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Send us a textJason talks with Richard White, the CEO of Fathom AI Note Taker. They talk about Richard's journey to becoming a successful founder, why a free product is sometimes the best marketing strategy for growth, and how he thinks about what it takes to successfully scale a team of people from below ten to over fifty.“When you build a business, build one that plays to your strengths—not what someone else tells you to do.”Richard White is the founder and CEO of Fathom.video, a free app that records, transcribes & highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. Fathom was a part of the Y-Combinator W21 batch, is one of only 50 Zoom App Launch Partners, and is one of a small handful of companies Zoom has invested in directly via their Zoom Apps Fund.Prior to Fathom, Richard founded UserVoice, one of the leading platforms that technology companies, from startups to the Fortune 500, use for managing customer feedback and making strategic product decisions. UserVoice was notable for being the company that originally invented the Feedback tabs shown on the side of millions of websites around the world today.Richard previously worked on Kiko, a company in the first batch of Y-Combinator, with Justin Kan and Emmett Shear who subsequently went on to found Twitch. Richard is passionate about designing intuitive productivity tools with delightful user experiences.Try Fathom for free: https://fathom.videohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite/Free ResourceGet better-quality, faster results from your teams with these coaching methodologies here. Connect with Jason If you enjoyed listening, then please take a second to rate the show on iTunes. Every podcaster will tell you that iTunes reviews drive listeners to our shows, so please let me know what you think and make sure you subscribe using your favorite podcast player. It means a lot to me and the guests.https://www.jasonfrazell.comhttps://www.jasonfrazell.com/podcastshttps://www.instagram.com/jasontfrazellhttps://www.https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonfrazell/
Welcome to another riveting episode of The SaaS CFO Podcast! I'm your host, Ben, and today we have an extraordinary guest with us—Richard White, the founder and CEO of Fathom. With a background as a computer scientist, Richard quickly transitioned into the world of product design and has since become a pioneer in AI-powered software. He honed his skills and experience during his time with Y Combinator and through his previous venture, UserVoice, which laid the groundwork for his current success. Today, Fathom stands as the number one rated AI note taker on G2, making waves with its innovative approach to simplifying meeting notes and enhancing productivity. In our conversation, Richard opens up about the unique fundraising strategies that powered Fathom's growth, including an impressive $27.3 million raised across multiple tranches and a notable series A. He also shares his insights on the evolving landscape of AI in SaaS products, discussing the challenges and opportunities that come with integrating advanced AI capabilities. Richard's perspective on the importance of user satisfaction, exemplified by Fathom's world-class NPS score, offers valuable lessons for any SaaS professional aiming to build products that not only solve problems but delight users. Whether you're a startup enthusiast, a seasoned SaaS executive, or someone intrigued by the future of AI in business, today's episode is brimming with insights you won't want to miss. Richard's passion for creating products that truly enhance user experience and his strategic approach to building a successful SaaS company provide a goldmine of knowledge. So sit back, relax, and get ready to be inspired by Richard White's remarkable journey and the innovative work happening at Fathom. Let's dive into the conversation! Show Notes: 00:00 Fathom: free AI notetaker, popular, premium options. 05:54 Fortunate entry into Zoom marketplace accelerated success. 08:05 Aggressive Moore's Law application, Amazon-style long-term strategy. 12:47 Unique, coalition-building fundraising strategy with small checks. 14:51 Series A expectations now demand fully developed businesses. 17:57 Founder prefers direct approach over lengthy fundraising. 22:55 Monthly meetings assess MPS scores, engage customers. 23:47 Surfing AI wave: Insightful tools for teams. Links: SaaS Fundraising Stories: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/fathom-raises-17-million-in-series-a Richard White's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite/ Fathom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fathom-video/ Fathom's Website: https://fathom.video/ To learn more about Ben check out the links below: Subscribe to Ben's daily metrics newsletter: https://saasmetricsschool.beehiiv.com/subscribe Subscribe to Ben's SaaS newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/df1db6bf8bca/the-saas-cfo-sign-up-landing-page SaaS Metrics courses here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ Join Ben's SaaS community here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/offers/ivNjwYDx/checkout Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrmurray
In this episode of Stronger Sales Teams, Ben speaks with Richard White, the CEO of Fathom Video. Richard, drawing from his extensive experience in the technology and SaaS sectors, shares his journey from software engineer to Founder and CEO. He outlines the development of Fathom and discusses how AI-powered transcription and note-taking tools are improving sales performance by enabling sales professionals to be more engaged and present during meetings. The discussion also covers the broader implications of AI in sales management, including its influence on pipeline reviews, coaching, and its potential future applications in sentiment analysis and non-verbal communication.About the Guest: Richard White is a distinguished entrepreneur and technology innovator, currently holding the position of Founder and CEO at Fathom Video. With a background in software engineering and product design, Richard is dedicated to developing tools that significantly improve user experiences. He previously established UserVoice, a platform for managing customer feedback utilised by both startups and Fortune 500 companies. Richard's expertise extends across SaaS and tech startups, with his current enterprise, Fathom, aiming to transform digital communication through sophisticated AI-driven note-taking solutions. https://fathom.video/ Key Takeaways: Fathom's AI-powered note-taking tools allow sales teams to focus on conversations rather than manual note-taking, increasing overall efficiency and presence during sales calls. Advanced AI can now analyse multiple calls to identify coaching opportunities, helping sales managers to pinpoint areas for improvement without sifting through hours of recordings. The importance of robust security and privacy measures in AI note-taking applications to ensure user data is protected. Leveraging AI tools for outbound sales can significantly enhance the quality and efficiency of prospecting efforts, saving time and improving outreach precision. The advancement in AI models now enables better understanding of tone and sentiment during sales calls, providing deeper insights and improving communication strategies. Time Stamp: 0:00 Intro 0:58 Guest Introduction 3:37 Fathom 5:59 How a Note Taking App Revolutionise Digital Communication 13:44 Challenges of a Note Taking App 17:02 Privacy Concerns 19:35 What To Focus On For Growth 22:29 Guest's Socials 23:27 Outro Rate, Review, & Follow If you're liking what you're hearing, make sure you ‘follow' the show wherever you listen to your podcasts…so you never miss an episode!I'd also love to hear what you think, so drop us a review after you close that next deal…tell me what you're liking, and what you want more of so I can look to cover it in a future episode.
Welcome to an enlightening episode where we explore the intersection of innovation and practicality with Richard White, Founder and CEO of Fathom, a pioneering AI Meeting Assistant developed under the prestigious Y Combinator's W21 cohort. Dive deep into the story of Fathom, an application designed to enhance the productivity of Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meetings by offering real-time recording, transcription, and summarization features. Richard shares his entrepreneurial journey from founding UserVoice to developing Fathom, highlighting the challenges and victories of creating technology that tackles real-world problems. Discover how Fathom is currently free and changing the landscape of virtual meetings by allowing users to focus more on the discussion and less on note-taking. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a remote worker, or anyone who spends a significant amount of time in meetings, this episode offers valuable insights into how AI is reshaping communication and collaboration in the digital age. This show is supported by www.matchrelevant.com. A company that helps venture-backed Startups find the best people available in the market, who have the skills, experience, and desire to grow. With over a decade of experience in recruitment across multiple domains, they give people career options to choose from in their career journey.
In this episode of The Digital Executive, host Brian Thomas chats with Richard White, the founder and CEO of Fathom.video, an innovative app that records, transcribes, and highlights your calls, allowing you to focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. Richard shares his journey from his early work with Y Combinator and Kiko to founding UserVoice, a leading platform for managing customer feedback. He discusses the inspiration behind UserVoice and how his experience with startups influenced its creation.Richard also delves into the origins and growth of Fathom.video, highlighting its recognition as one of only 50 Zoom app launch partners and the impact of investment from Zoom's app fund. He explains how this partnership came about and its significance in propelling Fathom's success.In a thought-provoking discussion, Richard explores the future of productivity tools, emphasizing the transformative potential of AI and machine learning technologies. He shares insights on how AI is set to revolutionize business operations, drawing parallels to the impact of open-source software in the mid-2000s. Richard's vision for the future of AI in productivity offers a glimpse into the exciting advancements that lie ahead for technology and business.Tune in to learn from Richard White's entrepreneurial journey and gain valuable perspectives on the evolving landscape of productivity tools and AI integration.
Richard White is founder and CEO of Fathom.video, a free app that records, transcribes and highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. Fathom was a part of the Y-Combinator W21 batch, is one of only 50 Zoom App Launch Partners, and is one of a small handful of companies Zoom has invested in directly via their Zoom Apps Fund. Prior to Fathom, Richard founded UserVoice, one of the leading platforms that technology companies, from startups to the Fortune 500, use for managing customer feedback and making strategic product decisions. Richard previously worked on Kiko, a company in the first batch of Y-Combinator, with Justin Kan and Emmett Shear who subsequently went on to found Twitch. Richard is passionate about designing intuitive productivity tools with delightful user experiences. What you will learn Discover how Fathom.video, a free app that records, transcribes, and highlights your calls, can revolutionize your productivity by allowing you to focus on conversations instead of taking notes. Understand how Richard's frustration with taking notes during user research calls inspired the creation of Fathom, an AI-powered tool that summarizes meetings. Learn how Richard's early exposure to computers and programming at a young age fueled his passion for technology and led to a successful career in the tech industry. Gain insights into the era of building custom computers and how it compares to today's plug-and-play devices like MacBooks.
