration program where he led a team that worked with over 25 startups in diverse areas and technologies, developing strategy, products and go-to-market operations while raising multiple rounds of financing from VCs and private investors. Be sure to check out Yochi's links listed below. Enjoy the show! Connect with Yochi: LinkedIn: https://www.animabiotech.com/ Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yochislonim/?originalSubdomain=il Connect with Allison: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonsummerschicago/ Website: DisruptiveCEONation.com Twitter: @DisruptiveCEO #CEO #startup #startupstory #founder #founderstory #business #construction #businesspodcast #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
#cio #cloudcomputing #digitaltransformation This episode of CXOTalk explores business transformation from the perspective of Seagate's Chief Information Officer, Ravi Naik. He has a unique perspective on cloud technology because he is also Executive Vice President of the company's multicloud product offering.The conversation includes these topics:● On the CIO and IT strategy at Seagate● What is multi-cloud?● Why is multicloud important to enterprise cloud adoption?● On cloud vendor lock-in in the public cloud● On managing the dual roles of CIO and EVP of cloud services● How can CIOs overcome challenges to being business leaders?● On customer experience and the Chief Information Officer● How can cloud providers improve customer experience?● How do multicloud environments create business value?● How can CIOs be effective driving digital transformation?In his role as CIO, Ravi Naik is leading large transformative initiatives, leveraging ideas and platforms focused on future growth. With his passion for technology, as EVP of Lyve Cloud, he is pioneering the next chapter of innovation and leadership in Seagate storage services.Prior to joining Seagate in 2017, Ravi was the senior vice president of technology at Katerra, a startup revolutionising the construction industry by transforming the way buildings and spaces come to life. Before Katerra, in 2007 Ravi joined SanDisk to lead an enterprise-wide transformation initiative. Following the success of SanDisk transformation, he was appointed CIO, remaining with the organisation through its sale to Western Digital in 2016. Before that, he held leadership positions in Mercury Interactive, Hewlett Packard, and 3Com Corporation. Naik holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bombay in India.
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about public relations/communications, and a very different point of view about that. In particular, why your content is your marketing. Towards the end, we'll talk about five easy steps to consider when building your own direct audience, and bypassing the legacy publications: the old-school, dusty gatekeepers. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Problem with Legacy Media This episode is inspired in part by a conversation I had with a CEO friend, which I then posted on LinkedIn. It reads: A CEO friend just asked me, if he should go to a PR/Marketing smooze event with the legacy business media. Here's my advice. (Warning: I'm biased. But for a reason) The bulk of legacy media is a waste of time. I used to write for many of the biggest legacy business media outlets. Stopped 5+ years ago, because a) (almost) no one reads it and b) it is mostly clickbait. No one reads Forbes fortune Fast Company, Inc, etc. anymore. Your best ROI will come from building your own media and thought leadership. And the AHA here is every company needs to be a media company. Playing Both Sides Another issue is that even as these legacy media have gone digital, they still rely on cookie cutter strategies and clickbait-y articles. They play the SEO game to keep their websites on top of searches, and then have companies pay to be featured as top so-and-so in a category. Some even go as far as charging subscription to access their media, which is a whole other reason why people don't read their stuff anymore. You pay to get the “information”, only to find out that it's something you can probably read 2 lines down the search results. Essentially, they are trying to get revenues from both sides of the process, which will eventually lead to burning both ends of the stick faster. They are still clinging to traditional ways, which shows even when they went digital. Go Direct to the Source So rather than subscribing to “publication lists” that doesn't really net you any traffic, it's best to do it in-house and go direct to the source by tapping into the digital market itself. You can start small with building up channels in various social media platforms, and promoting your content and linking back to your website if they are interested for more. At the very least, you now have a platform to actively engage your audience, and get a pulse of what works and what doesn't, and go from there. To find out the other steps in doing better PR and communications on your own, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
On September 15 2022, Adobe announced it was buying startup Figma for 20 billion US dollars. This is one of the largest private company purchases in Silicon Valley history. They paid approximately 50 times Figma's 2022 revenue, and Wall Street hated it. Skeptics are saying that Adobe paid an "astronomical price" for a company projected to book only 400 million in ARR annualized reoccurring revenue this year. And this is exactly what people who do not understand how categories work. The “experts” on Wall Street when deals like this go down, are almost always wrong. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Wall Street Mercenaries Let's start off with an interesting tidbit that I experienced by interacting with Wall Street. As I was doing a little bit of consulting and insulting back then, a group approached me about their matchmaking service. Simply put, they would match executives and experts to Wall Street folks, and they pay for your time so they could ask you questions and advise on certain things. The idea intrigued me, so I signed up for it. But it turns out, the Wall Street guys only wanted to ask for speculations and opinions on certain company's performance and how it would affect the market, what stocks were going to tank, etc. The AHA here is that most people (this is a generalization) in Wall Street are mercenaries. They're looking to make money in the now term, short term. They don't create a significant value in the economy. They just try to anticipate what might happen tomorrow, so that they can play a financialization game. While there are exceptions to this, it's generally the perception most people have of them. How to Confuse a Wall Street Folk As we've discussed before, there are two kinds of acquisition deals when you look at them from the high level. There are consolidation deals and acceleration deals. Consolidation deals happen when a certain company is not growing anymore, and their solution for it is to merge with another company to get a bigger share of the market and look like they have “growth”. Value investors like the Wall Street folks typically thrive and look out for such deals, as it fulfills their requirements for “growth” and revenue increase. Acceleration deals is when a company acquires another because they see value on it once they have developed it. They company or IP they purchased may not have a huge valuation at the moment, but it could be a gold mine for them once it is fully fleshed out. Acceleration deals tend to confuse Wall Street folk, as they are focused in the “now”, and could not fathom the significance of such a deal entails, unless it affects the current quarter. Hence, they do not understand what Adobe did, which is why they hate it. To hear more about the Adobe deal and why Wall Street folks hate it, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
