Podcasts about Total addressable market

Stage 2 Capital General Partner Liz Christo joins the show to discuss the disconnect between venture expectations and reality in the software market. The conversation covers the hidden costs of the new build versus buy debate, the structural changes happening within modern sales organizations, and whether traditional B2B SaaS go-to-market strategies and moats still matter when AI coding tools make software replication cheaper than ever. Key Takeaways: -The shift toward building internal AI tools instead of buying SaaS products overlooks long-term technical debt, as Liz Christo points out that "there's like a huge amount of cost buried behind the scenes that we're not really talking about today because it's still like sexy and fun." -Founders are artificially inflating their Total Addressable Market to meet new venture capital baseline expectations, with Liz Christo noting that "pitch decks read like really ridiculous right now where everybody wants to tell the story of like a $10 billion outcome because that's the new milestone that got set." -Revenue Operations is becoming the most direct path to the Chief Revenue Officer seat in AI-first organizations, which Sam Jacobs explains is "because as we use fewer humans and more agents, the sort of the half technical, the semi-technical capabilities of most RevOps people will translate into orchestrating armies of agents." -Delegating analysis and writing to AI risks destroying strategic judgment across go-to-market teams, a trend Liz Christo summarizes by stating, "I think we are producing an incredible amount of content that's not getting consumed... I just think we're like losing the ability to think and we're not teaching junior employees how to do it." Connect with the Hosts & Guests: Host: Sam Jacobs - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samfjacobs/  Host: AJ Bruno - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajbruno3/  Host: Asad Zaman - https://www.linkedin.com/in/azaman1/  Guest: Liz Christo - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizchristo/   Topline is more than a YouTube Channel: Subscribe to Topline Newsletter: https://toplinemedia.substack.com/ Tune into Topline Podcast, the #1 podcast for founders, operators, and investors in B2B tech: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-podcast Join the free Topline Slack channel to connect with 600+ revenue leaders to keep the conversation going beyond the podcast: https://www.joinpavilion.com/topline-slack   Chapters:  00:00 Intro and Cold Open 02:41 The New Build vs Buy Debate 06:10 Engineers in Every Department 10:48 Pitch Decks and 10B Dollar TAMs 17:53 Venture Capital Funding Quiz 23:43 AI Memos and Critical Thinking 42:41 Software Moats and Switching Costs 47:46 Bulls vs Bears Segment 48:23 RevOps as a Path to CRO 51:25 The Future of SDR Managers 55:14 Is Clay Actually Undervalued 59:12 Odds of Hitting 50M ARR  

Most B2B companies are still trying to grow revenue using a model that no longer fits how senior buyers behave. They count pipeline stages, measure campaign activity, and add more Martech, while the real problem sits somewhere else entirely: visibility, repeated exposure, trust, and buyer readiness.In this episode, Nigel Maine explains why modern B2B growth is structurally misaligned. He challenges the assumptions behind much of today's GTM thinking and makes the case that CEOs and revenue leaders need to stop relying on fragmented tactics and start thinking more like broadcasters, operators, and system designers.This episode covers: why many B2B growth models are built on the wrong assumptions  why buyer anonymity matters more than most GTM teams admit  why repeated visibility across a total addressable market matters more than internal activity metrics  why generic SEO and keyword-led content are losing ground to useful expertise  why sales has always been a numbers game, but B2B has been measuring the wrong numbers  how a more structured operating model can support visibility, engagement, and buyer readiness If your business is questioning whether the standard B2B growth model is still fit for purpose, this episode will give you a clearer view of what may need to change.Watch the full video version on our website - hereIf this episode resonates, start with the three papers below. They explain the strategic thinking behind the salesXchange approach and are the best first step for any CEO or GTM leader reviewing how their business develops pipeline, trust and revenue.➡︎ Revenue ResetWhy many modern GTM engines are structurally misaligned.➡︎ GTM LandscapeA map of how modern B2B revenue systems are evolving.➡︎ GTM Architecture AuditA practical framework to assess whether your current revenue engine is structurally aligned.For organisations considering change, if your business is reviewing how modern B2B buying really works, the salesXchange Academy is the strategic starting point.The Academy is the training and adoption layer for the salesXchange Operating System. It is designed to help CEOs and GTM teams replace outdated assumptions, align around a modern operating model, and prepare for wider change.The programme includes:• 20 modules• 170 bite-sized lessons• 30+ hours of training• playbooks, templates and GTM frameworks• quizzes and practical exercises• CPD certificationExplore the Academy - here.If you want to discuss your current GTM architecture, revenue model or readiness for change, you can request a private strategy discussion he

Many B2B companies have a Total Addressable Market of thousands of organisations, yet their entire pipeline strategy relies on a small number of SDRs making cold calls.But when you actually run the numbers, the mathematics collapses.In this episode Nigel Maine explains:• Why outbound prospecting saturates quickly• The hidden maths behind BDR productivity• Why Martech often made the problem worse• How broadcast visibility changes the economics of pipeline generationWe also look at why companies like OpenAI, Salesforce and HubSpot are investing in media platforms, and what that means for the future of B2B growth.==============================If this episode resonates, start with the three papers below. They explain the strategic thinking behind the salesXchange approach and are the best first step for any CEO or GTM leader reviewing how their business develops pipeline, trust and revenue.➡︎ Revenue ResetWhy many modern GTM engines are structurally misaligned.➡︎ GTM LandscapeA map of how modern B2B revenue systems are evolving.➡︎ GTM Architecture AuditA practical framework to assess whether your current revenue engine is structurally aligned.For organisations considering change, if your business is reviewing how modern B2B buying really works, the salesXchange Academy is the strategic starting point.The Academy is the training and adoption layer for the salesXchange Operating System. It is designed to help CEOs and GTM teams replace outdated assumptions, align around a modern operating model, and prepare for wider change.The programme includes:• 20 modules• 170 bite-sized lessons• 30+ hours of training• playbooks, templates and GTM frameworks• quizzes and practical exercises• CPD certificationExplore the Academy - here.If you want to discuss your current GTM architecture, revenue model or readiness for change, you can request a private strategy discussion here:

Shop ALPHAGVRD: https://alphagvrd.com?aff=34The Rise of ALPHAGVRD: From $0 to 100K Customers with Jett He**In this episode of the Axel Axe Show, we sit down with Jett He, the visionary founder of ALPHAGVRD, the world's leading brand for premium camera skins and protection gear.Jett reveals the "unfiltered" truth behind building a multi-seven-figure e-commerce empire. From flying to Taiwan to secure a business partnership to the extreme psychological tactics he used to stay motivated—including a "public humiliation" bet that fueled his success—this conversation is a masterclass in entrepreneurship, brand building, and the future of creative gear.We dive deep into:The Power of Shame:Why Jett bet his reputation on a Facebook Live slap to ensure his business didn't fail.Attention vs. Content:How to stand out in a world saturated by AI "slop" and why authenticity still wins.Manufacturing in America:Why ALPHAGVRD is moving toward in-house 3D printing and CNC machining in response to global tariffs.The "TAM" Strategy:How Jett turned "stickers for cameras" into a massive niche success by focusing on the Total Addressable Market.Materialism & Success:Jett's honest take on Rolexes, Porsches, and finding gratitude beyond the "temporary high" of luxury goods.Whether you're a creative looking to launch your first product or an entrepreneur trying to scale in 2026, Jett's insights on hiring talent, navigating "imposter syndrome," and following market trends are essential viewing.Connect with Jett & ALPHAGVRD:Website: alphagvrd.comInstagram: @alphagvrdEpisode Chapters0:00 The Reality of Starting at Zero0:50 Exclusive Merch Reveal & In-House Production2:05 Jett's Business Philosophy: Detail & Generosity3:23 How Axel and Jett First Met4:02 The Origin of ALPHAGVRD: Personal Customization5:09 Partnering in Taiwan: From Lifeguard to ALPHAGVRD6:48 The Battle for Attention on Instagram8:25 The Formula for Viral Camera Content8:57 The "Public Humiliation" Bet: Using Shame as a Driver10:48 The Problem with "Get Rich Quick" Schemes in America12:26 Overcoming Imposter Syndrome with Gratitude13:30 Dressing 100,000+ Cameras: The Scaling Journey14:49 Moving Offices 4 Times in 4 Years15:13 The Secret to Fast-Growing E-Commerce: Hiring Talent16:40 Fostering Creativity in the Workplace18:23 The Addiction to Gear vs. Business Revenue20:04 AI vs. Authentic Camera Gear: What's the Future?21:35 Advice for Creators in the Age of AI25:52 Materialism, Money, and Lessons for 21-Year-Olds27:44 The Power of Your Close Circle & Networking28:28 How to Say "No" to the Wrong Projects31:54 The 80/20 Rule: When Products Fail to Gain Interest32:53 Calculating TAM: Turning "Stickers" into Millions35:05 The New Frontier: 3D Printing & CNC Manufacturing36:13 Why Manufacturing in America is the Future37:43 Starting an E-Commerce Brand in 2026: The Brutal Truth40:12 Building a Brand vs. Building a Product41:55 Is There a Formula for Virality?42:21 Fire Session: Canon vs. Sony, Porsche vs. Tesla45:54 Why Men are Obsessed with High-End Cars48:26 Mechanical Excellence: Watches, Cars, and AI51:00 Growing Up Poor: The Drive to Become a Millionaire51:53 Investing in Assets that Don't Depreciate52:50 The Value of Time and Mutual InspirationFollow Axel Axe:https://www.instagram.com/axelaxeofficialhttps://twitter.com/AxelAxeOfficialhttps://www.facebook.com/heyaxelarzola/https://www.tiktok.com/@axelaxeofficialhttps://www.imdb.com/name/nm5399415/#ALPHAGVRD #Entrepreneurship #CameraGear #FounderStory #ECommerce #AxelAxeShow #Photography #BusinessGrowth #ai

Ever feel like you're working harder than ever but not actually getting closer to freedom? Most entrepreneurs chase revenue, not realizing they're building a business that traps them instead of freeing them. So, how do you create a business that gives you freedom, fortune, and fulfillment without burning out? The answer lies in building a business moat.In this solo episode of The Happy Hustle Podcast, I dive into a game-changing framework I learned from Cody Sanchez, a New York Times bestselling author, CEO of Contrarian Thinking, and serial entrepreneur who's on a mission to help one million people achieve financial freedom through business ownership. Cody is known for buying “boring” businesses—laundromats, car washes, service companies and turning them into cash-flowing machines. Her secret? The M.O.A.T. Strategy, a simple yet powerful system to protect your business, your time, and your peace.Here's the gist: M.O.A.T. stands for Margin, Operations, Advantage, and Total Addressable Market. It's all about creating a competitive barrier around your business so that competitors stay out, cash keeps flowing in, and you build a fortress of freedom. Let's unpack a few powerful takeaways that you can apply right now.Margin matters most.If your business isn't profitable, it's fragile. Cody's rule of thumb is to buy or build businesses that cash flow on day one. So, audit your margins—are you charging enough for your time and talent? Sometimes the simplest solution is raising your prices.Systematize or suffer.Your business should run without you. That's the true test of freedom. Start documenting tasks you've done more than three times, then delegate them. Freedom lives in frameworks, my friend—if it's repeatable, automate or outsource it.Identify your unfair advantage.Your edge might be your brand, your relationships, your humor, or your community. Double down on what makes you you. Competitors can copy your strategy, but they can't replicate your soul.Know your market size.If you're playing too small, you're capping your growth. Expand your total addressable market—how many people can your product or service actually help? Think bigger.Do a quarterly M.O.A.T. audit.Rate yourself 1–10 in each of the four areas: Margin, Operations, Advantage, and Market. Find your lowest score and make that your next focus. It's a simple way to plug holes before your business springs a leak.This episode is all about working happier and smarter, not harder. Whether you're running a $100K business or a $100M empire, the MOAT strategy helps you protect your profits, your peace, and your purpose.If you're ready to build your own fortress of freedom, tune in to the full episode and start happy hustlin' your way toward that life of balance, passion, and positive impact.Connect with Cary!https://www.instagram.com/caryjack/https://www.facebook.com/SirCaryJackhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cary-jack-kendzior/https://twitter.com/thehappyhustlehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFDNsD59tLxv2JfEuSsNMOQ/featured Get a free copy of his new book, The Happy Hustle, 10 Alignments to Avoid Burnout & Achieve Blissful Balance https://www.thehappyhustle.com/bookSign up for The Journey: 10 Days To Become a Happy Hustler Online Coursehttps://thehappyhustle.com/thejourney/Apply to the Montana Mastermind Epic Camping Adventurehttps://thehappyhustle.com/mastermind/“It's time to Happy Hustle, a blissfully balanced life you love, full of passion, purpose, and positive impact!”Episode Sponsors:If you're feeling stressed, not sleeping great, or your energy's been kinda meh lately—let me put you on to something that's been a total game-changer for me: Magnesium Breakthrough by BiOptimizers. This ain't your average magnesium—it's got all 7 essential forms that your body actually needs to chill out, sleep deeper, and feel more balanced. I take it every night and legit notice the difference the next day. No more waking up groggy or tossing and turning all nightIf you're ready to sleep like a baby, calm your nervous system, and optimize your recovery, go grab yours now at bioptimizers.com/happy and use code HAPPY10 for 10% OFF.99 Designs- Need a killer logo, stunning website, or next-level brand design?Stop DIY-ing and start delegating like a boss with 99designs by Vista! Neurable- If you're looking to level up your focus, productivity, and mental well-being all at once, do yourself a favor and check out Neurable. You get a special hookup—just use the code HAPPY at checkout and get $100 off.

