Matter Made

In this episode, Elias Rubel is joined by Mark Roberge of Hubspot who shares his experience at HubSpot, steps he used to achieve product-market fit, lead indicators of retention, and lessons from managing and onboarding people.

Episode OutlineEpisode Outline

[02:39] Mark’s experience in the HubSpot team

[07:16] Steps he used to achieve product-market fit

[11:13] Lead indicator of retention

[12:04] Steps in identifying leader and getting the economics right

[14:34] The process of getting prospects through the funnel

[16:35] Lessons from managing and onboarding people

[19:22] The importance of getting data through customer cohorts

Mark’s Inspirations:

John McMahon

David Skok

Brian Halligan

Connect with Mark

LinkedIn

Twitter

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In this episode, Elias Rubel is joined by Alok Nandan, General Partner at Emergent Ventures founding partner at Akra Venture Labs, a fundraising pitch tool for Founders. Alok shares his thoughts on giving VCs a more complete picture of your company, getting the meeting, and making it count.

Episode Outline

[04:39] How Salesforce is applying AI and data science in their products

[07:16] Alok’s journey into independent consulting and helping early-stage founders

[11:13] How to bet on founders and help them succeed

[12:04] Steps in domain expertise and identify the pain point of the buyer

[14:34] The process of getting prospects through the funnel

[16:35] Lessons from the school of hard knocks

[19:22] The importance of a peer group of folks who are on a similar journey

Alok’s Inspirations:

Ankur Jain

Contact Alok

AngelList

LinkedIn

Twitter

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In this episode, Elias Rubel is joined by Angela Jackson from Portland Seed Fund. Portland Seed Fund invests in the most talented entrepreneurs in the region, those capable of building high-growth, capital-efficient companies in a variety of sectors. They operate a non-resident business accelerator program designed to connect entrepreneurs with Oregon’s growing startup ecosystem, from mentors and advisers to capital, customers and employees. They are committed to supporting their portfolio companies and helping them reach their potential.

Episode Outline

[04:39] Angela’s background

[07:16] How does sales and marketing operationalize their work

[10:13] The ability to be more creative and more agile with more of your execution moving forward.

[11:18] Early risk taking that you can model

[12:04] Technical founders who are creating product to solve kind of niche-y problems

[14:34] To be a good investor, you have to be willing to be wrong

[16:35] How to embrace a more diverse set of perspectives at the decision-making table

[17:04] Will she invest in purely technical co-founders?

[19:22] Use empirical evidence to decide what, what the best option is moving forward

Anglea's Inspirations:

Lucille Ball

Carol Burnett

her parents

Connect with Angela:

Portland Seed Fund

LinkedIn

Twitter

In this episode, Elias Rubel is joined by Kasey Byrne of Rasa. A company building the standard infrastructure for conversational AI. With over half a million downloads since launch, our open-source tools are loved by developers worldwide, and Rasa runs in production everywhere from startups to Fortune 500s. Their friendly community is growing fast, with developers from all over the world learning from each other and working together to make text- and voice-based AI assistants better.

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Episode Outline

[04:39] How Kasey apply big picture thinking into her career

[07:16] The trap most marketers fall into

[10:13] How to judge whether it is math question vs communications question

[12:04] Steps in developing team spirit and energy

[16:34] The process of seizing fabulous opportunity right now

[16:35] Lessons from running large marketing campaigns and listening to contextual cues

[19:22] The importance of running a good referral marketing strategy

[27:04] How Al is like chiropractic for the marketing plan

Kasey’s Inspirations:

Jonathan Cowperthwaite

Contact Kasey

www.kaseybyrne.com

LinkedIn

Twitter

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In this episode, Elias Rubel is joined by Chris Combs. As SVP of Business Development, Chris is responsible for managing strategic partnerships and corporate relationships across the company.

Chris is a serial entrepreneur who has built multiple companies from concept. He brings a unique perspective on how to build and take products to market, while developing strategic relationships across prospects, customers, and partners.

Episode Outline

[04:39] Chris’s background

[07:16] What is takes to find product market fit

[10:13] What he learned was what success looked like

[11:18] Blueprint for entire future executive to impact

[12:04] Thinking about how a startup would scale

[14:34] Habits to be great at crossing the chasm

[16:35] Refuse to sort of sit and pontificate over like products and product

[17:04] How to find the right people and getting them in the right seats

[19:22] What was hugely valuable and formative for him

Chris' Inspirations

Advisory team at DraftKings and Carbonite

Connect with Chris

LinkedIn

LinkSquares

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In this episode, Elias Rubel interviews Scott Leese of Scott Leese Consulting, LLC. A company founded with a focus on companies scaling from $0 - $25m ARR. Scott work with both domestic and international companies on sales strategy, process, people, pitch, and more. Listen to this episode to learn more on building and scaling a sales team.