Peter Drucker is considered the father of modern business management. If there was a Mount Rushmore of business thinking, he'd be on it. Recently on Category Pirates, we've begun work on the evolution of Peter Drucker's concept of a knowledge worker, to what can today be called as the emergence of an intellectual capitalist. So I wanted to look back on Peter Drucker's ideas that had a huge impact on me, and see if we can apply more of them in our current endeavors. His book, The Effective Executive, helped me become an organized person and an effective executive of my own. And when I read the foreword in the latest edition that was written by Jim Collins, it struck something profound, which I hope to share with you. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Effective Executive: Foreword Here's the foreword by Jim Collins: My first meeting with Drucker is one of the 10 most significant days of my life. Peter had dedicated himself to one huge question: how can we make society both more productive and more humane? His warmth, as when he grasped my hand in two of his upon opening his front door and said, “Mr. Collins, so very pleased to meet you please come inside”, bespoke his own humanity. But he was also incredibly productive. At one point, I asked him which of his 27 books he was most proud of, to which Drucker, then 86, replied, the next one. He wrote 10 more. At the end of the day, Peter hit me with a challenge. I was on the cusp of leaving my faculty spot at Stanford, betting on a self-created path. And I was scared. “It seems to me you spend a lot of time worrying about how you will survive”, said Peter. “You will probably survive”, he continued, “and you seem to spend a lot of energy on the question of how to be successful. But that is the wrong question”. He paused. Then, like the Zen master thwacking the table with a bamboo stick, “the question is, how to be useful.” A great teacher can change your life in 30 seconds. I know that there have been moments in my life where I wondered if I was going to survive or make it. And the interesting teaching here that Jim is sharing with us from Peter, is that when we turn our effort, our focus on being useful to others, ourselves become less important. So if you're somebody right now, who's wondering how to be successful or worried that maybe you won't survive, or maybe that your startup or your career is on the wrong path. I would just underscore the story, you'll probably survive. Like Peter said, the real question is, how can we all be useful? Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about how marketing can drive revenue with White Space Analysis. We talked about how to drive short-term revenue via category design a few episodes ago (LOM 151). Today, we provide you with more options to make that cash register sing as soon as possible. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. White Space Analysis & White Space Marketing Let's talk about White Space Analysis and White Space Marketing. Essentially, it is doing data science analysis on consumers and the product they purchased. From there, you can see what products or services they have not purchased, which is the “white space”, so to speak. Now that you know this information, you can then focus on existing customers that have purchased some of your products, and target them with marketing for your products and services that they have not availed of yet. This drives revenue quickly for your company, as you provide consumers with a “need” for something they don't have yet. How Mercury utilized White Space Marketing Back in my CMO days in Mercury, we had a team led by one of the most legendary executives in the industry, Sue Barsamian. Sue got quite complicated with White Space Analysis; she was able to utilize it in real-time during one of the Big Customer User Conferences. The team got the data on their big customers and found the products they do not use that go well with the ones they have purchased before from the company. Then, they made sure that the salespeople on the floor have this information, and subtly drove customers to product showcases and panels for the products they do not have. They made sure to precisely market into that customer's white space, thereby saving time and effort, while having a higher chance of a purchase afterward. The fastest way to earn revenue One could argue that doing White Space Marketing is the fastest way to earn revenue, as you are already marketing to existing customers. As we know, if they bought from us once, the likelihood they're gonna buy from us again is very, very high. So it's surprising that a lot of companies don't employ this strategy, opting to do spray-and-pray tactics rather than doing White Space Analysis and focusing their marketing there. Once you have this information with you, your company can do a lot of things to funnel revenue and market share to your business. To hear more about White Space Marketing, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about the three stages of a legendary career. Let's also talk about the lessons we can learn about it from a source you wouldn't think about at first, Star Wars. Yes, that Star Wars. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Three Stages of Legendary Career: Star Wars Style So how do we discuss legendary careers using Star Wars? Well, if you look at it on a higher level, the three stages of having a legendary career follow a Jedi's progression. There's being a Luke / Lucy Skywalker stage, where you are just starting out. If you're lucky and successful, there's the Obi-Wan stage. And if you are even more successful, and legendary at that, there's the Yoda stage. Jedi Breakdown Let us explain even further. When you're first coming up, and if you are somebody who is gravitating towards the exponential different as opposed to the incremental better, or want to create, design, and dominate new future market categories, as opposed to just somebody who wants to kind of maintain the status quo, you get identified pretty quickly as being high potential. Much like Luke was as a padawan. If this person is lucky and successful, and becomes a mentor or teacher for other upcoming high potential individuals, they enter their Obi-Wan stage. And if you end up being a legend in your chosen career, much like Yoda, you will have the authority and success that befits the position. The True Reward When I myself was a Luke, I thought that the rewards for being a person with high potential who excels and produces great results was that you get the recognition and fame, as well as the riches that come along with it. But as you progress through the different levels of your career, you realize that while those rewards are worth pursuing, it is not the biggest reward out there. The real reward is you get to a place in your 40s or 50s, where the world acknowledges you, as a champion, as a legendary Luke / Lucy Skywalker, and you graduate. Now, the world grants you the Obi-Wan status. To hear more about the different legendary career and Star Wars, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about how to use category design thinking to drive short term revenue. We talked a lot about what to do in a recession on our last episode, and on this episode, we're going deep on a very specific topic, about how to make the cash register sing immediately. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Short Term Category Design One of the things that we hear about category design is category design is too expensive. Only big companies can design categories, or it takes too long it takes six to 10 years to build a category, we need revenue now. But the truth is that category design can drive revenue for you in the next immediate term days or weeks if you take a category science approach. As we talked about on the last episode, most companies in a downturn compete harder and harder for demand existing demand that is falling. And it's like fighting for the falling demand knife and cutting yourself into shreds. Category design is distinct from Legacy approaches to marketing is actually the cheapest, fastest way to make the cash register sing. Things to Consider What I'm about to share with you is work that call Eddie and I are currently in the process of helping a legendary b2c tech company who is scaling at over 100% a year. In spite of that, they wanted to get really focused, particularly with the economy doing what it's doing on how to continue their triple digit plus growth. First, it starts with an understanding of super consumers. The general idea is that a very small number of consumers, customers, clients, readers, you know, consumers of any kind customers of any kind, typically 10% or less are the ones that are on the bleeding edge of what makes a category go. They're super influential. They're super committed to the category and typically to the brand leader in that category. They also tend to drive a lot of innovation; they also tend to be the ones that evangelize the loudest. So the first step is knowing your super consumers, and observing them. This leads to the second point, which is a genius insight from Eddie, is that a super of one is a super of nine. That is to say, people who are passionate about something, tend to be passionate about several things. So what are the adjacencies that the Supers might also love? There's a whole bunch of categories that they might be interested in. To learn more about how to drive short term revenue through category design, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about the big startup downturn marketing mistakes and what to do about it. We also talk about why people who create demand are in massive demand. Lastly, there is the topic about your career, and what to do when the economy goes sideways, both in your business and in your career. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Startup Downturn Marketing Mistake The reality is, it's not just startups who make this mistake. But before that, let's go through the top 10 list of what happens when the recession hits. Number one, the recession hits. The immediate impact of that, of course, is number two, demand falls. So what do most companies do? Number three, they market hard in an effort to catch demand. Remember, when most people say marketing, what they mean is compete in an existing market category for existing demand. So when they do marketing, what they're really doing is demand capture. So when the recession hits to demand falls, three, they market hard to catch, falling demand or some people say catch a falling knife. As a result, number four, customer acquisition costs aka CAC goes up. Number six to nine is just running around in circles, repeating numbers two to four. Until you reach number ten, where they finally run out of time and money. Here's the big learning: He who competes for demand loses, she who creates demand wins. It also happens to be why category design is the most powerful underground skill in business. Most people don't understand that just like you can create and design a product and accompany you could also create and design a market category. Recession through a Different Lens I get into trouble for saying this, but most people immediately assume a negative defensive position in a recession or a downturn. However, approximately 10% of companies get stronger during the recession. In the last week, I have had many conversations with entrepreneurs and CEOs about how to take advantage of the coming downturn. I know that sounds crazy to a lot of people, but you can't be in the 10%, that gets stronger, and you can't be in the elite companies that actually are able to take advantage of a downturn unless you at least ask the questions. So I'm asking you to consider a different way. Choosing a Different Way So here's the different way and specific as it relates to shrinking demand. So there's three kinds of demand. Number one, as we talked about demand capture. Number two, demand creation. That's why some people call it category creation. One of the stupid arguments we hear all the time is, “well, category design is dumb, because why would we go to a market where there's zero demand, and we have to create it all, when we can just catch demand? Okay? She who creates the demand wins. That's why. Now in a downturn, here's the problem. It can take some time to create demand. People say, “well, we don't have time our revenues falling, we need to generate revenue now.” This is where the third type of approach, wherein we dam the demand. By doing so, you redirect demand from an existing market to a new solution that your product or services provides. To hear more about how to deal with Startup Downturn Marketing Mistake, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive.
On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about a critical question: Who are you going to be when the shit hits the fan? As we have talked about in previous episodes, it is starting to look like the business environment could get very hard here. Some people in Silicon Valley are even saying that it could be like back in 2008. Sequoia Capital wrote their seminal “RIP, Good Times” presentation, and its final slide says, “Get real, or go home”. No matter what's going to happen next in the economy, or frankly, the world, it's probably time for all of us to get real or go home. So on this episode, let's dig into why some people step up, and others melt down in times of crisis. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Signs When I was in my late 20s, and into my early 30s, I was the founding CMO of a company called Scient. We were a leader in the we called E-business Innovation Space, we were one of the very first consulting firms to focus on building E-businesses or Digital Businesses. We did incredibly well, as a matter of fact, the company was founded, I believe, in 98, maybe late 97. By 2000, we had grown to almost 3000 people, which is incredible for a consulting startup, essentially. We were public and had a market cap of about $9 billion. Now, if you were around back then, you've done your homework, and you know the.com bust happened. Like all bad things, they happen over time. It built starting by about February, March, we could feel things starting to get bad. Shortly thereafter, we could feel the rumblings our pipeline wasn't starting to look very good. There was weird shit happening with our customers. And there was a slow takedown that happened from about March, slowly, slowly, slowly, building over the summer, and by the fall, we were in a freefall. Sh*t Hits the Fan Due to all that, we had to do the first ever layoff in the history of the company. It was insanely painful. So when we announced the miss in the projected stocks, we do the layoff. The people we laid off are amazing. They were cheering the company on saying please go forward and be successful sign had an incredible culture. So as painful as it was, the exiting people were, were incredible warriors and supporters. And the people who stayed really wanted to make a go of it. However, people at management seemed to be focusing on the wrong things, rather than discussing how to move forward, given the resources we still had at the moment. This continued until I left the company, and from there the company continued on its freefall rather than picking itself up and starting anew. How People React to Disruption So why do I share that with you? It's a great example of the shit hitting the fan for a company. In my opinion, an executive team unwilling to deal with the reality of the situation, and unwilling to deal with it with any kind of speed is a bad way to go at it. That's why I got so mad and took off, and that's why the CEO of the company fired me. After that, the company vaporized. To hear more how legendary people react when disruption happens in the market, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting fi...