In today's fast-moving VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) businesses can no longer afford to confuse motion with progress. In this high-impact episode, we sit down with Ron Brumbarger, American entrepreneur and founder of Struinova, an “innovation-as-a-service” firm helping organisations unlock new products, services, and processes that genuinely delight customers. Ron delivers a candid exploration of why companies stall, the dangers of systemic blind spots, and what it really takes to build a sustainable culture of innovation. With decades of experience and sharp, real-world insights, he challenges leaders to confront the uncomfortable truths holding them back, and offers tools to navigate the complexity with clarity, confidence, and creativity. Whether you're a founder, executive, or innovator inside a large organisation, this conversation is your blueprint for staying relevant in an increasingly unforgiving market. What You'll Learn: Confronting Organisational Blind Spots Why waiting for permission kills innovation, and how to lead with urgency of agency How inattentional blindness sabotages even high-performing teams Where middle-management friction stalls progress, and how to refocus on issues, not egos The myth of "guaranteed revenue" and why G-A-R-R is a dangerous illusion Building a Strategic Innovation Portfolio A practical definition of innovation: net new or enhanced value that delights customers How to assess the real value of your innovation portfolio, and why most leaders don't TAM vs. SOM: Why chasing Total Addressable Market is a distraction How to create your own "Purple Cow" in a Blue Ocean" and avoid the commodity trap Why innovation lives in the estuary between your team and your customers Leading Change with Core Disciplines Why humility is a superpower in the innovation game The role of trust, not just with clients, but within your team Practicing empathetic curiosity to unlock customer insights Plus: Marcus Cauchi's powerful insight “Think as your customer, not about them.”

The total addressable market. TAM.We sometimes think the bigger the better, right? Hey, it means I can go to potential investors with a more impressive number.But too large a total addressable market can hinder success. As this episode's guest says, “serving everyone serves no one.”To hear the story behind that lesson, and many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Itai Sadan, CEO & co-founder, Duda [https://www.duda.co/]. Duda has raised $100 million, including most recently $50 million in Series D growth funding. Sadan manages a team of 180 people at Duda.Lessons from the things he madeNo one needs to give you a mandate (even in a big company), just find your customer's problem and solve it for themCrank through itEvolve your product over time to land on the right ideaSpeed in decision making is very importantIf you are feeling the pressure, it means that you are not applying enough pressureSolve the right problems for the right customers…serving everyone serves no oneTurn your knowledge assets into a new revenue streamMarketingSherpa has teamed up with parent company MeclabsAI to produce a research study. We are granting 10 AI engineering vouchers worth $7,500 each to eligible companies. Apply for your $7,500 AI Engineering Voucher [https://meclabs.com/research/ai-engineering-voucher].Discussed in this episodeOpen-Source Start-up Marketing Strategy: Sometimes you need to poke the snake (podcast episode #147) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/open-source]Time To Value: 3 speed-to-value marketing case studies featuring A/B testing, value focusing, and niche ad targeting [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/time-to-value]Entrepreneurial Resilience: Many of the day-to-day annoyances that inspired him to sell, he actually missed after he sold (podcast episode #78) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/entrepreneurial]B2B SaaS Marketing: No progress after Series A without product marketing (podcast episode #148) [https://marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/B2B-SaaS]Get more episodesSubscribe to the MarketingSherpa email newsletter [https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters] to get more insights from your fellow marketers. Sign up for free if you'd like to get more episodes like this one.For more insights, check out...This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages [https://meclabs.com/course/] free digital marketing course.Apply to be a guestIf you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application

Here is the republish of my chat with Rob Walling, author of the SaaS Playbook. We delved into product pricing, focusing on value alignment rather than greed, and discussed strategic price increases to reduce churn and bolster marketing. Rob also shared when to start paid ads and how to create impactful content. He offered advice on assembling a team within budgetary limits and revealed that smart business structuring can lead to profit with less work. Our conversation ended on the importance of joy in entrepreneurship, emphasizing freedom, purpose, and relationships.These shownotes were created with PodsqueezeLinks and MentionsSAS Playbook: 01:31:58Startups for the Rest of Us Podcast: 01:31:58MicroConf YouTube Channel: 01:31:58The Zen Founder Guide to Founder Retreats: 01:30:39Twitter Thread for Book Recommendations: 01:32:37TimetsampsRob Walling's Book (00:01:16)Writing the Book (00:02:13)Pricing Strategies (00:06:36)OpenAI's Pricing Strategy (00:11:54)Competitive Pricing Strategy (00:13:50)Greed and Motivation (00:16:40)Reasons for Raising Prices (00:17:50)Impact of Pricing on Marketing (00:19:24)Paid Advertising Considerations (00:20:59)Using Ads for SEO Strategy (00:24:57)Marketing Approaches for SaaS (00:29:50)Creating Compelling Content for Reddit (00:32:38)Navigating Reddit and Other Forums (00:34:17)Understanding Marketing and Content Strategies (00:35:20)Challenges of Early-Stage Product Development (00:38:03)Defining Product-Market Fit (00:44:48)Size of the Market (00:48:24)Total Reachable Market (00:49:01)Reaching 100% of the Paying Market (00:50:42)Total Addressable Market (00:51:00)Escape Velocity (00:54:20)Business Plateau (00:55:39)Hiring and Team Growth (00:57:24)Managing People (01:03:09)Owner and Founder Level Thinkers (01:04:35)Challenges of Hiring and Paying Employees (01:05:33)Remote Work and Cost-Effective Hiring (01:07:18)Working On vs. In the Business (01:10:33)Achieving Work-Life Balance and Financial Success (01:14:51)Earning Wealth and the Challenges of Autopilot Income (01:19:44)Investing and Selling Assets (01:20:21)Tax Treatment and Selling SaaS Companies (01:21:14)Wealth and Freedom (01:22:09)Finding Happiness as an Entrepreneur (01:23:04)Retreats and Self-Reflection (01:30:10)Recommendations and Conclusion (01:31:58)

Join Dan Englander and Jared Gibson, co-founder of Outworks, as they dive into the future of B2B marketing and explain why personal branding is the most powerful growth engine for CEOs and founders.Discover why cold outreach is no longer enough, how authentic LinkedIn content can drive long-term trust and authority, and how busy executives can make content creation part of their routine. Jared also shares hands-on tactics for leveraging video and interviews, working smarter with teams, and setting realistic goals for lead generation through personal brands.Timestamps00:00 – Intro & welcoming Jared 01:51 – Jared's background & launching Outworks 06:43 – Why traditional outbound no longer works 12:46 – How content & algorithms have changed on LinkedIn 18:51 – The importance of knowing your Total Addressable Market 23:35 – Making content creation a lifestyle 29:49 – What ROI looks like on LinkedIn 33:50 – Getting clients comfortable on video 35:21 – Using client interviews for content 37:21 – Jared's partner program and new service launchTagsLinks & Resources:Visit: https://salesschema.com

EigenLayer is back with a major announcement: EigenCloud. Sreeram Kannan and JT Rose unveil the first crypto-native cloud platform—a verifiable, programmable environment for building applications beyond the limits of traditional blockchains. We explore how EigenCloud packages modules like EigenDA, EigenVerify, and EigenCompute into a developer-friendly product that brings cloud-scale computation and crypto-grade trust guarantees together. From meme coins and AI agents to fully sovereign applications, we dig into what makes this launch a pivotal step for crypto infrastructure and why it might just reignite Ethereum's original ambitions. ------

The global market for obesity drugs is expanding. Our U.S. Pharma and Biotech Analyst Terrence Flynn discusses what's driving the next stage of global growth for GLP-1 medicines.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Terrence Flynn: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Terrence Flynn, Morgan Stanley's U.S. Pharma and Biotech Analyst. The market for obesity medicines is at an inflection point, and today I'll focus on what's driving the next stage of global growth.It's Thursday, June 5th at 2pm in New York.GLP-1 medicines have been viewed by many stakeholders as one of the most transformative medications in the market today. They've exploded in popularity over the last few years and become game changers for many people who take them. These drugs have large cap biopharma companies racing to innovate. They've had ripple effects on food, fitness, and fashion. They truly are a major market force. And now we're on the cusp of a significant broadening of use of these medicines.Currently the U.S. is the largest consumer in the world of GLP-1s. But new versions of these medicines suggest that this market will extend beyond the U.S. to significantly larger numbers of patients globally. On our estimate, the Total Addressable Market or TAM for obesity medications should reach $150 billion globally by 2035, with approximately [$]80 billion from the U.S. and [$]70 billion from international markets.Now this marks a meaningful increase from our 2024 forecast of [$]105 billion and reflects a greater appreciation of opportunities outside of the U.S. We think obesity drug adoption will likely accelerate as patients and providers become more familiar with the new products and as manufacturers address hurdles in production, distribution, and access.Current adoption rates of GLP-1 treatments within the eligible obesity population are about 2 to 3 percent. This is in the U.S., and roughly 1 percent in the rest of the world. Now, when we look out further, we anticipate these figures to surge to 20 percent and 10 percent respectively, really driven by five things.First, after a period of shortages, supply constraints have improved, and the drug makers are investing aggressively to increase production. Second new data show that obesity drugs have broader clinical applications. They can be used to treat coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertension, kidney disease, or even sleep apnea. They could also potentially fight Alzheimer's disease, neuropsychiatric conditions, and even cancer.Third, we think coverage will expand as obesity drugs are approved to treat diseases beyond obesity. Public healthcare coverage through Medicare should also broaden based on these expected approvals. Fourth, some drug makers are successfully developing obesity drugs, in pill form instead of injectables. Pills are of course easier to administer and can reach global scale quickly. And finally, drug makers are also developing next gen medications with even higher efficacy, new mechanisms of action, and more convenient, less frequent dosing.All in all, we think that over the next decade, broader GLP-1 adoption will extend well beyond biopharma. We expect significant impacts on medical technology, healthcare services, and consumer sectors like food, beverages, and fashion, where changes in patient diets could reshape market dynamics.Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review wherever you listen. And share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

In this episode, we sit down with Matthias Knaur—operator, investor, and seasoned voice in the European search fund and ETA community—to explore the real levers behind scaling small companies. From a billion-dollar transformation at listed company Solera, to hands-on leadership in niche B2B services.  Matthias Knaur—who's led his own acquisitions to over £100M in revenue and invested across Europe's search fund landscape—shares his deep experience on identifying, expanding, and leveraging total addressable markets. We dive into lessons from his billion-dollar corporate roles, personal acquisitions, and current investments, discussing adjacent TAMs, recurring revenue models, roll-ups, and why execution matters more than spreadsheets. Whether you're a searcher plotting your first acquisition or an investor scanning for red flags, this conversation is packed with candid insights and war stories on what it really takes to build enduring businesses.

Your ideal customer profile (ICP) is the north star for your entire company: it determines who you're building for and selling to. Though most growth-stage founders think they know who their ICP is, very few know how to update and refine it to keep the company focused as they grow—which can lead to a lot of headaches down the road.In this debut episode of a16z Growth's new company scaling podcast, the a16z Guide to Growth, a16z's Joe Morrissey (General Partner, a16z Growth), Michael King (Partner, Go-to-Market Network), and Mark Regan (Partner, a16z Growth) break down why ICP misalignment is often the hidden cause of common problems across the entire company, from pipeline gaps and bloated marketing spend to stalled product roadmaps—and dive deep on how to fix it.They offer tactical advice for defining (and refining!) your ICP as you scale, explain why getting it right requires company-wide alignment, and how to navigate the “precision paradox” when implementing it. Plus, why ICPs matter even more in the AI era, and how a well-executed ICP shows up across the business when it's working. Resources: Read more on sales and go-to-market on our Growth Content CompendiumFind Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morrisseyjoe/Find Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mregan178/Find Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-king-62258/Find Emma on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmajanaskie/ Stay Updated: Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16zFind a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zSubscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithioPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Kevin Cotch, Sr. SEO Strategy Director at Terakeet, delves into taking an audience-first approach to SEO. In the realm of SEO strategy, the total addressable market (TAM) plays a critical role. By incorporating TAM into SEO strategy, businesses can understand the breadth of opportunities available and pinpoint where the most value lies, laying a solid foundation for informed decision-making and effective execution. Today, Kevin discusses how the total addressable market creates business value.Connect With: Kevin Cotch: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Topline is excited to introduce our newest segment – Topline Spotlight. In this series, our hosts sit down with top B2B tech leaders to explore the biggest challenges they've faced and how they conquered them.   In this episode of Topline Spotlight, our hosts sit down with Tom McCarty, CEO of Org Chart, to discuss a pivotal challenge he faced: narrowing the total addressable market (TAM) to drive better growth. As a first-time CEO of a private equity-backed company, Tom shares his strategic approach to refining market focus, which led to more effective growth strategies. He also provides insights for aspiring CEOs, highlighting the value of selecting the right partners and viewing challenges as avenues for personal and professional development.   Want more from Topline?   Subscribe to Topline Newsletter written and edited by Asad Zaman.   Join the free public Topline Slack channel to engage with hosts, guests, and other listeners.   Listen to The Revenue Leadership Podcast with Kyle Norton every Wednesday.  