Richard White, CEO of Fathom, shares his strategy for acquiring first customers. He believes in giving away something for free to build trust and create word-of-mouth virality. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on building a sticky product that users love before worrying about monetization. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/first-customers/message
About Eric Boggs: Eric Boggs is the Founder & CEO of RevBoss, an outbound agency on a mission to bring honesty and transparency to the B2B sales process. Using a mix of software automation, creative strategy and messaging, and top-notch client service, RevBoss powers full-service outbound campaigns for 100s of teams across a wide range of industries, including SaaS companies, marketing and creative agencies, video production services, and business services providers. Today, Eric leads the effort to bring happiness to 100s of clients and more than 50 RevBuds worldwide. Eric spent the last 20 years building companies and advising successful CEOs (Device Magic, Kevel, UserVoice, Ignite Social, and many more). He completed his undergraduate studies at UNC Chapel Hill and earned an MBA at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School, where he was a Dean's Fellow. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Eric.In this episode, Nancy and Eric discuss the following:The importance of human conversation in salesEric Boggs' mission with RevBoss: client and coworker happinessThe role of AI in transforming sales and marketing processesStrategies for generating qualified appointmentsThe effectiveness of personalized email subject linesRecommendations for optimizing email cadence and timing.Key Takeaways: When you see really long emails, it's just laziness because it takes a lot of work to be sharp and direct in your communication.My team has probably gotten tired of hearing me say cut it in half, but I think you can cut it in half and usually cut it in half again.Content quality and volume are moving targets, but they are also goals you never achieve.If it can always be shorter, it can always be better."AI will not replace human-to-human interaction. However, it is in the process of absolutely transforming the steps in the marketing and selling process that ultimately will lead to human interaction. And it's doing that with content and decision-making and process enablement. And frankly, it's going to make the process better in the long run, but it's making it awful messy right now." – ERIC"At RevBoss, we do lead generation for hundreds of clients. Most are marketing agencies, PR firms, and business services-type companies. That's probably 60% of our customers. 30% are SaaS technology companies, and 10% are other. Machine shops and commercial real estate are all kinds of odds and ends. And our strategy and mechanism are generally the same across the board. We're email first and primarily email. But increasingly, we're augmenting that with targeted display ads. And sometimes, we'll layer on a LinkedIn program if it's targeted and small and makes sense. We've never done phone. And I know that's your expertise. No, it's more of a personal preference and experience than anything else. We have plenty of clients that have had a lot of success cold calling internally or with partners. And we've worked, you know, we've told plenty of sales leads in the past, hey, yeah, we don't do that. But I do think that phone will work for you. We've just focused on email because we're good at it. We can automate it with a lot of technology and increasingly automate it with many AI integrations. And that's just kind of how we've how we built the business." - ERIC"As a subject line, I'm rather ambivalent. If it works, it works; if it doesn't, it doesn't. We've had clients where we've dropped emojis and manipulated text. One thing I know works at RevBoss is that subject lines should resemble those you'd send to a coworker. You'd never send an email with a subject line like "Increase your XYZ by some percent," right? Good subject lines are casual, like "Hey, how's it going?" or "I have a question about this thing." You'll get the desired result as long as you broadly fall into that category. Emojis and text manipulation are great ideas." – ERIC"Our general approach is three emails over a week, maybe 10 days. One of the emails is usually like a bump or an inline reply, maybe two; perhaps both are inline replies or forwards. Instead of doing five, eight, or 10 emails or touches over an extended period, we like to do short bursts in seven days. Let that prospect chill out for 60 days 90 days, and then do another short burst over a short period of time. We found that the prospects we retarget—say, I email you today, and then if you don't reply after two or three emails, I email you again in 60 or 90 days—roughly convert at the same rate as net new prospects. So, a lot of the success we're able to generate for our clients is based on repetition, process, and ensuring we're landing in the inbox with enough frequency, the right target prospect, and a tight message to get lucky. And you know, we get lucky to the tune of hundreds of times a day for our clients." – ERICConnect with Eric Boggs:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericboggs/RevBoss: https://revboss.com/Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/ Connect with Nancy Calabrese: Twitter:https://twitter.com/oneofakindsalesFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/One-Of-A-Kind-Sales-304978633264832/Website:https://oneofakindsales.comPhone: 908-879-2911 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncalabrese/Email: leads@oneofakindsales.com
Our brand new series of Life After Prison starts next week, but in the meantime, Zak has been going back through some of his favourite episodes from the vaults. In this episode from series 1, Tassie joins Zak and Jules to talk about her journey through the Criminal Justice System, from entering as a YO and becoming homeless at a young age, Tassie reflects on the life that she fell into and how she got out of it. Since coming out, Tassie has set up her own business helping to support care leavers in custody and gained a university degree. She now works for HMPPS as Reducing Re-offending National Lived Experience Lead. Useful organisations: The Rees Foundation – https://www.reesfoundation.org/ Care Leaver Covenant – https://mycovenant.org.uk/ Catch 22 – https://www.catch-22.org.uk/ Prison Reform Trust – https://prisonreformtrust.org.uk/ User Voice – https://www.uservoice.org/ Revolving Doors – https://revolving-doors.org.uk/ Epic – https://epicconsultants.co.uk/ Going Forward into Employment Scheme – https://gfie.blog.gov.uk/2022/07/04/a... Contact us: If anything you've heard in this podcast has inspired you to make a positive change in your life, please let us know.
Connie's motivational quote for today is by – Andrea Mignolo, “I want to do business with a company that treats e-mailing me as a privilege, not a transaction.” When COVID hit, and many business activities stopped, the one thing that continued was email campaigns. Now that things are kind of back on track, are email campaigns still relevant? This is an essential question for all types of businesses to think about because our email lists are potentially our long-term lifeline for continued business. So, how do we create value-added emails so people not only open them but take action to investigate and buy? YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZpL2SFDnMTE Guest Eric Boggs: Eric is the founder and CEO of RevBoss, a lead-generation company focused on outbound prospecting. He has spent the last 20 years of his career building SaaS companies and advising successful CEOs (Device Magic, Kevel, UserVoice, Ignite Social, and many more). How to Get In Touch with Eric Boggs: Email: eric@revboss.com Website: www.revboss.com Free Gift: http://www.revboss.com/secret-menu Stalk me online! LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/conniewhitman Download Free Communication Style Assessment: https://whitmanassoc.com/csa/ Subscribe to the Changing the Sales Game Podcast on your favorite podcast streaming service or YouTube. New episodes post every week - listen to Connie dive into new sales and business topics or problems you may have in your business.
Cloud Stories | Cloud Accounting Apps | Accounting Ecosystem
Today I'm speaking with Sabby Gill, CEO of Dext. In this episode, we talk about . . . Sabby discussed his first 10 months as CEO of Dext and the changes he has implemented Sabby has been getting out to see accountants, bookkeepers and attending trade shows and regional shows. He has been listening to user feedback to better understand partners' needs. He wants to really focus on what partners are asking for. He has prioritised requested features like “Multi-account management” which allows you to manage multiple businesses or practices under one email address, enabling you to easily navigate between your business accounts from within your Dext account. https://help.dext.com/en/s/article/multi-account-management Developed an expenses module that users had requested Dext shall be setting up regional advisory boards to get input from influential accountants and bookkeepers and a temperature check from the community. Dext will be launching a Chrome extension called the “Dextension” at Sydney Xerocon ‘23 to better integrate Dext and Xero. It's currently in beta - read more here : https://help.dext.com/en/s/article/how-to-use-the-dextension-browser-extension The Dext Extension will provide new features like quicker navigation between the apps and improved data visibility Read more at https://heathersmithsmallbusiness.com/blog/ From here, I suggest you join the Xero Mastermind group on Facebook for advanced conversations around the ecosystem. I suggest you subscribe to the informative Accounting Apps newsletter which gives you a great overview of the ecosystem space. I encourage you to connect with me on LinkedIn and subscribe to the Cloud Stories podcast.