A serial entrepreneur in software and biotech, Yochi Slonim has built multiple companies as a founder and CEO through all phases of growth all the way to IPOs and large M&A exits. As a Co-founder and CEO of Anima Biotech, he is driving the company's vision and strategy, fundraising, and partnering. Prior to Anima, Yochi was a co-founder of Mercury Interactive. As CTO and VP R&D from the company's early days, he created product vision and strategy and led a multi-product organization of 200 developers. After going public and reaching revenues of over $1B annually, Mercury was acquired by HP for $4.5B. As Senior VP of products and marketing for Tecnomatix, a public NASDAQ company, he led a 500 people organization of 4 divisions that generated revenues of $100m until the company was acquired by UGS for $230m. In 2000, Yochi was founder and CEO of Identify. The company reached revenues of $50m in less than 5 years and was acquired by BMC in 2006 for $150m in cash. Yochi founded ffwd.me, a unique startup acceleration program where he led a team that worked with over 25 startups in diverse areas and technologies, developing strategy, products and go to market operations while raising multiple rounds of financing from VCs and private investors. As one of Israel's leading speakers on the subject of startup positioning and company building, several of Yochi's approachable and amusing lectures can be found on Youtube ("Youtube Yochi Slonim").
On this episode, let's talk about why most marketing fails, and what we can do about it. Speaking of marketing, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making our new books into bestsellers at Amazon Books. You can check the whole list Category Pirates mini-books at Amazon Books, and expect more in the near future! Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. The Marketing Folklore When most people say marketing, they usually have a preconceived notion to what it is. That is, to compete for an existing demand with a better product and a better brand in an existing market category. The reason most people think like this is that it is what is taught in business schools and MBAs. That's what is said a lot in marketing books and the like. So it has become a belief, almost a folklore, that things should be done as such. Competing for Leftovers The problem with this line of thinking is that it's a very bad idea. We did a data science project published in the HBr, as well as in our newsletter Category Pirates, and discovered something fascinating. We found that in tech categories, on average, the category king or queen wins 76% of the total value created, as measured by market cap in the entire category. This means, if you're not doing category design, you're playing in someone else's category. When somebody says marketing, what they're really saying is, we are going to fight for the remaining 24% of the value. The issue now is that most companies don't realize that they're only fighting for a small piece of the pie. “Because the vast majority of marketers don't know that that's what they're doing. When they hear the word marketing, they make an unconscious, undiscussed unanalyzed choice to compete in a category designed by somebody else, which only allows for 24% of the value. And that is why most marketing fails.” – Christopher Lochhead Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
On this episode, let's talk about how to inspire legendary creative marketing people to do their legendary creative marketing work. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Letting Legendary Creative Marketing People Do Legendary Creative Marketing Work Years ago, I was the head of marketing for a red-hot internet company called Scient. We had engaged with a group of creative marketers, designers, and copywriters led by the legend himself, John Bielenberg. At the beginning of the project, this is what I said to him: “Look, I know you guys are standalone, in terms of the incredible legendary marketing creative you guys create. So what I'm asking you to do is go away, and design the most legendary piece of work you've ever done.” In this case, it was a brochure that will serve as “grenade”: it was the kind of piece that when you got it, you knew you got it, and you never forgot getting it. They did just that. So when they came back a week or two to present their work, I asked the question that I always ask, “Do you think what you're about to show us is legendary work?” John smiled and looked at me and said, “Yes, we do,” and he showed us this most legendary brochure that he created. Acknowledge Your Legendary Creative Marketing Team's Efforts Another thing to address is to let your creatives know that you are aware that their best works don't usually see the light of day. This is either due to poor follow-through by the higher-ups, or poor feedback from people who weren't involved in the project, but higher up the food chain. So acknowledge this and then tell them, that once they deliver a legendary creative marketing piece that will blow away everyone, you will fight tooth-and-nail for it to see the light of day. Once they do so, remind them to remind you to not fuck it up. The Takeaway So what's the lesson here? One, when you're talking to creative people about doing creative work, let them know you want them to do their most legendary work. Second, let them know that you also know that most of their most legendary work has never seen the light of day. This is because most of the companies they worked for or the clients that they had didn't have the courage to execute their legendary work. They didn't have the courage to say to them, once they presented truly legendary work, “Don't let us fuck this up.” Now, here's the other AHA about this. If you as a marketing leader/CEO/CMO get a reputation with the creative people in your company for A) inspiring it and asking them to do legendary work, and then B) with very few modifications, actually execute the legendary work, guess what happens the next time they have to do something creative. They know that you want their most legendary work. Also, they know that if they put the thinking and their heart and their soul and their blood, sweat, tears and whiskey into that work, that you are not going to be the leader who takes that legendary work and lets it get crushed and watered down so that it never sees the light of day. And when legendary creative people know that you want them to do their legendary work and that you're actually going to implement it, guess what? They're going to keep giving you legendary work. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.