Kevin Tighe is the Founder & CEO of San Diego based Beachly Brands (acquired) which is the leading subscription retailer of beach apparel and accessories. Under Kevin's leadership, Beachly has been twice selected to the INC 500 – INC Magazine's annual list of the fastest growing private companies in America. Kevin recently joined Retention Brands where he serves as COO of the portfolio which includes Birchbox, Beachly and Alltrue. Kevin is a passionate entrepreneur, startup mentor and non-profit volunteer. Born in Washington DC, Kevin migrated to the West Coast to attend the University of Southern California. While at USC, he started his first business and has been a serial entrepreneur ever since. He has over 20 years of experience in digital marketing, eCommerce, subscription commerce, and entrepreneurship. Kevin is among the select few who qualify as both a visionary and integrator. This quality gives him the unique ability to dream big and then distill his vision into an actionable and achievable plan.Kevin serves on the Board of Directors of Sustainable Surf, a non-profit focused on promoting and restoring ocean ecosystems. He also serves on the Board of Directors of San Diego Sports Innovators. During his free time, you will likely find Kevin at the beach with his family or in the ocean; surfing, paddle boarding or racing outrigger canoes.In This Conversation We Discuss:[00:42] Intro[01:35] Building on past ventures and learning[02:16] Finding business inspiration back from the ocean[03:44] Testing concepts with real-world validation[04:52] Assessing margins for sustainable ventures[06:00] The allure of recurring revenue in business[08:31] Leveraging Facebook ads to grow audience[10:28] Pivoting to women's market after strong demand[11:57] Referrals from women's online engagement[13:10] Episode sponsors: StoreTester and Intelligems[16:23] testing market feedback before acquisition[18:09] Stepping into a new role post-acquisition[19:47] Handling distressed acquisitions[21:35] Building repeatable processes across brands[22:45] Focusing on key growth channels for maximum impact[24:25] Embracing the itch to constantly build and innovate[26:07] Learning and growing in new market opportunities[27:04]  BUBS Naturals for supplements and wellnessResources:Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on YoutubeBeach lifestyle subscription boxes beachly.com/A customizable box of premium beauty products birchbox.com/Curated collection of ethical and eco-friendly products alltrue.com/A capital partner that understands your business retentionbrands.com/Supplements for overall wellness bubsnaturals.com/Follow Kevin Tighe linkedin.com/in/kevinptighe/Book a demo today at intelligems.io/Done-for-you conversion rate optimization service storetester.com/If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

In this episode, Mippo, Michael, and Vance discuss sentiment at Token2049 and Solana Breakpoint, the total addressable market of memecoins, and bullish shifts in the market. They also discuss what impact the US election will have on the crypto markets, and the industry as a whole. Finally, they closed the episode by diving into the impact AI is having on the B2B SaaS business model. Thanks for tuning in! -- L2s and L3s are history. Supra Containers give you dedicated, customizable AppSpace on Supra's Layer-1 to rescue you from the costs, complexities, and fragmentation of L2s and L3s.  Containers help you build with better customization and control than appchains at a fraction of the cost. Use your own token as the gas token, create local fee markets with custom gas amounts or just go gasless, and scale on demand whenever you need to. Supra Containers are secured by Supra's L1 nodes and get access to Supra's 500k TPS throughput, sub-second consensus latency, and all their built-in services like oracle price feeds and onchain randomness without any overhead. Supra is also MultiVM compatible so you can easily deploy your EVM, Move, and SVM smart contracts here. Get all the freedom, control, and tools you need to build super dApps and bring the world onchain. To learn more, visit www.supra.com/blockworks -- Join us at Permissionless III. Use code BELL10 for a 10% discount: https://blockworks.co/event/permissionless-iii -- Follow Mike: https://twitter.com/MikeIppolito_ Follow Michael: https://twitter.com/im_manderson Follow Vance: https://twitter.com/pythianism Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3R1D1D9 Subscribe on Apple: https://apple.co/3pQTfmD Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3cpKZXH Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ -- Timestamps: (0:00) Introduction (3:06) Sentiment at Token2049 & Solana Breakpoint (12:56) Exchanges Launching Their Own L2s (18:26) The Total Addressable Market of Memecoins (23:40) Supra Ad (24:37) Shifts in Market Sentiment (38:08) The Election's Impact on Markets (57:46) AI's Effect on the B2B SaaS Business Model (1:05:39) Eric Adams Indicted -- Disclaimer: Nothing said on Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mike, Jason, Michael, Vance and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.tt and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

In this episode, CJ interviews Chuck Fisher, CFO of Turo, the world's largest peer-to-peer car rental marketplace, doing more than $800 million in revenue per year. Chuck breaks down the company's business model, what separates it from traditional car rental companies, and how it differs from marketplaces like Airbnb and Uber. He explains how Turo helps people build micro businesses and sheds light on the company's total addressable market and why it shouldn't be compared to its offline analog. He also talks about the company's take rate, what substantiates it, and the benefits you may reap from keeping the take rate as low as possible, including the story about Turo's own success in 2021. Chuck describes Turo's Risk Score system, the data used in this, and how they use this information to market back to the best prospective customer. He also shares his firsthand account of the fall of Lehman Brothers and what he took away from it.If you're looking for an ERP head to NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics and get a customized KPI checklist.—SPONSORS:Maxio is the only billing and financial operations platform that was purpose built for B2B SaaS. They're helping SaaS finance teams automate billing and revenue recognition, manage collections and payments, and put together investor grade reporting packages.

Check out this episode where Eric Siu revisits his conversation with Mark Moss, packed with insights on YouTube retention, lead gen, business growth, and Mark's forecasted inflationary crash.  Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/Eqo-V_vMuKA  TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: (00:00) The Future of Marketing: Earning and Buying Attention (03:29) The Rise of Personal Brands and Personal Interactions (06:20) The Power of Long-Form Content for Building Trust (26:02) The Value of High-Quality Views and Engagement (28:13) Short-Form vs. Long-Form Content: Depth and Context (57:29) The Consequences of Excessive Money Printing and Inflation (57:59) The Role of the Federal Reserve and Government Spending (58:56) Bond Auctions and the Downgrading of US Credit (59:49) Preparing for an Inflationary Crash (01:02:11) Learning Strategies for Continuous Growth (01:03:35) Investing in Scarce Assets to Protect Against Inflation (01:19:23) Understanding the Total Addressable Market for Bitcoin Don't forget to help us grow by subscribing and liking on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3owDdLk7HL1dyQnkoBuRew  — What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on X or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here Subscribe to Leveling Up on iTunes Get the non-iTunes RSS Feed   Connect with Eric Siu:    Growth Everywhere Single Grain Leveling Up Eric Siu on X Eric Siu on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is my chat with Rob Walling, author of the SaaS Playbook. We delved into product pricing, focusing on value alignment rather than greed, and discussed strategic price increases to reduce churn and bolster marketing. Rob also shared when to start paid ads and how to create impactful content. He offered advice on assembling a team within budgetary limits and revealed that smart business structuring can lead to profit with less work. Our conversation ended on the importance of joy in entrepreneurship, emphasizing freedom, purpose, and relationships.These shownotes were created with PodsqueezeLinks and MentionsSAS Playbook: 01:31:58Startups for the Rest of Us Podcast: 01:31:58MicroConf YouTube Channel: 01:31:58The Zen Founder Guide to Founder Retreats: 01:30:39Twitter Thread for Book Recommendations: 01:32:37TimetsampsRob Walling's Book (00:01:16)Writing the Book (00:02:13)Pricing Strategies (00:06:36)OpenAI's Pricing Strategy (00:11:54)Competitive Pricing Strategy (00:13:50)Greed and Motivation (00:16:40)Reasons for Raising Prices (00:17:50)Impact of Pricing on Marketing (00:19:24)Paid Advertising Considerations (00:20:59)Using Ads for SEO Strategy (00:24:57)Marketing Approaches for SaaS (00:29:50)Creating Compelling Content for Reddit (00:32:38)Navigating Reddit and Other Forums (00:34:17)Understanding Marketing and Content Strategies (00:35:20)Challenges of Early-Stage Product Development (00:38:03)Defining Product-Market Fit (00:44:48)Size of the Market (00:48:24)Total Reachable Market (00:49:01)Reaching 100% of the Paying Market (00:50:42)Total Addressable Market (00:51:00)Escape Velocity (00:54:20)Business Plateau (00:55:39)Hiring and Team Growth (00:57:24)Managing People (01:03:09)Owner and Founder Level Thinkers (01:04:35)Challenges of Hiring and Paying Employees (01:05:33)Remote Work and Cost-Effective Hiring (01:07:18)Working On vs. In the Business (01:10:33)Achieving Work-Life Balance and Financial Success (01:14:51)Earning Wealth and the Challenges of Autopilot Income (01:19:44)Investing and Selling Assets (01:20:21)Tax Treatment and Selling SaaS Companies (01:21:14)Wealth and Freedom (01:22:09)Finding Happiness as an Entrepreneur (01:23:04)Retreats and Self-Reflection (01:30:10)Recommendations and Conclusion (01:31:58)

Dalton Caldwell is Managing Director and Group Partner at Y Combinator. Prior to YC, he was the co-founder and CEO of imeem (acquired by MySpace in 2009) and the co-founder and CEO of App.net. During his time at YC, he's advised more than 35 YC unicorns, including DoorDash, Amplitude, Webflow, and Retool, and has worked across 21 different YC batches. He's also racked up more than 6,500 office hours with founders. In our conversation, we discuss:• Why founders need to adopt the mindset “Just don't die”• The most common reason startups fail• When to pivot, and characteristics of a good pivot• The concept of “tar pit ideas” and examples of bad startup ideas• Why investors say no to startups• The importance of market size in investment decisions• The pitfalls of founders over-delegating• Effective ways to talk to customers• 20 ideas Dalton is looking to fund—Brought to you by:• Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security• Coda—The all-in-one collaborative workspace—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-from-1000-yc-startups—Where to find Dalton Caldwell:• X: https://twitter.com/daltonc• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daltoncaldwell/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Dalton's background(04:41) The value of simple advice(07:04) Dalton's advice: “Just don't die”(08:39) Knowing when to stop(11:45) Deciding to pivot(14:26) Characteristics of a good pivot(17:53) Knowing when to pivot(19:03) Zip's journey and finding a market(21:22) Why Dalton says to “Move towards the mountains and the desert”(23:45) Tar pit ideas(26:49) Understanding why investors say no(29:14) The importance of market size(32:16) Avoiding over-delegation and hiring senior people too early(36:43) Why startups fail(40:30) Effectively talking to customers(45:17) Examples of startups hustling to talk to customers(48:01) Patterns of successful startups(52:05) YC's Request for Startups(55:37) Early days of Silicon Valley(01:05:33) Contrarian corner: growth hacking for early startups(01:09:28) Failure corner(01:11:15) Closing thoughts(01:12:22) Lightning round—Referenced:• Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/• Tiger Woods's website: https://tigerwoods.com/• Co-Founder Mistakes That Kill Companies & How to Avoid Them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfjs_eEEzs• Daniel Alberson's LinkedIn post about Y Combinator: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alberson_i-left-my-dream-job-as-a-product-manager-activity-7089677882431533056-jJ9H• Companies in Y Combinator W17 Batch: https://www.ycdb.co/batch/w17• Brex: https://www.brex.com/• Retool: https://retool.com/• Segment: https://segment.com/• Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/• Whatnot: https://www.whatnot.com/• Andreessen Horowitz: https://a16z.com/• Airbnb's CEO says a $40 cereal box changed the course of the multibillion-dollar company: https://fortune.com/2023/04/19/airbnb-ceo-cereal-box-investors-changed-everything-billion-dollar-company/• Rujul Zaparde on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rujulz/• Zip: https://ziphq.com/• Lu Cheng on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lu-cheng-973b7830/• Avoid these tempting startup tar pit ideas: https://www.ycombinator.com/library/Ij-avoid-these-tempting-startup-tarpit-ideas• Airbnb acquires Localmind to create crowdsourced advice about neighborhoods: https://skift.com/2012/12/13/airbnb-acquires-localmind-to-create-crowdsourced-advice-about-neighborhoods/• Foursquare: https://foursquare.com/• Razorpay: https://razorpay.com/• Total Addressable Market: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/total-addressable-market/• Lenny Bogdonoff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rememberlenny/• Milk Video: https://milkvideo.com/• Lessons from working with 600+ YC startups | Gustaf Alströmer (Y Combinator, Airbnb): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-from-working-with-600-yc-startups-gustaf-alstromer-y-combinator-airbnb/• How the most successful B2B startups came up with their original idea: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-the-most-successful-b2b-startups• Collison installation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18400504• Stripe: https://stripe.com/• Patrick Collison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcollison/• John Collison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbcollison/• Tony Xu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xutony/• Grant LaFontaine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grantlafontaine/• Ryan Petersen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpetersen/• Lessons on building product sense, navigating AI, optimizing the first mile, and making it through the messy middle | Scott Belsky (Adobe, Behance): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-on-building-product-sense-navigating-ai-optimizing-the-first-mile-and-making-it-through-t/• YC's latest Request for Startups: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/ycs-latest-request-for-startups• ERPs: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs#new-enterprise-resource-planning-software• Commercial open source companies: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs#commercial-open-source-companies• New space companies: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs#new-space-companies• A way to end cancer: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs#a-way-to-end-cancer• Spatial computing: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs#spatial-computing• New defense technology: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs#new-defense-technology• Bringing manufacturing back to America: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs#bring-manufacturing-back-to-america• Better enterprise glue: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs#better-enterprise-glue• Small fine-tuned models, as an alternative to giant generic ones: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs#small-finetuned-models-as-an-alternative-to-giant-generic-ones• Reid Hoffman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/• Sam Altman on X: https://twitter.com/sama• Sean Parker on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parkersean/• Owen Van Natta on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/owen-van-natta-444a7/• iMeme: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/imeme-generator/id1560021364• Marc Andreessen on X: https://twitter.com/pmarca• Picplz 1, Instagram 0 as VC firm Andreessen Horowitz chooses photo app rival: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS2587232395/• Gustaf Alstromer—How to Get Users and Grow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9ikpoF2GH0• Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Without/dp/0143118757• Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook: https://www.amazon.com/Founding-Sales-Go-Market-Handbook-ebook/dp/B08PMK17Z1• Founder-led sales | Pete Kazanjy (Founding Sales, Atrium): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/founder-led-sales-pete-kazanjy-founding-sales-atrium/• The Sopranos on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-sopranos• The Wire on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-wire• Columbo on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Columbo-Season-1/dp/B008SA89HA• Oura ring: https://ouraring.com/• Apple watch: https://www.apple.com/watch/• SiPhox: https://siphoxhealth.com/• Dalton & Michael on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5Nd98Sc9I-kkc0ZWe8peRMC• How Future Billionaires Get Sh*t Done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ephzgxgOjR0• The Student's Guide to Becoming a Successful Startup Founder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5KCB2p6SB8—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Kevin Cotch, Sr. SEO Strategy Director at Terakeet, delves into taking an audience-first approach to SEO. In the realm of SEO strategy, the total addressable market (TAM) plays a critical role. By incorporating TAM into SEO strategy, businesses can understand the breadth of opportunities available and pinpoint where the most value lies, laying a solid foundation for informed decision-making and effective execution. Today, Kevin discusses how the total addressable market creates business value.Connect With: Kevin Cotch: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

heavy-duty⭐ My guest today is Tim Boeltken, Founder and Managing Director of INERATEC. INERATEC is an e-Fuel company based in Germany that recently raised $129M to transform 1 GW of renewable energy into 125 million gallons of sustainable e-Fuel by 2030. Tim brings a PhD in chemical engineering and nine years of dedication to building INERATEC. Hope you enjoy it! ---

Our guest today is Paul Ganev, Vice President of Strategy, Business Development & Analytics at Surfline.On the podcast we talk with Paul about the strategic pitfalls in modeling Total Addressable Market, how freemium should work, and why Surfline's current success was actually 38 years in the making.Top Takeaways:

Sebastian Duesterhoeft, partner at Lightspeed Ventures, joins CJ to talk about anything and everything start-up operators need to know about your Total Addressable Market (TAM). If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics  --- SPONSORS: NetSuite provides financial software for all your business needs. More than thirty-six thousand companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅ NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics and defer payments of a FULL NetSuite implementation for six months. Tropic is the next-generation Procurement Platform that's helping modern CFOs take control of their budgets and bottom line. By combining approval workflows, supplier management, and pricing benchmarks all in one place, Tropic makes savings opportunities easy to find and act on.