In this episode, Susan interviews Richard White, Founder & CEO of Fathom.video. Richard shares his insights on the rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship, from navigating the challenging funding landscape of 2021 to his unique perspective on decision-making and overcoming rejection. With Fathom.video, Richard not only disrupted the transcription industry but also applied a consumer playbook to a B2B product, achieving outstanding retention and growth before even considering monetization. Susan and Richard delve into the power of hypothesis-driven startups, the key to attracting users emotionally, and the art of balancing the roles of maker and manager. Richard's journey is an inspiring testament to patience, perseverance, and the rewards of building a product that people genuinely love. About Richard: Richard White is founder and CEO of Fathom.video, a free app that records, transcribes & highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. Prior to Fathom, Richard founded UserVoice, one of the leading platforms that technology companies, from startups to the Fortune 500, use for managing customer feedback and making strategic product decisions. Richard previously worked on Kiko, a company in the first batch of Y-Combinator, with Justin Kan and Emmett Shear who subsequently went on to found Twitch. Richard is passionate about designing intuitive productivity tools with delightful user experiences. Connect With Richard: Website: https://fathom.video/ Linkedin: @rrwhite Twitter: @FathomDotVideo About Susan: Susan Sly is a Tech Co-founder and Co-CEO, a tech investor, best-selling author, keynote speaker, entrepreneur, and host of the highly acclaimed podcast – Raw and Real Entrepreneurship. Susan has appeared on CNN, CNBC, Fox, Lifetime Television, The CBN, The Morning Show in Australia and been quoted in MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, Forbes, and more. She holds Certificates in Management and Leadership, Technology and Operations, and Strategy and Innovation from MIT. Susan is the author of 7 books. Her book project with NY Times Best Selling Author, Jack Canfield, made six Amazon Best Selling lists. Connect With Susan: Twitter @Susanslylive Twitter @rawandrealentr1 LinkedIn @susansly Facebook @susanslylive Website https://susansly.com/ Join the Raw and Real Entrepreneurship Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/rawandrealentrepreneurs Join Susan's Insider's List https://susansly.com/insider/
Gil Allouche is the Co-founder and CEO of Metadata, a company with patented technology that combines predictive scoring and programmatic advertising to deliver a predictable pipeline of opt-in lead-qualified leads for B2B enterprises. Metadata's customers include Cisco, UserVoice, Mulesoft, Salesforce, Infoblox, and Aerospike. Gil is a software engineer turned data-driven growth marketer who founded the company to make demand generation easy for non-technical marketers. In this episode… As a B2B marketer, are you trying to free yourself from mundane tasks so you can focus on doing the work that matters the most? How can you do so and spend more time on the big things like strategy, creativity, and driving revenue? After doing marketing for three B2B companies, Gil Allouche discovered he was dealing with too many manual and repetitive tasks. As a software engineer turned data-driven growth marketer, he started looking for ways to drive more revenue without getting bogged down by all the manual work. He shares his journey of building a platform to automate repetitive marketing tasks to give marketers time to focus on revenue-generating activities. In this inspiring episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz welcomes Gil Allouche, Co-founder and CEO of Metadata, to discuss ways to automate your marketing. Gil talks about Metadata and what it does, the evolution of its product, customer success stories, and its ideal client profile.
Guest: Richard White, Founder & CEO at Fathom [@FathomDotVideo]On Twitter | https://twitter.com/rrwhiteOn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite/Host: Brendon RodOn ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/brendon-rod____________________________This Episode's SponsorsAre you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?
Guest: Richard White, Founder & CEO at Fathom [@FathomDotVideo]On Twitter | https://twitter.com/rrwhiteOn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite/Host: Brendon RodOn ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/brendon-rod____________________________This Episode's SponsorsAre you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?
Today we're talking to Richard White. Richard is founder and CEO of Fathom.video, a free app that records, transcribes & highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. Fathom was a part of Y-Combinator's W21 batch, is one of only 50 Zoom App Launch Partners, and is one of a small handful of companies Zoom has invested in directly via their Zoom Apps Fund.Prior to Fathom, Richard founded UserVoice, one of the leading platforms that technology companies, from startups to the Fortune 500, use for managing customer feedback and making strategic product decisions. UserVoice was notable for being the company that originally invented the Feedback tabs shown on the side of millions of websites around the world today.Richard previously worked on Kiko, a company in the first batch of Y-Combinator, with Justin Kan and Emmett Shear who subsequently went on to found Twitch. Richard is passionate about designing intuitive productivity tools with delightful user experiences.In this episode we dive deep into how to properly cold email, the benefits of working at a startup, when to monetize your startup, how to get and implement product feedback, the benefits of going through Y Combinator, and much much more. If you're looking to build a startup, this episode is a must listen. Key Lessons:When you write cold emails, write directly to one person at a time. If it reads like it's a bulk message, it will likely get deleted. Make sure you're solving your customer's problem end to end and not just one part along the journey. For Fathom this meant that the job wasn't done until the notes from the zoom meetings were in the CRM. Fathom Website: https://fathom.video/
Episode Summary:In this episode of SaaS Origin Stories, Phil speaks with Richard White, CEO of Fathom, a free Zoom app that records, transcribes, and highlights the key moments from your Zoom calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. He is also the Founder and was the CEO of UserVoice; currently, however, he is Chairman of the Board at the same company.One of his previous colleagues, Jim Wright, has praised him for his approach to problem solving, “Rich is one of those developers who can see the whole picture and find a real world solution, not just a fix for a particular technical issue.”They discuss how the conception of SaaS products are usually due to finding roadblocks in technology, what it's like searching for investors, the amount of effort it takes to keep an audience's attention, and how Fathom became a Zoom native app and if they have any plans to expand outside of it.Guest at a Glance:Name: Richard WhiteAbout Jon: Richard White is the CEO of Fathom, a free Zoom app that records, transcribes, and highlights the key moments from your Zoom calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. He is also the Founder and was the CEO of UserVoice; currently, however, he is Chairman of the Board at the same company.Richard on LinkedInFathom on LinkedInFathom's WebsiteTopics we cover:Why Fathom came at the perfect timeUnderstanding exactly what users wantSearching far-and-wide for investorsBuilding a solid SaaS team and product When are you ready to launch your product?Trying to keep the audience's attentionThe high standards of making something easy and memorableHow Fathom became a Zoom native appPlans to expand outside of ZoomKey Takeaways:The Difference Between Hearing and Listening to Your CustomersFathom was created for people like Richard, who have a lot of meetings on Zoom, yet struggle to take notes at the same time. Ever since the pandemic, people have been faced with this issue, and after researching into the user experience, Richard came up with the idea for Fathom, an app which takes important notes from zoom meetings so you don't have to.Understanding what users want and need is a skill; it's something you have to train yourself to look out for. Pay attention to how your customers are speaking, how they're asking questions, what specific words are they using? It's only because of this ability that Fathom was able to exist in the first place.Searching Far-and-Wide for InvestorsSince its conception, Fathom has managed to raise about six million dollars in investments; a million of that money is from the users themselves. It started off by asking friends and family and putting on events, but they also wanted to try to reach people with connections to Zoom, considering it was the platform they were focused on. If they could find people there to invest, then they could not only raise money, but they could build solid and professional relationships. They also did a WeFunder campaign which allowed users to donate and invest.“I've found that, when you get people putting their own skin in the game - angels and our users - you just get a very different kind of relationship and engagement.”Houston, We're Ready for Takeoff…You have to make sure that before you launch your SaaS product, everything is ready. Richard explains, although they had a rough version of Fathom ready within the first few months, it took about a year before they could confidently release it into the world. In fact, a lot of the time, even when your product is in the early stages of its existence, warts and all, it's easy to see what it could evolve into, and if you can envision that end goal, then you can easily tolerate some of the bugs at the beginning.“If you can create something that solves a problem you have, and make sure there's a big market for that problem, it's such a hack. I had such high conviction for the product at an early stage because it's like, I'm willing to tolerate some of the bugs at the beginning, we just needed to polish it up.”Keeping the Audience's AttentionWhen creating anything - not just a SaaS platform - that involves grabbing an audience's attention, you need to be able to keep them interested for at least the first five minutes, otherwise your product just won't work or take off. Once you've lost a customer's attention and focus, it's exceedingly hard to get it back, so make sure your product performs the best it possibly can when showcasing it. Try to take a step back from your work and be honest with yourself about it, be subjective - ask yourself what you need to alter, what needs to go and what needs to be added. This way, you're more likely to keep the audience engaged and interested.“You learn a lot of things about how hard it is to get people's attention. We actually started off as a desktop app, then a zoom app, but we moved back to being a desktop app because we saw that in the zoom app, people would start a meeting and then they'd have to remember to turn on Fathom [...] It's very easy to be forgotten, especially when you're trying to change people's habits and behaviors.”
In this episode, Professor Phil Scraton is joined by Professor Shadd Maruna and Dr. Gillian McNaull to discuss their ESRC funded research project, Coping with Covid in Prison, commissioned by and conducted in partnership with the organisation User Voice. This unique project for the first time reveals the experiences of prisoners during the pandemic lockdown; a time when the voices of the incarcerated were unheard. User Voice, founded by former prisoner Mark Johnson, is dedicated to amplifying the experiences of prisoners and former prisoners in the criminal justice system. The researchers worked closely with the organisation to enable prisoners to share their stories during this unprecedented time. The podcast discusses the historical relationship between prisons and disease, highlighting the heightened risks of Covid-19 and isolation for those incarcerated. While prison staff and politicians regularly claimed success for their Covid strategies, this episode sheds light on the harsh realities faced by prisoners during the pandemic.