Episode Outline

[04:39] Having the mindset of hustling and outworking everybody

[06:16] The purpose of writing his new book

[10:10] How investing in sales operations help scale the company

[12:04] Thoughts on recruiting and training people

[14:34] The bias and mistakes founders usually make

[16:35] How to communicate to your prospects in a way that is relevant to their needs

[19:22] The regret of not having a sales mentor or business mentor

Scott's Inspirations

Mike Lindstrom

Richard Harris

John Barrows

Kevin Dorsey

Connect with Scott

scottleeseconsulting.com

LinkedIn

Twitter

podcast

Surf and Sales

Scott Leese blog

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In this episode, Elias Rubel is joined by Matt Heinz. Prolific author and nationally recognized, award-winning blogger, Matt Heinz is President and Founder of Heinz Marketing with 20 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations and industries. He is a dynamic speaker, memorable not only for his keen insight and humor, but his actionable and motivating takeaways. Matt’s career focuses on consistently delivering measurable results with greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty. Matt is a repeat winner of Top 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management and Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers.

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Episode Outline

[04:39] Matt’s background

[07:16] How does sales and marketing operationalize their work

[10:13] The ability to be more creative and more agile with more of your execution moving forward.

[11:18] How do you become an essential service?

[12:04] Why focusing on internal process improvement can really provide a strong ROI

[14:34] What CEO can do to improve that interchange between sales and marketing

[16:35] Some of the most common mistakes leaders make

[17:04] Be creative and unique with your approach to unique businesses

[19:22] Use empirical evidence to decide what, what the best option is moving forward

Matt's Inspirations:

Morgan Ingram

John Barrows

Dave Gerhardt

Max Altschuler

Connect with Matt:

www.heinzmarketing.com

LinkedIn

Twitter

Facebook

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In this episode, we have Hiten Shah, founder of multiple successful companies, including Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and FYI. He shares the knowledge he has gained from starting the businesses and also how being curious about observing other businesses has helped him along the way.

Hiten explains the power of branding, highlighting three keywords: New, Different and Right. He also mentions the importance of setting the right intention with content as well as producing high-quality content which is in understanding of the market and its people.

He later mentions why identifying immature and mature channels and understanding the difference is key while scaling a business and also gives out the criteria he uses to evaluate channels.

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Outline of this Episode

• Content marketing - Hiten talks about the potential customer journey whether it's decisions around purchase or landscape of the product.
• WebTraffic - FYI focuses on content that is specifically aligned with the audience.
• The Audience - Hiten shares his experience on the selection and understanding of your audience.
• Market research - FYI focuses on understanding the customer experience and sentiment analysis.
• Channels - Hiten describes managing them and scoring channels.
• Blog content - Hiten shares the importance of creating the structure and time needed to be put in before seeing results.

Hiten's Inspirations

• Joel Gascoigne (Buffer)
• Nathan Barry (Convertkit)
• Matthew Kobach
• Eric Yuan (Zoom)
• Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson (Basecamp, previously 37Signals)

Connect with Hiten

LinkedIn

Twitter

Facebook

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In this episode, Olivier L’Abbe of Metadata.io joins us to share his insights. Olivier draws on his experience as the former SVP of Sales at G2 Crowd, Fliptop, Glassdoor and his time in the banking industry. He shares lessons learned on sales, tips to get prospects and customers to engage with you, how to manage oneself effectively, and creating predictability in your business. Olivier's inspirations include Jacco van der Kooji from Winning By Design and Doug Campbell from Fliptop.

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Outline of this Episode

[01:39] Early lessons from Olivier L'Abbe’s journey in his career

[04:46] Evaluating the core skills to learn in a job

[07:10] How Olivier is adjusting to working from home

[10:04] On making the transition from the banking industry

[15:34] Tips to get prospects or customers to engage with you

[17:35] How to manage oneself effectively in personal space and work

[21:22] Creating predictability in your business

Olivier's Inspirations

• Jacco van der Kooij from Winning By Design
  

• Doug Campbell from Fliptop

Connect with Olivier

LinkedIn

Twitter

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In this episode, Elias Rubel is joined by Arjun Sethi, co-founder at Tribe. Tribe Capital is a venture capital firm launched by a trio of former Social Capital. Some of their previous select investments include Digital Currency Group, Intercom, Slack, Relativity, Carta, Cover, Invenia, Front, Cloud Kitchens and many more. He is an entrepreneur who learns and adapts quickly. In this episode he shares lessons learned along the way.

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Episode Outline

[04:39] Arjun’s background

[07:16] How grew up here in the Valley and a lot of my family was coming from all over the world

[10:13] How to judge whether it is math question vs communications question

[12:04] The journey into the SaaS business

[16:34] The process of seizing fabulous opportunity right now

[16:35] You only need to have a hundred customers and then you can scale something

[19:22] The challenge of scaling your first company

[27:04] Starting a company is hard. Finding the customers to pay you as hard

[30:18] His thoughts on the evolution of tech

Arjun's Inspirations:

Ryan Breslow

Marc Andreessen

Peter Thiel

Connect with Arjun

Twitter

LinkedIn