Mistakes To Avoid on Product Demos with Steli @ Close.com - Escape Velocity Show #30

If I could take all of the BS about “success” and cram it into the single most actionable statement ever, it would be this: The key to success is consistency. I don’t care how cheesy it is… It’s the truth. Print it on a T-shirt. Crochet it on a wall hanging. Hashtag it on Instagram. Just don’t forget it. If you want to be successful at anything BE CONSISTENT. No-one encapsulates consistency more than my latest guest on Escape Velocity, Steli Efti. Steli is the co-creator of The Startup Chat, a podcast now with over 450 episodes. Did you know that the average podcast dies out after just 7 episodes? Yeah, 7. He’s ahead by 443. Steli’s co-host is Hiten Shah, the co-founder of Kissmetrics, CrazyEgg and FYI… and for the last 4 and a half years, Steli and Hiten have recorded two episodes every single week. Steli has an amazing story of how he went from nothing to starting and skyrocketing his SaaS, Close.com He sold everything he had, bought a one-way ticket from his home in Europe to Silicon Valley, wasn’t great at speaking English, didn’t have a Visa, but he planned to start a software company… …without knowing anything about software. It sounds like a disaster, but through hard work and consistency, he’s now crazy successful. Close.com is a sales and communication tool that pioneered many of the trends we now see in CRMs today. You’ve just got to hear the story straight from the horse’s mouth. Get your headphones ready and tune in. Steli is the coolest guy (leather jacket and all) and just ridiculously easy to chat with. In this episode, we talked about: - How he got started as a SaaS entrepreneur - Moving to a new country for business - His interview on day 2 in Silicon Valley (it’ll make you cringe) - The website that he made… and that died - ElasticSales, his Sales-as-a-service company that led to Close.com - How Steli evaluates the value of a conference - How Close.com managed to innovate ahead of the curve - The business war over their domain name - Steli’s failed funding experience - How to sell more from your product demos This is an epic interview, not only because you’ll learn about how he got started in business, but because you’ll hear from someone that made a lot of mistakes and pushed onwards until he figured it out. It’s encouraging, to say the least. And in these times, I think we all need a bit of encouragement. -- Dan Martell has advised more startups than his hometown has people and teaches startup founders like you how to scale. He previously created, raised venture funding for and successfully exited two tech startups: Flowtown and Clarity.fm. You should follow him on twitter @danmartell for tweets that are actually awesome. + Instagram (behind the scenes): http://instagram.com/danmartell + Facebook (live trainings + Q&A): http://FB.com/DanMartell + Twitter (what I'm reading): http://twitter.com/danmartell