In this episode, let's talk about Sales Kick Off. Since it's that time of the year where most sales, marketing, and executive teams are working on sales kickoff events for the new year and/or a company kickoff event. While most people work on the practical and tactical aspect of things, there's a strategic question that we need to address. If we get the answer right, it can lead to a very successful sales kickoff and a successful year. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Sales Kick Off Events Like most companies, you are also probably working on this as early as the 4th quarter of the year. If you're in a well-established company, you probably have all the basics down, in terms of systems, workflows, and all related processes. While those parts are also important, the focus in these kinds of kickoffs is the context that it operates in. Why are you doing this sales kickoff? Is it for something new, or maybe an important change in your company that will affect how you interact with your clients and customers? Why Should I Stay? That said, we have a very unique context going into 2022. You have probably heard about the “Great Resignation”. People have been quitting their jobs to find better work or pursue other careers. Those who stayed are probably getting recruitment emails from competition due to this sudden lack of high-value individuals in certain industries. So heading into 2022, the context of your sales kickoff needs to answer the question, “Why should I stay?” In order to answer that question, you should look on what truly motivates people. The first point is, people who are invested in the company are motivated by a mission. They want to feel like they're a part of something greater than themselves. That what they do for the company makes a difference. The second point is that they want to feel connected to their colleagues. Granted, this is harder nowadays due to COVID and social distancing. So instead of being physically around people, find a way to align people's goals, so that they get to interact with each other while having the same mission. This ties to the first point as well. If your company is still on a full remote capacity right now, you can also be creative with technology. Instead of socializing in the pantry like before, set up zoom meetings for your team where you can just talk about the recent activities you have done outside of work. Or maybe share what you have been doing lately, so that other people in the team are aware of your contributions and could help with your struggles. In the situation where we're primarily using a digital first native digital way to do that, think about using the technology and creative ways to bond people to each other into the mission and point of view. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.
In this special solo episode of Christopher Lochhead - Follow Your Different, I just want to share with you an element of conversation around the most recent Kyle Rittenhouse case. What I wanted to talk about is America's biggest problem when it comes to situations like this. That is, the lack of any authentic dialogue about the matter. Too Much Yelling, Not Enough Listening Regardless on where you come out of the issue, there are some things that wasn't properly address or we didn't hear from at all. What I hoped we'd hear more was thoughtful, nuanced dialogue and conversation. Instead, what we got is what we've been getting a lot of in the United States of late, which is yelling and hardened positions. You're only pro or anti-something. As part of that, whatever one side does, if you're on that side, everything they do is right, and everything the other side does is wrong, and vice versa. I think that's really sad. Because thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. And it's only through dialogue, where human beings can achieve greater levels of understanding. There was no dialogue sparked by this horrible circumstance, horrible situation around what do we as Americans want to do about protests and riots? There wasn't a discussion about that. Nor was there a discussion about self-defense, what do we mean by self-defense? Who decides where there's a line where we can no longer defend ourselves or not? “What I do know is we're not having conversation. We're not having dialogue. There's a lot of yelling, and not a lot of listening.” – Christopher Lochhead Bring Back the Willingness to Listen If you're a long-time listener of this podcast, you know that our mission has always been to celebrate real, authentic dialogue. In our case, dialogue around what it takes to design legendary business and legendary life. In hopes that we can bring back curiosity, we can bring back a willingness to listen, a willingness to co create our lives and ultimately, our culture and country together. I got to tell you: sometimes, particularly of late, it feels like we're losing that war. We might even have lost it completely, and we might never get it back. But I do know that a conversation about authentic dialogue, and why we don't have it, and how we can have more is an important thing to do, even if very few people want to participate in that. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!
On this episode, let's talk about what might be the most important equation in business and in marketing. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing, the number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind. Maybe The Most Important Equation Ever I want to share with you a little bit of math that I learned very early in my career. It was incredibly eye-opening, and has been a bedrock that I have tried to stand on ever since. And the equation goes like this: Results do not equal No Results plus an Excuse. Now, this might seem obvious, but if you look around, you'll find the contrary to that. You might also think, what's the harm of having a great excuse when you can't achieve the results you want? Well, here's the interesting thing: That mindset can perpetuate. Over time, you'll start thinking that it's perfectly okay to not reach the result you want, as long as there was a valid excuse not to do so. Who You Are in Business Here's the AHA moment in business, entrepreneurship, and in category design: Who you are is based on your results. It may sound harsh, but think about the people that you work with, particularly those who you admire. Chances are, you respect and admire them the most because they can be counted on to produce results. If we use sales as an example, it's easy to see one's value for the business. That is, if they hit their target numbers or not. If they do hit their numbers and beyond, they are recognized and rewarded for it. You also gain the reputation as someone who achieves their goals, or if you already have said reputation, it is further reinforced. The reason this matter is, in marketing and category design, there are winners and losers. In every category, there tends to be one category king or queen who gets roughly 70% of the market, and everybody else are fighting for roughly a quarter of it. So train yourself. The excuse doesn't matter when it's on the line. The most legendary people produce results no matter what. That's the mindset. Don't be Afraid to Ask If you're a product manager, developer, or engineer, it can be easy to measure goals and objectives. You either meet the requirements, or you don't. Though for marketing, the goal or objective might not be as clear. If you're not sure about the goal of your marketing is, don't be afraid to ask. After that, make sure the rest of your team is clear to that goal. That beats running around doing things that might not even be related to your goal, which wastes time and resources. So to recap: Results do not equal No Results plus an Excuse. Results equal Reputation. Which means you are your results and your results drive your reputation. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.