Your 2024 real estate success will ultimately depend on the strategies you implement, the actions you take, and the habits you maintain. And for those, it's always best to turn to a coach.   One of my favorite ways to close out the year is by having my brother, coach Patrick Ferry on the podcast to share his action steps for success. On this episode, Patrick and I are talking about creating mental toughness, listing attraction at scale, discovering your Total Addressable Market, and just about everything else required for your 2024 real estate success.   There's a long waitlist to get on Patrick's schedule (the guy is in hot demand) but consider this a free coaching session with both of us. Watch or listen now and lock in your 2024 real estate success.  

Ryan introduces a formula for business scaling in 2024: Strategy * Skill * Scale = Production...Create your business to grow your revenue, scale your organization, and make an impact with help from Wealthy Business! Apply here https://wealthyway.co/50d---Are you living The Wealthy Way? Take the quiz and get FREE access to the “Wealth Builder Academy” where I go over all the fundamentals of building wealth. https://www.wealthyway.com/Want to be coached by me on real estate investing? Join our Wealthy Investor program today at https://wealthyinvestor.com/podcastWould you like my team to help build your personal brand? Apply to join Pineda Media at https://pinedamedia.com/podcastLooking to grow in your faith and business? Join Wealthy Kingdom today https://wealthyway.co/dyyWant to partner with me to supercharge your business? Apply at https://www.pinedapartners.com/You can invest in my real estate deals! Go to https://pinedacapital.com ---Ryan emphasizes the art of subsidizing personal endeavors through strategic sponsorship, diverting the burden from personal finances. He advocates creativity in funding and believes not all expenses must be personally covered.Ryan introduces a formula for business scaling in 2024: Strategy * Skill * Scale = Production. He notes that many beginners struggle due to weak strategy, inconsistent skill development, and limited scaling.For solopreneurs, the formula might be 5(strategy) * 5(skill) * 1(scale) = 25(production). While commendable, scaling remains at 1. Expert solopreneurs may have 10(strategy) * 10(skill) * 1(scale) = 100(production), but the limitation of solo efforts persists.A business owner's equation, 1(skill) * 1(strategy) * 3(scale) = 3(production), introduces scale. The goal is mastery in all three aspects for optimal results.To enhance strategy, Ryan advises selecting a focused industry, understanding its potential market size (Total Addressable Market), and adapting strategies to evolving trends.For skill improvement, seeking a mentor is crucial to avoid mistakes and expedite the learning process. Daily dedication to learning, practicing, and executing is vital, with the end goal of becoming proficient enough to teach others.Scaling involves mentorship in building operations, utilizing systems, processes, technology, and human capital. Establishing relationships and creating awareness are keys to scaling effectively to a broader audience. Ryan underscores the importance of mastering all three components for business success.

This week, we are bringing you another special bonus episode. This week, we are sharing a podcast that our host, Paul Barnhurst, recommends. The Run the Numbers podcast is hosted by CJ Gustafson. The podcast is designed to talk about things he wishes he knew during the early days of his career that no amount of Googling would answer. This week's Show Notes: Sebastian Duesterhoeft, partner at Lightspeed Ventures, joins CJ to talk about anything and everything start-up operators need to know about your Total Addressable Market. Request from you, the audience: We are constantly working to improve Financial Modeler's Corner, and this week, I would like to ask for your help completing the survey about the podcast. This will help us make future episodes better for you, the listener. The survey will only take a few minutes to complete, and your response is invaluable to the team at Financial Modeler's Corner. Link to survey: https://forms.office.com/r/K2fHfSUvFp TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (00:55) SEGMENT: CJ's opening “Off the Books” monologue - the Billion Dollar outcome (02:59) Start of interview (04:38) Why is TAM so important to investors? (09:19) Is a $2B TAM not good enough? (12:06) How big is enough TAM? (13:23) Sponsor: NetSuite (14:44) Frameworks to calculate TAM (19:19) Second and third growth engines (25:18) On "maturity of the market" (28:36) On extensibility (32:27) Why your initial insertion point is crucial to your business (36:22) ServiceNow and Datadog: why these companies are shining examples of expanding their TAM (45:03) SEGMENT: Long-ass Lightning Round (48:43) SEGMENT: Rep Yo Stack - Sponsored by Tropic

Sebastian Duesterhoeft, partner at Lightspeed Ventures, joins CJ to talk about anything and everything start-up operators need to know about your Total Addressable Market (TAM). If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics  --- SPONSORS: NetSuite provides financial software for all your business needs. More than thirty-six thousand companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅ NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics and defer payments of a FULL NetSuite implementation for six months. Tropic is the next-generation Procurement Platform that's helping modern CFOs take control of their budgets and bottom line. By combining approval workflows, supplier management, and pricing benchmarks all in one place, Tropic makes savings opportunities easy to find and act on.

Head of marketing for T-Ads, the advertising solutions division of T-Mobile, Cherian Thomas describes the evolution of his rideshare entertainment platform, Octopus, to creating brand love across all digital out of home screens. In this upbeat but informative conversation with the high-energy "Doctor Thomas," Insider Interviews host E.B. Moss also gets the download on DOOH from DPAA CEO, Barry Frey, to offer listeners and viewers a complete picture of the state of screens today. QUOTES AND TIMESTAMPS 00:02:23 - "By the digitization of out-of-home, we mean a modern-day digital advertising business." 00:03:10 - "DOOH is becoming very powerful especially with its ability to target audiences, that heretofore was not available." 00:04:20 - " I've seen these crazy billboards where it almost looks like things are flying off of the screen. It's really amazing what can happen now with digital billboards." 00:11:49 - "While trying to market our app to consumers, we had to identify who is the ideal target audience. And then you look and you're like, wow, that's the Uber and Lyft rider!" 00:13:56 - "If we can delight riders in their Uber and Lyft journey, well, what's the next phase?" "The numbers don't lie: actual consumer spending is four times larger in store than it is online." 00:16:56 - "The numbers don't lie: actual consumer spending is four times larger in store than it is online." 00:18:52 - "Well, it turns out advertisers and brands also have similar pain points when it comes to them spending dollars and getting their brand out there or hitting performance metrics." Watch the full episode with Cherian Thomas, Head of Marketing for T-Ad on YouTube, too! [00:23:42] Enthusiasm, energy and skateboarding to work. 00:24:14 - "It starts from the top. So everything we do in my world is always ‘How is that good for our customers?' And I think that's something really important." T-Mobile Chief Creative Officer, Peter DeLuca with DPAA CEO, Barry Frey at Cannes 00:25:59 - "I think Peter DeLuca is a legend. And if you think about T-Mobile's brand, this is the best our brand has ever been. And you don't get there overnight. You have to be consistent. You have to be honest. You have to deliver. Like we say, dream big and deliver." 00:28:24 - "We leverage our brand to get our customers amazing deals and delight them." 00:33:45 - "My favorite product is the T-Mobile SyncUp Kids Watch, which is kind of a smart watch, but all you can do on it are basic things. As a parent, that was a pain point that T-Mobile had solved...This is kind of in our ethos: solving pain points I think is a common theme that's carried forward in everything that we do." 00:35:08 -  Brand purpose and trust. "One of our promises is “Nada, yada, yada.” Like, that's our actual Metro by T-Mobile brand campaign right now, because everyone else makes a bunch of promises and the fine print is like “yada, yada, yada, yada.” If that doesn't say we don't have any BS here and you can trust us....” 00:37:41 - "If you have a low cost of screen and you have connectivity, why can't there be a screen at the top of the Vail ski resort to show you information and speed times and fastest slope, the slope is closed, etc. So these are things I'm really excited about. [00:38:30] The growth of Digital Out-of-Home. 00:38:39 - As an industry, I'm excited because the TAM -- the Total Addressable Market -- for Digital Out-of-Home, is much larger. And that's always been the challenge with Digital Out-of-Home. ...You've got a $10 billion industry, but it's getting bigger and bigger as these macro trends continue." 00:40:11 - "What does the E.B. stand for?!” Don't miss the 10/10/23 DPAA Global Summit in New York City's Chelsea Piers, with speakers from McDonalds, Mastercard, Pepsi and more!  You can help sustain this podcast with a little donation to Insider Interviews at https://buymeacoffee.com/mossappeal

Here are the biggest TTRPG news stories from the past week. The future of D&D and TTRPGs estimated TAM from Chris Cox. D&D Beyond launches it's first 3rd party product, Baldur's Gate draws new interests into D&D and makes more money for Hasbro then their films. If you'd like to support the podcast head over to our Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/totalpartychill -------- For more actual plays, reviews, giveaways, and recommendations check out https://totalpartychill.com​​​​​ ​​​​​ Tweet us: https://twitter.com/ttlprtychll​​​​​ Buy TPC merch: https://totalpartychill.com/​

In this podcast, Michael Cardamone, founder of Forum Ventures, shares his valuable insights on the startup world and his journey in founding and running a leading seed-stage SaaS venture VC firm. He talks about the importance of building relationships and being transparent about your track record when raising funds. He also provides insights on investing in startups, moving upmarket into enterprise, and building channel partnerships. Additionally, he discusses the topic of diversity in venture capital and the future of the venture capital landscape, and much more!TimestampsHow Michael got into startups [00:00:22] Michael talks about his transition from working for a family business to getting into tech and venture startups.Partnerships and KPIs at Box [00:02:01] Michael discusses the partnership goals and KPIs at Box, including building credibility in certain industries and driving more sales.Founding Forum Ventures [00:04:59] Michael talks about founding Forum Ventures, including his idea for a differentiated accelerator and how he raised his first $1 million.Fundraising Challenges [00:08:15] Michael talks about the challenges of fundraising for his accelerator and seed funds, including finding early believers and building top of funnel.Founder Characteristics [00:11:23] Michael discusses the qualities and characteristics he looks for in founders and companies, including founder-market fit, ability to recruit, and obsession with the business.Investment Strategies [00:14:05] Michael explains the three different ways Forum Ventures engages with founders, including the accelerator, studio, and seed fund, and the ticket sizes and follow-up strategies for each.Investing in SaaS Startups [00:16:43] Michael talks about investing in a SaaS startup and the importance of building relationships with founders.Moving Upmarket into Enterprise [00:17:37] Michael discusses when it's the right time for a startup to move upmarket into enterprise and how to navigate the transition.Building Channel Partnerships [00:19:20] Michael shares his experience with building channel partnerships and advises startups to be thoughtful and build real relationships with partners.Analyzing Competition [00:25:17] Michael discusses the mistakes investors make when analyzing competition, including overindexing on competition and not considering market dynamics.Total Addressable Market [00:27:13] Michael talks about the mistakes founders make when presenting the total addressable market, including taking a generic approach instead of a nuanced, bottoms-up approach.Venture Capital Landscape [00:31:11] Michael discusses the changes he sees coming in the venture capital landscape in the next 5 to 10 years, including a decline in the number of small funds and a potential shift towards more emerging manager funds.Building a brand [00:34:43] Michael talks about how he underinvested in building a brand for Forum Ventures and how he focused on founder experience instead. He shares how he rebranded and invested more in building the brand over the last couple of years.Favorite online tools [00:35:49] Michael shares his favorite online tools, including Gmail, Slack, and a product from a company he invested in called Hyper. Key LinksForum Ventures - https://www.forumvc.com/LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcardamone/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/MGCardamone

How did Geoff Charles, VP of Product at Ramp, go from a background in consulting and finance to revolutionizing the world of product management in tech? In this fascinating conversation, we discuss the evolution of product roles, the importance of collaboration, and prioritizing value creation. We dive deep into Geoff's role at Ramp, the critical aspects of product management in tech startups, and his approach to making decisions that drive the company forward. Geoff also shares insights on building a successful company, including understanding the Total Addressable Market, tailoring the product playbook to the specific business, and designing a product that leverages top engineering talent. Finally, we explore the world of AI in product management, the importance of data privacy, and how technology can be used as a tool to empower people. Timestamps: Geoff Charles' Background and Transition to Product Management [00:02:45] The Role of Product Management [00:13:36] Prioritizing Relationships with Engineers [00:15:25] Challenging TAM [00:21:08] User Experience at Ramp [00:28:29] Ramp's Target Market and Differentiation [00:34:02] Biggest Mistake at Ramp [00:40:30] Fear Mongering and AI [00:46:42] Cultivating Happiness [00:49:37] Lightning Round [00:51:34]