We've met some brilliant product minds on this show over the years. If you're a long-time listener you hopefully enjoyed discussions with legends like Phil McKinney, former CTO of HP, and Philippe Cases, founder and CEO of Topio Networks, among others. Today's guest belongs on that list. Rich and I first met when he was starting UserVoice around 2010 and I was at ServiceNow. I love his approach to innovation. He pioneered the idea that listening to customers can be as easy as adding a feedback tab to every web page back when all that existed were clunky survey tools. Today, thousands of sites use the widget he invented. He's now out to make meetings more productive by helping attendees focus on conversations while an app transcribes them and offers simple buttons to annotate what's happening. It's obvious once you've used Fathom that this is the future of meetings.Rich White is not only a serial innovator but also a repeat entrepreneur who has raised from a group of exceptional investors over the years and was part of the YC Winter 2021 batch. Enjoy!Listen and learn...As a product expert and innovator, how to know when you've found "an itch worth scratching"What is "product-market fit" and how to know when you've achieved itWhat is a viral coefficient and how do you calculate itHow the "jobs to be done" framework led Rich to develop the key feature of FathomThe hardest problem Fathom has solved... has nothing to do with voice transcriptionHow Fathom trains developers to practice responsible AIReferences in this episode:Project Linchpin from the US Army is centralizing more than 685 AI projectsPhil McKinney on AI and the Future of WorkPhilippe Cases on AI and the Future of WorkFathom
Richard White is the CEO and founder at Fathom, a free app that records, transcribes & highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. Fathom was a part of the Y-Combinator W21 batch, is one of only 50 Zoom App Launch Partners, and is one of a small handful of companies Zoom has invested in directly via their Zoom Apps Fund. Before Fathom, Richard founded UserVoice, one of the leading platforms technology companies, from startups to the Fortune 500, used to manage customer feedback and make strategic product decisions. UserVoice was notable for being the company that originally invented the Feedback tabs shown on the side of millions of websites worldwide today. Richard previously worked on Kiko, a company in the first batch of Y-Combinator, with Justin Kan and Emmett Shear who subsequently went on to found Twitch. Richard is passionate about designing intuitive productivity tools with delightful user experiences. Fathom is currently free, head over to the website to sign up: https://fathom.video/ Key Points:Understand your product Sell how the person wants to buyMakes sure you do what you do best: make connectionsAudit your trainingMake sure to maintain your mental health Find Rich on social media: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/rrwhite
Sustainable Xagility™ - board & executive c-suite agility for the organization's direction of travel
Matt Young, CEO of UserVoice and speaker within the product management circle joins John Coleman on the Xagility Podcast to discuss Scrum, Product management and listening to the customers opinions on products. About Matt: Matt is a leader in SaaS, product management, software engineering, with a passion for sustainable, high-performing teams. Challenging what it means to deliver a great SaaS product. Connect with Matt on: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcyoung/ About John: John Coleman's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncolemanagilitychef/ John Coleman's website: https://orderlydisruption.com/ Thank you for listening. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/xagility/message
Today we are joined by Richard White, the Founder, and CEO of Fathom, to talk about his journey from cold-calling competitor companies to finally building his own. He shares the many ups and downs he experienced at the beginning and how his business has grown exponentially in a year. Richard White has been a founder and deeply entrenched in the Silicon Valley startup scene for the last two decades. He was Product Design lead at Kiko.com, the startup that Justin Kan and Emmett sold on eBay for $258K. He went on to found UserVoice, where he is still chairman of the board. He founded Fathom Video in 2020 and was in YC Class of Winter 2021. Learn more about Richard at: Website: https://fathom.video/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/rrwhite ——— I love connecting with Work at Home RockStars! Reach out on LinkedIn, Instagram, or via email Website
Matt Young is the CEO UserVoice, a product feedback management software that enables businesses to make data-driven product decisions and prioritize feature requests by making customer feedback more meaningful. As a boy, he had early access to computers since his Dad worked for IBM. In the 80s, he was interested in music and video games, which carried on through the rest of his life. Matt started his professional career as a software developer, right when web browsers were released. He developed innovative solutions on the web well before SaaS was a thing. In 2015, Matt joined his current venture as the VP of Engineering. At the time he was hired, the company was trying to press into the enterprise space, and in order to do that, the company needed some organization and some process put into place. In this episode, Matt shares how we can guide our product feedback strategy to drive certainty and growth. Insights he shares include: How did the idea of UserVoice come about and who is it forHow to build a data-backed product validation processA data-backed product validation process for how product management is undertakenShould customers be driving your product roadmapHow to find the right people for product feedback and validationIt seems experience is key to getting this right so what metrics should we track - NPS, PMF, churn rate, renewal rate etcHow to create scalable product feedback and validation testing processHow to foster collaboration between departments to make the best use of product feedbackand much much more ...
How I Raised It - The podcast where we interview startup founders who raised capital.
Produced by Foundersuite (www.foundersuite.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors who have raised capital. This episode is with Richard White, CEO of Fathom (www.fathom.video), an app that plugs into Zoom and helps you recall and share important moments from your meetings. In this episode, we talk about his previous company Uservoice, the pros and cons of strategic investors (in his case, Zoom invested in Fathom), why he raised funds from 90 investors over multiple smaller rounds with no lead investors, why he decided to go through Y Combinator even though he's a seasoned (3x) entrepreneur, tips for getting into Y Combinator, and more. Fathom most recently raised a $4.7 million seed round from over 90 early-stage investors. Zoom's Apps Fund was a strategic investor. Other funds include Maven Ventures, Character.vc, Active Capital, Global Founders Capital, Rackhouse.vc, Soma Capital, BoxOne Ventures, Quiet Capital, Immeasurable, Liquid2 Ventures, Valley Oak Investments, Hashtag Blessed, Whoa.vc, and Friale. Individuals include Bill Tai (Angel Investor in Zoom), Matt Ocko (Angel Investor in Zoom), Oleg Rogynskyy (CEO, People.ai), Steve Huffman (CEO, Reddit), Emmett Shear (CEO, Twitch), Justin Kan (Co-Founder, Twitch), Kyle Vogt (CEO, Cruise), Daniel Kan (Co-Founder, Cruise), Finbarr Taylor (CEO, Shogun), Immad Akhund (CEO, Mercury), Viral Bajaria (Founder/CTO, 6sense), Parm Uppal (CRO, DataRobot), Aaron King (CEO, Snapdocs), Aaron Rankin (CTO, SproutSocial), Jay Jamison (CPO, Quick Base), Alex MacCaw (Founder, Clearbit), Arram Sabeti (Founder, ZeroCater), Josh Buckley (Former CEO, ProductHunt), Rich Liu (Former COO Lattice), Chris Fanini (Co-Founder, Weebly), Nick Raushenbush (Co-Founder, Shogun), Jacob Rosenberg (Co-Founder, LendUp), Mikhail Seregine (Co-Founder, Outschool), Vikas Gupta (CEO, Wonder Workshop), Jinal Jhaveri (CEO, enable.us), Jeff Whitlock (Founder, Pingpong), Adam Michalski (CEO, Partnered), Andrew Chen (Co-Founder, Explo), Cedric Dussud (Co-Founder, Narrator.ai), Dwight Crow (Co-Founder, Whisper.ai), Jamie Quint (Uncommon Capital), Benjamin Bryant , Chris Evans, Jason Hunt, Maggie Gryko, Matthew Fong, Michael Keller, Nitin Shantharam, Shaan Puri, Leslie Lai, Zach Sherman, Zach Waterfield, Reza Hussein, Kutta Srinivasan, Jaclyn Kossmann, Eugene Zarakhovsky, Mujtaba Wani, Will Laufer, Eleanor Dorfman, Rustam Lalkakaas well as the CEOs of Reddit, Twitch, Cruise, Mercury, People.ai, Snapdocs and Shogun. How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $9 Billion since 2016. Create a free account at www.foundersuite.com.
Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you the next episode of... Product Mastery Now with host Chad McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved in innovation and managing products become more successful, grow their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. About the Episode: Today we are looking at product management work through the eyes of a CEO, exploring several topics together. The CEO joining us is Matt Young, CEO of UserVoice, the first product feedback and research tool for software companies. UserVoice is the tool I see most frequently used for collecting customer feedback and prioritizing customer needs to help product managers create more valuable products. Matt started his professional career as a software developer, and throughout his career he has been pushing for better ways to build software products.
