🧬 Fengru Lin - TurtleTree - Part 2 | Salesforce’s Customer-Centric Sales Motion | The Value of Knowing Your Audience in Every Conversation | Why Executive Buy-In Matters | How a Hobby Led to TurtleTree’s Founding Idea

Part 2 of 3.

My guest for this week’s episode is Fengru Lin, Founder and CEO of TurtleTree, a biotech company revolutionizing food for good. Having raised a 40 million dollar Series A, TurtleTree is creating cell-based milk, with a current focus on releasing LF+, the world’s first sustainably produced lactoferrin made with cutting-edge precision fermentation technology.

Prior to TurtleTree, Fengru worked at UL, Salesforce, and Google, gaining a tremendous amount of experience in sales and business development. Her breadth of experience makes her insights invaluable to life science companies looking to create opportunities for themselves in their verticals.

Join us as we sit down with Fengru to talk about her experience doing sales and business development at Salesforce. She talks about the success of placing the customer at the core of the sales motion, the importance of the 90/10 rule, and the value of knowing your audience in every conversation you have.

She also discusses the importance of executive buy-in, shares her thoughts on innovation enabling other parts of your org, explains how the idea for TurtleTree came about, and tells us the story of how she met her co-founder. Please enjoy my conversation with Fengru Lin.

Find Our Guest, Fengru Lin, at these links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fengru/
https://www.turtletree.com/

Find Our Host, Jon Chee, at these links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonchee
https://www.excedr.com

Timestamps:
00:20 Intro
01:10 Episode starts, going to Salesforce, the customer as the core of the sales motion
05:44 How to do sales, the difference between early sale and sales at scale
08:07 The 90/10 rule of sales and its application to fundraising, dealing with rejection in sales and business development
09:50 Mentors from Salesforce, the importance of knowing your audience in every conversation
11:26 Getting executive buy-in, innovation is there to enable other parts of the organization
14:43 How Fengru’s cheesemaking hobby sparked TurtleTree’s creation, meeting co-founder
17:12 The power of simply talking to experts, founding TurtleTree and bootstrapping at the start
19:38 Advice for filing the patents, working off of existing technology
21:03 The complexity of milk, the difficulties of reaching commercialization, finding the right partners
23:02 Outro

Social & Website
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/excedr/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@excedr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/excedr_inc
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExcedrInc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/excedr
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@excedr
Podcast Website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/

Enriched Notes:

Topics Mentioned:

Salesforce https://www.salesforce.com/
Marketing & Sales Strategies for Startups https://www.excedr.com/blog/marketing-sales-strategies-for-biotechs
Software Tools https://www.excedr.com/blog/tools-for-keeping-startup-costs-in-check
Getting Funding for Lab Research https://www.excedr.com/blog/how-to-get-funding-for-lab-research
TurtleTree https://www.turtletree.com/
Bootstrap Your Biotech Startup https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-bootstrap-biotech-startup
Seed Funding Explained https://www.excedr.com/resources/seed-round-funding-explained
Startup Valuation https://www.excedr.com/resources/startup-valuations
VC Term Sheets https://www.excedr.com/resources/venture-capital-term-sheets
What Is Patent Licensing https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-patent-licensing-works
Intellectual Property 101 https://www.excedr.com/resources/intellectual-property-guide
Understanding Intellectual Property Rights https://www.excedr.com/resources/intellectual-property-rights-for-biotechs
How to Protect Your IP https://www.excedr.com/resources/how-to-protect-your-intellectual-property
Intellectual Property Strategy https://www.excedr.com/resources/intellectual-property-strategy-for-biotechs

People Mentioned:
Max Rye https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxrye/ 

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.