In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about why thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. Context Matters More Than Content This might be obvious, but it bears repeating: context matters more than content. In any strategy discussion, the context of which is what leads to some kind of outcome or content. Most people, particularly those who are entrepreneurial, have a strong bias to action, which can be healthy and powerful. However, it does have it downsides sometimes. “A strong bias to action means that sometimes, and I know I've been guilty of this more times than I will ever know, we spring to action without doing enough thinking. More importantly, without doing enough thinking and dialoguing around what the context is for whatever it is we're talking about.” – Christopher Lochhead Accept or Reject the Premise The next piece to think of when discussing the context, is that whether you accept or reject the premise of said context? It could be a product, a service, or and prevalent idea. Here's what I know. “Legendary category designers, legendary entrepreneurs, creators, and marketers reject the premise. They start by rejecting the premise. So somebody says something and you go, that's interesting. And in our mind, we go, I reject the whole thing.” – Christopher Lochhead Now, you may end up circling back to that premise and either accepting it entirely, or just part of it. Though the reason why starting by rejecting the premise is so powerful, is that all premise, context, and established thinking is based on past experience, insight, or research. Of course, there are many cases where accepting the premise is the wise thing to do. Yet here's the rub: how do you create a different future, if the premise or context you start with is tied to the past? So we reject the premise, we reject the rules of the past and open ourselves up to a whole new kind of thinking. Listen to the Words In business and marketing, almost every sentence that somebody says to us use “accept the premise” language. Part of rejecting the premise is listening to the words they say. One example is “go to market”. You might ask, what's wrong with that premise? If you think about it, that premise suggests that there is a market out there, and we need to go and grab it. Which means that you are competing for other businesses that are also going to the same market. Yet wouldn't it be better to create your own market? That way, you get the lion's share of it outright, and you don't have to compete for it. Moreover, the customers/users then come to you, and not the other way around. To hear more about how thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.
Find out what it takes to climb the sales ranks and occupy the COO and CEO seats from the man who led Mercury Interactive from $40 million to $1.2 billion in annual revenue. Discover how Barry Mainz, COO of Malwarebytes, hires for greatness and leads teams to success. Legends of Sales and Marketing is produced by People.ai.
Christopher Lochhead wrote a book called Play Bigger. He was the CMO of Mercury Interactive and a couple of other real high-flying Silicon Valley startups and just an awesome guy. But he has a saying. He likes to say, "Thinking about thinking is the most important thinking you do. A lot of what we're talking about is stepping back because it's so easy to default to, Hey, I just raised my Series A; I'm in MarTech, let's go get somebody out of drift or let's go get a sale. Let's go find someone in Salesforce marketing. Let's go get a director from Salesforce to run our marketing. Oh, they'll crush it for us. And it's a natural default, right? And then a person comes in and because they weren't clear... And usually that person, they don't know how to vet. So, they're told this and they're super excited. Oh, wow. This is my chance. Put a stamp on it, but they forget that I'm not going to be in Salesforce anymore. Meaning, I'm not going to have, first of all, the Salesforce brand and just all the power of that. I'm not going to have all the resources. ----more---- And so anyway, the questions are just so important. Our guest, Mark Donnigan spends a lot of time just going through with the CEOs and the founders he works with and just really talking it through. Listen to the rest of the interview with Mark. Part one of this interview is here: The Two-Way Interview with Mark Donnigan About Susan's Guest: Mark Donnigan designs and executes marketing programs and go-to-market strategies that build markets and establish disruptive innovation companies as a category king. With 20 years of experience as a transformative and strategic B2B marketing and business leader Mark understands what's required to succeed in today's winner takes all market. Leveraging marketing and growth tactics that work, Mark produces real business results for early and growth-stage technology and disruptive innovation startup companies. Being well versed in SaaS, software licensing, wholesale, and retail distribution models, he helps companies build nimble, highly efficient marketing teams that routinely outperform larger marketing groups. Mark is passionate about extracting the most value from every marketing dollar invested. He provides startup founders in the early stages of building their sales engine with high-impact marketing playbooks so that they can reach their revenue goals and scale sustainably.
In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about how to spot a legendary startup / new category idea. It turns out there are a few secret hiding places where these ideas hide, but they're in plain sight. One of these ideas was shared by Avram Miller in a recent episode of Follow Your Different (FYD 234) when we were discussing his new book, titled The Flight of a Wild Duck. It is a simple, powerful, yet under-used idea for discovering massive ideas for new companies, products or categories, so we are going to talk about it in detail here. As a bonus, I'll share one of my own as well! So stay tuned to this episode, and enjoy. Avram Miller on Being a Legendary Startup When we talked to Avram Miller in Follow Your Different, we got into the discussions of why a lot of startups seemed to fail. These startups had, on paper, great ideas for products, services, and categories that should have dominated the market. Yet looking back, most of them did not achieve that potential. So what was the culprit? It was time. Specifically, they were too early or ahead of their time. Whether it was due to being technologically early or there's no demand for that particular idea yet, it was just too early. One of the examples was WebVan.com. It was a startup designed to deliver groceries to your home, and it was launched in the late 1990s. If you think about it nowadays, it makes sense that it would be a successful business. Yet WebVan.com shut its business down in 2001, while the same model today made Amazon a household brand. So if you have a legendary startup idea, one of the things you need to consider is this: is it too early, or just the right time to launch it to the world? Never Stop Innovating Idea no. 2 comes from me, and what I have observed upon past and existing category leaders in their respective markets. As I have discussed here in Lochhead on Marketing, and also at our Category Pirates newsletter, sometimes these Category Kings settle with fighting for a share of the market, rather than innovating and creating new markets for their own. One of the most known examples of this was Kodak and the physical media category, which tried to adapt too little, and too late. Surprisingly, Avram Miller shares in our conversation that Intel's CEO Andy Grove was also resistant to innovating things early on in Intel's history, which almost led them to miss out in getting into the chipset business for personal computers. As for a great example in the opposite direction, Victoria's Secret got left in the dust by Rihanna's line of lingerie called Savage. This was because it moved away from the POV of "be like these supermodels", to more inclusive and being comfortable with their own body. This radically different POV redesigned the category. As most native digitals see exclusivity as elitist and not welcoming, it was also embraced by the market almost overnight. So at the end of it all, would you rather be fighting to stay on top of your current market, or be the King of the Hill in a category that you have created or innovated? To hear more ideas on how to become a legendary startup or innovate your current business, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient,
Christopher Lochhead is an entrepreneur and former three time Silicon Valley CMO at Mercury Interactive, Scient and Vantive. He is also the host of two top-rated business podcasts, Follow Your Different and Lochhead on Marketing and is the co-author of two books, Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets (2016) and Niche Down: How To Become Legendary By Being Different (2018). The post 853: How to Avoid Losery With Christopher Lochhead, Category Pirates [K-Cup TripleShot] appeared first on Time4Coffee.