Insights on product strategy and customer research for product managers Today we are looking at product management work through the eyes of a CEO, exploring several topics together. The CEO joining us is Matt Young, CEO of UserVoice, the first product feedback and research tool for software companies. UserVoice is the tool I see most […]
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Overcast Support the Show. Get the AudioBook! AudioBook: Audible| Kobo| Authors Direct | Google Play | Apple Summary Hey everyone. Stay tuned to the end of the interview where I'll give you some actionable insights that I learned from my guest. These insights are also in the show notes. As always, thanks for listening. Now on to my guest for today, Richard White, founder and CEO of two SaaS companies, Fathom and UserVoice. An engineer who develops tools to "scratch an itch," Richard founded Fathom to solve a problem he was facing: how to take good notes on Zoom calls. As he was frequently talking to customers on Zoom, he wanted a better way to capture those insights while in conversation. Fathom uses a combination of tools to address this problem, which became a top-rated app on the Zoom app marketplace. Richard's experience provides insight into the process of founding a startup - and how doing it the second time around can be a bit easier. Richard says, while his first endeavor was a journey in just figuring out what he was doing, with his second one, he came in with a better idea of what to expect. While his first company was mostly bootstrapped, Fathom has had funding from the start, which Richard acknowledges was essential for this particular product. He also had people he could tap to develop the product and start selling it, another advantage of being a serial entrepreneur. Richard is a strong believer in the power of good customer service and of soliciting customer feedback in order to make the best product possible. Indeed, UserVoice is a tool that enables companies to get feedback. In our conversation, Richard explains the ways he collects the feedback and puts it to use to make better products and customer experiences. Now, let's get better together. Actionable Insights Richard emphasizes the importance of making a standout product. "You never get a second chance to make a good first impression," he says. That doesn't mean he isn't always trying to improve and make the product even better. Richard wants to make people "love" his product, not just like it. "People don't refer products they like, they refer products they love." Fathom is an example of a company that makes customer care an integral part of its business; this is key for making connections and building a loyal fan base. Links to Explore Further Richard White on LinkedIn Fathom Keep In Touch Book or Blog or Twitter or LinkedIn or The Story Funnel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Richard White, the serial entrepreneur behind Uservoice and Fathom.video. Richard is a design engineer and product visionary who has been in the first YC batch with Justin Khan and Emmett Shear for Kiko (YC S05) and most recently came back to the YC W21 to see how startup kids are doing the tricks today. 00:00 Intro 00:51 Who is Richard White 03:40 The power of cold emails 05:09 Kiko (YC S05) 08:53 The UserVoice journey 12:09 Traction and funding 16:09 UserVoice today $18:16 Starting Fathom 22:28 The Fathom product 27:35 Fathom customer profile 30:27 Fathom in remote orgs 32:03 Richard's own use of Fathom 33:57 Fathom integrations 36:14 Zoom Marketplace + platform risk $ 39:20 Going through YC (again) 42:57 Fathom seed round 46:11 The fun of fundraising 47:28 Vision for Fathom
Today on the show we have Matt Young, CEO of UserVoiceIn this episode, Matt shares how he has navigated the shift from CTO to CEO with his biggest learning along the way.We then discussed how UserVoice uses its product to collect user feedback, why user interviews are the most impactful form of customer feedback, and how you can maximize the time invested while doing them and we wrapped up by discussing how to avoid confirmation bias while conducting your research.As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly at Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.
@MatiasNisenson En las software factories no la pasa bien nadie. No la pasan bien los developers y no la pasan bien los clientes. Es un modelo que no funciona, al menos en el largo plazo. El skill más importante de un CEO es convencer. Convencer a todo el mundo de diferentes cosas. En 2016 forcé la venta de Tiempy. Le escribí a tres de nuestros principales competidores diciéndoles que queríamos ir a hacer otra cosa. Recibimos dos ofertas, y terminamos aceptando una. La mejor manera para desarrollar un SaaS era hacer un MVP, lanzar y ponerle un @UserVoice para que te den feedback. Un consejo que me dio @patojutard fue: «más allá de que la guita te va a cambiar la vida, vender una empresa es una especie de medallita. Cuando vos hiciste y vendiste una empresa es como la validación máxima para el resto de los inversores.» Una de las cosas que aprendí en estos últimos tiempos es que DeFi es un quilombo y que las DAOs no funcionan. https://twitter.com/ETPA_Spaces/status/1546255182719340544?s=20&t=xtNuX8j6OHjBGKXCS8McQw
Ryan is joined by Matt Young in this episode. Matt was born an engineer and now runs UserVoice, a product feedback software that helps companies make data driven decisions and prioritise future requests to help their growth Matt and Ryan talk about growth strategy, the power of learning from your clients and what it means for a software companies' success when they truly back their engineers. KEY TAKEAWAYS UserVoice help answer the age-old problem of product market fit. UserVoice gets a lot of inbound requests from companies, they are often searched for when a company is struggling and follow a content-marketing strategy to aid this. When a customer talks to UserVoice about their unique problems, they start with the outcome and work backwards. Being a multi-product company was needed for UserVoice to grow and Matt Young headed this. The way people want to talk to the companies that provide their software services has changed, they want to know more detail and more data. There's a lot more information that you have to be clever about learning. UserVoice offer help beyond the software, this is something that attracts more people towards them. Having the ability to work with lots of different product companies means that UserVoice can have visibility what works and what doesn't. The companies that do the best are the ones that measure twice and cut once. When starting product research, it's important to be crystal clear about what you want and expect to learn. Facilitate meetings between your marketing and product teams. The information and ideas they gather can be useful to both teams to share. Listening to your customers is about using the information they give you to go away and create the best product. It doesn't always mean doing exactly what they say but about –understanding and facilitating their needs. BEST MOMENTS “We try to share as much as possible to become thought leaders and industry experts” “This is a way to put quantitative and qualitive data behind what an engineering team has asked to build” “People who see us and say I really wish our company had that” “Do you know that if you went to build a solution in mind that it would sell?” Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?" Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets Ryan Staley Founder and CEO Whale Boss 312-848-7443 ryan@whalesellingsystem.com www.ryanstaley.io EPISODE RESOURCES https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcyoung ABOUT THE SHOW How do you grow like a VC backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom? Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO's and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset. This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World's Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpaul Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more. This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less. Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
About Matt Young;Matt Young is the CEO of UserVoice, the first product feedback and research tool for software companies around the world. Matt started his professional career as a software developer, right when web browsers were released. He developed innovative solutions on the web well before SaaS and Product Management were the ubiquitous terms they are today.Social Media:https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcyoung/Websitehttps://www.uservoice.com/-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Please send me your feedback , your key takeaways from this episode, any topics you would like me to cover, any concerns and questions at showupwithpriyanka@gmail.comYou can connect with me at Facebook PageInstagramLinkedinWork with me:Systems and High Performing Team saves more than just the sale. When you have amazing leaders, positive contagious team culture and a powerful system in place, you will be able to run epic promotions, increase your sales, & scale your company beyond what you think is possible.You create a highly functioning team that operates from strengths and leverage and automate your systems to scale.
Welcome back to the From Vendorship → Partnership podcast, Season 2: Seller's Journey. This week, we're sharing a masterclass we held with a panel of top revenue leaders on how to maximize NRR – the new startup North Star! We talked about best practices to action expansion opportunities & mitigate churn, who should own upsells & customer relationships, and NRR tactics for different sales motions. Get key takeaways from the masterclass here! Meet the experts: Brian Reuter, Director of Account Management at Figma – 10+ years GTM experience across the customer journey in sales, marketing, and CS Alex Heller, Head of Account Management at NYSHEX – 10+ years in sales & leadership at Flexport, Athena Health, etc. Connor Fee, CRO at Shortcut – 10+ years GTM & leadership experience at Clearbit, Winning by Design, UserVoice, & more
Richard White is founder and CEO of Fathom.video, a free app that records, transcribes & highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. Fathom was a part of the Y-Combinator W21 batch, is one of only 50 Zoom App Launch Partners, and is one of a small handful of companies Zoom has invested in directly via their Zoom Apps Fund.Prior to Fathom, Richard founded UserVoice, one of the leading platforms that technology companies, from startups to the Fortune 500, use for managing customer feedback and making strategic product decisions. UserVoice was notable for being the company that originally invented the Feedback tabs shown on the side of millions of websites around the world today. In this episode, Dean Newlund and Richard White discuss:The difference with remote office culture Sharing information asynchronously How virtual meetings can be better Solving the problem by taking notes Key Takeaways:People think that office culture can be translated easily into remote office culture, but the truth is that they are two different animals. What will work for one will not work as well on the other. Find asynchronous ways to share information. Meetings are generally more taxing than reading an email at your own pace. Asynchronous is a lot more efficient and easier. Technology will soon catch up and virtual meetings will get better than in-person meetings. Still, even now, there are a lot of advantages to virtual meetings - for example, the time saved from not having to commute and the energy saved from not having to leave for work. Taking notes sometimes causes you to miss out on something else that's interesting that you'd like to take notes on. You can record the whole meeting, but you'd have to sift through hours of footage after. Marking/timestamping parts in the meeting you'd like to get back to will help you to be more present in the meeting while at the same time, going back to those interesting stuff when the meeting is done. "When the video is on, it's more mentally taxing because everyone's worrying about how they look. Turn off video - give people permission to not pay attention." — Richard White See Dean's TedTalk “Why Business Needs Intuition” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEq9IYvgV7IConnect with Richard White: Website: https://fathom.video/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite/ | https://www.linkedin.com/company/fathom-video/ Connect with Dean:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgqRK8GC8jBIFYPmECUCMkwWebsite: https://www.mfileadership.com/The Mission Statement E-Newsletter: https://www.mfileadership.com/blog/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deannewlund/Twitter: https://twitter.com/deannewlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/MissionFacilitators/Email: dean.newlund@mfileadership.comPhone: 1-800-926-7370 Show notes by Podcastologist: Justine TallaAudio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