Joe Burnett is joined by John of Encrypted Energy to discuss automated Bitcoin lightning nodes. Sign up for the marketplace here: https://marketplace.blockwaresolutions.com/ Encrypted Energy is a service for collecting, processing, storing, and routing data from your Lightning Node. It regularly polls your node and your peers, monitors for state changes, and emits events to outside services when changes occur. Email paul@encryptedenergy.com and mention us for personalized onboarding. Passport is the Bitcoin hardware wallet you already know how to use. With a gorgeous design and familiar interface, Passport makes it easier than ever to self-custody your Bitcoin. No more sitting at your computer or squinting at tiny screens. Passport seamlessly connects to your phone, empowering you to quickly view your balance and move Bitcoin in and out of cold storage. Get yours today at: https://foundationdevices.com/?mtm_campaign=Blockware Use code: BLOCKWARE for $10 off! Follow us on Twitter: Joe: https://twitter.com/IIICapital John: https://twitter.com/jmarbach Blockware: https://twitter.com/BlockwareTeam Timestamps: 00:00 John's Background 03:25 What is the Lightning Network? 07:47 Total Addressable Market for Lightning 14:21 Why should an individual or company run a Bitcoin Lightning node? 18:00 How to easily run a Lightning node 21:47 What is involved with operating a lightning node? 25:49 Encrypted Energy 27:53 Earning yield with Lightning 34:24 Bitcoin & Lightning in 20 years

How Outbound Can 22x Your Total Addressable Market>> Get the newest LFG episodes delivered to your inbox when you Sign Up for our Newsletter.Resource Links:Fast track your marketing efforts while avoiding common marketing mistakes in our new trainingEstate planning attorney? Stop guessing how to get results from online ads and grow your firm with our client-generating Seminar 3.0 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Total Addressable Market Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The total addressable market is the size of the market that represents the total potential revenue for a product.   This is the market that could ever buy the startup's product. In the startup world, there's truly no limit to how big a company can grow. Investors look for business opportunities with large upside potential. Startups focus on large markets as it provides the most potential and the best chances for success. Large markets provide many opportunities for entering the market and positioning within the market relative to competitors. The larger the market the better chance of the startup finding product/market fit. Within the total addressable market, there is the serviceable market which is the size of the market you can reach. This does not mean the startup must actually reach the full market to be successful but rather it shows the opportunity. Within the serviceable market, there is the beachhead market which is the first set of customers to pursue. This gives the startup an area to focus on in entering the market. The total addressable market is a mental model startups and investors use to assess business opportunities. In raising funding, it's important to know the size of the market and the segments before pursuing it.   Thank you for joining us for the Startup Funding Espresso where we help startups and investors connect for funding.Let's go startup something today. _______________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at:   Check out our other podcasts here:   For Investors check out:   For Startups check out:   For eGuides check out:   For upcoming Events, check out    For Feedback please contact info@tencapital.group    Please , share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of .

This week Oliver interviews Horace about the talk he did at Micromobility America on the Total Addressable Market for micromobility, and the opportunity of the space. This should really be listened to in context of the 5 Billion Riders talk that Horace gave at the conference, which is now on Youtube. Here, we dig into Horace's thought pattern and the significance of mapping out addressable markets in informing the debate and opportunity for the space. Specifically, they dig into: The backstory for Total Addressable Markets and why these matter What has changed since Horace's early work in this space The potential impact of 5 billion riders Why this matters for companies raising In the meantime, if you haven't already, check out our latest effort, the Rider Choice Awards. It is our industry's version of the Oscars, the Baftas, the Top Gear Speed Week, and the Webby's all tied into one. You can select the best firms and vehicles in more than 30 categories and get them selected for consideration ahead of judging for Micromobility World, which is happening on January 19th online. We have many of the top brands in the world currently battling it out for top spot in the bike, scooter, pod, subscription business, shared operator, and more from around the world. We've been blown away by the level of excitement from the community and are super excited to share the preliminary results with you. The first round of cutoff is coming this month, and then again next month so get your votes in quickly! Catch us on Twitter @MicromobilityCo. Horace and Oliver are also active on their personal accounts and would love to hear from you. Our newsletter is completely free, and you can subscribe to have it in your inbox every Tuesday morning here! And for those who want more, we offer our Micromobility membership (mmm — “Triple M”) which includes exclusive content, swag, and conference discounts, as well as live calls with Horace and team! We're also on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Disclosure: Bueno is a sponsor of Overpriced JPEGs, but that is not why we had them on. We simply think they're a cool product doing cool work! ✨ SUBSCRIBE TO THE OVERPRICED JPEGS CHANNEL ✨ https://bankless.cc/jpegs  ------

This week we do a deep dive into the Total Addressable Market of Cloud and discuss the rise of Cloudflare. Plus, details an the SDT Meetup in Austin on August 27th (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/software-defined-talk-meetup-in-austin-tx-tickets-396650401027). Runner-up Titles “Have a good time at least once” is in my vacation OKRs The podcast of the Slack Analog Clocks Digital Clock Native Pretending to have a sidekick The First Business Case for the Metaverse I was a liberal arts major The TAM Episode Rundown Cloud Earnings Clouded Judgement 7.29.22 (https://cloudedjudgement.substack.com/p/clouded-judgement-72922?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email) Amazon says cloud-computing revenue rose 33%, topping Wall Street estimates (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/28/aws-earnings-q2-2022.html) 60% of Amazon's net revenue growth YoY was AWS. (https://twitter.com/conorsen/status/1552749857500286976?s=21&t=4J4ob4S-4vxl-60DOSKkUw) AWS continues to show strength, but there are a few things to watch out for (https://seekingalpha.com/news/3863264-amazon-web-services-continues-to-show-strength-but-there-are-a-few-things-to-watch-out-for) Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 3% in 2022 (https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2022-06-14-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-it-spending-to-grow-3-percent-in-2022) How Cloudflare emerged to take on AWS, Azure, and GCP (https://www.infoworld.com/article/3668197/how-cloudflare-emerged-to-take-on-aws-azure-and-gcp.html?utm_content=content&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic) Relevant to your Interests Apple beats on revenue and profit, expects growth to accelerate despite 'pockets of softness' (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/28/apple-aapl-earnings-q3-2022.html) Instagram walks back its changes (https://www.platformer.news/p/-instagram-walks-back-its-changes?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email) Meta posts its first-ever quarterly revenue decline (https://www.axios.com/2022/07/27/meta-quarterly-revenue-decline-earnings?utm_source[%E2%80%A6]utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axioslogin&stream=tophttps://www.axios.com/2022/07/27/meta-quarterly-revenue-decline-earnings?utm_source[%E2%80%A6]utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axioslogin&stream=top) Why Kylie is mad at Instagram? (https://om.co/2022/07/26/why-kylie-is-mad-at-instagram-explained/) There is a path to replace TCP in the datacenter (https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/27/replace_tcp_datacenter/) CHIPS for America Act (https://twitter.com/SBIndyNews/status/1552445739736989697)e JetBlue agrees to buy Spirit for $3.8B. It would create the 5th largest U.S. airline (https://www.npr.org/2022/07/28/1114226031/jetblue-spirit-deal-merger) The pandemic impulse purchases we grew to hate (https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23279350/pandemic-consumer-buys-peloton-bike-games-dog-covid?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email) AMD and Nvidia leaks show we are drunk on power, and the hangover is going to be brutal (https://www.techradar.com/news/amd-and-nvidia-leaks-show-we-are-drunk-on-power-and-the-hangover-is-going-to-be-brutal) Intel To Wind Down Optane Memory Business - 3D XPoint Storage Tech Reaches Its (https://www.anandtech.com/show/17515/intel-to-wind-down-optane-memory-business) On the huge importance of non-tech roles in Open Source: Empirical study on NPM - Livable Software (https://livablesoftware.com/importance-of-non-tech-contributor-roles-open-source/) VMware Fusion beta joins Parallels in supporting Windows VMs on Apple Silicon (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/newest-vmware-fusion-beta-supports-windows-11-on-apple-silicon-macs/) Apple Arcade finally got the boost it needed (https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/7/22370217/apple-arcade-fantasian-nba2k-wonderbox-classics-netflix) Apple Nabs Key Lamborghini Executive to Work on Its Electric Car (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-27/apple-nabs-key-lamborghini-executive-to-work-on-its-electric-car?utm_campaign=etb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew) IBM board of directors investigates sales fraud claims (https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/exclusive_ibm_board_of_directors/) Apparently Linus Torvalds is using an M2 Mac? (https://softwaredefinedtalk.slack.com/archives/C5GPMBXQT/p1659428218962219) Oracle Cuts Workers in US Customer Experience Unit (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-01/oracle-cuts-workers-in-us-customer-analytics-division) Gmail gets a new look and tighter intergration to celebrate 18 years of service (https://www.xda-developers.com/gmail-new-look-tighter-intergration-18-years/) Uber reports positive cash flow for first time (https://www.ft.com/content/a454447f-c0b9-44fc-a24a-2781f1b7717e) Pinterest shares surge after Elliott discloses it is the largest shareholder (https://www.reuters.com/technology/elliott-says-it-is-largest-sharesholder-pinterest-2022-08-01/) How Kubernetes Reinvented Virtual Machines (in a good sense) (https://iximiuz.com/en/posts/kubernetes-vs-virtual-machines/) Former VMware Star Sanjay Poonen Becomes CEO Of Cohesity (https://twitter.com/datachick/status/1554482007438237698) Thoma Bravo picks up Ping Identity for $2.8B in an all-cash deal (https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/03/thoma-bravo-picks-up-ping-identity-for-2-8b-in-an-all-cash-deal/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJnqIsV7eSB4aeKNW7V9HidMxohTjY2dtNtainWRjHXiv7ApDViwdsq6K_9LBJIVnI3ylbHjASvuAqEijvmNUyuW8DaHp0rSZ7uten5Sz6_DUKqUxifms2H-6Yk6TW5i8i9UXqTNsT_vhnMMFzJUp7OTTzNaXAfmzM0PqPtmoFdH) Software Is No Longer Eating The World (https://webtwoboomer.com/software-is-no-longer-eating-the-world-109785eb9d4f) GitLab plans to delete dormant projects from free accounts (https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/04/gitlab_data_retention_policy/) Raspberry Pi Zero vs MangoPi MQ Pro Benchmarks (https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-zero-vs-mangopi-mq-pro-benchmarks/) Highest. Close. Ever. - All Star Charts (https://allstarcharts.com/highest-close-ever/) Should I Stay or Should I Go (https://www.platformonomics.com/2022/07/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go/) Nonsense Murder Hornets get new name (https://softwaredefinedtalk.slack.com/archives/C04EK1VBK/p1659024319485459) An Australian Artist Pulled a Pickle from a McDonald's Cheeseburger and Slapped It on a Gallery's Ceiling. Now It Costs $6,200 (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/pickle-artist-2152731) MAKRO | Microsoft Excel Stream Highlights 3/19 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xubbVvKbUfY) British Airways suspends the sale of short-haul flight tickets from Heathrow (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/02/british-airways-suspends-short-haul-flight-tickets-from-heathrow.html) Sponsors Teleport — The easiest, most secure way to access infrastructure. (https://goteleport.com/?utm_campaign=eg&utm_medium=partner&utm_source=sdt) Listener Feedback Slack is increasing prices, changing how its free plan works (https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/18/slack-is-increasing-prices-and-changing-the-way-its-free-plan-works/) What is DevRel? (https://www.whatisdevrel.com/) — Cloudcast Podcast Good discussion on changing jobs in SDT Slack (https://softwaredefinedtalk.slack.com/archives/CEJ12RBJA/p1659459039423009) Conferences Register for the SDT Austin Meetup August 27th at 6:30 PM (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/software-defined-talk-meetup-in-austin-tx-tickets-396650401027) **** DevOpsDays DFW (https://devopsdays.org/events/2022-dallas/welcome/), August 24-25, 2022 - Coté speaking, along with John Willis, Andrew Shafer, and friends VMware Explore 2022, August 29 – September 1, 2022 (https://www.vmware.com/explore/us.html?srccode=na_pxkba4ap4tgmb&cid=7012H000001KawVQAS) - Coté's pitch (https://twitter.com/cote/status/1551895600270016512). SpringOne Platform (https://springone.io/?utm_source=cote&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=sdt), SF, December 6–8, 2022 THAT Conference Texas Call For Counselors (https://that.us/call-for-counselors/tx/2023/) Jan 16-19, 2023 SDT news & hype Join us in Slack (http://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/slack). Get a SDT Sticker! Send your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) and we will send you free laptop stickers! Follow us on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/) and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3OJPV6h9tp-hbsGBLGsDQ/featured). Use the code SDT to get $20 off Coté's book, (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt) Digital WTF (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt), so $5 total. Become a sponsor of Software Defined Talk (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads)! Recommendations Brandon: Ambulance (https://www.ambulance.movie) and The Terminal List (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11743610/) Ringer Podcast: ‘The Gray Man' and the Top 10 Trash Special Ops Movies (https://www.theringer.com/2022/7/29/23283211/the-gray-man-and-the-top-10-trash-special-ops-movies) Matt: (https://www.amazon.com/GE-Profile-Countertop-Nugget-Maker/dp/B07YF9SGBW)Jabulani Challenge (https://jabulanichallenge.com.au/) City2Surf (https://www.city2surf.com.au/) Coté: Vienna. Specifically: 12 Bruegels (https://www.khm.at/en/visit/collections/picture-gallery/the-best-of-bruegel-only-in-vienna/), old movies at old cinemas, Miznon (https://www.miznonvienna.com/). Photo Credits Banner (https://unsplash.com/photos/4W8LN0FgKNI) CoverArt (https://unsplash.com/photos/aX_ljOOyWJY)

Geoff Cottrill is the Chief Marketing Officer at Topgolf. We talk about the company's growth from zero venues to more than seventy today, what has changed since their $2 billion merger with Callaway last year, and how they are contributing to the surge of interest in golf globally. Enjoy!