Christopher Lochhead is an entrepreneur and former three time Silicon Valley CMO at Mercury Interactive, Scient and Vantive. He is also the host of two top-rated business podcasts, Follow Your Different and Lochhead on Marketing and is the co-author of two books, Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets (2016) and Niche Down: How To Become Legendary By Being Different (2018). The post 852: Why F*ck Is Such an Awesome Word With Christopher Lochhead, Category Pirates [K-Cup TripleShot] appeared first on Time4Coffee.
Christopher Lochhead is an entrepreneur and former three time Silicon Valley CMO at Mercury Interactive, Scient and Vantive. He is also the host of two top-rated business podcasts, Follow Your Different and Lochhead on Marketing and is the co-author of two books, Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets (2016) and Niche Down: How To Become Legendary By Being Different (2018). The post 851: How to Position Yourself For Success With Christopher Lochhead, Category Pirates [K-Cup TripleShot] appeared first on Time4Coffee.
Christopher Lochhead is an entrepreneur and former three time Silicon Valley CMO at Mercury Interactive, Scient and Vantive. He is also the host of two top-rated business podcasts, Follow Your Different and Lochhead on Marketing and is the co-author of two books, Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets (2016) and Niche Down: How To Become Legendary By Being Different (2018). The post 850: How to Become Legendary With Christopher Lochhead, Category Pirates [K-Cup TripleShot] appeared first on Time4Coffee.
In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let us talk about something that I get asked about all the time. That is, can service firms do Category Design? Simple answer, Yes. I would even say that the most legendary services companies are almost always created or led by a legendary Category Design. Long answer? Well, listen to this episode to find out. The Management Consulting Category Design There was a point in time where there was no such thing called Management Consulting. Remember, everything is the way that it is because somebody changed the way that it was. So, McKinsey and Company is the firm that created and designed the Management Consulting category. The interesting thing is the guy that built McKinsey into what it is today is a guy named Marvin Bower. McKinsey started out as a group of bean counters and accountants doing accounting stuff, and nothing like what McKinsey is today. The Aha moment that Bower had is that he noticed that while clients were paying for accounting services with accountants, and legal services with lawyers, what they often wanted and valued more from their accountant was actually business advice from a trusted source. With that idea, Marvin became the category designer of a new services category called Management Consulting. Marvin Bower as a Language Master Marvin is an incredible kind of master at Languaging. He intuitively understood that in order to create a new category of Services Firm, he had to language it differently. That is to say, you can't talk about a new thing with old language. Under his leadership, projects were not called jobs, they were called engagements. It's a word that is much more relational than it is transactional. Internal groups within McKinsey with specific industry or functional expertise were not called groups, they were called practices. Bower borrowed a term from doctors to demonstrate a level of professionalism to elevate these “groups”, or now practices within McKinsey. Finally, he made sure that nobody ever referred to McKinsey as a business: McKinsey was a firm. He highlighted the core values that held the company together. Today, there are very few firms who are rigorously committed, some might say consciously committed to the original language that Marvin Bower put into place. All of these distinctions, all of these differences, help McKinsey thrive. It also help to position McKinsey in a new category: not a law firm, not an accounting firm, but this new thing called a Management Consulting Firm. To hear more on how Service Firms do Category Design, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast! You may also subscribe to his newsletter, The Difference, for some amazing content.
Guest Biography, Steve Chiang https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevewchiang/ Steve Chiang is Vice President and Chief IP Counsel at RPX Corporation, where he manages RPX's validity challenges. Prior to joining RPX, he worked at various law firms including Oliff & Berridge, the Mueller Law Office, and Dergosits & Noah, on patent prosecution, counseling, and litigation matters. Prior to entering law school, Steve worked as a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard and Mercury Interactive. Mr. Chiang received his JD from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and a BA in Applied Mathematics from the University of California Berkeley. Episode Highlights RPX's evolution from defensive patent aggregator to data-intensive partner for its member companies The state of non-practicing entity litigation Best practices for patent licensing based on RPX's unique and considerable experience in license negotiations The future of patent technologies such as AI-assisted patent valuation, block-chain powered innovation markets, and more Want to spark an impactful discussion around innovation within your organization? Download your copy of our FREE e-book, The connected innovation intelligence blueprint. In this report, we explore what connected innovation intelligence is and how the world's disruptors are using it to grow, compete and win in a hyper-competitive world. Get your FREE copy at patsnap.com/blueprint This episode was fully transcribed and can be found at patsnap.com
In this episode, Christopher Lochhead stops by to talk "Category Design" and how Podcasters and Entrepreneurs can become different. Christopher is a #1 Apple Business Podcaster, #1 Amazon Marketing author, and a “Godfather of Category Design”. Lochhead has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups, is a venture capital limited partner and a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO (Vantive, Scient, Mercury Interactive), and entrepreneur. Learn more about Christopher Lochhead at https://lochhead.com/ Buy the book that will radically change your life: Play Bigger
In our sixth episode, Gil Allouche talks category creation with three B2B pioneers who changed the game when it comes to customer success, inbound marketing, and journey orchestration. Panelists for this episode include Michel Feaster, CEO of Usermind and instrumental in creating the Journey Orchestration category, Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight and the primary creator behind the customer success management software category, and Mike Volpe, CEO of Lola.com and CMO of Hubspot from 2007 to 2015, who was responsible for bringing the term "inbound marketing" into the mainstream. You'll walk away from this episode with an understanding of what to do when the market finally starts converging to validate your product, why sincerity and vulnerability are some of your most powerful tools as an evangelist, and how Gainsight's early investment in CS leaders shaped how tech companies approach customer relationships today. BONUS! Mike Volpe recalls why the county fair might not have been the best location for a first date, and Michel recounts how she inadvertently made a unique impression on the CEO within her first three weeks working at Mercury Interactive.
