Sam Ross is the Co-founder and CEO of Numeral.

This conversation is a master class on all things growth at the zero to one stage. We talk early growth lessons from Airbnb, and stories from being one of the largest, earliest Facebook advertisers.

We get into working backwards from pockets of strong demand to find business ideas, how to establish early social proof around your product, why you shouldn’t hire a growth person as your first growth hire, how he raised Numeral’s Series A in four days, and why sales tax is so complicated and how they’re using AI to make it easy.

Timestamps:

(3:03) Why sales tax is so complicated

(8:06) Running crazy Facebook ads in 2013

(11:58) Why you need to be aggressive on new growth channels

(16:55) How strong retention unlocks massive businesses

(18:24) Using pockets of demand to find business ideas

(21:34) Balancing performance vs brand marketing

(25:45) How to build a brand from scratch

(29:11) When cold outbound actually works

(36:18) Building early social proof around your product

(43:33) Don’t hire career growth people for growth roles

(49:31) Lessons building a jewelry business doing $30m in revenue

(58:44) How the 2018 Wayfair v South Dakota decision led to Numeral

(1:05:04) Hacking an early product together with spreadsheets

(1:07:32) Automating the product

(1:15:26) What happens if you don’t pay sales tax

(1:20:41) How Numeral uses AI and LLMs internally

(1:26:41) How to compete against non-technical incumbents

(1:32:57) Why they raised VC for Numeral

(1:38:19) Raising a Series A in four days

(1:45:43) How big can a sales tax company really be?

(1:48:55) Creating a better global tax system

(1:54:31) How San Francisco is losing its soul

Referenced

Check out Numeral: https://www.numeralhq.com/

South Dakota v Wayfair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc.

Follow Sam

Twitter: https://x.com/SpamRoss

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sambross/

Follow Turner

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

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