Skyler Reeves is the Founder and CEO of Ardent Growth out of Murray, Kentucky. They are a company that helps B2B SaaS companies get more value from their content by blending qualitative customer insights with their proprietary content prioritization algorithm. Skyler is on a mission to blend data and creativity to make the web a better place. He holds degrees in both computer science and philosophy (MSU) and is an Iraq War veteran.In this episode, we talk about Skyler's journey from war veteran to going to college to study computer science and philosophy to founding an agency focused on SEO and marketing and helping B2B SaaS companies scale their organic traffic with their internal software.  He also shares why he's investing in a coach, in building out a sales operation for Ardent Growth, and his insights on his experiences of hiring the right people for your agency.This Cast Covers:How Skyler's love for creating solutions to unsolvable problems and philosophy got him into the world of SEO and marketing (02:27)His reasons for joining the military right out of high school and what his experience returning to civilian life was like (05:31)The genesis of Ardent Growth and his transition from working in logistics to building his own digital firm (09:44)The value of investing in a coach, having someone speak into your life and your business, and how to go about finding a good coach (11:43)Why his coach told him about bringing the internal technology Ardent had built out to B2B SaaS companies, private equity, VCs, and agencies (15:58)The core problem this internal tool has helped solve for a lot of companies looking to invest in content and SEO (17:32)  How they realized the value of their technology would be a great help for digital marketing agencies (19:25)Did Skyler ever desire to go to market with their tech and make it customer-facing or was the motivation always to serve them internally as they serve other people? (20:21)How having this internal tool helps their profit margins as an agency (21:40)Goals and priorities for the agency as Skyler looks to the future of Ardent aside from investing in building out a sales operation (26:54)Skyler's decision to push working into the VC and private equity industry as well (31:06)Why SEO is a challenging endeavor for agencies specifically to get right (33:06)Skyler recommends where SDA as an agency should focus when it comes to SEO-related efforts (35:45)Areas where Skyler might still be struggling with in the agency and what he's doing to work on them (37:20)One of the largest mistakes Skyler's done growthwise for the agency is not thinking about people (41:01)A pretty interesting rule Joey made up when it comes to hiring the best talent for his agency called the 95-5-90 (42:45)Why Skyler likes looking for coachable people (45:48)What Joey looks for in people related to mindset (46:45)Additional Resources:The Sales Driven AgencyThe Best Damn Agency MastermindSkyler Reeves | LinkedInArdent Growth

CEO of Blueprint, Jordan Crawford explains the importance of researching your customers' pain to determine your Total Addressable Market. Simply relying on tools like ZoomInfo to find potential customers may not be enough. Companies need to look deeper into how their solutions and services can meet the specific needs of their potential customers. Today, Jordan takes us through how Blueprint uses this approach to help their clients and to also identify the right customers for their own business. Show NotesConnect With:Jordan Crawford: Website // LinkedInThe Rev Gen Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterI Hear Everything: IHearEverything.com // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

TAM is out - TRM is in.In this episode of Author's Cut, co-authors of the MOVE book Bryan Brown and Sangram Vajre talk about the “M” in the MOVE framework - Market. Bryan and Sangram explain why they think “Total Addressable Market” may not be the best baseline for your marketing strategy...it's actually “Total Relevant Market”. Here's how you find your TRM, segments, and cohorts–and use them to determine who you should market to. Next week, they talk about the "O" - This is a #MOVE podcast. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or here. Check out themovebook.com and you will find all the templates and scorecards to download for free and even an assessment that will help you find your next MOVE, faster.Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for MOVE in your favorite podcast player.Additional Resources:MOVE: The 4-Question Go-To-Market FrameworkKey Takeaways:Total relevant market is who you should actually be focusing your marketing energy onThe way you market should change as your go-to-market strategy shifts and growsGo and ask your organization what stage of the business you're in. Don't rush into the next one, until you nail this one!

If you're like most of the guests we've interviewed on this podcast, then you are constantly trying to improve your agency. Whether that's figuring out your pricing, building out your sales operation, or getting your agency to the next level, it can be tough. Luckily, in this Sales on the Rocks episode, we're gonna walk you through how you can do all that by setting better realistic and specific goals, learning how to charge more, and providing crazy value during a simple sales conversation. Tune in to learn the 80-20 rule of pricing, advice for reaching higher annual revenue targets, and a simple mentality that can help you win bigger in business and in life.This Cast Covers:The case of Joey's missing truck (01:09)Joey and JJ recap the recent BDAM anti-retreat and share their takeaways (08:15)The words you speak over yourself and your loved ones are powerful (09:41)What got JJ dreaming about the massively growth-minded goals (12:33)How does defining what you want for your business inform what your sales operation looks like? (17:31)Why Joey is also a fan of the “and, not or” mentality and how this mentality helps in setting realistic goals (20:56)A lot of people set goals in a very safe manner  (24:47)Can two partners who are totally misaligned coexist in a business together? (27:31)What most agency owners and CEOs forget to factor in when it comes to projecting sales targets in the future (30:03)When you play big boy games, you make the right decisions and come up with big boy goals (31:11)How people are limited by their total addressable market (32:00)Three options to scale: provide new services, serve new industries, or charge more (32:38)The 80-20 rule of pricing (44:06)Being in a hyper niche might be what's preventing you from getting to the next level of growth (36:45)Advice for badass agency owners who crushed their revenue goals but want to expand to that next level (38:13)As you exhaust your TAM, do you become incredibly unattractive to potential buyers? (38:55)Joey's thoughts on advertising your price versus having that be a part of your sales conversation (41:11)Pricing the client versus pricing the work: why it's always better to get into a consultative sales conversation with your prospects (45:02)Why Joey hates it when agencies do hourly or flat pricing (46:16)First time on the show: JJ and Joey appreciate their wives (51:01)Additional Resources:The Sales Driven AgencyThe Best Damn Agency Mastermind

CEO of Blueprint, Jordan Crawford explains the importance of researching your customers' pain to determine your Total Addressable Market. Simply relying on tools like ZoomInfo to find potential customers may not be enough. Companies need to look deeper into how their solutions and services can meet the specific needs of their potential customers. Today, Jordan takes us through how Blueprint uses this approach to help their clients and to also identify the right customers for their own business. Show NotesConnect With:Jordan Crawford: Website // LinkedInThe Rev Gen Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterI Hear Everything: IHearEverything.com // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

March 21, 2022.In our latest episode, we look at :Crowdstrike's recent performanceWhat does Crowdstrike do?Crowdstrike's competitive advantage.PIF comfort level with Crowdstrike from a halal perspective.Size of Crowdstrike's Total Addressable Market.Crowdstrike's valuation (Buy, Hold and Sell).#halalinvesting #halalstocksTo view our portfolio or become a member please visit https://practicalislamicfinance.comPIF Offerings:► Follow my investing journey: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/practicalif► Request stock or crypto review: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/practicalif/e/51253► Join the Practical Islamic Finance Discord Community: https://discord.gg/fURkzn9RRM► Sign up for our newsletter at: https://practicalislamicfinance.com► List of PIF reviewed stocks: https://practicalislamicfinance.com/pif-reviewed-stock-list-2/► List of PIF reviewed cryptos: https://practicalislamicfinance.com/pif-reviewed-crypto-list-2/ Affiliates & Promotions:► Follow your crypto investments and file taxes with Cointracker: https://www.cointracker.io/a/rakaan► Track your income, expenses and budget using Truebill: https://truebill.i679.net/c/2193816/616684/10034► Looking for a place to buy stocks in the U.S.? Try M1 Finance for Free using: https://m1finance.8bxp97.net/c/2193816/704943/10646Follow Us on Social Media:►Twitter: https://twitter.com/PracticalIF►Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/practicalislamicfinance►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/practicalislamicfinance►Email: rakaan@practicalislamicfinance.comDisclaimer: Anything you hear in this podcast is an opinion. It is not to be considered personalized financial advice. Make sure you do your own due diligence before making any investment decisions.

In this episode of The Marketer's Journey, I interview Andy Jolls, CMO at FastSpring. During the episode, we discuss selecting the right CMO role for your career journey, how to know if the company you've joined has potential, and why it's important to expand your view of the competition. Check out this and other episodes of The Marketer's Journey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play!Key takeaways from this episode:Consider the growth stage of the company. When on the hunt for a new company to join, Andy emphasized the importance of identifying the company's growth stage and determining which stage is right for you and your career goals. He recommended finding the sweet spot by experimenting with companies at various growth stages and identifying where your strengths lie.Don't forget about the “C” in CMO. Andy mentioned that he's had some great mentors throughout his career who have reminded him that anyone at the CMO level needs to take a holistic view of the company to consider the full picture of the business. Instead of focusing solely on marketing, CMOs should always be thinking about what's best for the entire company overall.Identify the right persona. One of the biggest challenges for marketers today is understanding and targeting the right customers in their category. Andy said it's important for marketers to dig down deep into the information that's available and invest in analytics in order to make the most educated decisions possible. It's also important to broaden your view of the competition to keep the bigger picture in mind.Learn more about FastSpring here: https://fastspring.com/ Learn more about Andy here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajolls/

Jesse Shrader is the co-founder of Amboss, a Lightning Network explorer and data analytics tool. Jesse and I spoke about Amboss role in helping node operators make better routing decisions, the ways Amboss can build a competitive moat when Lightning data is publicly available, the future of node operations on Lightning, as well as a discussion on Lightning messaging and other applications Jesse finds exciting. → Amboss: https://amboss.space/ The Lightning Round is sponsored by Voltage, where you can ask me questions over the Lightning Network. → Voltage: https://voltage.cloud?utm_source=kevinrooke&utm_medium=Youtube&utm_campaign=1mo → Use code KEVINROOKE to get 50% off your first month's Lightning node At the end of every show I answer any questions listeners send in over the Lightning Network. To ask a question, send a message, or to support the show, download Fountain from the iOS or Google Play App Store and load your wallet with a few sats. → Fountain: https://www.fountain.fm/ → Listen to More Episodes: https://play.fountain.fm/show/P6XXuSPg6f2rj4ECB0fT → Follow Kevin Rooke on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kerooke Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:59 - Jesse Shrader Intro 03:10 - Building Amboss 06:33 - The Amboss Vision 09:28 - Data Analytics with Limited Information 11:24 - How Do Node Operators Make Decisions? 15:34 - Can You Earn a Full Time Income From Your Node? 22:50 - Will Lightning Fees Change Over Time? 31:56 - Lightning Growth Surprises 34:39 - Amboss's Competitive Advantage 39:55 - Will Amboss Be a Lightning-Native Business? 42:27 - Features to Improve Node Operations 44:48 - Is Lightning a Social Network? 47:26 - What is Keysend? 53:06 - Will The Lightning Network Get Congested? 58:36 - Growth of Capacity, Nodes, and Channels 01:03:29 - Total Addressable Market for Lightning 01:07:39 - The Lightning Round