In my 12th episode I speak to Roman Stanek CEO of GoodData. We talk about: 1) His entrepreneurial journey 2) How the data value chain is becoming increasingly important 3) Trends over the last 10 years with BI to Analytics 4) The pendulum from IT to the business and back to IT 5) Chief Data Officers and their challenges 6) CEOs trusting their data 7) Building trusted data portals 8) If companies need to invest in product managers for analytics 9) Cloud Data Warehouses 10) Organisational data silos 11) What the future holds for data and business 12) The end of the "black box" About Roman: Roman Stanek is a passionate entrepreneur and industry expert with over 20 years of experience. He founded GoodData on a mission to disrupt the business intelligence space and help companies monetize big data. As CEO, Roman has become a leading voice in the analytics industry, pushing the boundaries of how companies use data insights to move forward. Roman is actively involved in GoodData's client relationships, taking care to understand the challenges they face and how data can positively impact clients' future success. Prior to GoodData, Roman served as Founder and CEO of two startups, NetBeans and Systinet. NetBeans, a leading Java development environment, was successfully sold to Sun Microsystems in 1999. Systinet, a leading SOA governance platform, was similarly sold to Mercury Interactive (later acquired by HP Software), in 2006. Throughout his career, Roman's work has helped transform the high-tech landscape. As he looks to the future, Roman's focus is centered on the evolution of the data value chain and how it will shape the future of analytics. About Samir: Samir is a data strategy and analytics leader, CEO and Founder of datazuum. He has a history of helping data executives and leaders craft and execute their data strategies. His passion for data strategy led him to launch the Data Accelerator Workshop, and host the Data Strategy Show. After a career in both private and public sectors Samir launched the datazuum brand in 2012, with a view to working with executives to deliver data strategy at a time when data was not seen as a business asset. Today datazuum delivers projects across both private and public sectors including: Charities, Financial Services (Banking & Insurance), Government, Housing & Construction, Law Enforcement, Logistics, Media & Publishing, Outsourcing, Postal, Retail, Telecoms, Transport and Utilities. Samir has 20 years of international experience across Europe, North America, and Africa. Is a regular speaker at international conferences, coach / mentor, a charity fundraiser, and youth champion for Working Knowledge - supporting young people to achieve their personal and career goals in life. Samir lives in London with his wife and daughter. Contact details for Samir LinkedIn: Samir Sharma Email: samir@datazuum.com website: www.datazuum.com
The Project EGG Show: Entrepreneurs Gathering for Growth | Conversations That Change The World
Christopher Lochhead is a leader in the category of “dialogue podcasts”. He's a #1 Bestselling Amazon Author, Top 50 Apple Podcaster, startup advisor, and venture capital limited partner. He has advised over 50 Silicon Valley tech startups and is former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and entrepreneur. He's been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. Lochhead is a host of podcast, “Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different” and co-author of #1 best seller “Niche Down: How to become legendary by being different” and Harper Collins' bestseller, “Play Bigger: How pirates, dreamers and innovators create and dominate markets”. He served as chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion, co-founded marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD, was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at Vantive, a CRM software firm. He's a dyslexic paperboy from Montreal with Scottish roots who got thrown out of school at 18 and started his first company. In over thirty years in business he has designed and dominated market categories, IPO'd, bought and sold over 30 companies, made a lot of friends, a handful of enemies, drank a lot of whiskey, traveled over 6 million air miles, experienced the bliss of winning, the pain of failure and learned how to laugh about the whole thing. He loves his family and friends, having amazing conversations and thinks The Ramones are legendary, Tom Waits is a genius, “The Big Lebowski” is a philosophy, George Carlin was right, and loves riding mountains and waves. Watch the full episode here: https://projectegg.co/christopher-lochhead About The Project EGG Show: The Project EGG Show is a video talk show that introduces you to entrepreneurs from around the world. It is broadcast from studios in Metairie, Louisiana to online platforms including YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and Stitcher, and hosted by Ben Gothard. Our goal is to give you a fresh, unscripted and unedited look into the lives of real entrepreneurs from around the globe. From billionaires to New York Times best selling authors to Emmy Award winners to Forbes 30 Under 30 recipients to TEDx speakers – we present their real stories – uncensored and uncut. Subscribe To The Show: https://projectegg.co/podcast/ Get Access To: 1. Resources: https://projectegg.co/resources/ 2. Financing Solutions: https://projectegg.co/epoch/ 3. Payment Solutions: https://projectegg.co/sempr/ 4. Services: https://projectegg.co/resources#services 5. Courses: https://projectegg.co/resources#courses 6. Software: https://projectegg.co/resources#software 7. Book: https://projectegg.co/resources#books --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/projectegg/support