Matt Young claims to have been born with a tech spoon in his mouth, having his Dad work for IBM and providing early access to computers. In the 80's, he was interested in music and video games, which carried on through the rest of his life. He is very interested in the intersection of tech and how it can improve real life. Fun fact about Matt.. he loves pinball! He restores and works on the machines themselves, which combines everything he loves. Some other fun facts are that Matt was (and still is) a club DJ, and he loves to travel to ride roller coasters.In 2015, Matt joined his current venture as the VP of Engineering. At the time he was hired, the company was trying to press into the enterprise space, and in order to do that, the company needed some organization and some process put into place.This is Matt's creation story of UserVoice.SponsorsImmediateOrbitPostmarkStytchVerb DataWebapp.ioLinksWebsite: https://uservoice.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcyoung/Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/code-story/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Should users or customers drive your roadmap decisions? The answer is yes AND no. Like everything in product management, it depends... and Matt and I dive deep into the topic. If you want to get into product management, join us at Path2Product to get the experience and visibility you need to land your first product job. Check out UserVoice and start collecting more robust and actionable customer feedback today --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/productmanagementlessons/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/productmanagementlessons/support
Show Notes Disruptive CEO Nation Podcast with Allison K. Summers Episode 149 Richard White is founder and CEO of Fathom. Video, a free app that records, transcribes & highlights your calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. Fathom was a part of the Y-Combinator W21 batch, is one of only 50 Zoom App Launch Partners, and is one of a small handful of companies Zoom has invested in directly via their Zoom Apps Fund. Prior to Fathom, Richard founded UserVoice, one of the leading platforms that technology companies, from startups to the Fortune 500, use for managing customer feedback and making strategic product decisions. UserVoice was notable for being the company that originally invented the Feedback tabs shown on the side of millions of websites around the world today. Richard previously worked on Kiko, a company in the first batch of Y-Combinator, with Justin Kan and Emmett Shear who subsequently went on to found Twitch. Richard is passionate about designing intuitive productivity tools with delightful user experiences. Top of Form Bottom of Form In our conversation, Richard explains: - How his app Fathom works and how it improves customer communication within a company. - Why Richard decided to start Fathom and his business model. - Fathom's strategy of giving some users advisor status within the company. Be sure to check out Richard's links listed below. Enjoy the show! Connect with Richard White: LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite Websites- https://kitcaster.com/richard-white https://fathom.video Connect with Allison: Website: allisonksummers.com #tech #SAAS # business #designthinking #AI #creativesociety #teambuilding #CEO #startup #startupstory #founder #futureofwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Richard White is a serial entrepreneur, founder & CEO of Fathom and previously User Voice. Richard's current company is a Y-Combinator backed startup, working on a video plugin that enables recording and managing highlights from Zoom calls. In our conversation with Richard, we dig deeper into his current venture Fathom Video. We talk about the problem its trying to solve, which is, simply put, note-taking during sales and customer support calls. Richard also discusses potential use cases for their software and addresses the risks related to building a product that is so closely connected to one specific platform.We also discuss Richard's fascinating startup journey, which starts with working on Kiko along with Justin Kan and Emmet Shear (who went on to found Twitch), going through the very first Y Combinator batch in 2005, selling Kiko on eBay for quarter million dollars, and eventually founding his first company User Voice.The User Voice days were still early days of startups in general, and Richard tells hilarious story of finding one of his co-founders on Craigslist. He also speaks on the division of labour between him and other co-founders, building the first MVP, incorporating and their first fundraising efforts.Richard also talks about his experience of doing Y Combinator as a repeat founder and shares battle-tested advice to first-time founders.
Glasgow summit and Commsverse get a mention Marijn is convinced that MS Teams as a hub is the way to go to the point that he even misses the ‘It Depends' joke that he keeps mentioning. Steves. Sarcasm is evident throughout the podcast, but Marijn defends it well.The devil is in the detail and Steve is not sure that the app is ready and counters many arguments that Marijn puts in and event Steve is beginning to see some sense but the strategy does need some development and yet again suggests that this conversation is ahead of the time and that maybe the future might deliver the right functionality.It is difficult to argue against the logic that because I spend so much time in MS Teams having access to the applications I need for my job.Steve Starts to think about how it might work, and Marijn identifies some solutions about how to focus the navigation against audiences based on policies for personae groups.Steve is not impressed with this idea and wonders if MS Teams in its current format is suitable to provide Navigation and appropriate functionality to become the true application, Hub. But accepts as a strategy the concept makes sense but wonders if it has the legsThe biggest issue is the current structure because everything is based around teams a Channel to have global access to the app's navigation seems difficult.Expanding Topics AI functionality might be an answer to draw people across to the apps your team is using and maybe a solution for your team to continue your processes when you go on holiday and maybeSteve throws in left-field questions to ask about UserVoice and cannot remember the name of the replacement. But after the podcast, we remember. We know now that it's called Feedback Hub which is a Windows Application for reporting improvements.Marijn accepts that this is not a perfect solution and decides that the only perfect solution is Anne Hathaway The boys eventually leave this with the suggestion that this is a strategy that needs testing so why not think about MS Teams as a Hub/platform as you consider an upgrade or rollout of an app and consider if it can be easily integrated into the MS teams and adds value.The finish is from the USA with a very neat Drink that Al Capone once described as “the Good Stuff” Templeton Rye 6-year-old from a small-town distillery in the State of IOWA
Product feedback is an indispensable tool for Product Managers, so the power that digital tools are providing to capture that feedback shouldn't be overlooked.UserVoice is a platform looking to hone in on the customer experience, and their CEO Matt Young is steadfast in his commitment to prioritising and streamlining the feedback capture.Matt joins us on Tied Together to discuss how digital tools help filter and analyse feedback, how to integrate software most effectively, and the connected future of Product Management tools.This episode of Tied Together covers:Breaking down silos and sharing relevant information throughout a businessHow digital tools are enabling more accurate, relevant analysis of customer feedbackKeeping feedback capture tools readily available to solve customer issuesThe future of Product ManagementTackling the core issue of validating the problem you're solvingLinks and references: https://bit.ly/3jAo8bD
In this podcast episode, we interview Matt Young, CEO at UserVoice, a product feedback management solution for SaaS platforms. Matt explains how the platform captures user feedback to deliver insights into product problems and solutions and how this raw data can be used to inform marketing and sales strategies. Matt also shares his insight into trends within the SaaS industry.
Matt Young is the CEO of UserVoice, the first (and we think best!) product feedback and research tool for software companies around the world. Matt started his professional career as a software developer, right when web browsers were released. He developed innovative solutions on the web well before SaaS and Product Management were the ubiquitous terms that they are today. Over his career, he has pushed for better ways to build software. And through all the changes in development methodologies, he has put the customer at the centre of everything his teams have built. This is what attracted him to UserVoice - an opportunity to make sure that teams building complex software solutions have direct access to the intended users - to make sure that the problems any company or development team are solving are actually worth solving. Questions Could you share a little bit about your journey with our listeners, in your own words? Could you tell us a little bit about UserVoice? To the average listener that's listening to this podcast, a little bit about the company, what does the company do? And what types of businesses do you primarily service? What about tips for improving feature request responses? Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Can you also share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even one that you've read recently that has really impacted you in a great way. If you could choose the best customer service or customer experience tip to give to our listeners who are business owners, what would be the most important tip that you would give them to ensure that their business is successful? Could you also share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can they find you online? Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to get you back on track if for whatever reason you got derailed or you got off track. Highlights Matt's Journey Matt shared that he had a pretty ordinary software development career starting off as an individual software developer, and then moving into management. The thing that he had experienced while doing all that was that he would notice that product teams would ask engineering teams, which are big and expensive and complicated to build things and didn't really have a good way to justify the reasoning behind that. He was really interested in hearing why customers thought what they were being asked to build was important, why it was an important problem to solve, why the solution they had in mind was a good one for them. And he just was really passionate about companies being connected to the users that they serve. So, that's kind of what brought him to UserVoice. He started out as the VP of Engineering at UserVoice but over the years, they've spun out a couple of other products and other companies, so the original founder is now the CEO of a sister company of theirs, it's working on some parallel products, and UserVoice is his to run and build and all the responsibility and fun that comes with that. What is UserVoice and What Does the Company Do? Me: Could you tell us a little bit about UserVoice? To the average listener that's listening to this podcast, a little bit about the company, what does the company do? And what types of businesses do you primarily service? Matt shared that UserVoice is a software as a service product and it's all oriented around making sure that you can gather any feedback that comes your way about your product, and that that feedback is available to the entire organization and can be analyzed and used to make products better. So, you guys have probably seen somewhere in your professional lives, a place where you had the opportunity to tell a team how they could make their product better, and that's evolved over the years and the way that that happens. There are annoying ways to do it, like with pop-up windows and there're really common ways to do it, like with surveys. But whether you've got a system in place or not, like people are providing feedback all the time, they're doing that in the middle of a sales demo, for example, they're saying what they do and don't like about the product, they're showing. They're doing that through support tickets, by asking about a thing they want to try to accomplish that may not be supported