On what it’s like becoming the CEO of a startup and gradually having more and more employees taking over some of the day-to-day responsibilities, guest Ron Tarro says the following: “It’s almost better to view what you’re building as a machine; it’s a machine where, if you actually step back from it, the machine keeps running.” Tarro is the former CEO of a telecommunications software and management services company founded in Boca Raton, Florida. His own experience of developing a startup led him to becoming the Vice President of the Board of Directors at New World Angels, a group of 78 accredited, private investors, operators and entrepreneurs dedicated to providing equity capital and guidance to early-stage entrepreneurial companies with a strong presence in Florida. In this episode, Tarro sits down with host Richard Miles to talk about his own trials of creating a startup, as well as discussing the importance of intellectualizing business as one forges their own path within the marketplace. TRANSCRIPT: Intro (00:01): Starting and running your own company. It’s not for everyone, but for those who have done it, it can be exhilarating, exhausting, and easily the hardest thing they’ve ever done. So we decided to go on and talk to some of those people and find out what they’ve learned, what they’d repeat and what they’ll never do again. We’ll hear stories from their first year, then from the period when they realized they’re going to survive and how they intend to position their companies for the future. We’ll find out what a CEO’s normal day is like, how they build and manage their teams, what it’s done to their personal lives. And finally, when is it time to move on? Join us for CEO 101, a limited series of deep looks at people who are their own boss, for better or for worse. Richard Miles (00:38): Welcome to another episode of CEO 101, a series of special episodes in which we talk to, and about, CEOs of startup companies. I’m your host Richard Miles today. My guest is Ron Tarro, CEO of a number of companies, as well as an advisor and investor in many more. Welcome to the show, Ron. Ron Tarro (00:55): It’s very nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Richard Miles (00:57): So why don’t we start with an overview of your career. You’ve done a lot of things. We just were talking about your role in a number of companies at various stages and levels. So why don’t you give a brief summary of where you started and what you’re doing now? Ron Tarro (01:09): Yeah, so I started as a nerd, software engineer, and I really came through a technical track. My background was in mathematics and the sciences. I ended up getting hired by IBM in IBM labs and so was on product teams, software engineering teams. Went through product marketing and product management jobs there, where I began to focus, not just on making the product, but deciding what should be in the product. I jumped out like a crazy person, one day went I into consulting and joined the industry young, ended up in a leadership position in the management consulting group, which focused on technology companies. So it was basically back to, what should we make? Why should we make it? Who should we sell it to? Those types of things. Did that for a bunch of years. In the meantime, a couple of my pals had started a software company here in Florida, and I was based in Minnesota at the time. I did work at IBM in Boca Raton, if you’re into Florida-centered conversation, and then started a company, I started advising it. I married one of them. My wife was one of the founders of this company and that company is telecommunication software platform. And we took that company, bootstrapping it, with no investment actually, and ended up putting it out into, I think 30, 40 countries. By the time we left, its largest market segment was in hotels and resorts, so we had a pretty big market share. We ultimately sold that company to what is now part of Cisco WebEx actually. And it’s gone through usual chopping up, getting acquired by a public company, where I was a public company, vice president for several years, as part of the arrangement, they went along with the desks and the pencils and that. So since the exiting, all of that, I’ve been an advisor in the incubators here in the state with the university system, in the leadership of a longest standing angel syndicate for investment in startups, so I do a lot of that. And that’s about it. Now, I’ve been a personal angel investor along with my wife, Dana, around the state. So that’s basically it, I mean, nerd turned business person, but still likes to do macros on spreadsheets or something. Richard Miles (03:00): Right, yeah. Nerd turned management consultant turned investor. Ron Tarro (03:03): Yeah, something like that. *laughter*. Richard Miles (03:05): You’re perfect for our show, Ron, perfect. You’ve a great experience in that you are able to both be an outsider and an insider and watching this process unfold of companies starting and then growing and then getting sold from a number of different angles. Why don’t we start with, what’s the biggest difference between watching it from the outside, like as an advisor or something, and actually doing it yourself? When you actually did that yourself with your wife, that company, were there things that you thought like, wow, I thought I knew what this process is like, but this is something nobody told me about? Ron Tarro (03:35): I guess I would look at it this way: in running an early stage company, in whatever form, you are absolutely single-minded. And I would say that what I know today that I didn’t know then is probably, I have more context in seeing some of the moves that we made. So we may have turned left, we should have turned right. And seeing lots of companies making left and right turns, you begin to look at it and say, “hmm, we could have thought about that problem very differently.” Now I would say this, that in our case, I think we made most of the fundamentally right decisions. And we can kind of walk through the life cycle of a company: when to get out of the company and sell it, all that stuff was being driven by stuff. But when you run a company, the thing that you need to be particularly careful, especially as an early one, is you are single-minded in your vision. And as a practical matter, what you don’t know can kill you. And so, I think once you’ve been through this a couple of times, you step back, you begin to see all of those other dangerous–there’s a counter argument, by the way, which would be your ignorance and optimism is the reason you’ll succeed. But I guess I’m a little bit more hardened by some of that. Richard Miles (04:36): Let’s get granular here and talk about the very, very beginning, but from your own experience in companies that you’ve helped start or advise. The first, maybe 30 to 60 days, where you’ve got a founder or a couple of founders, they’re very excited, they’ve got a lot of energy. Why don’t we start with the mistakes? The mistakes are always fun to talk about, right? What are some common mistakes that people make in the first few weeks, did they really come to regret later on? And maybe they don’t even know that they’re mistakes when they’re making them in that first 30 or 60 days? What have you seen? Ron Tarro (05:02): Yeah, no, I’ll start with the very basic one. Should you even bother? Is this a good idea? Because I think one of the things, when you see a founder, is they’re going to walk into this and they believe what they believe. And I’ll actually use the test with New World Angels, which is the angel group that I’m part of and leadership of, is this idea you have is derivative. It’s not better enough from anything else out there. It’s not enough to dislodge the current state. The way to look at that would be: I have a new idea for electronic banking, but can I get everybody to take everything out of this bank, including electronic banking, and move it to that bank? There’s a speed bump. There’s something here: you’re 10% better, but it’s 20% too much hassle to do it. And so one of the big challenges is you see a lot of folks coming into incubators and applying or coming to me for advisory. It is, I don’t know, has this been done before? And if it has, you better have some sort of transformative argument. It was Clayton Christiansen; he’s one of the Harvard guys that wrote a book. Is this sustaining innovation, meaning it’s incrementally improving stuff up, or is it disruptive? It restructures how something’s done fundamentally. Obviously you want a big success, it has to be fundamentally different, not just a flavor. It’s sort of like, there’s Uber and then there’s Uber for pizzas. It’s like, okay, you can make a living at that, and by the way, don’t want to discourage you, but it may not be an investible company, and it may be a company that’s only going to get to be this big because just by the nature of how you defined it in the first place. So part one is, is it even an idea that’s going to be able to, in effect, dislodge what’s already there? And if there is something there or is it clear sailing? And the other is, is it disruptive? Is it just incrementally improving something that already exists? I mean, obviously we want to be disruptive and there’s another great book out there, The Blue Ocean Strategies book that I always talk about, which is as a startup, this whole idea of derivative ideas will repeat. So it’s like, well, if Uber gets into pizzas, you’re dead. You’re, you’re not sailing in open ocean. You’re sailing in the shipping lanes. And so you better have a pretty good argument for why you think you’re gonna be able to stay afloat, new captains, smaller boat, limited gas (meaning financing). So you end up being in a little bit of a challenging spot. So really before you imagine a company, you have to sort of hack your insight, if you will, and say, yeah, I really believe that there’s insight here. There’s an engineer’s disease, and I can make fun of engineers because I used to be one, which is: because I can build it, I should. And that’s not the case. When you look at a lot of products, you see a lot of technology is built by a technical person that is logically and intellectually interesting, and economically kind of is around. For me, it’s like very first thing. Are you onto something here, something transformative? Can we go back a little bit about how you might evaluate that? That’s definitely the very first thing I look at. Yeah. Richard Miles (07:34): So you’ve been, I’m sure pitched a bunch of times. You’ve been to a lot of these pitch competitions, so on. You’ve seen probably thousands of presentations by typically a young-ish or very excited team and probably a bunch of engineers and they’re onto something, they’ve proved it somewhat, and it’s withstood a few proofs of concept. Have you developed, sixth sense is not really what I’m getting at here, but do you have like rules of thumb, five or six things that for you either, you’ll say like, nope, I’m done next? You see right away, apart from what you just talked about, say, is it a derivative idea? And then the other side, when a same team that if they say something, you go, okay, I’m going to go get that guy’s business card or I’m going to call them back because there’s something about their structure. Do you have like a mental checklist or is every presentation sui generis? You just figure it out after you’ve heard the presentation? Ron Tarro (08:22): So actually not only do I have opinions here, actually I’ve written a blog post. If you go to the newworldangels.com blog, there’s a post up there called Back-Testing, why we said no, essentially. So you just layered it right into a whole set of things that could take an hour. So clearly it’s the idea, you haven’t differentiated the idea in the marketplace and that’s a big deal. But at the other one that I look very quickly towards is the structure of the team. Again, I should put some context here. I’m a tech guy, right? So if we’re talking about opening a restaurant and marketing shoelaces, boy, am I the wrong person, right? It’s all a mystery to me, I’m a straight up core software person. But when I look at a team that’s bringing a technology product, if not out of the university, maybe even just an open market, I’m going to go, who are the founders? My favorite founders are one business person that knows the market space, where they think it’s going to apply, and one technology person who can make stuff. Period. If you have a business person who’s hiring out disinterested parties to make stuff, it’s a risk. It doesn’t mean no, but I’m going to worry that if the money runs out, all the cash is running out the door to the consulting firm or wherever it’s going to be. So very much, I look at what that team looks like and what their direct to main knowledge happens to be inside of it. So you have a team that seems logical. I begin to look at the market size, it’s called TAM, people talk about Total Addressable Market or serviceable market. And I always do this in dollars. It’s like, all right, this is great. This is really cool, and there’s 27 people in the world who would use this. So in order for it to be exciting, they each need to pay a hundred million dollars, right? (I’m making numbers up by the way). But it’s this idea that you have a market size that’s way too narrow, and so I’m going to worry about that as an investor. Now, again, you may look at this and you may say, yeah, this is a good product. And it deserves to be in the world. But from an investor standpoint, you’re going to have a ton of uphill battle with what’s being examined. Forming a company is a team sport. I’ll use Florida analogy here, but if the founder gets eaten by an alligator, what happens? And the answer should be well, there’s three more to carry on the journey, right? Richard Miles (10:18): Pre morph the alligator to snack. Ron Tarro (10:20): *Laughter* That’s right, so this whole idea of that is a big deal. And so all of this is back to the design of your company, right? What are you trying to do? Where are you focused? Does it matter? Is it big? Those sorts of things? And by the way, this is the theme you’ll see over and over again with investors, especially. But there’s a reason it’s not just because investors want to make a lot of money. It’s actually very rational. If I go back to running our company, we had lessons learned, but we had a total addressable market for our company, in that we dominated this total addressable market pretty successfully. We made a choice to not change industries, but to go global across one industry, those types of decisions. So in essence, when you look at our company, you would have said, okay, it’s a nichey product except globally, it’s a big niche, right? That kind of idea. And so those are the kind of decisions that you’re forced to make with left and right turns. We think we made the right one because it made us a pure play to be acquired one day. Richard Miles (11:14): I want to follow up on something you said in your ideal team is that you’ve got an inventor and a business person, but I’m sure you’ve seen–we’ve seen it in the Cade Prize competition–particularly coming out of research universities, you have the professor, right? Or you have the scientist or whatever. And they’ve got some grad students with them or whatnot. They love their idea. They’re smart people. and they figure how hard can it be to start and run a company, right? And your heart kind of aches for them because you want to say, you need to stay in the lab. Who has that tough conversation? Is that your job when they bring you along as an advisor or as an investor, for instance? Is one of the first conversations you have and say, look, professor, you need to stick to the, and the development of the idea and the product, and you need somebody who knows how to do this. I’m guessing the successful ones listened to you, and the ones that don’t listen to you, what happens to them? Ron Tarro (12:02): I’ll give you the losing argument, which is, “Hey professor, do you want a hundred percent of zero? Or do you want 50% of a lot?” There’s a question here. It’s hard to succeed in most of these companies; never say never, but aspirationally, there’s always this idea that being the CEO might be cool. However, if you look at the pain in the neck that that job can be, even as a college professor, I’ve been on both sides of the technology versus business fence. Some days I really missed the corny technology story. The reality is that you’re not going to get momentum unaccompanied very easily by being a part-timer, especially a professor. And you see it again and again, where they don’t get funded. The best thing you could do as a college professor would be back to my one maker, one business person that can carry and coordinate. And if you’re a member of the academy of arts and sciences or whatever the case might be, why would you check out of that? Where’s your next idea? What’s your next core research? It’d be better as a professor to have a portfolio of companies that you have a significant interest in that, where you were the founding insight, right? The technology, whatever the case might be. And you let those things grow and nurture because the attention required, you have to choose, you can’t be both. And there are a lot of PhDs who jumped out of academia to run companies, but that’s the choice you must make, I think at the end of the day. So you can rationalize it for a little while, but I know personally a number of folks that just have not been funded because they insist on being CEO as a professor or as a doctor or something like that. And so the funding dries up because nobody wants to fund a hobby, right? Or a side hustle. My money’s at risk and you’re part-timing me, not going to happen. Now maybe again, if you can make it all work without any money up from outside or whatever. But basically go find your best friend’s CEO and found it together, and then you can be chief science officer and you can contribute intellectual property into the business in really interesting ways. You get all the benefit, none of the work, you stay to your passions. And so I think you have to be honest with yourself too. Do you want to be a professor? If that’s where you want, you want the intellectual rigor to an effect, break down new territory. If that’s what energizes you, great. If you have that one idea, you think it’s it, then you got to go all the way in. Richard Miles (14:03): The counter-argument you hear from these researchers is they say, yeah, I recognize I need somebody with a business background, but these people really need to understand the core idea and a core principle here. And sometimes the core principles are fairly sophisticated, like, particularly in the healthcare field or in tech field. So if a business person doesn’t really get the technology, you understand it, right? They’re probably of limited use because they may have trouble visualizing or imagining the applications of that technology, if they don’t really understand how the technology works. Ron Tarro (14:33): Okay, I would argue a little bit differently. All you described was your requirements in recruiting for a CEO. You’re not going to get a CEO who did real estate management, no offense to real estate managers. That’s an entire industry that has a focus. If indeed, and we’ve done a series of investments in med tech, so basically what you need is somebody who understands the marketplace for these technologies. Here’s the problem with investing in research. Science is not the thing that adds value, it’s the application of the science in the marketplace. So you need somebody who knows the marketplace. So you have to go to a professor and you have to say, “Hey, you know the science, now you need somebody who needs to know the application space for the science.” And that’s different. They don’t have to be you, but they have to be somebody who is in effect, creating value through the application of the technology. That’s a different thought process. That’s a quite different thought process, because at some point it has to be commercialized. Now, if you’re just busy selling patents, if you will, you can do that. But then hire a patent troll, they’ll know how to do all that stuff too. So you still have somebody who’s going to spend all their time thinking about that. So there’s an intellectual foundation for a business and there’s an application foundation, if you want to think of it that way, maybe. So you still really haven’t defeated the argument. My two-person model is still the best model and that’s what should be pursued to create value. You know, I’ve been in the consulting world, which is sort of the intellectualization of business, right, which is all about strategies and frameworks and methods. And I worked at a think tank, for a number of years, doing this kind of published work. I get the academic-business divide. The reality is, is putting something in the marketplace takes balls. Period. Yeah. Richard Miles (16:05): So it sounds like important advice. Number one is it’s not enough to get somebody with a generic business background or business skills. You really need to have somebody who understands that particular market in which you’re trying to enter with your technology. Ron Tarro (16:17): And came out of networks, and networks and telecommunication. And there’s some young motivated types that can come up those learning curves, and that’s all great. But listen, if you want a CEO, you probably want somebody who knows how telecom works. All the better, right? We’re going to get back to, what you don’t know can kill you, right? So they bring actually wisdom that an academic probably wouldn’t bring to the business. Richard Miles (16:36): So let’s talk about the strategy and the frameworks. Now let’s imagine a company and I’m sure you’ve got real-world examples of, let’s say they’ve gone through their first year. They’ve launched, they’re getting revenue. They’re doing pretty well. They’re starting to grow, but then they face some serious choices, right? Do we grow in this direction or that direction? You start having to make significant trade-offs in terms of hires or just start hiring like crazy. What are some of the pitfalls, let’s say after a successful year one, that companies make in terms of a strategic direction after that first 365 days? Ron Tarro (17:05): So I’ll change your 365 days, cause I’ll let that flex, and I’m going to look for certain milestones. So I carve up a company lifestyle this way, is somebody is in the phase of hacking value. It’s the idea that I have a technology and I am busy refining potential uses for it and testing that. A good program in that startup type of stuff, iCore, I think most of the academic world has seen the iCore program. If you want NSF funding, et cetera, there’s iCore, is certainly a help to that process. But this is the idea of, before I build it, should I, right? Or, and what should it do? So this is the idea of hacking your insight, right? Getting that really polished, such a way that you have an insight and you know how it’s going to be applied, then build a prototype. So I’m gonna look at a company first and say, where are you at with that, and have you established that as a phase? Second thing I’m gonna look at is, okay, let’s hack product market fit. Product market fit is this idea that somehow it’s the right set of features and it’s the right price, and you’ve demonstrated that by a bunch of things like, maybe selling it to a few people. And so hacking product market fit to me is you’re done with that based on basically a quick check. Are you having to force customers to take this product or are they excited to take it? And we can talk about how to do that. And you’re going to test your different ways to sell it and your messages and stuff like that. And then third, you’re going to hack growth, and hack growth is another way of saying, you’re going to hire more salespeople and you’re going to begin to accelerate because things start to get repeatable, right? Here’s the problem, if you haven’t properly hacked your product market fit, and now you start hiring salespeople, guess what happens? They work really, really hard and they don’t sell a lot. Or worse yet, they do sell something, customer doesn’t like it and is always yelling at you, and maybe they stop using it. So what’s going on? The ones who went through and did this in steps. It’s not a calendar step. It’s sort of like a testing thing almost to say, I have insight. I have fit. Now I’m going to chase growth. And then you start hiring salespeople and evolving your messages, and you decide whether you’re going to use in-house people or whatever, and that lots of different things can go on. But that’s how I look at it. And you can see more often than not, that’s how companies get stuck, is they actually didn’t do the first two steps. The other interesting thing that you see with companies is you can look at the marketplace, crossing the chasm, that guy, this idea that you’ve got innovators and early adopters. And when you’re a new company, brand new product, and this idea that you have, these innovators and early adopters, and when you’re first starting a company, you have a brand new product. The tendency is to take the product out there and convince everybody how great it is. And if you did your insight right, what you really want to do is just look for all the people who are desperate to have it. Ron Tarro (19:40): There are certain people that a narrow range of people who will be fast adopters to this; it could be people with a huge problem and they don’t care about the wrong or risk it takes on a new company, somebody who’s the perfect fit for the product. So you’re looking for people with perfect fit, not trying to convince the rest of the world that you have the next big thing. You’ll see a lot of folks doing a lot of presenting, and what they haven’t done is they haven’t narrowed everything down into a nice tight message to a very tight group of people. And so they burn weeks and months, even a year or two, break their picking because they’re tackling the wrong folks. The other side of that is you want the risk takers, the people who have such a big problem that take a risk on you, right? And what you’re going to have is the big corporates. Everyone says, I want to sell this. I want so-and-so to buy it, big NASDAQ, New York stock exchange company. The reality is is those folks more often than not are managing risk of technology acquisition, along with innovation. You need somebody who needs the innovation because they’re desperate for it. So, I watch where people are on the cycle of early stage, and what you find is that some people rush it and fail late, after they’ve collected a lot of money by the way, from investors or worse yet, from their mom. So now you’re sitting there going, well, what happened here? Well, you weren’t quite defined in what your product was. It’s interesting, the story of our company really was similar to this, which was, we built a piece of software that was essentially a middleware, to use software terms. And we put that software into very select companies that were very innovative and had very sophisticated requirements that only we could do. And so we’ve found that one and then this one and picked our way individually through the group until we said, okay, this is a story that’s turning out to be repeatable with everybody else, and we refined it. So it happens that way in real life. If you try to circumvent that, you lose. Richard Miles (21:26): Let’s talk some about CEO’s as managers. You referred earlier to the life cycle of an early stage company, and you start out say with four or five people on your team, and it’s more like a family or a basketball team than it is a company, right? Because everyone knows each other. It’s very close. And then you get a little bit bigger. Maybe now you’re 25 or 30 employees. And then one day you’re 150 to 200 employees, and that obviously requires a different management structure, a different management style as you start growing the company in size and scope. How many CEOs are able to successfully make that transition from five people working for them to 200 people working for them? And how often is the case where somebody says, you know, “All I ever want to do is manage startups, I don’t want to manage a big company. It’s not fun. It’s too bureaucratic. Blah, blah, blah.” What is the range of outcomes that you’ve seen? Ron Tarro (22:13): Well, actually you described it. Let me just put it this way, maybe. Let’s just talk about growth of a CEO. So I started a company, it’s getting bigger. How do I have to change personally, right? Now I came into a small company from a large, so I had some visibility on what it’s like to manage a more complex environment, I suppose. You go as a founder and a CEO to, in effect, managing a product and customers, right, and building a product, if you will, to, in effect, building an organization. So it’s almost better to view what you’re building as a machine. It’s a machine where, if you actually step back from it, the machine keeps running, right? So you see a lot of CEOs who, and they’re right in the short term, they could probably do everybody’s job better than the person they hired. This becomes untrue as time goes on or less true, anyway. It’s probably even untrue. And so, they hold on to stuff too long. If you show me an overwhelmed manager, the first thing I look for is a delegation problem where they’re not viewing your organization as an organism that care and feeding, if you will, and they haven’t spread things out. And the real telling thing happens when you become a manager of managers, that’s the break point where it forces you down this road. So if you’re reaching into your managers or over your managers, then you’re just in the wrong head space. So to me, the growth thing is you have to then begin to say, okay, “how do I set up structures and communication so that everybody knows what I know believes, what I believe is seeking what I seek, KPIs to use fancy terms, Key Performance Indicators, to design the organization a little bit, so everybody’s a believer?” Ron Tarro (23:38): Listen, Elon Musk is great. He knows how to do this intuitively, which is our mission is to get to the moon, right? Who believes that we should be on the moon? So he’s got a whole organization, absolutely energized to this big idea and lining everything up to it. Here’s all the steps. And that’s the big thing is that basic transition away from being the best at everything and the person who’s best at moving the chess pieces around, if you want to think of it that way or best at designing ways that everybody can get stuff done faster. You don’t give up everything, you know, you choose. So for me, an example of how we sold early on; I sold, because we’re not venture backed, so I was selling the product, if you will. Ended up then having a sales group. In the sales group, they would in effect do some selling, but I would focus on various strategic things like this customer right over here has to be the one that we get next, Marriott or something. And so, I’m actively involved in that, because it had a material impact. But once we got Marriott corporate on board, getting every Marriott hotel to in effect use our product, an entire team that could drive that. So you begin to move yourself into something and then back out. You look at the messaging, all your positioning. So in our case, it was strategic impact sales, and then also the product roadmap. What are we making and why? One of the most telling things, cause I obsess on Musk probably too much is he’s not the CEO he was. But if you look at where he spent his time, he spent it as chief product officer, chief engineers. He’s very focused, because the product is what makes the business as a foundation and then its application and alignment to the marketplace the second. Those are the two things. If you have a CFO, the CFO makes sure that the mine is not running out the door wrong or something, but those are not the core things for a CEO. The CEO is what do we make and who are we making it for and why does it matter, et cetera. And that’s until you go public. And even then, still that. Richard Miles (25:24): Do you see that often where a founder, the idea person says, I just want to stick with product, developing products because that’s what I love? Is that fairly common? Ron Tarro (25:33): One of the reasons I came into our company was our CTO and COO were like, “we really don’t want to run this,” our CTO just really wanted to stay on the product side, it’s all he wanted to do. And by the way, that’s a very honest self-assessment, just to say this is not something I want to do. You can still own a huge percentage equity of a company and do profoundly well, but you just don’t want to go through the brain damage to that other job over there. And by the way, since you are a founder, is you get to pick your job. So why shouldn’t you? I actually have a lot of respect for that. The idea that, especially with technical co-founders is I say, “I want to be on the technical track. I don’t want to be a CEO. I don’t want to be dealing with every HR issue and financial and market, this and blah, blah, blah. I want to design and make products.” That’s hugely valid and maybe even desirable if I were to go back. Richard Miles (26:17): Ron, why don’t we conclude with something you said at the very beginning. You mentioned, if you could give yourself advice, young Ron Tarro advice from the older Ron Tarro, what would it be in terms of lessons learned? Let’s say you’ve got the young idealistic tech guy at 22, 23, or tech woman, and they’re going to go conquer the world, start the next Facebook, whatever. What do you think their older selves would be telling them in 20 years? Ron Tarro (26:40): At the end of the day, I end up getting rather tactical. I’ve been asked this before and I end up getting, “I would’ve made this decision differently,” but in general, if I were looking at all of it, I would have much more peripheral vision than I did. In some sense, we were pretty good at this, but not good enough. So the idea that we could have gone into other verticals faster, that we could have accelerated faster, that we were a little bit too conservative in what we were up to. Now, the reality is it turned out okay. But I would say that there’s an element of luck to that, that is significantly large, so we beat the odds. In some sense it was our success, but it was also probably a limiting factor of the company. So in a lot of ways, there’s a tendency to try to make what you’re doing today better, more efficient, more whatever. And sometimes there’s a breakout idea that you should be focused on to really grow the company. You could reasonably argue that we didn’t have enough peripheral vision to make a bunch of decisions or even see the decisions to be made. And so the advice to myself would be to get wider faster on what’s going on with mega trends, et cetera. I’m like 75% convinced of what I just told you. Now we pivoted different products in different markets. And the other was a strictly technical one and maybe more tactical too. It was really fundamental. There’s this thing called technical debt in software, and technical debt is this idea that you designed a product that has an architecture, but as you grow, your architecture is not so cool. It doesn’t support the growth or better yet, it sort of turns into a hair ball and you’d be adding this and adding that. Customer A wants this and customer B, and you lose control of the core product, and I would say that you suffered from a technical debt issue, because as an early company in our segment, we said yes to everybody. Sure, we’ll do that. Sure, we’ll do that. And we did not take a step back and abstract, what we’re doing, get back to peripheral vision, why are we doing this, right? What’s the larger context. And so we literally had to take a year pause on our product to say, it’s time to remodel the house. We should have been remodeling the hallway and then also abstracting. And so this is very much a software technology CEO problem, very specific to my world, but this idea that you sort of lost control of your code base. And so now every time you wanted to do an update, it took you 47 horses and a mule to get a new release out, when it should’ve just been a horse. You end up with a slower and slower product cycle. And so, one of the big lessons on the technical side was to really approach, I think, the software engineering story differently, but we survived. Richard Miles (28:58): I actually have one final question, both from your personal experience and what you’ve seen. What does being a CEO do to somebody’s personal life? Because everyone thinks like I want to be my own boss, that’s the best thing in the world. But then once you are, you realize that you’ve exchanged some freedom for responsibility, right? Part of being your own boss is you have to worry literally for a time, at least, about just about everything. You don’t really get to go home at 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM and check out and then show up at work the next day. You are the person. What was that like for you? And what has it been like for others that you’ve seen in that position? Ron Tarro (29:28): Well, I thought about my business every day of the week and pretty much all day. So let me give you the motivation. There’s a moral case for a CEO, especially startups, with deep respect to startups. What you have is you’re changing the world in a positive way. You’re creating something that will improve something for somebody somewhere. And so, if you have a passion for that, that’s pretty cool. And that is a motivation. I find that CEOs that care about money, it’s a crappy and soul-deadening way to approach life. Money’s a by-product of changing the world in a cool way. And so if you’re chasing money, then you’re just chasing money, and there’s no excitement. Then work is work, a slave to a dollar rather than a slave to change. I think one of the things I heard, I always sort of kept in the back of my mind is if you’re a CEO in these companies, what you’re trying to do is, it’s not about you making a product. It’s about you solving a problem in the world for somebody. And so, stay focused on the product or the problem. And with that focus, everything else takes care of itself. It’s its own joy. You made this industry better. You made this customer better. You made the world better. Something to that effect. That’s a huge personal motivation and something worth chasing. Back to, are you in the business of making profitable rockets or are we trying to get to Mars? And what’s the big calling here? And so I think as a CEO, if you have that, then everything else kind of gets easy, and you start blending work, play, and purpose all together in one thing. And that’s much better than being a slave to a dollar. Richard Miles (30:47): Ron, thank you very much for joining me today on CEO 101. Lots of good advice. I hope all of your clients and your companies are doing well and do well, and look forward to having you back on the show at some point. Ron Tarro (30:58): Cool. Hey, it was very nice meeting you. Outro (31:01): Radio Cade is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention located in Gainesville, Florida. Richard Miles is the podcast host and Ellie Thom coordinates inventor interviews. Podcasts are recorded at Heartwood, Soundstage, and edited and mixed by Bob McPeak. The Radio Cade theme song was produced and performed by Tracy Collins and features violinist Jacob Lawson.

Total Addressable Market is a key metric that VCs use to determine whether an idea is investable and one that some tech founders use to determine whether they're solving a large enough problem.  This begs the questions “how can you accurately assess the magnitude of a problem without having actually experienced the problem yourself?”.  This gap in problem awareness has created an incredible opportunity for underrepresented founders to build solutions that speak to the unique needs and build valuable solutions that improve the lives of overlooked populations.    In this episode, we sit with Maria Burns Ortiz, Co-Founder and CEO of 7 Generation Games.  Her team is building video games that close the math skills gap found in underrepresented communities.   Founder Bio: Maria Burns Ortiz is co-founder and CEO of 7 Generation Games, a video game studio making immersive educational games and interactive apps with a mission of breaking down barriers to success, one math problem at a time. Previously, Maria was a multimedia journalist and NY Times best-selling author. For her work at 7 Generation Games, she was an invited speaker at the 2016 White House: State of Women Summit, received the National Latina Business Women Association-Los Angeles' Rising Star in 2017 and named one of Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal's 40 Under 40 in 2021.   1:15  The many interesting facts about Maria Burns Ortiz's life 4:011  An atypical path to tech entrepreneurship |A career as an ESPN reporter 6:02  Reinventing your career| From reporter to video game developer 10:02  Operating as a cofounding team in the early days 11:29  What is 7 Generation Games and what problem it is solving? 14:22  The extraordinary value in serving underserved communities 15:45  The process of video game development 20:02  The importance of engagement UI/UX vs the tech itself 24:02  Building the first version of a gaming product 28:32  Testing your product with real world customers and getting traction 31:02  Finding the ideal customer for the product and communicating ROI to schools 35:02  How solving a problem in a niche creates a reputation of success 36:10  The promise of AI in EdTech | The personalization of the learning experience 40:13  Continue following 7GG at 7generationgames.com