yet. So, UserVoice the product makes it really easy for anyone who's in any position to hear customer feedback, either an employee of the company and support sales or success, or the customers themselves, have the ability to send whatever it is that's worrying them to the company and then gives the product team the ability to aggregate what is usually a pretty big mountain of data into something that helps them relate their product development plans to the goals that the company currently has. So, the short story is they're a software as a service product, but it's a business analysis tool that's built around product feedback. Me: One of the things I was intrigued in getting your feedback on is, do you think customers should be driving the product roadmap? Matt stated that that's a question that they get asked quite a bit and the funny thing about that is that a lot of the traditional like stereotypical personality type of a product manager is a very creative type person and he thinks they can feel a little bit threatened by saying, “Hey, your customers should drive your roadmap.” And they think, “Well, what about me? What about the innovation and creativity that we have to bring to bear?” He thinks it's a mistake to think of it as a black and white question like, should customers be driving a roadmap? “No.” Should companies be creating a roadmap without customer input? “No, neither one is quite right.” They need to use each other to really understand each other and meet to find common ground about the real problems that they're trying to solve. So, he basically views customer feedback as research inputs into a roadmap that's getting created. Not customers, like actually prioritizing things and steering the ship directly but they do have a lot of really valuable information for companies that can help them go to market with much greater success. Tips for Improving Feature Request Responses Matt stated that the typical product manager is getting asked to do a lot of things, they're getting asked by their co-workers to change the product to close a deal, for example, customers obviously have a lot of input. One thing that really makes a lot of product managers nervous is the fact that they know that they need to say no to a lot of these things just because of resource constraints, or that what they're being asked for doesn't necessarily fit the vision of the company. But getting comfortable saying no to people, he thinks it's just a matter of being more transparent with them. The customers of software, especially these days are getting more sophisticated and understanding how software is developed, how hard it is to make it perfect and do all the things that you want it to do. So, he thinks transparency goes a really long way so when you do get feedback about your product, acknowledging the people that you're listening, making sure that they feel valued, and that the time they took to give you that feedback is something that you take seriously and find value in yourself, acknowledging that is important. But then being very frank with what's the process, what's going to happen next. He doesn't think most customers would expect, “Okay, great, we're going to get to work on this right away.” That's not the way that software gets developed. But if you can explain to people like, “Hey, cool, thanks. I've made a note of this. We're going to talk about it with the team; we're going to keep our ears out for other customers like you who might need a similar kind of thing. And is it okay if we come back to you and have a conversation about this topic later when we decide to dig into it some more and get some more specific feedback from you about how your point of view has changed, about different solutions we're considering and all those things.” So, using customer feedback as an invitation to engage with a customer base, he thinks is a really good way to look at it. Me: Now, as it relates to product development, a lot of a lot of customers I believe have challenges sometimes trying to identify what's the right type of product that they may need for their business. The customer feedback, it's definitely something you should get ongoing once you actually sold a product, or you've had an idea of what the design is going to look like and how it's going to affect the customer's life. But let's say you're at a developmental stage where you're not sure exactly what the market needs, how do you gather feedback at that point? Matt stated that the best way to do that is through one on one interviews. And he thinks them being a one on one, he'd say in person, but more often than not, it's something like a Zoom call or a Skype call or something like that, where you're talking to people. You want to get as high fidelity information as you possibly can from people and that usually requires a conversation, asking people to fill in a form, it's kind of a boring activity. You can't ask follow on questions, etc. And when you're just in that early stage of developing your product, you want to be able to interact with that customer and maybe observe how excited or indifferent they are about what you're building. Are they just eager and jumping out of their seat at the opportunity to use something like what you're describing to them? Or are they more middle of the road. Most people are very polite, so they're not going to tell you that it's a bad idea or anything like that but they might not be excited about it and that's a pretty good sign that you might not be on to something that's truly differentiated in the market for you. So, they always say like, until you have 100 or so customers, doing interviews in person and not getting software systems in the middle of that connection between you and a customer is really important to do, where once you cross a threshold of a 100 or so customers, you need to have systems that can scale because your time is limited, and you couldn't possibly have conversations with every single one of them. Me: Agreed. So feedback, your whole solution is built around feedback. And I think feedback is so important. How is it that you handle dealing with some of your clients? For example, here in Jamaica, I found that sometimes when organizations get feedback, whether it's in like in an electronic format, or it is submitted to them in a verbal conversation, sometimes the organizations get defensive and it comes over in their tone and their language. Matt agreed and stated that if you think about feedback, when was the last time you went out of your way to go tell someone they were doing a great job? “Everything that you are doing, and your product is awesome, and I love it, don't change a thing.” That just doesn't happen. You might occasionally get a compliment about something they do like, but it's always going to come with something that people want to be different. So, as a company who provides a product to people, get into the mindset that they're not judging you, they're not trying to tell you you've done a bad job, they're trying to express to you what problems they think you might be a partner to them and help solve are and if you view it that way, then it's a whole lot less threatening, you're less likely to get defensive. It's never going to be all good news, it's mostly like, “Here are deficiencies that I think you have in your product and ways that it could be better.” But don't take it that way, take it to mean like, “Okay, these are opportunities that we have, that are potential improvements that could not only benefit our business, but really benefit these customers and what they're trying to do in their lives.” They get a lot of people who come to them who are pretty nervous about opening up the door to get feedback about their products, because it does seem like a little bit of a bad news train that's going to come your way. But they always try to coach them that like, “Okay, well, would you feel better just doing this blind, fumbling around, building software hoping that you're right. Or would you rather have actionable real information from people, even if it is a little bit tough to take at times?” And inevitably, when you think about it like, “Yeah, I know need the information, it's just we've been working so hard, and everyone's poured their hearts into it and I don't know if I can take hearing all the ways that people don't like it.” But it's okay, you'll get through it, we're all tough human beings. So it'll serve you well in the long run. Me: That's really, really good advice. And it's good to know that even though you're an organization that's focused on feedback, you do offer some form of coaching with your clients, to kind of get them in that mindset to change your perspective, because you are correct. If you change your perspective and look at it as an opportunity, which generally speaking, I don't think the customer would come back to give you feedback if they didn't want to continue using your product. Matt agreed. They wouldn't bother, the fact that they spared some time for you is a really good sign. It shows a degree of passion. As he's thinking about this, he's thinking about the world's most successful companies and you might in your mind, say, “Well, they've got it made, they've got these huge customer bases that are rolling in money.” But if you think about their world, they have even more feedback coming their way that's even more critical coming from all different directions in the world, because they are so popular. So it never ends, you're always going to get advice either unsolicited or solicited about how it could be better. So use it, use it to your advantage, make it a tool, not a threat. App, Website or Tool that Matt Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business When asked about online resource that he cannot live without, Matt shared that the app for him, it's Superhuman, the email client. They, like a lot of companies when the pandemic started shifted to working remotely and so even more than ever, his world is driven by email. So having a very efficient system in place that drives the mountain of email that shows up in his inbox every day, you can pry Superhuman out of his cold dead hands. And one of the things he likes about Superhuman also is that they're very public about the way that they do assess its value and build it. And Rahul Vohra who runs Superhuman, is a really interesting resource to look at from a product management perspective. So on two fronts, it's a great product and the way that they work on it is really interesting. Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Matt When asked about books that have impacted him, Matt stated that he'll share two because there's just one very old one that he read a long time ago and there's one relatively newer one that he thinks is really important. The older one is an old favourite that he's sure you've all heard of, How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And the reason he likes it so much is that he's an introvert. And introverts are not shy, they're not afraid of social interactions or anything like that but it drains energy to have a lot of interactions with people. And How to Win Friends & Influence People was really to him the beginning of understanding behavioral psychology and learning how to do that on a person to person basis really set the foundation for thinking about how to build software products that speak to the psychological motivations behind what people do and don't do. So to him, it was kind of like the impetus to get started with what turned into a much bigger thing so they study psychology to try to make sure that their products are really good too. And it's a very approachable thing, especially if you listen to the audio book, whoever they got to narrate; it just feels like a warm blanket on a cold day, that guy's voice is great. The other one he'd recommend, it's along the same lines, there's a book by Yuval Noah Harari called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and it's this very interesting discussion about the evolution of mankind and the various phases that it's gone through, even going back to like cavemen. But looking at the Iron Age, the Stone Age, all the different ages that we've gone through, and even more recent history. It even looks at things like religion through the lens of all the different eras. There was a time in history where multiple Gods was the norm. And the days we live in today, one God is the norm. And by looking at things way zoomed out like this, and humankind, you start to see the patterns of what changes and what stays the same with all of us over time and it's just this fascinating, very unusual perspective on humankind that he thought was really interesting. Important Customer Experience Tips for Business Owners to Ensure That Their Business is Successful Me: Now, Matt, could you also share with us and this is a bonus question. It wasn't in the conversation flow, but I feel like you give us an amazing answer. So the question is, if you could choose the best customer service or customer experience tip to give to our listeners who are business owners, what would be the most important tip that you would give them to ensure that their business is successful? Matt stated that he's going to say something that is a variation of like, make sure people aren't just the numbers to you and to put that into very tactical terms, call people by their name, and view them as an actual human being. If you're answering a support ticket, it's very easy to view things as an email that's coming through without a person behind it, who's having an actual problem, or having a good day or a bad day or frustration or excitement about what you're doing. But if you can always be visualizing the person behind it, and the fact that they go beyond this relationship that you have with them about your product, and they are a human being that is just like you in terms of their hopes and dreams and fears and the lives that they lead, it's going to make you a much more empathetic provider of services and that goes a really, really long way in the success of businesses. What Matt is Really Excited About Now! Matt stated that this is actually something he's really, really excited about. They just switched to a four day workweek, UserVoice did. And he thinks it's common in some areas of Europe, Scandinavia, in particular is kind of leading the way on it. But not a lot of American companies have tried this out and he thinks that's born of a few things and it's conjecture on his part but he thinks it's just lack of trust that a lot of companies have in their workforce, which he thinks is a huge mistake. But they're a relatively small company, and they try to be very experimental in what they do. And in doing so, they started a four day workweek experiment about six weeks ago. And they laid out what their goals were, their goals were concrete, they wanted to make sure that their output was just as good as it is with a five day work week. But they wanted to make sure that people had more time to pursue their lives outside of work. And it's been an epically good experience across the board, he's sent out a survey every two weeks since they started asking people if they would continue if they had to decide today, and then asking about what some of the pros and cons have been. And people will tell you, like, “My days are busy, but they're very engaging. And I feel like this scarcity of time makes me choose my battles really carefully.” And then, the one thing as an example, a guy named Tori, who's a product manager on their team, he has date morning with his wife every Friday morning, because the kids are at school, and his wife's favourite thing to do is to go have breakfast at a restaurant. And so, they just do this every Friday, it's like, “My marriage is better, my connection to my wife is better, and I enjoy my job more.” So this is something he thinks more companies should look into. It's been great for them. Me: I totally agree. Lovely, I love that. I really, really love that, I'm sure your employees must be totally excited that the organization is taking this leap forward. And you're doing it in a country or territory where it's not widely adopted as yet, hopefully, it will be eventually, as you had mentioned. Matt shared that he has a hard time imagining going back to I five day workweek, it's only been a month and a half after working professionally for 35 years. Me: I've spoken to so many people that said that they don't know what it would be like to go back into the office. And like here in Jamaica, we were kind of emerging out of the pandemic like a lot of other countries are, but there are a lot of organizations who they just can't see and I think it's because they don't have the systems and tools in place, really but they just can't see their business operating with their team members, majority of them operating from home, and some of them in all honesty, really don't need to be in a physical space, in a building, in a business district area to come and get the job done. I think if they had the right productivity tools to kind of measure and as you said, they were able to clearly identify what their goals are, and are still able to achieve those goals with their team members working from home, it's very doable. Matt stated that it does take trust on the part of the leadership of the organization, that you've hired the right people and that a lot of companies say this, but he thinks a lot of companies, it's lip service that, “I don't care what you do, as long as you get your work done.” There are other companies that if they find out, “I took an hour long walk at lunch, because I wanted to, they might get judgy about that,” which is why if you're getting good stuff done, it doesn't make any sense. So, he agrees. It's very similar to the remote versus office problem, and he doesn't need to watch someone work to know that they're doing a good job; he wants to see the results of what they do. Where Can We Find Matt Online LinkedIn – Matt Young Email – matt@uservoice.com Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Matt Uses When asked about quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Matt stated that he doesn't have a quote; his mind just doesn't work that way. If people ask him about like people that he follows and all that stuff, he tends not to do that, he tends to just assimilate his worldview into something that is influenced in small and big ways by all the different things he's read or all the different people that he interacts with. But he thinks that the most important thing that he tries to keep in mind, especially these days, it was highlighted by the pandemic happening is that your life is not your job. To him, the most important thing is the positive impact that you have on the earth in the time that you're here. Most specifically, the people around you. He grew up outside New York City so sometimes his language can be colourful, so he won't say it; don't be a you know, what is, the thing that drives him all the time, other people are just as stressed as you are, they're less privileged than you are, just have a bit of empathy for them. Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners Links How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.” The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!
Join me as I meet talk to Matt Young about how the user's voice is very important and the data collected from surveys, interviews and more are very important for decisions making. We will also discuss Matt's company, UserVoice. designing great customer feedback forms, challenges when receiving feedback from response forms, improving feature request responses and more. All data driven!!!
In this conversation with Matt Young, CEO at UserVoice, he talks about retention and product.Today, you'll hear about finding the a-ha moment, the customer journey, Matt's top of mind thoughts around retention and product, the greater noise-to-signal in the industry today, the main problems Matt sees in companies doing user research, when and how to re-evaluate and recalibrate your value proposition, and the future of UserVoice.As a leader in SaaS, product management, and product management, Matt has been challenging what it means to deliver great SaaS products for over 20 years. Prior to his current role as CEO of UserVoice, he served as VP of Engineering and President of UserVoice, as VP and CTO at Vodori, and as a Senior Analyst at Duke University. Since 2020, Matt has been a Product School Featured Speaker. Matt holds a BSc in Computer Science from Syracuse University and an MSc in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Episode Outline[01:20] What's most top of mind for Matt around retention and product?[02:21] The a-ha moment and the customer journey[05:35] Today's greater noise-to-signal[07:37] Re-evaluating and recalibrating on your value proposition[09:27] Primary problems in companies' user research[12:13] UserVoice today and in the future[14:48] Matt's influential peopleMatt's MentorsAll the people he has wronged along the way.Rahul VohraConnect with MattLinkedInWebsiteConnect with Matter Made WebsiteLinkedIn (Matter Made)LinkedIn (Elias Rubel, CEO, Matter Made)
Your customers aren't product managers, but their feedback drives your product decisions. As you gather their valuable feedback and prioritize their requests, it's important to understand the “why” behind them. Join Samantha and her guest, Matt Found, CEO of UserVoice, as they discuss the importance of gathering customer feedback from multiple sources for product management, and be able to answer the question of WHY customers ask for product enhancements, versus simply requesting feature upgrades.
Matt Young, CEO at UserVoice, talks with Jeremy Shere, founder & CEO of Tribal knowledge Podcasting, about ongoing product-market fit.Highlights:The importance of finding "ongoing" product-market fitCommon mistakes companies make when trying to find their product-market fitWhat it takes to get to the deeper truth of product-market fit for a good or serviceLearn more about UserVoiceConnect with Matt on LinkedIn
Today we're going to talk about the role of the voice of the customer in driving product roadmaps. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Matt Young, CEO of User Voice.
We know that one of the most valuable skills that a founder can have is grit. That determination to succeed and take their idea from a dream into reality. Our guest today has a ton of grit and we dive deep into his storied journey from being amongst the early companies at YC to becoming a member of a recent YCW21 class. Richard White is the founder and CEO of Fathom Video, an app for Zoom that allows you to record and highlight, in real-time, your Zoom meetings so you can write your notes later or skip the notes completely and share clips from your calls with colleagues. Ranked #1 Zoom App on the new Zoom App Marketplace, #1 Product of the Day, and #5 Product of the Month for Dec 2021. Fathom also recently raised a $4.7M seed round from a number of great investors including the CEOs of Twitch, Justin and Emmet, Reddit, Cruise, Clearbit, and many more.About Richard White:Richard White has been a founder and deeply entrenched in the Silicon Valley startup scene for the last two decades. He was Product Design lead at Kiko.com, the startup that Justin Kan and Emmett (subsequent founders of Twitch.tv) sold on ebay for $258K. He went on to found UserVoice where he is still chairman of the board. He founded Fathom Video in 2020 and was in YC Class of Winter 2021.In this episode we discuss:01:29 Richard’s journey to founding Fathom Video02:48 Being an early-employee at a YC05 company05:27 Childhood experiences that helped shape him07:04 Why he decided to start a company inside the Zoom eco-system09:15 Why being in a “crowded market” didn’t scare away Richard from starting Fathom Video12:13 Getting comfortable with Zoom itself as a potential competitor13:37 When he first heard about the Zoom App marketplace14:53 Thinking about competition and moving users to use something better17:25 His process of customer discovery and interview to help define a product that was 10x better20:13 What questions founders should ask themselves before entering a crowded market21:09 Best ways to onboard customers so that they experience instant success24:38 Talking about investors about their crowded market26:49 When to launch and how long you should build in private28:34 Richard’s fundraising journey for Thrive Video32:22 Fathom Video’s plans for the future33:40 How to get to product-led growth quicker34:30 The status of Fathom Video’s relationship with ZoomFast Favorites:PodcastThe QuestNewsletter/BlogPassTech GadgetSamson Q2UNew TrendCrypto WinterBookObviously AwesomeLife LessonDon’t be afraid to cold email peopleFollow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com
In this Episode of Startup project, Nataraj talked to Richrad White, Founder of Fathom.VIdeo. It is one of the companies invested by Zoom Apps Fund. Prior to starting Fathom.Video, Richard was CEO & Founder of Uservoice.com (Product feedback for B2B SaaS)/ Full conversation includes: Journey of Uservoice Insights that led to starting Fathom.Video Why repeat founders look at having more investors on cap table than less? Optimization for Angels and New funds on cap table Taking investment from Zoom Fund How to think about B2B marketplaces like Zoom Apps Follow Richard on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrwhite/ and learn more about Fathom here. Go to https://fathom.video/pod to skip the waiting list and try fathom.video. Nataraj is an engineer at Azure, partner at planbcapital.co & hosts thestartupproject.io podcast. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/natarajsindam & stay up to date here. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/startupproject/message